Board of Education 2-18-21

001we get into it mr jeske can have a roll call please sure mr grippo here miss hallon right here miss ham here ms harrigan here mr martelly here mr paragini here and mr white here mr chairman thank you carol i ask that we uh stand for the pledge of allegiance assuming events in our jeff will throw up the flag for us i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic thank you good evening everyone welcome welcome to a yet mother cold frigid and snowy winter day in in uh in connecticut hopefully everyone's braving the weather well today and safe on the roads uh hopefully you're not watching us in the way home but hopefully people are at home safe and sound uh if you are watching pull up

002a blanket hot cup of chocolate and have some fun with us tonight we're going to get into the student representatives reports uh joining us tonight again is lucy and josh uh lucy and josh it's uh it's all yours what's been going on thank you um so we just started or not just started but we are in the middle of our winter sports season uh we're currently playing regional league contests in ice hockey basketball skiing and swimming and the season will run until march 28th when it will end with a league tournament uh some exciting news cheshire high school was just given the ciac sportsmanship award at the recent ciac sportsmanship conference this award was based on overall sportsmanship community service and maintaining a ciac class act status on wednesday yesterday uh nine senior student athletes

003signed their letters of intent to play their chosen sport uh at college uh so we're super excited about that and then uh speaking of seniors the scholarship booklet was released on february 4th in the college and career center and there's also a digital format for any remote seniors this booklet contains over 70 scholarships that are available to our seniors so they're in the process of applying for that and then those will be due on march 12th um also part of chs's celebration of black history month includes poetry by modern black artists so each mark each morning in february a student reads a work by an african-american poet that connects to a court academic subject area students and staff visit a site from the chs homepage where they can see the daily poem read a biography

004on the poet and find links for further research the chs library along with rams against racism club is hosting a community read activity for black history month um all high school staff and students are invited to discuss the book between the world and me by ta-nehisi coates um in other news the seniors have enjoyed signing their space on the class of 2021 senior wall usually this will happen before the school year starts but due to kovadu is delayed but we're happy that that's going on now and then lastly for the musical the musical rehearsals for little women are well underway when it's not snowing um they've been acting rehearsals in the afternoons in person masked and socially distanced their plan is to film the musical through march and then sell tickets to a streamed version

005of the show they're hoping that they will have an opportunity to do a live screening outside in may when they can have a socially distanced audience huge shout outs for the expertise of mike salamini and the other adults working on the show john carter the choreographer peter randazzo vocal director taryn chorney the assistant director and rhee stashke the technical director don demaio the director promises to invite the board of vet to see the show um she says you have always been supportive supportive of the program and if any of you have connections to a large screen for a drive-in movie type experience to please let her know and that's all for our report thank you lucy and josh again thank you for joining this evening uh any uh comments from the board members or administration

006uh tim you raised your hand yeah you um lucy you had mentioned the nine students who committed the schools i'm just curious how does that is there a cycle to it where it's winner so it was paul sport that just committed or is it all three seasons that sort of commit at this time throughout the year um yeah so it's not just uh like winter sports it's just like based on when those students um commit so some students uh committed earlier in the year just because that's the way their college process went um others you know it took them a little longer to pick their school so um all of like the student athletes who have committed in the past couple weeks um all signed on this day but it could be spring fall or

007winter sports yes yeah yeah okay thank you you're welcome great thanks tim anyone else faith um i love the idea of going to see a musical and if anyone knows anyone with a drive-in theater or even if we could like pull money or something um to get a huge big screen i think would be the biggest boost for cheshire and so i am all in for going to the theater so just saying um i don't know anyone but if anyone does if we put the word out let's do it well our uh our plan for graduation last year if you recall was uh through berzudo's at the farmington polo grounds uh unfortunately mother nature dashed that but um maybe we can see what we can do about the the spring musical in chs is so

008spectacular every year it's always so so fun to attend and see our students perform and it it's it's incredible so even if it's on the big screen i'm sure it'll be awesome great thanks uh lucy and josh was curious of uh if you if you're moving on to college have you decided which colleges want to go to yet it was a little too early um i applied early decision to davidson college and i was accepted so that's where i'll be going congratulations thank you so i'm gonna put you on a spot but when i hear about the letters and commitments i know our senior uh representatives are or was that i'm sorry to put you guys in a spot i'm just kind of curious but i'm happy for you yeah um i'm hoping to know

009by either next meeting or the meeting after awesome look forward to hearing the update definitely well thanks guys if there's any other questions uh josh and lucy you are free to go and thank you oh i'm sorry catherine no no i was saying bye bye bye guys bye bye guys thanks tom no sorry thank you uh we're moving on to the audience uh uh jeff not sure if we have any audience emails yet we can certainly check again during the meeting we do a um i had to catch myself there because i've been conditioned like pavlov's dog when i wave at the screen you're supposed to then click goodbye on the meeting but uh so i caught myself thankfully and uh we do have an email from jamie ferguson at 105 copper beach uh dr

010swollen and board members i'd like to extend my gratitude to the members of the community volunteered to serve our town on the school modernization committee it appears to be an enormous project that by its nature could be a full-time job for each one of them as time is ticking toward the state's grant application deadline employer i implore all board members to actively participate and assist the nomination committee so they're able to meet this fiscal year year's deadline the students faculty and taxpayers can't afford to risk another year's delay which may very well happen if the grant application isn't submitted before june 30 2021 have a good evening that was our only correspondence tonight great thank you and uh both andrew and anne not to put them in the spot but there'll be a detailed nc

011update smc update later in the uh uh discussion i'm sure this will be addressed so jamie if you're watching stay tuned and thank you for for the contact if there is none else we'll we'll probably check the the mailbox during the course of the meeting and you know we'll check again later so just for uh folks that might be watching that are not familiar you can certainly send questions and comments behind during the meeting uh via the email address uh either cps covet 19 at cheshire k12 sctus or cps budget ak-12 cheshire kate tell us we'll check both email addresses but uh thank you if you do submit those uh moving on uh report to standing committee we're gonna start with curriculum i believe that's faith thank you tony um i um i i just

012want to say i sort of elaborated or expanded on the minutes that were provided in the agenda so um if you could all bear with me and i hope i do the meeting justice there was a lot that went on at the um the february 8th meeting um under the heading of public comment we did have an email correspondence with um mr john bester a cheshire resident who um was concerned um his letter um included a request for the board to consider a non-binding board of education vote to direct the cheshire public school administration to request a waiver for cps from participating in the smarter balanced assessment um marlene solano addressed mr bester's concerns by noting the administration of the test will show how much students have grown um since the test was given two

013years ago and that in turn should be able to capture the impact of covid that covet has had on student learning likewise the the results are used also to guide curriculum evaluation and improvements to both curriculum and instruction we may come back at it within this meeting to to address um another letter um but i'm just jumping ahead um we accepted the minutes um i'm going to kind of move around we had um an um overview of the english lay uh english language sorry english language executive summary that mr kevin hanlon presented um and it was the summary of the five year english learners program evaluation presentation and report to the council curriculum council from november key items of the report included reflections on the impact of the previous curriculum council goals on improved el

014student performance and future goals to further refine individual plans for students improved social emotional supports and family communication and continued professional development for teachers we also got an update on um the perk and supplemental grant um it was prevented presented by sean mcewen it was a great presentation um he um mr mcewen is the career and technical education department chair and he gave an update on um this big machine i mean it was huge um and he's training the kids uh in his class on how to use it i'm direct applications to the work to factories in town it's just an amazing curriculum that he is establishing using this machinery um it was really exciting to watch and if i could encourage all of you go back and take a look at it he did

015a fabulous job and um it's it's really encouraging so we also got the psat results from dr mary gadd i did ask that those be sent out to you all today so you could take a look at them um so they covered the 9th 10th and 11th graders and it highlighted the performance trends for students in the grades um as i said you should have received the slides so some of the highlights is the test overall just some background the tests do increase with complexity obviously as they move through the grades and the kids are learning tougher material there is the evidence-based reading and writing which requires to students to look at texts and interpret writing practices as well as use visual data such as graphs and charts to measure cross-cutting skills in science and

016social studies the math um in the ninth grade the test focuses on what's called the heart of algebra and problem solving and then the tenth grade as prob more problem solving and geometry and then finally the 11th encompasses algebra 2 and trig again you may see that the psats are measuring increasingly complex ideas so one other term that i just want to point out is the benchmark and i'm gonna it's gonna play into the data that you all received um and the benchmark represents the college and career readiness so if a student meets or exceeds the benchmark it is an indication that he or she is ready for college-level work so as for the results um ninth grade eighty-three percent of the students took the test the scores um for the english or the i'm

017sorry the um the reading writing um benchmark was 410 the cheshire average was 486. um our math benchmark for ninth graders was um 486 the chs average was for um uh 472. um uh wait a minute did i yes no 46 okay i'm sorry um i have to go back to the slide on that one because we the average was higher than the benchmark um in 10th grade 99 of the students took the test the benchmark for reading writing was 430 our cheshire average was 5 13. in math our benchmark was 480 and our average cheshire average was 484 and then finally 11th grade 93 percent of the students took the test benchmark average in english or in reading writing was 460 cheshire average was 532 and our math benchmark was 510 and our cheshire

018average was 492. so year over year progress for class which measures the uh measures from 10th to 11th grade progress um the kids increased their scores by 21 points and then against the durg b average we excelled the durg b averages when measuring psa psat 10 to psat 11 and also when measuring psat 10 to sat 11. so um i do want to correct i will get a correction on that ninth grade score because i know our kids scored considerably higher than the benchmark and i think i transposed some numbers so that covered the psat information we also had an sel update or a social emotional learning update and again you were provided with the slides that were presented at the curriculum committee meeting marlene solano provided the update she emphasized that cheshire high school

019is grounded in standards and for essay sel we use the castle standards meaning collaborative um for academic social and emotional learning for equity the measures um are self-awareness social awareness relationship skills and responsible decision making the district is using the following definition for equity it's the goal or identifying the goal of equity as addressing educational disparities and transformational ways to foster long-term change that sustains bias-free environments by redressing or remedying underlying organizational or institutional conditions that produce everyday manifestations of equity with guidance from serc the district is developing an equity policy and to date two committees have been formed a district equity leadership team which comprises teachers administrators parents and non-certified staff an administrative council which comprises people personnel services people personnel services director the k through a curriculum director building principals and assistant principals

020and special ed supervisors and then other components of the equity transition plans are interviews with families and students curriculum reviews and audits and creation of affinity groups just to name a few of the of the um initiatives underway um getting almost to the end promise um cirque will provide training for the uh development of protocols for um what are called courageous conversations and then ongoing um uh ongoing tasks are an equity policy that will be presented to the board for approval an equity transition plan equity audits um developing school equity equity leadership teams there will be a summer book club to review the book unconscious bias in schools the developmental approach of to exploring race and racism curriculum writing institute hiring recruiting practices continue to implement responsive classroom and continue to learn about and implement

021restorative practices um continue the ch uh chs club rams against racism and other groups and then um obviously coming down the pike is the african-american black puerto rican latino and latino course studies so and that's coming in 2021. so a quick overview of a very informative meeting and i don't know if anyone has any questions okay adam was first then tim close enough tim was very fast it was that was that was close that was that could have been a tie um thank you for the uh excellent overview um i guess i'll uh direct my questions to marlene um you gave an excellent presentation i just happened to watch the curriculum meeting that night and i saw your presentation on equity um and so uh particularly on the on the equity policy is that something

022that's going to be coming before the policy board soon is that or is is that and is that a policy that's written by cabe or is that um come from somewhere else so those are all great questions um the policy is not written yet that's something that those groups are working on with circ um and we've also been looking at other districts policies i'm unaware if there is currently a cave policy but that's part of our are looking i'm seeing jeff shake his head no um i know that some other districts have them so we'll put something together and then you know bring it forward to the policy committee great um let's see secondly was the uh the summer reading book uh i didn't see an author there um i certainly would like to read

023it i don't know if any of the other board members have read it or would like to read it um could you supply us with that information so that we could i guess purchase the book so that you know we can get informed on that i i can it's called unconscious bias in schools it's written by tracy benson and sarah fireman and this is um only being read by our administrative cohort oftentimes in the summer we read a number of books and this one is one that has been recommended by a number of different groups in connecticut that we work with and so that will be something that that the administrative team will meet together to discuss and really um i think the point of that is to have a starting point for some conversation

024so that we have something in common to talk about and something to support you know a collegial discussion on this this vast topic but we definitely get anyone who would like won a copy of the book thank you because i know uh just going back to the personalized learning task force um i remember reading the book that the uh facilitator was using for the members and by reading that book it shed a lot of light on you know where the facilitator was coming from and and how he was shaping conversation and it was so it was it was a good thing to know and i think this book may have the same effect of you know going forward um for all of us to read i can also share with you some of the other

025articles that the administrative team has read as a part of that and i can get those out to you even sooner than i can get you the book so right as well um and lastly um there is mention of a training um is that something that board of ed members can attend i think you had mentioned something like that at the meeting uh you know if it's something you know for me personally if i have to plan for it to take a day off from work or something i would like to you know be able to know in advance so the at the end of that meeting there was conversation from some of the members about would it be possible to get a training put together for board members and i did look into a

026couple of different places who would do that work and i'm waiting on some some pricing so i know that circ also you know because they've been working with us that might be an avenue that we we could pursue but i can get that information together for the board and um and we can proceed from there fantastic thank you you're very welcome yeah thank you um yeah so the first thing i just wanted to say is uh with regard to investors comments i i just i'm sympathetic to where he's coming from i've never been particularly comfortable with um standardized testing my own experience you know 10 years apart i took the gmat 20 years ago 10 years ago both times i got a 680 it measured it i think it probably did a fair measurement on

027me because i got the same score both times i put a lot of time into it to study other people don't that's more an indication to me of how someone studies rather than what they actually know so it i mean it could be a piece of it and i know i've read the um i read your uh your email marlene so thank you for that because it said this is really just a piece of student evaluation so that's good i still i frankly though it still makes me feel uncomfortable i don't really like standardized testing so i i am sympathetic um but i mean my understanding is it's basically state law i i well we could vote and say we don't like it and that's what i'm saying i'm not going to make a motion

028or anything right now about it um i'm just not really i've never really been that comfortable standardized standardized testing um if they with regard to the psats you were talking about the numbers and honestly i apologize i i couldn't i didn't follow it i'm wondering i couldn't i just want to i just wanted was there was there like in the 30 second elevator story was there a trend that you were talking about you know what actually um that was actually going to be one of my questions i do want to make a correction on the ninth on the ninth graders i did have a typo in there and and just to go back on the ninth grade scores um you know the benchmark for reading writing was 410 the chs average is 486 so above

029the above the benchmark and the math benchmark was 450 and the chs um average was 472. so again above so i want that corrected in the record um was there a trend i see in perhaps marlene you can you can speak to this what i see are really really strong reading writing scores um like well above the um the the benchmark um i don't it and correct me if i'm wrong i'm just not sure that i see the same strength in the math scores and i'm can you address that sure sure um first of all tim um if you you do have you you everyone has access to the slides that were reviewed at curriculum in case you want to go back and and check that out uh as far as the math i think

030that um we are going to continue to look to strengthen the math program i think that there's there's room for improvement there i think the scores are good scores but i think you know we're in a community where we always want to strive to do better and i think that's part of why we have looked at our middle school we've looked at our elementary curriculum and implemented eureka as a new program we redid our resource for our algebra one class and what's offered at the middle school we saw some great improvements there when we focused on that and our our efforts moving forward will be to look at the alignment between our algebra one and algebra ii um curriculum look at our algebra 2 textbook and update that resource we have a committee looking to

031do that now so i think we have a number of things in place um to so that we will in the years to come see an even greater increase in our math scores okay um and do do you so the textbooks you said like update algebra 2. i mean has it changed a lot since when i took it 30 30 years ago or so i mean i understand you know you need new textbooks and stuff but has it really changed that much um well i think the standards have have changed i don't know that the content of algebra 2 has changed all that much but when you look at the sat and how the sat is morphed and changed as a result of the new standards i think it's important that we continue to look

032at that and update texts as new research comes out on a better ways to teach kids that material and that's the bent that i'm coming from yeah i can i can i can appreciate that in the not not too distant future we evaluated the resources we were using for elementary school math and decided to shift to the eureka resources which do a very good job of storytelling if you will contextualizing the math learning and you know we've seen tremendous growth with that resource and so it is important to continue to review our resources to ensure that as marlene just said is the way that we're teaching it uh you know really working for our kids or not and if we think we can do better i think it's really incumbent upon us to to check

033that you tim you asked for takeaways too i think when we look at we like to compare ourselves to the dirt because it gives us an apples to apples comparison you know we look at average growth between psat 10 and 11. and we see that we're outpacing the dirt durg in terms of our growth uh it both both uh 10 to 11 and excuse me 10 to 11 psat and psat 10 to sat11 so you know those are are good things as marlene said we still have work to do but um you know at least we're we're making progress our kids are making progress year over year okay i'll just i'm sorry i just i want to go back to the the um assessments for a moment if i could and i i think this

034might alleviate some folks concern by me sharing that in third through fifth grade the total amount of testing time predicted at four hours and the total for six through eight four and a half hours for the smarter balance so i i just want to share that and i also would like people to know that um we can stop the test when kids need to we could administer it over multiple days it's not as if um you know it's all we do it day in and day out so i i just wanted you to have that piece of information now back to math what were you going to say no thank you for that i guess my general my general concern is you know fast and i'm not saying that that's what happens in large part

035and like my own experience with gmat i mean some of it you just have to learn you know three times five is 15. it's rote you learn it um anyway uh with regard to the the content i totally get that one of the probably the best uh professor that i ever had he taught that's improbability in dr seuss it made it fun it made it enjoyable and i learned the stuff actually um with moving on from that it is president it was presidents day weekend we had the day off and i am just wondering if in school this week there is you know any part of the curriculum does it touch on george washington and what i consider to be probably uh the single greatest precedent in american history that was ever set by him

036which is a peaceful transition of power i think it's highly meaningful right now i'm just curious does something like that gets touched on anywhere in in k through 12th grade yeah not to get into the politics but the fact that it has existed all of our students know about george washington for sure it gets introduced at the younger grades and then on throughout especially obviously when we're dealing with american history great thank you are there any other questions from board members on the curriculum committee report adam adam i just had one comment on the smarter balance um that um if i recall correctly uh connecticut is one of the states where a parent can choose not if they feel strongly about those tests a parent can choose to have their child not take the test

037is that correct is there a procedure for that go ahead jeff not necessarily um we're required to have all students take the test now you know we don't strap kids to desks and you know force their arms to take exams and stuff like that and we respond to parents and try and work with them through the situation but there's no opt-out i think that's a fallacy that you know i'm glad you brought it up because that's there's not a formal opt out state doesn't permit that okay thank you for that clarification sure could i before we close can i just make one more comment and that that is just going back to the um the unbiased unconscious bias in schools the book um i did buy it and i think and i'm about a third

038of the way through um i just i do recommend that we as a board read it if you can get it it's um it's tough to get it takes a few months if you want the hardcover you can get it on kindle um but i i just think it's important that we we see um what's being proposed and and be a part of the conversation so that's all thanks faith uh i just had a comment uh actually i'm glad you mentioned that faith because uh even at the last quick community ann uh asked uh if we can also get some of that cert training or stuff that's relevant for us and as board members i've heard from everyone actually that uh we definitely want more training more education but the right education right there's so

039many resources out there on diversity equity inclusion um it could be my numbing of where to start so i know we're gonna work closely with marlene and make sure we're all bringing the same resources uh the only i can add is for board members uh if you the cave has a uh equity diversity and inclusion series of webinars you know that there are well should be free for us because we're part of their uh cave process but they're like hour-long sessions i was on one today and um i think if you take those in total i think it's four or five they're helpful um i'm not knocking cave the one i saw today was okay but it seemed to point back to circ and the things that circus doing so the point is any education

040we think we need we can certainly find it and get it done it's definitely helping conversation uh the only thing i would ask is if it's possible can we publish the slides we showed we showed earlier tonight on the test scores and the social entertainment update on the cps website on because as we all know we get questions on these topics and there's some really good things to talk about there uh more than we can share tonight so if we can make that available um they'll be happy to share the link to folks that ask for it another uh faith that's all i had i don't think there's anyone else with questions um if not i'm gonna move we'll move on to our finance committee report finance report mr grippo thank you mr chairman um

041as usual i will defer to mr maciana for the wonderful finance report thank you and good evening everyone i'm going to preface my report by saying i have no bad news tonight and some of it you might want to consider good news so the um the finance report for the month of january 31st which we did provide to the board members everything that we reported previously is is still on track you know that we're through seven months of the fiscal year we did receive approval for the coronavirus relief funds and we've submitted our request to get that funded which we are expecting imminently so the budget is holding you know very soundly at this point in time the only thing that i did want to let the board members know because things are tracking you

042know very well at this point that we increased the expenditure cap that we had on our non-payroll accounts from 40 to 60 percent and we're going to hold it there for the next couple of months but we do need to make you know start making some of the purchases or lining them up for year-end so we're in good shape right now with the finance report the medical benefits update i did want to share my screen on that and then i'll take questions on both but we did get the medical benefits report for the month of january as we expected claims um did come to a more normal level and hopefully you could see the screen uh jeff can you just acknowledge you see the screen i did i see it okay thank you so i

043know the board members are familiar with the report but we started the year with 2.8 million dollars in the reserve fund these are the monthly claims that i'm cursing over or cursoring over i should say and you can see that the first six months of the year as the board members know we were over a million dollars per month in claims but in january claims did drop to 735 000 for the month this is the beginning of the new hsa plan year so employees are just going to be meeting their deductibles over the next few months which helps bring the claim cost for the board of ed down you can see over here on the right that our trust fund balance actually went up thirty four thousand dollars this month part of that is because

044claims did drop and also uh just highlighting up near the top of the report we received seventy five thousand eight hundred fifty three dollars in stop loss reimbursements um that was up from thirty five thousand the prior month so you know the good news here and it's good it's not great our reserve fund balance is back over a million dollars it's a million four six nineteen assuming that claims normalized at eight hundred thousand a month that would give us 1.26 months worth of claim of balance as a claim reserve and then the lower portion of this report you could see that our claims were expected to be 800 000 a month you know on a year-to-date basis they're still a million 36 000 but it's better than um you know it was over the prior

045six months so hopefully that that trend continues and we can you know end the fiscal year you know with a a reasonable reserve balance the board members know that we did ask for it a substantial increase for next year's budget so that our contributions equal our expected claims for next year but that's the uh that's the good news on the medical benefits hopefully the um you know the rate of loss of reserve balance uh will improve from from here on out this year so um any questions on either the finance report or medical benefits i'll be glad to answer um i'm not i saw a comment from ann is that was that something you meant to type man no no comment at all okay very good i was just commenting that vin is it's perfectly

046acceptable to curse the medical dentals all things i agree was quite appropriate adam i had a question uh for instance jeff i i i believe if not mistaken a week or two ago maybe a little longer time seems to be flying by this year uh did the that were any discussions have a town council on the state of the medical benefits reserve and if there's any feedback on that yes i there was a meeting of the town council budget committee that i attended with sean kimball and gave the town council budget committee members an update on where we were on the board of ed side and and sean presented on the town side where they were you know both board of ed and town has experienced a pretty significant reduction in the reserve balance from

047the beginning of the year to um you know to the midpoint in the year and now now we're into january i did present to the budget committee some of the information that was shared as part of the budget deliberations this year so everybody i think on the budget committee appreciated having the heads up on on what to expect when the board of ed's budget is reviewed by the town council so you know we we answered several questions but i think that um there wasn't a shock there because sean had forewarned that we were both experiencing pretty significant claims this year great thanks ben that's all i had adam thanks tony um i have no real que well i guess my only question is so just to to reiterate the the reason that the the claims

048decreased so much was because it's just a new claims here and uh people are still under their deductible so far this year that's certainly i would i would guess it's the majority of the contributing factor it is exactly what we expected to see it's what we've seen in past years when you hit january and employees you know are basically paying for their claims out of pocket for the first if they're in to if they're in two person or family coverage the first four thousand dollars in claims they cover and if it's you know single coverage the first two thousand dollars in claims they cover so i think it's safe to say that uh because of the the claims breakdown that you showed us at our budget meetings that if these claims uh that were you

049know from last year if they're still on the books then we'll probably see a rise most likely even next this month in february we'll be able to see it as as quickly as that um i would say that february should be you know more in the january range than in the december range would be my guess and as we we talked about i mean there is an unpredictability of claims some what we saw the first part of this year were high cost claims and the point i think you're making adam is that some of those high cost claims if someone you know is in cancer treatment those claims will continue to come through so it's a combination of what's lingering for high cost claims you know combined with just routine uh claims that employees are

050now paying for so again i i think we hope for the best and we'll deal with uh with the months to come as they come right well no i just want to admit because i know that there was like 38 that were like more of the joint replacement yeah uh you know that those those are more one-off type you know maybe there's rehab involved and stuff but um that that's what i'm more you know interested to see if there's more joint replacements from different people you know moving forward or if that was just sort of like a you know just everyone thought it was all the right time over the summer to do something like that so you know it'll be interesting to see what happens yeah we'll keep tracking it and then you know

051i'll report i'll i'll look at that you know at the end of you know the first quarter you know we'll look at january february march as a group and see what we're seeing within the claims okay great um sir are there any other questions all right seeing none this uh oh faith go ahead um this is just i understand there's a lot of a lot that can happen between what the governor proposed last week and and what comes out of the you know what ultimately emerges but can you just generally speak to what you see in that budget and assuming we stay on you know get something similar to what um has been proposed what impact it's going to have on us well i mean the parts of the governor's budget that impact education directly

052you know outside of any legislation that's that's mandated right because there's two things that are happening the governor's presented its budget and the legislators are making new laws as far as the governor's budget the most important thing that's been done is educational cost sharing grant which cheshire receives about 9.3 million dollars per year that's intact in the governor's budget most of the other grants that i saw are also intact but the big one is certainly ecs so for the next two years um in the governor's proposed budget ecs will remain flat there was some controversy as to how that's going to happen whether or not the state will be using some of the esser funds to buoy the budget um i i don't know that that's a risk at this point or not it's just

053a something that's being discussed so yeah we'll be okay yeah i can tell you that yesterday the alliance districts and many of the larger uh municipalities across connecticut met with together because the state statute was basically uh slated to reduce uh ecs funding to many of the more affluent communities across connecticut and i think you know i can't get inside the head of the governor he hasn't articulated this but it seems as if perhaps when the federal money came in they kept the ecs money flat what that amounted to for cheshire is about four hundred thousand dollars over two years um that we wouldn't have received had he not done that uh on the flip side it cost waterbury about 20 million dollars so there is a lot of um angst across the state about

054how do you make that up and then if it is through the federal money i can't imagine in our budget trying to all right we're going to cover 10 million a year with federal money that's going to disappear in two years hot like how does the taxpayer in waterbury make that up two years from now it's uh unconscionable so i you know there really i think there's going to still be a lot of debate deliberation my dog seems quite unhappy about it but i think he'll get over it i i don't know but uh they're still working on it i wouldn't call it absolutely settled yet right thank you any other questions or comments okay seeing none thank you mr maciana and this will conclude the finance report thank you adam and everyone moving on

055to uh section three c which is planning committee update uh andrew thank you mr chair we had a planning committee meeting back on february the 4th um tim catherine van and myself where we heard the report from ecg engineering if you remember back a few months back um ecg was retained by us to take a look at all of the school facilities for possible rooftop and ground mount solar installations ecg did a presentation where they showed their first pass at where potential locations could be um not gonna get into all the details of me but most notably um they pointed out there's a three acre wooded site at cheshire high school um that could be down in the back towards the um towards the canal and the linear trail that could be essentially clear-cut for

056ground mount installation that could potentially generate 90 percent of the power required for treasure high school um after a little bit of debate and back and forth the committee thought that that idea was a little bit much to consider right now especially with school modernization moving forward um just balancing you know the environmental benefits of clear cutting three acres of forested property with the installation of solar and how that might be perceived and what the real benefit would be in the long run um ecg also identified other potential locations at doolittle school along one of the entrance drives as well as at highland elementary on the front portico as well as along some of the parking bays adjacent to the police department and they're gonna do further exploration and look into that for another pass

057in about two weeks sir week and a half or so we're gonna get another report from ecg about where um additional installations might be able to be integrated onto some of our school sites while also taking into mind the ever evolving coming school modernization plan for the district um we do have a deadline but there's going to be a application for the state between april and june and so we do have to make some decisions in order to get into that funding round and we're still moving forward towards that we don't have a project yet and before we do have a project we'll come to the share what our thoughts are on that happy to entertain any questions or tim catherine if you guys want to add anything time thanks andrew yeah just one thing

058so i follow lots of energy stuff and one um chatter that i i've heard is uh joe biden is thinking about shovel ready projects um so i think it would be behoove us to have to move forward a little bit on to continue moving forward on this um because who knows maybe there'll be something out there more funding and give us even you know a better deal on our electric rates thank you andrew sure ann yeah i think it um the committee has expressed this cautious proceeding forward which makes all the sense in the world to me because if there are places that are identified that that's great information to have but as we go to modernize our all of our buildings down the road over the years um part of what we will be

059doing is uh readjusting some of those the roots and the the outside portions of our school buildings and you know we shouldn't be doing anything before those plans are solidified down the road but um i think it's great that we're having the uh research done so that we are ready to go we have some idea of what we're looking at when when we do get to that place thank you catherine [Music] thanks andrew um yeah i think while we are all i think very much in favor of trying to figure out how to do this kind of project one of the things that was clear to me was you know it it will be hard to make decisions without having some sense of you know where the school modernization plan is going to come out

060and so where although we will be getting more information from i forgot the guy's name um we'll be getting more information thank you um you know i i don't know how quickly we'll feel comfortable as a board saying okay this will do x y z but if we can i mean that would be terrific to at least get things started so um i'm just sort of i guess emphasizing what ann just said really which is we you know things are so much up in the air right this moment that we're just gonna have to take it as we can and um work as quickly as we can to get the benefit of whatever funding is available so um that was not all that helpful but there you go thanks valuable nonetheless tim thanks andrew yeah

061just um i know i've said it to i'm i'm confident i've said this to the full board before but for the viewing public as well just some of my thoughts include with regard to the school modernization but our we're probably going to continue using the parcels that we use there could be some changes but we'll be using electricity at them and we're still going to have parking lots at them and what at those schools and what goes through my mind is carports solar carports so it's not necessarily rooftops where things could get adjusted but we will have parking we will use electricity and granted the footprint of any building could change but generally speaking these things will still exist and the other piece as catherine just alluded to is the incentives so there's state and

062federal incentives which based on current law will be ramping down over the next uh 12 to 24 months now i just pointed out that there's talk about different incentives coming in so it's fluid um but i definitely think you know moving forward as expeditiously as possible getting ourselves in the queue for any possible incentives while balancing it with the modernization committee i think it's the prudent thing to do so thank you any other questions or comments thank you thanks everyone thanks andrew uh moving on to the school monetization committee update been a lot of uh activity happening uh from that committee so andrew and ann if uh want to give us uh update i unfortunately missed last night's meeting i've been under the weather this week uh so i'm sure we'll get an update but

063uh you guys can kick it off sure um and would you like me to start yes i would okay so what i did here last night we um for those of you that watched those of you at home are here tonight um we had a spirited discussion last night about where we are and where we still need to go with the school modernization plan and i just kind of want to start by saying we're making big decisions for a long-term plan it's a big committee there's a lot on the table so what i did in preparation for tonight is i made kind of a cheat sheet of what the options are kind of breaking it down what the costs are and again this is my sheet this didn't come from coliers i did this on

064my own just to kind of give a flavor as to the two different options that are on the table now um and then i've got a little bit more to talk about after we go through this so i'm gonna i'm bad at this as we all know so i'm gonna share my screen and share i'm gonna bring up this word document can everybody see what's on my screen yes yes okay i can't which i don't like because i love body language and i can't get any of it off of the committee so i'm off the board so here we go so scenario 1a i'm going to go through this and then we can i'll switch back and then we could i'll take any questions so in scenario 1a phase 1 we'll see the creation of

065a new north end elementary school which is forecasted for 850 to 1 000 students that total project cost is about 62.6 million dollars with a 35.72 percent rate for reimbursement from the state of connecticut which will leave a local sheriff about 40 million dollars also in phase one at the same time running concurrently with the new elementary school construction will be the renovation of the existing dodd building which would become a 7-8 middle school as it is today just a gut renovation so renovate as new as i had to know in the document here that total project cost is about 85 million there's a 45 rebate or reimbursement from the state of connecticut higher for renovation versus the new construction as you can see there those are the two rates i pulled those out so

066local share there would be about 46 million dollars in phase one darcy and chapman schools would be closed and the darcy program would move to highland and renovations would be conducted at highland and those would be absorbed through some cip projects product would start in september of 2023 with estimated completion of september of 2025 so the total phase one project cost would be about 105 million to local share around 86 million phase two would see the renovation of norton elementary school for 34.5 million with a local share would be 18.7 million do a little school renovated for 42 million with the local share at 23 million dollars and then phase three again phase three would remain fluid as cheshire high school you know as we get forward towards that project it might be renovated as

067new or it might be completely reconstructed but the renovation cost would be about 194 million with a local share of 105 million total project cost of scenario 1a would be 419 million dollars with a local share cost of 253 million dollars what scenario 1a does not take into consideration is um project cost for hummuston for either relocating the central office or the programs at hummuston school and the renovation projects or all these products will take place for you know for norton or for doolittle or for highland school these these schools will be renovated with the students actually in place um just to project it out cheshire high school would be open for the spring or rather for the fall of completed by the spring of 2034. so that's scenario 1a should i go right into

068scenario 2a or do are there questions andrew just uh i'm sorry point of clarification for folks that may be tuning in that are new to all of this um so there's very cereal when he has these phases as they exist today from smc and they're still you know going through the details um but essentially both options you're going to show i mean the initial focus is going to be on phase 1a um when the town council on board of ed you know deliberates i mean look at the plan in total but for those watching uh if this goes referendum this fall the entire 250 million project cost won't be in the ballot more likely the first phase so i just want people getting scared from that you know big ticket item um yeah and that's

069exactly right um but what's important to see here is is that phase one initially was just a new north end elementary school and since our last meeting it went from a new north end elementary school with a full renovate as new dodd middle school so i just want to make sure that you know keeping the board up to date as the project continues to evolve so i'm going to go on to scenario 2a i'm sorry i ca and throw the cap and she had a question oh sorry i can't see anybody yeah no sorry andrew um if you go back to one a the renovations of do little oh sorry didn't mean no no innovation of doolittle and norton are those renovated as new those are renovated okay i just wanted to clarify that okay

070thank you jordan okay so scenario 2a would be the creation of a new 68 middle school with a total project cost of 130 million that local share would be about 83 million and concurrently with the new middle school construction would be a new chapman elementary school on the chapman property which again i'm going to get into a redistricting conversation quickly after this which would be it's projected for about a 500 student occupancy with the total construction cost there of about 33 million with the local cost at 21 million both schools are slated to open for the september 2025. darcy school would close highland receive renovations through cip um dye would remain in swing space allowing other buildings to be renovated while they were empty so the total phase one project cost would be about 163

071million 200 000 with a local share of 104 904 phase two again as tony pointed out these phase phases are subject to change doolittle and norton would both be renovated as new um you can see the numbers there in front of you and then phase three again would see the renovation of cheshire high school and or the recreation of cheshire high school depending on where we are at that time total project cost would be about 439 million with the local share of 274 million um so the delta between option 1a and 2a is approximately 20 million dollars with 2a being the more costly of the two options so questions before i get on to next steps right now catherine okay sorry maybe you're going to get to this but has the committee i was i

072watched the meeting from last night almost the whole thing but i wasn't getting a sense that the committee is yet sort of focused on one option or the other and so is the idea that both of these options will be coming to the board and the town council or am i getting too far ahead of myself here no no that's a great it's a great question so no we have not these are just as they are as of yesterday both of these options are still under refinement and review um and if i could i just i'll just get into it so what's happening now is is milo and mcbroom who's now known as slr for those of you watching um they are looking at a redistricting study based on the two options as proposed so

073what that means is we did an enrollment study and now we're going to look at what the redistricting study is and so there are two very different things and what the redistricting study is going to show is is how many actual bodies will be in each of the school buildings um so what that's going to do is it's going to give us a final option or final understanding as to how many students will be at highland elementary school how many students will need to go into the new elementary school if that's going to be the route that we're going to go and how many students will remain um district-wide and all the other school buildings so that's a valuable piece of information that we need we won't have that information until the end of next

074week um so i guess we'll just keep going and let you all know that one of the motions that was made at the school modernization committee meeting last night is to ask the town council for an extension of our march first deadline um to june 1st in order to bring the presentation to both the town council and to the board of education for final review we all felt that it was prudent for that we need a little bit more time in order to really take everything into consideration refine the numbers refine the plans look at the redistricting submit the redistricting potential study to the board of education for review and come up with the best plan possible additional questions yeah uh i'm sorry adam andrew ann thank you um there is so much to digest

075here this is different from even the last time you presented um so if i'm understanding it looks like in one a that in phase one that the smc voted on and all agreed that on top of a new elementary school that there would be a full renovation of dodd is that is that my understanding yes yes okay um and that it looks like and so i'm guessing maybe this is why smc has decided to extend their deadline or ask for an extensions you have cost for cip for highland but there's no number and it also looks like that homiston is going to remain open and not be included in any kind of new structure in this phase not in phase one no it was it was agreed that we would we would pull hummuston out

076of phase one okay um and then in the excuse me and then in the section second option you're building a new middle school um and and of course just for everyone that's watching at home the the the problem we're trying to solve is a population increase in the elementary school and so you're building a new sixth rate middle school so that alone will that solve the population problem by removing all the sixth grades from the elementary school no no it will not not for the full enrollment projected for the 20 um for the 2029 school year so this is all based on the final of the 2028-2029 school year which is the final enrollment projection numbers okay and school has to be enlarged one of the elementary schools has to be enlarged in order to

077grab it's about 200 additional students the if you built a new elementary school at least preliminarily you're feeling like that would be able to absorb the elementary school population bump yes and that's why if you look from my presentation last time to this presentation it went from a 700 student elementary school to now it's about 850 to 1 000 students it's and now compared to highland is that comparable or larger i'm not sure i think highland's about 8.25 so it's roughly the same that correct yeah that's that's bigger than highland bigger yeah andrew just for a second uh when you're not sharing your document you're sharing your google uh tiled view of everybody just yeah that's how i can see you guys i know i get it i get it i have to be able

078to see people it drives me nuts that's okay uh okay that's that's it for now thank you okay can i just can i just add to clarify something that adam is getting at so where that falls is that in the scenario 2a where those extra elementary kids that you are alluding to and that andrew was talking about that happens with the chapman school project that will include more elementary students if we build a new chapman on the same property we can increase the number of students that are going in there yeah and if i build on that before i get to tim uh so if the board remembers when the modernization committee ranked and graded all of the seven or eight other options were a lot more if you remember the ranking um on the

079categories drop that down to about four or five and then from there down to three now down to these two but in every one of those scenarios there were a lot more phases so if you look what when andrew's showing now in phase 2a there were more than three phases the new middle school was its own phase one i think chapman was in phase two and i and i from wrong and andrew i think after looking at all their own projections and timelines and other things i think the the committee or colliers or someone decided probably best to do these projects in parallel the the new sixth grade middle school and chapman school who ann just talked about to get the totality of addressing the enrollment crunch is that correct is that one of the

080reasons why at least those two were yes sorry about that tony and i think part of it also is these two scenarios uh are parallel in that they they take care of the whole enrollment issue that we're going to have at the elementary level and so they both include all of the things that we need to do to get to taking care of elementary enrollment increases up through tell me 29 20 28 29 yes and the same for scenario 1a right so we look at phase one there that's what i mean they're parallel these two scenarios you can compare as apples to apples yep awesome thank you guys uh tim you're up thanks tony thank you andrew um yeah and and i realized these questions could go off on a tangent that's not my intent

081i'm just trying to keep i'm hoping for relatively short answers just to keep the meeting going um so in general you know i the school i know best my alma mater and also my kids norton it seems okay to me what is renovated as new is there an easy answer oh yeah i mean i don't know if ann or andrew or tony analogy i've used with some of the ptos is like a capital improvement project would be like taking your kitchen and pulling out the dishwasher stove and fridge replacing those you know major utility items um and you know it's it's not necessarily addressing the paint your what um a renovate is new is is basically you're doing the cabinets the counters the you know you're bringing it up to speed you're keeping the bones

082but um fully updated okay now i get that i mean very high level you know comparison yeah no no no you argue that or yeah no it's tim just picture they're taking the building and taking everything from the inside walls and demoing it and replacing it as new and also there's there is the ability for some small additions and alterations to the actual structure of the building within that that plan so you'd get a brand new school essentially with out building a new school okay i mean i i can understand that i can understand that jeff i appreciate the i appreciate the analogy and i'll say it bluntly is that i don't see a lot of people knocking down their homes in cheshire i do see renovations i mean with kovit i mean i think

083the booming industry is home renovation uh so i can i can appreciate that and i imagine a lot of people in town can appreciate or yeah better appreciate that than let's take a wrecking ball to the buildings and just start over from start over new yeah i think the difference is that most people aren't adding 10 people to their family either over the course of and that's what we're seeing in terms of the enrollment increase so you know really in terms of knocking down buildings what we're trying to do is accomplish two goals at least at chapman the the amount of money it'd take to renovate that building versus building one slightly larger and cutting off the you know addressing the enrollment issue is relatively nominal you know it would just not make sense to

084renovate that facility when you could build a new one and add more space for additional students alleviating some of the enrollment pressure for not much more money it just doesn't make sense uh economically the dodd issue is also alleviating the pressures of enrollment by including sixth grade in it also fully updates uh you know provides a brand new school facility for all parts of town in about 25 of our student population three grades worth of of kids so you know that's it on top of that it opens up dodd for future swing space when we do want to renovate uh it's safer and cheaper to do so with dot is swing space than trying to renovate with students in the building the final i think component to this that you know we've talked about probably

085over the last seven years is that it also provides a location for central office hummus thin and a myriad of other if we choose to do that or you could just knock down parts of the dodd building um you know whenever 15 years out when everything else is complete or 20 years out or whatever the case may be and um with regard to so you said you said a minute ago that uh existing chapman what is that uh 300 kids or something and you would write in the proposal would be a new school for 500 kids those would be somewhere near cost parity and the driving factors as i understand it is you know well age of the school i'm guessing asbestos ada issues you'd have to remediate all these things that would be highly

086expensive right and to do new construction could just make more sense for that site exactly right so you know slapping an elevator shaft into chapman in the building that it is it just it's not economically it's it would be super expensive to do that almost cheaper to just build a new one um that's part of the the consideration there yeah on the property tim could be built while that school is still occupied right be able to hear the old chapman down and use that space for parking and field facilities and with regard to that because redistricting is not something that many people would look forward to at least i don't think um would it be possible to do say 500 kids there and then do with i mean i've heard numerous times norton and doolittle

087have space and do additions at those two schools i'm just curious like has that been discussed by the smc yeah and that that's where where andrew was talking about if you look at a new building is that that you could have a new building someplace else um with a massive you know massive building which i really wouldn't recommend right now we have 766 kids at highland it's i want to say like the fourth or fifth largest elementary school in connecticut um wow you know you that kind of puts it in perspective there are boatload elementary schools in connecticut and that's one of the biggest um so really that sweet spot i would say is 600 or smaller um and that's what we have it doolittle and norton so adding on to those you really i

088don't wanna i mean from a um an econo or an academic perspective don't wanna necessarily bloat those buildings uh traffic is a beast already at norton in order to accommodate a lot more students that you basically have to move the building i i don't know and that's what they've talked about you build a new norton that's much larger at the rear of the property if you're doing that now you're knocking down trees back there and not making a lot of friends in the neighborhood would be my guess um by doing so so i mean there it's every one of these is sophisticated i think school boards and in communities across connecticut face a headache when they try and create you know try and build a new building or they try and renovate a new building

089we're right now exploring eight buildings at one time and hence the uber migraine that andrew kind of referenced that was last night's meeting so you know it is very sophisticated but we we've collected not not anybody in these meetings it's it's happened over numer numerous years we're we're kind of painted into a bit of a dark corner and so what we're trying to just figure out is what is that first phase that we could do that will absolve the or at least you know to a certain extent ameliorate the the issue that's the enrollment at the elementary grades and then we gotta move past that because that's a pressing issue and and i say it when our pto meetings my fear is these trailers outside it you know doolittle and kids going outside for classes

090on a day like today where you do that at norton already and that's bad enough um it's their eyesores they're expensive for extended periods of time if we're gonna as a community invest in right-sizing schools i'd much rather do it the right way and much more economically uh intelligent than renting trailers yeah no i i i don't like trailers at all um but i just so this whole this conversation i think probably just changed andrew what you were saying last night where it jumped from like 700 up to a thousand um and i'm just curious has the smc which just crossed my mind is 500 to chapman totally new school argument that jeff just made it makes sense to me uh and then i don't know we have a piece of property and we put

091in a whole new elementary school three or four hundred i'm a huge believer in neighborhood elementary schools has that been a topic discussed by the smc at all you're saying a new middle sixth grade middle school in two new elementary schools no no no all i'm talking i've skipped the middle school entirely i'm just thinking looking at that thousand person thousand student number that you put up there 500 to chapman and then i don't know eriso farms a small elementary school over there has that been i mean now that we're up to a thousand has the smc looked at something like that you know the first time that a thousand student elementary school was talked about was last night okay the first time and um something i want to i'm in here with before so

092i think adam had his hand up for a question a few minutes ago is uh you know the smc coney goes so far right so they're they're not uh nor should they uh determine how many kids should be in this school and how that impacts education uh that's our role i mean that's actually superintendents right and we're gonna talk about that those scenarios when we get them from the smc but they certainly are looking at maximizing the value of these dollars and i think that's probably what's driving the large elementary school um but yeah tim it's uh that i didn't realize again i i'll watch the meeting tomorrow night when i get back home from work uh but yeah that definitely changed last night and um something i want to bring up too and and

093andrew and you guys i got more to talk about so you someone mentioned asked uh what options are coming from the smc we don't know yet uh you know i'm assuming we'll get two yeah i would imagine um because we're not just looking at this too it's also town council right so they're looking for an option or options and you know maybe it is these two i'm sure it'll evolve as uh collier's in slr gets the information back to smc whether it's one or both um or some other variation um we need to do our due diligence on educational programming specs and have deeper discussions on these topics especially what jeff bought out with the size of the school redistricting concerns and you know we have to get parental input and feedback so i uh

094i think smc needs to push forward as it's doing take the extra time get the options refined whatever they are the only thing i would would say is and i said this at ssc meetings in the past all the time is and now i'm almost changed there is no consensus on this board uh of anyone of uh of being vehemently against any one of these options right now so if there was something on the table that is just a non-starter for us as a whole you know they would know about it and to the best of my knowledge right now both of these options in a current form while they're still being refined they're still viable options if they come to us we'll discuss them and figure which one makes the most sense but you

095know if there is a we're not going to vote on this obviously but there's a consensus that one or both of these is not going to work uh you know we were told smc a long time ago so i'm curious to see what comes back from slr that data is going to help us a lot and uh i think i was talking to someone today it might have been adam that or andrew that you know we may have to wait for the entire report from snc to deliberations if the data from slr comes back by march and we get our hands on that you know maybe we can give some them some input uh before they finalize their report but uh these are still a work in progress although they're they're getting i guess more

096refined as as we get closer that's when i put that out there before we go on i'd like to respond to something that tim mentioned about um just renovating dodd as a seven building a new chapman that's bigger and building another elementary school for the other say first of all i'm going to go out on a limb and say yes the smc has entertained every single scenario that you can imagine at least it feels that way but tim one of the things that that what you just proposed does is something that we are really trying to go in the opposite direction of we're trying to decrease buildings not increase buildings because of the cost of maintenance after you have the more buildings that you have to maintain and um have personnel involved in the more

097expensive it is so it's always sort of it's always been much more to the forefront of our thinking of taking the eight buildings down to seven six not to um take eight buildings to eight or nine even so one of the things we're trying to do is take the sheer numbers down at least by one or two buildings good point and i'm going to turn it back to a couple folks online line on that note uh andrew and phase one a with the new elementary school does phase one does that do you have a share line initially i forgot i don't have anything say again so which which plan takes more buildings offline 1a okay thank you uh let's go uh adam was up about 15 minutes ago so adam catherine tim and then faith

098sorry thank you um so so just so when i'm watching along with smc as i normally do um i just want to have this in my head so it looks like for a scenario 1a the assumptions are that you'll you would construct a new elementary school whether it's 900 students or 700 or whatever the the number is settled upon because that was a bit of a surprise last night um and it's also assumed that the that dodd can handle the population bump without any other additions to the space because it sounds like if you renovate dodd it's it's to upgrade labs and classroom space or whatever but it's the space itself which if i recall in the past has held upwards of 900 students could handle a the population bump without any major square footage

099additions that is that the assumption that's being made in 1a yes that was a question tim actually had asked that question um and i missed that i'm sorry no no no not tonight not tonight had been asked previously and we did get that back from colliers okay uh if i could just say in terms of dodd in the enrollment because i was there at the peak and it was um a rough couple of years but it it you know we managed it right the difference now is that we have added some special education programming there that has taken up a few classrooms so um we couldn't get to that capacity that we had before adam but even looking at that um slr my loan whatever projections we should be okay and i think the difference

100is right now we were looking at capacity uh how much could we how many students like what's the capacity of the district and then what's the total enrollment at the elementary level and i think this was one of the things that was eaten at me as i tried to look at the um enrollment in each of the buildings so what's the total we were looking at what's the total enrollment at the elementary level what slr is doing right now is now focusing in a little bit tighter so where do these students live and what school would they be currently attending then they're going to look at you know like eight years out and then they're going to look at all right well if the numbers don't meet the capacity how many kids would we have

101to shift from school a to school b in order to make the enrollments and the capacities work over the course of an eight year period so it is taking it from up here where we're only worried about whole all schools totality enrollment now we're looking at individual schools enrollment and we're getting that much more of a granular view and i'm looking forward to seeing that um but it would have you know i think some people expressed it would have been nice to have a week and a half ago you know we're still not settled on scenarios so i think it's it's a tough spot and when um slr is determining this are they assuming like 18 kids a class or or 22 kids of class or are they are they using our assumed averages that

102are historical averages um and not like maximum capacity of classroom right where they're they're trying yeah they actually you know they're right about where we were in terms of average our historical enrollment and that's a great question because we don't want them assuming 32 kids in a fifth grade class you know no we would never do that so yeah they're they're close very close to our our numbers and so that 900 number for the new new elementary school isn't solid yet because we don't really know what the shift would be north we don't know exactly exactly yeah yeah okay exactly right um okay i'm good thanks uh catherine you had your hand up earlier yes thank you tony um so i think uh my question goes more to the process that we're going to undertake

103as a board and what time frame we're expecting that to you know i'm getting a little confused now as to um what the steps are going to be so assuming that a present you know the options are presented to the board on i i don't even know when but let's just say april first just to pick a day right um what is our plan for analyzing you know and dealing with the process that we have to go through do we have that do we understand because what we don't want to do is is like have it bogged down with us however we also want to have the time and the plan for okay these are the things that we're going to have to accomplish and this is how we're going to accomplish it and they'll

104just chime in and andrew and ann i think i'm getting an update more on that june timeline and what that means uh for this and as well as what may happen in the fall but uh you know that smc is fully you know where just talked about it quite a bit as well as the three of us that you know we're waiting for it out bringing the whole package from the smc right the cost breakdown et cetera we're going to redistribute thing if i from earlier last time we went through um you know some period of looking educational specs for programming a sixth grade middle school we we talked about it as a board uh quite a bit um and that process i don't think it took too long because there was only one really

105one scenario that we chose to move forward with so i i and jeff's going to talk about i think what what he and his team need to do right to come up with specs for these options and the timeline for that we as a board need to discuss that and make sure that we agree with whatever those specs are what could be the best fit with the administration and so we have a series of meetings on that but once we agree to some option and this is where i need jeff and andrew or maybe vinda to correct me on this um and by the way to further muddy this the town council is also getting a report and they're gonna be going through their analysis you know definitely looking at value the cost and what

106town could afford etc and we're gonna coalesce right so hopefully uh you know what we decide to do you know they can support but nonetheless um up until last night as i understand that you know we would have to have three readings of i believe the education specs you know have a motion approved uh because before it when the grant application is submitted that has to be in there uh not different that we plan to do last time five five years ago um but you know we can't speak to what jeff and his team have to do to prepare those specs for us to review so that being said jeff you want to talk a little bit about that yeah i i would add that um we talked briefly with colliers today uh ben and

107i spoke with chuck about you know kind of nailing down next steps and one of the things that you know he had thrown out and jen bates and chuck neth were on the call too was considering the new town attorney who has a lot of experience with ocr oscgr excuse me office of civil rights oscgr the construction grants but uh you know they can help kind of uh create like identify what the path that absolutely has to happen is i also know that catherine was only throwing out april fool's day as a freudian uh promotion that i i work here but it but tony spot on that when we do identify a you know path we then have to put together uh a formal town committee that's the school-built construction committee we have to do

108the ed specs that like tony said we have to have approved at the board level and so there's a very detailed protocol once it gets finalized but i think you're kind of asking like just to give the initial blessing before it goes to town council like what do we have to do and i i think there is still a little bit of gray around that and that you know we're working on trying to make clearer but timing right catholic okay can i say can i speak to that because please i am really optimistic that we do not need till june first to get this proposal to the board of ed and to the town council call me crazy um but that was um that proposal was with the caveat that we can certainly complete this

109earlier than that deadline but we don't want to have to go back again and ask for another extension so i'm i'm really hopeful and i'm very optimistic that well i just want to be clear that initially it was we needed to get to june 30th in order to submit to the state project so that was that was our deadline that was what was you know we're falling back into that schedule if we don't make the june 30th we can still have a project that is reviewed by the town by the town council by the board of education and could still go to referendum this coming november for vote by the town at that point we could then start the design phase for the school or for whatever it is that we're going to be doing

110with modernization and then submit the project june of 2022 to the state what that risk would be to the community would be whatever those architectural costs are if the state doesn't approve the project in june of 2022. however if we do go in june of 22 with the project that's been approved by referendum vetted by the board of education vetted by the town council supported by the local pac and ptas and everybody else that we would go in with that strong of an application whereas on june 30th of 2022 the project could get put on the list for funding and green light and we'll already have the design done it will be that much further along the process so the actual opening of the school date will not change with this extension if it does

111go to referendum this year 2020. okay does that make sense that makes perfect sense okay and that's like the clearest explanation that i've heard so that's really helpful but where where's the date by which everything has to be finalized in order to be able to go to referendum well if arnett was here i'd ask her but i'm not i i don't i mean there's some period of time i mean it's like at least two months if not longer right to send something to referendum it's it's got to be like around september 15th or something it's not a full two months it might be oh it isn't okay yeah because we have i know i've been in capital budget meetings it went like as late as like the 7th or 8th of september or something it's

112you can't you can't go in much later than that but i think that that's irrelevant at least that's what it was you know in fact it was several years ago i'll shoot an email out to uh jen and team tonight asking about that for clarity from internet and so what i was worried about until uh well until last night is um you know we initially were going to get something in early march and pran's point there's still hope we'll get something soon on june 1st i agree with her on that um and then you know we have rest of march april may to do what we need to do and vet this process and now you know it's it sounds like enough time in there um to hit that original june 30th with this plan

113you know it we're not constrained to get everything done in four weeks if june first was the date we finally got everything and had a button of stuff up so it seems to me like the june the the current plan gives us more flexibility and room to vet this you know even if the the grant application is not ready which i think is a good idea um but i think what we need to get from colliers i know chuck's work warrington's work on this too is uh once smc does its work what does the board have at noon by when right so we gotta bet sometimes because i rather have uh right i think backwards from and make sure we can hit it and i you know i guess what i was trying to sort

114of think about was are there things that we could start doing now even though we don't even as these words are coming out of my mouth and now i think oh but no there isn't okay you're waiting on us that's all there is to it but if there are two options if we knew never mind okay oh go ahead catherine all i'm trying to say soon are there certain things that we could do that would help us be in a position and what i think tony what you were saying it probably does solve that problem you know let's just figure out you know what it is that we're going to have to do and then to the extent we could get anything ready to go or something you know we'll just be in that much

115better shape so um but we do we do have catherine we do have ed specks for a sixth has been done already yeah it could be repurposed i'm sure no that's a good point i think there are some things we can do um while we get a final report right so the costs are being hardened as we speak the scenarios are being refined still we know space requirements we're going to get the um when i say we both the smc border there we're going to get the detailed report from slr that andrew and we're talking about we could slowly start chewing that sooner than later because and again i i want to turn it over to the folks but you know if we see that reaching interesting study and you know jeff has a visceral

116reaction to again just by example some part of it and and we don't if we see an impact on the options as a non-starter that'd be some good information for the committee to have if that happens but i think you know so there's some things we can review um once agency is ready to release those things to us now you know we'll talk with the giant chuck about that but i would say in a couple weeks you know by march 1st we'll get a lot more detail from smc where they are and we could better talk about that in the meantime uh andrew uh jeff and i've been kicking around hey you know what planning start gearing up for so be on the lookout for a meeting on that next week or two but yeah

117if the board has any ideas by the way on uh some of these things that get started sooner and andrew let them know that let the committee know myself but i'm gonna link go back uh faith you had your hand up a long time ago so faith and then tim i'm sorry faith i'll shut up thanks now i appreciate it and um you know what i do want to say ann and andrew and everybody tony everybody on that committee i i confess i observe those meetings i can't say i follow them because they are they're going to keep my mind young if i try to figure out everything that's going on in them that being said they are changing constantly and and so that is a little alarming and i am glad you're going to

118for the june 1st and i'm also glad that we're going to get a redistrict redistricting proposal um because i couldn't even begin to figure that out and one based on hard data um i do agree with catherine on we got it the the big question we're gonna get plans one that could fundamentally change the way we educate our kids and that is do we go to the sixth through eighth i don't think we all know we don't have a consensus yet and i want to have data um when we make that decision and i don't it would be most unfortunate that if smc came out with a sixth or eight and the majority of the board said no um what do we do then so i i'm with catherine the faster we can start dealing

119especially with that particular issue um it could save a lot of heartache um i just so i don't know how we go about doing it where do we find the time in the calendar um i just really kind of can't emphasize enough that that is a question that we as a board that is our responsibility and we have to answer it um and provide guidance to the provide guidance to the smc um so jeff has jeff has given us a lot of information on six through eight middle school yeah correct the last plan and and um we you know it's a i i'm gonna say it's a new board um i would like to see it i yeah my point is i i think it's readily available i i don't think i've been conducting doesn't

120seem to be a huge problem to me to get that information to you right and what's new is the the other option 1a within the elementary school and you know the other the other buildings and that's going to materialize and so anyway listen if we want to start talking about the sixth grade middle school in more detail we certainly can uh knowing there's more data coming i have no problems with that and you know uh i don't think that board does either in faith uh you know as far as time you know i don't want to belittle you know make this oversimplify this march april and may are kind of they're always always busy as a board but there's there's more in that schedule for us certainly to have dedicated meanings for this so we

121can certainly do that and i fully understand that i mean we could probably settle this in a single meeting um but to go back to you know the sixth or eighth plan the the data and i read it um it was years ago you know a couple years ago that i read it i understand the data is out there but it was data to support the six through eight i would like to see objective data on maintaining a junior high school of seventh and eighth um and so i can make an educated comparison or educated decision one way or the other uh and i don't i may be the only one i don't know i maybe there are others on the board who want to hear it as well so i just throw it out

122i i want to just clarify real quick if i could and then this is the long time middle school educator in me that we run a middle school a junior high school is more of a um like it sounds where we have math departments and english departments and kids move we use a middle school uh methodology which is very uh intimate in its its design that we put students together on teams that are roughly 100 students each with an english math science and social studies teacher that that way they are with that cluster of 100 and don't really venture outside of that except for lunch where they would integrate with another team and see their friends that they went to elementary school with it's only same grade level though so seventh graders are having lunch

123with seventh graders another time they may be cross-teamed is in a world language class so if you're taking latin chances are there are kids in other teams in that latin class or you know their specials like art or pe or something um so it's designed to be very uh it's a it's a small graduation step up from developmentally from an elementary school to a middle school we appreciate it so much that we when i was high school principal and i know mary has looked at this too the idea of the high school equivalent of that sort of teaming is a transition for ninth graders called academies so um and it will just be and i know you didn't mean to make it but i want to be clear that we didn't just go fishing for

124what data would sell a six through eight middle school and only you know filter it that way or something like that we you know we put out objective data from objective sources and what you'll find is somebody who's looked at this a lot over the course of a long time go dating back to when i was on the new england league of middle schools board of directors the you know there's not wild advantages either way there's not wild disadvantages not wild you know you're talking within this swath not that swath and um you know our teachers because of the way curriculum is written often encompassing six through eight together and i think their their response was when we met with them and and did the school modernization visits that they felt that six through eight

125middle schools were developmentally advantageous for sixth graders and that's what our sixth grade teacher said so you know i don't know if you would consider that objective or subjective data it's not research but it's um objective opinions of um professionals in our community so i but certainly i will gather information and share it with the board um either some of the stuff older stuff and i'll look for newer stuff too thank you sure thanks faith uh tim and then adam thanks tony yeah uh faith thanks for that and jeff thank you too i'd like to see that information as well i i'm open like tony said i mean i'm open to any of the options brought forward by the smc but speaking as a parent i i want my kids to be together as long

126as they can in in elementary school um so i i i mean i'd prefer uh looking at the elementary schools rather than building a new sixth to rate school um going back i can't walk away from this new thousand student number that we just got and so i just um in response to the comment you had made before ann about the cost reductions i totally appreciate that i think that's important you know but at the same time so that what just popped into my head was a new chapman and then i mentioned it before you do an elementary school over at uh say to risco farms not a risk of farms but that property at the corner of jarvis and marion i think um which is owned by the town i say this for the

127public who's watching um so we wouldn't really have to worry about obtaining the property or anything like that but you know off the top of my head darcy could be closed it could be moved down to there it could be redistributed in other places i mean you can still close the school hummus then you know you could do something with the administrative offices i'm not sure that the idea that popped in my head because of this new thousand student number that we got last night that the town got last night i don't think that yeah my idea is um should be precluded because we don't get the cost reductions and i don't want to like change off in some new course but frankly we just got really really different data that's the first time i

128saw it interested it's the first time so um i just i i gotta put that out there because i'm really not that favorable to a six through eight program though i am open to i am happy to look at the the data that you're talking about jeff but i i just feel like that was a it's a bit of a game changer right now in my mind and it's not i don't know where did the thousand number come from how did it pop up to that number do we know because i mean i'll say let me say this i got sold on the projected student enrollment increase okay i've been doing i've been trying to do my research i i accept it um even though i had doubts or questions i should say you know

129a few months ago but i worked through it it makes sense to me but this thousand there's got to be a basis for it what is it does anybody know right now andrew we're going to chime in on that yeah i just wanted like i think you let's just wait for the report to come out in two weeks okay i'm not i'm not trying to minimize what you're saying no no no no no it's a range and there's you know there's a lot of reconfigurations that are going on and looking at all the different options in the numbers okay okay the someone on the smc it might have been chuck north a couple weeks ago asked you know why not do a bigger somewhat i don't want to put it someone asked why not do

130a bigger new elementary school i think at least have some room for for growth i don't think that's what drove it um i that is a different number and i we saw jeff's response earlier you know about the ideal on three school sizes right you know that would be a very large school i think the initial you know with these schools comparable in size to highland um but again i reserve judgement those we do want to see that data come back and see if that changes anything so so i'll say tim you know hang on we'll get the answers in two weeks and you'll have exact enrollment numbers per school building tim even better okay thank you uh adam thank you um so you know to go on that 900 school thing i want to

131when chuck was talking about that i could have sworn he was trying to say that he was he wanted to go to three elementary schools which which is what inflated the number that so he was thinking you were building it behind behind norton you're destroying norton i'm sorry um raising norton and also raising chapman thereby going to three elementary schools and i think i don't know anyway we'll wait for that report that's great um but there's there seems to be two separate problems that we need to consider um and that's do we want to go to a 608 middle school or are we solving for an elementary school population bump because one option seems to solve a school population bump and the other option a new middle school is building a new middle school for

132another 40 million dollars so i think that's maybe two distinct problems because if when this smc started we weren't anticipating a massive elementary school population bump we were debating sixth grade middle school or new high school and that's what we were thinking about not a new elementary school that came about through the process of discovery and so it you know it it could be i mean there's a big difference in the in the price tag here and if if it's a matter of what's best for for the schools is is it just solving elementary school problem or is it or is it uh going to the sixth through eight model because there's there's it's a it technically solves the population bump but one also transforms the the uh the uh educational culture of of our

133school system and so it's quite a it's quite a big difference between the two plans when you think about it that way and so what what are we really trying to solve and and maybe that's where the smc is getting a little confused themselves is uh they're they're they're trying to solve the problem with coming at it from two different directions and one is a lot more expensive than the other and so it's a matter of what are you committing to so i i just wanted to say that thank you yeah from a cost perspective that's one dimension right it's an important dimension right because that's a huge factor on the entire town right so remember as a board of education and i i'm preaching to the choir here i know but so we have

134to weigh a lot of things right the there's the the value of these proposals both from you know a cost perspective and i know i i know just knowing the folks in the board of ed that you know you know we so must believe that you know it comes to finances it's not our responsibility it's really that the town's responsibility and and yes that then they arrest the town to figure out what what can be borrowed and paid for and all that but obviously we want to make sure we're getting the best bang for the buck right so we're gonna look at cost it's not the only dimension though right we and um the educational programming right because it's moderation of buildings which leads to you know uh lack of a bad analogy modernization of

135our programming so there's educational value of these options and there's a short and long term things are tackling and i think adam you're right and initially you know i mean we knew enrollment was gonna climb we knew that back in 2016 but not the extent that we saw it now so that's new so remember these plans are both trying to solve for the short term and the whole long-term perspective right it's it's not all going to happen in one year right so i think what am is saying is you know um trying to solve your own from two different approaches i think that's one thing but also trying to get the most bang for the buck the most um students uh impacted in a positive way by the first option so there's a lot of

136things we got to talk through i don't know how um we help smc narrow that down until this data comes back and actual class sizes i think that's going to be a good starter for us but i don't know any other members want to talk about that i mean there's there's there's more to it than gross cost um for us but that's certainly i just wanna if i could point out i've received some communication from um jen bates from the chair of smc specifically to um tim's question there's if we stay with the pre-k through six model for the schools there's a total of two thousand seven hundred and eleven students eight hundred and fourteen at highland five hundred and forty-one at doolittle and 526 at norton i'm sorry 426 at norton if we close

137chapman school that difference between the projected total max enrollment and chapman is 930 students so there's your thousand student in elementary school that's staying with the seventh and eighth middle school and also that we would have to have something for referendum by the end of august catherine oh thank you thank you thank you jen um am i up next or did i jump the line okay so to me i i can't even fathom a thousand student elementary school it's like in my view that's that's an off the table don't even bother to bring it but um that's just me you know and i but i think if if there is a consensus among the board and i realize that we're you know we're i'm making the statement maybe without all of the data that i

138need but i'm pretty sure that that's just too big of an elementary school and um so i i don't know what to do with that you know i think we do need to give feedback to the smc to the extent that we are having these kinds of uh visceral reactions of some sort you know um that which is why i think maybe we do need to have board discussions um maybe parallel to what you know more active discussions maybe at this point because i don't think it's fair at all for for the smc to do like the time i mean the herculean work that they're doing i mean which is by the way you guys phenomenal i you know i just i'm so impressed with the amount of work that's being done um but i

139don't want a plan to come to us and and we we already have determined that that should never you know that shouldn't be on the table at all so um but of course i'm only one person and i'm just saying that we're not having those kinds of conversations you know and i i feel like we're being a teensy bit too passive in in not maybe you know engaging in this conversation more actively that's all yeah i i yeah well certainly this elementary school number is uh is a big change it was up until this week you know we were you know assuming the new elderly school would be you know reasonable in size and that's changed and i understand the data i'll tell you for me if it does turn out that it is going

140to be a 930 plus person school i have a big problem with that because i i need to understand what the impact is going to be um to our students and school that size of programming and logistics and the building location and traffic and it's it's a major we never had an elementary school that large uh that full and uh i know parents are gonna have a visceral reaction to that as too right because even in the last plan you know the new sixth grade middle school well there was certainly a lot of people in favor you know a lot of parents came out and are concerned about having a large school like that with sixth graders in their um big population you know i'm sure you have similar concerns with a big elementary school

141and you know that's someone moved to earlier what the ideal sizes are so you know if that data comes back and it turns out that that is indeed a number and we believe it's a non-starter i think that smc should know and so i think what we should do catherine is uh yeah we've been operating under hey let's wait for the final report and get going although i know we've been i think in lightest information we could certainly talk about it so uh we'll work to get a board meeting uh quarterback meeting of the whole plan very soon at least talk about six through eight and let's talk about the large elementary school concept and you know when jeff is ready and marlene and team if they want to bring some data around that that

142we can chew on to see what the impact would be that's what they're having discussion i agree with you catherine if we can get them some deals sooner than later it's going to help them immensely so thank you for for raising that any other comment from the board before i go back to the questions uh i do have one comment or a question um did the smc examine so you know let's just talk about costs right six to eight hundred twenty million or if it was more than that i don't know uh with the new chapman so now we're staring down the barrel of 160 million um and it also looked like if you were to build new elementary schools they came in around 40 million per school ish 40 or 50 million per school

143before um reimbursement so had the option been looked at to build like two or three new smaller schools because you could technically build three smaller schools for less money than one large middle school a large elementary school and solve your problems of population and population size and population growth so i was just wondering if that option had been looked at because we certainly know that there's land in norton and you can now build a new chapman at chapman um and and it sounded like we're gonna have to put an addition on highland anyway uh which is that cost had not been identified yet so i was just wondering if that option had been had been looked at so are you saying adding three small elementary schools to the current elementary schools that are no no

144you you would raise norton you would raise chapman and build new schools there that were bigger but not huge like this this new proposed north end uh elementary school you know to compensate for the population i just wonder if that had been looked at no i mean that wasn't one of the options right keep them yeah we could i mean you know we'll bring this feedback you know back to this and see tonight um uh this is a good question to ask i mean again just because they didn't look at it doesn't mean you know it shouldn't be looked at but all these things adam even that concept would mean doing multiple things in parallel in the first phase to get things done in time for the enrollment bump that's coming in the next four

145years right so i raised that one because one thing that we touch upon but didn't really talk about and again i want to prolong this but this is a great discussion to have when you get together is you know what are what are the members thoughts on uh so much happening in phase one in these two scenarios are there concerns there trying to try to make that happen that smc should know about if we're not ready to say that tonight that's fine but we'll certainly talk about that when we get together officially in this uh tim uh yeah i guess what i'm thinking is if we were talking about say to address the immediate problem or you know in the next few years the first problem that arises is the elementary school uh so let's

146talk about a new chapman as jeff said it's probably you know close to cost parity between doing an entirely new larger school at chapman and just renovating chapman so i'm just thinking do that it's not to ignore anything else i don't want it i don't want to give the impression to anybody that this is the end of it you know there's one there's one cost and that's it but uh to me i'm just thinking all right chapman and then we have this number that you know this new thousand nine hundred thirty whatever the number is um look at it slightly differently but kind of just moving down a path and saying this is we have a pro we have a concern and let's move down this path right here right now i don't know that's

147that's me i'm not a fan i'm not a fan of a sixth grade middle school and i'm also not a fan of a thousand student elementary school i like neighborhood elementary schools i think that's like part of american society um we where a lot of the kids can walk to school so that's where i am i just i have to say we can't have a seventh and eighth middle school without having these large elementary schools unless we're going to put additions on the elementary schools or build several smaller elementary schools you can't have you can't have both you know and i understand that that's why i just threw out a whole new elementary school yeah i mean you know i mean and so there's a lot i think what we're all hearing here is is

148why we're asking for more time for the town council right right and and you know listen again i i i think everyone's shared this sentiment um it's an analog to it jeff katherine everybody it's uh my my uh monstrous effort um that started not just five years ago i you know vincent showed i don't know if he showed a picture they showed to me a couple years ago he has three four five other binders in his office of past master plans going back decades that he knows of right and and and i i got to reflect back to the fact that the reason why that last master plan started it was the uh she's when jerry was chair was that board of vet at the time that we took a couple years to negotiate getting

149funding from the town to start a master plan so you know again for better for worse things don't move quickly in town so this has been a long time in the making and this particular group has built down the last group and coming you inform me so yeah there's a lot of great work and there's still some open questions they're trying to answer uh and now we're trying to to answer so i think time spent on this is prudent we certainly don't want to prolong this you know uh yet another year and and waste another year we can't put a shovel in the ground or do something meaningful with our buildings together for enrollment so you know i i don't have a problem with the june date although i think we can you know get

150something done sooner uh than that so we're going to keep your discussion uh this is a smc update angela and i'm sure if i cut you off an hour ago probably some more things to talk about but i think between now and march 1st the board of edge should meet we'll talk about what we can talk about six through eight right and uh get some feedback smc and uh you know by then uh by march first i think there'll be some data coming back and we'll meet again and we'll help that group you know if there's some fear i can give them that'll help them we'll get it to them sooner and later so i'll work on that with our board and smc and andrew was there anything else you wanted to talk about regarding

151the modernization committee i'm good so listen i warned everyone a few months ago that as ssc got closer we'd be doing more of this uh in our board meetings i hope for those that have been watching that you've been patient and uh um can appreciate the magnitude of this effort but uh we're all committed as well as the ssc town council to get through this and do something that's really beautiful for cheshire so stay tuned that being said we're gonna move on um so can i just very quickly say i really appreciate catherine i really appreciate your your comments and your sentiments that that you know as a board you're you want to chip in and and do your part with us as well so i appreciate that so thank you you're welcome my pleasure

152cathy just get this done already let's go i'm with you uh so so moving on uh we have a counter committee update um and did you want to go through the minutes or marlene uh i know we met last week on the two calendar emotions but before you go that the do you want to give a brief update of what the committee discussed i am prepared to do that um marlene we talked before the meeting would you like to share the actual calendar as i talk through the minutes yeah i see it okay so um so marlene do you have up the because now i i can't see it because i've pulled up the minutes i've got the 2021 2022 great so uh this draft calendar was approved last year by the calendar committee and

153then brought again to us to vote on this year these calendars i think it's worth noting are um are meant to just put together the start dates the professional development days are in there and um the major holidays and the breaks that we're trying to get and all within keeping that 180 days um period but it doesn't go into any more any real detail into the um half days and and other things that will be worked on as uh the calendar before the school year goes out so this calendar has the first day of school for students to be august 31st 2021 which means convocation is scheduled for august 26th and professional development days will be august 27th and 30th november 2nd and march 18th um cheshire public schools will be closed on the following

154days labor day september 6 the day after is rosh hashanah on september 7th yom kippur is september 16th columbus day october 11th thanksgiving break is scheduled for nov november 25 26 and then there's the winter recess and new year's day and that would run december 24th through january 1st there's martin luther king jr holiday uh january 17th there's february recess which is february 21 through 22. um that has been taken down from a full week what just a couple years ago maybe longer than that but um to just the two day break and then we have the april break 11 april 11 through 14 and we have good friday on april 15th and memorial day on may 30th so with no snow days the last day of school for students would be june 9th 2022

155and the last day for teachers would be june 10th um and then this we had actually robust discussion around snow days and whether the state would be allowing us to take remote days for snow days again but that of course is not decided um and so in this calendar we will take snow days through the end of june and additional snow days needed beyond those 15 days would be move into the april april break and move backwards so any questions on this or i'll make the motion and then we can have discussion uh yeah that's approaching so i would move that the calendar committee ex wait i would move that the board of education accept the 2021-2022 school calendar um as presented all right catherine seconds a discussion not all at once i guess we

156tear it out from the last discussion it looks great it's just the calendar so but i do have a question because what you suggested was that like early dismissal days and um this doesn't contemplate all possible early dismissal days or it does or did i misunderstand that well we have the opportunity a couple in there we have the opportunity to share because of covid and the executive orders another guidance from the state they were able to use uh days like tomorrow right as a remote learning day uh if it's a snow day right we don't know and marlene please correct from wrong we don't know yet if we're gonna have the same guidance for next year that no i think i didn't articulate my question well i'm talking about like the yeah dismissal for yeah

157professional development early release release collaboration time if you recall uh board members that we negotiated in the contract certain number of uh early release days for teachers for collaboration next year et cetera um the days that we put in for coven i'm going to touch upon that a bit later those none of those days are entered into this calendar at this time typically what we do is we approve the school calendar and then we go back marlene and i as we get toward the end of the year we'll outline all those early release days uh making sure we work it around events in the school year and then we you know send it to parents after that thank you sorry katherine my filter's clocked no that's not yours thank you i've no i have no

158further questions uh tim thanks tony uh jeff what what's the feedback you've we've had a couple two remote snow days now yes what's the feedback that you've gotten from people on it so far well tomorrow will be the third remote snow day um i i think that first of all as marlene said the most important thing is that we have student participation and that has been very good um you know whether it's a novelty of it or what but um i think a lot of it is our our kids are excited about they all join each other no mask on the computer and just seeing each other means a lot to kids today and it's sad that i have to say that but we've had great participation and the days have worked well to the

159point where i would love to see the state adopt this option moving forward but you know to be determined i guess so that okay so that's good and it has there been any like positive like a trend of or significant feedback from teachers principals parents about it i mean the teachers as marlene said earlier really appreciated the high level of engagement that our students demonstrated being on it and so you know if our students are happy generally our teachers are pretty happy generally our administrators are pretty happy when that that's the case and i think you know it's nice to maintain some continuity of education you think about the disruptions our students have already had to face and the challenges um if we had to stop everything for all these days the like the three

160days we would have already had to stop for after tomorrow it's just another disruption so this maintains some continuity especially coming off a week where we had monday and tuesday off so we see a lot of benefits to this and that's why i said i you know i have asked um what representatives from our area to try and you know continue to move this forward if possible monday tuesday and an early dismissal on thursday right and snow day so marlene sorry sorry that i missed that um okay and that has to do what you're talking about with kids being able to see each other is k through eight any feedback on the high school does it make a difference i mean it's kind of i'm thinking it's i don't have any high school kids but

161it's probably kind of baked into it yeah they they have a wednesday full remote day now anyway yeah and again i think you know our other people across the district we're seeing the value that our high school people see on that wednesday where all of our kids get to see each other with no masks on for the day where you can see a lot more expression is is you know we've kind of adjusted to this but seeing each other in person and face to face and those you're not going to replace that but this is better than seeing half of the room in a mask and other people at home and so you know that they they like you said it's kind of baked into the sauce there but um it's beneficial there too i'd

162rather have that than having a 17 year old on the road at dismissal today the way we did and you know nobody can nail it 100 of the time but i didn't feel good about dismissing into the heavy snow with a 17 year old on the road yeah i understood thank you anyone else catherine do you want me to slow down is what you're trying to say i'm sorry you want and to slow down this is still uh calendar committee seeing as there's no uh and scenes there's no other uh ebac i'll reread a motion which is part of me here move that the cheshire board education adopts the 2021 2022 school calendar as presented uh all those in favor raise your supporters in hand it is unanimous the motion passes in what do you

163have well then we uh talked about um re reviewed and approved the proposed draft for 2022 2023 school calendar and uh this one of course goes out another year beyond and we will revisit it again next year and bring that one to the board for the the next year but anyways that one is set based on the calendar of what comes up and um it was presented to the calendar committee with the first day of school on september 1st and the last day on june 12th but after much discussion the committee chose to move the first day of school to august 30th making the last day of school june 9th making convocation scheduled um for august 25th and professional development days on august 26 and 29 november 8th and march 17th part of the reason

164for that was in the 2021-22 calendar rosh hashanah is the day after labor day and so those that monday and tuesday are off for those holidays but in the 2022 2023 calendar rosh hashanah is much later in september so that gives us labor day on september 5th rosh hashanah on september 26th yom kippur october 5th columbus day october 10th thanksgiving break again november 24th through 25 winter recess including christmas and new year's day would be december 21st 4th through december 31st and martin luther king jr holiday on january 6 february recess february 20-21 good friday april 7th and april break april 17-21 and memorial day would be may 29th in this year so with no snow days the last day of school for students is scheduled for june for 2022 2023 is scheduled for june

165of 20 20 23 and the last day for teachers is june 10 and snow days will be made up june 13th through the 30th and additional snow days beyond these 15 days we'll begin with april 15 of the april break and move backwards so this one as i said before um comes back to the calendar the calendar committee next year before it comes to the board to be approved but i have a motion for this one that the um that the board accept this proposed um calendar for the 2022-2012 school calendar and um as presented catherine psychos tim you have a look on your face yes yeah i might have gotten i might have gotten lost on the september stuff what um wait a second what is september 2nd what do you mean what is

166it well it's highlighted in orange oh see i'm not looking at the calendar right now jeff marlene do you know it is it is a day off from school so that students are going to school three days that week and maintaining the long weekend because there is no jewish holiday attached to that labor day for the long weekend as there has been this past year and will be next year oh so you just you just want to offer a four day a long four day weekend to kick off the school year well offer a shortened first two weeks of school to ease into it okay got it got it okay i'm just i'm just thinking whenever you publish this it might be worthwhile to just note that in the list just like day off yeah

167it's there's no you want to just it's confusing to me because i'm like is that an error toward the bottom of the calendar usually a legend that talks about the color coding i don't know if it's on this one there you go sure but i think all the other dates have an explanation as my point and that one i'm just thinking that's the one that doesn't that's all good point it doesn't yeah it needs to be added marlene's gonna get on it right i'm fine with it oh thanks just fewer phone calls to the central office or the principal or us right uh any other comments or questions on this seen as there are none the motion is moved to cheshire board education adopts the 2022-2023 proposed draft school calendar as presented all those in

168favor please raise your hand it is unanimous thank you team moving expeditiously forward we are uh understanding committees there are none uh move on section four we have approval or minutes in your board of the packets we have meeting minutes from both the january 21st 2021 and february 4th 2021. uh before i make the motion are there any changes that should be made by the board members seen as there are none i will make the motion that the board moves that the board education approve the minutes from meetings held on january 21st and february 4th 2021. all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you uh moving on uh miss holland do we have any correspondence um well we we did get a letter from deborah menke a teacher at norton

169um i'm not going to read it all the way through because of the time but will be entered into the you know minutes of the meeting um but essentially uh her letter is um a request that early dismissals be added to the calendar again this year to enable teachers to collaborate and have planning time um because the the early dismissals that were added this year have been extremely beneficial and have enabled teachers to really maximize their teaching um and so she it's a very nice letter and it's uh i i really appreciate the fact that she has made some really good arguments for including extra early dismissals to provide that time for teaching collaboration time for teachers um so that's from deborah manke thank you and that's the only correspondence that we have great thank

170you jeff did you want to say something to that or what would you say that you know i respect deb's opinion tremendously she's our teacher of the year um i don't know to what degree she's aware that there are already i think it's five collaborative days built in per the contract agreement for next year uh that weren't there in the past but i'll see deb again soon and i'll ask her you know if that was what she was thinking or something else but um you know i think there are there's particularly this year been tremendous value and i'll talk a little bit about that my superintendent's report great thank you jeff uh catherine any other correspondents i'm sorry no no thank you thank you for the for the email to the board we all received

171it um moving on to the next uh i lost my place bear with me our next item on agenda i believe is a superintendent's report yes it is uh dr sullin all right let's kick this into high gear the moment we've all been waiting for dude already up with all due respect for the finance report mr massiana anyway um just quick covet overview um i will revisit this slide that uh there are a myriad of strategies uh mitigation strategies and data that we evaluate to determine how do we manage this um pandemic for our students and i want to remind everybody you know our our goal excuse me is to get as many students into class as many days in front of teachers as as we can safely for students and teachers taking a look

172at our current data we don't in order to maintain privacy we don't publicize when there are less than six students or staff members who are being impacted so what you see there is not much i mean we have about 5 000 people students and staff across the district and what you see here is very limited covet impact at this point in a year so kudos to our students and staff for employing you know the mitigation strategies we're supposed to thank you so much for our parents who being careful with their students particularly if they think they may be sick or they're sick themselves and not sending them to school um one thing i want to point out is that you know we're experiencing some like contradictory or incomplete information from the state slash cdc right

173now so the cdc put out recent guidance about um community spread and returning to school they use a a metric um titled the number of uh coveted positives in the community over a seven day period uh per 100 000 people they calculate theirs different than the way the state calculates the same titled metric and recently there was a a dph call on tuesday that said basically yeah we're not following the cdc guidance on that this is the metric that we're following um and frankly i mean it's it's less conservative than the cdc guidance but i have to say it's worked very well for us and obviously you know we we've had great success with returning our students to school and i think it's reflected too i think our parents are feeling more comfortable um with

174the transitions that we're seeing i think it's a combination of parents feeling more comfortable and recognizing how important it is to have face-to-face instruction so the number of remote students or the percentage of the school district population that is currently remote is 19.66 percent across the district as of today and you compare that to about a month ago less than a month ago it was 25 so we see more students migrating back to in-person instruction and we're handling that transition pretty successfully why i mean i talked a little bit about uh the combination of factors the the the idea that the numbers are dropping and people feel a little bit more comfortable plus you know maybe feeling pushed a little bit by recent data like this that um the this is an online mental health

175screening tool provided by mental health america this year basically they've seen 10 000 responses a day which is double their typical response so if people are dealing with mild to moderate or mild to severe depression or anxiety they take this in the this quiz online and the the greatest driver of that is loneliness and isolation right now and you know you think about the the our students they're not experiencing uh you know physical damage on the outside you don't see that they're perhaps lonely or isolated it's what people not only our kids but older older folks are experiencing on the inside and this is just 11 to 17 year olds so basically our high school population the middle school uh you know late elementary and middle school students are in school every day and i

176think there's a benefit to that as much as they miss out on a lot of other activities in life right now because of kobit at least they're seeing their peers every day so cheshire high school what are we doing to move forward there i grade out some of the previous stuff that we've talked about and you know darkened some of the um items that we have executed since the last meeting and where we are so dr gad gave a survey that we had talked about to all all parents who their children were not in full time we had 266 students expressing interest to return four days a week so that's basically you have to cut it in half to add it to the cohort because 100 you know all those students were already attending two

177days a week so um we're adding 133 onto each day for the cohorts and we went through all of the sections there we have 1006 basically class period meetings at cheshire high school only four of them had any sort of issues with seating when we added all these people back so we you know have done it at a time where the numbers are way better much lower community spread done it in a way that provides a secure environment for our students and staff that's safe and we can even conform to lunch capacity limits so we feel really good about taking that step forward for our students at this time and we feel like i said safe for them but also you know certainly necessary for them as i said before we're retaining that wednesday remote

178day we do our wellness wednesdays on that we can't underscore how important mental health is during this time and that's a great time for all of our people to see each other together no masks i talked alluded to the fact that i guess that we were going to continue to explore some dates for collaboration we have found this to be incredibly valuable um the time that our teachers are spending collaborating on what they're doing uh has translated to some solid academic success for our students when you know you know kevin and marlene uh presented at the curriculum committee meeting um not this past one but the one prior about the academic achievement that our students are experiencing in spite of what the all the disruptions they've had in instruction since last march um so what

179we are doing moving into march and april i hate to um add half days and stuff but if you know if it weren't so incredibly valuable uh we wouldn't be doing it and it's not with the same frequency necessarily as we've done in the past but uh it is the addition of of a few days so uh the high school we have a professional development already on the ninth we're gonna add collaboration for k through eight um and that's you know this these when we add these dates we try and be considerate of if there's a uh a younger child that's gonna be home for the day if we add a collaboration day on that day for the high school then maybe somebody's around to watch a younger child um you know in the home

180so we have uh added these days we're adding these days into the calendar and i'll be sending this out shortly for our parents to um plan accordingly and so that's that's it for my um update uh sharing the screen thank you uh dr questions faith and then adam good faith um thank you jeff just question um do you have another date you know for example governor lamont has said that um he's going to be lifting restrictions march 19. so you know that's that's out there are you do you have a date where you're looking to bring more kids into the high school um sure yeah so do you even have a schedule yes on march 1st uh we are bringing back those 266 students that express interest that's everybody who answered the survey expressing interest

181every per what we did ask in the survey though is you know kind of future thinking uh maybe you'd be interested may april 1st or may 1st so we're taking a look at how do we adjust to that transition on march 1st what are the numbers look like and then we'll examine how to bring more people back after that if there's interest um because right now like i said we're accommodating everybody who expressed interest for march 1st so um you know provided it's there we want to try and bring back more people do you think it's possible that you will get everybody who expresses interest back in school before the end of the year well we're doing that now for march first everybody who's no i really yeah no you know i hope um that

182that's the case i i'm really you know i'm pretty optimistic given the rate at which we've been vaccinating people um working with maura we have about 150 staff members who have been vaccinated already uh you know some of those a good percentage of them are 65 plus and they've been vaccinated but a good percentage of them are also we when we've had excess vaccinations available at the pool we've gotten people over we're making the environment safer for students and staff and so as long as we can continue to do that i think we can continue to bring back everybody who wants to be there that's our goal thanks okay uh adam is next and then tim uh jeff so i'm just trying to wrap my head around the percentage of students uh so 266 is

183that that's out of the entire so so what's there like forgive me it's i think it's a thousand students at the high school is that right uh 1366. okay way under okay so 1366 are two days a week right now right right two days well 1366 total students of those total students we have um let me pull up the exact number again i don't want to misquote that here let me see sorry i must have been using 1988 numbers for my high school enrollment reference sorry about that that's all right we uh we have about 400 um remotes let me see there we go it wouldn't load for a minute now we got it oh okay i'm sorry so there's all right so there's 400 there are full remote so back those out yeah so

184you back out the 379 that are full remote that leaves us with 987 total students um of those there's a percentage i don't have the exact number adam but there's a percentage who wanted to stay hybrid um so i think it's a it's roughly 200 students so we'll have 750 coming every four days a week and we might and we'll have the 100 um on top of that two days a week it'll be half and the other two days will be the other half so roughly every day we're about 850 kids uh so that so that 266 number was what the people who didn't want to return no that's that's everybody who wasn't uh of everybody who responded that they did want to return okay so then so then so by march 1st then you're

185saying that uh over 150 we'll have about 850 of our 1350 students in four days a week right yeah backing up the full remote kids and all that stuff so but so but so that's like two-thirds of the uh available students who weren't remote will be returning four days a week correct okay well that's great happy to hear that fantastic yeah it's a positive for us i think you know and for the students more importantly that we're able to do this safely and um the the numbers are right right now to be able to do that great thank you uh tim thanks tony i yeah i agree with adam about that's great thank you for getting the students into the high school as many as you can um [Music] with regard to the loneliness you

186have been talking about before uh so i'll just say i mean i've heard from parents and this is down to the elementary level below you know well below age 11 where it's a factor sure um so uh early dismissal so i know you were talking about this year but looking out to next year just in terms of planning for parents uh hoping you can get something out sooner rather than later i don't know how it would work for other parents but i'm thinking that something like you're doing this year if you're gonna have a bunch of them a bunch of early dismissals to put it in a consistent manner where it's the same day every week um yeah i mean yeah this year is like really in terms of planning a wild anomaly for us

187and next year um as we've done in years past we do get this out well before the end of the the school year um so that we can we can plan once the calendar has been adopted then we plan the early dismissals usually we have a meeting of our administrative at the next meeting of our administrative team we'll get everybody together and say okay these are some of the times we've had in the past let's do this and then we'll get the calendar out shortly thereafter so it usually turns around pretty quick once it's approved uh so that people can plan for next year yeah i mean the concern i have is just parents who have to take time off oh absolutely yeah i mean you understand that absolutely yeah with regard to uh substitutes

188is that working out okay for you are most of the teachers coming in i mean i've seen in the last day or two my wife told me it's worth one or two percent for the state so yeah i mean our teachers are are in i mean obviously we still have other situations that occur you know whether you have you know minor surgeries or major issues or where we always need um substitutes but we've run into like this year has been amazing with respect to substitutes and i know marlene you know is really excited about the fact that we can provide professional development periodically have you know critical meetings that occur during the school day where we have our teachers available and we're able to cover everybody with substitutes because that doesn't always happen and so

189um it's really been a godsend for us to to make sure that our schools stay open but we're able to even perform some of the functions we would normally you know plan to do but sometimes are unable to because of substitute shortages thank you um and the the last point i i got an email myself um our parent generally speaking your parents following the drop-off procedures the for this year and you know i'm sure there's some people there are i'm assuming there's got to be some parents i don't know if it's widespread or not who don't and do administrators you know get in touch with them and just behind them about the rules yeah so i think most of our community understands that our drop-off procedures can be a nightmare in a non-coveted year and

190that's part of our facility master planning process but um now you can you know triple the headaches and so yes when administrators identify people who don't follow the protocol do we try and you know remind them about what the protocol is and sometimes it takes the reminder um sometimes it's not going to matter uh and i hate to say that but most you know like i said most people are pretty good about it it's just a function of volume um but you know i'd be lying if i said there weren't one or two offenders that it kind of wouldn't matter what you did so is there anything is there anything that could be done about it i mean i don't know what the enforcer is sometimes we notify the police if it gets back or

191something you know but okay oftentimes it's not breaking a rule a law it's breaking a rule and so we don't have felony arriving early at drop off you know unfortunately okay thank you thanks uh i had a quick question regarding uh vaccination with teachers uh i don't know if we've i haven't seen any official word yet on that i know the preference at this uh various estate levels get folks into the next group 1c get these up on the list do you have any idea if that's going to materialize and um any idea how we're going to schedule are you going to schedule all those 400 possible sure vaccinations with school sure it's been our philosophy to protect our our people that we rely on every single day to be there for our kids um

192and you know some districts they say you know you know what go in vans get your schedule on your shot on your own do it outside of school time kind of thing and for us we're providing coverage we'll do what we got to do we do have the substitutes to make it happen and we want people for their own health and the sake of all of us in the school system to be vaccinated if that's what they're choosing to do so right now the state has not included teachers exclusively at any level uh there i've watched a lot of frustrating debate where everybody's um advocating for pretty much anybody to be in this next level and i did hear one of the doctors and the committee say well you know we just don't have enough

193shots to make everybody the next level priority you know if our priority is to keep schools open and to make you know because that's got a huge educational and economic impact then we need to prioritize teachers and i i fully agree with that but um the state has not done that yet my brother's a teacher and his wife is a teacher my sister-in-law in new york they've both already been vaccinated both shots you know it's just connecticut hasn't hasn't done that so i credit maura um that she keeps us you know on the on the will call list if you will and um we try and shoot across the street and get shots no pun intended i guess shoot across the street but um we we get our shots and that's why we've like i

194said i had about 150 people already vaccinated and i hope that we can continue that that trend thank you as soon as there's no other questions from the board we'll move on mine's going to be very short for uh for the sake of catherine get in the car and driving over and shut off my power sooner or later no no seriously catherine just hang we're almost there uh and i thank you everyone for hand so far very quick update for me is this uh um somewhere i say which paper i was quoted in uh they quoted me as saying that tony pirigini says the town council must pass the budget as adopted i i did not say that what i did say was that the town council i'm sure will be very clever in how

195they help us address medical benefits trust fund money and i hope that they would pass the educational portion as is um i always say that because i don't want my colleagues in the town council uh being offended i know they're not but there's been some reporting snafus over the last couple months i mean i've seen articles where andrews and michaels have mixed up with each other's names and other things so that being said of course we're to work nicely with the town council and get through this but uh that was it and that being said i'm sure we're going to hear more in the budget in the coming weeks so that that being said we're going to move on um upcoming meetings very quickly um we have a policy committee meeting on march 2nd at

1966 30 p.m we have a middle school showcase meeting at march 4th at 7 30 p.m cricket community meeting 7 pm on march 8th and we have a board of ed business education business meeting on march 18th uh uh there will be uh either board of ed planning committee meeting of the whole or special board event meeting in next two weeks to does this continue discussions about school options preference tonight was talk a little bit more about six to rate since you already have some data on that and if we can get smc community feedback sooner than later to help them get to um to you know a final plan and and and get their timeline so be on the lookout for some communications from carol and possible base for that and uh that being

197said we are at the end um do we uh need to adjourn an executive session i believe actually we did have that listed on the agenda but there's not an update you know i thought that there may be one available i apologize for that connecting with you earlier tony but no i didn't think of the cross but hallelujah we're not going to executives so that being said is there a motion to adjourn the meeting catherine motions don't moved adam seconds all those in favor the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone carol team mike everyone thank you everybody good night stay safe good night good night everyone