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yeah we cheshire got a grant of about 99 000 but we had to share that with the non-public schools saint bridget and cheshire academy so 85 000 is our portion okay and let's see oh and the uh the in in the personnel services the 41 for cleaning is that what is that overtime paid to our own custodial services i think i missed that part no no the 41 000 is the isolation room monitors that are there if we have any student in any of our school buildings that has symptoms um you know that are suspected to be covered which means it could be just about any symptom sore throat you know fever um you know those types of of of symptoms are very generic so if we have a suspected a child that has symptoms they go into an isolation room you have to provide supervision in that isolation room so we are using a third-party contractor to provide that right now because we you know we we didn't have our own staff that could do it okay thank you you're welcome are there any uh faith go ahead so um going back to these you talked about the costs all have to or the costs have to be incurred by 1231 right so january 1st onward is there what it how these costs aren't going to stop um what's what do we have available uh is there are there going to be more grants are we hoping for federal bailout i mean there are federal money that will then continue this uh or so the way i did the analysis is i assume the full year costs and the way i did the revenue is based on what i expected to receive with the from the 700 6000 and the 85 000.
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so and then the transportation savings so i've estimated based on what we know now full year's worth of expenses and then when you do the math that's where we wind up with this 300 shortfall okay okay so but you raise a very good point which is if there are additional funds made available let's say under the corona coronavirus relief fund 2. then we would certainly want to apply for that because you know that the current 706 000 doesn't cover the full boat of cost that we've that we will incur the full year i i've not been made aware of any additional funding that would be made available i'm certainly hoping that that would be the case then i'm sorry did did you just say that the 706 000 is for costs incurred through 1231 correct so that's so we still we have enough money in our budget to cover the remaining months if we were not to receive an additional uh coronavirus ii uh infusion of money we're still okay if we didn't assuming we get this bucket we wouldn't need a second bucket right now would just be more of a windfall no or it would be able to help us for uh to to reestablish uh our maintenance that perhaps we've been cutting now because of our additional expenses well maybe i'll explain it this way as of right now based on what we know we're projecting to spend less what we're getting including the seven hundred six thousand we are sure three hundred thousand dollars to our budget which we'll have to make up and i i believe we can make it up because we do have those expenditure caps in place and um you know that's assuming we don't have any expenses beyond what i'm projecting and it's also not assuming that we'll have additional savings as i said earlier if we continue to have very limited extracurricular activities we'll have additional savings in transportation you know the other place interestingly where we're seeing transportation savings is new haven school district you know some of us some students attend sound school which we have to provide that transportation for well the sound school's been meeting remotely so we don't have that transportation expense the votech schools that went remote again we are not transporting to the vote-tech schools because the students are remote so that's all funding that's allocated in our budget that we're not expending right now so if that continues to happen you know even if it's on and off for example at the vote tech schools you know or sound school through the year you know that fifty thousand dollars that i'm projecting in savings will grow so as of right now you know we're looking at a 300 000 net deficit all in including what we know we're getting you know from the coronavirus relief funds make sense yes and uh so that that uh jogged my brain for uh one last question for this section uh i know that uh ciac had just put out guidance for winter sports which i'm guessing would also affect our revenue for non for what do i call it extracurricular sports um that you know revenue that we may have we may have received through other organizations using our facilities you know such as tom white basketball or competitive cheer and that sort of thing um that spaces they normally would have rented i'm guessing now they won't be able to rent or or have we worked anything out on that front or are is that something you didn't account for in the first place so therefore it's either a gain or a loss so um we as of right now we have not permitted any building used to outside organizations so any after school activities so to speak are only for student sports or extracurricular activities like girls volleyball is in session right now they are using the gym no spectators though um except for parents of seniors um so building use you know it's we really don't have revenue um that does anything other than offset cost so when we rent out our building you know if there's revenue it's to pay for the custodial cost and there's no markup so if we're not renting the building or we're renting the building it's there's no net cost to the budget so that's not a factor right now um and you know just while we're on the topic so we've said um that we would not permit any building use through november 30th at this point you know winter as and i know everybody knows that basketball whether it's some of the youth leagues through park and rec or cheshire travel basketball they're not currently using our buildings now what we're waiting to find out and get a final determination on is what winter sports will be allowed and and under what conditions will they be allowed by the ciac and you know with dr sullivan we'll make a determination after consulting with mr phone and we're talking to john garlic over at park and rec you know what should we do for allowing outside building use come december it depends on on what's happening what the infection rates are what ciac's determination is what the governor will allow us so not allow us to do but that's not gonna be much of a factor mr grippo in in the budget okay i was yeah i was more concerned if if we were to open it up is it does it end up being that zero because do we have to incur extra sanitization costs or or anything because exactly uh hey i was reading your mind there catherine yeah so it's not just the usual custodial uh you know services uh that we would provide and seek reimbursement for i said it's that extra step um that you know could be cost an additional 25 or 50 percent uh from the looks of it um to keep things running so i was just you know concerned about that you know i would certainly make a recommendation as to what we should charge there would have to be some type of a surcharge um you know for any extraordinary cleaning expense that we would incur and again i mean as i sit here today even if we were to allow extra outside use of our buildings i think it would be pretty limited to just the uh participants and and coaches and a ref but not much in the way of spectators i mean you just couldn't you wouldn't want to do it based on current logic but we may not be permitted to do it anyway but yeah okay and and uh we'll know we'll know that one by uh by the end of this month probably yeah we we talk actually every week we have a group uh including dr solon sean kimball john gallick some of uh some of our internal staff including steve trafone we talk weekly about you know building use field use i think is really done [Music] within the next week maybe two and assuming that it's even allowed to continue and that's outdoor field use inside use you know tbd and there was uh no there's been no prepayment or anything because i know um some organizations are very proactive in let's say booking for space and and as far as we're aware no one had pre-paid for anything any potential charges where we may have to refund anything that's a joke question right nobody's prepaid okay i'm just making sure that we are not holding anything for anyone and that there's no surprises there yeah no risk there adam we're good fantastic thank you any other questions for this section all right okay so now what i'd like to do madeleine um is turn it over to madeleine dyker again she's our food service director to to talk a little bit about kind of the problem we're facing today and why and then some of the mitigation strategies that you know have already started being taken to help us get through so madeleine i know that if you want to present your screen you should be able to do that whenever you're ready sure i can do that right now okay um basically uh i'll present first what i feel is the um the causes of the shortfall this has been a certainly a tough year unexpected and you know obviously due to everything that's happening but basically uh in our budget and in our program our participation of the students are down so that's one of the uh main uh things that's causing this uh budget shortfall for us uh last year uh we were uh serving 11 000 breakfasts this year we're serving 9 000.
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that's actually not too bad down 19 and the reason why that's not down as far as it is is that we are serving uh breakfasts on wednesday um pick up wednesday evening pickup for remote learners our year today uh lunch meals 35 000 which is down 45 percent from last year's 64 000. so that's quite uh significant our revenue is down um by 85 percent uh in our a la carte sales so uh year to date till the end of october uh last year we'd be at 62 000 this year we're at 9 000.
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uh the reason being is we're just serving um meals we're serving very little a la carte uh and uh you know except for some waters you know a couple of chips you know obviously it's significantly down also there's a loss of upper tier lunch revenue at the high school we had a two-tier lunch price system so there was a 360 lunch and a 460 lunch since we are all on free meals and we're just based on the uh usda reimbursement meal we um are not getting the income from the upper tier lunch uh the uh parent funding of the student accounts uh is expected to be down 95 by the end of the year uh that's what really gives us our cash flow uh as the money comes in from the parents expecting that their students are going to be buying breakfast and lunch basically what happens is we use the that money to pay the bills and so we definitely have a uh cash flow issue here because now we're waiting for government money uh our government revenues to come in and there's usually a two-month delay uh arcadia ring is expected to be down about 62 percent and this is based on what i'm seeing so far uh year-to-date uh through about october uh what's also happening is not only is revenue down and participation of meals down but we have an increased cost of food per meal when we provide school lunch to the students we provide five components milk meat grains fruit and vegetable the student only has to select three of the five they can deny two components and it's the same thing at breakfast you provide four items and they the student can deny one it's called offer versus serve and the reason why the usda does that is to reduce waste why provide five components to every child in the school district if they don't want the milk or they don't want the vegetable they can still choose three that becomes still a reimbursable meal and then we get a small amount of usda money for that uh due to the pandemic we were packaging our packaging uh all five lunch components and all fresh for breakfast components and we did this for several reasons uh one a bagged meal reduces the chance of dropping the meal on the floor as their students are now traveling not only to the cafeteria but to tents and to gyms and outside uh one meal bag reduces the time spent on students making choices so we wanted them to move along very quickly and if we put everything in a bag you have to put all five components uh the grab and go remote learning at the high school a monday and wednesday pickup must have all the components since they can't have a choice you know right there on the sidewalk as mom and dad are picking up so you have to have all five components in addition there's extra cost in packaging the lunch menu you know we're now putting the hot items in foil bags or foil trays to keep things hot and the extra cost of vinyl gloves uh case of vinyl gloves last year as you probably all know went up uh last year was eighteen dollars a case this year it's ninety dollars a case uh at least this week you know last week it was eighty dollars a case just went up the the other uh increased in cost is our labor cost a small amount of additional labor time uh needed to extend lunch waves and additional passing time we needed additional labor needed for training before we open the kitchens you know exactly how we're going to do this the additional labor needed for bagging up the food you know instead of just cooking the food and serving it on the tray now we're bagging and portioning up and you know things just take you know much more time uh lack of participation uh by the students uh there could be several reasons for this you know you know we haven't put out hard copy menus and so uh you know the students may not you know be having that menu up on the refrigerator uh lack of choices we reduced our choices significantly uh because we knew there would be there's the more choices you have the more cost you have and so um also the more choices you have the longer it takes to make choices so we wanted to streamline the process to get the kids through the line as quickly as possible because now they're you know five to six feet apart and you've got to get them through the line uh in the same amount of time students are taking a longer time to get into the routine of eating lunch usually that occurs by october so they're not into you know okay yes let's buy lunch now um probably uh i could have done a better job in marketing and communicating to the parents and the guardians about the free breakfast and lunch i think there's still a lot of them for a lot of people out there that don't realize our meals are free um we feel that uh the lack of participation could be that maybe um the family fears um the sanitation or the kids waiting in line and you know so that could have been an issue i think in the beginning of the year everyone was discouraging students from eating school meals because we didn't know what was going to happen and concerned about cohorts and how are they going to be sitting uh and staying in their cohorts so there's you know several reasons why uh perhaps there's been a lack of participation from the students and then um you know as far as our weekly remote meals that we are serving on wednesdays and monday nights at the high school compared to the dad spring grab and go meals you know significantly down these uh right now we're serving about 2 000 meals a week as opposed to in the spring out of diet in one location we were serving 12 000 meals per week so um what is what can we do about this and what we're hoping would work so it's a plan to mitigate the loss i have objectives and uh key results the objective is to increase meal participation as quickly as possible some of the key results we're going to be looking and measuring for are increased meal participation by 20 measured at six week intervals we'll begin to offer free all grabbing free-for-all grab-and-go breakfasts or you can call it a snack at school dismissal for all schools by december 15th now we've already uh reached that key result or partially cheshire high school today did serve 179 grab and go breakfasts and dodd did serve today 79 grab and go uh breakfasts at dismissal today so we have begun the grab and go breakfast situation at dodd we are no longer serving breakfast in the morning but this way the kids can grab a breakfast and eat it either for snack or for breakfast the next day at home we will be instituting this at all the schools one by one and hope to accomplish this by the end of december one thought was to do a grab-and-go meals at dodd middle school between 12 30 and 1 30 during the day for remote learners we could offer grab-and-go meals for seven days a week at the high school in dawn and actually we are going to begin this this wednesday november 11th at the high school we start now to offer seven day um per week pick up so it's not only monday through friday but will include meals breakfast and lunch for saturday and sunday um the next plan is to set up a marketing and communication plan uh more communication to the parents uh communicating about our sanitation practices to if they have any fears to put them aside increase our tweeting and social media increased lucky tray days and so and then providing samples new samples of new foods this is happening on november 19th at the elementary schools we're going to be providing ramen noodles for the first time and so the kids are excited about that uh chapman school had a student had asked for it and set up a petition we did it and it it went over great so we're gonna try it at other elementary schools and just talking up school lunch with the kids the other objective is to reduce expected food cost we want to reduce our food cost by five percent to be measured every six weeks uh to double check that we're not uh over producing food uh by uh putting down exactly what we're making and how much it was over produced on our edit check sheet um also providing choices to the students i think this is a big one by returning the choices to the students i think the students will be happier when they can make choices again and return to serving food on trays instead of bags return to offer versus serve where the students don't have to take the whole bag again providing choices this will result in a slower line so we are working with the principals so that the students can wear id badges and once they wear id badges we have a scanner that scans that id badge and they quickly go through the line we will review and adjust our larger portion sizes at the high school to fit in align with the usda reimbursement that we're getting um our next objective is to reduce labor or effectively use the labor to increase participation we want to reduce our labor cost further by 5 right now we have about six employees that have retired resigned or uh are on unpaid medical leave resulting in a savings of about twelve thousand five hundred to about fourteen thousand five hundred per month will review and determine again we do this quite often on a regular basis but even so here um how many hours do we need per kitchen if we have extra staff hours you know and i don't mean extra but within the hours that the employees are supposed to be working we'll be cutting up fruit or baking bread or trying to make other things from scratch uh trying to utilize those hours effectively we'll continue with our cross training you know one of the concerns that we do have is that our staff get sick and both employees you know are quarantined so we are cross training staff so that we can move staff from kitchen to kitchen and we have been avoiding using our substitutes and in general just discussion with staff and managers just watching the hours very carefully okay all right there may be some questions madeline um but mr gripper if i can i just wanted to add a couple of things um first of all what we're experiencing here in cheshire is not unusual you know many school districts are dealing with some of these same exact issues where participation is down food service revenue is down you know and and costs are really up not so much because of um anything other than we have to package meals where we didn't package before and some of the commodity items like latex gloves you know are up in cost right now so there is an adaptation that that we have to make you know i will say madeline you know and her managers are running a very tight operation they always have so you know the mitigation strategies that madeline laid out will work they'll they'll certainly help mitigate the loss of revenue it's not going to be down to zero and so you know if things continue to go the way they are i do anticipate we'll probably be short around 300 000 per year or this year um but this mitigation strategy will help us and then the last point is you know food service if you haven't picked up on it and i know the you know you've heard me say it before the you know food service is very technical in nature what we do you know to get a meal out to a student goes way beyond just preparing the food and packaging the food you have to meet all the standards for it to be a qualifying meal so as madeline said you need to have you know between three and five components of lunch and four for breakfast and we have to meet those standards in order to get reimbursed we're getting reimbursed on all the meals we're serving right now but we have to make sure that we're compliant so there's the devil is in the detail you know with what madeleine is doing but i think this is a solid plan that will help us get through and and hopefully we can you know really build capacity up as long as we stay in school and we can continue to build capacity get students to start eating um on a more regular basis taking advantage of the grab and go breakfast meals that we hand out every day you know we'll we'll get ourselves in a better spot than we are currently and i see mr solon or dr sullin has joined so welcome doctor i didn't need the formal doctor event but uh anyway the yeah i'm sorry i was at the school modernization committee meeting but obviously i'm uh pretty well uh aware of where things stand fiscally right now in the district and you know we've been working with madeline and our principals particularly around obviously the food service stuff to generate higher rates of participation um you know it's critically important that we maintain the solvency of our food services program uh but it's also really beneficial for our kids to participate from a general nutrition perspective so uh we are really you know trying to be creative and i think you saw maybe some of that in madeleine's plan but really try and push that participation and find new ways to engage our students around this thank you um are there any questions i i just just because i don't understand why there would there was such a high level of participation last spring and it kind of dropped off and i'm just i maybe you explained what your thinking is behind that but i'm just that's so weird that it would have been there should be such a big difference i think um yeah go ahead i'm sorry man that's okay i i think not only am i surprised i'm as surprised as you uh but there are districts across the street uh food service directors in districts across the state that are just as surprised um all of us thought that once the meals became free that we have a bigger participation so i think there's other factors at work you know whether it's communication whether it's a concern about covet and standing online not quite sure you know we're thinking about doing a survey to the parents but um we are surprised that participation is not up thanks that wasn't helpful on my part but you know yeah i mean it looks like you guys know how to address the problems at least or start tackling it so thank you as always madeline thank you faith looks like you have your hand up yep a couple of things first of all i i don't know maybe i'm just the cockeyed optimist but what i see are families um making their own meals which to me um is a positive sign but um and i'm a little distressed that we are this dependent on a program that is mostly funded through government government um subsidies at a time when the government is is uh let's just say stretched thin and i would also i guess i'm a little distressed i you know you are the dietitian but when i hear ramen noodles which it probably i was told when i was feeding my children ramen noodles one of the the most nutritious things that you can give children i am concerned i'm really concerned that we're in this hole um and i i can't sit back and just say you know marketing is gonna fix it um i uh can i ask how much that that's just my comment and i'm sorry it is sort of uh from the gut as opposed to from the head um how much of our food service program depends like what percentage of our revenue specifically comes from the us department of agriculture versus catering where we could actually make some some make up some of this shortfall the catering amount is very small you know so when i do say catering is down well we're talking about a very small amount my budget is generally about 1.8 million in revenues that would would have been last year and while i don't have something in front of me i would say that half of those revenues you know generally came from the parents you know we are we only would get a revenue from the usda uh to get reimbursed by uh for free and reduced meals and then each meal we would get a very small portion of about uh 21 cents you know per paid meal so uh as far as our revenue uh from the government you know was not uh morse above and beyond what the parents would pay for it and could you i'm sorry could you repeat that um what i'm trying to say is the the parents i would say about if i had to guess uh about 75 of the revenue would come from the parents paying for the meals and then about um you know 25 to 4 35 or so percent from the uh federal government 25 to 30. yeah the book that's because madeline just to you know help explain you know our free and reduced lunch part not participation but the percentage of students that are eligible for free or reduced meals that are paid for by the usda is around 15 percent correct okay and then beyond that we also even if there's a full paid meal not a la carte but a full paid meal we get 21 cents additional reimbursement even if it's not a free and reduced lunch student correct from usda from yes so in ordinary times as madeleine said let's use 25 as a round percentage 25 of the revenues came from usda for either free or reduced lunch students or the 21 cent reimbursement when we were serving a full balanced meal you know i and i i think it was uh president trump who extended free meals for all through the end of this school year yes until june correct so yeah i mean it you know i think there are some things that you know we look at and say well gee you know is there would there be a way if we could allow for choice instead of having to serve all five components in a lunch meal only serve the three four or five the students want you know that we would certainly do that if we could and i think that's part of the mitigation when we go to a full tray and selection but you can't do it right now so you know there is some some waste that's potentially happening but that's the way it's always been with the food service program it's just worse now because of the fact that we have to pre-package these meals but again we have to meet the technical requirements of the program to get reimbursed you know the other thing is that this is a much different scenario than what in the spring too because in the spring everybody was home and we had a ton of people accessing these meals frankly out of convenience or telling me that it was a trip out of the house that i look forward to every day you know this is a different scenario now when the vast majority of people are back at work um and they're not in a position where they have to do that uh we still though need food service well into the future after this is over with and so we're trying to figure out how do we increase student engagement in the program with a significantly particularly the high school reduced number of students so you know on a daily rate we'd have about 1500 kids now you can lock 10 percent off of that who are full-time remote and then half it every other day right so you know that's the numbers are significantly down and we've made adjustments as a result of that but the revenue is obviously significantly down as a result so we want to make sure kids are eating and eating right first and foremost and then we need to make sure that our food service program is there to meet those nutritional needs beyond covid um and so that's what we're looking at just one other question if we reduce labor by five percent what does that translate into for dollars um 15 000 a month right because i would just 12 well we've already cut that well that's already been cut that's already been saved um due to retirement uh and resignation um at this point i would say that that would approximately be about 80 000 total or per month no total okay um so this isn't adding up for me i'm i think i'm i must be missing something so we're short 300 000 in food services but we're supposed to be getting reimbursed for our food so does that mean that we are not being reimbursed at 100 percent and that we're incurring a cost that we can't recoup because we're not collecting money from parents through the uh the the the meal payment meal payment system i i think you're correct in the fact that yes you know we get a reimbursement from the usda to cover meal cost but it doesn't always cover all the costs and i think because this is unusual times and the fact that we're doing business differently we are giving all five components of all the food where normally there would be many students that would only take three out of five so that extra food that we're serving out is the additional you know that contributes to the additional cost the additional uh labor to to deal with you know all the uh different things that we're doing compared to what we would do last year that's contributing to the additional cost and then plus the fact is what if your participation goes down you still need a certain number of people in the kitchen for example if i'm doing 300 meals in a kitchen or i'm doing 200 meals in a kitchen i might need the 200 meals in the kitchen i still need three people to serve whether i'm serving 150 or i'm serving 250 because i need two people serving in a cashier so sometimes just the the basic needs of needing some um a minimum number of people you know obviously the more meals you serve the more efficient you become yeah you still have one manager one cook to pay you know so if you're serving one meal or a thousand meals you know that's part of your overhead so it really comes down to participation rate more than anything you know there's not enough participation even though we're getting paid by the government you know for these meals there's just not enough participation to cover the overhead and even by reducing you know the overhead with some of the labor cost reductions uh and the mitigation strategies that madeleine talked about we're still going to wind up short unless we could you know magically get the participation up really really high for the remaining you know seven or six and a half months of the school year so i'm not understanding how a lower participation rate uh translates into a deficit well because i think it would be the opposite that you have low you're putting out lower less food less food cost unless the the usda plan requires you to have a certain amount of output that we're somehow not making up and what am i missing i basically what i um i said i is as far as labor goes you need a minimum amount overhead yeah okay i have a minimum overhead that you know we weren't operating on a profit before you know we were operating on a break even so to sustain the same amount of overhead but sell many less meals where that's where we're falling short over the course of a full year so if it cost us a hundred grand to do business and we were selling 100 grand in meals that's you know that's well that's where we wanted to be now we're doing it cost us 100 grand to do business but we're selling 80 grand worth of meals because we just don't have the customers coming through the door this is the same restaurant problem that other people have just under our roof because we're not selling as many meals anymore but it costs us the same amount we still have to have a cook we still have to have all these so the overhead is the same the meal sales is down and so that's why you know faith to your point we're not gonna we're not gonna blow this up with increasing participation we're not gonna get back to 100 but what we are going to do is by increasing participation we're going to start to hedge that instead of hemorrhaging the way we are now so when you so madeline when you say uh bringing back uh choice to a meal are you saying that you that would uh incur a cost to the student by that i mean before covid a student would have a meal account and then they would be charged x amount of dollars because they chose a certain meal or whatever it was does is that what you're is that what you're saying that parents could then uh refill the uh their their their child's meal accounts and then we would be able to conduct business in a more normal manner or because i'm not quite understanding how the how the deficit is made up by increasing participation um is it i i don't understand the mathematics behind this it's basically right now uh we're making very little on a meal based on usda reimbursement so the usda reimbursement is three dollars and 41 cents we used to get three dollars and sixty cents a meal at the high school and four dollars and sixty cents for a higher tier meal we're only getting three dollars and forty cents uh per free meal and for breakfast we used to charge two dollars and twenty five cents a meal or two dollars at the elementary we're only getting a dollar eighty nine for that meal so what we'd like to do is one you know if if we can make a little bit of money the more meals we serve then the more we'll make going back to the choices what we mean by choices is right now the kids don't uh in the beginning of the year we were putting all five components of the food in a bag take the bag there you go one two three it's done we want the kids to have choices when they have choices they're happier about buying their lunch because they're choosing the fruit they want they're choosing the vegetable they want and once we go back to more choices we're hoping that'll help um you know uh help the participation to go up so why are we doing this then if we're we're essentially operating at a loss are we mandated to do this well we have a couple of things again we need to first our first goal here is to make sure our kids get adequate food nutrition we do have a significant percentage that receive free and reduced lunch so yeah we are required to provide that to them um and additionally we do have a fair number of kids that are accessing the lunch program now and this is a short-term problem um i you know i'm hopeful about the the news today about a vaccine that this isn't a problem that's going to last us three years this is a problem that i'm hopeful will last us three to six more months um and it at worst if we get through the end of the school year we should be back in normal next next next year so yeah we we do have to continue to provide food services you know from a um another perspective and we could what if we just dumped our food program and hired an outside group well now is not a great time to even pitch that idea no there's no money in it for anybody so it's like trying to sell trying to get somebody to be our bus contractor last spring you're not running any routes you know there's no money there to be had now we had a a burgeoning food uh services program one of the best in connecticut prior to krovid but like madeline said you know you have that hundred thousand dollar overhead and back in the old days you could sell an upgraded meal kids were buying a lot of them that helped us meet the overhead actually made us allowed us to do some enhancements you've seen i don't know if you remember the old cafeteria but it's beautifully painted at chs it looks like a restaurant you know we we've done some of that because we've been we were successful in our food service program like the rest of the world we hit the covid wall we have a hundred thousand dollar overhead again these are just uh hypothetical numbers hundred thousand dollar overhead and we just can't meet sales because we're just not getting enough kids through the door to buy it um and we can't sell on top of it those high priced higher priced meals that the kids want like my 15 year old boy you know he wants a bigger meal he's going to pay the extra money for the meal the the reimbursement program is not working that way now so um you know that's probably another reason why we're not we don't have the same sales so there's a number of factors in play here you know strong recommendation is stay the course but we absolutely have to find ways to close that gap the same way if we were losing money anyplace else we'd be you know going out of our mind trying to find a way to close the gap um it's cutting the food service program is not really an option and i'm not suggesting that that's what you were saying by the way i just that's not what i was saying i know it's that's why i wanted to be clear about that because i know you're not saying well let's not serve lunches anymore but it's like you recognize the way we do and i understand like vin madeleine myself we've had a couple of weeks to really process this and start to problem solve where you guys have had not even a couple of hours so this is just um where we are right now uh with this and we're trying to close that gap uh aggressively i think what i'm just trying to understand is it seemed like we shifted from the the need model which was i'm i and i forgive me if i'm not understanding if if a child or a family was in need did they have to apply to be in in the program so that when their child went to the cafeteria you knew who they were right that you oh okay all right so it was just it was just built into the cost of the program that 15 or whatever it was that's what you were reporting or however it's done right and so and so you would get your reimbursement or whatever the number was you you were giving um and so now we've gone to basically a program but it sounds like usda is reimbursing at around or maybe slightly higher than what they were last year but we are not allowed to do our regular program because why not why shouldn't we just go back to our regular program and hope for the best because i know that i for me i'd be willing to put in my you know 30 40 a month and you know have my child you know spend that money at the school at the cafeteria so i i'm not sure why we can't go back to a model like that again or if there's something preventing us from doing that so can we opt out of the federal program is the question basically so yeah i don't know if that's what would be that's what would happen if we opt out we lose everything is that kind of what you're saying i don't know we would certainly lose the reimbursement we would lose certainly we were not getting getting government commodities which is another way of subsidy but i think the reason why we went to the state did give an option of staying the course or uh going to everything free and the reason for going to everything free is that everybody uh well the community uh was having financial difficulties so the fact is our free and reduced uh families uh the percentage was going up now people had stopped applying for free and reduced applications because now all the meals are free but we have about uh last year we had about um children that were eligible by applying for free and reduced meals and it is a very confidential system where uh you know no one knows you know it's in the system but they apply it gets processed in our system and then they come to the cash register and you know it's very confidential but the fact is the number of families needing help uh due to being layoffs um has increased you know and so if i go into free meals for everyone this sort of helps the community who is struggling you know during these coping yeah there's one more piece to just we kind of glossed over it but it i think it's an important one and that is the a la carte sale being down you know 86 percent is is what madeline explained in a presentation so you know we last year for the first three months we're at about 60 000 this year we're we're at about 9 000 in a la carte sales so i mean that's significant and the point that i'm trying to make adam is that that portion of the program is still there but it's just it's not being sold i think there's a fundamental difference in the way students are using you know a food service program i think a lot of that has to do with some of the things madeline touched on that people are afraid they just don't want to you know stand in line with other students i i can't put my finger on it but there's something at work there even in the a la carte sales which are not free those students would have to pay for that just can i just clarify for my own self some things did i turn myself okay so i just want to make sure we're losing meal money on every meal we give out essentially yes at this point yes yes okay and we have 15 percent of roughly 15 percent of our student population who receives free or reduced lunch is that in a normal year that is correct okay we're in an abnormal year but do we have a percentage on kids receiving for your doula reduced lunch this year okay everyone is on free meals so i i know but we but as far as their status the status of free and reduced uh i believe is around 650 students i'd have to double check i don't have that okay so 650 uh 4 000.
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um i might my initial reaction is we should those need to be our concern those guys are our concern in in how do we um you say that i i know there are needy families out there but our demand is way down so how do we reconcile this notion that there are all of these needy families out there when our numbers are so reduced um it's not that to me doesn't judge um so um i don't know i mean you know this is this requires a lot of strategic thinking far more than mine and trust me i applaud you for what you do because you are trying to unravel a gordy and not that nobody seems to know where the beginning or end is um but i just think that if we could somehow concentrate or or identify without identifying but help those 600 people 600 families 600 students in need and um well just so that you're aware there's two things here um we have done uh outreach when we were doing the spring grab and go we were doing outreach to those families to make sure that they knew about it that we made sure we gave them access to make sure that we can get a bus to deliver it you know so there were very many things that we did do to to to get the uh people in the spring it worked you know these are different times than the spring i think the other thing is one of the things you have to realize is that if we focus only on the free and reduced children we will not have the program that we normally have because we want kids that are not on free and reduced to eat the lunch if the kids feel that they are free and reduced and they're the only ones going up to get lunch they're going to be overly identified so it's important to try to get as many children to be eating so that those who eat it will also eat when their friends are eating it okay uh okay um so uh just so just to pick up on that point madeline um so our system was running like clockwork last year where we had the two um i guess the the two types of of families i guess uh using your system right the free and reduced and and and the paying in the paying children as well the paying families correct um and so why why what is preventing us from going back to that is it because right now it's an all or nothing situation from the government yes oh so either we yes it's but i we still would be in a financial difficult time because even if we were charging our four dollars and sixty cents even if we were charging our three dollars and 60 cents i think there may be families that who in the past would have purchased lunches might have might be struggling and having more difficulty this year than last year just based on how many people have been laid off right so even if we went up to let's say 30 or 40 percent right i would think that we would still be in a better situation than incurring a three hundred thousand dollar loss wouldn't you think uh i'm not sure that question thirty or forty percent of what well if if our free and reduced program was at fifteen percent but we're in a you know unprecedented unprecedented times right now so let's say that went to 30 or 40 percent right correct um wouldn't if if we were to be able to to just uh subsidize those lunches right at a 40 level than a hundred percent level wouldn't wouldn't we still be in a better financial position um than if we were to to maintain this hundred percent level um or are we not allowed to i mean is that basically right now we're not allowed to do anything except accept free lunches or provide free lunches or not right is that essentially where we are right now at this point we are accepting three dollars and 41 cents per lunch meal that we serve and it's for everyone last year we charged um a certain price we were reimbursed a certain way for 15 percent of our children but this year everyone from september 8th uh has been getting um free meals there's no reduced meals everybody three at three dollars and forty one cents and so and so that three hundred thousand figure that's for the remainder of the year or is that through 12 31 that's the full year okay full year provided that i'm not i don't see a way out of this it would even with your reductions i don't see how there's a red there's no way out of this because we're going to continue to concur the loss and even if you essentially if you're if you're increasing participation you're just hoping to approach a one-to-one efficiency in your fixed costs which may or may not happen and okay either way it's it's we're gonna have to find some money the um you know the mitigation strategy what it's gonna do is it's gonna get us closer to our break even because i mean just really simply if we're getting 3.40 back from the government part of that is covering the cost of the food that we're purchasing and and providing and the other part is covering our labor so because we haven't been and we can't i mean we still have an operations run you can't reduce your labor enough to make up for the loss of participation so by increasing the participation it'll get us closer to where we need to be that's why the mitigation strategies that we're presenting um you know have been identified and who knows maybe we'll get to a better place all right so so that brings me okay so all right i'm trying to obviously i'm just trying to figure this out we're talking through it here so you're saying that if we were able to increase the participation rate so let's say that we're doing 400 meals a day at a given school instead of the current rate of 200 you're saying that we would be able to somehow in close the gap of our shortfall by having more people participate i said i think what i'm trying to say is um the only way i feel i can explain it is like walmart walmart makes a penny on this uh one prod you know item if i could but you got to sell 100 000 items to make what you know that profit it's the same thing here we just need to serve more a la carte and we need to serve more meals we're making less per meal in a very small amount but if we can get our participation up the hope is that we'll bring in more revenue because we're serving higher meals so so you're saying that if if everyone in town participated as if they did last spring yes where the meals were at a very high level you're saying that there is a break even point in the reimbursement scale where we would not incur a loss per meal i believe so but that also includes the fact that uh we need more a la carte now a la carte uh items are not reimbursable so if i'm making 15 cents on a bag of chips that's pure profit to towards the program right that's a lot of chips though if i just follow on with adam i just i don't see how if we're losing money on every meal increasing participation is going to somehow get us out of this hole it seems to me that we're going to get deeper in the hole but yeah i see miss steiker that yeah we have got to get that those a la carte sales up as as any restaurant would i mean that's why you sell dessert at the premium because you know it's easy to make and uh people want it and it's a great margin same thing with drinks but can't do that no i'm not suggesting but no but you know you know and i've worked some in the restaurant in business and then and as mr zolan point dr solon points out there's this is what we're dealing with it's essentially food service restaurant but um i guess um you know freeing free and ultimately we got to pay for it but i i just going forward when we do come out of this and i don't know necessarily how to work it um you know i think of hospitals and they have you know they're non-profits they have their indigent fund and i don't mean to call this an individual fund but do we somehow going forward begin to set up funds um you know prices are our meals accordingly so that there is something that can be put away for for contingencies like this because they're not they're going to happen again you know this is this is a particularly um extreme one but i'm not we're not in the profit making business but is there a way to establish a fund in the food service um unit to to be able to offset these these hiccups or whatever when they happen yes you know if breaking even isn't going to do it in a normal time i think maybe this is showing us that we've got to have a a paddock some kind of padding somewhere some kind of extra funds yeah we always have we always have until last year faith the food service and madeline can give you the more specific details but food service actually was running above break even and food service is allowed to carry a three-month reserve maximum in accordance with state guidelines man i want you to just explain it kind of how they calculate that um but we ran out of reserve that's really kind of the bottom line yeah yeah and in the past 17 18 years that i've been here we've always had a positive uh reserve uh a surplus so that if we did make something we are allowed to keep up to about i think it's like 450 000 you know in a reserve for emergencies for cash flow obviously when we start up in august and september we need cash flow to pay to pay payroll to pay our vendors before the you know we're even starting with uh meals so uh you know for 18 years we've always had a general positive cash flow any um surplus uh you know you know we've had years where it's been over 240 000 we've had years when it's been as low as 23 000 that we would make money and we would save it what would we use this money for equipment you know um investment into the program just like a business you know if we need to buy a refrigerator you know we're gonna wait till we have the money and then next year we use our surplus funds certainly we went through our surplus funds last year um you know so and ended up with a loss last year even though as good as we did with this dodd spring you know grab and go it's still what um you know was a loss yeah i mean that that's the right uh thought faith and i mean i'll add to that too some of the things that we've done with the reserve kind of went the other way like when we were redoing the doolittle kitchen which you know was a capital expenditure that was paid for through the town's funds when we went out to bid you know we did come up short or the bid was higher than we had capital funding for and so money was allocated from the food service reserve to help pay for the improvements that we made at doolittle so i mean it's been a two-way street the reserve has helped but the you know the last you know now we're going on you know nine months with with covid for food service it's taken its toll on the reserve so we're not there anymore oh boy so to me it sounds like we're voluntarily committing to a program that's costing us money and there's no way for us to recoup it really um and and of course that money that that 300 000 as we know that's a that's a big number that will have to come from somewhere most likely maintenance and repair that's usually kind of where it comes from a lot of times um so oh man well i just i guess that's just where we are right now i guess because we cannot go to a hybrid right madeline we can't we like you said it it's all or nothing right now that's the way the program is structured it's either you're all you're at 100 or or you don't get any reimbursement at all is is that no no no don't it right now we're 100 free so it's a 100 reimbursement for the reimbursable meal but the other way was like last year where you would get your reimbursement for uh just your 15 and then we would be back to uh everyone paying for their meals okay all right all right so i think i think i'm understanding now is that the federal funds covers the cost of the food but it does not cover the cost of the overhead is that sort of like where we are at the beginning is that that's kind of where we are right now right it doesn't cost it it doesn't cover the cost of the people putting it together the materials to pack it in any of that stuff it's i i think it's uh yes it's not covering our costs for sure right but it the reimbursement does exceed the food cost it covers some of our labor it just isn't covering 100 at the current level of sales right and normally we would make that up through the the meal accounts correct with higher practice i mean with higher participation even with the federal reimbursement you would get revenue above your cost of food right then yeah these small increments which don't sound like a big deal but a la carte sales and the higher price of uh of the more expensive meals at the high school did you know get us to a place where we had a surplus typically in food service and we can't offer those now for some reason no we are offering them we we offer and we're in the beginning we were very very cautious because uh we want to keep kids six feet apart now if kids are six feet apart how do we get them through the line as quickly as possible you limit their choices and part of that was the a la carte so our la carte sales went down we are offering more a la carte now that the kids know what the routine is what the system is how to get through the line we are offering more a la carte okay so the hope is that now that everyone kind of knows the rules you kind of loosen things up a little bit exactly up sales a little okay so what so we're at a 300 000 shortfall now how much do you project that we could shave off that three hundred thousand a hundred thousand uh we've shaved that to three hundred adam that our mitigation strategy works and look i i think the other thing to throw out there is because other food service programs are in dire straits you know and i know they have a pretty strong lobby the the connecticut has a school nutrition association you know is there a possibility that we would get further reimbursement or some state state aid or might it be part of the you know another round of coronavirus relief funds that remains to be seen you know we don't take chances though we're you know going to put in a mitigation strategy we we plan for it within our budget estimates at this point in time and continue to work the problem and you know we're doing it in the name of you know ensuring that you know we're feeding feeding the children nutritious meals well i i certainly appreciate all the questions you've taken i don't know if anyone has any other questions um it certainly is a a a difficult problem and i know you guys are working trying your best to to solve it and um you know i think it's just it's so wild that you just said we hope to get more money from the federal government to make up the shortfall we're getting from the federal government 2020 i guess the pandemic adam there are no rules all right um well thank you very much madeline for your time this evening one comment uh to mrs hamm regarding the um uh the ramen noodles okay i love them i do love them they are school made okay so it's a lot less sodium and it's not a full portion it's just a little taste of ramen noodles to get them excited and to try school lunch and increase the participation so you don't have like a giant flavor packet that you put in there oh that's bad that's all right then that's better perfect garlic and ginger when i walk out of the kitchen you want to stay clear i smile that sounds good i'm coming over thank you um all right uh do we have anything else on the uh agenda we we do we have one more item it's called other and if i can just take one moment um to address miss ham had asked about the grant list um and what that when we would have an estimate on the gran list so the i did reach out to mr jascott the finance director for the town he said we won't have an estimate until january however what he explained is that the average grand list growth is about 0.67 percent per year last year happened to be 1.52 so i did the math the the grand list last year was 2.84 billion dollars and if you take point six seven percent of that as an increase that would increase the grand list by about 19 19.4 million and then if you just run that out with the current mill rate of of 33 mil that would generate just the groundless growth at that 0.67 would generate about 640 000 of additional revenue um again those are just some numbers based on on you know that 0.67 if it holds true so january is when we'll get a better understanding faith of what the grand list is going to look like and you yeah i'm not i'm not trying to do and runs i just would love a more less contentious not contentious it just um just a a better strategy than just saying hey we're going to give you you know cost of living plus you know plus three percent or that's that was too arbitrary and just a more methodical approach to budgeting than just saying nah kind of thing you know if you know what i mean but that's cool so i did want to share that though um thank you you're welcome um uh then uh just so i guess on a quick question for the budget for next year are we going to be budgeting uh with the assumption that the uh the vaccine is working and everyone's vaccinated and we're sort of back to normal for next year or what what scenario are we uh looking to fund next year so when we put the request out to all the the department managers and the principals we asked them to budget as if there were no pandemic and then we'll budget separately for pandemic related costs you know which you know as we were looking at the finance report tonight you know we would add you know budget categories i'll call it kind of on the side because we'll probably know a lot more in january and then even more in april by the time the town council gets to weigh in on the budget then we will when we you know essentially present up a budget in january so we'll budget for cleaning sanitizing disinfecting you know ppe purchasing uh disinfecting supplies to supply for our staff you know we'll come up with a separate number broken down for that but um yeah so we're taking it kind of as non-pandemic plus we're going to set aside a separate set of numbers related to the pandemic things like student enrollment which drives the number of teachers in elementary those are going to be presented as normal we you know did get our initial nasdaq number so you know we're moving along pretty well with the budget process at this point in time you know all the department managers and principals have submitted their initial budget we have the new program request those have been reviewed with with dr solon and miss solano already so you know we're making progress we still have a ways to go to get you know our budget developed but that's the plan for how we will treat it we'll kind of bifurcate it okay thank you um are there any other questions from the committee no all right thank you last item on the agenda says adjournment i move my second all in favor okay thank you everyone appreciate it
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e e e to the November 10th 2020 electronic meeting of the energy commission this meeting is to affect social dist distancing and mitigate the spread of the co9 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similar to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are any technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak um during the public um comment um section please call and we're going to use the two number that we know work 9723 I'll repeat that 206 9723 or 8477 again I'll repeat that 213 338 8477 um this information is also available on the published agenda on legistar and in the notice a section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting via CTN Channel 16 or AT&T channel 99 and online at www2 goov back.org backwat CN so Josh could you take the roll call yes uh let's see commissioner cloven Garcia here chair mki here commissioner Gerber here commissioner Cy here commissioner shriberg here commissioner hookham I'm here council member Hanner here uh commissioner Singleton commissioner Singleton he's here yep okay he's just muted muted uh let's see commissioner Cy did I ready do Cy did I already ask for commissioner Cy yes okay we'll keep going uh commissioner L and then commissioner George here um I'm sorry I'm not gonna be able to turn my uh video on for this meeting uh meeting's R really long uh in Detroit uh with work today my apologies do we have a quorum we have a quorum I think and here's one more Bridget M Bridget mumber okay so um first of all um hopefully everybody has had a chance to look at the agenda um I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda can we get an approve and such a motion Bridget moves we have a second from Chuck all in favor of the approving the motion as published please say I or indicate with a raised hand that you approve I great anybody opposed all in favor and none opposed so the um agenda is approved so approval of the minutes um so I don't recall seeing the minutes did I miss them or yeah so John and this gets to the emails that we've been going back and forth on I am currently working with Thea to get everything updated on legister and have that all set up including with CTN so I'm hoping tomorrow we'll have everything up okay so we will have to approve the minutes then at our next Mee hi I don't know if anybody saw ember's email but she said she was stuck in the waiting room of zoom and looking to be let in yeah I did see it I'm not seeing and I just emailed her back asking what name she's under um but I guess we can I can do is admit a few people and see thank you okay so um we will now move on to uh public input or public comment so this is an opportunity for persons to speak up for up to three minutes um please call 206 337-9723 or 213 338 8477 and enter the meeting ID 7397 so I'll repeat that 96825 97 7397 and um this is also on the meeting agenda and City staff will select callers that have raised their hand um one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star n on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments Josh let us know if we have anyone in the queue I'm not seeing anyone right now John okay I'll wait for another 10 seconds or so and then we'll have an opportunity at the end of the meeting for additional public comment so let's go ahead and move on Josh maybe um interrupt yourself or or me or others um in the next agenda item if someone dials in just in a few seconds um the next uh point on the agenda is the energy report um by the way the agenda is a rather skimpy one today so hopefully the meeting will be short and we'll have a number of other things that we can talk about that are going to be up on the agenda for the next meeting but Josh you want to start um with um energy news from the office of sustainability and Innovations yes um so I have been working with Zach and our office uh to get uh our website updated um and we have if you remember from last meeting we took a whole bunch of updates from around the office put it into a file that file is also attached on the agenda um I'm not sure if uh John just because we don't have a lot uh going on in this meeting whether we want to co maybe go a little bit more in depth sure on that piece of it okay so let me um let me share it with you all okay I I will start off by uh saying and John we we had a conversation about this beforehand um so I'll go and introduce the the topic um I think uh John carlen and Bridget had a uh meeting uh I believe it was about a week ago maybe a little bit more now um a phone call talking just about some general kind of energy commission things how the energy commission really interacts with uh OSI the off sustainability Innovations um and so I think uh that uh there's some interest uh to maybe rethink the way that uh that the office and the commission interact um specifically around the action tracker item um but Missy will be coming she couldn't make it to this meeting um but she'll be coming to the December meeting uh to kind of address that further with that said I'll just go ahead and get started on on some of the things that we've been working on uh within the office um so energy benchmarking and disclosure um theia and Zach in the office have mostly been heading that uh I know that uh we had a subcommittee that basically addressed specifically the uh buildings and built environment that talked about this uh they have time set up now at this point um and I know Jan Culbertson that was part of the subcommittee as well as Wayne Appleyard are on that um so they're basically getting a whole bunch of stakeholders together in a room uh to think about and kind of talk more about uh you know what it means to to have and specifically this has to do with benchmarking so what what it means to have kind of transparency and uh information available as far as energy disclosure goes in the commercial sector um and multif family um before you leave that topic Josh I think um it's important um to share um one of Missy's comments during the phone call that you referenced we had a week ago about this topic um the commission knows that there's a draft ordinance for um single family residences that would require a home audit um energy audit and disclosure at the time of marketing and Missy indicated that um um she had had discussions um and with a number of people um that were politically well connected in the city and um the feeling was that rather than introduce um individual ordinances for one sector at a time um that it would um be much more likely to gain widespread support politically um with council members as well as um among residents and stakeholder groups if all of the energy benchmarking um disclosure audit type of ordinances for all sectors meaning single family multif family commercial and Industrial were introduced as a group so there's been some um banter back and forth emails discussions um as to why that's been delayed and so the the call was made that um we would finish all these and introduce them as one one group um to um as a proposal to council at the same time all right yep um so the the next uh major item on uh on our updates for the things OSI is working on we have this Renewable Energy Efficiency electrification and Equity movement so uh we're calling it reform re 4M uh and this really came out of the electrification work that we were doing um so we had a I think I might have brought this up in in one of the earlier energy commission meetings but we had a number of convenings uh with uh stakeholders specifically uh contractors uh other cities uh in the Great Lakes region um that are all looking to uh to kind of do something similar to to go towards more electrification really to just kind of start introducing the idea of electrification try to figure out what the program would look like uh and kind of collaborate uh with members of of those uh convenings um and so we just wrapped those up uh not too long ago it was probably a couple of weeks ago now um and we did some followup uh phone conversations so uh we're really starting to think about how can we uh apply what we've learned uh with reform and uh specifically how do we uh how do we kind of move forward with with everything that we've learned from that side uh there's an interest specifically to look at uh lowincome areas um so Bryant community Center has been something that's been pitched as an idea um because the the whole the whole idea being that if we try to help those who are obviously most in need those that that have the hardest time to try to Electrify um we can kind of create a template that works for everyone um so that's one thing that that is currently ongoing J could you talk a bit more about the renewable energy part of that Ram four yeah of course um yeah totally so we we took a look at at a couple of different systems so we looked at electrification so specifically in terms of heat pumps um we looked at what would we do if if we paired uh those heat pumps with uh solar panels and then using those heat pumps solar panels and then Energy Efficiency upgrades the home um could we basically bring down the cost because there's there's two different costs for electrification there's The Upfront cost of actually getting the system which is generally more expensive than your traditional uh Natural Gas furnace for example um and then there's the ongoing cost of uh natural gas versus uh you know electricity as far as just the the cost to to power um your heat pump versus if it was a furnace so those are two challenges we've been looking at very seriously and one of the things that uh you know I think um Fong and our our uh part of our our staff OSI she was thinking about you know can we go ahead and partner these things together she did some modeling and we looked at it um and it seems like like uh it makes more financial sense if you're able to partner something like an electric heat pump with uh solar panels uh because it just brings down the cost I basically you're generating some of that electricity through the solar panels um and you're not necessarily paying for that on the grid like you would be otherwise so um so yeah so we've been doing some work around that as well I mean as of right now it's all very preliminary it's it's kind of just looking at everything that uh that we gain from these convenings and trying to figure out if we can put together a model so is the electricity from the solar powering the heat pump that would be the idea yeah that's the idea yeah it'd be offsetting though good thank you yeah is there any other questions okay we also have a uh solariz so we talked about this last time uh the kind of Julie solariz uh events that she's holding there was also some consideration as to how we can kind of develop uh what is happening as far as solarise goes so whether we can include things like uh heat pumps within the bulk buys uh battery storage systems in the bulk buys um and so that's something that we're looking at now hey hey Josh before you leave that um during the commission meeting and also in some correspondence and communication after the meeting um there were requests and um an indication that there might be cost information that um would be shared um is there any final decision on that and when might that be yeah um so the latest that I've heard uh I think that uh they were they were looking at the the potential um for basically disclosing a price range um and that kind of got to some of the questions that came out I think of the last convening and that that price range would have variables listed inside of it so that way people knew roughly what that price range could be when they're looking at things and what the variables would be to actually uh you know basically affect the the bottom line um so something I I worked a little bit with uh Julian and I I think that that's what they're going to go with can can we note in the meeting minutes um that we would like a clear decision on that sure and um um a date by by which we would know when the decision will be will be provided so if we I don't necessarily want a a date I mean it would be nice to be given a date right away but at the very least a date by when we'll get a date if you understand what I mean yes yep yep yep just finish real quick and then I'll open it up um the other thing is um there was also discussion about um um battery or storage options and whether or not that was really a let's say good return on the dollar invested from a climate perspective from a greenhouse gas reduction perspective yep I can oh I think John might have [Music] froze wait a second here I think John just power at his house and his battery hasn't kicked down yet yeah could be while we're waiting for John I think um there were other people stuck in the waiting room with me uh and so maybe at least one of them I think wanted to give public comment so whenever appropriate it might be good to check back in with that yeah let me see I think I actually see maybe someone with the so no one's in the waiting room anymore I put everyone in just because we were having that issue um but let me see maybe I do say raised hand here we go caller 134 are you there yes thanks Mr McDonald um Ken hi um I don't want to interrupt um your report so I'm we could I could talk later whenever you think is appropriate oh no if you want to if you want to go ahead and and jump in now it's a while we wait for John um all right um yeah I'm apparently uh being placed in the waiting room makes it hard or impossible to um see the uh star nine um indication I don't know I'm just guessing um anyway um I'll make my three minute comment um last month I smoke to spoke to the commission about the fact that DTE Energy is the third dirtiest major utility in the country DTE needs to clean up its act uh but I know it can't simply replace coal and gas with Renewables overnight I'm not that naive I know the transition will be extremely hard it's simple physics consider energy density defined as the amount of energy per fuel unit weiter volume when Humanity transitioned from biof fuels to coal and then from coal to crude oil and then to Natural Gas each time we stepped up from a lower to a higher density primary fuel source that's why we did it for more concentrated energy never before have we attempted to go from a higher energy density to a lower one why do wind and solar have such low energy density their capacity factor which is actual versus maximum electricity output is poor most wind turbines only work 20 to 25% of the time and voltaics even less in cloudier climates like ours no more than 15% so as Renewables take over from fossil fuels we need storage to fill in the gaps that means lithium lithium ion batteries in the short term maybe something like pumped Hydro or compressed air for long-term storage commissioner hookham is an expert on this he's reviewed these Technologies at previous meetings hydrogen generated using clean power electrolysis and stored in salt Doms is another alternative none of these is cheap we always hear that wind and solar have become cheaper than fossil fuels for electricity generation that's true in the narrow sense the so-called levelized cost of energy is lower that's the lifetime cost of generating electricity over the total electricity delivered but the levelized cost doesn't take into account storage or land use large scale Renewables for full-time electricity generation are still not even nearly competitive in the marketplace here's my point we can't wait for the market to solve the climate crisis there's no time for that we need mandates as part of a World War II scale or Marshall Project type mobilization no one in government is talking in these terms certainly not Joe Biden because we've avoided acting for so long and Global heating is a delayed effect we're now in an emergency requiring immediate and radical emission cuts to just avoid overshooting the Paris targets three three or four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels which is where we're headed at best give us a world that in my opinion is not worth living in even stopping at two degrees barely possible at this point will bring a myriad of disasters that will make today's fires droughts floods and hurricanes seem benign young people feel robbed of their future and they're right my generation squandered the gift of time and destroyed that future for them to S to salvage anything we must start the conversion right now this minute both at the personal level and at the policy level as for policy let's take some risks at the local level invoke home rule modify our building code to mandate that new construction and major Renovations be all electric form a solar power Cooperative to build new clean energy gener H clean electricity generation and storage and establish a municipal electric utility state law permits all of these nationally we must reorient our entire economic system towards reducing emissions and since the wealthy are by far the highest emitters the top 10% in personal wealth are responsible for half of all emissions that means drastically reducing economic inequality this will not happen voluntarily or probably at all given the entrenched nature of consumer society and growth capitalism so I can only dread our climate future I won't be around terribly much longer but to the young people serving on this commission and those on the call tonight I can only say I'm sorry I failed you thank you thanks Ken I'm back sorry about that Josh I just like to U make a quick comment on the our speaker thank him very much for his his input and coming forward um so I I agree with most of it I encourage him to take a serious look at um the experience of Boulder Colorado trying to become a municipal utility what that required and what happened um and uh encourage um you know more people to get into energy law graduate from the University of Michigan with with the law and go to work for um on the public sector side helping us to win that battle because Boulder spent over $880 million and they lost and and uh you know an arber is looking at that and several people looked at that price tag and said you know well we don't have 80 million dollar to fight over this and especially if we lose so um you know we gota we have to be even more creative in some of our thinking um on this and and the other pieces is that part of this equation which um we're not looking at is is carbon removal and adaptation um how how what we can do to adapt you know uh I know this there's uh it's apparently it's controversial I didn't think it was but controversial to paint our roofs white in an arbor um um oddly enough some people uh don't go along with that idea um but I think there are things that we could do at the local level for carbon removal communities are doing this there are technologies that are available and having an Arbor's Economic Development people um kind of engage on on uh how what what are the emerging businesses in carbon removal what do they look like and why aren't they coming to an arbor to launch their businesses or do those so you know I think a lining ourselves across uh broadening what we think about is energy um and looking for opportunities to uh grow businesses here that are world leaders in carbon removal technology um is something that the economic Vel mment arm of this city could be doing um my sense is that uh perhaps John and and uh Steve might want to educate the economic development side of the house about those kinds of things because uh my sense is that they're not on board with sustainability like the rest of us are and um we might see more opportunities there to remove carbon and buy ourselves some time um with the the in in those Industries then trying to figure out how to get to te to put in more solar so just a comment a comment to your comment Mark briefly there is a um entity within the energy Institute of the University of Michigan called the global CO2 initiative um they are looking at various um CO2 sequestration opt options as well as um use than um for those industrial uses of of that CO2 um I um had a couple of um web webinar or not webinars I say um Zoom meetings with them and um put Jan Culbertson touch with them Jan's head of the 2030 District um which you know involving the commercial and Industrial side of the city um and she's also an architect so one of the one of the opportunities um is the use of CO2 sequestering concrete um obviously you know we're not doing a tremendous amount of building in the city if any one is it's the university and hopefully that's one of the things we can put pressure on the university to do is when they do build to use their um concrete favored by their own Institute um but that that's um one option um and of course there's other carbon sequestering building materials too um so as um building codes change and practices change hopefully we can make some progress along this L yes I think that's it you have those guys perhaps come speak to us give a presentation on what they're doing would that be worth doing yes can you note that in the items for the next agenda yeah we could do that I know the I'd really like that uh personally speaking as someone that works uh for a union that does a lot of construction work um that is a big issue for us we are you know big proponents of moving to a green uh economy and infrastructure as fast as possible but as I'm sure everyone's aware uh that uh concrete emits a lot of CO2 emissions so if there is an optional alternative I would love to hear about it and learn more right we can do that and I know um John I think Susan fancy used to do a lot of work in this Susan works for that um correct Susan works for that particular inititive yes so might be worth reaching out okay I'm getting a message that my internet connection is stable again so um if I drop out just carry on without I want to just really quickly make sure was there anyone else uh just because of the the technical difficulties of the lobby and and and not being able to star in from the lobby is there anyone else who wanted uh to comment during a public comment that wasn't able to you can hit uh star n if you're on your [Music] phone okay um if you do just go ahead and we can stop and uh give you a chance to talk so uh other programs that we're working on uh electrification of vehicles um so you currently working with the DDA uh to get more Vehicles specifically electric vehicle Chargers so they're looking at about 100 plus uh level two Chargers um I think the the next Up's on that front and this is mostly being work being done by Simi uh in coordination with the DDA uh but they're looking at some of the cost analysis and some of the the different types of structures uh that are necessary to um to advance that side of things Josh do you know where the current count it's it's in the 20s isn't it or right around 20 yeah you know I don't have it off the top of my head because um I'm trying to think I know parking structures have uh quite a few the the um downtown library one so I'm trying to think if we include the parking structure we don't um but yeah we'll go with 20 I mean that sounds ballpark uh Josh while we're on the topic of um EVS I sent an email earlier I'd heard a rumor that the city was looking at buying Teslas um is that a true rumor it's true it is yeah it is a potentially true rumor it's on the agenda for for this next meeting Monday yeah um I know part of our sustainability goals have to do with um sustainable labor and uh full disclosure I actually own Tesla St but um they're a company that um doesn't use union labor um has is that an issue that has been discussed as part of that decision I don't think it has um I think the conversation and I I'm very it's kind of periphery peripheral conversation I kind of s on the outside of this but um from what I've heard they were looking at specifically uh police cars and cars that would be able to fit some of the equipment and policemen and everything and I guess the Tesla was the one that was chosen as being fast and and meeting some of these different criteria um I don't know I don't think that the labor component of it is is known or at least has been looked at but it's something I can definitely um pass along um I just wanted to briefly comment on that and I appreciate Bridget you bringing this up um I know that uh I I've had conversations with um a couple council members about issues around this uh that this might get pulled to the agenda uh I know that the labor the hon Valley area labor council is going to come out with a statement tonight against the city's purchase of it um and especially considering uh that there's a an American unionmade Alternative uh with Ford with the Ford mon uh that is comparable in price range um obviously you know I don't know the details on performance and so forth that would you meet meet the the city specifications there but um from what I'm aware of you know there is an resourcefully and uh properly sourced alternative uh electric vehicle on that so but I just wanted to make that cor Josh I have a question too yeah well is it part of the I didn't look at the plan so um does the Tesla include a power wall solar power wall to each power those cars with a power wall or are we just buying Teslas and power with them with coal and Frack gas yeah I don't think that there's a a power wall That's included did you have so using an American Alternative would be smart I mean if they have a power if they bring a solar system with them that's one thing but if it's just a one electric vehicle versus another our our Council questions are due on tomorrow at noon and so I was just getting ready to send them off and so I was waiting till after this meeting because several of the things that are on our agenda are are you know pertinent to to our work here including the chapter 55 changes for solar height which is something I just want to get two minutes somewhere during this meeting about but yeah they say Teslas and then they say we're in for a couple of Tesla charging systems also 5,000 each and so um I have all kinds of questions around this item I don't know who some of the other folks have been talking to on Council about it but um uh I can't believe like I can't believe that there's not an alternative and so I know that the contract required a uh I mean I have all kinds of questions one of them is um are are we getting in a situation with the OSI budget where they're going to be subsidizing these Fleet purchases and that's a new thing for us and so that's one consideration and then the other is just how how how was it that Tesla roast the top of this Choice when we've been buy buy we've had the bolts and then of course there's bolts and then the Ford products that were mentioned and so you know I'm not exactly sure what I mean it says in the resolution who these vehicles are for um but I'm not it doesn't really say why Tesla is an outstanding Choice other than it meets certain basic requirements and we're also by the way simultaneously replacing uh um many of the police cruisers with the new Ford hybrids which are supposed to be amazing because they have a big battery tray in them that runs all the gear and so most police car time is idle time and it they don't idle time anymore they run the battery down then they idle to charge the battery right so these new Ford hybrids are pretty awesome in my opinion after reading through the descriptions of them just now so I I don't know I I I as soon as I I saw it I thought that's really like a that's really like a bad look like a billion dollars for for climate change and then we start buying Teslas you know it just doesn't R even though the price is very comparable I mean the Tesla is they're used there 36,000 and they look at these Ford hybrids and they're about the same so it's not it's competitive on a price consideration but the the unit consideration jumped right out to me because I I have I know a lot of folks who are really down on Tesla for their labor practices and you know and also the sourcing frankly and this is a obviously we we talked about this many times that you know all all the concerns around the sourcing of these rare Metals you know for these batteries so whatever I don't know yeah we're gonna buy we're gonna talk about buying Teslas next Monday I saw your letter thank you for writing that I just saw it blip in during my earlier meeting so thanks for pointing that out Bridget so so Jeff I hope that the in the analysis there doing apples and apples not apples and oranges on on emissions because you know if we're charging Tesla's batteries with coal and and Frack gas um that makes that that makes no sense at all so you know I don't know how we're comparing Vol versus Tesla versus you know the the Ford stuff but it seems that the emission stuff um we got a looking at local emissions is just part of it looking at you know the The Fugitive emissions that are coming in we're not if we're not accounting for dte's emissions to to send us the power to charge these cars um then all we're doing is trans transferring the emissions from an arbor to someplace else yeah I'm I don't I don't see the breakdown but I could certainly ask for that yeah it should be you know be able to do it with in our our emission study and the stuff that we do on on uh you know the Anis plan for our our emissions greenhouse gas emissions stuff but my understanding is that we don't capture um the emissions that DTE generates to generate the power they send to us we only capture it at the end use so if we're charging batteries and running police cars you know with with batteries in an arbor and powering those bar battery get them charging them with with frat gas and coal um I'm not sure how we're we're subsidizing DTE you know it seems a little nuts to me why don't we just spend money and put more insulation in our buildings instead well it seems to me this is kind of the same conversation John was having before he uh you froze up um that's the economics of batteries when you charge use solar power to charge a battery and then use a battery to charge a car you're really introducing significant losses in that whole process and even though it may be feeding DTE there is a benefit to knocking off daytime energy even if it's only moving it to to the evening they still net loose because you know you're taking the most valuable solar power and offsetting the most expensive generation from DTE so they don't win from that and I also think it's important when you think about the economics of this that solar is the only way to go if you're charging from DTE you're paying perhaps twice or three times as much the lifetime the cost of energy for solar power today is probably onethird of what it is if you're buying from DTE and there's even a special rate I believe that would apply for charging an EV Fleet with that compensates you quite significantly for export during the day so it really could make quite a bit of economic sense just to skip the extra battery charge the EVS when you can even during the day or sell your current to DTE during the day which basically offsets other eration including the the gas that you're talking about with the wellhe head emissions it offsets that even though you are buying back electricity in the evening at a much much lower price so I think this whole area should just be investigated better including any alternative but if but if the idea is just to get an electric car and not charge the solar I'd say that's not a good idea you're probably going to have a garage and that garage could have lots of solar on it you'll probably have other areas where the buses are are charged you can have lots of solar there as well I will say um one of the things that I looked on at early on uh there's a site South Industrial uh and it's it's where the Housing Commission is and there's a lot of land there we were actually looking at potentially using um kind of a whole allinone so basically solar carport charger with battery system uh to basically charge all of the electric vehicles for the fleet specifically I think this was for public works at the time um and then the other place that makes a lot of sense is wheeler because wheeler is where Fleet is uh and so we have you know there's a I don't know if you guys are familiar with wheeler is a building but it's kind of a barn looking building um and out in front there's a rather large uh parking lots and so we were thinking if we go ahead and do uh overhangs like basically you know protected parking lots that are really just kind of double as solar panels uh you know and then have batteries and that and have that charge so there there are a few couple you know a sites that we've looked at the potential for uh specifically building in um you know the the whole system an all-in-one battery charger with a solar system that actually charges the car directly um I don't think uh by the way these in particular don't don't have that feature but I know it's something we've looked at in the past but I say that just just to summarize my point of view you're going to Electrify the police cars and other buses around the city that you need to do it with solar power you don't want to do it by just relying on buying energy from DTE that would be the wrong thing to do as for what Mark is saying very long well and also Jeff I think you know that this is a cart and a horse thing I mean I think the way to look at this is how do we Ma how do we have us take our solar asset and use it most effectively so when we're starting to look at cars and stuff um having that help Drive the Drive the decision what kinds of cars as opposed to oh we bought electric cars now we got to figure out how to charge them that's you know to me that's that's we got a cart and a horse problem here um so we've been talking about wheeler for a long time um the the decision on Wheeler let's maximize the solar that should be a main driver on now what do we do with with vehicles for the city and if we're buying vehicles that aren't we're not charging at the wheeler station then why not and and and you know how do we just how would we justify doing that so you know we're killing two birds and one stone but let's you know if we're going to make a decision about Teslas I mean for me the question is how is Tesla going to be charged at the wheeler Center and and is that a better deal than a Ford or something else um and then all these other questions about Labor and everything come come through but ultimately this is about emissions so how can we put people to work and not generate emissions how can we have gender equality and Racial equality um in a in a renewable energy Society that's tied to sustainability all those things have to be tied together if we make these incremental isolated decisions about what cars we're going to buy we're going to find ourselves stuck and and I can tell you we're going to be stuck we're going to be stuck charging our stuff all El we're going to have electric ordinance where we're doing want to make the whole city electric DTE couldn't be more happy oh boy we get to sell more gas gas and coal they're asking for a second thousand megawatt natural fra gas plant right now in Lancing with the Public Service Commission a second one and they and and they're capping solar at 1% so as soon as they get 1% of the amount of solar that they they need they will not let anybody else hook up or if they do they'll charge you at a rate even below the current rate that they're talking about now we we need a go alone strategy here like the caller called in and part of that is we got to be smart about this we own e wheeler we can put solar on Wheeler we can do this tomorrow if we can't afford it let's get a third party fing financer up here to do it for us um and let's pack it in and and get it done well there's even some locations oh uh Jeff did you have something you wanted to say you know about the electrification so we talked about the DDA operations and they're talking about 100 L2 Chargers and these parking structures well I hope that the solar panels are going up on the top floor of these parking structures for these L2 Chargers and you could park for free there and charge for free or whatever you got to park on top right underneath the solar panel or we got to run the wiring down through the structure whatever however they determine their you know needs analysis or demand analysis for their parking these EVS but um there's no way we should be hooking 100 L2 Chargers up to the grid fulltime like I would love I mean if people are parking their cars for their downtown offices or whatever that's during the day the solar should be going right into those car batteries so I have a few comments if I may um I I I would hope um that Council as well as OSI um looks at this carefully and lays out its rationale um first of all um we should also not let um perfect become the enemy of the good um the union of concern scientists regularly updates um how clean electric vehicles are when they're powered from the grid and in 201 2018 an electric vehicle in Michigan was the equivalent of a 49 m m per gallon um internal combustion engine that is dramatically better than equivalent internal combustion engines so um this is something that we need to consider the grid is getting cleaner and it could be that Anarbor will at some point in time in the future as well as the DDA be able to access renewable energy whether it's solar or wind or whatever I don't think it really matters whether it comes from GTE or whether it comes from the landfill or whether it comes comes from something on top of Wheeler so I would hope that um OSI lays that out um I haven't seen I looked about three four months ago as to whether the union of concerned scientists had updated their figure and I assume it can it also um takes into account those guys are smart enough to look at um fugitive emissions from methane um if they didn't that would be you know really concerning I assume that they're smart enough um the second thing as far as tesas are concerned one of the things that I would hope OSI would also present as an argument to council is what is the likelihood of other vehicles coming on the market in the foreseeable future and if there is not another Market um another vehicle again we should think about the the various tradeoffs that we have with um all these other things like labor and so on and so forth and you know it would be in my view irresponsible to wait until 2025 if we can do something next year if there's not a um an equivalent vehicle coming on the market if there is one coming on the market and it's coming on the market next year then that would be a good reason to wait for a year and buy another vehicle that uses um labor that um adheres to the standards that the city has set so there's a number of different things that we need to consider here and um I I would recommend that we not beat this topic to death I think um Jeff and and others are raising um questions that the city that the OSI needs to be able to provide to Council in order to make an informed decision yeah and the energy commission can help with that too yeah and just to kind of piggy back off of that you know um Jeff to your point so we had looked a long time ago at doing uh solar panels on a parking structure and there was concerns about a sale effect so when winds kind of pick up and if you have the wrong angle solar panels can get ripped off the roof uh there was an analysis done that basically showed that the winds could gust up you know strong enough to actually pose a risk so we are looking at other ways to do that um but on the other hand you know there are places like water treatment plant wastewater treatment plant where they have really low rates as far as the cost of electricity and at locations like that for example you know you're you know you might get better bang for the buck if you're doing uh solar panels they uh you know charging electric vehicles directly um since a lot of times you'll be able to to make up that cost a lot quicker um so I do think again to John's Point some of this has to be looked at in more detail um and just figuring out where it makes more sense to use what type of application um and you know again uh in full transparency I I wasn't uh very involved with the Tesla decision in particular because it's you know I worked on some of the stuff uh a couple of years ago but nothing's too recent so I can definitely take that back as a question to OS I when you speak to Wheeler and and like the water treatment Waste Water treatment so on um I talked to Dr staltz about that because um you know I wanted to prioritize uh critical infrastructure buildings for the city as part of our resilience also not just the sustainability so hopefully we can we can keep that prioritization in in in Focus as we look for places to harvest you know solar energy yeah I mean my my number one location every time there's any type of improvement is generally those three and in part it comes from a greenhouse gas emissions standpoint as well so they just you know those water tream plant Wastewater Tre plant are the largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions for the city um and Then followed by wheeler and City Hall City Hall's yeah go ahead well no just like you know we just I just got out of a card meeting and we're talking about Gelman and and the dioxin and all that and water treatment and you know um if we end up having a UV because we can't keep the dioxin out of our our water intake in the here on river we are doomed from energy perspective because those that UV energy drain is insane and you know you know Wastewater treatments going through there right now with the cryptos gum they put in a small Trojan system and I'm sure they're I'm sure their energy Bild just shot right up yeah so yeah it's really critical that's where kind of analyzing the different situations what makes most sense how can we incorporate solar where maybe you know you hook up the solar specifically to to the UV operations you know thinking outside the box a little bit bit um I think a lot of times we can if we look a little deeper we can figure out what makes most sense for each site it's a great Point Josh can we move on yes let's move on um so bikes uh this is kind of a uh a discount program uh that Simi has been working on as well uh mostly through ebikes so using all these different electric bikes um and there's uh as it says in this kind of summary uh you know they do discounts uh for these elect bike so you can go and get a discount um I think semi's just basically been adding more and more types of bikes to to the discount list which is really nice and you know electric bikes are they they have that uh the possibility of of going electric if you need to go a further distance or you can just use it some of these bikes you can actually just use it as a conventional bike so it's really nice because it allows you to go a much further range than a a traditional bike would and and with a discount um green rental housing so this kind of falls into some of the disclosure work we've been doing um you know and I think there's just a lot of stakeholder engagement uh work that's been uh you know underfoot currently it kind of wraps up really closely with uh specifically energy disclosure uh and ensuring that we're incentivizing uh certain types of uh buildings as far as you know envelopes and other things of that nature um okay other things going on 10,000 tree initiative this is another one that I haven't been very involved with um I know that uh we're looking for someone to actually coordinate and manage this um the 10,000 tree initiative so basically as it says we're trying to plant 10,000 trees offset kind of getting into a more natural form of sequestration as we were talking about earlier hey Josh on that on that front we should use our green spaces we've got all these green spaces around the city that we don't use at all they're just land that's that's not used there's tremendous amount of opportunity there for sustainable food for trees for um landfill um or not landfill but Wastewater sludge uh use nobody's doing anything with it where's the holistic plan and I would continue to harp about that yeah that's a great point we had great success with the food Forest up at Arrow by arowood Leslie Park and we've had two work sessions and it's almost all in It's amazing And they have an extended plan to run you know to get fruit and nut trees all the way down the side of there along the Leslie Park Golf Course fence and so I think that uh I hopefully we're in a year and then next year into that project that it'll act as a teaching site for that and say look what we're doing here and it doesn't take that much to stick some trees in there if you have people committed to maintaining them yeah no I think that's a great and I think if you're able to uh kind of like you guys are talking about if you're able to combine you know two different things together so for example fruit trees in certain areas or whatever you know where you're able to kind of uh I think that's a a great use of land so that's just to keep this in perspective um I read the University of Michigan's um presidential commission on carbon neutrality report related to bios sequestration two interesting facts um wetlands are actually here in the Midwest the best um ecosystem for sequestering carbon um and actually some entities are converting Agland into Wetlands um as a bio sequestration methodology um a second um interesting fact all of the uni all of the trees on the University's property here in an arbor 18,000 trees the total amount of carbon that they sequester is the equivalent of 150 cars um traveling for one year only 150 cars and that's every tree on all of the University's property here in an arbor so when we're talking about um sequestration um at least during using natural means at these trees this is not something that is going to solve our CO2 problems it's something we want to do um because it has a lot of other ecosystem benefits as well as human health benefits but we shouldn't fool ourselves that um by doing this we're going to be you know making a great contribution to reducing our greenhouse gas inventory well this is where that presentation that we were talking about earlier as far as sequestration might be really informative to let us know what you know how those Cycles work and I was really I saw a presentation actually from Susan fancy um probably more than two years ago now and was really Blown Away by some of the work that they're doing over there mark did you have something John to be fair those those trees are are existing trees I think we're talking about new trees which will you know sequester carbon throughout their it is but the the total carbon that is that's estimated to have to have been sequestered in existing trees on UL is emitted by 150 cars in one year oh so it's not just how much they do that in in a year the total from for the life cycle y for for their the total amount that they have currently sequestered is the equivalent output of 150 cars in one year wow I was surprised and that's a study that the university missing you were surp it was so low that I surprised you I've been harping on about natural capital for a while but then I know other other folks I know in the you know on the environmental fringes have said you got to watch it with that because then you know however they're putting the numbers on sometimes it comes out low and you realize hey that land's cheap I'd rather put a high-rise there or whatever and or a grocery store and so the natural Capital value isn't always calcula way and sometimes it's dangerous to put a figure on on something and let it have more of an intrinsic natural value right right interesting I don't know I don't know uh it really it really shines when it comes to storm water though sorry I dropped out for a second again I didn't hear all that so just keep I'm going um for the next one Aging in place efficiently program uh so cvan Arbor actually got a a grant for this and I think at this point we're just looking for people to help run it um so it's kind of in the design phase and we're looking to hire two- part-time funded uh coordinators basically um other things going on uh a20 ambassadors um so we had that meeting I think it was last month now uh where we went over you know some of the material for the ambassadors that we'll be bringing on um there is and I think when talking to Missy a little bit about the conversation John that you that you had with her along with Bridget and carlen um you know she had suggested in this example for to share a um a questionnaire that had come out from this um with the energy commission so I think she was thinking about something a bit more informal as far as uh you know us bringing or OSI bringing different tasks to the commission and then having the commission kind of respond to it um so I'll be sharing a a questionnaire that goes along with the a20 ambassadors program uh with the commission uh so that way everyone can take a look I think you know if you guys can respond within two weeks I'll I'll put it into to the email that's not the application is it form it's a different form isn't it uh I think I would have to look at it a little closer the applications I mean it's like a job application what yeah no I think this is actually a question references yeah I think this is actually a questionnaire but let me I'll send it over to you guys okay and that way you you'll have it because this is one of those projects where I'm kind of I'm peripherally involved but I haven't really been um deeply involved in the creation of it and then finally uh public engagement updates uh so climate coffee conversation happening November 12th at 8: a.m.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
first off i'd like to thank everybody being here i appreciate this giving you we're grateful that we have the opportunity to hear your voice tonight we appreciate you being here we've asked you to limit your comments to three minutes so more people can see there's a volleyball game going on and we're hopefully going to get those people out that would like to stick would like to go to the bottom first we're going to begin this meeting with chuck waldo leading us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the fight of the united states of america and to the republic for to stand one nation where are we going to have folks come right to this stand all right oh right down there at the front of this aisle right here is where we will have everybody speak please limit your comments to uh three minutes uh the items you can talk about anything you want to brother-in-law if i ask you how much you would eat for breakfast it takes me five minutes to tell you what to eat for breakfast so hopefully you can get what you would like to say done in three minutes so more people can see we appreciate y'all being here i'd ask for kindness uh if if any of the comments are in a very uh hurtful or demeaning way to any member of the board or staff we would ask those two please don't happen we won't have to prospect bridge we respect your rights to speak to us on anything you'd like to speak to at this time so the first one on the list is that i believe it's today and if when you come up you would state your name and then fills in with your passion excuse me one thing we this is not a debate with the public the board can't actually sit here and make a conversation with the public uh we're just here to gather information so we can make good informed decisions in the future you down and sneak right into it there you go okay quote most students have struggled to keep current with assignments and activities needed for academic success once students were brought back on campus we started seeing grades improve end quote by your administrator's own admission students do better while learning in person if our students are your main concern this should carry heavy weight he continues quote unfortunately many students continue to struggle with completing assignments on the days they are not on campus why is this my 15 year old daughter was off campus yesterday and i would like to share her day she started with a zoom class at 8 30 where the teacher asked her a non academic related question she didn't even respond because that would be awkward online for her next two core classes there was no teaching but assignments were given to students at home these assignments often take several hours to complete around noon i asked her she would like some lunch or a change of scenery she declined both of those because she was stressed about finishing assignments so she stayed in her room for another couple of hours i have talked to many parents and this is their experience as well but there is the opposite extreme scenario where there is absolutely no teaching and no assignment and those students are on their phones all day doing nothing finally by two o'clock in the afternoon my daughter came out of her room she had a headache she was moody and cranky and aside from my one question that day she had zero human contact from 8 30 to 2 pm her statement to me was i am so tired of staring at screens and her homework was still incomplete now you tell me is this scenario academically socially or physically healthy for our children no and this is a typical off-campus day it is clear to see why mr webb stated that once students were brought back on campus we started to see improvement in academic performance but i have also witnessed improvement in my daughter's mental and emotional well-being on day she is in class she is more engaged with me when she gets home and she is more confident and optimistic about school and homework according to the cdc in 2018 there were 2500 deaths due to motor vehicle accidents in high school students in the us so why do we let high schoolers drive because as a society we have felt the benefits of driving outweigh the low risk of injury in 2020 there have been 34 deaths due to coven 19 and high school students in the u.s that means there are nearly 100 deaths from motor vehicles to everyone from copen 19 and high school children aid in our high school school-aged children i know many of you are thinking that the covet deaths in high school students are low because we have not had kids in person in school however based on the current mortality rate if every single high school student in the united states got coven 19 this year there would still be significantly less deaths from covet than for motor vehicle accidents if society believes that benefit of driving out raise the risk we should also realize the benefits of in-person education outweigh the much lower risk of coca-19 i know this is a very polarizing topic and there are many people who feel strongly that our students should not be in school for very various reasons i respect that view and i don't want them to feel marginalized however in july our school was slated to offer an all online option and an all-in-person option i feel very strongly that the all-in-person option should be reinstated if you are concerned about a student's health then let them return to full-time in-person learning like our neighboring school districts thank you thank you next next would be brian yorkson thank you good evening i'd like to uh thank the board and all the staff that's here this evening um thank you for all that you've been doing uh to be proactive during this time i know it's very difficult i myself am a principal of a catholic school in chilo and i know what you're going through um very difficult time difficult for the staff the options that you choose to provide education for our kids um i totally understand and i appreciate all the you know the work that you guys are doing um i would like to address you though tonight as a parent and uh i too uh and my wife karen uh we're both from the area we lived here most of our lives graduated you know both of us i've had alumni students we have current students i got future students coming up um blue ridge is a big part of our lives and we as parents see [Music] what this pandemic has done to education just like a lot of you um and we feel kind of like mrs burgess we feel like the cost is of not attending school in person not having that option you know full-time option is more of a detriment than the risk so i would like you to just you know consider um especially like she said what a lot of the districts are doing up here offering that full-time option for our kids to get back to school um at least having that option i understand that many people in our community have been impacted deeply by coming families have lost loved ones and i totally understand that um but for the most part if you look at the statistics um like mrs burgess said you know kids not really impacted too much you've got to protect your staff you know and that's an important piece of you know you making your decisions but i think you can probably come up with some ways to offer that full-time in-person option for our kids you know socially mentally academically it's important that we get back to in-person learning um you know and i can give lots of examples like mrs burgess did about what we've seen with our own kids and i understand everybody's doing their best to offer the best that we can during this time but i think there may be some options if we really plan it out and be careful and still have some options for those that are concerned about you know sending kids or exposing their kids um but everybody's different and we and we have we need to have multiple options i think and so i'd like to just give that input to you guys again and i'd like to again thank you uh for everyone that's working hard during all this and god bless us thanks thank you individual would be is it caleb lake kaylee yeah just for people if you're going to say the same thing the person in front of you said maybe might want to pass so you know i know it's passionate that everybody's name is variable especially those that would like to leave go ahead hello my name is katie blake and i'm 14 years old and i'm in eighth grade i started school online in august and we would get on our laptop at 7 30 or all day until sometimes five or six of our wednesday i missed being in class with my friends and my teachers i had a hard time reading the lesson and understanding that i was supposed to do my teachers tried to answer questions but i was but it was really hard to understand what they were trying to say over the computer i started getting my dreams migraine headaches almost every day in my my stomach after a few weeks i also wanted to change me to a different school that met in person she tried to help me instead i should try to finish the quarter i kept hoping that i could bring that i could hold on until we met in person that that i would be okay and we started the hybrid schedule when we started the hybrid then we started the hybrid schedule but everything was still online and i was so sad and frustrated i knew some of my friends were doing okay but others were struggling just like me at the end of the first quarter i was telling two classes i told my mom i wanted to change goals i had been at my new school for about a month and i have straight a's and i haven't had any migraine headaches or stomachaches i miss my school teachers and friends but i cannot go back to on and staring at the computer all day is not good for students i don't need a lot of i need to be in class daily with my teachers and i need to be able to do well in school next hello my name is ricky blake i am 16 year old 16 years old and i'm a junior in all my classes before this year i always got and i told that like um i'm a national home society student i'm in ambassador's club i workshop and i play soccer this year um when we started this online learning it was hard for me and i struggled a lot in my grades um i know my junior year is critical for scholarships and i'm worried after this sister that i won't be able to get any of those scholarships i've been planning on getting i feel like i have more assignments and just want to figure out what i'm supposed to do my teachers have been wonderful and i've tried to answer questions but i still have to try to figure out a lot on my own i have to go i'm not on contract because i was filming honestly after just the first quarter i've never received a c in a class let alone a failing grade i could have switched to uos class but i didn't want to miss my chance at learning as much as possible and receiving college credit college credit i feel a lot of anxiety and frustration where with where my grades are at i don't understand why this whole district and in our area gets to have a person in traditional education and that we don't i also know that there are a lot of experts that say that too much same time is not good and that our brains are still developing and that many of us don't have the skills that are needed to be successful with online learning um uh my mother she did online college and she's really smart she's very good at school um but when she had online classes she struggled as well and she's like twice my age um so i personally feel like i don't have a disappointment that was necessary to be successful and i know that online education has been really hard for me and foreign thank you uh yeah my name is rodney ringham i'm here as a long-time community member leader and parent of four former blue ridge students and four current blue ridge students and it's been hard and i probably don't do this enough but i just wanted to step up and thank you guys for all that you guys do um as being a person who leads a lot of people in our community um i know the fog associated with trying to make decisions in these times of code and i try i'd like to be more of an encouragement to you guys i don't i'm not an expert in education so i'm not here to offer any ideas to you but i will just suggest that the qualities that i judge each of you on as elected officials and as leaders in our community are qualities like this um do you have honest honesty and integrity are you confident do you have the ability to inspire others are you committed and passionate are you good communicators um do you possess good decision-making capabilities are you accountable do you delegate do you empower um are you creative and innovative and especially during these times i can say yes for that one for sure um do you have empathy and resilience emotional intelligence humility transparent transparency and vision and purpose and so like i mentioned i'm not here to offer any ideas because you guys are the experts um i'm here to give you guys my support um i'm trusting that you guys each of you are hard working uh researching this thing out dreaming and planning you guys are passionate and smart you're capable of leading this great school and i'm here to express my support and thanks for each there's no easy answers um you know and come up here and act like covet has been your fault or something um it's left us all kind of um with our access to the wall trying to figure out answers and i acknowledge that i understand that we're all fighting this pandemic together i believe you're doing more than your due diligence you have my support thanks for all you do thank you [Music] don't get brittany confused with one of our kids thank you i just wanted to start off by saying i can't imagine what decision i would have made many months ago when all of this craziness hit i don't view the position you are in and i believe the choice you made was with our kids best interest in mind that being said hindsight is 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
this is for uh for uh board of ed policy this evening on uh november 10th i think yes november 10th so um mrs jojinski uh call the roll please uh mr crippo here ms halen and mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you uh it's all rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it's in one nation under god indivisible with liberty you know here or there um okay so first up uh all right well i guess we'll go right into uh the termination of employment sure so oh i'm sorry is there any public comment no no okay all right very good um so i will um present my screen here if you wouldn't mind bearing with me for a second okay get back to that where'd kim go i'm here okay can you i'm just trying to jump into the agenda get it open okay okay you guys can see that uh this is um the first agenda item the 41 17.5 uh is adamant in termination of employment um so uh it's you know pretty clear there in terms of um how we facilitate or who's responsible at least for facilitating termination of employment um so uh sorry i'm i'm a principal calling me that's usually not a good thing anyway so uh the exception of superintendent or my designee will make a statement concerning the reason and the individual has left employment with district um superintendent or his designee will seek legal counsel concerning the nature of statements which are permissible to uh in a particular case um and then obviously we approach we address any actions that may be necessary with authorities or whatever for example if you know somebody was stealing from us or something like that we would contact the police department um there were questions that came up in a previous meeting and so you know we um i i can hit on some of the highlights for that the questions were regarding you know notification of uh the public when there's a new hire or a resignation and um so there was a question about that posed to our attorney and that's something that's that's fairly common to do uh in the agenda but um it's very uncommon to state the reason for somebody's uh departure um there was a question about the legality of releasing information um you know when somebody is either released or resigns or uh is terminated and uh our attorney indicated it's not illegal um but you know could result in a defamation action grievance or other legal claim uh there was a question about foi and like we had talked about in the last meeting any disciplinary action is subject to freedom of information the only things that aren't subject to freedom of information are evaluations for certified people below the rank of superintendent and that's built into statute so if it's part of an individual's evaluation it would not be foiable however if it's action that's discipline outside of the evaluation process so they're sanctioned for some sort of you know behavior or action [Music] outside of the evaluation process those are things that would be generally more significant insubordination for example or you know poor attendance issues or things like that those disciplinary matters are subject to foi and somebody could um ask you know make a request of the district um and that does happen periodically um can somebody do a blank foi for all discipline with no specific names that was a question that was asked before and you know in this committee meeting last time and do we have to comply if in that foi they don't give a name and it's just kind of a buckshot um we do you know basically have to comply with foi requests the the thing uh with an foi request is that um we don't have to create records uh to release to the public so for example if somebody were to ask me um can you give me the name of everybody with the last name smith who's worked here for the last 10 years we keep records of everybody who's worked here for the last 10 years and databases so yeah we could give you that easily if you said to me could you um give me a uh everybody who's been disciplined in the last 10 years we don't keep a running record of individuals who've been disciplined in the last 10 years so i i wouldn't i don't have to create that record to comply with an foi request it's not something we automatically keep um but we would have to you know if if somebody was asking on specific cases yeah you have to disclose that information again if it's part of an evaluation you don't if it's a disciplinary disciplinary matter you do and so to be clear discipline can be released um and only the uh evaluations below the rank of superintendent may not be released um so then uh the question about you know what's permissible regarding um sharing information with separation or suspension um they are disclosable under foi is discipline um whether or not you know it's it's a good idea to do so i mean we talked about i shared my reservations there about the fact that um you know we uh occasionally make business decisions with our attorney's council to expedite an individual's departure because we consider it to be in the best interest of the district and our students so in those instances um you know i consider like what would it cost for us to litigate this matter what how much time would it take um what is the person's position and you know can i replace that position or not you know the there what what's the action itself that occurred do we need to move straight to termination you know how what's the likelihood that we would win a termination hearing and things like that so you know we work through that with um our attorney and ultimately uh on occasion enter into separation agreements well it's pretty rare um it does happen um and you know it's like i said i think it's it was pretty limited you know over the course of my history here i can only think of a few um and not all of those were teachers so you know we do enter into those agreements periodically for people outside the classroom um whether they be uh custodians or secretaries or other people um it's not uncommon for that to take place in a school system particularly of our size so that's um you know and the other thing you know that i shared last time was that when we um if we were to engage in a um a situation where we start publicizing all discipline and i remember this because i i'll never forget my father giving me this line when i worked at the grocery store as a kid you know coming home one day you you praise in public punish in private and um that's just been an old you know modicum leadership uh modicum for for years so um the the idea is you know if we start punishing in uh public every single one of those is going to now be a combative environment and that's just part of a um the environment in which we work and so you know we're better off addressing the situation with the cooperation of the union um hopefully the goal in any sort of disciplinary action is to uh change the behavior and so you know the best case is that that is effective and we move on um but when we start publicizing that i think it's just bad for culture bad for recruiting staff it's bad um for time because now i'm gonna have to fight all of those things and it's it's gonna start to get pretty costly because the union's gonna any union not just the teacher union any union probably in america if every time there was a disciplinary matter it was publicized would engage in a little bit more vigorous defense of the individual so um i i would strongly advise against going down that road i don't know if there are any questions on the policy or on you know anything we've discussed i'm just pulling it up here real quick so i'll just add that i think i mean is it adam can i talk go ahead thanks so i think i'm probably the uh the reason we're discussing this tonight i i um i appreciate and respect where you're coming from jeff on a lot of what you said and agree with you and when we had this discussion a month or so ago um yeah i was talking about disciplinary action and that's far too broad that's not i i had an idea in my mind and i did not articulate it well okay um so disciplinary actions in general no i i don't want to go um i don't want to dig into that that's not my point at all my concern is uh i'll say suspension so let's just say somebody is out of school for you know a week or two weeks or something like that i feel it's i feel the the voters including the parents have a right to know about those things i think it's important that they would be aware of it i'm not saying the cause i'm just saying the fact that the person is not in school teaching for a week or whatever it might be a few days as well as a separation um simply a public notice that this person has left the school system that's it no not any not any cause involved it would raise questions absolutely and that is part of where that's that's probably really what what got me thinking about this which is hashtag me too i just am concerned about bad apples and i'm not saying somebody that messes up or anything like that but a bad apple and they exist when you have a group of you know six or seven hundred people or you're gonna have a bad apple or two that person leaving this school system going over to another school system and causing more problems there that's not the right thing to do either or that's not a good situation that any of us i don't believe any of us want to exist i understand completely where you're coming from about the um the financial aspect that's part of the that's part of the whole uh decision making process as far as i'm concerned and i haven't really um i mean i i don't think i've really been involved in anything like this on the board yet i think maybe we had one discussion um but uh when i was on the council i mean it oftentimes it just came down to it came down to finance it came down to finances and you know we want things to move along what's changed in my mind is really hashtag me too and i and i'm not comfortable with this stuff moving along um you know somebody potentially moving on to another school district and having similar problems and it has to be frank i think i said it in the last meeting i feel like it burned us i know that it burned us before your time as superintendent um it had burned the school system and where somebody moved along out of one school system and over to the cheshire public schools and that's where i'm coming from on this so i have i have a question um if if what if what we did so our attorney or uh floyd dugus he said that you know there could be potentially legal problems well um so let me just let me just ask the question so what i'm confused about and those are my words not his but what i'm wondering about is if if all that happened was a public notice of someone being you know not working suspended or separated type of thing from the school system not why or anything like that just simply a public notice of that i don't understand how there's like legal legal consequences for us other than some sort of like frivolous lawsuit that's what there wouldn't be um i think if we as a practice identified new hires um and you know resignations um then you know the the people coming and going uh of the certified staff i would ask floyd's opinion on that about whether we list you know variety like all staff are we talking about ias 2 or just certified staff and is it ok to only use do the certified staff i think it is but you know i i i could ask his opinion on that whether just people coming and going because frankly i mean our policy does lend itself to that and we could include that as part of information on the superintendent's report every board meeting that you know x y and z have left and we've hired x y and z that's not uncommon as part of a board practice okay so i mean i could i'll ask for a policy on that that we can review next go around okay okay so then stating people have left because they're in a separation agreement no no no whatever that's that's uh that's where i think the concern comes in so i get it even if you don't say there's a separation agreement by the definition by by definition of the policy that is what happened if you state that yeah it's i think you get i get it i wasn't thinking about that before that that makes no sense okay so i'll ask floyd you know or carol can touch base with cave about you know either a policy or procedure that addresses that that we can look at at our next meeting okay so there's that i appreciate okay so that's pretty common okay but i i so i'm also i also um i it just goes through my mind you know be above and beyond that so thank you for that above and beyond that is suspensions you know somebody is suspended say for two weeks i feel like the parents should know that i i mean that's where i'm coming from it just doesn't and i i understand you're saying there's potential legal problems that doesn't really make any sense to me if it's just like a statement of fact not any why or anything just right this person two weeks out of not working and i'm thinking that this would you know i think we do often notify people if somebody was going to be out of the classroom for two weeks and we knew it in advance we would notify parents of that we don't say why i mean sometimes it's because they have to have a medical procedure and that's sensitive information too sometimes i mean oftentimes it's kind of hard to hide a maternity leave so you know so most times you know your person's out for maternity but um you know that there are situations now we don't we don't necessarily disclose every reason why the individual's out and no no no in medical i think going into that this person's out because they're suspended i think that's where you know the argument could be made that that's you know defamatory or you know could create issues from a legal perspective right or wrong i'm not the attorney you know what i mean i i'm just telling you what floyd's perspective was on that and certainly i'm you know we could have him come back and discuss this with us but um you know the suspension thing i would have some reservations about that you know because of the conversation i had with floyd because of like i said that principle of of publicly um you know promoting things that people do and and privately punishing them so you know i i understand you know definitely we wouldn't need to notify people that they're going to be out of the room you know i i don't i wouldn't do it for a student either and i know these are adults but i just don't think it's good leadership practice to publicly shame somebody that we're trying to correct their behavior with yeah no no no i understand i do understand exactly where you're coming from but on the flip side i i mean it happens where people just move on to a new school district and the problem continues yeah and then that's that's a there's there is a bigger thing above and beyond cheshire that does need to be addressed and the country our country has had a million things happen since harvey weinstein three years ago but it still sits in my mind and i still think about it and i just want collectively those things to stop and i'm not saying anything about harvey weinstein in the school district please yeah yeah of course yeah i'm just speaking you have drawn a comparison and not you know a suggestion that that's happening the the um i think from our on the hiring perspective of things you know we have a checklist that we go through with prospective employees where we solicit that information from references from the employee if they fail to disclose these things you're subject to immediate termination and so you know i think the situation you're referencing um that occurred before my time though all those things were disclosed upon hiring so that's you know at the end of the day uh the decision was still made to hire that individual but you know um that you know that's a different story i guess but you know to not not know that there were significant issues in the individual's past um that's a little bit shame on the district that's hiring the the person you know that you need to do your homework on your on your hiring process and and to be honestly i i don't know anybody that is doing things against children and thing i i thankfully never run into that in my career certainly not in the cheshire public schools um so yeah i understand what you're saying though you don't want somebody who's doing things that are egregious to be able to hide behind agreements that protect them in perpetuity and the the i think the good news working in the public sector tim is that if there is a separation agreement that's entered into between two parties that's still public information and so when we hire somebody and we're asking have you ever had a separation agreement a termination or whatever then we know um and so any employer would know that uh about anybody that we as an organization enter that into that uh agreement with um so it's it's not quite as easy to hide it's actually much harder to hide than it would be in a private sector situation so i think the the concern while i think it's it's legitimate and genuine in a public sector institution like us there's no you can't there is no hiding from it because it is a public document at that point i i guess the one this is really for the public and and for you jeff too just to just to be clear and i think you understand where i'm coming from it's not just necessarily a matter of the law like breaking the law or committing a crime there are behaviors yeah that can exist that are just inappropriate and it's just not right yeah that's not to say that a person is necessarily like a bad person or anything like that but not necessarily right for the school system yeah our threshold for our threshold for uh ending our relationship with employee is not breaking the law we have a much a lower bar than that thankfully to get rid of people if they're not getting it done um i just like to comment and say that uh for me personally uh if we were to report on any separation or suspension that i i think it would only be fair to at least have it anonymized if we if we do go that route that it's you know we had a we had a separation and we had a suspension at you know god for example right not not based in anything just using exactly um you know as a as a quarterly reporter or part of your uh uh superintendent's report um because i don't i honestly i don't know if there would be um uh a support enough for for anything more than that uh when it comes down to actually voting on the policy itself i don't know if there'd be support more than just um attention everyone something happened if you want to find out more then you're gonna have to file an foi basically unless it's incredibly serious uh which then there's other things that honestly there's other policy and contractual agreements that force us to take more action anyway than just someone who's terminated if especially if there's litigation involved and or any kind of terror some airborne happen it's it's going to be out there anyway because that's just how we operate here in cheshire it's uh there's not a lot of secrets usually unless it's of an incredibly terrible nature which you you can't really talk about all that much yeah um so yeah i'll go back and you know i'll ask carol we'll grab a procedure on that in terms of reporting and then i'll ask floyd about the other you know component with um any sort of suspension slash and i think you know i like you know where you're going there adam with the anonymized reporting you know this the state and i think i've shared with you and the public are uh covid data for example anytime like we can't even put a number on it if it's less than six you know because it's pretty clear to identify who it is so i have a feeling floyd would probably suggest that if because we just thank god don't have numbers high enough that it'd be pretty easy to identify even though it was quote anonymous who the individual was and then you could look at a defamation lawsuit or something like that which even though i mean it this is one of the things about our our legal system even though we could be right if somebody brings a suit it still costs us to defend ourselves at that point and is it worth it you know so let's i'll talk to floyd get you guys some more information we'll definitely pursue the you know comings and goings the people you know new and and leaving on our on our agenda or at least the reporting it out at the board meeting that sounds uh good to me you're all right with that so we'll just so we will do we have to table that or would we hold it or uh yeah we can we can uh you know come back to that one on uh if it's a brand new procedure or policy or we could uh put it anew because we're not moving a specific policy forward or anything like that i mean if it's going in the super if it's something with regards to the you know comings and goings and the superintendent's report i don't think i don't think there's a policy behind that that's just you doing that it's what it takes yeah right right right yeah yeah so we'll take a look at that and yeah you may even be able to do it for the next business meeting okay it's just a pedro thing i mean you've got you can't have that many people that come and go during the school year do you just it's a pretty rare bird i mean especially if you're talking about i it's sad but unfortunately most people who leave during the year are leaving due to medical situations um you know and and they may need certain care or uh it's yeah that's the frankly the most typical um reason that people leave and it's it's thankfully not that common you know yeah okay okay all right um i guess we will move along to looks like uh certified non-certified drug uh alcohol drugs and tobacco yeah so there was a recent change of present screen real quick on this one too this one yeah um it's just an optional component that indicates that personnel are not they're prohibited from possessing or using any canna bidal [Music] cannabidiol cbd uh is a little easier um and at school so you basically can't bring cbd to school uh to your your place of work um and that's really the only addition to that policy optional recommended by cabe is that be is it you cannot have uh any center sort of cbd product uh under the age of 18.
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here gladys cooper here lauren daley lauren uh is absent um he has uh there's a family issue okay he will not be with us tonight joe da silva present catherine hodgson heir rich gianelli kathy molinaro here alvaruso here amy spelino right ten present we have 10 of us 11. thank you kate uh could we move down to the recognition dr sam yes um thank you i see carmen a few years ago we were interviewing for principals at south street we were looking for someone who really had the desire to make a difference and to really get involved with uh the community in a way that's going to really change the lives of our youngsters well we chose carmen that year and um we're very uh very happy about that decision um she is um there's a good foundation here with a solid staff and uh just like any leader that's capable they could take him to a next level and she's been doing that you know about the achievement of the school as a blue ribbon which is really an incredible feat that we've achieved and then they started dipping in and looking at the attributes of why it became a blue ribbon school dave the noticings were a strong faculty led by a strong leader and in the name of the faculty and in the name of of the administration she was selected for this bell work and we're just so pleased that she's in congratulations to her carmen well done thank you thank you you have a minute oh look look you got a hairdo like mine that's pretty good that's all right ah lookie there you want to tell the board a little bit about some of the things that you've done yes dr sal thank you first of all i want to thank the mayor i want to thank the board of ed i want to thank dr sal because he trusted me and out of so many candidates he selected me i couldn't have done that without his support and of course i could not be here and celebrating this prestigious award if it wasn't for the south street staff the students the parents and the family and of course my danbury colleagues so thank you to everyone i've said it many times and i'll say it again it takes a village in south street i think one of the biggest things that has made a huge difference is number one having a common vision and setting high expectations for all students the staff entrusted me follow my guidance and we have a very open uh communication uh i'm not i don't know everything and we work together to do what is best for students this is all about the students what do they need and what do we need to do whether it be through professional development whether it be through reaching out to the danbury the administrative council the coaches it takes a big group of people to put this together and we have a lot of work still to do but we're excited for our next step and we need the support from the board and one of those things we can put on that list is a brand new school but we'll get there thank you everyone congratulations to everyone thank you why don't we all thank her because we're happy to have her here and have her at southern thank you thank you thank you you're finished dr seth dr sally you're on mute i i was in practice when i preached right i was going to ask anybody else from the cabinet anything to say kara yeah construction go ahead i was hoping you'd ask um so yeah it's been a pleasure working with carmen over the last couple of years um you know i think i may have said this before every now and then you know the phone rings or i'll get an email do you have a minute and they've got carmen on the other end wanting to try something a little bit new a little bit different um and wants to kind of talk through some things and i think that's a testament to um you know what what a leader does is that they're constantly pushing the envelope a little bit pushing the boundaries and and challenging a little bit of the status quo um and so carmen has been doing that for the last couple of years and i think that that has definitely paved the way um she often cites you know i had a conversation with my teachers my teachers were thinking thinking this what do you think and so she's always bringing that teacher um teacher leader perspective into the conversation she really honors that and i think that that that's what makes her so special um and i think that that resonates with staff when they know that their voice is heard and that the principal's willing to roll up their sleeves and dig in and try a few things out with them whether or not you know without any expectation of what the outcome is going to be we're just going to try it out and see where it goes and if it works we're going to scale it up and so carmen i just want to congratulate you and your staff um for what you're building over there and what you'll continue to build and we're just uh we're very so so proud of you so thank you i'll leave it open to anyone else on on the cabinet yes kelly kevin go ahead kel carmen and south street staff just thank you very much you guys are a wonderful highly dedicated team um i will say carmen is always reaching out similar to kara really advocating for what we can do for unique family situations circumstances how to meet students with where they're at um and kind of problem solve unique ways um to intervene so i truly appreciate um all the hard work for the south street team and a big congratulations to you guys any other comments okay i i just want to comment i just want to say to you to you and your staff we know that um every great principle is key to any great school i mean we've learned in these last couple years that south street elementary school is certainly great we also know from experience that great principle great principles support support their teachers and those great teachers in turn create a thriving school culture where all of our kids can succeed and i i just want to congratulate you your staff your students your families um you know we we are certainly grateful for your leadership at south street um and look forward to to many many years of great things ahead i can't thank you enough for your leadership at that school now carmen if you could solve the traffic problem i'll give you another award well done you know but all kidding aside even with that we sat with the police we sat with the neighborhood i think carmen's always trying to dig and finding an answer just to solve something whether it's a instructional gap or an operational issue um well-deserved carmen congratulations and thank you for recognizing her tonight board oh dr scott can i just say she has tried to solve the traffic problem because she has reached out to me about that as well so she's got a plan for that and i echo all the sentiments of everybody even though i'm new i realize recognize your dedication and what an honor this award is so thank you i just wanted to say that thank you i just want to add that thank you everybody um i cannot do this alone and i see this as a win for danbury danbury is on the map and i know that right now you know this meeting is not about me as much as i'd like to think it is um we have a lot of things that we need to discuss and these challenging times uh but let's celebrate this is a danbury win and this is everyone um and we're doing great things and i think that that needs to be said clearly thank you everyone thank you thank you amanda chairman next we will move on to public participation kate would you read the two scripts for uh public participation and then advocate read the two scripts then we'll come with the comments okay uh the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system due to the unique nature of the covid19 crisis and the limitations of technology members of the public who are danbury residents are invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at danbury.k12.ct.us thank you kay okay our first one for tonight is cheryl radacho if danbury is 100 distance learning please explain why the normal school day hours schedule are not being followed our kids are being deprived of a quality education and it is not acceptable megan shaw my son is a student at the academy of international studies at this point we are in the middle of november and the children have not gone to school one day one minute one second since march they left school one day in march with the promise of return in two weeks since then we have now looked to danbury public schools as one broken promise after another when will enough be enough i would like to know why brookfield and all the other towns are slowly moving toward full-time learning and danbury is not open one day when will you start to put the children first and the politics second if we continue going in this downward spiral the children will suffer for the rest of their lives at this point it needs to be in the parents hands parents should decide that the parents who want their children in school should have the option danbury needs to have some type type of support system for parents who need to work some of us are a two income dependent family the chil the teachers are working from home and getting full pay and benefits while other parents have had to stop work and not be able to get their salary nor benefits i don't understand how this is fair to working parents not all of us have the option to stay home with our children danbury needs to set up some type of caregiving no charge service such as people coming to the home to help tutor with online learning help care for the children in the home and other services needed by parents the parents at home who are unable to work anymore have added stress which means stress to the children we try our best to not let it affect them due to the stress damari is causing all the parents it is time danbury steps up and starts putting the children first if you continue to not put the kids back in school due to covid they will not get back to school for years my son is now asking why his teachers can teach from their homes and i cannot do my job from home not to mention they are not working more than five hours a day these questions come due to the selfishness of danbury public schools extras are not available to the children anymore bethel is next to danbury there are 83 people in bethel staff that are quarantined but the superintendent refuses to close the schools katie williams thank you for meeting on november 5th 2020.
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uh there's a a zoom uh link here um if anyone would like to join us um there'll be someone there'll be a couple of us we're probably going to rotate uh in and out of these so every month there'll be someone different who's coming to the uh and it's kind of just like a coffee hour people have questions so we can answer their questions by the way that's going to be a monthly that's going to be a monthly monthly yep thanks John that's right monthly uh there's also a transportation Power Hour November 12 um so if anyone is interested in this uh Simi has been having a hard time getting people to sign up for this so please spread the word let people know about it um I'm sure he he'd love to have a decent turnout as far as attendance goes so another thing Sim's working on uh yeah and I think we pretty much worked our way through all the major topics were there any things that Commissioners had as far as events that maybe we should put on here or other other Commissioners should know about um I sent out a notification there are two webinars that might be of interest um one is um tomorrow from one to two financing options to deliver carbon neutrality um there's going to be several large entities talking about um in particular related to the university but potentially also related to um larger um customers like the city or industrial entities um how um they can Finance their carbon neutrality plans um and then on um on the 19th I think it is um um towards it it's a webinar called towards adjust an equitable carbon neutrality plan both of these are being put on by an organization I'm affiliated with called car voices for carbon neutrality whose mission is to um accelerate and to Catal ize um carbon neutrality at the University of Michigan I sent an email out just before 6 o'cl I'm gonna be on that second panel too but yeah it should be good um Josh the GLA annual meeting is going to be Saturday December 5th um Dan scrips the chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission is going to be speaker and Jagger Shaw is coming in and he's going to be the keynote speaker and it's all Zoom based this year so you can sign up at gl's website but it's that's that's going to be happen on the 5th wonderful I'm excited about being on he's I listened to his weekly podcast along with two others and it's really great too he owed me money because I invested in sun energy it went up it went up to $35 a share and dropped the the junk Bonds in about two weeks I me holy crap that was after he left I think yeah it was after he left that's his answer too well I wasn't there hey Josh one one last thing the link to this report um in legistar did not work for me it was broken okay let me um yeah sometimes if you don't uh finalize the copy there's some funky things that go on let me look into that um I can get it live for you in if you guys want I can just send it yeah would you just send it out as to you right now that way you that' be great yeah we all right and I think that pretty much does it as far as uh news notes and updates then did we have any updates from council members from Council haer or from any of the other Commissioners um I I could just say something briefly about a few energy related things that are on the next council meeting um C1 is uh changes to chapter 55 the rooftop solar energy systems um it's a height waiver and currently it's written that it changes um it they allow up to uh 12 feet above says sorry rooftop solar energy systems May extend up to 12 feet above the surface of a flat roof when determining the height of the building and so I'm going to assume that they mean the height of the building caps at whatever it is and how they you know they have a fence around the AC Air Handlers and all that and this can be 12 above the surface of a flat roof so hopefully plannings um you know our building and development is fine with that language um my question was um what about folks who have you know pitched roofs which also have rooftop solar applications on them uh somebody's right at that 31 feet or whatever and then they start putting panels on there they're going to be 316 or 318 or whatever it is so I I just asked put that in my Council questions I didn't know if anybody had any insight into that um but right now we only discuss the rooftop solar as part of a flat roof um and the other part of the changes are to uh solar energy systems and um really not requiring people to come back and do a complete site plan resubmission and so on for solar system that we wave the we describe some things it can't do it can't increase impervious surface you can't remove Landmark trees and can't remove required parking things like that um but but it was being styed by the the the area the surface area that was allowed and so I think these are good changes I'm just not sure if for the the height variance we should also include pitched roofs so just wanted to share that that's the biggest thing plus the Teslas um hey Jeff if you need your if you need energy uh commission assistance don't help don't hesitate to to ask us that's what our mission is we're supposed to support you guys I don't think we've ever faced a question Lately from commiss from Council um on these kinds of topics don't hesitate to call well thanks you know I'm not sure I'm G to be on energy commission next two years um I we put in for different things and we're still sorting it all out who ends up where and I didn't get some of the ones I asked for and I was given some I didn't and energy commission wasn't part of that mix unfortunately so I'm not sure because I I actually enjoy it and I I know I missed a couple but um uh it's tough because sometimes it falls right when our our Gman stuff is happening but um you know I've really enjoyed being on here and learning all the things that that are you know I know it's going to be critical and I feel like I kind of maybe the next two years it' be the better two years now that this now that our E2 Zer plan start a rooll and all this stuff's happen and I feel like I could contribute maybe more in the next couple years so we're going to see how it all shakes out next Monday I I don't know if they're fixed until we vote on them or what it looks like the process is being run differently this year than my first than it was two years ago so if I don't see you next year thanks what you're do I just Jeff I just would like to make sure though that you understand what Chuck is offering as as in terms of like really what our role is regardless you know we really it's we hope that you're able to continue being part of the the energy commission and if you're not to please convey the message that this is what we're here for to offer you know information advice I mean the members of the commission are like extremely experienced and knowledgeable and that's what we're here for for exactly these types of questions well um yeah thanks thanks for saying that um I you know it looked like what the memo that preceded this resolution and these changes it it made it sound like it had gone through our subcommittees and everything and um we' take a look at that but maybe that's not accurate this did not go through the energy commission I think it went through planning and yes I don't know if the the the restrictions apply um to um residential um zoned areas or only commercially zoned areas or or I mean I don't I don't know the details but um you know just to reiterate Chuck's and caren's point um we would be potentially a second point that you could go to not only the staff that come to energy commission for um clarification of any questions that you might have yeah I'm reading through it again in in the full full body text here and it they were treating it just like it was had to do with height area placement under UDC and not really so interested in you know but they talk about anticipation it says under current code this proposal would trigger a full site plan review for the site making installations of solar structure possible cost prohibitive which it would be staff anticipates other possible sites in the city have similar considerations that make ground Mount difficult to install rights I mean maybe I don't know what the hurry is on this maybe maybe uh we'll have a conversation Council and I'll say look can we ask energy commission to take a look at this I don't know what changes would be made it we this is really been designed to loosen it up and allow more solar installations so that's the important thing to me but um I I I urge people to take a look at it and send me comments between now and the 16th if if that's helps it's it's on there as C1 um I can share I can share it with anybody who needs it feel free to ask or or I can share with with all energy commission if you want to see it thank you Larry that might be something you might um be able to help on or also check um as well possibly Teresa I'd like to see it I'm not aware of what the issue would be so yeah I'd like to read it yeah I'll share it to you I'll share a link to in legar right now thanks thank you and thank you for your service the commission so I guess we can go to um updates from the various um working groups and um also from me for the environmental commission Josh you want to lead us through that yeah sure um so we had a really good meeting on Renewables uh in particular looking at a whole bunch of projects uh that I'm working on and this kind of gets back to the conversation we were having earlier uh Jeff about you know just different sites uh trying to figure out what makes sense for those sites as far as solar battery Etc uh I think that there was a conversation that came out of it specifically towards batteries um and I think that might you know Chuck if you or Larry or someone else who deals with batteries um I I think it might be worthwhile going through even for the whole commission to really understand the use case for Batteries applications things of that nature um because I think it came out that uh the batteries aren't always you know I think we always it's almost like a go to and it really does have a specific application so um that's something that came out of it um yeah and just a whole bunch of uh kind of follow-ups so just every time that we have a different type of uh application that we're doing or or something that I'm I'm working on um I'm going to be tapping into the Renewables uh subcommittee for help uh specifically one of the things Chuck and I know you weren't able to be there for this one um one of the things that came out of it was uh talking about the water treatment plant looking at uh batteries for Peak shaving at the at the water treatment plant um so trying to see if that yeah I I do energy storage value analysis almost daily um so yeah be to help be super helpful um yeah so I think that's that's the major updates from enables unless anyone has anything else they want to add okay uh building and built environment um we kind of already went over this uh but there was uh again uh theia and Zach uh who are OSI staff are working on energy disclosure specifically for commercial and multif family uh they put together a um I guess a set I think there's four meetings that they've already uh put together and and basically they're stakeholder meetings uh so they're going to be including and I can't remember what the total number is at this point um but probably 10 to 15 people in those roughly um trying to get feedback uh and I think uh weighing out app yard uh the previous chair for the commission for the energy commission as well as um Jen Culbertson who is the chair of the 23 District we'll both be attending those um were there any questions on that one um Josh maybe input for Missy's um presentation in a month and that is um what role if any would the energy commission have with regards to developing a proposal for conier servic which is a service that would basically service primarily the buildings in the built environment although it could also get into other areas potentially like transportation and things like that but mostly it's intended for yeah that that's an excellent question it's one of those things where I think um at least I have seen it as the foundation to a lot of work that we're doing I think if you're reaching out to someone and you have a contact you're you're able to give them information as far as this unbiased Source they can go to it really helps to in a lot of the work that we're doing um and I find a lot of importance in moving that forward so I'll make sure to pass on the message thank you of course um let's see other things going on community outreach so we talked a little bit about uh this uh you know the A2 Zer ambassador program um I will be sending out that uh file for the energy commission's review I could pass it out only to the uh community outreach subcommittee but maybe the whole commission I don't know John if you or anyone else has a preference um I would send it to everybody for their for their information okay I would agree okay yeah I can definitely do that so my understanding is that at least one commissioner has um signed up um from what I understand more people have signed up for the program then there are slots um currently planned at least that's my understanding and so the intent is that um it will be offered um hopefully multiple times going forward is that your understanding as well John yes yeah my understanding is that there's going to be uh yeah like you're saying kind of multiple classes of ambassadors or yeah so it's going to be kind of a rolling thing um okay great uh so next One Transportation electrification carlen John anyone else on the transportation side want to give an update I have one update and that is um about the schedule for the EV Readiness ordinance um we had been informed and our um objective was to make sure that the changes to the ordinance were complete in order for it to be uh included in the November 16th city council agenda for its first reading and we just uh were informed late last week on Friday that it did not make it apparently the legal depart Department did not complete its review of the ordinance so um we're told that the next meeting for the first reading would be December 7th but we don't know exactly if that's going to be 100% certain so but that's that's all I can tell you at this point and by the way um beyond that carlen you want to just um talk about our work with simy and work on the strategy paper and and overall strategy just real briefly there is a list of um of actions that can possibly be undertaken uh by the city in its uh Transportation electrification initiative and right now the the transportation location committee is looking at this list we're looking at how to categorize it and prioritize it at this point in time uh and we've been working with Simi on this for the past couple months and we're continuing to do so so um yeah that's about that's what we're currently looking at right now and um that's that's just considering this list now just our last meeting was canceled because of the election so we're meeting again in another week well well we have a pretty aggressive schedule actually I mean we're we have it every other week's schedule and so that was also recently established and since because of the because of the election um this last week we um we skipped it and we're going to be meeting again next week thanks and then John environmental commission environmental commission very briefly um in our last meeting we voted to update our bylaws um we had a presentation of the an arbor greenhouse gas inventory I was had been previously presented to the energy commission Mark I think it was you raised the question about fugitive methane emissions and um Josh um hopefully you can answer this I I re requested it in an email but I don't recall seeing an answer my recollection is that Thea mentioned at least to the environmental commission that there's an estimate of the impact of fugitive emissions in our greenhouse gas inventory yes that's correct John yep so um yeah I don't know how far we want to go down this rabbit hole but there's definitely an estimate yeah and obviously those estimates of what the impacts are range significantly and because methane is so potent it could make a really big difference but they are indeed included in our inventory and you know as time goes on I'm sure and as those estimates become more accurate um then we'll better be able to reflect um that impact and um again I can't speak to it theia can maybe that's something um we talk to her about in the future I don't know if it's through the entire supply chain I don't know if it's just emissions within City boundaries but there is there is an element in the inventory that uh considers fugitive emissions so the The Fugitive emissions that are included are uh natural gas so if you have a natural gas plant for example there's estimates as far as leakage on that side um and then there's some very rough estimates as far as uh every so much as far as units of usage uh for CCF how much is you know the chances of how much are actually being off Gast um so there are some very rough estimates the problem is that there's like John was saying a wide range as far as what those estimates really are and what what so the University of Michigan for example they have a uh you know students who are working on specific specifically these problems uh and we've relied heavily on on their estimates for some of the numbers we use um DTE has other numbers that they use for their natural gas plants and what the fugitive emissions are um I think we strayed away from using those specifically um but you know there's again there's a lot baked into it um but yeah but to John's point they they are included so a couple of other things that might be can I respond so I think the question of the fug of mishes comes down to you know a couple things it's and and it and mainly where Anar replaces its chips um so you have mentioned this numerous times John that the these the Energy savings reductions the emissions reductions that we've had in an arbor over the last 5 10 years come almost exclusively from DTE going from coal to natural gas so you know we most of the what we've accomplished to datee is has is because of them because of we putting insulation in our houses or making our building codes better or doing better cars or none of that you know we throw up a few high visibility solar panels and you know we we talk a lot but this comes from DTE going forward there's no reason to believe that our emissions won't be tied very closely to what DTE does going forward as well so the question is you know given that reality what can we do to impact bte's emissions as a as a as a community we can certainly we can we can do resiliency things all those kinds of things we're going to need to do anyway but in terms of raw emissions reductions is there something that an arbor can do um in partnership with DTE or are we really doing it all alone so for example one thing we could do is begin to to question why DTE or what would it take for DTE to provide provide us with clean gas and I've supplied you and many others here with examples of other places that are doing using blockchain analyses and stuff um DTE has a biofuels green fuels program um there's things that could be done to Green up dte's natural gas system um and reduce their fugitive emissions they don't have an incentive to do that it's not going to come from the Michigan Public Service Commission the city of an arbor could turn to DTE and say we want clean gas we want this to happen what do we have to do and to begin that process and I think tracking and and accounting for the emissions is the first step so we know what we're talking about and I I just say I put it on the table that if we're going to be talking about spending our tax dollars to buy pre cars and and electric vehicles and do all this other stuff if this is an emissions problem what can we do to make G DTE provide us with lower emissions gas and electricity that is generated from lower emissions gas especially when they can buy it they can use blockchain this is a bunch of different things that they could be doing and I don't sense that we are engaging with DTE on that subject that was one of the reasons why I wanted us to talk have a presentation on the rate case that's going on at that Michigan Public Service Commission I I haven't heard it from Jeff I haven't heard from the mayor I haven't heard from anybody else that we are engaging with DTE Energy on the subject of of we want our electricity to be generated with clean gas they could buy a block of it and plug it into their thing and and charge and you know basically dedicate it to us they could do this and we are in a position to put some pressure on the city to say do that go talk to DTE and find out how we get cleaner gas and start the discussion that's my point without data without without us having so if we're using an estimate and Jos is saying that we don't like dte's numbers okay well then let's put our own numbers out there and stand behind them and if DTE argues with them then let them give us better numbers but I would think we should engage on this and be clear about it when we moving forward and it comes down to dollar for dollar spending money in a lawsuit suing DTE to make him give us green gas or buying you know green cars that should be part of the analysis that's my point ccil member here when I get data that's my point we we should be using fact-based decisionmaking well I I'm gonna I agree with that and I'm gonna just point out and share another link with everybody that we do have another resolution here ca1 it's on the consent agenda that reauthorizes a city administrator to direct purchase natural gas and choice electric for all relevant City facilities right um and it only talks about giving him the flexibility to do that it doesn't it speaks to purchasing power and savings and contracts more than it does the nature of the gas or the electricity absolutely but it says this is coming out of OSI so I'm not sure if that if that means I should assume this has had the review for the things you just spoke to it has not it has not I can actually speak a little bit to this um because I handle some of the natural gas purchasing site on Constellation so we do have uh Choice natural gas um and constellation does actually offer uh green uh I guess alternative green gas offerings uh which we have actually looked into as an alternative one of the one of the problems we often face um so I can give you a very simple local example of uh green gas so our landfill you know it's basically off gasing methane uh we've put a landfill gas generator on it we're able to capture that methane and actually turn it into something uh that then you can use into you turn into electricity basically um one of the issues that we found with the offerings that constellation has they just don't have uh enough for us to actually offset all of our natural gas with green natural gas so you know what they're supplying doesn't meet the demands that we have um I will turn over really quickly to say uh even though we might not be looking at Green natural gas there's a lot of things that we're doing right now to look at uh Renewables and alternatives uh for natural gas period right so electrification for example making sure that we don't have natural gas to begin with because there's always going to be some sort of leakage um and then trying to figure out with DTE so landfill G uh the landfill solar project I'm trying to figure out the landfill solar project uh negotiating that currently um and then seeing you know and there are things that you know aren't ready to really be talked about but there are definitely conversations going on uh on multiple levels uh that kind of address some of those those conversations some of those things you you raised commissioner McCoy yeah I just also wanted to amplify what Mark said but also push back a little bit in that like I think part of putting pressure on DTE is going to come from stopping talking like d our relationship with DTE is inevitable so like we we know that a20 is talking about Community Choice aggregation we've had two months of public comments where people have mentioned Municipal utility you know and I think you're right that we need to hear more about the rate payer case we need to put more pressure um on getting DTE to push for renewable energy but I think some of that pressure is going to stop talking about like I said that stop going to stop talking about is if we have to have DTE and the more and more we look into these alternative options that could be you know not only more um energy renewable energy but also more affordable to an aror residents the more that pressure is going to come as well I should also mention really quickly Markus I saw the email that came by as far as the rate case goes um we're currently in litigation so we can't really talk about it publicly um but I have talked to Miss as to you know what we could share and what we couldn't share and at what point could we do maybe a presentation so that's definitely something that we've looked at as well okay just um to finish things up um primarily for council member haer um it still may take a while to get the council but a rough draft is nearly complete of a um changes to the UDC um for Heritage in Landmark trees um so that's in the natural features working group of the environmental commission um and then finally of general interest maybe to Commissioners the solid waste Resource Management plan was approved by city council and um the top priority um for the solid waste working group of the environmental commission is to work on um construction and demolition solid waste so um something we've talked about in the environmental commission but probably not here is that um all of the greenhouse gas emissions um um that we estimate for the city are based on the tonnages that we measure um both compost you know that go to landfill and what the composition of that is we do not measure construction and demolition waste so all the waste that goes from construction sites um are not included um and we know it's really significant and 100% of it goes to landfill so that would be one of the things that we will be working on first of all trying to get an estimate of how much that is and then talking with stakeholders about what it would mean to try to divert some of that and how we could um put that potentially in an ordinance so that's it from the environmental commission so I think the next point on the agenda is public comment again correct I have it right in front of me I could pull it up and um then we'll take um agenda items for the next meeting after that so for public comment um I think we all know the Spiel this is an opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes please call 206 9723 or 38847 s enter the meeting ID just a second I have to get that sorry meeting ID is um 96825 3797 and then um press star n to raise your hand and you will be recognized by the last three digits of your number so please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments Josh do we have anyone you're muted thanks John uh oh yep I see two people raise their hand oh and there's another person uh 327 327 you are now should be able to speak are you there okay 327 we can come back around and see if uh might have some technical difficulties here uh look like they're muted scen the black shows them they muted can you unmute them Josh or yes give me so I can ask them to unmute um but I think they actually have to do something on their end to to officially unmute let me see if there's something else yep yeah they're not unmuting I'm not exactly sure what uh whether it's star9 or something else I have to touch does it say John how how they unmute um no I don't know how to do yes there we go hi um this is Twin John I also am here on a non phone number um I live right now at um 1218 wines drive and I would like to make a comment and um Echo some of the things that some of the the commission members have said already which is that I don't see a lot of point in attempting to negotiate with DTE for a better mix of Renewables or lower rates unless we are actually willing to do something else um DTE thinks that they can charge whatever they want of us um that they can limit the ability for our citizens to generate their own power and contribute that to their communities um and I don't think that that's a value that a lot of people in an arbor share and agree with and I think that an arbor has a lot of resources and being willing to stand up to DTE to operate our city based on energy sovereignty um and to demonstrate to the entire state of Michigan and the region that these these giant poor profit energy companies are not the you know the only alternate the only option they're not the end all Beall um would be a move that would benefit not only us but also the entire Region's energy sovereignty um and it would certainly make negotiating with BT a lot easier because right now they hold all the cards and unless we're really willing to demonstrate that we will do something other than ask nicely over and over and over again um they have no reason to give us what we want thank you energy commission members for this very interesting conversation um and I will now end my comment thank you I'd just like to say thank you for those comments and I think that they're are right on I'm lucky enough to have a a a summer home in Harbor Springs haror Springs is part of a four Community uh group now Harbor Springs pataski charoy and Travers City that are all Municipal Utilities there's 42 Municipal Utilities in Michigan um Lancing Border Water and Light Etc even Chelsea electric an arbor is not a municipal utility um if we were we could do this ourselves and there are Municipal Utilities Holland electric and others that are well along the way to going getting 100% uh Renewables and also in a position to generate renewable energy some of which around people's houses and some of it centralized and sell that as green power to third parties so DTE is not you I I couldn't agree with you more again I'd ask you to take a look at what happened in Boulder because this process is expensive and it requires a long dedicated legal fight and I think I agree with you I think an arbor is the community that is should do it and we should do it now and declare this and sharpen our lawyers pencils and get at it all right we do have uh 013 if you could unmute and I think it's uh I just found out star six to unmute for anyone who's oh there we go hi I'm Ian piol I live at 2016 Pauline Boulevard um I'm also here on uh calling in on a computer um mark thank you for your feedback to on Tegan's comments I would also like to Echo um my support for looking to alternatives to bargaining with DTE um just looking at what their priorities are which are increasing profits for their shareholders um they're not going to be moving to what they see as non-economically viable renewable energy in the near future um the even the renewable energies that anabor already has including our high H Electric dams they're and are distributed solar Community solar they're actively taking steps to hinder those they're buying like below Market rates for for hydro as well as distributed solar um and I agree it's not going to be easy the the boulder example um makes that painfully clear but I'd like to say that I'd like to make the point that it's not going to happen if we're just going through the private Market with DTE so we we at this point we need to do it and that means taking the the tough road um yeah thank you for having this conversation um I'd like to make a point on the electric vehicle discussion that um it'd save a lot of money as well as like not having to worry about um whether we're using fracked gas or solar generated energy to not be buying more cars for the police um especially I agree that we should be looking at unionmade or us-made materials for our renewable sources um but with all respect to those unions uh the cops historically have made it their their pastime of um abusing unions and keeping them keeping them down um so I think it's a little hypocritical to be thinking about purchasing unionmade vehicles or a police force that oppresses them thank you so much for uh hosting this meeting and I'll yield my the rest of my time thank thank you for your comments Josh do we have anybody else we do uh let's see one I think 134 you just went uh hello hello hello y can you hear me we can hear you okay this is RNE Apple Yard phone again from out in the hitter lands um couple of things first of all um I think it's really important to realize that carbon removal is sort of the the butt end of things that it's always going to be more expensive to remove carbon that you put up there as opposed to ones carbon that you have not put up there and so we really need to continue to work towards more Renewables and uh getting away from burning things um the person that called early in the meeting I think had some misinformation about the um capacity uh percentages for wind in Michigan which I looked it up on the web and it says the average is 36% and I know most of the stuff that's going in now are on taller towers and as well uh over 40% um but the other thing to realize and it comes into your discussion about supplying uh renewable energy for charging vehicles Les and I I would hope that all of you on the energy commission will read the paper that the EV uh subcommittee put together on why uh requiring that is not a good idea because among other things uh in the winter time we uh get less uh between a third and and a half of the amount of solar that we get in the summertime I've looked at my solar array and that's what I get so it would make that you would have to have a very oversized array and batteries for probably a week or two to really do that um otherwise most of it in the winter time you're actually going to be getting from DT anyways and so you're adding a real expensive item a bunch of batteries uh that aren't really going to work very well so um I'm a strong believer that the grid is your friend it's the ultimate Battery Source and you need to work on on DTE to get uh the rates to work out better um and uh I'm glad that somebody uh talked about how trees aren't really a very good answer um I have information about when you install a one and a half inch caliper tree which is what goes in in new site plans and it takes 10 years for it to really sequester much of anything so planting 10,000 trees would be good for a lot of reasons but sequestration isn't really one of them uh I'm also a little bit disappointed that uh legal hasn't stepped up and uh reviewed the EV ordinance which was largely complete several months ago uh but hopefully um they will come through for us um so and I might suggest that um I think it's very difficult to get away from DTE completely uh we have uh the because of the foot act they have a quote unquote franchise that lasts forever but I think the uh Constitution allows us to collect franchise fees and somebody should look into trying to negotiate getting a franchise fee from them which would basically allow us to um get funds for doing all the work that we necess we really need to do to try and reduce our dependence on them might be an easier route to go um they have a I think it's C10 or something like that is there um tariff for collecting fees that are required by local municipalities so that might be a better route to go and uh I think that's it so um goodly listening to you all and have a good night great thanks Wayne good hearing from you uh and then finally uh caller 134 if you could unmute yes thanks missioner McDonald Ken Garber 28 have your Hill Court thank you for the opportunity to speak again I'll be brief uh my thanks to the caller Mr alard for correcting me on wind capacity Factor um I also appreciate commissioner cley's remarks on being more active on the DTE rate case and on engaging with DTE to obtain clean electricity and green natural gas uh at least for municipal operations to start um thanks for that um at the same time I agree with commissioner McCoy and with the callers twin John and Ian peaw on the benefits of simultaneously exploring municipalization commissioner cevy twice has raised the painful Boulder utility municipalization history I have reviewed that history Boulder is definitely not an experience we want to repeat the city spent over 27 million in litigation with Excel the private electric utility there with not a lot to show for it at the end however Boulder and an arbor are different in the boulder litigation the central question was whether the boulder City Charter authorized a municipal electric utility that question was never resolved with some courts saying yes and others saying no the Boulder City Council basically caved in after eight years of litigation and dissolved ITS m Municipal utility in exchange for a better franchise agreement with Excel and um higher levels of M of renewable energy by the way renewable electricity however unlike Boulder City Charter and our Charter expressly authorizes a municipal utility no doubt DTE would find other grounds to sue to protect its local electric franchise but they would probably rest on shakier legal ground my point is the situations are fundamentally different with an Auber benefiting from a city Charter much more favorable to municipalization we might want to get an expert legal opinion on this thanks just like to say thank you Ken I I agree with you and I'm glad you read it and that's why I encourage people to look at this um $26 million is the that's you know about the kind of money we're going to have to come up with yes I think we do we used to be a municipal utility we gave up the right to do that we turned it over to DTE we can get it back it isn't going to be cheap but it's going to take uh take a clear view and people need to look at the boulder experience to see a couple things one being why after spending $26 million they quit so if we're going to go down this this the Avenue and I think we should then we have to be dedicated and committed to doing this and not be bought off at the end with some you know Green Watts thrown our way to to a sage whatever hurt feelings we have this there's only one way to win this and thing and that's we do it and we become a municipal utility so thank you for reading it and thank you for your comments I couldn't agree more so I'd like to offer an alternative to that path um right now uh energy uh is limited to 90 90% of the energy is Monopoly energy you have 10% freedom of choice this is something that's legislated it's legislated in Lancing it's been a possibility if we can get the money out of our politics that we could go from 10% energy choice to more than 10% and even 100% energy Choice other states have done this we wouldn't be the first state to do it Illinois has already done it I believe Ohio has already done it um and I don't see any arguments against having a a free market to energy access where you can make the decision whether you want to have green energy or whatever DT offers so it could be done but it's hard to do because they are able to influence our legal process and corrupt our legal process because of money so you got to start there and it would be certainly a lot less expensive if there was just reforced DTE to compete and then maybe they would wise up and do more green energy because it would be in their best interest because if they don't they're going to be on the losing end of that competition when you take competition out of the mix what you end up with is a lack of innovation a lack of cost control and certainly you know the ability to just say I don't care about what the customers think because they don't answer to anybody that's that's the problem so I think there are other paths but in order to take those other paths we need to have a different legislative action in Lancing that is uncorrupted by the money that DT uses so Larry I just um I appreciate the idea of uncorrupt taking money out of politics um I'm not could hold my breath on that one I was at the involved in the early Electric Choice Movement when John nler was chair Governor um and uh the company I work with small bus Association in Michigan we we were very active in in being pro-choice and and wanting to have that those caps there it has been capped at 10% for quite some time now um both the Democrats and and Republicans seem to uh not want that kind of comp comption but one downside of Electric Choice which um I thought was an unforeseen consequence was when you allowed any more choice to come into the state we didn't get green Choice coming into the state we got a lot of brown power purchased on the spot Market um that washed into the state and um we had you know we had utilities that that were unable to to do green stuff because of choice was really in their way they were competing against the worst of the brown power um and spot market prices um and so it's it's you know I think competition is great I think the competition between DTE and the 41 Municipal Utilities in the state um if we get that that's the kind of competition I think makes makes a lot more sense because we don't need more Brown unregulated power there there were there were Watts coming into Michigan from outside called they were calling it biofuel basically it was coal sprayed with veget vegetable oil and burned and called called biofuel and you know that's that's one of the negatives of choice so well you know I think if you look at municipalities all across the state they all charge less than p and consumers their rates are definitely lower if you look at the energy choice that 10% a lot of it's our school system and if you look at the rates that they pay it is considerably less than what you pay if you're if a DT customer or consumers so energy Choice may not always give you the green energy choices although what you were talking about was then and not now now we're talking about Renewables being the cheapest alternative and you just brought up the topic that what's going on with DTE is wanting to build yet another natural gas plant yeah they're doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing so I think you know I've heard A very wise person say if you want to bring them to the table you want to change the way they behave you have to start giving them a little bit of pain and the idea of taking 10% to 20% to 30% to 40% is not in my mind has no negative consequences for rate payers and could have significant benefits to giving them a little bit of pain and making them act like a better environmental citizen choice raising the cap to 25% for green choice would do exactly that yeah I agree with you totally I mean I think it's got a better shot to be honest than trying to become a municipal Energy company here my my opinion I don't know for sure um to try to wrap this up um and sort of also move to the next agenda items for the next meeting uh I what I propose is that you talk to Missy about when we can have um or potentially dedicate an entire meeting to this topic because this keeps I'm coming up time and time again um I recognize that the city is having sensitive discussions with DTE um I recognize that it is highly political I recognize you know all the pitfalls associated with this um but we know that this is a topic um with residents we've heard several of them talk about it today and um we shouldn't tip toe around it too much longer it really deserves to be something that we address um head on um address with our wide eyes wide open um so if you would make a note of that um I would like to address one other item that was brought up by Wayne Appleyard to council member Hayer um council member haer um you um heard um Mr Apple Yard indicate that we have a delay um with um not only one but we've seen now many times with ordinances going through the attorney's office and um being delayed um I would state from my experience um professionally um having also done a lot of work in the area of Performance Management and lean Enterprise and other kinds of things that um best-in-class entities look not only at the quality of the work and the cost or the cost implications of the work that they do but also the lead time in getting that work done and in something like um a20 plan and where we're trying to bring emissions down and as Wayne um has reminded us on other occasions it's the area under the the curve the emissions versus time curve that's important we need to do things quickly and we can't accept in my view um the situation that we've had for all the time that I've been involved with the energy environmental commission where things take forever getting through the attorney's office and I know that Missy has had now support of additional um Council in the energy area but in general I think council members have to look at what is the city losing where things are sitting in cue or in process in the attorney 's office and in my view it's significant that we're losing a lot and um that means potentially more resources or it means making um choices um that we potentially haven't made in the past but we are waiting waiting waiting and waiting in a case where you have a climate emergency is really detrimental to our our interests and I'm sure it is in other regards as well so you don't you can comment on it I just want I'm happy to comment on it because I couldn't agree more because you know the the Ken Garber helped me write an ex when and so did you folks write an excellent electrification ordinance and it got lost forever months and months and finally I said what has happened to it well he I was told that it got pted back to OSI it was on Missy's desk so I had to call Missy and say what's going on with my electrification ordinance like are we gonna do it we gonna do it and fight it in the courts are we gonna sit on it and hope the state acts which is not going to you know and the same with pollut or pay right and so what like when are we going to lead on this and I no I absolutely agree that things are getting lost inlegal I know we have a new attorney who I actually I'm I I mean I haven't really had any problems with any of our attorneys outside of the great delays that these things take but um you know we have a new person who I actually know outside of I didn't know they were being hired and he contacted me about some uh more social based resolutions that I'm working on he's going to be working on me with them and so perhaps it's just a matter of uh uh trying to continue to cultivate these relationships with our legal staff and say look these things have to be prioritized and I can't you know he our legal staff and Mr Posta particularly acts as the client for the whole of the body and so I have not made the um you know I'm not taking the steps that I'm sure some other Council people do to get his ear uh because I like to speak as the the from the whole of the body is what we were told but clearly that's not how things get done I've learned that my first two years here and so the next two years I'm going to do what I have to do to try and get things done uh in a more timely manner because it is an emergency and you can't claim it is and say it is and ask people to get on board uh and and then have you know B one part of the city uh dragging it all down so uh thanks for saying that and uh I agree I'll see what I can do to move these things in the future and does anyone know what happened to that electrification for new construction ordinance that we had floating has anybody heard from it it's like it it's like it fell into the ocean and I I'll be honest with the council member aner I also I mean we have a solar RFP we have many things that have been you know yeah just like you said lost in the ocean are you assigned are you assigned a staff attorney for these projects internally we are assigned one yes uh but it's just it takes a long time uh you know they look at things and then it just takes a long time it's a it's a very long process I will to to John's point we do do have uh thankfully now a special legal counsel uh that has a specific uh eye towards energy uh which was it's a huge Improvement in many ways um but obviously there are still processes we have to go through and that has been depending and you know I want to respect the you know the attorneys and their process but it is it can be frustrating for sure yeah I asked at the last meeting there was a talk about um uh um releasing various priv memos and uh some of you may have heard that conversation and I'm all for it because I think what you know unless it jeopardizes the city let let's let people see what they're working on and um along with that was a question that I had can I go search through other previous memos to find out what the legal positions were could I have done my own legal research say on the electrification or any other uh uh accommodations or restrictions we tried to put on building and you know as an example on the Building Trades over the years and it didn't really sound like they keep Master list of these memos in fact they basically said they didn't and so um one of the things I'm going to work on my the next two years is looking at um creating a unified way to view our City's assets and that assets would include the legal advice that we receive as a council and and organizing that better um and organizing some of the things around our GIS assets and organizing some other things around internal assets and uh I Derek was really on board with it he's setting up a meeting it would really help him a lot especially building and planning and and constituent services and so anything energy would like to see as part of that uh uh please let me know because that's just I just try to pick a project that I can actually work on for the next two years outside of the regular policy things because I I'm gonna have great is clear from these assignments that some of us are going to have greatly reduced policy Authority so just one last comment on this um every every professional that I've worked with in my whole life including legal at my former employer Bosch had to give due dates if you're a professional you give a due date or at least you give a date by when you would give a date so you know I can't tell you tell you now but in a week I will give you a due date and then and then you deliver according to that due date and if you have to put in more time you you still meet that due date you just don't simply say I'll deliver it whenever I think I can deliver it it's just it doesn't I I've never heard of a situation where you can't where you get away without giving a due date and you also have transparency um in terms of your lead time on things and when you know what what is what is my inflow work what's my outflow work and I just don't see that level of accountability and transparency in the attorney's office and it's it's going to kill you know all the things we need to do in a20 because we can't just afford to wait for everything and we we will have a lot of things that we have have to do whether it's contracts um reviewed or whether it's um new ordinances or whatever we we need to have um there has to be a change in Paradigm in the way things are done in terms of getting legal input so so John i' just like to throw two sentences is that this is the legal staff we would need or we would be using if we decided to go become a municipal utility so that's part of the question about are we really ready for anything like that given given the legal team we have now and that it uh so just threw that out there commissioner mcoy yeah I just wanted to Echo your first comment too um because I actually thought we were going to do have more that conversation around DTE and like how things have been strategized and planned a little bit more at this meeting based on the conversation from last meeting so I just wanted to Echo like Josh um you know seeing when we can have that conversation um because it seems like we've been putting it off for a while um and I also got a message that there was a public comment someone who wanted to give public comment in the waiting room which maybe they got L and I don't know if we finished with that portion but if that's an option I think there's someone else if there is someone we should recognize the person is someone else uh if you want to raise your hand we can call on you star Nine Star nine oh there we are okay ah can you hear me yes oh great thank you very much um I want to thank you uh again for letting me make a public comment here I'm a student at U ofm my name is Zachariah I'm in my third year an undergrad student and I just got finished taking a chemistry exam actually which is why I couldn't be here earlier I just finished it up um but I I heard that uh municipalization was something that was um gonna be discussed here tonight and I just want to uh express my support for this idea I have a really strong interest in um for a couple reasons uh first of all as part of my um my education at U ofm I actually did a study AB broad year in the city of fryberg Germany where they have a municipal utility um they produce a lot of energy and there's actually a few different cities around that have their own utilities that are able to produce so much energy they produce more energy that they can actually um consume so that they end up selling it to neighboring areas neighboring countries and actually neighboring states and cities and they end up making a good amount of money for the residents and it seems like a really great um really great deal for for everybody there who's invested in that system I also had the opportunity to um uh study one time in Quebec as well and they have their own uh provincial utility Hydro Quebec and once again that was um now that they have control over how they produce their energy um the the province can you know choose how they hire people um what kind of energy they produce and they can actually sell it to other places and I think that's a seems like a really great idea a really great deal for the residents there and they end up producing more energy than they need as well here in over there in Quebec and they end up selling it to the United States and make a good amount of money from that so um it seems like a really smart way to have um consistent income for for a government um it's like another and also to have control over H how the energy is produced um and another thing I'll say as the last thing here um I'm as a young person I'm very very very concerned about about the future in terms of climate change I it's one thing that I feel com really powerless about and and I look online to see what kind of like how is my energy being produced and and I'm a consumer from of of DTE Energy they say that they produce or 60% of the energy that they produce is from coal that's just not acceptable today in 2020 that's not acceptable and it seems like it's putting my future um at risk at Great risk and I think that um having a municipal utility is a great way to be able to control how we produce our energy here in an arbor um but uh that's all thank you very much for letting me make public comment here thanks Zach thanks Zach I just like to say one thing that um the the other 40% comes for DTE does comes from methane uh and fra gas and the methane fugitive methane that leaks it is causes more environmental damage than coal so if you we'd be better off going back to DTE and asking them to do more coal and less Frack gas that's the position that they got us in now so you bet I think the options uh are moving forward on municipals uh great idea we'd like to why you come spend some more time with us and maybe we can get you on a committee or something to to talk about this and do this there's a solarization subcommittee John mury actually entered into the energy commission and got on by volunteering for a subcommittee and worked on that and uh and got himself into the commission uh that way and now's his chair so there's a pathway we'd love to have you in so please bring your studies and uh and uh we you can be part of the discussion about this' be great thanks thanks Mark and and I agree and Josh um if we do have this as a subject I would like some consultation with Chuck in advance um Chuck has unique insights and expertise and we hear his voice as a part of the topic so yeah I've been pretty quiet about this whole topic I could go in a lot of directions and speak for a couple days probably on this but let's talk about that in a minute when we talk about the next meeting John let's do that right now so the first thing um that we have as a topic um and these maybe um Josh you can talk to Missy and give some feedback to us as to um which topics we um entertain um on which dates but um certainly this is one um the whole topic of Municipal utility um um Community Choice aggregation all these interrelated topics with um how is our energy generated um and what influence do we have um just on our own but also in coordination with other entities around the state like other municipalities um and with our state um Representatives Etc another one that we talked about um was um This Global CO2 initiative um in carbon sequestration and bio sequestration I think that's um one set of interrelated topics um and um those are the two that I had noted I think I missed a couple any others from JS that you had noted or from others Commissioners yeah so uh Miss's gonna do a presentation most likely in December as well I'm talking a little bit about the the relationship with OSI and the energy commission how they work together I will say on the the municipalization and ccas um the office has obviously been looking at this for a very long time um I you know and Missy I think in large part doesn't feel prepared for us to really be engaged in those conversations but I think uh in talking to you Chuck I think there's even some uh 101 kind of things that we can all learn from as far as the grid how it works uh and then maybe get a little bit more into some of these things uh that I think would be super helpful um even if it is next meeting so I know we've done a lot of research on ccas and and you know it's in our plan and have looked at uh a whole bunch of different um ways to implement ccas uh throughout different states and everything so um yeah we're definitely looking at these things for sure any other topics from other Commissioners council member hater that you included if there's something from your side okay um I think that's it um so I thank everybody um Commissioners um council member mner thanks again for your service on the commission thanks to members of the public um that listened in and that commented um it is 8:10 pm and um I call this meeting to a close thanks everybody and e for
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
while we can't predict the future i hope we can look at the current situation and make a choice to change knowing that our kids are suffering we need to do all we can to move forward while we still might make some mistakes we can always correct our course and get back on track that is all we are asking while it's helpful to hear both sides of the argument it's not the same the other side has what they want all we are asking for is the option if the situation was reversed and we only offered full-time in-person instruction and hybrid but no online learning you would have the same frustration on your hands parents desperately wanting what's best for their children and the school denying them the option offering full-time instruction doesn't change the online and hybrid option for the other party it simply provides the best option for all of our currently struggling kids we can't predict the future but we can already see the damage this has done and continues to do on a daily basis this doesn't have to be a war we just need to be willing to work together and brainstorm possible solutions we will be much more successful as a team than competitors please open your minds and hearts to parents and children desperately pleading for you to listen and give them what they need thank you next with the service strollers hello my name is sarah i have a son at blue ridge elementary sarah could we get you to hold the mic a little closer this weekend yep hello my name is sarah i have a son at blue ridge elementary school i have sacrificed multiple employment opportunities so that i can help my child with his online learning my family has suffered financial awesome disappointment and the lack of normalcy through these pandemic precautions however i am not here to belittle these precautions but to express my gratitude for them i want to remind everyone here today that you don't know all of our community's stories and neither do i honestly like me you most likely know your own story and the story's most similar to yours sorry how many of our blue ridge students live with at-risk or elderly household members how many of our blue ridge staff and faculty members are fighting secret or even public health battles should these students staff and faculty be cut off from our education system how would we account for the loss of their participation do not assume that because your battle is hard that it is the only battle being fought my son has a classmate that i know through his doing meetings lives with his 80 year old grandmother how do we protect her we cannot continue to fight when we aren't even in the same battle your battle may be social and emotional health for your children this and similar battles are valid and honorable battles do not think for a moment that every single person employed by the blue ridge school district has been agonized over these battles they have they want what's best for your child you are your child's best advocate and that's why you're here tonight but the blue ridge team in front of us must be the best advocate for all of our community members they must learn everybody's story and then make the impossible decisions of how to help best when winning one battle means losing the other with 57 covid cases reported in our county within the last 24 hours per the arizona department of health services this morning victories for your battles may look different than what is typical or desired i believe that our greatest gift is our agency to choose our actions and today even though my son mourns the losses of his typical educational experiences i choose to teach him empathy i choose to teach him that we are not the only ones with stories and battles i choose to be grateful that our school district continues to find solutions that are not perfect but strive to help everyone just a little bit with their battle i choose to be grateful because with an attitude of gratitude even my loss of income and lack of normalcy can feel lighter knowing that someone else's battle has been made a little easier because of it and their story a little brighter thank you thank you [Applause] jessica peters would be nice my name is jessica peters um i don't currently have children enrolled in blue ridge because i didn't like the way the district was going but i have two sixth graders and a um i have a four-year-old that has chronic lung disease in 2016 she was born in 28 weeks even though 2020 sucks lockdowns are nothing new to my family every winter we walk down my kids don't get to have friends over because when they bring home even my kids as soon as they walk through the door they're washing their hands they're changing their clothes because if they have a cold guess what the baby's in the hospital yes everyone is affected differently but we have a choice as parents what we do with our family if we have risks in our family we stay home like we have done for the past four years um opening the school parents still have that right it is my belief that it is the parents choice what type of education they receive and i feel like blue ridge took that away from us yes people have risks covered numbers have gone up testing has gone up guess what deaths have gone down and i don't mean to be not empathetic to those with issues because like i said i'm living with a four-year-old that has those issues we take precautions as a family we make the choice for what is best for our family and i feel like the school has taken those choices away from us [Applause] dwayne carlson hello i'm dwayne carlson um i'm i'm somewhat connected almost everywhere on the board one of my favorite teachers is up here my phone's ringing um i i know normally come to these meetings and and i agree with what sadet said and i don't want to reintegrate any of that but for me living here born in mcnary 1963 went to this school and had all my kids over here is it we gotta look at the big picture if we save one kid from drugs one kid from turning the wrong way because they're at home by themselves got two parents they're working that's they're raising themselves we have to look at that i think that's a big big issue and that you have a chronic step or something then maybe your kid should stay home or maybe if somebody has an 80 year old person that has to live with a kid the kid probably should stay home but if they if there's no other way i would pay for that person to live in a motel for a while but we got to come together and make this stuff happen right because all this i'm not as scared of the code as i am our freedom to get taken away because i believe in god [Applause] none of us all of us can make more money live in a big city we live here in a small town small community so that we can work together and most of us have traditional conservative youth and that's kind of where i'm coming from same way i don't i believe for anybody that that needs help and if anybody needs a personal help and i can do it if any of these board members they all know my number or i can get it thank you [Applause] next on the list would be uh is it pat lopez [Music] mr chairman versus the board dr wright good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is pat lopez and i come to you this evening in three capacities as the parent of a blue ridge high school student as a community member and as a science instructor at the local community college cocon19 is an infectious disease that is transmitted from person to person through the air via small droplets or aerosols as an infected person breathes coughs sneezes sings or speaks pre-symptomatic of asymptomatic individuals can infect others because of how this infectious disease spreads people coming together for any reason increases the likelihood of transmission of the disease therefore any person who chooses to come in contact with other persons assumes a degree of risk of contracting the disease what we have learned since the disease first emerged nearly a year ago is that six things contribute to the degree of risk one the number of people a person comes in contact with two the proximity meaning how close a person comes to other people three how long a person spends in contact with other people four how many individuals in the gathering are wearing masks or a cloth face covering five how good the ventilation is six the current local levels of infection in a small setting mitigating these risk factors is a tall order school is conducted indoors where ventilation is generally poor and airborne pathogen transmission is likely aided by the hvac system students spend over seven hours at school each day which qualifies as prolonged exposure by any measure even operating on a hybrid schedule any given student comes into contact with an estimated 50 plus individuals each day they are at school current local levels of infection particularly in navajo county are sharply on the rise as today's article in the independent reports this leaves us with physical distancing and mass wearing the current hybrid instruction plan at junior high school and high school allow for physical distancing between students a school-wide mass wearing policy is in effect although the evidence shows that it is unevenly enforced even among frontline office staff out of the six factors therefore only the physical distancing one is reasonably and consistently being mitigated by the hybrid schedule to suggest a return to daily in-person instruction at this juncture runs against all state and local recommendations and frankly against all common sense the risk is not limited to students teachers and their families again because of how the disease is transmitted when people come together the risk increases for the entire community people who are in favor of a return to full daily and personal instruction will frame their argument in terms of the risk being a matter of personal choice this is a false argument risk of personal choice only applies when we're talking about risky behavior like skydiving or wearing a seat belt wherein a person's choice not to wear a seat belt has no impact on the health of the community however if a group of people choose to come together for whatever reason at this particular point in time it increases risk for the entire community including those who did not make the choice to be around others when they didn't absolutely have to be ladies and gentlemen you were elected by this community to oversee and safeguard the interests of the community which includes the education of our children many of you have generously served for a long time and have endured criticism for your service to what must at times seem like a thankless job your dedication is noteworthy and much appreciated and although as a school board you have weathered crises in the past i would guess that like everyone else you have not had to face one where the consequences of a bad decision have the potential to result in the death or permanent disability of community members such as the decision you are facing this evening i entreat you to make the life-saving decision of supporting the instructional plans set forth by your superintendent and his staff excuse me thank you thank you very much [Music] our next person speaking to us would be um austin evans austin um as you said my name is austin evans i'm a junior here at blue ridge and i've been a straight a ap honors student um my whole life and um i've noticed that through this online hybrid schedule and online in general i find it extremely difficult to stay on top of my grades as i am a more visual learner as when i'm in school i'm able to raise my hand and ask questions i'm able to see what the teacher is doing and as ms burgess said a lot of the time we're just being assigned things and it's more teaching yourself looking up how to do certain things and it's not really being taught um as for the faculty i understand that there is concerns there but if you look at the bigger picture there have been fast food workers store workers and doctors who have all been working through this whole entire pandemic even when it started when there was all that fear going around and my dad has worked uh as a doctor in direct contact with those um with the coveted virus and he has not contracted it as their precautions that can be taken in order to prevent it um um i'm working very hard to get the lumberjack scholarship um and it's been really difficult for me now to maintain those grades as it is so easily it is so easy to get sidetracked when you're at home and um yeah and i want to thank all of you guys i appreciate the difficultness of this decision um but i would also like to say that i feel like there should be an option to come back to school full-time and if you are not comfortable with that then you should have the option in order to stay home and uh thank you [Applause] brown hey guys thank you just want to start like so many others thank you you guys do a job that is tough and i realize that i have two children here at blue ridge my wife and i moved up here seven years ago dream come true we came from the bale school district which is one of the top rated school districts in arizona uh they're blessed with children who are very bright i don't know how they came from my wife and i but they were very bright um and uh and they've done very well and i would say i'd recommend blue ridge school district over mail any day of the week um the your teachers are amazing they find ways of making science and math real to these kids and i think that although it wasn't planned by anybody covet has made it to where it's harder to do that so my kids who have always been grade a students in ap classes are struggling i was home with my son the other day uh he was on the zoom class with his biology ap biology teacher and i was just blown away by what the teacher started saying at the beginning of zoom meeting i'm actually intriguing the background in medicine so i was listening to it and it was awesome and it lasted for about seven minutes and they said okay now it's time to do your work online and i talked my son after he said man that's too bad he seemed like he's really cool he said oh i love him i love when he talks but he can only do that for about seven minutes then we have to go to the online stuff so i i would just like so many others here like to say 100 i understand the cost of this um i still work for medical field my extended family has been touched by we had one person who passed away from public i've got two others who have been seriously they'll never be the same they were innovated for for two months they are still on auction daily i understand there's risks i don't want to take that away from anybody however we do have a way of getting around that by offering in person school to those who are healthy if there's people who live with the grandparents or older have comorbidities absolutely let them stay online but i feel like we need to allow our children back in school [Applause] next person on the list would be whitney [Music] whiting i hope i can make sense i have a lot of things going through my brain i am mom for from kindergarten up to blue junior i'm also a former educator and i firmly believe that the primary purpose of public education is to create good citizens we teach kids how to become citizens by teaching them how to learn when they learn how to read when they learn how to math then they become good citizens but also part of being a good citizen is understanding your community and meeting each other where they are um i know that as a district we have had so many variations and so many options as this quarter has progressed and i thought i will have so many more but i wanted to express my support of the district and the way that they have tried to proceed with caution um i had the unfortunate experience a year ago before copied of watching my mom pass away in a way where she couldn't breathe and that's how she died and i was with her remember she died and i wouldn't wish that upon anyone to watch her only struggle for air was horrific and scar me and so if we can make efforts to prevent that from even one person i think as a community we can do that i know it's a sacrifice my kids have struggled our grades have been a rollercoaster of ups and downs and ins and outs but i feel like as a family we've found a ways to rally and to support one another i think that as a district we can work on supporting the mental health of our students i support whatever choices need to be made to take care of our community thank you next in individual would be uh ken mathgate kim [Music] and i have grandchildren i've gone to this school since whenever when they have consolidated fine top and lakeside consolidated when i was in seventh grade when it came and came here and i had all my children in school i am not pleased with it now i was very happy with it when i was going to school because of certain things and i know that you are striving very hard to deal with a situation that is hard but as a grandparent i've seen my grandchildren struggle when they were online and now that when they've been back they're doing so much better one granddaughter was out of school and even online she was funky and came back into class and now she's very on top of things um i just heard on the radio about the many suicides that are happening happening with the children because they're staying home and not being with other not socializing this concerns me and children are not going having problems myself long time ago i know that children and even adults do not tell you when they're not dead when they're having problems they not do not face effort and this is a very big concern for me i think you're taking the choice away from the parents if you are not giving them the opportunity to make the choice if they want to let their children go to school or not and that will thank you next question on our list is uh angie all right can you hear me okay i'm trying is that can you hear me okay good evening my name is angie granillo and i'm coming to talk to you guys as a teacher i'm in seventh grade and eighth grade math teacher here and so um i thought it might be helpful to give you a perspective what i'm seeing in the classroom as a teacher and as a school we're actually responsible for teaching four facets of a student there's four facets of education and if you think about what those four are you might think the most important one is academic but actually all four of those are equally important um one is social one is their civic duty that we're teaching in-house you know to be citizens um and one is creating a workforce right they can go into the workforce and be adequate i feel like our current hybrid schedule is really only aiming at one of those four quarters the academic one and i have to say it's failing currently um when you run a report of our students of my students i'll just speak for myself and for a couple other of the math department teachers when you run a report of what our students are doing five days a week the two days a week that they are in school they are actually completing their work the three days a week that they are at home and supposed to be completing their work 50 of our students are doing nothing so we're failing we're failing them because they cannot show up the other travesty is that we are only allowing our kids with special needs and our kids that are failing to show up what is that showing our kids that have worked hard and get these bees and seeds it's telling them you're on your own i have kids every day ask me how can i come to school every single day honestly on the inside i want to tell them start failing your classes because as soon as you start failing your taxes you think that's cool but obviously i don't want to tell them that right i mean i do but i don't tell them that um the other thing i want to tell you that we are teaching our children is how to cheat because when they're at home they're using all kinds of apps to change the system so we are using cheaters lazy heaters i just i just want us to think about what we want yours to represent and what we're producing and i think we can do better i think we can do better i know we can do better and so i am expecting that um of you thank you uh james thousand hi i'm james skelson i have two children um age 13 who is in seventh grade who's going on a hybrid schedule and bronson my eighth grader who i pulled out of school um he struggled immensely with online could not learn could not figure out what he needs one-on-one attention so i had to pull him out of school my wife and i both worked full time and so we're we're hiring we're trying to find people to be at the house to help bronson with his school work i understand that now they are going back full time that happened as soon as i pulled him out of school so the hope in the future is after the new year to be able to send him back however he will not go back until it is full time and as a person who had a father and my wife we all worked until 5 30 i will sit every single day so my 13 year old when we are at home he becomes the babysitter the teacher the cook he does it all for my eight-year-old and so it takes away from his studies because he's having to babysit and help my younger child with his score i understand your job of heart and i understand there's a lot of there's a lot of back and forth and everybody has an opinion and i understand that it's very difficult to wait for all those opinions and make the correct one a correct decision i want you to know that there are a lot of people in this community that all the parents work and it is a little nightmare trying to jumble babysitters let alone have them be able to complete their work complete it well and to thrive neither of my boys are doing that i think they need to be in school full-time both of them for not only for my wife and my state but for their sake and i appreciate you taking the time to listen to him thank you very much [Applause] [Music] dr ray um president merrill and other board members hello my name is dylan baca i'm a senior here at blue ridge high school and uh i'm in support of saying online and here's the reason why i've seen kobe touch our lives in ways that we don't want it to we recently lost a family member last week um and we're at this burial and that's one of the saddest things you can see um you don't get the assurance that they're there um closed casket we don't we didn't get any of that that's one of the saddest thing i've i've seen another thing is we're all struggling through this as students my friends quite a few of them are still fully online but we use each other as a support group to help one another work together to emotionally support each other uh and work as students on where we are struggling and where we need support so i'm proud and i'm sorry to hear that people are struggling um but i'm very proud of the fact that i'm still a straight a student so thank you thank you next one on our list is uh jeff norman butcher named krauska thank you [Music] jeff hi my name is jeff krauskopf i'm a registered nurse i've been registered for about 25 years and i take care of patients who've covered it i've seen the problems i've witnessed deaths i've gone through all of that and it's very heartbreaking but i'm also a single dad with a son who is in ninth grade and is struggling to uh to do the online program quite often the problem is the interface between our system and the school system it can look perfect on our end but on your end it looks like he's failing and uh even down to the seventh percentile of the class are the horses so we've had to find workarounds for that there have been times when i've gone home early and to check on him and he's still in bed sleeping at one o'clock in the afternoon so i know that he's finding workarounds to get the assignments done i know that he's missing some of the uh online classes when they're due and his excuses usually come to the fact that he didn't feel well um what i expect from uh the system is i would like him to go back full time knowing what i know about koben seeing what i've seen with kobit i would still prefer that he'd be back in school full time i would want blue ridge to take full mitigation measures to prevent cross contamination i want to assure that the school is assurance that the school is actually doing its best to make sure that kids are following compliance uh with the cdc standards so that when my son comes home he doesn't transfer it to me i honestly feel safer going to a hospital than having my son come to school if uh if they're not going to follow the standard and that's pretty much what i have to say thank you thank you jim next uh individual him is wendy kenner hi guys my biggest fear is speaking and i'm breathing in to be able to speak it's apparent the community needs or not met that is obvious with how many comments we've had tonight my concern is the quality of the community we're going to have if we don't see a change that's my biggest thing is we live in pine stock we love pine top my kids and my husband are wearing the theater trees so we're staying in times up but we want to see good family stay tuned and i know personally some families that have left and i know a lot of families are unhappy with the district and if we don't see a change they're going to lead you i think that's a big thing that we need to take into consideration is that if you're having this much upset parent this many upset families that that need to be taken into consideration so we can continue to have a great community and the majority of these families are begging for a full in-person option and i think that's something that with with considering them leaving or i know as the disease spreads it's going to be a harder decision and my second grader has gone back to school and i have seen her just flourish she comes home she's happy she's talking to me she's not crying every day and life is just so so much better personally if we don't um see the full in-person option continue we will be a family that has baby that's how severe if it has affected our family is that we cannot continue i will pull my kid out the day whenever it shuts down again and i leave her home silver or i will move up and i know that i'm not the only person and i'm telling you all these families are good families because they showed up to talk to you we love the bridge we all want to stay at blue ridge these are your good families you need them to stay so i think you really need to consider that not only now but throughout the week i know you're taking into consideration the cdc and all this stuff already but as we see because nobody knows what's gonna happen this winter what's gonna happen in january what's gonna happen in february and if you shut down the in person all these families are going to be affected and if shoulder and snowflake are still and going to school these families are going to go there so that's my concern is the community we want to see these families safe thank you [Music] calls i'm so glad i'm not up in your chair i'm sorry that you have to make these hard decisions um i admire you for making the decisions um i know there have been sleepless nights over figuring out what to do sorry i just feel bad for you i feel bad for all of us i feel bad for those of you who have lost family members to this and those in the crowd we have also um i just want to know that i support you all um what wendy said does concern me i know that there's a lot of families um who will be leaving like are tolerable for a semester but not tolerable for two and so it concerns me what will happen to blue ridge moving forward if we don't go in person um i do have children in the school and i see like my kids since we had a snow day monday we don't have school wednesday my daughter was so heartbroken that she didn't get to go to school this week and just seeing them i'm at work during the day and so as my husband we're blessed to have some college kids home that can help them but i just can't i don't know what i'm gonna do if we don't go back to school um in the you know in january um because i can't leave my kids home all day and i know a lot of parents struggle with that i also was on the reservation visiting families last week and it was heartbreaking to see signs everyone say no visitors i mean i totally understand both sides i know i don't totally understand but i sure try to i hope that you will continue to make a matter of prayer and figure out what will be the best for our community i know the teachers have done an amazing job going online so those families who are concerned the options now of staying home are better than they've ever been ideal um because of the technology and just the work that the school has done and the teachers um anyway i know that we are very concerned in our office um if we get covered we have to shut down again and we can afford to and um that's just the financial so i don't know what the right answer is even for my family to help them go to school or not because we can't have it but anyway thank you for all of your hard work and consideration [Applause] here's one more [Music] and speak but my daughter who couldn't be here just sent me her um her thoughts and and i've been thinking of some of my own so i thought i'd better come up and share what she told me um i have four kids my oldest is a senior um and what she just texted me um she said okay so online school for educational purposes is not good nobody pays attention in zoom anymore even when we used to we still didn't learn anything it's hard to ask questions and get help from teachers kids don't think they have to do anything also we should go back in january because it's not um it's not good to only be able to see half of the school but it doesn't really do anything to help cope with some people go both days so there's still lots of people and that was those are her thoughts and i agree with this hybrid only works if it's half and half and we already have elementary kids in school which i'm so glad it's so good for the for my second or my third grader and but so we already have kids who have siblings who are around many people so that's so having only half to stop the spread i don't think it's the answer it doesn't work when we have we have to have some people full time um so that's one argument against keeping and hybrid because we're already not complete hybrid and okay and then we have amazing teachers at blue ridge i have one in this group this is romeo's class who we just heard from she's awesome my kids love their teachers and they do not love the online program the general consensus that our house is online is that they learn nothing they figure out what they need to do to get the assignments in but they all tell me that they learn nothing from it they enjoy the time that they're able to be in class where the teachers can make the subject rather mean something be more interesting and exciting and have the lessons stick with them the online program may be a good online program but it's not the answer it's not easy for teachers to have to teach kids at home who are not engaged in zoom and probably doing something else and kids in the classroom at the same time and i wish coven would just go away i don't know i'm coping and i know that there are so many factors that you have to look into and i'm grateful for each of you for doing your job and for considering all of these things and thank you for listening to us tonight [Applause] [Music] only um with the agenda items as they are posted and they just explain a little bit the next islamic agenda is a consent consent agenda it can it's comprised of vouchers we have to approve [Music] just business items that really don't need to be voted on independently with the exception of mr waldo has asked that we remove item 2.6 recommendation to approve sports posting coaching extracurricular stipends because he would like to vote on that individually because he has individuals in that coaching program their membership family after that the items 3.3.1 we will as a board discuss what we've heard ask questions of the administration it won't be a debate with the crowd here but you're welcome to stand listen to what we have to say what we would like to say we will not be voting on that tonight uh we're just here gathering information at this time so uh next item on the agenda is item two point zero through two point eight with the exception and we're removing two point six and the motion accepted [Music] unanimous okay item 2.6 dr right you want to explain that to everyone here and the reason mr waldo was recusing himself 2.6 approval the sports attendance [Music] okay so can we have a motion to vote on item 2.8 that would be with the exception of mr waldo okay item 3.1 a return to face-to-face instruction discussion only this is for the board to determine for a safe return for face face instruction for all grades district-wide and you know i have some questions and i really don't know how to start this first thing i'm going to do is take my mask off because my eyes are up i can't see anything my uh i would just like to say thank you for everybody that's participating this evening that's why we came here that's why we asked you that's why we had the republic at the beginning of the meeting so we could hear what he had to say so we can take that and we value your opinions we want to hear from you uh i have i personally received probably 20 letters written from members of the community they're kind of taking the other side of the fence so you know there are how many people in this school industry citizens citizens and school districts around 2 500 around 4 500 so in reality this school board is representing 4 500 people in the community and that i don't think lightly um so there are other stories to be heard here too i had years ago i i praise houses early and years ago i had a request come in for a house and before i recognized the address and the owners and everything it was a friend of mine well i didn't i accepted the appraisal normally i won't do the appraisal for friend because i like to keep him as a friend but i went ahead and did the appraisal you know and you can probably see with this uh i didn't appraise the photo for well instantly i have a phone call now i got a face to face chewing out by that person and all i could do was justify my decisions as he was leaving he said well i thought you were my friend so regardless what goes on tonight i hope that everybody here we can say after this is all done we're still friends i hope you don't turn your backs on everybody and say i thought we were friends and i thought because you were friends you would listen to me and act on what i wanted appreciate your information so members of the board any questions or comments that you'd like to bring up right now i know i saw people taking notes so just speak up okay thank you i've listened to what everybody has said and believe me i understand totally where you're coming from i raised three children and i have 12 grandchildren and my children are dealing with this issue like you are as parents and it is very very difficult but as a school board member unfortunately we have to look at the bigger picture and you're coming from the standpoint as parents and grandparents but we have to look at it and make a decision on what's best in the best interest of the school district in total and that makes it an even bigger decision one of those factors is the fact that if i recall dr wright you told us in a survey to the staff that uh i believe it was one-third of the staff is either in the high-risk category for the pope of 19 or they have a member of their immediate family that is and that concerns me um because if one of those people gets the virus then they can pass it on to students but also they can pass it on to their own family members they can get sick with it and unfortunately there are fatalities so that is something we have to be concerned about also we have to be concerned of the legal aspect and that would have been covered by the state legislature and they were looking at as i understand they were looking at doing something about the legal aspect and unfortunately they had to shut down the legislature before they did anything about it so we have to consider those things and also we've had i believe a number of very close calls of having almost having to shut down for two weeks luckily we haven't had to yet but we've had some close calls and that concerns me the fact that the numbers are going back up again concerns me um so we're coming up on thanksgiving vacation the experts are saying they're anticipating a huge uh increase in the number of cases after thanksgiving that concerns me as well and i realized that the education that our students are getting online is not as good as it is in person there's no doubt about we have tried to institute the hybrid system as soon as we felt it was safe to do that we've also started going to full in person with the elementary school working our way up and so far we've been successful but we're trying to go cautiously so we need to take all this into consideration and i don't know it's a it's a very tough decision but i feel like we've been very proven and trying to move forward and dr wright and the administrators have been very carefully watching all the data and reports and so forth and advising us to go forward and i think we have to rely on their recommendations they're in tune with the data with the county health department state health department and so forth and they've outlined recommendations and basically triggered triggers that we have to follow and if we don't then we leave the school district liable and so anyway those are my concerns and i think i'm interested in hearing what other concerns are from the board ready i have a question just dr wright um you know we are always in competition with other school districts how have they been able to go around the city and the arizona i mean uh i i don't know how they're going around it's just a decision any idea how they're doing what they're doing i i've had a couple of uh superintendents say the parents are not having their kids tested they're not releasing the results it's a private matter um i bet i can't speak for those school boards or superintendents i have a brother-in-law and he retired last year the guy who lives two doors down from him is 30 years old he died a month ago two kids in school old kids daughter he says nobody reported it brought it home and he's dead now he's 30 years old i never heard that that's not reported anywhere or anything other than my brother-in-law telling you the story because he's a neighbor how do they get around doing that it is it's the prerogative of the district to move forward or to and ignore the data or to follow the debt that's given by the county and state level and that's what we've been to we've been doing i've been looking at our county health numbers and they're going in the wrong direction quickly the state has said if you are not in if you're in red in one of the three areas you should be either right now in red and two the third one lags that's hostilization and so we may this may not be a choice because we may all arizona schools may be online but it is it is the choice of that community and that school board uh what they do not know are the long-term effects efficiencies and no one can pretend to understand that what we do know is that it's a lot less risky for children and youth but it does present problems for community members extended family members and we have a number of kids living in multi-generational families the one thing i want to point out is we do not have the capacity i misspoke right from the get-go i put myself in all by saying online hybrid or in person we have lost seven teachers at the high school because of budget cuts we cannot afford and we just did not have the capacity we can't that's not a practical solution what we could entertain is to say you need to make a choice you're online only or your other person but in order to do that we need to understand what our risks are associated in total with going to in person with how many how many kids does that mean is it going to be half was it 80 we would need to figure out what that looked like to determine the risk if we were to go in person say next week do we have a capacity even in the elementary school to do that at social business and keep as we get to make sure we mitigate everything as good as possible we even have the physical ability to do that the physical distancing is not possible at any grade level with all kids in class we've set that all up what we're measuring with the younger kids is they are not independent learners like this mr skeleton i think said many of the parents have to work and those kids can't be left alone and so we're taking a risk and we understand that but the kids at the seventh and twelfth grade levels do have the maturity to not as effectively i won't argue that this is just effective but in many instances they can monitor themselves and they are better independent learners than the younger kids doesn't mean that it's an optimal solution it's a dilemma if you're presented with two undesirable options okay also in one of the letters that gave me the names of four individuals the football coach is no longer alive he's 40 years old a man in gilbert who's a teacher he's no longer alive two i.t individuals in the chandler school district one of them said before he passed away the other one his still suffering the effects of it so you know it just made it real to me that you know regardless of what you do you're still hazardous and it's hard to justify that if even i don't want that to be on my shoulders i can't imagine anybody that would want to take someone else's life away just because of their own personal circumstances situation i think there's a broader view it's not so narrow you know i appreciate those that spoke tonight i really do and there's passion and everyone that spoke tonight is it's very very personal to them he's very very personal and it is the most important thing in their lives right now and i appreciate that i can understand that i have four daughters and all of their kids out of school right now they thought they were gonna go back to school they went to school for about a quarter and they were kicked back out again and uh they saw their kids struggle and they saw corrupt now they see them brought back down right now they hate it they call me and say what can we do so anyway i'm dominating here somebody else needs to speak i'd just like to add a couple more things i thought about number one is the reservation has just started into lockdown again and we're right next door to that every day on the news now i'm hearing of schools that are having to close because of the virus close down temporarily and now they have to shut down and go back to online um so i think that is even worse than doing the a b continuously to go open and then have to shut down completely is even worse but the other thing is that i think we have a real advantage here at blue ridge because of the foresight of our superintendent and our principals they came to us back in april i believe and asked us to spend a half a million dollars buying computers and hot spots and we did that and then they came and said we need to have a substantial rigorous academic curriculum that meets all the state standards for online in case we are not able to open in august as we're supposed to and they were correct and we were not able to open but i'm very confident that we have probably the best situation of any school in the state as far as having computers for every student having a rigorous curriculum for them online and so for that reason i feel more comfortable with the position that we have and going forward and we are moving in the direction of opening up but we're doing it cautiously so we don't have to close part way through it so when will the elementary compete completely that's where at beginning of next week they'll be all in person oh okay through six k through 6 [Music] am i on okay i just wanted to let those of you that are still here know that you have a lot of empathy up here um all of us either have children in the district or have children in the district three of us are educators or administrators coaches so it's not like we're making decisions half-heartedly i'd like to share with you two though that i have grandchildren that are still not in school have not been back to school since march uh in a state that is not open uh for any of their schools and i know which i know the frustrations i know what's going on with these kids i have one grandson that is just starting to blossom and they're really concerned about all the time that he spends alone even in a house with four people in it i have one that's a senior and yes he thinks he'll probably miss his entire senior year he's a good athlete and like a lot of your children he's worried about scholarships he's worried about his ap classes i have a son in the military who has been quarantined probably three times because of exposure any time they have someone in their [Music] unit or anyone they've come into contact with uh test positive they all have according so that it goes on and on and on and then another son that's a pulmonologist and critical care doctor that i see the other side of it constantly um i have fears for him and his family um once they test positive they're out for a month until they test negative and you can test positive without showing any symptoms i lost a um during this time um not due to covet but i think because of cobit because of the restrictions in in um homes for the elderly they saw no one so i think of all of us up here we all have people that we know that either passed away were extremely sick affected our family members we have family dealing with this every day so just because we don't have kids in school some of us right now we still deal with it and i'm dealing with the parents and my grandchildren that are struggling because their kids are not in school and they want them to be there at least what we have they don't have that yet so we're a step above that and i also have two friends in the showa district who are teachers they are frustrated they are so frustrated because of the lack of protocol for dealing with um staff members that show symptoms one of these people have to helper assistant to stay home i'll be back if i don't if i don't have a temperature on my back no you won't you're gonna go get tested before you come back and stand beside me and and in the same room as these kids i also have a good friend that's a teacher in the buckeye history third grade teacher they were out as long as we were and recently went back to full end time school and she said 90 to 50 of her kids were it was not working out for them online her good students could make it anywhere and now she said it's just a matter of time probably before they'll be sent home but she's enjoying it while she has it she also has underlying health risks so i know that teachers face that even if they don't tell anybody we have people that have things they did have dealt with all their lives and now it puts them in the high risk category so there's so many things to try to understand and i don't know what well i do know what i would feel like if this were happening with my son being a senior or my son is struggling as a as a really good student struggling to keep up with his classes or as a student that needed more help and needed face to face i have kimises in college that we're doing online and one of them they're both very very good students one of them said i was not meant to take math online she was struggling as as a sophomore in college um you know so i've seen just about every age group struggle with this i've seen um so many people struggling i've known people that got sick and died at the very beginning of this i've known people that have struggled with family members having this i'm not being able to be with them i just had a good friend that lost her brother he was doing great in the hospital a short time ready to come home and the next day he was gone so it's it it's a horrible thing that doesn't point a finger at any age group it just points out everybody um i have a husband that has worked through this whole thing face to face with patients he has underlying questionable things he should probably not be near people that might walk in having it people walking without mass i've just seen all sides of it i think all of us sitting here are very lucky that we that we have not come in real close contact with us but it can happen anytime and like chuck said we're making decisions for everybody and we have to keep our staff safe we have to keep our children safe and our administrators and our technology people have been here from the very beginning and our maintenance staff from the very beginning they can't do anything from home so they're dealing with it every day i just want you to know that we all empathize with you um i can't imagine what i would have done as a senior being told well sorry no sports no music no anything so i think we all can see where you're coming from and we hope to make decisions that will be the best that we can for everybody so we're trying and we probably won't make any more decisions tonight but we're certainly glad that you came and we listened to you because we need to hear that so [Music] how did that make you feel as an educator what does that do to you because you're working in love when you're trying to get these kids educated because someone gets upset they pull the kids out of school what does that say to you as a teacher i'm just curious i think there are several things that it says to us but one of the things that i think all of us need to recognize as we're dealing with this is that these decisions are not easy ones it would be nice if we just had hard facts that are going to stay the same tomorrow that we have today they're changing every day it could be any one of us tomorrow everything gets culpit and ends up possibly not even alive i think when i think about kids i work with my and i feel like i could not stand to think that a decision that i made was the cause of any of those children losing their lives those adults today losing their lives i think we have to be careful when we make a decision that is changing constantly and i recognize that all of us would probably be better off if we had kids in school and have been there all the time but i'm not willing to risk those students maybe there are those of you that would feel like it's it's important to think of the majority but i think each one matters i think we need to remember that we are looking at changing times and it doesn't look like they're going to stop singing i think one thing that we can do is try to make sure that the online teaching is as good as it can be um things have pointed out tonight that i'm sure we need to follow up on um i wasn't satisfied with everything that i heard at all and um those are things that we can fix or we can urge people to fix them and online is difficult yes i i also have taken classes online and i'm not an online learner i don't think anybody's all of us up here probably would say the same thing because we enjoy being together we talk before the meeting like we don't like to be so far spread out because we don't discuss things very well that way and even in the other room in the other building we're still spread out but we also have people here that are very close to this and it you know rips your heart out having to make decisions never going to make everybody happy and you try to help as many as you can and do what's best for the kids but we're usually faced with doing what's best for the kids but we have to keep our staff safe too yes i think we owe great debt of gratitude for the maintenance staff that has been here constantly since since march dealing with this every day and our technology people they have worked and worked and worked and nobody says like i have to work from home they just aren't they're here all the time um i think that we can do our best to make sure that the teachers are providing as good of an education as as possible um i don't like to hear that there's too much on your own stuff i don't think kids learn them a little even like even the kids that you think can learn under any circumstances they don't they don't learn like that they missed the challenge they missed the discussions they missed challenging the teacher and having that one-on-one where they you know where they learn more than just sitting there trying to soak all this in and it is not good to be behind the screen all day long i mean before all this started we were urging kids get away from your screens don't do screens before bedtime um put your phones away and now they depend on that to get through school so you know that that's as educators and as board members that's another thing to keep constantly having to deal with and the mental health is a big concern we have talked about that just about every time we get together as a mental health kids and teachers i mean the coaches have a physical outlet the other teachers know him so much and a lot of kids don't have a physical outlet during the day jennifer i don't heard from you yet because i don't know what to say um but i'll i have a couple of questions and things are moving around first it seemed as if that even if it's an online or a hybrid environment we need to do better and we don't know how to do better at this time that we probably need to go ahead and address the better interesting of this if we go ahead and address those issues because if we go to the point where everyone is open and full-time and then immediately we have to go back to an online environment we need to ensure that our students are successful in that environment and maybe we need to look at universities that have significantly more time energy and money but they have they've been involved with this type of hybrid based learning for a long time i used to be a teacher of an online and hybrid environment in the university setting and i think that there's some things that we can pattern if we can afford it another thing that i think that we need to be very clear of is that our situation would be different if we had a larger capacity for example if we could go back into the elementary school and be able to funnel through all of those classrooms however our community decided to not pass an override that has really caused a significant problem for our budget so if we had 800 000 or 2 million dollars in the next three years maybe we could have branched out two other opportunities so our numbers would stay lower because it isn't concerning that we don't have we have older buildings we're not from the phoenix area that have exits that go exterior and they don't have and they're more of a pod base so we have a lot of mixing of air which is also a concern so those are some things that i have a question but one question um i do like a lot of the i wrote um pretty significant notes with horrible handwriting and these glasses are horrible too so um i think it's really important britney hanlon mentioned that we need to start brainstorming maybe it's time the community starts to where we have holes the community can get together and develop opportunities for kids to be successful i am a small business owner and as a small business owner maybe i can open up facilities that i have where people can have on off days opportunities to bring kids together to work on larger projects and smaller groups maybe we can start working on something like that so i don't think that it's a yes no situation i think it's a let's have an open mind and figure out how we can work in a difficult situation i think all of us really want to um teach children to not cheat and to work hard but if you're 12 you do what's easier because sometimes watching and being mesmerized by a tv program is a lot easier than going to school but another concern that i have and i don't have an answer to this question so feel free as community members to approach me afterwards is we have a very which i think is the reason why we moved to this area is i love our diverse community and i love that we have two different governing bodies that come to our community so we have a um a regular town that and then we also have a um reservation white mountain apache tribe that as our neighbors and those kids are part of our school district i do not believe in segregation of individuals based on their location i did not believe in segregation of individuals based on their um living in white river versus living in blue ridge those are our students no matter what i will never make a decision that will actually exclude individuals because they live in a different region than my children do that is something that i will always stand by no matter what now these individuals and we have people that live in our communities that do not have access to running water and these are people that live even in pine top and lakeside so most of the people that are here tonight have an opportunity to live in a home that has running water and can practice safe hygiene but we have a large percentage of our population in our school whether our residents of pines on the lakeside or also residents of the white mountain apache tribe area that do not have running water how do we handle that situation maybe it's something that we can go out for our grant and get some more of those washing issues that they've been doing throughout the reservation so those are the things that are very difficult questions that we need to figure out in order to make appropriate decisions do we have a lot of work to do as a board and as a school and as a community absolutely do we want people to leave our community because they're mad no but we also need a lot of compassion and understanding and we need their help to be better because i feel fortunate i feel fortunate that my kids can come to a school that's very diverse i also feel fortunate that my kids have parents that have a college education that understand the importance of hand washing and appropriate hygiene and that they live in a house that has random water that is very fortunate for us but there's a lot of people that don't have that my children are also fortunate that they have two parents in the home that one of their parents has flexibility with their work schedule that's huge so i love that one of our community members said that they would be willing to help fund um opportunities for kids maybe we need to think of that because imagine if you were a single parent that needs your kids to go to school every single day but also doesn't have rain and water what do we do i have no idea i would like to be able to come up with a solution but i don't have that at that time so that's the reason why i'm not really sure because i don't know what the right answer is but i know the right answer is patience i know the right answer is that we will not segregate people based on where they live and i also know that the right answer is we have great people to live in this community that are doing the best they can with what they have so i don't know that's my answer thank you for that because i was going too much but you don't know no i said i was going to say something like you were next that there are people that are struggling even to deal with this because of no running water some of them no heat except wood burning stoves you know so is that it's hard i mean that's hard that's or they can't afford a mask or we live in another community that's our neighboring community that doesn't have the same demographics that we have most of the communities in the white mountains do not have the same demographics that we have and as a result we have to do something a little bit different but it doesn't mean that the answer is no that we it means let's brainstorm and figure out how to make it a yes so that's the thing is we can figure it out i know we're smart we have lots of smart people that are in this room that have a lot of experience now it's time to figure out how we can make it work because we have a lot of questions that we haven't vetted yet thank you jeremy you always made me something i appreciate it i had written down a note about emotional health and you know it's my understanding we've already lost one teenage individual this year due to [Music] depression [Music] we've had three children died by suicide and the last three years has been one and as one of the gentlemen referenced suicide is a concern that we have and we've opened our schools for small group counseling the teachers are aware of kids not all of them but many of them that are struggling have invited those kids in thank you montoya since march has been working with small groups of kids the teachers do know their students and uh our family just suffered death by suicide in my young athletes i know what that feels like and not all of them show signs and in many cases despite all of our efforts some kids are going to make that decision but we're not throwing our hands up we're organizing training for all of our staff members to try to recognize signs provide support and we recognize that is an issue we also understand that the family is under immense pressure we're probably going to see in addition to turnover and all those things a high number of divorce we're already seeing a high number of domestic violence there are a lot of social wills that are being aggravated by this condition and we accept all that and understand it it just further adds to this development what i think we might be able to do is to see we need to get the numbers and we've been sending down surveys and trying to get actual data is to say how many of you want face-to-face how many of you want online only there's no way my administrators have taken me through the math and the staffing there's no way to say we're going to provide all three in fact she's still here but pat lopez cautioned me to offering the high red inside she picked one of the other because you're not going to go to and she was right and so we we're still going to have to make tough choices and i don't have any illusions please and we can still listen and disagree uh what i appreciate is that we've done so respectfully that's not the case with every district it hasn't been respectable it's been default to name calling and other problems and by the way all districts have the challenges just like every family they're no perfect family no perfect district we do have though a vast majority of our staff members including teachers and administrators that are fully engaged and they're working tirelessly to meet the very needs of our families and students we're not getting it done and that falls on me that's my home i i can and must do better and so we will not throw overhand the same as jennifer is reference we're not going to just say no we can't do it we're going to say let us see what we can do i can tell you we cannot go to person person until at least and it looks like we're headed the right direction we're prepared to go face-to-face junior high-end high school if things are worse than they were in march we won't do that um we won't unless the board of course directs i won't direct that if the numbers get worse and people are dying all around us the hospital capacity i won't recommend we go i understand i do not have that ultimate authority i will do as i'm directed but i would strongly and strenuously object to doing that and putting people at risk what we will continue to do as we have been and before this thing started we had a vision committee many of these folks participated in that it was our intention to continue to improve to continue to listen and get better i don't want to create the impressions at any level but i have all the answers i'm going to have some of the answers many of the times and i admit that and it's that it's it's the things that i don't know by the way headers about they keep getting back i don't know i do know i think the numbers closer to of our 275 people have a serious underlying condition i have about 18 to 20 percent of my teachers that are in that category at the high school it's a little higher percentage at the elementary slower some despite all that are coaching and teaching and they're right in the middle of it because they'd rather die than give it up when she got a buyer for it but i don't want to create the impression that teachers are hiding behind anything and i'm not trying to create the impression that i would say 85 to 90 of our teachers want to go back in person immediately i would say that's true if you did the entire support staff it might be more like 75 80 despite all of the other um rhetoric and despite all the other things that have said one of them once which november 4th this whole thing's going away it's not it's still here this is not going away but it has been said we need to learn a little bit which is true we must learn how to operate and live with it because by the way it's going to be here next fall as well we have there's a great hope of vaccination and hopefully we'll make progress in the country but it doesn't need to completely divide us i was born and raised in a small town and i know how small small problems end up being really big problems if it starts dividing communities and eventually it seeps into the schools and i do not want to be part of that divisive device of course and i will do my best not to be but when it comes to uh standing up for people even if it's only a handful that it would put their life at risk i'm not going to do that and i'm still not willing to do that but i do appreciate that there are real concerns and they're working families and there are others that have kids that are learning i will tell you your kids that are going to university half of their schools will be online half of the classes will be online just about wherever you go i have got kids in both universities at byu at asu university phoenix which of course is love online all of my nephews and nieces before this hit and half of their programs online it's cheaper universities to go in that direction we need to learn how to do that our kids are not college students they're not emotionally prepared and they're not mature enough to benefit as a college student so i'm not suggesting that i'm just saying there is some good in some of the experiences there are some good experiences coming out of this the other thing is make no mistake we want to return to face to face as soon as it to do so there is no motivation to stay online there's none none 100 if you ask our teachers they 100 want to be face to face there are some that want to be face to face but also are afraid of dying and that's a reasonable fear given their conditions and so i'm not talking about clothes i'm talking about people that are battling cancer diabetes and sometimes both and so these are serious underlying conditions it's not just like one or two they're very serious and so i appreciate the position of our better boards and i appreciate our community and i again i'm thankful for the um civility decorum the being frank but also being kind uh i i'm friends with the vast majority of the people that spoke and nothing they said will harm and damage our friendship for the love i have for them they're good people we see things differently sometimes with different people we'll we will redouble our efforts to try to incorporate some of the feedback that we've heard tonight including working redouble our efforts to improve the online we'll look for an opportunity in january to see can we go provide an option or there is a do we have enough teachers to say break it in in half it is not realistic to tell the teachers you gotta do face to face and have to do online it's just not realistic and so i've made many of those mistakes in setting this up because we haven't experienced it before but i love mentos and i'll get better anyone else have anything you'd like to say a question or maybe a direction that we could ask our administration to look into perhaps i can forbid any question any uh any ideas that we could improve on can we just go over and be very clear about like in the future not tonight the capacity what is recommended like per classroom per teacher because i think that's one of the questions like what if we only had five kids that were coming to robotics class every single day it could be you know and i know that i you have those statistics for us already but i know that some of our classes like the photography teacher just telling me she has 80 kids in her classes so every class she has 80 kids so i i just don't know how to handle something and that's why we'll schedule that differently and not have as many sections and those kids will have to go in the open learning lab or elsewhere but right now we couldn't do it we made a determination upfront we're going to go online and then we'll transition to hybrid and if we had to go to face-to-face we would figure something out but there's no way going face-to-face that we will be able to incorporate the cdc title piece as they are outlined it's not possible our physical facilities and the constraints that we have don't allow that we can't do it and so uh so we'll recognize that and the parents that are sending their kids will understand that and frankly i don't think they're worried about it and the teachers that are willing to teach if we have the core subjects covered and they're willing to do that they'll probably likely accept that as well and if our teachers are okay with it and their parents are okay with it and students are okay with it and we can make it work without endangering people then we're certainly open to that so there's room for creativity absolutely i think we can all agree too that um it all has to do with the responsibilities that we have if i weren't a board member and i had children in school i'd probably be one of the ones sitting out there questioning decisions um i've been out there oh yeah but as board members the responsibility is what keeps us discussing this dr wright has even more responsibility so it's not like it's not like we don't share your concerns at all if there were an easy answer to this we wouldn't even be here tonight that's true any other questions or comments not that we'll move to the next item on the board now this is a recommendation to review and approve the 2021 proposition 304 301 performance plan we received some information on that every year dr wright you want to just briefly go over that for those over here absolutely this is an annual requirement every year the principals work uh jointly to create goals for teachers 75 of the teachers have to agree to the goals in this case we're putting an emphasis on online education and training and the work that they've already invested in countless hours early and also that which will be invested in teacher development professional development in the spring months as well and so uh we in order to be able to pay out any of this first the board [Music] or are you ready to vote we're ready to go can i have a motion to accept item uh three point two on the motion by check i have a second by margaret all in favor and then this okay next item on the agenda london 3.3 recommendations to improve the school level report for fiscal year 19 and 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
no this is for our employees you can't bring it to work with you um it's supposed to be not isn't supposed to be medicinal like you know like an aspirin or something is that how touted anyhow yeah so we have the capacity to ban cbd products from the workplace so if you're bringing a cbd product regardless of the amount of thc in the product um we're we're asking we're telling people you can't bring that to work with you so so that is a a preference that is a preference of the school system and not something for state law currently it's there's no is there a workplace ban in uh private practice or or anything like that i don't know about private industry whether that's illegal to bra i don't think it is i think each employer would probably make their own determination um but that's just my opinion not a legal okay so there's no state law banning use of cbd at work or anything no no okay um but we're making the determination like we do for smoking well it's legal to possess cigarettes it's we don't want you doing that at work okay yeah i mean that i get that but is it is cbd a prescription drug or over the counter i think you can buy it over the counter yeah we have a store down on the south end of town frankly i don't know yeah no look i'll be honest about this like i i this is this is the the uh sort of libertarian in me i don't really care that much if somebody wants to smoke pot i don't want him doing it on school time right right yeah i agree i agree with you i agree with you too but i'm just wondering about a prescription aspect i mean if it is if there's a you know you get a real prescription that's the only that's really the only concern i have here yeah i mean if you can if you can do your i don't know that's that's my caution on it uh if it's over the counter then i'd say no because alcohol's over the counter too no yeah i don't want you drinking on the job i don't want you and you're not allowed to bring alcohol to work either yeah yeah well even though you can purchase it over the counter when you're 21 you can't bring it to work with you and that's really the same thing we're doing here is that you know we're we're telling our employees don't bring cbd to the workplace you know if you leave that in your purse or you know in your backpack or whatever and it turns up missing i've got a problem now i mean same thing with alcohol i don't want you bringing alcohol into the workplace either you know in a high school or elementary school or something um so again i don't think like you said tim i don't think this is a judgment about the individual as much as it is about we work in a school system with 4 500 kids around you all the time that's probably not something we want to bring into that environment and so like you said about what you do outside of school that's your own business but um we don't we don't want you bringing it to our workplace yeah i agree with that 100 thank you for that the only the only thing like i said is if it's a prescription i'm not like right then i would feel then i would feel differently about if it's there's i mean i i don't know all the i don't know all the medical reasons and stuff but i think back to probably like 30 years ago i think i was even in high school and it was like well before there was any talk of legalizing pot but i think it was my next door neighbor had glaucoma and his doctor would tell him look this is what you you just need to go buy this because you don't have money to get or whatever yeah i mean there are real there are real things that people use it for and that's the only caution that i have but no in general yeah people should be bringing stuff to work like that sure and i think timid is addressed in uh um let me let me share this with you i looked at it but i didn't notice that yeah i don't think you should be confused with medicinal marijuana right it's there because there's nothing about that because cbd oil is not supposed to have any sort of real measurable thc in it that would cause any sort of impairment or are you are you having issues with that where it appears that maybe someone may be impaired by the use of a what what is being deemed as cbd but maybe does have thc is that is that what you're concerned about that there's there are possible cbd products with thc in it that may affect well um employees not necessarily i you know i i don't know i mean it's not like the vape pens where you can't really trust the labeling you know there was a real long period i i i'm not um as well versed on the contemporary issue with vape pens but i know there was a long period when i was high school principal and uh well into my superintendency where you couldn't trust the information on the vape pen whether it was legitimate or not what was in it and it was really scary for me that we had 16 year old kids using that stuff not knowing what was and what um so but in this i just highlighted the uh portion of that uh policy that talks about prohibited employees are prohibited from the un unlawful manufacturer on the workplace controlled drugs it doesn't really speak to uh it says unlawful possession so i think when i read that i assumed that that meant you know if i bring medication to work let's say i you know i'm taking medication that's prescribed to me and i'm still permitted to go to work i can bri even though it's controlled substance i can bring that to work you know and take that at work and if there were some sort of cbd oil prescription again i don't know enough about cbd oil to tell you if that's prescribed or not but that would be lawful possession at that point in my mind if it's prescribed to you um if it's not prescribed to you you shouldn't be bringing it to work okay just just to try to understand this though we're talking about lawful and unlawful i thought we were saying a few minutes ago i've never heard of i've never heard of cbd before i yeah and hopefully in you know another 10 years when i'm a little older i'm not learning all these words but hey i'm not going to pretend like i won't learn these things right now i'm very fortunate but if it's over the counter then it is lawful so take the students out of it you have a 25 year old a 40 year old teacher who wants it that to me sounds like that's kind of what's being covered here but it would be lawful if you bite over the kid yeah yeah so let me let me talk you know i got to talk to floyd anyway so let me you know i think we could clarify the language a bit here to um better educate our staff and protect ourselves so you know let's we can tweak there's no rush i gotta be honest like it's not like principals are calling me every day unless this was the one call i just got i've never had a principal call me about like hey jeff we got a cbd issue with a staff member never actually um so you know we we have time this isn't really a pressing thing it was an optional ad from cade and so let's get some more information and come back and kick it around next you guys bring up some good questions yeah because i just think like i said it's my understanding that it can be used for for pain relief uh but not in the same way that if you're uh using marijuana there's somehow the see the whatever's in the hemp somehow helps inflammation or something i don't quite i don't even know if there's any science that supports what they're selling there i'm not sure um i'm not yeah we all sound kind of ignorant right now some cbd person going wow yeah the storekeeper on the south end would more than be more than happy to educate us we could invite him to our next yeah right yeah so um yeah perhaps we need just a little more information yeah education yeah i'd feel better about that given the questions that are raised and my ignorance so i'll i'll ask and then we'll come back next another one that will be unofficially uh tabled or held whatever um okay so we'll close that one all right so um now the next two uh time place notification we did review these last time would did we have questions on them i i don't yeah the next next one i think what it was was that um the last time that we were discussing this and we did get legal clarification from floyd you know all of us in this meeting and many on the board have been um and i would say all the board members have been really uh excited by the fact that our online meeting uh our online meetings have had great public participation um whether they be through parents or you know because it's hard to get to a board meeting sometimes on unfortunately um the executive orders which allow us to hold these virtual meetings now do not allow us to hold them outside of of covid so we can't hold virtual business meetings outside of covid time um so that's you know one because i know we wanted to hey maybe we can do this periodically in the future because we get great participation but unfortunately you know i looked into it further with floyd and read the executive orders and they're not going to allow boards to do that at this time unless there's a legislative change so um in looking at this policy and feel free to jump in here carol it seems like um then either one of these uh policies would not be necessary because we wouldn't have the power to enforce them because we would be in violation of foia and public disclosure laws right yeah we you know any meeting that we have has to be a public meeting now what can happen is that uh a member can participate remotely through advanced communication with the superintendent in the chair so that is permissible um the the point in that policy is that the member has to participate for the entire meeting they can't just um oh i'm i'm gonna be there for that vote on this contract and then i'm bailing out kind of thing um i'm gonna show up halfway through and then leave after the vote you know so they have to participate and they have to be able to take comment um take and make comments so they have to be able to hear what's being said in the meeting and they have to be able to reply if necessary so you know again you couldn't just um call your friend on the board who sits next to you at the meeting not be able to hear the meeting and then during this thing that you want to vote for probably the superintendent's raise i would imagine you'd call in and say yes you know and they like wait a minute that you didn't even hear any of the debate that's all right just yes um that's not permitted so uh the person has to be involved in the the full meeting so that was allowed before kovid it is yeah it was and so you know let's say one of our board members or multiple board members are traveling for work or something or your child is homesick and you don't have coverage you could still participate which is good um the the board member could be a part of that process but uh just kind of outlines the the you know the bylaw outlines the process for that okay but i wanna let's take a quick look here at the um the first one yeah you just have to have a policy that says it's allowed as carol said in the chat okay that's why we have it on the agenda all right so this one so uh this is that policy that we're talking about the the um electronic board meetings this just defines what i mean this is pretty straightforward needing public notice voting and internet and chat but the the statement really is that the board members make every attempt to participate through technology where they can be viewable heard um and basically as present as they can be so you know catherine and ann in our last board meeting were definitely they would fit this description and we wanted them to participate remotely so that they could um you know experience the remote classroom for like like the kids do but this kind of outlines what has to happen and you know they uh who who was cave who wrote this yes they were reading my mind because i because i didn't see it at first glance but i was like we should definitely have at least a 24-hour notice and not like because you have to set up the equipment for that sort of to have that i mean there's definitely a lot that goes into the putting together um is you know a lot a lot goes into putting together those remote meetings right we see all the cable that gets run when we're uh we have to do it at a town hall so um and so this so this allows us to uh continue after kovid if someone can't make it but not the whole board just if it's one should we cap um thinking maybe we should cap it just so sure carol can you clarify for me then that this this mean this um bylaw i believe this one was order i believe this one is only for can you hear me executive order i think the next one we're going to look at is going forward after the executive order is over and done with to allow board members to participate electronically okay okay this uh this is a bylaw all right yeah yeah so this next the next um this is the next one electronic participation and it has all of the same because this one it was interesting the other one was talking about basically all board members and speaking specifically about platforms and whatnot this uh electronic participation second paragraph allows a board member to participate electronically the member will be considered present and will have his or her actual physical presence excused um but they will be present for the quorum and that's where it goes on they need to be um they can't join the meeting after an item of business has been opened and you know then you can't participate or cast a vote and really just outlines if you're going to be participating remotely this is kind of like the rules of engagement for that um for the board and for the individuals participating remotely um for for this one i would um i would like to recommend instead of in the second paragraph okay or or even well anywhere where it says uh there's a board or if the board allows yeah or may allow um should i i think that should be chair uh changed to uh board chairman yeah instead of the board because then it would sound like we'd have to take a vote to allow it to happen and and so i don't know if that's the intention or not but i think maybe the board chairman or or designee like what if you know uh in this instance if tony couldn't um make the meeting at all and i was chairing i'm not the chairman so i would have you know someone would have to make the determination i guess so board chair or or designate perhaps the other way to look at this adam is to say the board allows members to participate to say if we say when if we're going to allow it i think i totally agree with you the way it's written my my concern would be you know a democratic chair and a republican that's going to be out and well we've always do this but in this case that we're not gonna let that republican vote because they gotta be in you know austin's business or vice versa obviously uh you know i don't have anything against either party it's just like i don't want to put the board in a bad position be over politics or something like that and i i don't think it would happen with our current board but you never know down the road that if we say that this is and i think this is probably something when we give a policy report at the next business meeting for you to probably touch upon for comment with the the board see what they think you know if they if they want to permit this to happen you know the the other thing is is there a limit can a board member do this every single meeting you don't want someone to make a habit of it yeah you know like every meeting it's like dude you haven't been to a board meeting since 1984.
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it was nice to hear from the doctors on staff that are advising you however watching the board meeting we are hearing from one side of the medical community even though the overwhelming majority of the research shows that schools can open safely that is never discussed by our board or medical advisors it is important to explore all sides of the medical research being conducted when making such big decisions might i also suggest that one of these meetings be more interactive with members of the parent community being invited to ask questions in real time to our medical advisors and the board it would be extremely beneficial to have the ability to be part of our dialogue i also think that it might be helpful if our board was having discussions with the board members of our surrounding towns to get insight into how being back has been for their communities it might also help to shed some light on how disruptive their families have found the temporary closures of cohorts classes or schools are their parents finding these closures to have a major negative impact on their children or does the benefit of having them in the classroom outweigh the inconvenience of closures melissa tuno in regards to the recent title 9 violation ruling against danbury public schools has this been addressed at a board of ed meeting i am interested in hearing what the board of ed's position is on this as we stand a chance of losing our title nine funds kathy snow i would like to provide some comments regarding the november fifth workshop it is clear that some board of ed members are in favor of keeping students out of school until next year but i'm wondering when the board of vet is going to talk about what the parents who have chosen hybrid would like the district to do and unless you are one of the few board members that actually have students in the danbury public schools you cannot claim to know how it is because you do not you do not know what it is like to have children at home basically in isolation for going on seven months and you do not know what it is like to try to keep them motivate motivated and mentally healthy i also get the safety is a priority but we are dealing with the double-edged sword because i feel the mental health of our students is in crisis as well in the workshop for her i heard the district has been reaching out to those in need about resources available but i don't know how you decide who to reach out to what about the average student who does not have food insecurities or issues with internet internet connectivity but doesn't want to log on anymore and is frustrated beyond belief and about to give up on everything how are they identified dr fong even said how important it is to address mental health and went so far as suggesting parents help children set up get-togethers with children wearing masks yet in the beginning of the workshop he said he doesn't recommend students go back to school until the end of the year that doesn't make sense students can get together wearing masks but they shouldn't be in school what about the report that cathy o'dowd discussed that the transmission of covid was not from being in school but rather from community spread has anyone thought about the fact that the teenage numbers may be going up because they have nowhere else to go but to hang out in their community i would also like to request a review of the attendance numbers by grade level because i feel you were losing students at the high school level and i also formally request that all grade levels be given the same consideration when determining when to go to school in the hybrid mode i also would like to have the numbers of how many parents chose distance learning and the hybrid mode reviewed again because i recall it was over 50 percent of parents that wanted to go back to school in the hybrid mode and those that chose hybrid option are aware there would be cases of covid and partial shutdowns just as the board of ed knew there would be and they still chose hybrid because there is a plan in place when there is a positive case please consider the mental health of our students when making decisions as this is not only a coveted pandemic we are falling into a mental health crisis as well give the plan a chance and do not just throw in the towel and i'm just hitting refresh here to make sure we have no more comments and that is it for tonight thank you so very much sandy you're welcome uh next on the agenda uh amy will you do the consent calendar please sure um i make a motion that the board of education approves the items on the consent calendar exhibit 20-113 through exhibit 115 as recommended made by amy keith his second name and kate seconded are there any questions seeing none uh kate will you do the roll call please your thing joseph britton yes rachel chaleski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgston hi rich giannelli kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy spolino i passes unanimously okay motion so care thank you uh do we have an employee representative tonight student representative hello guys hi so it hasn't been a busy month in terms of information to present um this pat this past month the efforts of the bog executive council and peer leadership classes in our community project partnered with do something resulted in the registration of dozens of new danbury voters and allowed us to apply to a ten thousand dollar grant which we'll find out if we won in the coming weeks we hope to organize a virtual spirit week before thanksgiving break as well as a virtual club fair to allow student interest and involvement in clubs to continue the other week dhs converted our distance learning live class is scheduled to the hybris learning schedule but with live classes we now start school at 7 20 and end at 12.
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dr wright from alberta would you like to explain that to us i know you probably have a presentation for us let me just go over the report really quickly this is this is the school level report it's a new requirement as part of the annual financial report it's due to the state on november 20th and what it is is it basically breaks out all of the expenditures for the entire edition it includes mmo it includes the classroom site fund it includes all of the grants and it breaks it out by by canvas that's what it's doing and it breaks it down by cost per student and it also does the same thing for all of the revenues it takes all of your revenues for the entire district and this is a new requirement and it's part of the national center for education statistics we have to report all of these numbers to the state and i was telling dr wright that the file that's sent over from the auditor general's office is 18x when we prepare and start inputting all of this data it increases the size of the file and right now ade is only accepting files that was 24 makes and when i started inputting all this data the data is now up to 36 mix and i don't know how rule 80 is going to start accepting these files being that the max is only 24 x but anyway what it does is it creates all of these um these pockets of how we did each district is spinning all of our files and we have to send this file back it goes this data the state turns around and submits it to the national center for education statistics and it's also going to go on the school report which is going to come out basically in february or march and each school district is going to have a website um where the public and you know anybody can go on to determine how districts are spending their money based upon expenditure and revenue and basically this is what this report represents it's similar to a little bit similar to apply each other that we all looked at it is but this breaks it down by bicycle exactly by expenditure by the different compartments and expenditure instructions support services administration by food service by transportation by the different components for expenditure and also from revenue right something different than that [Music] quickly our boys won the state championship for the second year running and that was an outstanding effort to beat chino in the finals and they did it decisively four to zero and that's a big win and i'm very proud of our kids and our coach coach elk in his first year nice start and coach crane should be giving credit for all the years he put in he coached many of those kids since they were they recovered it was a great job our girls are playing winslow tonight they're in first round playoffs and they call them play-ins it's a longer it's a bigger tournament they're doing well and we hope to get over there before this is over and then our boys will face off and uh playing for us here at the conference championship this friday at home against round valley and so there's four or five tickets per athlete that will be there we will practice social businesses and masquerading and we're going to accommodate about 150 fans on the site for groundhog as well and that concludes my report no further questions you have questions we're good then all right so the final item on the agenda is that we will have a regular scheduled board meeting december 8th at 5 pm and this board meeting will be over where the district offices are i have a motion to adjourn a motion from chuck have a second combined favorite return [Music] thank you so much thank you for being here this evening we appreciate your input it's valuable thank you very much
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right you know like that's another so i think there's a couple of good discussion points to be had here with the full board uh at least you know on the side you know with some individuals about what do you think and then we can come back and take a look at you know those those suggestions um carol can you just um make a note in the minutes that we discussed that uh uh chair approval versus board approval for this particular policy and then also add to make sure that uh the part about anonymized um departures and or discipline uh for the schools just so just so i remember when the minutes come up that way uh we'll be able to discuss that then at the next meeting that that would be helpful thank you um uh so then so i guess we so do we need to move the um uh 93 21 uh 0.2 to a reading if that's that's basically uh based on our on the executive um yeah i don't think it hurts to do that to disclose what we're i mean we're already doing that obviously we've been doing that i think we're one of the first districts to really jump right onto the remote meeting um but just articulate it i don't think bert's all right it's a cave recommendation so we won't make any changes to them at this time right um okay we're gonna hold there so um him can i get a motion uh for those last two i don't cause i don't we're not moving um uh termination of employment yet uh where it needs a little more research on that a little more research on uh 4118 slash 4218 is 5131 is that related to uh 4118 as well the one that says on hold on the agenda was that just a as a reminder yeah that that's related to the other one so we want to get more information on that one as well all right so then um yeah i mean i'm happy i'm having to make a motion but how do you want to do this do you want me to read through the entire to uh normally uh the motion would just be uh move to a move to a when i make a report at the main meeting i give uh okay so it's moved to a first reading at the board of uh by the board of education for policy number a and b um okay yeah cut me off and just tell me how to word it carol or by law number for a first reading to the full board okay bylaw number 93 21.2 and bylaw 93 25.43 two first readings to the board of education i will second okay cool thank you um all right so we have a motion to move to first reading uh policy 93 21.2 uh bylaw for time place notification type of meeting electronic board of education meetings and policy number 9325.43 bylaw attendance at meetings via electronic communication um is there any further discussion hearing none all in favor it is unanimous of those present thank you and um there is an uh an agenda item of other uh jeff did you have anything because i have nothing for other i do not thank you um is there any new business so i don't know if there's nothing actually different from me all right seeing seeing no new business uh can i have a motion for adjournment second on favor all right all right raise your hand okay
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a congratulations is needed for the dhs hosa for winning grant funding in the united states design for good challenge with their pitch to improve student mental health at dhs the pto commissioned awesome senior signs for distribution to families last month on the 30th and the past few weeks sports teams have been holding their senior nights seniors are also neck deep in college applications right now so please wish them luck and that's all thank you jake thank you all do we have any other representative christopher johnson yes ah good evening board of ed members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing us to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence ace will be holding parent teacher conferences during the week of november 16th to the 19th parents can sign up for meetings during the four afternoons and staff will also be available for meetings from 5 30 to 7 30 p.m on wednesday the 18th the purpose of the conferences is to address academic concerns and standing as well as provide sel support and strategies to our families these staff participated in a social emotional learning training run by lions quest in an effort to add tools and strategies to the employed during this time during this difficult time for staff students and families each guidance teacher at ace has was given an sel toolbox to be used during our career and life skills course the sel kids include activities and lesson plans for staff thank you chris um ace would like to recognize and celebrate the students of of the week for the last two weeks a staff meets weekly to nominate advocate for and vote on each week's recipients and f in an effort to recognize students who are demonstrating the five behavioral expectations at ace the award winners are olivia celino brian brianna valani serena song kaylee cottrell congratulations to all of you and remain a strong thank you for allowing us to share our efforts and building community within our ace family during our current distance learning environment stay safe and have a pleasant evening thank you thank you nicola for sharing the information you and chris and jack for sharing the information with the board thank you so very much action item okay i'll make a motion that the board of education approved the application for the state buildings grant program in the amount of one million eighty thousand dollars in accordance with exhibit 20-116 can i hear a second second second about joe any question concerning the action item seeing 9k could you do the roll call please joseph britton yes rachel chaleski hi keith canetta i gladys cooper aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgdon aye rich giannelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo aye amy spellino hi carries unanimously okay thank you uh superintendent's report yes thank you um number one we have there's a covert 19 update and cara puente uh is with us i thought we would have her uh discuss that i just received today's uh report which is kind of uh shocking but um would you like to uh talk to the board about the the covert report that we've been saying the 14 day averages please sir thanks dr south so um we did have uh 76 new cases today um which brought our 14 day rolling average for 100 000 to 46.4 and over the past two weeks our positivity rate is just about nine percent um as we had indicated the board we are trying to weekly uh update uh this information um you know we're going to talk about the reopening where there are some comments that made earlier um by parents that we look at and i think we'll be talking about it in our discussion of the reopening schools kathy do you have anything to add to the covert comment i know you've had some situations going on um yes uh thank you dr sal good evening everyone um i just want to start by saying to cara thank you so much um for your partnership um your you know your access uh the access we have to you is invaluable and uh we get to talk on a daily basis we meet at least once a week sometimes twice and that is such a tremendous help to the district um you know we continue i continue to track the positive cases that we have that we know about even on remote learning we do get reports every day of positive students and positive staff i continue to report that to the state i can tell you that in the last 14 days what we know of are 40 positive cases um and you know we we continue to track that information and uh work together with cara we'll talk more about in the reopening but those are just the numbers that we've been um receiving from um from uh carapanti and then just the um everyday numbers that reports that come to um to kathy i will say to you one of the challenges that we're reaching is this contact racing and being able to um really get out and uh touch everyone that um we're supposed to that we've come in contact with that is a challenge right now and youngsters are not in school but it is something that that's perplexing to us um you're going to hear a lot about we're going to talk about some of that also in reopening um continue the conversation from the board workshop as well um i'd like to just update to go a little bit on the ciac i asked the chip to be here tonight chip did you update the board about what's going on with these winter activities please chipset is he here he is right thought i saw him chip is here sorry i was on you uh thanks dr sell and uh good evening board cabinet uh thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit about uh speak a little bit about the ciac some good news uh first off i want to thank cara cathy board of ed cabinet dr self for your support uh for this past fall i know it was a tenuous time for everyone we were allowed to compete our our kids did quite well we had about 300 athletes and uh actually still competing and we should finish uh we will finish on saturday as far as the ciac for the winter season everything is in a flux the ciac off of reports from the dph and will have a guidance statement given to the state athletic directors on november 17th from this document we're going to hear we think about the movement of some sports to a new season and we'll also hear about some sports potentially playing with masks to be very honest with you as we speak uh i do not know whether or not sports will continue uh as we know it during the winter other is there has to be a lot of uh work with mitigation strategies and things from the cihc to the school districts to make things work uh we had our staff meeting today we addressed the coaches and about all our winter coaches about what what to expect so we're prepared uh either in either direction uh that we need to go uh but that's about it for the ciac we're actually penciled in to begin sports and penciled in because the board of control needs to vote on it sports would begin tentatively on december 5th with games and practices to begin games to begin on december 17th then again is tentative and more information will be available after november 17th that's it thank you jeff thank you very much that's all i have for my report at this time but one second uh i have something to add if you don't mind did you say had a question i have a quick one um chip i i saw an article and i didn't have time to really dive into the article but i saw an article that meridian for one has canceled the rest of sports to at least to the end of 2020.
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are there any other schools out there that are canceling sports or at least that seemed to be what the article was implying joe at this at this particular point there's a lot of rumors out there but nothing nothing factual um we do know that school districts like uh norwalk and stanford are absolutely waiting for uh the guidance from the state to come out but there's really nothing that i know of this firm okay thanks courtney did you have something to update the board on i didn't put it down if it you had mentioned something today well yes i'm sorry dr sal um in the last board meeting i had mentioned um doing a financial update i didn't realize that it's the next cycle in the calendar so it'll be at the next board meeting it's not this one that we do the financials but i also did reach out to rich to um schedule a finance committee because i recognize that he asked for some information in the last board meeting so we'll be doing a report on the current year financials as well as an accounting of the spending of the coveted funding as well as looking at the impact for next year um in the next board meeting and of that finance committee that will happen between now and then thank you thank you that's all for the superheroes report at this time okay uh you going to the discussion item yes yes yes okay thank you and thank you for the workshop um you know i'd like this to be a continuation of that quite frankly in some respects um we've looked at the um the science part of this we've we've examined the actual cases we've disaggregated it by age aid groups and we're finding some tendencies and i know as we reflect on you know where we are and why we are why we're at the position we are quite frankly the experiences that we've had has been longer than many of the surrounding towns that are just approaching it um you know what i see from the feedback that i'm getting we are very concerned about against not being in school i also see a lot of schools closing down doing contact tracing there's a lot of episodic events that are happening in the school systems when they're open not to say that our goal is not to open as you know we were close to doing it and those numbers that we that unforeseen by us that just jumped so drastically on the 26th caused us to not implement the model the hybrid model the prediction then was that they would go up uh right now they've just uh gone up they've gone through the roof um and i think that as as we talked to our medical folks we've been taking their advice and your advice has been pretty explicit to me that the infection rate and um the ability to contact trace and all that although is there the mitigating the migration standards that it's not the best time to bring our youngsters back it's not what i wanted it to be and certainly not our team in terms of where we wanted to be but at this point um i think it was mentioned at the workshop you know how it's impacting these youngsters i mean you know you could hear what the parents have said um i i agree with that as i said at the workshop i've got my own grandkids that have been quarantined and i understand the dilemma i really do but when i weigh the safety and the professional recommendations and everybody's scaling back didn't seem to me to be the right time to do it particularly at this time so we're looking at really moving along and trying to make a decision to keep uh on dl to at least the thanksgiving vacation and then reassess it for the possibilities of coming back now with that said please understand that we are looking at more mitigation kinds of activities not only the um cleanliness of the building but um stations at desks social distancing all the masks all of that there along with other other options that some districts across the country are doing uh with some testing options that we might have um with the goal to bring everyone back but at this point it's very hard for me to think through how uh the numbers are so radically bad much much more severe than we've had in i can't remember how long um to bring them back now would not be the right thing i did have kathy here tonight kathy and kara that comment uh cara we spoke about just yesterday about as we looked as i said you know let's call our surrounding towns what are we learning and how is it that um you know they're opening and we're at where we're at and as we reflect and look at it you had some good observations from meeting with all the folks maybe you can update us a little bit on some of the things that some of the things that you uh had mentioned to us at this time cara franti regarding that sure um what i had mentioned is that we have just been at this elevated level for a lot longer than a lot of the other districts so while we were um while all the other districts are are now coming into the red zone and we've had this elevated community transmission now since uh the end of august so um a lot of these places are now now they're seeing what it's like to be in school uh with high levels of community transmission um so if we were to start going into school now with this high level of community transmission um we're kind of you know we we haven't seen that happen before we haven't we're just now seeing the effects of what this what uh the high levels are on schooling with in-person learning because our levels now are um they're creeping up they are similar to what they were they're creeping to where they were in the spring um and we didn't have in-person learning there so we are then so we're kind of learning from the other districts what how they're um interacting with this high level of community transmission and kathy i know that you're in regular communication with all the other school districts so please feel free to add to that thank you cara yes our surrounding school districts um they are in person some are full-time at the elementary level and hybrid middle and high school summer on full hybrid but every surrounding district has had closures um which you know as as i have said before can happen very quickly so parents will often get notified at you know midday or end of the day that your child can't come back to school for the next 14 days and that is happening frequently in our surrounding districts um and those are districts that aren't even seeing the numbers that we are seeing right now um and uh cara you know i'll you know certainly defer to you on this but um what we've been seeing in the last two weeks i think is a result of halloween we have upcoming holidays uh you know thanksgiving and christmas people are still traveling uh domestically internationally and you know we're at numbers now that we have not seen in a very long time so that's very concerning to me i think a few of the districts announced around something have gone to deal already through the holidays is that correct is that some of the feedback you're getting oh no you got frozen um i think dr sally answered that is yes you've got milford and trumbull now both going full remote until january of next year and shelton today shelton announced that they were going uh as of tomorrow shelton will go full remote until january yeah um you know it's hard to i listen to the board deeply and i and i uh concur i i think uh you know if something drastically changes the other way would we uh move to the hybrid yes we're prepared to move to the hybrid you know and you know i need to say to the board that the hybrid for us i think i want to say 2700 students and carriers on here she might be able to update me maybe that's changed uh 2400 students that we requested or a third of um of our population that required such a high number of um faculty in order to uh uh in order to accommodate them those students that are that would be at home on gl that um if we were once we go to hybrid then we're gonna change teachers and you know as executive order four talks about um you know there are other factors other than numbers well i think the disruption of of the youngsters in terms of a new teacher um coming in you know as if we'd have come in on the 26th we probably would have been sending students home they would have had you know be santorum so all of these things begin playing into the work that we're doing um and although it's difficult to leave them at home and i feel we feel for them um we need to find a pathway back and as i said um you know if these numbers should happen to change or it puts us in a position where we feel we can safely start implementing our hybrid we would do it in an incident um but at this point i don't believe that we're there for uh from where i stand i know kevin you're on any comments uh kim or i got kelly and cara desmera no i'm i'm good doctor cell is kiran casamiro yeah i'm here i mean i i i can't really you know comment on the health numbers those you know that the data is what it is and it's a growing concern and unfortunately you know doesn't look like it's getting much better it's going in the in an opposite direction um you know but i you know i will it's disappointing for sure um you know kelly and i work very closely together we're very concerned about kids their well-being and and and how our instructional program is serving them in this environment and um but what i can tell you is that you know everyone is is doing um you know an enormous and tremendous job in in doing the best what we can with the circumstances we have a a pretty quality distance learning program in place um and we're um you know we do have continuity of instruction and i i do believe that that that that is an important piece rather than trying to write out some type of a roller coaster that is happening in a lot of these other school districts so you know you know obviously we're not happy about all of this but we we will forge on we continue to hone our craft in this environment and and find new ways of um bringing instruction high quality instruction to the students so you know folks can rest assured that we are at least doing our very best to make the most of this time that we have with the kids as we work towards getting back into in-person learning kelly anything from your standpoint just to add on to what kara said i mean for the majority of you know students we are just working towards making the distance learning model as effective and supportive of all their different learning needs inclusive of our special education students we are looking at a very small select group of students for whom have very significant disabilities that really is quite challenging for them to partake in the in the distance learning model um and through collaboration with kathy um and cara we're working on like i said a very small cohort of students and getting them into the building in very very small pockets to provide direct instruction for them a handful of days a week it'll most likely be a two day a week model where we'll take our most significant special education self-contained programs and bring in half the class on a monday tuesday and the other half the class on a thursday friday to be able to provide them with some in-person specialized instruction and related services while still keeping the health and safety protocols in place for our staff and students so we're looking to possibly roll that out right after the thanksgiving break and kathy cara and myself are working very very closely to make sure um that we're putting all the appropriate mitigation strategies in place um so that will mean some of your um some of your special education related services staff um will be coming in um during that time frame in order to provide support and services to these children so i am excited about doing that i think it's the right thing to do for our kids um but it is like i said a very small group um i wish i could do it for more but with the numbers um it's not not appropriate to do so at this time um so we will continue to keep you posted on how that goes dr sal can i just make one more comment just it's just to address one of the parental questions that came up in the beginning um there was a parent who asked about um you know why why we don't have a full day of school in a digital environment and i just wanted to point out um you know there's a good portion of the day particularly k5 and i believe that's where the comment was directed at um when when you eliminate recess lunch breaks transitions and independent practice from the school day um you know there there is you know there is not a need to have students in from an eight to three and a full day um in real school when you're in school uh for example in an hour block of time a teacher could rotate through small group instruction with a group of students do three groups 20 minutes at a time those other two groups are in the classroom working on independent independent work and practice while they're waiting to meet their teacher for a 20-minute group so those are just normal things that happen during the school day that may or may not be as transparent as they are now in this distance learning environment um and so you know that's where maybe some of those questions are coming from um additionally you know the length of time of the school day and the amount of direct instruction is is appropriate um and we also have to understand too that everything takes longer in distance learning all the lessons everything that we normally do takes longer it takes longer for teachers to develop those lessons it takes longer there's a lot of curriculum conversion happening right now and what that is is just lessons that would normally um be delivered at the drop of a hat in a classroom have to be converted into a digital environment teacher has to plan for how they're going to um to capture information how they're going to display information how they're going to make it accessible to students in a digital environment and also how they're going to um facilitate feedback in that environment and the planning that that takes just definitely takes longer so there is some time embedded at the end of the day for that as well as to reach independent uh independently some students who may need some uh some additional time in in this particular environment so um i just wanted to point that out that you know the day is very complex the lessons are complex and the work that the students are doing is right now is is very appropriate to to their needs is that there's any time spent with faculty expected to do i mean you know in my view it's five days a week basically that they should be getting continuous instruction on a hybrid we're down as you know as you know would be down to two or two and a half days of getting um you know that contact time so you know um you know just breaking that cycle right now thinking uh that we would have to send sensitive back really um does not start well with the instructional uh pacing of the curriculum at this point particularly coming to the end of a marking period all these things are playing into factor into what we're doing and for the board you know i hear the word political i don't know what that means um if it political means to try to listen to both sides and you know make a decision based on um the best data that i can then okay but there's no influences i could see in any any way um that would say it's it's a political type decision um we um um i don't know districts around us you know making decisions with so many youngsters out i'm i'm not there i'm not willing to take that risk maybe some people are um and then that that's just my my take on it um i i am somewhat conservative on that um and i do believe our medical folks when they look at me in the eye and say it's too dangerous knowing quite well i want them to come back knowing quite well the discomfort that's causing in the homes with um you know supervision and the um although we work at social emotional it's good when the kids interact with each other all these things come into play and even with all of that i can't look the board in the eye and say at this point i would bring him back and guarantee that um you know it would be a safe environment yeah we'd do our best we'd have our medication but i think the risk and reward is not worth it at this point for me so i'm i'm interested to listen to the board i'm very interested i listened deeply the other night um you know that's why um you know we want to look at this regularly that we can bring them back but um because we've been asked for communication purposes tried to give parents a good lead time for planning we think we need to at least the team felt very strongly we should tell parents look you know look at this right about thanksgiving to see what we can do about the return i think joe mentioned something about sports you know i don't see how we're going to be able to do that quite frankly based on what i'm seeing at this point as well this is not just um you know when we were in the dl before the numbers were different now you know they're they're at the point where i worry about that so uh you know all that is going to be in front of us moving forward um and you know i'll come down and we'll come down on the safety so um i don't know before i just keep quiet here i don't know if anybody else cara or uh kim do you have any comments or kevin no i the only thing i'll say just is is to let people know that you know we continue to field a lot of questions and concerns and we're starting the slow process of kind of peeling back in-person work for a lot of our folks um we're starting to be stretched a little bit with quarantining um and so it seems like the peel back now is is a really prudent approach not only to respond to the concerns that are coming to us but just for staffing so um i think that you know people have been very flexible and very kind in their approach and very concerned obviously about the numbers that we're all watching so we started that process yesterday afternoon and that'll run kind of through this week so we're kind of making adjustments now for what the next couple of weeks will look like are there any questions from board members to dr sale or anyone i'm sure yes yeah um thank you dr cell um just a comment to the parents we hear you i certainly understand i have a third grader and a sixth grader um this is easy on anybody and we're lucky we have family support that that helps um but doctor i think dr cell i have to agree with you i think the numbers and our doctors said this last week during our workshop the numbers aren't good and frankly they're worse today than they were last week profoundly worse i did while we were before our meeting i was just looking and getting ready for the meeting i looked around if you look at the front web page for the norwalk hour the damner news times are hard for current there are stories about schools being closed and not necessarily entire districts although norwalk and darien are certainly on distance learning shelton's closed for the rest of the year um wallingford middle school is closed manchester has a closing enfield has issues west haven high school has an issue middletown has an issue i believe they're also cancelling cancelled sports bethel brookfield newtown and milford all have positive cases and some closures um that maybe not whole schools maybe classes or cohorts um two high schools in hartford uh new canaan i remember reading an article yesterday in the norwalk hour when i was at work new cane in saks middle school has got a major outbreak and a problem this is happening everywhere these schools are going in and coming out and bouncing back and forth and i think i have to agree with cathy o'dowd the disruption that's going to cause might actually be worse than being out on top of risking the safety of staff and students so i i want kids to go back my son especially would really like to go back it's hard being in third grade and being home but to do it now with these numbers is just i think would be reckless uh not not even dangerous just flatly reckless um i and i think it's only a matter of time before more schools come in our direction than going the other unfortunately it's not a good situation but i think you're on the safety side um this is a question on top of that maybe it's for kathy when when we're close when schools are closing classes or cohorts how long are they closing those down for is that a 14 day shutdown um yes joe generally it is so if there's a positive case um and there are direct contacts identified um we're required to close um quarantine for 14 days and get a cova test even if the test comes back negative you cannot test out a quarantine you must remain in that quarantine for 14 days now for direct contact i'm thinking for for a child for a kid in the classroom do the direct contacts include all of the kids in the classroom um so direct contact or close contact we define that as within six feet of distance for 15 minutes or more and it's not one block of time it's actually 15 minutes can be over 24 hour period so it's effectively the whole class yeah it's very hard to you know have a diameter where you can say we know only these children we're within that that six feet of distance it's very that's difficult so the majority of districts yes are closing an entire classroom or a cohort is it also their school bus the school bus yes that that too you know so this expands beyond just the classroom okay thank you all of us as and that you know children on the bus are not necessarily from the same classroom so you would be dealing with other issues there as well and we've seen that in our non-public schools uh where we have had to close perhaps one grade but then when you get to the school bus that may involve several other grades you know when when it's the other grades it's an individual student not necessarily okay yeah thank you that's all i had right for this at this time adam share thank you very much thank you jim thank you any other questions i have a question yes uh rachel and also just a comment to joe's you know statement about other surrounding towns having gone back i wish we were one of the districts that had flip-flopped i think it's worth i want my kids to have just one day one day to make a connection with their their new teachers their new schools um you know i wouldn't send them with our numbers being what they are right now but i would send them in september i would have sent them in october you know in hindsight i feel like we missed our opportunity we missed our chance for our kids to have that one day um and we and does anybody else find it ironic that chip just you know spoke about our kids playing sports this whole time and then kathy o'dowd immediately saying there's it has it's about halloween i had 10 kids come to the house for um trick-or-treating 10. um and i know you know there are other leagues independent leagues that are um you know playing maybe not any longer with the governor's new rules um i i just you know is there anything tied to sports um and you know even through the independent leagues you know we know that most of those kids are our students and the and you know the optics of that um i don't know and i get you know the staffing issue as well um with with you know our danbury staff having kids in other surrounding towns but that means their kids get to go but ours doesn't i don't think that's you know that's fair either um i guess i'll just i'll leave it at that you know rachel i i'm not just just a reflection and here's what i was struggling with you know what do i have to take away from folks to take away from folks if it's if it's if i don't have to and and that was the struggle that we had and when we looked at what our youngsters were already were missing out on um you know we felt that with safety and the way we could handle the um the high school situation which started in july made sense to us it's not that we didn't come close to polling we did in the beginning when the numbers were at the point when we when we didn't have it you may recall that and then felt that when the numbers leveled it was okay to maintain it so long as we we had that weekly check and uh but that's that was the dilemma i think you just you know we had surrounding towns going and i had an opportunity to get let our kids do something and try not to just take everything away from them which which hurts everyone so it's it's it's a fine line and um you know in retrospect could we have i think carrot spoke to it well our numbers were to the point where we felt it was not safe but we did decide in october um you know what happened you know that's the only comment i have with that i do understand i don't understand i just also want to add about the halloween thing um a lot of it might not be associated with trick-or-treating but there were a lot of small halloween gatherings and we're finding that in our contact racing that we do have a lot of cases that are linked to halloween and um you know it's 10 right now we're 10 days out and we've seen our largest spike so we have to kind of think that there is some sort of association with halloween and also to sorry to mention we are seeing cases with sports as well we're seeing both kara are we seeing transmission i was looking at the numbers in school as that transmission you know there was this theory where the transmission was not happening at school are you seeing some of that now coming with our youngsters with our school or no in general school children transmission with school-age kids or school transmission within like our non-public schools well we have our non-publics we have yeah yes that's what i was talking about i'll defer to kathy on this one she's been more involved with the non-public schools um i can tell you what the level the numbers of kids that we have and that's the age breakdown that we kind of went through at the last meeting but in terms of the specific contact racing within the non-public schools i think kathy would be better able to kathy how is that going maybe so in terms of the non-public schools at this point we have not seen the spread in schools but we have seen um frequent closures of either a grade level or a classroom um and with the community numbers what they are now um you know my concern is that it's it's just a matter of time we're seeing spread through families it's not just um one parent or one child in the family we are seeing um all family members being tested positive so again i i can't confirm that we're seeing the spread in the schools but the numbers you know it's just a matter of time with what we're seeing at this point so um that's we're planning on sending something out to parents so that they are able to plan um you know uh probably uh tomorrow or thursday to to alert them that uh we'll probably be close to thanksgiving when we'll make a decision about going forward so i have a question yes um catherine so my question is and are on all these levels of positive cases are they symptomatic asymptomatic i mean you're saying that a whole family's coming positive but are they all just transmitting it or do they actually have it or do we know yeah so when i say it's spreading through families um that is with confirmed positive now positive cases can be asymptomatic they can be symptomatic but we are seeing uh confirmed cases of spread through families through testing aren't there any other questions okay got to say uh you finished out the sale yes thank you okay okay we have the information package remind board members that sign up for the cave convention you have the outline uh we have our next board meeting on uh november the 24th okay which is a tuesday okay and i also had a discussion with mr watson and and and would like to talk about having um i don't know if we want to name it a workshop but an open meeting with parents so we can have a discussion about reopening and more or less the information that we went through tonight briefly and more or less uh to have the view or the question from the appearance because most of the comments are coming in that you know we only hear one side the board you know board members don't have kids in school and uh that's not true most of us that are sitting up here we might not have children in school some of the younger ones but some of the older ones we have grandchildren in school so you know just have an overall discussion uh as we look towards january and just have a discussion with the parents and community people so i don't know how dr sale and mr watson sort of feel about that but i saw it through a date out december the 9th we will get started uh maybe a little bit earlier like 6 30 or 7 whichever one that's convenient for board members uh that's all i want to throw out to the board and and i think that we sort of owe it to the parents to sort of let them voice their the opinion versus the comments part so i don't know how board members feel about that madam chair yes comment please uh an open discussion uh i've also read the communications that have come in an alternate view of science that um my question to the cabinet i am not going to argue with dr fong or any medical opinion says that we should stay closed but there has been comment about additional or different uh medical opinions and before we have this open discussion i would just like to have the cabinet and myself well versed on what that additional uh descending of medical opinions are if there are any and we know there are and so we could we can talk intelligently with the parents and and to give them our point of view that yes the numbers are high it's dangerous and we see a school closures and partial closures all over connecticut and uh i just we should be as well informed as the others and i understand that uh if we all did the research we would have be privy to it but it's a lot deeper sometimes than we have time for and we rely on our own medical experts so if there is a descending opinion out there uh medical opinion on what to do um we should think about it or research it also but i have i am not taking any opposition against uh dr fong or dr begg and i just wanted to make that comment if you want to open this up to the public for discussion what we're going to be opening ourselves up to thank you madam chair thank you al any other comments our board members in favor are having uh this uh discussion i don't know what we want to call it a workshop but we work out the details it's an excellent idea okay yeah i agree so i'm i was looking at decent you know uh december the ninth i stated again and those you know it's not mandatory board members that want to come you can come and be a part of it but i think it will also give the parents a better idea as to uh planning and uh we don't want them to we find out something and then they'll their plans are totally different so i to me you know flatus will the doctors be on with um when we have the parents comments and i mean the only thing we can go by is this addendum 4 correct this is this is our bible i guess for keeping kids out of school so will the doctors be able to be on with us well we could we could talk to him sure i'm sure i think we can i think you know we got something today there's articles out there regarding um you know the the perspective of this is the norm um you know you practice keeping your hands clean you practice masks and you practice distancing and as you discover uh cases you then cohort them and remove them and you know how dangerous is it is you know what is the um what's the impact in terms of their uh their health um there's there's questions about long-term health particularly those that are compromised there's there's a lot of issues so you know maybe um we could we could well there's also going because there's also going to be questions about the vaccine and and will they be able to address that and kara that's a good question kathy um are we are we going are we going to um i mean what do we know about the vaccine for danbury for instance what do we know what do we know from will it be available in general prenti or kathy yeah yeah so that's a good question um we are doing our mass vaccination planning now we're in constant communication with our regional partners our all of our partners and the state um so what the word that we got today we actually got a memo today and they said be prepared for december 2020 um it's going to be very very limited doses so we there's a priority schedule that is for that and first and foremost are healthcare workers and hospital employees and then there's a tiered approach to that with critical infrastructure and and they're deciding on whether or not what the level of that would be for schools um so at this point that's all we know but we are planning on it they did tell us today plan on december 2020 i don't know what that means or how many doses but that is the information that we got yeah i did too kathy um we were asked a couple of weeks ago to start gathering numbers so we've actually already sent categorized numbers of staff to the city um so that they can use those numbers in their planning um without prioritizing but just giving them kind of overall numbers so that they'll be ready with what they need when the plan's ready to go thank you okay so we'll move forward december tonight and cam and mr watson and dr sale will come up if we how to really uh structure this and and have this meeting and more or less to get parents and had a divorce okay i don't have anything else if everybody is uh don't if there's no other questions uh entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting so moves moved by mr de silva can i hear a second second second by l that's stupid joe britton okay motion so care good night everyone good night everybody you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um uh good morning everybody uh we're going to just briefly talk about what peer leadership is uh some of you i see some faces that uh maybe an older brother or sister was a former career leader and so maybe you're aware of the program that we have um first off my name is ms miller and some of you are stuck with me for help from phys ed but not only do i teach mainly the freshman i teach a course a class called peer leadership and it's mainly made up of seniors with a couple juniors sprinkled in and we meet every day and it's a program it's a class where we're trying to build leadership skills communication speaking in front of an audience or a small group and they were once you they were once you sitting in these seats listening about what peer leadership was about being a freshman trans trans transitioning into from middle school to high school not knowing people some people they were friends with my older siblings but now they're not here and you know kind of maybe feeling that same amount of anxiety a little bit of stress and then of course you add these wonderful masks that we have to wear now and that really heightens things up today you're going to learn about the program and i challenge you to listen to everything that they're involved in and i challenge you to not just listen but get involved because you're going to get more out of your high school experience who knows maybe you'll be standing up here in a couple years and giving the same speech to the incoming freshmen but again thank you for your attention here and we'll let maddie start off our program all right thanks what is peer leadership here leadership is a daily class for juniors and seniors that have been selected from a large group of applicants this class works on leadership skills public speaking and monthly outreaches with a full-time freshman two peer leaders meet with their freshman group once a month after first period this is called an outreach the peer leaders lead their group in different activities based on a certain topic in these outreaches the freshmen will get to know other freshmen and their peer leaders better some topics include friendship dealing with stress harassment and bullying the first outreach will be at the end of the month who your peer leaders are and what group you are in will be listed at the end and will be posted in your exploratory classrooms and outside the gym advisors observe the peer leaders leading their freshman group the following are advisors miss agostini mr billig miss chin miss craig mr d'antonio mr harris mr mcelroy miss miller miss purdy miss shoestock and miss ajak meet your peer leaders okay i am not sammy um sammy's my partner she's not here today um so she is the vice president of the student council she plays second base in varsity softball and starting defensive wing inside um she's also in the mummer's parade every year and she's in food pro that's all i have to say sorry this is me i'm anthony i am a secretary for the senior club not secretary i am a senator with a senior class in the student council i'm also in robotics and i'm in a third year culinary class thank you um can just the next person go up and read that thanks it's right next to the thing and then very perfect okay so this is from olivia unfortunately i'm not able to be here but here's some information about me my name is olivia matthews i'm 17 years old and i'm a first year career reader i work at exo exit zero filling station as a busser smooth runner retail clerk and hostess i am in mock trial as a witness as well as a member of the national honor society i'm in graphic design and commercial arts class here at tech and enjoy many hobbies like painting knitting and drawing say sean and i can't wait to meet all of you in our group and get to know you better and then i'm corrine hi my name is corrine i'm currently a junior and this is my first year as a peer leader my cce is allied medical and i hope to one day pursue a career in the medical field some of my hobbies include watching grey's anatomy and going roller skating this year my partner is hailey pinto and we are so excited to get to know you guys [Applause] hi my name is tech i am 17 years old and a first year career leader i am in the allied medical program and i plan on going to nursing school after i graduate i am also a member of the national honor society and my favorite thing to do is hang out with my friends i'm a first year career leader and my partner this year is craig mcdowell i am a second year culinary arts student and in the fall i play for the girls soccer team in the winter i play for the girls basketball team and in my free time i like to spend time with my friends and family i am like one of my future goals is to be a leader and actually i can't wait to meet all of you this year okay so i'm not liv but i have something that she wanted me to read to you guys hi my name is olivia prickett i'm 17 years old and a senior here at tech i'm also a first year peer leader as well as a member of our school's national honor society i am currently captain of the mock trial chief team a member of the softball team a skills usa member and a third year long public safety student in my free time i enjoy playing with my three dogs watching criminal minds on repeat and goofing around with my friends i am a workaholic with a coffee addiction although i'm sorry that i cannot be present today my partner maddie and i are so excited to meet you at our first outreach all right so this one's mine hi everyone my name is madison sweitzer i am a senior and a second year peer leader my program of study is allied medical and i hope to become a doctor or nurse anesthetist one day at tech at tech i'm involved in cross-country cheerleading softball and national honor society one dream i have is to travel all over europe i live in middle township and i work with stewards on the boardwalk my partner live and i can't wait to meet all of you hi i'm gia i'm a senior here at tech and i'm a first year peer leader i'm involved in cross-country and national honor society and i'm an early child so i spend a lot of time with my family my parents and my boyfriend and when i am at home my free time i work on a small business and i sell jewelry and accessories i have two siblings [Applause] um um i'm a senior here at tech a first year career leader and i live in wilbon um my cte here is hvac and i plan to continue my academic career studying on mechanical engineering i have a big desire for cooking and one day i plan to open my own restaurant in the future hopefully and uh me and lou really want to meet y'all this year hope you have a good one [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hi i'm jordan i'm 18 years old i'm a senior and i'm a second year peer leader i'm a manager for the swim team as well as a member at large for the national home society i'm an allied medical i plan on becoming a nurse practitioner my partner is hannah and we're really excited to meet you all this year [Applause] just staying down there for that all right so we're about to play a game called stand up so stand up is a game where a statement is said and if it applies to you you want to stand up and if it doesn't you'll just sit down for an example if your favorite color is blue and i say that you'll stand out and if not you just stay seated yeah if your layers you can now slide down there you go katie doing it over there perfect you could be in front of the slide it's okay you can join all right all right anthony nice and loud all right stand up if you're from middle township stand up if you have blue eyes stand up if you're a middle child stand up if you were born outside of new jersey all right oh i'm sorry mary you know what you guys go ahead just just remain standing there just don't stand in front of the screen we haven't had a much practice in here because of you know splitting time in school so bear with us perfect you used it get involved the more you're involved to get the more you will gain the sports teams that we have here are baseball basketball cheerleading cross country golf soccer softball and swim the activities and clubs that we have are act archery ffa floor hockey key club mock trial skillsusa student council the teen center sbys tennis volleyball weightlifting yearbook all of the full-time freshmen have been grew to the pair of peer leaders these groups will be the same all year and will meet once a month there are six groups with about 10 freshmen in each group a list of these groups will be posted in your exploratory class and outside of the gymnasium please see mrs miller if your name is not on the list group seven is same sandy jettison and anthony lindell group eight is hannah oliver and jordan water group nine is karen mcdowell and hailey pinto group 10 is olivia matthews and zayshawn tony group 11 is liv perkia and me group to fall is gia taylor and katie tv not sure you saw your name check the list posted in your exploratory class or by the entrance to the gym final thought now that you have learned what your leadership is about and how it works i'd like to tell you how great of an opportunity you have it is to build bonds with not just upperclassmen but with many kids in your own grave i know that when most of you saw your groups on the screen you were worried that you were not with your friends but this is a good thing you're going to have the chance to make a whole bunch of new friends go into the outreaches with a positive attitude this will make outreaches more enjoyable for everyone in your group including yourself we are about to offer you tootsie pops as you know they come in many different flavors are the different on the outside but the same on the inside keep this in mind as you go throughout the school and meet new people here and in your community now more than ever it is important to remember you're in this together be kind to everyone thank you have a nice day [Applause] um probably won't happen until the spring time but that we have like a net that we drop and uh even if you've never done archery before feel free to join us and i know like right now we're all kind of in a holding pattern in terms of activities uh maybe some of you are playing a sport and or maybe you're a little hesitant i'm not sure if i'm gonna like this uh one of the peer leaders from the tech cohort because we did that on monday and tuesday and uh they said something you're not going to be married to the activity you can try it and if you don't like it then you know it's okay you can stop going and stop playing or whatever but really challenge yourself to maybe try something that i'm not sure if i know i like it or not and what's the worst case is that you don't like it and okay then you no longer go to the activity or the club but try and branch out and um get more involved does anybody have any questions about peer leadership anything when makeup pictures are i'll try and know is just spread out you can just dump a bunch of that whole bag that's open spread it out along the table this table and this table here all right we're doing that trick-or-treating social distancing the candidate here so you're just grabbing one on your way out okay and please you know make sure you throw the rafters in the can all right all right thanks for being a great audience uh maybe i would probably open the doors and keep that open and let's have this hand come down here first
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all right good morning my name is uh miss miller some of you i might have you as a freshman in the zed um yeah i just asked you guys yet thank you take your headphones off appreciate it um i also have the honor of teaching a class called peer leadership and what that is it's a daily class of mainly seniors and a few freshmen and i'm not freshmen season few juniors and anyhow they too were once freshmen like you who sat in this conference center and listened to more about the program and what we do is it's a daily class and we learn we work on like communication skills being a leader what composes a good leader and one great thing is and i always call it a win-win is because they're gaining leadership experience then they're working with you so once a month we have what's called an outreach and they will meet with you you've been paired up uh into groups right now you guys are groups one through three and um the date's still to be determined but you meet with two of these peer leaders each time you have the same peer leaders maybe you saw the posters up in the main entrance by the gym if not take a look there today but we meet once a month and we work on different things of just creating friendships normally before covet you know it's kind of weird being a freshman and coming in here maybe not knowing people and it's difficult well now add code of it add these stupid masks and it's harder to get to know one another these group of seniors and juniors are they're the cream of the crap of our school they're active in a lot of different activities sports clubs organizations listen to the different things that they do and try and strive to do extra in that you know do things that you can get involved with um and make your school year here a lot more enjoyable than just coming here doing the online stuff doing it in the classroom stuff and then going home you're going to get more out of your high school experience by getting involved okay so i challenge you when they give their little feels here listen to all the different things that they're involved in know that you can go to them even if they're not your peer leaders you'll see them in your phys ed classes in the hallways they're there to help you it's hard enough becoming a freshman into a new school and then now put these silly things on and it's it's a lot more challenging so they're here to help you um kind of be a big brother big sister all right i'll i'll shut up and let these guys go ahead take it away all right so what is career leadership a daily class for juniors and seniors that have been selected from a large group of applicants this class works on leadership skills public speaking and monthly outreaches with a full-time freshman chief peer leaders meet with their freshman freshman groups once a month after first period and this is called an outreach and the peer leaders leave their groups in different activities based on a certain topic in these outreaches the freshmen will get to know other freshmen and their career leaders better some topics include friendship dealing with stress harassment and volume our first outreach will be at the end of this month the date is still to be determined who your peer leaders are and what group you're in will be listed at the end and will be posted in your exploratory classrooms and outside of the gym advisors observe the peer leaders leading their freshman group but following our advisors miss agassini mr billy miss chin miss craig mr d'antonio mr harris mr mcelroy miss miller miss purdy ms schuster and miss sega so without further ado meet your peer leaders alright good morning everyone my name is frank bazil uh just a little fun fact i have a younger brother who goes here uh i probably don't want to hear me talk but i'm going to talk anyway i'm a second year peer leader at cape may tech i'm a senior i'm the captain of the cross country team president of the student council skillsusa broadcast news silver medalist and a level three student here at uh in the communication arts career technical class i currently have a pilot's license i got it over the summer so i've been having a lot of fun flying the past couple days i have two jobs i work for the recreation department of wildwood crest and i work at maurice pierce as a ride operator uh in my free time i like to go on the rides go to the water park ride my bike hang with my friends and family and of course going on a little trip in the airplane every once in a while just to have a little fun me and my partner emily look forward to meeting each and every one of you thank you take it away katie hello everyone my name is katie bowman i'm a senior and a first year peer leader i'm enrolled in the cosmetology in the cosmetology program and this is my fourth and final year on cheers i enjoy hanging out with my friends and spending time with family in my free time i also work two jobs i work at a salon and a yacht club i live at home with my mom and dad and my twin sister and a son of an older brother who lives in deffer and my plans after high school are to graduate college and pursue my career in cosmetology can't wait to see all of you [Laughter] [Music] i'm a manager for the boys and girls swim teams and i also play on the golf team in my free time i enjoy running and going to the beach and spending time with my family and friends i'm really looking forward to getting to know you guys and helping you through your freshman year the best i can have a great day [Applause] hi guys i'm timmy i'm 16.
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e e e I'd like call this meeting to order going to ask that any viewers please put yourself on mute thank you due to the covid-19 health emergency and in order for the Board of Education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held via video conference I'm sorry but I need somebody please mute themselves somebody who joined Zoom needs to mute themselves thank you it's being streamed live on YouTube on the district website in addition members of the public May provide comment at this meeting through Zoom by entering the URL meeting ID and password you will see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board education will the secretary please call the role Mrs Chu here Mr sisar here Mrs guas here Mr Hong here Mrs LAX here Mrs ree here Mr Simmons here Mr Winston here president Becker President we have a quarum please rise to salute the flag I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands stands one nation Nation Under indivisible for all the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies again I'm going to ask those who are watching through VI Zoom to please mute yourselves thank you so much the board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the Daye time in place posted at the Board of Education offices written notice is also provided to The Sentinel The nework Star Ledger the home news and the Trib and the municipal clerk of East Brunswick all Board of Education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions are videotaped individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening we're going to start off this evening with the superintendent report Dr veski thank you president Becker good evening everyone as I announced earlier this week on Monday November 16th the district will move to full remote instruction until Monday J January 11th I have heard from some in our community who are disappointed and quite frankly upset about this decision and in spite of the Herculean work of our custodial staff to clean and sanitize all our facilities our safe EB bubble was about to be compromised without immediate intervention we potentially would have been forced to close anyway combined with unnecessary covid exposures on top of it and just in aside I spoke with the head of the middle sex Department middle sex County Department of Health tonight he did conf confirm that so far schools have not been the spread of covid-19 but covid-19 is beginning to infiltrate schools from outside because of community activities and Gatherings we are ready to bring more students back on November 17th and I know this shift to remote seems sudden because it was safety always comes first then we can reassess and to that end we are immediately reassessing services that students depend upon and how we can safely deliver those services to meet the critical needs of selected students I want the East Brunswick Community understand that all while adjustments have been made for November 17th uh and they've been deferred until uh January we are planning to return to face-to-face hybrid instruction when it is safe enough to do so unless covid transmissions in our community between now and the New Year derail our efforts you will continuously be updated on each new step toward our return now for some news and updates that are more fun on Monday October 26 24 students were inducted into the high school chapter of the trim music Honor Society our membership now includes 51 high school music students the selected distinguished students have met the criteria as a triam candidate for student membership and will serve as a good example always willing to assist those students who are striving to better themselves in the music department on Monday November 9th the district held a virtual ESL literacy night for K to12 Ells and their families Church Hill and high school families met with secondary ESL teachers and counselors to learn about Naviance and how this will help their children in college in career research process Elementary elll families learn tips and tricks for successful learning in our current educational envirment the East Brunswick Public Library spotlighted opportunities for adults to learn English we are thankful to the ESL and counseling department for their collaboration Memorial School along with their student council worked with the East sponsor procreation and parks department to honor our veterans the students created posters that were shown during a pre-recorded Veterans Day ceremony that included the veterans Alliance mayor Brad Cohen and Town Council Members ebtv air this program on Veterans Day yesterday American Education week is November 16th through November 20th this week highlights the importance of providing a high quality education to all children congratulations to our girls tennis team on winning the njsiaa sectional tournament this fall we had four student athletes who signed letters of commitment to play their sport at the Collegiate level we wish them well as they continue their academic and athletic careers first quarter report cards can be viewed online through parent access on Tuesday November 24th again that's Tuesday November 24th hard copies will be made available at the request of anyone without internet access and just a reminder that Wednesday November 25th is a single session day and schools are closed on Thursday November 26th and Friday November 27th for Thanksgiving like to wish everyone a safe Thanksgiving and a holiday season thank you thank you Dr veski we're gonna start off this evening with a proc pres president beger uh regarding the report is there an opportunity just to ask a couple of clarification questions or uh is that an improper procedure um Matt is this an appropriate place for board members to ask questions about Victor's report or should it be under the good of the cause of the board you're muted Matt Matt you need to un mute yourself I'm unmuted now sorry about that they can ask a question about Victor's report that's not a problem Jeff oh yeah um Dr veski thank you um for the report you mentioned uh can you help me or help the public understand a little bit more about what went into the decision uh at this time I I like you are getting a lot of questions and you know inquiries regarding decisions why when now do you mind answering a little B to no not at all um thanks for the opportunity Mr Winston so you know obviously we were all on break last week and we we acknowledged that um people gathered and some people traveled we encouraged um everyone who had planned travel uh to quarantine if they were in an area that required that quarantine before they came back we encouraged our staff that if they were traveling to let us know so they we could make accommodations for them so they didn't reenter our school environment um so as we returned on Monday we started to get immediate reports of people who were reporting symptomatic uh Tuesday we started getting more reports of people symptomatic uh and then literally the um uh hours before I had made the decision uh somebody gave me a heads up that the Urgent Care Centers need brunsw were were packed uh I physically drove to every single one uh the parking lots were completely full and people were standing in lines around the facilities waiting to be tested I talked to the middle sex County Department of Health they were overwhelmed with testing request and the backlog for testing was starting to push out to instead of like 24 hours it was longer than that I I don't want to give a definitive time but it was taking longer than a 24h hour uh to 48 hour period um and even into including last night after we already made the decision staff members were reporting uh to uh our HR director that they were symptomatic they were waiting testing uh and we expect that wave to continue all through this week uh and that was before the um the go well before the governor's announcement today that he is going to allow townships to impose an 8 o00 curfew on um non-essential activities but uh we started to see the trend and I wanted to make sure at this point we had not had a person-to person transmission within the boundaries of East buun public schools and I wanted to prevent that I wanted to prevent the Integrity of the safety of our people so we would be able to return my thought was if we start a spreader type of activity we are going to be in a position we won't be able to return because we won't have staff to staff our building uh and and it'll be a vicious cycle um so this was simply a stop Gap and and I understand some people have reported you know and have reached out to me and they're they're quite upset and I understand that and I understand they're right to have that feeling um but I'm simply trying to protect the interest of the masses of East brunic Public Schools teachers students and the families they go back to um so that we can remain as well as possible and as safe as possible I'm confident we can do that um but as mentioned in the report we do have students that have critical needs uh that we need to address even during this time and we are going to find ways to do that in a safe manner so the the parents of those students uh can feel confident that we're researching uh the best options and we'll be discussing uh in fact options with the board in close session tonight well thank you I mean I for one think those are all prudent decisions and I I agree with you and did actually witness myself the lines but using the same criteria that you're that you mentioned and bringing the uh virus perhaps home or amongst the masses can you speak to me about what uh your decision is going to be on the sports programs and other programs where folks gather I noticed that wasn't mentioned in the it was not but we are going to I am working with uh a number of other superintendents in Middle sex County uh and we're looking at options to um actually slide or modify the schedule to later in the year so those are discussions that are ongoing right now so Sports at this point though are also part of this uh shutdown we are everything sports related or anything non-instructional Mr Winston is still scheduled so I left that caveat out there and the reason why is those are decisions to be made yet it's not to say that we are going to continue with it it's to say that we are going to address each component in its Singularity because I don't have an option for the board to consider about a modified schedule for winter sports or about sliding the schedule or who we compete against and those are things I want to share with the board before I make an announcement to the community I'm very confused now but you do have the option to suspend Sports at this time for the same criteria that you had used that you had just stated am I am I right about you just said that it was I do have have that option but I bring the virus home all right but we have how do you delineate between the two I'm just our our our athletes have been really respectful and really responsible about maintaining their safety and about making sure that they're protecting themselves and the rest of the team uh so they've created their own bubbles but that's not to say that as an organization we need to look at it because there we we have all as superintendant of at least the Brunswick we have talked among ourselves about maintaining that safety for all of our students for the officials uh we still want the students to have a season it may mean that we have to slide that season uh to make it happen uh safely I I'm having trouble understanding the delineation I didn't didn't shut I didn't shut down Sports um I didn't I didn't shut down all District Operations in its totality the instructional part yes because we were having teachers that were reporting to work and then we're reporting later that they they might betic so we want to make sure that we address that issue first uh then we were going to look at sports we are going to look at every element of our utilization of the building right now sats are still scheduled in our building uh we have different activities that um that are non instructional that we can tightly control but everything is under review we are going to address them individually thank you Dr veski um what um will happen to the rest of our extracurricular activities will they um any clubs or um we are virtualized in in so many regards uh president Becker that uh a lot of that will continue as as it's going right now okay anybody else the board wishing to say anything questions okay seeing none we'll move on with our agenda tonight thank you Jeff um we're starting out tonight with a proclamation for American Education week um Lori if you would please uh do the honors and read the proclamation sure whereas public schools are the backbone of our democracy providing young people with the tools they need to maintain our nation precious values of Freedom Civility and equality and whereas by equipping Young Americans with both practical skills and broader intellectual abilities schools give them hope for an access to a productive future and whereas public education employees be the administrators Teachers Health and student service workers media Specialists custodians bus drivers clerical workers Food Service professionals skilled trade workers school security officers technical employees or substitutes work tirelessly to serve our children and communities with care and professionalism and whereas Public Schools encourage Community by bringing together adults and children Educators and volunteers Business Leaders and elected officials for a common purpose now therefore be it resolved that the East Pro Board of Education proclaims November 16 through 20th 2020 as American Education week can I please have a motion for this resolution moved moved by Barbara second Jeff second by Jeff is there any discussion Lori um I just wanted to say that this is one of my favorite weeks every year I look forward to because it's a chance for the parents to see exactly how spectacular our teachers and staff are so if they didn't know already based on the way these teachers have had to teach these kids and and take every obstacle that's been thrown at them um this is just one other thing that makes me a little sad about the way that our year shaping up so I'm glad that despite the fact that our parents won't be sitting in our buildings watching their children learn um that we're still acknowledging how important this week is so I thank you to all of our staff um and the Educators that uh make every week National Educators week but but to you guys thank you for so much that you've done I to me the most um important phrase in the proclamation you wrote ReRe Lori is public schools encourage community and it it's bringing together adults and children Educators volunteers Business Leaders elected officials so it's it truly is a community effort and that goes to every aspect of our community obviously we start right here with our incredible public education employees extends to the students and their parents but the entire town has come together as the proclamation said again volunteers Business Leaders and elected officials for a common purpose and boy if we ever need it to be United it's now so I agree with you this is a very special American Education week that we're celebrating and that we indeed are lucky enough in this District to get to celebrate every day anyone any other discussion all those in favor I opposed abstain motion carries now we come to the good of the cause of the public members of the public May provide comment at this meeting through Zoom by entering the meeting ID and password provided on the screen in front of you in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized to speak when your name is called individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which you have received your request the Board of Education recognizes the value of public Comon and educational issues to protect the privacy of all students and staff concerns regarding individual students and staff members should generally be addressed by first meeting with the appropriate administrative staff participants will be limited to three minutes duration and I want to remind the public that the good of the cause of the public is an opportunity for members of the public to come and speak to the board it is not a time to have a dialogue so please don't mistake our sitting and listening to you as anything other than we are sitting and listening to you this is your chance to show and give us your voice if there are questions they will be duly noted by the board secretary and the superintendent and someone on their staff will get back to you with answers but the good of the cause is not intended as a dialogue it's intended as a time for the public to come and speak with that being said Bernie is there anyone wishing to address the board tonight yes so far we have two individuals in the queue uh the first individual is Heather James is Jam welcome Heather if you'll unmute yourself thank you yes hi thank you hi Heather hi thank you so much for recognizing me I apologize I'm not allowed to start my video it was actually stopped by the host or you would be able to uh see my face but anyway um thank you again so I appreciate you having the public here I just wanted to you know note my frustration with the fast transition to Virtual I understand this is not a time to ask questions but I do have a few I'm a parent of Elementary School student and there have been no cases at our school there's been very little spread within the elementary schools and you know we have a lot of working parents in this district four business days is is not enough time to secure the kind of child care that is necessary for an elementary student moving from hybrid to fully virtual I mean this you know a high school kid maybe can be left in home alone or something but an elementary school child can cannot and so you know I find it difficult to see the public health reason for such short notice when I mean there there are no there are hardly any cases in in the elementary schools at all and so I just I don't know I just wanted to really Express the the burden for working parents that is caused by such a short notice and I I did wonder why it was not possible at least to keep the elementary schools open for longer to give us more time um you know maybe to consider only closing the high schools because that's where there seems to be um more spread you know and then I was also wondering about the The Learning Centers at the schools which seems like you know they seem like they will be closed um as well so um I did have also have questions about non-instructional activities but Jeff asked some of those so yeah I guess that pretty much sums it up but um thank you for your time and I definitely appreciate any response to the questions thank you Heather and by the way I didn't mean that you're uh there this wasn't the place for questions this is absolutely the place for questions what I meant is that you may not necessarily get an answer tonight if we don't have one and that's what I meant about an administrator following up with you um but Dr veski as well as the entire board listens to everything the public has to say Dr veski I noticed that you unmuted yourself yes ma'am if I could um of course I I completely understand the concern as a parent I I I understand the frustration of of such short notice uh but I felt as though given the the data that we were presented with in just a matter of 24 hours the number of people in the not necessarily in the elementary schools but within the elementary schools orbit and people who could potentially come in uh we were encouraging them to stay out to get tested uh we had enormous numbers of absences on both Monday and Tuesday those are numbers I have um in my head right now we were in excess of a 100 absences and I think excess of 120 absences on Tuesday so this was something I wanted to get ahead of and I know it's frustrating for parents but as I said earlier I want I'd rather be safe than make decisions based on the fact that we've kept everybody safe first if we had an outbreak and and that began to spread then then we are way behind and we can't keep up with it especially given the significance of the testing and people who should have gotten tested uh or potentially would need to get tested May defer that because they go to the testing centers they encounter long lines they don't want to wait and they simply say you know I'll take my chances to see if the symptoms get worse um by that time they may have been around other people it's a difficult situation and I understand your fr ation but believe me it it it's something that I felt we had to do in spite of the The Angst I created for a lot of people thank you Dr veski and thank you again Heather um Bernie uh who's next uh next we have uh Dana zii if you please unmute yourself welcome Dana good evening everyone first of all you so much tonight for acknowledging American public education week um and recognition for strong Public Schools um of course New Jersey for the second year in a row has been named number one in the country for public schools and I'm confident that East Brunswick has been a major contributor to that that wonderful acknowledgement um I want to thank all of our 1,450 members of the East brunic Education Association for their dedication their diligence and positivity as they navigated through hybrid learning and now remote learning and I want to thank our support staff for keeping our building safe and clean and prepared every single day we have done an amazing job want to thank the East Brunswick principles and supervisors Association for supporting our members of the East Education Association and a thank you also to Central Administration for valuing the work our members have been doing we made it through an entire marking period safely and with great success so thank you very much for your acknowledgement thank you to all of my members and you know I look forward to more successes as we go forward thank you thank you Dana is there anyone else wishing to address the public Bernie uh no we have no one else in the queue okay seeing none I close the public portion now we're going to have a public hearing on the school level self assessment for determining grades under the anti-bullying bullying Bill of Rights so I just wanted to remind people as a public hearing um the public has the right to com on this issue and this issue only after the presentation so I wanted to put up the screen again to give you the meeting ID and password and link to the website if you indeed wish to speak on the issue we're about to get a presentation on thank you Bernie and I believe the presentation will be L take care of that yes thank you Mr and good evening everyone the commissioner of Education developed a program to grade each public school and School District's efforts to implement the anti-bullying Bill of Rights Act or the abbr this time period was from July 1st 2019 through June 30th 2020 a rubric was developed by the Department of Education and each school was asked to self assess their schools implementation of the abbr now on your screen you will see the uh self assess ment consists of eight core elements HIV programs training additional staff instruction curriculum and instruction or Hib related information Hib Personnel School Hib reporting procedures Hib investigation procedures and actual HIV reporting it is required that the self assessment be made available for public comment the self assessment results must be approved by the Board of Education and submitted to the state by December 1st 2020 the school district's grade will be the average of the grades of each School in the district each school safety team was charged with assigning ratings based on the criteria and available documentation supporting each score the Department of Education will post all school and School District scores on the New Jersey Department of Education Home Room page and each School must post the grade received and the district score on their school's web page the school district must post the district grade grade which is the average of all the school self assessment scores on the district's homepage the scoring for each component of each element was as follows zero was does not meet requirements partially was one meets all requirements to and exceeds requirements was three some important notes uh based on our 201829 HIV self assessment the areas that required attention were additional training for Bully prevention climate Comm committee or the bpcc and additional training for Community programs the morning and the after care especially uh in order to address these areas multiple trainings were arranged the anti-bullying Specialists were trained as trainers through alas they facilitated summer professional development for the bpcc and the safety and climate teams also a training program was developed by our anti-bullying Specialists and Community program staff was trained as well based on our 2019 2020 HIV self assessment we did earn a perfect score we will however continue to have our school safety and climate teams meet to focus on building School climate through activities as well as mindfulness strategies health and wellness now three years ago our district total average was uh 77.7 uh two years ago it was 78 and uh the district total average for last year was a 7 78 again which is a perfect score now so much of working with students um regarding hibs surrounds counseling and social emotional health rather than discipline um so we will continue to support health and wellness even virtually through individual group counseling sessions social skills training student observations additional meetings to address concerns uh through RTI inrs 504 IEPs parent phone email and virtual sessions collaboration with outside therapeutic providers and make referrals for outside resources also will collaboration for Student Success Through grade level meetings collaboration with classroom teachers virtual suicide risk and threat assessments and virtual class lessons we'll also have training for parents to support their children during virtual instruction our child study teams will continue in-person evaluations virtual IEP meetings they'll monitor student performance and propos appropriate program modifications if necessary they'll monitor implementation of the I AP including all related services our Student Assistance Specialists will continue to work as our anti-bullying Specialists our 504 coordinators our safety and climate team co-chairs they'll also be doing social emotional programming uh substance abuse support and counseling our school counselors will facilitate itate inrs meetings monitor RTI interventions College and Career planning do academic advising and counseling create student schedules parent presentations and facilitate college fair and college visits just to give you a rough idea of the number of some of the supports and students that we serve last year we had 5504 total students participating in groups we had 177 students uh receiving support through 504s 1,591 through supports through IEPs we had over 34,000 counseling session case notes log that's through our student assistant Specialists and our school counselors I want to take this opportunity if I may to thank Dr veski and the board of education for for board of education for allowing us to partner with ENT effective School Solutions or ESS our Student Assistance Specialists collaborate to make referrals with ES ESS provides therapeutic intervention for most of our at risk students ESS provides therapy for individualized period of time utilizing curriculums in Anger Management substance abuse and bereavement when appable ESS provides monthly parent support and ESS also provides professional development and support for staff so thank you Dr veski and the Board of Education uh for your support um that is my report this evening um are there any questions so first I want to ask if there's anyone from the public who wishes to address this topic in the public hearing and this topic only Bernie is there anyone in the queue there is no one in the queue on this topic okay seeing none I close the public portion of this hearing Lou I actually had a question for you um the lanes that we go to to try and provide social and emotional support is wonderful um in terms of of training and educating we often think of um our School Employees in terms of giving them the training they need to facilitate the process I'm wondering if we could do a better job with educating our parents on what the process the HIV process looks like from start to finish I get a lot of questions from parents parents what happens if my child is a victim or um written up in an HIV report do they get interviewed am I there when does the board get involved does the board get involved what does an appeal look like who can I talk to so I I I just think I mean it's great that we're getting high scores but we we are a district that never rests on its Laurels and I think that we probably could do a better job educating parents on what the process is well that's absolutely uh Miss Becker thank you very much and thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about this um one of the areas that we are looking into is doing more either parent uh uh evening uh where we uh do educate parents um we also have um materials that we give parents we use the opportunities also at our um back to school nights or other venues where parents either virtually or in person have been in the schools also if there's a parent that has a question or concern our student assistant Specialists do most of the training in the buildings for staff will work with students and will'll work with families I work alongside of um uh Danielle block to help work with the Student Assistance Specialists on a regular basis so student special student assistant Specialists are really the key for each individual schools information center when it comes to anything HIV if someone has a a concern or um is you know needs additional information they can always contact my office and I'd be happy to either sit down with them or to reach out and speak to them on the phone you know however it may be as long as we're socially distancing thank you and I'm I'd expect no less you you and your staff are are incredibly committed to doing the best thing for our students staff and parents but I was even thinking about something simple um you know it's kind of like what to do if like um a one sheeter what to do if your child finds themselves involved in an HIV investigation either as the accused or the accuser just kind of bullets you know what what will follow what happens the day after what you know what what does it look like from the child's point of view um what do the parents need to do just kind of a and I think it's something that we could do for a lot of our processes um that we facilitate with stakeholders other than our staff mainly the parents come up with a what to do if kind of thing on the website or even on the individual school websites so that it would it would be a primer of source for parents sometimes um knowledge can make a situation less scary just just just a thought agreed we can definitely update uh our processes on the website and look to put more information out to the schools so that uh and also I think we could brang it up more often when we are meeting with and talking with parents so thank you Miss Becker great suggestions anyone else yeah I I have a question for you um figure does a Mr doctor you're doctor figureo now right yeah I just want to make sure I get the title right yes call me that you'd like Mr still works a question for you now during this period of time where everything's going to be virtual obviously the shift on HIV changes quite a bit and I can't imagine it takes a vacation so can you tell me a little bit about how you're going to this adapts in these periods of uh of virtual learning so I imagine the Rules of Engagement are a little different yes well as a matter of fact and and thank you for giving me this opportunity to to speak about this and uh and my my team met today basically to discuss just what you're saying um what we do now is we will make sure our student assistant Specialists our counselors our child study teams um our Specialists will reach out to students more on a one-on-one and group basis to say how are we doing what's this situation like hey you know you had an issue with this last time can we talk about it this is something that is an ongoing process already for students who are are virtual who have issues but now with many of students as we know there's a certain amount of stress and fear going back into now from uh you know hybrid going back to uh to all virtual uh we've had some some parents with concerns with that so we are making sure that um we do reach out that we do make ourselves uh extremely available uh right away because I think uh you know and we one of the things that that we have been doing believe it or not is there have there are virtual students who have not been in school all year physically that have had HIV issues on the outside in their neighborhoods in the park we're dealing with those that's part of what we do and and a big part of what we have done is really tried to even if it's a virtual counseling session with the student with the parents on both ends we really tried to make that a major part of uh what we try to look for in in in getting students to understand behaviors and also to get to the root of why some students um you know will use bullying tactics or issues you know at at certain times now I'm happy to hear that now you mentioned that you're going to be doing reach out um is there a uh a subset of students or is it your intention that the uh counselors uh reach out to their roster entirely in their student population and if so how frequently will they be doing that well we absolutely will want to reach out to students that we know may have some uh history of issues that we are presently working with uh we will be reaching out to all students at some point during you know the next few weeks hopefully we can get students when we get students back in school we can do some more uh you know grouping uh with students uh in person but we will continue to reach out and to try to uh make sure we um have communicate with every student in in the district at some level whether through their student assistant specialist through their school counselor through their nurse through an administrator through their favorite teacher um speech therapists it could be a number of ways that we reach out and then we communicate as professionals to see at what areas and what lengths and what you know Services um we may need to provide for certain students I appreciate it I hate to see this kid suffer in silence absolutely agree thank you thank you youf Barbara I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Dr Figaroa and Dr veski and the whole team of the virtual um counseling and all the different opportunities have been online I've been seeing sources of strength continuing um a lot of the wonderful programs that we have in person are virtual the counselors are reaching out to the students uh I'm sure there's always you know further reach out but from what from what I've seen we're just we know it's a tough time and the pandemic and we're I'm very thankful for all that you're you're doing us I'm sure we all are for all your efforts thank you thank you Mr thank you Board of Education we have a tremendous team and uh we we really appreciate all of your support thank you anyone else okay okay moving on to our agenda tonight the Board of Education agenda can I please have a motion for items one two and three so move Jeff move by Jeff second second by leeu is there any discussion this is a roll call vote Mark did you raise your hand sorry I'm sorry we didn't no oh okay you were just motion sorry okay uh this is a roll call vote will the secretary please call the rooll Mrs Chu yes Mr sisar yes Mrs guas yes Mr Hong yes Mrs LAX yes Mrs ree yes Mr Simmons yes Mr Winston yes president Becker yes motion carries moving on to the community programs agenda there is one item can I please have a motion for item number one so move Jeff move by Jeff second by Barbara is there any discussion all those in favor I I opposed abstain motion carries moving on to our facilities agenda can I please have a motion for items one and two too so moved move by Leu second by Heather is there any discussion I I Oh Susanna go ahead and then I had a question too go ahead yeah just a question for Mr Juliana about the um rtu Replacements um is any of this tied to the uh esip program U because I know the EIP program had funded um you know some some rtu work and and is this part of it or is it separate no uh the esa program actually did not fund any uh rtu Replacements uh these rtu Replacements are separately funded um these are absolutely essential at this time because they are essentially nonfunctioning and we need to get them up and running before the weather gets too bad okay understood yeah I was hoping we could get some incentives or you know some some help from the EIP program on this but um I guess they they didn't find any Energy savings opport well part part of it also is not only the the Energy savings that might come from it which um I I would venture to guess was not uh to a level that would have warranted or Justified um Replacements in these cases um but also um you know balancing out of the available funds that would come back to us what are the priorities to be done and we've gotten quite a lot if you remember uh the amount of funds um that uh went into the project if I recall correctly were well in excess of $10 million right so there's quite a lot of work that has occurred uh since the esa project began okay thank you you're welcome Hey Bernie was anything in the vault um uh oh yes in the vault um yes when that underground Vault was um was found what was in the vault were um two live Transformers that belong to PSG okay so this has been a long time in coming in finally getting that uh Vault um removed it's taken years literally Jeff you were a graduate of East brck High School correct well that's why I was asking understand the Vault contains some information from the year you graduated no I just lost my ID in 1979 and I'm still looking that's awes I just see if it was there that's the only place I didn't ow us do you still owe us money for that listen statute of limitations I don't know Matt no go ahead okay all those in favor I oppos abstain motion carried onto our financial services agenda can I please have an item a motion for items one through 13 so move Jeff move by Jeff second by sorry second by Susanna is there any discussion seeing will the secretary please call the role Mrs Chu yes Mr sisar yes Mrs guas yes Mr Hong yes Mrs LAX yes Mrs ree yes Mr Simmons yes Mr Winston yes president Becker yes motion carries moving on to our human resources agenda can I please have a motion for items one through three so move Jeff move by Jeff second second by Heather is there any discussion um I actually have something um for the secretary I would like to uh PLL uh for a future agenda line one on page 10 of the Personnel agenda noted I don't need to to uh do a motion that's sufficient we're good okay thank you okay is there any other discussion seeing none will the secretary please call the role Mrs two yes Mr sisar yes Mrs gu yes Mr Hong yes Mrs LAX yes Mrs Reese muted Barb Barbie muted fro I was frozen sorry um yeah yes except abstaining on number one noted if you were frozen did you need a sweater go Bernie get it Mr Simmons yes Mr Winston yep president Becker yep motion carries moving on to staff development can I please have a motion for item one so Mo move by Leu second second by Susanna is there any discussion all those Jeff yes no okay all those in favor opposed abstain carries moving on to the student services agenda I'd like to combine items one through six may I please have a motion for that so moved moved by leeo second second by Lori is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role Mrs Chu yes Mr sisar yes Mrs gloss yes Mr Hong yes Mrs LAX yes Mrs ree yes Mr Simmons yes Mr Winston yes president Becker yes motion carries moving on to the transportation services agenda can I please have a motion for item one so moved move by Heather second second second by Lori is there any discussion I actually have a question um when we are given what we're about to do with uh going uh fully remote for students um next week through um that date in January what happens to our um bus contractor s obviously we won't be transporting students Dr veski Juliana obviously our contracts remain in force and we will we will be doing professional development we will be cleaning our buses and utilizing that time to ensure Safe Transportation Services when we return Mr Juliana do you want to elaborate um I would like to uh but I'm going to defer to Mr jacobe because this law re the law recently uh was changed regarding Our obligation uh to contracted services so Mr jacobe perhaps you can uh speak to that yeah I think it's important that everyone knows right now so what happened is the law changed back in the um spring and what they said is that during a a public health emergency declar state of emergency whether it's covid-19 or some other emergency we do not have the to cancel the contracts we have to keep these people the contracts in force uh they only get paid their actual expenses so if they have any savings I.E they don't aren't paying for fuel wear and tear they can't charge us for that but the whole purpose is they don't want to have a an overrun on the state unemployment system so we have to keep those contracts in forc and the other reality is with busing is busing there's tremendous shortages of bus drivers and busing throughout the state so we don't want to be in a parallel situation where we cancel the contracts for approximately six weeks because remember we have Thanksgiving and then the Christmas recess or the winter recess um you're going to need those buses to come back in January so we will not be able to cancel them that's state law that was passed in I think it was April this year I'd like to supplement on that also and Mr jacobe correct me if I'm if I'm wrong but um one of the changes um in the law uh well prior to the change in law uh one of the things that the district uh was a leader in in the county is uh or was um uh working with each of the contracted services not only those servicing East Brunswick but other districts throughout the county and um in having them provide appropriate documentation to prove that they actually incurred costs um certainly we we would not want to be paying for uh contractors that did not have ongoing costs for staff um what we yeah what we did in in there was actually some litigation but overall we were able to negotiate considerable savings for the district and for other districts throughout middle sex County and the whole purpose is is that the contractors have to certify that they're not firing their employees they can't use this as a an opportunity to fire their employ employees and get a windfall they have to certify to us that these people have remained employed and if they don't we don't have to pay for them so the whole purpose is to keep people gainfully employed during these temporary shutdowns just of course very important thank you thank you gentlemen is there any other discussion Mark we probably don't have the answer to this but would these private companies be using their drivers to do other Roots during the during the school day I know we have to pay them I know we have to maybe you don't have this answer but is there any uh requirement on their part um not not to be using these employees during the day on on the on the taxpayers tab to do other private work well I I'd say a lot of a lot of your drivers you know are District employees um and then the ones that are not the private ones not not the emplo what the law provides is they have to be ready so if for some reason Co drops down and you you reopen just like let's say hypothetically you reopen the day after Thanksgiving they have to be there and ready to service you so I think it would be highly unlikely that they would pick these routes there's not work to be picked up um you know can an individual driver most of these companies what they have the drivers do is you know work on the buses and do other things sometimes they deliver meals um assisted delivering of meals for the free and reduced children um but I haven't seen that in any of the districts so far throughout the state where where somebody's been basically double dipping great thank you and if and Mark if we ever learned of that the first person we' contact is the middle six County prosecutor and the Attorney General because that's a criminal that's a criminal activity thank nice job anyone else all those in faor abstain motion carries I believe our student rep Den is with us tonight good evening there you go Tony how are you I'm doing well president Becca how are you good thank you we're looking forward to hearing what's going on thank you um the first thing I wanted to talk about was the high school student uh opinion on shifting to online and generally it's well received and understood um I guess prioritizing caution is very important and the notion that preventative measures are much better than reactive measures is extremely valuable and understood by the students uh especially with the trends uh that are leading to higher cases and it kind of matches the trends that I was talking about in my last report um with students there being a slight shift and more students shifting to Virtual as opposed to students shifting to hybrid so it kind of plays into that Trend and it still you know takes that cautious measure and also uh for the staff as well thank you to the staff who had been coming in every single day of school and now they have to prepare for this shift online so thank you to them um and then for the students specifically seniors uh now is kind of grind time for college applications and a lot of one of the bigger deadlines was November 1 and there's like mid November ones and then December 1st so shout out to my seniors who are going through that and then uh speaking on events uh unfortunately two large and traditional events had to be postponed to the spring one of them being homecoming which was originally planned for uh two weeks ago and then uh one of them being the Powderpuff game which was supposed to be next week those aren't canceled those will postpone to the spring so hopefully we can still see them this year uh just at a time where you know safety and I guess it it safety is less of a concern um uh but luckily last for the past two Saturdays we were able to hold a food drive which was held by NHS and um working with in conjunction with MC Foods as well at the mall and large turnout for the community from there about 2350 pounds of food was collected uh as MC food stole me and uh it's good that there was at least one event that brought out the community during this time and that's it that's all for the report um tell me do you do you hear of a lot of students taking advantage of the virtual tour that colleges are offering in place of the regular inperson tours and do you think that there's a value to them that people are getting something out of it I mean nothing can replace being there but yeah no as you mentioned nothing can really replace being there but um people have been using virtual tours especially since uh a lot of colleges Clos campus March which is right around when people would start going um just to get a feel of the school just to see what it's like and I still think that uh especially for students who are seriously considering schools if they get accepted they will go and visit and at least walk around campus regardless of whether they can go into the building or not but these virtual tours have been a great way of getting like a first impression thank you I was curious about that thank you for joining us tonight okay uh committee reports information items for the good of the cause for the board uh I know Heather and Susanna and Heather had she wanted to speak Susanna go ahead uh just uh from the human relations Council there's a Unity walk tonight at 7:30 it's um a virtual uni Unity walk as most of you know um the human relations Council has been holding this Unity walk as an expression of unity in the community for the past few years I want to thank Dr veski for submitting uh a statement for for the video tonight so it's on Facebook live it'll be available for viewing later and uh it's it's just an opportunity for the community to um just you know Express positive messages so look forward on East Brunswick human relations Council on Facebook thank you thank you Susanna I have Heather and Barbara wishing to speak Heather you need to unmute yourself Heather mine is not a committee report I just wanted to thank Dr veski and the administrative team for devising a plan that was so thorough and allowed us to open and offer a hybrid option from the first day in September um our students had the opportunity to see their schools to Walk The Halls my own children that are in the schools both transferred to new schools this year and that was a big deal to be able to be in the buildings and to meet their teachers and we gave the opportunity to begin the school year with a choice that most dists really were unable to provide um I always love that in speaking to Dr veski he often says we evaluate things one half day at a time uh he and the team have remained so transparent and open with the communication and just very data driven so I also respect this decision that they've made that now is the time to move to remote learning until January and I want to thank him and the teams for their endless hours you know just dedicated to safety and monitoring the very latest Co information and I also appreciate the hours that are going into Beyond just the learning setting um that have gone into creating modified activities and working on the opportunity to work with other districts for safe Sports I just wanted to say I feel our 8,000 plus students and my own students here at home are just in the very best of hands thank you thank you heather okay I got Barbara and then Mark thank thank you can you hear me yes okay uh this is a community programs advisory committee meeting we had one on October of the 26 and uh just uh wanted to say thank you to all those involved uh amarie Gilbert the manager of community programs and Janetta canara out of school time coord and Joe crell the director of financial services uh they were very thorough in in explaining to us the huge efforts really I mean again similar to what Heather said a thank you to our Administration Dr veski and to all the people who put so much effort into the uh Early Learning Academy The Adult School the EMP program enrichment uh there's so many different areas there's sat ACT prep remote Learning Centers just uh English um ESL for adults adult school so there many different areas and she went through for us all the cleaning protocol calls and the curriculum updates and enrichment opportunities uh in fact at one point um for the after care they were having a virtual tutoring for the students uh so that as they did their homework there were teachers available to help them with their homework so thank you to all involved and for providing the support and for all the hard work that everyone has done thank you Barbara Mark you're up um I'm aate but I never think it's too late to uh thank all of our veterans I don't think we would have anything we have in this country obviously without the men and women who have made the sacrifice to be a veteran uh Victor I thank you for bringing it up I know the programs that you in the schools are fantastic um and on a different note uh I think it is I would love to see Sports move I guess my my internet's not going good um I would love to see Sports move because I like to see Sports on but it is a tough pill to swallow to have sports occurring and in school instruction not so um I hope you do come with it an out of that to be able to move the sports they go on but it's just it is kind of a conflicting statement and uh you know it's just I know I know you'll do the right thing Dr veski but it's it's a tough one to to not have one and to have the other so thank you anyone else from the board seeing none uh we do have a need for a closed session whereas the Board of Education intends to discuss matters as follows those items in tonight's agenda and the length of the Clos session is estimated to be 1 hour hour after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene an action will not be taken can I please have a motion to go into close session so move move by leeu second by jff is there any discussion all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries board member I want to remind you to please log out and log back into the closed session for those of you who joined us tonight thank you and stay safe e
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