001good evening [Music] we'll call this meeting of the criminal board of education to order at 706 pm apologies alessandra would you she'll please awesome i do have some deletions to account for so items a b and c under new business will all be omitted so item a was future problem solvers discussion and we're gonna hope to have that sometime in september or october item b is the social work department update and that will be at our june meeting and item c which was the discussion and possible action of the devereaux student strength assessment that will be also at our june meeting so we're omitting a b and c and we'll just begin with item d also new business item h just a correction the amount um let's see item h the approval approval of the
002request from the board of ed to transfer money from the board of bed capital non-reoccurring funds into a new project the amount listed was 72 000 but it's actually 66 000 so just that correction i think that's everything did i miss anything okay with all of those is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended thank you allen is our second jen all in favor opposed extensions motion carries the agenda is approved next on our agenda we are celebrating some faculty and staff and i'll turn it over to dr macri for our teacher leadership academy good evening everyone this evening i'm going to invite dr carrie mclean our director of curriculum and instructure instruction and dr jeremy vasson who is assistant professor and program coordinator for the sixth year program for those of you
003that don't don't know what that may be it's for all of us crazy people who want to go back and be administrators in educational leadership um and that is what dr vison does at central connecticut state university and we are lucky enough that he lives in town and we get to educate his children so i'll turn it over to both of you good morning everyone um it's my pleasure to recognize four teachers tonight that are not only incredible teachers the teacher leadership academy is one of the programs that i love the most it gives teachers an opportunity to demonstrate their leadership skills we partner with central connecticut state university and dr vizon and i run the program and the teachers dedicate time and they do a project that um you know help the school community
004at large um but i would like to recognize um dinafodi brianna fry debraca priori and jane sarnowski [Applause] thanks so much dr mclean thank you very much [Music] um i appreciate uh the time that we have to speak to you tonight we'll try to be brief we know you have lots of important things to talk about but as dr macri said my name is jeremy vazon i work at central connecticut state university whereas dr macri said i work to prepare educational leaders however one of the most exciting parts of my role is that i get to work here in the cromwell public schools with some awesome teachers who as dr mclean said are giving up extra time to do projects of of interest and um of value to our children here in cromwell so um
005i have some certificates here that we want to present to them and there's only three of them here tonight so i think it would be fine if we clap for each one of them individually as they come up first of all brianna frye [Applause] jane sarnowski [Applause] and dina fodi [Applause] as i think dr mclean mentioned debra priory is not going to be able to be here tonight but we should clap for her anyway [Applause] at this time a couple of our folks are going to tell you about their projects they've been working on so i'm going to turn it over to brianna frye first hi good evening so my project that i worked on this year was i would like to improve family communication amongst our schools i'm a third grade teacher at woodside
006intermediate school and something that i had talked about with my principal mr butwell is and we've been talking about this for a couple years was to find a consistent way to communicate with families specifically using a single platform i know a lot of teachers use different types of apps or just do emails and we wanted to have something that was consistent across the building one of the apps that i have used in the past is called blooms and a lot of other teachers have used it as well with the free version and we were able to gather funding from mr butwell as well as central office to purchase the full version of it which gave a lot of advantages to our school as well i was able to receive training and work very closely with
007their i.t department so closely in fact that i mean they did try to recruit me to come work for them but i said no and because of that i was able to go back and train the teachers on how to use the platform and then we eventually rolled it out to the families it wasn't the easiest rollout but it was great experience to see some of the behind the scenes work of how to implement some new technology within the district i would also like to give a special shout out to kelly swan romanak who works in central office as well she was phenomenal and jumped right in she sat on a lot of the calls with me and she helped us to incorporate clever which is another single you sign on that we've implemented across
008the district this year and being able to transfer some of that data over which was not an easy process but my hope for next year is that we can continue to do this and that we will be able to have it be much more smoother instead of starting in the middle of the year and i also would like to thank dr vazon and dr mclean for their resources and their guidance thank you thanks brianna i'm a former principal before i was in the role that i'm in now and i'll tell you the idea of having teachers using one platform to communicate consistently across the school is like mind-blowing so great job brianna and i am enjoying as a west parent enjoying those blooms updates next up we have jane sarnowski who's going to talk about
009their project at the middle school because i'm so good at sharing i'm going to have dina start hi there um so i'm a little shorter so all right so what i'm kind of going on what brianna said so our theme is consistency in having one platform and so our project along with dev we're all language arts teachers at the middle school and we want consistency on one platform on our new teachers and how we can support them new teachers beginning teachers as well as teachers who are maybe not new teachers but they're new to our district and how we can support them coming in um and knowing our system and how how it works and so that's what we have been working on this year um and so we uh just we had first decided
010on a print and we decided not to do that and we decided we were going to move to digital instead so the three of us had been working on brainstorming ways on how we were going to do that and so um we wanted to do that because we have a lot of great protocols in place however when new teachers come in um they maybe are assigned to a team mentor if they're a new teacher or they learn from you know they're buddied up with with a teacher and they learn you know they're able to ask questions however they may not get all the information needed or they may get pockets of information and the communication again is not consistent and that's what we want to really do with our project is to have consistency with
011our project and that's what we've been working on um this year and i'll turn it over to jane with some of the things that we've been doing so the bottom line is covid has kind of changed the world for everyone and that includes teachers and so what we realized is we had an influx that we didn't expect and those teachers were prepared for teaching but they weren't prepared for each particular school so we started at the middle school and we kind of took an inventory of teachers that were new to teaching and teachers that were new to criminal middle school and we figured out through a survey what they needed what they were missing what could we kind of fill in as gaps and we designed a survey to kind of get that information to
012try to help them and so we held some meetings and we kind of designed a protocol that we would meet in with them regularly and meet their needs as as they came up because you don't really know what you know until you realize you don't know it um so we kind of went from there and we're hoping to expand it district-wide we've done surveys throughout the year to kind of figure out um the direction that we're going in and we've realized that some of the protocols we have in place are great and there's some needs that need to be met we do have mentor teachers for the team program but there aren't protocols in place particularly from grade level to grade level so the great thing about our project is we have a sixth seventh
013and eighth grade point teacher so we each had our own perspective and we were able to kind of put something together um like dina was mentioning that we have um we're going to be putting a digital version together so that it's kind of a living document that can kind of adjust over the years and we hope that it will be something that we can use over time to meet those needs so thank you thank you thanks so much uh jane and dina i didn't realize dina was speaking so i'm sorry i didn't introduce you surprise um but once again um i just wanted to have you all appreciate the dedication of the teachers that we have here in cromwell we should be really proud of them and again as a former principal new teachers can
014never get enough support so this is a great project and hopefully it will expand to the other grades we look forward to next year dr mclean and i to a new group of teacher leaders who will come and join uh the existing teacher leaders um to expand our academy so thanks so much for the time tonight really appreciate it have a wonderful evening thank you very much congratulations to all of you going for your sixth degree sixth um what is it called it's a sixth year sixth year it's part of the teacher leadership program i really i am in awe tommy said he can't hear me which is very unusual um i am in awe by the dedication of the teachers in this district especially brianna and jane and dina and deb their names come
015up all the time i well constantly um but we have so many teachers who are so devoted and so dedicated to the work that we do and um just we can't do it alone the you know we have an administrator by our name but it takes everyone to do it there are so many programs that we think we're doing a decent job at but the teachers know because they're they're in it every single day so to be able to step up take a risk and say hey we could do better at this and we have some ideas of how we can do that is something that is so admirable and i am just so proud of all of you and i feel really lucky to work with um not just the teachers who participated in
016this but all of our teachers we are we have amazing people educating our children so thank you and last week was teacher appreciation week so what a um a tribute you can't really basically you can't do enough during teacher appreciation week um they probably all gained 10 pounds it's nice not being in a school because we oftentimes get fed very well so thank you to to all of you i appreciate everything you do for our kids and those projects are awesome thanks any comments from the board members about that okay moving on to celebrating our students we have the cave student leadership award would you like to introduce that for us as well sure i am very happy to invite mr cockle and mrs kochiola up although i really want to do this myself because
017i really am so excited that i know a lot of these kids and i'm so excited that they got this award but i will pass the honor over to their principal principals good evening everyone and yes this is also an honor for us as well to be able to introduce these students for this amazing award that they are awarded by their team of teachers they look through the criteria and it's very important to understand the criteria it's it's the connecticut association boards of education student leadership award and the criteria is willingness to take on challenges capability to make difficult decisions concern for others ability to work with others willingness to commit to a project diplomacy ability to understand issues clearly and ability to honor a commitment those are quite hefty criteria to meet and i'm
018very proud to introduce our two middle school students that were given this award this year first i'd like to well i'd like to call them both up jillian's liz and olivia salvatore come on up so for jillian um as as her teachers got together to um sing her praises and why she was given this award so jillian went over here honey kind responsible committed to learning jillian leads by example in the classroom and throughout our school her calm demeanor patience and perseverance allow her to lead her classmates to productive discussion during group activities jillian's not only a leader in the classroom but outside of the classroom as well she's a member of contempt company in tempo where she participates in many productions she serves as a board of education rep attending meetings each month and
019providing updates on club sports and academic achievements additionally she's a member of the cms student council and helps to organize and execute fundraising activities to benefit the cromwell community jillian's a natural leader as she consistently sets an example of considerate and caring behavior among her peers so congratulations jillian [Applause] and now i'm honored to introduce olivia salvatore and her teachers said each day olivia comes to cromwell middle school she models and exemplifies each of the cave leadership skills she never shies away from a challenge or a chance to lead whether she's learning a brand new concept struggling with an existing one or simply trying to wrangle her peers to stay on task during group work she steadfastly pushes on in pursuit of her goals because of her innate sense of caring and her natural diplomacy
020skills olivia is able to work and collaborate with all her peers regardless of the myriad personalities mindsets and cultures day in and day out olivia's growth mindset her high academic motivation and the consistent let's do this demeanor with students teachers and administration easily makes her a qualified recipient for the cave award so i'm honored to give this to olivia salvatore congratulations proud of you guys congratulations to you both did you want to do a photo op anyone parents are here or anything if you want i'll grab it after okay sounds good all right good evening so it is my honor to present the cave student leadership awards for cromwell high school to seniors christa pereira in jasmine hampton at this time i would like to call both chs seniors up to the podium so both
021of our award recipients demonstrate a wide array of leadership skills based on the cabe criteria they embrace challenges work collaboratively have a genuine concern for others and a willingness to commit to a project coincidentally enough both of our recipients this evening are being honored this week by outside organizations for similar efforts so the timing of tonight's recognition could not have been more perfect christa pereira krista is a senior at chs in her time at cromwell christa has started the kindness campaign aimed at fostering a more accepting climate at chs the main hallway is covered with kindness campaign flowers highlighting random acts of kindness she is the co-founder of conquer brain tumors incorporated who raises funds for childhood cancer and brain cancer research and donates to connecticut children's hospital and the national brain tumor society as
022a co-founder of this organization she has coordinated a district-wide fundraiser known as the gray and gold day an effort to raise money for connecticut children's hospital earlier today krista was the recipient of the middletown rotary club service above self award and they made a donation to her charity conquer brain tumors inc and their student of the month award on her behalf jasmine hampton is also a senior at cromwell high school she has worked to make chs a more accepting and equitable place she is a founding member of the chs student equity committee as a member of their executive board she has dedicated countless hours to our collaborative conversations initiative which focuses on storytelling and our intersectionality jasmine also represents chs as a member of the town criminal diversity equity and inclusion committee her dedication to
023these endeavors have helped her form strong relationships within the school community and the greater cromwell community jasmine is also the recipient of the ywca new britain women in leadership award for which she will be honored on thursday may 12th both of our award recipients are not simply members of different clubs and activities at cromwell high school they are active participants who engage in difficult conversations and are constantly looking to improve their community i am incredibly proud of these two students they have raised the bar and represented cromwell with great pride congratulations to chs seniors christa pereira and jasmine hampton [Applause] congratulations to all four of our students we're very proud congratulations to jillian and olivia i look forward to working more with you as you grow older um i feel that i've worked a lot
024with krista and jasmine and they just amaze me they are selfless and brave and they inspire me i think that i probably have had conversations with both of them at a certain time and they have left the room and i have been teary-eyed to think that the leadership skills that these two brave and courageous women possess and the caring that they exhibit for their classmates and the rest of the world they can teach us so much and i am just so incredibly proud and i'm going to be sad to see you go but i'm so excited to see what you're going to do in your future and i congratulate both of you and your parents for raising some pretty amazing kids so adults young adults now so everything mr cockles said about you and there's
025just so much more to share but of course i can talk forever about kids and i would probably do that because there's so much to say but you are just fabulous and i wish you the very best of luck and this award couldn't have gone to two more amazing kids and i know i'm gonna see the same from jillian and olivia in the future so congratulations to the four of you [Applause] okay next on our agenda is correspondence and i do have one piece of correspondence that came in it was written to lisa and is from scott brown crumble little league would like to request the following be presented for the to the board of ed for consideration batting cages installed at wis for the girls softball crumble little league would pay for the entire
026project we're looking to put them in the outfield between the two fields closest to the playground and we would be looking to install these as soon as approved jim vincetti or myself would welcome the opportunity to meet with the board further to discuss thank you so we can talk about that if that's something we want to put on a future agenda and next we have public comments before i read the rules are there is there anyone here for public comments okay hearing none we'll move on to our report from the student representatives would you like to start the high school teacher appreciation week was last week and students wrote letters to their teachers and the student council organized a lunch for teachers after school one evening mary tobias was selected as the cromwell high school
027staff person of the year for 2022. mary runs the work experience program at cromwell high school and has been a valuable member for the chs staff the assessment windows for seniors and students grades in grades 9 10 11 are different this year seniors are graduating friday june 10th therefore they will complete their assessments prior to graduation day students in grade 9 10 11 will begin thursday june 9th and end on thursday june 16th the spanish department is taking the students the food trucks in new haven to educate students more in spanish culture and to learn how to order food in spanish the students can't wait the junior class is also ready and excited for the newport trip to the breakers mansion in rhode island may 18th to continue on their learning upon the gilded age
028prom for seniors and juniors is on may 21st just around the corner yesterday the girls lacrosse team had a game against north bramford unfortunately they lost 9-17 but played an excellent game they will play adam killingworth on thursday today the boys lacrosse team played against vinyl they will also play adam killingworth on thursday today both the girls and boys tennis teams had matches the boys team played against rocky hill and the girls team played against valley the boys team lost though they fought a well match and the girls won four to three both teams will play westbrook on friday today the girls softball team played against bolton tomorrow they will play windsor the boys baseball team played north bramford on friday which was also their senior night they had a great game but lost 7-6
029tomorrow they will play hail ray the boys golf team played hillary on friday they will play adam killingworth thursday the boys and girls track team had a meet today against adam killingworth and hail ray on friday they will attend the running rams invitational okay thank you both any questions okay we'll move on to the middle school then who wants to start jillian love wednesday will be held at cms on may 17th may 17th is the international day against homophobia transphobia and biphobia the hope is for the school community to promote acceptance and come together students and staff are encouraged to wear rainbow colored clothes on this day to show their support you may also bring in money to donate to carmel's lgbtq committee the cromwell middle school's future teachers club began meeting in march this
030special club has grown to 25 members and is facilitated by dr brosworth the future teachers club affords the opportunity for students to explore teaching as a career meetings have been filled with engaging guest speakers crafting lesson plans reflective writing activities and creating google classrooms the future teachers club the future teachers are looking forward to finishing off the school year by reading to elementary children in june the spring sports teams have had their first game so far the boys track team has been on a streak winning every meet so far the track teams had a meet against mcgee middle school in berlin this afternoon the girls on the softball team have been working hard today they had a doubleheader against easthampton 8th graders from the cms unity club will be joining the town to help clean
031up frisbee park on saturday may 14th the world language club has been learning about japanese culture specifically learning about their art and lifestyle during the next meeting on may 17th they will be learning about norway the art club has been diligently working on beautiful mural on abu sorry on a beautiful mural on the wall across from the cafeteria the design for the mural is inspired by life and nature and features a beautiful tree in the middle with a landscape and planets okay thank you both does anyone have questions catherine do you have a question i do have a question jillian what was the first line that you read that you said about is it called the love wins is that what it was and that's on may 17th okay thank you okay we will move
032on to reports of liaisons from the town council and board of finance i don't believe we have anyone here from town council but we do have gail richie would you like to come up and give a report no okay all right then we'll move on to the superintendent's updates did i forget something oh i'm sorry i missed the citizen's comments because i had to take her to the bathroom is there any way that i can close the podium sure okay i'm sorry i just need to read the rules though just one moment okay we welcome and engage public comments at our board of education meetings to make sure that our meetings are conducted respectfully while encouraging public participation following are the rules for public comment the public comment portion of our meetings thank you for
033your cooperation and participation individuals are welcome to address the board of education for up to three minutes each during the public comment portions of the meeting but board members will not generally engage in dialogue the board of education chair may at 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
034free to do so all comments must not include personal attacks and comments cannot be discourteous threatening vulgar or otherwise inappropriate the board chairperson may his or her discretion curtail any public comment or terminate any such individual's privilege of address at any time if they violate any of these rules violate reasonable standards of decorum are boisterous or repetitious the board of education reserves the right to limit public comments to particular comments with that being said if you'd like to begin with your name and address hi my name is sheri mcguire i reside at 76 washington road i'd like to submit a letter to the board of education members in regards to my daughter grayson rose ginfritto she recently had a 504 annual review to discuss her accommodations and we are in disagreement of what is i'm
035sorry you know what just because it's personal to your own child i would ask that you handle this outside of the board of education meeting just want to respect the privacy of your child and yourself okay can i at least give you if you'd like to speak generally or provide something to dr macri yeah it's not going to be in detail it was just going to say that i wanted to present this letter to the members of the board did she distribute it privately okay well if you have a meeting schedule then maybe you can start with dr macri and then at that point if something if you want to distribute something to us after the fact i think that would be more appropriate i'm very disappointed i'll email them the letters thank you okay
036we're going to move on to presentations and reports of an administration right dr macri sorry are you ready because superintendents updates and responses to board red comments and action items from the prior meeting okay well so we do have some exciting news um we the teacher of the year committee has selected um our teachers of the year at edna c stevens it was mr christian plourde who is our school psychologist at woodside nicole sylvain at cms we have maya pavlik and at ca hs we have christina williams so these are our teachers of the year for 22 23 school year last year's teacher of the year for those of you that remember was mr dalia so those of you that are new members i'll just explain the process to you it's a really exciting process
037where we get to go into classrooms and this year we actually got to go into classrooms and really observe instead of having to observe a taped lesson like we had to last year and then we have observations that are completed um obviously i'm sorry interviews with the teachers um this was really difficult it's always an extremely difficult year to pick your teacher of the year for the district um but i am proud to announce that the teacher of the year for cromwell public schools for next year was selected and it's miss maya pavlick at cromwell middle school so her passion uh her passion for education is one thing but her passion for children and students and saving the world right i see you both shaking your head is just um unbelievable and it was an
038agreement for the committee that she would be our teacher of the year so the next phase is um most districts i would say in connecticut not all there are a few who who do not participate have a teacher of the year um represent them in hartford at the bushnell which is this evening and every superintendent attends with their teacher of the year which is why i was most likely not going to be able to come this evening however the teacher of the year from last year decided not to attend um which was fine and that's why i'm here however every teacher of the year is represented by their superintendent and it's a very big deal they are recognized by the commissioner the governor and other politicians um usually by the education committee representative um it's
039just a wonderful evening for everyone to come together and recognize the incredible work that all of our teachers do also they have the chance to participate in i want to say it's really just to apply to be teacher of the year for connecticut and then one teacher of the year is selected for the state of connecticut and then the teacher of the year for connecticut speaks to everyone at this event that's going on this evening but we don't have anyone this evening which is why i'm here but we will next year um hopefully miss pavlick will join us i did attend before kovid with miss dooley and it was an amazing event to just see all of the teachers and the superintendents um and all of the people who support education in connecticut really rally
040around our teachers because they are pretty amazing people so um congratulations to all of our teachers of the year um and maya pavlick is besides herself we will honor her and all of the teachers in september and miss pavlick all of the teachers um get to speak to their staff for the beginning of the school year and then mrs pavlick represents the district at convocation and speaks on behalf of the district so we do a lot of wonderful things for them they're on our facebook page they're on our district page they have had the opera they get a fancy parking spot and we just really appreciate everything they do so congratulations to all of them our next um quick update there's there are so many things going on in the spring as you know um
041we have students that are being um right now are taking smarter balanced and the sats so we wish them the best of luck be patient with your children at home if they get a little cranky they are being tested and it is a high pressure test unfortunately we also are have our dear graduation you received that invitation on may 20th i know you may not be available at 2pm but it is an exciting event for the fifth graders at wis and if you can make it it's at two o'clock um we also uh as you know um we are working with the town of cromwell transfer station pratt and whitney and um have put together a cromwell cleanup day we have about 75 to 100 people a volunteer so far for saturday if you haven't
042registered yet don't worry about registering just show up that would be wonderful we are having a small ceremony in the morning to honor mike camilleri mike was a stand-up guy as all of you know he did not hold back from sharing his passion of what he loved and that was seeing our kids do the best they can and volunteer and so this is something that we are giving back as a community to honor him and his family will be present so if you haven't signed up yet or if you know people who said oh i didn't sign up but it's too late it's okay to show up at eight o'clock at frisbee park and you will be put on a team but pratt whitney has donated t-shirts and they have teams coming as well and
043the transfer station tony salvatore jr there'll be breakfast and lunch provided because so many incredible people have donated throughout the town of cromwell and our last day of school is june 16th the calendar has been updated it's been put in all of the newsletters and we are well on our way in preparing all of the activities for our students and are so happy that they are getting to uh participate in them however i do have our wonderful nurse jillian hanson here to provide a covet update um we do have 84 positive cases um and i'm just gonna have her be part of this update so that we don't have to continuously put it on our agenda good evening everyone i'm unfortunately not here with the greatest news that we are seeing an uptick in the
044cases in the school system so the numbers are there actually there's 85 because i got a phone call on my way here so um there's we have 25 students at ecs and three staff members we have eight students at wis and five staff members cms has 18 students and eight staff and chs has 15 students and two staff so with a grand total of 85. so we are seeing some trends in classrooms without the masks um we're we have had to mask a classroom at ecs due to over 20 of the students in the classroom being positive um we've discussed this with the local health department and we are close in a lot of several other classrooms so it is a change to what we saw before but we're monitoring it closely and the good
045news is that the class that we did mask in we haven't seen any more cases so we're hoping to have that just a limited period of time uh a two week you know or a week for that classroom it was a week and a day um and we have seen the improvements so so that's good and as i said we'll continue to monitor and and and discuss it with the with sal nashi at the department of health and with dr macri does anyone have any questions no questions okay thank you all right any questions for dr macri either on her report okay all right then we'll move on to presentations and reports of administration we have the 2021-2022 budget update reference a in your packets good evening i have included in the packet a brief
046memo and our budget summary as of april 30th 2022 we are still in a budget freeze and we will likely stay there for the rest of the year we're currently approving health safety and maintenance and repairs that cannot be put off until july 1st um we will likely end the year slightly to the positive i don't have that number obviously yet because things are still moving but um with my projections um even since i did the april report i did have um an additional special education costs come in so we're probably down to only about a ten thousand dollar balance so we're hoping to close out some purchase orders of maybe things that um we can not purchase this year to help us manage any other expenses that come up so we're just holding strong
047and really analyzing the numbers for all of us on a daily basis and i'd be happy to answer any questions if anyone has any specific questions that i could address does anyone have any matt you looked like you had one i'm sure you're shocked what what kinds of things are we were we planning on spending money on that we're not going to now just are we talking consumables like paper goods and stuff like that yes we we've cut back on um any custodial supplies that we can do without um some instructional supplies that we can either share between buildings or just for go um so we're we're doing those sorts of things um it's a really i mean minimal impact to instruction in students yes i try to i'm just making sure yeah definitely we
048if someone comes with a request that's not health or safety but they're like i really need this for xyz dr macri and i will have a discussion about it and we weigh it and decide do we need to do this now can we wait can we not should we not consider it at all so it is definitely a case-by-case basis but um a good example right now is um because maher is here and mr kuckle we need basketball uniforms desperately and we're trying to wait for july 1st money so that we can figure out what will exclude from next year's budget the problem is is that the lead time for them to come in is pretty long so right now we're we are in discussion with uh miss burke on what could we possibly pay
049for through open choice that covers that so that we can put an order in for these uniforms because they are ripped they are shredded they are no good we have nowhere to go and we need to order them as soon as possible so that's just an example of stuff that we haven't ordered that we would have ordered and it was like five thousand dollars worth of uniforms that we just put on hold um because we didn't have the money um but if we put it on hold any longer our kids really won't have uniforms to wear for next year so that's something that we are looking at very closely that's just one example of many i'm sure any other questions catherine so from the end uh month ended the budget summary ended march 31st to
050april 30th there's about a 30 000 difference in our balance is that um mainly attributed i know it's like kind of filtered throughout in the budget summary but i also know that sometimes things fall into different categories in the budget summary so is there a main driver of that 30 000 special education thank you anyone else okay thank you ann you're welcome okay old business we have none new business we have the cremel middle school building project update and tonight we have rosanna glenn our building chairperson i'd like to present an overview of where we are right now good evening everyone so since our last report the independent cost estimator finished their analysis of the project the total project cost estimate is 58.6 million dollars after reimbursement adjustments the anticipated state reimbursement is 22.1 million
051dollars with an estimated cost total cost to cromwell of 36.5 million dollars the estimate considers the unique economic circumstances created by the kova 19 pandemic national supply chain issues and resulting material cost escalations including increasing the escalation rate from 4 to 6 percent uh the committee has been actively engaging the community in the project since the last board of ed meeting the committee presented to the following groups the board of finance covenant living cromwell senior center cromwell youth advisory board and the crumble children's coalition the committee also attended the following community events and distributed information about the project and answered questions we were at little league opening day the ecs was pto ice cream social cromwell plant swap and ecs and west dismissals we also hosted a very successful open house on may 5th for
052the community come and see the current facility meet the architect and learn more about the proposed features in a new cromwell middle school kudos to shannon who's brown who's here with with us today she's our subcommittee chair for communications her and the team really did a really fantastic job very professional job at that open house i think we had over 100 people show up which was pretty phenomenal for a thursday night and it was like a really nice thursday night for next steps the committee has worked diligently to accomplish its requirements to meet the june 30th state grant deadline the committee has been thorough in its review and discussions and effective in its decision-making while also actively listening and considering community input to the project to meet the state deadline and to not delay this
053project for another year the following timeline is recommended so tomorrow may 11th is a town council meeting there's a possible action to appropriate funds for the project and set a special town meeting date for those of you who are unfamiliar with the process because i honestly was unfamiliar myself with this process the special town meeting is where the town could vote for this project it's literally a raise of hands type of thing if if a petition for a referendum is submitted at least 24 hours before the time of that special town meeting then the mayor would call for a referendum that has to be between 7 and 14 days of that special town meeting so what that means is the proposed date proposed date for that special tom meeting is going to hopefully be june
0541st uh and and and if a referendum is required it has to be between 7 and 14 days from june 1st so anywhere between the 8th and the 15th we are um now all of that is contingent about on the project getting through the board of finance uh board of finance meeting is may 26th so in may you have may 11th is a town council meeting they were going to possibly have vote for a special town meeting assuming that the board of finance passes it then we go to the board of finance on may 26th if they pass it then the special time meeting is set at that point for hopefully june 1st and then we're either voting that day or there'll be a referendum seven to 14 days after that we're hoping that the
055referendum if it gets to that point would be june 8th or 9th because i know june 10th is high school graduation and we know that once kids are graduated half the families are going to go away on vacation and celebrate so we really want to make sure that we have as many citizens in town available for that referendum and then assuming we get past that point the grant would be submitted on june 30th so this time next month hopefully when we meet again we will know where this project stands any questions there's a lot of information does anyone have questions other than do you do you want to include some of that um in our minutes it seems like you had it had it pretty typed up do you want that yeah i sent it
056to you yeah you could i can what you sent me i can attach to the minutes okay great i didn't put the explanation of what the special time meeting is but okay great ken if we need it any other questions for tonight though a couple of questions um with all the [Music] presentations and discussions that you've had around town what has been the general feel from um the population about this project about the town spending money in a new building do they are they learning anything about the needs of of you know what we we know what we've seen from our presentations but most of the town hasn't seen it so um are you getting pushback from people or are they supportive or is it mixed so generally enthusiastic for the project people seem to
057love the idea that we're having a two floor that seems to be the most exciting part like oh finally two floor building um no but general excitement for the building um everyone i think acknowledges that the current middle school is outdated and not adequate the concerns location has been a concern because of other potential projects in town that our building committee is not a part of that's come up often lately um there's some concern about parking but all of those things we would keep stressing in our little roadshow is that everything right now that you're seeing is all conceptual it's just used to help us estimate what the project cost is going to be for the most part but it could look very much different when we actually go to build so a lot of
058we you know a lot of a lot of detailed questions are coming up like about the design itself and um again we just keep reminding people that it's just conceptual that when we actually go to go to do detailed design if we actually are afforded that opportunity then we will solicit feedback from the community to see like and the teachers and everyone to figure out you know what are the best options we will probably have to take our building committee to do a search of all you know new new schools throughout the state go look at them see what their best practices are and um and see what their lessons learned are because everything looks great on paper but then when you go build it and you look at it you're like that didn't work
059out the way we expected it and so uh again the design can completely change by the time we actually go to build so um you know once we get that point out to the people we spoke to like okay i get it now but in general we haven't i don't think we've ever spoken to anyone who said this is a waste of money or this is a waste of time or we shouldn't do this i don't i have not received not even one comment negative about the project and we spoke to lots and lots of people of various ages and you know people with or without kids in the school system so it was um very very encouraging having having those discussions with everyone didn't miss anything oh right so yes thank you shannon a
060lot of positive feedback with the recommendation to go with a new building as opposed to renovation i think people understood our reasoning and our justification and in general agreed with with our recommendation to go with a new building oh lori go ahead i don't know if i'm getting ahead of myself but you said for two floors so there there would be an elevator yes there's gonna be yep the building would be and we actually got a lot of those questions too about ada compliancy yeah the building would be it has to buy code be ada compliant and there would be an elevator and you know some of those some of those issues came up with why we chose not to go with option two because of some of the accessibility issues that we couldn't get
061around with the way that the current building is set up any other questions dipty well the state of connecticut do they have a list of new schools that have been built that you can visit once that time comes um i don't know the answer that if it's on their website but we have resources who could tell us like we know we visited colchester we know farmington just built a new high school and harford has built his building actually farmington is about to build something they haven't built it yet so that's not going to be done middletown middletown um just built rocky hill just built a bunch of buildings i think so there's there's a there's a bunch around that we can go visit and again it's not just looking at it like oh what can
062we do it's more like you know what what was your expectation and did your build meet the expectation what would you have done differently i'm you know as a as a project engineer i always look at risk so i'm always looking at i want to avoid the mistakes other towns have made right and so that would be an important perspective to have okay any other questions matt not a question really so much as you know um along with some of the other board members i've attended a lot of those a lot of the meetings for the building committee the building committee has put in so much time and energy and effort in this thank you for for your leadership in that role but thanks the building committee as well i mean regardless of where this
063goes you know going forward you guys have put a lot of energy into this and a lot of passion um and i don't know how much people in town are aware of how much you put behind this so i do i mean honestly just thank you for all of your efforts this it's been a massive undertaking so far and there's more to do even after it's hopefully approved there's a lot more to do a lot more to do um so just i mean understand that you know when we're seeing these things happening you know you have meetings that are ending after 10 pm after 10 30 pm on a regular basis it's really impressive how much passion you guys have for this thank you thank you for saying that if you didn't i was planning
064to but i agree thank you for your expertise your time your community relations committee and everything everything has been so professional i went to the open house and i was just in awe of the way it was set up and you had teachers in all the areas giving descriptions and i saw areas of the building i'd never seen before and it is way worse than i even imagined so yeah um if you ever had any doubts take a tour of the middle school so thank you any other questions no yep catherine um did we have other members of other like um board of finance members go look or town council members because those are important players in our group so did they come to open house yeah yes we did we had um because if
065not i was thinking we should set up a separate tour for them if they were interested we had a few town council members come i don't know if any board of finance people come we did yeah you did you're there okay matt was probably there because matt was there they all received a personal invitation i believe too right yes yep yeah it was an awkward night because um i think stuff was going on in the town too that they you know there's i think finance stuff that was going on too i think that was okay conflicting i just want to make sure we give them the opportunity to see efficiency inside um and everything that that they're fully aware of why we have this need it's a great need so yeah okay thank you all
066right thank you very much okay thank you all right next on our agenda is an action item approval of the out of state field trips reference b in your packet and do we have anyone presenting this are we just kind of going over it just quickly um we do you do have to approve out of state field trips and these are what are being proposed for next year so if you have any questions i do have i don't believe the teachers are here but the principals are here and they would be more than happy to answer them for you and so i have a question um high school or middle school for general high school some of these field trips are kind of pricey and do they fundraise for these um mr cockle there he
067is all by himself yeah it's a combination some fundraising uh you know the senior trip for example is is uh the more the fundraise the cost of the trip uh comes down so uh there's a combination of things that they use but fundraising is definitely a major component of it any other questions follow-up stifty no okay i just have a comment it's nice to see our list expanding again and to see some awesome out-of-state field trips dc philadelphia orlando it's just really nice to see it back on the schedule yeah i know it's our pre-covered really um field trip list which is nice yeah it was uh the one thing i will say just to make sure everybody's aware the the band trip to orlando was typically one we would piggyback with um april break
068but the calendar this year april break leads into good friday and easter so we planned it it's off of april break but it goes over into a weekend as well um you know so there was no avoiding uh you know that circumstance this year so just a note to make note of well it means students if they're missing school time for their field trip they're still responsible for they are and we usually it was like a 50 50 right you do uh you know it's two days of school and then miss you know you'd have the weekend so a little bit of your time a little bit our time uh you know it'll just be a tougher return because they'll come back on a sunday and then hello monday yeah rise and shine all right
069so i believe we need a motion for this one would anyone like to make the motion jen okay is there a second dipty all in favor opposed extensions motion carries the field trips are approved i i just i'm sorry i just have one quick question um i see the middle school only has one field trip are they not doing the boston field trip anymore okay thank you that that's on there that's the un is sixth and seventh graders they did it in seventh grade before yep okay are you all set catherine yep thank you all right action item f approval of the healthy food certification and please bear with me i have to read this verbatim pursuant to csg section 10-215 f the board of education or governing authority certifies that all food items offered
070for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the connecticut connecticut nutrition standards published by the connecticut state department of education will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards during the period of july 1st 2022 through june 30th 2023 this certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all times and from all sources including but not limited to school stores vending machines school cafeterias culinary programs and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organizations and groups and this is mandatory so is there are there any questions first of all on that and would anyone like to make the motion motion okay i saw lori and then i heard catherine um all in favor opposed extensions motion carries then item
071g another action item another mandatory policy required vote for food extension exemptions for board of eds opting to implement the healthy food certification the board of education or governing authority will allow the sale to students of food items that do not meet the connecticut nutrition standards provided that the following conditions are met the sale is one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event and three the food items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or an extra curricular activity for example soccer games school plays and interscholastic debates are events but soccer practices play
072rehearsals and debate team meetings or not the regular school day is the period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the food sales is there a motion to approve this policy do you have a question sure i'm just assuming it's okay for us to do this like legally like yeah we can legally in order to do it legally we have to do this yeah okay okay did you have a question lori is this a new uh and you might come up and speak to this i just don't remember doing this before i don't remember either i'm laughing at coming here i remember approving the healthy food certification but not with all this language
073yeah right oh so i have actually oh my goodness i have the letter uh from the division director from school health nutrition family services and adult education um and it basically says uh the healthy food certification statute cgs section 10-215 10-215-f requires that each local board of education or governing authority boe for public schools participating in the national school lunch program each year must certify whether all food items sold to students separately from reimbursable meals will or will not meet the connecticut nutrition standards this memo provides the required boe motion language and instructions for the hfc application process for the 2223 school year so they gave us the actual language um for both of those and i don't know if anne if you want to and i could pass this around or i could email
074it to all of you just so you have it but it's here yeah sure matt so all right so basically in a nutshell the healthy food certification just says that we are we are ensuring that healthy foods are what are determined by whatever entity is to be equal to healthy foods are served during the school day this is an exemption from that to allow the sale of maybe unhealthy foods outside of the school day for example if we have um you know a play or you know some kind of dramatic performance we can sell candy bars and we're not putting ourselves in you know in a problematic area given the healthy food standards right that's really what we're doing in a nutshell yeah okay thank you for summarizing all that so i'm trying to get
075it clear in my head because there's a lot of legalese in here and just i'm trying to make sure i understand what it's actually saying so then so i i would motion to approve did laurie get her question answered oh i'm sorry that's okay i just so this is just for this coming school year then we probably would have to do this every if they if the state department of ed tells us we need to we'll have to do this every single year right yes okay they could change it i haven't even read every single solitary thing for all i know it could have been changed already through this legislative session for next year but yes okay thanks any other questions no okay is there a motion to approve okay matt second dipty all in
076favor posed substantions motion carries it is approved item h we have update and possible action approval of the request from the board of ed to transfer sixty six thousand dollars from the board of ed capital non-referring funds into a new project for the criminal high school culinary kitchen we did talk about this in facilities but ms burke if you'd like to come on up and give a quick explanation that would be great hello again so first many of the members who are here and i don't know i can't exactly remember the timing of it we had a rooftop unit at the high school that went down so we had we have some money in our capital non-recurring account that we are allowed to transfer up to one percent of our budget each year we don't
077get close to one percent but we've you know we last year we put in one thousand seven hundred dollars the year before was 47th at 4 700. so we asked previously to take the money from that account to pay for the rooftop unit we needed to get that done kerma after much deliberation and many requests decided to give us the money to cover that repair so the money came back to us in a check and it was it was given to the town because once the year ends and we put the money into the non-recurring account the town then takes control of that money cuts the purchase orders but the board of ed has to say we want the money to go into a project called x and that one was the project called rooftop
078unit the money was received by the town put back into that account which is great because we need it for the culinary kitchen at chs a couple last week or the week before the project for the construction phase of the culinary kitchen was re-bid we got six companies to bid we're going to ask for permission from the town to award the lowest bidder the contract to do the construction work what we need to ask for you from you for tonight is that we can take 66 thousand dollars and assign it to a project called chs culinary kitchen so that we can award the bid have the money and we can move forward with doing the project so that's our request here tonight for the board of education to say we would like to create a
079project and move sixty six thousand dollars from the non-recurring account into that project the project currently has about eighty five thousand dollars um and that's at the town side so the the 85 or so that we have and the 66 we're still a little short we um six to eight thousand dollars we think we're going to have to pay for out of next year's budget but we can't not move the project forward so um with your permission we can move that into the account i can ask tony salvatore if he will agree to allow tommy to award the bid and we'll move forward any questions catherine just a couple um so these project funds um the one for the rooftop and the one for the culinary kitchen are technically with the town yes but we
080need to approve the transfer of the funds from one to the other i'm a little rusty on my government okay so the culinary kitchen is a is they gave us 250 000 and it's their project it's their capital account that they agreed but the project came up short right we made the decision not to go back and ask for additional funding from the town because we got this reimbursement for the rooftop unit so that's more like board of ed funds but the town controls the purchase orders after the year ends for any money that we are able to return and put into the to the non-capital recurring account so what will happen with this project is when when the invoices are presented we have account 252 which is the towns project for the culinary kitchen
081and 253 which is the board of ed's project for the kitchen so the town has 250 in the 252 and we're going to have the 85 plus 6 the eighty-five is what's left over in the town okay the project started okay we've already bought and we've done work and you know we've done this i know it's very confusing okay so then we'll add the 66 will be in the board of ed portion of it yeah so our project will be over here and then the 85 remains in that account so once we approve it we then bring it you bring it to the town council or by the finance neither okay because of the they've already approved the transfer initially into our capital non-recurring okay so it requires the board of education to approve a
082project because it all falls under that umbrella of capital non-recurring yes so as long as they have minutes to support your decision then they'll move the money into the project for us and we don't have to go to the town council or the board of finance and i'm sorry did you say six to seven thousand is what we're a little this is what we're short on this kitchen project we think we will track it as we go along right you know okay all right perfect thank you any other questions thank you lori second hi jen all in favor opposed extensions okay the motion carries and it is now approved next we have an action approval of minutes and motions from our april 19th regular meeting reference c it's a motion to approve these minutes dipty
083second by allen all in favor posed abstention matt uh motion carries minutes are now approved next we have an action item stipend approval 2021 2022 reference d in your packets we have a memorandum here and it looks like we have a stipend request for a cromwell high school golf coach varsity anything you want to add dr macri no it's part of our stipend uh we need a coach and we found one great does anyone want to make the motion thank you jen is there a second kelly did you have a question well yeah i i don't know if we know but do when we put out for our um stipend projects like a a golf coach or any other type of stipend paid do we first go to within district and then post outside or
084does it get posted at the same time mr morrow will gladly come up and explain the process it's a little different here than we're used to but we're getting used to it sorry for all my questions i'm extending our meeting a lot but i'm that's okay if you want to repeat your question again so my question is um when we have these stipend positions that are opened do we post them internally first and then externally or is it just all posted at one shot so we follow the these stipends are all on the teacher's contract so we follow the teacher's collective bargaining agreement and which basically states that they have to be posted 10 days and teachers contract to do do you have first rates to the position you're welcome any other questions okay we
085had a first and a do you have a question okay first and the second all in favor posed extensions stipend is approved and then we have informational item k human resource personnel activity reference e [Music] any questions on that none at all oh man so just out of curiosity um you know we've got a couple of folks who uh worked here for a short period of time 2015 where are they are they leaving the profession or are they leaving to go to other places do you want miss tomorrow to come up and answer uh-huh to the extent that she can or can't we're both going to say both and personnel matters that we can't just yeah yeah obviously i'm sorry for some reason i can't hear very well i don't know if there's like a
086machine on back there but can you do you mind repeating that yeah so um you know when when folks are leaving right because we you know we're getting resignations uh yeah and i know statewide we're seeing people leave the profession i'm just curious do we have a lot of folks that are just saying throwing their arms in the air and saying that's it i can't do this i'm done or is it kind of they're moving on to other other districts and other positions just out of curiosity yeah it's you know it's a combination of a couple different things it's a combination of exactly what you said it's a combination of also people moving out of state um some people are moving to other professions some people are moving closer to home um so you know
087there's there's a combination or like a spouse who gets a job yeah there's all different situations some some of these are also people that recently just had maybe children and um are looking at daycare options and realizing that you know it it might be better for them to stay home versus trying to find child care right now so there's a lot of different things going on um and we are in a shortage area so it's going to be difficult to fill a lot of these positions but we are moving very quickly okay i mean i do i do get a little bit worried about those numbers yes right now actually this isn't too bad at all no we're good we're good keep our fingers crossed this is jen lamberson asked that same question a year
088ago and the list was a lot longer yeah we're great compared to this is like beautiful last year i think we hired probably about 140 by january not just teaching but like all staff um so you know this isn't that bad i got to be very honest with you since i've been here um so i mean i you know there's a lot of different things going on but we've been pretty lucky everything we've posted we've been receiving lots of applications that's fantastic so all right any other questions okay thank you and then we have our principal reports reference f g h and i any questions on those none okay so we'll move on to our policy section for a second read we have item a second read and possible approval business non-instructional operation school activity
089funds policy three four five three from cape reference j any questions on that policy hearing none would anyone like to make a motion okay lori sarah second catherine all in favor opposed extensions motion carries and policy is approved next we have a long list of first read policies and my understanding is that many of these are statutorily required so does anyone have any questions it's just first read we'll go on for a second read but after a first read do you have anything you want to ask okay then those will all move on to a second read at our june meeting board committee reports policy committee reference y see those are the minutes i'm not sure why they're on as a reference but is there an update from the policy committee that they want to
090share no okay and then we just had our facilities and technology committee meeting tonight which um basically we just talked about a lot of um basically not a plan but a lot of things that we need to look into over the next few years and we'll probably have a lot more discussion about that at our june meeting so that's all for right now unless you have anything to add dr macri no just bringing forward some capital improvements that um need to just making sure that i'm keeping you in the loop of everything that needs to be addressed and more importantly things that we may not know that need to be addressed because it's not c you cannot see it and looking into some legislation that came out last year but i heard this legislative session
091it may have been retracted as far as addressing the needs in schools in connecticut because the school buildings are so old so i'll keep you updated on that but i just want to make sure that i let you know uh where tommy lewinsky kelly maher myself the administration um believes we are in uh some dire need to make some improvements so we'll let you know as we talk about that in facilities you can really make a decision as to what you feel and how you want to prioritize that list okay topics for future agendas and possible action to approve additional topics does anyone have anything dipty going back to the letter that was um scott brown adding those batting cages right to future topics is there interest in discussing their having um him attend a
092future meeting i think at least yeah yeah hear what they hear what they have in the pose um it's softball field right yeah it was it pertains to the softball field but it's batting cages at the where softball fields gotcha that are in my head it was it was dugouts but when i first read it i read dugouts as well it's funny but no they're bad in cages um does it does is that something that should go through policy i'm sorry facilities first or can it just be put on considering they want to do it sooner than later we might want to put it right on our stray board okay lori does it need to go through us for them to do for them to move forward so we really need to hear the presentation
093then right so we need to add it yeah i would say we wanted it was scott brown and jim and jim binchetti so i mean do we want to invite them to present to the board what's their proposal we can do that we'll work with lisa on that and get a date okay i'll follow up anything else catherine um i know that we did a lot of discussion and voted and talked about different options for um when we eliminated our class ranks starting with our current freshman but we talked about other options and i'm wondering and mr cockle might have some input i don't know if he's oh they're here sorry um are we we talked about recognizing students that have a 4.0 or higher gpa i didn't know if we were starting with our
094current class or not um there are a lot of students there could be potentially a number of students that have 4.0 that aren't the one through 10 which is what we wanted to eliminate um are we planning to do that starting this year or before our gpa element or you know class rank elimination comes through we actually when we looked in the old board minutes i believe it was top 10 percent um is what we settled on versus the 4.0 um and we would start that this year at the awards ceremony so the top 10 percent um you know which would be obviously more you know uh about 13 kids 14 kids um versus the we didn't in the old in the in in the minutes we didn't it wasn't established how we would exactly
095do it um we were looking at like the 4.0 and acknowledging that maybe at graduation in terms of in the program uh like you know laude summa laude things like that um but in terms of the actual award ceremony we did agree on the 10 percent but we could take a look back at that just to make sure we're all on the same page yeah i'm sorry i know there's a lot of back and forth it was for some reason i thought it was we looked at it a few times i can look at it again just to double check um it actually in yeah and and believe it or not like the top 10 typically is most of uh those with a 4.0 or higher but yeah i just feel if someone has a
096someone's crashing at a 4.0 and they get zero recognition yeah yeah you're kidding me yeah so you know hopefully hopefully we did agree to something something to that effect but even we could still there's nothing stopping us from okay still acknowledging the 4.0 or higher okay yeah i would agree all right thank you yep all right so we'll just go around if anyone has any comments or updates or announcements we'll start with matt this time anything okay alan jen lori anything dr mackery are you upset okay catherine kelly um i just wanted to say that it was great to see that our kids got to go on field trips so far um i was lucky enough to be able to go to the third grade field trip to um hammond asset to see at meg's
097point and i want to give a shout out to miss barry because she took the initiative and she put the waiters on and went in the water and it was amazing it was a great experience to get to go she was great i saw pictures too it was awesome i honestly it's so awesome to see our kids go and that gives you an indication of we have staff out we were not canceling that trip our administrators jumped right up and got on them and i saw pictures of miss barry and i have an asset with the waiters on and i was extremely jealous because i missed that field trip but whatever it takes to get them out there and doing um the things that they haven't been able to do is what we want to
098happen so thank you for acknowledging that it's it's not always easy because we still do have a lot of staff out all right dipty um yeah i would like to encourage everyone again who's listening to attend the may 11th and the may 26 town meetings to support the proposed middle school good point thank you thanks and i just want to thank all the staff it was teacher and staff appreciation week and also the ptos and everyone that donated parents and i'm sure you all received a lot of food and gifts and everything else that you all deserve so thank you very much and with that will adjourn at 8 32 pm so i heard i don't need a motion so i kind of switched from doing that but correct me if i'm wrong i think