Board of Education 4-22-21

001business meeting april 22nd at 7 30 p.m kevin will crawl we'll call for quorum sure mr grippo here miss allen here ms ham here who's harrigan mr martelling mr parachimi here mr white mr chairman thank you uh regarding the pledge there was a fancy meeting in the hall earlier um some of us members object i'll forgo the pledge since we've moved on excellent well good evening welcome everyone if anyone's watching uh yes we're in a different venue tonight we're actually out of our homes um feels good to be back out here in the town hall chambers uh lucy and joshua welcome it's great to meet you guys in person finally um with that being said i think we'll start the report of student reps underway and the teams are playing a full schedule and there

002will be league and state tournaments in all of the sports um cheshire will be holding a college signing day in may for athletes who will be competing at the college level and finally the ciac has chosen has chosen excuse me cheshire high school as the facility to film a video for their upcoming ciac scholar athlete awards and this virtual award presentation will appear on fox 61 later in may the next thing that we have to share with you all is that the peer health education class at the high school is currently planning a middle school leadership conference and a high school leadership conference the middle school event will be held on april 28th and the conference for the high school will be held on may 19th in a normal year the st students from other

003school schools would be invited to attend these events but because of the pandemic only cheshire students will be in attendance and both students or both conferences excuse me we'll focus on everyday leadership and will include a panel of student leaders from the scene the senior class at cheshire high school um next from the or the rams against racism club at chs is hosting a virtual book talk on thursday evening april 22nd i think that's actually tonight well i guess it happened an hour ago and they talked about the short story barry and poem life is fine by langston hughes the english department is holding a virtual poem in your pocket day tomorrow in the library where students of the staffs are encouraged to do reading and the event will be livestreamed into english classes the

004student senate is sponsoring the sale of an updated super fan shirt sporting a mast gram and part of the proceeds will be donated to the cheshire food bank then lastly the theater department has finally completed the musical production of little woman and they're hoping to have a release date in the very near future and that's all we have awesome thank you any any questions from the board members that is a great question [Laughter] oh and mr salamini spent a lot of time recording that so as soon as that that video is available i'll you know we'll certainly promote it to the community and i'll share that with you as well even though now you're masked nice to be here mr zenski and i we're shocked today realizing that we don't have plaques for these guys

005because we've never met in person with them wow and so it's you know the year is almost over and here we are and it's so great to see you in person thank you with without a plaque it seems there's no other questions on board i just want to thank you lucy and josh for being here tonight it's great to see you in person meet you in person and looking forward to see you again soon so you're welcome to stay but if i were you i'd i just go home thank you thank you very much thank you good night uh dr sone do we have any public comment or emails at this point there was one email from uh john bester 45 trees road it's rather like i don't know if you'd want me to read

006it or just include it in the record it is a uh expressing concerns about students reading via technology he encourages um the uh the members of the board and leadership read a book by dr naomi barron entitled how we read um and so and that's that's the the gist of it yeah and just for a record uh to mr bester if he's if he's watching tonight all the board members received the email as well as someone so we went through it so thank you details there actually will be in the uh many minutes in its entirety yep so thank you for that moving on uh committed reports starting with curriculum faith monday um and um the the meaty part of the um of the meeting had to do with uh two presentations from the cheshire

007curriculum council first one was from um lori holm who heads up the academically gifted program in the district and so what was so interesting about it was that the ag uh the gifted program is um in many ways kind of flourishing in covid because with the remote learning the students now have um virtually 24 7 access to ms holm which is allowing them to finish up their academies the academies are the concentrated areas of study that the students go the gifted students go into and explore at multiple levels using a variety of media so um and then she did note that future in-person sessions are going to focus on the social emotional learning for these students in the agp program simply because in many respects some of these kids have different emotional needs or heightened

008emotional needs because of their their position in the school so and um anyway the other section the other presentation we received was from the social studies department and the team presenting was tim galvin from the high school and kristen giuliani giuliano from dodd gene montag from norton and kevin hanlon they were uh we're all in all in um attendance and presenting and so the foundation of the social studies program is actually um called the c3 which is college career and civic life framework for social studies state standards and the anchor point of the summary on monday was the connection of the four dimensions of inquiry with the c3 program so how that manifests itself is uh in the elementary portion um the c3 framework at this point has predominantly happened within the sixth grade social

009studies curriculum and making the shift to the other grade levels will be a priority in the next curriculum council cycle the middle school curriculum is pride uh predominantly grounded in geography standards in the seventh grade and history standards in the eighth grade um and the development of the curriculum not only includes these standards but also key social study themes connected to the connecticut core standards and then in the high school the alignment of the c3 framework emphasizes literary literacy skills democratic participation student inquiry and opportunities for application future goals are going to include encompassing more global a more global perspective in the program and creating a social studies learning library as well as exploring opportunities to increase the opportunities other opportunities for student-led inquiry so that kind of covered the curriculum council presentations then we

010received an update from kevin hanlon regarding professional development days and there was one held march 12th elementary teachers who participated majority of them focused on development sessions provided by our math curriculum trainers the re under the eureka or we use the eureka program and they had trainers available for our staff um middle school divisions and high school departments focused on the acceleration framework that we've been using all year um then um ms solano marlene solano talked about the summer program which we have all discussed here um it will be two weeks in mid-august designed to help kids transition back into school those who have been absent from school for so long and then finally we actually took up the topic of a real overnight field trip for the dodd middle school to washington dc so

011things are getting back to normal they uh mike woods just talked about um the steps he's taking to ensure a safe trip and a um informative and memorable trip for the kids and that pretty much covered the meeting so it was something it was action-packed any questions mr tim yeah thank you uh yeah a second ago i thought you just said that the summer program the summer camp program is two weeks of two cohorts five days over two weeks two days two out of three two and three okay okay i missed that part before thank you yeah um i have a question on curriculum actually going back a couple months i didn't get a chance to ask about it i was hoping to just uh early elementary grades george washington a couple months ago i

012had asked about it because i didn't i was unaware that george washington is not really in the curriculum and correct me if i'm wrong on this at this point for you know kindergarten first grade second grade um and you had mentioned jeff that he's you can't do everything and i understand that he said that he's one of many famous people i'm just curious like who else would fit in a bucket yeah i don't wanna i think that diminishes the role that george washington plays okay in our history just to frame it that way and if that's the impression that was received that's certainly not the intent i would want it to descend um and you know i i be honest with you i can't quote you where george washington is cited in k through 2.

013[Music] george washington is not a standard a social studies standard but obviously he's an important component in american history and like many other important people throughout american history we have books that are inclusive of george washington and other you know american key figures in america prominent if not you know arguably maybe the most prominent uh in american history so we do certainly address many important figures through american history not only in our history curriculum but in our reading curriculum uh or in our um yeah our english curriculum so you know i i couldn't cite you exactly where george washington's identified at you know marlene i don't know if you want to elaborate on that or is that in all of the classroom libraries at the elementary level you've heard about these books they're these great

014biographies for kids and i'd be hard not pressed not to find the one about george washington in every classroom because they pick all of these um you know important historical people to to share and that the kids read about and also in second grade um with the c3 the the focus is on economics geography history and civics and we're talking to the kids about making a difference state local national international and examining people that make and have made a difference in those places and george washington is certainly one of those people who comes up as a topic who have have made a difference and in a great difference at that so it's interwoven throughout um and across the curriculum okay is there i'm just curious is there any criteria like if anyone is discussed in

015particular in the early elementary gates is there any i'm just curious like criteria that are used in determining who is addressed as a unit is there a criteria for who we discuss yeah i can't recall a single unit where it's one person right right for anybody i think we teach standards and and as marlene said important figures are woven in to the standards that we study if you're talking about american history you don't talk about american history without referencing george washington but the standard is not tell me everything you know about george washington you know and it's the formation of a country and what role did george washington play in that would certainly be uh discussed but it we don't have a george washington unit per se the same way we don't have like a

016martin luther king or any other prominent figure in american history abraham lincoln or no you know no no unit focuses on one individual i mean i don't know if that helps you or yeah no no i appreciate it and just anytime tim we can have that conversation and you know go into greater depth but you know i think that's just an overview yeah no thank you i appreciate that and just so people at home understand where this really came to my mind was the insurrection and what i view as the you know the precedent set by george washington to have a peaceful transfer of power it was important and we saw it up close and personal a few months ago and that's why i just uh i i put him in a different place than

017anybody else for that specific reason so anyway thank you thanks tom any other questions for curriculum uh andrew what what grades does that cover department of education and all the standards are i don't know if you've gone through them yet but they list why not um but if they're there and you know in their lesson plans too and um all kinds of real wealth of information so you could look and get your daughters in first grade sure yeah okay thank you fit great thank you thank you faith moving on to finance committee mr grippel thank you mr chair um you know i just wanted to say something real quick um you may notice that most of us aren't wearing masks tonight and uh this may be just indicative of how we are going to be

018going forward in the world and you know our high school students were wearing masks and before our meeting began we we discussed our own comfort levels and our degrees of vaccination and all that kind of stuff so so just so you know that we're not sort of trying to make a statement or anything we all discussed our comfort levels before the meeting began that's a good point we're very far apart and just uh yeah so we are distance apart for our guidelines so we can do this and the reason why the students weren't wearing masks certainly for personal choice but also we could not space them far apart enough they're sitting at the same table which i'm not sure people can see so we are we're doing our part but thank you for clarifying that

019i just uh took it for granted no problem um okay so uh finance committee uh we just had that meeting uh if you would like to see it in its entirety uh if he will be on youtube i'm assuming uh in the near future um and in that meeting we uh dr solon gave a great presentation on uh future grant funding and how we're going to uh what was the term bounce forward uh so um if you'd like to have more detail on that that'll be in the video um and the uh the one the one part uh in the meeting that we didn't get to discuss was the uh the bloom shapiro quote for um an audit of our student activity accounts uh something that really probably didn't have a lot of activity this

020year but has in the past where over a million dollars in i would call uh cash and cash equivalents passes through every year um and so we asked uh since the um the town was i guess going out to bid for a new vendor i think for for audit we asked them to to get a quote for uh to do an all-inclusive um internal control and operational review of our of our uh student activity accounts um and uh when we we actually we had a presentation on march 12 2020 which was the evening before our school shutdown where uh dr gad mr uh woods and um you see mr uh steve trophone and pretty much jeffrey and uh yes mr jeffries um uh gave a presentation on on their internal controls um and uh and

021it was a very good presentation and um so after that we we looked into the actual policy and we noticed that the policy had been updated since 1996. um and uh so at that time the the quote for the audit was twenty thousand dollars and that um at the time the finance committee uh passed to the full board uh a recommendation to uh to have that audit done uh since then there was a revision in the quote uh according to the uh information we have here it uh was reduced to twelve thousand dollars which is a uh great news uh but that still is expensive right in the grand scheme of things and um we never officially voted on it at the full board level because of uh funding questions as to how that would

022be paid for and so um i guess that's the one thing we didn't get a chance to discuss but uh mr maciana i was just going to ask if if we have the ability to pay for that or if it was discussed with the town as to how an audit like that would be paid since we're technically using their vendor uh and we're asking them to do a an audit of our accounts um or a separate audit of our accounts was there had there been any clarification on that um from the town well i haven't spoken to anyone from the town about it in particular but i'll just talk generally about the quote um which was provided as part of the bid um when we went out for new auditors for the town in school

023and the bid was won by bloom shapiro um and it was negotiated from twenty thousand down to twelve thousand dollars however you know the way the quote reads is that because they don't understand the full extent of what's involved and it's an operational review slash audit um they quoted 12 000 as the not to exceed number so if they spend less hours than the 12 000 we would not be billed 12 dollars as far as paying for it is concerned you know the reality is um the board of ed budget pays for its portion of the town audit so it's you know even though the audit report goes to the town council we do pay our pro-rata portion so the vendor really is a vendor of both the schools and the town as far as

024who's going to pay for it that's up to the board to decide you know if the question is can we allocate twelve thousand dollars to do this operational review you know i think the answer is that we can i was i didn't do the finance report yet but our budget operationally you know is in good shape and i would suggest that if the board wants to go forward we encumber this um and i think now that the the audit is is really wrapped up and the audit was extensive this year because it was the first year this firm you know audited the town and the schools so there was a lot of additional work but i think they are freed up now to be able to engage in this i haven't talked to them about

025schedule but you know if the board wants to agree to go forward and pay for it i think that's within the board's authority but as i propose there's nothing in general time for a motion on this i'm hesitant to add it um but we have another meeting coming up in may business meeting so i i want to know i would think the best time to do this is when things wind down this year and a lot going on this summer but i think in the fall if you look for a little bit positive communities i have to work on that and i feel the policy number from 1996 refresh it it's been an acquit it'd be nice to have some results from that so if anything has a change in the policy it's good to

026go for the fall um so you know i kind of want to know i mean this is going to be your purview but when could they start you know one could give you results get that button down and see if they change your tune in the on the estimate because this estimate goes back to last july and all things have changed or not in terms of cost but i can ask and you know let the board know sure sounds good okay yeah i was going to say since there is no motion that uh well uh hopefully no but it's good to know considering the year that you've had endure financially that we're you know looking in good shape with our budget so just want to kudos to you on that i think i can get

027that detail soon but the fact that that's when that position you'll do this is a good thing [Applause] this is the financial accounts we also had discussed something in relation to auditing the coaches making sure they were permitted correctly sort of wrapped under some of the different things that's on their policy which you guys are talking about i think the next meeting okay okay all right i just want to make sure that's still on the radar too that's all yes thanks pressure here so when they do the audit um it will we will they'll say either everything is kosher or you need fixes well they recommend the fixes do they the corrections do those come out of the audit or is that another level that would be the that would be the hope that would

028be the hope yeah okay especially because if they're going to do anything we'll get corrective measures but we'll have what before we vote we will have an overview of what that 12 000 is going to give us right so we make an information yeah well it's already it's it's already been laid out and when yeah the details is but it's been over a year it's actually been over over a year yeah talked about it so yeah but i'm hopeful there won't be anything to fix you know my guess is they'll probably find a couple minor inefficiencies but anything that comes out of that it can help with our policy reshaping for that you know again we will see but that's going to be under messianic's purview with the auditing firm okay thanks um let's see

029mr maciana would you like to uh give a uh finance report oh sure mr gripper i'd love to do that actually this month the board members do have the uh the financial report and the financial detail and i'll just give a high level overview this evening this year's budget is 74 million 593 926 we've expended our encumbered 89.8 percent of that budget we are looking very solid you know to end the year certainly within our budget um as we you know enter april which we're in now and may this is the time of year that we really start to um you know look at not only where the budget is but look at what we need to purchase that we haven't purchased this year as the board knows we you know for most of the

030year we had a 40 cap on non-payroll expenditures we raised it to 60 a couple of months ago and now we're releasing uh 20 more so that the principals can encumber up to 80 of their non-payroll accounts we do have the leeway to do that so the principals this month and next month will be entering their supply bid orders for next year their equipment requests quest for furniture you know maintenance requests and all the department managers do the same thing so our facilities manager will go in and start entering what we call summer requests so that we can look at them prioritize them so as we go through the finance reports in april and may you'll see that you know the numbers will be updated but i feel very confident that we will certainly meet

031this year's operating budget really the only surprise we had this year was covet related expenses um you know our typical expenditures that um you know we see taking us over budget in certain categories forcing us to reduce spending in other categories especially and and maintenance and and we really didn't have any of that this year fortunately some of that was because we controlled it but a lot of it was just um you know a pretty good year is outside of the you know large amount of money we did have to spend on covert related expenses i do want to give the medical benefits report but maybe i'll pause and see if there are any questions on the finance report for this month first not really the question but um was in our in our finance

032packets to the public don't see do detail out the uh um updates on the grant applications that you apply for et cetera and in the finance committee earlier uh the team get an overview of bouncing forward if we can make this available cbs website it's a great detail on what the grants entail but as well as what the school is trying to do to get kids back in school is fun especially for folks that have been remote and unreachable in terms of getting back to school it's a great information just going through it it's it's it's i wish i had this last week because i was getting a lot of these questions i could have pointed to so we should bring all this next week [Laughter] so um ben the state well actually cdc has

033now said that um they have recognized it that corona doesn't spread on surfaces we've we've known it but we've still complied with the cleaning protocols but now that they're out and it's official does that change our protocols and will that affect us financially will that benefit us or are we going to continue doing what we've here's what we've done so for the for the remainder of this year we're going to keep things going the way they are we still have the intraday cleaning that's being done and i think that you know that is necessary there is a sense of comfort that it provides to the staff and you know we still do have covid that although it's not spreading in the school but you know it's the precautions that we've been taking i think we

034continue that through the rest of the year the things that we could have stopped we did like the isolation room monitors and the bus room monitors you know we've seen that the rate at which we're providing uh ppe you know mass in particular has gone down pretty dramatically for next year in in the covet budget which is again i know that the board members know that it's separate from the operating budget and the covert budget we prepared will be covered by the grants we'll be receiving you know which we discussed in the finance committee earlier so what we built into next year's budget because we don't know what will happen in the fall we've built in for the first six months that we would have intraday cleaning in the schools we built in 10th rentals

035for the fall but not for the spring next year so as we get through the next several months and into july if we realize and the guidelines support that you don't have to do the intraday cleaning or we determined that the tents are not necessary we want obviously we wouldn't make those expenditures and that will free up you know those funds so that they can be used for other things such as as learning loss as we discussed earlier so we um you know that that's that's kind of the difficulty right now in budgeting for next year we don't know what we don't know there's still a lot of variables things are moving in the right direction between people being vaccinated with the infection rate you know decreasing we hope that continues and you know next

036year looks a lot more normal i know that we all wish for that so we're budgeting maybe a little bit more conservatively and hopefully we're surprised so that we can you know use those funds that we've allocated in the budget for better things what degree the variant impacts things and i think you know we'd rather be conservative when it comes to people's health through the rest of the year at least until you know we have better information over the summer hopefully okay see no questions please continue okay i will give you the update on medical benefits i know the board members also have this in their package so for the month of uh march which is the third month in the in the new hsa plan year unfortunately claims you know which had dropped to

037735 000 in january and eight hundred fifteen thousand in february climbed back over a million dollars in march to about a million eleven thousand dollars um so that that's the bad news that those claims increased again you know claims are unpredictable sort of the good news in this month's report is reflected in the top section of the report we received 188 124 and stop loss reimbursements in the month of march and those are for claims that exceeded the 175 000 that were insured for so that was repaid back to us and then the second and larger sum that we received was 321 thousand dollars in prescription rebates i had updated the board last month that i estimated that amount would be about 250 000 it actually came in at 312. so between those two which

038total uh about a half a million dollars that helped buoy the um net difference between higher claims offset by these stop-loss reimbursements and rebates so in essence the bottom line is that our reserve fund balance actually increased in march by two hundred twenty eight thousand seven ninety five so as we ended march the reserve balance stands at one million two hundred twenty five thousand six forty two certainly better we we did hit a low of about nine hundred thousand dollars a couple of months ago so it's looking a little better it's not at the two months or better that we'd like for it to be but um you know it it is a better position that we're in overall for the year our claims are averaging about a million nine thousand per month you know

039that's versus eight hundred thousand dollars expected you know we we believe it's an anomaly year that's what our benefits consultant and cigna you know are reporting um and we hope that you know this will normal normalize for next year you know our reserve balance you know is lower than we need it to be we need to increase the contribution rate for next year that's what's been proposed in the budget so overall even though claims were up the the rebate and the reimbursements helped buoy the reserve balance this month and that's the medical benefits report uh well you know firstly uh you know since we've been in remote for what i don't know i guess eight months or something like because we did meet in the summer for a few times but the the luxury of

040you sharing your screen and uh instead i have to actually pull up the report luckily i brought my computer to you know to to view it while while you give your presentation um so it looks like um if because the the the money the uh stop loss and the uh and the prescription rebate those are one-time infusions correct at least for for this year the we won't see any additional prescription rebates this year we may see some additional stop-loss reimbursements and uh and it looks like so let's say we we continued on the the million-dollar track again uh it looks like we would have enough fun uh reserve balance to carry us through june at the very least if we go over 225 000 a month that looks like we'll be okay through june until

041our next budget is uh enshrined i guess right if that happens and we get no stop-loss reimbursements we'll be painfully close to zero in reserves right i hope you're wrong right yeah i know it would be bad i'm just saying we wouldn't be zero right yeah go claims are ahead on average a million dollars a little bit you know the reserve is really way closer to just a lot you know a little bit more than a month so yeah our experience is not unusual based on what the insurance company is saying well the claims the anomaly and claims we know this happens every few years you just get one of those years where you the claims exceed the actuarial expectation um but it's not just cheshire it's not expected to continue to next year you

042know next year the the consultants are telling us that they expect claims to be about 900 thousand so from an actuarial basis what and i know we've talked about this a lot in the last few months and during the budget presentation what's driving our high claims this year is a lot of claims above the 25 000 threshold more than we've seen you know last year at this same time so it's you know the bad words but the luck of the draw with the claims in some years and that's what's happened to us and again by the way it's not covered directly driving those claims so as of last as of last month february not march the of the 25 000 claims there was one covert claim that was over 25 000 and it was about

043thirty thousand dollars um can you just remind me of what we budgeted for the medical benefits contribution in our next year's budget nine hundred thousand per month we did so we're matching what the actuaries are saying hopefully is expected for next year oh god willing yeah okay thank you you're welcome um just looking at the you guys uh you gave an analysis uh for the um during our meeting with the town council showing that was the 21 22 or the 2021 claims i think that's what it was right um and they seem to be somewhat age-related at least in my layman point of view i guess um so so i guess my question is so when we gave our uh our uh retirement handshake last was that last year i think it was was there

044were there any stipulations about um extended medical coverage in those in that agreement no there wasn't okay well there goes that theory so again i have no answer for anything we were not shaking hands during it either threshold how does the how does the carrier come to that arrive at that they they say that's what the average claim should be and anything over gun no no it was just to when you look at large claims that's just a starting threshold 25 000 and above you could have done 50 000 and above there would be less i guess but what is the formula for the 25 000 and is it a realistic formula i mean because i don't know what i mean medical inflation is running at what rate i'm just one uh i'm with them

045i'm trying to figure it out per year so is 25 000 a realistic threshold well it we're comparing claims above 25 000 last year to this year so the what we've seen is compared to last year we have more claims above the 25 000 threshold and more total dollars in claims above the 25 000 threshold so it's really for comparison purposes i don't know that there's any magic in looking at 25 000. we just have you know and and those claims are typically you know if you remember some of the things that were presented during the budget workshops i know it's a it's a while ago but you know cancer claims claims from surgery claims related to um you know bone you know joint hip spine um childbirth you know some of the the claims

046you know are relatively high as well as you know claims related to heart and and uh vascular issues you know so you lumped in there are all the surgeries and people getting you know sick not just you know typical doctor visits and prescriptions are there any other questions um do you have any other i don't think you have any other presentations i have nothing more um mr chair that concludes the finance committee report thank you assuming there's no other questions from board members on that portion and we'll move on to personnel mr white uh sure the person i met a week ago or so april 7th um yeah exactly we were in executive session discussing uh the superintendent's annual review and his contract i'm not going to get into any details there the one other

047topic um that just so people are aware uh succession planning just in very general terms not getting into a lot of specifics or anything but it is something that um is on the board's radar you know people leave jeff could leave at any time and just to be aware and have an idea that there is succession planning in place within the cheshire public schools and that is all i'm going to say about the personnel meeting great awesome do you want me to move on to the motions yeah let's do anything else report out um so the motions jeff i'm i know i've got them here somewhere these are just to confirm these are these are basically boilerplate recurring every year yeah okay yeah this is kind of a promo uh forma move that we do

048every spring um in the budget process we have to notify uh people if they're going to be non-renewed before may 1st and so at the last business meeting before that we will typically non-renew teachers to protect insulate ourselves from a significant budget situation our teachers you know recognize it's still an anxiety producing event for teachers to to think that your job may be in jeopardy uh we hold off as late as we can unfortunately this year the budget process at the town council level got pushed back a month due to covid so there's a little bit more waiting but all this does is provide us real security that whatever money we have we will be able to extend appropriate contracts and not be left in the lurch um so uh our people know this and

049this is like i said kind of a pro forma thing okay and with regard to so this has to do directly with the union and correct me if i'm wrong here state statute state statute okay um basically the first three or four years of the union membership are you you don't have tenure until you've been you've completed 40 successful months as a teacher that's four years if you have tenure in another school system and you then move to cheshire you have 20 months before you acquire tenure however this is grounded in seniority and so you could have had 10 years someplace else or whatever if you you know we're tonight non-renewing all first and second year teacher contracts with the strong conviction that we will be retaining these people once the budget is passed but

050again this is an insurance policy in case the budget goes really sideways between now and then okay thank you moved that the cheshire board of edge so this is non-renewal of interim contract teachers moved that the cheshire board of education pursuant to connecticut general statute 10-151 authorizes the superintendent to non-renew the teacher contracts of all certified professional employees certified serving under an interim contract subject to connecticut general statutes 10151 at the end of the 2020 2021 school year it's their second and seconds any discussion jeff this might be a silly question but can you explain the definition of interim we hire some teachers um if for example a teacher takes a year-long medical leave [Music] we might hire a teacher on a one-year interim contract to be clear we have this motion to leave no

051room of doubt that that contract ends at the end of this year okay thank you sure seeing as uh there's not a discussion the the motion is that the cheshire board education pursuant to general statute 10-151 authorizes superintendent to non-renewed teacher contracts of all certified professional employees serving under an interim contract subject to connected general statutes 10-151 at the end of a 2020-2021 school square all those in favor please raise your hands it's unanimous thank you second motion non-renewal of non-tenured teachers moved that the cheshire board of education pursuant to connecticut general statute 10151 authorized the superintendent to non-renew the teacher contracts of all non-tenured certified professional employees that are in the first and second year under contract for the cheshire public schools subject to connecticut general statutes 10151 at the end of the 2020

0522021 school year and further to authorize the superintendent to communicate written notice of such non-renewal to the affected teachers is there a second miss harrigan seconds any discussion as soon as there is none the motion is the cheshire board of education pursuant to connecticut general statute 10-151 authorized superintendent to nominate the teacher contracts of all non-tenure certified professional employees that are in the first and second year under contract for cheshire public schools subject to connecticut state connecticut general statutes 10-151 at the end of 2021 school year and further to authorize the superintendent to communicate written notice of such non-renewal to the affected teachers all those in favor it's unanimous motion passes thank you tim that concludes the personnel report policy i think it's back to you mr thank you mr chair um on april 7th

053the policy committee met um we reviewed um policy uh number 6159 instruction individualized education program special education program um we needed to um make a change to the policy um because the law changed well i'll just let's see all students with disabilities who have not yet who have not yet turned 22 years of age who have not received a regular high school diploma diploma remain eligible for special education services under the individuals with disabilities of education act up until their 22nd birthday previously the exit age of the students was 21 so we we changed that language to which is in italics here students receiving special education services under the individuals with disabilities act remain eligible for such services up until their 22nd birthday or until they graduate from high school with a regular high school

054diploma whichever comes first the adult student or his her parent guardian will be asked by the district if the student wishes to receive the special education and related services outline in their individualized education program iep until they turn 22 years of age or they graduate with a regular high school diploma whichever comes first the policy committee moved unanimously to move policy 6159 for a first reading the second part we had we had reviewed um previously or we had moved for a first reading um the policy numbers i'm about to speak about and we moved them off for a second reading uh those were policies number uh 3170 300 33 26.1 and 3541.45 um these all may had changes for uh positional titles uh relating to the chief operational officer or other um positions that had

055antiquated uh titles for them uh that was uh passed unanimously uh 3-0 um finally uh we discussed um again as we we said uh earlier uh discussed about the the audit of the student activities account and the uh the policy that's related to it um and that dr solon would um uh pull the actual policy so that we could uh begin review uh because it's a fairly lengthy policy to see where we can highlight um areas of concern um specifically uh well any antiquated internal controls or references to uh gasby and we will be taking a look at that in the future um and that's uh we and we adjourned at 7 pm and that is the end of the policy committee report are there any questions seeing none that concludes the policy report thank

056you adam moving onwards uh school matters is a committee update andrew or andorian so uh our last meeting was back on march 17th while many of you might have been celebrating st patrick's day we basically were at a working meeting where as we finalized our proposal to the town council a vote was also made at that meeting 7-3 vote to forward the option six which is the two new elementary schools as the preferred option with the secondary option option 2a for the new 638 middle school um during the meeting we put together the the packet read through all the different verbiages i'd go to the town council and that report was finalized on april 1st there was a joint meeting between the school monetization committee board of education and town council back on april 4th

057where the plan was presented and gone through which we were all at um so now we're to the next phase which is what the next steps are going to be um we have discussion with superintendent as well as with chairman peregini about that um so what we'd like to do is set a policy or i'm sorry a planning committee meeting of the whole next week to dig into the proposals now that we've all had a chance to digest the full 68 page report and go through and figure out what our next steps are for the project we haven't received as far as i know any communication from the town council it's by way of questions or input on that but what we do know um is that now it's time to open up to public

058and start soliciting and holding forms and getting some public input on the different scenarios and then figure out what our next step is because we have a deadline of november if we're going to be forwarding a project to referendum yeah i think we uh okay can i add uh sorry i'm trying to chew gum and talk at the same time i can't mute you i don't know where to put it but all seriousness uh and i know that the song i think vincent had a discussion with collier's a little bit on next steps and a few boards would do i think one of the things we talked about at the planning committee meeting is something that was uh not settled in smc which is land right so that's gonna be a huge factor on these

059options so i think we can talk a little bit more about ideas for that next meeting but uh no i and i haven't seen anything from town council not because they're not interested in similar just because the budget process and workshops so i know in talking chairman or a couple weeks ago after that presentation there's something digging into it now well but um you know certainly looking to the board of ed dr sullin his team on what we all feel is the best uh way for trust public schools during a weight on the financial side so while the referendum would be november um i think we have until august to get something ready for our friend so before we know it that will be here i mean it's already may and it'll be july before

060we know it so we just want to make sure we have ample time to get public feedback as well and but the i'm pretty excited about how this shakes out so it's actually a very positive thing so i do want to thank the modernization committee uh because we haven't had a board meeting since the presentation to the town council for all their hard work both you know past and present members it's been a long 18th month journey for some of us six years but we're getting there so that's it that's all i want to say andrew great that's all i have thank you uh thank you andrew as far as understanding committees there there are noticing i'm sorry tim yeah please so just a comment a little comment any question the first comment i just

061hope that um keeping in mind the august deadline my hope is that chapman which is in each of these two proposals is not just linked automatically to norton and dodd because if norton or dodd end up in some sort of discussion about land i i don't think that chapman necessarily needs to be slow walked because of that i think it could be two separate they're obviously related but it could be two separate discussions at the same time and then the second question i have you mentioned forums before are we thinking about having any forums with public input yes okay i miss that if you said it okay so what i want to do is work with vin so just get set that up for next week okay awesome so we could have this discussion and

062figure out what the next steps are going to be cool all right thank you because tonight uh to reach out to me and ask some questions about hey can we engage the public somehow maybe a in a very socially distant safe manner because as much as we you know some not us but as much as folks think things are getting back to normal not not quite um i did share that with dr sullen earlier this week and he was looking at some ideas but yeah we we definitely want to engage the community and i think this information is out there and we can discuss it and as that specs are materialized we need that feedback so in person maybe made the high school maybe a dot outside in our tents whatever i know jeff is

063looking at what's worth i would just add that a very strong recommendation by the state yeah that we um elicit response from the community so since the proposal you know the school modernizations um recommendation is is now out there you know it's been reported on is there any public feedback that's coming in just out of curiosity has anybody i don't even know where they would i don't know where to go yeah i think that speaks to the fact that we had um we had a facebook page and we had all that communication out there but but who owns that can can the board of ed then continue with no i just didn't know if if you were starting if anyone was starting to i haven't received anything i need to answer the question directly nothing

064electronically i i i'm sure we know folks that have reached out to us just curious but no i keep checking my inbox every day on number items but i'm not seeing anything i i've gone through the facebook groups now and then you know i i don't spend so much time it's interesting well i i hope in the i would think positive tony as marlene would say uh negative twenty i forget what she's oh tony downer right that's would say yes you know that there's not enough information out there but you know this goes back to the fall of 2019 that these meetings been happening and publicized and talked about there's videos out there i would hope you know there's so much information that all questions are answered and we're not hearing but i'm sure there's

065what bothers me is there's i don't say silence but there's we're not hearing much right so i noticed very good or bad i think this is post-saturation yeah there's a lot of information right that's true and it may be that we just have to have a an event like a forum and then people actually will show i'm just i find it curious that there is so much not happening yet so yeah i guess we'll figure that out i'm enjoying it a senior who was quite clear that he was not happy about the direction of spending and he said thank you tim you're not on the council anymore i'll take it to the council but it's not really it's not really our role to a certain extent i wouldn't be surprised if people are reaching out

066to the council rather than us in terms of the financial side of it yeah i was thinking you know like the two different options not so much the financial but yeah are people expressing any sort of preference for whatever so well he also he also mentioned that he's beginning to organize seniors so i don't know if they're just putting that out there i would i would say catherine i have heard from you know my my regulars yeah i mean there's one there is a letter to the editor um today okay just about bonding in general in the community yeah from bartlett just yeah just the last point and i'll mention again next week but i think everybody understand it which is uh the meetings for the public i think it's important for us to make

067it comfortable for the public so we're here tonight adam you had the discussion before i got here about being comfortable with you know no masks but we really need to try to make that effort to make it comfortable for the public to participate agreed i listen i expect you know once we uh shake out the options and where it comes out of the board event in terms of the you know the impact of the school district and what it means for students and how these facilities would look like and design all that and by time town council does a financial analysis i expect to be a lot of public input yes so i hope sorry andrews any other questions from organization if not we'll move on there's no other standing committees uh we do have

068uh approval of minutes from our board of education meaning hell business meeting held on march 18th we do have the meeting minutes in our pack it or someone like to make a motion i saw your hand go up first man i think is there a second fake seconds uh i have no changes didn't have any changes to those minutes i should ask that earlier as soon as there's no discussion the motion is that cheshire bro education approved the minutes of the board of education meeting held march 18th 2021 all those in favor it is unanimous thank you correspondence miss ms fabiani do we have any correspondents this evening thank you mr chair you're very welcome thank you i have no i'm sorry we actually have super the long awaited superintendent's report much anticipated i know

069i i've actually had withdrawals not hearing this for a few weeks i'm serious there's a lot of good stuff happening i know we got a great presentation coming up so i hope folks are watching it's a very detailed update yeah i i have a presentation that we follow have been following lately as part of our typical format um we did have uh two resignations and uh two retirements for this year as part of the personnel update uh we had you know teachers just moving on um but uh in like i said the two retirements and this is about the time of year where we start to think about retirements and what sort of budget impact does that have uh now here's the list that i had so yeah we had that already for this year

070i would anticipate not many more uh retirements because as adam alluded to earlier we had an early retirement uh incentive last year so most people that were close took that and sent incentive we did have one very special retirement just recently and i has been to talk a little bit about our food services director madeleine dyker has been with us for 18 years and we threw a wonderful surprise party for her last night i say we and i really mean eileen menkes and the rest of the food service team through a wonderful surprise party for her last night in the cafeteria and i thought to myself you know i am tired of making school lunches for two boys i can't imagine how many school lunches she's made over 18 years for all the kids that

071live in this community so a special debt of gratitude to her and uh vin can add any of his own thoughts and introduce our our replacement well i have a question for you jeff are we going to include madeleine when we do the annual retirement yes okay so i don't want to exhaust all the points that i have about madeleine but madeline you know was hired in in november of 2003 so by the time she retires at the end of june she'll be uh 17 and a half years of service with the cheshire public schools she's done an outstanding job i know many of you you know have if you've been on the board longer you've seen madeleine in front of the board several times but you're well aware that she managed through the pandemic

072the grab and go program uh as well as got us through this entire school year um which was a very tough year you know not only to try and serve students and serve remote students but also manage the finances and the department and the staffing a lot of challenges and she did an excellent job this year so you know we're certainly going to miss madeline um she is a cheshire resident she was able to sell her house very very quickly basically over a weekend um and and the people that are buying her house the um you know one of the owners is is pregnant and so she wanted to be in on may first so madeline basically has to skedaddle so she'll be working remotely um you know with they they have a small cabin

073upstate her and her husband jim so from what i understand it's it's not winterized but fortunately it's not winter so they're gonna get by until they they find a permanent home they have two children that you know live in the maryland and philadelphia area so they're trying to find you know a place that kind of fits between their two children so um we will elaborate more on on madeleine's retirement at the next at the meeting when we do that which i suppose is is it next month are we doing that june 3rd intro 3rd um but with that i did want to let you know a little bit about the person that we hired to replace madeleine who has already started because we anticipate you know that we need a healthy transition because there is

074a lot to you know food service and the person we hired after a um an interview process which by the way we posted the position we had 12 applicants we narrowed it down to seven who we interviewed we had three really strong candidates which i was very happy to see and the person that we selected her name is erica biagetti she is currently or was the food service director in the guilford public schools for seven years she was unanimously selected by this committee by the way erica has a bachelor of science in food service management from johnson and wales prior to serving in guilford where she served for seven years she was the assistant director for food service in the milford public schools and prior to that she worked at the omni hotel in catering

075sales and she also has management experience with olive garden chain so she's got very very diverse background um she is a very very strong believer in the importance of school nutrition for students and also interestingly she's currently serving as the president of the school nutrition association of connecticut you know and and just like in casbo or caps you have a rotation you don't start as president you start working the officer position so she's been extremely active with snack she's an excellent spokesperson she's an excellent fit with the manager group you know that i have none of my managers if you know any of them are shy um erica is not shy she um is very bubbly a lot of personality and i think she uh she'll do an outstanding job so you'll get to meet

076her probably um at next month's meeting we do have some recommendations that are coming forward you know related to food service so you know we'll hopefully be able to have her you know join us for that so all the board members can meet her but erica is on board she's already started her training she's um doing a very very good job picking up where madeline's going to be leaving off thank you thanks and so i'm going to try and kick this into a little bit of high gear uh i know surveys prior policy or anything that involves students like this i notify the board we were just notified by dph that they run an annual ser on that annual the regular survey called every smile counts it's a little more than a survey they identify

077random schools through connecticut hyland's been identified they're seeking to come to the school next year and give a an exam to kindergartners and third graders where it's a very cursory exam by a hygienist and they collect height and weight information certainly more information would go out to families before we ever execute that but i just wanted to make the board aware a quick covet overview i'm not going to spend a ton of time on this because it's very much what we've done the last couple of months with updated numbers so you're pretty familiar with the format we know we talk about mitigation strategies community spread etc and all those uh variables are important currently the way it looks uh what we had a significant uptake uptick in covid positive students at chs over the april

078break unfortunately there were two social gatherings that occurred very early in the break actually one of them was the friday before the break where with a positive individual in the variant there was significant spread so it as of today we have 17 positive students and 61 students quarantined as a result at cheshire high school but you can see across the rest of the district we're in very good shape with very few uh positive students or staff uh and so we're we're doing pretty well uh reflected as well as our remote learning population we had 25.28 percent of our student population was remote on january 27th uh today that excuse me i want to touch on the emotional impact i did already again uh in the previous meeting and maybe even already today in this meeting

079talk about the fact that we have about 700 kids and when you look back at that 25 percent that's more than a thousand students remote back in january as of today we have 740 students remote our principals and and the mental health staff in each building have been aggressively contacting families encouraging students to come back you can see there's very positive very small positive and we don't see transmission in the buildings it's a safe time for our students to come back it's a good time to reacclimate them so that we can shrink that group that we need to work with over the summer to make them feel comfortable so we went from uh 25 now to almost 18 percent and what's more interesting here is that at the high school we had 366 remotes back

080in january right now we have 412. we're going in the wrong direction and the reason is i think that first of all there was a lot of concern raised by the number of positives that occurred over the break and the concern is not necessarily interestingly for becoming sick the concern is that i'm going to be quarantined and missed the ap exam there's an in-person ap exam the in-person ap exam start not this upcoming monday but the monday after i believe with ap gov and if you miss that exam you have to take a different version a month later and so yeah i see andrew's eyes pop out of his head nobody wants to do that so we're seeing a lot of folks quarantined to avoid you know just going remote to avoid being quarantined so

081you can take the test understandable but so it kind of gives a skewed number here when we look at that i think in reality it'd be even lower than that um so the remote learners that we had in january um the other thing i want to point out there is in january our total enrollment was 4114. today it's 4136 from january 29th um so madeline sold their house and 22 people moved in and 22 kids moved in it was really it's quite a house so but the reality is i mean we have a lot of you know people are moving in and tony and i were talking about this earlier today dodd in dc i know mike presented the curriculum committee meeting but just to update the community we are seeking to do i can't

082guarantee that it'll be available but we're working on uh covid screening pcr testing people before they go we've connected with hartford healthcare and we're working now with yale to see what we can do to get testing available to students the interesting thing is testing is becoming a little less available by may they're anticipating cutting back testing because they're just not giving as many as they have been and so uh that's a unique uh situation we will expect people to self-quarantine until departure on wednesday the 26th we have reduced occupancy on the buses they all have murph 13 filters uh 35 occupants to a bus even though they're 55 seats option to room in pairs other rather than fours uh additional hotel rooms for isolation if needed if somebody's symptomatic we would place them in their

083own room until the parent can pick them up predominantly outdoor sites in the interior itinerary so people are you know we're visiting mostly outdoor venues uh with the consideration of smithsonian's opening now i ran this trip when there were eight full buses of kids going you know you'd have almost 400 kids showing up at venues and it was like an instant flash mob um and we are now breaking the trip up into like several eight almost singular buses and they're kind of doing their own thing because we have to spread people out differently and it's going to be different but yeah it'll be really fun with your bus midday and evening cleanings of the bus and then socially distant dining or eating and shifts or outdoor dining so we're very conscientious about maintaining the same

084safe environment that we have in the school setting to the greatest extent possible under the new conditions and giving our kids a really great experience that i know many of them look forward to from the time they're in fifth grade uh our vaccination progress i never miss an opportunity to shout out chespercott maura and her entire team there have been instrumental in uh providing vaccinations for our school community more than 500 cps staff members were vaccinated i appreciate the patience and flexibility of our parents to make that happen during school days it's allowed us to now you know be very confident that we can safely close out the air and not have to quarantine many teachers and that's a positive thing to help make our community safer and healthier we have a scheduled student vaccination

085clinic on wednesday april 28th we have over 100 students signed up already that we'll offer right at cheshire high school again thanks to maura and our team again a special another special shout out this time to jack kasner uh the fire chief and our maintenance team because they've been running the clinics out of the cheshire pool jack and rich clavette and they teamed together we're moving all of the items out of the pool over to cheshire high first of all you know shawn and the team here at the town have been really good john gallick about being flexible using that pool space it was really awesome you know they're they're looking to get back to normal too so we're transitioning uh some clinics over to cheshire high school to give them a little bit of

086relief but also to provide easier access for our students um so cheshire high moving forward where are we uh i i want to reiterate that a lot of districts you know have been going half days with kids or whatever we as of monday we'll have any child who wants to be there four days a week full day we'll have that access um wednesdays we are retaining for remote learning uh because we you know there's just significant value we find in having all the kids on the same platform in addition we our students our peer health educators run wednesday special programming for all the students in the building uh we call it wellness wednesday and they they design and run the programming it's really beneficial for our kids and they get a lot out of it

087so we're excited to continue to move forward i also shifting years beyond kovid have distributed a book called the strategy playbook for educational leaders principles and processes it is as exciting as it sounds and um it is a very you know it's an easy read but uh as we've talked about before this year we had planned on revamping our strategic plan kovid had other ideas so in the summer i look forward to kind of you know if we can balance it with the work that we're doing with school modernization get together with the board and start to talk about some of that long-term planning marlene kevin uh and robin and kerry and i have all been involved in really doing some some heavy lifting about setting a our new destination it may be the same

088destination but it might look different and we're we're trying to uh work through that so that we can work with the board and then the broader community about is this the right path for our community so we're uh excited about that work maybe we need to get out more often but uh it is kind of cool so news and other notes the notes will make sense as i go through this but uh ocr we've talked here about title ix regulations and um in my personal opinion i don't believe that the revised title ix regulations had done enough to protect kids uh to be honest with you it's added a lot of bureaucracy but didn't really protect kids i think it in some cases may have exposed students in a in a negative way and the

089ocr has heard that feedback and they're revamping it is our policy committee chair i gave adam an article a little earlier that talks about some of the things that they're trying to do and some listening tours i want to commend chs football wrestling cheerleading they were part of a group that included our central office team in a polar plunge back in february the community in cheshire along with the community in southern southington raised 92 000 for summer camps that's insanity you know and you know kudos to our our teams that participated in that steve trafone according that along with coordinating that along with kelly len she plays a very important role in the ymca chs math team had its highest ever finish in their state meet at fifth it was really exciting for those kids

090and they're off to compete in the new england championships we'll keep you updated i am really excited about this next one we have been nominated to participate in the 2022 national memorial day parade in washington d.c uh it's really cool uh getting goosebumps talking about it because you know our our band kids put in so much and you know for for those students over the last year or so that band has been dramatically impacted by covid19 and limited and so i'm so excited for marching band to start next year and for our students to have this incredible opportunity on a national stage to perform for america and represent cheshire so we we've surveyed the band members and ninety percent of them said oh i'm definitely in no doubt about it another ten percent said i'm

091probably in and that's that's parents actually so with the students you know they're bouncing off the walls about it so i'm really excited for them and excited for us and can't wait to be a part of that in 2022. so that's all i have for the superintendent's report there's a couple questions uh yeah i have uh several i think they're all positive uh firstly uh for the eighth grade uh trip are they gonna be uh like the bus the bus um organization are are you gonna maintain those like the hundred uh student cohorts that you had you know for for classrooms or probably not um they'll probably i i haven't discussed that specifically with mike so i don't want to speak out of school uh so to speak but i i don't know that that

092will be the case i can't confirm that okay and you know they are getting if provided they get tested beforehand um and we know that kids on teams are engaging with kids on other teams outside of school now um so i mean for me my personal take off the cuff is that our students have earned the opportunity through what they've gone through to make sure that they're with their friends to the greatest extent possible when i ran that trip when don malonis ran that trip before me it was who do you want to be with you know we put these clusters together groups of four and you know you can pick your group of four and then you might be you're going to be mixed with others on the bus but we really want the

093kids to spend time with the people they most want to spend time with on this trip and anything we can do to facilitate that is what we're going to try and do great um so i'll mix this one in this one's less positive i had read an article i don't know if faith you would share this with me or not but it was about um having your camera on during remote learning and i was wondering if we had no wasn't he okay um uh if we had any kind of mandate where where our students needed to leave their camera on during learning or if or if they had the option to turn it off it's really at the teacher's discretion however we prefer the camera on um i have a 15 year old who likes

094to watch uh the office rather than the math teacher and it's harder to do that when you're sitting there with the camera on um so you know whether it's in my home or in other homes we encourage the camera beyond but the teacher could you know at their discretion allow a student to turn it off and really hearing from parents talked a lot about this camera and we did a lot with teachers in the beginning of the year to talk about why kids might feel uncomfortable showing their home or showing their background and so we tried to work with people on giving kids options and talking to kids about why they might not feel comfortable having the camera on and how to use different backgrounds and things if they if they didn't feel comfortable or

095for the students we have who are homeless and you know don't want to show where where they are etc so we we've yes teacher discretion but we've done some training around working with students to see how they can make them feel comfortable i just wanted to add yeah so the response isn't you know generally the teacher barking into child get your camera on cletus but we'll reach out to the student about you know what's going on it's better to explain to them why we want the camera on and as you and i have played around with google meets before you can fuzz out backgrounds and do different stuff now and that's fine we just want to see you engaged in what's happening you know in a classroom you couldn't just like pull out your phone

096and watch tv you could do that at home unfortunately if the camera's off and we want to make sure our kids are engaged starts with great lesson design you know with good lesson design they want to be engaged right but they should be camera on to the greatest extent we can yeah it's good to hear it's just that this article i guess and i was about a school in connecticut where the kids were using the screen being turned off as a as a method of exclusion so that even if a kid another student wanted to speak no one would turn their cameras on and it would create this further feeling of isolation so i wasn't sure you know that's the thing where we made it mandatory or if we had that any kind of anything

097like that occurring here so i just wanted to bring that up as a i haven't heard that this is the first i've heard of that sort of practice that's yeah and so just uh uh as a to end on a positive note is there going to be a proms or an in-person graduation this year there will be both proms and the graduation what that looks like um we're still trying to nail down uh the we have a couple of different options in terms of a prom uh we're serving our students tomorrow to kind of ascertain what's the uh vaccination rate amongst our students uh one of the reasons we have the vaccination clinic on wednesday is if you are vaccinated with pfizer on wednesday the 28th the subsequent vaccination is the 20th of may it's

098a three-week window between shots two weeks after that is i think june 2nd our proms are june 3rd and 4th or 4th and 5th and so you'd be fully vaccinated um would that give us option at a place like arya maybe you know we're working it through with maura and the gentleman tom st louis who works with districts on mitigating strategies so tom st louis always talks about uh there are a number of mitigating strategies that's why i have that whack-a-mole image that you know it's not good enough to just be vaccinated it's not good enough to just where uh you know if everybody's vaccinated that's one level of safety if everybody's mass that's a different cohorting is part of the equation distancing is part of the equation so i think what we need to

099do is determine how many students will be vaccinated look at the environment what sort of distancing can we provide masking what would eating look like if at all and then you know put the right package together to make it a great event for our kids but also safe and so we're going to work with health professionals to figure that out asap graduation there's no food it's a much different environment we are looking to hopefully hold a graduation outside you know in a fairly traditional way worst case scenario is it has to be done in two phases but you know after last year's weather tormented covid tormented experience drive through um i'll take two phases as opposed to that great thank you sure um what changes what changes do you anticipate if any with uh uh

100may 19th in the governor's lifting yeah i mean how will that affect schools sure the education component of the state the department of ed uh and i meet with them every tuesday morning at eight a.m as part of the superintendent's conference call and they're suggesting that you know we're just going to stay this stay the course through the remainder of the school year i don't think that we'll deviate dramatically what we do prom might be one area uh graduation might be another we're planning in person graduation but also promotion ceremonies across the district so we want to make it is typical as we can but again be safe and balance it with the the restrictions the the everything else in the schools like vin mentioned we're going to pretty much keep the same through the

101rest of the year you've probably seen the circus tents were getting back to eating outside once the weather improves a bit and you know that that's that's huge that's a that's the greatest area of concern that i have is dining and dining outside very nice alfresco environment at our schools that's what's better than that today was alfredo so there's a swanson frozen meal today jeff thank you so much for making the dc trip at least moving forward still at this point um i've said it before i'll say it again now i was wrong about sports last fall but your decisions related to the public health concerns have been really good um you've kept all the kids not all of them most of them in the school system and so thank you for making this happen

102i remember i graduated died in 1986 35 years ago and it was a big deal yeah the dc i mean it was it was a blast thank you um do you happen to know anything with regard to the vaccination clinics do you happen to know anything about dropping the age below 16 even i thought i'd seen a headline about that is there any not yet okay um and so i don't think that we'd be prepared certainly not for wednesday to go below age 16. yeah we're in a pretty good place now on your previous you know commendation i i have to say that's a it's a group of people it's vin it's marlene it's you know our health uh dr o'connor maura nancy stanton they deserve a ton of credit steve in the sports world

103yeah thank you for the whole the whole team um making that happen i guess so the one other thing with regard to the vaccinations is that something in the back your mind over the summer even i mean if that's nature okay yeah i mean we're a community organization that we don't shut down in july and august and if it's in the best interest of kids we'll find a way to make it happen in july if that's what it takes you know okay we want to offer it and i understand that it's a personal choice it's you know certainly not everybody it's it's not a required vaccine but it would enhance public health and if there's a demand for it we'll offer it okay thank you [Applause] oh with regard to uh students returning to school

104i know go back to october november you were talking about you know on a monthly basis you'll have to sign up early and then just a few minutes ago you were talking about um all students being eligible to go back i think next monday right do you still have that lead time involved there or you just saying you do i i want to be clear for anybody who's watching that it takes an incredible amount of work for our team to switch people between remote and in person and the work required in the classroom of our teachers to teach two groups the group that's in front of you at the same time that the group that's online is incredibly taxing and they deserve a world of credit for making it work this year i know vin

105gets ballistic about some of you know school systems that haven't haven't gone out of their way the the teaching team hasn't gone away out of their way to make this happen for kids and i don't blame them our teachers have not they've been incredible with what they've done put fear aside but then you know got into it and taught live and synchronous and all year um what i think it can be frustrating at times when we get requests like sparky wants to go remote today because he's got a haircut at 11. and that's you know i don't think it it's intentional but ultimately it's it's not really considerate of the work that has to happen to make that you know and top everything they're already juggling it's like scramble and now get him invited to

106the meet and all this and you know and get them shared documents for whatever that you were gonna in the classroom um so we asked people to make a commitment for a month at a time when they go remote or not and i appreciate parents you know thinking that out it's not a matter of just flipping a switch and it's no problem it's it's tough for our team so yes we still adhere to the month okay thank you um just a couple more things that i think should be quick uh you mentioned the um working with the uh the ymca i was just wondering where's camp q this summer do you know is it one of those schools i i know that what are we doing with that then is it chapman chapman yes we

107can't do it morton this year because the refrigerator the refrigerator back in norton the construction going on yeah we've got projects all over all over the place this this summer's going to be busy we'll actually give you an update at the planning committee meeting okay they are going forward camp q ups i'll just double check my notes um the question i think adam usually has i usually leave it for you uh bullying do you have a quarterly report or is there something yeah we do that at the end of each quarter i think the next one oh this isn't the end of the quarter march 31st i didn't i don't remember what the quarter we may have had it's okay yeah i'll get you one no big deal yeah yeah no that's fine okay all

108right i'll send it to you i'll get time to pull that for me um i wasn't sure if i'd heard you right marlene you had mentioned homeless students so we do have homeless students in the cheshire public schools okay thank you i i knew that it'd come up in policy but i thought it was more theoretical so that's not a large percentage but yeah i'm assuming it's relatively few people okay thank you um truancy you ha i didn't hear you mention truancy is it not to get into a deep discussion but is it an issue with the you know you mentioned sparky going for a haircut at 11 but is it is it a big concern for you more so than in other years how is it going this year you know maybe less so

109actually than other years i think it it could be difficult um i think we're seeing it more now in the spring um with high schoolers occasionally checking out senioritis maybe that's i mean that's that's nothing new um but when you're remote and it's you know in the next week if it's 84 degrees or something it might be harder to jump on and be tempted to jump on i mean aap will keep certain kids hooked through the end but um our kids are weary you know it's been a long long haul um i'm not saying it's okay i'm just saying it's it's hard to maintain that stamina of a year in your bedroom yeah online so we're hopeful to continue to hook them in through the rest of the year that's why we're pushing really hard

110to get them in the building because there's so many fun events that occur in schools at this time of year that we're trying to do safely and engaging and so it helps keep them better connected to class and another reason we want to get them through the door thank you and just one last comment you did come it had come up before about addressing white noise at chapman and putting technology in there so just being mindful of the potential for you know changing the changing the building at chapman even up there not putting a lot of money into it right now well any again you know strategically anything that we're purchasing we want to take with us it's all portable okay so you know anything that we're installing is not a fixed structure it's we

111want to be able to take it with us if we go someplace else okay thank you i can just update you so just confirming camp q quinnipiac is at chapman this year and they're also doing the race for chase youth triathlon camp also with chapman okay thanks man okay chef had a quick question i don't know if you covered this during the finance committee meeting uh on enrollment but you gave me an interesting number today of the change in enrollment since january yeah the it's the we've gone up 22 students since january um right so sorry to cover it 41 20 or 41 14. to 41.36 is that in any way related to folks moving into cheshire well the home sales going on i would say yeah much all of it right yeah we have

112a lot of a lot of folks moving in so i was joking about madeleine's house although they're not really occupied yet so it's going to go up by more apparently and that is more than usual uh definitely yeah it and it really isn't considerate of we had certainly more than typical home school we've had a couple of home school students come back um i'm expecting many more that's good news so yeah our it's good that people want to be a part of our school system in our community that's awesome oh i think it's eight i'm not positive off the top i had it okay emailed them a congratulations no i don't need an exact number eight thank you awesome all of whom are smarter than i am thank you dr dr sullin for the update

113uh there is no old business uh did we have any audience questions come in there and no no i can double check really quick but i don't think so 18 wow 18. i saw the screenshot there were the email i got from kim to be determined yeah but i had no other emails awesome thank you old business very short uh the only cheer up that i have is i i pretty sure we as board members we get the communications from cave on webinars conferences etc uh there is there is a free webinar coming up monday 26 it talks about what's come out of the appropriations committee in terms of the education budget so i'll be attending that and there's another webinar called legislative wrap up what happened and what are the implications for your school

114district on monday june 14th it's always a worthwhile one um topics on that one's gonna be education funding the pandemic legislation minority teacher recruitment retention mandates and task forces so that's uh i always find that to be a good good one to see what's going to come down the pike and fall and what we'd be facing with the policy and everything so uh and i'm saying this because if the warmers don't know if you attend the board of the cave seminars webinars most of them you earn academic credits and if you're in 20 you become a save cape certified board education member if you put on your resume they're very informative nonetheless that's all i had as far as upcoming meetings we have a policy committee meeting monday may 4th at 6 30 p.m uh

115that will be virtual border high school board of education high school high school showcase meeting thursday may 6 at 7 30 pm wtbd whether it's uh in person or virtual monday may 10th 7 o'clock we have a curriculum committee meeting which will be virtual and thursday may 20th at 7 30 p.m we have a board of ed business meeting uh here at town council chambers and next week we will have a board of ed planning committee of the whole to continue our discussions about the modernization committee options and what the board is we'll be entertaining the next steps including public feedback we'll make that information available to uh to us in the agenda as soon as it's ready uh that's all i have for upcoming meetings that's it so do i have a motion to

116that's why i looked to you first time because i knew it was coming up so motion adjourn the meeting and as our second adam seconds all those in favor that's unanimous thank you everyone thank you on if you've been watching uh we'll see you soon meeting is adjourned you