Special Board of Education Meeting - January 18, 2022

001good evening everyone thank you for joining us we've got uh one person in person i'm sure we have a lot of friends on zoom i would like to call this special meeting of the board of education to order there will be another special board of education meeting on monday january 24th at 7 pm in the board meeting room the next regular board of education meeting will be held on tuesday january 25th at 7 30 p.m in the board meeting room thank you um so thank you everyone i'll be brief um with a chairperson's report um as we continue through the budget process and going through questions from the board from our rtm committee's board of finance and our other partners at cpac and cdsp just a thank you to all those folks that are participating

002in this process i think it's an open transparent process where we literally go line by line and talk about almost everything in the budget so all questions and comments and thoughts are appreciated and i think we've got a good process to continue to get all those questions answered as all of you have been participating in this process you know there are a lot of questions around a program that's been put forth open choice and also a lot of discussion around the one-to-one initiative and the direction that's going in up at the high school so the meeting on the 24th will be around those specific topics with also some guest speakers from ces around open choice so we look forward to continuing to get more information and answer questions about those programs i would ask that

003you continue to participate come to board and email come to board meetings email board members email your pto reps your friends at rtm f b in education to get your questions in and get your questions answered i suggest you stay away from social media social media has a lot of misinformation out there and wrong information out there and it just adds to the confusion um we understand there are a lot of questions on a lot of information that's needed and we're ready willing and able to answer those questions and provide that information but the proper way to do that is through the specific rtm organizations the board board members and that way we get the right information out to everyone so thank you for that with that michelle i will turn it over to public

004comment okay good evening with the like person in person sorry who is that oh that's bad if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon the bottom of your zoom screen next click the raised hand option you will notice a blue hand icon appear in the upper corner of your screen where your face and or number or name appears when it is your turn to speak the facilitator will identify you and announce that you're unmuted for public comment once recognized and unmuted please state your name and address you will have up to three minutes to comment miss teresa vote you are recognized and unmuted great thank you actually this is uh david vogt 22 circle road thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight in favor of the open choice

005program i have listened and read the information provided by opponents of the open choices program and i want to say for the record that the opponents of open choice are using erroneous facts and figures as a scare tactic not grounded in facts or truth letters are circulating that falsely claim and imply that darien taxpayers spend 23 000 prostituted annually and while the state funds only 3 000 per student the darien taxpayers are effectively left holding the bag and have to fund the 20 dollar balance excuse me nothing can be further from the truth clearly the supporters of this particular argument lack a basic understanding of financial forecasting fixed cost absorption and operating leverage by adding four students each to henley holmes oxford and tokenique the incremental cost to educate these students will be minimal the

006open choice students do not require another teacher they do not miraculously change the benefit assumptions for district personnel they do not change the utility consumption assumptions they do not change the cost of developed curriculum and they do not chase dude they do not change the athletic budget well i'm hopeful this fundamental economic mistake is an honest misunderstanding and will be ignored by the administration and the board i'm concerned that opponents of open choice are using this intentional falsehood to obscure the underlying reason they oppose the program and increase in the diversity of the dairy and student population so in conclusion i fully support the administration and the board of ed in funding the open choice program thank you very much for speaking gregory grambling you are unmuted and recognized uh thanks everyone thanks for the

007continued efforts in particular to the board of ed members i'd like to reiterate my opposition to hartford's open choice program and to any further involvement of california consultant ken shelton in the darien public schools this past week i attended the cdsp pto meeting via zoom i was surprised to be the only male participant via zoom or in person given that the cdsp and ptos seem to be strong advocates for diversity i was even more surprised to see dr adley show up in person and openly push the attendees to support ken shelton in open choice given this was my first cdsp admittedly first cdsp pto meeting which zoom participants weren't able to make comments on or provide feedback it made me wonder if the cdsp and ptos are representing dairy and parents as they publicly state

008or the administration finally last week a number of good questions were raised by the board of ed members including when do we get back to normal at school which dr adley refused to answer i inquired with darien's health director david knoff regarding hospitalizations in darien which he indicated and i quote the good news is we have no reports of hospitalizations of any residents vaccinated or not end quote not a single hospitalization given how critical parents have made issues of mass etc i would have hoped dr adley or at least miss kasuchi would be on top of this important information rather than seeming like deer in headlights in the fall the board of ed and administration decided to implement a self-governing policy to wear mass at these meetings as a sign of solidarity with kids in

009our schools if you really want to align with students i would propose that the board of ed members and administration begin wearing mass anytime they are forcing our defenseless kids to wear mass therefore five days per week nine hours per day no breaks except for 30 minutes for lunch and 10 minutes for snack taken outside even if it's below freezing like it was today if you cough or sneeze keep the mask on and keep wearing this solid mask for the rest of the day thanks for your time thank you mr family mr grimlink we have your address please it's uh blue blurry lane thank you jackie miller you are unmuted and recognized hi my name is jackie miller and i live at 84 fitch avenue in the materials for tonight's meeting i was surprised to

010see that the response to the cdsp's question about whether the board planned further discussion about the boss walking radius policy was the note that quote the boe considered this policy last year and did not recommend any changes end quote this seems to me an incomplete summary of the way we left the discussion last year at the boe meetings on january 12th and january 26th and the policy committee meeting on january 19 2021 the challenges of covid and the inability to get an accurate sense of bus ridership were explicitly named as reasons not to amend the ball the bus policy mr dineen recommended that we that the transportation remember remain on the agenda for further study and ongoing conversation when we return to normal times a year later i'm not sure what normal times are anymore

011and while i love having the opportunity to come to talk to you every year this is a conversation that i started when my son was a freshman next year he'll be a high school senior and there's still no permanent solution for him this isn't just an issue for high school students who need the buses to get to and from school this is a problem for every car that sits in traffic on middlesex this is a problem for every student who's late to first period because they're sitting in traffic on naroten this is a problem for the parents who can't make their turn into the parking lot at mms because the line of cars waiting at the four-way hot stop sign on holiday ridge just won't budge more buses are a win for everyone i hope

012this is the year we really get to talk about that thank you thank you mrs miller who do we have next michelle i am username mz zablocky you are recognized and unmuted you are still muted mr blocky it looks like you still mood it there you go can you hear us we cannot hear you can you hear me now yes you might have to you might have to put it up a little bit your sound okay is this better thank you okay thank you good evening melissa zablocki rallyhand road and i'll be quick first i do just want to say thank you to the administration and the district for the increased transparency that's come through over the past recent months we do appreciate it as parents and it's been it's been great to see i

013just did have a few comments tonight um informally just about cbsp in general um there's a lot of mysteries still around this group i know they've been on the scene for some time but not a lot of parents are familiar with them um who they are you know how they're selected the process for selection and just some things i think maybe the public should be aware of as they are ultimately an umbrella group that represents the parents as a whole um collective body of parents of darian so some more transparency around cdsp i think is needed um you know what is their role within the school and the community exactly and personally i'm interested in to see maybe even a hierarchy of how they communicate with parents in the community um i personally have reached

014out and have not had a response and it's just been to a generic cbsc no website or email address so i don't know you know who exactly my representatives are or how to get in touch with them or even how to get involved so just a lot of mystery around cbsp still and i understand they were gathering comments for budget to bring to the board but again as representing a collective group of parents um just a lot of known unknowns around that group so i just wanted to communicate that because it's coming to me from other parents as well so thank you again and thank you for your time tonight be well thank you have a good evening susie flaherty you are unmuted and recognized did you guys hear me yes we can hear you

015go ahead thank you hi thanks for having me uh mr janine i'm so sorry i i really respect your comments about not continually repeating things over and over again uh and i wish we didn't have to do that but unfortunately um the same misconceptions keep getting put forward and i just wanted to say uh open choice is connecticut's program it is one that has been working for connecticut school children for 25 years through the terms of four governors two republican and two democrats i encourage i encourage you not to be concerned about which students might be selected through the open choice lottery fear about who we might end up with from outside our community whomever they may be is what got us here in the first place there is absolutely no point in speculation about

016the children who will apply for the lottery and who will come to us it's a lottery open choice is not the first step to regionalization this misconception was cleared up at our last meeting none of the 47 school districts in connecticut that participate in open choice have been forced to regionalize mr ken shelton has a non-traditional position on grading homework and curriculum mr shelton is not being hired as a consultant for grading homework and curriculum he will have zero input on these things this was also cleared up at last the last meeting calling mr shelton a california consultant is an attempt to cast doubt on someone who is not from around here and is not like us creating a label for a person that defines him only by where he comes from is exactly the

017kind of prejudice we are hoping to begin to correct in our community i would argue that anyone who makes these assertions about mr shelton and open choice is the exact reason why we need it and we need it now my eldest graduates from dhs in 95 days also graduating in 95 days are the students who came to us 98 days ago to tearfully nervously angrily describe their experience with hate and ignorance in school and ask you for your intervention also graduating the seniors who say nothing is going to change so what's the point these kids have 95 days left with us the kids who write and use hate speech in school also have 95 days left this year the same is true for the many victims of that ignorance and hate i urge you to

018act now on ken stelton and dei so we can send the class of 2022 often to the world knowing that change is possible and so that the underclassmen can return next year to a school where they are seen and heard in both word and deed we have the right person we only have 95 more days the time is now thank you oh uh six lake drive thank you miss teresa vote you are unmuted and recognized thank you teresa vote 22 circle road um i don't think this is a place for me to have to make this comment but given that two public commenters have decided to um for lack of a better term attack the cdsp organization as a former pto chair and a former cdsp rep for the middle school um i don't understand

019the attacks i don't understand people thinking it's some hidden organization some secret organization um it is simply the umbrella organization of the seven ptos that is it anything you need to know going on at cdsp contact your building pto chair because that's what's going on at cdsp there aren't some secret meetings and the attacks on the volunteers who put countless hours in probably more than any other board member in this town regardless of the board to attack them is really unfair if you want to know what's going on at cdsp meeting their their meetings are public go easy to go so if the attacks on cdsp could come to an end that would be fantastic thank you thank you teresa abigail hornstein you are unmuted and recognized can you hear me yes we can hear

020you thank you go ahead abigail fantastic 17 edmond street so i wanted to talk about two points first at the last board meeting i heard a lot of criticism of people for having the maturity and intellectual creativity to change their opinion over the years i actually find that very fascinating there's one research paper that i reference in nearly every college class i teach called ownership structure in corporate performance it was published in 2001 in journal financial economics which is considered to be an eight plus plus journal like literally the top journal three publications in there will get you tenure at a place like uconn so it's a pretty damn good place and has now been cited by about 4 000 people and again the mean and median citations for an economics paper are zero they

021have a graph that shows how this relationship between structure and performance has changed over the years and what's fascinating about it is you can see many papers even papers wearing by nobel prize winners have been overturned over the years and consensus changes as we get more information so i urge everyone to have respect for the fact that dr adley's opinions have changed we give the nobel prize at times to people for changing their opinions so i hope we would have the same respect for a superintendent secondly with regard to ken shelton and the diversity initiative i was trying to figure out if his background's representative i think it is in fact i looked at the undergraduate college of every member of the board of education and looked at their diversity equity and inclusion leaders to

022see what their backgrounds are each of your undergraduate institutions has personnel with backgrounds similar to ken shelton's in charge of initiatives at your schools i think that is quite telling to see that places that you are presumably proud of have hired similar people and put them in the same position of responsibility similarly i have written nearly 200 letters for graduate school admissions in the last five years every single one of them has asked me if the student or applicant is comfortable working in a diverse environment and to comment on their background when i am approached by a student from a background such as darien i often decline to write a letter for them because i cannot write a letter unless i will endorse the person and when they come from a background devoid of diversity

023they rarely demonstrate skills uh or a comfort level in my classroom that makes me feel like i can write an honest letter supporting them similarly every job applicant at a college is expected to write a diversity statement abigail you're almost a good time i know and finally colleges when proposing new majors and programs have the same expectation thank you good night thank you abigail amy zurby you were unmuted and recognized amy zurby nine more house drive you know i actually wasn't going to speak tonight but given the attacks on cdsp i felt the need to um i've been watching board of ed meetings for seven years and i have never seen parents attack cdsp at these board meetings until this year it seems unwarranted and i just wanted to clarify a few things i am

024no longer on cdsp but i i was for five years um i was at the cdsp meeting last week that someone mentioned and dr adley was not pushing parents to accept ken shelton and like someone said before there's a lot of information on cdsp out there there is a website cdspdarianne.org if you aren't subscribed to the school wires do that um because there's information there as well and talk to your pto chairs there's nothing you know under cloak and dagger going on with cdsp thank you amy dan gullar you are unmuted and recognized hi uh i'm dan gullar 10 uh longtime listener first time caller uh it seems to me and and i hear it again tonight i've sat in on several of these meetings and it it seems like darien does have a problem

025and it's not uh it's not anti-semitism it's not racism it's not classism that i'm talking about it's it's inhospitality which is a major problem our town has a reputation of being unfriendly to outsiders and i hear it in criticism of ken shelton called california's ken shelton earlier this evening i hear it in criticism of open choice which once again we heard this evening hartford's open choice i i heard it in this last election cycle with politicians calling for quote local control the common thread in all of this is fear of outsiders and this is an attitude more aligned with the dairy end of the 1950s and this is why darian is is the butt of a joke in auntie maine or a cautionary tale from gentlemen's agreement but this isn't the darian that i found

026when my husband and i moved here 12 years ago that's not the darian we're raising our son in that's not the darian that showed up by the hundreds for the town's first menorah lighting this past year open choice is a way we can help our children uh who we who can help children who are not as fortunate as our children are because our children live here and some aren't as lucky so we can give children that opportunity uh yesterday was mlk day and there's a quote that i saw posted yesterday life's most persistent and urgent question is what are you doing for others so that's my question to this town what are you doing for others thank you dan carolina magui you are unmuted and recognized hi everybody 28 kansai carolina magoi i'll take 20

027seconds of your time um in regards to the participation of people in cbsp and volunteering i've been volunteering for the schools since we moved back here to the us in and i'm sure all the ptos and the cdsp would love to see male parents arrive and volunteer to all the positions that we have for volunteering in the school so please mr grambling and everybody else out there come and join us we're a great group of people working very hard for our schools thank you thank you carolina peter orfanos you are unmuted and recognized peter can you hear us yep yeah thank you thank you um first of all i'm speaking in my personal capacity uh uh at this moment um not in the other capacity which we're hearing uh from some of us later tonight

028and i say this is a former cdsp member cdsp is essentially a group of parents who give a darn about the public schools and want to make the public school the best possible experience they can for the residents of this town and their and their children and they put in self countless selfless hours uh and towards that goal um and uh anyone who is uh ascribing uh uh other motives simply ground those of those that type of point of view is simply groundless and again all meetings are public they're open go to the meetings if you want to know what cdsp is all about go read the website and if you don't know what cdsp is about then you're not working hard enough to find out thank you peter can you let us know your

029address please oh a pardon me 67 raymond street thank you thank you peter thank you there are no more raised hands at this time okay mr janine can i have a point of order i wanted to let everyone speak but we received in our meeting now one two three four five six comments on cdsp the board of ed education is not in control of cdsp we don't tell it how to work how it not to work so so we need to understand there's a board of education meeting and and so cdsp comments should be directed to cesp because we're trying to run a meeting here thank you mr zachman all right are we good michelle seems so all right so we'll move on to uh comments uh from board of finance rtm education rtm f

030on fiscal 23 proposed budget board of finance um oh he's there yeah they uh they are forwarding questions to us is actually a conflict where they have a meeting this evening so i see uh beth in the audience from rtm fnb so i'm not sure beth or jack how you want to start out um i'm going to start out with this jack davis 197 white street we're going to do a three-person tag team today um i'm going to start we're going to hand it off to beth who's there and then peter rafanos will wrap it up first we'd like to thank the board of ed for the opportunity to present the rtm finance and budget committee's preliminary comments on the superintendent's proposed fiscal year board of education budget we'd also like to thank the administration

031for the quick response to questions from super saturday as well as the follow-up to the board of ed meeting it provided a great deal of additional information on the proposed budget and as i mentioned earlier today probably one of the best um responses that i've uh seen i've just been asked to show my face um that should be frightening for everyone um at the state of the town the board of ed what a finance chair presented to the rtm in the whole town guidance for the fiscal year 23 budgets core growth guidance was 2.5 new growth including additional head count added capital investments and benefit changes yielded an overall target growth of three percent for the town new growth required clear and compelling case and let me repeat that last part a clear and compelling

032case which means demonstrated needs supported by historical metrics and financial analysis addressing both the short-term and long-term costs and that's our starting point one of the things that we're asking is can the administration assist our committee in reconciling core growth versus new growth as presented in the thursday january 6 superintendent's proposed fiscal year 23 presentation we believe some if not most of the component parts were presented but it's probably a lot safer to assist the committee versus leaving us to our own devices we're requesting that new growth be further divided into educational non-educational growth for example two-point fts um attributable to enrollment mandarin the lpn and special ed teacher or education the others appear to be non-education this reconciliation should include footnotes for future years in a response to years the fully loaded costs for

033certain proposed non-professional ftas did not include pension costs which are not included in the proposed budget because they're not here but for future years and we have to figure out how to calculate that out since it's not done on an individual basis part of our question is is the core growth due to health care utilities and other increases resulting in a 2.75 or 3 core growth that's important to know when we're evaluating this budget this brings us to the next level the board of ed represents the largest single component of the overall town's budget and thus has the greatest impact in determining the town's mill rate the current year's adopted budget had a 4.03 increase the fiscal year 23 proposal was 3.9 under four percent provided primarily due to the adoption of bring your own

034devices overall four percent budgets are not sustainable for long term yes the board of finance does have budget tools in its arsenal tool to bring the overall budget within a three percent gardens target but last year's approved budget included all town capital being bonded or paid by the general fund primarily through transfers from the reserve fund for capital non-recurring um expenses cleanup which had long been a f and b request the grant list increases if it does one percent a year yields another 1.5 million dollars and debt service has significant pay downs and new desks pushes out repayments of principle that being said continued going to the well on the grand list to cover our capital expenses is not a long-term viable option and with new major projects from the board of ed and other

035infrastructure projects from the town the main focus needs to be on operating budgets and their increases this is the main driver of the milway i mention this because as we go through budgets this is and has always been the starting point for how the rtm finance and budget committee reviews the overall budget looking at operating and capital budgets well again i want to stress that that will be our focus um on the budget and i now hand off to beth who's um there with you thank you jack well i've never done this with a mask before so if it's impossible to understand let me know what i will promote i think we can hear you pretty clearly so thank you okay significant attention in this year's budget has been focused on two areas open choice

036and the bring your own devices at the high school there's been a lot more discussion on those two issues than on the addition of 10.7 ftes despite the fact that the latter has a greater greater financial impact on the overall board of bed budget both in the near term and far into the future the committee concurs with the board of ed that having a special meeting regarding the financial projections and the all of the details of the program makes sense that being said the actual cost appears to be a simple cost accounting exercise to account for open choice is basic cost accounting principle the variable cost to support any student at a grade level as the cost of teacher desks utilities and other related sunk costs are fixed and wouldn't change unless an additional section

037is created in the elementary schools in middle and high schools as long as the total students joining a district doesn't exceed the maximum capacity of the school again variable cost to support the student is the total cost this is the safety net caveat that special education costs can be provided by the sending district or charged back there too and transportation costs are absorbed by the sending district the committee is generally in favor of the initiative there are more mixed feelings on the bring your own devices within the committee the final decision whether to implement or provide a hybrid model will have an impact on the proposed budget not only in equipment but also on the new ftes requested the committee feels that the administration has established a compelling case for the following new growth ftes

038the lpn tied who's tied to an iep the new special education driver as the driver shortage is well documented new teachers from mandarin at middlesex and for hindley's second grade we would like more color and a little more information on the following new ftes the 0.5 para professionals at both oxfords and homes we would just like to confirm that these are based on enrollment ratios and thus are that's part of normal growth of the school um the high school physical and health education drivers what is causing the increase in those and the henley pe teacher which is 0.2 fte then the committee has questions on the following editions for the campus monitor this position is part of the american rescue plan in the current budget we acknowledge the better student to the combined monitor sro

039ratio with this edition the committee further understands the financial and reporting relationship differences as well as the rationale for those differences but we'd like to be provided with specific metrics used to determine improved building security what are the measurable goals to be accomplished by the campus monitor edition and could you please provide a description of how the sros and campus monitors overlap and work together what are the specific differences in their goals for the bursar administrative assistant in reviewing the additional write-up it appears that this position has been working an additional 160 hours although gatsby 84 will increase the number of transactions to be transferred from one system to the other we are not sure the incremental hours over the 160 hours already being recorded have been demonstrated here are some additional questions 25 percent

040of the bursar's role is managing all ordering for dhs processing requisitions placing orders for teachers and administrators working with departments to ensure goods are received fielding phone calls and working with accounts payable to provide invoices to close out purchase orders are responsible that must have been done prior to the addition of the bursar who did the bursar replace for these responsibilities also darian is not alone in dealing with gasby 84 and school cash online has an automatic automated feed from skullcash online to munis been investigated or discussed have the outside auditors determined which components currently in the student activity accounts need to be recorded as government funds or special revenues and with the two new fund categories will two new town funds be established to comply with gatsby 84 if so when and finally has

041the administration investigated using school cash online as the subsidiary of books complying with gatsby 84 thereby reducing the number of entries needed to be entered into munis the next fde on which we have questions about grant is the groundskeeper the committee does not believe a compelling case has been made to substantiate this position the full cost for the groundskeeper presented is 108 096 dollars however that cost did not include future pension costs the actual cost is even higher is would it be possible for existing staff to work overtime or can town staff perform some of these duties either as straight time or overtime and charge the district what is the cost to contract these services to an outside vendor and finally the care of grounds historic costs have been stable even a five percent increase

042represents only fifteen thousand dollars so it's well below the proposed 108 000 cost for this added fte this position costs fully loaded costs even without future pension represents 50 percent of the total outside contracted groundskeeping budgeted expense for the oxford custodian we'd just like to confirm that the square footage is increasing from the current school being 50 000 square feet to 74 000 for the new part of oxford that will be open next year which will necessitate the increase and finally for my part the technician for all technology repairs the committee does not believe a compelling case has been made to substantiate this position in the proposed budget and should be deferred until the implementation of bring your own and the valuation of tickets with the additional new equipment in the next budget is in

043place so we could reevaluate this position for the 2024 budget fully loaded cost for this position is 104 670 however this cost also does not include future pension costs and thus will be higher in future budget years can the administration provide a three-year experience of repairs and tickets broken down by elementary schools middle school and high school by the device and level of service required and with the purchase of new desktops at middlesex devices for dhs teachers and the bring your own devices and the other proposed technology purchases in the budget one would assume that hopefully repairs with all this new technology should decrease and so perhaps this is not the year to introduce this what budget line item shows the reduction of repairs suggested in the original presentation as an offset to current outside

044repairs and is it realistic to assume that any but the easiest repairs will be performed on dhs bring your own devices why wouldn't the existing dhs technical staff perform these repairs as they currently do we do not believe the ratio is presented without full understanding of the underlying uses and applications within each other school district in the dirk is a sufficient compelling case to add this fte and with that i'm going to turn the rest over to peter ortonos back online thank you beth peter can you hear us yes i can thank you peter go ahead um there are a few areas where our committee would like additional clarification first has to do with technology uh there's a significant amount of technology proposed to be purchased in the midst of a documented chip shortage which

045is not anticipated to be resolved into the latter part of 2023 as well as significant distribution costs added to consumer discretionary purchases how does how do the proposed costs relate to the same purchase costs from the prior year what are the increases if any concerning the middlesex middle school desktops the uniformity proposed in devices sounds good but there is a cost for uniformity what are the needs for each component of the component groups requiring desktops to be replaced their uses processing speed requirements and storage requirements the latitude processing speed and rem drive the cost of the device it does not make sense that the nurses in library and art classes or administration all need the same processing speeds or storage requirements why are the suggested unit costs of the desktops appear to be so high

046are there other added software costs to the purchase so what are these costs as concerns ipads and macbook airs the committee is still not satisfied that both devices are required based upon the web-based and structural capabilities and the compatibility of both with the technology in the classrooms can the teacher's macbook airs be deferred until fiscal 24 as the use of pens etc for instructional purposes appears to be of greater benefit to the educational experience in the classrooms with respect to the macbook airs the teacher macbook airs are have 13 inch screens while the mac student macbook airs have 12 inch screens why do teachers require the larger screen and the reason why we're bringing this up is that the potential savings of making the teachers machines the 12-inch screen is at 200 per device or

047over combined to a cost of twenty thousand dollars we'd just like declare you to clarify this request a bit more high school student desktops again can the administration provide the uses of 150 student desktops what storage and processing speeds are required for each use do we each does each use require the same capabilities then the same question applies to middlesex middle school and relationship the cost for desktops which appear to be high district servers do all the servers in our district need to be replaced at the same time can these be implemented over a two to three year period can the administration provide a list of all of these devices where are they located what exactly are their uses what is their anticipated replacement cycle turning to the fitch academy we'd like to thank the

048nielsen family for their working relationship with the board of education to house the fitch academy we would we would like some further clarity on the annual escalation clause regarding the lease property there does not seem to be a consistent increase in rent over the last few years the percentage increase in leases varied significantly from year to year for example from 1819 to 1920 the cost went up 5.767 the following year fiscal 19 to 20 to 2021 it rose 12.7 in the last fiscal year 2021 tonight to 2122 the cost rose 4.7 and the projected increase for this year's budget i believe is 10.4 percent the new ap spanish uh edition although there is more significant there is a more significant number of students who potentially might enroll in ap spanish which we think is great

049what is the historical percentage of students taking this course are the materials budgeted for anticipating 100 enrollment and if so is that the a reasonable way to anticipate that cost utilities escalation both oil and natural gas are escalating the town paid extra to have diesel excuse me dual fuel capabilities installed to the schools has an analysis been conducted to determine with if on a btu basis it makes sense to switch to a different fuel at individual schools and finally capital items the oil replacement tank the committee would request additional detail on the oil tank at durian high school if this was a problem from the beginning why did we accept it the next item has to do with replacement of elevators at the three elementary schools that are being refurbished are these elevators all the

050same age and in identical repair state the committee is also wondering why these costs are not part of the refurbishment of the schools instead of a standalone capital item even if the state will not reimburse the town for this initiative if they cannot be added above can the administration request funds to provide a strong detailed estimate of the anticipated costs thank you for your time allowing us to request additional information on this budget thank you jack all right thank you rtm fnb um i appreciate that we will move on to rtm education i am looking for ed to see if he's in our zoom land hi hey how are you good i'm not sure if it's just you or you're like jack you have a couple of people so just no but i'll turn it

051over to you thanks it's uh just me and we're gonna be very brief um thank you ed yeah i thought i thought you all might appreciate it leave you more time for public comment um thank you we thank the administration for its responsiveness to questions that have been asked as part of the budget process i know the budget takes a lot of work from a lot of people and we do appreciate all of that effort our committee met only last night so we will submit our questions in a written document for the administration to address the process the administration uses to answer these questions will ensure the public will have access to the questions our committee has asked along with the administration's answers in our meeting last night in addition to reviewing the budget categories

052we had an active discussion around two broad topics open choice and bring your own device where we expect to learn more from an upcoming special meeting of the board as such we will likely have further questions on these two topics after that upcoming meeting we look forward to continuing to engage with the board and the administration as we work towards a budget that we can afford and that delivers the high quality education we expect for our community thank you thank you ed okay we will thank you both um we will get questions from the board of finance uh via email and then share them with the board as soon as we get them we will move on to further discussion on the 2022-2023 proposed budget and follow-up questions dr adley good evening everybody uh thank

053you for those who participated and we'll work on getting those questions answered for you so i'd like to share some information that you had in your packet so with your understanding we'll simply go through these questions these were the uh january 11th generated questions so you've had every opportunity to look at these so i won't read them particularly but we can certainly sort of stop along the way as as board members may or may not have questions so i guess or do you indicate on here dr adley what's been updated from the last time these are all the updates these are all the january 11 these are all the updates so we'll just i think in the interest of time and getting through it we'll go open it up to board questions and we'll start

054with rc11 um questions where are you mr chairman rc1 rc1 it's january 11. all right i included i included the january 8th question just yeah i'll show you how to full packet sorry so we will go to thank you for that mr demand um we'll go to rc1 darian high school so uh question one any additional questions or comments mrs achman so the question was mine so thank you i i guess the only thing i think for the the board to consider um is it sounds as if what we're doing is we are now actually bringing in ftes based on the amount of money and work that we're doing with parents donating to their schools and student activity fund which is great i am an active donator myself but i do think there's some sort

055of balance there um if we're bringing in ftes and healthcare and work we do have to realize that this is for additional fundraising um i just think it's something for the board to contemplate thank you mrs zachman any further questions on uh question one on the bursar i'm also looking online here i don't see any hands up okay so we'll go on to two questions about gasby 84 any additional board questions or follow-up based on the response there all right good we will move on to question three yes sorry julie go ahead quick question on that one and this is kind of versa related but it's in the gatsby section it says that the high school bursts are currently processed as approximately 2 500 transactions i was just curious and rich you could probably just

056answer this what does it entail to be processing those transactions i would expect they're just through the program but am i misunderstanding is it labor intensive it could be anything from posting a catalog item and following up on uh receipts of revenue from the parents it could be uh recording a check that was deposited it could be issuing a reimbursement or issuing a check to a vendor um it could be a reconciliation between the various sub-accounts within the account so it could be a variety of things thank you mrs best so we move on to question three what do we use at 12 000 for handbook printing for um so there's a breakdown in there any additional questions or comments on that this is parent just make a suggestion for next year doesn't be for

057this year can we just say printing not handbook for things so it's not the confusion thank you all right we'll move on to question four how many pe health classes hit the 2628 class size and is that what the principal is concerned about any additional comments or questions there we'll move on to question five what is the balance of the student activity account at dhs um all right the response is there any additional questions or comments on that thank you we'll move on to question six what fees are being collected from parents or students that go into the student activity account so that outlines the parking fees rental fees and other stuff that's listed here mr brown sorry number four sure current flank it just it says it'll reduce the uh class size from 24

058to 22. what was the question i was just trying to figure out nope never mind i'm good you got it right are you good all right mr brown mrs best no i'm good thanks okay um so we'll go back to six any questions on the fees collected that go into the student activity account not seeing any hands all right we'll move on to rc3 middlesex can we have a job description for the campus monitor the job description is attached any further questions or comments right now on that we'll move on to sure mrs mccammon um thank you i'm not used to this um for any of our new board members or people who just want a reminder that there was some question about the difference between the campus monitor and the sro but the sre

059presentation was on march 27 2018. and it's just helpful if you want to go back and see what the goals of that program were thank you mrs mccann we will move on to question eight how is flex time used can we get a breakdown of what flex looks like on a day-to-day basis how will there be time available for the genius hour so that question pretty much outlines that any questions or comments mrs perrin so as i listened to the rtm education meeting there were a lot of questions about um who would access this program and what the program was and i i think those questions have been answered but i just want to reiterate for people that may be confused as the word or just haven't come across the information is it a package

060curriculum and first of all let's back up this is for every single middle school student yes and then it ends in a presentation and that's it it's a it's a beginning middle end project right um and is it a pack are we buying a package curriculum that we're just importing into the classroom or is this something that will be developed and i know there was talk about inquiry-based learning which i'm a huge proponent of um which would level in more detail so that people can be clear about what this is no it is not a packaged curriculum and it would change every year based on the interest of the students at that time and it also ties into a recommendation from our gifted education review about enrichment for all as well as i'm looking at

061program for students identified as gifted or as yes gifted right but it's not just for gifted it's not just the idea programming no it's for everyone in this school yes thank you mrs mccammon just building on that is there is this something i mean i think you talked about some area at school's doing it but it's it's something just that that's really the driver the driver is looking beyond what students would typically encounter in their school day and generating areas of passion and finding peers that have those shared areas of interest so you can spend time with them and explore deeply through an inquiry-based model and then share your learning at the end thank you mrs achman so there just seemed to be a fair amount of commun communication excuse me confusion in the rtm

062meeting um back back everybody if you miss me i'm back um [Music] it is indeed that all children will participate if this isn't a self-selecting this is for all kids it's a different way to utilize flex time is that correct that's correct it's deflect using flex differently one day a month so 10 different times a year thank you thank you mr stockman oh see mrs worm so i thought it was an optional so this is additional work for all children i wouldn't call it work um i would say it's an additional experience that they're going to have during their regular flex time so they're not they're not gonna have homework for genius hour this is pear and how many other opportunities are there for pure inquiry-based learning at the middle school that are this authentic

063and student generated i would say few they probably have some that are embedded in our curriculum but again those are opportunities that there isn't too much choice in those experiences so this is spending time once a month for them to explore an area that they care deeply about with the teacher who likely shares that similar interest mrs achman so i mean a little history because i do think this was a robust conversation last night so i just want to add some color so that education is coming back with questions um pre-flex we used to just have students or the district had students read during the day then we carved out flex and we started doing different time but it wasn't just peer reading so we've done some social emotional work i'm still a little confused

064what happened in capstone but trust me we'll hit that curriculum committee i'm sure um but but this is an extension of time where we used to have kids at one point the idea was they should just read during the day then we thought you know what no we can do something different with that time so this is an extension or maybe an enrichment of what flex time is um not just more per se it's what i understand it to be if i'm wrong please let me know no i think that's a good summary thank you is there a driver behind the scenes in terms of talking to students about flex time and how they use it what they're using it for currently and is it the new principle that's in there looking at you know

065how we use it as mrs zachman said this has evolved over time as to what we're doing with that time versus just hey take your time to read versus more interactive type projects or ideas so i would say number one giving students an opportunity for inquiry-based learning whenever we can do that we'd love to do it and especially at the middle school giving students a chance to have some choice and explore something that they that they care about there's not much more to it than that it's just an attempt to get students more engaged and excited about their learning yes go ahead doctor and yes uh the new principal bringing forth different types of ideas to support student learning great thank you mrs worm so i apologize because i'm struggling with this a little bit

066um and i'm absolutely 100 for inquiry-based learning this does remind me very much of the uh ninth grade idea project which i am always a proponent of um [Music] but has anyone and originally like i said i originally thought this was optional for students right and i think when we are in a time when a lot of remediation is still needed to now be giving these students something else even if it is something they're passionate about is this necessarily the time and has anyone asked the students do they feel like they have time in their day that they can use this right i think a lot of this is going on and we're we're talking about we we hear constantly about mental health mental health mental health um but i really feel like that or

067that we need to listen to our students but i don't think anyone is asking students so have the students be asked been asked or they've been brought into the conversation no it was a budget proposal from the administration thank you mr swarm mrs perrin would this supplant what would this supplant um from what's happening currently in flex you're taking what is it right so it's like nine hours right so what would it be so there's three different things that happen in flex it's either sel two days a week uh two days a week it's extra help or makeup and one day a week it's reading uh so they would rotate what would be missed that once a month so over the course of the year they would miss um four stls four makeup days and

068two reading days my math is correct and once a month they would miss five minutes of each of their classes to make up the hour um for it to be genius hour and not genius 25 minutes because can't get too deep with inquiry in 25 minutes so is this kind of to the point of some of the questions if a student feels they need time to do homework or do reading is there can the student just advocate for themselves that they may not want to participate in genius hour based on where they are in their grade and with what they feel they need to work on so typically having i've not experienced genius hour but i've i've lived other programs like it students who have a passion about reading it's not unlikely that you would

069have one of the genius hour focuses being focused on a group that likes to read and discuss their reading so i would say that would be a way to to think about that it's i've not seen any kid not be excited to work with their peers on the things that they care about most thank you mr chamber mrs worm is there a grade associated with this um i don't think that's worked out yet i've seen it done both ways and it's actually a wonderful opportunity when there's not a grade associated with it to work with some peers across grade levels because you don't have that opportunity as you know too many times in middle school yeah i think to that point when you hear about pressure the pressure thinking about moving to high school and

070everything else i think something that can drive their passion is not tied to a grade or a test or an exam i think gives it a little more flexibility and openness for them to participate in mrs ackman so interestingly i would hope this would also address the board's concern that sometimes we see a gap between going to middle school and high school um and i know um principal rodriguez spoke on maybe there'd be a presentation form of this i think presentations are fairly regular at the high school i'm not sure how many opportunities we have that so um my understanding again and please correct me if i'm wrong that this would also maybe help some skills that are expected to be honed at the high school and giving kids a chance to do that and

071something they're interested in at the middle school to mr janine's point that's a passion project rather than i got to get an a so i just think that this board's also been asking for some of those stop gaps and i see this as one potential one unless again i am mistaken all right i agree with you my experience with it is i know it's a reason why kids want to come to school that day i've actually seen it where it's every week that's typically the most exciting week and the analysis that we had done at one point was it was the date of the day of the week of lowest absences in a school was the day that that occurred we'll take that and also the fewest visits to the nurse's office that was the

072other staff that we have all right good thank you for the conversation questions around that um we'll move on to rc's on the elementary schools rc's five through 10. we're going to request for job description and schedule for the pe teacher so that is outlined here any additional questions or thoughts on that was mine again um i guess i i understand the contractual obligations for prep um and lunch but or what we are saying is that there is a gym period scheduled every single period of the day in every single school so that the only time to take prep and lunch is when the itinerant is in the building yeah the only time i'll reverse that if i can answer it with the reverse the only time the itinerant can teach a class is when

073that home teacher is not teaching a class because the space isn't available okay so it's sorry i keep going i'm going to go back because i have my history here there were times where we had our school so crowded that we were teaching two gym classes at one period so now we're we're back to we have one full-time class as as far as i know we're not running dual dual gym classes that is part of the there have been no dual classes uh during my tenure and this would continue there no be there being no dual classes okay i gotta think on it but thank you okay i just can't read the chart i don't get it so there are so if you look what was the question i don't know i don't understand the

074chart so this example is there are in this model there are three first grade classes so that would be 1a all right so they're teaching uh one first grade class one second one third and they teach them twice during a cycle so if i'm the itinerant teacher on an a day i have my first grade class and i see those students again on wherever the 1b is so then 2a 2b 3a3b because the other piece that makes itinerant schedules when you do twice a cycle so complicated is you would like them to see the same students both times they teach them so you don't have two different pe teachers so this is just showing over the to make up that fde they have one in this example this doesn't mean it will be these grade

075levels they'll have a first second third fourth fifth and sixth class they'll have one of each grade level as part of their schedule just to model it out thank you okay see what i have to think of there may be more questions on that but thank you mr tranberg um we'll move on to rc 12 maintenance um job description on the groundskeeper any additional questions or comments on the groundskeeper rich i know you talked a little bit about um acreage that we have and current staffing versus acreage and then i think some folks have brought up the question of we have a lot of fields that we spent a lot of money or had a lot of money donated thank you uh to the community for turf um versus grass so anything to add in

076terms of our current staffing versus the amount of space that we have so some districts do it differently some have their own employees who maintain the grounds and some have parks and recs who maintain the grounds up to the sidewalks um whether you look at the staffing from the districts that have their own uh staff members or the districts that have parks and recs uh we're probably about two grounds keepers short compared to where everybody else is even with a lot of turf uh there's still turf maintenance that has to go on there's still garbage that has to be picked up um there's still a lot of gardening that has to be done and mulching that has to be done and then the groundskeepers also do a lot of moving of items so there there's

077a request to have something moved from the middle school let's say the high school or vice versa it's the groundskeepers that are that are doing that um but like average wise and uh capacity-wise we're probably too short um you know the request for the one is really to help alleviate some of that burden i know there was a question about whether the staff could work overtime as opposed to adding the fte um it's not really reasonable to expect that the staff that we have is going to work 10 hours a day every day for the school year um you know that'll lead to burnout and you know if they have families and kids that they'd like to see and then we're not going to be able to have them do that um every day for

078the year okay and then i think the question that constantly comes up is working with parks and rec in town but there you get into shared services and that gets into contractual obligations and while it's something that down the road maybe we should think about or look at in terms of shared services it's not that easy a decision to make to have a part of this budget season would you agree with that correct uh same with even contracting out um you know there's only certain there's limitations on really what we could do there and we're probably pushing that limit as it is in terms of contracting out based on the in terms of contracting out services based on our existing contract and staff correct okay thank you mrs mccannon so rich i know you covered

079this a little bit already but but what is happening today are things just going not cleaned up as much as they should be what's what's the impact now so things are either not cleaned up uh the grass isn't cut probably as often as people would like um the time frame in which things are being moved is slower than we would like um mike does have the guys doing a typical cycle um but even when dr adley started the first thing he asked was how often does the grass get cut at central office uh and i think mike said it's you know once every two weeks almost um you know so when you see the grass is long or you see there's weeds it's because they're off doing something else thank you mr kevin thank you

080mr rudel sure mr ceni go ahead um when the district renegotiated the y contract one of the changes was the district basically charged a lie for additional maintenance of the facilities it rented um when i think about the fields is the rental fee inclusive of a you know a maintenance fee uh if you will a custodial fee so it's not a custodial fee but there is a cost associated with maintaining the outside of the campus so the field usage if they're not renting our buildings which is why there's no custodial fee uh but it is intended to partially offset what you see in care grounds okay so we can assume that the revenues that were being generated um would cover the incremental maintenance of you know garbage pickup and any other maintenance associated with the

081field use yes i mean the the need for the groundskeeper is more operational in terms of just everyday day-to-day use not necessarily the use of the fields by outside groups all right thanks rich thank you mr ceni yes rich does this need a year-round need not just during the school year or anything it is it starts with orientation it starts with kids coming at the start of the school year buildings being ready uh aesthetically and and they're also the first people to do snow removal the grounds guys are you know you know at the forefront of doing that thank you thank you mr rudel we'll move on to rc 13 music um do you consider buying music attire um any this is outlined here any further discussion the board wants to have on this right

082now mrs worm i just had a question about it um is there a policy about uniforms as to which groups from what i see it looks like the the sports that have uniforms included are uniforms that can be passed down right so for instance gymnastics and diving swimming those kids or families purchase those uniforms themselves every year because it would be gross to pass down a bathing suit or a leotard right so feel like this kind of falls into that same thing it's your own clothing or something that you're wearing it's not being passed down is there a policy around this or we just kind of willy-nilly this one we pay for this when we jump no this is this is this has been the practice for some time uh regarding music and it's not

083similar than other districts um that would do the same thing but the board certainly has discussed this a couple of years in terms of no it makes sense to me i'm just wondering if because i know because i know this conversation has come up yesterday so i'm wondering if there's something a policy about what's included what's not that's all this is best thank you i can certainly appreciate not passing on leotards and bathing suits um the reason that i ask this question again is because these are curricular classes these aren't extracurriculars and so we do say that as um as the board of education we pay for things that are required for kids to participate in their curriculum and these uniforms have to be worn for uh performances that they must participate in in order

084to get grades in their classes um that said my question this evening is i think this is correct me if i'm wrong all enrolled students in the music programs so i'm guessing that this number would actually be a whole lot lower because most students would get a few years at least out of one uniform i've got a kid in her third year for band dress for example um so i don't know if we could try to put some kind of filter on what we might actually be purchasing like for the freshman or you know 50 percent or something along those lines thank you mrs best yes mrs zachman i think our practice has been things that come back to the school and are kept by the school the school purchases and i'm not saying that

085we can't change that practice um band always comes music comes up because it is curricular versus extracurricular but to mrs worms there's not a board policy regarding uniforms there's been an administrative regulation on that and there has been a practice and that the uniform comes back to the schools that it can be passed down and to your point i don't know that anyone's looking to pass down bathing suits or leotards but i guess someday there could be a discussion on that um i think this does i think music comes up because there is curricular tied to actual brains um and it is required so where we go on that i don't know but that's been the practice and the admin rag versus a board policy that makes sense i know i appreciate the clarification that

086it's part of curriculum thank you i think 12 is self-explanatory yeah i mean unfortunately i don't have any children in the music program at the moment but when i look at the description black suit black dress black top and pants i mean are some of these everyday you know items and i think of a uniform in sports you're not gonna typically wear the whole uniform to you know church or something like that so i'm just trying to get a better idea along the the lines of the the uniform that's required thanks anything you want to add to that dr evan no chris you'll record that one i'll get i'll get more information from the music okay i think you're more chance of crossing over a different setting from one to the other but not exclusively

087so but i think i do think too that i don't i don't know the only thing that pops out to me i mean i you know having a daughter in course or whatever just wears a black dress which she has plenty of um i guess and and i see most of these students they wear black pants they wear a white shirt they wear a black tie or they wear a suit so some of it is stuff they seem to have themselves i know there is a rental option but band is kind of a specific uniform so those folks that are in band they purchase those uniforms that they're in that they wear and those are not passed down i just i need to get details okay that's fine i'm just not sure what one does

088with the band uniform after they graduate other than pass it down this is actually if there's any orgy sorry what's that i don't think there's any organized way to pass it down no right okay yeah and and then maybe because yes general music for course you wear your your black shirt and your white shirt but then when you get in the upper levels you're asking kids to have a tuxedo and you're it's not just pull it out of your closet you're asking the girls have a very specific black dress so i don't have kids in the program i can't answer what it is but this is why it keeps coming up because parents say you buy the whole soccer uniform or you buy the whole football uniform why does my software only has a tuxedo

089because of the requirement of participating in this group so so mr tramberg i would suggest just get some more information beyond the questions here and then i think we could banner this around all night long but to continue to talk about um uniforms with everything else we have on the agenda then i think the board has to think about the direction they want to go in here in terms of what we do provide and what we don't provide and come to that conclusion all right mrs best anything to add i was just going to add it is a specific dress it's a specific tuxedo it's a specific black pants and tops for high school band chorus and orchestra it's not just a you know an outfit which involves rentals so good right rc 15 technology

090uh job description around the technician um a lot of information here i'll open it up to board questions or comments we may come back go ahead mrs mccammon thank you would you please spend a little time talking about mms i understand that's why we're hiring the technician but that's a big difference one or four hours and 12. what's going on there so that's that's the basic uh turnaround time that teachers have to wait uh to get some work done and get work orders filled so we're probably hundreds of hundreds of hours behind right now and work orders why is the middle sec middle school different than the high school in the elementary schools just it's just the size the middle school tends to have well i'll say from a student point of view this this

091there's another student component of this um the middle schools tend to have more issues just developmentally um with their with their machines okay and is that also based on the current staffing that it's taking 12 hours well just yeah directly yes the use of the ratio of people to actual computer types like this it's lower at the middle school and higher at the at the high school in the elementary school i don't have to check the number there but there's two texts at the high school currently and only one tech at the middle school okay and there's no rollover that if the response time at the high school is an hour and if tech's not doing anything at the high school and you got 12 hour wait time at middle school does that tech roll

092over to help the middle school so jeff i think jeff is alive but uh jeff does flex people sometimes especially you know for student devices our largest repairs so do we need to shift one of the two from the high school to middlesex i don't think the high school could operate uh with one tech given the size of the staff and students okay this is mcallen so looking at this i know it's it's a ballpark but at 55 of the day is is basically repairs and we moved to byod at the high school um would we free up a lot of technician time there this is just this is no not really this is strictly they're still going to need that they're going to need to be doing what they're doing at the high school

093this is strictly for the middle school no i understand um but i'm just pushing harder because that is one of the things that we're certainly hearing about that if if you know a certain percentage of the repair would be handled now in the home um would that lessen the load on the on the high school i i could answer that question different ways but i'd be making things up so i'd love to tell you i'm not going to anticipate that um mr adams are you there i'm here do you want to respond to that just from your department but sure absolutely so no the the troubleshooting time will not change in the high school um because those technicians are basically doing level one troubleshooting which is anywhere anything from connectivity to basic application support they're

094not actually doing in-depth level 2 or level 3 hardware repair so in fact i think level 1 troubleshooting will actually go up a little bit with diversity of devices we'll see in a byod model thank you jeff mr brown hey jeff following up on that are we doing any support for a student who brings their own currently at the high school level one we are not no okay thank you mr brown any other questions on 13 we'll move on to 14. sorry dude i'm a little late sure go ahead mr genie it takes a while to hit the button um can any of this support be done remotely i.e you know you could share across different schools with a call or a zoom or something like that a lot of a lot of it is

095hands-on you know you need to be in front of a device so it's very difficult to do it remotely in fact we saw it during the pandemic because my staff was pretty much in during the entire pandemic do you have the ability to you know when i have a problem at work they just basically take over my laptop do you have the ability to do that oh absolutely yeah thank you thank you mr ceni thank you jeff this is achman would we have that ability in would we have that in the bring your own jeff do you have that zoom in availab do you have that take over the individual computer and the byob model yes we will okay i truly said that right maybe that's what i'm thinking about 8 30 at night um

096mr brown just a quick on the uh pairs you see at middlesex can you give a percentage or generalize like it's the same thing over and over or you attribute it to a similar cause i'm sorry i i didn't quite hear the question yeah i'm not sure i said it well um is it normally the like the space bar falls off all the chromebooks it's just the chromebook model we have or the kids dropping or they spill orange juice or it's just who knows it's it's everything it's everything you hit crack screens missing keys operating system rebuilds application loading um it runs the gamut it thank you all right um we'll move on to 14 case loads for technicians um any additional questions or comments on that um we'll move on to 15 if we

097move to byod at the high school in level one um would there be excess capacity at the high school i think we kind of touch base a little bit on that all right um any additional questions there we are good 16 if everything is web based why do we need to purchase the 25 mac labs any additional questions there all right good um uh the 85 middle school desktops um so this is these are all really an age issue um so any additional questions there on those and jeff very quickly is there any comment you can make with respect to the rtm questions about do all 85 need to be the same do can we order the 10 for the administration with a different type of setup versus the 24 for special ed in terms

098of what they need or the time and energy spent on that would just take away from any savings that there would be yeah these are some very these are some very basic uh computers there's no high processing power these are these are pretty similar across the board um and yeah it would be a lot of work to determine who needs what kind of processing power and storage so these are the basics and the basic covers everything that is needed for administration guidance nursing special ed cafeteria auditorium library art music and pe the basic computer that you're ordering covers all their needs correct okay any additional questions mr moroney yes not and if not for this budget cycle but i think for this it should replicate mr lynch's replacement schedule for trucks and things and have

099a replacement schedule so we don't have an 85 purchase one year and then zero for the next seven eight nine years whatever it is but it should be kind of spaced out more evenly through the budget in my opinion thank you mr maroney mr brown this question of the phone system that we're running is there any ability to go to like a soft phone or um unified communications on these devices or do we need to actually have telephones because i know teachers never call me about my kids so i don't know what they need them for [Laughter] so your question is i'm just asking like phone system support is there a way and i guess this is jeff is there any way we could go forward or look at not having phones to have to

100support moving forward or by using some of the computers and other devices that we hand out to the teachers or is that not being looked at or would it make sense not make sense to do that well the phones are sunk cost already so they've already been paid for in prior years um the only cost going forward is the support of the phone system which does include hard phones soft phones lines etc so whatever type of device you have at the end user um we will still incur that support cost i think if i think back in time over some um incidents locally and throughout the country that the old-fashioned phone line has come in handy in terms of trying to make emergency calls or get through to fire police or emergency over cell phones

101being blocked or cell towers not working is that correct jeff yes yes and i think it is a legal requirement that we have a hard phone in every classroom okay thank you yes can i just say um mr murray page 136 if there's something different that you're looking for that this is the actual technology replacement cycle but if there's something there's a skew on that i'm certain we're certainly willing to you know look at that did you mean dennis that that you like the schedule but you want to ask that from a purchasing perspective we consider uh uncoupling purchases like with the stock server for example so where you just might see servers being replaced over a three year cycle instead of all servers in one year i think that was your question yes just

102sort of space it right here yeah sorry thank you uh yes mrs it's my understanding though that the servers are all almost up with their useful life so it may have been the original purchase was done so this is the replacement cycle because they're just aging out so right i don't it would it might be difficult to uncouple i mean i'd love to hear if we could but it might be difficult to uncouple at this point jeff is it is it kind of the way to do servers is you replace them all at once and there is no really schedule of a server every couple of years well what has changed over the years is that servers are virtual so in this replacement it's actually just one unit within that one unit is all the

103redundancy and all the servers within the district it's that one unit that has gone into life so where we're saying replace the servers it's actually one physical unit but we have over 45 servers in the district that this will upgrade okay thank you i think that explanation helps for some of the questions that were brought to the table too thank you jeff uh 18 are the grade 12 ipads usable so that questions answered any additional thoughts or questions there yeah uh good i thought mr moroney was going to raise his hand rc 17 health [Music] any questions on 19 charging the nurses to this rc because they really do service all students um 20 should we move the lpn to rc 24 i think we were all in agreement that that makes sense based on

104that is a one to one for special education just yes this is actually so i i i agree my it's the second part of that statement that confirm that concerns me i'm not saying we move everyone and we don't move everyone what i'm asking for is time allotted be allotted to the appropriate rc so if let's just take a an extreme example if no psychologists were seeing any student as part of their iep then they should be nowhere near specialized if students are seeing a psycho psychologist as part of five percent of the psychologists times for ieps then five percent should be in my opinion in special ed like if we're tracking costs we just need to track consistently if we're not then we don't have to but it's not an all-or-nothing proposition and i

105think that's that's what concerned me it was kind of like we're moving all nurses well move the nurses that service all students because you're a general ed student first to health move a student who is specific based on a need to where their need is wherever that might be in the budget so i agree with moving the nurses that services all students i would put the lpn back in special ed where it's always been for the one-on-one services and then in terms of if the bo agrees we'll move all psychologists in all schools rc's and social workers i don't know that the boe can determine that it depends where you're spending the money i think you could simply you could simply just allocate it where the state's going to allocate it regardless of where we

106have it that's like i think it's 85 15. so the state will allocate that for us because that's what they do so you could we could decide to put 15 and 1 and 85 and the other because that's the way it's going to be reported anyway i know but i think what we're trying to do as a town is understand where our cost is as a cost accounting measure that's all i'm trying to do i don't really care if it's 85 15 one year and it's a hundred another year i'm just trying to track my costs as an accounting measure so in terms of moving all anywhere i would just move them where they are appropriately the moneys are being expended and leave it at that thank you mrs ackman mr ceni rich can you

107can you track as as granularly as 95 5 or in terms of where you're providing the services or is it is it difficult to track the expenses at such a granular level i think it would change every year um and it could even change throughout the year it could be that you start the year off let's say at 85 15 and then you end the year at 75.25 um so can you track it i guess can you physically track it to that level is my question uh no those staff members would actually have to fill out um some type of like time sheet or information saying we saw x amount of special ed kids and we saw x amount of uh general education students which is that is that yeah good mrs practice is that

108practice um done today or you'd have to create that practice of a timesheet uh we do track how many special education students they see i surely can correct you if i'm wrong and we do that for access cost purposes but i don't know if we do any of that for gen ed is is that where the methodology comes from from the state in terms of 85 15. it's typically because they assume a 15 identification rate okay thank you mrs klein did you want to add anything thank you thank you mr dean i just wanted to confirm that that we do track it for excess cost um and to mr city's question um if you look at our answer on rc 24 for 23 for the school psychologist we're able to we'd have to have a

109system to do it to show how much time is spent at ppt's how much time it's meant to be 504s how much time we have to be very granular about it would change throughout the year it wouldn't be a constant number but we could establish a system for that thank you mrs cline mrs zachman to be clear we track all of our iep services as they are delivered to students so right now what we've done is say one in one but we are in full compliance with the law and track our services so it's not creating a new system we do it i don't really care for one-on-one there were people who were saying it it's not fair to divide it that broadly i don't care if we do it 85 15. at the very

110least we know we do do it correct yes and just moving them all one or the other is like flipping a coin each year thank you mrs zachman this is warm i i guess um my question is really what is the end goal right what are we trying to see how do we want it broken down is it just to see how much we spend on special education um because if that's the case aren't we trying to not single out special education aren't we trying to look at everyone as a whole i i guess that's my issue with it like what what are we trying to accomplish if we we need to know what it looks like so that we can plan for next year that's one thing if we're just looking at it to

111point to say this is how much we spend on special education i'm not sure i think i don't want to speak for all the board members but i think they're looking for fiscal responsibility in terms of being able to track expenditures one year from the next to be consistent whether has changed or whether okay good question um uh rc26 elp can we see tuition from other area preschools and then um yes um i just want to clarify that these pricings to tuition that you're seeing here are this current year's tuition and they will likely increase for next year is that right correct thank you and you see 22 where our proposed tuition is any additional questions there we'll move on to rc 24 special education um could you please provide a narrative similar to what

112we provided for slp the additional questions on question 23 question 24 who do the school psychologists report to should they be charged to the buildings uh again the school psychologists report to the principles if the boe agrees we will move the psychologists and social workers to the school rc's so i'm not sure does the board want to have a conversation around this is there a recommendation from finance rich on this in terms of you know what we look for what we want to see on a regular basis and then is there anything we want to change as a board i mean really either way is fine if you look at the districts that do have like the equivalent of an rc24 they also usually have something called uh like a pps budget so they separate

113out special education and pps so pps is typically things like social workers psychologist guidance counselors they're usually coded into a pps rc or cost center and then special education if they have a special education cost center it's usually special education teachers speech therapists things like that and then there's some districts that don't actually have a special education cost center and everything is pushed into the schools and we do have practice nights we you know we bring out library music art so that all of those could like be a direct line could also be in you know technically could also be in the these other rc's if you know people just do we just do it differently different different 40 different practices so my my thought process would be you know i understand the conversation around

114the nurse and the nursing but i think this is a broader question for the board that maybe work should be done at the finance committee level to see if we want to make any significant changes about the way we're reporting i'm not sure this is a real conversation around the existing budget versus a change to how we want to report or look things or look at things going forward so other than the few changes that we've agreed to i mean we could go through the whole budget process and continue to ask ourselves the same questions as to where we want these things placed so does that make sense mr ceni yeah i mean i i agree duke um you know basically what we're talking about now is making accounting adjustments going forward and i think

115we should kind of take that away from the budgeting aspect yep thank you mr seniors i think the line of supervision is is one thing versus where the expenditure happens so right yeah no that's a good point all right thank you um 25 sorry could we have more detail on the professional development in this rc and we are still on the special ed rc so that's a good outline there uh any questions on the professional um development well just thank you that it's really really helpful to see it broken out and to see thank you uh rc 19 curriculum again looking for more detail on the professional development any additional questions on that mr brown what is equitable instructional practices those are just content specific so if the social studies department uh wanted to bring

116someone in they would that those funds would uh support the cost of that over the professional development days and i guess the follow-up would be bring in for what in this example so for so when you're thinking about content specific and we're talking about just responsive curriculum in general uh looking and making sure that we have accurate representation portrayal within the document strategies for teachers um suggestions for curriculum those types of things does this overlap with the dei initiative or we'll work into that i would say potential recommendations from a dei committee would be considerations for the department chairs and administrators to look at for the professional development for departments yes thank you mr christian mrs mccammon we're at notes wilson that is um wilson training for general ed teachers is that what that is

117yes which most of even general education often comes under rc24 it's a it's a collaboration between the departments and typically 19 would supplement in case there's a few extras that's how we've budgeted in the past thank you any other questions thank you um 27 uh what is the title of the book we are purchasing for western civ any additional comment there i'd like to make sure we all get a copy at the board table we're very interested in reading more about western soup uh 28 line understanding the dei consultant for next year and what are those costs that you're building in uh for this budget that we're talking about now so any additional questions around that explanation okay thank you um question 29 could be more information on the tc k through 12 units for

118next year what does this include where did the new requirements come from um so pretty detailed explanation there rich anything you want to add to that no okay any board any board questions mrs best no no it looked like you want to ask a question very good thank you um last question can we reconcile the fte in the personal objective pages 184 to 1 to 198 throughout the budget book attached as a reconciliation um any additional i know this people were trying to mrs ackman you were trying to do your comparison did you get what you needed or yeah okay good any other questions on that all right good so that is the follow up on board of ed questions anything else you wanted to add dr adley no if there if there are other

119questions from the board and either now or in the next day or two if you want to forward those we'll add them to this the discussion for tuesday and um i would ask also that um again any additional questions i think we have a lot captured but any additional questions or information you'd like for the meeting on the 24th with respect to open choice and also the one-to-one initiative please email those questions into myself and um dr adley mrs achman on that mr janine can we can the administration be prepared to provide at monday's meeting a document on open choice because i'm being sent multiple documents that people are creating in the public um arguably i would say that they're not all factual um they may be people's best attempts to be factual but i

120have no place to point people right now other than saying go back to watch these meetings on youtube or zoom can we have a presentation kind of with the facts and just the facts so that if people in the public want to know they know that's a resource to look at and then if they have questions they can ask questions based on that but right now i've seen at least three different documents put together often anonymously sometimes not and so it's i think it's confusing to people the public on where to look um i i would like us to have a place to look you know i would just add to that that if there's i mean i read a bunch of stuff on various websites all state websites but if there is a good

121place to point people to also over and above that i would rather direct them to a specific area along with what i think we do need is a is a full-blown presentation from a to z on the program and i believe you're organizing that and ces is also going to join the meeting correct correct great again if the board members have any questions or they're quite open choice or anything else for that matter budget um as soon as you get into us the better as we prepare for like we're gonna come back to back here with me monday night and tuesday night so it'll just be helpful because to get it right thank you thank you mr sini and along the open choice we've amassed a number of questions can we get a list of

122kind of questions to date that you guys are preparing for so we know whether or not things are being covered or you have it covered uh prior to the meeting now sure thank you thank you good thank you mr senior any other addition this is warm just a question so ces i did see the one meeting when they were here at like 11 o'clock at night um but there wasn't a full presentation it was just really answering questions was there a presentation they did previously that i'm not finding no they didn't do a presentation there was a presentation and um i have the date i believe it was november 25th um but i will get back to you on that and i believe dr adley did an initial i did yesterday yes maybe we've done

123this like three times so i can give you the dates times i know that ces did a like a full presentation for new canaan that they seem to have gotten something that we did and i'm just curious as to where that is no we we probably knew a lot more before we were able to share most of the information and okay and see yes or coming to provide any other context or clarify some questions that i didn't answer i think they are also um here late but but that's just because the meeting went light and there weren't a ton of questions so i think they were prepared my understanding is with lots of information there just were not a lot of questions that evening thank you mrs warren thank you mr hoffman um any further

124questions um all right and we will look forward to questions from our friends over at the board of finance and circulate those as soon as we get them so i will make a motion to adjourn um mrs um mccammon ii this is mr brown um all in favor that is unanimous thank you everyone have a good evening see you next week [Music]