September 14, 2011 at 7:00 PM - Regular BOE Meeting

Rationale: 

Rationale:  Patty Maher, Fifth Grade Teacher at Killingly Intermediate School, was chosen as Killingly's 2012 Teacher of the Year.  The Board will be honoring her at this meeting.

Rationale:  Members of the Killingly community are encouraged to share their thoughts with the Board of Education and are invited to do so during this segment of the meeting.  When appropriate to do so, members of the Board and the administration may respond to comments. However, in consideration of those in attendance and in an effort to proceed in a timely manner, follow-up discussion may need to take place outside of the meeting setting.

Rationale:  Steve Rioux, Principal of KIS, will give a brief report of news at Killingly Intermediate School and opening day.

Rationale:  At the Board meeting in June, Brad Thompson provided an overview of progress in year one of the District Improvement Plan, and some of the lessons learned from the initial year of effort.  Building on that work, the District Data Team met in August to revise the plan, allocate professional development resources, and update timelines.  Mr. McNamara will provide the Board with a status report and highlight tentative changes.  A draft of the plan will be shared with the Board at a later date.

Rationale: 

Rationale:  I will provide a brief summary of actions taken during Hurricane Irene and the aftermath, some lessons learned, and activities we will undertake to be better prepared the next time there is an emergency.

Rationale:  An overview of the start of the school year will be provided, including updated enrollment and attendance data.

Rationale:  A draft of the annual board meeting calendar will be distributed. Key agenda items are listed for the regular business meetings for the board. It is anticipated that for most of the year the second meeting of the month will be reserved for Lighthouse Project activities. 
This is a draft; items may be added, deleted or moved to different months but this provides a guide for members of the board and the public for when topics will be covered.
Please review and make suggestions for changes or additions. A final calendar will presented in October for board adoption.

Rationale:  We have twelve new teachers this year, plus one long-term substitute for the entire year.  This is more new hires than in the past two years combined.  All new teachers attended a two-day orientation on August 24-25, getting to meet district staff, become oriented to district instructional initiatives, spending time in their buildings, and completing a number of housekeeping issues. 

The group is a good mix of experienced and new teachers (see attached list), who we believe will add much positive value to the district.

Rationale:  New versions of Schoolwires (our website host) and PowerSchool are now available.  We updated to Centricity 2, the new version of our website, at the end of August.  The public will probably not notice the difference, but it increases the ease of use for staff in adding web pages or content to existing web pages.  It also has additional social networking capability that can be used by teachers (such as moderated discussions, wikis, message boards).

We will upgrade to PowerSchool 7 later this month.  Again, public users will not notice much difference (though some reports available on the parent portal will be easier to access), but staff will notice increased speed and capabilities.  This release updates all computer code, and so will resolve many longstanding usability issues.

All bus and hand held radios were upgraded this summer to meet new FCC requirements.  In addition to better functionality, a GPS function was added to bus radios.  This allows AJ to track bus locations on the computer, record bus route times, and, in an emergency, give exact locations to responders.

Finally, AlertNow, our automated messaging system, was used extensively this summer to keep people informed about decisions related to Hurricane Irene and announcements related to the start of school.

Rationale:  In accordance with Policy #3260, permission is needed to dispose of obsolete textbooks which are no longer useful to the educational program.  Mostly these items have copyright dates in the 1980's; some are newer but are no longer used.  If approval is granted, every effort will be made to either sell these texts to used book vendors or to donate them to a school or charity that could make use of the materials.

There are also non-text materials, mostly from the KIS Media Center, that do not require board approval for disposal.  However, given the extent of the weeding done this summer, it is important the Board be knowledgable.  Weeding of the collection was done following guidelines from the American Library Association.

Rationale:  Attached is the "final" FY11 budget report that served as the basis for the ED011 filing with the state on August 31.  Recommended transfers summarize pre-purchasing authorized by the Fiscal Committee last spring and the usual transfers to balance account expenditures.

Please note that the end-of-year balance on the final report is $2,841,499.  Of this total, $2,175,018 represents the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) set-aside to replace the loss of ECS funding to the town.  [Recall that Governor Rell reduced ECS aid by 14.1%, backfilling state aid to towns by using the SFSF funds; that money, by federal law, went directly to school districts.  It did not, however, increase our overall budget appropriation.]

The resulting balance of $666,481 returns the entire supplemental appropriation of $103,203 for snow removal.  In summary, after returning the supplemental appropriation, we returned an additional $563,278 to the Town Undesignated Fund Balance.

Rationale:  Mr. Krot and Mr. Rockett are requesting the use of Athletic Special Revenue Account funds for some high-need items at the high school.  In accordance with Policy #3454, prior board approval is required.  See attached memo for the rationale for the requested items.

Rationale:  A number of school districts are looking at thier school calendars for 2011-2012 and considering changes due to the lost attendance days from Hurricane Irene.  We lost three student days and one teacher professional development day, pushing the last day for students to Monday, June 18 and for teachers to Tuesday, June 10.  Suggestions applicable to Killingly include holding school (or a professional developoment day) on Columbus Day, and holding school on Election Day (instead of a PD day).  Many districts that have full weeks off in February are discussing shortening that vacation; ours is already just a long weekend.

Historically, snow days used have been (full days of school closing):
2006-07      2 days
2007-08      3 days
2008-09      4 days
2009-10      2 days
2010-11      7 days

Looking at the data, it appears that we have sufficient available days without going into the last week of June without making any calendar changes at this time.

Rationale:  To date, fifteen residents have expressed interest in participating on the committee, including two board members and one teacher.  Additional teachers or administrators should be added, either as regular or ex officio members.  The Board should consider committee size, charge, and timeline for reporting.  Ideally, recommendations should come to the Board for a decision prior to budget development, so that any savings (or additional costs) can be included.

Rationale:  A tentative agreement has been reached with the bus drivers and mechanics, Local 1303-261 of Council #4, AFSCME.  The union has ratified the agreement.  It is recommended that the Board do the same

Rationale:  CABE bylaws require that the local board of education nominate a member for the state organization's executive board.