001september 17th 2020 cheshire board of education opening a school's meeting uh mr netscape we have a role for quorum mr granville here was helen here ms harrigan here mr martelly here mr garagini here mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you carol ask the board uh please rise good evening everyone before we get started uh do we have a motion to amend the agenda this evening sure i would like to move to adequate session to discuss union negotiations to agenda item number 10. thank you man is there a second the second the motion is we move to add executive session to discuss negotiations to agenda item number 10. all those in favor aye is unanimous it passes thank you and for those for those watching if anybody hopefully there's quite a few
002tonight we like the uh the 200 numbers that we've been seeing these meetings lately on online so we had we added that because the agenda was posted earlier this week did not have uh executive session danny agenda but we do have an updated discuss with the board so we had to add it this evening thank you for bearing with us on that having said that welcome and uh jeff marlene we're going to turn over to you for the presentation of opening a school thank you very much mr perez i'm just going to step to the microphone here if you don't mind um first of all i just want to thank everybody for tuning in this evening and for all of your incredible flexibility uh during this really challenging time uh there is a it's a
003pretty lengthy powerpoint tonight given the very unique nature of the situation in spite of editorializing over there i will try my best to go through this as quickly as possible uh starting with the fact that you know this has been a summer like no other uh we had to absolutely redefine everything that we do within the school system and you know you don't necessarily think about a lot of these things when you think about coming back to school but they're all elements of our school day that had to be absolutely um redressed given the coven 19 situation so we will get into some detail on many of these items tonight but as i said in the interest of time we'll just kind of move along with that i want to pass this off to our
004chief operating officer mr maciana who will cover much of what we did during the summer and how that impacts our daily school life now that we've started up mr maciana hold our applause please thank you good evening everyone and welcome in the interest of time i will i will move this along as quickly as i possibly can which by a lot of people's definition is kind of slow but this summer i was no different in that we did have summer projects that were funded through a capital budget and you'll see here there's a picture of the 10 000 gallon underground oil storage tank that was removed at darcy this summer um whenever we remove an oil storage tank there's quite a bit of environmental testing that has to be done and i'm happy to report
005that there was no contamination from this tank we only have one remaining tank that needs to be removed next year and that's over too little so we've knocked off this project over the last three summers darcy will be heated by propane going forward so we will not have an underground oil storage tank to have to worry about in in 30 years from now at the high school we um if you've been by the high school you'll see that the front lot the driveway have been repaved we also re-carpeted 7 000 square feet of of carpeting in the library at this is a picture of the high school window replacement project that project is uh just about complete you know due to covid there was a delay in the awning windows actually you could see there
006those plywood sections those will be replaced and the blinds will be installed by early october so that that is a project that you know we were looking forward to getting started on those windows are low e and they're double panes so you know that will improve the comfort in those rooms both when it's hot and when it's cold this is a it's not a great picture i suppose other than this is the inside inside of the new highland government freezer that was completed over the summer and you could see that there's some shelving cheese fruit chicken turkey so the highland government freezer serves as the central storehouse for the items that we receive primarily from the usda we get about a hundred thousand dollars worth of product every year and our food service director madeleine
007dyker decides what product that um we're gonna basically get and and use in our schools over the of the course of the year so this was an important project for us um this summer we also completed the new office trailer that was installed at the bus depot that was actually funded by daco under their contract so we're happy that that that work has been done the old trailer has been removed we also finished the video surveillance system camera installations and that was about a three year project so those are done we've um exhausted all the funds that we had available for that we may ask for more to do additional camera installations um and then the last thing i put on the list there was um funded through the capital budget is the cheshire high
008school stadium lighting which we're converting to led the you know everything is in place except some of the components due to covid were delayed so that project will probably be completed in the late fall um since football is being you know canceled for the fall i i don't think it presents a huge problem and there is still lighting at the field it's just the old lighting beyond the summer capital funded projects these are the typical you know maintenance and repair projects that we do i'm not you could read it but i will highlight that the first item on the list the detail cleaning of all schools normally that is a job that is done by our cleaning contractor but because of of the school being shut down we were able to use our internal building
009maintainer staff to do all that summer cleaning and they started doing it during the period that students were not in school which was from march through june so that saved us a little over a hundred thousand dollars um that was um planned for when we prepared our you know our final budget and then you could see that there's a laundry list of things that we typically do we paint we do playground inspections you know we you know we'll do the annual maintenance on the emergency generator at the high school we inspect the cheshire high school utility tunnels to make sure that you know we have no no water coming into those tunnels to stay ahead of that um tree pruning and removal fence repairs those types of things then also across the district we did
010some um district-wide projects like catch basin rebuilds and cover replacements we did h duct cleaning you know primarily at cheshire high school we replaced exterior doors in sight and side lights over at the high school loading dock and we did some asphalt patching and we did line striping things like that and then this is a list of school specific items that we completed over the summer chapman we replaced the handicapped stair lift that's over by the main entrance bunch of door lighting and other projects we did a lot of work this summer obviously as we do every summer what i really wanted to spend the next couple of minutes on because this was new for this summer and i'm calling it the covert 19 preparedness so to get ready for this school year as as
011dr solon explained this was a summer like no other so there were tasks that we we added that we normally wouldn't do the first couple of items i want to mention one in order to create additional space in our classrooms and in our buildings in general we were able to take furniture and equipment and move it into storage and so that created additional classroom space so that we could maximize the social distancing between the desks that are in our classrooms we also installed tents at all our buildings except cheshire high school in humiston we didn't need to do it at cheshire high school because remember cheshire high school is in hybrid mode so only 50 of the students are in the building on any given day so there's enough room to spread out when we
012use the gyms in particular but we have about 30 000 square feet of tents installed those are being used very successfully at the elementary schools and at dodd's tent is 7 200 square feet so we're able to spread out um primarily to do lunch you know but it's also being used for mass breaks underneath those tents the you know tents i'll just caveat you know come november it's gonna probably be too cold to use those tents so you know we'll have to move those um students back into the building and figure some other strategies but you know that was certainly a good solution to get us through the first two months of school the other thing i want to highlight is you know there's a lot of guidance that has been issued by the state
013by cdc by our local health department you know things that you know you have to familiarize yourself you know with the guidance and then you have to implement the guidance so these are just some of the highlights it's not an exhaustive list there's a lot more than than this that you know has been done and that we're continuing to deal with but some examples at transportation even though our buses can accommodate 71 students or more we have some larger buses that'll accommodate 80. all our routes were mapped to 50 students or less per bus so that we could at least not have more than two students you know per seat the state guidance did say that you you could run your buses at full capacity but we were able to not do that and plan
014the route successfully and by the way we didn't add additional buses to do that one of the ways we were able to accomplish that is that we did have several hundred parents who signed an opt-out form so we were able to remove those students from the routes the mass police have been hired and basically these are bus monitors that get on the bus in the morning at 6 30 and then you know in the afternoon for the for the runs in the afternoon the goal there was to make sure that um students are compliant with the mask wearing that's why i call them the mass police um but i will say that the students have been terrific you know not only on the buses but you know generally speaking you know in in the classrooms
015and at school so the plan was to have the bus monitors ride those buses for the first two to three weeks of school we did have some difficulty getting those bus monitors so we don't have one bus you know one monitor per bus per day so they're being rotated very successfully the bus drivers are very grateful they feel that um you know they're able to continue their focus on the road while the bus monitors are focusing on the students but that's worked out very very well um and then we are disinfecting after the morning runs are done and after the afternoons are run uh afternoon runs are completed you know all the seats and the high touch surfaces on the buses are being disinfected again part of the state's guidance we hired day porters in
016all of our buildings to basically go through the building during the course of the day you know sanitize or disinfect all the high touch surfaces including the bathrooms so there's one in each of our buildings and that started as of august 31st their only job is to do sanitizing and disinfecting you know they're not there as an added resource for building maintenance they're solely focused on trying to stay on top of this disinfecting that has to be done and although the state wasn't very specific on what needed to be done we gave very specific instructions to the dayporters they are hired through performance environmental which does our building cleaning and then we added to the nightly cleaning that was always done additional disinfecting duties so we're disinfecting all the high-touch surfaces including student tests every
017night in our schools that is an add-on that was done once a week but with covid we're doing it nightly by the cleaning contractor and beyond that and i think you'll see that maybe in the next slide you know we also provided product inside our schools so that the teachers and in the case of the high school the students can can wipe down with products to either sanitize or disinfect we've added across the district signage um floor decals you know to try and and encourage people to keep their six foot distance at all time you know we stamped some of our sidewalks with with markings six feet apart you know some of them are kind of clever you know maintain your six that kind of a thing we've added acrylic shields in all the high
018traffic areas like the offices and the nurses um areas uh the library circulation desk you know hvac was a there was quite a bit of guidance that came from the state so we did have all our mechanical systems and not every building in fact only three buildings have true air conditioning systems um most of the rest of the buildings you know have you know at a minimum ventilation systems but not all buildings do you know and even our windows they've been inspected and repaired to the extent we can some of the windows are so old you can't get repair parts um you know as part of the state's guidance you're supposed to start up your air circulating air circulating systems two hours before occupancy we're doing that you know we've upgraded the filters where there
019are filters to be upgraded to merv 13 so it it will remove finer particles out of the air and the last thing that i wanted to mention is that we did hire collios facility engineering to detect to conduct further reviews you know of of all our um mechanical heating and cooling systems uh in line with the state's guidance we've provided hepa filtration units for the nurses offices and the isolation rooms isolation rooms have been set up in all the buildings in accordance with the state's guidance so that if the student is reporting some type of symptoms they have to go into an isolation room and we also had a higher isolation monitors for each of those rooms so that's been done hepa filters are recommended just for those rooms they're not recommended for classrooms in
020line with the state's guidance so you know again we we've done everything that we possibly could could to um you know meet the guidance and exceed the guidance to the extent that we could some other things school meals uh are being served but they everything is streamlined and pre-packaged so it's not the traditional lunch line where you go and you you select your food we're pre-packaging the meals we converted to a scan to purchase instead of having students punching their id into a pin pad we've also on the technology side we've increased the bandwidth that we have available because we know we're doing more video streaming um that's been an area that we've been struggling with a little bit with google me it's it's more of a google issue than a a network issue but
021you know we're we're trying to to you know deal with these problems as they come up and and so far we're doing okay you know some days are better than others so we are making some further upgrades to the google licensing we have in an effort to get higher priority when when items aren't working as well as they can and we do have quite a few students that are remote so this is an important task for us and the broadcast classrooms are up and running across the school district which we've talked about providing ppe and cleaning products for our staff this was a huge focus and it it still is a huge focus for us the um what we had to do and i'm just going to know because i think this is important but
022we've appointed a district ppe coordinator and each school has its own ppe coordinator so that if there's a product that's needed the the ppe's coordinator's job is to you know look at the inventory as we get a couple of weeks into school we'll be able to better predict what the needs are so you know we my my operations assistant is the district ppe coordinator and pretty much that's all she's been doing for the last four weeks and you see a picture there of some of the items that we have stocked you know in our undisclosed location where we keep our ppe some of the ppe is very difficult to get you know sanitizing and disinfecting wipes in particular are hard to get hand sanitizer is a little bit easier to get right now masks we
023have plenty of face shields we've got enough of right now disposable gowns those were able to get pretty easily um the other thing that i wanted to mention is cleaning sanitizing and disinfecting you'll see that you know this is highlighted um this is a great it's not going to work so we're going to skip that but you know part of what we've done is not only have we trained our building maintainers but we've had to educate our staff as well on you know the difference between cleaning sanitizing and disinfecting you know cleaning is what you typically would do with soap and water it does uh reduce the number of germs sanitizing you can do with soap and water some there are some diluted products that will sanitize you know sanitizing generally reduces the number of
024germs and which is okay so if you just sanitize a surface it reduces the number of germs on that surface and at times that's all you should be doing um you know on things like gym equipment you don't want to disinfect you can't disinfect constantly disinfecting is typically harsh chemicals um so there's a big difference between sanitizing and disinfecting disinfecting kills germs there's no doubt that's that's the best thing you could do but there's an appropriate time to do it and then we have also spent a lot of time not only educating you know ourselves but trying to educate you know our staff on you know what type of products should we be using i did bring you know some of my favorite items i didn't bring them you know to the podium right now
025i'll spay you the details but we did find some excellent wipes and a very limited supply we're able to get through our cleaning contract are called oxavir tb um used in hospitals the great thing about it is it's hydrogen peroxide based you'd need no pe no ppe when you use it so no gloves no mass no respiratory it's got a one minute contact kill time for covet just very difficult to get so we've taken whatever inventory we had and we sent it to the high school because at the high school students are moving between classes you know and using the same desks so the students are wiping down right now using the ox of your wipes if we can continue to get those we will great product absent that this week we received another product
026called enviro cleanse a very safe product to use it'll sanitize you wipe it down from a spray bottle so it's not a wipe the only difference is it's got a 10 minute contact time to kill covet so you have to use the application appropriate with with the contact time and so we've been sending out procedures we have posted to all our employees a product list of the products that are used and can be used safely by students staff and then there's the products that are used by our building maintainers and then our professional cleaners so we've spent a lot of time we're trying to do this right we don't want to put any kind of a disinfectant into somebody's hands that's going to hurt them and so you know where it's appropriate we've opted to
027just provide some basic sanitizing wipes that are alcohol-based or some other mild product based and that concludes my my remarks thank you uh mr massiana um you know as i say thank you to mr manciana i just want to again take a moment the buses right now do you have any expectations whether the bus ridership would change have you gotten any feedback from parents or anything like that uh it's kind of early i do expect the bus ridership will go up assuming that the infection rate stays low and and i think there'll be a sense of comfort this is my speculation there'll be a sense of comfort and students will get back on the bus and any parent that wants to add a child to the bus all they have to do is contact our
028transportation department and we're going to do that as quickly as we possibly can usually today sure i uh again just want to thank all of our parents and students who've been so flexible this is a different world than they're used to and i appreciate the trust they put in us to keep their children safe and that we are going to you know work as diligently as we can to make an education that's as normal as we possibly can i more importantly though as it relates to preparations for the opening of school there are so many people who had to just do incredibly different things than they ever have that of course continues but the preparation uh dating back to june july when we had um you know our team together to try and create the
029reopening of schools but ias food service uh teachers of course uh maintenance professionals nurses secretaries technology specialists i mean we have technology specialists working over the weekend bringing their spouse in to help you know clone computers and i mean people have just gone so far out of their way and our administrative team you know they all of these folks have engaged in a herculean effort and without them we could not have reopened schools the way that we have and the three-day orientation process all the preparation that they put into that really i think helped ease our students and staff into this it hasn't made it quote easier but um we're trying to normalize it as much as possible and you know i just want to thank all of these groups again our administrative team all
030summer long our entire group and thank you all all of our staff members for what you've done for our students and community and of course each other so school opening convocation we as you know have uh at least our board members realize we have a generally very invigorating um you know edutainment we call it we try and make it really engaging for uh folks to come and enjoy the day uh vin gave his own qvc uh episode with ppe and you guys missed that this evening but a couple of the key events are really the naming of the instructional assistant of the year that's something that we started uh last year and esther harvey is a beloved instructional assistant and we were proud to honor her as well as our teacher of the year deb
031menke i really encourage anybody who's watching to visit our website and look for teacher of the year you can hear her speech there it's really powerful and i think it'll help you understand why she was our teacher of the year really great stuff um so typically what we do is go through the school by school reports and kind of give an overview of the opening of school and how it went um every time you go to darcy it's it's just like this honey i shrunk the kids moment for me and and it's really a lot of fun uh to see that the kids arriving at school and all the wonder and excitement that they have to show up for their first days of preschool or kindergarten it's really great stuff but you can see that
032you know even for our youngest students things look much different with masks and taped off areas and so we had projected through the new england school development council nasdaq last year to have 64 students in kindergarten at darcy we have 62 so pretty close to projected at chapman you know you'll see that tape on desks in a lot of places kids spaced out differently and a teacher teaching remotely to students there with no mask on but here's the arrival we've all become much better i'm sure socially reading eyes and a lot of smiling eyes through those masks it was a lot of fun on the first day of school and so we were projected for 330 total students at chapman and uh have 323 enrolled doolittle so in our do little enrollment we had a
033projection of 469 students with 437 students enrolled at highland we had uh really kind of an anomaly here 300 or 713 students projected in 760 students enrolled so you know we're not quite sure what happened i know that you know across connecticut there's been a real demand for real estate um there were no new developments built or anything but apparently there was a little bit more turnover in the highland uh residential area and it really shows in our enrollment at that elementary school it's pretty yeah yeah but uh has explained that the turnover housing stock treasurer so i'm not surprised by that yeah and i you know i i love to tongue-in-cheek kind of say people don't move here for the night life and you know you can see it in our school enrollment norton
034school you know another exciting opening i i think everybody was so enthusiastic about returning to school even if we weren't doing a lot of our traditional pomp and circumstance uh like with countdowns and things like that and kazoos and the usual stuff that we do but it was still really it was it was just special this year to see each other and that was that was really great part of our opening day uh 430 students projected it norton with 405 arriving you can see what it typically does there to the class size even 25 students across seven grades it really doesn't move the class size average all that much the middle school level at dodd [Music] see folks outside under the tent so our enrollment it dodd the 631 projected 629 actual so pretty much
035right on treasure hi giving out senior shirts right of passage very exciting our link crew team helping freshmen and find their way and uh 1392 projected in 1395 enrolled so pretty good size still building our overall enrollment summary uh a total k-12 enrollment of 4030 was projected 4011. now the projections arrived well before kovid as you know we build the projections in in january when we're writing our budget so there were actually 32 students who elected to engage in homeschooling due to kovid they declared that specifically so actually we would be a little bit above projected uh which is a shift for us and moving you know north in terms of our enrollment so interesting kind of like chuck from colliers was saying part of this presentation has to include an approval of our strategic
036plan the strategic plan was originally drafted to include things like our mission statement which i will reiterate that cheshire public schools in partnership with families in the community will prepare all students to meet the challenges of an ever-changing global society by providing high quality educational opportunities that inspire excuse me lifelong learning and service to others so our strategic initiatives were initially created in 2011 it was designed to be applied through i know you know as far back as last december you heard me talking about you know this year would be a year that we would review that and kind of move forward now right now we're in a little bit of survival mode um but our intention is to review our initiatives and move forward at the end of this year to plan strategic initiatives
037for uh coming years now i'll talk a little bit about vuca later but the world has changed dramatically in the last 10 years i went into a class at dodd today they were talking about self-driving cars and a student indicating he had ridden in one and i asked the students eighth graders at dodd how many of you think by the time you graduate the cars will be driving themselves and a lot of hands went up the world is changing at an incredible pace and so i think our strategic initiatives will likely not last us 11 years and really frankly when you see them a lot of them will be more like goals that we have as opposed to perhaps vision and we'll talk a little bit about that throughout the year many of the initiatives
038we had have been fulfilled we reviewed them in 1617 when actually when i was hired and we went through a lot of work with the community and and that has really sharpened and and focused where we are uh directed and i'll talk a little bit about that too so these are the initial initiatives that um cover a number of of key elements within the school system curriculum being one of them talks about you know common core state standards is remember these were written in 2011 most of them instructional strategies again you know we we now focus very much on complex thinking which marlene will talk about which shifts our instructional strategies student work and an emphasis on the treasure performance standards which are still relevant that was really forward thinking in 2011 and is still
039an important component of what we do because we are no longer really focused as much on content as we are skills assessment evaluation technology think about how much technology has changed in the last 11 years 10 years personalized learning that was revised or added uh in 2014 i think and as you know we did a lot of work with our committee last year to take a look at that so um the cheshire performance standards again you know we talk about why this is critical these are really aspirations that are skill based and not necessarily knowledge based when in 2016-17 when we reviewed everything with the committee we used to have knowledgeable person as one of our performance standards uh and when i went to pto meetings and met with business leaders and students and we
040kind of assessed which one of these do you think is most critical for the class of 2020 at that time those were the students that were starting in kindergarten uh or had started in kindergarten no no four years later i guess i don't even know what year it is anymore but they they said it was the class of 2030 excuse me and they were saying knowledgeable person was least important already it is important to have knowledge i don't want to discount that but these skills are super critical for our kids and we're still very much focused on that so the direction of our schools i know you've seen this many times we are focused on complex thinking and social emotional learning this is an area where um you know we're not really willing to negotiate
041we are focused on these things as a community we've developed this we're going to take another look at it and does this need to be adjusted um and we're going to talk about really some of the dividends that have paid off in that process but um to talk and go a little bit deeper into social emotional learning and complex thinking i'm going to ask our assistant superintendent ms solano to try and elaborate on some of those things i think you can from that mike yeah thank you by mentioning that um the presentation you just want to remove your mic excuse me mask for this part of it can you hear me okay now better better but project okay so regarding social emotional learning i wanted to remind folks that originally we had talked about having
042the state education resource center come and do a presentation about the work that will be involved with them this year and we have moved that to our next curriculum committee meeting where we will more thoroughly address our comprehensive plan for social justice and equity work so i really see that as something that's falling in line with uh our social emotional learning plan for this year the additional things that we are going to continue to work on are building capacity of our k-12 staff specifically in this instance our support staff we had trained hall monitors and study hall monitors from the high school this year in both trauma-informed practices that relate to restorative practice so that is is helping to get that message out to all of our staff in addition we are supporting new teachers
043with sel coaching that was done for our elementary teachers during the new teacher orientation where they worked with one of our consultants on effective classroom strategies as well as our secondary new hires uh we're also working separately on restorative practices so we see that as as building building our capacity and making sure that the reach goes out to all of the adults in our district who work with children we are going to continue to work with our elementary schools on strengthening those responsive classroom practices that's something that's really infused through faculty meetings and through grade level meetings and as i mentioned the other night at curriculum we had a day devoted to social emotional learning and how we would use all of these tools that we've been exposed to to help during this pandemic right
044especially when you think about how traumas impact students and student learning and that for many students in some ways this this was a trauma for folks so we want to be very cognizant of that so the middle and high school is is doing that through their work with restorative practice and also continuing our work at darcy in looking at student behavior through an attachment lens and looking at the whole child we also continue to use ruler and the practices down at yale by dr mark brackett complex thinking as the as the slide indicates is one of our marquee issues it's something that we continue to work on and we really feel that if if we have a strategic and systemic alignment of our curriculum instruction assessment and our pd and we have the resources around
045complex thinking then our instructional practice will demonstrate that and basically what what all of this is saying that is that as a result student achievement will increase and so we have certainly seen that pay off by number of measures if we move on to the next slide this is some complex thinking strategies that we have developed through our implementation of learning walks and while our learning walks have been paused we still continue to work on effective questioning applying learning using rich literature text and non-fiction text to compare um to compare issues and to use that to solve real world problems i know that uh particularly our social studies department has been working on how students can take take informed action by taking their education and what they're learning to apply it to situations in real
046life and in their own lives as well we're also brainstorming ways for teachers to share strategies so while it may not look the same way well it may not look the same way that um learning walks looked i was at norton today i'm not sure what that even is why it's doing that um yeah um because that's not really my phone um so i was at norton today and we were talking about um and and you could relate to this from what you saw at chapman the other day seeing teachers teaching the in-person and remote students and that we want to be able to build capacity around that as well and wouldn't it be great to have a teacher come in and watch that happening for those people who have adapted to it really well
047and flawlessly so that we could build capacity around that so that sort of ties into those complex thinking strategies that we're working towards thank you marlene so you know we mentioned some of the dividends of our work um we have received many honors and i i lead with this slide because it's not just our academic achievement we don't have transcripts that graduate we graduate students and people and so it is important that we have a well-rounded experience for our students to include arts and athletics and you know focusing on creativity and things that aren't necessarily always readily measured through standardized assessment but our skill our drive is also to develop the skills in our students that they can be successful in pretty much anything that they tackle whether it be standardized assessment or other problems
048such as demonic possession of cell phones or whatever marlene was just dealing with but um we really want our students to to be able to solve problems and be creative thinkers um nevertheless you know we've had tremendous success academically um you know 33 point gain on the average chsat score i know there was a lot of angst about if you look at the college board website our next day for a scheduled sat was september 26th that's a saturday and if you look up cheshire on their site it says it said closed like we cancelled it and we were like what are you talking about you know we called them up and actually somebody coded it wrong and it was supposed to be another school in connecticut and they accidentally coded treasure we are holding the
049sats on september 26th um and i know dr gad was something sending something out about that um uh again our student achievement you know k through or three through eight uh has been exceptional ranking um we've gone from seventh in the durg and ela to first from 11th in the derg in math to fourth over the last uh couple of years our overall state performance we were about 40th uh three or four years ago now we're fifth in connecticut and you look at the other schools on that list um most of which are in fairfield county most of which are expending about five thousand dollars more per student than we are i think we recogn you know appreciate that we're a tremendous value and uh the work that our students staff and community have done
050to put us in the top five in connecticut is very impressive and it's also success for all learners and if you look at the the graph on the left indicates the english language arts performance for students receiving special education services where you know we were lagging behind the derg and now we're well outperforming the derg our special ed performance is not just some of the best in dirk b but best in connecticut so um for both math and for ela we've we've soared so we're really proud of that success so where are we today and i i told you i'd mention vuca a little bit later on that stands for volatile uncertain complex and ambiguous that was initially uh identified by some harvard researchers but then really adopted by the u.s war college of the
051at west point where they used that to describe planning for combat post-cold war and this has been really adopted in a lot of strategic planning in industry and uh private sector but it really i can't think of a better explanation for what we're dealing with right now or a better label than vuca it is incredibly volatile we change almost hourly in terms of responses and information it is very uncertain um you know what you think is going to happen tomorrow may very nice it's very close to the the volatile and what i think might happen two weeks from now is is wildly uncertain and ambiguous there are not a lot of right or wrong answers here um as we go through this work so um it is like sailing the ship through a massive hurricane
052and being bounced all over the place we're trying to keep all the folks on the boat trying to keep the boat moving in the right direction not worried about what's necessarily served for lunch on the cruise we just want to make sure we're continuing to get through this hurricane and reach calmer waters so that we can arrive at our destination to continue the metaphor um but this is definitely an avuca period that we're working through right now in education um so you know marlene i asked her to talk a little bit about the next couple of items here is it relates to you know our vuca experience and what we're doing today like you know every day this changes and what are we doing to continue to keep the boat moving in the right direction
053so marlene thank you it's hard to describe um the things that we're doing that are new in the classroom right because teachers are so good at having procedures and structures in place to manage the time to manage the students to manage the physical space and so they've had to revamp all of that because all of that is different the students need to stay separated the students need to wear masks and have breaks um when did we ever think that giving someone help by kneeling down next to them by their chair or whispering some words of encouragement next to them wouldn't be possible and you'd have to work really hard mentally to think how are you going to get that same message across without even having a facial expression to share with the child so our
054teachers are really feeling this very very personally because all of the things that they've been taught our best practice and that they've worked on their craft for many years they don't have those strategies anymore so using google meet simon we learned how to use google me but to do that simultaneously while attending to the students on a screen and also attending to the kids in the classroom is an incredible challenge navigating the audio and making sure that when you are saying something to a child that it's not overheard by the masses is is something that weighs upon them as they're going through their day timing of their lessons so that they get back from the mask break and the hand washing break in time for the parent at home to make sure that their child
055is on that video call they might be able to keep themselves on time but they're now keeping the entire classroom on time to be back i had a wonderful teacher yesterday tell me about how she uses exit tickets for math and how she's able to immediately gauge where the learners are and she said it's a she's trying to reinvent now i have the paper tickets in front of me for these students but how do i get those k the remote kids how do i get their exit tickets so i could move along so things that took you know five minutes before are not taking five minutes any longer and teachers are frustrated and i feel bad they're frustrated with themselves because they're not able to move at the pace that they were they're not able
056to teach in the way that they were and so they're walking around feeling pretty defeated and exhausted at the end of each day because they don't feel that they're doing good enough so that gives you a little bit of an idea about them doing something brand new in the classroom it's like their first teaching year of teaching all over again with the safety features etc and and not having had the training to do it this way so i i i tip my hat to them and i am just impressed with what they are able to do and i know i know that they will continue to make it better and do it better but that's that's an idea of how things are going on that front um we are benefiting from the technology that we
057have we are so grateful for the broadcast rooms because in those rooms things are going pretty well pretty well it's still all of those things like we talked about but the um the the greater ease at which they are able to reach both in-person and remote students is at a higher level than not higher level but it it's if the facility of it is much better than having a chromebook in front of you and trying to live stream to to those classes so we we recognize the gift that those are in having those systems um and certainly more would be a significant upgrade to the level of service that we're we're able to provide um i i did want to talk a little bit about attendance i i know oh one more thing on on
058on sort of the the learning and the in person and remote um tomorrow we worked really really hard and the curriculum team along with our tech integration specialists and our technology department we are ready tomorrow to be able to send home nearly 2 000 devices to students in grades k through 6 along with power chords so the the the notice went out today to our principles and people are our media techs are readying those there was a lot that needed to be done as far as waiting for those power cords to come in making sure every device is scanned out to a student in the way a library book would be so we're asking parents to make sure they hang on to those cords at home so that they can charge those devices and the
059devices will go back and forth with the students um a little side note the first grade chromebook uh it's called a ta it's a chrome tab 10e for any parents who might be watching and get these at home it looks like it's fragile they are actually ruggedized and they do not need a case we have sort of you know done some of our own demonstrations on them so if they do come home and there's a concern about that please know they are ruggedized certainly take care of them but i did want to mention that tonight so those those will be going home tomorrow along with some information for parents on how they can have that technology support for our cheshire public schools issued devices and we are also getting the message out to families that
060students should be using the cheshire public schools device because those are loaded with all of the tools that our students need and if you do need tech support we can support what we've provided but it would be really difficult to uh for us to support something that we don't know what's been loaded on it so i wanted to make that that note the next item on on the powerpoint is regarding tracking attendance and we absolutely want to encourage students to engage in learning in person and remote and it's really important to all of us as a community in order to continue to come to school every day for as long as possible we want to encourage students to stay home if they are not feeling well above all is safety and if they are feeling
061well enough to join a google meet that's been pre-set then they are welcome to do so when that's available for our in-person students who are in-person learners that might not always be possible we won't be able to get that message to the teacher to have them now invite that student to participate in a google me but for students who that is already available because of either their class or because that's something that that is already being provided they are are welcome to join if we're thinking about this from the frame of what's best for a student and if the student wants to get that learning even though they may be home with a headache or the sniffles or whatever it might be and and they're willing to do that then we will provide that we
062can provide that to them um it might it won't always be available however if you have an in-person teacher or if the student is in a classroom that doesn't have that it just might not be feasible for us to do that for a student who is taking a a sick day in other words i want folks to remember that there's no award for perfect attendance this year that has sort of gone by the wayside and we need to report our attendance to the state but obviously we are being much more flexible in how that attendance is taken and there there are not penalties for our kids who can't be there right and so if there's an in-person learner who decides that their they know their teacher has a meet and maybe they have a headache
063in the morning so they can't go to first or second period but by third and fourth period they opt to to join on that's great i don't want anyone to be alarmed if they are marked absent for that day there's not a mechanism for our organization to track the first period second period etc to determine what we call them at the end of the day so if we're focused on the learning and the learner wants to be a part of that and it's available to them they're welcome to join it i i don't think we can get caught up in if it's a an a present or absent day that's secondary and it really in this year of covid does not carry the weight that it did in the past yeah perfect attendance this year
064is you stay home if you're sick that's perfect um and we do want students i was talking to the union vice president today about this and she like flipped out she was like no no please first of all stay home second of all tune in if you can if you know it's available to you like marlene said not every single classroom has that part of that's tech related part of it is how the infrastructure was set up in the teacher with the google meet but as much as you possibly can we want you participating you may be marked absent but we don't care about that um you know you're not going to get an award if you like marlene said if you're not marked absent at all we have to do that to track with
065the state but we want you to participate and we're not we're not going to have you sit you know repeat a grade because of absences for that sort of thing you know that please engage if you can um finally i want to talk really quickly about managing incidents you know as i think many people are aware last night we we had an incident and when i say incident i mean something related to kovid uh and we've had a variety of them from the outset you know from our professional development days where starting with an administrator who we thought could have had kovid she is super high fever feeling terrible negative test but we notified people um notified our staff she was before students arrived and we had a teacher who went for a quick test
066it was called and told it was negative called back told it was positive had a more thorough test the i think it's p c r i had that test and had that all evaluated by the state state said no you were never positive you're negative you know you're you're good we've had some other incidents where people have been close contacts so a class a close contact i want to remind folks is somebody who if you have been within six feet of an individual for 15 consecutive minutes or more and that that person was positive now you are considered a close contact that person must self quarantine now other people that have been around that close contact are not required to self quarantine um you know for medical reasons that are beyond my understanding um but
067i know that this is what the cdc says department of public health more esposito everybody has repeated this to me therefore and they know more about this than i do so we're trusting in that and our rate of spread has been low so i i trust in that um so when we get an incident there is a an absolute ripple effect of things that occur last night vin test texted me at 8 8pm and said we were notified that an employee at um highland tested positive so we have to immediately engage in our own like contact tracing we have to contact deep not dph but uh chespercott we have to um evaluate who was this individual in touch with now granted with a contractor who doesn't know the other people who work in the building
068who did you come in contact with today uh they could say well i don't know this dude he looks like really handsome and people would say the superintendent i don't know like how do you know let's try how do you know so um you know as we work through that process last night we couldn't be a hundred percent certain if you know they said no i didn't come into contact with anybody which is great that's a great start but we like to verify this with other people at two o'clock in the afternoon it's a little easier than it is at nine pm so not being absolutely certain we make the decision better to be safe than to be sorry she said no i wasn't in contact with anybody and then i find out tomorrow when
069everybody's in school oh yeah i forgot i had lunch with those five people now we have a serious problem that could impact not only our availability to provide teachers and staff but could make people sick in the worst case scenario so we make the decision at that point it's better to be safe confirm with our staff that nobody has been in contact with this individual and indeed you know early this morning we were able to do that maura was able to review the test results able to confirm you know these things that's why we had to go to a two-hour delay this morning so people could get devices so that we we could get our feet underneath us today and have that remote so our intention is not to close schools every time somebody tests
070positive our goal ultimate goal is that we don't have staff and in students testing positive which you know that is another reminder to please wear your masks out in public um you know when our students they're so religious during the day from that time they go through the door to the time they leave it they are so good about it then they leave and i worry about it you know because i see kids in the community not wearing masks not being socially distant and you know they're still playing on teams they're still traveling doing some of these things it's important to wear that mask to protect yourself and your family and everybody else and i did send that message in a video message to all of our 9 through 12 students last friday you know
071thanking them for doing being so vigilant in the building but let's not forget we're not just exposed in the building you know you're exposed when you go anywhere so that um is an important reminder for folks if somebody is positive and we affirm that there's an individual that's positive we will continue to work with chespercott we will identify for the 48 hours before uh that that person was identified or that you know from from the time that they started to have symptoms or if they were asymptomatic tested positive the 48 hours before who was within six feet of that individual for 15 minutes or more we need to know that now and we do that we would do that during the day it's much easier obviously than at nine at night to get responses from
072people we would do that as expediently as possible move as quickly as possible to quarantine those who have to be and open the next day that that would be the the plan um again like like last night it's not always that smooth it was that smooth on monday night when we when i was doing the same thing but three hours earlier in the night we were able to to work through that process much easier so you know when these things come up we do that now last night we emailed the highland community it impacted the highland community that's what we will continue to do email the the building now you know in a nanosecond it's available online but as we're trying to prep this stuff when we're trying to we're not trying to prep messaging
073and get into powerschool at night school messenger notices that go out to the entire district that slows the process down actually it took us a long time actually to make the robo calls last night through power school for just highland if i'm trying to do stuff like that district-wide for thousands of people a building itself is over a thousand people in most cases so that's why we stick to the one building for expedience and efficiency um but let's face it i mean we did post to facebook we'll continue to do that and that gets the information out pretty quickly too i think it was like a tenth of a second between the time that we sent the email out quicker and tony was already getting calls from press i got calls from press you know
0749 48 at night somebody calling my house confirmed stuff i did take the call um you know our last then and i our last text was about 11 o'clock last night so we work it's a it's a thorough process and i just wanted to kind of explain what what we go through as we manage an incident finally i would just say as i think marlene said our goal is to get every student back in school as much as we possibly can every day and you know we will continue to evaluate with medical professionals what's appropriate the biggest stumbling block we have at cheshire high from getting people in every day all day are the mitigation strategies we're required to implement in order to provide a safe environment and then reduce the spread i hate the
075hybrid rel you know my oldest is doing it in high school you know actually my middle schooler is also doing it where we live the it's it's tough you know i'd really prefer kids to be there every day all day our staff would prefer that but we can't implement the appropriate mitigation strategies to ensure that we can continue that for an extended period because um you know they're just you saw the enrollment 1400 students alone plus another couple hundred staff and the building is not really large enough to accommodate you know you'd have lunches all day every day people spread every it would dramatically impact programming you couldn't walk through hallways they're just not wide enough to accommodate sixteen hundred people changing periods so once we can get a clearance on those mitigation strategies we
076will start to introduce more students into the building because i know that that's what they want their parents want we want in the meantime like you know our other schools we are doing the very best we can under these vuca conditions to provide the best educational experience we can you also saw the data our kids are coming into this pretty well off they are outperforming most everybody in connecticut at least by the measures that we have that can compare us to other people in connecticut so our students are not going to come through this process you know absolutely backward which is not not going to happen i mean everybody globally is dealing with the same problems and our kids have learned a tremendous amount it may not be the stuff we had in our curriculum
077but they've learned a lot over the last six months related to technology and engagement and epidemiology and other things that they will carry with them the rest of their lives it's again not what we planned in our curriculum but our kids will be okay you know and i want our teachers to hear that too that as much as they are frustrated by not being able to provide the way they used to provide i was talking to a teacher of 30 years she's an amazing teacher earlier today and just like i have this whole bag of tricks i can't use any of them anymore like everything i've accumulated over 30 years of knowledge in my profession is pretty much gone and so i'm just relying on i know kids i know my content under these circumstances
078i'm gonna do the best that i can but it feels like she said if people were to watch me teach on video i'd be humiliated because this isn't what i do this is not at all the way i teach this is what i'm trying to stumble through in this situation so reminding our students and our parents and our staff that our kids will be okay um they'll still go on to be super successful and and with these complex thinking skills we'll be okay but hang in there um and hopefully we're through the choppy water really soon we all want that so with that that concludes my uh slides and presentation for tonight i appreciate your attendance and that yeah you know watching on tv i should say i guess thank you thank you jeff uh
079just some comments i i have questions but just remind everyone that we do have superintendent's report and i instead we go more detail on some topics then if we like um i forgot to mention earlier and begin the meeting that for those watching if you have questions concerns comments you can submit those to cpskovid19 at cheshire.k12.ct.us which is our email i just been using for during the meetings um it's a couple of comments you know first i um and i was speaking about the whole board i'm sure the board would want to mention something too but um it has been a year like no other has been a summer like no other i know typically during the summer months students families in particular teachers employees get a chance to take a break from the schools
080even jeff and vincent to get ready for reopening and you know parents were plugged into that there were a number of meetings that the administration folks reached out to to get input free opening a lot of legwork a lot of creativity i'm still uh pretty impressed the fact vincent and jeff that you're able to at least get uh classroom technology for 56 classrooms because it's pretty much entertainment at this point out there um even the power chords that marlene mentioned it's even my company we're having a difficult time getting extra monitors and keyboards even headsets for our employees so um you know there's there's a lot of creativity so i personally want to thank everyone in our school district for all the howard to get to this point i will tell you it's been a
081lot of positive feedback we've been hearing i've been hearing um i think we have some parents that where their kids are able to um tune in remotely from home parents see for a few seconds what the teacher is is saying and they're impressed they're impressed with the enthusiasm for the teachers and support so i mean there's issues here and there but i've also seen our district respond pretty quickly to those too and it's an evolving process so i don't want to under uh estimate the impact that all employees are having so thank you um everyone i know we're just it's first quarter of the game right we're but we're well on their way and uh we'll see how it goes but i don't know if any other members want to comment in the presentation yes
082tim thank you um a couple of so you know our infection rates are still or they're at one percent and that's great relative to other states but we pre-k at darcy right yes and i think it was a day ago we got a new mandate down to three has to wear masks so that is that is the plan at darcy yeah i just i understand it it just seems like insanity to me to ask a three-year-old to do that but understand he is well versed in the ppe domain and even ordered pediatric masks okay so we're we're covered there yeah um but it's definitely a shift it was confusing because the office of early childhood education and department of ed had two different guidance groups and so they've reconciled that and pushed pushed the mask
083mandate down to three years old so it's different to see a three-year-old the mask um sports at dodd are they happening not right now uh we are exploring as of october 1st though i told people we would look at that at october 1st but at this point we don't plan on having sports certainly not interscholastic and potentially not intramural but we haven't made that decision fully yet okay yeah i know i i was talking to a friend from north haven and he said middle school has inter intramurals this year and that's at least for the fall that's what they're planning on right yeah we're exploring that option um if our numbers were to stay low and we remain in school it may be a potential but right now we i'm worried about tomorrow you know
084and then next week we'll start to think about that for october 1st and there's nothing big happening tomorrow it's just the point that we're trying to get through day by day yeah no i got it i got it okay and you just you just said what you said at the meeting a week ago which is there's no decisions on any is it basically any sports having matches games before october 1st that yes okay so even even cross country or swim which are listed as low risk yeah no we're not doing anything so there's not even a middle school level before october 1st oh i'm talking about the high school level at the high school level uh the ciac did release a fall sports schedule today for safe sports uh for low risk sports [Music] um
085and i i have that here if you'll give me a minute to look that up you can just go ahead detail during your super time updates as well yeah okay yeah and i just want to point out i mean my my concern just what people understand is i want to keep the kids in the school as much as possible this year and uh when it comes to social distancing contact is just the opposite of it and that's my concern they are looking at october 1st for a high school athletic start date for contests of the um [Music] pretty much everything except for football football has been canceled for the fall by dph and ciac and they are ciac is exploring the spring is an option for football okay but you know other sports that the
086department of health is deemed low risk are able to start on october 1st okay thank you sure adam you had a commenter question um firstly uh thank you for the incredibly detailed presentation i think it uh put many parents at ease i think and answered a lot of questions that have been floating out there in the last let's say a week or so uh and i encourage any parent who's watching uh if they have any further questions to on the educational level like we stressed last time begin with the teacher work your way up the ladder um to to solve the problem that way first uh to see if there's a resolution yeah thanks for reiterating it's a great point yeah something i had forgotten yeah last time so um and then uh for your
087actual actual enrollment figures did that include the remote learners as well yes that's all so that's like if there's a class of 20 not necessarily there's 20 in the classroom it's just that's everyone yes correct yeah or the rule of thumb and it's been amazingly consistent to me across the district from the time we initially pulled in july to now is 15 of students are at home and engaging in remote learning you as soon as no other comments let me move on to presentation item number three which is audience uh not sure jeff there's any audience uh emails yet maybe there's a presentation yeah or if they're covet related we could address them during the report it's up to you yeah um we could just hit them really quick many of them have been addressed
088through the presentation um this was a question about having k2 learners just do remote learning and um marlene vin and i met with the teachers union leadership today and we you know we're exploring that so right now in many cases we have some teachers that have remote learners and live learners at the k2 level and you know the concern is also when you have [Music] 15 16 17 seven-year-olds all remote that isn't always easy either so we're working with the teachers to try and figure out what's the best combination to try and tackle that and it's one of those things that you can kind of hypothesize about but when you live it it could be different so we are exploring what's the best option there this is a question about districts going to um full-time
089at the high school there are multiple questions about that and i think i addressed that um question about chromebook coming home uh marlene addressed that uh s.a.t question i also addressed that [Music] policy for students who are home sick marlene addressed that one there was a question about any plans to address congregating of students that are neither distance nor mass the minute they are outside the doors of the schools but still on school grounds before both before and after school you know i guess we can have more people outside to police that to encourage mask wearing it is difficult when kids are out in the community but this is specific to our school grounds and i address the fact that why didn't we um make all schools aware last night that there was an issue
090at highland i did address that part um there's a rather lengthy question about um standard operating procedures manual we do have something basically like this this question asks asks for a lot of a lot of detail which we have in different places sometimes not always consolidated into one document um at this point we're just trying to make sure people are following the right um right uh directives so i don't know if we'll be able to get to this at some point soon but you know we are focused on standard operating procedure in different areas the state has released information i think they're up to what are how many denims do we have now 12 addendums and so each one addresses something different so it's very hard for us to put together a comprehensive um you
091know sop manual when the information is so dripped and drab so that really is our standard operating procedure what the state has issued us um and that uh addresses all of the questions that we've received i i did that i'm sorry can i just ask for clarification you you said that um you're exploring through two possibly going forward no no i apologize i'm glad you asked that if anybody thought that that's not what we were trying to do um you know we we think for our youngest learners being in person is really for all of our kids but particularly youngest learners the the preferences to be in school if they can and if their families are comfortable with that um the question was teachers have we have students that are remote the family is elected
092to go remote and um juggling the remote students and the live students together this person saying have you thought about doing it like all the remotes to one teacher and yes absolutely we have um you know we've just decided to go in a different direction to create connections not knowing would we be remote two weeks in uh full remote anyway um trying to make sure we have good connections with with between students and teachers was number one um but we are exploring that and is this working well for kids again it's only what day four i think that we've been in school or something um all students so you know it's going to take some time to evaluate and adjust to and i don't want to throw something out after a couple days only to
093realize well wait that really was the better the better solution so we're trying to work through it a little bit assess the value and then we'll we'll amend it when needed thank you uh we're moving on to reports of standing committees starting with the 4a curriculum report on meeting held september 14. okay um curriculum committee met this past monday september 14th um johnny peregini and harrigan dave damn present the primary the bulk of the meeting was devoted to professional development and what took place over the summer um been preparing faculty for teaching and so marlene solano and dr mary gadd provided an overview of some of the district professional development during the august and september pd days prior to the start of school topics for professional development were linked to being able to proactively plan
094for in person on campus remote option fully remote and hybrid learning models that may be used during the year each class this year will be organized through a learning management system to help facilitate learning in each of the learning models google classroom will continue to be used in grades four through twelve and seesaw is being introduced in grades k through three professional development was provided for additional technology tools to help increase interactive collaborative and remote capabilities part of the professional development was also focused on helping teachers to plan to onboard students to use and expectations to the use and expectations of these tools one other key aspect of professional development centered on using um acceleration as a strategy for addressing the loss of learning time and focusing on the most important areas of learning this
095year professional development sessions at the high school also included collaboration time for teachers to adjust to teaching in an 80-minute block in overview of the professional development offering around social emotional learning was also highlighted then we talked about the state assessment calendar which uh the state has published its annual assessment calendar for the year and include includes all of the traditional dates for sba um sbac ctaa ngss las linx el and sat so the whole gamut at this time state testing is proceeding as normal for the 2021 school year and then we adjourned thank you any questions on the curtin committee report um i have one on the standardized testing um so what are the expectations for this year i sort of assumed that perhaps it would be another year where we kind of wave
096things off since everything's not as perhaps as robust as it could be um what's the sort of uh feeling there at this point in time the state has published their calendar so we'll proceed as we have um i expect that we'll probably see some changes to that that that's just a marlene guess but i think the plans that we put in place the strategies for instruction and the way we've looked at our curriculum that we would hope to have our students prepared for anything that came their way well that's good news then i guess thank you [Music] yes tim thank you um a few minutes ago you were talking about how it's difficult for there is some difficulty for the teachers you know they had a six hour day and now frankly they have less
097time because you know after mass break get the kids who are on video to come back in just wondering if you are having maybe not yet but have an idea of what will transpire over this year will you be you know talking with other curriculum assistant superintendents getting ideas you know where where are your schools do you have the same problems i'm guessing they do but because i'm wondering if the whole state is if we're we're we're doing great with scores and stuff right now um but it's all different this year so just where do we compare to other schools not in a not necessarily like a an actual quantitatively measured way but at least anecdotally in conversations with other school districts if you if you'll have those conversations been having those conversations since march
098and our team has attended numerous workshops over the summer done significant research on the topic of learning loss and how you plan for that which is why we settled on the strategy of acceleration in order to make up for that loss so we've also looked at our curriculum and identified the most important standards for any given grade level so we've talked about what we're going to provide as exposure and what we're going to go deeper on so that students get the most meaty um and most important topics in the grade level so yes and we're all talking about that can you just define acceleration because i think oh yes yes so don't get me wrong acceleration is not about going faster and going ahead of the grade level that is not what we're talking about
099what we're talking about is continuing to i describe it as keeping your foot on the gas pedal and not stopping to go back and re-teach everything that you think they missed but rather teaching what is important in germane in the grade level and providing those just-in-time supports for students that need them and not teaching things just in case they need this and just in case they need that but focusing on formative assessments to find out you know what do students already know and are able to do so that we're continuing to move forward and not you know re-teaching unless it's it's necessary and needed at that time thank you thanks mommy thank you as soon as there are questions at the curriculum thank you for for update finance committee we have financial report and a
100medical benefits report um i'm going to uh defer to mr messiana again uh for uh since he was the person who uh mainly put this together allow him to summarize and report on the details but uh before he begins i just want to say that um i will schedule or like to schedule a meeting for the end of october because i i think you had mentioned in another one of our meetings that you'll have a better financial picture more near the end of october i believe yeah so that we can go over that before we head into the next budget season uh so i will schedule something then so we can kind of review all of that so thirty weeks hand over the florida mr massachusetts adam's just anxious to get to the next budget
101process yeah well thank you mr gripper before i begin since you mentioned budget season i do want to let you know that budget season has started for us we put together our timeline and budget documents have you know are have been prepared this week we'll be sending them out to the principals and the department managers next week the you know budget process does begin relatively early there's a lot of work that needs to be done with the goal that by roughly thanksgiving we would have the initial budget you know prepared internally and then the first presentation you know of the superintendents to the board happens uh in early january so we're already it's hard to believe but we're already working on next year's budget with the finance report the school district's budget at 74 million
102593 926 that's the approved budget for this year we're only in month two we haven't completed all the encumbrances for payroll and transportation um you know so you know i i can tell you as i said here we're not concerned about any major variances other than those related to covert which is really what i want to talk about a little bit and it's only day four of school so even with that it's really hard to understand what the run rate would be for expenditures related to covet as we reported in last month's report and it is on the narrative so i'm just going to refer to that quickly we expect just to cover the cost of additional building cleaning which we're doing throughout the day the tent rentals the storage of furniture and equipment that
103i talked about in the presentation earlier purchase of ppe and substitute coverage for when our teachers and other staff are on leave we expect that estimate will be about eight hundred thousand dollars okay so that's kind of an early estimate of of what we believe we will expend over the course of the year as i explained last month and if you look at page two of the finance report i do have some details on what the state has approved in terms of funding to help offset some of the covert related costs so the the first piece is the cares act funding also known as the elementary and secondary emergency school relief fund our prorated portion of that from the from the state is eighty five thousand two hundred sixty four dollars cheshire was allocated a
104total of ninety nine thousand one forty four but part of that goes to the um non-public schools in town cheshire academy and saint bridget so when you subtract the 13 880 that went to them 85 264 is what we have available under the esser funds the second piece that's on on the page what i'm showing you is based on a survey that we filled out august 11th we estimated that personnel costs could be as high as six hundred forty thousand dollars and non-personnel costs would be a million forty five thousand um so we we had submitted on the survey a total of one million six hundred eighty five thousand on the right side what the state has approved is 706 075 now the survey that we filled out we you know we're not really sure
105what the purpose of the survey was but as it turns out the state was actually calculating some funding which is the right side of the page some of the costs that we have for example on the personnel costs we set two hundred thousand dollars for bus monitors i don't think that is and that was assuming the daily cost if we would have 180 days of bus monitors it doesn't appear we need that and certainly you know not on every bus run even if we continue it and so you could see in that section the state has approved eleven thousand twelve dollars under personnel for cleaning ppe health safety and seventy five thousand for personnel transportation so the way the survey was written that's not the way the state approved the funding so we're waiting for
106the state to give us details on exactly how that was calculated and how we can apply for reimbursement so i'm sharing with you the information i have with the caveat that we're still waiting for the information from the state on exactly what will be funded within these categories on the lower section the three um towards the bottom if you look at technology device purchases we indicated 125 000 9 000 for wi-fi hotspots and two hundred thousand dollars for the you know broadcast classrooms the state has not approved any funding for any technology i heard you know through the school business officials organization that the state is still looking at that so there may be funding coming for that but as of this point what's approved is for non-personnel under cleaning ppe health and safety six
107hundred thousand for cheshire and twenty thousand dollars for non-personnel transportation that twenty thousand dollars is basically for bus cleaning supplies so a few minutes ago i mentioned we are estimating costs of about eight hundred thousand for certain categories right now the state is saying we'll get seven hundred six thousand but it doesn't align necessarily to all the categories that we would need funding for to offset our costs so there's a little bit of wait and see here it's also my understanding that you know that 706 000 will be in the form of reimbursement so the district would have to supply evidence receipts or you know invoices showing those expenditures and then would we would be reimbursed and i don't have any information to indicate that if we underspend in one one category you can you
108know spend the excess funds in another category i'm hoping that's the case but i don't know if that'll be the case so you know that's really um the update that i wanted to give on finance and it seems like we have some questions around that yeah i'm sorry keeping our mask on that way ask a question i don't interrupt you it's down now so our budget is 74 million 593 593 thousand dollars when i love this state and their survey that's not explained but in the state survey and what what the folks watching don't see is we have a detailed um document to list all the individual line items that vincent identified in the surveys as cost that we might incur really the covet so the bottom line is one points 1.7 million dollars in
109potential costs i understand that that might change and between the 86 thousand dollars received and the 620 700 thousand dollars we're about 706 thousand dollars potential reimbursement to those costs and we'll have let's see or as the months go if we're gonna if that gap widens in our budget so the question i have is reimbursement that's the little premature we obviously can't spend more we legally can't spend more than what we have in our budget and for new board members we are you are personally liable for that by the way um second by law and second um you know just heads up no i'm serious but that should not happen we can't if we respond to our budget we're responsible there's there's some stuff around that hopefully that doesn't happen so i'm curious how we're
110going to pay for things potentially go over budget and by the time reimbursement comes back what role the town would have to play in that because if you have the money to spend my guess is again this is a worst case scenario we have to ask for more money to pay for expenses hope to hope that the state reimburses us tom gets a check back i i know it's too early to think about that stuff but keep a close eye on this oh i think about that every day so that's why you can't pay the big bucks the uh i mean the the simple answer is that we're going to manage our budget the way we always do when we and in this case i agree with you mr peregini that we know we're going
111to have expenditures and i'm not sure when that reimbursement will come in you know in exactly what form it will come so we're managing our budget we have a expenditure cap on all our non-payroll line items so we're not approving anything more than we need to approve at this time in the areas that we typically would hold back on so it's everything from instructional supplies and other technology expenditures you know building maintenance and repairs you know we're just doing the things we have to do but up to that 40 cap and we'll keep that cap on until we have some confidence in our run rate on you know things like ppe we're estimating 15 000 a month it's an estimate as as we got through this first month of school i'll know you know exactly
112what the run rate is and again assuming we stay in school which i'm hoping we do that's what the anticipated expenditures will be if we go remote then those that expenditure profile is going to change so there's a lot of variables and unknowns that we don't know but i um every year and miss peregini's not kidding that the law says that the board members are you know responsible for any budget overages but i'll make sure that no board member has to write a check because i value my job i respect all of you but i value my job too so you know i'm i'm painting a worst case scenario yeah i just i know it's a little early but it's a you know it's a it's a very different experience for us even veteran board
113members so thank you for this defensive welcome uh mr nancy i'm before you move on um just in regards to the reimbursement process do you does your office work someone's with someone directly from opm or is it through the board of edge at the state board of education or whatever they call themselves i didn't hear of uh i didn't hear what you said does this do we work directly with who do you work directly with opm like someone from opm or do you work with someone from the state board of state department of education for the reimbursement now i mean the employees that we we deal with at the state level are from various departments um not only the department of education so some of the staff sometimes is from opm so i was going
114to say it's a little disingenuous of them to just sort of give you a questionnaire instead of a formal application if they're going to hold you to line items like that i mean if you were to fill out an application that's one thing but if you're just doing something that you're not quite sure what it was for except for guidance to give them like what they could give you not that you don't mind that they're at least saying that they're going to give us money but to have them hold you to uh line items in an application i think is a little ridiculous so i hope they're flexible on you know how they allow for us to apply for reimbursement yeah so i mean i i think and kathy dempsey you know it works for
115the state department of ed and she's the chief financial officer i'm not sure that that is her exact title but you know i think like everything else during this pandemic they're trying to help and so they get information out we respond and then you know they they turn that into you know the the beginnings of a reimbursement grant is really what it is so you're right it wasn't an application for a reimbursement grant it was tell us what you think the estimated cost will be as we go through the school year under this pandemic so yeah that it's there's work that needs to be done by the state to get us the information and so there's there's been communication but we're waiting for the written documentation as it relates you know to this and yeah
116there are some things that were a little bit um that affected different school districts differently so you know without cleaning service we do it on a contracted basis so it's not a personnel cost the state in the so far on the approval has been very very light on improving personnel costs and a lot stronger on approving contracted services and ppe so you know for us where we are we're able to hire that intraday cleaning staff through a contractor right now looks like we would get reimbursed but a community that has hired staff to do that additional cleaning wouldn't be so i think the state has is hearing all that and we'll have to figure out a solution that works for everybody faith go ahead um i just wore an observation the 40 expenditure cap um
117i guess i just get a little worried at what point we begin to cannibalize ourselves and you know it's typically 60 percent usually at this time of the year we're at 60 so um especially with capital projects and maintenance if we're i don't know just a statement of concern and i don't know what you can do about it we've not deprived anybody of things that they they're the essentials but as the year progresses if we can't raise that 40 cap you know it'll have it'll have more impact and we'll need to talk about that and just prioritize what's more important than than what it's not new it's just more severe because of the pandemic right now yeah vin are you having you may do it do it in years past but are you having an
118ongoing dialogue with town hall because that's rather than my pocket there is a rainy day fund here so just figured i would ask if you do have those conversations not every day but monthly or something keeping them um oh yeah i mean we talked to jim josh got the finance director and sean kimball you know regularly we have strong communication but i think you know the the point that adam's making to hold a finance committee you know ultimately the town council is a fiscal authority so there would have to be you know formal notification or a request and i think the council you know is already aware yeah through multiple communications that we've got some pressing issues related to coal with that we may have to sure you know come and request additional funding okay
119i thought it's worth i it's been probably uh four four weeks ago maybe i was talking to chairman orris on the town council he checks into thailand times how we're doing and if we need any help and i i do think you know ten council for reaching out from time to time i know you're in talks but i did iterate what you said as you know as we get closer to opening school this is at the time and get to that first month or two we have a really good idea of where we'll be so it's not that you know we we had nothing to share with them as well and scare them at this point either but so that's the point of finance community meetings so we are and i think it's just to
120be good to to walk them through some of the things we saw tonight you know how we got to where we are and how to see things going just so that you know whether we go to them or not you know it's we don't know yet at least there's an idea you know but i'm pretty sure they have communication with sean and jim so 1.2 million and we do have that 200 000 that was was carried was rolled over so you know i didn't include that here but you know that still is an available area that we can expend against so i don't think anybody needs to worry yet we're just going to track it and manage through it i'm not worried okay good uh do you want to go through medical benefits uh yes
121so medical benefits the board members do have the medical benefits report again it's only the first month it was a very high claim month of one point one million two hundred seven thousand seven eighty nine we began the fiscal uh excuse me we be we began the new year for medical benefits with a balance in the trust fund of two million nine sixty nine eight forty two um the million two does have some large claims still hurting us um but none of those claims are significant covert claims because i know that that's been a question um so for the month the trust fund balance decreased by 477 000 that puts us at 2 million 492 186 that gives us about three months of claims and i'm using this year 800 000 as the monthly estimate
122um so that's how you get 3.12 months obviously this month claims exceeded that by a wide margin but as we go through the rest of the year um hopefully hopefully the claims you know do settle into a lower pattern and then the new uh hsa plan year begins in january so you know we would expect the claims to go down at that point in time um then just one question you always have a fun question for medical benefits um so you change the uh the calculation it looks like to eight hundred thousand a month weren't we at like 740 before that something like that or was it was am i last year yeah yeah the 800 000 is based on what the expected claims are from our insurance broker us okay so that was just
123a revision at a particular dayton particular date it changed like july 1 or something yes when the renewal is done for july 1 they look at the claims for the prior you know 12 months running and so that was the estimate that they gave us so that's why we'll use that as we go through the course of this year okay thank you and i will point out along those lines if you look up at the top the budget that we have is 724 100 per month so those are the two benchmarks we'll be using the 724 100 that's based on what we have approved so that's what we'll be contributing every month so the difference between actual claims and the 724 will you know affect the trust fund balance up or down except for any
124stop-loss reimbursements that we get okay yes this is a stupid question but if the contribution is 724 100 per month how come the contributions for i guess for august or july whatever the 729.5 yeah there was just there was some the components of that 7 24 100 include payments that we received from retirees so we we didn't calculate it exactly correctly because i asked the same question i was like well how's it 729 so it it's in our favor by four thousand dollars so i'll just leave it yeah fine it's a good question though yeah you're paying attention anyway so if the 800 000 the calculation for um is that based on our claims experience or is that just medical information no that's based on the the 12 months running claims and they project out
125they have an actuary that does that last year was unusual for us and that the um high cost claims you know we were over a million and a half dollars i mean we wound up getting 1.5 million or so in stop-loss reimbursement so you know that's that's built in into that eight hundred thousand so hopefully those high-cost claims don't continue i know that you know in one case um you know the individual employee who had those high cost claims has left the district so that will drop off as we go through this fiscal year so you know we plan and then we cross our fingers when it relates to medical claims but you know we do have over three months of claims reserve so you know that's healthy it was healthier i mean we we
126were almost at five months at one point but we'll keep our eye on it and manage accordingly [Music] um i'll just i just have one more question as um i don't think you were going to go through the budget detail at all um but just uh in general um and i know it's what are we day four five um for uh outplacement in uh special education are we sort of on target as far as enrollment in that area or is it too soon to say well the number of outplay students um i don't have the count i i think it's a little better than we anticipated but you know if you look at that that line adam you could see that we've only encumbered 20.7 so that's not because we're that much under the expectation
127it's that we don't have all the dollars encumbered unexpected outplaced tuition and it it usually takes the first three months you know for us to you know analyze and project not only for our place tuition but transportation and our payroll encumbrances too so a little early a little early to say okay thank you the one thing i would add though is that there was a lawsuit extending transition services to age 22. it had been previously to 21. and so that will that's an unexpected impact on our budget in providing those services for an additional year and it's sizable um and we'll provide more information as that becomes a relatively recent um impact on portugal are there any other questions thank you adam uh up next is our policy committee report right back to you back
128to me again thank you um uh for policy uh we this was our first in-person meeting um so i guess i'll use the summary that's uh that's in the the minutes here uh for the report i i think our our conversation was a little more in-depth but i think this this paragraph sort of sums it up pretty well um and basically uh the meeting opened um what was the day on september 1st uh where i asked the superintendent if there was further conversation or action that was needed by the policy committee regarding the incident that occurred last year with the lapse coaching certification dr solon responded no new procedure that responded no comma but not that there was no nuke there is there is a new procedure that has been put into place to track
129the certifications and the superintendent stated that he will supply the board with a list of coaching certifications prior to the start of each sports season uh at that time the policy committee agreed that that was adequate uh to for for the resolution at this time um and then we uh uh we had a little bit of discussion back and forth a couple extra questions um and then we moved on to uh discuss about setting our agenda our policy agenda for the rest of the year um uh mainly whether or not we have to change any uh policies regarding electronic meetings and communications and if any other policies come up during the year um we can add them as needed if something needs to be adjusted during this uh this covid situation and that's uh essentially
130uh my report for policy um uh going forward we're going to um go back to um uh online stream uh because we felt that um having our conversations uh was actually ended up being more transparent if we were online where people could tune in uh via youtube because you know normally no one attends a policy meeting but sometimes uh conversations occur uh during policy that could be of interest and it's easier for uh citizens to observe our conversation on youtube so i agree thank you we're going to do that thank you another quick question especially catherine and ann and i it seems like it's been several years that we've been continuously revising policies and it's a good thing if we feel a little light this year are we pretty much jeff caught up um i
131i know the student activities policy we're probably going to look at a little bit data but i think are we pretty much caught up with our policies and bylaws refreshing it's been going on for yes uh or five years last year and change was an absolute marathon because there were many years where we adhered to law but never really updated policy in the last few years we had an audit done a couple of years ago we initiated that and then updated a boatload of policies over the last couple of years so yeah we were caught up on that process and now it's just that's great more of a maintenance period now thankfully yeah i just want to commend the policy committee's present and past in particular for all the help to to get us here
132so that's that's good news i don't want to just want to point that out no no we are still going to check in with kate just to make sure as we always do thank you adam uh uh i'm sorry any other questions from the board tim i i just want to comment on the um having the continuing virtual meetings it was actually a little difficult for me i strongly believe in having meetings in person and allowing people to come to the meetings but like adam said i mean i've been to hundreds of well well he didn't say this but i've been to hundreds of committee meetings and most of them there's almost no attendance ever from the public some of them definitely get it and in the times when i would expect to have public
133want to attend a committee meeting i absolutely would want to have it in person but on the offset you know if i expect nobody to come to a meeting but we could actually have you know 30 40 50 people watch it online maybe even send in some emails and get a little bit more interaction i think that'd be a good thing so i'm i'm comfortable going with the virtual meetings when i expect low attendance but the other thing i just want to point out that i think is to parents with young kids in town so last year i ran for the board of ed and one of the things that went through my mind was do i want to take all these nights away from my kids and i i didn't really want to but
134i felt strongly about running for the board last year and so i did but at the same time i think this uh provides an opportunity potentially if we could do the if the remote meetings work the virtual meetings work i think it could provide an opportunity for some parents who might be interested in running for office but didn't want to take away so many nights from their kids um and so that's a that is a reason why i really do like the idea of it thanks and uh and just an additional point um thanks for bringing it up is that um we we are going to be virtual unless um we sort of get a feeling from the community that there needs to be an in-person meeting where there's going to be significant uh community
135inter interaction uh and usually we'll usually get a feeling of it through facebook where people start emailing uh us about a certain subject that people want to speak about um and so we'll try and work that out because we we are still under the uh restrictions of 25 uh 25 people i think during a meeting in the building or i'm not i forget exactly what the yeah indoor restriction yeah so um so so as of right now unless there is a feeling of you know really a lot of community involvement where they want to speak in person that right now we feel that uh you know this is the best way to to have the community know what's going on yeah and i you know it's been a challenging year when we started a square
136last year we were uh working with the town to have a i think room 219 210 is set up so that lisa town council committees can be there and broadcast so folks can't be there this is pre-covered by the way so this idea was broadcast to meetings if you could intend it per person i i think um while we're in his code which probably the rest of the year at least next year uh if we can do a virtual great and and maybe when things kind of go back to normal where that is maybe we could possibly do some combination of having you know board members here and remote via zoom at a meeting and if that's something we could talk about we could always amend our policies we're not there yet but so i
137think there's a lot of flexibility i think we've learned some positives of covet to to accommodate that work-life balance so thanks for that bring that up tim alrighty we're going to move on to school modernization committee update i don't know if ann or andrew wanna he did meet last night yes andrew [Music] so by actually the town council um last evening jim jinx joined the school of modernization so we have our full complement of 12 individuals there was an election that was held to elect both the chair and vice chair the chair of school modernization it was elected jennifer bates who's a community member pta pto president um she's been on school modernization since its inception i'm a member of the community and then chuck net um chuck was i worked with chuck we developed
138the rfp which actually resulted in the hiring of coliers who is the consultant that we're working with um helping to guide the plan for the modernization of the schools he's a pe so it's i believe it's valuable to help guide the process and manage the consultant so coliers gave a presentation charles warrington he gave an update where they are they're still continuing to review the data touring the schools talking to the administration um to come up with the best plan to move forward we don't have a copy of that plan there's no draft of it yet to share they hired mylona mcbroom or we hired milona mcbroom and they're managing my loan to do the enrollment and demographic study um with the different projections we received a 37-page draft of that which hasn't been shared
139yet they've done a good job looking at the different population trends in the community there's not a lot of surprises in there there's definitely a shift the community is getting older the average age is 48 which i thought was interesting um birth rate from 1990s there was over 300 births per year we're down to 230 birds as of 2018 um and another interesting fact that i was jotted down last night was is that between 2010 2018 there's been 1 376 new housing units built in town but the population has not increased in the school age so there's a lot of things that we're looking at there and that's going to all get rolled in and then presented to the committee i would add one thing a very thorough report i found it interesting that the
140enrollment study also reported that people don't move to certain elementary districts within cheshire because they're unlike many other communities our district is considered a solid school district as a whole and the elementary schools are not a re there's not a variance perception of variance of quality uh among the four elementary schools and i think that just speaks volumes towards what we're doing that we have this very cohesive school district as a whole so kudos for that because perception is reality in many cases and certainly in this case yeah they showed a nice heat map of cheshire where the districts are in relation to the home sales and it's you know it's pretty much it's not like uh again said everyone's moving to the highland district because it's best school it's it's consistent which is great
141the other thing i thought was very interesting too is what was the decline in housing starts they pointed out that um a lot of home sales this year are still waiting for the final numbers but they're saying that there's eternal or existing homes that's that's driving people come in i think they correlated if andrew and remember uh approximately students i think uh average came in to this through those sales so the point was there it was a pretty thorough report and i i feel sorry for vincent and jeff they had to drop out because that's when he got the call for the case um so i was very thorough great meeting a lot of detail there were two there was one thing i know that uh collier's looking for which is the october first enrollment
142numbers um i told them after tonight we can send them this presentation open schools because there's good information in there so if you guys don't mind giving that to to take care of that and um the other thing that came up as part of enrollment was a lot of focus on enrollment general student population and what dawn to me was whether or not our i'm sorry i could put this down for a second whether or not our special needs student population um which one are we spelled out or uh identified that in rome and how they could should we give them some enrollment numbers around that population from us over the years because i think that could be off on this but i think my opinion it maybe a small population of four thousand students
143but some of those students require more space in schools special services more ias i talked about that so uh charles thought that might be a good idea just to have their a little bit so i'm not giving you guys more work to do just uh heads up demographics so yeah that's it i think we're meeting again in mid-october early october 5th october 5th the first of the first monday of the month great thank you any questions on mars asian committee sorry yeah faith also talk about how they saw a something going on five years that like an incoming kindergarten class that's when they're starting to see an increase there there was a increase yeah we're gonna start to see a pretty significant increase um with the kindergarteners in like three to four years yeah i
144think over the next four or five years there was an increase in kindergarten lower grade levels middle school level i think it's it projected to be the same but there was going to be a drop at the high school level for a few years not a significant one but something noticeable and then it kind of picks back up again but the suggestion is that that we are going to start to see as we're planning um that kind of yeah they used three data sources for the roman trends um i i think it was high medium low but they yeah stronger mechanical not there was much difference but they recommended the group use the high projection because uh especially in later years uh you want to have that space to accommodate growth i'm going to try
145i'll i'll ask uh the committee if at least get the draft out to the board i know it's not for the public yet but it was presented last night so i don't think it'd be a big deal i'll try to share that with the group so you can see those charts better yeah i would add faith that um it's really consistent with what we were seeing from enrollment a few years ago when we did it before there always was this projection of moments going up and are we seeing that and actually we should be seeing that now what you saw four years ago and um soon i think we're still leveling yeah we're in a downtrend still a little bit i mean not again it's like just it's just below the level right 10 years
146there's been it's been level what was ironic was the enrollment number today we saw was just around 4011. and that was their low number i think well that was so that's what kind of so i i'm glad i reminded that so that 4011 enrollment number did not include home school so we'd be 440. but it's right there i think andrew if you have it up well yeah they're saying the high the high level for the high productive model assumption shows that over the plan for 4 60 students over the next five years but before then there's gonna be a little bit of a dip with enrollment right what year were that was that gonna happen low point yeah guys thank you yes please for an observation uh as i was watching the meeting last night
147i think my takeaway of that presentation was that it really feels like we have about five years to get our act together because it once five years is up it really seems like things are going to start taking off again and so it really seems like we need to be in place and ready to go within the next five years with whatever the plan is going to be as things start moving again for the first you know up through it was like 20 years or something like that so that was my interpretation maybe i'm wrong well mine too my initial reaction was had we been able to do it when you do three years ago we'll be on that track but nonetheless you're right yeah it's right i mean our our schools had higher enrollment
148you know as is but the needs have changed so i'm with you and i'm sorry i'm sorry random one more thing so uh part of the discussion last night too was there was a a summary showing of potential options i guess as the committee's been talking all these months you know someone said hey i should start the high school how to start the middle school no so they just laid all stuff out and i think it was chuck that asked me i fear who was asking me what what the board what the board wants them to focus on where to start and my answer was i talked about is we can't tell them that really we're looking for a plan we're looking for options whatever they are you know once the data has been finished
149enrollment studies housing trends the school feedback colliers is going to compile all that and based on that let's let's see what the committee comes up with i mean uh i i told him i don't think we're in a position to say hey start the high school or middle school we kind of the last plan but all options are open tell us what you guys see and we'll work with you to figure out the best option so if i was mistaken with that please tell me yeah i mean i i was a little bit thrown off when you started into that discussion with you know we have no deliverables yet from college of college or from our living room to look at in order to help guide that decision so when he started asking if it
150was going to be the high school or middle school or the elementary schools i was a little bit yeah without any tangible evidence or to look at enrollments or what the school conditions are projections i wasn't sure what he wanted from us so i think we're all excited in that committee to do something you know it's so i saw that i don't think so but you know again this is why we have colleagues and you know help and they're going to help guide that decision too so i think we're getting there i think next couple months while the data points finite we'll see what options play out yeah tim so aside from code in the last six months i just i am kind of skeptical about growth the next five years student population what were
151the two or three bullet points did they give two or three bullet points to say why well but i mean but i mean the main drivers of it did they did they give it a lot about the housing yeah i mean there's a hundred and let's see real estate's picking up yeah there's there's about 140 some odd approved new housing units um either approved or under construction currently in town okay um so it was based on that and then looking at just the overall developable land in town yep um and then they talked with a lot of real estate agents over the summer about homes existing home sales and there's a lot of out of state folks who have been moving into town coveted yeah because of all the remote work that's being done now
152that people will be moving it's predicted that people might be moving out of the cities and into the suburbs actually cheshire is considered no and that i find that totally that makes sense where people would move to yeah no that makes sense to me but it wasn't the projection wasn't driven by new housing development it was dependent on existing housing stock turning over which was sold the real estate market's pretty hot probably will be for a while you know a lot of market rates are low the other thing they also pointed out was as far as affordable housing they had the number in there too i think there's with the new development that's been approved it's over 140 units but they projected potentially maybe 50 or less students would probably enroll in schools as a
153result of that potentially don't really know uh but that could be absorbed with our decline right now so it seemed to be that because education is doing very well in cheshire and that's driving people to come here and as long as there's housing stock to turn people over to come in it's that's what's probably drivers and also we have a nice community and so forth so so what is the buying road the one up nearby road the new apartments that's 100 units you said over a hundred units yeah 40 114 yeah so that is a small one single family it's 184 new housing units planned in town today thought it'd be built probably in the next two years is the basic idea okay yeah i thought it was very positive all right thank you but
154we'll save that projection hopefully that lands that forecast no there's a basis for it it makes sense to me now i just think like the last 10 or 15 years i don't think there's been a lot of growth no so why in the next five years and that's that's it so that makes sense but even that growth is really small compared to what happened since the mid 90s it's still you know oh yeah yeah yeah but something a good question i'm sorry to belabor this one it's i know we got a chance to talk about too much uh we actually got to do something so number five we have approval of minutes in our packets we have the meeting minutes from the meetings held on august 20th and september 9th i don't have any changes
155to the minutes that i saw if any board members have any alterations or edits to be made mr chairman yes i'd like to make a motion yes sir uh move that the board of education approved the minutes uh from meetings held on august 20th 2020 and september 9 2012. is there a second faith seconds and the motion is moved at the board of education approve the minutes from meetings held on august 20th 2020 and september 9th 2020. all those in favor it is unanimous thank you team correspondence the only other uh well we don't have any kind of job i'm getting ahead of myself okay i do not have any correspondence up to the board that was requested in red and for record do have coveted emails uh i'm sorry you're not the secretary madam
156secretary do we have any correspondent i have no correspondence to report thank you mr trump thank you kathy i i didn't mean to uh overlook you i just trying to beat 10 o'clock sorry yes that's a joke um thank you catherine so number seven is superintendent reports this yeah we have some co-related emails we did receive an additional email asking about more information on special education that just that we send some out and we will send something from the special education office update on that um i think marlene thank you so much for earlier in the meeting talking about the absence policy uh it was we've gotten a few emails i got nothing critical just that i think a couple parents are caught off you know that um the child had a fever and want
157to stay home but in there in that situation where there is no class remote classroom way to plug in to take an absence i think the only you know the issue there is i'm sure it'll be a relief the parents know that the abstinence are not going to be held against them which is great and you know it reflects on that this year i think it's just a they might be feeling like they're missing out the opportunity to do remote learning you know if they had a way to do it and my only ask is if i know it's not easy i know it's it's especially for the grade levels that don't have this set up or in someone's home to do the same thing they do in class but remotely i know it's not
158always possible if we can find a way to try to make something happen i just got to imagine as the flu season starts when i get folks that um will be home at least want a packet to work with that they could i don't know but i think we could put that and i i know we've talked about it so many times but it was a way to put that policy the summary that marlene did it out on the cover website yeah we'll definitely cut down your email traffic yeah we'll definitely do that awesome but thank you that's the only question i had related to the covet update any other questions related to kovid superintendent i know you have one time you were waiting your match was coming off yeah no i'm just wondering um
159so as i said before i really am just concerned about you know the infection rights going up above one percent keep the kids in the schools so before sports start are we going to be having another meeting and hearing from chesapeake dph somebody love this and i i want to be i want to be directed about it i so i looked at the reopen connecticut and tell me if you're on board with basically what i'm saying i looked at the reopen connecticut list it's not just i don't want to say sports i want to say extracurriculars um you know yearbook is that happening is it happening remotely is it happening in person um i just want to get a better idea about this with the goal of keeping the schools open um and when i
160when i looked at specifically one thing which was sports there's the reopen connecticut guidelines and it has high medium and low risk and it had you know football is a high risk and soccer so i'm talking fall season soccer has a medium risk and i you know i i don't quite understand what the difference is just watching a sport um and so i tried to look at look for details of the criteria used in setting these risk levels and i couldn't find anything and the people who were running the reopen connecticut uh they didn't appear to be involved in sports per se there were public health people and there were a variety of people in education but i just want to know like it doesn't really make sense to me um and i want to
161be careful about this so i'd like to hear more from people before we go engaging in contact basically which you know band is is banned happening right now just to be clear on that there's you have a large music program what's happening what's not yeah the uh national organization that oversees band performance has canceled the season the the um the projection of aerosols is significantly greater through instruments that would typically been played in a marching band show um so even with mitigating strategies you know they they decided that that would not be appropriate um and i don't know if they are seeking to move that to the spring or not but the band program was canceled the you know i i don't feel like i have the expertise to make decisions about um medical impact
162you know is the department of public health his um i think spent in some cases perhaps too much time going through this stuff along with ciac ultimately deciding that there are sports that are safe to play we've had not only a number of kids like you know you think about just our high school sports or our interscholastic sports but a boatload of kids in our community i happen to ho coach a bunch of them on a hockey team um are participating in athletics all the time now um they've been doing so safely for an extended period through the the spring now i can't say that or through the fall excuse me in late summer i can't say the same for football there aren't youth leagues really um engaging in football most of the shoreline conference
163teams that our younger kids play in have canceled football for the fall following really that dph guidance but other sports have been playing all along and been managing to do so pretty successfully so you know if the department of public health is saying it's safe i know that our many of our students have been engaged in it i also recognize that emotional well-being um as you've said too that you know we want we recognize that component to being involved in athletics the arts we want to try and continue to to provide these opportunities if medical professionals can tell us we're doing so safely i think for most of our athletics that's the case um i think we still need to be cautious they still need to be very closely monitored and i would like to
164try and do more of that along the lines of of non-athletic contests too right now it's all remote all of our clubs are remote until at least october 1st that was part of our summer plan um we're adhering to that plan i pray that october 1st comes and we have to make a decision about clubs in person because we're still in person things are still going well but that's kind of where i fall on that the whole thing i guess the the thing that goes through my mind is i know so i know sports have been ongoing throughout the summer but i just wonder and again i'm not a public health person or a doctor but i hear about the asymptomatic right i think demographically you know younger people kids are more likely to be
165asymptomatic than older people but i just wonder i mean if there's no real testing going on in any large-scale way are there a lot of asymptomatic people who are who are the coaches that are out there in the summertime are they in their 20s 30s 40s lower at risk and then so i'm a 65 year old teacher in the school system i'm higher at risk the asymptomatic comes into the classroom and then all of a sudden so you you see how it plays out yeah of course but those those kids go home and but if they're asymptomatic why would they go home they no those kids go home after contests they go home after practices to family members yep that aren't 12 and 15 and 18 years old okay so the likelihood is yeah so
166okay if indeed there was a a greater viral spread i think one could deduce that that you would see more uh impact on our numbers um through this period okay which again thank god has not been the case and you know that's i don't i don't i certainly don't want to be perceived as cavalier about the approach here because i i just spoke earlier about how critical it is to wear masks outside of school and you still have to be smart frankly when i see kids engaged in athletics they're supervised and tend to be better than when i see them not engaged when i see kids walking down the street with you know a pack not in in um you know in something organized or just walking down the street oftentimes i'm disappointed to see
167that they don't have masks on or whatever and that's not that's not you know exclusive to cheshire by the way that's just kind of maybe demographic you know just that age but you know when i see them participating in sports they are pretty good about adhering to the same way we see them in school they are very good about wearing the masks and i the precautions they're taking maybe it's because they don't want to miss out on school maybe because they don't want to miss out on athletics they're really pretty vigilant well you know i see it with our kids on the hockey coach today team like i said many of those kids are cheshire residents um so um shout out that they're at practice right now actually but uh you know i do think
168that for their mental and emotional well-being we we also have to calculate that in but i think that medical experts are i'm not making that decision like that's not that's not me that's swaying that i just recognize that that's a variable for kids i i don't have the medical background to make that decision yeah no i understand that i just when i looked at these categorizations yeah i did like how did you derive that right it was a good question it wasn't sports p i mean i didn't see the names that very sense to me they had titles and stuff and it wasn't sports like i just don't get how you say football's this and soccer is this speaking of to the fall season because two people running downfield right next to each other for
169right now it's not 15 minutes right right i just want i i would love to see some more information just the criteria used in defining those things yeah ironically if you talk to a football person like that that strongly believes we should be playing football they would tell you the same thing like you know what's what's different where's the data what data do we have to have to be able to play football because the data is so favorable today but you know at the end of the day the medical i would defer to the medical experts who made that decision and i don't think it's a good idea to be playing football right now if they don't think it's a good idea and i know that's what you're saying you really all of us our
170first priority is to make sure kids receive a great education and do so in a way that's healthy and safe you know that they've deemed the healthy and safe piece around athletics and i think that's a critical part of education so what i sort of recommend so i you know jeff you mentioned october 1st being sometime between now and then as you gather more information about the club sports it yeah i certainly follow the experts medical advice you know obviously the direction for chester park has been getting an amount of control procedures not too i'm not really worried about that um i think that's for transparency for a community you know i'm sure just as there were you know unfortunate football players wanting to play this week that couldn't there's probably other club folks and
171i can't wait to get together with my group next week yeah robotics or wherever it is a way to get the board and again it shouldn't it's what might be opened up versus i guess it lists everything that we have clubs intramurals i know we had that somewhere we brought up a fine school year a couple years ago yeah but there's a way that you know when you have enough information to categorize all that so here's what's going to happen not going to happen and these go to the board because if if we feel there's something on there we should talk about we could try to get meaning in but if nothing else you know you know there's there's also an equity thing in all this too you know it's [Music] your parents out there
172that hey you know at the time why is why can't sports play but you know but you know my daughter who realized not my daughter but someone's daughter relies on yeah and a club activity after school for social media can't you know yeah but they're able to be able to do that through virtual virtual yeah so i know if we actually need a meeting next week but i'll def i'll kind of see how things go with you jeff if you feel there's enough information there that we should talk about some of these things or at least send us an update where all these things are where you think they're going to be next year october yeah we didn't say we would start clubs on october 1st and clear but we do we would evaluate around
173october 1st yeah um and so you know we have a board meeting on the third it's probably a good time to talk well there's one on the first to open forum we're going to talk about how to do that one but worst case we can reuse that for something else yeah uh open forum would be difficult so i kind of i want to get to new business it's starting to get to past 10 o'clock we got three items in executive session so is there anything else pressing on this superintendent's report could we please get out of the way quickly okay i just i'm wondering who is ultimately responsible for these because i'm reading all the decisions is it is it dph is it the governor is it us who makes the decision all of us
174because i'm totally confused every day i pick up the paper fair question i think it's who you ask when it comes to football the dph has said cic can make that decision ciac has said well local districts you know you go play football now if you want but dph is basically advised against it and i've heard that some districts are saying you know what we're going to play we don't care what you say we're just going to go start our own little our own league um over here and go play that now that could be bravado early i don't know i i don't know of any formal announcement of that but i've heard that and so they're saying you know local district for football but dph is really the guidance that we use before it's
175worth faith um on our board chair list group that okay i asked a question you know i have yet to hear from any board in any district that voted the board themselves voted on sports or voted on taking action on any other activity relating to this they all have defer at least with with competitive sports have deferred to the superintendent and athletic directors to the guidance of dph ciac and jasper i haven't seen any boards you know formally vote on intramurals or clubs et cetera they tend to rely on you know the advice of superintendent but the same folks because you know if it's contact the local health district so ultimately those experts that give input to us the superintendent and most boards have been [Music] letting the superintendent you know make the decision this
176is something very egregious there so i it just seems to change every day though the input so who knows what's going to happen next week on any of this stuff i just i don't hold my breath no problem uh we have no old business thankfully we do have new business we have a affirmation of our strategic goals now we did this last july uh yeah before the new board took place so i just want to spend a few minutes on why we do this every year at this meeting and then we can get into it any takers or there's nothing to talk about i mean with respect to we do have to develop a strategic strategic goals on an annual basis for our policy um we have to affirm them on an annual basis not
177develop them like i said earlier in the presentation we designed these in 2011 designed to be run through 2021 or 2021 yeah 10-year plan um as i said this year we hope to be changing those or at least revisiting um them uh for the future so these are these will be kind of the last year of the plan and and we did clean them up a couple years ago and really have been focusing on those two because you look you saw all of them you can't possibly name them all nobody could tell you what our strategic goals were they can now scl and complex thinking people don't forget it so it's got to be something like that moving forward too i think yeah i can't believe it's cr10 yeah right i am looking for a
178motion board thank you anna is there a second catherine seconds uh any discussion comment really quickly um and uh or freshmen these are the same uh items that we spend a better part of a year on 2019 right we went through all of them line by line so uh a lot of ev we went through all these things and we did uh make updates and tweak some words that that um that we debated heavily on sometimes about the meanings of those and so i think that uh uh the the um the uh the strategic objectives and goals are uh our sound and i think will serve our our uh our system well so yeah i think it was last july the last update yeah um so this is an annual thing it is yeah so
179we didn't look at it really at all this year did we did it go through no because i'm not planning no i said okay now you've been busy i get that what about it no no they don't we don't go through them because they're upset like it was a 10-year plan that it was established last july and so now this year they ex like basically expire yeah and we will review them this year and it'll be a stakeholder group that'll review them and make proposals for new goals moving forward and who sets that stakeholder group is it the board or you um historically the superintendent has worked with trying to um select and pull solicit i should say sure you gotta find volunteers yeah well right now it's um it's really tough for that stuff
180yeah but we'll hopefully get like i said earlier to clear water and be able to focus on this okay right now it's kind of on autopilot correct okay thank you fair enough yeah so any other questions as soon as i don't know the questions the motion is move the cheshire board of education reaffirms the cheshire public schools strategic objectives and goals for 2020 2021 all those in favor thank you it is unanimous i have no update um as far as upcoming meetings uh we usually have uh open forum meeting in the fall um we have one intently scheduled october 1st 2020. it's marked as tbd because we're not sure how we're going to have uh it usually as a public open forum we talk about various committee topics finance planning et cetera here in town
181count the chambers i'm not sure how we're going to do that with covid so um i'm not sure that is going to happen but i'll work with the board and superintendent see what we could try to do worst case we'll repurpose that meaning for something else if needed or try find an alternate way to do an open forum i think that's sometime this year october 6 2020 there's a policy committee meeting at 6 30 p.m we'll be virtual october 15th is the next board of education business meeting 7 30 p.m here in town council chambers october 19th 2020 is a current committee meeting at 7 p.m uh and it'll be a virtually over youtube channel i do have a motion to um adjourn an executive session um i move that the meeting be injured into
182the executive session to include dr sullin mr massiana miss solano to discuss unit negotiations with no action to follow it's very second uh actually and beat both of you ann seconds all those in favor thank you we will be adjourning executive session there will be no action to follow hence there'll be no follow-up meeting for those of you watching this evening thank you so much for sticking through this hopefully uh you got a lot of good information to begin the meeting on the reopening some culvert concerns please contact us via the code email if you have any further questions and be happy to get back to you all so we're gonna go dark at this point you