Cromwell Special BoE Meeting June 6, 2023 6:00PM

001all right at this time I'll call this special meeting of the Board of Education to order at 604. and we have a new um secretary here tonight would you introduce her for us so that she can take roll calls absolutely we have Laura Laura me and japico Laura tagore for Alessandra she started last week she has incredible amount of experience and is working her tail off trying to catch up on everything and she just threw her into uh the fire tonight by having her take minutes because Lisa's on vacation but she does she has done them in the past and so I'm fully confident that she will be fine and will be recorded so all right me and Jeffy go everyone welcome and thank you so do you have a list if we usually just

002go around do roll call but looks like we're all here so um she won't be here for the first part that's right okay so you can go through and read them if you'd like if you have it Mrs Cantwell yeah Mrs Cloutier Mrs Miss Franklin she'll be here later thank you Mrs Kelleher yeah Mrs lamberson Mrs post Mrs Russ IA Mr Schuman Mr zambrouski Dr macri here and Mrs demaro here thank you all right thank you approval of the agenda we have two items on the agenda for this evening and it's to interview the candidate for the Cromwell Middle School assistant principal position and also candidate for special education supervisor both are proposed to be held in executive session is there a motion to approve the agenda by Alan is there a second I saw

003Matt all in favor pose abstentions motion carries the approve agenda is approved and with that is their motion to go into executive session and we'll also be inviting a Dr macri and miss tomorrow Catherine made the motion is there a second I saw Kelly Cloutier all in favor opposed sentence motion carries and we are in executive session at six oh [Music] okay sorry about that we just have two items to vote on and then we'll come out of this meeting into the next meeting so we've the appointment the possible action for the appointment of the Cromwell Middle School assistant principal Andrea Middlebrook so we interviewed the board interview just now so is there a motion to approve is there a second dipty all in favor opposed extensions oh Kelly is abstaining okay that's true you're

004not in attendance until the next meeting okay motion carries and it passes congratulations and welcome Middlebrooks thank you all right and next our potential action to appoint the special education supervisor and for that we have interviewed Ashley Talman is there a motion to approve made by Laurie Cantwell is there a second by Alan all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries congratulations Ashley we're so happy to have you both here so good luck and thank you very much right and we'll adjourn this meeting is there a motion to adjourn Lori second Matt all in favor opposed absentions motion carries meeting is adjourned at 7 10. 15 p.m tonight sorry for the delay everyone and I just wanted to welcome Laura she's here this evening and she'll be doing our our minutes Lori mangafico is that correct

005okay so welcome um if you'd like to take roll call Mrs Cantwell Mrs Cloutier Miss Franklin Mrs Kelleher here Mrs lamberson Mrs post Mrs Russ here Mr Schumann Mr zabrowski Mrs arnista Miss Barry Mrs biggington Mr buttwell Mrs Burke Mrs chocolia she's not here thank you thank you sorry Mrs tomorrow Mrs tituno Miss thank you Mr cuckle Miss St John thank you Mrs Lynch thank you Dr McLean thank you Dr macri Miss mayor Mrs O'Leary thank you Mrs Shepherd thank you Mrs weissickle thank you Olivia polkowski Julia Bay muradova Jillian Morgan thank you Jack Drew thank you Anthony Salvatore Stephen fortenbach Jack hennenhan is there a long list she you know at least surprised the list a lot longer than look around yeah okay thank you right Steve wagonowski Steve okay thank you thank you

006and then I'm told we have a new board rep for the high school so we have summer teacher if you want to add her to the list summer teacher t-a-t-r-o thank you thank you to all who could be here tonight I know it was inconvenient that we moved the meeting sooner so it's a special meeting for that reason and we appreciate all that are here tonight and just before we move on to approving the agenda I wanted to take a moment of silence we did have Frank rasconi as an ECS custodian for nine years who sadly passed away last month so we want to take a moment of silence and just remember Mr vasconi for his time here at ECS and our thoughts and prayers are with his family okay thank you and move on

007we'll move on to approval of the agenda additions deletions and since it's a special meeting we're not able to make any additions or deletions so we'll just I'll accept a motion to approve the agenda as it is by Lori is our second Alan all in favor opposed extensions motion carries agenda is approved and we'll move on to celebrating our faculty and staff and for this who will be introducing Ms Shaw s okay okay I'm very happy to be here this evening to celebrate Sandra Shaw she is in charge of our food services department and we wanted to tell you a little bit about a recent administrative review that we have undergone Sandra has undergone the state of Connecticut will come out the state of Connecticut Nutrition department will come out once every five years and

008they do an extensive review of your program from every document you could possibly imagine all the way down to the nutritional values on your menu we received notification I believe it was in November that we would be audited in May and it took Sandra six months to get all the documents together that are required for this audit um upwards of over 70 documents needed to be uploaded and an additional two inch binder needed to be provided for the two Auditors that came in from the state of Connecticut to look through our entire program I just wanted to talk a little bit about the exit conference that took place at the end of the audit the audit was um basically two days on site and then a third day they left us but we're still working

009on the audit so a couple weeks afterwards um we had an exit interview and our two reviewers who are Terry d'andino and Susan Fiore um we had got on a call with Dr macri and myself and Sandra and it was a surprise guest there it was Shannon Yearwood Shannon Yearwood is the bureau chief of Child Nutrition and she's also a criminal parent so usually when Shannon Yearwood is invited it wasn't a good audit but in this case our our review was in the top one percent of successfully completed audits that they had done and they wanted to be able to celebrate that so they did invite Shannon Yearwood to be on the call so we're very proud of that um Sandra is very dedicated she is very hard-working um most importantly Sandra cares about our

010children as if they were her own children she has worked for Cromwell since January of 2002. and she has held several positions within the food service department and in 2018 Sandra was chosen to lead the department um it's 20 it's 20 employees and those employees are dedicated to serving the kids of this District breakfast and lunch every single school day for some students the cafeteria is some is the place and sometimes the only place that they're going to eat that they're going to have a nutritious meal and that they can know that there's going to be food for them because even in a town like Cromwell there's food insecurity among our children whether we know it or we see it or we don't but that is a fact and sometimes it's a place where your

011day is very stressful as a kid in school and you go and you get a smile and you get breakfast or you get lunch and that's very important for our kids as well and um they're amazing the staff's amazing we are so lucky here um I'm extremely proud of Sandra's accomplishments I'm extremely happy that our audit was as good as it was and we are really really proud of that I just want to end by saying today 625 breakfasts were served in 1300 lunches to our kids here in Cromwell and that's a Herculean task as big as a Herculean task of having to put together all the documentation for this audit so Sandra thank you for all your hard work here so we can properly thank you we couldn't do all this without you and

012our our audience can't see you from there would you mind walking up to the mine over here we have to get you on the camera thank you thank you thank you I love my grandma kids yeah like my kids and Sandra's been here since you know January January of 2002. my motto has always been that you treat the child that comes through the line as if they're your own child so thank you so much for all that you do for us every day and to run this program and I mean I don't even want to cook every night so I can't imagine doing it all day long so ladies love our ladies and gentlemen love what they do so great thank you very much appreciate it thank you Anne I think it's awesome it's also

013that before Sandra um like many other things in our district took over the Food Services Department um things were being done but they were not being done uh as well as they should have been which always means it affects our children and since Sandra has been in the role in the role that she has right now currently we don't have to worry as far as who's getting fed when they're getting fed um do we have a staff that's qualified to do the job Sandra takes care of all of that she starts taking calls um early in the morning until late at night and the freezers are broken she gets those calls too but it also is important in the review and everything that Ian said I could I can't repeat obviously because everything is true

014but it's important to note that they said that the food service service director did an excellent job in preparing for this comprehensive administrative review a great deal of care was taken when completing the USDA menu worksheets for both the breakfast and lunch programs and the documentation provided supported compliance with the meal pattern requirements thank you with two exclamation points and they would not start the meeting until I actually was in the meeting and it was really nice to have Mrs Yearwood who happens to be one of our parents in the meeting as well most of the time like Ian said they're doing these reviews and I may or may not have been in one before and they're not always as successful as ours is so um Kudos and thank you to Sandra for everything that

015she does for our students and our staff every single day I agree thank you all right we'll move on to celebrating our students Carmel High School and for that we have Mr cuckle so we're going to uh acknowledge Olivia polkowski she had a prior commitment and couldn't make it um as our senior Board of Education rep we'll make sure she gets that um and is still going to speak kindly you know she did serve on the board uh she was a member of our chair team as well uh here at the high school very successful chair team at the high school and she was a class officer and uh you know ultimately and I'll share the same things with her tomorrow you know the thing that that will stand out the most with me with

016Olivia what I will miss the most is she is just such a genuine good person uh always a smile on her face always in in good spirits always bringing up other people and supporting other people around her so she she will absolutely be missed when we look at you know as we lose seniors uh to graduation uh and just a dynamite kid and we certainly wish her the best uh you know in her next uh venture all right thank you so much and she's been on the board as a student rep for two years we definitely have seen her at most meetings very dedicated so we really appreciate that she's been doing that for us hopefully it was a good experience for her sad that we didn't get to say goodbye to her but definitely

017wish her that the best and if she ever has any needs needs a letter of recommendation I hope she feels free to reach out absolutely so let's give her a round of applause [Applause] all right moving on to correspondence Dr macri you do have the letter yes we do actually yeah I do so um last night I received an email and I forwarded it to all of you um we received an email from the director of operational and process planning um from the Department of administrative services and we as you all know uh hit a roadblock with our CMS building project we were expected the referendum the first referendum was 58 million next thing we know it's about 72 million and we were told that we would only be reimbursed on our general statute 10-285

018for about 39.6 of um of our project so we went back to the state and begged and a lot of people lobbied for this arcadis I'd like to really thank arcadis they're our construction manager um Rosanna Glenn the entire building committee um Senator lesser representative Carpino and we did something unprecedented although it was precedented because I think they just did it for another District as well right before well at the same time as us and the state has approved our request to update um and reflect the district's reimbursement rate from 39 percent to 49 which is going to save the town a few million dollars which is excellent because obviously we know that there are more things that the town has to do besides take care of our schools so this is unprecedented receiving this

019letter was like hitting the lottery last night it was just so exciting to and this truly was a joint effort between the town the community the school system everyone was involved and I just couldn't be more pleased because I say it all the time that if we actually work together and we spend more time working together and figuring out how we can do this we could move mountains and we did we did something that um that the state has never done before so in this situation it's a huge win for the community of Cromwell and it's a humongous win for the students of Cromwell which obviously we all care tremendously about so congratulations and I'm excited to share this from David Barkin the Chief Architect oh I'm sorry I thought you were going to read

020it okay oh no do you want me to read it no no no can you put it in the minutes though yeah I'm included in the minutes for everyone to read so we're definitely thrilled about that and the building committee members are over the moon about it as you'd expect and I'm sure they'll be sharing that at their meeting tomorrow night and we talked about a lot may have been shared all over Facebook already but people are excited okay moving on to public comments before I read the rules for public comments is there anyone here I would like to share a public comment okay please come up to the podium and I'll read the the rules for public comment individuals are welcome to address the board of education for up to three minutes each during

021the public comment portion of the meeting but board members will not generally engage in dialogue The Board of Education chair his or her discretion extend the time for public comments speakers must come to the podium and share your name and address to facilitate efficient sharing of your comments we encourage you to share any comments you may have about instruction discipline or learning materials first with your student's teacher then principal and followed by the superintendent before bringing the comments to the board of education however if you do not believe your comments have been addressed appropriately or if you believe they should be shared with the board of education for any other reason please feel free to do so any complaints or concerns about individual criminal Board of Education employees should be directed to the superintendent and

022the Board of Ed in writing rather than in public comments at Board of Education meetings all comments must not include personal attacks and comments cannot be discourteous threatening vulgar or otherwise inappropriate the board chairperson may as her discretion curtail any public comments or terminate any such individual's privilege of address at any time if they violate any of these rules violate reasonable standards of decorum or boisterous or our repetitious the Board of Education reserves the right to limit public comment to particular topics The Cromwell Board of Education values the well-being of our students and families those electing to make public comments at a board meeting are strongly discouraged from sharing identifiable information of their children and such comments including but not limited to name age and learning ability and are also reminded that any comments made

023during a meeting May become will become a permanent matter of public record that may be accessible by individuals in the future as such any person making public comments during a Board of Education meeting is solely responsible for the information they choose to share we kindly ask that you consider the privacy of your family and your children while making comments and with all that if you'd like to state your name and address you have the mic right thank you I will recite what you just told me hi I'm Jessica lamb twelfth High Ridge Road I'm actually here for two reasons tonight the first and I don't see this person in the room but I saw them on the agenda so I'll try and be very vague because I don't know I don't want to give away

024any surprises but there's a teacher that I know you wanted to recognize this evening um a teacher of the year and I just want to acknowledge that this person is so well deserving of it um I've seen him in action Through The Eyes of a seventh grader and when if any of you have children about that age you don't get a lot of information I don't think but the fact that he spoke to my student and touched his school experiences so meaningful so I I just want to Echo that recognition for this teacher he's pretty pretty amazing and I know he does other things just you know beyond teaching social studies so and I know there's a product of his track team here tonight as well so I just wanted to acknowledge Him the other

025reason I'm here tonight is to speak for another parent who couldn't be here in person who wanted some wanted her comments read aloud so it's for Heidi vanisher of 34 Hemlock Court and she says Dear members of the board I'm writing to take state of grievance about the amount of half days on the calendar for the 2023-2024 school year there appears to be no Rhyme or Reason as to the days of the week and how many half days there are going to be in a particular month it's not so easy for parents to arrange Child Care around this schedule the month of October has three half day Wednesdays in a row November and March have four half days including two days in a row for parent-teacher conferences children are losing out on a tremendous amount

026of learning hours I did the math and when children and and when the hours are added together the children will be losing the equivalent of two weeks of time in the classroom and this is not including delayed openings early dismissals that might happen due to inclement weather I've already spoken to the board about the struggle for special needs children in the middle and high schools who cannot receive daycare or after school programs these children are not able to be left home alone and parents cannot afford to take this time off of work well Dr macri and Mrs O'Leary State there's nothing they can do an IEP is illegally illegal federally mandated document that states how many service hours per week children should be receiving and how and how many hours per week children should be

027with non-disabled peers this is based on 183 day school year which the children aren't receiving due to the amount of half days it is the responsibility of the district to ensure that the children are receiving these hours which this calendar appears to show the district being out of compliance parents need to work and these half days are creating hardship parents should not have to decide whether to be employed or keep their children in public school and she asks that the the district keep keep an eye out on the calendar and are there any things that we can do to to change that so thank you for listening those are the two reasons why I came tonight are there any other public comments please just state your name and address hi my name is Dave deanabellos

028I'm from 23 Franklin Road um I'm gonna I wrote this thing 27 times I couldn't get it under six minutes so I'm gonna try I I just wrote it as notes and I'll try to keep it as brief as possible okay um I'm not here to bash anybody I'm not here to knock anybody's beliefs okay I'm here as a concerned parent because my daughter came home after cms's um what do we call it uh love wins all day and I have a few things I'd like to express as my concerns um first off I love the message I think everyone should be feel like they're invited and welcome in a community I mean that's how you build the community um I just it's confusing to me where we went with it um let me hold

029on I'm sorry let me just try to read this um uh I wouldn't be doing my job as a father if I didn't come here with the things my daughter brought to my attention um everybody should be accepted Foundation what are countries built on okay uh our country says you have a freedom to believe in what you believe in and so does your neighbor okay and and as long as you're not hurting anybody or breaking any laws Live and Let Live and I believe that I truly do okay I I also um I I love wins all day is about celebrating everybody right but I didn't see any Autism Awareness I didn't see any racial Diversity Awareness I didn't see uh religion cultural I I saw one thing push I saw rainbow colors we didn't

030choose school colors we didn't choose the colors of the American flag we chose rainbow colors I think we know where that's directed um I let me see um can I just stop you for one quick section did you express this to um Mrs cochiole I assume it's the middle school you're referring to um I did not directly I got to be honest with you I work like 70 hours a week I'm very disconnected from the real world so I tried to take any opportunity I can no I didn't but I'm I know many people who did I just figured this is an opportunity for me to reach as many people as quickly as I can in one sense I I understand that maybe reaching her directly but I I feel like where I'm going with

031this is more of a board thing and and like it's I'm asking you guys to play all right I'm just enjoying your following the chain of command before you come before us but if you have a few more things you can add to it yeah yeah again I'm not even bashing her I think she's excellent okay the few run-ins I've had at the middle school she's been wonderful so I can't even fault her okay again I want it to be a district-wide thing so um the issues that my daughter brought to my attention that made her very uncomfortable and my daughter loves school I mean she's a high honor kid she loves school okay um teachers wearing the flag I have a problem with that because again it doesn't matter what it represents it's an

032ideology so replace the flag with any other flag swastika anything it's it's not appropriate right where we're pushing an ideology okay number two um handing out stickers I heard of one child who was approached by a teacher would you like a sticker no thank you teacher said what's wrong you don't like my kind um in my opinion that is a teacher openly soliciting their sexual orientation to a minor I don't know where that stands as far as sexual harassment but it's very uncomfortable and if it would happen to my child I I would not be pleased um the first period video that I'm sure everyone knew about about gender ideology and sexual orientation my daughter is very upset accepting of everybody she has been since long before she knew what transgender was okay that's not

033the issue the issue is I wasn't notified that there was going to be a video until after it had already happened and honestly I'd like to have an open dialogue with my child and I'd like to be there as her parent and we we have open conversations but the fact that I can't have that conversation until after it happens and I have to speed up my parenting so that Google and YouTube don't beat me to certain punch lines it scares me as a parent so again just a little more back and forth with the parents knowing that there would have been a video would have been great um um my daughter is friendly with everyone in the community including children who identify as trans because again from the time she was little we have taught

034her to not see differences see why you are alike get along with people based on how they treat you and treat them how you uh how you're treated right okay if you see the good in somebody that's all you need to see so okay so Dina valleys I do need to stop you there because we've gone well beyond three minutes okay but I appreciate you being 30 seconds I do think that if you reach out to the administration they'd be more than welcome to answer your question I really apologize like I told you this was like a 10-minute speech that I tried to get down I have like I can feel your passion I know you're coming from a good place but okay give me to last sentence okay um here here's my for the

035Board of Ed okay the culture war is nasty and toxic I'm not asking you to take a side I'm asking you to stay neutral and protect the innocence of our children okay in order if you have to sexualize a child in order to teach acceptance then I don't think you understand how to teach acceptance that's that's my opinion children as young as 10 11 years old in sixth grade it's not an appropriate topic of conversation as far as I'm concerned again there's so much more and I wish I could have gotten it all but thank you for extending it and thank you for hearing me that's okay and as you know we don't respond to public comment but if you'd like to feel free to reach out to either myself or Dr macri and um

036yeah this is my first time again I know I'm so not involved I wish I was more of all and obviously I'm going to have to start getting more involved um I respect you all okay I really do and I I think you all play such an important role in my child's development right all of that I'm asking is let the parents have the say first okay let let the parents decide what they want to teach and when they want to teach it and how they want to teach it as best as we can be open to ideas and Concepts but like again the way we're going about it is very uncomfortable for me that's that's all I'd like to say is got it thank you so much are there any other public comments this

037evening okay hearing none we'll move on to report from our student representatives and this evening let's start with Julia the high school Cromwell High School hosted the annual senior night award ceremony where students were presented with courts and scholarships CHS also hosted their annual honors breakfast we participated in our second ever Field Day this year and everyone had a wonderful time we had activities such as kickball and inflatables Thomas Pierre student council president spoke at the Memorial Day parade and he did an amazing job student council held elections and announced the class officers for the next year for sports it was a great season for athletics for boys tennis Sean manik received Player of the Year in first team all-conference for girls tennis I received second Team all conference in Olivia lucitani received honorable mention

038for golf Jack wise and Dylan rosic received first team all-conference for boys lacrosse Eric triglia received honorable mention for girls lacrosse Lena Riley received first email conference Lauren McCarroll and Danny pre-court received second team in Hannah Hannah received honorable mention for baseball Connor schleifer and Ethan you saw received second Team all conference and for softball they're doing really good right now Willie Kenny Victoria wytruck and Grace McFarland received first team All Conference Molina signorello received second team and Emma Rivera got honorable mention for track they also did really well Jaden Nguyen Michael Anderson Jared semper Nas Andre Rashawn rankins received first female conference Dylan bathroom Lucas with Kowski Jovan Marrero Davion Lovelace and Kai mclarney received second chemo conference that's a lengthy list congratulations to you and if anyone is interested I do know that

039most of that is also I believe listed in the newsletter that the high school sends out thankfully because I would never remember all of that but congratulations to all and I see you have an understudy with you today did you want to introduce great well welcome thank you for being here all right we'll move on to the Middle School um so our Sports also happened um baseball and softball ended but track had their states over the Memorial Day weekend so the Cromwell middle school track team faced eight hours at Manchester High School against the top teams in the 15th annual Connecticut state championship we had tremendous success the boys 4x800 team consisted of me James Daigle Brody day and Jack brecks we are in third place the boys 4x4 consisting of Eli De La Cruz

040James diggle Brody day and me we earned third place again the boys 4x100 consisting of Jayden Ogden Rafael Mendez Zaire Brown and Brendan Ross earned points for the track team for their eighth place finish the girls 4x1 consisting of Addison soltas Natalie sues Ayanna Bennett and Grace Hartley also are in third place Nyla Ryder also repeated her success last year and earned 7th place overall on the shot put finally as deal was also able to earn eighth place in the entire State despite only having practice the 55 meter hurdle for three days the track coaches Miss Middlebrooks Mr sanange and Dr Bosworth would like to thank all the athletes who spent a hard bought day with us and to the whole team for a wonderful season um the uni Club the CMS Unity Club hosted

041the second annual CMS cultural Fair last night based on generous generosity of our students we raised nearly 600 for the victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine if you miss seeing the wonderful booths or the four courageous teachers getting pied in the face make sure you tune into the CMS Student News YouTube page for this Friday and then student council so we voted um for our 2027 class um officers so the president is soccer Dave the vice president Roger bot secretary Brianna marfella and the treasurer Walid mundle congratulations to you and was it track yeah okay congratulations Jack are there any questions for either of our board reps tonight okay hearing none thank you all for being here you're welcome to stay but I know you probably don't want to so feel free to leave

042whenever you want I know it's the end of the year working today oh of course it's the end of the year they have all that going on sure yep I'm sorry just want to say thank you guys before you leave um we did have we do have a gift for Olivia and I agree with Mr cockle she's an amazing student anything and everything she does is uh just tremendous but the one thing and she does a lot um she participates in so many clubs and activities but ditto to what Mr uh cockle said is she is just an awesome human being she's just a phenomenal person as an elbow learner myself it's not always easy and she's first generation in this country as well and um I'm just so proud of her success and I

043just know she's just going to be incredibly successful as she moves forward and I cannot wait to see what she does in her future so I am definitely going to miss her and I will come find her to come give her her present and then a quick thank you because I know Jack and Jillian are ending um their little tenure with us as well and you just I've seen you both grow so much especially you jack because you've been with us for a while um thank you so much for your participation it's so great to hear everything that you share with us and I hope you all know that it's important for you to voice and talk to us just as much as you sit here and listen and I look forward to seeing you

044in the high school and you may have your name plate so you don't take the this because it costs too much money and we don't have in it but you haven't but you may take this with you okay and we thank you very much and then I'll um go find Jillian tomorrow and give her and Jillian again amazing student and you've seen both of them they just are incredible students athletes everything they do they do well Jillian can't be here tonight because she has a lacrosse game a state conference game so she wanted to make sure that she could get her name plate and she asked me how she can get it and I said well Jillian lucky for you we live in the same building all day long so I'll give rehearse tomorrow and

045welcome to Summer we're excited to have you and I'm sure Julia is going to be a great lead for you thank you I'd Echo everything that Dr macri just said and good luck in the high school thank you for everything you've done we really appreciate having you here okay next is report of Liaisons from the Town Council Board of Finance Cromwell Middle School building committee and Fields committee Town Council I don't believe we have anyone here this evening but we do have Mr wagonowski did you have a report you wanted to share great Board of finance that is all right good evening good evening our school officials and Board of Ed I just want to give you a couple late it's a few things [Laughter] thank you nice job Jack all right I want to

046give you an update on a few things primarily on the budget process we just went through and where we ended up and then a few other smaller items as well and then if you do want to ask any questions I'm happy to do that certainly so so we had budget deliberations in early April April 4th and April 10th some participated from this room and we knew there were long long meetings but we did end up I think with a good outcome you know in the end as well I know if everyone knows that the Cromwell fire district you know also goes through their own process but it's separate from the process that the board of Finance manages so we manage the town The Debt Service and then the Board of Education and the fire district

047has their own their own piece so as part of the outcomes the town budget went down by one and a half percent it did get the benefit of being able to use ARP money for some capital projects for this year so that helped out you know end up that way The Debt Service did go down by 8.7 percent we had some debt end off as you know you take out debt for 10 years or 15 at some point that debt ends and you stop paying it now we did in this year's budget or the coming budget we did put away some money to help support the school funding the new school as well so that's going to work out well kind of be a nice down payment you know in that process I think that's

048a good thing certainly and then the board of education budget ended up with an increase of about 6.3 percent the fire district ended up with an increase of about 13 percent it's a smaller budget overall but that's just where their numbers ended up so in addition to all the budgeting process the ton of karma went through as most people live in Cromwell know a reassessment of your home values all the commercial properties and all the home values went through a reassessment this happens every five years it's a state mandated process every five years it's sort of a light touch every 10 years it's much heavier a little much more canvassy and coming out to your house this year they didn't do that so it could happen in these reassessments is sometimes when they add up

049all the Residential Properties and look at their change in value and look at the commercial property those two things together form all the taxing Grand list into the town well the way it ended up is the average house in Cromwell went up about 24 percent in assessed value the average commercial property went up 10 percent so what that means is that the residential side is getting a bigger shift of the taxes going forward until the next assessment happens in five years or it could change it could change back we'll have to see how that how that goes so in the end for a typical house in in Cromwell I guess the numbers where it's 000 but they got reassessed at 360. and then you take 70 percent of that value and as the numbers ended

050up the typical house or that average house so to speak in Cromwell will see their taxes go up about 645 dollars for this coming year commercial like I said a little bit less if commercial a bit more balanced maybe with residential you wouldn't have seen that and again that is a complete average number the numbers are all over the place some houses Believe It or Not went down in their assessment because of just where they were most didn't and there are some houses who went up considerable 30 40 even in some cases and obviously their taxes will be higher you know as well so that's that piece and we can stop there's anyone have any questions on that make General sense just want to give you some idea of what that process was and what

051the outcome from that was okay a few other quick items then uh the town although I can't guarantee it I do believe there's gonna be a surplus in the town's budget this year for a couple different reasons taxing ended upcoming a little bit stronger than we thought a couple operational things might be a little bit better their investment income from on the cash we have is a little bit better so we'll find out next month they weren't prepared to give us an update in the main meeting but hopefully at the end of June we'll have a better idea where that'll land which again is just good for everybody because again we want nothing necessarily want to tax and then be able to have the money as a surplus but if you are getting up having

052the Surplus then we can use that money for other things whatever it might be whether it be school needs Town needs or something you know something else we did discuss in the last Board of Finance meeting the request for facilities assessment really for the schools and some of the fields you know as as well I'm hopeful that that's going to go in front of the Town Council and they're meeting coming up soon and one of two things could happen either they'll say yes we want to go ahead and go forward that assessment and then start that ball rolling which could lead to a couple good things potentially being in a better position to get grants you know in the near future a long-term future or using it just for a general assessment so we have

053a better understanding of what's going on with the schools if they do hopefully approve it hopefully we go to the board of Finance by end of June and we would approve it there if it goes to Town Council and the Town Council says well wait a second we're going to look at it in part of a bigger view of sort of capital planning for the whole town then unfortunately it may sit there for a little bit and we can only and I know I'll personally try to push it along as best we can to try to get it through that process to get to a decision and again it may be a little bit delayed after that so one of those two things could happen just don't know yet but hopefully it goes in front

054of Town Council you know this this month soon and then the last item we should hear and now with the news you know Dr mackery just shared you know with getting the 39 to 49 one of the things we have to do is figure out the bonding you know for the new school and I'm not a bonding expert necessarily but just a high level given idea of how it works they'll be what they call Bond and tissue patient notes or bands that'll be done sort of in the first year and I think the way I understand it is you actually in essence bad more than you need and you use the money from that to help sort of pay the interest in the first year and then the second years we'll actually do and create

055the real bonding which might be a 20-year Bond or something like that and that's when you really go to market and then you go ahead and figure out what that binding is going to look like now we know interest rates have moved all over the place we'll see where they are when all this kind of happens you know I don't really know for sure no one knows we'll have to see hopefully they'll stabilize or start to go down when we actually try to go to market for the bonding for the bond anticipation notes that probably won't be true because we'll be doing it this year I don't expect to see rates go down and we'll have to see what they are you know hopefully they'll be favorable to the town and they'll be quite frankly

056um there's there is a lot of interest out there for people wanting to invest to get to these bonds so hopefully we can go out there to favorable market rate get a good rate on that and then see probably a year from now what it'll look like for the 20 or 30-year bonding level that'll happen over there hi Steve um just first of all thank you I watch if I'm not there I'm watching all your meetings I'm so grateful that they record them now for us to go back and see um but this this I know has been happening because I've been either there or watching but I think it's very important for everybody who lives in town to understand this and I think you did a phenomenal job of laying it all out very

057clearly I am a numbers person so I like it anyway but um but my question for you is the when we go out for the bond for the new school we've always had we've had the AAA rating for I'm not sure how many years maybe five years now or longer at least is it a lot longer okay I know we the town worked hard to get to that is that going to be how favorable is that towards us and going to get an effective interest rate sure for you know a favorable interest rate I should say sure yeah if you do look uh um if you happen to look not everyone does if you happen to look at what other towns even in this state are doing in terms of going out to bonding um

058I would say at least three quarters are not even AAA rated there's a lot of Double A's that go out you know for for bonds you know and the like I think if you're at least double A or double A Plus and AAA you're generally going to be in that band of getting very favorable rates so when you start getting into that lower either single a the double A minus you know that's where potentially you have to pay a little bit more so by example most bonds going out now they're paying a five percent coupon maybe four and a half AAA we might be able to get four and a half four and a quarter a a minus those kind of might be in the five kind of range if that makes any sense again

059we have to see when it goes to Market so don't hold that but that's just to give an idea of how that might work are there other questions no thank you so much that was really informative really appreciate you being here there's a lot of information to take in and it's definitely nice to have you here and have up the public here you know an overview of what you've been working so hard on so thank you thank you numbers all right so we'll move on to the superintendent's updates and responses to board read comments and some action items from our prior meeting Dr macri okay actually I'll start with the facility study um I did go to um the board of Finance to talk about the facilities study that we have requested um it is

060uh imperative it's not uh we have to have it done we should be on a three to five year cycle there's a Public Act I can't remember the number by heart right now I don't know if Anne remembers the number we just talked about it today there's a public act that requires us to check air quality testing HVAC and a few other things that goes officially into full swing January 2024. which requires us to use a facilities study to find out where we may not be up to Snuff with our air quality and then put into place what we're going to do about it so the facility study is imperative in that respect I did talk to the board of Finance about um another Grant even though I was calling it security because I was

061exhausted it's actually the HVAC Grant where the security Grant we actually submitted and we're waiting to hear back so there's money out there quite a quite a few million at the state level in order for us to even apply for that state grant funding we have to have a facility study and a capital a capital Improvement plan and in order to do a capital Improvement plan you have to have a facility study so we there is an opportunity to between August and December to apply for this grant so for example our boilers that I keep coming to about and saying they're breaking we would be able to apply for that if this facility studies was completed and we started to work on our five-year Capital Improvement plan but it is a huge commitment from the

062town's perspective as well not only is the grant itself a huge task it is because it's so we could we could potentially apply for so much money it requires a building committee like type of setup in order for us to determine what would be our priorities based on the study that's found it also applies the town would have to put in 50 so let's say we applied for six three hundred thousand dollars um the town would be then responsible to match it and we are not 100 sure if we're there because obviously we know we're doing the school right now however it's imperative for us to know where we are also knee accreditation we want to be an accredited high school and everyone asked me well what does that mean what happens if we don't

063have a three to five year plan Capital Improvement plan for our entire District um our NEOS accreditation then goes into uh we're not in compliance we've already been told by the first report that Mr cook will share with you at our last meeting that that is something that is that we're delinquent in so I'm very happy to work with um Mrs St John I like I said you all know I went to school to beat curriculum and instruction and the next thing you know I'm looking at Tiles and talking about um Asbestos and everything else which I'm very happy to learn that's what I chose to do but we definitely need an expert in here to tell us what we need um we're excellent we're getting a new Middle School we're elated but we also

064know that ECS is going to need some work and how much work can we possibly put in the work or is it do we need to start from scratch again that's a huge expense to the town and it's not a decision for me to make it's a decision for the town to make together but unless you have a good foundation and true experts coming out and doing these studies then we're just guessing we could all look we can look at the ceiling we can you know there are things that I noticed and I say oh boy we need to fix that to the naked eye when our boilers are not working and it's freezing in the school or our air conditioning isn't working we know those things it's the bigger things that we can't put

065our eyes on so we do need that facility studies study and I know um are Mr wagonowski is in full support of getting this moving he's actually been incredibly supportive um and so as the board of finance and we hope that we get that support from the Town Council because it will slow us down in many ways if not and I do have to actually talk to them because their next meeting is June 14th which just happens to be graduation so none of us can be there because we have to be at graduation so if it ends up on that agenda um I won't have anyone from from for us to to talk about the facility study so I was going to send an email to um Tony Salvatore and see what we should do

066and honestly the mayor isn't going to be there either because his daughter's graduating so no next year oh she's a junior oh that's right I thought she was a senior I was thinking she was a senior so that is something and I would like to be the person there talking about it with Melinda um but um you know obviously our graduation has to come first so I will email the town manager and um see what we should do in that respect so that's that update um child care I said that I would come back and give you an update about child care so for after school half days in particular trying to find child care services for our students who are in the middle school and who may have special needs um I've probably spent

067a tote myself and Siri oh named Mrs O'Leary a total of six hours uh investigating and looking for uh care so these are the people that we've reached out to spoke to and I can let you know what they told us um we're not the only District in this situation um and in fact I'm thinking about starting a business because I think this is an excellent business to start the problem is that it's only once or twice a month and we're talking about our students who have the most needs and require special services so we have to have the right people doing the job so we reached out to effective School solutions they looked into it we talked to them about what we would need they said that's not a service they would be able

068to provide us um it is not cost effective for them and the quest to us would be astronomical and they don't even feel that they have the expertise to do it at that point I did ask for an estimate of what it would be if they could do it and they said they are not interested because we did push the limit I spoke to YMCA Kids Corner program to Candace crane who have an excellent relationship with and due to the Licensing Laws they cannot accept any students um in their Kids Corner program and they do not have the licensing for the next level and they are not interested in getting it because they don't think that they can actually staff it they're having a very hard time with Staffing Kids Corner programs as they are

069um I've talked a little bit about you know the basics and students who may be sixth graders but maybe on the younger side is there anything we could do and she said no um she said not legally I spoke to Scott cures from town Town Park and Recreation if there was anything that they could do even talked about you know if we could figure something out and offer something you know in our school if we were to find a space and he said unfortunately he does not have the staff to do that program and he doesn't have the level of expertise um in his Parkinson Rex program and then Candace crane did uh ask us to speak with Mark which is an another establishment they have not called me back um so we don't have

070a response from them and we have done all of this and I have met with one parent through zoom and reviewed um everything and took some suggestions as well if you know if the parent had any suggestions so myself and Mrs O'Leary did meet uh via Zoom to have this discussion it's not that um we don't want this of course we want it we want of all our students to to have the support that they need however all I IEPs are met and if parents don't think IEPs are being met there is a process it's through due process that they would they would go through and we have families who do go through due process if they feel that we're not meeting our students at IEP so we take that responsibility and that legality very

071seriously um and at all times all of our parents know that they can always call a PPT if they feel that we're not meeting their needs however um I do believe that we are meeting our students needs based on their IEP and to the best of our ability but there is a process that you go through if if we're not um so we've done our due diligence more than our due diligence and there's just nothing out there so we could talk next year about perhaps decreasing those days we could go back to the one hour even though it we talked about not having the one hour we thought the half day would be better but maybe it isn't better I think we start that conversation again in September and talk about what we want to

072do um they're in legislation legislators or in legislative session right now I can't even tell you how many education bills are coming out um it's we're the Hot Topic education is the Hot Topic so I can't do anything um I have to provide specific PD and one example and I think it's hard for people to really understand this there is required professional development to be an educator that we used to have to do so for example DCF training I'll give you bloodborne pathogen and GCF training those take two hours so the first day of school we would take two hours we would do those two and then DCF became a mandate that's another hour before you know it we have um sex trafficking is now another two hours and it has to be done with

073either it has to it can't be you're just watching a video so what's happened with our our professional days in the beginning of the year are they're completely used up by state mandated professional development so now we want our teachers and we have expectations of our teachers of being better instructors um and we have collective bargaining agreements with our teachers so we have to either provide the time or we have to decide if we want to go to a district of providing 180 school days which is all we are really responsible for providing our students but Cromwell provides 183 school days which is excellent a lot of districts do not have above 180 because every single day is hundreds of thousands of dollars you have to remember how many people it takes to run a

074school system so we can have that conversation too however a full day of professional development we would love it we would be we'd love to be able to do it but you would have to make a decision of two of two things one does that mean one less school day or two less school days or does that mean we go to the board of finance and ask for another 15 increase so that we could now have more school days that's where it comes down to so this isn't uh that it's going to waste it's time that's needed and this is the way it works in education and I know it's frustrating for some people but we do have collective bargaining units our teachers teach uh you know they work hard and we have to follow

075their cbas and that's why it becomes frustrating I I completely understand that it's frustrating so this is something that we should continue to talk about um come September especially before we vote on The Following calendar of how we're going to make this work because it is definitely uh difficult for parents and it's also difficult for staff so I wanted to make sure I provided you that update because I said I would um and that it has not gone unnoticed or untaken care of in fact there's quite a lot of research has gone into it okay so another thing I wanted to quickly give you an update on because I said I would is the SRO update situation um I spoke to our future chief captain sifo and they know that we need our sros back

076no one disagrees especially with what has been happening we have we have a security guard and we're very lucky as you all know the process that that takes however sros do above the role and the responsibility of of an armed security guard um just the few things that have happened over the last month requires a big portion of our police force to come out and help us when you have an SRO or the SRO has all of the history so they know it and they agree with it and they understand it but they are down seven people I have made it very clear that I need my sros back I don't know what I'm going to do if I don't have them and I they um are in the midst of negotiations right now and

077they we talked about um you know pay being a large problem and officers going to other districts that are paying substantially more money and I do believe that our town is going to be very successful in coming up with a plan that helps retain officers and attracts officers I just don't know how soon that'll be and September Comes very quickly as you all know so what I was told is we know we agree we want you to have your sros give us some more time we'll give you another update I'll give you another update in July that's where I left off so that's it for SRO update just one second at the time they had mentioned something about July being like there was some reason it was July because they had someone in the pipeline

078that were what happened with that so they had a few people in the pipeline and I believe out of that snap pipeline because now there's been two Pipelines so I think the fir and I I don't want to speak on behalf of the police but I believe one person remember I think they said three I think one person only made it through that person is training I believe another person um had to take break but then is is back in training now and they just tested four more people and I don't believe we got anybody or maybe one person out of that testing so that one person that did make it through doesn't necessarily relieve them of one SRO to give back to us right now if the way things are right now there's seven

079officers sure they were already five yeah now it's seven counting the chief they're seven so so now they're they're I believe they're seven sure counting the Chief's position so um it's just not do we want to get ahead of the situation that might happen if they can't give us any more and have something something in the works leading up to July as far as researching other options our our other option is not one that I love but we can is do the secured the the armed security arms guards like we have um and I think if I could have it both ways I would have armed security guards and sros in our buildings if I can have it my way that's what I want of course I want a lot um with that being said

080security guards armed security guards are great but it's it's very different than an SRO for many reasons it's the job responsibilities are different um knowing this wasn't on the agenda I'm not sure we should get too deep into it but do you want to put it for July I could and you can give me direction of what what you want me to do right so I I'd like to put it on the agenda for July and have a little bit of background available so that we can talk about it right and Jessica Ritter oh my God oh my god when she came and spoke to you she could come and speak to you again about but the process is the process and we you just have to give me the go ahead and we'll start

081the process really um because I don't know I wish I knew how much lead time do you need to just get numbers and information so that we could move on if we wanted to because of what armed security guards can and cannot do if we had two armed security guards right two is better than none one is better than none as we know I would say two um and I'm saying two because for financial reasons right otherwise I would say one per building which is is quite expensive to do then to find those positions so if you are for example our our situation is pretty easy we have an officer who's still in good standing retired but he is in good standing he worked here so flipping it as soon as we did was very

082easy now I'm pre I'm thinking we might have another retired officer who might be interested in the job and it could be very easy I don't know for sure I haven't said much about that because it needs to come from you that would be very easy as well now if I'm going out um and looking on the outside posting the positions and looking for people to come in it's not as easy as what we just did with our armed security guard it's it's a lot more difficult because we have to make sure they fit all those stipulations and it's um they just changed the law too so if you are a retired police officer and you worked in that town you could work more than your 90 hours that you were supposed to be allowed

083they changed that which is awesome so that makes it a lot easier for us it the turnover is much quicker this is something very very very very very new in school systems so for me to tell you that I could do it quickly I would not be honest with you I I need to we need to do it that's all I'll find out how quickly it could happen and I would need our councils um help the entire way this is something that school systems are just newly getting into this is not this is unchartered waters for a lot of people so you give me the direction you say you want to go in this direction and I will go in this direction I will do it I will post it you can tell me where

084you want me to you know look at our budget and where we because we're only paying remember um is it half Ann of one or the full salary of one SRO so we pay the full salary of one SRO um so all right we have a few questions going back to Lori you had one a while back do you remember what it was okay do you wanna I know but I don't want to forget you oh you want me to go into that then come back to you all right Matt go ahead it's more of a comment than a question I I think honestly um I'm not confident that we're going to be able to get sros back in in the fall the hiring process and what's been going on um in law enforcement um

085I'm not confident that we're gonna get sros I think we need to have another option on the table that we can act on quickly and I know that that is um asking a lot um but but I I I would like to in our July meeting be prepared to take a look at what their options are what what those estimated costs might be estimates are fine obviously we're not going to be exact so that's what we were just talking about so for July I don't think we can do it ready to go and then and I think we just we put it on for July we get as much information as we can and then we go from this because we can't do anything tonight it wasn't on the agenda and there's no point okay

086did you have a question on that topic Okay Lori yeah just a comment on the calendar issue in the public comments so just going back to when we did the calendar you know we spent a lot of time agonizing over the hours and remember when I added everything up we actually did not at the end when Dr McLean went back and redid everything it's not less time it's just looks it looks worse because it's these big so many half days but when we when we time wise when we added up the hours it came out to be the same as it was for this year with all the two 125 dismissals or the you know the hour early so it's really not we didn't cut we didn't cut the student time we you actually fixed

087it because at first it was more at first it was 11 hours remember and I came back and then she we did it but the issue is now for parents which I understand what Heidi's saying these big chunks of time so and I'm just throwing this out there I did the Paras always have PD because it seems like they don't always have PD so if I'm just throwing this idea out there if they're 18 hours now okay so if there was I'm just throwing this out there that's all if there was days where the pairs didn't have PD because it doesn't always seem like they do would that be an option where if there were students who were in this situation and they were looking for that could we ask the parents to stay you

088know is that is that something that we could look at or is that not an option because you're saying they're always getting the PD yeah and they just upped um the restrictions for PD for Perez and what we have to provide and how we have to make sure that we uh to live that deliver that information to the State Department of Education that's in a new rollout so yeah they're so you're saying on all those half days next year the parents are booked they're booked otherwise that would have been a great fix right I mean I'm sure you guys would have thought of that about that before you came here that's the very first one right I know I just was just and that's what Scott said to me too he said can I borrow

089your pairs I said no they're in Beauty right I said you can't so just I just wanted to clarify that because we we didn't cut I I think you know we did do the math as a board I I did go through all those numbers multiple times it's it's not less time it just looks like more and as a parent I get it I mean it does look like there's a lot of there's a lot all those half days but the time did come out to be the same as what it was this year with the out every week being an hour dismissal and we basically went back to what it had been before which was one half day a month and now there's a couple where there's two but basically we just reverted back

090to what was normal back then so we tried to do our best to get things back on track I think in changing the days yeah I mean we can see how this year goes and like you're saying if we're getting if it's not working then we can come back you know in the fall and maybe look at changing it back but but thank you for looking into all those options and if anyone has any other ideas obviously let Dr macri know right I think the hard thing forever and it is it is very difficult we are no different than any other District with professional development that is needed and required for many reasons um the only way we are different than some districts is what we offer in our collective bargaining agreements and some collective

091bargaining agreements teachers stay until I mean we already have some of this in ours they stay later but they get compensated so we we have to make a decision of of nobody wants our students to lose out but we also then our Board of Finance was very generous and I can't thank them enough a 6.3 percent um just to keep our district going these are things that we have to swap in and out because I can't um break the law I can't break the law as far as providing people with professional development that they have to have and it comes at a cost and I gave you some of the examples we are no different than we've been over the past few years as far as hours that we are providing our students um an

092education and instructionally I know people are not always happy about it I know it's difficult I feel terrible for them I wish there was something more that we can do but as far as providing the hours and all of that that is just not true we are we are exactly what Lori said Lori did the hour she helped Carrie they worked together Carrie did it again um it's just the way it is right now in education and I don't see it getting any better unless we are going to pay for it you know we're going to have to pay for it one way or another financially or in in releasing our students was that the last topic for your update Dr macri um because I'm just I actually wanted to have um because I can't

093do this for you and we have um Mr cockle has talked about and we don't have to do it tonight we could do it another night um about a parent CHS CHS advisory which has been really successful to just have parents participating on a level of advising a high school is huge because it's by the time you all know if you have high school students by then you're like oh God there's too many things going on I can't participate so we can have Mr cook will do that tonight just to give you an overview or we could wait and do it in on another night um if that's okay um I've been wondering about it too I've seen it as an option so I was curious but if you want to save it for July

094that's that's fine it's up to you Mr Coco are you prepared to give an overview of of what it is and yeah okay sure let's do that now in listening to your senioritis podcast there were quite a few takeaways so I appreciated listening to that that got me thinking about parent advisory oh yeah yeah the podcast has been yeah we look forward to expanding that next year for sure um so our parent advisory group we started that uh we're in year two uh of it and it's been off to a great start we have a dedicated uh group uh that ranges anywhere from you know 10 to about 16 uh parents all grades covered uh who attend these meetings uh and really they start out as you know I give all right here's what's going

095on at the high school here's what's happening and we open it up for discussion in terms of if they have questions about what's going on and then one of our our topics is always what can we do to make the high school experience better uh for families and for students and you know it's during those sessions that we get a lot of valuable feedback and you know there's a lot of small things that we do and we change how we do base on that parent advisory group uh and sometimes those changes happen the next month because you know parents bring a perspective that I don't have and obviously we all don't have in terms of they're seeing what's going on at home sometimes those changes take a little bit longer uh you know and some

096of the things that we've looked at is just how we communicate out about clubs activities uh you know and so we've taken a lot of things into account and they've been Rich conversations and Rich discussions uh we have not had an advisory meeting that's gone under an hour you know it's usually an hour to two hours that we spend talking and it goes by very quickly but again the feedback they give us is just so valuable to what we do and even I go back to last year was something very simple uh and you might not think much of it but it was March and we had um we had our homecoming popping up and so we had ninth grade and 10th grade parents on that parent advisory who were like my kid has no

097idea what a homecoming is what to wear to a homecoming right we took that those little things that we took for granted like what is this event which made us turn around and we were able to push out you know communication like a basic communication to kids and families about like you know dress protocol and and what to expect and there's a lot of those types of small Communications that come from that group that we have and uh you know we had our last meeting in May and we'll look to uh you know continue that next year and uh you know essentially that group is just so incredibly valuable to our high school experience and how we improve things for our students and for our families because you know one of the things that I

098think we're aware of is that you know high schoolers maybe don't talk as much at home uh and so you know it's kind of helping with that communication uh and being more transparent with families and what they need from us so that way they can better support their child so there's some things that we've done on that end and we'll be doing next year on that and so for example big change next year we have a calendar finally on our website that is somewhat functional with our new Cromwell website that we're updating and we're gonna have Club times on there after school so families will be able to know like oh you know one when my child says to our chess club it actually is meeting that day um but you'll be able to see

099that and know what's happening what's going on we have our Athletics tied there now as well so it's much more convenient for families to find out more information about our extracurricular activities and things like that so again small change but a small change that it did take a parent advice group to talk about to say hey I don't know when this group's meeting that group's meeting you know and so we've getting gotten different feedback on that we've made some changes it's really good to hear and I can see your efforts I mean the communication from my high school is amazing so from my perspective anyway so do you get the same kind of um parents that not seem kind of but the same group that attends every time or is it drop-in predominant so it's

100predominantly uh a core group of the same parents uh we do have uh one parent that acts as our more or less my liaison who will send out an agenda and you know uh seek questions for agenda items and uh it is a core group but we do have you know depending on what's going on we'll have more of the group show up uh but everyone is dedicated we have uh you know uh we have good communication with each other on that front and and it's busy you know there's there's things that we've learned obviously along the way where you know a lot of our our parents are extremely busy we actually held our first virtual one uh last week because I was sick uh and so but we talked about doing a virtual once

101it would just be easier for families you know if we can do that from time to time so uh you know we're looking at a lot of different ways to just increase that engagement with our with our families and get their feedback uh for what we can do nice well thanks for facilitating that for us be nice to expand that to other schools at some point although we do have our ptos and they have PTM training so it's just different but um that's our reality we don't we don't have that yeah that's what I meant yeah we have a lot of boosters though but yeah all right any questions for Mr kokel all right thank you for sharing all right from there we can we move on to presentations yes okay presentations and reports of

102administration we have the 2022 2023 budget update and that was not included in our packets but I'm sorry what Captain I'm sorry it was not included um because we moved the meeting up right everybody was going to say that so sorry just got interrupted but I could only move so quickly you do have it in front of you and we have Ann Burke here to explain it so if you want to take a minute to look it over really quick if you haven't had a chance to and then um in the meantime if you want to present what you normally do sure yes it was a little bit too quick of a turnaround for me to get it ready for you in the board packet but I have been working on I actually was working

103on it today before I printed it out at the end of the day to get it all to you for your review and we will put this in the minutes so they're still part of the record um just not in the packet they'll be in the minutes um so as you can see we should we are on track to end the year in the positive manner I anticipate there's always a a few expenses that you don't know about until the end so while we're at about seventeen thousand dollars right now I do anticipate being between in the five thousand to ten thousand dollar range to the good um as we have been discussing throughout the year um the areas that have been um tricky for us are pupil Services the needs of our students maintenance

104of our physical physical plant our buildings transportation and tuition for special education have been a challenge and as I mentioned in a couple of meetings homeless student transportation is a significant issue for Cromwell as well as many other schools and I don't know what's going to come for next year um just so much homelessness right now and we have to get the kiddos to school so we are doing our best to get us to the end of the year and this is where we stand right now nothing significantly changed but I'm you know pleased to let you know that we are in we are in a good good place right now are there any questions for Ian now just a quick one um the under the people Services um you know seeing that's that's gone

105beyond what we had anticipated yes that's related to the ESS program primarily these are really needs of the students okay um students that are in District as well as students who are have chosen to go to magnet schools their services have increased um and part of it is ESS I mean esss is kind of the one that kind of helps us I was going to say ESS is actually this that would be allowed not for you exactly okay exactly so I wouldn't attribute I wouldn't say that is why well a number is the way it is but it is a contributing factor okay yes um and then for when we talk about tuition that's really where we're seeing um things like magnet schools and stuff like that yes not so much um while we do

106have a you know enough students that go out to the magnet schools primarily the tuition on that line is special education outplacements um if you remember back in the budget there's a separate page all the way at the end that kind of talks about non-special education tuition um very it's a real relatively small portion of that so I would say that that is um special education tuition and not magnet okay thank you any other questions okay thank you for your report next on the agenda we have old business an update on the Carmel High School mental health awareness club which we had on the agenda last month or last meeting and we just we're gonna I think hear some more information about it Mr cockle that would be you I guess actually we don't have

107to approve it yeah I could quickly do it it's actually not a club it happens during advisory um there's a mix up in paperwork this is happening during advisory during the day the teacher's not applying for a stipend so forget about it okay well thanks to her for running it anyway okay on our new business teacher of the year District Teacher of the Year Mr Steven St Ange who since we changed the meeting probably wasn't able to no unfortunately she could not attend because we changed the meeting and he will be here either in July or August okay so we'll just table that all right class of 2023 post graduation plans reference a b and c in your packet it's always so exciting to get this at the end of the year it's one of

108my favorite things Mr Kunkel did you want to go over it at all or just there for questions I mean it really more that's just there for questions and did everybody get the uh the memo where we went back over time as well or no no okay we did all right good that is in there yes good yes we went back uh 2019 just so oh thank you the board could see uh just over time you know where our students are going in terms of four-year College two-year colleges uh but really more more or less just available for uh you know any questions that you would have uh in terms of our post-secondary plans we'll let you put together I've always wondered that I think we asked that almost every year so I appreciate that

109just take a second to look at it any questions from anyone else Kelly more so just a comment just congratulations to the graduating class and also a big thank you to the individual who's going into the military okay uh Jen had a question I also had more of a comment um so I was you know happy to see great schools on here um kids venturing out like that was all great but I was actually really excited to see the increase in trade schools there's such a shortage um of anyone working in trades and such a need and we saw like Bristol Tech Lincoln Tech and Tech which is HVAC electrical training programs not everyone wants to go to college it's good to see that students are going into the trades that was just awesome to

110see and we were happy to see that as well because we really we've pushed that with students that we know have that interest uh and so it was nice to see that we have a lot of students moving in that direction where it's a perfect fit uh for them so we were happy to see that as well it also looks like students going straight to employment decreased so maybe some of the ones that would have gone straight to employment decided to take up a trade which is encouraging we even have a collaboration for students actually still in high school next year where they uh it's a program out of Goodwin College where when they're done with that they can actually then get a job in manufacturing at roughly eighty thousand dollars a year so you

111know we have there's more of that happening uh I know I think of a new career path um you know we have that happening as well and that's really there's all those places are doing that when we went to the Wesleyan career fair same thing we saw electric boat offering summer internships to graduates and then looking to hire them immediately in the fall so you know that it's moving in that direction and we're you know trying to network as best as possible to to get students those opportunities I did notice one thing that stood out to me I was shocked that the number of students accepted to UConn because all you keep hearing is that students are not being accepted but I was going to ask that does that include a lot that are starting

112out at a branch and then yeah transitioning to but still very strong numbers though for us yeah of course at the University of Connecticut yeah we did especially with the shops that you have here in school and just the way the the students have all come together post covered in a positive way um I know a number of the kids that are going directly into trade school and the kids are the other kids were normally may have been frowned upon a lot of the kids are are super excited for them and proud of them and impressed and just cheering them on they're very very very proud of their classmates that are going directly in the trade because they they know exactly what they want to do in life and those kids are proud of them

113so yeah that we visited was it yesterday I can't remember yesterday I think it was yesterday so it was really cool to go around and look at all the kids Capstone projects and I will tell you too that stood out to me and I could have listened to them all day it was two students who were talking I mean there one was incredible they Mr Borgia helped them um build their project they did it with him they talked and it was just fascinating and they were so into it they'll be on the website soon Lisa's on vacation so I couldn't put their picture on the website and then another student who I I think I spoke to for about 15 minutes about cars and um just the difference in um sorry fuel engines or so

114many things he had a PowerPoint presentation he was the entire board and then Mr cockle comes along and he says and I'm like oh my God I just learned so much I mean he truly knew in the ins and outs and it was just funny and he said to Mr cockle something like um something about staying out of the hallways and staying in class but in my head I'm thinking he's this is what he knows this is what he loves he's trying to get out because this is what he wants to do and let me tell you he really um he's gonna be amazing at what he does and what he at this and and so both of these it was three kids and then another student and clearly talking about trades and and they

115wowed me at what they knew and then everyone else is trying to figure out what they want to do where I felt like these kids really knew what they wanted to do um it was really nice to see so yesterday was a very successful day with our Capstone projects and talking to all the kids and seeing what they came up with some really great ideas and a lot of things on Mental Health we're gonna have a hopefully have a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists in our future someday soon out there because our kids see the need yep all right any other questions comments all right thank you and we look forward to sending them off next week oh yeah congrats no we don't not everyone yeah not everybody that's graduating we won't talk about it

116yet all right moving on to action item action c a stipend approval 2022 2023 reference D in your packet and it is for I assume one that we approve each year um this isn't a new club it's the art club I'm assuming this is yeah it is new no no it's not new okay yeah is there a motion to approve it Catherine and I saw Jen second all in favor opposed extensions motion carries the stipend is approved action item D approval of minutes and motions from the May 9th regular meeting reference e in your packets I believe we were all in attendance at that meeting so is there a motion to approve those who is that Kelly okay second by dipty all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries the minutes are approved item e in

117your packet is a human resources personnel activity reference f any questions on that okay hearing none we'll move on to the informational principal reports reference g-h-i-n-j any questions on those okay sure I I was just sad to see that Mr Borgeson is leaving the CMS and I just want to thank him he was great and sorry to see him go agree we'll definitely miss him lost there okay and moving on to policies we have none for first read for second read we have a through f are there any questions on any of those policies I just had one quick follow-up that you probably have a quick answer for and item F just at the last meeting I think you had said you were going to check on whether or not it's cover oh you did

118okay it's covered this okay then I have no questions is there a motion to approve item policies a through f uh dipty second by Allen all in favor post sentence motion carries the policies are all approved board committee reports is there a policy commitment no we were supposed to meet tonight and that will be moved to do we know when no it's not it's not going to be in the month of June so I guess we'll have to connect with you and see when you want to reschedule it so September we don't have anything urgent that we have to approve at the next meeting okay all right in facilities and Technology committee reference Q this must just be the minutes okay and you gave a overview of that tonight so I think we're all set

119with facilities and Technology right Jen unless you have anything to add okay topics for future agendas and possible action to approve additional topics anything from anyone I just want to make sure because we moved this meeting up so usually you approve it's just another formality all of our stipends Michelle um posted them they're closed people applied she'll have all that together for you for the next meeting so that's going to be included in that just so you know okay and then also we have to go into executive session so that you could review I give my self reflection and then um uh oh my God I review uh the three directors contracts with you that are single tens so that you know um extensions are okay so those just need to be added to that

120agenda so that you know we will have an executive session and then we also added the SRO yeah do so so I think I pretty much am clear with what we need to do I don't think we need Jessica at that meeting but as I go through the process if I feel that I do need her just because I could post for teachers and administrators and custodians and everything else all day long except this is unchartered Waters but kind of Chartered I think I'm okay but otherwise I'll talk to you and then we'll have her in executive session too so that we can figure out what to do should we invite in um the chief or anyone from the town side to give an update on their side if if you would like to and

121because it's security I would say an executive session I don't think it's a bad idea for July okay um we can um by then we'll have a cheap it'll be cheap sifo straight one day okay anything else that we'd forgotten all right then that leaves us with comments updates and announcements from board members and administrators so I'll start on this end this time Kelly anything dipty line um I just wanted to say that as we're nearing the end of the school year I'm really excited for everything that we've accomplished this year with all of our administrators and staff and parents and it's a little emotional for me at this end of the year so yeah I'm excited but it's been a great four years for my daughter here at the high school and thank you

122to our administrators for that that's nice we'll get you through this Catherine don't worry um I just want to say congratulations on a successful end of the year I've been hearing and seeing a lot about the prisms concert and so many phenomenal singers and musicians and I just I wasn't able to attend but I saw a lot of little Clips on Facebook so so much talent in our school I love it um okay all right we'll have to get together um and then I want to compliment the staff who went on all these field trips that you know I know that like the seventh grade trip ended up coming home really late later than they expected due to traffic and then Middle School I chaperoned the Quasi trip and it's it's hot and those teachers

123are really tough because I was tired so I just want to thank them for getting that together for our kids they all had a blast and then good luck to the girls in softball which I think they'll be playing this Saturday possibly at UConn is that right yes okay so good luck good luck to them all right that's all from me anything Okay Lori Jen now huh uh two the art show at uh at West was awesome um we couldn't stay too too long because we had other commitments from Sports and all that fun stuff that's been going on but it was well done well attended I mean I think they were you know they were counting people at the door and they were close to a thousand when when my family went in so

124that was really great to see um and then the only other comment is um I did hear uh individually from several different families about the the event at CMS and the impression I'm getting from folks is it's not an issue of not being on board with acceptance of others I think the feeling was that a number of families felt blindsided what I heard from several parents was they would have liked the opportunity to talk to their own kids before that event took place and I just think we want to take that in account in with future events particularly with more sensitive topics if it's going to be a school-wide event maybe giving you know a pretty good advance notice and not just like one line in a newsletter but like making sure that families know

125so they can have those conversations at home before their kids go in just so they're not kind of trying to deal with with it afterwards in other words I think the feeling I got from the families that spoke to me were they would really like the opportunity to talk to their children before the event to kind of prepare them for it and it was coming more from a place of acceptance but it was certainly more of a they a bunch of people felt kind of Blindsided so just maybe being a little more careful in the future with that all right thank you to everyone for being here tonight I know it was the last minute change so I appreciate all of you in the audience back there and um is there a motion to adjourn

126Lori second by Matt all in favor