001onset just a little housekeeping measure there are some other board members on the call which is awesome um i just wanna for the dialogue tonight i just want to just make sure that we're starting with the committee members first i'd love to get other people involved if they'd like to speak but just want to make sure that whenever we start talking we're going to start with the committee members first and see how the discussion goes from there so mr walleston superintendent walleston i will i'll hand the football off to you to start thank you thank you thank you mr britton so i will share the screen share the agenda and good evening again everyone so john being the rookie that he is was planning to go home for the meeting for the sights and facilities
002meeting and because he loves it here so much already decided there's no way i'm going to make it home and so him and i both are in our office conducting a meeting tonight um so we have a small agenda but but heavy and so the first item um is review request for elementary middle school expansion and then the second one is a solar panel installation update i've asked john stang our new chief finance officer to join us this evening and then also our director of facilities mr richard jobert who has been busy busy busy these last two months like no other um and uh the solar panel installation update i just want to remind the board and the committee that at our last board meeting you might recall we had a motion to approve the
003solar panel update at our king street intermediate school we ended up pulling the motion because of what we had learned from the state in terms of their requirements for the solar panel installation a couple of days after that meeting there was considerable discussion and dialogue about that the project itself had not been totally shut down we continued to get mixed messages i had asked rich to help pull the the different constituents to the table so we spoke to state representatives we spoke to the city again and then of course johnson's controls as well to make a long story short what we will do is continue to do what we've been asked to do and that is get all the necessary paperwork submitted to the state which includes a motion from the city and the board
004of ed and then hand this over to the state in a way for the state then to make the decision um i think rich and i both have some concerns if this thing is gonna if the actual project is gonna go through uh we had heard and learned uh that the the age of the roofs was to be no more than five four or five years to be considered um and i think he was just updated recently i think in the last couple of hours uh with the true age where our roofs are so we we will see if it's going to be approved um but i i've actually switched to join us to give give us a more thorough comprehensive update so i um my fellow red sox fan i've cleared away for you
005uh good good evening everyone uh yes so our initial review uh the initial phone call i got from the representative from the state department of construction grant the information he gave me that was that we would not be reimbursed for any solar projects unless the roof was less than a year old and he told me that he was going to deny all the projects so at that time it sounded like none of this was gonna get improved so uh since that call i received another phone call from another person in that department and they were much more amenable to uh reviewing the projects and potentially making a commitment for uh i think our reimbursement rate is 63 percent so for a total of a 13 million dollar project we would be getting reimbursed by the
006state uh eight million dollars um and and the change in information was that um we would we would uh be able to get reimbursed provided that there was uh special protection involved in the installation of the solar panels which uh johnson controls has assured us that they would do and the only uh the only uh i'm sorry i'm getting phone calls on my other call so at this point i don't think we have anything to lose really um you know there's there's no money at stake on our side uh from johnson controls i'm gonna i'm gonna work with sean hanley to get the actual ages of of the roofs and submit that to the state there's a few other things they've requested um and the worst they could say is is no but you know
007we stand a chance of getting an 8 million reimbursement um and the not to mention the uh the energy we would save on the solar panels thank you rich uh for the update um i have a question if there any questions yep i have a question rich um who is the second phone call from is it higher up than the first phone call or i mean who did you talk to first the custodian or you know uh no well that that's what's sort of confusing uh it was more confusing i was more or less told that that no doesn't mean no unless i hear that from the director of the department or the assistant director of the department um so the first person i spoke to was knowing that now yeah knowing that now if
008if i ever run into that situation i'm going to call the assistant director and say okay what can we do here to work this out okay okay thank you you're welcome joe i don't know if there are any other questions on that i was yeah i was just flipping through the screen to see if anybody might have their hand up but i didn't see anybody i'm i'm good okay okay and rich do you have anything else on the panels or do you feel like we're good as i had um initially had described with the motion and um and then handing this over to the state uh for the review because right now they don't have the entire packet to review yeah i would i would recommend going forward with it um one one of the
009uh items that the state was looking for was a project development agreement and the project construction agreement a few of these items we wouldn't actually really have until after the state committed to the the project so um i'm going to communicate with them to to ensure them and it and i believe it protects us and the city of danbury that there's no financial commitment on our part until we get some kind of commitment from the state i i have one other question where is antonio on on where we are with this where is he in the loop um i've been keeping antonio in the in the loop um and i actually uh had a meeting with johnson controls yesterday regarding this and to to keep the project as clean as possible what we would discuss
010was on on the board of ed side regarding the reimbursement for to have one contact per person or one point person um so i would be the point person for for that and then sean hanley of public buildings would be the operational uh point person once the project gets approved rich yes so excuse my ignorance but 13 million the state will give us eight which cost us five which budget does that that five million dollars come out in our in our initial ad hoc the ad hoc meeting for at the city of danbury i believe the city of danbury finance department is is leasing the money towards the project so that it doesn't actually come out of the board of vet budget okay so it'll be coming out of capital improvement or a bond yes
011okay thank you from the city mr russo um we're actually submitting the grant really on behalf of the city um because we occupy the schools but the city owns the schools so we're really submitting the grant on their behalf understood listen thank you i'm good anybody else all right kevin if you have anything else on the solar panels i think we could move on great thank you so much okay so we will make sure that i think everyone should expect to see that motion in the friday packet for the next board meeting next week and i will provide any additional information that i can um in just an event any of the board members have any questions so the the next item is review requests for elementary and middle school expansion i know it's been
012a while since we have talked about numbers in the district i'm sorry we've talked about enrollment numbers in the district but i i thought i'd take the opportunity to just kind of review our data and our enrollment over the last number of years and then speak to some of the projections from the demographers and see um if the board had an appetite to move further and um investigate further so just give me one second let's see if i can find this page here i think this might be a little helpful for everyone to just tell the story so the demographer they they do their own study um here are the hard numbers october 1 numbers that we submit to the state i'm sorry can you see this my document is saying that your screen sharing
013is paused yeah we're looking at the agenda okay now it's gone is this working there you go okay great and so what what you are looking at is um public information public enrolled school enrollment by district and this is a trend data report which will share which will show to you our data our enrollment by every school throughout the district over the last six years and of course we will have an update on the 2122 data for you next week and the you might recall the school year which is when we had the bump in enrollment and that is this number here of course we kind of froze if you will uh during the pandemic second half the pandemic in the pandemic here getting down to 11 8 but i thought it was important to
014show the board in the community on the numbers over the last six years and the growth that we've experienced um in the last six years so you'll see the closer and hovering around 11 000 and we've continued to get closer and closer to 12 000 um in the last two to three years and the projections across the district at least the high projections um across the district they are seeing us and there were two there was a study done and there was an updated study done where we actually flatlined a little bit because they did that last study during the pandemic so give me one second during the pandemic and so the the um the demographers they did a low medium and high projection for us and so i'm just going to read from the
015medium projection uh that they had for us and so we will see here we have a 834 and so that's the number that's actually in our projection they projected twelve thousand one hundred and thirty six and twenty one twenty two school year um of course this was pre-pandemic and so not being aware of those interruptions um twelve thousand three hundred and twenty-five i mean 22-23 and then 23-24 growing up to 12 385. so they are continuing they're they're projecting that this is with the median projections they're continuing to assume that we will experience growth to 4 to 500 over the next couple of years we do have we are anticipating a really large 9th grade group next year because we have i believe it's i'm sorry i have the number right here so you can
016see it in broad view between broadview rogers and westside academy the numbers we have looked at we have almost a thousand kids going into the ninth grade which would be one of the highest numbers that we've had and so that's when we're really going to begin to experience the bump at nor at normal high school so we're really going to start to see this number continue to trend up because our middle schools have been maximized and you'll see the 989 but this is mostly because of this bump through the 1920 school year and you'll see that number has increased again at broadview and then the same thing at rogers park and so those are the numbers that we're concerned about we learned that we had a number of students and i'll be able to share
017this data with you on wednesday a number of students leave us in june and then we had a number of students come across our counter over the summer and they're still coming and you know our our reporting date is october 1st uh we have another 200 students in the queue um that you know unfortunately for enrollment purposes official enrollment numbers will be after october 1st but we have 200 more students and families who are registered in the system that will that will be processed after october first and part of what we're learning is um and we're looking to partner with the city and the state where appropriate we have a lot of families who are trying to get their vaccinations um they can't afford vaccinations um to actually get access to our schools uh we're
018learning that the vaccinations themselves are very costly at urgent care um to get a physical we're learning that um our our um places where our families would get these physicals are backed up from other appointments and so we're trying to work with the city and outside agencies to see if we can have someone come in to help relieve some of this log jam so that we can get our kids and our families serviced but we're learning that has been a frustration in the system and part of the hold up for some of our registrations in the system but i i and i will share this link so everyone can have it and we can share it for the board meeting as well but this is these are the numbers actually that we reported last year
019the 11834 number uh this number will be obviously updated for 2122 experiencing you know significant growth leaving the middle school going to the high school over the counter this summer we've had a lot of kids coming in at the high school um you know and that that growth also continues and hopefully we will be out of the school in the nick of time and that building is built at the matrix to help relieve some of the pressure for danbury high school so we will have this data available on this screen i'll share this link but we'll have this screen shared for wednesday um in addition to the 2122 updated enrollment numbers um and then also broken down by kindergarten first grade second grade third grade all the way up to pre-k-12 so on the board
020in the community you can see that see that data as well but i just wanted to give an update just so everyone can kind of see where we are uh we are projecting right now at around 11 7 11 6 for our 2021 numbers as of october 1st uh but like i said we're expecting an additional 200. uh we already have 200 additional families in the queue waiting to be processed so they won't make the october first number but it will be here so joe i'm i'm not sure i'm i'm assuming there was some discussion just on the numbers alone um but i i just wanted to make sure i presented the information and uh see how the committee would like to move forward if at all yeah i'm gonna open it up if anybody
021wants to um start us off kevin in terms i mean enrollment is what enrollment is it's been going up every year it's showing no signs of abating it's picking right up where it left off pre-pandemic um the agenda is you know look at elementary slash middle school expansion am i correct in understanding middle school is the more immediate concern um well yes based on numbers and and i think joe i think it makes sense given we have a high school slash middle school being built uh to help offset some of these numbers and i i don't think it's any surprise that we're experiencing you know the growth and you know some of the concerns we have at the building um but i i'm hoping just kind of given the projections and the growth uh that
022we have enough space even with the 300 that's going to the matrix right now and i believe our last submission was going to be and i think cara is still on the call it would be um 900 i'm sorry 1 000 high school and then 300 middle school or some number like that does that sound right carol yeah it's about uh three and a half ish or so i'd have to go back and look at the exact number but it's a total of 1400. that's my recollection was like 350 or 360 years about it would only pull about 40 kids out of a grade level at each school of the middle schools right in light of the career academy in process and the middle school space that's coming with that should we be concentrating on
023elementary or middle school first so i and i'm sure kelly is chipping at the bit here um we we have uh which you know and we have this number here that's also reflected and kelly continues to remind us and anyone who will listen quite frankly that her numbers are continuing to grow and we have i believe i think it's 18 to new students pre-k students who are in the queue to be registered and so kelly already you know we have the i believe it's 10 classes at the grandville site we have a couple of more classes spread around the district um and we're going to continue to experience growth in this area as well on the board may or may not recall and job this i'm answering you this long way so please forgive me
024um the board may or may not recall as part of may abouten's bond effort there were a number of things on the table at that time one of them it was the high school growth and address the middle school growth and you know we addressed certainly the high school and um and and certainly chipping away at the middle school growth um the elementary school growth was something that was also discussed um in trying to plan for pre-k and pre-k programming and when serving the schools in a district uh the city landed and the architects landed on great plain as a potential site uh where they we would add on to that site and that could potentially serve as a pre-k kindergarten kind of center or we would move more more classrooms to that to that
025area and if i'm not mistaken we it was a number of classrooms which would be an opportunity for us to avoid some you know the various leases we have across the city um that one did not get moved forward as part of this initial bond um but the um the career academy and and the and the ellsworth's annex work did get moved forward but we you know when we put the shovel in the ground for granville uh we knew we were two or three classes short already um and that's and that's when we started that project so the the great plain kind of center and the exact academic focus is was really i don't think we had really solidified that plan but the thought was that would be at the very least a pre-k center
026so we can pull out our pre-k classrooms uh from maybe pembroke or hayestown uh great plain already has some so that was part of that discussion at that time um but again because it wasn't part of the bond we had kind of abandoned abandoned that conversation right so it sounds to me like i'm hearing we we need to seriously look at elementary soon like now i i believe so and and you know depending on the appetite of the board um you know we certainly given the pandemic which has frozen some enrollment or unleashed some enrollment in kind of different pockets although we certainly got a heavy enrollment push um in late august and i believe as i was um communicating with the board over the summer we really had not experienced much growth and then
027all of a sudden there was an explosion in late august like we didn't even handle it with so many families coming in across across our desk for registration um so but joe that that's my long way of saying given the plan the initial planning around the elementary before i think that is something we might want to revisit um and then i i think we also need to impr probably more appropriate to have some professional help here re-examine the idea to make sure our plans for the 300 plus kids at the middle school is really addressing our needs if it is addressing our needs that's great uh but if it's not i think this is the time to to re-examine and revisit that study in turn i'm gonna ask a question we may not know the
028answer and and that's okay because it's just something that i'm curious about in elementary school obviously you need a lot of room for high school a lot of room but not as much for middle school and you need a lot of room for an elementary school just in in various great gradations going up i i know the zoning minimum i think is at least an acre for any school i think in residential zones it's two acres i think a multi-family zone since one do we know if the city has any concepts or ideas on property that might be available either to rehab or to build a an elementary school i'm thinking of that first just because that obviously requires the least amount of land and the least amount of parking comparatively so we're not making
029any more land so it's hard to find but um do we have any ideas or no so i can i i haven't heard anything uh new joe i can tell you um in in the board um i see cara smirking so she might also remember um but we were at the table um with glenn with antonio um some members of the sites and facilities committee as well like i recall and there were a number of options we were looking at none of them included new land it was looking at our school sites to see what school sites had the potential to add more to that site and you might recall there was one school that was mentioned as maybe a middle school site there was another site that would be considered for to add on
030elementary space and and we landed on the space that made the most sense for elementary growth from a pre-k and possibly k perspective would be great playing and even that came with some challenges but i i think that's where the demographic i'm sorry not the democracy the architects and antonio landed um but again that didn't make the cut in terms of the bond proposed submission right career academy which of course we're all happy and grateful for um and the and ellsworth annex certainly did and i'm excited to talk to john about our girl at the ellsworth annex and share the back story on that initial school brand new school being built that didn't meet the needs of our downtown growth kevin i just i have a question just thinking about something that could help kind
031of better paint the picture of kind of the dire situation for for the enrollment um numbers is there's a difference between max capacity and like ideal capacity for these buildings and i think you know they're clearly not at over max capacity because they wouldn't be able to open but they're way over i ideal is there any way to maybe and i'm not asking you to produce this now because but if you could come back with it and forward it to us maybe what the ideal capacity would be at the current buildings right now just to kind of better allow us to to gauge what it is we need to look at in terms of new buildings what the difference is between ideal and what is existing absolutely joe and i i antonio and our architect
032who work with this initial project because i think after so many years of us being in like we've been accepting that the enrollment is just going to increase and increase so i think after so many years it kind of becomes the norm that we are accepting that we have these many kids in these schools when it's really not okay anything over i think ideal capacity for anything education related is a hindrance on education so i think it'd be good to kind of see just where we're at right now relative to what the ideal um conditions would be for those schools would be really nice to see and i think paint a clearer picture first i would think the fire department would have that for you for us right yeah i i can also speak to
033terry him and i were talking about um talking about this recently anyway um thank you kathy for bringing that up um and also joe i think when they make this assessment you know some of those larger spaces in the building um some of those spaces including but not limited to you know our pe space um our cafeteria our auditorium right and so if they have the capacity to handle so many kids in a in the school day that give us a really good indication of you know what kind of capacity we're talking about um but i i i'll rely on the experts uh for the feedback for this one evan thank you sir just if you could clarify for me are we presently being held hostage by either the state or the democrats numbers uh
034but we cannot bring this closer to a level buoyant number as far as our expansion are we expanding to the limit that the state will help us finance right now yeah thank you if i understand your question correctly it's um antonio who's been an amazing partner in this work with us um reminds me reminds me reminds me and he can't stress enough um kevin you guys can explore all you want but the state is going to have a formula and i know joe knows as well the state is going to have a formula for um for reimbursement and so unless the board in the city has an appetite for paying for any new expansion without any reimbursement we're going to have to meet the threshold for the demographer's um kind of submission and so a
035a study if i'm understanding your question correctly to we would never okay the demographers would need to come in do a study make recommendations we would have a building committee we would make a request for something and then the state will let us know if we met that threshold i don't know if we would meet that threshold or not but i think it's something worth considering and i think that's what's bringing us here this evening but we would definitely need to meet that threshold to even consider it because i don't think there's any appetite to to to finance the project 100 i think that would be a very logical statement thank you for that question and clarifying clarification because i'm sure there are others out there that were wondering as well kevin if i could
036build because that's a great question that i'll just ask question and maybe this is something we need to talk to the demographers about before they start can we maybe we need to figure out what our increasing trend is how much we've been blowing through our demographic estimates year or over year after we're exceeding the estimate by two percent three percent five percent one half a percent whatever that is because maybe it's in i love the way al just phrased that we're being held hostage to the demographers in the state maybe it's time to go to the state and ask for a different formula to ask them to take into consideration the fact that we're growing at a rate exceeding the demographers abilities to project and exceeding the the uh operational limits of their formula um
037but i think we need to know from the demographers how we're growing in order to make that argument or at least can make it convincing it makes sense no absolutely absolutely and a question i recall hearing um i don't know if it was i i believe this summer and it was clarification how we were doing with our growth in kindergarten um and we you know we we are we are we lost students in other grades uh but we are at 900 plus in kindergarten and so we did see the growth that we were anticipating in kindergarten um and so that that number is now in the district uh we experienced a little growth in first grade we were wondering for the parents who kept their kindergarten students um children at home last year we were
038wondering where they were going to land um a lot of them did decide just based on the numbers a lot of them did decide to put their kids in the first grade but we definitely got our growth in kindergarten we were you know over 900 um in that grade and so you know we we've kind of reset and kind of have a new high number again um we were initially as part of the demographers media projection for 2122 at 8 39 and we're a little over 900. now in our other grades we went down um and this is pandemic related this study was done pretty pandemic but we did outperform kindergarten you know just because thank you just curious kevin do you know how when we uh get these studies done how long they take
039to to finish i mean if you don't know the answer you don't know the answer i was just curious yeah so the i i feel like the last one the update joe that we had done um rebecca turned around really fast but i think that's because she had already had completed a really comprehensive study the year prior um i don't remember when the request was initiated like i'm looking at one that's dated february 2020 and then the update was provided april 2021 um and i feel like we reached out to rebecca um kind of in january and she provided that update um that i i don't know how long it's gonna take them but i can find out i definitely can find out for us no worries thanks kev if if the committee feels i
040don't know if there are more questions on this but if the committee feels um like they would like me to pursue an additional study uh for our information i am happy to reach out to them um interestingly enough i had called a couple of weeks ago just to touch base with rebecca who was our point person um she's no longer working with the company uh you know just to make things more difficult because this transition i feel like everywhere so and then i said well can i speak to another person um who was working with rebecca on the project that person is gone uh so the company is still there but the company has changed names um and uh we will find someone but the the group was called malone and mcbroom i forget the
041name of the new company now um same number uh so they but they do have evidence of our report and i don't think it will take them long to wrap their kevin excuse me how much are we looking at as far as it costs for a new study i'm just trying to justify the need in my own mind for how much we're going to put out right right and i will look it up mr russo i believe this study was about 30 40 000 last last time um and but i i will confirm okay thank you now i i don't want to speak on behalf of the entire committee but i i think that the intent of tonight was kind of just to open the discussion on how we want to move forward and i
042and i think you know the the the logical move here is to get a little bit more informa another another study done to kind of see where where we're at but i really think joe joe uh made a very good point that if it's possible to talk to whatever company we use and tell them the history of us blowing over the projections and kind of lay that foundation first i think would be ultra important because at the end of the day i think every nobody wants to spend out of pocket to build a new school so the reimbursement is what's going to drive kind of the decisions we make so if we can absolutely if we can get uh a very favorable um you know demographic report uh that would be right yeah and and
043i can see if ryan um who is our point person to see if he can work with the legislators to see if there's anything they can do on their side to advocate for us to get this formula changed for our um specific situation as well you know i i don't know if it's a reasonable request but i don't think it hurts in asking um to see if they can advocate for us in some way this this will be the first time we've outperformed they're just they've i've underperformed under numbered us for a while now several and it just yeah why right yeah yeah if in a new demographic study i think is going to show what we all know it's going to show that we keep getting bigger and in a way that doesn't seem
044to match i understand the state's got to have a policy they got to have a formula but i i don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to show some flexibility in the formula where we keep exceeding what you know those numbers show you know it makes no sense to continue to build buildings that are too small when we open them so i'm thinking about uh mr russo's question about the cost of the study and if the committee is okay with this um i would like to ask antonio um if he would be willing to join us for a meeting to talk through the study from his perspective which certainly certainly will not cost us 30 000 maybe a cup of coffee from my office um and and see if i can bring you [Laughter] then
045i'm definitely coming yeah that's right and see if it'll speak um speak to these numbers and speak to our initial planning um and maybe just kind of better inform this conversation before we make the investment and study if you guys if you're okay with that sure works for me it works for me because we we are sitting on two studies done one year apart i mean we wouldn't have needed them yes i know it's different because of the pandemic so the pandemic is kind of challenging the the study itself but we do have some data to look at and i just think uh kind of a refresh from antonio might be helpful for us because it's been a while since we've sat down and looked at all of the plans and et cetera so joe
046if you would be okay with that i'll be happy to reach out to him yeah i think that would be best i'll i'll what does everybody else think we cool with that absolutely so then i don't think we actually need to make a motion on that so i think i think we're good on that end right joe what do you think is that we're fine i think we're fine it's it's we're setting up another meeting it's not like yeah you're not taking an action yeah i'm putting it and i'm putting it in the minute so and when we talk to you obviously it's going to be good to see what the new numbers eventually look like because one of the challenges we have and this is a conversation i think we should have with antonio
047we can only build to the eight year high estimate that's the formula we want to change but the interesting thing is that's what you can build new it doesn't factor in this goes back to joe's question before what the optimal occupancy is you know broad views almost a thousand students we can only build a new middle school that would accommodate x number of kids that doesn't take into the fact the account of we should get some kids out of broadview or or doesn't necessarily consider the number of kids we need to take out versus the number of kids we're also going to be expanding because it's going to be growing um so i think that's where we're going to hopefully at some point we can meld that optimal number with the formula the demographer in
048antonio and talk to the state about trying to fiddle with the number a little bit ideal number i think it is an idealistic goal sure we could try it's ideal ideals we're not getting an idea definitely definitely not maybe maybe i'll settle for better item number two and i will i i will i will definitely follow up with terry i think um kathy had make that recommendation to see with the the fire department so i will reach out to terry as well and see if he can get us some help on this because i think that you know we have a class size kind of class size limit but we don't have necessarily a building limit and i i think that number would be interesting it might also help to inform our inform our conversation
049as well i will make sure we have that for the next meeting all right well it sounds like we put in a nice agenda together for the next meeting yeah definitely now timeline kevin what do you think in timeline for that we don't have to pick a date right now but you think in two weeks or three weeks i'm give him a month or whatever i'm i'm comfortable with any way the committee would like to proceed um i don't given these questions two or three weeks works for me because i can i mean all of them that i'm looking at i'm not gonna need more time than that i don't think okay okay okay and i can i can have cara pompano reach back out to you and try to set up some dates with
050you in the committee works for me okay and let her know we don't have to wait a month to come back great all right um anybody else any last-minute comments nothing all right well um i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved a motion made by joe is there a second someone seconded i'll second it all right all those in favor second all right we're done good everybody thank you have a good night everyone kevin thank you all right thank you