BOE Planning Committee Meeting of the Whole 3-11-21

001uh tonight is thursday march march 11th hope this finds you in good spirits and good health uh before we kick this off uh to the meeting this can we have a roll call for quorum please yeah i'll i'll take care of that mr paragini i used to carol thank you vincent okay that's all right i've been called worse than kevin northwest mr perezini is harrigan here pam here mr martelly here and mr white is it thank you vincent uh so we stand for the pledge okay so the flag is destroyed i pledge of allegiance thank you welcome everyone uh before i turn over to meeting to andrew because this is a planning committee meeting of the whole meaning that not only is the planning committee meeting here tonight of the board of ed but the

002full board of it uh primarily this across the great efforts by school modernization uh again upgrade on what they've been working on some of the options and other information but a chance for the full board to talk about the plan being drafted and share some feedback that being said andrew i'm going to turn it over to you and and uh i'm sure you do the same but uh for folks that may be watching i hope you are you can send questions and comments during the meeting just keep your october 19 a check should.k12.ctus and we'll address as the meeting moves on andrew it's all yours thank you all right well thank you everybody thank you to our invited guests just for those who are with us here and those watching at home we have a

003few folks with us who are not um either board of ed staff or on the board of education we have mr chuck warrington who is a consultant from coliers international as well as well as john copeland who is our consultant who have been retained by the smc to help with our help guide some of the discussions and to work through some of the different scenarios we also have michael zuba from slr who did the enrollment study and the redistricting survey for us and then chuck north who is the chairman for the school modernization committee so welcome to our invited guests um the way that i'd like to kind of go through this is there's a lot of information we have some folks here who's going to who are going to share some information with the

004group and those listening at home um but i want to touch on a couple items and then i'm going to turn it over to various individuals to share their screens if they could do to walk through and then open it up for questions and comments which i know there'll be quite a few of um so with that being said the first thing i'm going to talk about is our last modernization committee meeting which was held back on march the 8th main topics that were covered there was the survey that was sent out to the community so i'm sure that some of you have had a chance to take a look at that survey i kind of pulled out some of the high level things that i thought were important from that and i would be

005happy to answer any questions about the community survey um so basically a survey a group was hired in order to conduct a survey of the community um there were 400 random phone calls that were made to individuals across the town as well as 903 individuals who were able to access an online survey which mirrored the survey that was done by the 400 random calls to individuals in the community of those surveyed um of the of those surveyed 132 identified as either business owners in cheshire or managers of businesses located here in town um the survey focused on not only school modernization but also on life and cheshire in general so i'm not going to get into that but i thought it was important to know that 98.5 of those surveyed reported that their quality of

006life in gesture was either good or very good so i thought that was important to know school modernization um three quarters or 78.5 percent of those asked were either interested or somewhat interested in school modernization 86.5 percent indicated they consider modernization of chelsea public schools is either very at 54 or somewhat at 32 percent important um so we have 86.5 of everyone surveyed things that modernization is the right process that we're following right now um interestingly i thought this was interesting just like pulled this out that of all the modernization initiatives that could be done in cheshire public schools the top was it technology upgrades at 38 um give me one second air quality at 29 um and renovations of the cheshire of the school buildings at 27 um 4.3 percent of all those asked

007thought that there was no need for modernization of the cheshire public school buildings um let's see and moving forward with school modernization 93.8 percent of those believed that the public communication for modernization needs to distinguish between what is required and what is desired for upgrades to the public schools which i thought was an interesting point um and 90 of those asked could be convinced to support funding for school modernization um if they were clearly understood what the project needs and objectives were so the reason why i thought that that was important was is that the survey did not ask or did not present any costs associated with school modernization so still 90 of those ass thought that they could be convinced that it was depending on what the funding levels were for the projects um

008again 11 of those asked totally opposed modernization so survey went out there was a lot of information in there i know that all board members have been um have received the full packet of what all the questions were there's about eight to a thousand different comments that were received um both verbally through the um phone the people on the phone taking going through the survey as well as those that submitted online so that's the survey um i don't think that there's any question that we have pretty large support in the community if you're one of those that believe that the numbers are going to tell the tale if people are going to vote in favor of school modernization that was not asked as part of the survey so that was one issue that was left

009that was left out of it because at the time the survey was being put together um all the calls were made during the month of february and when the calls were being made and have numbers associated hard numbers associated with the different options or the scenarios developed which we're actually still going through that process now so any questions on the survey that um that i could address before we go into the actual options andrew this is adam yeah um are we gonna have access to the actual comments that you referenced is that part of the the packet that we got i don't know if it's part of the packet that you received but we could definitely make that um available then yeah like you know i don't see any reason that we can't share that

010at this point um but it's not what we in the package what we did include was the presentation that was made but i will um attend to that i know it sounded like there were a lot of comments but um usually there's a lot of interesting detail in there so for sure i mean they really run the gamut of uh there's there's a lot of interesting information in there yeah all right thanks andrew i have a question um are we gonna once we do have cost estimates um are we gonna go back out and uh get a sense of the community i know that there are some members on the modern modernization committee who have raised that point you know and there's a poll forever but yeah i mean i'm not saying that we're opposed

011to doing that um there hasn't been a plan that we're going to re-engage the center for research and public policy to do that once again but i i don't see the harm in doing that um so that's definitely something that's up for discussion isn't it isn't it true though that we we may not have more funding to do that that is a question i don't know the answer to then now we'll be checking it out i'm sure yeah i i think ultimately it's up to the committee to decide if there is an additional investment to be made and i think there is still a balance available but i don't know what else to say beyond that oh it's a committee decision yeah that would be a full committee decision faith could bring it up at

012the next meeting on the 17th of school modernization you thanks sure questions or comments by anybody who uh is on smc chuck do you want to add anything chuck north no i was uh you'd pretty much given the answer i was going to say we can talk about it it's not currently planned but it could be um it kind of depends on what happens uh following presentation of the time all right can i ask one more question i'm sorry andrew sure faith this is for um john and chuck from colliers um how do these numbers compare with other projects that you've worked on um when you've gone out and pulled the communities are we running ahead are we comparable to what you've seen um did you do the other districts when they pulled neighborhoods did

013they actually include costs um to get a better sense a realistic sense of what the community wants and is willing to bear yeah so um you know so we most of the district we've worked with we haven't done the survey um mike zuba um with slr mike has uh he's the one i think they brought the surveyor to us i know mike has done some surveys um you know for we've had referendums that have succeeded but not any formal surveys that i could give you answers to i don't know if mike's available to maybe share i think he was trying to get in with his cell phone well if he's talking his microphone's muted yeah mike just said i don't know that we're yeah uh he said that uh when he's presenting you unmute his

014mic i don't know then if you have control of that i don't have control of that i'm trying to do it right now since i can't mute someone else yeah it's not i mean i have the mute icon but it's not letting me unmute let me try this i you know i can respond because i asked that same question though and um i will you know not be able to give the verbatim response and i'm hopeful that you know mike could fill in any blanks but uh these numbers are very favorable and generally you don't see numbers this high in the survey supporting a change you know supporting work being done in the schools i mean i i asked that at monday's meeting and i know some of you were there so i mean um

015but if i missed anything no and the um the surveyor from the center for research in public policy stated that in the communities that he's surveyed this is overwhelmingly high for um for a positive for a project faith so if i can add i don't think the board's met since the last smc meeting but it's just a heads up that town council gave smc april 1st to deliver the report and then you know what happens what that some see after the fact they'll figure out so they're made an opportunity to another survey but i think we need to get through the plan first uh figure out where that lands and see where it goes but it's certainly open for discussion down the road anything else in the survey before we move on to the um

016scenarios seeing none okay chuck can i ask you or john to go through the two scenarios that were discussed the last smc meeting yeah i think john's prepared to share that walk us through it hey johnny there buddies i think he's on mute here we go so i was on mute trying to get my screens figured out here okay can everybody see that see that screen we got it okay so um as andrew had touched on um at the meeting on monday uh we had a presentation from uh slr uh formerly maloney mcbroom where they went through uh the scenario 1a and two-way which essentially were the two finalists uh from the initial uh 13 or so uh scenarios that we had been addressing over the last several months uh with the smc group hey

017john all right i'm i'm seeing uh the google screen it says you're presenting do you guys see the actual presentation yet no no yeah we don't see the actual application that it's bringing up okay um all right mine's indicating that the uh my screen's showing the snap okay for some reason then hey john you've done this before maybe you want to just stop presenting and start over okay okay try it again is that working now so when it when it comes up the um it says present entire screen you gotta click on the icon of the screen and then just go to the tab or worksheet that you're presenting okay i thought i had done that but let me try that again it's okay john i'm bad at it too that's it i didn't have

018any problem previously pressure's on could i just ask who's on the uh the call-in line that's mike suba oh okay yeah he's trying to get his his mic to work i'm trying to present it here to see if it'll pop up all right guys can you see the spreadsheet here andrew yes i can yep does everyone got that yeah yeah hey john you want once you're going to walk it through i'll just uh just maggie and you don't know what happened on my end sorry about that so uh again what we looked at were the scenarios 1a and 2a um and ultimately uh scenario 1a was um essentially voted down if you will by the smc so i don't want to spend too much time on that but what this was showing is um scenario

0191a consisted of a new k-6 elementary school um i guess challenge an issue associated with that however was the 858 enrollment number and in addition to that the uh size of that school not only for the students but then also the square footage was a was a concern uh for the smc the other uh detriment of scenario 1a was that the percentage of the redistricting which was presented from the slr report earlier that evening resulted in 39 percent of the student population for the k-6 elementary schools would be impacted by a redistricting plan so ultimately the size of the proposed new six elementary school and the fact that of the student population for the k through 6 would be affected by redistricting uh this one a scenario was not uh voted through or in favor

020to proceed so um just uh bottom line while we do have this still up as far as the budget is concerned uh the costs associated with this again a new k-6 elementary school renovations to dodd uh doolittle highland and norton and then um ultimately renovations to the high school which would likely be towards one of the latter phases would be a budget figure of 408 to 515 million dollars total of which the district share which would be the percentage um after the oc oscg and our assistance from the state the reimbursement would be a value of 242 million to about 305 million so um not only the cost but then also ultimately the size of the proposed new elementary school and the impact of 39 for redistricting uh to the k through 6 student enrollment

021numbers were the reasons for this one not being voted through the second scenario is scenario 2a and this one entails a new 6 to 8 middle school and in doing so the elementary schools are then changed to a k through 5 program and set up so uh the numbers in those uh elementary schools then are slightly reduced again because the sixth grade has now moved into the middle school and the new middle school would have a high eight year enrollment figure of 117 students and then the new elementary school in this scenario or in this case the assumption is that this would be a figure of 515 students roughly and the intent with the redistricting in this scenario 2a helps to more equally divide the students between the four elementary schools the impact to the

022redistricting was much lower and that was at roughly 15 percent so there was less of an impact to the redistricting for the town of cheshire and ultimately the costs also you will see at the lower right are also much much lower so um the new middle school the new chapman elementary school uh results uh in a um bottom line figure of 431 million to roughly 535 million dollars with a ultimate district share of 263 million to 326 million dollars so it is much cheaper and ultimately it does not have as much of an impact on the redistricting to the town and as a result of further discussions monday night what we are now pursuing is actually a scenario six we are calling it which is a modification to the scenario 1a tweaking that version there

023and what we are looking to do for scenario six is to construct uh two new elementary schools uh roughly between 600 to 650 at the most most likely students in each of those and that would help to alleviate some of that pressure with the existing schools chapman again would be closed and then the other elementary schools would equally share in those in those numbers and the redistricting impact would be much less uh than even the 15 percent uh that was uh from scenario 2a so that is something that we are looking into now um slr is uh reviewing uh the ultimate impact to the enrollment numbers as well as any potential redistricting that may be impacted from this scenario six as we're calling it and then uh based on their findings uh colliers we will

024then uh do another one of these uh uh charts here to show the potential cost impacts uh with uh the proposed new uh elementary schools so that in a nutshell is um what we have from our uh cost analyses for the uh two scenarios from monday night's meeting and as i said we're about to get into the scenario six uh cost associated with those uh once we get some more information from slr okay thank you john um catherine you have a question um yeah and i just may not be understanding on scenario 2a the square footage for the new middle school seems significantly higher than what was estimated um in our last go-around i'm in the facility master plan so is that i'm just curious as to why there is such a because i think

025i thought it was like 180 000 square feet but maybe vin has a better recollection of that um so that's one question and i don't know if it's because of an increase in enrollment over time that we're planning for but second i don't know that i understood the uh john when you said that the costs of scenario 2a are lower than 1a doesn't seem right to me you know based on what but maybe i missed something that you i maybe i didn't follow exactly what you were saying um because 1a seems to be cheaper overall than 2a i just want to make sure i'm following on i'm sorry i i did misspeak there the the assumption is uh the scenario 6 is going to be cheaper than the 2a so i'm sorry i oh okay

026okay misspeak there but um as far as your first question i believe had to do with the square footage yeah of the middle school of the middle school the the square footage for the middle school is based on a couple of factors mainly the space standard calculations that the state uses as a guideline and that in turn is based on the number of students there's a square footage cost allocation that is put towards uh each student and then with respect to the ed spec educational specifications there's another factor that comes into play with determining the square footage for the the school size itself so um a lot of that is based on the number of students enrolled and then um that helps to determine uh the square footage the factored it's a 1.05 uh factor

027and multiplying uh the um the net square footage and the high number is a 1.15 which accounts for the exterior envelope or thickness of the building exterior if you will so that that is the difference between the low and the high gross square foot numbers right but so i don't know vin or jeff if you or tony if anyone remembers whether i mean is it our is the enrollment that we used for the last middle school analysis uh significantly lower than what is being used today i don't recall i i got a in fact as you were talking i was trying to go back and find uh on our website that uh that study but what's significant this time is the elementary spike enrollment but i'm not sure yeah that contributed to the middle school

028size i do know that uh this middle school six to rate and 2a i believe based on the space standards i think john talked about is accommodate approximately 1 176 students which i think is higher than what we saw in 2017 which i think is around 900 that may be yeah i have um i'm looking at the uh tskp information that was prepared yeah and so in so this was from 2017. this estimate was 1140 students so it's only about 32 students higher right now in what we're looking at um and the building size was 185 000 square feet right um so this one's about 15 000 square feet um bigger so i think it's it's in the ballpark and i'm not sure if the calculation um now has to do with the years in

029which that enrollment peaks but you know john and chuck would be able to speak to that better yeah yeah i mean i think part of it is enrollment and and the other part that we i don't know not having seen i know perkins i think perkinson put together some of those two is ensuring they they factored the building by the five percent for the exterior walls um we've seen where some teams have not done that and they just took the space stand and then what it does it shorts your budget down the road by um quite a bit in in your ended up with uh a shortage that you'd have to deal with so that could be part of it i'd have to look at the calculations and see what they come up with okay

030thanks adam thank you um so we've talked about 2a a lot and it's been talked about since you know like i said 2017 um so i guess i'll i'll ask my questions about this new scenario 6a um i think that uh our last planning meeting we had discussed something very similar to this uh just as a pie in the sky idea and so it's interesting to see it kind of come to some more reality i guess um so and i know it sounds like it's very preliminary but i guess the thought is to to have like new elementary schools north and north and south correct that would be a new chapman and essentially for lack of a better term new norton um where then if just by just doing a little napkin math that would

031allow us to i guess at some point shutter norton shutter chapman and shutter um uh darcy darcy i'm sorry yes darcy so there's at least three buildings there um that and then we would have two brand new buildings um and so i'm guessing that the the population would then be split between those two new schools because 660 is quite a bit larger than what norton is because i think it's functional capacity somewhere around 450 or something like that so i'm guessing that's sort of the idea yeah yes the the intent is that the new middle or assuming the new elementary schools would be uh positioned on the north and south end of pressure to try to um you know balance out the the enrollment numbers and then to minimize uh any potential redistricting that may

032occur um that's something that slr is going to be looking at in further detail and uh you know we'll be you know getting back to colliers with that information so then we can look at generating um another cost analysis for for that scenario if that answers your question uh yes and so so i guess so so with a larger norton i'm guessing that would also reduce the population stress on highland which would perhaps make it easier to incorporate the pre-k and the perhaps the other special education programs into wow so that could really be something bobby hall look forward to see what the results are on that yeah thank you you're welcome thanks thanks adam all right tim thanks thank you andrew um yeah uh so i the i know this is very preliminary but

033you you came out with a new norton rather than say something in the north end of town is there any reason for that and i'm not talking about chapman i'm just thinking another property where it's an entirely different school reserve is there um why did we go there instead of just like a whole new elementary school is there a reason for that or no what we're looking to do is two new elementary schools for scenario six so um as far as the site locations uh to be honest we we've just started looking into that um as far as what properties may or may not be available either town properties or potentially you know private properties that um you know would be positioned or situated in such a point uh to provide as minimal redistricting as

034possible for the town so um you know we are not specifically saying you know this school or that school will be impacted although you know the the consensus or feeling is that the cheshire um assuming the chapman uh school would be you know one of the two that would be impacted um you know by having a new school uh in the southern end of cheshire okay so so yeah you're right the question is about site location and there really hasn't been much of any discussion about that at this point oh no no not at all that's that's too premature first right and one of the and tim one of the resolutions that was uh voted in favor of at the smc meeting was to have coliers take a look at both public and private land

035in town as possible school locations so that's another task that's been added to their to their workload okay yeah and to be honest we actually just started working on that today so we're starting to look into parcels within the town that you know may be um you know sufficient or adequately sized to accommodate you your proposed new elementary school which is you know typically about 12 15 acres minimum yeah okay so i i appreciate that and i have two little ones so i could directly benefit we're in the norton district right now but i don't want to just go toward that because we have the property and we're using it i don't think that's a good reason to necessarily land there as the option that's that's my only point um excuse me tim yeah the

036the question of of why norton and admin i mean it is facility based but also making equally sized school districts across the uh across the board and getting them as close to the same as you can for the number of students that you have there so if we're talking like in that six to six fifty range for those two new schools and then if you look at scenario 1a i mean highland was like 777 and doolittle was 576. all the schools would be similarly sized what and what's the benefit to that i don't know if that's for chuck or for jeff of going with two schools versus a larger school no not the not the one large not a thousand kids in one school i don't like that idea but um if you did another

037school say chapman redo chapman and call it 600 and then you do another school not norton different site north end of town north west corner of town 400 students what's the what's the relevance of a 600 chapman in a 400 new school you i thought chuck i thought you were saying a second ago it's beneficial to have the schools like the same size yeah i'm just saying in terms of the numbers that are at the school so which what you would be saying is to have another let's say it wasn't norton and it was a school in the northwest of town the numbers wouldn't work out like those students would have to end up going to doolittle which already has the students i mean if you're just playing a numbers game you wouldn't move around

038more students than you would need to so right now yeah i guess norton's this the second smallest school so that would be the candidate to to make larger first highland is already 777. you can't add more students to it doolittle is already 576. you wouldn't want to add too many more students to it so are you right mike mike zubat mike are you tied in now yeah i think if you guys hear me yeah yeah mike can lend a lot of insight into something yeah it feels so good to be able to speak again sorry about that i've you know worked through my difficulty switching platforms and uh i think what we're talking about is when we ran the origin when we ran scenario 1a um and looking at you know the difference in sizes

039and the way we view the difference in sizes when we're sort of you know facility planning we look at the number of grades in the building your loading level and then the number of sections you want to have and i think what chuck's referring to is that when we were looking at scenario 1a we had a building that would have you know housed upwards of 900 students um it was a little bit unwieldy from an educational environment but then when we look at should it be a 400 and a 600 or two roughly the same size um when we went through and started running some numbers of you know what a good size would be for an elementary school you begin working in that 550 to 600 range where um you know you have enough

040to be able to run it as if you were a 400 student school from a a staffing standpoint but you also have enough sections per grade where you have a little better consistency in each geographic area with class sizes so if you have a 400 student school you're limited on how many kindergarten classes you may be able to classrooms you may be able to offer a first grade classrooms where if you get a bubble in your demographics um then you ultimately end up with some class sizes that may be either a little too high or not very efficient whereas if you have a 550 to 600 student school um you're able to level that off and have a really good efficient operation and i think we also talked about being able to plan around growth

041so with growth being a lot of housing turnover having equal size schools not only in the south and in the north provided really good opportunities for when ultimately the construction occurs you have buildings and then you go through an actual redistricting if they look somewhat to our concepts you're able to then have sort of these relief valves at both ends of the town and really right size in the middle and provide everybody with some flexible space um versus um you know having you know more space in the north or or more space in the south um the way we've been looking at it is that um it could or may not be on those individual sites themselves so um you know we're sort of you know drafting a boundary without a site in mind but

042knowing that it's going to largely capture these residential neighborhoods regardless of where the actual school is just based on really the physical geography and the layout and how you move around in cheshire um hopefully that that answered the question uh yeah yeah no that in terms of the flexibility and that that makes total sense i guess the only thing my counterpoint to it that's just going through my mind is as i've said before i like the neighborhood schools and in my mind i was thinking like 400 is probably the equivalent of chapman which has been i think problematic from a districting perspective for decades um limited in the flexibility so i completely understand that i just it's just kind of nice going through my mind if there was one in the northwest corner of town

043with a shorter commute you know i mean anybody who lives up nearby except for darcy they're they're going all over town to get to one of their schools anyway that was a simple point on that but thank you the the point it makes a lot more sense to me now um okay and uh one more i have one more question um which is and i i mean i have an idea of this already but there's probably people who are watching it now or will be watching it um the enrollment in general so we're we i so i was skeptical in the enrollment skeptical of the enrollment spike 12 months ago and right now i i definitely am a bigger believer in it um the projected enrollment spike but i'm just wondering if you if somebody

044could speak to that what are the factors going into that and i could i could speak to it myself but i'd rather hear it from one of you who've been a lot closer to this yeah i'd be happy to cover that and it is a good question it is something that um you know we haven't rebounded as a whole in connecticut really um since the great recession and now what we started seeing a couple of years ago was uh probably starting about four or five years ago durga dr b schools were getting stabilizat they've been stabilizing at the elementary level holding their own um we've also been seeing um you know overall you know even before the latest boom and and sales of housing on single-family homes because of the pandemic um the housing trends

045have been on the up and up um you know across the board um you know in cheshire itself um what we're seeing is a little bit of a combination of um you know immigration you know taking over where you know younger families are buying homes there's a sort of a turnover of that natural population that we're seeing um and that in part is fueling um you know students moving in at various grade levels but also um you know where you're going to start to see a leading edge and we always call the leading edge it's when your birds pick up so um over the last several years you haven't seen bert's um to the level that have been reported over the last um few years here in cheshire um so you know we're tracking and

046even though kindergarten was typically down a little bit across the state with parents holding back for kova delayed entry um you know we you've averaged about 212 births a year for 16 17 18. so those are reported um those become your kindergarten classes of 2021 2022 2023. the last time you had burst anywhere near that level was 2007. um so we've been on a bit of a birth you know slide and that's that's not surprising considering our aging demographic um so with some of those larger kindergarten classes coming in and with the turnover housing and with new families buying into the community as older individuals move on um you know we're seeing now some higher immigration rates higher um persistency ratios feeding in those grades and overall um the higher enrollment is now going to

047start waving in um starting next year okay okay so i'm just going to add to that what i heard you say is the the older some some older residents moving on empty nesters basically so just one point on that is the median age of the homeowners in town in the last 10 years has gone from 38 to 46 you know effectively saying that people just haven't left down in the past 10 years presumably directly related to you know their kids being in the school system and a lot of them may have graduated five years ago so they're not really they're not necessarily empty nesters it's sort of the boomerang generation um but there is i do think there is a good reason to believe that the enrollment will be increasing along with the births being

048up and um also i mean you drive around town there are the houses being built that that haven't you know that haven't been built in probably 20 years there's been no meetings from town um yeah so so to that point tim we went through um analysis of housing sales talking with the realtors um talking with um you know the town planning department getting an idea of you know residential starts you know what the activity level is and to your point they're all when we say we start to see all those key enrollment drivers align the you know even though you're a bit built out there are there's there's subdivision construction going on um you know the housing market right now is is hot and then we have these bubbles of birds now coming through um

049that all leads us in the direction of you know you're at your bottom and now the enrollment's on the up and up especially at the elementary level so thank you i'm gonna if i can i've i have one more question that i just want to touch on which is um the enrollment is on the increase but we have basically at least system wide not grade by great necessarily but system-wide we've we've experienced this population before so and what is a reason so we we have had all the space in the past to address this what are you know a couple of reasons why it's different today than it was say 20 30 years ago yeah i can get started on that but then i could defer to yeah okay i'll be better to answer that

050question yeah yeah i wasn't sure it would be so just a reason just to restate the question yep so today versus 30 years ago why haven't we redistricted no no no i basically we've we had 30 years ago we had the same number of classrooms right oh so why is there okay so why are we um at greater capacity now why are we yeah yeah what pro programmatically what has changed is yeah i put together a document on that i can share it with this group again but basically um kindergarten full-day kindergarten uh doubled the amount of kindergarten space that we need the other major driver is bringing [Music] special needs populations back in so the highland intensive special education program uh is substantially larger to accommodate needs as well as our bridges behavioral support

051program on top of that the needs of some of our students with respect to occupational and physical therapy so we have significantly more spaces dedicated to things like you know swings uh from the ceiling uh you know large medicine ball or yoga ball areas and mats for students to be stretched and engaged in that sort of activity those are the primary drivers but i'll pull up the uh documents so that you can see sort of a visual from our enrollment uh it didn't go 30 years back but uh roughly i think then do you remember how many years we went back i think like a decade um 15 years maybe and it really outlines where the space yeah no no i mean i think i think i'm okay with that this is i mean i

052have an idea i'm just thinking there are people watching this too so it's useful to have that um and one other point uh to connect some dots here is with regard to uh special ed there is this increased cost we're using all this space that we didn't use before but one of the things that where we benefited in town from the special ed program that you've developed and you know uh the cheshire public schools have developed over the past couple decades are we saving the last i remember you mentioning it you felt like there was probably a cost avoidance of about six million dollars a year by having is that the yeah the cost about placement not only for uh the services provided but transportation is incredibly high and that's why we ultimately opted to

053provide more in-school services because we figured at that cost we can do it better and allow our students to stay in their neighborhood schools which is also better for our students and families so um there is obviously a flip side i guess the drawback being the space necessary to do that but um it is significantly cheaper and better for our students okay yeah i'm just looking at it from an economic perspective somebody who was here 30 years ago what changed that's a real change but that's not it it was i mean it was it's stuff that it's stuff that we should do it's stuff that's required by law um and we are from that perspective we have been saving money by keeping it in house on the flip side there is you know new construction

054that basically would need to happen assuming that we keep all those programs in place so right okay i'm good thank you andrew thank you very much all right uh catherine sorry i got bumped off before so um hopefully i'm not gonna ask the same question that somebody else has um but one of the questions i have is that if we had the six to eight middle school the new 68 middle school my understanding has been and maybe i'm wrong but that it that would enable us to absorb um an enrollment spike um in the k through five population um and you know maybe it's not a perfect match but i always thought that once you took all the sixth graders out of the elementary schools and put them into a new sixth grade middle school

055that you know you're freeing up at least some space in the elementary school so um i'd like to understand better why you know the the discussion seems to be exclusively on enrollment levels in the elementary schools which of course we want to be able to plan for and manage um but you know up until this year we were of the belief and the opinion that our enrollment levels were going to be pretty much flat if if at best um might go up a little bit but not so much that all of a sudden we have to think about building you know one or two new elementary schools now it's two um and i don't hear the the discussion about what is really the best thing that we should be doing for uh um the entire

056student population and in my you know the middle school the new middle school was something that was really an important key to you know we wanted to think about what we could do at that level six to eight to really um i don't know like enhance what those students that age group uh was going to be you know uh be able to experience so that seems to not be part of the discussion anymore but maybe i'm not you know maybe i'm missing something um so what is my question you may be asking my question is can if a six to eight middle school was built um how much more um space really truly would we need at the elementary level that wouldn't already have if that makes sense and i get that there might have

057to be redistricting or whatever but anyone john or chuck want to take that yeah maybe take a crack and mike mike might build i might chime in on this as well um and they're in with the with the proposed redistricting in the in the this is in the 2a scenario um there's a proposed chapman for the and then the other numbers kind of mike and his team have kind of moved them around when we do that we just look at it from a space standard they really done a good job of really right kind of right sizing the buildings to the populations where when we do the space standard calculations they're very close to 195 to 100 percent and that kind of ties in with the capacity as well but as far as understanding if

058we're going to need say build maybe an addition on a school or two that's really going to be dependent on the educational specification and the program for the school when we get to that and looking at that school specifically for example highland we've had many discussions of moving the pre-k into highland and analyzing the programming of that building and how it may be affected when you're so close to 100 percent and you write the ed spec the ad spec may say you need a few more square feet because of the programs that jeff was talking about and the state by the way isn't a hundred percent support of that we met with him today and and the director of osu's yard they're 100 percent of having them in district so it's really ed spec dependent

059is what it comes down to and until we really develop that on the school by school basis it's they're very close to right size they're not going to be huge additions but they might need some square footage or maybe some reprogramming if we can fit them in so we really don't know definitively at this moment if we need it so chuck you you this is tony uh you mentioned quickly that scenario 2a it's not just the new sixth rate middle school because that in itself does not solve the entire enrollment problem at the elementary school level there's some work to be done at chapman as well to increase the flaw so i think i think uh as i remember four or five years ago well you know like like katherine said at the time the

060enrollment just doing the sixth grade middle school we knew would free up a lot you know space things have changed a little bit in this scenario so you know your own projections are i guess a good thing right if people want to come to cheshire that's a good thing for us so it would have to be a new sixth grade middle school and chapman in that phase two right chapman chapman is projected to be larger than it's kind of you know kind of right sizing me so they're closer in size and more uh i'll say uniform i mean hyland's still the biggest one right but bringing the other three to be what it appears to be by enrollment a little more uniform size so you don't have these disparities between them yeah and yeah go

061ahead mike yeah and i think one of the key points too are with taking darcy offline and moving the programs from darcy into highland we're now sort of displacing some of the seats that we had we had gained from moving sixth grade up um which is then you know sort of mitigating some of the games that i think when you look at sort of historically a 300 you know student sixth grade class you think that's like three quarters of a building but really that darcy move mitigated some of those gains and you know overall reduce the amount of space that we're talking about so it's nowhere near in like scenario one a or what will become six now um but it's still there and i think you know it's really just that that programmatic need

062from consolidating the other building yeah thanks mike i just want to add captain uh yeah no so on the smc meetings the uh the the option 2a 628 middle school is very much in discussion that that you know but at that last episode c meeting uh permission entire all 13 members didn't like the size of that you know nearly 900 elementary school um and most of bournemouth didn't either you know killing jeff was a member is that 400 to 650 range which is the ideal sweet spot and even on today's call with us cgr they bought the fact that they were definitely frowned upon and pushed back in such a large elementary school they too want to see the 400 to 600 range and even on the sixth rate middle school there raised some concerns

063about the size of that being almost 1200 students they would push back on that too so you know there's some discussion be had there with smc based on that feedback so so still keeping these options on the table but just do know things are still evolving adam you have a question yes thank you um that's that's pretty surprising what tony just said actually saying that the state may not even like a six to eight option like it might be too big for even their tastes i mean isn't that what the smc has kind of been spending their time on for like the last year and a half and the state is kind of like well maybe we don't like that so much anymore um that's just a comment on my part um the uh the

064uh for this new option 6a uh you know for for 20 years uh this town has sort of been planning has been planning and the demographics show that we've sort of been anti-growth i guess i suppose you could say we've been kind of not wanting families to come here as much we've we've been trying to uh you know make sure that we almost age in place a little bit and um if those two new elementary schools are built to the 650 capacity or whatever it is does that allow us headroom for growth in the future if like we let's say if our town population actually surpassed 30 000 or or anything like that or that if um people we have who who have been living here for for let's say 40 years until all those

065houses and a lot of families come in does that allow us additional capacity past the year 2030 when we've gotten past that peak mike you want to tackle that maybe yeah chuck um you know we prepared like a 10-year projection to look at this and i think it's one of the things that um when you're looking at it it's really hard to see anything past that but i will say having been you know we've been doing this for 20 years that um when you see the kind of growth that we had in say the 90s into the early 2000s that's driven by raw land new housing um subdivision style growth it comes a lot quicker and the peak is a lot sharper than built out communities that we've had we've historically worked with where there's

066not a lot of subdivision growth um it comes a little slower and you know connecticut and most of it in cheshire include it right now with the zoning in place the open space that's been purchased um you know we're seeing growth through turnover and communities that are attractive for older individuals to age in place um that turnover is a little slower but then again out past 10 years we don't know what economic conditions may look like or you know really anything else what we always advise upon is you know in this case we prepared three sets of projections based on what we're seeing and knowing it's a facility plan we're recommending the higher projection so that provides some headroom there as well um within the numbers so um it's really putting some of those factors

067in place where you know you have a little bit of a buffer you can never build for 20 years the state only lets you build for eight years and no one can ever have a 20-year outlook on enrollment in the community so you have to be smart about what you build have it where if you do build it could be expanded upon um easily and um be strategic on where you locate the space yeah mike i think it's a good time can you um why don't we get into the redistricting plan that you put together we can see that and then get back into the detail sure and i know i'm gonna go i'll just say in addition to what you as you're bringing that up mike um what's important with these multi-phase programs and

068i think you might have heard when dr carter presented smc is monitoring the the projections as we go we're not just you just don't want to do it now and stop you'd want to have them updated as your program progresses and monitor that so that as you get into the faith you know hopefully say a phase two program you might have to adjust those a bit that's what they do in south windsor like okay we got growth their final school doubled in size by the end i think that's a very unique situation don't get me wrong right mike i don't i don't i don't think that's common but you have to you have to monitor as we go and update those projections to watch that yeah there are there's different economic drivers and tim you

069said it best earlier with just driving around seeing the seeing the ramp up in in residential construction seeing you know the the sail signs you get a feel for when something's happened even before you get that wave of additional kindergartners first graders there and chuck's set of best you just continually monitor and you get ahead of when you may need space you don't ever want to over build um andrew i'm going to share my screen let me know if you guys can see we have well at least i got something right i failed on the audio earlier so i got a gift from the technology gods here [Laughter] i pulled her away from the ipad to come down here to help me fix the uh technology i probably should have to be honest with you

070um all right so our charge from the smc is to work hand in hand with colliers and and the committee um and we see this is what we always do when we want to be able to tie the actual geography the the the where the students are where your housing are form some conceptual boundaries these aren't the ones you're going to go out and adopt they're a good starting point and then look at what the enrollment responds to and then help kind of feed into this equation of let's size the school and cite some of the planning based on the enrollment needs of a given geographic area so you know that's the philosophy that we've always done as part of this and it works really well especially when you do you have neighborhood schools you

071group by a geography you group by an address list people associate your neighborhoods with different school buildings and you know the kids on the same street go together it's not a magnet system it's not a choice system um so it works really well there so what we wanted to do and these are just our assumptions and they'll apply to all of them but i do want to pause um we've been using the existing functional capacities those align well with the numbers that john and chuck have been using we've also used the 2019 um 20 school year geocoding enrollment we know from our work you know across districts that 20 20 21 school year enrollment's a little bit um you know because of the pandemic the numbers don't truly reflect what typically happens or where the

072kids typically arrive at the school year so we use that as our starting point but then begin our projections a year later um you know we try to look at these to right sides did a couple different iterations to eat each in order to get it in with that planning specification um but overall we see this as really that first stage of being able to then have numbers based on how it could be populated and then as chuck has talked about um that gets put over into the construction part of the equation the space planning the ed specs and all of that um so this is just to keep people who aren't informed with what the actual district boundaries look like in the community and these are our starting points with chapman up in the

073upper right hand corner in orange highlands shown in green we have doolittle and purple kind of making up the northwestern flank of the town and then norton school to the south so scenario 1a is going to become the backbone and really the jumping off point for scenario six this is the one that maintains the sixth grade in the elementary schools i'm closing both darcy and chapman respecting what those existing functional capacities look like at doolittle norton and highland and then really letting what the demographics tell us the size of the new elementary school should be so in our attempt to not have dramatic change in dramatic change with the closure of two school buildings um you know we try to keep schools that have historically grouped in certain areas together the best we can these

074areas are just calling out um the neighborhoods that we had conceptually planned on changing um you can see it's a big shift with the new school of uh you know we already had a little spoiler on the side but the new 900 student school taking up you know about a third of the entire town of cheshire to the north so kind of stretching all the way down um past chapman school and then really making up both the northeast and the northwest flank the community so we allocated the birth we allocated the students looked at our housing factors and then projected forward really getting us out to 29.30 um if a grant application were to go in this june um you know we highlighted that in in um you know this tan color but if it

075were next june that would then just shift to the right with those peak years um but overall the new elementary school would have been projected at about 860. um you know with darcy's program moving as a whole into highland um you know that peaks out at just around 780 and then we have a 475 or 470 norton school and then a 575 um do little school what we wanted to do was look at that overall capacity and balance the enrollment outside making adjustments to the boundaries that make sense geographically um and also from a transportation standpoint and overall we did a pretty good job of leveling that out you'll see uh where we have about 95 percent overall um in and in the 90s overall which is really a good target um as part of

076this a little head room um but not too much excessive space however when we looked at creating a planning capacity for the new school we assumed that we would load all grade levels at 22 students we would have seven grade groupings and then six sections for each grade giving us a roughly 924 student building just from our planning standpoint there even though as i mentioned the enrollment came in um you know slightly underneath that um so overall what we saw with this consideration is that you know we had a good utilization um looking at the seat count overall when you're at a district-wide utilization in your 90s um you know based off your max capacity that really is the sweet spot we had this growth this growth up factor um however when we saw our

077overall considerations and our experience from space planning and and talking with colliers and talking with the administration and the smc um you know we we had some questions on not only um the size of the school from an operational standpoint and what that means for the educational experience but also um that a school of that size we are going to ultimately redistrict about 40 percent of the overall elementary student body um which is a big change for any community um so we did have some concerns with it and then we also made just some suggestions on you know getting into some further due diligence to ensure that um the capacity at highland um with bringing darcy over um that it's not going to take up any more additional space than we originally thought and that

078would just need a space need to study there um so 1a will become the starting point for scenario 6. we are going to now as we discussed earlier have those 550 to 600 north and south um and then create some boundaries around that knowing that the site may in fact change um but we'll be able to then sort of right size and look at what it means for um you know the student body in the middle and see where we stand from an overall district-wide utilization as well as hopefully camping down that overall number of um of change from a student boundary standpoint um so from the redistricting and getting into ads was mentioned earlier um you know the size that's not only supported educationally but also um favored by the osgr so looking at

079scenario 2a with 6th grade moving out becoming a 6'8 middle um we're still going to close darcy um so that gets taken out of our functional capacity equation um do little norton remain and darcy pre-k program like in all the other scenarios uh moves over to highland and then we're our goal for this study was to really provide that information of sizing the new k5 chapman according to what a likely attendant zone could look like so keeping our same sort of color pattern um but with this one rather than the uh the new school being this uh this nice little you know cantaloupe color i guess um we're now calling the new chapman um that color the conceptual new chapman um identifying some area change which would shift um do little to the new chapman

080and then some flip-flopping between chapman and highland and then a small little area of highland to norton and then highland to do little so much more um i'll call almost like a precise or surgical redistricting not this wholesale change when we do these smaller pocket areas we sometimes call it a pocket redistricting but really it's just some cohesive collective group neighborhood moves that keep kids that are in that immediate area together rather than slicing a lot of boundary changes just because we'd rather have larger peer groups when you ultimately go through a redistricting so what that looked like i know we referenced the number earlier um looking at the new chapman of about 515 students um balancing out doolittle at 560 to 570 um highlands at about 750 overall um that peaking at last year

081does get up to 760 and then having pretty stable enrollment at norton um especially as the growth starts to occur in that 450 460 but then we see a little bit of a bump up there in the 480 range so when we ran our overall utilization numbers and i went through really the same exercise of coming up with a planning capacity and this is absent of the site absent of the building absent of any of the physical parameters just taking that same loading level of 22 multiplying it by six grade groupings now rather than seven um because we've now moved six up into the middle school so that's one less grade grouping in the building and then having four sections of each grade so four kindergarten classes four first grade classes gives us a 528

082planning capacity there um what this did this also got us into that sweet spot especially in the last five years of in that 90 range overall all of the schools um you know performed really well um one thing that did pop up with some of the growth up in chapman getting around 98 um when the district-wide number works in that 90 95 that's just the function of having to go in and right size the boundaries at the right time um and follow the enrollment there because there is some space at a highland there is some space how to do a little there um but overall i think this one performed um really well with a good um scaling up as the enrollment comes in um even enrollment overall that's the way we were able to

083um apportion it out to the uh the various um new attendant zones um same caveats there of you know taking a better look at highland getting a capacity number there in case you need it um some additional space because you lost some space with the pre-k program you know those would all require some adjustments that you'd want to know before i'm going into a construction program and then really overall it moves about 15 of the student body which with the number of um the number of changes and bringing a new school online um you know that's really on par for what um you know we typically see as part of um projects of this size to be honest with you um we have three elementary schools of roughly the same size we still have the

084larger highland but that's just you know part function of the building itself and part function of having the pre-k program um nestled in there and then you know this really involves just you know testing out the chapman site for that 5c uh but we've left it flexible where you saw it probably covering the northern periphery of town as the you know work moves on depending on if this you know 2a falls to the waste that it becomes a 6a you know all those site questions will need to get answered but um we ultimately left enough flexibility there that um you know we feel pretty good about those geographic areas that we have we have captured in our work um so as chuck mentioned and john mentioned earlier um we've gotten started on the new scenario

0856a um you know we're hopeful to be able to you know have a have a meeting um internally next week sharing where we're at um and you know within two weeks have uh have a presentable slide deck to be able to come back out um and share with everybody on that one so um you know um it was good to be able to get the guidance um needed on you know the direction of having the schools the sizes of the schools and seeing how that performs as part of uh that new iteration um i know we talked about a lot of it but if there's any other specific questions on the redistricting itself i'm glad to cover those now okay i see a question from tim thanks andrew uh yeah it's it's actually not on

086the redistricting per se but i think it's a quick one okay average number of years of home ownership in cheshire do you happen to know if you don't know i do not have i do not have that but if if i have it in my deck of information outside of tonight's meeting i will gladly email that back out because it's something that we may have okay i know i i found it on zillow or realtor probably like five years ago and it was 17 years and it just struck me that there's a lot of people who move into town and then probably move out after the kids have gone through the school system and i was just wondering if that had changed at all particularly in relation to the um what i mentioned before about

087the average median age uh sorry not average but the median age of homeowners having increased anyway if you have it i'm curious yeah we're all waiting for the 2020 census to get eventually released where they talk about housing tenure and time um which is really the best number we may have an estimate but um it would just be an estimate of it um sure but if i do if i do have something at hand i'll be be sure to send it back out do you know when the acs gets released did they said well they they feel that census 2020 um the pandemic has slowed it down they're going to start sending out some um town wide so you know for the entire community of treasure um hopefully by late fall we should start seeing

088some information flowing in okay thank you great thank you mike um faith yep yeah and um forgive me if if we've gone over this um where is most of the development taking place i i there's a ton going on around us out here and i'm in the north east quadrant um and clearly our biggest districts are going to be um in the area in my area but does that does that comport with i mean is there still a lot of development i know i should know this i should go to the other side of town but is there a lot of development going on on that western and southwestern side as much as going on in the east and um i i just i'm trying to say yeah i i actually haven't i drug a

089map over are you guys seeing a map that says future housing no no i'm gonna stop presenting then represent now um it seems to work well for john earlier um are you seeing a flight called future housing now yes you go yeah all right i'm now now i'm too up on you john just to be honest i know really making me look bad mike [Laughter] so um you know this is tracking those that are um and hopefully everybody can see all the different colors we have green stars on those developments that are under construction we have orange stars on those that are approved but not yet under construction and then we have yellow on those that are applications so what these are are some more significant units we have the number of units listed here

090and i can flip over to the next slide to kind of talk about the type what we're not picking up though and i think a lot of people are seeing are the smaller um infill lots so it's you know where it's a one lot subdivision here one new home one new home one new home um these were really cool to look at um some some larger you know some larger developments um but overall when we looked at what that could potentially mean um for student yield and this became part of our um projections those developments i had on the map um you know including some of the apartments at lakeside of cheshire um they really don't generate a lot of students it's when we get those single-family subdivisions um is where we get more students

091coming out of those units um so you'll see where we have subdivisions listed even though the overall number of units are rather small we're getting a fair number of school-aged children and this is really school-age children in the next you know five to eight years coming out of that knowing that it gets filled a family set you know a family may move in they may have a child when they move in and that child may make it in to the system and then some families move in with a kid or two in tow and then have another so you know we use these established multipliers um through two different sources to be able to gauge you know how many students we're getting um per unit um and overall for the single family it came out

092to i'm just under one student per unit within our projection window that's not to say that that family may not eventually have numerous children overall but it's trying to account for sort of the different family cycle of a household but overall a lot of the big numbers where we saw just the number of units um very little school-aged children come out of there just because of the the number of bedrooms most of them are um you know assumed to be one bedroom from the information that we had um so not real you know student generators however i think a key point is um you know they do allow sort of um a younger demographic to move in who may eventually become um homeowners within the community okay um slr has been asked they're gonna go

093back and they're gonna update this because there are additional subdivision sentences so we throw it's not on here faith that we spoke about earlier right there is uh mckinley christmas tree farm also yeah another 35 houses single-family homes okay thanks um faith you're all set adam did you have another point that i interrupt you before on before we go back to tim um i think i'm good for now thanks okay i thought i cut you off before okay tim thank you andrew yeah just uh i guess kind of for faith here uh i'm not sure i didn't quite catch it but what you were just talking about it's michael zuba correct what you were just talking about um there's also another factor like i guess from my perspective planning and zoning five or ten years

094ago they changed some of the zoning rules so that you know the one acre lots can now be developed into you know ten housing units something along those lines then that's basically up and down route 10 i think it crossed west across west main and the only one that's listed in that um in the list that we just saw is the development john ricky is doing at the corner higgins in route 10 but there's there's a good number of other r20a zoning parcels that could ultimately get developed and frankly my suspicion is in the next you know five or ten years is there some turnover they will get developed i'm the type of person who likes to have sidewalks i really don't want to move out to buy a two acre a two acre lot

095that's me there's everybody has you know different different preferences but i do think that there probably is an appetite for some of the smaller units um in those r20a zones that probably will get built out in in the years to come yep okay any other questions on the redistricting um uh hopefully quick question how much of the 827 functional capacity for highland school how much of that is um the pre-k program what size is the actual elementary school part of of that highland number approximately so i'm i'm opening that up now just give me one second so approximately i'm just trying to back into and if jeff if you have it in front of you just the pre-k um total enrollment 100 i think it's 105 mike pre-k is 105 yeah yeah 105 was that

096this year or what was the average over the last because it wasn't this year down a little bit so i think we might have used the average over the last few years that's why it's a little bit tougher to do we um we and we figured that based on you know that's perfect that's all i needed to know yeah give give john a gold star he nailed that at 105 that's the number we use and i got the spreadsheet open i'm catching up to you mike i'm catching up i just wanted to know the size of the of the elementary school not without without the pre-k because it's really a separate it's a separate community it's a separate piece yeah i thought i totally know so roughly like 600 and um 650 or so because

097as it kind of grows up over time okay um if i could i'd like to ask either somebody who was at the oscgr meeting that was held today with the state if somebody could give a little report on that to the board i know that the smc hasn't heard the results of that meeting yet today i think it's important that we at least touch on what was discussed there today so the board could hear it any preference jeff i don't know if you want to take the lead or sure i'm i'm happy to you know what i'm gonna pull up is uh i thought after the meeting um i received a couple of different uh synopsis from a couple of different folks um and i thought they were pretty good uh basically uh and we

098did touch on some of this and in terms of our reviews uh the elementary schools you know tony already talked about that 4 to 6 50 range so the scenario 1a wasn't really well received there that we need to make sure we're calculating appropriate space for special education which i really appreciated uh acosta's sharing that when we are doing the ed specs for our buildings those special ed room uh can be larger and another example is that of that is uh pre-k where the standard they use for pre-k is 1200 square feet and the standard for other classrooms is 900 because of the additional adults and little buckaroos in there uh so what they do say though is when you identify what building that pre-k classroom is going in that you don't build like six

099pre-k classrooms and then move that program of pre-k to some other building and you know re-appropriate those rooms for other classrooms so that's consideration that they weren't a fan of redistricting 40 of the community that they're not going to really support a new high school until elementary enrollment is addressed that the support uh for a middle school with enrollment over 900 i think kind of proportionally wanes as the size of the school goes up i did some my own research there's not i can't find a another middle school in connecticut that's 300 kids uh grant request must be fully support now that i don't think we could do it well but um you know there's a probably a reason that nobody else has one and there's nobody um the state's not really supportive of that

100which we kind of need in terms of reimbursement they want us to make sure that we have a comprehensive plan uh that we engage the community in that plan um and i think those were the marquee highlights tony i know you sent a summary as well did i miss anything there no i think it's spot on i thought they were very very helpful in fact encouraging um not what i mean not that i expect anything less but uh they seemed one thing that stood out to me and um hopefully the other folks attended was uh like like jeff said they mentioned pre-k um special education and behavioral services quite a bit and one of the big no's for them their words was they don't want to see really anything in these education specs that take

101space away from that or minimize it especially if there's a need in other words what jeff said not that we're going to do this but if they've seen school districts try to shoehorn or move pre-k into a space that wasn't meant for it they'll they'll reject something like that so they're they're they're encouraging uh keeping in district services that we're doing with special ed but to me it sounded like it was a carrot like if we uh if we're able to and again i think we have this need that's and pre-k c to uh too high there's a need there there could be again uh something in the spec that calls it out and they'd be more supportive of approving funding for that so i mean i thought that was very interesting um one of

102the things that came up was they saw the high school somewhere in the options one of the phases i think i found the lady's name said that uh it would be a big no if uh high school's done in phase one clearly because it's not a need for us immediately and there was space there that's the thing that came to an initial call was um they they um they they called out the space availability at the high school which we know but that's not the pressing need uh so to me that was just like well if you guys are thinking about doing the high school not a good idea in phase one because you had no need for it but that being said the only a they brought up was as far as a thorough

103comprehensive plan um you know don't rush to grant the application and you know as much as possible good costs because they don't want to see any school district you know go through the process go to referendum go out to bid and the costs come in higher that was approved they don't see that very often but i i thought overall they still gave some good advice i'm not surprised but they seem very um encouraging for lack of a better word okay has anybody else want to add anything to the meeting that was there today yeah they're just looking for us to come back and we have updates andrew yeah they're very much being a partner uh they definitely want help they love when we come to them early like we've said is partnering with that office

104as michelle dixon by the way tony who you know she's a grant specialist and and and you know and said you know based on what we're seeing if you start with the high school it's not resolving the need you know that's the highest need that they saw chuck and i'm just going to ask the question if if we did go forward with a 638 middle school with a 1200 capacity and they want to see a school of 900 what does that mean what could that mean um i think there'd have to be a lot of discussion and i'm speculating and i'm not i mean i build schools an engineer but i think you'd have to demonstrate a strong need and um and show that your your master your programmatic uh goals and mission statement for

105cheshire public schools to support that i think i think it definitely involved more conversation um i don't think it's an immediate no but i i think their experience what i gathered is casa de manchester's director he's seen every district he's seen a million schools different grant applications and and my guess it's probably based upon his experience and what he's seen throughout the state of connecticut and what are some of the what are some of the norms so i i i think there's a deeper conversation there if the also the cheshire comes to that conclusion that that's say the the program you want to go with we're going to it's going to be a deeper knife and justifying why we want to go in that direction i think got it okay all right excuse me andrew

106i think one of the things to add um michelle did point out that a lot of the uh towns in the state are leaning towards the six to eight middle school so that was something she she did show favor to it was just you know the enrollment number was the concern so um you know they certainly aren't opposed to the six to eight middle school it's just the the enrollment number is what they are certainly going to be looking at closely understood okay faith you know okay so they're leaning toward a six to eight but we're still going to be at the well over what 1200 student capacity i don't see how that's gonna work unless you do two okay six or eight middle schools but um but it sounds like uh you know the

107old proverbial two steps forward one step back where are we now i you know because we can't and we know we're not gonna do an 800 student elementary school but we can't do the 6 8 middle school as proposed i mean what does this mean for the smc where where are they and what do they have to do now going forward to also meet these deadlines that we've kind of imposed to get the report to council yeah i think maybe the next steps as we said i think the the immediate next steps is this um when we talked about instead of one larger school there's two newer schools in the sixth to six fifteen seven you know depends they might shift depending on when mike and his team get done where the numbers move yeah

108i think we could get to that and see see where that comes out and see how that plays out um i'm going to be i'm you know haven't done this i'm very interested that's going to come out i think it's a very interesting solution um i think we got to play that up first and they're very interested in that and i think they're going to want to see what those they said they said come back and talk to us when you get that send us those results they want to see what that comes up with taking into account everything we talked about tonight you know how many how many students does it impact does it right side is these schools better um you know from a you know from an operations standpoint not having 900

109kids so i think really the first step i think not to put everything in one basket i think that work that might mike and his team is going to do is going to show some interesting information to us and i think once we get that in another week week and a half when mike's done who will inform the state um of that they're they were supportive of that um but i think we're getting there just it's another refinement in the process so i think that's really the next step but i think it's going to happen sooner than later yeah i mean it just seems like they implicitly put their perimeter on the two elementary school plan yeah i don't know just i didn't necessarily take that away from the call today that they only gave

110us one option based on what was presented um you know on sony chuck and jeff and nikita further they you know certainly we're definitely open to the smaller elementary school idea the initial reaction to that 850 plus all these schools pretty much a non-starter for them so they like the idea that small elementary schools you know chuck and jeffrey talked about the sixth grade middle school feedback and i think like what chuck said is again it could be you know an argument to be made with him on that if we can you know prove it but just so i'm not sure if angel talked about it he might have the early in the meeting but the last time cc meeting you know appreciate the entire public group you know decided to remove the large elementary

111school option from phase 1a and i think almost everyone on smc voted to have um slr and team go back and come up with this two elementary school configuration so smc does want to see that and vet it through but that has to happen first so okay it may it may or may not be a solution let's see what the numbers come back um okay so hopefully we'll know soon thank you i know you were there today too but that's at least my perception is there's some still some options on the table and faith the only reason why that information yes is essentially just voted on our option six on monday evening so when when this was originally scheduled option six was not on the table i'll tune in tune in does anybody else want

112to add anything with os the meeting today yeah the only thing that i would add just to make it clear is what they what they said about special education programs is they would not penalize us on space standards if we had more robust special ed programs and and we do and jeff explained that we have a bridges program running out of doolittle we have our you know other programs you know primarily focused on autism at highland school which is a district-wide program and the birth to three programs so i think the state generally you know really liked hearing that and i thought that was very very helpful for us as we look at our elementary schools all right thank you then um tim you have a question yeah thank you andrew just to uh this

113is probably for jeff just to be clear on this with regard to our birth to three program and the pre-k program are they are we required to have those programs we are required to do k-12 right we're not chester's not quote required to have a birth through three program however um the state provides birth through green services and we're a provider the tremendous benefit to us being a provider is that it increases our contact with students in our community children in our community who have significant need and supports the transition from birth to three servings into the school system and the we bill all that to the state so there's really limited cost to that the other thing that it does is um you know provides tremendous professional development and exposure to a lot of

114people who work in our school system uh to support the development of students with you know different and broad range of needs so no we're not required but um i think it's it's tremendously beneficial now pre-k we have that as part of an inclusion program that we would have regardless of whether or not we had birth to three but we also have two smart start pre-ks which are grant funded for the time being by the state of connecticut next year is the end of that grant bin is that accurate you know [Music] end of the second year of the second smart start um i think that i think that grant continues the it was the capital improvement grants that for smart start that expired right so i mean there's substantial offset uh making it you

115know worthwhile tremendous resource for parents in our community to engage in our our preschool programming yeah no i no i appreciate the benefit i mean i agree with you on that i just the what i'm wondering about is the offset the cost which is you said that substantially these two different programs are substantially uh offset if in simple terms like operating budget and capital budget the operating budget is substantially offset in the capital budget is it just the standard rate we get like call it 40 reimbursement for construction or is it a different rate for the pre-k or b to three rooms birth to three rooms so for capital improvement we were giving given a set dollar figure to uh transition our facilities to be accommodating of preschool-aged children um so that was a flat

116figure the operational costs are really paid through billing so it's all through like billable services so our leadership team darcy works to work with the state it's really like a a private medical provider does billable hours back to the state and we get reimbursed um so that's that's where that money comes from so that's for the operating budget and then i'm talking i'm talking about school modernization so let's say yeah there's no money there left to be able to do that really right because it's a short-term grant so we would but we would get like just call it the forty percent reimbursement whatever the rate is thirty five forty right yeah so we would we would get whatever the prevailing rate is for either a renovation or construction okay all right thank you mr grippo

117thank you um firstly um we've been talking a lot tonight about all these programs and as as we have been um i wanted to commend uh chuck neff um i i watched the last i've watched almost all the smc meetings and um last the last meeting i think on march 8th was almost three hours long and i think that's maybe your second or third meeting as chairman and that meeting went from two real solid proposals to a completely abandoning one and then facilitating the group back to another proposal and i found that incredibly impressive that you were able to do that and have what it would appear to be anyway the mental stamina to to guide everyone back through it so i just wanted to commend you on that uh that i thought that was

118a great great show of leadership there so congratulations on that chuck because i know how hard that can be um and last uh lastly um as far as the was it the oscgr did i get the letters in the right order you did oh excellent did they talk about our reimbursement rate is it going to stay the same for these projects or is it is it going to be changing or anything yeah adam if i could your the reimbursement rate is set by it's statutory um it's constantly fluctuating a few percentage points here and there it it it doesn't vary greatly from year to year so every year is different um i i i could give you the 2021 um but it probably it will get outdated but they don't fluctuate greatly um what's really

119key in reimbursement especially on a renovation project um and if if you watch some of the pre the early presentations we made it's when a project is going to be renovation status we have to build support and cure that status from oscgr so that we reduce we reduce the um ineligible costs because otherwise that reduce if you have a lot of ineligibles you're you're paying for those and ultimately reduces your effective reimbursement rate as well as right sizing the building so that you keep the full reimbursement rate versus a reduction of that rate that's that's statutorily they don't have any say on it in that office whatsoever okay great that's what casa will tell you okay anybody else to our last agenda item second or last all right so agenda 3c um agenda item 3c

120is middle school configuration um put on the agenda there's been a lot of questions by the smc about how the board felt about a seventh through eighth there were six through eighth middle school configuration so i just wanted to throw it out to the group if anybody wants to comment on that now um you don't have to honestly or obviously but um so maybe has a strong opinion on that um the smc has looked for that information and i'll jump at once i'm sorry did you say a seven through eight a new what was that seventh or eighth middle school configuration we're sixth through eighth all right oh well did i stay here correctly yeah i'm gonna go with catherine first i'm sorry you're good um thank you thanks andrew you're welcome i will you

121know i have been a proponent of the six through eight middle school um for a long time now and so if the choice is between you know if the smc wants to know whether i personally favor the six or eight over seventh and eighth um there's no question i mean i am not a an expert really i'm not an educator but everything that i have seen and what i've heard from you know jeff marlene and others who are the experts is that our sixth graders would really benefit um educationally from becoming a part of the middle school environment you know in terms of academics and that they're ready for that kind of a change and i you know i'm sensitive to the fact that that could be controversial um like for mr white but you

122know i i do think you know the way curriculum is designed these days and um just what our kids are you know really deserve in terms of technology and uh stem sorts of courses that the six through eight middle school is the ideal from my perspective and so um i hope that the smc will really give that serious consideration and i know that um jeff and marlene had put together a um a document that sort of you know reiterated why um they're thinking on why the sixth grade middle school would be beneficial and gave that to the smc so um but that's all i have to say i mean i i'd never i think a new seven through eight middle school would be not a great use of money let's just put it that way

123and so um so that's my view does that help andrew no that's great thanks thank you um tim thanks andrew yeah i i just come from a different i have a different world view on it um the what i've what i've read about it i think it was last night i was reading a synopsis of a harvard study saying that the benefits there's benefits there to going one way or the other but it doesn't sound like it's that strong in either direction and i know it was mentioned before that connecticut is looking like it's moving toward a six through eight uh schools but then i think one of these things i was reading yesterday said that nationally it's actually the other direction moving away from six or eight two seven and eight take all that

124aside i really would just prefer you know seeing kids being kids and going through sixth grade uh with their younger siblings and i also think there's one other there's one other police to this which is when we'll have moved to town including myself and everybody else there basically has been something of a social compact which is this is what you're getting k through six um so we could change that that's totally that that is an option but i think to me there would need to be a compelling reason for that and i just haven't seen a compelling reason for it um i think the status quo works so i'm comfortable with the k through 6 model that we have and a 7 8 junior high thanks right thank you tim um adam um andrew i'm

125confused by the question um just by looking at the smc's um projects that they had put up it seemed like they had abandoned these seven eight school options already um and they hadn't no there's a renovation of dad oh the all right okay yes my apologies not a new construction of a seventh and eighth but renovation two dot configuration all right so but it seemed like the discussion on smc was whether or not our preference was to build a new sixth or eight over any other option regardless of the data and am i am i misinterpreting that as the that they were trying to figure out if we had a preference overall or not because for me it's like wherever the debt i'm you know i'm still on the side and it's wherever the data

126goes at this point um seventh or eight i mean seventh grade or sixth or eighth you know because as far as i can tell the where we still have to figure out a population problem and how what what option best fits that so i guess that would be my answer it's wherever the data leads so that'd be that'd be my answer okay thank you chuck should you want to add something noth yeah i'm you yeah sorry the the question of the the 638 middle school was if looking at a scenario 2a as the smc has been is we wouldn't want to put that forward as a recommendation if it didn't have the support of the board of ed in the end because we'd be back to square one so we wouldn't want to put that

127forward as our recommendation if it wasn't going to go anywhere so we're just trying to gauge what the actual support of it was that's it yeah sure my answer remains unchanged if that's where the data leads then so be it yeah just to reaffirm what chuck said the last thing we wanted was the smc to put together a proposal when it comes to the board of ed and it gets voted down um on the merit of six through eight middle school so um ann i see a hand up yeah i want to thank adam for his answer because that's the a answer adam um because that's what we're doing right that's what we've been doing for over a year now on the smc is looking at you know what's the best big picture what's going

128to um solve our enrollment increasing enrollment uh issues and um and you know how to best go about doing that combining it with um with renovating or with updating our aging buildings um it's a big task it has it's been hard and it's hard because all of our buildings need a lot of tlc tlc is a euphemism for what we need to do to all of our buildings um but if you're talking about purely from an educational standpoint the issue of the six through eight middle school i have to agree with catherine on on that in that there are lots of advantages for sixth graders in a middle school environment um and i honestly i'd like to know more about what you found out today from that meeting with the os cgr um as to

129their reasons for um not going over the 900 level it just seems to me that with the way that we can configure buildings and you know the magic that architects play when putting um school buildings together to fit the needs of whatever community problems they're trying to solve that just a pure number doesn't i just would like to know what that number is is um based on i'd like to know more and i'm sure we'll find out more so i look forward to finding out more of those facts as adam says thank you did we get back to any uh any actual information from oscgr as to why 900 was the cap or was it just anything i don't really i don't recall the specific reason andrew like factual data reason i don't know i

130think it was more my perception of it was more i think it was based upon them knowing the state as a whole and probably how they operate in and probably looking over long-term basis of you know what works in connecticut from their experience that that that's again a perception and kind of a speculation okay um faith um i agree with adam and ann that we have to kind of see where where things go um i would love to know why is oscgr why they i'd love to see what material they're using to say that they're they prefer a six through eight because i i you know i i'm a uh experience of one and when i did teach in a small little private school in california um which has no correlation probably with a huge

131district in connecticut but we did a six through eight middle school and it wasn't comfortable i mean the kids there was a noticeable difference between the seventh and eighth graders and the six such that we had to separate the sixth from the seventh eighth so but again that is just a little data point and a great big sea of data but um you know and jeff i i thank you too for the um materials that you sent and i did go back over the smc reaper or the um the um report from 2017 and you know ultimately i think what the researchers were saying is it's what's important is what's going on in the classroom if more than the model one way or the other and i think we have to keep that in mind

132it's it's the interaction of the kids with the teacher and vice versa and you know if if bringing the kids into the middle school so they could get robotics or you know name your program or whatever um if it's good for the sixth graders why not the fifth and why not the fourth graders so maybe what we need to do is look at what we're doing in our elementary schools but i i do think there's sixth grade is such a tough year and um you know they're given leadership opportunities in an elementary school that that helps them through those years and it's especially tough for girls it really is um well boys too but i you know so i i am very much in support of keeping those kids in an environment where they're able

133to have something that that um gives them encouragement and boosts their their um self-confidence going right into a middle school at that stage where the little kids on the block with other groups of kids going through major hormonal imbalances and everything else and all that comes with it i think is i just don't see how it works but um i'll see where the data goes like adam um but that's kind of where i'm coming down so i'm not sure how the smc will take all of this information together and um decide what to do but i just wanted to add my my opinion so thanks katherine thanks andrew um so i just want to clarify something that um to go to faith's point about sixth graders being with seventh and eighth graders and um i

134think there's no question we all know that if we did a six or eight middle school that the sixth graders would be in a you know their own space and and the design um that was done for by ts kp tksp whatever um you know we talked about that a lot you know that there would have to be a way to um have the sixth grade you know primarily on its own in its own space um so i just want to sort of throw that out there as a thing that you know obviously i think we'd all be very sensitive to the other thing that i heard a lot back when we were first thinking of a six through eight middle school was that there will be a really a tremendous benefit so the kids

135right now go come in for seventh grade they're gone at the end of eighth grade and the ability to for middle school teachers to have um those kids in the middle school for three years rather than two would um i think you know i mean it gives the teachers and the staff a much better um ability to really get to know these kids and um and you know educate them in a way that's different than just having them there in and out and i don't know jeff could maybe speak to this because he was a middle school middle school principal but i thought i remember hearing you know that there was a real benefit to that as well um so i just wanted to throw those two things out but you're right i don't when

136we say though to chuck neff you know we'll we'll follow the data that that's not giving the smc any i don't think uh assurance that we are really seriously willing to consider a six through eight middle school if in fact that's what smc comes to us with and um i know what it's like to do a whole lot of work and come up with an idea that we think is a great idea and have it shot down at you know um in our case it was the town council um so i and i am really i do not think it's fair to the smc they've you know these people have put in a gigantic amount of effort so if if they're asking for even kind of like an overall consensus from us tonight i think

137we owe it to them to actually you know not just say well we'll wait for the data i mean what data are we waiting for you know um you know we have a sense of the cost we have a sense of the you know what it would look like so if we are dead set against a six through eight middle school as a group then we we gotta tell them tonight i'd or soon because they only have till april 1st to figure out what they're going to present to the town council um and so i i i yeah so if it's up to me i would very much be in favor of a six to eight middle school i don't know if we can get a you know get chuck and this smc a better

138sense of where the rest of us are but just saying that you know we're gonna follow the data i don't know how that helps them so that my 10 cents okay thank you catherine tony yeah we can't make any assurances on anything at this point other than i keep reading this and see what i've been saying since november of 2019 is you know whatever work comes out of it the board of ed will absolutely take it seriously vet it properly get back to the question and answers i make no assurances i'm pretty sure the board tonight can't make any insurances in the options number one we don't have option six yet and that is something that smc voted on almost unanimously to get that back to tables or strong interesting so that looks like until

139i see that you know i'm open to the options certainly open the six to eight i'm not comboshing that but my mindset's changed a little bit since four years ago or five years ago on that i prefer smaller is better if we're all in favor of small elementary schools and we can pull that off i think that's a good thing but until it's got data the cost analysis it's hard to say what that looks like you know the other thing too is i think ideally if money was no object and we had the it was we talked about this last time and one of the option was rebuild everything as new right so we keep the smaller schools keep sounds right as it is more space the right layout the right programming we'd actually do

140that um if these two elementary school options pan out we have an opportunity to do more programming to a greater number of grade levels and two modernized schools that's a huge head start but i gotta see that you know so uh we can assure them that we will absolutely look at both options and quite frankly um i don't know if they're gonna offer one option or two options uh and keep in mind that when it goes to the town council it also comes to us and you know let's just be realistic here there's got to be some compromise right so you know when a town does its number crunching and looks at the long-term debt all that stuff we're going to be talking about these options in greater detail so um i think even 1a

141had a lot of good things in it 2a has a lot of good things in it 1a still does i think once we get through elementary so you know i i can definitely say i'm not going to rule out sixth grade middle school at this point so chuck i know that helps you but you know again uh if it was just between these two options and you know we didn't have a problem with the large elementary school i still say the same thing let the board see those final details let's talk about it education specs are another thing the one thing i want to be careful about is uh regardless of what the options are that come to us we have to as a board um you know the superintendent school district give ample opportunity

142for parents to weigh in the options one of the things that ocg brought up today was um you know redistricting right it's uh not against it you know but they definitely call out that there's a big difference between reducing 40 percent of your population versus 15 and they asked us several times did you get public input did you get public input did you hear from parents we have not yet not any great capacity um and that's going to have to happen regardless of what the option is so you know we'll have time for that um so i mean the insurance check because we're going to take a look at whatever comes across uh and serious no probably have questions for them but for me personally i opened the both options i kind of six looks

143like and i'm sure we will you know before the month's over so we'll see where those uh those chips fall great thank you anthony ann oh i was just gonna ask chuck and because i i thought it was our our goal to present more than one uh option when we go to when we bring it to the board of ed and to the town council yes so i believe at the meeting on march 1st we had uh discussed presenting a recommended option and then also a second scenario as well as a kind of a backup to that so that hasn't really changed but in fairness we haven't uh obviously talked about the uh input from osc r um with the smc committee yet so they still need to hear that and it's been said a

144couple times we're still waiting to see what happens with scenario six and see if there is two viable options um you know two percent so so my interpretation when i hear people say that we're um you know where we were certainly still considering it either option or both options as long as um the smc is doing what they're doing which is making sure that they're gathering all the information and putting it in there so i didn't hear adam's response as saying he's being non-committal i heard his answer is telling us that yeah he he's is would still consider a six through eight middle school if that's what if that's what our work tells us is a viable option your interpretation your interpretation is correct then it is an option an option is open in my

145mind let me let me just add i it's not like there's a bad option here right i mean you know i mean there were some that didn't make any sense and just to remind this board you know ann certainly knows and andrew and myself catherine too i mean there are a lot more options than the last two that you know so um and all of them were good i mean it wasn't anything that was so catastrophically bad for the school district so i i know that whatever's going to come across from smc they're going to be good choices to make and i don't think there's going to be a uh a bad choice made from the option so you know please don't feel like uh if it's not a middle school hope is lost if

146it's not two elementary schools it's it's not there's some good things there and so again chuck i wish i could tell you i i i would ask if there's anyone on the board that's vehemently against a sixth grade middle school at this point but i think it's a little premature for adam let's just get the rest of the information back in the other option and see where it goes we'll make the right choice i'm confident sorry andrew no you're good any other any other comments on the middle school configuration all right does anybody else have anything they want to add chuck do you want to add anything on behalf of smc before we adjourn no i think uh you know i think we've covered it obviously we're still working we got a uh the deadline

147here in a couple of weeks for a presentation but i think we are on to something possibly with a scenario six and we'll see what the see where we go here with scenario 2a based on the the feedback back from oscg r today so all right thank you chuck thank you everybody um can i have a motion for adjournment tim so move by faith all right thank you everybody um have a good night