Board of Education 12-17-20

001meeting uh mr jeske can i ask a call roll call please sure mr grippo here miss hallan here miss ham uh miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr paragini here mr white uh he's there okay uh mr chairman you have a quorum thank you uh carol i asked the board uh and members uh join us in the pledge of allegiance since uh flag is up on the screen great i pledge allegiance is well welcome everyone uh on what is a cold wintry day uh hopefully everyone's feared the weather fairly well today and uh that you've dug yourselves out of this beautiful elegant snow pile that we have throughout town uh we have a great uh actually uh a great agenda tonight lots to cover lots of positive news um that being said before i move

002on uh i'm gonna ask if there's a motion from the board to amend tonight's agenda yeah i would um like to make a motion to move item 8b up to further up in the agenda to just after item two which is the audience very second second uh catherine b so the motion is that uh the board of ed move item eight b from the agenda up to after item two audience any question all those in favor thank you it is unanimous um for everyone watching and uh just so everyone knows uh we have a motion tonight to fill a very important role in the school district and we don't want to scare our candidate off by waiting for three or four hours to end the meeting to make that so out of respect for one's

003time just trying to move up a little further uh that being said uh uh dr sone do we have any orange correspondence at this point i'm sorry yeah of course audience correspondence separate um yeah we're i think a little ahead of the uh student report oh how did i miss that i'm sorry i'm looking at something different i apologize to our student representatives uh can we have the student representatives report by josh and lucy yep so um i can start uh in terms of athletics each school in our league receives two athlete award winners during each sports season these awards are based on leadership academics and athletic performances this fall our sbc scotland winners were simone rosenberg from girls soccer and nicki dimizio football in addition several athletes were named to the connecticut high school

004coaches association allstate's team from the following teams girls soccer boys soccer volleyball girl swim and dive boys cross country and field hockey in some more exciting news sophomore soccer player gabby turado was named to the all new england girls soccer team and some not so exciting news the winter sports start date was moved to january 19th to avoid any possible covid holiday issues and students are in the process of registering for those winter sports right now the next thing on our report is high school is in the process of running a food drive sponsored by the national honor society and the peer health education classes the idea was to run a coped-friendly food drive where students volunteer to be street captains so they go around door to door to their neighbors to accept donations and

005the neighbors that choose to participate simply have to leave a bag filled with non-perishable food items on their front steps and then the students will come around and collect them the drive ends this saturday december 19th and the items will be dropped off in front of the high school from 8 a.m to 12 p.m so anyone else in the community who have a street captain on their street can bring uh any donations to the front of the school at that time and then all of the items will then be delivered to the cheshire food pantry awesome um some other things so psats were administered to all freshmen students on december 9th also the chs vips or the advanced chorus will do virtual holiday caroling by entering each teacher's google me class tomorrow um so that

006should be fun the student senate is also sponsoring a theme week next week encouraging chs students and staff to support holiday colors sweaters hatch socks this event has become an annual tradition for the chs community and we're looking forward to continuing it um also the curriculum and activities night for upcoming freshmen is held towards the end of january every year the administration and an instructional leadership team is currently discussing options to deliver this event in a virtual format so look for the information to be really shortly after winter break and then lastly uh chs best buddies is sponsoring another holiday drive through this time so we're partnering with a bunch of other chs clubs and sports teams to be at different stations and hand out different holiday themed items like candy canes crafts hot chocolate

007and there'll also be an optional picture with santa so this is all going to be covered friendly so six feet mass and gloves for all those who are passing out candy or items to participants the event's gonna be saturday december 19th from one to three and we're accepting donations of non-perishable food items and also used books for the local rereads bookstore and we're really looking forward to it and hoping for a good turnout and that's all in our report thank you josh and lucie are any questions from the board members ann uh josh you mentioned the books for the reread bookstore uh are those necessarily uh children's young adult books or can they be are they all books they're accepting basically any book any type of book okay thanks yep any other board members excellent

008could i just add that you know i know i was so excited for lucy yesterday when uh she found out she got into davidson and uh it's very exciting for her congratulations lucy we're very happy for you thank you josh we're not going to put you out i know it's very early in the application process so uh you know when you're ready to share with us we want to celebrate you too so anyway but congratulations lucy thank you congratulations again and thank you both josh and lucy for your time this evening and uh i know uh there's not another board meeting until january so you're off the hook next week and and i hope you both enjoy some time off and time with families and you know be safe and we'll uh start off a

009new fresh new year fresh in january 2021 and and hopefully it's gonna be much much much better than 2020 so thank you again yeah you don't have to stick around for the meeting but if you do um i i wouldn't put you through that but you're welcome to stay so take care thank you see you good night uh moving on uh to number two this time audience uh doctor stalin is sure for any correspondence or if we do if that's something you want to address later on in your report yeah we have one and it's pretty quick um it's from kristin mellett she just wanted to say that i just want to let you know how grateful my family is that cheshire has made keeping kids in school a personal up in person safely a

010priority when i look around the country and even our state i feel so fortunate to live where we do everyone involved is to be commended from the administrators to the teachers and staff to the students and i don't know if chespercat gets enough credit for the amazing work they've done during the pandemic including what they've done with regard to schools we are incredibly lucky to have such a proactive and responsive local health department as the mother of a senior i'm glad my son has had some degree of normalcy for his last year of high school and just as a human being it has filled it has lifted my heart almost every day to see kids at bus stops kids playing joyfully at recess kids in band rehearsals and sport practices these signs of normalcy in

011this difficult time have been so good for my mental health i can only imagine that what they have done for the children themselves i know there is still work to be done to get to the other side of the pandemic and continued uncertainty for the coming months but we should be very proud here in cheshire of how we have handled it to this point thank you kristin mellitt so i just wanted to share that great thank you jeff we're going to move on to item 8b uh before we actually make a motion uh jeff do you want to give us an overview of this special appointment i do thank you very much chairman peregini this is a position that was vacated recently when we appointed robin ann carey to pps director from the elementary special

012education supervisor position so since that time we've engaged in a comprehensive search to replace that really important position in our leadership team so this evening i'm proud to introduce and nominate christina sherwood christina's 11 years in special education encompasses several key experiences leading to her desire to pursue a leadership role she began her career in education as an instructional assistant supporting special education students in various settings including self-contained classrooms christina quickly made the transition to teaching by working with students with disabilities in ansonia her skills were soon recognized by her administrators and she was encouraged to take on greater leadership roles those roles included advocating for a life skills program for students with intellectual disabilities chairing ppt's supervising instructional assistants and training certified staff in the learning disabilities guidelines cheshire was very fortunate when christina

013decided to join the staff at highland school in 2015 she has worked to support some of our most complex students meeting both academic and behavioral needs and has worked closely with support service providers in the process christina continued to demonstrate her leadership skills through various avenues such as collaboration time with colleagues and administrators participation in ppt's and our work with parents she showcased the highland intensive education program with her colleagues for the board of education just last year christina has also supported parents through workshops presented by the intensive education team christina completed a leadership internship at highland where she worked closely with scott jeffrey and erica bordenero in all aspects of administration after a rigorous and thorough interview process it was clear that chris christina possessed the knowledge skills and drive to round out our

014special education department leadership team her knowledge of special education instruction and strategies collaborative skills reflective thinking her interpretation of data and attention to detail is just a piece of what makes christina right for this position so with that i chairman i i nominate christina sherwood for the position of elementary special education supervisor for the cheshire public schools uh thank you dr song would a board member like to make a motion i'm sorry i'm on a different screen i apologize i have like four monitors here and i'm trying to coordinate all the documents and notes and so forth uh give me a second you think being a chief technology officer adam wants to make it thank you adam please do thank you mr chairman um i'm assuming uh the date in this motion is 2021-2020 yes

015reference okay thank you um move that the cheshire board of education appoint christina sherwood to the position of special education supervisor effective february 17 2021 further that ms sherwood is compensated in accordance with the collect collective bargaining agreement between the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administrative personnel catherine seconds and the motion is moved that the cheshire boy education appoint christina sherwood to the position of special education supervisor k through 6 effective february 17 2021 further that miss sure would be compensated in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the cheshire board educate chain and cheshire uh administrative personnel i uh i was gonna call for a go vote but i apologize um uh let's have a discussion on the motions i know board members would like to make some comments would anybody like

016to make a comment on the motion tim yeah i know i've asked this before but particularly for the public who's out there uh jeff this motion is it largely ceremonial you have the authority to hire and fire people yeah the board of education hires one employee and i'm responsible for hiring everybody else i'm the one employee you hire but board policy calls for uh the board appointment of administrators so um i think it's just really to keep the the public informed about who it is that we're hiring correct thank you any comments on the actual motion uh and please i just want to say congratulations christina and welcome aboard and i know you've been in cheshire public schools and um i i'm thrilled that we are we have promoted you up into to this uh

017position and um as people mentioned to you beforehand we're we're so pleased i think i speak for most people on the board if not all people on the board we're so pleased um with the way that our special education programs are working here in cheshire and um thrilled that this uh you know the turnover with personnel is going to be so seamless by getting somebody of your stature and experience and also your um experience already with cheshire public schools so congratulations and welcome aboard thank you thank you ann uh and any other board members wish to comment a faith come on um i just let the um those watching we had a half hour meet and greet with christina just before this meeting and um she is a most impressive candidate she um has just

018a true appreciation for the program um but when i asked her you know what was the integral part of the program she without hesitation she said it's the staff and um you know that's that's an important thing to for those of us on the board to to know um and to continue to support and find ways to um you know to continue to um ensure that we get the best of the best for for our kids here so i wholeheartedly recommend uh and support our approval of christina thank you faith anyone else i know we uh comment a little bit during a meet and greet earlier uh if there is no one else i just like to add i i'm i'm thankful christine that you know you chose to step up into the role and

019chose to stay in cheshire public schools i i mentioned had mentioned earlier that uh you know our special education the intensive program is um is very popular um in the state and i i know families personally that have moved to cheshire's uh because they see the quality of the staff in particular uh over the years and you know their their kids benefited uh greatly through the program and they they have roots in cheshire now so um i'm even more excited that we're able as a school district to um have people get the professional development the experience of training that to grow into these roles so um i think others mentioned it earlier if it wasn't ann you know that the seamless trend i think andrew the seamless transition uh and this very important program is

020huge and i speak for all the board of ed and the community that we're excited that you're taking on this role and well we welcome you um so thank you thank you i'm very excited excellent uh seeing there's no more comments uh i'll read the motion one last time uh move that the cheshire board education appoint christina sherwood to the position of special education supervisor k through six effective february 17th 2021 further that miss sure would be compensated in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administrative personnel all those in favor please indicate right here's your hand it is unanimous christine welcome well uh well since you're already here thank you for uh moving up into a role congratulations christina thank you everyone very much welcome uh

021you're certainly um would you like to make a few comments you don't have to we're gonna put you in the spot anyway um i will just say that i've thoroughly enjoyed the last five years here in cheshire public schools um i've had fantastic administrators that i work for who have really shown me the type of administrator that i want to be for all of you and i look forward to showing all of you that so thank you for the opportunity excellent thank you so much christine uh you're certainly welcome to stay but you don't have to um you know we're being constant of your time and everyone's had a very long year if not this week so thank you again uh we're gonna move on to the next uh item on the agenda uh which

022is reports of standing committees beginning with curriculum faith would you like to give that update i would thank you um we met on december 15th and probably what was one of the fastest committee meetings ever but anyway we um among we reviewed the items from the previous meeting on october 19th um among new business items um there was a recommendation to for a textbook or a new textbook recommendation college accounting a practical approach the committee approved to move the textbook to recommendation to the full board it will be on display or on review um in the administrative office um and then for any for the public to review and then we will vote on it i believe in the next meeting um so um we then had a several informational items starting with an update

023on the cheshire high school hybrid learning model dr mary gadd who's the principal of chs gave us the update and she shared a lot of information starting with an overview of the five parent forums that she had had in late october in november and the topics included the structure of the collegiate hybrid model student support at cheshire school student expectations and attendance social emotional learning and student activities and the meeting attendance ranged from nine to 25 parents she dr gad also shared three examples of course communication expectations that were sent out at the beginning of the year as well as email and video updates that were sent by all teachers to parents on the first week of november and um they were incredibly well done and um professional so um anyway i commend all of

024the faculty for that and then regarding professional development in november cheshire high school teachers work collect uh collaboratively to improve the synchronous learning um instruction model and this included a variety of technological technolo yes this is hard technology tools to support instruction assessment and feedback um after dr gad we heard from kevin hanlon who is the k-8 curriculum coordinator and he gave us a quick overview of um professional development in elementary and middle school um the uh focus this year is on the strategy of acceleration in the use of technology tools to support learning november 3rd provided a full day professional development opportunity for teachers where elementary teachers worked on priority standards for the second trimester in reading writing and math and the middle school teachers focused on developing engaging and meaningful academic tasks that

025support both in-person and remote learners for their given subject areas areas and then finally um mr hamlin talked about the annual eel parent information and um it's interesting i mean it was all conducted via google meet which is um really a feat and congratulations to everybody who was who were able to organize this it was mr hanlon and a number of faculty within the elementary and middle school levels respectively who talked with parents about the el options or program at the schools and in addition to the regular topics the support process for el students this year's presentation also included ways that the district is supporting the remote el students um thus ended the meeting and we adjourned so um our last item of business is to approve three textbooks um business which have been on

026display or on review um in the office they are business 11 introduction to business advanced personnel personal finance and um d uh computer essentials and ms word and um i would like to move that the cheshire board of education approved the purchase of the following textbooks personal finance turning money into wealth business 11 introduction to business and paradigm benchmark series microsoft word 2013 or 2016 levels one in two is there any just gosh this very second catherine seconds said thank you discussion thank you hearing none senior during those discussions on the topic no it's faith it's fine hey so one thing i get to do i'm going to do it so the cheshire board the motion is that the cheshire board of education approved the purchase of the following textbooks personal finance uh turning money

027into wealth uh business 11 introduction to business and paradigm benchmark series microsoft word 2013 or 2016 levels one and two uh all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous faith your emotion has passed okay um are there any other questions regarding the curriculum committee mr grippo uh thank you uh just my question was um i did have an opportunity to watch the uh surprisingly short uh curriculum meeting uh i think it was like 33 minutes or something like that um and so i just wanted to make sure that that my impression was correct that it seems like the um the synchronous learning uh is uh running positively uh and that the the feedback from the parent groups uh uh seemed to be that uh everything is is uh improving is that was

028that per impression be correct if i could comment um i i think you're absolutely correct um from what i've heard from parents um there has been a vast improvement in terms of communication between teachers and families um the engagement is stronger and um i think a lot of um the questions and confusion um have been significant have been addressed i don't know if dr sullin or um miss solano want to add to it but no i i think that's accurate you know we we got some feedback through the survey um dr gad got feedback through the parent meetings that that faith mentioned um we have made you know certain adjustments that have seemingly been beneficial but you know this is going to be an ever evolving process uh after the holidays you know hopefully we're

029we're trying to support more in-person learning um and you know like again this is just going to continue to evolve and we're going to have to continue to make adjustments and that cycle of feedback is really helpful so if parents or students have concerns reach out to the teachers reach out to dr gad that communication is really helpful and we can make adjustments to support you great thank you any other questions faith thank you so much thank you you're welcome up next is finance uh fans committee uh mr grippo thank you mr chairman um uh per usual i will uh hand the reins over to mr maciana for the financial report okay thank you mr grippo good evening ladies and gentlemen the board members do have the finance report as of november 30th in their

030package i i'll just highlight a couple of of the key points from the report for this month not a lot of not much has changed in terms of the forecast for year-end you know this year's budget is 74.59 million dollars you know through november 30th we've incumbent or expended about 80.9 percent and most of that is encumbered for payroll and transportation so you know one of the the key concerns this year has been costs related to covet which you know we've outlined in the last couple of board of education meetings um the the forecast that we had was by year-end you know including the funds we would get from the state for the coronavirus relief act which is seven hundred six thousand seventy-five dollars plus the two hundred thousand dollars we carried over from last

031year's budget plus the 85 000 that we have from cares act funding you know we believe that will be sufficient um you know with a 300 3 000 deficit projected which we'll be able to cover by reducing our expenditures in other categories um the other areas that are typically concerns you know special ed costs maintenance costs those are running you know in line with budget so you know again not a lot has changed from last month i think our forecast is still holding pretty well obviously our students are still in school we did well after thanksgiving so if we continue on you know with the school year staying open you know we'll we'll be able to cover the deficit a couple of specific things that i did want to mention um because you know we

032are trying to mitigate any costs related to cobit what we did since the last meeting is we're required to have isolation room monitors for students who are symptomatic during the school day until their parents pick them up and what we found is those isolation room monitors we're really not that active we do not have a lot of students reporting sick during the day parents you know have been very very good about keeping their students home so we reduced from having one in each building full time to having four isolation room monitors shared across the district and you know we're in the second week of doing that it's working out just fine and we can always add isolation isolation room monitors back if we needed to but you know that strategy will will save us about

033thirty thousand dollars through year end so again that you know helps us mitigate the the cost related to cobit the uh second update that i wanted to give you is that the state and i did let the board members know the state did officially approve the 706 075 dollars in the coronavirus relief funds based on you know the submission that we gave to the state uh you know that specified the categories and the expenditures and we're getting ready to submit um our reimbursement requests so i i don't anticipate you know any any issues with that you know we we will be expanding the 706 000 that uh we need to by december 31st in order to get that reimbursement so you know hopefully by the next meeting we'll we'll know that that submission is in

034place and you know if we didn't get the funds we'll be expecting the funds so i know there was some concern about that but looks like the state has done everything they could and everything they could they've been pretty flexible about allowing us to move some of the funding between the categories from where we originally started i did put beyond that in this month's finance report you know a little cautionary note about um our medical benefits which are running you know our claims are running very high this year and i do have we just included uh for the board today the medical benefits report as of november 30th and if you didn't have a chance to to see it i i'm going to present it on the screen thanks for if you could put it

035up there thank you yeah thanks tony um so um if somebody could just acknowledge you could see the report on the screen yes okay thank you so again this is the report that we just updated as of november 30th and you could see here that claims for november you know surpassed the one million dollar mark again unfortunately um and our reserve fund balance dropped 441 000 further so we started the year with a reserve fund balance of 2.8 million dollars and you know as of november 30th we're down to 1.2 million dollars so we've we've run through about 1.6 million dollars of the reserve fund over the first five months of the the claim year which is unfortunate um somewhat surprising as i reported last month this is this is a series of high cost

036claims that are coming through and not related to colbert our total covert expenses are about sixty thousand dollars year to date most of that is testing so there's not been any exorbitant uh claims related to to covet virus the only offset that out that i can share is that we have not received any stop-loss reimbursements yet which will increase our reserve fund balance um and i would expect you know based on a preliminary report i saw that we'll be receiving at least a hundred fifty thousand dollars in stock in the stop-loss reimbursements you know which will help again next uh the month that we're in now december when those december claims are filed and reported you know it will be the last month of the claim year for the hsa and then because everyone's deductible

037starts at zero effective in january i do expect and i certainly hope that our claims start to um drop um but we'll see so you know the cautionary note that i had put in the finance report was to indicate that for next year's budget which you know we're we're actively working on right now we will need to increase our medical benefits contributions substantially just to be able to make contributions that equal our claims before i close this report i just wanted to you know show you on a year-to-date basis um you could see the claims that we had two years ago um monthly were running eight hundred fourteen thousand last year year to date they were eight hundred one 000 and this year to date we're at a million 96 000 per month so it's

038a it's a very substantial and and unusual spike in claims again primarily driven by large claims we are working with the um our benefits consultant i'm going to stop sharing my screen we are working with our benefits consultant on you know giving us the final projection for next year's renewal um but you know i i do my own estimate for purposes of preparing the budget because we're not going to know you know the final renewal until you know probably march or april but we have to work on some preliminaries so um you know it this is going to have a large impact on next year's budget you know i'm estimating that between the the contributions we need to increase uh and the cost of stop-loss premiums going up we're in the neighborhood of a two

039million dollar increase in next year's budget just to you know get on stable ground so you know that that's the cautionary note i'll i'll stop there if there are any questions or comments yes miss howard uh this is really a comment which is to say that this is exactly the situation that was predicted last when we were dealing with last year's budget the budget for this year and and the year before we we've been sort of underfunding the medical benefits trust fund um for a couple years now and this was going to happen and we knew it was going to happen and so i am hopeful that the town council is uh not going to be um difficult in sort of acknowledging the fact that now we're in the exact position that you had you

040know had predicted and now we have to really make up things uh in you know a substantial way which is too bad but it is obviously where we are so um good good that we know it now i suppose that we see with where the trend is going um the question i kind of have i mean our is our and you may not have any way of knowing this but is are we unique in terms of you know are we really nailing the stop-loss insurance in a way that the other participants um in that pool are not or do you have any sense of that well there's i'll give you two pieces of information one is the town this year and last year had significant high cost claims as well so it's sort of a

041double whammy for the stop-loss carrier that we place our insurance with which is ct prime you know and i'm president of ct prime so as much as i'm happy when we get stop-loss reimbursements it also worries me as because i have to represent ct prime um you know it's cheshire's claims last year were almost double the premiums that we paid for stop-loss but our increase was about 20 percent so you know we've done well in ct prime had we been in in straight commercial market we are you know our premium increases would have been significantly larger the last few years and i will say that the other members of ct prime you know each year there's one or two members that are participants that have a very high claim year you know sometimes it's driven

042by you know a handful of semi-large claims and sometimes it's you know one or two enormous claims and and that's what happened you know last year in cheshire that the town had one claim that was about 1.8 million dollars and on the board side we had one claim that was just under 700 000 so that was the main driver of last year's stop loss now we did get reimbursements you know between the town and the board of ed of um over a million dollars so you know it's good that we have the stop-loss insurance you know this year is unusual i mean we certainly knew that the run rate of claims um was the run rate of contributions has been lower than the run rate of claims and we did that purposefully because we knew

043had a large reserve balance this year's jump in claims you know was unpredictable but it does happen so i'm giving you the early warning so the board members can brace themselves because we will have to deal with that in the budget soon thanks vince i just want to iterate something uh that katherine mentioned so vincent did not predict the exact situation we did not know this was going to happen we knew that claims were going to go up but at the 1.1 million dollar markets it's just ridiculous it's unprecedented and quite frankly just doing some quick math of five months we had so far the 1.62 million dollars more than the 800 000 that we average is that still the average we try to use for this year for the average claim that was is

044expected it's it's way off and it's averaging 325 000 a month um over so at this rate even if you funded if the board said hey let's add another 1.6 million dollars we're still we're still you know if this trend continues uh it's not enough so uh it is unpredictable i really am surprised by a large large claim amounts and you know that being said i hope you know our you know our employees that being covered are getting better i mean that's you know we we have this here for their benefit you know it's sad to hear about this that we have some you know some claims you know i know when they are you know they tend to be the most specialized and you know serious things out there but that being said vincent

045um it has has a town management got a heads up that we're seeing this not just for not for next year my concern now at this point and i just speak for myself is just what the trends we're seeing and even though a new claim year starts in january it's not to say we're not we're not going to see million dollar plus claims um so so if we continue running at this rate of being over an average of 325 000 a month you know the the medical trust fund will be at you know zero you know in three little or three months so do we need to have some clearing discussions do you believe with uh you know the town manager jim jascott town council that there might be a need to shore this up

046a little bit in the interim for school year because there's this there's the um you know the meals um projection that you know we're you're trying to mitigate that as well we have snow removal right that's just starting and you know hopefully the first and last major winter storm i i don't want to have the board in a position where you know we're going to the town council and say march or april and they're not prepared for i don't know if we need to but um have you had any discussions with the town leadership about this well we had a call yesterday with um a broker uh from usi i apologize about that my um and you know we just we just received the claims report at the same time the meeting that we had

047with the what the broker included representatives from from our town so and that's donald um sean kimball the town manager was not able to make it when i wrote this month's finance reporter was before i had the november claims um you know so it is it is unnerving at this point i thought we'd be okay by year-end but i think that is a is a good idea you know mr peregini to you know get together with the town manager talk talk this through um so that we can you know be prepared and give a heads up to the town council if we need to again it is a couple of things here the stop-loss reimbursement would almost in effect double the money we have right now uh in the account uh 1.5 million raise always

048had been no that was last year stop-loss reimbursement you know is probably in the 150 000 range so far so that that you know that's not going to touch a months of claim a month of claims so that's you know that's something that but at least it's something to offset is it comes as it relates to the meal uh situation that we talked extensively about in our previous meeting we've started um breakfast distribution to all students at dismissal and that you know we went from a position where we were hemorrhaging money to a position where we're we're just bleeding now it's it's significantly better um but still it's it's an issue so you know as you said mr pergini i think it's probably uh certainly now that we have the november claims uh time to

049to talk to them a little bit about what's going on yeah i don't mean the pain of diarrhea yeah it's not panic or just you know well trent yeah i mean we were very judicious of our budget before kovid there's another two million dollars reduced from it you know after we approve we did our budget we're you know it's it's lean as it was you know expanding the circumstances it just i think um you know it'd be proven at least get a heads up now my last question i'll turn it back to you adam is uh but the medical trust fund reports that i believe the town also gets that too and it's all reported into one one area because we are part of one large you know so i'm sure they have they're seeing

050this but um again i asked that you know you or jeff have you had a dialogue just to give a heads up we don't want to surprise anybody and uh we obviously you know being selfish here we want to pay for out of pocket because we are responsible for the budget as board members i thought that would happen but you know again just but that the other point i want to reiterate that the vince admit is we're looking at at least a two million dollar potential budget uh increase to this account depending how things go right going into next year as we discuss it so anyway sorry adam i just wanted to add that though thank you uh not a problem mr chairman uh uh just add my comments this uh report is alarming um

051when we did construct the budget last year especially for the medical budget the medical trust fund we were at i believe a five-month reserve um and now we're the burn rate here is is unlike anything we've seen uh certainly in my term and for many years before when i was just a budget hawk right um and this is i mean this is just uh just unprecedented and it seemed like if the way you're describing it is that it's uh uh i don't know well it's a injury by a thousand cuts because uh all of these are are high claims but they're not high enough to get reimbursed by our stop loss right is that is that my understanding of how this is occurring so far but if the you know as the year progresses you

052know if the claims are for the same individuals it is cumulative so you know we will we will reach the 175 000 mark and then the stop-loss carrier would would reimburse us for everything above the 175. um but if you've got you know 10 claims over the course of year that are 175 000 or more that's you know 1.175 million that you know is just attributable to those you know the you know our out-of-pocket cost for those high-cost claims that you need to cover right so but you were saying that you you don't even anticipate getting made you might we anticipate maybe getting 150 000 back so far so all right so but before right um and then on to the uh food service uh deficit um so now that we're not hemorrhaging and only

053bleeding um when uh we had this report last month the shortfall was 300 000. now it's 500 000 if i recall from from the report there uh so what is bleeding look like how how much bigger is this going to get no just to be clear i know in the in the monthly report in the finance report i had indicated it was 500 000 was the run rate and with the mitigation you know i'm projecting that will be 300 000 short by year end oh i'm sorry so it remains it's remained steady exactly from the last report okay exactly gotcha uh my mistake okay so mitigation strategies work we're good you know and so we're trying to make good on it it's what we do and so you think um that we have uh sufficient

054uh money in the budget to compensate for that is that that's been your position yes okay and again the reason we get there is because we've got this 40 cap on non you know payroll expenditures you know so we're just going to keep it there so there's a there's a sacrifice that's being made in other line items but that's how we built you know that's how we balance our budget every year right okay thank you um are there are there um any other questions on this report or in the medical benefit uh report more of a command very quick uh you know listen vincent and really jeff you're the entire team you know i i'm sure i speak for all board members we certainly appreciative of the efforts and sometimes the hurdles you have to

055jump through to make budgets work in the normal list of times right so it's not lost on us that you know again the public doesn't get to see our you know detailed finance report the board receives but it does outline some very detailed mitigation strategies and steps so um you know i have confidence i think we all do i know we all do and that vinson will help us manage through this as the chief operating officer but you know i i feel like you know how many more rabbits do you have left to pull out of wherever you're pulling out of that large hat that you're using because you know as things get tighter um and went to a 40 uh hold back rate you know i what is what is not getting done that

056shouldn't get done we're not going to buy that's tonight but maybe for the budget process i i'll ask that when we which we'll talk about later for 21 22 if we can at least point out missed opportunities or things that were put on hold or uh any effects that i might have had within cps i'm withholding 40 percent this year and i think last year around his time worth holding what uh there abouts because of different so at some point there's there's some some effect um and i'm not sure what that is yet so i don't know how much how many more years as a school district would continue to hold back in our budget for things that we've got to get done so anyway i'm not putting more work on you you usually cover

057this in the budget process but i think for the board it'd be a good discussion topic to see what the impact could be if we keep doing this that's it i'm sorry to ramble on but that's all i had okay i believe that ends the finance report thank you mr chairman sorry everyone so that was our little call on our stocking right for bro hopefully that's that's that's that's it right the only call that's our christmas that's our christmas party there you go there's your there's your bonus is that call for us or for the council i think for everyone exactly yeah it's planning to go around apparently uh digress but we gotta smile sometimes um no need to apologize vincent we know you're doing you know best you can uh moving on uh personnel

058committee mr white uh thank you tony so the personnel committee met uh december 16th primarily to discuss the superintendent superintendent's annual goals there is typically no vote that happens on this i this is my first year involved in this and my preference would be for a vote but i just don't think this is a year where that would be good to have it my um you know the superintendent uh he had he had some ideas on goals uh diversity equity and inclusion communication strategic plan i just shared my own personal thoughts which is probably the single most important thing for me for his goal this year is equity across years there are so many difficulties uh across everything in the school system everything in the you know the country the state uh that and everything

059is a time suck and so to simply uh i think for me the goal is to get as close to 100 learning in this year for as many students as possible as we would have had say in a normal year there's just so many there's so many different things that pop up um in general i mean i think that uh i i think that things are under the circumstances i feel like the school system on balance including the superintendent everyone is doing a great job trying to trying really hard to make things happen um and that's it again there was there was no vote that we cast on it and i don't think we're planning on casting any vote for the full board or anything like that but that's it i don't know if the

060superintendent or anybody else has any questions or comments from the superintendent no if i can add quickly to tim uh so yeah so this is tim mentioned and you know i i'm realizing um you know i i sometimes take for granted that you know everybody watching knows exactly what we do how we do and why we do certain things so i'm glad tim i'm glad you you mentioned about how we do the goals so just very quickly you know at the beginning of the school year our board of ed works with superintendent solon to set his goals for the school year and we usually do that in september and we started that process of september there was a personal community i think october there was a personal community back then we talked about you know

061just ideas and uh you know by and large the committee was agreeing with it and uh and you know we tend to follow up you know by now use november just say hey yep these ghosts don't make sense and these are we're going to measure you on as a board you know come in the school year and um it's certainly the number one goal has been you know lead us through kuvit kuvit kovet sorry it's been a long week um i don't know what coup it is but uh leaders through covet and uh and there's some things along with that that hasn't changed and uh jeff still has goals it is by this does not mean that we're not going to measure him on anything but um you know given where we are and where

062we need to be you know that is a primary focus the school district is to continue delivering through kovid and i think some of the things that we've learned um during this is going to help immensely go in the next year and there's some positive things that have evolved out of this that weren't goals um that i think you know probably could be uh moving forward and i think jeff you know talk about some of those positives later so i don't want the public thinking that we're not measuring jeff we will uh it's just that uh again there's there's things that the board would like to do in an enormous at times and jeff also has a series of things he like to do the strategic plan is is one of them that's still going

063to happen uh starting in the spring it's not postponed but we're just being realistic and the back burner as we sort of uh are more reactionary to emergency situations as we go forward um but i think the one thing and jeff i don't know if you're going to speak to this tonight um what is the the strategic plan um the last one what because i think it's what it's 10 years old and we're going to be getting a new one i mean the last one was essentially transformational to how we conduct business and how we uh teach our children uh and that's probably one of the uh more important things that we're going to be doing uh in the coming year and um i was just wondering uh if you're if you have at least

064some high level ideas as to uh what's sort of uh coming down the pike as to what we're going to be looking at because i mean that you know we yesterday and i think we ushered in ruler and social emotional learning those are two huge concepts uh that didn't exist before you know and so that was you know obviously not tonight but i think that uh you know soon uh at least i would like to to see what you know what's what we're gonna be looking at uh for the next strategic plan uh if anything yeah sure so uh really quickly i could tell you you know 2010 we had a community process where we developed i think it's 17 goals um and you know by the time i became superintendent in 2015 nobody could

065tell you any of the 17. um it's just nobody could memorize 17 focal areas you can't you know have 17 things you're focused on now over a 10-year window at that time it made absolute sense but things have evolved so quickly that in 2015 we as a board and i asked that we focus it down we focus on complex thinking and social emotional learning and then you know of course like you know adam was saying the focus became more on ruler and mindfulness and sel strategies as well as complex thinking in the classroom and you know everybody who at least works for us and most people you know many people outside of that can tell you complex thinking and social emotional learning are what we focus on as we um go back and revisit that

066uh you know i've started reviewing what our kids need you know what they'll need for for 2050 you know way down the road when we started it's it's hard to believe you know when i started that process in 2015 we were asking ourselves what do kids need in 2030 and it's like that seems forever off that sounds like a science fiction number back then um that's actually when our entering kindergarteners were going to graduate basically uh in that process so you know we have to be thinking about well how do we prepare our students to be successful by the time they end this uh 12-13 year journey with us and so you know that's what we're looking at now and again when it's easier and safer for people to do so uh we look forward

067to engaging the community back in that conversation that you know in 2015 i met with business people parents at each of the pto meetings our staff and so we're looking forward to that process again catherine uh yeah yes um i guess now i have a couple of questions one is so to the extent that and maybe i misunderstood what the purpose of last night's meeting was but it seems to me that any sort of discussions regarding the superintendent's goals should be by the board as a whole and not just a three-member committee so that's one thing and i assume we're not talking about shifting goals mid-year um so i just want to clarify that and make sure that i understand yeah i can ask for that it is the personnel committee's prerogative to set the

068superintendent's goals and bring them to the full board for discussion and that's what happened that started back in october as we do every year with the personnel committee and when a personnel committee has some draft goals that's right for the board we tend to do a personnel committee meeting as a whole talk about it give feedback and we don't normally vote on it but we gain consensus that these are things that we're going to measure superintendent by that hasn't changed what we haven't done this year is really change the goals that jeff set out back in september that we all have that were written up from the personnel committee back in october uh at that meeting at the time the personnel community wanted to follow up with jeff to make sure there were any changes

069or anything that he wanted to add to it but so that was last night's meeting was hey were there any changes to the goals the answer is no we didn't anything new um nor would we of course not the board's approval but you know we i think tim made the point that as much as some of the community members like to add more goals it doesn't make sense for this year um we're not going to try to over assign things to them they have already committed to so no there's nothing abnormal about it well okay uh i'm not sure i i you know i'm here i hear what you're saying about the prerogative of the personnel committee but um i don't agree i know this is julian i don't agree with that the board as

070a whole should not um be engaged in all of the conversations and and so but that's a different thing we don't have to i don't want to go down that rabbit hole right now um but that feels to me like something that is not the prerogative of one small committee that's all it is this is the committee's mission to help i don't uh simple i know and the committee is open to all board able to you members watch the meetings you could read the meeting and not actually i'm saying you everybody on the board could i have attended last night's meeting there was an executive session but the meeting in september was live viewed the minutes we all have the write-up from jeff and his draft we all have so we can talk about september

071but but that's when this started and again these are all available to us you want to have if you think the board should have a meeting of the whole soon to talk about his goals we can do that no i'm not saying that i'm just saying if that's what the topic of the meeting is it should be a meeting of the whole now i'm sorry if i missed out on the fact that i could get to the meeting point of order here for two things number one is read our policy the personnel committee's goal the personal models committee's role is to start foster set his goals the book just like policy sends a draft to for the board just like finance sends a budget to the board personnel do the same thing this is no

072different than do every year the only time this we haven't done this year is bring a whole plate to the board but nothing's changed that's the point uh okay i hear what you're saying you're like you're missing out because we didn't have that committee of the whole talk about so i'm sorry that is the committee's role we are following the process i am more than happy to ask the personal committee to have a hole to close loop on this but nothing's changed well then we don't need to have it if nothing's changed i i'm not trying to add meetings to anyone's list of things to do um but if you're telling me that i was a i was invited to that executive committee executive meeting executive session meeting sorry last night i wasn't i i

073no you weren't invited because it was a personal community meeting but well but you just said that the board again i'm gonna call point of order here's chairman okay the september meeting everybody had an invite to it you'd have to attend well you have to understand this is when the process started as we do every year we have that meeting september the personnel committee started talking about goals of superintendent superintendent submitted his draft goals to the committee we all have that we talked about in some details we gave just the way to come back to the committee winning modifications if you're anything the committee mayor has had time to think about it we did that last night we win the executive session to talk about it nothing came out of it there was no vote

074there was nothing to move forward to a full board of ed because nothing's changed now if something was coming out of the meeting last night absolutely the next step will be is the board as a whole gets an opportunity to talk about those even though we don't vote on them even though there's no binding vote to make things happen every year we tend to go through talk about them as a group but that's the committee's work is to bring something for the board to review and that's all we're doing so nothing was done that was uh done behind the scenes that the board didn't know about we have his draft goals going back to september they have not changed that meeting september was televised we all have the meeting minutes for it we could have

075watched it we could have given feedback to the committee since then you know some members did you were left out of the process we're just not to the point where we're going to have a board meeting at a whole to review final goals nothing's changed i'm happy to do that not for taking another meeting but you know let's do this uh jeff let's draw no no no i i no no no no no no no no you're touching something let's jeff i know you sent out draft calls to the group back in i'm sorry october would you mind resending out what we discussed uh then to the board so we have it if there's any questions we you know if we need to meet again about it we're happy to do that yeah absolutely okay

076so my second thing we haven't changed them fine perfect great um i have a one other thing on the strategic goals is that a personnel committee function or is that a board as the whole function that seems like that comes to the board just straight from the superintendent the strategic plan yeah yeah the strategic goal the ten year yeah yeah i don't know which strategic but right in all fairness um nobody but me was here when that started 10 years ago yeah so that board member knows what usually happens so we can talk about it um now quickly if you like i don't have a problem with that i'm just wondering what the process is you know annually we adopt goals as a board but you know this this process we would engage in this

077process um in 20 well it turned into 2016 by the time i brought fourth scl and in complex thinking the board adopted them at that time and reaffirmed those goals annually since it the conclusion of the process you know you guys need to be at the seat of that at the beginning of the the goal setting process at the conclusion of the process you will formally adopt those gold and we'll continue to obviously talk about it throughout the process like we did back in 2015-16 but you'll formally adopt them the entire board that's not done in personnel no right i don't i just don't know that that would be any committee that would be yeah you know that's i you know i have no idea but jeff you're going to talk a little bit about

078that yeah when we get there yeah yeah that the term committee throws a lot of things off but it's um let jeff talk about it in this update because uh that's fine we did talk a little bit about when how we can start that so i think so a good question and catherine i'm not trying to argue it i i feel bad because i don't want you feeling like you or anybody is left out it's just um you know we i'm certainly happy again we'll look up the board members if we want to have a uh personal community whole just to revisit the goals what they were again and you know that's fine they haven't changed but i don't want people thinking that we're trying to bypass anybody we're not talking about that [Music] i

079know you're always engaged in in the goal setting and you know again me if we need to so thank you fair enough thank you very much mr chair all right tim we're still in personnel um committee updates do you have anything else tim no that was that was it any other questions for more members on the personnel update good thank you uh moving on policy uh mr grippo planning planning it's planning so i'll just if it's okay chairman i'll just i'll take that on so um instead of rehashing the planning committee meeting we had our last planning committee meeting was a meeting of the whole held on december the 10th whereas we were all at that meeting coliers was there who is our owner's rep for the school modernization project that was the only item

080that was on the agenda um so in the spirit of time i'm going to kind of leave it at that as my planning committee meeting update um for those of you that are watching at home i encourage you to watch that meeting whereas colliers went through each and every one of the multiple options there's uh 10 borderline 12 options as of the date of that meeting so that meeting again was held on the 10th is available on youtube and then also it's very important the school modernization committee has a link on the town's website i'm in the left-hand bar if you scroll all the way down to the bottom the school modernization can be all the documents meeting minutes agendas and links are there so for those of you watching at home i encourage you

081to take a look at that information as it's populated onto this website and then also there's a facebook page that is the school cheshire school modernization committee facebook page um so like that share that it's updated regularly and on there there's also the links to the presentations there's links to the coliers reports the enrollment study that myelona mcbroom did for our eight-year enrollment projections which is helping to guide the decisions that the committee is making so with that i think i have a question from mr grippo thank you i was just a comment um i asked i asked enough questions at that planning meeting um uh for uh smc i believe you can go to cheshire channel 14 uh for youtube uh and i think the s uh yeah smc meetings are chances channel 14

082and the planning meeting would be on the i think it's cheshire isn't it do we it's like the board of education channel or cheshire cheshire public schools youtube youtube.com slash church or public schools yeah there we go all very stimulating meetings uh that smc lasted i think three hours which was yeah we've had a couple meetings this week but you know it's all beneficial we have a lot to talk about and we have a small window of time to talk about everything um and to come up with some decisions so i'll touch on a little bit more in my update on school modernization the two meetings that we had later on in our agenda this evening so there's any other questions i'd be happy to answer your planning committee seniors are and just for record

083andrew i'll just test and see if you're paying attention earlier so well it was a hard act to follow but i thought there was time to move on uh might be a hard head to follow but i'm not sure about a heart act but thank you uh policy mr grippo thank you chairman mr chairman um okay for policy um uh we uh we had a a good meeting it was only an hour um they're um i i have yet to uh match a policy meeting that we used to have under uh chairman body where we'd go uh three hours sometimes with our in-depth uh policy discussions but needless to say we haven't gotten there yet but we might uh for our meeting that we had on december 1st we examined a a new title ix

084policy or revision of a total night policy that was 37 pages in length dr solin gave us a high level overview of that policy where we had a a nice discussion about it again this this meeting was uh televising is on youtube for review if you'd like to hear our discussion about that um we also reviewed a policy on alcohol drugs and tobacco where let's see it was employees are prohibited from possessing or using any product with canna cannabidiol cannabidoidal well cbd products uh whether derived from hamper hemp or cannabis um and uh there's still some legal uh questions about uh that policy so um dr sullins going to advise our attorneys on that um so moving on um one of the so the title ix policy is very important um we made a motion

085to move that to a first reading we did that just so it's out for public view it's very long and highly detailed and we uh uh if i recall um uh dr solon that uh we still need some uh guidance from our attorneys on that policy uh but it is up for uh first uh a first reading uh just so that uh all of you and and the public can can review it if if you wish to because i think we are going to have to spend a significant time on that uh policy uh at least perhaps our next meeting um uh so we had uh moved that policy forward for first reading let me see we'll get to the motions here um and we is that the only one uh we also moved let's

086see is it four thousand is that the same one yeah oh okay all right so yeah right that was uh what student and in staff policy around federal law right um and then we moved for a second reading bylaw 93-21 time place notification electronic uh board of education meetings uh that's the uh uh i guess a we'll call it a a a formality uh policy that allows us that at least puts on our books that we have a policy that that coincides with the governor's executive order allowing us to have these types of meetings we discussed that once the executive order ends that uh we will unless legislation changes um we will no longer be able to hold meetings like this um uh ver at least on in a virtual format like this we would

087still be able to we'll have those hopefully new systems in place where it's more like the old days where you have the cameras in the room and you can watch it live stream uh on youtube but it's you know obviously a little different um and so while we move that to a second rating and the um there's another policy that we discussed which was 93 25.43 attendance at meetings via electronic communications now this one would allow us to have a form of electronic communications with the public whereby a member could not attend a meeting that they could um uh participate virtually um we uh there it's it's right now the policy i believe is only seven or eight paragraphs uh which means a lot of detail could be uh filled in on that and um

088i just wanted to bring it to the boards that or the um policy committee wanted to bring it to the board's attention um for review i don't know uh dr sullin if uh the entire board has a copy of that one and if they don't if you could perhaps send that out so that they could at least take a look at it for comment um because i i believe that there is some desire to uh to have this policy in place so that we could at least be somewhat prepared for a uh we'll call it a um the second decade of the 21st century uh whereby maybe we could have some more virtual participation um because uh we all we all agree that this type of meeting is is very advantageous uh not only uh

089for us uh but also for the public uh whereby it's easily recorded and easily reviewed for the public's digestion so um i would ask that when that pile draft policy is emailed to you that you all take a look and if you have any comments or suggestions on it or even if you have an appetite for it um to to let me know so that we can add those comments to our review at our next policy meeting um uh lastly um we uh the scope we had for the last several meetings we've been talking about employee status notification uh we all agreed i don't think there was a formal vote or anything but we all verbally agreed that um the information that uh dr schuler is now providing us uh with that is uh anonymized

090information about uh the comings and goings of of staff uh was uh adequate um for uh for public information and that um we appreciated that information um and lastly uh dr solon provided us with an update on the high school coaching certification reports back in september we were informed of the new procedures that were going to be in place um between uh dr gad and mr trafone um on verifying certifying that all coaches are are certified properly certified to coach um uh coaches and assistant coaches uh to to coach our uh student athletes um the uh i believe the uh was it winter the winter and spring let me see winter we reviewed the winter right i have the fall one available it's actually on my desk right now i was going to share it

091at tonight's meeting but i didn't make it to the office today but i will send it to the board uh first time fantastic and uh from the looks of it it looks like the uh this new um reporting system is is working well so i'm uh happy to report that is there uh i don't have any emotions here so i think that ends my report uh yes mr white yeah i just wanted i just wanted uh clarity on this i thought you'd said a few minutes ago the comings and goings of staff would be provided in the superintendent's report in an anonymized fashion so just so what i recalled and i may be misremembering this but what i recalled was uh the superintendent superintendent's report would include people who come and go which typically is

092going to be in june or september probably who actually arrive and leave the school system and then there'd be an anonymized report about suspensions if any did i get that i could have it wrong i'm not sure that's what i thought it would be yeah the suspension part you know typically we wouldn't send an anonymized suspension report [Music] you know that we can clarify again with floyd but the comings and goings were every month so for this month we have uh two resignations and two you know positions filled so um but the the you know we can revisit the discipline piece okay so the when people come and go that's that's anonymous well we just have to we i mean i was going to touch on it in my report but we have a resignation

093two teacher resignations one at dodd and um one at norton and we've hired interim teachers to fill those positions through the remainder of the year okay one one was health the other was uh um assistant principal position the person took an existing principle position okay according to the minutes um we uh we came to agreement on the um uh what was the terminology here teacher hires resignations or terminations uh and nothing about discipline so we we i think we left the discipline off uh for now right okay all right thank you mr chairman yeah three questions uh going back to the first reading uh 4 000.1 regarding personnel certified non-certified title ix the the policy that's attached um says that it's a some cable overhead although i know that cave uh helps our policy development

094but there's a new sample policy to consider um is very lengthy has this policy gone through our legal counsel has it been cleaned refined to a point where the policy has actually discussed it and gotten it to a point for a first reading was it doesn't sound like it's ready for a first reading but we have a list of written yeah it's a good question the cabe legal department has reviewed it to comply with law it and i've read the law it's a it looks like what's in the policy that's not from the law is like notes that this for example the person who investigates the title ix claim if you will cannot be the person who makes the decision about whether or not there was a violation so there's a note in there there's

095like a reminder so the question that i think adam brought up in our policy committee meeting was he just wanted to uh identify between the law and the cave policy what parts of this did uh you know is not verbatim from the law in his cave britain and so you know i i mentioned floyd earlier for other people that are watching he's really the pivot person on the law firm that we use and not uh connecticut association of boards of ed so his firm is reviewing the the law uh against the cave policy as well just as a double check so that's we're only in the first reading phase of it and still certainly able to make modifications as things come along um but it's you know i think the committee just felt like it

096was okay to move forward for now we're not adopting this but this is pretty solid okay thank you jeff the second one is uh you know anna you mentioned about the certification tracking verification process um i just want to be clear it's not just for coaches or assistant coaches it's you know again i i think the committee is not mistaken read the cic manual some of the sections that talks about who exactly is required to have permits and uh that's any coach in any capacity that is in a coaching situation volunteer paid otherwise right so it's it's not just a head coach and an assistant coach it's any coach and the other dovetail to that is it's not just the permits but it's also the um uh education certificate part that i guess is done

097with sdc so the point is we're abiding by those guidelines correct yes okay we are and and there was no necessary board bylaw policy change on this correct it's more administration process because just i know this has been a topic that's been out there i even read the editorial today and the herald on this and there's still a misperception on what the board's role is in these matters but just so folks understand there is no border that policy change that policy committee felt was needed because our policies cover this it was more of a process improvement and checkpoint that falls on the administration that the board has no control over this is under a superintendent so just so folks understand that this is a process improvement jeff would you say yes yeah not necessarily any

098there's no new policy boards doctor the board is not going to actually go into people's files we will never do that and now i think all we asked was a for a summarized report you know periodically assured process is working beyond that you know it's really up to the administration ensure that this is being followed yeah we've developed a number of checks and balances including having the certification date on the coaches even like tony said volunteers evaluation um on top of that the high school principal and athletic director review every certification so like one now that uh the this would be the traditional start of the winter season although it's been postponed so at this time of year um right after the holiday the tone the the athletic director and the principal will review the

099spring coaches so we're we stay a season ahead um and then you know address any issues that may exist because there are a number of different components that people need to there's there's a five-year coaching certification if you've received that permit already it's a five-year renewal there's a concussions training there's a cpr and first aid training so people are juggling the myriad of dates and if you saw you know and the ct mirror put out an article i guess or hearst connecticut media put out an article with hundreds of coaches in fairfield and in new haven counties having permit lapses so i think you know by comparison we're still doing pretty well but i i know that the um profit we put in place will ensure that we don't have those lapses moving forward no

100and we don't have anywhere near the severe lapses that we've written about other districts but that aside thank you jeff i guess for those following along i know this i don't want to assume people understand everything all the time so i'll try to clarify it the last thing is kind of related to this you know regarding you know notifications of people leaving coming to school district i personally don't understand why we're doing this i don't need to know who's getting suspended i don't want to know who's getting suspended you know as board of education members we are not supposed to be involved in personnel matters let them be be be privy to them unless the superintendent actually brings it to the full board for for a legal reason i think the intent of this is

101um really so that we're not caught off guard with departures or things happening in the school district and but even if we are and i would say in the case of the certification issue um you know it doesn't really help us because you know the board some public perception is and again anybody read the herald editorial today that um there was a claim that the board is more transparent in these matters but these are personnel matters that the board has not been privy to and we never will so are we setting ourselves up for more scrutiny for questions we can't answer because we may hear from the superintendent that oh yes there was a total of three suspensions last month you know we open ourselves up to more scrutiny that we can't possibly answer you

102know and i feel that was a situation with this other issue where we as a board did not know about the meaning we did not know the circumstances of that meaning and quite frankly we never would have known if it wasn't that bs accusations made the public that dragged people through the mud for no apparent reason that's what drove the focus to us so you know i don't be in that position no board member wants me in that position i'm worried that if we're gonna start talking about um even in general terms people coming and going that gives more suspicion to to a fire and fuel that we just don't need um so i i don't know if superintendent stone is going to give us a report that means much of anything but at the

103end of the day we can't ask questions about these people who they are what they did or what's going on i mean i think it's a good thing if as dr solomon's been doing if someone's leaving our school district because they took a bigger better role in their pro that's a great thing and he's got something to talk about that but i quite frankly don't need to to know if the teacher is leaving but then we can't say why um so that's my two cents on it i know possibly has talked about this i just uh i don't get it um because we can't possibly you know talk about these things without getting legal jeopardy and we're just not worried we're just able to do this so i'll just say be larry that one but

104i do appreciate the all the work the policy committee has been doing this year and last year you mentioned need a body adam about the lengthy meetings but you know thankfully in some ways you know this board is benefiting i guess because over the last several years various iterations of the board and both ann and catherine and i were involved throughout this have been doing policy revisions uh year over year i think we are all but through except one around you know strategies accounts but that's pretty much it it doesn't mean that the policy committee has nothing to do but i think uh we're benefiting at least that um there's shorter meetings because by and large things are pretty much up to speed there so thank you for for your work on this um that's

105all i had adam i'm sorry to go a little lengthy but i just want to clarify my stance in a couple of things yeah uh no problem and uh and my mention of chairman body is that is only to say that uh when um as as now the chairman of the policy committee that i i attempt to uh maintain the high standards that she had uh when we uh had our marathon meetings uh and it's be and and it's a uh because of her work that um we have uh much less to do this year than we have in previous years um so uh though i suspect again that that that may pick up the cycle you know and to comment just on the uh the discipline part uh again we agreed i think unanimously

106uh that because of that jeopardy that we could be put in whereby uh part of our policy is if there was any kind of uh termination or or appeal by an employee that that the board could be involved that uh we we decided not to be involved in any kind of notification especially suspension there's also you know union issues that that are involved the grievance process that we could be seen as interfering in uh so that that was definitely something we left off and that you know uh a just a general coming going of of uh employment was just a general information point for for the superintendent's report um and lastly the uh on the title ix policy um yeah we did decide to move it to a first reading and another point of clarification

107we're going to need is that because that the reporting requirements became i don't know if i want to call it more rigorous but it seemed to provide more public information uh whether or not um this new pilot new i guess new federal guidelines or new law is in in viola is in conflict with ferpa um and we know we've all had now lots of experience dealing with ferpa um and that we want to make sure that this i don't know if it if if even if it wasn't conflict if there was anything we could do about it because this is federal law so that's why we wanted to make sure that whatever the changes are are federal law only and that there's uh nothing that was written policy by cave that they were putting in

108there as an interpretation of the law we uh we were trying to make sure that this extensive policy really only the chain the only changes that were made are are the law itself uh and uh jeff is going to add clarification to that before we move forward if i may make just a very quick point you know is adam's talking about the countless hours of of time spent on the policies over the last several years i'd be remiss if i didn't give carol jaczynski a shout out there she started an incredible amount of work to try and do that and i i wouldn't be able to sleep tonight if i didn't throw that out there yeah she actually has to ends up doing all the editing so right he does a ton of heavy lifting

109on that so i just needed to acknowledge her for that thank you tim you ought to comment as well or a question yeah so i just want to be clear on this so i i think probably i'm i'm probably the person who is pushing the the greater uh transparency the greater knowledge not just for board members but for the public it really comes down to it just for me it's it comes down to hashtag me too um i don't want stuff to just sort of disappear quietly into the night i'm not saying that this situation is happening here in cheshire i am saying that it could and i want to avoid that and that's really what it comes down to i mean in terms of you know in terms of suspensions i was thinking anonymized

110okay now if we're not going to do that it is what it is um but i don't want to do it in any way sort of way to uh i have no interest in punishing or embarrassing anybody like that but it is i think it's important to not have somebody just move along to the next district at some point because it that impacted cheshire 10 years ago in a negative way and i don't want it to happen again that's what it boils down to and i understand that there could be legal issues and all sorts of stuff but the way i see it is really simple if information is foiable it's foiable people can get that get should be able to get access to it so it's that simple but anyway i will stop thank

111you i appreciate that again i i know where you're coming from i know it's a lot about transparency and i like to think this board has been you know as as out as outgoing and transparent as we can but when it comes to you know employee things it's it's very as you know and i want to just being a dead horse i certainly understand it it's and again it's tough for us because as board as board members in the board body there's a perception out there misperception from the public that we know everything about everything and any personnel decision and we're a part of it we're not and um and i just i don't want any of us to be caught you know again in a situation where you know you were privy to anonymous

112information you know then the next step is well you're not doing enough we need more detail just we can't go there but i appreciate them and i know and i think hearing everybody jeff's going to find a delicate balance to you know share things that he could within reason but i hope the public understands that you know when it comes to personnel people coming or leaving the school district or anything else it's that is not for us to discuss um and we can't and we're not privy to it but it doesn't mean we're not um directing the superintendent to make sure he's running a smooth school district but it is his call and if he feels the need to report something he will do so i hope the public understands that but uh again sorry

113tim i didn't i wasn't trying to single you out i know uh we all have criminal thoughts so that being said thank you and we can move on be great are there any other comments that ends my policy report thank you thank you um thank you everyone uh next up is item 3f which is the i'm sorry uh yeah 3f which is the formation of the calendar committee and i know this is fairly new for some of us jeff you want to give us a quick overview about this process yeah absolutely the every year the board has to formulate a calendar committee that uh you know we comprise that of town wide pta an administrator a member from the teachers union so their all the stakeholders come to the table we have one formal meeting

114annually and we establish the calendar for the subsequent year so we already have a draft calendar um for next year we'll adopt that calendar and formulate the calendar for the subsequent year and bring those back the committee uh makes a recommendation to the full board full board at the subsequent meeting after that calendar meeting adopts that that calendar thanks jeff and just for uh board members sake i know in our packets in the concord report uh it said that i will announce miss hallon as the uh as the uh uh member of the committee and and sharing that but you know katherine and and quite frankly she's earned this right has asked please don't make me the uh chair again because she does this quite often and it's uh in and again uh so i

115am anyone interested in being on this committee um please let me know um we're always trying to you know uh rotate people in now to get some experience yeah it is important it's one meeting yeah but it's a great opportunity i don't want to be involved with department heads after our conversation see the calendar i see ann has her hand up and are you interested of course i'm always always happy to help out i've sat on those yeah i've been trying to be i'm trying to be good this year about spreading the workload around i know you're doing a lot of work it's painless thank you you're off the hook this year catherine uh that being said um there's just a recommendation there's no vote required correct jeff um well yes that's correct so if

116anne's in charge we'll move forward then and then we'll get back to you guys with a recommendation awesome and thank you for stopping up for this appreciate we all appreciate it so one jeff one thought on the calendar committee just wondering where you are right now so looking forward to next year is it two snow days and going remote or you have no idea at this point on that topic yeah um on that topic the board the state board of ed this year has permitted the use of uh remote learning in place of snow days so that's not a perpetual uh guarantee so next year we wouldn't um have i wouldn't quote build that into the calendar uh we'd have to wait for the state board of ed to provide that authority or direction on

117that but that is an option for this year and that's why we have the two regular snow days before remote learning and then if anybody's still watching tomorrow is a two-hour delay oh it is yes yeah yeah and it was on the channel three news site under announcements earlier i was already on the forums a follow-up question on that i saw a comment in one of the maybe it was in the mirror or something uh lamont had said that he feels snow days are antiquated i believe that was pretty close to his quote i'm just wondering does the state board of ed report to the governor they're not elected but do they do what he tells them to do basically just sort of anticipating or is it a state law that would be required to

118change it no they're they're of independent thought they're they're like uh the board of education at the state level and whether well they're appointed um they don't necessarily have to do what the governor tells them to and so you know the board works independently and they have this year i think you know like i'm the superintendent of this board and we work collaboratively they work with the commissioner of education at the state level um i actually met with uh commissioner cardona about this issue remote options for snow days and other issues um a couple of months back and so they made he made that recommendation and they adopted it so um everybody's trying to work together on the education side independent of whoever is in the governor's office okay thank you uh moving on uh

119school modernization committee update andrew oran or andorran if you guys like to give a update you'll need to but you're welcome too sorry about that sorry i was just looking at something um okay so we've had two meetings since our last full board meeting um here the business meeting of the board of education back in november um the first meeting was held on december the 7th as at that meeting we reviewed the proposal that we then discussed at our planning committee meeting of the hall on december the 10th um so again back to where i did my update last time go on take a look at all different options that were presented at that meeting one item that was discussed there that then went over to the option subcommittee meeting was the development of a

120matrix this matrix we in the subcommittee of the school modernization options committee have spent um we've had three meetings on that we have another meeting again on friday we presented it to the full school monetization committee meeting last night um basically i'm gonna share my screen and show you guys where we are at that as of last meeting last night we did receive a lot of valuable comments um from the full meeting last evening and we're going to go back and take another whack at that but what this is going to do is it's going to set the framework for how we're going to pare down the options to the final options for school modernization um you know as i said earlier there's about 10 to 12 different options floating around so coming up with

121one concise way whereas each of the members of the school modernization committee can take a look and rate and score each of the different options it makes a lot of sense to do that to try to get these options down so then we could all come up with one plan to then submit to the town council ultimately and then to the voters for um referendum but also at the meeting on december the 7th it was discussed and decided that there would be a hiring of an outside committee or an outside firm rather that would um do a poll of up to 400 residents in town doing a telephone via telephone vote both cell phone and um to individual households in town which is a representative sample so we received a proposal from a committee or

122from a group known as the center for research and public policy they have a very robust resume and track record where they have done this in other communities where there's going to be a major capital expenditure um there's going to be questions that are going to be developed that are going to be uniform questions are going to be asked to each of the 400 individuals who are called um to take kind of a a sampling of where the community stands on the project in general the cost implication to the mill rate and um just the appetite for school modernization of the community so based on a community size of 30 000 they're recommending um 400 individuals as i said earlier um and that went to the town council for their review because we're seeking a

123bid waiver where we're not going to go out to competitive bid for this firm it's been vetted by the committee and the town council approved us to hire this group once we are ready to do that the total project cost there is going to be an eight week time frame that they're going to perform their work and then submit their report back to the smc um is a total budget of 17 000 so that all came from our school modernization committee meeting on the 7th any questions on that meeting no okay moving on last night we had another uh great meeting um of the full board school monetization committee um and there again we reviewed the matrix so i'm going to show everybody this matrix again i'm really bad at sharing my screen but i

124will do my best to do this all right i'm going to share a window and then i'm going to click on this all right see that no no okay boo i know well that's like all right let me do this how about now somebody oh no you know andrew try sharing when it comes up say entire screen and then just click on the the window or the tab that you want to show well now it's saying it's not responding oh damn it all right keep bearing with me for one more minute sorry everybody at home i know it's getting late here all right well i'm trying i can't bring it up i don't know but what i wanted to do is i wanted to show you folks the um different criteria that we're going to

125be rating the different options for for the matrix um but it won't let me do it do you have it man that's what i'm looking for andrew can you it was emailed if you email it to me i don't know if i have the latest one and i can't find it i'll bring it up let me let me see if i can pull it up too it should have it right here my whole screen is gray right now damn sorry guys adam you get a plus for every adam andrew a plus for trying it no i i think that was a great call because i know smc showed a near final draft last night and uh i don't know i raised it to a chance to see it but one way or another we'll find

126a way to get to the board but um i don't know if the link to last night's meeting is up yet or not but maybe somehow we can share that for the audience um because that was disgusting right this is um a version of it that we were reviewing let me see if it's the most recent one sorry um yeah that's the older one yeah this is an older one but you can get a sense of the sort of things that we were looking at uh the highest priority item being in dr addressing the enrollment projections as you know we're running the base based on the enrollment at the elementary grade um code requirements and physical conditions of the building modernization uh what sort of life expecting sort of life expectancy will we get out

127of buildings with these things um the degree of benefit to cheshire students um and then i think the last two we might have taken off but we have included the the fiscal impact i don't know andrew is there anything you want to elaborate on with these no yeah there's definitely an older version um yeah it is the older version it's going to be updated tomorrow no problem andrew's back really i really blew that one huh not only did it kick me off but i wasn't able to share my screen or go through anything so jeff were you able to share it i i had only an older one andrew and i did go through some of the highlights like the greatest priority being the enrollment at the elementary level and then you know what sort

128of longevity would each um option provide and uh the code updates and things like that modernization of classrooms so we did hit on it but tomorrow will be the next meeting if people want to view that on the the town youtube page it'll be 3 30. tomorrow at 3 30 yes and it's um take a look at it and once it is finalized tomorrow will be the last time that we're going to look at it um we're going to finalize it at that meeting tomorrow and then it's going to go out to all of the smc members and they're going to have the opportunity to rate all of the options on that and then send in their final rating sheet to colliers coliers is going to tabulate all of that and then we'll have that

129ready for our next smc bull board meeting andrew i just got a quick question on on the matrix sure um so that matrix looks uh familiar to me it looks like something i've used to to grade uh uh vendor responses for rfps um and i was just wondering um usually that that page that you showed is looks like the the main page where you'd have like let's say uh eight or ten or fifteen other little things that feed into that final score um and i was just wondering once the um plans are whittled down to let's say two or three are you going to add any additional resolution to the scoring for the for the project finalizations or is the intention to use that matrix to choose a one project that we're gonna that the

130smt is going to uh recommend for consideration the idea right now is to bring it down to a few options and then start building out and populating what those actual options are and how the actual construction if it's going to be cips of the various schools which you know capital improvement projects or if we're going to be going for full renovations then from there the um jim jascott is going to populate with the overall bonding implications to the town and to the individual taxpayers you know saying if it's a 200 million dollar all-in 10-year project that that project there will cost the average um cheshire homeowner based on a 300 000 home x amount of dollars per year um so that column that we showed that um superintendent put up that final column all the

131way to the right will be populated by jim jascott's group um in town hall so there's going to be once we find out the final like let's say that we come up with three options that we're going to be moving forward with then there's going to be actual schedules assigned to those options and to how the bonding will hit the town that's great news happy to hear that and also this isn't the only thing we're not just looking at the price here and i wanna you know we talk about the price the cost implication to the town you know we're looking at the best overall plan and then seeing how that um will impact right and i just wanted to comment uh from the smc meeting uh the first hour uh was the presentation from

132uh south windsor i think and i think if anyone is who's taking great interest in these projects they gave a great presentation on how they sort of sold their final project and how they came about deciding on their project and i think that would be great if someone wants to see sort of a future expectation of how things may proceed in the future here uh that is very informational absolutely tim actually tim had a question thanks andrew thanks tony uh yeah this it came up at our the planning committee meeting with it was it chuck warrington a week ago earlier yep and i mentioned it there but i didn't actually ask you or ann to bring it to the smc life cycle costs uh did you happen to bring it up is it something that

133you would be willing to bring to the essence yeah i definitely once once we have um once we have let's say those three options on the table um i think that that's that's the discussion that um we could bring to the smc to bring to coliers okay okay and then just for this important i mean it's a very important item you know if we're looking at a 20-year bond and a cip is going to have less than that or a renovation is going to have greater than that i mean that's something that we should it should be part of the discussion for sure yeah just so the viewing public understands where i come from on life cycle costs of any sort of construction project i read it somewhere and and i can't verify this but

134i take it as being fairly accurate uh buildings and i don't recall if it was residential or commercial but various types of buildings over a 40-year lifespan of a typical building which could be a school it could be a home eighty percent of the costs are energy costs energy maintenance costs i forget exactly um so looking at the lifecycle cost to me is is critical and when we had this discussion with uh with colliers a week ago i i realized that that was not part of the overall contract so anyway yeah as long as it gets incorporated before it gets down to sort of the finish line and asking people um so yeah thank you for that and then also uh is there does the smc have uh i know there's an as sort of

135an outreach committee is part of that going to be looking at enrollment trying to help increase awareness of enrollment targets so yeah that was one thing sorry with my internet issue i had before um also we have there's there's a subcommittee a communication subcommittee of the full board um and so i keep saying the full board of the full committee rather you know so many board meetings but yes and one of their jobs is to get that information out there um we've we have put it out we've published the mylona mcbroom study which talks about the enrollment projections over the next eight years um that will be continued to be discussed and if you look on that scoring matrix one of the one of the um the highest ranked column on that is about the

136increased enrollment so that's we're looking at that the project that addresses that is has the highest weight overall so when we're looking at the projects um that's really that's what's coming down the pike to us um and as adam mentioned uh um south windsor um superintendent and the head of the pack that was formed there to get the projects moving um that was one of the issues that they were faced with and that really helped push their project along and since they built their schools they've had a major increase in their enrollment um so getting all that information out and how best to do it that was what we discussed a lot last night at the meeting okay thanks yeah just i mean one of the things that's so people can understand where i'm coming

137from is i tend to generally be a skeptic of the enrollment that i've seen for years talking about increasing i feel differently right now from what i felt 12 months ago and it's primarily i'm guessing it's primarily because of kovid and all of a sudden construction that hadn't happened in cheshire for 15 years is happening now in in a significant way and that's that to me is is a bit of a game changer right there thank you yeah and i wish i i didn't jot down the number here last night but the superintendent um miss uh kate carter from south windsor um orchard hill elementary school which was the fourth elementary school they built four brand new elementary schools in south windsor there were five schools they went from five to four four brand new

138schools and the last school from the initial from the beginning of the plan to actual construction it was somewhere around a 400 student elementary school and now it's up upwards of 700 students um so they experienced a major influx of residents um because of some you know they couldn't exactly pinpoint why there was some economic drivers from the city of hartford and some folks moving into town um but it was kind of one of those they built it and they came type scenarios whereas we um might experience the same thing here in cheshire and so that's what we're trying to really plan for with the enrollment site by melanoma broom just just one more one more quick point just then that's that one more that's it i'm kidding i just want to acknowledge because i've

139had people say it to me you know the the student enrollment has dropped what is it a thousand students in the past 15 years or something like that 5200 to 4200 i understand that at the same time the buildings have aged 15 years and enrollment probably will be increasing so just these are the thoughts going through my head and and how we move forward and it's an important thought and you know she the superintendent actually pointed that out south windsor experienced 10 full years a decade of declining enrollment so when they began their study and they did their enrollment study it showed 10 years they were losing enrollment and then all of a sudden there was this major influx of individuals and so now they built these new schools luckily at the um elementary school

140level but now they're going to be faced with issues at the middle school and at the high school um she made a comment last night that there's gonna be 600 additional students that are going to be coming into their high school so they're going to have to continue to look at that anybody else have questions no okay thank you yeah sorry no i'm just gonna add that um because tim asks that the our communication subcommittee has been putting out like the basic facts of of what they think you know the public really needs to know and one of those is the enrollment projections so they're they're doing their best to really get that that base information while widely out there with the public excellent thank you andrew thank you ann and board members for the

141interaction there and you know it is uh we are you know these meetings especially as january february in particular come around smc committee will you know be narrowing down the options and there'll be more details and certainly much you know much more bored feedback so i think the more we can cover in the board sessions it keeps things fresh and i'm certainly not trying to get the meeting to go you know too long but it's worthwhile and we all agree in smc and hear that we can't you know we got to be as proactive and communicative as possible so i know you know richard gustenberg is working you know harvard communications committee and those members to be out there and you'll see more stuff from that but so all good stuff one last thing related

142to finances um so the sneak community meeting uh uh gen based chair was content planning and vice chair you know whether a finance uh related subcommittee was needed to start looking around and they try to really not need it since you know mr jim jascott has the wonderful task of you know turning through the number so to keep things simple uh i think don walsh and um if someone has their microphone on can you can you mute her against some feedback sorry thank you all right so we have don walls and jim jinx who are members in smc represent town council they will be working with uh feedback from town council anything related to finances with jim with jim jascott and uh i'll be working with the board of vet if you have any questions

143that you'd like jim to answer and had a couple here today about what the town born rate is and be happy to move that uh to gym and get back responses with the goal goal being of of of streamlining everybody's time you know jim not being inundated with too many questions and smc being in the loop on the different things so you know as things materialize expect more questions around that you know keep them coming and thank you on that uh moving on we're going to get to item number four which was the uh minutes uh from the november 19th meeting so in our packets we do have the minutes written up thank you carol um any changes modifications to those minutes i have none seen as there are no you're you're muted tony mr

144chairman i'd like to make a motion also you read my lips uh seeing i was asking was any modification you know i probably sound clearer when i'm muted but any any uh amendments or modifications on the minutes seems there's none is there a motion mr adam mr grippo uh i do um move that the cheshire board of education approved the minutes of the board of education meeting held november 19 2020. excellent is there a second faith seconds any discussion as soon as there is none the motion is move to the cheshire board of education approve the minutes of the board of education meeting held november 19th 2020. all those in favor raise your hand asian animus thank you motion passes mrs hallam do we have any correspondence uh mr chair we do um we have

145a letter from eileen wilderman um and it it reads as follows uh dear mr peer genie i hope this letter finds you and your family well i write to you in response to a recent record journal article regarding our athletic director steve truffone the article dated november 28 2020 rehashes the certification lapse of football coach don drust but much of it focuses on the board of education's investigation of mr trophone and his office i was alarmed to read that there is a lack of confidence in mr tufan from board of education members as a teacher and coach for the cheshire public schools for over a decade i have observed mr trafone as my boss my colleague and an unconditionally committed member of cheshire public schools and the community as a whole i am hopeful this

146letter restores your confidence in mr trufone first and most importantly mr truffone's main priority is the health and well-being of our student athletes every meeting he runs leads or facilitates steve emphasizes the importance of building our teams in a way that every athlete has a role and is valued he encourages coaches to help athletes develop into the best possible people they can be he asks his coaches to be strong communicators good people positive and forthright so that the student athletes are strong communicators good people positive and forthright yes mr phone is proud of the athletes when they have strong seasons but his pride is magnified when they help others through community service or even small positive daily interactions mr tafon recognizes that sports are an effective pathway to creating model citizens of our student athletes

147equity amongst teams and sports has always been prioritized by the chs athletic department as a female coach of a sport that is not widely popular in our country which happens to be field hockey i feel so lucky to have mr trafone as our athletic director so many of my female coaching colleagues at other schools struggle for turf practice time for games on their multiple turf fields and to get support or questions answered despite having just one field to be shared between all of the sports i have never felt that our team was slighted for another team instead i often feel like the field hockey team has no bigger fan than mr trafan as do most of the coaches at chs he is at every single home game he knows all of my athletes well as

148both players and individuals and the girls on my team completely know and feel how supported they are by him as long as mr truffone is at the helm i know female sports will be well supported before he was an athletic director steve was a teacher it has never left him steve gently teaches us all how to be better people better coaches better teachers when i was an english teacher steve would pop into my classroom to talk to my students about what books they were into and to generate more interest in reading now that i teach culinary arts steve has been my go-to guest speaker for teaching how to make pizza he leads by example always he stresses the importance to coaches about the student coming before the athlete and he lives that lesson out loud

149finally one of my future captains for next fall said that she hopes to lead with kindness i was struck by how simple yet powerful that statement was in such a polarized world mr truffone epitomizes this on top of his already strenuous workload on a daily basis mr trifone quietly completes dozens of small tasks favors and works simply to help people around cheshire high school the only way one would ever know this is by observing him because he just does this without a need for recognition this is the mr phone that no paperwork reveal review will ever show as another teaching colleague of mine said respect is too weak of a word to describe the way that we feel to feel about mr trophone admire is a much better fit mr truffone is not just a

150temporary figure at chs bettering this community has been his life's work and for that much more i throw my full confidence behind him thank you sincerely eileen wilderman family and consumer science teacher and varsity field hockey coach and that is the correspondence that i have to read this evening thank you mr chick thank you madam secretary um and thank you for that catherine and i'm glad you read the whole letter into the record so uh the board has actually seen them a response to that and uh just to summarize there was no investigation of anybody by the board of ad level the investigation was done by a newspaper uh locally at the site of the foia two individuals personnel records for reasons unknown and unfortunately without the course of that you know it's you know

151it looks like an investigation but it wasn't so my quote about confidence has nothing to do with trophone let's take a little bit of context what it had all to do with was the process or lack thereof or tools that are needed and uh it turns out exactly the case in this case that is not the cement of the board the board has not lost any confidence mr phone or anybody for that matter so they respond you the board members has that response you know it's unfortunate that um you know personnel records you have to be foia um it doesn't you know without getting the full story it just never helps anyone so i don't get that part but eileen uh is culinary arts teacher at cheshire high school my daughter's actually my daughter nicole

152had her she's wonderful in fact um in my follow-up discussion with her she invited me to know that i'm a chef to come into the classroom and maybe do something interesting so if if we can i would love to try to have that the group create a uh hot chocolate bomb which is all the rage these days so we'll figure that out but i lean for us and bring it here you know while we're covering everything you know we're trying to be careful i certainly love to do those things by lean thank you so much as i sent my email to you for reaching out i'm sorry you felt the need um to feel that the board that's not the case um so thank you and i everyone shares your respect for steve um you

153know i'm going to put him in a spot a little bit uh sometimes i see steve triphone at 5am at our local gym and he leaves there ready anxious to get to the schools he wears his heart on the sleeve for our kids um it's never in question so again thank you for that um and i guess it's good there's no other correspondence but it's nice to get some once in a while thank you moving on um finally the much anticipated superintendent's report i i know that you guys lament the fact that you only get to hear this once or twice a month um so you know the the time is here it's very exciting uh let's go through the superintendent's report as quickly as i can uh if if i could start with yesterday

154uh i was very excited to be a part of a awards ceremony along with dr gad for a young man at cheshire high school vincent kai he's a junior very impressive student he's got aps all over his his course lights it's insane what he's doing and uh he was honored because he won the um coding app building competition that uh the it was sponsored by the local congressional district uh for the house of representatives and and he won our area and we'll have his work demonstrated down in washington dc later early next year and so to give you a sense of why i'm so impressed his app that he designed takes a look at all of the different socioeconomic and racial conditions uh across the state of connecticut compiles an incredible amount of data to

155determine if gerrymandering has occurred in voting lines for somebody who's uh 16 17 years old to develop something like that is so sophisticated not only does it speak to his incredible talent as an individual in terms of coding but his um acknowledgement of equity and uh that everybody in our country and and certainly in connecticut uh deserves a voice and so you know we were incredibly proud of him and so i find that a great way to kick things off um the cheshire ed foundation this month turns 25 years old and i would be remiss if i didn't give a a real shout out to everybody who's been a part of that group over the last 25 years they've done incredible things to forward our school system by supplementing our resources for the purpose of

156innovation and this year they they stepped up in a big way uh as we've talked about some of the financial needs um what could be uh unfortunately lost in that is that they're really educational needs excuse me during the course of this pandemic and so they purchased about thirty thousand dollars worth of uh classroom equipment for us to be able to outfit 10 rooms with our our audio system that the board has seen um and there's been one person who's been on that group from start to finish um marty rausch i say finish but start to their 25th anniversary marty rauch i'm sure many of you know him he's a local realtor and an absolute character and one of the best people you could ever meet um and so marty is is very active in

157the in the cheshire ed foundation uh i was hoping to uh acknowledge members of the cheshire ed foundation uh at a board of education meeting but we're opting to do that in person when they can be there and we can really uh give them genuine expression of our gratitude for everything they've done for our community if you're interested in learning more about the cheshire education foundation you can go to their website um and there is a article written by dennis denninger he's a professor at syracuse but nevertheless um he commutes there and comes and gives his time to the cheshire ed foundation so if you google cheshire ed foundation you can donate you can send them an email and you can certainly read the article about their uh 25 year anniversary um i i feel

158like i'm compelled to give a quick update on covid19 if you go to our website you can access this data i update it every school day including today even though it was a snow day you can see that you know we're actually quite fortunate in the cheshire public schools that there has been a very limited impact of covid at the building levels um we have very few staff or students that are currently positive uh and then you know uh you can see also very few staff and and students relatively quarantined highland did see a rash of cases more recently um they're starting to come off the books of quarantining and um on uh positivity but it's still you know it was really unique it was just parents actually that were sick and unfortunately their children

159ended up sick as a result um and so that's you know what we're looking at and so we consult with just for cod about this all the time the other covid data that we uh explore is the cdc considerations for schools so i update this every thursday when the state updates their data the state reporting period that got updated today was november 29th through december 12th the cases per 1000 100 000 excuse me in cheshire is a case rate of 42.1 per 100 000 residents last week it was 35 so you can see a pretty steep jump after uh thanksgiving uh the percent positivity on the testing rate is about six and a half percent and it was at six uh in the last reporting window so we look at those variables against the mitigation

160strategies i know the people of the board have seen this before but we have here we're in that moderate area for both the number of cases and the pet testing positivity kind of smack in the middle of those with a very strong mitigation program and so when you look at that against our our current data in the buildings uh that's why we are holding tight with our our current programming now that being said we also are looking toward um the the start of the new year after the holiday i'd certainly love to be able to continue to ramp up as we start the vaccination process this week healthcare providers in in cheshire were starting to receive the vaccine i'm hopeful that as weeks go by we have more folks vaccinated we continue to have very

161low positivity in our schools and we can start to look at the high school of in particular of bringing more students back on a more regular basis so really the biggest mitigation issue that we have the challenge that we have at chs is dining um so i'm going to be meeting with um susan loncich she's the the jesper cat sanitarian from mora's office on monday morning to evaluate our dining areas at cheshire high school now that we're strictly indoors here over the winter to see exactly how many students they feel comfortable with us fitting in there to make sure that we aren't risking uh spread of covid during dining and finally um i want to acknowledge uh jack raba and isabel orozco who are two of over 40 now chs graduates over the last several

162years who've come to bail us out uh we put out a letter before thanksgiving indicating that we needed subs uh they came uh to the rescue uh we have like i said over 40 recent graduates uh this is the first week in really my memory is a 15-year administrator in the district where we're not we don't have any worries about subs and we have very high demand through covid but uh the the recent graduates have stepped up and they are filling those voids and it means so much to our kids to see those recent graduates in it means so much to our staff to have their support and i hope it means something to them that they are giving back to their community they are being paid as substitutes they've received all the training they

163need uh but you know this is a major contribution for us and we significantly appreciate it um i think that i know that the commissioner of education and governor appreciated our innovation in designing this so i'm just going to show you a quick clip from the press conference that we did today we really wanted to talk about our schools and i'm so proud that compared to all my neighboring states connecticut your child is more likely to have an opportunity for in-classroom education than just about anywhere else in the northeast and as um jeff and fran you know shawna describe how important that is especially now for these young people in terms of their education in terms of their social emotional well-being uh in terms of public health and we cannot continue to do that as

164i look around the charts i look around all the different towns i see if schools are closing it's not because kids don't love going to school it's not because their parents aren't delighted their kids are able to go to school it's not because you don't have a lot of amazing teachers who um are stepping up in the classroom but it's all but it's because let's face it sometimes there could be an infection or a test and you've got to quarantine you've got to step out you're an older teacher uh you've got to um step off the battlefield so we have an awful lot of teachers who are still involved they're teaching remotely they're teaching uh via zoom but that means we've had some holes in terms of staffing in our classrooms to be blunt about

165it and a number of the schools that i've seen that had to close down closed down because they could not fill that void well jeff you didn't wait for step up connecticut um cheshire stood right up and um and what cheshire has done what we're trying to do around the state is they reached out to cheshire high school and they said i want to know who are the recent graduates many of them are college kids they're coming back to connecticut maybe they got some time maybe they'd like to step up and help us out and they got 35 folks who stepped up in very short order of time getting them into the classroom being there so that certified teachers teaching remotely and you've got um young people and others in the classroom able to give

166these kids an opportunity in what that means that's why we really want to emphasize what step up connecticut could mean follow the lead of cheshire so you know anytime that the governor is of uh and i don't care what your political persuasion is but it's always nice to hear the governor telling people across connecticut to follow our lead and you know we've certainly received many inquiries about the work that we're doing on both the local and national level uh to um learn more about this and you know we've had a number of innovations that our team has rolled out over this period and we're really proud of that work the one last thing i have to report is that you may have heard about a couple of weeks ago the cdc had introduced new quarantine

167guidelines more recently just yesterday as a matter of fact the connecticut department of public health released those guidelines to local health districts those revised guidelines provide a number of options at the local level to consider one option is to retain a 14 day quarantine a second option is a 10 day quarantine monitoring symptoms during that period four symptoms and then four days after the tenth day to ensure that the individual is healthy um and then they're off monitoring the third option is a after five days of quarantine you can be tested you can either have the qpr test or the antigen test in either case you cannot return before seven days so if you have the rapid test on the fifth day and it's negative in an hour you still can't return to the seventh

168day if you have the qpr test let's say that takes you three days you had it on the fifth day if it's negative you can return after seven days but if you don't have results until the eighth or ninth or tenth day you can't return until you get those results now that sounds pretty inviting the idea of test on the fifth day return on the seventh unfortunately however when you drill down on the data somebody who's been quarantined for 14 days has a 0.1 chance of being positive when they return somebody who's quarantined for 10 days has a 1.5 chance of being positive after their return somebody who's taken the antigen test has a five and a half percent chance of being positive and the qpr is four and a half percent when nancy stanton

169our nursing coordinator and i evaluated that we're charged um at the end of the day with maintaining the health and welfare of everybody who enters our buildings and we felt like at this time we are reviewing this we haven't made a final determination yet but i can tell you right now we're resting with feeling most comfortable at 10 day with a four day monitoring period because it it best ensures you know to pretty significant degree that the likelihood that people who might be sick aren't coming back and the other issue with a seven day window is now we start to get into debates about you have to track date of exposure you have to track date of test against the date of exposure and you also have to test when or track when did the

170results come back and we feel like there's just a greater likelihood for error there um when we're dealing with numerous you know 4 200 people plus 600 staff so um you know we feel like the the 10 days is most prudent it's pretty cut and dry when you add weekends into there it's it's still substantially reduced from the 14 day um which will help for substitutes but really most importantly getting our kids back into the building and and making sure that they're healthy when they do return or staff now we do reserve the right to hold it 14 days so for example if you're a calf employee who's had a very close contact um i may not feel comfortable with you coming back in 14 days or 10 days you know we may force you

171to stay out for 14 days just because of the nature of your work you're around food you're on people um it's it's not is safe necessarily we don't want to jeopardize anybody or your health so these are some of the considerations we're making i've already reached out to all the surrounding districts to kind of see what their take is on it um and it's frankly all over the map some people are saying seven some people are saying fourteen um and you know we're going to continue to do what's best for us but i'm always curious about what other people are doing and why they're thinking that um so i think we're we're more than likely to go with the 10 days but we're still evaluating that um i did email maura to get her perspective

172on this and it was only this afternoon i haven't heard back yet so um just wanted to put that out there in terms of where we are because i know it's a question that'll probably either come up on the forum or you'll hear about and i just wanted you to be uh just cognizant of what you know i'm thinking when we go through this process that's it for me thank you jeff questions uh tim first and ann i'm sure will be others yeah uh jeff thank you specifically with regard to the covid as i think you might be aware at least partly so my house has had four multi-day multi-kid quarantines the past two months it is painful but i trust your judgment on these public health decisions wherever you're going with it and the

173people you're consulting with i you know i i really was you know go back to september and i wanted fall sports to basically stop not all of them but at least more than just football because i was really concerned but you disagreed you made the call you were right as far as i can tell based on all the numbers so i was wrong on that i trust your i trust your judgment the people you're working with on the public health uh decisions that you're making so thank you yeah thanks i mean it's just i mean at the end of the day i'm making the call but i'm not any sort of epidemiologist so i have to consult with a lot of intelligent people even vin and marlene and uh there here we go oh we

174got you your attention so you know it's a real team effort to uh come up with these these decisions and a lot of credit to go around thanks tim and europe yeah i just want to say congratulations on the press i think it's fabulous if you can get the governor of your state to publicly say the word cheshire connecticut several times to call you out by your first name um this is fabulous and i just want to thank you and your staff because i know that marlene has had a lot to do with this and others on down the line and this is just a beautiful example of thinking outside the box of being flexible in a difficult climate and kudos to you and your and your uh staff for everything that you've done because

175i i'm i'm just tickled pink i think this is just great press and um and you deserve it so kudos to all of you yeah thank you i'm a little disappointed that we weren't on the cover of usa today when we traded teachers like i would have thought that was the bigger one but whatever yeah what do i know thanks sam uh adam you're up thank you uh yeah uh jeff i wanted to uh congratulate you on your accolade from the governor um you know when we when this board met back in the summer and we were deliberating on uh how what we should do and we all agreed that the schools should open as much as possible and for as long as possible and i wanted to uh commend you and and your staff

176on uh being innovative and really having a backbone against a a really an unrelenting pressure to close um for the benefit of our students to keep the schools open and for you and your staff to find innovative ways to uh keep our schools open and and i also want to thank the uh the recent graduates who stepped up uh and heard your call and and has allowed uh again our system to remain open by by giving you the staff flexibility uh to uh react to whatever the situation is with with the pandemic so um i just wanted to give you uh congratulations on that because i think that's really great and um and uh just on the question of the the the covet testing what is a if you're quarantined for four day for 10

177days what is the four day observation period how is that different than just a 14 day corn tea the uh you'd be able to return to school um that's one of the things that i'm working out with nancy stanton would that mean during that four day window our nurse is screening you for symptoms at may i'm not positive yet so nancy and i are still trying to work that out to make sure that we have uh a safe and effective way to reduce the the quarantine period and you know i don't want to necessarily make this sound like a i'm just a mutual admiration society but i want to just take a second at least to acknowledge uh the board because you're also in the crucible here uh with a lot of a lot of

178pressure and people you know reaching out to you and trying to push you to go one way or another and i can't tell you how much it means to me vin and marlene in particular to know that you can put faith in us to work with the right people you don't have the time and luxury of doing this full-time not that i would call our jobs a luxury lately but what you know we are engaging more we are talking to doctors you know vin and i did a a zoom call with sean kimball and a doctor perry his last name's escaping his great guy lives in town but he works with infectious disease at yale you know we're making these calls and having these conversations and you know you guys put faith in us to

179make good decisions around that and i appreciate you hold us accountable um when and you know it appreciating that when things go right and and calling us out when things aren't um but i appreciate you putting that faith in us and i know i speak for vin and marlene when i say that as well so thank you it helps us to be successful that way i know andrew had a comment yeah i just want to say i saw the um the actual broadcast on the news with lamont and uh kind of gave me goosebumps when i actually saw it and um you know i've only been on this board since december 1st there's only been what three months or so of non-coven board of education service and um i have to say jeff you and

180your team you guys no one knew what was to happen it would have been so much easier to default to closing the schools to scaling back and not coming up with innovative ways and just to continue to build on that and continue to do what was right and like you said i've had parents come up to me and say i these kids got to get back to school and then i've had other parents who said how long are you going to keep my kid in school before they die um and one of the closest people to me is my aunt who lives down in chapel hill north carolina and she thinks we're all completely nuts she hasn't left her house since march and so she'll watch these meetings and she'll call me after like she

181might watch this meeting at some point tomorrow and now she's starting to see that we did make the right decision i mean we're not out of the woods yet but last week was a major turning point with the vaccine starting to hit and so we're getting closer to returning back to reality and so just congratulations to your team and you know you really put yourself out there and faced a lot of criticism and you did the right thing so congratulations thank you uh any other anyone else so jeff thank you first of all uh i was going to say um sounds like you have a new best friend in hartford can we get that reimbursement right up for uh that's a good one i think miguel's going down to dc and then jeff's gonna run

182away to hartford yeah you know i'm curious how um and first of all let me first say thank you um for making that happen if i recall correctly when the idea started um i believe marlene had written a letter reaching out to the graduates correct asking for or was i just hearing that yeah i wrote a letter to the graduates oh okay and i remember you know you guys are so giddy to get that out there and excited about it and uh so i knew you're onto something but what's really um i think inspiring is that we have 40 graduates that want to help and it's incredibly promising they want to come back to treasure and pitch in so i you know i hope folks watching um you know at least see it as a

183sign that your your public school system is doing some good things if we get our graduates to step up and you know in extraordinary circumstances so thank you for making this happen and and also thank you for the call to the board you know um you know this is what we do you know best of worst of times you know if we support each other and you know support superintendent staff good things happen so i appreciate the the kudos to the board and by no means is this a victory lap um for any of us uh but it is nice to acknowledge once know how the positive press it nice to get that these days so um as i understand it's kind of starting a national trend if you're not mistaken correct correct jeff yeah

184i know that like i said it's gotten national attention too and you know while i was busy recruiting um the high school graduates or alumni marlene and vin did a lot of work behind the scenes with kelly services and were able to get them to turn these uh applicants around in a heartbeat and actually get them into the classroom you know i mean record recruiting them was one part of it getting them actually into the room was certainly uh much more valuable and so they were able to do that part of it like i said it was a real team effort awesome well listen on behalf of the board of ed thank you and uh as well for a 40 and hopefully growing um graduates came back thank you for your service thank you for

185for helping out uh it's refreshing and lightning and and i know community can't be thankful enough because that is helping us keep the in-person learning going um and you know hopefully 2021 greatly improves uh on that so thank you any other comments or questions for superintendent stone saying it is not we're almost there folks uh we don't have old business we uh do have some new business uh item 8a on the agenda is a change of the january board meeting date namely uh the budget presentation we normally have in the first week of january from january 7th to january 14th um jeff want to give us a quick summary of why we're going to have a motion on this yeah right now you know as we've talked about through this meeting there are just so

186many variables impacting um our budget and you know vin did a really nice job recapping all the financial implications of govid earlier in the meeting we wanted to just buy another week after that vacation period to get a better sense hopefully have um more reports back and then put things together for the 14th rather than the seventh usually and as you know the the town council changed charter we we have a little bit more time in the spring um but we just with all the you know uh variables that are out there we wanted to just push back a week understood thank you jeff um let's bring up the motion with someone to make a motion on this motion thank you uh moved at the january 7 2021 budget presentation meeting be changed to january

18714th 2021 thank you is there a second catherine seconds um any discussion seeing there is none the motion is moved at the january 7th 2021 budget presentation meeting be changed to january 14th 2021. all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you team uh we covered 8b earlier uh chairman's update's very uh quick um we are coming up in less than a month the 21 2021 2022 budget operating budget process um so every year um i think this is a great thing there's always one or more board members you know during the budget workshops that has an idea whether it's an addition to something whether it's uh new materials uh et cetera and usually often by those meetings it's a little late in some cases to to drop something like that

188in there so what i might ask is any ideas you have for us for for superintendent's budget um give it to him before january 14th uh just so that you know at least has some time to contemplate it and if it's something that could possibly be accounted for in a budget we'll have it ready to discuss in the meeting so feel free to send any ideas to them um and that's pretty much it i'll cover those dates in a second uh other updates um i think we did receive from cave yesterday a day before a pdf document from the state department education's addendum that talked about the options for the 10 versus 14 day quarantine so i i don't i i'm not sure i just went to board with chairs all the border beds in

189general but there's a lot of detail in there that jeff uh you know didn't cover but i say check your emails if you don't have that i'd be happy to forward to you but there's a lot of backup material on the options that jeff talked about when it comes to quarantines in schools um you know i you know earlier i get a little defensive on some things namely the board being attacked and maybe attacks the worst not the right word but you know we're always going to be under criticism and you know that's that's that comes with the territory public has every op every right opportunity to that kind of question and see what what we're doing something that triggered me a little bit today was uh an editorial where you know uh given this

190and i don't want to be a dead horse but you know it's just it's it's one of those things that you know i'm sorry but you know the right information has to get out there in it and i think it's fair enough but again my opinion is look uh we're all for increased transparency uh within reason and i think every member of this board has been pretty responsible with that but there's just some things that we can't do so with regards to that whole certification situation in my opinion there was more enough transparency um it was never about any individual it was about process and i i cannot expect the public um especially with everything going on this past year to be attending every meeting every committee meeting looking at our public's agendas um i

191know some of us you know in in an unofficial capacity we try to get updates on the forums there's a lot of information out there there there is no surprise on the review process for certifications it's there um you know this is not a vendetta we've beaten that horse of death that's been um rebooted so many times even by dr solon so i have an issue with you know a media outlet asking for greater transparency and something that's already been covered ad nauseam it's not the most glamorous topic um you know certainly not as glamorous as smc where we have a lot of viewership but there's a there's a record there's meeting minutes there's videos especially going back to this year and it was never about any individuals it's about a process unfortunately for whatever

192reason there are people in this town that you know made that about something that wasn't and you know the issue i have with that in particular is that you know we we as a board want to ensure that our stakeholders are comfortable coming to the superintendent to to the board if need be with help and that you know they're not going to have retribution as a result because of some something even if it was valid and i think that out that um backlash from some malcontent individuals in this town going after a person's family and even individual board members or something that was just not reality is it's just bad for the school district it does jade people from you know speaking up and coming forward we've seen that you know last year when people

193came out in open forums to express ideas and concerns so again we're better at that this is in the community but i do take issue with the fact that the board of ed cannot discuss things and um i also have to recognize that you know the public is largely unaware of what what the legal role of border that is it is not absolutely not about investigating some personnel it's not about um going after a coach uh it's not about looking people's personnel records we can't and will not do that we've never done that so i don't know what other transparency this media outlet was calling for um especially instance in the fact that they went out and foied disciplinary records of two individuals in our school system you know i i don't know what that

194was about um you know it just doesn't help anybody um it's the information that we're not even privy to um and never would unless it comes before the board event in some kind of legal matter which it rarely if it all does so again i a little animated tonight because you know oftentimes we're put in a situation that the public doesn't understand you know what our limitations are as far as our role so that being said thank you for bearing with me this evening um you know but uh the public should rest assured that every single member of this board has everyone's best interests his mind uh we listen uh we can't always intervene we shepherd people to the right people in the system to get things done and you know throughout the course of

195that process if there are things that we can improve your policy to help everyone we work with superintendent get that done and uh you know that will never change for most of us um again so i hope really hope that's the end of it um i think it was a lot of noise over what essentially amounted to nothing and someone asked actually someone posted on on one of the forums an interesting question after reading the article last week and realizing what every issue was about the question was if that was the case then why was the public dragged through it it's a great question who dragged us through it we may never know but uh give everyone the benefit of the doubt you know the trans transparency is there you know everything's documented we have

196meetings eventually truth comes out and like i said earlier the process works it's fair and that being said um i don't have any more to say on the update i'm going to read some of the upcoming meeting minutes upcoming meetings for the 2021 month of january we are going to start off the year with a policy committee meeting on tuesday january 25th at 6 30 pm it will be virtual via google meet monday january 11th at 7 pm there'll be a curriculum community meeting also virtual thursday january 24th 21st 2021 7 30 p.m there will be a board of education business meeting also via google zoom and um budget season is uh right around the corner uh as you saw earlier the first budget presentation for 2021 will be given by the superintendent and that

197will be on january 14th at 7 30 p.m and pretty much for the rest of january there will be uh several budget committee meetings to vet that budget process and as always if anybody watching public has ideas for the budget issues concerned please send them in in fact um if you don't want to contact individual board members you can send them into the cps covet 19 at cheshire.k12ctus email address or contact office stolen we will love your input that being said um there's uh really another new business talk about since this is our last meeting as a whole board of ed body i personally want to thank everyone all my colleague board members for what has been an incredible year uh highs and lows but i think in my opinion this team is working very

198well together uh you all have the best interests of the community uh you're all putting in extraordinary amount of time uh people certain number of committees uh we're hearing from a number of parents where i think we're doing all the right things that we can't be doing there's always room for improvement but i want to personally thank you for uh sticking through this um and i hope you enjoy your holidays i hope you get so much needed rest uh and you will not be hearing from me at all until january so that's a positive and to dr solon and your team and carol and marlene and the entire support staff central office i can't thank you enough for the work you've been doing this past year not just supporting the board uh in the committees

199but also supporting our students it's not lost on anyone and lastly to everyone else in the school district all our support staff be it voluntary or paid we can't thank you enough for your dedication and um you know that being said thank you i hope 2021 is going to be a very positive new year we have a lot of great things happening uh particularly smc hopefully we're going to be coming out of covid um so let's stay tuned but again thank everyone enjoy your holidays unless there's any any other feedback um i'd like to adjourn the meeting 10. that dana has a motion to adjourn the meeting um thank you 11 seconds i was waiting for him to shoot up um jeff do we need to uh talk about the non-meeting before i do this

200i'm not necessarily before we do it but we do have a negotiations meeting which is a non-posted meeting right after this and it'll be brief correct it's not executive session there's no action that's sticking to negotiations right nonetheless uh the motion on the table is that we adjourn the meeting are all those in favor thank you and if i can ask the board of ed to stick around with jeff