Stonington Public Schools Board of Education Meeting May 12, 2016 

Bids\Purchase  Recommendation brought to Board for Food Service  Working on spreadsheet for deferred purchases. Nothing has required a bid waiver so far.

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Revenue/Advertising  Softball scoreboard – I have quotes for the entire installation. It is $23,000.  One of the items for the deferred purchases was the installation of this scoreboard.  One advertiser has requested a refund since it has taken so long to get this installed.  We have placed the item on our district deferred purchases and will attempt to get the scoreboard in place at the end of the year.

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Food Service  Decision made to decrease the limit from $10 to $5 for the calls.  We placed automated calls to families with balances over $5 negative with the hopes that this will generate cash for the department.  The total amount owed to Nutrition Services is $2,051 as of 4/28. (last month it was $1,979).  Reported to SHS that seniors owe funds to the food service program to the amount of $358. The principal is working to recover the funds.  We still need a working process for collecting unpaid meals from students who are not eligible for free/reduced program.  Need to make the communication over the summer that negative balances will no longer be accepted for the 2016-17 school year and beyond.  Nutrition Services will NEVER let a student go hungry.

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Transportation  I have been in contact with Mike Mason from Gerwick_Mereen LLC. He is developing a quote on what it would take to get this parcel of land for the new depot operational.  The quote Mike communicated to me over the phone would be the one received from another firm and is below the $10k bid threshold. Quote received on May 4th and it is $4,660.  I will keep Mr. Valenti in the loop on this development.

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Facilities/Security  The pod climbers and cargo net were installed at West Vine Street Schools during the April break week and look great.  Ken Donovan attended a security symposium and I attended one by CIRMA. The CIRMA security seminar was very generic and we are doing most of the items on their list.

Stonington Public Schools Board of Education Meeting May 12, 2016   

Ken has met with the DEMHS representatives before and has received praise from them. Stonington Public Schools is being used as the model to copy. The State requires the BOE to resubmit the security plans annually. We will modify the plan over the summer and present it to the BOE in the fall.

Other  Working towards going totally organic on the baseball field and it will go through one more baseball season with improvements before being over-hauled.  Chip Osborne visited the outfield on April 27th and stated that it was going according to plan.  Retirement Board meeting held on 5/4/16 was relatively short. There was a presentation from FIA (Fiduciary Investment Advisors) on the performance of the Town Plan. For the quarter the Town Plan did match the benchmark of market performance. FIA recommended keeping the same plans and fund managers in place for the following quarter. They did state that this would be a very volatile year with Energy, Financials, and Healthcare driving the market downward.