001um good evening everyone this uh welcome to the uh board of education policy meeting for march um i'm not even sure what the date is hold on let me see march second um mrs joginski call the roll sure mr grippo here miss hallen here mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you um we all rise for the pledge oh jesus oh i was hoping you had a flag fantastic i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i was watching the smc i think it was last night and you watch him do the pledge it is a an awkward thing to watch all these headless bodies right here and you
002only hear like one voice because everything cuts out yeah i think we were on to the right track when we started to try and have one person yeah through the pledge yeah oh okay um so um uh dr sullin is there any public comment there is not okay so yeah go right right to it okay great um good evening everybody uh as you saw in the agenda this evening we have a number of uh policies for first reading and what you'll find is that you know over the last what three years adam catherine i mean maybe maybe feels like three could be eight i i don't know it feels like an eight could be three but we've uh comprehensively reviewed the policies with the support of cabe and we've reached a point where where um
003identifying things that might be considered a little bit more nitpicky and you know i think it's relevant and it's necessary to tidy up some of these things that we're going to talk about tonight so as a perfect example of that the first item up for bid here is the budget implementation and you'll see that you know in many of these policies what we'll have is outdated titles for individuals so director of management and personnel is now the chief operating officer so this policy here just you know hasn't been updated in what is that almost uh 25 years uh so you know it's just making sure i think it sends a message too and it says this hasn't been updated since 96 that at least we've looked at it as a board and made it contemporary
004reflect contemporary terminology so um any objections here to changing these these titles no i don't have any um chief operating officer that's vin massiana correct it is yeah okay tim um yeah just would it make more sense it's a little awkward but to avoid titles entirely just change it to the superintendents designee and then it doesn't change in the future so whoever you designate basically it doesn't have to be i mean is there a drawback to doing something like that no um i you know it it's it would um you know make it unnecessary to review it in the future uh it i think it's more of a preference amongst the board uh if you you know feel like we want to be able to just go back and check this periodically it's up to
005you guys i'm comfortable either way uh catherine go ahead i just think if it says the superintendent's designee or what however it is then it's adding sort of a procedural step what dr solon would have to do and um you know to me maybe it introduces a little uncertainty to the whole thing and so i i understand exactly what you're saying but i get what why you're saying that too but i i guess we're yeah i mean we're probably not going to change the title of that person well we're certainly not going to change vin's title but whether uh someone in the future has a different title that is responsible for this i you know i get that as well so i'm sorry adam go ahead oh um excuse me um i would just argue
006that uh i like having the officer named because it helps in the separation of duties uh especially because it's dealing with budget implementation some of the other ones are like payroll and that kind of stuff where you're where you're designating a a particular title um i think i think it just helps just in case in the future perhaps there's a superintendent that doesn't quite have the clarity that you do dr solon separation of duties where whereby it's clear and uh you know policy states it that's yeah that's kind of me all right so you know i'm i'm guessing mr grippo that that clarity wasn't a shot at my new fuzzy background i'm gonna go over that and we'll just move on to the next one i'm not that clever let's say yourself short this is
007a good pokemon so anyway uh the next um item is the expenditures expending authority purchasing guidelines uh very similar to the last item um we're updating you know changing the term from audited vouchers which isn't something that we use uh to now requisition for purchase orders in shifting from assistant superintendent for management services now this i think is the second title we've had now for chief operating officer that's just being switched over so it's just reflecting contemporary protocols that we use in contemporary titles this this was last reviewed in 1998. um and we did retain this component here that uh i still continue to review every purchase order for in excess of five thousand dollars excellent i don't think we need to increase that at this time tim thanks jeff yeah i don't want to
008go uh changing anything here but i just want to get an understanding of what this means because the uh the five thousand dollars it's to me it needs to be like constrained in time uh you know is it like a 12-month period five thousand dollars to one vendor a one-month period is it five thousand over ten years just yeah it's per purchase order uh requisition so um you know i i i get i totally get that but i mean if somebody wants to sort of game the system then you do 4 000 you do 12 4 000 requisitions in one in one year and it's really in a sense it's 48 000 so i'm just wondering like what your thought is on it is it it would well there's a tiered approval process already so
009if the when the requisition is made ever vin already has to approve every purchase order so it goes from building level leadership or departmental level leadership approval then ben has to approve it and you know obviously where we could really get hurt is i mean i could make an argument that 5000 is kind of low and a lot of the purchases that we have to make and i'm thinking things like i apologize for the noise but it's the heating system kicking out almost but it's things like eversource um some special education placements larger orders in terms of uh you know resources like books uh uh or contracts that we we engage well this is outside of that the contracts is not a purchase order it's a contract and that's also reviewed but um you know
010there is a review process already in place we could certainly have been talk about that if we want at some point but um and this is an individual purchase order um and jeff aren't these records audited annually they are okay so i i mean a lot of times it could be several years before something is audited but if you guys are audited every year where i'm assuming they're at least doing uh source document spot checks all the time yeah so you know we have obviously that internal check system but then that's a good point adam there is that external check system that is in in place as well that you know make sure that there's not something funky going on right um i i'm i don't know i'm comfortable at the that firstly switching at
011this chief operating officer and leaving it at 5 um unless you know it was you know an audit finding or something where uh they thought it was too high or too low or too high too high yeah you know something like that if it hasn't been a problem then i think we're okay not since 1998 right like you've been auditing since 1998 one of those i guess tim is the the official cpa so yeah i mean i have no i have no real authority here except a vote but no i come from a different perspective to simplify your life if you know if you've wanted to bump that up from five to ten i mean especially for things like electric bills whatever it might be i have no problem with that i'm i am and
012i don't have like a big concern with this but just generally speaking i mean that that is one way that somebody could you know sort of game a system which is we're just going to do you know every week we'll do something at 4 500 i don't expect that that's happening by any means and i'm not looking i would not even necessarily want to codify that here but that's just generally what i'm wondering about in terms of the controls because we're talking about it right and i mean here i'm still here at some point but but from my perspective if it makes your life easier i mean uh whether vin has a five thousand or ten thousand dollar authority level that that doesn't make much of a difference to me yeah i think you know
013and first of all i appreciate that consideration second of all uh you know having done this for five years now the time spent on that isn't really inordinate that it would you know jam me up uh at 5 000 and it's all i'd be much less uh problematic at 10. i think 5000 is fine and i you know i think i i have understanding my fiduciary responsibility i want to know what's going on so our internal protocol is even checks i i think i made a comment to carol today i reviewed a 11 check and on mileage so it's part of a slew of check when we cut all the checks every couple of weeks uh the finance office gets it to bin vin reviews it signs it that is sent to me too and
014i didn't want just the report i get the detail level report so i know who the checks cut to and what purpose the check you know was cut so um i think we have pretty tight controls here in internally uh and as adam said it's audited externally as well so i'm really comfortable with this if it's just a matter of changing titles in language so all right so the next item is uh paying for goods and services again this there's a theme this evening that we're updating things uh so this is again a a change in title so these are you know the invoice approvals i just have a quick question the second to sign the supervisor of fiscal transportation services is that who is is that then or also now um the assistant superintendent
015uh that's coming through all right let me just review this again i'm sorry that's right receiving sure i want to get back down in this budget it's correct gibbons is the supervisor of fiscal transportation okay so there is somebody that holds that position yeah so in in absence you know if neither vinder i were available to make payments um this is like tim's succession chart we have uh marlene would be the first assigned person to sign off and then greg givens would be the second got it okay thank you yep just to put names to titles here any other questions on this one i'm uh fine on this one nope if there's another policy right below that one too all right all right thank you for pointing that out um so we don't have a
016payroll clerk anymore that position is called the payroll supervisor now or it has been actually for a long time certainly well after 1996 you know around this 96 last time this was audited so so we're just changing again the titles there okay all right sounds good um paying for goods and services again invoice is approved by vin and again this is what i was talking about kind of that tiered approval process so the department responsible for the purchase first sets the approval forward uh so an individual within the department makes a request the department supervisor uh approves it and then it goes to to vin if it's more than five thousand dollars it comes to me so this is kind of that that tiered process do you still use uh inc signatures or do you
017approve within an accounting system we use the munis accounting system so it's a digital sign off everybody has a unique user id and password it's very secure and uh so been once been like for example approves it in his queue i get an email automatically generated that i have to approve it um so i would log in and do that so again you know just changing from clerk to supervisor and from management personnel to chief operating officer carol do you remember when vin's title changed that was probably like eight years ago i think about that time yeah seven or eight years ago it was after i started on the board so right and i'm in my eighth year so it was like right around yeah let's say it was probably about seven eight years ago
018yeah now this is a regulation so it doesn't require a vote just something to make a note of when we go through the nomination process at the end of the night at the end of this section i guess but the um so we've added different components to this accident which will be immediately reported to the building principal or department manager so oftentimes um [Music] you know like the director of special ed or transportation coordinator will be notified of of uh school accidents off of premises and then we're just adding that component those individuals also have to you know execute the the plan as we typically would and ultimately you know the copies of accident reports are forwarded to now the chief operating officer and reports um you know in coordination with workers comp need to
019be provided to the chief operating officer rather than the director of management so again this is approved in 96 just updating it now jeff um when it when it says chief operating officer so that means that everything literally goes to vin it's not like vin's designee or something it's it's literally vin yeah it gets all this and then he you know assigned it to however it gets filed or tracked or whatever yes okay yeah so i mean uh ben has a tremendous amount of responsibility i mean i know we've had conversations as a full board before about that there's not um we don't have a cadre of people in central office um like some districts do we we really invest at the classroom level to the greatest extent possible but it means vin puts eyes
020on a lot of things um that then you know like you said get disseminated out or delegated out okay so again that's just a regulation this is the last policy for review uh in terms of moving forward for a change uh this is the student transportation insurance each year [Music] we require and right now we have dat cow that the company is required to file with the board certificates insurance attesting to coverage so each year dacco files that within to provide you know proof of insurance for our buses which makes sense so we're just updating that from the original 96 was a good year for policy apparently yeah yeah tim yeah one quick question on the um with regard to vin stepping back for a second with regards to vin getting accident reports um just
021so i would think that in some situations he would probably notify an attorney is that attorney would that attorney basically always be floyd and then floyd represents his firm yeah cause i'm thinking he's a labor attorney not right yeah good question i mean basically um i can jump out of presentation mode here for a second but we deal with different firms um floyd oversees really most of our labor stuff uh his colleague in that firm bertram and moses they uh that person um they have a couple of different specialists that we deal with it's one of the benefits of dealing with a firm of that size that there's a diversity of talent that we can call on somebody for special education related stuff which is this is why it's significantly uh advantageous to go with
022a firm rather than to hire our one attorney for the district um because we just don't have the diversity of knowledge with one individual that we get using the firm so there's that component when we have accidents where insurance comes into play or if somebody were to file civil suit against the district for some any reason then where our insurance carrier is notified and the carrier assigns a firm to represent them and us and so you know sometimes that's um floyd's office it could be in an employee matter um but it's it's rare uh usually they assign another firm okay so outside of accidents most of the work goes to burch and moses correct okay okay yeah we we generally don't hire i mean i can in my five years i think we've um used
023in another firm once for a second opinion on a matter but we generally go through birch and moses but we also will consult depending on the issue i don't want to leave cave out of this they have a legal representation that supports boards with policy uh creation and revision so you know sometimes we'll control them as well thank you that's just part of our enrollment fee in cave they don't bill us hourly or anything for that work all right sure so that's um our review of first policy readings and we have a few items for discussion this evening uh i'll share the screen again now so everybody can see what we're working on the first is um something that i know you know tim had asked to discuss um and adam i think you have
024an update kind of where we are in this and how it fits into the state and everything do you want to share that um sure um uh tony and i had been in discussions or had been uh discussing with our local legislators um uh and letting them know that um or asking them to advocate for us uh a change to the foia law so that we could continue to have these uh google meetings um especially for subcommittee meetings um where uh in the past it's just been basically uh minutes where now you can you know a citizen can view the entire meeting um and it's in its tape without um a huge bur a huge administrative burden uh to anyone well except for mike of course uh who sets everything up for us but um
025that's still it seems at least to me and i i've never set one up myself it seems a lot easier to be able to do this and have to physically meet in a room set up all the mics and cameras and everything to be able to sort of do the same thing which we would do in the uh council chambers uh for our business meetings um so we we asked to advocate uh a change for that and uh they said that the legislature is looking at that during this session um so there there could be changes um going forward um so as far as this uh bylaw change goes um i i just wanted to i just wanted to put it up there so that we could so i could at least publicly discuss that
026we're in the works of having the actual hopefully having the actual law changed uh so that we could can do this going forward yeah i know that's something that you know tim has advocated for and i think we've all seen the benefits of you know being able to participate remotely in terms of not just our own convenience but as adam said uh community access and community participation um so that we this is this uh item here was kind of a cousin to that overall process which is allowing an individual board member to uh petition to participate remotely and i think as we discussed that last time you know it it wasn't something that the group just really wanted to engage in at that time so we kind of tabled it and in light of the
027fact that you know as adam just mentioned there could be a legislative change yeah i think it probably makes sense to continue to just table it and see what happens uh in hartford plus there seems to be a question of for this particular bylaw allowing a um a an individual member to participate that if the um governor's executive orders were to expire i think we would be in violation of foia by having a member participate remotely correct well we only if we had everybody doing it if we have an individual doing it they by law right now an individual could participate by phone but there are very um rigid uh guidelines for how that individual must participate uh and i think when we looked at it last time it was a little bit of pandora's
028box so let's just see what happens with uh the legislative session and then you know if we feel like there's a real desire to come back to allowing an individual an individual periodically if you recall we were talking about well what if i travel like once every three months that's different than if i want to participate remotely every week it just we started to go down this rabbit's hole and decided to table it and just see what what shook out i mean that was what i want to say like three months ago we were talking about that four months yeah a while back but yeah so for me i'm just you know i just wanted to at least say that on the record that we're working to have the law changed um but until then
029i think i i mean for me anyway i'm okay at least i guess tabling it although we had tabled it already but to remain it keep it tabled keep it table yeah yeah untable it that's right it's in the ether and it's out there and we can revisit it yeah yeah definitely it's too complicated at this moment because just by i read it again today there's probably like five or six things i'd want to change to it if we were to make it actual practice right for me anyway and you know yeah no exactly yeah tim go ahead thanks adam uh yeah i'm totally comfortable you know waiting on this with the executive order current you know still in place and hopefully knock on wood something that'll be able to end in the not so
030distant future um i i am a believer you know for the public who does watch it i am a believer that uh in-person meetings are the best option um but i also think it would be uh you know that in the past year things have changed dramatically and i do think there's an expectation on the part of the public that they that there is some sort of uh online participation is perfectly uh appropriate so what i'm what i what i'm thinking i i'm okay i understand the administrative burden at least to some extent that there is an administrative burden uh having the in-person meetings i would like to have the option for members to participate remotely even if the executive order ends and one other thing i think that's really important just for people who
031you know it's difficult for them to make meetings um say they have a nighttime job as an example or something like that uh this could uh help them participate uh the other thing that crossed my mind just in the past week as i was thinking about this is members of the public participating you know i think the reality is that committee meetings generally don't get a lot of attendees but i do think that people would be interested in watching online and one thing that i was thinking about is you know let's say there's only going to be one two three people who want to participate would it be possible for us to let them participate remotely and not have to leave their house and you know drive to hummuston as an example uh i think
032if it was more than say three people that want to participate then we're probably talking about a meeting an unusual committee meeting where we're going to get a bunch of people there and then that it would just be administratively difficult to do anything like that but i would like it if we could add if we could allow um members of the public to participate at least in committee meetings i don't know how it would work out for a board meeting where you could end up having a lot of people or any of our meetings of the whole whenever you have a seven person like a budget meeting might be a finance committee meeting officially but we know we're gonna get a lot of people there even though it's officially a finance committee meeting i just
033think it'd be i think it would be nice if we could allow people to participate remotely in our committee meetings that generally have low attendance anyway so with that i'm done and i'm happy to wait and see what happens with the executive order and with the legislature although i guess i do have one question adam did you get any sense we are the land of steady habits uh did you get any sense that there actually could be movement on on this because frankly i mean call me call me a cynic but i just i just don't see something happening yeah well you know it depends i mean we uh spoke to them a few weeks ago so i don't know what their legislative schedule is i don't know you know how that works uh we
034can follow up though and see if it's if it's still alive or not and then i guess my question is does ritter want it to happen or not right because we're not the only school board that was you know you know in line here to advocate there's there's you know more than just us you know so i want to just be clear on this i don't think it's just school boards i think it's regular people you know just you know out of the three million people in connecticut a lot of them are just saying this is something that can be done so that's it i mean it's certainly uh you know if uh in 2019 this it may have been like a wow how much equipment we're gonna have to buy to do all this
035which we actually had that conversation and now it's like well just open your laptop and here you are and yeah and now everyone can watch whatever they want whenever they want since it can because i don't even think we knew it could be on youtube before 2019 maybe we did but i mean now we all know it's on youtube you know you could post meetings like that yeah we just you know created our youtube channel this past year and we did a quite a bit leading up to the pandemic to make ourselves more accessible online but all right so moving on to school attendance areas i'll present screen [Music] again uh basically uh we just wanted to take a quick look at this for a couple of reasons in terms of you know where are
036people uh where do people live as we start to talk about uh in the school modernization committee meetings uh redistricting and the possibility of that that may you know come along and how is that policy uh how does it influence where students attend school right now so basically you know when we look at um educational programming and we're trying to you know optimize the use of our facilities we consider obviously the safety of students first and foremost and student educational lead what programs are housed there i know you're aware of some of the specialized programs we have it you know elementary schools in particular where you might only have access to a program within a specific building uh optimal use of the facilities residential patterns if they built a new um a new you know
037massive complex on one part of town that really impacted our our enrollment then you know would be incumbent upon me to initiate with you uh uh restructuring of our our enrollment balance our redistricting i guess so i wanted to highlight this here where we have attendance areas for the district but people can file an attendance area waiver so they will usually contact carol after you know speaking to their principal and saying you know i would like to attend doolittle even though i live in norton or vice versa and we do permit that um after reviewing these items here to make sure that you know first is this safe whatever you know are there is this meeting the students educational needs etc and then the family must provide transportation for their child because we don't have
038buses that jump between residential areas and this this is really an issue for k through six you know seven eight everybody in the town goes to the one school nine through 12 the same so this is really an issue that we see at the elementary level i'll tell you the most frequent frequent request i receive is that i have a child who receives services at darcy school or at highland school let's say and can the sibling attend that school and so you know we we typically approve those requests but i just wanted to review this with you particularly in light of the conversations we're having about redistricting and i think that these things here are uh powerful considerations as we look at redistricting and i know that you know that's what slr which was formerly
039myeloma thinks about as well when when we're talking about redistricting so um are there any questions around this whole you know um policy and how it's enforced um for me um my first question was uh in real i guess relation to special programs i guess specifically special education programs um just thinking like um in the uh under the umbrella of redistricting like we know that there are um at least so it seemed to me like there's uh like a more specialized program at doolittle and at highland um and if uh redistricting were to occur how this policy doesn't specifically address that um and so is that does that fall under like when you're because i know like what from what we've heard from presentations that consistency is very important um is i guess is that
040following their educational need like if you know there's a movement of student population how does that work is that under your discretion or or like it's your soul discretion or is there a committee or you know what i mean i don't know yeah no it's not a nice whole discretion and basically what we do is identify if there is a specialized program that a child attends now are the specialized programs are uh identified through a ppt process a planning and placement team process so an individualized education plan is written for a child that indicates that this child needs this sort of supports and services they you know kind of do not pass go they don't go through this sort of superintendent review process they immediately um are able to attend that building where the the
041program is offered regardless of where they live that doesn't even come through my office this is um like almost like i was saying before the sibling of that child now the family is like well it'd be nice if both kids went to the same school um so i can provide transportation for my other child to go there is that okay is the request and then we review it and we say well right now there are 32 kids in the in the fifth grade class i'm sorry i can't accommodate that or yes that's okay um and you know i will say typically uh we do approve that we do approve those requests the challenge is becoming as our enrollment at the elementary schools in particular increases um then you know we we are gonna have more
042difficulty with that um so the for example i got a request about can my kindergartner uh out of district attend darcy school well this year because of enrollment that they live in let's say highland right but that they have a sibling that that's going to darcy can that my kindergarten child go there too and the question you know typically would be yeah we can make that happen but this year if you recall we're moving a number of uh sections from darcy to doolittle because we just don't have the space to accommodate it at darcy anymore so these are considerations that we make uh in terms of approving them and the one other area that i neglected to mention that's pretty typical is an in-town move so my fourth grader at uh norton has been there
043forever you know but we just moved to chapman is it okay if they stay in fifth and sixth grade at it doodle i think i used doolittle or was it norton i don't know at the school that they were in and i say sure if you're going to provide transportation because adam i think you mentioned before we want to have that continuity for a child um and so if it's a year or two at that old school if the parents willing to provide transportation we permitted um okay so i i guess it's like a pandora's box but so let's say there's redistricting theoretically yeah and then all of a sudden uh you get a hundred requests for a parent you know from parents not wanting to have their kids go into the new redistricted area
044sure what happens then because this policy doesn't really say anything about that well it says that you know the superintendent has discretion so i'm afraid that in that scenario we're not going to be able to accommodate 100 people you know quests that says i'm sorry but that's not gonna work right okay unfortunately with that number i mean one of the scenarios for a new elementary school had 40 percent redistricting um i you know you think about the number of with 2500 uh k-6 students 40 is about a little more than a thousand so there's no way we can accommodate that right because i'm sure it would happen yeah um and then lastly um there seem to be a lot about um the the not the denial process as far as from if you're out of
045district let's say you know the the move you left town but you know you know you'd want your channel yeah that's more than the next policy oh okay all right i'm sorry it's actually great you know it's a great segue uh to non-resident attendance and so i'll present screen on that um and there are several elements in this that i just kind of wanted to hit upon and um the first element is i remember maybe my first year as superintendent having a council member expressed concern about you know this person from out of town drops their child off at a bus stop every day and if the if an individual is not living in town um then you know we pursue that and carol will send them a letter indicating here are the things you
046need to provide to prove that you're living here and if they don't then we can charge tuition um and we're you know sometimes we've even gone as far as hiring a security officer a private investigator to confirm residency because it is a big deal and you know the members of our community pay taxes to educate their children and not people from out of town unless there are special circumstances and so this policy here outlines what some of those special circumstances may be so for example uh non-resident attendance without tuition and this also you know gives the superintendent discretion to identify you know to really read into the situation and determine what's going on i mean we've had things where families were victims of crime and had to relocate and um you know the student had
047been through incredible trauma and all right so it was more than a marking period but you know if you're going to provide transportation will allow your child to attend until things stabilize or whatever so life has so many different variables that we you know have to have some flexibility and so you know if a family moves from the district after the year begins a parent can request that the child complete the marking period which happens periodically and you know i i'm generally pretty flexible with that um but it goes back to the last policy you know what what is this is there any sort of safety issue security issue is there anything else going on is there the space available you know is the you know is the the transportation there in those cases yeah
048so it's that's kind of the checks that we go through to determine what's appropriate here um if the family has firm plans to move into the district before the school year uh maybe your your house is being constructed and i'm supposed to close on october 3rd it can i start the year at the school if i provide transportation i live in in wallingford or someplace else is that okay then yes we we permit that sort of thing and these are examples these are not requirements um but they're examples so a 12th grade student wishes to complete his or her education in the district then generally we permit that sort of stuff but you cannot you know just um drop your child off at cheshire high every day if you live in another town and expect
049that you know it's okay for them to go to school there every night um now some of the uh unique uh wrinkles in this uh for example exchange students we work with uh you know non enduring non-pandemics uh agencies that support a child being uh enough from another country resident and a guest of a family in cheshire and having been high school principal that's a great experience for everybody involved so those students are permitted by the superintendent and we monitor how many students it would be and things like that and of course you know vaccinations and all that are are required um so then there's that component there's a non-resident attendance with tuition component which allows if class sizes permit the superintendent to allow a student to attend cheshire public schools with tuition this is
050different than open choice open choice is a state facilitated program to increase diversity equity and inclusion and you know that we annually discuss open choice and we certainly welcome students and the state pays us a lump sum with bonuses if we exceed x number of students in a school and so and it's really beneficial for all of our students this is different than that so this is i live in southington but i'd really like to attend norton if the superintendent reviews the that criteria in the last uh policy and determines that there's adequate seating this policy permits the superintendent to say okay base you have to pay what the board tuition is and yes your child can attend norton school this year so that's that's really what this addresses now historically that has been kind
051of a nightmare uh dating back to before my time as a superintendent and that you know times have changed significantly um over the last you know 10 years and so we haven't permitted people to attend with tuition the biggest problem was the they would just stop paying and now you're in a position where you know you're evicting a child from a class it's it's obviously not great for kids it becomes uh it can become a significant burden for us as a school system as well chasing down people for money we're not a collection agency we're not equipped to do that so that's that's the primary reason we hadn't done it historically however like i said times have changed and i've consulted with other districts who do um permit tuition just today i was talking to
052craig cook the superintendent madison and they have been able to accept some tuition students now i'm you know i'm not recommending a change in the in the policy however i want to let you know that i'm considering um kind of changing how we address this at least for the 21-22 school year for a couple of different reasons i as you may know sacred heart in waterbury closed recently so there are tuition students out there looking for high school i wouldn't recommend um really pursuing this at the elementary as you know where we're facing growing enrollments there at the high school however i think i may want to consider opening up a lottery for like 10 seats and i've sought legal counsel on how to draft that contract and it's other districts have done it and
053one of the the you know concerns i had was the cost you know so we set a tuition at x dollars and if the individual student uh required services for you know academic enrichment or other services that exceeded that dollar amount um what how do school districts handle that and there are you know contracts and it's permissible to build that into the contract that if a child receives services or avails themselves to services beyond the cost of the tuition so for example sparky wants to play a sport all right well i paid my tuition however this is a cost beyond tuition therefore you have to pay the participation fee sparky wants to park on campus that's fine but you pay that in addition to the tuition so just some examples of where costs would exceed
054you know typical tuition and you know if if we set the tuition at our per-pupil expenditure which is roughly seventeen thousand dollars and we open it up to 10 seats on the lottery system this isn't we can't uh screen students so it's still the public school criteria so we can't say yeah you know we're just not a fan of you not that we would but you know you would have to open it up to x number seats and if we have 10 people that's a hundred and seventy thousand dollar budget offset and so i i think it's worth consideration given the fact that um financially i i think it you know tuition at this point would help offset a 5.2 budget year i think that there's a demand that is unique to the period in
055time uh and would be relatively short-lived for existing students from sacred heart waterbury or others that may have that interest and that may include our employees if you look at the next component down that we can't offer this to employees of the district or people that want to attend um cheshire high school but i i wouldn't i would probably set a number of seats at each grade level and i i would be very meticulous about that process this is an initial conversation that i could elaborate more at our next business meeting um but it's just something i'm considering and i i wanted to make sure that not that again it's no change in policy um but it is a change in how i enact the policy uh potentially and like i said i haven't finalized
056that yet but um you know this is something that i'm strongly considering and i you know i certainly respect your feedback catherine looks like you want to jump in yeah did it look like that um so with respect to like a lottery situation or really any i mean if a student comes into the district that has um special needs for example and we are charging them the you know regular per uh student cost the 17 000. sure is there any would the town that they actually live in have any obligation to help cover the cost of special services that is a tuition student i i you know i i'm still gonna follow through on that and review that but i don't believe that yes they're the nexus which is where the child but if the
057district didn't place them and the family made the choice the district's not on the hook so for example if one of our families just decided they wanted to go to to southington because they could they couldn't southington couldn't back bill us for services so um okay pretty sure that's the case and if it's a tuition student now that they've made their own choice to do that there is a risk which i hate to like harp on this but there's a risk that you know we could the tuition offset could be overridden by the cot the actual cost no i think that's that's what i was saying in terms of um cost beyond tuition so okay oh okay yeah whether it be for uh specialized services or enrichment activities or um specialized enrichment activities uh the
058the prevailing wisdom in the legal community is that you can bill for those things oh okay sorry thank you and that would be built into the contract with the individual family the other thing is that i you know that i really need to nail down is how is this payment plan established so you know like i said given the historical concerns about chasing down payments and getting in the business of evicting students which makes me sick you know i we would have to have a pretty strong uh process in place to ensure payment right so jeff you're saying that it is legal to charge tuition for let's say well we'll we'll say be since we're using water bay as an example right of potentially um uh disadvantaged students right because you know who's whose parents
059had a little more uh advantage because they are allowed to to attend catholic high school right instead of attending waterbury public school i guess we'll just say and not assume you know and of course i'm guessing there are others who were outside of waterbury who attended that particular school a sacred i was thinking sacred heart um but you know so how does i'm just it feels like a a slope a slippery slope of some kind where we're we're charging potentially students that could have since like outside of our open choice students right because they're designated from new haven instead of waterbury it's like it's it's not it's a great opportunity to attend cheshire public school which is near or better than uh private school in some instances um most i'm just yeah [Laughter] i'm being
060honest right um right and so i i just it's that you could uh minimize our ex risk exposure that katherine was just talking about through through a contract um i just was just wondering how considering all of the law involved a house that that contract would hold up in a court you know a couple of couple of points there i think i i don't want to make a lot of assumptions into who's attending sacred heart or um who's living in any of the surrounding community and their ability to pay but i also would say you know as far as i'm looking at this um this is the um slowly wading into the shallow end and not cowabunga dive into the deep end um you know what we'd be looking at here is a a small
061pool of no pun intended on the metaphor but um a small number of of people at only the high school level because frankly i don't see the availability at the other levels in terms of space is you know the elementary enrollment boom has been well documented um we do have the lower class sizes at the high school at this moment so i think you know where we could fit a handful of individuals in uh the we're not the first to do this um you know as i mentioned just talking to madison today i know trumbull has done it as well so you know i i think it's it's more of an exploration adam than uh then i would say we're making a commitment to this is how we're gonna do business moving forward um and
062then this is still uh as i said in the that exploration phase but i didn't want a business meeting to come up and people go what the heck where did this come from you know it's not really even something that needs board approval per se but you know i think it it because i i value the collaborative relationship that we all have i'd be a fool not to have the conversation with you guys because it is a change in approach and it is something that i think if it became public and you weren't aware of it you'd be right to say jeff what the heck are you doing i didn't know anything about this so it's just an exploration and there's more uh i think conversation to be had on the topic but just planting
063a seed for you to now think about and let's come back and talk about this again yeah i mean i definitely think it's worthy of exploration just to kind of see uh tim go ahead thanks adam um so you said this is wading into the waiting into the shallow end do you aspire to go into the deep end no um i i think you know the further you get into the deep end uh i um i think that it creates more challenges there there would be a point if we got too far into the deep end tim where i'd probably have to hire somebody to facilitate this work you know and then you start eating into the like is that really worth it at that point yeah and it you know it it's it's the
064school i i think in connecticut is a community um endeavor so there's a culture that's built within the community i think we have i feel personally committed to improving the diversity equity and inclusion in the community which is you know why we engage in the open choice program this is not doing that if if this was and we have i i actually added a number of high school seats this year through open choice already so this is an opportunity to extend beyond that i added 10 seats at cheshire high for open choice because of two reasons first of all i want to further increase the opportunities for diversity equity and inclusion but i also know that you know being a high school principal that those poor kids get on the bus at an ungodly hour
065to be here for 7 30. and when i met with the folks from project or open choice and i said you know how can we improve that as well if we have more kids then it's just a more you know i could i have like a dedicated route and it's done you know we'll do that for those kids um so this is not that uh i just don't think it's a great idea to go whole hog on it but who knows maybe after doing it for two years we find it's terribly you know valuable and maybe we do want to explore it further all right so um i mean i'm a believer in public education uh this sounds like we're going down a very different path i'm comfortable with it uh i guess i'm wondering
066what is what are you so we're talking about sacred heart closing and then you moved over to open choice what is the relationship between those two things i i don't know if they're both um in both situations they're non-residents of cheshire okay the choice piece has there's a specific purpose to that which i mean it goes back to chef versus o'neill right exactly in this case in the um in the tuition situation and i it's not exclusive to people from sacred heart as i said i think it would be um sacred heart anybody who wants to if you live in southington and you're interested in attending the cheshire public schools you could submit to the application process or whatever same with our staff you know we could make those seats available to them too if
067they were willing to pay the tuition and so this is a financial offset for us if we have some seats available it could provide upwards of two hundred thousand dollars and a short term intervention if we find it to be incredibly successful then maybe we'd continue that small group um you know 200 grand a lot of money you know it's a fair amount of money and it absolutely is i i mean for me it's just sort of philosophical like right sorry one second it's it's kind of a philosophical thing and it's sorry my son has to go to bed i don't know if you hear that or not and i'm just not really i'm just not really comfortable with going uh with going down that path um another point that you made a comment you
068made was that you would be meticulous about this and even just in this meeting i want to be sensitive to your time and this to me sounds like it could end up being a bit of a time suck for you and so that's a reason why another reason why i'm not really comfortable with it um yeah and then it just gets i guess the um two the two last points on this and it's it makes me raise like it raises a question in my mind well what size let's just say that we ended up sending out a new elementary school to referendum in november well are we doing it at 800 are we doing it a thousand and what you know what's gonna happen if we if we do we end up over building and
069then just asking people to enroll here and it's it it becomes my concern is it becomes like a for-profit motive rather than you know what you would traditionally do um and the last thing is honestly right now i've said it you know probably a hundred times to you is covid and i know it looks like we're moving past this but you know the next month it's vaccinations and i i just still am concerned about everything that could happen in in the before this year is over and then even you know rolling back into a new school year that is hopefully normal so for all those reasons i'm not particularly interested in this right now as one of three or one of seven having said all that i wanted to jump back to one other thing
070you would mention a little bit earlier exchange students generally speaking i mean we have students that go overseas to high school is that i mean i i think marlene told me maybe like one or two a year or something like that correct do they enjoy reciprocity generally speaking where they get to go to school for free or yeah um not only one for one but just generally that house education in the world around the world yeah not i mean we don't typically have a lot of cheshire high school students who leave for a year to attend school in another country what typically happens is we'll have we'll host during the year a student from another country who attends cheshire high for the year usually two maybe three on in a busier year um but then
071or you know or they'll be for a semester um at the least a year at the most and then over summers our student will the the host family will typically go to the other other country and visit and spend like the summers there which could mean in school depending on the country so and i you know tim the points you bring up i think are all valid points which is why you know i think i'm treading lightly into this and putting it out on the table because i think reasonable minds this is something could very well differ on and um you know i i'm not religiously convicted to um having tuition students however i think you know if i were gonna do it for the purpose of uh you know financial gain and knowing there's
072demand out there now would be the time to do it from that perspective from an opportunity for us perspective um maybe it's not the time to do it be in from a covid perspective you know that's again it's one of those things where i just open it up to the group and i'm gonna take some some guidance from you guys okay all right well thank you uh so for me just just um one question and then well two questions and a comment uh firstly um just going back to the policy in general um there didn't seem to be a section where explicitly said that your response your your discretion was in writing is that or did i miss that or does it specifically say that you have to reply in writing or and i'm sure
073that in practice you do but i just wasn't sure if it if it said it anywhere and and i missed it so you're you're i think uh specifically uh referencing this part up here um upon written parental requests right the superintendent shall have broad discretion to allow attendance in what you're saying if i if i'm correct adam is that it doesn't say that the superintendent will respond in kind in writing right um we do do that i mean correct me if i'm wrong carol we don't or we do give a verbal it all depends if somebody calls and asks on the phone it's always been we're not taking tuition students at this time no this is for um if somebody wants to attend out of district placement like out of area placement so if um
074you know i moved from norton to doolittle oh that is annually annually they have to request it in writing yes annually every single person that requests it we respond in writing they get a letter every year what about um i just moved to another town and i'd like my child to continue in the district for another three weeks or whatever normally we tell them to respond to send an email to the superintendent they can do it through me but to the superintendent and then we answer them through email okay so there is some paper trail then normally and that the administrator of the school would know and most likely be informed that that is the case right okay um not always does the individual like sometimes a family you know the same way we have
075people dropping folks off potentially bus stops or in front of schools just you know your time to go to school the family doesn't always notify you when they moved and they may tell you one thing or the other at the school level um but usually the principal knows enough to double check that when they're made aware of it right um now so i so this this um uh wading into the shallow end it feels a little bit like um like a charter school and but i don't know how charter schools work because i know a lot of times there's a lottery to get into a charter school do charter schools charge tuition or is that like a public school it's just like you have an opportunity to go to a spec more specialized school or
076whatever and but there's there's no tuition involved yeah it really depends on the school so some charter schools do charge tuition some of the schools like through open choice the charter school has its own oftentimes its own specific purpose so you know it could be a magnet school as well that has a uh a magnet school is able to draw from other public districts so like we send students to magnet schools in new haven um some correct schools and that's a magnet situation where the public school system is paying a fee so we pay a fee for new haven for students to attend educational center for the arts is part of the magnet like reciprocity component with open choice and in a charter situation usually the student is just attending without the the district paying
077the money so there is a uh there is a tuition that the family pays in most cases in this case here this is like more like a private school where you can attend cheshire public schools cheshire high school in this case for a tuition basis um and that's you know the question here is is that something that we want to pursue at a small scale at this point in time where our financial need is greater and there's a community need for this and we have the space available um it seems to be like there's this confluence of variables coming together that doesn't account for you know philosophically are we uncomfortable with it from a coveted perspective are we uncomfortable with it for next august those are those are things that i would want to like
078i said meticulously review before pushing it forward further but it's also something that i think you know we have to do diligence in looking at um or otherwise maybe miss an opportunity right yeah i mean there's part of me that i think it's a great idea because it could be a great opportunity uh but at the same time i'm also conflicted as to maybe the level even the level of tuition we'd be charging um if maybe it wouldn't be but then is it what kind of program were you talking about then at that point uh because if let's say well we you know i i looked up the tuition of sacred heart and it's not it's like it's not as expensive let's let's just put it yeah it's not 17 000 a year no it's
079not so um and like and i don't know like what the intuition of like cheshire academy is i'm sure it's much greater than 17 000. um so it's like i i'm just conflicted about the whole thing and if it's really what are we trying to do and if so i and i'm so i i think it's worthy of a a bore a full bore con discussion i guess um and uh thank you for bringing it to us uh in subcommittee and uh it's definitely an interesting subject i'm sure it would get a lot of attention and you know there there could be a point of diminishing return where it's not worth our time and energy um but you know nothing ventured nothing gained and i i think it it's worth exploring and if it doesn't
080if ultimately we decide it's it's not worth it i mean you know we we pride ourselves on problem solving and creativity and this is just a uh kind of a venture maybe we how do we cover both of those things in this situation yeah if it's good for our kids um which i mean sometimes financially you know meeting our our financial um expectations across the street makes things better for our kids maybe it's consideration yes um all right uh does anyone have any further comment um okay um well for now as far as the business part um i would like to entertain a motion to move the policies that we discussed earlier in the evening to move uh i guess i can make the motion i suppose huh i want to be clear that that
081one's a regulation so that's the one we're skipping okay i mean yeah go ahead i'll make it okay so i moved that um we submit the following policies to the full board for first reading hope that's the way you're supposed to say it uh policy 3170 business budget implementation policy 3300 business expenditures expending authority purchasing guides 3326 business paying for goods and services 3326.1 business payroll procedures and authorized signatures and 3541.45 business student transportation insurance is there a second tim white seconds um okay there's a uh emotion on the floor um that was previously stated [Laughter] by kathryn uh all in favor it is unanimous thank you we'll move that to the uh board for consideration um seeing that there is uh so uh jeff before we uh adjourn uh so that the the discussion
082that we just had i guess will be part of your superintendent's report i guess at our next business meeting or you'll discuss with tony as far as how that will yeah i think i mean we'll probably bring that up at uh policy as part of the policy conversation okay you know and when we review the minutes at the next business meeting thursday is a showcase meeting of the middle school so um we won't be talking about it then but uh the subsequent meeting i want to say is what march 18th 18th i think 18. i think we have a planning meeting before that but yes the uh yeah yeah next business meetings the 18th so that gives us a little time to pull stuff together i'd like to just you know like i said thoroughly
083review it before um and make sure that eyes and our dotted tees are crossed before we really talk about it because if it's not real possibility then i wouldn't want to right and especially how other districts uh that you had referenced are handling it and you know see how they go um okay um there is no um uh other business on the agenda um so uh catherine yes no i i know i'm just going to make a motion to adjourn if that's what you're ready for i always like that you know in any meeting that i attend with tim uh sometimes you may have additional comments i always make sure that tim is has no further comment thank you looks like he's okay uh catherine did you have would you like to make a motion
084i move that we adjourn this particular meeting is there a second and white seconds all in favor this meeting is adjourned thank you very much thanks everybody all right have a good night thank you bye