BOE Regular Meeting - May 27, 2025

001going to try to be productive on the on the administrative stuff. Yeah, don't worry. You're good. You're good. Just skip to the chair present. All right, we are live. Good evening. Tonight is May 27th. This is a regular board of education meeting. Um I'd like to make a call to order for the meeting. And tonight, uh Mr. Cameman will be here shortly, but we're going to skip the chair report for now and go straight to public comment. Good evening. If anyone in person or online would like to participate in public comment, please come up to the podium or use the raised hand icon and wait to be recognized. Once recognized, please state your name and address for the record and note that you will have up to three minutes to comment. Please note your the

002time with the chair. We do not have any raised hands at this time. I'm fine. Thank you. Thank you for getting us started. That's totally fine. Um, superintendent report. Just go ahead. Thank you. Good evening everybody. Uh, thank you for being here. Um, I want to thank the members of the community that uh attended uh last week's uh stop hate together event uh hosted by the town. Uh please know that your presence was very much appreciated in your partnership matter and make a difference. So thank you. Uh just want to recognize our our students over here particularly Brena who um received quite a few accolades on the senior scholarship and award ceremony. Um, it was wonderful to see the very best of our our our school district uh on display and also a huge thank

003you to the generosity of our town organizations uh for the many thousands of dollars um that they gave out in scholarships. It's just a wonderful tribute uh to Darian public schools and the excellence that they uh that we are known for. So, thank you and uh well done Brena and congratulations to you. I know you're interested on your way, so I'll let you talk to those. Uh good luck to our uh DHS unified team. I think they are playing a spring tournament uh tomorrow at Farfield Lello High School. All the field days and recognition ceremonies are underway, field days especially. Uh thank you to members of our CDSP, PTO's, uh musical organizations, musical parent organizations, everything that has been going on and continues to go on. Uh it's just wonderful to um it's just uh

004just to see the excellence on display, our kids so engaged and our staff and our parent community. So thank you for that. The arts just show the art show at the middle school is going on tour to the Derry and Nature Center. So it will be there most of the summer. So if you get a chance to swing by there, you can see that ESY schedules have been sent out. The transportation actually if you have any transportation questions, we have many people here can answer them tonight. uh transportation updates will be communicated uh this year I believe by the the drivers with personal contact uh with phone calls home. So look forward to that. Uh registration for the summer school enrichment programs is is presently open. Uh the summer school and extended year programs uh

005will commence on June 30th and run to July 25th. Then we have a couple of weeks of bridge programming. Uh just upcoming meetings. Um the facilities committee on Friday the 30th. Uh the administration has suggested that recommended that we defer that and certainly the board can comment on it. But the Oxbridgeidge uh curb cut the the food waste recommendation uh the uh food waste recycling program and the transportation transportation is here this evening. There was an executive session discussion prior on the Oxbridgeidge curbcut and the food waste uh program is underway. Uh processes are taking place but there's just not enough to bring to the table. Uh July 26 is when we need to be doing something by uh the facilities and Amy are are working on uh me with members of the community and

006also some of our vendors. So when that's ready they can they can bring it forward. But um it would be the recommendation that we reconvene again uh in the in the fall. But that's up for for the board meeting the subcommittee to make that decision. Uh the the meetings are as have been communicated. Kirkham committee meeting on June 4th, next regular meeting June 10th and the finance public committee meeting on June 19th. Great. Uh, approval of the no, sorry, student representative reports. Brena and Ryan. Good evening everyone. Um, our seniors are officially into our second week of our internships. I hope that everyone's going swimmingly and and um hopefully not missing classes too much. Um, as well as coming right out of AP exam season, we hope everything is going smoothly. um for all of

007our I guess freshman uh sophomores, juniors, and seniors who just recently went through those um ruling exams. The theater 308 just had our I think largest student productions yet to date. I think we had 11 shows um all some of which were written um but all of which were directed and produced by the students. So, hats off to everyone. um some great moments and performances there and um we continue to be moving through the last few days of of our of our calendar. Yeah, just building off what Brena said, many of our students begin their finals next Friday, which is insane to say. Uh our junior prom is uh next Saturday, May 31st. So, hoping to see a lot of people there. Uh and tonight, our girls and boys lacrosse teams both have their FCA

008matches along with our boys baseball, girls softball, and girls golf. So, hoping for some great things from them as always, but not too worried. We got some great teams up there. Thank you guys. Fun to hear. Uh, approval of the minutes. May I have a motion to approve the following minutes of the special and regular meetings held on May 13, 2025. That's Robin, seconded by Dennis. All those in favor? Um, that's unanimous. And we have So, just there's one just one quick John was here for a vote that I didn't record. So, Okay. Okay. As as amended. As amended. Thank you. Thank you. I approve. Thank you, Dave. Okay. Uh board committee reports. John, trying to figure out which date we met. Um about uh May 15th, the board of uh the finance committee met.

009Uh we discussed the surplus non-lapsing account. Um the consensus was for the superintendent to come with some recommendations from his uh him and his cabinet and we'll talk about that later. Okay. Nope. With that, we'll move on to presentations, discussions, and possible action. We'll start with an update on transportation. So just to start with the brief overview um we've had a relationship with First Student who is the district's home to school provider for over 25 years. Uh we do have 25 homeschool buses. Um previously we did use a mixture of first student and some out of district um vendors for in-house special education transportation. This year, as you know, as part of the budget process, um we did bring that all in house and we operate a fleet of 15 vehicles for both in and

010out of district. Um we typically talk about the tiers. We do have a three- tier system, the high school, the middle school, and then early and late elementary. And then just as a reminder, we have our transportation policy which guides um who receives transportation. Uh so we have our director of transportation here, Miss Danny Powers. Um a lot of people probably know her but might not ever get to see her. Uh she does do a great job and this is uh just a list of her team. She has 15 drivers who do a fantastic job as well as uh Mr. Terry Fogle who is uh the assistant. I was her assistant principal just for the record. Um for transportation we have talked a lot about costs for transportation. Uh you can see the home to

011school transportation which are those 25 buses uh will grow by about a million dollars over the next four years. And that's really driven by the driver shortage throughout the state, increases in wages uh paid to drivers and benefit costs to drivers as well. Um and then you can see the uh in-house versus the contracted costs for special education transportation. So next year we will uh with this model save about 1.1 million. Um we have the district and the town has um committed about $1.18 million in uh vehicle acquisition costs whether it be the Suburbans, the Sprinter vans or the type twos or the wheelchair vans. And so that uh the town including from fiscal 25 through 26 will see their uh investment returned in full by the end of next school year. Um so it's

012a two-year um payback which is a little bit ahead of schedule and that's largely due to um some of our drivers didn't receive benefits. We did end up getting three sprinter vans as opposed to five type two vans uh when that initial calculation was done. So the payback is about a two-year payback. Oops. Uh we did want to just highlight that um all our drivers do get training. Um there we go. Uh all our drivers have to have an endorsement whether it's an S, a P, or a V. They all get captain training, supervised training, and then a slew of other training whether it's mandate mandated reporting. um they get some special education training, emergency evacuation, student uh management, bullying and other items like that. Um if we look at writership, uh we have a

013population of 4,600 people. 4,600 students about 3,300 are eligible and that's based on the board of ed policy with the walk radius and typically about 61% of that 3,300 actually take the bus on any given day. So we are transporting about 2,000 students um every single day. Wrership ranges from a low of 183 at Royal to a high at Middle Sex at 527. We do typically see as most districts that uh middle school does tend to see the greatest volume. They're obviously the kids who can't drive yet. They're also the kids who probably tend not to want to be driven by their parents like an elementary school. So you do tend to see higher ridership at a middle school compared to an elementary or a high school. Um home to school. Uh so starting next

014year, the district is starting their transition to propane um buses. So the Connecticut Clean Air Act does require that school districts either transition to propane or electric buses um by 2030. And so we are implementing a phase in of five buses a year for the next five years in order to uh get to that. Um we went with propane for a couple reasons. One uh the bus depot in Stanford does not have the infrastructure for electric buses. Electric buses are also more costly. Um, and so propane buses are uh are used in a couple districts in this area, including New Kanan um and Norwalk. And the fuel cost for propane is less expensive um than electricity. Um we do typically try to publish routes um about a week before school starts. It does take a

015while to get all the routes uh together. Um, as you can see, we typically try to keep uh the students on the bus for an average of about uh 30 minutes per bus. Um, we have a certain amount of time in between tiers, which also determines how many kids we can actually have on a bus. Uh, there's 45 minutes for the middle school and the high school and about 35 minutes at each elementary school. So, a lot of times we're we're asked if uh you know, a parent might see a bus go by and say, "Well, you know, the bus can hold 70 kids. I only usually see maybe 30 or 40 kids on the bus. could you collapse a bus? Um, and the reason we can't really uh do that is the time it

016takes in between the tiers to get the students to school. Um, so if we were to collapse a bus at each school, all the buses would run late essentially. Um, you have to think about how long it takes the kid to get on the bus, especially at the lower grades. At the elementary grades, you know, it's not a very quick process. It takes a while for the kid to get on the bus. They like to say hi to their friends and they got to sit. Um, so it does take a while. And you can see the number of buses that we have here. Um Oxbridgeidge obviously being the largest elementary school has the most buses at 12 for the elementaryaries. Um Royal and homes are down at seven. And then again the middle school has

017the most buses at 16. And again that is a product of wrership. Um just as a refresher uh we did bring in school uh bus logistics a few years ago to look at the walk radius. That was a study that's done and we've used an external router Lance Oscar to review the efficiency of our routes just to make sure that we're operating as efficiently as possible. Um there's been discussion about train tracks. This is obviously a commuter town and so there are a number of train tracks in the area. We do cross four areas uh throughout town. Hoy street, Cam Street, Talmage, uh Hill Road and Glenn Brook Road. Um the district um through the superintendent has requested the first selectman through Westcog to start looking at a study to see if there's any ways

018that can be improved uh safety improvements in the areas. All drivers are trained on proper railroad safety crossings to ensure um that they're doing their procedures correctly. community responsiveness. Just as a reminder for the community, uh the chain of communication starts with Miss Powers. Um and then it would move up to myself and the superintendent. Um we have tried to uh be as responsive as we can considering some of the conditions are in place. A few years ago, uh the board did add bus 25, which helps support some of those high school walk radius uh students in that Fitch Avenue area. Um we do always try to make sure that students are not crossing main roads. Sometimes we will get uh emails from parents where they think their students crossing the road, but sometimes you

019have buses going in an opposite direction and it's an instance where a student might be getting on the wrong bus, but we never really want a student to cross a main road. And then if we can, and it's optional, we can we will try to adjust drop off and pick up spots when feasible as long as it doesn't disturb the whole route. Um I know we've talked a lot about a bus depot. This is actually a picture of the bus depot in Stanford that first student rents. Um, a bus depot would need room for about 30 full-size buses. While we have 25, we do have spare buses. So, if the bus breaks down, you do have to have a spare bus. You need parking for the bus drivers. You need parking for mechanics. You need

020parking for location manager, dispatch, safety manager. Uh, the site at uh in Stanford is about a twoacre site. So, you would probably need between a one and a half and a twoacre uh site to make a bus depot. Um, we talked about this a little bit, but having a bus depot is not something that could be done during the budget season. Um, if we were to just magically get a bus depot tomorrow for students not going to just take their buses and move them to a new depot and then credit us an amount. They have a lease uh for this facility uh that they are paying on. And so effectively, you would have to break the contract with first student. You would have to go out to bid. You would have to get a new

021bus company. And that bus company would have to get buses. They'd have to get drivers. They'd have to get a location manager. um the whole slew of staff that goes along with running a bus company and that obviously takes time. So that's not something that could happen in a period of a couple months. It's really it would take a while between actually acquiring a site and staffing up a site. Um if the town wanted to look at a bus depot, the best option would be to try to time that with an expiration of a contract as opposed to breaking the contract here. uh special education transportation. As I mentioned earlier, we did transition to an in-house fleet of buses. Uh we have eight suburbans that support both in district and out of district. We have

022two type two buses, two wheelchair vans, and three sprinter vans. As I mentioned before, um we have 15 drivers, nine monitors, and we support about 128 students. And as shown earlier, it saved in excess of a million dollars. These are just pictures of what our vehicles look like. You can see the Sprinter vans and the Suburbans, uh the wheelchair vans and the type two buses. ESY Dr. Adley mentioned before. Um it does take about three or four weeks to get the routing down. Um we do transport about 120 students in district along with um about 20 or so out of district students. We do have uh 10 vehicles servicing uh in district students and we have 12 out of district locations as well. uh magnet schools. We have about 15 students attend magnet schools whether

023it's the center for global studies, Rogers international or uh the academy of information technology and engineering. Uh the district does not currently provide transportation for magnet school students. Athletic transportation, we do have Mr. Manfredonia on Zoom as well. Um you can see in the chart below uh we do try to operate as efficiently as possible but again uh athletic transportation just like home to school transportation is a growing uh financial cost due to the cost of drivers and driver shortages. We do spend the lowest amount per student. Uh but you can see everybody's kind of in that same ballpark of 190 to 220. Uh the biggest challenges we have is first student only provides three uh buses in the afternoons. Uh and you could have as many as 13 athletic competitions happening at once. Uh

024it's not viable for first students to increase that number from three or more. Uh when we had contract negotiations, we were trying to push them as high as we can go. Anything above three, they were willing to just walk away from the district entirely. Um the problem is that school gets out at 2:30, they need those drivers also to pick up the middle school kids, the elementary kids. Uh having a driver just kind of on standby to do a route for athletics is not really cost-effective for them. And so when we can't get a first student bus, we do try to do u we do get charter buses or coach buses. Um ways we've created efficiencies, we do use the home school buses for in town facility drop offs, whether it's the Y, Weed Beach,

025or Cherry Lawn. Uh we have combined teams on buses when traveling to the same towns if that's an option. So smaller teams like baseball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, things like that. And then on occasions, you do have parents who drive their uh students to smaller trips as well. Okay. Thank you, Rich. I appreciate that. Yes. Could I just ask just just a we quick comment on we restructured a little bit some of the you know the organization how that sort of I hadn't asked before. I just wanted to make just just for the board's perspective because we did a we bit of restructuring for for productivity and responsiveness and so on. Sure. Um so it starts with uh Danny. She's the director of transportation. Uh she has Terry who's um her assistant and Terry focuses primarily

026on the in district um and out of district specialized transportation. Um and so they're really a team that kind of uh goes back and forth. Danny handles the the predominant amount of uh any issues we have or concerns from parents about uh home to school transportation but also with special education transportation. Um and then they're also in charge of 15 drivers. And so as we said during the budget season it is running like a mini bus company. Um we're running 15 buses every day. Um it's about 212 days including ESY. Um so the idea is the first point of contact for um the community would be Danny or Terry. Um and then obviously depending on uh the outcome it could always get escalated to myself or Dr. Okay. I think because this is such a

027broad-based topic maybe we can sort of take it set of questions by set of questions. So maybe staying on this question of the restructure. Um, does anybody want any more information about um community responsiveness, how the how the restructure works, financial side of it, anything on the restructure? Go ahead. Um, I think this would go under community responsiveness. Uh, so not to be too strict. I So this year I believe it was uh an opt out or everybody like last year um was what is it? So, so previously, so starting in COVID, we did have to we instituted an optin uh policy and that was largely because we had to know who was on the buses. So, we actually had to track who was sitting on the buses around where they were sitting on the

028buses. Last uh this well this school year we eliminated the opt-in opt out. The reason we eliminated the opt-in opt out is most parents just didn't actually remember to opt in. And so what would end up happening is a couple days before school, we would get frantic phone calls, emails, uh from parents saying, "I didn't opt in my kid. I need transportation." And you literally couldn't get back to the people in time because your email box inbox would be full. Uh you couldn't uh get them back in time. It created a lot of angst and concern in the community. Um it wasn't done for like efficiencies or cost savings. And in the time in which we did it from uh COVID until we eliminated it, it didn't result in any elimination of buses. Um it

029didn't eliminate any reduction in cost. It really simply started as a process of having to know who was on the buses. Um and because of the the issues with parents uh not being able to, you know, give their information or forgetting to give their information, the concern amongst a lot of parents who called was, "Oh my god, my kids's not going to be able to get to school now. I have to work. How am I going to get my kid to school?" Um Danny was working probably till midnight or 1:00 in the morning trying to get back to parents. And typically what would happen is her email box would be so full by the time she got back they've already sent two more emails saying I haven't heard back from you. Um and so just

030operationally it would work it worked better without having to have it and there was no cost difference between other questions related to this area. Okay one financials. So Rich, if you look at that uh slide with transportation costs over the three years, you know, there's a significant increase. It's like 10% a year. Talk a little bit about the dilemma we sit in uh given that we don't own a bus a property for a bus fee. So in the area there's probably about four primary vendors for for transportation. There's for student uh there's SDA which is in Wilton. Um there's Durham and Norwok and there's Allstar Transportation which is a little further up. Um so every year the districts put it out to bid. There is no interest in actually submitting a bid other than for

031students. So DACO is another one I didn't mention but they're new Kanan. DACO has explicitly told us they're not going to bid because they don't have anywhere to park their buses. Um uh STA has said the same thing. We don't have anywhere to park your buses. We're not really interested in bidding. And so what ends up happening is you you submit an RFP and you have one bidder. um we are obligated to provide transportation. So you have a marketplace of one and nowhere else to kind of go to. Um one of the reasons the special education uh transportation model works so well is we created our own market um so that we could essentially out bid um for student or outbid some of these smaller companies that did some of the outited districts. We don't

032really have that as an option um of home to school transportation. So you're kind of stuck getting who you get and per student does a very good job but it also doesn't create an incentive for them to sharpen their pencils and you know when like New Kenan goes out to bid they had Datco they had first student they had SDA same thing with Westport and so we just don't have that option available to us and just one followup given the var I mean there's a lot of variables going into this question so it might not be unanswerable but if it was a competitive bidding process could you estimate the difference that we'd see in this transportation cost forecast versus um I mean obviously it would depend on the wages for everybody else. We did ask

033when we put out to bid how much for a student was paying for their lease in Stanford and it was a half million dollars. Um so yeah so one would assume that you're going to get something in that ballpark um if you were able to park the buses. Now that's not free either you're going to have to find a space in town and rent it out and you're going to have to factor in whatever that rent would be. the town would have to buy a piece of property and um you know reszone it and maybe do some investment into the property. So it's not a you know a free and clear half million dollars, but it's about a half million dollars a year that they're paying to have those bays there and the ability to

034park and transport. Um you know I I'm sure that if we had a depot we would get more than just for a student that would uh that would bid. whether or not um you know a DAC or an SDA would come in that low would be uh staying on finances and I guess the depot. Yeah. So I guess building on the depot question, how what has the conversation been with the other town bodies about this process and if is there any interest from the other town bodies about pursuing this? Uh they're aware that there's a need. Steelania I know is constantly scanning for it um to see if we can find a spot. I think it's um I think we would have the support of town bodies if if and when we're ready to actually

035do it, but I think we would need to figure out what the timing is. Um and be a little more committed beyond just we think it's a good idea. Um so a lot of what you get in other communities um bus depots are loud and they're loud at a time most people don't want it to be loud. Um you know the buses are starting to gear up at six o'clock in the morning and you know the buses aren't quiet. Um, I mean, just in the the lot in Stanford, we hear the complaints from the neighbors in town saying how awful it is to hear the buses, you know, rolling out at six o'clock and uh all the activity that goes on. So, you have to, you know, realize that could be an issue if it's

036in a residential area. And again, the timing is what's important. So, when we put out to bid the contract here, we had results in like November, um, which was the one bid that we got from First Student. So, you would really need to know what direction you're going prior to even pushing out a budget. U because if let's say you were going to have a depot, you would want to know in November that you could offer actually in October when you're writing the bid and sending it out that okay, we're going to have a place for your bus company to park, work on the buses, etc. And then you're looking to award before you've even really gone uh kneede into the budget process and gotten approvals. So, based on the current contract, can you outline

037what your ideal timeline would be? So we are in year one of five, right? Uh for the contract. So you have four more years to go. So if you were really interested in, you know, considering a depot, you're really looking at four years out in that last year of that contract. And so if that year started in July 1, really trying to hone in and get a a decision on a site by probably September, October, so that when that bid goes out and you're getting bid responses back within that bid, it says our bus depot is at X, Y, and Z address. you'll be able to provide, you know, parking for your staff and the buses, etc. Um, and then we would have results in again in like November, December time frame, uh, to make

038a decision on who to award. But again, running through the financials in my head, right off the bat, we're talking about $500,000 a year savings, give or take, plus a competitive bidding process that could yield even larger savings. Looking at other fellow towns that have deep bus depots, how do we compare cost per student? Do you know? Uh so we are higher. So we are higher than uh Westport. Uh we are higher than New Kanan and Weston as well. Um you know some of that has to do with you know the number of buses that you have the wages and whether or not so some uh some uh locations don't offer benefits to drivers. We uh Darian does offer benefits to drivers and that's is that's an ability to attract drivers so we're not sitting

039in a situation where uh we have a driver shortage. Uh so there's been a lot of districts especially in the last couple of years that have had to send out messages to parents. I know in New Town as an example it said sorry we can't pick up the kids today. We have no bus driver. Um parents you have to drive your kids to to school. And so that's you know an effort to kind of avoid that. Um but we are kind of near the top end. um you know us and I think furniture item. Okay, any other questions on this topic? Go ahead. So, if we had a depot, could we uh have more than the three buses and then maybe alleviate some of the athletics or um maybe make our walk radius a little

040um smaller. So, the the choice of a walk radius isn't really whether you have a depot or not. Um it's whether or not you want to put money into buses. So if you were to reduce the walk radius to, you know, pick a number, you need more buses, right? And so the Stanford lot can certainly accommodate more buses, but you have to pay for the bus, right? So every bus is about $110,000. Um the more than three buses for athletics is not something that's going to change whether you have a depot or not. Um again, for it's just it's not really a a money maker for first student to have a driver who's only available at, let's say, that 2:30 time frame to drive. What they really want is that driver be able to do

041all three packages, which means, you know, the high school run, the middle school run, the elementary runs. Um, you know, most districts across the state have kind of struggled with not having available drivers for athletics before COVID. Was there were there more drivers for athletics? So, there were you weren't really getting more than three or four for the most part. Uh, what we saw in previous years prior to this year, so this year we have a three driver guarantee. And so what that means is they have to provide us three drivers. If they fail to provide us three drivers, we can find them. Um in the past what it would be is we're aiming for three drivers, but this year, sorry, we can only get you one driver. You're kind of on your own for

042the other two. And so you kind of fill that gap with whether it's like charter buses, coach buses, things like that. Um so we built into the contract kind of have that hard and fast three driver um guarantee. Dennis on can we go to athletic just it's it's kind of a cost question I think parents driving students for trips with smaller student participations does that happen in the other towns which you reference as well I don't know if Chris is I believe it does if I don't know if Chris is only wants to speak I'm here the question can you can you hear me though I'm I'm cross we can hear you so uh to answer the question hopefully speaking you can hear me. Um yes, it does happen in other towns as well. Smaller

043teams will um you know have parents drive um versus you know getting up an entire bus. Okay. Thank you. Other questions on cost for bus depot? Katie, thank you. Um yeah, I would I just want to say that um thank you for the presentation and for the conversation. I think that this is um a big driver of the budget and um I appreciate the timeline that you laid out especially, but I I do want to just implore the board to keep this top of mind and to um be cognizant of the timing and the conversations that we need to have with other town bodies because it it really is material money and if we can, you know, find half a million dollars that we can put back into student programming over busing, um I'm all

044for that. Um I um I am curious just about the slides and I might be missing something here in terms of first student providing the drivers but then we also have drivers and we offer them benefits. I'm curious what has been done in terms of um recruiting drivers specifically you know evening drivers. I mean, I can still remember John Johnson, the cutest like old retired guy who drove my volleyball bus in all of high school. Is that is that something that we have an ability to kind of, you know, recruit for ourselves? So, we recruit for the 15 uh drivers that we have for special education. Danny's done a great job of be honest poaching a lot of first student drivers um that have built our team. So, first student on their side uh does

045offer bonuses. is they offer like perfect attendance awards, things like that, but they are also a unionized group. They're part of the teamsters, right? And so there's only so much that they can do within the confines of their contract. It's not as if they can sit there and say, you know, we'll pay you extra if you're willing to do a couple more routes. Um that all has to be collectively bargained on their end as well. And again, with like athletics as an example, that's happening at the same time that you have the primary drivers doing the home to school drivers. And so what you need effectively is extra drivers that are not doing those routes to be able to do those athletic, right? Sorry, I don't think I was clear. If we had our own

046buses, would we then be able to recruit our own drivers to drive in the evenings as well? Um, if they were willing to Yeah, sure. Okay. But do you do you mean um that we would purchase buses in a different in addition to the depot? Is that is that what you mean? I'm not really outlining a plan. And I'm just trying to understand where some of the constraints are and how we might think about them going forward. Like what might be a barrier versus what might be a one thing I would just say is like if you were to look at like our 15 drivers and if we were to say you know you're driving eight hours during the day, would you you know work you know at night to maybe do let's say like

047an athletic run. So the only thing that comes into play is now you have to pay them overtime because obviously it's over 40 hours a week and so obviously a time and a half or double time depending on what it is. It does change the financial equation. I appreciate that consideration. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah. And just following up though, we the town there's not a recommendation or do do other towns buy their buses also? So there's only I'm talking about the big buses. I'm not talking about the um So there's only one district that I know of that does it? I believe it's flat. I believe it's Glass Barry um that does it and they run their own fleet. Um it's a big proposition to do. It's not a you're liable for everything. You're

048liable for all the the records. It's not just getting the drivers because then you have to have maintenance mechanics on staff. Um I mean it it's not typically something that you would want to really get into. Um buying the 72 passenger buses. It also takes a good 12 to 15 months to actually get a bus, right? And then the other thing you're going to have to consider is you're going to have to buy extra buses more than that you use because if the bus goes down, it's not like you can just go borrow another bus. Um whereas right now if let's say one of our buses goes down it's not uncommon or we let's say we're down a driver if the first student say okay well Stanford we're going to borrow a bus from you

049for the day and a driver from you for the day I'm kind of shuffle that account around because they have those economies of scale whereas you wouldn't have that if you so it's very uncommon okay thank you probably more common upper Hartford area Joanna um with the idea of the bus depot but hiring um for a student or whomever to to hire have the buses. What about um do they also pay for the mechanic or the uh the person who sits at the Yep. So, uh first student has an on uh on-site location manager, an on-site dispatcher who are first student employees. They have safety team manager um who was a first student employee. They have mechanics who are first uh first student employees, drivers, etc. So, would that come with the contract with them

050as well or would we need to hire that separately? No. So, if you were to have like a bus depot, it would be similar like let's say like what Westport has. Westport has their own location manager, uh, but they're for student employees. Um, they just sit at the location that's provided by the district. Then, going back to the depot discussion, we we've always talked about having housing it in Darian. Is there anything precluding us from leasing land in neighboring towns? So, uh, no. Uh but you'd have to have you'd likely have to have the town do it because um you have a non-appropriation clause, right? So technically the town could not appropriate you money, but you still have this lease. Um so I know when I worked in a previous district, um we had an

051issue of not having a bus depot in town. Um, and we actually ended up working with the town uh for the town to uh enter into an agreement to take property and then they took the property and they build us back essentially the cost of that depot so that we could get the depot. Um, you know, if the if the town even wanted to potentially maybe buy a piece of property in the neighboring um community, they would obviously have to be the taxpayer to that town if they own the property. Um, but there's nothing to say that the town couldn't lease or maybe purchase a property outside of its boundaries. I would imagine that they would want to go through their council to make sure that everything's, you know, okay. Um, but it, you know,

052there's nothing to say that you couldn't have a piece of property in Norwalk or Stanford, for example. Thank you. Just one final question. Um, can you just give a a quick comparison when we are able to use one of those three first student buses for an athletic event versus a coach bus? Like what are we talking per instance in terms of like the cost or um I mean it's you know it's probably a good 30 to 40% more to use a coach bus. It's it depend on it's dependent on where the trip is going too quite honestly. Obviously a longer longer further away trip is going to cost more and be a bigger differential. what a you know a trip that's closer by would be. So those three buses with for student like we're paying

053those per per transaction per transport as well for athletics. It's not part of like a contract whatever schedule. Correct. Yeah. So I think sort of I'm not want to finish the total discussion but in terms of the bus depot it would be helpful to document some of this in a memo that I could formally send over please to the PNZ the board of selectmen I'll copy the board of finance so they're just aware um so that everybody has the same set of information please I definitely think it's worth pursuing in the next four years or even you know starting the ball rolling because we know we do have some time but not a ton of time so There was talk about doing a capital pri prioritization kind of list townwide. Yeah. Where does that stand?

054Do you know? Uh, no. I don't know exactly where it stands. Good question. I know that John was aware of the depot as a discussion. Um, but I'm not sure it's on there. Okay. I can check that too. Okay. Thank you for asking. There was um there was talk of of food pass and so on. So you would want everything to probably coordinate with that too if if you were if you were doing something. Yeah. Which which there is a sidewalk study. I have asked John I'll ask him again to just brief us on the sidewalks because I know he's looking at some of the areas around schools uh also. Um so we're aware of the scope of that. Um okay. Anything else on bus depot? Yes, Katie. Well, I just want to talk about

055writership. Go ahead. Okay, great. Um, so I have a couple questions about writership. Um, first, um, especially if if we're updating with a few of the information and the questions, I'd love to see the total student population next to, um, the slide where you have the school's writership. Um, because I think it would be helpful to paint that full picture of um, not just who's eligible and then who's using, but also like what percentage of our our full population is actually making use of the bus. Um, additionally, I'm really curious about the intersectionality of some of our um, busing issues. For example, I'd be really interested to know about tardiness rates at the high school in particular. Um, I think a lot of people can probably attest from personal experience that, you know, the minute

056that you get to that loop changes dramatically with how long of a line you're in. And you know with buses and you know with the fact that I think probably I'll speak from my own experience you know a lot of people are driving students because um the high school starts very early and they don't want their kids to get on the bus you know at 6:00 a.m. So how many kids are are tardy because of you know the traffic because of the eariness of the bus route all of those kind of things. I think um I think it would really benefit us to look at this from multiple angles of how it impacts um our students and um you know the way that our buildings run. Um I'm also a little curious just about general

057you know how does our writership compare to to the other districts as well too like are we within the same range? Are we low? Um and then one last question on writership is the determination of the roots and the stops and the I know you had like the slide on collapsing is that all coming from first student is that coming from No. Uh so we use a program called versatrance and so we don't use first student for our routing. We do our routing ourselves with the help of uh a consultant named Lance Oler. Um but uh there are some districts that we'll contract with let's say first student and they have something called first planning which will do the routing but uh all of it's done through uh versat so sorry you have a consultant

058and then you also have versat that's the program that you use correct okay there were a couple questions in there is there anything that you have answers to off the top of your head uh I do not know about the tardiness and I'd have to really kind of dig into what other districts do for um uh wrership I would imagine the breakdown And we can check um in terms of like usage of the buses. Like I said earlier, most districts do tend to see middle school kids use the buses more. Again, you know, the older you get, you don't want to go in with your mom and dad uh to school. And the uh the older you get, uh maybe you can drive and so maybe you're going in with your friends or you're driving

059yourself. And so it's not unusual to see lower um usage at the high school. Um but I would have to check really about uh some of the elementarymentaries. Can I just for clarification? So, it's it's probably easy for us to track how many buses are late or whatever, right? Over the that that's easy. But the other one about arriving in the circle, like how do we get to Yeah, I I um I'm not saying it's easy, but I do think it would be beneficial to pay attention to um um again using my own example, I know that um the high school certainly tracks a certain number of charities, you know, that gets you sent to an admin and another. So, you know, in those instances when maybe you're on your second admin meeting for being

060late to school, I think that could be an interesting question. You know, is this is this a is this a bus issue? Is this a loop issue? Is this a I can't wake up in time issue. Um I think that those things would help us better understand our population. And then also, you know, what what maybe is within our control. Bren, what's that? Brena. Brandon. Um, so if we want to like look into like the tardiness issue, I think there would be some value to holding those attendance meetings, specifically those about people who were like consistently tardy. Um, but I'm not sure about because what happens is the buses like have their own special entrance, so they're not always waiting in line with all the cars. So, I think it would be challenging to specifically

061pinpoint the buses in the DHS loop because oftentimes even even just like for the regular traffic, even for like the pedestrians and the cyclist, like it it extends far beyond that one-way road that goes into the high school. Um I but I I was a bus rider and I was late many times because my bus was late. And the one thing that I had sort of picked up was that these poor drivers have a set time that they have to be at every house. And a lot of the times those set times are illogical because if you're leaving a house, let's say on like Fitch at 7:29, there's no way that you're going to get to the high school on time. So, you know, it's not fair to anybody because the students wind up with

062the seven or eight tardies or whatever it is and then the drivers are getting angry emails from parents and then the um and and the teachers are saying, you know, why is everybody coming late to class? So, it it's it's a negative feedback loop for sure, but it's also um maybe we just need to reexamine what time because there's nothing that the drivers can do. they they have they have to be and they're they're as flexible as they can be, but um it it it really is something I think more so on the administrative level. Um examining like are all do all these times make sense? Do we really need 15 minutes to get like.5 miles away, especially at like 7 in the morning when there's maybe not going to be as many cars on

063the road as there would be at 7:30. Um, there also have been like instances where I know like buses have literally had to like pull over on the side of the road, especially earlier in their route because they had to they were they were running too early. It's that timing thing is tricky and you know, everybody deserves a grace period of however many weeks it is. I think we could, if possible, amp up the evalative um work that we're doing in that period to really make sure that everything makes sense and everything is what it ought to be. I think Danny is Go ahead, Danny. Y just wanted to speak on Come up to the microphone, please. Our students are not Mark Tardy. Um I have a GPS on all four student vehicles and on

064our vehicles. If they get to the school late, we notify LA. They'll mark them. It's no fault of the students. But what we run into in the high school is the high schoolers like to park and the buses are tracked and can't get to the bus. So, I've had a couple of issues that we work on, but I do have a program where I ask parents for first view where they could track the bus and I have the ability to see what the arrival time was for each school. Okay. Thank you, Danny. And I just want to clarify that when I was asking about the tardies, I really wasn't blaming the bus tardies. I was I really was asking how many people are tardy because they're avoiding the bus and then they get caught in

065the car traffic. Well, a lot of the complaints are coming from the toe section cuz that's our longest route. So, they start at like 6:43 and they're and they're on the bus for a while. So, a lot of parents don't like that, which we try to accommodate as much as we can, but we're also dealing with construction or vehicles blocking or, you know, lawn trucks, you know, every single day I'm calling the police like, can you call because, you know, our buses are stuck. So, so I do have the ability to track all of that and I do that. Okay. Thank you, Joanna. Um, sort of jumping off the idea of tardiness. Sorry. Um I know this was an issue at least at Tokenique last year and I still have heard rumblings about it throughout

066the district. Sometimes um the buses get to the elementary schools a little late and then if a kid for instance has like a special they might miss the special if it starts right at you know the arrival time and they come a little late. Some of this I feel like happened when we eliminated morning um recess and buses couldn't at the so like in the maybe if they were dropping off in the second tier they couldn't drop the kids off a little early for them to go out to morning recess now they have to wait until they can get off the bus and then now they go to the before they could go to the third tier. So, I was wondering if there would be any sort of data on when um buses or how

067many buses are getting to the schools after the official start of school um based on these sort of u timing issues. Um and then just back to wrership, I was wondering if you had the wrership of the uh late buses at middle school. I know there's only two. Um we can pull that. Yeah. Anything else on wrership? Okay. What can you walk us through this magnet school slide? What are the implications of it? A little bit more detail. Um, sure. What other districts do, etc.? Sure. Uh, so we have about 15 uh students uh who are at magnet schools. Uh there are I believe three uh locations. um we don't have a large population that go to magnet school. So for example CGS it would be a bus ride of one for example. Um we

068don't have the infrastructure or um for a student to be able to do that. And so you would be looking at like a third party provider similar to what was used for out of district transportation for special ed in the past. And so for that you're paying between $450 and probably $500 a day uh to transport a student. Any questions on the magnet schools? Do most districts have a policy one way or the other? So, it depends. I mean, districts that have a lot a lot of students going to one magnet school, um, they might provide transportation, uh, to that location. A lot of districts who might have or similar to us where they're only, you know, providing transportation to one or a couple of students, uh, will typically do what we do, which is

069not provide transportation. Okay. You have a couple of school districts who when they bring diverse students in use that money to to fund kids from their own sending district uh to other measures. Okay. Any other questions on transportation? Sorry. Thank you. Um this is sort of both part of transportation and not um I know five years ago uh there was a consultant that examined the walk radius to school or sorry the busing radius to school um and there were like a lot of options and it was in the middle of COVID and um sort of just hdled it because it didn't seem to be um for many reasons but I didn't you know I was wondering if there's an appetite or an ability to look back at that um or alsoong along with that. Examine

070some of the policies that we have, especially like with high school and middle school kids. Um, they're not allowed to ride other buses or if they're not technically like if they're within the two mi within the two-m radius, the mile and a half radius, but they could walk to a bus stop that they're not technically assigned to, the kids sometimes, you know, sometimes they do it, sometimes the bus drivers have can't get on. I'm just wondering if there's any discussions to be had over that. you know, what um availabilities or reasonleness, you know, is two miles still reasonable? How effective is the bus 25 been? Um and uh you know, how many of the um students uh actually Dennis asked this question because I just rewatched that movie that um are walking or actually walking

071to go into the traffic and the oval question. Um, so is there any way we can sort of re-evaluate some of that information along with the policies? I mean, I think we can always put it on the board agenda if that's what we're interested in. Um, do you want to touch first on some of what Joanna was speaking on before we pick that up? I mean, changing the walk radius is really a question about where you want to put your money. Um, so if like you want to reduce the walk radius, you're going to need more buses. Um, and so it's just a matter of, you know, is that where you want to invest your your dollars when you have the budget coming up. Um, I mean, one of I think one of the things

072that was talked about in the school bus logistics report was changing all the elementaryaries to a 9:00 tier. Um, and I believe it was like a might have been a two or a three bus ad. Um, you know, that's that's an option. In terms of bus 25, which was added, the ridership definitely is probably the lowest ridership of the 25 buses we have. Um, it fluctuates depending on the season. the colder it is, the more kids we get on the bus. Um, it's not as much fun to walk when it's cold in the winter as it is in the spring or the summer. Um, but uh, you know, we probably have between, you know, 20 and 25 kids, I think, on that bus, bus 25 every year. Yeah. Sorry, Danny, I can't hear that. And

073we have to record it. I said usually the afternoons are busier for bus 25 depending on the time of year. Okay. If it's cold or not. Thank you. You could certainly piece me like certain aspects of this like the uh walk radius or so on. I might recommend if you're going to if you're going to look at all of this, do it all comprehensively and um and it's sort of planned out as opposed to just taking the walk radius for and looking like because then you have other variables to consider. So you might as well consider all of them at at the one time. I don't dis sorry jump in. um you know if there's a savings to be had by having a bus depot could that be offset by you know could we use

074some of those savings to reduce the walk radius you know just trying to think in a more global comprehensive way might be a good way to do this um yeah I agree I think that um I think it would behoove us to look for some of those synergies we have been having a lot of conversations um in terms also of um our start times as well um has been a conversation And um what would it look like to to flip them? Um and I guess I'm curious, Rich, I know we've talked about this in the past, but can you remind me um the pieces that we're talking about and the cost associated, the timeline as we're thinking of all of these, a transportation study would be the next step. Is that right? So if you

075were doing like start time analysis for example um you would want to do a transportation study and you know they would look at more in depth at ridership. They would look at routes um you know what are your options. So you know as an example most districts won't flip the the timing in large part because they don't want elementary kids to wait at the bus kindergarteners to wait at the bus at like 6:45 in the morning um when it start depending on the time of the year. And so when you look at the districts who have made that change with start time, um Greenwich, which is now reversing their change in start time due to budget constraints, ended up adding a lot of buses because they started at the high school at 8:30. Um but

076they didn't again they didn't want to have their kids, you know, the youngest kids waiting at 6:45. Um New Kanan had to add a bunch of buses again. They they looked at everything. There's really not a zerocost solution. And so that typically that's why you'd want to bring in that consultant to say, you know, would it make sense if all the elementary started at 9:00, for example, and maybe that changed the high school and the middle school to a different time, maybe not 8:30, but something, you know, in between. Um, I think that's what Wilton did many, many years ago when they were one of the first to change. Um, the the prohibitive cost is really that 8:30 time, um, which is what Greenwich did. Can you just remind us um what the ballpark would

077be to do um that kind of comprehensive study? Um, you're probably looking at a a cost of between 20 and $30,000. 20 and 30. Okay. And is that typically something that we would um put into um a budget book? Correct. All right. Any other questions on this topic? With that, thank you Danny for being here. Thank you Rich for the work. Terry or whatever. Appreciate the time how are you? I'm well. I you know I'm right here already starting thinking this is your last instructional technology update that you get to see Dr. badly and I'm going to make sure I send you all my future slide decks so that you can uh you know give me feedback before get to see it. I look forward to that. I'm gonna find you. I'm gonna find you.

078Um so technology has four primary roles in our school district. Communication, administrative tasks, safety, and of course to support teaching and learning. And if you're not sure who I am or if you watch my home, I'm T McGuire, the school district's instructional technology coordinator. I'm here tonight to provide an update regarding some elements of technology related to instruction. That clicker works them. Here we go. These two documents have been the guiding resources for my work here in the district. Tonight, I'll touch on elements of the future ready technology plan including curriculum and instruction budget and resources and data privacy. The strategic plan uh addresses goals addressed tonight include expanding the professional capacity of our staff and improving technologies for teaching and learning. See, so I'm going to provide four updates primarily on these topics. Artificial

079intelligence guidance for staff, updates on the K8 smart device practices as well as insight into the 912 plan uh for next year. Utilization of data connected to software in our district and a look forward to our work next year. Artificial intelligence first big one. But we can talk about using AI or not using it. We can try to block it, ban it or restrict it. But if you follow the news like I do, large amounts of money are being invested in AI. And even though AI as we kind of know it right now is around two years old, uh employers are currently expecting AI skills and hiring. So the 2024 Microsoft work trend annual report highlights this shift. And so in the workplace, the use of generative AI at work in the corporate world has

080doubled in the last six months. With 75% of knowledge workers now using AI or nearly 80% of business leaders say they must adopt AI to stay competitive. 66% say they would not hire someone without AI skills. And 71% say they'd rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without. So AI is here. At the start of the school year, Holly Clark, who's a worldrenowned expert on technology integration in schools, she led our convocation at the start of the school year with messaging on AI in schools. And Holly, to her credit, helped me shape over 15 professional learning sessions this year for our staff on AI that I offered and presented. But I'm not the only one providing training. Shout out to our high school librarians, Ba Moren, as well

081as our system technology coordinator, Lori Rit, for offering their sessions. And I'm sure there's other staff that have offered department level sessions. Um, we've also tried to support staff on AI understanding through our monthly district-wide technology newsletter, which is something we launched this year. And I have 10 staff around the district that have been collaborating on that. And a number of the contributions have been around AI. So, that does sound like an impressive amount of professional learning. Um, and I kind of think it is. When I talked to some of my colleagues in my other district, I think we're doing a really good job. Uh, but I know a number of staff feel like they are underprepared for working with these tools. And I think that's partly because the area changes so rapidly. So one

082of the things a competency is a district technology council with input from administrators and teachers, we develop guidance for staff on the use of artificial intelligence tools. And within that guidance they can use when they're working with their students. So guidance they can share with their students. More information is currently available and posted on our website and was also distributed to all staff in that aforementioned newsletter. Our goals with the guidance are to of course enhance efficiency but more importantly educational outcomes and it does of course guidance emphasize responsible use of AI tools encouraging the development of those technology skills that I mentioned that's so important out of the corporate development embracing the potential for AI to improve accessibility and personalization of learning materials and of course we want staff to use approved tools they

083should also be reviewing AI generated content protecting our students data and continuing as do to uphold academic integrity. So to help that last year uh in my presentation this spring uh I mentioned the build and the deployment of our school digital library for software which has searchable insertable information about software tools that are approved as well as links to student data privacy agreements so staff know what's available. Well, this year we've added um a filter and a feature set so staff know what tools are approved that are related to AI. As you kind of look clos at this, um, what I'll let you know is there's currently 16 thirdparty software tools that have been vetted for student data privacy. 10 of those 16 are restricted currently to staff only. Um, so but this is also

084a changing dynamic document. So for example, if I think about a product like Gemini in August, Gemini wasn't even available for staff. By next August, this coming school year, it'll be available for our high school students. That's something that continues to be adopted and changed. Now, this slide to me is the most impressive slide, but we'll see what you think here in a moment. I don't know how many of you know who know who Sam Altman is. I'm looking around to see if I got this or no ideas. Uh, but see, he's a CEO of Chat GPT. And I found this post rather striking. I think it's important that I share this because we have a lot more to do with artificial intelligence and we have a lot more future work. So for anyone that

085has kind of any doubt, AI is here. AI is very different kind of tool when compared to other tools. So I think of tools sometimes I go right to a hammer or maybe a toaster. Um AI isn't like that at all. It's it responds to us using human human language and that really does change everything, you know. So I don't really need to evaluate the work of the hammer or the toaster. I know if I've used the hammer, I've probably bent another nail. I know if I've used the toaster, I've probably burnt him a piece of bread. But with AI, we can't just assume that it's working as intended. We have to really evaluate those outputs. We have to be clear of it. So depending on the tool that's being used and the prompt that's

086being used, AI can be very persuasive. This is something I don't think it's talked about quite as much with AI tools and people. One of the secrets to the persuasive power of AI is this ability to customize the argument for any individual user. So our relationship with AI is different when compared to other tools and requires experience or even a form of literacy. And this is a point of struggle right now because experts way smarter than me are still wrestling with what AI literacy looks like. There are some points of agreement. Uh tool fluency which would be the idea of knowing how to prompt and evaluate those outputs. Really I'm stressing that word evaluate tonight those outputs. ethical awareness on things such as privacy bias and misinformation and process transparency or being able to explain

087when and how it was used. So, kind of looking a little bit at my high school students that are here tonight, recent research highlights that students without thoughtful AI experiences tend to trust the output unconditionally and often will end up using it to complete assignments without really engaging in that learning process. But students that have received intentional and critically taught AI experiences, which is what we really need to develop next, form of AI literacy, um are more likely to see AI as a tool and not a substitute for thinking. Those students will make better decisions and critically evaluate AI's output rather than blindly accepting them. So I look forward to learning a lot more about the president's initiatives for schools regarding AI and how it's designed to help with that AI literacy. So there was

088a presidential executive order in April that he released that's really meant to help and hopefully by the start of next school year we'll have a better idea of what the guidance of that will be. Shifting topics a little bit. I provided information to the board early this year about personal smart devices. Uh presentations in November and in January of this school year as well as my presentation about a year ago all contain kind of connected information. So, as part of tonight's presentation, in support of our goals around instruction, student privacy, and wellness, I'd like to provide a few additional updates on this topic, the KA implementation first. And just a reminder, you're looking at the slide and our practices. We would prefer that KA students just leave their personal devices at home, and we know

089that many of them do, but I've shared with some data before, so I thought I'd share some data again tonight. Last uh fall, we distributed a feedback survey. And this spring, I did offer some focus groups for parents, staff, and middle school students. A handful of seventh and eighth grade students aside for they have different opinions. Uh the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The elementary schools did not record any device confiscations in April, which was the last month I looked closely at the data. The middle school averaged 1.7 per day in April, which compares about 2.3 back in uh September. So confiscations have and continue to trend down over time. And if you consider there's about,50 middle school students on any given day, your students at the middle school are 99% compliant. I do include

090a few other tidbits of data, but I really want to stress that high degree of compliance. So like when you're looking at these charts here, this is pulled from the entire data set from the whole school year. So, the worst days tend to be Fridays, right? The most incidents tend to be grade eight. You have a grade eight or you know, you know. Um, sixth grade students, sixth grade students are more likely to be seen with smartwatches. But overall feedback from both the staff that I spoke with and parents I spoke with that they're happy with the change. And I mentioned some seventh and eighth grade students. Um, they shared concerns on the protocol and several mentioned that their parents are trying to reach them during the day. So parents should know that students at

091the middle school are allowed to access a phone to make urgent calls if necessary and guidance or the front office. U but I just ask that they please help us to continue to support students by refraining from texting child care today. I just I just want to just comment and move on. Again, I'm so proud of this this data and particularly I'm proud of the kids, the staff, the community for a joint effort in this because it's based on trust. Um, and I just believe that if you kids will rise to the expectation, okay, maybe not again, but they'll be But it's just I'm just so pleased. Um, because there were people who were here coming, we couldn't do that. The kids wouldn't do that, the teachers wouldn't do that, and it wouldn't work. Now,

092tomorrow it might not work, but so far so good. So, thank you. Oh, yeah. Very much. Yeah. Again, thank you to the administrative staff and this and to the staff throughout the whole building, but also parents and students that do support it, which is the vast majority. Um, Darian High School has been working on the topic of cell phones this year. Uh, Ellen Dunn and Keith Keeler, the assistant principles of the high school, have worked hard on this topic and are here to clarify any questions specific to their zone after I've completed the live presentation. But I know Ellen, you have to like run from another thing to get here. So, thank you. Thank you for being part of this. Um this chart is intended to outline the range of work that happened throughout the

093school year for the high school. After a board presentation in January, two subcommittees were formed to better address three core areas related to implementation that the original advisory council identified. So work around logistics included but wasn't limited to things such as evaluating product options like specialized lockers or pouches. We they visited the Wilton's high school's pouch program. uh considering things like entrance and exit plans as well as developing an initial pilot of pouches and this work does overlap a little with the other committee that helped develop messaging that is heard and seen around DHS and rotated weekly. Um parent communications uh there were lessons offered to students in virtually every math class as well as health and media classes and away for the day along again that pouch pilot program. um building administrators. I know

094they shared draft protocols with student leadership and council groups and staff. Uh they had focus groups for both. They also uh received input and suggestions from all those constituents and communication has been ongoing has happened through things like the superintendent's messages, these meetings uh and school and parent organization newsletters. This table outlines some of those subcommittee activities I just mentioned. uh the communication will continue and we recognize that there may be you know uh bumps but we are all moving in the right direction and we're all committed to supporting this plan which we believe is in the best interest of our students. So I'll give you a moment to read this slide but in short access to cell phones within classrooms at Darian High School is already greatly restricted for all students. The new protocol

095is really intended to address the less structured parts of the student days such as lunchroom and hallway transitions. Um I think there might be some misinformation about current practices in the protocol implementation along with the exclusion of the seniors. LinkedIn is a frequently asked questions document tend to help start to address some of that. I think Cass, you may have made some copies if we want to. Okay. Well, anybody wants a link in the the link is in the document, so you'll be able to open it from there. Move on for a moment. Make sure got a chance to read it. No, you don't need to do anything else. It's fine. We'll let it go. All right. Next section. I want to provide some data regarding utilization of digital resources by students in alignment with

096goal 7A of our district strategic plan. And also it's an opportunity for me to use spreadsheets which is my favorite thing. All right. So um what are those highly utilized programs? I shared some information similar to all you all about a year ago on this. So what are those highly utilized programs? The chart on the left on this slide represents the top 12 instructional tools for our kindergarten through grade two band. The right side is upper elementary grade three through five. Um this delineation makes sense from the point that how some programs are assigned. So for example, Seesaw and I know it. Those are primarily K2 programs. YXL is primarily grade read through five. And when you're looking at some of these programs, I want to mention like EXL, there's several different subproducts of EXL.

097That's why it shows up on that chart more than once. When we look forward a little bit, the secondary level, as you look at this data, recognize again this is counting user access. Um, and if you're wondering how does this compare with last year's program access, actually it's really pretty similar. Um, you know, like if I really dive into it a little bit, things like Brain Pop and Google Sites is a little higher. Uh, some staff are definitely using a few products alternative from last year. So, for example, Ed Puzzle and Gim Kit are more favored this year as opposed to Quizlift and Cahoot was last year. Uh, the high school data is an accurate pointer, I believe, to what is in use. I'll have the high school students clarify me if they think I'm

098wrong on this one. But um so far I think there are yeah maybe um but as mentioned last we have data limitations in that BYOD environment. So we can we have some ability to track how some of that work is happening but when I really dive into actual screen time for them that's a little harder to do at the high school. And that takes me to this slide. So how long are students actually on devices uh related to school work? I averaged the usage for a oneweek period of the top 12 programs. Uh I chose April 20th to May 2nd for that. Uh the dark blue is what the software reported is average. So you look at that dark blue is that those are really those thin bands near the bottom. That's what the software

099is reporting. I needed I I almost thought it was too low. So I did seek some feedback like I did last year from some uh staff to help me clarify. We kind of feel that that little middle band is not is time on device not accounted for by software. Right? Right? So the dark blue band with a little more time above that. But that light blue band is time where students are not on a district assigned device on an individual basis. So as most the vast majority of a student's school day, they are not on a personal device or a students assigned device. Uh please note that students in K4 do not have required digital homework. Some students in grade five and most secondary students do and I think that's part of reason why I

100see the time start to increase there because this does capture time at home as well on homework on a district assigned device. Reference back to DHS time's not reported here. That's partly because of the nature of the BYOD environment. Um I just not as confident in the time results. My conversations with staff have and a few students from time to time have suggested that they feel that time is similar to the middle school but probably maybe even a little less time in the regular school day but more time at home. That was kind of my takeaway from those conversations. Now this is an important slide to me. Hopefully you'll find it as important in a moment. Uh this year Dr. Alicia Dodd and I read the Mediatricians Guide. Uh this book is a wealth of

101information for caregivers about technology use and it provides clear concrete action steps. There's a quote I found in the book that I think is important to share because I know it is related to conversations are happening in our community. So from the book, the best software for protecting your children against harmful content is between your child's ears. The best hardware is your dining room table where they can go online while remaining present in the family circle and model, mentor and monitor them well. Be present in their digital life and keep the lines of communication open. Dr. Rich in his book also references the same screen time guidance that I shared here about a year ago in this table. If you cannot set aside time for the whole book, please consider reading the last chapter on

102ages and stages. I share that with anybody. ages and stages. So with that said, I want to let parents know this month we changed YouTube for students to a default of full block on student provided Chromebooks. Managing YouTube in the K8 schools has not been a significant problem in classrooms thanks to tools such as GoG Guardian. This change is intended to help some families who struggle with YouTube at home on school assigned devices or staff without easy access to those monitoring tools. Right. Staff at all levels will continue to have full access to YouTube for showing whole class video when it's appropriate for instruction to do so. Staff may assign individual YouTube videos to students through embedding tools such as Google Classroom or EdPuzzle, but students will be unable to directly browse YouTube at home

103on school devices. I want to give Jeff Adams and his team a shout out for hours of ideas and testing of options. There's brainstorm behind the scene that it's hard to articulate here, but we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's the best way to approach this and handle it in the least ownorous way for staff as well as a cost effective approach. All right. No state of the union or shareholders report is complete without addressing what's on the horizon. So in district initiatives and outside forces do have an impact on our structural technology landscape. I had a big section on artificial intelligence and I we've done a great deal of work but this is a fastmoving field and I anticipate more work next year especially depending on out on guidance that's

104released by the state and or federal from the president's executive order. Uh the implementation of DHS cell phone protocol puts us in front of anticipated legislative actions and is well thought out but new practices come with challenges and it's something we're going to keep working on. Uh considering budget adjustments made this year there are a few tool changes coming. We are switching to securely from GoG Guardian. The tools have the same purpose and similar functionality. This is a cost savings for the budget. K8 staff will be offered training opportunities in August and September. Though I actually feel confident that once they look at like, oh, this feels pretty similar. We are reducing another program, Near Pod, to just a handful of licenses for those staff that use the product frequently. Everyone else will go to

105a free account. Uh we're also eliminating paid Zoom accounts. staff may continue to use a free version of Zoom or Google Teams or or excuse me, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. Tim, those those those are our kids up there, I'm assuming. Oh, you want me to talk to the kids from Oh, yes. I'm assuming you chose uh Well, I don't know if I should give their last names, but one is a current uh high school student that's participating in an NHL competition. Uh she has in this picture just recently been uh defeated for the second time in the day. So, her bot her bot was uh be she was able to rebuild it in time to have it pass safety inspection and she lost again. And she's talking to a um without giving away the

106inside, she's talking to somebody she knows really well, family member, shall I say, that is um also a former DHS graduate that now works for NHRL. I believe he's a camera operator. So, changes the challenge. And I I one of the things I appreciate so much is how the NHL group has embraced us and our high school coaches have done a fantastic job working with them. Uh and in fact, I believe they're still getting ready for another competition in June. I don't know if they've passed safety muster yet, but that's what's happening there. So yeah, I thought that was like the ah here we go. What do I do next? And that's what I know she's thinking about now. What do I do next? And NHRL is national. Oh, the National Havoc Robotics League in

107Norwe. So our robotics uh high school team uh participates and competes there. And I could actually spend an hour just talking about all the great stuff that's happening on that. So, I just want to know about the safety protocols. Oh my gosh. Yeah. They actually have a safety team and they they go in and they if if your robot is uh not appropriate, they won't let you go in the room. The real deal. Yeah. They're they're they're weaponized. They are weaponized. So, all right. So, I have uh thrown a lot out there. I'm wanting to uh circle back and say tonight I hit you with a lot about artificial intelligence, an update on K8 smart devices and insight into what's happening at the high school. Um what the utilization of resources look like software side

108and also what I think are some of the upcoming challenges. So um I'm hoping you have some questions or thoughts. Um and we'll take from there and Ellen and Keith are also here to help address anything that is not in my wheelhouse. Great. And I think we'll do questions in by topic in the order that you presented them. So let's start with questions about AI please. Robin. Um thank you for the presentation. I the question I had after reading the presentation was what's next? What are you recommending and specifically thinking about that feedback and the quote from Sam Alman about how AI itself is persuasive. So how are we how are we training our students so in a way that will enable them to really understand and use that. There is a staff member at

109the high school I know that has started to do some really good instruction with its history students on that and uh next year when I anticipate Gemini being available for students. I think it's going to be um it's going to be the right tool to start to introduce to students those conversations in in the in classroom how they can use it and staff are also um as part of the guidance delivered to staff is uh flexibility on how they approach AI with students meaning they might decide that certain assignments are gi restricted we don't use it for this but they might have other assignments where they want students to use it maybe as an initial prompt partner or a thought partner to help them brainstorm a topic or alternatively maybe they use it uh in

110a way to get feedback on some initial work. So there a lot of potential uses in the classroom for AI specific to developing that digital literacy. There's kind of like we also talk about digital citizenship. I think this seems to be weaved in a little bit with a lot of those conversations is this is a a lot to consider when we think about areas not just how to use the tool but also what does uh what might bias look like or what misinformation look like and and show them examples of that. um we at the younger levels the experiences right now have more been very much guard railed and so I'm a I don't know if it's appropriate for me to name particular products but I already mentioned Gemini so I'll also mention uh there's

111one product I'm a really big fan of especially at the upper elementary and middle school level called school AI and the teachers can give students that chat experience but it's very well managed by the software uh the teacher has full insight to what's happening but also does a really good job of uh not leading or persuading the students in a particular direction actually prompting them to think about their responses. So um with the range of tools out there partly we also have to help students identify what tool makes sense for what purpose you know. So uh you know if I'm going to do a presentation I might want to use a Google slide. If I want to create a chart I might want to use a spreadsheet. Similarly there's certain AI tools that are better

112for certain tasks. That's something else we want to help them with. just a followup because I mean everything that you just mentioned is excellent but how are you training staff then to harness all of that knowledge and guide them appropriately. So um my training this year has been handled in a few different ways. Uh certainly we're offering tips and tool suggestions through our newsletter. Um I have done onetoone tutorials when requested with staff. I've also done um a number of at least 15 uh offered sessions. So I'll go to school before after or also during some professional learning days or uh team level meetings and offer training at the secondary level. It's been mostly coordinated through department chairs when I've done those workshops. So um those are so sort of I guess to try to

113answer your your question here. Sometimes I'm doing workshops with a particular subject group of teachers like I did the math department or the social studies or open sessions I offer um onetoone at this point kind of whatever the staff has wanted. Whenever I get a nibble I just go chase it. So whatever they want I've kind of gone after. Um, as far as providing the experiences, I've also worked with a few teachers to help craft those individual experiences. So, for example, I I I go back to school AI. I worked with uh one teacher at the elementary level on using it for uh it's a writing brainstormer for some of her students. Uh and then I we used the same tool with special populations as students at high school as practice for job interview. So,

114it would provide questions and responses to them in job interview. um it kind of depends on the nature scale because you have got a great amount of knowledge and it would be really nice to be able to incorporate. So I'd like to ask that question a slightly different way which is you know at this point that this technology adoption curve is moving faster than we are and at this point you you know you're kind of you're talking about tactics that you're using to kind of do this that or the other and certainly I I can see that you have a you know a strategic approach to it but my question is how are you putting some guid guard rails around uh creating a district-wide systemwide approach to AI beyond. So, we do have the guidance

115that I put on the staff website and it covers a number of areas for staff as far as when they're considering using AI tools um what to look for and within that is also reference to um language they can use with students uh as far as if they want to put it in like a course syllabus or if they want to have a a chart that they point to as far as when staff can use it. Um I'm leaning on that guidance. It's meant to be um it's meant to hopefully not need to be updated every six months. So, it's not specific to individual tools. And that's why we also have the learn platform to help staff know what's approved. And one of the things I wrestle with staff when I do the presentations with

116them, you know, I I will show I'll start talking about tool and I say, well, this is true this week. So, we always have to be flexible minded and know that these things are going to change and change rapidly. Mhm. How are we going to get to the point where we don't have teacher one in AI, you know, baby level and a versus teacher two teaching the same course, same grade, you know, AI advanced. How are we managing that? Not that I'm saying it's easy. I I think this is kind of a challenge beyond just AI in some ways. Uh we we want teachers to be able to customize the course for for what makes sense for them and also for their students. So, um My role is really to try to I think help

117educate the staff on tools that may um help them provide resources to students. And right now some of my experiences with students have really or with teachers has really been about helping them try to find efficiencies in their work first and then that'll bleed over hopefully more into their instructional side. So if I can help them say, "Hey, this is how you can for example translate this document really quickly or change the level reading level of this document really quickly." So they're making those customized materials and once they start to realize how they can use it, that bridge will happen on its own. But for the staff that want me to come in to do direct lessons with their students, I've also been doing that. Okay. There's a piece of the question that I'm asking,

118then I'll open it the floor that's really administrative in nature. So do you guys want to um because you know I think a lot of your job is consultative and you're Yes. but there is that enforcement piece and that sort of structure piece is really you guys over there. So is there anything you would add? I would add um as Tim indicated there's work that needs to be done departmentwide so to be more systemic really through the department chairs and just like when we think about you know se you would know what decade this was but when digital citizenship came on the scene it was like how are we ever going to manage this and like this this is just another layer so really we need to do is think about also how to embed

119within the curricula um resources that are appropriate and like Tim said we have to do so we're not naming specific resources because they change so rapidly really also needs to be done through curriculum um and also professional learning plan planning. Um the technology plan is I think almost at its final stage. So I think part of it is engaging staff in that work to see what staff needs. I think you also need to think about readiness with regard to staff. You know you have some staff that are maybe more fearful um and other staff that are very eager to jump in. So these are things that we really also need to explore with that tech committee. They'll help us find some of those answers. Okay. Thank you, Sarah. Just going to build on what Amy

120said. I think this is a great conversation for the curriculum committee to be having because this is a you know this is a much deeper we could have a much deeper conversation at the subcommittee level. So, um, and especially Amy and I work together to find a time in the fall to to work on this because there's I would love to hear more in detail and I'm envisioning, you know, teachers from the different levels explaining how they're using it, questioning um, and I actually would love to question Brena and Ryan is get your get your thoughts on how have you seen your AI use change over the past couple years? How do you use it? Do you And don't incriminate yourself. Yeah. Um, I mean, just from like what I've heard from my teachers, I

121mean, going back to Miss Nelson's point about like AI becoming more persuasive, like what you write and how AI writes, they're both very different voices. It's very easy to tell like especially without human input, it what's AI and what's written by a person. And I think with like in a year that won't change too much. AI has programs where if you ask it to write like a person, it will say it's against my programming. It can't do that. And I'm not encouraging myself here. I've just I've seen it around. I've seen it around. It's a thing on social media. But yeah. Would you say that you used AI in most of your classes? Did I use school AI and then if you ever search anything up on Google, Gemini instantly gives you an answer. There's

122no turning away from that. Those are the two I have the most experience with. But I think Gemini, it's a great tool. I think it would be very good in our school system from my personal opinion at least. So, I want to bounce also that we'd be using the free version of Gemini next year, not the paid version. So, high school graduates, if you're graduating this year, you can get the full version free for uh from Google for a year for you. So, we've been building the capacity of the staff this year. That's the way I would put it to be honest with you. Um, high school right down to elementary school, that's where we started off the convocation at the start of the year. Um and uh through Tim and all have efforts and

123uh uh Dr. Fedigan, we've been literally trying to build capacity of people learn from each other. It's been a year of that. Um there's competing forces here for professional development time, professional learning time. Uh so it's not uh straightforward. I'm very proud of the staff actually of this of of the leadership that they've exhibited in the classrooms and um pedagogy wise and uh even in the elementary school level in terms of how the uh some of some of the teachers have uh courageously taken some steps uh to use it. So uh I would say it's it's a capacity building thing. Um and no I think we reduced the budget uh from from AI and took that out. Um, so it's just important we continue to support our teachers, give them encouragement. They'll make some mistakes

124along the way, but we have to be we just have to be cognizant of that. We've developed some policy around it. Uh, so with Tim's leadership, we're we're I think we're in a pretty good shape with it um and what we're the status of where we are right now. Great, Katie. Thank you. Thank you. Um Sarah, I just wanted to echo your comment about bringing this to curriculum. I think that it would be really helpful to um have that facilitated with the department chairs and with Tim as well. Um I'd be particularly interested to see how teachers are incorporating this into their uh syllabus as well. And I'd also be interested to think ahead to how we are um both looking at what universities are doing and also preparing our students for that. Um, I

125can tell you that this past semester at NYU, I had a class that actually required um the use of AI. Um, just kind of recognizing that it's here and and there was a big responsibility component. One thing that we didn't talk about um tonight though with AI that I think has become very topical um and maybe an idealistic way of curbing inappropriate use is the um very large environmental impact on it. And so I would love to see um that be woven into the conversation as well just in terms of actions and consequences both in academic work and learning but also in how we use our tools and the toll it takes on our environment. Um okay, anything else on AI? Pardon? Brena, that that was my only commentary really. um the environmental impact because

126we see like tremendous amounts of energy being pumped into um its like facilitation. So I think what would be useful or what I think I would appreciate seeing is some sort of like if we're establishing an AI literacy course or an AI literacy like phantom curriculum then definitely um talking about maybe distinguishing between like what is AI like actually necessary for in our lives because it's I wholeheartedly believe that it's going to turn into another um item in like our society that just uses tremendous tremendous tremendous amounts of energy. Um, and so like if we're thinking about living climate consciously, um, then I think that that's definitely a message that I think we should talk about. Thank you. Okay. Uh, personal device policy questions about that, Joanna and Katie. So I was Um, I know

127we had approved the pilot through a transfer. Um, and I was wondering if we could have more financial information and just general information over how many bags that purchased, how many were used, how many more we need, what that's going to cost, what else, what we'll need to buy like the opening, shedding, however that works. So, we have uh had late breaking news. It's not great late breaking. It's not horrendous. Um but uh uh with this is their rationale with tariffs and different things they have increased the price. Uh so that 17,000 that potentially we will discuss later on uh for about 1,100 bags. I think that's about about the right number. Um will be around $26,000 um there there thereabouts as opposed to the 17th. Uh so that's that's the latest information. And that's

128what I'm going to have to sort of share at the board table this evening when we come to that particular number. Um but that's that's for the uh those will be for the bags. Were you more curious about what we've done so far? Yeah. I mean how much is each bag worth? How we're buying 1100 more. How many did we buy before? What else do we need to purchase in order to have this be a successful program? We had 200 and we're looking for another 1100 of the banks. Um I think 50 of them were lockable 50. Uh so of the 200 bags 150 were a locking type and 50 were just a magnetically sealed type. And which one are we going with? Well that uh that's a decision that needs to be still made

129in all transparency. We've got uh they're going to be given to the 9 through 11 are going to be given a a bag, a pouch of some description, either lackable or not. And that's a final decision. I was hoping that the decision will be made on that topic tonight. Um but that's still uh to to be finalized. We're we're the high school principal could talk about it, but we're we're close to finalizing that. Um but but the price will not extend beyond the $26,000 and the locking or just the magnetic close cost say no no it won't be any more than the 26. I think it'll be around 20 to 26. So we're asking for the 26. So does it need Well, we can we can ask him to speak for tonight. Yeah. Go ahead,

130John. I was just wondering, you know, for some time we were told we didn't need bags and we heard today um about how well middle school is working without bags, right? So, I'm I'm kind of confused why we're implementing bags more mature students that we should have better faith in following direction. So, uh the the well the seniors I don't want to get got ahead of myself. The seniors will not have the bags, right? Uh so um I think some of the feedback that that the committee found out and I would like other people to talk about this but uh a we bit of the students themselves found that they couldn't sort of uh behavioral wise manage the phone um and they understand the recommendation to actually have something to put it away. Um and

131also this particular bag doesn't let doesn't allow them to access it through the actual material itself. Uh the reality of the high school with that number of students is a we bit of a different challenge. Ellen, are you going to expand on that? But yeah, with um I I think the difference it's a great question. I think the difference is that the amount of direct supervision at the middle school is pretty constant. Um I think developmentally we have a lot more freedom for our students at the high school and so um they are not assigned all to a study hall. They're not they have freedom around the building to move. Um they may be going to the library. They may be going to the cafeteria. They may be going to a learning connection space. Um

132at the middle school they're coming in. and they're locking things in a locker and then they're coming back to that at the end of the day. So, we feel that the visible reminder that the action of placing it in a bag, the bag that we're looking at is actually got the blocking technology that prevents um the phone from linking to the MacBook or the computer. Um, so I think the addition of the bag will really be a helpful step for for the high school students. So I just can we summarize so we can make sure we all understood what you just said. You said the differences are supervision or the physical locker. Yeah. And um I I think the daily reminder of the commitment, you know, I mean that the there was a visit to

133Wilton High School um where they're using the yonder bag in back there. Um and and one of the things that was expressed was how important the daily commitment coming through the building. I've got my phone in the bag. I'm showing my bag. This is not just something we're setting a rule and not engaging with. This is something that we're committing to as a school community. Um and and they felt that the bag was essential to that. Okay. And students and students and faculty. Yeah. Who's they? Yeah. Students and faculty people who did the pilot or was it beyond the folks who did the pilot? I'm sorry. I'm jumping at Wilton. They've gone with the yonderful across all grades. Okay. Okay. Um Katie. Um yeah, I have a lot of questions and concerns um still left

134around this. Um, and I I really would appreciate a a more comprehensive document and visual that has these things together with the updated pricing with the specifics on the bags um with the detail of what had been found. Um, I'm also curious is this what happens next year, you know, after like are these bags reusable? Do the kids turn them in at the end of the year? What's their lifespan? What happens if they get ruined? You know, can the kids ruin them? I, you know, we've all heard about the YouTube videos, how to crack a yonder bag, how to get around those, those kinds of things. Um, I do think that there will it's very hard for me to wrestle with this amount of money, um, especially outside of a budget. Um, and in particular,

135a a very quickly rising cost um, for something that's very unknown. Um and in particular in terms of a priority um you know we we don't have a um we don't have an issue device at the high school that that greatly complicates things. Um so you know I I don't need to have my phone out when I have my backbook out. Um I I can do whatever we want. Um, and I think that I think that we always when we talk about technology at the high school, I think we need to recognize that our students are so much better at it than we are. Um, like they are truly the ones that evolve and can teach us all of that. Um, but I have implementation concerns. Um, you know, how are we going to make

136sure that those kids meet their buses? And, you know, we have just hundreds and hundreds of them at the exact same time needing to have bags unlocked. like we were just having a whole conversation about transportation and timing and um logistically I think it's very very tricky. Um I'd like to hear a bit more about um you know some of the other schools like the Wilton trip and and how it has been different because in my mind um I'm also wrestling with with John's point is that you know if if we have a policy it's up to us to enforce it and I I read through the FAQ and you know Even high school students have said, you know, like if that's the policy, that's the policy. But like, what am I gonna, you know,

137I think they are nervous about getting to their buses, having emergency situations, and um I I'm a little concerned that we that we're not quite ready for this. So, I just I'll just talk to John point and that point. Um, one of the things that I think that that this group is just finalizing is that sort of trust factor that we went on about a little bit uh with the middle school um where the the bag may not even be locked, right? But it'll be a pouch so they can put the bag in and put it away. So you won't have it at the end of the day potentially this locking unlocking type thing. The locking is another scenario for where kids can the next level of intervention is to have a lock bag if

138you're having it out or something. That's that's the final decision that the that committee is is going to make. So I understand the wrestling on that. It's just different a we bit at the high school. Um but at the same time they are wrestling with that very same concept in principle that very same concept u with the the intermediate being as an unlock bike. I understand that we're up against something of a timeline because the committee's been working. Um, and so I'm curious. Um, I think may this might be for you, Rich. If we were to ask for a little more information that's a little more formal or more formal at the next board meeting, do we still have time to issue the purchase order and get them to you guys in time for implementation

139so that we can have a more robust understanding of of again understanding that you guys are finalizing your process now. So you just have to add something to the agenda on the 10th um that would approve a transfer in the amount of um whatever you pick. Um so it would just wouldn't accompany a financial report, but you could approve a transfer outside of the financial report. So we can do that. Yeah, why don't we do that? Yeah. Okay. Um Sarah, um can you talk a little bit about how you see this working to just to Katie's point about you know the beginning of the day, the end of the day, the the just the mass of humanity that has to do this and how how do you logistics are are challenging and that's what we've

140spent some time on. Um if we go with the locking bag um that adds a layer of logistics. um the bags that we were looking at um part of the pilot that we ran, we discovered that the bag with a lock that they provided to us was not at the standard we'd like. It was locking in the bag overnight. Um and that would mean unlocking in the morning and unlocking at the end of the day, which is not acceptable to getting us in and out of school. Um, so I think we're leaning toward the bag without the lock to eliminate that. Um, and to eliminate the unlocking at the end of the day um, as students are leaving. The schools who are using the bags with the locks, however, it's working because they put a

141lot of magnets around the building to do that. So, at every door, we would have to have several stations and and locks there for students. It doesn't take very long to open it. It's literally clicking it and keep going. So, um, the visit that we went to at Wilton, they witnessed that all day long. So, I think it's going pretty smoothly. Thank you, Ellen. I I think on the 10th, let's hear more detail about this um proposed implementation and and talk about the funding at that time. Um, if folks have questions that they would like included as part of that presentation, let's throw them out. You can throw them out. Yeah. Um, I would just like more information on this senior area, how what that is or isn't. um and the education or messaging to

142seniors where it's, you know, I could see a situation where senior thinks that they can use it at lunch and then suddenly they get it confiscated. So, um the plans for that would be great to include in more detail, please. Yes. Um I have more question. I was reading the frequently asked questions kind of thing because specifically about for instance accessing the daily class schedule since students will not have access to their phones. is part of the implementation anticipating that there would be additional education to all students in executive function planning. Is there a calendar feed that could go from, you know, to get their class schedule downloaded onto their computer that they could print out for the week? I mean, this kind of thing because a lot of the students are using their phones

143just to know where and when they're going to have to go because the schedule changes every day. Are advisories also going to be included in that? because a lot of students miss advisory because it's not necessarily accessible as easily. And so I I have more of the logistical question for how the executive function training will happen. And that's not only 9 through 11, but also for the seniors who also will not be using their phones during the day, but they will need to know how to do that in college when they're on their own. And so I I'm like the idea of no phones, but the the executive functioning piece I think is really important for us to understand. I guess what I would say is what I've said to a lot of our students

144in the in the um um some of the meetings we've been having is that many of us went to high school without a phone and had a schedule and followed it without the telephone. And so partly this is retraining and giving them some other tools. Um, we were talking about making miniature schedules to put on the back of IDs so they always have their school schedule. Um, because they need their IDs out as well to come through the building. Um, but I and they, as everyone has said, they will have their computers um, in their classes. We'll be able to check often during the day when that comes out. So, um, okay. You know, I we're weighing it's a tool, right? It's a tool that's very helpful to us in many ways. And so those

145are the positive ways that our students are using phones. I think we all know that the negative impact may outweigh the organizational impact that it has. And so we have to try to find some balance for that. So I I know I'm just going to cut off. Ellen, um that's an important conversation. If there's followup on that, do you mind just sending it in? Um because I I just want to keep us moving. Um we still have a bit to get through tonight. So um Dennis, just super quick question. Similar I similar, but Do did we give thought to the the transition from high school to university college and the the ability of not having never had a phone and you and and all of a sudden you have free access to unlimited phone. Okay.

146Is going to be a difficult and that's why we built in the senior piece. Um but okay they're not the professors won't want them to have the phone out in class either. So okay. All right. So thank you. We appreciate it and thank you for the work that you'll put in for the 10th. We appreciate it greatly. Okay. Uh, usage data. You're back up, Tim. All right. Questions about usage data? Nope. Thank you for including it. It's something the board is really interested in continuing to monitor, so we appreciate that it's here and we're excited to see it. Yes, Katie. I'm just um I'm just want to highlight again the fact that that at the high school we don't have um a onetoone and that component um is a bit of a black box um

147for us. So I'm curious and maybe this is really more something for coming back to next time, but I am curious to continue the conversation of how we are understanding our high school students engagement with technology and whether how the phone plays into it and how the curriculum does and how you know that you have like the entire world at your fingertips with no parameters. Um I I do think that's an interesting conversation for us to continue in the future. Um I think we can split that into parts to the I think the inter the relationship between the device and the phone would be great to understand on the 10th and then the curriculum piece would be great to understand in the curriculum committee. Thanks. Okay. All right. Um any questions on changes and challenges?

148No. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you for your time, Tim. We appreciate having you here. Thank you all. Okay. First reading and discussion on proposed 2627 school district count. Oh, no. Discussion and possible action on proposed changes to 2526 school district calendar. Uh so you should you should look at the uh we'll pull up the colored version here. Uh I think you probably have it in front of you. So uh for the 2526 calendar typically what we would do at this point is put in the PLC times um and any other changes to the calendar. So this calendar uh is proposed to look at a couple of things. One PLC times for the high school. to HHR move in uh because there is they're they're complex movein phases both at the start of the summer here a

149lesser degree the summer um but then also in December and also in April again uh so we we have to build in time uh we've sat down with facilities we've sat down with uh OMG I've sat down with the principles we've gone through all the room changes and everything else that needs to take place uh and we need to provide uh our staff with time to actually make those particular moves. So you'll see that in there and then you'll also see in here uh K to3 support for additional time for uh K to3 literacy to support uh the successful implementation of the of our new uh reading plan. So our new reading program. Uh so I'll talk about just randomly a little bit just to start with here just I'll get it all on the

150table. Uh if you would pull out your proposed school calendar uh for 2526 uh I don't have to be in detail for this particular one but where the yellow ones are those are professional development days. One of those days I'll just talk for the moving of HHR for the moment. Um uh one of those days will be for HHR actually moving the uh because we don't know if they're even going to get in over the summer or even for the 18th. So we have to plan this sort of year ahead. If you look at December uh the orange the 22nd uh that will be a half day only for HHR the H3 HHR schools. this the staff have no time to change and get ready for the new phase of moving that that takes place

151over the Christmas break. So just there's literally no time for them to do that. Um so that gives them a half day there. And when you look at June 5th, the green June 5th, that gives them a two-hour late arrival just to get ready for the kids coming in from the start of January. That same not January 5th. January 26th June, pardon me. Yep. Uh same thing happens uh in April. April 10th is uh the orangers as a half day and then April uh 20th that gives them two hours again whenever they come back. Okay. So that's the HHR uh moving schedule. It would be useful for everyone to know this in advance. uh parents particularly staff members incoming superintendent the uh OMG everybody right it just would be helpful to do that um so

152I'm suggesting that uh we plan for those moves the green boxes indicate uh the PLC's for the high school that really hasn't changed other than what moves it to Monday uh so uh there's a thought that that may be a better way uh to prepare for the week um that was originally in the PL PLC proposal for the start of the week but um it's that the number of days hasn't changed because so you don't have to worry about the number of days changing uh thereafter for K to3 reading so the K to3 reading if you want to implement a new program our staff has said and listen I could probably if I wanted to fill this place with staff who who support this that's not the point right they on their own whenever I

153was working with them in the groups ask for additional time. They're not wrong in that. Right? So, I think it's important that if you are going to implement a a new program or anything substantial in the school system, it really needs about 40 hours of professional learning. If you do any of the research, any of the meta analysis I've I've included in there, it takes about 40 hours of regular ongoing professional learning time uh to actually fully implement something. If you want to try and mitigate the implementation dip, which which you will see for a program, right? you'll see a a a we drop in performance uh particularly the first year if you want to try and mitigate that a little bit um the continuous professional learning for staff uh will support that venture too

154so in order to get those basically 40 hours or thereabouts right um I'm suggesting that uh in addition to we'll have one professional development day the 25th in August will be all day uh particularly for K to3 uh literacy I'm suggest suggesting that the uh PL uh PLC greens are a two late or a twohour late arrival for the complete district. Why the complete district? If you're going to give it for K to3 literacy, you can't have the elementary schools doing that, the high school on their schedule and the middle school on a different schedule. So inherently here the whole district would be on a a sk a two-hour delay schedule. The middle school would predominantly work on MTSS um and other discipline based uh topics. But uh for your for the K to3 literacy

155program, you have to try and provide ongoing regular professional development time for for the staff. If the board doesn't want to do that, what would we do? We would pull the staff out. Uh we would have a couple of days that we already have there. Um I mean, we would do the best we can with it clearly, right? But I'm just saying if you're asking for a professional opinion on this um that's that's what that I would suggest um and support and ask the board for the support of uh implementing that to actually give this the time that it needs and deserves for for the staff. Okay. Uh Katie, thank you. Um I have a lot of questions about this. Um it seems to me that um that there that there's zero question that we

156need professional um learning, professional development time for teachers to meet with one another and with administrators in order to roll out into reading. Um we spent a lot of time looking at our curriculum and the program and absolutely you're right, we heard that consistently. So, I think that's without question um that we want it to be really successful and we want to give our teachers the time they need to understand the resources to get familiar with them and to collaborate. However, this plan seems to me that we are taking something that is needed for four grades and applying it to 12 grades. And we cannot dismiss the fact that it is disruptive. That a 2-hour delay is disruptive to the entire community, to parents, to students, to workforce. That any day that is not a

157typical day is a not just a loss of instructional time, but has impact on what the lesson is like. Is everything a little bit shorter? Are certain things getting missed? It's it's a pivot that we're requiring of everyone. Um, so I don't think we can have this conversation without recognizing that it comes at a cost. Um, I think it's really important to look at multiple options. Does it have to be um, a delayed opening? Can it be a early dismissal? Does that change anything? What about having a couple assemblies in the elementary school where some of our staff can take students into a convocation? Um, I I feel a little bit like this was a dismissed idea from budget season that got forced back in under the guise of something else. Um, K, listen, I'm

158not being disingenuous about this. Okay. So, that coming from the that PLC suggestion stood in it own fail on its own. This is my professional best judgment for you for for the staff for the K to3. This is not trying to It says in the memorandum this is for this year only. Well, so how does that work then? Because there is going to be a disconnect between we're we're taking a curriculum right now and we scaled it back and we started with K through three and the idea was that we would then look at four through five. So next year four through five is still sticking with teachers college units of study. I think the assumption was that we hope that this you know that this program works and that we want to have consistency

159through all six grades at the elementary school. So there is going to need a repeat of this as well. Not to mention that hopefully as well that there will be some vertical alignment and we will have time for then our fifth grade teachers to meet with some of our sixth grade teachers and so on. we we'll start to see over time a shift of our student body as they move up the grades. So I I want to caution us about being myopic and looking at this as a one-year only when curriculum just doesn't work that way. When we started this conversation, we talked about it not being oneizefits-all and not buying a box and plug and play. That we need time to develop it. And I'm a little worried that this professional development plan is

160a bit hasty and is not really thinking um about the best um usage of all the minutes for all parties. other comments that did sound. Um I I think Katie, I hear what you're saying, but I think that the and I understand that this is disruptive to some families, but this is to me that the benefits of this outweigh the disruption. Um it is my understanding from what we've all heard at the table from teachers that this is very much in in need um and a strong need. So um I am in support of this. I am curious why Monday versus Friday and why why that shift um you know just thinking people that work from home some you know there are more families that work from home Fridays versus Monday is that that might

161make things easier. Was there a reasoning Monday versus Friday? I think that I think the basic reasoning was uh that that the planning would basically the planning would take place at the start of the week and then be executed over the course of the week. But that I'm sure that's not I'm just wondering if it would be an easier adjustment. You know, the high school high school families have been using super Friday PLC's forever, right? So if we if the adjustment is just the only ones that would have to stay in that case would be April 20th and uh January 5. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, th this is on as discussion and possible action, but I'm wondering if this is better as a first reading and discussion and possible action next time. So, um to that

162end, perhaps we could get um a little more of comprehensive answer from the high school about what they were thinking um about the about the Monday just to understand their thinking. Oh, she's still here. I'm sorry. I saw Keith go out and I I assumed that Ellen did too. I didn't hear what you were asking. I was asking about why you would like to move PLC's to Monday. Well, I think two of the days were Mondays already. Okay. Um so I thought the Monday Friday mixup would probably be harder for people if we were doing Mondays or Fridays. Um when we think about professional learning and planning um in the PLC were we were originally hoping to do every other week and the beginning of the week planning for that um makes more sense to

163be looking out than to be by the time teachers get to the end of the week. Friday morning can be a tough time to be looking forward. Most people are looking forward to the next couple of days, right? And so I think Monday morning when you're starting fresh is just a better time for that limited time of professional learning. Obviously, children and families are a part of that decision, too. So, that was the thinking. Okay. Uh Robin and then Joanna. Um, I I want to echo what Sarah's saying because I I do think as many many parents are starting to go back more often to their workplace as opposed to being able to work from home. And I think Fridays most likely would be more likely to be working from home than Mondays. And it

164does create a lot of logistical challenges, that change of routine is for two parent working families especially to have it on a Monday. Um the other question I had is is the two calendars we've got 25 26 and then 26 27 is the instructional are the instructional minutes for the year still meeting the state requirements for both years even though we're adding these 10 kind of PLC dates for the K through eight that have not or the late start. Yeah, they they will because we have we already did all those calculations for the last proposal. Okay. And then last proposal was more than this. Okay. And I mean I do I I also I understand the absolute need for professional development and I know this is a fluid process. I do think that even with

165middle school potentially getting a late start PD as well being able to have best practice sharing with teachers and doing that effectively is something that I think we might be missing a little bit in our district. And so I do think that there is an opportunity to really gain value there even if it is just for one year. But I I appreciate the thought behind that. So just for for clarity, this uh for transportation doesn't cost us anything. Uh after long deliberations with first student and Richard's efforts with them, uh we got to a point where they would do this without uh any u any compensation. However, uh I did get receive a question as to uh does this affect the u cafeteria sales and it does. It's about I guess I think we calculated

16624,000 uh in cafeteria sales because 24,000 um for breakfastes that that the kids won't have. We we still offer for late arrival but there's not as many that are taken. The what the 24 I just heard a question over here. The 24 is for the year. Yes. Yeah. If I can just add one other point of consideration, it definitely we definitely didn't go out cost benefits analysis of this. We again we discussed this earlier as was pointed out in the budget season. We would not even be remotely near the first the first school district to consider in the state of Connecticut to think of a model similar to this. Um the research does support that when you have professional learning while there is a slight decrease in some of these instructional minutes there is through

167the collaboration opportunity that teachers have some tightening of curriculum implementation um and instructional strategies. And additionally, I think one of the other things I think that my colle and I would agree on is this would also provide additional time for um not only general education teachers across the grade level to have a systemic view of professional learning, but also general education teachers and special education teachers to collaborate. And one of the things that we heard from one of our special education staff members at the board table recently was the alignment between inter reading and what students will be receiving is on intervention resources whether it's through OTSS or special education. So this just provides another opportunity to the impetus for this right whether it's done right wrong or otherwise and there was a significant amount

168of time put into this by admin administrators and teachers um was really K to3 reading HHR moving and to a lesser degree the PLC that was just a given right because it that's already incorporated so we wanted to put put forward a comprehensive in good faith put forward a a calendar Now, that addresses all of those issues simultaneously. And that's um not necessarily an easy task to do. I can tell you that there's significant amount of time and effort went into that. It wasn't just cursory. Uh you your whole administrative team was actually involved in this for a long period of time. Your staff has been involved in it. Um so anyway, it's it's before you for consideration. Hey Joanna, I mean I have to say I agree uh with Katie that it does feel

169like a Trojan horse. So even if it isn't, it does feel like something come back around in a little bit different way than than we said no during the budget season. Be that as it may, I was wondering what uh you know, you've had maybe about four months once you started seeing that this was coming down the pike, we would need more professional development. What other uh ideas did you come across and reject? You know, doesn't the PD for K through three literacy need to be frontloaded with the heaviest lift being in like August, September, October, and then by the time we get to May, is it really necessary to, you know, April, May to continue to lose these hours of instruction? Um, also I'm curious what practices um of professional development would we take

170teachers out of the classroom right now um and put subs in? Um, would we are we still doing or could we trade that off? You know, so if we have teachers and I don't know exactly what else there is, but like I'm thinking professional rounds. Um, if you have teachers out of the classroom for that for uh, you know, a solid amount of time. if we are now we're also adding on 20 hours of lost instructional minutes. Um I was wondering you know where the balance comes from that as well and just parents elementary the thing PLC's work at the high school because high schoolers can get up put themselves on the bus elementary kids can't. So you know creativity would really have helped here. If I could just add about front voting um of

171course we want professional learning. I'm really happy that I was saying to Sarah before actually we have received our version three materials. We thought we weren't going to receive them until staff was um out for the summer vacation, but um they're here. So, we will be starting to frontload actually this spring beginning with June 2nd. The other piece is having implemented I'll give you an example with mathematics, not just English language arts. Having implemented um a new uh curricular resource in my previous district, part of the strength is not just the frontloading, but unpacking the units like as you're getting ready to instruct and teach them. Some of that is responsive to what you see the students doing before you in real time. So in that case, you can't you can't just only frontload your

172professional learning. You really want it's that ongoing professional learning is what the research should suggest and I've seen play out to be the most beneficial. Um with regard to taking teachers out of class, there is a cost to that and we do try to really not do that very often. I would suggest, I think I've said before in this table, the only time that I think that there is great value in that is the instructional rounds example and that's because teachers can see instructional strategies and practice happening in real time with kids right there. The only way to do that is when school is in session. Other than that, we should not be removing teachers from class. And that's why you would if you had a schedule like this, you could organize your time throughout

173the year um and not be pulling teachers again offline for when when they should be with children. Is there a budget savings because of that because we're not I have not done the budget analysis um of that. I don't know if Marge if you would have or Rich a better sense of substitute cost and savings. No, still instructional rounds is really the only thing we're still pulling this year. Instructional rounds and we did of course pull staff for this K3 study and that you know that took and the benefit of I think you've heard from every teacher was not just exploration of resource, but the deep dive into developing a framework for best practices for literacy instruction, looking at the standards, really thinking about our own practice and shifts that we need to make, thinking

174about that preschool through grade 12, eventually articulation. Those are the benefits. We didn't have time, so we had to post offline for that this year. John, did you have a I mean, this is a required requirement from the state to change the curriculum. a lot of time went into it. Seems like again, education is not my background, but it seems like it's a pretty complex change in terms of the way we're going to be teaching kids and this is a cost of that change. So, um, and I don't think it's fair to call it a Trojan horse, but I do think it's going to disrupt some folks, but that's the cost of what we're dealing with with this change. So what um if we do take a multi-geear view of it um understanding that we

175do want to potentially go up into the upper elementary grades um what what was what were your thoughts when you thought multiple year again I understand the drivers this year in particular but if you look out based on your experience of other curricular implementations that have had to move through time what do you think we're looking that I think the research would tell you that the implementation depth for a um an instructional program is particularly over the first year. So that's where the focus is to the front loaded. You're going to build the capacity of the fourth grade and the fifth grade uh by by what they're doing and learning from their peers too. Um, so I would I'm always an advocate I won't say always an advocate for for professional learning if you have

176have enough of it, but I'm an advocate for providing our staff professional learning. Um, if you look at international studies and so on so forth, uh, I think it it would show that that uh various countries around the world, right? Um, one of the things they do is they support their staff uh through professional learning. And so I'd always be an advocate for professional learning and to what degree it it it it dissipates a little bit after for a particular program after the first year, but it has to be ongoing. Um but not to this not to potentially to this level. Okay. Amy, do you do you or do you have anything to add in terms of the taking that multi-year view? And I think all of the people all of the teachers who participated

177were really clear that they're concerned if they don't have the proper level of professional intervention for learning that they um they they require that to really be effective in their implementation and I think to K's point also and to John's point there is a loss there is a cost there's class times children do miss that uh at the same time the notion is and in citing the research also that um increasing and and opportunities for professional learning that increase capacity and agency of teachers, improve teaching and learning instruction. So in the long term, you've improved the um not only the implementation of the program, but the level of instruction kids are receiving and the breath and depth of it. So I think there is a cost and the cost is those extra days and loss

178of class time and especially on the secondary level also recognizing that and it is a cost you pay for that kind of level of professional learning. Thank you. Just one other um added benefit in this next year and I have just recently been able to acquire and obviously as everyone knows we're continuing with study of structured literacy and thinking about how we grow staff capacity in that area. We've been able to develop a plan for staff to be invest education staff members that will be uh trained beginning in this June. And so another benefit of this is when you can you can cross-pollinate, right? So when we're looking to grow the capacity of an entire elementary team, for example, in that type of training, the staff will benefit from those that have had the experience

179before that naturally just during these professional learning hours. So it's just an added consideration for the ongoing work. Okay, Katie, thank you. Um, I appreciate that we moved this to a first discussion and I want to just bring this back to the comments at the beginning of this because I I think it's really important that we hone in on this and it's it's not that I I don't think there's anyone who's been paying attention to the the path over the past two years of the change in curriculum doubts that there is significant need for professional development in order to change the program we're using. That is full stop. We absolutely need that. The issue is that this proposal is taking a need in four grades and applying a blanket schedule to an entire district. And

180there really, in my mind, has not been a comprehensive discussion about alternatives to this one model or plans for those remaining four, seven, nine grades. Nine grades. What is the value for those? What are the specific things? This would be an easier conversation for me if I had been able to see a comparison. We know that we need to have professional development in order to successfully implement into reading and support our teachers. We looked at, you know, paying them outside of school days and that would have meant X, whether it was cost prohibitive, whether it wasn't. We looked at that, right? Here's what it would look like if we did an early dismissal. Here's what it would We're not seeing that. We're seeing one option and we're seeing a focus. And now it feels like

181the conversation has a little bit devolved into whether or not we need professional development for inter reading. Spoiler alert, we do. The question is what's the best way to implement that? And is this truly the only option we have? Well, do you want do you guys want questions? Sorry. Yeah, it's okay. If one was seeking an answer to that question, uh I wish I had an answer that question. Um and I think yes, you're right in terms of sharing with the board. U there were many considerations of different options. Um and to your point, Katie, also what else could we look at? Um could we look at precisely some of the examples you gave. Um could teachers come after school or before school? teachers come at different times and of course things that get in

182the way are not only cost for that but also availability. They have families to get home to they have their kids to get on buses. They have that. So we did look at but you know that's something that we may not have memorialized but yes we did look at other options but I think we hear what you're saying is are there other options we have considered and we certainly can share that also but a lot of it is moving staff around whether it's before school after school which would be less disruptive to student attendance um was something that was really um not feasible because of personal reasons and and families and needs of all the staff. Uh so but we certainly can look and share with you other things that we had considered to look

183at. We love the idea of bringing staff in for other professional days and doing that before not availability. They have summer responsibilities. They have jobs. Their kids are in camp. So we couldn't do that either. Looking at all the time you have between June and the last day of August was another thing that we certainly considered. So we were looking at a way that would be accessible to all faculty especially in those grades. Uh but we certainly could share that. Right. So, I think some of those are only cost limitations, but contractual limitations. I'm sure Marge would know more than than any of us at the table about that. Um, the other piece is I just think that I hear everything that you're saying, Katie, and I'm wondering, you know, at some point there was

184a conversation around the table and I don't know who here was here then, but around the high school and why there was a commitment, you know, to provide the professional learning PLC time at the high school and not with the That's an interesting perspective to me. When we think about early intervention and strengthening from the earliest grades on up, it's interesting that the district started 912 and and not inclusive of of all grades. There would be a natural benefit to the other grades. I think you know, as you mentioned before, we have to take a look at literacy continuum all the way through preschool through grade 12. That's something that we need to be working on. And um we do always feel like there's a shortage of time even with the high school. I hear

185from Mrs. Dunn and at the high school that their time is chockful. They're still looking for more of it. So, those are just some considerations. Joanna, um, and this might be more for the curriculum committee, but I don't think we've ever actually had a presentation on the PLC's at the high school. Um, whether there's been surveys of teachers, if they're effective, what kind of things they study, what kind of changes might have been made coming up so we understand what they're really used for. There was something we can add that there's one other I've mentioned too um there aren't even enough substitute teachers let's say in the world it seems like these days for us to pull an entire grade level offline to have a consistent message and consistent professional learning experience. So one of

186the things that we hear from teachers over and over again is we'd like to get together as an entire first grade team. You know you really you can't do that when we're pulling teachers offline. There just there wouldn't be physically a way to do that. Okay. So, looking at the time, if there are additional questions that we would like answered for the for the 10th, please go ahead and send them in and we will um take a vote on this next meeting. I'll just note this is your professional judgment of the people that that work for us, right? like I I just can't reiterate that enough in terms of this represents they think would be helpful for this one year. Thank you. Yes, Robin. One clarifying question on the cost. Alan, you had said it

187was a $24,000 cost because of breakfast, but don't the high school students already have these 10 PLC days? Yeah, that that that that takes that into consideration, right? So, that would be a zero cost versus what we have currently. would have been 27 or something. So, it's not really just breakfast, it's just food in general. So, one of the things that we see is anytime you have a delayed opening or an early dismissal, whether it's weather related or not, we typically see about a 20% decline in food sales across the district. And so, the 24,000 that Dr. Adley mentioned is a 20% decline in the food sale for 10 days K8 because we've already really built in the high school even though they're not missing lunch. Yeah. for whatever reason, they typically just buy less

188food that day. Um whether they're buying less snacks or maybe they have more time to bring lunch from home because they're going in later. Whatever it is, we just do see a decline. Pancakes for breakfast. Thank you. I have the same questions. Okay. First reading and discussion on the proposed 2627 school district calendar. What do we need to know? Uh not much. Uh these are main this is m these are your main vacations and I think we did put in the um uh conference days just just put those in right now but other than that it's start of school vacation times. Okay. Are there any significant differences from how we're handle handled anything in the last couple of years? No. Pretty much just translated to the next year. Okay. Any questions? No. Okay. This comes

189back for another read. or excuse me, it comes back for a vote next meeting. With that, I'll move on to discussion on April 25 financial report and possible action on proposed budget transfers. Uh so this is the financial report through April. We are forecasting a positive balance of 575,310. The general education RC is a positive 10,849 and the special education RC is a positive 564,461. Uh moving to salary, salaries are forecasted at a positive 35,915. Um we have a small amount of salary savings across a couple positions, some savings and turnover of building subs and some clubs that didn't run totaling 11,972. Uh moving to operating, operating is forecasted at a deposit of 254,55. We do have some savings in out of district tuition from some students returning and changing changes of placement for 281,000.

190And then uh we do have a projected deficit for the superintendent search for 27,000 uh which is a recommended transfer. Um going to fixed is a positive $2,200. U we have a small amount of savings in uh payroll taxes due to the salary savings and turnover and then a credit for workers compensation of 914. Uh moving forward to revenue. Uh this is really what's driving the surplus. Uh total revenue is forecast at positive 282,545. Um excess cost reimbursement is uh expected to exceed uh budget by 282,976 and again that is due to the additional $40 million uh that the state has put into access cost for the current year. Uh and we're expecting the that reimbursement to be received any any day now. Uh so there is one transfer we're recommending for approval and that

191is for $27,000 for the superintendent search firm. Uh we are recommending taking uh the funds from saving salary savings from a custodian position. Uh some savings from clubs and councils from step and level savings and clubs not running. Uh the building uh substitute savings that I mentioned earlier as well as uh high school inter murals that are not running. Okay. Any questions from the board about this? Okay. We did talk at um the um building uh you're not the building committee finance committee. Uh because some of these dollars we won't expend all 27,000 immediately. So how do how does that work? Correct. So the contract does call for us to make a payment on execution. Um and so what ends up happening here is you'll have a reserve for encumbrance and so this incumbrance will

192get carried over. Um it's not uh atypical for a district to carry over certain incumbrances for either goods that haven't been completely received or services that haven't that have started but have not been finished yet. And so this would be a case where we'll make uh payments across that incumbrance. So when we do that final year-end report in August, you'll see a number of incumbrances that are still open. This will be one of them. And then we'll make payments across that uh incumbrance. Okay. Questions about that? Okay, with that, may I have a motion to approve the April budget transfers? That's John, seconded by Dennis. All those in favor? I. That's unanimous. Thank you, Dave. Okay. Uh discussion and possible action on non-lapsing account. Rich priorities were changing account. uh we talked to finance committee

193about what would be appropriate to use capital expenditures um textbooks technology equipment studies things like that we also discussed potentially not having account previous the lock that we just discussed earlier in the year as well as uh that were reduced from the budget earlier. Um, I would just add Rich, you gave an example of where a non-lapsing account is typically used around the use of technology purchase is not something. Could you just cover that a bit? Um, so as I mentioned, the best use of a non-lapsing account is expense that's not going to reoccur u because by definition, money that's going into a non-lapsing account is nonreoccurring sources of revenue. And so some districts that have had a non-lapsing account number of the years typically used for the purchase of technology. So one of the

194things that you typically see um budgets get tight constrained and boards of that are looking for deductions uh budgets uh to meet fiscal guidance or restraints typically comes with technology purchases. So you don't always have that placement cycle that you know you put together you and so you end up with palace. So districts have tried to mitigate that by having funing for technology. So during our discussion we you know I raised the idea of maybe talking about uh a creation or account along these lines and and this better subject matter uh over like the summer retreat and then we can wrap every everybody else involved in the budgeting process and explore whether or not this is a a good good budgeting that's responsible and um meets the needs of technology breaking down on budget cycles.

195us we're probably going to talk about in a bit. Um so that's okay the way I wrap up the discussion. Any additional comments? Yes, Joanna. We just general discussion now. Yes. Okay. Um so for me this is a little complicated because majority of our surplus right now is from excess cost reimbursement. There's special education dollars given to us directly from the state that we only have because the state funded us $40 million more or funded this this the entire state um $40 million more. So I it's very hard for me to take that money and say give it back to the town and put in a general fund. um you know if I was in charge of the world I would keep that money for special education um you know future costs which we will

196have much of I am willing to also admit that I am not a financial person with background in in you know education um and I understand that um you know uh what Rich said about it being a non labs you know non-less account is really good it's best for technology um so given this I'm wondering if there's a way to um you know take a have a broader conversation something what John alluded to before about technology in general um you know it seems to work against us often because it's in our operating budget um could it be moved to our capital or can we at least discuss other ways to come at technology year after year um in a way that gives us breathing room in our operating budget um because I don't think otherwise

197we will necessarily reach a real consensus um on what to do with these dollars. I mean there'll be a vote but I think it will be you know eight nine different philosophies of what we should be doing here. Yeah. And I I think it's probably a actually in terms of timing with a new superintendent coming in who will only work for about a week before the retreat. He's going to take a little vacation. Um probably something that's fairly concrete like this is a more palatable uh topic or an easier topic um to manage. So I'm in agreement that I think this needs to be a broader discussion. Um um I think we are in a period of time where we are going to continue to look at rising costs and we are going to be

198also looking at the need to invest in the school system. Um and but a non-lapsing account isn't necessarily the way to go about it. But I think we need to have that bigger discussion. So, I'm I'm very comfortable doing that in in July. Um, yes, Katie. Um, thank you. I'm I'm glad with the direction this is going today. Um, I I would want to say that I think it could be really helpful um to prepare for that that we um that we structure a facilitation of um different components to it so that we can kind of weigh in and make sure that we're we have um a constructive way of going through things. Um, for example, well, anytime we're talking about um, you know, our budget, we're talking about so many things. We have a

199very large budget that um, encompasses a lot of things. And when we are in the budget season, we're prioritizing every dollar. When we find ourselves in a unique situation like this, we're constrained and suddenly we might be making choices that are not at the top of our priority list. And you know then to Joanna's point um which I fully agree with um you know the the source of the money is also something that um that warrants consideration. So I would like to make sure that as we go into that conversation that we have all um all nine of us and administration have have spent some time thinking about it and have been able to kind of share some of our considerations and points that we want to talk about so that we can sort of

200construct a very fruitful conversation on that. Okay, I agree with that. Okay. All right. So I think for the moment um that conversation is tabled um to the retreat. Okay. Technically I could take a motion to table it but I think I think it's pretty clear. Pretty clear. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you all. Where is the Pardon? No. Go ahead. You have you have the additional uh memo on the year ending request but you don't have it warned here. Um, we just rolled it into Well, I can't really go into the nonlaps account. That's a different discussion. Just want to pant it to June 10th. Well, I mean, unless we just put it under we've just we've just done the nonlapsed account and maybe considered it under the other financial report because that's kind of

201that's where it was part of it was part of the financial. Sorry, we we jumped ahead on the last hand, but we didn't finish the discussion on the Okay. The um surplus. Okay. Uh so let's should we go there? Yeah, go back. Okay, go ahead. Get started. Uh so there were couple of options, six options uh outlined in one of the memos that that Richard went over and u you've sort of seen that before. So off the 575 and I think 280 of that is above the budget like that was like another 72.8 or something related to excess cost, right? So 280 is is different than the excess cost, which we didn't budget for, right? That was over our budgeted item. All right. So we're looking at we last time we were looking at the

202the cell phone bags. Um I shared that that um that potentially is up to 26,000. The fusanics, uh there's 30 fusanics that were was deferred. We now have 11 of them that that aren't working at all. Um so that's an urgency to uh replace those. we would say as a one-time uh a one-time purchase and the the cost of the other 19 would be 95 of 11 of them have gone. I don't know what the forecast is for these 19. So, we would suggest that we would uh put those 30 uh back in the high school and replace those now while we can. Yeah. And I just add based on our discussions and the the topics that were raised, you know, we do have constraints in how we use surplus dollars, you don't go out

203and hire and create recurring costs of surplus dollars. And I I am in an agreement that um it's a fact that monies came from a you know, we had a reduced budget assumption around excess cost reimbursement. The state came through with special reimbursement on that. So I hear they're not coming directly from uh town people's dollars, but I think we should definitely uh focus on, you know, the two categories. One, broken technology that we need to fix and then in some of the items that are deferred. So I would support the 20 20 is it 20 30 mics uh being replaced. I'm not I wouldn't move or or not ready to literally to go after the cell phone bags and that's probably an updated discussion that we have at our next meeting. Katie, thank you.

204Um, I would I would really prefer that we were able to table the entirety of this conversation to in order to be more thoughtful and to prioritize what we really need. Um, you know, the views during budget season even came up as um as a somewhat there were questions around the board table whether that was even the appropriate technology for us still to need. Um, I personally would like to see um a review of that in terms of whether it's still um considered the best piece of equipment and if it's necessary for that high cost versus what we can do um um you know putting something like athletic uniform cycle just back to three years again is that even necessary? are we are we able to to do a four-year cycle and be comfortable with

205that um going forward. There um are other costs that you know are not listed in here. For example, this year and for the next year uh we took out any revenue from food service and put that back into the operating budget. whereas previously that had been earmarked in order to be used towards um a s kitchen sustainability initiative. Um I'd like to see us consider maybe putting that money back. Um, I I think that I think there are this is a short list of things and um it's it's very hard for me to spend special education reimbursement dollars on lower priority lists when we fa just faced a budget cycle where we had to cut personnel and now we're scrambling to pick up things um that are Some of these things on here are nice

206to haves. You know, I agree with Joanna and you know, if it were up to me, we would be holding this money um to return back to our students in special education. Um so this list is is particularly um not exciting to me and not top of the priority list. Dave, I think Dave has his hand. Dave, thanks Jill. Um yeah, not to disagree with John about broken technology and the necessity there. Um just for me this issues that's come up previously. Um I think from a principled position, I think we ought to be returning whatever we have back to our good friends at board of finance and work together with them collaboratively in regular order to get things funded where they've always been supportive of us. So I'm not going to be supporting this

207uh for that reason. And I think we should restore whatever we have left to the town. In the spirit of full representation, um I have not talked to every board member of the board of finance by any means. I have talked to the board chair. Um he would prefer that the monies be returned. I did ask whether an appropriation was an option and um that wasn't something he was interested in entertaining at this stage um based on his understanding of what we were thinking of funding. Um, but that's just so that the full board has the understanding of the conversations that I've had. Yes, sir. Thanks. And then building off of what Dave said, I I have no problem returning what was um what they what was discussed. So that approximately $400,000. But I think

208in the whatever is the nexus of that, I think we we should be able to have the ability to do what we think is fine. I mean, I don't want to I don't want to return all of the 575 when the town has already budgeted for the 400 that we are we're planning to return. my own personal opinion. Rich, would you remind me of what exactly happened with the life this bonic discussion? What what have we done over the last couple of years? Uh so last year the board approved stretching out the life cycle from four year uh from three years to four years and so uh last year we were supposed to uh do uh I think it was 40 uh viewics and we've reduced that to 30 for this year which we replaced

209and then it was supposed to be another 30 for uh fiscal 26 fiscal 27 and fiscal 28. Uh so we did do the 30 for this year. uh next year it's been cut and so the following year in fiscal 27 uh if nothing changes you'd see 60 as the need for replacement. Rich could you just repeat that last point? So fiscal 27 So fiscal 27 you would have uh 60 fantics budgeted on the normal replacement cycle because you'd have the 30 that were cut from this year plus the 30 that were anticipated for 27. Just as a followup um when when were those adopted? When did that, you know, like you're mentioning that's part of the replacement cycle, but when were those chosen as the choice technology? Uh, we've had Vonics for a number of

210years. I mean, they're the standard across pretty much every district in Fairville County. Personally, I'm wondering if it's not time for a review of that, John. So, I just want to underscore what Sarah said. You know, if if we were to implement the 11 Vonics 19 others, um the dollars left would be $425,000 right in line with what you signal to the board of finance at their meeting when they assumed without discussion with this board that we'd be returning $430,000. Can you speak a little louder, John? Sorry. Okay. Sorry. Are you talking about just the 11? No, no, no, no. He he he Go ahead, John. Say that again. So, when um I uh when when we presented to the board of finance, the assumption was that there'd be a $425,000 surplus, actually a little

211larger, but they forgot to include the superintendent search that we needed to implement. So, the net number was $420 as you indicated at the meeting. If I'm not mistaken, the assumption from the RTMO is we're getting somewhere near 400,000 uh surplus handed back to the general fund. If you implement the spending for the 11 Vonics that are broken and we're using I, you know, if we want to review new technology, we can do that next budget cycle. And then 19 that might have problems in the future that were originally in the budget, but they were pushed. we still get to a $425,000 surplus that's returned back to the general fund. So, so sorry. Um, this memo has 17,000 in it. Yeah. Yeah. Wrong. So, would it still work if we bought the cell phone bags

212and just theoretically the 11 sucks. Is there what's up after that? So maybe because we have a moving piece now in terms of what the cell phone bags cost, we shouldn't adopt uh we shouldn't make a motion in terms of using the surplus right now or if you want to limit it to the 11 view sonics and kind of see where the moving pieces are. So, I would I would like to make a motion that we use 55,000 of this surplus to replace the broken bonics and then the rest can be discussed in greater um com uh comprehension with I'll second that motion. Okay. So, the motion's on the floor now. We can ask questions. Um, is is there a possibility of purchasing the cell phone bags at a later time but still having them

213usable at the beginning of the year? All I can all I can tell you is that the uh provider said the sooner than later for production wise and receiving them. What's the earliest? You don't want to start this at the end of like the October. No, no, no. What's What's the earliest we could write a PO? So, the board would have to approve a transfer in the 26 budget before we could do a purchase order. So, we typically don't do a financial report in the new year until September. Um, so you would be doing a transfer in September and a purchase in September with delivery probably in October. um you would you could do something uh amend a budget if you wanted to prior to June 30th. Um and then we would issue a purchase

214order in July. Um the district did do something similar a couple years ago when it restored a receptionist position here at central office. Um, and so what we would bring is almost like a reconciliation of it of the 25 budget where you'd have your ins and your outs. It if you place the order then in July, would that be ready by the beginning of the school year? The B the I would imagine we would get the items. I don't know how much time and I would have to defer to Ellen and Tim in terms of what they'd need to do logistically to get ready to implement, but I would imagine bags would be here by August. Okay. So we have a couple of different options. We have different mechanics, meaning whether it's a transfer in

215this year or it's a transfer in the following year. We can actually do that if we amend the budget um going into next year is what you're saying. Uh we would do that next meeting. We could amend we can either transfer from fiscal year 26. So you could transfer So you can uh do a transfer in fiscal year 25 and pre-by these items drawn down on the surplus, right? You could choose to amend the 26 budget, but obviously not amend the appropriation. So, the appropriation stays the appropriation, but you could amend uh where the line items are allocated. So, if you chose to uh add $26,000 to high school teaching supplies for the cell phone bags, then take $26,000 out of something else. Um, and that would almost be like a transfer before the budget

216got officially released. Then, we bought some K3 literacy stuff already. So technically we have some dollars that could be allocated from from next year from next year. Okay. Yeah. So there's Okay. So all right. Um yeah, go ahead. So even if we vote tonight for instance to uh use surplus for the 11 ponics, would that still come to us in the version of a transfer next time around or is this enough? That would be the transfer. Yeah. Yeah, Katie, did you have a question? Yeah, I I just want to reiterate that I don't I don't think we've had a full enough discussion on any of these items and um I would be um most in favor of of continuing this conversation at the next meeting just having it in more full. Okay. Do you think

217are there more details you want in preparation for next meeting? Yeah, I would I would like to see um I would like to see other options. You know, we had um just a presentation today about the cell phone policies. We had a lot of questions about implementations. We don't even know which bag is being bought. So to be approving money for that seems Yeah, that's not on the table. That's not on the table. We're in agreement on that, but I hear you. You're you're wanting to think about it all in Thank you. Yes. I I'm talking about all of it. Like I'm I'm not comfortable with the viewics as they are. Um even if we're just talking about that. Um but like bigger picture when I look at this memo I don't um it doesn't

218make me feel that that we have really like explored all the options of like what our best use of money is. Again coming back to we have limited dollars. We have had to make very difficult choices to the point where we've cut personnel and spending this way seems um a little frivolous to me. Um, and I I think it warrants a longer discussion so that we know that every dollar we are spending is a choice that that we stand behind. And I don't think I can do that tonight. Okay. Dennis is so I'm struggling with Roberts of order. So I would like to just to Sarah's point calculate 425 what's left and then come have the administration come back with discussions on how best to spend that money. Or is this is that what this

219is? But is it prioritized to Mrs. Lovelin's point? It is. Number one is a top priority. Yes, it's the Vonics and then the I think the bags will probably handle in the next fiscal year, but right. There's currently a motion to vote. There is. So I can call the motion in and I just want to make sure people were finished. Can you just repeat the motion specifically again? Motion to approve the expenditures from the fiscal year 25 forecasted surplus of $55,000 to replace 11 inoperable views. Sorry. Yes. One clarification. So that's only a component. Um if were this to pass, would there be continued discussion about remaining dollars FNX? Yes. Yes. Either way there will be. Yes. Okay. Um any other comments? Okay. Yes. Go ahead. That's okay. Um Alan, would it be possible for

220us to have um a presentation slashd discussion on Vonic technology at the next meeting? Well, we can have we can have uh someone comments and speak to it. I mean, typically that's we we've done that through the budget process. I'm not quite sure uh what my issue is with it. Sure. Um that's that's a fair point. So um I'm worried that we are spending a lot of money um to have redundant technology in our rooms. We talked during budget season about a current practice of teachers both having a desktop and a laptop. Um I know I raised that that seemed that that didn't seem to be keeping up in the modern world. Um so yes teachers need laptops absolutely they do. Um well computers um but I I think one and to me it seems

221that a sonic is almost another computer. Um whereas you know speaking from someone who is you know in higher education you know in I'm I'm not seeing Vonics ever being used right we're seeing professors who bring their laptop and either use a projection or they hook into a monitor right that anything that's being run is being done from the laptop so to me I'm really worried that we are we have excessive waste in the terms of desktops laptops and visics and I I think that we might be able to streamline and run our technology through a a teacher laptop. Um, yeah. So, I I'm a little worried about chicken and egg in terms of changing a technological strategy midstream, although I totally understand what you're saying. Um, can you remind us of where we are

222in the total um, Vonic cycle, Rich, because we if we're on a replacement cycle, are we doing this every year or is this the kind of the end of a four-year cycle? So this is this would be year two if you did all 30. This is year two of a four-year cycle. Okay. Yes. Robin, just a clarification, Rich. I thought the Bonics were basically an interactive Smartboard essentially. Yep. It's not a tool just for a teacher to do something off of a laptop. I think it the reason we can't use just a static screen is because those were not so they're not so like if you had a docking station where you plug the teacher's laptop and put it up on a screen. Um that's not interactive and then you would just see anything that's

223on that teacher's lap which was why the other options did not work and that's why the tech team chose these. Correct. And they are still what other districts use in terms of operability and use of like they're widre they're widespread throughout. Okay. But we're also applying that from K through 12, right? Like like Yeah. So there's a big difference between, you know, how um a high school teacher is is lecturing and presenting information versus a kindergarten teacher and and you know, student interactivity. Well, I can say that they're being used, but that's neither here nor there in terms of I mean, what does the board want to do in terms of like framing this? Because there's a lot of a lot of potential doors being open. hold the vote. All right, let me um call

224the vote on the motion that's on the table. All those in favor, that is John, Sarah, Robin, Joanna, um Jill, and then all those opposed. That is Dennis, Katie, and Dave. Sorry, Dave. I'm assuming assume. Were you opposed? Correct. Thank you. Thank you. It passes 53. Passes 53. Um, okay. But we do need to clarify what we want to talk about um next time. Um, in terms of is there do you want more information on the Vonics next time? Okay. So, okay. Okay. All right. I I I think if other people have ideas about how to use a surplus, they should come armed with those ideas um as well or or suggest that to the superintendent. I listed a couple tonight. Okay. All right, guys. Um it is um now we're now on to we

225have policies left to go. So, we had a policy subcommittee meeting uh couple Tuesdays ago. These are basically uh new rules that came down from our council based on legislative and other changes. Uh I haven't received any comments from anyone since that meeting. Marge, I don't know if you have or had any further comments, but we did cover this in pretty good detail uh and expeditiously in the subcommittee meeting. Yeah, that was the fastest that literally is the record of subcommittee meetings. Um are there any questions about this set of policies? It's a first read. Okay. Um, if you people have questions, they're welcome to send them in. With that, I'll move on to the personnel report. March. Anything? No. Okay. Uh, follow-up action items. We have a couple of follow-up action items from this

226meeting. Um, do you guys just mind sending them out so we can remember what they were? Thank you. Uh, public comment. Good evening. If anybody in person or online would like to participate in public comment, please approach the podium or use the raised hand icon and wait to be recognized. Once recognized, please state your name and address for the record and note that you have up to three minutes to comment. We have no raised hands at this time. With that, I'll take a motion to adjurnn. John seconded by Sarah. Help all those in favor.