Board of Education 11-19-20

001Allen here miss ham here miss herrian here Mr Martelli here Mr barini here and Mr White here Mr chairman you have a quum thank you I ask uh everyone join us for a plure Allegiance I believe Jeff's going to put the flag up on the screen as per normal practice I pledge of aliance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God Liberty Justice for All excellent well good evening fellow board members staff Administration I hope everyone's doing well as we're oh I guess we're guess over Wednesday so we're nearing the end of the week tomorrow uh hopefully tomorrow is a nice quiet day heading in Thanksgiving next week but I hope everyone's had safe and well same for those that are watching tonight

002if you're watching uh welcome to the board meeting a lot to cover tonight uh we also have one or two new guests so uh Jeff do you want to introduce our our new student Reps for the 2021 school year that' be it would be my honor uh and it's really exciting uh unfortunately you know with with Co not being able to be in person uh much of the the start of this year uh we've kind of missed out on what is really for me one of the highlights with all due respect to my board members and colleagues uh one of the highlights of our meetings and that's our student representative so uh if you would permit me a moment to just introduce our student Reps for the 2021 school year I'll start with Joshua Goldstein

003he's a wonderful young man who is responsible dedicated respectful and inclusive academically Josh has done phenomenally well throughout High School his impressive transcript shows his dedication to his academic success and to his love of learning Josh is in the National Honor Society science National Honor Society and he's in the top 5% of his class the majority of Josh's extracurricular activities are focused around connecting with peers with special needs needs through Best Buddies Josh has an inspiring friendship with his buddy and their relationship has grown over the years and both students have gained so much from the friendship that they share Josh has also been involved in Unified sports unified theater volunteer work with the the therapeutic recreation summer camp through Treasure Parks and Recreation as a camp counselor throughout the school year he is involved

004in numerous after school activities including afternoon therapeutic recreation Club yard games swim swimming soccer basketball and upbeat athlete these activities are meaningful to him because Josh believes that everybody should have the same opportunity to compete in various activities and and a disability should not hold anyone back in in addition Josh has volunteered at Yale New Haven Hospital as a patient Aid where he interacted with inpatients at Smo cancer hospital he loved the bonds that he was able to build during his this lifechanging experience which also helped him build his confidence in interacting with strangers I will I know Josh will continue to do amazing things in the future and we're proud that he's representing the student body at cheser high school on the board of education welcome Josh welcome Josh um now I'll introduce Lucy

005Helen our other uh board representative she's a dedicated student hardworking employee in passion volunteer she is highly active in her school and Community Lucy has managed to balance her work Athletics academics and community service incredibly well throughout high school she has pushed herself to take a rigorous curriculum in a wide range of subject areas she will complete high school with multiple AP courses and and an impressive 4.42 GPA her leadership ability and experience is inspiring and varied most notable is her volunteer efforts at the Ben Haven school a private school for children with autism and other disabilities since sixth grade Lucy has volunteered at the school she loves participating in activities with the students and helping fund raise most importantly she effortlessly instills the ideals of equity with her within her peers and the students

006at the school her impressive character continues in her role as National Honor Society president student liaison for chesher Education Foundation and others this summer she was called upon to represent the student population in the discussion in planning for opening schools this year Lucy is always willing to help out she brings great ideas to the table regardless of the population sitting with her the chesher community has reli relied upon her Insight compassion and dedication for years now and I know that she will represent our student body incredibly well on this board so if you're not feeling um a little humbled with your own high school experience I would ask you to just kind of take a second and get away from that the the feeling of of worthlessness that you may have had in high school

007like myself compared to these guys and give them a couple minutes of your time uh is they share some of the highlights of the things that are going on right now at chesher high go ahead guys thank you for that great int introduction thank you okay so to start off so just generally school with covid-19 now um it's been a pretty big transition but it's also been really smooth thanks to all the help from teachers and other faculty so that's helped make it amazing we're still getting really good instruction from our teachers through synchronous learning and the only thing missing is being able to see everybody face to face but we know that that's impossible due to the current circumstances but overall hybrid model is working very well for us definitely I just like to

008add um that the new technology that has been installed into our classrooms has been incredibly helpful uh I have a class where they have the microphone and camera and I can hear my teacher as he walks around the room and I can even hear the students in the back of the classroom so it's like you're engaging in conversation with them um on to our Athletics uh going on right now we just finished a very successful uh fall Sports season where our teams practiced proper covid protocol in order to finish strong we had four teams that were division Champions and those are girls cross country field hockey girls swimming and girls volleyball and we had five teams play for the league championship two of those teams won League titles which are girls swimming and girls volleyball

009ball and we had three teams that uh received runnerup and those are field hockey boy soccer and girls soccer we also had some individual Award winners Sarah Holly W SEC player of the year for volleyball Gabby torado won SEC player of the year for girls soccer uh for coaches Eileen wilderman won SEC coach of the year for field hockey uh Dave majuli won SEC coach of the year for girl swimming and Sue bone won SEC coach of the year for volleyball we also just had on November 11th the first college sports signing day where uh 21 of our athletes signed to commit to play sports at their chosen school so that's very exciting uh on a less exciting note uh the CIA has just acted to postpone all winter sports to January 19th of 2021

010uh so that's it for athletics uh some recent and upcoming events uh the lights of Hope of event just occurred and so our lights of Hope Club at the high school was working tirelessly and that led up to that to distribute luminaries uh to Street captains and then on the day of the event we had high schoolers volunteering to put up luminaries along Route 10 as well as um holding signs along Route 10 uh the event sold out of all luminaries and they reached their fundraising goal of $1 million overall for the community yeah it was amazing um another upcoming event uh the link crew which is a club at Treasure High School uh that's a it's a student leadership group that supports freshmen in their transition from middle school to high school and this

011week they just conducted a virtual Club fair so that they can introduce the freshmen to the variety of clubs we have at CHS and then an upcoming event that they're going to be having they'll be scheduling meetings with their freshman and advisory groups on Wednesdays or during lunch breaks to check in and make connections and discuss specific topics and as far as other clubs the CHS Rampage is the school newspaper they write about a range of different topics from science to Arts to current events and they're going to be coming out with a print edition next week of the newspaper so we're looking forward to that um on November 7th CHS was happy to continue its annual community leaf raking event for the senior citizens uh students from the high school volunteered to rake for

012elderly residents and they red for 20 properties in Chester um all the volunteers followed covid-19 safety precautions with they were gloved and masked and they worked from a safe distance and it was a beautiful day and they were happy to give back to the community and then the last thing was the um on October 24th the best buddies Club hosted the first ever Halloween spectacular drive-thru event um it was at Chester high school so student volunteers dressed up in costumes they decorated their cars and were stationed around the perimeter of the building as community members drove through with their children in total there in total there were 25 different stations and these were best buddies members but there were also a ton of different School groups and school clubs School sports teams and also teachers

013so that made it a really fun event um and it was great to see all the different costumes there and best of all the participants all left with a lot of candy and a goodie bag at the end even and in total the event was extremely well see by the community 325 cars came through and nearly $1,000 was raised to support best buddies and that's all we have for our update thank you Lucy and Josh you know U first before I turn over any any questions to the board on behalf of all of us here welcome thank you for volunteering your time to do this I know uh as you as you guys L to earlier Co has been an interesting year and I know it's thrown a bit of a wrench in you know

014how you're going to school high school especially hybrid model so thank you for taking the time out uh and get us the updates you'll find that we're we're a very nice group easy to get along with no one's going to bite you so uh here for our student reps uh especially during this time there's so much going on and for me personally it's just just a a positive moment to hear all the good stuff that's been happening uh that just to walk this through so thank you and and welcome that being said any questions from the board members Mr chairman yeah I just wanted to say welcome to the group it's nice to see some student faces uh we've been uh working all together uh for so long talking about you you know as a

015uh as like an abstract almost it's nice to see your smiling faces and see that you're you're being successful in this year of Co so uh welcome thank you thank you for having us yeah awesome any other board members well that being said uh oh Andrew yes sorry I just want to say welcome aboard guys and kind of to Echo what Adam said we worked really hard this summer to make sure that you guys had a school year and we're continue to do that um and we hope that it's as enjoyable as it can be under the current circumstances so welcome on board thank you thanks well that concludes our student representative report section you uh Lucy and Josh you're more than welcome to stay you don't have to it's probably gonna be a long

016boring meeting from your perspective I I would rather do well if I were in your shoes I'd rather do my math homework you're welcome to stay or you can drop off we won't take it personally but again thank you we'll see you at the next board meeting thank you you're welcome a good good night uh up next is our audience I'm not sure if we have any audience feedback at this point I just want to remind uh while Jeff's checking that uh we do have our email address it is still CPS co9 chest. k12.us so during the course of the meeting please send in your questions via email we will begin to those uh later on the agenda uh there's a correspondence section right before the superintenden report so we'll check again there uh but

017in the meantime not sure Jeff if we have anything uh so far during the meeting you're on mute you're muted sorry the old you're on mute trick uh not necessarily during uh this meeting there were a few comments that are going to kind of just duvail into what I was going to present tonight so if we want to hold off on that there's like four four emails yeah and we do have a correspondence s later we'll get through all that thank you uh that being said up next is uh report to standing committees we're going to start with curriculum uh Faith you want to give us a report on a meeting held October 19th sure actually we have um two things to go over uh starting with the meeting it was October 19th um a

018lot went on in the meeting and so um bear with me here um we started with a presentation by uh from Michelle LeBron Griffin and Michelle Weaver both from um the State education Resource Center um and they just gave us an overview of the district's plans to engage in equity work over the course of this school year is part of the chesher um strategic planning initiative um so it's in this first phase Circ we'll work with the strategic planning initiative committee administrative Council and then begin student focus groups um next we got a broadcast demonstration from um Marlene Solano and Kevin hanlin and Tom leok and Scott Conway um and they just described and demonstrated for us um how the broadcast equipment was going to be working within the classroom um and that included a

019wearable microphone uh ceiling mounted microphone and one really good audio system um then we had um a fall data review from Kevin hanlin and um our elementary schools did incredibly well on the reading inventory um the report indicated the growth of students uh the growth of students from uh 2019 fall Administration um to the fall of 2020 administration of the reading inventory so that is something to Crow about um and then finally Mary Dr Mary dad gave us a um status update on the um instructional model being employed in the high school um it's a Collegiate model and some of the details included information regarding asynchronous and synchronous activities the regular and hybrid schedules uh class period length teacher students um length and details and also we were told that um there was an ongoing

020survey which I believe we will hear the results of tonight um moving on uh for new business um Dr Moren Reed and Mrs Leslie peir and Dr sha maccau uh mun sorry um shared in the presentation of curriculum changes in their departments so just a quick summary um new coures added are AP an AP seminar Capstone introduction to business manufacturing Cad and Cam and Manufacturing fundamentals uh We've eliminated three courses uh business ownership international business and research and design and then we have um up the or changed the levels um adding dual enrollment designation for advanced personal finance accounting one computer Essentials and word processing so all of that necessitates a change some um changes in textbooks so we also got a um new textbook recommendation um so Leslie peir the business development chair reviewed

021the recommendations for three textbooks to be U utilized within the business department curriculum uh specifically each textbook is associated with a new cour that I just identified their titles are Paradigm Benchmark series uh Microsoft Word 2013 or 2016 I will stop there it's a long title um business 11 introduction to business and personal finance turning money into wealth now these books are these texts are on available for review um in the central office through uh December 17th 2020 and after all that we adjourned so I have one more um notice well it's just again um my I did want to just emphasize that those textbooks are available for review um now there is a third agenda item for the curriculum committee having to do with educator evaluator evaluation and support plan and flexibilities of which

022I am not Adept at all so I'm going to hand it over to Marlene Solano yeah I was going to say Marlene will walk us through the uh communication we received thank you thank you for that great overview Faith um so this year we received all superintendents received an email from commissioner Cardona um about adopting some flexibilities to the current teacher and administrator evaluation plan and in response to that we pulled together our educator evaluation plan and professional learning Council of which we have 19 members four of which are administrators and 15 are teachers we held three meetings virtually where folks could drop in and ask questions about these new facil these new um flexibilities the intention of the flexibilities was to respond to the new realities of school and um ease of getting in

023and out of the classrooms and rather than having more formal observations that require pre-meetings and post meetings for which we oftentimes need substitutes and lengthy stays in a classroom that could cause um problems with cohorting Etc they were able to uh suggest to us um limiting those formal observations in favor of more frequent informal observations and also getting rid of the summative evaluation at the end of the year and focusing these um the evaluation system on some concrete feedback for teachers so this group met uh discussed and looked at and reviewed the flexibilities that the commissioner had put put out um they also we documented our feedback on all of those and the general consensus after deliberation was that this seemed like a very workable and realistic model for us to use going into this

024year um we shared that with the committee shared that with Jeff um and at that time we applied for um these flexibilities to the State Department of Education which was granted to us and so we wanted to make sure that we were informing the board of this change change to teacher and administrator evaluation and um some of those changes also include having a heavier focus on parent engage um parent communication student engagement um and and also academics but certainly the Highlight seems to have been on social emotional learning so our teachers when they're choosing their goals we'll be looking atal goals which have always been a you know the past four years been a part of our plan but there's a bit of a greater emphasis on that and those connections with kids and with

025families does anyone have any questions I have one Marina I I'm looking at the actual document uh we got from the state department of Ed uh which I'm not sure you can share it on our website somewhere in case folks are curious about this but the the the question I had is when you talked about formal versus informal is informal I'm assuming that's a limit you know contact in the classroom for Co but would informal include like you know getting in on a on a hybrid uh life classroom uh session and kind of observing that way not necessarily being in there but just GNA CH or am I over that's a great question Tony um the formal observations are scheduled so I'm telling you what time I'm coming into the class room we plan ahead

026I see what you're doing that time I go in and then we we debrief it afterwards the informals are just that they are informal visits to the classroom that are unplanned so teachers don't know when they're happening and it's um it's a little more relaxed and so yes they can see um they can see the broadcast rooms they could see those um what do you call it uh synchronous sessions um they can see those sessions happening on Google meets Etc all right so more like a surprise inspection but you know nothing much well understood I just we're all you know we're obviously all thinking in light of covid and you know our high high school and just this social distancing I can understand but I'm glad that there still an anity to get in there

027and give teachers feedback one way or another so thank you I don't have other questions on this Faith at this time well that's the end of my report uh so yeah and I uh welcome back an and I don't see uh any other qu questions from the board unless Tim has one on this part of the report uh yeah thank thank you Tony so Marlene just just um you had mentioned with regard to the flexibility You' mentioned increased in engagement and communication could you just give like what might be a typical example of those things I'm so glad you asked yes so um some of the things that we've been talking about are um for example for a um an administrator towards that goal they'll be working with their schools on plans to engage parents

028and one of the ways our administrators are looking at doing that not every single one although I I'm sure that we'll have lots of people doing this are having um remote coffee sessions so that they're inviting parents to come in to drop in not a formal PTO meeting but more of an informal you know Mrs gillo is going to hold a coffee hour from 99 to 10 on these dates come on in and feel free to ask questions about covid related items or or classroom instruction or you know different things like that um one of the things I was talking with Kathy Sullivan our uh PE department chair today and one of the things that her um department is doing are these Wellness Wednesdays where they're engaging kids in um some different uh topics related

029to social emotional learning standards and um some of those include uh topics like helping others or believing in yourself positivity in the pandemic um exercising during the pandemic and one of the things they've asked is for kids to to video and show them um doing activities uh exercising activities with their parents so kind of getting families involved in doing these things together and then sending them in so really a lot of activities designed for connection and community and um while the doors to the schools are closed really opening them up virtually to get engagement with families and students do yeah do you have a do you have a a sense right now of how many in order to do that engagement with parents say um do you have a sense right now of uh how

030many parents are actually working at home as compared to do I mean have have any of the surveys touched on that yeah no we haven't surveyed parents whether or not they're working at home but just anecdotally it seems like certainly we have oh yeah M much many more now you know than we did before I know recently our um Scott Conway and Tom leok are technology integration Specialists who I know you've heard me rave about before they've done some um technology sessions for parents of remote Learners and they did those with our principles and also with our Rams across well Rams across the elementary and some other folks across middle and high school to try to support parents in that way so doesn't answer your question but it gets to again that engagement piece sure

031okay thank you you're welcome excellent thank you Tim and marleene for for reporting the questions uh we're GNA move on to finance committee Mr gripple thank you Mr chairman um we had a finance committee meeting on uh November 9th uh to get an update uh from Mr massana on the situation on the status of our budget so I'll uh hand it over to Mr masana okay good evening everyone thank you I am going to um share my screen and and walk the board members through the finance report which was presented to the finance committee and you know I will try and walk through this at a high level and quickly or as quickly as I can um because I know the board members do have this information in their package so this is the um

032as of October 31st our approved budget is 74.5 n million that obviously hasn't changed you know through the end of October we've expended or encumbered 57 million $689,000 um so we have encumbered all our payroll and our transportation accounts as of the report date and you could see here that I projecting that we will end the year in Balance which is you know one of the requirement that the Board of Ed is responsible for um I think the important thing is to show you how we're going to get this year in Balance because of covid there are some extraordinary expenses uh but also some offsets that I want to walk the board members through and I I just want to make sure everyone can see the screen with the report and the dollar figures on

033it somebody just say yes yes thank you okay so this is a projection that I completed again shared with the finance committee um when we met um just starting at the top this section here these are the um potential costs due to covid-19 that we're estimating for the full year this estimate is prepared on the basis that and with the assumption that school remains in session for the full calendar year and that treasure High School remains in hybrid um and all our other schools operate on a full day schedule so obviously if we if we change that the assumptions you know would change the dollar amounts I've listed here are where I expect that we're going to have again potential and major costs uh that are going to be variances to the budget so we're

034estimated $300,000 which will cover the cost of the intraday cleaning and dis expecting that we're doing in all our schools we started doing that when school opened again assuming we continue through June we're expecting that to cost $300,000 a new um loss that we're anticipating has to do with our food service program because of the fact that the high school is um in with students four days out of five and and on the four day is only 50% of the students are in plus participation is down in in all our schools except Highland we anticipate that the food service program will experience a loss of about $300,000 and that's after we um have mitigation efforts in place so um I will add just a couple of things that we weren't able to report in the

035finance committee meeting and that is based on a survey that I saw from other school districts in Connecticut um 79% of school districts are anticipating that they will be in the same boat as us where they will not be able to cover their expenses because participation rates are down uh and about 85% of those school districts you know are reporting that they'll you know they'll be um you know in a significant loss you know this year if things continue as is so the board will have to make up that loss again you know the the key word that I want to use is we're doing everything that we can to mitigate you know the loss is by working to increase participation uh in both breakfast and lunch and some of those efforts are already starting

036to um you know increase participation so we'll we'll keep the board members posted on that as we go through the year uh board members are aware that we installed um AV Equipment and and have broadcast classrooms up and running there's actually 59 of those that cost is 191,000 tent and table rentals uh through November 20th that's 159,000 paying isolation room monitors um which we're anticipating will end in March I estimated to the finance committee 135,000 I I will tell you that since we met with the finance committee we were able to make some adjustments you know based on consultation with the school nurses and our school principal so we reduced from uh seven schools with isolation monitors to for schools with isolation monitors that we share so I expect that that 135,000 you know will

037be reduced by about a third so we're looking a little bit better there already the cost of purchasing and supplying uh PP sanitizing and disinfecting for our classrooms and staff is 120,000 98,000 for the removal of furniture and equipment that we did over summer plus keeping that equipment and furniture Insurance storage and then returning it that's about a $98,000 expense and then the bus room monitors were $40,000 we are no longer supplying those bus monitors they really aren't needed the the level of compliance by students with you know wearing masks and um you know social distancing to the extent they can on the bus has been fine so if we total all that up you see that it's about 1.34 million so here are the off offsets to that 1.3 million the Corona virus Relief

038Fund that the state um provided grant funding for is $76,000 and again an update since the finance committee meeting we did get confirmation from the state that this amount is approved um and will be reimbursed to us as we submit you know our our expenses in accordance with the with the grant parameters so that's a piece of good news you know there were some concern and some questions about whether or not that would actually get approved and funded by the state so we we did get confirmation that's proved we're getting $85,000 from the um Elementary and secondary emergency School Relief Fund that's part of the cares act that 85,000 partially offsets that 191,000 for the broadcast classrooms um board members as I mentioned I believe at our last board meeting we still have $200,000 in

039the budget carryover from last year that we'll use and then the last category here is we we are um confident that we'll have at least $50,000 in transportation savings because we are not running field trips right now to any measurable extent the number of sports Charters is way below what we had budgeted and encumbered funds for but we're also seeing pickup because we're not running you know any students to sound school because they're remote at this point in time will Cox school has been um open has been remote on and off since the beginning of the year we just got word today that they'll be remote through November 30th um so that all winds up you know saving dollars in the transportation budget so uh we'll have offsets of a million 41,000 uh against that

0401,344 404 so what I'm anticipating that we'll need to cover Through um through our budget through you know either savings or additional funding is about $33,000 and as I said earlier we've already started to mitigate some of this with the isolation room monitors um that 303,000 because we have a hold we're holding at 40% of um non-payroll expenditures on our budget you know we will be able to cover that 303,000 but not spending in in other categories so at this point I'm not I'm suggesting that we um ask for any additional appropriation from the council this is going to be a a bit of a moving Target as the year progresses and um just remember that this projection is based on even though we're in the month of October when we made these projections um

041we really only had three months out of 10 months of of school so you know I think we're looking okay all things considered and we'll continue to manage and monitor this as as we always do so I will stop sharing the screen and and pause there if there are any questions there oh go ahead so on the on the cafeteria on the uh the food cost the $300,000 Revenue loss or projected Revenue loss is that because I understand that we have less participation due to how we're having uh lesser kids in school during the week and uh sounds like more than expected uh opted out of I guess more out the cart stuff so is the overage because we had to purchase additional supplies and packaging due to covid and because we're playing labor and

042that the revenue from the food surface not covering that cost like do we had to rep I imagine we also had to pre- purchase you know obviously ingredients Frozen Goods Etc the extent that we thought we needed to I uh just trying to figure out what's driving the loss at this point it it's a combination of several factors certainly because we're pre packaging the meals we're buying supplies to prepackage the meals um that's an added expense the the time it takes to prepackage the meals um also adds to our labor cost um but primarily it's because if you look at you know year over-year our breakfast meals are down 19% from last year our lunch meals are down 45% from last year uh and our allart sales for things like water and snacks that's down

043about 86% from last year so it's really the it's more of a revenue shortage than an expense overage problem that we're dealing with now one of the ways that we will mitigate um because we have been offering you know meals for our remote Learners in particular um but the the number of remote Learners and the number of remote Learners picking up Meals is not is not one to one to where we were last year so one of the things that we did start doing um last week is as students leave for the day we're handing them breakfast for the following morning and that does two things for us one it does increase the number of meals that we're serving um and we do get reimbursement from the USDA for those meals as we serve them

044it also um prevents students from coming in to get breakfast in the cafeterias where providing supervision has been one of the concerns for the School principles especially at the elementary schools um we also um have made a more of a marketing effort to promote the the distribution of meals that we're doing Monday and Wednesday so that has already started to help increase the participation rate and I I think there's still a bit of a Fear Factor especially as we started the year about student students you know obtaining meals in school so they're bringing their own um you know as I said this is It's Not only chesher that's experiencing this particular issue we um you know continue to work through it to see if we can solve the problem I mean one of the things

045that I know the board members have heard me say is that you know we have a very strong food service director and meline Dyer and strong managers at each of the cafes you know here in chesher so you know if we can't do it nobody can so we're we're addressing the problem you know we're working through it as best we can um and you know I mean I I I don't know if Jeff was going to talk about it but for example you know on Wednesday we're preparing for a very large distribution so Wednesday before Thanksgiving we are giving deals for seven days to um you know not only to students but for children 18 and under those meals are available so we expect to distribute about 5,000 meals on Wednesday and all those will

046help the the fact is that the the USDA actually the Office of the President uh announced that they would extend free meals for all students through the end of the school year so um the meals are free to our to the children but I there's been a reluctance to take advantage of that program and I think that's one of the things that you know by promoting it we'll we'll get to a more you know a higher level than we are today I don't know that we'll ever be at a normal level compared to Prior year okay thanks Vincent welcome um Tim go ahead oh thanks yeah sorry Vin a second ago you said the Office of the President are you talking about Trump I mean okay all right like it threw me off when you

047said that um so not the office not the office of the president-elect I'm sorry it was President Trump that enacted the free mails through um the end of the school year okay yeah no I guess it was just the fact that you mentioned the Office of the President but then also through the end of the school year but then it's a budget cycle not who's in office per se I guess um yeah I was just wondering so is it basically most of the revenue coming to you right now is from the USDA well ultimately yes okay you know and the way it works it's actually a reimbursement program okay so you know I know we normally don't talk about cash flow in our in our budget meetings but Food Service you know that cash flow

048comes from from the sales that they're making day in and day out F the parents fund student lunch accounts and 85% of student lunch is paid for by parents the other 15% comes through the USDA in normal times through students who are eligible for free or reduced meals so you know cash flow is is ordinarily not an issue but it it's become an issue because we have to wait for reimbursement from the USDA now okay and it's delayed usually about 30 to 45 days so that's why that's one of the reasons we have to you know basically help the Food Service program so that they could State cash flow positive um but the answer to your question is there's very small amount of all our cart sales um and the USDA does not cover water

049or snacks they only cover the cost of full lunch or full breakfast meals okay thank you and I just one more question I'm pretty sure I haven't seen anything about this per se but with regard to covid and Community spread that's you know I think I would be I think we know about the cases of CPS community members students teachers staff who've you know had some covid or a test or something like that but I'm curious because I'm pretty sure what's happening now is that ches Perot or you know Public Health officials can't really pinpoint where all these things are happening where the spread is happening and I'm just curious has there been any indication from ches percot of any spread within the school system we contact Trace every positive and I can tell you

050like it almost without fail a family member is sick a student is quarantined as a result and ends up positive it's it's almost always the case I it's not every case but it's almost always the case so has there but has there been any community like within the schools that of that you're you have a hint at or anything uh of all the cases we've had we've quarantined about a thousand people uh so far probably more than that there's one case that's a possibility okay okay with uh in an elementary setting with students who sit next to each other at lunch sure sure I heard probably a month ago so okay other than that I mean we can say with pretty solid certainty you can never say with 100% certainty um either way really but

051you can say you know there's clear indicators and evidence uh for the contrary there not and that's national uh nationally been reported uh for public schools nationally right okay that where the and I'm going to get into this in my report a lot more DET okay all right thank you uh Faith go ahead um then I was just curious we've had two lunch workers in a um covid semi- covid do we have to shut down the kitchen when this happens for cleaning and is as these instances happen and incidents happen how is this going to impact the food the budget as well well you know what the the case that we had this week was over at cheser high school um and we did have a you know one Food Service employee over the weekend

052you know reported that she was having symptoms um so out of an abundance of caution we we put the high school into remote um and of course as it not of course but as it turns out the employee is not covid positive she had you know a rapid test and and two PCR tests so she's not positive but on the heels and and waiting the results of the first Food Service employee a second Food Service employees reported symptoms U actually a symptom and you know we decided to extend the remote for cheser high school students Thursday and Friday so it it will have a you know a negative impact this week um you know we we don't make it we don't seem to make it up in the food distribution that we do Monday Wednesday

053at the high school on on the after school program so the I guess the short answer it's not going to help help us at all if if uh that happens again it is the first time it happened and certainly we're hoping that the second employee is also you know negative um and to answer your question about you know when we uh you know would would close either a classroom or a kitchen or any space down if someone tested positive um yeah we we would certainly do that the in this particular case the incident occurred and was reported over the weekend so we did our normal disinfecting you know and and we did have one case this year because of the timing of when the person started reporting symptoms and tested positive uh which was at

054Highland School we did have to do an overnight fogging of all spaces in the building beyond the hand disinfecting that we do so it's case-by case basis is how we at it I would just jump in on that one that case occurred in August yeah back when and first of all this person's role in the building was to clean every surface um and they were covid positive uh the other thing is we you know at that point the people who were doing that job had no ideaa who anybody they worked with was so how do you contact Trace when you know I don't know that that dude in the hallway that that doesn't really help us so we needed to close school the next day to be able to to make absolutely certain the other

055thing was at that time from what we knew about covid we thought that fogging would be um an effective strategy today nobody considers that really an effective strategy in a school setting um so you know things evolve over time nevertheless we showed abundance of caution then we show abundance of caution with the cafeteria when you think that one or potentially several cafeteria employees may be sick we get them out of there and we play the safe fruit our goal is to keep kids in school as much as we possibly can as long as it's safe and if I'm not really sure then we're going to air on the side of caution which is what we did in the cafeteria now are we required to do that no the person didn't test positive but if I

056can't be really sure I don't want to go down that road so we did it um and it's to protect everybody's well-being and you know the money that maybe we lost on those couple of days isn't a deal breaker when you look at the big picture yeah and the other thing is you know we do regularly consult with esot or Dr OK Conor you know when in doubt on on some of these types of issues so you know we you know the guidance that we we get is very very important and I think it's what's helped us you know maintain relatively healthy overall as a school community and not see you know any real spread you know student to student or teacher to student or vice versa yeah and we did uh consult with Mora

057on this incident in the in the high school calf thanks just for remind for folks that just tuned in uh we are actually in the finance uh standing committee section report and just duve h a little bit to the by no means is that the end of the co discussion there'll be more later so so hang in there thanks everyone back that ends Finance if if you want I could do medical benefits if there's no other questions on finance sorry I dropped out there for a second yeah Vin go ahead uh medical benefits that be great all right I'm gonna just go back and share the screen so the the monthly uh report we just received it today and so the board members received it a little bit late in their package um so you

058should be able to see on the screen now this is the medical benefits for report through October 31st um the bottom line is that October claims were a mil 45,000 so you know three out of our four months in this medical benefits year have been over a million dollars which is unprecedented for us again we're still seeing a lot of high high dollar claims um you know for people who have you know various illnesses and and particular cancer treatment um so that's mostly what's driving it it's not Co I'll give you a quick update on Co in a moment so with the million 45,000 in claims this month um if you look on a year-to-date basis we've uh paid 4.3 million in claims we started the year at um with a trust fund a medical

059trust fund balance of 2.8 million and we've depleted 1.1 million of that so so as of October 31st our medical trust fund balance is 1.63 million that gives us about two months worth of claims but that's at the expected $800,000 per month of claims and and we are running so far year to date an average of about a million 78,000 so certainly disappointing um from an overall perspective and the only light I can The only positive light I'll shed is it at least it's lower than the 1.2 million that we had in September I say trending in the right direction finally yeah yeah so we'll go with that Tony and I'm I'm as always I'm going to keep my fingers you know crossed and and hope that you know people stay healthy on the covid

060front I just thought it was um worth noting that we we do get a report you know each month from siga that just isolates the covid related expenses or covid related claims um so since the beginning of the pandemic this report begins in January of 2020 through October of 2020 we've spent a total of $ 54,3 196 on claims related to covid of which 53,800 is for testing and only $547 for treatment so I I I think that's great news I I think we you know are fortunate that we haven't had anybody in you know our benefit plans that have been sick um to co to the point that it was a very expensive treatment and for their for their health not not so much for our cost but most of the money that we've

061we've spent has been for testing and it looks like from what I could see in the report looks like we've had about um tests that were done and only about diagnosis of covid amongst our participants which of course includes our employees as well as their uh dependents whether they're spouse or children so we'll uh we'll continue to you know manage and and hope for the best with the medical claims Katherine you had a question yeah um so then are do you know if we're going to be getting any stoploss you know coverage for any of the claims uh well not there yet yeah so these are expensive claims but they're not hitting the level of right gener but that's not unusual because you know July is the beginning of the new claim year and so

062stoploss begins as of July one so we're not we don't have any claims yet that have risen to the $175,000 level okay and I've you know the claims that the higher claims are in the 80 and $90,000 range you know hopefully they stop but if they continue on we will hit our stop loss you know as as we approach the seven Monon Mark usually is when we start to see a a bump up in stoploss reimbursements to us okay thank you uh Tim go ahead thanks Adam yeah Vin just in general so you mentioned there are you know the unfortunate circumstances some people are getting treated for cancer other things do you happen to know if any of those treatments in general do end up going up to the 175 or is it totally dependent

063on the specific person it's going well the the stop loss is on a per person per diagnosis basically so someone who um you know it they have cancer and they're in treatment for six months um and you know some of the the chemotherapy drugs you know are 20 to $30,000 you know per month so some will hit unfortunately okay but you know I I don't want to I I I hate trying to forecast where the stop loss is going to hit when they hit you know they'll hit okay some well yeah okay all right thank you any other questions on medical benefit okay uh well then um Mr chair we'll turn it back to you thank you Adam uh up next is uh report from our planning committee uh Andrew he good evening everyone we

064had a meeting back on October the 22nd um between Tim Katherine and I and Vinnie um very focused meeting on solar power we had ECG engineering who's our consultant that has been retained by the district to take a look at our school facilities both the buildings as well as the grounds of the various properties across town um they presented to us a report entitled treasure PV opportunities um whereas they outlined each facility and where there could be potential installation of solar um from there we went into the different programs and deadlines for the submission of Grant applications to the state um as part of the renewable energy credit program one that we really focused on was the zero emissions renewable energy credit program um and how that could be utilized by the district for a

065potential installation um from there we talked about a site walk which actually didn't take place due to some weather issues that occurred um but we were looking more towards a potential installation not on the roof of a school building but rather on a property um some of the F conversation focused around Norton um and the parking area there just outside of the Bus Loop so we're waiting to hear back from our consultant about um the layout of the the solar array I believe in um and we should be getting that within the next week or shortly and then the applications would be due um I believe by July I have to go back into my notes and look at that yeah I the you I will um because we didn't do the site visits I

066did provide the ECG engineer um all the information that he needed and and he was going to you know do this basically based on site plans uh and and Google Earth so did give him some direction um he did start working on it um he's pretty sick right now unfortunately so um you know I'll I'll just give a report back to the planning committee members as soon as I have an update or a report I'll share it right Away Great and that was the only item that was on our agenda I'm sure Tim has some information he'd like to uh add thanks Andre yeah so Vin correct me if I'm wrong but where we kind of landed at the end of the meeting was uh in my opinion we will have schools that are still

067going to you know the modernization is happening but we're going to continue to have schools we're going to continue to use electricity and have parking lots and what we discussed was probably uh Norton ditt and Highland Andre that that we were kind of thinking about that are low likelihood of you know being demolished or anything like that and putting up a new building have some idea of where we're coming from on this in terms of the direction yeah the the other couple of suggestions that we provided is the north parking lot at cheser high school there's that large area on the west side of the high school property by The Pump Station that's you know near the the the um linear Trail uh as a potential site and also you know even an area like

068over at Highland the that um that concrete structure that serves you know as a bus shelter so to speak so those are some of the things that he's going to be looking at beyond the schools that you mentioned as well okay yeah all right thank you Andrew thanks man thank you thank you Andrew uh moving on policy Adam thank you Mr chair I have to should have had a glass of water because I I guess I'll be talking a little bit on this one um so uh we had a meeting on November 10th um and uh we were uh there to discuss uh four particular policies I believe or was it five yes uh five particular policies um three of them we decided to uh table for further research um because we did not have

069enough information to even decide if they were uh uh deemed ready for a first reading um and uh though the the three that uh we have postponed for now was uh termination of employment um Personnel non certified non-certified alcohol drugs and tobbacco and uh students alcohol drugs and tobacco uh and two of those were um involving uh uh the product called CBD and on um the termination of employment we're I think we had some foyer questions that uh we could not answer if I recall correctly if anyone thinks I'm wrong please pipe up Tim or Jeff or Catherine right sorry cther yeah I wasn't at that meeting so I oh that's why yeah okay all right yeah all right that's why uh yeah that's that yeah we almost didn't have that one uh did you

070have any questions on that Tim no well no I was just gonna say I didn't uh so Jeff correct me if I'm wrong I don't recall the the discussion on terminations and suspensions that was in large part I mean something that I feel like it was in large part something that I was asking about I just come from the perspective of um I want I don't want to uh hurt anybody in any way uh but I want the public to be aware of you know serious situations where someone is terminated or someone um is suspended I think where we were at the end of the conversation was that uh all I think hiring in Departures will probably or Jeff was going to think about doing this giving an update in his superintendent report um people

071who arrive and leave the school system so it wouldn't be focused on people who separated from the school system but everybody would be out there in terms of coming and going and then uh with regard to the suspension um I mean my personal what I'd like to have that information I think where we were is saying all right we don't want it we will not identify people per se maybe this is the Foya part you were talking about or the legal part you were talking about Adam but basically uh an anonymized uh detailing say on a quarterly basis of suspensions that occurred so it doesn't name anybody per se but it's put out there yes this happened and it doesn't happen often um I mean we were in a meeting in the last couple months

072and Jeff had said that I think in his four or five years maybe four of these situations arose so like once a year um but anonymizing the suspension data is what I was thinking where I thought we ended the conversation uh I would agree with your recollection Tim and um yeah we're we're looking at uh anonymizing the data um as I believe I I stated uh during the meeting that uh I didn't think that the I was making this assumption I don't want to speak for anyone else but that the the board may not uh have a stomach for anything besides an anonymization of uh of data uh as far as reporting to the public uh but I believe that we wanted to make sure that if we were to anonymize that that didn't create

073a catch a catch 22 where if someone wanted to look further to be able to foyer something if you don't have a name can you actually foyer anything so uh so it sort of like we're just doing some more homework on that to see if it's see what's going on there um so if I could chime in go ahead I if you guys are actually having a PO discussion right now but it's an update to the meeting right so can you focus on the update part yes sir thank you uh so I'll continue on because I have a lot of reading to do so after we got past that discussion um we move to uh to a first reading uh bylaw 993 21.2 uh time place notification and uh bylaw 93 2.43 for attendance of

074meetings via electronic communication to the full board um and uh both of those um one of them uh I believe 9321 I'm just going to summarize these uh 9321 is just to uh for us to consider uh that allows us to have these electronic meetings during the time of the governor's um uh executive orders uh once the executive orders expire uh it's our understanding that we will no longer be able to to be able to have these electronic meetings like this because we would be in violation of foyer um the uh second bylaw uh change for attendance um via electronic communications uh could be maintained uh if we choose to um uh so that if a board member uh could not attend in person after um uh I guess after covid it restrictions have been

075lifted uh and the executive orders have expired that they could attend electronically um and so uh those two uh bylaws are now uh placed in the the minutes here for your review and that would end my report unless there are any additional questions just have a comment on bylaw 21.2 yes just gonna recommend to the policy committee that uh if they look at paragraph where is it where it talks about posting uh the meeting talks about the town clerk's office the Board of Ed uh office especially in light of Co no one's going to the town hall to look to see if board meetings are posted and certainly because of Co no one's going to the board of the office to see if meetings are posted I'd ask the committee to add to this paragraph

076in a public notice that perhaps also post On The Board website because are checking these days and I get a lot of flack and it's not Flack actually it's very constructive feedback from you know members of our community that you and now engaged and you have good following um you they go to our website you know it's Tuesday or Wednesday morning they see the meeting date but they don't see a not an agenda posted and if I tell them well it's at Town Hall you can imagine the response right so uh to the best possible just let's if we can add it in there it will just clarify things and also help Carol just to post it there too you know might be easier for her so absolutely we'll take a look at that next

077time thank you um um uh I uh don't have a motion here so I guess well sounds like you guys are still in draft mode is that correct yeah so right so yeah we're we're all set so just in first reading and we're good to go thank you my report is completed all righty see there's no other questions from the bo I'm sorry I uh just uh sort like everyone has been a long week I'm paying attention I'm just trying to read ahead to the next s uh up next is our school monetization committee report actually the comme me last night uh Andrew and Ann if want to give an update that'd be great sure um Ann if you don't mind I'd like to start unless you want to throw anything out there before I

078get in I what I did here uh fellow board members and those at home is I took certain portions of reports and plans that we've received and I put together a little presentation um they're not my slides but I'd like to kind of run through them which includes the different options as they stand today which are draft draft options just I want to put that out there um as well as some items from an the enrollment study that was done by milone McBroom to kind of paint the picture as to why those options are being considered based on what milone McBroom um found for the long-term study of enrollment projections for the district so and do you want to add do you want to go first and just kind of talk about anything before I

079get into this because it might be a little bit long winded I'll try not no let let's see what you have all right so I'm more of a zoom guy so I'm gonna try to present my screen and not screw this up so let's see how this goes uh let's do window and then let's do that okay do you see the my screen no no okay hold on give me one second hold on you could do it Andrew you're worse than I am I was gonna yell not that button now yes yes yep yes okay all right so this what you're looking at here these are the um enrollment figures as put together by milone and McBroom um we hired them back about five or six months ago um so what I'm showing here is

080this is the elementary school capacities um we have the functional capacity by Elementary School within the district um so the total prek through six functional capacity is at 25518 in our current school buildings here my loan Pro projected out through 2930 the projected enrollment within the school district for pre through six again this is just prek through six is where I want to kind of start to run through so you can see at 2021 we're at 258 students and then up to 2930 we hit the blue line which is showing the capacity of the district school buildings as they currently stand for prek through six at 2518 at 2711 students so by 29:30 um well actually by 2526 um we are just about at capacity and for the 26 27 school year we are actually

081over capacity of our current school buildings here you can see each of the five elementary schools broken down um again starting in this year 2021 up through 2930 and you can see um Darcy is by next school year is or is over capacity um and then go school by school um do little we have definitely some space and some time so some redistricting could help to solve some of the other problems districtwide um but Highland um 2122 is pushing it and then by 2324 we are over capacity in that school this is just the uh number of classrooms and the function capacity at D and treasure High School I left that slide in there just so you can get a feel as of what those capacities areum and then the average class size is assuming

08220 at the middle school level and 17 at High School so the good news is that DT and treasure High School in the course of this study the Horizon that this Project's out for and neither school is projected to exceed capacity within the projected Horizon okay so here are the initial scenarios as submitted um by coers International who is our owner project manager um who has been studying um working with milon McBroom to come up with the different draft scenario and working with the school modernization committee as a whole um the first scenario that they came up with was to build an new elementary school um the reason why I showed you the information previously is is that we are going to be out of room in the elementary schools um pretty soon um so

083what this does is that this helps to pull some of those students um namely from Highland as well as from the um Chapman area into a new to be determined school which would have a capacity of six to 700 students um it would house the prek and would close the Darcy School up here in the Northwest Quadrant of town um the elementary schools would all remain as K through six DOD would remain as the Middle School housing seven and eight um and there would have to be some CIP which is capital investment projects or alterations to that school building um possibly be able to size a new Elementary School to minimize additions required at the other schools possibly use Chapman as swing space for renovations to the other schools and treasure High School which is

084still the big elephant that needs some work um that would be handled through some capital investment projects the initial draft scenario number two is to build a new middle school has grades six through eight um approximately 200,000 square feet gross square footage based on projected enrollments um so what this would do by building the new 6 through eight Middle School it would free up the space within the other elementary schools um to house the projected enrollment or the projected increased enrollment of the students that would be coming into those schools by making each School K through five um again there would be alterations and renovations to the remaining elementary schools um DOD would become a swing space in order to complete the work to those schools um and then treasure high school would be renovated

085um in outgoing years scenario number three is the project where we would start with the renovation of chesher high school um it's large anticipated cost for that project um and then we would go after Chester High School gets designed renovated Etc then we would look to renovate Renovations in the elementary schools um but again if we do start with cheser high school um you are not solving the immediate issue of the increased enrollment at the elementary school level and then initial draft scenario number four would be to construct the new high school um a new new high school not on the Chester high school property somewhere else um and then demolish the existing High School upon completion of the new school and repurpose that building for either a middle school or another combination of um

086facilities into one so that's the first thing that I wanted to run through are there questions from anybody on that initial uh andreww I just uh chime in that this came up last night too SMC meeting this is essentially where to start in the overall plan it's not and again so these are drafts they're they are work in progress they're being refined they'll continue to be refined over the next month but just to put in context it's that's like that's not like the plan that's anybody is where we actually start you know so even with scenario one two four uh if you if if everyone agreed that was one of those was a start you still have to address the rest of the plan for other schools and so again just put in perspective what

087you're seeing there is not just what you get it's just a start right I want to just you know there's going to be a lot of scenarios that are going to come out of the committee um I just thought it was important to let the board know and those at home that there is a lot of thought that's going into this um things are definitely going to be subject to change um things are changing at every single one of our meetings and in addition to we meet on the first Monday and the third Wednesday of each month as a full board um but then also there is a weekly meeting of the selection committee or the scenario committee which is also looking into the different options um there's lots of ideas we've receiving correspondents from

088members of the community which we greatly appreciate which is helping to shape what this plan is going to be um but I do want to just say we we have have some rough numbers and I know that people are going to ask what those are so um the new elementary school and again these are rough numbers um a new 700 student Elementary School at 990,000 square feet would be about 55 to 66 million before State reimbursement um so after State reimbursement of about 35% we're looking at a 37 to 45 million project for the new elementary school and then the Middle School um would be about 110 to $140 million at 1100 students and 190,000 square feet so after State reimbursement you're at about 75 to 90 million um in Treasure high school they're still

089working on putting together what the cost would be to renovate that building hey Andrew you're still sharing your screen I think I know I want to show one last thing oh okay I before I give it up into this once I get out so here I just wanted to show you what the schedule looks like because I think this is important to look at so even if we come up with the plan in the short term so here we are in 20 let me just go back give me one second okay so right now we have been the school mization committee has been meeting um met throughout the spring and summer um so the pre we're calling that pre-referendum pre-referendum phase one um so right now we are in pre-referendum phase two which is option

090development November through January so we need to come up with or hopefully come up with the best plan by the end of January um through phase three we would be doing the um option refinement and Grant application process so between February and June by June is the hard submission to the state of Connecticut um of a project um so between February in June we'd have to not only go to this board but also to the Town Council and the community and come up with what the project the best project is so moving out from there saying that we all agree and the project gets forward to referendum we' go to referendum in November of 2021 with the project if the project is approved by the voters then you see that there's a design phase of

09115 months once the architect is selected here you get the grant commitment from the the state in the June of the summer of 2022 design phase will bring us into June of 20123 with construction going from August September of 2023 with a construction duration of 18 months and the school wouldn't come online until school year of September of 2025 so that is my presentation if I can stop share I do it all right all right good all right so what I want the reason why I showed you that schedule is is you know even we're working to get this project to a point that it can go before us into the Town Council and get Buy in from everyone to just be approved for referendum once goes to referendum basically a year from this past

092election um we're not going to be into that school until school year of sure uh I believe the question starts with faith then Tim then Adam um just thanks Andrew that was great good technical uh job juggling there I do work all the time I'm not used to this Googling so what can I just ask and I know I should know this what percentage of the K through six population is sixth graders how many students percentage your students you have to turn that to Jeff as I said I'll throw that to Vin no so we're talking uh percentage of our population that's k k through six no no no that's just sixth graders because they're the ones that we're either we're we're looking at moving around it's funny you say that Faith because we uh

093at last night's meeting were just talking about that and you know I I could tell you today that it's roughly 300 students but um they're going to build out the projections for that over the next eight years and look at that so um we're that we're asking the same question you are okay all right great mind think alike um okay and then again I I think I mentioned this when you had your had us with you guys a couple weeks ago um you know I anyone watching is is thinking oh my gosh how are we going to handle all of this and could you explain the the project um phas in I mean you know this notion that we don't have to necessarily do it all at once that it's a stepbystep process um because

094to have to swallow you know wow how many just hundreds of millions of dollars is going to kill whatever project we have anyone right I mean so so faith I mean that's a great question so right now we are you know simply in the the putting together the options um and then once we get our first project then we can plan out to see what the other projects are going to be and see what the appetite is for bonding within the community I mean it's it's it's a big price tag no matter where we start um and so figuring out where we do start and how we handle that as a community is going to be a discussion for all of us okay thanks okay we lost an but I think Ann is back welcome

095back an you're welcome to chime in on this I was calling out just before you dropped off if you want I'm having some trouble tonight that's for sure um so I missed uh some of that but I have seen it before so um yeah I don't I don't really want to um duplicate something that was already said so I'll just no worries yeah uh yeah so faith I don't think the committee's at a point of uh hard cost yet I think I think by middle December we'll have a better cost estimate for all the options and then obviously you know uh no matter where it starts uh you know obviously you got to still do something with other buildings right that maybe are not part of a major renovation or so so again it's still

096TBD so again these are just draft options and on on that note I just want to say that now that these options are getting more detail and I think uh as a board we should meet as a group and talk about these options probably uh in December I would say after that second SMC meeting which I think is on the 16th Wednesday and we have a board meting on the 17th by the way so I think by then we'll have some more clarity on where these options land and we can as a group uh talk about you know does it make sense Etc because I think we need to feed that back to the SMC committee you know while they're doing this I don't want to wait till January for us to talk and you

097know um hold up the discussion sooner they hear from us a consensus and where we are on some of these things the better I think the details start coming to us in December so stay tuned for that we'll figure out how to we have a meeting on the December 7th and then again on Wednesday the 16th so between those meetings there's uh weekly meetings of the options committee and then um things will get further refined by by coers and my loan awesome any any other questions for Andrew an or onization Tim and I probably forgot Katherine and Adam go okay cool than yeah Andrew so in looking at the slides uh it looked like you were suggesting that or the slides are suggesting that renovation and capital Improvement projects is two different things could you

098just give like an example like renovation is painting Capital Improvement projects a new new square footage like a new room what what's the difference my definition been correct me a capital Improvement project would be something that is included in our Five-Year Plan right or kind of routine not routine maintenance but as we approved the $25 million plan for the fiveyear capital so like for instance a $500,000 window replacement project at Darcy school would be considered a capital Improvement project whereas a renovation might be a new classroom Wing or a larger renovation to a a gym or a cafeteria Vin is that summarize it fair yeah yes that's correct Andrew so I think you know what's really what kers is saying in in that slide is you know if you have a renovation project for a

099particular school or group of schools you're still going to have to make some Capital Improvements through the five-year Capital plan process so on that slide It's a combination of Renovations plus whatever you're doing in the capital Improvement plan okay okay I get that that makes sense I was thinking of like renovating as like painting and being relatively inexpensive if renovation is more expensive than Capital Improvement project think of renovation as a building or a a substantial portion of a building large scale project Capital Improvement plan may not be small I mean if we do a roof like if we do the roof over at at uh dot it's gonna be a $3 million project probably okay thank you andh just one other point I don't know if you can speak to this Andrew or vin

100but what I thought I heard you say Andrew was yep uh Elementary School 990,000 square feet just as a just as something to start a discussion $55 million that comes out to about 600 bucks a square foot I was I had in mind it'd be more like $250 $300 per square foot for an elementary school it is there something I'm missing like it's on it's a it's a big difference my number may be totally wrong I don't know but is there anything special going into the elementary school when you said that so there and Vin you could stop me but I asked that exact same question because when I was doing the math between the new Elementary School cost and the Middle School cost um and coers was able to show the state and how

101the state factors square footage costs um and that's what that's based upon so there's certain square footage costs for school size and school grades corre Finn yep and that you know that includes not just Construction cost but that includes all your furniture fixtures technology equipment so that's an all in number for a new school will give you everything that you need okay all right but it does exclude the land cost if we have to acquire land so that was one thing I mean that's not going to be a large percentage of the budget but that's not for the idea of Elementary School would it be something similar to what we have now or would it have you know like a science room a clean room or something like that for elementary school is what I'm

102wondering about or I mean again Tim it had nothing's been designed yet so if if if we are going to go the route of a new elementary school I think that'd be a whole another committee that would be kind of working with the architects in order to SP but one of the things is with the element with the new elementary school is the prek program from Darcy would move into that building so there would be a specialized area for for that program okay okay all right thank you uh Adam had a question earlier thank you um yeah Andrew I wasn't sure how long your or how detailed your presentation was going to be um so I ended up watching the entire meeting last night uh I thought there was a lot of great information in

103there uh it actually goes through even the the sites of all of the schools that are that remain um and I thought that was incredibly interesting um I also found incredibly interesting that uh I was I was named personally last night at the end of the meeting but that was uh I don't know weird um talking about the middle school project and um and and and what I what I had commented on on the uh I guess at the October 21st meeting um and I normally don't like having someone else uh sort of explain to other people uh what I said uh so if anyone's interested in what I actually said you can go to the 51 minute Mark of that meeting and you can see what I said and what I did say actually

104uh was that um at the time that I thought that a middle school wasn't necessary any longer because I was uh commenting to what uh Jeff had said during his presentation um and I also uh stressed very very heavily that we need to have a comprehensive plan uh of the Middle School plan that I saw last night it would still cost $120 million is uh just for that school which was my understanding um I know that we haven't had um our debt tolerance presentation from the town yet I guess I don't know um from what I've seen it's probably around $80 million or so um and so if that's true then and that Middle School plan still has in there that we still have to update all of the elementary schools that remain take care

105of what DOD will become and still renovate a high school or do something with you know make the high school more habitable than it is um so when I say that uh I'm I'm not uh entirely a positive about a middle school project I question whether or not it's feasible to the town um from the information that I saw it may be feasible on paper as far as uh freeing up space at at the elementary level uh because there does seem to be some dispute as to whether or not um the ele a new elementary school would only serve perhaps 25% of the town you know only you know one part of the town will ever see that new school up in the north end and no one else will get to experience that where

106if you do a new middle school then you know their kids will most likely get to uh walk those hallways at some point um but I think that way too premature to at least call me out on on something that um I don't think I've really taken a firm stand on except that whether or not it's feasible financially for the town um and I don't appreciate um uh being uh I guess picked on in that way um and I'm certainly open-minded to to any project that comes out of this SMC and and I know that we'll certainly be able to to uh analyze and have a final say on that as well um so that being said I think that the work being done so far has been really great uh but I still want

107to see more uh because I'm not convinced of any project right now uh even even I know some of the members of the SMC were still uh promoting the uh the high school renovation or brand new high school project and they were talking about turning the high school into a five through eight uh school and that and I don't know maybe that could work and but I haven't seen any numbers on that either uh so I'm I'm definitely excited and and interested to see uh what the what the final projects are going to be but I also know seeing your timeline that you know with the holidays and everything if we have to decide on a project by the end of January then there's going to be a lot of work that has to be

108done uh before that can happen so I just wanted to say that thank you good points Adam I think you touched upon a couple things one is I don't know I would say you being picked on as a badge of honor I don't know I I I I I understand that part of it but but in all seriousness though there's other costs right so uh we don't yet know and I I'm not sure when the committee will know my guess is when the options are refined with our input because um you know it's not like we're going to be sitting here waiting for a present to be given to us in January saying okay here we go have fun with it uh SMC is very much once ensured the Board of Ed is giving them

109ideas on educational specs so so like you know talked about you know clean room that's something that superintendent wants to do with our support you know so again it's whatever those final projects are they can't get across the street per se to the Town Council unless they pass us first right so uh we're G have plenty the weigh in on and yes it's going to be a busy January not just because of budget um so but yeah we don't have all the costs and I think we know those variables and you know all this is going to depend on what appetite the town has and you know so everything you're asking Adam we're all asking um so it's F uh Andrew I think Katherine was waiting for a while Katherine you have you want to

110chime in I'm not going to belabor this um one you know you guys are obviously doing a huge amount of work and and I'm interested I'm interested to see what these you know the four options are as as a preliminary uh matter um but it's clear that there is still a lot of there are a lot of moving parts and there's a lot uh that still needs to be worked through um I do just because I am the way I am have to say that this sounds very familiar to what we went through a few years ago and the prices then were going to be a lot cheaper and so the town I think better get ready for whatever it is that come that whatever comes out of the SMC and gets through the Board

111of Ed it's going to cost money and I and significant money and and we're never going to be able to avoid that fact so um and the longer we you know continue to just not make the decisions the the more expensive it gets obviously you know I mean um so I mean one of the things that we did not look at I don't think very hard was you know building a new elementary school so that's you know sort of in that's that's interesting um but I don't you know I I have to hand it to you guys this is such a difficult process and um I think it's up to us as the board and the Town Council because I don't know where they're how they're feeling about anything at this point but to really

112keep an open mind and give you guys as much room to you know synthesize everything that needs to be sort of brought together um but you know I I'm just concerned that in the end the reaction of the town's going to be exactly the same as it was a few years ago and you know I hope that's not the case but um Adam was s from what I heard from Adam it you know I mean that's the concern it's a huge ticket so um anyway good luck and uh we'll be waiting for more details obviously yeah certainly twist this time around as the uh enrollment at the elementary schools growing Beyond capacity or in next five years so yeah there's a little bit urgency but point taken Andrew's Andrew I I think we lost an

113in unfortunately I don't think sheing to to say but is there anything else you want to add before we move on I just echoing what everyone here has said I mean schools as Vin has said numerous times schools aren't going to fall down tomorrow I don't want anyone at home or here to think that you know there's this imminent problem with each in building each building is old they're tired they need work but the issue is going to be increased enrollment so enrollment is coming these kids are coming you can see it um the the prek and the kindergarten classes and the first grade classes are growing and they're going to continue to grow and at some point we're going to be out of room so something needs to be done and I just hope

114that after all of this time and energy is expended that we get a project that is a project that we could all agree upon and that it gets agreed to by the Town Council and it gets to the voters and the voters can make the ultimate decision as to what they want to spend and what they're willing to spend on behalf of the school facilities in the community so that's what we're working for and with that more details to come soon stay tuned thank everyone I'm sorry to we uh we'll probably talk a little bit more about the SMC uh output in these meetings so we can gear up for our January refinement uh that being said uh for those still hanging in there we're getting very close to correspondence and the superintendent report before

115we get there uh we have no other standing committees uh we have an item four which is approval of minutes so in our Board of Ed packet we do have meeting minutes from the Board of Ed meeting held October 15th and November 5th um doesn't want to have any changes to these minutes amendments see as there are none would someone like to make a motion to approve the minutes nobody wants to make a motion faith I could say I would but I can't find the motion the link packet okay I move that the Board of Education approve the minutes from the meetings held on October 15th 2020 and November 5th 2020 excellent is there a second second Catherine seconds uh any discussion seeing there is none the motion is that we move that the Board

116of Education approve the minutes from the meetings held on October 15 2020 and November 5th 2020 all those in favor please raise your hand there are six in favor Ann unfortunately ised off but the motion passes six in favor and I will say one exstension we'll let Carol clarify that in a minutes that being said we're moving on to correspondence the much awaited part of the meeting we have received some a couple today um so miss and secretary do we have any correspondents yes sir Mr chair we do um so the first is a correspondence uh that was addressed to the superintendent and um principal Gad and uh the board was copied on it and it's from a group of uh concerned parents regarding the uh current instructional model at chesher high school um and

117there is a continued concern about um the fact that you know maybe kids need to go back go to school um more often and and the Wednesday the day that is used for cleaning the school uh could be better used I think is basically the concept here um for in-person uh learning and I know that superintendent Sol's going to be addressing this issue in his report so uh that's one piece of Correspondence the second is a letter that was addressed to the Board of Education um comes from from the teachers at Norton school requesting uh that chesher public schools go completely remote between Thanksgiving and the winter break um since there are only 18 school days during that period of time and for primarily for safety reasons and um because of Staff shortages Etc uh

118they are proposing that that would be invest interest of the kids and the teachers so and again I think that that's something that um Mr Solen will be Dr Solen sorry uh will be addressing in his report but those are the two pieces of Correspondence that we got Catherine uh yeah yeah so uh those are folks listening we're we're talking about the after correspondence that the board of AD receives outside of Co email uh mailbox uh but I know there's more in the co email box so Jeff do you want to move on to your Super's update so we can just uh discuss and start addressing some of these questions yeah thank you um so I'm GNA present screen um there is so much to cover tonight I don't want to threaten you with a

119get comfortable but there's a lot of uh a lot of stuff to go through this evening on a VAR of topics and I'm going to try and be as expeditious as possible but you know kind of try and do right by the information that we're we're sharing so everybody can everybody see that I'm in full screen so I need an audio confirmation yeah looks good thank you um so you know as as Tony just indicated we do have some covid-19 emails um there was a suggestion to go remote in all grades uh request to keep schools open if numbers support that for example um you know if one school doesn't have the numbers that support uh in-person instruction and another does can we keep that building open uh there was a question about air purifiers

120and because I don't touch on that in my my uh overview I'll will respond to that that this is something that VIN and his team and and I have looked at uh the health department does not support that uh particularly for Open Spaces like classrooms the only place they do endorse that is in the health office or uh an isolation room if there is a sick individual that uh want to be put in there which we've done um so they the and our health professionals don't endorse that either so what we do is you know keep windows and and ventilation uh cross ventilation to the greatest extent not possible um maximum level of community spread uh of covid-19 that allows for safe operation of inperson education so that was a question that I'll address delayed

121start uh the question was if we go to remote will we have a delayed start the answer there is yes uh we've built in a one hour on um if we go to remote learning uh is a is a building and we make that decision um not necessarily these last several days at CHS per se but um if we make that decision going forward there would be an hour delay built in and then of course you know we'll address something you The Correspondents from Norton and and uh the high school uh group there will uh touch upon that so covid-19 first and foremost I wanted to start with our current District data and this PowerPoint presentation like I said is is pretty comprehensive and it goes uh we're going to have to move it along

122at a decent pace to get through the whole thing you know before at a decent hour anyway so it will be available on our website tomorrow if you miss anything don't um don't feel bad it'll be available uh the uh numbers as you can see and the first two lines or the first two rows are uh positive cases that we currently have uh individuals isolating we follow the state guidance in do not indicate numbers of people F you know when there's five or less cases I can tell you districtwide they're you know it's it's generally the case that we don't have five cases it's one or two here or there uh the isolation impact is is greater the excuse me the quarantine impact is greater on the bottom two lines uh you can see where

123we have significantly more people quarantined and we work very closely with uh at ches Brott to identify who needs to be quarantined and um sometimes that can be only students in the room uh with the the positive case those within six feet for 15 minutes but sometimes that also includes kids that were uh at a club or activity it includes kids that are on the same bus or bus stop uh uh lunch and so we uh meticulously review the child's schedule and then uh quarantine who appropr roate as well as the staff um so you know that question about when do we know if we need to start to look at uh remote learning and so the Center for Disease Control has a um a I guess a a kind of a form that they

124use to evaluate when might you want to consider that um clearly you know you have to look at these three primary factors in determine you know what at what point are we comfortable so we look at what we're looking at is this data coupled with our the data that I just showed you um is really indicators of what's going on what do we have to have to do might we have to make a change so today the state just released the number of new cases in chesher uh per 100,000 within the last 14 days that number is at 34 it's in the moderate uh risk of transmission the percentage of positive PCR tests over the last um uh 14 days is 5.1% it's right at that threshold of lower risk to moderate risk and then

125the ability of school uh to implement five key mitigation strategies uh consistent and correct use of masks social distancing to the largest extent possible hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette cleaning and disinfection contact tracing with in collaboration with the health department schools should adopt additional mitigation measures as we you know typically do but um the in that case implement all five strategies correctly and consistently there's a lowest risk um and implemented all five strategies correctly but inconsistency inconsistently I think what we've observed and um seen through and Mora has provided us feedback we do a very good job with that I think it's obviously contributed to our low numbers but uh you know others aren't seeing spread in school so I I don't know that they do as good a job or just the same quality

126of job but um using that indicator we're pretty low risk of spread in the schools so first and foremost you know we have to make sure that our our schools are safe for all anybody who walks in them our staff students um anybody who's entering the building and we use we measure uh that you we determine that through data and you know obviously regular consultation with our our health professionals um both federal and state officials agree that maintaining in-person instruction is is the best path for health and you know those are obviously two fairly different uh political realm so i' like to think that the the politics have been kind of taken out of this equation and health experts are agreeing on that um the other area that we consider is Staffing so as you

127saw with the quarantining numbers I have to have enough substitutes to staff the building because we can't be in a position where we're taking I know you know this is what made things difficult in hamen that they found themselves often taking several groups of classes putting them in the um in the cafeteria or in the in a Auditorium trying to space them out the best they can and that that just wasn't working um so Staffing is a is a factor another issue we consider is the mental health and well-being of our students and staff so um that's you know we survey folks we just completed a round of surveys I'm not familiar with other districts that have completed surveys uh we did that we were amongst the first to do that in the spring and

128uh we're uh evaluating that information now I just sat with John Redford the the teachers union president today going through some of that and we've sat with our administrators to look at some of the teacher and and student data and then I'm also consider of the role that we play in the bigger picture I mean certainly um if we can provide a healthy safe environment uh for our kids to access School in I'm conscious of the fact that we have doctors and nurses and people who work at Stop and Shop and and policemen and firefighters and that that need to be on the job and um count on us to to play a certain role to allow them to be able to do that and of course that comes with making sure it's safe to

129do so first and that's why we look at those CDC guidance and the number and our data but we do play a role and our our teachers are every bit front line heroes in this but they shouldn't have to risk their life they play a role and so we look at review the data and make sure that um it's a safe place for them and our students to be so the evaluation of these factors is constant and it's ongoing our administrative team nurses and local health professionals we've been working non-stop every weekend I get calls from principles and uh certainly Nancy Stanton or Mora and we are constantly evaluating this so it could could change um but for the last 11 or 12 weeks we've done um a very good job of monitoring that and

130and not uh and making sure that the environment is safe now we see other districts um changing they have their own unique circumstances they have their own Community data they may have much more multi-unit housing and having greater spread and things you know we we are looking at treasurers data um and so you know that's that's what we're making these determinations on and why I'm confident that we need to continue to move forward in this path the state said today that they're looking at mid January for a peak in the viruses um the idea of our students going out remote now when we have good conditions and keeping them out through mid January is deeply concerning for their mental health um in our in our community so if the health data and experts are suggesting

131we continue down this path then we do but of course like I said that could change uh in a day um so our plan is to continue to move forward with remote learning and I've been thinking lately about this Paradox of our our current situation that you know we spend so much time separated separating you know kids in school separating ourselves but we are so deeply interconnected that you know if if an individual is not responsible uh and you know can can tracks the illness in through some irresponsible way and I know that others you know it's not always because you were irresponsible certainly but you can impact many others and we see that out in the community all the time through these parties uh get togethers and it's well intentioned you never think that

132your friend or whoever is going to be sick and they may not be symptomatic but uh I just want to underscore what every Medical Professional is advocating for particularly during this holiday season is we have a a vaccine on the way you need to to stay do the right thing um stay home do it with your family um and and be be smart about it um couple of reminders those who elect remote learning starting this week if you go to remote learning this week you're required to remain in remote learning until January 2nd that is consistent with what we've said from the beginning of the school year it's on our frequently asked questions page um from September um that you're out for a month and that and that protects particularly now our staff who are

133dedicating themselves every day to be there for our kids and all of those kids that go into the building so again if you know if you're going remote you're making a commitment through January 2nd um the other thing I want to remind people of is that there is a Connecticut travel advisory um it's on the the um Connecticut website and it's map is Crystal Clear if you travel anywhere outside of the tri-state area New York New Jersey and and we'll throw Rhode Island in there um you need to quarantine for 14 days upon return and um you know the states are listed what you have to do is listed and I will tell you that um this is something we take incredibly seriously that if you are traveling and I will be sending these things

134out as a reminder to our parents that if you are traveling that you need to do you need to follow all the advisories if you don't there are fines associated with that and in order to protect our students and our staff I will pursue that with Mora if people are not adhering to that and jeopardizing the health and safety of our students and staff and I I don't want to sound like you know a tough guy or anything like that but this is serious business we want to have our kids in school and we want our staff in school and we need them all to be safe and doing so and so if people are making conscious decisions that contradict that and jeopardize it we will pursue appropriate steps um because it's something that we

135take again very seriously um so Stu parent and student um survey results uh there's a lot to go through here uh High School parent survey I appreciate the 493 folks who responded and as I indicated earlier there's a lot it's hard to just go through these and really process each graph um but I want you to come away with a flavor through this presentation and as I said you can go back and and take a look at it later um that our children are able to adjust to school this year um 63% said mostly um 31 somewhat uh so those are pretty high numbers um under the circle cumstances we know that this year is going to be tough uh for for everybody student staff parents uh the whole nine yards so compared to the

136start of last year uh your child's ability to regulate their emotions um doing fairly well uh compared to the start of last year child seems to be enjoying school and for us you know we we give these surveys not only to learn about uh how we can fix the here and now but also what you know what can we do better when we return and to see that you know seven and a half% of our parents think that their kid is their child is enjoying school more this year than in years past what can we take away from that how can we improve so that's you know something we're thinking about the amount of communication I received from my child's school at you know CHS or humiston is um either you know about 75% say

137it's too much or just right about 23 um so we need to delve into that and see you know how do we improve the for those 23% the amount of school work my child receives um it's you know the vast majority of respondents particularly in English and math consider the work their child is receiving to be just right social studies and science um relatively uh a little bit lower than than math and English but also very good the green bar here for career and Tech is not applicable uh and again we'll we'll put more information up on our website so the top responses our parents provided when asked about what their child needs help with nothing at this time was the top response um about 50% actually more than 50% uh I think I can't

138remember exactly what the original n was so we'll go with about 50% uh time management social emotional support understanding curriculum and content is about a quarter of the or fifth maybe 20% of the group so that we want to take a look at the amount of time my children spent on the computer for remote learning has been about right um and 31% say too much so when you know there are some Advocates you know on online that that are pushing we need more time on on remote um that would concern me um I'm not suggesting that's what the parent letter was about but we you know you see all sorts of things on online and so we have to really look at what is the data telling us when we have a much more um

139you know robust survey like we have here so I mean this is also concerning that 30% say too much online time so the most frequent parent comments uh summatively is the desire to go to more inperson learning I think you know we all share that desire uh grateful for the support of teachers and administrators and too much time on the computer so what did our students think 1155 responses there from chesher High and humiston combin um they're you know not shockingly feeling less connected to their peers at the high school they attend every other you know roughly every other day in cohort groups um and the opportunity for like team Athletics and stuff have been somewhat compromised certainly for football and now postponed for winter Athletics um that's where there's so much you know peer

140connection and I don't want to um I don't want people to walk away forgetting about music I mean it's such an incredible part of our community and our students the marching band didn't happen this year and so I mean that's a family uh in its own right and so I'm I'm I'm really sensitive to that piece about what our our students are experiencing if our students have a problem they feel like they can help somebody solve it uh the the overwhelming majority of the time if I needed I can talked to a teacher individually 75% said yes 24 haven't tried and a sliver um said no I had contact with my school counselor um and you know I'm I'm impressed that so many students have um connected with their school counselor I think that's uh

141uh you know kudos to the board uh in years past we've added more mental health positions it's certainly necessary now and clearly our kids are accessing that if needed I can talk to a teacher individually scar that was a repeat if I feel I'm on track to meet expectations in my class uh 60% said mostly 32 and uh change said somewhat um in a small percentage not at all or I don't know if you don't know that's a bad sign is a dad a principal um yeah that's not good uh I need help with top responses this is what our students have said time management and um marleene and and Don wonus who's been helping us out have been delving into that um certainly uh an issue that's a greater concern with our underclassman but

142really for all students and that's you hear that with college freshman transition so this the silver lining in this um nightmare that is 2020 is that students are getting a taste of that and I'm impressed that you know more than you know third almost a half of our kids that took this survey or half indicated that time management is something that they know that they need support with and and that's coming upon us to work with those kids and try and make sure that they they have that support um again many kids indicating that they don't need help at this time um curriculum content social emotional support you may remember that these are the same four that our parents identified and then you you'll see this as kind of a theme um of the biggest

143concern of of what we're dealing with in the these days with covid um so these were I think uh our remote learner responses uh when learning remotely 141 students that are strictly remote the amount of time I spend in class is about right and then 24% say too much um and I think that is really interesting as we've increased more uh synchronous learning time uh that that's you know from our students starting to be a question that they're asking as a remote learner I feel part of my cohort in class um strongly agree and agree is a little more than you know 45% and then we have neutral so you know the the fact that there's a small you know about 20% that are struggling with that um under the circumstances is really pretty good

144for our our our high school teachers of course we want to address this but you you know as we transition to doing this for the first time um that that's something that we we think is is pretty good to start and but a play always want to improve so our Elementary in uh DOD parent survey we had 855 respondents really again appreciate the responses um adjusting to school this year you're going to see dramatically different numbers for students that are in school um that's just the reality and uh part of why we believe that it's really important as long as it's safe again to make sure our kids are in school as much as we possibly can um you know 91% say they've been able to adjust to this uh because they're in school now

145school is wildly different than what it was last year at this time but uh still seeing very positive numbers uh my children's needs are being met emotionally in their school um pretty strong support there my children are able to regulate their emotions um and we're we have some students that are having some difficulty and that's something that we you know need to continue to address at all levels it's a concern from kids it's a concern from parents and that's K through2 and that's you know certainly not exclusive to the chesher public schools but um part and parcel with what we're dealing with right now as a as a country compared to the start of last year my children been able to maintain connection with some peers um yes obviously the connectedness is is much better

146when all students are attending every day uh compared to last year my children seem to be enjoying school and it's interesting that we have 19% saying more and again you know what we're trying to do is identify what is it about this experience that's working for these one in every five kids and we need to try and build that into our future the amount of communication I re received from my child school is just right at 90% um so that's really strong number I think if we start cranking up much more this you know too little group May shrink but this too much group is is probably going to grow so we're I think we're doing a pretty good job with the the parent communication if you as a parent have a concern if you

147fell into that two- little car category reach out to us let us know what you know where you think we're falling short obviously we'd like to support everybody but uh let us know the amount of work given to my children has been um just right 85% uh 11% considering it too little so the top responses again you know nothing at this time 59% of our parents said that time management social emotional understanding content and curriculum uh again aligning with what experienced at the high school level uh most frequent comments uh kada six or k to 8 uh grateful for teachers and administrators support for the in-person model um and then focusing on mental health concerns seven of the you know hundred hundreds of responses so our student responses from the elementary level in uh in

148Middle School compared to the last year connectedness um less connected to my peers and school friends um so it's interesting though again that 26% are saying more connected um so that's really an interesting data point for us that we're going to drill down further into to try and learn a little bit more about that compared to last year um again you know connectedness with teachers at this time so um about the same or more is over 70% compared to the start of last year I enjoy school again 25% saying more roughly and so this will teach us something about how we move forward for what is it about that this experience that we can you know build into the future for ourselves and for our kids make school um even more engaging I feel like

149I belong in my classroom and school Community um the vast majority n 95 96% do um clearly we we obviously we always want all these things to be 100 but we when they're not we try and look into where where are the individuals that aren't connected and we try and connect into them uh I get to talk to my teachers individually you know again very high numbers and I I give our teachers so much credit for the work they're doing to be able to make these numbers possible I need help with and these are our students again three through eight we did not give the survey to second and first graders um but three through 8 time management the vast majority indicating that you know I I don't need help or at least not the

150vast majority but at least about half understanding curriculum and content um and managing my feelings and emotions so if nothing else these surveys have really given us a consistent picture about where the needs are time management supporting curriculum content feelings and emotions and that's you know the time management I think if we can do a good job of really addressing that Kad it k to2 then it helps the other two and so that's what we're we're focused on at this point how do we build that in more for our students uh so that they can feel better about their time management and hopefully address those other two items uh the last item I have on my presentation is that you know we're required to present the district profile and performance report given the given the

151amount of information I've already covered tonight and I know I knew that it would be kind of late I at least just want to show people where to get this information um it'll be a very cursory review if you go to edite which is the dis the Statewide data warehouse for Education um there's a a b link on the Le hand side profile and performance reports and so if you click on that you can find all districts um any you know all districts in Connecticut and our most recent report is from the 201819 school year it provides a tremendous amount of information um information about the uh student enrollment and race chronic absenteeism and suspensions um who are our Educators um by Race by by of you know by role that they play in The

152District you know this uh as you know this 1819 our numbers in terms of um nonwhite teachers in our school system have grown and that's something we're we're trying to work on as we focus on on uh equity and cultural awareness um actively recruiting uh teachers of color instruction and resources um how are our students performing uh where do we spend our money um of course the state didn't add enter that in but um District profile and performance uh reports you know our performance is um certainly grown exponentially over the last several years and um this is a real point of Pride for us how do our students do on the physical fitness assessment the national assessment of educational progress um we look at that that's that's uh not identified for chesher per se but

153it's a Statewide U performance and then for your cohort graduation um meeting benchmarks for college readiness and AP performance um how did we do on the Next Generation accountability index that that numberers improved annual um so the uh then we have information about uh parental Outreach and efforts to reduce racial ethnic and economic isolation so individuals can um go to that Ed site as I was mentioning and click on the link uh on the left hand side and and get that information or there's a myriad of other information about all school districts in Connecticut I use it regularly you see it in my budget presentations so um you know certainly if there's more that people or more that the board would like to see on that certainly we can go deeper into that probably on

154another night um but I just wanted to at least show you that and and kind of give you an overview of that report uh if you need more information uh the last thing I have is Vin mentioned this in his report given our um Food Service uh challenges this year um that Monday CHS hybrid student meal pickup will be relocated to DOD um it's still at the same time 3:30 PM um we usually pick up at at the high school but um hybrid pickup will be at dot on Monday Wednesday night uh I think Vin talked about it already remote meal pickup for the next week will be reloc located to DOD at an early time due to the early dismissal on Wednesday pickup will start at 2 and run to 4:30 uh the Wednesday

155pickup will be in bulk form such as gallons of milk instead of Half Pints uh if anybody who picked up food from us in the spring and there were many um that took advantage of that opportunity um either for themselves or for others they care about you can certainly come and pick that food up we would encourage you to do so um but the Google survey uh sign up for the Wednesday pickup in details will follow so we ask that you know just keep your eyes peeled we will send that information out um to sign up if if people are interested again we encourage you to do so um for yourself or somebody else you might might know that would appreciate like a gallon of milk or other things so we are reimbursed on that

156from the the government it it should go to people who need it um and we encourage you to get out and and do that thank you all righty thank you Jeff uh I'm sure there are questions uh who has questions s superintendent where do we start I I have a general observation so the Sur responses for the high school how many respondents Jee roughly uh um over students and 600 about 600 parents I think it was uh what seems like a healthy response I would expect the more parental responses but the reason why I ask is uh one of the letters we received from uh a group of parents I believe some of those parents are also part of a petition that's out there sure asking for you know improvements to in general the co

157learning at the high school for lack of a better summary and there's about 118 signatures there and you know there's 144 responses and parents at the high school I would have expected that the the you know the categories that were orange would be bigger based on responses I it just seems like the disparity to me that the the parent responses don't reflect the sentiment in that petition of 118 parents well you know I I would indicate that you know Mary did have several meetings five I think with different parents that averaged about 25 a clip we we always as I said I think 14 times through my presentation we always want to get better we always want to do better um and I think frankly I mean that's part of why our teachers are experiencing

158so much frustration this year all of us have very high bars for ourselves um and this year is different you know the the opportunities are different the challenges are different um it's not what it always has been um and that's really frustrating nevertheless we all want to continue to improve and if if if something's not working for parents or kids we want to be a part of trying to fix that and so I would encourage any parent any grade level to reach out to their school principal to reach out to me reach out to Marlene you know on instructional issues you know we can definitely we want to always be better so you know reach out to us and I also appreciate that parents may have concerns at different levels about you know structures or

159whatever but universally they appreciate the job that our teachers and our administrators are doing and and that's you know they've been really respectful in in criticism uh that I've had or constructive feedback and I tell you that for our administrative team is is really appreciated during a time that's been really tough for everybody I I know we didn't read the letters in in great a lot of detail they will be as part of minutes on they published so folks can certainly read more detail but I want to I think you've answered it indirectly earlier but there was uh from the from Miss CTS and the other parents there was an idea um that uh they want to see educational stret return what it was hey I agree 100% I want all the kids back in

160school it's not feasible right now but I think what they're getting at is trying to alternate the cohorts every other day um and what they're saying is mean you know have have um each Cort would have two or three iners days each week um Sun seems to do it what working for them I know they have different circumstances and then you know lastly you know they don't really understand the reason behind the deep cleaning on Wednesdays it doesn't provide a deeper cleaning for cour heart too at this time yeah we don't we don't really do a deeper cleaning on Wednesday I think that's kind of a a misunderstanding I'm glad you brought that up Tony it's it's not a deep cleaning day it's a day that all of our classes meet um remotely for a

161much shorter period of time and one of the angles we were looking to take on that was addressing some of that time management and emotional support during that period so I you know I I'm glad you mentioned that and I want to clarify that I and I think that you know having three days on on site in school we you know we've got this earlier in the school year and not too long ago today is it safe to say really that the only that's prevented that right now is simply the the situation with covid and maybe labor or we're just not not we can't go every other day or three days a week for for some groups and two for the others yeah I think what it is is an effort to make sure that

162all kids get a connection three days a week and we could only do that if we're meeting every day or if we're meeting with every period on that Wednesday uh with all students um and so you know of course we'll go back will continue to look at it and there's no I haven't heard any high school in Connecticut that said yeah this is the Magic Bullet everybody's everybody says this is the best um they all have drawbacks they all have benefits um we still want to improve where we are um but this is a a real unique circumstance that we're managing got it I uh uh I'll address the teacher letter at the very end just I read that one paragraph it's very telling but Adam I think you had your first question at 951

163followed by Andrew or actually I say okay yeah uh uh I'll I'll save my second question because it sounds like maybe you're going to address it Tony so uh I'll I'll hold off on that one um so for my question um was there was there was one question in the 3 through eight survey um and you know we had we had before Co we had spent an awful lot of time on uh social and emotional learning and and being able to to to to stay in contact with the kids and making sure they're doing okay and talking about you know well one is one is too many and there was one question in there where it said do you do you feel like you fit in or something like that there were there were it

164looked like a decent amount of kids who said never uh and I don't know what the number was on that I didn't I couldn't quite tell what it was but um I just wanted to to point that out I'm sure that stuck out to to you and your staff as well but I just I thought that that that was a little bit of a little bit alarming and I just wanted to to point that out that to to have any uh child in that age range Say Say Never I mean I suppose maybe at the middle school it you know it's a time of transition and everything that you might feel that way but it's just to have someone think you know individually without prompting they're saying never that just I thought that to be

165a little alarming so I just want that so it it was um the question is I feel like I belong to my classroom in school Community the response being um 60 95 96.4% said always sometimes um the remainder had never is their response um because it's an anonymous survey I don't know exactly who those individuals are but we always want that to be zero covid or otherwise uh to your point so yeah we we work with our mental health Team and teachers to try and find out like you know we teach people about Marlene and I were just having a conversation today about uh QPR training and Mental Health First Aid where people learn signs to identify people that are not feeling connected and that's more important now uh than ever and I know Marlene

166kind of hinted at that when she talked about the the evaluation program so absolutely I'm glad you brought it up and was this the type of survey where they could um uh write in additional comments as well or was it just answering questions yeah so there are written comments in there somewhere yes okay that so it's it's similar to that um the 1819 survey that we're all familiar with it's is it similar to that or is this a little less detailed less detailed okay because we're we're you know that's a school climate um survey right this is really you know it's meant to look at a a lot about academics as well okay which we you know don't necessarily ask during the climate survey that the state has us do every two years gotcha thank

167you thank you Adam Andrew you got a question this is for uh Jeff and I think Marlene also you know I've received emails and from people that I've talked to so the reason why we can't alternate three days two days between the two cohorts at Treasure High School is because we want to keep Wednesdays as a day where everyone can meet that so that's what we've been that's what we've been doing all class yeah I mean to me it makes sense that you you know if my daughter was to go to school three days this week and then two the next it would give that in classroom time that everyone is pretty much begging the district for um I understand that there's constraints but could we look at that and could we at least maybe

168make that a survey question to see if that's something that they would rather forfeit that one day of everyone doing remote and touching face together in exchange for another day of in-classroom learning on an alternating schedule yeah yeah I mean we definitely evaluate that um and I think it's a concern for some do we you know certainly we want to try and gain more information and so you know we'll we'll definitely look at that um and see if we we should be moving there okay thanks Andrew uh Tim you had a question thanks Tony uh with regard to the Norton letter it struck me uh really hard and I'm glad that this is really I'm speaking to the teachers right now I'm glad that they spoke up it's something that I've been thinking about for

169months now but at the same time I just want to say to you Jeff that I do feel like you've been making good decisions in conjunction with ches Perot and Mora Esposito and so right now I mean I I support you uh fully on the decisions that you're making and they've it's been incredibly tough but I mean I'm not the health expert and neither are you but you're using I feel like you're using good judgment in collaboration with chess forgot and whoever else it might be um so I just wanted to say that as difficult as it is because I you know I feel fortunate that I'm employed and I get to work from home um but that there's there is another thing that I'm wondering about in relation to that as you said you're

170thinking about or the state is thinking of modeling peing in mid January so let's say nothing happens next week we continue on you know no no Earth shattering new information or metrics come out but we continue heading toward January and you decide you want at that point or some point in the future you do think that the best decision is remote learning 100% all the schools do you have and I I kind of touched on this before um do we have any information that so it opens up a whole new can of worms last March was relatively easy from the perspective that you know Governor Lamont said all right we're shutting down the state everybody go home because we were all afraid you know I was afraid like everybody's about to die I didn't know

171what was going to happen but now it's more peace meal so if we did shut down the schools you have not just high schoolers who looking just at their age generally are okay on their own even got you know I've got mine my first grader and I'm working at home but we have homes without the parents do you have any could you put in a survey uh you know what's the percentage of parents that work from home where something like that would be feasible because if they're not working at home then we probably need to have some sort of discussion about an alternative plan whatever that might be sure I think what makes a survey a little bit more challenging is the whole vuka thing we've talked talked about that you know for some people

172I'm not working from home today but January 5th I don't know um and we're experiencing that with some of our teachers uh that you know I everything was fine I was coming to work everything's great my district all of a sudden went remote and now I have my little kids at home like you're talking about and now we got to work something out and so we're trying to support those teachers what I will say is that if you know absent a full State shutdown we're g parents are going to have problems but I I can't make decisions about whether or not schools are open based on whether or not parents are going to have problems I have to make decisions about whether or not schools are open based on what's safe for our students and

173staff in the building and if we make the decision based on the metrics in in advice of our medical professionals that the best thing is to go remote the next step is how do we support those parents that are in that difficult spot um I I already acknowledged that we play a role in the community um and we're here to support those people that I would think at that point it would be predominantly essential workers that are not at home how do we support those people and so I you know we work closely with the why um to to explore things like that we ran our own daycare for our teachers in August at one point so using a class from the high school I mean that wouldn't work obviously in the in the future

174situation but we are you know we will work on helping them but that can't be the metric we use to determine whether or not and I don't think you're suggesting that but I want to be clear to people yeah you know that particularly our staff that's not how we make these decisions yeah no and I I don't want you to make the decision based on that but I do um I mean it is part of the it is part of a broader discussion absolutely that's why I included on that slide as a consideration yeah okay all right thank you Jeff sure thanks Tim uh Faith you had a question and then Adam after you um just real quick first of all you know Jeff I I'm go in on you know the state has those

175Tuesday Morning um State Department of Education public yeah Department of Public Health calls and I listen to them and you're doing exactly what they're asking you to do um and so I listening to what the state officials are saying if I could reassure the community there's nothing untoward going on here so um you know you're following their protocols their recommendations so um I support you in that and then the other thing before I get into like my big concerns um you know I just over with Amy O'Brien at uh dittle and I just cannot emphas just listening to her and again to the community the dir of substitute options out there or people who the substitute pool the the shallowness of that that is g to K that's going to shut us down I'm amazed

176at the creativity of the principles of our elementary schools shifting you know uh sub here sub there intern here intern there it's dire and as Amy Amy says um you know if we shut down it's mostly because we don't have the staff so um just make that point but with regard to the the high school situation um you know there was a lot of positive in that in that survey but I also saw it was going pretty quickly so I'll have to go back and look at it yeah there were some very large blocks of red flag areas and I get concerned when I see that and and and the emphasis is on the positive these W these families who signed that survey put their name out there they were concerned they they don't understand

177why the Collegiate model even after all this time why this not that and maybe maybe a proper expl explanation would help but um you know I I've been in touch with some of them and all they're saying is you know why can't we get as we'll never be normal we can't go back they understand that but can we get as close to normal as possible and and whatever normal looks like and that may be the alternating cohort days but um you know there are families there who've got freshmen who don't even know who Dr Gad is is that's scary um you know it's so there's no connection being made it's just it's running deep and so I just hope that these concerns are not just dismissed that you know we've got this big blue Block

178in our you know pie wedge in our survey and I'm not saying you will right but um you know it just you know there's that concern and then the continuity which I heard is improving you know the the teachers are getting these kids checked in and and and following them which hadn't necessarily been happening with consistency before so you know I'm just saying um you know I I I like your the fact that you are saying you will take a look at that especially perhaps just going to three you know alternating days and and looking at that Wednesday Gap in and and maybe reassessing that that's that's yeah yeah we would definitely look at it and I appreciate Andrew you know suggesting a a potential survey to because I I could tell you um dealing

179with the circumstances we've been dealing with it wouldn't shock me if I made an announcement tomorrow that we're going you know to that alternating Day schedule and we have a petition of 100 parents that says yes yeah but I don't want my kid in the building with that cohort are you jeopardizing their health so I I think it you know we have to look at instructionally um from an educational continuity perspective what's best and we have that consideration we have the the consideration of how are our kids doing what are what are our kids telling us what are our parents telling us and you know we need to go back and and dig deeper into that to see how we can you know come up with a plan that we we do want the smallest

180ugly slices of pie that we can have you know is a a good metaphor for Thanksgiving you know uh but so yeah we we always want to do better and and we have to that's that's why we survey you know and again I I don't know a lot of other districts that are doing that um that we've surveyed every student 3 through 12 and every parent K through 12 um because we do care and we want to improve and I want to make that clear to all not just you I think you guys know that and know me well enough by now but for our families too um that we want to do always want can always do better thank you thanks faith and I think you had another question yes thank you um uh

181Jeff you had mentioned the the new deadline for remote learning um when the school year began I think we were around 15% and then it kind of uh some people had migrated back into in-person learning um what is our uh no what does our percentage look like going through uh January 2 uh I don't know exactly through January 2 because right now um parents are making decisions that would start roughly November 30th through January 2 oh I'm sorry I thought the lock in was today or yesterday or no they still have I think till tomorrow um and if somebody said to us on Monday you know I'm going remote I'll be out through January we wouldn't fight him on that um at any day next week to be frank with you but for planning purposes

182you know it's really helpful to know um as soon as we can okay so but right now is it is you think it's going to go above 15 or Original start or is it is it is it trending down or up as do you know I mean I don't it it fluctuates kind of wild even within a building so we were having this conversation today with our administrators and you think like w there's a lot of talk about people going remote whatever and somebody was saying I literally just got an email for two people to come back from remote so it it it's kind of it's not really clearly trending but if anything I would say we started 15% like you said we dipped down to about 10% a little north of 10% and we're

183probably trending back toward that 15% right and so I guess so piggybacking on that um because each school is different the percentage is different for each School uh have you thought about centralizing the remote learning because I know at at least you know my my son goes to Norton school and it seems like uh uh uh one teacher look like they they have to do both and the other two are just teaching in person or whatever and and so is there any way where you could centralize it so you have one teacher just teaching all the remote kids and then having the other teach you know I don't know because I know that there was some demand for that at the beginning of the year and I wasn't sure if that's an option if that

184screws things up uh with you know with all the other schools but you know I just wasn't sure if that was something that was even possible yeah I mean it's definitely possible um and we are looking at is there a place to add if we're going to add a teacher here or there um to do that there certainly there's a fiscal impact on that which we would manage um I think the other impact is and the and the one that's probably more critical for our parents is that you're no longer with the teacher you've had for 12 weeks and are going to this teacher and that never sounds too appetizing for for parents for good reason um and so you know back in August when you know nobody knew anything not that we know everything

185now but we know more back in August we thought you know all right we have very small percentages relatively where I can't afford to assign a remote teacher at every grade level we didn't we don't really have any we don't have a teacher dedicated to remote Learners and so as time is evolved that number hasn't really changed and and frankly there was pretty good hypothesis that come end of September end of October at the latest we'd all be doing remote learning anyway and so you know it was we wouldn't be thinking about kids changing teachers and now we're kind of far down the path to ask a family you know we could ask them do you want to change and we are looking at grade levels where maybe we have more remote Learners or certain

186buildings where Maybe we could facilitate that but um not sure that it's in the best interest of our kids to to just force them all over into that and you're Notting that but this kind of our thinking right and and and you know the at the presentation we saw a few weeks ago know not to knock it it was a very Rosy presentation of of how teachers were were teaching kids and remote kids at the same time and I I can just imagine how difficult that can be so I yeah I just was wondering if that was a consideration but I you know kudos to the teachers who are able to I guess use both sides of their brain at the same time and uh and and be able to to do that um yeah

187retrosp great difficulty retrospectively showing those people that we did is is almost a problem because you know there there are only a handful of people that can make it look as easy as they do um the vast majority of us like my s included you know would have a lot of trouble um and so you know they're doing their absolute best to make it work but I want to tell you you know I the thing that keeps me up at night is not covid it's the mental health and well-being of our staff because the the challenges they face are so different than anything they've ever faced and they have astronomically high expectations of themselves which is typically a good thing when you know what you're doing but if you had an high expectation of me

188as a marathon runner I would be very frustrated very quick you know it's it's so it's so different and it's so challenging that that's what keeps me up at night how they're how they're managing that and frankly it's hard like they're not managing it well and we need to figure out how do we better support them in that I mean that's part of what John and I were talking about today um we need to do that better and I just you know aside from saying you know it's like let's everybody take a week off which isn't really an option you know I we have to look at how do we better support them and and coming up with real actionable strategies um so that's what we're working on right now that that's good to hear

189thank you because there see definitely seems to be Lings yeah it's not a treasure problem either right right I'm sure sure like this isn't easy all of a sudden for teachers in Meridan or other towns I mean it's wicked hard um and so you know everybody's doing the best they can and I'm still really you know Rumblings are not you know I'm still really proud of what our teachers are doing and I you know although I think I would disagree with some of the um citations or or thinking um in the Norton letter I totally understand where it's coming from absolutely thanks Chef timy had a comment then I had something yeah um just on that topic uh I just wanted to say thank you to uh it is very difficult for the teachers I

190saw it firsthand last week my daughter was uh out she didn't have covid but we kept her out for 4 days she went for a test and just the interaction frankly it was kind of painful as she was sitting there trying to make sure the speaker was working her teacher couldn't hear it and her teacher was incredibly patient but even when it's only you know you get to two minutes and she has other students to talk to it's really difficult I mean I I feel like it's got to be nerve-wracking being a teacher trying to make this stuff work so I really really appreciate um what they what they are doing and what they're going through um and the reason that I actually had the comment I just wanted to say that uh I just

191feel I I agree with you on the point about there's a number of different factors to consider on the use of Wednesdays for in-person learning at the high school I just feel like on balance the in-person learning is better than the remote um you know I think for when you get to be a senior you're in college it does make sense but for those freshmen I'm suspecting they're more like eighth graders or younger kids than a senior sort of moving on to adulthood um so so my my preference would be to move that to in-person learning and that's it thank you Tony thank you to no worries I mean this I know we're running long but it's an important topic and unfortunately there's a lot going on so you know this is a chance to

192get a chance to talk about this stuff the the one thing I want I uh you know we didn't read the whole more letter detail not going to just for time conin but you know it will be it will be in the me minutes I do encour encourage people to read it it's again I thought they did a great job just for reference I think there were 38 teachers that signed this letter from Norton and they are obviously very proud obviously being the Blue Ribbon school but like all our teachers as Jeff mentioned you know they have very high expectations of themselves so you know they um you know I read it and you know it's it's it's obvious that you know they're not able to do the things they normally do preo which was

193you know contining to sword a confetti throwing you know all the tighten the community stuff they're doing is on hold of Co but you know what they're saying is in light of all this and and everything that's been put in place with CPS and the schools support current learning that they feel they have the tools and a know how to translate into a remote scenario which is I think is very positive you know so I think it's a great letter um you know but right now at Norton unless I'm mistaken unless the data was uh I didn't see all of it Norton is not at a highrisk situation where it's on the brink of going full remote if I if I had a you know worst case scenario if it ever happened if we had

194a further outbreaks some more classrooms at Highland they cross thres but I don't think Norton's in a dangerous situation in terms of covid spread yet but they're not even saying that um they're looking around what's going on in communities and other school districts and the cases and in Connecticut you know it's interesting they they say um you know what is CPS doing the flat and the curve and I I think it's obvious what we're trying to do and and you know per CC guidance and SD and so forth I think it's being handled fairly well what I would for me the question I have is what is the chur Community doing to flatten the curve and I'm going to read a paragraph in this letter which I think is very um it's very important and

195I and I want to put them on the spot but they felt compelled to write this which is you know quote teachers are relying on a community around them to keep them healthy with the uncontrolled spread in town it seems as though the Good Will to keep us safe is gone in the community um college students from out of state are returning home in droves community members continue to go to bars and restaurants and hold hold small intimate gatherings in their homes these are new super spreading events and you know the other the other point I touch upon which we talked about Labor is you know there's a staffing shorts persistent um you know despite pleasing jokes while you're pitching in you know it that's another real risk so I I don't think they're saying

196that there's a dire situation in Norton but looking at all everything going on around them and you know adults spreading the the the virus you know the wor effect is going to affect them and obviously their students so I think that the way we keep this going is the community does what it needs to do to to to flatten the curve and keep the spread low I thought that was very you know an important point they made there is there much very much concern I think as any teacher is in our school system about what's happening around them and the other thing I want to add too is uh you know there was one one other school or actually some U parents I wondered you know is it safe to even have substitutes in the

197schools particularly College interns coming in because the the age range of spreading is 20 29 can we do without them um or you was they worried about you know a intern or substitute getting it and spreading it across C let on outside the classroom I don't know if it's that simple um you know but we can't mandate testing of folks coming into the classroom I don't believe so is there any concerns Jeff with you know uh labor shortage and increasing sub com to the classroom and that being an Avenue for potentially covid getting into the classrooms no because we we haven't seen transmission it is a problem if an individual comes into the building and is positive and now I have to quarantine a boatload of people that they were in contact with because they

198were in different rooms all day that that would be the bigger concern I would have sure um but again everybody you know we we've quarantined well over a thousand people those tests aren't coming back positive now not every individual gets tested right it's quarantined but most do um because they want to make sure they don't have it and those tests are coming back negative so I'm I'm more concerned about if they're positive how many people are they going to take down with them by being you know quar I think that's for everybody's yeah yeah uh just one last thing I again I think this is you know every person in our school system and certainly all teachers not just Norton but uh you know again you know they're saying we want to be well enough

199to teach in the winter we want to be well enough to teach in person we want to be well enough to be our famili holiday season we want to be proactive I mean this is the I give all our teachers so much credit you know I it's not an easy job during the best of times Al during Co get through all of this you know as hard as it is they're they're still putting students interest above their own they're putting there's safety to help students you know there we have a incredible Workforce U so I I want to just read about the board M say you know we I thank you I think all our teachers our community knows the good work you're doing I haven't heard a single bad comment I heard a lot

200of PR Praise of our teachers administrators I know that the whole situation is not ideal but um you know we we do hold everyone in high regard you know I ask that you know stick with us you know keep that Spirit up our students are benefiting greatly from what you're doing and and I we all appreciate the fact that you're being proactive on this so you I hope um it sounds like number one no we're not going to go full remote anytime soon before Thanksgiving obviously to recap uh tonight um that could change right as time goes on but there are no plans to do that before Thanksgiving um no plans yet to after Thanksgiving it's going to depend on what the numers and the data tells tells tells us from our health official Etc

201Pro likely could happen in January if Co Peaks but we're got have to plan for that so I would hope in the meantime that you know appreciate you talking with John and I'm sure you're talking with the teachers of Norton you know to to kind of hear them out a little bit uh but we certainly support all of them and um I don't think there's anything we could really do on this tonight but um again I do like what the board is saying MERS as consensus is that you know I think you're doing a great job Jeff it's it's not easy you know if I felt that or saw that you weren't following State guidelines or working outside the guidelines or perhaps leaning down down a path that we're not comfortable with you know I

202would definitely call it out but that's not the case um so I I I don't know how to make everybody 100% happy uh we can never do that in the best of times but what we continue doing is you know keep hearing from folks so the good news is we are hearing from folks we being the Board of Ed CH Public Schools whether it's parents students teachers or employees keep it coming because oftentimes you know there's some good ideas there and it's it's good for us to to to see that feedback to ensure that you know we're we're looking at every angle so I appreciate everyone contacting us and appreciate everyone tonight uh sticking around at 10:30 so that being said are there any other questions for the superintendent report at this time see Adam

203Adam all right yes Adam I want to open up the Genie bottle just on the last question you just want to open up a bottle go ahead there is only water in this red cup um uh Jeff vaccinations yeah uh I know that um uh ches Bott had was talking about that several months ago that there was a plan in place are teachers considered uh first line uh responders like is that something that they could be offered and I'm assuming that it wouldn't be mandatory that they would have to be vaccinated is there anything about that uh you know no guidance at all yeah so um cheser Cott is working with the state on dissemination guidelines and really it's it's the highest priority or or high-risk folks healthcare workers um ultimately yes educators are are

204toward the top of that list um you know unless the state law required it you know I I don't foresee us mandating that people get that I think that's a a big ask um at this point with a a new vaccine you know we we only ask that when the state law requires it so you know same of students so that's that's kind of where we are at this point okay there we go thanks thank you soon as there are no other questions uh we have no old business uh we have no news bus new business I don't have a a chairperson update other than you know we'll coordinate the board of aded that uh set some meetings up December and January talk about uh C options as those details materialized but beyond that uh

205before I call to adjourn just remind those that might still be up if you are you deserve a medal um next board uh committee meeting is actually policy committee on uh Tuesday December 1st at 6:30 we have a curriculum committee meeting on December uh 14th at 7 pm and we have a December 17th uh board ofed business meeting at 7:30 pm. all these are virtual uh I see our budget schedules coming up in January I'm not going to read that till December that's depressing but that aside I just want to I just want to I forgot to say one thing uh that um regarding the chesher Coalition for change uh we we have been Communication in touch uh uh aan Team uh we've been going back and forth they've been you know great to talk

206to a while ago I was hoping we can actually use tonight's meeting to have some representation from the group here uh because the board does want to talk with them and they want to talk with us and share somebody his knowledge but given just the massive amount of uh Co related business items tonight we you know this would have been a five hour meeting so hoping to try to do something in December um you know and we've been communicating with on that but it does not mean that we're not doing anything uh on the topic so uh Faith mentioned the presentation a while back in curriculum uh probably this up in curriculum again soon so we will have that dialogue and you know have a better discussion uh so I apologize to the group for

207not be able to commentate you tonight uh they were very understanding though saying what's going on so soon and uh that being said I have nothing else uh do I have a motion to adjourn Katherine is there a second Adam seconds uh move to treasure board education adjourn the move the this meeting that is the motion all those in favor I unanimous thank you everyone um and again I appreciate everyone taking their time being here tonight and also a long day for a lot of us particularly our our Administration and Carol and team so thank you um all this I can tell you is is very worthwhile when we have community members that are asking two or three days in advance for the agenda for the board because they want to hear I think it's

208a great thing it tells me the information that that you put in time in to put together is very helpful so thank you for putting time in I know you guys don't get a lot of uh Kudos but thank you Jeff and Marlene and team and we'll keep at it so that being said uh I'm sure I'll hear from you tomorrow but I was gonna say if I don't hear from you any of you enjoy your Thanksgiving and for those of you out there thank you again for SAS tonight enjoy your Thanksgiving stay safe and healthy and we we'll talk to you soon all the meeting is adjourned happy than