Reader
Browse passages, annotate evidence, and export with full provenance for citation.
so because of what happened at the end of fiscal 19 we had that available in fiscal 20 to spend in fiscal 21. and so that's the that's the sort of you know lag time that you see um you can you can do it other than that but it's a it's a lot trickier um so there's a lag between when you sort of save and when you can spend relative to e and d and it's it's got a sort of year gap in it in some respects that being said the other things you can do um that makes the money a little more flexibly available to us in the next fiscal year is that let's say we get to the end of this fiscal year and uh it looks like we have a reasonably large surplus that would go to e d now we can do things like not utilize as much school choice and so what that does is that instead of using school choice to support the operating budget which we typically you know pay for teachers with that money we use uh we don't spend the school choice money so that stays in that account uh and is available to us for next year and so we sort of spend the money this year from from you know our this year resources and then we don't spend out of that account and that counts like a different savings account so if you think about um you know we've got e and d which has a lot of constraints on it but we have a few others so like the athletics has a revolving fund um food service has a revolving fund uh capital stabilization is a revolving fund school choice is a revolving fund there are a few very specifically prescribed you know sort of funds that we have they're like their own separate bank account and so if we've er we can one way to leverage savings this year next year is to essentially kind of keep money in those accounts and not spend it uh and so then it's available for next year's use and so we do that all the time with school choice i mean we always try to you know the amount we try to use from school choice in a given fiscal year um we're trying to preserve a little bit for the you know for subsequent years uh and and we try to use you know just enough to to uh to help things out but not uh sort of zero out the balance so um you know that's that's one of the things we can do this year so if if we do uh have considerable savings in in our spending relative what we thought would be the case um you know we can we have a few options so it can go to end which is a little more restrictive than how it's used and it and we can essentially not spend out of other ones we were going to spin from but those are also you know except for school choice but even that to some extent you are fairly strictly defined as to what you can spend it on so like capital stabilization you have to buy capital stuff with it um but you know we have plenty of need so we have ways to to spend that so i don't know if that helped or not or if that just sort of muddied the water i'm sorry no i'll say yes and yeah good um so i guess um i i like kind of what you've outlined doug i think um explaining if we can in some way some of the the terms that get used which i think you're suggesting here at the beginning right so i think um like i was thinking i finally my brain finally i think processed level services versus level funded which are two really different things and i think this is a year that we might want to make sure that that in particular is clear to people um uh and i i guess i feel pretty strongly that it's is carrick said and how i'm not sure how the best way to illustrate it but i think it's really important for people to understand that a big part of our budget in terms of our expenses we really have to do we have contractual agreements for payroll we have insurance payments we have to make you know transportation utilities all of those things we don't have a choice right um we're not going to you know we don't change our building size very quickly or easily so it you know the heating bill is the heating bill right so i you know and i think people will understand that but i i think it's important to point that out and and then what you said you know the the places where where we could make changes either additions or cuts although it's likely to be cuts not additions at this point um i just was looking at my notes uh down assessments one of the figures that i came across but i i'd have to go back and look when i was going through a couple of the budgets was the percentage of the budget that comes of our income that's from town assessments versus state aid because what i saw and i i is that it's changed you know the towns are picking up a bigger percentage of the school budget than we used to and so i think it's important for people to see that and some of these things we can't do anything about in the budget but i think your comment about advocacy you know if you're concerned about these things and you care about your school you know these are things you can go out and speak about you know write write to people talk to people and and i think that that is an important point to get across as well the uh the state i'll say on that on that particular point the state has taken a uh decided point of view relative to how much the state should support local schools versus how much the schools i mean even the chapter 70 formula the tweaks to that in recent years are are in part uh you know uh keeping in mind or following that same point of view relative to the amount of uh you know i think to put it bluntly this state would say well if you want to lose local control great you can also fund it and and so that's part of it because you know the the significant drop in in the portion of the budget funded by uh by state aid is dropped uh by design and it's at a level i mean you know like if you look at the chapter 7 formula we we fund well above the what they call a minimum they're many towns that just barely make the minimums you know there's a there's a net school spending that you have to do which is basically you've got to spend at least this much on your kids and then there's you know and as part of that is you know a certain required um you know uh kind of commitment to it we we spend well above that so it's not a you know in our community you know our communities i should say it's a strong value to support schools um and we're willing to sort of spend our money that way which means we're not buying something else with it you know um and and other communities don't have that and so the state has a sort of philosophy of how much they think is a minimum that you should do um but you know there are a lot of people would argue that that's not a high enough level you know i mean we certainly take a different you know here in in our community we definitely think it's a it should be a much higher thing and we you know it's it gets into your philosophy of like well should you tax more centrally and distribute wealth or not i mean there's all those kind of things too okay well so i don't know if that's i mean maybe that's not something to get into for this but but that was something that struck me when i was looking through some of the information um i wondered too in terms of some of the the the fte cuts the things that i came across um in fiscal year 15 the business ed fte went away which i assume means any kind of business education program we had went away uh or did it there was primarily one person who was you know up you know having those classes um and they retired and so i think it was you know one of those by attrition sort of you know cuts were going to be needed um and by retirement and you know just the general enrollment in those classes i think they felt this was a program that we could reduce okay and would the same be true for the two ftes in 2019 for the child study program so i think in that circumstance um uh one of the ftes may have you know there's a basically there was a teacher and a paraprofessional in that in that i think the professional decided to retire okay they might have worked a few more years if if the job has stayed uh the teacher uh did not and so uh they were essentially going to be out of work we were um i mean the short story is the the preschool crocker farm needed staff to cover i don't know maternity leave or something and so she was able to kind of cover that and and remain employed with us but but i think that was just you know uh i think that decision was basically if we go back and sort of watch the videotape was uh something we got to reduce and this is a program that you know it's it's got the green we've got controls so we're going to make this not have this uh food service i think with the same time you know i mean not food service but the foods program where they did the cooking classes and and that sort of stuff um it's not that people didn't like them and it wasn't the kids didn't take them it was well we really have to offer math english science social studies and these are more easy to you know remove than keep and our budget dictates that so i wonder how people feel is that are those examples of things that could be used to show the change and diversity of options for the students um yeah they definitely i mean they definitely demonstrate that we offer less stuff than we used to um uh or we in some of us we've changed what we offer too i mean so we've got um you know i think we have more uh um like computer programming type classes that we had uh we've we tracked in that direction a little bit um okay you know so it's it's um i'm making a note here foods this is yeah i think one of the things i i i find i don't know a little bit tricky and enamored and and i guess the region as a whole is that i think a lot of the folks who have had kids go through the district kind of have this idea of how it was maybe 20 years ago because a lot of the folks on our council and kind of in these decision-making processes like they've had kids go through the district but it was a while ago and i don't think they recognize necessarily the changes over time um in what we can offer because of the enrollment so some of it's about the budget and some of it's you know with fewer kids there's you can offer less options because class you know you can't be offering a class to like two kids or something who are interested in like i'm just thinking about like for example foreign languages like the number of foreign languages that were available in the 90s versus now is dramatically different but some folks may not have the you know not realize that and i'm not sure if there are other areas like foreign languages or art class i mean i'm not sure where all of these changes have happened but it might be worth kind of doing kind of a rundown of um i don't know i'm not sure i'm not sure of the utility of this but i'm just thinking that i think i think one of the things that we may have as a challenge is kind of explain to folks who no longer actively are engaged you know like have kids in the district you know they may not recognize the way that enrollment has impacted and and the budget restrictions have impacted our diversity of offerings um and it may be worth saying there's not much left to cut i guess that's the thing like that there's not a tip in my mind it seems like that if we start cutting back on some of the optional things we're really gonna get lose some of the core of what i think makes amherst the great school district and i think the thing is this is that you know there are choices we make you know and have made over a period of time and there's a lot of different factors that play into it someone who's like you say when there are fewer kids in the building it's hard to offer the larger spectrum of choices i mean look at hadley they graduate i don't know 25 30 kids a year they're just not able to offer they can't hire enough staff and you know they're gonna have people come in every other year and teach one semester of something you know they just can't do that it's not a model that works in any way shape or form for them um so just the reduction in number of students is one factor but i think the other thing is uh you know we operate in and this gets back to the question on charter you know we operate in a competitive market in others we have to offer things that retain our students because the expense of kids going to charter is so great um you know you whether you like the idea of a charter school or not i know that and peter dimling's talked about this at length the funding mechanism is is kind of screwing it's hard um and and so that's that's a piece of it and i think also you just have just changes in in um in what you offer by virtue of you know society is different than it was you know in other words the sort of tech ed and technology and computer programming stuff that's a bigger component of all our lives and so you offer you try to move in those directions that are supportive of kids and where they're going to be for their future um you know it's it's uh it's my mom calling me sorry about that i'll give her a call back i promise but um which is a good sign because you know given the circumstances in the world today that's uh you know she's 81 so uh the fact she's calling me that's a good sign um but uh you know you're trying to adapt to what you offer to match what kids need to be successful um you know and and so you know the uh i was in town meeting and the guy said to me and i've heard this echoed it other times with appeals like why are we still teaching french and uh you know as a language because you know it's like it's lovely and you know but france doesn't have the influence people you know people who make the argument they don't have the influence they used to have you know it was the international language of diplomacy for the longest time um i will say i saw a short video on uh the the still existent uh french empire and the fact that you know it's kind of like the sun never sets because they have all these island nations still that uh are still under their control but anyway we can digress on that later but but the point is is that you know that's that's the kind of comparisons where sometimes making is what do we you know if we have the opportunity to change it may not be that what we're giving up is bad or you know good i mean it may be just that we're thinking oh this course this set of course offerings you know better addresses the needs of kids in the 21st century or you know the early part of the 21st century that kind of thing so those those are also complicating descriptors that we may not be able to get into but are certainly part of the the broader conversation about how this happens um but i think you know um you know that's you know that's all part and parcel so i'm you know kind of thinking about those kind of things maybe there's a sentence or something where i can at least tease the idea so people can kind of think through that a little bit and um yeah the high school has you know fewer than 900 kids this year um wow and you know it wasn't uh in in 2000 we had over 2 000 kids you know i mean it's i mean or not well not the high school the high school itself had you know almost twice as many kids in the building yeah which is part of why we did a big expansion to the building around that time student enrollment um you know technically our high school is what they call a comprehensive high school um which means it has some vocational offerings um and there's things you have to do to continue to to keep that designation um uh so you know we used to have more vocational type programs like auto body and auto shop and shop classes and we've shifted away from that we haven't had as much interest and so that's part of why you shift away from those but then we've also picked up uh some of the programming and and tech ed type stuff that's filled in that that uh that area and still kept us as a qualified you know tech ed uh and we get some grants around that um you know that helped support those programs and keep them viable for us so it's it looked like the enrollment in or the the um the students going out to vocational schools maxed out like around 2015-16 and has gradually been going back down i might have that mixed up with something else but but but we're sending fewer students out to vocational schools which means we're not paying the tuition right to send them out but i think we i assume we've done some things to keep those students in school like with the summit academy you know trying to keep some of the special ed stuff in-house instead of having to send so many out because that also has gone down right over the last few years right and and vocational is an interesting one but it is one of those where i think sometimes it it's reflective in choice i mean choice students out and charter students out also reflective of sort of politics of the town so sometimes when the town has a lot of turmoil um and and uh and there's more for lack of a term drama relative to the school committee uh people make choices to to go other places where it's not happening and that that's a factor i mean i think there's also ebbs and flows relative to vocational as far as what what kids are sort of seeing uh how actively uh those vocational schools recruit and how well they do it it makes a difference yeah i thought some of that that those high numbers might have something to do with what was going on here yeah that it it does have an impact i mean it's not you know it's not generally hundreds of students but you know you two or three well out of you know if you've got 30 vocational students and you add three more that's a 10 change that's a pretty big shift you know um the fortunate thing for vocational is that the cost for those tuitions are uh not as you know difficult to take as as the tuitions for say charter so i've just one more point which is the um not fully funded mandates and in particular the charter school funding and the regional transportation i think it's really impo i mean that's another advocacy thing um if if people are concerned but i think people really need to understand that the state has told us these things but they don't give us all the money and i also wondered about the idea money because i noticed that we had that for the first time last year and and i looked it up because i didn't know what that was and it's a federal it's a federal thing and there's um an amount that they mandated that is supposed to be funded but they haven't been doing that either yeah the so the idea is they typically spell out the letters on that it's uh for special education it's actually entitlement program we've had it for a number of years how we do it from year to year changes a little bit um and some of the size of that uh entitlement depends on your student needs it kind of acts in some ways with with who the students are and what your projected needs are and that sort of thing so that one's a you know uh some of those things uh can get tricky to sort of tease out because they're really complex in some ways well i got that off of the website that talks about that program yeah yeah instead of i don't know 40 or something they're typically funding around 15 percent right so you might not want to talk about that but i definitely think the charter school and the regional transportation should be so the great story on regional transportation is so the idea of of of regional schools uh they got created in the 50s right so one of the things they said is that oh you've got to drive all these miles to bring kids to school um we'll help you out and so the the sort of promise made was will will you know for this category of transportation we'll give you a hundred percent uh reimbursement on that cost that has never happened in 60 years never once unfortunately when stan rosenberg was was our representative they they came to understand more fully by virtue of i think stan kind of beating him over the head with this that when you cut regional transportation so classically it's funded entirely separately from from the chapter 70 in the sort of school aid and because it's funded separately they would make adjustments to it separately and so all the you know and and the representatives from places that don't have regional schools you know cambridge cut it that's fine it doesn't hurt us keep chapter seven but cut this one you know for all the regional schools it was like wait a minute that's the same as cutting chapter 70 to us and so they finally they you know it's it's non-binding in a way they passed a thing that said well if you're going to cut chapter 70 you can't cut regional agent unless you've got chapter 70 equally kind of thing it it only has i mean they've kind of honored that uh that uh that legislation but you can't truly bind the hands of of a future legislature on what they choose or don't choose to fund um but they've been pretty good about sort of at least you know if they're gonna raise your lower one they kind of keep them in step because it is it is a cut to the to the regional schools if you don't own the transportation so what you're saying is they've been balancing that out for us with funds in chapter 70.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
thank you everyone no thank you jake do we have anyone from ace good evening border vet members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence a staff is participating in virtual student entrance interviews over the next two weeks to welcome the new students to ace these meetings are the first step in building relationships with the students and their families in an effort to create a supportive learning plan specific to each incoming student on february 1st ace will run a structured orientation day to deliver expectations for attendance and course schedules behavioral norms and social emotional learning activities students will follow the orientation day schedule with their guidance groups to continue the process of building community as we re-enter the building in semester two following the hybrid model this friday ace will hold a school-wide google meet where students and staff will read works and celebrate the contributions of dr martin luther king jr in an effort to continue the efforts to promote social justice and equity a special thanks to ace english department for organizing the 2021 ace inaudible poetry contest the contest was organized by joanne tolles daniela esposito and melissa lasky students created and submitted their original pieces of work which were also shared with each other in their english classes after their works were scored anonymously by ace staff we had five finalists first place went to serena assam second place went to chris johnston third place went to michaela oyola honor roll mentions went to olivia selena and nazariah battle congratulations to all the students who share their creative creativity with us ace would also like to publicly represent two students of the week for their hard work and demonstration of the five behavioral expectations of ace nine students were nominated and two students who recognized extreme assam and derek jeremiah congratulations to both of you lastly ace would also like to congratulate our december students of the month award winners jalen batista and annie andy vasquez thank you all for allowing me to share what is going on with our ace family and stay safe everyone um we moving along on the agenda hello we're on mute gladys gladys can you hear me you're unused yes this computer have a amount of it on sorry is there any presentation dr sam uh we have discussions below so not at this time okay so we'll go and we there's an action item joe uh the civil would you do the action item please certainly madam sure make a motion that the board of education approved the 2021-2022 school calendar in accordance with exhibit 21-08 page 33 in the packet did you just step into the motion second okay second by kathy getting a question seeing none uh i entertain from kate to do the roll call joe britton aye rachel chaleski hi kate canada aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye cathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy spelino hi passes unanimously okay thank you emotion's been killed uh now we're to the superintendent's report thank you very much everyone uh again happy new year to everyone um so um one of the things i was asked was when we had initiated um bringing back our special needs students uh just to give you a follow-up on how that went so kelly can you kind of let the board know how that sure um so we on november 30th we bought back our high needs special education students they came back in a cohort a hybrid model um students came either monday or tuesday or thursday or friday we have had great success with that i have to commend all the special education related services staff our nursing personnel our administrators it really has been a team effort and i think it has been um you know a nice trial of getting kids back into school um you know in the beginning i think you know the newness of having kids back in the school some of our students with more significant disabilities um needed a little bit more coaching and training um on mass compliance and wearing but i'm happy to report that they've done really really well with it um we have seen um them just kind of fall back into place where we were before we were out in march um it's wonderful to have them back in the building and like i said i truly think i can't say enough um on behalf of all the staff that have truly just um you know put their own fears aside and done what we need to do for students um our nursing team has been phenomenal making sure our parents understand our expectations um so that every we're able to maintain the health and safety of everyone um but overall it's went well um we did have um an incident where we did have to um close down a classroom um and fortunately everything worked out fine it was an abundance of caution to uh take precautionary measures um and again um i'm sure you know anxious and overwhelming for some of the staff and families um but really um i can't say enough good things about how hard everyone has worked um it truly has been nice seeing the kids back in the building and i'm looking forward to bringing more of them back in thank you kelly um cic update just um as we move towards the tomorrow apparently the uh cisc is going to make a decision regarding winter sports they were to make it last week but they didn't do that they were working with the department of health but if i'm reading the tea leaves it looks as though they're going to categorize these sports into different um segments um that which would be um at least um um evasive regarding the uh the virus and then those that are moderate sports um so tomorrow we'll know more and my thinking is that depending on what they say um we probably will participate but with some kind of phasing much like the the summer where youngsters need to spend some time we don't even have coaches hired yet because we did not know what's going to happen with this so that has to happen uh and then some conditioning and that nature the competition would not begin until somebody sometime in february if in fact um it all comes to fruition but so we're gonna have to monitor that so um i would say that if it does happen uh we'll we'll face something in with um and then um be in a position uh to follow um the cic rules but whatever we do will have to be uh reviewed by carapanti and kathy o'dowd in terms of protocol and what they had done during the summer was mainly um you know um dividing in how many students attend um and different categories coming in and i think that's what the department of uh health for the state of connecticut is advising but we'll know more tomorrow right now we are very uncertain as to what they're going to do but i just wanted to alert you that it's coming up um psat uh it's gonna be on 126 which is that tuesday before youngsters are to be back as you know the high school is scheduled to come back february first not because of the virus but simply for the will of the administrators that the courses are at the end and um being that they're going to switch teachers it seemed to be much more confusing to have the youngsters come in and then switch the next day so they'll be starting in their regular semester course on february 1st but the tuesday prior tuesday students that have signed up for the psats will be invited in will open the entire high school we're going to bring teachers in early dan made that recommendations we've talked with the union and we've arranged for that tuesday for them to come in and the youngsters will be spread out so they could be socially distanced so we don't know how many students are will be there but we'll have the entire campus for us to run it i keep losing the agenda because my my account my thing goes out um the um hybrid model update i think i'm just going to leave that go and we'll talk about it under the reopening um we have a the budget update and uh courtney courtney has been working with her staff on a new our new um system for payroll and it's been taking everybody's 24 7. and i want to just thank her and the staff and kim's staff all of them working together it has been difficult and that's an understatement but courtney do you want to update the board regarding the budget sure dr sal thanks um yeah it's good to see everyone i've been we've been sort of sequestered for the last few weeks and i also want to echo dr saleh's sentiments publicly and thank um specifically the finance and hr teams for just really going above and beyond taking us to the 21st century so we can have some more transparent budget reporting as well as you know um a payroll system that really you know honors is able to have us have you know our staff can do work more efficiently provide you know more efficient information to people about about benefits and their pay and we just love it and we're really excited about i want to thank everybody um so we're excited to kick off the budget season that's that now we that's our full focus and attention um i wanted to give an update on the timeline and the schedule um i'm really i'm happy to be working with the proposed draft finance committee um kate kat kathy rich um and catherine and al um i'm looking forward to working with all of you um we need to uh it's a little bit of a truncated schedule um i want to just not lie to everybody we're a little bit behind so we're going to have to catch up um we're going to be presenting to the board on 127 um and we're going to need to have a vote on 210 to be able to make our deadline of it's always this valentine's day deadline with the uh with the city so there'll be a lot of work next week i'm going to work with kate to arrange a time um for us to get together a committee i'm with rich who isn't here but i spoke with him today and he's also you know looking forward to rolling up the sleeves and we'll work with you to get as many as we need um to have understanding of the budget um we did have a preliminary meeting and it looks like you know even just to roll forward our existing budget and after life a little bit challenging um it's about 5.3 percent um and you might wonder why is that normal cost of inflation is about three percent um that's because if you'll remember we all lived through it we didn't get much of an increase this year during the pandemic year and the cities and you know challenging straights as well so there's some things that we were fortunately able to do as a result of the cares act funding that are cares act related and eligible but that have an ongoing cost so i'll just give you like two little examples and we presented this to the finance committee but um you know we've spent thus far approximately 7.7 million dollars on you know covet and pandemic related items last year and this year combined a little more than five million dollars this year and some of that is for social emotional supports we've um purchased some software um that will like to continue ongoing um that has been tremendously helpful that kelly's rolled out with with um staff and also um there's some maintenance costs to some of the online learning that we're going to be talking about as part of the budget to see if we want to maintain some of those components as well as some staffing um with our cares money we were able to pre you know hire some counselors and then also some student support staff that have helped flesh out some of the things that we've been doing that cares because dr kazmira's team has been doing this year um yeoman's work to get everything aligned with kids learning at home so some of those things will be what we'll be talking about as part of the budget i believe it's in your packet agenda because it was presented at the uh a finance um meeting uh to the board on december 21st um and that outlines sort of the details of what we have and are purchasing for cares um to keep our families our children safe in the schools um and we also presented an update which is in your packet on the current budget because if you ran the current budget right now it would look odd in that it would show you that there was a deficit of 1.3 million dollars for this year so we just explained that to the board in this committee that um that's just real that's related to that braided funding that we had used this year basically um it's just aligning all the grants with the board operating budget to show that it brings us into balance for this year so as far as the budget process goes like i said we'll be kicking that off um working with kate to schedule a series of meetings next week um in in the goal presenting to the board at the next board the 127 meeting um and again it's it's a big number it's a 5.3 just to do the carry forward so we're gonna have to make some decisions about um about the budget and and the priorities of the budget um within that that context um so thank you and again looking forward to working with everyone thank you much more to come about the budget um no doubt so um i have two things but i i see on here i think uh before you move forward is it possible you know it's at this time any board members having a question for courtney that they can answer this sure okay is this one i don't want anyone saying that have been left out are there any question for courtney's from board members quick inquiry why don't we get something in writing that we can look over or sure for a proposed budget for the upcoming year or for this year for the upcoming year yes sure um prior to the committee so um al would you like something this let's see what's today would you like something on by friday i could get you something by friday that would be great um i need to peruse and study i'm not a flash genius like rich generally oh yeah i'd be happy to so thank you you're welcome thank you and courtney you'll be sending that information out to all board members right and yeah you can't yeah if you'd like lettuce i can send it through i could send it through your office or just directly to the board members whatever you'd like right okay okay so everybody looking at the same information sure okay okay i don't know do you want me to move on or yes dr sal i just want it that's okay kim do you have something on protocol yeah um so part of what we're doing um as we turn the new year and we're looking at the way that the meetings are running um we're looking at um who's who's speaking who's making presentations and trying to kind of sketch out where we think the year will go and one of the things that has come up is for us to take a look obviously we've been making some changes with public comment and comments from different representatives because we've been in this virtual world so one of the things i did speak with gladys a little bit about was um i think that you are hearing from the um the faculty and teachers union but you're not hearing from the administrators union and that's something that has come from us to put forward for you to consider and i think the reason why is because many years ago actually prior to my arrival you'll all remember that building principals and administrators and teachers were all in the same union and when they separated we retained the speaking role or the presentation role for you all for the teachers um but we never put in anything to parallel with the administrators so one of the things as we're looking at um at organization of your meetings is to put that out and i know gladys wanted me to raise it in the context of the meeting so you could think a little bit about going forward if you want to make any tweaks or changes if you want to put any time constraints anything like that going forward i i i assume we'll get some feedback and a discussion about that okay thank you ken there's two things one um you're going to start reading about um a proposal made from the connecticut association of public schools superintendents and also um by katie roy who is no longer executive director for the for the um budgeting uh project the finance project in connecticut um you're going to and i'll at the next meeting um they just published something and i will get it out to you but ostensibly uh the caps is looking at redoing uh ecs for the entire state to revamp the in the entire thing and over a 15-year period and have a system that is um dependable and uh recognizable with a two and a half percent increase per year 15 years they're also looking for the state to step up to their 50 commitment with the local taxpayers um looking at also in two years catching up to the excess cost funding mechanism um the finance project on the other hand is looking at it much more aggressively i think the number presented to me was like in order to achieve equity and all this is based on equity and disparity between um i'm going to use the word haves and has not for whatever reasons and uh that it's about 649 million dollars to put into the formula uh with waiting for ell much more than we have uh for special ed uh students and for uh reducing reduced and free lunch numbers to bring in equity up to um programming they would like to see that done in a year so um we'll probably hear on both accounts i could have we'll talk about the caps one but i don't want you reading about something and not at least knowing there's something in i noticed today with something from ryan bingham our um our lobbyist uh setting a time for us to meet with our constituents our you know legislative group and i think he did ask us to come up with a time they suggested a time and a zoom meeting and we'll probably talk about these things so at the next meeting i'll bring this up and we can for discussion um and i'll share it with you because it is in it's about i think 30 points that they're making and then i can share with you but um the last thing i want to mention to all of you um just and i said it the other night i'm i'm a little dismayed at some of the things that i'm reading um and you know i know everybody is frustrated about coming to school and kids bringing home and the social emotional issues the learning issues but i gotta say um the board has been um very mindful of the needs of parents communicating with me trying to put us in a position to do what's right regarding safety and and bringing kids back the teachers as well i think as aaron pointed out today and some of the things i've been reading and not only are not accurate but um it's talk talking in ways that they i in my view is somewhat disparaging of some of our own neighbors some of our teachers um parents that we have in the district um i i just would like us to be calm um and as we come back and just to know that the decision that we've made i know that folks don't agree with all of them but the lens always was safety the new lens is looking at safety and practice and we'll talk about that in a little while but i did want to mention that and um hope that the um you know i don't have control of social media but uh it is somewhat um asparagine to me to see that that out there in the public so um i just want to make that statement um madam chairman i don't i don't have anything else uh other than that we can move into the next phase if you would like yes yes dr sale you can move into the next thank you i just let me know get my my uh that my program up here again um uh okay here we go um all right so okay um let's talk about the um first thing i just want to mention the summit real quick um you know the the formal follow the function at the meeting before the meeting tonight you heard about all of the work that has been going into crafting what the division for secondary education that will be melded into um the space that we have at the summit um i'm sure um i'm gonna we're gonna have to i'm gonna have to talk to joe we'll have to put together a uh a meeting for the um facilities uh regarding uh looking at some med specs that we're gonna need to move over to the board for approval that will have to then go to the city regarding uh the application even though the project's been approved uh we still have ed specs to deal with i i received something this week from mr cavo that said that there's a committee that will be operating in the town i see courtney and myself will be part of that uh as i say i'm not exactly sure if that's quote the building committee because the separate from the board of ed is a building committee that nurtures the project as they move through so as soon as i find out more information joe i will get to you i'm sure we're gonna need a facilities committee the osborne project uh courtney i know i would like to if there's anything you could tell the board about that you may have more information than than i have on that would you like to do that uh just we're on on track they've been in it the architects have been um in the building um they're in the design phase and we're still on track for our scheduled um opening um for osborne or scheduled start for osborne of this upcoming summer so it's moving forward along they might even start a little bit earlier um we're looking to secure a lease we've secured a lease for um the um building uh riches facilities group and we're looking to secure a lease for um the registration and ambits group um for them in for a one year time frame short term so that they have you know a place to to be until the project's completed so and just for the board regarding building the granville project has a temporary occupancy thanks to kelly and her staff who shepherded through it's been really really difficult with covert things have not been delivered and um people became sick and couldn't work i mean it's just been one thing after another um but monday i'm sorry no tuesday uh it'll be open and uh kelly you want to update the board quick sure we'll be moving um six of our preschool classes over to our new preschool site at granville um we will only be occupying the top floor of the building um as that is the floor that is finished and we received um you know uh the official word from the building department as well as the as well as the fire marshal um to move into the top floor of the building uh that will be enough to um house all of our classes for the beginning of our return to school we will then move into the lower floor of a couple more classes um starting a week or two about two to three weeks later is our anticipated timeline um the i have to just thank um you know rich dalbert and his team um the cabinet team courtney uh kim kevin and sal and kara have been wonderful um honestly this was a team effort everyone from the city on down we would not be opening if it was not for everyone's combined effort so the building looks beautiful we're really thrilled to have our preschool kids there and we'll be even more excited when we can occupy both floors of the building but for right now it meets our needs our young learners will be coming back and it does um you know it feels like a school for preschool when you walk in which is really nice so at some point we should have a walkthrough what the board would like to say it right yeah i think probably a couple weeks out once the entire building is is finished it would be appropriate to do so that would be great okay good so let's go to uh reopening update and we'll we'll fold in that hybrid model in there as well uh kevin so you want to put up the um presentation that we have while uh he's doing that i'll have um kara um would you just upgrade the board about the model itself for the hybrid and then we'll go into the uh the reopening or so just briefly um you know nothing much has changed uh with the 612 hybrid model um we're still incorporating the distance learners into the the hybrid classrooms um but we've had a lot of meetings leading up to this opening to just double check um to see if there's anything any other ways that we can enhance um some of the ways that we're moving forward so um we have uh talked about providing just a little bit more structure to the at-home students learning day to make sure that you know they stay on track with their schedule they're going to be coming in two days a week and they'll be off two days a week at home doing asynchronous learning but how we can provide a little bit more of a touch point so we're going to be doing three touch points during the day picking up probably after the second week so it'll be a morning session sel students will be invited to join their classmates in the morning to be a part of that sel warm-up activity and to kind of overview the day they'll have an opportunity at the end of the day which was part of the original plan for questions and check-in with the teacher sort of the undivided attention of the teacher at that point in the day but the part that we've added in um is a a lesson touch point mid-day so on so on either for example if a student was in the thursday friday cohort in person monday and tuesday they would have either a literacy lesson or a numeracy lesson and be invited into a portion of that lesson whether it be the practice and review or part of the mini lesson and that'll change each week depending on on what's happening in the classroom and the coaches and specials will be making special attention to create the lessons that would best serve um that that purpose of of in home and um in home and in pert at home and in person learners um so we think that that'll provide some light touch points to across the day to provide structure for at home but still attending to our philosophy that when students come into school the teacher's really giving the preponderance of their attention to the in-person learners so that we're not keeping kids on the computer who are in school all day uh which tends to happen when students do we're doing full day live streaming so we still do not want to do that um so these individual schools will be providing updates for parents to talk through that and then teachers will be sending those schedules out the first week back in um will be just the end of the day uh check-in we want to make sure that the focus of the first week of school is really about getting students in orienting them to their buildings their classrooms to safety protocols and just getting used to the idea of what six feet mean in the classroom and how we have to operate so um buses will you know as we work through this model the buses will be rolling in over the next couple of weeks you know will that morning touch point um could happen at different times and so we have to be a little bit flexible in the beginning until we establish the buses and the timing of all of those between the schools on on this busing schedule so parents can expect three touch points after the second week of returning um some of that may happen a little bit more quickly depending on how quickly those classrooms and the schools get into a routine so we're excited about that we think that this will help to enhance the at-home students day for the hybrid students okay madam chair can i ask a question on the k-5 program that's appropriate it's okay with me if it's okay thank you um thank you re real quick i know whether this is first dr sal or kara how are we handling lunch for the elementary if i remember correctly we were eating in the classrooms is that still the protocol it depends and that that's part i believe part of this yeah part of joe we're going to talk about that okay did you the six through 12 you know is grab and go right that's a mixture of some in school uh summing classes some in cap we'll talk about that in here okay i'll hold my question for later thank you all right kevin um i can't see it so kevin is the liaison regarding uh the reopening um so um i'll just have some preparatory remarks and i would like him to take us through that you all knew that in october we had that turnaround which was um difficult to do but we did because we felt it was important the information that we had at that time and the information regarding practice is much different now and it was based upon um the practices in the state of connecticut and information that the state board of that had been collecting and disseminating to the 169 towns um currently every town is in the red there are towns that exceed danbury's numbers in terms of infection rates and um per hundred thousand so um many of us are there they're very one or two that's in the moderate um so you know then then going back with some real questions and that's those questions we talked about at the um the medical advisory meeting we had uh when when we turned after the holidays as you know we had indicated to the community that our intent was to take this new information and with a wait time of days after the holiday because of the impact of the virus we would move towards an implementation of opening our schools beginning with the elementary going to middle and then high school um so uh we convened the meeting with the um with the uh advisors and we had a lot of questions as you know there's a new virus strand there's many things and what we were advised in terms of what to think about is that that the schools themselves in terms of transfer rate what's bearing out is that it's very low among students the adults are the issues that we're having in terms of community spread and not so much teacher spread at the school itself but community spread and the doctors had a unique kind of perspective on that particularly those that um dr begs who was practicing and is connected with um danbury household and dr fong who who's been in the community for a very long time in pediatrician the the evidence is that the community of adults who are now are very knowledgeable about the virus the spread of virus and those activities that puts people at risk when they leave the institution in our institutions of schools and to to be knowledgeable that our our staff should be aware of and things that they should be doing or not doing in order to keep themselves uh in a position to uh to be able to come and come to work regarding the school it was very clear that those schools that have put in the mitigation strategies i mean we've talked about ours somewhere in the vicinity of i don't know five million dollars between events desk i call them dividers these these little plastic things so kids can be behind them we have special garb for more intense programming for students that those mitigation strategy of social distancing um we've gone so far to ask folks not to come together for meetings or meetings should be done virtually in order to not to prevent any any spread we spent a lot of time in cohorting um so they were able to do tracing if it becomes necessary um we have set up these cohorts that could be by bus so that we can do notifications uh when when in fact it happens um the the uh evidence that we're getting back now it doesn't there are some spreads in schools uh as the lady and as a parent indicated today i mean just before in the opening and the remarks from the public the schools in danbury have been open but they've also been closed primarily for um some of them because of staff the inability to get staff and to operate so um you know that is more of a concern than i have in terms of that happening than i am of um what would happen at the buildings because i'm very confident that we uh will have the mitigation strategies um to um to do what we need to do to keep our youngsters and everyone safe serendipitously it seems as though you know we may have hit a sweet spot inadvertently that the vaccine now um is is moving very aggressively i mean this whole timing may fall in the position where as we as we um start implementing the re um reintroducing our kids to in-building learning and personal learning may coincide very nicely with the vaccination process um and um that is evolving every day um one of the things this is the board we're understanding that um you know they may um use the vaccine for everyone and then schedule the second one um as more vaccines coming so um kim and kathy o'dowd have been uh and carol prundley brittany have been very active in in looking at that um i'm just hoping that it does coincide with what we're doing so you know when i see all of those things coming about the the teachers being knowledgeable about what to do what not to do waiting these two weeks um and then bringing our kids back slowly i'm sure we're gonna have some hiccups there's no doubt about that we're gonna have some closures no doubt about that but i think it is the way that um what's happening um not just in connecticut but throughout the country uh and i believe we'll be in a position to be safe with that said there is a presentation that i'd like to go through and open up the questions i know joe had one about food and maybe some other ones but do you want to move on from here kevin for me please sure give me one second while you're doing that for the board we're going to be sending home a notice on a robocall on sunday night and wednesday just reminding teachers and students about um if in fact you know some of the healthy protocols if you're not feeling well to stay home where you could be tested if you need to who to contact just as a reminder as we phase into this so sunday night and wednesday nights we'll be sending you at home to the two hybrids uh groups that are coming in and just for your information we have about 4 000 students that are on dl that are the 12 000 students that we have so you know you have eight thousand coming in uh four thousand at a time on the high coverage that'll be spread among our all our campuses so that's how so go ahead kevin dr salphus i cannot share for some reason cara i might need your help here can i carap can i share my document with you to share with everyone yes yes send it to me and i will try to get that kevin as we do that and karen there are only three pages okay do you want to start kevin or you want to wait for it to come up uh kim while he's doing that you want to update them on the vaccine please sure um one of the things that's ongoing um as we're kind of getting ready for re-entry um we're working simultaneously on a number of fronts um but the the vaccine okay the way that this runs is that there is um a system that's set up by the cdc with support from the local health department where once folks are deemed eligible within phase 1b which is about to open they then ask us for basic information which includes name email address and telephone number once all of that information is uploaded into the vaccine registry then the system takes over we sort of step out and notifies those people who've been input that they are eligible that they can set up a file and register and they can select a vaccination time and location so right now kathy o'dowd and i are working very closely together getting all of those lists together you might recall i believe we've said in a prior meeting we've already gone through this process with our nurses and occupational therapists and physical therapists and soon to be if not already started slps speech and language folks those are all people who hold certificates that are connected to the department of health and that was how they were designated in the 1a group so we're preparing for the move to the 1b group and right now we are marshaling our lists together and getting sufficient resources because we can't just upload the information all has to be entered individually so we're going through the process of doing that now um and it's our hope that we'll be able to complete that we'll round the bend at some point next week i would think or the next couple of weeks to get everyone in we're about 2 000 employees it's going to take a little bit of time but i want to thank kathy for her leadership on this along with carapanti um they've been amazing and they've responded to our concerns about groups and and who's being included and it's going to be a very heavy lift but i think we'll get there eventually um and we're hopeful that that's going to actually help us give us a little bit more comfort as we continue to roll open the buildings and we have more staff and students attending i'm sorry kevin go ahead i see you're up there okay so so one i just want to take this opportunity before we get started and these are three very quick slides but i just wanted to share with the community um our principals um our teachers um our school custodians safety advocates secretaries nurses everyone has done an amazing job in helping to get our buildings ready for the reopening next week and momentarily we'll have the phases and what we should share in the phases that dr sal spoke to um a couple of minutes ago um one i just want to also thank courtney and her office on the director of facilities director of safety safety advocates um has has joined me visiting all of the schools and speaking to the principals and assessing their readiness and getting feedback from them for any last-minute resources they might need needless to say you know we had done this previously in october and certainly we felt like we were ready to open then we feel even more ready now um given the latest uh development with uh resources that courtney was able to ensure that all of our buildings had and so we will be a one-to-one um desk shield in every in every classroom in the district and so you know we're really excited about that and in addition to of course the expectation is all of our students are still expected to wear the mask as as as our bass policy as indicated earlier next week we will start with the sound that you want me to speak to the schedule yes just go right through it okay okay so next week uh my elementary schools we are expecting elementary students next week for in-person learning and so for the families who have selected to send their children to school for in-person we will start the day after martin luther king's holiday and we will start on tuesday morning january 19th and that will be our k-5 students the following monday we will have our middle school students starting and that will be our six to eight students and that will be monday january 25th and then a few weeks later initially we had planned we had considered a couple of different models uh one we had considered a 612 starting on january 25th and then we had considered um monday uh the following monday and that would be the following monday i think we were considering before february first and after consultation with the high school we thought it was best so that we don't have an additional transition at the high school we thought it was best to start clean with the new semester um and so that's why we're starting on monday february 1st with the high school we also just wanted to give some updates to the community to the board um you know some updates regarding contact tracing um and then also some updates regarding quarantining uh we received recently some updates from the cdc and department of health yeah i know kathy is also on this call for anything that might might not get get correct but we've received some updates from the department of health and the 14-day quarantine and expectation has been relaxed a little bit um you can go as we can have a quarantine period as as as minimal as seven days up to 14 days and we have decided to choose a 10-day option um and this was after consultation with our local health experts including dr fong dr begg cathy o'dowd and and um and cara punty um and so that's that's why the the ethan the letter that our families received last friday from dr sal uh it reiterated that expectation and so in the event we do have a positive case in the community um or if you're a primary contact uh the expectation is you will need to quarantine for at the minimum of ten days um the the contact tracing protocol um well certainly you know unfortunately and as a doctor sal mentioned um we've had other districts who have who have been back in school um unfortunately you know there have been times when classrooms have had to close down schools they've had to close down for short periods of time and certainly we anticipate those things as well and we are and we are ready quite frankly we have gotten some practice over these last couple of months with the programming that we've had and and between kathy o'dowd the nurses at all of our buildings and the protocols that our principals have put in place which includes um sign-in sheets at every single classroom in the building including into anyone who enters into building that staff i mean enters the building will be able to quickly respond to any uh positive cases in the school community um so our readiness we feel like we're in a really good place to open our schools next week um and quite frankly look forward to looking look forward to opening our doors for our staff and and also looking forward to opening our doors for our kids again could you speak to the lunches yes sure and and joe i did hear your question earlier and so the k5 lunch protocol is is it's not and so in the majority of our schools lunch will be served in the cafeterias uh and that in that and for the majority of our k5 schools that is the case in some instances uh lunch will be served in the classroom um and that is almost in one school we have lunch being served in every classroom at that elementary school um in another in a couple of other schools we have some of our lower grades kindergarten in first grade lunch is being served in a classroom in those schools and it's really about how the principal was able to provide um provide supervision during lunch and whether they were able to provide supervision in the cafeteria or not help to determine whether or not we can have lunch in the cafeteria um for all of our students who are having lunch in the cafeteria um we have um we have limited the movement um in those spaces so that kids are not congregating at any point and so we have worked with the cafeteria staff and i just want to also applaud that group as well because they've been tremendous and very cooperative in this process and so they will make sure that they have lunches ready on the tables for students as they enter the cafeteria um we will also have shields on the table helping to separate the students during the cafeteria time as well and the cafeteria staff and additional custodial staff that will be brought on will be available um to wipe down those spaces in between lunch waves um and so it's in some schools where we have you know maybe more students than we would like in one cafeteria uh wave we've also opened up the the gym the the adjacent gym space and so in some of our schools we even have um tables uh tables set up in those spaces as well to to ensure the social distance kevin if i could follow up on that um might i think i have a question on this in terms of just the sheer number of kids eating in a room we have cafeteria staff and teachers on lunch duty and a whole bunch of kids unmasked it it seems to me that if we were a restaurant we wouldn't be allowed to do this the the covid 2.1 sector rules for restaurants it's fifty percent six feet no more eight per table are we complying with i mean i don't i'm not envisioning a scenario by which we can comply with those rules how do we justify this i'm just a little concerned with the exposure so so joe our capacity in most of our elementary schools is 100 to 200 250 kids in our elementary schools and and and i would say up other than park no one really has more than 40 students in the cafeteria uh and so in in our you know our traditional rectangle long cafeteria tables we have no more than three students at that table and so all of them are six feet apart um over the years we have you know really for efficiency's sake we've gotten these round octagon-like tables to fit eight kids at a table um and even at those tables we only have three students sitting at those tables and and in that case we will also have barriers in the middle um and so and so we were mindful of those social distancing you know protocols and as you might imagine our our our our principals and and other staff members raised similar concerns as you and and in spaces where we felt like there were too many students um in one room we've asked those principals to open up an additional space similar and so in this case um as an example morris street um they have like a little stage in their cafeteria so we've asked them to also open up that space and have a couple of tables and have a couple of tables um opened up on the stage to continue to social distance um the same thing with south street we've asked them to open up their gym because their cafeteria is so small but even in those cases you know the principal there has about 35 36 kids um and uh 36 kids three year table and like 12 tables in that space where typically we might have you know eight kids at one table at a time um you know times 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
what i should have said is that all tk8 sites would have a baseline of a four hour community liaison position and a four hours of the library aid and eight hour of a clerk that would be the baseline and then once sites received 750 as we've been discussing here the sites will receive an additional hours to max out at six hours for community liaison and six hours for library assistant and uh capping out at 1.5 um of a fte for the clerk positions so um after the meeting i realized that i i misspoke um and as we should do is when we make mistakes we should quickly try to correct them so i apologize and um the correct information is what i was provided there i um on the slide before you describes what the um support staff changes would look like in the 21 22 school year as you can see on the support staff additions have been represented in green and the reductions in uh red um and as you can see there there is neither on on this slide so support staff would remain status quo um in this 21 22 year moving on to the following year the 22 uh 23 year my apologies uh you'll see that there are some changes um starting with the counselors um on the on the schools that would be phasing out uh the counselors would be um there's a total of three counselors at schools uh four five and six combined two of those counselors would be going to the um new school seven and eight which would be then um seventh through twelfth grade um so you'll start seeing an increase in counselors um would become the high schools and then the remaining one counselor would be um be responsible for the three remaining middle school sites that only has eighth grade and that's reflected in that percentage the um ap position uh at the school is four five and six on the currently they have a 0.5 um so right now they they're each of the schools um including or our tk8 side has um a 0.5 of a of a counselor of a assistant principal uh in up here you'll see that they'll be reduced uh by the um by that number and then the assistant principles would be going to the the high schools so from 7th to 12th grade and so the um the administrator left would be the principal covering just the one one grade at the eighth grade level if you go to the bottom as you start seeing the new schools and the uh what's represented in green um you'll see that the staying consistent with what we have been talking about with regards to social workers uh at the tk8 school we would increase by a half a half of fte of a social worker and then the 7th through 12th grade sites would have a full-time social worker as i stated earlier they'd have a full-time counselor coming from the middle schools and then an additional full-time assistant principal again as small but just a a small nuance just so we're calibrating if you can go back uh natasha just just so we're all on the same page right now the plan in this year the schools would not be seven through twelve schools it would be seven nine ten eleven twelve uh and this year next year there will be 7 12 just again just a small nuance but just to make sure that we're all on the same page this year they are not 7 12 and 22 23 they are only 7th and then 9 through 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
this has been as you know a very difficult budget planning year and because of the devastating projected cuts to the school and classroom levels we have been providing information about programming and service impacts principal voice has been critical in this process particularly as they both inform the internal decisions but also are critical to providing information to families about the fiscal challenges at hand and what these challenges are going to mean for their own children we engaged in an internal tri-level process to develop our budget to determine where reductions would be made with core assumptions about protecting the teaching and learning infrastructure including the design of our curriculum core core we conducted a tri-level process that include included a state level review complex level plans and school financial plans in addition we created a budget program review subcommittee this year to help inform state level review i pulled together three subcommittees focused on business function business function efficiency school level efficiencies and instruction and equity each subcommittee had tri-level representation we met weekly in the month of october the subcommittee identified essential functions to preserve as we face budget reductions the subcommittee's recommendations were reviewed by tri-level leadership i also sought feedback from the hawaii executive collaborative and education advocates in the state i presented proposed operating budget with imposed 10 percent budget reduction to the board of ed on december 3rd 2020 and the board approved the proposed operating budget now that the board has adopted a budget which has been submitted to the executive office the hard lift is now preparing and organizing our work for these massive cuts and changes which are underway cuts at this level have implications around staffing programming scheduling and so forth we will be undergoing impact planning throughout the spring semester based on decisions made throughout the legislative process on january 1st i will be presenting the school financial plan impacts to the board of ed including staff reductions staff reduction numbers by employee type and by school so schools have now completed their financial plans and we're going to be presenting what that means in terms of which areas are going to be cut and what staff are going to have to be cut in order to meet those new financial levels i've also begun the process to engage i've also begun the process and continue the process of engaging parents and and community on our budget on our budget from this this month through march so january through march we are hosting community convenings in each district to discuss with parents our doe financial outlook the status on our significant budget cuts what we're requesting of the legislature and we're providing them another space as parents to give us continued feedback about these difficult budget decisions and priorities from their perspectives especially because of the impact on their own children as hallett will now speak to the potential budget cuts on the next slide you will see that we stand to absorb over 400 million in cuts each year and i would say that our operating core and mission of teaching and learning is at risk of major disruption unless we address some of these needs thank you we're on slide 12 potential budget reductions now we know and appreciate that that senators that you've been in in direct communication with schools in your area and you've been hearing about the fiscal challenges they're facing um this slide is to help to put context on what um what is behind much of of what you've been hearing about um as mentioned in november december schools were engaged in developing their financial plans for next school year and they were factoring in a minus 10 uh budget reduction related to the program review reductions uh that that is uh what we're looking at for the first year of the next biennium the planning they're doing now is for next school year which is the first year of the biennium that is before you there are three major impacts to our budget for next year causing significant shortfalls that will decimate our public school systems these are a 100.2 million dollar non-recurring reduction imposed in the current fiscal year that has been carried forward into the next year program review reductions totaling 164 million dollars per year and the yet to be confirmed but looming labor savings adjustment for our employees so this slide shows that when factoring in the fiscal year 21 reductions being carried over the new program reductions and the looming labor savings all three that are contained in the executive's financial plan we are currently facing faced with a 22 reduction to state funding for public schools so these are the three impacts totaling the 393 million dollars for public schools that we need your help with going going a little more into detail about each of them starting with the starting base column this is the fiscal year 2021 general fund appropriation provided to us by governor by the governor which includes the folding in of previously approved collective bargaining and is less the non-recurring cost of 1.5 million dollars for for early college this starting base that we use show here does not include the 100.2 million dollars of fiscal year 21 budget cuts that last session were proposed and presumably adopted by the legislature as one-time reductions if if you want to see more details on that that's in appendix in the appendix is item 11 for details on what makes up that what made up those reductions for this year now the next column the 100.2 million dollars again for fiscal year 21 was intended to be one-time non-recurring reductions in the development of the executive biennium budget these non-recurring reductions were maintained for the new biennium so the department does not yet know how these cuts will be extended for fiscal year 22 on top of the program review reductions these cuts have not been factored into the school's financial plans for next year next column is the 10 program review reductions based on the august 17 2020 executive memorandum each department submitted budget cut proposals the part the department prepared a package of reductions totaling 10 percent or 164 million dollars using a process that was described by superintendent on the previous slide these are the cuts that on the december 3rd on december 3rd the board of education reluctantly approved with the reluctance in large part due to their awaiting further details on how schools would be implemented implementing the reductions these are the cuts that schools have been adjusting to in the recent in their recently completed financial plans and now that the first phase of the financial plans were completed by december 31st the department has been compiling the impacts and as mentioned previously will be presenting them to the board of education at their next meeting on january 21st the next column labor savings this is only being included for discussion purposes the form of labor savings what it ultimately may take are subject to negotiations between the union and the governor's office so again these are the three impacts totaling 393 million dollars 22 percent that public schools need your help with so dr k legislative so if we go to slide we're going to talk for a few minutes about legislative priorities the national council of state legislators has had a clear framework for over two decades about best practices in public education financing it's a national best practice to develop an education budget that provides equity stability predictability and adequacy per their guidance hawaii's weighted student formula is a strong example of equity students differentiated learning needs awaited and provided differentiated funding support our principals causes and staff and a a public partner a private partner serve on the committee on weights and thus our education experts program experts provide input into that equity formula it's an outstanding design in hawaii we have defined our legislative priorities therefore around the other three best practice areas that need further vetting if you go to slide 15 i'm providing a summary of of our three legislative priorities for this for this legislative session the department believes access to quality public education must be protected for all students therefore we are requesting that the legislature restore the 100.2 million dollars to hawaii's base budget the base budget provides stability and predictability that is at the heart of long-term planning for excellence and the removal of this 100 million from the base budget has destabilized our schools we are also requesting that we retain and maximize federal relief funds to stabilize public schools particularly on the instructional side we must address our student instructional needs ensure that there are no lost generations of students because of this pandemic this does mean that if we're prioritizing our federal relief funds on the instructional side we do have operating costs that we don't have an answer for how we're going to address third we are asking for changes to state law to provide fiscal predictability and reliability for public education and so we will be putting forth legislation a request for legislation focused on a maintenance of effort approach to stabilizing year-to-year funding that allows for predictability and stability for our school principals the current budget reductions limit the department's capacity to deliver on services that support student learning especially at the school level and threatens a safety net that the state of hawaii has come to rely on through its public schools legislative priorities for the 2021 session are focused around restoring and preserving funding for school operations and student support the department will continue to work diligently to ensure its ability to meet its core mission of teaching and learning and sustaining essential functions and infrastructure to ensure student achievement even during periods of economic decline and with slide 16 my cabinet and i are available to answer questions so mahalo for your time thank you superintendent um can i start with um on your slide the understanding is that we are going to receive 183 million from for esser correct when is that expected we have been notified that it's it's coming and it's been fast tracked is what we've been told uh we have not yet received the grant award notification but but we expect it any day now and that has to be yes there is for the secondary schools that has to be used at the school level no that's not restricted to the school level that has to be used for public education so that includes our doe and charter schools okay so what's what's the plans for that then so we are pulling together a budget proposal that's going to the board of ed on january 21st the budget breakdown prioritizes restoring some of the funds that being lost in weighted student formula as well as some of the special education funds this is a high priority because without restoring at least some of that we're going to have a impact on our capacity in terms of our labor workforce having to be reduced we're also prioritizing the learning loss mitigation program so the approaches we need to do we need to take on to address students who are demonstrating that they are not keeping up with their grade level expectations and or are showing a slide this year or have had loss of instructional time for any number of reasons can you provide us with an updated chart as to where that 183.6 million will go we will have that on friday afternoon of this week okay thank you the the esser funds that was received a couple months ago the 43.3 where how is that spent do you have the attachment i do um the best source is to look at the report on the web we have six million go to summer school we had five million go to learning devices continuing uh our cte we hired student interns for connectivity for learning platforms distance learning health and safety transition safety needs and so on can you provide us with those costumes oh sure sure um [Music] speaking of connectivity do we have account of how many students are out there without connectivity without devices is that something that your i.t department has been able to do yeah so we have um a.s book hana on if i can have him answer some summary information but we also can provide all the data charts so as connor yes we we started the covet pandemic with a shortfall of approximately 50 000 devices approximately 20 000 students that didn't have any sort of network access we are finalizing a analysis and report for the board focusing on the gap the number of students that are left that is down to the three or four thousand approximately so it comes down to about two to two and a half percent um of the population that does include of course um some families that have opted out of using devices for for their kids they've specifically requested to use paper packets and it does also include in some situations the schools have built an online hub on the campus where in a socially distant way kids can come and access their their education but again that's being being finalized we do have detailed reports of what devices we bought which complex areas they went to which schools they went to and we can provide that to the committee as well um we're in the second quarter we've been in this pandemic since march and we don't know the numbers yet well we do know the numbers they they change remember we have changing conditions so we have as as we started out we had a number that families let us know uh we met that demand with either new devices or schools handed out devices so we met the demand of what was requested i think it was 26 000 were requested plus we our order of new devices that we pushed out into the community as students and teachers started teaching and working with each other online there was an increased demand in terms of bandwidth in terms of making sure they had the right cameras and so forth and so more families started realizing they couldn't have multiple children at home for example on the same uh with their internet access and so there's been additional requests throughout each month so we keep updating based on what families are telling us if a device breaks we replace that device everyone who needs a device has a device everyone who needs connectivity either has it via wi-fi at home or a mifi that's that's provided or they are have access to a school site where they have connectivity the needs keep shifting and changing for families and we keep working to adjust to meet those needs where we are now is also the principal starting to think about as they transition to the summer next year how many devices they're going to need for refresh and that's going to be a longer term conversation that we're going to have to have with the legislature around how do we have a refresh system now that we've gone into this level of technology use yeah and and i think my concern is that i know when we started the pandemic and knew how many thousands of devices we needed there was a shortfall i mean it was hard to get devices and that's just because all the schools all the businesses were asking it you know for them so i want to make sure that you know we are um i can't say ahead of the game because we will never be ahead of the game but we're aware of you know what that's going to be so we can get a jump start whether or not the devices can be the devices we have can be upgraded and whether we're seeking out that information locally or not so if there is any kind of report that you have on this the situation of digital devices and connectivity i would like to see it please we'll send you the link to what we have online that does track the device requests and connectivity requests so yes absolutely thank you do you guys have questions before i continue yes you're talking about the laptops and and devices whatever you provide can i ask how's the situation with south um beyond pahala at ocean view where we have many of our micronesians living there and many are homeless and attending i would believe the closest school for them would be na alegu have we that used to that was an issue and so um can we be brief you know in summary um if they were able you were able to reach out to them so we have ayus um connor but we also have a.s armstrong who oversees our homeless liaisons so we can we can address that from both sides very succinctly so and i and i would think maybe not only my commun our you know big islands community but i i think that was pretty much prevalent on the big island i think an issue yeah there's several there's several geographical locations that have had that kind of problem and we've been tackling it on a community by community basis whether it's by providing mifi's or in some cases really remote areas even cell phone coverage and the southern part of the big island that you're talking about is one of those we also have mobile buses that can go to a place near the community that has enough cell coverage to get data access to those families and they can come there they can also go to the school campus like malayu and get wi-fi access there as well they're also the community centers that we're talking about we've extended this part to a community center there that provides access for students as well and that's a discussion that we continue to go through as we work with the communities this is also part of the broadband hui group that has been meeting where we work with hawaiian tel and spectrum as they build out their infrastructure and tcca about the the infrastructure that is is built out as well obviously the the situation with homeless students is particularly challenging i'll see if as armstrong has any comments that she wants to add for that ober hi good afternoon this is heidi armstrong the homeless liaisons and we have homeless liaisons in every complex area have been able to ensure that all of the identified homeless students do have access to devices and connectivity they are continually searching for homeless students and families that have not been identified but as of now those that have been identified we can say 100 do have access to devices and technology okay so um the reports have been coming in pretty much from the district uh superintendents then most of the issues i guess yes so we collect data on all of these uh data points that was a previous slide about this new data we had to collect and we reported out that comes from the complex area superintendent for the district and by school okay yes okay yeah i'm kind of curious to see how where we are so if you can get some information to the chair uh identifying what areas in the state that has been more challenging and how they've been met we can provide a connectivity and device report update okay absolutely thank you can you clarify i'm superintendent when you talk about connectivity has been made available at the schools does that mean they drive to the school and sit in the parking lot or is there a classroom open to them to to do their homework it means there's a learning hub inside the school and there's staffing there to provide even technical support of getting online and making sure that the kids can do so the kids are doing their distance learning but they're at a school site in a safe space that's um thank you very much for that because i have seen pictures of students on the mainland sitting in a parking lot on the i guess you call it the car stop the cement blocks with their laptops on their lap trying to do homework and i was just wondering if that was the same picture that we were painting here no we have had some um vans that heidi armstrong and her team have outfitted for hard to reach communities to get out and but they they actually have carry with them tables chairs laptops the connectivity that's needed so the wi-fi and they have staff there to have the kids actually go on so they're they're not sitting without that kind of support so can you provide this committee with um a number of of you know those vans that you have and you know where they're targeting and what's what's what has the cost been you know because yes over and above that you know you guys had budgeted for previously before this pandemic came on so yes we can provide that update senator thank you thank you and then while we're talking about virtual learning um is there any funding that's going to be provided to or to support the school and transitioning from the acellis onto another learning venue another platform yeah so principals and counselors have been part of the planning team and they are and they have the transition steps that we've identified the funds to transition not only the the immediate funds that are needed but just the long-term longer-term plan around how we're staging up and preparing for summer school already believe it or not we're already in summer school planning and what kind of uh online program we're going to need to support not knowing how much of this pandemic is still going to be impacting closures and access and all of that we're staging up for the summer and even for next school year so the funds have been identified for each of those components via the the cares funding that we've received and is um is that going to be funded out of administration's budget or by weighted student formula free school well it's out of the federal funds that we're receiving so we're prioritizing the federal funds for this for this utilization for to support learning but right now we don't have an idea what that cost is we have some of those costs i don't know if we have the breakdown for the certainly the session portion no it's it's we just have a level okay a couple million okay and um while i'm talking about weighted student formula i just want before i forget um pps in the very early stages of the pandemic we couldn't get pps fast enough to to help our schools so principals use weighted student formula hi emma told me that they were going to be reimbursed that never happened as far as i know so so i and i don't know if you have a breakdown of of how much the school was paid and how how are we going to make them hold again because i understand they they gave dewey the information but it was never i don't know if it was never given to hi emma um but when i asked hi emma they said they had turned over all the funds to ui already so it was not it was out of their hands and it was budget and finance i guess that made the decision not to pay so i where where are we on that do you know what the whole story is well we can talk about where we are with funding so so um randy tanaka shop office fiscal facilities collected data and and we're ready to request reimbursements from hyema before fema changed the rules and and that didn't happen the total at this point was 4.8 million dollars 4.7 of that was was cost that was incurred at various schools a hundred thousand dollars was cost incurred centrally so that's where we are now so to assure that the schools don't have to use weighted student formula again how are we purchasing ppes because when the individual schools have to purchase their own it's probably two or three times more costly than buying in bulk through hayama and a lot of it was free to hayemah and then was distributed so how are we making sure that this doesn't happen again should i take that or should throw it to randy welcome part of it is that we're going through our our budget proposal for the new federal funds and how we we have funds set aside through the rest of the school year so we're all set now we're planning for the summer and next school year where we need to allocate funds and we need to know what process we're going to be going through to acquire the the ppe is needed the uh the part of our budget request to the board will be to look at a set aside for the ppes for summer and next school year which is where we have a gap right now brandy tanaka who's on ies tanaka he's been managing this whole system with his team and working with haima and others including donations of ppe's which have been significant and are extremely helpful from the private sector so is to knock are you on yes superintendent hello senator kidani hello your your initial uh evaluation is correct in the early days the schools uh provided and took the proactive measure to get the ppes when we had gotten the relationship with hayima established we took that over from a central standpoint all of the schools run a 60-day inventory and we monitor it through an online system that we call cpt so we know in real time what the inventory is and we replenish the challenge uh from the very beginning we were led to believe that there was reimbursement we started running that tab and brian is exactly correct 4.8 million is the current um reimbursement level uh at some point in time um in the last 45 days we're notified that haima would not be able to reimburse that for whatever reason and so we sit on this i would call it a debt to figure out how to rebalance that that liability aim is said they have inventory for us until february and then february to the end of the school year we will need to manage that uh based on on what was called the burn rate uh we are fairly comfortable as we have been monitoring the burn rate and depending on the degrees of the student population uh we we are holding relatively well at this point there are 17 items on this list which we manage so right now the schools that that demand or need for those ppe so 17 items come through facility operations so are you randy are you um looking at adjusting the burn rate depending on uh how many students are going to be back in the classroom as we continue bringing students back are you go i mean i know it's a lot to to calculate but knowing what you know and with the number the lesser number of students that have been in school there's a projection that we're going to have more students in the classroom so has all of that been projected out yes we have that forecasted we're like you see watching the burn rate very closely and so far the pace has not outstripped our inventory and our our uh supply our backlog of supply so we we monitor it every friday the schools monitor that inventory and we monitor it at the central location thank you chair um can did i lose something um in regarding uh her question regarding the reimbursement or if there has been reimbursements then made to the schools regarding the use of their weighted student formula monies in place of you know not receiving ppes so at this point no that has not been solved that's a current um outstanding uh amount where we've needed to shift our thinking because it's no longer going to be reimbursed and so now we have to solve for that and look forward for planning like i said for summer and next school year so we're doing all of that right now we are in good shape i think because of randy tanaka his team and everything we've learned working with haima for the rest of the school year in terms of just good do we know for each school then what is old to them yes we have a chart with all of that chart but you know let me just add something last monday i had a conversation with governor ige during our senate leadership meeting and i brought this to his attention he was not aware that the schools had not been made whole and he was going to look into it and he said that the money was there and he doesn't know why you know they weren't reimbursed well whatever that um he says that the schools should be you know reimbursed so i'm waiting to hear back from him as to how they're going to do that i'm only saying that the schools are having a double whammy you know having to have used their weighted student formula for emergency purposes to assure that our students and our teachers our faculty were safe and now they're being told that they can't be they're not going to get reimbursed so what i'm saying is that if if hi emma if budget and finance is not willing to step up to the plate and reimburse i think that i'm asking doe to make sure those schools are made whole because they're going to get another cut with what we're looking at in the budget but you guys are are forgetting they were already using weighted student formula for something that should have been provided by the state by emma it's not their fault they were they were doing what they needed to do to protect students and faculty we recognize the inequity created when expenses against weighted student formula distributed by a formula based on student needs when disproportionate expenses occur at schools and it's not fairly or evenly spread so this is something that's very concerning and we have been in communication with budget and finance in particular in recent days and i think that we'll have a hopefully a resolution i think what you point out about schools and their their anxieties and frustrations i think that you're hearing in particular is is in large part a reflection of they just finished their financial plans they're looking at what they're going to have to adjustments to make next year and every dollar is critical to them because it means they're having to make very hard choices around staffing so i'm not saying this isn't an immediate problem it is but i think it's also a longer term problem for the schools and their in their outlook is they're thinking every dollar i can secure this year is going to help minimize or reduce impacts next year so again um we are working on it and and with budget and finance and and i think we will have a resolution i know that you guys are doing the best you can but i'm just saying you know every time something happens at the school level it's usually the teachers that take stuff out of their pocket to pay because students don't have supplies students don't have ppe and they this they just have to be made whole and i know randy's job is not going to be easy and trying to get this this distributed but i will also say that um from what i'm understanding from from um bnf and i will give you guys a copy of information i got from uh robert uh you anyway um they're saying part of it they felt it was that having to deliver to 300 different locations was you know i guess difficult so i think maybe uh for randy listening that you might consider how we can do it by complex errors or something that will be easier for them although i think hayama should be more able to do it than our schools because they i think they have the the guardsmen that were called out to help i'm just saying that that seems to be part of the problem too whether or not that's why they're not getting reimbursed i don't know but it was the distribution of some of the ppe's that they said were were difficult to do senator favela you had a question yeah um i know you kind of want to chew this up to death but the reason why for us it's frustrating and the schools are frustrating because right in this room you were here and the general was here saying there's some tv and i'm reassuring the schools that it was going to get reimbursed and i i talked to um the schools and and you know they're really getting the cut we're already losing security teachers custodians adding to our unemployment so that's the point i know i i don't understand this is this is like way in the game before the teachers before the principals even went out and had suggested to purchase their own stuff they was told that they was going to get reimbursed i reassure you we reimburse go ahead and get them and we're going to reimburse you not just with you but with the general saying this and then for him to say you know to give the money to unemployment and uh nobody knew about it um you know it's really kind of like fall between the cracks and again it falls upon the independent in the individual schools who's suffering you guys come with a ten percent cut and i still i mean i don't know you maybe you did give the other senators to email i just like know how how we came about this with the governor and you um because when we wasn't budgeted downstairs and senator kadani and asked the governor about the 10 cut um at that time he didn't have um an answer and he probably wasn't even known about it so the principles and you had this uh 10 cut that you gave to the schools way ahead of any of us hearing unless we heard from our school principals and the governor so i don't know if the governor didn't know at the time and most of us over here didn't know of the time and i started principals from our complexes came up um and talked to us about the ten percent cut how did you come up with a ten percent cut across the board for each of these schools so senator thank you for the question the uh ten percent cut is a direct was a direct process that we went into uh based on uh the the governor's uh letter to us and to all state agencies that we needed to go through a program review of a 10 15 and 20 percent cut that was dated when oh that's was it august it's in october it's pretty late yeah so we were we were waiting for guidance on our budget process and and cuts one of the things that the one position that we took senator was that uh a 10 cut it's alone was devastating and that we were not going to go and do the process of 10 15 20 because we couldn't even get over the 10 hump of a cut and so i met with the the governor and the budget and finance team and and came to agreement that our budget review was not going to include 10 i'm sorry 15 20 cut and met with my board and and they agreed on that that parameter of not going beyond the 10 percent cut because we also didn't have clarity on the 100.2 million whether that was going to continue to be taken from our base and that you know as you can see from the chart that takes us up to potential cut of our budget not 10 when you add everything up and we were you know i was struggling with you know how do we go above the 22 when we look at all of those cuts now we're gonna get into uh near uh surpassing 25 of our budget potentially cut if we looked any deeper than 10 percent so so we stayed with the governor's guidance but only at the most minimum end of it we did not go as deep in 15 and 20 percent now the conversations with the board of ed in our board meetings um was exactly that we were not going to go deeper than that even though the governor had asked all the agencies to go deeper because of the devastating impact on teaching and learning and because the the labor conversation um also uh while there were conversations early on about potentials of furloughs just looking at ten percent cut you know my concern was not furloughs there was reduction in force because of the ten percent that's not even you know so the cumulative was getting so large so i needed to go through a good budget planning process but i also needed to say i can't even pass this because i can't even figure out the devastation of the ten percent cut and so i met with the principals and the causes and we agreed to collectively as a as a leadership team we're gonna we're gonna stay with 10 percent and we advocated for staying within that parameter for at least the planning process if i could just one correction it was august 17th is when the program reviews it came out october was on the when the instructions came out we did not have a december is when the board acted and we did not know what the governor's final decisions were until after that we had to start our financial plan process earlier and everything superintendent said about conversing with principles so when did the governor's office or what bnf notify you of what what their decisions were i'll have to get back to you on the exact exact date december so it was after but it was after the ledge got the budget or was it right before just before a couple days sounds like so if you're saying mid because we get it on like the 20th and our financial plan process had to start in in really october is when we started out i just want to try to figure out how much time did you have between the governor's final submitting it to the legislature and when you found out about their final decision so if you submitted if the board took action in mid-december you only had a couple days so it's right after the the board meeting which was the the board's uh recommendation which i mentioned earlier was was very very reluctantly put forth was on december 3rd and it got transmitted to the administration immediately thanks to you guys but i don't i don't understand when so what i'm trying to figure out is when you get the governor's decision what options do you have to kind of like either appeal make adjustments what's the timeline it doesn't because you're so truncated because he had to send a budgeted brief to us in mid i mean this came up to like december 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so it was kind of named after the arizona snowbowl and and the mountain up there so it's mashed potatoes engraving you get to choose your chicken and kind of make a home style snowball it's delicious with pickles mr stanley you had mentioned that um there's a high volume of free meals that are provided um can i know some of our community are concerned that dysert is uh gifting food out who pays for free meals so it's reimbursed by the united states department of agriculture or if that answers your question so funded through the state by the usda um so right now we are not collecting any local revenue whatsoever it's 100 reimbursed at the free reimbursement rate for the remainder of the year by the federals correct thank you i just had one other thing that i was thinking of when you were talking about the roving chef um because i know you have students that work with it and everything so since 2005 i'm just curious have we kind of tracked and it might be something you might want to do track to see how many students may have gone into the field of nutrition i have not but that is a great idea i mean because i did not know about it before but it may be something wink-wink to mr greasable you know but i was just curious because if they're learning about nutrition and content and all that type stuff i was just wondering if there was any students that may have gone into the field of nutrition or anything like that so it's just something to think about i would love that information as well and i'll work with mr greenshade yeah there you go okay thank you anything else thank you so much madam president members of the board dr kelly's cabinet thank you so much for your time appreciate it all right moving to item k-1 and we have a discussion and possible action to determine continuance of the policy governance model and the dysart unified school district dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this item is brought forward by the request of a board member policy governance is as a format that is used by some districts many other districts use a more traditional model this has been a format that has been in place here in dysart for let me go back to those who have been here for a while probably about 13 years and so there is a lot of information that could be provided about it and when it was first brought in i believe it was um it was a transition time and it involved everything from [Music] shifting to a new policy manual and and just some other practices that may or may not still be in place today but with that uh ms densmore i'll turn it back to you to lead the conversation thank you um i just thought it was a good time since we you know we have a new board to just talk about maybe the pros and cons of of this particular governance model i know that for me as a new board member um you know coming into this role wasn't something that i really expected to this model wasn't something that i expected to be in place so just with some questions that i have received from at least one other member one other board member um it just made me think maybe it wasn't um necessarily the best thing for us going forward and i would just you know like to ask you dr kellis if you could give us a little bit of background on it about like the why it was implemented in the first place to help us all understand that um madam president members of the board looking back 13 years let's see if i can piece together some history and i'll also defer to other board members who may have some history at that time here um i will say that the board was very dysfunctional at the time and that there were some grave concerns about the the board relationships with each other and with administration and the superintendent at the time brought in a consultant dr tom jandris and he helped facilitate the process of moving to a policy governance model the policy governance model anymore i would say is not a whole lot different from what other districts have adopted as or have never really adopted it's just their the way they've always done it more traditional model and that is the concept of ends and means and when we talk about ends and means generally it is the board's responsibility to determine the ends in other words the goals or the the vision and then it's the administration's responsibility to figure out the means or the how and then in our current policy manual the board adopts policy then administration figures out how to implement the board's policies so it's the the what um for as an example it might be the board would say we need to bring up our third grade math scores administration would then go and figure out what all needs to be done to bring up the third grade math scores it could be that the board might say [Music] i'm just grasping at things in the air keep schools open during covet and then it'd be administration's responsibility to figure out how that happens and put together all the processes that are needed sometimes there are situations where the line is blurred between ends and means and some boards thinking globally across the entire country start getting into more of the the means and that's where there's frustration from both the board and the administration that uh popular terms getting into the weeds can often be a frustrating place to be i will say that it is frustrating to board members across the globe to be presented with decisions to make that board members have not had the the privilege of the months of looking into all the information receiving the updates or doing all the research and yet you're asked to make the decision um that is absolutely universal frustration it would be inappropriate for the board to get on all the committees that exist and the reason why that's inappropriate is because the board ultimately is voting and it could possibly be that one board member who's been on a committee has the three months of experience and knowledge benefit that the other board members don't have and that can be frustrating to board members where they don't have that equal access to information so policy governance can be confused as the superintendent's in charge that's not the case the board is in charge and always will be in charge and that is statutorily in place the board does continue to in either model identify policies and put policies in place and then it is very typical and traditional that the board expects the superintendent to exercise the will of the board and figure out how to best implement those policies so again we could have an entire workshop a three-day workshop on it it took about if i recall about four years under dr janders's consult to fully implement all the different elements of a model that he i don't know that he originated but that he ascribed to and was very proficient with and no doubt that there are many elements of that model that are not in place today the board may some members of the board may recall that we separated services with dr jandis a couple years ago but we continue to follow the ends and means concept of governance when we have brought in consultants or trainers from arizona school boards association they train the same concept of ends and means they don't get into a lot of the other details that dr jandis had specific to to his framework but they also sba also follows that same idea of the the differentiation of roles between the governing board and the superintendent um so that's kind of a very very fast brief synopsis of potentially some history and some background on policy governance or just board leadership thank you um i know that one of the pieces that has concerned me is that we don't have the the what do you call it the self-monitoring um you know going on to to measure how successful we are doing as a board and i i know that that was something that was involved when we had dr chandras involved with us with policy governance as a consultant but since he has left it doesn't seem like there's really any structure to to what we're doing as far as policy governance goes so that has been a concern of mine as well madam president members of the board i would share that um having been in an administrator under both platforms um most recently in the madison school district that there was a system a process in place for board self-evaluation another district had a process for 360 type evaluation meaning they took input from administrators teachers parents as feedback for the board's performance in dysart under what you're describing under dr jandris's consult he had in place kind of uh like secret shoppers of sorts where nobody knew who they were but there were people in the audience who were identified to evaluate the board how many times did you make a comment were you engaged in the meeting did you come prepared there's a list of of evaluative criteria and you're correct that that weekly [Music] secret evaluation has not continued something we could but again that would be something that would be an ends and means type of thing if the board would like to receive continuous evaluation we can talk about do you want self-evaluation a 360 type evaluation or do you want the the type of monitoring that we have done in more recent years does anyone else have any i just um i would agree that something dr callison i got to keep my mask on um was mentioning that i wrote down as he was talking that i i think really kind of hit the nail on the head as far as what i've been feeling is that sometimes there's frustrations between the board and administration with how policy governance has been rolling out over the last couple years or so or like when dr chandras um separated um i think there's been some changes over time with that like you had mentioned and dr kellis and i have had talks about opinions about policy governance for the last couple years so i know for him this is this isn't new information i'm saying but just for the rest of the board um it's changed over time it's not it's not what it used to be it's not what it was when i think it first came to dysart and um having the evaluators and the audience as well as us doing our own self-evaluations and some other little things that were big pieces of policy governance have kind of faded so i other than the reminders of ends and means i don't it doesn't feel like policy governance anymore anyway um so and i know i think from i've been a little frustrated with it for a while just because i feel like in a way probably too because we haven't been following it exactly the way that it's designed that um it's causing maybe some some ruffled feathers or hard feelings or just difference just um it doesn't feel as as free flowy as as far as all of our our work together and leadership goes um as it used to in the past when it was more of a traditional board administration um was governed by like asba policies or something that that typical traditional relationship um it feels sometimes i'm just speaking for myself sometimes i felt very uncomfortable asking questions or not that anyone refused to answer ever ever but it just seems more like like dr keller said like if you're in the weeds you know if i've had a question it's like well it's that you're in the weeds and so i'd be like okay am i allowed to ask certain things but is it like statutorily um sometimes it feels like the governing board should be making some decisions or having some having a voice in areas that maybe um policy governance kind of frowns upon so then there's more that feel of well but i was elected to do this and the law and the statutes say i should do this but our particular district has adopted a different model that just does isn't i just feel like moving forward it would be um for my own personal opinion i i would rather since we're not really doing policy governance anyway anymore i just feel like maybe going back to asba policy might also heal some relationships too and bring us back to where things were with how we work together and communicate and more of an open way then more rigid and structured and you stay on in your lane and we stay in our lane because sometimes i feel a little bit out of touch i think as a board member with certain things trying to stay out of the weeds so that's just been my observation and some of my personal feelings over time as someone who's been here since it's originally was brought to the district and how it's kind of morphed into something else now so if we were to eliminate policy governance we would still have to follow policy so what would change i mean there's still policies in place on what board members can and cannot do what student whatever the policies are what would change besides calling it policy governance the way that our policies are written now they're very um specific to the policy governance model right right so in other words if we were to eliminate policy governors i think we would have to revert to asba policy is that correct dr kellis madam president members of the board we as part of dr jandis's consultation with the district he did go through a process of creating a new policy manual that is completely compliant with all the state statutes and everything that needs to be in place the asba policy manual is about 12 inches thick our current policy manual is about two inches thick the board certainly could say we want to go back to the asb template it would probably take about two years to create a boardwalk between our current policy and switching it over to the sba policy [Music] there are a lot of things in the asba template that over 30 years or more districts have personalized to their district there are things that the asba policy has and i'm not trying to be critical of one or the other i'm just saying our experience with it there are a lot of policies in asba template that are not based on statute or regulations from a arizona board of education sbe um they're just opinions that have made their way into the policy template so when i say it takes two years it literally is a page by page line by line is this what dysert wants is this what dyson wants and then with asba we take any revisions to their template to asba give them our proposed changes they say yes and then we bring it back to the board for a first and second read that's why one change could take a month obviously we would do it in bulk but it could take as long as two years the other option is we could just scrub our current two inch policy manual of those elements that reference policy governance and continue to use it as we are currently using it and that is as a working document that is statutorily in sync and compliant but it is [Music] what a lot of us would hope title 15 would be is just reduced to the bare bones of what is necessarily required um the the thing that a lot of reference to our policy there are what we call executive limitations there's a lot of policy that says the superintendent shall not and when you look at that language that is an element to policy governance where essentially the board says here's our policy the superintendent when i say superintendent that's a universal term for administration because it's i don't do it all it's a i delegate to all everybody but um the superintendent has can do whatever is necessary to implement the board policies except for the superintendent shall not this this this and this for example the superintendent shall not fail to incorporate a student discipline policy or procedures the superintendent should not fail to evaluate teachers those limitations are meaning that i can do whatever it takes i being the administration whatever it takes but i still have to follow those those expectations in the simplified format and many of those are statutory the statutes require that the board evaluates teachers it requires that the there's a discipline plan but that doesn't uh necessarily say that if we took those references out that now we don't have a discipline plan if it says the superintendent shall not incorporate this one plan procedures statute still requires it so while it's not a limitation i still i we would still have to be compliant with all the other laws and and regulations so we could that's another option we don't have to adopt the asb policy we could take our current one and just go through that it would take several months of just saying these are the changes that we would like to see in our current policy thank you well if we were to make a decision tonight to to change to a governance model without policy governance we could make that decision at a another a future board meeting um which manual we wanted to go with right we don't need to do that tonight madam president members of the board yes you you could the policy governance um i would have to go back 13 years to see was there a board action to adopt policy governance that is like i said it was like a four-year process of becoming the model that dr jandris put in place you could go to another district they have policy governance but it looks very different from dr jandis's policy governance but i think what is most important is that we work with the board in dysert and say what do you want the governance model to look like and then we can go through if it's is it the policy manual is it communications is it um the [Music] the culture of board superintendent relationships what is it that the board would like to to experience in your leadership role and in your relationship with administration so we can go back and see if there was an actual vote taken to adopt policy governance and if that motion included by saying we now have adopted policy governance that that came as a bundle that included the policies and everything that associated with the monitoring and all that my guess is a lot of those things were either practices put in place along the way or policies that were created along the way or board votes doesn't necessarily have to be policy but the board voted say okay we're going to vote for board monitors in the audience then those are things that we would go back in and say we're going to vote to not have those board monitors in the audience we haven't had them it's just a matter of going back and looking through all the documentation and kind of you take a tree by the roots we have to find all those roots and account for them and if we say we are no longer doing policy governance what does that mean what comes with it if you're devoted out i don't know what all comes with it to be honest that would be something we'd have to research in theory though just to kind of just to kind of go back on that so i understand so it wouldn't just be if let's say for an example i were to make a motion to discontinue the use of policy governance and revert back to as traditional asba policies expected immediately then um at that point since we're in the beginning of the year anyway wouldn't we be able to just bring back each section of like the asba policies and then kind of start our work just like we normally do in january where we go through and we're like okay do these fit the way we like them do we not because i remember way back in 2007 we had a lot of board members that would create write their own policies and we'd send them forward and or asba would send us a policy revision and sometimes if we did our own that asba didn't have or didn't really like we wouldn't necessarily need them to like endorse it or have it it's just as long as it wasn't breaking any laws we could do it so technically if there's some asba policies that maybe we don't you know we don't necessarily want to adopt and die start or don't really fit what we're doing um then when we're going to through to maybe review policies like we already have that schedule set then couldn't we just kind of do that work along the way just like we're doing policy governance work along the way madam president pritchard um feasibly yes i would ask please please don't do that the reason being if you say tonight that you are adopting the asba template there are thousands of pages of associated regulations exhibits and other documents that come with it that we have not been under the the um the direction of that policy and we would immediately be required to be in compliance with all those policies so in one night to switch over to that yes we can do what you're thinking of doing is on a monthly basis adopting new sections that would be fine we can we can do that but to take it all in one night would throw the district into a tailspin of procedural and regulatory um law that we are not prepared to do i could say something real quick um i believe i came in on the fourth year of the talks when we were going through that and i i want to say that we did actually make a motion to accept policy governance um i you know after after looking at this and everything i i am not comfortable with making a decision for or against tonight um because number one we have two brand new governing board members i am in favor of i hate this thing i am in favor of at least having some type of working training session to get them on board to understand what we have been doing for the past 11 years 12 years 13 but to actually scrub this entire thing tonight there there's just no way um it doesn't seem like it's um as i was listening to you miss pitcher i i heard a couple of words and you had repeated the same word kinda and i don't want to put the district in a kinda situation as far as can we kind of do it this way and then do it that way i know the policies have changed with asba several times over the years but as far as making a decision tonight without our two brand new board members being brought up to snuff on the policies and everything for the district i don't think we should do that so you want to bring the new board members up to snuff on a policy mod or a governance model that is we may not continue using i would like them to be trained on what we have been doing for the past 11 years and if they see insight i it could it could very well be changed my mind while we're doing those training sessions but to actually just zero it out without looking at our options and not doing this during an actual board meeting but training session or a workshop i think that would be better suited for us see and i don't know why we would train on a on a model that because technically in 2019 this topic came up when dr chandra said he could no longer work with us because he thought policy governance was in jeopardy didn't feel like it was it was going the way that it was um designed that was in 2019 so here we are 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
get out of here go away come on rip it all right i'm just gonna throw it up in the office there we go all right thank you that's a big list yeah okay in many countries cultures religions traditions we bring in the new year with light and with love and with happiness and to kick that off we're going to invite miss mastriani to share a tradition that k3 is really sharing with the whole school so miss matriani here you go oh so that's happening here in japanese how beautiful and i thought we can start off by the video that was quickly made this morning the cakery friends fantastic hi my good friend so cliche wants to share a project we are doing for jimmy would you ask the first question to wildwood um would you want to bring joy to i would and if they do what you're going to do and get a cam like this that's a great idea okay so that's the first thing you're going to do right yeah hi i'm deck one i'm k3 make sure you empty the can first thank you batman you're supposed to get a can then decorate this top hat and then um um then go to the wild wood and then you can dig a hole and then um and and also um ask parents your parents to drill a hole through the bottom and why do we drill the hole on the bottom so then the rain water can um go through right and then when you dig a hole how far down do you have to put the can it leaves that far down at least that far down all right thank you thank you jasper hi i'm my name's solomon and i do i can join the food court on my hand here where is the orange heart near the garden near the garden okay and hugh can you tell us please stick a hole on the orange line of the heart if we have enough and it's the house will be lit up hold it up and does either of you remember which nights we're going to light up the candle sundays and fridays fridays and saturdays and saturdays yep fridays and saturdays and when you go there what do people need to to do do they have to wear a mask right yes yeah and then keep their distance too right uh-huh yeah but it'll be on fridays and saturdays oh near the perfect still closest night that's right only on perfect nights because why if it was windy the flames might blow down there that's wildfire okay thank you kieran q wow so that was amazing miss master ronnie there was so many comments about how brave they were because i get really nervous i don't i don't like to be right here too but um they helped me so i hope my wildwood uh community i hope you can join k3 in bringing light and joy to our community um we're hoping that our first lighting can happen tomorrow night um so the you know i i will be the one to light up the tea candles and placing it in the can tomorrow night there might be two or three but we're hoping that with everybody joining eventually our two hearts that i drew behind the hill behind the garden um will be filled with lights and just like you said and we're also accepted accepting tea lights donations from everybody okay beautiful project and so is there a particular time that people should could show up um yeah after after dark any time after dark any if you could respect each other and keep distance or mask you know but definitely you know give a big hello and also respect the the lights too you can you can walk around the heart but be very careful beautiful so we hope to continue that for a few weeks fabulous thank you and you you actually drew that orange heart on the hillside yes yeah okay all right fantastic thank you it's such a great way for us to come together as a community so i look forward to coming and it's a three-day weekend right so it's only friday and saturday though fridays and saturdays every okay thank you all right please tell k3 thank you for creating the video thank you project take care it was an awesome video thank you okay so this is our theme this year is how we're going to bring in 2021 and especially in the wintertime sharing light and love and happiness with others and and miss catherine in the tech room in the computer lab created a project that i wanted i asked i said you got to share this with everybody so we're going to invite miss catherine to come out oh there she is hello hello hi miss katherine hi everybody i'm so happy to see you all and and see all the awesome comments that are going along so one thing that um we do every year in second grade is we make we make postcards that we send to different places and the kids get a chance to practice copying and pasting and um and adding yes i saw you too daniel i can see all your comments which is awesome um and they got to they get to pick up some make some pictures and this year i had been talking to my sister who is a pediatrician she's a doctor in california and to some of my friends who are nurses and we're talking about like how to make they've been under so much stress because there are a lot of people who are getting sick and so people in hospitals the nurses and doctors are very are doing so much work for people and so we decided to make our project to send the post i was asking him what can i do to help to make people happier or just to bring a little something to them they're like we love to get cards and and little notes and so i was like you know what let's make our postcards to the doctors and nurses and healthcare workers and even volunteers at the places nearby so we created some postcards for joy so and we ended up sending 66 postcards to hospitals and the survival center nearby and um and all over the place when you make your postcard oh i'm so sorry yes every i realized that um sometimes postcards get kind of lost in the mail um so one nice thing was that when i got them printed they actually printed up two copies of everything so i used a whole lot of stamps but so here are just a few of our postcards for joy that i've created um with different people so here it is when i was putting um putting the stamps on and actually i had my theo my um first grader help me put the stamps on and you can see some of the nice messages thank you nurses and medical workers thank you for helping us during this pandemic just thank you thank you thank you um thank you for helping my mommy bring the baby in because some people actually had specific people who they wanted to um to send send things to and here are some of the pictures that they made to go on the back of the picture um sometimes some of them took pictures of themselves unfortunately daniel and mahali's pictures got switched on their postcards um because the printer print shop switched it up so that i'm gonna be sending that again but it was so fabulous to see all these pictures and i know that um the nurses and doctors and volunteers are going to really love them i sent them out sometime last week so i'm sure i'm hoping that they got them i know once in a while the postcards don't end up showing up and that's always disappointing but um i'm i'm i know my sister was really excited with the project um because she she's trying to help as many people as possible and a lot of the nurses that i know are very excited to get some of those so anyway thank you all second graders i was so appreciative of all the hard work you did yay thank you so much and i'm noticing in the chat bathroom that people remember doing that when we were younger too so it's great to have these kind of traditions at wildwood so thank you so much okay see you later bye all right miss gaspies we're moving right along i am so inspired i just want you to know i have two opportunities to contribute light to the world i can bring a tea light down to help with the um heart the shining hearts on friday and saturday and i can help i can write a postcard i hadn't even thought of that these are things i can do oh i love it absolutely yes i think you know nowadays people hardly ever get mail real mail you know so when you go to your mailbox and you see some real mail or you get it at work it means a lot to people yes and the healthcare workers like jim is saying they're working so hard they've been working so hard for so long right and i my heart just goes out to them thank you jim for saying that so you know that we have a couple of fifth graders who've been who we're going to interview actually but i'm trying to get them in so why don't we go on to the last part of the assembly first and i'll see if i can get them hooked up okay and so we always necessities we always save time at the last part of the assembly to um you know say goodbye to people and we we call them shooting spas and these are both students and staff members who are leaving wildwood before our next assembly and so we have a slideshow i'm going to be doing that we're going to be feeling our feelings a bit and then we'll have a special way to say goodbye to them off as they go off to their new homes so these are the wildwood shooting stars you want to read the first one you know i do because you know i'm going to miss them this is my friend sebastian and we are and sebastian will miss all the teachers his friends actually being in the school and seeing everybody he will miss the school playground and specials he and his family are moving to vermont on january 29th oh how beautiful sebastian vermont is a beautiful place and your new school is lucky yes all right who do we have next oh calvin do you want to read this one again because i'm still looking for the fifth graders as well okay i'll do it calvin another good friend of mine the things that calvin has loved about wildwood are his amazing teachers the incredible library the playground and the art projects he's gotten to do at school he will miss amherst but is excited to live near his grandparents in salem he gets to be closer to his grandparents thank you calvin for sharing your light with us bye calvin and who do we have next ah cryptic kritig krithig moved to our northern neighbor in canada and ontario and here's a beautiful picture of him he was with us for a short time in the kindergarten k3 for a half a year and he likes to be in this master yani's class working with his friends in small groups especially highlighting words in a poem sheet and then drawing kritig is an expert on big cats like tigers leopards and panthers and get this the name of his new school is called the tiger jeet singh school and he that was amazing to him we'll miss you critique and we also leave time to say goodbye to staff members so we have one staff member who's leaving who's been with us i think it looks like miss katherine's getting it ready for 14 years and it's miss todd betsy todd has been the room b teacher for 14 years and she sent this beautiful photo of her all dressed up she's going off to new adventures and this is her with her husband and she said a building doesn't make a school it's the people who make the school and you all make wild with the special and inclusive experience that it is wow thank you betsy for sharing your light with us all right so i think we're ready to go on i'm just going to scroll down and see if we have our fifth group we have catherine here and let's see do we have hassan and jordan yet i know there's a way to go below catherine miss catherine backstage do you see all hassan or jordan not yet okay so why don't we do catherine from music why don't we do our closing song and i'm just gonna spend a couple minutes still trying to find those fifth graders and that will be the finale if we can get them in here okay all right best wishes to betsy we're gonna miss her and we know she's gonna do great things as she moves on to a new phase in her life so let's welcome catherine we always like to have at the end of our assembly a song hi everybody and i'm gonna remove myself hi everyone so i was thinking like you all were about 2020 transitioned into 2021 um and there's been a lot of challenges there's been a lot of things that have made me really happy seeing all of you has made me really happy um but there's also been a lot of challenges um and so a song that i thought of that's about pushing through challenges um is a song called ain't gonna let nobody turn me around it's an african-american civil rights song that was written based on an african-american spiritual and the thing about it is you can change the words based on whatever you're going through at the moment um and that and then singing it can help you to move through that so i want to say a special thank you to miss applegate's class who helped me come up with some of the things that we might need to work through um to get to to get to where we want to be um so some of this is inspired by ms applegate students um and i hope you enjoy if you know it sing along or just listen [Music] ain't gonna let nobody turn me me round ain't gonna let nobody turn me around i'm gonna keep on walking keep on talking marching onto freedom next stop is covid ain't gonna let no cove turn me round turn me [Music] keep on talking marching onto freedom a lot of the students were saying that they struggle with being lonely they struggle with being kind of anxious about the world um and singing together was really nice today so anxiety ain't gonna let anxiety turn me round turn me round ain't gonna let [Music] kids also talked about the world and a lot of the things that have been happening in the past couple of weeks so we can sing about racism we don't want racism to turn this around [Music] injustice ain't gonna let injustice turn be round [Music] keep on talking marching onto freedom [Music] whatever you are going through whatever you are struggling with keep on going i'm taking a lot of inspiration from all the people in history in the past who have faced struggles and have kept going makes us all a better people ain't gonna let nobody turn me around keep on [Music] thanks guys got our tissues thank you catherine that was awesome miss allison you're muted okay i just wanted to let you know i had to have a little light for you thank you thank you and thank you to miss applegate's class wow thank you so much catherine and i noticed in the chat people were saying that music is giving them strength yeah me too keep singing everybody all right i'll head out all right bye-bye all right so miss estes we have a grand we have a an ending that another way to stay strength is is stay strong is by connecting with people that we love and we've started a project that we've been talking about the last month or so called the wildwood story project and we have two fifth graders jordan and alhassan who are backstage they made it they persevered to close our assembly by telling a little bit about they did family interviews and it's now they were brave enough to upload it to our wildwood family stories site and so everyone can listen to these interviews that they did a fourth grader lewis wells also interviewed his 85 year old grandmother and heard stories about her childhood so thank you lewis for that and let's hear let's add al hassan and jordan welcome how are you guys good to see you thank you for being brave enough to join us today i understand that the whole fifth grade uh one of your assignments was to interview family members is that guru yeah yeah and and the two of you uh why don't we just start out by asking each one of you who you interviewed um i interviewed my dad your dad fantastic and how about you jordan i i interviewed my grandmother your grandmother fabulous and and during the interview like what was it like for you how did you like it um the interview was uh pretty fun hearing about um my dad's childhood what it was like for him in egypt especially alexandria and like and it was very cool hearing about his mom or my grandmother and about how how she was so determined about my dad's childhood and how she really wanted him she did the best for him so and so as my dad too or my granddad fabulous oh yes i listened to the interview and i have to admit i i got a little teary just listening about your grandmother and how much you want your dad to be a good person how about you jordan what did you learn about your grandma well i learned how lucky i am to be at wildwood such a great school and and how funny and great my grandma is yeah yeah and tell us jordan where did your grandma grow up in haiti in haiti wow and and what did she say about the schools and and how and what what stood out for her as a as a student doing math and didn't really like enjoy doing writing yeah yeah fantastic did anything the last question i'll ask both of you did anything surprise you did you learn something new about your father or about your grandma um um i'm being no not really i didn't really learn anything but it was just fun hearing about how persistent my grandmother was and also my grandfather and how they really wanted my the best from my dad's childhood and i'll do things like that beautiful how about you jordan i learned that my grandma likes to jump rope i used to like when she was younger i'm sorry i just i just started asking all these questions do you have any questions i i just think that this is such a great project and i you asked the question that i wanted to know is what did you learn that was new yeah that's i remember when my sons were asking their grandmother questions like this for a project and i learned stuff about my own mother i didn't even know so you're helping everybody get closer in your family that's a great idea thank you both and i'll send out the link to all families and staff again you all can become a member of the wildwood family story community and then you'll get pampered these interviews i'll send you out the link it's very simple you just you just uh you create an account on storycorps and that's what jordan and alhassan's family did so everyone can do this and everyone can actually record their own story so thank you for getting it started thank you to louis if you want to hear about lucy's grandmother and what it was like growing up during world war ii it's quite a story and i even put a story up myself important in al hassan it's about when i was in fifth grade so you can hear about little nikki pretty convenient what's that i said pretty convenient yes it's convenient yes all right so we're going to say goodbye to you too thank you so much for joining us and this bringing us to the end of the assembly ms estes we're going to do one last thing can i just make sure everybody knows this is a tea light because it dawned on me that people might not know so that's what a tea light looks like thank you so much all right last thing the last thing is to make wishes for the new year you take your second piece of paper if you wanted 2021 okay write down a wish a hope a dream a goal a resolution all right we're going to give you 30 seconds to write something down that's something you want to have happen in 2021 i'd like to go to the beach again oh of course i'd like to see my grandchild theo you're out there in los angeles i would like us all to be back together at wildwood for sure i want to be able to walk into someone's classroom and say hi oh yes i want to be able to have a big gathering at my house oh great yeah all right so once you've written a few things this one we're not ripping up you're going to fold it into maybe like four parts and find a place to put it in your house i hope so too luke that a tin box you can put in an envelope and you just put it away and and you don't look at it in the end of the year until the end of the year okay all right okay have more video calls with my family that's a beautiful thing happened all right so this brings us to the end of the assembly i want to thank you all thank you miss estes thank you nick oh oh by the way i forgot to tell people you can call me miss allison now whoa okay i had one of my wildwood friends who has trouble with s's they had trouble with sds and i said why why am i doing this to people so feel free to call me miss allison i don't want anyone tripping up on my name okay miss allison all right everyone lots of love to all of you i'll just work it on my heart send out that and we're gonna meet again on february 3rd for our annual african-american read-in to kick off black history month it's going to be a great event okay keep smiling bye everyone and don't forget about the tea light the project that you can come on friday and saturday night take care goodbye be safe thank you miss catherine backstage thank you to all our guests and i'll send you the link once again so you can hear those fabulous stories or add your own bye bye bye
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
right so let's say broadly i mean this is you know oversimplifying in somerset but so if if if chapter 70 was going to drop by one percent they would sim they would also cut you know uh the transportation reimbursement by you know an equivalent sort of one percent so you're sort of uh you know one isn't sort of forcing a set of choices in the regional schools that isn't the same set of choices that a you know a a non-regional school is having to make so they're trying to generally keep those you know adjusting either up or down in a sort of in step with each other um i mean they're still not fully funding it i mean there's in you know there's a thing called circuit breaker in special education um you know again how much they can offer to support it's those are for extraordinary expenses for special education students um you know how much they reimburse on those is is limited by how much gets funded so you know it's always dependent upon what the states um and that's never been funded as fully as as was originally you know thought of as the way they'd approach it um but you know you know you know the state's got a series of tough choices that they're making about what's important or not important too so they're trying to strike the right balance on all these things but um so i'm sure the charter school tuition is that so they pay us for and i'm not sure because i looked at the website today and it says they're doing the 60 40 whatever but i also read something in one of the budget reports that they changed it to like a five-year thing so which one is it and do they so if we have a student go out would they pay us for some number of years something with the assumption that by that time our population will have adjusted in our aid from what chapter 70 i mean are how does how do they how do they justify all that i will say that the the what they call the reimbursement formula has changed almost every year since since this started okay so they sort of moved the chairs you know after the game started here a little bit they're moving the goal post i guess the term that gets used but but the short story is that you know the idea is that uh you know that the tuition that you would pay to the charter school uh generally comes as a you know you're planning on having a student in your school they make the decision to go to a charter school that's a huge bump uh in your in your essentially in your costs that you weren't anticipating um and so the reimbursement is to help give you some time to sort of absorb that cost there's no subsequent um [Music] funding that helps fill in the gap all it's doing is just easing the transition so that that reimbursement is really about sort of smoothing out the the transition of a student out of your out of your district and so uh you know the the difficulty is is that what you pay for tuition is based on what they call your per-pupil expenditure which is which is you know essentially the average for every student well you've got some students that really run that number up i mean what it takes you know for a given student to be educated on a per year basis you know our our per-pupil expenditures in the neighborhood of about twenty thousand dollars well most of our students aren't nearly that expensive many of our students are but not many but a few students are very very expensive much more expensive than that um they kind of lump those together in that per pupil thing the difficulty i find one of the difficulties i find with that is that you know it creates a situation if i'm a charter school i'm much more interested in a kid from amherst than i am a kid from hadley because the per-pupil expenditure is like five thousand dollars more per kid well i get a lot more revenue out of a kid from amherst now they're not supposed to sort of actively recruit in but let's be real it you know they're trying to create inroads in schools i mean in communities that have higher per pupil expenditure they'd be fools not to right you know some of the rationale behind why they say it's supposed to be uh you know it's the full you know per pupil expenditure price as opposed to like school choice which is just five thousand dollars for each student part of the rationale for that is like well we don't give any money for for buildings uh transportation's a little different but the difficulty with you know with uh with the buildings thing is if you look at the pioneer valley uh chinese immersion school they got a usda grant to fund the building of their building it's like well wait a minute i don't think we could have gotten that so there's some real need there and i mean you know mr dimling's very correct in in saying that that funding formula has got some pieces that need attention but uh there hasn't today been the political will to to take that on it's so complex and difficult and um so do you think it's worth mentioning the the charter school thing or not i think well i think there's there's ways we can do it i mean we won't be able to go into the detail i just went on about for 10 minutes sorry um but but i think there are things in uh like that that are critical to understand how they impact our budget because you know so for the example you say oh you get this charter re-embarrassment it's this funding source it's great you get this 500 000 what's not easily seen is the expense side you know that's five times that you know or 10 times that you know or whatever um that's that's sort of bleeding money out of your district all the time um so it's it's it's worth mentioning sort of those those opposing pieces because you you know i think oftentimes people look the reimbursement piece they're like great this is income we can use this and it's like well it is but it's offsetting a much larger uh deficit in our budget and you know wouldn't exist if target schools didn't exist or um you know if it was funded differently would be structured differently it's it's um you know if you talk to sean mangano there's there's he has other things that he has problems with on charter schools you know and if for example like the ones around here if you don't have your own way to get to that school you really don't have a way to get you can't choose a charter school as an option that and that inherently biases it uh towards people with transportation ability and you know you think about who that is and that pulling that out of your community of students uh that changes the demographic of your building um likewise a lot of them aren't here to you know technically they can't they have to be need blind so if a kid has special education needs they're supposed to be blind to that but the reality is is that given what the charter schools you know they have often an area of focus that tends to bias who selects them and special education often gets excluded from that not always but but you know that's that's a another sort of quirk that isn't in the sort of funding formula stuff very well okay but i think we can mention some stuff that paints the broad picture all right well we're getting close to 7 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so we've reduced significantly and our in-person numbers um and so if a classroom is walking to the cafeteria for lunch you know where where if we had three sections and i'll use south street as an example she has three sections per grade level and on the average to 25 let's just say 25 per classroom so 75 welcome to lunch you know now we may only have 12 to 12 13 kids per class walking to lunch um and so those numbers are reduced significantly now and those 36 kids will be spread out and and what we feel like is is is really as safe as we can possibly get um and now with these additions and now with these with these death shields we can provide an additional barrier you know in addition to the social distance and that we felt like we had accomplished it was this was this just decided as safer than eating in the classroom because i thought it was that when we discussed this over the summer it seemed that that was the that was the model we were using yes joe it really came down to supervision um and and being able to provide the supervision across the board um for you know you know what i mean in order to do that um and so again you know in some schools we were able to accomplish that and in some schools we were not okay thank you so one of the things i've talked to we've had the time to talk to folks one of the things that we're going to have to do is um you know we may have to retrench and relook at so we we told the elementary principles today you know we're going to have to just look two weeks and and we may have to just pivot and do some other things and just be aware we need to be nimble but uh kathy is online kathy has been very intimately involved with kara prenty and with the state department of health kathy maybe you can come comment on the return in some of the practices that we're doing might be helpful for the board um sure thank you dr sal um so i i believe we have a very safe plan in place for our return um we as dr sal mentioned we will be sending those robo calls out on sundays and wednesdays reminding everyone of the need to screen at home not send their children for parents not to send their children to school sick uh we'll also be discussing the travel advisory um there is a requirement in the state of connecticut for international and domestic travel that people must either quarantine for 10 days or have a negative kova test that they provide that documentation to us before they can return in addition we'll be reinforcing all of our mitigation strategies so that will include the mask wearing the social distancing the frequent hand washing hand sanitizing um courtney and her team and rich dalbert have been wonderful all of the classes have been supplied with um with wipes with disinfectant cleaner everything that's needed um we have um more than enough ppe we're well prepared for that we've established our isolation rooms um and just you know in regard to the cafeterias versus the classroom space everything has been distanced as best it can be and i feel we have a very safe plan in place to return can you just mention that contact tracing the board knows the parameters i think that's interesting sure so um for contact tracing um um i will be conducting that in collaboration with my school nurses uh certainly principals and teachers will be um called upon to help us with that as well so if we have identified a positive case in school we will look to see who has been what we call a close contact which means anyone who has been within six feet of distance less than six feet of distance for 15 minutes or more would be identified as a close or a direct contact those people will be notified directly for families that will include a robocall with a letter uh it will include the instructions for quarantine where to go for testing and certainly the school nurse's number and my number so that we can be contacted with any questions um every principal will be provided with a general notification letter that will go to their school community informing them that we have had an individual we do not identify if it's a student or a staff member but we just identify an individual it's a positive case and they're just getting that letter as a notification just for their information the um positive case of course then will be followed by the health department for them to continue their contact tracing the school nurses will keep track of the students who are in quarantine and staff who are in quarantine in terms of their negative or positive results and then in terms of the general public we have a dashboard thanks to gina jasmine for her help in creating that for me that's updated on a daily basis so anyone in the public can go and look they can see uh the individual school if we have a case if there have been direct contacts and how many people are in quarantine and that's updated on a daily basis and the 10 days so in terms of the new quarantine um you know the cdc um their recommendations still 14 days is the best however they feel there has been a lot of non-compliance with that throughout many and i would say most communities um throughout the country so what they determined was that we could have two options the first is to reduce that quarantine to 10 days so anyone who is either positive for covid or has been exposed and put into quarantine that will be 10 days with a cove test if um after the 10 days if they've been positive symptoms have either improved or for the asymptomatic it would just be the 10 days of quarantine they can return to school however people must continue to monitor not only for excuse me for the 14 days but we expect families and staff to be monitoring before school every day anyway they also gave an option for a seven-day test out which meant that uh someone after five days of exposure could get a covet test and if it was negative they could come out of quarantine um and then continue to monitor for symptoms however when looking at that and the increase so when you decrease the quarantine you are increasing the risk a little bit of spread reducing to the ten days it was minimal it was about a one percent risk um but the seven days went up to five percent and we felt that that just was not uh something that we wanted to take on and i will tell you i don't know of any other district in fairfield county that has opted for the seven days so as a team we met we've decided to adopt the 10-day quarantine and that's what we're going with for the other the other important mitigation strategy and rick jalvert is with us tonight uh in terms of um the buildings rich do you want to go over some of the things that you'll be doing and i know for the board we have been we've had a difficult time not only getting subs and we just can't people don't want to come in at this point um also hiring um our extra custodians we're in the process of doing that but we have some backup plans but the cleanliness and some of the things we're doing maybe rich you could talk to the board a little bit about that because that that was way on my mind rich mr jalver rich oh i see him there but he's not speaking up um courtney you want to pick up for him oh sure yeah so um we had set aside funds in the budget to hire um a sub-custodian for every uh building and um rich and his team put out a call and um we didn't get a huge response we we did hire a few and that we've gotten phenomenal feedback the people that we brought on board we're hoping as we have you know vacancies we'll be able to bring them on board as full uh staff because everyone's really really pleased with the work that they've been doing so we can provide you an update at the next um board meeting but um i don't know because i've been a little bit snowed under with the with the launch of our payroll system where we stood this week but i know last week they were working to do the interviews um maybe kim knows from processing any of them if um how many we had going if rich can you answer um again we had a plan to bring on one for every building but we're just a little bit behind because of the recruitment efforts being a little challenged um okay um oh i just had to we are uh retraining all of our custodial staff in the cleaning protocols we did a training for all the custodial staff in the in the cleaning protocols before you know one of our many iterations of going back to school the protocols have not changed there's a certain type of material you use during the day for cleaning and then after school for cleaning just for the safety of the students that are cdc approved and that kathy's reviewed and and um we're comfortable that they're appropriate materials you know we'll go back over the training protocols with all the custodians and i just want to commend them for um as we did the walkthroughs of the buildings which i wasn't able to join kevin with on this next uh round this week that happened but i mean the buildings looked really wonderful they've done such a tremendous job just getting things cleaned and up and ready to go so i i have great faith that they'll be very diligent and i think they're happy to see the kids return as well so um my understanding too is that the backup plan is to bring in people for overtime in while we screen and bring people in for the part-time work um so that we have coverage during the day the other area i think the board's going to be hearing about constantly and we're going to hear about subs and that will back out and kim maybe you want to speak to some of that what may happen with some of the last minute closures sure um so we have um two things that are going on in that area one that's going to be particularly complicated is going to be folks that call out so people that are currently scheduled to come to in-person work who have to call out sick for one reason or another and we've had to make some modifications to the way that we assign sick time and and that kind of thing because of changes in the federal law the family first coronavirus act was changed fairly significantly in its second iteration so it did not pick up 14 days of paid sick time if you're on quarantine it did not pick up and renew intermittent child care so we have had to put a series of policies and procedures together and there is if you're interested you can see a letter that went to all hands from me that is also posted on our website under the human resources tab under the covid procedures and basically we're trying to make this as as seamless for folks as we can particularly those people who are going to be involved in quarantining situations so they're not sick themselves but they are able to work from home if possible um which would require us i would say in a perfect world simply but not so simply to be sure that we have supervision for students that are coming into the classroom while that teacher is home on quarantine um so we're trying to work through now all of the scenarios on um what the options will be for our staff if they have to call out sick or if they have to stay home for quarantining reasons and as i said those are laid out in the letter it's also required some fairly significant um changes to the aesop system which we're currently implementing now some new um items in the pull-down menu for folks to select so that's been ongoing um right now it as we also uh make one final run through all of those folks who i've got accommodations for one reason or another um we are i will just say anecdotally continuing to get requests for accommodation to work from home i've probably gotten a dozen in the last week and as you'll recall i've been doing those since june so we're trying to do what we can to support our staff as we get ready to open that said assuming that we will have outed people who are calling out and remember that in a perfect year in a given non-coveted year we have days particularly in the winter where we'll do as many as 125 absences in a day so we have been brainstorming on ways to cover absences which certainly and surely will be higher this year in large part because of the quarantine rules so we've had a multi-pronged attack you're going to see some flyers out and around again and some contacts coming through home schools again putting the call out for substitutes anyone who is interested in being the sub pool the sub pool i think i reported to you at the last meeting ordinarily stands around 250 we re-surveyed we surveyed in just before the holidays and we surveyed again now and we've generated about 50 folks who are very much interested in coming back the remainder we either haven't heard from or are not interested in subbing so what we've done is we in addition to the regular building subs that we place in every building in any given year we've bolstered that group with a second backup building sub um so we've taken those folks that have expressed an interest to work and we are assigning them to buildings we're not going to allow them to move across multiple buildings to the greatest extent possible so that we reduce any risk of spread or breaking the cohort but we're assigning them building by building today i had a meeting our team had a meeting with all of the elementary principals to talk about how we would do the assigning and to talk about um what that pressure valve is going to look like what that target number is going to look like where it may not be possible for us to use existing staff and building subs to cover absences and we talked through kind of the order of priority um of we may have to pull building principles may have to pull some of their building staff from other areas to put them into classrooms when we exhaust all of those options the only option may be to close a building and that's what right now we're trying to work on what that emergency plan is going to look like so each building principle at the elementary level has been tasked with trying to circle around what that number of uncovered classes would look like for them and melissa bang who's our asap coordinator and has been since our inception so who knows it inside and out is going to work to watch the daily absence reports each afternoon and early evening in order to put up an alert to the building principal if those numbers seem to be rising in a way that they may not be able to sustain opening on the following day um it's we're not going to be able to do it on the morning of because we simply aren't going to be able to stop children coming on buses but we may the night before see a critical shortage where we may have to close a building what she'll do when she alerts the building principal is she'll put in play a series of steps that will include the building principle working with dr sal and with kevin to talk about whether they believe they may have to close the building and if that decision is made there will then be a phone tree that's going to involve robocalls notifications to bus companies so we are trying right now to make sure that we've solidified those plans in the event that the existing sub coverage just is not sufficient to keep the building open we hope it will be a very rare occurrence but it may be that this is what happens so if that is to happen obviously all of our staff will flip to remote on that day and so those people who can work from home will so there shouldn't be any impact on sick time or anything like that but it will definitely be a last-minute change and i know for those of you who are parents out there particularly those of you who are working parents um you know we have watched our neighboring districts do this and it has been gut-wrenching to watch sometimes these calls are coming at nine o'clock at night and we're going to do everything we can to give as much time to families to plan for a last-minute closure but it's definitely going to be it's going to be an option for us if we get to that point so kelly i had before any any special areas with the reopening for your group of folks kelly yes sorry um so for the um special ed for the reopening um we are going to start by returning all students two days a week um under the monday tuesday or thursday friday cohort and then we will look to expand about two weeks in we would look to expand to bring the students that were identified as the four day a week cohort to bring them in for additional time uh the reason behind this is to make sure that we are ensuring um you know strict uh guidance or we're following strict guidelines regarding the cohorting model the other difference is at the preschool level we will bring in our students into four cohorts so there will be a morning and afternoon cohort each day and then a monday tuesday cohort and a thursday friday cohort and that is to keep the class sizes extremely small at that level to ensure safety so i think other than rich i mean i think we have a comprehensive plan and yet i'm sure there's some hiccups that we're going to have to remedy but i think we're we're as ready as we're going to be we've looked at the classrooms i am told that the most important mitigation strategy make sure everybody's work masks that is that is number one number uno in terms of uh prevention and then the social distancing part as well and minimize or eliminate the gathering of together so we're doing all that um but we'll see how it works i think some parents will get some late calls but as kim just said if we open up on a morning and we're going to be eight or nine teachers short we're going to open up and figure out how to get how to do it because we can't just turn the kids around and send them back so that's why we're going to try to make that decision the night before i have nothing else and i'll just ask my team um if if um if you have anything um if not i got to give a shout out to kim and her staff i received something today which i found um very moving for me i'm hearing some of these anecdotal stories about why folks can come in and and they are um very heavy very deep and very sad and i keep getting this notice that um you know there is a heart and human in the human resource department listening and helping and working through and advising and going over uh way beyond just one mundane about what our procedures are that's from all of the staff so kim i gotta thank you and mr publicly for doing that i'm treating our faculty and staff with respect uh particularly at this time when everybody is so tense and filled with anxiety and rightfully so so thank you very much but thank you thank you madam chair and that's all i have thank you dr uh before we move on um our board members uh are there any questions that they would like to ask dr sale or kim about the reopening amy well you're all doing an amazing job and uh yet i was wondering this week we we're wondering about when will we be able to come into beaverbrook as the board and meet in that huge room i i think uh right now um as i said before we're asking for folk not not to convene right give us some time so i think gladys was going to deal with that i'm we intend on being in you know in terms of working for us but at the board um i'm not sure if you want to you know wait till the first part let us open up and then see what happens the first meeting in february may be a good target uh for for you to think about but that's something what should decide what we have been following amy has been um you know what the city council's been doing so i mean that's sort of been our ammo but right now there is a chance for as you know a hybrid possibility and i think that's a conversation you guys should have but uh certainly um by that time it may be appropriate for you okay good i saw the driving uh uh dr sam uh kim could you go through the uh protocol for us really going back into the building and what needs to be done before we just can't say okay monday we're going to go back into beaver brook there are some things that have to come into play before we even go back into the building right so so i'll start and maybe courtney can also chime in in terms of that um the the first thing is um you should all know that beaver brook is going to operate on a kind of a modified schedule and that stems from the fact that we are all kind of squished into our spaces and share an awful lot of spaces and cannot meet a six foot distancing requirement so um you know for those of you who've kind of poked your head into my suite or kelly suite you you know that um we're really kind of pushed in and so we did a lot of work in the fall on trying to really separate our teams that are in beaver brook out and in some places we're going to have to go to an alternating work schedule so some one cohort is in monday tuesday one cohort is in thursday friday remember too that we have one restroom in that building um we have the the men's and women's room um that's right off the boardroom um for the boardroom itself and again i can defer to to courtney and kevin who have done a lot of the logistics on this um but i will say that you know you're talking about 11 board members you're talking about five cabinet members and anyone invited to the meeting and then the public and that room you'd be amazed how quickly six feet gets gobbled up and so that's a primary concern the secondary concern is ventilation in that room which is not great you'll remember um the air conditioning problems we've had in that room um and lastly i will say one thing that we have paid attention to that dr sell just referred to across the district is in meeting with our administrators we have already had situations where more than one administrator has met together and that pair or triplet or whoever it is gets quarantined so it's pretty easy to wipe out an entire team with a quick meeting in terms of quarantine not necessarily sick but quarantining and so you'll see as a cabinet our intention is that we all meet from our offices on our laptops so the days where we all sat around dr sal's table are are not going to happen um but rather we'll use this technology albeit from beaver brook but with attention to making sure that we've separated ourselves to the greatest extent possible because as i said if um cathy o'dowd does the contact tracing she could put out the entire cabinet level team um for for for 10 to 14 days um just after a meeting so um it's one of the things that we're paying close attention to um i have talked just anecdotally with some surrounding districts um and they're all considering the same kinds of things in in going back to this hybrid model or going back to a full board meeting um and everybody's kind of watching carefully to see how this unrolls but those are just some of the things that we think about now sadly as part of our daily organizational life um courtney and kevin i don't know if you want to add anything more to the facilities piece um um i wanted to also commend rich albert before before he went out but earlier in the um fall he went around i'm calling it the red walkie-talkie that's not what it is but it's a co2 raider so one of the there's recommendations for the amount of co2 in a room that represents the amount of fresh air that's pushed in to a room and there's a threshold and he made sure that every one of those spaces not just in the schools but also in the administrative offices meet that threshold and work with the city to make sure there were some upgrades or modifications to ventilation where it could be made to make sure that that that protocol was being met you know we train folks on opening windows where applicable um we're being very effective from home even my i mean a lot of my finance staff does go in because they like to to see each other even distance so you know we don't have them going in to a small space crammed in all at once but um you know and they need to do so to run payroll and to do you know major finance um we're still kind of paper based so we're in the offices um but um we we feel as yeah so so the buildings um themselves uh have safety protocols in place and as far as the board room kim's right we're following the city the city's recommendation they're not they're not meeting in their full city council chambers yet we want to see you we want to get back in we're anxious to see everyone i'm very anxious to see you amy and meet personally with everyone and um i think it's soon i think the the connecticut we're one of the best in terms of the number of vaccinations and arms and kim working with kathy to get our district up and going i i think it's around the corner for us you know and we're really excited i just think we have to be cautious not to push to the end line and undo all the great progress that we've done with kathy's health protocols and and rich's work with building readiness and all of kim's plans for accommodations and you know and making sure that people are cohorting and not crammed into their rooms where like kelly's staff and kim staff are really really tight um so all those things we're just we're being mindful and we're really excited to be back with everyone and i also want to commend everyone for shifting to a bit of a work from home model during this time for us it's just really been tremendous how um you know people have just i mean i think they're working harder and but that said we're just very very excited to see the board members again and it's around the corner thank you we'll reevaluate it for this part of february and you know if if we can't meet there then maybe there's an alternative site you know um we'll have to think that but that's what i think amy okay thank you madam madam chair i'm about to say i could i just because uh the question was put to me as to you know when we were going back to uh the meetings up at b report and um you know it was suggested that you know some board members could opt out as far as coming in person and uh a jew from home and that sort of disturbed me because you know i've been pushing that we work together support one another okay and if we can't get all 11 board members in to work to come to meetings then to me we have senior board members that you know everyone is not 100 in their health and to say okay if you don't want to come to a board meeting then you know you can do the laptop and i truly understand that but it's not working together and we're all coming all 11 of us in the boardroom so you know i and i just feel that you know this is a pandemic okay and certain things has to be in place that we know that's not in place that people broke it might be easier for them to put up a big wide screen so we can see the meetings and people other people participate in those meetings but that's not bringing the entire board into the to the boardroom so my suggestion was and and it still might be that is that we look at the last meeting in february or the first week and their next board meeting in february to discuss this a little bit further and it's still on the agenda uh about discussion but you know i'm looking at it and some might say no we're not dividing each other but yes we are because we do have senior murmurs that cannot come at or would say no i'm not going to the full board meeting so we're going to have four board members or five or whoever uh at the meetings and then we're going to have the rest uh on laptops and i'm not comfortable with that okay so that was going to be a part of my uh chairperson report but i think it's appropriate to see it now uh so kate had a question and then jody silva thank you uh thank you mrs cooper um i just want to follow up dr sal um and i know you know i don't know if you're the right person or if kathy's the right person but i just wanted to ask about the 1b uh distribution of the vaccines again i know that uh i believe school teachers have been added to that list and i'm just wondering about the support staff like our our janitorial teams or bus drivers or cafeteria workers do we have any information about whether or not they're going to be part of that that cohort yeah go ahead kat okay yes kate i can speak to that so um the state determines the different phases of the vaccine distribution and who uh qualifies under each phase so n1b yes it will include all of our school staff teachers paraprofessionals the administrators our custodial team food services secretaries so everyone will be considered i'm just just yeah the bus yes the bus drivers um they will be registered separately because they are an independent contractor and i'm providing them with the information on how they can do that um everything is dependent on the vaccine supply yeah and that's what i was gonna that actually leads in i don't mean to cut you off but i wanted to get this other question in because it sort of pertains to this um i'm just wondering what the district plan is as far as trying to make sure people are vaccinated and you know i think that this is a tough one because i know that not everyone is feeling very comfortable about it um and obviously that presents some level of obstacle for us if you know all these folks are going to be in the same building so um we can't mandate the vaccine we're not permitted to do that we do encourage that everyone who is eligible receive it certainly if people have concerns they should be discussing that with their healthcare provider and what we will do everyone will be uploaded into the system into the vamp system so everyone will get the invitation and then it will be their personal decision as to whether or not they choose to have the vaccine it's highly encouraged but again it's not something we can mandate and i assume that they would go to their provider or to a community provider that we're not you know it's not being organized and orchestrated by our organization yeah oh no no no so when they receive the invitation um we're working right now with the health department and we will also be collaborating with civic but when they receive the invitation the locations where the vaccine is offered the individual physicians don't have the vaccine right now so currently we're running a clinic out of rogers park and we've been doing that since december 28th um the health department has been doing that so um when they get the invitation they register for an account they select the location the times and days of the clinic and the appointments available are come up on the screen they select one uh they're given a confirmation and then they go and they present that confirmation and they'll receive the vaccine okay does not have to be in deemer it could be in no libertarian i mean we are you know we've been working very closely with cara we are encouraging our staff you know to get it through rogers park that's you know uh readily available and civic um but yes there are other options okay thank you so much sure i guess kate the interesting part would be um i'm i'm making a sign of course when we all get uh and we're ready to come back because you know other than those that are on dl and the state made a decision how long they need to be out and then we'll and then probably would hit the road though what i've heard so far is the districts have done some surveying they have up to 75 80 percent of the folks that are um wanting to be vaccinated so i think it'll be very very high that's good news i mean especially because even after you receive the vaccination they still don't have a at least what i've what i've been seeing is that they don't have a sense of whether or not people are capable of spreading uh covet 19 even after they have the vaccine so you know the mask piece and the the social distancing and the you know the hand washing and all that still is going to have to continue until we really can get everybody vaccinated yep that's correct i know you've been involved no no i'll just say anecdote you know we do have quite a few people that have accommodations based on health care conditions and and many of them that i've talked to have said you know if i can get vaccinated i'm ready to come back so i think we're going to see some easing of some of our um staffing issues and you know just i think the one thing that's hardest to remember about this virus and this pandemic is that you know these folks are teachers and educators and paraprofessionals they want to be with kids and they're home for reasons that really they don't want to be and that's one thing that comes through in every single one of them that i talk to so i think you're gonna see that many of them assuming that their healthcare providers have cleared them for it um you're gonna see a lot of people eager to get back to work because they're gonna have that level of protection and that level of comfort so i think we're i think we're bound for more optimistic times honestly sounds good to hear thank you ken uh joe did you still have questions i did um a comment than a question i suspect my question will be for kathy um i i i'm glad we're going back in a way i'm also extraordinarily concerned this is an ignora it seems to be an enormous risk um i obviously there are there are no things in life that come without risk but when we're discussing mitigation strategies the inevitability of having to close schools for lack of staff the risks you know the requirement to do accommodations for people it just seems that this is extraordinarily fraught to be an understatement especially in light of the fact that danbury's had somewhere in the vicinity of well over a thousand cases in the last three weeks um and a positivity right in the state positivity was almost eleven percent yesterday it's almost seven percent today um in in kathy i know we changed the rules somewhat mind-bogglingly the feds or the cdc or somebody change the rules so the red zone at 25 cases per 100 000 went away we're three times that limit and now all of a sudden that doesn't seem to matter what is the thing that matters what causes us what happens to cause us to pull the plug if 10 11 positivity rate in a thousand cases in three weeks isn't that is there something that causes us to pull the plug um yes so what the state department of health is telling us right now and again just moving back to august even october um i've said before there was no playbook for this we had the ability to go back and you know this is a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen for over a hundred years we don't have we did not have anything to go back on we could only deal with real-time information so now we've had information for schools who have been in session since september yes they've had interruptions they've had closures and what we're hearing from the state is that um the the risk for transmission in school is extremely low even with high community numbers so what the department of public health is telling us now is that if you can reduce the density in your buildings which we will do with using the hybrid model we're not coming back uh full time with everyone in person so by reducing the density in your building employing those mitigation strategies even with higher community numbers they are saying that it's feasible for us to try and return so we'll continue to look at everything certainly if we started to see that there was spread in school we would absolutely revisit that immediately i've had some experience you know i'm also responsible for the nursing services in our non-public schools in danbury they have been open in person full-time yes they've had interruptions we have had closures um whether it's due to a positive student sometimes a positive staff member and i can tell you that through all of those quarantines we have never seen um another case spread within the school it's always been from within the community so that's what's causing the interruptions it's the community spread it's not because it's spreading within the schools so at this point you know we're you know been out since march given all the information we now know we know more than we did even a month ago um i do feel it's safe for us to try and come back thank you um and compliments to everybody in the the cabinet and the teachers and everybody who's working so hard to get this off the ground madam sure one final note about the question about when we when when and where we're meeting i i will note that as dr cell said we're following the city council city hall is closed it's not just that the council meets by zoom city hall is closed to the public it's not open the state capitol building is closed to the public it's not open the connecticut house of representatives voted from their offices and were sworn in outside on a freezing cold day last wednesday they had fewer people in the hall of the house on opening day that we have on this board of education any one time so we're a little premature for that i'd love to go back we're all politicians we didn't do this because we don't like people i'd love to go back but i don't think this is the time thanks madam chair all right thank you uh could i just ask the questions to kathy or dr sale which everyone doesn't that can answer this the question is if once the students go back to school may it be k25 middle school or high school what happens if a student refuses to wear a mask now i don't know if anyone saw what we ain't you know a little three-year-old girl that refuses to wear the mask on the plane so what type of action will be taken even if it's one time then it comes back a second time the student oh uh glad sorry gladys or the board did adopt the policy but kathy go ahead i'll let you sure um yes we do have um we do have a mass policy that the board did adopt as dr sal said um there are very rare cases where we would um consider a mask exemption for a medical condition and again that's an extremely rare case if it's just a matter of a student again depending on their age of i'm not going to do this non-compliant that may become something that the administrator has to address we do have some of our special needs children where mass compliance is difficult but the teachers have been doing a wonderful job with them in working with them and creating lessons on how to wear a mask so flat out refusal for a student who is certainly capable of wearing a mask is not something that we will be able to tolerate in the schools um and again those with special needs will we address that individually thank you okay any other questions yeah i do rachel thanks um i just also want to share my opinion about meeting you know of the board um i agree with amy i think you know if our teachers can work together in a hybrid model it would be you know ideal for us to um mirror that model and um you know at least try to meet somewhat i don't i don't think that it's you know not a matter of we're not working together it's it's just um you know um to show support for what's happening in our schools and other board meetings other boards of ed have been meeting in hybrid fashion for a while now um in addition to that i just want to say for the reopening um families are concerned that there will be another last minute change like there was in october um so many are holding off on making you know a decision to go dl or hybrid until the last minute um you know we've gone through we've gone through all of this you know discussing our our stellar plans to come back in a hybrid model so how can we assure them that we will reopen as planned and i'd like to go on record on you know behalf of my fellow republicans myself we fully support and urge the follow-through to open schools as planned um we also feel that these decisions should be made in consultation with the board and we feel they have not been um you know with the with the october decision we found out you know simultaneously with the public um so how can we be more involved and informed in the decision making process um how can we support you and your staff and with that um you know also i'd like to know what has been the communication between you know the governor's office the commissioner of ed's office and and you dr sal um you know are they keeping tabs on us do they do they you know are they aware that we've we've had this prolonged closure since march and are they concerned um well let me just start here um the decision that we made in october was a last minute decision i don't know how the board could have been involved so i take full responsibility for that i think the board has been advising me and i've been keeping folks up to date um certainly i would take that advice uh from you but that the currents that evening was that evening um there was no reason for us not to open i think joe just put out there the big question we're going to open unless the governor says don't open then i can you have a um there the um the executive order gives your uh department of health the decision-making recommendation for us not to open but at this point she is on board with us as kathy just mentioned so we we intend on opening um regarding the state board of education i put them on notice that we are opening before before miguel was even assigned to washington and i just sent something up to them this past week that we're opening so they fully know that we're opening from the pressure from hartford um the mayor kept transmitting to me you know the governor his conversation with him why we're not opening during all of those times i spoke with and uh with miguel and at that time the practice in october and november was different and understood that each the town was differently uh impacted by the numbers and we had to do what we had to do but certainly my intent has been to return they know that we want to return safely and that's where we're at right now rachel um we're going back i told the administrators that we're going back i did also inform the state that we're going back with that going back means disruption going back means it's going to be the way of life as i said from the bottom of my heart before i'm hoping that we're going back in a sweet spot in conjunction with these vaccinations which i think will give us all a better feeling of safety but um we're going back and uh if we're not going to go back it didn't have to be an edict that you me uh couldn't say we can't do it it'll be from the governor and i don't see that happening at this point he has been encouraging us to be in school and and i spoke into districts now that exceeded our numbers they are in some are even in k5 with 18 in the class at three feet apart i'm not saying we're going there and they're experiencing what kathy told you so that's the new information informing us with that we still have to be very mindful and careful of the mitigation strategy so i don't see us not going in i really don't i see as getting disruptions as kim just explained but that's going to be the way of life at this point and at some point i'd like to know how our students have failed academically through this um you know the the closure um you know you typically in non-pandemic year we would um the board would receive you know presentation uh data presentations you know and i know that there have been you know assessments um done um just so just curious if you know we could possibly be updated on on how students are doing yeah i mean that that'll as we start collecting information uh yeah we can do that sure thank you any other questions for that next thing uh you are you finished out the sale oh yes thank you very much okay no thank cathy uh o'dow for always being here to help answer uh questions that come up uh next thing i'm gonna get janet because we're you know getting past nine o'clock next thing on the agenda is the board chairperson report and you all receive your committee's assignments and this is not the final draft if you want to change or want to um look at some of the uh other uh ptos the pto's in the district committees and if your name is not where you had put it at uh just have a carer put the information in and we'll finally have this uh list finalized by the next board meeting if you want to chair a particular committee please let carol know so we can finalize uh the information about next board meeting um i certainly would like to thank uh kate and cathy martiner for always working uh with me when something come up to try to help me put it sort of in a line uh so um we can put it forth to you um and also cara uh dr sales secretary on tuesday al and myself uh and kate uh attended the workshop for uh cave al did you want to speak briefly about the workshop how what do you feel about the workshop while he's home i'm pierre gladys okay yeah i think we are above the curve when it comes to uh either a united border the topic of the webinar was civility and i think as a group we work very well together and we should give me two minutes to prepare something formally but off the top of my head gladys we work well uh i really realize that we have differences of opinion but civility is being able to uh communicate those those differences in a positive manner than rather than lay it out personal or turn it into a political snowball and i feel very fortunate to be able to work with this group and uh yes we are a cohort thank you okay thank you and as a matter of fact we have a another workshop tomorrow morning tomorrow afternoon right we do so and uh finally i'd just like to say uh when we when we come back to going back to beaver brook and i stated earlier we're going to look at february as to if we can go back in in person and and the necessary um items that need to be corrected in order for us to go back to uh be broke or in place i don't have any uh problem with that so uh saying that along with i hope by the time we do go back that everyone has been vaccinated okay gladys bringing up the the topics of vaccination if i could just go off script a few minutes for one moment cara prunty how do i sign up i'm over 68.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
if i can also add the budgetary impact is a reflection of salary the salary calls for those positions being added to that school site thank you again i want to make sure we get this correct so i appreciate you jumping in uh the uh 23-24 school year uh we um and this is consistent with some of our models that we shared previously where you've seen a reduction in the number of support services in the way of the resource teacher um keep in mind in the schools that are being phased out on they um they will have fourth through sixth grade so they will be reduced by half of a resource teacher at these sites and similarly the these sites would also be would also experience a reduction of 1.5 hours of a health aide and library aid and as you can see for schools four five and six on this is when you the eighth graders would not no longer be at the middle schools and so the schools would in effect be be closed um going down to the new schools reflected in the bottom half of the table the green represents the additional hours for health assistance reflected um in green and then the reduction in hours for clerks and library assistants um corresponds to the reduction in hours actually to the table that we had been talking about and i started talking about earlier when i started when i started my remarks um with regards to the tk8 they will experience as well a 1.5 hours of an increase of a health assistant and a increase of one hour for the library assistant on as you can see here uh this the what i just described in the 23-24 school year would continue in the 24-25 year so there would be no change here and then in 25 26 excuse the small typo of the on the year banner you would see the the reduction of the um amounts of service that this sites will be receiving in the way of research teachers uh health assistants and library assistants you so before we go to next steps are there any questions on this model that pertains to our six pieces i do have one question about um when the six uh the possible 612 um idea or is it the intention for the district to departmentalize six through eight or they be self-contained as well when they're at the secondary right now right now the ideas we were talking about this model it would be as a middle school and and you bring up another good point um ms davidson this is a five-year model if we were to extend it to that sixth year that's when you see sixth grade appearing at the high schools that's why right now in this model you don't you don't quite see it yet uh because it's a five-year plan but in that sixth year is when you would see sixth grade appear at the at the high schools i have a question but i don't have a raise your hand thing can you hear me yes yes um can you explain um the decision making behind having it be 6 through 12 instead of 7 through 12 and then keeping sixth graders at the elementary can you talk to us about that piece of it please so a couple of things uh just a quick reminder uh these are just models right we're gonna get to latasha is gonna speak about these next steps in a quick second uh but right now if we keep the y in in mind in terms of maximizing um not only programs but facilities this helps maximize uh both of those things so having more students on a high school campus during declining enrollment that would maximize uh those facilities uh and having uh more students on that type of campus like six or 12 or we're thinking about programmatic offerings in terms of electives again having a larger group of students gives you more flexibility in the master schedule in terms of what it is that you're offering to have more moving pieces but again just want to revert back to the fact that this is a model when we get to those feedbacks that is definitely something that can be provided you know just something to ponder or think about you know would a 712 be better than a 612 but to answer the question those kind of were the driving factors or forces behind um this initial draft on 6-12 okay so then i'm going to re rephrase my question then so then by having it six through 12 then you are looking to maximize the capacity the existing capacity at both of the high schools so having the sixth graders there fulfills that by coming closer to having a hundred percent capacity yes ma'am okay thank you okay any other questions pertaining to the six pieces i think i have a question now um i i just want to know i'm thinking about this long phase out period in the elementary schools and i'm really wondering at the tail end when there's like maybe a school that has two or three classrooms with two or three teachers how that will really continue to function as an elementary school and provide kids with really a learning environment that's conducive to a rich experience because there won't be enough people to do a lot of activities there will be limited people should be involved in parents parent groups and in the staffing or support staff and um i are you going to be looking i guess what i'm really asking is are you going to be looking at maybe a shorter phase-in period with any of these models instead of taking the full five or six years so that kids can be in a a school that's well that has more kids in it so right now all of our models are over the five years um what gives opportunity for those that would choose to be able to promote from their home school so it could be that uh whenever a model determined and is implemented all the parents say you know what i don't want my kid just out of school when it's just only going to be them but right now this is how we're doing the model here now again that's just one of the implementations that we said was one of our pieces that could be a recommendation when we have our next meeting when we're going to discussions as to why people feel that's a pro or con okay any other questions this may be a nuance that we can talk about a little bit later but i do want it noted and i do i think that it might be a parent concern are we looking to maybe designate certain areas of a campus for younger students as opposed to the older students yes ma'am okay thank you all right okay so our next steps we will have our next meeting which i believe mr toro you received the invite already so on february 3rd and february 10th will be our in-depth meeting where we're going to receive feedback recommendations pros and cons but in the meantime we would like for you to speak to your counterparts your bargaining groups your parent groups to find out their ideas of the plans you guys have all four models so you can get their feedback and represent them as well when you come back on the third and the tenth um see their reactions share your reactions um recommendations maybe you just want to tweak a model maybe you have model 20 however it is this will be your opportunity to come back to us with your feedback as well as feedback from others and this will be your show we will moderate and we will have structure but this will be your show on february 3rd and february 10.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
there really was was not much i wouldn't say there was an appeal as much as i was having regular meetings with bnf and the governor to talk about the process i was going so when you look at the leadership team look at table four so table four details by edn 164 million dollars the 10 program but that's all on the governor's decision so it seems like the there's the initial budget department requests bnf requests and then governor's decision so the governor's decision shows the cuts so your question is what the no because what's happening but there's some questioning because why are you cutting and i'm not trying to figure out are you cutting it or was it the governor's cut and so who are we who do we who does he take his case to say so from the table it doesn't sound like some of these were your cuts they were the governor's cuts so if you don't necessarily agree with them it may not be their decision it was based on table four it was based on a directive to all the department heads that we had to do a minimum of a ten percent cut and so that and we had to look at it and you could just receive further cuts based on table four because it doesn't show all it shows is negative amounts in the governor's columns so when we presented this to the board of education we spoke about this this wasn't what we wanted to do what we felt we needed to put forth um i think when look asking the question about additional cuts we're looking at the 100.2 million dollars of carried over non-recurring cuts as being the additional cut that we did not address we do not have program adjustments to meet that reduction we thought we were doing the responsible thing in putting forth 10 percent um we felt it was what we needed to do in in the context at that time and i'm sorry there's so much flexibility and need for continued conversation this year um and we recognized that but it also didn't take into account the 183.6 million that you're getting from the feds right you didn't know that no this is prior to that notification so now you know that you're getting that back i guess we should be asking you where are you going to put back no when do you get the final amount and when do you receive the funds when do you know the final amount we know the final amount it's the 183.3 million dollars we have been told we'll get it any day i suspect the change in in the leadership in the u.s department of education may be bogging that down a little bit but that should not be a problem we should have ready soon access to the 183 okay so a lot of these cuts can be restored based on denim those dollars yeah so when we did the budget we would send it to the board we identified the highest priorities for restoring restoration if there are new funds that became available and so that's what we're presented to the board on the 21st of this month is the budget proposal of what to potentially restore the 183 million so if you guys you guys are going to say 10 how is it that early college got cut by 50 so the early college is a bit of a complicated situation their current budget this year is 2.5 million dollars being a 1.5 is was determined to be recur non-recurring which which means in building the base budget for next year the base was 1 million as part of the 10 reduction scenario the department put forth another half a million dollar reduction so in reality that program is going from 2.5 million this year to half a million dollars for next year in the budget that's before you that's really nice again none of this is what we wanted to do it's what no i understand but i mean we should be doing everything possible not to cut from school level and i'm you know i'm not sure how many warm bodies you've gone through in your administration but we need to make sure that we try and keep whole as much as possible that kind of cut to early college is going to kill the programmer i think you guys realize that and that is not acceptable particularly because in this pandemic and where people have to be retrained and retrained this provides opportunities for kids right out of high school to go into the health profession we saw that last year when hbh picked up 30 kids from waipahu high school because of the training that they had in the health i mean that's what we have to look at that's what we have to depend on and help get get us back to where we need to be in our economic development for our state i'm sorry but that's not acceptable to me so is it going to be restored those are the kind of conversations we we really want to engage in and and as mentioned in the presentation uh we will have a plan put forth by friday and we will share it it goes to the board on the 21st and they will be evaluating plans around the priorities and in alignment of those priorities with with the department strategic plan um on the 24th of of this month um we know there's so what does that mean so in the sense you know you're going to get the federal funds you have these cuts right now is it as simple as you're just going to take the federal funds and restore the cuts or is it more complicated than that it's a little more complicated superintendent that talked about learning loss and and we we have no requests for additional funds for the biennium for general funds we only have cuts going forward um for the federal funds to supplant the general funds we also have the problem is we have new needs yeah if when we're calculating we don't even have calculated out all the additional supports that are needed for additional instructional time for kids that are falling behind because of the pandemic the additional um infrastructure needs for technology the ppes all of that is costs that are new costs so how much of that can go into cip though so when you're talking about infrastructure needs how much of that can actually go into the cip budget i don't think we were contemplating cip with those dollars at this time but but in infrastructure i i think you're talking about human capital yeah you're talking about computers let me change the terminology because it's yeah because i get that too but that you're going to need wi-fi you're going to need not necessarily i think expenditures that will easily fall into cip or appropriately fall into cip uh but that that's that's the that's across the added cost factor so we're 400 you know 400 million in the whole right now we're getting 183 million and then we have these unknown costs that will co that are continuing to escalate and um and trying to design around what we're going to need for essentially what is a a design is going to have to be a year-round school kind of concept we need to have a very robust summer school not for every child but certainly for those students who are behind and then students who are two or more years behind they need so much one-to-one support that's what's not even that's what we're calculating now because you can't just put them in a small group in a classroom i mean they need intensive catch-up in order to go into the small group and back into the classroom i think superintendent what i would like to see is how much um how hard to look that you guys took in each a.s division to see um where the fat is how could we you know and and what is their service to the schools how are they supporting and for instance um a few years ago we added 15 equity specialists how many cases have they had i mean they don't even report to the the kazan so i can't ask the kaz is the same with the the 15 it people that we added a couple years ago also all those positions they don't report to the kids i have no idea what they do specifically for the individual complex areas so you know that kind of going down and looking at how they're serving you know that their caz is in on your office of curriculum and instructional design um i think there was a presentation to the board and you talked about reductions in staff and funds for instructional development admin services and instructional services so how many general funded full-time equivalent positions are in those sections what were their job duties and assignments how do they assist each school and their curriculum um these are the kinds how many times have the schools requested their assistant these are the kinds of information that i think would you know help and i would help you surely but would help us senator at the last board meeting we published the data sheets for every department at the state office showing how many ftes how many were being proposed to cut what the what the how many how much of what percentage of the budget is centralized versus a pass-through so that there's also a clear understanding that if you look at special education for example most of it is a pass through to the school level so if you're cutting the state level appropriation for special ed you're actually cutting at the school level so we have data sheets we can provide you per department that shows exactly what you're asking for and and for the first time we've made those we've organized it so that the public can see when we say state funds what that means what's what state funds and sit centrally and what state funds it actually is at our school site so you can see how many of those employees are actually out of school yeah i would appreciate that because i think all of our senators we can send that immediately supported from admin level the concerns you're raising are definitely concerns we share those things are basically table five broken down what you're seeing is online because table five are just these big for the state yes yes on december 3rd we had the recommendation memo they went to the board the details by program where those reductions would be happening at not at the edn level but at the much lower level on december 17th there was further impact statements and and as mentioned in the presentation at the next board meeting we'll be focusing on what are the school and complex level support so we'll definitely share those those those are just all further details to table five so table five yes it's just drilling into the impacts and getting it the questions to to make it transparent what was the thinking behind what is before you um and and again none of it what we wanted to do um what what we felt we needed to do it in the context at the time and this is all fluid we recognize how fluid the financial situation is for the state um you guys have any more questions before i continue well i'm just trying to figure out just from a budgetary point of view so you even if you were to supplant uh the general fund cuts with federal funds because you have increased needs you're saying that's still not enough right so the the difference you're still going to be short i don't want to confuse marriage a little bit but we we have current year shortfalls and those you see in emergency appropriations in in here in one of the tables 62 million our needs are actually greater than that we have the 393 million potential in shortfalls that's both years of the biennium um we have the learning loss which is another expense and then we have this 183 million dollars which is tremendous but it's it's not going to address um everything and and that's that's the the what the board will be wrestling what is the plan for your learning loss has that been planned out what the programs would be and so there's a dollar a month that you guys can you know say this is what we're going to need so our office of curriculum instruction and deputy uh superintendent with the casas and the principals are planning that out now so we now have quarter one quarter two data student achievement outcome data and we have summer school data so now essentially you have three quarters of information or i should say two quarters plus last summer school and now they're using that for planning for for what summer school needs to address in learning loss and how we prepare for next year so that's the work that's happening now and what we're essentially doing is setting aside a an allocation of money to protect that for the as we finalize this plan okay so what what you're saying then is that there's no set amount that we know we've ever need right now for that well we know what we're going to be able to set aside and we're going to work with that within the 183 million we're going to we're going to prioritize it for that yeah but that's not saying you know what we need no and i think no you don't know what we need cutting from other places that need it we're we're taking away from students and and schools that need this funding now so that's what i'm saying if you guys haven't done your homework and you don't know where we are then how can you say this is how we're cutting the debt budget with the schools are the ones that are are pulling together the learning plans and what they need that's what we're using we're using this through school and student data to generate the plans in terms of mitigating learning loss uh moving forward so that that's the planning process we're going through now my question would be then okay i mean i i kind of get kind of confused here so any other money is going to go to any other schools for the lessening the 10 percent cut yeah i mean that's the general part because we we're losing the teachers we're losing um i know some of the schools in my area are losing um over 2 million of their budget and then almost 300 000 on special ed funding um does any other special ed funding do get any direct funding from feds um helping with special ed in our schools or that that's that we don't get anything from an offense to subsidize anything just for sure 83 does that come out of the 183 or is there a separate funding mechanism for special aid special education there's the individual with disabilities education act through which we get almost 50 million dollars a year that that we talked about is is consistent we're going to we're relying on that to continue but it's that's just to maintain what we've already been doing um the cuts to special education i think they're they're in the neighborhood of 30 million dollars to our edn 150 budget um that i think is what you're talking about and that is portion of 183 cover that or are they still going to be short so we're looking at using a portion of the 183 to cover part of that special ed cut that we were being we would be forced to make if we didn't have the 183 so yes we're looking to restore part of the wsf funding to schools so they don't have those deep cuts and and part if not all of that special ed uh funding and so we're trying to stretch this money out to wrap it around what schools need to protect this the classroom in the school site okay so if you go back to table five then and you have the 183 so in addition to reductions there's actually additions that are not paid that you can't afford right now there's another hundred million dollars of base budget so basically you're going to add another 100 million to listen to this amount so from the 183 that you're getting not all of it obviously is going to be restored so where i guess on friday is when you're going to tell everyone like yeah those categories are going to get restored these amounts but some of them may be fully restored some may not exactly that's correct and i apologize not to be disrespectful but we do need to go to the board and have that conversation and that that will take place on the 21st and you will have information as soon as we have another question on uh lunch is food um how much of that um that we're going to be restoring and how much of that are we going to go back since we have been getting um sets of dies from the feds and uh um other agencies to continue the feeding of the children that was at the school because some of the parents and some of the community members are saying you know we don't need to go back to a full-on menu because the second goal and the banking goal was just as good and it was enough to uh take care of the children in the morning and in the evening afternoon if we're going to go back to a full menu and you know what i know in the elementary air level and in the high school level we get more waste than actually consumption so now when you guys did or the federal program did the second goal they noticed that there was less waste on campus and even the parents reported that even when they went home there was less waste so again if we want to go with the full meal juice milk apple salad um the whole nine yards that we're spending this per per plate per school is only going to rise to to the um budget that we are right now we still under the pandemic should not even go and even thinking about going back to a full menu so what i heard is that most of the schools kids are people coming back and we're going to go back to a full menu i think there will be a disaster and a waste of funds and going back to a full menu where most of the schools don't even have a full uh student body so i think you guys should look into that too because using that kind of money to be buying a lot of rice and food and everything and and not be able to feed the multitude of kids that they need to feed the sac lunch was just as good and it was just enough for the kids to to get by during the morning and in afternoon so that's something that i know it's a huge cost to the dle is food so you guys can look into that because i think they'll be devastating to even having the schools have to make a full menu making the principles and the cafeterias go over the full menu knowing that that's coming out of their uh budget of running the school i think was going to be hard on them you guys can look into that please thank you senator we we do have federal standards and requirements we have to meet but we're also trying to look at how we maximize the flexibilities there are for exactly the reasons that you're raising so we do have a team that's reviewing this right now yep okay so thank you superintendent and the um the latest funding from the feds are they providing funds for hawaiian language and education programs or are is that included in that 183.6 there's that separate allocation do you have details i i don't have details so there's two components one is just the the pro the academic programming we provide falls under our 183 million right because they're part of our schools but there are there is a separate allocation that the state should be receiving i don't have details on that that doesn't come through the doe we haven't been given those numbers yet but but it should be coming there should be some allocation to the state for um for the hawaiian population and what the scope is and who's going to manage it here i don't know and what about for the charter schools the charter schools fall under our appropriation we're anticipating uh providing similar to the 43 million dollars where where uh fair share was was provided doing that again and that has come out of 183 there was some in the authorizing language for the esser funds the allowable uses one of the things that states is that it can be used for any purpose for essa the elementary secondary education act idea and a whole laundry list and i think one of the allowable uses was for purposes although also authorized under the native hawaiian education act that that caused a bit of confusion and anxiety around how that would would be operationalized so it is an allowable use of 183 and the 43 million i wanted to ask one more question to deal with our um alternative learning centers you know that was a a big thing for us and getting these alcs and i think the intent was to you know see if we could do more i'm sure we're not looking to you know fun more right now but has there been any movement i mean i'm talking about um you know we have olomana storefront and uh papa hana oka i know in the waianae and i i understand they're doing very well and you know hats off to a.s armstrong for continuing to see that they you know thrive but i just wanted to know because i think it was the intent of the legislature to you know continue this these models and see where we would like to expand but is there any report that talked about this i know we're not going to do it right now but moving forward we funded some money for a plan didn't we when we initially added the amounts a lot of expenses so we'll have to go back and see where that is in this budget um i know the funding for the alcs was was disproportionately protected in a sense in that there's a one percent reduction in that area of the budget but we will have to go back and see where the plan what the status on that is okay so the the um you know the news report that outlined the number of cuts of two positions this does not include the the funding that you're getting from the fits right no it doesn't include this the adjustment that the funding will now the impact it will have back on planning so this number uh will be reduced based on what you decide by friday yes and we don't we we're right now running through the final numbers that are calculated from the financial plans from the schools that's also being presented to the board and the adjustment that will that we'll be able to propose based on the new monies so i don't know that we can put general funds back i wish we could but i i think what we're looking at is is offsetting or using federal funds in place of some of those areas that were reduced right and we'll we'll share that information for sure okay so on by friday you'll have a i guess a new outline of how many positions are actually it'll be a proposal we we put forth a kind of outline the issues a week in advance when we when we go to the board so they have materials when they're presented with with an issue to deliberate on so senator i want to be clear on friday what we have is the the cuts if we didn't have any federal funding right that by school and we'll have the proposal to try to reinstate some of that money back now the schools will have to go back and indeed because they're not going to get all of their money back and now they'll have to go back and say how they're going to use those funds so you guys are going to you're going to go back one by one saying okay you got this much back what are you going to get what position do you want back so they're going to they're going to go back and adjust their their financial plans based on that and what's the timing on that well there there is a process we'll have to go through based on whether the um the the other competing needs right now that we still have an un you know that are still unmet needs yeah that that timing question is is an excellent issue i mean we have an entire legislative process to get through and this is always a frustration for schools when they do financial plans to to not really know for certain what they're ultimately going to receive but we will be communicating to schools with with the best information we have so they can anticipate adjustments there's a number of decisions that still need to be made of course the not that probably the most important one is is the legislature's ultimate decision on the on the budget is there some discussion on i guess this is for uh randy tanaka but some discussion on reducing transportation costs by rescheduling bill times for students yes so it's can you answer that question about where we are in the study on our transportation schedule school schedules randy are you still connected i see his name yeah yes i'm here because i'm here so senator kirani yes we are actively managing what our pickup and our raw schedules have been clearly ridership has been done reduced there are some savings in that area and so that's part of our budget adjustment we also have looked at reducing contractors i'm sorry can you hear me yeah yeah all right um so a number of uh service contractors we've reduced back uh we're taking we've frozen uh unfilled positions and on a case-by-case need especially in the food service area so we have uh as directed by the superintendent and and as hallett that exercise of 10 15 20 uh we have taken a hard look at that so um if we have contracts with for bus services did were we able to do savings when when the pandemic hit and we didn't need the bus or all the bus service was that something i'm sorry go ahead was that something that's written into the contract so we don't need the service because of something on the emergency or whatever is that we can you know recruit or you know not continue with the contract yes we're not locked into a hundred percent of the service as we were would be operating in a normal situation we have rollback positions there's a minimum of 25 percent that we is maintained but it's not 100 of the contract that we have to fulfill so what was the percent savings on transportation well i've got to get back that number back to you but it is it is substantial based on the ridership and please note we have to fulfill the the special ed requirements that is not some place where we can give so randy let me just share from from the fiscal services perspective we were watching that closely and and our the latest information we received as they're projecting a right around 50 million dollars expense this year they have a about a 62 million dollar budget so it it at this point um extrapolating forward for the rest of the year it looks like there may be some savings there so it is something we're watching closely of course we we also have a 25 million dollar approximately shortfall in food service so those two kind of more than it unfortunately cancels each other out um but but we are watching that and it will definitely be part of our our planning going forward okay uh senator keith agaron and this is sort of along the lines of what mr tanaka was talking about to what extent have you frozen all the vacancies in the planning and in the capital improvements area because i guess my concern is really about whether or not you'll have the capability to implement a number of the projects that you're asking for the ones that have already been authorized we we have we're short of personnel in that area but we've done some process changes we have not fallen into the place where projects are lagging because we don't have personnel to to execute those programs we're focused on the large projects and some of the more critical projects in specific areas so right now we're tracking okay we're not ahead of pace we're right right in the zone where we think we should be we we lapsed 12 million last year june 30th but that was not lapse because projects couldn't go up that was lapses in project changes so out of the 498 when i walked in the door in january um with the potential laps we ended up with 12 million in the laps so our team did a real good job of hustling in the right direction so you're confident you can handle the additional projects that are being requested for this year i think there's it's mainly a lump sum as i as i've seen so far right yeah that is that is correct that is correct and the one area that we um stay real focused on is is the repair and maintenance the unforeseen um you know uh breakers going down that affect the entire school and we didn't account for that we we have a budget for that but you know it goes up and down depending on the just the general wear and tear and the equipment okay thank you chair okay so you know what's the uh attachment c page 13.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so i guess i'm just saying how long do we want to limp along with the system that isn't working we're not implementing it the way it was designed um and we've had since 2019 when asba came and and maybe as someone who's very active in esba you can share why you know what the differences would be or why it is that the majority of districts in arizona don't operate under policy governance but to spend a lot of human resource hours trying to train on a on a model that took several months if not a year to train everyone on that we're not even implementing for us to decide then okay do we like it do we not like it i mean some of it when you're new a new board member you kind of are at a disadvantage in that you know you're coming into a system that we've all worked in for a while and then you kind of sometimes you do may have to make decisions just with the limited information that you have but then i don't know that it's you know for the rest of us to necessarily continue again limping along with something that in in a lot of ways is not working right but you've you just hit it on the head you said that you're asking two board members to come in and vote on something that they they really haven't experienced and i would like for them to know what we've been doing and you hit it right on the head he came in in 2019 and said we were in jeopardy or you know whatever he said and um you're right if we haven't done anything with it okay then why haven't we done anything with it um but this is january 2021 and he came in in 19 and now we've had that year and a half almost two years and we haven't done anything that was that's that's a very big concern that is i agree with you um but to have like i said two board members to come in and say okay i'll agree with you let's scrap it they don't know what they're supposed to remember well but they're not versed in what has been going on for the past 11 years and now the last year and a half two years with no monitoring self-monitoring so well i do have a few comments here i have to agree with miss prichard on as a board member i want to feel comfortable asking questions and it's not that i'm i just want to be able to better understand certain issues that's going on and i don't want it to look like getting into the weeds just because we're asking questions to me that's the only way to learn and to become a better board member and to understand the district overall but i guess what i'm trying to understand is what is your concern and your concern about is there a certain policy that you don't like and what will change i mean we still will have policies in place so i guess i don't quite understand the difference between like the asba and the governance we still have boundaries that we have to keep so what would truly change if we that you want to get rid of it so the reason that i that i brought this to the board was because i wanted and was hoping for a more collaborative you know situation here in the district you know not just with us but you know with administration too to be able to feel more comfortable asking those questions understanding some of what's going on i i know that that there are times though when there are decisions made that you would um maybe naturally think would have come to the board that don't uh some things that are um decided between um administration and in other districts you'll you'll hear that the their boards made those decisions but in dysart there's a separation of power so again just making a more collaborative um governance model for for dysart it doesn't mean that we want to be on a power trip or that we want to micromanage anyone we're still going to you know respect those ends and those means but again just a i hate to use the word again but more collaborative so more teamwork involved i would feel comfortable taking a vote tonight just because for one i don't like the idea of going through this grueling training about policy governance and then all of a sudden being like just kidding it's gone and then all of a sudden all of that time and effort and that you guys have spent training us and that we have spent in a training i don't like the possibility of then all of a sudden having to relearn something new and some some decisions if it really is up to the superintendent i feel like that's a lot for one man's shoulder to carry i am sure he's gotten tons and tons of emails about current events maybe if you know and right now when people ask me questions i defer them to the superintendent and i say hey i can't do anything about this to help you but because that is the superintendent's decision so that is my thought on the process we do have books that we can kind of look through manuals and stuff as far as policy governance goes but i feel like if we are going to make a decision now is probably a good time to do it and just start it off fresh that way we are all on the same page as we go throughout the year and the decision-making process madam president if i could comment that i'm very concerned about what the board by making a motion if if you have intense if your intent is to do away with everything policy governance there may be some misunderstanding of things that aren't necessarily attached to policy governance that the board may not unintended consequences is basically what i'm getting at um i would like to have our attorney help us to identify what is it and maybe come up with a proposed language for an agenda item what is it that the board is separating from and what is it not separating from again if you're asking to abandon the current policy manual we are not prepared to do that but if you're looking at the gender carver model of policy governance okay that's something that you can vote on tonight but if the expectation is what all is included in that vote i i'm uncertain myself of what comes with that bundle it was my intention just to change the governance model potentially not changing the policy handbook um that's why my question to you was how does that work does that mean that we eliminate everything or does that mean that we take it step by step madam president members of the board i think if a motion was made that directed administration to [Music] prepare policies in alignment with some vision statement we could work collaboratively to to achieve that again i'm very concerned about even the policy is one thing what i don't know what the board is expecting to be included policy being one perhaps it's been mentioned what other things is the board intending to be included in this separation i see what you're saying about um putting the district at risk if you just say effective immediately we're reverting to all asb policies and so that wouldn't be that wouldn't be my intention i don't think it would be anyone's intention to put the district at risk um i think that um for again just one board member i'm thinking that continuing to go through the policies the policies themselves and evaluate does this still fit do we still like this whatever that's to me not as immediate as far as like i'm not saying because we go through and we review these policies as far as actually what our expectations are for the district all the time and we have opportunity to ask questions or to change things i don't think i personally don't have anything i don't object to i can't think of anything necessarily um regarding policy it's more the governance model so i'm wondering if um if anything as we this work in progress as far as looking at okay are there parts of the policies we actually want to change as well that you know i can see might we can do that as we move forward through the year and change those up if we need to still operating under them but for me again moving forward again with to do board members that need to learn what type of governance model we're going to start with i think the sooner the better so for me that would then if anything just um discontinuing the policy governance model the concept of policy governance not yeah not necessarily throwing all the policies away so that i don't think i think that piece of it or that that little stipulation might um i don't think that's going to require like legal advice or putting the district at risk because we're not we're not stopping and reverting to a whole set of policies we haven't looked at for a long time i don't know that thanks madame president pritchard i i would say for the record officially absolutely without any reservation i welcome your questions and i i hope that um any action uh because of the the umbrella or the shadow the policy governance i regret that that has had any influence on your your interest in asking questions because i we cannot function as a district if the board is not informed and it is my intent and i've said this to to you many times it's my intent that you come into your job prepared with the knowledge that you need to lead and that's my responsibility just to make sure that you are informed so please officially i'm asking you ask questions at will and if you feel like the policy governance is prohibiting you from doing that then i support abolishing the policy governance for that very reason if there are other limitations that the board feels restricted because of policy governance i would love to hear from you what those elements are so that if you believe that by discontinuing policy governance that that now is going to start something that hasn't been happening that's a conversation we need to have to open up that communication and to eliminate your frustrations or any reservations that you have under your your leadership role um so i would welcome those conversations as well even whether or not you vote one way or the other and policy governance it's not my understanding that again different administration since i've been here i i would never say to you you cannot ask that question that's against policy governance i welcome your questions so i just want to make that clear thank you dr kellis um i'm not very comfortable making a vote on it yet but i'm with everybody else i mean if we're going to do something we do need to do it pretty quickly because like you say well i get trained on all of this and then we eliminate it and now we're we're starting all over and that's that's a waste of everybody's time but we have a study session coming up and i think february february that's not too far off could we add that just so we understand what them it sounds to me like it's not the policy end of it it's the model part and that's what i guess i want more information on is what is this model that seems to be the the concern so could we at least include it in a before we go too far into this year at least have some other discussion about it i think that that's one of the things that you just said miss grant um i i just want to make sure that our incoming board members know what the model is and what we if we choose not to do with that then what can we do with another model i just would like for both of them to get not necessarily get trained on policy governance i guess that's maybe i was using the wrong words but the fact is what we currently use and what else is out there as our options so just to get information not it would take a long time for you it took four years for us to go through it and everything but just so you know without um just so you know what you're dealing with what policy governments are over here and what asba is over here or there may be a third one out there i don't either no idea but just you said something as far as like getting legal opinion that's that's that's okay too but just so you know what you're actually voting on okay so respectfully i asked i was i was told that was going to happen in 2018 when we're like well let's just start looking into that and here we are so when i hear those words again i just feel like if if if this would clear things up by saying okay we're not gonna we're not gonna say we're to revert asba policy effective immediately but we're going to say we are abolishing or discontinuing the policy governance model in dysart unified school district and then we have these workshops to talk about do we want to tweak these policies any differently that's fine but i've already been told in the past yeah we'll we'll work toward it we'll look at when people have study sessions and we never did so i'm hearing those words again and i'm feeling like well it's not yeah and i i totally understand that but i guess i want to make sure that the incoming board members know frustrations or delights of whatever we've had with policy governance and we could probably we could probably knock it out with a an hour or a two hour workshop but it's just giving them the opportunity to see and again i said not training on policy governance but what we've been doing what what are our options instead of doing this during a board meeting so you're saying still continue with the policy governance model until we change it at a future date sometime is that what i'm hearing i just want to be clear too we're on our second meeting of the year are we saying they haven't been trained in policy governance this is their first meeting this is technically their first meeting so have either one of them do they know what policy governs that would have been covered like an orientation no no so that's that's it was covered in mine that's why i asked it was not okay so okay in order to take care of your concern can we put it on the study session i don't even know that study session as an agenda item and discuss it and then on the record as a future uh agenda item for the meeting after that study session have it on the agenda does that take care of your concern to have this work study session soon i mean it now it'll be on the agenda because i just want more info we did not get it was not covered in orientation we were given two big books but you guys were you guys attended board meetings for how long while you were i mean but they don't know what the model is but i don't unders that's why i want to have without taking up time i want to understand what is the difference nobody's been able to answer that question except for a book that's 12 and you know this thick versus this thick we still have policies so what is it about this model that is keeping that you feel that is keeping you from doing your job as a board member so that's what i wanted i want to understand what is this model you're asking me personally i'm asking you and miss jones more because the two of you yes okay so for me personally just like i've said this is not policy governance anymore this is not how the model was designed presented we were trained in years and years ago it's morphed into something else so it's not even can you be more specific i mean can you give me an example so um for an example yeah we had the we have the consultant come he analyzes the data he brings it back he tells us he gives us feedback on that part is too technical and since you're not familiar i won't um but there's that piece of it we have the um the people the observers that are in the audience that monitor are we following policy governance to give us the feedback we would have our own self-evaluation tool that we would have to do after every single meet that has not been done for probably over a year you know um so those are the more of the strategic the um the procedural types of things that are no longer in place um as far as my frustrations as a board member i feel like the board is very that this model keeps the board very hands-off it's very much like dr keller said that you know the ends and the means and not i was never even in 2006 or 2007.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um carrie or holla do you have other things you'd like to say or ask i realized i i didn't um i just wanted to say that i like the idea of doing some cost adjusted like some inflation adjusted illustrations i think those are generally in the books but um i think it's important that we highlight the inflation-adjusted numbers up front as well so but otherwise like i think i think you're on the right track and i look forward to seeing this more um kind of filled in yeah i mean i'm happy to comment on i don't know can we comment like if you circulated something and we responded to you directly rather than yeah you can certainly reply to me directly without any issues whatsoever if you if you so you can express it opinion to me all you want uh the when two get involved it gets to be problematic um the other thing i think is just you know sort of timeline on this and and so the uh the four towns meeting is the sixth uh so i think you know there are in thinking about sort of you know there's multiple audiences here but i think one of the primary initial audiences is going to be that group of folks um and and partly just so that we're you know there's a lot of uh varying levels of experience in in those in those in that you know in that room quote unquote um so hopefully this is something we can get kind of put together before that so that they have a day or two kind of looking over and get a more intimate feel for what what the you know the push pull is in the conversation around uh you know the different pieces of of the of of the budget and the funding sources and that sort of thing so that's kind of my target for a time horizon um but as i you know fill this in i will definitely share it back out with folks um for feedback and and uh you know if you guys want to meet again to sort of uh polish it up some more or have a you know a conversation amongst yourselves about what you know things that you think we should add or take away or you know enhance or reduce you know we may want to do that i would think maybe one more meeting would be useful in that regard just to collectively you know kind of talk through it with yourselves um but i think it's going to take a look at calendar see where we're at but i mean it next week wouldn't be probably that other the following week which would be just before we get into um the uh yeah so next week we have the holiday on monday um the following week and then there's another full week before the four towns meet so we've got three full weeks three and a half weeks really till that meeting um but i opened a suggestion on how you guys want to proceed as far as getting this developed carrie so we have a bunch of weeks where at least if if none of the meanings that we have planned or cancelled at least those of us on the region and amherst are going to have if we do this maybe we're having at least two meetings per week on because we're having all these thursday meetings as well right so i would love it if we could give you feedback directly and you could incorporate it over email if that's amenable to the rest of the committee um i'm just feeling a little tapped out in terms of being away from my kids three nights a week yeah yeah so let's say how is this let's say let's see how we are by not next week but the beginning of the following week how things are going and then maybe get some input from doug about whether he thinks we had to try and do something that week or wait until the following week how does that sound sounds good yeah and i mean i think if if um you know if what i get put together and based on your feedback if if we're in a place where you know we don't have to meet at all if people are comfortable right you know but if we if we think it would be worthwhile to have a a little round table about what's in there um yeah i think it'll take me until the 25th would be the the beginning of you know not next week but the beginning of the following week so i'll try to get something um you know to kind of compose this in a more full way by that date and then you guys give me feedback um if i get it done earlier great i'll get it to you but i wouldn't make that promise at this point um but then i think that gives us enough time if we need to do a pretty considerable rewrite we've got time to do that and if we don't then we're just ahead of the curve and we can get it out to people let them start musing through it a little bit and getting familiar so okay that sounds good to me i uh care carry and holla that's that sounds good and i assume and i'm reminding myself because this is you know i i don't have all that much experience with meeting stuff either we can't really share our comments or our feedback amongst ourselves it's got to go only to doug that would be right yeah okay and i'll i generally am i'll try to remember if i send you guys anything you know to remind you it's like oh just reply to me not to the group because it's also one of those things you know quirk in the open meeting logs like if carrie writes to me and then i send it to you we've just violated open meeting law even though you two didn't directly interact but because collectively got to all three um that's that's still council violation so we got to really be strict you know about sort of keeping that stuff straight and separate okay you know i don't know that anybody's gonna really give us a hard time about this but at the same time we want to know we should pay attention yeah yeah okay um all right well i thank you everybody i i think we made a lot of progress tonight and um doc i thank you so much for all this work because i mean you're in the middle of all your own budget stuff too yeah i got plenty going on i will say this if you have other ideas if you think of something you see something you're like oh that'd be great feel free if you even if i haven't seen anything out send me a note don't hesitate to say oh i found this thing or i saw this graph or i saw this thing or i thought of this thing send it to me i'm happy to sort of you know take a look and try to get it included if i can so don't okay so one thing i i would say just share with kev with heather i'm sorry with holla and carrie for you um i went through a couple of the full budget budgets the the documents but not the whole thing there's a section there's a couple places where there's information with charts and things like that and i learned a lot and that you know you might see some things if you had the time maybe to just kind of quickly go through those maybe the most recent one which would be what the fiscal year 19 would be the most complete one yeah 19 is the most recent complete one yeah it might give you some ideas um if you have the time so all right i'll take a motion to adjourn all right i'll move to adjourn the widget subcommittee meeting second thank you um all uh all those in let's no i can't do it that way can i um paula um holla carrie carrie i margaret i alright great thanks have a good evening everyone bye
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
that's a great question so um we have a survey on our website right now currently right now it's 75 plus that's the guidance that we've been given you can still fill out the survey because i'm sure that that's going to be changing as it has a million times before um so if you fill out that survey we'll have that information and then we can send you an invite into vams to be on the basic the regular city page web page yeah we have a vaccination page on the city website and there's a survey it's a 75 plus it's a big orange button um you just click that and fill out the survey i don't want to push 70. i don't want to be quite 75 yet but okay leave it alone you leave it alone is there any other oh discussion have just a few quick things yes from um the ptos um the citywide pto met on monday um and i just want to um thank dr sal kevin and anne for being there to provide updates to families there are minutes of the meeting on the citywide pto website if you'd care to peruse them also westside middle school is looking for judges for the science and engineering expo on next wednesday january 20th and that's virtual but they could use some volunteers if any board members would like to volunteer you can get in touch with sandy or um or dr labanca and then i just had a question on the committees is there a need to assign negotiations this year yes there is so then could could i request that there be a republican on each of those committees could we have a discussion about that tomorrow okay okay okay any other questions 109 uh i asked the motion to adjourn our meeting so moved second second i just got a uh an email from ann talking about a committee for the matrix and that was put together and mr cabo appointed it looks like mark as the chairman of that committee so you may read that in the paper but that's the committee i mentioned before i'm on it and so is courtney someone just sent me that so that's why i thought let me tell you i just received it okay thank you dr sarah thank you guys good night good night gladys i'm sorry i did not guys okay canetta seconded thank you i was just trying to figure out who seconded that thank you good night good night everybody happy new year
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so as we say before we're going to give you guys the time to give us your input and this is us honoring that and that will be on february 3rd and february 10th any questions regarding that i know it's fabulous so i know you don't have any questions because you're like oh my god she just gave us what we wanted another oprah moment i'ma write a book anything else you guys are amazing it is only 5 54. so the goal for next meeting is to receive the feedback from you all you're bringing back to us um receive the suggestions new revised model and participate in a consensus process if we get there but right now we're focused on here we want to hear you guys we want to hear and we're hoping that you truly use this opportunity to speak to others like hey i'm on this committee this is what they're talking about and you could be their voice because right now the only voice we're getting is from you all they have the opportunity to hear the meeting view the meeting but now this gives opportunity for you to represent them as well that's a lot of power you guys have so we're looking forward to seeing you guys on the third if there's no more questions i would like to thank you guys for tonight and i will leave it to boss if he wants to close us out if anybody else has anything real quick um natasha we do have um a comment in the chat from melissa wilson perkins at the next meeting can we have an idea about how the district will be handling busing from which school sites and for how many years it will continue busing i can take that note but i think we would get into that one once we dive down to settle down to which models we're dealing with then we're going to get into the nuance of that but busting is always on the table for us and that is not something that we're saying we're getting rid of as a process question latasha um so i'm reading what you're putting as our goals for the next meeting and let's hypothetically say it takes two meetings to achieve these goals so then one once um the group has decided on a consensus process then is a following meeting going to be about trying to choose which models will be recommended to the board is that the next step after that or is that part of this consensus model no the next two meetings is solely to get your feedback and then from there we're going to have to identify what is our next steps how many more meetings we need to schedule vice versa okay because we had asked some other questions in the very beginning that were not part of this particular process and we were told okay that's going to come later once the schools are determined that that will be closed for example or why or how and so those meetings are tbd right that's right okay yes ma'am thank you any other questions comments all right you guys are rock stars thank you again for your time your commitment and your service
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so i'm not sure if the members are able to see that is this the december 3rd law no you're november 20. stacy does do the members all have attachment c it shows your budget reduction scenarios by program okay yeah that's that's from the december third okay board meeting so this is still accurate until you decide how you're going to restore some of these these are at the the state program level what we talked about is that we are now going to be presenting to the board at the school level so the priority is going to be primarily restoration of uh the cuts at the school level which is which which is not available until this next board meeting so which line item would that be in this that wouldn't begin here so yeah chairs question is about the school level cuts but this only represents the state level so not necessarily because high core is only one school and that shows 1.8 cut so i gotta to orient this was the december third memo to the board it was organized by office of oversight over the programs so on page seven is the office of fiscal services and that's where you'll see things like weighted student formula okay um you'll see under the the office of school student support services you'll see this fed per people allocation i think you'll also see high core that is on page 12 yeah so you separated alcs from high court yes they have a separate program we call it program ids when we allocate the money out we send it out on these programs yes yes well i thought high coil was part of the alcs the the money that was um added a about three years ago the bulk of it went into the alternative learning programs a little bit of it went to high core and olamana as well i think you can see you know alternative learning programs the one percent reduction there um forty four thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars those are yes those would be potential candidates for restoration yeah so i'm looking at because you have some that are high some are medium some are low so i'm assuming that you're going to try to reduce take get the high to low yes and get the medium to low a priority is to look back at everything we identified as high priority and the low to medium are the ones that each office identified as either their lower priorities because there was less cut made to them and so they're in good shape or that they can still meet their mission with some sustained cuts so we'll be going back to look at restoring those are the high priority first okay and then medium yes at least two variables at play one is the the amount that was cut uh when we have a higher percentage cut from a high priority program i would think expect that would be a higher priority for restoration than a high priority with a low percentage cut so i just want to acknowledge that alc is with a one percent cut it is a high priority program weighted student formula high priority program 10 percent so that's those are the things that the board will be wrestling with on the 21st okay so you're taking this broad approach here but on friday you're going to be talking to the board at the school level which somehow still fits into this and then so then you're going to update this once the decisions have been made at the school level because that's going to change these these numbers it'll change what we are restoring with the 183 million federal funds so so the board will be making decisions that will affect at the program level we'll then have to translate that to whatever school yeah and then informing the schools and then all the personnel things that need to happen and then collecting that and then the collective information is going to be reflected here and then creating an adjusted budget based on that yes okay [Music] i guess that's one approach any other question [Music] okay because i know you have a hard stop at 2 30 so okay if not i'm sure this conversation will continue at some point so thank you thank you thank you very much you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i was never a board member that believed in micromanaging i don't want to micromanage anybody but if i have a question about what's going on or i have a grave concern about something or something that i would like administration to focus on i don't i want to be able to have a voice in that or big decisions that impact the district we're in a lot of big decisions right now the board is not making those decisions those decisions we're we're reverting to our um our experts and i appreciate that and they gather information and they rather than gathering information and coming back and saying this is the data this is the information here's our recommendation but what do you think what do you want to do and then we as a board talk about it and decide what's best for our stakeholders our students policy governors is more like as long as the superintendent operates within the um ends or focuses on the ends he the administration decides what those means look like the how he gets there and for lots of things that that doesn't make a difference that's fine no one wants to micromanage anybody but that means that if there's certain things along the way like again whether it be covid or some of these other bigger things we still have to be consistent with that model we can't pick and choose when we want to use policy governance as board members so i can't say okay i'm good with policy governance we don't make any of these bigger decisions but they know suddenly i want to get in the middle of this because that's when we were told well you're in the weeds you need to stay in your lane stain your lane is my word um so that's just and then and then talking with representatives through asba about a year and a half ago they were even mentioning that a concern was well it's in statute what your roles and powers and responsibilities are per statute policy governance doesn't really it kind of goes against that it limits you so and there's been other conversations i've had with other board members that were like well what do you mean you're not voting on that or what do you mean well we have policy governance what's that you know so it's very different okay and i just want to feel more involved in i just want to feel more involved rather than i think for me i feel that the board lots of times is on the outskirts um waiting to see what administration's deciding on how to handle something and i would just rather be more hands-on not in the day-to-day but just hands-on when it comes to some of these bigger decisions that impact our community okay that makes sense and just to give you one example i pulled up one of our policies that kind of gets under my skin a little bit is that official communications if we as board members get a communication per policy from like a community member or a parent or a student we are not to respond to those even though we are elected by these people we are in per policy we are not to respond to those we are supposed to forward those to the superintendent so i i don't see anything constitutional about that but that kind of falls in line with policy governance though so just for the sake of further discussion and since i don't really think it's going i know for a fact it's not going to put the district in any liability at all i would like to move that the governing board discontinue use of the policy governance model effective immediately keeping current policy in place until a later date when the board can convene to discuss possible revisions or adoptions second well i have to speak against emotion because like i said i really would like to understand more information about the model i've been a board member before we did not do uh policy governance i can say that right off the bat that's why i'm very confused and if you if the policy says as a person you're not supposed to respond then why don't we change the policy why are we doing all of this just to change i mean can't we change that policy i mean we adopt them so that's my only concern i would just like some more time to understand it a little bit more and that's why i asked for the study session but okay we can still have a study session i'm open to talking about the policies that was actually part of the motion so as far as reconvening later well but then it's too late because i still want never mind that's richard can you restate that off the top of my head um do you need it right now or do you well we have to vote on your motion you said motion to content discontinued policy governance model immediately in the deiser infinite school district keep current policies in place until the board can reconvene at a later date to review and revise policies that discretion or to review and to review and revise policy as needed i have a motion by christine pritchard said was there a second don does more second motion passes item l1 request for future agenda items do we have any requests no okay we will move into executive session now madam president that would need to be an action item to call for an executive session i will motion to convene to executive session we need everybody to vote on that motion passes you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
hello chris cooper here with a brief update for clearwater schools on friday january 15th it is the end of our first semester so we're excited to wrap things up i know a lot of finals going on at the high school this week and we'll be headed into second semester next tuesday that's one of the things i wanted to remind you of is there's no school next monday january 18th no school for students or staff also i would like to remind you of a couple other calendar changes in two weeks from monday february 1st there'll also be no school for students we're going to utilize that as a staff development day and actually our staff will be getting some training from state level trainers on dyslexia and some about the science of reading so excited about some professional learning that our staff can get involved with on that day so a brief covet update our numbers are uh remain steady from about the middle of the week they're better than they were towards the end of last week so that's that's good news our school numbers are down to uh we have two positive students at this time and two positive staff members we still have a large number of students out for close contact and some for symptoms we have 57 students out at this time we have seen some strep and other non-coveted illnesses this week as well we have six staff out but we were able to get classes covered this week each day so that's good our winter activities are in full swing wrestling last night basketball tonight wrestling tomorrow but as always in this season there's lots of flexibility we just got word this afternoon that wellington's not going to be able to play boys basketball so i know mr elliott sent up some sent out some communication about the change in schedule just girls basketball tonight at wellington because wellington's not able to have their boys play while we're talking about activities i want to let you know uh we appreciate everybody uh following the guidelines that have been able to come that up to two parents to activities i've been to some of those games as a parent and appreciate people uh social distancing and wearing their masks doing the things that we need to do to continue on in that way the kansas activities association does have a meeting next wednesday and they're discussing the option of allowing up to four spectators per participant starting on january 29th 29th and honestly i don't have any idea how that's going to uh go at that meeting but uh just something to be aware of that we might be able to um loosen the restrictions for spectators just a little bit in the coming weeks i said not a lot today just a brief update i want to thank our staff and students for coming back and and starting after christmas break strong and just doing the things that we need to do so with that that's all i have for this week it's mr cooper signing off appreciate everything that everybody's doing to help keep our kids in school take care you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we are live good afternoon everyone uh now is the time set for the board meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind uh i'd like to take the roll call sue k do you have the the role i do great um david nigro president lynn davison mike gordon i'm here mike manley i'm here linda bove i'm here mark sims dean howard shelly herbald present and su k conifel is present uh thank you sue k the first item on the agenda is 1.02 call to the public call to the public on agendas items um so as we've been doing uh for the last few months uh during covet we've accepted public comments uh via an email system i believe we have one of those and and sue k can you uh read that comment david that's for a non-agendized item oh i'm i'm sorry i i thought that was for agenda so i i don't believe we have any for agenda's item is that that correct i don't have anything other than the one non-agenda item okay um that's the only yeah that's the only comment that i have so uh thank you for that let's move on to uh item 1.03 information item executive team reports um there are the reports are given in the uh in board docs that we've all have a chance to review uh before the meeting um superintendent reichman do you have any any comments uh before we open it to the board members no just wanted to let you know we have written reports hopefully you had the time to read and now is the time to ask questions okay um are there any board members that have any questions about uh the reports that we were given in particular human resources information technology or operations this is linda bove i have a question okay uh david oh i don't know if we're looking at me or if you're looking at another screen so i just want to make sure we are making eye contact and you do see me here raising my hand thank you for that i would like to take some time to read all of these reports um i mean i feel like i'm reading a novel um and i did enjoy reading all of these reports it has been wonderful to see the agency and the staff and how we've all managed to cope with covid19 and to adapt through all the changes and the staff within asdb we've all made incredible changes and i would love to take this time to applaud everyone within the agency for all of your hard work your commitment and providing access to the children and i know it's hard especially with deaf children providing services for those who live in remote rural areas and how we've been able to provide food to these students i just think how amazing that is i can't imagine how the students would survive without everyone here we've been a great team i would like to take note to hear a video that i participate i saw was a very adorable video that was put on for christmas and just to see the light in the kids eyes the holiday cheer and what really impressed me seeing the difference between the parents and the families and the difference between those whose family sign and those who don't um how those children respond to this video and that was something that i recognized and very impressed with the importance of how uh the parents need to sign at home and that's important for the children's learning especially with how we've been doing this remote distance learning that's one comment i have another comment um here from jay johnson the director of itinerate services so i was looking over his report that's some really neat information i know it's really not hard to find teachers who are qualified for the school for the itinerant areas the last part of his report i was interested here a little bit nosy but something i wanted to take note of the aligning external support uh are you familiar with this this area this part of his david i don't know presentation anyone is following me uh linda and just to interrupt i uh appreciate you um where everyone has been coming together every month with the expect with the special ed um group so i thought that was um interesting and fascinating how they've all still been able to come together so um the names of all four of these the organizations the universities and the collaboration that has taken place they've had um the deaf ed track program um and so with that has that been able to meet the level of expectation as far as professional development has that doll been met for example deaf ed deaf education continues to change and to collaborate with other schools within the nation i just have a question about that so who is it that i need to ask about that and address this question too i apologize for talking too much um go ahead okay um uh linda this is david um i think that's that's a great question um but i think that falls under our next item uh when we talk about the superintendent of reports um this is the uh this item is the executive team reports so it's it's just limited to human resources information technology and operations okay thank you oh no problem we'll hold that um for the for the next item if there are any other board members that would like to comment on the items from 1.03 and and hearing hearing none or seeing none we will go to 1.4 uh the assistant lieutenant report um for dr rex and i think dr rick's a few initial comments um and then you can address um uh linda's uh question and we can go from there thank you linda could you repeat the question um jay johnson has been meeting with those groups and yes we are continuing to try to develop external partnerships as well as internships to bring people to our campuses or to let them shadow our itinerant programs so we can probably give you some more information on that but it it was more to let you guys know that even though kovid's here we are still meeting and connecting and trying to support our students in the best way that we can does that help answer your question yes it does right i understand that with the the covet and the current situation um i think it is a lot easier of course to come together in person but remotely you know we are connecting with the external agencies and here's someone in california there is a program there with deaf services there is a department with a deaf ed program and so that was one program that part that i picked up on um because i i was familiar with it in california so i was wanting to see if there was an expert or someone who had the expertise that would be able to present on the deaf ed just giving that as a tip if that's been considered thank you i am writing that down and if i have any follow-up questions i will send um through a net some clarifying questions to you if that's okay okay i also do have another question the university of arizona i'm not familiar with them but we do i know that asu does have a teacher's program in this program there is a special ed component now with covet i've lost my connection as far as who is the contact person or the director of this program within asu we did have um one connection where they wanted me to come and speak to the students about teaching in a special ed and deaf ed really wanted them to see what it was like to be able to come and ask questions too but i've since lost that connection and that peace so you know if we're interested in getting those recent graduates um and come to the school for the deaf we want to make sure that they are completely equipped to teach um you know that's the the bottom line here you know not just a general teacher we want them to be on the track for the deaf ed and those are my thoughts awesome and the university of arizona um does have the deaf education and the here they do help support our special education so i will try to actually i'll try to find that contact for you maybe even but thank you for your thoughts sure no problem good afternoon president nigro board members and superintendent reichman you have received my report and thank you for reading it i'd like to also give you some additional information in our co-ops we are continuing to work on our redesign with the focus on delivering student services some of our districts are still in person some of us are doing work remotely we are still serving students in the co-ops depending on which way the districts want us to work with them we are also meeting weekly to align our procedures and we continue to collect data on what is working well already within our co-ops and establishing protocols to ensure that we have these protocols in a state-wide equity format i wanted to give you an update on the dvr director search this week there is a team that is scoring applications and interviews will begin at the end of the month around the 1st of february so far the team has 19 applications and 14 resumes for the director of dvr position the pdsd and asdb tucson campus students are being served remote we continue to meet with the principals weekly we review the data from the public health agencies and we develop our reopening plans and share this information with our staff our parents and our students i wanted to give you an update on the pdsd principal search we posted the position for principal in december we have been collecting applications we have a team designated to score these applications and refer names to the interview committee interviews are slated for mid-february as of today we have received seven applications and 11 additional resumes that have not got completed applications our birth to five early learning programs our students are being served in the preschools remotely and we currently have 37 preschool students at the tucson campus and 58 students at the phoenix day school for the deaf campus we also had some birth to three supervising teachers that reported to azip and had a launch party on december 17th the purpose of the launch party was to give information about how asdb will be working with unilateral students now there were 46 participants at this early intervention provider meeting and we are we are happy and excited to watch our unilateral services grow in the coming year my final goal for you is to hopefully bring a dvr director candidate as well as a pdsd principal candidate to our march board meeting and that concludes my report uh thank you dr rex uh are there any board members with additional questions for for dr rex all right seeing done we can move on to the next uh agenda item and that is one point here i'm sorry i um dr rex was talking about um recruitment um and i'm thinking about the principal position at ptsd miss courtney fritz um i know that soon she will be leaving and she is really irreplaceable so um yes we do have one year uh i'm wondering how confident are you dr rex about the potential of any of these applicants do you see potential or do you have any ideas or is it too early to tell it's a little too early to tell at this point in time but i haven't okay thank you and i i i am i agree with you courtney fritz has really been a powerful leadership force at pdsd and at times i have waves of panic but um we have some we are growing our own within the educational teams we have sent out to all the deaf um schools to let them know that we have this fantastic position so information is going out and applications are trickling in so hopefully i have more for you all soon thank you um we will now move on to item 1.05 information item superintendent's report uh superintendent reichman alright thank you um good afternoon president nigro mr asb to be born i'm assistant superintendent max and those of you watching us the estb community welcome to our january 14 2021 award meeting happy here it is 2021 i'm happy to see you all here this afternoon is my annual date of the agency report to the board so my presentation will be a little bit long but hopefully you find the information interesting i hope you engage your interest and of course i am starting with a story so long ago there was master a master he told his favorite student he had glory to share with him and the reason that he wanted to share this story of two minds because sometimes the teacher felt inadequate because of other persons and causing him to feel he was much confused so in telling the story to the student of the two minds she starts with one mind believes that people are faked and only has to be woken up the second mind believes that you can learn and grow and become rape the first mind believes that don't learn anything so me as the master have nothing to teach the second mind is anxious and listens to my words the first mind believes that everything stays the same we're staying the same starts to the second mind believes that we can learn well and to make change the first mine become embarrassed and angry and hurt the second mind however when they make mistakes they laugh and learn from the mistakes and then they move on the first mind when they see success of their friends they become jealous of them the second mind when she's discussed her friends feels inspired and learned from their experiences the first mom believes that there's no way of moving forward with work but this other mind believes the only way forward is to work the first mind believes there are no changes there's like that mind beliefs must change first mom believes that the world the same all the time the second mind recognizes that the world is constantly changing so as the student was listening to the master the student began to realize hmm and abstract are telling me i have two minds and the masses says yes you have two minds but it up you to this rich mind you decide to feed and i think that's a big metaphor we have here about the fix the fixed mindset and the glowit mindset depending on our mindset it really affects how we teach how we learn how we make decisions so when i became the superintendent of in the summer of 2016 i had a really simple four-year plan at that time i recognized that asdb had just been special times that trust had been breached and that i don't learn as superintendent so my fourth plan was this the first year i would just focus on listening learning seeking to understand i wanted to focus on building us and building relationships both internally and externally the second year i focus on strengthening those relationships to really build a solid foundation then the third year would be focused on problem solving and beginning to make and torment improvements here and then the fourth year we would get to the innovation phase and as it turned out the first year at the time the opportunity to really meet the asdb community i went to different groups different meetings i traveled the state i even also got into cars with teachers enrolled with them to schools where they provided itinerant support services to students i got into cars with the early intervention teachers went into family homes and observed how we provided support to families with infants and toddlers who were deaf hard of hearing blind and visually impaired so that first year was a wonderful time of really being able to focus on and get to know asdb the second year though the summer of and the fall i got back from you a dsp board of directors that i needed to start expediting the process there was a lot of interest by board members and discussion about programs that asdb had and about how fiscal resources were allocated to support those programs i heard that sense of urgency and began thinking about how do we problem solved where do we even start and it was around that time in the fall of 2017 that i learned that two of our staff members staff members mr owen patkov and miss melissa de reeves had just published source about soon to publish a research article and this research article was about those school districts in arizona who had students with disabilities with much better academic achievements and they worked for asdb it seems that the previous superintendent lamer hired them so i asked them to provide a presentation to asdb leadership team about their research and what they learned the research that they conducted was that they looked at all of the school districts in the state of arizona and charter schools and they identified those who seem to be doing much better with academic achievement with students with disabilities and they identified i think 32 school districts of the 32 they were able to go out and interview nine school dis leadership teams and in collecting that data they were able to analyze what were the common characteristics of those school districts we know that often students with disabilities including students for deaf and hard of hearing blind and visually impaired and deafblind are behind their peers other students without disabilities we also know that for those students to succeed they really have to have two things that have to have full assets to the general curriculum and you have to have high expectations you really have to believe these students can succeed so in analyzing the school districts they identified six common characteristics what were those common characteristics they were a culture of high expectations highly effective teaching strategies in the classroom frequent data collection and decisions being made based on that data the use of data to figure out what interventions to provide and enrichment opportunities core instruction spending time on core instruction as much as possible meaning english and math and sex effective leadership those are the common core characteristics of those school districts so then the question becomes asdb how do we become like those school districts how do we provide the best education and supports to our students so with that question we made the decision to use the advanced ad accreditation process that accreditation process really gave us a roadmap as to how we can improve our education and our assistance in providing supports to our students so with the advanced ad accreditation the plan to seek and get that accreditation we convene about 53 [Music] agency-wide leaders from all over the state to come together in one place in the fall of 2017 and that was the steering committee and during that steering committee we we set up tables and we had six to seven people set at each table and we did an analysis of our effectiveness as an agency reuse the advanced ad system quality in the indicator's diagnostics that systems quality indicators had seven eight seven areas that we needed to focus on and i'll give you those area and under each they asked us board engagement and teacher engagement community engagement parent engagement and we rated ourselves based on those so those four were one a clear direction a healthy culture high expectations impact of instruction that is effective teaching resource management efficacy of engagement and seven the capacity for implementing systems change now remember this is the fall of 2017.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] all right i called to order the workshop for bullet city elementary school board on thursday january 14th at 5 38 pm uh roll call corey burgess here jeanne borland here amanda amen here randy dubois here charlene diaz here all present dr stewart uh well okay so the first item you all wanted to talk about was the tax credit uh we included in the agenda the guidelines are the rules that we have to follow relative to tax credit use of tax credit money and then i put in front of you on your desk i had kim put in front of you on your desk paper clip together documents that lance prepared he keeps us on track with the paperwork and uh advertising you know both on social media and all of the media for uh the tax credit stuff so you see the new form that's up to date for 21 and then you see the form that employees can use for payroll deduction you can see oh i'm trying to think what the third thing is since i didn't keep myself a copy oh the okay these are the local tax preparers that we take these forms ask them to encourage people to do tax credit donations and then the last page is the clubs and things that you have that you authorized earlier in the year to be able to receive and use tax credit funds so whatever you all want to talk about and there is a copy of the guidelines in front of you as well this is a boat we're severely missing in our community it is incredible what it what it actually allows for things to happen um a lot of people don't even aren't even aware of it and the great thing about it we use it for my clubs we use it for the wrestling program at the high school heavily uh because if you have a tax liability you get to determine where that money goes so basically are you going to give your money to phoenix or are you going to let it stay here if you're paying taxes anyways why are you letting it go to phoenix and the the best part about this is you get to pick what program it goes to so you can say i want it going to diamondback music or i want it going to sunrise whatever club they have uh on that you get to pick and why every single person in our community is not doing this is beyond me it is absolutely incredible this is one of many tax credits our state allows and hopefully in 2022 they'll renew this but it is absolutely phenomenal we dang near fund our season in wrestling through tax credits uh for all the stuff we want to do all of the things that are going on new equipment we need all this it's incredible so uh i really wanted to put this on here as a shout out so we could get more people in the community involved and it's we do not collect nearly enough not even close one of the things i will say to you is in most years lance is out with this stuff anytime he's out representing both school districts and has the forms and has all the lists of activities and all of those things and heavily promotes it as you know this year there haven't been many opportunities for him to do that and uh so it was a good idea i didn't even know until today when he told me about the list of tax providers you know the tax preparers that they had that but he was also telling me who is at lance that um gives you gets the best results for the districts mr president members of the board my experience so far of all of the folks on this particular page right now the tax preparer who has shown the most interest uh and is the best communication back and forth is chuck copeland the cpa in laughlin in laughlin yeah i mean chuck's been in town since the ice age he's a great guy involved in a lot of stuff mostly on that side of the river before laughlin high was built his kids went to mojave when mojave union high school district was serving the kids in laughlin i happen to sit on the laughlin chamber board with chuck so we've got that relationship but with a lot of the cpas and the non-cpa tax services in town sometimes it's a ho-hum response sometimes it's no response whatsoever chuck's great and chuck's always asking for more forms um so there is you know mr president you're right that opportunity is out there one of the important things about this form and you may recall um from previous years is that i email this out to members of both boards and ask whoops i'm sorry ask for a review of is there anybody that i'm missing is there anybody that you think should be added is there anybody who's dropped dead and their tax service is no longer in business anymore because this includes both cpas and non-cpas and so i'll save you the time of not emailing it this year but if you happen to see any corrections or any additions please go ahead and either let me know or let dr stewart know and we'll get it updated some of them i send electronically some i hand deliver we did learn something today in review process there was another district in mohave county that has that is now taking these forms to local banks and uh that i think is something that we can start doing as well we've got a pretty good relationship with most of the the banks up and down the river and uh at least with the um you know their their gm's or their branch managers so that's going to be another outreach opportunity as well as dr stewart mentioned one of the big big things that has hurt this year was just the lack of physical outreach opportunity there still have been social media posts there's still been news releases there will still be the the end of the tax filing period push you know we had some posts and had some stuff go out at the end of the calendar year but quite frankly a lot of people now wait until april now that it's been extended and we've got the opportunity as is listed on the back of the tax credit form for the next two years to include playground equipment and shade structures that's never been allowed before that's an opportunity for the elementary district so i think there's some some opportunities but we've we've got to get in addition to just getting the word out to the general public we've got to get buy-in from the tax preparation services and that's something that's really tough for me to do by myself that's something i think where we all need to lend a hand you know whether we use a tax preparation service or know somebody who works for a tax preparation service or a cpa and um you know it's going to be a team effort to to get things back up and running again pandemic or no pandemic thank you yes ma'am um when's the last time we sent anything out on social media regarding the tax credit and do we have something scheduled coming up shortly about the tax credit um it'll be very easy to get something up shortly there have been a couple posts since since the pandemic there is an event that is scheduled in about six weeks six or eight weeks that would be our first opportunity other than the fire safety fair which was in october there'll be a hands-on opportunity to share the information a lot's going to depend on the safety protocols in place whether it's going to be appropriate to participate or not but i can get more stuff up on social media maybe even if we did january april september sure and every couple months because i i mean i we've all got you know people we know that oh yeah i saw that that i forgot i forgot and they forget i mean they just truly out of sight out of mind so maybe the more frequently that we have it there i mean especially i mean we've been in the cobia pandemic for 10 months we're getting on that year so yeah we got to hit him again because i'm with you know mr burgess that there are so many opportunities that are missed with this i mean we see it all the time up in at the high school and things and it we definitely could use could use more push on it because it is a huge opportunity that is missed they still can make a donation before april 15.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we can start by um we can start by letting everybody know that um how grateful we are for the work that emma dragon is doing for the town and that's the reason that she's not here because she's working so hard on vaccine distribution and we're very grateful for for all of her dedicated work on that and hope to continue it with her the next thing that's on the agenda that we can talk about given that emma's not here to answer some of our questions about the vaccine as well as contact tracing or um long-term planning and this is something that i've been asking since october i think was when i first asked it um as far as substitutes so can you give us a sense of how many substitutes the district has per building currently i don't have that that information personally do you mean like substitutes that are actually working in buildings yeah that would be assigned to a building back in october i asked the question initially we were told that the district had uh three per building and then i think maybe december one of the times i asked again we were told there were two substitutes per building and just wanted to get an update on that as well as any contingency plans for when we are out of substitutes so what would the district do if there are not enough substitutes for coverage um you and i all of us know from working in schools for as long as we have that we typically in a day would need um more than two substitutes when we're not in a uh a pandemic so just wondering what the district's contingency plans would be if we are out of um coverage for classes yeah i definitely don't have an official answer on that okay um something else that i've been asking for since october was also about location for um staff to eat lunches so that they can continue to practice social distancing and do you know if there is a plan moving forward for that as we're looking to put more adults and as well as students in the buildings nothing that i've been apprised of yet i know our our department in the facilities department we actually just kind of put out a memo regarding that but aside from that now can you can you give us a little more like what what you're doing with your staff as far as um lunches so so that we can ensure social distancing it's so so i just want to preface it with it kind of works out differently for us because we have we probably have a lot more spaces available to us but it's it's essentially that that no two people should we'll be eating in the same place at the same time so for oh there we go there's stephen so for for instance a painter who has his own shop that's where he eats that sort of thing break rooms like communal break rooms we're not we're veering away from that hi stephen we're talking about some long-term planning um something that i've been asking for um information on since probably october were contingency plans for substitutes for um to ensure that we have enough coverage uh for staff in um in the cases of quarantining and just in the case of being out for illnesses so want to make sure that when we get people back into the buildings and get students back into the buildings we have the coverage that's needed to keep the buildings open so i don't know if you have anything that you could share about contingency plans for substitutes yes substitutes we really haven't gone there but that's an incredibly difficult thing to figure figure out i mean that you know where where do you get them and how do you how do they stay you know who i mean do you quarantine subs i mean what yeah you know what do you do to keep them from you know i don't know where you'd find them but so it is a difficult topic thanks stephen that and that's one of the reasons why i uh wanted to start discussing it back in october so that we would have some type of plan in place for that so this is a topic that we're going to need more discussion on because i think we can can we all agree that it is something that we would need uh some contingency plans for yeah definitely okay um as well as staff uh lunch spaces so that we can continue to have staff feel comfortable but also still be able to socially distance from each other the other thing that i wanted to ask and ben you might know the answer to this is i know that the transportation for students the the drop-off points might be changed for some buildings due to more families perhaps driving their students to school um can do you have any information on that yeah yeah like the the drop-off side of that right there at school yeah each school actually has has come up with their own plans like certain i know fort river actually had to go to the ex four river and wild with you know same layout both had to kind of go to the extent of actually marking where folks go out but yeah we've we've got pick up and drop off plans for each of the schools we had to do that before the first day that we opened initially do you know if those plans um are going to remain the same uh as we move toward again as we move towards getting more staff and more students into buildings are those plans going to remain the same are they going to change and where can people find those plans right so so far they they almost have to stay exactly the same they were they were basically set up for the best possible option as far as social distancing and being able to get our buses in and out safely it affects how our vans drop off as well but yeah i believe each school has them i'm not sure if they sent them out to parents but i can get i can get a like a firmed up answer on that that would be really good it would be really helpful yeah information um as somebody that works at crocker farm um i know that initially because that school is it is a little bit different because it's got the two uh driveways it's got one in the front off of west street and then it's got the shay street entrance in the back which is more like a horseshoe um in the past staff have used the back entrance um to park a lot a large number of staff have used that that area to park and um we had the front entrance and then there was uh parking up the driveway as well as to the side for preschool uh families to for them to drop off my one of my concern is that there will not be parking enough parking in the back because that's where the buses were were going to go do you know if that's going to continue that the buses will continue to use the shay street yep yep that that hasn't changed it's been long enough now that i don't have it exactly in my head like like the general picture but yeah it's going to be about the same and the like the parking coming up the hill and the like parking by pre-k and all that is going to be utilized more than it has been in the past okay um my understanding is that staff would not be parking because knowing um the buses need that they need the space to turn right yes yeah correct so do you have a set do you know and you don't have to give me like the exact number but an estimate of how many parking spaces are available in the front so that uh going up to the west street i actually should have it exact but i yeah i i will venture a guess i i definitely should have an answer basically yeah i just wanna would um you know you know that i i'm a planner and yeah mr and i are both numbers people so just trying to get ahead of this and and wondering do we have enough parking spaces in the west street side to accommodate all of the cars uh for staff if we're gonna have full staff there so that i guess that's my question yeah i was gonna say that part i actually can speak to okay that came up during the planning phase and the answer was yes more than right it's it's gonna be different than it has been in the past but yeah there's so there are enough um spaces for all st if all staff are in the building correct to park and in the on the west street yep parking okay good that i think that's what i wanted to know yeah all right um someone's calling me from canada i don't know who i think it's one of those calls you don't want to pick up um so i guess uh krista do you have any other questions for long-term planning more on the secondary school level um i'm i'm thinking about the location for lunches for for staff and um the plan that you have in place sounds really good for your for your staff i just it sounds like best case scenario and as we're thinking ahead to long-term planning finding ways to replicate what you're doing would be really would be really good so um i'm i really i just want i guess this is an appreciation i appreciate how much thought you put into um how you planned having facilities um people having the safest possible lunches they can have we've just seen so many outbreaks that happen around the break room and i i appreciate that you've thought so far in advance on that one i just hope there's a way that we can find to replicate something similar when we start increasing numbers in the buildings um for locations for for students having lunches in locations for staff so that we're reducing that that risk we know that's one of the riskiest times in our day um the time when the masks come off to eat um so uh i guess as we think ahead finding ways to to replicate that plan would be amazing yeah any any input i could provide i'm more than willing to help with excellent um i guess um a related question is the the tents are all down for the the winter season i'm assuming that's why they're down when is the planned date to have the tents all put back up is that after the i don't even know how you planned that is it after the snow season is it when do those go back up it's it's going to take a a bit of guesswork and a bit of luck provided that the the winner plays out like it has been so far which i mean this is new england so it'd be ridiculous to play it based on that but provided that it did work out that way we're probably another month or two away we could probably realistically do it in about march is it the snow load on the tents that's the worry or frozen ground which is the all of it yeah well yeah mostly the the snow load side so so from the manufacturer we got a bunch of wonderful specs and they've assured us that it'll work out that way but we we decided that the risk isn't worth yeah you know worth trusting with what a manufacturer says when they're selling you something basically okay because i i know in the early plans having access to those tents was really important for thinking about students and eating lunch and the priority was to have as much outside eating time as possible in the tents so knowing when those tents come back up is is helpful for knowing when we can have those best possible scenarios for eating again absolutely excellent thanks i've got a funny question about tents union 28 we had all four schools had purchased tents this fall past fall and it turns out none of them were flame retardant so i'm just curious if the if the fire department has checked out your attempts to make sure they're flame retardant we had to send them all back and now we have none yeah i don't know if you followed the uh the drama that was the tents of amherst that's what i'm calling it but um yeah so i went through a planning board hearing the permitting process in an inspection process and that was a so knowing that i was going to have to do that that was the first thing that we we had to do was to make sure that we had the documentation but yeah what one of these days when you have time i'll i'll explain the entire process to you it was a thorough i'll say thorough i don't want to open on that but yeah it was thorough all right stephen do you have anything that you would like to bring up for long-term planning okay do you want to switch over to facilities yeah i just that substitutes is a real you know that we really gotta start would start with that now because that that is a key thing there's the uh the number of substitutes that you have per billing and also the issue with contact tracing when you've got a substitute that might move from room to room throughout the day which happens often or a substitute that may need to switch and move from building to building due to staffing levels or shortages so there's a few different pieces to that puzzle that really should be looked at and again that's why we've been asking these questions since uh since october in addition to that too gene is getting substitutes trained in what the protocols are for when masks can be on and off and i'm those whatever the protocols are may be slightly different based on age of the students or capacity of the classroom and so knowing what kind of training additional training substitutes will need to be able to implement um safety protocol is really going to take time it's going to we're going to need time to know what those are and time to train whatever subs we have to know what what to do to keep our students safe all right um thanks stephen for facilities update ben thank you for sending the document um yeah there was one major part that i didn't put in there that i would be remiss in my duties both on the school committee and in my day job to mention and it's it's the it's a hard fact that so the the process of furloughing our staff has begun so i just want to point that out that you know as hard as we've been working there it's getting it's going to get a lot worse coming coming soon and i had some folks that wanted me to mention that here that because that does affect how we can be ready for schools to open um ben thank you um the custodian and maintenance staff and facility staff are are like the heart of the buildings yeah um they really are absolutely yeah and they they've been here throughout so if anyone noticed last night that i explained that my week sucked that's why my week sucked so i just wanted to point that out thank you thank you for sharing that um for the uh the update that you did send out would you be able to send us the actual nexus report so not the processed information data but the actual report that came from nexus if you could forward that to us that would be great yeah and and um so there was there was like we got a request in our department earlier in the week and then we got more data after so you guys will be getting the the the newer version of the raw data but yes yes we can provide that here that's looking at the facilities update it sounds like you had nexus back in to do some retests is that correct yep fantastic um yes getting the whatever data you have from nexus you you already know gene and i are uh all over the raw data um so we we just can't wait to see that so thank you so much i only have one other person throughout the course of the day who actually gets excited when this stuff comes in so it's refreshing oh this is gonna be like a holiday season for me again this is fantastic thank you one thing that i wanted to ask you i think we talked about it in december were the fact that there were some rooms that were not scheduled to be tested for air quality because they weren't slated to be used correct correct um would it be possible to get a list of those rooms by building yeah well yeah sure not the map but just a list of the room numbers by building yep yeah it's relatively easy because of the airflow list i mean airflow maps we can put it together a little bit um i would think that that some a list like that would also be helpful when you're thinking about planning out staff lunch locations as well yeah right because a lot of the areas we we weren't going to test if you only had one person in it it would i mean that you can't affect yourself right so if people were assigned to those rooms for lunch that's probably the best one of the best ways to go about it i think all right so that that would be great yeah look at that 444 um i think our our two other main things we wanted to talk about today again um were related to emma's work and since she's not with us because she's doing such fantastic work to roll out the vaccine for our first responders i think um we'll have to wait till we can snag her again to ask about vaccines and contact tracing but it's probably a good thing that she's busy not even probably it's absolutely a good thing that she's busy right now we're just so fortunate for her role in rolling out the vaccine for our county or being one of the main players and rolling it out we're just so fortunate to have that so um she's she's fantastic superstar and a dragon that's right and i remain optimistic um i know uh the superintendent shared that he was kind of um pleasantly surprised at the vaccine uh distribution and i i i think that we're going to see a ramp up over the next few weeks if something's going to change on the 20th i think to probably a little more efficient perhaps yeah not sure what it is yeah no i i will remain an optimist about this so and i appreciate all the work that both of you are doing not only on the school committee but also putting in the additional time to work on safety issues so all right um now do you still do you still stay on for questions i think we do for like another five minutes okay so this is the this is the part of the show that uh krista and i say goodbye all right have a good weekend me too all right sweet style your website oh okay any questions i'm not seeing anything the only thing popping up oh i guess for folks watching on youtube if you put a question in the comment section we'll be able to see it here but yeah the only thing i see is someone saying okay so what do you think we give it another two three all i can see is the note that sasha put up there yeah which says and we probably should read that okay so the nurse department has reached out to the central office to create a website that will assist staff with some concerns around mask protocols now good all right i guess we give it to 4 48 and then i have another hat to put on after this there's the lucky you how was the meeting last night it was it was good oh good yeah folks got to kind of air out some some grievances and concerns and then after that i got to wear another hat and go go coach some basketball so that was fun oh nice so are they playing with mask on or yeah we're just doing skills clinics we can't we're not even allowed to scrimmage or play one-on-one or anything so a lot of shooting a lot of dribbling hope there's more dribbling than shooting what about the passing thing somebody somebody somebody's got to learn how to pass the ball right right if you can uh you can catch the ball off the wall you can catch the ball anywhere somebody's got to be willing to give the ball up though yeah yeah it's important part of the game that's where short guys like me came in handy i'm down here too yeah all right so i'm not seeing any questions so i'm gonna wrap it up and then all right and we reconvene it's tuesday right thank you ben all right thank you have a great extended weekend you too just don't put the wrong hat on now just make sure you get the right one i'll try have a good one you too thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above