001little call to order mrs jensky please call the roll sure mr grippo here ms halland here miss ham here ms harrigan uh mr mr martelly here mr perogini and mr white here mr chairman you have a forum thank you um let's see uh well first on the agenda we have audience um is there any uh commentary on this meeting this morning nope not since uh not in the last 10 hours we haven't received any budget info okay thank you um uh next on the agenda is the standing committee of curriculum and approval of the peck jones funds uh mrs hamm i do have a report uh-oh you're on mute faith you're muted oh i think she's waving us off it's like use the text box good okay um two meetings to report um the curriculum
002committee met on monday january 19th um i'm sorry i'm so early in the morning um committee members present were faith ham and harrigan and tony paragini staff president where mary god kevin hanlon michael earley marlene solano and maureen reed faith ham called the meeting to order michael earley director of the cheshire public schools k-12 art program gave an overview of the five-year curriculum review by the cps curriculum council of the district's art program um he under the new program the students will create their own works and then respond and connect to them by explaining both orally and in writing how their art conveys meaning finally students are expected to present finished works the instruction more closely aligns with cps's performance-based standards than did the prior art curriculum um okay um um i'm sorry i've got
003something going on in the background um um uh oh boy and next you guys can i um i'm sorry adam can i pass for now i just got to get myself organized and something's going on here why don't you have marlene yeah marlene yeah yeah sorry i gotta step out for a minute if i could okay thanks go ahead marley okay good morning i believe um the meeting that we need to recap is actually the meeting that was held on may 11th um again faith uh and ann were both there we talked about a new textbook recommendation for advanced placement which was forwarded to the board we talked about the olsat results also kevin hanlon gave an overview of the lost links um the memorial day music events that was one of our meetings uh
004the most recent give me one second um the most recent meeting was on june 8th faith and ann were at that meeting we talked about the peck jones request where i presented a proposal on how to use the peck jones grant funds this year and had made a request for the money to be used for quality reading materials in our school our classroom and our school libraries especially whereas we gave lots of books out this year we don't know that we will be receiving all of those back the other thing that we wanted to do was to increase the amount of non-fiction text in the primary grades as well as do an audit of culturally responsive text that are available throughout the libraries uh dr gad presented on digital media foundation's class which we was
005was through uconn and that we are now looking to partner with naugatuck community college on she all dr gad also presented on the business courses that we are articulating with tungsten community college um and lastly we talked about the remote learning tools that we would need this year where we um we're going to after looking at some efficiencies find both essential software tools that we needed to run the curriculum if we need to be in a remote setting as well as distribute um sorry ipads to our kindergarten students and chrome tablets to our first grade students in that plan we would also be able to distribute devices to teachers and that was the entire meeting thank you um let's see so we have a motion to looks like uh approve some funds faith are you
006ready to go yeah i'm sorry about that um i do have emotion here um again trying to go between screens look at me here oh god technology do you want me to read it i have it up yeah please it's um then i will move that the cheshire board of education approves the use of peck jones funds and the amount of 28 600 to enhance the availability of quality reading materials in the classroom and school libraries for students in grades k through 12. do i have a second second okay catherine seconds uh is there any discussion seeing no discussion yeah yeah yeah oh mr white go ahead yeah uh so van i'm just uh or marlene i'm just curious what's the balance of the peck jones fun did you mention that i'm sorry if i
007missed it uh just a ballpark no no not specific numbers i want to say 600 000 um and we're allowed to take i believe it's four percent per year okay okay all right yeah so that makes sense okay thank you um is there any additional discussion okay um the motion on the floor is that the cheshire board of education approves the use of peck jones funds in the amount of twenty eight thousand six hundred dollars to enhance the availability of quality reading materials in the classroom in school libraries for the students in grades k through 12. all in favor aye okay we've got uh looks like six votes so that's unanimous for those who are here uh no opposed motion passes thank you um okay finance report um as far as the finance committee we've
008not met uh in a little while i think our numbers have been set for for a bit so um i guess uh vin i'll hand it over to you for some updates thank you and good morning everyone i'm going to share my screen and and go through the next couple of sections on the agenda hopefully everybody can see the medical benefits update on your screen yes yes okay thank you yes the this is the medical benefits update as of may 31st if you um take a look here you could see that the most recent claim month of may was 909 000 in claims you know this year we were looking for an average of 750 000 so you know that claim month is higher than um you know what we would have expected this entire
009year in fact if you look down in the lower section our average monthly claims this year have been 869 000 119 per month what's driving our claims is primarily some very large claims um for just a handful of individuals that have benefits through the cheshire public schools um you could see that you know on yet a day basis we've decreased the the medical benefits reserve balance by 1.27 million dollars due to claims however if you look up at the top section of the report you'll see that we did receive 475 644 dollars in stop-loss reimbursements and so those are for individual claims that exceed 175 000 um coveted claims on a year-to-date basis through may are under three thousand dollars so just you know kind of keeping in what i've been reporting previously this is
010not covert claims that are driving this year's claims it just is uh you know it's one of those years where large claims do predominate um our medical benefits volume the ending balance and the reserve is two million four hundred seventy thousand ninety dollars as of may 31 we have one more month to go in the in the claim year you know i believe june claims will likely be relatively high again um because of of some of the large claim activity that's continuing to come through you know but i do expect that we will probably receive another 50 000 or so of stop-loss reimbursements in june so you know despite the fact that we had a large claim and and uh a large decrease in the trust fund balance we are ending you know at least
011may with about three months of claims reserve um which is where we'd want to be i mean we were higher but you know we'll certainly take ending at three months and you know hope for a you know better claim year next year so i'm going to stop sharing my screen for a second there are any questions from board members um i'll i'll go first um now please put your uh your questions in the chat box so i can um uh determine order please um so vin uh for the the funding levels um i know that we had i think if i recall increased funding levels for uh fiscal will that take effect i'm guessing on july one yes or is that is that's not reflected in this report correct no no so the increased funding
012this you know we increased the uh funding to medical benefits by about 350 000 for fiscal year 2021. so as we make deposits to our medical benefits reserve you know that that monthly amount um you know will be reflected in the medical reserve contributions but yeah that's not reflected yet thank you um let's see and go ahead yeah so along those lines uh vin can you talk about can you remind us because i i do remember but um could you remind us of what we're doing with with our deposits because it's less than what we've did last year and are we still on track for what we were thinking um due to you know ending the year a little bit lower reserve than we anticipated are we still going to be on track with with
013uh depositing the lesser amount this coming year well we are depositing um you know a little bit more every month next year you know the question is will it be enough to meet our monthly claims so you know for next year just from memory we'll be depositing somewhere in the neighborhood of seven hundred twenty thousand dollars per month um this year's claims have been averaging eight hundred seventy thousand dollars per month but yeah again being driven by large claims so if our claim do normalize you know down to that 700 even if it's 750 000 a month level you know we'll we'll have enough reserves to carry through 20 20 21. so it's um [Music] you know i i think the board remembers we did try to increase the funding even higher than what was
014ultimately approved but we're relying on reserves i think next year again and so i i always cross my fingers when we start a new fiscal year and hope for the best the um you know we did as and you'll see that in a minute you'll see that um we did add another 30 000 you know to the medical benefits reserve as we close out this fiscal year that was you know at the end of the day that's what we had available to deposit so again i'm hoping that we normalize it was really an unusual large claim year the uh you know the 475 thousand dollars in stop-loss reimbursement um does help us right so even though our claims were you know negative to the remote about 1.3 million dollars the 475 000 actually helps increase
015the um you know the to the extent that claims exceeded our contributions so if you net that out you know we're down about 800 you know thousand dollars for the year thanks van i just you know uh i remember our conversations during those budget meetings and um i remain a little nervous that we aren't more conservative with this uh fund and to to keep it more because you say it may it should i hope that it normalizes but you know perhaps this is the new normal like many other things we're experiencing so um thanks for keeping us on track with all of this because i know that because i know that you look at it carefully and and you advise us carefully yeah i mean if there's a little bit of a ray of hope
016it's that in the um you know we were really unusual to a lot of different um you know municipalities and organizations this year you know a lot of you know claims went down for a lot of organizations because you know of covid elective surgeries and and you know procedures you know that would have ordinarily occurred you know people even you know pause before going to the doctor for their visit so it was an unusual year for us and um you know there is some optimism that claims won't be extraordinary next year just just base claims so if that's the case and we get you know a little lucky with the large claims we should be okay but again i think the most important thing we do have three months of reserves i don't want you
017to lose any sleep at night over this because those reserves are there for a reason it's to buoy us if we do have you know a large you know large claim event year next year um you know it's the funding in the following fiscal year if we run through the reserves in 2021 we're going to have to increase the operating budget to to bring up the medical benefits contributions monthly thank you again you're welcome andrew he had a question i'm actually good he answers my question thank you ben you're welcome hey hey um just so you know i'm not i'm not texting i'm reading your report here um so um these million dollar claims are they individual claims or are they are they cumulative claims and i'm just curious how rigorous is our case management
018program in terms of um just helping us contain costs as well as ensuring that whoever these guys folks are are getting the most efficient and i don't mean that in the negative way but efficient inappropriate care well answer the first part of the the question which is are these you know these are individ when i say large claims and that 475 thousand dollars in stop loss the way that works is when an individual employee or dependent has medical claims that accumulative that exceed 175 000 that's when we consider it a large claim and that's when we start getting stop-loss reimbursement from the stop-loss insurance carrier um so if we have a you know member or a a dependent who has you know 500 000 worth of total treatment uh because of a cancer diagnosis which
019includes doctor visits hospitalizations you know chemotherapy or immunotherapy that all accumulates um to become a large claim and it it's not by month it's over the course of the of the claim year and you know for our plans you know the hsa is january to december and for our other plans it's you know let's it's july to june so um that's kind of the technical answer on a large claim as far as you know the medical administration and case management you know we obviously rely on cigna as our carrier to you know manage those claims and and claim costs we you know do have a pharmacy benefits manager that manages the pharmacy benefits you know we do look at you know the large claims you know to make sure that they are scrutinized so to
020speak and large claims do get a second layer of review by the stop-loss insurance carrier so you know i think it's it's fair to say that you know the the claims that we have are based on the need you know of the individual um and like all medical costs i think they're managed fairly aggressively in the industry these days um but yeah i think that that's the best answer i could give you on that i mean we do rely on you know the carrier you know our broker you know and our you know pharmacy benefits manager to help us you know keep claim costs in line with the treatment that's needed thanks you're welcome tim you got a question yeah thanks um so i hope i didn't miss this but with regard to the uh
021early teacher retirement incentive this is where it hits correct uh to the extent that teachers decided on the medical benefits option is that your question yeah basically i mean there was an incentive this is the incentive bucket right here right the incentive was a choice so teachers can choose to take um cash or they can choose to stay in medical in a medical benefits plan um and most teachers did take the cash option i believe there were five teachers that elected to stay in medical benefits and they could only stay in um what we'll we'll pay for one year under the incentive um but they do have to go on medicare when they're age 65 so you know they can't stay in our medical benefits plan forever all right so just with respect to this
022year there's five or fewer teachers who are here and you have 700 staff with different medical plans five about 500 employees participate in the medical benefit plans all right so we're talking about a one percent impact on there which is it's real dollars but it's it's frankly it's image here one percent is a material to the big to the big number right well it's not no no but i mean from an accounting on an average claim basis um yeah yeah okay all right that's it thank you you're welcome are there any other questions on this issue okay uh vin uh why don't you continue on okay so now i'm going to share my screen again and just give you an update on where we are uh at the end of the year um today is
023is june 30th it is the last day of the fiscal year this is the memo that was shared with the board members last night from superintendent um normally at this meeting we do fiscal year-end transfers this year is a little bit unusual because we actually don't have to transfer between budget lines and if you could see my screen here you could see that the ending balance in salaries benefits instructional expense support service operations and maintenance you know all those individual line items were under budget and if you add the total it's one million two hundred forty seven thousand six hundred dollars i just wanna put a little bit of context around the you know what each of these ending balance represents so if we look at salaries 647 863 000 that's about 1.4 of a
02447.4 million dollar budget line so in other words we spent 98.6 percent of the budget leaving 1.4 for benefits this represents about 1.4 percent of 11 million dollars the 242 000 remaining an instructional expense um you know that represents 5.3 percent of 4.6 million dollars so from a from a budgetary point of view instructional expense is the area that was the most under budget that that is somewhat by design 152 560 and support services represents about 2.3 percent of 6.6 million and the 47 205 remaining in operations and maintenance it's 1.3 so you know we did expend um over 98 of the budget but the to the extent that we um didn't spend all of the budget that's how we wind up with the 1.247 million that's remaining i'm gonna just move on before um
025you know i present you know the potential motions to the board um so the budget commentary just a couple of points i'd like to make first of all the budget year from july 1st of 2019 through february was was actually relatively good we were on track in in you know most of our accounts um there were really no no major variances that were overly concerning however because of the pandemic you know certainly from march to to june 30th you know was was quite extraordinary we had a you know a lot of you know things that we needed to deal with obviously from an educational and an operational point of view we had a series of governor's orders and legislative mandates that you know all school districts including including cheshire were obligated to follow we were
026in remote learning you know for all our students from march 13th through june 11th when the school year ended for our students as the board members know we started a grab and grow grab and go emergency food service distribution march 18th and end of june 8. and then on march 25th most of our employees began working from home in line with the governor's stay safe stay home executive order so to a large extent the 1.2 million that we didn't spend in our budget is related to savings you know from that period and um you know not to rehash uh because i know all the board members have heard this but the areas where you know we saved the most money were transportation the cleaning costs you know uh you know wages for additional hours and
027overtime the coaching stipends because there was no spring sports season and then we also had significant savings in electricity in particular that that savings was around 200 000 uh as well as our heat and energy accounts um the few things that i want to highlight also um [Music] which are final expenditures or encumbrances that we made and i i'm sharing this because it puts some good perspective around what we're planning for at least for the first few months of the new fiscal year so you can see here we have eighty four thousand dollars you know dedicated to purchase and install plexiglas shields for the school offices the nurses offices areas such as the library counters we also in that 84 000 are anticipating purchasing student desk shields which are you know cardboard devices that actually
028sit on a student desk that have polycarbonate panels so that the student can see out and you know assuming that we go ahead with this purchase you know it would enable students to be seated at their desk not necessarily having to wear a mask so it allows them to work comfortably but without having a mask also in that 84 000 signage and floor decals you know signage would indicate you know the rules social distancing wearing a mask you know if you have a temperature please don't enter the building some of that signage is up but we need to purchase a lot more we're also working with you know one company in particular to uh install floor decals so where we have hallways that are two-way hallways you know we would have signage on you know
029applied to the floor you know in the elementary schools we're anticipating putting footsteps to point the direction of movement in the hallways again this is all covert 19 protective measures we're planning on we've got 55 050. allocated for purchasing of ppe um as well as disinfecting wipes and sanitizer containers for all the learning spaces this is only about a two month supply the fifty five thousand dollars um we're not sure if the state will provide some of these items we're waiting to hear back from uh cirque which is you know a quasi governmental agency to to provide some group purchase price um discounts for these items so you know we know we're going to need this we also purchased 10 portable hand wash stations to be used in our schools so this will supplement you
030know what we have available for bathrooms these uh stations hold seven and a half gallons of water basically you put them anywhere you know near an electrical outlet is all they need it has a seven and a half gallon container of water and it's got a seven and a half gallon container for waste so as people are washing their hands it's it's basically you know an item that you know uh all that our maintenance staff would have to do is fill the water and empty the waste water on an as needed basis unemployment um we do have 75 000 allocated for unemployment costs you know we we finally were able to get our hands on the april bill for unemployment you know from july through march our total unemployment claims were four hundred dollars uh
031april's bill not surprisingly was thirty one thousand dollars and we're anticipating about the same for the months of may and june so we've got that set aside for unemployment um i did want to give an update also the food and nutrition services i had explained as we were going through grab and go that we may need to provide a reimbursement for the food and nutrition department um they did serve 155 030 meals to 20 768 students in 25 serving days and we all know that that program went very well so we did have to provide a small reimbursement this 7365 to the food service department and also in accordance with state requirements the border vet is responsible for any unpaid school lunch balances owed by students and parents so we write a check to food
032and nutrition but they are continuing to attempt to recover against that sixteen hundred dollars and any recovery that they get gets reimbursed back to the board of ed's budget by food and nutrition the sixteen hundred dollars uh is you know it that that balance is aggressively worked by you know madeleine dyker and her food service staff so we've had years where that balance at the end of the year was over four thousand dollars on the sixteen hundred dollars you know we're estimating is probably when it all is said and done to be about half of that maybe a little bit less last year was under 500 as an example and then the last entry that um we made yesterday to balance out to that 1.247 million was 30 863 was added to the medical benefits
033reserve um i'm not going to go through this other than to say that you know we do have uh routine maintenance and summer work planned and you know much of that is already underway i have a couple of quick photos here um this is how we did our bid openings this spring and early um early part of of the summer i suppose we did them outside and you can see that you know it's that greyhead guy is me and then that's a couple of vendors that showed and that's rich clavette our facilities manager uh this is the ppe distribution these are the uh chesapeake employees this is cheshire high school they've been doing ppe distribution to other health districts every tuesday the uh you know this is an impressive picture this is darcy school that's
034a 10 000 gallon underground oil storage tank that was removed this is a panoramic picture you could see darcy school in the background uh that project is going well there was no soil contamination i'm pleased to report uh this is our sign pro representative with our staff you know walking through highland school preparing for the plexiglas shields and the floor decals those are the items at highland school that have been collected its books its textbooks and its chromebooks that will be sorted through and prepped highland we're redoing the gym floor and finally this is cheshire high school this is the high school window replacement project that is underway so i think um i'm gonna stop sharing for a minute there sorry that took so long but i it's about as quick as i could go
035to to give the board a sense of you know where we are with the fiscal year end um the projects that we have and the money that we have parked so that we can you know start off the the new year in this pandemic mode you know somewhat prepared at least for the purchase of the items that that we need to purchase uh thank you vin um i see there's a few questions out there i'll kick it off with my own um i saw in your your list of um final expenditures um there because i have a little bit of knowledge in this um there seem to be um three items that a lot of your ppe purchases and a lot of the items you're using to prepare the schools for the fall may qualify
036for fema funding and or additional cares funding and i was wondering and i know that sometimes towns can apply individually and i wasn't sure if cheshire had begun the process to file for uh reimbursement for any of those expenditures it looked to be about 000 i was wondering if if the town and or the school system can independently apply or are we tied to the state as far as what they're choosing to dole out so on the fema reimbursement specifically like other past fema reimbursements we work with the town finance department and we submit our claims you know jointly honestly i'm not sure what qualifies and and doesn't qualify for free for fema reimbursement at this point in time i'm hoping a lot i'm hoping even some of that unemployment uh claim activity will qualify
037but that's that's yet to be you know determined and announced but we will be filing uh fema claims we are tracking you know all the costs related to the pandemic you know that include purchases um we don't have you know typically with fema reimbursements and the example i'll give you is if there's a snowstorm you know that there is female reimbursement typically the reimbursement is around overtime and labor costs some equipment costs we really don't have any any labor costs under this fema reimbursement so this is rather unusual um as far as the cares act money that you asked about adam you know that that's about 99 000 that we would expect to receive um that application i believe um has been started i don't you know i'll defer to jeff and marlene but um
038that 99 000 can be used for whatever purpose it doesn't need to necessarily be used for ppe it's it's not limited you know for its intended use certainly we will put the hundred thousand dollars to good use i would anticipate it might be used on the instructional side but that remains to be decided um uh well yes and and i guess for your information um i asked about the fema money because i was uh i was on a conference call for that sort of thing and fema had decided that um basically anything any covet expense such as the at least the first three items were considered uh disaster recovery good and that you could be eligible i don't know if it was a hundred percent i think it might have been 75 reimbursement for those
039types of expenditures so and they're running through uh demas i think they're the uh they're the uh agency that's that's kind of handling all the paperwork for that yeah just for your information i don't know if you can check on it yourself or if it's got to be the town but no really eager to to give money for covid related especially plexiglas it's hand washing all that kind of stuff yeah we've been in touch the the demas coordinator for um region two that we're in i mean demas has been providing ppe for you know our emergency services primarily we've asked a couple of times now you know if they are going to start providing ppe to boards of ed and the answer has been no so far but you know jack kasner is the town's
040emergency coordinator and you know we we do have a weekly call you know with jack and some of the other town officials so that's an issue or that's a topic that keeps coming up because you know the commitment to ppe you know as i as i indicated is about 55 000 that's just a two-month supply and it would be certainly better financially if the demas or you know some other state agency provides the ppe so you know we're in a it's a little bit of a dilemma for us because we can't wait too much longer to order the ppe that you know we've allocated the funding for uh we are waiting for you know a couple of the state quasi agencies cirque is um is it the special education regional council what is that research
041center so yeah you know we're waiting to see if they give us some better pricing i mean that right now you know i think surgical masks face shields we could get the things that are going to be difficult to get are gloves sanitizing wipes and a hand sanitizer it's okay right now so we're gonna have to start ordering some of those items pretty pretty quickly within the next i would say 10 days okay thank you let's see um i think catherine you were first thanks uh thank you so i guess my question is if first my question was should we be using more of the surplus to anticipate higher costs um that we kind of know is coming but since i wasn't really aware of the reimbursement um possibilities if we are if we do
042get reimbursement for like the ppe purchases that we make or whatever does that money come back to the board of ed or does that end up going back to the town i'm just trying to understand if that's those funds would then be available to you know pay for more equipment or things that were we end up needing after the first two months for example i guess that's my question yeah i mean we would certainly lobby to get those funds you know back so we could buy you know additional pp or whatever costs we need to cover um you know i will i will throw out one more thing that there is a um we've got about 200 000 in the building um capital nom recurring you know we call it the emergency fund that you
043have to go appeal uh or request from the town council um even though it's you know it's the building fund if if we were really in a pinch we could use that and the other thing female reimbursements generally take a long time so right we probably well i didn't know if the cares act would be you know funds from the cares act will be uh coming more quickly than the fema or whatever yeah yeah and then the other thing um just kind of on a related note when we start the new fiscal year we are as the board knows we usually start our fiscal year and we allow up to 60 percent usually 60 of our non-payroll items to be ex non-payroll lines to be expended this year we're starting at 40 percent um you
044know we're going out with a hiring freeze so we're going to be very very conservative for obvious reasons as we start the fiscal year and we'll you know we'll certainly have to prioritize you know the governor's document was released yesterday and you know i haven't gone through it yet but you know eric potential expenses can be in a number of places it could be ppe if we need to hire additional bus aids or instructional assistants depending on how we set up classes next year there certainly is the potential for costs that aren't anticipated and the only way we can counter that right now is start with the very low expenditure ceiling on our non-payroll accounts but but but the surplus that we're sending back to the town you know at what point can we i
045i find this crazy but um so we're sending a million dollars back to the town when we know we're likely to need at least some of that um and that will just mean that we have to go to the town council and ask for them to allocate it back to us at some point i mean is that how it will end up well we also have a 200 000 uh fund to help mitigate some of that uh you know i mentioned last night we're initiating our fall reopening meetings today so i think by the end of next week or the following week we will have a little bit more clarity about at least from an operational perspective wait what some of our needs may be uh and i think that'll also have to be calculated
046are ours our conversations with the the council uh about how to support our school system through this pandemic are not over i think that's definitely fair to say okay thank you um ann you had a comment um i just wanted to say that um whenever we come into these end of the year fiscal reckoning meetings uh i am reminded that um i need to express my great appreciation to you vin because the attention that you pay to these accounts and the magic that you perform to make this all happen it um it does help me to sleep at night throughout the whole year so um i just want to express great appreciation for what you do and um and how you keep us on track fiscally so thank you well thank you and i will
047just comment back you know thanks for that ann it's not magic um you know i do have some really good staff that helps with this i mean you know we had this year we had about 2 purchase orders you know i know we look at five line items in this meeting but there's about 910 accounts that those 2500 purchase orders are issued against so it's just a lot of detail work and it's always you know our budget is a series of trade-off decisions as we manage our expenditures so um i wish it was magic but it isn't it's it's just looking at it and and trying to be responsible about where our expenditures go i should have said i should have said you make it look like mad okay i'll take that and thank you
048to your staff as well because i know that it's not just one person yeah andrew you had a question sure uh vin you said there was 242 000 in instructional expense savings could you just highlight what some of those are seems like a lot of money i understand i mean because there's a salary line and where the money was saved and other items i was just wondering what instructional is that out of district training what is that so um the line items where we had the largest pickup in instructional um in the instructional line we had 99 99 000 of the 240 2000 came from instructional supply which is you know items that range from music art classroom supplies you know things like crayons and pencils those are primarily in the hands of the school
049principals so when we apply you know what we allowed the principals to expend was 80 of that line like it's one of the non-payroll lines so the actual expenditure was 81 percent of 513 000 uh the second largest savings in that group was textbooks software which was 48 000 so we did spend 89 percent of that line curriculum materials we had 25 000 in savings library media supplies with 19 400. so that it's primarily items that we you know would use inside the classroom and inside the schools and you know i will you know comment that you know the principles when we say you can expend 80 percent what they do is what we do on the district level is they prioritize you know what are the things that they need and what are the
050things that they can do without for the fiscal year so i want to leave the impression that we're not supplying anything that that's necessary we're just prioritizing what we can afford okay and one other question um is there a limit so you spent about there was 253 000 if my math is correct of uh end of year expenditures for the covid is there a limit set on how much can be spent or is that just what we were able to spend by june 30th or encumber by june 30th like if we had to have spent you know an extra couple hundred thousand dollars in order to outfit the schools if we had more time could we have done that or is there a limit that's set um no no the limit in this case in
051this year you know which is unusual right the limit is we um needed to leave 1 million 247 600 as our year-end fiscal balance as far as what we expended it we or you know we either expended or encumbered for purchase of there there is no limit um and so if you look at the list of accounts you'll see that some accounts are under budget but some accounts we overexpended you know one of the over-expended accounts was capital equipment because you know we did need to buy additional chromebooks uh which you know i believe marlene presented to the curriculum committee and it went to the board you know we know we're going to need chromebooks for next year you know to replace some of the ones that are no longer they're past google's support period
052um but also to put more chromebooks into the hands of our teachers and our students in case we need to go back to remote so it's that same series of you know what are the things that we need what are the priorities you know the 75 000 for unemployment you know that was a you know we really didn't have a choice there you know we needed to encumber that money to expend it so yeah the the cap is only what we have in total to spend and in a normal year you know we we would be looking to balance the accounts to zero again this was an extraordinary year but it's the same theory you know if we over expend in you know one of the line items such as instructional supply we have to
053make it up somewhere else whether it's operations and maintenance or support services good thank you okay tim you got a comment um yeah okay yeah so vin thank you for all this and with regard to the with regard to the reopening you obviously need to follow the law and provide a safe environment i also just from in terms of prioritizing your spending just i want to i want you to be realistic about behaviors and what you actually can change and what you will not be able to change and i mentioned last night at the meeting that the american pediatrics some american pediatrics group is you know saying does it make sense they're questioning whether it makes sense for little kids to wear face masks because they're going to touch their face anyway and you're not
054going to be able to control that sort of thing and you also mentioned about i think buying the stickers for the floors yeah telling the schools which direction to go and i'm thinking really the high school where you have the the eight and i just wondered you know i think it's a i think it's a nice idea but the student who's supposed to go that way and walk half a mile to get all the way around rather than walking to the room next door just keep those just keep those things in mind before you go spending you know large sums of money on anything and then i do have a question you mentioned encumbrances with regard to do you have any encumbrances that are more than 18 months old just off the top of your
055head do you happen to know that no no i mean okay everything should pretty much be within the past year usually it's with only we only keep encumbrances for the first six months of the year is really our max you know so by december those incumbents have to be spent otherwise they get closed and they actually you know they do go back to the town's general fund in that case but yeah okay i just because i think the town hasn't conferences that can be out there for years but it's probably capital project related i'm not sure capital projects are different right but operating budget no those encumbrances have to get closed do the schools have any capital project encumbrances that are that stay out there does it go back to the town and leave the
056schools yeah no capital budget so let's use an example we have you know capital budget appropriation for district-wide roof repairs and usually those allocations are 125 so if we spend eighty thousand dollars to do roof repairs and we don't need roof repairs for two more years that capital funding stays in that capital account until either it's expended or until we make a request to have the town's finance department close it out and that's usually done by council action so okay yeah but we can't carry over our operating budget encumbrances uh past you know certainly past the fiscal year okay okay all right thank you you're welcome faith question yeah thank you and vin thank you to ayakoen's comments um it's really uh amazing what you and your staff can do in terms of uh this
057budget um with regard to the ppe then or 55 000 is for its worth of e-coverage pp equipment correct yes okay so um i mean it it you know ten months if that's uh we're going to blow that 200 000 out of the water but um is that simply covering staff or are you are we anticipating that we are also going to be providing ppe for all students and is you know 55 000 uh sufficient 20 you know 26 000 per month is that sufficient uh so yeah that's a great question um and i don't want to bore you with all the details so we put together a work worksheet um and we laid out on that worksheet by school how many students we have per school how many staff we have per school the
058type of staff that we have per school so if you look at that ppe what we assumed as an example for surgical mass we assumed a one surgical mass per week for everyone students and staff um for you know we don't know what we're going to go through i mean you know certainly the line i've been using is you know byom bring your own mask but we can't be in a position where we don't have a mask if somebody doesn't have a mask and they need to wear a mask which apparently is part of this governor's requirement for hand sanitizer you know we have 400 learning spaces which is classroom libraries resource rooms whatever so we assumed one container of hand sanitizer per learning space per week it's a guess it was you know a
059way for us to come up with what we think we need to order i'm not sure how much of that we'll use um kn or n95 mass you know we only are ordering a few hundred of those for our you know maintenance and other staff so you know depend depending on the commodity item i'll call it you know we we used an estimate um so some is for students some as staff and some as for just limited staff okay if i could follow up that's okay adam i have a just a couple others um okay okay so just initial quick read of that report that came out yesterday heavy heavy heavy emphasis on equity also for marlene and jeff are we confident that work from uh beginning in march we satisfy the equity everyone has
060access appropriate access to wi-fi and you know hardware and or are we anticipating that we have to go and and and provide even more um in one way or another well as you know we've moved for next year to a device per student which um you know i think we were already there in the we found a way to patch work make it work this past spring including the distribution of hot spots wireless hot spots to people who needed them and things like that so if it's impos if it's possible to even build on that level of access we have done that and we will continue to be sensitive to people who need wi-fi in the home if we're doing a remote situation but you know we want our goal as i've said before is
061to get every child what they need and not in our mind equity is isn't equal to everybody it's getting kids what they need um so that's what we're working toward okay okay all right and um i don't know if it i would just like it restate it again why of the i don't know um you know it's clear we need more than two hundred thousand dollars and uh perhaps i need a refresher as to why if that language regarding the special fund was up to two percent of the budget only 200 out of our 1.2 um saying if someone might be able to refresh my memory for that one yeah it's a combination of town budgeting and what we're looking at in terms of needs for special education supports and more i mean the the
062reality is this is really ever evolving that you know until yesterday we didn't know what exactly the needs were for uh mask wearing and things like that so it's definitely a challenge to hit this moving target and as i said you know moments ago that i don't think our conversations with the council about the resources necessary to facilitate what's in that state report to the greatest extent possible keep our kids to the group safe to the greatest extent possible as well as educate them um you know that that's evolved it will continue to evolve throughout the year and um you know we're going to need to continue contact with the council about uh any sort of resources we may need to address that i know they're they're uh is even tony said last night you
063know concerned about that as well okay are there any other questions for vin or jeff on this topic is their hand uh anne oh i'm sorry i missed you and go ahead no i just put it in there thank you um going off what faith uh said my question is um because this um this idea of access for all is is really important and and i thank you faith for bringing it up um but i also think that we do a pretty good job here in cheshire with that but what about uh statewide um are we getting funds are all towns all school districts getting some funds uh based on need to get all of our children in the entire state um to where they need to be with this access to internet and access
064to uh devices that that let children participate in school uh when we're in these emergency situations so i'm just wondering like faith's comment got me to thinking um what what's the state um funding involvement in all of in all of what we're doing um beyond peers money i mean that's and that's federal money anyway the we um cheshire hasn't been contacted about any sort of resources but i know alliance districts those are districts with uh more significant social socioeconomic needs those districts have been provided technology and additional resources necessary to provide greater equity access so there is some of that out there yeah thank you okay um i'm seeing no additional questions um so we have uh several motions here that we're sort of discussing around the periphery a little bit um uh i guess
065i'll read the first motion that the board of education requests that the cheshire town council deposit 200 000 of the remaining 1 million 247 600 fiscal year and balance to the non-lapsing unexpended educational education funds account is there a second second okay um is there a discussion on the motion seeing no discussion um all in favor of the motion i i uh let's see i believe that is unanimous of those voting okay thank you um the second motion um move that the board of education returns 1 million 47 600 of the 1 million forty seven thousand six hundred dollars remaining uh remaining fiscal year-end balance to the town's general fund is there a second well it's a faith we go faith seconds um is there a discussion on this motion no discussion um all in
066favor uh looks like that is unanimous okay thank you um there is no old business and there's a chairperson's report the chairperson is not here and i was not provided with any additional report um jeff did you have anything to add was there any additional report from you there is not okay um we had uh something about a executive session but it looks like i believe we handled this yesterday evening so i don't think there's an uh any need for an executive session uh was there any other new business that anyone wanted to bring up uh andrew i just see your hand up yeah i wasn't able to we had a school modernization committee meeting um a very brief one on wednesday the 24th that's going to put out there that um we met and
067we hired a firm by the name of milo and mcbroom to do an enrollment study to help with the uh facility planning so there were two bids that were received one was from milan mcbroom and the other one was from um nesdek and uh coliers who is our project manager assistant uh they um recommended highly recommended melon and mcbroom they were a little bit more expensive but the other proposals that was submitted did not have the mapping which came highly recommended by coliers that we do include that in the proposal so i believe they're under contract vin for nineteen thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars um and we'll be expecting some new enrollment studies and projections in the next four months or so correct not out there it's a very brief 30-minute meeting but they
068are getting some work done just wanted to provide that update to everybody great thank you andrew i i'd like to add to i'd like to add to that the the reason that the meeting was so brief was because it was just a one-item agenda for the purposes of of hiring that enrollment study but um this committee is on hiatus and will not be meeting again until uh our um the issue that we have presented to the um town council is resolved and um i so i just wanted to inform this group that um that committee is not meeting until we resolve the issue of um i guess it's personnel issue is what it's considered so but that was an emergency meeting adam your mute thank you um so is there any uh additional uh topic
069under new business okay oh adam jim always at the end okay tim what you got no i'm not so i don't know if you i don't know if you could elaborate on that but my question really is for andrew who did the who did the um last enrollment projection was it might want to make room or something no not ergonomics okay it's a different term okay my loaning room was chester's my little room right yes yeah and it was you know there was a lot of discussion at the meeting but one of the they do have kind of the pulse on the town they do know that the development trends they helped with the plan of concert and development where new developments may be going in order to help they really you know that experience
070is pretty invaluable to the to the process so okay cool thank you andrew thanks adam thank you tim um okay uh seeing nothing else i'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn anyone catherine is there a second all right all in favor great thank you everyone uh final our final final meeting of this year of course july 1st begins tomorrow so then who knows what happens after that so uh thanks everyone and we'll see you next time enjoy your day everybody