June 4, 2014 at 6:30 PM - Regular Board of Education Meeting

Rationale:  The Memorial Day essay contest winners have been invited to the meeting to read their winning essays. We will welcome and recognize them for their accomplishments.

1^st place:       Riley Nelson

2^nd place:      Isabella Hine

3^rd Place:      John Cox

Rationale:  The Science Olympiad team won the state championship followed by a trip to the national competition at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Members of this team, along with the team advisors, will be present to be recognized and to present a brief description of the program and its accomplishments.

Rationale:  Each year, CABE invites its member Boards to recognize outstanding student leaders at the middle and high school levels.  The principals of each school are asked to facilitate the selection of the students based on a given set of criteria.  Mr. Wygonik and Mr. Pomroy will recognize the award winners.

Recipients:

From LOLMS: Jace Funaro and Una Barrett

From LOLHS: Tajhay Marshall and Meredith Aird

Rationale:  Patty Downes will recognize Diane Bates for her 35 years of service.

Rationale: 

Please note the personnel report as you will find updated employee information reflected in it.  This is the time of the year where changes sometimes occur due to late retirements and/ or resignations.  We have also filled a number of open positions.

Please take note of the June enrollment report. We have a total of 1,436 students enrolled. We are continuing to track our Kindergarten enrollments.  As of 5/30 we still only have 56 kindergartners enrolled for next year.

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

Rationale:  Due to the nature of our June meetings (awards, end of year evaluations, etc.) we do not have educational presentations.  We will resume our presentations at the next meeting.

Rationale:  Each year the Board is asked to approve application for all state and federal grants.  These include those for special education as well as remedial, staff development and other entitlement grants.  A single motion authorizes the administration to apply for all that the District is eligible.  This requires Board action.

Rationale:  Mr. Rhodes will review our recommendation to purchase 281 Lenovo laptops and 5 Lenovo desktop computers from Connecticut Computer Services for $154,254.

Rationale:  Each year the Board is asked to appoint a designee(s) to act in the absence of the Superintendent as necessary.  It is useful to have the Board designate two individuals for the rare occasions when both the Superintendent and Director of Curriculum are unavailable.  I recommend the Board approve Dr. Borden and Mrs. Johnston as designees for this purpose.  This requires Board action

Rationale:  Lynn Warren will review the results of the bidding for food services.

Rationale:  Although this request for a leave of absence is outside the contractual language, I am recommending approval of this leave.

Rationale:  Please share written minutes and/or oral reports as necessary.

Rationale: 

We will address two separate issues in executive session.  The first will be the Boards’ interview of our finalist for the Business Manager position.  I have attached sample questions for you to use as a guide during this interview.  Following the interview, I recommend that we come out of executive session to approve the hiring of this candidate.

Our second portion of executive session will begin with my annual evaluation which will be presented by Dr. Jones.  Upon conclusion of that discussion, we will discuss the terms negotiated by the HR committee for the Business Manager contract, Mr. Rhodes’ contract, and my contract.  If the Board chooses to accept the terms as recommended by the HR committee, we will need to move into open session to vote for approval.