Board of Education 1-21-20

001okay good evening everyone welcome to wow january 21st our journey 21st board of ed business meeting it's actually one of one of our it's our first business meeting since the uh the new year uh before we get into it mr zenski have a roll call for quorum please sure mr grippo here miss hallon here miss ham here ms harrigan here mr martelly here mr paragini here and mr white mr chairman of a quorum thank you carol uh i ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance once uh jeffer vin has the flag up on the screen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening everyone good evening that may

002be watching welcome to our meeting this evening uh we have a lot to cover uh since uh the end of last year we had our superintendent's uh board uh 2021 2022 board of operating budget presentation last week uh hopefully folks will tune in for that uh but this is our first actual business meeting of the new year so happy new year to everyone once again uh before we get into the business section of the meeting we actually have a student representative report by lucy and joshua so lucy and joshua whenever you're ready the mic is all yours thank you um so first we're going to start with athletics the winter sports season started this past tuesday so that was really exciting the state has approved participation for the following sports boys and girls basketball boys

003and girls ice hockey boys swimming and boys and girls alpine skiing unfortunately indoor track programs can only hold practices and there are currently no con contests but they will reevaluate that in march cheerleading can participate as a sideline cheer only and competitive cheerleading and wrestling have not been approved for any competitions they can only run conditioning programs the competition season for those winter sports that have been approved will begin on february 8th so we look forward to cheering on our rams then uh last meeting we told you all that the peer health education classes in the national honor society were running a food drive so that was finished right after our meeting actually on january 19th and we just got word that the groups donated 5063 pounds of items on behalf of cheshire high school

004and the cheshire community which i believe is a record yeah that's awesome and the other event that we talked about was the holiday drive-thru that also happened on december 19th uh it was run by best buddies along with many other chs clubs and sports teams that volunteered um so basically all participants that went through got holiday goodies and they also got an optional picture with santa in total we had 326 cars come through and through donations we raised over 900 dollars we we received hundreds of non-perishable food items for the local food pantry and also hundreds of books for the local rereads bookstore and lastly the spring musical cast at chs has started rehearsals and they're planning to have a performance in some way we don't exactly know how that's going to be yet but

005it will be the musical little woman so we're looking forward to that and that's all we have thank you lucy and joshua any questions from our board members speechless you left us speechless awesome great work tonight well thanks for being here we love seeing you i love seeing you happy faces uh won't keep you any longer longer so you're welcome to stay but if you need to log off and do some homework uh it's perfectly acceptable so thank you guys thanks for being here again we'll see you at our next business meeting good night thank you uh up next is audience uh dr sone do we have any audience correspondence yet um the only audience correspondence we had actually was budget related so we'll hold that for tuesday's meeting great thank you uh moving on

006we have reports of standing committees starting with curriculum uh miss ham which i can give an update sure would um first of all i just want to correct the agenda it um should read that the meeting was um january 11th not the 15th of 2021 um it was a concise meeting uh we had two three four informational items um first the uh cheshire curriculum commit uh council gave an overview of the um music executive summary and the key items in the report included experiences for students in the elementary middle and high school relative to the national music standards um we received an update on a video audio link um that unfortunately was not functioning that night and um it they really are remarkable uh the program is remarkable at both the um at the uh

007well all grades um these are pretty much a talented a big bunch of talented kids which is really nice and committed teachers secondly we heard from um the library executive [Music] summary and um the key points there were that um the uh the faculty of the the staff are aligning the new curriculum and assessment to the 2018 american association of librarian standards um which are more rigorous and um perhaps more in line with what we do what we're doing in our program than the state standards um so [Music] the um the staff is continuing to seek opportunities for librarians to collaborate with one another and with classroom teachers and finding meaningful ways to integrate the library and core class skills and work then kevin hanlon presented the annual report for the grade six otis lenin

008school ability test also known as the old sats and the results show similar performances to previous years and then finally mr hanlon reported on the test administration of the las links which is the state assessment for english learners and the test has four parts which are listening speaking reading and writing and this year the administration is from january 4th 2021 to march 31st 2021 um and the administration of the assessment this year includes procedures for assessing students who are remote learners um which presents an interesting challenge so that was the gist of the meeting um we have one are there any questions i should ask seeing none um we have one um action item and that is an approval of textbooks um the title is the college accounting a practical approach to 14th uh it

009is the 14th edition of that book so um do i hear a motion to approve the textbook so moved okay do i hear any discussion of the motion oh do i hear a second so sorry catherine second thank you do i hear any discussion uh mr white hi faith yeah i'm just curious uh so you mentioned the 14th edition of the accounting book yes if we if we're moving from like one addition up to the next edition are we voting on that just to be clear right it's a motion that we must vote on we are voting on a textbook okay yes same text new edition basically new edition yes okay all right thank you okay um all those in favor aye all is opposed it carries um that's the end of my report at

010the curriculum committee awesome faith that was nice and concise thank you uh for reference uh we did receive the links to the music videos from uh marlena's cooner that we couldn't see during the actual meeting uh if those are available to you by the public uh if not already i would definitely recommend putting up on the website or to our youtube channel they're great to watch and it's definitely uh uplifting and enlightening to see our kids uh perform um those songs so thank you for sharing that mr cooner and marlene for giving us that detail uh that means said we're going to move on to finance uh lots of finance activities happening so mr grippel would you like to give us an update um yes thank you mr chairman um we had a finance committee

011meeting on uh january 19th which was just a few days ago um it was uh it went ran a lot longer than i thought it would um but uh i think we went till 10 o'clock i believe uh in which where we had a spirited conversation about the medical benefit trust fund and a bunch of other uh very uh incredible uh subjects um and i will um if you would like to see the detail of that it should be on our youtube channel on cheshire public schools uh to see the entire three hour budget meeting for part one of i believe three or or two possibly three we'll see how it goes um and uh so now i'll hand the report over to mr maciana thank you mr grippone good evening everyone the what i'll

012do is i'll report on the finance report as of december 31st which the board members have in their package and i'll summarize here you know because really we're we're at the six month mark and the good news is this the uh report is no worse than it was in november so we're holding steady the this year's budget is 74 million 593 926 we've encumbered 83.6 of that budget which is which is fairly normal for this point in the year we do expect to meet our budget despite some challenges that we have this year especially related to the pandemic and that's assuming that we we received the 706 000 in coronavirus relief funds from the state which has been approved and we'll probably do our submission next week um and we also have 200 000 available

013in the unexpended education funds account which was rolled over from last year's budget so i i think we're looking pretty good i did report um you know back in november we had a lengthy discussion about food service and we're you know working to mitigate the loss in food service which the board of ed budget has to make up and that that's holding so you know even though we'll have to make up the deficit that's all factored into the report that i've provided so you know the the things that we typically are concerned about in our budget at this time of the year you know have to do with special education costs uh going above budget and those are holding very steady this year so you know we hope that continues um you know and i'll

014talk now about the medical benefits report might swing back to the finance report here in a minute but we did provide in the package the medical benefits update through december which we did speak about when we had our finance committee earlier this week but the claims for the month of december were a million thirty three thousand six sixty four so for the first six months of this year our medical claims average is a little over a million dollars per month you know that's well above the 300 excuse me well above the 800 000 that was expected in claims and so our trust fund balance has decreased from the start of the year of 2.8 million down to 970 000. so we're just over a million dollars in the in the medical benefits reserve fund um

015because we're crossing and we've crossed into january and now we're in the new um high deductible hsa plan year you know we are hoping that those claims subside and so we won't erode the medical benefits reserve any further we'll have to wait and see if the if the fund continues to erode at the same pace that it's been eroding you know this year you know we will run out of reserve in i don't anticipate that happening but obviously i don't have a crystal ball and i don't know and so if we did that we would certainly you know use whatever available operating budget we have and and of course talk to the town council i have spoken to um the town manager about having a meeting jointly with uh the the town and the board

016of ed to talk about our claims and our reserves because the town is experiencing the same you know high claims so their reserve is being you know depleted as well and you know i'll finalize with sean when when we'll give the town council an update on this so it's just it's a cautionary note um at this point again we still have 970 000 you know in the reserve so that's the highlights of the finance and the medical benefits report i'll stop there because i know everybody's had enough medical benefits talk this week right i i i can never get enough i'm sorry actually this year it's been such a uh complete dictionary surprise uh but that being said i'm sorry mr grippel this is your section i'll let you uh moderate very quickly i can't

017let it go if you haven't had enough you can go back and watch hours two and three from the other night that's uh i certainly invite you to do that i was just gonna say that actually everyone's welcome to watch a three-hour meeting last night i watched that one too uh uh tim you had a question yeah thank you i i just heard something i i hadn't heard it before then you mentioned that the town is experiencing similarly high claims i'm just curious is it is it the height the high claims are similar but is there any sort of pattern that you can see in a larger like group of people where things are going awry that might be able to improve things no i can't say that tim and that's because you know i

018haven't delved into the detail on on the town side but you know we'll get together and and talk it through you know i i think it i can't say you know what we do know is that a pandemic and covid related expenses are not high so it's some other extraordinary items that are occurring i don't know if it's occurring everywhere but it certainly seems to be occurring you know here on both the town and the board of vet side you know if people are are you know doing things differently because of the pandemic you know that may be a force but it's really don't know at this point we'll get into the details you know and as the rest of the year tracks we'll you know we'll have some more insight from cigna because we

019do get you know reports from them you know more analysis reports they typically come at the end of the year but we'll request it sooner than that so we could see is there some kind of underlying trend that predominating what's happening in our claims okay thank you and i know you would uh i think this got touched on on tuesday but just to revisit it for here um the what i for but for lack of a better term there's discretionary accounts like supplies and materials they're not urgent you push them off till the end of the year a lot of these things replacing staplers and whatnot you're you were you were in your are you are at 40 right now right and it for the foreseeable future say for the next month or so you're

020looking at staying there i am just because of where we are with medical benefits exactly if it weren't for that i would say you know certainly we probably would have raised it to 60 this month but we're going to hold at 40 until i see january claims and you know hopefully we've seen some you know but you know a lower claim month and then we could decide from there but yes for the foreseeable future we'll keep it at 40 just so that we have that cushion if we need it yeah i just i mean i just really uh i understand if we do need to go to the council and i could support that but i definitely want to do everything we can to rein in our spending on our side um before we go

021ask them for anything so thank you that's that's all thanks adam faith you had a question yes um thanks adam um this just came to mind and i guess i just couldn't get enough benefits the other night so i'm gonna keep it going um when you go to cigna you know the the big concern with kovid has been the delayed screenings um and delayed care um my concern is that as that we may continue to see these high rates as people start to get diagnoses that and begin to receive treatment for this delayed care um that everyone has been talking about since the pandemic started could you ask cigna about that if they're trying to track that if they have any indication of how that might be that might affect claims going forward yes yes

022i can and i what it'll you know i i know what the analysis showed you know as we ended last year you know it was there was nothing extraordinary through december other than you know where we typically see a large portion of our claims that are not just cancer and those types of things it's diabetes and it's and it's hypertension type claims so what cigna would show is is any of that changing as you know a percentage of total claims okay i'm just thinking that surely their um projections have to be looking at that and trying to estimate what that's what effect that's going to have and if they have any insight it might help us as we're looking at that budget i'm sure thanks tony you got a question i think vintage just answered

023that i was just kind of curious uh the reporting that comes back from cigna on the the claims analysis i assume in there is um you know claims with icd and healthcare procedure code information so i'm i'm hoping that's what's in there at least that way you don't know if there are disease classification situations or certain certain healthcare procedures but i think you just you just answer the questions may not so much be cancer oncology or um infectious diseases per se but uh hypertension and diabetes i i just i just wonder if that's just correlated with the whole cova situation although our teacher is not all home so they are mobile and in the schools for the most part but i just wonder if that's having an effect on our eyes on that but i

024guess uh some analysis if we ever figure that out be good to know yeah for you know what i can do for um our upcoming meeting tuesday night is just show the summary that cigna gave us for the year-end report for that you know for the year that or the 12 months ended december 31st of 20 just so you got a sense as to you know what are the you know what are the highest dollar categories of claims from last year you know again i yeah right your information overload but there's certainly a lot of interest here and it's a it's a large line item in our budget so you know the more we know the more comfortable you'll feel with approving the uh the request or or changing it however it goes thanks ben

025that was it yeah thank you are there any other questions seeing none i conclude the finance committee report thank you thanks adam thank you vincent up next is the planning committee uh andrew thank you all right i am going to present my screen hopefully you got it yes everyone's good i can't see you so just okay thank you catherine um okay thank you uh mr chairman so back on january 11th we had a planning committee meeting where vin presented to us the request for both the 21 to 22 calendar year for capital projects as well as the year total i'm gonna just take a few minutes some of you were there but for the folks who are home or those board members who haven't seen it i'm gonna go through and then let you know

026how the conversation developed um so overall district-wide we have about 500 000 in window replacements um paving roofing sidewalk and masonry another 1.1 million cafeteria improvements 350 000 hvac improvements district-wide 1.2 million interior building improvements at 925 000 laboratories district wide 250 000 flooring and ceiling replacements another 100 thousand and then lighting and electrical improvements at 480 000 and then 200 000 for the removal of a semi-used or never used press box over at the athletic complex at cheshire high school so the request for the 21 22 school year is 5.2 million dollars um the conversation went back and forth vin went from there and just explained what schools were going to be touched with the different improvements the committee came to the conclusion that we asked vin to go back and take a look

027to see what is actually necessary immediately necessary for this year as we move forward with school modernization um and you know we've all been going through this i think we all understand that we are almost at to a point where we're going to be starting to hone in on some final decisions with school modernization and it made the most sense to go back take a deeper look at what is absolutely necessary for this year before we move forward with anything as we come up with our final plan for that um since our meeting we actually received some communication from vin today that we're going to have another meeting on i believe if it works for everybody on the 28th at 6 00 p.m with a revised proposal um which is going to take the 5.2

028number and bring it down to about 2.6 with some other projects that have been identified as being crucial to be taken care of um in the next year or so um what will not change though is up to the 26 the next five years is that the total project values will stay the same as we continue to look at the school modernization so i'm going to stop sharing my screen because i can't see anybody does that work yeah am i back all right good okay so um with that i know i just kind of threw that out there quick does anybody have any specific questions for vin or for myself uh andrew when do you uh what what day you're looking for kind of planning committee meeting this month or uh yeah we're looking at

029it on the 28th next thursday what is that next thursday thursday so hour before our budget meeting all right got it thank you andrew yep and there's vin's already sent out some details i have not had a chance to look at him we just received him a little bit before this meeting um as to what the most pressing needs are for uh i'm assuming the high school's uh walking cooler is in there but i'm not exactly sure yet yeah well the yeah the biggest one is the dodd roof and the high school roof and well i mean the details in there i could spill the whole bean tonight but you probably don't want to do that no we'll wait for the meaning but the planning committee has to evaluate it first tim you have a

030question you muted thank you i was just looking at our schedule and this one next next thursday the meeting is scheduled as ritual uh no sorry tbd virtual versus in person do we have any sense on that right now of what we're thinking i don't know how long ago that was that was uh two weeks ago i still eating let me just point out the the meeting for people who are watching the meeting i'm talking about is in case it wasn't said the public information so chatting with you your feedback on the budget that's why i'm just asking about that one different from any other meeting that's very cool was a couple minutes ago i was going to look into if we had a mobile broadcasting solution where we could have public comment come in

031through the tv like we did a past four meetings last year but we could we can definitely code this later uh in the meeting if mike's not ready to talk about it or jeff you might know yeah i think that i need to connect connect with mike on that tuesday so uh let's connect with mike and then we'll get that information out to the board in the public as soon as possible thanks thanks thanks for reminding us about that anything else that concludes my presentation for pre uh for planning seeing as there are none uh we are going to move on to policy uh mr gripple thank you mr chair um let's see uh for policy we had our last policy meeting on january 5th um where we again uh reviewed uh uh title ix

032um mrs halland uh presented some excellent findings as she went through the policy um and we had a decent discussion on it and after um discussing a lot of the what we found were problems in many questions and um i guess uh questionable language and vague law that uh we decided we voted to uh to table the policy until we received further clarification from washington uh which it sounded like even from today that there's going to be changes to title ix so i'm guessing that uh we'll be receiving clarification in the coming weeks if to see if we need to do anything if any other subcommittee member has any comment on that i think i kind of summed it up there let's see uh moving on um oh yeah go ahead no i just wanted

033to clarify that you know the policy we we have been talking about putting into place of formal policy but the district is already you know doing what it has to do to comply with the um was it the final rule or whatever so i don't want people to think that you know we're not we're already doing what we have to do this is just a question of getting a policy you know on the books um because that's also required by the law so i just wanted to clarify that right yeah the the law is the law and it's in effect and if the uh problems occur we roughly have a framework in place to deal with that um okay uh moving on uh so that the next two bylaws that we visited were about electronic

034attendance of meetings by board members one of which is completely fueled by the governor's executive orders and the other one was um uh something to take us beyond the time when uh the governor's executive orders expire um in in both cases again we decided to table both of these by-laws one of which was because since the governor expressly gives us permission to meet like we are this evening there was no need to have a a new bylaw in place to just have it rescinded after the fact so we felt it was there was not necessary to do that and i believe according to the minutes there were still many questions as to the necessity of um having electronic uh uh meeting meeting attendance by board members uh going forward after the fact so we decided

035to table that as well uh and then that concluded our meeting so essentially we we tabled everything that we were looking at and came to no conclusions except to table are there any questions uh no questions lacana thank thank you i know the policy committee uh is one of the hardest working committees we have on the board there's always a policy revision or several in the works i know this one was uh just seemed like it was rushed to us from a number of sources so thank you for uh and i know catherine spent a lot of time reviewing the language so thank you for going through that i i remain hopeful about it mr cardona's in washington maybe he'll uh uh help clean us up and make it uh something very tangible and equitable

036for for everyone but uh to your point catherine we are already meeting the title nine uh requirements so uh there's no jeopardy there but we'll make sure we're proven with this policy so thanks again team uh any other questions on policy see seen as there are none ah my favorite topic school modernization committee update um andrew and faith uh i i know we have a lot to talk about on that so and yeah i have faith in the brain i was trying to see if you're gonna ask a question earlier flipped andrew and ann uh if you guys want to give a quick summary or or as thorough as you need to what's happening with smc you want me to start and you want to go why don't you start and i'll add the communications

037stuff because i've been eating on the survey great all right um before i'm gonna share my screen i'm gonna show the matrix as presented last night um if i could share my screen again um but before i do that i just wanted to remind everyone of the timeline that we're that we're looking to to follow here um so school monetization committee is going to have the recommended plan to the town council and the board of education by march 1st the reason for the march 1st deadline is to get it to referendum for june 30th whatever the first phase of the plan is going to be um and if we don't meet the june 30th submission deadline then we will miss the funding application for this coming year and we'll have to wait a full another

038year in order to submit the plan to the state of connecticut um so there's been some questions about you know things seem to be going pretty fast or maybe not fast enough for some people but as we put together the plan um our goal is to get it our goal is to get it to us and to the town council by march 1st um so that's that's i'm going to start with that and then secondly there's been a lot of talk about different phases of the project um again i don't know where i fall yet on everything but i just want to throw out there about starting with high school as the first project um i've got a lot of questions about that and it was one of the topics last night so we heard

039from the chair um jen bates about the high school and why that would not be the first project first of all we all 13 members on the committee all used a scoring matrix which i had shared here previously about how to rank all and we ranked all the different options the high school as the first project was the last selected option by the school monetization committee that's number one number two is that based on the capacity studies or the enrollment studies com um completed by mylon and mcbroom the most immediate need now is that we are running out of space within the elementary schools as we heard in the superintendent's um presentation the other evening um so even if we approve a project now we're not going to actually be in that building until 2024

040and effectively we would be out of space we're starting to run out of space next year in the elementary school levels so that's the second reason the third reason is is that when the state reviews the project and the phasing of the project um they're going to look at the enrollment study and collier's is fearful that if they do see that they are going to question why we're not starting with an elementary school if we move forward with the high school first um so there's three reasons why they're not we're not starting with the high school um there might be others i mean we have plenty of space at the high school according to the enrollment based on the square footage of that building um so again if the state's going to be reviewing what

041project would be the first project to move forward with they would definitely have questions as to why it would be cheshire high school so anybody have any questions about that part of it adam thank you i was in the middle of typing question um yeah so uh so just to be clear um and i had actually i had sent an email to uh to uh den bait and uh uh both chucks i guess uh today um on the question that you had uh or that i think that you kind of answered already was that whether or not um the state would even reimburse uh for a new high school because it was so far out of the realm even though you might be able to say that you could if you move all the buildings

042that theoretically you could address the population surge at the elementary level as far as the committee is concerned that is most likely not a viable option from the state point of view correct okay thanks that's all i wanted to know yeah i mean and and chuck you know chuck had pointed out chuck from collier's is that you know we really run the risk of if we did move forward with cheshire high school the state might not reimburse us um and so then that's that's a real that's a real concern for uh for what it's worth i i'm pretty confident uh chuck isn't a definitive answer uh on that i think by the next snc meeting but they so the high school did come up last night a few times uh the smc and i just

043want to end up returning back to andrew so when the committee scored all the options and there were i think more than a dozen 12 out of 13 committee members did not put the high school anywhere near the top in fact they fell out of the whole list of top five or six for a number of reasons uh but uh andrew and anna i know you've been in a lot more options committee meetings than i have but if the high school were theoretically done first um we'd have to start next year uh figure three or four year before school is complete new high school goes online and we're hit with the element of the enrollment that they're not prepared for right because high school doesn't solve for that step one right if you renovate the

044old high school as a new middle school um i don't know how that solves for the elementary woman either right because there was a discussion about doing a high school and using the old high school as a new middle school which would be way too much space you know if you put in hummuston and the board of offices but then we still hit with the elementary moment um so it's almost like we would have to do the high school and some other elementary school at the same time and that was one of the options i believe seven or or or eight that had uh but i never scored near the top of the list either so i i um i know there was more to it but i i think uh i hope on the

04527th with a little more detail on that but i just wanna put that out there i know we're not just trying to solve for enrollment but there's a lot more of these moon pieces that that's what i want to say tim thanks andrew so everything here is predicated on i shouldn't say everything a large part of what we're doing is predicated on increasing enrollment and i'm just wondering if baked into that enrollment is the assumption of a higher increased rate of housing turnover in the next five to ten years based on lower than expected sales in the past 10 years so i'm just wondering if do we have do we know what the basis of that assumption is it's entirely possible you know people move out in large numbers but i'm just wondering what's the

046what's the basis of it did did anybody do like a survey you know a sampling of homeowners and say are you thinking about moving out in the next five years type of thing because this is i mean this the enrollment number is a really big deal so i just wanna and and i can ex i can i totally understand where it's coming from but i just wanna know if there's more meat to it than an assumption a hunch that somebody has um i can jump in there andrew if you're there who's there jeff so um i think that the numbers are predicated on the work of two do two different demographers first most recently is my loan in mcbroom um this is what they do they they study birth rates um housing trends labor markets

047and [Music] very analytically i mean is far from go through uh that data to project future enrollments and uh so they they have a lot of experience with that they want to lead firms in connecticut we also had a similar study done then i it was on the tip of my tongue the company that did it uh was the perk part of the perkins basement yeah ergonomics was a couple of years ago they did a similar study that showed projections like this as well so at least you know in my mind that urban urbanomics study is a couple of years ago four years ago really has been more validated by another firm saying the same thing um in this this updated study uh i know there have been some questions about that you know ben

048and i have reached out to milon and mcgroom uh certainly i i think you asked the question about the number of births in and which we don't have the answer to yet but i know we've reached out to them to try and get that information we certainly provide more as part of our budget meetings or a future board meeting too thank you with regard to the urbanomics that was done three years ago 2017. so do we have has anybody looked at it just cross-referenced what they projected to what we've actually seen in the last three years to see if it was a good prediction it it was pretty solid the the one variable that you know to be fair is kovid the yeah you know it's kind of a wild and you know what they

049say past performance doesn't you know guarantee future results that move it is really the one that throws the wild card into that could i get a copy of that at the enrollment from the urbanomics absolutely and i basically i just want to see the enrollment numbers and just compare the two of them and see that how close they are thank you and yeah i mean you're concerned your concern is is shared for sure and do you think it makes sense would the board like to have malone and mcbroom come to a meeting and just kind of discuss is that something that we could do tony and have them come and just discuss the enrollment study because this whole thing is predicated i know that i'm basing my decision based on the fact that the wants

050and the needs the need that's coming is the elementary school we need more elementary school space i mean i would love to have a brand new high school but at the same time you know we're gonna run out of room the elementary school level so um i think it does make sense that milan mcbroom really come and talk about it with us yeah i don't have an issue at all uh with that i mean i i would work through work with through uh jen and chuck because that was paid for through smc budget and because of their time uh no it it does come up and it's it's very hard um you know to look at the bottom i'm gonna spend hopefully spend on moving our school infrastructure forward and the enrollment study is right

051behind it i just want to you know uh i've gone through this once already with uh catherine ann the uh studies done in 1617 were pretty solid um you know we knew back then we're gonna have an issue uh you know here we are uh again going through the process and again the enrollments come up and uh you know we're past the point of no no return either we're gonna do something before it sits in 25 or or not and we're gonna have a big problem so so for me it's not a hunch it's not a guess it's uh it is based on studies uh it seems to correlate with nasdaq as well so you know but i definitely want to hear my loans with dollars and quite frankly with covid and you know with

052tim's question on housing even breakfast last year let's see if there's anything new they they i'm able to add you know it's a few months into the year so yeah i'd be happy to reach out to jenna if you unless you want to do that andrew uh but uh if we just fit it in let's do it sure okay i mean and also i mean just the cheshire herald today there's another 16 lot subdivision going through land use approvals on marion road so that and then the one on whis that's another that's 24 lots so that's two subdivisions that weren't even taken into the account when this was done by milanic broom back a couple months ago so is that mckinley yeah it may take some time to have that presentation scheduled and what i

053can do is share with you the video from when mylon and mcbroom gave their presentation the winter early maybe late fall of 2020 it seems like it was 1978 that they gave that presentation and i think we just all have a different perspective of processing additional information through the school modernization committee that we may see it with different eyes when we go back and look at it again so i'll share that with you so that you have it if you want to check it out but in the meantime it certainly fair to talk to we can talk to chuck and jen about you know new questions are generated let's let's put it out on the table okay members have similar questions so they maybe will do something for both both groups yeah adam yeah i

054just wanted to concur with jeff um for the most part with the uh with even with my last question on the high school um with the exception of that one actually um 99 of my questions have been answered by going back and looking at the smc meetings um the population one is actually one that i hadn't watched yet again so um i think was that the one we attended maybe not that maybe it's one before that anyhow um it was at highland yeah that was when we attended you were there okay so so we actually got to sit through that entire presentation as well um but uh jeff yeah i would appreciate even just the the date of the presentation so that we could just go look it up and i'll i'll probably watch it

055again too so uh thank you so adam uh you said by going back and watching missing videos meetings 95 percent of your questions are more or less answered 98 yeah uh if jenna's watching she's probably doing cartwheels because uh it takes a lot of time right those meetings are three hours but yeah you'll you'll find it if you good to hear there's a lot of good material there it's worth the watch thanks sorry andrew back i think catherine had her hand up in the comments as well catherine thanks ian um so i just before we get into this are you andrew going to go through the rest of you do you have a whole presentation to make too much have this presentation that i have the spreadsheet that was presented last night yeah so why

056don't we let you do that and then maybe you know ask all our questions after because i i may have some questions that you're going to answer in the context of all right here well here we go okay just he practiced prior to the meeting and why are you going to do that you probably did i did i totally did man's not lying i absolutely did all right can everyone see this yeah uh yeah sorta yes you want me to zoom in a little bit can you zoom in a little yeah yeah let me just let me just drag this over here some of us have over 50 eyes oh by the way i did 40 documents to the board members last night yeah you did and i should have printed it out but okay

057is that good yes okay perfect okay so one a we're calling scenario one is one a renault which is the median score is 73.13 that's the score that was given by those on the smc that ranked all the different options so the phase one the construction logistics of phase one is to build a new k-6 elementary school move darcy pre-k to highland move darcy k to do little move hummus and boe to lease space which would result in the closing of darcy chapman and hummuston so then we'd have to redistrict to balance the elementary enrollment across the town phase two would be to renovate doolittle and norton and we say renovate renovate is the term meaning that basically a gut rehab of the entire building all building systems hvac et cetera potentially some smaller additions

058phase three would be to renovate dodd and highland and phase four would be to do a full renovation of cheshire high school the pro of option 1a reno is it'll immediately address the elementary enrollment and it'll eliminate planned cip projects at hummuston and chapman the reason why that is in there is to show the cost savings for the projects that are currently in the five-year plan for homestead and chapman school because chapman would come offline in this option con is that it would consolidate only darcy chapman replaced with new elementary school and hummingston is replaced with lease space meaning that we have we're only losing one building district-wide the renovation of all other schools will be done while occupied which leads to longer construction times student safety concerns and poor learning environment and the phase

059depends to achieve modernization of multiple schools so the discussion on this phase and and you could jump in here at any time too is is that um it's going to be difficult this phase does not create any swing space whereas if we start with the middle school as the first project we would have that swing space with dodd so here we would be shuffling the students around or renovating in place or doing bursts of work during school vacations and um during winter break which um our concerns were allayed in terms of many schools are renovated with the students in there the construction companies that we hire will know how to do that but it does add cost because you can't do it as fast right the other uh con that came out of me last

060night was um when we graded uh these scenarios uh back in december uh there were more than four phases there were essentially almost one phase per school and uh to try to touch as many schools and students as possible uh they moved basically bundled darcy hummuston chapman you know all in the same phase one and some of the feedback that came out with me last night was a great idea but that seems like an awful lot of ongoing simultaneous projects and schools that could be a pretty big disruption um just like when the community felt comfortable um splitting it back out but by and large that's why i came up last night too all right i'm gonna go on i can't see you guys if anybody has a question just uh kind of shout out

061if you don't mind um so phase 1a cip so the difference with this one um is that this would focus on capital improvement projects so phase one would be virtually the same we would be building a new k-6 elementary school and just for folks that are watching and and here tonight big part of the discussion was where is the school going to be we don't know where this new school is going to be um this is going to be a 700 student 100 square foot new elementary school to be located um somewhere in the north end of town um with the site to be determined as we solidify what the final option is going to be but the big difference with this phase is that capital improvements will be done at doolittle highlands norton and

062dodd in a sequence to be determined and then renovations to the high school um so you're not going to be having a gut renovation of the schools as in phase as in the first option so this option would be capital improvement projects um so again it has the same benefits addresses elementary enrollment in phase one um and it will address planned cip projects at humminson and chapman will be taken off of the the table but it is seeing that one of the goals is to modernize the schools and so the one of the discussions is that cip cap improvement projects at the schools will adjust the physical needs but it will not necessarily achieve modernization of the of the learning spaces as we will be doing renovation projects versus doing a full renovation of the

063spaces does that make sense yes okay i'm gonna go on to 2a renault so this this a lot of discussion around this one last night so the phase one would be to build a new sixth through eight middle school which would also include the board of education office space not the alternative high school we built a new k-5 elementary school on the chapman site and then we would demolish the old chapman once that building is brought online darcy pre-k would be moved to highland darcy kindergarten would be moved to doolittle the board of education offices would go to the new middle school that's redundant um we closed darcy and dodd if phase two is approved we've moved hummus in high school to lease space or dodd if phase two is approved and we'd close hummuston

064phase two would be a moving of do little k through five students to dodd renovate do little move two little students back to doolittle move norton k through five students to dodd renovate noren and move norton students back to norton phase three would be to move highland pre-k through five students to dodd renovate highland move highland students back to highland where am i complete capital improvement problems that nora and i move students back where am i phase three give me one second here move highland pre-k5 students to dodd complete cap improvements at highland so you guys could read that but basically what this is doing is is that we're building a new 68 middle school building a new k-5 elementary school on the chapman site and then dot is basically becoming a new um a

065new school building for okay pre-k through five students in the phase three of the project they thoroughly confuse everybody oh andrew batman moves to god um yeah no so you're talking about a new middle school a new elementary school and then renovations i i was interpreting that as being that dodd access swing space correct while those renovations are happening but i didn't but where does it end up being a elementary school school it's actually closed it's close to phase three if you look at that at the end of phase it's a temporary elementary school it's temporary elementary school while the renovations are right like so swing space right yeah yeah okay fine that's i understand that now sorry but the big the big issue with this um scenario is that we would be building a

066six through eight middle school and building a new chapman school at the same time in the same phase and the same in the same pay in the earliest phase at the same and then the renovations there's a couple of renovations that are going on at the same time as well in the next the renovations come later later no i know but it looks like you're renovating two schools at one time yes yes in phase two and phase three okay and there's a price tag with that too which i think some of the concerns last night even both other options you know could turn off voters you know in that very first referendum but i got one more detail on the financials on the 27th and that's the thing is we don't know exactly like i

067had asked the question as to what 2a would cost um so just so the the new the new chapman school that would be built on the property would be would be about a 350 student school um currently there's 331 students in that building um but townshare would be 125 million for the new middle school 33 million for the elementary school for about 160 million dollar project so the phase one that would initially go to voters would be 160 million project is there you know a property for chapman is there a property for for the middle school at this time no and andrew kriffin wrong the cost of land is not included in that estimate for middle school correct that assumes building on town owned property i would also add for all all of the three

068scenarios that we're considering that rolling high school is the very last phase in each of them without renovating the high school by the time we get to it could actually be building a new high school we'll we'll have a few years to make those decisions yeah as the time figures kick off in these plans um you know depending what happens between now and three four five seven years from now a renovate could be a new new school and things could change so it's it's fluid good point anne thank you i'm gonna go to 2b reno so the phase one is going to be build a new 78 middle school with boe included build a new k-4 school on the chapman site and demo the old chapman once that's open move all 78 students to the

069new middle school move boe offices to the new middle school move all five to six students to dodd move darcy pre-k to highland move darcy k to do little and move alternate high school to leave space and close darcy and hummingston phase two of that project would be to renovate doolittle and norton phase three would be renovated on highland and phase four would be to renovate the high school i thought we took this well that this option so 2b renault was taken off the table last night as well as option five agreed as well as and also option five was also erased which was renovating all the schools that's it so that's where we are okay i actually i think uh tim you're gonna ask a question before that last update oh thank you yeah

070so this i don't know if it's a question just a comment that um you know for me personally living in the south end of town um but also in terms of building support uh across across the town for doing anything i just have to caution on uh using property in the north end of towns the elementary school i think makes total sense but i think there would i think there'd be a lot of hesitation in supporting like a new middle school or high school in the north end of town because we don't have a property listed right now but i think it would be really difficult just because then you know 9th graders 10th graders they're not driving themselves you're going to have parents driving from the south end up to the north end i

071think they're going to be questioning it like dot and i'm just saying not in terms of these not in terms of the projects but the location does matter and i'm just i'm just throwing that out there as as are you talking about tim are you talking about the new elementary school the no the new elementary school makes total sense but if it was like a new dodd or a new middle school i think having something up like on the southington line would probably create a lot of reservation and building support among people living in the south end of town just because of the commute to go pick up your kids after after they do sports the bus one thing um but if you're going to pick them up i think that just makes it a

072little more difficult to cross that bar and gain the support for it that's all well the the thing about the high school is the high school actually could be you could build a new high school on the proper high school property while high schoolers are still in high school and then move them into the new building and demolish the old building but that like i just said earlier that's so far down the road in terms of what we're going to do with the high school yeah no it's just that the dot is dot a new middle school is listed and the larger pieces of property in town generally are in the north end and i think anybody who's going to spend you know vote to spend 160 million dollars is going to say where there's

073got and i don't mean to complicate it i'm just putting that out there so there really are three options that we're putting out for for three phase one options that we're putting out and we just had um finalize the survey we're putting out a survey also just to communicate with uh the public about these options for phase one only because that's the part that would be going to uh referendum and so the three parts are the new k-6 elementary school somewhere in the north end of town that takes over takes chapman offline and the other two options are built into the one which is the phase one doing the middle school and the uh chapman in school together or just doing the new middle school and pushing the um the uh new chapman school to

074a later phase phase two and then catherine and faith thank you um so at the end of the meeting last night i think it was near the end um chuck net i believe started discussing started discussing an idea about um building a new school on the norton property um because that's actually the one of the best pieces of land that we have where you could then build the k through six big enough to also shut down the old norton so that we would be able to consolidate norton chapman darcy and hummuston it but i don't know if it was in reference to also building a new middle school as well and so but the idea of of using that land i thought sounded good because it's an actually really good piece of land and norton

075is i think was built in 1957 if i recall as a alma mater um so i i wasn't sure if that was uh anything that's and and if that was an idea would the school have to go beyond 700 would have to be more like a 900 uh student school you know i'm just i was i don't know if he it didn't seem like he flushed it out too much but i thought it was an interesting idea at least i can answer that actually it was in conjunction with doing a new middle school it probably would be phase two if we didn't do the phase of uh building a new chapman school on the chapman site because it would also consolidate chapman school but it would be a six through eight middle school so that

076you could then put the students from the chapman school also into elementary school it would be a lot of redistricting clearly and um but no it wouldn't be bigger than 700. it would leave us with three elementary schools three elementary schools total and a new middle and a six through eight middle school sorry so it's the assumption of the k through five building eight through six correct okay thanks thanks adam uh catherine and then faith um i'm not even sure uh so the the options that will go out to the community in this survey are just the first thing that will go to referendum so it's either a sixth grade middle school standalone project or a six through eight middle school and a new elementary school you chat together yes yeah but it doesn't matter

077but or well it does because chapman's a pretty small school so right so i'm trying to get my wrap my arms around what it is that the community is going to be like sort of pining on so that that would be a new middle school in new elementary school smaller one and then the third one is is just a new elementary school a large er elementary school on the north side of town yes i think you've gotten middle school i think you've got it um without it but but the the balance of the phases will not necessarily be put out there for for any sort of public uh reaction which is fine i'm just trying to understand if people are going to feel like they have enough information to weigh in on one of these

078three options um but i mean i guess if if the goal is to just start getting a sense of community interest in you know okay which direction do you think makes the most sense then that's fine i just you know it'll be interesting to see what comes back i think catherine i don't really have a question i just wanted to say the the the goal of the survey is to get that back the first couple weeks of march so they're trying to formulate right and so we're trying to form what the questions are going to be so the whole phased we we won't be there yet but if you're coming to the board of ed in the town council by march 1st because the survey needs to start they need x amount of they have

079to finalize it by the 26th in order to have results in by march 1st the 26th of january yeah okay okay the survey needs to be finalized within the next couple days in order out to get the results back for march but that will give the committee enough time to absorb the results and come to the board and the town council with whatever the final idea is final plan i'm i'm sorry you don't know no it's it it's a it's a good it's a good question i mean the survey the survey results are going to come later than smc oops informing my town it's that's alive okay but that's okay um let me talk just briefly about the survey um we have we did finalize it just this evening prior to this meeting and um

080but then it needs to go to the to the whole it was just a communication subcommittee that um finalized it with the um tomorrow i think tomorrow it will be sent to all of um the school modernization committee members so that our next wednesday meeting we can approve it um and then that's what gets started so the survey is done by telephone and it's it's pretty involved and it gives the three scenarios uh for phase one and it shows um monthly dollar amounts that your tax taxes would increase um on an average home to cars and that's all stated in the service so it's a phone survey that's going to get 400 responses and then in addition to that it will it will go out on the internet and um people can can fill out

081the survey but that's not going to be what's analyzed the 400 phone calls uh part of the survey are what will be analyzed that's what they've determined but we will get additional information because we're anticipating that quite a few people will um if they don't get called uh we'll want to see what the what information is there and in that way we also just get we'll be able to get a lot of information out to people about the project thank you ian uh before i turn out of faith once and on something so uh yes was last night um just for expediency uh ssc members will be able to see the survey and if we have any feedback we're going to send it to rich jen and chuck we'll collect and quality and by the

08227th i think rich in a committee we'll have some answers for those questions so i would definitely think that the only uh and i'll send this feedback to the group as well but my concern is if the survey just focused on the first phase and does not talk about the entire plan it's it might um at least if there's references to the entire plan so folks can see the end-to-end journey of each phase and the reason why i say that is i've noticed on some of the emails that snc members got in some of the um posts on the forums that uh again not every to file the meetings uh or find the information even though it is out there on the town website thought that starring shortsighted or starting with elementary school shortstated that

083um starting with um the high school not starting it wasn't short-sighted but they're not seeing that picture that shows a starting point and that everything is accounted for but then again i can understand the survey calls if you're calling them with a total 400 million dollar uh spend over 10 years they're probably less inclined been down that path before so uh but nonetheless confident that reference but definitely before that survey it should be uh it should be very interesting so thank you man faith you've been waiting you had a question i i i'm with catherine i'm trying to wrap my head around it but i think i'm there and i trust you know we we formed the committee or the town form the committee um of intelligent thoughtful people so i'm i'm putting my trust

084in everybody and then getting the job done um so um [Music] i my only suggestion would be um you know and again over a 30-year amateurization i'm not sure how much land would actually impact um the cost but but i know it was raised last night i think by matt bowman that um we should have an idea even some estimate of what the cost of the land is going to be and what it's going to add to the project and and so i i guess i am a little concerned with the survey going out and giving one cost um and then having that big price tag tossed in there so you know i don't as you said ian you've got the the survey ready to go but that is a concern um and um just

085um i i don't know i i i trust you guys i think [Laughter] what the survey really does is puts out three three different levels of okay and it's to get just some idea of the appetite of whether people would be able to support uh that project that phase one project at if this were the um the effect to your tax monthly tax rate okay with the understanding anyway that's okay but with the understanding that there has to be a two and a three in there somewhere that there are three phases to the all of these building projects and they um you know again each one will be approved each subsequent phase will be approved but it's understood that there is a package so as tony said they need to understand the full scope and

086and um but anyway i'm like i said again i don't know if i it's not even a question it's just more ruminations of an old lady but i think it will be very helpful to the board when uh you get received a survey yeah i agree which will be next week tony i i i think jen said last night we'll be able to see uh discuss the survey at smc 27. so i imagine wednesday yeah see you too i'll find out i'll see if we can get in the van i was on a communication meeting actually at five they um went through and revised the changes it should go uh get kicked back to the communications group tomorrow to be very expeditiously sent to the um full committee this weekend yeah for discussion on wednesday

087good andrew and ann any other uh commenter no tim tim's eager oh tim sorry i see you pop up there thanks thank you yeah um so i'm just one of the surveyor this is a professional surveyor who the reason i ask this is kind of generally speaking i have a whole bunch of questions run through my mind that don't need to be answered right now but you know uh do they have a list of phone numbers do they have a list of cell numbers home numbers i don't know what it is i mean um and i know that that's changed dramatically uh who do they do they know who is it just self-identification by the person who picks up the phone that i'm a taxpayer is this all stuff they're taking into account yes okay

088um and uh you know what they're doing actually no no no no no that's fine that's why yeah it's it's very scientific and it was explained to us pretty thoroughly um but i could not turn around and explain it all to you no no no i mean as long as they know what they're doing i mean look at all of us have run for office we've probably made phone calls and the homelines don't really work that much anymore so that's all i'm wondering about um i'm not sure it's just home lines to tell you the truth well no as long as they have a list and it's related to people who you know you know people switch sell lines they move out of town they might still answer the questions but they have no impact

089that has no impact on their taxes and if it's one or two people out of 400 i don't care but you know collect across the entire survey i just want to make sure that it's relatively good and it's a professional surveyor that you have so okay on that note 10 and if i remember correct i remember a few minutes ago that they will hit the form of the number so if there is a situation where they call the person and just have one within cheshire they'll go to another one but they'll get their 400 actual cheshire residents so yeah they want to check on the caller id too when they call and we're picking up demographic information also so better okay no that's good thank you and uh so i think i'm just wondering um

090the will the survey include anything i know two things will the survey include anything about location location of well i'm just curious to point out though the point that i was making before about putting a high school like up in the southington line does it mention anything about that it's just these three options it doesn't say where a new middle school would go it's just would you support a new middle school so some of the survey is much wider it addresses um all of the modernization what people think about it did you know or what are these items what's important to you in terms of modernization let's gather some information on the project as a whole but only phase one for those three options is um is broken out to sit to find out what

091the appetite for supporting these those three options phase one options would be and that's because that's one of those three options okay and it does include open-ended uh and so this it includes open-ended questions so they can get they can get qualitative data to sort of sort through that and is there any um is there any targeting of this this is is this limited to school system families or is it everyone in including seniors so they may very well get the response no to everything and then we get an indication of where that stands as well because that's the option of referendum one find out whether they're business owners in town ages whether they have kids in school had kids in school you know there's questions surrounding all of that okay great thank you is

092that it i think adam and catherine have questions oh my god you guys are quick uh go ahead adam and then no i just had a quick comment um if i recall uh the the sample size of 400 was meant to be statistically valid to encompass all people all walks of life in cheshire so that since it is a smaller sample size that that whoever does get the survey their uh answers will sort of echo amongst the community so it's supposed to be statistically valid correct that's my understanding too thank you adam uh and catherine yeah i just had one quick question which is because i didn't see all the numbers which of the options scored the highest on your matrix it was the option 1a rena which is build a new k-6 elementary school

093i thought the middle school had a higher score yeah i think the middle school there was an 80s for middle school and element new middle and now hold on let me just find actually uh i'll bring up i'll find a spreadsheet nope you're right 2a 2a yep phase one build new 68 middle school yes okay i vote for that we should say that the options have changed a little since the phases and the options have changed a little bit when we did the the scoring on them correct andrew yes yep they have yeah because they consolidated uh a lot of phases in the phase one whereas they were broken out but it's still the same schools i mean the same order yeah if um if i you know what no i'm not going to try

094to share my screen no no let me see uh the presentation from two meetings ago where uh jen and chuck walked the group through the rankings every option how they scored uh now you're welcome for your viewing pleasure catherine yes absolutely thank you very much and i know that was uh uh you know fair amount of time on snc lengthy update but it's very important because we're smc is nearing the finish line we can see it and uh you know both the board of ed and town have a lot to chew on uh once the final two options presented to us tune in on the 27th if you can because jim jascott our our town finance director has been uh grinding away as an abacus the last couple weeks uh doing quite a bit in

095depth analysis so the committee is supposed to get um for for at least those two plans that we just showed you those two phases of those two options um financial impact cost to the town cost to debt service the ratings uh et cetera are broken up by schedule so i know as a calculator is pretty much caught on fire by now i've turned a number so it should be a good meeting and that'll give us all a good good idea of you know as those options are structured how it's going to impact us financially so thank you and by the way if there's any questions just send them over to smc committee uh like us uh jen and the team address them at the meeting so if anything with survey the options fire away they're

096happy to respond uh moving on we are uh we don't have any understanding committees uh meetings so we're gonna move on to approval of minutes uh we actually have a few meetings um i would like to approve these as one batch but in our packets we have links to the board education meeting held december 17th 2020 which seems like it was just yesterday the board education special meeting held january 5th 2021 and the board education presentation meeting held on june 14th which was last week on the superintendent's budget presentation uh do any members have changes to those minutes i do not i don't seem to be raising their hand would someone like to make a motion to approve those minutes mr chairman i would like to make a motion thank you mr gripple is very

097second catherine seconds sorry andrew she just beat you sorry it's quick um uh any discussion great seeing as there is no discussion the motion is that the cheshire board of education approve the minutes of the board of education meetings held december 17th 2020 january 5th 2021 and july 14 2021. all those in favor say or raise your hand it is unanimous thank you team the motion passes well we're moving on to correspondence um madam secretary do we have any correspondence we do not have any correspondence mr chair thank you thank you catherine uh we're gonna move on to section six which is the superintendent's report dr sullin the moment you've all been waiting for uh very exciting i'm gonna try and keep this short and sweet we have a few different items to address today

098of course a quick covet update um they're the teacher and staff vaccination peace in connecticut's received a lot of attention uh we're hopeful to have a clearer plan about how to roll those out in the coming weeks uh and that really when i say we're hoping to have a clear plan that means consultation with the state and clear direction around when uh that'll actually occur so that we can make sure that our staff are addressed in an efficient and effective manner we don't want to see vaccines going to waste uh nor does chesapeake there was a clinic today in at the pool uh for people 75 and older again if there's anybody in town 75 and older they can sign up uh through the vans system if you need help with that you can call

099tomorrow to chest per cop they can try and help direct you through that but it is a little bit complicated and that's part of the problem so there were 20 surplus vaccinations today we have a wait list of you know people that are older who work in our school system or have significant medically compromising conditions and so we had those folks vaccinated today 20 20 people we'll see what happens tomorrow hopefully that you know we can get the best of both worlds and have a lot of folks that are in that 1b 75 and older vaccinated as well as some some of our staff as well real quick i will show you the state releases every thursday the information around uh how our town's doing in connecticut and what does this look like and we

100put this into our cdc considerations chart so cases per hundred thousand uh the last two week running average is down uh significantly 10 10 points from 53.49 to 43.6 cases per 100 000. the positivity rate over the last 14 days has been 6.4 percent down from 7.4 and our medigree mitigation strategies remain very strong uh when you balance us all out you know basically a lower risk of transmission in our schools that's exactly what we've seen as a matter of fact we've seen really no transmission in our schools uh and that's that's uh across the state as well that um you know just not seeing in school transmission dr matt carter one of the leading epidemiologists in connecticut really nationally and also a cheshire high school graduate said the other day that um really the

101schools are proving to be one of the safest places to be based on everything that all the data that we have so that's that's positive we want to try and get as many students as we can safely into school every day the high school is the only place where we don't have that full-time option and we are taking steps to move closer to that identifying students with more academic needs and trying to get them in more regularly is the first step in that process and we're doing that already to get those students in four days a week as opposed to the typical two-day week experience for other students i want to remind members of the board who may have signed up that tomorrow morning at 8 00 am there's a cade connecticut association board of

102education legislative leadership breakfast virtually of course and carol would have sent you the link to that if you signed up if you're still interested and don't have the link just let carol know we'll square it away for 8 a.m tomorrow happens annually where we meet with members of the our local delegation uh with other folks from other school systems other superintendents and board members and just they share with us kind of what the legislative agenda is and how it relates to education so that's tomorrow morning at 8 am and then finally um important here that we have to there's not a formal motion that has to be taken but we do need to notify you that we have to as a school system our leadership team in informs aces of seats available in cheshire to

103be offered to new haven children throughout the state's open choice program open choice is a program that was instituted to reduce racial and economic isolation for students from urban communities is part of the response to the chef versus omnia lawsuit the benefit for the community is tremendous in providing diverse school enrollment for our community and funds received from the state have helped offset district-wide literacy programs uh costs over the last several years you know i've said repeatedly over my five years as superintendent how it's an incredible resource for us to be able to offer these seats that are available to students from the new haven community it's a tremendous benefit to us to be able to further diversify our student body um and i don't know in my opinion i don't know that we'd ever

104be able to offer enough seats to really uh meet our goals but when we have seats that are open i think this is a great resource for us and it's a good opportunity for the students unfortunately as a principal i've seen many times it is difficult when you're taking the bus from new haven to get to cheshire high school it's 7 30 in the morning and because your bus ride starts i mean it's ungodly early when you're in treasure but when you're coming from the south end of new haven the cheshire again it's just another thing that i think about if we are considering the the myriad of benefits for pushing school start times back my god i don't have time to think about that today but it's in the back of my head uh

105just another side benefit for us to be able to better retain uh students from the open choice program as they matriculate up through the high school level because it's really hard on them to get up that early but anyway um so we we will again be doing that this year and we'll provide more information as we review our our enrollment for next year is exactly how many seats we're we're providing so that concludes my always exciting superintendent's report thank you dr sullin uh start with adam adam had a comment and then faith had a question thank you um i uh after seeing that the um i don't know what to call infection report i don't know um i just again i wanted to thank you and marlene and your staff for working so hard to

106to having these great mitigation protocols to be able to keep our schools open where i think we're one of the few in the state where we have been open from from the beginning until now where we've had well we've had no instances of closure or going having to go remote at least system-wide and um and i that's really testament to to you and your staff and to to working with uh um uh maureen is it more more more right and all of her staff and keeping everyone uh going it's just been really great and i'm and and i'm also happy that the i think the community responded as well by by seeing our our infection rates kind of uh drop uh so that we can continue this great success so yeah thanks adam you know

107my budget slide highlighted really the the community-wide effort that was necessary for us to be successful and um our parents did a great job keeping kids home and it's still imperative that if your family is symptomatic that your child is home if somebody's being tested i really need to reiterate that this new strain of the virus is um according to dr carter within the next month going to be the more prominent strain in america uh because it's it's that sort of spread which makes these practices these mitigation strategies so critical so mask wearing keeping your kids home when they're sick our kids have been phenomenal social distancing not just at school but at home because that's where we are seeing issues is outside of school and so i really absolutely marlene deserves an incredible amount

108of credit for the education that our students are receiving while they go through this process but i would be remiss if i didn't acknowledge the czar of ppe that is mr massiana he is just uh he's something when it comes to that don't get him started he's worse than me when it comes to rolling on about school stuff so anyway um thank you adam for that thank you adam uh you had a question um first of all echo adam's um comments that good job you guys and keeping everybody in and also um being ready with a wait list because there's nothing more um disconcerting is the thought of doses going unused so glad they're getting used and getting used within the school so so kudos to all of you just a question with regard to

109open choice um which is a fabulous program and i'm just wondering do we ever have seats go unfilled i mean you you know how many every year that you can take do we does every seat get filled or do seats go wanting uh it depends yeah i mean i i've seen it over the course of our history whereas go unfilled um and often times it's a function of the drive we are the furthest away from nor new haven um it's the way the state sets up these catchment areas you know waterbury would make more sense right next door um but we are in the aces uh area and then we take students from new haven so it is a a little bit of a track and i from my the families that i've had conversations

110with that's always the biggest factor right i think they they have a great experience generally speaking but it's the transportation's a killer and just a thought um one well just a follow-up question how has covitt affected current open choice and is there any way going forward that we can um look for ways to use remote learning for some of these kids um going even when we're out of covenant yeah you know what faith that's a tremendous suggestion um and again yeah that's we think about a lot of things and how do we uh take what we've learned from the covet experience to improve upon our school system postcode and we've got a laundry list and that one i have to give you credit is not on the list and it's a tremendous suggestion so you

111know i'm sure marlene and kevin and i and ben will all be thinking about is there a way for us to better leverage that and support students so that maybe it's it's not so uh tough on the ride you know we could have students participating in first period remotely depending on you know if you're a judge or high school and that's a much different experience when you have to get there at 8 8 15 versus 7 20. um so it was a great idea so we'll think about that it happens sometimes thank you faith uh tim had a question and ann had a comment so tim you're up yeah jeff thank you for um and marlene and vin for keeping the schools open this year jeff do you happen to know um like adam said

112we were among the few do you happen to know what the actual numbers are or is it 150 school districts there's differences between elementary and high school but just generally speaking how many have been open all year yeah you know i don't know i know that i can tell you we've had to close for covid four days one day at highland when we learned of and this was very early in the process we learned of a positive employee from the cleaning company who couldn't tell us who she was in contact with because she didn't know anybody it was only like day two um so we were closed that subsequent day and then we closed for three days at cheshire high school when we were working through an issue with our cafeteria staff aside from that

113we've been open every day and you know anecdotally i can tell you that there are very few that can claim that and uh i want to thank our graduates over 80 of whom have come back to support us and this has garnered a lot of national attention on the apy i got an email from a superintendent in kentucky the other day asking for the letter that we sent out to our graduates it's a national problem we just interviewed the heckinger report yesterday there's another major news outlet looking to do a story on this that i hope to share soon but it's really our graduates who came back and helped bail us out so a lot of credit to them i hope the governor doesn't know what you're doing because he said he's looking for someone

114who wants to keep the schools open yeah yeah um after our december first press conference what we're doing um with regard to uh um the substitutes you were just talking about are those are most of those uh the recent chs alums are they going back to school around february first yeah someone they just had a great conversation with one today who um is their school's remote in the second semester graduate i talked to today february 6th so uh it it's kind of different um for everybody i do worry as we come toward the spring my hope is that if schools are going back our demand might be lower too so um we'll have to cross that bridge if we get to it the uh the reason the thing that's coming to my mind is that

115uh um so anecdotally and i think i may have seen this reported a little bit but the second vaccine hits people yeah harder than the first and i'm wondering if you can follow that you know you're paying attention to it you know what let's just have 50 extra subs teed up because we're about to do a hundred people on their second dose right now on february you know 14 14 valentine's day whatever in the middle of february just to have that um have an idea about what's happening there yeah i mean that's something that we are definitely sensitive to and uh when the rollout is available to our staff then i i think i in mass anyway then i i think we we would want to be very careful about let's say we're not gonna

116give the second vaccination to everybody at chapman on the same day and if if we had to would our plan be for the next day to potentially be remote or something like that you know these are considerations that we've definitely been working through internally with nancy stanton our nursing coordinator who's phenomenal um our team is looking at some of those things okay great um and the last question i don't know if you would mention it i'm just wondering how many open choice seats do we have this year i think it's 30 we currently have 34 open choice students in the district and so that's that's spread out across grades rated toward the elementary so that i'm just guessing that most of them are probably more of them it's probably more weighted toward norton and doolittle

117than chapman right no not necessarily you know there were points where marlene who is also a very strong proponent of the open choice program where um we would have actually the majority of our students at chapman of our open choice students would be a jedi what we're trying to do is focus on really cater to uh students and try our goal being bring in as many students as we possibly can and then hold on to them through their entire k12 experience and you know whatever the remainder of their whatever through 12 experience is so that they can really be a part of our experience the whole way through and graduate from chs okay thank you thank you tim uh ann harrigan you're up yeah i just wanted to thank you jeff superintendent solon for um

118bringing up that in on the back of burner is still uh thoughts of moving the school start times for the high school back uh pushing them back and um if there is any optimistic information coming from people about uh covid and remote learning and all of this the people that i've spoken to who have kids in high school if you get past all asking questions all about the remote learning and online learning and screen time and all of that if you just ask the simple question how is their health do they seem more rested the answer and this is all anecdotal it's not i have not been compiling it in any systematic way but i the responses that i'm getting across the board are oh yeah oh she's much happier he's he's doing really well

119he doesn't have to get up at six o'clock in the morning it's just that the other thing um i wonder if there's a way that we could systematically compile some of this information i would never ask you to put one more thing on your plate but i do think about it still and um i'm ready to work on that project as soon as uh as soon as you all call me in i know you will be there with bells on and marlene and i spent a lot of time talking to parents over the summer a lot of times a lot of parents and that was something that you know a sizable number of people indicated that the the benefit of at least sleeping a little bit later after that march through june experience where we

120had that hour delay in the morning prep time and just rearranging everything that we do in a school system it was it was really powerful to hear all those parents say what it meant for their high school kids and some of you you know tony your daughter you know just experiencing that it's much different so thank you sure thank you uh i have no comments sometimes reporter again dr stone thank you and again i i i know um we probably don't say it enough and i i know you know we appreciate everything you and team are doing um you know not just someone here tonight but it's a it is a district-wide effort to pull this off and it has been pretty it hasn't been easy it's challenging and it changes by the day by

121the week and you know as uh this code evolves respond to it it's just a it's a constant state of change uh by no means is it perfect uh but i think we're failing very well and uh i look forward and again i'm not gonna i'm not gonna knock on wood we have another five months of school at least to go through um you know anything can happen but i'm confident that um you know we're staying the course and using actual data and measuring and feedback to help guide you know the direction so thank you for that um i am looking forward to debriefing all this attend the school year lessons learned and you know the ann's point are there things that we learned um that might be worthwhile incorporating uh next school year but

122um don't get hurt ourselves we're gonna take this one week at a time so but thank you yeah and again i this is i'm one person in this organization and and i know ben and marlene feel the same way we have ias and maintenance technology like the the and of course our incredible teachers and administrators who deserve so much more credit uh for doing this every day really proud of the effort they've all put forth great thank you agree nurses of course yeah they're always in the forefront of them um again so that was in the superintendent's report thank you i have known you uh old business uh do have some new business chairperson's up that actually do have something i'll try to keep it short um so someone mentioned earlier the cabe webinar series

123i'm pretty sure as board members we're getting these notifications from cave i have been attending them i do every year i attended a couple of finance and uh running meetings etc there's a couple coming up in february that you should have in your inbox um one is on school board leadership through effective policy so really gears toward policy committee members of those that wish to want to serve on policy uh it's appreciated for us but we'll definitely help uh get some tips there and another important one coming up on february 18th uh it's entirely a new year a lot has changed a lot has them what can we do and i think this is the fourth uh session in cabe's uh diversity equity inclusion series i definitely will be attending that one again these are

124uh we belong to cape so partnership fees cover this they're available to us and you know we're we're all trying to do professional development for ourselves as board members um these have been pretty concise and worthwhile especially since they've been online so please take advantage if you can and uh there will definitely be more um jeff dr sullin mentioned the vaccine uh there has been a lot of chatter on school districts i again i still sit on a weekly board of that chair meeting um a lot of school districts were upset that teachers weren't prioritized higher in phase 1b not necessarily ahead of age 25 plus but they def they wanted to see teachers especially those that are in the front lines or students be prioritized alongside with them i guess there was some discrepancy

125in the state last week i i think teachers started enrolling for the vaccine and the governor or someone said don't enroll but i don't think again it's quite clear yet the last i've heard uh depending on what gun lamont does and our health department um they may be right behind 75 plus maybe a few weeks after but as dr sullin alluded to it's uh the timing role the vaccines would be very interesting so it's still a bit of but do know a lot of school districts are are having that discussion i know some have sent letters into uh the representatives as well as uh governor lamont on that um i uh had a chance to meet with the members of the cheshire coalition group this past monday and welcome to king day i've been touching

126base with them periodically just to see how things are going i know they spend some time behind the scenes talking to district staff they attended their curriculums back in late fall they're kind of taking a look at uh how the district is actually working on diversity equity inclusion anti-racism etc we'll probably have more updates on that at the next meeting uh it brings us up only because uh we've always uh wanted to accommodate them at upcoming board meeting but with everything going on it was pretty difficult to do last year i am looking for a date sometime in february probably after we're done with the budget submissions wear some breathing room it will be very worthwhile for us to have some dialogue with them and see what they're all about see their goals and and

127i know the board members have some questions for them so i'll work on a date you'll probably get some emails from carol on potential dates on that but uh look definitely that february i am going to be attending legislative breakfast tomorrow i think dr seoul might be on that one too curious to see who's going to be there this time in in some of the topics um oh i uh i should have mentioned some last meetings uh because cheshire belongs to the area cooperative oasis with aces um i get to serve on their governing board as chair of our board of ed so there's a monthly meeting of the group and some executive meetings that happen uh similar you know no different than traditional school they're sort of dealing with cova they're dealing with funding

128issues budgets etc um one notable topic uh as i'm not sure if people know about this but uh they are looking for a new location for thomas edison middle school uh they've been looking at potential sites now for a few months they have a dentist they've identified a site and are actually um discussion at real estate but unfortunately because it is executive session i can't talk about it uh but hopefully in february there'll be some news around that and that's materializes she's super some pretty exciting news so that'd be a pretty big thing for for aces um and lastly i had the privilege um of uh being on a treasure cast last week um corey and trish we shot me some time ago i just got generally from the board you know everyone realizes that

129uh i think everyone does there's a lot going on on the board in the school district uh so i had an opportunity just to give up the all things that we're working on smc covet et cetera nothing out of the ordinary but i just want to mention that um they were very complimentary of the board all of us um and a lot of thanks was given to the board for our time or dedication in the best of times let alone um in what is not the best of times right now so just want to share that with you all that that cast comes out soon i laugh because i think um i actually was able to say something 22 minutes into the meeting uh into this because they're they're just a fun bunch to be

130with um it was very very fun uh very uh uh joking so uh very lighthearted but uh i think hopefully it was informational for for us in the community beyond that that's that's all i had thankfully um next up on the agenda is announcement of upcoming meetings and events because they never end um first let's talk about the budget meeting schedule uh january 26th which i believe is tuesday is the next public budget review of the finance committee board as a whole we will be reviewing the administrative review of accounts on january 28th uh there's a public informational meeting board member quarterback member responses to the budget possible adoption of an education budget uh it'll be at seven pm the date's gonna be uh the times will be determined i'm sorry location we need to

131be virtual or in person uh as tim asked earlier for both these meetings we're gonna figure that out before tuesday and then on february 4th if necessary we may have a special meeting at the board of ed to adopt an education budget and just remind everyone we have until february 15th to present an operating budget to the town so they can start their process outside of budget meetings um tuesday february 2nd at 6 30 p.m is a policy committee meeting it will be virtual monday february 8th at 7pm there's a curriculum committee meeting also virtual and thursday february 18th at 7 30 p.m will be a board education business meeting um not this and again there's other smc meetings sprinkled in there um where those will be published as well the next ssc meeting for

132those that are very much interested is next wednesday the 27th i believe it's 7 p.m and that agenda and schedule can be found on the tom website one last reminder before we move on to adjournment uh just like um our covered email address for anything related to the board or district on co-related questions smc can also take questions and they do it they're getting emails so if anyone out there does have questions on what we discussed tonight namely what ann and andrew brought to the table on updates and some of the dialogue if you like more detail you know just please send an email to the group i don't have the email address in front of me but you can definitely find it right off the main page of the town website those are read

133into the record at the meetings uh just like we do here so um they very much will love to hear from the community as well some board members okay that being said um our last time on the agenda is adjournment um is there a motion to adjourn the meeting i moved that we are thank you catherine and adam seconds at uh all those in favor raise your hand it is unanimous uh the meaning is adjourned again i want to thank our board carol our team dr sullin arlene and of course mike for sticking out tonight i know it's been a very long week uh a very long year that's only january and for those of you watching again thank you for hanging in with us and again any questions please email us at the cbs

134covered address and we'll respond to you or discuss them at the next meeting that being said the meaning is adjourned thank you mike let me know