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so it looks like that's where they'll start first intent for the lions one safety deep for this olympians defense after the deep threat passing rip that they had in the first half surprise the olympians don't want to put an extra defender in the backfield as a lot of tackles being broken on the near side tyron mason able to make several olympian defenders miss looked like a screen pass of sorts a little farther maybe a sticker out but mason was able to make plenty of olympian defenders miss and get eight yards on that catch eventually wrapped up by number 37 chase zaffy but eight yards on that impressive run after the catch by mason as the lions second and two handed to woods cuts it back up the middle off the right side barreling his way across midfield and out to the olympian 34 yard line moving at ease this ball game this lions offense powering their way through the olympians defense as the lions as they've done all game no huddle looking towards the sideline for the play call [Music] lions moving quickly to get the snap off get it off with three seconds on the play they fire it out wide and number 12.

he breaks a tackle falls forward across the 20-yard line that's number 12 jacob holt on the catch broke a tackle from zappy and was able to get another first down for this lions offense so elkhart once again moving the chains at ease on one play let's see if this o's defense can make some quick adjustments to stop this lion's offense they send a tied in emotion and send them right back it's going to be a reverse to mason a play we've seen before it's been a quite successful play so far but this time not so much as he's wrapped up near the sideline by elliott koopman on the edge mason just a second ago had a bevy of moves to get eight yards on a fantastic run after the catch but this time dragged down by the edge of his jersey by elliott koopman which i guess you gotta do it one way or another it's not the prettiest but it gets them down so second down and three for the lions as a clock running under five minutes here in the third quarter it's a little early to be considering time so far for the olympians but in the back of your mind you do have to think about it as it runs to woods off the left side and he goes out of bounds maybe a yard on the carry if there's been anything this olympians defense has been successful at stopping this game it's been the running back derrick woods he's had a few gapers tonight but most likely or usually most of the time he's been held in check on those runs as the olympians fans on the far side of the field able to get loud for one of the first times tonight here on this third down as they give it to woods up the middle and he dies his way across the 10-yard line another first down for the lions and they are inside the 10.

it's going to be first and goal as this lion's offense as i mentioned all drive just moving with ease here after a easy first half of moving the ball through the air moving it primarily through the ground this drive maybe working some clock off here as we run under four and a half minutes it's a fake handoff up the middle they give it on the edge they give it to 12. they say the ball came out again but they're gonna call it down before the ball came out jacob holt on the reverse carry he got it out to the two yard line before he was thrown up and thrown down i didn't quite get a number one would assume if you watch enough olympian football that was tj barkheimer but we're not for sure on that one let's say here it was number nine chris bergwin actually that made the tackle so joining the ranks of his fellow linebacker making a big hit they're going to give it up the middle to woods and he's in another touchdown for the lions offense and elkhart once again putting it in the end zone 40 to 14 now as the extra point upcoming lions moved the ball through the air mostly in the first half but here mainly in the second half able to move the ball on the ground as the extra point is blocked that was chris bergman coming off the edge to block the extra point made the big hit at the goal line just a couple plays ago and able to stop an extra point from going on the board here on the kick as with 3 27 to go in the third quarter lions all over the olympians 40 to 14.

we'll be right back here to stafford field after a quick break let your imagination soar ovation audio video welcome to our one of a kind showroom experience engage all your senses with explosive home theater sound enjoy the big game on the big screen take your music to the next level of awesome and create the right mood with music and lighting in every room ovation audio video bring all your entertainment home now open in carmel we're back here at stafford field after another touchdown by this lion's offense putting the lead back to where it was before the olympians scored as a return here by number 37 chase zaffy and he's chomped down by number 17 by the lions garrett ganzik so the olympians will start inside their own 20-yard line first and 10 at the 19. so parks will have to lead his offense a long way to get in the end zone once again and they're gonna have to do it quickly because they got a lot of points to make up parks throwing over the middle it's incomplete in and out of the hands of number nine chris bergman so second and ten for the o's as the incomplete pass to bergman as parks tries to keep it once again off the left side fires far side to bergman this time it's complete right at the marker they'll mark it a yard across the first down marker and that'll move the chains so clock stops with 308 in the third quarter as bourbon looks like he's limping back to the line of scrimmage he's their most dynamic playmaker on the edge let's hope he's okay as they give the ball to mcdonald and he's got a first down and the helmet came off on the far side that's going to be a face mask on elkhart that helmet came right off of mark mcdonald's head as i'm not mistaken if it is a penalty on elkhart he won't have to come out of the game by ihsa rule a player must come out for one play if their helmet comes off but if it's a penalty against elkhart i believe that rule is wavered and he's able to stay in the game but that may be more of a college professional rule i'm not sure so it is a personal foul face mask on elkhart that'll move the ball 15 yards and across midfield but it looks like mcdonald will stay put on the sideline for at least this play as the ball is placed at the 45-yard line of elkhart so the olympians moving fast here as pierce keeps it up the left side across the 30-yard line right at the 30-yard line as the olympians moving fast after another first down run 15 yards on the keeper by parks as bourbon coming out of the game looking to be shaken up as he's replaced by chase zaffy on the right side they give it to mcdonald up the middle runs over a defender and the ball came out but they're going to say he was down as has been the case most of the game when it looks like there's a fumble the officials say he was down before the ball came out and it looks like bourbon is going to come back in the game and zaffy the guy who just came in it looks like he's cramping up maybe so the cramp bug may be getting back at the olympians once again as parks keeps it off the right side and another first down run by parks this time it's going to be inside the 10-yard line first and goal for the olympians clock stops just short of two minutes at as the olympians moving fast give it to mcdonald off the left side cutting it back up the middle and he's in touchdown olympians mark mcdonald his third touchdown of the day and the olympians once again cut the lead 40 to 20 with the extra point coming up by nathaniel hedrick clock stopped on the touchdown at 154 here left in the third quarter so still plenty of time in this ball game as the extra point is good by hedrick a 19 point deficit for the olympians and a full quarter and some change left here in the third we're gonna come right back here to stafford field for some late second half action what does it mean to believe in something to truly support and get behind it to be committed and invested in making sure it succeeds and grows at first financial bank we go beyond banking providing resources for dreams that matter and giving back to projects that make a difference as our family grows our commitment to serve the community grows with it first financial bank because together we're better we're back here at stafford field as an onside kick falls well short of where it needs to be an onside kick needs to go at least 10 yards and from the 40 yard line where they kick it has to get to midfield that ball i think made it out only to the 42.

so well short of where it needs to be for an on-site kick to be legal and so the lions will start their possession in at least territory at the 42-yard line so not the onside kick execution you would have liked to see if you're an olympian fan no time comes off the clock though but i think that's the least of bob gaddis's worries right now as wilt fong sends his tight end emotion and sends a receiver in motion as they give it to woods up the middle woods wrapped up at around the 40-yard line moving it up a couple yards as they'll most likely just keep it on the ground here preferably with derrick woods who for the majority of this game has been somewhat bottled up if you can consider it that for this olympians defense their attention had to be focused elsewhere most of the game but the lions may be turning their attention to woods for the remainder of this game as the lion's in no rush trying to run as much clock off the scoreboard as possible five seconds on the playcock as i swing it out to the left side lots of room for the receiver number four donye higgins and he makes his way out just short of the 35 yard line at the 36.

so higgins catch gets it out inside the 40 yard line it'll be third and four inside a minute now as the clock runs movement on the defensive side on the near side the officials say he didn't make it past the line of scrimmage so no penalty as they give it to woods up the middle he bounces it out right got lots of room on the edge he may go the distance and he will derrick woods 30 plus yards on the carry and another touchdown for this lions offense as the lions able to do what they please this game on offense able to throw the ball down the field able to throw it short able to run it wide and now able to run up the middle as the extra point low but it is good no it's not good it looks like it went right through the uprights but the official on the near side say it went wide left so two straight extra points failed for the elkhart lions it'll make it 46-21 in favor of the lions we're going to keep it here for a moment we're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors for tonight game who have been very generous to help us keep this live stream afloat and stream all these games to you the olympians fans rue off mortgage ovation technology group first financial bank columbus wealth jolie rentals and joey development and overhead doors south central indiana once again we'd like to thank you for your generous support of columbus east athletics and bcsc livestream as the lions rearing up to kick off once again they've done this several times tonight as their offense has been on fire wind up underway and the kick is away it's going to be returned by mcdonald finally fielded cleanly this time as mcdonald burst up the middle trying to find room and make magic but only able to make it out just short of the 40.

so the olympians have better field position than the last couple drives this half and they've scored the last couple drives this half so maybe a sign of life for this olympians offense as once again having to make up some ground as they have probably most of this game parks in the shotgun fakes the handoff looking over the middle he's got bergman across midfield and across the 45 chopped down across the 45-43-yard line number 22 on the tackle graham ellie looked like he got chopped in half there but a big play as the third quarter runs out at the end of three 46-21 in favor of elkhart we'll be right back at stafford field after a quick word from our sponsors [Music] we're back here at stafford field for some fourth quarter action as we started off with a mcdonald run off the right side busting free stiff arms a defender and runs out of bound across the 30-yard line a nice run to start off the fourth quarter for mcdonald and a first down for the olympians moving quickly as the time stops at 11 51.

parks keeps it off the right side he's got lots of room wrapped up at around the 10-yard line another chunk run and another first down for the olympians it'll be first and goal at the nine yard line parks takes a quick snap hands for mcdonald out the left side breaking arm tackles and falls forward at the seven yard line a late flag on the field thrown by the back judge maybe some extra clicker activity up field we'll see what they're gonna call the flag came out after the play was whistled down and it's going to be a personal foul on elkhart and a personal foul on columbus east so those flags will offset so in reality there's going to be no effect on the outcome of the game so it stays at the six yard line after mcdonnell run it's a keeper by parks off the right side and he is brought down at the four it was number three on the tackle on the right side that was number three vinnie ambrose as the give is to mcdonald once again he got it out to the one yard line [Applause] it's fourth down a big play here fourth and goal at the one yard line it'll most likely be on the ground we'll see they give it to they give it to mcdonald we'll see where they mark it short a turnover on downs the olympians stuff just short of the goal line far official came in right away and marked it just short and elkhart will take over possession at their own one-yard line and another late flag called i believe this won't be on east maybe some late words exchanged between olympian players and the official i believe that was the same official that throw the flag a couple plays ago so maybe some bad blood between the olympian players and that official so instead of being at their own one yard line elkhart would get the ball at their own 16-yard line a big difference as if the olympians could get one play in the backfield that would have been a safety at the one yard line but now at the 16 the lions have a lot more leeway as the officials going over some apparently talking to the olympian defenders so we're underway for the lions as they reverse it to the right side it's mason he's wrapped up by bergman got out to the 23-yard line as it was the same back judge that threw the flag we'll see what this is called hey holding called but no direction i would assume a holding on l card that's what they're gonna call so the holding will be called from where the flag was thrown that was quite a ways up field so the elkhart lions may still get a gain here scratch that they're gonna move the ball back a couple yards so it'll be at the 13 yard line so not a down distance you see a lot first and 13.

but the lions may be happy with that call as they get an extra down and the time is running they're going to throw here fires it down the field he's got a man wide open donovan johnson with the catch out across midfield and the lions going aggressive putting it up in the air assuming you keep it on the ground for a couple reasons to keep the clock moving in a little sportsmanship but they're going to air it out here maybe threatening to score once again as the lions move quickly now in olympian territory they give it to woods bouncing it off the right side going to be pushed out of bounds by elliott koopman out to the 40 yard line far side judge says 41 so it'll be second and five for the line offense as woods went out of bounds so the clock stops at 9 42 to go in the fourth quarter lions bleeding the playcock but not writing any time off the game clock as a give to woods once again he's got lots of room off the right side cutting it back cuts it back once again and he's going to score [Applause] derrick woods the 511 senior 185 pounds running all over this columbus east defense as the score extended to 52 to 21 with nine and a half minutes to go extra point upcoming these haven't been gimmies the past couple times the second one was blocked in this and the latest one was missed this one also missed so three straight extra points failed by elkhart but as it stands now it'll make a little difference as the lead is up over 30 now 52-21 with 9 33 to go we'll be back at stafford field after a quick word from our sponsors and back at stafford field another kickoff coming from this lion special teams unit they've gotten quite a bit of practice of that tonight as mcdonald takes the kick off trying to make mid miss and he's wrapped up at around the 30-yard line pyle pushed forward out to the 32 and that's where the olympians will start so in all likelihood this game is most likely sealed in terms of who will win and who will lose but maybe a little bit of pride play from this olympians offense trying to add some points to the board and make this look more respectable on the final scoreboard as they give it to villarreal off the right side across the 40-yard line gonna be just short of the first down marker so villarreal hasn't gotten as much time in the second half as he has the past couple games mainly due in large part to mcdonald's injury absence tonight mcdonald's has been healthy to play the rest of the game but villarreal getting another hand off here near the marker he's going to get the first down after a couple yards as a lion defender down on the field officials will call a timeout for the injury and we'll take a quick timeout as well 8 55 to go in the fourth quarter lions up big over the o's [Music] so the injured line able to get off on his own power as we're right back to play parks rolls out left looking to throw down the field it's incomplete intended for chris bergman pass a little long just outside of the outstretched arm of bourbon it'll be second and ten for the o's at their own 43-yard line parks takes the snap is going to keep it off the right side diving for near the marker going to be just short as they're now into lion territory at the 48 yard line third and short upcoming for the o's we'll see if they want to go aggressive and maybe make a strike for the end zone or keep it on the ground and get a first down and move the chains they'll give it to villarreal up the middle they'll get the first down out to the 42-yard line so moving the chains once again but the clock is ticking three wide receivers to the near side as parks drops back to throw running out of time and he is going down number 99 rodney mcgraw a penn state football committee 6-6 senior a load to block up front for this olympian's offensive line and you can see why the big ten program penn state is so interested in him that's his third or fourth sack of the day we don't have official stats but he's been all up in this backfield as they give it to villarreal up the middle he's got it near the original line of scrimmage so it'll be third and long for this o's offense parks takes the snap looking for a screen he rolls out right evaded mcgraw as parks gets across the original line of scrimmage and out of bounds at the 41-yard line so just a touch above seven minutes at it'll be fourth and nine for the o's offense one would assume they'll keep it on the air here and they will parks drops back having to evade pressure right away fires it down the field it is caught chris bergman making a fourth down catch parks was able to escape pressure and fire it to bergman right on target and another touchdown for this o's offense i thought he was down so a touchdown to play but maybe more concerning for the o's quarterback malachi parks limped off the field it looks like he's walking around on the sideline trainers attending him now at this point the game you really hope you don't lose your starting quarterback for any amount of time parks looks to be okay on the sideline just having to walk off a little limp as the extra point upcoming hendrick's kick is good so the o's offense keeps fighting just under seven minutes to go the lions lead 52-28 here at staffordshire we'll take a quick break right after a word from our sponsor [Music] [Applause] [Music] i [Music] we're back here at stafford field on the passing touchdown by malachi parks there was a roughing the passer called on elkhart so that'll move the ball up 15 yards on the ensuing kickoff so heatrick will punt it or kick it away inside lions territory a high kick returned by elkhart across the 20 yard line by number 12 jacob holt and holt gets it out across the 20-yard line to the 22.

we'll most likely see the lions keep it on the ground and run the clock here but they've had their way however they want to do it tonight 52 points enough said but if you watch the film derrick woods is running right up the middle on this o's defense and early in the first half they were airing it out wilt fong has had several hundred yards passing in this ball game to his two stud wide receivers donovan jones donovan johnson and tyrene mason as they'll keep it on the ground here to woods evading tackles in the backfield and able to make something out of nothing out to the 24 yard line the second and eight for the lions the lion's in no rush bleeding down the play clock and the game block as we're just about to hit six minutes left here in the fourth quarter they're gonna air it out here over the middle it's intercepted [Applause] picked off by rocco duffy and the olympians defense gets a quick turnover and that's part of the reason you don't throw the football when you're up by 24.

you risk the chance of a turnover and right there shows why some elkhart fans on the near side wanted to pass interference so the offense right back on the field as the elkhart defense wants a timeout their second time out of the second half with 5 53 go in the fourth quarter the o still fighting here at stafford field the game probably decided but maybe a little bit of a more respectable score we'll be right back at stanford field after a quick word from our sponsors [Music] we're back at stanford field the o's offense on the field once again after the interception thrown by wilt fong picked off by rocco duffy and were turned out inside the red zone so the o's may be able to strike early here as they give it to villarreal up the middle to the 14 yard line so five and a half yards on the carry and the o's moving fast five and a half minutes to go as parks keeps it rolls left evading pressure trying to evade fires it right side it is incomplete intended i believe that is chris bergman and he's slow to get up so then completion stops the clock at 5 20.

but it'll be third and four for the o's keeper by parks off the right side pushing his way to the marker near the 10-yard line far side officials standing right next to the marker maybe just a half yard short and that's exactly where they'll put it fourth and inches inside a yard as birdwing goes to the right side fourth down in inches parks gives it to villarreal wrapped up in the backfield i don't think he went anywhere so a fourth down stand by the lions defense put your stamp on this ball game this is probably all but settled now if it wasn't already so the elkhart offense gets it back at the 10 yard line first and ten after a fourth and inches stand inside their own red zone so a big stop and like i said if this game wasn't already over that just about sealed it most likely as wilt fong gives it to the right side it's woods derrick woods wrapped up on the near side number 23 kai stidham on the tackle the former wakeboarder and former soccer player who started playing football his sophomore year made the tackle there originally came to play football as a kicker but then of coaches eventually realized hey you're a good enough athlete to play on defense so here he is now as a senior starting at linebacker for this olympians defense as we have an injury on the field an elkhart offensive player down on the turf with four and a half minutes to go 52-28 lions as we tend to the injured elkhart player these teams both will be starting their conference play next week elkhart will be playing south bend washington next week as the olympians play their season opener conference game against jeffersonville as i mentioned that game was originally supposed to be at jeffersonville but due to construction on the field at jeffersonville the game has been moved here to stafford field so it'll be a home game for columbus east so we'll be happy to be sharing with that one next week as the injured elkhart player makes his way off the field assisted by a coach and a trainer with four and a half minutes to go this elkhart offense most likely is trying to bleed the clock and run out the ball game but stay tuned we have the jolie rental and joey development offensive player of the game and the overhead door defensive player of the game coming up soon so stay tuned while we run out the rest of this ball game the injured player that came off the field for elkhart was number 12.

that was jacob holt as they give it to woods up the middle off the left side and he's going to be just short of the first down marker so it'll be third and one for the elkhart offense and once again they'll take no time bleeding all the clock they can off the scoreboard running it down to 10 seconds on the play clock before they line up getting just set with two seconds on the clock and they give it to woods up the middle and he's got the first down out to the 24 yard line and so the lions able to move the chains once again and i think one more first down will be able to end the game as they bring out woods and they stick in number 32 elias leonard so woods getting us ceremonial substitution at the end of this game as elias elias leonard his first run of the game able to break it out just short of midfield a big run on his first play of the game just short of midfield as the lions once again bleeding clock has the ball placed just short of midfield so as i mentioned during the injury timeout the o's will be open up conference play next weekend against the jeffersonville red devils as elias leonard carries it off the left side but a flag down near the first down marker and of course those fans know the hoosier hills conference winning streak over 90 games and nearing the century mark it actually is at the century mark including tournament games but with just regular season games i believe it stands somewhere around 96 or as a holding called on elkhart it's a spot foul so it'll move the ball back just a couple yards so it'll be first in 11 for the lions and a new quarterback in the game for the lions number 13 brady cooper as they bring out wilt fong sticking in some subs as leonard gets the canned off it he goes nowhere as this game winds down we're gonna go ahead and give you your jolie rentals and joey development offensive player of the game we're gonna give a nod to olympian running back mark mcdonald who scored the first three touchdowns for the olympians in this ball game scored the first 21 points it won't make all the difference tonight but still an excellent performance and i'm very glad to see mcdonald's stay on the field the entirety of the game tonight and for our defensive player of the game we'll go ahead and give it to a lion rodney mcgraw had at least three or four sacks tonight was able to meet a man child in the backfield wrapping up parks and runners alike in the backfield all night for this lions defense so mark mcdonald our julie rentals and joy development offensive player of the game and rodney mcgraw of elkhart our overhead door defensive player of the game as we wind down the last few plays in this ball game here at stafford field a long drive was well worth it for this elkhart team having to drive four hours two and now they're gonna have to drive four hours back but i believe they'll say it's well worth it after this victory tonight next year the o's will be making the trek up to elkhart to play this same team and that's the last play the elkhart lions defeat the columbus east olympians 52-28 thank you for joining us tonight here at stafford field we hope you enjoyed as we said a late change to the schedule means we will be with you next week as the o's open up hoocher hills conference play against the jeffersonville red devils hope you all have a good night and please stay safe [Music] me [Music] so you

get going uh welcome to the wednesday september 9th 2020 electronic meeting of the ann arbor design review board this meeting is in accordance with orders to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient as there are technical issues at just about every meeting public comment will be via telephone only to speak at any at either of our two public comment opportunities please call 213-338-8477 or 206 337-9723 and enter the meeting id of 947-7928 this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 18t channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org watch ctn the design review board is a volunteer resident board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by city council the purpose of the design review board is to foster excellence in the design of ann arbor's built environment and to advise applicants on how a project can meet the spirit and intent of the downtown design guidelines we have one applicant today that we'll get to in a few minutes the applicant will have timmins to present the proposed project to the design review board then the design review board will hold the discussion on the design of the project following the presentation and discussion members of the public are permitted to comment for up to three minutes uh so jeff could you take a roll call crappy tube uh board member burns member cooper president member singleton present uh member kinley here member mitchell here member perkins here i'm going to ask that just just one more time i didn't hear a response member perkins president okay uh and then member katarsky here you have quorum thank you um the first item is the approval of our august 8th 2020 uh i'm here jeff i don't think okay corey gotcha thank you sorry corey um so did everyone have a chance to review the august 8th meeting minutes and are there any suggested changes deletions or additions would someone like to move approval move for approval second that's jeff and second by gary um any more discussion all in favor please say aye and raise your hand and anyone oppose okay passes unanimously as written um now is the opportunity for the first public commentary section and this is for items that are not on the agenda after we're done discussing the applicant's uh project there'll be another public comment period so let me read those numbers to you again to comment please call 213-338-8477 or 206-337-9723 and enter the meeting id of 947-7928-2749 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one and using the last three digits of their phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press number nine on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television or background sounds so we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments so we typically give a minute here for people to call in while we're waiting um every time i read this i think of epi pots and uh and i miss her and for those of you then applicant and effie is a person who passed away several months ago and attended every meeting diligently and and always jerked us into shape and uh had good commentary and and she's gone now so i just think of her at this time as as we have not gotten commentary from the public for several meetings so anybody out there kristen no um attendees have indicated okay okay we'll move on so our under unfinished business this is dr20-004 which is 300 west huron street which is returning from our previous meeting a design review board application to construct a five-story 93-room 42 926 square foot hotel at the northwest corner of west huron and north first street in the d2 zoning district four parking spaces are proposed on site with seven surface spaces proposed in an access easement on the parcel north of the site the applicant is proposing a lead gold project the project proposes to combine three parcels to create a site 300 west huron 308 west huron and 111 north first a one-way drive is proposed on the site from north first to west huron to accommodate deliveries and drop-offs plus four parking spaces and solid waste pickup um excuse me mitch yes uh just a reminder i can listen but i can't comment since i'm i have a conflict of interest only to join any parcel so whatever you need to do to silence me do your do your darndest just wait once you hit your mute there you go and and we're all set okay jeff do you have a report you'd like to make before the petitioner yes yes i do have a brief report and the petitioner is here um dick as you mentioned the site is located at the northeast corner of west huron and north first streets in downtown ann arbor the this project was last before you last month on august 12th uh the petitioner presented the report and received a number of comments the staff part just briefly summarizes uh the general nature of those comments which includes the need for photos and building sections comments on facade materials awnings windows streetscaping entrances and public art the petitioner may want to spend a few minutes mentioning or discussing the notion of the access easement on the north side of the site that may have been removed since this since the previous meeting the petitioner provided a memo to respond to the comments that they received at the august 12th meeting you should all be in receipt of that and um the petitioner also provided revised elevations that we're going to see shortly so that's the end of my commentary and now maybe kristen can invite the applicants in to walk us through the the changes dick unless you have anything else you want to add no that's fine thank you okay the design team has they've been promoted to panelists so whenever they're able to unmute okay yeah we are uh i'm here uh this is nittany with dynamic and want to thank everyone for allowing us to be on this month's uh uh design review board uh it's a pretty quick turnaround but i think we got you know uh made some pretty good progress based on the feedback that was given last time um kristen do you want to pull up the pdf that we had sent yes i just want to run everyone through thank you for giving a quick rundown of everything um uh in terms of the comments uh everyone you can't hear me if i could interrupt you would you no i i can hear you i just wondered if you would introduce the rest of the team we can't see everybody and sure and i just like know who's there sure um so i'm i'm with dynamic design uh my name is nick patel uh the owner samir patel is here as well uh jason van riden who's the civil engineer uh he's he's on the call as well he's with nadervel okay thank you okay um so uh as i was saying um there was a lot of comments uh in terms of the materiality and especially the corner element where we had multi-colored panels um and you know as jeff mentioned especially some of the materials wrapping the sides uh whatnot so um let us run through these and we'll notate some of the comments that were given last time on the last round so um starting off with the first slide uh we've included some contextual map images which uh gives an idea of where the site is located um chris if you want to go to the next slide um this is more of an exonometric view so it kind of shows how it how would fit within the context and some of the surrounding buildings and then the next slide uh we selected some uh images uh particular of interest was the residence inn since this is obviously the same type um we you know they were playing off sort of the same um corner feature that we had as well kind of modernizing that round corner and bringing bringing attention to that intersection so we wanted to make sure and highlighted that um and sort of the same thing with the flagstar bank as well so um you can move on to the next leg um i'll let jason sort of speak to this but um i know this was excluded from our last presentation um [Music] so this uh this shows the retaining wall that was in question and also some streetscaping as well that was brought up in the last meeting but jason do you do you want to speak to these next two slides yeah sure i can do that uh good afternoon uh yeah pleasure to be before you today thank you again for hearing our project we've made a few modifications to this site plan based on our last meeting we've added some landscape plantings along first street to break up the concrete there um you can see those uh it's we're kind of we're we're looking to match what was done recently along carron street um you know so it's a rectangular shaped bed with a few uh trees planted in that and then we've also added elevations to the retaining wall along the west uh property line just showing how the grade would work if you if you i don't know if you can see it we have call outs but basically um you know this the retaining wall on the west side is gonna it's gonna vary but the highest that it would be is about six feet um and that's kind of in the north west corner of the site everything everything drops off kind of to the northwest so um you know we you know this is a very preliminary grading design but um we have the ability to pull that wall in a little bit if we need to to provide some additional space from the adjacent property um but but i know that was a comment at the last meeting just rough elevations of that wall so we've added that to this plan i know jeff mentioned that the shared parking um that was mistakenly shown in the lot directly north of our parcel and we've done we dug into that a little more and that that agreement still exists but that those parking spaces are actually um on on the parcel on the other side of the the homeless shelter there's a access driveway on the west side kind of between the railroad um easement and the the county property there the homeless shelter there is a an access drive there that has parking that the seven spaces are are shown there we didn't so we didn't really have that on our plan but those parking spaces are still in are you know intended to be used um you know we still meet our parking requirements using those so if you have any questions i'm happy to answer them answer those okay all right um kristen if you want to go to the next line and this i believe shows the truck turn right uh jason so um we can we can move on to the first floor plan as well if you if you'd like so um one of the comments uh last time was uh was how is the space going to be used in terms of the first floor and how you know we're showing a lot of storefronts so you know the question was how is that going to relate to the streetscape and uh and the pedestrian environment so we spent some time in laying out the ground floor um as you can see the entrance you walk into a vestibule the lobby lounge is situated at the corner at the very prominent corner of first and huron where guests will you know walk out to the registration desk there's a little waiting area lounge area for guests to sit and relax while a family members or whoever's checking in um on the right-hand side of the vestibule um you see the breakfast um the breakfast area where guests are going to be enjoying breakfast which is going to be completely transparent on first street there's a lot of storefront there and then on the far north end of the ground floor is the fitness which um you know we'll have all of our fitness equipment and everything lined up against the storefront so again once you're when you're walking up and down the sidewalk you're going to be able to see into this uh into the hotel and there's and i know that another question is this is something also we addressed on our responses is that you know how are the blinds and shay's going to be used well for the ground floor you know this is going to be completely open the blinds and shades are going to be limited to the guest rooms so obviously for privacy reasons but in terms of the public amenity spaces we're going to keep that open next slide uh these are the typical upper level floor plans uh there's no big changes to be noted here um the the biggest the biggest thing that you know i wanted to point out was that we did push the stairwells out um the north stairwell out to meet directly with the original facade so that way um you'll see in the elevations how we added windows per per the comment that was received last time so we want to we can actually skip the floor plans and move on to the elevations actually the building section here is something else that we provided based on the comments last time um apologies but the we should have labeled the street on this on the right hand side is wes huron so you can see um you know the elevator shaft protruding down below the base floor elevation and then also the stair shaft uh meeting the drive under uh off the first street okay um so in terms of the elevations um i know there's a lot of uh a lot of discontentment i guess on the corner element which we did simplify and i think actually this works a lot better after looking at it we are pleased with this outcome um we simplified the corner element and got rid of the multi-colored panels it is still a metal panel that we're using as a primary material along with brick at the base we were originally proposing a faux wood miche rip panel which we also got rid of and now we're using brick inset panels so we're in setting the brick one inch to give a little bit of relief pattern um and you know so that way it doesn't all look like a blank facade and we're using sort of a two-tone brick material that you can see there another another key change that we did was the canopy uh we had sort of a long protruding modern canopy that we simplified and made made a little less a little more traditional while still keeping you know the uh the fundamental um reason to have it there which provides shelter as well for uh any sort of uh pedestrian or any sort of hotel guests are waiting for their ride or their uber ride to pick them up uh we want to move on to the next slide um same comment here as well um you know we we revisited the language you know along the ground floor um you know change the brick color and carried the same sort of language across the corner of the tower at the corner of person europe next slide this is uh one of the side uh side return elevations and then also one of the you can see the courtyard elevation here as well so we carried the metal panel um halfway through and then we created a jog in the floor plan where we thought would be a good place to terminate and transition into a fiber cement reveal panel uh originally we were calling out for aephis which i think that was determined last time that that was something that you know should not be proposed and especially in this climate so we were proposing fiber cement um uh reveal panels and and what we would do is try and what we would do is match the color of the metal panel so it's sort of a less obtrusive transition um we did create we we also returned the brick and then carried it down uh one level up to the second floor and we created this opening which i think is a pretty good relief and created a signage band here as well so it creates a good place for a signage it's very visible from the ground floor or especially when you're driving in your car um so we really liked how that turned out as well but in terms of the back elevation we kept the same same language even though it's a different material as the front if we want to move on to the next elevation um and same here as well we originally had the sign up here in the top right corner we transitioned that down to this opening that we created much like the other elevation you just saw and created an opening in the brick um carried over the new language from the brick trench uh for the brick inset panels and then um also placed the windows of the stairwells to get a little bit more daylight um in the next three slides you'll see the renderings that were updated you can see again that the brick along the ground floor works works a lot better there's some comments that were received um really like how that turned out as well also in the renderings we're now accurately showing the grades that are sloping down once once you get past them right away added led light strips um on the underside of the driveway as well to give a little bit more welcoming presence and a little bit more line underneath the tunnel and then if we want to go to the final rendering so this is um kind of holistically how everything kind of turned out you know at the corner again we we did explore i think there was a comment to bring the corner element the top corner the soffit all the way down to the top uh to the top side of that storefront um we did we did look at that we just felt it looked a little too heavy especially with the side bands being a little skinnier so what we instead did was um used a light almost a white metal panel as an accent and created a backdrop for the sign so that way it would be much easier to see instead of the instead of the fairfield sign being on a dark backdrop which i think gave it gives it a nice pop as well so uh with that said um i'll open it up for any sort of comments um i think i think i've addressed uh all the comments that were received last time um but we uh welcome any additional comments that you guys may have on this round good thank you ned um if i might i'd like to read uh comments that were emailed to me from tamara burns um she's unable to attend but she she did a thorough review and i don't want to forget to get her comments in so if i could though she commented on detailing on the awnings on material choices on public art in the corner element so first under detailing and i'll just read this uh general overall appearance is more suitable for that area in the colors and materials have been simplified to focus more on the form than a patchwork of color or the wood that was previously in the project that said the areas that were wood are now lighter brick and are too plain uh suggest that some detail be brought into the brick in that area even if it's simple carbon panels above the window or soldier course or subtle cordling in one it is one monoplane now not even a nod to the window it frames brick detailing would be a nice way to bring back some of the human scale and warmth the designers were trying to achieve [Music] originally with the symmetricious wood and then under the heading of awnings and some comments i don't think they have achieved anything with this in the smaller windows which i think is is going the wrong direction i was hoping they could be more artistic parentheses detailing materials interesting steel joinery lighting signage graphics etc in the parenthesis and hung from above which would allow them to be deeper instead of the stubby cantilevers that they are now they could also possibly move down to create a more human scale at the sidewalk under materials wrote i strongly discourage using higher end materials on the two faces of the building facing the street the building is three-dimensional higher-end materials could go into the base the entry the corner tower the cap that is the focal points and then her comments about the corner were short the corner is simplified the vertical glass emphasizes the corner which is which is good and now i can read the sign and our last comment was about public art uh tamara said i hope the city will one day require artwork incorporate incorporated into every building some fraction of a percent of the construction cost maybe that's it um who else is ready to comment i had a few comments okay i brought up the retaining wall last time and i noticed now that it's five to six feet on the west side it seems that's an awfully big trap to have no guard rail no guardrail for persons as well as vehicles also i would encourage you to consider a screen fence or hedge plantings or some landscape in that back area from what i can see right now the entire courtyard is bituminous except for a small finger of concrete and there are no curbs separating the driveways from from the drive areas or from the pedestrian areas i think it'd be possible to get some hedge material some upright trees things like that in several of the locations and also just the issue of the potential of going over a five foot wall um i wanted to comment on the color palette as well i i personally kind of like the original color palette except for the multi-color panels and [Music] and the faux wood inserts i i like the lighter or the accent brick and the banding that being a dark color and less value change between the two bricks the awnings i also wanted to say that i wish the awnings projected more i didn't really have a problem with the awnings on the previous middle and i liked the fact that they came out further and they also had some extended shading i appreciate that you've added landscaping on first street um a long landscape planter with two street trees might also consider benches in that area or against the building since people be stopping and waiting for pickups in that location and uh i don't think you mentioned it but we did ask for uh what the treatment for the air conditioning or package units was and it's fairly clear that it's a continuous louver below all the windows in a darker color and it seems appropriate to me those are my comments scary anyone else jeff laurie jeff you can go ahead i'd like to i'm sorry lori go ahead all right i'd like to echo some of gary's comments i would like to see those uh canopies come out further to provide more shelter um what's their what's proposed is fairly shallow and maybe only about one person deep and i think it could use more i'm not sure what the one along huron is really going to function as because i think all of the action is going to happen on the other street um so as far as color is concerned i didn't like the idea that the material used in the lower portions last time was going to be wood but i really liked the color um the color sort of juxtaposition between the dark gray and that color and i i don't really like this buff colored brick proposal um it would really i think suit my taste and i think it would make for a more handsome building not just to meet my taste but to it would make you know sort of a more elegant color scheme if that dark brown could somehow or another be reintroduced instead of that buff color i really like the idea of getting rid of the multi-colored panel system at the corner and i think this solution really reads a lot better and it's stronger um and i appreciate you including the uh louver louvers at the bottom as of the windows i think that that pretty much tells us now how that's going to be treated and it's sort of as expected so i think that's about it for mine thanks jeff laurie i think i saw your hand go up yeah sure um i actually have to disagree with a lot of the comments my opinion is that i actually like it a lot better i feel like it's much more sophisticated and refined i think you've really taken the comments to heart and kind of cleaned up and clarified a lot of portions on the building i like the horizontal dark bands and that kind of corner element i think they're really elegant tying it through and i personally like the brick colors but i tend to like kind of cool and simple and modern things so i think that's where it's sort of landing but i just think it's it's it's um crisp and kind of timeless in the um the way that you've pulled it together i had a couple small suggestions and i'm just going to share this since now we get to do this to just add again that kind of human scale and human element is to kind of incorporate some green and planters into the kind of building itself i don't know why it's not letting me enlarge this at all but kind of within these spaces that are recessed into the building that don't provide any you know conflict with the walkway can we include some integrated planters in those locations probably have to be irrigated because they're going to not get direct rain but i think it would be a nice way again to add that like richness of scale at the human level not higher up in the building as was indicated earlier so i i mean in general i just think you've come quite a long way in um clarifying and responding to some i think if we were to hold these side by side right now we'd see a lot more changes than it than it appears at the at first sight but personally i think it's a great improvement and i think gary you were talking about adding some green in the back area and i would agree there's no reason why we can't and get some a little bit of storm water infiltration and some natural landscape back there where you don't have circulation thanks laurie i my free my screen is freezing so i can't see hands go up so if anyone else is open yep oops there we go corey yeah i just wanted to um echo laurie's appreciation for the changes and i i i think it looks fantastic now and it's just cleaner and as you might make is more timeless um and i think the the you know the ratio of the things you kept a lot of the elements in terms of the scale but um i just think it looks a lot cleaner and more something that's going to stand up over time and the signage is much better i also appreciate the little you know installation that you did lori on this um and i was kind of hoping for those trees myself and i think you did a nice addition there and i hope you would consider that um i was concerned about the guardrail um issue as far as safety um one of the you know maybe it gets lost in the big the talk about the building because there's so much to cover and i really appreciate what you've done but we are you know in ann arbor really working a lot on our um cycling opportunities um for safety and getting around the city and one of the elements in our guidelines is you know transit connectivity and if you would consider like throwing in some bike racks i think it'd be much appreciated thank you thanks corey let's see i i saw john kotarsky but i don't see him now are you there john i am can you hear me yes yep we see you gotcha thank you um i really like a lot of the changes uh that you met uh nick and jason um particularly those uh multicolored panels i think uh jeff pointed that out originally and uh it's much cleaner uh and it looks it looks much better um but i agree with tamara and gary in terms of um for me the the pedestrian experience uh seems to be cheapened the materials uh and i think that if the canopy were lower and extended out more it would it would be better uh and um and let me just say i all of my colleagues know this that i'm sort of the odd person out here that i've been appointed by the council to represent the art commission so i'm i'm glad that tamara mentioned that the city really does want to see more public art in their developments private and public and i'm sort of here to inspire encourage whatever um so i just want you to to to know that nick and jason that you know when you come to council they unanimously appointed a member of the art commission um in part because they we do support public art in ann arbor and uh we want developers to sort of leverage a lot of their development so i made a suggestion about the entrance that that one brick wall that you have coming in and i think the uh response was is that it would be dependent upon marriott and i i totally understand that but i don't think that any art would necessarily first of all would mean a painted mural it could be a relief there are all kinds of different ways in which you could incorporate public art and i i'm um i would like to encourage you to do it if you can uh maybe in partnership with marriott but um uh this would be welcome by the council when it comes to council those are my comments thanks thank you john um i just had a few um first of all thank you for coming back and and i get the sense that you heard what we were saying last month so i appreciate that um i agree with all the comments that the canopies could be deeper and i think they're a little bit shallow and it could be facilitated with tension rods as tamara mentioned and i really agree with lori's suggestion of planner boxes near the entry in the recesses i think that would bring a richness to the point of entry and the portal of the building i like the color scheme i'm fine with it i was the one who suggested the top of the corner uh become deeper and i like what you did better i think uh my idea was not as good as what you came up with so it looks looks fine to me i think you you listened and we appreciate it any other comments i've got a comment that i missed um you made a significant change it appears to me that on the north wall of the building where the drive goes through to the courtyard uh there used to be a solid wall and now it's uh four columns and so that's open to the north if i'm correct um i think that's good i i like that better than a big solid wall i would just throw in that it's another another opportunity for some landscape treatment um and i did notice you got rid of the three small awnings that were over the windows on first street the um that were outside the main entry canopy um i did like those i i don't think they're absolutely necessary but but they were a nice feature and i would echo everybody else's comments about how uh well you responded to all our comments and how much of an improvement i think this design is over the past design thank you any other comments okay um jeff could you take a shot at a summary yeah yeah happy too good comment thank you um dick i got a number of uh tamra's comments but um i'm gonna ask you to help me fill in some of the blanks um i did hear tamara talk about um camry uh the the canopies um the desire for them to be deeper i heard uh her suggestion about higher end materials being used at the pedestrian level i think that she talked about um this being a better color uh for the brick but if you could clarify that that would be great and then um if you want to help me fill in the fill in some of the blanks the the only other comment she had was about um the opportunity for masonry detailing she was wondering if if there could be some corbels or soldier courses here and there particularly at the lower level just to add more interest you know okay great and um feel free to email me her uh written comments that will help me with with with my written summary um i heard from gary gary talked a bit about the retaining wall on the west side concerned about safety um talked about possibly being able to screen uh the fence at that location talked about potential for hedge materials uh other landscaping in some of those locations he liked the original color um the accent brick uh uh um being a darker color um awnings uh should op should uh come out further he he uh indicated which was consistent with what tamara had talked about um he liked the additional landscaping that was being proposed he thought that benches might help as well he also acknowledged the um the air conditioning treatment and the louvers that were below the windows he felt that that was reasonable i i believe um he also talked about the column instead of the wall um at the at the back side which i think was also reinforced um um so um that was what i heard from gary uh jeff's comments um he also thought canopy should come out further wasn't a big fan of the new colors uh he preferred the previous color scheme which had the darker richer colors um he liked the dark gray um he wasn't crazy about the wood uh the use of wood but he liked the that the contrast of those of that that color scheme in the original version um he uh he mentioned the panels at the corner which he felt read better than what was shown previously and the louvers under the windows he felt uh he he also felt work work better uh we hear from lori she liked these elevations a lot better she thought they um the petitioner went a long way in cleaning up the um the elevation and and make it making it clearer sort of a clarified um attempt she appreciated the horizontal bands as well she felt that the overall facade treatment was more crisp and more timeless maybe a little bit more simple um she did have some suggestions she liked the idea of having additional green plant planters to accommodate a little bit of vegetation to bring in some color some green and she liked the idea of having some green um activity uh on the back side of the building that might even accommodate a rain garden or something like that uh corey also agreed that she felt that these elevations were cleaner and more timeless she thought this the signage is working better now um she also expressed a concern about uh the guard rail uh or a guardrail and safety related to that um and laurie eric excuse me corey also recommended um bike racks be introduced to the streetscape environment john uh indicated that he liked a lot of the changes um he liked the multicolored panels he uh liked the idea of higher quality materials at the pedestrian level and um john put a plug in for um for art um being being displayed on at least one uh portion of the building um dick agreed that he felt that canopies that the canopy could be um deeper he appreciated the new color scheme and um dick did i miss anything else that you had indicated the uh planners at the entry the lorry suggests i agree okay great so that's that's my summary okay thank you um so ned are are you have any final comments or questions at all pretty clear to you i think in terms of the comments we really appreciate the feedback uh i think you know as as just mentioned i think we came a long way so um i think we'll take some of the you know we'll take the comments and you know further develop this um in terms of next steps um samir uh do you do you have any questions or uh uh yeah no uh again i just wanna thank everyone for uh allowing us to come back um i think as ninten said uh i know ninten and jason's team both worked real hard on uh on the design over the last couple weeks and turning it around so quick and i'm actually really happy with the final product that we have um or the product that we presented today uh we there's a lot of good suggestions today as well that we're gonna uh take into account and hopefully keep refining this to uh uh make it something that the drb and ann arbor uh will be pretty proud of but um in terms of next steps uh uh i guess i'm not exactly sure where we go from here i know there's a lot of good comments but some of them uh uh i said they liked the new color some of them said they didn't so i guess how do we proceed with uh moving forward through the drd and getting their approval i i can take a stab at that and then any member of the board can comment as well uh comments on the board are advisory um board members always bring up great you know great ideas some sometimes they they conflict with each other but it's it's up to you to ultimately decide what you are want to propose and i think i think most the board members appreciate the steps you've taken to sort of um to try to address some of their major concerns so if this at this point um your your next step is to focus on the site plan um petition process if you would like you're welcome to present a brief memo to the design review board that i can forward to everyone in indicating your appreciation for their comments and maybe indicating whether you want to make any additional tweaks to the elevation based on what you heard that's that's up to you it's not a code requirement but at this at this point uh your job is to get your site plan ready for submittal and then it goes through the planning review process ultimately going to the planning commission for a public hearing and then on to city council so that's that's basically where we are in the process you know the team will huddle up with samir um and jason and you know kind of get a memo of what what things that we want to change and some of how we're addressing uh some of the additional comments that we have today uh you know obviously they're a good comment so we want to make sure that they are being implemented so um we'll we'll coordinate on our end and then uh get ready for the sci plan approval process for next steps um i but i think that's it from my end uh jason uh do you have anything i guess a mirrors or any questions or comments no nothing on my end i'm excited to uh to proceed to site plan good thank you thanks guys okay thanks everyone all right we'll move on the next item is unfinished business is there any unfinished business jeff one of the things that you'll want to do i believe is approve the um the draft meeting summary and once you do that at this meeting i will write it up and then i'll get it to dick and dick can get it to everyone and you have a chance to make any tweaks to it before it becomes um memorialized okay thank you you know i skipped over that you're right would someone like to move acceptance of the of the summary that jeff gave us a move there's gary in the second i see corey thank you any other discussion on that all in favor say aye and raise your hand all right hi anyone opposed okay all right passes thank you um and is that it for unfinished business kristin and jeff kristen should have i'm afraid i was not able to print out the uh agenda but maybe kristin has it in front of her there is that item relating to looking at the guidelines um let me pull the agenda up for that we we have a three person three people have volunteered to serve on that committee and it is geared towards sustainability uh being added to the guidelines and it's on me to convene that group and i haven't done it yet so i'll i'll get in the next month who is um who are the members in that group is it lori and corey or is john in there i can't remember does anyone remember volunteering i agreed john rory corey and john okay okay okay so it is encoring myself okay great good i'll be in touch with you i i just wanted to add just to uh close the loop that um we raised uh this issue with brett brett consulted with our attorney who said it'd be fine if two or three board members want to begin a process of evaluating the dr the the the guidelines um to look for ways to enhance sustainability um and that after you're done with your evaluation and there's no deadline or anything after you're done with your evaluation staff would like to have a look at what you have um and then we can bring it before the full design review board for discussion and then uh when everybody's fine with with what the proposed amendments look like stat our staff can take them to our ordinance or business committee uh on the planning commission which is a committee of the planning commission of i think about four members and they they first sort of get into it in in detail and then um we would bring it before the full planning commission um for a recommendation um to change to to change the guidelines and then it would go on to city council so that's what the process would look like thank you okay um communications to the design review board do we have anything kristin no okay all right we have one more item okay uh the public commentary after the presentation and i'll read this again this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes to comment please call 213-338-8477 or 206-337-97 and enter the meeting id which is 947-7928-2749 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak so any response kristen no no callers okay all right i think we're done um some like to move adjournment there's jeff in the second oh actually i had i i had a question for jeff jeff kahan yeah um it relates to what dick brought up uh previously with regard to the um the lead certification of a project as it relates to the premiums that people can get um you were going to talk to brett about it but i'm just curious if if if a developer takes advantage of premiums and then doesn't hit the lead standard what is the city's recourse for those premiums that they uh allowed right it's a it's a great question and it's one really that is worth us uh reevaluating um currently we include language in our development agreement that prevents a developer from getting a certificate of occupancy until they've documented that they've met their lead standard which would might be a lead silver standard or lead uh gold standard uh i think there might be new terminology these days um and so um uh we do have a language in the development agreement that that that obligates the petitioner from doing that i i believe alexis also corresponded with dick while she was staffing the drb about the potential for fines um and so the city does have a potential um to um uh to submit fines to a petitioner who who doesn't meet that requirement but i do think that it would be um good for our staff to have a conversation about that and that's what i mentioned in my correspondence um maybe yesterday uh with with dick uh that we can have an internal discussion about that because we we do recognize that that potentially is a real is a real problem it's setting us up for a potential uh big challenge yeah i just i'll go ahead i just you know i'm concerned about the possibility of abusing the system i you know i i hate the idea of having to find people um but as dick pointed out this is going to be it for this particular project i'm going to be a difficult standard to meet i don't want to see people punished for it or or uh find i i what i'd like to do is figure out a mechanism that a more um practical way to evaluate it at this stage could occur and and i don't i don't know what that would be but so i i suggested in and then this is really outside our purview so it's not i didn't bring it up today but um i i suggested that potentially at the end of construction documents during bidding did a peer review the undertaking of the drawings to assess the likelihood of attaining a certain level of sustainability performance and and so then the money has not been spent and they haven't broken ground and we're not trying to undo what in this case was a 150 or 75 i'm sorry increase in the far um so maybe something like that would work if at the petitioner's expense there was a peer review strictly looking at at sustainability issues but it's up for discussion at the city level and yeah well we we actually like the idea of of rethinking this because i do think it makes sense to um have peer review at various stages you know prior to just saying okay it's time for a cfo prove to us that you've achieved the lead gold status um so i i think it's definitely worth us um evaluating yeah okay thanks anything else anyone okay we um if someone would like to move adjournment raise a hand i'll move a second somebody seconded okay all in favor say aye all right thank you my screen keeps freezing so i can't see people's hands moving but thank you very much and we'll see you next month bye everybody bye

good evening everyone we appreciate you coming to the dysart school board meeting and we'll go ahead and call to order let the record reflect that uh miss pritchard is out and also miss tanner and also miss sterk dr kellis is out we'll go ahead and get started with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty thank you everyone we'll go ahead and move down the agenda to uh agenda form b1 and i'll make a motion to approve this agenda form consistent with the governing board policy and temporarily suspend any policy with which the agenda may be inconsistent second motion made by jay leonard seconded by don densmore let's go ahead and vote and that passes thank you we'll go ahead and move down to item c one recognition and celebration and it looks like cannon ridge high school their heritage project book presentation dr pulling i'll turn it over to you good evening such a pleasure tonight to have mr rosso students families and honored guests as part of the veterans book project and before we have them present we're going to watch a special video [Music] the veterans heritage project here at candy ridge school began nearly four years ago the genesis of the project came from the fact that we had a long time volunteer with us mr dennis grau of vfw post 106.95 a vietnam war hero who's done great things throughout our district sharing his experience and we really wanted to get him into this publication so we acted if you will as just a group of freelance writers we had six students and i was a sponsor we interviewed him we went through the process and we we got him in the book we were so happy with the process and bhp liked what we did but the following year we became an official chapter the veterans heritage project is about students coming together and we interview veterans and we take their stories and put them into a report to put into a published book and we send them off to vhp headquarters in scottsdale then it's taken and put in the library of congress so those students are archived these kids will be historians their name will be on a national website in our national library at the age of 13 that's not bad to see what i contributed to is insane i never thought in my entire life that i would be an author of something amazing like this if i'm being honest i got involved in the veterans heritage project through just hearing about it from classmates and from mr ross so one of the main reasons why i joined is because my grandpa was a vietnam veteran and that my great grandpa was in world war ii and i just wanted to be able to share their stories and the stories of other veterans my first veteran was winona fritz and she is an amazing person i learning from her was an experience of a lifetime we interviewed her with a series of questions and then after that she kind of um elaborated on her story one thing i learned from winnie is that you can never really underestimate anyone you can maybe look at someone and think that they are just they're just them you know but when you actually take five minutes to have a conversation they are so different than what you would ever imagine winona today is 73 these kids are probably what 13.

all right good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomason roll call president keller please let the record show that all five board members are present tonight thank you very much we are going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge i move that we approve the agenda second any questions or concerns all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero uh superintendents report dr thomason president kayla are members of the board we do have some exciting things coming up in two weeks we have our last board meeting before the first quarter is over and then we go into fall break starting on september 28th going through october 9th so we'll have a two-week break for for the entire district and then on october 21st we'll have the next board meeting and the only board meeting for the month of october thank you very much fall we felt a little fall last night i do believe it was such a delight i thought okay arizona i'll love you again all right board comments mrs wilson i just wanted to thank all of our staff especially here at district but then even lower our admin our teachers our staff everybody who made tuesday possible it was a big heavy lift and even our online teachers they did a great job i've heard very big praises i also was driving near cooley today and saw a gilbert police officer pull over there's a lot of construction up there on wrecker and he pulled over and was able to cross kids at that little cross there and i just want to thank gilbert pd and probably maricopa county sheriffs because i'm sure they're out in high force and helping our kids stay safe on the way to and from school so just thank you to all those people thank you mrs wilson i also noticed there was a lot of people out cleaning up trees today and even community members were trying to help so um there's still quite a few down around here so yes beautiful thank you thank you mr witovic yes um i i'm just i just prepared something because i think it's important that the community that's watching knows everything that that took place for us today so i'm going to read something to you here our schools reopened yesterday our community can be proud of the higley administration teachers and staff who have dedicated countless hours to ensure our schools have met the state and county and public health dashboard guidelines for a safe and healthy environment we want our students to be excited not fearful as they begin their school year whether online or in person as our students returned to school yesterday the staffing teachers needed to be adjusted to accommodate both types of in-person and online students we have amazing teachers and staff who are doing all they can do to ensure each student will be served to do this particularly administration and staff completed countless hours they worked over the weekend they worked on labor day people you cannot understand how many hours it went in just for to say let's open school and they all wanted this to be a safe and successful opening our buildings were disinfected new higher tech air filters were installed and tested classrooms were rearranged to accommodate social distancing and additional cleaning supplies were ordered students schedules were reviewed according to their online in-person preference and were assigned to be taught by our qualified higley certified teachers no matter what their preference took place that took place on september 7th and that was huge in reference to they had to move all the students that were online or the ones off online it was an incredible task and what that took place and i just applaud them the it infrastructure was reviewed and enhanced to accommodate online learning classes additional safety procedures were determined the staff was trained and new signage was put into place these are extraordinary times the response from the higley staff and teachers have been extraordinary to meet the challenges of reopening our schools no matter how our students have selected to learn i as a current board member of the higley governing board join the community in wanting the best for all our students i would like to publicly thank every single employee for working together to ensure a safe and successful opening i'd like to further say for the people that are watching out there on television or anything like that anytime you come in contact in the near future with a higley employer be it a bus driver a school person the secretary anybody just say thank you because what they have done is an incredible task and i want this community to we need to begin to show some kindness first of all and i think this is a great start for all of us to start acknowledging all the good work that we have done together to bring our kids to school today thank you thank you mr witovich and i echo both of your sentiments and i know that several many of our teachers thanks to great leadership are doing six fifths they are um getting we are getting those ap classes for those kiddos we are getting i heard about a student that goes to drama for first hour and then goes home and goes online so we've made some accommodations and i am too so grateful that we are trying to reach every student's need to the best of our ability and it's with great staff and great leadership that that's been taking place all right we're going to move on to request to speak i have a couple thank you mrs reach stretch okay we value input from our constituents the time has been aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to just three minutes mrs amy ludwig oh thank you i'd like to start out mr glover um thank you thank you so much for your continued support of teachers and students in this district i greatly appreciate you i'm so sad to know that you're not running for re-election okay so to the rest of the board um this is my fourth year teaching i thought that the first six weeks of this this year were hard that is nothing compared to how this week has been and it's day two um you said all of these lovely words about how much you appreciate how hard teachers are working but i don't think you you really understand fully what's going on inside classrooms right now every teacher that i know is working a minimum of 12 hours a day they're working weekends that's time sacrifice from our families time that we're not getting compensated for at this point if i incorporate those hours into my pay i'm making about 13 an hour 13 an hour um we are expected as teachers to do so much extra sanitizing to keep students and staff safe i appreciate that the pacing guide is not being adjusted at all we are still expected to teach students the same amount of content that we are in a regular year because they're getting tested on it not because that's what's best for students not because it's what's best for teachers but because they're getting tested for it so um i don't how were we supposed to do that i don't understand how we're supposed to teach the same amount of content in um a limited amount of time because transitions take much longer now because we have to clean and sanitize everything we're supposed to keep track of when a student keeps their mask on and off i am 90 students i have 30 students rotating in and out of each of my classrooms i can tell you right now there is no effective way for me to tell you who took off their mask in a class at what time it's not possible unless that's all i'm doing all day but of course that the pacing guide as i said has remained the same so i'm still expected to teach them content as well um it's it's a lot it's very difficult and um you made this decision by cherry-picking your data and you were not up front and clear about that so the metrics were not met they were met for the county and they were met for the district and you combined them which is the opposite of what what you did prior but i digress so um you made this decision by cherry-picking the data if teachers were to do that um i think we'd probably have a lot more a-plus schools throughout the state but of course we're not allowed to do that and nor would we because we like our data to be accurate because that's how we effectively teach um and you did this with one week notice one week notice for families and for teachers so that was so nice of you to do it over labor day so we could sacrifice our three-day weekend to be in the classroom preparing because guess what my classroom was not prepared because my hours and hours and hours of time were spent creating my online canvas and then we had one week and two days where we we didn't have to teach we had those two days to do everything that we needed to do wednesday we had our meeting that gave us our policies and procedures wednesday we open school tuesday it's like a 44-page playbook that's constantly being updated it doesn't even have the contents on it because it's changing so often i submitted my resignation to the district today i'm at a school that i love to be out with the team that i i is so strong with students that are amazing and parents that are so supportive and i had to quit my job today because i am unhealthy due to my stress level because of the decision that you made you could have waited you could have waited and given teachers the time that we needed given families the time that they needed we could have wrapped up first quarter and gotten everything all squared away but you didn't do that you gave us one week notice and you're sitting here saying thank you for all of our hard work but i'm um those words are lost on me i'll be honest i just wanted to stand up on behalf of all of the teachers that i know in the district because they are working just as hard as i am uh we're actually teaching online and in person so i wanted to stand here and say that the decision you made was not based on accurate data you are not clear in the way that you represented your data i hate to ask you i'm almost done and because of that i had to quit my job so because i can't get i could just get a second job i can't do that because of the amount of stress and work that i already have to do that is a direct result of the actions of the board cherry-picking data and giving teachers one week notice to do everything so i appreciate your thanks i'm i'm i'm i'm so glad in my heart that it's meaningful to you thank you thank you mrs ludwig miss ludwig sorry molina rangel hi good afternoon um that's a credible story um i certainly want to echo that sentiment for weeks i've watched patiently completely impressed with the online schooling my personal students doing fantastic hearing a bunch of families struggle so fortunate right feeling very fortunate that my teachers are prepared and my students have the support they need i understand that's not every family what i asked on the last school board meeting when i submitted is that you just please take the time to make a good decision because we cannot all go back to school as a high risk family as other high risk families we have to make decisions on what's best to keep our child safe my children are doing fantastic at home my husband and i do a lot to make sure they have everything they need we work 10-hour days we work on the weekends we work on the holidays there's no compromise if you're not a teacher as well we have to do both my concern is that they went back to school with very short notice very little information from sauceman junior high on what our options were you can get more information later but make your decision now who does that i give job offers to people and they won't accept them unless i tell them how much money i'm going to give them what's the difference i would expect the same consideration the problem is my daughter was told yesterday she has no instructor at 12 years old teach yourself that makes no sense to me so what i'm asking is i understand there needs to be time these teachers have done an incredible job so far i have no doubt that it can happen again i'm asking to please consider for the for the children that have to stay home at sosman junior high please please get them an instructor i mean my daughter wants to learn how lucky am i can you please give them some teachers can you please give them an option to learn in an equal manner as every child that gets to go back well i'm asking thank you this is mr philip rangel uh my name is phil rangel uh molina is my wife we're in the same uh situation with our daughter uh currently everything uh that she's doing online i've talked to the principal i've talked to um i've lost a message for the superintendent to give me a phone call back also um as it stands right now we have a daughter who's struggling at age 12 to deal with online learning it's she wants to learn that there are no teachers willing to help we were told that she has the ability to speak to a teacher on wednesday and all of her teachers have combined within one hour of her if she has any questions on any of her assignments whatsoever so she's supposed to go to every teacher within a one hour period she has no interaction with anybody else she deals directly with a module that she has to figure out herself colleges don't do that my son goes to centennial elementary he's got a platform and the one thing that i look at is we were there we were out there at centennial elementary with signs honking horns for red for ed because it was a cause we believed in i feel like this is the time where we need to be paid back our students should not have to suffer because you chose not to give them a proper education my daughter is in accelerated english she's in accelerated classes and as of today one of her lessons that she had to do was she had to do a point of view who is telling the story my son did that last year in third grade so my daughter is currently going to suffer when she goes back if she goes back and she's going to be behind for everything that she worked for from kindergarten through sixth grade on accelerated she's in she's in the honor society she worked hard on an application throughout her uh this summer to make sure she got into her yearbook class that year of class was taken away from her because it's an elective she can't have anymore the school messed up and headered in-person learning so everything that we have regarding online we were given within a day to to process this so the school messed up our enrollment and didn't have us in anything so we were not receiving any emails so we we all go in now uh we have a zoom call tomorrow at 11 a.m with the principal but we work 10 to 12 hours a day just like the teachers do how are we supposed to take the time off from our schedule when the uh the in-person learning has a zoom call at 5 30 so it's a lot of inconvenience so me as a parent i have to teach my child because the resources aren't there for a zoom class what is the reason why we can't have a a computer in the class with just a camera on during while the teacher gives the lessons to the people in the live class no one can answer any of the questions like this her schedule is completely changing i don't want to see my daughter suffering there's nothing like seeing a a child that is sad and and frustrated and has no one to go to other than her parents because the teachers are are not there anymore i guess you can go to the teacher from you know 11 to 12 on a wednesday but she has to pick and choose which one the online is a complete mess and i'm all i'm asking for is the time to get it fixed right we've been in this pandemic since march i work for wells fargo we transitioned from home and figured out everything within two months we're a multi-billion dollar corporation we had the resources to do it but it's now six months for higley unified school district i know our tax dollars are going to this somehow we can figure it out i hate to cut you off but thank you thank you very much okay we're going to move on to six i move that we approve 6.1 to 6.8 seconds questions comments and concerns all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero okay we are going on to a president taylor yes can we thank for the gifts can we do a thank you to the school for the gift oh yes you can i believe anybody remember it was coronado i think again pto i just thought it would be nice to thank them yes absolutely i did have that on my notes earlier but yes thank you to the pto of coronado they've done a lot already this year okay now we're going to our information update from educational services president kayla members of the board at this time i'd like to turn it over to mr luttenselder to give us an update on our educational services president kayla members of the board dr thomason members of cabinet uh dr foley and mrs richards can't be here tonight so you're stuck with me so um we've got quite a few different topics for discussion uh that we're going to go through today next slide please so if you'll take a look we're going to have an update from jillian fulton our district nurse we'll talk about elementary specials tonight we'll talk about the secondary online options different things that we've done to help fill you in i have a short athletics update and then we have a food services update as well so those are just some of the tasks and i would like to thank you for recognizing the hard work that many many of our people have done behind the scenes and forward-facing it was as we know the split was a very big task and um there are a few people that i'd like to thank before i forget we have a team in research and assessment who did all the back and work and when you talk about people who came in over the weekend they started saturday morning on making this split happen for us and so i'd like to thank dr susan borzitch brian campbell lori collins julie shipman billie jean welsine and julie cutler that group came in really worked behind the scenes then to allow the schools to start making some of those decisions and making those changes it was a very very huge lift and so i'd like to thank them president kayla and members of the board dr thomason members of cabinet my name is jillian fulton and the district nurse i have a little health update tonight the first slide here just to recap what we've already gone over and what's already in our guidelines the exclusion guidelines the maricopa department of public health require that anyone who exhibit a covit 19 symptom or symptoms must be excluded from school may return when the following criteria is met those have not changed as the 24 hours fever-free without reduced fever-reducing medication improvement of symptoms for at least 24 hours and 10 days have passed they can have a negative lab test which is optional not required in place of 10 days so those are things that we've already had in place this right here the maricopa department of public health services additional component that we have added is the exclusion of students who have an absence related to covet 19 symptoms what that means is if the student is called in absent for any symptom of clovid 19 we are monitoring that it's going to our health office and they are following up with that they'll be screened by the school site health aide that screening includes any active cova 19 symptoms and we do take into consideration the pre-existing conditions from there we have them on our watch list and we're watching them to make sure that they're feeling better if things are escalating if they're being tested if they're not if a student has active cova 19 symptoms that are not related to a pre-existing condition we're following those same exclusion guidelines to be able to bring them back to school and these are the exclusion guidelines and the highlighted sentence at the top is what i added this includes students who are reported absent due to any one of the above symptoms and this was given to me by the health department and i find it very easy to follow and it's just nice little picture so i added that in here tonight you can see screen for cova 19 and you can go through all of those no flags they can come to school exposure close contact no symptoms cannot go to school home for 14 days all the way through there and you can see on the right where this new component was added at least one symptom cannot go to school um 10 days since first symptoms no fever for at least 24 hours so same guidelines underneath that mrs fulton can i ask a question on that um when we talk about pre-existing conditions it's arizona it's allergy season it's it's always allergy season i don't know that arizona has an off-allergy season for something congestion runny nose is very common with allergies do they need to have some type of medical record saying that they suffer from allergies um you know not not everyone goes to the doctor for allergies that it's something that over-the-counter allergy medicine takes care of because that's what it is so can can you help on that a little bit yes um president killer board member reese i can give you a good example too but to answer the first part of your question yes so if sorry i can't see if they have um pre-existing conditions those are documented in our health system in synergy and so sorry i'm thinking of a couple different things to say but parents when they're updating all their contact information there's also medical information and they can update at that time and they can put in something like a pre-existing condition a diagnosis that being said i have had examples where there wasn't something listed of a pre-existing condition however we pulled the data that we do have how many times that student had been in the health office for the same situation in the past year in the past two years and we collected that and looked at that and talked to the parents so this wasn't a absolutely you're going home sorry you have a runny nose we look at absolutely everything i will say if they don't have any documentation and i don't have a history of it they need to go home for those 10 days so okay so if they didn't put seasonal allergies in synergy will you accept a medical diagnosis of seasonal allergies i mean and i get it because unfortunately every symptom of kovid is the symptom of everything else too and just because you have symptoms of something does not mean it's covenant and i i get that and i um i understand frustrations um but i i know more so right now that it's the congestion and the runny nose it's the allergy piece um if they never marked seasonal allergies on their form i mean i would hate for students have to miss 10 days of school when they do have seasonal allergies and a parent's never thought of marking that because if they think of allergies they think of a food allergy or a medication allergy president keller and board members the parents that i have talked to i remind them to go in and update that information unfortunately if there is nothing documented and we don't have a history of those symptoms being consistent they will go home for the 10 days however they do have an option to go get tested with a negative test and i have been giving out resources just today of a testing site that is testing all ages and i'm getting results back in 18 to 24 hours so they do have a choice to to be able to do that and help come back and they can go to the doctor after that and have things documented and bring that to me but it is not a free one time okay you wouldn't got a note and you get to come back we're not allowed to accept those notes per the health department so if we can start documenting that and we have that history of course we take that into consideration thank you for our online elementary specials update i will do my best mrs richards for you it has been a great start for our elementary students but when we look at online basically one of the challenges that was had to be addressed is how a special is going to be happened so i have a statement that i'd like to read or some notes from mrs richards our elementary online students have will have access to art music media and pe while they're learning online special area teachers from all of our elementary campuses are contributing to this very important initiative ms stephanie watovic our online specials teacher on assignment is coordinating the collection and uploading of these lessons weekly into canvas as you can see that's a picture of what the canvas page would look like when the students log in grades will not be taken as these are enrichment opportunities and really when we when we talk about our moving forward together this is an example of how we have an example a good blending and teamwork opportunities from teachers all over the district that are coming together found a need moved forward there's an organized way now that we're going to be able to provide specials for online learning elementary students so we would like to give a shout out again to the special teachers and to our specialist teacher on assignment who's coordinating all of this work for us additionally when we took a look at our online elementary students how are we going to be able to fit in the band and orchestra opportunities and so with those discussions of those teachers we really need to thank mr alexander rivera and mr david jakes because what they're doing is providing an enrichment course almost like an after school enrichment opportunity that parents can volunteer and opt in for their students regardless of what school in the district they go to and so they meet on wednesdays at 3 30 well given because we need that music instruction to continue and we don't want people who are unfortunately are having to make the choice to stay at home to miss out on that and so these two instructors stepped up and are leading this opportunity so it's a free abandoned orchestra after school course wednesdays at 3 30.

a good idea a bad idea is up to you all right we are live right now so um welcome welcome to this session we're start sorry we're a little bit late getting going but we appreciate you being here and i'm superintendent mike morris and i'm really pleased that jastree and molly who are two of our distance learning coaches are with us today to work with caregivers and families about google classroom they're going to present a few slides but the intent is to be interactive so if people have questions as we're going we may wait till the end to be able to answer them but really we know that this distance learning you know is a challenge for caregivers and we want to do a really good job making sure that all families have the tools they need to be able to support their children in school so with that i'll turn it over to jay shree and molly and welcome thank you mike my name is jay shri and i am the tech teacher at belham elementary and i'm also one of the district's elementary distance learning support specialists for this year and i will now give over to molly thank you um i'm molly and i'm also a distance learning support specialist and i also teach special education at crocker farm i should mention i'm sorry to jump in before we do the slides uh if there are comments along the way or later the way this program works as you're following on youtube is in the lower right hand corner there should be a box that you could type in a question or comment i also want to note in the chat already if you're looking to hear this in spanish there's a google meet that's been set up telephone or link where translation's happening we're going to do our best you might hear us speaking a little bit slower than what you might normally come to expect and that's really because we have live translation that's happening simultaneously and with that i'll turn it back to jay shree and molly thank you um and so we're going to if we could present our slideshow this is also on our website um so don't worry if you don't get everything right now um because you will have access to it later so um this is training is just for google classroom so google classroom will be used for grades 3 through 12.

hi good morning this is mike morris i'm the superintendent of schools here in amherst and pelham and with me today is tim so i'll let him introduce himself hi everyone i'm tim schead and curriculum coordinator for the amherst regional public schools and we want to thank you for coming to today's session we're going to talk through the elementary remote learning schedule and plan our plan today is to talk for about 15-20 minutes going through some of the basics and some questions we've already received uh via email and then open it up for more dialogue for those of you who are here if you look at the lower right-hand corner of your screen there should be an opportunity to make comments um and so we'll try to go through our presentation then get to the q a but if people want to try it out just to say hi or good morning or whatever just so you know how that system works you can feel free um to do that but um really thank you coming we're really excited to share our plan we know it's a little complex and tim and i were just talking before we started that um we we tried to solve some complex problems and and there's no outcomes raised or simple solution to them there's really was the only way to do it was to create a complex schedule to meet our students needs and and that's what we'll plan to go through today but really thank you for joining us and i'm going to share my screen so go through a couple slides before we open it up for more interactive dialogue okay there we are and i think i'm going to take tim and i off so that people can see the shared images a little bit larger yeah i think that looks better um so again thanks for being here and we'll go through these and and then go through some questions so um really our guiding frames of how we were approaching this task is last spring the state set up a dynamic or a directive that we were really providing a menu of academic resources it was an emergency situation uh we know that was very hard for many of our families and frankly for our staff who are more used to providing instruction than resources this year it's it's not the same situation we're we're both mandated and excited to be providing explicit instruction for students um you know we did a survey last spring which many of you took we did a great turnout for that or response rate for that of families and staff members and some of the themes that came out is everyone wanted a predictable and reliable set of a schedule and routines throughout the day and the week there was a large focus on all parties and providing more synchronous instruction live instruction for students there was also a feeling and i think research bears this out that small group instruction really matters that 20 elementary students in a classroom that's not the best place for instruction to happen even as adults and tim and i when our leadership team is about 20 20 people on it we have meetings and everybody's on it it ends up being a lot of this right now a lot of monologue and that's not how we teach that's not how we think students learn best so it's really focusing on small group instruction we want to provide some of that feedback was that we wanted to provide more clarity and way finding systems so folks could gather resources and know where to go and also strong relationships between students and staff last spring we had the advantage of having six or seven months where staff and students got to know each other and built a classroom community that's not our scenario for this year so we know we need to build in some of that social emotional time and so that really led to our priorities for our schedule development a group of staff members met this spring and here's a summary of the priorities that they developed again you'll see a through line between the survey results uh and the priorities and one of the challenges for us is that we are not based in person and having small group instruction we try to do it as much as we can but it led to some complications of how to do that in a virtual schedule how do we provide small group instruction throughout the work day uh throughout the school day and the workday for many families and so that's why things got complex i've seen some schedules from other states and other districts that are kind of an hour for each of the core subjects all in a large group and kind of our the evidence last spring here but also the research evidence would be that that's not necessarily the best way to approach elementary school virtual education our teachers just finished on tuesday a week of distance learning from a virtual school international school has been around a long time and and they also reinforce that that small group instruction particularly in the core areas is critical and particularly for elementary age students and so um i think i will turn it over to tim to explain this very complicated chart we'll look at a grade level specific one in a minute that i think will help illuminate some of the um kind of what it looks like on a granular level much clearer but i'll turn it over tim thanks mike um so the reason for showing this is to get a sense of what an elementary school schedule on the broad level looks like so this would be the schedule for the entire school you can see kindergarten on the far left side and grade six on the far right side um and and and the need to look at the whole school is because there are staff shared across grade levels um so in fact when students have different subjects is dependent on when other grades have those subjects um you'll note in the right about the middle is a lunch block that's highlighted in blue there and that was designed so that um students who are getting school meals that are delivered out to neighborhoods that there's enough time for them to get those meals um and then for all students to have lunch and to have some time away from the computer screen um and so that is is time that won't be supervised by school staff online but is is time for lunch for recess at home uh for other types of play and and time away um i'll still point out on there that you'll see with each grade level except for kindergarten you see a 1a 1b 2a 2b and so on and and we'll explain a little bit more as the slides go along but each class will be split into an a group and a b group and and this goes back to what mike just mentioned about an effort to create smaller groups for teachers to work with um and just the final note on this slide is kindergarten in the remote setting will be half day so the kindergarten session prior to that lunch block is the morning session and the session after the lunch block is the afternoon session and mike i think we can go to the next slide all right and this is this is an example class schedule so this we simply took out one grade and blew it up a little bit for better visibility here and i want to point out on the left side is the a group and on the right side is the b group so this is this is a single class this is one classroom teacher but divided into two groups and so the elementary schools have been doing classroom placement the way that they normally would and placing students into classes and then teachers will be working to divide their class into the two groups and you'll see that the subject areas are staggered in a way here so that teachers can be teaching small groups and can alternate between group a and group b so if i just take a few moments to start at the top you'll see that all students are together in a morning meeting and and this is a community building time a check in time for teachers to give students some information about the day it's 15 minutes it's not intended to be long um again putting 20 students together at one time on a google meet is is not as productive as smaller groups so we really want to use those times well but also keep them to a minimum then you'll see that group a goes into an independent literacy time and so there will be activities that students will be engaged in um there'll be some choices of online activities there may be some some activities that students will do off the computer at that time uh related to literacy skills after that um that staying with group a they go into a math mini lesson and this could be taught live or it could be a recording um and the reason it may be a recording if you note if you look over to group b group b is in a small group literacy lesson at the same time and so the classroom teacher will be engaged with group d so while there may be times that a teacher will do a live mini lesson more often than not it will probably be a recorded lesson um then group a proceeds into their math small group lesson where they now have the teacher with them and and this is again a time for smaller group more intensive support from the teacher and then that group has a break and then they have their mini lesson in literacy and they're with a receipt small group uh one thing you'll note is that we tried to set up these schedules um and so that the mini lessons came before the small group work and that so students have a chance to get engaged in some of the work before meeting with the teacher that's that's been identified as a as a strong practice and that was something that teachers really emphasized that would be helpful in designing the schedule um then there's the lunch block and that's the same for both groups and then if you go to the afternoon there's a win block and so win is an acronym for what i need and there will be multiple things happening during this block uh students who receive services from special educators uh from occupational therapists physical therapists speech and language teachers that may be occurring during this time english learner support may be happening on instrumental music lessons could happen during this time um and at times there may be some independent activities going on during the win block then group a moves into specials and so this is what you're used to art music pe computers library and the specials teachers will be teaching live lessons and then another break and then an independent choice time and most classroom teachers will probably provide like a choice board of activities where students can select from activities again some may be online resources that the district is providing some maybe offline activities related to their academics of the day it's been really important to all of us that kids continue to be engaged in project based learning and completing activities and doing investigations that don't involve computers all day long uh and then the final block of the day in the case of this grade is is social studies or science for the whole class and again this will be a live lesson um with some possible time where um one colleague is using the term catch and release where a teacher might set some kids off with an activity send them off to do something and then come back to the whole group and that may be used at other times during the day as well and then it ends with a closing meeting on to wrap up the day to do some final um social community building uh before closing the day out and you can look down the b side i won't go through all of that step by step but you can see that it's mostly staggered so the teacher can bounce back and forth between the groups i think i think we can move on mike oops sorry about that jim i think you're good that's all right um so we put here some some frequently asked questions and some of this i i explained a little bit as i went through the schedule um but it may give you a little more detail and so some ques some questions that have come up as we develop schedules is what happens during an independent literacy block and and again as i mentioned that students may be reading independently or engaging in on online curriculum and tools to support literacy um and there are and this this may be reading actual books that that one holds in one's hand um or one of the online resources that delivers ebooks to children um independent choice block and so as i mentioned this may be project-based learning based on the curriculum areas that are happening during the day it might be some outdoor learning um or choices so um teachers could present a menu of activities and students choose which ones they're going to engage in uh the math and literacy mini lessons again will often be pre-recorded but may sometimes be a live mini lesson and this is a mini lesson is exactly what it sounds like it's meant to be brief and this this is terminology that we use when we're in in school normally during a typical school year uh where a mini lesson is is the launch to um an academic blocks that students get the big idea and then teachers usually spend the time after that working with individual students or small groups to help them understand the concept that was taught and so that would be the small group blocks okay um the social studies are science block students will participate in live instruction for unit study lessons uh and social studies and science during a typical school year is is often alternated where teachers will teach a science unit uh for several weeks followed by a social studies unit for several weeks um i don't anticipate a change to that sort of structuring each grade level and teacher has their own approach to that scheduling but this will be done in a block during the day and may also have other parts of the day integrated so there may be reading and writing involved in science learning or social studies learning uh during the specials blocks students participate in direct instruction in the specials areas um during those morning and closing meetings this is this is a time to again build routines to have an opportunity for students and teachers to check in with each other uh and and to make sure that they continue to build community in in this remote fashion uh during the lunch block this is not supervised by school staff uh so students will have time for to have lunch to have some play time time outside away from the computer um and much like what our lunch and recess block would look like during a normal school day and then during the win block which is something new on this schedule the what i need block is the time for learning extensions special education services instrumental music reading or math intervention or english learner's support as well as other services that students receive that can be plugged in during the school day okay and so i'll do a couple more and i see there's a number of questions uh going um coming through the chat more than probably could keep up with at the moment so we have a couple more slides and we'll transition there um so you know the a and b groups um as you can see in the schedule that tim talked about earlier that this is the way to for our schools to get to small group instruction i want to clarify because i see some of the comments that it's not that pelham won't be doing it but it is a different model when you have one teacher per grade level and some of the class sizes in pelham like first grade in particular are incredibly small um so you know i think they're the focus is on small group instruction pelham there are some ways that we can get at that without an a b model because of the class size in certain grade levels other ones it's a little bit harder um but teachers are putting those together again the same way they would do typical placement you know looking at friendships as well as looking at service delivery and making sure students have peers um so i think um i think that'll come up more in the questions that we get as well but i wanted to address that here during asynchronous learning periods are students still logged in with the teacher available so as you saw uh when tim was going over the schedule that teachers are going back and forth they're toggling between the two groups so the asynchronous periods um they are working with the other group of students as we're trying to get small groups it's sort of the only way we were able to get it with the same number of teachers is have uh to have that model that i think the really important thing that tim in particular as well as some of the principals and assistant principals have talked about is that we've purchased a number of different online learning platforms um that students can do independently for families who want want their children involved in that maybe at the end tim you can talk a little bit about some of the math literacy and science programs that are self-directed that even young students um can have success working on like lexia reading and some of the other ones that uh we've done we didn't have those last spring in the same way so uh that is a really important difference from last spring to now is that it's it's not we're trying to create situations where it's not totally on the caregiver to be able to provide that there's a number of questions and i'm seeing one now about the number of transitions so in google meets so the idea is that there would not need to be a new google meet address for each model so if there's a mini lesson that transitions to a small group lesson it'd be in the same kind of google meet call so i think on the schedule you know and then we went back and forth on this we chose to give a much more detailed schedule to families then a lot of the places again that are just showing math happens in this hour but i also want to be really clear that it's not involving the same number of transitions that it looks like on the schedule from the student perspective we're trying to give a pretty granular amount of information to families to be really transparent about it but it's not about navigating each of those specific transitions and i think we always have this tension point we're trying to simulate as much as possible the kind of instruction students would get during the school day but in-person instruction requires different things than virtual instruction so you know we sort of had some decisions to make about you know do we do instrumental music do we do specials and in our opinion at the district we value those arts we value those things and they create another transition for students so at the end of the day for us is we wanted to provide uh more well-rounded uh virtual education than probably were able to pull off really last spring and that does involve more transitions and we know that's our major input has major implications for caregivers uh about being able to support particularly young students one of the things that we'll get to and that's a it's a great uh segway is that there are two platforms so one of the pieces of feedback we received from last spring from staff in particular is how to not necessarily use google classroom for our youngest students that it's really the interface is it requires reading we know some of our younger students aren't quite reading you know at that level yet and it doesn't didn't seem developmentally appropriate for many of our students many of our families and many of our staff so we have transitioned to seesaw which is a different program that is meant for younger students and provides a lot more ability to navigate regardless of reading skills or age level so we think that'll be more successful than google classroom is for our youngest students again um a lot more icons a lot more easily to use navigate it's easier to navigate i guess you could say um as it relates to there we have one more slide i think and then we'll get on to some more question um i see some comments also about the synchronous piece uh we tried really hard and across seven grade levels it wasn't possible to cluster synchronous instruction and provided small group so you know we had to make a decision of do we want to cluster synchronous instruction and keep everyone with 20 students in a class or did we want to have again a little more of a complicated schedule to navigate i want to acknowledge that point and provide smaller group instruction and we ended up going with the smaller group instruction and we think again because of the service providers there's special educators ell teachers all those folks who work in multiple grade levels we couldn't cluster everything and provide small group and so for us based on the feedback last year synchronous instruction was an absolute and small groups and in synchronous instruction was a small group and that really forced some decisions that our folks had to make when they were designing a schedule and so i think we've we've talked about a number of these before um i think tim you mentioned instrumental music um we met some of the online learning platforms and maybe maybe i can turn over to you to talk about a couple of those i think it is worth noting that uh for the commandantes program that schedule actually literally as we speak is being finalized by the teachers in that program and it will be slightly adjusted because of needing two languages uh it will likely have slightly less independent time because of the need for oral language skill development in in two languages um and so tim i don't know if you're able to describe a little bit of the online learning platforms or just even give a piece of that sure um so what this summer um we took a look at some online learning resources that are supplemental in nature so they don't reply they don't do not replace the direct instruction or the main curriculum but they provide resources for students so that they can access independently um that would complement what they're learning and so one example is lexia which is a reading platform and this is something that teachers will be able to set students up with the district will provide accounts for students where they log in the very same way that they log in to their district accounts and it's it's a game-like platform to practice reading skills where teachers get information about what students are doing um and where they're meeting challenges as they work through it and there's a similar version in math it's called dream box and so these these will be potential activities to use during independent times um that also should not require much in the way of support for children at home uh they're they're very visual in nature so that students who don't yet read should be able to use them without without much problems and then there are other resources that older students will be engaged in that complement the curriculum teachers last spring used a lot of one called newsela and this provides non-fiction reading current events passages in science and social studies areas at different reading levels and they're particularly useful at upper grades grades three through six and so teachers and students will have access to that and and then in terms of sixth grade just to mention one we found that our sixth grade math curriculum which is also used at the middle school level um has an online version and this should make instruction and teaching and learning in math a little bit more fluid and smoother than it may have been in the spring in the remote setting thank you tim so um i'm just going to scroll up because we got a number of questions so thank you for all the questions that have been coming in um so we are you know i think next week you'll see about the logins we are trying to kind of reduce the number of logins that students need to do again there probably will have to be a different one for a whole group lesson versus a small group lesson um because you know there'll be two groups going on simultaneously but we're trying to reduce the number of logins that folks need i'll be honest that many other districts um in other states that mandated more synchronous instruction last year worked on this and students got have got quite adept at being able to log in and out of different different um different lessons different google meets and for us it's going to be a little bit complicated because we didn't do as much of that last spring or statewide we didn't do as much but much of the first week or two is going to be also training caregivers whoever that is in the home but also training students to become more independent so i wouldn't expect that this schedule will be implemented on the first day of school next week with all the different kind of lessons it's really going to be around community building and building students capacity to be independent navigating an online world so i should have said that at the beginning and i apologize i didn't um it's question about feedback we will be gathering feedback throughout the year about how this is going uh and we this really came from the feedback from last spring about what was working well and not working well um you know and i think you know again i think one of the challenges that we had is across seven grade levels of an elementary school um how to balance that and i think even in the comments that we're seeing uh you know that there's some people who feel like this is too much synchronous instruction and some people who are feeling like this is not enough synchronous instruction and and i think that's the world we live in you know when we try to cut it down the middle there definitely our districts that are trying to do four or five hours on google meets you know for us and all the training we've done from virtual schools they don't try to do four or five hours five hours of virtual time in google meets every day we're also trying to also balance that we need to do a lot more than we did last spring and i see those comments about breakout rooms really that's what the small group pieces uh are is that they're they're sort of an opportunity for a breakup room to happen um and i know with the middle school high school is moving a lot uh moving towards that a lot as well um um see so yeah there's a lot of conversation going on with staff about populating a calendar with appropriate links and creating digital calendars see some examples of that and that's some of the training that we teachers had last week was specifically on wayfinding how do we support caregivers and students around around that process and again help to for students to be much more independent um let me see um just scrolling back up because i don't want to google me actually none of the programs allow for breakout room so zoom which we don't use for a whole host of reasons breakout rooms don't work on chromebooks if you go to zoom's website you'll see that google meet does have that program coming out that will work on chromebooks starting next month there are i think it's google chrome has extensions that allow for that so some of our students um are providing that um they can do that now but it could be much more integrated about a month from now um so there's a question about in-person school you know i'll be candid that we're you know we're moving forward and progressing with negotiations with the bargaining unit um and when there's an update to give we'll be happy to give it uh immediately we're not at that place just yet good question but attendance attendance will be taking in that that morning meeting um and you know uh that's the same way it is during in-person school at the elementary level and this is not wildly different from the schedule that was emailed out a couple weeks ago in an update um you know we refined it we got a lot of feedback from staff members that happen there's a question tim that you might be able to answer about social studies science a live session or on the computer or a combination um so the intention is that social studies and science instruction would be live um and and i think probably the way i described it was was a little confusing when i was talking about it in the schedule because i mentioned the possibility that that teachers may engage in live instruction and then give students something to do and then pull them back to finalize that um my intent was not to say it would not be live it will be live instruction but i think during any live instruction group there may be a time where teachers say to students to complete some piece of the activity as they're thinking they would still be live on the screen and then re-engage with the group so a couple questions attendance according to our state is required like it would be for in-person school um so i want to clarify that one um there's an email about for grades two to six families we we did not ask for binding uh decisions on in-person verse virtual because it's quite a ways away and we know people may change their minds as a result we may have to flex the classroom placements when we move to in person because folks you know invariably will change their minds some people will feel more comfortable being in person and some people will be more comfortable or you know decide to go the other way um and so that's that's sort of where we are with that um and um i think if you have concerns about that please share them with me um and um you know we'll certainly we present this at a public meeting at school committee we got some feedback from families and uh you know we continue to move forward there's a question about specials being uh one each of the specials one times a week that's actually something that uh you know in the virtual environment you know could make sense but as we move to in-person schooling we're thinking much more of a residency model and that's really so the specialists don't see 20 classes a week from a public health perspective we don't want our our staff members and that that's not advisable from our from the health perspective so we'll feel look a little bit different as we transition to in-person school but the idea is that students would still have access to a special a day and they would still have access to all five specials and receive the instruction in all five areas over the course of the year um our cast is about 20 students right now i think all classes are either at or under 20 students there may be one or two that i'm missing that are slightly over but yes the student the classes actually will be smaller this year especially as we move to in-person schooling because when we mix those two in classes in person classes have to be at smaller but for the virtual classes i think you'll see a very similar class size if not smaller than what people are used to um see sorry i'm scrolling up and down there's a lot of good comments um at this point you know we're still in negotiations so there's a lot of questions about in-person and again there's more to share but we would not there's no feeling of everything being pushed back in terms of what the school committee voted it's just really that that first phase wouldn't start till october 1st and we have more of an update um we will be able to share it um [Music] so yeah great question about first grader um and engagement and i think one of the things that we realized is last spring uh we weren't able to provide the level of training for our staff as what we would have liked and i think everyone did incredibly strong efforts to try to make this work but what we've learned you know really from some of the training we did over summer but particularly in the last couple of weeks are different ways to build relationships in an online setting so i do think people will see not just that there's more synchronous instruction but actually the pedagogy will look different than what it did last spring last spring i think our teachers our staff are doing the best they could to try to integrate in-person learning into a virtual environment without the training and now that people have had much more training i think people will families and students will see much more engaging content because we're supporting our teachers much better than we could of last year and there's a question most of the first part of september is trying to feel our way through the processes i think to charis brown's question absolutely that we're not starting with okay open up everyday math books as if nothing happened on the first day of school it's really trying to work through where students are as they go so i think the wind block there's a couple questions about that tim that you might be able to respond to that if teachers aren't engaged with a teacher during that time are they given some choices about what to do during that time yeah and the short answer is yes so this would be a time that if students are not engaged with with another um educator in some way which and and which in some cases is maybe para educators as well uh there will be a choice board of activities a list of assignments things like that that teachers will provide for students to engage in during that block um so it will not just be free time there will be some activities and some of them again may choose to be off screen and some so for some families the on-screen options that tim talked about earlier uh may be really good options during that time that are more self-directed for reading services um special ed or title one services that students receive that will continue that students will still receive their if students have an iep or 504 plan that have services or if they receive services from a reading specialist based on their title one supports their services um get the screen off actually um that that is um those will continue often during the wind block or other blocks of time and the special educators or title one teachers will reach out um reach out for those folks and the wind block again for instrument upper grade students who take an instrument uh one of the things the instrumental teachers uh it's great for their scheduling which they're never able to do is they can teach teachers some students from fort river and some students from wildwood simultaneously if they're at the same level playing violin and so actually this is the one of the weird silver linings is from a scheduling perspective we'll be able to kind of link similar student and especially for students who play low incidence for black or better phrase low incidence instruments uh like jello or some of the other instruments they'll actually have a group to be able to practice with that sometimes they don't in the school setting um so when independent choice are the same depending on the student i think that that's accurate having a chromebook offer advantages compared to any other computer no um there's there's not a particular advantage i think using google chrome as a browser is an advantage with google classroom um but any device that can have that would work for our youngest students we're like we're getting ipads uh which will work well in terms of a touch screen for preschool and kindergarten um but if you have a machine at home that you're comfortable with there's there's no advantage to using a chromebook versus one of those in terms of paper material distributed students that that'll be like a fort river i know tomorrow they're having a pickup day and that'll be organized in advance by either the school or the district um and assuming kids can do off-screen assumes they have a caregiver to help support that i don't think this is a fair assumption right so i want to be really clear that this is not we are not able to provide what we would think of as typical coverage or child care in a virtual environment that that we know that this is an imposition on families that we have because of the pandemic so i do want to address that i don't think there's a way that we could maintain and really provide child care in the same way in an online setting that we can in a virtual setting that we can in person so people people can disagree with that statement and that's fine but from our perspective our focus is on education and you know we're trying to do the best that we can with the resources we can to educate kids at the highest level and uh we're trying to do that as well as we can knowing that some families won't have one parents won't be both parents won't be in the home it will be an older sibling he's an eighth grade student and that's really the first couple weeks of building that classroom community and also supporting students to be much more independent about navigating this um we're always amazed at what our students do like reading and tim tim and i both used to be elementary student teachers and tim was a primary grade teacher so he can speak to this better uh better than i can and our teachers teach our students learn how to read which is magical i taught fifth and sixth grade and i was fortunate that most of my students were in pretty good shape with that when they got to me and so as opposed to looking at that we're really going to have to teach our students how to navigate an online world and much like teaching reading or something like that there's a code to it and that's really the focus of the first few weeks is to help our students be much more independent in doing that we understand that that it's not possible for all families to be home with their students or they may have multiple students navigating that one of the great ideas that we got at one of the um in-person town halls that we did about a month ago was to have headphones so we do have some headphones available and some of the pickups for chromebooks we're going to have those available particularly for income eligible families because they have multiple children on devices in multiple classes simultaneously in a small house small apartment we want to make sure that folks can be able to manage that and be able to not have the you know calculus class in one room uh intersecting with the fourth grade class in the same room because that's where both students are working so you know i think that that is our focus um and and that's what we're trying to do the best we can um i think um for the question about standardized testing uh i've got an update on this from the commissioner our current secretary of education in washington d.c has indicated that there are no waivers coming in terms of statewide standardized testing this spring we'll see if that person's still in that role when we get to the spring or not and that's not a political statement it's just there's an election and we don't know what will happen i'll leave it there um so the state doesn't have the ability to suspend standardized testing would need a waiver from the federal government and so it's uh it's sort of wait and see on that for us we are doing some assessment at the beginning of the school year and we will do some in the virtual context because we know that it's been a long time since students were in school in person and we want to get a better read on where they're at so this is not high stakes testing it's really helping us instructionally understand where we are um and and what we how we can support our students um yeah there's a good one about inner student interactions outside of academics um so we're trying to provide as much as we can during the school day um google meet for education has some really thick boundaries and actually school from a safety and security perspective we don't typically allow students to be in unsupervised spaces in school and the same thing sort of operates more or less in virtual spaces for elementary students so we don't necessarily have a way to facilitate that um but i do think our pgos do a fabulous job of running events and i know they'll be thinking about how to do this in a virtual context and how to provide kind of emails and other ways through facetime or other resources that families can connect off the school day but we would have the same supervision concerns about students being together you know in school in a virtual context that we do in a in school context as well if people still have chromebooks maybe a deb if you could put in jerry champagne's address email address he would love to know that i think at this point it will need to eventually be returned and get refreshed and that happened it was a busy summer and and emails sometimes don't always go to the right place and might have gotten to junk about the reminders around that that's not a problem at all but you know as about 2000 devices are being given out starting yesterday and going through tuesday it may take a little while for us to collect that and and refresh it um but if deb can put jerry champagne's director of is's email address in there that that'd be the place to go um i think window would operate similar to mcas that is a required test from the state um but that's a really good question and i i'm not i don't know if tim's confident about a response to that one as opposed to mcas that's a that's a good one yeah it's a great question and and i i have not heard updated rules around the widow yet yeah um so we'll get back to you on that one um excusable access absence kind of functions the same way according to the state as if it was in in school you know illness you know family illness things like that um the state has set up attendance guidelines that mira in person school or virtual school uh thanks deb for putting jerry's email address in there um we're looking at first grades getting chromebooks um and so i think at first grade we're feeling like uh if they were in school they'd be using the desktop computers during computer class so again having a chromebook and getting some support on its use we feel like's appropriate and i think it's a good question and certainly if some first graders if they have ipads at home and feel more comfortable on them you know ipads get to be limiting as students learn typing skills and are able to communicate that way you know for many students for myself included typing on an ipad uh is more challenging than typing in a keyboard but i i see lots of people better than me at that routinely so i think if that's that's a family choice but there are chromebooks will be available for first grade um oh great thank you phoebe for that uh chromebook piece about at this point we'll hold on to them and i think if there's uh a fix up time it'll come after you know the the 2000 have gone out and if there's a problem in touch with us and we'll work that out um i know i missed some because they were coming in really quickly so i'm going to scroll up or get near the end of our time period i think there's a question at the bottom um so it's a phoebe excuse me it's a danielle asks a good question about it's a pelham specific question so it looks to us based on the initial read that we'll have two to three virtual classrooms across our two districts clash union 26 which is the emerson pelham at the grade level as pelham only has one teacher per grade level their pelham's teachers can't do the virtual school plus the in-person school it's not possible to do both um so for upper grade students when students come in in person and students transition to virtual there will be one teacher that is assigned or more than one but a teacher will be assigned to that virtual classroom as the majority of teachers go to in-person instruction um and so it's um i think there will be that transition um and we can definitely communicate that for pelham it's a unique perspective because there's not another teacher but the same is true there may not be a virtual teacher from crocker farm for a certain grade level maybe a teacher from fort river or from wildwood um and so uh we're doing the best we can i'll be honest that there's there's many um thanks laura uh there there's many um schools that are just using um and i shouldn't say just but are using um online companies to do their virtual in other words they're putting all their teachers um in the in-person learning and using like ingenuity or the florida virtuals charter school we've decided in this district we're trying to support both uh we're trying to support both the in-persons uh students with teachers from our districts as well as the remote and so there comes some there comes with challenges with that but some of the neighboring districts have sort of avoided that problem but for us we wanted our teachers in front of our students whether in person or virtual um you know i think the pelham specific update came from the principal i think she's emailed that but i would i would go to lee who's incredibly responsive on that if you don't need a chromebook provided i think you're all set because there was an email just asking for who needed it will the kindergartners be doing more screens and video calls they're they'll have access to those some of those online programs but especially as those kindergarten students have never been in our schools before if they have it was the crocker farm preschool we we're trying to keep the screen time lower and that's why they have half days to be more realistic about it but it wouldn't be that they don't have access to the online programs i'm looking at tim to make sure i'm correct that they would have the same access to some of the early childhood or early reading online yeah yeah um so danielle's question it would be a mixed group pelham and amherst kids it might be a mixed group between market and fort river kids for that online option um to explain the chromebooks uh anyone who needs a chromebook can get a chromebook uh there was an email multiple emails that went out asking for who is interested in chromebooks and those pickups are organized by school on your principal uh has emailed those out and if if that's something that you haven't gotten i would i would get in touch with your principal uh but that's sort of uh in in effect but no one needs to get a chromebook because we don't uh if you have a device at home that you feel like you'd like to use or you feel uh is sufficient that's great particularly as a nationwide chromebook shortage based on some things going on on the other side of the world um but i think if you're in a grade my advice would be if if you have a student in grades one through six having some kind of laptop or chromebook is probably advisable um for some people the ipad may be sufficient um at least at the beginning of the year and it may trend maybe people may want to transition later um and um if it's a foreigner i see a four river specific question if people can't pick up supplies i would get in touch with with miss chamberlain um to see what other options are available uh the ipads are unrude they've been saying they've been shipped for a while um and as soon as we get them we're gonna provide them um but like many technology devices these days uh the back orders on them is is is a real challenge um so we're doing we're scrambling as best we can to provide uh the resources as best as best we can um so um there's a question of phase two students stay online how might they get a teacher from another school how does it work with principals and directors related to each school so at the time that students go in person at any phase they may get a teacher from another school because the it's going to be a district-wide approach to who the virtual teachers are again our choices where district-wide approach or a virtual school you know like florida virtual schools the one that most people around here are using are ingenuity so that transition will happen when we ask for binding surveys which will be a couple weeks before that phase starts and it'll be communicated who that teacher is ahead of time um and so there's a question about in-person versus independent work versus special education services and that's really dependent on what the special education service is so that's going to be individual student dependent um so for kindergarten we would be giving an ipad not a chromebook anyway that's correct um and i think for kindergartners to start with that at this point is really just a device that they can access and meet their teacher i think it's much less important what device it is um this is the beginning of kindergarten uh really it's around building relationships uh it'll be about orienting so i think for for five-year-olds i wouldn't stress which device it is at the moment because we're not going to be asking tremendous amounts of homework or work to be done it's really going to be much more teacher directed and orientation focused at the beginning of the year than it is going to be sort of getting to the curriculum in a very fast way we know that these children are five years old we know they're entering kindergarten a very unusual circumstance and we know particularly for the students who are coming in person assuming that we wrap up negotiations effectively they're going to be starting in-person school pretty soon so that online interface is really going to be about supporting students about how does how does kindergarten work and supporting their re-entry into school a couple weeks later so i that's not one i would stress you know one of the nice things about google meets right now is if people have google chromecast i think it's called people can also stream from any device onto their television which is a really nice feature for you thinking about young kids and and screen sizes and so um that that's what i'd say about kindergarten and teachers can conduct classes from the classroom virtually they also can do it from their home setting and that's the choice that teachers are making um [Music] i think probably the last question we have time for is most students want to participate in the same specials in the same day so the special schedule will rotate by different grade levels so it would be that it's not so much a choice perspective it's that the class the the group would go together to those specials [Music] yeah and so it's 9 20 we're about five minutes over uh but that that's okay because there's a lot of good questions if are continuing questions i'd encourage you to follow up with either your child's teacher which you'll find out in the next day i think almost all the placement information at all the schools is going out today or tomorrow so that'll come soon or certainly can reach out to the principal for some school school school specific questions um i know our teachers are well equipped to be able to manage this they're really focused on orienting all of your children as well as all of you into what this school year looks like i know it's a really odd thing and we really appreciate your patience that we're in trying to reinvent what we do in school and i feel much much more confident in where we are than i did last spring because we've had a summer of incredible work done by our teachers and tim was one of the people who organized this around we organized multiple sessions of live instruction for our special education students for title 1 students for ell students and we learned a tremendous amount about what works and what doesn't in a non-emergency setting in the summer so we're really taking what we know didn't work in the spring as well as what did what worked much better in the summer and really trying to apply it and we know it's complex but what i guarantee you is your teachers will walk you through this and they're not going to no student's going to be lost on day one with getting oh i i'm on page 74 already of my of the book that i'm supposed to be reading it's really going to be a soft entry into this is what this year is going to look like uh this is what um kind of this is how this is going to work this is how we're going to support you as children as caregivers to make the best out of this experience and so i want to reassure people that we've showed a schedule that's not going to exist on day one that schedule on day one is much more focused on that orientation that's going to last for a couple days because we want people to um to feel comfortable and confident everything that's in this slide deck is will be on our website on the fall 2020 website later this morning the actual schedules that tim went through was emailed out a couple days ago i think tim i'm trying to think um yeah yeah maybe yeah um and in terms of the a and b blocks your classroom teacher of the school will be sharing that before the school year starts so you have that and so we we know uh imperfect situation and perfect solution we feel much better about this solution than where we were last spring and much better about offering live direct teaching every single day in all of the primary content areas and small groups to your children so with that i appreciate all the feedback and comments keep them coming to either myself tim or the principals maybe deb can put mine and tim's email addresses in here the principal's email asks you email addresses i think you'll have for those of you who couldn't come on couldn't come to this this youtube link will stay live and active so if someone wants to watch this the same youtube link that you're all accessing right now you can email to people and say oh this was good you can send it we'll also send it in the newsletter that that's coming tomorrow um and in terms of day one you're you will hear from your teachers in your school about the logins before then that'll be individually that'll be individual so you know tim and i don't have the master list to send you at the moment we did from a security perspective uh we wouldn't put it in a public space anyway uh because we're very conscious of that so again we really appreciate the 150 or so people who logged in today to have this hopefully more people get to see it and we really appreciate all the questions and feedback and we'll continue to do these kind of sessions moving forward have a great have a great morning and look forward i'm sure everyone's anxious to get their placement information the next day so i know you'll be at your mailboxes looking out for that and thanks again

okay i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic always bro [Music] of course uh joseph britton jose he will be late okay rachel chaleski yeah kate canetta here gladys cooper yeah lauren daley joe da silva president katherine hodgston here rich jannelli kathy molinero here al russo here amy spelina here and present one coming okay thank you all uh dr sam do we have any recognition tonight um welcome everybody i'm recognizing everyone for being present okay [Music] okay uh kate will you do the public participation information please of course uh due to the unique nature of the covid19 crisis and the limitations of technology members of the public who are danbury residents are invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at danbury.k12.ct.us thank you um sandy do you want to do the uh two comments that you have sure first one is from demesha moore i have a few concerns regarding the school system and mr hannah how do you intend to handle the threats that mr joe hannah made threats of bullying and threats made to families what is your stance on bullying during the principles breakfast mr donovan said that he was aware of the behavior of mr hannah before the newspaper article when did you all become aware of mr hannah's actions why was this information withheld from students and their families were you aware of prior misconduct at past employers of mr hannah i am looking for accountability here who is responsible for hiring mr hannah we the people deserve to hear publicly who this is and does he or she or them share the same views as mr hannah will there be training to directly address these issues why was mr hannah given the option of resigning moving forward what is the plan to prevent the hiring of such individuals why do we have racial tension that is obvious in the school system with teachers the next one is from donna bosworth i am writing to the board to ask what mitigating strategies and resultant tests have been conducted within our buildings in preparation for any potential partial or full return of our staff and students the following guidelines come from the cdc evaluate the building and its mechanical and life safety systems to determine if the building is ready for occupancy such as hazards associated with prolonged facility shutdowns such as mold growth or issues with stagnant water systems and take appropriate remedial actions ensure that ventilation system signaling facility operate properly there have been concerning reports of legioneer's disease across schools throughout the country consider taking steps to improve ventilation in the building in consultation with each with an hvac professional based on local environmental conditions and ongoing community transmission in the area increase the percentage of outdoor air potentially as high as 100 percent improve central air filtration increase increase air filtration to as high as possible without significantly diminishing design airflow the test of each system should show co2 levels below 800 ppm consider using portable high efficiency particulate air hepa fan filtry i'm sorry fan filtration systems to help enhance air cleaning especially in higher risk areas ensure exhaust fans and restroom facilities are functional and operating at full capacity when the building is occupied consider using ultraviolet germicidal radiation as a supplemental technique to inactivate potential airborne virus in the upper room air of common occupied spaces in accordance with industry guidelines most of our buildings are old and don't have this infra infrastructure set up has the cares money been allocated to remediate these issues we can't simply change filters and hope that it is enough to protect our staff and our children especially as we see the rates of cases in the young rising at an alarming rate the cdc guidelines also specifically note that plans should include all employees in plans for example management staff utility employees relief employees janitorial staff and maintenance staff i feel that this mandate has not been followed in regards to these issues or the many other encompassed in the reopening plan there has been an absence of teacher voice and our reopening plans which i hope that the board seeks to rectify as we embark on the challenges that this new school year presents and i am just hitting refresh on our emails and that is it for public participation tonight thank you so very much stan um kate will you do the consent calendar please of course i'll make a motion that the board of education approves the items on the consent calendar exhibits 20-82 through exhibit 20-90 as recommended motion made by kate could i hear a second second second about show are there any discussion on the uh consent calendar yes yes a comment um i just want to thank sandy first for the very detailed recording of the minutes and the many minutes that are in our packet this evening um i do would like i would like to point out that in the june 24th meeting minutes that it's not recognized who and how members voted um as in with the our other minutes um you know if passed unanimously it should state it was unanimous and if there was one abstention it should state who that was made by then [Music] can that be corrected for next time okay any any other question concerning the meeting uh we will have those corrections uh hopefully at our next meeting okay thank you seeing that all in favor uh could i hear i'm sorry i'm used to the old way uh joe britton is not here rachel chaleski hi kate canetta gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli hi kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy spolino hi that's 10 votes for us thank you all the motion so careful um do we have anyone from the uh employee's booth here no any of our students here it's cooper i'm yes yes okay how are you good evening how are you i'm very well thank you nice to see you sorry i i was a little delayed getting on um no problem no those zoom waiting rooms anyway how are you everybody i'm doing fine how are you very good very good for pumping jumping from meeting um i just wanted to take two minutes of your time to um speak about the um efforts that your teaching staff has been putting in not just the past two days of opening but the two weeks prior to that with the new learning the knowledge that we've all been working hard to acquire and implement and just to let you know um that our teachers are tasked with as you know um a ridiculous amount of workload on their shoulders right now and to please be um cognizant understanding um gentle because one of the things that is happening throughout the community as our teachers are getting the the the comments and the directives from parents when things are not going so great with technology so as things are breaking down and we're working out all the tweaks with our technology issues throughout the district and some of them are not even district issues they're they're google issues with our google classrooms um you know who gets gets all the emails and the texts and the communication are the teachers and oftentimes the teachers are getting the direct blame for those issues that are issues that are well beyond our control um especially somebody who is you know not a tech troubleshooter but someone who considers themselves very tech savvy um you know we we've i've had colleagues speak to me about parents um already on day two sending you know very angry communications to teachers so i just wanted to put it out there for you know the board record to let our community know and to let our board know that you know teachers are working an incredible amount to make sure our parents are up and connected but there are some things that are beyond our control that you know need to be addressed within uh the administrative realm and not the teacher realm and perhaps within the google realm and i just wanted to go on the record to commend the teacher effort and commend the uh the amount of collaboration that has taken place in the past few weeks just to get up and running and just to say how incredibly proud we are of our teachers and um the efforts that they put forth make sure our students are getting the best if we can so i just wanted to say kudos to them and i hope everyone has a great year thank you no thank you and thank you for your leadership and and fully support those comments that you have just brought forth to us and and we know that everyone is working hard and we know that everything is not going to fall in line just because you said today is monday or whatever today uh sometime it takes time but we thank everyone for all their efforts that they're doing to make sure that the students receive what they're looking for or need in school but thank you again aaron thanks miss cooper we're doing the uh presentation on the facilities update yes ma'am okay uh during our last special meeting we didn't get to this part and um i've asked rich chalbert and courtney to update the board of all of the happenings that have been going on this summer if um you would include conversation about um i know i know kelly is here about granville to update him as well that would be helpful so courtney take it away okay thanks dr cell um hi everybody totally good to see you all at our regular board meetings um so uh we were going to do this a few weeks ago and now we're in a little bit different of a space so i just wanted to let you know first before i go through building re-entry plans for hopefully in october if our students are back in person learning um where we are today um so right now um the buildings are open the administrative staff is in and teachers are invited in if they choose to work remotely from their classrooms the custodial staff is is in our safety advocates are there and we're running our food service distribution from all of our elementary schools right now for the remote learners that are in need of a meal we just got approval from the state to continue running a waiver for our summer seamless program which gives us a great deal of flexibility in that any kid can show up they don't even need to be a danbury student it just needs to be a meal for a child um and a family member can pick it up on their behalf so we have some flexibility so if you could let all of your um people know out in the community um that you speak with that there's a lot of flexibility around that they just have to show up and let us know how many meals they want we're doing it monday through friday 12 p.m to 2 p.m to be able to give a little bit of time for people to get into their learning for the day um and um and and so we've heard so far that that's going decently well um so we wanted to tell you what our planning process was just very broadly speaking um kevin assistant superintendent kevin walston myself um the health services coordinator kathy o'dowd and rich jalbert as well as richie torres um set up sort of building templates that included every aspect that the individual principal leadership needed to address we can't be in all 18 buildings and we know our principals are the experts in their individual buildings so we thought through every piece of guidance that we had from either the cdc or the american institute of architects um the the parent that just um called texted uh emailed in some comments quoted all of the requirements that were supposed to be falling for guidance for the buildings and i'm gonna address that as i go through that's one of the aia american institute of architects guidance that we did follow to ensure that our hvac systems were up to standard and running as well as testing the water quality in the buildings so we developed a template for all the principles to touch on each of the points so so arrival and departure egress in the hallways classroom setup cafeteria meal distribution and then every other common area we thought through every aspect of when a kid gets on the bus to come to school to when a kid a student leaves the bus or their family driving them or they're walking so from arrival to the building to going into their classroom doctor style engaged a consultant to work with us um to advise about signage and flow protocol based on the size of the hallway for example and the particular setup of the building whether we could do one way where it was practical or if we had to maintain two-way we also purchased a signage that would encourage that distancing of six feet in the single lines and set up all of that in the buildings now if someone went to look at this in mid-august i think it was like actually early august um i know the date because it was the date of the um mini you know hurricane that happened august 4th um actually on the fifth rich myself and kevin were in the buildings with flashlights because we wanted to get everything ready but if you looked on that day it wouldn't look like that we were it was ready because in order to put things together we had to pull them apart so you would have seen that all the desks were pushed out to the side of the classroom and a lot of the teacher materials were out in the hallways we were getting everything ready so that we could space out everyone in the classrooms to the maximum practical amount possible and so the the guidance was to have have the individual principals work with their custodial staff to follow certain templates depending on what the size of the classroom was and what the particular furniture in the classroom was um so in addition we addressed the egress so the movement from when students arrive and this will you know continue to be the protocol we set up these templates and then we met with the principals um individually for each school and then we did building walk-throughs so from those four staff members i talked to kathy o'dowd myself um kevin and um and rich albert and rich torres walked through each and every one of the schools to clarify any questions that they had for um you know their particular space so for example one of the guidance was use as many building entry points as possible so if you've got some you know normally kids would have arrived at one or two locations open up as many doors as you can handle so that the students could remain cohorted so for instance great plane had a way to open up great plane i'm sorry hayes town had a way to open up one of the back doors so that all of their kindergarten and first graders were coming in one way and they go directly into their classrooms and they're remaining cohorted so they're not coming in the same entrance as other students um the same thing with for just missiles we opened up as many you know points of dismissal as practical within any given um building um cafeteria so when we open as you probably know the secondary um are going to be schools are going to be grab and go for their um well grab and bring bring into the classroom for the breakfast and then grab and go for the lunch and the elementary schools are grab and go bring into the classroom for the breakfast and then um they're um going to the cafeteria in most places sometimes it's a it's a hybrid so sometimes it's some of the students are in the classroom some of the cafeteria it depends on what coverage they had and what they could handle in terms of the infrastructure of the individual building we also addressed playground and outdoor use which said that you know maintain cohorting on the playground within classrooms the identification of isolation rooms so we visited each and every isolation room to make sure that if it had it had a window if it didn't have a window we purchased um air flow that was rich on here i don't remember the name the air filter purification that has a particularly hepa filter um for each of the isolation rooms that don't have a window um and we also have swapped out doors so that there's a window in each of the doors for the isolation room so that staff can monitor the children and still be safe we visited staff lounges and offices and took out extraneous furniture so that we were encouraging um you know giving people places to be so that they could do their planning and eat their lunch but not congregating in in mass um the city ventilation so um i have an email from sean um he hanley he's been working with us he because i couldn't describe all the work that they did you know directly so i wanted to read from his words they went through and looked at all the rtu's which are the rooftop units and the air handling the units and they checked all the belts monitors controllers actuators linkage arms dampers and filter racks and they replace them with what's called the merv 8 filter or where appropriate and the airflow could handle it what's called the merv 13 filter which is just a finer finer mesh of filter and um that's only where the flow can handle that type of a filter in addition we addressed adjusted all of our building controls to allow for to flush the air like an hour earlier in the morning and then two hours after closing at night so there's more constant airflow in the building than would normally be set on our building maintenance system our building management system they also looked at all the exhaust fans and did performance maintenance on them and includes replacing belts and motors as needed um in addition we walked through with sean kevin myself rich and and used i don't know the name of the device but it's uh um it measures the carbon um the co2 within a given room and the the parent that wrote in mentioned levels below 800 and they were well below 500 in most cases and where they weren't there were adjustments made to the airflow so we were well well within the range and there are plans to revisit as staff and students return because the co2 is a little bit different when you have more people in the building but we're well below the levels that you would expect to see with people not in the building so we would expect that it would remain the same when people return which is a good sign of fresh air coming into the buildings we do have old buildings we do have upgrades that we need to do there are capital plans to address that and i can say that we're within the guidelines for what's recommended for for airflow in our buildings now um okay in addition so this is just talking about the process so dr salle engaged an architect we established all the building specific templates and we pushed those out to the building principals who then planned out every classroom every common space i mean they really thought through every single aspect of the kids being in the building and i can't say enough about the custodial staff i was so so so impressed with how the majority of the buildings were just spotless and i was so grateful to them for making the the buildings look so beautiful this summer because they spent so much time painting and cleaning and getting the the stuff ready before while we were developing that models because while we didn't know whether we were going to be falling or hybrid we couldn't tell them how many desks to put in the classroom and how to set up the egress once we had that information they just they they went with it we do still have things to pull out of the buildings we paused on that to let all the staff come in that that is coming in all the staff that wants to be in the teachers to see their classrooms and to take out the rest of those extraneous materials and then we'll go in and pull them out and put in storage whatever needs to be stored um [Music] so we conducted all the walkthroughs and we did revisits as needed where people needed additional guidance there were questions about what was purchased i just wanted to say we did purchase a lot of um district-wide equipment we did not push it out to the schools over the summer because we were concerned that it would walk um you know we didn't want to see all the ppe that we spent money on um you know just people taking it home and the sanitizer so we we've to date um earmarked and or spent about five million dollars on what i would call um pandemic preparation whether that's from academic you know pieces so online instruction and distance learning to the purchase of ppe sanitizer disinfectant you know rich rich his entire warehouse is taken up with pallets of disinfectant so when the kids come back we're really ready to and sanitize we're really ready to supply even if you know the country supplies run low i think we're pretty in pretty good shape we purchased through kathy o'dowd all age shields for every staff member that would like them and we also purchased backup ppe that the nurses are keeping in case a student comes in and doesn't have the appropriate ppe or or doesn't have any at all we also push that out to our bus company so they have a supply on hand so if the kid shows up at the bus you know we have additional ppe supplies so that the kid can ride the student can ride a bus we purchase additional high school science desks um because they were actually five foot desks and there was just no way that we could get the number of kids that we needed to students in the classroom the very old desks so we purchased those to be able to do the distancing uh paper towel dispensers replacing the um airflow the hand flow dispensers which are not recommended um and wall dispensers for hand sanitizer placed in key areas and sanitizer for every classroom that doesn't have it's like a big gallon jug every classroom that doesn't have um [Music] um every classroom that doesn't have like hand washing sync in addition we provided it in the classrooms with hand washing sinks but we're encouraging hand washing through signage and through reminders with training so we also established some policies and procedures so we limited restricted school access to only essential employees and that means that there's a table outside and if a parent comes in and you know wants to bring in a lunch for a kid that forgot to bring their lunch to school they're reminded to stay outside and some will come in to get it from them we establish new cleaning protocols for the bathrooms and we we are in the process of hiring when kids come back um additional um seasonal custodial staff for every school and we establish updated fire drills and lockdowns because there's going to be floor signage that's directional floor signage and we wanted to make sure that students and staff know that it's you know go to your nearest exit do not follow the signage on the floors so there's guidance on that and each school established a reopening and safety reopening committees and safety committees with representation from all members of the community school community so that includes paraprofessionals lunch staff custodial staff teaching staff everyone that's involved in keeping staff and students safe in the buildings um we've conducted training series um one that cathy o'dowd put together which is what school personnel need to know and it's very fact based and it's linked to all cdc documents and there's a lot of really great videos that we train staff in about hand washing mask wearing water appropriate masks six foot distancing all the things that staff needed to know to keep each other safe fire safety protocols we trained our custodian staff in appropriate cleaning and use of supplies so making sure that we're still complying [Music] with the requirements for keeping asthmatic children safe and making sure that we're not just disinfecting but we're also sanitizing and um people also were trained in their regular bloodborne pathogen um on training series so our next steps while we're getting ready for a hopefully october re-entry is to continue to review the airflow maintenance with building staff so you know continually look as people come back into the building as i said keep testing the systems and um distributing the ppe to the nursing staff so kathy has done that this week um and so they're ready to go with backup ppe for people that don't um that show up without it and um kelly has also worked with kathy to purchase special ppe equipment for all um special needs staff that work with students with special needs which includes gowns and gloves and additional face shields and protective desk fields and things like that and as you can see on this slide there's um stickers with one way directional and reminders most of the stickers are down in the schools now and are placed but some schools said can i pause on this because i really need to get up and running with this full remote model so they pause for a minute you know while school gets started and we're going to go back into the buildings next week to make sure they have the help they need to continue to finish putting down the signage and then we'll revisit the furniture and room setup depending on you know when we re-enter if the numbers have shifted a little bit um we'll have to look at the classroom setups and help to space kids out more if we can do that and make adjustments as needed um so that's that's our update on on building safety and building readiness um yeah that's pretty much it dr zell we can't hear you though you're still i think you're still on view is kelly there i'm here would you update on granville ahead guys like sure um so we're still working on um working with the builder to finish the project at granville which will house eight of our preschool classes um for this year um he is on a tight timeline to try to get it completed for um the first week of october for us um he's been working with the district with the it team regarding kind of the technology infrastructure um we're working with a police officer who's also in security to make sure that we have top notch security installed um you know visual cameras uh you know inside and outside of the building security systems and protocols in place he's also customizing some of the areas and spaces to make sure that we have sufficient um space for our related services such as our ot and pt um so they don't have to uh share joint spaces with uh the physical education teacher like they currently do um and i'm really excited i think it's gonna be a nice new facility um you know rich and his team are on kind of standby to help move in our stuff as quickly as possible um and as soon as we get the um green light from the city that we're approved to start moving in we will go ahead and do so but um there are some finalizing things that still need to occur and so i keep in regular contact with him to try to ensure we can get get in there as close to the start of october as possible thank you i don't know if you have any questions of course it'd be a good time are rich albert um is he there richard he is i'm sorry that i didn't even get to acknowledge and rich has worked incredibly hard all summer he is here rich rich anything to happen thank you uh no just to you know uh [Music] you know reinforce uh what courtney said you know we've been working very diligently school by school making sure the you know social distance stickers are on the floors we've put up approximately 200 pieces of plastic gas dividers for secretaries and safety advocates um we've done more painting than we've ever done in the past 10 years with the amount of time so if you go to schools they're looking cleaner and and nicer than they ever have been and we just keep on working towards the goal so so question i would have of vietnam richard courtney wednesdays where we've decided as many districts to use it as um making sure our staff and students are not in for um extra cleaning so you want to talk a little bit about your protocol during that day so people are aware why we're doing it sure the the the goal is uh to the only people in on wednesdays are school lunch because they're still distributing food and we're basically doing a deep cleaning every wednesday which is a thorough king of every room and disinfecting it is a two-step process you have to clean first and then disinfect so that's what we're doing on wednesdays all touch points uh bathrooms light switches doorknobs uh desktops out of the game and the board did hear a little bit about some extra um personnel coming in during the day any comments about that to help with the cleanliness sure we have uh job posting for what's called a temp custodian uh when we go to a hybrid plan we plan on bringing in an extra custodian at all the schools uh specifically to clean the bathrooms and disinfect during the day uh state guidelines recommend bathrooms that are cleaned twice a day as opposed to just at the end of the night so that's what we're going to be doing and i i can't let's go without asking kevin kevin's is the liaison with the uh with our program in terms of the um the established mitigation program and i heard a comment about no teacher input i do any comments about that kevin well i i think we mentioned this in some of our previous meetings the the the true teacher voice is going to be found in the reopening plans of all of our schools so courtney in her presentation earlier she mentioned that every school is going to have a local reopening committee and so these plans are going to come alive at our campuses throughout the district all 18 schools with the support of teacher safety advocate nurses para professional all of their voices and participation in the process and so you know i i think we had heard some of the feedback earlier in this process when we were you know first um revealing the plan um and accepted responsibility it certainly could have been greater teacher participation but we made sure as part of this implementation process where really counts in our schools is that we're asking our principals to make sure that the teachers paraprofessionals they have appropriate uh representation so we we did note this from one of our previous discussions and feel like you know it's everyone is going to have the voice that they deserve um as these plans are being played out as implemented at the schools thanks kevin i think i'd be remiss if i didn't thank the city sean and antonio for their help um you know they have over 70 buildings and they did come in and prioritize and work with us it's been difficult so it's been a good team approach a lot more work to do i think this dl time has permitted us to do some refining we're learning from some of our suburban surrounding district what's going on to help us out but um i need to thank the city for all of their assistance as well so i think unless people have questions we can move on guys i just have a quick question yes cat okay um i just was wondering if there's an update about the osborne street facility no i mean i i go well let me just uh update you in general the matrix uh things are still moving forward uh what does that mean that means that people are looking at it that are decision makers so i have not been uh told anything about other than um the state department the building group they look at they're um they're comfortable with the idea so from that standpoint i guess going on but that's all i know the osborne project um courtney do you have any update on that i'm sorry i was on you i think um as far as i know we're still on track um the funding was approved and it's for next year like one year from september um so september 2021 um that would be yeah so as far as i know if that project hasn't shifted and it's it's timeline at all the only thing we're doing kate we're trying to anticipate and look for um particularly now because we have to move a lot of desks and things out of schools we're looking for another site that may may be available um to to take care of us while this year goes through and then we figure these two years of construction so we have a place for everyone to um put supplies and and park our uh are added uh storage issues so that's what we're working on okay but that's all i know at this point dr sal if i could add um the city is in the process of uh you know finalizing i'll consider the project um i've met with three architectural firms this week to show them around osborne street uh so you know they are in the process of narrowing it down to uh selecting an architect oh okay well i don't know if the whole board heard you um because you you so you were engaged this week to meet with some architects and they went around looking at osborne so this screening for architects is what you're saying yes okay all right thanks richard i've got a question for courtney any other questions yes i do uh gladys i have a question for courtney uh and that is important at some point in the near future is there a way that you can give us a cost analysis in different categories not specific details i don't care how many faucets and stuff you you you bought but uh how much do you spend on these um pandemic situations in terms of last year how much we spent on the last year's budget and how much we spent on it in the current year's budget and can you determine from what sources of revenue that came from in other words was it all uh cares money or part of this food from our budget etc etc if you can furnish us with that when you feel you're at a completion date uh i'd appreciate it oh i'd be happy to rich yeah it's a little a little bit of a moving target in that depending on what we continue to do i can tell you right now what we've committed and encumbered based on you know our assumption that we'll be back in in mid-october or october and then if that changes we'll just give you updates but yeah we do have something that we have been tracking all the spending for last year this year against the cares act money the new coronavirus funds the additional technology um that the state gave us um directly as well as um our our you know grant carryover funds that we had this year so i'd be happy to share that yeah great well the question may be kind of difficult in these figures and i just suspect what we're talking about a material cost is there any way to estimate or evaluate what a labor cost is attributed to to do this i know the labor that you purchased for outside contractors etc is there but our own internal staff in terms of man hours used you know is that a possibility to to try to estimate something like that that's a good question you mean um man hours used in preparation and planning for exactly such as you know risk job is spending you know three months of his time basically on this and other things i could work with you on some of the concepts on that but i think it'll be an interesting exercise when we put both these numbers together a firm number for material costs and another realistic estimated cost for labor i think we'll find out that this cost is a huge huge outstanding process oh for sure yeah even just in the time commitment that cabinet and rich and principals and and teachers oh my gosh yeah yeah yeah i'd be happy to work with you on that thank you thank you very much and you guys have done an outstanding job personally i want to thank you all uh i'm going to ask glass that's okay to speak on behalf of the board because i'm sure the board feels the same as i do both the teacher janitorial staff the administrative everybody has done an incredible job uh and and uh i i do adhere to what aaron had mentioned that people have to be a little bit sympathetic to the opening of this to basically be patient so that we can debug stuff that we've never done before and thank you again for your help thank you gladys uh okay uh courtney thank you and thank rich and your entire team for doing a great job we certainly appreciate it and we know that we will continue to do uh um a job that's going to uh continue to make things uh better for our students once and our staff once they come back to school thank you again thank you gladys that means a lot to us thank you okay uh before we move on to our action item uh rachel i want you to do to make the um the motion for the the action items we need some uh we we're going to table uh the four action items until our next board meeting and uh once we make a motion to take there's no discussion so uh mr wallston would you want to come on and just briefly uh let us know why we're going to table this and just wait until next month to um accept the uh four action items yes miss cooper so we we just asked um so that the board in the community has more time to review um the the four policies we posted the cape version of the policies um but the policies that this board of proof of first reading were actually the appropriate ones the right ones however we posted the cave version and we just just want to make sure that the community has an opportunity to see the appropriate ones uh for the next meeting so we did make the adjustment uh that joe had recommended i know he's not i don't think he's on yet that joe had recommended and so we did make that update um and so that was actually noted um in the agenda um and then we'll we'll have everything ready for the community to see in time for our next board meeting uh thank you mr watson and thank rachel who's chairperson of the policy committee uh because you make the money we're gonna do all four of them at the same time okay sure i'll make a motion to table action items a through d until our next meeting [Music] by uh rachel could i hear a second yeah uh second who's i amy sorry okay the motion was uh made by rachel's second by amy all the uh kate could you do the roll call please of course uh rachel scholeski aye hi cal russo uh amy spolino i passage unanimously thank you all uh superintendent's report thanks and listen to this one this is this is going to be overwhelming but if you look at the um the agenda uh cara aptly put three put a goal out there and i just want to reinstate it for the board what was our goal for the opening was to get students connected and we'll comment about that tonight with gina build relationship and community in the classroom on social emotional is something that has been very important and uh missing link in many respects and we and uh we're acknowledging that need um the orient students to the norms expectation and tools that they will need to be successful in the digital environment no easy task the high school is still handing out uh computers we are handing out computers setting up hot spots doing a number of things so our kids are engaged and uh it's evolutionary keeps happening daily uh for us um you heard what aaron said um i thank the board for your indulgence and permitting us to have those extra days because i think they were spent well um although we would like to have had them in person but we had to make a modification and uh the work that kelly with her staff and kara and her staff and all of them it's just been incredible um to roll this out because it doesn't happen with without the teachers in the classroom each and every day and those three that goal is really relevant to us um so i will start with um kara uh i will reserve some time at the end i do want to make a comment regarding uh a situation that was mentioned at the beginning of the meeting by a parent but i would like to go through this first if we can so with um we'll start with uh with cara in terms of um unlike hartford and some of the other communities we were able to start without a uh without a hitch somewhat uh but go ahead kara so just to dr sell's point you know there's been a uh just a tremendous amount of hard work that has gone into the planning to get ready for um for the opening that was this week um so i i do want to commend all of the um teachers and administrators who put in extraordinary hours administrators for probably at least a month and a half leading up to this nights weekends vacations uh they're around the clock and um you know planning and preparing for eight days of professional development was no small feat and receiving that professional development if you were a teacher was also not easy to do so there's a lot of information to take in there was a lot of planning involved and then we're also kind of trying to make this shift with uh new learning as well as working in an environment that that we're not used to receiving professional development and so um it went relatively well again there's a lot of information in over eight days um and a lot of hard work that has gone in from all parties and it's been a true team effort on everyone's part so i just want to make sure to put that out there um so the one of the things that i think is really important for the community to understand is that um you know we're in a period of making sure that we are number one priority connecting kids and that we are um ensuring equity so there's been a a huge uh push to get kids connected to technology gina could talk a little bit about the laptop distribution but that has been an ongoing process to anyone who needs a laptop principals have been meeting uh students and families needs round-the-clock with convenient times to to do pickups robocalls multiple languages you name it to make sure that we get the access uh to students as soon as possible um we have really good connectivity rates i spoke to every school principal today um except for one um to just you know how is it going you know what do you need how is the connectivity what are the biggest issues that um that you're dealing with in terms of connectivity and and we had some definitely had some um initial google glitches there was a nationwide uh issue with google meets of course our i believe it was uh in part due to the fact that every probably 75 of the country was logging into google classroom and google needs um on the same two days so they're probably working on on their bandwidth and how to handle all of that traffic but um we definitely needed to manage to get through today as well um and it was it was intermittent it wasn't everybody and it wasn't at all times but there was definitely a few glitches there we had some typical connectivity issues in terms of um my password how do i get in how to how does this work um and people kind of maybe waiting until tuesday morning to try to read through some of the information that was shared and teachers worked through the day to connect students and at the end of the day on both days they reached out and circled back to students who maybe didn't connect in the classroom um every single principal particularly k5 and even six eight mentioned that the pleasantly surprised with you know one or two kids missing maybe three in each of the classes and that in many cases they had accounted for at least one or two of those students as either new students that were still registering or had they had contacted the phone in the office to say that they were having some issues and they were working through some of those so um there was a pretty good deal of connectivity um and that made many of us very happy and i'm sure carowinds will update you on sort of the overall percentages but um over the last couple of days it was it was pretty good um and not too far off from what we would normally maybe see during a typical year where people are still coming back from vacation or they hadn't quite checked in yet so i'm relatively pleased with the general connectivity um but number one is to make sure we're connecting with kids and then the next piece is really so now we get kids connected how are we engaging them how are we um attending to their needs how are we building community and navigating this new environment building relationships all over again um particularly being sensitive to the fact that we may have new students who have never stepped foot in our buildings just yet and are and need to um they need to orient themselves to their classmates and feel that connection with their teacher and with the students that are in that room in a digital environment which takes a little bit of extra finesse um to be able to do so um big push on the social emotional learning and building those relationships and eliciting from kids sort of how they have been where they have been and letting them know that we really miss them and that we're happy to have them back um along those lines uh while this is taking place in the classrooms we've had kindergarten orientation taking place uh this week and finishing up this week and principal after principal mentioned how fantastic that was um the having the tents outside was a huge success kids were coming in um we got a chance to meet the parents as well as a student and really do that one-on-one walk through with the technology which was so needed with the kindergarten students i wish i could have done a maybe a first and second grade orientation too but that um has ship has sailed a little bit so we're doing that orientation now uh through through the regular regular means but the kindergarten orientation has been going well um the other issue the other piece too that was a real focus is it's going to take some time for students to understand how to navigate their google classrooms um we put in some new structures and organizational pieces and teachers are walking students through just how to navigate that environment where to find links um how to you know hear where their where their weekly planner is where the course syllabus is um will be open houses that will be upcoming where teachers will walk parents through those google classrooms and how to get information and what they can expect in terms of sort of the weekly overview um so we're happy about you know that those organizational pieces but they do take time to um orient students through um they're also asked to kind of work on digital citizenship and so for those of you kind of you know what is digital citizenship it's really about understanding what a student responsibility is in a digital environment how to navigate that environment responsibly um understanding a little bit about cyber bullying appropriate behavior and how to sift through lots of information that they'll have access to and how to navigate that appropriately um and with integrity so um there's a lot of work ahead there we also have lots of programs that we've been able to resource for students you'll hear things like ixl razz kids imagine learning ingenuity there are read 180 math 180 we have all sorts of different programs at different levels for different reasons and so students need to be able to understand how those programs operate what their responsibility is for those so you will see over the next couple of days at least next five or six days or so the teachers will really spend time working on that as as classes become ready and students are connected and they're operating um as a as a whole and ready to go they'll start moving into more academic and curricular pieces but for now it is connect build those relationships and orient um to the digital environment and when those things are done well then this um the students can and teacher can move more efficiently through curriculum um and be able to concentrate on on those next pieces so um we were very pleasantly surprised today with that um the last two days with the reports um and over the some students have already received their supplies the district purchased um a fair amount of supplies for students so that everyone has access at home to be able to participate and to utilize tools that they'll need so we've sent home markers dry erasers pocket pals art paper will be going home math manipulatives and a variety of other materials composition notebooks art pens so if students haven't received those bags yet the schools will be scheduling a pickup time that works um best to do for distribution uh very soon um and trying to think if there's anything else that we had we did have a couple issues with um a little bit of bombing in google hangout so we did have a couple of students where um you know they had accessed another classrooms link so students shared their google me link out on social media and other students access that so um we we have uh you know we'll be addressing that with students but that is also part of the division did a digital citizenship which is why we um have to have good conversations with students about how they should behave in this environment so um you know these things will come up and we'll address them as they as they uh surface um i also want to address a little bit about um a couple things about special areas so there were some sticky issues k5 in special areas but it was mostly along if you can envision a virtual handoff to another teacher so instead of a teacher walking their class down to art music or pe we have sort of a virtual handoff um where students are are guided to another link and so we're working through sort of practicing that with both the students and the teacher as well as making sure those google meet links are up and running so we'll be pushing through that um and then there were some questions about um flex and asynchronous uh learning and so we did receive a couple of emails about uh wednesday high school and in some cases at the middle school and so on wednesdays wednesdays is primarily a small group instruction day basically for the district and so um our program is made up of both synchronous and asynchronous experiences as well as some defined times for small group instruction so on wednesdays particularly at the high school where flex is noted um and particularly once school gets underway more and more the academics start to flow out of the high school there'll be a lot of expectation for students to be completing asynchronous assignments on wednesday but also plenty of opportunities to access small group instruction and one-to-one support with their teachers and so we thought that that was a very important day for students to be able to do that um you know some some parents uh got an email today that they were thrilled that that was built in because they're worried about screen time and flexibility and we have some parents that are not happy about it and want it to be pure academic uh driven day so in terms of like direct and direct live instruction so um i just wanted to clarify a little bit around what flex is and how it's used typically during the regular school year and work week there's uh 40 40 minutes a day dedicated to flex that's over 200 minutes and so we have sort of tagged that up and compacted that on the wednesdays so it also provides some flexibility for students to receive the small group but then also to complete some of those asynchronous um coursework that they'll have as the year gets starts to progress i'm trying to think if there's anything else along those lines i think that is so all of this going on uh question sometimes comes around i know and me jiren here how can we support parents to support the youngsters are you on in i am could you briefly tell the board what we're doing with that good evening everyone so over the last um three or four weeks we have um at the family and community engagement center spent a fair amount of time working with parents that have come in that have questions about connectivity about how to navigate the different platforms that we're using um so my staff has been working with them as well as supporting central registration from that we have um just recently this week deployed a fair amount of staff to help out with interpreters as interpreters at the kindergarten registry or kindergarten orientations big kudos and thank you to staples who has provided us with over 500 bags of materials that we have distributed to the schools to go out to students in addition to what we already have purchased so families were able to buy either five dollar or ten dollar bags to um distribute and they're already packed up and ready to go so they're out in the schools ready to go to the families um we were able to add to cara's and her team learning manual guidebook a whole family and school partnership guide onto that so that fam so that teachers have more resources at their fingertips to be able to connect with our families out there as we know once that relationship is built then we have smoother sailing um especially in the digital environment we um are working with jen um to update the website and under family and community resources we have a new resource page there that is chock full of tutorials and multiple different languages we actually did one on zoom and google etiquette um so that parents can review that i'm thinking we might want to put up something on digital citizenship as well and then we have a child care program that begins next week at pow with at advance and that is enrolling families we are seeing a large uptick in family child care homes taking more children the office of early childhood um let the family child care providers normally they can only have school-aged children for a very small amount of the day have them now for longer periods of time so older children may be in a family child care home with their younger siblings so that's helping cohort families together a little bit more and the children are getting support while they're there lastly through our priority school grant and our 21st century learning um program we will begin tutoring next week after school with certified teachers for children that have been identified either by their teachers or by their principals as needing more help and so we'll start that um roll out after the teachers regular day around 3 30 or 4 give them a little break and then be able to work with students that still need more help so my office as small as it is um really does work hard at um getting the parent the resources that parents need um answering the phone we take over 150 phone calls a day from families um looking for everything from food to supplies heating fuel things like that so busy office and we're looking for looking forward to finding our new space temporarily while we move out for the construction at osborne street thank you gina as long as you're on could you just quickly update amber up to registration on how that's going because you remember what happened to us last year gina are you there yep i'm here yeah speak up okay can you hear me no hello no yeah that's better that's better okay um yeah i i will speak about enrollment and um and then move on to devices and technology is that okay no just stay with enrollment okay so um we're still seeing enrollment come in certainly not at the rate that we did last year and currently we have about 130 kids in the queue who are handing in their paperwork and we're verifying their information um some kindergarten um kids and um but we're definitely not seeing what we saw last year uh as far as a big surge right that's been what i've been that's what we've been uh monitoring um i know that was always on his mind so um before we get to the next phase here seeing how we're talking about parents and technology you talk about the hot spots and and how you're working with parents and then we'll go to kelly will be next to talk about setting up for her special programming go ahead go ahead gina gina okay so um so if we do have a few hot spots in the district and um and any parent who has reached out to me we have given access to the hot spot for them my big push is going to be with comcast and the internet vouchers which we were awarded through the state and um i got information yesterday that we should be receiving um some more information on when we're going to get the vouchers and how they're getting to us next week they were just the state was just finalizing their deal with comcast and they've already finalized deals with um smaller internet providers and um cox and comcast were the last two that they had to update so i anticipate once that happens uh we'll be able to hand out our vouchers um currently many principals have reached out to me um with families who have reached out to them about um a better internet um connection and um so so we're gathering all that information and as soon as we can we'll get those vouchers out anything else about technology update then you'd like to alert the board to as long as you're up um just that the device uh continues we're concentrating on kindergarten last week it was all new students and anyone who had a broken device and we will keep keep along with that and any anyone who needs help if they have a broken device and they don't know where to go can visit their school website there's a link on each school website to reach out to a technician um for help and and we monitor that on a daily basis so technology connectivity carol um maybe it's better to go to carawanza and then the kelly keller runs you want to talk about the connectivity i think a lot of administrators were pleasantly surprised at the amount of students gary you're going to have to speak up it's hard to hear you so um i think a lot of administrators were pleasantly surprised around how many students they had in attendance um when they were working um with their staff and speaking with their staff um we had an overall rate of 90.4 across the district which is a couple percentage points below um are normal for a stay attendant we are working out several procedural issues and protocols around attendance that we need to kind of sure up the state gave out some guidance at the end of last week around more specific definitions and reporting that we have to do um so i i imagine that this um this number will change as we go in and make corrections um through friday um i i believe you know we're seeing a a higher rate than expected kind of at the uh the 912 level um it was pretty close to where they were last year considering um that were remote um i think there was a three percentage point difference or four i'm sorry four percentage point difference at the elementary it's slightly dipped below what we normally see um but that's to be expected as our youngest learners are learning to navigate this new system um we'll be working with um elementary and secondary principles tomorrow to speak more closely around what the protocols are going to be around attendance and and how to identify students that are not engaged at all those students do have to now be reported to the state so we'll be closely tracking those numbers and those families and and reaching out okay uh kelly um so beginning tomorrow we will um start in the special education department in bringing students in to conduct evaluations we will be using rogers park middle school as well as sacred heart which is our um one of our current preschool location so we'll be doing preschool evaluations at sacred heart or early childhood center and we'll be doing evaluations for students in kindergarten through 12th grade at rogers park middle school we'll be using one floor of the building it'll be one staff member one student per classroom all ppe has been provided or will be provided as well as sanitizer lysol wipes spray to clean materials in between students we are scheduling students either one or two students per day to come in and work with a staff member and we have staggering start times so myself as well as a special education supervisors will be present and on-site we will be having parents drop students off at the door with a few rare exceptions for students with certain needs but parents for the most part will be leaving the students with the staff member the psychologist for example that's conducting the evaluation will walk the child down to their designated location all things will be sanitized and cleaned in between students they will work with the students we'll make sure that you know we give them appropriate breaks between evaluations snack breaks and so forth so we should we're excited to bring kids in we'll have about 15 kids at rogers park tomorrow and about seven or eight students at the preschool level so it is a small group um we'll have at least one staff member for every student that is present probably a few more with the administrative oversight um and we've worked today with christy a big thank you to her and her team for graciously letting us to work in the building as well as kathy for making sure we have all the ppe set up and courtney and her team for helping us to do the extra cleaning that's needed as a result so this will be one step in bringing some of our meteor students in to do part of their programming that's required by law um and then moving forward uh depending you know and working and partnering um with kathy and the health department as well as our medical advisors one of the questions that we are considering is um depending on the decision that gets made on october 1st particular consideration to our high needs special education students so those students that are in self-contained programs and whether or not we can bring in small cohorts of those students into school safely for the month of september um you know the health advisors did not feel that it was in children's and staff best interest to do so um but certainly um it is something that the state has asked us to give special consideration to um and so my team and i are already working on preparation um you know should that uh be a reality across the district we have about 1700 special education students um and what we would deem as the high needs as outlined by the state and their guidance um would be about 300 of those students um so a much smaller subset of our special education population but still 300 students and so is a sizable number and how to go about doing that safely and that doesn't mean all day every day but that does mean for some time with live instruction with their special education and related service providers um just for the board's knowledge um in looking at the evaluations that we're conducting starting tomorrow we did slightly alter uh the evaluation responsibilities uh typically our school psychologists don't do our academic testing it's just policy and protocol and the way we've done business in danbury um they are fully qualified to do those evaluations and so in an effort um to utilize their time and energy to get the evaluations and connections with kids through that done and keep our special education teachers who usually do the academic testing in front of kids so that they continue to receive that live virtual instruction um we've made that alteration um it will be a slight change we are getting parent consent to do that um but we did feel it was uh in the best interest of kids to have them have the time with their special ed teacher through the distance learning on virtual instruction and then designate a majority of our school psychologists time to work on the evaluations so that's enough quite a bit um kim wanna update the board with the staffing how we're putting this all together yep sure so um this year we're just rounding the bend on completing teacher hiring we still have a couple of um vacancies open that we're trying to fill now um but so far this year we've brought in 113 teachers um to give you an idea of scale last year at this time we were about 163 so we're definitely lighter but 113 certified staff members were processed by my two full-time staff team members we did all of their onboarding virtually this year which went very smoothly we figured out how to do their id cards remotely so that their id cards and laptops can be ready for distribution upon their arrival so those certified staff members have all been processed and onboarded at this point in addition to those 113 we've also brought on 30 of our regular either building subs or interventionists people that are working daily in the building with students or as substitutes those folks are now in place and they are serving primarily as substitutes on the occasions when we need them in the full distance learning model at the same time we've opened our substitute teaching pool we have about 250 substitutes currently in there we're in the process of continuing to stay in contact with them because they won't become active until such time as our students return to the hybrid model so we're trying to maintain connections with them so that we can keep them engaged in danbury so that when we're ready to call upon them they're available and that will include rolling out some training some video modules for them to watch just to keep them as i said engaged in addition to that group of people we've also onboarded 22 non-certified staff members outside of the pera and tutor ranks so this would be for example new nurses and other non-certified staff members so an additional 22 of them we have seen an uptick in resignations from our para and tudor staffing we believe that some of that may be because it they have been remote now for quite some time and some of them have found other positions in other career paths in other places so we have so far held off on backfilling those tutor spots in particular um and i'm working with kelly closely so that we'll be prepared to pivot to in-person learning in whatever form it is that we have it and we'll have the staff available to cover those needs at the time that we're ready to enroll them so right now we're on a pause for um filling those tutor vacancies of which we have quite a few as well as edge albert mentioned earlier the seasonal custodians who will move slowly through bringing those folks on board with an eye toward having them in place when students arrive in the building in addition because we are not engaged in in-person learning we are not running our elp program right now so that is our before school and after school programs those employees have been furloughed for the moment um so they have been told without a fee-for-service model in place that we can't um maintain their status as active employees for the moment we're hopeful when we flip back to the hybrid model we'll be able to staff again many of those folks are existing danbury employees so they're our teachers our paraprofessionals our other substitutes so um they're at the ready for or will be at the ready when we're ready to move back into that in person model with elp i've spent a lot of time over the last 10 days or so working very very closely with union leadership of all kinds not only with the teachers but also with the administrators but also with all of our non-certified unions um we've spent a lot of time talking with them answering questions about what it looks like to be back in the buildings and i'm happy to say that those folks are all back in on a full-time schedule with the exception of wednesdays except by invitation and so those folks have been moving through the preparation process and helping us to get ready for the moment when we all hope that we can welcome students in some fashion back in person so a lot of conversations a lot of um tweaking and a lot of really listening to the feedback from the folks on the ground about what we can do to make sure that they're comfortable and safe feeling good about being back at work in addition to that um what is new this year for us is the accommodation process as we've talked about repeatedly in the past we have quite a few staff members who are very concerned about the impact that um this their serious health conditions have on their ability to report to work in an in-person model so right now we've had a total of a hundred of our employees requesting some sort of accommodation of that 161 of them are teachers certified staff members requesting accommodation and among those the breakout is 24 at the elementary level and 37 at the secondary level in addition we've had 36 non-certified staff members similarly request accommodations the requests range from enhanced ppe or enhanced cleaning protocols to the opportunity to work fully from home without entering the building and interacting with students or colleagues um so right now um my team member jen gonzalez has been my right hand left hand and middle hand on this and we are in the process of engaging as required by law but also just by good labor relations to meet in person with every one of those hundred employees so we have started that process everyone was asked to submit medical information and as a follow-up now we're sitting with each of them on zoom calls and we're having discussions with them about what we can provide to them in terms of reasonable accommodations without an undo hardship on the district um so the non-certified folks are more or less finished and we're moving into um with the exception of tutors we're moving in now to the certified staff members um and we'll be meeting with them um daily we've been doing this for about 10 days and i would imagine probably for the next two weeks and part of the conversation is not only do they have what they need in terms of accommodations for right now in the full distance learning model where there may be teachers that are coming in certainly in the special ed context but also when we flip back to the hybrid model what can we do to for them in order to accommodate in some cases that's going to be the ability to provide a distance learning teaching opportunity and only distance learning but those will primarily be focused at the elementary level and so the other conversations are can we provide similar accommodations across all levels so as i said those hundred or so meetings are going on now in addition to that we have seen a small handful of our staff who are seeking assistance through the family's first coronavirus act which has a variety of provisions in it that include provisions not only for their own health and safety but also provisions for child care in the event that their child care situation which could include school has been closed so i'm working with those folks again under the auspices of the family's first coronavirus act and the provisions there um for leave or intermittent leave and we're proceeding through that handful although um we do anticipate that we'll see an uptick in those requests when we are ready to pro to move back to the hybrid model lastly as we round to the bend on those pieces um we are turning to reporting obligations because those continue so my team is working on making sure that we know who is where which certified and non-certified staff members are located where and we're in the process of compiling those reports that are required by the state with october 1st numbers so that starts and lastly um the negotiations continue and um thank you to the two board members who are going to participate in the nurses negotiations with us um many of you might recall that that contract actually expired on july 1st and so we are working under the old terms but have been collaborating closely with the nurse's leadership in this interim period um and so we're ready to schedule that meeting for the end of september and we'll hopefully move forward to at least get them an interim agreement so that they can have their terms and conditions set anew with this turn of the new school year so it's been very busy um great kudos to my team they are working around the clock and i think they've got everybody where they need to be at least virtually with what they need to do their jobs and i will say you know i have had the great pleasure of talking with so many staff members including teachers and non-certified staff in the last two weeks in circumstances are really really difficult these are people who have got some real real issues to deal with and they have been um kind they have been generous and they are working very very hard to do the best they can right now with our um opening this week and um i echo aaron's sentiments from earlier tonight i applaud the efforts of the teachers um some of them are working under some really difficult circumstances and um i say to all of them we will get through this and we'll get you what you need so that's the end of my report thank you kim because it was asked just you know who hires teachers just tell the board that process is because we were asked at the beginning of the meeting sure um so the way this works is when we do a posting typically many of our postings are for backfilled positions so people who have left the district and we need to replace them but some are new postings or different kinds of postings the posting goes up we check to make sure that we've budgeted the the position and the posting contains what it needs to contain and through that we consult with administrators often central office folks and building principles posting goes up and then at the building level we have a really decentralized process so building administrators are typically responsible for screening it can be volumes of applicants for an elementary position we may get 300 400 applicants who go into the pool apple track is a great function for us for sorting so we're able to kind of sort through and help our administrators to do that with what they're looking for they whittle down a list they create a short list for interviewing often the interview includes a panel of other teachers in the building or other staff members there's often a demonstrative task it might be a lesson it might be a live lesson it might be a writing sample that committee then will make a recommendation through the building principal to central office we have what we call a final hiring report once they have checked references they've checked kind of check to make sure that the people have or at least purport to have what they're looking for they send that to central office where it's again vetted by dr sao myself often other administrators in central office we take a look through and set the process of placing them into the salary scale at which time i will personally call to make the offer to employees or potential employees talk through with them any questions on certification if they need alternate certification or a durational shortage permit whatever it might be and and that's where that process ends so um in some it's a it's a very decentralized process but it has the checks and balances of coming through central office for that last kind of big picture look okay well thank you because the question was asked i thought she's so that's how we hire also um the next biggest thing that we have going has been the review of uh our mitigation work particularly with the uh with kathy o'dowd and with cara prunty and they're with us tonight and the two things i want would like to first update us on what's going on with athletics because we've been working with that diligent as we mentioned two weeks ago when we had to go to remote and also the review process for looking at data in terms of our return so um cara parente are you there i'm here and kathy so we'll start with karen then kathy you can chime in go ahead kara uh so just a quick update about athletics uh we started or we will be starting um we made the recommendation to dr cell today to be able to start modified practices friday with following the same almost the same exact protocols from july with the understanding that we will be monitoring this very closely and if anything changes then we'll have to make adjustments to that um in reviewing things for uh going forward in october we have um a time set up to meet towards the middle of the month where we're going to be kind of looking at how the numbers have been trending what's going on with the metrics um specifically you know in regards to labor day weekend uh two weeks after that and also with all of the other schools opening in the in the area in danbury so we're going to see if that has any uh implications on our metrics in danbury is there anything else that you want to add kathy um thank you cara um and again thank you for um your collaboration and all of your hard work uh karen and i continue to communicate pretty much on a daily basis sometimes more than once a day we will continue to look at the metrics and we're also collaborating in with the health department and the community health centers to offer coveted screening sites at our schools we've had a number of drive-through screening clinics um and you know that's certainly certainly helping us to get the testing numbers up and getting the data that we need so that we can make a safe evaluation kathy and cara i think as a board member i'd like him to hear this i've been talking to surrounding superintendents learning because they're opening early uh one thing i could tell you that not many folks are riding buses that was a question i think someone had asked um but um that that's that's something to observe but also we observed three districts the last two days that have entered into covert and they've had to alert their community regarding the event and what procedurally and i know it's in our our re-entry plan but uh kara or and kathy could you just briefly review for the board so they hear what it is the process that we were going through if in fact a student uh is reported to have covert so that they are aware about what will happen sure um so if if i'm notified that we have a student or a staff member that has tested positive for covid um of course dr sales notified our medical advisors and i immediately contact cara at the health department and we have to evaluate this on a case-by-case basis um depending on the situation if it involves someone a classroom that's been in a cohort we will have to determine whether we have to close one classroom two classrooms or an entire building um sometimes we may have to close for what we call uh presumptive uh for two to five days so that we can do a proper contact racing um and as i said it would be on a case-by-case basis so the closure would go how how just the board here is how long the closure the closure um well if it's once we determine the positive case and say we determine if a cohort of just one classroom uh then those students everyone would be uh sent home to quarantine for 14 days and to be covered tested i have a question i'm sure gladys there's a question um i had the mute oh yeah i just have a quick question for kathy or cara um i i'm just trying to get an idea of how we're having the course of events influence what we're doing and what's going around us today new milford schools are closed for the next two days because they had a positive covenant test newtown public schools is a positive cova test now mind-bogglingly they won't say whether it's a student or staff member and it doesn't appear that they've closed anything naugatuck high school is closed because of a positive code test with a student so obviously we did the right thing by not opening because the dominoes are falling and they've been open less than a week how are we taking what the those experiences that other districts are having and how are we going to use that to influence what we're doing and decision making going forward so we will be following on addendum 5 which was presented several weeks ago at the board meeting we have the scenarios from the state on how to respond if someone tests positive how we would respond in terms of closing we have if a student presents with symptoms uh we have criteria for how they're assessed who goes to the isolation room who gets sent home what the response is if they test negative or positive um and again it's on a case-by-case basis because it may differ for example at the secondary level um where students once we're back in the building um they're not as cohorted as in the elementary schools it's just not possible with their schedule so depending on the contact training we may have to close the entire high school versus just one or two classes i i think maybe i think i asked the question badly to where we're gonna be doing going forward analyzing and deciding which point in the next few weeks whether we're coming back in to what degree are you using so let me let me try to hand so let me try to answer that that that's not enough yeah i will tell the board right now i was uh contacted yesterday by the commissioner uh who was asked by the governor what is danbury doing uh in terms of re uh returning so the question to me was what are you doing and what we're going to do is follow the law which is to look at the data just as we did with the athletics and to make an informed decision regarding our situation winston's has been distinctly different than the surrounding towns uh i don't know much that i could take away to say what happened in newtown would necessarily impact us what i can say that will be impacted what's happening in danbury relative to our our data which would would help us to make a healthy decision that's the best way i can approach that and what i told the state is in conversation with kara and kathy um we are going to wait the uh the two weeks now we're particularly concerned regarding the uh labor day and what it may bring and at that point at that point you know me with our two medical advisors and the whole team as we did when we went down when we decided to go dl to make a decision uh cara parenti any any advice to us on that scale bring us some other perspective yeah i think that right now everything is data for us to collect so that's the advantage that we have right now is that we can watch and assess how the community spread is happening and how other schools are are handling these situations um we can see you know if their mitigation plans and their plans are working um there's a couple of things that are happening that are that we want to watch uh one is the labor day one is the other schools reopening the private schools and also um the fact that wescon is coming back so those are some some things that we want to watch very closely and monitor and that will all kind of impact how our metrics are going and then see where we are in a few weeks i don't know if that answers a joke but that's about it absolutely absolutely yeah terry had everything i was talking about and tara is very detailed you know whenever she has she has the data available so we can look at the metrics whether it's a low moderate or high risk based on the positivity yeah much as we did with the athletics which yeah just a quick um comment request for mr 20 doing what we're doing [Music] in the numbers and damn right now still support distance this morning i can't i'm gonna repeat back [Music] yes okay sure [Music] i'm not i'm not sure what you were saying um i also might not have a good connection we're not receiving the information the question clearly and and we can't you know answer it we can't hear i don't know if anyone else can clear it [Music] i think dr sal may be trying to call him okay yeah i couldn't get i couldn't get through i can't unless he wants to write in the chat yes okay mrs cooper i've got a question all right excuse me mr janela do you have a question yes yes to tim um can you mention that on the new hiring that's exactly 100 and you can't hear him either yeah he again you had mentioned this year from the new high risk was 113 and it was down from last year of about 160.

60 years difference and they will probably laugh and talk like peers that's a good thing i think the reason why having a program like the veterans heritage project is important for students of all ages is because we're able to really connect with those who have given us the opportunities that we have here living free in america our generation looks past a lot of things and we seem to kind of just shrug it over like yeah they're veterans yeah but they're they're not just veterans of people and i think that it's important that we that we remember them and our generation needs to remember them being able to really hear firsthand from our veterans just added a new level of respect for everything that they've done and for our history textbooks and learning in the classroom is the beginning not the end and something like vhp allows us to have students pursue learning and patriotism and character development outside of the classroom it if you will shows them a commitment to the community and by learning to be committed to the community they're learning how to serve others and just by association to serve themselves and that's been one of our main goals of ehp here at canyon ranch wow that was incredible and such a pleasure to have mr rosso canyon ridge students families honored guests mike fish president of the saguaro chapter of the sons of american revolution and dennis grau vfw post six nine five 10695 and both are long-standing volunteers it's a pleasure to have you all here and uh such a neat project at this point i'm gonna turn over to mr razo and students good evening honored governing board members and leaders of the dysart unified school district my name is grace forensic i'm a member of the vhp group at canyon ridge school for the third consecutive year canyon has participated in the veterans heritage project we have been sponsored on campus by mr rosso and mr and mrs galindo we are proud to have four veterans featured in the hardbound vhp publication for 2020.