Meeting transcript
BOE Meeting
February 14, 2024 · Watch on Zoom · All meetings
Alrighty. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to welcome everybody to the Andover, Board of Education regular meeting for, 02/14/2024. I'll call the meeting to order. It is 07:01PM. And if I could have everyone do the pledge of allegiance. Nick, you wanna lead us?
I pledge allegiance to the of The United States Of America. That's the first time I got from now. 1,602 board meetings Miss Chopassin. No no one's ever had to take it. Okay. You're very welcome. And
thank you very much for being here. We're joined to this evening from Nick Caruso from Cave. So thank you very much for for joining us. Comments from the public? I don't see anyone other than our miss Loudon and Valerie and Terry and our board clerk. So thank you. Any communications? Does anybody have communications? Valerie, do you have any? No. No? Okay. Done from you, Taylor. No? Okay. Alright. We have a bunch of meeting minutes to approve. We'll start with the regular, meeting of 01/10/2024. Did everybody have an opportunity to read them? Any any changes, any corrections? No? Okay.
If I could get a motion to approve the the minutes. I move that we approve the minutes from the original meeting of 01/10/2021. Thank you, Gary. Negative second? Second.
Mhmm. Thank you, Steve. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Thank you very much. Moving on to the special meeting of January 17 for the budget seminar. Anybody have any corrections or any issues with the minutes? No? Alright. Can I get a motion to approve their minutes? Jerry, you wanna go down the go down the line here? Okay. Thank
you. May I move that we approve the minutes for our special board meeting of January 17, is it? Yes. At 01/17/2024.
Thank you, Jerry. Second? Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. You. Abstain. Abstain. Okay. Alright. Thank you. So alright. Steve Bus will abstain from that one. Alright. And then the special meeting for 01/24/2024, that was another you have a correction for the budget seminar. Okay. Go ahead, Jerry. My name is Gerard, not Gerald. Okay. Alright.
I will, I know Caitlin had, done these, so I'll follow-up with her on that one. Okay. No. Any other corrections? No? Alright. Can I get a motion? I'll move that we approve the AES special board of education meeting on 01/24/2024. You
got it. Second. Thank you, Steve. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. And last but not least, another our last budget workshop, which was Wednesday, January 31. Any corrections? Your Alright. Thank you, Jerry. Alright. I'll follow-up with Caitlin on that one. Thank you. Thank you. Other than Jerry's name, does anybody have any other corrections?
No? Okay. With that, make a motion that we approve the minutes from the and over our school special board of education meeting on Wednesday, July January 31
Thank you. 2024. Alright. Second? Yes, please. Okay. All in favor? Alright. All in favor. Okay. Great. Thank you, everyone. Alright. Does anybody want to, add or delete any agenda items? No? Okay. Hearing none. Alright. Again, we wanna celebrate, Nick coming here today, to do some professional development and new DOE member training. So go ahead. Take it away. Thank you. Thank you. Can I speak one celebration with you? Absolutely. Yes. I'm sorry. Did I skip over that? No. No. Celebrations before you. Sorry. I just wanted to welcome you, the new AES baby. Have Two year and June. Not today. Oh, the year of the week. Year and June. So we just wanted to welcome Perfect. Wonderful. Awesome. That's great. Congratulations.
Thank you. And let me have this shared screen.
Hold on one second. I have to come out of this. Sorry. There you go. Now you can go back to this. No problem. Oh, it's working. We're we're good. You can see it, Shannon?
Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. As I get started, the one thing, the state legislature this year passed a law saying that all new newly elected board members had received training within their first year of service. We are still negotiating with the state department what it's gonna look like, but we have been assured that this would cover that, the expectation. So what I'd like is first have everybody on the whole assignment that's that's that's gonna be present. So if somebody's gonna Zoom in, if you wanna catch their name. Okay. So even if they're Zooming, we'll put their name down here. I'll just say Zoom. I don't wanna
Yeah. Give credit where someone hasn't been here. We're trying to keep this legit. Okay. And name, print, sign, and then date. And for the people who Zoom in, can just write the name. Okay. We're tracking that so the state department says who's gotten it would be able to
think that Shannon, do you want me to put your name down? Is that okay? Yes. Thank you.
Yep. Please. It's not as urgent for people who've been on the board, but this way, you'll get the credit. Understood. And just make sure I don't leave without it. I think that happened in Scotland when I was there. Right, Val?
So I'll do my best to remember who's calling me to talk to you. Great. So
I'm gonna sort of speed talk tonight because I have I've taken three hours to do this presentation, and we've said about an hour. I know you have other business to do, so I'm cognizant of that. What I'm gonna start with are just some sort of random thoughts, but in order to really everybody hear these things, Mike, I wanna start with you. Well, I know who you are. I love it when people put the name Ben at the front. How long you've been on the board, why you chose to serve on the board, and what you hope to get out of city. What is it that you wanna walk away knowing?
Yeah. So just over a year. Why? I'm an educator myself, and I I just I really value education. I think it's the most influential factor outside of, you know, the parents impacting the home for things. And just wanna make sure that our community has the best education for our kids that that that we could possibly give them. Mhmm. What I hope to do is training is just to further clarify and nail down really what the true role of the board is in the overall. Okay. We can deliver that. Thank you. Eric?
I've been on the board for about eight years. I've been coming up far. Mhmm. So why? I was fine too with an educated teacher, you know, went to school. And I realized how important what we do here is and how it impacts the kids, the classroom, and it's the opposite end of being a teacher. And I've learned a lot over the years, and that's the reason why. I'm gonna ask the what?
I kinda want what, you know, what do you hope you'll hear tonight or well, hold on, Leo. Well, I've been to your presentation. Yeah. You've heard it all sometimes. I've probably heard it all,
but it's worth hearing again. I think what you your message is important. I think it's important in setting priorities of what the board should be and what our role should be. Thank you. Well, thank you for being bye bye.
Celeste Willard. I've been on for three years. And why I chose to be on the board of ed, I have a child that goes to the school, wanted to give back to the community and, you know, public service, and, you know, felt that this is an important board, not only for, you know, my daughter, but for also the other, you know, the children that go here, you know, members of, you know, the community that I live in. And to learn today, it's always good to hear new board member training to kind of brush up on, you know, what our goal is and, you know, things actually to learn more about it. Thank you.
Steve Bluffs. Been on the board for about five years. I joined the board initially because I have three children, go to the school. I I came from a very large district myself growing up in California. You know, I had, I guess, frequency notions of how I thought it should this was a brand and all the now kind of after I've had the opportunity to see behind the curtain, I think it's important to not only continue to advocate for the school, but having kind of that experience help kinda translate some of that to other people who I I know are in similar shoes as I were prior to getting here. And
I I can't tell you what because I don't know normally know until after most of your presentations. There's always something that I believe, Hermit, that I find very useful and helpful if you could go. Thank you.
Hi. I'm Graham and Sarah. About two months. About about twenty minutes. Not that long. Well, I well, I come from a family of educators. My grandmother was an administrator. I have many aunts that are teachers. I myself as a lifelong learner learner continue education for as long as I possibly can until I run out of a way to pay for it. Mhmm. And
I have a child in the school, and I also wanna make sure that elementary school is really where kids like you learn either love school or not love school. And so I wanna make sure that that's fostered, and I wanna make sure that we have a good relationship with the community. And what I hope to learn is, you know, what our role is and expectations of how to interact with the state, other boards. Thank you. And we have Shannon joining us. Yep. Shannon.
Eight and a half years. I joined because, at that time, my son was a student here, and I saw Andover Elementary as probably the greatest asset, that Andover has as far as encouraging, especially younger families to move here. And I wanted to support that, support the students as a way of contributing to the community. And, Nick, I'll love if I learned something new tonight, which I usually do during your presentations. Thanks.
Thank you. I hope I have a chance to ask all of you if you did what you're gonna take away. I don't have the time because I'm rushing, but I'll try to do that. By the way, this was my first attempt at AI. Draw a picture of a of a facilitator with a, flip chart, and then I had to start fine tuning the instructions. This was probably about eight months ago. I imagine if I did it now, it'd be almost photorealistic. The technology is changing that dramatically. But, anyway, that's just a little tidbit. For those of you who have heard this before, I'm gonna ask, how many school board members does it take to screw in a light bulb? See, now if one of you said, I remember that it's I would really feel like I did my job. And only once has that happened in the last couple years. Okay. So the answer is none. It's up to the board to say let there be light. Oh. Write that down. When I come back next year or the year after, we're gonna have a quiz. You're the policymakers. Your policy manual is your book of law. You are the legislative branch of government in as regards to the school system. You, set goals. You set, maybe you have a strategic plan or maybe it's a portrait of a learner. There's lots of ways of articulating it, but that's the best way of making sure that you leave an imprint on the district is by as a board collectively coming up with a shared vision that drives the work of the district.
It's the superintendent's job to decide are we gonna do an indefinite fluorescent handle power or whatever and to designate the appropriate staff person to do it in. Of course, when you have a principal, that usually ends up being the designated staff person. And in fairness, I was actually in another district about this size a couple years ago, And I had done this, and I was talking about some of the other things I'll talk about. And I noticed the superintendent feverishly writing on a legal package, writing, writing, writing. And I finally stopped, and I said, what are you doing? She goes, I'm taking the minutes. And the first thing that dawned at me, you don't need verbatim minutes for this. It's Nick did a presentation on roles and responsibilities,
then we went on to policy. But secondly, and I was so glad, one of the board members literally stood up, pointed to the superintendent, she's throwing the light bulb. And she was absolutely right. Is it is it good use of your chief executive officer's time to be taking minutes? You know, when I'm in a meeting and someone says, who's gonna take the minutes? I go like this because I hate taking minutes. One, I have lots of handwriting, but on top of that, you don't you're not engaged in the participation of that meeting when you're taking minutes. You're using your ears and you're using your hand, but you're all you're doing is trying to capture what you hear, and you're not participating. I want my CEO fully engaged.
And it was at that point, you know, you educators know that's a teachable moment. We stopped, and we said, so what would be the appropriate thing to do? And they said, well, we have to talk to the superintendent and find somebody to pay somebody to do the the minutes because that was the thing. We could save $50 a week then. Is that good use of your your money? So they decided that's an appropriate place. So your job is really through your expectations. The superintendent comes back and says, in order to do this, this is what I need. It's kinda your job to provide her the resources to do that. That's part of what you do. You provide me the tools to be successful. And then it is your job to evaluate the quality of life, and you work with the superintendent, with staff. But if you're focused on teaching and learning, which is what that's the outcome we're looking for. That's the work that happens in this building. Do we spend time in our board meetings talking about student achievement? Do we talk about where did we say we were gonna be when we started this new I shouldn't be reading initiative because that's a really sore subject lately, literally. So next to say.
But but but as you're going through your decision making, one of the questions I would always ask is, what's it gonna look like if it's done well, and how are gonna know? And then part of our board meetings every meeting should be something about how how do we know and what what are we doing, where are we, so that if that's the most important work of the district, are you spending your time on that? Or do we spend our time on what they call the killer beads, buildings, books, budgets, all the beads buses? Those are tangential to the mission. I mean, we need them, but that shouldn't be what we spend all our time on. It should really be on instruction, teaching, and learning as a board. Oh, no. What? Yeah.
Because the number's there. Oh, here we go. There's a 192 faces on this page. That was the last strategic school profile. Each one of these little faces represents a child whose entire future depends on what happens in this building. That is a huge several of you have said the importance of the work you do. That's what they're hoping is that you are gonna make a difference in their lives. A couple weeks ago, I was asked to answer a few questions. I hit my 1,600 workshop, so they decided to interview me. They said, what's the most important thing you learn? And I put on the fact that school boards matter, that you matter. If you're doing your job right, you're gonna make a difference in this building. If you do it doing your job poorly, you're gonna make a difference in this building. But the success of this school rests a lot on the work you do with the board. It's really, really important. And we know that there's a huge connection between success in school and success in life, and the absence
of success follows them through. So it's really important what you do, and I heard all of you say that in one way or another. There we go.
Back. There we so there's a book called School Board Leadership in America. It was written in 1958. Ed Tuttle was the first executive director of the National School Boards Association. And I mentioned this book for a couple reasons. One, I found it on Amazon for, $6 a couple years ago, so I read it. And it fascinated me how much of what they were dealing with in 1958 we still talk about today, and we still deal with the same issues. More not as much in instruction as it used to be, but on the societal things, we're dealing with a faster pace of trouble, but the same kinds of issues have never really been solved. Because for one thing, we're trying to solve social conditions through educational solutions, and that's not always gonna work. We become the focus of a lot of social engineering, for lack of a better term, I don't mean that in a negative way, rather than the broader community taking charge of a lot of that stuff. It falls on the schools to do it, and those things haven't changed because they never give you enough resources to do that well. The other reason is the book was full of these great quotes. I like this I like this one by the Marquis de Lafayette. I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect. And out of all this, I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.
To me, that's good decision making. That's what we want. I need data. I have to pay attention to the facts, But in the end, it's not if I'm just waiting for enough, you know, enough stuff to fill my head that it tips the scale, I'm not sure that's enough. You know? I've seen policies written by our policy department, which is a retired superintendent, and we make sure it meets all the legal requirements for a policy. But at the same time, we have a retired superintendent saying, if I approach this policy looking for guidance, is this gonna help me? Because as the CEO of the district, I'm gonna go to policy for the will of the board to understand what my expectations are. Is it clear enough? Is it does it if I open that, will it give me guidance or make me more confused? And so common sense is really, really important as you go through this stuff.
I found this quote recently. I put it on my email tagline because I really like it. Great leaders don't set out to be a leader. They set out to make a difference. People will follow you because of where you're going, not because you are the best person that's telling them how to do it. And I think that's really important too. I'm gonna ask you for some help. I'm working on these memes that you see on social media. In this case, like, play guitar and stuff on the side, so, you know, there's all different kinds of impressions. I'm working on one for school boards, and I just I'm I'm gonna share you with you my rough draft of it.
How our parents see us, Joan of Arcburn, at the stake. How we see us, you know, Mel Gibson with the flag charging across the field. How our staff sees us, drunken sailors. How our legislators see us, trick or treaters. Our friends see us as, you know, Washington's boldly going across the Delaware, how our community sees us, the Salem witch trials, how our kids see us. Who? Not a lot of kids know who the school board is. I love it when they do. And then actually, yes, just, you know, doing the job doing the job. I've actually been working with one board. Well, I'll get to that one in a second. This is another concept I've been trying to figure out whether it plays in some places, it has ravioli, meatballs, lasagna. They have pasta. They have cheese. They have sauce. They have meat. They're the exact same ingredients, but one is a whole lot better because as you cook it, all of the ingredients meld together, and they're stronger for that. And I just think of a team being more worthy of the of the task when you're working together and making things happen together. And so I just plant that seed, think about it. If if I'm working with the board like in an an evaluation, I'd probably spend some time asking people to share what they think were more like this or that and why would that matter. And nothing against ravioli. Ravioli
meatball is a great staple. We have it at least a couple times a month. But and finally, I mean, I I put this together for a board I'm working with where is your team more like, you know, work in new races? And I've done that with my kids, and you if not everybody's paddling in the same direction, you don't win. Or is it more like wrestling? And, this district that I'm gonna be working with is, we know they're like that, and I'm trying to get them off of that. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out also. What I have to do now is we have to switch to the other presentation. Oh, that's here. We can do that. You might be able to it's better if you hover. It's that new Microsoft stuff.
Oh, wait a minute. I know what's behind that. I don't know what is going on with it. Oh, here we go. Not a problem.
So now when I started this work, I actually started on the school board in 1983. I served on the Bloomfield Board of Ed for ten years, was chair for a couple, and then left there to come to work at Cave thirty years ago, last November. So I've been doing this work for thirty years. And when I started, I you know, I've been a board member. I've actually been vice president of the Cave as well, so I was very in tune to what was going on around the state. And but I figured if I'm gonna really work with boards and help them understand their job, I should read all the state laws, and the state prints a book that's about 450 pages thick. That's all the state laws that govern school districts. And as I'm looking through it, gee, I wish I'd known that. Gee, I wish I'd known that. So this is a compendium of the stuff I think is probably most important to know, at least the short version.
And I'm gonna because they're words and words matter, plus there's people online, I'm gonna read them, and it's called death by PowerPoint for a reason. But I think the words do matter, so I'm gonna do that. But starting with the state constitution, it reads, there shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state. The general assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation. And the first time I saw that, the first thing that stood out in my mind was, well, first of all, it's a state responsibility. The state of Connecticut constitution says there shall be free schools. They deliberately left it out of the US constitution. They left it to the states to do it. While all of our founding fathers thought education was important to the new this new government they were forming, this democracy or democratic republic, Jefferson wrote extensively about education. Adams did, a few others. They knew it was important, but they didn't think it should be a national thing. They thought it should be by the state. Incidentally, their idea of what universal education was is very different than what we look at today. Back then, if you weren't an old white guy, you didn't get anything. Jefferson wrote that the purpose of education was to separate the genius from the rubbish. I mean, they had a very different but society could live with that. You could educate world class education with 10% of the population, and they would run everything.
That doesn't happen anymore because we we have to have a much more educated populace to make things work the way they are now. So that's changed a little bit. And second, it's the responsibility of the Connecticut General Assembly to provide these provide schools. So it's a state obligation to do this. Now the first thing they did was oh, and I'd also point out that the oath you swear when you're elected says you're gonna support and defend the constitution of The US and the state of Connecticut, and that you're gonna faithfully discharge duties as a school board member to the best of your ability. And those are kinda outlined in statute. So you're promising you're gonna do it. And then from there, you have a statute that says each local or regional board of education shall maintain good public elementary and secondary schools, implement the educational interests of the state as defined in section ten four a, and provide such other educational activities as in its judgment will best serve the interests of the school district. This is the first paragraph of four four or five pages of law that say this is what a school board does. But in my mind, it was really the most important language. It's sort of on a box of cereals, the first ingredients, the most prevalent, and it works its way down.
And I think they made made it clear the reason you exist is to maintain good public elementary and secondary school. Now you can argue about what good means all day. Sometimes people even argue about what the word maintain means, but I think it's just you're you're gonna provide schools, and they have to be good. There's a lot of further legislation that tries to help you understand what good might mean, and we'll talk about a little of that. But most important language in this is that you implement the educational interests of the state. You are a state agency. Your obligation is to the commissioner of education, the state board of education, the state legislature, and they can and have removed the authority of boards of education occasionally when they felt that that particular board wasn't implementing the educational interests of the state. Happened in well, Wyndham's probably the closest, but also New London, Bridgeport, that was kind of a mess, the way they worked out with that one. I think even Hartford for a while, disbanded the Hartford board of Ed and had a appointed a separate board to oversee it. Half of those people didn't even live in Hartford.
It's not something you do quickly or willfully, but it it has happened. And then finally, and and as I said earlier, you're you're actually a state official functioning at a local level. That's a very different distinction than almost any other elected position in in at least in the municipal government. Board of finance, board of selectmen, you have roles to play, but it's it's local. And in this case, you actually answer more to the state than you would to the local board of selectmen or board of finance. You have some things you have to work together on, but you don't you're not a line item. You you're a line item in the town budget, but you are not a department of the town. You are a separate agency. And then finally, you provide such other educational activities as in your judgment that serve the interest of the school district. So the law is very clear that anything to do with operating the school,
it's your call. You get to make that decision. I mentioned the educational interests of the state. There's four listed in the in the statute, although they add the language shall be limit shall include but not be limited to so they can make you do anything they want you to do. And there there are the legislature spends all their time when they're in session making up stuff for you to do. I sometimes say hope nobody's listening. Every time the legislature meets, an angel dies, but that's I didn't say that. So, anyway, the first one basically could be distilled down to two words, equal opportunity. Must provide equal opportunity for children to receive a suitable program of educational experiences. That's mirrored in special education law, handicapped accessibility, pretty much any kind of opportunity to provide equity so that every child has the opportunity to start at the best place they can to help them learn the best they can. That's in state law. That's part of that educational interest of the state. It's easier when you only have one school. I know, you know, some place like Hartford with 27, I think, elementary schools. I don't know if you do that balancing act, especially when there's fewer resources,
but that's part of the expectation. You are required to fund at a reasonable of course, that's another word that can be interpreted differently, level at least equal to the MBR. So there's a formula the state cranks out. They look at your wealth, your reference grouping, although they technically don't do DRG anymore. That's still in there, which is sort of your placement on the continuum by the terms of community wealth, community need, etcetera, etcetera. But probably the most important thing to learn from this is that the system for funding public education is broken, tragically broken. It's really important to understand that because you're in the middle of budget for this year. The reason it's important the reason we're in this situation is that the state has always had the obligation of providing schools, and, unfortunately, the way we structured funding, a lot of it's dependent on local property tax. And in the small community, don't have a lot of industry, so it falls harder on homeowners. In the cities, you've got so much municipal land, museums, nonprofits, state buildings, those aren't taxable. So in the end, it falls on you, your community, Hartford, whoever, to actually fund this stuff out of local property taxes, and that's really hard to do. 1985, the state legislature recognized there was a problem. The statistic I remember, because I was on the board that had to deal with that, was that of the teachers coming into the teaching ranks,
over half were coming in from the bottom third of graduated classes. So we were not necessarily always attracting the best and brightest. People who came into education did it because they loved teaching. They didn't do it because it paid so well, And so we lost a lot of people. So the legislature said, we're gonna make it set you up and help you out. We are going to let you reopen negotiations with your teachers midyear, mid contract. You can give them a whole lot more money, and we're gonna pay for it. Sounds like a plan. Right? So we did it. I know everybody else did. We jacked up teacher salaries commensurate with the need. And then about two years after they started, they pulled the funding. So their promise was 50% of all education funding would come from the state. That was on average. Bridgeport would get more than New Canaan, for example, but 50% of all education funding would come to the state. They never got to 50%. They may not have even gotten to 48 or 47%. That was a high. They've gone down into somewhere in the mid thirties. The difference is they haven't taken anything off your plate. In fact, they've added more to your plate. So adding more taking away money puts you in a really tight line. Big rock, big hard place.
Secondly, the biggest expense in a lot of districts is special education or certainly one of the biggest, and that's one you can't touch. You have your PBT. You have your IEP. You must do what they say you have to do. You can't debate it. You can't negotiate. We have to do it. When they passed those laws around 1975, they promised federal money would cover 40% of all special ed costs. Now back then, far fewer students were being identified. There were far fewer items listed as falling under that law. They also had one little provision that sounded so innocuous at the time. It's turned into a giant nightmare. If a parent, challenges the placement of their student and they are successful in winning their case because it becomes a a legal system. You go to the court, some of these judges and lawyers and stuff. If you prevail on any part of your complaint, the district pays all your legal fees. That has become a huge industry, frankly. And I'm not knocking the people who are out there acting for advocate advocates for parents, but they know how to win. You know? They might lose 90% of it, but if they get that one thing, they're gonna they're gonna pay their legal costs, so there's no reason not to do it. And so the legal costs are way higher than anybody would have anticipated when they passed those laws.
So here's two of the biggest things that you have to deal with, and you're gonna go to your community and say and and, like, now where the federal government and, oh, by the way, typically, Connecticut gets about 5% of special ed reimbursement from the federal government. 5%, not 40. Nationally, it was around seven. Now I heard because of the COVID money coming in or that's the money that it's about 16%, but that's going away. We're seeing what's happening in communities now. I think Danbury's budget was over 20% this year. That's what they're and that's cutting a bunch, and they're still coming to, like, that high. It's gonna be a nightmare for them. The reason I'm mentioning all this is because I think it's important as you start to wrestle with the financial issues that you're gonna have to deal with, it helps to go in with the idea it's not our fault. If we are not spending too much money, there isn't enough money to do the work we need to do. It's a different mindset. Same results ultimately, but if you walk in with the idea that I'm gonna come in and apologize because I must have done a lousy job because if we did a really great job, we'd have enough money to do it. It can't work that way. So I think that's it's semantics. It's but it's that plus when you're going through the document and you're going through where where do we take money, where do we cut it, where do we add, where do we do,
understand that it's it's a it's a guesstimate of where we're gonna go. How do we make sure our priorities are met as best as possible knowing full well that when we bring this document to the town, they're probably gonna wanna cut us. In fairness to the towns, if there isn't enough money, they're gonna feel just as much as you will. And that's so and that's why there's a different there's actually two different categories. The state will talk about your willingness to pay as well as your ability to pay. Ability, they can they can sort of figure that out. They know what community wealth is. They know what the tax rules are in town. They can tell you should be able to afford this much versus this much. Willingness to pay is the part that you you can if you're talking about communication and wanting to be set up. That's an important part of that. Get your community to understand. You know, we talked about how important schools are, how this school how important this school is to your community. We we gotta get more people to buy into that, to be well willing to fight for that. You are charged with providing opportunities for students to interact with students and teachers from other racial, ethnic, and economic groups.
That came out of Scheff and Susan O'Neill. And while Scheff was a Hartford specific lawsuit, the legislature understood that that isn't just Hartford. It it affects every community in one way or another. So they came up with a way of trying to bring about some changes in terms of, you know, my kid's never spoken to a child of color. My, you know, I my kids grew up in Bloomfield. Well, I did too, but my kids grew up in Bloomfield. One of my daughters was the only white female in her class, that's great, I think it was. So we have to make sure that those opportunities exist for every kid at some point or another. And they're different everywhere. They don't prescribe how to do it because your needs will be very different than I'm guessing maybe Wyndham is its closest in terms of an urban more urban community. Their needs are gonna be different too. And fourth, and probably this is the catchall, you have to adhere to all mandates. Now mandates are anything from you have to fill out reports and your administration spends way too much time filling out forms. Thank god they went online for a lot of this stuff for the longest time. And if you didn't use the right color ink, it's in the back. I mean, it was crazy. But you spend so much of your time that you want to spend on education things, filling out forms, filling out reports. There's mandated curriculum. You know? You have to have a course on this. You have to have a course on that. You have to provide professional development for a whole list of different things. You negotiate in your teacher contract certain number of hours for professional development, and then the state eats three quarters of it up before you even start. So how do you have enough time to teach your math teachers how to better teach math or your science teachers to do better in terms of instruction?
Or, you know, you have to teach CPR. You have to teach about blood borne pathogens. There's all these different things, all mandates. You can't say no. New Canaan, I was there a few weeks ago, they get $54,000 in ECS month. That's it. $54,000, and they're like, we don't need that. No. We'd rather give up all the mandate. Yeah. We go. It's law. Oh, by the way, the the word they left out of the statute is unfunded. They do not pay for it. You to sort of what good means, they add to this list all the time. I've just pulled a few out just for the sake of argument, but you have to provide things that include things like adequate books, whatever adequate you know, they leave these words in that you can debate.
Supplies, materials, equipment, staffing, facilities, technology. I remember about twenty years ago when boards were first sort of putting PCs in the classroom, and there wasn't any money to put them in. And, you know, one board chair asked one is it educational malpractice if we don't provide a computer for kids nowadays? Now it's even more it's just it's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. Equitably allocate resources among schools. Again, it doesn't apply in a district with one school, but if you had three or four different schools, that would make a difference. Or if you had your own high school or middle school, it would make a difference. And you have to provide a safe school setting. Now, again, this I think this was added around the time of Columbine, was the first shooting. Since then, it's gone from just hard in the sights or have guards to social emotional wellness, providing a safe place for kids to learn, no bullying, etcetera. That's all now include sort of woven into the idea of a safe school setting.
And the State Department of Education is constantly issuing directives or guidance on what they mean by this stuff, and they're changing it constantly. And that's part of your superintendent's job is to be listening to that, keeping your ear to the to the ground, and then making recommendations to you. And that's what our policy department does, for example. They're looking at every bit of legislation to make sure that you'll get a copy of a policy that won't meet the new expectations. Speaking of policies, there are a lot of places in in statute where you are required to have a policy. These are just some examples, discipline, homework, attendance, promotion and retention, drugs and alcohol, use suicide. Reporting a bus complaint is not, call your local school board member and have them fix it for you. New folks in particular, that's an important one to remember. There needs to be a process. It should be in your policy manual, probably more regulations than the actual policy in terms of what the practice should be, who's responsible.
If Al was here, I'd probably say, well, you probably know. Who who would the parent call if they have a problem with the school bus? Is it you? Mhmm. Yeah. That's okay. So when you get those calls, there's a board member talking to the principal. No. You'd have very limited in fact, you have zero authority as a member of the board of education except when the meeting is in session, legally called, and you're going to the agenda. Your authority comes from the way you vote. You don't have the ability to walk into a building and start giving directions. You can't start or even just challenging your question. You are a guest in this building like any other member of the public would be unless you're here at some sort of meeting or you're in the meeting. And it it's not so hard and fast. I mean, the expectation might be, you know, you talk to the superintendent. Hey. You know, I I know we have this new breeding program. I'd really like to see it in practice. Is it possible to arrange that? And then she could work with the principal, and they can say, you know, we have this teacher who does this great lesson.
Let me talk to her, make sure she's comfortable having a board member in it, and that they can make that work for you. It helps to see kids learn because that's why you're doing all this work. It's a joy to watch children being successful, but you wanna do it within constraints that any other member of the public could have. You provide for the supervision of the schools by hiring a superintendent of schools. Basically, the critical language is that the chief executive officer has executive authority of the school system and responsibility for supervision. Superintendent is your employee. She is your only employee. Everyone else is her employee. And so you will evaluate the superintendent. Three of the most important jobs the board does, hire, evaluate hire and evaluate the superintendent, and prepare budget is another one that you have to do. But it's in terms of the most important decision you will ever make as a super as a board is to hire a superintendent. You hire a really good one, you're gonna succeed. If you don't, it becomes a bigger challenge. Basically, your evaluation of the superintendent should be annual. The most important language here in my mind was well, besides annually, is in accordance with guidelines and criteria, mutually determined and agreed upon. It isn't just the board's choice of how we're gonna evaluate the superintendent. You usually work together,
come up with something that everybody's comfortable with, mutually determined. And that's usually not it's it's not a a checklist to see how bad we can do. I I remember teachers when I was in school. Actually, my daughter, her high school, she had AP chemistry, and the teacher goes, I'm telling you right now, I'm a really good teacher, but three quarters of the kids are gonna fail in this classroom this year. Talk about diminished expectations. And, of course, I was chairman of the school board, and this was parent's night, and I'm like, I can't say it. I can't say it. I can't say it because I've got deal with the grievance probably. If three quarters of the kids failed in this classroom, you failed at the teacher because the expectation should be every child should be learning. And if it's AP and the wrong kid's in the class, then there's a failure to help that child, but it wasn't the teacher being the person that weeded out. And that should be the way you approach superintendent evaluation. It's not to look for fault. It's how do we get better. Superintendent makes sure all other people are evaluated. You should get a report annually, but it should be just sort of 30,000 foot, you know, x number of teachers were given an intensive evaluation,
maybe a third, a third, got the regular, you know, and then we have some that have been identified with extra needs, and they get more intensive observations or whatever. So it's not a bad idea to have a a sort of general understanding of what evaluation looks like, but you will never see a teacher's evaluation. You should not. You become a hearing panel if there's ever a legal action with the board. You become you're all not only are you the legislative branch in doing policy, you are the judicial branch in that you have a role to play in making decisions that are totally legal and binding. The expectation is that when you go into a hearing, you will make a decision based only on information presented in that hearing. So if you're talking about maybe at the teacher's performance, and I've heard this one so many times, teacher walks in, and this actually happened in our district. This was a grievance, which is slightly different, but in this case, the teacher wanted to criticize her evaluation. She wanted to challenge her evaluation. She felt that it wasn't fair, and she wanted to have the board overturn it. Well, that wasn't agreeable in our contracts contract. It they there was nothing about evaluation protection in that contract, so it should have been a five minute meeting. It should have been, I'm not happy with my evaluation.
We would have said, not grievable. Have a nice night. It's not it's not actionable. What happened instead, this is important, the attorney representing the teacher pointed to a board member, and instead of saying, my client didn't want for evaluation, he goes, miss Beckwith, isn't it true that you were in the supermarket talking to missus Jones two weeks ago, and you said that this was the worst teacher your child ever had? How'd you hear that? Doesn't matter how I heard it. Is it true? Yeah. But how did you hear that? Recess the meeting, call our attorney. We didn't even have her at the meeting because we so pro form a, you know, the assistant town attorney was there to make sure we dotted i's and crossed t's. The minute that happened, he's like, I'm out of here. I can't do this. So we called our attorney who was available. We had to pay her shipment of Goodman prices too from Granby to Bloomfield five hour hearing. Five hour hearing because we had to make sure that her complaint wasn't then I was mistreated. It was still about the contract. But so we had a five hour hearing and then paid her time and a half to go home too to run through the same decision because in agreement, it's cut and dry. Either they violated we violated the contract or we didn't.
Now imagine if this was a termination or an expulsion where there are some very you're taking away a person's employment or a student's constitutional right to a free public education. Even in those cases, if you don't do it exactly right, they can sue, and there have been cases where things have been people got their jobs back after being maybe fairly terminated in terms of why, but if the process wasn't adhered to or if they can prove a board member said something, you're you're toast. So it's really, really important to always be mindful. And and this was in the days before we go deep. With these, they're recording you. They're videotaping you. They're doing all this stuff, and it gets on Facebook, and it gets and it's evidence. So all you're always on. You are always on. My favorite statute, I'm gonna say this right up front. I love this statute. I wish I'd known it when I was a school board member.
Because it says, each local board of education shall prepare an itemized estimate of the cost of maintenance of public schools for the ensuing year and shall submit such estimate to the board of finance. The money appropriated by any municipality for the maintenance of public schools shall be expended by and in the discretion of the board of education. Now there's a lot of stuff in here that I had to unpack. One, it's not a budget. It's an itemized estimate of expenditures. The words were chosen carefully because yeah. And I got caught in this when I'm a brand new board member. My idea of budget is column a is what we're gonna spend. Column b is what we spent. There's no column c because if we did our job right and we budgeted properly, we spent exactly what we said we were gonna spend. That doesn't work in a school district. It can't. A boiler diodes, roof leaks, a family comes in with a child with, you know, a significant need. That might be a 100,000, $200,000 that you didn't anticipate. So they in their infinite wisdom, and I'm saying it without sarcasm, the legislature understood it's an estimate. It's not a budget. I think this is really important to try to make sure that community members understand that. And I know there's tension
between the three boards here. I was at that meeting when that tri board meeting that you had before. But it's important, I think, to go in with a clear understanding of what your role is. And your role is to prepare an itemized and I'll go a step further. I believe when the statute was written, and I understand it's not practical, but their idea was you come up with the estimate of what you need, bring it to the board of finance, and we're supposed to find the money. That was the expectation years ago, nine years ago, whenever they put the statute in the books. You can't because all that state money that never gets kicked in they have promised, by the way, to fully fund ECS by 2027 again.
We'll see. So it's an itemized estimate. That I I recommend you put that on the document that used to be called the budget. I have I have a hard time not using the word, but I really for try to force myself. It's not a budget. Or call it a spending thing. Call it anything but budget because that's setting unfair expectations in the community. Well, if it's a budget, how come you're not doing this, or how come you did that? It's an itemized estimate. And the other part that's really important shall be expended by Anna's discretion of the Board of Education. You decide where the money needs to be spent. Nobody else. Now, again, you have to work with people because we have to try to figure out a way of working together with the other boards, but the choices that you have to make are yours to make. The priorities must be yours. You're allowed to transfer money from one part of your estimate to another, or your appropriation. That's just because the expectation has its an estimate we are allowed to change as we go through the year. COVID was a huge example of that in so many different ways. We stopped having to pay the bus company probably. I know some contracts has ended up paying a significant part even though the bus has sat parked.
But in terms of buses, we may have gotten a lot of money back, but keeping the buildings clean, custodial supplies and stuff went way up. I remember I was talking to a maintenance guy. He had a little thing. You could stick it on a surface, and it would tell you the bacteria count. They And had to go all through the buildings and do that. They were $4,500 each, and they knew it was 6 per school or some crazy thing like that. Nobody anticipated those things. Boiler dives. Uh-oh. You know, probably a million bucks nowadays, or rooftop units, a few 100,000. It's an estimate, and you have the right to transfer. And finally, not doing too bad on time. We may even have time for a couple of questions. If you are doing the job as a board and if the work that you're doing is within your statutory authority, so you make a decision in a legally called meeting during session through a legitimate vote, you make a decision, but it causes a lawsuit. If you lose, the district is responsible for paying. You are not you're individually held harmless from a personal liability. So the board is sued, and unfortunately, it happens all all the time, but and if there's a loss or even if there's a suit, your legal expenses are covered because it's the board getting sued. You don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about put should I put my house in my spouse's name so it doesn't get taken or something?
However, that's if it's the board that makes those decisions. If you go as an individual and do something inappropriate, that may not cover it because it's the board that's protecting its members. And so if the board's doing something legit, you would be covered. I've seen board members learn about something in an executive session, go right out and blab about it, and then get sued. Those are the kinds of things you have to be incredibly careful about. Respect the need for confidentiality. You're in executive session, and something is told to you, you don't repeat it to anybody. I can remember one night, very contentious meeting. I think it was revolving around our superintendent search. And I came home 02:00 in the morning, and I was just furr, fired up and angry, and my Next day, she's in the supermarket. The biggest mouth on the town council happens to see her at the supermarket. Hey. So what happened to the meeting last night? And she told her. I never made that mistake again.
Of course, it didn't make her happy. I can't talk to you about this stuff anymore. You glad. So it's really important to respect confidentiality and if acts are not wanton, reckless, or malicious. So if there can be like, that board member in that hearing. Let's say that was a termination, and he's on that hearing panel, and the let's say that attorney said, you said this was the worst teacher your child ever had. Right? How can you stand there and judge him? You didn't you're you came into this meeting with prejudice. You have a preconceived idea. It might get thrown out. So it's always really important to play by the rules and understand them. If you ever have a question, I would start maybe with a call to the court chair, the superintendent. We have attorneys at CABE. You're more than happy to call us. That's a free call. You're a member, so that's all part of the service. What would happen if, you know, we don't represent you in court, but we have experts on and I answer the phone every day. Really, I can answer that stuff too. But ask somebody because it's way more important than you know, we'd rather get that call than the one that we often get. If we did such and such last night, would that be rad? Yeah. Freedom of information commission has occasionally spanked board members for doing something in violation of FOI.
Their intent is never to punish a mistake. They don't wanna sit you know, we forgot to go back in a public session and and voted on something in executive session. Don't do that again. Just have put on the next agenda, voted over again. That's fine. They they want to help you do it right. But if you willfully and repetitively do something over and over and over again, I have seen them actually fine individual board members. In one case, I know every board member had to pay $250 fine. I suppose it could've been and if they did it again, it probably would've been $500 fine because they you're not getting it. But they're not out to punish people for making honest mistakes. But it's another place where there's a potential liability, and you wanna think about that.
The only other thing I would say, and I haven't seen the statute, nobody can point to it, but I've been told forever that if a board deliberately and willfully overspends its budget, you aren't individually responsible for the difference. So if you're a million dollars deficit in May, lock the doors. You don't operate school in a deficit. Now, it's never happened. That I do know. It's never happened. You'd invoke different things. You'd for instance, the first thing your superintendent's gonna do, and they're monitoring constantly, so they're gonna know there's a problem early. We're we're you know, we just had this special expense that we hadn't anticipated or this or that. So we know that we're gonna be short. So we're gonna take every step we can to cut where we haven't spent yet. So if you can show there's been an honest effort to accommodate as much of that deficit as possible, we've done all that, and we're still gonna be $50,000 in the hole, for example, there's an expectation that your missile your finance board is going to come up with the money to do that or however that structure works here. But there is an expectation that they are gonna because it's still the town's responsibility to fund the schools. And as long as you've made a good faith effort to meet the the deficit as best as possible, they usually are gonna do it. They may not like it, but they they understand their responsibility.
I've known a couple communities. I think it even happened in New Haven once where the deficit was pretty large. The city council said, not paying it. And the commissioner actually commissioner of education, would say, went to the city council meeting and said, you're gonna do it or else. So, I mean, there were people that intercede. It's more if it's, like, wanting or reckless. You know? We just found out we're gonna hit the the budget exactly right for the estimate. We don't have a surplus. We don't have a deficit right on target, you say, well, you know what? Let's let's order band uniforms for the the older kids. Let's spend a $100,000 on band band stuff.
That could be considered deliberate or or willful, and they you could conceive a little bit trouble. I wouldn't say you would, but, yeah, just try to throw some things at you to make you think and be careful about, especially your new folks. That's an important part. I'm sorry. Example, if a parent calls and says, I need to talk to you about my kid. He's being disciplined. Know, they're gonna give him a detention or whatever. Wait. Stop before you go any further. There's a potential that this could end up reaching the board, and I can't talk to you about it now because then I'd not I would not be able to do this in a hearing because I'd already know about the situation. So I I wanna redirect you, talk to the principal, talk to the yeah. We talked to the teacher. We talked to the principal. There's a chain of command. Have you followed the chain of command? If you're not sure, call the superintendent. But usually in the school setting, it's probably gonna be the principal first. Well, I talked to the principal. Here's the other thing. I talked to the principal. She won't do anything. That's not what that usually means. What it usually means is I didn't like what she said. That's different. That is different. As a board member, I wanna know that people are treated fairly and that they have their opportunity to challenge something and to get something taken care of. That's different. That's a systemic thing as a board member. I'd wanna know if that takes place. But it's not my job to second guess whether the principal made a good decision or not. It would then go to the superintendent. There may be a place in your policies that say if it's if you're unhappy with the superintendent's decision, the board may be called to be a special hearing panel and hearing formal complaint.
Same thing, though. Formal complaint, you walk in cold, and you react only to stuff that's presented in that mirror. So that's an important thing because you'll get the calls. My kid the school bus keeps going by my house and doesn't stop for my kid, or I don't like the fact that we live on a cul de sac and the bus doesn't go up cul de sac. You have to you know, those types of things happen. Talk to the principal. Talk to the superintendent.
But I can't fix it for you. You know, we talk about advocacy. You have an advocacy role to play as a board member. Advocating for in your community, advocating at the state and at the federal level if necessary. If they're gonna pass legislation that will affect you, by all means, write an email to your state rep or your state senator and say, if you do this, this is what it's gonna look like in Andover, and it's not gonna be printed. They need to hear that stuff, and we can help you do that. But in terms of you can't serve as an advocate for a parent or a teacher. They have the right to them. They have the opportunity to get them, but can't be a board member. I covered a lot in an hour, didn't I? What else
should I should we talk about? Well, if I could just open it up for just questions. Brie, you're our newest member. Do you have any questions for for Nick? Not about that. Okay. Okay. Would you could you take a question from Oh, absolutely. Is that okay? No. That's fine. No.
Would No. It's time to stop, but I'm happy I'm here. Or would you rather an email or what?
I don't think so. Oh, you're done. Oh, okay. Okay. You're good. Okay. Okay. Alright. I'll just kinda go around. Mike, do you have any any questions for Nick based on what we presented? I don't think so. Alright. I'm good. You good? Okay.
Jerry, how about you? Nick, I think you did an excellent job. Thank you. Did you get a nugget? Did something you said I wanted to hear something new. I wanna hear something new. I I think that as you spoke,
everything came back to me. Okay. And I think it was important to hear it again. And I think it's important that we hear it over and over again. When I come back a year from now, I wanted somebody to say, let be like. There be like.
I'm just gonna I'm gonna start with or go to Shannon. Shannon, do you have any questions for Nick?
No. Thank you. I don't have questions. But, Nick, I did learn something new, and I really appreciate your emphasizing that it's not a budget, but an itemized estimate.
Really important. Really I wish I had known that. We fought over stupid stuff. We we once argued whether we should buy five horsepower snowblowers or seven horsepower snowblowers. The board event. Everybody knows it's gotta be at least 10 in the wing, that's not what the board should be talking about. So we did it too. All I gotta say is let there be a snowblower. Right. Right. Let there be snow removal.
Right. There you go. I thought you'd say do that, Lisa. Thank you, guys. No problem. That was fantastic. I really appreciate you coming in. Nobody If has any questions for for Nick, I will I will not just get this back. Say thank thank you. Grab your sign in sheet, and you're welcome to stay. Or if you'd like to what what No. I'm sorry. Salvage
I can salvage a little bit of Valentine's Day. I actually have a bullet in the truck. There you It hasn't shrunk from the cold.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Nick. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Nick. You're welcome.
Okay. Any other celebrations? Probably done a a new baby. No? Valerie, do you have any celebrations? Nope. I'm all set. Thank you.
Okay. Okay. Alright. I guess I'm up with my oral report. Well, first of all, I just wanna thank everyone for their time and energy for the budget workshops. I wanna thank Val for putting together these PowerPoints, for Terry, for her input, for for Taylor. Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a great evening. Everyone everyone here, everyone that helped with the budget, I just wanna thank you for getting all of the things posted on our website. Thank you very much for doing that. And, you know, we're we're here. We have the budget. We still have a long way to go as far as getting it past, but we got a big step forward. So so we're good. PTA has been very busy. We had our first restaurant night, which was successful at the Goodwill Tavern. Hoping to do that again. And we've been very successful with selling concessions at the basketball games here for the rep. So we are definitely well on our way to reaching our goal when we playground. So we're doing well there. Couple upcoming meetings as far as the town, the board of selectmen still have two budget workshop meetings to go. One is gonna be on the twenty first, and the other one's on the twenty sixth. And they have their regular board of selectmen meeting, which was yesterday. And a board of finance meeting is scheduled for February 28. That's I think that's all I have for my oral report. Valerie? Okay.
So just a couple of things. Tonight, in terms of DonorsChoose, I'm not sure if everybody heard that we had an opportunity, a last minute opportunity through DonorsChoose, a partnership with the State Department of Education. DonorsChoose is normally a crowdfunding opportunity for people where you put something on their website and people in the general public fund whatever it is somebody wants. That's not what this was this time. This time, there was $4,000,000 of ARPA funding left, and the state decided that they were going to follow suit with the other, states that had done this successfully. And they, offered an opportunity, it was two weeks ago on a Thursday, where they let superintendents know that the commissioner would be announcing, an opportunity for teachers, to go on to a dashboard and put a project up to a thousand dollars, and that the only funding source would be the state department of education on those. It was a first come, first serve. They found out about it on a Thursday, and, they actually were funded all weekend long. I did get that to the teachers immediately within minutes, and, a lot of our teachers did put in for it.
And we were very lucky as a small district that, in fact, it was first come, first served, and almost everybody that got it in over the weekend or or prior to was funded. So that was great. It was like Christmas morning. They were able to see because they've already come in. That was a little bit extra, and it was well, well received by the teachers. I'm working with I have a meeting with Cool for our summer expansion grant once again. Taylor and I will be meeting with Jess to plan how that money is going to be used. Again, we have $442,000 to expand the program that is on our campus in the summer. We also have 18,000 for summer mental health, and I've met once with Tressa already from, and I will meet with her again and Megan to
find out how they can better serve our students and our families over the course of the summer with that 18,000. So as soon as I know, I will let you know. The last thing is I'm working on the diversity educator plan. I know that we have policies in effect, but one of the things Nick was talking about is mandates and, a new mandate, for a diversity educator plan, due March 15 for every district. We have to let them know on a template what our plan is for trying to attract and maintain a more diverse workforce. I met yesterday with about 20 area superintendents, all small towns, and, we all kinda joked like, yeah. We just when we post a position, we're just hoping we get applicants, in these small towns. And so it's not a matter of whether we're getting a level of diversity or not. It's are we getting any applicants? So, so I'm working on that. As soon as I have that finished, I will bring that to you guys so that you could see, what it is that we are submitting. The only thing that I do know for sure has to be added to it is, as of July, there was a video, an eighty minute video, at the state level that is now required for any staff member that is to serve on, a hiring committee, that they have to sign off that they've watched this video. And what it is is it's shown up from the state, and it simply is diversity video, and and offering strategies and suggestions for making sure that there are certain things that are kept in mind during the hiring process. So
other than that, I don't have anything unless, you guys have any questions.
Does anybody have anything for Val? Shannon, you're all set. Mike, you're all set. Shannon, do you have any questions for Val? No? How about you, No. How about you, No? Alright. Thank you, Val. Alright. Taylor, principal report. Yes. So I, briefly do just wanna share the screen one more time so I can give you an update. I know we were having some, unanticipated difficulties with the website, and I apologize for that. There was some staff turnover at Eastcom and some miscommunications on that end, but we are resolved. Nick, who is works on all the other tech in our building right now, has been currently reassigned for our website as well, which until they hire someone who will do that. That works out really great for us. We love working with Megan. It's great. So I just really quickly did wanna show the updated budget page so everybody is aware that it is in beautiful condition, and and everything should be very easy to find in terms of information. And I just did wanna thank, Christina Fraser in the meantime the last couple weeks. She's been really making it work and getting stuff up. But now, that Nick's back at it, he can make that in our, 45 pages. Nicely. Caitlin is Caitlin. Bless us here. Brie is up here, Mike. So I appreciate your patience. I'm sorry. It was really one of those loops of everything gone wrong. So we should be all up and running. And that is on Andover Elementary School page under BOE, under budget. Yep. Everything is there. Great. Thank you. So
thank you. Yeah. I just wanna make sure we saw that. Thank you. Let's see what else I have. So enrollment is going strong for kindergarten and preschool for next year. We as we anticipated, preschool is is going very quickly, so we're encouraging the community to certainly get those enrollments in. As we go through the next couple of months, certainly, Val and I will continue to give the board updates if it's really, of course, too early to tell how enrollment looks, but we are way ahead of where we specifically are in pre k in February. So we are anticipating likely to imagine with the age change
higher numbers, so we'll we'll keep you posted there. We had a great concert last last week, two weeks ago. Possibly. Yeah. Yeah. Been weird. So thank you to missus Gourdette and all the family participating. They did a fantastic job, advanced band and chorus and chorus, so that was exciting. And we will still plan to do our beginning band and younger chorus as well in the spring, so we're gonna see all of them. We did have Spelling Bee winner, Hillary Worth, a two time winner. He's our champion for the second year, so that was exciting. A great spelling to turn out again. Thank you to all the families that support us there. It's really cool experience
for so many of our kids. So that was great. Invention convention will come up next. Now is the time where I'm officially asking the board. If anyone's interested in judging Invention a message, feel free to call me an email. That be during the day? Yeah. It's on the thirteenth. Yeah. Okay. So I put that on there for you. If those are if those are available that day, we we welcome certainly. And then that evening, just like last year, I will send out we'll do the prior to the board meeting Right. Will be the actual ceremony in there for the awards. And so we last year, we invited out the winners to kinda come over to the library just so the board could kinda It just kinda worked out. It's kinda nice. I'm sorry. Real quick. When does Hillary when does she go to the spelling bee? March. It's in March. Okay. Date down. Okay. But I will give you an update. She's very excited. She just got her practically novel sized book of spelling words. Okay. She's studying. She was like, yeah, hoping to she's which is kinda nice. She's already been, so she knows what to expect, so she's studying hard.
It's in March. Okay. I I think it actually might be after our next March meeting, so it might be totally cool about that. Okay. Just talking about one of the plans she's working on or working on the diversity, hiring. We are also working on the district literacy plan, so we're about halfway through that. We are in attending professional development series on the new reading initiatives. And so as we go through that period with the state, Krista Garibulling, our reading specialist, and myself, we work on the district literacy plan kind of side by side. So we're about halfway through that process. And we have decided on Bookworm is the name of the program we are going to pilot for the reading initiative. And so certainly more information to come that I can share with the board on kind of what that looks like and what shifts, kids will see in our instruction at, the younger elementary level. But we're working through that. As Val has mentioned, we are, funding that with the grant that the state provided for them. That's good work. And we are actually I'm headed to Marlborough next week. They are already using bookworms, so they are hosting site visits, and I'll be going. Couple of our staff went a few weeks ago, and I will go next week. And so we're excited about the opportunity as well to do some more, hopefully, partnering with our neighboring towns. We're still in the deciding decision making, being able to program. Who knows? We could be all in the same one.
And then my last update, I just wanted to mention, night, we have officially submitted for our accreditation. They give you a three month grace period where they don't do anything with these two. I don't know. I just need three more months to scan it. So May 1, our window opens. It's a six month window in which they can come. And so we hope that we'll get our visit May or June just because it's nice to do it in the school year that you've spent all this time preparing, it's a you know, fifty fifty shot that it could be September, October, window ends 11/01. So we'll keep you posted. We get a fifteen day notice. I was just gonna ask you. And so then we'll get a twenty four hour.
Okay. I know. It's it's really pretty. Yeah. And then they don't tell us what classes they're going to until they arrive that fast. So that's about two hours. I'll just. How many of I love her. You know, we're we're excited. We're we're do we're in good shape already. We get, a ton of support through the AQIS grant program from EastComm. I go there monthly. They come to us monthly. There's coaching. So we are really well supported, and I'm excited. Just to kinda reach the finish line there. I think that's all just, you know, just a reminder. I know schools are long weekends coming up, so we have professional development in which most teachers are split. Some are gonna be working on that bookworms and starting to get more and more acclimated, and our older grade levels are working on a SPAC. And I know since Caitlyn's not here, and I know she will she would most likely say this. If you do make an announcement on CSOFT, could you let everybody know what those what that professional development is Yeah. That would be helpful. Yeah.
Best back will be we are just scheduling on the calendar, but it'll follow similar to last year where we start likely on that. We were the second week of May last year. They have pushed the window slightly to end the May 31. It used to get a little June. But just with absences, we get we're cautious to make sure the way sickness goes since COVID. So we're probably looking at starting the first week. Right in time for no. Yeah. No. I know. I know. So they'll be taking us back. I'll be running sure the right now will compress. That's awesome. Great. Thanks,
Taylor. Yeah. Does anybody have any questions or anything for Taylor? And I should have said our enrollment, sorry, too. Yes. We have a new student starting tomorrow again, another third grader. I'm not sure. I should have asked since I apologize. That probably didn't happen. It just happened a couple of days ago. Wow. Like, a new third a new third grader? Yeah. I engagement? I should have asked her. I apologize. They just enrolled a couple of days ago. I'm betting it's not in this one.
So we're maintaining I don't know. They're sticking in the grade three. Yeah. So grade two, three would be at fifteen, and we'll be up to 19 in the grade three.
Oh, I'm sorry. Was looking at the bottom. Where are we seeing them? Yes. Let me see here. They are going into the grade two three. Oh, they're going to Okay. Sorry about that. When you said are they grade three, I'm like yeah. They're going into the two three classes. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So it's exciting. Continuing to grow. Are you are you doing? I feel good. Great. Thanks, Taylor. Does anybody else have questions for Taylor? Shannon, do you have any questions or anything for Taylor? No. Thank you.
How about you, Mike? Good. That's Jerry. Yep. About you, Greg? Yep. Alright. Alright. Financial report. Terry, are you with us? Yes. I'm here. Alright. Good evening, everybody. If you turn to the middle of your package, you'll see, a summary of the expenditures, and then following that, you'll see the breakdown by object. And I'm hoping you all had a chance to take a look at this. And are there any questions at this point? Daniel, do you have any questions? No. Thank you.
I thought you might Jerry? I'm not You're not free? No. I'm I'm not. I'm not Alright. Thank you, Terry. I don't have any questions. Thank you. Thanks for following up. Thank you. No problem. Alright. So liaison reports. Well, first of all, does anybody have any liaison reports? I know, Brady, did you go to the Yeah. Yep. It was interesting, but I and I knew that in this, but I was, like, trying to some premium. Thank you. But what I took out of it was that Taylor reported on the tuition that was collected, that there's 40 students enrolled for the next year. We have work for and now we're at 45 as of today. As of yet, the rest has changed since she's not had to waitlist anybody, but it could happen if it continues to grow. There's a couple other items that we used to talk about a training that they were going through and Okay. Ask anybody who was interested in,
I guess, a back break. I'm just not. That's great. Thank you. I appreciate you attending that. I know it's a lot to to double, so thank you. And those are on Thursdays. Right? They're once a month on Thursday mornings? Or Next fall the year. Oh, five years. Now? Okay. To April? Okay. Mhmm. Okay.
Celeste, I did wanna report. This is Shannon. CIP, it's having its, first meeting tomorrow night in a long time. We're hearing from public works as to their request, and, I'll report that next month after we have our meeting.
Great. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Shannon. I do wanna just talk a little bit about the liaison. I know we talked about this last month, and we were gonna kinda have a better idea of what exactly it means to be that liaison and kinda have a better definition of the role and and kind of the responsibility of it. I was hoping that Nick could kinda help us with that, but just in the interest of time and what he needed to present, maybe we could grab him at another time. But I know last month, we decided that, Steve, you're gonna be the financial capital improvements and and maintenance liaison. Shannon, you're our policy and and CIT. Mike and Jerry, you're the curriculum and instruction. Caitlin was gonna be communications. And, Brie, I know we kinda talked about, like, community relations and and school readiness. What I'd like to do is first kind of align our roles as these liaisons with our goals, our four goals, which I think that we kinda do already, You know, the goals of supporting the use of a differentiated instruction to increase student achievement. I think, obviously, that would fall with curriculum and instruction. Collaborate with the community and staff to ensure the needs of the students are communicated and addressed. Think I that definitely would, you know, fall in line with, you know, communication, community relations. And I think all of us can can work on this one. I don't think we necessarily have to be a liaison, but evaluate and optimize optimize board processes and focus on continued professional development for board members, AUS teachers, and staff.
I know, you know, that all lines up professional development for us. We don't think it's very important and for all of us to try to make time to attend those, you know, cave events. You know, I went to the one in November, and at least it definitely it's it's it's good to to attend. And then, obviously, maintain fiscal accountability and focus on optimization and long term planning. I can see that will definitely fall in line with with, you know, with that liaison. So what I'd like to to do is kind of just put together an outline, if you will, of of what what that means and what what the liaison means as far as, like, curriculum instruction.
So then when we have new board members and they get appointed to those, you know, liaison positions, they have an idea of what it is that they're doing. So I'd like for us to to kind of work on that and at our next board meeting, kind of have something in writing, so to speak, on what you think that liaison means and and what and what what you're gonna do. So for example, Jerry and Mike, I don't know if that means maybe talking with Taylor about, you know, what it is you can do. Are there meetings? Are there, you know, things that you can work on? And just try to put together something for our next meeting in March so we have a better idea of of of what it is that needs to be the communications liaison. Absolutely.
So, Mike, what I would ask them, maybe it would make sense for us to do then is prior to
our next meeting, meaning before you get in here, we'll have homework submitted,
you know, to but we also need to make Celeste. Sure. Oh, and then that can either be added as packet, but that way we can all look at it and provide our thoughts prior to getting into the meeting and going, okay. Well, let me see what you've got in our first lead. Right. Yeah. That out there a week before. Okay. Everyone can look at it on what your I mean, we have all kind of put our hands up and said, yeah. I'll do that. And maybe it's up to us now to write down what if we think that entails,
have everyone review it so we're all on the same page with that. Right. Yep. No. No. That that's good. So if if our next board meeting is March 13, kinda looking at this calendar. So Wednesday, March 6, if everybody just wants to email me, again, what what it means to be the, you know, the communications liaison, and I'll I'll talk with Caitlin about this. And then like Steve said, we can kinda all look at it on our March meeting and and take a look at it and, you know, decide what it is. And then so then going forward, when we have it on the agenda, what it is to report, you know what you're reporting. So I think that would be helpful. Does anybody have any questions or suggestions on on that? No? Shannon? No suggestions. Thanks for the update.
Thanks, Shannon. And also kind of in line with that, I know we talked about it at the last meeting, but I would like for all of us to pick a month and attend the board of selectmen and the board of finance meeting, whether you, in real time, log on to the meeting or you watch it after, and then just give us give the board a report on what was discussed. I know some members of the board of finance, you know, attend our meetings. So I just think it's important that we attend those meetings so we know what's discussed, and you can report back to to the board for the the next month about, you know, what what transpired in that meeting. So, you know, I watch them after. If you can attend it in real time, that's great. But, you know, they're they're usually posted on YouTube within a day or two after the meeting. So, again, I just think it's important that we all,
you know, attend those and watch them and get an understanding of what was discussed. So I'm I think if we made a a schedule of if everybody just picked a month, and, again, you either you attend it in real time or you watch it after, I think that that would be helpful. I'm willing to do March, and I would just like to go out until September. Think in that way, we can kinda look at it. The just the board of finance and the board of selectmen. Nobody has I don't think we need to do a So both of You're going to do when you do take a month, you have to do both? Yes. Yep. Yep. So I'm I'm willing to do March if if somebody wants to take April. Take April. You'll take April? Okay. Do I have May? May? I think I might. June? Okay. June. Alright. July? I'll take July. Oh oh, alright. Shannon, take July. Is that okay? Yes. Thank you. Alright. You'll get August? Alright. And I will pick up with
I'll I'll pick up with September. I'll I'll talk to Caitlin after. Let let know when we should take every effort to attend any special meetings in my Well, yeah, if you're signed up for that month,
you're off. So I think budget month is April to do board planning.
You turned it, Steve. Oh. And if there's again, you watch it. I've watched it the next day. If it takes you three days to watch it, you know, I'm not expecting you to attend it in real time. If you can, that's great. But, again, it's just important that that we all watch these meetings to see what's what's the missing. It is on that, though. If I can Yep. Feel free to correct me. But while if we want
it's great that the board of ed is going out and sitting on these meetings. You're not there representing the board of ed in the like, to start talking or going in and discussing Yeah. Board of ed matters without talking in a meeting. Yep. So just No. That's fine. Gather information not to Right. My
understanding is you're looking for things that pertain to us.
Or or not necessarily. I mean We wanna know about those bridges too. That's fine. Absolutely. If they talked about you know, again, it's it's just a a it's a brief summary of of what was discussed. I mean, obviously, if they're discussing board of ed stuff, then obviously go with that. But, you know, if they're talking about the community center, if they're talking about, you know, whatever, I just think it's important that, you know, we we go to these meetings, we watch them, and and we report back on what was discussed. So thank you. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Alright. Does anybody have any questions about the liaison signing up for a month, anything like that?
Anything at all, Mike? No? Okay. Alright. Let's get to items for discussion and action. August, the 2024, 2025 budget. Yeah. Just We still have a budget.
I have my best move we have to pay for it. Go I doubt that was a nugget.
Based on that, I don't see anything in here. So can we assume the one that we're talking about just because I wanna make sure what we're actually voting on. Where is it? Like, is that one that's posted? Can we pull that up with new?
So this is one that's posted on the website that we discussed at the last public meeting. Yep.
Sure. Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. Alright. So I'm gonna go ahead and make a motion to start the stuff in here to adopt the twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five budget draft budget as presented. Okay. Good. So we have a second by Jerry.
Any discussion? Shannon, I'll start with you since you're online. Do you have a new thing? Nope. I've I've voted in favor. No discussion.
How about you, Mike? No questions. Okay. Great. No. Nothing. Okay. Jared? No questions. Okay. Not that we've seen. Okay.
All right. Hearing no questions, could we just vote? Okay. So all in favor of adopting the, 2024, 2025, proposed budget for the Board of Education. All in favor? Say aye. Aye.
Aye. So moved. Any opposed? Okay. And no extensions. Okay. And I know Caitlyn's not here tonight. So alright. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. Alright. 600. Alright. Next up is the policy for the exits interview. I know we talked about it at the last meeting. This is basically just to to adapt it when all didn't have it. Or was it it was in here. Right? We did. We did. Yeah. So did everybody have an opportunity to read it? Okay. Alright. Does anybody have any questions? I think we did. We just changed some some wording around. So
with that, with us being the second reading, I will move to accept or to adopt policy 4017.6. That's the survey I reviewed Thank
you, Jerry. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright. Policy has been adopted, six zero zero. Okay. Next up is the BOE, board of finance joint policy update. Shannon, do you have an update for us from the last board of finance meeting?
I was trying to unmute. Sorry about that. No. It is a very different policy than the one that, Robert and I drafted, so we're taking a little more time. But he and I have scheduled a a meeting to try to redraft, the joint policy, and I'll get back to the board certainly by by our March meeting. But, by then, we would hopefully adopt a new joint policy, and then that could be put forth for the board of finances consideration at their March meeting.
Okay. Alright. Alright. Thank you, Shannon. I appreciate you working on that. I know it's been, tedious, so thank you for taking the time, to do that. So thank you. Alright. Alrighty. Any other action items? Does anybody have anything else? No. That's okay. And I don't see anybody else from the public. I know Danielle all the time now, but it looks like we lost her. So
Well, we lost the public comment section of the. Oh.
You're right. That is okay. So we wanna put that back on. Alright. So put that on. Alright. So we'll put back on comments from the public. Definitely And you yeah. You
never know. Yeah. I do think especially depending on we've got this in the past, depending if it's a topic that's important. Absolutely.
Yep. Now we'll make sure that I've got it. Alright. So our regular board meeting is gonna be March 13. I I don't know what we're gonna do with our Wednesday nights now. Know. Watch on the board meetings. Watch on the board meeting. You're welcome.
You may wanna check the board. I know they canceled the board, but I'm.
So there was supposed to be one last night that got canceled? It did happen. Okay. Alright. Good to know. Okay. But
family was really nice. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Know that this week she has canceled out. Okay. Next week, I go to the tour.
So the budget workshops are the twenty first and the '20 yes. Okay. But the regular one was okay. That's good to know. Thank you. And for everybody that that is wondering where to find them, you basically just go on the town of Andover website, the calendar, and it's all right there. So and, usually, though, sometimes they're hyperlinked to even go to the meeting, but but the calendar's right there. So alright. So our next regular board meeting is gonna be March 13. Just a couple of reminders. If you could just get to me your liaison role summary of of of what it means to be a liaison in that role to me by March 6, so then that way we can talk about it at our March 13 meeting, that would be helpful. Does anybody else have anything that they wanna put on the agenda for Well, as we're and may not be this month, but we've started building policies. We made it through 03/04.
I don't want that to fall back off again for another couple of years. So Okay. I don't know where the last one was. I don't know if Mark makes sense to go back to that, but I would like to return to
the last one. I know Dan did have done a great job of getting those to us. I'm everything's up. I I just don't want that to fall off the radar. Okay. So so so policy
So maybe even discuss a schedule of what policies we wanna look at next week. So policy schedule. Okay.
And then we'll talk about liaisons. Anything else? Anybody? Okay. If you think of anything, just let me know. We'll get it on the agenda. Alright. Can I get a motion to adjourn? I'll that we adjourn. Thank you, Jerry.
Can I get a second? Second. Thank you, Steve. All in favor? Aye. Bye.