MINUTES
WATERTOWN BOARD OF EDUCATION REGULAR MEETING
Watertown High School
Technology Center
Monday, February 9, 2009 – 7:30 PM
Board Members: Gina Calabrese, Chairman
Richard Mazzamaro, Vice Chairman
Mary Colangelo, Secretary
Kevin Killeen
Joseph Apicella
Mary Dzioba
Janice Pond
Thomas Lambert
Others Present: Thad Hasbrouck, Director of Curriculum & Prof. Services
Karen Baldwin, Superintendent of Schools
Gary Miller, Interim Director of District Operations
Richard Mastroianni, Student Council Representative
Andrew Lees, Interim Director of Special Services
Justine Hayes
Matthew Geary, Principal Watertown High School
Fran Palmer
Michael Magas
Carl Pallokat
Joe Marcello
James Perucci, Reporter from the Town Times
Other interested guests
Absent: Todd Griffin
A. Convene Regular Meeting - 7:30 PM
B. Salute to the Flag
Ms. Calabrese led the Pledge of Allegiance
C. Recognition
The Board wishes to recognize Justine Hayes, grade 12 student at Watertown High School. Her Voice of Democracy Scriptwriting Tape on the Theme “Service and Sacrifice by America’s Veterans Benefits Today’s Youth By” was chosen as the winning tape in the Fifth District Competition sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and has been entered in the State Finals. Her tape, along with five (5) other District winners in Connecticut, will be judged this month to select the State Winner who will represent Connecticut in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Baldwin: Good Evening. I’m very pleased tonight to share with the board and with the community a celebration of excellence award for a senior at Watertown High School, Justine Hayes. If Justine can come and join me. Recently, Justine competed in a local voice of democracy speech writing contest sponsored by our Veterans of Foreign Wars. She performed very well and has moved forward as a district winner in this competition and I had the pleasure of meeting Justine just this past Friday night at the National Honor Society Induction ceremony and talked to her a little bit about her speech that she wrote. She is here this evening to share that with you. She responded to a prompt from the Veterans of Foreign War and the theme that she had to write about was “service and sacrifice by America’s veterans benefits today’s youth by…”. That’s what she spoke about and she has about a three minute speech that she is going to share with you and when she has concluded with that I will present her with a celebration of excellence award, so Justine Hayes:
Ms. Hayes: Thank you. In order to be well rounded youths of today’s America, I believe young Americans need to know how we came to be here. How the United States came to be the most powerful country in the world. The veterans of America’s foreign wars are the fundamental reason for this country’s success. The services and sacrifices of America’s veteran’s have benefited us in numerous ways and are the main reason for our comfortable ways of life. Unfortunately, many young Americans today do not realize just how much of an impact veterans have had on our lives. Our basic freedoms, the things we tend to take for granted the most are the result of thousands of lives and lifetimes are dedication. American’s youth have also seen the benefits of veteran’s services through safety and protection. It is likely without the relentless courage of America’s original army; Americans today would speak with a British accent. Along with that, we would have a parliamentary government or maybe even a monarchy. Quite frankly, we would not be Americans as we are defined today. Fortunately, we are not in that position. Both men and women of every race, religion and ethnicity have every right to vote for everything from city mayors to president of the United States. The first American veterans, those from the Revolutionary war gave us this right for fighting for this country’s freedom. Due to the hard work of our veterans, the United States has a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights includes freedom of speech, a popular right among America’s youth. Teens know what it means and take advantage of it. Although what it entails, they do not typically think about its origination. One of the biggest complaints by Americans about Great Britain was the fact that everyday people were not allowed to express themselves. Our veterans fought for this right today and today, America’s youth reaps the benefits. Safety and protection are typically overlooked as benefits secured for Americans by veterans. However, they are basic necessities of human beings. America’s veterans have protected us from many foreign countries that could have taken us over and changed our history, and they continue to do so today. Unlike too many countries around the world, the youth of America do not have to worry about foreign attacks at school or corrupt government officials gaining too much power. America’s veteran’s have made the United States a safe country. We have the opportunity to become anything we want to be. The opportunities and possibilities for young people in America are endless. There are no gender or racial restrictions to stop one from reaching his or her goals. This incredible freedom is completely thanks to America’s veterans. It does matter what war a veteran fought in or if they fought in a war at all. Freedom, opportunities, prosperity and education are just a few of the things the United States stands for and our veterans made a conscious decision to defend their country with each of these aspects in mind. These brave people sacrificed their time and lives for millions of people they never knew or will never know. Americans will never know the full extent to which they have benefited from veterans. The ways are too numerous and have become such an integral part of everyday life. Basic freedoms, safety and protection are a few of the major effects veterans have had on America’s youth.
Ms. Baldwin: Very impressive. Are you still moving forward in the process?
Ms. Hayes: No, it has ended.
Ms. Baldwin: Well, on behalf of the Watertown Board of Education, I want to present you with this celebration of excellence. It reads, “Awarded to Justine J. Hayes for winning tape in the fifth district competition, service and sacrifice by America’s veterans benefits today’s youth by.” sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, presented by Watertown Board of Education, Monday, February 9, 2009. Signed by me and Mrs. Calabrese, the Board of Education Chair, so congratulations.
Ms. Hayes: Thank you very much.
D. Report from Student Council Representative – Richard Mastroianni
Mr. Mastroianni: Good evening, Madam Chair, Superintendent Baldwin, members of the Board of Education and everyone else with us this evening. Today, the student body and staff came back to school after a wonderful and much needed weekend. Of course, everyone is different in how they allocate their time for the weekend; however, there is one activity that most everyone at Watertown High School can say they did. That is excessive rest and relaxation. Trust me, after Thursday night and Friday morning, every single student I know was drained. I can see most of your faces questioning just what I’m talking about. Well it’s simple, I’m sure everyone in this room will be happy to hear the cool fact, that Watertown High School was WFSB’s Cool School this week. Students got to school as early as 4:15 in the morning to participate in what was really was a massive pep rally that aired on television. One teacher I spoke with said the following and I quote, “The second I drove into the school, I was shocked. Here I was the day before expecting maybe 100 or so students to attend. Instead, I was greeted by so many cars and people, it was almost overwhelming. I realized just how many students and faculty really do care about our school. That sentiment was true for everyone who went. I, too arrive at 4:00 am, not exactly sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to see just how many students took time out of their sleeping habits to attend. Such a simple idea shows how unselfish we as students are. Even more fantastic than that was to see the number of groups that had something special to show everyone. A few of these groups include, earthly delights, Mr. Watertown, the sculpture class, Watertown High School publishing, Honors Cohort, the robotics team and even the school’s cheerleaders. Again, that list is barely scratching the surface. I admit, even I am guilty of taking these excellent groups and people for granted. That is merely human nature, but coming from someone who goes to the high school, I will tell you that it is not until you see what these fine people have to offer that you realize just how cool Watertown High School actually is. To the people of Watertown, if there is anyone out there who believes that our high school isn’t cool, or isn’t worth it, I challenge you. I urge you to become acquainted with the students, to get involved in our activities or even to simply come by for a visit. Perhaps you will change your mind. Thank you.
E. Public Participation
Mr. Magas: Good Evening, Michael Magas, 47 Mount Fair Drive. Richard, good job on the cool school. I wonder if there is any way we can bottle that. I have two high school age boys that woke up at 4 am. I haven’t seen them get up by 6:30 without some product, so it’s amazing they got up on their own at 4:00. I just want to give the board a quick update. As you know, I’ve been involved with the High School, helping Watertown be recipients of a timing system. I want to let you know where we stand with that. We have received your letter formally accepting the gift. I am in the process of waiting for a response from our business manager to see if he has a boilerplate type (inaudible) agreement, which you were aware we were asking for. My estimated time frame is to get this document signed by the end of this week and have the items to you by the middle of next week. I’m going to deliver the items myself, and hopefully, by mid-next week you’ll have them.
Mr. Carl Pallokat: This wasn’t planned. I’m Carl Pallokat, known as “Pal”. Worked here for 38 years, retired in ’05 and started the Robotics team at Watertown High School.
Ms. Calabrese: May we have your address also?
Mr. Pallokat: 251 Harmony Hill Rd., Harwington, CT. This is an opportunity I really appreciate and am so pleased that you have time to listen. I’m very upset. I came here tonight; I came here to see how the robot is being built this year for competition. I was really disappointed. I have never seen so few kids in all my life. I think it leads back to when I started the team; I was a member of the faculty here. And it leads back to one thing, enthusiasm. When you have a faculty member on board here, that can talk to kids during the day and can see them after school and before school, it really gives one a chance to boost the opportunities to build a fantastic robot and build a team that is like no other. I just don’t know what to say, I’m sort of caught without words. I’m very upset to see that there are so few students on the team. I think maybe it might be because we don’t have a faculty member leading the team, but then again, someone has to have this in their blood in order to do it. This year, I’m upset there’s 9.5 million dollars available in scholarships for students that are on teams when they go to college. About 6 or 7 years ago, there were 2 students in here that they received more than the entire rest of the student senior class for awards for scholarships. It’s out here and both those kids graduated as engineers. It is a great program, I will be volunteering in Hartford on March 25th, 26th, and 27th, to take and inspect robots and my good neighbor, Joe Marzullo who came in with me will be doing the same thing. We came down tonight. He is a retired engineer and I’m sure he would definitely speak to the support of having a team like this. I know no money has been put into it by the board in the years I was here. I got no pay for it. I don’t regret it. I gave my life to these kids and it’s been well worth it, more than money could ever buy. Somehow, we’ve got to make this enticing to students. The (inaudible) robot, million-dollar robot is saving lives left and right in this country right now and robotics is here to stay and it will be here long after I’m gone. We will need people to build them, design them, we will need people to take and keep them up and maintain them. So it’s not something that is just a passing fancy. Dean (inaudible) the gentleman who actually kicked this program off about 18 years ago, said we need to honor those people in science and technology that are doing something for the world. There is too many of us honoring the football players and the basketball players and baseball players that make millions. They’re not doing anything for society except playing in something that we can watch. I was very fortunate to have Mary’s kids on the team, all 3 or 4 of them. All 4 of them. Wonderful asset to the team, and Mary can speak to it to. I don’t know what you can do, I try to keep, if I get an email, Thad knows, I throw emails out, if I get something from the State of Connecticut that he may not have, it comes right to the Director of Curriculum. I try to keep people informed so they know what’s going on. I may be behind the scenes but if there’s anything I can do, I would love to do it. I’m just trying my darndest to see this program not die. It will die unless we get somehow; get some kick in there to get it going. I don’t know how you get a teacher to, you can’t force people to do things that they don’t want to do. It’s cool, it’s neat and this competition this year is going to be absolutely phenomenal. They’re going to pick these up, they’ve got a moving target, and they’ve got a trailer to move them around. They’re working right now with the robot down in the middle of the hallway and getting ready for this year’s competition. Are there any questions?
Mr. Lambert: When you were a faculty member, how did you get the kids enthused about it, how did you drum up support and get more kids?
Mr. Pallokat: That’s a good question. I started going to history classes and I got a couple of teachers psyched about it and I went to history classes and they’ll give you 5 minutes. I actually got quite a few kids interested just by talking about it and showing some slides of some of the previous robots that have been built by different teams.
Mr. Lambert: What could we do as a board to help you?
Mr. Pallokat: Somehow we have got to make people realize that this is cool. It’s not something to look down upon. Building a robot, working on a team and if any of you can get to the competition in Hartford, the Hartford regional in March on Saturday, please go. Absolutely, please go because the enthusiasm is dynamic. It really is. You can’t twist arms but, you have a teacher in the junior high who is very supportive, but he’s not up here, so it’s kind of difficult. He has worked with the robot team, a good friend of mine, Everitt. He’s in the tech ed program down there. We have to do something. I tried to say if the guidance counselors could say to the students, the opportunities are here in the fall, try to get on a robotics team. If you want a scholarship, you want something to help your parents, you don’t have to pay this much money. Like I said, this year is 9.5 million and as long as they’re on a team, they can apply for the scholarships. They don’t even have to physically build a robot, because there are so many different things. There’s the fundraising, publicity, building, design. It all adds up. It’s just tremendous. I don’t know what to say.
Mr. Lambert: Well thank you very much for coming.
Mr. Pallokat: I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.
Mr. Marzullo: My name if Joe Marzullo, I live at 194 Harmony Hill Rd., Harwington, right up the road from Carl. In all my professional life, I’ve been in chemical engineering. I’ve got a long and a good background of what it takes to accomplish things of a technical nature. I know innovation when I see it. I have personally 36 mechanical patents myself. I know what innovation means. When I was here last year as an inspector, I was so impressed with these young people to be able to think outside the box and create things, innovate things and I’m sure that this awakened in them possibilities that they never knew they had and had opened an interest and avenues for them that they never know. When we were all kids, we didn’t know, Johnny wants to be a fireman; Susie wants to be a nurse. There’s so much more out there, but until you tap into this potential and let these young people exercise their innovation, they will never know, they will never taste, they will never drink from that stream that they don’t know is there. I’m telling you these young people will satisfy the needs of this country and as Carl put, if you notice when we have these emergencies, like we’re going through right now in our country, we’re going through technical emergencies (inaudible) and are they asking for (inaudible) to solve these, are they asking for basketball players, football players to lead the technical solutions. These are tough problems that require people that can think and innovate and even though as Carl says (inaudible) interest, I agree with that. But I’m looking at it with my perspective on what kind of people we need in this country and we need people that can think, we need people that can innovate and create for our country to remain strong and become stronger. We’re in trouble right now, and those are the people we need and this can very well bring out that potential in those kids. I hope you put some effort. Thank you.
Mr. Magas: Mike Magas, 46 Mount Fair Drive. I’m actually glad I was here this evening because when I heard the word scholarship, my ears just perked up. I have a son going to college next year and we’re looking for any scholarship possible. I also have a son that’s a freshman, and obviously, we’ll be looking for scholarship money for him. You talked about ways we can get the kids interested, just brainstorming some ideas, like offering a stipend for an advisor, something you might want to throw out there. I know when we’re battling the budget, every penny counts, but it might be something that you can throw out there. Also, there are different departments in the school, there’s the business department, and we have marketing. How can we market this program to kids in school? Can we do it internally? Posters on walls, flyers home. We get flyers all the time from little league, from Babe Ruth, can we get flyers? I don’t believe I have ever seen a flyer from Robotics come to my house for my child. Can we do that? Can we get the marketing, the business department involved? Can we get the graphics people to make posters. There are so many internal possibilities to get this type of program going. I’m definitely going to talk to my youngest son about getting involved.
Ms. Dzioba: Carl, it’s good to see you. I have about 8 of the same t-shirts that you’re wearing at home. All of my children were involved in robotics; my son and Mrs. Palmer’s daughter were in the first robotics team and followed it through the years. It is a wonderful organization, great kids, and lots of scholarships. I’d like to inform the board that 2 years ago one of our graduates with her involvement in the robotics team got a full scholarships to every engineering school and is now a student at MIT. There were other factors involved, but she was very active and her participation on the robotics team gave her a very big advantage as far as her scholarship went. One of the things is that we do pay for an advisor now through advertising fund money. If we could encourage Mr. Geary to really find a teacher and if we could come up with a stipend, so there is advertising money there. I don’t know how it compares to a stipend. If we could really try and encourage a teacher because it would be a shame to see this team just phase out. It is such an incredible thing. I’ve certainly gone to enough competitions including one in Florida and New York and it’s just a great group of kids and organization so I hope we support its continuation.
Ms. Pond: Hi Carl, I remember working with you and you had the spirit within you and I see you still do. Maybe you can take a minute to talk to the student council because just what you did tonight ignited feelings amongst all of us listening to you. I watched you do this. It’s amazing. Maybe you can share and somebody will catch the fire that you have in you, by just going to student council or some of the clubs. It would be a shame to lose something that was so wonderful.
Mr. Lambert: I was wondering if Mr. Magas would probably run a little bit with this. He had some great ideas. I wonder if you can meet with Carl and with Matt Geary and segway everything together and maybe get some interest going.
Mr. Magas: I’ll try. Right now I’m devoting about 20 hours a week for free for the swim team for the high school, but once that season ends, I’d be happy to do that.
Mr. Killeen: Madam Chairperson, on another topic and I don’t want to (inaudible) our student council representative unless he feels so. I believe that he had received some correspondence that he might want to share. It’s something that you showed me outside. It’s up to you. Would you like to share that?
Mr. Mastroianni: Yes, I got accepted into Columbia College in Chicago. I’m pretty excited.
Mr. Killeen: Outstanding and I thought it was something that the board should be aware of.
F. Committee Reports:
1. Advertising Committee – Mary Colangelo
No Report
2. Athletics Committee – Joseph Apicella
No Report
3. Budget Committee – Thomas Lambert
Mr. Lambert: Yes, we do have our last budget hearing or committee hearing Wednesday, 6 pm at John Trumbull Primary School Library. I hope that everyone that can make it will make it and put our best effort into this next committee meeting and keep going with the budget. Thank you.
4. Curriculum & Instruction Committee – Kevin Killeen
Mr. Killeen: Madam Chairperson, we are scheduled to meet tomorrow at 3:40 at the Swift Library and I’d like to request that we amend our agenda to include the topic of discussion on the robotics team. We’ll report back to you the next meeting on the results of our next meeting.
5. Facilities Committee – Richard Mazzamaro
No Report
6. Policy and Labor Committee – Mary Colangelo
Ms. Colangelo: The policy and labor committee met earlier this evening to discuss a possible reorganization and decided to bring it to the full board at our next meeting.
7. Cablevision – Mary Dzioba
No Report
8. PBC Representative – Richard Mazzamaro
Mr. Mazzamaro: No report tonight other than to say there is a scheduled walk through of the Judson Elementary construction project and I believe Watertown, I don’t know, was that set up?
Ms. Baldwin: Notice will be going out I think this week, I believe it is only Judson. We will schedule another time for Watertown High School.
Mr. Mazzamaro: That’s at 9:00 Saturday morning and I encourage any board member interested to come by.
9. Education Connection Representative – Janice Pond
Ms. Pond: Yes, the Board of Directors did meet at Ed Connections last Thursday and there was a lot of information that was hot off the press which wasn’t so hot off the press anymore. We discussed Governor Rell’s proposals and I took some of the information and made a packet for everybody. I’m just going to send that along and it has the involvement of the various school districts into the educational programs that are offered at Ed Connection and they had some interesting things for both of us on the budget committee and so I just thought that rather than talk about it, I’d just pass it to everyone and then I think the legislative breakfast, everyone got that information. That will be rescheduled to Wednesday, the 11th between 8 and 9:30. I think that everyone has (inaudible).
Ms. Calabrese: Thank you and thank you for the packet.
G. Communications - Secretary
None
H. Minutes
1. Regular Board of Education Meeting – January 26, 2009
MOTION made by Ms. Colangelo, sec. by Mr. Mazzamaro
To approve the minutes of the Regular Board of Education Meeting of January 26, 2009.
Opposed: None
Abstained: Ms. Dzioba
Vote: Motion carried (7-0-1)
I. Superintendent's Recommendations and Report
Ms. Baldwin: Under item 1, I would just draw your attention that we have hired 2 tutors to work at Watertown High School through a grant focused on drop out prevention and working with some of our at risk students. That grant was secured by Mr. Hasbrouck, but also came to our attention through the assistance of our State Representative, Sean Williams. We’re very thankful for his efforts there. I would also point out to the board that Mr. Don Wailonis also has started as an interim Assistant Principal at John Trumbull Primary School. He started last Thursday. Mrs. Meca is still on board, but is anticipating the birth of her baby later this week. This is a good opportunity for transition to take place and we welcome Mr. Wailonis to the community.
1. Appointments – (Information Only – No Action Required)
a. Ms. Maureen Buell to the position of Tutor at Watertown High School, effective February 2, 2009, for four days per week, six and one-half hours per day for approximately sixteen weeks, at a per diem rate of $80.00 being paid through a grant.
b. Ms. Lisa Hellmann to the position of long-term substitute Grade One Teacher at John Trumbull Primary School, effective February 2, 2009 to March 2, 2009, being paid the substitute teacher’s rate of $65.00 per day for the first ten days, and on the eleventh day, placed on the first step of the WEA contract of $38,815.00 prorated.
c. Mr. Kurtis Spieler to the position of Tutor at Watertown High School, effective February 2, 2009, for four days per week, six and one-half hours per day for approximately sixteen weeks, at a per diem rate of $80.00 being paid through a grant.
d. Mr. Donald Wailonis to the position of Interim Assistant Principal at John Trumbull Primary School, effective February 13, 2009, until approximately May 8, 2009 or the return of the Assistant Principal, being hired on the per diem rate of $458.68.
3. Three School Project Update – (Information Only – No Action Required)
Administration will present an update on the three-school project.
Ms. Baldwin: Item #3, the three school project update, as you heard, we will have a walk through of the Judson Elementary school this Saturday at 9:00 am and that is specifically to follow up. It’s been about 5 weeks since our last walk through there and this is an opportunity to note progress and to note progress and to work with O & G on that schedule. There is also a special Town council meeting, this Wednesday, February 11th at 7:00. We will provide to the council a presentation on the three-school renovation project. The progress to date on Judson and the high school, our plans with the Polk project, we will also share with them our financials relative to the construction project. The purpose of this special town council meeting is the council is determining how to move forward with bonding these projects. Certainly interest rates right now look favorable and so I think the council is weighing options and wants to hear from us relative to the status. That will take place Wednesday at 7:00. I believe it’s at John Trumbull, although the most recent agenda I saw indicated here. I will get clarification to the board relative to the location of that meeting. In terms of actual update, I will share with the board that certainly we can see momentum building on both of these projects at the high school and Judson. There are more people on site at both schools, more trading contractors in place working at Judson, specifically. The steel is going up. That’s a very good sign. We continue to do infill of the floors. The windows are set and are getting ready to be installed. Mechanicals are still in progress and as a matter of fact, I learned late today that O & G has assigned a second site supervisor to the Judson project. O & G is firm with its commitment with us to get this project done and on time and they have shared that they will do whatever it takes and certainly the addition of another site supervisor is very beneficial. We’re very pleased with that and I’m looking forward to going on the walk through on Saturday morning.
4. Superintendent’s Recommended Budget FY 2009-2010
Administration will give a presentation on Special Education, Transportation & Operations
Ms. Baldwin: At this point, I move forward in the meeting to a presentation to help the board focus again on our fiscal year 2009-2010 operating budget. We’ve had a series of presentations on different aspects of the operating budget and tonight we have two brief presentations. One focusing on special education and services and the second focusing on transportation and operations. I think it will help the board to reconnect to what our budget request is to connect to this concept of current service moving forward and the cost of just doing business in 2009-2010 and if questions come up, we can ask them tonight or also we have that meeting on the 11th and certainly we can do more focused work on the 11th. At this time, I’m pleased to introduce Andy Lees, who is the Interim Director of Special Services and Allison O’Hara is also here, the supervisor of special education and I think Mr. Lees will give a presentation on special education.
Mr. Lees: Overall, the presentation tonight, we’re going to review some of the information that we talked about previously. In terms of our goals, we’ll talk briefly about that. I’ll review who our students are and then talk about some of the budget issues and the plus side, talk about some of the additional funding that special education services are privy to.
Last time I talked to you about goals and our goals remain the same. We are engaged in the process of working with our students to get them ready for the CMT and the CAPT. We discussed last time, we’re working with the new system of the modified assessment of some of our youngsters, which will change the configuration of what we’re doing a bit. We’re moving forward with the TWNDP, Time with non-disabled peers. We revealed the data today and it looks like that’s moving along very nicely. Data collection on days out and suspension, for our early intervention process, we’ve tied that into a project with the Special Education Resource Center. That is a three-year project that is going to work on improving skills in all areas of curriculum, but there is certainly going to be some significant focus on what is called response intervention. We were lucky enough to qualify for a grant. We’ll be getting about $18,000.00 over the next three years to help us work on that. In terms of the managing students with behavior problems, we’ll be talking a little bit more about that tonight as well as we build some plans or looking to building some plans into the long term budget. In terms of accuracy of our paperwork, I look to my friend Allison over here. She spends a great deal of time getting that into shape. We’re still responding to all of the regulations that were provided to us by the State Department of Education through the funding that comes through the IDEA grant. We continue to work with a very diverse group of students with disabilities. The one thing that we have been looking at is that the majority of our students spend the majority of their time in regular education programs, 80% or more, particularly when we look at the combination of learning disabilities and other health impaired youngsters. With that it’s really brought to the forefront the strong connection between the skills that our special education teachers have and the skills that our regular education teachers have as well. Our staff is steady at what we described last time. We are looking to add a half time person in the special education teacher’s category. I’ll talk to you a little bit about that later in the presentation. We should be able to do that through a grant, so it won’t affect the budget specifically. When I look at the staffing and we look at ourselves compared to some of the other districts in the state and in our DRG, what we have been noticing is that in the area of our mental health professionals and our special education teachers, we’re somewhat behind and again, later on in the presentation, we can talk about how we can possibly bring that forward, because these are the folks that work with some of the youngsters who have mental health issues and in that regard, that’s an area that we need some additional help.
Specifically, one way of addressing a behavioral issue is through the hiring of a behavioral analyst. You’ll notice in the bottom of the slide, we recognize that this is not the time that we’re going to be able to add this, but we’re going to put it on the table for future consideration. A behavior analyst is somebody who assists students with progressive and destructive behaviors in the school and you can see how they approach it under the (inaudible) and how this works. The potential in this particular area has two parts. One is that it would certainly assist us in helping students in our district and also (inaudible) under a variety of circumstances the contract with outside folks to provide this service to us and that we do that sometimes at a higher rate than we might be able to do if we were in a higher (inaudible). We decreased the flexibility that we might have by not having that person on staff and available to us. That’s something that we’d like to consider for the future.
We recognize from a leadership position at the high school we have a lot of staff in the high school, non certified staff members, 130 students with varying needs. We have 15 paraprofessionals supporting those 130 students and working with those teachers and these programs are integrated throughout the building. What we’re seeing is we feel we would benefit from on site leadership within the department by adding a department coordinator to expand the leadership in the high school to help us improve instruction, management and organization. When new staff comes in, to make certain they’re supported and as well as working with the scheduling. That cost is very low at 2591 and I believe again we can make this a cost neutral addition by using the IDEA grant to fund that particular position.
I have spoken to you before about adding a halftime special education teacher and that would be helpful because if we (inaudible) at risk of failing and this person could be of assistance in supporting that kind of effort within the high school. Once again we’re going through the IDEA grant and funding that half time position. We’re not sure how much that costs, but that’s based on the top of the scale. It is money that we could make available through the IDEA grant.
The budget in general is very problematic in terms of predicting. Because of the nature of tuitions which is a large portion of the special services budget, we have youngsters moving in and out of district and costs were some of these out of district placements that range anywhere from $45,000 per year to as high as $140,000 per year. So that if a youngster moves in or moves out, it certainly drastically can change the amount of money we might need. Also transportation, which Mr. Miller will talk about at greater length. For a student going to an out of district placement, that can cost up to $18,000 just to move them back and forth from these services. These services are necessary. They’re services that are provided for youngsters with very significant kinds of disability. We need to support them; we’re mandated to support them. They’re unpredictable and they’re very expensive. Other professional services that we are required to provide are consultation services such as the behavioral analyst that I was talking about before and other types of consultation services for low incidents of special disabilities, evaluations, we are in a constant process of referring youngsters for psychiatric or neurological or audio logical evaluations of all types. We have our adult services that we need to provide for our youngsters who are transitioning out of the high school. Those youngsters who are staying with us until they are 21, we have to hire adult services to make that transition and tutoring is fairly self-explanatory.
So funding sources other than the board of education budget, they’re actually a variety of these. The first one that I’m talking about. There’s the Medicaid program that we initiated this year through the work of Gary Miller in our department. The state permits us to file for reimbursement of services of certain types to youngsters and we can gain back some of the cost that we are putting out to help these students through the Medicaid program. The actual cost grant has been around for a long time; probably you’re familiar with it. It ebbs and flows in terms of the actual amount, but we were getting some firmer figures from Hartford and they will help us to reimburse us for some of those very high tuition that I was talking about. And the Bureau of Education Services for the blind also provided some additional funding to support some of our youngsters with visual impairment. What we’re estimating for the coming year in this Medicaid program is anywhere from $32,000 to $35,000. It’s a very optimistic estimate (inaudible), we haven’t really gotten it started up, but we plan to get it going this month and we’re hoping that we’ll get most of that revenue for this year. The ESB is absolutely a prediction because they change that figure all the time and I’m never sure what it’s going to be. The excess cost grants we’re predicting $773,000 level and that’s based on a 75% of actual because the state periodically reduces that. The funds that we have taken from these sources are used to help us offset the cost of tuitions and also help us purchase some of the (inaudible) services supplies. IDEA, I mentioned before, through the Individuals of Disabilities Education Act, there’s pass through funds we’re permitted to use for support of a variety of initiatives that include some positions, and those you see listed up here as well as there are things like professional development and some high end (inaudible) you may periodically have to purchase. Currently we are at 2.6 full time equivalents for special education, .4 for the school psychologist, .6 for vocational coordinator and 3.6 for paraprofessionals, so that’s a small amount of our staff but it certainly is helpful and we’re looking to move that up to 3.1 for the special education teacher for the coming year. We also get another grant that’s for preschool. That’s a very small amount of money, but we are able to use some support for our students through this program, as you’ll see we have a .2 special education teacher and a .2 language pathologist, that’s LD. I think that covers my part of the presentation. I can only hope it was as entertaining as I can make it for you.
Ms. Baldwin: Do board members have any questions? I would just add relative to our budget request, we have really focused on needs and in so doing, we’ve examined the IDEA grant and how we can use those federal funds to help leverage and get (inaudible) improvement. Certainly at the high school being able to extend the leadership reach of the principal and the administrative team; at the high school there four content department leaders that through the contract they receive a stipend. That’s what we propose to do with this IDEA funding is create a special education department leader to help with the instructional reach with servicing special needs children, also adding an additional .5 FTE to service kids while that coordinator is doing more leadership work. We’re exciting about taking a new look at the IDEA and how to use that to address some of our systemic needs. This is really all focused on improved learning for all kids throughout the system.
Mr. Apicella: Superintendent, I just have a question with that information that Ms. Pond gave us, according to the stimulus bill, we’re anticipating a slight increase in IDEA funding, a substantial increase it looks like.
Ms. Baldwin: Right now that’s still in process in Washington, but the original figures we received were roughly an increase of $430,000 in IDEA for 2009-2010 and also construction grants increase of about $138,000. A lot remains to be seen on the actual dollars amount and how it will be distributed to schools. One of the pieces should that all remain whole; one of the pieces that we should be mindful of is that grant dollars cannot be used to supplant district operating budgets. We could not in essence take that $433,000 additional IDEA funding and cut $443,000 on the general fund. That would not be an appropriate action. So we stay close to this in terms of what is developing in Washington and what the stimulus act will actually end up looking like and we will come up with some strategies to use that money in a very beneficial way to use throughout the school system.
Mr. Miller: I get to pick up the 6 parts of the budget that we have yet to do as a formal presentation, we’ve gone over these with the committee but some of this overlaps slightly with what Andy’s already has just presented to you so I won’t (inaudible) around any of those. I’m here to talk to you about transportation operations. 5 functional areas of the budget for lack of a better term. These are the areas that I’m going to talk about. Professional services Andy has already talked about a good portion of that. When we get to that you’ll see our combined special ed services, utilities, maintenance services, transportation and other services, supplies, materials and equipment. These are really all the cost of doing business. When you open the doors in the fall, you incur most of these costs without one student walking through the door, or one staff member entering the buildings. This is the cost of having five schools and keeping them open, keeping them heated, keeping the lights on, keeping them clean, getting the students to and from your buildings. Some people might call it fixed costs; I call it sunk costs because if you want to have schools, you must put your dollars here. As you can see all 6 of these areas encompass only slightly more than 15% of your budget. They’re all fairly small wedges. Professional services makes up 1.8% of the budget requests, that’s a $154,000 increase. A good portion of it is consultant services for special education that Andy talked to you about. Psychological evaluations and all those kinds of things. There is in here a fee that we pay as our share of the cost of the admins, 1980ish admins financial system. We’ve also added $15,000 into this category to start the process of implementing a modern 2009 version financial system, which would have a good resource package and do a lot of the work that people are doing manually now and providing the kind of financial support that the board of education needs in order to properly conduct our business. And manage our budget. The other big piece in here is the legal council and it’s broken down into two areas, primarily special ed, about $25,000 to support special education process hearings. All those kind of things because special education is a very legal binding process and you need to have attorneys present. The remaining funds in that category is about $70,000 and that’s all the cost of doing union negotiations, superintendent and the board getting advice on various policies and other matters, contract reviews, all those kinds of things that typically go on throughout the year because you do have union contracts that are in on going negotiation now, there are several unsettled contracts that (inaudible) going on for over a year and our legal costs because of that continue to rise. Utilities, about 3.5% of the budget request. In this case, it’s about a $38,000 reduction. That’s partly because Todd was able to get some dollars in the budget to cover the (inaudible) cost of fuel oil which is now locked for next year in a price that is almost a $1.10 less than what we’re paying currently. That’s good news. We’ve taken advantage of that. Also I locked down all of the other utility costs with the exception of natural gas. I did look into that but there’s not an opening for (inaudible) total some time 2011. We’re really paying a good price at the moment and natural gas prices are falling thankfully. The telephone account is up. It’s up primarily because we’ve added a lot of services to enable administrators to properly be in contact with student financial system, with other staff that have Nextel walkie-talkies and generally improve communications throughout the district. It was slightly underfunded this year. Looking at that we’ve done everything we can do to get that cost in control to get it where we want it to be, but we had to increase the budget for 2009 to cover the cost of keeping what we have today in place. Maintenance services are a very small portion of the budget, 1.3%. It’s a very modest increase. This is really where your responsibility and I’ll get to it later on and I referenced the general statutes 10-220 which is the charge of the legislature, (inaudible) of education is your responsibility, to maintain your schools, maintain clean, indoor air quality and transportation and supplies and all those kinds of things. It’s very easy to see when you walk into a building, how much money is put into maintenance and into the supplies. There are a lot of national studies that review all sorts of information of staffing, but (inaudible) all go to levels of cleaning and it’s pretty obvious. It’ll be a lot better with school construction, but you can’t use school construction dollars every time you need to get your buildings maintained. That’s just not a very efficient way to go at it. In this budget we look at all the service contracts to maintain your building systems, many of the new systems, although they’ll be on warranty, they’ll still have ongoing costs for maintaining the systems that do get repaired during the school construction and also even John Trumbull is getting on 10 years old since its last time been renovated. We’ve identified tentatively some money for the track and turf maintenance, the kinds of things, rips and tears, those kinds of things. There’s not money in this budget for any major replacement costs. That’s something we’ve discussed at committee level as far as a capital budget is concerned. There is a slight increase here in custodial supplies and maintenance supplies. Just to kind of start the (inaudible) of cleaning, you’ll have all these beautiful renovated buildings; you need to keep them that way.
Maintenance projects, a tiny portion of the budget, in fact this year, there’s $15,000 in this year’s budget because the work that was originally earmarked for, got done for free by one of the contractors at this project here. We had the opportunity to remove that money so although it looks like a $15,000 increase going forward into 2009-2010 it’s really level of what was in the budget this year and with that we’re hoping to get a couple of small projects done. There’s ongoing HVAC problems, (inaudible) at John Trumbull, areas will not heat and cool properly and we have some vestibule areas where there’s floor tiles that need to be attended to. Lastly, we talked about it at committee, but Ray Cenicola and I are going to be working on putting together a capital plan for you based largely on the list he presented to the committee, but also we’ll be trying to look at some of those things over the next 5 years, so you can start to position some of these things that have to go on. John Trumbull is going to appear on that list several times in that 5-year stint because you do have to start thinking about positioning yourself for even these new buildings. There are things that don’t have very long useful lives and they need to be maintained.
Transportation, 6.1% of the budget, $171,000 increase. This will be the first year, 2009-2010 of the new 4 year contract with First Student provide the in district transportation for our students. When you agreed to that contract, it included a 3% increase in the rates that were (inaudible) without the cost of a school bus each year. About $35-36,000 per year. This year we had to add a bus at Polk because many of our routes were overcrowded. As you know Polk’s population is going up, so we did add a bus this year, we had to carry that forward into next year because our plans are hopefully for Polk to be at Heminway in the fall. There are about 35 walkers at Polk. We are going to have to bus all those students to Heminway, so that’s an additional bus and today we had a little added. You may or may not know that with Judson at Heminway, we’ve not been able to hold the Y program for those kids at Heminway. We’ve been collecting those kids at Polk in the mornings, busing the Heminway students up to there and then back at the end of the day. We’ve had an activity bus for most of the year and today we found out that we’re just not going to be able to run the Y program at Heminway. That means we’re going to have to continue that busing before and after school for the remainder of this year and then probably do the same thing for next year. For the next two years, we’re going to incur that extra cost. Good news is that diesel fuel price is also locked in. It generally runs about 15 cents more than the oil price. That’s good. We have a commitment for a certain amount of fuel and I talked with Diane at First Student and our commitment falls right within what they typically use for fuel. Special Ed transportation in district is included in this budget. First Student provides those services. They have the handicap vans and buses and then there's the money for the out of district transportation included in this area. That is one area that can be supplemented with the excess cost grant assuming we get enough money to cover the portion of the tuition that we earmark. We also currently have the end of the three-year contract for out of district transportation. We’re hoping to look at a slightly different model next year and not put all our eggs in one basket. Talk with a number of different providers to get a little better coverage and increase the flexibility for some of these kids. There are a lot of things you need to turn on a fairly short fuse. It’s not cheap transportation. It’s pretty much one to one transportation and we really need the flexibility to call a number of vendors in the state that provide these kinds of services and not put it all in one basket.
Property liability insurance is in here. We’ve been advised to add 10%. That’s typically the trend. We’ve had that in this budget. We’ll know more clearly as the process goes on exactly how much.
Athletic transportation, this is an area that pay to participate was brought forward to hopefully to cover some of these costs. It’s not met that goal. We are nowhere near the funding goal with the play to participate and when the fee was raised, that dropped the participation even farther back. It is proposed in this coming budget to put the fee back to the $85.00 per sport and look at maybe a 2 sport cap or some kind of family cap to maybe make it a little fairer. It might bring the participation level back up, but fully funded what we believe to be the real cost with the participation levels we currently have in next year’s budget so we can keep that (inaudible) where they should be.
The last is something near and dear to Thad’s heart. Infinite Campus he’s been working on it all year long. We’re finally bringing that up live this month. We have the implementation costs for next year in the dues and fees line of the budget. Most of the dues and fees line is mostly fees. There will be licensing fees for software like Infinite Campus or our internet costs and all those. The only dues we pay are for the (inaudible) business manager’s organization, the Superintendent’s association and the Connecticut Association of Schools and a couple of other fairly modest dues.
Here’s an area that can stand a lot of improvement. It’s the one area that continues to get peeled away every year and we’ve tried to prop it back up a bit and it’s still a very small portion of the budget, 2.3%. We’ve really been only able to identify just under 75,000. I’ve been around a lot of towns and this is very thin. That’s probably the best way to describe it without being unfair. The teaching supplies are up in this budget 21.5%. They got cut almost that much last year, so we’re trying to get them back up. They initially have it back up plus about 3%, some areas we’re there, but not across the board. I would point you to the 10-220, your charge. It does say your charge is to provide adequate levels of funding of supplies for your students. This is an attempt to move in that direction. The textbook and workbooks account (inaudible) looking at some very modest text book replacements and half a dozen, maybe 6-8 subject areas, bring Story Town into 5th grade and then try to put some money into the primary school for the level readers and not fiction books and start to build up the classroom libraries to the level they really should be at elementary schools. Another very modest amount of money to try and start to build up the school libraries.
The tiniest piece of the budget, equipment should be about a couple hundred thousand dollars in your budget. $50,000 I think, .2%, we’re looking at a $35,000 increase. We’ve got an ongoing vehicle replacement program. There is actually no increase there. That runs about $30,000 to $35,0000 every year to keep the trucks being replaced. The other piece is in the instructional equipment area and it’s very modest replacement of classroom equipment. We’re relying very heavily on school construction on the fixtures, furniture, equipment and technologies dollars. The school construction now and for the next couple of years, there’s just not the dollars in the board of ed budget. I have the money for technology and computers primarily at John Trumbull. What we propose to do is to do a 3-year lease purchase. Next year a fairly small one, but then start to ladder 3 year lease purchase, so every year we’ve got a new one coming on, one in the second year and one coming off in the third year with dollar buyouts at the end so you keep a fairly (inaudible) $45,000, 2, 3 $15,000 leases you could actually have some kind of replacement program. It’s the kind of thing typically that towns do when they can’t put the dollars in. You stretch it out with leases. It’s a good way to maintain a budget. Get a line at the base of your budget and then you can move forward. We have to replace some of the old network hardware and the servers in the areas where they aren’t being done with this. That’s pretty much it.
Ms. Pond: I have two questions that I’m confused about and maybe you can shed some light (inaudible) you don’t know the history. But I’m wondering what the history is of this Y program and where is our responsibility now to provide to transportation to children who go to an after care program. What’s the legal implication? Why are we providing this?
Mr. Miller: There isn’t any requirements. It was a program that was already in place at Polk and at Judson. This year when we started this school year back in August and we thought we were going to be able to get Heminway approved and up and running at Thanksgiving time, it seemed like a fairly modest amount of money at the activity bus rate to transport the kids. The parents drop them at Polk, we bring them to Judson by bus for those that aren’t brought there directly by their parents.
Ms. Pond: Next year, it’s going to be expensive putting a whole new bus in.
Mr. Miller: Well, it’s still going to be an activity bus because it’s only moving kids from Heminway up to Judson. That’s the only thing it does. It will probably be one of the buses that drops kids off Heminway and will take them on and it’s only for those kids that don’t get transported by their parents.
Ms. Pond: That’s my question. Why are we transporting them?
Mr. Miller: That’s up to you what you want to do for next year. We started the process, I hope to have it done by Thanksgiving, as things go, there are a lot of different agencies involved in this. It looked like post Christmas break was going to be doable, now it doesn’t look like it’s doable at all, but we’re really into it now so at least we’re going to continue it for this year and we’ll see what happens in the budget. Given that it is driven by school construction, that we’ve obviously entered into, it’s going to go away at the end of school construction. Polk has an approved program and Judson which already has an approved program. The advantage of Judson is their approved program is for 65 program children. Next year they could house all the children that are currently involved in the program.
Ms. Pond: We certainly want to keep children safe and in an appropriate after program, but I was just wondering where it was our responsibility to provide that.
Mr. Miller: It’s not, but I think it’s just something...
Ms. Baldwin: These were two well established programs, the Y programs at Polk and Judson before Gary and I even arrived. What happened was the Judson program was disrupted by construction and Heminway, we hoped to receive all the approvals to make that an approved site for the Y program. We have run into a series of difficulties and we will not be able to make Heminway an approved site. The good news is Judson, as Gary explained, Judson can have 65 children in its Y program and so we will probably be able to do that next year. It’s an important service to the community and certainly it isn’t our responsibility. We basically problem solved this fall and thought it was wise to provide that activity bus for families this year. If the board wants to revisit that, we can certainly revisit that.
Ms. Pond: Well, Heminway was always transported and there was always a fee for the board. I always questioned that. Where was it our responsibility to provide this transportation? It is a wonderful service, I’m just saying.
Mr. Miller: The parents pay for the program.
Ms. Pond: It’s just the transportation. My other question is the truck. Even the last time, I always vote down the truck. Dr. Pelosi would say, do you have something against the truck? I said no, I just have something against not taking care of trucks. Why do we always have to keep replacing them?
Mr. Miller: I don’t think it’s not taking care of them.
Ms. Pond: What is the truck used for in our system when we have computers where information can go from the computer to the school?
Mr. Miller: You’ve got to physically move them around. We have maintenance equipment that needs to be moved around, the auto scrubbers. We have a lot of equipment that (inaudible) that gets moved. The town where I came from, they said why does the board of ed need a truck, why can’t you just borrow the town’s truck? If I went to the highway department and said, can I borrow your truck, they’d say no, we’re out sanding the roads or tarring or doing something.
Ms. Baldwin: We use trucks to move furniture.
Mr. Miller: We don’t have a lot of trucks.
Mr. Killeen: On topic of the issue of vehicles, it says ongoing vehicle purchase program, it is my understanding that we have gone to a vehicle lease program. We now have vehicles coming off in the three year increment, so how many vehicles are we actually moving on an annual basis?
Mr. Miller: I actually don’t know that answer. I will get that to you when I talk to Ray about what the amount of money in there that it needs to be in that same $30,000-$35,000 level to keep the program going.
Mr. Killeen: The only request that I would have in respect to that is I know we’re going to get a line item budget, if we could have information on the number of vehicles that we registered and what year they are.
Mr. Miller: OK
Ms. Dzioba: Ms. Calabrese, wouldn’t this be our third truck purchase within the last four years?
Mr. Killeen: I think so.
Mr. Miller: I think we’re actually purchasing one. I think this is the pay to lease cost. You had already agreed to do this. Its level funded. (inaudible) more than what you’re currently have in place.
Mr. Killeen: Actually, that would help to answer the question of care of the vehicles. When we were purchasing the vehicles outright, part of Todd’s presentation was we’re getting into situations where vehicles don’t have the miles, but they have the wear and tear and so the ideas was that if we got on a lease program, that we would be better off at large.
5. Student Artwork
Ms. Baldwin: Item #5 is for you to pay attention to the new student artwork that has been put up on display. It is beautiful and I do want to recognize:
Kiana Livingston -Kindergarten, John Trumbull Primary School
Katrina Geslien -Grade 1, John Trumbull Primary School
Laine Rushton -Grade 2, John Trumbull Primary School
Brianna Konovaluk -Grade 3, Polk School
Jillian Gurry -Grade 4, Judson School
Alexis Cortes -Grade 5, Judson School
Rebecca Reznak -Grade 6, Swift Middle School
Carolyn Flaherty -Grade 7, Swift Middle School
Ashley Domack -Grade 8, Swift Middle School
Lauren Scully -Art 1, Watertown High School
Matt O’Meara -Art 1, Watertown High School
Rachel Berube -Art 3, Watertown High School
Christina Weaver -Ind. Study Art, Watertown High School
Ms. Baldwin: If I could follow up on student council representative’s report on the Cool Schools program, certainly that was a wonderful display of school pride and commitment and energy. I think it surprised everyone to see the turnout, mostly the response from the community. We had many people in this community donate breakfast items for us so that we could feed children and staff after a long morning of the programming. I do want to thank Mr. Geary and the administrative team because certainly this can’t happen without adults in the community willing to show up at 4:00 in the morning and being here to supervise children to participate to model and to lead and so I do want to thank Mr. Geary, the high school principal, the two assistant principals and probably 50 faculty members who were here on Friday morning and it certainly it was a wonderful display of our collective commitment to this community forward and the school forward and to show that Watertown High School absolutely is our flagship school and we’re moving in the right direction and so I do want to thank Mr. Geary and the high school team for (inaudible) selfless acts on Friday morning, so thank you.
J. Report from the Chairman
Ms. Calabrese: For the chairman’s report this evening, very briefly, I would like to reiterate that as budget season unfolds, this board will be doing its very best to prevent the school system from taking a major step backward. This will call for a high degree of creative problem solving and the deep commitment on the part of all stakeholders in the community considering the current economic climate. With that we can move on to our action items.
K. Action Items – Adoption of Items to be Approved by Consent
MOTION made by Ms. Colangelo, sec. Mr. Mazzamaro
1. Consideration of the Approval of Childbearing Leave of Absence
Ms. Shannon McDonnell, Reading Teacher at John Trumbull Primary School, requests a Childbearing Leave of Absence under the Family Medical Leave Act, commencing May 16, 2009 through the end of the 2008-2009 school year, with use of accumulated sick time and then leave without pay, and a medical doctor’s note to return.
It is recommended that the Board approve of a Childbearing Leave of Absence for Ms. Shannon McDonnell, Reading Teacher at John Trumbull Primary School, commencing May 16, 2009 through the end of the 2008-2009 school year, with use of accumulated sick time and then leave without pay, and a medical doctor’s note to return.
Discussion: Mr. Killeen: In as much as we’ve been focusing on a reading development at John Trumbull, I would hope that we’re going to do some creative problem solving to make up for that absence.
Ms. Baldwin: We will and actually because that leave time is right around the time that our local colleges and universities are graduating people, we do hope to have a pretty robust list of possible candidates to come in and finish out the last five weeks or so or school, so we will pay close attention to that.
Ms. Calabrese: That sounds great, thank you.
Opposed: None
Abstained: None
Vote: Motion passed unanimously
L. Future Agenda Items and Board Members’ Comments
Ms. Pond: I just wanted to say something to Mr. Geary. I was up for that cool school about quarter after five and I ran and put the TV on because the kids were telling me in the meat market, don’t forget to watch. I missed a little bit of it, but I can see they were so enthusiastic and I was so proud of you. When I went up to my long term teaching job, I was sharing with all the kids in Region 10 how great Watertown was. I said why don’t you kids be a cool school, so they said what do we have to do. I said maybe you should model what Watertown does. I was really proud. They were so enthusiastic.
Ms. Dzioba: I have a comment. I would like to thank Mr. John Boucher of the robotics for sending us the links for those of us who didn’t see it.
Mr. Mastroianni: I have some photographs if you want to see them.
M. Public Participation
None
N. Adjournment
MOTION: made by Mr. Pond, sec. by Mr. Mazzamaro
Motion passed unanimously
The meeting adjourned at 8:55 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Mary Colangelo, Secretary
Board of Education
Patricia A. Barber, Minutes Secretary
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