Baldwin and one of our students from our athletic advisory group at BHS Jamie high treatise worked at an idea to put a public service announcement together regarding kovin 19 and some of the things you could do to help yourself and help others and while it was a Brookfield high school idea and mr. Baldwin brought it to the CIA see we were going to put an entire video public service announcement together and then of course the CIA seal of the idea and wanted to get students from all of the league's to join in and so so we stepped back and had the students from the other leagues join in and there's this beautiful public service announcement I think Eric you have this queued up I'd love to show it for the public into the board and it's led off by BHS senior Jamie high a treatise so we can show that error yep I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and end up prep that right now for sharing okay hang on one second thank you everybody teens and we're asking for we the athletes of Connecticut are coming together to help flatten the curb of Cove in 19 and we're asking for your help we may be rivals on the field but now we must be nice and slow save lives we're all missing athletic events proms plays and more in school but now's the time for you to help us save lives please stay home unless it's an emergency can establish healthy ways to communicate with your friends and family from home best way to stay safe is to wash your hands with soap and water after being at a public place or washing your hands after you blow your nose sneeze or cough if soap and water are not readily available use a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol cover all surfaces of your hands and rub them together until they feel dry by touching your eyes nose and mouth with unwashed hands do it to protect yourself and to protect your loved ones cover your mouth and nose with a tissue whenever you cough or sneeze or use the inside of your elbow throw your used tissues in the trash clean and disinfect frequently touch surfaces daily this includes tables doorknobs light switches countertops handles desks phones keyboards toilets faucets and sinks we're all hoping to drive onto the field to experience the thrill of victory but the biggest victory we can achieve is to help flatten the curve we the athletes of Connecticut are taking the pledge to come together and to stay home to flatten the curve please join us Jamal our student athletes together we will persevere even though it's hard for now stay home and stay safe and when the time is right Connecticut will play again [Music] thank you Eric thanks for showing that and thanks to mr.
great noted thank you very much [Music] no comments all right so we're going to move down to the information section I guess we'll get a current status of district operations including we'll start with the governor's executive orders affecting operations and school year calendar dr. Sal you're on mute though okay let me just for a backdrop this thing is changing every hour literally every hour and since we posted the meeting things have changed so we may not need the executive session there's some clarity coming out of the the cares Act okay and primarily tonight is to give you some background about what we're doing talk about labor issues and then we there are some budgetary questions and then we have a regular board meeting next week okay that we want to deal with so let me start by first saying that the executive order by the way if you don't have any and you want to look at them if you go to Connecticut gov go to the Connecticut Department they're all listed in reverse order so you could look at him the ones we want to start talking about was Ed you recall when we closed school in March we posted information and we had an order to read bringing us to a level of education of our youngsters mmm distinctly different what we've been doing in the past in fact what what the staff is accomplished and I've sent you emails I don't want to bore you with there's been nothing but incredible well what they've been able to do I'm really proud of them so we should talk a little bit as we go through here about the allowance the allowance on this order last the board publish calendars the last day of the year for us it becomes the I have June 12th would be our day that's where we had the two the to emergency days which were obliged to to make up but before I talk a little bit about there let me take you from the what we're doing with the actual online learning that care has been able to send out and I'll start with you care the permission from doctor cord ona was to transition from what we've had on the website to the current system that we are on as of last Monday and Kara has taken us right through that along with her team so Kara why don't you start sure so Kara santomero director of instruction so as dr.
Baldwin and Jamie and the entire BHS athletic advisory group for for having that idea and starting the storyboard that and get that together so really proud of them it's really wonderful yeah really is in addition to that speaking of our athletes and in some work I actually like to turn it over to dr. Ruby for a second she had the opportunity with mr. Baldwin to have some connection with students and have a real talk about feeling how they're connecting what they're missing and those kind of things and and maybe dr. Ruby if you could share a little bit about that review so one of the most important things that you can a source that you can get data from for improving anything is feedback and feedback has a very large effect size for making change so when we were thinking at the end of last week about how what we were doing was going and there were a bunch of changes that we were seeing we could make based on what other districts are doing I want not I was talking to Steve about this public service announcement they just saw and I said jeez you know let me know how things are going with you using video and audio with kids because we weren't doing that yet because I really would like to connect with kids and ask them because they're the consumers of what we're doing what's working and what isn't working and you all know Steve he's like you can give an idea and he just it's like he picks up the ball and runs with it literally so he he said I can get that together for you and then we were talking later the next day I think and I said you know Steve let's not make this hard you know and have multiple meetings maybe when you have your athletic visor e-meeting we can just ask those students before you get into the end of your meeting these simple questions and you know he's like yes let's do that so it was Steve myself and Carla's in oh and I think 25 students and Steve you know Steve brand the meeting he just said so what's what's good about you know what's good about distance learning and I'm gonna tell you it was it was really emotional to listen to those students because this was the first time that they had been like in a video and audio situation and they were so mature and impressive in how they spoke about what was positive they were very complimentary to their teachers even saying things like well you know some classes are too much work but you know those teachers you know they're just trying to do the best they can and you know there it was just it was impressive so then we asked them you know what Steve asked them actually what kind of advice would you give teachers for how to improve what what they've done and they gave us really poignant information that is going to be informing what we're going to be doing subsequent to that mr.
Sal mentioned we had to move from the the initial website that we set up that was really designed primarily for two core continued practice and I will preface that saying that we had a team right around the time that we started to hear the other schools closing or potential closures we enacted our curriculum development team also called the CDT to start developing a website by grade level to curate some of our content of programs that we normally have our kids access on a regular basis and so you know we were very fortunate in the sense that that k12 interactive learning website was up and running for the very day that we were forced to close and so we're able to start communicating the use of that along with concurrently developing learning packets k5 for those k5 students who may not be connected to to the Internet we knew that uh predominantly the majority of our kids who were not connected were at the k5 level so we thought that was very necessary to make sure that we had those packets ready to go so it until we figured out where all this was going once we realized that we had to move to a continuous learning we were able to reset a launch date coupled with a lot of preparation in the background for or a pre launch time and couldn't also running parallel to this was an enormous effort to distribute laptops to prepare those laptops to get kids connected - in families into our Parent Portal to get up-to-date email addresses and to give kids their gmail accounts and some some guidance on how to get connected and so I can't begin to even describe the efforts of our tech team the principals and their leadership teams in that distribution process along with members of the cabinet so that was an incredible feat and we're still continuing to work on that in the distance learning plan that is referenced on the website you will see that we have sort of broken out the implementation of our plan and four distinct phases at phases running running through all of those phases is this urgency to continue to reduce the numbers of kids who are not connected currently and again Yeomans efforts because we were able to get a huge number of families connected in a short period of time and we're still working on that the DPS plan as mentioned is on the website the most current version is up and was updated today we did update some guidance with some parent some parent guidance along the lines of privacy and student privacy so if you haven't looked at at it today I would suggest that you make sure that you have the most up-to-date version we've also updated some guidance on the use of some virtual tools in the plan we have outlined the phases of implementation staff expectations at every level important roles and responsibilities by stakeholders special considerations for our special ed and second language learners along with data privacy requirements guidance for technical support and staff and student absentee reporting as you can imagine we're working through lots of challenges with this and rolling this out but I have to say that we're I think we're in a very good place staff is aware of their expectations we have a tremendous amount of connectivity happening right now in terms of the amount of teachers who have already connected with students and set up their global classrooms and we're working on increasing those connections every day and so the goal in the first 10 days of distance learning is to build relationships can with students and to make sure that kids are at the other end of the learning that we're providing and so the first first week or so we go going a little bit slow and with light rollouts and orienting kids to the environment and families and then more detailed new learning assignments will be rolling forth as the more connectivity develops in each of those classrooms so right now we're trying to make sure that all of our kids are getting on board into these classrooms and are communicating before we really launch very heavily with you know heavier day-to-day assignments here I did get a phone call actually really nice call from one of the assistants in the commissioner's office reaching out to see where we were with our planning she was quite surprised with what she considered to be sound like we had a very organized plan that we were on track and given where we are with our screen reduced lunch and our demographics that we had we were doing a pretty good job of covering a lot of basis and making sure that we had some multi-faceted efforts taking place to connect our kids to to our classrooms so she she gave us quite a few compliments on the place near me I guess because we were up and running with continued practice and learning pretty close to the first day that a lot of the time that we've been out that will count for us which is a great thing the plan that you might need to know we weren't we've been providing another wonderful thing that has happened so we do have some internal capacity with folks that we're calling super users and we have let's to distance learning and dr.
Belinda met with some students Ernesto davia who is a Spanish teacher at the high school and he's the climate coordinator he did a survey mr. Renda spoke with students at whisk and ear we didn't go down we're working with the most people in the high school first you can't do everything at once but we we got the same information across both populations of students and across the different interviewing situations and surveys we got we got convergent information but what was most moving to me and really heartbreaking was as much as these students were when they were talking about you know how their classes are going and what was working and empathy for and compassion for what the teachers were going through as well they you know the teenagers they seemed well these guys they're seem so mature and then all of a sudden the little kid in them really came through where they started saying but I really miss school and and I miss my friends and I want to be in school and and then they said you know dr.
Franklin banca who is the principal over at Westside in his former role working at at advanced LED a lot of district distance learning initiative 21st century learning he had great expertise in this area so I asked him to help me out with the training of folks and the organization of that and through that we identified a few folks some of our leaders yeah Kristy's Lita Laura Laura Meade Mark Poliquin and I know I'm missing someone Christy Laura mark there was someone else who stepped up to help to lead some of the professionals of professional learning and organizing the learning including helping me to organize these super users who have already launched some some webinars for staff this Tuesday that were oversubscribed we actually had two we're going to schedule more because we had over three or four hundred teachers requesting access to the webinars and so we have a lot of participants there so there's a huge demand for more professional training staff are eager to get going and there's already some really nice things happening people are sending some great anecdotal messages from their students and from the teachers who are shifting in this direction so it's a pretty good feedback along the lines of the plan there are comment please on the structure I think because they may be getting some feedback from parents would be good Lucic Gestalt of how we've organized the day the architecture sure so it looks obviously a little bit different at different levels but so every in the plan you'll see that every classroom teacher has to have a separate Google classroom for each of their rostered classes and there are a few exceptions to that rule and when we get into the long the lines of special education which Kelly can outline a little bit later on you know in terms of certain privacy privacy issues and the delivery of services those students have one-to-one classrooms and she can elaborate on that more when she speaks a little bit later on but for the most part it's one classroom per roster of students and the expectations are that teachers post their content their lesson content by nine o'clock every day and that they post a message for - as a way to track attendance and that students have to respond and very simply that they're here there's one choice to click and the answer is yes I'm here so we're working through the attendance pieces on that and trying to simplify ways to take an accurate attendance daily but basically we have at the k5 level in particular we knew that the shift would be the greatest technologically and so we had we started to have our curriculum development team and I had Mark Poliquin who's been assigned to my office he's been amazing with helping to set up a k5 Google classroom that is designed as a model for k5 teachers and with the support and the very hard work of our coaches and our supervisors that are curating content in the form of lessons common lessons that can be pushed out for reading writing math and science and some social studies and some other anecdotal social-emotional pieces and so this way k5 teachers can kind of can access that curated content to be pushed out into their own classrooms along with having some professional autonomy to adjust and to add other pieces but this has been Yeomans effort to to set this up so that our k5 teachers as they kind of get the hang of managing these classrooms and the technological pieces of it crafting videos doing lessons on video modeling so some of this work is being done the heavy lift as being done through coaches and these supervisors and with mark Poliquin kind of leading that in in the background and so teachers are able to kind of access these lessons to push them on the daily basis at the 612 level there's a lot of teachers and students who are already very familiar with operating in this method with Google classroom it's not unfamiliar to us as a district that is one of the reasons why we chose to use Google classroom as a platform because we had a high degree of of capacity already in the district and we are just continuing to refine how we provide assignments how we grade things on those those lines will continue to develop in this new environment so we have a couple of folks who are working on the side to provide guidelines in those areas the next next thing that we're gonna be working on is you know what is it what this classroom behavior look like virtually one of the norms and the etiquettes for students that they need to follow what happens when students break those rules and so we're having some pretty good conversation about those now basically all systems that we have normally have to be now be redone and replicated through this through this virtual environment so we're recreating just about every system you could think of for the way that we operationalize and communicate Kara before I open up questions down the road but I think Gina talked a little bit about the work that you've done building the capacity for the online work having student access the surveys and what have you so the board has a kind of a feel about what the connectivity looks like [Music] you gotta speak up we're having some drawing volume can you hear me turn the volume up on my mic just go ahead then okay so there are three phases to the technologies rollout that are happening at the same time about a month ago we mailed letters home to all k5 family he's encouraging them to sign up for the power school Parent Portal the letter also includes included their children's email address and password so parents could help their youngest students sign into Google classroom both the parent portal and using school email are common practices at the secondary level however at the elementary level they were not used with the help of principals teachers secretaries and other support staff we have 89% of all families signed on to the parent portal now and that was over the past two weeks and the other benefit is that now we have a way to email families in addition to the usual robo calls and posting to the website so we've increase wet school web site distribution of the Chromebooks has taken place over the past couple of weeks at each school and in adhering to the CDC guidelines principals and other volunteers handed out Chromebooks to families as they drove up to a pickup point and these were a combination of Chromebooks that were already deployed in the school so they were in carts and tubs and classrooms things like that and some new Chromebooks which we were able to purchase at a low cost and we can track all of the Chromebooks through a central management system in Google education so we didn't have to assign Chromebooks ahead of time we can just hand them out and then as the kids log on we have a track of what Chromebook is assigned to what student so our first goal in this whole rollout was to get a device in the home of every family and even even if they had multiple students in in the family today every request that has been submitted has been fulfilled and where we are almost to the Chromebooks every family each school in addition has a help desk so that families can get tech support with any issues that they might encounter as we will go along in the process and moving forward were set to receive additional Chromebooks we're using IT workers to unbox and prepare devices and then we'll continue distribution to all students I've also had a number of volunteers that have helped us with this initiative and all the employees and people of my team have been amazing and the volunteers have done a great job and we really couldn't have done it without them I want to comment regarding the new 60,000 computers that States making available so the state has 60,000 Windows computer laptops that are becoming available to seniors and high school students and we have applied for some of those and we they expect those to be delivered sometime in May they calculated there were 60,000 seniors among the 30 priority districts or the Alliance districts so they're going to have a cake those computers to the partnership the DeLeo foundation and they and the criteria is going to be mm-hmm they're going to really look at districts that that are where the students are less likely to have a computer let me play it that way so districts that have taken initiatives and provided computers are not going to get as many as the others so they're going to create a ladder basically and we're still in line for about how many jeanna about fifteen hundred some will get more merited for example as in one-on-one all of their folks have it so there bottom of the list equity it not with the hartford's and the bridge ports will be receiving the lion's share those but we are in line for those we think post this event here will be very close to one-on-one even k12 so I think you know we've leveraged saw a bad situation into something positive as we grow in addition to this they're giving us some other materials and I'll have Kara comment about it real quick about the books because you may be reading about it go ahead Kara so we just submitted an application for an application today and it was - what numbers were needed you know not terms of laptops to get us to a one-to-one situation so we submitted those numbers along with a distribution plan and then scholastic is offering sort of a supplemental backpack take-home books so they're not necessarily for teacher use but they're for at home family use so for every student that we have in the district get an opportunity to get a backpack of book so I think it was like between three and four books per per student and so I'm sorry yes so we have three or four books per student and then along with that some kind of at home learning good questions and guides and activities for the parents to do with their kids and those questions are also in Spanish as well and a lot of the books that were selected have a high level of culturally relevant topics so so pre-k to 8th grade eighth there'll be some books coming in a couple of weeks we're trying to figure out how you know given all of the kind of circumstances that we're dealing with right now and the limitations how best to get those distributed so we'll be having those shipped probably to Sacred Heart and the gymnasium and they were gonna figure out a distribution plan from there but there's at least one set for every child in each grade level k12 if if our application gets approved but I don't think they're gonna withhold approval at this point so hey Kara so so for the mainstream students the expectations are then you know for a special population that has been somewhat challenging and Kelly and her team has been doing a phenomenal job trying to get clarity there are privacy issues just on the use of the of the online platform was Ewing who so she said to make a lot of accommodations and also provide the supplement work that they're expected to have that commences every work so Kelly you spent a few minutes talking about that so for the special education group we are following the district plan with some additional kind of parameters placed around that population one of the things is the state has been issuing guidance and I expect more to come so we may need to tweak and changes as we hear more um but right now every class every special education teacher has set up an individual Google classroom for that child and the reason for an identified special education student and the reason for that is any of their services as provided in the IEP on a pull-out fashion need to be done with the strictest strictest level of confidentiality um so we're having teachers post to individual classroom pages for each one of our special education students and I do have to credit our teachers they're doing a tremendous job as most of you are aware we have nearly 1,700 special ed students in the district which meant 1,700 individual pages that were corrected in about a week's time um and so on those pages what we've done is we've set up one page for each student and every single service that they receive so if a child was receiving reading instruction math instruction occupational therapy and speech all of the service providers are hip hooked into that one page to make it simple for families so families log on and they'll see the lessons or activities from the speech and language pathologists they'll see the reading activities you'll see whatever it is that that child needs it also serves as documentation of the program that we're putting into place right now on an individual student level in addition we've required every staff member to keep what we call a communication log in that is to capture all the other things that they're doing relative to that child consulting with other staff help parents to set up scheduling we're very aware and sensitive to the fact that particularly for some of our students with special needs that this time well it's hard for all children is exceptionally hard for them and so the many of our students may not even understand why they can't come to school mmm a quick example is I had a parent of a young child with pretty significant needs saying mommy if I'm just going out and I sort of slim not understanding why they're home during a period of time and so we are trying to reach out to families on an individual level every service provider is expected to make contact with the parents of a child at least weekly so that means we're doing lots of checking in so I really have to commend the special ed administrative team and the entire department they have done a phenomenal job the additional things that we're trying to do is our guidance has been to implement a child's program to the greatest extent possible certain things we can't do when a child is at home I'm so we're working through the nuances of those and figuring out kind of creative in an innovative ways to continue to kind of up our game as we move along we are dabbling in some video conferencing with kids it's not a requirement at this point in time but I'm encouraging staff to check in through one-on-one videoconferencing with kids so very similar to this set up but in a one-on-one fashion with the students so they can provide some directs you know first check-in see a friendly face but also provide some direct instruction on in addition or pupil services staffs or school psychologists our school counselors are social workers they have really done a lot with the social-emotional supports of students that are with disabilities and not um and a lot of that is just guiding families on where to tap into different resources how to get internet in your home how to seek you know social services what to do if your counselor no longer will take patients in their office due to this the executive order in place and so really just providing them with other outlets and support and connecting them up with new resources so they've been doing a tremendous job and you know we've been focusing on doing all the other things that that children are being provided under under the distance learning plan that was created by the district but I think that just gives you a different lens and to kind of some of the intricacies of special so I think for the just for the board's thinking the waiver for the 180 as I said going into districts around us are doing different things with it our thinking has been to keep the expectation and I call the Commissioner just for the board's background once a week sometimes twice a week government has a conference call we're all included on it once a week and sometimes twice a week the Commissioner of Education has a conference call were on it also we host the area superintendents once a week on Thursday mornings and then caps I mean there's more meetings we know what to do with but talking about these things and things vary and the backdrop of everything ever said to me every time we get into this safety first understand safety first coast of distribution no crowding sourcing a distancing so we've had to keep that in our in our in our planning and one of the things that we I thought as I asked the Commissioner what is the 180 mean well the 180 means were allowed to go to the days that we have in a calendar and as I talked about there's expectation that you you accomplish the 180 the only variance on the 180 would be if for some odd reason we can't make it up to June 30th we don't have the days then they will permit us or district to waive of those days but the expectation is you put money and we have 180 based on what I said and we think there's seems to be kind of counterintuitive here but people are pretty well zoned out but a lot of the materials families are trying to get the kids on board that it would probably one way to achieve the 80s based on 180 based on the current count that we have by giving the folks starting next Friday to the following week as they as a vacation week people might not be able to go out someday I'm not sure that's really a mental rest but corollary to that Kathy I wanted you to speak a few minutes why by the time is in essence terms of taking that time so Kathy hoedown has been phenomenal working with this in the city on keeping us safe it's just been a tremendous resource to us so you want to talk a little bit about a caffeine sure thank you dr.
Ruby mr. one who makes a decision when when will we know if we can go back to school and it was just it was horrible to hear them one of the things that they really what really came out of it which was something that we've been investigating because of the legalities of using a platform like zoom with children and some of the things that you've probably seen on the internet and in the news problems with zoom when you when your teachers aren't trained to use the controls that are built into zoom they said if we could have could we have a meeting like this for a class not every day because the teachers couldn't be online every day just zooming all day they just couldn't do it what like even once a week so we got a lot of valuable information and I know Steve if you're on the line if dr.
Sal this is Kathy Odette the health and nursing services coordinator so as dr. Sal mentioned earlier this situation is changing hourly and the numbers of positive cases in the city of Danbury are increasing there was a sharp increase on the weekend and everything that the medical experts are telling us April is going to be a very serious month in terms of new positive cases they're finding patients who have no symptoms who are positive we're now finding out that people can be positive for one to three days before any symptoms show so we have to act absolutely on the side of caution and we're you know we're doing our very best you know in terms of the laptop distribution and the food distribution to get this these materials out to families and to keep all of our workers safe but as dr. Sal had mentioned you know just in terms of the April break this is really taking an emotional toll on everyone on family students their families or staff and so in that regard I'm very supportive of the April break so so that there's there's some things that are happening and we could move into it and I think maybe right now would be a good time for Kim to talk about the labor and those issues and the things you've had to do in order to bring us here to get this work done so date the board sure so when we originally started this when we closed abruptly on the 13th of March it was unclear what we were going to do whether we were going to continue working how we were going to proceed with teachers and it became pretty clear early on that we were going to need to move to a distance model or a virtual learning model so what that required from us again early on was to negotiate new essentially new terms and conditions of employment for teachers so their current existing collective collective bargaining agreement needed to be modified to talk about what the rules of engagement basically are for teachers who are going to be providing virtual services to kids so the first step was to work on a Memorandum of Understanding with both the teachers and the administrators and it addresses a lot of points like what's the length of the workday accessibility to parents just lots and lots of different factors we worked off of a template that's been circulating around with all of our neighbors but I believe was originally started by Shipman and Goodwin but that was the template we started with and then we modified it to suit our own needs in the district and we managed to put that to bed very early on and that was a really huge plus for us because it enabled Cara to really move quickly on getting the distance learning piece up and running so that was teachers and administrators it operates under the premise that we're gonna end on June 12th and so when dr.
will indulge us and let you let us say a little bit more about this because I think it's important are you there and you say anything or mr. Renda if you can talk about something about your experience because it's the same um like dr. Ruby said we myself mr. Bednarik and mrs. Ryan who's our student council adviser spoke with some of our student council students we did a zoom meeting like this virtual meeting and the kids were just so genuine they were so thankful they gave us some some good feedback and suggestions of what to do similar to what dr. Ruth was saying the thing that was really telling again was there I'm expressing how the social interaction is something that they really missed Missy and they're friends although they a one student said she's leaning on her friends to get through this which was really awesome still in the same point that I think that whole interacting throughout the day on a consistent basis for them is lost I mean they may talk for someone for you know a short period of time it's just not like sitting in the lunchroom with everybody around you they were also very thankful how flexible our teaching staff has been that made me feel really great I'm gonna share with our staff about flexible on assignments and just really understanding everyone's situation is a little bit different I that's something that we really as administrators have all been trying to talk staff about but again I think the biggest thing was they felt pretty empowered they had a voice we told them that we're gonna bring some of this back to our staff and see you know having the zoom meeting maybe once a week in all our office hours and things like that which I think would be how it would be helpful and I know that thank you very much mr.
Sol talks about things are changing daily from the time we started and actually concluded those negotiations so now lots of things like that have become clearer to us so the trick with all of these agreements with our labor groups has been to write the agreements broadly enough so that as these details start to become clear we can we are nimble enough to be able to work around them we're gonna have a 10 day evaluation process with both of those unions to look back and see how it's gone over the first 10 days just to check in to see if there's any other modifications those were the easy ones the ones that followed next para educators and tutors we actually just put to rest today and those folks of whom there are several hundred are a little bit trickier we ran through my office's survey of their accessibility to technology and found actually much to our great surprise and happiness that many of them are wired in with some sort of technology and can access Wi-Fi so what we're gonna do next is we're gonna roll those pair of educators and tutors into the distance learning plans so that they can provide support to kids in connection with the teachers that they had been working with when we were live when we were here there's not likely going to be enough for them to do for a full day and so part of what we're doing is taking this opportunity to roll out some really intense professional development for them we have a suite of online learning that we're going to now roll out to those folks and we're gonna request certification that they complete them so they will have plenty to keep them busy for the remainder of this year and from what I can tell anecdotally many many of them are so eager to get in and get started they've been volunteering they've been making phone calls and they're really excited to kind of get in and get working not only in the regular education context but for Kelly and her team to be able to provide support and the special ed context so that is ongoing one trick with that group has been the ELP group you may know where you may remember that those are those are our employees who work in the before school and after-school programs those programs are not connected to the regular education rollout that we have but rather it's you know people use it often if you have working parents they use that as a as a resource in order to have childcare with some sort of homework help and that kind of thing before and after school those programs run exclusively on receipts from participation so that means that for example when we have sites where fewer families take advantage of the after-school programs we have less staff in those sites when more families take advantage we put more staff in those sites we are it is unclear to us right now how much longer we can continue to keep them with us we have been able to at least provide for them the next two paychecks so they have been on the payroll and I've been working within me to see not only if we can sustain them past that time but also if there's any extended learning opportunities that we might be able to involve them with under the twenty-first century grant money that's going to take a little time to get to resolution but for right now those folks are also still you know getting paid and we're trying to do the best we can with that group but that's a conversation we continue to have with the unions sure how are we squaring and obviously this changes every day yesterday the governor issuing another executive order right right asked us nicely to maintain everybody my suspicion is if school districts don't do that he's going to require it order in relations LP thanks because the EOP folks are not providing the school day services that order is for our school day employees so teachers teachers custodians that said I mean we're still trying to bridge some kind of work for them so that we can hold them but the other part of that order not talk about it again in a minute in the context of the transportation contrary but it also has crazy language in it about to the greatest extent practicable what's difficult for us now is because we don't use general funds to fund those programs we don't have the funds as part of our budget it comes from clearly outside sources that's what's making it difficult for us okay so that's how I square going down the list our nurses Kathy O'Dowd has got our nurses connected with students particularly our high needs students kids that are medically fragile so her nurses are reaching out in that context they also are doing a lot of work with us records keeping things up-to-date on their own time they've also been volunteering you should know that many of our nurses have offered their services to the city which we're incredibly proud of these are people that are just trying to find places that where they can be of great value so we've been working with that group mostly at Cathy's direction to make sure that not only are they helping our building administrators to connect with these families making sure that medications are on track making sure that they're connected with those families and then they're also doing this volunteering on the side and the next two are trickier custodians so custodians have been through this period of time working they've been working at sanitation sanitizing buildings they've been involved to the extent that they're peripherally involved in the provision of school lunch or distribution of laptops they've been in their buildings working when it became clear to us all the days are blending together but not a long long time ago I think it was for last Monday we needed to implement greater social distancing for them some of the buildings like the high school that are enormous it's it was easier for us to spread them out some of the smaller buildings not as easy so we went to split shifts starting at 7 o'clock in the morning for four hour shifts they were still paid for their 8 hours but they worked four hour shifts and they just crossed over and then we made sure to go back around with them on social distancing measures like please do not eat in the custodians office please do not share tables and tried as best we could to keep them separated while they went about the process of sanitizing the buildings we got to a point where we really severely restricted access to our buildings because they were cleaned we didn't want continued contamination so there was a very limited period of time where some of our teachers and administrators were in the building's trying to access those essential and critical supplies that they needed in order to get out the distance learning process so since that time the building's have again been cleaned we have had to close Danbury High School today for a period of 14 days at least 14 days because of a confirmed case so right now Danbury high school is closed and will remain so there will be no custodians working in the building and to the extent that there are any other contacts of those people currently employed with us in the district those folks have also been sent home for the 14 day period this is a continual process for us we're going to continue to look at whether or not we are able to continue to keep the building's open at all and that's a process that's ongoing right now for us so I would imagine certainly by your next meeting we'll have more information on that if not before about what our intention is with the custodians in particular the last group is school lunch and school lunch we've had very similar concerns about where our folks have been in terms of interacting with members public with our families and what we've been doing and I'll defer a bit to Courtney when it's her turn to talk because she's been running the provision of school lunch program we have vastly reduced what we're able to provide and what the need is with the number of lunches that we've been doing vastly reduced so we took this approach and it was sort of a stay put approach at first that we're now revisiting we looked for volunteers from the school lunch program who had experience with preparing meals we looked for volunteers and took a handful of them to prepare meals in the kitchen largely at Rogers Park and to hand out meals at seven different sites located across the city we are reducing staffing at this point and those volunteers to the extent that they're still available we're going to use them on a more limited schedule next week and we're still revisiting how we're going to continue to do this part of our concern obviously is that as we approach peak in the city of Danbury we need to be concerned about those folks so right now the vast majority of the school lunch workers are not engaged and so we'll look to see whether we're going to make a decision finally about how we're going to roll out and provide any additional lunches to kids and that's something that Courtney will talk about when it's returned but just suffice it to say that has been running with volunteers they've done an amazing job they are selfless and I think that we all really owe a great appreciation to their hard work with the support of some safety advocates who also volunteer to come in and help do the distribution so then I was gonna say that's gonna lead me then into two other two other larger areas to talk about the human resources team and the the finance department team have been working they're working more or less remotely they're coming in as needed right now my team is focused on two primary issues there is in the area of new legislation and government government orders there have been new rules issued about FMLA time for people who are directly impacted by the Cova 19 crisis so Jen Gonzalez in my office is learning what the new rules are for FMLA particularly really related to the Cova crisis I think we've had our first request for that so we're just getting ready to get that up and running we also along with are dealing with any changes to kind of our regulatory landscape we have been collaborating very closely with Cigna who's the primary provider for most of our employees and Cigna has been rolling out for us lots of materials on coping with the crisis on telemedicine which is a big component of that plan and on other kind of tips and webinars that you can watch or you can participate in as a policy holder with Cigna we're going to continue to look with them on what our experience looks like and what we're seeing but for right now they've been a really good partner with us in terms of getting information to us which our team and our brand new now shell-shocked benefits coordinator is helping to push out and she's doing a great job to push out as much information and as many resources as we can for our employees that are going to struggle not only with the physical relations with this with this epidemic but also if there's mental health issues or coping strategies for any of the families Cigna is waving a lot of the fees involved with that as much as they did in in Prior when we've had prior big events and so they're doing that and they're partnering with us again so the HR team is kind of still functioning we're picking up mail several times a week because the mail is also going to include any claims for unemployment although as Joe's comment also points out we're not going to have a lot of claims for unemployment we've got our subs in the sub pool so the daily subs and to the extent once we start to resolve these issues with the ELP folks but there's not a lot of unemployment claims coming in but to the extent that they are we're trying to handle all of that virtually which has been a bit of a trick the Department of Education has suspended a lot of rules for what they call wet signatures like an actual signature on things like renewing your certification so those pieces are all we're getting new guidance more or less every day on how to handle those pieces so my team is they're all working remotely and they're doing a great job of figuring out solutions and back door answers to how to get documents passed back and forth and get things filed so that brings me through the last big piece which is an item on your agenda and that is to talk about transportation so the reason why many of you have probably is there's been discussion the news originally I think most districts were inclined to look at their transportation contracts because the the logical position was we're not using buses anymore we don't have bus services why would we pay out the rest of the contract it's a courtney and dr.
anda I know that mr. Baldwin is ready to say something Steve he's connecting to the idea and as we're waiting for Steve board members I appreciate you letting me take a little extra time with a superintendent report there's just a lot to report with this unprecedented situation we're in and I still have some more things I do want to share and I push it on so while we're waiting for Steve are you ready um Eric with that little clip yeah I can either do a clip here of them of the meeting or I'm I heard Steve just chime in so stay oh actually we just lost Eve so I will play a quick little clip of of how that zoom meeting wins the eventually lost power in in his town so he Wow what this electricity oh no oh yeah hey Erica oh here he comes back in you all right sorry sorry I was watching online and and I heard that you white guys wanted me to speak this really has been an incredible experience it's been very fun working with the administrators and all of our teachers and the the best thing that I experienced this week was getting in the athletic advisory with dr.
sell and i have spent a lot of time consulting with shipment and goodwin who's been also advising the government office in the State Department of Education about what continued participation in your transportation contracts look like the busing companies nationwide mounted a pretty serious lobbying effort and so what we saw in the federal bailout or the the federal legislation was a protection to some extent of the contracts that were negotiated for transportation services and as we were all trying to struggle with what we thought that meant about paying out that contract the governor issued another executive order last night which is number seven our that basically says we're going to make our best efforts to continue to pay under the transportation contracts in particular with the deliberate goal being we don't want bus companies to have to be laying off their drivers because remember those drivers belong to the bus company they know how to our employees so what it does in this executive order is it says when Boards of Education determine that an amendment to that contract may be appropriate because of these circumstances that Boards of Education can enter into negotiations to amend those agreements with the following provisos that you will cover essentially the cost of the drivers and insurance and anything else that's going to be necessary or critical to re-establishing bus service when the day comes that we can finally do that the nice thing about the executive order is it also requires the bus companies to produce more or less an itemized cost list for us so that we can see what the numbers look like what's profit but also what's the important and critical components of salaries wages insurance and any other benefits and any other critical keys to keeping your buses running so what we have sent along to Kate to read is a motion because in order to I think in order to enable the superintendent where his designee to enter into that contract negotiation that this board needs to make a finding that an amendment to that agreement would be appropriate so that's where I will pause for questions and about the motion and any other questions you might have about that Candice for just for clarity I'm sorry with Joe it's okay so what we're talking about now is this has happened last evening as everybody knows and that that conversations are gonna be them the foundation of the executive session it's out no concession only because the executive order explicitly dictates what we can and cannot do so I think what Kim is saying and I just want for clarity that you're in order for us to take that set a motion would be in order I just want to make sure and in the text of that emotion I think is in front of Kate thank you I'm sorry can I just make sure that I'm reading it right this is still a suggestion by the gunner but it is a very strong and unsocial suggestion I think what's happening here honestly is that right now you know I don't think it's a secret to anybody that the unemployment compensation system crashed I mean the electronic system crashed because the numbers of claims are getting are so high and so the priority for the governor is to make sure that we reduce to the greatest extent possible those claims and that's really what this is an effort to do and they brat their fund us over the way they're supposed to fund us and have us fund those contracts that have to fund those same people through unemployment effectively okay thank you so so for the board's background before the motion just to understand we're fully expecting now with last weekend's Care Act and we've been talking to caps and cabe and also DC to representative out of Murphy's office actually in terms of what we can expect back it sounds to me that it will come in a block grant decares money to do connecticut as kim pointed out our per hour population percentage were like the fourth on the number of incidences of the virus so we're entitled to quite a bit of cash apparently and I did talk to mark today about that as well along with her lobbyists as that money flows to Hartford that the board and Danbury in particular be in line for explicit funds that would be reimbursed for us into a service not rendered and kidding to talk a little bit about that if asked good can I say the principle of it is that what you are paying for is kind of continuity of service you're paying for the security of knowing that when the day comes that we're going to have bus stops yeah and kids are going to be riding a bus that that particular service is going to be there for you so that the the benefit of the bargain here is over the assurance of continuity of service with your provider thank you I have a question Jim can I ask it yes so what I'm hearing is that we're going to continue paying the bus drivers but we're questioning continuing paying our custodians no no no the the statute seems or the governor's order seems clear to all of us that we continue to pay our educational employees that basically that work during the school day for us so custodians school and that we have an obligation to continue to pay them yes the bus drivers are not ours so they work for another entity they work for sta yeah they work for them so what the governor's directing us to do is to basically pay that portion of the agreement we have with them that's going to keep those bus drivers whole so and the the what we're getting for that expenditure of public funds is the assurance of continuity of services does that make sense thank you yep thank you so so Kim are you asking for emotions so Kate if you would read the motion sure I make a motion that the Board of Education determines that the contracts related to student transportation and for the provision of special education services by a public special education provider and by an approved private special education provider requires amendment to more accurately reflect the actual costs incurred during the duration of the public health and civil preparedness emergencies and that we hereby authorized the superintendent and his designee is to negotiate and finalize such amendment in keeping with the governor's executive order 7r motions been made by Kate do I hear a second second second by Jo on the universe all in favor the motion can I hear aye all right are we gonna use these yes and news up to the right side there you if you want to record the votes you can certainly yeah that's a good idea yes wait are you asking for thumbs up ah yes I don't just a pin if you go under that participants heading Joe at the bottom and it pulls up a side screen there with all that the people listed and then there are a raised hand option yes I know I don't have that know what emotion always been put to vote yeah yeah you record the vote we all just checked yes motion okay so just one more quick thing the reference in the motion shifts into the special ID piece was we use separate transportation services for special ed kids so that's part of why that motion included a reference to special ed and services the last thing is what just so you know I don't really have anything more to report on this other than to say while the governor's order is silent about the food service contract so the agreement with Sodexo which is a very large agreement that we pay monthly we are talking about working and partnering with Sodexo to see if kind of a similar model might exist where you know there the contract that we have with them includes the cost of food several employees that they provide to us so we're going to use a similar model to kind of have conversations with them and when we have more information then I'll bring that back too but that's not required by the governor's order but it's something that we talked about my extension can I ask a question this may not this because this dovetails between the food that we were talking about earlier and the transportation contract it was in reference and one of the emails we saw that there was some notion of getting food out to bus stops and those that we haven't done that I do don't know that's what Norwalk has been doing their buses are going the bus stops and distributing food that way rather than have it come to destination locations is that something we're thinking about doing going forward would that help us in any way with any of these contracts actually stopped that yeah it was the yesterday the day before home so they've been looking at you know it you just have to stop listening to all the news because there's so much of it but this is that is a model that Cortney looked at very closely with the cabinet over time and suffice it to say we thought the way we were rolling out was the best model but what you need to look at whether or not it's necessary to make any other changes I think that's relevant one of the things and talking to Norwalk they prepaid their bus contract for a discount so they had that advantage of saying we're working where we were in this phase but as of a day or two ago one of the drivers contracted and has passed away from the virus so they've changed their model to our model and I'm not saying ours is the best as we reevaluate sadly but that's why we really couldn't activate that at this point anyway so I just wanted to add that we do have about a hundred families that are unable to access our food site and we did start a mold mobile distribution for those families today so we are making an exception for those families that have been identified by some of our staff in the building as for a multitude of reasons being unable we provided and we're doing three times a week a multi-day drop-off for all the children in the home Courtney this is probably a good time to talk about the calf and I just wanted the board know we did finalize something during this time the Granville lease has been finalized right Kim we're just getting ready to sign it now we've had some back-and-forth but it's just about done yeah you know as you all know the referendum that has been pushed somewhere so in our protection we we moved the head we'll have Kelly help me out ten classrooms I think the boy just should know yes ten classrooms and with the possibility if we needed to expand in future years for them to build up to 14 okay good so I just so you all know we've done that so we're said so Courtney do you want to talk about the cap theory and then the conversation about the lease knee you're not coming across better yes that's better there okay so the calf so as Kim mentioned and and talked about also the custodians and I can't say enough about how phenomenal the staff has been the custodians have been in the buildings and they've been socially distancing keeping everything safe and clean for the and as well as in the 7/3 sites of the cafeteria where workers that are working they've been working a voluntary basis we've had two per site they've delivered about a thousand meals a day to our families and that's been happening since they won in the district that we opened up that Monday or that Tuesday after we closed so really can't say enough about everything that they've been doing well that says we're operating their five-day-a-week model right now so open five days from 8:00 to 11:30 and there are concerns now that you know Cathy was mentioning about distancing so we're looking at a model where our families our workers are out there less frequently you know and and so that's a 2-day models so they'll deliver multiple meals at a time and maybe even a one-week model the state doesn't have the flexibility to authorize that right now but they're looking to do it and so that would be preferable as Kelly mentioned we've got about a hundred families that the cafeteria workers are also delivering to Moberly in their cars they also have some of the managers doing it as well going past the house for the families that can't make it from the sites so I can't say enough about how dedicated they've been and how really wonderful Cathy's been making sure that they know what the safety protocols and guidelines are up to the latest and greatest and making sure that they're safe and as we rolled it forward and see as things change if we need to modify further we'll keep the board informed but I'm really really proud of them and our relationship with Sodexo through this process also the safety advocates they've been there every site you know maintaining social distance I think let's see is she on here no I don't see I saw a few people have Joe was out volunteering on one of the first days we have a ton of our staff turn up so Julie distancing but on the first week to distribute the Learning packets when we opened up the food sites and it was just really nice for the kids to see their teachers and and to be able to feel like their community was out there so you know and it's really good that we're providing the meals for the families that do need it that's part let's see what else wasn't going to update with one of the the things that the board should be aware of this this is a revenue generating service so their workers are our staff they're our district staff and it's managed by as you know Sodexo the contract yeah okay sure let me try to put my computer back on and turn this one you're muted I'll get better okay so essentially it's a revenue program so when school lunch expense runs about five hundred thousand dollars every every month roughly imitate and that's for our staff it's for the cost of food it's the cost of the contracts and the managers on the contract and normally we bring in enough revenue to support that so it breaks you then or lens a little bit because we can reinvest that money in district equipment that we need as we need to replace it when we're during this total emergency time frame we're not bringing in the same revenue because it's based on the number of meals that we distribute and a normal basis all twelve thousand kids that are enrolled in our school but during this time frame it's only the families that show up that are needing it that can get to the sites and that access the food so the revenue is less so that gap between you know the revenue that we're bringing in and the expense is something that you know the board should be aware of and that we're looking to other funding so we don't know how the peers act you know might find that difference and that will come out as it becomes better defined but right now you know all districts that are operating the food services program during the crisis are also you know when at Leonida Vidya we're paying the whole cost of running the food program but we're just generating less revenue because it were reimbursed on a per meal basis and that said we're also as you mentioned looking at the contract so much like we're looking at the bus contract and looking at you know all the line items that make up the expense for that contract to negotiate down where we can practicably to keep them operating to keep them whole but not I'm paid anything more than we should or need to be paying so for the board's knowledge within the the new executive order it speaks to the cafeteria workers and they are are our workers but we will be as Kim point out before looking at savings and cobbling some savings over to cover the cost with the full anticipation of of making sure that danbury categorically gets their money to backfill these areas this will be a deficit area as you can imagine for us to keep the employment going that's the trick here in addition to that I just want to raise that Kevin's been really wonderful reaching out to the community as well and we're in the process of a new order that came through from the state was that you know potentially we could use volunteers to help us distribute the food and Kevin's been working with United Way to reach out into the community where we might not be touching because we are doing a thousand meals a day but we do have probably more need than what's being met so um before we move on to the budget piece did you want to talk a little bit about the partnership with United Way Kevin sure so don't want to I just wanted to start because we haven't available publicly since we've been closed the first week of school that we were closed we had a number of principles I just want to echo what Courtney said earlier get enough of principals and teach a volunteer safety advocate SCAF Marcus custodial staff of course the ladder has still been working but we had an overwhelming support from our school community out of the distribution sites handing out the learning packets that Cara and her team had developed food available for families very successful for obvious reasons and for the social distance reasons we had to cut back on staffing but I just want to thank those teacher volunteers many of you have so you know we had quite frankly had to turn back the volunteers we had so many people but it wasn't safe the United Way reached out last week to the district reached out to my office and asked if there was any way that they can help with the distribution to support of food security efforts made appears United Way has a partnership of Boehringer Ingelheim Boehringer Ingelheim has a non-profit supporter from us food rescue on Boehringer through United Way on has offered to support the community on the United Way thought of us and so we are now trying to identify them we feel like we've identified some areas in town that are not necessarily accessing our seven distribution sites in years past my understanding is through summer programming we've gone through certain neighborhoods to deliver foods and so we reached out to the Housing Authority to try to get some feedback from them to see what this would look like so once we hear back from the housing authority we'll see if we can't plant ourselves in some of these community and it won't necessarily be the district that's distributing the food it will be through one of these volunteer groups again it appears to be us food rescue and then it would help so essentially what they've acted is to identify any food security data gaps that we that we might have and then figure out a way to help reach those families so we're getting closer and closer to two to landing on a part of the community and in our partnership with this city and Housing Authority see if we can strategically land somewhere that's going to reach more families so for the board because you might hear some of this Kim alluded to we've had to shut down the buildings for safety first and people won't get instruments we've had to cut that short it's we feel it potentially is dangerous the other thing you're going to start hearing this idea I know we have a moral you know obligation to feed everyone but also a standard of care for our workers I'm we're only really concerned about continually putting out folks out in in the area where they are potentially infected when we know by the way one out of very I think she said six would see my is infected in Fairfield County it is asymptomatic or stir or the other so one of the things we're looking at is some alternative ways of distribution we have an application to the state for some waiver which is a little bit unique and we're hoping they would consider that we also because of protection with Ike I forget the acronym but the private dip whatever you call that face ends and as loves and be right we reached out to Fred Fred's new job correct you know works with hospitals he's been able to step out find the supplier and Kathy Courtney work through getting more supplies that we need by the way Kelly and Kathleen we wound up sharing our materials with the city because they were in need but we need them now to backfill particularly if we're going to go out on the front lines next the next two weeks we're doing this so I just want everybody to realize we may have to change our model just as Norwalk had to do it in two days we have an application to change your model so I just want to make that point go ahead Courtney okay thanks that so yeah and once again like just unbelievably dedicated staff and and we just want them to be safe we also have on the agenda the budget transition I think yes I think you need to talk about the you and Kim need to speak to the lease the how we're making this happen yeah the Chromebook so we had a technology lease that was approved on June 4th of 2019 that the initial purpose of the use of the technology lease was to buy technology including Chromebooks for high school and some teacher supports we are enacting that schedule we asked the board to approve that we met that schedule on the lease to repurpose that lease for the purpose of purchasing all of these Chromebooks for the one-to-one the initial intent we'd like to request that you approved to repurpose that already approved schedule against the lease well so what we're doing is the lease was approved by the city and we're activating it to buy books rather than for faculty where we're purchasing the 3031 for the for the students so Kim is that require any motion or information no I think it's for information to let you know that this is coming under the original that obviously things have changed since the first time you voted but this is gonna fall within the original lease and one of the things that needs to happen to enact that lease is the city corporation council needs to sign off on it and that was one of the conversations that we've just been having is is this considered an extension or within the terms of the original vote in the original lease and the answer that is yeah we think so so it's really to make you aware I did see that the City Council did indicate that this evening did he write back go ahead he brought back up and accepted that idea I'm just curious back and he's about he's gonna sign it so yes can you do me now I can it goes in and out I think I'm having text yeah we could hear you so anyway so it does it's really informational if that we're permitted if they sign off then just so the board's knowledge we needed the computers so we had the lease approved we turned in now moving through the least we have the computers bought there in Chicago sitting in a warehouse that was currently closed down that'll open tonight I offered to have my Uncle Joe pick him up but they said nope they're gonna send them out by Friday and we hope they haven't been in by next week so we can start distributing to all of our students so rather than have one per family if there's multiple children they'll have more than the one that's where you want to talk about the budget in the rest sure and I also just wanted to say about my financing came and mentioned HR they've they've just been absolutely wonderful getting everything up remote we're not as agile as you know we could be but we've become very agile so everyone's been printing checks from home they ran a payroll we're about to run another payroll I'm really really proud of them so I'm really really happy that we've been able to be as seamless as we have with getting things keeping keeping things running so that leads me to the budget broadly speaking the impact on the current operations they're they're obvious you know the purchase of the one-to-one Chromebooks and the distance-learning purchasing that we needed to do to get everything up and running that care has been talking about and the coronavirus communication so you know we've got a lot of sanitizing materials we're hoping that the cares Act will reimburse us for you know some of those exposures that we have in the budget and then a big one that we talked about was the cafeteria work that we're doing now the food safety so although that's not on the general fund it's part of our overall budget it's responsibility that we have to fill that gap but we're seeing some things that we're not using some subs the daily subs they'll be some money to offset their tutors coaches as you know Kim mentioned we're keeping all of our staff whole but all those things that we did we don't normally have to do we're not going to be doing so coaching overtime some supplies some savings on electricity so I know we'll be having a final thing to go here this in greater detail but I just wanted to give you an update on the current budget you know broadly speaking there's some exposure and we'll have some awesome you know items that we're not going to be using because we're closed from a building perspective but we're still open from our distance learning so most of our expenses salaries so as you know that's still everybody's still getting paid as far as the upcoming budget we spoke with the city the other day I mean they've just been inundated so they're in the reaction mode there will likely be a delay which will be announced soon on their issuance of the budget they're just now going through and looking at the revenue projections so as you know tax rules everything property tax sales tax everything's been being gone for the city so they're going to be making some adjustments and they'll be communicating to us next week I don't know if we'll have the budget published got their timeframe next week I'm not sure if that requires a change to the Charter but we're prepared to work with you through a Finance Committee and through our next you know meetings remotely to work through what that means for the district you know as everybody knows were not likely to be getting our 12 million dollars the city just can't support better sustain that I heard today didn't Dave tell you to have problems challenges with the with the the permission to push out taxes and there's some collection issues you may run until the board yeah yeah I actually get back so I don't know I know that he said that they're down but I didn't know about the timing of it I don't Lee some of the executive orders from the federal government and has pushed off some possible payments and one of them I believe it's in taxes and they're concerned about they may not know till I want to say July or so forth what their revenue is so that was something that was maybe I'm sorry there was a mayor bound to mention it it's morning to me cuz I was speaking to me about the the virus issue so that's where that came from yeah they're gonna they said they're gonna do their their best with what projections out but they they've really just been dealing with the day-to-day up until now so it's still on their priority list but it might not be in the same timeframe that that's the published time frame I feel so much is going on and then I don't know what more to tell you I mean just is this just constant every day and the only only the only constant is change literally every day and we're reacting to it so I think we have everything on here I know Gladys mentioned about possibly two subcommittees which are permissible a policy one Anna finance one Joe where's Joe Joe I don't know what we're going to do with the facilities one I'm kind of really in limbo with that other than the grand old thing at this point but out but next week we have a regular board meeting quit my intention was but you're to have two meetings the policy committee and the budget committee to sort of me and we go over and I think there's a group we really need to stay connected because I know things are happening rapid I know that you're busy and everyone is busy but I think we need to stay engaged as members to sorta know what and know what's going on as a group so my idea was and I don't know when we could have it I don't know we want to do the budget if the city's working on the budget when we want to plan a budget meeting and a policy committee I I don't know if Rachel's own because I can't only see doctor self and whoever speaks I don't know what other members are on and they I can't hear you at all got to self that's cuz I had to mute but none but if you go to the top there's like there's an icon will show you it has everybody on the screen and next time I should have showed you - I'm sorry okay well our review yes hit that review okay may I see everyone okay we don't know when to and mr.
Ruby and all the kids and the same to them it was really moving hearing them when they all got together they were so excited to see each other and share what they liked and actually helped us improve on what we can do better and also because I came in to another range so I stopped listening for a minute to turn my computer I don't know if doctor will be shared that yesterday there was for Brookfield students dr. Ruby and myself on with the Commissioner of Education Commissioner Cardona and they asked our kids what was going well and our kids did such a great job and there was probably 20 other kids from the state I'm with commissioner Cardona and asking and sharing what is going going well within our own school system and I act was actually a meeting today with Fairfield County physical education and health directors and we were doing very well as far as Fairfield County goes and what we're doing were actually there were a tremendous job and we're able to share everything that we're doing with other teachers and with other coordinators in Fairfield County so I just wanted to show that angst Eve and then one last thing if Eric if you're ready and we can just show a little bit of that and then we can hand it back over to dr.
Walston come up with some type of time frame that we can do policy and the reading that I'm thinking about policy we don't have to go into executive policy okay what do we need to go over for policy is it just continuation of what we're continuing that were we left off with that okay Kevin are you on board with that business stop don't want to get too far behind whenever we can go back as a full board in our meetings and I would continue to discussion and talk about you guys because I miss that communication good good agree miss Cooper and Rachel I I don't think there's any problem with us continuing number one we still have community relate I'm sorry board believe it was business operations we still have a number of business operation policies to review and so I can not believe those already share but I can so those are shared again so they're easily accessible for everyone and then I think Rachel unlike Rachel and I had talked about meeting I guess we'll have to be differently now but in terms of planning for our next meeting so if my only question to the subcommittee is do we want to number one keep the same commitments that we have once a month and then two you know those meetings were rather late I don't know if there's still a need to keep them as late as they were you know I can sort of talk offline and see if we come up with a new schedule if if you desire well one are you and Rachel and the committee member sort you know discuss that and I'll leave that up to you class name and I ask a question please yes this is for Rachel and for Kevin one of the things we have an opportunity now to get out of sequence we may want to revisit the those rates particularly the policy on the graduation requirements Kevin you mentioned this morning we have some options there's some things that we might want to consider one be good for kids in terms of what they ought to do and also the states has permitted us some flexibility and it may just be a rectangle which is fine too but it might be one you might want to start thinking about and you could have Dean and Meg participate or Kelly infecting any of those things but that's the only other area I think you could start looking at thank you we will see how these two committees work and then we would look at some of our other smaller committees and we won't with sort of having a meeting with them mr.
pearl so far why don't we just start with Jamie and everybody and we'll see how what do you think what are your thoughts how's it going buses this is whatever we want to share shame for me and I just like think figuring everything out was a little challenging especially cuz like some teachers kind of just posted like a lot of stuff at one time and it was like oh I don't know how to do it but I also like how you kind of can work like at your own pace as long as it's done by the due date so like I organize my work in a way so I have like the days I need free to like do other stuff so I kind of art yeah Julia well I've been it's not been that bad I've been just kind of getting all my work done in the morning and prioritizing that and then I have the rest of the day to do whatever I want if you split up all the work throughout like the eight days and be days it's pretty easy to get it all done listen until I call your name mute yourself so we don't get the feedback and I've got to be better for us to listen Sam what do you got for us hi mr.
dinelli finance in Courtney with what's your suggestion as far as pulling something together for finance or you want to wait on to after the board meeting next week I think it's best my personal opinion is to wait until after the board meeting next week Courtney and I generally talk you know but at this point here I think we should wait another week and then we'll put together some sort of a timetable see what's available for other participants okay the question was that any board member would like to ask to anyone that had brought on this presentation does that known because I think it was good information and I know everyone is working hard I just had one question and I know that just started this money has a been in the feedback Kelly from any of the teachers concerning the students doing their homework so I think overall the engagement in the distance learning for our first three days has been really really positive um we have a high percentage there are some kids that we're still trying to set up some technology with I'm and make sure that will provide them appropriate supports to check in but I think the overwhelming majority is going very well and I just want to give a shout out to Great Plain my granddaughter who's four years old she gets up every morning she's doing her homework Carrie has very good comments for that we have you know there's definitely some some growing pains with um you know the attendants taking how to submit assignments particularly the younger younger grades and so we have to be patient as a learning curve for everybody there but you know in in between sort of emails of you know how do we help someone so do this we're also getting emails of look look at how I look at what this child was able to produce look what they're able to communicate I look at the learning that's already starting to happen so you know we're you know I'm sure gradually over time or only three days into this we're gonna start to see more and more creative and innovative ways with which the teachers are able to deliver their lessons and the way that we students are able to respond and we're able to collect what student work looks like and evaluating that so you know or in a big adjustment period but I think that we are off to a good start you know there's a lot of lots of you know requests so can we try this can we change that can we can we do this differently and you know my my guidance has been and everybody just take a deep breath we put some things into place and let's take some time to work through those before we make any adjustments and tweaks and we certainly have built in some back in the comes to garner some feedback to revisit the plan you know we can mention that we are going to be revisiting every so often with our unions to just check in to see how everybody's experiencing this and what we can do to to problem solve together and so I think we're off to a really good start I think we're a lot further along than I thought we would be but we have a lot of really we have an amazing team everybody's done their part to get this off the ground so we're actually pretty excited about where this could take Denver in the future not just to solve the problem that we have now but how are we doing things thoughtfully to position ourselves for what this how this can transform teaching and learning in Danbury so we're super excited about that I have one last question and if there's an appropriate Kim please let me know the question is what procedures do we have in place if our superintendent gets it it immediately makes me think of the presidential chain of command right the vice president and then the Speaker of the House I'm not sure we have any policies in place I mean well yeah I guess this yeah I mean what would be the natural order of things if the position was vacant then the assistant superintendent would be running the district does not have to be that way that's why I'm asking that question we I don't know I would have to go back again and look at your um your bylaws I don't know off the top of my head if there's anything in there my suspicion is it's silent um with a very silent yeah but we don't want anyone to get sick no no but cave did put out something so did capsule having I call succession plan if someone is ill and embedded in job description and Kevin in my absence and run the board meeting and serve as the as the interim superintendent he just needs to get a haircut a new trying I apologize I had a really bad headache for trying to get online today I'm going to thank Jean I want to thank Carol and mr.
Baldwin he told me Clyde we're on Sam right now we're just talking about distance learning and how's it going for us right now okay so I should meet myself yes I'd say I'm only unmute yourself and Sam you got definitely listen to something else in the meeting Steven maybe his computer audio isn't put on yeah thoughts on email - yeah I kind of like distance learning because I get to slick it a little more but um I learned to never leave a bunch of work till the end because there is a time that's due and it could really like you can't leave a lot of work till the end and you have to really conquer it and just like divide all the work do it at the like an earlier time because there will be a time that is going to be due and you can't do it after for sure those who just join us for yourself on you until I call on you we're talking about distance learning so far some pluses some minuses are you guys interacting with your teachers so we move on to Anna I I had a rough start with distance learning I'm the artist because all of my teachers kind of just gave us a bunch of stuff and like like I had an 8 page like packet thing and I was do like the next day so some classes are a lot like heavier than others so that's like the stressful part but then like other classes are like like my English class like we had like the whole week to do our like intro to our project which was good yeah so that was just the beginning and you could see that they were really trying to learn how to work with zoom and I we don't have the time to look at the rest of the video but I can tell you that they got pretty proficient by the time we were ten more minutes into it so thank you for indulging us we're really proud of the kids we're proud of the teachers as well but we feel that getting the if whatever we're gonna do we're gonna do the best we can it's not going to be perfect but we're gonna continue to make changes and increases as we go along that are based on feedback from the consumers of what we're doing and then our next stage is going to after we meet together as an administrative team looking at the lower grades getting feedback from from parents because you know that's a whole different operation when you get to the lower grades and it's a much bigger adjustment but thank you for letting letting us share this with you thanks Maureen and thank you Steve parade for getting on with us and again thanks for for giving us that time it's really appreciated you can see how the kids are just doing so well and speaking of that you know there's a lot of good going on but truth be told the administrative team is exhausted our teachers are very it's been an adjustment for students and parents for sure so we're paying attention to that and to dr.
Washington for your support and went through all the avenues and for some reason I still couldn't do it the way it was supposed to but you know I keep on trying I don't give up easily but thank you all so very much all you wanted a you have anything that's not the same no I just appreciate your understanding I know there are a lot of questions and we're kind of just you know the Lord's not through us yet I mean there's a lot that we have to do and we're all learning how to how to move ahead and if those of you have sent me some information it's been helpful because you're our eyes out there there's people who are tuned into this like and me Christi Eadie principles when you see it I'm just saying thank you what they've been able to succeed this has really been remarkable and all of this in the caring manner truly a caring manner to keep everybody hold and make sure we're we're doing what we ought to be doing so anything you have that would be helpful I'd like to know but I just want to say thank you to everyone and my team you've been incredible so thank you mean 6:00 6:15 are we gonna forego or an executive session Thank You Kim do you want to the point the purpose was originally it was our expectation that we would go into executive session to talk about negotiating changes to the transportation contract the governor's executive order last night made it clear what we needed to do so we have that thank you okay so I guess just making a motion to adjourn then so moved okay who's me say your name again thank you all I have a good evening I see okay thank you again thank you thanks guys thank you very much stay safe good night thank you [Music] you
Ruby's point feedback is really important that you know how do we structure lessons how do we structure assignments and what are things we can do to make this more fluid for all of us and so we're learning as we go and again we're in unprecedented time tonight I don't think I need to say that again tonight I'm a couple of other things I wanted to share in terms of things we're thinking about I know that for seniors especially but you know all of ours are spring events for kids whether it's our big music goals or our athletics programs or whatever it might be you know we're talking in the early stages right now not only at the state level and at the league level like Steve was starting to talk about but just in general in our district what my closure activities look like you know we don't know just yet I was on the phone as the board knows I'm on the phone and I'll be pleased with easy to the Commissioner or the governor in terms of our superintendent conference calls and the Commissioner shared with us yesterday that most likely by April 10th which is next week Good Friday did probably be a decision as to whether we're going to extend that April 20th come back to school extend that further and make that official extend it very far to the the end of the year we don't know that yet and they're really looking at data every single day and looking at steepness of the curve and and where we hit you know the the apex as it's been called as we've all been following so and they're listening the governor and the Commissioner are listening to the public health officials on that getting that advice so we are thinking about the end of the year I mean you think about your seniors you think about your juniors the big dances graduation ceremony all those kind of things very special and wanting to provide it appropriate closure to the year in these in this very challenging time that we face so we are thinking about those things I also want to address the fact that as a district and within inter within our collaboration that we have but our whole community we also understand email fatigue I think we're all in this group are going through there's a lot of emails flying around people trying to stay in touch with each other it's hard to keep in touch and so I mean it's hard to track your emails so I want to just share and send my best to the community because prior to my specifically numbered updates which now there are 10 updates prior to that I had three public health updates and so that's 13 specific formal communications for me in just two weeks time that have gone out to the kid to the entire community that's not that's a small amount compared to the communications from teachers communications with each other social media principals communicating to families and and then you can imagine in district between all the different employee groups and trying to communicate so there's a lot of electronic communication going on and we're appreciative of the fact that there is there is a fatigue with that and so as a district it's important to know for families out there that we're being mindful and while we want to communicate effectively and often we also don't want to burden people with with over communicated we wanted to be very specific and very purposeful let's see here I did want to mention today I absolutely was re-energized once again by our staff and our students at Center School Center school had a teacher and staff parade today thanks to mrs.
diamond for organizing that and the police department for keeping us safe and all-star transportation it was planned for two hours and I participated in the first hour thinking it would be two hours and I understand it lasted about four hours it was unbelievable to see the families out there with the signs and waving and honking the horns and I had officer Ron toes behind me and his police cruiser he was playing all kinds of dance music and it was just a blast so I really I can't thank the bus company and the police department enough and certainly mrs. Larson one of our kindergarten teachers who was really big and getting things organized with mrs. time and then and of course our families mrs. diamond do you have anything to share about that this evening at all I just wanted to say again how much it was it was great for the community but it's great for the teachers as well so it's been a lot for everybody and seeing all the support and all the kids out there and the families and everyone being responsibly socially distant was great and it was it was really heartwarming and brought a lot of tears to our eyes so we're really grateful for everyone thank you and I know a number of the board members were out there cheering and watching and waving and holding signs and doing all kinds of things and it was so appreciated and then I just have a couple more things to go through I wanted to share in terms of community support there's been a lot of talk about personal protective equipment for our first responders and our doctors and our nurses and and all of our medical professionals we not only mrs.