August 7, 2019 at 6:30 PM - Regular Board of Education Meeting

Rationale: 

1. Please note the personnel report as you will find several new hires reflected in it.  

2. While there is no enrollment report this month, the Board should be aware of some grade levels which we have been tracking closely. 

At this time, we have 29 students enrolled in Kindergarten at Lyme and 48 students enrolled at Mile Creek for a total of 77 students.  Our class size guidelines for Kindergarten remain at 15 students per section. 

Our third grade and fifth grade are also large with 42 in 3rd grade at Mile Creek, 32 at Lyme in 3rd grade, 43 at Mile Creek in 5th grade, and 45 at Lyme in 5th grade. Both schools have two sections per grade. Class size guidelines are 18-20 for 3rd grade and 20-22 for 5th grade.   

We have 70 students enrolled in Pre-k of which 53 are four year olds.  29 students are brand new this year.  This will give us four classes of 13-14.  The class size guidelines are 8-12.

In addition we have seen a significant increase in the interest level of families looking at our schools.  I will share some examples with the Board.

3. We are holding our annual Convocation during our professional development days in August.  You are all invited to attend the convocation ceremony on the morning of the 26th.  In addition, we have expanded our new staff orientation to two days on August 20th and 21st. 

4. It has been a very busy summer as far as facilities projects and maintenance.  I will review the progress on the Pre-K renovations, the MS library renovation, and the repair of the MS foyers.  I will also update the Board on the use of the pond water for irrigation.

5.  I will update the Board on the before/after care program for Pre-K.

6.  We have two new students who are refugees from Iraq.  The Refugee Placement Committee, sponsored by the churches in town, is supporting their transition.  They will join the other two families we have from Syria and The Congo.

7.  CABE has completed their transition of our old numbering system to the more common Davis-Perknel system for our policy book.  Unfortunately, they did not look into each policy to make adjustments to policy references.  This will require us to find those and report them to CABE to be changed.

8.  We have already begun to see savings in this year's budget with the receipt of over $30,000 in the last month.  We were fortunate to receive an equity distribution from CIRMA for $15,878 and applied for and received a grant from Amazon (through our association with FIRST) for $15,225.

9.  I will update the Board on our progress with the pursuit of international students.

10.  I will provide a summary of our SAT results for this year.

Rationale:  Mrs. McCalla will provide a year to date budget status report as well as a contingency fund report.

Rationale:  Michelle will update the Board on some changes we are making to how we structure music at the elementary level.

Rationale:  I am recommending the approval of three additional tuition students.  Two will be attending the MS, one of which is a staff member's child.  The other will be attending the HS.  This will bring us to 12 tuition students.  This requires Board action.

Rationale: 

The existing copier lease for seven district copiers will expire on September 30, 2019. A request for proposal was publicly bid with results listed below.

CBS                             $3,537 per year

Prism                         $3,340 per year

Ricoh                          $3,551 per year

Prism will be supplying identical copiers to the existing machines. In addition, a reference check was performed. We recommend awarding Prism the five year lease for the replacement copiers.

Rationale: 

As part of the annual facilities equipment purchase program, the school district has publicly advertised for a replacement truck. The current truck being replaced was purchased in 2003. The proposed replacement truck is a Ford F350. The new truck will facilitate grounds work and summer projects, support use by both the crew team and techno ticks for remote events and reduce maintenance staff use of their personal vehicles for district business.

This truck is within budget and is being financed using a Ford municipal vehicle lease agreement. These agreements are based on an APR of 7.75% and a $1.00 purchase price at the end of the three-year term.

Although this lease was publicly bid, only one bid was submitted from Shaker Family Ford.

 

         

 

Rationale: 

The existing high school Valcom public address and clock system was installed as part of the 2013 renovation project. The system has been extremely unreliable resulting in complete system failures followed by multiple expensive repairs. Since the public address system is part of our safety plan, it must be reliable. Currently, the system is inoperable due to a recent system failure.

We are recommending that the high school public address system be replaced with a Bogen system currently used at Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School and Mile Creek School. The Bogen system has been extremely reliable at these schools. Due to manufacturer limitations on distribution rights, only Integrated System Services, LLC can sell and install this system. Although this prevents us from public bidding, we have had excellent experience with this firm.

Rationale: 

The RESC Alliance has completed bidding the Microsoft and Symantec annual licensing agreement for the 2019-2020 school year. SHI International is the RESC Alliance recommended lowest bidder. The offered pricing is within our budgeted value for licensing.

 

 

Rationale:  As discussed at the retreat, I have provided the attached menu that includes areas of focus for the coming year.  The idea is to use this menu to provide the administration an idea of what goal areas you would like us to focus on.  From your feedback, the administration will develop a draft set of goals for our next meeting.  This does not require Board action at this point but does require Board input.

Rationale: 

This was a late addition and therefore requires a 2/3 approval of the Board to add to the agenda. 

We budgeted to purchase additional radios to replace our outdated ones.  John was waiting until we received word on our grant submission as the state offers a reimbursement grant for security upgrades.  Unfortunately, we just found out that we were not awarded the grant.  The quote we received is $6720 over budget which will not be covered by the grant.

Attached please find a quote from Utility Communications for the purchase of new radios in the amount of $42,720.  This requires Board action to approve the addition of the agenda item and to approve the purchase.

 

Rationale:  In June Michelle presented a proposal for a new Latin text.  We are recommending approval of this text.  This requires Board action.

Rationale:  This is a second reading of this policy.  This requires Board action.