Board of Education 3-18-21

001march 18th board of ed business meeting uh before we get into it mr zenski can i have a role for quorum please yes mr grippo here miss helen here miss ham here miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr perogini here and mr white mr chairman you have a quorum thank you carol can i ask that we please stand for the pledge of allegiance under well i hope uh this post st patrick's day finds everyone safe and healthy and uh thankfully we're seeing a little bit more dryer uh well not drier but warmer weather uh that being said uh welcome this evening uh we have a pretty packed business business agenda but we're going to jump right into item 1b 1c which is our student representative report uh joshua and lucy it's all yours thank you

002uh so we're going to start off with athletics the winter sports league playoffs begin this week girls and boys basketball ice hockey and boys swimming will be competing in the playoffs and there will be no state tournaments so the season will end with the league tournaments fortunately indoor track was able to hold two meets at the new haven field house it was however limited to two schools at a time to maintain proper indoor social distancing and the cheshire team competed against amity and fared very well so we're very excited about that some upcoming news is that spring sports begin saturday march 27th all the spring sports have been approved to play and will have a normal schedule including state tournaments covid protocol rules will still be in effect for all sports and the spring coaches

003have been brought up to date on the rules that they must follow we have some commun community service news which is that the national honor society just completed their second cards against corona donation drive where the members of the group made color colorful cards and donated bags of snacks to thank healthcare workers for their efforts during the pandemic overall the group collected handmade cards and 10 bags of snacks within roughly a month these collections will be donated to yale new haven hospital and american medical response which is an emergency medical services provider in new haven um in other news the sats will be administered to all juniors next wednesday um for the musical the cast members have actually spent time in the recording studio so they could record with their uh their vocals without masks

004next week they're planning to put it all together the vocals sets costumes lights music video um the cast is working together in person and doing their best maintain old and create new traditions and hopefully they'll be able to share a streaming of the musical at the beginning of may um and then lastly earlier this week best buddies organized a school-wide activity to celebrate inclusion um we brought the national movement spread the word which has a main purpose of spreading inclusion to everyone to chs so chs students watch a short video about why it's so important to include and then students wrote on a paper strip one way how they will spread inclusion and then they decorated their strip so now we're working on combining all the strips into a paper chain and then we're gonna

005try to make the chain go around all the halls of the high school and that's all we have thank you joshua lucy uh any questions from the board uh mr chairman i just had a quick question sure uh to josh um you had mentioned the play rehearsals is the uh final run going to be done on stage or is is there going to be is it going to be put together some other way yeah i i am not quite sure about that i can reach out to mr mayo and let you know thanks thanks adam any other questions from the board seeing as aaron lucy and joshua thank you so much good seeing you again we'll uh we'll give you your night back uh you're welcome to stay but you can certainly go we won't

006take it personally uh thank you for showing up again and we'll see the next meeting thank you thank you before we move on to uh the fund committee reports uh dr stone do we have any corresponding emails to cps cover 19 at cheshire that k12 sctus i'm saying that just in case folks want to contact us during the meeting sure we do i don't know if you want to cover them now or in the correspondence section uh correspondence unless it's really you know unless you're going to cover some topics during your update uh we can do that later okay great thank you that being said uh we have uh several committee reports starting with curriculum uh miss ham you're up you're on youtube thank you tim let's try that again all right we met on

007march 9th um went over a number of items which i'll try to get through thoroughly but quickly um the first uh order of business um they mostly we had no business but informational items um our first item was celebrating black history month um and we heard from representatives from the elementary middle and high school uh who shared just samples of the work that was going on in chester cheshire public schools to recognize black history month um first we focused on debt um norton um not yes norton and we had um kelly grillo and deb manky um talk to us about a uh the black history museum that the student council set up to show exhibits uh created by students and displayed through the school mike woods then shared a presentation from the middle school that

008included recognition of the contributions struggles and journeys of african-american figures in the united states and then make connections to both uh language arts and social studies core curriculum and future opportunities to infuse the work with the curriculum and experiences for students at dodd and then dr reed uh maureen reed at the high school spoke about the activities to celebrate black history month um it was uh in an intro really fascinating um overview they had 24 days of living poetry in which students read a poem by a black poet over the announcements over the course of 28 days as the name would suggest and then the rams against racism also offered book talks um using or based on the book between the world and me by tanishi coates which was uh it again a very fascinating

009and interesting presentation um then we went into mid-year data review that um looked at the k through eight performance comparing it compared uh k through eight performance um of students from uh looking at 2019 the school year 2019-20 and then 2020 and 21 in the fall and winter um periods and what the data showed and the sources were the reading inventory and the easy cbm assessments um and what it showed was an amazing resiliency on the part of our kids which was very encouraging um and when asked you know how given all of the obstacles that the kids were facing how this could be you know mr hanlon suggested or offered up that teacher collaboration regarding an implementation of a curriculum that user uses what's called the accelerated acceleration framework developed by the connecticut center

010for school change intensive collaboration um and just a focus on moving forward all contributed to what are very positive results so um that segwayed into an update on profession professional development and mr hanlon indicated that uh one early we have consistent early release professional development days um they are focusing on the acceleration framework and leveraging technology to foster increased student engagement both in school and with remote learners and then um marlene solano added details of the district's efforts to provide professional development on these particular um in these platforms outside of professional days so right now we've got a group of 51 teachers and administrators who are attending a month-long evening professional development series on acceleration provided by the connecticut center for school change and the district anticipates a continued focus on professional development related to

011acceleration um we then moved into the um letter that will be going out at the end of the month to parents regarding the smarter balanced assessment and that um led to a letter that was submitted by mr jack bester and um it was read in its entirety regarding the s back or um smarter balanced assessment and um it i would just refer folks to the um cheshire public school youtube video of the curriculum committee starting in about the hour and ten minute mark it's a great overview of the smarter balanced balanced assessment and what it seeks to how it came into being what it seeks to accomplish and why it is important in this this year we did not do it last year um we are going to do it this year and um and

012again miss solano provided some very interesting information um about the the the entire assessment um i will say that mr mr bester has asked us to consider as a board um to request a waiver understanding full well that the waiver will not come because um the federal department of education has um not provided that level of um autonomy or or discretion so the test will take place but i do want to note that he did ask that we at least make that statement as a board so um also the draft uh 2021 ngs smarter and smarter ballast assessment parent letter letter was shared with the committee with the committee members those tests will take place in may and finally we discussed um cheshire high school student engagement and expectations dr mary gadd gave the report

013that included four main topics in-person learning upcoming events social emotional learning and homework policy and dr gad hasn't has indicated that there are 300 more students attending in person four days a week and cheshire high school is looking to increase this number recognizing that we are unable to really cohort our kids um and also um maintain social distancing requirements so it's it's a very fine balance that they're trying to achieve and as we get vaccinations um now that it's also opened up to kids 16 and up in the next couple of weeks um let's let's hope that um more and more students can come in to the school and begin attending those four days but equally encouraging were the fact that proms graduation um in-person activities are all on the schedule um according to the

014schedule so i we're all looking forward to that the school is also conducting such things as wellness wednesday um to focus on social emotional learning time management is also a topic that faculty and counselors have been working on with students and the homework policy is also under review and the current purpose of homework as stated in the policy continues to represent the beliefs about homework at the high school so um finally the parts of the policy that relate to the amount of time students spend in homework is under review and likely for revision and updates so that covers it thank you faith any questions sorry thank you tony thank you faith for that um a couple a couple points so faith thank you for the um the fifth the the curriculum committee highlight where uh

015you were discussing the standardized testing yes back so i did watch it and a question i think probably for marlene in it i heard you say that part of what you're doing is looking to see if teachers are asking the question are teachers aligned with the standard and i want to just for people who are watching i'm not a fan of standardized standardized testing the least bit i've benefited from them personally i feel that i've benefited from but i think that i do feel like there is a risk in people teaching to the test not saying it happens i'm just saying there is a risk in that that you can try to learn what's on the test rather than what's necessarily gonna give the best outcome to students um but anyway the point my question

016you had mentioned uh asking if teachers are being are teachers aligned with the test and my question is should teachers be aligned with the test in your professional opinion and i realize it's very subtle but to me it could be a big difference so it's a slightly different question so i'm sorry you had to go back and watch me talk on and on about the smarter balance i want to make clear that we're not aligning any of our teaching to the test what we align our curriculum instruction and assessment to are the connecticut core standards because those are the things that we need those are the skills that the state has indicated that our students need in order to be college and career ready so that's what we're focused on okay okay all right and

017i may very well misquoted you and i apologize if i did but you corrected it right there that's fine um and the another question and this i had i actually had a discussion with jack too and one of the things i'm wondering about is um are do you know what's do you know what's on the test do teachers know what's on the test the questions and then what goes through my mind is you know if this stuff is it publicly is it publicly available is it verified verifiable by people you have you i mean my brother did test not for s back but for another test he was grading him at one point i mean people get hired for this and they're supposed to have certain standards the way they test it but ultimately you

018do have people who could have you know slightly different interpretations on stuff and so i'm wondering you know how how do we know how do the teachers the classroom teachers how do they know do can they can they see the test can they see the answers and see if they agree with something and i'll tell you let me just make one point here i remember back in seventh grade with miss finneran and she told me i got a question wrong and i didn't because this was a topic in science that i understood she told me she said too bad you got it wrong and i just kind of threw up my hands in the air and said whatever it's not a big deal i don't really care but the reality is is that there are

019situations in which you know somebody's saying this is the answer and it's factually incorrect and so how do we can we determine you know if we actually agree with these answers and with these questions is it public so let me try to answer a couple of the questions that you had posed in in there um the first one i think is is the information are the test questions public domain and do teachers and other people have access to them and the answer to that question is no they are secure and they are not for public consumption the second part of that i think touches on really the validity the reliability the test fairness the design of the test the scale scores and the norms the reporting and the interpretation and for that i would refer

020you to the the technical report of the smarter balanced assessment consortium the 2016-2017 technical guide which is chock full of um the information that would answer any of those questions as well as um you know the um sort of the psychometrics that go behind all of that information that the consortium built um and then the state of connecticut you know has an office under a jeep gallop christian who devises those growth scores so that we are able really what we're doing with this is we want to make sure that our kids are growing you know you send them to school every day they spend a year with us we need to be able to show that they have mastered certain skills what might be interesting tim one day if you know folks who are interested

021is to take a look at some of the sample test questions so that folks can see the complexity of it it's it's very much not a rote memorization test or a pic pick the answer it really is more of which of these is not the answer after you've gone through and had to apply a number of different ideas to a problem uh to sort of try and divide try and come up and problem solve an answer so it really is much different than any kind of a test that i ever took whether it had been the sats or the gres or the iowa test of basic skills back in the day it might be interesting to as a group you know take a look at that okay thank you sure sure okay thank you for

022that like where i still stay in the same position which is i just generally don't like standardized tests but thank you i appreciate what you're saying about it most of us get a little twitchy around standardized tests i think it was how we were brought through the system with them and hopefully as i told the faculty at chapman the cmts are dead and we're not going to ever let um a test cause that kind of a feeling in a child or a teacher ever again this is a whole different way of doing business and you know it used to be that you know some districts used to want to make sure kids had breakfast before they came to school the day of the test no no no no we want kids to have breakfast every

023day we want kids to come well rested every day we're not doing anything different the day of the test we're going to welcome you with open arms every day of the week not just during test season so hopefully um if people were listening we're we're not reacting to that situation anymore and our kids have become much much more resilient to that because our our teachers are calm about it and so we're passing that on to the kids yeah no and i i can i definitely appreciate that i'll just say in general though that if there is a risk just saying there's a risk i'm not saying it happens but there is a risk in teaching to the test and then that doesn't really relate simply to the one day on which the test is given

024the risk would be in focusing on things that are not going to provide the best outcomes for students over time and you're talking about weeks or months leading up to that one day of the test but thank you for that about um the point you made about at least on that particular day having a trying to reduce the stress i don't i actually for me i don't really remember being stressed out when i took all those the iowa's and everything else but i can definitely see how kids would be especially more in high school not not in elementary school it didn't cross my mind in the least bit but um i'm sure there's stress when kids take the sat but the bottom line is you can't really teach to this test and i think marlene's

025saying when you know we we teach standards like you know uh connecting themes within reading and um you know three-digit multiplication it's not um the test we teach kids to be good problem solvers and i i would definitely encourage you to take marlene up on trying some of the questions wow that they're not and the questions change for every child um when you take this test out of a bank of thousands so you know it's impossible to teach the same five questions or whatever that you know as banana does last every year i mean it's much different and so we teach our kids to be problem solvers who understand third grade math and then they do well on the assessment or anything else that you put in front of them that's our goal right thanks

026everyone let's be careful let's stop saying we're teaching to the test because this is not the case and again there's plenty of resource materials and that's back i know some of us weren't here when it's materialized years ago a few of us been through it my daughter's been through it i get it but definitely take up marlene on the you know get the spin on what the statute is about any other questions on the current faith yeah i um i think at one point we all asked if we could um actually sit down and try to take the test which would be probably please definitely pretty interesting my guess is we would set cheshire public schools back like just um but you know again i'm gonna i'm just gonna refer folks to that that section

027of the meeting um only because we did talk about i understand the concern i mentioned that we are becoming a data-driven society and we're concerned that education is going to be completely data driven and so um and and contributed to the conversation you know the fact that there is an art to teaching there's an art and there's a science to teaching and and um you don't want to lose one to the um you know to the benefit or the uh you know the build up the other and so um it was a great discussion and i think we were pretty well assured that our teachers are finding are never actually losing that um that innate talent to the artistic element to teaching and and i don't want to sound really ethereal and everything else but

028i mean there is that approach to teaching that you cannot lose because that's where you connect with your students and so um i would refer you to there as for the teaching i understand mr bester's concerns i truly truly do but i also appreciate where marlene comes in and says that we are going to get some valuable data this year as opposed to what we may have lost um in this covet year um and i have waited and mr bester's request and and personally um i i don't see the value of asking for a waiver and i will say that now but um i just wanted to add that to to the conversation yeah thank you faith enough i know folks like probably wonder who missed their best stories if they're watching this meeting but

029we did get a couple emails from from jack uh and again it's and there's other parents that have some questions on the two and and i you know i i it was we always take uh mr buster's information at heart he's very thorough and it's helpful uh but you know part of this too is you know i guess you know it's it's great that marlene took the time and current community i unfortunately couldn't be at that meeting but to the time to go through us back and what it means to cheshire and how it actually applies to us because there's so much misinformation out there and i you know it doesn't surprise me there are folks wondering exactly what this test is you know unless we're out there you know being transparent about it so

030i hope that video is being watched and we're always happy to help you know educate not just like students on this but parents so understand what these things are about so thank you for spending time on this i'm sure we'll hear more about the um but that being said any other questions on the qriket current report if not we're going to move on to finance not a favorite topic mr gripple would you please give us a financial court update thank you mr chairman uh the finance committee has not met since uh january i believe there hasn't really been a lot of reason to currently i believe we will in the future probably next month but we'll see definitely next month because we'll have our council meetings with the for the budget anyhow i uh hand

031the report over to mr maciana for a wonderful summary of events good evening everyone and thanks adam for the little vote of confidence there i'll do my best um to get through the report i if you could just confirm that you could see on the screen the this month's report someone yes thank you uh and the report is a little bit longer this month so i'll give you the highlights um our budget hasn't changed 74.59 million we're eight months in um we've expended or encumbered about 87.4 percent of the budget um and i will tell you that as a just a high-level overview we are um tracking just fine for our budget and to meet our our budget this year we do have 706 000 that we've received from the state and 200 000 available

032in the unexpended education funds account so we are looking good to meet our budget i did want to highlight um just a couple of things on revenue so the revenue that we were expecting to receive uh this year was 85 264 from the emergency and secondary emergency school relief fund that's been received 264 which was used for the broadcast classrooms the board already was aware of that but i in this month's report the final grant funding of seven hundred six thousand seventy five dollars was received by the state and it's been applied to our budget accounts so that 706 000 is now incorporated and it's been used to offset the covert related expenses that we've incurred through the end of december so that's all factored into this month's report and if you did look at

033the report or you look at it in your spare time you could see that this column here has been updated to show that the 000 and exactly where it's been applied i have another update in the next section of the report which um is really an update from a summary that i've been showing since november as to the covert related expenses that we expected to incur and so the update which is in this middle column and this column shows the change so we were anticipating about 1.34 million dollars of covert related expenses for everything from you know cleaning to the food service program revenue loss tent and table rentals all the categories here on the left we updated the estimate and it's about 1.2 million so we're to the good about 135 000 over the

034original estimate from november so that's the good news on this the not so good news weren't um planning on at the time we prepared this report on needing tents and tables for this spring so fortunately the money that we saved over the first um eight months we'll be able to use and and offset almost exactly the 10 rentals that we have scheduled from april 20th through june 16th and so we're within about 1700 you know of the original forecast including the new tent rental so so that's good news and and the bottom line here is we thought we would need to make up about 3 000 in total from this year's budget after considering the revenue we're receiving from esser and the um cares act and now it's down to about 291 thousand i will

035also confirm that the food service program revenue loss that when we started the year we thought it was going to be much higher we are on track for that 300 000 we may even do slightly better than that so that that's all factored in so from just a conclusion point of view i feel confident that um we'll be able to end the year you know in balance you know we will have to make some offsets which are already factored in to make up that 291 thousand i'm moving on to medical benefits and i i'd like to just wrap up the report and then we'll go back for questions medical benefits i'm going to just show you the medical benefits report for february which was included in the board's package and you could see that claims

036in february here hundred fifteen thousand eight ninety five um so we are certainly on a better trend than we were over the first six months of the year where our claims were averaging over a million dollars a month uh you could see for the month our net change to the reserve fund was a decrease of 771 way better than what we saw here earlier in the year where we had some months where the fund balance decreased by over 450 000. so for the year-to-date um the fund balance decreased by 1.8 million we ended february with this 996 848. so that's some some decent news and i will share some breaking news that i just learned and that is that the um you know with with cigna we receive rebates for prescriptions from the various uh

037drug companies based on the prescriptions that are provided to our employees and so we'll be receiving about 250 000 as the estimate in march so that should help buoy our reserve fund we do get that every year it's up significantly uh since we moved to cigna that was that was part of the structure of the relationship we have with cigna so again that will help us and and that's breaking news i'm going to go back now to the finance report i covered this section on medical claims the next section that is brand new in this month's report really speaks to next year's budget 2122 um and the update here is that we receive confirmation from the state that we would be receiving in the sr2 funding um and i'm going to highlight down the bottom

038here if you notice these lines in red so we'll be receiving 559 that we can use for covert related expenses through september of 2023. so this particular document here that shows the 1.1 million under the full year total this is the supplemental budget request that we looked at during the budget presentations and workshops this year and so we know that we can offset 439 000 assuming we use this esr ii funding so assuming that the 1.1 million you know is what will incur next year after you're offset with sr2 funding it'll be a net of six hundred ninety four thousand the other thing that i do want to explain the use of this sr2 funding will include things such as learning loss summer programs any technology purchases we can use it for any indoor air

039quality and hvac improvements and so with you know marlene and jeff and the administrators we are starting to work on that you know what's reflected in these categories are you know i would call more of the disinfecting and the protective portions of covert related expenses so we will be supplementing this in probably the the next month or two with some of the learning loss and summer program costs um so that's kind of the as quick as i can give a summary of you know where we are with this month's finances and and what we're looking at for next year um and then the last thing i will um hit you with is some more breaking news and that is that i stopped sharing my screen the i'm sure everybody is aware of the american rescue

040plan the state of connecticut under the rescue plan is being provided about 1.1 billion dollars for education um cheshire's share of that preliminary is about a million ninety one thousand dollars so that funding can be used through october of 2024 so as we get more details on that particular funding you know it not only would apply for next year but also the following two fiscal years then you know as we've been talking earlier on on the curriculum and the education side you know there may be needs that that that funding could be applied for in future years so that is the finance report update i'll be glad to answer any questions um faith was your hand up or is that from the that's okay uh so tim see your hand up go ahead thank you

041adam uh thank you vin so you had mentioned you may have described it or explained it the s or two would it that is that another one is that another federal bailout type of thing yes okay that's what i get so there's two so there's two different ones there's one that just got past the biden administration then s or two is is that the difference that yeah it was december and then we got the update from the state in january as to the amount for cheshire okay so yes it's two different parts of money okay all right thank you a lot of terminology it's like era when it started i had no idea now i know what it is but um i i don't know if you mentioned this when you were talking but i

042noticed it um as you were scrolling through the document the the what is it the cap a 60 cap on discretionary spending i'm not sure it's usually for like uh non-salary stuff right supplies non-payroll so it's everything from curriculum and textbooks to you know other purchases that we need for schools furniture you know equipment um whether it's new or replacement so that's where we have the 60 percent hold still um and we'll you know we upped that from you know which we carried in in as we hit february we increased it to 60 percent and then in april you know we'll probably release you know up to 80 and that last 20 is where we'll find that 293 000 that we need to balance the year all right so you're balancing the year what goes

043through my mind is uh the medical trust fund right i mean it looks to me like i mean what do we have what do we have in the budget each month about seven or eight hundred thousand seven hundred twenty five 000. all right so even based on the last two months we're still going deeper into i can't say deficit but we're getting farther down i might my symbol our surplus is being further reduced based on current trends since january first so my preference would be to i i wish you hadn't even increased it up to 60 i mean you want you know the details of what you need to buy and stuff but my preference would be to keep it as low as possible until we have conversations with the town council about you know

044their concerns because there's just a lot of question marks there in in my opinion well if i could just jump in on that i mean we approved the budget for this year to address particularly this year a lot of critical items that fuel instructional resources that we've been able to try and curtail uh up to this point and i i'm you know we're certainly conscious of not you know we don't want to be frivolous of course you know we're we're trying to fund the things that we absolutely need to um to your point tim i i understand and agree that you know particularly coming up on a large town and board budget presentation that were more sensitive to that and i think that's what you're saying i don't think you're saying don't spend any more

045money and you know but we need to be re just sensitive to it yeah no i mean i try to make the point you know the details better than i do yeah we're meeting student needs but like you know sometimes i mean it's things like ceiling tiles no no no no it's you know it's a stapler you might want a new stapler you don't necessarily need the new stapler you understand what i'm saying that's where i'm coming from not the ceiling tile that's you know had a water leak and it's falling down i get that um but every time that bumps up from 40 to 60 and it just it just looks we've got to slow everything because there's so much going on not just the covid numbers and medical trust fund the school modernization

046everything else just to try to keep anyway you understand that thank you um and the last thing i'm wondering about uh this just came to me from uh sustainable cheshire they're talking about electric vehicles and i know you've mentioned this before to me then so i'm thinking you probably are going to know this aside from the regular yellow school buses whether they're long or short uh we have the schools do have another dozen or so vehicles but ten vehicles you're talking about the school owned vehicles yeah school and so they're those vehicles but correct me if i'm wrong those are those are more like minivans or even vans they're not passenger vehicles per well minivan might be a passenger vehicle but do we have any regular like four-door sedan passenger vehicles or anything like that

047we have well we have several hey clerk for a second guys i i appreciate this but we're on the financial report part of this meeting it's probably best something we talk about during superintendent update i mean i'm not sure how to sway it i just want to keep this moment because we've got a lot of stuff to get through okay okay but any other questions on the budget before we ask for anybody else on questions uh sorry adam andrews uh hand is up yeah andrew go ahead vin could you just what what is the state getting from the federal government one point how many billion 1.1 billion and cheshire is going to get 1.9 million over four years 1.09 1.0 so how is that math you know is there who's getting this gigantic sum of

048that billion dollars if we're getting a million over four years well i'll start to answer the question and i see jeff smiling um so the allocation of the um really of all the funding that we've received um including sr2 and the american rescue plan is based on title one funding which cheshire does not get a lot of because of our affluence so if you look at some of the dollar amounts actually i have them under the american rescue plan you'll see that you know this that will use meredith meriden's going to receive about 24 million in under the american rescue plan uh west haven about 22 million hartford 113 million danbury 25 million new britain 56 million so all the areas where you would expect that title one funding is higher are receiving significantly more

049than cheshire you know our neighbors southington um is about four to five million as is wallingford right jeff yes sorry that's like button only pinning somebody not yeah southington's 4.6 million and wallingford is about 5.2 million dollars okay thank you you're welcome i had a question go for it uh thanks to andrew for asking that question i had similar question and reaction but um hey it's better than eighty thousand dollars i guess right so well i guess we'll take it uh that being said uh regarding the rebate that we're receiving approximately two hundred thousand dollars from cigna is that is it is that just a board of ed sheeran is that or is a town that their share as well is this just or is that our piece of that that's that's our piece you

050know the total is about um 400 000 okay so our piece is about 250. and one last question on the supplemental kobe cost for next year that you shared so i'm sorry excuse me again a little dry hair um uh the budget we sent uh to the to the town does not include that supplemental budget that's just the operating budgets roughly 3.8 million dollar increase we know right hundred thousand dollars just for short the reserve account the rest is you know more or less keep the light sign items with contractual obligations people you know very you know the the needs not necessary ones we also coughed up 1.2 million dollars after we sent the budget to the town last year around this time to help you know our share with uh you know covet impact

051the town which i understand has been some that's for let's call it you know uh four almost five six million dollars and now based on the essr one and two funding that you listed there if we incur all those projected cova costs next year we're still about six hundred fifty thousand dollars in cost that's not represented in an operating budget right so i know it's too early to say what if but you know i think we're going to have a budget workshop with town council and beginning of april um i'm sure things are clear then but i guess um you know even if we did get the fully funded budget of 320 million dollars uh we started to find 600 plus thousand dollars potentially to pay for those code expenses so i i don't see

052a win in that scenario with the additional cost they've identified well we do so that 600 000 doesn't include if you were to take the million 000 you know would you know actually give us 400 000 additional availability but you know again the funding is designed for the next to through 2023 and and you know i i would say two things tony one i don't think that where we are now with the vaccine and and the direction you know in which we're moving in terms of you know people getting sick at this point i'm not sure we'll need all those covert related expenditures that we identified and we we identified those back in november you know before the vaccine started rolling out so those costs might look different is my point we may not be

053expending as much on you know the ppe and the disinfecting but you will be allocating money for educational services that we didn't identify back then no i understand i know it's more of the high-end estimate and but i think you just answered a question in my mind too as i was thinking about that million nine um i know andrew mentioned over four years so is that situation where you know we'll get that money the beginning of next school year and we can use over the course of two or three years or we get it in chunks over the course of the next few years i'm not sure that works i yeah if it works the same way as the first sr allocation we request it as needed you know you do have to keep track

054of your expenditures and it basically serves as a reimbursement so that's really just specific to cover costs yeah and they're pretty broadly defined you know they'll use words like learning loss um technology purchases you know certainly ppe disinfecting you know bus monitors isolation room monitors there's still you know that we need the details especially on the american rescue plan um there's i'll be at those there's a superintendent's conference called tomorrow morning at 8 30 a.m that'll be on that i think i'll hopefully shed some light on that great yeah and again thanks for answering that detail vincent that's all i have to do thank you tony um so as for me um i'll begin with the uh the line items for um employee cost um there was a a change there of a hundred and

055ten thousand i was just wondering kind of what happened there yeah if you look at benefits to employee salaries i think yeah some of the detail on that um you know that has to do with the anticipated cost for um substitutes uh and unemployment actually that particular 110 000. you know our unemployment cost we budgeted 25 000 and our unemployment uh comp is going to be about 135 000 this year as our estimate so you know we do we do expect savings in the instructional assistant line secretary custodial lines because we're not incurring additional hours like we like we would in in the normal year so that's why you see that offset adam okay um so uh and tony almost got there but um the 250 000 for the rebate does is that going straight

056to our um medical trust fund yeah somewhere else the way it works is it's it will go to the reserve fund okay and if you look at the at the medical benefits report there's a there's in the upper section where i show funds that are being received like our stop loss interest and prescription rebates it'll fall there as a as a credit basically okay so that windfall could theoretically uh be reflected in well i'm sure it'll be brought up at our budget hearings in april it's because we had requested 1.8 technically we would we could request 1.6 for our medical benefit trust fund and remain the same proposed uh funding level for next year a replenishment level correct well i'm sorry well no well all right the numbers aren't exactly right but yeah what i'm

057saying i do and i just want to i want to be really careful with that because the 1.8 million dollar increase essentially all that does it gets expected claims in line with contributions you know it's not designed to rebuild the medical benefits reserved so you know whatever we end theoretically if we increase our contributions and the claims are as expected next year whatever we end with in our reserve fund this year is what we'll have at the end of next year but right and i remember there being some conversation in the budget process about well you know our budget would go up even more if we did try and like basically re-pad that account but things like this prescription rebate help you know 250 000 is a good it's a little bit you know going

058into that and we can ride out the next few months and see where things stand hopefully there i mean if they come anywhere near the fall we'll be concerned but uh it's not trending that way right but um the the balance that you're showing that 900 000 balance is that reflecting the 250 000 or not no that didn't come in by the end of february okay it you know you'll see it in the march balance okay um and lastly um you know a lot more schools are um opening up uh especially a lot of the large cities now are i think hartford announced they might they it sounded like they were going to go a full open or something to that effect at the end of this month um so i was wondering and jeff

059if you're going to cover this in your report that's files stop right there you are yes okay well so any so let's say we did something like that or if you're going to speak to that is is that cost of a full reopen that i remember there was like a 90 000 line item for furniture reallocation all that stuff is that all baked in already or would there be an additional cost because we weren't anticipating going a full open no we're okay most of the furniture moving cost has to do with us pulling all ancillary for not desks but ancillary furniture out of rooms um file cabinets and all desks or tables and things like that that we had to do predominantly from k to eight okay um but yeah the major cost i think

060been touched a bit on is the the tents this spring that's that's the the greatest cost but it provides so much uh confidence for dining uh that's that's a big area you know we're not seeing spread in classrooms it's really when masks are off out outside of the school system um and we don't wanna invite that during lunch so as we bring more kids back the tents become that much more critical right um and then finally so uh with the cdc are i'm sorry with full open uh potentially around the corners that mean the cdc is about to change their social distancing rules or is full open in quotes meetings full open as far as whatever the cdc will allow with social distancing well it's interesting you know the cdc there have been uh recent

061reports about six feet distancing not really statistically being any different than three feet distancing and the state has always said from day one you know that's a recommendation it's part of a suite of mitigation strategies six foot social distancing um you know vin mac mentioned vaccination is part of that suite for our at least for our staff uh or 16 and up uh masks are a critical component to those things so it in our schools we've never said you must be six feet apart and in many cases we we haven't been um at the high school where kids are older and they express more vapor because of their size and things like that we it's it's like working this balanced equation so we're you know sensitive a little bit more to spacing and the fact

062that another mitigation strategy is cohorting when you're with the same people all the time you can't do that at high school because kids are switching classes um so we do put more of a premium on spacing at the high school um and so that's that's one thing that we're considering and i'll touch on that a little bit in my report about how we are transitioning back and how that plays a role but the cdc doesn't look like they're going to be changing the uh the the recommendation to three feet they're they're gonna stick i think with six feet is the recommendation is part of that overall suite understood okay uh well that ends my line of questioning uh does anyone else have any questions unanswered i think so everything is finance related actually i mean

063from my perspective that's money involved um with regard to uh vaccinations um do we do duven or jeff or anybody else do we know we're sorry there's a lot of yelling going on here um do we have a sense of who's paying for the vaccinations is it insurance companies and really what i'm getting at here is you just mentioned the vaccinations go down to 16 years old they could go even lower than that at a certain point and not getting into the discussion about whether a parent wants their child vaccinated but simply there probably would be a lot and i'm wondering do we have a sense of whether it would be somebody going to is it is there many people in cheshire are probably questioning who pays for vaccinations my understanding is the federal government

064they they made mass purchases from moderna and pfizer johnson and johnson to you know is a public health intervention during the crisis and so that we're not getting billed for the vaccinations okay and okay good that's all i wanted i just want to make sure that kids can get vaccinated if they're eligible for it that's it right well we're working with um and i'll talk about this in my report okay mr chairman that concludes the finance report hallelujah thank you adam up next uh planning committee mr martelly sure thank you very much mr chair so um we had the planning committee meeting of the whole back on march the 11th um a lot of what was discussed there i'm going to go over in the update for the school modernization committee so instead of rehashing

065the entire meeting that we all sat through for three hours i just like to touch on some of the high points of that meeting um the survey i discussed the survey results for those of you watching at home um which is overwhelming support in the community about 86 percent of all respondents in favor of some form of school modernization or another 95 95 of the community understood what modernization was and what the goals of and the objectives were for the plan moving forward um one thing the survey did not touch it is what the overall costs will be to the average taxpayer or to the district as a whole um so that's still something that we're working on um i went through the different scenarios scenario 1a and 2a um and then alluded to a

066scenario six which was a creation of two new elementary schools which was still going to be refined which i'll get into in the school modernization update um that meeting on the 11th came right after the district had and some of the planning folks and members of the school modernization committee had a meeting with the office of state construction grant and review and at that meeting there were some new items that were touched on which i'll also get into but namely the size of the proposed sixth through eight middle school was a bit of a concern that oscgr had as well as the size of the elementary school that was proposed at 800 students um which would be the phase scenario 1a and 2a um other than that if there's any specific questions again i have

067a pretty lengthy update to get into of our meeting last night which i'll try to be concise with as well so if there's any specific questions about the planning committee i'd be happy to address those thank you mr chairman yeah i think we had one of the attendants on the board so thank you for attending that nozzle lengthy meeting but uh it's a very important project i'm sure so we're going to hear more a little bit later on that um up next was policy mr grippo again uh thank you uh so for policy let me bring up the minutes here um we met on march 2nd um the first part of the meeting was we reviewed let's see one two three four five six uh different policies that had not been reviewed since 1996. to

068me that's like yesterday but i uh failed to my uh math skills uh can remember how many years it is that's 20 something years so a long time um all of these uh policies just need to have the uh the director of management and personnel title changed to uh chief operating officer um and uh and or refer to current titles that we use within the system it was moved that these policies 3170 300 33 26.1 3540 were all moved for a first reading unanimously by the policy committee um after uh we reviewed those policies um we had several other policies for discussion um we reviewed bylaw 93-25.43 which is attendance at meetings via electronic communication this is one that we have visited and tabled several times in the past um i had i had it

069added to the agenda again for this particular meeting because i wanted to report that both i and mr chairman peregini had been talking to local legislators uh to um encourage them to change the foia law so that we could continue uh electronic uh communication meetings especially at the subcommittee level because as of right now the only way that we can have a meeting like we are tonight is through executive governor's executive order so we are assured that the legislators will work to have have the law change this session but with no guarantees and we the policy committee agreed to uh table while we awaited feedback um we uh reviewed policy number 5117 which is uh school attendance areas um uh superintendent solon uh wanted to review this policy uh with the board so we had

070a better understanding of policy and procedures um in reference to redistricting um and he reviewed common requests uh that occur uh normally whereby if a student uh moves across town or or uh let's see common requests uh receiving special services outside of the school district or a family who has moved within cheshire but out of their area district uh requests for area waivers must be made and approved on a yearly basis so i might just read that instead of summarizing um so uh he just wanted to sort of review that uh so we were all aware of those types of requests um finally and this one we we had a little bit of a discussion on was about non-resident attendance um [Music] uh dr solin reviewed this requirement with the committee um and i'm just

071going to read here he explained there are certain times when non-resident students are allowed to attend cheshire public schools tuition-free such examples might be a family in the process of moving to cheshire or a grade 12 student who has moved out of town and who would like to finish his her senior year um and we wanted to to sort of talk about this subject because um with the historically we have not allowed out of state district students to attend on a tuition basis mostly because of accounting issues uh with the increase in elementary enrollment um he would not consider allowing tuition as students in the elementary grades but uh may consider it at the high school level where we have additional capacity currently and was considering opening up a lottery of up to 10 seats

072to out of district high school students um the members of the committee that would be myself mr white and miss hallon uh expressed concerns uh about this especially uh perhaps even potentially charging full tuition um to uh out of district students for a public school and um uh dr solon said that he would review um what uh there are other districts who have uh uh piloted this type of program in the past and he was to check to see what sort of solutions they had come up with uh and mostly i wanted to bring that to the board's attention as um it's something that dr sullin is considering um and if uh i know that uh we all had concerns uh sort of unintended consequences of a program like that um and so uh again

073there was no action on that policy just that it was uh uh meant for public uh discussion um are there any questions in relation to the material that i have covered uh secret adam i i apologize while you were talking i was trying to find the actual bill number about um the ability for boards to continue uh meet remotely and foia i can't find it that came up during i i i apologize i thought i'd mention this back in january that came up during a cave legislative breakfast that uh was had for our for our uh region number and it wasn't our wraps a bunch of other reps i think up near denver talking about it i am and i reached out to some of our local reps and give them a heads up and

074uh they're certainly supportive you know once that language is finalized we'll we'll see it but you reminded me to check in on that and see where that is i haven't heard anything more but something like the bill number i'll forward to the rest of the board so you can look at the details but that was it great thank you um faith you had your hand up first yeah regarding sacred heart students um i assume clearly that they would not be the cheshire students going to sacred heart who are losing their positions because they would just we already get reimbursed from the state for those kids or we would get our reimbursement for those kids um ecs funding correct when they come back well we don't we don't receive ecs funding on a per pupil basis

075um that's uh a formula that uh evaluates the number of people who live in the community and income and what the uh the uh taxable property is in the in the town what we're looking at here is you know if you're a student who grew up or lives in cheshire resides here and went to sacred heart or any school private school we haven't had a lot of kids come back from private schools to attend cheshire high school and they can do that this um what this consideration with respect to tuition is that students who do not live in cheshire exactly could pay tuition um that doesn't impact our ecs funding either that's a flat fee that is paid to us by the individual it's our whatever our tuition rate is to attend and i you

076know my recommendation is that you know we wanted to put that out on the table something we're looking at something that we would consider but i really don't know that we need to discuss it in earnest you know until we we determine what our budget is and you know make some decisions closer to the end of april that's my recommendation okay all right then i'll we'll pick it up later then okay just put it out there food for thought let you churn on uh turn around a little bit and then we can talk about it or not at the end of april good deal thank you yep mr white thanks thank you adam yeah i just wanted to add um i didn't have only like administrative concerns with uh charging tuition to out of out

077of district students i just philosophically i don't like the idea of public education charging tuition it's that simple as well as other concerns that's it thank you are there any other comments or questions uh seeing none that concludes the policy report thank you thank you adam uh up next uh is our school moderation committee update the andrew and ann and team i think we have a lot to talk about so uh hand over to you andrew on the end what's up sure and do you want to kick it off you want me to do it and you can clean it up you know my internet has been blipping me off and on so i'm going to let you take it just in case i get booted out again sure all right well let's get right

078into it so last night we had a rather lengthy meeting um i just want to remind everybody that when we started the process we started with about 12 different scenarios some of which had sub sections of each of those so you know countless options we started with we are down to about two preferred options tonight i'm going to go through three and then two and then let everyone know about a vote that we had in case you didn't get a chance to see the uh the meeting last night as you might have been out celebrating st patrick's day like some of us wish we were but got work to do so i'm going to present my entire screen let's make sure that i can do this share all right all right we good i can't

079see you so give me somebody yes all right so here we go so since our uh planning committee meeting back on the 11th um these scenarios have been updated um on the 16th by coliers with some other numbers and some items received from slr so back to scenario 1a which this scenario is pretty much off the table as of now this was a scenario with an 858 k through 6 elementary school to be built somewhere in the northwest quadrant of the town with the renovation of dodd as phase one of the initial project um with initial estimated district share and the low end of about 80 million to the high end of 98.7 one of the large issues with this was the amount of redistricting that was going to have to be done district-wide um

080many thought that was too much and i'll get into the actual redistricting that slr has done based on scenario six um as we move forward here so scenario two a which is the creation of the new six through eight middle school on a site to be determined um and then the building of a new we were calling it the new chapman which would be a k-5 elementary school either on the chapman site or on a site to be determined with an estimated student population of 515 students so phase one just to recap is a new middle school with a projected eight-year high enrollment of about 11 but more like 1200 students with a new elementary school to be built either on the chapman site or somewhere else about 515 students phase one estimated district share

081would be a low of 102 million with a high of 124 million dollars scenario six which i'd like to really draw attention to here in phase one would be the construction of a new elementary school somewhere in the north end of town maybe on this chapman site maybe not the chapman site and a school somewhere in the south end of school maybe on the norton maybe on the not norton's property both of these schools would have an eight year high enrollment of about 660 students on average with a low district share of 71 million dollars with a high district share of 86.6 million i'm going to stop there and see if there's any questions about the three options that are currently the final three options which are now refined down to two options before i

082get into the actual redistricting report which was received yesterday by slr which shows how the two new elementary schools in the now north and south will take on the student the increased enrollment and then with the redistricting with highland and do little schools never mind i think i stopped sharing but i can't tell i just wanted to oh i'm sorry i was i wanted to see the um i'm so confused uh i think 2a yep give me one second i bring that back up sorry no you're fine okay that's six that's six so here's 2a that's 2a okay so that's the three middle school on site to be determined and a new elementary school and the reason for that um catherine is the six through eight middle school even after taking the sixth grade students

083out over the eight year enrollment projections there still won't be enough room in the elementary schools to take the bump in the projected eight-year high of the enrollment so in necessity it's the d and either a new chapman or additions district-wide something needs to be done in this scenario it is calling for a new school to be built um with a projected year high enrollment of 515 students and jeff i don't know if i don't remember off top i had what is chapman now how many students in the three high threes um let me pull you the exact number i'd rather give you the and take me two seconds go ahead i'll be right back with you okay so kevin do you have a specific question about this uh no i just wanted to get

084a sense of i don't know i can't like absorb numbers and retain them like that well that's looking up number let me do this let me forward this um spreadsheet from last night the whole board so you have it okay because we just saw it last night sorry they had a chance to i'll do that now always i mean i knew i didn't see exactly i just didn't have six obviously but yeah the exact number is 322 right now okay to get that the exact population at chapman 322 32. okay any questions on the three scenarios before i go on to the redistricting can you show can you show six again sorry not a problem oh so i got that i don't see anything though it's there so eyes are bad down in front of

085me also faith if you have questions if you can't see him um i know i'm curious why is it that the middle school in 2a or the elementary school in 2a is running it six i meant sorry i'm looking at the square footage numbers and maybe maybe not enrollments are around the left-hand column um you know what never mind never mind i'm sorry uh sorry never mind no it's okay and if if you have i mean i have them all all the numbers right in front of me so if we go through the discussion you want to just ask me and i'll i know the number okay okay so one of the large issues with the large elementary school in 1a was the amount of redistricting that had to be taken that had to take

086place in order to move the students around in order to do that so that led to a lengthy discussion about going to scenario six so we asked slr to come up with how the new redistricting would take place for that so i'm going to jump into that can everyone see it yes yes yes okay so i'm not gonna read all the scenarios this will be this will be provided but for those um who are watching at home so this is for scenario six um which maintain the pre-k through six model configuration so this is going to grab the bump in the elementary school enrollment so this is pretty much the methodology as to how the current functional capacities of the elementary schools showing that over the eight year target there's going to be a bump

087and how in order to how best to redistrict the dis redistrict the schools in order to put the students at the new north and south elementary school so here this map is showing the existing districting for the schools green is highland elementary school which basically stretches from the north to the center of town to the eastern side norton school in the south do a little school along the western edge of town up to the northwestern corner and then chapman school in this pinkish color over here on the uh right hand side or the east side of town towards meriden so scenario six assumes the sixth grade remains in the elementary schools d'arcy school chapman and norton school buildings are all closed and two new elementary schools are constructed with about 680 students each one school

088in the north and one school in the south the darcy pre-k program moves to highland elementary school which will be handled through some capital cip projects and just i mean i can't see y'all so if anything comes up and you just just jump in so for scenario six for the new north and south elementary school the redistricting looks like this this area of town out towards marion road towards waterbury and then along waterbury road goes from highland to the new school in the north and then a little section from that's now doolittle school will also go to the north school this doolittle school roommate will remain this portion here center of town here will be for highland elementary school and then this area here go from chapman to the new school in the north so

089chapman is this new school and again in a spot to be determined somewhere in the north end of town this area here which is now um norton will go i'm sorry which is now highland we'll go to the new school in the south so the south end school will cover this whole green area here let's do a little so it kind of it splits the the town up i think in a little bit better of a kind of a four slice um and again this is subject to change as we move forward with the planning um but the goal as slr put it is they wanted to try to keep you know neighborhoods cohesive as they are now going to the same school and not splitting up streets and trying to keep like parts of

090town together as they move into the new schools so here is the productions um so i mean some people think that the schools are too large as they are which is definitely a discussion that we could have um so the peak enrollment over the next eight years i think this is the most important column here um so you have the new school in the north at 630 the new school in the south is 663. um and then doolittle at 612 and then highland still remaining as largest school in the district at 774 students um so darcy's dars highland school will grow with the addition of the pre-k program to the 775 students um but overall they're saying that the elementary growth will be spread across the four schools to try to balance out the student

091population good uh oh are you telling me about the talk i heard you oh there was a bruiser a giant inhale um okay okay so um if i recall the the effect on the district for the large elementary school like the redistricting effect i believe was something like 40 percent of the district would need to be redistricted yeah the um uh plan 2a which is the sixth rate middle school redistricting would be was i think somewhere around 18 to 20 percent if i recall yes so what is the percentage effect for uh plan 14 14 14 wow okay andrew yes can those boundaries be fudged even one way or another to even further reduce that highland population yes i mean they could be as we move forward with the planning and as the schools you

092know are being developed um yes absolutely they could be okay that came up last night too um and it's gonna be kind of a case-by-case basis as the schools are built but i mean are you saying to cut down from 14 to like a 10 change um well or you're talking about the enrollment i'm talking about the enrollment sorry just that if people are concerned with that 774 um it you know it you look at and you also look at the the functional capacity of the other you know the other schools it's possible that perhaps we could change the boundaries just a bit to reduce that highland population and um give them a little bit more breathing room i don't know just a thought but so i could answer that a little bit i think

093faith okay so yes the answer the short answer is yes that can be done but the fact is is that highland school is already built and it holds room for that many students so we're not going to not fill it to its functional capacity yeah and looking at it i guess the real stress is for doolittle i mean they're the ones who yeah shoot up pretty quickly the effect on when ann said that's gone on and also jeff craig from wrong and andrew but also moving pre-k to highland right um pretty much again so whatever comes to the board which i'm sure andrew and him will talk about his options you know just you know jeff and timor and go through and figure out specs and see what fits where but you know during i

094remember during our lscgr meeting they emphasized hey if you're gonna move pre-k around their behavioral uh programs special ed don't skimp on space so if um we'll see how moving pre-k to highland and top of the high enrollment if that you know is gonna work right way but it's not just the enrollment highlands also the fact that we move pre-k there on top of it uh then we're really maximizing what that space was built for and you know again the the atheists were test fit but when the specs are written for the pre-k for highland then we're going to figure out okay is there space to accommodate that we don't want to move something that's adequately sized now to something smaller and highland i'm not saying that's going to be the case because that would

095be found upon by old cgr so but i think they're definitely going to hold the boundaries um but that's something we'll have to discuss as we talk about these options when we get them right and so and if i could i mean so when the meeting was held with the oscgr um i know we discussed at the planning committee meeting but there was a lot of discussion about that last night and you know they're not going to kill one of our plans on arrival so if we go in with a 1200 student middle school or an 850 student elementary school we're gonna have to prove to them as to why that's we think that's the best way for our district and how as they're tricked with weighing in from you know all of our programming

096needs and whatnot um why we think that's the best way to go so it's not to say that a 1200 student you know they would rather the the middle school be 900 students but if we go with the 1200 student middle school and we come up with a plan as to how we're going to do that if it's paused if it's different floors in order to and to prove that that's the best option for the district um so with that being said there were two very important votes that were taken last night by the school of modernization one of which there was there was a motion that was made to take the um i don't want to watch this to take the option to a which is the new middle school and the enlarged chapman

097school off the table all together after much discussion it was a 11-2 vote to leave the middle school plan on the table and to go to the town council and also to come to us with a preferred plan prefer a recommended plan and then a second plan um so to come with two different options with costing local tax uh implications etc fully fledged plans in order to present both items out and one of the things that you know tony could report on others that were at the oscr meeting they want to know what the public input is so smc really feels as if you know we should come up with two basically phase one scenarios to show um what's you know that it's been thought out put it out there in the public let the

098public discuss it and really weigh in on how everyone feels that it should move so we don't just come in with this is our one plan and that's it um so i i can't speak for everyone there but i feel that that's a better approach i definitely voted in favor of that um because you know i've gone through this as i said before there's been so many options on the table there hasn't been this one idea that's just jumped out to me and said this is the way that we need to go so i feel that you know we've done a lot of the research we have the numbers we'll have even more numbers we have the redistricting we have all these different details um and we're a town of 30 so there's a lot

099of other people i think that are out there that have opinions we want to make sure that we're able to provide them with more than one option um the second vote that was taken which was what is going to be the preferred option to go to the town council and to come to the board of education um and the option that was selected to go forward with as the preferred option was option six which is the creation of the two elementary schools in the phase one of the project um so that was a ten to three vote um and you know i voted in favor of that of that plan um and just from seeing all the different details that have been put out there um i think that i don't want to say just

100based on just based on all the discussion that i've heard i feel that that's where we should start with this whole process um and it's under the 75 million dollar number which keeps ringing in my head is what the town council is going to tell us that we have which i have no idea if that's the actual fact or not um but the local share would be under 70 million dollars for those two schools um and so we'd have two brand new elementary schools and which would leave us with highland and do a little school um and we would close darcy and close the two other oldest schools in the district so i think that talked enough perfect yeah no angel's great so so there's the preferred option and the secondary option i preferred the

101the recommended option that the committee won last night was the six opted six secondary option is the 2a with the middle school so you know and i made it you know i i made the comment that um and again it was decided uh even before we got option six a few weeks ago or what to actually send the town council and back then and i think this one when jim beach was still chair when the vote happened was to send two options you know give give give folks um options to choose from and i made a point last night that uh given the the the cost of these projects you know and again it's not our initially our number one purview to cause these things certainly as a factor for us we're going to be

102definitely getting into educational specs um and really how this impacts our student community you know has a lot to be discussed there but there's got to be some compromise i think because both pla again it's not just fake one that's usually where that's we're going to start now your plan but these plans are the whole long term plans for all of the schools in phase one through phase n uh knowing that we got always one for immediate needs um you know cgr is looking for that long-term plan as well so we take that whole car you know i think andy threw it up on the um on his computer i think both plans were like you know from 400 to just under half a million half a billion dollars so so when you look at

103all these options i guarantee we're going to be discussing the town council you know what they feel is you know going to be um affordable for the town sequencing spacing of projects we're going to talk we thought it'd be good to give two very good options for everyone to chew on and i keep getting a lot of feedback it's probably me and my speakers i apologize and uh yoga argument two is i think hopefully these already two options that move forward and again uh i also voted against removing the sixth grade middle school because you know there's a lot of merit there and you know it's something last bored looked at i think it's still viable and there's no bad option here um just want to put that out there so there's no meeting next

104week cardinal correct andrew i think there's a the meaningless meeting is the 29th of march yeah and um you know ann was there too but i'm pretty sure that the committee is going to deliver a report on 4-1 to town council i i think either going to do a via presentation or give materials ahead of time and i think at a subsequent time council meeting you know the town council chew on it for a few days and maybe in that first week or second week there'll be more uh formal discussion because i'm sure we'll be there too but they're definitely going to deliver these plans to the town council on april 1st um so a couple things if the idea is to submit a couple of different options put them out there you know get

105public input get you know find out what people are really thinking about it to me it is i don't understand this concept of a preferred option and the backup option and i think that that is um sort of stacking the deck i mean either you just put them both out equally we you know the smc supports both or uh you know don't bother with the second one you know i mean it's kind of a false kind um a false choice and so i i i'm sure that the committee would like to i guess stand behind one or the other but i don't that that is inconsistent with the idea that you're just going to let the public you know weigh in on both and i think that the public should be presented with two equal

106supported options that's one thing number two i think anybody who thinks that there's going to be a phase two after this phase one anytime soon is being completely unrealistic when you look at how long it's taking us to get to a phase one which may or may not move forward i cannot imagine how how when the community is going to be willing to absorb another you know whatever it is 100 million dollars um so to me looking at this you know when i think about it i want the best the best bang for the buck here and you know i know you know i probably sound like a broken record but a 16 middle school um is going to benefit the entire student population you know over time in cheshire um i get that we

107need to absorb an enrollment bump in the elementary schools but that can be done with an expanded uh chapman i think the two new elementary schools you know maybe i'm not thinking about this correctly and i and if these things come before the board before the town council decides that's another thing i have to i have to say um you know maybe there's a compelling reason to do the two elementary schools i'm not hearing it yet um as opposed to the um middle school and uh and one new elementary school um and the idea that this is going to go to the town council first and they're going to decide and then it's going to come to the board of ed is completely lopsided to me you know the board of ed is theoretically the

108body that has a bit more expertise on this um type of issue and you know it's not just dollars and cents it is really what is best for the students of cheshire and putting it in front of the town council and then saying okay let's see what they say and we'll see what comes to the board after that is you know you're taking i believe um the board's roll out of it completely and i i've never understood why the town council was the be all and end-all on this thing it should be the board of ed saying yes this is what we have decided you know this is our preference how about that and then let the town council weigh in on whether it's something that you know they are willing to put to referendum

109i sort of know how that will play out but um catholic if i just chime in that is not the case the town council is not going to decide the option for us so so i i apologize but um so remember their chart their charge of smc delivering plans to the town council and to us and i mentioned a few meetings back and almost every meeting that once the town council gets this report they're going to chew on from a financial perspective we're going to chew on it from educational perspective and we're going to come together and figure out what makes sense so i i would hope that by the time we're done chewing our options and get the world educational spec programming and all the merits of both options and which one is better

110we do pick one and go without the town council and let's see what they say to it but they're not going to decide which one for us that's false tim uh thank you andrew uh catherine sounding like a broken record i appreciate it repeat repeat repeat it's difficult to get you know to to remind people what you're thinking so i i personally appreciate it and respect that you do that so thank you um uh and yeah so with regards so i kind of have two different questions and they kind of go hand in hand um with regard to the question is really about citing and it just struck me as we were sitting here tonight i didn't i didn't see the last meeting but with regard to norton one of the things that the superintendent

111had voiced concerns about was access so i what i heard him saying jeff correct me if i'm wrong but in essentially what i heard you say was norton does not have good access for an expanded facility for an expanded building so start over and knock it down and do something farther and back is that a good part of why we would even talk about new construction at norton when we look at parcels in the south and town i think the access piece at norton is still unresolved that is a huge hurdle to clear if we can at all um so i wouldn't want to say definitively that's what will occur i think that's that's um an aspiration at this point but not uh nothing far from concrete okay is it but it access was a

112real issue with regard to normal absolutely now pretty much every one of our buildings but you know if you were to um add 150 people to the building at norton you're only exacerbating the existing problem where we have to go to the church across the street et cetera for pickup so you know there is an access road at the rear of the property that cuts into the neighborhood behind norton a sidewalk yeah and and in that access space um you know there's a hurdle to clear getting through there too if it's even something that could be further developed like paved for uh for busing and things like that okay so you've actually so you've actually thought about so what i was thinking was yeah but that's that's only a sidewalk it's nowhere near a road

113right um right now it's not a road no it's just a sidewalk basically when i say that like three feet wide or something like that but then i was even thinking beyond that i mean pretty much you have houses all around it i mean somebody may want to sell and you could end up just accessing through another part i'm just putting it out there in terms of citing i don't know that because i think that norton is a is a fairly nice facility is my simple point um yeah and relatively yeah relatively speaking norton is is not uh not the worst of them that's for sure but if i could add tim the reason why norms looked as because of the flat land that exists in the back of the site right i mean and

114if i could add and it's just my opinion it's hard to balance having a neighborhood school in the town of cheshire with having great access so if you want a neighborhood school you know unless all the schools are cited on route 10 or in the industrial zone in town there's not really a great neighborhood location for an elementary school um you're going to deal with pick up and drop off you're gonna deal with those times 180 school days out of the year that are going to be congested um so yeah okay no no no and i understand that it's just you know even just from a traffic flow perspective in one entrance and out another like on the other side i i don't know i mean i don't mean to get into that conversation i

115just wanted to make sure that that is part of like what is considered by school modernization that access alternative access is something to consider yes that i mean that's been discussed and also you know as we move forward if this this is going to be the plan and whatnot they're going to do test fits of the school and how it would fit on that site or another site in the south end of town so also if i could add colliers did put together um a list just a parcel list of available properties that could fit for a school for the for either of these schools um we don't know what the parcels are we just know what the average acreage is um in town so as we move forward in the process we don't want

116to identify any parcels specifically other than town-owned land thank you andrew thank you um uh several questions um firstly kind of to piggyback on what what katherine was saying did the smc assign a definition to what preferred means because it seemed like there was a robust debate um smc didn't want to remove kate the uh sixth or eight middle school option but then voted to have a preferred option thereby making the six through eight option a lesser option so i was wondering if if there was any thought behind making one a preferred one or not was that it was it as far as information gathering or focusing on the detail for the report that's due in two weeks or or or what was there and then secondly before any of you answer um has the

117analysis for the ci for the renewed cip projects been done for 46a because just off the top of my head if you're not if you don't have to do improvements to norton or chapman anymore that would seem to be like there would be a significant cip savings there that could be either saved and or diverted to other projects like perhaps a renovation of uh our board event headquarters uh hummuston the hummuston building or something like that as is that all i mean i wasn't sure if an analysis analysis had been completed there sure i'll i'll try to take this one um so for the present for the preferred versus the second option um it wasn't necessarily discussed as to how that would be portrayed the way that i saw this is that option one or

118option six that we'd be going in would be more um be more refined would have more supporting information on it and that that was our recommendation for as the first project to move forward with um but there wasn't a formal vote taken necessarily as to how that would be handled um so the way that i saw it is that when we put together the deliverable to the town council that's going to have that's going to be stated as our preferred option with the most documentation to support the reasons why but then secondly for if you look at the if you want me to reshare this but in scenario six it does now carry money for hummuston um so it's looking at a total budget there for a renovation in the low end and then a

119renovation in the high end of 12 million dollars for hummus in school but then correct me if i'm wrong i don't believe that all the cip numbers were taken out i mean the 4.4 million on the low end is you know right now we've got three and a half million in the capital plan for five years so that's a little bit that's an estimate that's a little bit higher which i think we need because our five-year capital plans the mission is not all-inclusive um and the 12 million dollars is you know as as chuck warren collier said it it's an estimate at a very high level based on swift square foot you know square footage of this building so it's it's intended to serve as a range and and uh kind of a guide as

120to what the cost might be oh okay thank you are you good at him uh yeah yeah i'm fine now everyone was quiet i was like oh was i okay no i'm good thank you okay uh faith i think ann's had her hand up a while oh and i'm sorry i and it's starting to fade and go ahead i think she's frozen now are you frozen ian okay maybe she's good and has a question we know she has a question frustrating let me achieve that green dots are showing does that mean it's like a statue all right go ahead all right just real quick just from my own perspective and and um going way back to when smc started could could someone restate for me the mandate given to smc i want to make sure

121what i remember is in line with what the mandate was so there is a mission statement um i would be faith you're really let's say as i recall it was to come up with a plan that um benefited the most the most students um or something to that yeah there's a there's a there was a specific which i could dig up i you know it wasn't the benefit of most students it was more from the the it was um because a comprehensive plan that tries to address as many of the facilities needs as possible while you know keeping you know fiscal cost savings in mind but the town council is definitely you know was looking for you know if um if you only had one scenario to do going back to katherine's comment about you

122know you stop at phase one do not present a plan that if all you're able to do is phase one for a short while uh and like other phases depending on it that would fail right because you know you want to make sure that you try to get as much you possibly can get done in phase one while you're trying to build up the rest of the plan so they were looking for a comprehensive long and short term but you know they're they they also want to see consolidation as much as possible you know taking buildings offline where it makes sense to do and they want to see you know taking savings from not doing cip projects and save the operating costs and shutting our buildings to funding those plans so they're looking for [Music]

123in the biggest impact in the school construction project cost minimization decreasing the footprint and then you know utilizing those savings okay okay thank you i just want to make sure i know we all have this those of us undermines that have that missions that charter will sell tonight i have to dig it up i can get back you have it you said no i said i have i just don't have it in front of me okay and we all i mean i can just go back to to the town website um the other thing i just wanted i knew vin would find it and he's got it uh here it is there we go hello vin did you find that on the website yeah this is from the town's website because they changed the town

124website i know it's insane oh thank god they changed the website they modernized it yeah okay um okay all right thank you um i'm gonna take a picture of that and i'll go back over it and and um the other thing is that you know when we first got our recommendations you guys went through and did a scoring system which rated all of the options available um and that's how we got one a and two those guys those plans each contained a score and effectively um that was a prioritization system um just with a numerical value attached so um you know just to to say you prioritize now six over two perhaps maybe you do go back and take a look at it and apply a metric or some kind of you know rating system

125to it to see if it if it actually works out um as opposed to just a um sort of qualitative this one sounds better um but you know have some numbers attached to it just a thought um it might satisfy some of the concerns that you guys are stacking the deck or anything like that faith i completely agree with that and i'm gonna talk while i'm here because i might get looked out again i completely agree with that because we have lost sight we're trying to move so fast right now i feel it's my feeling um we have forgotten that we did prioritize these according to a rubric and one of the parts of that rubric was how it will affect the community as a whole and when catherine was talking about the middle school

126really reaches all of the entire community for three grades at some point when when the kids get to those grades that's that was one of the that was a major consideration when we were looking at um these projects other things like safety and um uh you know there were other other aspects but that was one of the major ones and we have not done that again and i will say that i did not vote to prioritize the two elementary schools over the middle school project for exactly the reasons also that catherine said which is because what we really need what the state has told us is that we need our community to speak to us to to look at the two options if that's what we have and to vet it for us and we

127need to hear from them we need to hear from them about these two specific um projects and to say that one is preferred over the other by the school modernization committee it it's in in my opinion it doesn't that does not sit well with me i want to look at both of them still objectively and um and we talk about you know having the neighborhood elementary schools well that two elementary school project over a middle school really makes the our elementary schools bursting at the seams it makes them bigger whereas a bigger middle school we're missing out on an opportunity to have a middle school that services the entire community of of our students and we have an opportunity to make a program that is so educationally sound so 21st century education and so forward

128um moving that it astounds me that we are not looking forward we're not looking we're not taking the opportunity to really think about that and my feeling is one of the reasons we're not is because we're starting to talk about dollars we're starting to talk about how this is going to impact the the taxpayer and quite frankly the taxpayer has had a free ride in this town for 50 years they have not invested in the schools and it's time we need to now we have eight school buildings that all need some updating and we can't do it all at once but um i don't know my feeling is still that we're starting in the wrong place by making elementary schools bursting at the seams to take care of that enrollment problem when we could have

12921st century programming for all of our middle schoolers and and at the same time eliminate that burden on our elementary schools i'm off my soapbox now but um i'm sorry to say that because i feel like in our meeting last night we we started to lose sight of some of the things that we were looking at more carefully before and talking about just throwing throwing things aside because you know we have a new option we have a shiny new option on the table um i really would like to see both options vetted by the community thank you thank you yeah too it so remember again uh we lose sight of what smc is about too so you know there's 13 members um 10 decided to move the two elementary schools forward for a number of

130reasons like the size in comparison with the bigger middle school like the smaller elementary schools two brand new modernized buildings taking more buildings offline so you know from my perspective there's certainly following the guidance given by the charter et cetera but again it doesn't take away option 2a so i expect both those to come to the board of ed and the things that smc cannot do nor shall they do is figure out which one is best for cheshire based on programming that's superintendent's responsibility and our responsibility so that's where we get a chance to make the case uh for either option whatever that is and when we talk about why one is better we need to quantify that i've heard a lot of qualifications in the discussion about sixth rate middle school i have an

131idea of what the educational priming could be but uh there's four new members on this board that have really no idea what that is six years ago we gotta refresh that and i think when we talk about that and if the elementary schools comes as an option the specs around that i think people pay attention parents will know what it means i'm a parent and as a parent a kid's in school sells adam we know what it means to us for our kids oh sixth grade middle school i get it he had as many pods and segregated and you know the concerns of having six to eight eight folks on the bus are mitigated i don't see those details redistributing oh i live on this street oh i see how the maps are gonna impact

132me uh so that kind of detail the smc can't do so it is up to us at the end of the day so again where it comes forward comes forward um i'm in favor of doing that rating for option six i think it makes sense i think it's doable in fact uh you know i'll give chuck a heads up that you know they came up tonight it's worth while doing um but cost is a factor for them uh it is an audience but again i i i i'm not trying to put my rules so i'm being realistic here again dr sullin his team us we're gonna decide which of these options is best for cheshire public schools and so get ready because uh honor on april 4th we begin the same report and i talked

133to jeff a little bit yesterday about this you know we're going to be looking forward to our details on what programming means all these options and and get into it and absolutely yeah we're going to have i'm certainly not going to uh make a decision on this in a vacuum these discussions will be public i want to find a way to get our cps community at the very least involved uh so they know what we're talking about what the specs mean uh and we need to have their those folks weigh in it's really not much different than last time uh the good news i think is because there's not a rush to get a grant application in in june we have time to do this um and you know do it before referendum so again

134nothing's over but uh good points anne and faith and you know andrew i'll ccu but you know i'll uh just let chuck know hey maybe we should let's let's rate this thing and see how it falls in because that was criteria there that i think we need to look at so that being said again i uh i i think we have some really good options i agree there's one chance to get this right um because either one is a big investment both from of uh funding and you know education and a change for for our kids in in treasure so uh we all hear you we'll carry this message back the three o's will carry the message back to smc for sure so so thank you for everyone chiming in thank you andrew thank you

135okay we're about halfway through so up up next is uh other standing committees we have none uh approval of minutes uh in in our packets and i think that jen that we have minutes from the meetings held february 18th 2021 and march 4th 2021. what anyone like to make a motion and then we can have a discussion adam you make the motion is there a second captain seconds seconds any discussion or changes to those minutes seen as there are none the motion is move the cheshire board education approve the minutes from meetings held on february 18th 2021 and march 4th 2021. all in favor please raise your hands it passes unanimously thank you uh correspondence i think we have one correspondence that we unfortunately i dropped from the last meeting i didn't even catch it

136um i know it's talked about uh quite a bit in curriculum so catherine do you have any correspondence to summarize for us tonight um actually i was going to turn this over to jeff since he's also got some covid19 uh emails that came in so um and i think that faith already you know addressed the letter from mr bester so no she did not so we need to summarize that letter into the record was it was request for mr best that would be summarized at the board of business meeting sure i can i can hit we do is as uh catherine said we have mr buster's letter um and then a few other items that came in today uh i know that is um it was talked about during the curriculum meeting mr better bester

137talked about really the history of smarter balanced assessment asked questions about our interim assessments again addressed and i think faith pointed out on our curriculum committee meeting we go into great detail at that our 10 minute mark about the smarter balanced assessments and how cheshire public schools utilizes that information and how we engage with interim assessments to determine how our students are doing as well as the amount of time committed to this which is really pretty small within the scope of a school year versus relative to the value that we receive he talked about um the the document that has put out about sensible assessment practices um and then you know again that talks about the interim assessment blocks and he's concerned about teaching to the test and i know that we've already uh spoken

138to this issue today uh mr bester and the other comments the the full email of course will redact the emailers um email address will be in the minutes of our meeting we received an email from parent jessica jessica zenowitz today she is asking can we have the school schedule exist addressed how can half days keep being added and then sudden changes to tuesday thursday not fair to parents who are working and hire i hired a sitter to cover wednesdays every email that's written by dr solon says he understands the difficulty this is for parents but clearly he doesn't some of us work out of the house and just can't be home to cover half days it's impossible to keep up with the ever-changing schedule i had a child eligible for the smart start program and

139can't have her attend even though she may need services because these could continue next year as an educator in another district i think the time with students is so much more important at this time of year and more than more professional development like to know what the professional development is that they are doing specifically and how it's benefiting our children this crazy amount of half days needs to stop just to address that very quickly first of all smart start is not a special services program so uh people you know you who are interested in that preschool program um anybody can apply for that but i believe we still have a waiting list for that program it's it's quite popular through darcy school you can contact them for more information the march calendar was already dense

140with early dismissals for parent conferences during those parent conferences people are dedicated teachers dedicated to providing updates to students our update to parents on how their students are progressing unfortunately uh the couple of half days that we added one was around the vaccination schedule actually was a change to add a half day so we really didn't tweak the the schedule much and it was tuesday thursdays already dedicated to the parent conferences at the elementary grades so i i absolutely do appreciate as a parent as a parent who doesn't live in cheshire and have had to deal with a lot of schedule like my kids aren't in school um frankly half as much as they are in cheshire um i can appreciate you know what what it means to have to adjust your schedule all the

141time and it's terrible but we we are abiding accelerated learning professional development to help our uh teachers and students uh and as i think you know we heard earlier in the meeting our students are performing actually in many cases ahead of where they were in past years so uh that's a that's a testament to the value of that professional development what it means to our teachers and students um email from stephanie galeno and by the way i'll follow up with uh that parent tomorrow uh a email from stephanie galino it's going to my attention dude the coveted accommodation the children now having lunch first in recess after to my understanding eating and playing doesn't always max when done soon thereafter i've heard that many children are having stomach aches including my own after eating lunch

142and having research so that's directly after is this something that would change for the future and the weather gets warmer or is this a set order of operation and schools have a discretion to change at any time thank you kindly for reading the email on stephanielino and frankly i i will have to pass this on i just looked it up real quick and that would be a norton school question uh we don't dictate from central office when students eat relative to recess but i will tell you that um the vast majority of times have been kind of past practice to have recess then lunch um and i don't know if something specific came up at norton so i'll ask uh miss grillo to reach out to miss galena and i do know the tents as

143i said earlier in the spring will provide a lot more flexibility um another email from gemma williams-nussbaum uh i have a couple questions related to quarantining next year in remote learning uh with the weekly early dismissals that have been added throughout the school year for teacher professional development again i think there's the sense that the uh profession the early dismissals over the course of march and i'll show the calendar in a bit are dedicated to professional development actually most of them are dedicated to parent conferences at the elementary grades that were already in there and so we are doing a lot of conferencing but because not uh parents don't it's every single day that parent conferencing is going on you may just assume that it's related to professional development but i hope that all the

144additional training time is not wasted next year i imagine there will be need for student teacher quarantines close contacts from copen positive cases will the district continue to provide students with tech devices to access remote school as needed for these quarantines do you anticipate that next year we will also require so many early dismissals for teacher training and support i'm also interested to hear that this what the state releases for guidance about remote learning days for weather i personally felt that only two snow days was a shame for the kids and adults alike especially those parents having to manage their child's learning on remote learning days thank you for reading um and all you're doing to juggle the complexity of this year and next i this was an early earlier one today so i had

145the opportunity to respond i indicated thank you for your email continue to provide technology to all of our students regardless whether or not they have the quarantine next year of course if they do they will be better prepared as you point out i don't anticipate needing the same number of early dismissals next year i certainly appreciate the hardship it creates for parents but it was necessary and necessary evil to provide as much in-person learning at as high equality as we could this year the state has not yet provided guidance on whether or not we can use remote days in place of snow days next year i know many people are eager eager for that guidance if the option is available i will survey our parents and staff to make a well-informed decision i'll also share

146those results publicly i hope all is well with you and your family thanks again for the email so um that covers our correspondence for this evening thank you katherine and jeff uh hang on well i think up next is the much anticipated superintendent's report tony i i certainly appreciate you giving the introduction that it's on the uh the superintendent's report yeah lots happened in the ronkovic so i no i i know i'm just blessing the jobs i i like to give to try and create a little energy in the room when we do this presentation and overview so i'm going to give a quick overview of where things stand [Music] there we go so for today again i've talked about the sweet suite of consideration mitigation strategies um no one silver bullet but we look

147at a number of different things vaccination being the most recent um what we've seen lately and i want to be very clear for our board in the community is an uptick in students and anybody in the community frankly uh contracting covet and to the point where we've had discussions about is there a variant because it seems to be a little bit more frequent than it has been an uptick we're not making any connections to school 99 times out of 100 frankly it's a a family member gets sick and then the student ends up getting sick and we find out and um but this is the current data the the data frankly overall is still low but um just this afternoon after after i update this each morning we're going to have to quarantine about 50

148students at cheshire high school because of two positive students that had close contacts and activities outside of the school so it outside of the school day the academic schedule so um i really need to remind our families in the community to practice these mitigation strategies they're not just for the school day but mask wearing spacing from others washing your hands those things are so critical and become vaccinated if you can if you're eligible because that's what's really going to help prevent further spread and well we can see the light at the end of the tunnel we're not through the tunnel and i just want to remind everybody of that critical fact that being said what we have seen is a significant swing to more people electing in-person learning so after the you know a couple

149of weeks after the holiday we were at 25 remote learners now we're at 21 we have 169 fewer remote learners today than we did um at the end of january so uh people are migrating back and we think that's that's very important and it hasn't at all contributed to the spread again we're not seeing in school spread between classes individuals and classes or anything like that but um it is important to get those remote learners back quick update on vaccination progress um i really have to give chest for cat a shout out they've been unbelievable uh we had about a hundred cps employees vaccinated prior to uh the formal vaccination schedule just because they had excess availability and they would we would work together and we got a lot of people over before uh the

150the formal day which has been very helpful on march 9th we had 373 teachers and ias predominantly vaccinated that was a huge day for us in the health and welfare of our students in our community 133 individuals vaccinated today and those were predominantly subs cafeteria workers and transportation the 373 teachers and ias in group one are scheduled to receive receive a second dose of moderna on april 6th unfortunately you know again i know that this is a real hardship for people um but we're looking to have a remote learning day on the 7th which is already scheduled to be a half day simply because you know the the data that we have is indicating that way i didn't originally plan this but given the fact that our substitute pool has significantly shrunk because a lot

151of our college kids have made that transition back we don't have the subs to cover the rate of illness that other districts are experiencing with the second dose and i the worst thing i can imagine is us clustering a hundred kids in the cafeteria together for a class because we just don't have subs to watch it uh to watch their class and then trying to call people that day to have their children picked up and you just can't plan for that so we're gonna try and um you know tomorrow i'll be making an announcement to our parents first of all to maintain those mitigation strategies but second that we we have to make this adjustment our schedule on the seventh i'm not worried about learning loss um through that remote day i mean again we've

152had more in-person instructional time than pretty much anybody in connecticut at this point and we wanna and we have the data to indicate that our students are doing quite well with the professional development that our teachers have received so that's not the fear of mine the fear of mine is creating a super spreader event because i just don't have subs to cover it the second group that was vaccinated today will receive their second dose on april 15th which falls during april break and we are pursuing the possibility of a student vaccination option for families for students age 18 are 16 and up again pursuant to state guidelines and we're meeting with chespercott to discuss how that might look i've also had conversations with local area superintendents to be able to offer this as a collaborative

153effort through hartford healthcare at the wallingford mass vaccination site at the oakdale theater if we can't work out something with chesapeake or we may be able to work out something with chesapeake and invite those surrounding towns as well so we're all partnering together to try and make our community safer and healthier for our kids and community and so we want to be able to provide that option for our families the emotional impact i have shared this this pretty obvious i guess point with uh our staff but you get wrapped up in the day and and just trying to get day to day and you kind of it gets lost on you and it's powerful to realize that we have about 850 remote learners if and that includes students that are temporarily quarantined right now but

154to think that we have about 800 students that if they stayed remote through the end of the year they will not have gone to school for 17 straight months from march 13 2020 to august 2021 and when you think about that that's really powerful and it's hard for students it's so critical we we focus so much on social emotional learning it starts with uh physical safety then it's emotional safety and belonging is so critical and so it will be a focus of ours over the coming months to identify these those 800 students connect with those 800 students and invite them back in before the close of the school year we'd really like to see them get back into the building and reconnect with school because if not if we wait that full 17 months it's

155that much harder for for students who have been out and disengaged to return so one of the things that we're doing is working closely with uh social services uh marlene and i were already planning a summer return to school um activity for remote learners to try and re-engage them with school if they haven't been back because it can be anxiety producing and we hear that from families to to return and we're working with social services to help us with that effort they you know just connected in with them today and michelle picarillo and social services they are amazing and they they're always so supportive of anything we need and this is no different so i just wanted to make people aware of that too what is cheshire high school doing moving forward i single them

156out because that's the only school that um has not been full time all year uh we've been adding students i know faith talked a little bit about this from the curriculum update but 331's receiving in person four days a week uh 239 of those were added after january 1st and we just recently surveyed all parents to assess interest in coming back more time what we're doing is prioritizing struggling learners at the moment and really we're looking at bringing significantly more students back next month as i said the the teacher vaccinations will be administered on the sixth which will make our students safer the sixth is also the first day that um those i think it's 45 and under uh are can 45 and over excuse me can access the vaccine with 16 year olds right

157it might even be on the fifth as well so we're um sensitive to that and trying to make sure that we can get as many students in as we possibly can for the affirmation affirmation reasons as well as just being better instructionally we do continue to plan to hold wednesdays for remote learning to make sure that we can continue to facilitate our our education around health and well-being but the more students that we get in for remote the from remote the less likely we are to continue that so hopefully by the end of the year we have five days full in uh all day and a lot of the districts you hear that are going oh they're going in you know in person five days a week most of them are doing half time or

158many of them are doing half time i don't really consider that all in we want our students full day every day as long as we can do it safely i think tents will be a big step toward that vaccination another big step toward that so before too long hopefully we're there just to touch on april travel guidance um it's currently an executive order which they're hoping to transition to just a recommendation for tomorrow and it may have even been breaking news today i don't know but uh it was the recommendation that travelers out of state self-quarantine for a period of 10 days when they come back from the state that they were in you also have to fill out a form all of this is on our website but um that looks like it'll become

159a recommendation tomorrow and that if it's a recommendation we will not enforce the recommendation for our students and staff it's it's simply just too hard to know and um you're i think you're crazy if you if you feel like everybody's gonna self-disclose that they traveled and it's just too much to navigate so we're asking people to again be safe and smart and do do their best to maintain public health um the schedule adjustments this is for the remainder of the year so april 7th already a half day we're now looking to make that remote learning for all grades for the day um and again there's no decision on remote learning in place of snow days and just to show you our calendar here real quick uh here we are in march like these days the

160today was a remote conference day conference day so we've had some of these conference days and pd's already built in uh the 31st was an added early dismissal for um for professional development which is oftentimes planning for synchronous learning as well because we still have as i showed you before 20 percent of our students are remote learners at this point and so we're trying to balance that as well so the uh the only addition here is that the only change is that april 7th will become a remote day for our our students other than that we're keeping the schedule as it is for the rest of the year and hopefully that gives a lot more predictability for our families to to be able to get through the end of this school year that that is

161my covet update i also would like to uh really quickly hit on a few marquee items this month march is board member appreciation month and i just want the community uh may not i mean here we are at ten o'clock after meeting uh three hours last night i know that our board members often experience rose petals tossed at them in the streets and stuff expressing the uh the adulation for the job well done uh of course that's a little tongue-in-cheek but i i want to express how much i appreciate the amount of time that you put in to improving the educational experience for the kids in this community it cannot be overstated the amount of effort that goes in by each of you on the screen and how much that is valuable to have these

162diverse perspectives and opinions and to debate these issues together that's what american democracy is about and um it's really for the betterment of our kids so thank you very much um as such yeah thank you marlene and vin and um we have small token gifts for you uh when we're able to see you hopefully soon in person two other or three other really quick things um this was so extraordinary i really wanted to point it out um today maura atro and don inaudi from darcy school were asked to present for the second year in a row to yale university nurse practitioner students on early childhood development when yale invites your team in to speak about our knowledge and education that's a massive feather in the cap and i can't think of two people uh that

163could represent cheshire better than them and so kudos to to donna to maura to everybody at darcy that's a tremendous honor and i'm sure yale got something out of the experience today also i want to just recognize a few of our students ishwara benzie juliana destante and isabella del rosso they presented their culminating presentation for the yukon natural resources conservation academy project recently they used one of our a remote classrooms that we put the the audio system into uconn was blown away by it and what they did for their presentation was they're going to along posts on the the farmington trail the cheshire trail you they'll be qr codes where people can scan with their phone and learn elements of the the nature in the area and i just thought that was such a neat

164idea to engage people in the outdoors particularly at this time um and i know you know technology and outdoors don't always mix but this it made the perfect uh marriage here and congratulations to those students for doing such a great job and this is just a funny little anecdote from luther miller who's the our director of transportation he passed this on to me he said just a side note i had some physical therapy last week and was wearing my treasure shirt and badge two individuals in the waiting room one from hammond and the other from another town i shouldn't have named him told me they think cheshire has done a great job keeping schools open and the kids learning then the physical therapist from another town also expressed the same opinion i haven't been this

165popular since i was a teenager so i'm glad we could do that for luther and it just made me laugh i thought it was very quick i thought i'd share it with you and that's it for my overview this evening thank you jeff questions or comments from board members i know adam had one oh i'm sorry uh yeah he did pop up first in the comments and then faith uh thank you um i just wanted a uh a clarification um on the uh uh we'll call it super spreader event with the the isolation of the 50 high school students to be clear um was that uh because i know that athletics has opened up and and i know they're taking a lot of precautions there was this due to a school sanctioned athletic competition or

166was this due to something else not to my knowledge and though and there were two different uh events that yielded the 50 individuals okay but it was an athletic related like so not smart as we know it's been yeah not to mind it wasn't not to my knowledge it wasn't tied to a fox there was a there was one school-sponsored event it wasn't athletic though um was actually the play uh so you know if one individual is positive it can be very tough to identify six feet 15 minutes over the course of two days um and so i think we have a number of students there that are unfortunately quarantined as a result well i hope it works out for the play i hope both groups recover quickly yeah show must go on adam that's

167right they will find a way those are some dedicated kids thank you yeah faith head um god i thought you just said the plague with the team you eat like okay um real quick um super is severity the illness with coven or what how how bad are the kids um do we know i mean is it i'm just curious and and it's it may not be did i just lose everybody you were breaking up a little bit okay okay i'm just wondering how severe the infections were in in the uh yeah i i you know i don't just discuss um the impact of medical situations on students but i will tell you holistically um children of that age group at the high school level um the the fatality rate is next to zero and um

168you know i'm not a doctor to be able to tell you long-range impacts not that sort of doctor anyway but um the all the accounts that i've had of any student who's been um identified as having covid have been relatively mild the other thing that i understand is that with the variant it is much much like more likely to spread and less likely to be um severe yeah as the mutations occur particularly as more people get vaccinated will be in a better place but um to my knowledge you know the the health of the kids is okay at this point um and it's just a matter of quarantining and and taking care of them yeah and i i think that's what we hope and expect the virus will do is just kind of fizzle that's

169a great word okay so okay um i had an a a comment earlier and it's just that it's just a request and i know i should have raised this when we were going over the calendar um is it possible to put in another shape another color or something to mark ends of grading periods because i know i was looking the other day trying to find it on the calendar and um couldn't and it's it would be helpful i think for everybody just just a suggestion sure interestingly enough i i don't think we've done that in the past because with snow days they always get changed um and it you know can be confusing i i think schools tend to keep that more on their calendar particularly you know i know at the high school with

170exams their end of marking period is different so the end of marking period is different at the middle elementary and high schools that might be a little confusing on our already kind of confusing but maybe we can have a supplemental calendar with that and we can explore that carol and i can talk about that tomorrow okay and last but not least i do want to give a shout out to juliana desanti who is my neighbor and we are blessed to have her next to us and she is just one amazing kid end of yeah great job thank you thank you tony uh yeah a few questions comments with regard to remote learners um yeah that is the the uh emotional concerns it's a real that's a real concern for me i'm closer you know i

171have a i have a first grader and a preschooler and that's probably a little bit more on my mind it's not probably it is a little more on my mind than say high school so one thing i'm just this is really intended as encouragement to parents um you know starting going back about a year i had i had initiated just reaching out to parents um to connect kids to have some conversations you know last year it was even worse but i mean there are still i mean worse in terms of no one in school but there are still kids who are not in school and so i just encourage parents to think about reaching out to other parents connecting the kids and what goes through my mind more so with the younger grades is that

172we do have people who move into town particularly particularly for the schools and they're going to have kids their oldest kids in kindergarten or first grade they don't really know a lot of people um and so i i just think that that could be useful and the the one uh request sorry the one request that i have for um for the schools is you have uh is it possible to send out like uh distribution lists of parents just to the just to the classrooms themselves like phone numbers or emails i mean i think i've gotten some of those emails so it's just something to put out there as an idea to you know reach out to the the teachers the classroom teachers there and if that's something that they would normally do and then just

173hey uh just so everyone has contacts if you want it just to make it easier for people to make those connections um yeah i'm gonna defer to marlene on this one yeah tim i think what you're talking about darlene at the elementary level yeah can you hear me can you hear me i can okay yes um tim i i think what you're talking about is so important for people to feel connection connection in the community connection in the school um the teachers cannot give out those um email lists or those um you know just name and address lists but i know this was very successful at chapman and i'm sure at other schools too the ptos have been great with hey if you want to sign the birthday list put your name address and phone

174number here and then you're by signing this you're you know you're giving us your consent and we'll would they specifically tell them we'll share this out with the class so they're really great about doing that so if they're looking for that i would suggest they they reach out to the pta or pto in their school yeah we can we can the thing is yeah so i mean some parents might take the initiative but it's kind of just coming from a different perspective the parents who are not taking the initiative are not connected or not aware of these things they're busy whatever it is but they're their kids their kids could still use that connection sorry i'm going to move on jacob we're meeting with all of our principals tomorrow we can bring it up with

175them so thank you thank you yeah that that's going on yeah with regard to um with regard to the number of students who at the high school who are attending four days a week um i thought so i thought you said tonight it was probably about 400 who are going four days a week and like in march but then i thought last month you said as of march 1st it'd be close to 700 students going four days a week i just want to be clear on the numbers like how many say on march 1st and expect on april 1st we have we have that 339 i think it is that go every day on top of that we have several hundred more who are going two days a week so on any given day there

176are more than 700 kids in the building okay okay okay and do you expect to have more kids do you expect to have that number increased for say april 1st did you do another one of those emails who wants to come yes yeah so mary um actually has already tried to pull students back based on a need so she's bringing more students in and i think is um you know we transition into april what she's trying to do is figure out we have some rooms that are physically just very small and for those classes where we have kids and this is what is so painstaking there when we're trying to figure this out for those classrooms that are so small we have to try and find an alternate location for that period where they can

177have more social distancing so that's that's what takes us longer at the high school to kind of work through that um and we'll let those you know we'll have the teacher maybe meet with them there or half the class goes someplace and they're remote almost for that period it it's kind of tricky but for us to maintain social distancing that's what we've been doing in order to bring more people back sure no no no i have every belief that you're trying to the best the best that you can while keeping the rules in place thank you for that um yeah and and going back to the question i had mentioned before so i don't know if this might be better for vin but basically um there's a group here in town called sustainable cheshire and

178they reached out to me it was today they were asking about electrification of town the town fleet including the schools so moving from you know the the gasoline engine over to electric cars i have an electric car they are here they are real but generally speaking the heavier the vehicle really like a school bus for the most part you just can't do it right now they exist but it just costs way too much money the economics don't make sense but the cars do and so what i'm wondering about in relation to the request of sustainable cheshire is within our fleet most of our fleet is school buses and we're not about to electrify electrify them this year but we do have other smaller vehicles that we own um then you're saying maybe a dozen or

179so there are they buses or do we have any passenger vehicles and and when would sort of be a replacement cycle for any of them yeah so the what we have of vans um a few pickup trucks and then we have i believe it's three type two which are the smaller buses a capacity around 20 you know 20 students so that's the board of ed's own vehicles and then obviously there's deco fleet which is large buses small buses um which we could work with daco you know when when electric buses you know become a reality and and you know we know that there are some in the works some pilots and some funding available you know those are things that we'll certainly we're willing to pursue um as far as the replacement cycle on our

180vehicles is you know as they age out you know they're no longer repairable that's when um you know we we will replace them so you know i don't know at what point you know a van you know which we're using for student transportation when those electric vehicles become you know available and cost effective for us but we'll certainly keep that in mind as we go forward and you know i know we've heard from you know we jeff and i have gotten you know some emails but i don't think it was from the sustainable cheshire group so if you want to afford what you received on um you know i'll certainly weigh in when i can and just keep it in mind yeah they basically and this is for andrew too i'm thinking maybe at some

181point the next few months like a planning committee agenda item but they they're making presentations they're trying to make presentations to towns about the options that are out there i i i replied to him and i said you know right now i just don't think the technology the economics are probably just not going to make sense but they want to put a plan in place um the uh or they'd like you know the the schools to put a plan in place so the only thing i'm gonna add to it um what you just said we do have a few pick a couple or a few pickup trucks and this is for you and it's for the broader public as well the pickup trucks are arriving this year they they are actually getting put out there

182fully electric pickup trucks so uh commercially available so anyway that is it thank you thank you tim and i think adam had one last quest i had a question um yeah just a quick question um so with the now seeing that the the vaccination schedule for the teachers it looks like um teachers will be fully vaccinated by the beginning of may is there any point at which you would uh man mandate a full reopen with perhaps a medical exemption like maybe there was a parent or a child who could not receive a vaccination for whatever reason where they could maintain their remote learning but for the most part we would you know achieve 95 98 reopen by you know the beginning of may because of the vaccine if we assuming we maintain high vaccination rates

183uh in town yeah that's a good question uh first of all i can't mandate students to attend in person per state uh executive order right now uh there i have to i didn't know that i didn't yeah i have to provide remote learning and the vast majority of our teachers a significant number of teachers will be fully vaccinated by the end maybe middle of next week the almost every single one of them that elected to be vaccinated will be fully vaccinated which means i received my second shot in two weeks after that's what the cdc is defining is fully vaccinated now so those people the va like almost everybody will be fully vaccinated by april 21st so you know that that's probably a time where at that point we're we're really trying to bring in

184as many kids as we can particularly if we can initiate an option for 16 and up to be vaccinated it'd be really nice to for those family again this is not a mandate but for those families a lot to elect it i would love to see our kids vaccinated before proms and graduation you know i just think that's a real game changer for families to feel more comfortable to have grandma at graduation or grandpa or somebody who's medically compromised i you know i i i'm so hurt by the lack of opportunity to connect our community and our kids and our families and engage them in the things they love to do over the course of the last year that you know i wouldn't say i'm desperate but any chance we can to provide greater normalcy

185in the in the high school graduation experience is certainly part of that prom is certainly part of that for our kids i want to try and do it so i know more of esposito from chesapeake feels the same way and we will do whatever we can to make that a reality for our families if they choose that's great news thank you yeah great thank you since there are no more questions number seven all business we have no old business animate we do have new business three motions as relate to the healthy food certification uh before we get into the motions uh we have these in our packets there's a short paragraph but jeff or or van you want to give the board a quick recap of why we're doing this and and what the statute

186for for this entails for us yeah i'll pass that on to mr massiana thank you okay i'll give you the 50 000 foot overview so every year the board uh is required to make a decision and determine whether or not we will um agree to meet the connecticut nutrition standards which you know we have been doing here in cheshire for many years and we certainly recommend that we continue to do so and the three motions although they're kind of complex you know that once you get through the gibberish it's pretty straightforward you know the first motion is that the board certifies that we will participate in the healthy food certification and meet the connecticut nutrition standards this applies not to reimbursable meals because those do meet the connecticut nutrition standards they have to this applies

187to snacks and a la carte items that are sold so the first motion is just the board certifying that will participate and then the next two motions are exemptions to food and beverage that enables any fundraising activities to not be required to meet those exemptions so a simple example at the concession stand you know when there's a football or other game they can sell soda we can never sell soda inside our buildings we can't do it inside any of the vending machines that we have but the exemptions allow for fundraising and other groups to sell those items on school property there is a monetary component to this by participating in the healthy food certification we get an additional 10 cents per reimbursable meal you know added to what we receive in terms of aid and

188that amounts to roughly 30 000 per year is what we've been averaging so that's the uh quick backdrop of healthy food certification thank you vincent and what we do is we'll uh we'll go through each motion if there's any discussion each motion will just follow all that so um and will anyone like to make the first motion motion number one catherine thank you mr chair sure um i uh the first motion is move that pursuant to cgs section 10-215 f the cheshire board of education certifies that all food items offered for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the connecticut nutrition standards published by the connecticut state department of education will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards during the period of july 1 2021 through june 30 2022 this

189certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all times and from all sources including but not limited to full stores vending machines school cafeterias culinary programs and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or by non-school organizations and groups period thank you catherine is there a second oh and seconds she had a handful uh any construction faith yeah uh tony you said that uh um not tony sorry ben you said that um we get thirty thousand dollars in reimbursement under this program how much does it cost us to meet compliance i mean it really doesn't cost us anything to to meet compliance because there are certain requirements we'd have to meet you know like the sale of beverages they you have to meet the connecticut

190statutes for the sale of beverages in schools so you know i really can't attribute a cost to doing it and if there's any additional cost for the food items you know that's included in the in the pricing you know for the food items we sell so it's passed along to the consumer so to speak i i mean i've already made my position known regarding state mandates um and this is one of them i think we're smart enough to know that we are not going to feed unhealthy children food to our children nevertheless i understand that it's state law and until the law changes we must comply um but i'll be quiet now thank you okay thank you faith any other comments tim thanks tony uh yeah just really quick the way the way it reads

191i'm trying to understand it says you know food given to students so as an example you have uh rotary does uh pancake breakfast students might be there but i think it's more coincidental it's more of a community thing does it apply to groups like that the this is for this is for like a pto fundraiser type of thing not for a regular adult civic group well it would apply to and that's where the exemptions come in it would apply to any event that's held on school grounds so that's why you need the exemptions so that you can have those pancake breakfasts or sell items at concession that don't meet the connecticut nutrition standards thank you i know i've said this in the past i'm sorry tony but you know the food service you know school

192nutrition is very technical the amount of details around what um items meet the connecticut nutrition standards are intense i can send the board members the link to the website where the the lists are available and they're updated and changed constantly so there really is a lot you know to to this and again it's all in the interest of making sure that we're serving products to our students you know in this case on snacks and olive cart sales that are good for them so you won't see any fried potato chips but you will find that there's baked chips and you know we do have cereal available but you know it's going to be all whole grains so there is a you know a technical element to this but it is in the interest of providing healthy

193stuff for our kids thank you any other questions uh for for sake of saving time i'm not gonna reread the motion uh but all those in favor raise your hands all those opposed one opposed uh the motion passes thank you second motion would someone like to make motion number two adam chairman thank you i haven't spoke i haven't spoken in well over five minutes so i figured motion number two uh move that the cheshire board of education will allow the sale to students of food items that do not meet the connecticut nutrition standards provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event and three the

194food items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity for example soccer games school plays and intergalactic interscholastic debates are events but not soccer practices play rehearsals and debate team meetings are not did i read that quickly the regular school day is the period from midnight to before 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the food sales end motion and here again seconds any discussion on this one seeing as there are none all those in favor please raise your hand all those opposed there's one opposed the motion passes thank you motion three this is for beverage exemptions

195who like to make this final motion okay i'll do it oh you do it okay all right uh move the cheshire bar education will allow the sale to students of beverages not listed in section 10-221-q of the connecticut general statutes provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of director's school day or on the weekend two the sale is the location of the event and three the beverages are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity the school day is a period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held it

196must be the same place as the beverage sales any is there a second and seconds any discussion okay all those in favor please raise your hand thank you all opposed there's one opposed the motion carries thank you everyone we're a motion passer thank you i have no update uh the only thing i want to mention is uh i'll read the upcoming meetings uh before we adjourn but uh again if we jeff mentioned earlier it's board member appreciation month day week that's it let's be recognized thank you i do want to thank all all of us on the board all my colleagues it's uh it's been one heck of a a year and going and i think everyone's been doing a fantastic job very much engaged i love seeing the the uh respectful debates and and

197everyone's so again thank you it makes uh easy for everyone uh the other thing i want to say is there is one last modernization committee meeting this month before uh the options are presented to the to the town council on board of it my ask of you and again i take this and it's a good nature ask it's nothing um issue wise ann andrew myself you know we we every meeting and even between meetings i know the three of us in some way shape or form are you know given information to the committee from the board we're sharing our perspectives we're starting to share the feedback tonight my ask is if you can email the monetization committee um with any questions concerns or other things you'd like to see uh being considered for the presentation

198i think hearing from all of us um especially before they wrap up this month will be huge uh you know they've been added what we've been at since uh 20 late 2019 a lot of information and it's hard to um you know watch a three hour plus meeting you know and and try to get through i understand that but based on what you heard tonight everyone's bought some really good points and concerns and opportunities i think it's worthwhile for them to hear it and if you have time to share what you said tonight i think that would help tremendously we'll certainly bring those to the table next uh the next meeting but other than that before we adjourn um the next meeting with policy on tuesday april 6th at 6 30. we have curriculum april

19919th at 7 o'clock and the next boardroom business meeting is april 22nd uh that being said i would like uh planning committee to entertain possibly holding a meeting to review that report at smc after the first and you know maybe before to our board meeting the 22nd that could be worked out after um just a reminder that april 2nd is good fridays uh schools and office will be closed spring break well it's already spring uh april 12th and 16th is spring break all schools are closed and lastly may 31st memorial days and schools and offices will be closed as well that being said thank you um is there a motion to adjourn i'm sorry tim you have a question yeah just just really quick uh personnel i'll probably be planning i'll probably be uh scheduling

200a personal committee meeting in the next month um and then uh second of all for andrew or for vin have we heard back from michael saum about solar carports and should there be something like tack it on to a planning committee meeting no answer nothing necessary right now but i just want to mention that yes michael some did send some information i owe him a call back but we'll be ready for the next planning committee meeting okay thank you i'm sorry tim i wasn't uh i was chuckling earlier i just it it was nothing uh so thanks my personal meeting i i assume it's because we're kind of in the closet school year we probably start planning for some activities we gotta do related reviews and things like that so thank you for for saying

201that uh that being said is there a motion to adjourn faith is there a second catherine sorry she's quick all in favor good night i passed you nancy thank you everyone uh especially our administrators and staff and carol mike i appreciate um we all appreciate your time good night guess what busy day tomorrow stay safe