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yeah all right and nutrition services so here we have a change in federal revenue of 1.1 and that's only because we are now receiving most of our state funded programs and so we're getting um most of our funds from our grants um so you have to decide if you're going to receive money from the federal government or if you want to keep getting the state programs and right now is we're in the summer seamless feeding program that's going to be state funded so we will not receive this revenue it is not revenue that is going to impact our any fund balance but you'll see on the next slide but we are now allocating that we're only going to receive the funds for the state for our nutrition services program okay what is the difference right so what is the difference um just for this year just so that we could feed all of our families in this seamless um feeding opportunity that we have right now so starting next school year we'll go back to our original federal guidelines if the current um feeding option is no longer on the table yes yes okay welcome and here we go in our nutrition services so we don't have a change in expenditures but as far as staffing but we do see a decrease in expenditures of 561 000 books and supplies books as implies again we're at our category but that is truly our projected savings of expenditures of buying food what we're doing is we're maximizing our commodities we're maximized joining um co-ops we're maximizing getting free opportunities through grants so as long as we continue to be hungry and get funding that way we're able to minimize our projected costs that we had on the books already for some of our other more expensive food options yes ma'am before the closure of last year we were implementing we're purchasing yes yes it was a science adoption through the sciences we we have not so basically we have not have we purchased the books and when are those going to be rolled out um i'm speaking for dana here but those books have been purchased i mean sorry let me tell you the curriculum has been purchased and that curriculum is being implemented now yeah okay so the free stuff that you're saying is this is all food this is 2013.
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and then again the student count reduction so the base level amount increase of 1.22 percent the teacher experience index did decrease slightly down to 1.0196 and then the transportation revenue control limit we have set equal to fiscal year 2021 based upon information again that we are receiving from the legislature we expect that to hold as well they will use the 2019 revenue control limit for funding purposes so the aoi full-time and part-time set equal right set equal to 2021 which is what we have today i know is that do you feel like that's conservative um i can share with you a quick analysis that we did okay to show the difference did you have a did you do a survey we are surveying right now we do not have the data at this point in time okay thanks okay so based upon all that information we are projecting again there's that 30 two down to thirty thousand five hundred and two that's your 400 student projected loss based upon that cohort movement and then the resulting total total weighted student count the revenue control limit based upon that data as i shared with you the number of full-time aoi part-time aoi as well as bricks and mortar we're anticipating a revenue control limit of 201 million the 15 override i really wanted to note that so note that in the 2021 the override is 32.3 million dollars because it's based upon last year's student counts so it's down by about 2 million dollars due to the reduction in the student accounts in the current year which will inform them override capacity for next year so there's two million dollars of the budget reduction right there and then note the budget balance carry forward going into revised number two we were expecting 31.6 million dollars of budget balance carry forward right now our projection indicates that we can assume 17 million when we presented to you a couple of weeks ago that was 6 million so that difference is definitely due to the 9.7 million dollars additional money as well as the aid the additional revenue we're receiving because the adm increase so both of those combined are going into that 17 million dollar budget balance carry forward projection so you can see that 258 million was what we adopted and our projected for 2022 is 250 million we're going to compare it to revised number two though which is a little bit higher so we are looking at a 10.2 million dollar reduction if you remember three weeks ago it was um more like 20 million at that point it was closer to 20 million so we definitely have have made progress that's good i don't think we have a print out of this so can you include this in our friday memo at least this page where we can look at the budget sure you better be great you bet and then this is what i wanted to point out um lori was the if all the students went back to bricks and mortar at the same level as in 2020 so let's just say that for purposes of whether students are going to be online or in person if everything was going to reset to 2020 not with the same number of students but the same number of online students that were normally ready to see so basically we took the the what we would consider a normal online full-time and online time and then that delta we added back into the bricks and mortar so when we did that the resulting budget capacity was 330 000 about higher and that's probably reflective of that five percent or 15 reduction due to the 95 or 85 funding okay so these are our known budgetary increases and decreases so as an example we know we had an arizona state retirement increase tonight you will be asked to approve the medical insurance premium increase that small amount will require about three hundred thousand dollars more a minimum wage increase as you know minimum wage increases by inflation every january so that is accounted for here we always anticipate special education increases year-over-year so that's there and then we did put in the pay increase consideration at two percent and then finally also part of the rate increase that you are approving this evening is the concept of a premium holiday as we've talked about our employee benefit trust is in a very healthy situation over and above the reserving policy and so at this point by having the premium holiday it will put back about one and a half million dollars to the m o budget i'm helping us to balance the budget and then in addition as we work to balance or right size the number of teachers to students we could realize anywhere between three million and six million dollars of savings depending upon how many teachers we determine we will need going into the 2022 school year so the total increased need or decrease projected will gives us a net of still short 2.15 million but to a positive 850 000 if we if we can realize if we if we have a a lesser need of teachers than we then we are not sure of at this point but we're doing that in those analyses right now um can you explain a little bit about the premium holiday and how that would help the m o so basically the idea is that for two pay periods we would turn off the deduction in payroll so then at that point in time the reserves in the employee benefit trust would actually be paying the premium on behalf of employees and the district okay so we would receive that portion that we put in with the employee right so we just wouldn't have to pay at those two pay periods so it would still be left available to us okay thank you and ms betts doing that still allows us to keep our reserves in the healthy category yes we anticipated globally for the employee benefit trust to include all funds the one and a half million dollars is savings just for maintenance and operations but remember idea title one community community ad as well as nutrition services all will benefit from that premium holiday so that's the portion but yes even with that so that's about two and a half million dollars and we're presently at 13.5 million so it still puts us at our high end of the reserving policy of 10 million dollars very good thank you you bet i will say it's surprising that we've come out of this year of covid with our trust in really good shape yeah that is an unexpected bonus yeah okay so uh this is just a an analysis of teacher salary i mean of staff increase for every one percent increase in salary district-wide it's about a 2.35 million dollar cost that does include all the payroll benefits so that's the source of of our data regarding the 4.7 million dollar need for 2 percent across the board so there's where we are a total budget capacity decrease from 21 adopted is i'm sorry that's incorrect too it's 21 21 revised so the total budget capacity decrease from 21 revised is 10.2 million then the recommended expense increases contributes another 2.15 million to a total of a 12.35 million dollar deficit at this point again remember three weeks ago it was 24.5 million so we've definitely made some improvement significant improvement so finally how do we what are our opportunities here for balancing that so the enrollment management strategies jason shared that with you this evening regarding the neely houston uh change the move movement of unrestricted capital to maintenance and operations note that that's in the one-time category that would just be needed for we're committing to make that a one-time contribution um moving teacher salaries to the j-ted fund 596 doug daly has done that analysis and indicated that we would be able to move some voc ed teachers into the jted fund 596 to realize those ongoing savings and then increase classroom site fund contribution 1.5 million dollars ongoing 1.51 one time that could change as well depending upon the classroom site fund projection for next year which we're expected to get at the end of this month so considering the fact that we're using ongoing and one-time money together the potential budget balancing options are sure are showing 9.81 million dollars leaving a 2.54 million dollar shortfall but again that same caveat using 6.51 million dollars of one-time monies miss fitz why so i don't see the budget balance carry forward in here as a mitigation strategy or as a strategy or opportunity so the budget balance carry forward because we already increased it from the six million dollars i mean it could be it could be a possibility so we we just realized we went from 6 million up to 17 million and that's already in the projection right now for the budget capacity for 2021 but it is still a possibility that the budget balance carry forward could increase and that could be in here too and that's on the next slide okay thank you um not quite on the next slide i just wanted to share again the budget limit comparison where again final revised in 2020 that was without the 15 override it had a 10 override then the adopted was much higher the revised number two is the highest we've seen in the last two years but the 2022 projection is 10 million dollars less than that so it just kind of graphically shows that change over over the the time frames and then again budget balance carry forward so a lot of budget balance carry forward going into the current year a little bit less projected for 2022 but normally our budget balance carry forward is in the six to six and a half million dollar range so anything above that would be considered one-time money is that a lot has a lot to do with the esser monies right okay yep and then the unrestricted capital budget all of that new data that we put in that gain of those students since three weeks ago has uh increased our district additional assistance we still anticipate we'll be able to carry forward two million dollars so that increased our our capital budget capacity by 420 000 over the current year which is also good news so okay finally so budget proposal risks the legislature does not adopt the governor's budget uh greater loss of students than projected could could we lose more than 400 students going into next year classroom siphon revenue like i said we don't think there's going to be a decrease in the dollar amount per student for classroom site fund because the sales tax revenue is very positive in arizona right now but that could happen adm growth less than projected in current year so i told you lori i think that that's a really good estimate of how we're going to end up at the end of the year but it could be lower could be a little higher and then utility and fuel cost increases we've seen at the gas stations it's up to three dollars a gallon right now and then the big thing i've been pointing out is the use of one-time funds decreases future flexibility but there are some opportunities as well so the budget balance carry forward increases as an example i shared that the distance learning adjustment would go away in the current year which would automatically put 6.3 million dollars back into the budget so that would go right into budget balance carry forward to help close that gap current year average daily membership increases we still could go up a little bit again the distance learning adjustment decreases or is eliminated we haven't talked about any mitigation strategies regarding putting expenses into other funds maybe not just those federal funds but maybe maybe a little bit more money into into indirect or a little bit more money into medicaid or some of the other cash funds and then classroom site fund revenues and sr3 revenues they could be greater and we'll find out more about that in the next month and that's all we have today if there's any other questions this question doesn't have a whole lot to do with what you've presented tonight and you probably have it on a future presentation but will you be reviewing the recent auditor generals letter oh with us at some point when we go over the kafir is that when we'll do that yeah so i think we're scheduled to present the usfr compliance and the single audit at the end of this month is that correct on the on the 30th at that point in time we'll share the auditor general's report um but we did increase our dollars in the classroom you know by 0.4 i think year-over-year which is a positive result so we're up to one point six percent in instruction which is really good and up to seventy four and a half percent in in in the classroom globally which includes student support as well as um instruction support very positive results for gilbert regarding that report yeah i'm not overly concerned with that letter uh i just know that you'll be reviewing that with us and want to put that in the context of everything we're doing in finance so that the community understands that we're mindful of what the auditor general does and says to us and we're doing all we know how to do to mitigate any negative impact of any letters that may come from them and most of it is positive but there are a couple of spaces there that are just interesting yes sir yes sir other questions board members thank you once again miss betts and miss matinen very thorough and well presented thank you guys well board members we've had a long work study but valuable information this evening and we're now at item three which is adjournment of the work study portion item 3.01 if there are no additional questions i will declare that we are adjourned from the work study we'll move to item 4 the brief board business meeting and we'll call the meeting to order 4.01 ms wilson would you call the roll please dr charles santa cruz here miss larry wood here michela eugetti here miss jill humphries here mr reed carr is not present mr president you have a quorum thank you ms wilson item 4.02 of the roll call i will ask for a motion to adopt the agenda so moved thank you miss humphries second thank you mr jetty then all those in favor of adopting the agenda as presented for this evening please signify by saying i i those oppose the same motion carries four zero item five reports 5.01 is school social workers week dr mccord i would defer to you thank you dr santa cruz governing board members the week of march 7th through the 13th is school social worker week and we will be on spring breaks we wanted to make sure we acknowledge them in the month of march is national school social work month when thinking about our social workers that we have on our campuses and we're very thankful to have them we also want to keep in mind our mental health counselors that we have in our district that we hired for this year here's their proclamation for this month whereas the social work profession for decades has been dedicated to improving human well-being and enhancing the basic needs of all people especially the most vulnerable among us whereas this year's social worker theme beacon of hope school social workers lighting the way embodies the vital contributions that the school social workers in gilbert public schools have made during this pandemic to serve and address students social emotional physical mental health and environmental needs as well as those of their families and gilbert public schools staff whereas school social workers have played a crucial role in gilbert public schools response to covet 19 and helping to support our school communities cope with the epidemic whether in person or remotely whereas school social workers have always been present in times of crisis and will continue to stand ready to assist and support gilbert public schools in addressing present and future challenges and empowering our students to live to their fullest potential now therefore in recognition of the numerous contributions made by the gilbert public school social workers i dr shane mccord proclaimed the month of march 2021 as national school social worker month and march 7th through the 13th 2021 at school social work week and call upon everyone to join me in celebration in support of the school social worker profession thank you and thank you to all of our school social workers and our mental health counselors we appreciate all that you do thank you for that approximation dr mccord and well those are as all of our professionals highly committed professionals as well we moved item six the consent agenda is there a motion i move that we approve the consent agenda as presented thank you mr jetty is there a second a second thank you ms wood it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion seeing no discussion then we will vote on the consent agenda as printed all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those pose the same motion carries four zero we move to item seven action items item seven point zero one is approval approval of employee benefits trust medical insurance and rate recommendation for 2021 2022 school year dr mccord any rationale yes i'll read this to you guys this is what's in our agenda for the evening but i think it's worth reading the employee benefit trust is recommending a small increase in premiums this year reflective of the included rate grid which is on inboard docks please note that this rate grid represents the cost per employee per month this premium increase results in an increase in budget expense to gps in the amount of around 226 thousand dollars note that the rate grid includes a comment on two on two school year uh 2021-22 pay dates there will be a premium holiday due to the help of the employee benefit trust and the continued increase in surplus over and above the employee benefit trust reserving policy the trust committee also recommended that two premium holidays be included at some time during the school year for the 2021-22 year the exact times will be communicated during open enrollment by employee benefits trust staff to clarify for two pay dates during fiscal year 2022 the employee benefit trust will pay the required benefit premium saving each participating employee as well as the district in the cost of benefits in the aggregate up to about five hundred thousand will be returned in participating to participating employees and up to 2.2 million dollars will be returned to various district funds including nutrition services and community education providing an economic to all gps operations the result of the employee benefit trust will be a decrease in the surplus of about 2.5 million dollars against the 13 million dollar surplus still leaving the employee benefit trust in sustainable financial position and well within the parameters of the reserving policy thank you dr mccord is there a motion i move that we approve the employee benefit insurance rate recommendations for the 21-22 school year thank you mr jetty is there a second second thank you ms humphries any discussion i just want to say that that um you know having to sort of be serving on this committee i would like to commend mr mcintosh and mrs betts for all their hard work and in keeping us in such a good place along with all the rest of the committee members we we were in a better place i think than i've ever seen before and i've been on it for a long time thank you mr eugetti and thank you for your service on that committee as well i was just going to say it is um wonderful that we're in this good position this is um we've worked really hard to get our benefits trust into a good position and i'm just thrilled that we can you know give a a paid um premium holiday and and help employees in that way thank you ms humphries anyone else no further discussion item 7.01 is on the table all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries for zero item 7.02 fy 2021 budget revision number two by way of rationale anything to add dr mccord no sir no additional all those uh i will need a motion for 7.02 i move that we approve the 2021 budget revision number two it's been moved is there a second a second thank you ms wood it's been moved and seconded that we accept and adopt item 7.02 is there any discussion [Music] no discussion all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi those opposed the same motion carries 7.027 item number eight is adjournment of this brief board business meeting 8.01 is there a motion to adjourn second thank you mrs humphries ms eugenie it's been moved and seconded any burning desire for discussion typically none don't forget to stick around and sign miss betts's documents uh thank you for your attendance those of you who are here in the building board members and those who viewed this presentation on live stream we will vote on adjournment all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same thank you board members we are adjourned
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education services okay okay okay all right any other questions for nutrition services uh mr mall when we receive a grant for example from no kid hungry does that go into the nutrition services fund revenue or does it appear somewhere else nutrition services so would it come would that be recognized under contributions or would it be a separate category it depends on the resource they send it but typically it comes in under local revenue local revenue okay any other questions all right so here's any fundamentals for nutrition services at first interim we projected that they'll have a 1.3 million dollars next uh in any fund balance due to the change in the revenue that was projected we're now realizing they'll have any fund balance of 817 thousand dollars with their inventory that they have to keep the reserve of 59 000 they will have the total um any fund balance of seven hundred and sixty nine thousand dollars any questions here we're gonna get to the good slide word shows that nutrition services continues to reign black does not require a contribution from the general fund um we are showing this the last contribution came in 1920 the largest contribution was 1819 and we are just happy to we're going to continue our efforts to seeing how we could maximize commodities maximize grants and other opportunities to continue to keep our funds solvent but based on our current projections we are forecasting that nutrition services will stay on the black for the next three years any questions here i mean that's that's incredible i mean because i i i remember looking at that you know and having a conversation around that first piece so to see where we are now is huge so so great great work to everybody um i i now is not the time but but at some point in the future um i i'd like us to to keep in front of us like auditing what and i and like personally auditing what foods are being served and provided to to our um to students i i know that that was i mean prior to the pandemic i know that i i had received some questions and some folks kind of kind of you know asking about that um and so when we go back and as we're seeing some of the uh some of the costs go down i would just i'd like to ensure that the costs are not going down because we're sacrificing you know the the quality of what we're providing to so just keeping that in front of us um i i would love us to maybe at some point next year to be able to do some sort of audit around um what food is typically offered sure love it all right here we're going to go to special education so for special education um the only change in revenue is uh the primary change of revenue is the local revenue and now it goes back to the sofa where we find out our actual self applications since first interim so we'll have a reduction and um funding allocation for the 2021 fiscal year a production of 301 thousand dollars any question here and this is the one that we just um we always remember the federal government is not doing their fair share um so we thank the state for their part still not cutting it but then we know our district we make it up and we provide what we need for our students and by way of a contribution here we have an expenditures um we have reductionist finishers it's not a reduction of staff but this is just going back to the budget seeing some additional hourly allocations substitute allocations that we haven't had to materialize at this time but we have had an increase in classified support staff versus hourly and other items we do have a reduction in some of our contractor services of 183 000 and that's also the same for the um transfer and other outgo and the transfer and other algo will be categorized for the contributions so if we have a reduction in expenditures we would expect to see a reduction in the required contribution from the general fund to our specialized resources any questions here all right and this has just given us a historical trend of our contribution for um special education so in 1819 we contribute 13.4 million dollars 1920 that was reduced to 13.1 million dollars right now we're projecting to contribute 12.4 million but is projected to increase again going back to 13.1 13.5 13.8 and 14.3 respectfully effectively any questions here all right now to our nyp so we are showing that we can meet our financial obligations the current year which is and the two subsequent years which is 21 22 and 22 23.
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just so that we can always keep it in our forefront i wanted to go ahead and provide the two uh additional out years which is the 2223 here in 2425 now again just a reminder the 2223 is based off a more restrictive cola of two percent if that was to materialize and increase we will actually have more of any fund balance um with that if that does materialize that would mean the shortfall of 343 000 would be eaten away by just the increase in cola so if we receive even a three percent versus a two percent that would automatically satisfy the 22-23 but no matter how we look at it even if we use the department of finance or school services and not the more restrictive cola the 2423 we will have a double digit reduction that we will be chasing and so right now with the restrictive cola we're looking at 11.2 um again if we were to receive the 3.84 1.6 that projection that cola i mean the reduction would be a little less than nine million dollars but it will still be there for us and and we wouldn't be waiting for 24 25 to address that we will not be waiting to 24.25 i'll just keep a dollar today is four dollars in four years and we most definitely will continue that philosophy and continue to adjust our budget accordingly all right and here's just giving us our graphics um if we um we know we have fun 17 which is the reserve fund we don't contribute to that fund but that is just fun so they're sitting there um we can consider that a rainy day fund but if we did nothing with fund one um current reserve plus fund 17 we will maintain a 6.9 million dollar any fund balance the risk of that is just one month payroll is over 2 million dollars so that means after two months the 6.9 million dollars will be gone and we'll be insolvent we can't let that happen so then another option is we continue to look at ways to readjust our budget and we make sure that we do not realize the 8.5 million dollar negative any fund balance by 2425 we do our due diligence early and we start working at eating that away over the next couple of fiscal years and with that i am proud to announce that we are still positive as we were at first interim we could meet our current and two cisco fiscal years any questions so far i just have one more slide all right and i want to and then after that positive note because that was a positive certification we also wanted to talk about potential funding that we have that is not included in our inner report so we have another 6.6 million dollars that we have the opportunity to apply for which is the expanded learning academic intervention grant and that can be used for various strategies to accelerate learning have extended school year and any other creative way that dr mitchell and her team can help educate our students for any type of learning loss then we also have our safe food safe schools for all grant that is projected at the 2.7 million dollars we would have until july 30 21 to spend that money and then we have the cares act i mean the esra act which is part of the cares fund and that's the one we i started with on the update that we just submitted that application um once approved the funded allocation we would have another nine point eight million dollars available again they will all be under restricted resources but you can see based off all the allowable uses we could find great ways to benefit our students by spending these dollars and with that i will ask for any questions so it's more about this additional funding right and just in terms of like i know i know everyone's there's a lot of energy being put in right now to reopening but in terms of thinking about these dollars that we know are going to be coming down and knowing that we have to support um the learning of our students and accelerate their learning um just just just what are you thinking right now in terms of like planning around these dollars planning in terms of recovery um i would even just throw in what do you think about in terms of assessment i heard you talk about elpac assessment right now with the state with the with the with the extended time window are we thinking about that as part of this these expenditures just like so where are you with that and and maybe the answer is it's coming but just if that's so then what's the sense for us in terms of when are we going to hear things about it so um so actually we've been having several meetings over the last few weeks really around summer summer learning opportunities um taking a look at what we can offer and not just our traditional summer program that we've done for like six weeks but we're really looking at the entire summer right so we're looking at the entire summer for high school students we've got a variety of options we'll still have citrus college as an option for students but we're also looking at providing a different option for for our students not only for credit recovery but also for acceleration as well so this would be something that again would start right after you know school gets out pretty much all the way through we're looking at um at least to august um so that's one piece um we're also looking at um the same thing summer programming for kinder um through eighth grade as well so looking at a very robust program we've been talking with think together in terms of how we can partner with them to provide a more robust opportunity um so that's one piece another um another piece that we're looking at um as we move into next year and i think you've you've heard me talk about this is that how do we make sure that we're providing opportunities and experiences for students to actually have hands-on learning experiences as we go back we've we've missed that right and so um you know president ariana mentioned science um one of the things that we're proud about is that for elementary for example we have carolina biological this year in distance learning we've been able to do that online they've got a they've got a very robust program where they have online labs and things like that but we're really looking forward to coming back because this program in particular has hands-on experiential types of experiences for students so that's what's one piece another piece that we're excited about is opportunities for students um to have enrichment in um the elementary grades um in terms of um what we're what we're calling innovation labs right so we've purchased um quite a bit of um ub tech robotics for our elementary students again we want to be able to have these kinds of opportunities for learning um one of the things we really liked about the this program in particular with the ub tech is that it's connected to the science standards so thinking about what are the ways in which we can infuse literacy with hands-on science curriculum so that's one piece another piece that we have been using this year to help our students accelerate and fill in the gaps is we have used i ready ireti has been a very successful program for us we've had students show growth we've been running i ready after school intervention groups for most of the school year since we started using that so that's something that we're going to continue to do as an option that will help us as well and then the last thing i want to say too is um the summer is an opportunity for us to do some professional learning with our staff over the summer right so thinking about project-based learning thinking about you know again literacy how we can design lessons that are or actual learning experiences that are hands-on interdisciplinary those are the types of things that we're looking at so lots of so we've got a lot of plans for the summer um in terms of jason summer learning as well for our staff just a quick just make sure that that you noted that the at the high school uh level um the idea or the conversations right now is that this would run through the entire summer and again these are initial conversations that we're having and that they would be like blocked so that they would have multiple opportunities but it's the same concept at the elementary level correct so so the same like extending the school year yeah um versus what we typically do uh which is six weeks max 20 days 19.
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20 days 19 19 20 days and really looking at like these these blocks and these phases that run throughout the summer um so i just want to add it add that um initial conversations uh also centered around this year today it was announced that we are at 7.2 7.2 case rate to 100 000 which means now we are 0.2 away from moving into the red tier um and that opens up uh some other possibilities and just to start thinking about okay what what can what can we do uh also thinking about at-risk groups um and then lastly uh conversation and planning has already started in terms of next year and um knowing that even with these opportunities we're still going to have to face learning loss head on and so what can we start doing in terms of next year by next year i mean the next school year um in terms of of addressing um that that potential learning loss that shows up on on day one and how do we support our students through that so when would you anticipate bringing sort of a comprehensive plan of what are you talking about to the board like well um we're hoping to get uh we're hoping to get a budget going for um what the plans are for summer and like um mr ortega was saying we're we're hoping to do three different um three different blocks right throughout the summer so um we're we're hoping in the next couple of weeks we'll have a budget um that you know how much will it cost to be able to run uh this program for essentially k through um you know all the way through high school so maybe our april meeting you guys can have an update by our april meeting you can have an update of like what you're envisioning and the budget you know is that feasible yeah i think so yep yeah for sure does anyone have any questions okay great and since i went ahead and did a point of order and retracted r i'm going to go ahead and ask one more time for a motion to move 12.1 approval of second interim financial report 2020 2021 still moved we have a first by board member beau and we have a second by board member career and we can go ahead and now vote and it passes five zero we'll move on to 13.0 policies and bylaws we have 13.1 uh our um policies administer administrative recognition regulations and board bylaws uh all of the board policy with all six of these items to the recommendations of california school boards association so if there's any feedback on any of them i i have feedback or question just on 13.6 so if someone has one before that i can wait okay okay so 13.6 if we look at um see what's the document in there meetings and notices on page eight you're ready for this five the fifth paragraph up from the bottom um this says it says the board may use teleconferences for all purposes um basically that but that all votes taken during a teleconference meeting shall be by roll call um so that i i i take that to under to mean that you know that us voting online does not would not suffice um no that's not right because by so what we do is considered role call voting that is so it doesn't need to be you know um calling your name and you saying or that this is this is what's going on i mean you can you can you guys i mean you can ask legal counsel but my understanding this this is this is the same thing i think that we should ask the legal counsel just to double check and i actually um you know had the same yeah because if if that is what this is saying i wonder you know what what is what what what space do it because i mean there's there's some there would be some inefficiencies to our meetings that if we if we did it um in a traditional role called sense so so i i would hope that um our online system counts as as roll call all right well it would be good to ask the council because my understanding of the laws changed a couple years ago and we're actually supposed to take all our votes by roll call even when we're in person and so we've always just assumed that the electronic method is substitutes for that because you're you're capturing everybody's individual vote so it'd just be good to clarify that to further board member cruz gonzalez punch or what she's talking about uh in the in this actual board bylaw not in the electronic version or teleconference version it does talk about how we have to provide minutes of the meeting and we have to list the people the the persons uh the board president so forth and a copy of the roll call so that's the your names and then how you voted uh but we can definitely we can definitely seek legal counsel but that would further i think support that that makes sense that was my only question scene that there's none then we can go ahead and now move to the item of our agenda and it is 14.1 a german can i please get a motion to move 14.1 so moved second first motion by board member beau second motion by board member greer and it is 9 20 and it this is the end of our meeting during the meeting you all have a great night and we will see you at our next board meeting good evening good night
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one aloha good afternoon thank you for joining us for this informational briefing the community on education wednesday march 3rd and we have our guest with us today to talk about the in the informational briefing we have representatives of the c writer production to talk about their commercial commercialism efforts and we also have representatives from the hawaii academia group and i will turn it oh i will let you know that joining us virtually are members of my committee senator vice versa by committee senator donna mercado kim also senator favela is joining us virtually as well as senator donovan de la cruz and i would like to welcome the representatives that are from sea writer production that joining us today miss anne mahi as well as miss candy suiso i believe representative kanohar is with us too and also welcoming senator drew kanuho from our committee thank you for joining us senator miss mahi would you like to start at msuiso thank you for joining us you're muted aloha good afternoon and thank you so much for um giving us this time senator hidani senator young kim and the members of your education committee we really are very excited to share some of the things that we've been working on over two years and present it to you and hopefully move forward we have i want to start off by also wishing all you also mohini on right now happy girls day so with that i believe we have a presentation it's a visual presentation and um if we could just start on that i think the best way is just to visually walk you through what's been happening over two years ago as a result of quite a few of our programs in the department of education that have been doing cte programs project-based learning type of projects working together and actually generating income we thought if we could do some kind of a commercialism bill where we could allow these programs to actually bring in money and the money that they make come right back into the programs sort of like i would say more of a social enterprise type of model uh an enterprise that's educational so we came up with an edgy prize came up with that one more a word so senate bill 2051 in house bill 2048 was introduced and passed two years ago to and it was an amendment to allow for the doe to establish a commercial enterprise within the career technology education academies in the department of education schools next slide relating to education it was introduced in past and this would this permits individual department of education schools and cte academies or programs to engage in commercialism allows the department of education schools to engage in commercial enterprise or we created as i said earlier edu prizes and it includes the sale of goods and services produced or for an individual school which is tied to a career pathway in academy or program and a good example i'd like to use i want to say back in the early 20s we were just our program was just beginning to do a lot of traveling going nationally to compete and learn to see what some of the best and brightest across the nation were doing and we always wanted to have matching t-shirts and sweatshirts and so we contacted campbell high school who i thought at the time was a really good example of an edu prize even though it was just part of the program troy tsuyoka was i believe the graphic arts teacher and we would go to him every year for these t-shirts because we really wanted to support his program the kids would design our uh our logo they would design everything and then they would print it really quickly with it they would turn it around within a week very competent and very business-like and so they um you know that was just an example and i know fast forward to 2020 you know we have our program cirad productions which is very successful in um in actually modeling what choi soyoka did and bringing in a lot of income where the kids are learning during the classroom how to create these logo items and then actually printing it themselves and then turning it around and going to um farmers markets and online sales it's become very successful and then one more example i want to use is waipahu high school has a very state of the art culinary program i know all of us on this thread right now has been to some of the nicest most expensive um fundraisers with some of the best chefs in hawaii with some of the best food but i think if we look at what the students create at waipahu under elaine matsuo they certainly can compete and that's another example of taking an edu prize within the school to have them continue to create money and feed it back into the program so tied to career pathway academy or program so the next slide again is um is uh the bill allows the doe schools to expand these cte programs to allow for the safe products and services to deposit these funds right back into the school so everything comes right back all the money they make comes right back into the program and we really feel this is essential as there's a need to utilize the money to support continuation and improvement of the commercial energy prices within each of these cte programs and i think this is so important even now especially as we begin to open schools with a lot of these budget cuts it's what better way than to have these programs begin to just create their own funding to be brought right back into their programs and i'm going to turn it over to ann okay thank you kathy that really takes us on our journey i think what was really important is that we were um limited to being able to have scales and to be able to make a profit because based on the current uh i guess rules and rates for the department any of our state programs would only make enough to break even and so that was one of the things that we had talked about you know how can we make sure that we're providing opportunities for a real world type of environment for learning and that these students would be able to really understand and feel like true entrepreneurs in a real world situation and not just we can only break even and not be able to produce services or goods that could actually be utilized to expand their program as well as you know even thinking out of the box you know providing um uh part-time work for these students uh after hours and during weekends and and actually having sales out in the public or within a commercial type enterprise and being able to take that money and feeding it back into the school program so that's the that was the dream for all of us as we started out uh and we thanked uh the legislature for the leading in this and passing that amendment to the commercialism bill law so our goals are next slide are simply to be able to support the development of these cpa enterprise enterprises and and you know like i said again it really is about giving our students real world experiences we want them to learn how to be entrepreneurs we want them to be able to innovate and create we want them to have that experience of running a business and really be able to work together with community and businesses to really start to prepare them for the workforce we want them to be able to move forward whether it's getting into a job uh situation or getting into post-secondary to hone their skills even better so these are the goals that we talked about we talked about in our committee work over the i think it was a school year next so again this is kind of what we've been talking about and enterprise is an educational enterprise we have um our we want our students to be ready to be independent not only as learners but as those that really see a future for themselves we had us i went to visit waianae high school and there was a young man and he was um he was in the special education program very quiet but he started taking um people to visit you know and it would explain every part of that marine science oval farm and when we asked him what do you want to be he says you know what i'm learning so much i mean he knew a lot more than than a lot of us did who um you know when went to college and he could explain everything he said my dream is to be able to go out in the community and create a business like this for myself and my family and that's what this is all about so how can the department of education support enterprises we started a committee like i said again in 2019 we met regularly under assistant superintendent rodney luke i was there we had principals from the hawaii academy who were interested in participating and designing so it was lisa hoagie from waianae high school keith hayashi from waipahu and we also had john henry lee from campbell high school and we were there trying to figure out how what kinds of things we needed to have in place in order to truly implement an energy prize in a school we did have the department of education cte branch there troy was there with other staff members and we had an opportunity to start to think about so what is it that we need to be able to do and and how can we move forward so we said we need to continue with that enterprise committee we need to ensure that there is a statewide consistency you know um once we create this implementation plan we need it to be consistent so that it can be implemented statewide in all high schools that have academies we want to be sure that as we create the implementation guidelines through the pilot that the department of education will then be able to take that and start looking at creating more definite administrative rules and regulations we also want uh to be sure that we're working with a group of high schools who have really invested in developing academies in their schools and these three principles that sat in our in our committee are three very dedicated principals who have implemented academies and given opportunities for their students to create innovate and to learn about the world of work next so these are some of the things that we said we would need to have we need to have business and marketing plan and this should be part of the cpe program development we also um and that's not going to be too hard to do okay i mean we just want to be sure it's integrated so that it's part of a strategic plan for the state as well as in the um in the schools through the cte program the next thing would be really how do we create a foundational financial management system because this is really different from what the state schools can currently do right now everything is really about purchase orders and um you know uh payments you know in a very antiquated way so our question was in order for us to really be um thinking in the future you know uh how can we actually do a website where people can see the products order the products uh we process they pay like foursquare shopify paypal these are all things new to me because i'm in the old generation but you know when you think about everybody else this is how they operate so how do we start to update the department's um ability to create those kinds of systems for us um we have programs that are ready and we mentioned them before like the sea writer productions with graphic arts you know and um video digital media we have the waianae high school marine science learning center with volvo development and then we have the culinary arts that candy talked about as well as the national natural resources academy so this is really we're closed we just need to continue to move this with everybody's health so next slide is the hobby principle of waianae high school lisa aloha can you hear me yes yes thank you for joining us lisa really appreciate an opportunity to share with you the progress we've made and what we feel we still need to work on together in order to really operationalize the commercialism bill at the school level one of the biggest challenges we have is um and this is not the department's fault the department was is set up to do other things and we're asking it to do something out of it valley wick so we're asking the department to figure out ways to support the commercialism bill by developing these um ordering processing payment and delivery systems many of which are online what happens is that we currently have a system in which um we can do fundraising and it's very part it's very explicit and there are checks and balances that protect the staff and protect the students as well as people purchasing so that there's no loss of funds etc etc we're asking to go a step further and we don't have systems that help us to do that yet so i'll give you an example on the next slide in order for our students to truly begin to get a sense of entrepreneurship we need to give them those opportunities in the school setting and what happens is that within a school setting what we believe is that we can allow them to make mistakes in a safe way in a way that does not um cause any personal disruption into their own lives and sets them up for the real world type of situations that they may encounter if they are become indeed entrepreneurs because there's nothing our state needs more than more small businesses we need to be able to support that and we would like to be able to do that through this ability to engage in commercialism students will make decisions about operating costs marketing they'll do surveys they will succeed and they will fail and that's okay because that is what learning is all about and it's better that they learn in school and not learn with their families money or real loans in the real world next slide the biggest challenge for us at the school level is managing the volume and the particulars of a business the fiduciary components of a business while still operating under the department of education currently if we use either the state fms system or the local school kev system there's a very rigorous and appropriate system of writing creos getting approval principal has to sign all of them they go through multiple hands they get checked and cross-checked but that system is going to be too cumbersome and not conducive to the real-time turnaround needed by these cte businesses businesses will fail if we don't have the underlying system that allows them to operate like a business and um we look forward to i know the department has been working on this it's a not an easy solution um that they are having to figure out how to address but this is exactly what we need to be working on in order to move forward and i'm not sure who's next and um so we're going to have um principal keith hayashi go back to the other slide if you will um yes keith all right good afternoon everyone good afternoon senators um schools are a um maybe one slide back i think uh thank you hawaii academy schools are a conglomeration of 21 high schools across the state that uh implement the career academy design and through that design what we really focus on is providing authentic learning opportunities for our students and uh so this we the whole academy school really looks forward to continuing uh to work with the cte office at the state office um to establish these a system for all of this to occur and speaking to some of the principles at the hawaii academy schools um they are looking as handshare in areas of culinary looking at business and entrepreneurship and designing uh different kinds of projects uh also in natural resources growing and perhaps even selling meeting meeting health requirements uh selling uh food and vegetables and such so uh the schools are really uh focused on providing these kinds of opportunities for our students and some of the areas that on the bottom part of that slide uh the students will make decisions on when we look at that those are really real world type of experiences that our students will be engaged in so the hawaii academy schools definitely are fully full support okay thank you thank you um principal hayashi if we can go to that the next slide after that so this is the proposal that we'd like to put up front um this is what we need to do in order to move forward um we need the okay so the first thing is we we ask that we be allowed to have a pilot so that we can really start to develop you know positive policy regulations and procedures and that the pilot would actually be working through the hawaii academy schools and that we would look at two or three high schools that would be willing to work together because they hold regular meetings to really start to develop on the the plan for this implementation looking at how we can be consistent how we can keep everyone safe how we can actually mitigate any kind of liabilities and create that financial system that would actually update what the department currently have so that we can we can actually take this energy prize and be fully ready the second thing is that we really do need the support of the cte state program we need their guidance to support and thank you they've always been at our meetings they also attend the hawaii academy's meeting so they're very up to date on the kinds of work that's being done we need to have them work with us on creating that final that enterprise handbook that we would develop through the pilot if they can help us really start looking at any kind of initial initial funding through the cte programs funds strategies and resources create partnerships and connections with uh commercial enterprises and business resources being that um you know that uh center for a single point of contact where we can actually have um you know a source a resource for um checking with high schools checking to see who's interested and then i think the last part is also the coordination of that professional development that should continue through the hawaii academy's program i mean consortium but the thing about the hawaii academies consortium is that it's never closed keith and the rest of the principals have always opened it up to any high school that's interested in joining and they provide collegial support and they they were able to get some funding to get i think um a consultant who is well versed in creating academies to actually work with them in their regular meetings so i think that this is a perfect opportunity to now say this is where we need to go with the development of an edu prize and you know we we really do appreciate this opportunity to share and we hope that we can have this happen and we really again mahalo nui because when we work together no task is is impossible and we we say inaudible the reason we do this is because the children belong to all of us and we have to hold hands and create that net so that no one falls through that net so mahalo nui we really do appreciate this opportunity thank you thank you very much for that wonderful presentation members do you guys have any questions before we go on to the does presentation any questions i wanted to ask um anyone on the panel there if they could name some of the schools that are participating now in this hawaii academy's pilot schools uh let's see the hawaii academy schools include um let's see on oahu we have the six schools in the leeward district so uh nanakuli waianae of campbell kapolei we also have our ayah high school castle high school kailua high school um um high school on the big island uh recently joining us was kohala kealakehe let's see maui on maui and you know what i probably missed a couple of them but uh the whole academy school span um mostly all items well that's pretty uh impressive list i thought there were going to be three or four schools that you need and i think you rattled off about uh 15 or 20.
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david esau here sarah fuller here sophie gray yeah john catarsky here peggy leonard juan santa young peggy is here she was just muted yes i understood uh council members you have a quorum thank you [Music] next on our agenda is the approval of the agenda do i have a motion to approve don't move thank you john do i have a second one thank you david any discussion [Music] all in favor aye aye any opposed great agenda passes um are we doing approval of minutes next i don't see it on my agenda but my agenda also says draft at the top so i'm not sure uh i guess approval oh i'm seeing public comment approval of minutes that's what it says so that's probably two separate things let's do the approval of the minutes from last meeting david was that a motion to approve sure do i have a second thank you sophie um any discussion of the minutes that was a pretty interesting meeting i had just a couple really really minor things on the second page under design area one there is a random a at the end of that uh bullet i don't think that i can just strike that and then i noticed sophie's last name was spelled wrong at the bottom of page five um when she's talking about the ann arbor woman artist changing over to the huron river art collective so just two minor things two else one t [Applause] i see venina's thumbs up does anyone have any other comments about the minutes no all right david and john or david and sophie would say those are okay changes to move forward yes all right um all approval all in favor of the movement and it's as they are all right great any opposed all right the minutes are approved um i'm going to assume that public comment comes now and i'm also going to assume unless bonita tells me otherwise that we don't have anyone from the public here no one from the public allison okay um and we don't have any special presentations tonight either is that correct no okay um i know at the last meeting it was mentioned that potentially first martin was going to come tonight so that well first martin has made a submittal um but it was more engineering changes in the right-of-way than it was art so we are we have run it through engineering first it's in engineering getting reviewed uh for acceptance before we bring it back to the art folks to you folks okay great um so the next thing on the agenda is old business with the pickle street murals art proposal um so i know i saw as an attachment a couple different proposals from them um specifically it looks like they are running with the um walkway that comes up by the broadway bridge and under there um they have a new budget of it looks like three thousand dollars they were going to be raising on their own um are we just looking at that and as a group discussing it and then approving it is that yes sophie um i happened to walk through there once today and once a few days ago because the weather was nice and i must say that anti-graffiti stuff is really really depressing it's prison like it's it's just upsetting really and um it would be nice if we i know we we do to some extent but if we could have before they put all that stuff on which must cost quite a bit that we have a decision about how we can prepare for the fact that we would like murals and that we would like people to be able to paint those walls and actually i find personally i find that anti-graffiti stuff actually more upsetting than graffiti of which there is some on the other side of the river and it's i mean it's slightly messy but it's not upsetting i don't think anyway that's just my thoughts on the subject sophie i haven't been through the area is the anti-graffiti i was understanding it was just like a primer is it not just a primer or what does it look like um well it's deeply grooved so that it would be hard to paint it's it's very textured and deeply grooved and then it's got this kind of um very flat gray sticky looking kind of paint stuff on it and it's i mean i think they included a picture of it in one of their presentations the uh pickle guys little guys but um yeah it's it's it's just miserable really it was also extremely wet down there um i saw that there was a teeny tiny drain actually under the bridge but the rest didn't have any water management which was considering how much snow was melting and turning into ice was a little bit hazardous in the first trip but that's not connected with us necessarily so can you scroll back up vinnie it looks like are they doing what's the plan so there's going up the walkway with a highlighted walkway it looks like and then are they going under the bridge with their painting or just up the sides where that yellow is do we know because it looks like the path goes under the ridge right uh is that the right way around i don't know that's not the right location they were interested in doing it there but i think their proposal was for the other tunnel wasn't it but this is a new proposal that uh benita sent us like 20 minutes ago they say as well as under the bridge right yeah okay but the proposal you the venita just sent was the new tunnel and path between main street and depot street i'm assuming that's the new underpass below the train tracks you might be looking so not the one are you seeing the one that she's got on the screen right now no i'm looking at the 2021 art proposal yeah this is something she said at seven o'clock today the very last attachment um and so vanita since this is the most recent one that we've received i'm assuming this is the one they are most interested in moving forward with yes so i i guess banana are we supposed to review this and say give it our blessing basically and then i then it goes to city council or what's the um i guess i'm not familiar with the process we would be looking for your comments on it and ultimately a recommendation to go forward or go forward with changes or not go forward we would then uh take their proposal and i want to say enter into negotiations it's really not negotiations we would enter into an agreement as to the terms as basically what insurances they need when they could do it what they would have to provide in the way of safety precautions permits etc did i get that right vanita yes and in all actuality i i did get this update about three o'clock this afternoon so it is probably different from that initial one that i attached to the packet but i did add this one i don't know that we're expecting you all to make a decision today we could do a few other meetings or if you've got some questions about it we can certainly do it at a later time or you can send me your additional comments and we can go back to them with some additional information if you you if you're needing that as well and just one follow-up question so if we say yeah we love it we want to move forward does it have to go through city council before you do all that um stuff you were talking about craig or not no uh technically not because it's under 25 right uh i i the thing that i think we are missing which you folks may want to weigh in on and have some comment is you don't know what the actual art is they are proposing you know a location you have samples of what they have proposed but you don't have the actual proposal and i thought i saw in the proposal where they said they would come back with designs for our review at some point if we wanted that yeah because it was part of a community process yeah yes i i would i have no problem with that but the final go-ahead would be contingence on your approval agreed i like that it seems reasonable to to encourage them to move forward with that public process and provide whatever support we could in terms of promoting it i i would think we should encourage them to answer any questions you have we enter into an agreement for the the art the process and as part of that agreement we outline what their public process will be and when when you get to approve it so they know what the steps are and so you folks know what the steps are and a quick question craig on regarding that um just as you're saying some of that would actually be reviewed by the city attorney's office and blessed through them as well yes even even before yes the agreement would have to go through them oh yeah john um well from my point of view one i think they're qualified and i think we should let them know that second i really like the concept they're coming with a budget and uh they have an idea of where they want to do it i'm not completely clear exactly where they want to do it the one the pickle street mural co-op pdf shows three design areas my question would be and is that consistent with the same document that venita shared with us so one uh i think i would like to know exactly what walls they're going to plan to paint uh yeah johnny what that venita is showing it's called ann arbor public art commission application aaron lakeland julian hanson and that's specifically the the route under the broadway bridge and connecting over to um [Music] the pathway by the river yes this is one of the three from their original presentation so that's narrowed it down that's their design area three is that correct is design area one i believe design area one because that's broadway street is what the proposal okay in the one that was sent today it says proposed location under concrete underbridge concrete area under broadway street near huron river okay so we've we've got the lo we've got the location and they have in design area one identify specifically six areas six different uh sites so if that's correct i would just like to confirm that uh i think there are six sites or just examples of places that could be painted well then i guess my question is exactly where they're going to plant it i mean tell us precisely the wall and precisely what artwork they're going to put on the wall i think for us to make uh any kind of an evaluation one we like we think they're qualified you know we like their work uh and we like the project idea that you know i would just like to know specifically exactly what law and specifically exactly what art works well that will come with a design that we would get at the second approval yes okay well that that's all i that's all i'm saying i mean if we can give them the feedback it's positive you know we feel they're qualified we we'd like it to go forward but this is what they would need at least that's what i'm saying um sophie and i can't see all of you at one time right now because you're on the side small so if you if i don't see you raising your hand please feel free to speak up oh there's the little thing yeah um i i was under the impression that they were aiming first for the pathways in towards the the new tunnel but i could be mistaken the one that we've just been looking at is the one which is already graffitied and and um which i mentioned earlier um not the bit on well i can't remember with a bit under the bridges but certainly the lead up of those two lines showing the pathway that is graffitied right now um uh with some black lives matter graffiti and things like that uh mostly but uh yeah the the tunnel was the thing i thought they were aiming at first but i could be mistaken and they might change their mind anyway so yeah it's a good idea as john says to ask them where they plan to start and what they plan to do there uh as soon as they have a better idea themselves great and and let me explain to that to you all how this original proposal was submitted it was submitted through the public art web page so the initial attachment was what they submitted through the public art web page when he sent this one today um i i believe he wanted to put more detail than was allowed through the middle on the web page and if i'm correct in reading what he said to me this is their current proposal to us right now with this location no other locations are being considered at this time and then if you're asking also about the uh what type of art will be placed and where we can certainly clarify all of that after we get more information and detail from them i would assume that they're going to do like any other folks are going to give us some ideas of what they may want to have on some of these areas and but again you would have the opportunity to revisit all of that if i can jump in the purpose of the agreement would be to nail down and describe in more detail the locations for the art installation and the process they would have for proposing the art whatever engagement process they are proposing after they have perspective art chosen they would be coming back to you folks for the approval of the art that would be we haven't gone through this process with a donation like this before but that would be my expectations for the process so craig i i think my expectation would be more in line with what you were saying before um so at this point it sounds like we're all saying we like them we like their enthusiasm we like their their previous work we think this is a good location for art we would like at some point before it moves forward more details about exactly which walls would be covered and i think we'd also like to review their public review process for the selection of the art prior to selecting the piece um and then also at the end once the piece is selected then review the work yes that can be done in the agreement the agreement can cover that great um that not only the location but uh approval of the public art selection process just if they can't start their public process until after our next meeting they're starting that in may and then trying to get the design and all the details approved through the city um you know sometime this fall i'm not going to be able to paint it until next year i i am chuckling internally as you say that like in the city that's that's light speed at city range i i see trying to get this through the attorney's office so my goal would be to get it through the get the agreement drafted with them as soon as we can get review from the attorney and maybe share it back to the art commission in an email format if we should be so lucky to get it done ahead of your next meeting so um do you need us to formally say go forward with doing that chris okay so can i have a motion to let craig and me to move forward with an agreement with these folks thank you john do i have a second second thank you sophie all in favor aye aye i i i would like to comment now that you voted on it if this is successful i think we have a model or we could extend other areas in the cities to this to these folks so i am excited about it and i really want to make it successful yeah i mean we could model other projects or other people who are interested in doing stuff this kind of stuff too yes so all in favor say everyone's all in favor any a post great okay if i can find my agenda i've been moving all my papers around okay new business so um the new business stuff is all related to our fundraising committee which i think we had originally thought we would talk about in the working group but we can talk about it here if you want deb you want to talk about it here um do you want me to introduce it or would you like to okay so um the fundraising committee working group met and we were discussing one of our goals is to figure out how we're going to be using the um interest from the endowment um the community foundation has encouraged us to use it on an annual basis however we don't have to we can let it roll over from year to year and grow and use as needed or we can kind of decide no we want to take it out every year and spend it on x or you know we want to form a working group every year that's going to decide exactly what we're going to spend it on so we didn't feel like we should tell you how we're going to use it we thought it would be better to discuss as a group and kind of um weigh the ideas i think internally we kind of discussed saying there isn't anything specific we want to spend the funds on at the moment um and don't want to just take the funds out and let them sit at the city so unless there were specific ideas people had or projects they had their heart set on blessing i mean certainly if this project we just discussed needed some money for permitting or things like that we could look at those as options as well so kind of open up the floor for conversation and discussion about those funds deb is there anything else i needed to cover before i opened up a floor um no i think opening it up to the floor is fine um i was one of the concerns that i've had is that by bringing monies into the city um uh into the city uh system while we may actually be able to say those are funds for these purposes any monies that come into the city may actually indeed be just encumbered later by the city and so i do have some trepidations about pulling money into a city fund if we aren't immediately ready to use it and i just had a question what are we talking about in terms of the funds the amount the large amount about five thousand dollars okay right now that's the fund total or that's interest that's the interest that's what we can spend even though the and it's not certain what amount we would add to that every year they estimated it to be currently with the current return of about 1700 added to that every year so we haven't taken it out for several years which is why it's at the number it's at right now sophie i'd just like to ask a question because um i was discussing with with somebody else uh recently the idea for projects where citizens would have some of their own things painted or businesses would have some of their own things painted so like whether it be the dumpsters behind a restaurant or whether it would be someone's own garage door or building like there's a beautiful one on i remember the fifth street or somewhere where they painted the whole house and it looks great um [Music] uh there i mean there are other things you could maybe paint like that but i'm just wondering whether it would be um possible to offer subsidies to people to cover materials and maybe something towards the artists as well if they wanted to you know like a matching amount or something if people wanted to do something in their own home and we thought it was a good project in a good place yeah i mean along those lines we've also we've talked about you know wanting there to be more public art within the neighborhoods sort of along those lines you know um because a lot of our funding and a lot of our projects are kind of within the dga footprint so we don't really get in like the cip projects don't normally hit neighborhoods so this could be some of the funding that we could you know suggest neighborhoods apply for or individuals apply for matching funds or things like that uh travis and when the fund was initially set up was there an express purpose for why it was being set up that we should try to honor as well yeah you missed all this fun stuff so we just a couple months ago um originally the fund was set up for maintenance and repair um and we recently updated the um bylaws or whatever that's called the agreement so that we could expand that to inclusion of marketing and purchase of art so and specifically we did that because in recent years the city has taken on the maintenance and repair and put those into the departments that hold the works so ideally there wouldn't be a need for funding for maintenance and repair that's still left in the agreement so if we wanted to use it for maintenance repair we certainly can but we thought that it was much more exciting and a lot more there was a lot more opportunities with the expanded language so the community foundation um board actually voted on that a couple months ago and made that change good question sarah um i was wondering if uh part of that budget might be well used for the pickle street art project for marketing in order to get uh the word out because the whole idea is that this is the community coming together painting together and you know in that proposal i don't think that it included a budget for marketing and i know that last meeting we had talked about ways to utilize you know potential press um and things like that but that is not guaranteed so um you know maybe putting a portion towards uh towards marketing would be a good thing especially if this is going to act as a template that could be repeated and a community event that could be repeated in the future sophie yeah on those lines i'm wondering whether we might need something for the golden paintbrush project because um the publicity department i guess was going to put it in various places but i feel like an extra boost to make sure that especially since it's been dormant for a while so that people would hear about it and you know i'm not even sure how people hear about stuff these days so um but it might need an extra little push to make sure we do get some some nominations and we should all be nominating i mean we should all be telling our friends and relations and everybody neighbors about it so how is that i guess we'll get an update a little bit later about how that's going i don't want to derail our conversations but yeah so definitely marketing of whatever specific projects are happening within the year could be something that we say we're going to take a certain amount out each year to put towards marketing david one thing for a longer term consideration there are a couple of things in the cip none of them imminent but you know relatively small projects but we're ones just because of the type where it would be a shame not to have some art but we can't probably justify enough money for the full public process with the harvard arts center and all of that that we've done on some of the other big ones so having this available to fund an art selection with a much less rigorous or elaborate process would be really valuable potentially just to keep it in our back of our mind yeah i mean that's one of the reasons why it might it might behoove us to leave the funding there and have it grow and grow and grow because you know there we'd be able to have um more of an impact with the more money we have you know and actually like purchase or a piece of art you know if we had enough money in there so travis i saw your hand go up no okay go ahead sophie yeah there's something to be said for that but on the other side it's also possible that if you do things with it then people hear about the fact that you're doing things with it and it then breeds you know more activity on that front whether making more things suggesting more things or raising more cash so um there's something to be said for spending it as well definitely sarah uh picking back piggybacking a little bit off of what david was saying it uh reminded me of our conversation with the parks department actually and there are some small uh you know kind of repair budgets that the parks department has for playgrounds and if we could contribute even a small portion because they're small already um to maybe make those into artistic projects or to kind of help push that idea that would be you know a way in a small way to get more art in neighborhoods as well deb i saw your hand go up for a second did you i just wanted to pull us back around to all these are really good ideas um and we could decide that we're going to have a homeowner's uh program for beautifying you know the garage doors or the or we could decide that we're going to have a uh a public park initiative although that seems like we might again so something that was more overarching that we could actually solicit and uh gain some in you know ideas for and then say okay that's a 500 idea we're going to take the monies out um in terms of marketing i think that we could probably do a both and where we may want to remove 500 every year for the express purpose of marketing whatever our our uh um programs might be and expect to spend that amount so we take a small amount out and plan to expend it in that amount of time while letting the uh other principals sort of gather up for these special projects i think what keeps bringing this up to us is the fact that the foundation would very much like to just give us the money once a year and that's easy bookkeeping for them and it's an easy regular thing i'm just not sure that it suits our needs at this point unless we're doing it for a very small targeted amount that we're sure we're going to spend every year like on a market i like on marketing efforts john i really like the idea of marketing um because we've done very little of it uh i would i think we have a marketing group i don't know if it's called marketing it may be something else i would like to hear i don't know what we would get for 500 i guess uh that uh but the point is i think i think that i uh i i like uh deb and sarah's idea of marketing that we that's really something that we haven't done well enough i think so if we could and that money is seems to be uh identified or clarified that we could use it that way and i think it would be difficult to get money elsewhere um but the city has a you know has a marketing arm that i think in the past have been very open to helping us so um i like the idea uh that uh that sarah and deb suggested yeah i think that um taking a small portion out for marketing we've got a couple projects already on here that we could spend the money on makes sense the marketing committee could look our work group could look at what a normal amount makes sense and come back to us with that number as far as the other special projects you know i think that this pickle project could be a great example for how someone comes to us with an application with an idea how we kind of work with them to formulate the idea come up with an agreement get our work installed and then once we've done this that one time around we can probably model a process for people to individuals or neighborhoods or businesses to apply to us with their ideas and as those come up we could look at this as a way of helping them and supporting them either through marketing which is what it seems like the pickle street guys might need or um in other ways you know was matching funds or whatever does that sound like kind of what our discussion has been been okay cool um so not groundbreaking anytime you know this year but i think it's important to us for us to do some marketing and you know we've been wanting to get the communication out there so that'll be great deb i think maybe the group that this falls under would be the communications group and so they're about to meet i believe um in the next little while and so we can bring that um to that group to talk about and then we can probably think about when it makes sense to have that draw for marketing it might be right in january as we head into uh the uh golden paintbrush nominations for instance or we might think about a regular one-page ad in the observer for instance because that's such a community and locally based um uh enterprise um and so i think that there's an opportunity to to figure out when we would take an amount and how much that might be and bring it back to the group benita i saw you come off mute did you want to jump in you did see that thank you i wanted to say something about the golden paintbrush awards right now we've received a total of seven proposals right now and as you're talking about marketing i'm wondering if in there if we could look at local vendors do some street walking and ask folks to put up flyers we could use the the flyer that is already part of the page and share that out with other people um and just as deb said uh perhaps an uh an ad in a local i'm not sure when i say paper anymore of what we actually really have anymore um but we are here early and we actually only have um seven right now okay um i'm happy to take pliers around if you are ever in the office and able to print them i can come pick them up okay i'm gonna i'm gonna look to craig to see if it's okay for me to hand okay i can certainly get some packets ready for folks i can send them out um and and and i'll let you know when those are ready awesome perhaps a communication group could come up with a list and everyone is very welcome to suggest places where those flyers might go i mean it used to it used to be and hopefully it will be that people would seal us arts flyers at sweet waters and places like that and uh obviously downtown home and garden is always welcome welcoming to things like that too and some other places so we should probably just put together a list and figure out how we would get the flyers to them and i'm impressed that we have seven nominations i think that's terrific i wouldn't say only i think yeah okay yeah i i think that when sophie and i started on this we knew that with the pandemic and everything else going on we weren't we were kind of thinking people might be distracted and that maybe it wouldn't be right on their radar so i feel pretty good that we have 7-2 so yeah they all kind of came in at they all kind of came in at one time um and initially i was worried that um even with within the city of ann arbor website um it's hidden just a bit so i might try reaching out to communications a little bit more to see if they can be um more visible and more prominent in a different location did they post about it on facebook i'm not i'm not a facebook so i'm not and i'm not familiar with the city facebook so i have not checked that i know we've got some other um community uh community venues that go out to multiple residents we were also supposed to have it within the newsletter and the i think it's called the wastewater for residents as well i haven't seen those things so i will probably reach back out to robert and ask those questions if that's okay okay great great as a as i'm thinking about the the pickle street mural company folks too um do you do you know if there was a concerted effort at all to communicate with like the campus art community and um are have we i know that i'm not all the students are here but have we um also shared with them these not that they might be participating in public art well honestly travis i'm gonna have to say no um so i would look for other folks to help me do some of that i would think the penny stamps gallery and or penny stamps um what's it called dab i'm gonna throw that out to get in touch with but we'll put that on our list if we have something that we want to go out to the student body at u of m uh there are several newsletters that um could pick that up and send it out and so um if if we have something prepared to go to the campus body either asking for rfp or for participation perhaps in pickle mural painting when the time comes we should be able to get that out to multiple thousand students i think i think we're we're thinking of pickle shape because they're students but i think that what we're hoping would go out in those newsletter is the um paintbrush golden paintbrush so there's that flyer i don't know if that's something that you could send out to those groups for their newsletter the flyer we should be able to email with that worked up um i think if we're asking for nominations from that group um we can certainly uh look to add that into some of the announcement areas um of the newsletters sure okay sarah um i was wondering if we could do a digital version of the golden paintbrush flyer as well and basically put together an email that we could send to business owners as well as you know dropping off flyers that would include a graphic or some type of image and suggested copy that uh you know just asking you know this is a great award that we're bringing back after you know however many years and would you mind posting this on your social media uh we know you're a business that supports the arts and we would you know greatly appreciate that i know sophie mentioned you were at york uh uh off of packard um with an art show that they had so there's so many businesses that you know i think would would definitely love to put that on their own social media feed uh with a link and um that might be a good way to do that digitally as well yeah another another group who i would very much like to advertise this or share it on their facebook page would be council members i mean how nice for them to have a lovely piece of news to to put with a picture on their uh on their own facebook pages so i think we should try and get them to do that too as well i shared on my personal pages and i announced it at council meetings but i don't know how many of my colleagues shared it so mentally exhausted we probably have to ask them once or twice i can easily send out another email to them with the information thank you travis all right um so we got derailed a little bit there but that was all good discussion and i'm glad we had it um we can jump back to that conversation if we want to during the special projects um the one other item and within the new business that the fundraising committee wanted to bring up was we are tasked with writing a grant well we test ourselves um with potentially writing one grant this year um and began the discussion of well how are we going to find that grant opportunity and we're kind of wondering if the city itself was enrolled or subscribed to any of those grant forums or online communities that had all the grant opportunities that we could search through um like there's one called flux that you can do and if not if there was specific ones that either council commissioners that we should potentially get a subscription to to find grants i can't answer which ones we belong to um i i guess in my section of the world yeah they're they're pretty much federal and state funds we are chasing and we're chasing them for infrastructure we get those notices from semcog and from eagle and from other parts of the state that's a question i would have to ask some others in the city to find out which ones we belong to i would also ask which ones you would like us to belong to if you had to pick one what would it be and what it's what's its cost so that if we aren't there we can figure out how to get you there i only know of a couple but i know them from non-profit work i don't know if they would be ideal for city applications so i would have to do a little digging on that side yeah as i say i have to dig to find out who we most of the grants that i work with we have channels for those but i will admit that art is not my everyday grant chasing with um americans for the arts and culture source have lists somewhere um i know that culture source has a list of current grant opportunities they're all really coveted related at this point um americans for the arts does have a couple grant opportunities um on their website yes um i guess our hope was that we would subscribe to one that would have a much more extensive pool than going to much a bunch of individual sites and and trying to find the best opportunity well no i was thinking they would have a list rather than you know going to yeah they i mean they don't have a list of like all the grant opportunities for art they have a pretty narrow list um on each of those sites there are forums that they pool and collect that information and that are much more comprehensive but they have like monthly subscriptions to or annual subscriptions to participate in those and that's the fee that i would be interested in knowing what it cost and just for example when we looked at the flux one it was didn't i say did i say fifty dollars a month and they would be like so it'll be like 500 for the year and that's i i would believe that's pretty doable if you end up getting a grant it's fine but if you don't it's painful city's definition of painful is different than yourself thank you david well we wrote a grant that we didn't get so we've we've gotten over that hump at least all right so i guess we'll touch base on that again at our next meeting or in the interim we can email about what we figure out um in regards to that please let us know please let me know what you find that i can desire because i don't necessarily want to wait to the next meeting okay and also you know of course we're all kind of embedded in the arts community if you see specific opportunities that arise um send them our way um i know like last year there was a bloomberg one that came up and it was like this is doing a week okay so those come up and we can consider those as opportunities as well um so next on our agenda is the report from staff um we already talked about the proposal from first martin for their art and that it was more engineering than art at this point uh the we still have the wall that on the the railroad side of the tunnel available for art right now the city is not committing that project because we're still trying to close the whole allen creek firm opening project and find out how far upside down we're going to be on it but that may be a location for pickle street in the next round if they need to help me what am i missing i think we were going to we we had the information about expanding the portfolio in general as it relates to the initiative that mayor taylor wanted to move forward reaching out to the art commission on the possibility of looking at black lives matter and lgbtq opportunities for art throughout the city it sounds like it's an initiative that the mayor is very interested in um and and possibly um sharing some funding and not really completely thought through totally um and i think we need some additional conversations with the mayor i know that travis was working on some pieces of that with mayor taylor um so we tossed that out just to let you know that there are some conversations about that that are happening hi sophie yeah um in terms of black lives matter and artwork as i was saying the the location that we saw in the picture that you had your screen share of as to where the pickle street guys would be putting their painting is currently graffitied with black lives matter and say her name and things like that so if it comes along and get some festive colors which look great it would nonetheless not look great to the people who put the stuff there that's there now or people who might have appreciated having that stuff there so i think that has to be taken into account when we're making new artwork that um where it goes and what was there and who else might or might not be involved in the new work and things like that because um you know the the there isn't a topic as as such in the stuff that the pickles treat um i keep forgetting what they are collective group whoever they are um there isn't a subject matter or topic in it currently it's more decorative so if you're going to erase something which does have some social significance then we should either have something somewhere else that that counteracts that or we should try and get them to incorporate it in some way or something because otherwise you're just going to annoy people i think john as i understand it from veneta that the mayor has expressed an interest in public art that in some way connects with black black lives matter and lbgtq issues so much so that he might find some money but he certainly supports it so my what i'm understanding what vanita is saying is this an initiative that we might want to take on as a creative group it strikes me that it might be best um we might best ask the special projects group to consider it and think of some ways in which we could do it if in fact we wanted to do it and bring it back to the uh to the whole body so is is that thought that we would commission art that would be themed in this manner travis go ahead so i um i don't know if this is the exact proposal that vanita is talking about but i know that i had and venita i think this may have been sent to you as well um survivors speak reached out to me um they're a local organization that um and they specifically actually have the beginning of a proposal that they wanted to bring forward um i have actually i'm i'm trying to set up a time when i can speak with trishay duckworth who is their um one of their leaders i guess i i would say um and she the last i heard from her on this i believe she said that some of the details of that were changing um i do know that what i saw was at least a draft of a proposal so i know that they're putting something together for us to consider um and so before we go too far down the path i think maybe i should check in with the mayor and make sure that either this is the same thing or if he's thinking about different things how we might be able to kind of work within the framework of both of them um and then and then also um make sure that this group is included particularly since they're going through the process of of reaching out to us and trying to submit a proposal i would hate for us to move forward without including their voice in the conversation travis i didn't receive that could you send that to me again i will yeah i will forward that to you okay so should we be having discussions or too early for like special projects to to have a beginning exploratory discussion with the survivor speaks people wait until we hear back from travis is what i i sort of understand so that we could get him yeah i have not other than getting this email that she forwarded to me i have not had a chance to speak with her about it and and when we when we exchanged i think uh i don't remember if it was by email or if she she messaged me on facebook or something like that um it sounded like maybe some of the details had already changed from the initial proposal she sent so um let me touch base with a few folks and hopefully we can have them submit something more formal that could be on a future agenda and vanita is this just kind of like an fyi this is in the works or did you need us to move anything on this no it's just an fyi and um just an fyi great sounds exciting all righty anything else from staff before we move on to our working groups no okay um our first working group is our business owners and developers work group which i believe john you are the lead of that group nothing to report okay uh our capital improvement project working group not much new to report i did have a discussion with um jennifer hall from the the housing commission about their items you may remember at the last meeting last month we approved the the cip recommendations um with kind of a caveat that i hadn't had a chance to talk with her about some things that we had recommended for her for their projects which was a big piece of the new new stuff that was in the cip this year um she was fine with moving forward with it a little concerned about where the money will come from for the artwork and you know i i don't really have a good sense of that myself i you know it gets added into their project total in the cip so it doesn't reduce what they're getting um for the projects that that are planned but i don't know where that money comes from obviously so it needs to come from somewhere so we'll have to see how that goes but um but she was fine moving forward so i believe benitez said that it's going to be at city council on the 15th craig you have your hand up yeah uh as part of that conversation i would cc'd on it and the thread that i took off of it was that jennifer hall is very supportive of it but it's likely the art will be incorporated into the structure in details of the structure so that it's not discrete separate art if i am saying that correctly um it would be more like railing details or details in in brickwork or something like that yeah i don't know that i had that impression necessarily and they're obviously not even in design yet on anything no exactly they're not so it's still to be determined she did it she had been thinking about they have one project on the the parking lot at catherine and fourth ave um which is the historic um black neighborhood of ann arbor and i believe they have the african-american festival in that neighborhood every year or um back when we had festivals um and so she was interested in doing something art related that would relate to that location in the city but that was just a thought that she had had and expressed and not no no idea how it might be incorporated into the building or even what the building is to incorporate it in and david yes i have sent your recommendations forward as they were i didn't make any changes to your document that you sent to me so i sent that to city council great um travis do you feel comfortable with the cip document and representing it at that meeting on the 15th um i think so let me review it and if i have any additional questions i'll reach out to you for sure okay david's the guru of all that and give you can give you all the ins and outs of that i'm planning on attending the meeting like calling in or whatever but um i don't know how that works as far as on a zoom meeting if they have questions answering them or whatnot so and and and also remember that this goes on as a communications item so travis if you um have the opportunity to i i think you all get time for yourselves to talk about things so if you could bring it up there otherwise it's embedded a little further into their um agenda for that evening as a communication item it's not an action item for councils yeah it's it's an action item correct it is not and so to to that to that point allison like they're there probably wouldn't be an opportunity for you to kind of jump in either so yeah i'm just the last time i went forward it got pulled out of the and was like a conversation at council so that's where i say do you have all the information you need to to be at that table having um representing us at that point if it gets pulled on off of you know at the previous time that this happened it was on the consent agenda for approval it does need to have a vote by city council so that that funding gets added into the cip formally yeah so if it's if it's only a discussion item this time then it would need to come back to the leader for a vote okay i believe the vote comes when the capital budget is established okay oh okay so we would be veneto we need to flag that with marty to make sure the cip art enhanced pieces go with the capital budget thank you okay anything else david before we move on i don't think so thank you okay thank you david um communications and art placement work group we don't have um anything specific to report out other than we are meeting soon and we will talk about marketing like we talked about earlier in today's meeting and other things of course um the fundraising work group um our update and our conversations relate back to what we just talked about in new business so we met and that was our conversation um leadership forum work group met yesterday and deb has a little report for us yes it's a very brief report um so um as you all may recall we are looking to create a leadership forum around public art that would serve both as a key communicators group so that when we want to communicate things about public art such as the golden paintbrush we have networks of people that are willing to distribute to their networks sort of as a word of mouth kind of network for the kinds of programs that we want to do it also will start building some interest groups such as i'm just going to pick on peggy here k-12 teachers who might be interested in being notified of things like youth art month and things like that and so kind of thinking about who those interest groups are that might actually be more especially interested in public art and so what we need to do next is to for each of you and i will reach out to each and every one of you but you can also just proactively reach toward us we're looking to um you thinking about your networks of the three to five people that you would like to propose that we might tap into first now we don't need 400 names but we're thinking about getting a list together if each of us do three to five we're going to end up with you know 40 or 50 people who come from your various networks and who might be good in terms of this key communication group it also will serve as a pipeline for creating opportunities for those of us who are leaving the public art commission to go on to this leadership group and become part of that key communicators network and also a place to draw from when we're looking for new commissioners um when we have spots opening up so the plan is for in the next week or so for you to come up with three to five individuals that you think we should consider for uh initial invitation to this group we have in our work plan over the next um few months to get together small informational groups to kind of pitch the idea uh to this group that we've identified and to start to get them to name other people who they think would be good to invite to this kind of a interest group and then we're hoping in the late summer or fall to actually meet in person because the idea was to sort of that this group to make them feel good about public art to invite them to an event or two every year that we would host or that they would host on our behalf and so to start create that community connection when we are actually past the pandemic so that's the plan that we have we need some input from y'all to get started and we are going to be starting to put together these initial interest lists over the next month and start inviting people to come and speak with us um as a group to learn more about public art in ann arbor so are there any questions um deb and allison could i also as a reminder send you the link to the um city clerk's page for commissioners on where they would have to go for information and filling out applications should they be interested i'll share that with you if that's okay of course yes um so if you have specific people who you think would be good for this type of group if you want to share their names and contact information phone and or email with us we can add them to a spreadsheet we have going or if you would prefer i can share a link to that google sheet and you can put it directly on there whatever is easiest for you we would ask that once we have a communication that you reach out to those people specifically as they are your contacts and it likely would be have more impact coming directly from you so at this point we're looking to create a list of names um and that will be our starting point and then also remember to we'll have to use that in coordination with the current list within the um city clerk's office as well this is not talking about commissioners this isn't for commissioners this is for the leadership forum commissioners to add to this group is a different uh working group that's the dominant okay okay i'm ahead okay sorry thanks no worries those names actually though might be good people for us to look at for the leadership forum um so it's a good good list for us to look at regardless and i just had a clarifying question did you want us to reach out to those people first and then put them on the list or we can just add them to your list okay add them to the list and we'll come back around to coordinate the efforts and the information that we would like to get out to them yeah we'll have kind of like a forum letter for you to pop into your email and send out to people so you don't have to do all that work perfect okay that's the report all right the um next working group we have is the nominations and leadership review work group john yes um well just to remind everyone we're supposed to have an election have a new uh leadership team elected every year by january so what we're doing tonight should have been done last december uh and my apologies uh that uh i've agreed to uh to sort of chair this uh this work group in part because i have no i've been uh on a chair for three years i have no interest in being a chair uh and everyone else sort of is in the game so to speak um so part of what we have been doing we've been doing this for about four five six years maybe uh that we have surveyed um all of the art commissioners and asked them to um to give us their feedback on our current leadership on sort of what they would like to see the art commission do and then this work group kind of synthesizes that creates report and one was sent to you so to summarize uh that um that that survey is our current leaders get high marks kudos um and um that this group uh is charged with creating a uh nominations a slate from all of that information and present it to you uh and nominate them of course anyone else can nominate from the floor uh it's not closed but it was thought that this would be a thoughtful way of getting everybody's opinions together and then sharing with everyone so you know now who is interested in being uh considered to be a leader and what the group thinks of their current leaders um so the good news is uh is allison and deb get great high marks unfortunately deb is going to be leaving in may which means she wouldn't be able to complete a full 12-month term uh that's unfortunate but fortunately that sarah fuller is interested in being a vice chair so um that and she has gotten she was considered to be um by four commissioners a a real good choice for leadership and i agree um so the um our work group uh would like to nominate allison buck for chair and sarah fuller for vice chair um that i'm not sure how we do that i defer to um allison buck our current chair um do you want me to to nominate someone and then see if someone will second it and then we vote i guess my only question is usually we write names on little pieces of paper and we have that really nice counting thing i don't know how we would do that in today's meeting um we could just do it like an i thing or an a thing if there's not more than one nomination uh i think because of uh the pandemic uh this is kind of the going to be the exception but we normally make that private um and uh unfortunately uh what we could do we could each send an email to veneta uh of our choice i'm sorry uh travis i was i was just going to say i mean this is a public meeting and so so even if you already email it they're not really private votes they they could be fired things like that and so um i think for the for the sake of this being a public meeting a public vote is probably the most appropriate course anyway okay uh david i'm sorry allison if there are any other nominations if there are not there's not much point in a private vote anyways yeah so i guess we could put it out to see if there are further nominations for chair or vice chair so before we let me formally nominate allison buck for chair of the art commission i'll need a second sarah i'm sorry alison do you want me why don't i chair this because you're going to be well so uh there is a second sarah fuller seconds it are there any other nominations for chair i see none so i will close the nominations for chair and ask for a vote all those in favor of allison buck for chair raise your hand you can't vote for yourself alison yes so it's unanimous that's right she she's been doing this got one year at left right so alison buck is now our new chair and uh her term runs until december and this will be your last year because in our bylaws uh no one can serve more than three consecutive years so uh allison would you like to take over the nominations for vice chair sure so john's group has nominated sarah fuller for vice chair um i will i know fuller ask if there's any more nominations oh i'm sorry are there any other nominations for vice chair and if there are none we close the nominations all right i'm closing the nominations because i do not see any others all in favor of sarah for vice chair [Music] yesterday passes so now at this meeting sarah is now the vice chair as i understand it so you can take charge sarah and kick us all out will do david can we thank deb for her service since yes absolutely thank you deb's not leaving quite yet but thank you david it's been a it's a privilege and a pleasure to work with this group and uh you know uh leaving the group is is very bittersweet it won't be until may but as i said in my uh in the the in saying that i was leaving in the survey is that i've got two weddings of daughters coming up and multiple things at work that need my attention as we move over and emerge from the pandemic so it's just a good time for me to step back from a couple of these kinds of service things but that doesn't mean i won't be back are you going to be uh here for the may meeting as well oh no um i think i'm still on in may i don't know exactly how the timing works i go off in may but i'll have to see i can always just come as a no as a member of the leadership forum yeah maybe that um so i would encourage everyone to be thinking about um potentially stepping into a leadership role at some point um as we will have an opening a year less than a year from now when we do this again um all right the next work group we have is the policy and governance work group um that work group we put forward the line item that is still pending to go to city council and then also working on how we're going to be using those endowment funds is part of what that group is working on as well um kind of in tangent with the fundraising work group since it's the same people um speaking of the fundraising work group as well as the policy and governance work group i believe is just myself and deb at this point um when deb leaves it'll just be me so if anyone is interested in those work groups i really don't like having meetings by myself so um if anyone wants to join those groups that would be great um the next work group is special projects oh that's us yep um well as you heard golden paintbrush is out there on the website um i'm hoping to get it more visible i think we already managed to get it bit more visible on our website but it'd be nice if it's on the city website more visibly um and we've had seven seven nominations i just learned so which is great uh so i don't know whether there's anything more to happen now except we need to figure out a bit more how to make sure it gets publicized so and could you remind us or the viewing public of when the deadline for those nominations uh closes i think it was april 30th but i might be mistaken i think it's april 30th yeah great seen a thumbs up from vanita so april 30th great um the next work group we have is the youth outreach work group oh just one other thing we also need to figure out who our judges will be [Music] do you need feedback from us for that or just sophie did you need feedback from us about the judges or is it oh well i mean if anyone wants to send me an an idea that would be great but uh and i don't know whether we need to discuss it here now but uh i thought i thought maybe if people have ideas let me know and then we can perhaps discuss it at the next meeting if we need to do that okay as my understanding is i'm supposed to oversee that process okay just putting that in my radar okay um and then the youth outreach work group last month i did talk to jonah about this and we were gonna get uh back in touch with each other and we have not done that so maybe before next meeting we can talk a little bit about that okay sounds good there was a project um well i'm going to talk about it later about the full full the full moon group they have an event coming up and they were hopefully going to reach out with the neutral zone so i'll talk later about that but that was what we talked about for our youth outreach connecting with the neutral zone um next on the agenda is special presentations is there special presentations no okay i'm sorry no okay i do have you have a update before you um and i want to just do a reminder that our next meeting is not until may the 5th oh yep back to the bi-month or by monthly meetings mm-hmm and then i'll go ahead and alex and that's my starters excuse me before we adjourn if anyone has anything they wanted to share um personally professionally arts related whatnot before we take off i just want to congratulate sarah on becoming vice chair i think it's going to be a great experience for you and i have really enjoyed it and i'm so excited to have you step up into leadership so i just wanted to congratulate you on that and i also wanted to congratulate allison on her next year as chair she has been amazing to work with and i do not think that this commission could be in better hands thank you thank you sarah i just wanted to say thank you so much um i'm really honored and i'm gonna try my best to be as helpful as possible and i'm really excited to uh to move forward uh in this role so thank you again so much [Music] peggy did you have more you wanted to share about full moon um yeah i just wanted to talk about the full moon group they are having an event just so the public knows on friday april 9th and you can go to www.wonderfulproductions.org to see a whole list of all of the events that are going to be happening um there's a lot of things happening that friday night the ninth but leading up to that there will be hopefully some public art making that will happen mary thiefels is working um with the ann arbor public schools art teachers and art students we're submitting designs and she's going to create these mandalas which right now are just going to be temporary art installations they'll be painted on the street but um i guess i should say um if we get city approval or they get city approval um but there'll be some community art making and we're really excited about it um our regular youth art month event is not happening like it typically does so this was a way for the students to partner with the community and also make public art so we're excited great any other announcements all right um i will just say one thing i'll be plugging that the guttman gallery is going to have an all media exhibition coming up in march um that we had wait the most applications we've ever had and it's a very very very high quality show we're very excited about it so now that we can have 25 people in our space we're going to have an opening so i'll send you all invitations um and hopefully see you in person at that event all right all if that is all for tonight uh i will make a motion to adjourn all in favor have a second sarah seconded it all in favor all right have a great evening everybody bye bye see ya bye
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[Music] this for those of you whose segments aren't until later you're welcome to stay on screen but you could also turn off your camera and you won't be seen until it's your time but you're certainly welcome to stay on screen yep and we are now live to the public so uh just an fyi even though we're not starting yet we're live to the public um oh [Music] you hi all this is eric i think everyone is on so feel free to proceed whenever you want um we are live we are recording and everything should be available to everyone mr smith whenever you're ready sir yeah i'm just waiting on mr mountain to okay hello mr smith it's it's eric mountain um we are recording we're live so whenever you're ready go ahead if there's any issues let me know mr smith can you hear us i can hear you fine yes uh mr man i had asked i told you i could not sign into board docs i was waiting for some assistance with that okay i see that that's a separate issue um i'll be on that right now uh mr casper do you have the mission statement to read okay i'd like to call this uh special meeting of the board of education march the 3rd if you all would please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by a brief moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you uh mr uc roll call yes sir mr awad here miss passford here miss beltran here mr canova here mr daley danny here mr casper here mr abedrabo here mr smith here we have a court um mr casper would you read the mission statement please the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners or responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world okay the new jersey open public meetings law new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight i would like to preface the meeting by letting everyone know that board members or many board members may have their cameras off we have one board member miss danny who's recovering from surgery so we wish her all the best and speedy recovery but other board members will have their cameras off but they are present at the meeting they are listening um and they will come back on from time to time so just so the public knows uh if they don't actually see the uh the physical pictures of all board members uh dr robitosi i can turn it over to you mr smith thank you very much good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board uh and community members welcome and thank you for making the time to join us tonight for our community forum regarding the bond referendum a school district is nearly to the midpoint of a five-year timeline that could make vast and long-lasting improvements to all 19 of our schools the public vote on april 20th comes about two and a half years after we started researching our needs and if the voters approve it will take at least another two and a half years to get all the work done it's a large proposal with a lot of details so tonight this forum is just one way that we are sharing information our website is a primary source for background for photos for costs and for faqs for instance it includes a 90-minute video recording of a presentation that was made to the board of education if you're new to this idea of a bond referendum the video is a really good place to start but we wanted to find a way to get our expert advisors as well as some of our students and teachers in front of the public and obviously the pandemic makes that a challenge if this were normal times we'd probably be in the clifton high school auditorium uh with you know hundreds of people uh answering and asking questions but uh we're gonna do this the best we can through a virtual environment as you can see on the screen there is a list of the schedule for tonight and right now it's just my introduction uh we've separated the night into segments so that every topic gets its fair turn we've asked our presenters to be ready for questions from the public so please to make sure that we can answer as many questions as possible we've invited the public to utilize email so we're not limited to questions that could only be posed during this two-hour form so we've asked residents to send questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net we'll answer as many as we can tonight in some cases combining them and will continue answering questions by email up to and even after april 20th we're recording this forum and it will be available for people who couldn't join us tonight or couldn't find the time to spend two hours listening at this point before we start the first segment i want to repeat how the public can participate send a question to one clifton at cliftonschools.net we will answer as many as we can tonight during this two-hour forum and continuing uh answering them by email afterwards our first segment will be led by the team from dakara rubino architects who have worked with the district for many years and know our buildings very well at this time i'm going to turn it over to joe dicara and rodney watkins thank you dr robertosi what i'd like to do is just give a very brief overview of the overall projects uh and then we could open it up to questions and as we go through the the evening there will be more detail at each each section um the project as most of you know are the majority of it is uh heating ventilated and air conditioning upgrades to all the schools except school 17 which is fairly fairly new is completed in 2014.
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[Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] good morning and welcome to tedxdhs2021 i'm mrs true mrs souza and i would like to tell you just how happy we are to have you here with us today so the tedx club is thrilled to present to you this exciting event here at dartmouth high school this is an independently organized event this year it will be broadcast via live stream as you can see by dhs tv media productions this change is obviously a major change from our previous format of having a live audience our live streamed event along with the participants wearing masks are all trying to meet the coven 19 protocol guidelines our theme this year is sociology moving forward one step at a time students from cohort a and cohort b will be presenting various topics that are engaging and stem from their personal passions these students have volunteered their time to the group and diligently prepared presentations to enlighten you on a variety of topics you may be thinking when you hear the word ted who's this ted guy well i'm here to tell you that ted is an acronym for technology entertainment and design the ted organization has covered many topics with ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see the same diversity in the topics being presented here today and then again tomorrow okay and let's get this show on the road our first presenters are our only presenters that are partners our first is grace george this is grace george's senior year here at dartmouth high school grace is a member of the multicultural club and has been a co-founder of the science club and wants to study biology upon graduation grace also enjoys reading a good romance novel and has a bit of an obsession with the bachelor franchise series grace's partner is sarah hartman sarah is also a senior here at dartmouth high school sarah is very involved in extracurricular activities she is the other co-founder of the science club is president of the key club is president of the student council and is captain of the math team additionally sarah is true president of her girl scouts troop and plays the violin she loves to bake and play with her dog sarah and grace chose their topic because both believe that learning is more important than grades and that everything that can be learned can't be measured by a grade they want people to know that learning is fun please welcome grace george and sarah hartman as they present what lies within the letter what did you learn in the first five years of your life i know you're thinking probably not a lot i was just a baby who was sitting at home and playing but all those things were very influential in your learning one of my favorite things when i was little was building sand castles and i never realized at the time but building those sand castles was the basis of learning about engineering and construction one of my favorite days in kindergarten was when the firefighters came to visit and told us about fire safety now i know to stop drop and roll and to use a pillow case in case i need someone to get me which can stay me from dying personally one of my favorite memories of a kid was playing with the medical kits i used to love those little plastic stethoscopes that i used on my family members and that was the first time i learned what a heartbeat was were you agreed on all these things that you learned as a toddler no you were entirely self-motivated and did you learn certainly so if you were able to learn when you were a kid without grades what do you have grades now well three of the main purposes of grades are evaluation communication and motivation so grace help teachers parents higher learning and even yourself see how you're doing teachers use it to see if they need to reinforce a certain topic and colleges use it to see if you're a good fit for them academically and also motivation grades extrinsically motivate students to work hard because they will want to focus on studying so in order to get the grades they want now i'm getting some constant grades one of the main concept grades is that they encourage the learn test forget repeat method basically you learn a unit you test on it then you forget it and i know i'm guilty of this because it's hard to try to remember everything when you have more to do groups are also very impersonal sometimes alfred comb author and lecturer about education interviewed teachers and students about grades and in this interview one student named clarissa that once the first time they were given a grading rubric they felt that education stopped being for them and became about the grade grades can also disencourage kids from challenging themselves and the same article by alfie cohn a teacher named mr robbins said that he noticed that once his students started picking easier topics on a project just to get an easier grade so even though they might learn more from a more challenging topic they go with the easier one just get the grade and grades are also very inconsistent teachers might grade differently so even if students have the same master level content they might get different grades due to different teachers and also methods like curving can methods like curving where a certain amount students have to get an a certain that synthetic to get a b can really not make grades about what you know but well you know compared to what if someone else knows and this picture is comparing a 10-point scale to a 7-point scale so even if two students get the same number grade they might be reflected differently in their report card because due to what their school uses for lettering grades can also have a bad physical and mental physical and mental effects so there's this organization called challenge success it's a non-profit and it works with schools so and they did a study in five california high schools and in the study they found out that 79 of students said that grades are a main cause of stress and 83 percent of high schoolers have stress stress-related health issues and another big issue that comes from stress is sleep deprivation one 9th grader said when asked what they would like their parents to know said that i'm not staying up late because i want to i know the consequences but my grades are more important i'm not trying to make you upset all i want to do is sleep so as students we know that sleep and having a good mental health are important but sometimes we let our focus on grace get the best of us grades also don't necessarily measure learning the way that everyone learns best everyone learns differently according to the american test anxiety association about 35 percent of students suffer from moderate to high levels of test anxiety so for example a student can understand the material perfectly well but then not do well on a test due to test anxiety so grades don't necessarily reflect learning differences in addition grades don't even measure the qualities that are needed to succeed for example the ability to be flexible the ability to manage your time collaborate with others and communicate these are all the qualities that employers look for according to an ibm survey and these qualities can't really be measured by grades so who do grades impact they don't just impact you as a student they are a part of our entire society our grades impact the way our teachers teach our parents our schools our mcas scores impact the department of education and they impact the statistics that our country uses so our society is kind of based off of grades so we can't really get rid of them so what can you do as a student right now our solution is to focus on learning first so by that we mean forget the grace for a second not forever just for a second so now when you get that project try to choose a harder topic or assignment because you might learn more from it and also our school just indicated this new retake policy which we're very lucky to have so when you get your first test back try to look at your mistakes and analyze them before going and getting their retake because that might help you do better by not focusing on grades that might even lead to a better grade for example an experiment that was published in the journal of personality and social psychology found that students fifth grade students who were told that they weren't going to be graded when they read an article were able to learn more from reading that passage they were able to learn for longer they had a better understanding and even more they had a greater interest and they felt less pressured so why focusing on grades when you don't focus on grades you'll get the same grade and you'll be happier so i know you may be thinking what should i do should i focus on learning if i may never use a class in the future well you probably will use that class remember that survey that said that employers looked at the qualities such as adaptability time management and teamwork these are all qualities that you can develop in any class you take and adaptability is so important that you're able to understand many different topics and adapt to new situations in addition um 30 percent of college students change your major at least once and the average person works 12.3 different jobs in their lifetime so even if you don't think you're going to use something you probably will use what you learned at some point in your 12 different jobs you never know it'll be useful to know the structure and function of a mitochondria what one well we want to leave you with is to try to learn more outside the classroom like you did and be not created like you did when you were little so there are many ways to do this you can apply for internships in a certain business or place of work you like you can join a club you can join the science club stainless steel promo i know but if you want to do your own independent research like do that in the science club and also read a book many professors researchers and experts publish books on what they know and i'm sure you can find something a book on something you like i guarantee you and finally do a ted talk this has been a very enriching experience experience i love being able to work with sarah and my favorite part is being able to share what i believe with all of you so please sign up for my next year according to educate edgar dale these kinds of active experiences like doing a ted talk or conducting your own research not only lead to more learning but also allow you to use what you learn in more interesting ways by focusing on learning first because learning is more important than what lies within the letter you can help the world move forward one step at a time thank you thank you [Music] thank you grace and sarah that was wonderful our second presenter is lavender bork lavender is a senior here at dartmouth high school who enjoys learning about many varied topics while at dhs lavender has been a member of both the unified bowling and unified basketball teams she plans to attend the community college of rhode island this coming fall and major in accounting the reason she chose her topic is because she found learning a foreign language particularly challenging and emphasiz and empathizes with those who are learning a new language please welcome lavender bork as she presents esls ells and fels what is the meaning of an acronym 300 people now that is a huge number to put that into perspective that is one-fifth of the united states population or about 20 percent that is the number of people in the united states who do not speak english now english is the predominant language of the united states with 78.1 percent people speaking it however the reason that the united states does not claim an official language is because if they were all our documents in official forms would be in english only so what does that mean that means that we wouldn't have any variability we wouldn't have other languages available in other forms so the united states is very special in this sense because they offer many opportunities for people who do not predominantly speak english to learn english or have opportunities to gain a basic understanding in fact we offer some of those programs here so what is an ell esl rfl now i know you're probably wondering what are these random acronyms these acronyms define a small percentage of students at dartmouth high school now it's not as much as the surrounding districts however but it does define a small percentage an english language learner or an ell is someone whose first language is not english so that means that they come to school and they learn english through many different techniques an esl is what we call the department well new bedford calls the department and the surrounding district called the department that teaches english it's the english as a secondary language department however here we call it the ele which is english language education a fell will be described later in the ted talk so i'm about to tell you how ells are categorized and how they are taught let's talk about wida wida is the world class instructional design assessments nada has a lot to remember and it is a lot to it's a lot of words they have a test called access for children k through 12 to learn english access gives a score and places them into six different levels of english learning so access tests and ell's learners basic understanding or english proficiency and we are one of the 40 states in the united states who's offers wida there are 10 states who don't massachusetts is one and here at dartmouth high school we actually have it i'm pretty sure you've seen the pro the posters all over classrooms i've never taken the time to read one because it's a lot of words but if you were to take the time to read one you'd learn a lot from it there are six levels of wida language proficiency level one being entering two beginning three developing four expanding five bridging and six reaching so someone who is a level one may just be starting out with english for instance they may just be learning the alphabet or such level two may be that they can match words with pictures however i will be referencing the 2007 english language uh proficiency standards from wida the standards have example topics to follow and the standards fall under umbrella of five categories ell students at a level one like i said usually are learning the alphabet level three could be described as like putting putting like having a sentence starter and filling in the verbs level four and five are usually when they're able to start working on their own their english comprehension is developed more than it was at level one or two or three and reaching is when an ell is moved into a fell category which will be explained later students are also put into four subcategories writing listening reading and speaking these categories help classroom teachers understand how the ell learner understands the subject that they are learning now you're probably wondering what is the once a student reaches a level six on the wida scale they and score the requirements on the access test they are known as a fell a former english learner these students can form sentences do well with comprehension and can write essays with minimal grammatical error at the high school teachers are sent forms twice a year to access how a fellow learner is doing with learning english and how they're doing in the subject that they are in in order for an ell to be exited from a program they must get an overall score of 4.2 or higher on the access test and a score of 3.9 or higher on the literary portion of the test the school also looks at other things like mcas report cards or progress reports to consider moving an ell to a fell classroom environments differ from country to country i bet you didn't know that in spain around 1 or 2 p.m they usually take a 30-minute lunch break sometimes it can be up to an hour for a nap and also to get lunch because it is considered sacred in spain meanwhile in the united states our classroom environments differ we have different social instructions we have different things and i bet if you were to go if you were to go to a different country you wouldn't know the etiquette of that country's classroom or anything now english is one of the hardest languages to learn if not the hardest english is often the hardest class for the ells the reason being that there are a lot of unspoken words unspoken rules for english for instance the way we word the great big dog we use rules of adjectives rules of word placement and honestly it can be confusing especially if you didn't learn it from a young age in fact most of us still struggle with their there and there imagine having to learn the same word spelt three different ways that's pretty hard however if an ell has a strong understanding of their first language they are more likely to understand english better but overall learning a whole new language from the start isn't easy in any situation i'm pretty sure at the high school we have spanish portuguese and mandarin we have a lot of issues when we first start out with spanish and portuguese in eighth grade imagine learning english now math already is its own language math has a lot of complex terms that most english native speakers struggle to learn like i've really struggled with trigonometry now imagine sitting there in that same lesson having to translate most words to a different language trying to keep up with the teacher because you don't understand what's going on that's pretty hard but there is a connection with the numbers that are used in many foreign languages so there was a research project done by our a al-sheri for his master thesis about the correlation of learning chemistry well-being well being unable to speak secondary english most of the ells in the research project could not draw a correlation and distinguish the point of the lecture and the point of the experiments due to the complex nature of the information being presented when presented with certain things like a beaker a thermometer they couldn't identify it instead they had trouble identifying it in english most of them said that it was what it was in their first language and it's very interesting because science is really hard and it shows how much we take for granted because we thankfully have a basic understanding of english and we are basically we are taught from a young age about english meanwhile someone who comes here has a lot of issues learning it and it's a very hard language to learn the language of social studies tends to be a tad bit easier in some instances due to the fact that while someone in france might learn french history from a young age as we learn american history in elementary school they will have a basic understanding of world history meanwhile when they come here they won't have the fundamentals for american history so world history tends to be the easiest class for an ell to understand or at least a tad bit easier than some of the other social studies classes now here is an interesting thing let's look at it at a local perspective in the whole district there are 55 ells and 64 fells to put that into perspective at the high school there one out of 200 students are an ell and one of 120 students are fell dartmouth does not have a high number of ells or fells compared to some of the surrounding districts dartmouth is actually considered a low incidence district which means the number of ells are below 100 students the plan that dartmouth puts into motion at the elementary level is the pull-out motion of ele instruction now i'm going to remind you that ele stands for english language education an ele certified teacher pulls the ells out of class for 30 to 45 minutes a day in order to give complex instruction to them or they push into the classroom if needed depending on the schedule needs and depending on the time requirements and they help the student out with complex instruction as i stated before but it also depends on the level and needs of the students however in new bedford they use the same method but the situation is a bit different at dartmouth it is called at dartmouth as i said it is called english language education instead of esl miss duart the head of the ele department was very helpful in providing this information about ells in the district ms rr is a third grade general education teacher at alfred j gomes school in new bedford she has taught there for many as many years as i've been alive so about 17 and has taught both first and third grade she is bilingual and speaks both spanish and english when speaking to her she told me that she was currently speaking she's currently teaching 29 students out of those 29 23 of them were bilingual she has taught many children some of them did not speak any english though and were level ones on the weed of scale for instance she said the most students that she had taught that was a level one on the weda scale was seven in one year she praised the esl department at alfred j gomes elementary school and she praised the teachers that she works with when i asked her about how she teaches her students who do not speak any english and are considered a level one she gave an example of sequencing so the native english speakers they are given a paragraph in which they must put the sentences in order to write a story well the level threes are given a little more structured like for instance they may just have to fill in the verbs well level ones would be given pictures and they'd have to put it in order she said that the esl department has the same method that we use at dartmouth high school the pull out method they push in the classroom to help with instructions or pull the kids out of class to give more structured intensive instruction i actually was once a student at alfred j gomes elementary school and however i did not notice this because i was very young at the time but when i got to hayden mcfadden i noticed that i was in a class with a lot of children who spoke who were bilingual and spoke spanish now will talking to msr she mentioned the dual language immersion program which is a program in which let's say a class of 20 to 30 kids are put together and there's one teacher speaking in english teaching the lesson in english while the other is speaking in spanish and teaching lesson in spanish so that basically the children who are learning english are learning english while also learning spanish at the same while the english-speaking children are also learning spanish at the same time so it's a little bit of teaching them spanish and so it's kind of like teaching a foreign language and also like helping them um so it started off in 2019 with kindergarten and every year they add on a grade 2020 was first grade 2021 was second grade so that the children who started off in the dual language immersion program in kindergarten will graduate elementary school in that program it follows them now the reason that alfred j gomes has it and dartmouth does not is because aj gomes is one of the highest constant has the highest concentration of ell's learners in the district in new bedford dartmouth however like i mentioned is a low incidence school in district so we don't have we don't meet the requirements for the ell learners and the dual language immersion program because you need at least 20 kids who speak the same language and at dartmouth we do not have that because our numbers are below 100 kids in conclusion the united states is a melting pot of different cultures and languages that is the key factor in this the united states provides so many opportunities for non-english speakers and their children but the issue at the end of the day is that there are not enough esl teachers who can provide education for these children so much so that the united states has started searching abroad esl teachers are the teachers that are unheard of they do so much behind the scenes and you never hear about the impact that they have so if you know an esl teacher thank them today if you know an ell or fell offer them help with their essays tell them you'll look over the grammatical errors because most of us are lucky enough to have english as a native language and this informing you about english language learners and how they are educated is how i'm moving forward one step at a time thank you lavender that was really great all right our next and final presenter for this particular period is jaffa heria dunno jaffa is a senior here at dhs and plans to study aerospace engineering upon her graduation jaffa is a member of the dhs tennis team and enjoys playing the sport very much she chose her topic because she loves fashion shopping and clothing way too much as jaffa put it i can empathize she has found that most people don't understand how important the fashion industry is to the economy as a whole and how it impacts both our environment and our society as well please join me in welcoming jaffa haridano as she presents the price we pay a look into the global fashion industry [Music] so i'm going to ask you all to take one look at yourself and then i'll look at someone around you and think of one thing that you all have in common well from my point of view it seems that everyone in this room is wearing clothing thankfully the world of clothing it's something that we don't think about all the time but it's always there and it's always changing and then trying to keep up with the rush of our own lives we fail to notice how every time we walk into a store there's about 100 different new products but why is that there why do we have so much stuff well it wasn't always like this you see in the past having a closet full of clothes to choose from and a different outfit for every day of the week was practically unheard of and this was because clothing was super super expensive to make the process of taking something raw like cotton and then turning it into something wearable like a shirt took a lot of time and energy and that also meant that it took a lot of money and frankly a lot of money was just something that people didn't have so this meant that fashion was something only for the rich that is until the 1950s so 1950s america reveled in a time of post-war prosperity amongst other issues however people want to treat themselves to commodities such as clothing because they could finally afford it and this is why there are department stores like sears that start showing up everywhere because people could finally buy clothes now this happened to coincide with the invention of synthetic fabrics which are man-made textiles that are infinitely cheaper to produce than the raw stuff like cotton or silk now these technological advancements paired with the stable economy of the time are what allow normal people like you and me to buy lots and lots of clothes and that's exactly what they did fast forward a few years later and now we have a whole new market as of now fashion is more popular than ever clothing is not something that we just wear on our backs it's no longer just a necessity it's a creative outlet an art form and an industry all thanks to a new revolutionary business model known as fast fashion cheap clothing being rapidly mass produced by large retailers to keep up with the latest trends so up until now fast fashion seems kind of perfect finally all people are able to wear what they want buy what they want but i think at this point in our lives we all know that some things are too good to be true so then what is the problem with fast fashion if we are paying so little for clothing then what is the true cost in 2013 the rana plaza and clothing factory in bangladesh collapsed killing 1134 of its workers the factories were run by and manufactured clothing for major fast fashion brands including adidas american eagle and h m now all of these buildings were not made to manufacture clothing they were actually built on old residential areas that couldn't handle the weight of the production process so we have a couple of engineers coming to the building to inspected structure and they see how poorly it was run and they say this is a terrible idea if people work here they're going to die so they go to the managers of these factories and explain to them that if they want to run production you're going to need to spend more money to support its structure however all of their all of their concerns were basically ignored not a single one of the 1134 workers at the plaza were aware of the fact the very floor beneath their feet could crumble at any second and to add insult to this injury there were no safety precautions taken to make sure that people could get to safety if disaster were to strike and obviously it did strike there were no fire extinguishers no fire alarms not enough exits for people to escape now this paired with the structural shortcomings of the building are what led to one of the deadliest structural failure accidents in modern human history however this is not the only one rhona plaza 1134 dead staka konwig factory 117 dead karachi fire factory 300 dead and lahore shoe fire factory 30 dead what i just named are just a few examples of clothing factory tragedies all of which run by fast fashion companies all of which happening in the last decade yet most importantly every single one of these was preventable if worker safety was taken over priority then streamlining costs because the truth is fast fashion does have a cost it is paid for in the atrocious environments we put workers through the havoc it reeks on our environment our planet and the fact that it has masqueraded itself to allow us as a society to let it continue so i think we all realize by now or speaking of the environment an article published by the new york times credits the fast fashion industry for releasing 1.2 billion tons of co2 into the atmosphere now this is more than all emissions from any international flight or shipping combined and to add on to that the burning of these fossil fuels stems from incinerating 2.5 billion tons of clothing that's a billion times to free up landfill space since these synthetic materials will never biodegrade naturally so i think at this point we know that fast fashion is bad and obviously no one wants to support killing the environment no one wants to hurt people so you're thinking maybe what brands can i avoid buying from if i don't want to support this well this is where things got a little bit difficult but i'll try to help you out as much as i can so on screen i have a few brands you can start to avoid to not support fast fashion and there's also these and these and these and it just keeps going and going and going now you might be thinking with so much of the market being saturated by brands who are committing these atrocities is there anything that we can do to not buy and have a guilty conscience well the truth is basically any clothing brand that isn't making clothes by their hand in their kitchen table has done something that's ethically questionable but obviously if something is broken there should be attempts made to fix it and the world of fashion is very very broken so what are we doing as of now to try and solve what seems like an unsolvable problem the answer seems almost intuitive i present to you slow fashion defined by oxford international as clothing produced using high quality resources in an ethical environment now at the 1987 general assembly the un formally defined sustainability as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations which is us to meet their own needs today slow fashion has evolved into something that has a lot more structure so in 2015 which wasn't that long ago the un established 17 sustainable development goals a coalition of 17 global goals designed to be i quote a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all of us among them is goal number 12 ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns this includes making the distinction between any fast fashion companies and slow fashion companies and trying to get as many of the latter in the industry as possible now i know that sounds like a lot of words and seems really confusing but thankfully slow fashion can be divided into four very easy principles the first of which we have transparency so this means that major companies are being honest to us the public about their production process they're disclosing to us exactly what they're paying their workers how they're treating them and how they're making their clothing so the more that someone knows about how a brand makes their clothing the more accountable that brand is going to be held and make sure they do things the right way and with this accountability will come change now from transparency we can ensure that brands are participating in what's called the ethical production of clothing our second pillar of slow fashion ethical production means clothes are made in a way that is humane workers are being paid livable wages and factories are designed with regulated ventilation systems fire extinguishers and enough exits to make sure that events like rana plaza never have to happen again because they don't have to happen again and of course we can't talk about sustainable clothing without talking about helping the environment which is why our third pillar is making sure the production process prioritizes environmental health now slow fashion requires that clothes are made using materials and processes that won't permanently damage the earth that we love so much you might already be seeing instances of this in your own clothing so if you check the back of a tag and something says 100 organic cotton that's actually a really good sign because it means that shirt can be recycled and it probably was made with way less water than that of fast fashion clothing and finally we have mindfulness now this might be one of the most difficult steps to complete because it involves reversing decades of thinking of clothing as something that is merely disposable however at the same time it is the easiest to start to work on and that's because it starts with you guys so to be mindful means to educate yourself on fast fashion which is what you've been doing and to understand the benefits that we have by moving a more by moving towards a more sustainable clothing world it's to understand the value of good quality clothing and to make this the standard so slow fashion seems like such a streamlined solution something so easy that we can implement but if it's so easy then why is fast fashion still an issue well we have to remember why fast fashion was up by it became popular in the first place and that's because it was really cheap and everyone could afford it and honestly this is not something i can say the same about for slow fashion so on screen right now i have a couple of examples from some products for what's known as one of the largest sustainable clothing brands as of now reformation and that cardigan and tank top on your left cost 228 dollars now as miss true stated before i love clothing but i do not love it enough to spend 228 dollars on a shirt that's about the size of my hand and frankly i don't think any of you guys are willing to do that either but the important thing is that there are plenty of people who cannot afford to do that and now this brings up a dilemma of only the people who can afford it being able to dress sustainably and the rest of us have to choose between two bad options either we continue quote-unquote killing the planet by buying from fast fashion companies or we just stopped buying clothing and that's not really an option thankfully as slow fashion continues to grow brands have realized there needs to be a balance between high quality clothes and what is affordable so i have on screen right now are what are deemed as some of the most affordable slow fashion brands now anything up here will run you from something between like 25 to 30 dollars now obviously this isn't as cheap as buying a five dollar shirt from river21 that's the point you don't want a five dollar shirt from forever 21 because if something like that only costs five dollars then the chances of it being made ethically are extremely low now there are also other options too if you don't want to buy something that is brand new you can do what's called thrifting or buying second hand second loved clothing so i'm sure all of you guys are familiar with stores such as goodwill or salvation army and places like these are gold mines for buying high quality vintage clothing for prices that are even cheaper than those of fast fashion companies and obviously right now it's going to be a little bit hard to go out and go thrifting yourself so you can go online to stores like thredup and depop and poshmark which are user-run marketplaces in which people like you and me are selling their own clothes and because it's people like you and me selling their clothes the chances of you finding something that you like gone up astronomically now it's good to hear that even brands who are considered the most worst offenders in fast fashion are starting to do things that will help the environment so for example we have h m who released something called the conscious collection a part of their brand that only sells sustainable clothing now does this make up for all the things in the past is h m and angel are they perfect well obviously not but that's the thing you don't have to be perfect you just have to try because even making the tiniest bit of effort is helping push towards the future and that's why i want to leave you with this the world of clothing it's always there we don't notice it but it's always changing our world is always changing even if we don't realize and in a world where things are always changing it would be nice to have something even as small like a shirt to just last a little bit and that's how we can move forward one step at a time thank you thank you jafa and this concludes our period one presentations uh teachers we would ask that you hopefully spend some time debriefing with your students and we'll see you again period two thank you [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] welcome to our sixth tedx to ehs event mr and i are thrilled to present to you this exciting event here at dartmouth high school this is an independent organized event this year will be broadcast via live stream by dhs tv media productions this is a change from our previous format of having a live audience a live stream event along with participants wearing masks has been updated to meet covet 19 guidelines our theme this year is sociology moving forward one step at a time students from cohort a and core b representing various topics that are engaging and stem from their personal passions these students have volunteered their time to this group and digitally prepared presentations to enlighten you on various topics you may be new to ted and you might be wondering who is this ted guy well i'm here to tell you that there isn't a person instead ted is an acronym for technology entertainment and design the tech organization has covered many ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see this same diversity and the topics being presented to you here today for this period we will have three presenters that will talk about music mental health and steam for our first presenter our next dhs presenter is ryan aruda ryan is a sophomore here at dhs ryan is a member of dhs marching band indoor percussion he plays a variety of instruments his favorite being the piano ryan loves winter and dreams one day of visiting norway he plans to attend college upon graduation ryan chose his tedx dhs talked topic because of his love of music and how music has inspired him and brought him joy he wants to share his passion for music with you please welcome brian neruda as he presents music effect on emotion [Applause] thank you today i'll be speaking on music's effect on emotion here we have six different common emotions that people feel day-to-day such as happiness sadness fear disgust anger and surprise you may felt very extreme forms of these and they are obviously songs can produce these emotions as you listen to them but the question comes up how how are your emotions impacted when you listen to these songs before we go into that i'd like to define music music is vocal or instrumental sounds or both combined in such a way as to produce beauty over form harmony and express of emotion now a little bit about my personal experience with music as you heard i am involved with the band and percussion but aside from that i am a very large and huge fan of classical music and their amazing composers and one especially claude debussy who has shaped my life and you are listening to his song now which is clear next we have the beginnings of music they are produced with the banging of sticks and stones and young while this has obviously advanced over time we can see the early forms of music were made to to convey a certain form of emotion as we saw before anger happiness or sadness but let's take a quick look at the timeline of music here we have the many classical eras of music medieval renaissance baroque classical romantic and the 20th and 21st century in the medieval era we have such great such as bangin bird in the renaissance and some of the more well-known ones as we go forward bach and the baroque vivaldi and hendell in the classical we have hayden mozart and beethoven and the romantic we have chopin list and chewbear and the 20th and 21st which is possibly one of my favorites we have st sands debussy and city next up i'm going to talk on the scientific viewpoint on music heat is completely positive in the scientific field as seen by a study in scl health dopamine levels are proven to increase and those who practice positive listening find their moods improving in just two weeks music can improve your mood your quality of life and self-esteem but it's also used in therapy it's seen as extremely safe non-invasive easily accessible and on expensive many studies occurred and scientists found that happier music obviously produced a happier form of emotion it helped people have better physical health higher income and greater relationship satisfaction here we have a chart on treating depression with music therapy so we have a control group and a group that went under music therapy and psychotherapy and the control group also went under psychotherapy alone but within six months of six months of treatment excuse me the depression score has dropped significantly along with the music therapy here we have six scientific scientifically proven songs to make you happy with such grades such as don't stop me now by queen dance in queen biaba uptown girl by billy joel i'm a believer by the monkeys i'll survive by gloria gaynor and walking on sunshine by katrina and the waves and now i'll i'll talk a little bit more on how [Music] we have different keys and chords and major keys and chords produce the happier feeling like imagine by john lennon minor chords produce the sadder feeling like some parts of bohemian rhapsody by queen the two other chords we have are diminished chords in which those are used as transitions into the minor and major and augmented chords which usually lead to the resolution now i'd like to discuss a little bit more about the recent times when how you can use music now especially during covert 19.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
rosie all set all right thanks okay today is uh wednesday march 3rd and i call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order in accordance with executive order 7b suspending sections 1-206 1-225 and 1-226 of the connecticut general statutes the public will not be able to attend this meeting in person but will have the ability to view or listen to the meeting in real time by way of the brookfield board of education youtube channel furthermore such meeting will be recorded or transcribed and posted on the board's website within seven days of the meeting and made available as required by law all speakers taking part in the meeting are reminded that they are to clearly state their names and titles if applicable before speaking on each occasion that they speak individuals wishing to participate in the public comment portion of the meeting may do so by calling the following numbers area code 929-205-6099 or area code 301 715-859 and the meeting id is 927-6067-7168 so let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have all seven of our board members present tonight so first on our agenda is board recognition so uh rosa if i may just uh march is board appreciation month and uh although we don't have the opportunity to be in person and break for cake like we typically do i want to uh on behalf of the whole school district uh and in our community thank all of you as board members as volunteers who have just put in a great deal of time with ernest hard intentional work and support all of us uh as a leadership group and the faculty and staff uh to execute on what has been one of the most unusual years uh any of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes and i just can't thank you enough and as i said in my email yesterday uh when i shared with you the great news about the vaccinations which i'll briefly talk about my superintendent report uh thank you for all the belief in the team and in all of us and um and the faith you've continued to have in us to make the right decisions we've needed to make all along the way although we've been tough decisions here uh to matriculate through this the very difficult school year and as we know we are seeing a beautiful light at the end of the tunnel you just have to keep our nose to the grindstone and keep on going so anyway thank you board i know it's board recognition month i wish we had uh fat free parfaits like we've done in the past for cake or something but uh we don't have that opportunity but thank you all and you could drive around and deliver cupcakes to us that's it i'll drive around i like that that's a good one dr ruby knows i like cupcakes so that's a good thing thank you thanks okay up next is public comment and i don't see nope there's no one else here so we can move on to the student representative report hi i'm candy channeru as a student the brookfield high school student representative um so nhs is continuing their tutoring services and this includes ap study nights which is really important as ap exams get closer the deca competition was yesterday march 2nd today march 3rd which was an all online competition this year and the award ceremony is going to be on march 9th the peer counselors conduct conducted interviews for new members um for peer counseling and the decision letters were sent out this past weekend um there's a new club at the high school the brookfield club council which is led by senior vince diesta and junior greg friedman and overseen by senor davila and this club was created in order um to have some inner club cooperation um to accomplish some goals not possible just by one club and so they're going to gather all club leader leaders and advisors every month to kind of present club projects and get help from other clubs if needed student council election elections were on monday where the videos made by each candidate were shown during iot and all voting was done by the end of ilt so we distinguished each grade's class officers um and as of monday there is a new grad party daily raffle for the seniors which the names are pulled every day and i think by the end of the year each senior is guaranteed a prize value at 25 on may 22nd there is a officially a date for our quasi senior class event um where there'll be rides food dancing a bonfire for all the seniors to enjoy and on june 12th we have graduation and there's planning and progress for a parade and an outdoor ceremony and i just wanted to thank mr bland and mr buckley for putting in a lot of effort to kind of start to put these events together for the seniors as well as putting other plans into motion which aren't yet finalized and it makes me really excited just to like hear about some of the things that are in motion and i think once they're finalized and sent out it'll make a lot of other seniors really excited as well and that's all i have thank you thanks tandy any questions for her all right thank you again up next we have written correspondence okay leah mania and marnie mcniff wrote regarding a youth commission survey and laura orban wrote regarding open choice okay thanks approval of board minutes i will move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on february 17th second thanks joy sorry i need to get back to i can see everybody all in favor aye thanks that's unanimous next on our agenda is the superintendent's update thank you rosa so i have two items for tonight and the first one is uh what i talked about just a bit earlier which is uh the vaccine clinics we have here in brookfield we're very excited now that uh last week the governor announced that education sector employees will be eligible for vaccinations beginning as of march 1.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i know we have we have a heavy agenda but oh there's there he is there's joe yeah good time hey sorry i'm late that's okay thank you for joining us warming up dinner um so we called to order and i was just saying um we have quite a long agenda i don't think it's as bad as i mean it looks as it looks worse than it really is um and i know we probably won't get to everything but i'd rather have it out there for us to have no more time to read through it if we have to table some items at the end and save it for our next monthly meeting we can do that and also we are meeting at 7 30 so i'd like to end you know well before that so we have a break to um you know get a drink of water and like re reset ourselves and refocus so [Music] hopefully hopefully by 7 15.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all right test one two three four okay we should be live in about ten seconds here okay we're live okay good afternoon the anaheim union high school district board of trustees meeting of march 4th 2021 is called to order at 2 35 pm the following members are present anne-marie randall freedom brian o'neill al jabar katherine h smith and myself anna l piercy now staff has requested the following amendments to our agenda on closed session item 4.4 okay please remove [Music] employee number hr 2020-21-86 and that is about halfway down right on the left hr 2020-21-134 this is the second line from the bottom and hr 2020-21-135 right next to it and hr 2020-21-136 and then that 20 hr [Music] 2020-21-51 so we're going to go back up to just above the middle okay okay then please pull items point eighteen okay eleven point eighteen eleven point nineteen eleven point twenty and eleven point twenty one pages fifteen and sixteen of the agenda so those who were in a row eighteen nineteen 20 and 21.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so um starting at 601 pm all right we're going to um talk about what was discussed in closed session well i can't talk about what was discussed but we did meet in closed session and no decisions were made all right i guess we need a flag salute so if everyone could please rise and mr lear has the flag don't block it salute pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with indivisible with liberty and justice for all eddie all right zipping through the agenda quickly here all right do we have a motion to adopt the agenda salute thank you mrs anderson second um i did have um a request to amend our agenda um because there are some very specific topics uh that i'd like to talk about that are related to business uh item a and without the information and discussion around those very specific topics i'm not sure that i can make informed decisions um i'd like to hear about the status of the feedback received from cdhp on rcsp i'd like to hear about the feedback from csea on our plan to transition to plan 2 hybrid model i'd also like for us to discuss learning community readiness facility and supply readiness and instructional plan readiness that all falls under the heading yeah all of those um first of all the the agenda can't be amended um once it's posted publicly that's that's it it cannot be changed we can move things from like the uh consent agenda out to be discussed individually but we can't um add anything to the agenda but that's regardless because all of this stuff falls under discussion for action item a so once we get to action item a we open it for discussion or we open it for we either get a motion to approve or a motion to discuss and once that's done and we have a second then we can discuss it and you can ask all the questions in the world that you want i have a list myself and uh i also know that mr lear and uh everyone else all the executives have presentations ready to hopefully address all those questions before we need to ask them so we will be all informed before the end of this meeting i that's my hope anyway all right so we have a motion to adopt the agenda do we have a second i believe mr bruno offered the second i believe great thank you mr bruno uh and general consent yes great okay comments from the audience regarding items on the agenda so what we're going to do is we're going to um table this item number eight until we get to business item a where all of that discussion can happen there's only one item on the agenda so we don't need to have two comment sections it's all going to be one conversation we'll put them all together so moving on to item number business item number nine excuse me um a and that is the transition to plan two hybrid model the board is being asked to consider the proposed return to in-person reopening calendar for our schools as presented in the packet do we have a motion to approve or a motion to bring this to the floor on motion to bring it to the floor miss kelly thank you mrs pope we have a second oh second and thank you mrs anderson let's uh let's let superintendent lear start us off all right so uh thank you uh so we do have a a presentation and mr jordan has so graciously agreed to uh uh share it with you while he's he's getting that going we have three parts tonight that we're going to go through i'll start with with the sign of the um proposed dates then mr grimes will go through the components key components of the csp and then mr jordan will provide us with a review of what plan two looks like because it's a plan i'm sorry could you can you back up and and uh explain what csp is just sure for anyone that's listening sure so csp is the coveted safety plan that's a requirement for anyone to open actually um i think it's that you have to have it for any opening that you do moving forward within that so you would actually have to have that there's different conditions based on the tier that you're in but there is the requirement to have a csp done before you reopen in any status um so and then mr jordan we'll finally re review with you the uh plan that reminder is a plan that we had adopted uh months ago related to uh the hybrid transition for two but one of the things i want to start with before i get to the dates is it i've been asked a couple times why now why why are we doing this right now well one of the things that is the most constant with covid if anyone can can can be in our world right now is change everything changes extremely rapidly and so after our last meeting the board had said hey go ahead and do two weeks into red made that recommendation well since that meeting i i'd shared with the board we have received and been working with a company to increase not only our response testing at each school site but also our surveillance testing for those individuals that would be volunteering to do that the guidelines had changed a little bit with the update from cdph we have also seen that a staff which was a big one has had the ability to to receive vaccination i think wholeheartedly our natomas partners and our twin rivers partners for making it accessible to a district are of ours because we had a lot of opportunity that all of our staff was able to do and now with the county's offerings and mcclellan park has one all of our staff have had the ability to uh choose to get the vaccine or not if they so chose the the other thing is we're ready we want to make sure that the board has the ability to make the determination when you are ready to have us come back we are proposing these dates tonight we we feel like we are ready and we put these dates out to you and our community as a place to get get back um for our students in a safe responsible way we've put a lot of time and energy into planning i will tell you is planning if you've been in education and i think planning there's always things that happen that you're not sure of but we know we have the big strokes there's going to be little tweaks i'm sure and one thing we have in this great district is the ability to be adaptive and flexible and we will make it right for our families our students and for our staff so framing that mike i'm sorry i went a little longer but do you mind pulling up just the first i want to just go over with the board for clarity what we are asking you to consider tonight uh so if go to the first slide mr jordan it's can you see it now yes we're good if you go to the first slide okay sorry our second slide i guess i'm sorry there we go um so just an overview what what we are proposing is all staff would return on-site working uh even in the purple tier beginning march 22nd a lot of our staff our cse staff has already been back working but this we would bring all our staff back to the work sites to to continue with the um their roles within the school site uh instead of in a virtual they could do it on school site instead of from their homes or or wherever the then we're proposing march 25th these are initial days this is one day that the students in these grade levels would come back i'm going to share why in a second march 25th all four through sixth grade would come back for in person even if purple uh on march 26th all tk third grade would come back in person uh even if we're in purple and the reason you might think why is that flipped off why not tk and three uh on the 26th and then the 20 um 25th and then the 26th for the older kids one of the things we wanted to look at is we figured four through six since we're only doing one day each those students might be a little more flexible and independent than the younger so if we have one day to even kind of run through our systems we can even improve for the next day um also on that march 25th and 26th if we're in the red tier because i must uh uh emphasize 7 12 right now unless you're in the red tier cannot come back to campus so if they are not in the red tier they cannot come back but if we are in the red tier our seventh and eighth graders would come back and they were doing two days because that would take them through one full cycle of their schools so the thursday would be periods one through three the next day would be periods four through six for those that are choosing to come to the hybrid in-person model i want to stress and you will hear a stress all families all students have the ability to remain in a hundred percent distance learning model um that is fine they can opt for that and then we would then go on our week spring break which if we determine from those two days that we've identified some areas that we need to improve that gives us another week to actually come in and and and dial things back in for the full rollout which we're proposing would be april 6 because our spring break does go through um march or excuse me april 5th is anderson um how many classes do we have that are reporting to class now uh we have we don't have classes the cohorts can be brought back based on some different categories uh our homeless foster youth el and special ed students i believe if if not every site most sites have uh cohorts coming or planning to come back some are back though correct correct uh excuse me do we know how many i don't off top my head because we've added more recently so i wouldn't want to misspeak okay mr jordan next slide mr jordan i'm raising my hand because i do i do have a question um i i have a question about what you mentioned about the options um and um i i just think that as a district we really do have an opportunity to make a reopening plan that meets the needs of our students and family our staff and our teachers in ways that other larger districts may not um and what i notice because i also have students who are enrolled in this district i haven't heard of from a survey effort from this district since september or october of 2020.
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b good evening everyone this is the march 3rd regular meeting of the chico unified school district board of education we are going to go into closed session and i'm asking if there is any public comment on closed session items there is no closed session comment request so we will we will adjourn to closed session greetings this is the re adjourned or re anyway we're back from closed session and there's nothing to announce um so we should have a flag salute here shall we yes i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all as i mentioned we were in closed session and there are no items to an uh report announcements good evening my name is tina keen and i am here to announce an upcoming community event i think board members might have a flyer there next to you chico unified is represented on the butte county nicotina action alliance through two grants that we have the tupe grant and the tobacco grant so chico unified has partnered with this alliance and duke county office of education to put on a community event sunday march 7th and that community event um you can see on your on your flyer there is a family movie night at marion park it starts at 6 p.m and uh there will be some tobacco education there beforehand there will be some kind of some cool swag given out to those who are participating and then a free showing of spider-man into the spider verse so this does give information on how to reserve a ticket and also more information can be found by contacting the person at the bottom of the flyer thank you tina do we have any other announcements okay see none we'll move on to items from the floor and these are items that people can comment on that are not on tonight's agenda we have six speakers signed up for items from the floor um are we going to take summer first yes i'm going to give her a try she initially signed up for the later items from the floor but i'm just going to see if she wants to speak now she is a student so we'll take her first hello is this summer hi summer do you would you like to speak to the school board hello okay we're gonna are you ready to go i'm gonna put you on the speakerphone okay no you're good you're just the second go ahead summer yeah hi so my name is summersun and um i'm the soft sophomore and i am in the club at chico high school called that stands for student advocacy association and okay thank you okay i'm calling patrice jackson okay those voicemails i'm calling jordan colby hello this is jordan i'm gonna put you on speakerphone you'll have um three minutes to speak you'll hear a bill at 30 seconds that means you just have that many 30 seconds left okay okay go ahead jordan good evening my name is jordan colby and i'm a father of three kids uh junior high and younger and i'm speaking in support of returning our children to full-time in-person instruction everyone on this board is already aware of the preponderance of evidence that it can be done safely and the reasons for not doing so are steadily being broken down and disproven every day on february 3rd i watched the board spend the majority of the meeting discussing how to spend 20 million dollars in cares act funding for learning loss mitigation while the school board continues to allow the learning loss to go on certainly when the next bill consisting of two billion dollars to reopen california schools makes its way through the legislature there will be more money pouring into schools which makes me happy our schools absolutely need this money it is well spent but watching that february third meeting it felt like we were on a sinking ship and all discussing ideas for different ways to bail the water out but wouldn't consider plugging the hole in the bottom of the boat i don't understand how any board meeting since march of 2020 can move forward without discussion of returning to full-time instructions using these funds acknowledges that the current system is failing us they're earmarked to provide release from learning loss which continues to occur every day that a child in this district receives two hours of instruction instead of six you the chico unified school board have the ability to mitigate this further by returning the students of full-time instruction if you want to focus on the barriers just consult the california teachers association website which shows their layered approach to safely reopening where every layer represents another reason they will cite as not being good enough to return to full-time the barriers they can provide are numerous and ever-changing and you can continue to focus on every piece of regulation standing in the way i think we all know that if it isn't death space hitting requirements the next time it'll be community transmission rates or regular testing of healthy students and staff all with their own set of logistical hurdles there will always be reasons why it's unsafe to do so according to the california teachers association august 17th is a long way off let's not wait until then to start giving our children the education they deserve let's stop making excuses and figure out how to get it done now small and large schools from elementary to high school in california and around the nation have all figured out how to do it and are doing it safely the decision to close chico schools was made with one emergency meeting providing the board authority to unilaterally make decisions effective immediately why is it so difficult to return to the mission and values of the district which is to ensure that all students achieve high levels of academic and personal success are we really doing that right now thank you okay i'm calling amber camber okay i went to voicemail i'm calling kim lange thank you i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the school board if you hear a bell it means you have 30 seconds left okay okay left correct okay thank you go ahead kim hi yes i'm this is kim lang and i'm a local children's dentist and i just i'm calling as a concerned parent and actually a concerned person in town with what's been going on with the um school system here in chico for the k through 12 12 year old grades um considering it seems like the majority of this board is taking no steps in the right direction to bring back full-time education can even considering the number of people that have been vaccinated which is very high for most areas even in our state and their kids are going back to full-time education we would like to ask this board to please start considering the majority of the people and having options for us the everyday people who want their kids back in full-time education we don't want any more alternative um this and that programs that suit just a couple categories of people all of our kids deserve a full-time education and that's why we pay taxes we are not getting what we are paying for so we would like to ask this board and to reconsider their options especially on this four-foot rule and you know quit making excuses for this it's time to start moving forward and this needs to end thank you okay and lastly i'm calling gina backs actually i'll call summer back again as well in a second okay there's voicemail so i'm calling summer sun back and hopefully she has a better connection hey summer it's um we're calling from the chico unified school board again are you are you in a you have a better connection now how you doing are you ready to talk to the board no you're good we just want to hear from you so i'm going to put i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll do great and if you hear a bell that means you only have about 30 seconds left okay so i'm gonna put you on speakerphone i'll let you know when to start okay okay go ahead summer hi okay so my name is summer sun and i'm a sophomore at chico high school and i'm part of a club at chico high called saa which stands for student advocacy association and our mission is to amplify student voice on campus and practice speaking up to things that we care about in our lives as well as in school and one of the things that we would really love to do is actually it was recommended by one of the board members is to um bring back a representative system where a representative from the high school could go to the board meetings and present on you know how their school is doing and we think that this is really needed right now because everything is changing and it would just be such good practice to have these schools speak up and have student voice at the board meeting okay summer do you have anything else that you want to tell us um no we would just saa is really excited we would love to work with the board in any way any way that we can to bring student voice um to these board meetings okay so the board can't respond to the to your statements but they're we're definitely taking notes okay thank you so much of course thank you so much thank you for doing this and have a great rest of your evening thank you summer yes i've been in contact with summer um and i've turned it over to um the superintendent to continue the dialogue okay next is a negotiations update mr hanlon okay we met last week with cuta we spent a considerable amount of time on the ibb which is interest-based bargaining regarding compensation um it's very early early stages but things were very constructive we had a lot of good ideas that were generated within that meeting so i look forward to to reporting on those things as we progress through that conversation um over the next few months we also spent some time on one of the items that is later in the agenda regarding voluntary full return of students to classroom for teachers that volunteer to do so and we'll have a more detailed report on that later and it's a and then uh several smaller items junior high stipend for coaching we clarified some language on the all-day kindergarten as you may recall next year we'll have all of our kindergartens doing all day historically they've been a half a day instructional day only and so our final schools will be implementing that full day all all next year and then um we did some marine numbering of the contract because it's um after 30 or 40 years there's so many numbers and letters and big capital and capital letters that it's very difficult to navigate through there so we did a renumbering a full renumbering of the contract which has taken quite a bit of effort and time and we've agreed on that so we look look forward to continuing to work with cta we have some dates that we're working on with csca thank you mr hanlon board members do you have any questions on mr hanlon's report okay we'll move on we have the consent calendar next are there any items that a board member would like to pull from the consent calendar seeing none i need a motion kathy has something yes i move the passing of the consent calendar point of order we need to wait for the president to ask for our emotions on the floor i i i think i almost did thank you right is there a motion to approve i move to approve the consent calendar is there a second i'll second thank you is there any further board discussion okay i'm going to call for the vote um members will have a roll call vote dr kaiser bye dalby aye eye lando eye robinson eye that's unanimous okay let me get through the consent calendar okay discussion action calendar our first item is educational services we have an athletics update mr shepard thank you madam president just wanted to give the board an update um all the work that the board has has been observing has come to fruition we have currently our alpine sports and our tennis teams and cross country and even field hockey started today pv versus chico i don't have the results but i just want the board to know that we have kids out there and improving their their social wellness we're really excited to have those students out there we have some upcoming sports that we're looking forward to as mr hanlon mentioned we're excited about being able to offer middle school cross country and we haven't had that happen from a from a district level in a while it's been happening from a club level but we're really excited the estimates range from 50 to 100 kids on each school site so we're really excited about that golf golf starts next week football as you probably noticed when you walked in tonight they're out there practicing in full gear and baseball and softball are also cleared to compete track and field will be starting soon so our outdoor sports are are amping up so we're pretty excited about that we are establishing our contest protocols and just want to make sure the community understands that we are under really strict guidance for spectators and unfortunately we the we have to limit the spectators to immediate household members so the policy that's been created is to provide four vouchers to each participant and they can pass those out obviously if we have extenuating circumstances we can we can work with the families so we're excited about that there's a some criteria from the california department of public health that the parents need to sign an informed consent document and fortunately we had already addressed that back in november so we're we're covered there if we are in the purple there have been some questions about testing football players and if we are in the purple with a adjusted case rate of seven or higher we are required to test our football players two days prior to competition so it's my understanding that our first competition won't be until march 26th hopefully by then we'll have an adjusted case rate of of six or lower that's that's our goal and that's my update any questions for me caitlyn um yeah i just had a question about um uh maybe clarification on how we pay our officials when it comes time for that because if we have if there if there are sports that we have to have paid officials for in my past experiences outside of the district it usually comes from the admission fees so families that are getting vouchers are they still going to pay an admission fee are we paying for officials a different way we are still planning to charge for spectators although we only charge for for four sports basketball and boys and girls basketball and girls volleyball and football so the only sport that we'll be charging for will be football and the the district has agreements with the officials associations for all of our sports so those those agreements were finalized last summer for this year so they're still in effect okay so i just i guess i just wanted to make sure that we're going to be able to pay the officials and it's not going to impact our families too much or you know put out a call to action to like donate to the athletics clubs if necessary or something like that so okay yep thank you thanks thank you yes mr baltimore yes i'm actually one of the items that's listed under the s or two dollars is athletics and um a portion of those dollars the intent would be used to supplement our programs that have lost the gate revenue and help pay for officials and other items so that's one of the items on the ester dollars that we'll talk about in a bit because as you know without the athletics that their gate is substantially down thank you any other board discussion questions of mr shepard okay this is a information only item so we don't need to take any action okay our next item is again information only this is on the overview of school site survey on safe routes to school mr sullivan yeah good evening we were asked to check in with our site administrators and just get a little sense and get some data to look at what's happening with students and safety coming to and from school so we surveyed them and we broke it out i think you guys have a google doc available to you in the agenda we broke it out into areas where they're hearing of concerns it related to student concerns they're hearing it related to parent concerns they're hearing and also related to staff concerns that they were hearing so if they were hearing concerns at any of those areas they mark that indicated it so we look through the results and generally speaking once again what we're seeing is a lot of the uh the the safety issues related to it have to do with kind of the drop drop-off and pick-up times at school sites and students getting to that drop-off and pick-up area and exiting from that drop-off and pick-up area so there were a couple other sub-areas some of them expressed some concern feeling that there may be some folks in the community are in homeless status that maybe are putting some concern into some of our folks coming coming from or going to school but i think about 20 plus of the areas really were around drop-off pickup kind of traffic flow issues during that portion of the day and that was hands down the strongest uh what the most represented concern area that came out with those things and i will say having been elementary principal for a long time the drop-off and pickup portion of the school day is definitely a fraught with lots of concerns and issues at any given time and trying to get all of our community members to follow all the traffic rules and procedures and laws as they should be can be difficult at times as well so i certainly understand why that came up in that capacity so i'm not sure if there's any questions about anything at that point also mr sullivan i have a question i noticed that there's a check on marigold regarding playground equipment is the replacement of playground equipment part of the um upgrade at marigold that was part and i talked with the principal there work orders go in if those things are happening and it's in process okay thank you any questions from the board that's it this is the whole present okay so yeah i guess i i do um first question is um we didn't actually get this spreadsheet until pretty late right um in fact i don't think i've saw it today when did it get posted on the agenda so it probably did get uh posted today so thanks for that opening when we get items at late on a wednesday night i think in this case it was about 10 o'clock so then to go back and put together a survey distribute that survey explain it get principals to be involved and then have it back by the deadline of tuesday is impossible to do so uh we had to work all this week getting the information back and as a result it doesn't it doesn't allow the board much time to see it until the presentation itself and that's going to be true on another item that was put on the agenda on last wednesday as well so mr sullivan um thank you for conducting the survey sure um the check marks in the boxes in some cases don't give us a lot of information in terms of you know whether it's a you know considered by this the respondents as being a really serious threat or just kind of a i mean there's no rating at all or descriptions in here um with respect to the the constituent constituents i can say who who brought this issue to my attention that caused me to want to get out on the agenda were concerned about um children walking past um you know homeless encampments essentially i can relate to this a little bit because my family actually travels past homeless populations let's just say to and from school every single day and i'm happy to say by and large we've never had any adverse experience in that at all i myself have witnessed disturbing things you know like acts of vandalism going on sort of in broad daylight in front of people sometimes aggressive obviously this is this is anecdotal but um you know when you have an increase or a concentration in in an area let's say you had i mean we've got populations right now in in the town moving around um settling here settling there um you know i could see a scenario where if a population got so large in one area that you would just see an increase in that sort of you know maybe i could just call it lawless behavior one case in particular i saw this this act of vandalism was somebody who had a probably a 15 or 20 pound boulder in their hands and they were banging on the side of the freeway essentially as we came by not the end of the world you know destruction of public property but it's not the sort of thing i would want my child to come around the corner and confront a person like that if they're willing to be kind of spending time doing that they might you know also not have a problem having maybe an inappropriate conversation with a child that could scare the child so this is something that i think we should just be on our radar screen on an ongoing basis i'm a little disappointed that there's not any kind of anecdotal uh descriptions i i mean we can happily share those anecdotal the kind of the comments with you also okay but but i'll certainly add if anything rises up to the level of kind of legal or the concerns you're talking about also administration's going to be in touch with law enforcement and make sure that they're following up in that capacity as well so kind of the game plan if if a family and there are some who are listening to this or may hear about it or read about it that we're to encounter some you know again i'll just say lawless behavior for lack of a better characterization right now we could be talking about any number of things from drug use to you know violent behaviors or um something like that um they should report it to their administration and then their administration will bring it to the attention of the proper authorities and and they can work through the school system in that way absolutely if there's something that rises that level of kind of illegal immoral whatever the kind of behavior you want to talk about art we have a good working relationship with our sros also and i know we definitely lean on them at times with these kinds of situations as they're rising as well and they're very um extremely prompt in responding i've learned over the years if we report to them that we have an issue that's related to a school student in particular um really prompt responses to make sure that things are okay at our school sites for our students thank you very much mr sullivan for conducting this and for answering my questions sure and we do have all of our principles that are online if there's any specific questions they're able to answer those but maybe the easiest thing to do would be share the anecdotal okay uh thank you mr sullivan any other board questions comments did we have uh no we didn't have a request card for speaking okay this is an informational only item thank you mr sullivan okay our next item is um uh under business services mr baltimore discussion action 2021 second interim budget uh yes we'll have marie hartman and jacqueline krueger will start off the presentation hello so we are presenting the second interim budget second interim is the third reporting that we do out in the budget cycle to you we present original budget in april first interim in december second interim tonight and then um our estimated actuals along with the original budget for 2122 will be presented in june so basically for second interim we take what we presented to you at first interim and update with all the new information that we've received since then okay major themes will show you the impact of one-time funding and carryover dollars the next couple slides will show you enrollment average daily attendance projections we will talk about the cares act federal funds sr1 is what we're currently spending and sr2 is the money that we will be receiving next for the next fiscal year and we'll be talking about priorities for spending those dollars pers and stirs annual cost increases are always the theme of our budgets okay a major factor is average daily attendance projections this slide has a lot of numbers on it but basically it shows historical data as well as projections for this year and the next two years enrollments taken at a point in time and p2 average daily attendance is typically about 95 to 0.5 to 96 of um enrollment and you can kind of see in the past that's that's really been true so when we project for future we use 95.5 of our projected enrollment so if you look down the the list historically chico unified has been increasing enrollment and increasing average daily attendance but for this year 2021 we did have a negative change in enrollment and so we're projecting a negative change in ada and because of that we're also projecting declining enrollment for the next two years but not as vast as 2021.
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the total those are the total number of schools i think the schools though that are looking to establish a pilot are maybe just a couple of schools they're all at different places uh through our academy journey so uh those students those schools that are ready to embark in this um maybe two or three as pilots thank you for that uh principal hayashi um the other question i had is that um on that slide that has number five and six operating and edu prize includes and a system number six a system for managing the money needs to be identified and in place who did you guys uh think would be uh someone who could do the number six managing the money needs to be identified and in place and i think you talked about a consultant is that something the consultant would do or something that you think can be done within the doe yeah no the consultant was actually working to create the academy structure and infrastructure with these these schools that are in the hawaii academies what we're talking about here we were working with brian hallett finally show up at our meetings and and listen very carefully about you know how can we possibly create this different type of money system that could help us because you know he knew the limitations of what the department could do so right before uh the pandemic it was really having these conversations about so how can we update the department to allow these pilot schools to be able to have um this kind of accounting system you know like even a point of sale kind of system you know an ordering online ordering and processing systems so that's where we left off you know we're just having that okay you know brian how can we do this how can we make it happen and he started working on it so it would be interesting to see where the update is from the department and his work thank you appreciate that so members if there are no questions further questions i'm going to go on and ask superintendent kishimoto and her doe team to go ahead with their presentation thank you for joining us superintendent thank you chair kadani and vaishya kim i'm gonna just speak for a few minutes and i'm gonna turn this over to dan miyamoto and the team i am going into a department of health uh meeting so i apologize these meetings are back to back but there's a couple of things i want to say one is i think everyone who's on candy nice to see you it's been a while uh since i've been on your own seeing your work directly uh as well as an mahi ki fayashi and and lisa have been leaders in this work along with other principals lisa now in her work as a complex area superintendent i want to mention under our 2030 promise plan which has is is still in action we haven't had a whole lot of public conversation in the middle of this pandemic about the promise plan but if you go through the deliverables you can see that a lot of our work is focused on um on on innovation on uh empowerment school design and under the innovation section uh the there is a section uh dedicated specifically to commercial enterprise this is an area where we know we have to move into we've got to update our financial structure to support this our policy structure we need to get back to the legislature if there are any legislative matters as we move through this process of doing our work differently uh we have them motor on the on the um on the quad today and um and he's in charge of cte cte is an area we can look at tapping into uh to look at next level support to move this work forward uh and so uh i i want to emphasize that that is uh in fact possible and also the team that uh keith hayashi has included me in the past on the hawaii academics coalition meetings to show me what the principals are designing because we really want the principles at the school level designing all of this innovation work and appreciate those principles doing that work that that really is the right place to advance this work and so i just want to say that the department is fully supportive of moving this forward we've been unfortunately impacted by this pandemic for a year there's a lot that we had to kind of shift our focus but this is this is the future the the now and the future of department as we continue to talk about powerful school design models and we have the right thought leaders some of which you see here and many others who have been working on this i'm going to hand this over to dan i believe dan was going to share a couple of slides to just show you what we uh where we are in our work from the department level thank you dr kishimoto good afternoon senator gitani senator and members of the senate education company and your beauty um he's not muted we can hear him but it's kind of soft is there a way you can turn up the volume okay let me take off my mask here testing how's this now better thank you okay uh once again good afternoon senator kidani senator mcconnell kim and the members of the senate education committee department has present uh put together a presentation to provide an update on the implementation of the commercial enterprise department of education at 164.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
the the improvements include the electrical requirements unit ventilator replacements which basically provide the ventilation uh the cooling and the heating in each classroom we're replacing in many areas uh the rooftop units those serve the larger spaces such as the auditoriums the cafeterias and the gymnasiums and they have a very specific type of system that are also being replaced they're being replaced not because they have not been maintained they're being replaced because many of these systems are original to the building many of your schools were built in 1920 1930 so they reached a point where they need to be replaced because they're not operating as they should be so in terms of the new systems efficiency energy savings and also particularly in these times is air quality and we started this many years ago in looking at these and and most of it was for air quality um restoration in your in your facilities as i mentioned it also incorporates the electrical upgrades that are necessary for these new new mechanical equipment part of that is also to replace of some of your boilers and we've replaced some of them over the years but this would include uh additional boilers um throughout the district that would be replaced um there's approximately eight boilers that are being redone in part of this referendum um and they include steam boilers and also hot water hot water boilers and i'll just touch on on the other areas and as i said we'll get in a little more detail later but there's also security entrances throughout the district and that is done in several ways one internally with vestibules that they have uh blocks where you um where you have an area where they're controlled before someone is allowed in the building um so sometimes they're done internally and sometimes based on the existing structure of the building we have to add small additions or vestibules and we're paying very close attention to the architecture and the historic quality of various buildings so they fit into the overall design and that's that's very important in the overall approach to this we're also renovating your auditoriums in some cases and that would include lighting ceilings acoustic wall treatments and seating there's also another large area is the toilet upgrades your toilets are like your mechanical systems primarily are original to the buildings they don't provide the proper air changes ventilation but primarily the fixtures are very old very hard to maintain very hard to find replacement and plus access is very important to your students with disabilities so that would all be resolved in this overall project we then also touch upon the clifton stadium with the expansion and the renovation to the locker rooms and also at the field at woodrow wilson uh middle school which will include the new artificial turf field as well as the field house that would be in here and then there's also budgeted improvements to overall technology and security so that is the overall scope of the of the project and then we can get into whatever questions we're hopefully we can answer any questions that are that are given to me thanks joe um so the community knows our architect team will stay involved as we move uh to the next segment that deals more with a personal on the ground perspective of what it's like in our schools so at this time uh unless there are any questions i don't see any in the chat yet um unless there are any questions we'll move on to our next section we do have some questions so okay fantastic okay so this first question comes in uh for mr de cara architects could the hvac systems be replaced one school at a time wouldn't that be an easier way to pay for it well it's a it's a matter of um there's a greater economy of scale when you replace all of them at one time plus the way it's being structured with the referendum that the state pays for a large percentage of the actual improvements the plans would be designed that would go out to public bidding would be would be structured in a way that the work would be done on a phased implementation with the primary importance and acknowledgement that these buildings are being occupied uh during the various construction phases so that would all be implemented in the design but it's more practical more and more efficient in terms of cost to do the larger project for economy at scale thank you we have two more why do the bathrooms need such extensive work can they just be remodeled for less money well they are being remodeled they're uh the fixtures need to be removed um the plumbing areas uh need to be adjusted uh and in order to get the uh to comply with the americans with disability act for for full access uh many of the fixtures have to be relocated and repositioned uh which would require plumbing adjustments by time you do all that you need to replace the floor because of the different slopes uh and then you're going to replace the ceiling the lights to accommodate the mechanical systems that would be incorporated so it would cost almost the same amount of money if you did half the job than the entire job thank you last question 168 million dollars for 19 schools is almost 9 million dollars per school that seems like a lot and then there will be cost overruns right well obviously it is a lot of money but you are tackling a lot of projects there's a tremendous amount of work being done a tremendous amount of required work being done for the district if you let things go too long they will actually cost you more in the future because they'll cause more damage and things like that now in terms of uh cost overruns there because we're dealing with existing buildings of that age and based on our experience in working with uh school districts that's basically what we do we we know certain things that come up in renovation work with that in mind in our budgets uh we also include a contingency uh of approximately 10 on the overall construction costs that were established and sent down to the department of education for their review and approval so the proper planning is that you have a 10 contingency that can be used and will be used to some degree for unforeseen conditions because we don't have we don't x-ray the walls we don't know exactly where a plumbing chase or mechanical system in the wall would be we have some existing plants but depending on how it was built so we assume that there's going to be the unknowns but we've accommodated that in the cost now it's a it's a it's a healthy amount of money that we believe based on our experience doing schools will more than cover any unforeseen items if that those funds are not used and the processes we take public bid they award it we know where we have the contingencies um if you if you don't spend a portion of that money um then it goes back to tax relief so if you don't use it you you give it back basically but it's the proper percentage for buildings and renovations of this type thank you very much thank you uh excuse me thank you mr dekara as i stated earlier uh our architect team will stay involved with us as we move on to the next segment don't forget to send your questions to one clifton cliftonschools.net once again if we can't answer everything tonight we'll start replying the emails in the morning and keep responding until we answer every single question um at this time i'd like to introduce our director of buildings and grounds to give us a little more personal on-the-ground perspective of what it's like inside the clifton public schools mr al martion al thank you dr robert tasey thank you commissioners and citizens of clifton um as far as this referendum um it's it's a challenge for my department to be working with old hvac equipment we have frequent repairs it's difficult getting parts replacement parts um so i think now's the time now is the time that we should move forward um also we talked a little bit about the bathrooms um there's many times that we have backups in the bathrooms we have the drains are clogged sometimes we have to shut down bathrooms um it's a challenge for my maintenance department um the auditoriums i know um we're talking about renovating auditoriums i'm sure some of the public has been into some of our auditoriums our christopher columbus auditorium it's a beautiful auditorium very architectural um the seats are original i mean it's time it's time to upgrade uh our woodrow wilson auditorium same thing the chairs the seatings it all needs to be renovated we need to be be brought up into the 21st century um as you can see from the public that has been in our high school auditorium we just did a renovation there um it's state of the art and that's what we need for our other auditoriums and our other facilities throughout the district um i'd like to take any questions at this time if there is any yes we do have several thank you mr marcion why can't the equipment be maintained or modified to last a little longer okay we have great maintenance got us to this point that um in some cases parts like i said before are really hard to come by in other cases we can't keep using the equipment but it's prone to failure we we are starting to see failures where it's very hard to keep them going and it's not efficient it's not efficient we're spending money repairing this stuff when this rent referendum would help us bringing up bring it up to more efficient equipment and in the long run we would save money the longer we wait the more risk we take thank you next question is why has the district put off all of these projects uh we have a responsibility to the taxpayers to get the most out of their money just like a homeowner we maintain repair we put things off as long as possible the time has come before because of the inefficiency of these repairs and because packaging everything into a bond referendum opens the door to state aid with that being said and i'm sure mr dicaro uh mentioned that too that this project here is we're going to be getting almost 33 of state aid for this it's like free money so that's the time we can't keep repairing repairing we need to replace i'd like to add too to that al that as as we've been involved in this district for many years we've been doing every year uh facility upgrades so it's not like the district hasn't done anything out of their out of their annual budget they've spent a tremendous amount of money over the years to fix things to improve things at a point you just don't have enough money in your budget and you can't keep up the the age of your buildings once you reach a certain age for certain equipment it goes downhill very quickly and then what you what happens is you have actually failures if a boiler goes down during the winter it's going to cost you three times as much to replace it on an emergency basis so that so from my perspective the district over the years has done a tremendous job in doing what they can with their budget in making it various improvements if they didn't do that this referendum would have been a lot more money and plus as al mentioned this is the perfect time because the state through a referendum will contribute about a third of the overall cost of the project including all of the project costs so so i just wanted to make sure that the public is aware that the district has done a very good job and in my professional opinion over the years in trying to keep up with things but at a point just like your home things just start to fail just because of not lack of maintenance but because of age we want to remind the community to send your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net and we will do our best to answer all those questions tonight thank you dr robertosi um another one for mr marcion can we add an item to the referendum school 14 has modular trailers that were temporary over 10 years ago can we put an addition on or fund that another way that question there i think that would be a question more for the architects um but i just wanted to add something that mr piccaro had said too about the emergency what happened last year it was in the middle of january it was a friday night and it was like five degrees out and we had a boiler let go at school number eight we didn't have to shut down the school we brought in a portable boiler and we kept the building going but the reason why i'm bringing this up is because that can happen in many buildings and what that cost the district in emergency is it we could have did three new boiler jobs new boilers in different buildings so that's to the point where we're at now where some of these boilers are going to fail beyond repair and it's going to cost us twice as much to fix um as far as that question with the trailers i think that's a question for um the architects to answer yeah i mean we uh part of it too is they're they're not really trailers or they're temporary classrooms and they're they're approved by the state department of education so there many districts have them uh they're a way to accommodate students where you can't put on an addition because of the cost the additions are are very expensive but this referendum is really focused on on the facility upgrades you do have the capacity for those students and as i said it's really for facility upgrades but they've been approved as as you know safe structures for for your students thank you the website refers to ada a lot do that many people with disabilities really come to the schools well from a if i could from a legal perspective in terms of the code public space particularly public spaces are required to make accommodations to uh anybody that is disabled and it's the americans disability act whether you technically have any disabled students or teachers or parents you may have visitors and it opens up the district to potential lawsuits for that reason and many districts have experienced that so proper planning is when you're going to particularly the bathrooms as an example proper planning when you when you renovate a space you must meet current applicable codes and one of those codes is with the americans with disability act and it doesn't it doesn't make it any more expensive you just have to accommodate those code restrictions if you're going to renovate a space you could do it um for the same dollars and meet all the codes thank you that's the right thing to do thank you how will we be able to have school when all of this work is going on that that's a um that's a fantastic question and as i had mentioned before um when we design uh when when this referendum passes and we start the construction documents for bid we will meet with and based on our experience we will meet with all the principals we will go through schedules we will then develop a logistics plan that becomes part of the contract to the contractors that bid on this and we will identify certain windows we call them windows that a contractor can do certain things in the building we will identify when that contractor will have access to the building in many cases certain work will only be done after school hours or before school hours if there are sections of the building where they can work while students are in it those areas are are sectioned off proper security clearances are given maintained to all construction workers so there's a litany of of items that the contractors have to comply with we are on site during the construction process and we've also budgeted for an independent construction management team for this that will be there every day to make sure those things are complied with so as a quick example we may run plumbing we may do a lot of work during the summers all right this will go over two summers and then let's say we're going to now replace the unit ventilators in each classroom and this is what we've done very successfully in other districts what we do is we we have a swing space so you may take three classrooms and relocate them in let's say hold for for four days in the auditorium during those four days in those three classrooms the contractor has access to it you know after hours and they come in they they got the unit ventilator put the new unit ventilator in they bring that entire space up back to where it needs to be and then those those those students come back into those three classrooms right uh with a new mechanical system and then we move on to the next three and the next three and the next three and the next three so we're daisy chaining it and it's very it's it's a planned attack it's a very strategized uh logistics plan and what's important is that we do that with everybody's input the principles on how they can how they can do that and safety is the is the paramount importance during construction and we and we do that and what's critical is the contract has to know that because it's a cost factor involved which we've incorporated into our into our estimates and also the overall timeline for the project so an excellent question uh but we've looked at it very carefully on how to actually you would construct this with with your your children in these buildings thank you mr dekara and this next one might be for you as well when the kids go back to school on march 8th how are you going to handle the air exchanges while the kids are there march this march 8th um i think i could uh help with that mr dakira uh we certainly understand as an administration and the cdc has emphasized that ventilation is really important to mitigate the risks of the coronavirus so um our goal is really to have all of our windows open uh in every classroom but the district has also ordered um air scrubbers for lack of a more technical term which are um portable air filters that clean the air every 12 minutes or so in the classroom so each classroom is going to have one of those because we understand that this that ventilation is an issue has been an issue and that is one of the best things that will be addressed through this referendum uh the largest piece of this pie is the new hvac systems and nothing could be more timely in regards to ventilation as as it has been with the covet 19 virus thank you dr robert josie i have one last question for mr marcion how often are the auditoriums even used it's a good question um the auditoriums we use them a lot we rent them out we rent them out to church groups we rent them out to dance recitals we rent a lot um also they use them for the plays they use them for community gatherings um how many days out of an average school year um it's hard to say but i can tell you they've been they they are used quite frequently um i like the high school um before covid we were renting that high school out every weekend um with all different gatherings some community affairs and also church groups so they are used quite frequently not only for um school purposes but also even for community um usage mr de cara i have a question from one of our commissioners uh either mr martian mr de cara what is the uh the warranty on the new hvac systems how how long would will they be protected how mr carrie you're muted joe you want to take that sorry sorry um the uh there's very various components um to a unit ventilator uh there's the compressor which has a higher which has approximately a 5 to 10 year warranty on it that's the critical part to it and the compressor portion but generally the unit ventilators will have a life expectancy of probably 50 years as as it's maintained the rooftop equipment will have a life expectancy of a similar nature um you know 35 to 40 years for for that system as as you as long as it's maintained which you have been uh with your existing systems so this is not something that is going you're spending this money in 10 years you're gonna have to start replacing uh elements to it thank you mr ducara mr rose if there are no more questions from the community on this particular topic we're a little bit early for our next segment uh so let me just do a couple things one let me remind those watching that you can please email your questions to oneclifton at cliftonschools.net uh we will do our best to answer all of those questions tonight and into the future while we have a few minutes before moving on to our security segment do any of the commissioners have any questions for either mr marchionne or our architectural team uh mr dr robitazi yes miss password thank you i i have a question uh that was brought to me and i don't know how this is going to be answered one of the one of the um one of the slides um that was brought to the and i apologize for having my camera off uh one of the slides that were brought to one of the other former um former meetings showed an auditorium that was brand new um and um in what this is a really um important topic to this person uh school three and um christopher columbus has a very um old uh but um very um architecturally designed i can't think of the word um auditorium will those features try to be saved or as many as possible or will they be modernized to like a a new like you know modular looking type of venue an excellent question miss vanford uh asked mr de cara to handle that one please yeah um the there's there's several um auditoriums that have great architectural detail uh we would we would we would maintain that we our plan is not to uh change that you have a certain language there a certain quality there's a history there so we wanted to maintain that history and the design importance for that just as we would respect the exterior architecture of the build many of your buildings when we add security entrances we just showed that as an example for some of the other ones where how how your auditorium can be transformed um with new seating lighting uh wall treatment things like that but we would respect the existing uh details of of your quality auditoriums okay and the other one that i would like to um to also um touch on and it's been an answer before but i'd like to bring it up again is why do we need the upgrades in the woodrow wilson uh middle school um fields to from from what it is now to a turf and also with a um a venue of having uh a field house or um bathrooms outside the building um i think the um the principal said it best at a public meeting but if this is being taped and it's being shared with everybody i think that because i was on the fence and i'm going to be honest about it but when he explained the usage and and he like had a whole list of things i i can't do it so if you could reiterate that that's really important some people that have been asking thank you for that and it is critically important we have a segment from seven o'clock to 7 15 um with mr um malayhi and mr healey the principal and they're going to be addressing those exact uh concerns and the other thing is everybody's asking are we just doing little renovations to the bathrooms that's another thing uh with that's another segment because i didn't see the agenda when i was working before uh is that another time dr robert says this is just on the ventilation system um no we can certainly discuss the okay the bathroom is down mr de caro can you uh dig a little deeper on what that what that looks like well the the uh to to accommodate all of the things that the concerns that are in your existing uh bathrooms um they would be generally a complete gut um the uh the floors uh tile would be removed the walls would be removed not the walls but the tile the plumbing fixtures where you have certain types of plumbing fixtures that are not per code today would be eliminated and redone the toilet petitions the size the dimensions would be placed in that so virtually the the toilets after they're done would look like it's in a new new building you would have new lighting new ceilings new uh ventilation you would have all new fixtures all new toilet petitions you will have energy efficient fixtures that don't use as much water as the older fixtures do so you'll see a savings in that and also this the bathrooms will be very easily maintained you could almost hose them down not literally but almost that way to maintain it and they're extremely extremely durable materials that'll stand the uh the wear and tear particularly at a high school and uh and they'll be there for for many many years without much without much wear one one other question and uh somebody asked me today actually they uh they sent me a message um if this if if we're not successful uh how is there a schedule from replacing all this stuff and possibly i i told her that we'd have to do a spreadsheet and probably list that it would probably probably take decades to actually do the work that we want to do all under this referendum but if it does she wanted to know could we possibly fit some of the smaller stuff and and into our budget i told her no but i really couldn't answer that question so that's why i bring it to your attention thank you yeah ms bassman i think the the simple answer is that if we're able to obtain this money for the referendum then we can utilize our regular operating budget and capital reserve for some of the other projects that still need to be done in the district uh although i don't want to be naive and think that there's a chance this referendum won't pass on april 20th uh the board would have to look at that and see how we wanted to uh to pursue getting these projects done if the referendum fails but you are absolutely right it would take decades to do these jobs out of our general operating budget plus plus you wouldn't get the state aid plus right i finally refer to that as a coupon for my shopping friends out there so it is a very good deal it is thank you for answering my questions i really appreciate that they weren't mine they were they were people that contacted me directly thank you we're gonna have one more question from mr casper before we move on to our next uh segment i'm thinking it it may be an easier question but how much would it be to replace the compressors once they do go in five to ten years don't have a particular i don't have a particular number they're not they're not that expensive um but there's a there's a warrant there's a warranty on those thank you mr casper and let me just still also reiterate there was a question earlier about how often the auditoriums are are used and um well mr martian did an excellent job explaining that they're used a lot one of the things that happens daily in our auditoriums is our music instruction so that takes place at both middle school music and um in our performing arts so it's also one of these uh it's a community place it's it's where people people go when you go to visit a school to see a show you're going into the auditorium and it really um gives people a sense of pride or in the case of the way they look down really i've gotten emails from parents saying you know it's almost embarrassing how embarrassing of shape some of the facilities are so um thank you uh mr dekara i understand you're going to stay on for a little while in case any other questions come on same for you mr marcion uh ladies and gentlemen uh in the community don't forget to send your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net that's one clifton at cliftonschools.net we'll do our best to answer every question tonight and if we don't get to all of them you will get a response so moving on to our next scheduled segment another significant piece of the bond proposal is security and for that uh it's my honor and pleasure to turn the presentation over to mark gingaro our administrator of climate and security mark perfect thank you very much dr robertosi to our audience ensuring the safety of all stakeholders is the top priority of the board of education especially since we know that schools increasingly become targets for threats and attacks over the course of the past several years our district has dedicated time and allocated resource specific to the enhancement of our security systems and procedures we have provided professional development and training to all of our staff including all of our individuals our students our teachers our secretaries our paraprofessionals members of the custodial maintenance teams our transportation department and our substitute teachers and of course our administrators we put our skills to practice in accordance with nj school drill law and based upon the recommendations from the office of school preparedness and emergency planning we have improved upon our ability to communicate within uh to notify students and staff and law enforcement of an emergency situation through the installation of what we call a lockdown notification system again specific to improve communications uh we have recently completed phase one of the installation of our new our new phone system uh that one of its many functionalities is affording all staff the ability to communicate an emergency situation from almost anywhere in the building specific to security as a whole our single greatest defense against a threat is to have a secure perimeter and we have found a way to do just that and control visitor access through the use of what we call a key card swipe id access system uh for staff allowing our staff access to and from the building while leaving all doors locked and through the implementation and practice of our visitor access procedures we've also installed security cameras at all of our buildings including our transportation building and we do this because we recognize we believe and we demonstrate that the safety of our students and staff is our top priority we do this because we believe that in the words of former fbi director william webster security is always seen as too much until the day it's not enough and we recognize that providing a safe school environment truly is everyone's responsibility and this is where the clipton voters can really truly do their part this proposed bond referendum will help provide our students and our staff with a more secure learning and professional working environment as a substantial amount of money is allocated for security enhancements from the technological point of view all all the previously mentioned security enhancements that have been implemented over the past several years are currently working off of what we call independent systems and this referendum will provide us with an integration software that will both enhance and tie all these systems together it'll allow us to to update and increase the server capacity as both the space and speeds of our our servers are currently limited it'll allow us to replace our aging camera system uh that's currently being used utilized in grade 6 through 12 and it will actually replace and enhance the inadequate pre-k system that the district is currently using it will simply put allow us to just add more cameras district-wide but especially in our elementary schools who are in the greatest need of additional cameras this bond referendum will allow us to update and increase our server capacity again allowing for additional cameras more storage and the ability to streamline with all other systems and for example what i mean by that is we can integrate our security camera systems with our door access system and our emergency notification systems but just as important we will improve upon our ability to more efficiently communicate to students to staff and law enforcement in the event that we are faced with an emergency situation we'll be able to integrate our clock and bell schedule with our pa system uh with visual message message boards uh we're going to be able to increase the amount of strobe lights and high volume areas in the building such as our cafeterias our hallways our gymnasiums and our auditoriums as well as other areas of the building such as the classrooms and the building exterior all of these enhancements will also help us better communicate with our auditorially impaired students staff and visitors from the physical point of view the implementation of our security vestibules will add that additional layer of security to the perimeter of our building and finally oftentimes when we think about security uh people people often time their mind goes directly to the types of security previously discussed like camera systems and security vestibules and integrated systems if they fail to recognize the emotional security that comes with these improvements over the course of the past three years we have seen a steady decline in the amount of confirmed harassment intimidation bullying cases as well as incidents of violence vandalism and substance abuse our camera systems security procedures they truly have aided our administrators and our anti-bullying specialists during the hib investigation process as well as when students are in violation of the code of conduct security cameras often serve as a deterrent to students as they're always aware that for my old coaching days the eye in the sky doesn't lie and all of this truly can be made possible with the passing of this referendum so at this time i would like to turn this over to our moderator miss sam derose to see if there are any questions specific to security thank you mr gengaro i do have a few questions for you but i do have one for mr de cara first is there any safety risk regarding disturbing old asbestos or lead during construction and how will that be handled yes there is and in the overall budget uh was a line item for environmental remediation um based on a hero report that the district has maintained there's a knowledge of where any hazardous material particularly asbestos resides that work would be done and removed in a safe manner prior to the actual construction in that area so that when the contractor comes in there's no delay and there's no release of any asbestos that is a very critical element in the implementation of these projects but it is removed prior to uh in close coordination with the district's environmental consultant they will review our documents see where any work is and then develop the specifications for removal so that is done lead will also be handled in the same way but the lead removal is much easier than the asbestos abatement because the asbestos can be friable lead is just bagged and removed in a safe manner but those are very good questions as well and they are incorporated into the overall planning of the project thank you mr de cara mr gingaro what good is a two-step entrance when people still have to get into the building to show their id thanks sam please keep in mind that when it does come to security nothing offers a 100 percent protection guarantee but but these security vestibules do provide additional protection by adding a secured space historically the vestibule was actually meant to keep warm air in and and things such as cold air leaves and dirt out of the building today the vestibule is actually an integral integral to safety and security in schools but ideally the vestibule serves as a safe zone where a well-intended visitor could come inside and get out of the cold air or rain and begin the process to enter a building and once inside the vestibule they'll find their path into the building blocked by another series of locked doors at this point the visitor can press an intercom button for assistance from front office staff who will receive some sort of notification or alert that there is a visitor and they'll be able to initiate a conference a conversation through an intercom system from the safety of their office area video surveillance will be incorporated and cameras will transmit images to monitors so that our staff can verify the visitor's identity their demeanor and even the surroundings and again once this visitor's identity is verified and they appear to be well attended the second set of doors can then remotely be released so the visitor can enter make themselves into the school of course always accompanied by an escort but the security vespers will actually actually also assist us in combating this technique that refer to as piggybacking where a second visitor attempts to quickly enter the building along with the visitor who has already been screened again this would be a significant upgrade from what we have now and of course it would meet modern standards for schools thank you mr drinkero uh the next question is what do the schools already have for security as previously mentioned we already have things that are in place including a lockdown notification system uh scenario-based drills and training and professional development to make sure that we're in compliance with new jersey school drill law we have an enterprise level phone system that has a million one functionalities but they have finally been installed in all of our classroom and offices and anywhere where there's an internet jack and it really does afford our staff the ability to initiate an emergency procedure from when anywhere in the building and again as previously mentioned we utilize what we call an id swipe card key scan system again that affords us the opportunity to truly leave our perimeter our greatest defense secured at all times while still allowing staff access uh to and from the school and then we also have our security cameras at all buildings but unfortunately as i said these systems are all operating on independent systems right now and the approval of this bond referendum will allow us that software that will tie it all together thank you mr gengaro last question and this may also i believe commissioner bastford has already uh asked a similar question but i will pose it again as it did come in can the fronts of the schools be changed aren't they historic and again this may be best suited for mr de cara it definitely will be from for a degree but i just need i would be remiss if i didn't contribute uh that would have to strongly agree to disagree with anybody where the belief that the appearance of a building supersedes the importance of providing our students and our staff with a secure and safe learning environment as far as the historical standpoint i am going to defer that question over to mr takara yeah thank you we agree that security is paramount but we also want to respect the existing buildings we just don't want to make it look like an eyesore the the final design um can be modified we've we've looked at how you can include the security vestibules whether as i mentioned earlier whether they're internal or whether exterior internal is easy easier i'll say when you're putting it on the outside you you don't want to make it look like a telephone booth the old telephone booths if anybody remembers those um so we want to incorporate into some of the similar detailing of the of the facades some are more important than others in terms of the the uh land market you don't have landmark status but the the type of architecture georgian style architecture with the columns uh they have to be replicated in certain areas and the proportions so you can make modifications in that we've budgeted them and and there's flexibility in how it's finally designed we don't do the entire design now pre-referendum um you always wait until after the referendum is approved to go through that uh long process in the design process thank you mr dekara that is the last question that i have for um the security section so thank you mr rose thank you mr de cara and mr jingaro i know you'll both stay on for um some other questions that may come up later on tonight uh at this point we're going to move to the next scheduled segment to discuss our athletic facilities uh and no one knows more about our athletic facilities than our district athletic director uh tom malay and we also have joining us megan graziano a clifton high school science teacher and the passaic the current reigning passaic county teacher of the year um and also the principal of woodrow mills uh woodrow wilson middle school mr brackealy yeah uh thank you dr robertos thank you for the opportunity to come pre-present this evening i'd like to start with uh mr healey and uh you know his his take on the woodrow field situation hi good evening i think uh i want to thank commissioner bastard for asking that question because it's it's a really good point and i want to say that there's a misconception that this is just an athletic upgrade at woodrow wilson middle school i just want the community to understand that woodrow has over 1300 students in attendance and that field is used daily for phys ed classes the field is also used for academic classes or health classes it's used for clubs activities intramurals so the entire student population at woodrow is using that field 60 to 70 of the year i mean the only time we're not really getting out there is some of the colder months but for the most part that field is used daily uh and every single period of the day and then even after school hours with our clubs and activities um also what i want to point out is with the woodrow wilson field and safety being paramount over the years we've had a lot of issues with injuries because of the sinkholes in the field they've tried their best we tried our best to maintain the facilities there at woodrow but it's time for the turf to come in it gives us a level playing field right now ccms also has turf chs has turf that's really the only field right now that we have available to us for the wardrobe students in the event they want to go outside they want to use an area that's the only area we have and when we get rain say on a monday sometimes that field's not even playable for a saturday game uh or even the following week at woodrow the rain it turns into a swamp it's like a swamp meets a beach it's really tough to walk on it's it's extremely unsafe and um i mean that's that's what i want to talk about woodrow thank you mr healey mr malay yeah thank you mr hilly i always want to piggyback on the phys ed side um you know some of my coaches are actually phys ed teachers there uh some of our site managers as well and uh you know they talk about the struggles that they have on that field you know they do their best to uh keep the kids active and keep them engaged you know but uh as mr healey said you know if it rains that field's out of commission for for days uh it's so uh unlevel you could tell that um you know there's definitely there's definitely some injuries uh attributed to the to the ground um and then they also have to go around the goose droppies so it's it's just it's not a good situation obviously we've been making the best of it but uh it's something that we can certainly do better um if you've never been back there some of the homes on the if you're on the baseball field and you're on the first base side and the right field side uh some of the homes they're they're back their backyards back up to the uh to the field and the water runs off and then there's a hill and that the water runs down the hill right onto the field and it sits at home plate it sits on first base it sits in the outfield and it sits for days and um you know al marcion and eddie maldonado do an excellent job of getting the grounds guys the grounds guys are fantastic you know they do their best to drain the field but there's only so much they can do um pumping pumping the field cutting the grass lining the field um you know it's a lot and as far as phys ed goes i mean you know what we've seen now uh you know particularly during covet sometimes school is the only exercise that some kids get um you know so now you have kids who who have the opportunity they they don't i should say they don't have the opportunity to walk to school walk up and down the steps walk walk to class um you know participate in phys ed on a daily basis or at least uh twice a week you know this gives them the opportunity to be active every day you know whether they're part of the club when we first turfed the field at um at clifton high school the clubs actually one of the clubs used it for a kickball tournament with all clubs and it was a great fundraiser for them it was a great opportunity for kids who don't participate in sports to go out and compete to uh you know to be healthy so there are a lot of good things that that we we didn't think were gonna happen that actually happened um on the baseball side i mean it's actually embarrassing that a group four school plays on that field a few years ago we had a catcher who was being looked at by the chicago cubs and one of their scouts came to the field and i was mortified um it it it was bad you know he he was wondering how his school that that's had a lot of success in baseball um can look this way we also have the same issue with um you know it's not just for baseball it's for uh freshman and jv boys and girls soccer so you're talking about 80 to 100 kids there in the fall um you know they use the field for for sub varsity practices and games um so it gets a lot of use by by our athletes uh the district also spends quite a bit of money um you know seeding the field we had the geese police which is at which is uh a company that comes with dogs and chases the police so we're spending money there we're spending money on overtime um many times on a saturday morning we have you know i'll meet the grounds guys there at 7 or 8 a.m they're trying to pump the field they're trying to dry the field um they're putting quick dry down they're putting extra clay down you know they're really working hard but there's nothing that they can do to get that field playable so i think that you know our kids have missed out on a lot of opportunities um turfing the field it's certainly the right time it's definitely the right time when the state is going to pick up a third um so that's all i have on that field thank you mr malahi address the weight room now mr rosen um yeah sure i'll ask your questions in a little bit go ahead okay um excuse me for one second so we're trying to trying to do this with the two kids in the house it's not easy i apologize um the we down at the stadium we've got um a field house where we where we lift weights and it's it's um you know it's used for football it's used for two seasons of track and you're talking about hundreds of kids um we've gotten to the point where our programs have become so successful that we we're attracting a lot of kids you know football typically has between 85 and 100 kids a track program uh when you combine boys and girls can easily be 140 to 160 kids many of them pretty much all of them use the weight room at some point so you know we spent we spend more time trying to schedule the weight room between those programs and and again it's used it's used year round um you know right now during cove but obviously we're not using it because of uh you know the various regulations but you're talking about the the strength of our programs you're talking about you know the bigger and the faster the stronger your athletes are obviously the better your programs are so what we've done with this weight room which is clearly obsolete um way too small for for a school hour size i think we're giving ourselves now the opportunity if this referendum passes to really provide our our athletes with a real experience a real athletic experience and prepare them for college and mr if i could just add to that the uh cost of the of the weight room project is 0.3 of this entire referendum uh which is important the this this whole athletic piece is a very small small part of the total cost of the referendum but does impact so many of our of our kids so i think that's important for the community to to know um okay mr rose do we have any questions or mr hilly did you have something else you wanted to add we do have about two questions um they may be they may have been uh partially answered by both mr healey and mr malahi but i will ask them this question comes in it says i don't consider sports facilities to be a necessity why is a terp field and weight room included in this proposal yeah i think uh it's a it's a it's a great question and that's what we talked about it's not an athletic upgrade for us it's a facilities upgrade the fact that the 1300 students at woodrow are able to use this on a daily basis throughout the course of the year is huge for us we don't have to worry about the geese and as mr malaya said we have the geese police that come it's very expensive service that field has become a landing pad for the geese um just going on the field and having 200 300 students move around on that field coming back into the building becomes a huge sanitation issue because then we're cleaning up the hallways with all the geese droppings that was now brought into the school um like i said when it rains we can't use that field for weeks one of my first years at woodrow we had rain at the beginning of june and we weren't able to have our final field day two weeks later because the rain was just too much the field couldn't handle it it's a huge issue put aside the sports postponements not being able to use that field weeks on end is a huge imposition for our school especially when we're loading all these students into the gyms and we don't have that facility to go outside especially in the covet era to get outside to get some fresh air i think it's just so critically important so that's the misconception everyone believes that this is an athletic upgrade they see a turf field and they associate that with athletics it's not an athletic upgrade it's a facilities upgrade and it benefits the entire community at woodrow and during the course of a student's career in clifton public schools that field is going to be used by half the students in clifton as they come to either woodrow or christopher so it's a it's a great it's a great item for us if we're able to have this referendum end up being improved all right thank you mr healey i'd like to add something to that too is also as your programs grow it's an integral part of your program in your in your community and your school but if you look at you know that the district over the years has been very innovative and using spaces for those for those facilities like your weight room in areas that were never intended to be a weight room um very creative um but you reach a point where you have to look is it is it crowded as it's safe is it that so you're doing a very good job uh cannibalizing old spaces to make that work but you've reached a point in time with the program and the elements that you're providing your students in your community to have a proper safe place and that required a very modest addition to accommodate that thank you for that you know it's also been my position as my 13th year as an athletic director i prior to that i spent eight years as a as a head coach and a teacher but it's always been my philosophy and uh you know it's now become the philosophy of the clifton athletic department that athletics is an extension of the classroom so to say that something was purely athletic you know we remind our kids all the time that that those student athletes remind our our coaches that they're teachers first um so you know i think that's an important that's a really important part of this project and it also hits a large amount of numbers you know we have just under 3 000 kids at clifton in high school and on a typical year we have between 1 000 and 25 and 1100 athletes so over a third of our over a third of our student population um is athletes and again a hundred percent of our population takes phys ed so you know this is something that really that really reaches quite a few uh people we also run camps out you know as far as the woodrow field goes uh we run soccer camps and baseball camps which are huge they're very important you know obviously for the kids and the parents of clifton uh residents but you know it's also really important to our feeder program it's important that our coaches meet the kids at an early age and our coaches and our kids meet our coaches at an early age and um you know those programs have been really successful and it's unfortunate because many times those those camps in the rain get moved into the woodrow wilson gymnasium so it would be great to be able to have them outdoors um you know where they belong i think it would it would help everybody thank you gentlemen mr rose if i could just add i think it's i know we've pointed this out but the state also believes as this is an educational facility as they are putting money um from the referendum which they rarely do for you know athletic upgrades like this that we're speaking about i know money and architects talk about this too um we're getting a discount here you know they're the state is deemed that these are you know bona fide educational facilities that we can receive money for um and again i know dr robertosi mentioned it i think this is less than one percent of the entire referendum that we're talking about and it benefits so many students across clifton mr rose one more question it was answered but i do want to um i do want to mention it this was how many student how many students are athletes it sounds like we're making a big changes for a small percentage this was already answered mr malay he did answer that but if you want to expand upon it that's fine yeah no i think just to echo you know you know mr healey and dr robertosi that again less than one percent of this project is going to go um just an hour in our case to one third of the high school's population actually more than a third of the high school's population so it does it is a very far reaching project thank you i do have one more question uh regarding the um the gyms and this may be best suited for mr dekara are you going to improve the air quality for both gyms yes as part of the as i mentioned uh earlier in the first segment um part of the uh hvac upgrades is your what we call course spaces which are your auditoriums your cafeterias and your gymnasiums so they they're serviced generally by rooftop units the mechanical systems are on the roof and then they're they're ducted into the spaces uh and those those would be included thank you mr de cara and dr robert tosie that is that concludes the questions for that segment thank you uh mr malahi mr healey mr de cara mr rose i want to remind those watching that you can send your questions please email your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net we will do our best to answer all those questions tonight and continue responding after tonight's event at this time we're going to move into what might be uh could be the most eye-opening part of our community forum uh we've heard a lot of information from our our experts uh and from our administration uh but we want to be sure that we hear from the people who are on the front lines every day and that's our teachers and our students who utilize our buildings each day so with us tonight we have two uh wonderful students max rubin who's a senior and mariam gabriel who's a freshman also joining us tonight uh megan graziano a clifton high school science teacher as mentioned earlier the passaic county the reigning passaic county teacher of the year dana murdoch who is a bsi teacher at school 12 and also a parent in our district so she'll bring [Music] that perspective to the discussion and magdalena rotillo uh also a grade four teacher and parent at school 13.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
the world has been hit by covid and it's affected us for about a little it's we're coming up to a little over a year now and we've had lockdowns and quarantines and music therapy was a way people come back to them but it did obviously have those people that did not use music therapy and those people that possibly couldn't have finded it and here we have a study by the cdc in late june of 2020 40 of us adults reported struggling with mental health or substance abuse and within those we have 31 percent with anxiety and depression symptoms 13 percent started or increased substance abuse 26 with trauma or stressor related disorder symptoms and possibly one of the most shocking 11 seriously considered suicide so this was done by the cdc this was only in late june of 2020. this number has frequent this number has obviously gone up since then but we have to think of ways to combat this and we have to find ways to fight this and one of the ways that people have been doing that is with music therapy once again in a study by npr and therapist filipio giordano music therapy was used with frontline workers and doctors and quote it reduced the stress and improved the well-being of those people so we can see by the studies before and right here that music therapy works and this study was actually conducted in february of so it's a fairly recent study and not only do we have covert distractions but we have things such as news distracting us and it's not just locally but it's around the world bbc world service npr cbc which is a canadian news channel euro news douche well fox news and some more well-known ones to us locally in massachusetts univision rtp and global we find ourselves listening to these things and the things we hear on them we may agree with or we may not but it usually causes a lot of stress as especially in the news recently there have been a lot of stressful events but one thing that i ask you is that you tune out with the news and you tune into music you tune into the serenity you tune into the peace and you tune into the hope you can we you as a person can come together with your friends with your family come together as a world one global community and get through this together because if we band together we are unstoppable we just all must find a way to get through this and one of those is with music and right now you're listening to arabesque number one but [Music] that is one of the many ways that we can get through this and this is how we must move forward one step at a time thank you okay for our next presenter our next tedx dha's presenter is jacqueline minlin jackie is a senior at dhs whose futures plans are to attend the university of new haven to study criminal justice jackie plans to focus her studies on criminal analysis jackie's part of the casting crew of dhs theater company and is also vice presidents of her jewish youth group hanid usy she is also a cheerleader coach for dyfl please welcome jacqueline minlin as she presents a look at mental health [Music] mental health everyone has it whether it's good or bad we all have mental health mental health is directly defined as a person's condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being and since the pandemic has started mental health has the struggle with mental health has increased astronomically mental health first aid is a major help in helping those who are struggling with mental health some of the things that you learn when learning mental health first aid is the risk factors some risk factors include genetics those who suffer from depression anxiety schizophrenia bipolar disorder things like that can get passed down to their offspring so that's a major risk factor if you have mental health do you want to have kids do you want to risk that another thing that you learn when doing mental health training is how to assist you learn how to listen you learn how to validate those who are struggling and you learn the hotlines you learn the numbers you learn what to provide for those depending on what you're struggling with and you also know the warning slides which i will address in the next sign some warning signs of suicide and suicidal thoughts are talks of suicide in today's society it's completely common for teens and youth to joke about suicide whether it be through snapchat instagram ticktalk we either make jokes about it on posts or comment on posts and it's just completely pushed away a teen can post on their snapchat private story i've had such a bad day i want to kill myself and we all overlook it as if it's nothing but this is a warning sign thoughts like these are warning signs and it's something that we need to pay more attention to hopelessness another feeling a feeling of hopelessness is a huge warning sign for thoughts of suicide during kovid a lot of our seniors are getting their thoughts of graduation taken away our prom taken away our last homecomings our final hockey games football games and that provides us with a feeling of hopelessness it's hard withdrawing from loved ones it's very common for many who are struggling with mental health to withdraw themselves from loved ones they may not go to social activity events they may withdraw from their extracurricular activities they may stop using their phones delete their snapchats delete all their social media stop texting their friends and that's a major warning sign mood changes changing from being happy to being sad being tired all the time to being energetic all the time sleep deprivation all of those things are major warning signs now you may be wondering how can i help my friend who is struggling how can i help my sister who is struggling from my personal experience the major way to help is just by listening validating no matter how big or small someone's struggle may be to you it's big to them and all that they need is to feel validated in their emotions to feel that they can feel the way that they feel also providing information whether it be hotlines therapists ways to get help any of those professional help doctors guidance counselors which i'll discuss in the next slide teachers any of the above are major help here at dhs we have guidance counselors and we have social workers if you're struggling you can reach out to miss heath mr mr mcgrath miss fitzgerald mr wright or our social workers miss thomas miss callahan or miss no khan from my personal experience i personally reached out to our teachers when the pandemic hit i felt extremely alone i didn't know what to do with myself i'm outgoing i talk to everybody and anybody i make friends with 50 year olds at target so not being able to see people that took a hit on me and the way i solved that was by emailing the teachers i loved the most i emailed miss pavlik and i emailed miss lassie and i said hey can we set up a zoom call can we set up a google classroom meet i just need to talk to somebody and of course they both were completely willing i spent hours talking to ms pavlick about what was going on in my personal life i spent hours talking to her and just ranting to her about all the silly drama going on in my life and i just talked to her like she was my friend and she was there for me when i needed her and she also was able to provide me with sources throughout the school miss lassie also took a hit she loves her students anybody who's had miss lassie knows she loves her students it is why she does this job not being able to see her students was a major hit for her and so by connecting with her to help myself i feel as though i helped her too and i think that everybody can benefit from reaching out to a teacher and making those connections since the pandemic hit cdc has reported that anxiety and depression rates have gone up by 31 substance abuse so nicotine alcohol marijuana that's all gone up by 13 and suicide and suicidal thoughts have gone up by 11 percent in america suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death so here's what puzzles me the most why do we care about physical health so much more than mental health why is it that when a kid falls we immediately grab the antibiotics grab the band-aids slap it on and let them heal why is it that when we're growing up drink at least eight ounces of water a day make sure you're eating three meals a day you're always taking care of your mental health your physical health why is it that it's so much more difficult to reach out and get a therapist why is it shamed upon to get put on antidepressants why is that a bad thing why is it that we teach our youth that your physical health is important but the second your mental health comes into play you'll be fine it's just a bad day you're just you're just sad right now why is that the situation your life matters your mental health matters recently someone i love dearly tried to take their own life they were put into a mental hospital they almost didn't make it someone i know someone in my life this has happened to me personally and this isn't the first time and if i just thought about mental health and mental health first aid a little bit more i could have been there to help but i wasn't and that's okay it's not my fault this took a toll on me this set me back this experience you know i stopped doing my schoolwork i started failing a couple classes i almost didn't have this ted talk ready and but in sentence for her i pushed myself to get better i pushed myself to do what i needed to do in her name while she's okay now that experience will live with me for the rest of my life and you may be wondering about my story why am i up here talking to you about mental health what is my credibility i've struggled with anxiety and depression since the fifth grade i faced a major move put me into a depressive state i was probably one of the worst fifth grade students you'd ever seen and i've struggled with eating disorders i have struggled with ptsd i've struggled with it all i finally reached out for help when the pandemic hit i finally realized that enough was enough and i finally reached out to my teachers ms pavlick and miss lassie who then said hey maybe talking to your doctor isn't the worst idea maybe you should talk to your therapist and i finally got put on three different antidepressants and i actually have my first meeting with my therapist on march 22 which is a huge goal for me so finish that shampoo and conditioner at the same time finish your toothpaste in your mouthwash at the exact same time finish a chapstick without losing it pet all of the dogs and the cats and all the animals in the world there's so much more to this life and this is how we're moving forward one step at a time thank you [Music] thank you jackie for presenting such an important topic to our presentation here our next tedx dhs presenter is faiza achilova faisa is a junior here at dartmouth high and this is her second tedx dhs presentation and we are excited to have her joining us again faizal loves the violin and fencing and plans to measure an esteemed area upon graduation but dreams of working for doctors with our borders and helping to develop in countries she is passionate about the importance of steam since it combines the study of humanities and science and leads to a more rounded future learners please welcome faisal achillova as she presents why the world needs steam as the world and society races towards new innovations technologies and creations we're turning a blind eye to the further implication it has on the fabric of our society and how it cultivates systemic racism on how it cultivates discrimination now our lives are quite literally being engineered so there's this portrayal of this fantastical facade of this modernized world well underneath there's so much more there's so much bias there's so much racism there's so many problems and what we need is steam in order to tackle these problems we need the um we need to emphasize the importance of humanities in the arts into science technology engineering and mathematics therefore steam so now i want to talk to you about this man here his name is jul robert julian bortchock williams so one day he was at work and he received a phone call and a guy was saying telling him that he was going to be arrested so to come down to the police station so i don't know about you but i wasn't aware that police officer just hit you up and asked you to come down and get arrested so obviously he thought i was a prank but on the day he came home and upon driving up to his driveway two police officers followed he was arrested and handcuffed on the spot his wife meanwhile and two young daughters for watching this all take place he asks them sir why why am i being arrested and they reply and i quote larceny and a felony warrant so his wife asks them where are you taking him they respond google it so much help right so anyways he gets to the police station he is interrogated for hours and stays there overnight eventually the police officers showed him this photo this is a surveillance photo taken from a shoplifting incident at a nearby boutique they asked him is this you in the photo and he replies do you think all black men look the same so no of course this wasn't him and i don't know about you but i cannot distinguish any discernable features from this photo so how is it that they connected shoot two seemingly unconnected photog photographs the answer is simple facial recognition technology now facial recognition softwares are increasingly increasingly becoming more common using the criminal justice system but here's a problem technology does what we tell them to do we're in control right and there lies the problem humans are the epicenter of bias and bias driven data no surprise that softwares are similarly driven now i'm going to come out to this point later but the conclusion of this anecdote is that it illustrates and exemplifies not just the racism and just and just utter utter disrespect to robert by the law of enforcement it shows the problems in the system itself in technological context now this system is severely flawed but here's the question who is the wii who are the creators behind these softwares right who are the engineers and computer scientists creating these and here's the here's the simple answer is behind most of this is generally predominantly white men to put this into quantitative context nsf found in 2015 that 49 of workers in stem were white males while black men black women hispanic men hispanic women totaled to about maybe 10 while asian men and women accounted for so now this we're seeing so facial recognition technology tends to target or is unable to discern the features of black individuals but yet the creators are predominantly white it's kind of interesting right i don't know so anyways to kind of talk about the topic i'm going to show you this hypothetical situation between two candidates so let's say you're in charge of hiring the new director for the board of education in massachusetts so you have two candidates you have a candidate a and candidate b so canada a has grown up her whole life in a low income middle class household and she's attended public schools her whole life she's worked in low-income communities and public schools so she has experience right can it be on the other hand she has grown up in a higher income family she's attended private schools her whole life and does not have the same experience as candidate a now i'm not saying their credentials are different i'm not saying one is about a person the other but i'm asking you if you wanted to tackle the issues in the public school system who would you choose threw up to me i would hire candidate a why well i want someone who's going to understand the issues at hand connect with the students connect with the people right and just give a better and broader understanding of the problems we're facing now why is this applied to everything why isn't this applied to science so if these technologies are targeting a specific group why do we lack so much diversity and not just that so many of these workers are so divided into their own fields and they don't explore other ones now if we had a diverse and well-rounded group i feel like this could be very different i'm gonna expand on this point but first how does this relate to steam and like how how does any of the things i said relate to the arts and the humanities well the a as i said previously stands for arts so steam stands for science technology engineering arts and mathematics we're seeing now more than ever the importance of incorporating the humanities and the arts into our education system and the importance of interdisciplinary studies now the humanities allows us to better understand the world the societies cultures religions around us it allows us to manifest deeper thinking and empathy right it builds creative thinkers understanding people um and isn't that what the world needs isn't that what science needs right now the well-rounded people the people that understand their fellow people so policy makers scientists engineers or let's say civil rights activists it doesn't have to be so divided into two groups right oh stem versus the arts or let's say like an ethics professor versus a biology professor we should immerse ourselves in what's considered unconventional knowledge right we should instead of focusing so much on core curriculum classes that are really important but also emphasize the arts right so make it instead of so dichotomous interdisciplinary we should shift our focus beyond these and have a chance for balance and perspective because that's what's necessary for all fields now before we even sensationalize the idea of stem people who are already anticipating the impact the lack of arts and science would have on the world now when we think of let's say a really quote smart person we think yeah this girl or guy super super nerdy so good at science or we think yeah this person is a really great writer like huge book nerd we don't tend to correlate the two we don't say wow this mit student is actually studying biochemical engineering but he's also majoring in ethics but if you think about it the ethics could really help him in the field he's planning on pursuing so in 1959 um this man here charles p snow a british novelist physicist and chemist delivered a famously controversial lecture and basically what he talked about was this divide between the science and literary world so basically what he said was that um scientists proudly can't quote shakespeare while literary nerds let's say can't tell you the second law of thermodynamics now i'm going to share some information and examples pertaining to the lack of morality and the issues regarding racism and discrimination in a.i but i want you to keep in mind how could this be different if we did incorporate the arts and humanities and did emphasize steam so the ai and the justice system so now we're seeing more than ever the incorporation of artificial intelligence and technology into the criminal justice system especially when it comes to sentencing individuals and determining how long they'll serve and whether or not they're more likely to commit a crime in the future so these are all based off of data and if we know anything about data it's that it's so biased driven right it tells it they take what we give them so in here the data is actually being weaponized against black communities and i'm not saying these systems are using race right they're not saying okay you're black you are gonna sense you're gonna you're gonna spend more time in jail it's way more complicated than that they look at where you live how much money you make and those tend to be communities that have greater popular that have greater densities of black individuals so in 2013 in wisconsin a man named paul zilley stole a lawn mower so we stole a lawn mower and he pleaded guilty so they had this deal with the judge right but the judge turned to a software system called compass which was going to determine okay how long should he serve and is he likely to commit a future crime so this compass system it ranks you from 1 to 10 of likeliness to recommit a crime and the severity of the crime so zilli was found to actually be more likely to commit an extremely violent crime for stealing a lawnmower all right so the sentence was originally one years and this went up to two years and you can think oh it's only it's only one year but any extra day in prison is already so much more treachery to endure in our current system it's heart-wrenching to think that his blackness may have contributed to this or possibly his residency or how much he made now i want you to recon i want you to reconsider the idea of um robert and his situation with his false arrest so now imagine that the software used for um the determination of his photo and the surveillance photo was actually curated by a very diverse team right so it included majorly black individuals it included ethicists it included professors of sociology and included professors of ethics and it and it um also included policy makers it included activists and they all came together and made this system and actually he was never falsely arrested so imagine that right the thing is we don't we don't need to imagine it it doesn't have to be imagination it can be real and i'm not saying all policy makers should be scientists we're all scientists should be policymakers but rather we need to include the we have to include the world of policy into the world of science and really think about the social impact it has on with the projects i've mentioned we should credibly think about and discuss the impacts on the rest of the world we need people we need well-rounded people right we need interdisciplinary studies we need these scientists to also have a passion and learn about the humanities we need empathetic thinkers we need understanding people creative thinkers so these problems don't keep reoccurring right this racism and discrimination will only go farther unless we actually do something to stop it unless we actively try to change something and this starts with our education it starts with the young kids our future leaders right from a young age we need to we need to say steam steam steam the arts we need to vigorously train and tell students to also embrace the humanities to embrace the arts and pursue what they want to pursue we need to create these well-rounded people we must mainstream the idea that ethics and responsibility when exploring fields such as science and technology are so important and the arts and humanities offer us a door to these and solutions to the problems now this isn't just food for thought right humanities are not just food for thought there's so much more they're an extension to more nuanced thinking understanding thinking that we need in science right now so this thing i talked about today i think you just could go in one year and out the other but i want you to know that we say oh one person can't make a difference but if you think about one one person things the reason we have our iphones today is because of one person's idea the reason we have our laptop is because of one person's idea it takes only one person one person to make an impact any of us any of us could go on to do something so great right it takes one person and that creates such a cascading effect so we shouldn't have this like constricting idea that i can't do anything because you can do something because it all starts with you so i implore you to explore steam and really think about how we can all incorporate the humanities into our daily lives as we go on to college right what can we do so please let's plow forward with steam thank you [Music] thank you faiza for such an important topic that is happening now and will be important for our future so we like to thank our presenters for this period also we want to let you know that you can view these ted talks throughout the day and in future days coming or using the same links there will be available to you to watch [Music] later on as well okay so just use the same links for to view the ted talks thank you [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hello dhs and welcome back to the third period presentation of our dhs tedx event i'm mrs true and mrs souza and i are happy to welcome you to this event this is our sixth tedx dhs event and we are thrilled to present this exciting event here at dartmouth high school this is an independently organized event this year it is being broadcast via live stream by the dhs tv media production and this change obviously is a change from our previous format for those of you who have participated where we are normally in front of a live studio audience our live streamed event along with the participants wearing masks have been an update that we have put into place in order to meet covid19 standards our theme this year is sociology moving forward one step at a time students from cohorts v will be presenting various topics that are engaging and stem from their personal passions these students have volunteered their time to this group and diligently prepared presentations to enlighten you on various topics since you may be new to ted you may be wondering who's this ted guy well i'm here to tell you there isn't really a ted guy instead ted is an acronym for technology oops technology entertainment and design so therefore the ted organization has covered many ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see the same diversity in the topics being presented to you here today our first presenter for the third period presentations is emma fernandez emma fernandes is a junior here at dartmouth high school she is a member of the dartmouth high school theater company and plays the violin emma has chosen her topic on portuguese culture because her grandparents have relayed various stories to her about their personal immigrant experience and she has wanted to delve deeper into what brought them here to the south coast region please welcome emma fernandez as she presents portuguese culture and politics cramming your life's belongings into a bag choosing and deciding which part of your life is valuable valuable enough to keep and bring into the new world you're looking out not just for yourself but for the little one that soon will arrive you're looking out for a place with more potential a place where you can grow and prosper you want your child to grow up not having to worry about when their next meal will be not having to worry about sharing a single size house with 13 siblings and not having to worry about using their imagination when playing with vegetables pretending those vegetables are dolls you're moving to america the land of the free and the brave a foreign place where foreign sounds come from people's mouths the story of my grandparents i love to tell it but even more hear it i've been hearing this story since i was old enough to understand the older i got the more i wanted to know i bombarded them with questions every time i visit the one that always seemed to pull me was why here my grandparents had the whole united states to pick from but like many others they choose to build their life in new england but nevertheless she answers my question she said that she knew a portuguese household that would sponsor them in america to immigrate to america immigrants had to had a family that would sponsor them this sponsor family was responsible for all the money the housing and would help the immigrant families establish a life in their new house i further had wondered why there was such a large community of portuguese people in the new england area well have you heard of the whaling industry people have been wailing for thousands of years but in the 11th century portuguese people started to get involved in the whaling industry hunting and trading products like blubber and meat over time whales migrated from portugal shores to the atlantic islands of azores madera and cape verde wales continued to migrate and whalers continued to follow whales continued the migration led the portuguese whalers to north america but particularly the island of nantucket as it was located close to the whale the whale migration routes but in the 18th century 1800 sorry nantucket shower harbor and upstroking ups structuring sand bars and dangerous shore led to the decline of the whaling port in nantucket and it was later focused in new bedford massachusetts in 1830 new bedford became the leading port making it become the main focus of portuguese immigration whaling in the united states hit its peak in 1870 and 1880s with the portuguese immigrants not only arriving at new bedford but also traveling to the west coast traveling to california and hawaii most of the portuguese immigrants had been sailors on the whaling ships but eventually settled in a number of coastal stations where migrant whales were spotted and pursued during the last two decades of the 19th century the whaling industry diminished as fossil fuels became more reliable than whale oil by 1971 the u.s officially outlawed whaling industrial became the new forefront of portuguese immigration and urbanization growth in the 2 2018 report by the world atlas the states with the largest portuguese population is as follows california massachusetts rhode island new jersey florida new york connecticut and hawaii in the same world atlas report states california is ranked the highest population of portuguese americans home to 346 thousand portuguese americans portuguese have been arriving in california abroad american whaling ships the portuguese have traditionally preferred to follow articulature pursuits where they are especially active in the state's dairy industry in san jose in the tuna industry and san diego california captures the culture of the portuguese people that immigrated there with local portuguese community activities such as the holy ghost festivals and the portuguese cultural center the report states that hawaii had a population of 48 48 000 portuguese americans in the 1800s hawaii had a large scale of production of sugar which required many workers which require many workers but due to the western diseases the hawaiian population had just had decreased by 1870 there was already approximately 400 portuguese in hawaii who had left whaling ships to establish a life primarily in our culture one of them is mr pereira a well-respected owner of the dry goods store recommended that the hawaiian government bring portuguese workers and their families to the hawaiian government bring their families from madeira as they were skilled and working in the fields he then agreed to recruit workers that were skilled and working in the field recruit to work workers and arranged for their transportation mr pereira agreed to represent the portuguese when they landed in hawaii massachusetts is home to the second highest population of portuguese americans with a total population of 296 thousand the portuguese culture has drastically mixed into massachusetts to the extent that portuguese is the second most spoken language in the state portuguese immigration increased in the 1900s new immigrants were attracted by employment in the textile factories and in industrial towns of southern eastern new england new before provided many industrial employment but other large portuguese communities developed around the textile factories such as fall river and providence in 1960s we saw a vast number of immigration coming to massachusetts from mainland portugal the azores madera and cape ford some of the increasing numbers of immigration were due to the cause of devastating volcano eruption in fayal and the portuguese dictatorship under antonio salazar later in the 1990s and early 2000s there was an increase of brazilian people immigrating to the area many of the portuguese immigrants planted roots and close-knit communities where they will run their businesses among themselves and observe cultural festivals that reflect their connections to their homeland as many of you may know there's a thing that goes on an annual thing that goes on every year called the madeira feast it is one of the most popular festivals in the portuguese community the madeira feast is some may know it is the portuguese feast of the blasted sacrament it's the biggest event in new bedford every year with this year being the hundredth and sixth annual celebration as the name says the feast originates from adera a portuguese island off the coast of africa in 1950 formendarian immigrants wanted to create the festival for their homeland with a four-day celebration of entertainment a carnival a parade and a 5k race and of course food as the as the feast without food in the portuguese culture is unheard of portuguese people have a rich culinary culture living in this region you must have heard molosadas that fried dough with all the sugar poured on top well portuguese americans influenced the way the land we have countless portuguese restaurants that serve traditional dishes such as chicken alajana and caldovid there are many aspects of the region that the portuguese have influenced like food education and the creation of the portuguese american caucus established in 1995.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we have to complement not only our hr director terry cavanaugh who has been our vaccination coordinator and we're just so proud of her and thankful for all of her efforts in collaboration with the health department and mrs farrell from the health department who's been incredible along with dr sullivan to set up um the clinics for our educators we have eight clinics now set up three this week three next week and then the two follow-ups for second dose of the moderna vaccine and we also have a choice between moderna and johnson and johnson so i mean it's just been incredible what the health department has done and for those who aren't familiar terry and i shared with all of the staff at a q a session last thursday afternoon that for the most part our health department in a lot of ways especially the clinics that are being run in town are with volunteer staff many retired nurses and volunteer medical professionals that come in to do all this work and so it's just it's been an incredible effort we're just so proud of everyone we're so pleased and really the sense of relief on all of the staff uh has been amazing and this staff also includes coaches and uh bus drivers and all the folks that work with us in addition to that the governor's orders are that it's child care workers as well in town so we're really you know putting a full effort into making sure we can keep schools open uh what's nice about once we're vaccinated my understanding is that once you're vaccinated um and the time goes by where you develop that um immunity if you're exposed you do not have to be quarantined and so what happens there is that's that big staffing issue we've had with keeping the schools open so obviously we want to be protected keep our staff safe but then also be able to be physically present and not quarantined so we can keep the schools open so just a lot of great news there but i remind everyone and i know the principals reminded staff uh at the faculty meetings today that uh there's no time to take the pedal uh to take the foot off the pedal in terms of mitigation strategies we still need to distance we need to wear our masks and we need to practice uh tremendous hygiene um while we get through the vaccination process over the next uh i guess couple of months it'll be so anyway that is is uh uh all about vaccinations in a nutshell we're really excited and then the next one is another exciting opportunity mrs wygonic and her team in the special education department uh have conducted a couple of parent training sessions and they have several more scheduled for the remainder of the spring um and they've been well attended and they are actually recorded the webinars that they do with these training sessions for parents and so those are posted on our website as well if anybody wants to avail themselves to uh to view those so we're really thankful for the special education department and the team that puts those webinars on and excuse me again you can go on our website uh under the special education department under the parent resources and and find those there so we're excited about a lot of good news that's going on there truly is a light at the end of the tunnel it has been as of next week the end of next week it'll be one full year we've been dealing with the pandemic and uh i'm thankful to everybody for helping us all stick together and get through this so that's my report rosa thank you any questions all right thank you thank you uh let's move on to subcommittee reports and first we have policy and communications okay um our last meeting um on i think it was february 17th um yep was really pretty much to talk about the policy that we have for you tonight for a first read this is um i'll talk about it more later but it's an equity and diversity policy that's brand new for us so we really spent um the bulk of the meeting talking about that we talked a little bit about um dr barrill's covid communications and the need for a new naming system once he gets up to update z um which will be coming up by the end of the month talked about whether it should be double a double b big a little a um but uh and then we had just a brief discussion about budget communications and the need for um a budget flyer sometime around april once the board of finance votes on a budget so that was pretty much it for policy and communications thank you any questions for debbie all right let's move on to cape is jen here oh there sorry rose i'm gonna move my my internet is in that one particular room is giving me a little bit of trouble so gotta go hold on just a sec okay i'm ready sorry about that okay so we had am i coming across okay you can hear me okay can you hear me rosa yes yes yes okay sorry okay so um we had a meeting with uh arcade committee um which was back on february 18th and we had two main presentations the first one was from our teacher librarians from all the different schools and it was really an interesting update they gave us a bit of a presentation on what they're doing in terms of library audit work in terms of equity efforts and looking through their collections and doing some training and really working as a pre-k to 12 team to really analyze the text and the media that we have available to students to make sure that we have a real cohesive uh strategic approach to equity and inclusion so that was really great it was a super professional presentation and then we heard from uh mark and kevin uh about some world language textbooks um that they that are currently in the proposal um they are needed to support the french program um and we recommended the support of that proposal and then lastly uh mark gave an initial presentation and that was also um with um shannon hungaria from the guidance department started to discuss the concept of eliminating class rank at brookfield high school and he they began by reviewing the data that really according to colleges it's not something that's valued by colleges it was very low uh on a list of 10 things it was you know almost towards the bottom and so it's no longer a clear criteria for decision making by colleges and some colleges you know don't look at it at all and a lot of high schools particularly in our area and the larger maybe tri-state area have already eliminated it so we're a little bit behind in this particular reform this was just an initial discussion at this topic he wasn't ready to make a formal recommendation and as committee members we were in support of continuing to discuss that issue further and that's it okay thank you any questions for jen all right let's move on to the consent agenda i will move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires retirements and resignations second thanks joy all in favor okay thanks that's it can i just have a quick minute to acknowledge lorna bufkin who has announced her retirement after 21 years of service as a teacher reading teacher and most recently she's been an assignment in our pre-k program uh just a wonderful educator who's given so much to our community and to our students and uh just want to take a moment and thank her and wish her well uh for 21 incredible years so lorna bless you and good luck for the rest of this school year and into your future endeavors thank you thank you okay in new business the first item we have is policy and equity and diversity policy i i will make a motion that the board approve the new policy number 0523 equity and diversity for a first reading as recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee second thanks joy um debbie did you want to add anything specifically to this at at this point or do you think i mean it's it's really pretty self-explanatory um the only thing i wanted to say is this is a brand new policy for us we didn't have an equity in diversity policy before and it's not required but it is recommended by cabe and so we feel strongly that it's you know it's something that is important to include in our policies so you'll see it's it's very clear but it really just [Music] ensures that we remain focused on closing the opportunity gap and creating learning communities that provide support and programs for all students and that includes curriculum recruiting of staff professional development um culture and environment and uh even things like discipline and suspensions and expulsions and things like that so i think it's pretty straightforward all right uh so for our first read all those in favor thank you that's unanimous all right um next we have a textbook adoption i will move that the board approved the new world language textbooks and materials to support the french program at bhs and the ap preparation in world language as recommended by assistant doc superintendent dr maureen ruby bhs principal mark bellanda and the cape subcommittee thank you and uh mr linda do you have a few words about that thanks joy okay now go ahead go ahead mark hold on if if you need me if mark needs me i could go into a little bit more detail from the cape committee about that particular recommendation i also have it open mark if it's not opening for you i just sent it again in an email but we can both talk about it if you would prefer i think mark is just frozen because he's not blinking yeah all right so you know what we can we can uh do you want to go jen or do you want me to go well mine would be a little bit more general in nature but the main thing that was presented to us was that the spanish textbooks have been updated um and from a review of the french textbooks it they are they were not at the proper level to be aligned with the quality of spanish so really the purpose of the new textbooks is to align the quality of resources between the french and the spanish i think that's the big picture takeaway yeah and additionally as seen i think you can see it on the screen now um the um there there's an issue with the the licensing so this is also a cost savings um move besides increasing the quality of the french textbooks to align with the quality of our new spanish um resources that we also get there's a also a financial benefit to doing this and the um current option that we have doesn't have an online component and one of the benefits this past year uh considering the situation that we've been in is that online component has been um very helpful for for teachers so the proposed um action is to make make this purchase of the online and physical textbook that has a it's a six-year license and it um has the alignment to the spanish program offerings it prepares students um very successfully um for the college and ap courses and um there it's already in the budget and i if who's ever running the slides if you go to slide two there's um some information right there basically what i was what i was talking about um the next thing that they spoke about that which is also um budgeted for is the um gaps that we have in um programming for the ap spanish course there's we don't have um any comprehensive opportunity for students to have simulated testing which is um something we all know that when students take the ap courses it's a different format to to the courses and the end goal is for students to be able to take that ap exam thus earning i have the potential for earning a college credit based on their score depending upon the university or college that they're going to whether they require a four or a five and so um we are not providing the same opportunity to the students that are in the spanish ap classes uh that that students in other um disciplines mark your back i'll let you take over if you want um but they're the the students are not having the same opportunity as students in other ap courses so this is the the next slide shows what the proposed action is um which is to purchase this the um ap spanish language and culture exam preparation resource and mark yes well i apologize for that a little light to go to my phone i'm not sure what was going on on my computer so i apologize um but uh it sounds like you pretty much hit everything up i mean one of the the big pieces is we need this resource to support our advanced level uh ap students and i know maureen has gone through i can see the the four slides that kevin and i presented uh a couple weeks ago um you know it really aligns better with what the experience that our ap students uh need uh and so they have the appropriate resources um one of the things i certainly will mention i'm not sure if she did um but the the money is budgeted already for 21.22 and that should show up at the slides so that's a good thing uh and that we're not asking for more money it's already there when we're ready to move forward um you know once the budget gets approved so that's that's a positive step in the right direction it's really good for us in terms of the french program too to align it with our other language offerings so that we're more our curriculum is more robust our supports are more robust so and as uh jen mentioned uh after the presentation the um the cape committee members were in support of this and recommending it for full board approval so thank you are there any questions i don't have any questions anyone else all right jen got kicked out um she's trying to rejoin um [Music] but i believe we even you know she'll be back here in a minute but i think we can go ahead and uh and vote so we uh all in favor of this hi all right thank you that's unanimous but without jen i'm sure sure she supports it i mean she voted on the cave committee so i would say that yeah all right um moving on to old business we have to address the 2122 school calendar again um we do have a motion for that okay i will make a motion that the board adjusts the dates for the president's weekend for the 2021-2022 school year from february 14th and 15th to february 21st and 22nd 2022.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay so um kevin would you like to take it away absolutely um so good evening everyone um so this is the ambitious and um overwhelming agenda that rachel was talking about but honestly it's really not as bad as it looks right now um so first let me just just provide a little overview the the first three policies that you see at the top and number two um we have community relations and appeals um and these and then b we have instruction in special education 6171 and then policy 6159 instruction special education and these three policies are coming back for second read you might recall we had um i did not hear any objection or questions regarding being seated to special education policies but you know we continue to have our expertise with us um in case we had any questions with kelly online um you might recall joe britton did have a question or concern about a line that we had um in um community community relations and appeals so i recommend that we revisit that line in the policy and i will bring that to your attention when we circle back to a in number three for policies for consideration um this is and i i love telling stories like this so this is november 2019 um the board before previous to this one in committee approved the policies in front of you for first reading a through c and d through h and so a through c um and and this information is available for you and then the board in the community um these policies were approved by our board years ago i will show you some of them were improved as far back as 2008 uh but as part of the um policy audit these they have been renumbered and so this is really just the information for the board but since they are your bylaws all the policies are yours but particularly since they're your bylaws i thought you might want to see them and so you know quickly by selecting a link or you'll have an opportunity to review role of board members transaction of business conferences conventions and workshops again these are already approved by the board um no action required but i left them available for the board and for the policy committee to to kevin quick question did we get this document before uh yes so this isn't the agenda that i have it looks a little different but um cara did she copied and pasted mine but if you select the link um the link still works so it's so for example even in the pdf the link should still of course yeah yeah okay it should be the same content okay because the iteration i had only had one two abc three and four it didn't have any of this detail um she yeah she updated on tuesday i don't know if you may have printed out the monday version uh i've printed out the monday version because i always look at everything before no so friday was one and then it was updated i believe on monday oh okay that might be it okay no problem and then okay and then last but not least so the the actual policies um that i'm going to ask this group to to review this evening um is policies for consideration is when this is an attorney and this is appointing an attorney on behalf of the board um board representatives um we'll have an opportunity to review this reimbursement particularly for conferences um issues related to conflict of interest and then time place and notice of meetings um and i think this is the one in particular that i think rachel is afraid we might not have enough time to really um really dig in deep um so without further ado i will circle back to uh second reading uh for policies up here a b and c and i thought i would start with community relate community relations um and again you might recall um joe had had a question about this line so i highlighted it for the group complaints about the board policy should be directed to superintendent of schools complaints shall be in writing and signs they didn't know specific objections to the policies superintendent shall review any complaint and conduct whatever study of it or investigation he or she deems appropriate the superintendent shall then submit the complaint and his or her recommendation to the board we had added this link we modified this language a little bit and so just wondering how the committee would like to move forward on this leave it the way it is not sure i mean i'm fine with the the way it's written i think um the explanation given to joe at the board meeting was was um sufficient um and you know explained you know our conversation that we had at our original committee meeting um he also and i don't know how anybody else feels about that but um he also said you know uh he mentioned a time you know time wise for a turnaround of um you know action so i don't know if we want to put in language um i mean it could be simply just um the superintendent shall then submit the complaint and his her recommendation to the board in a timely fashion in a timely manner or within within 30 days from the complaint [Music] um i would be inclined to keep the the language we added last meeting but if you want to put in in a timely fashion promptly 30 days any any of those i i timely fashion probably gives a little bit more flexibility to the super depending on when we are i mean a complaint in july returning it in 30 days is irrelevant we're not there so um it makes sense to like you said in a timely fashion if people like that anyone else care to weigh in i i don't have any preference at all i think it's fine the way it's written it's fine the way it's written i agree i agree and i don't you know i mean if you want to add in you know saying some vague language but it doesn't hold us to anything so i'm not sure it even serves any function okay i'm fine with that i just wanted to open up the discussion um so i will ask for a motion um to um recommend this policy for a second reading so moved hate and seconded by joe all in favor hi hi hi great thank you and that number was that was i'm sorry that was 13 12.2 0.2 the next one is policy 6171 and again i did not hear any objections or questions or concerns um but just in case uh the committee had an interest in updating anything this is the same thing we saw at the last meeting committee meeting and the last board meeting correct yes i'm okay with b and c okay yes me too um yes so again i'll ask for a motion to bring both b and c then motion captain moved by catherine second by joe pregnant by joe all in favor aye hi thank you so we're good with a through c okay all right great so if it is okay i will take um rachel would you prefer that i um do a quick overview of a b and c that's being renumbered or go straight to the ones that are going to require action is it just the renumbering heaven and do we have a second we need to bring it to the full board for a second reading then from so so these three know um they just happen to be in our manual being renumbered um we actually in our committee we did not look to change anything we just literally just renumbered them these we looked at all of them for first read um and then i think we had discussed and i think we should talk about it this evening um how we want to move forward here i'm assuming we want to count this as the first reading yeah yes i think so so i don't i don't think we need to review the renumbered unless does anyone have any objections to that okay no objection okay great so let's let's continue to d then okay well i'm excited we might get through all of them could could somebody do me a favor and email me the agenda with the link i just went back to my agenda i had links for the ones we did last week but my where it says bylaws nine hundred nine thousand series it's not a hyperlink so i don't have the action thanks that's perfect oh perfect thank you that'll make it easy so rachel um we don't have to make a motion to um go for a second reading for the policies the bylaws 9000 series not a through c okay thank you oh i just i just gave you right show it should be fine awesome thank you very much perfect okay so i will open up policy nine one two five and i'll just give the committee a little update just so you aware previously the the pilot the next few policies that we're going to be looking at uh the previous committee had approved um this bylaw without the alternative language alternate language um i am going to undo the strikethrough so that you can also review this as a committee yourself and i will give let me take this out now just so you can see the language okay so i think as we read this you're gonna see that the bylaw is pretty consistent with what we are already doing and the board may appoint either on a full time or retain a basis and attorney or attorneys to serve as a school attorney and then it talks about the primary function of the attorney is to provide professional legal counsel and representation for the board and the superintendent here's the alternate language that was not accepted by the last committee and then this next paragraph was accepted by the last committee which is again pretty consistent with our practice now if i can go down this is the alternate language that was provided where did the alternate language come from uh so these two alternate language boxes joe were provided by cape because options and then some expectations of the attorney are below representing the board and legal proceedings of his or her written opinion on all legal questions and refer referred to him um or her by the danbury board of ed or the superintendent attend board meetings board of education's meeting conferences and other meetings as requested by the board superintendent aboard chair aboard committee fulfill such other legal duties as the danbury board of bed may assign and then sorry this again these are some alternate language that was offered that was not accepted previously i'll undo this now in this language it just kind of spells out the type of activities um the legal services could provide whereas up further it's at as we may see fit or as we want to assign them the non-stricken language that had been a previously approved looks fine doesn't look like there's anything in the language that had been stricken that's inherently better might be more kind more complicated right simpler seems to make more sense i mean any of the language in here is fine it's not like anything in here is bad um but what what what had been not stricken in the original draft for lack of a better term i think that language all works it seems i mean it seems fine to me and it looks not inconsistent with you know some of the background stuff that my firm has because we represent a public agency as well it's not that different than what we have okay and so for clarification this line everything in black was part of the original um that had been approved by the previous committee the two alternate languages in red um were not accepted by the previous committee i only thought on this one um and i know kate and i were probably on that original committee that did these so it's like we're we're you know doing double work unfortunately but it's nice to have other you know eyes on it true especially from a legal perspective um but i'm just curious if if there's um value in adding from the first alternate language the last sentence says the board reserves the right to obtain legal services outside of its designated attorney law firm as deemed appropriate i don't see me if i missed it please let me know but i don't see that in our approved language and i wonder if that's worth having there just for future board board members is all yeah it's like a fail safe just in case i mean it certainly doesn't hurt i mean i think the line in the first paragraph the board of education either on a full-time or retainer basis an attorney or attorneys to serve a school attorney that contemplates retention of more than one but if we want to include that language in there just to be clear kind of like in the last one where we make it clear we don't have to do anything it doesn't hurt there's no harm in adding that one sentence to the end of the previous paragraph but why would we do it are we are we going to sue the the attorney that we have already i mean we think it's more like a lack of confidence a lack of confidence maybe you hire somebody for this uh to serve in this capacity and you find that they're not uh operating the way you're you're holding another another level of expertise maybe depending on the situation i would read it as we're retaining instead of retaining the people that were retaining specialty counsel for a specialty issue because it you know i mean as it stands right now between kingdom and shipping and goodwin we pray have most of our bases covered but you could get something esoteric that comes down the road and you want to hire you know the pro from dover you're going to hire the the nationwide leading expert who's out of chicago to come here and be admitted that's really where that language would come in okay in that context it makes sense but wouldn't we be able to do it anyway yes yes i look at it just as like an educational you know just something to make other board members future board members aware that that's like you know i i wouldn't necessarily have known that if i you know had an experience you know something it's it's also cover to the public yeah it explains explains that we may we we don't have to use the people we've already hired we could hire somebody else for a one-off if we need to so i'll leave this line here add it on to the end of the first paragraph and re-strike all right okay so i think we can restrike that all over the ultimate language yeah yeah that alternate language there would make worse that if we didn't have kim in-house where our only council out out out of the office on a contract basis who was asking and then the attorney shall this language was in there before i don't know if it helps or hurt us one way or the other all right i think it's fine to leave it it's what they do right right and then strike out the alternate language okay okay okay so this is nine one two five i don't want to close it out until um you have your vote should we do a vote for any case that i'm sorry that's up to you i'm sorry i wasn't sure how you want to handle that this is a first reading now yes i i think that's how you you agreed you wanted to move forward yes okay so make them make a motion we approve for approved to send to the board for first reading 9125a second okay motion made by joe seconded by kate all in favor hi hi so moved excellent so the next one is um policy 9140 we actually have three statements to consider but they're all very short and frankly i don't think it's awful but quick and short and so sample a give you an opportunity to read this one it might be easier to pull this up they're all in separate pages right now but it might be easier to see it this way this is sample b so my thought on this is um the first one is more aligned with how we operate already we have you know the city um building committee for example where um i sit kathy i know you sat um so i think i think that tailors it more to us rather than um the second one which designates the superintendent as you know the official representative but i will open up the floor for any other comments first one makes sense to me the second two are written in such a way as the reason why people hate lawyers too the first one is much clearer and much simpler you know i'll just scroll down certainly amen and this is c i don't see off as much the first one is better yeah it's clearer it's simpler yeah okay any other thoughts comments okay so i will ask for a motion to bring more first i'll do the motion motion to accept p949140 board representatives as um example a is that right yes thank you catherine is there a second second becky hi sorry who second did that i did cassie thank you missed it okay and then the next policy is 9250 remuneration and reimbursement this one is also pretty straightforward a little longer but a little straightforward and there is alternate language also here for us to consider so i i hope you're not disappointed to learn this sorry and and then there is some language about reimbursement out of state there is some language here for out-of-state travel and in-state travel here i think it's pretty straightforward and some alternate language here for the committee to consider and then i'm sorry all of this was actually this is the only part that was alternate language one through six was part of the original oh really and i'll confirm i'll go back to the document but oh so the alter the alternate language is the alternate to the paragraph above it right okay oh well i'm sorry let me double check that yeah because it looks like yeah i see the coal in there there's a difference in that the the top part they're talking about what they consider reasonable expenditures versus you know specific uh it says legitimate costs you know and so i think that's why they're spelling it out underneath these are the specific things that you could reimburse for do you need do we need to be that specific because if the travels approved in the first place wouldn't wouldn't all of those things just be the normal incidentals to travel if we're approving the travel yes i think the only reason you might change something like this is if you were seeing a pattern of or you know an instance where somebody was um asking for reimbursement that was and granted reimbursement that was not reasonable i haven't heard a lot of uh incidents of standby board event members junketing places fancy so yeah i came my own way as it is i don't i don't uh i paid for my own fees my apologies one through six is part of the alternate language to consider so it sounds like we're okay with the original without the alternative um so i'll ask for a motion for first reading then it's all moved and there is a form right there is a form um they have to the formatting was i couldn't copy and paste because of the formatting i'm not sure what was wrong with it um so i i think i'm gonna have to print out a hard copy to get it in there um but like once this is overrated i can go back and see if i can pull the form up for everyone to see the form so the next one is 9273 conflict of interest and it's essentially a civility code for the board and almost like a statement so some boards actually have a statement on their website and as a member of the board of ed i will strive to improve education and to that end i will and then hear the following statements there is also an alternative at the bottom to consider um rachel may i jump in with a comment here um i certainly like the idea of this i'm a little unclear about how we could really enforce this policy in any way or what function it necessarily serves as a policy you know this is very broad and subjective so it's it's kind of tough am i correct in understanding this is optional kevin it is not required it is a policy that the previous uh committee had um requested um in hannifer's tweeting for and it's a it's a bylaw i know that's still a policy but it's you know it doesn't it's it's not the same way as like an actual policy right right it's not enforceable but is it it's good information it's a good teaching and um and helps kind of ground you as a board i mean it's almost like not your norms but almost like your values as a board theoretically it's all stuff we should be doing anyway right yes right but sometimes you eat it in writing for you know and says to go back to there should be a place to sign [Laughter] there's also another way it has been used in the past when someone gets out of control we immediately go into um we just stop the meeting and at a loss for words right now but anyway we go into executive executive session yeah and then you get a reprimand and we come out of the executive discussion and continue with the board so there are ways to rein people in but you have to have a very you have to have a strong leader um and you know someone who recognizes when people get out of control gladys you're there you know you know how people get out of control so there is a mechanism already when we don't we don't use it beat that person up and then return right and that was one of the things one of the uh questions that came up in a meeting with cable a couple of weeks ago i was in a workshop as to uh one of the boys were having a problem with uh a couple of their members and you just stopped the meeting have the chair stop the meeting go into executive session and recommend you know represent the person and come back out so to the point um that kathy just raised um at the bottom of this policy to consider it's a version essentially regarding norms um and the language is a little more simple um just in terms about mutual respect civility etc and just kind of given straightforward norms and expectations for board members and so of course of course if any of these norms are violated um to kathy's point you know can immediately go into executive session and address them and then come back out and come back up with the public again i think version 2 is a little less wordy and a little more to the point either either one probably works i mean they're they're it's aspirational we can't i mean we can't require it we can't mandate it we can't really do anything to anybody who doesn't abide by them but we should have them just as a statement that this is what we're trying to achieve either version i think works but you're right captain the second version's simpler but not only joe uh you know at board members we haven't been gone and this is something that we really need to talk about as a board i would i would just point out also that in the the top version it says clearly distinguish opinions from facts render all decisions based on the available and verifiable facts and um my independent judgment refused to surrender that judgment to individuals or special interest groups i'm not sure that that's covered by the shorter version i think there's a lot that's not covered by the shorter version i i like both versions and maybe we we could keep both um because there are some some things that are just not covered that i think are you know just good to have knowledge of as a board member would it make sense to bring this back in april and try to figure out a way to merge the two of them together into one yeah we can try and you know yeah i can try and meld mold the two together in some kind of more you know cohesive coherent way and then bring it back at our next meeting if you'd like because there's nothing bad in either one you're right there's there's certainly things covered in the first one i'll cover in a second there's certainly some overlap in some of them and perhaps we can remove some of the overlap and then represent it to this committee okay is there um this catherine but is there anything also in there um a lot of it that i see says in person but if we're not person and what if it goes to like a social media or something like that is there anything like that in there we have a whole section on social media i think a whole other separate oh let's see by law okay just want to make sure yeah that's a good point um so let's do that then i'll try and you know cut some of this out and then bring it back in april 3.9273 we will table it if that's do i need a motion i'll make a motion to table it okay a second thank you okay um rachel would you like me to proceed thank you okay so the last policy uh for consideration is nine three two one time place and notice of meetings um the first two regular meetings in special meetings um are frankly essentially how we do business um and then three meeting meeting time and place is also essentially how we do business and then we're going to see that um cave is offering a bylaw to consider and this is going to be about electronic meetings um and so my recommendation to the board is that we still obviously start at the top um and make sure we're fine with the language that's here i think the conversation is really going to pick up uh when we evaluate or review the options for the electronic meeting so i'll just start here and just for the record this was previously approved this was actually um sent to us because they wanted us to consider the electronic cave was not recommending it necessarily at the time this was pre-covered um but all they were asking all of the boards to review that option for electronic participation so this is actually already an approved policy pretty much dovetails with foia on public meetings anyway right so please let me know when i can go to the next scroll down to special meetings i think we're all set to move on okay an opportunity to call a special meeting making sure that we have appropriate notice and purpose of the meeting with at least 24 hours advance notice for the community okay and this is in the event we need an emergency meeting and then if we do have an emergency meeting minutes need to be available made available for the public no later than 72 hours according to the bylaw okie doke okay meeting time in place of our meetings time it would start ending no later than 10 o'clock and happening two times a month i might be ahead of myself i believe it's this doesn't count just to be clear at the 10 p.m that doesn't count towards executive sessions or anything like that it's just a regular board meeting that that is my understanding but we do have to come back we're supposed to come back to the public though so yeah i'm just asking because i know that there was at least one circumstance i can think of that we were in person until past 10 which you know i'm not sure anybody's going to go digging through our bylaws and be like well but it's just something to think about because we according to this almost extended by to a time certain by a two-thirds vote of the board members present or we can as as it begins at 7pm or as soon thereafter it can end at 10 pm or soon thereafter as long as nobody objects to 10p going past 10 pm it doesn't really matter with the it's not like anything bad happens if we go past 10 without a vote we just can't force it okay before we go any farther one stupid picayune little change all of these things require notice to the city clerk we no longer have a city clerk um the danbury city charter was changed and the position is now legislative assistant and i believe she's the repository of all of these notices it's either her or the town clerk it's one of the other we just have to figure out to whom it gets sent and foia may determine who it gets sent to but we technically don't have a city clerk anymore so we may have to go back and fix that we don't have to worry about that tonight later so do we want to change the wording around 10 pm no i don't think so you know i don't care i just wanted to point it out yeah okay so we'll leave it then as long as there's coffee in the kitchen i'll go past 10 no problem i'll be happy just to get back in the kitchen in the building again joe you can't touch and then of course special meetings that are non-emergency uh the place in time are also announced in advance no news there some new news there right and so this one then this is a suggested by laura to consider this is essentially if we liked what we just read um i don't think we need this one but i urge you to just maybe take a quick look this one is not the electronic version so we just have to change the town clerk in here if we use this yes i believe that was excuse me for hopefully not making anyone dizzy so i will do a word sort and find town clerk and i'll substitute that language city city city clerk is the is the officer that no longer exists we have a town clerk yeah we just have to figure out if it's a legislative assistant or if it goes to the town clerk that's all okay okay i'll find out okay sorry i was writing that down okay so this a lot to consider i'll just go slow i think we're okay with this and then this is the last part of it um with optional electronic participation so again at the time the language up here that's in bold cave does not recommend um this was again pre-covet but this was shared with school districts in danbury i wonder if they haven't updated if cabe has an updated alternate version then yeah i if they have i have not um seen them i mean we we they've continued to send them our way on rachel um but i have not seen anything in emails or those hard copies that they sent uh but i could i can check again specifically and see if they have no i and i've been every time they put the new um policy you know update i've been reviewing them and i haven't come across so this is not a policy designed or contemplating the governor's executive order that allows us to be meeting remotely this is just a general policy yes yes okay and i'm assuming we have no such policy now correct correct correct okay um and and essentially um to summarize if you haven't seen it already um this apology policy is suggesting so let's just say if um you know joe if it's okay if i can pick on you joe was on the board and joe can participate electronically he is available you know he's in a private place he is participating just like all the other members and then if he is then the board would allow joe to vote and take action just like everyone else um if he is not really not participating um and and we'll see later in the language then joe can participate but can't take action along with his fellow board members um and so it just kind of speaks to some of those things ahead of time if someone wants to participate electronically um the policy requests that the board chair is made aware uh prior to you know so that made that the board chair is made aware prior um to the board meeting um and that the district is also made aware so that we can make um make accommodations at the board meeting make sure we have the electronic equipment available at the board meeting uh for the for the meeting i'm sure this is this would be a lot easier for us than it would have been uh prior to covert for sure so i'll just give you an opportunity to just take a look at this foreign here so will will the person who wants to join electronically be automatically okay to go into executive session with us i only see one if we're allowing them to participate as a member i think we'd have to even in executive sessions my question would be and we've we've had other conversations about this i think rachel you know if i remember correctly we had a conversation about whether or not if we allowed this kind of thing whether folks would have a voting a stake in voting or if they would just count towards the quorum am i remembering that correctly we discussed this at length and it was very um passionate discussion we did not reach resolution it was pre-covered though so you know now that we're we have you know where we're operating in a virtual world and it's possible um i i i don't know if it's worth having you know something that allows this going forward you know once we're we're out of the pandemic um it's very sticky this i think the way it's written here is it does give boards voting power as long as they're there for the discussion you know they can't just um call in just to vote they have to remain you know um throughout the discussion of business so um it does i didn't see anything about executive session and that really worries me because um you don't know if somebody's calling in you don't know who who else is around in the background um same same with how we operate on zoom and um so i don't know i was not i was not a big supporter of this pre-coveted but now that you know things are different i just i don't think it's changed for me but you know i wonder how you all feel i wasn't here for the last discussion obviously um i don't love this notion in fact i i'm a little conflicted because a little part of me agrees with you rachel that it's a po in a covid world it's a little different which is why we're doing this by zone a large part of me hates this idea we actually confronted this i spent four years on the board of directors for the stanford bar association the fairfield county bar association we actually had people want to board members meet remotely be able to dial in or call in we didn't allow it and we had an attendance policy if you didn't attend enough meetings we boot you off the board um or not continue you in your second or third or fourth year it was a four-year hitch primarily because once you allow it it becomes very easy to make that to be the only way you ever bother to attend yeah um and all of a sudden we're going to get to a point i'm afraid where it's going to be gladys and 10 speakers or recording devices or something i it i don't love it i understand why people would want to do it in a covert world maybe we have to figure out a way to make an exception if somebody has covid for example um but just as a general policy i don't love this at all i mean where elected officials come to the meeting everybody's going to understand you're going to miss a meeting here there you get sick you're out of town you're traveling that happens it's not the end of the world but you know i i think we kind of need to be in the room that's that's pretty similar to the conversation we had last time joe um and you know one idea that we had kicked around which i would just sort of reintroduce as a conversation was the possibility of allowing folks to to attend uh virtually and not have voting privilege um you know in other words if if i'm out of town for a business meeting um i'd like to be able to attend the meeting or you know hear it but we've sort of worked around that anyways because we've got the youtube stream so i'm not even sure that that's necessary it would i guess it would only be pertinent if you had something that you wanted to contribute to the conversation at that point rather than you know but it seems like if you're not there at the meeting then you shouldn't be voting then why are you dialing in you may have feedback or you know want to make a comment at the meeting about something text one of your fellow members email the chair right email the chair right yeah i'm with you joe i i don't like this at all i don't like it i understand why but i understand why to do it but i also don't love it i don't know it makes people lazy and it just leads to the wrong way to run a meeting or to conduct business that's all down the road i think the other thing to think about too is that if if we were trying to run a meeting where we had some people attending virtually and others attending in person even though our technology is better the reality is you have somebody in the camp in the boardroom you know with the camera who's taking footage and i don't know how you splice that together with you know folks who are attending virtually they're two different you know two different information streams i don't know how you make sure that they match up so i think you know there's some logistical challenges there too i i can also tell you i've done on a couple of occasions for isolated reasons court hearings where i was standing in a courtroom next to the judge's bench while the judge is holding his cell phone on speaker up to a microphone to catch the other lawyer who's out of the country on the hearing it's really awkward really awkward um i mean i think our technology would be better than holding up your speaker phone to the microphone in the courtroom but it's still awkward [Music] catherine do you have anything you'd like to add to that i don't think we've heard from you no i i'm listening to everyone and i totally agree i don't think that we need that in there okay so is it okay can i ask for a motion to bring to the full board a first reading um as originally approved i'll make a motion that was easier than i thought it was going to be yes everyone just said no yeah good for us that's right so it's only seven o'clock i know we could have met at seven o'clock but now we get to have a break okay and so last but not least but i can do this to one minute number four um k policy service update um i did receive a an update from cave uh regarding our request to start to post the policies online before the entire manual is completed and so the answer is yes it can be done the feedback that i received is it will take four to six weeks to [Music] do an analysis of the policies that we already have that can be posted immediately and then it takes another um six to eight weeks to actually put together the platform to connect them to our uh to our website so that means essentially we would have a cult a k policy manual um connected to the danbury public schools website um as early as august september for the next school year so it does come at an additional cost because the previous contract called for when we finished all of the policies we hand them over give them one and then they would post them now we're asking them for them to post them now and then we continue to update them over the next few years and so there is an additional cost but quite frankly i think it's it's it's a minimal cost given um the availability of our product the non-availability of our policies um it's navigating our online management system trying to find policies now are really challenging for our families and the public and i think this is going to i think everyone's going to find this uh to be value added when this is completed okay for sure i went to look at something oh for for our next meeting and just oh i think we lost you rachel for a change it wasn't me we lost that last part rachel you kind of tapped out we just heard a change it's been unstable all all night and it's now it's yelling at me um mine too no it it's it's painful to try and search the way um it is now on on our website i wasn't able to find what i was looking for so i think it's sorely needed okay so i i am done um with the agenda i will g uh number three g has been tabled into the next meeting um d e f and h uh we'll be we'll move forward for first reading a a b and c um the two special ed policies and community relations will be forwarded for a second reading at the next meeting awesome great thank you so much um motion to adjourn i'll make a motion [Music] hi see you guys soon thank you okay thank you everyone bye
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okay all right have you done that do i have a motion to adopt public comments closed session items is there anyone that wishes to address the board of trustees regarding closed session items only at this time and there were no public comments for close session today okay now the board of trustees will now hold a closed session to discuss items 4.1 through 4.9 on the agenda it is now 2 39 [Music] p.m
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