001thank you Michelle good evening everyone I'd like to call this regular meeting of the Board of Education to order the next regular Board of Education meeting is on Tuesday December 13th at 7 30 p.m in the board meeting room well good evening everyone uh it's good to see a packed house here in person and I'm sure we have plenty of people looks like 16 people on zoo so welcome and thank you uh good evening again um thank you for all being here uh on a busy Thanksgiving week on behalf of the board and the administration we wish you and all your families a very safe family and friend-filled Thanksgiving with plenty of good cheer and good food we truly have much to be thankful for moving through and hopefully past covid please all remain healthy
002during this holiday time and all your traveling we continue to be a district on the Move we are well funded we are building and renovating new schools as I previously said but we are going to continue to stay focused on our students their health and their safety our priorities must and will continue to be on that a big shout out to the theater group on another incredible production The Tempest I think John was somewhat behind the scenes on some of that incredible well done on the sports front a shout out to the incredible accomplishments of our girls swimming field hockey and volleyball teams well done um we appreciate your feedback and involvement staying informed is key and with our new Communications committee hard at work I look forward to continuing to work with our parents
003and community on keeping everyone informed continuing to listen respond and ensure parents feel the transparency around the hard work of our professionals and what they are doing each day for our students working together is key with over 4 600 students in the darien Public School System we have over 9 200 parents and Guardians we have many ideas thoughts values we have left right center and we talk about almost everything to do with our children's education we will continue to listen learn and work with the experienced professionals parents and students to stay focused on our students I would ask that you continue to email call and speak through your local school teachers administrators reach out to the administration and the board as you see fit this way we can understand the needs and challenges of our
004students and have them understood in the right context of the issue social media Facebook posts Anonymous blanket emails do not always have the correct context and only add to the challenges and spread misinformation the communications committee has already started to build out outlines to help us improve and build a more comprehensive plan around the many forms of communication that face face us each day we have a full agenda and we will start to hear and talk about the superintendent's budgets and initiatives this evening as we move fast forward into the budget season I want to again stress the priorities that will keep us focused our Focus has to be the whole student the physical and mental health of each student in a safe and secure learning environment as I said at the last meeting we
005have invested in so much over the last few years and we must continue to invest in our students education but we also need to make sure that all of this investment is working a hundred percent in helping our students and staff each day prioritization is key and will drive this budget season and discussion you have to be able to implement and execute 150 percent on these priorities or we have failed our students we have to understand our capacity and resources to deliver and not overextend ourselves our priorities as I mentioned at the last meeting that will keep us focused on our students are the mental and physical well-being of our students and staff the Safety and Security of our students and staff our commitment to our facilities and our infrastructure supporting our teachers through our
006new contract our commitment to our Communications committee and delivering on a comprehensive communication plan and continued work on transparency through the curriculum committee ongoing work that is in process and has been prioritized in no particular order a strategic plan and Dei recruiting the best the teacher shortage is real an article today had 74 percent of teachers thinking about their careers and next steps we have new Statewide special ed system implementations around ppts and an enormous amount of work and time that goes on behind that remediation and test scores I think we are really just starting to learn more each day and we fully do not understand the remediation needs from covet we have a literacy program work and feedback from the state and compliance with State mandates this is an issue across the state after
007all of that I have to say our plate is full and we must execute on these initiatives and priorities to the benefit of our students education never stops but we need to make sure we are focused on the basics each day we have to make sure we understand our academic goals for our students and base them on reducing Stress and Anxiety while providing that safe learning environment so to wrap up my thoughts I think we have our priorities and what I have outlined above let's focus on the student let's execute on all we have invested in let's keep our priorities let's continue to listen to students parents teachers in the community as a whole so thank you and again I wish you all a very healthy a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving all right Michelle
008Mr chairman I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda sure okay um my motion is to add the words to agenda item 8A it currently reads presentation and discussion of 2023 and 2024 budget initiatives I would like to add the words and possible action uh before budget initiatives so read it as like it amended presentation discussion and possible action of the 2023-2024 budget initiative okay do I have a second on that Mrs McCammon all those in favor [Music] that is unanimous okay thank you for that topic thank you Mr Susan um we'll move back to public comment Michelle good evening for participants who will be participating today you will have up to three minutes to comment please state your name and address we will start with folks in the audience hello my name
009is Megan Montrose I live at 110 155 West Avenue and I'm here tonight because uh there has been no follow-up no resolution so the last time I spoke at your meeting and I just want to review a few things I followed your chain of communication and I learned per Julie drawler the director of Elementary education there's not supposed to be gender education in elementary school so um contrary to Julie's statement we have this book that I shared with the board last time in this book it's categorized under gender identity I'm going to show you in the Royal Library so this is the Royal Library it's categorized gender identity so you have a book that was read to a second grade class that is categorized under gender identity and the author's intent is also gender identity
010conversations so there's a major conflict here you have your director of Elementary education saying there's no gender education yet they are using gender themed books with a class full of second graders seven years old now there's another layer to this conflict I just want to share Dr adley's comments uh our superintendent here I'll tell you what it's not about at least Sid it's absolutely category categorically not about gender identity gender expression gender ideology that is not what the text is about it's not what we teach or discuss as part of scl or diversity gold so that's a conflict as well so we have the superintendent saying that this book is not a gender themed book but it's categorized as a gender-themed book so my question for this board is when are you going to hold
011this Administration accountable when is this board going to address the administration and demand honesty one transparency and ensure that they follow their own policy and in this case the policy is there's not supposed to be gender education in the elementary school so thank you all for your time this evening I appreciate it I know that is a lot of work what you do but we should be focusing on keeping our youngest learners safe and not sharing things with them at an inappropriate age where they have no idea the complexity to these topics it's inappropriate it is age inappropriate that's it so thank you thank you for speaking this evening good evening my name is Deborah Ritchie I live at 16 Stony Brook Road South I am the co-chair for CDs P but I'm speaking on
012my own tonight I have some concerns about the process last week regarding the special appropriation request for the security ftes on Tuesday November 15th the board of Finance learned at their meeting of an increase to the protected Board of Ed Surplus as a result of the lowering of the ECR submission threshold why was the board of board of Finance notified about the change before the full Board of Ed the board of Finance discussed the change before any public discussion by the Board of Ed finance committee or the full Board of Ed due to the forecast had increased to the budget surplus the board of Finance did not make a motion to vote on the board of ed appropriation requests to fund the security ftes therefore the appropriation requests process was terminated by the board of
013Finance or to finance members stated in the meeting that the special appropriation for security ftes was not necessary due to the Surplus and one member stated they would like the process to move even more quickly and to speed it up this is concerning since one could perceive this as the board of Finance exercising light on line item of control over the Board of Ed operations given the change to the ECR calculation and the revised forecast for the Board of Ed Surplus it would have been most appropriate to allow the Board of Ed to opine on the continued necessity of a special appropriation rather than have the board of Finance assess ostensibly make the decision for them thank you thank you for speaking this evening good evening my name is Megan Thornton and I live at
01449 Birch Road I'm currently a co-chair of the PTO at Oxbridge and a member of the cdsp it is no secret that the district has had its fair share of staffing issues at all of our schools this is a problem that I would never expect in a town such as Darien many residents move to Darien because of how highly regarded our public schools schools are however the current Staffing issue could greatly impact the quality of our children's education I will speak in regard to Oxbridge but I know that there are many stepping issues throughout the district many existing teachers parents and therapists who are currently employed at Oxbridge are kind talented and truly care about our children who receive special education services the special ed staff are incredible teachers and an incredible support for our
015children unfortunately there have been numerous complaints this year regarding special ed staffing issues and the lack of communication from the special education administration at not at Oxbridge but throughout the district over the past few months the Oxbridge special education representatives and I have been approached by many parents whose students receive services at Oxbridge the parents have voiced concerns over missed Services the lack of Paris to support their children the special ed Administration as well as staffing issues that have left students without services this isn't a missed session here or there this ranges from missed services for a week or two to students who have yet to receive Services since the start of the school year all of the missed Services of children with IEPs appear to be due to staffing issues which is entirely unacceptable
016the children who have IEPs and have been affected by these staffing issues have IEPs that are out of compliance this is a legal issue which should be a great concern children who receive services in our schools are the biggest single minority group in our Darien School District these children often have a difficult time with transitions as well as have difficulty when their schedules teachers supports are not a consistent therefore the Staffing issue in our special ed department has negatively impacted the children in our schools the Stu the students who need the most support a tremendous amount of work needs to be done to help both staff and students recover from the effects of teacher shortages and resignations thank you thank you for speaking this evening good evening my name is Kate McIntosh and I live
017at 11 deepwood Road I'm speaking tonight on behalf of this you just could you just adjust the mic so we can thank you so much sorry that's better thank you um my name is Kate McIntosh and I live at 11 deepwood Road I'm speaking tonight on behalf of a special education parent community at Middlesex we are concerned with the number of special education staff that have left the district since June 2022 we have lost an overwhelming number of staff from the Special Education team this is a deep concern of parents as these Learners require a specific level of specialized direct instruction the district has done an amazing job in a very tough environment to hire teachers for our special education department I believe the department is now fully staffed but the 10-year experience and knowledge
018of these teachers and administrators that left cannot be replaced quickly while we are trying to recover from teacher shortages our students are still in school needing to be taught many service hours have been lost during this transition how is the school planning on making sure all of these students are being taught appropriately appropriately in line with their IEP mms's direct reading staff is very compromised as most of our new hires are not currently trained or certified in the Wilson Reading Program certification in the Wilson Reading Program requires 80 hours of training for those of you who do not know what this is direct reading services are given to our most challenged readers who need scientifically research-based direct instruction taught through the Wilson Reading curriculum how are our wonderful teachers supposed to deliver appropriate individualized support
019if they are not trained in the program most of our new staff has only received a three-day introduction training on Wilson over the course of the first three months of school many of our special education students have not had consistent teachers in their specialized classrooms how are these students expected to master their goals and objectives written in their IEPs when they do not have a consistent trained teacher there have been loss of service hours and IEPs that are not being followed with consistency and fidelity Sarah O'Malley has been given an Herculean task just one week before the school year started she was given a new position with very few special education staff members she has done the best that she can with the limited resources the Board needs to be aware that we need to
020remediate this situation and it is likely to be a be costly if it is not addressed thank you thanks for speaking this evening good evening Katrina O'Connor 15 Island Avenue I'd like to raise a couple of concerns with you this evening regarding the most recent proposed transfer funds due to the projected Surplus from the ECR Grant to fund the operating costs of the SSO initiative it is no surprise that the district has suffered losses and staff and providers that shortages have resulted in administrators having to increase caseloads and cover Services where needed in some cases as we are hearing from parents students are not receiving their services as prescribed in their IEPs which is likely a result will likely result in an agreement for reimbursement for private services or compensatory services to be delivered at
021a later date this is one of the consequences of a teacher shortage that you have all been discussing this fall it is concerning that you are spending the Surplus money that is being projected so early in the year before you even understand or realize what your actual reimbursement will be later this spring the most you will get back is 70 and given that the state has already lowered your threshold there is a possibility that you may get less you don't know what you don't know and you are reallocating your Surplus too early in the process if special education costs exceed the projection this could result in a request for an appropriation from the board of finance and the RTM in the past these actions created a collision course between boards politics and residence with the
022majority of damage inflicted on children with disabilities and their families as you know special education services as prescribed in the IEPs are mandated by law going before the RTM and the board of Finance with an appropriation to cover a special education costs sets up a narrative in our town reminiscent of the crisis of 2012 when negative public opinion and positive public pressure to cut costs resulted in egregious systemic violation of student rights it is Paramount that this board revisit attorney Sue Gams reports were in the introduction she carefully examines the events leading to the hiring of Dr ossipuk and the directives to slash costs this is not to say that Mrs Klein and her staff are going to act in bad faith as previous administrators have thanks to the work of attorney gam and the
023subsequent work of Mrs Klein the district today has standard procedures to ensure compliance Mrs Klein her team should be afforded the room to make hires or changes to meet the demand as we realize shortages learning losses and a mental health crisis we don't want to turn back the clock 10 years the board should act in the best interest of the community and ensure the dialogue around special education is free from divisive rhetoric that could be harmful to Children and Families please don't let this happen again thank you thank you for speaking this evening hi Sarah vortel 22 Brushy Hill Road um I just learned that this month it's actually the 50th anniversary of um an album called free to be unb in case anyone's heard of that um and it was an album that was
024designed to teach kids that boys and girls aren't different at all that every child no matter which gender can wear whatever like whatever behave however it wants be whatever profession they want play with whatever toys they want um that every child can just be free just to be I have seen the YouTube which every one of you can do of the book in question um Julian is a mermaid to me and to many other people that I've spoken to um I view it very much like a free to be you and me type message again that's been 50 years in the making um and I just wanted to share that and let you know that there's many people that do feel that way as well thank you thank you for speaking this evening bye um
025my name's Armel Jacobs I'm 12 fish um I'm here with pretty simple comments tonight uh but they're twofold the first is to ask you to keep Dei and SEL in the curriculum in the budget these acronyms can scare people I know that there are a lot of people in this town in this country that hear these things and you know get set off in certain ways um but every day there is more information every day the misinformation and the fear dissipates a little bit more so I'm I'm asking you to keep these things and stay the course and secondly which is a related comment I I want to ask you guys to stand up for the curriculum that you chose I want to ask you guys to stand up for the teachers that you employ
026who don't have a choice they implement the curriculum that you chose that the state chooses I want to ask you guys I'm listen a lot of people are going to talk tonight probably a lot of people who want to speak out against the SEL curriculum against Julian is a mermaid when you hear them when the people watching this hear them I want all of you people listening you people especially the ones in charge of leading this community to lead okay don't follow lead and stand by the things that you put in the curriculum stand by your teachers because you ask them to implement the curriculum just be brave every day it gets a little bit easier every day the fear dissipates in my opinion you're doing right by these students so please just be brave
027keep doing it anyone else in the audience Belinda Fang 22 Beach Drive good evening um in the spirit of Thanksgiving I wanted to express my gratitude um to our Educators for reaffirming the value of everyone in this community and choosing to teach from diverse literature that illustrates the richness and worthiness of our Collective differences over 30 years ago Dr rudine Sims Bishop the mother of Multicultural children's literature published an essay titled Windows mirrors and sliding glass doors she stated literature transforms The Human Experience and reflects it back to us and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger Human Experience reading then becomes a means of self-affirmation diversity in children's literature is important for all it helps adolescents learn about themselves and feel like they have a
028valid place in the world without it they may feel invisible or inferior to those we more frequently see books written about the goal of diverse literature is to expose children to stories that often aren't told diverse books teach empathy at its Best Literature helps children understand that despite our differences in race ethnicity gender sexual orientation age size cognitive and physical abilities all people share common feelings and aspirations those feelings can include love sadness fear and the desire for fairness and justice some of the benefits of diverse literature provide friendship skills problem solving skills positive self-image and respect for others sometimes books are simply a slice of normal life that demonstrates that when it comes down to it we're all much more similar than we are different and the simple truth of The Human Experience is
029that we're not so different after all I grew up in the 80s and 90s in a Melting Pot neighborhood in Brooklyn and even though the demographic makeup was quite diverse the exposure to different cultures was quite Limited in the classroom back then I don't think I came across too many books with characters that resembled myself or that of my peers I'd say in the past 40 years children's literature has finally caught up it's evolved in ways that allows for all our children to have the chance to feel seen and worthy you're almost that time and after the difficult year our community has had in recognizing the young people who are hurting I'd say diverse books are more important than ever in making our children feel significant accepted her you're at time and that they belong
030thank you thanks thank you thank you Happy Thanksgiving [Music] yeah anyone else in the audience Michelle anyone online do we have one more sure step right up [Music] hi my name is Diane Urban I am the um cbsp community outreach and Dei chair put these comments on my own you could just maybe move the mic up okay so yeah yeah thank you yes thank you um however I will say that in my role um also as the PTO uh co-chair at the tokenique CEI committee there have been a lot of conversations um among parents and the the positive side to discussing all of these things is I think a lot of people are starting to become engaged and really pay attention to what the their kids are saying about the books that we're all discussing
031okay well so I'd like to point out one thing in the book um when we're talking about the acceptance that this book is about acceptance there's a beautiful page um that shows when Julian is imagining himself as a mermaid and it's all right it's okay I can I can paint the picture just like we all have so he's he's imagining swimming with all of the sea creatures and there's part where he comes up to this big beautiful blue fish and the fish has all these patterns on it and he hands the and the fish handsome this sort of necklace and it's sort of kind of crowning him as the mermaid that he wants to be as the book proceeds and he comes out and he says you know abuela I'm a mermaid too and it's
032the moment where the abuela looks at her grandson and it's gonna decide how do I pave the path for future acceptance no matter what this kid wants to be a boat a mermaid Marshall from Paw Patrol how am I going to respond to this moment and she hands him a necklace it's the exact same image from when he's imagining this in the book she's wearing the same dress as the fish the book is about acceptance It's about Paving the pack for when kids have those moments with the adults in their lives they know that they are there and they are seen and these steps will then be like Illustrated when they get further on in their lives and are making the tougher decisions these are the these are the steps that pave the path to
033Future acceptance so whether or not an author had that in mind when they write a book that's not how our kids are reviewing it I asked my daughter what's this book about mermaids thank you thanks for speaking this evening anyone else in the audience Michelle anyone online we have no raised hands at this time okay thank you we'll have public sure well we have one now uh Jim Palin five Hickory chairman of the board of Finance as well I just wanted to point out a few uh just a few comments that were made as part of public comment you know Board of Finance did have a meeting on Tuesday November 15th to discussed a few of the financial Appropriations that you sent forward to us um and as we do with every appropriation we asked
034the chairman and superintendent to update their budget ahead of us making any decisions on that budget and as is typical Mr rootle provided you know extreme detail in fact it was part of a uh an update to the budget that he was going to provide at the finance committee later that week and so that's the budget that we relied on in terms of making the decision to approve the three hundred thousand dollars of capital and that the board made in terms of not moving the 300 million of an additional special appropriation to augment the 110 million appropriation made at the beginning of the year to fund the uh the security officers the ssos and the uh the director of security and so when we looked at that budget I just want to make sure everyone's
035aware as Mr rootle updated that budget was approaching close to 900 000 at the same time that the board was asking for a 296 thousand dollar appropriation so the reason that the Board of Ed the board of Finance did not move that uh that appropriation is not because we didn't support the ssos which I think every member at the dies spoke fairly clearly about their support for the overall program it was because you had a surplus that was three times what you needed to move forward with it I think you know chairman as you may recall from that meeting I think our whole board made it very clear at the end is if and when this board does have a shortfall or some type of deficit because something unforeseen an education or capital or whatever
036you're always invited to come back to the board and I think that the board of Finance has always indicated it would always support you if there was some type of unforeseen cost so I just want to make sure the public understands sort of what the board of France did do and did not do thank you Mr chairman just a point of fact those weren't Millions those were thousands exactly 300 000 requests ahead of a 900 000 plus thanks thank you Mr Pam thanks for speaking Mr Denise yes we now have raised hands for public comment on Zoom okay Jackie you are unmuted and recognized [Music] hi it's actually uh Bill Leonard she's not Jackie um I hadn't planned on speaking today but I just thought it was relevant to do that uh state your name
037and address sir Bill Leonards one silentoy road okay thank you um the the book that has caused controversy Julian is a mermaid is very specific it's an intent and very specific in its pictures and words uh the Earth author stated this the if you Google it every every Google will come up with it if you go to Amazon it's in the gender identity section if you go to any library in the country it's under gender identity if you go to any bookstore in the country that's under gender identity and yet we're being I've been told by Julie drawers privately and I've I've read Dr adley's public comments that it's not that and that's what I have the biggest problem with is it's just the dishonesty if if a book is classified as gender identity if
038it's motifs or specific to transgenderism and drag and pushing acceptance of those Concepts that can be discussed publicly and in the marriage and the downfalls should be discussed publicly it shouldn't be snuck in the back door under acceptance if I had a book about a kid and he wanted to be a football player and he bought the uniform and he tried out for the team and he made the team and he scored the winning touchdown at the end of the day you said is that book about football he said no no no it's about a boy's Journey you say well how do you figure that the book is in the sports section of the library the book is the guy's wearing football equipment I said no no it's not about football at all you say
039I'm being dishonest so I'm just asking for you guys to be more honest about exactly what's going on if we're teaching gender identity say we're teaching it if we're not teaching it say we're not teaching it and why but so far all I've seen is books to mainstream drags mainstream transgenderism to my seven-year-old and I haven't heard any answers I haven't heard any honesty I'm still waiting for it thank you thanks for speaking this evening Natalie Martin you are unmuted and recognized Natalie can you hear us yes can you hear me yes go ahead please Natalie Martin nine Little Brook Road North uh I wasn't planning on speaking either um and I have not written a speech so apologies for not being as eloquent as Belinda Diane and Armel who did an amazing job and
040I fully support their sentiment um I support the board for um accepting this curriculum and most importantly I support our teachers who are doing the best they can I think that the um the shorted the staff shortage goes hand in hand with what is happening right now in our environment the criticism that the teachers are receiving for doing their jobs for showing up for our kids every single day in the middle of a pandemic with masks in the middle of a national crisis with guns I salute our teachers and for them showing up and to add this community to add this stress of teaching Acceptance in our community this is this book right you're right the last comment was talking about a book about sports and a journey yes life is a journey and acceptance
041is a journey and we all change and we all want to be accepted some of us are luckier than others again I support our Mal Diane Belinda the board who has supported this curriculum and most importantly are incredible teachers who I hope do not all abandon us thank you thanks for speaking this evening Jackie Miller you are unmuted and recognized Hi how are you uh my name is Jackie Miller I live at 84 Fitch Avenue I was planning to talk as I usually do about school transportation and what an easy win it is for reducing stress on our students and our families by providing adequate School transportation to school especially at the high school level but I I feel that I need to say something about the book Julian is a mermaid which I've read
042the book does not contain the word gender it does not contain the word transgender it's a beautiful story much like Sarah gortel mentioned Williams doll in free to be you and me which I read in elementary school there's nothing harmful about talking about how some people present differently than other people we all need to understand that as a community we don't all look the same and we've heard from our students that they do not feel safe we heard last year that many students of different sexual orientations did not feel included in the community this book is important it doesn't matter whether we're talking overtly about gender representation to seven-year-olds we're talking about how people look and how people act and what it means to be accepted and I hope that we'll continue to offer Dei
043and SEL as a district thank you very much thanks for speaking this evening Katie vonovich you are unmuted and recognized [Music] Katie can you hear us again hi you're gonna have to speak up louder please thank you apologies can you hear me yes thank you hi Katie manovich 118 Hecker Avenue um I wasn't planning to speak so um trying to get my thoughts together I just want to make a quick statement in opposition to the proposal of ssos and elementary schools the stats don't support this initiative um I fully understand the emotional response to the non-stop gun tragedies in our country I understand wanting to protect our kids but I strongly feel that more guns especially with our youngest students is absolutely not the answer um second I also wanted to reiterate what several speakers
044said um please include all Dei and SEL programs in our schools we need to be raising well-rounded emotionally developed critical thinkers we need to ensure that we're developing the entire child in our schools um and lastly I just wanted to say thank you for the book recommendation um after the last meeting I had borrowed it from the Darian lab library and I had found it absolutely fabulous um as do my kids and if you if you didn't find it to be wonderful and accepting well I really don't know what else to to tell you I guess it says something um but thank you so much thanks for speaking this evening there are no more raised hands at this time all right thank you thank you everyone for uh participating in public comment um we will
045move on to the superintendent's report Dr adley good evening everyone it's nice to see you right thank you and thank you for your participation I let our young people speak a little bit about uh our success of our athletic teams uh support chair commented on the Tempest Avid um also like to pass along my congratulations particularly to John uh the cast and crew obviously but also to John for composing such a wonderful School score and songs uh did a phenomenal John phenomenal job you did thank you I also want to congratulate our high school robotics teams for competing in their inaugural robotics competition these are some of the kids who competed last week it was a very similar competition to BattleBots at on the Discovery Channel our battle bat didn't last too long it was
046KO that's okay um but it was a successful inaugural event and uh thank you to the staff for supporting our students and uh stay tuned this is this is the start of the process do you have the picture of the other children and other teams you can go back just to see them and we'll talk about them even guess who they are if that's I think Shannon and John we'll talk about them those must be the swimmers uh so we are concluding we're in the final steps of the processes for the director of mental health and our director of school security so uh those will be coming forward uh in the near future to the board and we just finished American and we don't know about anybody recognize it but we just finished American Education
047week that really just recognizes those who serve in public education that certified staff and non-certified staff from many of our public this evening have talked about uh what a wonderful staff we have and actually the need for certified and support staff and the benefits that contribute to our students and education so I want to thank all those people uh for their contribution to their M Public Schools but also to the Venture that is public education and here in Connecticut and across uh our country uh Friday December 2nd is a national special education day uh that's commemorates the anniversary of the first Federal special education law which is now been reauthorized as disabilities active they'll be all affectionately know as Ida the the day for celebration is Friday we will be recognizing it with the support
048of some of our parents and the cdsp and ptos uh to include our the ELP program that concludes on Thursday so we'll celebrate that event on Thursday and if you want to celebrate trades we can do and celebrate on Friday Also uh just a reminder to the public Dr Mark Brackett I encourage you to comment uh in person uh if I could encourage this is a wonderful opportunity to see uh refer to him as Mark um in person he does a phenomenal job I would ask you bring a few of your friends along with your neighbors with you I don't think that they will regret the hour and a half or so that the the presentation will be at the high school um honestly it would be wonderful to fill that high school with our
049with our parents uh since Mark has been kind enough to come along and again thank you to the cdsp for for sponsoring that event Elementary conferences can you believe at parent conferences or next week uh so we start on on Tuesday and go through Friday uh November 29th to December 2nd uh report cards will be sent home on Monday thank you to Mrs McCammon and Mrs Libman for attending caps Cape convention uh this uh past weekend uh they can certainly speak to it themselves but uh appreciate them representing the board and represent darianne the theme of the conference was moving forward for all children the southern Fairfield County legislative breakfast is scheduled for December 2nd at 8 30. that's in Trumbull certainly the board chair and I will be attending there may be an opportunity
050for other board members at the end uh upcoming is a facilities committee December 1st curriculum the 8th and Communications committee uh will be reconvened on December 9th so on behalf of uh myself uh the central service stuff I'd like to watch everyone very happy and restful Thanksgiving and members of the board also and um to HR and our kids good luck on the turkey boat hope we wave thank you thank you we will move on to student representative reports um John and suaha I hope we didn't steal too much of your thunder talking about all the great things that have gone on you're totally fine thanks uh good evening everyone um as people have mentioned the play just ended so ghs wants to congratulate all the cast and crew of The Tempest for a wonderful
051set of three shows last weekend we are actually currently in preparations for the next show which will be Newsies now auditions are going to be held in two weeks and the performances will begin mid-march so stay tuned um again we want to congratulate the volleyball field hockey and swim and dive teams um I personally know a lot of people who have been working super hard to make that happen and you know you know making great sacrifices and some of the academic classes and I just I'm really proud of them um and finally uh for me at least uh the DHS band had an annual turkey drive this morning and the collected 75 turkeys so we're very proud of them thank you um also the Darien High School attended its first debate tournament of the season
052on November 12th at Greenwich high school we placed or we won one award in Varsity and three more Awards in the novice division so it's a great start to the season and there are also several food and toy drives currently going on at DHS including Toys for Tots and the annual Student Government canned food drive thank you both thank you for the update on those food drives and all this this town is driven and really run by an incredible group of volunteers it's nice to see it starting at such an early age and you carrying on volunteerism and service so thank you and extend our thanks to all your other students that you work with it's an incredible job thank you uh we'll move on to approval of minutes we have a motion to approve
053the minutes of the special meeting organizational meeting and regular meeting held on November 9th 2022 uh Mr moroney second by Mr Brown all those in favor I was unanimous other than Tara was not it was absolutely thank you we'll move on to board committee reports Mr Scenic uh the finance committee met last Thursday of November 17th we had a robust discussion related to the rising Surplus that was mentioned earlier and the associated account transfers that we have brought forth to the board with a consensus favorable opinion um I want to make it clear that I am in full support of how the process uh unfolded there is in any scenario that I would uh envision that we wouldn't present the most up-to-date information when dealing with a fellow elected board when seeking an appropriation so
054we're going to hear a lot more about the numbers behind that from Rich and I thank you for having them prepared for the board of finance and our finance committee meeting any other board committee reports Mrs McCammon the HHR building committee is thrilled to report that we have finished our third cycle of Appropriations so once again our many many thanks to um the folks that put all that together I see Dave Martin in the audience thank you Dave for all those numbers um but thank you to the board of Finance for calling together a special meeting to the RTM for squeezing us into their organizational meeting as you and um it was a lot of work on behalf our fellow government bodies did a lot of work to make this happen so that we could
055build our buildings in the most efficient way and not have separate roof product projects going on at the same time I see Kevin nodding so that's a sigh of relief from us and a thanks huge thanks to everybody so just to follow up I think Jill thank you for mentioning that but just a thank you to my fellow board members and the administration I think last week we were out almost every night at a different uh board meeting either participating or attending and um you know I think we work incredibly well with the boards that support the town whether it's Planning and Zoning or Board of Finance with all we have going on with uh Appropriations and building committees so thank you it's it's truly a team effort by a group of volunteers and especially
056for the administration after their day job to be out at night attending these meetings that quite often don't start till 7 30 or 8 and board members extending their day thank you uh it's a it's on top of these regular meetings and and all the work that's done by these board members it's it's another commitment from a volunteerism standpoint so thank you thank you so I there were other people I pointed to I I skipped it I'm sorry any other board committee reports good we will move on to presentations and discussions um we might have a presentation and discussion of [Music] 2023-2024 superintendent uh budget initiatives Dr adley [Music] good evening everyone um this is the annual opportunity to share a few things topics that that would be in the budget as characterized uh this
057year the safe and healthy Learning Community for our students and staff uh as we move forward we'll continue to be responsive to what we hear and also to the tax preparers in time and so at this point it's just I'm just going to touch on a few high level some of them are uh I can't really say they're all there are initiatives per se um but the budget priorities are things that will come out and that sort of uh frame the budget itself for the most part A lot of it is around the mental health and health of our students and that has already been and safety of our students that our board have been a discussion job for the last couple of months or so and that we've moved forward with with uh the
058region of expenditures and anticipated expenditures around ssos mental health director and those particular positions so you'll see that they're obviously embedded in the base of the budget as we move forward we also have um some Grant that would go away the Ida ARP and the specs education covet Grant so there's a few positions your have been aware of from last year that will be carried over I haven't named all the positions I will share that um I would reserve the right to amend this I would reserve the right to revise it to add to it to lead to it and so on so forth so this is not this is not by any means a full budget presentation it's just to get to provide that potential a little bit and give us a sense of
059what's coming in the for no surprises so the Strategic I've aligned some of the some of the topics around the Strategic goals as you can see there so the first one is really sort of addressing the teacher and substitute shortage referred some things this evening we have lived through this um we have a teacher contract that's tried to address it uh so you'll find that that this budget actually tries to support uh some of those shortages and even everything from from substitute journey to daily teacher shortages uh so there will be finances that are will go towards that spatial education uh special education needs that we have both from IEP needs directly and also that address the support of some of our specialized instructional program times that could be Excel program DLC fetch so on
060um those are those are some of the expenditures improvements at uh proposals that you'll see new courses and Club offerings the new courses this evening will come through it will be presented this evening ordinarily we'd like to go through the curriculum committee first of all it's just for the schedule but we'll go back to the curriculum committee before it comes back to the full board Mr tramberg will speak a bit more to that we have a couple of Club offerings to support at the elementary school and one of those being robotics that the boards aware of that would potentially transition in from the last couple of years of private fund and there's enrichment also at the elementary school obviously we want to support class size and enrollment so clearly the the budget will support that
061and Hanson enhancing some programming for fetch students uh there are some additional program that we would like to provide uh over at the fetch Academy so you'll see that there's a budget addresses that under Google two support the mental health programming we're well underway uh with that our our final stage here of of hiring a director of mental health uh this mental health program and also will support programming uh up at the high school in particular um uh the participation in the open Choice program I would ask the board uh to revisit that I think it's good for our students and our school Community uh the last discussion we had was a day at the budget process last year uh there where there was the opportunity to discuss the program and also potentially look at
062it in a different year so I think it's it's good for our kids and also helps some other other children but primarily I think it's it's good for our students and our school community so and that's supportive David revisit that uh the new teacher contract obviously that we have tried to recruitment of teachers retainment of teachers that was a priority for the board and negotiations and negotiating a contract clearly uh contractual obligations is a big part of any budget and um a significant part of the budget and this supports uh a teacher contract such as support chart teaching teachers and district and also uh supports the entertainment and retention goal five development enhancement systems of communication this is not a big expenditure in fact it's a very small expenditure but it begins to ask the
063question of exploration around a new student management system uh there are reasons to potentially look at a school management system it doesn't happen quickly uh so Alternatives particularly alternatives to Aspen of anybody's thinking about the school management system so our parents are probably familiar are familiar with with Aspen so we'll be starting a process of of reviewing this is a relatively small expenditure until and if we decide um that we are ready to go to propose a new student management system foreign school facility so we have the implementation as you're aware of the school security officers and the director of security uh offside um I'd say the operating budget and capital uh we have the appropriation for for the uh improvements to your security also uh we have additional support for facility support and that
064uh is one custodian at Oxbridge we've also suggested expanding uh the space for Fitch and the need for additional square footage it doesn't go outside of the particular building that's in at the moment but it expands uh some of the actual space inside number seven is not a it's it's an expenditure but it's one of the expenditures that's in the base it's simply uh the replacement cycle for technology that we normally do so there's nothing new in there in that capacity it's not a new expenditure it's simply uh stay on the course with the replacement cycle that we have so those are those are the talking points and I'm happy to uh answer questions or talk to any particular topic thank you Dr adley I'll open up the board for the questions or comments this
065is parents I have a question about the enhancing programming for Stitch is that something that you will need to come through the curriculum committee and be voted on or is it not it's not classes per site um my hesitancy is just it says hi to clarify that it's an extension of it's not a difference it wouldn't be a different class per se it might be an extension of a class or or a potential different section of a class but it's not it's not a new course it's not a new course critical thank you Mrs parent this is the character so just related to that that whether it's Fitch or some of your special education specialized instructional programs when are we going to hear about what those mean because those are you know they I know
066we often have in the first week or for December meeting we often have a lot of discussion about special education is that when we will hear what these line items mean again that with the I'll caveat that saying I understand that Fitch is not a special education program ultimately you won't hear about this until the budget is actually presented ultimately you won't hear about it until uh just prior to the Christmas Vacation okay so these are program changes or these are Staffing changes uh these well they're not they're not huge program changes they're productive predominantly support and staff [Music] there are no program changes to [Music] okay this is best um to follow up on that so as as Mrs Perrin and Miss McCammon were getting act some of these items kind of call for
067more expansive um explanations or presentations than others and are am I understanding correctly that the plan would be to address those when we go through the budget in its entirety or do you see some pre presentations um to kind of prep us for what is going on I'm happy to provide information that I can provide or I'm able to provide from this point some of these are continuing to be worked on at this particular point so the final decisions on certain aspects of them uh behind behind the suggestions aren't all played out because there's some decisions I got to make uh over the next couple of weeks but if there's something in particular that needs to be uh addressed and happy to address it as much as I can do you think what I'm hearing
068is we'd like to hear more about if there's other things other than space that we need for Fitch I think it's a tight calendar we're bumping up against one meeting in December while we can always try for a special meeting I think that becomes a challenge because we move into the holidays I I am concerned that we're a little behind in I think as we've gone through this process and earlier in the season we asked for an earlier overview and discussion around initiatives and understanding those initiatives and the impact on students and class size and teachers I think the budget the process really then gets into a discussion around the dollars and cents associated with it so a a uh it's a little frustrating in that I don't want long programmatic discussions to then go
069into the budget process I think we agreed to try and move some of that stuff ahead of the cycle so I would ask if we have to next week when we look at the agenda for the seventh we focus on what the the board we may need in terms of understanding some of these some programmatic changes I know we're going to hear about new courses in club offerings this evening and we're going to go over the enrollment report so I appreciate that um oh pause there Mrs parents I have a suggestion that maybe we have not heard an update about Fitch in a very long time um so if and fully recognizing fully recognizing that fish is not a special education program if there's any way to have um Mr Cabrera come next on the
070seventh and just I don't I know that's very short timeline but if we get it just so everybody maybe board members that haven't had any presentation at all about such so um I think it'd be very helpful if we're talking about enhancing programming what's there now so that we know what's going on Mr Brown thanks Duke um if I could have a few minutes here just to kind of back up a little bit and talk about process and talk about substance uh you know as duke just mentioned we've asked for a number of years now to have the process modified to have presentations to have information given to this board ahead of the budget season we've asked to not have budget items and program items be conflated and the two of them running together and
071learning about objectives goals policies what we're looking to do programmatically as part of the budget process it's gone on for a number of years it goes back to the open gov which I think is about four years ago where we fixed that as a budget item we had buses additional school buses get roped into what we're going to do as part of the budget process bring your own device I mean I applaud it but you know that was worked in as part of the budget wasn't done as a presentation or anything that was done and also the change with the assistant principles and the Cs facilitators so this has been going on for a while this board has asked repeatedly for the process to be followed and I think process and stuff so since I'll
072tie those together at the end but it's important I want to check through the list here addressing teacher and substitute shortages we just did the teacher contract so if there's that's not it if there's something else that's part of this plan I didn't see it presented special education needs including specialized instructions I'm not sure where that presentation is new courses and Club offerings I know we had a meeting canceled so we're going to get to that tonight I guess that's reasonable supporting class size enrollment that's also on the agenda tonight that's fine you know would have been preferred sooner as requested for a number of years enhancing programming for fish students no presentation as Miss parent noted support for mental health programming we did hear a lot we heard from outside experts there was a
073lot of information presented there was a thorough and robust process so I applaud the effort there it shows that we have that capability I would point out two problems in that process one there were a number of questions presented by a board member that have yet to be answered before we took action on that number two we took action in the post-vention phase when the experts told us we're not supposed to affirmly changed policy and yet we had to rush and put something in place so I applaud the fact that we followed process there I'm not sure why we had to do it in that stage and why it could be put off two eggs in a post-vention as instructed by the experts open Choice as you noted a couple moments ago Alan this board
074has heard nothing about it since we last voted in February the new teacher contract that's done easy for the budget initial planning for potential new student information first time hearing about it personally I think Aspen's terrible so I kind of like it as a parent but I have to say for board process not so much implementation School Security Office is done additional support for facility support Oxbridge we have heard this many times and we know this is coming given the larger size of the building so that seems fine expanded space for Fitch first I'm hearing about it replacement cycle for technology devices not sure what these technology devices are presumably this relates to the recent roll out of Technology done for the teachers and staff how'd that go did it work well are the teachers
075pleased with it is it giving them free time is it multiplying their ability to teach her students and complete tasks quickly I haven't heard that would have been a great thing to hear in a presentation before we start talking about budgeting issues so to tie it up that's process how we'd like to see things happen in a regular course which we did not see again this year and the reason process is important is because it gets to substance I'd like to hear advocacy why we need a new technology update device cycle I'd like to hear advocacy for why Fitch has been a success for certain students in our district and why we should expand it I'd like to hear the board explain to us why we want to you know have additional things be added
076and I want the board to come present that have all the information so we can have a rich robust discussion ahead so we can act quickly and promptly focusing on the budget priorities hasn't happened again Alan thank you thank you Mr Brown Mr Scenic yeah I'm going to follow up with a few minutes myself actually um 295 days ago we conducted a robust discussion and voted whether it was the right time to implement the open Choice program for this current School Year Karen Dairy as we all know the motion did not pass and as the meeting concluded our chairman reflected on multiple meetings and discussions by stating we've got a lot of lessons learned out of the process and how we look at programs on a go forward basis there's still a lot of questions
077about the program all right in terms of goals and objectives and how students move through and get ties get through High School so one of the key lessons that we learned last year was avoid rolling out new programs within a budget cycle discussions over open choice and bring your own devices swamped our traditional budget discussions among the various Town bodies and we were actually criticized for that uh by I believe a few RTM members if I'm not mistaken that we inexplicably find ourselves here again this evening talking about launching a new program previously voting down by this board in the midst of a budget cycle we've all read the local news headlines covering suicide crisis ongoing student mental health concerns a different student test scores heightened concern over school security and above average turnover among
078our Educators moreover ongoing strategic priorities which we heard about tonight Dei ruler HHR SEL the launch of electronic IEPs and the role of new technology among teachers and launching the communications committee which is board finds a priority will continue even tonight we like I mentioned we heard several parents related to shortages in special education these priorities have been discussed often and throughout the year but yet not until this evening's agenda was published did this board hear anything related to Dr Hadley's renewed interest in launching open Choice he didn't take the opportunity to discuss it at this Summer's day-long retreat nor was there any mention in his nine page board and goal strategic Plan update discussed at a recent October 25th board meeting [Music] open Choice has also been absent among numerous board discussions outlining its
079priorities and those are and I'll reiterate Duke mental health security facilities teacher retention and Communications at best I see this evening's unilateral move [Music] to to prioritize open Choice as a greatly misaligned against the budget priorities our chair has consistently laid out since this Summer's Retreat and at worst a case of willful dissonance by our superintendent with this board in conclusion and this goes to my um changing the the agenda I propose like last year in order to move forward with this program within this board's budget discussions it should require an affirmative vote from the majority of this board thank you Mr Ward may I respond to that okay we'll just we'll finish with board comments also I uh I appreciate the comments from the boards I I've I think going back I think I
080appreciate some of Mr ceni's history um I think with all we have going on I constantly worry about execution I constantly worry about um the resources that we have I think a perfect example is what we heard this evening from many folks about what they see our challenges um around uh Special Ed I think those are the things that we need to focus on um I think you know some of these goals in this document fall within the priorities that I've repeated several times in my board comments that I got from board members that we've discussed several times I think a little of it is is Back to Basics it's really supporting what these students need I feel we're nowhere near understanding what the remediation needs may be for our students and clearly you know
081there's some need and there's some serious work that needs to be done in short order around education um I think from an open Choice standpoint I just don't understand how that lands in this deck at this table at this point in time um you know we need to focus on our students and what our students need it's about prioritization it's not about the program and our priorities I just don't see that fitting into our priorities and I don't see us having the capacity to execute on that basically because our capacity needs to be directed toward the priority as we've outlined and that I've spoken to several times and I don't know how to make it any more clearer foreign comments Mrs best thank you um I also re-watched the February 1st meeting today which is
082uh was the public hearing and the vote on an open Choice um and and where we left it was now is not the time I I think that was so I I did expect that open Choice was coming back to be clear about that I didn't think it was gone for good um but to the question of timing I'm not sure that I expected today to be the day or November you know late November to be the time that we would come back this is something I I would have loved to have started discussing earlier in the process if we were to consider it for this next budget and I think the fact that we weren't able to get to it sooner is sort of a testament to why I feel like we we maybe
083don't really have the bandwidth right now to do it the way it deserves to be done um I I don't I believe in the program and I believe in the benefits that it could bring to our town and I would just want to be super careful that we do it when the time is right and we can offer to these students what they deserve as well and do it in the best possible way so I think at this stage of the game we'd be in a bit of a catch-up Rush game and again a question of capacity or bandwidth to be able to do it justice at this time thank you Mrs best Mrs parent I will just Echo what Mrs best said I think that I have tremendous faith that the open Choice program
084is thought out and it is that would benefit our students and it would benefit their wherever they come from um I think that the merits of the program are strong I see the see the value in it um I also see a district that's not really doing everything it should be doing very well um and that's on us that's on the administration that's on everybody but if we we are in a different place than we were 295 days ago a lot has happened in those 295 days um I was very supportive of the program last year and I advocated hard for it I don't know that I can do that again based on where we are right now thank you Mrs bear again I'm gonna pile on um but I also think that there are
085times when our priorities are things that we wish and there are times when our priorities come to us and I think this is a year when our priorities have come to us we have a lot of things we have to finish we have as we've talked about Dei and SEL um I'll be voting later this evening for the security guards I think that's an important initiative but I think doing that right really matters we've heard a lot about making sure that those folks are selected and trained very well and I have full belief that our staff are capable of that but I think it's really important that that be an area of focus in this time I also think that mental health needs a tremendous area of focus and as much as I like to
086believe that we can all do everything well I don't think we can and actually in some ways I think we do ourselves a disservice to pretend that we can all do everything we have to pick and choose sometimes and this is one of those years thank you the other board comments okay I guess uh so I don't think anybody would be surprised um I voted no last year on this and I voted no because I thought we needed to focus on our children's mental health and my opinion Remains the Same um I do not feel that we have really done all we can do as we many of you know here on the board I've asked question after question that never were answered I'm still not sure what the hesitation is to answer my questions
087in public um but I you know we have then moved forward with a director of mental health that you know does not actually interact with students and does not have any of the mental health professionals reporting to them I understand it does fill some State statutes I just am not sure if that I'm still not sure if that was the right person and if it was not thought out and be appropriate due diligent stuff so um I will continue to you know believe that we need to focus on our students mental health and until we successfully meet the goals that we have in front of us and they are a lot whether it's mental health new buildings school security we have a lot on our plate um until then I don't want to support any
088new initiatives thank you Mr smart the other board comments Mr Maroney since everybody else is going in may as well I I think I have kind of a differing view on why I don't like open choice because I don't think we'll ever get to a point where everything is perfect and it's the perfect time to roll it out I think we're always going to be busy I think we're always going to have different priorities and where we where we rate that I think our priorities is always going to be difficult what I think I really struggle with is that I want to make sure the community is behind us and without having presentation and discussions with the community we can't get community by it and I don't want the children who come from a different
089District to be used as political footballs and have the program be constantly in flux and question whether we're going to support it in future years and and to me that's what I don't want to have I want to make sure if we enter into this that we continue to do this and it's something we do and in order to do that there needs to be a community discussion about it and to have this come through literally at the last minute before we get our budget books in a month is a little too late for me thank you Mr Brown thank you um as a new board member I was not part of this board when open Choice was discussed make sure you get your just pull it closer too pull it closer thank you as
090a new board member I was not part of this this was on the table last year um however I can assure you that I was following along quite closely um and I was extremely supportive and quite excited about the program um and really disappointed when it didn't happen um I agree with Dr adley that the program seems to benefit darianne students maybe most of all while doing something really good for other students and and that is very exciting to me unfortunately circumstances have changed and our district is facing some serious challenges and not just in one area but in multiple and I share our fellow board members concerns that we just might not have the capacity um and I do hope that this discussion can come back to the table at a time where we
091have demonstrated metrics to say why we think we can be successful and what might have been barriers to why we couldn't do it at the time I really hope it's not something that we give up on um but I do think that that we have some serious concerns that need to be thoughtfully dedicated resources to right now thank you you know the board questions or comments oh sorry thank you uh I respect the board's opinions and um uh certainly on a degree we have a lot on our table and I want to thank my staff for the exceptional job that they are doing on a daily basis uh and a very challenging environment and charity very challenging time but I couldn't be Predator off them and I will say perhaps by not putting this on
092the agenda at this particular time sometimes as as we had short a little bit because how much information is out there how much do you talk about it um uh we're still refining something that we'll say that near I don't think of really anything here is Big programmatic um perhaps I should be more specific than Chan perhaps even more disclosure some of them are just ftes and staff and there's nothing that's a big programmatitude I wouldn't even say fidget Spike programmatic but perhaps since uh board members may or may not be removed from Fetch we bet and just getting up in that they'll be fine um but there's nothing else in here that is so dramatic um open Choice we've talked about for at least probably three years really um two and a half years
093or so but that being said the process is the boards I'm gonna go to the board that's the board I respect the board's opinion on Implement your budget your priorities right and hopefully they're the same as as mine and one supports the other that's that's the way the process works and that's fully respect that particular process um I have an ethical responsibility and a statute responsibility to present to the board what I think is good for our kids that's all I'm doing and I'll close the basically I'm walking into the history of who said what and what we're saying I guess I respect what you said but I will say this if you're going to attack my Integrity I will stand up for that I'm not willfully being dishonest and I take exception to that
094comment to be honest with you that being said um I respect the board the the word was not dishonest dissonance dishonest yeah you got me sorry I'm sorry I thought you said dishonest I might have mispronounced it the first time that's right but thank you thank you Dr adley I think I will reiterate what you said though I there was no one here that would deny the hard work and the dedication of your cabinet um I deal with them work with them on a regular basis as does Jill and Sarah and the rest of the board so there's there's nothing here that would shortchange the commitment and the work ethic of your team I think as you you spoke and you made your comments though I think you actually presented in a way the challenge
095that we're talking about this evening is you're saying on the fly as you're speaking and referencing our comments that there's not much from a programmatic standpoint that's part of these programs but we didn't know that until you just set it on the Fly and there's been no um there's been no presentation there's been no discussion so I think by now if everyone doesn't realize we're a very analytical metric driven town I think the board has moved in that direction and you know the board wants to see very specific decks information and financial information behind it and again I think it goes back to resources ability to execute and I think I I couldn't be more reinforced by the public comment this evening around some of the challenges or the headwinds that are being presented to
096us from special ed standpoint I have full faith and confidence in the special ed team on the ground I appreciate people acknowledging that there is an incredible teacher shortage there's an incredible shortage around Paras and all the services that go with what our children need and I I know from speaking daily to this cat from March to recruiting to Mrs Klein from and Scott from figuring out what our students need is it's there and it's happening it's just challenging but if we don't acknowledge it if we don't organize ourselves around a better plan then it doesn't get any better so with that I'll pause Mr C I I have a process question now because I am adamant that I don't want to see like a program Open choice in the proposed budget to avoid confusion
097to avoid continued conversation I think down since my meeting here was unanimous disapproval so the question is to Dr adley do we have to vote against the program or you will you just remove that item from your proposed budget book and again I would thank you Mr ceney but I want to if I can just make sure we're all on the same page here we're not voting against the program we're voting we're voting that we don't feel that shits our priorities at this point in time correct I think to some of the comments that the board made that we cannot execute it on the way we need to execute it there is a lot of support for the program throughout the community throughout this board we left a lot of open-ended questions there was no
098pickup of those questions there was no ask of us to continue to look at it through the course of the year when we left off with it and it just it can't be dropped on us in a deck as we're heading into Thanksgiving in the holidays and the budget cycle so my view is it's not about the program it's about our prioritization it does not fit with our priorities right now because we are not able to execute it the way we need to execute it foreign the questions directed Dr adley will you remove it from your proposed budget or shall we uh conduct a motion to around the program so the way it's meant to work right the way the budget process works the superintendent presents the budget to the the board the board then
099takes over that particular budget and we take ownership of the budget from there that's that's the way the process works and I will bring forward to the board I'm certainly listening to the board being respectful of the board and I'll bring more uh bring back the budget that I think needs to be brought back before the board Mrs parent I was just I just pulled up the motion from last year but we did that we don't need to talk well I'm still not clear with the answer I guess the the the question is Dr adley you've got unanimous feedback from the nine members of the board are you going to bring open Choice back into the budget cycle well I'm going to reflect on what the board has told me tonight and make a decision
100accordingly well I'm happy to move a motion forward because I don't see any need to continue the conversation I think we've given you and the administration the feedback around it so I'm happy to entertain a motion that we're all in sync that open Choice does not fit our priorities this is the camera rely on you what is that motion we should or Mr senior yeah it's going to be a favorable motion but um if you're not in favor please don't vote for it and it's the same verbiage as we used last year just with a different year so the motion which I'll make right now is to approve the darien Public Schools participation in the open Choice program beginning in the 2023 to 2024 school year do we have a second on that motion again
101this is in the favorable okay a motion to approve Darien Public Schools participation in the open Choice program beginning in the 2023-2024 school year do I have a second on that question I do not have a second so that motion does not carry so again it doesn't fit in with our priorities as we go into the budget discussion it's not programmatic and if the administration wants to bring it up from a discussion standpoint as we go forward into the new year I expect to hear from the administration on that thank you all Dr Radley to the cabinet to the board for the conversation around that any other additional conversations or thoughts around the budget priorities and considerations from the superintendent all right thank you we will move forward to discussion and propose new courses for
102Darien High School for the 2023-2024 school year Dr tranberg and Mrs Dunn welcome Mrs Dunn good to see you good evening everyone and Happy Thanksgiving just as Dr adley mentioned I just wanted to do a a process calibration so first two budget Cycles ago we moved the course approval process up forward in order to make sure courses were approved prior to our budget discussion that's going to happen next month we had a cancellation of our last curriculum committee meeting where they would have had an initial conversation that would not that the committee doesn't approve approve things they just moved them to you for the discussion but we didn't want to delay the process because then we would be out of sync with our budget meeting that is is coming up but we will go bring
103this back to our curriculum commuting in our December meeting prior to the approval so we can talk in more detail the other piece that we've discussed about at the request of some board members is well what's not what's not running where's the stuff that hasn't run so I've asked Mrs Dunn just to speak to a few of the courses that have been approved in recent history that have not run um they don't calculate into we need less FTE because the students are still taking other courses but just so you know what those courses are that are recently approved um and if you have other questions I can certainly mine that with the High School administration after and I'll let Mrs Dunn get us started thank you good evening good evening everyone thank you I'm pleased
104to be here to introduce three new courses that we're proposing at the high school and I thank Mr Keeler and Christian dockam and Christina Mauricio and Colleen Thompson for being here with us as well um before I ask them to come up and give you the details of those new courses I'd like to go through some of the slight changes in the memo um requesting some changes to current courses um I'm going to jump over the Spanish because it's related to the other course for a second and the AP Human Geography we have a request to open the enrollment to grade 11. currently the course is open only to grade 12. um the department has asked us to consider this and bring this to you um so that our seniors are not the only students
105who may opt for this course especially those who have a real passion for history um AP European History this is a very slight change currently we have 10th grade students who after a great experience in Western Civ and who have entered honors world studies in grade 10. students have asked for permission to pursue the AP European History it's an appropriate follow-up because the Western sip content is so closely related we'd like to formalize that in the student records so that students who are in honors will be all aware that they may pursue that request um the third course is our African-American and black studies and Latino and Puerto Rican studies course this was new uh the year before last and we were able at that time to run the two semesters as separate courses the
106state of Connecticut requirement um to run the course this year required that the course be a one-year course only three of our students registered for the course and I believe that was partially because they have so many other courses that they're pursuing in grades 11 and 12. so we would like to follow the state requirement offer it as a full year course but also separate the two semesters and allow students to take one or the other and the final request is the Neuroscience course when first proposed about 15 years ago the course was not proposed with a laboratory period and we would like to add a lab period to the class um it is the only lab science in the building that doesn't have that extra period and we'd like to have it line up
107the course content has changed during those 15 years and we would love to see our students have that opportunity to pursue lab in that class um the Spanish um Miss Mauricio is going to talk to you about the new course proposal in order to meet the needs of the new course proposal we would really need to rename the current Spanish 5 class to distinguish it from the new course so this name change is dependent upon your decision to move forward with the other Spanish class so I'm going to ask Christina to step up and talk about the Spanish program and then we'll follow up with the other information foreign I'm going to start with um the renaming of our current uh Spanish five class and then I can talk about the new Spanish five class
108because they go hand in hand in order to create 200 um two years of 300 level Spanish options for students who would like to continue their language study past level four um we have proposed a new course in title 300 Spanish five Hispanic culture through ART this necessitates a name change for the current Spanish 5 course to reflect more accurately the current curriculum which uses film as the content Focus students in this course are learning about the history and culture of Spanish-speaking countries through the medium of film they watch films of the Spanish-speaking World set North America Latin America and Spain which provide the historical and cultural context for developing their language proficiency and reading news articles and works of literature that are aligned to film themes and topics that provide the backdrop of the
109settings of these films lessons require higher level thinking skills such as expressing opinion analyzing predicting and comparing and contrasting in the target language and students continue to master more sophisticated vocabulary and grammatical Concepts and are assigned a substantial amount of written and oral proficiency tasks both the film and art courses will provide options and choice for students for advanced Spanish studies at the 300 level Juniors who select this course or the Spanish five course with an art Focus may also develop their skills with one additional year of Spanish 300 and may choose to enroll in AP Spanish language as senior so this is an additional Pathway to an AP course by the time they graduate um so that's just a renaming of a course that we currently have we're not changing anything in the curriculum
110we're just changing the name to reflect what is currently taught so in tandem with that we're proposing a new class uh the prerequisite for um Hispanic culture through the Arts is Spanish for Spanish for honors or AP Spanish language and culture and you have behind you or in front of you I'm not sure if you can see on the screen this lovely chart that I made my colleagues know that I love a good chart um and you can see where these two courses fit together so Spanish five oh yeah zoom in that's great uh Spanish five culture through film is the current course that we have with the new name on it it's in pink and Spanish five culture through ART is the new class that I'm proposing that we are proposing excuse me in
111yellow so you can see where these courses fit in the multiple Pathways that we offer our students when they come to us at DHS um this provides a 300 level Spanish option for students who want to pursue a Spanish course in their senior year other than an AP course and additionally students who complete AP Spanish languages Juniors who do not choose to pursue AP Spanish Literature May opt for this course as a Spanish six offering in their senior year the reason why you see five and six there with the same course title is just because it will be a different designation in Aspen depending on when the student has taken the course it's not an additional course on top of what we're offering it'll just be how the course is designated in Aspen um this
112the um Hispanic culture through the arts class will concentrate on the art of the Spanish-speaking World which include Visual Arts architecture literature selections and music to increase students knowledge and appreciation of the Arts while further developing their Spanish communication skills at the intermediate to advanced level this course will cover works of art beginning with prehistoric cave paintings of Northern Spain all the way through today's Hispanic influences on global problems so thank you it's always good to have a chart and I appreciate the way you walk through that so thank you very much um any questions while you're up there any questions from the board specific to what just went over around Spanish not for tonight but I when you're back for the curriculum committee we don't typically forecast enrollment super precisely but I think it'd
113be helpful to see some general enrollment Trends on what you're expecting with this change please so I think too to clarify that um the wonderful thing about this is that our students many students are landing at DHS in Spanish 3. and so the need for this course in our typical 300 level sequence it allows our students who don't choose to go the AP route which is wonderful and fine um to have a course as a fourth year in their language so we'll go on to American Sign Language um which is another new course um Christina is going to present that to you as well um and uh we're excited to offer this this is also considered a World Language so we're going to I'll do this so American Sign Language or ASL um is asl1
114which is the course that we're proposing this year for next year is designed to provide students with a language learning experience that is different from other more traditional language courses ASL one and what I hope are more advanced levels of this language is interest in the program develops will be open to any student that wants to become proficient in the second language whose path to proficiency does not require the development of the morphological and phonological skills that scorpion languages do in keeping with the dispositions of the vision of the graduate this language will also connect our students to the culture and language of the deaf and hard of hearing community and often underrepresented and unseen population here in Connecticut and in the United States as a whole there are no prerequisites for American sign language
115because it is an introductory course offered to all students and it would be in the same category as other introductory novice level courses along with all other level one courses currently open to students at DHS and asl1 will also give students an additional path to completing their one-year World Language requirement and further continue their study in more advanced courses in the future and I prepared this before I went to Boston for the American Council on the teaching of foreign languages annual conference I was there for about a week and I attended 25 different sessions and they all had an American Sign Language interpreter and so if we're talking about career Pathways for our students when they leave DHS I mean I talk to almost every single one of them as much as I could and
116said where did you go to school and who employs you because I might have an ASL program at my high school next year so I was blown away the keynote speaker was um Chef Jose Andres who's currently doing a lot of work in Ukraine he checked in with everyone on zoom and right next to him on stage was an ASL interpreter so it was almost like serendipitous that these two things were happening at the same time so I just want to make a plug for how visible this is in um in our in the current world thank you very much questions comments by the board Mrs McCann um yeah sorry um again fine to do it when you're back with a curriculum committee um but just talking about sort of this in a larger context
117I hear you in terms of potential job preparation and I see in the in the notes that there could be potentially a second series but today we're approving just one so where would that sit in the life cycle of a student how would we think about it in terms of you know it's just a one credit course what what else you know how does it relate to the rest of their student experience it would help me to see that in a greater context um I can say so about that now okay sure okay so um the reason why it's open to all students is because we've had interest from lots of different groups of students and their families particularly with students who want to switch a language want to take an additional one but also
118from families whose students are struggling to meet the one-year World Language requirement because of the program that they currently have or that they have had since middle sex and going into DHS so um it's IT addresses the need that we have that some the need that some students have but it also addresses the interest for some students who are looking to learn this language because they see it they they see it at concerts they see it when they watch TED Talks I mean they it's it's very visible and it just seems like the right time to propose it and moving forward as those students I I would imagine that most of the students that enroll will be freshmen and sophomores and I will think about that more as I prepare for my February board update
119um but as they enroll and want to move on the hope is that the program will grow [Music] and will you beg my Indulgence for a second you talked very um clearly and compellingly about the connection to the deaf Community but ASL actually serves a lot of populations of folks who are non-verbal so I was wondering if Shirley would just take a second to talk to us about some of the other populations who are also served yes [Music] and I did get a chance to speak to Christina also it also um as many of you know really does speak to non-verbal and an opportunity for students and young children who don't have vocal speech to be able to communicate using um American Sign Language it goes beyond using a technological advice also because it's something
120that's very portable it's with you you can be not have to reach for device uh so I think to our non-verbal students or students who really don't have not yet been able to demonstrate Proficiency in oral communication it gives them a form of communication also many of you may be familiar with um many young parents use it with children during their toddler years it's actually many of you may have friends or yourselves and used it with young children prior to language prior to two years old being able to have expressive and receptive language we also I think Miss McCannon's pointing to the notion that we believe that language begets cognition and if you're really looking for children to learn having a language whether it's an oral language or a sign language begets cognition and that's
121why we're very committed to using it um for for child development thank you okay Katie um thank you and thank you for this um I'm incredibly excited to see this um on tonight's materials um it's been something that has been hoped for and asked for by a large population for a long time um the hearing impaired Community is an obvious one but we also have a significant portion of students who have language-based learning disabilities we have students who give up their um their world language classes in the Middle School in order to receive services and then face challenges to pick it back up in high school to be able to be competitive on college applications and um this is a wonderful opportunity I'm so excited to hear it um and there is interest for it
122yesterday the Middle School hosted their very first meeting of an ASL club that was organized by a student so you certainly have Rising people of Interest I just want to ask how you how you might project the growth of it at what point do you think that if you offered year one next year with the following year do you think you'd be able to offer your one and two do you have an idea on how you might grow the program yes I do and it will the the nice thing about presenting my board update in February is that while we may not have full registration numbers I will have an idea of where students will fall at that point and then I will be able to project out into the future but just like when
123we introduce Mandarin at the middle school at this time two years ago to have it start this year at this time last year to have it start this year um Dr Dahlstrom and I presented a plan for where we would see the program potentially go and I can do that for February absolutely Dennis and and building on that I think so my my question is why Darien High School and not Middlesex middle school or Elementary School I don't know who's gonna answer but that's my question why why wait until 10th grade if we can do it in fourth or seventh if I may just answer that Miss Marty we have a need that um since the Connecticut state department has required that all students have at least one year of a language there are many
124students we have currently who would like to really participate I think Christina said earlier on in her presentation um because ASL does not have a phonological piece to it or morphology to it it really gives access to students who may want to require a required World Language as they begin high school so the reason for starting in ninth grade would be to accommodate those students to meeting their requirement of graduation um Christina did have a chance to study other districts and how they phased in different levels of of grades she studied Rye City school district and the program over there as well as Greenwich and then maybe some other districts also New Jersey thank you and to New Jersey so you can start in ninth grade and then you can move backwards to eighth grade
125as you move upwards you can look at whichever how to really have students access it so sometimes you go forward and backwards at the same time so if I may ask it as the future at Future meetings if we could see both forward projections 10 backwards [Music] thank you Sarah sorry Mrs parents all right thank you are there um faculty and staff members that are fluent in ASL or would we be bringing in new people my hope is to hire someone who is a member of the deaf Community to come and teach our students it's actually I learned this week that it is often frowned upon for a hearing person to take an ASL teaching job interesting so my hope is to hire someone from the outside to come in interesting thank you thank you
126very much you're welcome thank you for the detail and the level of information uh and the last new course is the guitar Ensemble of course at half of the high school I'd like to sign up for is the adults I'll invite Colleen Thompson to come forward you're not going to play [Music] yeah guitar is not my instrument the piano is not as portable so we are proposing a new course for DHS called guitar Ensemble uh this would be a one semester course open to any student who wants to learn the guitar for the first time or continue any previous guitar studies in a group setting the music department members believe that we should offer more options for students who want to get involved with music at DHS all students in our general music classes are
127exposed to strummed instruments through a ukulele unit that we do in fifth grade and we have recently revised our scope and sequence for the Middlesex music Explorations class and I presented that last year at a curriculum update to include a unit of guitar in each grade so all students at MMS who choose music Explorations will have some experience playing guitar as of now we only offer traditional Ensemble classes such as band chorus and Orchestra and music electives including music theory and music technology we feel that a guitar Ensemble fulfills the need to offer for students who might not have participated in a traditional ensemble in the past and might not typically choose to enroll in a music class it might allow them an opportunity to take music at the high school level we're designing this
128class as a guitar Ensemble so that students at any skill level can take the class and play at their our own level so if there are students who enroll who already have experience playing the guitar they could take on a more challenging part or they could learn to play in a different style while students who are new to the instrument can start with simple chords and Melodies this also opens up opens students up to songwriting and composition and you know again I didn't prepare this part of my uh presentation previously but talking about health and wellness throughout the meeting tonight I think there's a lot of evidence that um you know music and the Arts and participation in that can really add to the health and wellness of people in general and students as well
129so um I I do think that this course could be beneficial for our students and it is accessible to them as a one semester course and potentially could even be repeated as an ensemble class because um it's not leveled so um just like a student could take band Orchestra chorus every year they could essentially take guitar multiple times and have a different experience based on the repertoire that we choose and the other students who enroll in the class so um that is the gist Colleen thank you very much I'll just add that I got to sit next to you at the last concert at which my daughter participates in and my hats off to the programming um not to get personal but my daughter who has special needs is in chorus and she's flourishing challenge
130reading but learns the music and belts it out on no particular note or tune and the inclusiveness of the group there and and how they look after each other and the performances that they do are extraordinary so thank you very much thank you word questions or comments Mrs apparently I just wanted to say thank you for incorporating the vision of the graduate in your description I found that was very helpful to tie it back to what we are all working so hard on now you all are all working so hard on say thank you I actually mentioned that to um Ellen as we were talking about this it was it was really helpful to tie it back it's it really helped the vision of The Graduate come alive to see how a music Ensemble can
131appeal to those different tenants I guess my only question would be would we need to hire another teacher for this as well so we don't believe so um we we offer semester classes and so we have some flexibility based on enrollment and how we run the classes whether we run two in one semester or multiple sections so we believe we have the capacity within the department now to cover the semester class in the skill absolutely yes absolutely yes and and we we have some time to do some professional development and it's actually on it's on the agenda for January and February to do some uh group group guitar thank you Mrs McAllen you mentioned uh you know being able to access another cohort of students who aren't currently necessarily taking music today I'd love to
132see that a little bit numerically again when you come back to the curriculum committee um sort of what percentage of our students are in music classes what's that distribution look like and how are we starting what is it what does this add to the program sure from a numbers perspective okay thank you thank you very much any other questions sure this is done yes sure Mr moroney going back to AP human geography and AP human history I guess those two and then I'll touch on a couple um last spring we heard a lot from our students who felt there's too much pressure in in having AP classes and and dealing with that and to paraphrase uh a Field of Dreams if we build it they will come and opening up 11th opening up European history
133to 10th graders opening up uh that uh a human geography to to juniors are we putting too much pressure on our students to take these more classes it's a fair question Mr moroney and um I think it's a conversation that we need to continue to have between our counselors our students and our families um you know we've we've batted around this concept of limiting the number of AP courses that that a student can take we have exceptional students at Darien High School who are ready and capable of taking multiple AP classes and so I do think it's an individual conversation um I'm not a huge fan of making rules that I'm then going to break because I've you know we say that you may take only three and then we have a student who who
134for whom their academics is really everything that they are focused on who should be taking five AP classes and so um I really do think it's the importance of these ongoing conversations around well-being to say we need to have balance we need as adults and we need it as students as well so thank you uh I have a couple other questions I can't go um I'll skip that one for now the Neuroscience um again going back to so these two kind of tie in together I guess well they're not related but they are so the Neuroscience based on an extra lab is there any concern now the scheduling will be too tight to have an extra lab and take up a class that we won't be able to take the Neuroscience class with the lab
135for that constrict if you understand it may constrict a little bit but every other science class at the high school has these too many periods as a lab so it's a fairly common balancing job for our counselors okay fair um and then my last question was on the African-American and black studies on Latino and Puerto Rican studies and excuse my ignorance on this but the state statute is we just have to offer the class the students don't have to take the class that's right so it must be offered as an entire year but we can also offer it as two semester classes okay thank you good question thank you Mrs worm um I actually have a follow-up on that and I may have misheard you but did you say that class was only offered to
136seniors uh that class is opportunities right yes and is there and but you said that didn't have a lot of people signing up they had because they have other classes is there a reason is is it not appropriate for freshman sophomore um I think the the belief is that we would want to have students concurrently in American history at least um to align with the content of the course can you please just refresh my memory there was a good enrollment when it was a semester class right yes yeah one semester ran with it with a 15 students and it was wonderfully received yet Dr tranberg and um Ellen um just in my continued theme of priorities um we offer a lot up at the high school it's a high performing District I love to your
137point of we need to stress the individual conversations with these students we need to constantly think about the stress and the anxiety with these students but I'd like to also hear at some point in time a little more detail as we're adding or we're changing some names here but we're adding but is there anything we're taking away like does the process include looking at there's a lot of need to have there's a lot of nice to have I think as we continue to add to the district but it's always true back to um you know making sure what we're offering has the right enrollment in it has the right focus in it and you know I hear internally and externally you know we have more offerings than some small colleges and universities which I don't
138think is a bad thing I get the feedback from folks that go off to college from this district and they feel incredibly prepared um at the schools they're at so that's kudos to this District but I just ask you to always think along those lines it's always good to do an evaluation of is there anything that can come off and I guess you should know that when we register the students vote with their feet in many ways right and so we look at those numbers if a course only fills to nine we put that aside and asked the students to re-register so um it it there we do remove courses from the catalog um so the ones that have come up just for example um this semester or this year are contemporary poetry hasn't run
139for five years it's coming off the books um page and Stage which was one of the new courses years ago that Francis brought forward in the um second semester literature course um writer's Workshop which was replaced previously with writing with purpose so courses do come off that are no longer being selected [Music] um thank you because that really muddies the water when they go to register if one student signs up they're not making a good choice so yeah thank you for the info okay appreciate it thank you thank you we'll move on to presentation and discussion on October 1st District enrollment report and projections Mr Michael Zuba from slam collaborative [Music] thank you for uh for bearing with us through the meeting um appreciate you being here thank you [Music] all right make sure I
140can get the microphone and clicker set up um it's good to be here I've went back to my notes the last time we had presented and done the enrollment projection update was back in the uh the fall of 2020 so right when first year coming back from covid um had a lot of assumptions talked a lot about the direction enrollment was going um as I get through tonight's presentation it's good to see that our projections had performed well overall but we were going to give a full update of everything that was in that last report and looking ahead 10 years of what the enrollment looks like for Darien Public Schools so um without further I do we'll get right into it um so part of our process for developing enrollment projections going back about 15
141years has been looking at a high medium and low model that's what we're looking at on the screen um back in 2020 we identified the medium model as the one that we thought was the best fit for the data that we were looking at hand it turned out to be the case we were within four students overall um for the entire K-12 from our projection two years out um K performed very well that's something nandarian that we've been I'm pretty proud of is that arcade projections performed really well however we did see a greater level of immigration especially in the lower elementary grades um than we had originally projected when we looked at the actual data so that's something that we wanted to unpack a little bit more um and then we saw a little
142bit less enrollment over in the middle of high school so that's something we also wanted to look at a little bit more as part of this update um getting into the overall school performance looking at the individual elementary schools going two years out they were on par for what we expected overall except for Oxbridge that actually came in nearly 60 students High I know we always joke in our architectural operation bill that they will come especially during a pandemic when we had a housing boom we even had a more really optimistic projection they're trending to the higher side and still with the different circumstances that came in it was one of those numbers that arrived much higher than what we had projected overall um but but the other elementary schools were on parts and certainly
143was two years out before we have projected there huge data point that came out in the past year and more such status finally coming out and spent the latest part of as part of the covid Staffing and you know everything that went with all the different demographic and enrollment shifts that Google brought about the country but overall durian grew in the last 10 years from 2010 to 20 20 about 3.6 percent um what's not counted in there is the movement that we've seen post sort of the census so as the census was being fielded throughout 2020 especially in through the spring um this data is silent to any of the movement that's happened since then coming out we made the American Community survey which is kind of like a branch of the census it's going
144ahead and providing estimates that hopefully are proving accurate and kind of bridge that Gap not only in their ambul across all the communities that we work it in order to be able to get a better understanding of what the current profile in each Community looks like kind of post-covered looking at Birds going forward I think one of the things that really jumped out is darianne like so many communities throughout Connecticut was on a pretty steady decline birth-wise even leading up to covet you had a little bit of a bird bomb in the dip um but the last two years of birds 21 as well as 22 which is a partial year that we extrapolate out for um we're seeing some pretty big tough kicks of birds overall there I could squint and see but I'm
145sure you have a copy in front of you I won't try to fake what I think the numbers are but I believe we ended up in 22 2022 around 263 birds and that was based on January through September and we extrapolate out on a historic average for the last three months um it's been a pretty reliable methodology but I think the takeaway here is that the last two years we've seen a birth uptick um we did look at some different demographic models using females of child during age for the census as well as fertility rates but they all overshot um when we back tested those so we relied back on models should use to project the three different birth lines you'll see there in the blue green and red pill forward but really they're following
146the last six or seven years historic Trend there but it's not demographically based just due to that big disconnect the Census Data I will say that in your package the chart on the upper right I have to replace that there was an older one in there the newer one reflects the one that's in this copy and I sent it reflects the uh year-to-date for uh January all the way through October actually um so for the home sales there we're seeing that the earlier extrapolation was a little bit off um so now for 2022 we're seeing a bit more of a total sale dip um that's aligning with some of the other data points that I checked on what your sales really keeps high in 2021 um 2022 we're seeing it across the board a lot
147of communities seeing a little bit of a downturn there partially Supply driven and partially price driven um as well as you know you know we're seeing some volunteer utility in The Lending Market um but your median sale price and that's running through September is just below 1.7 million for um single family homes that's up 34 um versus the pre-candemic number um so that does begin to have an impact we're all on just a total number of sales for the community but overall the last three years they're still elevated from where you were really the prior seven or eight years there getting back to you know three Great Recession levels in the early 2000s for Total Home Sales there um so that's definitely have to determine the community um working through your housing permits um what
148you'll see is where we have the darker colored yellow or mustard those are indicative of multi-family units and there's a little bit of a lag so these are reported through the dec-d you'll see in 2022 where they don't break down single family or multi-family we just have a great bar there and that does not account for any demolitions or demolition lag about 10 months there if they look at that data and um but overall with talking with the town planner we're still seeing that trying to continue where a single family we're having a lot of demos are cleared out to rebuilds so it's kind of bending out where we use coming through those multi-family complex which will touch on in the next couple of slides so looking at the recent under construction or plan for
149alcohol just typically the housing pipeline we work with the town planning department to be able to get status update Jasmine books into our production update um identify the location of all of those units assign them especially for the elementary schools assign them to an intended zone so we have an idea of where we're going to feed that at the moment and obviously for the Civil high school they all end up school so we don't have to do that for there but what we'll really focus on here are those larger units you recognize that there's some smaller developments typically a half dozen or so smaller units they've had them over time they get phased in providing a better terms for rejection model overall so what we do is we kind of focus on some of those
150external ones that are the large scale so this is the October 26th 2022 update um from the planning and zoning department looking at the total projects that are in that pipeline categorizing them done by recently completed those that are partially or still under construction and those that have yet to be built are the three main categories and then working through that we've identified the ones that have the greatest influence on generating school-aged children so as we look at some of those multi-family developments we want to ensure that we're accounting for those and looking at the construction schedule we're looking at what we do with the construction schedule Parts there and identifying one of those kids are likely to come online so this is just a list of the latest information talking about the 116 condo
151units at the corporate District that feeds into tokenique um looking at the facing for that with about phase one basically complete or other construction scheduling completely late in 2023 and then the Latter-Day numbers 122 apartment units at vary Commons and speeds into Royal District we're looking at a phase one there expect to be completely this year with the major completed by mid-year next year and then we had 50 units approved at of heights almost not expected to be completed any sooner than the fall of 2024 and then about 60 units over at three-part Parsons Drive which is really an opposite version of tokenique um and I believe that was appealed but that was recently resolved in the last few weeks or so so we do have that accurate accurately reflected in our updates there and
152just what we're looking at student generation from those so look we use various housing multipliers in order to be able to get our new generation out um I've been combating units and there again for about seven years of data I have to take a five year average of students that are generated at the multi-family here um and then compare those with two different sets of multipliers in order to be able to get that estimated student generation of folks showing on the chart here I believe that's a 160 degrees 265 units there we go and then we break it down according to the ESI multipliers based on whether they're going to be elementary middle or high school so that's kind of our our support for those units overall um so what we're doing for these units
153is based on the bit of information we know anything if you're doing any kind of construction residential Civics School construction everything there's a little bit of flux um so we try to be mindful of that but also try to ensure that we have a realistic schedule as we're facing these in a lot of them units based on what we're seeing or getting paid in I'll call us sort of the midpoint of our projections and a mom so as I get into the individual Elementary School projections you'll see where we're having the greatest impact from some of these developments in that last sort of five or ten years in that window there are factored by uh so I'll ask you to pause there for a moment sure and uh put a lot of information a lot
154of good data thank you but I'll I'll ask you to pause there I think it's a good natural break and see where there may be some board questions or comments can you just do that last slide more slowly you and Rich can compete for who can go through the numbers this is our finance guy over there Rich wins so what this is this is looking at um okay so these are these are the major developments thank you all right so these are the developments that we sort of add to New Generation to alcohol so when we're adding external students outside of our mathematical models from our demographic so it's when we know we're going to have students generated from these developments um this is what we're developing for what we'll call our estimated number of
155students so we have 163 total students overall we have them assigned to each development we have those developments you geographically located um so we know what elementary schools they're going to feed into and then we have them disaggregated by our middle and then pies or two other categories so we're looking at about 80 K5 students um 35 middle school students and just under 50 high school students and what we're anticipating is that the first students from the lease for development so likely start impacting our projections somewhere in the 2324 window school year window all um so what we do is we go through it and we phase in so we're ultimately reaching and I don't remember exactly what year it was but I think it was year eight um we're phasing in that 163 students
156by year seven or eight I'm pretty sure every year eight so saying that construction is completed which of occupancy or issue um everything to either leased up and um we'll get families in there and then ultimately they come to what we call sort of maturity where you start to get a student generation right there's students moving in or some of the younger grades they may be students that are born in the units um but that it would really fall towards the end of that window but that's where we start adding these students into our connection and we added into all three models okay and to get to those total students generator you have dairy and specific multipliers so what you're saying is you take the total number of units you've got some specific uh multipliers
157that are based on Trends in Darien and that's how you get to the actual generated numbers yeah use it based on bedrooms [Music] as well as type of units or it's a mark whether it's a market or affordable looking at a percent that is Affordable and then um we'll dive into it then generation in town I believe the two top strategies are the heights as well as um Avalon and then I basically augment that with two different accessible parts of the purchase but they're not specific to this town obviously that's why we look at it locally and then we can kind of look at the numbers and see what makes sense from that standpoint thank you could you do me could you do us a favor I think you said you're going to update one
158other slide is there any way you can update this slide to put the school next to the development name yeah I think this is a good recap yeah and gives us a good Overview at a high level so I think that people looking at it I mean most people know but I think if you could just add the school that's associated with the elementary school yeah yes Mr ceni so I I understand the multiplier effect by um yep looking at the number of newly constructed Apartments but is there any second derivative derivative study in which you look at typically the empty nester that you know I know uh Corbin especially is is marketing to you know where they move out of a home with four bedrooms basically downsides and then create a an open home
159that might be more attractive to um you know families with young children is there any way to analyze that or I mean I guess you'd have to go back to Avalon and see if there was yeah you would have that new sense of who's selling and moving it's yeah but I do agree with the premise that that does happen sometimes um where you have something opens up a town and it's suitable friendly as you're attractive and then that speeds up the availability of homes that would be the traditional family home I'll call it right adding more to the market there um which it does seem like the market has been limited based on Supply we're seeing it a little bit extreme but um to try to go through and analyze that that was that would
160be a technical problem I mean um you know if you look at two of the more more recent or the look at Corbin I look at the heights I mean they're they're being age targeted um away from families if you will and you're like a Ken's it two years ago that was age targeted now I know there's still kids there but at the same time they are targeting people moving at you know downsizing empty nesters so it's gonna be interesting to watch that play out I guess yeah any other board questions on the section Mr Brown I'll just say the numbers here really quick and um sort of the slide before this one and just doing some quick math so it looks like across the middle school the high school and Elementary it's really about
16112 kids per grade and then just want to do quick and dirty between royal two projects in Royal one and tokenic you're looking at say eight per grade going to Royal and four going to Coconut just based on the grid and we're going to get that detail when we move forward to the schools I I haven't rolled into the entire regular projections Perfect all right thank you taking a threats all right thank you yeah sure all right um this is your and it's kind of interesting your yours is much different than when you plot out the state or a lot of other communities so this is your 74 what is that 50 years yeah yeah tonight we'll just call it 50 years I know all too well so this is looking way back and then
162look and then bringing it to to kind of the present day so what we see in the present day and I think is kind of just gonna last like 15 years um really that was everybody else has had a big dip here so when we go and describe demographics in the larger scale looking at either the county um State um Nation you always have this um boom then you have the big embossed and you have this like Echo baby boom and then you always have like a baby boss some yeah I never had that um so when you kind of peek you've just had a little bit of slow decline um so very interesting with me doing demographics all the time that you're one of the only communities that have seen that in um but
163what we did see is people really close to squint with just a little bit of a dip that first year of Kobe back in 2020 and then the enrollment has kind of rebounded a little bit to get back on that trajectory so this is something we've just been tracking for a number of years um this is just to look at your K-5 enrollment um you had your you brought out a little bit of a decline yet you thought about in 2020 we had a bit of a rebound and right now you've been around 2100 or so um K5 students overall um taking a deeper look at that shape by in a moment so this is a chart that we didn't have last time we had death migration for the elementary schools so when we compare
164grades one through four versus grades two through five the next year um we track and call that kind of a net migration analysis it's looking at those cohorts and how they perform near here it's um going back historically the red bars below the line show that you've had that out migration up until 2019-20s so in 2019-20 you had some vetted migration dropped off a little bit in the first year of covet shot up in 2122 and then dropped back off a little bit but when you look back historically um you really didn't have a pattern having several years in a row of an immigration you were moving in the opposite direction of Natural Health migration um so when we did our modeling in 2020 um when we were lower on the elementary schools we were
165factoring in a bit of that net out migration at the store of the attic urge to occur and you bought the trend and you had that immigration um so that explains a little bit of that disconnect for those campaigns at the lower elementary grades over that time and it's really that something from the housing market and bringing in a lot of new families really helped us kind of talk that current going forward um this is a look at your individual Elementary School historic enrollment and um over the last three years we've had some enrollment growth we'll see the biggest from the road I described earlier was in Oxbridge that's the aqua colored line that's there on that upward trajectory since 1920 um but you'll also see that we've had some you know different variations there
166with some modest growth of token even just below three percent homes has been pretty stable and Royal on decline at about 80 and can be declined at about 2.6 over the last the last three years so some different fluctuations there across the different um elementary schools this is just the look at your middle school grades um you know from your recent Peak you've been um declining but ever so slowly um to get to your present involvement there and looking at the high school it's really been very stable over the last few years um about 1425 students averaging over the last five years but um really stable enrollment overall but you look at that long-term trajectory and it's just been a slow and steady climb and you've kind of flattened off over the last few years
167there this is our our immigration analysis so um what we do here to be able to generate these stat bar charts is um we do a tracking of student IDs so every year I request detailed information um through your data services and I.T are looking for your PSIs extracts where we can then track students by their state ID completely Anonymous I don't know what they correspond to except that what grade they're in but what it does is we can actually track new to District students by identifying whether or not students were in Darien public schools at any point in time in the recent um you know pass prior to that school year um so it gives us a really good indication of new to District students is what we call it um so what jumps
168out to me when I look at our entirety of all your great movements with that little chart in the upper left with the elementary and green on the bottom of the stack bar the blue is represented in the middle the mustard color is representing the high school so I'm getting into that 2122 um you had a lot of immigration almost 250 new districts students on what what surprised me when I went through and I ran it back then I think that's 17 and 18 you had a very similar number uh albeit you had more elementary students in 2122 but you still had a lot of net in like a lot of new District students there um what also jumped out to me was in 2223 that number also dropped back a little bit um so
169you have one of your lowest numbers that second year um but when we begin really kind of looking at those we're seeing especially in the Elementary grades in that middle barge that bar chart there is that the lower grades have the most due to District students and we only do this for first and fifth every kindergartner we assume is new to the district so we don't go through the process of tracking that but really looking there and seeing those larger stack bars in the lower elementary grades um shows us where we have additional students over what we would have normally had just through our natural growth process looking at the middle school the numbers there have been very steady over the last few years just under 50 booster students there I've been looking at the
170high school numbers have been very steady there over the last couple years as well this is taking all this information including the home sales I described earlier which we get through the warmth based on address and then um address matching the new District students to look at the hot spots to see if there's any correlation there between where three students are and um the housing sales hotspots so what we see here is that the risk of correlation but also that we have many more home sale hot spots than we do due to District students and when you really kind of dive in especially the some of them in the center town it's just the type of housing that we're flagging for the hot spot analysis um to the earlier point of the book you know
171with these really don't generate students yeah a lot of thousand doesn't so that's what we have to think of Disconnect there overall but it's a good exercise so this is just looking at that same New Edition student analysis based out of the individual elementary schools and I want to spend a lot of time on this but I will point out that that on some of the bubble that we saw especially the last few years over in Oxbridge um it has been the new District students there so we've gone back to 1617 doing this analysis and our highest have typically been um token eight Oxford but also our largest in the district cohort wasn't 2122 adox reach in that light purple pastel purple color there if almost 50. um so that's the highest one that we've
172had reported so that just shows sort of where you had that push students coming in right during covert there but then in 22 23 that number had dropped back off to kind of that historic average so we're looking at that as being a one-time kind of big push there but still having some increased immigration there but really looking at that big push in that one you're there all right um pause again thank you very much questions comments a lot of good data keep moving all right good we'll keep moving thank you are we using cohort survival where we make some modifications to it it's what you use for Construction Grants or really anything to get um we're getting specifics for specific projections um this is pretty typical to if you've seen in my presentation spend
173a lot of time on it but I will spend some time on is our caveatic assumptions um last time we had a plug number which precake just a plan number 150 if you lower that to 108. um also for our high medium and low projections um each of those are fed up those different birth models so our high projections are cut out more hybrid model which averages 260 birds in the future that we don't know so in order to Kenya Elementary projection if you have to project a certain number of birth years or the media model were projected for um Birds there feeding for that on average and a low projection model has 134 but I think the key points here um the high projections assume that they're going to grow with student immigration of
174about one percent which is slightly above your historic average um I look for the last five years is 0.75 um with the last three cover years kind of pushing that number up a little bit higher the media model assumes that you'll be slightly below that so it's really kind of taking a blend of your pre-covered with covet they're giving us what I feel is kind of a good model there in the lowest if they can have really low immigration um something that reflects 10 years prior to covet so um really you know actually 10 years prior to 1920 as well so it's really assuming some low immigration there is something that we don't see as being period likely um your birthday is shot up so you're at about 1.8 so for every 100 Birds five
175years later you get 180 kindergartners um tracking back your recent tasks that's the highest number you've had reported over the last two years you'll see on the right some of those estimates of migration that I talked about where going back to the earlier part of the 2000s you had smile migration across the elementary schools showed those little stacked right bars um now we're seeing net immigration across the board over the last few years so it's really kind of balancing that going forward with our Outlook of the next 10 years this is just a distributor of where kindergartners come from it's something that we've been seeing especially in the reserve area could be across Connecticut um with um if you were just using static words okay and assuming that you know your birthday is the same
176every year regardless of housing station the class size with way overestimating what your enrollment is going to look like back 20 years ago a large majority of your kindergartners were born in town it's not something we're seeing anymore as you can see in the bar chart on that greenish color represents your K component from immigration more and more of your K are resulted from family libraries moving to your town with kitchen toe and then the chart on the right just represents our best fit line that you can use it for birthday as you can see all of your birth years tracking back almost 28 years looking at that historic relationship I've fallen on that best fit line um that's a testament to why our cave projections from the pandemic true and you know within four
177two years out on that is just on the methodology that we use there methodology that we're employing forward can I ask just a quick question um just the birth Decay immigration I mean if I look at those bars and you know bursts were such a larger percent you know in their earlier years does that also a function just needs demographics in which people are having children too it is part of that I think it's just a new family of like uh buying the house you have the kids versus you having the kids to buy the house correct yeah okay thank you a lot of that so if you try to use a methodology it doesn't work anymore okay that's kind of the point I appreciate that thank you all right so our three projection models
178um we have pretty good alignment the first five years both with the high and medium kind of walking and lock step there um I believe they're both the five years out and that's K-12 only um 47 37 and 46.90 for both of those with the low model trailing at about 4 500. um those two models stay in pretty good agreement going forward um so we feel pretty good about that I think um we're still basically benchmarking everything off the medium um but especially if you're talking about facilities if you're looking at your elementary schools um you may want to use that blue line with the blue model there for space planning purposes just to be a little bit more conservative even though we did see a little bit of a housing downturn on this past
179year it still wouldn't be a bad idea to track against that um but overall we're still seeing some enrollment growth this is pretty well in line I went back and looked at our projections for 2020 and that ran to 20 30 and overall we were with about 240 250 students within that range for the entirety of K-12 so even with all the changes that we had it's still kind of a model of track and not a very similar trajectory overall um but this is just representing the different grade groupings um what we're seeing you know go right to the K5 um it's going to increase by about 12 percent over the next decade um reaching almost 2 200 I mean 2 360 um by 20 30 233 so I'm a bit of a notable growth
180there um just over 200 and some students there middle schools projectors increase very slowly um you're going to exceed 1100 students towards the back half on the really slow growth there and then high school and wellness projected applying by five percent and then so we'll be rebound to about 1400 students in the back half of our rejection Horizon there um looking at the individual elementary schools that broke this down in two different Windows um so we're seeing really broke across the board in the first five years um and this is where we begin to kind of play out some of the changes in the persistency ratio so changes in the underlying different Graphics of what we've seen um we've seen some different larger cohorts come in um at some different grades because we had projected
181rituals so that kind of funnels all of that through but I think on the first five years we're looking at silicone being one of the largest Brokers there at just under 60 Royals gonna grow by about 40 students over that time frame um Oxbridge is going to grow an additional 11 ohms for and hit the just under 30 and then in the fat half is where some of those uh multipliers generation really start to kick in um we see a greater level of growth especially in tokeny Royal um we're looking at about 80 students growth there um two dozen students at home to Knox bridge and Italy had just under 50 there overall um so really kind of flash forwarding ahead to 23 to 233 you're looking at having um two two schools just over
182500 Oxford Ridge at 526 and then you're looking at preschools and fours with two right around 460 and Royal right around 410 students so um some growth of those Elementary buildings for your space planning purposes and this is just looking at a percent change annually over time I want to spend any time on that last slide and just our overall takeaways which I think we touched on but I think the only thing I really may not have touched on is in the next year um so next year's payroll enrollment projected increase by about one percent um Elementary increases by two and then the Middle School Street Supply One are a little bit less than one in high school increased by one percent and then I touched on the first five minutes five for a lot
183of the other ones that take considerations and then in the back of the deck which just uh the tendency to chat all of this detail there I won't spend any time going through the other low high model as well as all the individuals okay so I'll turn it back over to the board if there's any questions on this last part of it thank you very much um Mr Brown [Music] so I kind of want to ask and just if we share the Portables towed over to tokenique but more seriously I actually would like that um or seriously Jill as you're looking through HHS and we're going through the process and integration not looking for answers but just talk about how you incorporate these numbers through that work so we're following the state process which has
184us project out eight years um and so the numbers that we submitted were based on our last set of projections eight years out we used the high model not the medium um but I will certainly compare them to what's here um thank you for asking thank you Mr Brown Mr SUNY one of the things that surprised Us in enrollment this year was the you know losing kids to private schools and um yeah I don't know how how you look at that Trend or if you can look at that Trend so maybe you could comment yeah we we picked online you know it's so tough to kind of carry that forward then for 10 years so what I do with that is I look at the grades that you typically lose than that and then look
185at it and try to take a larger swap of data there to try to say that well is this not one time but is this something that's going to be shorter term when you try to like take what happened in any given year and extrapolate it out for 10 years you always end up too far in One Direction or the other so it's something that would track when I try to moderate and look back at history at different things that have happened and I see exactly when you had all migration there um try to be a little bit more mindful of that as a project going forward were we outliers there yeah okay thank you Mr ceni Mrs best thank you thanks for the presentation um with the past few years being kind of wonky
186is it I kind of look at it as is it possible that we had sort of a few years worth of in-migration in a year's time like did people change people who might have moved to the suburbs a couple years down the road accelerated their timeline um and then now things are sort of course correcting would that make sense as a theory for the summer right and I would think that a lot of people change priorities and Lifestyles to some degree which has to make it harder to approach this with the same assumptions that you would have used five years ago for example everybody's a little different too so we're seeing different trends at Westport then we aren't there yet okay um they've added 100 plus elementary students each year ago [Music] but then other
187communities are very similar so I'm working at Richfield as well I've had for years and years and it's kind of like a product similarities there um but I think to your point of saying with the housing market did we push through three years worth of potential buyers and like a year and a half um I don't know if that's I don't know if that's going to come to Bear really or could you just we had our buyers some some may have jumped a little barely but some who may not have moved to the suburbs like so quickly did so and I think what we're going to see and I'm just kind of speculating on that um is just that we're this is going to have a little bit longer lasting impact than that you're going
188to have new families and a lot of families move without kids or they have kids that are zero to three say um so there's going to be an impact to this in the next few years not just the kids that arrive in the seats already I think it's kind of even if sales kind of drop back down to your research historic average you're still going to have a little bit higher integration just because you know families have moved here that wouldn't have otherwise been turned such a compressed time and that's going to take a little while to kind of work its way out and that's kind of how I developed the projections here Mr Brown it's just following that up so I guess we want to think about accelerated and think maybe there's going to
189be a mean reversion but then we look at some of the numbers we're kind of sticky over time too right so probably yeah yeah okay so it's probably not going to be a big potential to switch back no it's not okay thank you Mr Brown Mr moroney yeah so kind of piggybacking on Mr Brown's comments about tokenique is so Avalon if I'm correct is in the home school district and it's being busted company so would we want to look at busing those putting those kids back into their true home District at home since tokonik is expected to grow by 80 students in the next few years and the question is as well as how do we go about doing that chat if we wanted to take that off foreign [Music] I appreciate the question it's
190on my mind too um and I think in the interest of time I think we'll have the administration take that question away and I think it's a something I think I'd rather get ahead of and at least start the conversation once we look at these numbers if there's an opportunity to have that discussion around um moving people around but thank you for the question any other board questions Mrs parents I think my biggest takeaway from this and thank you for the work this must have taken hours and hours so thank you for this um just in in 10 years it looks like Middlesex is going to grow by you know 80ish kids and to me that's for classrooms and we're already tight over there so where are those four classrooms coming for from and yeah
191I'm just putting that thought out to the universe just you're just throwing out there another building thrown out there maybe people might want to think about another you know fun adventure in building land thank you Mrs Perrin any other Mrs McCammon I'm just comparing what's in the specs for HHR to what's in these projections they're pretty similar which is good news um but can you um break out that 10-year High um enrollment projections by building for us you don't have to do it now but I just want to be able to compare it directly to our projections I didn't see it in the packet is it is it further back oh I missed it yeah yep yeah so here's the library grouping and that's called Blind everybody we're trying to look at that so here's
192it by school by grade um of course you have it thank you thank you any other thoughts or comments great well thank you for staying through most of our agenda thank you for the presentation of the work we appreciate it great uh thank you so much Happy Thanksgiving to you thank you thank you very much thank you we will move on to presentations of updated five-year Capital plan um Mr Moret Kevin thank you for hanging with us the most appreciated so I think in the interest of time and everyone's day jobs tomorrow um I know everyone on the board has has run through this but if you want to hit on the highlights and then we'll open up some more questions sure thing so thank you this evening move that microphone or just speak a
193little louder thanks guys is that a little bit better perfect thank you all right so the first thing that you'll notice in the capital five year plan is that some of these projects were presented last year under Mr Lynch and we rolled them forward because that's appropriate this time but taking a look at some of the projects were either removed or changed in their fiscal year uh to Mrs parents point just a few moments ago you'll notice some very large capital projects looming in the distance where the middle school and high school because as we're going through the HHR and Oxbridge building committees we're starting to look at middle and high school in that capacity for this upcoming year you'll see our focus is mainly on the middle and high school because of what's happening
194with the elementary schools at this time um facades at middle school for example renovations to the gym wall padding etc those are new ads that weren't necessarily presented last year also new this year is the um security cameras the high school additional cameras that could either be repurposed or purchased new uh that we had from oxridge and then the audio visual upgrades to the theater which Colleen behind me has worked extensively on to come up with a plan to get our theater upgraded to um incorporate more technology and sound equipment thank you Kevin um open it up to any board questions or comments who would ask Dr adley Kevin have you looked at um and incorporate it in here anything that's come out of the kerma audit we have not seen that yet that might
195be some of the Soft Stuff fencing Landscaping stuff like that but anything no I would like to we have reviewed that with the administration and Karma has has gone back to this edits and revisions from that maintenance home where I'm waiting to actually receive it there's there's uh nothing more that's been included in this that has come from from that from that audit all right good thank you very much very much have a good evening Happy Thanksgiving to you the only thing sorry Dennis do you want to add from a facilities perspective that the projects while there are projects in the in the long-term capital plan for the middle school the high school and coconut library but those are still under discussion and so yes sorry that's a good point thank you yeah that's a
196good one so those are just approximate numbers for this point in time but they're not more all right we'll move along to discussion and possible acceptance on contemplated gift and bluewave booster club Dr adley and Mr manfredonia hi Chris you're you're on Deck I'm here thank you everybody thank you Chris give us the high level overview donation uh contemplated gift to the girls basketball program during high school it's a nice to have something that would not be supported by the Board of Ed budget uh for uh travel bags and warm-up tops and bottoms to wear prior to games all right thank you Mr manfredonia Mr Brown just like to very briefly say thank you to the Blue Wave booster club for their generosity and make a motion to approve thank you Mr Brown I appreciate
197that I will um also on behalf of the board and the administration say a big thank you to the blue blue wave booster club um again um incredible generosity for for our students second by Mr moroney all those in favor all right um we'll move on to discussion and uh thank you Mr manfredonia have a good Thanksgiving thank you all we'll see you Thursday roll wave yes onward to the Turkey Bowl um discussion and possible action on proposed Middlesex field trip quiz Bowl Regional Tournament Mr Romeo uh Mariah was there and this was just one of them normally we do these in October uh this is just an additional one that we'd like to support for so Mr Romero I have a motion by Mr Brown his board conversation or discussion second uh Mrs McCammon
198all those in favor thank you for hanging around a pretty routine request but thank you for all you do around that and uh best of luck to our students as always all right thank you I just want to say hi to John and suaha two of my favorite students from the past and uh absolutely hope you guys are doing well thank you Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family all right we will move on to further review and possible action on proposed 2023-2024 budget calendar uh Mr chairman there's only one uh revision that I have uh it's and it's really a relation to the order on Super Saturday here uh so the rundine that you have in front of you is darianne high school Fitch Middlesex Elementary schools and and the Athletics um for different
199reasons I need to move that to high school Fitch Athletics then middle school so it's really moving uh rc11 up in the just open the order okay it's not a big change okay any questions Mrs McKenna yeah just we need wanted to rename that one work session just because it's not confusing to the community right so I think we were going to call it uh [Music] maybe which date which one uh works okay sorry between tests is it the board of Finance the board of Finance one which we have currently on uh March 30th I think we wanted to call it something like Board of Finance review and discussion of VOE budget so we get rid of the work session which is confusing to folks the board of Finance review and discussion okay Mr Brown
200uh I would just like to suggest the tour of schools on March 18th early Saturday morning March the 18th perhaps be reconsidered for a different Saturday okay [Music] March 18th Amendment oh the early morning afternoon the large Irish contingent on the board yeah all right let's we'll take that under advisement thank you um any other board questions or comments um yes [Music] sorry hang on we this is the 17th gym that'd be fine yeah yes yes yes yes [Music] okay all right let's go make those updates all right if you want to move this forward with those updates you may have a motion to approve the proposed 2023-2024 budget calendar with those modifications and a possible consideration of the Saturday tour of schools see if that can be moved around at all all right um
201motion by Mr Brown secondly Mrs fast all those in favor and is unanimous thank you um we will move on to discussion and possible action on approval of the district director of security in the sixth school security officers I will turn that over to Dr adley so just consistent with the director of mental health there was discussion um that we should actually be seen to be creating the positions first of all before any uh transfer Appropriations or any other allocation of funds yeah does everyone understand that I worked I actually went over this with Mr Mooney and he was comfortable with the way we originally proposed it and then felt just adds Clarity to it also Mr ceni yeah and I I just like to comment that you know we're doing this now fully knowing
202where the funding is coming from correct after a vote after this so you know we I don't think we had a clear idea where the funding if we were going to get the funding yeah originally and that's why we're doing it today yep no I appreciate that and then we'll hear a little more clarity uh around the funding and the and the Surplus in the next discussion so um may have a motion to approve the district director of security one FTE and six school security officers six ftes Mrs McCammon second by Mr moroney all those in favor yeah discussion [Music] that's something I'd like to say before the vote go ahead yeah as a new board member I have not shared My Views publicly on this topic and I'd like to do so tonight nothing
203is more important than the safety of our students and staff schools should be safe places currently our elementary schools are gun-free zones introducing armed guards does not guarantee they will be secure what it does is consciously and willfully make guns a part of our youngest children's daily lives without evidence that there is Effectiveness beyond the sociological benefit that some parents might feel without experience or training on working in an educational setting without experience or training on working with vulnerable student populations without discussion or acknowledgment of the risks associated with these additions and without a public hearing to include the broader community this is a bigger conversation than a nine person board an issue not of Education a bit of culture I've heard from many parents who share the concerns I've outlined their voice deserves representation
204too as Board of Education members we must ask for ourselves now and at every turn how does this impact students this initiative prioritizes the addition of seven ftes that are not student-facing the answer to gun violence is not more guns I will be voting now thank you Mrs Loveland for saying that um yes Mrs McKinney point of clarification I'm not sure I I hear the point um but I know we've talked extensively about a few components of it including training so um I just want to be clear that while there may be things that we need to figure out and as part of the implementation and I um I just want to be clear that I think that training and working with vulnerable populations is something the board has highlighted and talked about and will
205continue to follow up repeat that I appreciate that Mrs mccam and I will I will back you up on that I certainly appreciate uh Mrs loveland's comments and um but I do feel that the administration um the board and the chief chief of police have done their homework throughout this process we've had extensive meetings extensive conversations we've heard from the public we did discuss risks um we did discuss implementation we'll hear more about implementation Dr adley did go over specific training we'll hear more about training the rollout and the implementation of it so um what it is a difficult topic I think it also as I've said previously it's a topic where I think as a district we have to leave we have to lead I don't um want to be talking about it and
206talking about it and not take action um and I think that's where we're at in a district and I I applaud the board and the administration and the community that has reached out to us but I think we've gone through the process um and a big thank you to the chief police and his staff that have helped us through this process so I appreciate everyone's comments and thoughts and now we'll move it to finish the vote so we had a second we had discussion um all those in favor uh bear with me a second uh all those in favor of the approval of the district director of security one FTE and six school security officer six ft's that is sceny best brown Maroney uh McCammon Deneen parent and Worm for all those against Mrs Loveland
207any staining no all right thank you all thank you Katie for your your feedback and your input there and and we move forward um we will move on to discussion on October 2022 2023 financial report and possible action on proposed budget transfers uh as Mr ceney mentioned uh good uh as always finance committee meeting a lot of good questions and as always Rich made a good presentation so rich I'll turn it over to you the clock is ticking foreign [Music] uh so the financial report through October uh did have a positive balance of 565 731 uh the general education RCS were a positive 248 181 with the special education RC is a positive 317 550. um I do want to highlight that the general education RCS do include the projected deficit for the security program
208if you were to strip that out that positive balance would be 533 000 and the overall positive balance would be 850 572. so what brings it down is the actual cost of the security proposal which has a pending transfer for the board tonight um and so that Surplus within the general education overseas is what's uh recommended to fund uh the program for security uh nothing is coming from special education or ECR um if we look at the savings and salaries we are forecasting a positive 146 865. um it is primarily due to the three sections the elementary school that were not filled due to low lower than anticipated enrollment that makes up about 195 000 we do have a new custodial and maintenance salary schedule which uh yielded about 51 000 to the positive um
209and then we have the security proposal which is a deficit of 235 000. I'll pause there any questions at the top of the house Mr Palin is also stayed throughout the meeting if there's any questions from a board of Finance hey Rich uh so the operating account is forecasted at a deficit of twenty two thousand three twenty and again that is primarily due to the materials associated with the SSO program and then we have a small positive balance in the China exchange and then dues and fees uh related to the teacher and residence program um the fixed area is a positive ninety four thousand it's primarily due to savings and health insurance and again that savings associated with the three um Elementary sections that were lower than anticipated due to enrollment and then uh one
210less teacher in Resident uh revenue is positive by 347 060. um ELP tuition is uh below forecast by about 34 000. um excess cost uh is uh positive to the budget of 378 000. we did spend a number of a good amount of time at the finance committee as well as the board of Finance discussing this the primary reason for the swing from the previous month is our threshold it was dropped to a hundred and four thousand dollars and we were forecasting a hundred nine thousand so we essentially pick up five thousand dollars for every claim that we're able to submit and so that 5 000 multiplied out across almost 60 claims helps generate that and then we have a few more claims that know we're actually able to submit for because of that threshold
211is lower as well um and so that's generating that additional Revenue we are still forecasting that cap with 70 based on the new state legislature um but that additional access cost money won't come in until February and then again in May um and again we are not touching uh the projected increase in excess cost for everything that we're expected to say so there are five transfers recommended for the board of education's approval uh the first is to fund our water account um Aquarian is increasing rates by over 13 uh starting in April and so this is really just a portion of what that rate increase will be it's that April May and June you will see a significant increase in the water account when you get the budgets back in December um we are recommending
212taking the funds from salary savings for the principal at Royal uh that turned over during the summer and then some savings from unaffiliated salaries um the second transfer is to fund a pro-rated portion of the director of security we are recommending taking the funds from the unfilled section at homes which was not filled due to enrollment and then a third transfer for 187 062 for a prorated portion of the six armed school security officers uh we are recommending taking the balance from the unfilled section of homes uh we did uh generate twenty seven thousand dollars in savings from staff turnover of a music teacher and then unfilled section again at Royal that I mentioned earlier and then Hindi as well and then a balance of savings associated with the unaffiliated salary references uh the fourth
213transfer is for payroll taxes associated with the ssos and the director of security uh we are recommending taking those funds from the savings and the unaffiliated salary increases as well as premium savings from the workers compensation and then the fifth transfer is the materials for the security program and that's just over thirty thousand dollars and we are recommending taking the balance from the savings and the Perma workers comp renewal as well as the savings from the property insurance renewal and then health insurance from the unfilled Elementary sections that I mentioned detail in anything you want from a board a finance perspective [Music] thank you board questions or comments Mr senior anything from the finance committee I mean uh you know I just want to reiterate you know after paying for the security um guards and
214it's their ssos and the director of security we're still running 000 Surplus and there's some adjustments that you are foreseeing uh going forward around um so we still have some teachers um that we have to fill that I'll have some adjustments um we actually think in the next report you'll see a positive adjustment to tuition within special education um so there'll be some small adjustments that'll go forward okay so you know there were some concerns raised about you know potentially if we had to fill in uh for services required services that we wouldn't have the funds but I I would assume that you know based on any sort of services 565 000 is a pretty pretty significant amount of money that we could pursue those Services is that right if we needed Services we would
215we would utilize those functions yeah more than that would have to go back for an appropriation you know I think the board of Finance has made it very clear that they're um ready will enable and stand by and work with us from a partnership standpoint but I think based on Rich's forecast and uh Mrs Klein is part of these conversations all the time I mean if there are needs uh carrying a half a million dollar Surplus at this point in time is a good Surplus we gave back 675 000 at the end of the last year's budget cycle so we'll continue to Monitor and look at it closely this is lovely just want to clarify the point that this Surplus is not yet real it's projected is that right Ridge so the excess cost portion
216is projected the Surplus associated with the untilled elementary section is real um we're not filling those sections right but in terms of this 565 that we would have left over that those are projections and they're based on using the maximum allowable percentage so it's possible that we won't because there were capped at 70 but it's possible that we won't get that full 70 uh so the state legislature does tear it uh currently um by 70 and then higher for districts in town wealth it's not similar to what it was in the past where you could have floated anywhere from let's say 65 to 80 um 70 is our number unless the state legislature acts to change that um thank you for that um I do just want to say regarding whether or not a dollar
217amount is enough um we never really know until we get through and we're pretty early in the year it's November it's not May and in terms of the comment that if we don't have enough we would go back to the board of Finance for more it's important to note that doing that would essentially give the board of Finance line item veto over educational programming that's an incorrect statement so if we if we went to them for an appropriation if we went for them for an appropriation like we've done built our justification Board of finances [Music] would go through the process I don't think we need spin or rhetoric around this conversation it's not we can help you continue to learn you know in terms of how the excess costs and the finances work but I
218think this is the way the surpluses are forecasted and work and work and I think Rich does an incredible job in keeping us all abreast and as a board coming through this and and the changes that happen over the last month I mean I'm comfortable with where we stand Mr senior if you want to add anything I am as well I mean we uh if you watch the Surplus build over the year and there are projections but they're built also on what's behind us so only last month we were looking at a surplus of nine thousand dollars after accounting for uh was almost ten thousand dollars I should say after accounting for any security costs and hence I think that's why we carried it forward to the board of Finance with the intention of potentially
219uh receiving a special appropriation since that time and as pointed out at the board of Finance meeting publicly and during our finance committee meeting more money has been projected as rich as it has said a lot of this is behind us and is pretty certain so I'm very comfortable you know uh recommending these transfers uh to fund the half year give or take of this uh school security officers and the director of security [Music] just as a matter of process there is volatility built into any given year particularly in special education because as students come in and out that's why the school Finance project exists it's known across the state that volatility is is difficult it's difficult to do budgetary protection so we we don't actually currently usually carry any sort of buffer in that
220we build our our budget off of projections and on every given year if we were to have uh large unexpected fluctuations we could end up having to go for an appropriation and we would um I think in this current year I do agree that we continue to have to monitor um you know we've talked about over this past couple of years increased rates of identification we've talked about compensatory services and so I certainly think that we as a board need to continue to pay close attention I think it's really important that we need to talk um carefully and kindly and inclusively about all of our students and if at any point we ever have to ask for more dollars that we hear the point that um it's it's not just because certain kids are more
221expensive than others that we as a board and we as a community support educating all of our kids no matter who they are or what they cost and that's something that that you know we've worked on in years since and we we may still have more work to do but I think there's a lot of us up here who commit to doing that work should we find ourselves in that situation um but I think as a matter of process we don't typically carry with the exception of budget control we don't typically carry any sort of surplus that is um unbudgeted except that we're projecting this excess cost and we have unfilled sections [Music] Mr Brown I just want to really quick say Thank you Rich for doing this work and you know we do appreciate
222your efforts and your hard work and the skills that you're able to bring to this position and you're very spot-on forecasting that you've given us over the years you're able to forecast everything perfectly I think you'd have a much other easier job somewhere um that being said you know you provide us some great analytics we're able to use business judgment essentially here on the state of play as we know it at a time and look forward so thank you for your hard work Mrs best thank you um I understand the mechanics of of what we're talking about here as a precedent is there anything that we want to consider moving forward I don't to my knowledge I don't believe that we've ever used transfers and an existing Surplus to fund the hiring of seven new
223ftes and we're basically creating a department we're hiring six security guards in the administration that will oversee them um do without a vote for us to do that I I know I've heard mention of things that have happened in the past with surpluses that were looked back on with skepticism and is there anything that we need to build into what we're deciding now to carry forward for the record for those who come after us I mean not afterwards [Music] I'm paranoid those who follow I think it's I think it's it's a good question um I think in my eight plus years on the board uh you know there's like don't want to go back in history I think you know we're charged as elected elected officials to work with the administration I think this was
224brought through the right process um uh in terms of getting it to the point of board members understanding and wanting to move forward with the change in these security protocols um we have an appropriation Jack Davis summed it up one time if we wanted to spend 50 million on pencils we could once we get the appropriation so they think the appropriation is there for us to manage the district I think we budget tightly against that um I think this forecast and some changes to it have given us the opportunity to fund this in-house and continue with the Surplus and I think we work very closely with the board of Finance it got to a good you know a good place I think you know maybe from a retreat standpoint or if the board wants to
225have further conversation around the process but I think it's within how we do business um if we see a need to add security just like we see a need to add security from a physical standpoint to these buildings it is our it is Mr ceney anything you wanted to add here no no some of that well yeah just just factually for the board I think I think the board knows if if we go for an appropriation for something that we that we wanted and for some reason we didn't get the appropriation it doesn't mean to say we don't get the item we would have to come back to the table and make some decisions here at the board so it's not that particular item and also we can't go back at the end of the
226year with a negative budget so right legally all right thank you for the conversation um dude one suggestion we we did the As we reviewed the transfers we did them separately I don't know if you guys are set up to do that um this evening in terms of you know somebody wanted to vote for the first transfer versus uh the other do we want to break up I mean do you want to do the first transfer and then the security transfer is always one yeah why don't we do that yeah so it would be to transfer the 5921 all right so a motion to approve the 5921 as presented uh with respect to Aquarian rate hikes in April uh transfers coming from savings and turnover principles and unaffiliated salaries second Mr ceney uh for Mr
227senior second by Mrs best all those in favor that is unanimous and then those hmm and then together so the rest are all associated with security right rich I can't have that quickly yeah do you happen to know that number yeah 284 000. say that again 284 841.80 by 41. so motion to accept the transfers as presented for 284 841 motion Mr moroney second this is where I'm all those in favor that is sceny best brown Moroni McCammon Deneen parent and worm anyone against the transfer Mrs Loveland any abstentions all right thank you thank you for the conversation we're moving forward with um I think a much um foreign [Music] security protocol change and we'll continue to monitor it we'll continue to listen to the parents and from an Administration standpoint we look forward to
228hearing in short order kind of implementation training and roll out plans so thank you for that we'll move on quickly anything update on the Personnel report Miss Siam just to clarify that those are not resignations there are appointments I just didn't change the heading there but these are two people that we hired okay okay great thank you yes how many positions are still outstanding well um sorry we have two we have two psychologists one at ELP and one at one of the elementary schools and unfortunately we got another resignation today so it's just going to be a psychologist no no no no no I'm an art teacher but that's just the way this year is going to be I was recruiting Mark it's tough I mean it's just it's tough but we had an HR
229area director's meeting and everyone is struggling there you know we are actually more filled than our surroundings I know yeah very good Michelle um sure Sarah vortel 22 Brushy Hill Road and I just want to say I'm so excited about the ASL um course so thank you thanks for speaking have a good Thanksgiving Atlanta Walsh uh 17 Pleasant Street I'm a co-chair of cdsp but these comments are utterly and completely my own you all keep talking about going back for another appropriation at the end of the year if needed not for nothing but this started out as an appropriation that you were asking the bof for you went to the meeting and you came away with not even asking for it because they weren't going to even vote on it so you could talk about
230doing an appropriation asking for an appropriation until the board of Finance changes their mind fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me um uh Katrina O'Connor 15 Highland thank you for clarifying uh Mr riddle all the financials I will say though that the majority of the conversation was always focused on what was coming back due to the lowering of the threshold you know and again um I will say that yesterday at my at our Dei meeting we had a whole discussion about difficult conversations and Dr Davis Klein was there you were there you were there a couple years here and I looked at all of you as parents were speaking about the problems in special education and you all looked kind of shocked and surprised and you have a par report
231every meeting and you look at it and it's usually a psychologist a special education teacher an OT an SLP and there's no follow-up questions and you know I've put two kids I'm quite put two kids into college have you ever heard the term demonstrated interest you have to demonstrate interest because demonstrating interest shows that you support something and special education and student services deserves the equity at this table not just in your cabinet meetings not just by one member coming in into the end and saying oh yes we all have to just you know think about this more often every meeting you should be asking for updates it's not just up to the department chair I would love to be in your cabinet meetings there's a lot of communication between the cdsp and administration but
232I just don't see a lot of questions being asked at this table we have all these people are resigning you're not asking questions none of you maybe a couple of comments tell us what you need tell us what you need you have to make an investment it is Equitable and it's fair and it's the right thing to do thank you for speaking again I uh I will speak briefly I think the uh some of the public comments about uh the appropriation um I think it's it's important not to have the rhetoric and the spin out there because I think that adds to the challenges of communication and it filters through social media and it's all put out in the wrong context I think uh thanks to Mr Palin who is here and Mr rudel and
233the board we had the right conversation about the appropriation process um we discussed thoroughly the change in the Surplus and the finances we uh we explained thoroughly the change in the special ed costs so the process worked and the process will continue to work because of the partnership with the board of finance and the partnership with the RTM subcommittees in the RTM so those that continue to want to push on uh the challenges there or what wasn't done or wasn't done correctly it's just misinformation the process worked and it worked effectively so thank you all with that emotion to adjourn Mr ceni second from Mrs McCannon all those in favor thank you everyone have a very good Thanksgiving thank you