Board of Education 2-4-21

001we have a special board of education being this evening but before we jump into that mrs order mr crippo here miss helen here miss ham here ms harrigan mr martelly sorry here but that's okay uh mr paragini here mr white mr chairman you you have a quorum thank you carol i ask that we stand for the pledge and i assume jeff defensively for us i pledge allegiance to the flag america into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice this evening she's gone now uh thanks for joining us i i hope we have some audience and attention tonight i know uh we received some questions about the budget tonight's tonight's uh agendas pretty much focused on both the proposed operating budget for 2122 as well as the capital

002budget uh but before we get into that part we have a couple items first we have an audience uh section and for those that are watching this evening uh if you do have questions as we're discussing this and perhaps even the superintendent's update that he'll give in a second um please feel free to email us a cps budget cps budget at cheshire.k12 with any questions comments uh concerns or ideas you have as it relates to the budget um we will check obviously during the audience section we're going to talk about now and we'll also check towards the end of the meeting uh and possibly during the motions uh as we're discussing this so that being said uh dr sullin uh i'm sorry dr sullen or madam secretary do we have any audience and or correspondences

003even yes mr chair thank you um we have an email that was sent to the members of the board and i think administration and it reads as follows a recent article published in the cheshire herald highlighted perhaps the most positive and proactive responses we have seen in this town's public schools since the start of this pandemic i applaud dodd middle school principal mike woods for making every attempt to make this year's eighth grade trip to washington dc hopefully a reality the positivity and can-do attitude are a colorful sale in what is essentially a quote rudderless ship close quotes otherwise known as the superintendent's office and the board of education as the parent of two high school students i find the high school administration the superintendent and the board of education's unwillingness to find ways to

004get high school students back into the classroom irresponsible forever damaging to our kids unforgivable and reprehensible for months we have suggested and heard many ideas and thoughts all met with we can evaluate that and we can see if we should be doing that we continue to hear what we are planning to do however what we hear and what we see could not be more different in the december boe meeting it was mentioned that cheshica was going to review the high school dining situation december where was this last summer and what has changed since that comment nothing we haven't seen any action taken by the parties responsible for implementing those changes and getting our high schoolers the education that they so desperately want and need as well as the education that we as taxpayers parents and

005taxpayers expect in this town known for its education the two days of in-class instruction do not amount to an education and the three main remaining remote days really two and a half days are not filling the void by being left outside of the classroom add in a significant number of early dismissal days added to this school year's calendar and there is no way these two students will ever get back what they are missing that is not to say that the teachers are not trying on the contrary i believe they are doing what they can given the conditions of this rudderless ship the problem is that it is not working while approximately two-thirds of the total student population are in school full-time approximately one-third of the students in this town are not getting the education that

006so many people live in this town for and have come to expect for the most part any reasons few and far between as to why these students cannot return to the school obviously revolve around social distancing in the classrooms and hallways justifiably so it has been stated that chesapeake deems what is safe and what is not safe for our students so when i read the article about the washington dc trip i was a bit surprised how can it be possible to put approximately 300 students on buses bound for dc for 68 hours and mix them up put them back together to tour the sites of dc on those buses and then back on those buses for another six to eight hour trip to return home all while staying in hotel rooms but somehow we cannot

007find a way to get one third of our town wide student population back in the classroom we have been mandated by executive order that any travel outside of the tri-state area would require a covet-tested mandatory quarantine does that mean the entire eighth grade is going to be tested and schooled remotely for the quarantine period following their trip to dc seems possible what happens when there are asymptomatic students on the bus on the way to dc what about when that bus is now carrying this awful virus home and this becomes a super spreader within the community of course i'm sure that the administration at the middle school have collaborated with the superintendent and chesapeake otherwise they would not have gotten those eighth grade families hopes up about a trip to washington i mean that would make

008them as morally and emotionally irresponsible as the inept ciac this past fall with high school parent sports particularly football but if we can manage to get these kids to dc why is it that the high school administration the superintendent and the board of education along with chespercott cannot come up with a plan to get our high school kids back in school it is clear that the lack of desire to help our high schoolers is not important to the current high school administration superintendent or board of education otherwise there would be more than lip service hi-fi's and kudos to each other during the boe meetings we would actually see something happen the high school and superintendent's office very own survey results presented back in the november boe meeting clearly showed that there are multiple educational social

009and emotional problems at the high school level with the hybrid model when compared to their peers at the lower grade levels what exactly is the point of a survey or if you are not going to take the data and make the changes needed to correct the deficiencies was a survey done just to placate some parents was there ever a plan as to what to do with the results sadly the answers to these questions just do not matter to those administering the survey the data presented in multiple meetings and by all of the major health organizations demonstrates that in-school learning does not appear to be a significant transmitter in school look no further than the middle school in the elementary schools in town for further evidence the excuses and lack of action by those responsible for

010this is deafening i'm very hopeful for the 8th graders that they will get to see dc i truly believe the dc trip is worthwhile and should be part of every young student's education however ignoring the needs of the 9th through 12th graders is a much greater issue that has been ignored for months and will undoubtedly translate into years of trailing behind and always trying to catch up for that this high school administration the superintendent and this board are completely and fully responsible all while refusing to admit its missteps and continuing to avoid corrective actions maybe less pat's on the back and kudos and more eyes on the ball would help perhaps the high school administration and the superintendent could learn from the proactive actions of the leadership at the middle school for the past five

011months we have seen little action and lots of empty promises when it comes to the progression of bringing the high school back to a normal learning model high fives for those that sit on the sideline while watching others actually get it done it's time for those on the sideline to be sent home and this is from adam stern and i will i would like to say i disagree with most of what was in this letter thank you thank you awesome any other audience correspondence at this point no there was oh there's one comment right jeff do you have that there was one comment though the one that i had was related to budget it was um a question about the number of a parent had asked on our budget we talked about an inclusion of

012two elementary school positions um and of course when i made the screen bigger i lost it there but when we have the inclusion of two elementary school positions and the uh person who asked the question wanted to know where those positions were and actually they're kind of spread across different buildings two of them are actually additions here it is so the net increase of plus two is chapman is seeing no change doolittle has a reduction from to 24 teachers that's a reduction of two highland has an increase of two norton has an increase of one and darcy has an increase of one net it out it's an increase of two teachers so uh and again i i know we've talked about the fact that um our current number of students per teacher is 17.8 and

013we've uh you know certainly spent a fair amount of time both here and the school modernization committee um talking about the significant increase in enrollment that we're facing over the next several years even adding the two teachers the ratio is higher number of students per teacher next year from 17.8 to 18.3 by obviously half a student so i think that you know addresses the question um there's more information i would just say about our um you know our staffing and that part of the budget process in uh my budget presentation from january 14th 2021 on our website too if people want to find more information thank you jeff and uh as it so happens this evening we do have superintendents up there in cope at 19. so hopefully uh some of the information that will

014be shared with dr stone would address some of the um concerns from mr stern's letter uh sure so that being said uh before dr song gets into the code update again if there are any questions from the audience on the budget um the email is cps budget treasurer.k12.ct.us i'm not sure if we're actually checking the normal covet email box tonight uh we are so if you have an email there too we'll circle back to that as well again that's the unfortunately due to coven our remote meetings the best way for us to have audience participation is to send us questions via email so we look forward to seeing them again we'll check them again throughout the meeting that being said dr zolin you want to give us an update on covet 19 for cbs sure

015it'd be my pleasure um again if somebody could just give me a confirmation you can see the powerpoint slide okay great thank you um so you know important considerations as it relates to kovid this is um almost a year's worth of experience for us in in leadership during this pandemic now and this is not um straightforward obviously there's a number of considerations that we have to make at each developmental level to make decisions right for our students and community so we consider things like mitigation strategies and compliance mitigation strategy for example being mask wearing compliance simply meaning to what degree are we able to achieve that mitigation strategy and what we've seen across the district is tremendous compliance from our students and staff as it relates to proper mass squaring spacing in classrooms so you

016know at the elementary grades that means you know we we are inside of six feet apart the uh state guidance and indicates you know there is no exact number and we have not seen spread but they're all cohorted together for the day so you'll have 22 students of the same students all in the same room at the middle school as well at the high school because we switch classes kids are moving around more it's just a different consideration hallways obviously a bigger issue when you're talking about moving throughout the days and then dining areas that's really for us when we look at spacing the hotbed that we have to keep kind of sacrosanct and that's why you know we we brought in chespercott and vinn and i walked through with them in december and i'll

017explain why we did that in the summer now we of course we spend a lot of time with trespacot anyway they were evaluating our dining areas in august and september too but specifically in december looking at chs for the addition of more students so common area cleaning classroom cleaning i know those are things we've touched quite a bit about from a community perspective we monitor things like how many cases in cheshire per 100 000 people and then what's the positivity rate of those cheshire residents being tested because those are key factors the cdc has identified along with mitigation strategies that influence the risk of spread within schools there's an emerging uh variable that we're you know certainly paying attention to and that's vaccination rates you've probably heard that teachers aren't yet um in the queue

018necessarily to be vaccinated or aren't currently being vaccinated per the state the exception to that is when there are surplus vaccinations so if um for example today at the cheshire town pool it was a scheduled second vaccination day so for people 75 years of older older or emergency services personnel you could come and get your second vaccination today well it turns out a number of people already got it someplace else so there were extras and we need to call somebody quick it just so happens that being right in town it makes it easier for us to get people there in a hurry and um maura esposito and her team have been great about reaching out to us um to address that so the more vaccinations become available to our staff for example by the time

019dodd might go to dc and may four months from now that could be a consideration obviously um school spread again i just reiterate that that's not really been uh an issue for us thankfully and it's because we've successfully navigated all these other items up here so i just want to take you back only a few weeks in time this is the center for disease control considerations for uh risk it says this says higher risk of transmission in schools highest risk of transmission and they look at the three variables i mentioned the number of new cases per 000 persons within the last 14 days so on january 14th that number was 53.9 um cases per 100 000 in cheshire that's where we were peaking out the highest risk of transmission um the positivity percent positivity rate

020over the 14-day window also our peak on on january 14th and that's you know up near the higher risk of transmission eight being the threshold for that our mitigation strategies nevertheless have always sustained themselves at really strong levels because we do you know maintain quality social distancing um but really the mask and hygienic part is the stuff that we are we mastered um and we need to continue to stay with that obviously for our kids this is today's the state releases the data every thursday so you can see from last you know january 14th to today the remote learners we always provide per state guidance the option for families to go remote there are also calculated in this number uh families and students unfortunately that are quarantined and have to be remote um so you

021can see even with our quarantine population across the district were roughly 25 chs at 26 27 percent um dodd is our highest area but as of january 27th but i i understand that more recently it's trending back toward more in person now bigger kids um you have to have different considerations there same as like our kindergarten classes it's not easy to ask a seven-year-old to sit in their seat for the day six feet apart from their peers it's really not not doable um and it would be torturous if if we were to try and institute that so it's a consideration we have to make and then that whack-a-mole sort of um you know example that i was providing so what are our schedules look like at the elementary middle school we are in five days

022a week full day from the beginning of the year we've missed one day of in-person instruction um due to a last-minute uh late night call i think i was actually in a meeting when when vin called me um and we had to close highland for the day back in september at cheshire high school we have three groups we have the monday thursday in person the other three days a remote is one group tuesday friday in person the other three days are remote group and we have a growing group three that's kids that are attending cheshire high more than two days in person we've been gradually adding to that group um for a while now um so we have 91 students that are four days a week 15 students that are five days a week and

023three that are three days a week at cheshire high we've only missed two days and i think you remember the cafeteria issue we had when all of our cafeteria staff are out it's hard to make lunch and but we figured it out in two days uh cheshire high school moving forward what are our plans there are 13 of 15 derby high schools that actually south windsor who surveyed but shared the data with us that are in a hybrid schedule like cheshire high school the two who aren't are smaller than highland elementary school ca chs has been systematically adding students since the turning of the year with the blessing of chesapeake that's why we met with them in december so we have 109 students now who go more than two days a week 22 of those

024students were added this past monday um so we we have been systematically adding them dr gad when i talked to her wednesday committed to we need to survey now all of our families who aren't already in that four day a week scenario to determine if they would like to add more days um that's not a guarantee that it'll be available but we need to know the numbers to start to actively continue to move forward and you know we've decided educationally that it's most in our students benefit to retain that remote wednesday for all students so that our students can come together in the same modality uh remote they're all together as a group in the same modality our teachers um are able to do different groups they do break out groups with each other and

025can connect as well as run we run our wellness wednesdays through our physical education uh department to work on overall well-being i mean there's there's this is a much different situation i can't imagine being a high schooler during this time and it it's not what we want for kids to be home obviously you know i don't love my own high school kid being home um but in when you try and navigate the variety of uh demands to make sure that our kids are safe and continuing education this is our current situation now i want to reiterate bringing back students when we had highest risk of transmission would be reckless if not stupid so we didn't do it then we are in the process of bringing back students here now and so that is where we

026are at the moment i am grateful for the incredible amount of energy that all of our uh high school staff the one thing i i appreciate is that i the the you know correspondence which is great to have correspondents and people share their perspective didn't indicate that you know academics were a failure that that was abysmal you know our team is doing everything they can to make sure our students have access to the fundamental learning that they need to be successful and this isn't a cheshire public schools it's not a cheshire high school problem this is a global problem um and so you know i think we are all working really hard to try and continue to bring more students back we look forward to continuing to bring more students back ben and i have

027already started planning out our you know what does our warm weather uh protocol look like again getting the tents back um it makes it easier to bring more kids back when i can have them eating outside um and it just interests the lunch is the biggest problem because you have masks off dining six even six feet of part or less i mean for adult-sized people at the high school is a concern so you know that's kind of where we are today and the progress you know we're making in and moving forward i know you know mary takes that very personally um as do i and everybody who works in the cheshire public schools to make sure that we're doing the best we can for our our students not that some people may disagree with whether

028or not they think that's the best way but that's why this forum exists to be able to have that conversation so that's my update certainly you're happy to answer any questions uh i had one uh it was a cheshire high school so it seems to me like the since beginning uh since new year's i i in the last few weeks as a parent my daughter's junior at transfer high school again almost daily uh and mary's very good at communication on the cases and as they come up but just this week alone i just did a tally of emails through today and see that there were nine new cases this week gesture high school there was uh how many tony nine if i come out monday tuesday wednesday and thursday's emails talk about number of cases

029um i i got nine last week was similar is this now we're way past i think large gatherings from new year you know that more great lengths last fall and early winter that those were the culprits for a lot of things we see in town essentially adults log gatherings here we are in february as curious is it more the same or are the cases at the high school i know it's hard to say if they're driven internally from other students probably not but it's still a case where we're seeing the ramifications from outside you know large group gathering not wearing masks or is it something else or can we really pinpoint what's driving the latest and honestly i'm not sure if this week's numbers are that far off from from january but it just seems

030daily now we're getting tuesday from there you know it's a a great question um and i'll boil it down to a couple of different succinct questions that uh is is cheshire high school experiencing a flare i think is one question and it uh you know another is do we understand the source of of the cases and so the question about the flare or the answer i guess to that question is kind of um and you know is somebody who spends every single work day um checking our data we have a a pretty comprehensive uh gathering of spreadsheets that identify the number of cases by building and when the person went on quarantine and offer became positive and no longer positive and all that data is tracked if you go to our home page and click

031on the covid19 current cps uh covid data it's updated here every single school day so tony's absolutely right that we have like right now we have seven positive cases at cheshire high students um i think you know it's less than six we don't identify the number but i will say you know more often than not when you see the less than six it's a real small number um but right now we have seven positive students and you know sometimes those occur in families where an individual may have one or two siblings attending chs and what happens is you know they all tend to become positive at one point and if they're not all tested we still count you as positive um the other thing that uh and they do it ebbs and flows so if

032you look at highland at one point highland i was getting a call from scott jeffrey seemingly every day so the point my wife would say is that scott when the phone rings and you look now it's it's way down we only have six students quarantined there were a typical day would be like at highland um so right now and it it runs through like i said it i don't know why um but it does pop off in areas uh almost it doesn't make sense you know like right now norton has experienced their first little bit um darcy is in a little pop as well um but they they will come back uh down to manageable levels almost always and when you see the the data that i was just showing you about community spread that's

033a tremendous indicator that things are moving in the right direction of course the other variable that i guess i didn't include on the considerations are the variants the uk variant being um having much higher rate of spread and so that's a consideration for us but right now i mean the thing that is counteracting to a certain degree is adults in the community having access to the vaccine so you have to measure all these different variables and proceed judiciously to make sure we're doing okay at the high school level again i i don't see it being anything where like kids are throwing a monster party and everybody got sick that's not what happened that's not why our numbers are the way they are that being said it's a constant concern [Music] for kids and adults in

034our community particularly when they're outside of school not in school but outside of school gatherings letting their guard down hanging out with your friends you know well so and so is my neighbor you're all right you know well you don't know and that's why we have to remain vigilant with the masks and we reinforce that with our students all the time i did a video for our students not that long ago impressing upon them proms you know athletics these are things we want to be able to participate in uh certainly the drama you know so be smart outside of school that's that's the big message for our community thank you any comments or questions from the board members of faith yeah um hey jeff i thank you for that overview and i think it needs

035to be heard frequently um you know i think we've got a lot to be proud of in the district um we've certainly put in good mitigation strategies that have have kept our numbers low which is great and we've also been able to keep through the you know keep up in those k-8 schools which equally wonderful and um you know administration on down to the ias all need to be commended for what they're doing um you know whether or not we agree with a cheshire high school parent letter is irrelevant uh we've gotten a number of letters that we have read in full that have praised your effort everyone's efforts at the high school and and they should be read just as those letters that are critical need to be read these guys are frustrated i

036get it um it's been since march it's been a year you know even if it's a look guys we're probably in this to the end of the year and i'm not saying that but they i think they just need something more than it's coming um you know if there's something more concrete but but you know i don't you know what you're doing you're the superintendent all i'm saying is we have got to be able to listen with discernment to those folks who are as frustrated as the people on the other side are encouraged that's all i have to say yeah thank you that's why i said i mean that's why this forum exists to be able to hear all those perspectives thank you faith uh adam had his hand up first and tim um firstly

037jeff thank you for that uh fantastic report um it was a really great update and uh and i guess sort of a a time a timely update considering uh the letter that we just received um and you know uh to piggyback on what faith said about you know commending all of our staff and our students but also the community at large i think we said this uh several meetings ago that you know any kind of future success that our children are going to have and to be being able to open up the school especially the high school even further is that that the community has to come together and and follow all of the guidelines so that we can get that um infection rate down which seems to be what's happening and in turn you

038are responding by uh attempting to open up the the high school further and that we continue to have success in that uh k through eight uh that they've been open all this time which is incredible and i think even our last meeting um when we were speaking with robin um our concerns about the high school being you know in hybrid mode for so long and what that is going to look like for next year so it's not like we've turned a blind eye uh to the hybrid model or or how our students are being affected by it uh we're certainly uh deal with uh parent concerns every day and we certainly can communicate with you on a regular basis um voicing our concerns and and and hoping that we can have a uh you know

039a gradual successful reopen hopefully this year and certainly uh for next year so thank you again for all your work i think yeah uh tim europe and then andrew thanks tony yeah jeff uh so thank you for thank you for all that explanation i agree with you just today i heard dyna you know one anecdote about one of the high school students who's in quarantine now and you know we're going to let down our guard a little bit want to see friends now in quarantine not positive but in quarantine because somebody else had it and passed along um so yeah no i i do think that that is uh indic your explanation made a lot of sense it resonated with me and i think it is what's happening just people putting down their guard i

040look at this three percent i think we're down in the three percent range now and i just wonder are people gonna let down their guard well the vaccine's out we're down to three percent but we're still in the middle of what used to be flu season maybe now it's coveted season would you mention that which at a certain point this i mean assuming it's similar to what happened last year and these and the infection rates go down i'm hopeful that you know say may june these rates are dropping naturally because of environmental reasons when is the when is the dodd trip tentatively scheduled for the dc trip uh i was may 26th may 26th okay so out near memorial day so i i don't think it's i think it i agree i agree with adam

041stern i think it makes a lot of sense for the for mike woods to be thinking about that seriously this year is incredibly tough and i know i look forward to dc trip what 30 40 years no not 40 years ago 30 years ago so um yeah i think that's great but i do think that the time frame definitely matters i'm assuming that's part of his consideration in the planning oh yeah i mean as well as we talked about testing before the trip isolate testing multiple tests before the trip isolation and then and that's in may assuming that you know vaccinations have a real positive impact um there is the other uh consideration of what the climate is in dc at that time um what the interstate travel bans or lack thereof may be at

042that time and you know i know mary's worked um the same to make sure that we have junior and senior prom like nobody can guarantee that we'll have any of those events but we're certainly trying like heck to you know make it a little bit more normal if we can yeah and just the last point is that as i know you'll recall jeff uh i certainly was very concerned about fall sports happening particularly not not all the fall sports but some of the higher contact ones like soccer um and you disagreed with me and you were right and i was wrong i mean as far as i know all the data you said i'm just being blunt about it i i i'm not a public health professional um and i'm trusting your judgment that the

043decisions you're making in conjunction with chespercott and the other uh area officials are the right ones i don't like it at all it's not your fault i think the teachers are generally doing a a great job but i i stand behind you in the decisions that you're making as as much as i don't like them i don't think you like a lot of the decisions keeping kids hybrid but um and you are pushing forward like you said so thank you for that in turn pushing forward in terms of getting more kids into the high school three four days a week so thank you sure thank you thanks tim uh andrew thank you tony um so i just wanna i have to say this there was not one person that wanted to keep the kids in

044the schools more than superintendent stolen did from day one when in march when everything fell apart and no one everyone was going districts were closing across the state we worked and this isn't a pat on the back or a high five to the superintendent this is this is based on fact this is based on action and what happened was is that we did everything possible to keep our kids in school as much as possible the elementary school is the fact that we've missed a few a handful of days since the beginning of the school year and that cheshire high school if we had another another 100 000 square feet of cheshire high school this wouldn't even be a discussion because those kids would be in school every single day say i spoke to a mother

045whose kid goes to hill house and then another whose child goes to crosby high school those kids have not been in school since november of 2020. so personally you know everyone's entitled to their opinion but we have had we have doubled tripled up on our meetings we have doubled down we have done everything possible to keep these kids in school and frankly i'm insulted when i hear something that you know we're not doing everything that's possible to keep the kids in school and to compare cheshire high school to the dodd trip i'm a doc my my daughter's going to be going to um d.c on the dodd trip we have been told time and time again that they are doing everything they can to get those kids to d.c within reason based on cdc regulations

046based on chest for car regulations we have been told that if we do not buy the insurance that we will lose our money on that trip there has never been one time that we are told that those kids are going to dc mike quiz is doing everything he can to give those kids hope and we're talking about may we're talking about the end of may not september of 2020 when these winchester high school reopened so again if you take that as a high five or a pat on the back to the superintendent then so be it thank you andrew any other board members with comment or feedback thank you and yeah i just want to add so dr solomon again thank you and i you know i uh actually i was reading uh mr stern's

047email throughout the course of the comments i unfortunately get a chance earlier um you know i agree everything into the course not and i'm certainly not here to argue with mr stern at all no one is uh but you know the only thing i can think of is there's been a lot of information that we as a board and a school district have been sharing at these meetings uh especially the beginning of school year september well actually august september october where we've had chestercock here we've had detailed diagrams we walk through what seems an endless array of state department education addendums that talks about cases per populations and green yellow red zones and when they think it's safe to have more students and that's something that uh dr someone showed a little bit earlier there's

048a multitude of factors and data hard data um and science quite frankly in in our health district state department health district and cdc there's a lot of factors um they're going to play on what we can and can't do with our school so you know i i certainly understand the frustration my daughter junior treasurer high school it's a very different year i tell you i haven't said this before i i was incredibly disappointed this past spring you know here i am chair finally get a chance to speak to graduation for my daughter graduating couldn't do it and she had a normal graduation it's been it just the past years it's talked about work sucked for a lot of families in town especially those that have been hit harbor coded um but i know we're doing

049all we can to get schools back in school safely uh you know to that end you know we talk about the uh the transfers to cafeteria it's a spacing issue um for certain you know unfortunately you know unlike my waistline uh chester high school cafeteria didn't expand over the holidays right so there isn't more space than i'm sorry for that analogy i'm trying to lighten the mood there's there's enough space there more students so we're trying to work within that but that being said uh it goes back a few meetings uh tim adam faith and everyone asks hey when can we get more students back in high school and uh the one thing i think i'm definitely proud of is consistency we are following um unmalleable facts right the data uh trespass so we're getting

050there um is it perfect of course not no one here is doing a high five no one's patting themselves in the back i think i said that at one meeting that was not the case but i do want to commend our staff in particular everyone every employee and contract that has been helping make our schools and volunteers by the way uh it's as special as they are should be connected they're they're more or less the front line uh doing a lot of great hard work for us so i encourage you know mr stern who hasn't taught the mayor yet or dr song please do so i'm happy to speak with you as well uh there's much more to this and hopefully tonight's update reflects some of that and that being said i think uh maybe

051at the future quarterback business meetings we touch upon these facts from the times i i noticed the last few meetings we there's so much going on that we didn't really talk about chesapeake and metrics but i think just having those figures out there from time to time and why we're doing things would help you know me ease on the frustration um but that being said again i want to thank everyone for feedback i agree with everyone listen we get stellar emails we get not so spelled emails and you know my mission is always to read those into the record unless there's something that's uh you know personally identifiable for students that we can't do but we'll take all feedback and uh and that's what we do is listen we not agree but we'll certainly try

052to help so that being said i see and hers has her hand up yeah i just would quickly say that i'm a proponent of high fives and words of encouragement we risk having a re i'm sure we have a little bit but we risk having a big morale problem among our teachers and administrators in schools and that's the worst thing for our kids when they go to school we we need our teachers need to know that they're appreciated and um i thank everybody on this board tonight who gave those kind words of encouragement because our staff needs it and they need to hear it a lot so i just want to say words of encouragement high fives whatever keeps the morale up is okay by me thank you anne what's that and uh and i

053just wanted to close with this doctor someone mentioned it we all mentioned it chester cotton mentions that morris you know preaches this almost every day the success of our community adhering to the rules to the safety mandates is what's going to dictate how much quickly we get students back to the high school if our community is following those guidelines and we're not tasting or taking risks we'll get the students back there faster you have to understand that despite the the cases we've been seeing over the holidays and you saw that spike that dr shawn so someone showed all the mitigating factors mitigating uh tasks that cps is doing you know i kinda wanna say it's maxed out so it's really up to the community to help cps help our teachers get us students back to

054school by staying safe following the guidelines and we'll get there starting to get there so please continue your support and continue your feedback that being said now we're getting more some more some more fun stuff tonight uh we're gonna move on listen under comments we're gonna move on to the purpose of this meeting which was uh fiscal year 22 budgets so that being said um mr gripple do we have a report from the finance committee uh thank you mr pergini um essentially uh what came out of our finance report uh was a motion um to uh send to the full board for consideration um essentially uh a super superintendent solon's uh budget untouched uh so far um and so that was a a total requested budget of uh 78 million four hundred eighty seven thousand

055and fifty two dollars for a total uh budget increase over um uh 20 budget year 2021 of three million eight hundred ninety three thousand one hundred twenty six dollars thank you adam um so before i get into the next question just for the audience watching a little background here so pretty much the entire month of january the superintendent started out the month by proposing his uh 21 22 operating budget for next school year and the board of ed finance committee met with the board as a whole and had three or four deep dive budget workshops on various sections of budget all that detail has been available on cps youtube schooltube it's on our board of our website there's a lot of data there uh that's why the committee chunked out the presentations by topic they

056think more digestible so what came out of the finance committee last week i believe was the recommendation to move dr stone's budget as is the full board for discussion uh tonight we'll be discussing that in more detail so mr gribble you have a motion so we can get into that discussion sure be it moved that the cheshire board of education submit to the town manager the superintendent's proposed budget for a fiscal year 2021 2022 of 78 million four hundred eighty seven thousand fifty two dollars an increase of three million eight hundred ninety three dollars excuse me three million eight hundred ninety three thousand one hundred twenty six dollars over the current budget thank you mr is there a second and uh andrew's seconds able to put faith behind them uh so motion uh discussion you're

057um catherine i just have a question a procedural question yes is before we discuss this motion if someone wants to make an amended motion is that appropriate now it's appropriate any time during the discussion of motion whether you do it now or later but yes yeah so the current motion is discussion in the superintendent's proposed budget as is correct okay i just it's like an amendment you certainly can motion and do so thank you sorry tim go ahead no no okay it's been a while since we went through this routine but thanks tony i i plan to support this budget it's it's a huge um it's a it's a really big number particularly relative to other years jeff what's the what are the increases been 2 million a year for years type of thing i

058could probably give you by percentage easier but um it's hovered in the um you know the basically the 1.17 is the five-year average so that'll give you a censor okay that's that's it yeah wait 1.17 percent or 1.17 million 1.17 percent okay this is roughly 1 million dollars just short of 1 million dollars i'm sorry this is a five percent increase this is a five percent increase this year it is 5.22 yeah so this is it's a really big um increase but i support it i appreciate everything that uh the superintendent all the staff the teachers are doing trying to work through this i've said at several meetings recently that i don't believe that you know on balance most of the kids are not getting 100 out of this year as they would relative to

059a normal year i said that based on my experience with my first grade daughter and that is in no way intended to be a poor reflection on teachers uh administration anything like that it's just the reality of what we're what we're facing here with covid right now trying to keep everybody safe and healthy while learning so i do realize it's a i do realize it's a big ask of the taxpayers but i also believe that going into next year this is this is a good budget part of one of the things that the superintendent previously mentioned that it's not about this is not about hiring new staff new guidance counselors new psychologists or anything like that and jeff correct me if i'm off base here but basically it's all hands on deck the way to

060the what what for any shortcomings that exists next year and i have no doubt there will be you know educationally students will be not up to where they would be given a normal year um the way to the way to correct it is with all hands on deck all the teachers all the guidance counselors psychologist principals working uh together with the students so i'm not sure adding a counselor to one building and thinking all our kids will be fine because we did that as fool's gold it's really going to take a comprehensive approach from every adult in the building to continue to support our kids the same way that this has taken a comprehensive approach thank you for dealing with it now yeah thank you so with that i i i'm going to i plan

061to support this budget uh proposed by the superintendent and i don't know what'll happen with the town council um they have a from my perspective they have they wear a different hat um but i think that this is uh i think this is a good budget all things considered the pandemic basically being it so thank you thank you tim we have a bevy of folks uh in the comments with a hands up so up next is andrew and then adam and then yeah andrew europe great thank you um i obviously i seconded the motion so i'm supporting the superintendent's budget um i think it's important to point out for those who are at home that you know 1.6 of this budget 1.6 million is contractual increases and 2.2 million is just restoring um last year's

062programming and there's only 12 000 in this budget of improvements over uh past years um obviously we'd like to do more and we'd like to have more improvements but in the current situation pandemic that we're in this is does not even include the covid related expenses and that's going to be an additional expense onto the taxpayers so with an average of you know less than two percent of a budget increase this budget going in over five percent knowing the council is going to have their own comments on it um i think that it's responsible and i think that it's fair and you know obviously we'd like to do more but at this time i will definitely support this um so that's it thanks thank you andrew uh adam thank you um i will also be

063supporting this motion um i'm sure as many of you know uh this number is you know well beyond my comfort zone as far as improving a budget um i think last year before kovid i think we had a unanimous vote on a budget increase of like it was like 2.1 million or something like that so we are uh well above that uh increase this year um and you know the way kind of way i i you know tried to to break down uh this increase is that you know when you strip out the the amount of money that which is essentially an emergency infusion into our medical benefit trust fund of i i want to say it's like one i think it's 1.8 million dollars if i'm correct when you strip that away um the

064budget remaining after that looks very similar to what we approved last year before kovid uh with less many less positions in it actually just two two teacher positions at the elementary level where we know we're going to have a need going forward in the future um so when you've when you take out that part of the the remaining budget uh seems very reasonable and uh i can't find a lot of fault with it though some of my friends called me last night and told me they did but that's okay that's uh why why we're elected to make the votes i guess uh so um uh so yes i will be supporting this and um uh uh van and jeff like you said it's it's almost borderline austerity budget even though it's 3.8 million so i

065do commend you on on making this budget um very efficient considering uh what uh we're looking at for next year which is just basically a world of uncertainty and um i know the town council will be uh looking at this budget i'm sure with a very critical eye and at the very least this budget gives us flexibility uh assuming we need to reduce the final budget it gives us at least some areas to to play with without doing severe damage to our students and our staff thank you thanks adam uh and and then faith so i have to disagree a little bit with what adam just said um i actually have a crisis of conscious going on with this budget because our budgets are always about or have been about three areas maintain restore and

066advance this budget has no advance in it so we're maintaining right because we have contractual obligations and that's a huge part of our budget and you know we're doing things well and we want to stay doing things well but too much of this budget is restore things that are out of sight of our control we're restoring the medical benefits reserves as people have said and we we had no control over over that going um haywire so to speak and the other uh place that we're restoring is increased maintenance to address our building and equipment our aged buildings and and aging equipment so that leaves us with advance and advance means that we have additions beyond the current budget designed to provide service and further address our goals as an educational institution as an educational district

067and that is where i have to take issue with this budget so because of my prices of conscience as i call it i went back to dr solon's what if list and there were 11 items and we have not discussed them at all they've just dropped off the table these are really important things that keep our school district running and provide this successful education that our students are getting these are things like a high school math interventionist an elementary tech coach this is a coach that helps teachers uh to navigate um the technology so that they can help their students if we don't need this coming out of out of covid and all this technology and having our teachers well equipped to be able to reach our students more successfully then if we can't put

068that in our budget then i don't i don't understand what we're doing here um we haven't talked about elementary world language which has been a goal of ours and it's on the back burner and maybe it should be on the back burner but we should be talking about these are goals of ours we are not talking about the district school security manager position which has been a goal of ours for a couple of years now there's district-wide professional development which also we've put on the back burner we've been doing a lot of professional development in-house which is great but how many years are we going to put that on the back burner because professional development is what makes our teachers the professionals that they are that brings new ideas into the classroom it directly affects

069our students and the education that they get we have things like administrative support which is at the elementary level assistant principles that we currently have shared positions i think at norton and do little i may be mistaken about that not even a full position for an assistant principle we have uh on this wish list a what if list reading and math specialist at highland chapman school we have interactive flat panel displays for 1.5 million that may be an item that goes on my back burner because i think as we talk about school modernization that's likely to become a part of that whole discussion and we have the mastery based portfolio coordinator at chs position so knowing that i can't have everything probably um i did come up with eight of the 11 that i felt

070necessary to include in the budget and from that i think i shaved it down to five most essential items that i think we need we really need to add to this budget and we're talking about a total of four hundred thousand dollars which is a drop in the bucket uh in in a 78 million dollar budget so with that i would like to propose an amendment is it is it called an amendment to the amended proposal the current motion yeah an amendment to the current motion if if this is the right time to do it yes so i would um propose it of 78 million and 52 which is an increase of four million 293 126 from the current budget to include sixty thousand dollars for the high school math interventionist position thousand dollars for

071the elementary tech coach position a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the elementary administrative support eighty thousand dollars for the reading and math specialist at highland and chapman and thirty thousand dollars for the district-wide professional development thank you can you do a favor and read what the new number is against 78 million 78 million eight eight seven 052 which is an increase of four million 293 126 from the current budget thank you so to really the amended motion increases the current motion uh budget to 78 million which represents an overall increase of four million two hundred ninety three thousand dollars performance four million two hundred ninety three thousand more is there a second on the amended motion discussion so for before we get to the discussion for those that might just be tuning in uh

072we uh we started the discussion on the motion which was to uh move forward the superintendent's proposed budget increase uh a board member and made an amendment motion to change that number by increasing it to a total of four million two hundred ninety three one 126 with several additional items added to it that being said we are now discussing the amended motion as a board any comments thank you mr pear genie um i'm sorry i got bumped off my network here so i didn't hear everything that anne said but i i do think that the argument that we need to fund items that are going to advance our goals and the ability of our system to support our students is even more important in light of the fact that we have a pandemic that has

073caused a lot of disruption to all of our students um and if we are you know obviously our hope is that in september at the latest we have everybody back in school but the transition to that for a lot of kids is going to be difficult um and the kinds of things that we're talking about here the math interventionist a technology coach um additional professional development administrative support and the reading and math specialist at highland chapman are just to me kind of those are critical expenditures and i am completely aware of the fact that this is a big budget it's it's a big budget but the difference between the budget that we're we've already supported um and this you know additional fund it's a point five three percent increase over what we would have but

074other you know we all seem to be in support of anyway and it's time it's a it's a small increase that i think the bang for the buck kind of analysis is pretty clear that these additions will enable us as a school system to have a much more robust um you know support system for our kids and making sure that we are ready to um you know get back to where we need to be with with our kids so i completely support this motion and this these additional uh funds that's it thank you thank you catherine uh any other comment from our board on the amendment motion of faith yeah um catherine and anne i i appreciate where you're coming from um in it would be lovely i i i'll just say it'd be lovely

075to be able to add them um these these positions this year um a drop in the bucket perhaps but it's coming back this budget we know will be coming back at us i do not see the council approving it we're going to have to make even more cuts and so um if we put these in i put it to you where are we going to cut um one place that i would love for us to really start taking a position and i'm really trying to hold myself in here we have 75 mandates coming from hartford and from the federal government that we have to comply with they are costly they're laden with paperwork they are taking away from our programs and i encourage you both along with everybody on um you know the rest of

076us to begin to put some pressure on our legislators to stop we have got to get control of this um i i just i can't believe that that this is where we're losing our program we have five percent to work with we have 95 fixed costs we can't do anything with those so we need everybody's help on this one and um you know if you can if we could get some of these mandates lifted perhaps we would have more room to play with more room to get these needed positions in but right now we're stuck so i don't know um i'd love to support you but i cannot thank you faith uh mr grippel comment there we go uh thank you um firstly uh i i won't be supporting the amendment um and uh although

077i do agree that the uh the support that that you're advocating for um is may or may not be needed uh as as has been quoted to me several times by both of you um that we uh normally look to superintendent solon and mr maciana for their expertise when constructing a budget this year we're passing their budget untouched that they've identified the needs for next year to to have us claw out of the hole that we are going to be in uh for next year there's there's no you know two ways about it that it's not going to be a you know a perfect uh return uh to school next year uh we can you know we're certainly only hope hope for the best and even robin had said in several meetings that she believes

078that they have the supports in place to be able to help our students recover and marlene has said that as well so for now i think um the budget that we uh hopefully will be passing tonight um is sufficient to to get us through uh and and to get us back on the path to uh uh normalcy uh and then to begin to move forward again um because i i i think it's accurate to say that we are rebuilding because we are in in a almost a a wartime footing uh where we are doing things that we normally wouldn't have expected to do um and and use resources um uh that we uh weren't expecting to use so um i think that um although that your amendment is uh well-meaning uh i i just i

079wouldn't be able to support it at this time thank you thank you adam anyone else have your hand up uh so we're still discussing the amendment the amendment to the the first motion that being said i i uh i certainly agree and sympathize with dan and catherine you know for the three of us in particular uh some designs go back a few years uh in fact i remember if not mistaken uh nidaddy was certainly behind the math intervention specialist uh at fact michigan on the board in their first term the the the chat the question i have is for dr sullin i guess is you know throughout the budget workshop reviews um you know you and your team and you know we were testing this and various questions you know going back to to a

080normal environment in the fall we don't really know what it looks like yet we hope it's what it was two years ago or you know first day of school everybody's on the bus we're all showing up in person learning and without masks if it's safe enough to do so frankly we don't know um that being said and echo on what adam said you know we're i think you know calling back is uh we are uh we're fighting back to give it some normalcy this fall um assessing our student needs getting back into a rhythm of being in person everything goes along with that and we're assessing um not just our students but our staff you know they're going through quite a bit on this getting really reactivated getting everybody's needs and planning out success for

081each student and student the rest of the school year that you know itself my opinion is uh is a huge challenge um so in these times i i just wonder if these positions were added to the list can the administration even execute on them considering everything else they got to deal with to get 21 22 um up and running so i i guess jeff my question to you is um money is there wants to answer is you know these things were available to you how realistic is you'd be able to execute on them assuming everything was funded um because they were not top priority in the budget you submitted doesn't mean they're not priority but that kind of tells me that you know you looked at holistically what you needed to do um and dollars

082aside you know these things get in there i was just wondering the reasons why yeah it's a good question it's one of these situations where everybody's right um the everything that's identified on that what if uh slide that i think ann referenced everything there would support our school system and help move us forward um i think there are limited um areas that you know might be a little bit more difficult to intervene there you know or to interject at this time excuse me things like you know expanding spanish next year i think that would be a huge you know hurdle across but most of the things in the in the you know when we talk about math intervention certainly incredibly beneficial tech educational technology coach at the elementary level um the word on the street

083although i haven't heard anything official is that students will still be permitted to learn from remote next year we could have really benefited from that elementary tech coach this year to support that learning now an elementary administrator has been something that you know we want to be able to spend more time coaching teachers we've found that to be incredibly beneficial um over the last few years when we've done instructional rounds and learning walks and teachers coaching each other but somebody needs to coordinate that and it's just a piece that particularly as we almost redefine what teaching looks like would be beneficial course reading and math support always valuable and professional development is important as well the the um you know the challenge that we were up against and the design of this budget was we

084have a five-year history of 1.17 and you know here we are the things that are in our budget right now are critical you know typically we'd be looking at you know some more maintenance items or more um you know something else but right now i i we don't have insurance to fall back on to make any reductions our maintenance accounts have been very lean for an extended period of time and i don't really know where smc is going to go yet nobody does so you know so we had to try and strike a balance i i'm trying to be fiscally responsible but readily acknowledge that this does not move us forward in a way that would be significantly beneficial to our community it's trying to strike a balance thank you jeff sure any other comments

085on the board attend actually what time i gotta can you hear me i'm having some technical difficulties here tonight um i really appreciate let me just say one thing i know that all of us would like to be able to fund the school you know cheshire public schools at the highest level possible if it didn't cause pain to the taxpayers i get that and i also am a i'm a taxpayer you know whatever we do here is going to impact me into you know personally um i you know what we're proposing in this amendment is you know 400 000 of additional expenditures i understand that the town council may or may not accept anything we send over there they may cut whatever but i am not going to i have never been a fan of

086trying to predict what that will be i think you know the way i approach the budget is to say um what is it that that i believe is going to be in the best interest of our students our staff and and you know and then we see what happens really but you know but my job as a board member has always been to advocate for you know the best result in in my view um i i do i get it i get that this is a lot of money overall i get that we are in a bad situation globally i get that you know things are uncertain and yet i also think that you know focusing on these few additional items is not going to have the you know a gigantic impact on the town

087as a whole on any individual taxpayer um and it is one of those situations where i think you know this is a way of getting a much more valuable return on the money that we'd be spending um i am really you know last year we made a a decision to you know under not under yet well under fund under fund the medical benefits trust fund by a little bit because we had such a big cushion and it looks like you know we would anticipate a certain level of claims and we should be in pretty good shape because really we only need a couple of months worth of claims in the medical benefits trust we made that decision we're paying for that in a way because now you know we have these this year of really

088unexpected high claims we're d we're getting perilously close to um you know less than a month's worth of claim um and we have to make up for that okay that that's what we have to do and it's happened to us as vin pointed out it happens to us every several years we find ourselves in this kind of a situation but i you know so the taxpayers got the benefit last year of the fact that we cut the funding to the medical benefits trust this year we have to make up for that but it should not necessarily be at the expense in my view of these addition additional items that are directly impactful for our students um and again i get that i may be one of the two people here that supports this and that's

089okay you know that's okay i i'm going to support the the superintendent's budget as we you know as was passed to the finance committee if that's where we end up but i do want people to at least think about it you know just think about whether or not this is something we would at least want to put on the table and present to the town council and and then see what happens uh i'm done sorry thank you tony thank you tim that's why that's why we're uh we volunteer for these high paying positions on the board of it right is to have these discussions and i understand we all understand where we're coming from and i'm very very thankful everyone's you know has been very gorgeous in these discussions even last year so you know

090no worries here um i'm sorry tim you're waiting you're up yeah no i appreciate i appreciate where your motion's coming from man i i do i i do like it but at the same time i'm i still have in my mind uh that this is probably in the last 20 years the largest percent increase the largest dollar increase that the board of ed has requested uh i think we will probably end up getting whatever it is from the council it'll probably be the largest it could be reduced but it'll still be the largest increase both in dollars and in percent i i suspect um but i i i just think about not not so much i mean i've i've seen numbers unemployment is relatively low but i've anecdotally i've just spoken with a lot of

091people who have you know made less money this year for a variety of different reasons i do think there are a lot of people who are um you know the not just the uncertainty but actual they're going to have a lower agi just adjusted gross income for 2020. so i'm gonna stick with the superintendent's proposed budget thank you thanks then anyone else so you know i'll try them in i was going to comment original motion earlier but estimate comments now so yeah getting the amended motion is adding uh it's an increase of 4.293 126 million dollars roughly 400 000 additional for a few positions i'm not arguing those positions you know personally if we if we're planning on having um as many students as possible back in our schools this fall that's to be determined

092i hope that's the case uh we'll see our next few months play out you know then i will definitely say security management positions finally funded we thought it was a good idea three years ago two years ago and you know trying to get in at the right time i know some projects weren't you know we're playing on hold so we could you know not fund out this current school year it's unclear to me if the security manager will actually be doing anything with projects next school year um all these positions i think will have some benefit i'm gonna just go back to you know i think if you know dr solomon thought they were critical to relevant schools they'd be in there um i don't think this school year is the year to have all

093these positions i got a feeling that this coming school year administration particulars and had his hands full assessing the students getting back to speed uh getting reacclimated and i went surprisingly throughout the course of the next clear night i know ian i'm sorry catherine's not the not a fortune teller not that am i i can't predict this but just logic tells me that you know we may change course and couple these positions depending on what you know the school experience is next year math assessing that maybe we need more teachers for from math the foster meeting more programs um i personally want to see us get back into a rhythm or to demonstrate to the town that we have our schools back kids back in school we're assessing where they are we're getting back up

094to speed let's see where chips fall from there i have no doubts we're coming on top fighting these positions in particular are not as critical to opening the school year this fall speaker i think they will be nice i think they will be the next final year we got to build upon these so i'm not inclined to support them and emotionally i don't understand where it's coming from and i thank both ian and catherine for raising it um you know the one thing i want to add is i know the medical trust fund is always a it's a fun topic well you know it's a medical claims reserve account it's always a fun topic to talk about i i disagree with captain that uh we're paying for undefined the account you know the necessarily go

095back to whether it was reduction 400 thousand dollars 100 000 or not the exception high claim rates was unforeseen from our actuary so even left untouched we'd be in the world of hurt right now but i think the point that really could be made there is you know again especially for the the the more newer you wish members now there's been years uh budgets for the board where that medical claim reserve was either touched in some way by past town councils not necessarily the current one the town manager in some cases would take the superintendent's budget and offset part of it by undefining it so it has been used as catherine pointed out when it's very high uh rates um you know i think you know by doing that you know obviously it's you know

096we've learned we can't always predict when these claims are going to uh become astronomic and i still question whether there really is a cycle for this because this year seems to be a cycle of madness with these particular claims that being said um you know i think this 000 is really things that you know had those reserves not been touched over the years and we got fully funded or even you know more than 50 in front of our budgets we could have those positions a long time ago so you know 2020 is always hindsight uh but i do agree that this budget uh and even i would say even these amendments does not add anything new it does not uh advance our education curriculum does not advance what we do in the school district it

097doesn't mean that we're not doing anything um but you know i agree it's to maintain get back to a normalcy but i need to see that happen um and this is a very high budget i seriously doubt um again being that fortune teller i feel failed to be at i don't see how we'll get a fully funded budget we've never gotten a fully funded uh budget as far as i can remember in the best of times in the worst of times uh considering that half of this increase actually more than half is related to the reserve account um you know i would hope that you know when town council reviews this you know whether or not to decide to fully fund the 1.9 million dollars i think to the claim reserve 1.8 million increase you

098may do half of it i would hope that you know some of that money could be used to fund a regular increase so again we'll see where that goes that's a little too tell but i appreciate the amendment i can support it at this time but before we vote on this do we have any audience comment on this amendment motion i think i have one go ahead and you have to do it i'm sorry just i just wanted to make a point of clarification that i did not have the district's school security manager in my proposed increase because i do think that that is something that needs to be looked at and that's for down the road the same with the um elementary world language i think that needs more thought put into it but

099the five items that i did include i think are things that could be and should be implemented as early as next school year and that is the high school math interventionist the elementary technology coach the district-wide professional development and the elementary administrative support and the reading and math specialist at highland and chapman great thank you so i just i just wanted to clarify the ones that i chose were and i thought i thought very carefully about this because as others have said i'm conscious of creating a um going for a budget that is um responsible as well but there's there should be no denying we are in we are on the board of education we're not on the board of funding our medical benefits trust fund when it goes haywire and i've already mentioned in

100a previous meeting how i feel i think we should have a special account for that because that is not under our control um but that was a discussion last week so i i'm not here to rehash that but i did choose items that i think should and could be implemented um as early as this fall thank you jeff do we have any audience uh input on this amendment um we do you know one with the two comments one is really specific i think to the amendment um the other one is you know just generally related to overall spending um this is from heather cavallaro bargow first i would like to commend you on the amazing job you all do i want to share that i'm deeply sad by the state of the budget for our

101education and cheshire what cheshire has been able to do given the budget has been stellar however i feel that we're at a point where serious investment needs to start to happen in our education for our future our children they deserve the additional programs uh they deserve the technology they deserve the facilities continuing to slash a budget will only hurt us long term it will hurt our town long term what we spend per child compared to our peers is appalling i moved to this town for the education i need to start to see the investment in our education system and i know i'm not alone i certainly hope town council ratifies the 5 increase but i think we should uh be seeing a higher increase in order to continue to attract families to cheshire to attract

102talented teachers to teach around town we need to demonstrate an investment so my question are we doing enough to ensure that our town is putting the appropriate priority and education of uh over of children i think over other programs that are offered and what are we doing and are we doing enough to ensure that parents have a voice in the community given the investment in education over the past several years i'm having trouble believing that we are investing in us and the town understands the priority thanks the other question we received i couldn't make out a name from the email address but the question asked have we explored uh privatizing lunch services um the short answer to that is yes we've been you know i think you're probably better equipped to speak on that than

103tonight good evening everyone um yeah we we have you know talked to a couple different vendors over the years about um you know basically taking the food service operation that we have that's run in-house and it's not a cost savings it's not a matter of cost savings that you would achieve by doing that you know we have a very strong food service program we really have no issues you know keeping up with the requirements of the food service program and you know certainly i would argue that we would do a better job than bringing in a third party we'd still need a food service director and and staff to to oversee the program um it's not out of the question but you know if the question really relates to does privatizing or outsourcing it save

104us any money the answer is generally it does not we have a good program and we like to keep it that way is really i think the more important question for us thank you or any other audience there as there is more uh the amended motion on the table uh increases the superintendent's recommended budget the overall budget amount would increase to 78 million and eighty seven thousand fifty two dollars which represents an increase of four million two hundred ninety three thousand dollars two hundred and two thousand and one hundred twenty six dollars uh all those in favor and catherine in favor all those opposed if i'm opposed the amended motion does not pass we now fall back to the original motion on the table which i will read because it's been almost an hour uh

105the original motion that's on the table is that the cheshire board education submit to the town manager the student the superintendent's proposed budget for 2122 of 78 million 487 052 which is an increase of 3 million 893 126 dollars on the current budget so we're back to that motion any further comments on this motion everybody's tired are ready we've got another motion to go um in all seriousness i i do want to thank ann and catherine for that adam right adam i think catherine had one too um but uh i just forgot to to uh to to thank um the the teachers and the administration we had several uh tough uh contract negotiations this summer um and it's because of them that were even to have a a but you know a budget of 3.8

106and a budget increase of 3.8 million as uh faith had mentioned you know our budget is 95 um fixed costs and most of that is uh salary and benefits and um the the teachers union administrators union that really came to the uh stepped up to the plate and uh and and negotiated um a fair contract this year that that really helped uh our budget this year unfortunately because of the uh the other uh trust problem um we weren't really to to reinvest into our into our uh our system the way we could have uh with the savings that we incurred through uh salary and benefits but i just wanted to thank them uh for for the fear negotiations this year thank you adam uh catherine i'm sorry i didn't see your hand up earlier that's

107okay i'm sorry thank you uh mr perginian and i just want to um say of course i will support the superintendent's requested budget um even though i wish he would have asked for and uh but i appreciate the fact that in coming up with this budget that uh superintendent solon mr maciana miss solano really you know sharpened their pencils as much as they had to and came up with you know a budget that is it's large but it is um fair and and i have no doubt and i didn't mean to suggest that our children will not be uh well educated will not have the resources that they need to um succeed next year um and thereafter so i i if i gave that impression i did not want to do that because we have

108an extremely talented um district full of great teachers administrators and you know and it's we're so lucky and i as as adam said um we went through some tough negotiations and and everyone has approached this difficult time with um flexibility and grace and professionalism and um so of course i will support this budget um i wish we could do more and maybe next year that will change so thank you thank you for letting me speak as if i would prevent anybody from speaking of course and i didn't take your comments says that we're not i know exactly where you're coming from catherine so thank you i know i know a penny for every word i just spewed um but i want to echo something catherine just said and we had not as a group really

109said this until she just did and that is um vin and marlene and jeff's work in terms of recognizing the situation for what it is they could have asked for the moon um and they didn't they were respectful um of the town um and uh you know that some of the constraints that our townspeople are are living with and um and i just it's it's hard it had to have been really hard for them to pull this together and you know to see all those line items that were zeroed out with no increase um is really almost breathtaking and um even i who you know fiscal like uber conservative um was surprised by seeing that and so i applaud you guys and what you've done and catherine and and i would as i said i

110would love to be able to fund those positions i really would i don't mean to come off as like this real hard you know what but um it's just an unfortunate time we're in and so um anyway kumbaya so we can count on your support next year faith oh next year's a long time man hey this meaning this is not video so you know this might be an infinite playback loop next year uh as we go through the budget discussion i just dug my grave i get it no no thank you any final comments on this motion before i comment and turn over for a vote first of all thank you for we have another motion discussion too hopefully it's uh probably just as involved and again this is a good thing for those watching

111you know please understand that uh this has been uh almost a month and a half and discussions in the budget a lot of deep dive you know tonight's meeting you know it's not showing any of those dozens of slides and hours and hours of discussion to come to this point but this budget as every budget has been uh looked at very very deeply many questions were asked mandy has been raised i think dr saul and his team put together a very responsible budget that needs a critical need to get up and running and restore it next year still moving the floor as much as we can i do agree that some of these positions we're going to have to fund eventually it is my hope that after this current year comes up we're in a

112better position because we do need to um you know either move forward on world languages and illinois schools or punt that one you know we seem to keep going back and forth on that uh with budgets but you know eventually we gotta move we know there's a benefit to our students by having that so i'm confident we can and again for board members you know every year we uh we tend to get into this routine where in the final budgets we bring up positions and so forth may i suggest that at the start of next school year that we regularly discuss these new positions and you know get the superintendent to include in his budget presentation in january so they are part of those things and you know it'd be a lot quicker and easier

113discussion to have so it's really i'm not saying if i'm here i'll remind us to you know to remember these positions and remind the superintendent that we want to see these added and discussed next year that being said it's important for everyone watching to know that we're not this budget does not remove overall remove positions it does not reduce much of anything in the budget is an increase of almost 4 million 3.8 million change so it is increasing the budget uh it is accounting for the fact that we're seeing a bump in kindergarten enrollment uh next school year and jeff pointed out the issues there between uh doolittle and darcy full grades kindergarten and this is just a sign of the enrollment book that's coming in the next four years that the monetization committee is

114discussing so we are being proactive and making sure that we have teachers funded and those class sizes stay reasonable and successful so i'm happy to see that and uh besides the reserve claim funding the rest of it is is mainly benefits and to that end usually our certified salaries is usually a large chunk of the increases this budget is not it's actually i think the lowest part of it a large success because we're starting a new contract uh with all our units particularly our teachers union um and we both worked out a very favorable agreement to to both groups uh we helped put some things in their contract to help ease the quality of life and likewise they were very very helpful in recognizing the financial hardships that cheshire is experiencing and they want to

115be part of a solution so i do want to thank them as well as administrators union and the other units for for being at the table because without their help and support this budget has been bigger so so again thank you for the board for calling that out that being said i am concerned of what comes back as a final budget we didn't really talk about this uh you know i think faith might ask where do we cut i'm concerned because this past spring you know we did a very good budget in my opinion uh we increased funding reasonably and then you know coveted hit and i know it's been uh it's kind of history now it's been over a year almost a year we also you know to to help the town and help

116ourselves we were the town council and give up i think another million plus dollars i think i want to say overall it's probably a two million dollar uh more or less reduction than we started last year uh in large priority other coveted we worked through covet almost we're not quite there yet we're unsure of what the code expenses will actually be this year if we remain the course jeff and vincent outlined those details and there was another supplemental budget of one million dollars in expenses that could be uh seen in the worst case we don't know what the funding is going to be yet uh from the state or feds this time next year and quite frankly if things get better hopefully we don't seize expenses so just want to keep that in mind because

117those are not part of this budget uh and i thought i mentioned earlier that when i i just speak to rob horace uh last week briefly and he said we're not sure we're not hamlets because it's a first for us we don't have a mechanism to do a supplemental uh his advice was you know we'll bring forth the operating budget by the time we get that discussion let's see whoever coded and his expenses you know there might be something to do there later on so uh i only raise this because that's not in this discussion tonight but there's potentially another million dollars plus that we have to deal with this coming fall especially if we're not getting uh reimbursement from the feds of the state so uh that being said i'm concerned that something smaller

118comes back particularly as it hits our non benefits of cal we don't have anywhere else to go in this budget that's remained in my opinion around the board that uh we exhausted cuts to head count in spring uh to the point that if we were to go there and you know i think mentioned to mention last name that's really the largest lion's share of budget it's going to increase class sizes there's no doubt um it's going to have an impact on our kids uh getting restorative back in school if they're gonna have much time with teachers um you know there's there's really there's no there's no reserve account to under fund this coming school year um where do we go so it is a critical budget in my mind i think it has to be

119funded as is and i think we've demonstrated to the best of our abilities over the years that we're very very pruning with our budgets what comes back and even though we're you know the bottom third of scoring per pupil our students excel academically and that's really unheard of you would think that the less you spend uh the least our our students achieve not just academically but holistically that hasn't been the case here uh i'm not sure how much longer for that course is going to run with all these challenges with kobit i i really hope and praying that this budget is fun as that is and at least our non-fixed cost or our destruction costs are not impacted we really need those kids back in with the full staff at hand things successful so that

120being said the motion on the table is that the cheshire board education submit to the town manager the superintendent's proposed budget for 21.22 a 78 million 487 052 an increase of three million eight hundred ninety three thousand or twenty six dollars over the current budget uh all those in favor please raise your hand and i can't see if you have your hand up or not uh okay all those in favor all opposed one abstention the motions the motion patches uh passes six to one thank you team next topic uh planning uh just before we get into this and andrew if i turn it over to you uh we we now do both the operating budget and capital budgets at the same time uh in the past the capital budgets will start a little later um

121in early spring so we're going to dive into yet another budget hopefully not as lengthy of a discussion but definitely worthwhile discussing and that'd be for a cabinet well uh andrew i'll leave it to you if you want to give an update sure i um i'm gonna give a brief update and then vin's gonna actually walk us through briefly as to what the five year the one year and then the five-year capital plan is for the district um so the planning committee has met met back on january 11th and then again on the 28th the meeting on january 11th um the first the initial proposal to the to the planning committee was an overall capital expenditure budget for 2122 and the amount of 5 million 240 thousand dollars um at that meeting catherine tim and

122i heard the reasoning and saw district wide where those improvements would be made um and knowing that we'd be facing various increases in the operating budget and knowing that we are in the midst of a comprehensive school modernization plan which will hopefully and will touch every school building in the district we thought that it was prudent to take a deep dive to see what was absolutely necessary for the upcoming year and then also for the five-year plan um knowing that as modernization will be submitted to the town council in march next month um that we do reserve the right to make some changes to this but we need to get something on the books now and so that's the purpose of the approval that we'll be seeking later on tonight so with that i'm going

123to turn it over to vin and he's going to share his screen and walk us through what we're looking for for the short term and for the five year plan for the district okay thank you andrew and can somebody confirm they could see the two pie charts on the screen yes yes yes okay so we're going to look at the left pie chart first um this is the overall five-year capital plan and you know i will reiterate you know what mr martelly said is that the the planning committee really went through you know this this um you know the overall five-year request and the one-year you know request for funding very thoroughly there's some very detailed spreadsheets that were shared with the planning committee members where they could see the details so this is a

124high level overview of the five-year capital plan here so the over five years the request is thirty seven million seven hundred twenty eight thousand five hundred dollars and you'll see here in the pie chart those the categories in which that money is being requested i will make an editorial comment that these are all maintenance related requests to keep our current buildings we have eight you know operational um and in in good repair from an overall capital investment point of view so of the 37.7 million 11.1 million are for window replacements most of our district schools still have original windows in them and as as all the board members certainly and and administrators on this video call and many members of the public know our buildings you know are an average of about 70 years old

125this year so we do need to get those windows replaced over the next five years district paving roofing sidewalk and masonry improvements is the next biggest percentage 8.1 million dollars i will tell you most of this is for roofing on our buildings where the roof systems are expiring um and you know we always prioritize worse first just because a roof warranty is expired we don't put it in for replacement but certainly when we can't repair a roof any longer and when we start to see leaks we do have to replace our roof systems district cafeteria improvements are the next largest piece 15 of the request um that's 5.6 million dollars the high school piece of that is about four million dollars we do have funding currently for the norton cafeteria improvements which i will be

126talking about when we go through the one-year funding request next is 3.2 million dollars for hvac improvements 2.6 million dollars for interior building improvements across the district code compliance this is primarily ada improvements 2.4 million this year we introduced the need for the replacement of three fire alarm control systems in our schools these are older systems they are working but they're antiquated and you know they really need to be upgraded and none of these are in year one but we do need to upgrade and replace those so that's 1.7 million continuing to improve the district laboratories 1 million dollars flooring ceiling tile replacements eight hundred thousand lighting and electrical improvement six hundred eighty thousand and then some uh final improvements at the athletic complex to make that um facility ada compliant is 350 000. so

127that's the full five-year plan uh however i just want to point out that the actual money being requested from the town council will be whatever the board of ed approves as a request in year one of the five-year capital plan and that's what i'm gonna you know focus a couple more minutes of discussion on so the one-year request for 19 for 20 21 is this 2.65 million dollars of the 37.7 million in other words the first year is 2.65 million as mr martelly indicated uh the original proposal that was recommended by the superintendent and myself was 5.2 million dollars but you know after reviewing that the planning committee members did ask us to go back and and really isolate and identify those projects that we really needed to do in the next fiscal year and

128so the 2.6 million dollars just quickly 500 000 for window replacements this has continued to just replace the windows at cheshire high school this is a multi-year project we need to continue making those those window improvements by replacing original windows you know with new windows we do get energy savings when we make those improvements uh this million 75 000 which is under the big category of paving roofing sidewalk and masonry 750 000 of it is to replace a section of dodd's roof above the gym the cafeteria and main office area we've been you know chasing leaks and making repairs there for the last several years and you know the roof system is a point at a point that it has to be replaced so that's the bulk of that million seventy five thousand this hundred

129seventy five thousand is additional funding needed for the norton cafeteria improvements we had a four hundred thousand dollar appropriation approved by the board and then the town council last year we hired a design professional did the legwork and the you know the bottom line is that the norton cafeteria is really very small and we can't expand the footprint but in order to make the improvements and gain some additional space that we need so we can improve the serving area for the students we needed to move the refrigeration equipment you know outside of the building and put it you know into the parking lot in a you know in a very confined space it won't create an issue with parking it's actually going to be a little bit of a smaller footprint than a pad you

130know with a storage unit that's already there so the bottom line is we need another 175 thousand dollars to be able to complete the norton cafeteria improvements uh this next 350 000 is for hvac improvements actually half of that is to replace the underground oil storage tank at cheshire high school which is a requirement by the department of energy environmental and energy protection when a tank reaches 30 years it needs to be removed and the other half of that is to make some replacement of ventilation equipment at cheshire high school which is necessary 250 000 we need a hundred thousand to make some continuing improvements to the utility tunnels at cheshire high school those tunnels have been you know well maintained over the last six six to seven years last time that you know we

131had an issue in those utility tunnels we want to keep them in good repairs um we want to continue to do the annual inspections so a hundred thousand will will fund that and another hundred thousand is requested to make some replacements of interior doors across the district on a worst first basis 250 000 to keep the district lavatory project moving and the last 50 thousand dollars being requested is to um you know replace some of the older and non-compliant uh bleacher and stadium seating over at cheshire high school at the main game field so those in total are two million six hundred fifty thousand dollars um again this was approved by the planning committee this one-year funding as well as the overall five-year plan and that what that is um what was recommended to be

132brought forward to the board of education i will stop sharing my screen and tune back in if there are any questions i'll be glad to address them and i i apologize advanced andrew and then but uh this was not the original proposed capital project uh capital budget was it was it was a than the initial was yes it was reduced the year one was reduced from five million two hundred forty thousand down to two million six hundred fifty thousand but the 37 million in total that didn't change what what was done is the projects that we could push into year two or three we did that but preserved the full 37 million 728 500 in the original proposal got it i i know this was discussed in planning committee meetings i'm not sure how much

133the public actually watch those meetings um but you know i'm sure the question in people's minds is with the modernization committee uh nearing its final options by march first you know the board of event town council start delivering those or can any of these wait uh for that or you know i know the answer is no i'm sure they could wait they probably would have but i i know we have projects that we have to do to keep things maintained that not be touched by any of those years but another question is you know are we spending money that we shouldn't be spending in lieu of a pending monetization option that will be voting on by the summer i i mean i can answer from you know my perspective and i see mr question but

134you know the i guess the the first point that i would make is um any school monetization plan that is approved you know we wouldn't see any if there's a building a new building approved the renovation of a building that would take you know three years before we would see any of that come to fruition in the form of a construction project you know and completion so you know that was certainly one of the things that the planning committee was was very careful as we looked at you know these requested you know one-year funding of 2 million 650. so a good example is the dodd you know roof project that's 750 000 we cannot wait to do that you know because it's going to continue to leak and the dodd building presumably is going to

135be online for a minimum you know of of three years depending on which scenario is approved and then in one of the scenarios dodd remains a swing space for elementary schools as some of the elementary renovations are done so you know we did scrutinize this for you know items that can be pushed out and and we did that's how we got from 5 million 240 down to 2 million six hundred fifty thousand so i would say that these projects are projects that really do need to to get done um including the district laboratories which if if we're doing a district lab and this has primarily been done at norton and doolittle and we'll probably some probably most of this 250 000 will be spent at too little you know do little right now and the

136scenarios we're looking at would be renovated but if these bathrooms were recently renovated probably won't touch those as part of a more broad renovation that do a little you know whether or not that happens i can't say with 100 assurance but i think that would be taken into consideration thanks andrew tim had his hand up earlier i'm sorry tim i just saw that yeah thanks anthony uh just with regard to your point about the smc you know moving forward a few weeks ago when the planning committee met that was generally my point which was to say can we sort of create another bucket of these items which are frankly you know could change depending on directions that the sme smc takes in the next few in the next few months but we we're going down

137parallel tracks right now with the annual capital budget and the smc but we have some flexibility in the next few months to make changes in our decisions and that was really the reason i asked to change that 5.2 million number to something different and it ended up coming down to about 2.6 then question for you yeah these projects town council referendum thresholds five hundred thousand dollars correct if aggregate if if in aggregate uh spending exceeds five hundred thousand dollars it goes to referendum how many referenda questions do we have baked into this so the there'll be three that would have to go to referendum assuming the board and the council approves it the first is the 500 000 for the cheshire high school window replacement project continuation also the 750 000 for the dodd roof

138is the second one and the third one is no actually the yes i'm sorry the 175 would take us to referendum because the appropriation of 400 000 last year plus this 175 takes us to 5.75 so that would have to go out for voter referendum as well okay all right thank you any other questions for andrew on the planning committee andrew do you have emotion i do have a motion now i have to read the motion in all subsequent years correct yeah the motion is brain sure okay the motion i moved the cheshire board of education approves the five-year capital expenditure plan for improvements to current buildings in the total amount of three min 37 million 728 thousand five hundred dollars with annual allocations as follows twenty one twenty two two million six hundred and

139fifty thousand dollars 23 7 285 thousand dollars 23.24 10 million 675 thousand dollars 24.25 6 million 656 000 and 2025 through 26 10 million 462 500 thank you andrew i didn't even ask you is there a second the faith was ahead of the enemy campaign sorry so the motion seconded any discussion on this motion i know vincent uh andrew and tim i just give some detail behind us seeing as there is no discussion thank you the uh the motion is great adam my comment wasn't that important actually could i guess it could have been any i just wanted to see the planning committee uh for going through all of these uh all the plans have been put forward and paring it down a little bit to what is necessary for uh next year uh because

140of the pending smc uh decisions and anything to decide after that so um thank you for doing that can i comment on that and just our hope is and i know that moving forward with the planning committee we're gonna know what that plan is so it's gonna make these decisions moving forward for the next five years a lot easier um so this has been i give catherine and um tim a lot of credit i mean this this was hard to do we don't want to pare anything down we don't want any of our buildings to fall into any sort of state of disrepair but knowing that there's big changes on the horizon this was this this was the best that we could really come up with catherine did you want to comment no thing no

141i think everybody's yeah no thank you i had your hand up just it's a practical question so several of these items have to go to referendum when would that referendum be november and when do we anticipate this the modern november okay okay timing standpoint we'd have three projects these three projects if the town council moves along plus whatever comes out of modernization okay heavy lifting okay uh before we vote on this uh jeff is there any public comment on this motion i think we wore everybody out during the other budget it seems there is none uh the motion is move that cheshire board education approves the five year capital expenditure plan for improvements to current buildings and a total amount of 37 million 720 500 with annual allocations as follows 2021 to 22 2.65 million

14222 to 23 7 million 285 000 23 to 24 10 million six hundred seventy five thousand twenty four twenty five six million six hundred six million six hundred fifty six thousand and finally 25 to 26 10 million four hundred sixty two thousand five hundred all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you i do again i do want to thank vincent and planning committee for having a number of discussions on this and getting into such a great state first of all thank you and um again these budgets are never easy i can't imagine on time the the district spends preparing these let alone the time to spend uh answering our questions so thank you everyone uh on both budgets uh as far as the rest agenda there is none but before

143we want to just read a couple upcoming meetings uh the next board of ed meeting is a curriculum meeting which will be on monday february 8th at 7 pm there is a calendar committee meeting which is wednesday february 10th at 4 pm and we have a board of ed business meeting thursday february 18th at 7 30 pm uh it's also worth knowing that we have a school modernization committee meeting february 10th i believe to do some further discussion analysis on the the remaining two options that the committee is working on and i i hope that folks tune into that and i hope uh folks if you're watching you're aware of the survey that the modernization committee is conducting and you participate in that um but that being said uh again i want to thank everyone

144uh those watching especially the board and and the entire staff helped put his budget process together i know uh it's been a long two months at least on this to say the least thank you and uh look forward to hearing back from the town and the second part of this when we get into more discussions with our town council on the budgets which i believe is april that time frame and those dates will be published when the town council begins deliberating this i'll let you know so that being said do i have a motion to adjourn catherine seconded by adam uh all those in favor thank everyone it's unanimous the meeting is adjourned please be safe and enjoy what's left for the rest of your evening thanks