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thank you uh thanks steve i'd like to call this meeting to order the personnel committee um roll call is carol here or jeff do you want me we got it uh mr white okay and the membership anne harrigan tony peregini and me tim white yeah we're all here okay all right jumping back uh pledge do you have a flag jeff or sorry behind me gotcha thank you pledge allegiance to the flag the united states america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice [Music] i did stand up jeff sorry i got this my screen pinned it right at the justice for all so um all right so uh number one topic for us tonight uh there's a couple just and for anybody who happens to be watching or if you watch it later uh the agenda includes uh one topic that we're expecting to discuss publicly and then i think the rest of it would probably just be an executive session jeff is that it yes thank you okay just uh my um my goals and then as you said you know just a couple of real quick contract updates as to what we could share publicly okay all right thank you so um yeah so we're here to uh primarily to discuss uh your goals and you sent us uh you sent us a draft of a draft uh what a week week and a half ago something like that um so i will uh oh let me back up so yeah your annual goals this is basically the intention is to measure you you know how well the school's doing measure you uh against your goals achieving them uh so with that jeff take it away and uh let me let me add one more thing just for the general public so my idea my hope is really yeah i am your i i am a representative of you the public but uh i'm not an educator so my preference is really for uh jeff to lead the way on uh on his goals uh in in what what's getting done there so with that jeff thank you sure if i just add in case 10 thank you i just keep wondering so this is uh this is goal setting for the current school year for the superintendent's schools and just a little history the board uh tends to do this just around the start of the school year usually in october so it's a normal process and given our uh interesting coven year you know maybe uh probably a little different approach than normal but we're all oh sorry that was it so this is a normal process and looking forward to working this through the committee okay thanks folks the um you know the point that uh tony was just making is that you know everything this year uh in everybody's life i'm sure in some way shape or form is somewhat framed by covid19 and that you know really maintaining a safe and environment and educational continuity to the greatest extent we possibly can i think is probably everybody's job one uh that's our our focus to try and ensure that you know we can have our students in school uh and our staff and have it be a safe environment and that we can is close to what we would typically aspire to provide an educational experience that's meaningful for our students and so you know i drafted three goals within that context the first is social emotional learning uh you know we have two marquee goals in our school system and we talk about it all the time it's complex thinking to support our students to become better complex thinkers and we want that reflected in the work that they're doing and therefore reflected in what they're capable of and i think we've done we've made tremendous progress along that goal in the last several years the other one uh social emotional learning is another place where we've really intensely focused um and our theory of action around social emotional learning speaks to our desire to support students in developing cultural awareness and while we've been working toward greater diversity equity and inclusion for years uh it's really critical i think now to communicate even more so to the the community and to our students around that goal um so throughout the year we will seek to develop and execute a coordinated plan to identify strategies that we can take as a schools community community to support our learners in building cultural awareness and understanding of equity i think the goal has been out there um you know but this our effort this year is to uh more clearly articulate what it is that we're hoping to accomplish and is part of that uh we're working with the state education resource center circ is the acronym you may hear um to meet with a community a stakeholder group uh in terms of providing some training and awareness and also trying to look at what we can do in building uh an equitable school system so that's one of the proposed goals and we want to be able to so that the deliverable there is a clear articulation of what the goals are really is defined by that stakeholder group uh or in coordination with that stakeholder group and then uh uh articulated plan on moving forward toward uh achieving those goals the second you know is is really kind of a holdover from last year we were pretty far down the road of developing uh our communications platforms and we've certainly we today as we sit here have a much more robust uh you know plethora really of of communication strategies including instagram twitter facebook etc uh we do a lot more video communication than we have unfortunately you know we were in the process of revamping our entire website and when kovid came along it diverted all of our technology resources to providing remote instruction and we're still to a degree in that point in that place but we have slid our website onto a host and we are in the process of building that up right now but we're not ready to go live on that we're still we still have members of our school team undergoing training on the new platform for the web hosting so we should the goal is to have that up and um running live by february 1st of 2021 um but we we have made good progress there but we do want to update it our website could use some some work the other reason i haven't pushed that start date up sooner is because um as we're kind of still dealing with the the crisis we don't want to deviate away from what people have gotten used to there we have our website access decrease increased dramatically through the pandemic and now doesn't seem like a good time to throw something new at our parents and and community so we're gonna hold tight for a while on the old website even if we could flip the switch tomorrow we're not able to but even if we could we wouldn't want to because it's just a wrinkle that would throw people and they don't need that at the moment the last item is vision and goal setting i know you've heard me at the beginning of the year talk about our 10-year goal process that was established and that the goals were were very far-reaching um and really inclusive uh covering 15 areas and you know we had accomplished many of these you know these goals if you could even call them that a lot of them were just kind of um things we'd like to to try and do i guess goals in that sense but we decided uh when i became superintendent to really focus in two areas that we as a community developed and identified uh and as i i've already mentioned that was social emotional learning and complex thinking and uh that you know would be hard to argue from any vantage point that that hasn't paid substantial dividends the community as a whole and i think the vast majority of our our staff could certainly articulate what our two marquee goals are the board is owns those goals they're very much a part of that process even though we've had certainly turnover and board members over the last four years but the you know it is something that we own and that we all understand that this is our focus and so i think what we need to do over the course of this year is again revisit that and i'd like to be as inclusive of community as we can you know the past process included a lot of face-to-face meeting time which is obviously limited at this point in time and i think we will probably have to monitor this closely i certainly don't want to curtail uh involvement for the sake of quote getting this done i think it's really important that the community be invested in whatever we decide to do even if it's stay the course um but i i don't want to compromise community involvement like i said for the sake of just getting it done um so this is one that we're gonna have to really closely monitor as unfortunately our numbers right now or across connecticut are heading in the wrong direction but we definitely want to be inclusive of the community in this process of vision and goal setting so that you know i that's those are the three draft items that i had i'd be happy to you know take any questions or discussion obviously sorry ann or tony anything right now i have some thoughts but i'll let you go first if you're interested uh well i have one in in the goals i think because this year is so different in terms of the learning environment i know we went remote totally ended last spring but since we're doing a hybrid mile at the high school remote learning days in a modified school day in these goals can the board measure how that's how effective that is for our students have you thought about that jeff like how we as i know that throws our wrench at this it doesn't change these goals but how we're delivering instruction and the international teachers or some cases lack thereof how can we look at the school year and say hey based on hybrid for example high school the modified schedule we were 99.9 effective i i'm still trying to wrap my head around that sure yeah so some of the um indicators we would look at would be things like psa t-test thing that just occurred today although that's probably a little bit better indicator of where our students in each grade level 9 10 and 11 today relative to past cohorts in those grade levels um you know that's probably almost more of a reflection of how uh did the spring progress in those hybrid learning models then we have uh mid-term exams now again those are somewhat modified i know marlene has shared with the the board and curriculum committee that this year we are um across the district focus on an acceleration model it's called where we're not trying to go back and re-teach everything that we had done in the past that would be an undue hardship on students it would put people just flat over the edge and you know asking kids in the current circumstances to learn twice as much it's not not reasonable so what we are doing is identifying the key skills that kids need to continue to accelerate and matriculate um toward where they would typically be and we did that you know in concert with the connecticut center for school change and other school systems around the state uh that are you know ascribing to that model we would be looking then at like midterm exams so in those exams however we would be focused on the key strategies the key standards that we are pushing in this accelerated model ultimately looking at uh sat scores and final exams is measures of where kids are relative to you know where they typically are performing at this time and then you know i think because the entire state of connecticut is going through this and actually the nation but we'd be looking at our performance relative to our peers as well that's more of an apples and apples comparison sure um so really there's really no change how we're measuring because the sats pst's midterms we do that anyway correct it's funny enough uh i lead off my my daughter took a psats today at cheshire high school and yeah so i remember i saw her my wife asked her how it went she goes oh it's much easier this year i'm like hmm i hope that means she was more prepared i don't know yeah i'm almost thinking in it was it worthwhile to include some feedback from students and parents and how covered learning went this year i'm not sure if the exams or the midterms just the test scores because you know not you know you know it's funny when and although chester's been always been pretty good performer but when test scorers are never great we don't reference them when test scores are great we reference them and we can't stop referencing them yeah i i almost have a suspicion that the test scores won't tell the whole story you know you've done these surveys uh going into the school year we haven't seen anything yet on surveys how things are going although it's only week six someone there's a way to engage feedback as part of this and again i'm just thinking outside the box i don't i don't get too much thought yet maybe by next time we meet a little more one more idea but just wearing some some kind of external input besides test scores might also help yeah i mean i i think just to address a couple of points first of all our standardized testing has done nothing but improve over the last several years which i think worthy of of recognition not that you're saying it's not but i want to underscore that point the other thing is um you know when we went to remote learning last year uh if we weren't the first we were one of the first districts to start serving parents students and staff about how the experience was going and i think there's you know certainly valuable feedback in that and we use that really in a in a formative way much more than a summative assessment of how it went we you know just like we do in student assessment in the classroom we try and um test students or quiz them more to understand how do we need to adjust what we're doing to continue to improve more so than say you know this is this is where you're at you know i i'm certainly happy to survey people and continue to go there but right now i don't have a metric to necessarily measure ourselves um to say this is this is because this is also unique i i can't tell you like we want us the goal is to score here on this metric or something because we don't have one yeah it's and it's it's hard for me to to give you that i was like i mean again for me at work and i guess lost in the private sector you know you know i'm all these things are easily quantifiable that don't have a social emotional learning really right yeah to it so i struggle how to measure this i i'm thinking it probably falls under your communication goal so i think the communication that is happening between students parents staff and community is probably going to help on that again i'm yeah yeah no that's it's helpful i think we're on communication feedback more than a survey i guess but i uh i'll noodle on it more next couple days i just want to throw it out there yeah what maybe we could pursue is um maybe not so much because like i said um when you stepped off them that there's no there's no uh number to compare anything to there's no there's no history for you know how did hybrid learning work you know i don't know what a perfect score is on something like that but i can certainly you know add something around um in that communication piece i think is a good suggestion tony around uh you know embedding certain surveys or frequency of surveys throughout the year to see how how things are going and we can take a look at that data as part of the the process they work on something there go back and look at some of the surveys we administered last year yeah so that's all i have for now sorry thank you and yeah so so i would add um sort of to what tony was saying only in the area of the social emotional learning um because i think that what covid and the remote learning and the screen time and i know we're doing a good job but they're still in in my mind there still have got to be some uh drastic effects on uh students social emotional well-being as well as on teachers social emotional well-being as far as that goes and i'm wondering if your goal that deals with social emotional learning while i 100 support this diversity and inclusion part that's going on and i and i've seen very clearly with um presentations from marlene and yourself and others that there's a lot that's been going on in that area um i'm wondering if we should have a second part that goes back to that social emotional learning and the mindfulness and the getting at students well-being their their emotional well-being and i worry a little bit because of course we're losing tracy hussy as well or sh she's is she gone at this point november 1st november 1st i thought it was october sometime um but anyways just with that um change also happening um i i feel like we maybe there needs to be a goal in there that that goes back and addresses some of the the basics of what we were doing with the social which i believe we've been really successful with over the past four years five years but i feel like we're moving on to this other part with the uh diversity and inclusion piece and with all of the covid stuff that's been going on i feel like we need to also revisit the emotional well-being yeah i think that's a great suggestion and that um you know from from where i said i i appreciate that feedback that um surveying around not only scl but also the academic experience makes sense you know i i don't think our academic success is what it is without that focus on the sel piece and so you know we don't want to certainly lose sight of that either yeah i and i totally agree with that comment that the academic success is very closely tied with that success in uh the students well-being and the way they just the way they feel about themselves yeah one of the highlights of my school visits was walking into a classroom at um norton in time to be part of a mindfulness experience with with sixth graders it was really great you know to see that integrated it's such a critical time um for that work and we're not losing sight of that either yeah yeah a survey about how our kids are doing on the on the sel side is also important great thank you that's all i have thank you ann um all right so uh a few thoughts here jeff so last spring we did some surveys and last spring is different from where we are right now but last spring we did some surveys and i thought oh that's useful but then also in retrospect i said to myself you know six weeks had passed and i've really i mean i heard from other parents too it for that time things were not they were incredibly difficult but what i also remember at that time was looking back i don't think i certainly as a parent and i suspect many other parents including ones i talked to they had no idea really what was even supposed to be happening yeah and and so what i'm wondering about for uh this year is could we create some sort of metric to give that information to the parents uh so here's an idea that's just coming to mind right now brain dump you have a syllabus a college syllabus i don't really remember it in high school but just as an example because you're talking about collegiate classes or collegiate style courses so you have a syllabus you have dates next to it all right when is this basically the topic that you're going to be covering i say all this because i've i've heard from a number of parents a number of high school parents since school started who've been scratching their head over the hybrid model now i'm not i'm not questioning the hybrid model itself but what they've told me is that you know there's teachers who some teachers say how do i put this on monday and tuesday some teachers teach two different lessons and some teachers teach the same lesson on monday and tuesday so when you're the remote student they say don't worry there's nothing to do here the basic concern on the part of parents is if that's how the school year operates i think this is i think this is a basic concern at least one of one one concern by parents you're only going to get through half the material in the given year i mean you still have the same number of hours in a year i mean it might have changed by a few minutes or something but you know it's eight to two or whatever it is 180 days a year 177.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
roll call cake please uh joseph britton is not here he's coming late rachel chaleski yeah kate canetta here gladys cooper here lauren daly here joe da silva um catherine kaushin here uh marissa genelli is absent this evening kathy molinaro is absent this evening al russo here and amy spelina at this portion of our agenda is a very exciting recognition and at this point i'm gonna let doctor say i'll take over the recognition part yeah i do want to make sure we have a conflict cara um has carmen been able to make it tonight did that work out yeah okay great i can't see it let's see here so um well um some years ago morris street was honored with the blue ribbon award um unquestionably it's it's a demanding program um ours is based on achievement student achievement and uh in the category for um low-income students achieving exceptionally high rates of achievement when i received the call from the state they were just they were verifying the data looking at it very deeply we're just so impressed with the work that's been going over at south street which begun a few years ago and carmen has taken that leadership over the last few years and it's really crystallized and it's really producing some outstanding results and the state wanted to be sure to recognize that so when we received those schools of distinction as you know last spring six or seven which was phenomenal um the state does a combing uh and evaluating of all of those schools and they called and recommended that they um would send to the national blue ribbon committee south street school from connecticut they reviewed the portfolio contacted the state and said they would accept them as a blue ribbon school now you know you you you know this is 47 000 schools and um you know this is an honor that is sought after and to receive it twice in in what four years and uh our elementary schools are doing this is just so impressive so carmen um you're here why don't you talk a little bit i know the mayor's carers too he wanted to congratulate you but um we're just so proud of you and the faculty and students let me hand the mic over to you thank you dr sao thank you board of education thank you everyone administrative council thank you so i just want to show you um bell street is here south street can you say hi great job south street so they they you know uh we were trying to think of how we my husband stole nobody we were trying to think of uh how can we make them a part of this because obviously as we all know um this couldn't have been accomplished without the amazing staff from south street and i want to just say a couple of words i have an hour worth of a speech so i hope you guys are ready [Laughter] just kidding um this is a great honor and uh south street staff is amazing they have come a long way as you guys know i i came to connecticut uh 16 years ago from massachusetts from the boston public schools and honestly i never wanted to be a principal it's a it's a huge responsibility um and i liked being just the assistant principal but dr sallin trusted me with this position and from the very beginning i i knew that my goal was to make south street number one because i know it can be possible but i cannot do it alone it takes a village it takes a a staff that can trust you at staff that uh builds upon the foundation of the work that has been done there already and so we took on the challenge the staff trusted me as their leader and with the help of the administrative council who's always there to support us the help of our parents who have been able to support us as well bring their kids every day to school and trust us with them every day we have been able to accomplish this wonderful task one of the things that people are asking me now is how did how did you accomplish that we again south street was always known as one of the lowest performing school in danbury and across the state and now we're being looked at as a model school and well the three things i said from the very beginning high expectations for everyone um high expectation first of myself and then to the rest everyone there and so we know that all of the students can achieve success and the staff charted that way they are the ones they are the ones that are right in front of the kids and they're the ones that uh took on that responsibility and went out of their way and above and beyond to be able to make sure that all of our students for learning we still have a lot of work to do this is just the beginning we're excited this year is definitely a challenge um but we will continue to strive and to provide our students and our community what they need in order for our all of our students to be successful so i thank all of you for your support and dr sal especially and uh here's again south street this is to them as well couldn't have done it without them congratulations man big smiles thanks miles terrific great job uh kara anything dr casmero oh yeah i wasn't sure which cara um yeah no i just wanted congratulations to uh to south street and to carmen um the one thing i can say for sure is that my phone rings um quite often uh and it's carmen on the other end asking to try something a little bit different to try to you know do something a little bit out of the box um and her teachers have come to her with some ideas and so there's been this um sort of great flow of ideas and collaboration that has kind of sparked in the last couple of years and the staff is is always coming forward with new ideas to try things to reach kids in different ways um and carmen has been shepherding that in um through her leadership and has been in you know relatively constant communication with with trying to seek out new and innovative ways to to reach students um at south street and so um i also know that she goes to the ends of the earth to um reach families um our esl families in particular to make sure that things are just the way that they need to be so they understand what is happening and that they're fully engaged in their school community so i just want to say congratulations to the south street staff and to carmen for her leadership um is well deserved and again this is just the beginning there the sky is um is is limitless for south street and the trajectory with where you're going so continue on and congratulations to all uh there'll be a there is a national ceremony but uh i think it's gonna be done virtual we'll be hearing about it and we'll be getting a special award and i'm i'm sure that uh this spring if we have our day in hartford um we'll be um you'll be presented with a special plaque as well so um congratulations and the job well done to the poor to the faculty the carmen to the parents and to the kids great job thank you thank you for the recognition thank you next sandy before we get to the public participation do we have any comments um refreshing as of right now no we did not okay thank you we'll move on to public participation uh kate will you do our reading for the participation part please i certainly will i do see a note on here gladys about mayor belton uh did you want to um uh but do the public what we the the reading for the public participation then we'll go right to sure thing okay 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 b-o-e at danbury.k12.ct.us the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes you may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern you the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students or against any person connected with the danbury public school system thank you kate uh my i'm going to read a brief statement too the concern board for our last board of education meeting regarding spanish translation has been resolved board education meeting will be translated in spanish and uploaded to the website the following day thank you all for being so patient and i hope we continue to work together next we will have um mayor bowman come forth all right good evening good evening madam chairwoman good evening may belton good to be here um so uh i want to just to take a few minutes and kind of brief the board on where we stand with the danbury career academy what the latest action in the legislature was what it means and what next steps would be going forward to be able to make this a reality uh first for those that aren't aware there was a special session of the general assembly um about two weeks ago and and during that time period the general assembly adopted the governor has since signed a school construction bill that school construction bill does mention danbury specifically and the specifics are that for the first time uh that this state has ever been able to do we would be allowed to repurpose a corporate building or a office building if you will uh for use by uh the danbury public schools as a school assuming that it meets the standards of construction that are required classroom size etc all of the uh operational things that have to go into that as well uh that the reimbursement rate would be 80 percent from the state of connecticut that we would work on a plan that would not only be a beta test for us but then would be able to be translated into legis general legislation that any city or town could use so we're sort of a test bed which means that we'll be keeping uh some extra data extra information for people uh so that we can then take this uh information as we go through this process and again use it for a template for future communities to use that we would be allowed to not use a traditional bidding method for construction we would be able to do essentially a turnkey or design build method where we would just like you buy a house or a condominium or anything like that we would go in and buy a completed school as long again as it met all state regulations requirements but that during the process of the construction of said school there would be um uh steps that have to be taken by the developer to meet with the state to review uh the plans and to make sure that they in fact do meet um all requirements that that the state of connecticut has so we're very excited that um the state agreed to this this was a very very i can't emphasize what a heavy lift this was um pretty much burned up every iou i have going back about 20 years now i have to give a lot of credit to uh david arkani uh who was right there we were hip to hip doing all this stuff i had to take certain members of general assembly out to play golf i had to wine and dine i had to do everything that had to be done to be able to get to this point where people sort of got what we were trying to do and so i think in the end the speaker of the house really stepped in and said it was really coming unwound um the governor wasn't feeling it and um opm had a real big issue with it even though we had briefed them for months we started working on them last year um but uh at the end the speaker stepped in and said no you're going to do this and you're going to do this language that we've drafted which initially they were going to throw out so what does all that mean it means that we're going to be able to go forward with the danbury career academy we've got work to do um as you know i've been meeting with antonio uh over the last week or two to begin scoping out what are what are the next steps look in this and what do we need to do to be able to make sure that we hit all the benchmarks that are in the legislation as it relates to filing deadlines and so forth i think first of all i do want to take a step back and in some ways apologize i think the the 2020 task force unfortunately two things came into play there one first one was coven made it extremely difficult to meet uh to have meetings zoom meetings became problematic having a freewheeling discussion became problematic we did have a couple in november but um you know in a couple after that after the holidays and then um essentially we you know we pretty much shut down both the school side and the city side of government um it wasn't necessarily the process that i that i saw or envisioned but at the end i think we we got where we needed to be um so we have not had a vote out of 2020 out of this particular program but i don't think that's necessarily going to be an issue and we really haven't had as much interfacing with the board as we typically would should we be in traditional meetings and and doing the way we've always gone about business right so that's not exactly our process all the time but again i think we had to deal with the cards that were dealt with us in terms of getting it done secondly obviously was we were on a time constraint you know we can't wait the traditional five years to go ground up uh if we could identify a 20-acre piece of property that we could buy that we could build a building straight up we just don't have the time we know we have kids coming in about three years and even then it's going to be tight to get them in there but having a building that's already pre-built but now requires internal modifications makes our build out from three years to a year and a half and so that year and a half will be mission critical for us to be able to deal with the students that we believe are showing up now we got a little bit of a break this year our numbers aren't as high as they were last year but last year more than made up for what we didn't get this year so it all it all evens out in the end anyways right so um our next steps will be uh to continue negotiations with the owners of the building so they can bring back a finite number for the purchase of said building we have a not to exceed number of 94 million dollars we don't think we'll be anywhere near that but that gives us plenty of room for what we need to do to the building uh and to to purchase three pods of that building for our use um this will be a building that will blow the city of danbury long pass uh we're there we you know the future people who are on the border at the city council or mayor can use it if for some reason their numbers get smaller again i don't think they will but if they did can use it for whatever they want or they can definition an older building somewhere else in our portfolio and use this building so it gives us much needed flexibility as well so we'll continue our negotiations the owners have been super flexible i anticipate having some kind of contract ready to go for the whole project uh probably by um right after the first of the year maybe a little bit maybe early february bring that to the council have the council review that have a vote out of the council we would be required to place a deposit down on the building much like you put a pot deposit down on the house that'll give them their uh go ahead to begin their construction we then have to have all of our paperwork in by october 1st 2021.
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okay okay the uh john are you ready okay thank you the anaheim union high school district board of trustees regular meeting of october 15 2020 is called to order at 2 49 p.m the following members are present brian o'neill uh we'll just do a roll call brian here algebra here anna l piercy here catherine h smith present and anne marie randall trejo staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda page 21 of the agenda item 1111 correct effective end date to december 31st 2023 under current consideration exhibit triple r replace page four to include antoinette brown and amanda bryant as well as correct effective date for brianna plummer so may i have a motion to um adopt the amended agenda second okay moved and seconded uh roll call mr o'neal all right uber thank you mr mr jabbar hi miss piercy aye ms smith aye and myself i public comments closed session items is there anyone that wishes to address the board of trustees regarding closed session items only at this time and we did not receive any public comment for closed session items thank you carl it is now 2 50 p.m and we will move to closed session
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mr walker went around to every class and tried to promote it for the most part the interest lies in soccer but he's going to do other things with them and i just i'm hoping that once those 12 students start and other kids hear about it maybe we'll get more participation but right now we do have uh we're going to start this week yeah and now that they uh well we'll talk about the winter sports at a later time but we will do this you know for the time being no problem anyone else okay if we looked at the uh consent agenda uh mr founder you um do you want to make mention of anything with the uh resolution regarding uh doug byrne yes mr byrne affiliated with mancinelli and conti is now going to be moving to a fund called burn route effective uh immediately and that's essentially what this resolution is about and once we uh approve the resolution then we will then send it the executed resolution to mr byrne and mr burn will then send it to the county and uh mr alfano just for the record um douglas byrne is just going to be handling any bidding documents for construction projects etc our main attorney is the steve fober that is the correct statement just want to make sure about that and he'll continue to just do uh construction dating projects especially thank you okay uh also in the consent agenda is the first reading of policies and the regulations that we are mandated to uh revise in your packet tonight is something called the policy alert and basically what it does is it just summarizes those changes so we're not approving the policies tonight we're just having a first reading there are there's a new policy there's new guidelines there's a policy called gifted and talented students that just refers to the fact that the state is now mandating that a school district has to complete a report annually we've already filed ours with this with the state it was due september 30th and that policy is just referring to that uh there's some policies that have to do with finance that mr alfano has already reviewed and again a lot of them are just minor tweaks to the policies that we've already had uh in place uh so you can review the policy alerts if you have any questions about anything you can either email me during the week or prior to our our meeting next october uh next week october 21st and then there's just a resolution for the bill list on the following page and that's it any questions on the agenda motion to accept so move is that mr capano yeah may i have a second please there's mr russo okay i'll take a vote please mrs abreu mr capano yeah mr garcia dr pantaliano yeah mr raincourt yeah mr russo yes mr shelley yes teddy mr roman gina okay just again a reminder to the public that next week october 21st uh the public will be able to attend our meeting uh conditionally on temperature taking uh and wearing of a mask and we will publicize that on our website for next week's meeting so at this point i'd like to call for a motion to adjourn that's mr raincoat may i have a second place mr russo okay okay thank you very much
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i don't think we need a workshop for that we can discuss at that point if we want one for the november meeting are you guys okay with that you might want to think about a workshop just i happen to think after last night's meeting that there were you know there were comments that you wanted from the audience and the folks had things to say and if we have a workshop we don't have to worry about all that product you know it's going to be a very short agenda that that night as well but it might be an opportunity for some last minute conversations at 5 30 work book shop 5 30 meeting i don't know if janie can make five o'clock usually she can make 5 30. so let's do a 5 30 workshop 6 o'clock meeting and the meeting shouldn't be too long all right yeah let's do that for that special meeting and a regular meeting for november 19th 2020 does that date work yes miss diaz yes that works for me all right and we'll set that for now if we need to make changes to that meeting we can at the other one um so with that we just need a motion to adjourn i move we adjourn i move that we adjourn the meeting we're the second oh second brandy burgess aye brady dubois i surely need you hey with that we are adjourned [Music] so [Music] you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um but it's like half their time is remote and the teacher saying you don't you can go do your own assignment but then it's not necessarily being measured in a way at least that the parents understand and so what i'm wondering about is how can we how can we increase the confidence of parents that they're going to be getting through all the material that they feel should be covered in a given year and remember i mean we have parents who you know they've got the tony's perfect example two he's gonna remember two years later what is what is uh your son tony um all right you're gonna remember two years later what your second what your second kid is doing when they're taking basically the same class um and this is what i'm hearing basically from parents already that they're they're voicing concerns and my concern right now here today um is i don't i don't want this to continue and when i say continue i'm i have to assume that you know teachers are teaching what they would normally teach so we're in week six they're at the same point as they were six uh you know in week six a year ago but parents definitely are questioning yeah let it back up on a on a couple of things if i could there okay you brought up the college experience and you know i remember my undergrad experience where we'd go to class tuesday or thursday or monday wednesday friday maybe shorter periods whatever and [Music] never in that time do i remember a professor after class saying now you're good there are always expectations that you're doing work between live class sessions and this is no different so if in some classes there is more of a tune in live when we we go back to that accelerated uh curriculum piece in some situations there are you know you're gonna have to tune in tomorrow virtually to follow up on what we did today in other cases it's you have work assigned for this time tomorrow that you need to do that would be more work that might otherwise be independent anyway so if a teacher is saying that tomorrow you don't necessarily have to tune in it's not like the expectation is ah it's like when i ask my own kids about don't you have are you supposed to be doing independent reading they're like independent reading you know no no that's what you're supposed to be doing um and so yes that in some cases what are what kids supposed to be doing and to hear you say you know parents don't have confidence obviously you've heard from some parents that don't and we don't have an understanding of where people are on that until we have more valid data like the you know that uh to hear from some is is not the same as hearing from a broader audience is what what obviously we aspire to do so um yeah i mean definitely i i could go back as a you know tony suggested as well with the the survey and you know i want to take a look at what questions we were asking when we did it multiple times if you recall last spring to kind of gauge how things are doing i think this fall you know uh hindsight being 2020 we probably should have surveyed a little bit earlier um you know retrospectively to kind of see where things were going relatively early but there's a pretty massive adjustment um and the next two items on our agenda have also been quite time consuming so uh you know retrospectively i wish we had gone back and surveyed maybe you know three weeks in now that we're you know closer to five weeks in at this point um but you know it doesn't mean we can't move forward with it now and i think we should so i think that's i i think that could be useful a useful tool but ultimately i'm just going to go back to where i was last spring which is i didn't know where we were supposed to be anyway right i mean my daughter was in kindergarten no i know i know but but the same concept i believe still applies so you're you're a parent your oldest child is a freshman in high school you don't there's it's very likely that you really don't know much about what your child would even necessarily be learning necessarily be learning and that's what i'm looking for i want parents to be uh have a better um have access to you know better information about where their kids would be um now if that's relative to the year the prior year that's one way to measure it as you i'm not sure you know another way and i'm not i think over the course of the year that would be difficult anyway because i think covid's only going to get worse in the next few months anyway um maybe as you had said before measuring against our peers so i don't know if there's a you know there's a superintendent's uh uh not a committee but an organization across the state like where are schools where are schools actually at on november 1st so all right you're a month behind where you were but where are you relative to everyone else maybe that's the best that we can do i i i just i want parents to have um i want parents to have a better understanding of uh where where things should be um they can't i find it difficult to reply to a survey if you don't really understand what you're replying to other than i guess it's okay yeah you know surveys are they helped right it's but yeah i'm with you tim on that too because i'll be be honest with you i have a daughter chester high school junior here i mean i know the things she's working at i know her her assignments or work but i couldn't tell you like what the goal is for semester for a year for that course you know but the syllabus is for things to cover are you good to know that and i understand things will change you know if if we're far behind for a reason if there's an outbreak of covet and teachers can't be whatever that is it has an impact i understand they'll be revised yeah um but me another way to look at this too is maybe it's more about consistency between the classes being taught yeah another topic well i think there's something here i know we can't really quantify yet but i think someone can probably take away work and see if we can find a way to figure this one out yeah mary and i dr gab the high school principal you know i know you guys know that but you know we've been talking about not just talking about but planning for a couple of weeks two i think critical steps forward um one is the inclusion of more students like you know we have a cohort a and b but we also you know it doesn't get talked about a lot is like a cohort c that attends school every day so what we've been doing is gradually adding more to cohort c and we do that based on need um and i i understand the idea of consistency too you know in classes that you know some classes you know when you're looking at the accelerated model they do still need to meet particularly through certain stretches daily and we're doing more synchronous learning in some places others may not necessarily require that um but being clearer about that could be helpful for parents to understand like where are you with this class and why but we are also mary and i have been planning to do more synchronous um particularly at the close a quarter one uh which would be in a couple of weeks to transition to more synchronous daily learning um given the fact that it doesn't look like we're unfortunately going to be in a place you know we were hopeful uh most optimistically to get everybody back full time um the numbers unfortunately don't seem to be trending in that direction and then the mitigating strategies that we're asked to employ in order to have a safe school environment aren't changing and it's almost impossible with 1400 kids and the additional staff to have those in place so we're looking at changing our instructional structure to being more synchronous um but you know i'll ask uh you know i know we'll have an update on this at the curriculum committee meeting but i'll ask mary or maureen or whoever to add more on that transition when we meet on monday but the survey thing you know i definitely want to go back i can throw you guys a a draft to that asap around you know what you mentioned around the instructional and academic experience and i agree with tony it definitely falls into that communication plea piece that we could we could put that together does that make sense yeah yeah um let me see uh so you mentioned this so the the the draft that you sent us was uh labeled smart goals so just so you know people at home watching smart it's an acronym it stands for specific measurable achievable relevant and timely and that's what i'm that's what i'm hoping we get a little bit more out of here in in your goals just jumping over to him for a second uh so the the um the social emotional learning uh you put in here in your goal while we have been working toward greater diversity equity and inclusion for years the need the need is greater now than ever um so to me when i'm when i'm thinking in terms of smart goals specific and measurable well you said greater so greater than one and what the next sentence i i think speaks to that develop and execute a coordinated plan which will identify strategies that we can take and that would be over the course of this year would be the timely piece of it okay that you know that's the time of the piece i guess i'm just wondering like the that's the speci you know it's develop and execute a coordinated plan which will identify strategies so identifying the strategies development of a plan um and you know initiate that plan that we can take as a school community so the specific um piece of that is the development of the plan of strategies that we can take support learning learners and building cultural awareness and understanding of equity uh i think you know that's specific it's measurable as to whether or not we did it it's attainable i i think you know over the course of this year as things currently stand it's attainable um i think it's realistic and certainly relevant to um the work that we're doing being that that's a component of our um theory of action around social emotional learning and the time-bound piece of it is that it'll be done during the course of this year i would so good so step one is a plan and got it when the plans finalize there will probably be other goals and objectives as part of that plan yeah that will be probably another goal if not this school year attention next one and i would expect that one to have specific things to be implemented and measured but yeah be nice to know just what the plan is right yeah right now the plan is to develop a plan you know one of me for that goal you know yeah i don't i don't necessarily have a problem with it i i i think i know tim's going like okay yeah it's specific enough you'll be playing with a road map that tells us how to get to some achievable goals as part of the whole initiative the the time this office yeah this school year i mean you know is it by february 1st is by march 15th at 2 p.m is it that time specific or is that something work expect to have by the end of the school year yeah i think right now um [Music] given the the vuca world we're living in where you know everything's so volatile and you know i'm hopeful to nail this down by the end of the school year as we continue to work out with circa and our community partners like you know social services in the town uh on this plan uh it would be for the end of this school year then the next one the next one is you know february 1st to have the the website roll out but like i said i do want to you know after your feedback um incorporate a component on the survey here so i would need to modify that second goal but the there there it's more you know specific there's a clear time-bound nature to it it's relevant to our overarching district goals with respect to communication um that one's a little bit more straightforward i think but again i do want to incorporate the survey feedback you've given me sure sure so just looking at going back to smart specific measurable achievable relevant and timely or time-bound so i'm looking at the goal number two i'm wondering what your thoughts are on this the the last sentence in it inherent in this goal is the inclusion of a procedure for ensuring integration between all platforms with the express goal of driving social media follow followers to our website so that makes sense to me do you i mean do you have to me the specific and measurable there is not simply the date but it would be all right let's increase let's increase this by a hundred percent i mean i'm not saying that's that's the best way to do it but but is it and then we actually know that people are learning something i mean who knows there could be russian bots on there or something there but we're gonna have an idea you know if if i have a general idea if people are if if awareness is increased among a lot of these things what's going on within the cps well the other thing about our new platform is that we're provided a more robust data uh feature on the back end to see you know in terms of like hits and things like that on the website to know you know what sort of traffic are we receiving so at the very least we'll have a um a good uh benchmark for like what what's typical here uh i think as time goes by we'll have a a better sense of you know because we we really right now don't have a great way to capture the number of hits we're getting you know we we can see that on social media probably better than any place else right now the same way that everybody else does you know how many followers do i have how many likes does this post get etc but we we certainly want to make sure that people use the website is a is a go-to resource um but we don't have great data collection on that now with our current platform and this new platform will provide more of that yeah i think that's yeah i think what's what's uh missing today is the fact that you know again because the technology is a little antiquated on the current website i'm pretty certain even google analytics doesn't plug in nicely with that as it is so you're not getting the benefit of a report that shows all the searches happening in the site for content that people are looking for and whether or not they found it and i think having that capability is gonna help um you know cps tailor the content to what people are looking for which you don't really have so i so it's really not just streamline communications but probably more timely yeah meaningful and i think your point tony with the back end analytics we can better you know based on the feedback we get around search results on our site and things like that you know we can then as it's been explained to me push that content to the front if everybody if 9 out of 10 people who go to our website search calendar then i make sure that that's on our homepage front and center kind of thing you know it's like using that to uh using those back-end analytics to tailor our content as you're saying we're looking forward to that yeah absolutely and i wanna again so i do this every day yeah so you know you'll be able to see things like if people are searching for what's the cohort schedule of cheshire high school right and 20 search results come back but they don't click on any of them yeah well part of your property answer wasn't found and you might say oh i need to push something up or tailor it so so it sounds like some of this is measurable um although once it's live i think by the end of the school year like february march april may june you'll have some analytical data right you know the traffic right and so yeah i'm actually looking forward to it yeah and i do have some down time so i can help with this anyway i'll do it for free okay um the third one where i was you know like i said i and i if i said it once you know i i said it several times in the in the overview is i really don't want to compromise community inclusion on this last item for the sake of completion um you know the the meetings i had with ptos and with the school business partnership and um you know we we did part of this at a board retreat there were a number of interactions that i had with the community our teachers that are face to face and you know really got meaningful feedback students groups of students at the middle and high school you know i really am anxious about kind of putting something together that is such a touchstone document for our school system without having intensive feedback um and so i you know this one i i wouldn't see us rolling out until you know probably january or february with the hopes that by that point we can have more face-to-face time but because i i really think that's a critical element of this last one i know that's optimistic tim but you know the the i really don't want to compromise for covid on this one you know we really face the face i mean my my view the next note i have on here is delayed strategic plan yeah right which is and not incur actually to us yeah no i'll say i frankly i am probably encouraging you to just even delay it because i mean you just look at the the trajectory of the infection rate and stuff right we're going into flu season you're probably going to just find fewer and fewer people who even want to participate in in-person media um which are unnecessary type of thing yeah and i just think it's to me it's just the type of thing that could get you know kick the can down the road not indefinitely but you know may or something like that but then it doesn't but then it's not even really a goal for this year because you're not going to get anything this year by the like by june 30th say right right and frankly you know if we were in a position where the wheels were falling off the bus you know in terms of the school system and we needed a dramatic turnaround maybe it's different but you know we're in a position where we did as a board and community update things a few years ago it wasn't like we haven't touched our our goals for 20 years or something like that you know we're in a decent place so you know if if indeed it carried over to when conditions were better for in person you know i don't think we're losing a heck of a lot is my point so i agree with you that that's not a front burner item i mean that we need to focus perhaps more on the sel and um academic survey into the communication piece and making that a bit more robust and understanding that that third goal will be a priority as soon as we can get there um from a public health perspective sure sure okay um a different a different topic um that a goal school climate how do you how do you see that uh baked into these goals here yeah i think or is it should it be separate yeah i don't see that baked into these goals per se um as much as i think the the focus on how are kids doing you know we've had very few disciplinary issues i guess when everybody's forced to be six feet apart or whatever it tends to cut down on those things and you're wearing a mask um even whispering under your breath is tougher these days you know um i i think that hasn't been is critical um you know maintaining a school positive school climate is critical i think the the equity piece is a critical component of that overall i i think when we do sel surveying that's going to be a component of how is your child doing in school and i i see school climate is not as much about how kids are necessarily always you know treating each other but how is your child doing in the school environment are you know is there an anxiety there is is are they feeling safe and comfortable now safe um you know we may think of as with other kids uh you know gonna take my lunch money i don't see it that way these days i i see it more of in the grand scheme of covid are our kids feeling safe you know dude are they feeling safe at school emotionally and we need to definitely gauge that and make sure that's being addressed i see that as the forefront of issues for us so our survey is not just for parents by the way i don't make that clear i'm just on the topic on the topic of school climate and bullying to be short about it you know what i remember what i remember reading was the the two biggest problems were probably on the bus in the playground the bus there's actually i mean i think there's more kids getting on the bus now than there were at the beginning of the year right yeah it's still hard anywhere i mean we would cap buses at 70 before now we cap at 50 and most of them have plenty of good seats still available yeah so i mean there's you know kids can separate themselves also physically in that way to some extent uh we've been encouraging kids actually to be um not just separate but uh like basically a um assigned seat if you will don't change seats because what that helps us with is contact tracing if if somebody live we know who you were sitting next to yeah yeah absolutely that makes sense um okay but so even on the playgrounds that's the other one that i was thinking about for the young at least for elementary school i mean your numbers that you we haven't i don't think the board's seen any of those numbers since lockdown and yeah not worried about that but the numbers yeah have you just off the cuff i mean are those numbers down dramatically okay dramatically okay and do you happen to know the population that are in the building and like i said the separation and everything and i think people are focused in a different place today just trying to get through the day yeah no no no that's why i worry about the sel component more than the the discipline piece per se sure no i can i can understand that um so uh with regard to one one way that bullying happens is online so if you break down the you know the hundred instruments that you had last year and you know 10 or 20 of them were online is it fewer than 10 or 20 this year or is that up because i'm guessing that with covid you probably have more people online more of the time so i'm just curious about that as like one small piece of the bigger picture has that changed at all or you i don't even know if you would know that per se yeah but if you've gotten any feedback anecdotally no the time that people are online is pretty well structured i mean for us you're predominantly online with uh a teacher the the online issues tended to come outside of school time yeah you know things like social media and whatnot but we don't have many issues like that at this point even the outside of school time yeah that you're anecdotally that you just happened totally across the board everything seems to be significantly down okay yeah no i'm not thinking that it'd be like necessarily your responsibility but i could easily see where parents talk to a guidance counselor teacher principal or something and we want to know that yeah yeah okay okay that's that's good here thank you um i think that's i think that's it for me right now all right so let me revise this and shoot it back to you okay yeah that's him out you know i'll certainly go through you know the revised document i'm sure annual too but there's any other feedback we'll get it to you and jeff maybe do one more meeting the committee figure out you know that the irony is out and then we can send a full board for and i i i'm having a a senior moment there's a board yet the board votes on the goals correct now we haven't typically um you know what we've done is i've just built them in to the end-of-year meeting the year prior so there hasn't really necessarily been a vote i think we could discuss some executive session or something yeah yeah and uh just so that if there's any feedback although i'm sure we'll hear from them before then anyway but i forget well i'll say i'll draft it and send it to everybody that's fine yeah no no i mean i i definitely feel we need to get you know if people if any other board members want to chime in i definitely want to hear from them yeah i'll draft it and send it to everybody awesome great okay all right thank you jeff appreciate that um so uh call for a motion to go into executive session to discuss and jeff feel free to cut me off if i get this wrong well i i actually have the agenda here discuss two items yeah i mean it's up to you guys i mean the point here we could either i could just give you a very cursory update because frankly i don't have a ton to report where i don't know that we even need to go into executive session okay and why don't i give you that update and if you feel at the end like you want to then we can go there if there are other specifics we want to address yeah tim i would just like give a public update because you know we as a board have not discussed negotiations as they were ongoing so i'm sure members of public are probably curious where things stand and uh you know both tim and anne were obviously not uh in the teacher's unit negotiation meeting the last one we had so i don't know if it's maybe worthwhile just 10 minutes second session to review what we sure yeah i'll leave up to you in tim okay yeah let me let me just uh being relatively new to the board i'm putting on my my sort of newbie hat here and just want to uh share something with you know parents or voters back home which is so jeff how many uni so you have about 650 700 staff uh less than that we have about 600 staff all right you've got certified staff and 200 non-certified we you know um certified is certified as teachers basically and administrators and administrators okay yeah we we have um several bargaining units the vast majority of our staff are represented by a bargaining unit so we have the administrators bargaining unit the teachers custodians and and maintenance staff uh ias and secretaries are our five bargaining units um and i i say those in like broad terms uh you know like ias have other individuals like the the cafeterias that support staff and things like that in their um like tas the teachers assistants stuff like that caf monitors so they're broad terms but pretty much all of our staff are represented by some union the two biggest obviously being being in terms of dollars really the the teachers union by far is is the biggest uh the administrators union is also you know financially a more significant impact even though they're uh smaller in number i think there are 16 and a half certified administrators and um over 200 uh um 300 380 uh certified teachers in the district so uh the union negotiations for those two groups uh usually cover multi-year contracts uh three to four years typically the processes is pretty uh involved is is tony could certainly attest you know um to to those with the administrators bargaining group um there you know has been a lot of a conversation what we typically do is take a look at what other settlements have occurred uh around the state we look at you know where uh what sort of compensation package do the members of the bargaining unit have relative to their peers around the state and that's important because connecticut is a binding arbitration state and so what they do is if uh the town and the bargaining unit can't come to an agreement on a contract it ultimately can go to binding arbitration and the arbitrators there look at what's the town's ability to pay what is everybody else getting paid and then they you know assign terms to the contract now that process is like a fifty thousand dollar process in its own right like when you have to pay arbitrators you have to pay your legal representation uh the other side has to get legal representation um that we don't pay for but it's it's expensive uh to enter in and it's also incredibly time consuming so these are all variables uh for consideration as we negotiate contracts with respect to the administrators bargaining unit uh i think we've reached a very fair settlement with them uh the three-year all-in number for them and i i can share this because tomorrow we're voting on this as a board is under seven percent um though so all in includes two things and you'll you'll hear that term all in versus gwi gwi is general wage increase so the person at the top step is getting what percentage of arrays i mean it most over the administrator contract it's about 2.5 i think three years out um but typically you know it's it's lower than that um particularly in the first year there the settlement is all in 1.65 so the administrators wouldn't see a percentage salary increase above that that would be the cap for anybody the all-in also includes the motion on the salary schedule so there are steps in the teacher and administrator contract so when you go from step to step as you move up steps there's a pay increase inherent in that and there's a percentage in that and so that's built into the all-in uh salary increases so uh just a quick overview i just want to make sure i have the numbers right i i saw a look on tony's face that year one is 1.75 2.5 second year 2.65 third year uh there are benefit cost increases every year as well in that that process the other thing that we did with the administrators there's not much in the way of language that we would change um but one thing that we we did change was uh we have offered hmo and ppo plans over the last you know forever really after the first year of that contract we're dropping those uh plans as options which administratively on our end makes life a little bit easier to not have people in those plans it's not financially much of a difference for us because technically you know over the last several years if he if administrators elect or even teachers elect to be in those plans they have to pay the difference the member does between what the uh high deductible plan cost is to that one so if a high deductible plan is is 12 grand and a hmo plan is 20 you've got to pay the 8 000 difference um is an example but if they say plans it's a same provider network uh so someone switching from ppo to hsa they're not they're still going to go to the same doctor physician uh as i remember those one things that came up in some discussions and that's you know that's the whole structure for the people's union so in the end it does save them money i think so that's going to help both groups pretty well yeah definitely so that's that's the um the cap contract the teacher contract uh before you go before you go any further could i just back up on that for one second the the administrator yeah you said the three number it's a three-year contract proposal right yep you said 1.65 2.75 and what was the third number 1.75 2.50 2.65 all in okay i got that all wrong say it one more time uh 1.75 1.75 2.5 0.65 okay and you also thank you for that and also you i if i got you if i caught it correctly you use the phrase there is a benefit cost increase each year correct yeah who is it so is that an inc an increased cost to the to the union member or to okay so they're paying more and more the union members are paying more and more each year for their benefits yeah and the way that works let's just say arbitrarily that the cost of the insurance per the individual you know if you have family plan i'm just throwing out a random number these aren't quotes but uh family plan insurance costs the district 10 grand this year employee cost share is 10 they pay a thousand dollars next year let's say the let's say we froze the employee share it but our um are uh the cost to us went up to eleven thousand dollars yep now they're paying ten percent of eleven thousand so it even though their percentage didn't go up their costs can still go up okay in this case you know typically the cost of insurance to us goes up annually so even if they had the same percentage they would be paying more but in this contract settlement they went from 11 to 12 and a half percent to 14 over three years and it was nine and a half 10 and 11 previously i think yes yeah and so what that um when you look at how our administrators are compensated compared to other communities our pay is on the lower side our benefit cost share that they pay is on the lower side um so you know that's it's part about an entire package and that's where things shook out you know after a lot of negotiation and when you look at you know where things were and i know you know we talked as a board about this that this is uh you know fair deal for for both sides at this point and if you if you could just off the top of your head um what's the range say for a single i mean i'm pretty sure there's actual like dollar numbers like a single is 10 000 and a family with you know whether it's two kids or 14 kids it's like 30 thousand dollars for yeah i i don't want to um because i know i'll be off base on that that's good okay that's when you're negotiating it a month and a half ago but i didn't commit that to memory yeah yeah okay i was thinking from a budget perspective just to give just to give people an idea of the numbers here that we're talking about yeah i think that's i'll have i'll have vin ready to answer that question tomorrow okay all right thank you and we took discuss this at the board meeting okay so that was was that agenda item number two yeah the uh the cap the cheshire administrative personnel which just also so that's you said there's about 16 or 16 and a half and a half in that group the the teachers union exact same process it's all statutorily defined so we have to initiate negotiations with them by a certain date then same with administrators then we have if we don't have a solution a resolution to that we have to go to mediation where a mediator comes in and works between the two parties to try and resolve the contract whatever differences are left ultimately if it can't be resolved in mediation statutorily again by a certain date you need to go to binding arbitration in that process and then ultimately you know the the arbitrators would kick back a contract that would then go to town council in this case with the teachers we've come to an agreement with them through the mediation process uh you know an agreement in principle so basically what happens now is our attorney and their attorney are finalizing the contract the draft contract that contract will then go to the members of the bargaining unit to ratify this has already happened with the administrators the administrators ratify the contract now it comes to you the board tomorrow the teachers on the other hand haven't received that finalized draft yet which is why i haven't provided it to the board yet because it just hasn't been finalized there are a couple of language items that we are just trying to you know put a bow on and we'll send it back to the like i said the attorneys are working on resolving that then we'll get it out to the teachers to vote on and and you to review um but tony adam and catherine sat in on that process and spent a lot of uh time including i think we we came to an agreement about 11 o'clock on a friday night um party night yeah we know how to party so um it was definitely i think you know after a lot of time and energy fair agreement and i'm looking forward to sharing more with you and the community once we we get to that point where we can do so i i thought it was uh we none of them have been non-productive i'm not trying to be passive i thought it was one of the more productive negotiations we had both groups i thought john redford's team uh came to the table they did a great job he was recognizing the uh the fairness of everything talked about there was no contention it was just uh a lot of good back and forth it was collaborative in my opinion um i'm happy with that deal hopefully the board will get some more details and exact session tomorrow night and hopefully teachers gratify it we'll see yeah and i i think it's one of those things tony i totally agree with you that um you know both sides walked away wishing that we could have done some things better in in places but also respecting the fact that you know this makes sense uh for for every party so uh i agree with you that you know that well there were strong feelings on both sides of the table everybody you know kind of put some of that stuff aside in order to come out with a fair agreement and i'm looking forward to sharing it too as tony was saying okay um i think just one last question just the the administrators who is the administrator is that your assistant principals your principals and then a few people at hummuston yeah it's um everybody sorry yeah it's all right it was exactly what you mentioned all the principles of system principles the group that maybe you know people don't necessarily realize is the special ed supervisors as well so rodney carey marie uh broadway and tracy hussey in that group along with kevin hanlon okay and then you uh and your assistant superintendent of curriculum marlene solano and your c o o vin maciana though you're the three administrators who are not in the union correct okay so it's about 20 people total the union is 16 and a half okay yep thank you yep was there anything else that you wanted to discuss in executive session not that i you know i think we've covered the highlights here tonight anything that i i don't have a final teacher's contract to to show you i think that would be you know tomorrow we can hit on some of the numbers in the executive session hopefully even have a final contract to give you at that time we're pretty close okay tony ann anything well ann might be gone and tony's i'm good i'm good i i think uh i think we have an executive session tomorrow night in the board review uh state union negotiations so i'm looking forward to sharing the detail i think some of you we already have this but share details of both contracts there's a a lot in there that we're trying to resolve for a number of years i think finally again so it's all good i'm hopefully this i'm looking forward to the teachers ratifying this yeah put it behind us and focus on the rest of the school year but we'll get more of that tomorrow night okay all right notes on the goals i'll i'll uh just go over that on any any input i'll send to you and jeff between now thanks man okay all right i mean i'm good i think move to adjourn tony second all all those in favor all right all right all right thank you everybody
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that's the drop dead date to me our reimbursement and um we actually normally it's june but they gave us an additional four months in the special legislation for us to do that so that'll help us um because i don't know if we'll be ready with fully completed drawings by june i think it's more like uh july or august those will be ready and you have to submit all that when you submit for your final authorization um so that's where we stand right now we'll have more information for you as we continue to scope out the project but i i just want to give you a sense of what's going on and where we're going with this and i think at some point a full-blown presentation by the architect who will be engaged uh will be warranted you know obviously in front of the board and dr sale and kevin and their team will will work their way through this and work in conjunction with the ed spec and with uh the the building committee on the board as well as 2020.
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so we're excited i mean it's a good thing right i mean this particular piece of legislation will save us 80 of 94 million so you're looking at about 70 75 million dollars and the delta between 60 and 80 will you'll we would have been around saves us about 20 million bucks when it's all done 20 to 25 million and the style of construction if we were to go a traditional build building for let's say 1200 students you're probably going to spend about 160 170 million um we're getting out the door at about 95 million with the reimbursement out of pocket for taxpayers will be about 20 million dollars that's pretty darn good now that doesn't count obviously staffing that's a whole other story but this will allow us to um uh really save a lot of money on debt service and provide us some some wiggle room as we need to staff up the building and hire et cetera there are a lot of questions that'll have to be answered how do we fill the building do we we do like we did with the uh middle school the west side academy where we you know each year we added another grade so we could staff up slowly and higher slowly i think that a lot of that will depend on the numbers that we see coming through um the door in terms of how the board up you know opts to do that a lot of that will depend on where we are financially um but i think more importantly it'll be driven by you know how many students we have can we do just a grade six then add another grade six and add another grade six all the way up to grade 12 or do we have to do everything at once or do we do just a middle school once i think those are questions that remain to be answered and that's quite frankly something that the board will have to hash out with sal and the rest of the team so with that i'll throw it open to any questions with obviously uh madam chairwoman if you you so concur and um if i don't have an answer i'll try to get one for you i have a i have a question mayor first great job uh on your part in our delegation's part to get this done uh i think this is a great start and a good idea one quick question i know we're working on a design build and the contract of the developers building it is the is the contra is the developer required to do this in a prevailing wage basis um no with the exception that if state money is being used it does require prevailing wage yeah so while the traditional bidding process has been waived um whether it's union or non-union will just depend i think on where the lowest bids come in and what numbers that they come from i think i think a large proportion of the building will be will be union labor which you know again we're looking for the best number we can get but we're not doing the bidding that's really up to the developer and okay they'll be contracting with the actual contractors okay thank you mr mayor i have a question uh when we initially discussed this wasn't to build out about 45 million it is but we we added at the end we added another pod in there because we wanted to provide uh flexibility for from 900 students up to about 1300 to 1240 somewhere in that range to do that we had to add in another pod which increased the cost but uh the good news of that is that we we got we went from 60 to 80 of the reimbursement so that made life a lot easier for us once again sir let me add my voice to uh the well done button on this crowd well done sir to you and the team thank you so much so mark process wide um we'll have a facilities committee i uh and um you know last year unfortunately we didn't get to go the weekend this whole thing hit but we did we have some conceptual ideas about this the academy um we did visit and um cara and dan from the high school and melissa they do have all gone so we're we have some background information the state also cara you on dr casmaro has uh placed in a position to receive i believe some kind of consultant to work with us is that correct uh correct so we've been selected to work with um in consultation with the state of connecticut and nc3t to begin looking at um are evaluating our current assets um and talking about the pathways uh you know how to build these pathways out and do it the right way so these this is a free collaboration with the state of connecticut um that we're very excited about and that's that's really just started um and you know i think um some of our covid meetings have been a little bit difficult to to engage fully but we've just started that plan and we'll be working closely with them to learn how to best utilize our our current assets to build this out so um you know so let's put that aside the the the the break fix stuff uh with mark and would um and the delegation did david uh is this incomprehensible um he's not telling you everything uh there was some turns that were moving away from commitments and it was their diligence uh and their persistence on behalf of our kids to do the right thing and and mark uh i just can't say thank you enough for the kids to you and to the delegation and to david uh this is going to be a tremendous asset uh cara and the team are really excited then our kids are going to benefit well well in the future connecticut is going to benefit danbury's going to benefit with this career pathway so um just i'm having them tingling down my back i'm just so excited about this so thank you thank you thank you and uh madam chair when joe gets on we'll we'll set a facilities committee meeting and we'll start talking about some ideas and the board too some ideas about construct of the grade levels and some of the things that the mayor talked about as they move along the parallel structure about um how to get this in front of the state so um thanks again mark and thank you thank you team and antonio for his diligence i know you know it was hard for him and uh he was up there fighting for us so tell him i said thank you i will i i the um one of the challenges we're having is that some people on the opm side the school construction side want the operational they want the you know the operational plan for the school and how we're going to you know what the education is going to look like within the walls and you know we had to sort of put do a brush back and say well that's not really your concern your concern is are the walls going to hold up are they going to be able to handle so many kids are we meeting the square footage requirements for for all the various programming that the state is requiring um so the sooner we have that piece done i know you've got a long ways to go on that but the sooner like you know late spring whatever whenever you have it done the better because people who ask for it that really shouldn't be asking for it but they want to see it anyways because i think they're more curious than anything else and that was part of the issue um that we had with certain people who are really just entrenched bureaucrats that just didn't want to do this because well you know what it's going to look like inside what's don't worry about that you know we're going to handle x amount of kids and so many square feet and we're going to meet all of your requirements so that that's i think that is absolutely under the purview of the board of education is what you you guys get elected and hired to do and that's what you should be doing um we'll we got work to do there's a lot of hair on this in the sense that again some people's feathers got ruffled but uh um i do want to again thank the speaker because um he literally we stood there in a three-way colony he said to the governor i gave mark my i gave the mayor my word and i'm not going back in my word this is what we're doing that's it i'm not we're not debating this anymore and then the governor said okay we'll do it so um all good stuff and again everybody pushed from all the different angles to make it happen mark i know is there going to be a is there going to be a referendum i know you had some ideas about that maybe the board might want to hear that yeah i i you know i i definitely think i know that we can we'll we can enter the contractual uh arrangement um with the uh the developer i'm not worried about that with a deposit with authority from the council i don't i i don't think we can get away without a referendum because some of the old language from the statutes are still in there so i think we're gonna have to have a referendum at one point but this will be because it's the most cost effective way ever put in front of our voters to be able to handle our students not counting the educational excellence that will go on inside the building which carries and her team is going to be working on um i think this would be the easiest vote we've ever had i just got to find the right vehicle to lop on a referendum but i may just do it even if i don't need it just to say it was done just so that's they can't throw that up to us at the last minute and say well you know you need a referendum you didn't get it so there may be we maybe do something in the spring or late spring i'm still kicking this around we were not ready to have something in front of the voters uh in three weeks we just we just didn't know if this was going to fly through the general assembly and i didn't want to ask for too little money which is what i would have ended up doing if i tried to do a referendum then so the answer is most likely thank you thank you madam chairman okay now thank you dr sarah and thank you mayor belton for uh supporting education uh the way you have uh this past year and on behalf of the board we would like to thank you and the delegation would like to thank him uh in a special way because um you know we can imagine it was not easy but we know that you support education and we appreciate what you have done for our students here in denver thank you very much mayor mayor do you know a celebrity will give us 10 million dollars if we named it after him good job on that that's not over yet that's not all over yet but uh we'll keep you posted everybody um this is great news uh uh we're we're gonna be working through november and december and um you know you've got your building committee i know they'll get going i'm gonna hop on another zoom call unless you need me um but uh we will definitely keep everybody in loop here thank you thank you okay next is our consent calendar cake sorry about that i was on mute i'll make a motion that the board of education approves the items on the consent calendar exhibit 20-106 through exhibit 20-107 is recommended second motion hey exactly any question concerning motion um i'm not sure if the numbers are correct maybe if it's a typo but under the superintendence report of our last regular meeting um the ais magnet school funding update i'm not sure if the the enrollment numbers are correct there i think they seem a little off to me but could somebody maybe look at that uh rachel they were unofficial just count tonight is the official okay but it's yeah but we can correct the minutes okay we'll look at that all right great but but for our submission to the state it's uh the october one but we'll check that date and the numbers that we have to correct the minutes okay great yeah thank you i'll put a note another question concerning the minutes uh uh kate could you do the rope call please 40 minutes uh rachel chaleski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper yes lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye al russo hi amy spelino hi all in there thank you uh next on the agenda uh do we have an employee represented here tonight i don't know no we do i i i'm looking i'm looking up and down i don't see aaron's name uh no madam chairman okay so we'll go down do we have our students on uh with us tonight hello everyone how are you guys we're good how are you doing i'm good all right so dhs is working with the do something organization in order to register more people to vote and so far we have registered close to 60 people and we're actually the first in the nation for registrations we're also in the running to win a ten thousand dollar grant for the school and every student who is signed up to register people is also in the running to win a thousand dollar scholarship wow good job thank you guys so tri-m or music honor society is now taking new members for the 2020 to 2021 school year the submissions will be all virtual and we are working towards creating a montage video with all types of instruments and vocalists the board of governors executive council and peer leadership will give tours to the freshmen next week the tours will be on monday tuesday thursday and friday and will be from 1 to 1 30 1 30 to 2 and 2 to 2 30.
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it'll be live right um and actually i would think so i was just kind of uh it was very important to mr donovan to see if we could make that arrangement but um okay good well thank you for doing it it's important so the groups will have 10 people each and there will be seven groups each session we also want to say congratulations to caleb schlissel on being a national merit scholarship semi-finalist also congratulations to erin h and on the okay on earning commended status the bog is planning to have a spirit week before thanksgiving break this november we want to try to bring some school spirit back we have also had some changes to the dhs schedule starting october 26th classes will run from 7 20 to 12 with additional added instruction time for the cohort that wasn't in the building that day there will also be classes on wednesdays that will switch a or b every week and that's all thank you jake so very much thank you guys jake when are you going to find out if you guys have won the scholarship and all of that did they tell you we should find out in the coming weeks you guys will know okay thank you good job thank you have a good night thank you okay do we have anyone from ace no christopher don't say no yes ma'am nicole hi go ahead hello good stuff for you else go ahead go ahead guys hello my name is nicole i don't know if you can see me yes we can hi my name is nicole kushby i am a student at ace and um this year i was nominated to be their representative along with chris johnson your new representative and um what is going on in ace so um good evening board of ed members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing chris and i to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence during the week of september 21st through 25th ace held its humanities department grade level benchmark week the ace humanities department has created a benchmark google classroom that the entire student body participates in based on your highest grade level in english or social studies thank you ace humanities humanities department for all of your diligent work on this school-wide learning activity also stay ace staff nominates and votes weekly on the students of the week we would like to publicly publicly represent two students of the week for their hard work and demonstration of their five behavioral expectations at ace 11 students were nominated and two were recognized last week and they are jalen batista and axel valenzuela they will receive dunkin donut gift cards donated by american paving congratulations to both of you thank you on october 27th 12 seniors will participate in the school day s.a.t assessment for seniors at ace on the week of october 25th joanne tolls melissa lasky daniela esposito and approximately 78 students will engage virtually in the dodge poetry festival thank you all for allowing us to share what is going on with our ace family during our current distance learning environment and have a nice evening thank you thank you thank you okay next stop to sell the presentation yes at a board retreat uh the timing couldn't be any better right for us uh the request for um a q a and i think you've received that was the request for a presentation over the um our our pro distance learning program a hybrid program which we have tonight cara has uh put it put together we are going to encapsulate this and also put on our website uh because as you know and uh the reopening is going to happen on the 26th and uh there are a lot of questions about the program um i i will say to you there uh what you're going to see tonight is is the thinking over time that we have had to develop we have tried to learn from districts around us and we'll continue to learn this will be the phase that we'll implement i think we'll do our due diligence and see if adjustments need to be made but this work has been um i just can't express to you how deep uh and how difficult it has been to do we have i want to say kim is on the line and kevin and kelly just finalized it today to staff for going through doing the staffing because we have as you know there were a number of accommodations that had to happen um the distance learning and the accommodations we had about 72 to 75 staff that had to be um developed and assigned to distance learning while we reconstruct our um our class list is like starting from um first day of school but uh i want to just keep quiet now and i would like you to see um the presentation and then we'll leave it up um do uh questions and answer uh kara are you ready to do it uh i am and just to clarify the the presentation tonight was is really you know since the the board retreat we had made the decision to shift to hybrid and so the focus um you know if we had had an extra board meeting or so we'd be able to talk about it like all of the distance learning uh programming that we have in place and then also in addition the hybrid model that we're going to be moving to so this is really more focused on the hybrid model um and we'll talk a little bit about how the distance learning cohort fits into this but mainly um to make sure that we have enough information out there to share with our parents who are listening tonight so that they understand how the shift on the 26 will affect them and their and their children at home so i will start my screen share you might if folks have their um they might want to turn the mute okay can everyone see this at home are we good dr sally yes okay great okay so um this is a little bit lengthy um and it's really to go over sort of the details of where we are now but also to unpack a little bit at each level elementary middle school and high school on sort of the operational inner workings of the schedule um and also to highlight some of the summary points of both hybrid and students who have selected the full distance learning cohort model and we'll talk a little bit about that i know there was a lot of questions we did answer those through the parent faq so anybody out there who's still um looking for that that is a pretty helpful uh resource with a lot of questions that have already been um asked and answered that was sent out in the last um last robo call by dr sal so this is this should look pretty familiar this is the current district distance learning schedule these are the times that students have been going to school when we shift to the hybrid model beginning october 26th the times will change and we'll talk a little bit about some of the rationale for this uh change along with um what we had originally proposed and why we need to make some some adjustments so a preschool session runs from 9 to 11 30 in the morning the afternoon session 12 15 to 2 45 again these were all published um k5 early schools run from 8 to with the bus is departing at 1 35 the k5 late schools run from 8 30 with buses departing at 205 6 8 starts at 7 35 buses departing 12 40 and grades 9 through 12 starts their day at 705 and bus is departing at 12 10.
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on wednesday you can see that all students are at home learning and there are times set aside for for the start times for that day as well that is synchronous instruction with their teacher at home so again depending on the cohort monday tuesday thursday friday the times on the left hand column represent the school day there was a lot of questions around um why we changed the time from the original uh proposed 60-minute and 90-minute early release so if you remember very early on back in august as we were preparing to open in hybrid we had a 60-minute early release schedule for k-5 and then 90 at 6 12. we have done a lot of consultation with aries school districts we have learned a lot from some of the parts that have maybe tripped up some of the districts in terms of timing and planning and so talk a little bit about the differences in the shift in the schedule so in k5 we'll have what is essentially boils down to a 75 early minute release and at the high school a little bit longer with 110.
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what we've learned is that the arrival and dismissal process is very complex particularly with the number of parents that we will have dropping off we need to make sure that we are planning appropriately for that um grab-and-go lunch also takes some time and we are doing that at the secondary level um the biggest uh process we think will take the most amount of time is around the k-8 level but mostly k-5 with young children being dropped off and having the number of cars um coming into the school so all the schools have a plan for that arrival and dismissal um but we are allowing for some additional time to reflect the reality that's needed to actually operationalize the um the and execute the our plans at each at each level um we also have learned that everything in distance learning um and so true uh will be for hybrid that everything takes a little bit longer um the planning time that's needed to work with students both in school and to connect with students at home and to plan for the digital complexities that are needed really take additional time for the teacher and we want to make sure that we have some of that time particularly at the end of the day and at k5 where our teachers will be connecting with students at the end of the day who have been working on asynchronous lessons the other thing that we thought was really important having started the school year and the way that we did um and you know worrying about disruption is this idea that you know our kids have finally gotten settled into these current schedules we've got them in in their groups we've um took a couple of weeks to make sure that we've identified their needs and that we're working working with them and that their groups are set um for for intervention in particular special services esl services and so we wanted to try to disrupt those current groups as at least as possible and so we took the current schedule and the groupings that students are in and we look to sort of stretch the schedule across and so we created a schedule uh particularly at k5 where this was most imminent to make sure that we maintain the integrity of the groups that the students were still working in um with regards to services so um we did our best to to accommodate that um additionally should we find ourselves um and we're seeing this now playing out in communities around us um having to have schools go in and out of um hybrid or full distance learning um because of an exposure um that we want to have one schedule that can serve both purposes and so um the schedules that you'll see presented represent um an amount of time and are organized as such so that whether or not we're in school or we're at home that the length of the day and the organization of the schedule serves both purposes for the least amount of disruption i have several schedules in here i'm going to speak first about the elementary schedule and i'm really only going to speak to the early elementary school because both early and elementary schedules are the same they only differ by about 30 minutes or so so i will kind of go through the elementary schedule here just to kind of give you an overview of the day so for students who are in the who are in hybrid and who have selected um i'm sorry who are in the blue on the blue team cohort so that is attending in-person instruction on monday and tuesday students will be in school between 8 a.m and 1 35 p.m they were they will arrive to school they will follow all of our social distancing protocols that the buildings have set up they will grab their their breakfast and they will head off to their first class the teachers will engage them as they come in through and supervise students but also begin to engage in social emotional learning activities that are community building activities right from the moment that students arrive in the classroom we anticipate that as we become more efficient with our arrival process and our ability to grab and go efficiently and students get settled um that that will be more time dedicated to this sel morning work and less time transitioning and um and organizing so but that's just a typical fare for the beginning of school anyways but in this particular situation that we're in um we know we're going to need some extra time in the morning to to make sure that our systems are are operating smoothly the instructional day will generally run from about 8 30 to 1 o'clock students will have their numeracy their literacy reading writing they'll have all of that in addition to that we will still be able to provide our what i need block and our esl services so students will go um and the students have this now in a typical year and we've been able to accommodate that in this current distance learning schedule so students will have some services they will have a lunch break they will have engagement with a special area teacher who will come in to their classroom and they in between all of this a teacher will have scheduled mask breaks for students to be able to take breaks during during the course of their school day dismissal process will begin approximately one o'clock and we know it's going to take a little bit of time to get students out safely to to the pickup lines and to uh to drop off and the buses uh will roll out by 1 35 so individual schools will have um their you know set procedures and pickup times and drop off times and um will be communicated by individual schools this is represents a generic schedule for the 13 schools but this is uh been designed to to give parents at home an understanding generally of how the day will work um while the blue team is uh at school um and after they are dismissed the teacher will work at home with the orange team so um this team here these are the students who are not attending in person learning for the day will be sent asynchronous lessons and practice to engage them in learning at home um i can't begin to tell you how much work our coaches are doing right now to design lessons that are pre-recorded and that prompt students to what the areas that they need to learn along with uh you know directions for the practice that they need to engage in so we do have a team that is working very hard to produce these very high quality constructs that the teachers can set the students who are at home up for learning at the end of the day when the teacher is done with the blue team there is an opportunity sometime between 2 and 3 0pm and the individual teachers will schedule this with students to check in to answer questions and to make sure that um things the anything that needs to be clarified is done so um there's also time for teachers that's going to be working on planning and having some meetings but there is an opportunity in here to check in live with students to engage them here the same thing plays out in reverse on thursday and friday with the orange team in school blue team at home so you start to get the picture there on wednesdays everyone who in hybrid is at home so between 8 a.m and 12 30 p.m students will engage with their teacher from both cohort who are both cohorts uh live with their teacher home they will have a morning meeting um potentially a whole group lesson here and then followed up by several small group um lessons that will be scheduled individually with the child's classroom teacher we will also still be able to provide win and esl and special education services this will be scheduled through the school at the end of the day the end of the day on on wednesdays is 12 30.
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so again just to reiterate where the in-person learning happens either monday tuesday or thursday friday all students are home engaged um virtually with their teacher live uh from home okay this is the uh the next slide is the general elementary schedule for the late schools this is the same exact um idea just about 30 minutes difference between early and late so just to summarize the hybrid program for k-5 students will attend school in person two days a week based on their cohort assignment both cohorts will attend class remotely on wednesday the focus of wednesdays is mainly small groups scheduled by the teachers and the students will be provided the students who are home on the on their non-in-person days will be provided asynchronous lessons and practice so the asynchronous to clarify these are assigned lessons in practice to be completed independently and flexibly and the teacher will check in with students at the end of the day special areas this has been there's been a lot of questions about special areas special areas will occur only on the days of in-person instruction and so if your child special occurs on a monday and a tuesday they will engage with those teachers but not so much if they if that occurs on a thursday and a friday and they are in the blue cohort what we'll try to do in the spring is rotate some of those specials so that students are able to engage with all four areas and have exposure to all of them additionally we've had some some of our special area teachers have asked if they can still post to a special area classroom a recorded lesson um so if students still wanted to be able to see what was happening in an art class that they may be able to do so so we are still working on bringing creative ways to engage students um and adding to what it is that we've been able to plan uh so far if a student has a special that falls on a wednesday they will still have their special area but it'll be a live synchronous class with their special area teacher okay so in contrast to that we have the elementary full distance learning program so for families who have selected full distance learning these uh students are going to be assigned a distance learning teacher that's been a a lot of the work that has been going on this week is to identify and finalize those those selections and those lists um students who are in the distance learning cohort will follow a relatively similar schedule to what's happening in the schools um and there's the day their start of their day will either be at 8 o'clock or 8 30 because we're going to try to align the schedules to the schools with which they came from i have to commend the cabinet team for working really hard on creating a system where the majority of students would still be affiliated with the current schools that they're in so that there's an alignment of services as well which we think is very important for continuity um so just very briefly uh what you see here at the beginning of the day tier two intervention simply means that the distance learning teacher would be the one to deliver any services in for tier two uh instruction that is needed um normally in students who are in the schools would receive intervention services from one of a number of folks but in this model um the distance learning teacher will be delivering that intervention um unless there's um another another plan in place and students who are currently in different types of intervention will be contacted to kind of continue those groups and we'll find ways to to continue to do that so generally the instructional day is the same numeracy literacy reading writing mathematics um 8 30 to 12 30.
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they will have a special choice board they will not engage with a special area teacher we simply do not have the staffing capacity to to do both in both programs um they will still continue to have a win in esl and any small group instruction that the teacher feels needs to be provided um 12 30 to 1 o'clock students will have their lunch and then will engage in some additional asynchronous instruction or practice at the in the second half of the day in the afternoon it is possible for some students not all to have arrangements for additional small group instruction or intervention uh based on need and current services that are provided so similar to the way that we've conducted uh this now in the distance learning program that's currently running we have some students who are attending additional groups and are being provided certain services on wednesday in the full distance learning actually all five days are virtual with the teacher and synchronous but on wednesdays in particular again the focus of those is more on the small group instruction again looking very similar to the the way that the in-person students are are would have that um and what is currently happening as well okay so in summary for students who've selected at the elementary level the full distance learning program they they will meet with their assigned distance learning teacher virtually five days a week special ed esl and intervention will require students to work with additional staff members during the day so that may happen or before or after the school day ends so we're going to be working very creatively to make sure that kids receive those services students will not be assigned special area classes or teachers however they have access to a special area choice board for self-paced enrichment no grades will be issued in the special areas for students in the full distance learning program okay the middle school schedule these obviously looks a little bit different but the same idea applies so the middle school schedule will run from 7 35 to 12 and the students who are in the blue court again blue cohort again monday and tuesday will be in school they will arrive 7 35 grab and go breakfast they will go to team enrichment they will continue on through their classes and they will be dismissed and hop the bus at 12 40.
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at the same time the orange team is at home but logging in virtually to those classes and so they will be logging into these blocks here so that they do not need to log in anywhere during this time period but block one two and three they're required to log in same thing on tuesday when both students are at home in the afternoon they will be they will have some assigned independent work that they have to complete uh flexibly it doesn't have to be between 1 15 and 2 45 but it could be at any point in the night but that is to just to identify that there is work that would be assigned the teacher office hours at the middle school level really represents that time and uh period where a teacher could still make an arrangement for a small group to pull a student or two that needs some additional extra support so there is time embedded in here as well on wednesdays again i'm sorry on thursday and friday if you're in the orange team the same thing plays out but in reverse on wednesdays both cohorts um everyone is at home and they will have a touch point with the teacher um in a little bit shorter blocks straight through the day they will have a break in a lunch and at the end of the day they have a little bit more of an extended block and again team enrichment to touch base with kids and to do a little bit deeper on social emotional work that needs to happen um sorry so yeah so wednesdays is everyone is at home so in summary for that schedule the hybrid and distance learning students actually let me go back just explain something um the students who are on full distance learning have a selected full distance learning cohort they are in distance learning five days a week they simply log into their classes along with the orange team or the blue team that's at home on different days so they're logging in live and virtually five days a week through their classes so they they they do not have a separate program per se they are simply not ever coming to school in person but they are logging into their classes so i just wanted to make that distinction at the secondary level so in summary the hybrid model cohort students attend in person and they're assigned cohort days students at home log into their google classroom and google meets to participate in each class following their course schedule full-time distance learning dl students will just simply participate and do the same as their blue and orange cohorts but they will do that five days a week all students on wednesdays regardless of hybrid or distance learning will attend classes remotely according to their schedule at the high school this sort of represents maybe the biggest change in the schedule um i know there's were a lot of questions about wednesdays um i think um though for as many questions there were about um the perception of not having enough of structured time we're also received as many emails thanking for the the the time to uh to do things flexibly so um regardless of that we did have we have gone in and made some some changes we worked very closely with mr donovan and his team to put something together that we think will um will solve some of some of the concerns that initially arose so again monday and tuesday at debris high school the sessions will run from i'm sorry monday tuesday thursday thursday friday the sessions will run from 705 to 12 10 for in-person instruction and they will follow an ab day schedule they will attend four blocks they will be dismissed and grab their lunch and go home at 12 10.
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the orange team similar to the middle school and as well as the dl students and the hybrid students will log in from home and follow their normal class schedule on an a b rotation in addition to this again the the high school has a an extra block in here the middle school is a little bit more time added into their schedule and they have some more embedded small group instruction but we are also asking the students who have been at home on the orange team that they are able to uh that they log in for live interactive mandatory flex session um it's actually interesting mandatory flex we'll have to think of another way maybe to to word that um but our typical flex sessions that we use the enriching students model is called our flex um and so we would like to see the orange students log in to have a um kind of a q a and to d and to check in with their teacher um from the classes from the day it is definitely a little bit more difficult when you're at home to ask questions um high school particularly a lot of classes such as ap where the content is very heavy and so this offers students an additional check-in with the teacher to make sure um that they have everything that they need um and to have any questions answered for quick check-in um the blues the team who is at home the blue students who happen to be home can also log into this time and have those same questions answered but we're asking that the orange this the orange team at home that that is a mandatory uh flex and we're going to um reevaluate that um at the end of the semester to see if that is indeed still necessary but we wanted to ensure that we had sort of a fail-safe system in here to make sure that kids who are logging students who are logging into their classes have an opportunity to ask some questions at the end of the day if they didn't have an opportunity to do so in class because they're home virtually so the same plays out thursday and friday with the orange team again just the reverse on wednesday similar to the other models all students are at home and are logging in this wednesday becomes um an alternating a b schedule mr donovan and his team has created a calendar to alternate these days um and also take into the account that um there are some mondays and some holidays in the school calendar where that would mean that the blue team would be in school a little bit less than the orange team and and or vice versa on some weeks and so he's going to create and flex the schedule a b to account and make an adjustment so that um there's equal amount of instructional time for students in both cohorts who attempt to attend in person just something of note on the wednesday afternoon session students will log in for a mandatory mentor flex session this is a live session so this will be an sel check-in an additional opportunity for students to work with their mentors for a variety of reasons um and and this we think that this will be very helpful across the year particularly in this environment um to make sure that we have that that um that one-to-one check-in with their mentors and the afternoon will be assigned independent work and most of our teachers are in department meetings on wednesdays across the district um so that is where they will be so in general and again similar to the middle school students who have selected the full distance learning model will just be logging in from home five days a week the hybrid program cohorts students attend in will attend in person on their assigned cohort days students at home log into their google classrooms and google meets to participate they follow their course schedule students who do not attend class in person must also attend the aligned flex session to check in with their teacher again we will reevaluate that at the end of the semester to ensure that that is indeed still needed full-time distance learning program students will simply log in and follow their courses five days a week and all students on wednesdays regardless of hybrid or distance learning will attend the classes remotely according to the published calendar and this the students will be shared on this calendar if they haven't been uh to haven't already received that and i believe that calendar runs through through the end of december and then will be readjusted and things like snow days and and so forth may be maybe accounted for um ace may have a slightly different schedule to accommodate student needs um so those will be published and sent to students from that school specifically um something to know um we are still giving the s.a.t at denver high school so october 27th students in grades 9 10 11 and 12 not taking the s.a.t we'll have asynchronous lessons posted for the day so yes we will be coming back for just one day and then we will be in asynchronous learning the next day to accommodate our seniors taking the sat so the timing is not terrific um but it is nevertheless necessary uh students in grade 12 who are registered will report to school at 705 the buses will run normally breakfast and lunch will be provided we'll end the day at 12 and i believe a robocall went out yesterday to confirm the students who have registered and in a very short time room assignments will be emailed to those students so that they are aware of where they need to go on the day of the test we will also provide the psat for juniors uh in january and more information will be coming out we did have lots of questions around attendance and whether or not students attendance will be counted or how it could be counted um i just want to distinguish and it's not quite on the slide but there's a difference between period attendance so i was present for my algebra class at 7 a.m but i didn't i didn't attend to i didn't attend any other classes um and that would be the daily attendance so period attendance is by class at the secondary level uh for instance and the day attendance daily attendance is that you've attended at least half of the school day and so in this environment and this was uh this little graphic here uh was extracted from the state of connecticut's publication and guidance on tracking attendance and um in the in remote and in hybrid a student can be considered to be in attendance by a combination of these four things here so and that is for the daily attendance so attending virtual classes virtual meetings um consideration for time logged into any electronic systems that we have and any assignment submission or completion so if students were assigned asynchronous work and they have completed that um and it would have taken a student an hour to two hours so on and so forth that the uh that that time is logged in to account for at least half the school day to be marked overall present or overall absent we will be adjusting our attendance codes on the back end it's really nothing that folks really need to worry about at home but we will have we have had to expand our different codes to take in consideration students who are in a remote program who are absent or present and students who are in person absent or present um we are still working with uh learning about the state of connecticut and they should be updating us with further guidance on on ways in with which our distance learning days can be counted should we need to use them for uh should we have a snow day so if we have inclement weather and we simply shift over to distance learning um we would obviously like those days to count there have been some state statutes i believe on the books that have made that a little bit complicated that i know that are being worked on now and it's my understanding that the commissioner will be providing guidance on the ways and what we need to do on our end to have the our distance learning days considered um for the use for inclement weather when we have to cancel in-person learning and i know that doesn't make a lot of sense but i know that the state of connecticut is working on providing that guidance for us um you would think that that would be a bit of a no-brainer but um it needs to be clarified and and we will certainly follow suit with whatever we need to do to comply the grading for this year we've said this in many other notifications we're back to normal grading procedures for 612.
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um if a student has any difficulty they should contact the teacher and school administrator there still is an option for a pass fail however um that needs to be um delineated and approved at the school level but we are back to normal grading procedures normal honor roll distinctions will be restored for this year at the k5 level um you know we have a standard based report cards so there are components uh academic um pieces that are on the report cards that sort of delineate different levels of progression with different skills and so some of that will be shifted and so um while we'll still continue with the grading there will be some areas that will be not applicable because we haven't reached that part in our pacing yet or things have shifted because we have shifted some um standards and have prioritized other areas so those those changes will we will kind of uh make special notes about what teachers and parents can expect with those uh the teachers um will be making those adjustments um particularly in special areas the hybrid program students will receive grades for the classes that they attend the distance learning program students will not receive grades so that would be an area that you student would receive an n a and not applicable as far as technology goes we are expecting um students to bring in a fully charged laptop when they come into school um on daily and to also to protect those devices to the greatest extent possible um and that you know there are a lot of the backpacks these days have a pocket to to keep things safe um but in the but folks can get creative i just had someone one of the principals texted me a picture of a of a bubble uh envelope from the uh like ups store and the student was able to transport their laptop in a little bubble case that was i think they've probably purchased at the dollar store so um there are different ways that students can definitely protect their devices but they will be bringing them back and forth for the most part unless they're directed to do so otherwise from their teacher and we just ask that all of our students respect our uh school equipment and that they adhere to safety and security protocols when we are in the hybrid environment and particularly the secondary level where there's an expectation for collaboration at home and in school that requires a very intense amount of digital collaboration uh and respect so that the teacher can can can teach their lessons and so we're just making sure that parents um at home are also holding their their children vigilant to having the utmost level of of respect for uh the hybrid and the complexities that kind of ensue as we try to implement this new model parent-teacher conferences uh we were going to reschedule these for k-5 um there's going to be many changes with teachers and shifting in programs and so we feel that it would be best to to hold off a few weeks um closer to the report card and when teachers who are receiving new students have an opportunity to develop um some relationships and to um to best understand their students abilities so we'll be putting out some new dates for that grade six through 12 will remain the same we may have to get a little creative with how we do that set those appointments um and there may be some asynchronous activities that are assigned to students in order to be able to accommodate uh parent schedules um to be able to meet uh meet with all parents and all the meetings will be virtual and then uh this really isn't for the general population this was a slide that was added and i know that there were some um board members who were curious about you know what is what does the distance learning look like at home um you know maybe i don't have children in the school system or i don't have school-age children and so there's a a link to some lessons um just a few that were delivered and then some wonderful k-5 student response videos um that you can take a look at to see sort of how our students are are working in this environment and i have to say we've been very proud of our teachers um stop hearing now very proud of our teachers uh and what they've been able to accomplish in a short period of time uh we did provide them with some training for the for the distance learning and they have taken off um and so they've been really you know our students have have gotten settled into a lot of the routines for distance learning um and are are doing well so we're really proud of the work that the teachers have done and and the support of the parents at home and and the work that the kids have been doing to uh to do well and to thrive in this environment so um you can help yourself to those links at will and um get a sense of what that looks like at home so so kara just briefly because there may be some differences in class sizes based on the number of faculty that we had to reassign so you'll have some variances on classes maybe you know we tried to do some combining uh we were able actually kevin and kelly and then um kim were able to salvage all of the classes all but one that we had to combine schools which was very impressive so there are some variances also cara has some piloting going on so you may have heard some differences at one school versus another that we want to kind of keep an eye on and in fact if it's solid and something that we can um we could scale up to uh to to for us to utilize then we will look at things like that so we have some things going on corollary to the regular program the other thing i think board members have said hey what about connectivity gina can you respond to that please sure hi everyone um i did receive uh our vouchers for comcast and um we have started passing those out to families so i'm very excited about that we're going to be sending some reminder robo calls that this is available and posting some more information on our website in addition we um that was part of the everybody learns initiative and we did receive an additional 900 chromebooks as part of that initiative as well so um every part of the commitment has been filled and the connectivity in the schools i know that's been any comments uh yeah the um the access points in the elementary schools uh the installation of those has been completed and um so now we're just in the process of visiting every elementary school to test out their bandwidth and make sure that every ap is working uh the other side is kelly drucus talk about your program how it fits in and what the hell is in that yeah so um with special education and related services we've done a very similar model to the secondary um what we have done is we have um taken most of our our caseloads and we'll have the teachers do a combination of in-person instruction and some streaming to students that are at home um in in populations where it made sense that there was enough students to warrant a full distance learning class we will be assigning one teacher to do full distance learning um and so we are currently working through um talking with our building administrators and then outreaching to each of the staff members that are involved in that to make sure that they are clear on the students that they will be responsible for um as we transition back into hybrid it was our goal as a department to make sure that we're providing the best instruction but also minimizing disruptions to these students because their learning needs are unique and we felt keeping them consistent as much as possible was very very important and i know that the esl department is operating similarly similarly and is uh kind of following that pattern with that population of students as well kevin anything at the popul to the presentation before we move to questions kevin i guess he's good kim yeah so so i i i i'm actually quite frankly i'm i'm excited about the the principal's participation in our meetings this week um kelly and kim and i met with every elementary principal this week in preparation for just trying to get their staff ready um and given the the varying options that were available to our to our parents um the principals have worked really hard to meet those needs meet those demands um and and as a result we've had to move staffing around considerably um and and principals have been working hard for these last couple of weeks just trying to balance classrooms um but but frankly i'm i'm excited and feel like we're going to be positioned well to open up our schools next week um kim anything um just i just want to echo kevin's concern or kevin's comments um and and i will say that one of the things that um i have been most deeply embedded in is talking with well over a hundred of our staff members about some pretty important um health conditions serious issues that these folks have been returning to work and i continue to be impressed by the resilience of our staff and by their dedication to their craft i think it has been while challenging it has been a really important and critical part of this process and it really has allowed us to say as a group that we value our our teams and we value our employees and we're able to really work with the vast majority if not all of them to find some sort of reasonable way to help them we also have taken that opportunity as another way to continue to reinforce for our um for our teams that we continue to put in supportive services kelly and her crew often will step in to help um but also the um the eap plan that we've put in place um a lot of the training that we've put in place i think has just been really helpful um and and i think it's starting to really become a critical part of people's navigating back through what is kind of an unsettling time for everyone so um i think it's been it's been a very hard month but i think it's been a really valuable one for us um and so i just wanted to say i i continue to be impressed by our team of teachers and staff members and and this is a very special place gareth thank you very much uh kelly thank you very much no team for doing it thank you gladys that's the presentation so if there are questions i'm assuming gladys recognized me she's still on mute but i have a couple questions i think this one's for kara um the most common question i've had asked to me by friends and family and people i've seen is why is k-5 asynchronous on the off days especially in light of the fact all of their surrounding towns are synchronous learning on their hybrid days new milford is newtown is i believe bethel is as well in fact in milford even the full distance learning kids are logging and googling into the classroom why are our off days for elementary schools asynchronous because that really seems to i don't know it seems to i'm lost on why that's better yeah yeah so so we had extensive conversations about um so so when students log in uh at the high school level or at the middle school level um you know they're they're basically um i'm not going to say it's a little more than observing right you're you're learning you're you're interacting to the greatest extent possible it takes a tremendous amount of work to design lessons to engage students who are both at home and in the classroom and we've been talking and having those conversations and so we're working towards what that looks like um and you can do it um interactive all virtual lessons cones are yeah yes 612 it's a little bit easier to do that with students because you can get them up and running and working a little bit more independently there's lots of concerns about the ability for a teacher who is in a classroom elementary classroom to attend to the 10 or 12 students who are in front of him or her as well as try to engage students who are at home at the same time in the same lesson without being tethered to their laptop um and so what happens is either you're if you put a camera in the back of that classroom it turns into like a security camera right where you're observing you're trying to catch what you can catch uh in that lesson and so while you may be able to observe what's happening between eight and one is that engagement of of actual instruction with a student um as opposed to you know we've been able to produce some pretty high quality videos with lessons uh that are pre-recorded to engage students with some step-by-step directions for that practice and then to be able to check in with them at the end of the day so they will get a check-in with the teacher at the end of the school day and then when those students come in they will have their teachers undivided attention for the two days that they're in and we think that that will serve our students a little bit better we also have um a lot of our students um you know that the their our their home being watched by a variety of um of folks um parents are a little bit in survival mode with where they get child care right now um yes yes and that that describes most most folks um and so having the ability to to actually engage with these lessons a little bit more flexibly so that these videos and the slides can be looked at at times that may be a little bit more convenient when mom and dad gets home from work in in addition uh we felt would be a better direction to go um we're hoping that we can get a little more direct contact a little more direct uh engagement so we would love to see the book ends of the day so in the morning engaged students in the afternoon follow up at the check-in but we need to slide in and get into school um and get our systems up and running i know that you know coming i'm sorry go ahead is it possible that we may move the off-state kids to synchronous learning at some point it seems like every other district is doing it i'm just kind of still lost as to why we're not well i think i think you know we've had the conversation what we're trying to what we're trying to do is the kids in front of us we're trying to do we're trying to work with them um as best we can without interfering the instruction during the day and as we looked at those models i think they became more perception as a convenience to to zero in and we questioned ourselves you know we said well why aren't we doing that would it work and we came down thinking you know let's focus on the kids in front of us and study that and then see if we need to make i think with carriage just hit some accommodations that we can increase time then by means let's try it but that was you know i think we went back and forth and what we learned was 612 seem to resonate uh better that's why we have that and here we thought this would actually do a better job with the kids in front of us giving them their time i recognize we're all just guests that nobody's ever done this before no and you know it's it's the the folks that i've talked to we've spoke to folks in different districts and we actually have a council group that we meet with and you know they're they're really i hate to say this you know no one's super thrilled with any model that they have for a variety of reasons um you know for obvious reasons this is this this is an emergency model that we're operating in this is a model that the state has required us to have as a result of you know our one half measure back to full in person learning and um you know if we had our druthers it would you know and we had you know 10 more features at every grid level we'd be probably look at different models but um you know we're definitely doing the best we can and we're also going to reassess so after a couple of weeks um we're going to see how students are responding are they responding in the way that that we hope that they're able to um to get some feedback and at that time too uh once we get our teachers in particularly at k5 um you know trying to find create some creative ways to have a little bit more engagement um again you know it when you teach from if you are to teach from your laptop you're tethered to the laptop if you're trying to engage both groups and when you have 14 little ones in front of you younger kids it's a little bit and you're trying to maintain their social distance and health measures while you have another 10 students asking questions at home it's just you know so so perceptually and from a compliance standpoint it appears that more is happening than really is uh it's my professional opinion but we will reassess that professional opinion in a few weeks and see how it goes thank you yeah rachel i'm sorry i was muted thanks i'm just wondering if this presentation could be posted on the district website um there's a couple hyperlinks there maybe not the last um slide but um that would be helpful for families to see it all in one place also are we expecting the elementary kids to um find their schedule of small groups and specials [Laughter] no so um so what's going to happen is there'll be a a transfer per se of of if if the teacher if if a child is getting a new teacher um so towards the end of this week and or possibly monday um we're still working on the finalizing a few a few last-minute details um so if the child's teacher is changing they will receive a letter all children will receive a letter you're either have the same teacher go good luck go forth or your chat your child's teacher is changing or here's your distance learning teacher and we're going to include a new google classroom code um on on that letter if the child's uh teacher is changing and then that child's teacher at particularly the k5 level will reach out to um to families and just similar to the way they did when we started the year go over the schedule so the schedule for that classroom will be posted and the and the inner workings of how the school is operationalizing a few things there are nuances um in every building and so the the schedule for those children if they have special services or if they've got groups will be made known to those those kids and um you know again we tried to keep groups um so if you're staying with the same teacher and you had esl services you know after lunch you will probably still have esl services after lunch the time may have shifted but we tried to put some things into place that kept similar routines um and you know in place to keep groups uh you know so continuity of instruction and just sort of the fluidity with understanding where to go the other thing just to add in is for students that are receiving multiple services so like in in my department that's frequent that a kid might have you know regular ed instruction they may have specialized instruction for reading or math they may have occupational therapy physical therapy speech and language what we've done is in their individual google classroom there's a way to post just to that child and they have a schedule by day of the week that's consistent with the same links every single time so they just go to their individual schedule and click on the link um so we've tried to make it and we've even have our students as young as preschool that are operating and amazingly doing a great job going through those links so i think it's working and we found that visual kind of picture that's personalized to the kids so for those that have more services and support or in any cases where students may be struggling with that feature the kids are are really doing an amazing job at it that's great thank are there any other you from board members yes i'd like to ask a question gladys amy yes yes amy first of all i just want to say to all of you who've been working so hard on this you just totally amazed me like you're like magicians the things that you're coming up with and we just really appreciate i'm i'm sure we all feel the same way um it's amazing what you've done i just want a couple a little bit of clarification cara i think you said um in the in the k5 for someone who's a distance learning student and is home you said something about you were you were you were training or working on staff members are there are there different teachers like just like you explained about how you can't really have a class of 12 or in front of you and then also be dealing with 10 that are home or something so other different teachers that are teaching that distance learning to the k5 yes so we have desert so so one of the i'm glad you brought that up because you know while you know we we won't have cameras in the in the k5 for the hybrid um going we we are able we have made a um you know a a big move and the ability to have that choice where a student can have a distance learning teacher that's dedicated to just distance learning um and and so they will have a different teacher we you know as you know um kim have mentioned we've had you know a lot of staff members that have needed accommodations we were able to um creatively match um staff members who needed accommodations to to remain at home with students who have also selected um the option for distance learning and then we could we built on that um to to sort of round out a distance learning program so yes students who selected distance learning will be assigned a dedicated distance learning teacher in k to five k through five yep yes thank you okay are they any other question from board members i just have a quick question it looks like uh joji silva does as well okay um gina i just wanted to follow up with you real quick um i know you mentioned we got some additional chromebooks which is great um and i just want to follow up about the internet connectivity through the elementary schools because um i think that last boarding we had a brief conversation about that um and i just want to make sure that we're we're good to go there um yep we so the last time we talked about it uh we were in the process of installing all the aps um and so now they have been all installed and um and like i said we're going around to each school for um to test to test the connectivity and make sure that all the aps are working as we anticipate okay wonderful thank you so much thank you gladys i just had a quick question i don't know whether this is for dr sal or our health director or who just are we comfortable right now with the way the the the state and local coveted numbers are that we're moving in the right direction to reopen joe um i have a whole thing on the reopening oh all right never mind nevermind yeah and kara and kathy are here i thought we would talk about that might give us a point i jumped the gun thank you all right um i do want to let the board know that um kim part of this accommodation um particularly at the secondary level where it's content specific the model provides our chemistry physics calculus teacher if uh not in person um to be home in teaching and it's you can't find a calculus teacher you can't find a spanish italian teacher so um what we've been able to do through the work of kim the principals and kevin and and killians and is um they'll teach remotely and we'll have an assigned supervisor in the room basically the monitor or in some cases we have to hire a sub i think this whole thing if it all comes to fruition the way we think we we think there's one i'm looking at kim now one fte which i'm just i thought i was gonna talk to the board about more than that right to make this work is that correct yeah i mean what has ended up happening is we've sort of evolved into two different models so um at the secondary level we are doing this sort of distance teaching so we're basically beaming in teachers into the classroom so their class rosters are not changing what's changing is just their physical location so that's at the secondary level and that was because we had unique challenges about class schedules at the high school we have graduation requirements lots of movement among kids so that model seemed to work best at the secondary level and at the elementary level because it was we were particularly challenged to find staff to be in the rooms sort of supervising kids while they were learning from a remote teacher we had to adopt a different model so we have aligned those a combination of some folks who need accommodations and others who have volunteered to have a cohort of kids that have opted for distance learning and so those will be taught in most cases from the physical classroom but to students that are electing to work at home so we're kind of balancing both and part of the reason for that is to thread the needle with different schedules different needs um and and also just different patterns of learning different structures of the day so it's really been it's a pretty big puzzle and and we sort of laugh if google docs ever goes down we got a big problem because there's a lot of these big spreadsheets and and and all sorts of things um so that's kind of how we've worked together and the creativity of the administrators on your teams is really amazing and that's really the whole reason why it worked so well is because of the you know credit to their commitment to making something work um so that we didn't end up with big staffing gaps which would have been very hard to fill actually before i finish um doctors i do want to just in the in the darkening cloud that is substitutes um i do just want to say a word about that um we have turned a lot of our attention to that issue you all know because you've been hearing for years about how compromised we are with making sure we have sufficient substitute coverage in our buildings never will that be more true than this year and so um where we ordinarily have a staff or a pool of about 200 250 subs um we've canvassed the group and we've heard back from about 50.
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so um this is going to be a big challenge for us to figure out how to cover so we're working on some different creative ideas and are always looking for everyone to spread the word that we're looking for folks who are interested in substitute teaching but um you know we'll have some new protocols for covid protections but also um just trying to make sure we've got sufficient coverage in our buildings is going to be a particular challenge for us this year and you may have some undergraduates take advantage of the executive order right from westcon right if you have a student who has decided to take a leave term or something like that also we'd love to hear from them and we're going to try to work with wescon and some of our other partners to see if there's anyone else that we can pull in to do some subbing for us thank you thank you okay uh could i just thank carol for the presentation it was absolutely beautiful thank you um and i totally agree rachel you know uh if we can put this on the website so parents can see it it would really be a big help to them and so again thank you on behalf of the board it was a beautiful presentation and i think you can understand it much much better than just having somebody come forth asking a question now you can see it on paper and you can realize okay this is the way it's going to be so thank you again you're welcome thank you so superintendent report no i'm sorry okay uh kate can you make the motion for the action item sure thing um i will make a motion of the board of education ratify the memorandum of agreement with the national education association danbury mea related to covid19 working conditions for the july 1 2020 through june 30 2021 work your only motion made that kick that was the second by joja silva there glasses by joe any questions in a discussion about the motion cn9 uh kate could you do the roll call certainly uh joseph britton i think he he is joe did you give that give us an eight iron a okay we'll skip him uh rachel chaleski i gladys cooper i lauren daly lauren are you there you're on mute okay joe da silva aye catherine hutchinson hi um al russo hi joe britton tested texted yes sorry okay lauren are you and i there ah yes i'm sorry no problem thank you i thought i had muted and amy spoolino hi okay did you hear there was uh i think al had something to add yeah al said that uh joe britton uh voted yes yeah he sent me he's put it in the chat actually yes oh yeah okay the motion uh has been um moved in second and uh the motion has been carried thank you all so very much thank you and thank you report okay i'll make it short uh kevin the october one enrollment report you ready go okay well kevin's doing it let me go to let me go to b um early childhood senate granville um kelly has been working with bob as you know to open it up and um it has been really challenging and difficult the construction um i was going to thank the mayor as was working with their building department to get i guess a temporary co particularly for our second floor so we can get our classrooms open very much appreciate that but even at that um talking them today dora's having come in i mean you know you've all worked with contractors you know what's going on um but we have a date that we think uh will work and that is november kelly i'm gonna say no more number nine we were originally planning on opening preschool the second of november which was a week after the k-12 return we are now going to be pushing it out additional week due to a couple different factors um but granville being a primary factor to that so we will continue in the distance learning model until the students return it to in-person learning on november 9th um and so we will um we just made the decision late this afternoon dr sal and i we uh sent out an email um to notify staff that we were planning to make this proposal this evening um and our plan would be to notify families um you know following in the next day or so now i will say uh if bob can get it done earlier i you know we will do that but i i i'm i'm hoping that that 9th is solid so um kelly has been thank you i know you've been there almost every day uh shaking and shaking and bacon but we should take a tour there when it's done i think you're going to be very pleased with it when it's done and dr sally i just want to acknowledge michelle capitelli who's the preschool supervisor has been instrumental in getting everything um you know done and and in place for there it's certainly a heavy lift particularly at this time um and she has just been phenomenal to work with as well as uh kathy on the nursing in the isolation room um it's just it's been a good team um you know bob bob is doing everything he can and he's hit numerous stumbling blocks regarding the building um but we are excited and every time i go there it's going to be a great place for our youngest kids so i'm really really excited to open the center i think the end result you'll all be very very pleased with we just need to hang in there unfortunately another week kevin you ready yes so so a quick update for ais and enrollment for the 2021 school year we are down some seats across the board with our partner schools and non-partner school districts as well i think we had mentioned to the board last year principal chris roach and his team did an amazing job reaching out to the non-partner districts last year we brought in you know close to 10 additional students for non-partner schools last year and that was really a credit to him and his his team's vision getting out into communities who historically had not um attended ais as you might imagine because of the pandemic those numbers are down this year so last year we were at uh we had 44 students i'm sorry we had 34 students committed from out of town non-partner districts in this year we are down only two actually to 32 but it's really our partner schools where we've we've also experienced some reductions we have we are down in total 18 seats between brookfield new fairfield new milford new town and reading courtney will explain a little bit later financially we don't necessarily lose any funding because those commitments um those those districts have um stuck to their financial commitment to us but it also means that we've we had at least until october 1st less space to fit our own students so currently we have 233 danbury seats uh 39 from brookfield 14 from new fairfield 18 from new milford six from newtown four from reading anyway for a total we have 346 students at ais last year october 1st we had 365 which is that maybe the number rachel was concerned about i think we reported something differently at the last meeting so we are down you know close to 25 seats in total um and you know again it's mostly due to the pandemic that we were not able to get um the the commitments that we've had in previous years but i anticipate those numbers will go back up when things calm down in our respective communities and the overall numbers were we didn't see the rise at all but you could it was down by about what seven tenths of one percent or uh 100 and the net difference is 145.
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is that correct kevin i'm sorry and that difference overall enrollment no no it's not it's not that significant so i can't see it we were at 365 this year we're at three no i'm talking about the district level i was looking at the total on the page five it's 25 the net change i think kevin wright 20 out of district and five in this now you guys are talking about the magnet school only i'm talking about the district the district down we're down one minus 145 in terms of total but the mat the magnet school will have to correct the minutes from the last meeting but um that was a funding issue but as of right now we did not see the influx we did last year we don't know what's going to happen the things get lifted but uh right now we're staffed at the level as you know and the dealt is at minus 145.
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so next i have the summit um you heard what the mayor said um and i think um what we'd like to do is ask mr s joe i think carrick talked to you about maybe trying to get a facilities committee meeting there's two things going on there's some funding at the state level for some solar projects that the town wants to get involved with us we haven't done a few we've done a number of them then we stopped for a few years but there's some real incentive money there to do it some good possible savings and the other thing is we ought to talk about the summit um in terms of program i i'd like us to start talking about you know the concept of what is what a career academy looks like what the nashville academy looks like so um we can start i think with the facilities committee and then at a board meeting start talking about the concept and come up with a concept the board will have to come around to approve the specs programmatically uh as you know it is built now for 1200 we had a real concern about 900 but we're feeling comfortable about the 1200 um which means it literally what it meant up there was getting another pod stat extensively so now um you know i think we begin talking about and i'll have our program folks come and talk about some concepts that we're looking at uh for that career academy so i don't know joe if we set a time but maybe at the end of the meeting you you can do that and we can start having conversations around that thank you oh and i do have one more thing next tuesday i believe next tuesday uh maybe yeah the naacp has asked we're going to go and speak with them um they were doing some comparison in terms of arrests and uh with with a few of the districts and we've seen that would be secondary we were a little high and asked us about you know to look at those numbers and talk about them so next tuesday um we'll be talking to them we've met with the chief of police we've been with the high school during during this busy time but we have um we have a conversation that we'll have with the naacp next week kevin when is it what time could you help me out with that believe it's at seven o'clock so seven o'clock so um i'll let you know how that goes but i i did neglect to put that on my report i apologize uh so thank you okay uh madam chair may ask a quick question yes um dr you very kindly let us know there's about 3400 kids who are going to be going into the dl model i'm just wondering if we have a breakdown for the different levels of high school uh middle school and elementary if those are like a consistent percentage to yeah um there were uh actually uh kelly cara sent us that let me see if i can find it actually i just want to call it up if you give me a moment i'll be able to get it yeah thank you the the elementary the elementary had a split the 1400 there was about 450 of those kids with yellow kids and then about 160 were sped and the rest were regular red so that made up for that so the other you could see it spread between 6 to 12 but i don't know what the middle in high school exactly would be so maybe karen carrick would probably carawanza she's not online but she has been phenomenal getting all the data loaded up so that we were able to disaggregate it in a meaningful um constructive way thank you for that here can i ask a question yes dr sale two parts uh the build-out price for the summit went from 25 million to 94.
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yet we're only increasing our our student enrollment from 900 to 1200. um i'm sorry is there anything new there any other aspects we're adding to that that building that would just no just space okay just just space with the 900 when we looked at it we were really concerned that we're going to under build and i think when um the state when they looked at the numbers um they verified that the added numbers though they would give us the reimbursement because we do need that space for the number of students that we have because it will have to be middle school part two that meeting next week at 7 pm is that open to the board well every meeting is open to the board but the way the board's policy works is the committee uh will meet and discuss it and then other members are invited to participate but it is just a committee meeting but every board member is invited well which i'm sorry policy committee which committee is no no i'm saying by board policy oh okay the way these subcommittees work gladys am i correct and we're still working that way um yes okay yeah al you could you'd be there the committee will discuss it and i'm sure joe will ask your you know you have a question but it's really a committee and then the the other board members that are there um can participate we just don't want to make it a board meeting per se right that's the issue dr sally have the answer to kate questions um so we had 3 486 students total on distance learning 1088 of those were at danbury high school 797 of them were at the three middle schools pretty evenly split um and then there was about 26 students at some of our other programs like reach and endeavor um and the ace program and then the remainder of those were at the elementary level so overall pretty pretty evenly split across the grade levels perfect thank you so much okay when we talk to the other urbans that we're running about 70 thereabouts you know so in school and about 30 on dl it seems to be consistent at this point thanks kelly yes uh mr britton sent me a text message he's looking to do the facilities meeting tuesday the 27th at 7 pm if it works for everybody else his mic is not working so he's apologizing um if that works for everybody no i will have a conversation with him uh tomorrow let's see if if it works with everyone and see nothing else going on and then we can confirm it then okay thank you also the um doctor said uh the number that uh keller just gave out uh could we sort of put that um numbers uh and that even like sort of the email and send it to all board members so everyone will have and know what they're talking about sure i'll take care of that talk about that sure thank you thank you karen madam chair may i ask a question please yes i just want to go back to what you said dr sal about the naacp meeting next week you said there's a commit like there's a committee that goes glass what committee would that be no there isn't a committee the committee of the naacp their meeting they invited us to their meeting okay if i said i missed is that is that their local chapter meeting that we're talking about no no no it's not a local chapter meeting it's a separate meeting for education yes it's just a it's a meeting uh that the naacp leadership from my understanding has is having with dr sale and mr walston and whoever else that doctor said has invited oh yeah the invitation came from julia um okay so you talk that's the education committee of the naacp yes that's who's meeting with you guys okay okay great thank you yeah uh now can we talk about the reopening yes great great great um i think i said uh back then that and and and not the board's always been same concern has been on safety but as you know um my i remarked that if we get our students back this year in front of us um that would be we're gonna be very fortunate to do that and i'm glad we're able to do it and one of the reasons why we're able to do it we're learning some things from our surrounding town but the essence of the number of students that are on dl provided us the opportunity to do a hybrid which splits our students in half the the state has always looked at this as a transition so for us the transition of being in remote learning the state calls it we call it dl is that when numbers of hybrid i'm sorry when the numbers uh the infection rate you get to a certain amount that would move us from dl back to hybrid when you're in the hybrid model that is also a transitional period the expectation is when will you go to full in person now if you look at everybody around us you'll notice that just about every school district has started on the hybrid and now they're transitioning to the uh in-person learning and the transition typically has been either a k3 for a few days or k5 and then middle stayed on hybrid they come in and the high schools to my knowledge so far been on hybrid with that said we've taken the opportunity to look at our numbers and consultation with the doctors as you know last week when i talked to you that um we would we would start the hybrid model on 26.
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