And then we also got an email from one of the umpires from the varsity basketball game on Monday and he really again emphasized how much that we really do were courteous and respectful of officials, how professional we are as an athletic program and how he enjoys coming to our games and officiating our games. So to reiterate, we have 20 senior captains that lead all of our sports teams. We go to leadership conferences. We do our mentor program for athletes in need of academic emotional support. We do official appreciation for fall, winter, and spring. We do community service for clean Danbury. We do read across America and March Madness for academic support. We are planning to meet with the mayor to discuss school issues. Um we also do secret Santa Endeavor teacher appreciation for teachers who made a difference in someone's life. Middle school sports awareness to prepare for the high school sportsmanship support for teens who need support.
Um, there's organization called Exodus Cry. uh they are an organization that uh advocate for the ending of sex trafficking. They have produced a documentary um called nefarious and they show screenings of that to different governments around the world to end this slavery. And also good news is um they turned in a uh amicus brief. It's about 38 pages. Uh, I was going to send this to some of you. Uh, and I'll just read a little bit about what it's about. Uh, Exus Car's director of public policy wrote a 36page amicus brief detailing what can be found in today's pornography. And the reason I bring this up is this is affecting children. 400 million images online. Is this is this district business? Does this have to do with what we I had a feeling you would bring it up. The reason I bring it up is because we have responsibility with children that we take very seriously and this does affect children on a very large scale and that's the reason I'm bringing it up, Julie.
Let's continue to six. Jan Plumbing, Inc. Change order number one for bid B-08-2023-24 monument sign project. Superintendent, please. It is recommended the board approve this change order. It is a credit of 16,11766. That's pretty good, too. All right. Any comments from the board? If not, motion, please, for approval. Move to approve. Second. All right, it's been moved and sec it's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion is approved. Item 16, request for staff followup. Board, do we have any? None. Let's continue to item 17, items for future agendas. Board, do we have any? I have a request to agendaize an LGBTQ plus resolution to procla proclaim June as pride month. Yeah, like last year. Oh, as pride. Okay, that's got that. All right, so um item 18 is adjournment. Do I have a motion for adjournment? Move to adjourn. Second.
Um it it's it's a simple process through the our counseling department and um alternative education administration and their counselors there. But things that go into that is um we look at we have attendance meetings. Uh we look at um and review students attendance and so sometimes students um because of their truency get referred to aled through the SAR process. Uh there's also the expulsion process where if students um have ed code violations um we go through an expulsion hearing. Um, so Eric or I might recommend a student based on their ed code violation um to go to the expulsion hearing which is a um hearing conducted uh much like a court proceeding where there's a panel of administrators that listen to testimony from the school about why we feel the student um is not placed properly or shouldn't be placed at our high school. And then there's also testimony from the families and the student as well.
Uh, you'll usually hear them called BFW, but Bedford, Freeman, and Worth for AP. And then Study Sync, um, from McGrath Hill was our alternate selection. Where do we get to those choices? Um, so with all of our committee scores, each of them, um, the average score for into literature was 106.46. Um, we also take a look at whether or not people have it in their top three. So for into literature 100% of the committee placed that in their top three. Average score for study study sync was a 93.85. 77% of the committee placed that one in their top three. Um you can see the results there for English lit and language and the language of composition. Uh those two AP considerations. Um and both of those are going to come out with top three and 100% because there were only three. Um so that's an easier piece.
We conducted an audit um to identify any areas of concern. All of our campuses go through a deep cleaning process during the during the school breaks of summer, fall, winter, and spring. The audit noted that some of the classrooms needed to be um needed to go through a deep cleaning more frequently and have carpets extracted more than once a quarter. That led to developing a cleaning schedule on a monthly basis. The audit also helped assess the cost of upgrading the lights in our our special education classrooms to LED. We plan to begin those con those conversions in next year's budget. The custodial teams and extra volunteers stepped up to come in on breaks, nights, and weekends to deep clean and extract carpets and to go the extra mile for our special education students and make sure that they have a welcoming, clean classroom. These 43 special education classrooms received extra attention and care on a monthly basis from October through March.
Oh, I apologize. I almost made it through the hour. You almost You almost did. You almost did. You did a great job. I'm good. I'm good. take some more water. Uh Joe, your closing statement, please. Thank you. Uh being a lifelong resident here uh of 69 years, I can say that uh I bleed blue. I'm a true clocker right through thick and thin. And uh anybody that went to Ashlin High School like Nate knows that what what being a clocker is all about. Um I love this town. I always will. Um and I would will fight for this town in every way, shape, and form. One of the concerns that I have is the 40B initiatives that um that we have to follow through the state legislation. And one of the things that I uh will continue to strive for is to to bring developers that are willing to build affordable units in town.
Any questions? Feel like I talked really fast. You got a lot of good stuff going on. I just want to really applaud you for how you guys have taken and run with the community service idea and how you've implemented it into your school because not only are the kids involved in really creating a community and taking care of their community in Mendes, but there's also a lot of leadership development in what you're doing and I think it's it's really amazing. I love hearing that the kids, the fifth graders have come together with these ideas and they wanted to talk to Dr. Kyra and do other things and I think it's showing the value of not just having them take part in caring for their specific community at Mendes but again that leadership development is really impressive. So I think that's you guys deserve um some kudos for that.
participate in teacher student basketball games, meet with all team captains to discuss a good role model and captain. And again, we really appreciate all of your support. We thank you for taking the time to kind of listen to everything that we have done this school year because without you, we would have been able to operate. So, thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Sorry, I kind of got here a little too early. I thought they were already in here. No, we want to thank all of you for coming tonight and and taking time and as student athletes, um you know, you're you are amazing role models in the school. I know you're all going to go on to college and do amazing other things as well. Um and you know, hopefully you come back to Danbury four years later and come work for us in some capacity and you stay in the area because you're all incredible um students and Jack, thank you for your support of this program, keeping it going because this is really important stuff.
Thank you. Um may not be our particular district, but we're dealing with children and it's a it's a very huge issue and that's the reason I'm bringing it up. Um but anyway, this is a uh the Supreme Court will be hearing this case and it has to do with um age consent. U they have to be 18 years old in order to view anything uh online that is obscene. And so I think this is a very positive thing. um children right now are able to access anything and the pornography of today is not the same as years ago and it's a very violent um predatory and indoctrinating of children. So we want to do what we can to protect children. We all have a responsibility and when you bring things out of darkness into light that's the first step of being able to eradicate this against children.
It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? I oppose. None. All right. Um motion is carried and adjournment now at 8:29 p.m. Thank you very much and good evening everyone. Excuse my voice. I've been coughing.
The panel asks questions and through that process um a student is recommended um for expulsion. Again, the recommended being the key word. Uh you all as a school board have the final say on on expulsion. So, we are only a recommending body at that point in time. Um there's weekly counseling meetings. Um, and then like we talked about uh earlier in a slide, we have our site monitoring meetings um that look at students in as a whole and determine whether or not that student should remain on our campus or whether or not we should look at a referral to alternative education. And you'll hear from Andy uh in a little bit and then he'll talk to you a little bit about more about specifics about uh alternative education. All right. So, moving forward, um like I said, we're not done. We still have a lot of work to do.
there's fewer vendors who provide those AP courses. The next piece that we always make sure we review as part of our process um is some of the research backing um ed reports is a good component to look at. Um you can see that this is the ed reports data for grades 6 8 10 and 12. Yes, you can also get seven n1 uh in between but they all look very similar. Um they get high marks for their text quality um building knowledge and usability. The next slide shows you the alternate um selection of McGraill. Similar scores. So, you know, one has positives in one area, another has positives in the other, but both of these are good quality research-based curriculums for us to consider. The last piece that we look at, and I always tell the committee that cost is my problem, not their problem.
Our next steps will be collaborating with the SS department to refine our focus and frequency of cleaning and create a plan to enhance the sped classrooms with furniture and equipment upgrades to ensure that all students have safe and attractive learning environments. Miss Derry, hi. Good evening. Good evening. Um, our work with Miss Nash and the ESS department um was really around parent feedback and how to um make our web page more um digestible and having those core resources available for our families um easy to navigate, easy to understand. So, we started with our website. Um, as Miss Miss Nash said, she brought a wealth of knowledge and a lot of material from her other district. Um, so it made our job really, really easy. We just had to make sure that it was digestible um and and had a nice layout and was easy to navigate.
Um but pleasing to the town's landscape that uh without a threat of 40B, hopefully they could be a friendly 40B if if and we've had that before. and I will campaign to revise the state legislation on 40bs needing to adhere to the ZBA and planning bylaws of each town because right now they're not being they're not being utilized at all. If anything, they have currently being ignored and ignored completely. Over the past 15 years, I think I have proven to the residents of Ashlan my leadership skills, the experience, the vision, and the integrity to hold as a select board member. I will continue to work for the town of Ashland and I will continue to work for all residents no matter who they are, what they are, or how old they are. Um, I am a member of the traffic study safety committee, affordable housing trust and an original member of the Ashland day committee and the charter review committee which was needs to be redone again.
Well done. I want to echo that too Tina. I think I was just saying to Mike that Mendes is the exemplar in the district in terms of, you know, the conversations we had about community service and about how were we going to implement this across the district by grade level, if you will, or by building. Uh, and Mendes has really set the standard for that and and that's kudos to to both of you for doing that and and working at um providing our students with jobs and opportunities for community service. So, that's really so excited about taking pride in it. You should come over one morning and see them holding the doors open. It's awesome. It sounds sounds like you're you're backing up what you said when we were talking about the different areas of the school and we talked to John Murray about concern about upkeep and she's like, "Nope, the kids are going to do it.
So, thank you. Thank you. I would like to say on behalf of the board, I appreciate you and I know that the rest of the board members appreciate such beautiful faces coming before us with a positive attitude and Jackie who I've known for years always have a beautiful smile. So I thank you. I thank you and go home and be safe. And and you know it was a lot to get. We started out with five and we had a lot of cancellations with the rain and everything and instead of them staying home and not being here, they got here, got lost, went to Ridgefield, some people slept in later. They don't know how to run a GPS, but they got here. This group, this group is so committed and I, if you see, I had so much expectations and they're in so many other clubs, but they always seem to come through.
So, and that's all I wanted to share and excited uh for the end of the school year for everyone. Thank you to all the teachers and staff for all the very hard work that you are doing right now. I know there's a lot of issues that you're having to deal with with behaviors, but thank you for being so strong. Okay, that's it. Future agenda items. Do we have anything for for next time other than those uh board policies? Anything? No. Okay. Our next meeting date is June I believe it's the 18th Wednesday. That's correct. And then we have the following week will be okay. This meeting is [Music] adjourned. surprised. [Music] What about adults.
Um one piece that I'm just going to use Rockland as an example, but one piece that Rocklin had when we did go visit, it was a 30 minute plus period, which was an intervention andor an enrichment period. um we haven't explored we we've talked about it we've explored it but we haven't imp implemented it yet but it would be taking some minutes off of every period and adding it um somewhere in the school day so that we could see kids more um if they needed you know AP test prep or redo a science lab or remediation on a on a math test or something like that. So that's an idea. Um looking at you know hiring highly qualified aids. We have a lot of turnover in our aids. um making sure we have highly qualified aids, which our HR directors are helping us with. Um hiring specialists to help with those intervention classes, um because it takes a special, you know, teacher to work with kids that are behind in academics.
I want them to look at the integrity of the work, and then we try to make sure that it fits in our budget because if not, my good friend Julie tells me no. Um, so we make sure that we can can make the dollars and cents work. Um, and so that's the final piece here. Uh, the cost analysis for the eight-year adoption is 565,54375. I know we had a question in the past of why eight years. Do we have to do eight years? Um, we always have the option of ending the contract early. I will tell you that generally speaking, somewhere in the four to fiveyear range, we're breaking even. So, we might as well have the longer contract. We can always cut it short if we decide we want to move on to something else. Um but it becomes cost prohibitive to add on down the road because prices go up over the course of those four or five years.