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our it has more excuses our cuts from december to now will be basically 130 000 because if you those of you on the board last year would revise the budget in december for capital 508 000. and this is another quarter million so it's it's something to lay awake at night about yeah it's um but he's going to be 750 000 and you can only cut other decisions are made will we get some of those kids back i'm assuming we'll get at least hopefully at least half and if we don't the contract should be written where you can either reduce salaries or you can go ahead and do re nobody wants to do any of that especially after people have made their commitments um i think with the current legislation going on at the federal level there will be different federal money coming down the road but i think it's going to be more targeted it's going to be more targeted at student it's also going to be more targeted at safe school facilities which is a good thing because we don't really have much money for that either in our state that it's funded so but you can't count on oh big brother's going to save us we really need to be working to save ourselves so if you say at the end of this year we're down 300 000.

that was at 70 000 plus the 225 we've spent we're depleting our carryover so as we look at next year we have to if enrollment shows we're not going to recoup those kids decisions have to be made very very quickly if you cut too much you can have kids come to you you know the kids the enrollment change is not ever going to be oh it was two in first grade it was two in this it was three it never works that way so it's not exactly even to put it together you know casey and mr edlund need to be putting together the master schedule for next year you know they have some idea they've been doing both of them have experience putting together math they need to start putting that together what does it look like what are our choices because we also want to give our kids the best but we also have to be good stewards of public money and we have to pay our bills we cannot we cannot deficit finance yeah and one of the things frustration i have because most of my career we yes i have to i've been there uh pardon me most of my career we have done previous year funding so we had a year to get ready for this about five years ago wasn't it something like that three i think we're in the third year into current year funding exception capital so theoretically if you budget for x number of students per month and you have less than 100 have 100 less show up if they all worked in three 30 groups of three you'd like three teachers off just like the private sector we have never had to do that i hope we don't but we're going to cut to make this happen the minimal cut is 250.

i have to go with mr casey's best bet that will only be half of the students back no kids have been out of school for that's a long long time and then i do believe there will be additional grants to do things such as after school tutoring in person more supplementary i think there will be money for that but again it will be very specific to for student learning and supplementing you know it won't be going i think i think that the yes your monies that was a blessing and an awful awful situation question go ahead um i'm not trying to put you on the spot i know you've earned it no um quite when we talk about carryover funds yes if i was sitting in one of these four seats and plus on zoom i would wonder if we've got carryover money why do we have to worry about cutting the budget can you talk about that a little bit in eminem we had to carry over from last year to this year let's say it's about 000.

we're going to deplete it because we still have that almost 300 000 now capital he had saved up and saved up i don't know how many years and he's telling i keep telling eric that the only you know that pandemic has been a godsend to him because he finally got to buy chromebooks our kids need to have one-on-one they need to have these these materials they need to have that tool um so we're gonna probably that's probably gonna be depleted to probably six maybe seven hundred thousand but again capital is for instructional aids computers instructional software all of those things it's not for people so so my elements business losing eighty thousand dollars a month before right we yeah three months in a while we lost eight thousand dollars yes you did you're killing me yes wow and we don't get ppp's so at that point i had to make tough decisions in order in order to survive right now this cares check comes in the mail and it really helped out right but we had to make tough decisions you've given us the problem when are you going to give us your solution for that problem probably in a month so in a month we're going to get your solution for that and it's not going to be pretty i'm sorry it's not going to be pretty uh because it's going to impact people and that's that's our business but our number one person is people from preschool to high school and they'll be impacted as well but we have to adopt a budget at our uh january i'm sorry our june board meeting we'll have a have a budget hearing and uh then angel in uh august i'm sorry july i think it's the 9th of june the 14th of july we have to adopt a budget and so we're going to have a budget to adopt but it's going to be different than we've seen less but we still it's before school even starts and kids come back and i've gotten comfortable enough with there's been lots of years that i was projecting budgets that the legislature hadn't even ended and so you didn't even know what funding was going to be for sure and so this crystal ball i've gotten pretty good at maneuvering but this is really tough because the enrollment drop is so severe and the consequences or the effect on the budget is just devastating we have families moving out of the community because we don't have sports yeah yeah major families six kids seven kids families are moving to the thatcher and other places because we don't offer sports anymore i'm not saying we could have i'm just saying when you go to figure out how many kids you're gonna have next year yeah you better start thinking about these families that are moving out and more are gonna move up you know i don't want my kid to miss out on playing sports in senior year so i'm gonna move to thatcher right i'd love to think that kids come to school for you know calculus because i was a math nur i'm a cpa but you know a lot of kids come because they like the debate team they like sports um they come here because we make them feel good when home doesn't i mean there's a lot of issues with our students so i'm wondering given that we don't know what the shortfall will be yet or what the makeup of the shortfall will be and the fact that we have so many hirings on the agenda for this month ms burns would you think that we should postpone the hirings of new employees until we have a better picture i on your teachers that are core that are hard to find here almost everywhere ela and math i would hire if you have the opportunity because those those teachers are scarce in the valley so if you have those teachers i would really be careful um i think that we have way too many instructional dates um dr philly keeps telling me while we have all these when i look at the severity of the handicapping conditions of our kids it just doesn't make sense to me because it's not severe that doesn't mean some kids still don't need that that one-on-one maybe it's time to we only work our instructional aids and and this isn't all for next year but our instructional aides we we set to 29 hours a week so they don't have health insurance maybe we need less instructional aids and more really qualified ones and give them a 40-hour week or a 36-hour week give them health insurance which is a huge benefit district those kind of things to look at i would i would proceed carefully on hiring he's gone asleep mr hopkins i i tend to shut a place down in the future i've asked dr dooley we have our audit from last year and it's really really good but i've asked him to put it on the may agenda because i'll come for the board the budget revision but i would like to also bring for you there's like a 20 page as what puts it out it's basically a budget overview and it's really a nice kind of like to go through and look and go oh this is what i see this i see i it's just kind of a cool tool i'd like for all of you to have a copy of it to it's just a good learning or just a good oh what was she talking about again i can look in here or you can't sleep at night thank you any more questions mr hopkins no no more questions thank you and we're back now the last thing is the governing board discussion on foreign administrative terms are you leaving no i'm gonna wait i'm going home tonight yes okay i have four dogs i'm sorry so i asked for this item and uh after all that we just talked about you seem like really small things but i do think they're important and i think it's important that we address them as soon as we can um i asked for this item because for nearly two years i've been extremely frustrated with the pace and efficiency in which our board addresses administrative issues i mean board administrative issues not administrator issues it should not take two years to come up with a workable email solution or months to agree on a base on basic board processes we will not be able to fix everything in one night but if we work together to address the issues we face we will be more efficient and more effective governing board before we start the discussion i want to remind board members that we must limit the discussion to board administration issues only you'll notice the discussion topics are unusually broad this was intentional and is only possible because of the administrative nature of these topics there are four issues that i hope to resolve tonight these may seem like small things but they have a significant impact on board operations communications and transparency i think we can work through them fairly quickly but i first want us all to be clear on something yeah wendy are you referring to something that other board members have that i do not no i'm just i'm just reading um i did pass that but i did pass out the um the uh communication template the response to public um comments but you already have seen that i just i just um i i passed that out at a previous meeting um according to the asba we do not have to vote on these administrative decisions simple agreement is all that's necessary i really hope we can agree on these straightforward issues tonight because we need to get things done and we need to get them done as expeditiously as possible so i i just have four things but first just a little information and eric you're aware of this because we worked on this together a little bit um on quorums abstentions and recusals so we had a vote not long ago where there were four bed board members two board members voted yes one voted no and one abstained that most vote passed as it should have but after the fact i wondered if we counted the votes properly properly because there were four people voting but only three counted i contacted asba and got clarification it turns out that extensions do not count as votes so the tally was actually two yes and one no and since our quorum requirement is three members the vote passed two to one just as we thought but here's where it gets tricky and this is just information i didn't know this um what if instead we had two yeses and two abstentions does it pass but it's a quarter to meeting it does except it doesn't count for a quarter a refusal would correct it's it's the reverse so it passes because and this is where it gets a little weird an abstention counts to contribute to the quorum so we have three people but it doesn't count as a vote so you have two yeses out of three so it passes now if instead those two people had recused themselves so we had two yeses and two recusals does it pass are you not it doesn't in fact we can't even vote because we don't have a quorum because recue uh recusals don't count for the quorum and they don't count as votes so so then a refusal would have to take place before the vote was even called for yes and in fact recuse if you recuse yourself you shouldn't be involved in the discussion at yourself all as soon as that agenda item is brought up so i will be refusing myself exactly and some boards uh they even ask the person to leave the room yeah so anyway just this little bit of knowledge that i i wasn't aware of the windy spirit of this i really appreciate it and afk got back to what five minutes oh my gosh for five minutes chris thomas he's a lawyer at asba super knowledgeable and yes very responsive yes so okay so moving on to getting things done hopefully the board response letter each have a copy of it rodney seen it from a previous meeting we need to improve communications community members who make the effort to contact the board directly deserve a response from us to achieve this i propose that we implement the policy-based board response letter template that was created for this purpose and that one of us takes responsibility for this task is anyone opposed to implementing this board response letter which we would send to um community members who address the board at public comment it's um i know you've seen it before we've discussed it a little bit but i'm not against this i think um if this is something we do on the forum that the public fills out there should be a check box asked that they're requesting feedback but then some people just want to make their statement known and that's it um i i personally won't respond to individual comments during a meeting just i think that's the best practice um i'm not opposed to contacting someone after the fact with some kind of information just broad letter here seems okay um but i think you should have an option on that form if they want additional contact from us they can say check yes so my only issue with this is some people have come to speak around meetings from personal experience but some people that couldn't speak our meetings could be somebody that is so combative and so angry that as an administrator i wouldn't want to call them up on the phone because i know i'm just going to you know where to come you might to have you know so actually i'm going to get to that but right now this is just about us this is a board response so we're committing them oh oh okay so or you were hoping for a board member to say i will go ahead and take care of sending these communications up right so about the the very specific components of this ladder that can be adjusted so if there is someone if they're if it if this is um a public comment where um it seems clear that there shouldn't be a response or or that there should be a particular response this way it's a template it can be adjusted according to the commenter but i think in general people want to be heard they want and they want to know that they were heard and we often have situations during public comment where there are misunderstandings about what the board's role is um that we could clarify if those things come up i'm not talking about making any decisions at all just communicating clearly so i think you're right i think we should the first paragraph or something that i really like the only department i have an issue with is committing the administration to having to follow up with every single one you kicked my kid out of school we've already had a big discussion on this may have got a heated as can be now i'm going to come in and tell the school board what i think about it and now i'm committing the administrator to calling the parents up again and rehashing the whole thing over again right you want to do that right so i think i don't know did i put that in bold i'm looking at where it is about the third paragraph then yeah this related information administrator can give you more information no that's not it um oh the board has requested administration to contact you to further discuss this issue um we could put that in bold as well all the things i put in bold were things that i thought would be subject to change we could put that in bold as well um but i do think in general and that's actually my my number two i do think in general um we should send something out an acknowledgement like this clarification um then my next one is actually about the administrator's role in this um but yeah i think that does make sense to put the board as request of the administration contact you um because that won't always be the case it depends on who to me it depends on who is some of the teachers that have come in here they have no they shouldn't have been here we're not they were illegal to come before you go through the steps and uh it's been causing a lot of trouble and the policy and everything else and this is just too broad which is to run your letter i mean it sounds like we have to do it for everyone who comes to speak and i don't think that's necessary see i think it would do a lot of good in terms of it's time consuming i understand that but i do think that we could do a lot better with with communications we don't do a good job there's a lot of misunderstanding in the community can i finish nobody wants can i finish but these are the people that are coming these are the people that do care enough to take their time to come and talk to us it seems like we could have just it's a form letter i mean it needs to be customized but it's not a lot of work and then most loan ratings most board meetings we don't have that many public comments so i don't see it being all that time consuming in the majority of the world we certainly would have been during the board meetings we were voting on opening and closing i also think that had i know the teacher issues you're speaking up i think had one of those teachers received a letter like this the very first time they came that outlined what their procedure was we wouldn't be hearing that from them meetings still coming to the inappropriate venue well even if we would have we would have notified them of the appropriate venue it would not have been on us at that point i like the fact that you're communicating to the community what the world is right yes or whatever i think they need to understand that we can listen to that but really we're not going to be able to change that right right and so i think that information should come out the only issue i have with this is this letter is mandating that the administration follow up with every single person that comes in to speak tell you from my business there's people that call my office want to talk to me and i don't ever want to talk to you right you know you know what i'm saying i don't want to talk to them and because i know where it's going to go and it's not going to be productive for either one of us so that's the only part that i have a concern about when you look the letter issue itself i have no issue with just i don't i don't want to commit the administration to having to you agree with that to follow up with all that what do you think brother rodney can you hear us all right he's a little bit choppy yeah i think it's an important step just simply getting something from the board thanking them for their concern for their engagement in the community and in those cases where it's appropriate saying by the way this board is not able to work with what you suggested here is the proper avenue for you supposed to respond to them when they're addressable i think something like this would go away to at least letting people know that you know the board is there the board is responsive and it might lead to us getting more community in front of them but then the paragraph down here that says this issue will be scheduled for the month board meeting and i realized that we're here in march will be on the april board meeting um i i just don't think it's necessary so i would go ahead i would include that as as optional um i i actually should have should have holded that one sentence because that's not always this is more to be a template so you know what things on here apply to this comment let's use them and it could be i mean over time well now the question becomes and i know this working who decides who decides whether the administration needs to contact this person and who decides whether this topic can or should come come before the board how how does that work so [Music] what this letter sounds like right now what i'm getting from is this is a response from before as a whole to that individual not from the administration correct okay so um i think it's a pretty good layout i'm not opposed to having a response letter at all i think it's good um i don't think that everything that is brought up by the public needs to be made to an agenda is the person who came and spoke to us i wrote this immediately after she spoke to us and her subject happened to be an upcoming agenda i know and so that's why i put that section um but certainly that's only gone excuse me really basically the first part you know um is just say thank you for coming i mean i don't think it has to be elaborate this is quite elaborate and i don't think that it needs to be that way i'm not have fun to have a letter go out to them and to recognize that they were here to speak but i don't think all of this needs to be in it um i like the idea of a letter and your first paragraph at the minimum should be what's unless basically what we're saying at the minimum that way they're getting a written correspondence yeah through mail or email and as a clerk i'm sending that email out to that person that's fine i know that's one of the other things you're going to bring up too um i think the more basic we keep it but yet still acknowledging that we receive the information from them thanking them for their time coming in and leaving for that um and then i think then we say okay if you have any other questions please contact the administration yeah and i and i think that's sufficient obvious when well i mean i i really don't want to limit us to the first paragraph because there will be situations where the other ones apply and then they do and i i agree but it's it's not it's not it's not going to be essential in every case so how are you going to decide that that's one thing i have is how are you going to decide on the administrative part of it on the administrative and also on the on the future agenda item are you going to have part of every meeting that we discuss the uh the speakers and then decide how we're going to um follow up with that so in in some cases we will be aware that there's a future agenda item on it and then we can share we can share that there will be knowledge that we have which was the case with this with this comment in other cases we might ask for it so if someone approaches the board with a community comment and it's something that the board wants to discuss we can then and there say we're going to ask for a a future agenda item on exactly what you are bringing to the board that's one of the things that we can do as a board we don't do it very often but it's one of it's one of the things we can do so if that happens then sure that would be on there otherwise it probably just but we would have to vote if whether who would agree did now anyone can ask for an agenda item because the way we're doing the agenda is that we think it gets emailed to me yeah then we decide so i come in because i lost my job and i bring that up so one member of the board wants that to be an agenda item i'm not saying it could be but i'm just throwing an example and somebody else doesn't want it to be an agenda item how has that worked out when is that worked out when we get the other what is the logistics of that regarding say a personal issue like a termination that let's change that let's change it to well that's rodney i think just a um letter you know this thank you for this um something like i think the simple

hello chris cooper here with a brief video update it's been a while since i've done one of these and in this case it is true that no news is good news so on the coveted front we have some really good news have some other uh great news too it's nice to have some topics that don't center around cove at 19.

by the way i got vaccinated last week and hopefully the rest of you all of you will soon so um maybe someday we can get together and uh and do this in person again that would be great and then go out for uh for our favorite beverage afterwards in celebration so we intend to conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings commissioners please remain on camera just as you would be visible during in-person meetings also mute your microphone when not speaking public comment will be via telephone to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call one of the following toll-free numbers 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5247 and enter the meeting id 913-5783-4502 and by the way these numbers will remain the same for the entire year for energy commission meetings so this information along with two local dial-in numbers is also available on the published agenda in the public notice section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 at d channel 9 and online at www.a2gov.org backslash watch ctn so um opening up or going into our agenda the first thing on the agenda is the land acknowledgement missy will you um please recite the language acknowledgement yeah thank you chamerski i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including the ottawa ojibway and botawatomi and wyandotte peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807.

and harrigan here and tony perrigini so madam chair you have a quorum thank you um does anyone have a flag or i do okay let's get that up there and we'll say the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right um okay first item do we have any public comment let me check our cps see if there was anything there's been nothing let me just check from earlier today nothing to the cps covid email account okay alrighty um okay um next up uh review of the minutes for february 8th 2021. um and have you had a chance to review and okay i move we accept the minutes for uh last month's meeting february 8th my birthday if you recall happy birthday anne no last february last meeting let's just keep it going why not okay i second oh that was easy all in favor all right um so any new business i don't think we have any nope any old business none so we're going to move on to informational items um first item on the agenda is celebrating black history month thank you faith i want to introduce this topic because we just came out of the month of february which is black history month and there were some really neat things happening at the various schools um i happened to be there talking with deb menke and kelly grillo one day and they shared with me what their student council had planned which was really exciting um and then i was also seeing some of the pictures of things happening at dodd and so mike woods has you see we have a number of visitors here today so we have deb menke and kelly grillo from norton school and mike woods from dodd middle school and so we just thought it would be appropriate to give you um a synopsis and i think our either dr gad or dr reed will be sharing about the happenings at chs as well so we wanted to give you just a glimpse into some of the activities that our students were involved in we fully recognize that in our work with equity that we need to infuse more of these types of learning into our regular curriculum but for the time being we had a number of parents reach out to central office and ask over the course of the year the types of activities that we would be engaging in during february for black history month so we wanted to make sure that we shared those with you our curriculum committee tonight so i guess i'll turn it over to uh principal grillo from norton school to start us off hi everyone thanks for having us um so like marlene said she happened to be at noor in one day visiting and uh we were in the process of planning for our our first um ever black history month uh museum and um our our student council advisors are deb manky and fran houser who couldn't be with us tonight but deb is here to really um share with you the the origins of where this project um came from and how our students took it pushed the bar like as high as they could possibly push it from this small little nugget of an idea our kiddos um came up with this really magnificent way to celebrate um black history month at norton school so with that being said i just i'm happy and very proud to introduce cheshire public schools teacher of the year and norton school amazing teacher and student council advisor deb menke thank you so much kelly um and i hope marlene we have the little video too right that mike put together for us i hope that that's gonna be there but we're really excited to share our norton black history museum presented by the student council tonight fran and i are advisors of the student council and as advisors we're really trying to focus on everyday leadership and we've really tried to step back and put the students in control of um what we're doing and our group is very eager um to share and make their ideas reality so earlier in the year when we discussed that we wanted to do something for the black history museum fran and i kind of came up with this simple idea of a walk-through museum um and the student council members what we thought we would have was just research a person and it would kind of be um portraits hung up more like a gallery but um the mute i think when we said the world museum they really started to have a very different idea of what a museum was all about and they really took it to the next level and they started to see rooms and they came up with ideas of um writings and how geography tied into it and how poetry is tied into it and they decided they wanted to include other grades that might be interested in adding to it um and also not that this was part of the walk-through museum but they recorded children's books that could be loaded up onto seesaw and into google classroom so that um younger students or any student could have a time to listen to um to fiction short books and they also looked up youtube videos um and what was interesting is they didn't just really go for black history they just looked for really interesting things like the howard university band um or um they had the um harlem um dance company just dancing and clips of simone biles and other um just clips of things that were very interesting to the students so their enthusiasm to find things they were just eager and they just incorporated me it was very joyous to watch um so fran and i planted this little seed and they really grew it into something that was very different um and i know kelly will agree that our our students in all school got had an opportunity to visit the museum um we got really positive feedback from the students and um from the teachers um so i think that um i know what was really exciting to me was more than just learning about people which is where we had kind of started it um and that it really turned into time to tie into all of our curriculum and also give us the idea that black history is all of our history and that it really touches everything that we do and that we're doing so hopefully there we have the video um that you can if i could just enjoy it for it's hard to really capture how powerful this was our school hallways became museum exhibits and our classroom teachers toured our students around our building um to visit these exhibits and remote students included at times i saw teachers with kids on on cell phones and i you know chromebooks walking around the hallway so that everyone had an opportunity to uh visit these exhibits and it was pretty marvelous in a year where things are so um well a bit drier than usual right like this breathed life into our building these kiddos just traveling through our hallways with their little clipboards because the student council created um a sort of a guide you know through the exhibits and it was it was just absolutely um energetic and and powerful and and wonderful and this will be a tradition that will live on at school we already you know are thinking about how we'll tweak it next year uh but it was a great start and thank you well they weren't even things i talked to kelly they wanted to do like qr codes and i we were like we can't we're not ready we're not ready to do this yeah they were really excited it was very exciting to watch their excitement they really took it to a different level it was awesome it was awesome so i know i was sent a copy of the video um a little long so i'm gonna i'm gonna condense that was there any particular part that you wanted to hone in on okay give me a second here so while we're waiting have any of you guys um traveled into atlanta and the airport and actually walked the concourse or walk the uh the span you know normally you can hop the train or you can walk if you have been sitting too long but it's a whole history of um atlanta africa american african-american history it's it's really cool can you all see deb manky now on my screen okay hi my name is and it was their understanding and they were african-american and they lived during a time when being black and women limited what they could do but they were hard and persistent and most important except from the publisher the exhibit is courtesy of miss macarena hi i'm charlotte after a lesson on dr martin luther king's powerful i have a dream speech our norton school's second graders honor dr king by sharing their hopes and dreams for the future i'd like to share three of these amazing hopes and dreams my dream for for my community is for people to not litter my dream for myself is for me to get a good job my dream for the world is for it to be a better place here are some more dreams for people for communities here at norton my dream for myself is to help others my dream for my community is for everybody to stay healthy and safe from the pandemic my dream for the world is for kids to be president another one is my dream for the world is for everyone to be kind to each other my dream for my community is for everyone to have a good year my dream for myself is to help everybody hi my name is joe this is technology you know you know people are google these aren't how many people are google devices um most church athletes lebron james most searched gymnasts and simone vinyls most surgeons basketball dunk michael jordan will search tennis players sabrina williams the research female player poet maya aguilera search star spangled banner britney houston no search talk show host opera whiskey research tap dancer gregory hines no search mathematics kathryn johnson bush public nurse um search kubernetes shirt wise winner kendrick lamar most search college homeland homecoming howard university most search performance beyonce most searched speech martial hi i'm kayla dwyer from the student council mrs lachance's second grade class has made some amazing black history month posters this one right here is about martin luther king's dream and this person named liliana says that his dream was that he wanted all people to have equal rights which is true her dream is her coronavirus to be gone in my it says in her dream coronavirus would not exist anymore here are some things that she could do to make her dream come true to wear a mask wow great job liliana hi i'm amelia here's a poem from an inspirational black fella when you see me sitting quietly like a sack left on the shelf don't think i need your chattering i'm listening to myself hold stop don't pity me hold stop your sympathy understanding if you got it under otherwise i'll do without it that's just part of the beautiful poem named on aging by maya angelou this exhibit is courtesy of ceraya samantha glenn hi i am maya this exhibit is this is an exhibit dedicated to african americans who inspire the world of music they made new types of music such as blues and soul socks soul music often referred to simply as soul is a popular music genre that originated in the african-american community throughout the united states in the 1950s and early 1960s this exhibit is courtesy of the fourth grade in student council hi i'm cam here are some important quotes and inspirations from the civil rights movement and other times in black history poverty urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obstruction this exhibit is protein of joseph giragazzi student council members is about black americans who have served in the government small head non yards was born in 1963 kamala harris earned his law degree in 1989.

um thank you everyone for joining us this evening and i'm going to it'll be best to see if i can share this agenda so i just want to start off with sharing with everyone um two of the links these two survey links i just wanted to share we didn't make everyone on this call collaborators because we're still modifying the questions but i do want to make sure um the committee can see them this evening and of course anyone who's might who might be watching from home they can get an idea of on the type of survey questions we are thinking about pushing out uh to the community um so i'll just start off with um i'd love if we can spend a few minutes just talking about the citywide pto meeting um as a debrief um but but mostly this evening um courtney ann and i would like to talk about um the essa funds that have been made available for the district and districts across the state of connecticut um our allocation is is a little bit over 10 million dollars and we have had um some initial discussions within the district on you know in terms of planning for that those monies um but there are some guidance that comes from the state um that that that suggests that we should also and certainly uh supporters of this idea um making sure we have a plan in place to also engage our staff engage our parents and families in the greater community um to get also additional feedback on how these monies can be used to help support um and and and help raise student outcomes in the community um support the social emotional development and support for our students and and staff um and then also you know provide supports for family um just to help support student outcomes at home and then last but not least you know any efforts that could be continued to make sure all of our kids and families are connected and i'll go with some of that guidance in more detail um throughout the agenda um in the next area there are some community engage materials wanted to share with this committee the community engagement materials are not necessarily esser specific we had talked about having some some engagement sessions for the community but this evening is about esser so we have a community invitation here um and we want to review that with you and this is an invitation uh to join the district in the conversation about esser funds we will review within the guidance that you'll see momentarily but i also wanted to revisit the one pager with you um as part of the con the citywide pto to see if there's any adjustments you wanted us to make and then last but not least um there was also a social media graphic that had been developed and talked about um kate had led that discussion in our previous meeting and just wanted to see where we were with that and see if there any adjustments needed to be made to that and then kind of rounding out the agenda the city of danbury and just kind of revisit that budget timeline and just kind of make sure we we're all aligned and making sure we're landing on uh whatever date has been assigned i don't think the city has identified one yet and then just talk about our collective next steps but for the most part this is about the as for guidance i'm hoping we can spend the majority of our time on that but it would be great if we can start with number two and talk about citywide pto debrief and you know as we continue to this is before esser as we continue this idea of engagement sessions with um different stakeholder groups um since we did get our first engagement session out of the way just curious about what we can do to improve um any feedback this committee may have heard um that you know that would be helpful courtney ann and i and of course dr sao as we engage these community groups moving forward i'm sorry that was an invitation sounds good kevin um do you want to talk about the the citywide pto and sort of uh you know give us a sense of i mean we talked a little bit about this on thursday um so what what else um do you would you like to address this evening so so so i i think for me and and for courtney and ann and i and i guess all of us um you know we will start to calendar um as we get commitments from those different constituency groups start to calendar engagement sessions and so if there's any concrete um adjustments we need to make you know we're happy to make those adjustments um you know if there's anything we can do better we're certainly open to that and see if there's a conversation we wanted to have if not i could certainly move on to the next one um i mean i think the the one pager is uh really in very good shape um and i i like the use of it in terms of the presentation i don't know if other folks have a similar opinion but one thing that mr genelli brought up last meeting was that we are going to need some some numbers behind some of this um i do think that that piece is missing i don't want to necessarily put that into the one pager because i think that that's a really good standalone uh piece but um i think it would be helpful for people to be able to see some of the breakdown that occurs in that you know like the four page piece courtney that you put together um you know just provides the kind of detail and especially the the numbers that folks may be looking for um and we had a conversation as well about you know some of the other numbers that i think would be helpful to give to people which is a sense of what their tax what is going to do their taxes to do different things so for example um a courtney event at one point worked up a number that was relative to home value and what it would look like for you know an increase in taxes for a certain home value uh but we also talked about the idea of okay if we're adding you know x number of teachers to our roster our employee roster what would that look like in terms of a tax increase um if we were to add you know five guidance counselors what would that look like in terms of a tax increase to sort of help people understand what exactly they're getting for the money that they would be spending yeah yeah that's good kate because kevin kate and i spoke and i've also spoken with al russo about this before as well and and i think that's a good way to frame it because if we said like when i did the brief slide that i shared earlier it was assuming we needed the full 14 million that the city would have to undertake wouldn't necessarily be the full 18 million because they're already there's already an assumption of a certain amount within the existing budget so we said maybe to make it more palatable to people you know that i could break it out and say okay so if we were going to buy 10 10 teachers this is what it would mean in a tax you know change 10 additional new teachers for example and then also just putting it in terms of like i gave what it would be for someone with a property value of 200k but i we can put that more in like the median house you know so i don't know what the median is but it's probably more than 200k um or even a few different levels or you know a few different tiers of houses house values would be helpful i think yeah i've seen districts where even they i kind of did a little bit of research kate and like even on their school you know website they actually have a tool where you can you can input your tax bill and then show how much of that goes towards your education i don't know what the tool is that they're using but i thought that was kind of neat yeah that's a that's a i love that idea actually but but i can get this the tax information and the four pager is the draft the document that anne had put together with the sort of template which maybe i'll work with rich rich and i are meeting tomorrow about finance so maybe i can work with him about you know what information to put into that four pager that still gets to the numbers but it's palatable and accessible yeah i think that's a good idea rich i hope that's okay with you okay i'm sorry yeah and i i like that idea because it continues the idea of you know kind of digesting the budget in small bites um and people can understand the impact um and so translating it in the way we're talking about what you're getting for your money um what it means for an additional taxes i think people really appreciate that yeah and help in helping to form any decision or action that they might they might they might take yeah rich did you have something you want to add yeah you know i'm still being a dead horse and i'd like to ask or have somebody uh kate perhaps you because you chair is to ask the the fellow who runs the citywide pto tim i i think it's tim i'm not sure as to what his reaction or what his the members of the city-wide what their their opinion was of the response to the presentation basically the interest um i you know basically i'd like to know that my observation was you know it was sort of accepted as half-hearted um and maybe a question to him could be what could we do to stimulate more interest in what we're doing this you know the the amount of of time and effort on everybody's part and you know the uh kevin's and courtney's and and you know the the people on the committee it is tremendous and you know i i still feel we're beating a dead horse if the people that we're out there advocating for don't understand or just don't have the time to to listen to us and if that's the case then how could we ask them or not how could we ask them can we ask them what we can do to to reach them and and maybe to make it simpler you know we we've been down this road for years and every year our presentation gets much better but it's like a rehearsal for ourselves and the audience that we're looking to to give it to continues to you know be be the same just one point i finished the meeting tonight with a pto meeting at pembroke which liaison for and their their membership is the same they had 13 people on there and maybe five of them were teachers and the rest was some parents but the parents were the same parents that i've been accustomed to seeing for years so they also said that their problem of engaging more people to join has been tough but there was one new parent i should say and she came on and said that she'd learn more about what's going on except she doesn't know where to get the information and she'd like to to be aware as to what's a point a point important uh rich i think he cut out there um well hopefully rich will come back online but um to to address that point uh we did have a conversation a follow-up conversation amy and i spoke with the citywide leadership and they're actually going to be conducting an internal feedback opportunity on that presentation and they were hoping to turn that information over to us so that we could um you know use it to improve our uh presentation going forward um i think amy you know had a more in-depth conversation with tim you know to get his immediate response and um you know as she shared you know part of the frustration here is that uh they're also struggling to figure out how to engage parents um on things that are not specific to their own children um yeah you know so i think that that's that's part of like you know in our messaging i think that's part of what we have to just consider is that if we make this um if we if we use if we express things in a way that speaks to the individual students you know the student level experience whether that's you know talking about guidance counselors steering the path for high schoolers you know as they're preparing for what's going to happen after graduation or talking about you know kids who are experiencing interruptions in their learning because of covid and and being on distance learning whatever those avenues are and talking about the supports as they relate to those obstacles that the kids are facing in school i think that's likelier to resonate so um and i i think ann is still here and i am and and tonight is probably not a good time to talk about this in detail but um you know there there are some thoughts you know talked to sal and and dr sal and and anne has been you know leading this effort and we're really close uh to bringing in um a social a social um media platform um that frankly i think will really help with the exchange of information to our community um and will allow us to continue to push out messages uh and so um you know we're we're really close to onboarding um uh purchasing and and onboarding that process and you know soon there will be a rollout for professional development training the staff etc but by next year perhaps maybe not september the first day um but we will be able to use this social media and be able to you know have even more contact with with our parents and families um i think we'll have an opportunity to continue to inform them and you know kind of reinforce um and continue to educate so you know in this way we're not you know relying on these one-time deals one-time efforts to push out information so hopefully that will also also help us in the near future it will if i could just add to that i just came off of jeepers took a light i just came off of another city meeting um or meeting here in the city and they were talking about accessibility of information and ease to be able to find things and so we are also at the same time working on our danbury public school website to make that information easier to be able to find but i think in the meantime we have some ability to be able to get um you know the messages out to groups and to folks in danbury but um it was really emphasized the accessibility of information and being able to find it easily um was something that many of the the members of the community that were on the call we're not finding that was easy to do in danbury yeah there's a lot of content on that main web page there is yeah and i find even as a parent just meeting me where i am so i know to ann's point like if we can figure out a way to market simplify be consistent you know and get it out there on social media it's helpful it'll be helpful for our parents because it is hard today people are have jobs and they're over subscribed you know in their fitness and so to the extent we can meet them where they are it'll probably be helpful yeah can i say something yeah go for it um i just wanted to add too that uh i don't know if richard's still on richard um unfortunately i know he's really uh championed this effort for a long time i mean you know hit being head of community relations i think as long as i was on the board he was i think we're getting we're getting closer we're getting closer to having what the parents are looking for and i i don't know if uh kate that we when we spoke to them one of the last times we talked was you know parents are just still kind of reeling from getting back to quotes normal this year and you know that the big concern i guess one of the big concerns of course was their kids schedules and they were going to be changing from hybrid to you know in person and so i mean i think we still have to keep that in mind that that's what's going on this year and if we just keep on kind of honing this sounds like we are i mean it's like we're zeroing in on what what the parents really are looking for um and you know it's just a process and i i think that we have to keep on going and realizing that this is just again another year of a lot of people a lot of parents and teachers and being overwhelmed and it'll be different once we get back to some sort of normalcy that's a good point we needed that perspective amy thank you yeah and i wonder if there's a way we can extend that welcoming school model to a digital platform or in a way that you know markets us to you know meet people in a way that is part of the district because i know they interact with their principals regularly but if we can pull the principles in and think of the community as a whole you know ways that we can access each other digitally not just in the little red schoolhouse might be helpful so kate if you're okay [Music] i'd like to move on to the esser guidance um and i think if i heard it correctly and i do have some some notes here about making sure we find a way to incorporate the impacts on the taxes and home value um what you know help to share with our families and community and you know inform them of what they will be getting for their value and for them for their investment um and i heard mr jannelli's point what can we do to stimulate more interest in the budget and see if we can't you know elicit something back from tim on behalf of the citywide pto um and we we certainly can do that so we'll make those adjustments and you know get that additional feedback to inform that process yeah and i'll follow up uh with with tim um in the next day or two and just see if he was able to reach out to the folks that were on that call okay okay great and so i will go to number three um and so um as part as part of the esser funds um we have some guidance we wanted to share uh with the committee this evening we wanted to also share some surveys some draft surveys uh some for staff and then some also for parents and families in the community and just kind of talk about an overall community engagement plan um you'll see down here in 4c there's a community invitation so we wanted to show you that draft as well and i think you'll have a better understanding of why we're engaging in this process and you know on our opportunity to educate the community on this on these funds so let me just hit this link okay i believe the powerpoint is only it's not that long so 12 pages it's a relatively quick read yes say one thing so just to be clear this is sr2 esr1 what we refer to as the cares act funding is 2.5 that that money is um it's in addition to that sorry just to be clear yeah thank you thank you courtney okay thank you and so this is the 10 10.1 million um that we talked about briefly in our last meeting but we did not speak to in much detail um so the analogy that i used when talking about insurance and there are you know certainly some restrictions on how those monies can be used and we'll have an opportunity to see how those funded to be distributed so it might be just easiest to do this this way and so the state has you know they have some priorities uh for these money starting with um and it's really all about providing equity and access to a high quality education for all children and courtney would you mind starting off with the timeline oh sure sure so so they released the lea allocation so we have we were received an allocation of 10.1 million it was funded along the title one um allocation methodology and um the week of february 22nd well it didn't actually happen the week of february 22nd that happened last friday last week so i said released an online application through the ee grant system it requires a needs assessment articulation of steps to be taken to mitigate gaps description of the intended plan for resource and then um csde will give us they expect us to update just like we do with alliance on the plan implementation the grant period for sr1 what we call cares act funding you know or the first part that you're familiar with was extended so the grant period ends september 30th 2022 and sr2 and culminates in 2023 and you might have heard of a new federal allocation as part of the stimulus package i'll just mention it it's not here on this slide but um it's anticipated if if the house passes what the senate passed they could make modifications but what the senate passed along the um legislative rules danbury could expect about 25 million dollars if it's comes to fruition as the senate as per again go through the house or information soon but i just wanted to make you all aware of that right thank you courtney and so just just bringing this back to the second bullet here um application will require needs assessment and articulation of steps to be taken um to mitigate the step mid you know for mitigation um description of an intended plan well this this needs assessment in this plan that we're going to submit on behalf of the district is going to be informed uh by feedback from our administrators feedback from our staff and feedback from our parents uh families and community um and so and so that's why that's part of the reason uh why we are engaging um our community in this process okay can i use i'm sorry go ahead i just was wondering can you remind me what the sr1 funds were yeah cares like money 2.6 million and that went towards specific priorities also um which uh you know was um ppe um learning loss i can get you some specifics but it it it funded some student support specialists um it funded some purchase of uh [Music] to roll out for students to um be able to engage remotely and do assessments to help feed families during the school close down feed students during the school close down thanks that jog my memory i appreciate it yeah and i was going to continue to pay staff during the close down yeah well yeah and i i on this sr2 funding timeline um just it's going to be jermaine when kevin gets to the next part essentially there's a quick turnaround time for us so they'd like it to be returned within a month of when they opened the application there's a little flexibility there but we're planning out as though early april we've gotta have our application in so and kevin and i worked through something with cabinet which is a timeline um and kevin's gonna go through the rest of the presentation that achieves sort of all the goals of this application that um the state's asking us to do because this this application's a bit where the funding is a bit more um involved and than than our previous cares which was you know they needed to get the money out quickly and so we were able to do that a little bit more quickly with less information so so so here are the four plus one uh priorities for the district and so i don't think anyone is going to be surprised by the first four and quite frankly i think the last one is a bonus academic supports learning loss learning acceleration and recovery for our students family and community connections and so you know we've already talked about some potential potential investments uh with our social media platform um school safety and social emotional well-being uh right and so we want to continue to support the social emotional you know we're going to continue to support not only our students but our staff in the support of the whole student in our schools remote learning staff development and a digital divide and so continue to make sure all of our kids are connected and then where they are not connected making sure we have resources in place to make sure that our kids can get connected and then last but not least school facility repairs and improvements which you know is that this could be an opportunity for us um to address you know some kind of long-term issues um in the district we might be able to address some with these monies so you know we're looking forward to all of these opportunities can we just clarify one thing and maybe you're going to get into this kevin so i apologize if i'm getting ahead here but in terms of what we're talking about we're talking about programming we're not talking about staffing combination combination and when you say when you say staffing and so i i think the point you're getting at uh some of these things um some of essa ii some of the things that we perhaps have um targeted for our budget could be eligible in esser ii so it's so some of those things are eligible and maybe when we get to the end courtney can you know discuss some of those things perhaps not in too much detail because we're still trying to understand what those things are but but there are some things that could be eligible in esther too that's what we have learned in the last couple of weeks yeah you just have to wait and this will be part of the conversation we have with the board but wait the risk for the future right now that we're getting this additional funds like a five-year timeline so you know it's a little bit anyway yes it personnel is eligible um to be supported through the s or two right and so as you might imagine we've had we've already begun discussions on how to address learning and loss and so you know for a lot of our families this could mean um you know extending our invitation to summer school this could mean you know additional supports after school for students to help our students uh you know this could this could mean different programming support virtually for students at home so you know we're exploring all ways you know we can help students who have been severely impacted you know by the pandemic um also for opportunities for kids to continue to accelerate their learning uh you know we want to address recovery we want to mitigate learning loss as much as possible and then of course we have students who you know even more vulnerable than others so you know our students with you know students with disabilities that have an iep um english language learners uh you know we want to and any of our disengaged youth um you know any of those barriers that they might have to remote learning we want to make sure it's mitigated through this process and leverage these resources to help you know to help all of those students so engaging families in the community provide parents and guardians with the skills to support their children's academic endeavors um or their you know academic goals um you know i love the fact that um you know even even in the state's guidance they they talked about districts engaging the community in the family academy programs right and and in these in these environments we could provide parents and guardians with the skills to support their children's academic you know endeavors at home right and so including those skills necessary to support technology use in the home and so you know anne did her best our coaches did their best our district we all did our best to try to support families in this transition but it would be amazing to have the resources uh to have academies to support our our families across the district in in a more systemic way and these and these resources could help in that in that network school safety and social emotional well-being of the whole student and our school staff um and so you know we know we're unprecedented times right now and so um you know helping to address the social emotional um health concerns um and partnering with you know our public health safety i mean public public uh our our social emotional centers and partnering with those with with those groups to help making sure we meet the needs of all of our kids um there are certainly opportunities um for mental health services to be delivered in person or remote and making sure we're tapping into all of those supports to meet the needs of our kids in these um unprecedented times and of course you know you've also heard from from the district um you know around um hiring or or or or yeah hiring and recruiting and hiring more staff to help support um you know for guidance counselors social workers etc and so there is also some opportunities in those areas to help in this effort and then the safety piece school safety is also included in here so resources could also be allocated to support the physical health and safety of our students and you know ensuring that we continue to have the ppe equipment that we need across the district ensuring that we have the cleaning supplies that we need across the district and making sure we continue to be outfitted uh with the necessary ppe equipment to keep our building and our people safe so remote learning staff development in a digital divide maintain or upgrade access to technology and connectivity for the long term and i really think we need to be forward thinking right now as part of this work certainly we did we did enough to get through the pandemic um but i think uh you know part of par part of the conversations we need to have if we're going to be a one-to-one district that we're going to have all of our all of our kids walking around with laptops um there's going to be an increased demand on our infrastructure and i think we need to do an assessment probably to to make sure we can meet the needs of all of our kids whether they're at home or whether they're in school and i think with an assessment is going to be needed really soon and so some of the resources that should be allocated you can see up here we've identified a few uh provide assistance and training for our families talk about that a little bit earlier increased professional development for staff um to continue to develop their skills to provide remote learning um and you know open with maintaining upgrading technology uh for for the long term kevin could we could the assessment of our existing system fall under uh a reimbursement for this i don't know courtney any thoughts on that one um assessment of our current network technology or software um i'm thinking more networked like the the the network itself like the uh the incoming signal and the disbursement of that signal and the connection of all those like the hardware the hardware itself sorry my signal's bad as you're saying that because i'm coming i'm hearing you in and out yeah it we do believe it is eligible um and it's a big upgrade that we're about to to need um for the whole overall infrastructure so um i think it's like 395k that we put forward in the budget i believe this will be it'll be eligible for under esser our challenge there is that you have an ongoing maintenance cost we're just going to have to be mindful you know of that ongoing maintenance cost um being funded with a grant you know is an operational need so that's that's that conversation but yes upgrading the wi-fi where we need to upgrade the wi-fi and putting the right servers in place and network maintenance contract in place can is eligible um yeah at least the hardware portion of the of those pieces are eligible okay great thank you yeah and then and then not terribly different from what the last slide um but school facility repairs and improvements to reduce the risk of virus transmission and exposure to environmental health hazards i mean you know this this one could be a big one for us and so i think another you know some type of inspection or assessment would be necessary um you know and this could be some opportunities to upgrade um continue to upgrade our infrastructure and so you know we'll be all of these things will be part of the considerations uh moving forward and so in here in this next slide just provides kind of a list of activities or eligible items eligible activities under esser so i just wanted to share this [Music] and i again this is just kind of repeat of some some of some of the items we've already talked about but improving coordination with the district on to include improving coordination to respond right and prevent uh the response to coronavirus uh planning for coordination between schools and families during long-term closures so you know we were you know unfortunately if we would have another event like we did last time make sure we're ready to make sure we can continue to make sure our our kids are fed during during any time of long-term closure making sure we can still provide access for families of high quality online learning um you know like we did during the closure this time um but again as we continue to have more and more kids connected there's likely to be more and more demands on the system so we want to make sure we're ready for it provide principles and other school leaders with the resources necessary they need to address the needs in individual schools this was mentioned in the previous slide about facility repairs and improvements to enable operation of schools to reduce the risk of virus transmission [Music] of course address the learning loss and you know whether it's programming or staffing to help to help support all of our students provide mental health services and supports and this could mean staffing this could be programming on this could be professional development for staff so there are a lot of different directions we can go in under that one planning and implementing activities related to summer learning supplements after school programs and addressing the needs of low-income students students with disabilities english language learners and so this is again going back to the academic learning loss and making sure we're addressing those areas and other activities that are necessary to maintain operations and continuity of services and continuing to embl employ existing staff and so these are just some of the activities that are eligible under esser um and so you know when when our community is thinking about the 10.1 um certainly there are guidelines but there as you can see there are some flexibilities that that could be part of the consideration so what's next for us we will be submitting an application soon um in uh we will be submitting an application soon courtney mentioned that earlier and that that will be in about a month from now in early april as part of this application process you know we will be engaging we will be engaging stakeholders as part of our process to help inform the submission of that application um and frankly we we are we are looking forward to that um you know as part of that process we will have a needs assessment all of this will you know help inform how we can address students needs district-wide and improve student outcomes we also understand that you know we as part of this process we want to make sure we're engaging community but we also want to make engage all of our bargaining units as part of this process um and and we will right because because we are partners in this work and then last but not least review the current funding streams um to ensure any remaining balances are used to support current needs in accordance with our approved applications um and so that also will be part of the process moving forward um courtney did you do you need to provide any clarification on this last slide before i close out one little bit so something that rich has asked for and that i'd like to to ask his opinion about doing in a finance committee would be we have crf current virus relief funds we have cares act one we have cares act two and now we have this new federal stimulus money coming so just to be really clear for either a workshop or um how we talk to the board about it i just want everybody to know you know what each of those funding streams is supporting and then what our process is for this application so um as kevin mentioned you know there's a assessment tool that we have to use and we are using for the state guidance to develop our plan for the 10 million dollars that's just kicked off so we've identified sort of stakeholders to lead each of the target areas so remote learning learning loss family engagement social emotional and they have to engage stakeholders and then identify what rubric they're going to be using to measure the effectiveness so demographic information so qualitative quantitative information to um align it with our and then also align it with our mission and our smart goals so our strategic plan and so it's it's involved and already um you know from the academic side tara has led some teams that have identified um possible uses of the karzak money and then cabinet's going to go come together and prioritize those and then talk to the board about it so we've got a short time frame and there is a rubric for which we discuss it and i just want the board to be aware and the community relations group to be aware that you know there's there's four basic funding streams related to coronavirus relief each has a little bit of a different purpose or application process and i just want people to be aware of that so i'll be having a workshop with rich about that as well as how that ties into our current city budget needs and the potential uses of those funds for some of the new things that we've asked for yeah yeah i got a question could i ask a question kate yeah of course richmond yeah courtney the 10 million dollars is that's a one-shot uh infusion correct correct and it's a multi-year one-shot infusion it's over two years okay yeah two and a half yeah two and a half and what we're trying to do is to equate i'm assuming we're trying to equate what's already in our budget with what some of the provisions or thoughts that that are in this 10 million dollars that we've already come up with that we can use correct correct now the goal is to so the guidance from the state is not to supplant operations um and to fit within those like required um um you know points that that kevin just made for uh learning loss you know to celebrate learning loss and um address social emotional needs and um digital learning but yes the point is yes so the the thing that we have to assess is the risk for the future so a lot of the things that we put forward in the plan from the city um are personnel related and so to the extent that we do decide to shift those items into that grant we run the risk in future years of losing those people or that funding okay so what's the risk of us utilizing the 10 million dollars in creating or paying for improvements etc and then down the road what do we do at the end of two years pull a plug on the the we just pull a plug on on what we've already spent to ten million dollars for i mean i i would stay hopeful that because it's nation this is just me speaking i'm not speaking for the district but it's a nationwide effort that it would continue to be sustained in some way but yes we can't count on that it's not in any budget it's only appropriated until 2022 you know and so it is a risk that we run but it's it's it's a risk shared by the rest of the country with the investments that they're making thank you and it's part of the reason why the acceleration of the alliance monies um they maintain the original the original um numbers that they were going to because danbury was expecting an acceleration in those um in the alliance monies and um i know the government had mentioned recently um that they may they may pause on that acceleration and if they make but if they maintain those numbers i think the cliff that we're concerned about right now we would be less concerned about right courtney and i don't know some thoughts that you had previously yeah and and to yes like so we definitely need the state to at least you know maintain the commitment to the alliance levels in the two years down the road but in addition i just want to say so dr sal's stand on this is that we both need the 14 million dollars for what we put forward for operations and we need the 10.1 to mitigate learning loss i mean that's his his um position um so and we also have to prudently plan for if the contingencies what ifs so the what if one is we get less than we ask for from the city um the second is what if the alliance funding remains on flat you know we have to be prepared for all those contingencies and so i'm prepared to talk to the board about that you know through you reach the finance committees as well just i'm not as hopeful down a row that this is a continuation you know i sort of look at it worst case scenario or even i think what will happen you know it's just it's a shot the arm and then a couple of three years when maybe the virus thing is is under control and it becomes a normal flu shot every year that we're stuck with programs and we pull a plug on it and then we're scratching our head and say sorry we can't afford it anymore we could air conditioning but we could air condition all of our buildings and use the 10 million dollars you know that'll be something but yeah so every piece of you know what what each group is examining when they go through they're very carefully thinking through things that are i'm not going to say one time in nature things that give us long-term impact and would not leave you know if for example there's a train the trainer model for social emotional that's expensive but we get a big bang for our buck with our current staff and we could retain some of that you know and it's for social emotional and it's pretty it's it's a really well-known model that we just have we've wanted to implement and we haven't implemented now might be the time that's one of the things that's being put forward as an example you know buying libraries for our kids it's mitigating learning loss you know it is important so yeah just rich people are definitely mindful of that we're not hoping but but to your point earlier most of our budget asks were personnel so no we can't you can't have it i wanted to ask a question about that courtney because on one of the slides i think was the second to last slide there was like a last line that says it could be used towards you know additional staff are we talking you know so when we talk about supplanting operations we're talking about not using that money for the existing staff that we have but any new staff that we might bring in that are specific to these goals we might be able to fit under this umbrella is that what i'm hearing um yeah i i do think that just like we did last year you know it's it's still part of our operational budgets part of our operational budget needs but and when the city comes back with the response about the funding um we can look at that and and yes some of the things that we put forward would be eligible um we would have to figure that with the unions like it's described uh how that would how would that would work if they're grant and termed positions for example but the counselors the um student support specialists certainly a lot of the curricular investments you know would could be considered mitigating learning loss okay so we're going to have to figure out i think how to navigate that conversation at the city council level um you know which i can certainly appreciate you know the different interests that are being represented you know by the city but i think um you know i i kind of concur with dr sal's point that we need both both sets of uh funds to come in um you know just from the presentation we had from dan and megan at the last meeting and hearing that they had you know programs that they put in place specifically to address some of the things that were happening you know some some you know problems that they saw happening at the high school level and then had to cut them um and i just don't want us to wind up back in that place because um you know that's not that's not doing our work to provide the best possible educational experience for our kids right right yeah i i feel like when we get on the other side i'm sorry miss cooper did you want to say something okay you know i i know this was not a finance meeting but you know the committee sort of go hand in hand and that was my question you know as far as looking at the 10.1 million dollars and knowing that we are asking for what is 13 million or 14 million whichever the number that we're using um as we approach the community and the common council uh you know first thing that they would say well you have 10 million so why are you asking for 13 million and i know this is coming off a grant and you know there's specific things that you will be able to do with these funds but again uh would you and i think courtney has said it early that you know we'll move forward and ask you know with the 10.1 million then we will also continue to ask for the 13 million from this city and i i guess i'm just trying to to to figure out you know is this going to be a uh you know i'm just trying to get some thought as to how you feel about that for me one of the challenges is that it is a challenging year so i and i understand that for the city and i know that our our ask is higher than anybody in connecticut um one of the challenging things is that in this is my opinion every year that we don't put the funding it out forward we're stepping backwards so two years from now and this funding goes away and i don't know how to play that politically gladys so i'm just we're with the community or what's palatable but i do think that every year that we don't invest we're further back in the hole because just the cost of living if it goes up two and a half percent every year for us two and a half percent is a lot of money you know because we're a big district so three years from now if we don't get our two and a half every year then we're seven and a half percent behind and um you know so it's keeping pace with the local commitment and and we have to do that rationally rational understanding of where the city is right now with um the pandemic and the loss of revenue um but that would be what i would say so i don't have the answer i think i i kevin can you yeah so i i i will say and and and and and courtney my my thoughts quite frankly are are connected to a statement that you made earlier when you talked about you know you're really hopeful that the state maintains um you know those funding levels that they had committed to previously and and i feel like um you know if if we can begin to think through a three i think a three to four year budget is necessary now more than ever and i feel like it's going to be necessary for us to partner with the city to talk about what our needs are and not not just this year uh but you know 2022 2023 because when when when these grants sunset we can't be back at at ground zero again um you know when we get to the other side of this uh obviously we just talked about uh the many activities that are eligible um under this grant and and and we will address them you know i'm confident we will do right by kids and families with that work um but but when the grant sunsets right we we obviously we need the gov state to continue to maintain their funding levels um but i think we also need to work and partner with the city and and and hopefully that they will also maintain the levels we need them to be at the end of these three years not just this year but when that grant ends we need some type of commitment from the city to say when we get to the other side of this right because we we we have a little jump start over these next couple of years but when we get to the other side and all that money is gone we can't be back to where we are right now we have to be in a different space in terms of a commitment from the city and i i i'm hopeful that these next couple years gives the city the opportunity to grow you know and get the support that they need um to help refresh um you know because i quite frankly i don't pay attention to that side of the ledger in terms of with the city dynamics um but but but we will need some type of assurances when this is over you know given the continued growth in our community given um the growth in our schools um we're going to need a support that's different from the from from the support that we have right now and it can't just be enough to maintain the additional staffing it needs to be enough to maintain the staffing plus the the investments we've made over these last couple of years yeah and and i think that needs to be part of our planning effort and i think we need to start partnering with the city like asap right i know the state we need those comm we need them to maintain their commitments uh but i think some partnering in conversations need to take place with the city as well thank you thank you uh courtney and mr walsh edrich kevin you know you're i like your point in saying that we're going to partner with the city this is very complex and it it's complex and and it creates a burden for us in terms of going down a road and feeling assured that we could follow through with our commitments is there a way that we could work with somebody in the city to as we prepare this you know as opposed to just giving a presentation what we normally do which i'm sure is just too complicated for them to hear in in a one hour or two hour session so maybe it's it's possible that i'm not saying who but maybe it's possible that somebody in this city whether it be the finance department basically it should be the f well i don't understand who it should be but somebody within the city understand what we're going through and at least the rationale and and the need for this stuff so we're all on the same playing field um and they have our at least they have our thought process as to what we're trying to do um you know to engage them early on in our process as opposed to later on so we build a partnership a true partnership as opposed to just going in without you know how in our hand and say you know give us you know whatever funding that we're looking for so it might be a thought that we can reach out to them and and ask them to to at least stay there and understand what's happening or have yourself or courtney and whomever discuss with them the legalities and and the and the issues of this money so they understand uh it and they could pass it on to to their council people so that when they have to make a decision they don't automatically as mrs cooper said you know deduct the 10 from from the 13 or tell you look at your problem you got all this money now you know don't come to us um but go ahead amy i just have a question have we ever richard i'm sure you'd know the answer to this but have we ever had a workshop at the city council meeting you know take it to them instead of you know having one and hoping they'll get on the call or something like i think that's a great yeah a number of years ago or you know i don't want we had one um but i don't think the times were as complicated you know they were normal times where we needed money you know to say that but that that hasn't changed in 14 years i've been on a board but the the last two years have been complicated with also with this additional funding stream that we have and and and now with the rug pulled out from under us regarding the the alliance funding you know this district in a horrendous horrendous position you know we're guessing we're promising a lot and you know can we deliver and and if we deliver fortunately can we continue to deliver so you know somebody in the city government has to understand our plight and uh you know i don't know whether it's a workshop amy or whether it's a one-on-one conversation with the administration and and the mayor and then whomever in the finance department but my feeling is is we got to build a partnership and and part of the conditions kevin that you indicated you know in one of your slides and then i think was to last was facility upgrades and i think a lot of that isn't that part of the city's responsibility to take care of their buildings or does that come under our responsibilities technically i believe it's the city's responsibility yeah so um but anyway it's it's complicated these are all our kids in the city they're not the board of ed's kids you know they're they're the danbury kids and and the city of danbury you know which is basically us has to be under you know has to help us understand this plight that we have in into fulfilling a a an obligation and we've got to we've got to be able to understand what we can do if i can just um i just wanted to follow up on something that amy had mentioned earlier amy once you brought that up i couldn't help but think about a sites and facilities meeting we had it feels like centuries ago when you know when we were sitting down with legislators when we were sitting down with city council members um you know mayor mark was at the head of the table and all of us were sitting there and you know we we were partnered in that discussion um and at that time that was about you know the you know trying to launch the work of the matrix um but in many ways it was an opportunity it was like a workshop because we were each each of those different subcommittees were um speaking to each other about the progress or lack thereof um and kind of what work needed to take place in order to move the work forward um and it would be wonderful at least in my eyes if we can have you know just trying to think about that structure if we can have similar conversations whether that's the finance committee um you know whether that's a community relations committee whichever one would be appropriate i don't know but it would be great if we can find a way to meet with them and you know continue these discussions in some kind of long-range planning i agree i think rich we have a really good working relationship with the finance director and it's helped us tremendously you know in terms of you know just everything that we we've needed that that's doable we've been able to achieve with the finance director this year and i i think that that us doing a presentation to the fight the fire director um dave saint-hilaire he does know all this information about esser and us or two we share it with him um i don't and he's influential certainly however he's not the one you know that's making the decision so i do think the council is a place that we could have some impact in terms of really informing people um like amy mentioned and maybe the finance committee and including dave as a partner there because um you know he has been a wonderful partner um with us maybe if maybe we need to bring this up with with the mayor and get his in our thoughts about who that would be indoors work with the sr2 planning as a way to get a hook you know to get that interested potentially yeah i think it's time that kevin and courtney and everybody else i think it's time that we form a partnership here in the city and it's not board of ed against the city and vice versa yeah this is as i keep saying the these are our kids and and the city has the same responsibility in providing you know a good education for these children as we do and as times get more and more complicated you know we've got to work together to make things work rather than just adversarial i think gone are the times we go there with our hands on our hat and say we need this and then walk away with whatever we get and we do magic and everything goes away and the next day you know it is something else this stuff is not going away the implications that we have here with the funding that we're asking for in in the budget plus all the complications that this 10 million dollars and who knows what's down the road may be but all these one shot one shot uh infusions creates a problem for us and i'm glad you like that multi-year id you know idea because i i think that's critical you know that shows everybody strategic planning on our part and and uh it's time to work as a team if we don't work with the funding source we don't work with the people that write the checks so that they understand our plight and you're right it may not only be with the mayor may not only be with dave's and saint hillard but maybe to the full council is to have a what you call a workshop but some sort of a presentation to them in terms of what we're faced with so they see it firsthand and then if time comes again this year and they allow us to do the the presentation they will be more aware of the significance of our budget rather than just listening to it for the first time and trying to absorb everything so it may be something we want to consider look at thought rich thank you could i uh uh interject a brief uh word or two i think it's uh it's very important that if we're going to form a relationship with the city i think you should not just do it once a year and this is what has been happening over the times you know we get to the budget we sit down with them at education in their education committee once a year and we have to start planning to not do that once a year and and as long as i have been on the board that have always been some type of communication about the budget not as much as going for a workshop of anything but when they have put their education committee together everybody comes to the table and we sit down and it's only once a year so if you're going to look at a formula partnership let's say we start meeting every two months every three months or whatever and then you know because once the education commission committee is formed you get those people involved which is i think it's about 10 12 people and then you can't form that relationship with the common council and have them all come in and then everyone have a full workshop on uh the budget and i think this is to me the short stick of it is you know we only do this once a year yeah so we're gonna form the partnership let's say okay we no we need to start sitting down in september october okay then the next two months you know and just keep pushing and pushing and pushing until we sort of get them on board with what we are trying to make them understand that we need as a district yeah good one yeah totally agree if we're going to partner today i totally agree that's what it would take i'm just thinking about the number of meetings that we've had to try and understand the complexity all of this stuff and and we see your you know the monthly finance updates and understand all those mechanisms so i have to imagine from you know an outside perspective that's that's a lot to absorb and you know they're weighing that against the things that they're looking at every month in terms of budgeting and expenses so good points all around thank you yeah i think one thing just when dr sal briefed and i briefed mayor cavo but dr sal spoke mostly on the current budget it was really informative because it was it was similar to kate's kind of highlights you know and and the one pager we we spoke to like five or six points he really heard it and he understood the need and he knows he's constrained but it was a good opening point for him to hear and i was surprised that he didn't know some of the information even though he was president of the council but now in his mirror so i mean it kind of circles back to all the points that gladys made just sustain the the relationship like start the relationship sustain it not just at those one meetings and really look at maybe workshopping some things with them in a way that that gets their interest too but i got another question amy amy i'm take your version and i'll take you after that rich i i think that it's uh an opportune time also with a new i don't know if you know we don't know if it'll be a mayor cabo or someone else but uh excellent time to get into a new group with a new leader um right i mean just like you said courtney that you and uh dr sal went to see mayor cabo and he didn't wasn't aware of something so it's it may be a good time good time to do it yeah yeah edward you know we're struggling with trying to present that budget to the general to the parents of the general public to support it just think of how difficult it is to to present this concept to them so that the publicity that they get from you know the patch or the news times or wherever they get their information the headlines read you know the danbury public schools get you know 10 10 million dollars and somebody sits back and says ah you know again to my point what are you bothering me with you know you know you're you're flush so this is complicated you know as we're hearing it tonight can you imagine the complication we're going to have in trying to get this across to and if we stay with a one-pager concept is to get this across across to the general public which says basically these funds are different to be used differently than our regular general budget um you know if that's a way to phrase it so it's creating again more of a communication problem for us to reach the outsiders for those people to support us to continue to to have them support us rather than to lose them because they they don't understand the implications of all this money you know they just hear money and you know as i said the layman will subtract one from the other and say it's home free and go on to something else yeah but i think part of our work here too is um building awareness about the things that we're lacking in our current structure and obviously we want to be um careful about how we're presenting information and and careful about how we're we're talking about our schools because i don't think anybody here would disagree that our schools do a really fantastic job with the resources that we have it's just a question of helping people understand that we don't have the resources that really are are what we what we want to give our kids and that parents are asking for and that that students are looking for so um you know that's that's a piece of this as well is helping folks understand what it could look like to have you know a high school that has a program for gifted and talented kids what a program would look like to have sports at the middle school level what it would look like to be able to have expanded arts and uh and music programs you know at all levels you know we have some good things in place but you know we've had to make cuts to a lot of the programs that we have into a lot of the experiences we could offer as part of a robust education that extends just beyond the pure academic piece of this i think one of the things i can do is also look to other large districts that are recipients of a large amount of money that are also struggling and find out how they're talking to their city about this so you know we can we can get some common language because i know just seeing from my casper group the business officials they're struggling also with how to convey this message that'd yeah this doesn't kevin this doesn't even throw into the picture the the financing of of the the the the academy you know i i think you're gonna just you're gonna be as short as me in a little while and and i think that's why it's so important to partner with the city on this um because like i said earlier you know we don't we don't just need the state to maintain their funding levels but we need to get the city to to commit to a funding level that's going to make sense for us um you know when again when we're on the other side of these grants and they sunset uh because we we can't be we cannot be back at ground zero um you know we'll be opening up uh the academy um at the high schools we'll have you know again increase population growth around around the city we have an annex that we know at ellsworth that we know is going to fill up um this all requires additional staffing you know across the district and so that's that's just our you know base base staffing that we need to to continue to move the district forward um you know not to mention the contractual obligations um you know that will certainly be an increase in us in our in our city fund in our city budget um and so you know that that's just enough to maintain our budget um you know never mind the initiatives and the enrollment growth that we're anticipating uh over these next two or three years um and then and then the grant monies will be gone um and again that's that's why it's so important to try to you know start to get commitments from the city and the state um to maintain these things and continue to move forward yeah and perhaps the city could help us advocate to the state to to reinstate that alliance money again we act as a partnership and so we're acting as a city and and not just not the educational part of the city but the city you know in its entirety in the city government plus the board of ed is is asking the state to to maintain what they've agreed to do so i think it has merit so so kate i just wanted to make you aware uh while we were talking i moved the agenda around a little bit just to make sense um before we close out um i did want to give ann an opportunity to review the community invitation that we had developed i think the two surveys that i had um that i had included the links for in this in this in our agenda um it was really just for information only we just wanted to make you aware that we had developed uh surveys on behalf of the district to get feedback to elicit feedback from our staff on how they would love for us to use these funds um you know given given the guidance that was provided but then this similar survey that anne had developed and her team had developed for parents families and community as well um and so is that is that going out district-wide just to clarify it is they're both in draft form right now uh let me just put this back up um they're both in draft form right now but yes that is the idea um and are you still there i'm here okay um you want me to start with the community invitation and then go to the surveys okay sure now watch it not work because i don't know you still have 79 days left in your trial so yeah that's right that's right that's right thank goodness so we felt it very important that we um have listening forums with our families where they have an opportunity to speak with us but then also to have surveys so there's multi-modalities modality ways that families can get information back to us we've had several conversations already with groups in the city questions have come to my office i'm sure courtney has fielded some too about what is this money what's this going to do for my family um and it's written up in the newspaper and communities um like ours are doing some of the same things so next week on tuesday and then thursday and thursday we will have um listening forms the first one is that march 16th that one will be done in spanish by our frc through that group and then we have two on thursdays one in the morning and one in the afternoon one in the evening and that will give parents community members time to get there and then respond to sets of questions i've been fortunate enough to attend a couple other districts to see how they've done it and what i like about it and what i don't like about it i do believe that we need to give some parameters up front of what the money can be spent on and help channel people's energies very much like what we just did here on the different areas that money can be spent on so that is that invitation that will go out tomorrow to folks and kevin if you can how about you want to do the family one ann sure so this is a survey and as you read down through it i'm sure you'll say wow that's just a bizarre idea as i ran it through my team today they're like hmm i don't know but you know when we're trying to build a sense of community we wanted to throw out ideas of what families felt were important and not important and of course one of the big ones on here was a community garden around pollinators right there you see it a community or school-based pollinate pollinator vegetable garden that's huge our experience for our 21st century programs have been huge for that with parents you know partaking in growing the vegetables and reaping them and so how can we use that money then um can't do food carts but we certainly can do projects like that that help feed families um and so this survey here that is both for families and community is pretty wide ranged of the things that we threw out there that we'd like to hear from feedback from them on how important it is to them or you know maybe it's not important at all and so we'll be able to take the data that we receive from this survey to be able to help direct our priorities into the grant and how that's put together of course at the bottom i did leave a section for open comments you know what did we miss what other ideas do you have from this so this as i said is being discussed in the community and we are getting questions so i um expect that it will be hopefully well filled out and that families will feel comfortable about putting comments in the bottom portion wow i didn't think it was that long but that's okay i was going really slow in yeah no that's all right what other learning supports would be helpful what educational programs um you know and this particular one here these questions here the learning support is around what's important for the student and then what learning programs would be helpful for the parents to enhance their learning on how to support their child's learning and then what did what did we miss um tell us what else you think so that's that survey and then um two like kevin had said we wanted to make sure that we reach out to our union members our staff they're the you know on the ground they're the ones that um we also want to hear from you know where do they find um you know where's the importance for them um so is it you know summer school programs credit recovery at the high school extended day for acceleration and intervention and so uh these surveys are vetted by the cabinet they're vetted by our curriculum experts as well as to what areas the staff feel necessary we also did under on dr casmiro a large um a bit of work with our admin council broken down into the learning loss areas and pd of what they feel are important so we're trying to challenge this as courtney said channel it i'm sorry as courtney said as quickly as possible but by doing due diligence in the work that we're being done to capture everyone so that um when that button is hit i think it's april 5th the proposal has to be in we feel that we did our best job and put our best foot forward in getting all of this information uh put together in a timely basis that's going to fit the needs of our community that's it thank you ann thank you it was a very thorough list so thank you doctor thank you well i want to ask you guys a question about this because i think part of um part of what i try to think about as we're approaching anything that we talk about with the schools and how we're supporting our students is thinking about those most vulnerable kids um you know and the most vulnerable families that are in our community that either may not be able to offer feedback for one reason or another um you know we're trying to make it as accessible as possible obviously but some folks don't have internet or don't have the ability to to access you know things this way and i'm also you know thinking about the percentages different percentages of people that might respond to something like this you know where some of the priorities that maybe we should have as a district kind of get outweighed by the responses that we see from this feedback here um and and i'm just wondering if there's a way we can sort of address that equity piece absolutely so one of the things we'll be doing is it'll go out through a robo call it'll go out in the email but we'll also be placing it into the google classrooms for students to bring back to their parents we know for many of our younger students the parents are sitting right there with them and so we're going to ask teachers to bring it forth during their classrooms to show parents talk to parents a little bit about it um and to get the word out that way and i think that will um to your point kate will really help um gather those families that we often don't hear from but are hearing from more and we'll also work with our 21st century programs and the elp program to reach families as they're coming and going um picking up their children next week to make sure that they're aware of this and that they take the time to do the surveys excellent and it's in the forum and is are these both available in uh spanish enforcement okay wonderful thank you so much for translation thank you maybe we could also put them in our just we don't have that much time left with the one week distribution of the food oh absolutely yes absolutely yeah very good thank you thank and you okay last but not least from us anyway um um courtney did you have any update on the budget timeline yeah well i just can i do you mind if i just share from they don't last years just because i want us to be mindful of the time and i just want to i know we don't have this year um let me find oh where is this okay hold on one sec i'm so sorry i didn't have it ready to go i mean i did but then i went out of it here it is okay shoot your screen okay um so they haven't published this year yet but here's where we are like in terms of like a comparable time frame so we had our february 14th submission between the 10th to the 20th so last year so roughly along the same time is when they're preparing their budget for binding meaning you know the finance director it was working with the mayor and then we're working towards that date of roughly i think it's april 5th this year because it's that tuesday when the mayor will present to city council and then city council has basically those three weeks in april to review and then the the proposed budget is printed by the danbury news times and it's formally adopted on may 15th so to say we don't have much time um to get out whatever message we want to get out with the community or if we want to initiate some forum with the city council i don't know yet i don't know if you've heard kate because dave hasn't told me yet or rich if you've heard the format that they they haven't decided i know that the executive order expand it expires after the april deadline so i don't know if they're going to take advantage of that again and it'll be like last year where there's not like a public a formal public forum um as soon as i know i will let the committee know um or as soon as any of us here but for right now just so you're aware that this is the debt around april 5th would be the date that we the mayor would be presenting to the council and then the three weeks are when the council is doing its review and we'd have our committee meetings if they're going to be held as well as the education sub committee meeting correct yeah and we can certainly ask for that you know and i think we have every right to ask for that um traditional meeting even if they decide that they're going to go forward because we didn't have it last year um but that's that's the timeline so yeah thank you courtney i haven't heard anything from um any of the folks that i've i've reached out to about how that schedule's gonna work so yeah i apologize that i don't have it yet i mean they're just mired in their current process at the moment as well so and then court um kate the last the last piece for us um you know and has already spoken to next week on the community engagement sessions around esser um you know of course you know between city council and esser these these both of these things have kind of uh jumped in front of our other engagement sessions that we wanted to participate in but but we still have plans also to present the city the the city budget as as we had initially intended um so ann would you mind to help close this out at least from our perspective um kind of what our next steps are i know we had identified some different constituents constituency groups throughout the city of danbury and talk about our next steps there as well right so um and i changed the letter a little bit to reference the budget details that courtney did in the presentation that's listed on our website um and for that for right now that's the master kind of information that's out there from that presentation that courtney did um until we get a date from the city or we really know what the city is doing it's really hard to ask people to become active at this point except to reach out to their council people and so once we get that date we'll be able to um continue and circle back with all of those groups to make sure that they're um you know asking their constituents and their stakeholders um to help promote this budget right and and in the letter and had um developed a letter inviting these different constituency groups constituent groups to join us for a zoo meeting so that we can present that overview of the budget that we had talked about um so and maybe it's probably best to invite them right after the esser engagement so folks don't get confused and think it's the same session so you know maybe we can send out those invitations next week and then probably in a couple of you know in a week or two we can turn around and engage those folks as we had originally planned correct correct in the meantime can we um also and i don't know if we should go through your doctor meter or through you kevin um to set up a meeting with the democratic town committee and the republican town committee um i don't know if that you know where that falls into the timeline but my feeling is sooner would be better rather than later but you know depends on what your guys schedules are so well i'm i'm i'm available um right so we could just make that make that happen but we'll have to circle in dr sal and you know let's talk strategy and do it as soon as possible okay absolutely okay thank you kevin go ahead richie had your hand up yeah i last week we had at some point we had talked about engaging a conversation with the students um we were i wasn't looking for them to advocate you know for for our budget or get into a legal conflict with them it was more of an understanding that they understand what we're trying to do for them and have them look at the components of the budget so they can give some feedback on it that'll help us to either reinforce that what we're doing is is good for them or if we could pick up more information from them that maybe we didn't have in here that we might have missed that was the point in terms of engaging the students with that i assumed it would just filter home if they get excited about it and then talk to the parents about it but basically it'd be good to have their feedback in this as as another interested in party uh in in the budget process so that if something could be done to put something together with the the whoever it is at the high school whatever group up there that donovan feels we can do it and um it might be interesting i agree i i i agree rich i i think in in in similar but but different way um as we got feedback from dan and meg i'm hearing firsthand of the impact of positions being available or not available i think it would be um valuable for us to hear directly from kids to hear you know how service how they're impacted by services or lack thereof at the school i think that would be good for us so i'll circle back with dan and and see if we can get get get some kids for us to speak to it would be good to build for our next year's budget as well like to get that engagement and say we had students involved and these were their thoughts you know to continue that once we build it this year yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah i just want to say a very nice job tonight excellent job you know a nice agenda fantastic um there was one of your slides in the agenda packet was um a multi-slide relative to the high school that kept flipping it confuses me because it goes too fast and i can't focus on what it is is there a way to play with fonts on that and reduce yeah and reduce that to something that's manageable um even if you extend it to to not eight and a half by 11 but legal size paper or something you know if you have to do that but it might be better on one sheet rather than have a scroll because personally i i find it difficult to to read it you know comprehend it and the next slide comes uh unless i don't unless i have the ability to stop um sure so so rich that um i put that together and and it was based on the feedback that we got from dan and megan and i can i can adjust the fonts i can adjust the content of the slides i can adjust the time that those slides are up so if you feel like i could certainly go back and add you know time to that the idea was that this would be pushed out through social media um and the the intent behind choosing that format is that you know it sort of happens in the background as somebody's like looking they don't have to do anything they don't have to uh click on anything they don't have to increase the size on anything it's big enough that they can read the content right in place i'm not just you know i'm not saying anything negative about it it's just that my thought would be the other would be a good mailer or something a good takeaway that that you can have as a hard copy takeaway you could shoot it out to again a pto or principal and tell a principal to give it to whomever and and particularly in the high school if this is addressed as the high school and it's you know somebody could click on it and and print it out uh the the other one you know suits the purpose that what you you designed it for but it had a lot of good information on there and it was you know good bullet points so it's just another way that we can get a message across sure i think multiple formats is is great um and that's something if you guys are okay with i can work on that kick something back to you um and i can do that for the other one as well just to have it okay so kate that is it for courtney ann and i um unless you have any additional items for us uh no i just want to open the floor to the committee members and see if anybody has any other questions or feedback they want to share i think we're i think we're set here so i will ask for a motion to adjourn moved motion to adjourn i got a motion from joe and amy you'll take the second on that let's take a second all those in favor aye thank you so much for coming tonight thank you guys you

And he, that attitude in We Are Fired, Welcome Back to School, I went to dance well for the service implementation in Herning, he equips a truck and puts a lot of passion into football, the different education, working together, we who work well, save internet, students of them, and we are very happy to welcome you back to our schools. We will have a lot of information to share with you and your parents that will keep our community safe when we return to school. Our classrooms and our schools will look very different from how they looked last year, but if we all work together, we can have a happy and safe return. [Music] Beyond world windows and mount, more faces are required for all students, staff, and guests at all times. The mask must cover the nose and mouth, and there is town webmaster 600 of Bobby Sands Place, Obrador score of the AP-6, Berman and Erwan, a thousand science partners.

foreign you ausd students we are excited to welcome you back to our schools we have a lot of important information to share with you and your parents to keep our community safe when we return our classrooms and our schools will look different than they did last year but by working together we can have a happy and safe return estudiantes estamos muy contentos davien benida and [Music] don't forget your mask because you will need it mask should be worn covering the nose and the mouth estudiantes el personal all auc staff will be wearing masks for your safety and ours [Music] there will be signs placed around our schools and offices reminding everyone to keep social distance in las puertas de los alones esta signales nos disen cuantas personas estan permitidas in los alones [Music] our classrooms will have a different look and feel than they have in the past student and staff desks are spaced to allow for social distancing student and staff desks also have shields to protect our community teacher desks are separated from student desks and students will be given time throughout the day to wash and sanitize their hands estudiantes is [Music] we're confident that even with these changes we'll be able to provide a safe and engaging learning environment and don't forget to bring your water bottle every day water fountains will be closed off but each school has new water bottle refill stations installed students should bring a refillable water bottle to school each day las puentes de aguas estarances students who are on campus for in-person learning will receive a bad lunch as they leave campus [Music] for the safety of students and staff we will not be able to have volunteers or visitors on campus if you need to conduct school business please call first and we will help determine if the visit to the school office is needed if you need to come to the office you will be screened prior to entry every school has a new mega scanner that has been installed in every single cafeteria it is extremely helpful to all of us to ensure that we are abiding by safety guidelines and make sure your temperature is taken when you come in tenemos scanner yeah [Music] each school has a unique plan for drop off and pick up be sure to attend your school's reopening meeting so you can learn about the entry and exit points and other site-specific information allah when you arrive at school you'll find signs at all the entrances you'll also find floor markings and directional arrows please make sure that you're following all instructions and following the arrows as you walk into classrooms down hallways [Music] a reopening guidebook will be posted on our district and school website it includes the information share in this video as well as many more information about our reopening plans the web [Music] each site will also host a reopening meetings more information will be shared and parents will have an opportunity to ask questions regarding the plans cara escuela tambien organized [Music] to all of our associate unified school district students we cannot wait for you to return we miss you and we can't wait for the first day back at school again well good evening everyone uh thank you so much for being here today um on behalf of the board of education uh we would like to welcome you uh to tonight's town hall that's going to be focusing on our reopening reopening plans for elementary schools in a second here we'll start showing our guidebook our skill our school reopening guidebook which will be available uh tonight um on our website uh as well as the video that you just watched uh tonight so on behalf of the board of education again uh welcome uh before we begin uh we would like to let you know that we input we do anticipate uh that we will have time to take live questions uh at the end of our presentation but just in case uh to make sure that your question is captured uh we would really appreciate it if you post it in the question and answer section of the zoom i do notice that some of the parents some of you have already started posting questions so thank you for that again at the end of the meeting we're going to try and answer as many questions as we can in a live manner but for all the questions that we cannot get to we are we're going to be gathering all of those questions and we're going to be creating a frequently asked questions document which will be in english and spanish to make sure that we are addressing all of your questions we also want to let you know that in addition to the guidebook and in addition to the video our cobin 19 reopening uh site on our website has many many resources and a lot of the things that you will be seeing today will be on the website um you can find it right from our home page it's under the find it fast menu and then we're also going to be sending this and posting this on our social media and send it out also in next week's parent communication uh tonight we're going to be covering uh our goals we're going to be covering our health and safety our preventative measures our decision trees our social emotional wellness our learning models our alternative programs and next steps as we have been planning and working on our reopening plans these four goals that you're about to see here on the screen have been guiding our work number one we are ensuring that we are following all of the los angeles county department of public health guidelines and orders and those guidelines guidelines and orders have deemed that opening schools for elementary is now safe um we help we also have been working on maintaining an inclusive and caring and supportive school culture making sure that we're establishing protocols for health and safety and making sure that we are having timely frequent and transparent communication this guidebook was created thanks to the collaborative opportunities that we had with parents with our bargaining unit members and partners and our administrators and because things change quickly and often we are committed to updating this guidebook and the decisions included here based on the los angeles county department of health guidelines and orders and you will always find the most up-to-date book on our website as you will hear tonight and included in this guidebook we encourage you to speak with your students about the importance of following the protocols outlined here for example that they are to wear a face mask at all times while at school we will be providing two masks for each student we are encouraging parents to conduct school business remotely whenever that's possible and when it's not possible or you're not sure just please call the office and we'll make sure to accommodate your needs and welcome you inside if that cannot be done remotely visitors are going to be extremely limited on our campuses with some exceptions being made for specific meeting meetings all visitors just like students and staff must also wear a mask at all times prior to arriving we are also asking that parents conduct a symptom check of their students and the guidebook includes what you are to check for if the student is experiencing any of the symptoms listed they are not to come to school we are asking that if that is the case that you also contact the school and let them know as far as options for cobin 19 testing you can contact your healthcare provider or you can get tested at memorial park here in azusa the only extra curricular programming that we are anticipating having right now will be our think together program and we want you to know that nutrition distribution is going to continue for the remainder of the year at this point i would like to turn it over to jorge rocchio our assistant superintendent of human resources thank you mr ortega [Music] students and staff must stop screening for symptoms such as cough shortness of breath runny nose and fever at home before coming to school or getting on a bus anyone with the fever of 104 degrees fahrenheit or more should not go to school go to school site or get on a bus staff members are required to fill out the coven 19 symptom check form prior to coming to an ausd site temperatures will be taken and health screening questions will be asked at sites at entry points campus entry points will be designated to allow for appropriate physical distancing school sites will have signage throughout campus to encourage physical distancing and proper sanitation and student desks will have individuals partitions parents and visitor access to campus will be strictly limited symptoms while on campus if a student or staff member develops a fever wall at school they will be isolated from others parents and guardians of students will be contacted to pick up the students and staff will be sent home sick staff and students will be advised to isolate according to cdc guidelines parents should contact their school principal prior to returning to school after an illness at this point i would like to turn it over to natasha jamal our assistant superintendent of business services thank you so masks are required at all times with the exception of when a person is eating or drinking masks are required both indoor and outdoor while on any district property digital aids and how-to links are available on the district website throughout the campus visual aids will be posted to remind us all how to properly wash our hands and how to properly cover our mouths while coughing or sneezing hand sanitizer stations have been placed throughout the campus both indoor and outdoor additional hand washing stations have been installed outdoors to emphasize frequent hand washing throughout the day six feet social distancing while outdoors and hallways offices and play yards will be monitored throughout the day additionally floor markers have been placed throughout all campuses both indoor and outdoor as a reminder to remain six feet apart direction arrows have been placed both indoor and outdoor to minimize cross traffic student desks have been positioned four feet apart and each desk will have its own three-sided plastic protector the use of playground equipment will be prohibited while in in-person learning ppe and protocols continue so face coverings will be required at all times for all students ages 2 and above unless exempt exemptions for wearing a face covering must be submitted prior for approval students and staff without face mask will be provided with a disposable one when they enter the campus face coverings most cover must cover both the nose and mouth at all times how-to videos are available on the district website on how to properly wear a face covering visual aid reminders are also stationed throughout the campus including the classroom regarding the proper way of wearing a face covering and the requirement of wearing a face covering face coverings can only be removed while one is eating or drinking students will be instructed on the proper face covering protocol parents are asked to familiarize their children with the use of clause face covering including the importance of being careful not to touch their mask or areas on their face parents are also encouraged to send a backup face covering in the event their students face covering becomes damaged wet or dirty hands hand sanitizing stations have been located in common areas such as lunch areas multi-purpose rooms the front office and priority locations identified by the principal the district will provide face masks for all staff are required to wear a fabric face covering or face covering of their liking unless prevented due to health conditions are instructional con instructional communication needs in those instances staff will be provided with clear face shield ppe for personal protective equipment that will be on every campus will be as following face coverings which are still required face shields mask gloves as and disposable gowns the district has provided each school and district site with the temperature scanner anyone entering a campus will be screened as they walk past the scanner every point of entry will require a temperature scan in order to enter campus the district has invested in both clorox 360 sprayer as well as a glory sprayer the sprayers will enable custodial staff to have more to more effectively disinfect our campuses the units spray a fine mist of disinfectant solution that statistically sorry is charged and adheres to the surface and the room ensuring coverage detailed attention will be given to high touch areas such as door handles desktops sink handles handrails and restrooms throughout the day now daily bathrooms will be cleaned and stocked with soap throughout the day disinfecting wipes as well as disinfectant sprays will be provided in every classroom daily cleaning schedules have been established and are posted in the front office of every school enhanced cleaning of school premises will be done when students are not at school shared objects are prohibited to the greatest extent possible when this is not possible objects will be cleaned and disinfected in between users high touch playground equipment will be shut down breaks recess and lunch will be staggered as feasible to allow maximum physical distancing drinking fountains will be disabled students should bring their own water bottle and may refill their water bottles at the designated stations on campus each site will have two outdoor water bottle refillable stations and one indoor water bottle refillable station which will be located in the cafeteria all the hvac systems have been serviced and inspected across the district to ensure proper operation and circulation of outside air all district hvac systems will have ionized unit installed the ionizer will have the following benefits it will help fight off bacteria virus mold and it helps control allergens asthma outdoor smoke it also reduces the pressure it also reduces pressure loss to keep calls clean without the extensive of a uv system drivers for transportation will perform a pre-entry before entering our school buses students must be screened before entering should the student become ill during transit they will be isolated in a debt and dedicate to a dedicated seat sorry behind the driver students will see every other seat on the bus and the buses will be loaded starting from the back filling up to the front face coverings will be required at all time at this time we are committed to provide the same level of transportation for those eligible in our communities drivers may remove their face covering to ensure operation of the bus only when the students are six feet away from the nearest passenger for meal distribution free weekly meal distribution will continue at azusa high school murray elementary school and slauson middle school meal distribution protocols will remain the same all are encouraged and acts remain in their vehicle while the mill pick up while in the mill pickup line masks are required we are asking that you continue to pop your trunk when you arrive and the meals will be placed inside your trunk if you cannot open your trunk meals will be placed on a nearby table for you to grab if arriving by foot we ask that you watch for moving vehicles and alert the staff of your presence your meal will be placed on a nearby table now during in-person learning grab-and-go lunches will be provided daily as the students exit the campus students receiving a grab-and-go lunch can still participate in the weekly meal distribution and at this time i will pass it back to mr our assistant supervis hr mr jorge thank you mr tasha uh preventative and preventative measures as a district we are taking affirmative steps to assess our risks to cover 19 and we listed here the strategies we're using to reduce the transmission of the virus it is important for us to be aware of the indicators of community transmission uh two key indicators that we closely monitor are the adjusted case rate per 100 000 people and the percentage of positive testing during the last seven days uh similarly the district intends to administer covin 19 testing in accordance with the screening testing cadence individuals who demonstrate symptoms or were close contacts to coven 19 will be administered a test as well now moving on to the notification protocols the district will always strive to balance the need for the privacy of students and employees with the need to communicate with potentially exposed individuals this page articulates the steps that the district will take to contact trace and communicate with individuals and the school community this process begins with the school or district being notified of a covenant 19 positive employee or student that the dis that the district is directed to isolate and they'll also be interviewed and contact tracing begins the individual is also provided with coven 19 resources notification to the school site and employees are sent via email as required and district communic communicates to the los angeles county department of public health and cal osha also as required now moving on to the decision tree for students this is a decision tree for students if the student indicates that they have no symptoms or exposure the student enters the school if on the other hand the student screening indicates symptoms of coven 19 the students parent or guardian are contacted to pick up the child if a medical provider confirms that the symptoms are not consistent with covenant 19 the student must stay home per medical provider guidance if this student is provided a test and the test is negative the student must stay home until he she is symptom-free if the student tests positive the student must isolate for a minimum of 10 days if the student is not tested we treat the case as if the student had tested positive and must isolate if the screening identifies a student with symptoms not consistent with kova 19 then the administrator determines if the student should be excused if the screening identifies that the student was exposed to coven 19 the student is sent home and directed to quarantine for a minimum of 10 days this is a similar decision tree for staff if the employee indicates no symptoms or exposure on their daily screening form the employee enters the school site um or district if on the other hand the employee is going to indicate symptoms of cover 19 the employee is directed to not report to work and if a medical provider confirms that the symptoms are not consistent with cova-19 the employee must stay home for the medical provider's guidance if the employer i'm sorry if the employee is provided a test and test negative the employee must stay home he or she is symptom free if the employee tests positive then the employee must isolate for a minimum of 10 days if the employee is not tested again we treat that case as if the test as if the employee tested positive and must isolate if the employee identifies that the symptoms are not consistent with cova 19 then the administrator in consultation with the hr department will determine if the employee should be sent home if the screening identifies that the employee was exposed to coven 19 the employee is sent home and is directed to quarantine for a minimum of 10 days this page at the very bottom also contains some hyperlinks to code with 19 resources and those are the links that we use to to make these decisions as well moving on to the next page this is a decision tree for both students and employees that develop symptoms on site during the school or work day if a student or employee develops cloven 19 symptoms or becomes sick during the school day the employee will be provided with the medical grade mask and will be required to isolate from others until they are picked up or for employees can safely return home if their test results are negative the employee or student must stay home until they are fever free for 24 hours without fever reducing medication parents and guardians will report their status to the school site employees will be communicating with the human resources office if the test results are positive the employee must isolate for 10 days and cannot return until they are symptom-free for three consecutive days and are fever-free for 24 hours without fever reducing medication if if a classroom group needs to close student instruction will move online with their existing teacher until they return to campus at this point i'd like to turn it over to our assistant superintendent of education services dr dana mitchell thank you we support student mental health wellness through a variety of services ranging from school wellness campaigns to more intensive and individualized support programs we work closely with partners and community service agencies for additional services to support students and families social emotional well-being support and mental health assistance is available to all ausd families through care solace we also partner with mckinley children's center and foothill family who have provided workshops for both families and staff to support our students social and emotional health if you need assistance please call the office of child welfare and attendance when we return to in-person instruction we will operate in a hybrid model of in-person and distance learning at home during synchronous learning at home students receive instruction from their teacher virtually in a google meet during asynchronous learning at home students complete their academic assignments to keep class size smaller in order to follow the los angeles county department of public health reopening safety protocols students will be assigned to either cohort a or cohort b details of this tentative model may change based on county conditions and guidelines at time of opening here's what a sample schedule might look like for students in cohort a on mondays and tuesdays cohort a would attend three hours of in-person instruction 30 minutes of asynchronous instruction would be at home 30 minutes of synchronous instruction would be at home for students who receive english language development and 30 minutes of asynchronous instruction at home for non-eld or non-english language development students on wednesdays the students would attend three hours of synchronous instruction at home in one hour of asynchronous instruction at home on thursdays and fridays students would attend three hours of asynchronous instruction at home 30 minutes of synchronous instruction at home 30 minutes of synchronous instruction for english language development students only and 30 minutes of asynchronous instruction for non-english language development students here's what a sample schedule might look like for students in cohort b on monday and tuesdays cohort b attends three hours of asynchronous instruction at home 30 minutes of synchronous instruction at home 30 minutes of synchronous instruction home for english language development students only and 30 minutes of asynchronous instruction at home for non-english language development students on wednesdays students would attend three hours of synchronous instruction at home one hour of asynchronous instruction at home on thursdays and fridays cohort b would attend three hours of in-person instruction 30 minutes of asynchronous instruction at home 30 minutes of synchronous instruction at home for students who receive english language development 30 minutes of asynchronous in asynchronous instruction at home for non-english language development students and our ausd virtual academy students will continue to participate in a fully online learning environment we also have alternative programs in addition to in-person learning we have alternative educational programs in our home school program students in tk to 12th grade complete assignments independently parents provide instruction and students check in with a teacher on a regular schedule the independent study program is also a tk-12 program students are provided with assignments to be completed independently and students check in with the teacher on a regular schedule this year we offer a virtual academy which is a tk12 fully remote program students are enrolled in online grade level or content area classes this program is a blend of synchronous and asynchronous instruction for any of these programs if the student is receiving special education services the iep team will meet to determine if the placement is appropriate thank you dr mitchell um we do have some time to answer questions we have until about so i'm going to turn it over to lika juarez who will guide us through that process good evening if you are in zoom attendance and you would like to ask a question please click the raise your hand button and we will call on you one by one thank you first up we have rosa diaz rosa you may mute your mic mic okay we will try to come back to mrs diaz next up we have uh sandra monta hi i just want to um get to be reintegrated with the students who are staying at home 100 will be doing and if it's the choosing the virtual academy option is that still an option there's no like fear of it being over capacity or whatever you know dr mitchell you'd like to take that sure yes exactly thank you so much for the question um so parents that are interested in continuing in a distance learning uh program we do have a variety of options and so at the school site for example it's going to depend on uh the cohorts uh the the sites will be determining the cohort so um you'll want to work with your site principal to find out what those options are at your school site next step okay thank you next up we have ronnie bland you may meet your mike yes i have a question um when will they start going back to school i can take that uh so uh for students who are in tk first and second grade uh they will start coming back on march monday uh march 29th okay if students are in uh did i say tkk first and second march 29th if they are in uh third or fourth grade uh they will be coming back monday april 12th they are in fifth or sixth grade they will be coming back monday april 19th okay and does this go for on the high schoolers too uh right now this is not this is only uh for elementary schools uh we will be communicating uh with the community um about middle school and high school okay and would they be going back to school all day again um no the students will not be going to to school all day the students will be coming back to in person per the schedule that dr mitchell just showed so it would depend on what cohort or which cohort the child is assigned to uh that will dictate which days they would be coming to in person okay so if i go on the website can i find that um that schedule that we were just talking about yes thank you for that question uh the video uh that we showed today plus the guidebook that you saw right now uh will be available uh today on our website in both english uh and spanish uh in addition to that uh we will be uh we will be posting this on our weekly parent message uh as well okay okay i'm sorry um i have one more question um so they won't be going the full day in like only a couple of days out the week that that is correct okay okay thank you you're welcome next we have a guest who is signed in with just a number it is uh 16266 you may ask your question and meet your mic um i just had a question is as to if my child doesn't go back to school um does she keep the same teacher or did she get a different teacher because i was i heard that she got a different teacher if we choose not to return to school dana you want to yep i can take that question um thank you so much for that question um it is possible um that if you're um if your student has been doing distance learning this entire time and you are interested in uh continuing for distance learning depending on how the cohorts are structured and the number of the cohorts it's possible that your student could have a different teacher that is correct okay so basically we're if they ch so we just have to wait and see what's going to happen if we choose to either go back or not go back because i don't want her with a different teacher because she's used to the one that she has and it's like we're uplifting them from something that they already know and putting them somewhere where they don't know yep totally understand that thank you so much for uh for that so um i would encourage you to have a conversation with your principal because the sites are going to be reaching out um and they're going to be putting those cohorts together and so again it really is going to depend on the number of cohorts and uh families that will be returning to in person and the number of students so i would encourage you to go ahead and have a conversation with your principal regarding those options okay then i have one more question before um now my biggest concern is because my daughter has asthma and if i do send her back to school now is there um are the air filters being changed in the school due to the health condition health um conditions of this of what's going on right now are those being switched out for sanitizing purposes and that yes i can take that one so yes our air filters are on a rotating basis and we update those um every three months um and some more frequent than that and then we also implemented the ionization process that we've added to each one of our hvac systems to also assist with purifying the error okay okay thank you so much you're welcome and before we go to the next person just to reiterate a little bit more on nuance with what dr mitchell said um after this this district-wide uh meeting that we're having tonight the schools each elementary school is going to have a similar meeting but only for their parents where they'll be able to talk about specifically what's going to happen at dalton and specifically what's going to happen at ellington and valley dale and paramount and so forth and so they'll be able to to give you more nuanced uh guidance and and answers to those questions so look out again to your to your school site for when those meetings are are going to to take place as well and each school website currently has a pop-up enabled so when you visit the school's website the meeting times will automatically pop up on the home page thank you and next question we have is from alma kim you mean to meet your mike okay um my son has um seasonal allergies he'll be going to second grade hodge elementary um and he has seasonal allergies and he does sneeze a lot um every now and then he does have a runny nose what is that to determine um at school that he doesn't get sent home thinking he has coveted and he does take um daily allergy pills mr rokio you want to take that one yes of course uh so the department of public health has given us guidance on the symptoms tracker so what we have received is that and the direction we've given is if the symptoms are new and um have a a specific onset that that has no prior history like asthma or allergies then we will treat the the new symptoms as um as a possible covet uh situation but it sounds as if in your situation there is a history to to the symptoms that um you've described so um i i it's part of the returning to to school process i would encourage you to talk to the principal to make sure that they are aware so that they're not wrongly identified okay and then i do have one more question um i i know that now um the each school is going to let us know exactly how um the schedules are going to work and um i wanted to just clarify i know somebody had just asked about it but i did want to clarify that he that they will be going to school on a full day basis um on the days that they do go no the in-person uh day right now is not uh full-time uh per the schedule that you will find in these in the guidebook the in-person part of the day is three hours during the daytime and at what point would the school let us know like in between now and the 29th when they go back um does hodge have a date on when have they scheduled a time yet when the parents are going to be notified where their child is going because like the last mother who was on the phone he has a teacher that she's very good with and i personally um i i like her teaching so if if she's only going to teach at home i'd rather keep him home so he can stay with her or if she's going to teach in person then i'll let him go back for a person i do not i do not know the specific date for hodge elementary school they will they will have that i'm sure they'll be announcing it in every modality possible so that's social media peach our website blackboard notifications but yes to answer your question every school will now begin to have their own personal meetings just like today but dedicated to their school site so that you know exactly what your next steps are in terms of determining uh what's right uh for for your family and what's right for your students okay thank you very much you're welcome thank you next step we have a guest by the name of lorena with no last name uh you may i meet your mike hi so i i guess i just need clarification if if it's a a group or a class of say 24 and only two of them decide to go back to school the the class is still going to be split into two groups group a group b and then if it is split into two groups from my understanding it's they're going to go to in-person learning monday tuesday and then wednesday they're all going to be online with no instructor no teacher no anything and then what about the other two days is it also going to just be them on the computer because group b is now in person learning good questions thank you um so to answer your first question um if there are two students that want to come to in person you said the class had just a supposedly 24 kids that means that 22 kids do not want to come so yes those two those two students would come in person they would be for for all intents as intents and purposes we're going to call them a they would come to school in person monday and tuesday just a point of clarification on wednesday um they are with a teacher everyone they're just not in person so on wednesday it'll be distance learning uh but it will be it's not it's not by themselves it is with uh with their teacher and then on thursday and friday the 22 students that have opted to not come in um when they are supposed to be in person instead of being in person they will get that instruction uh via distance learning and then via via distance learning would be by themselves or it would also be with an instructor with with the teacher okay so if if the if the other group decides not to go back they're still going to have someone that's going to be there with them just as if they would have decided just to keep going with the distance learning monday through friday that is that is correct um and it's just the the nuances on the on the schedule um that again will that are in the in the reopening so any time that it says uh synchronous uh or in person that will denote that it is with a teacher okay uh i guess one more question is the asusa unified school district are the teachers are they being given the option of getting the covet 19 vaccine or do they have to get the vaccine good question go ahead sir so um we are in the process um we are currently in the um tier for educators i think it's tier 1b or phase one be tier one which we're currently in the process of and so i'm happy to report that last week we had a very large number of teachers and classified employees managers get the their first dose of the vaccine and today i was able to send out another round of invitation for employees to to get their vaccine so we're right in the middle of a vaccine so if if the schedule goes as planned um many of our teachers who were vaccinated last week will get their second dose of the vaccine before the 29th um as to your question as far as a requirement it is not a requirement for for us to mandate uh teachers to to get the vaccine [Music] thank you for your questions the next question we have is from amber hi i also have two questions um i'm wondering if we know what in-person learning will look like so when our teachers are teaching in class will they be teaching to the children um on the computer with head with the students in class wearing headphones um and using their computers or will they actually be teaching to them like they were teaching last year and then my second question is um if they are requested to quarantine for 10 days uh because they were looked at as sick so they send the students home will the students be set up to be with distance learning or are they just going to lose those 10 days of learning time now dr mitchell you want to take the first one and then yep um so yeah so we're we're excited about in-person instruction and so um yeah we we can't wait to to get back to that and and we're super excited about it and so um this is going to be um instruction looks a little differently um because our our desks for example in collaborative groups uh like we normally have and so the desks are are four uh feet apart but nonetheless uh the teachers will be providing uh that in-person instruction so the students won't be uh you know wearing headphones and participating in that distance learning at the same time now that's not to say that there couldn't be um things for example like station rotation or maybe there's um there's an activity where the students might you know work on an activity on their chromebook or something to that effect but uh for all terms and purposes this is this is back to our in-person instruction thank you for that question thank you and the second question uh for students identified as needing to either quarantine or isolate the instruction will continue for those students who are asked to quarantine or isolate but it will continue in a distance learning modality our next question is from el ascencia you may unmute your mic i should have lowered my hand i think i got all the answers and then i'll just go on to look at lee's school and see when i'll just look at the schedule but thank you so much thank you before we bring the next person i just want to just for time purposes we still have uh 12 minutes for questions but at 605 pm uh again we will have to end the live portion of this again i we encourage you to make sure that you are capturing your questions in the q a so that we can answer those uh in writing next up we have maria santana you may i meet your mike um hi um good evening i have a two concerns um uh how did you guys determine that the students can go to class twice a week for three hours and number two i know my daughter goes to magnolia and i know they're going to have a set schedule how can you tell a student or a child to go to the restroom at a certain time you know i don't know if you guys thought about i'm an essential worker thank god i've always had my job when the pandemic started and you know sometimes you guys i don't know if you guys realize that a lot of parents well maybe not a lot but parents some parents work and it's gonna be very hard for some parents to you know pick them up at 11 o'clock thank god you know i can afford a daycare and that i don't have a problem but i'm talking in general because a lot of the co-workers i work in the area i work in a community clinic you know a lot of the co-workers have their students in this is a unified school district my job is not going to let five or six employees go pick up their child at 11 o'clock i mean i don't know if that was something that you guys thought about it or was just something that you guys or otter how can i explain or it's just a um thing that you guys didn't think about the working parents thank you for your question um miss santana um yes absolutely uh we know that this is uh a difficult time and there are so many changes uh coming our way and so we appreciate your voice and your concern uh in this area in terms of um you know parents who who might be working parents but maybe still want to offer their students in person we do have uh some options uh for our parents um at our elementary schools uh we are currently in the process of uh ensuring that our think together programs um are going to be on campus so that that might be uh an option uh for those uh seeking uh the in person and then of course we also will continue to offer for those families that um that it works better for them uh the the distance learning uh mode in addition to the to the other programs and i am sorry can you i know you said you had two questions i think i missed your second question oh the second question is since my daughter goes to magnolia i know that that school said that um they were gonna have like a time where each you know each classroom had a set time to go to the restroom but i'm thinking how can you tell a child what time to go to the restroom i mean that's a that's another concern because i know that we had a questions and answers with the teacher and i i didn't get to say for the whole thing but i know there was parents that you know said you know my child has a stomach problem and you know you know he can't hold him he has to go when he has to go i mean that's going to be very difficult i mean i wish that kids can go back and and full day schedule because in my per in my opinion you know i don't know if the children are really going to learn something because either going to be there three hours they can't get near the teacher they can't get near their classmates you know they're going to be excited because they're going to go back say the three hours or the two hours or the one hour and say you know teeth through second grade they always want to touch the teacher or they wanted to talk to their friends or pat them or or something i mean it's going to be very difficult and i know as you guys said we have to train our children but you know there's so much we can do you know and it's going to be very sad here they're excited going back to school and they're going to come back and say no i wasn't able to talk to my classmate i couldn't get near the teacher and i didn't i needed to ask her because i didn't understand i'm telling you because these issues come in in my personal experience thank you i appreciate uh we appreciate that so um just like uh before the pandemic there will be set times uh during the time that they're in person uh whether where they will have breaks just like before right there were always set times where they will have breaks and of course um to not interrupt their learning we always even before the pandemic we're always trying to remind them and encourage them to use the restroom during those break times but in the situation where a child needs to use the restroom outside of the break time uh absolutely they will be allowed uh to use the restroom so so thank you for that question thank you absolutely thank you uh next question we have is from jessica vital you may mute your mic uh hi can you hear me yes okay um i just had a i guess most of my other questions have kind of been answered at this point but i did have a separate one so if you were talking about like cohort a and cohort b um for like example um because i have a first grader second grader and a sixth grader so my concern comes into like well if for if my one is on cohort a then and say my other one's on cohort b would they be i guess would the one that's in cohort b would he be doing distance learning at the same time that my one was in person i guess at this you get what i mean dr mitchell sure do thank you for that question um so i just want to make sure that i'm understanding the question correctly is that you have um you have uh three students at home and it's potentially that they could be in different um uh a schedule is that what you're asking yes correct okay got it so one of the things um that our sites are doing are our sites are going to be reaching out to families um and um and so what i would really suggest is that when uh you're contacted that you would express that and say gosh you know what i you know here's our situation is it possible to be able to have them on that same schedule because we would want that we would want the same thing so um if all it if if it's humanly possible then that's what we're gonna we're gonna work out so um that's something you would definitely wanna talk with the principal about that and let them let them know um in terms of that schedule and that you would really prefer to you know have your students on that on that same schedule that's a really important question thank you and then i did have like a secondary question i just wanted to verify something so if i did choose to not have them go back to the hybrid schedule it you said that there was a possibility that they would not have their same teacher at that point then is that when i would choose to either like do like i guess virtual academy or independent study or home homeschooling yeah so um this is it's really going to depend on again how many how the cohorts are structured and how many students are uh you know going to be coming back in distance learning and so every site might be a little bit different and so that's where we would really encourage you to have that conversation with your site principal so then you would be able to understand what your options are because we want to make sure that all of our students have access to that rigorous instruction whether it's in distance learning or whether it's in you know this hybrid um and we have other programs as well so again talk with your principal about your situation and then let's explore what those options are for you thank you you're welcome our next question uh we have is from alex you me i meet your mike hi um so i have a question that's kind of touching on a question that was asked previously um so if we choose to do online learning or so will we be able to change to on campus uh in the same semester say if circumstances change so if i understand your your question correctly let's pretend um actually let's not pretend uh what grade is your student in she's in tk okay so if i understand your question you let's pretend you're saying you know what i'm not sure if i'm really ready for uh my child to go back to school on march 29th because that's when tk's go back um a week passes two week passes um maybe you hear about the program or a friend or a neighbor and then you change your mind and you say you know what um i think i'm ready now or my child is ready now your question is can you at a later date uh change your mind and say okay hey i'm going to call my principal and say i want them in person now is that correct is that your is that your uh question yes yes that's correct the answer the answer is is yes um um you know we we definitely want to to be flexible with our community uh and our parents again every single situation and every single classroom uh has their nuance and their and you know their differences uh but again work with your site principal uh to be able to do that but the idea here is again that we're demonstrating flexibility to our parents and to our community okay uh two more questions sorry so uh regarding the uh the hvac air quality control will will there be sign up sheets that ascertain the air quality um uh that's inspected by the professional uh to be available for parents to look at sure we can have our inspection scheduled available in the front office okay thank you and then the last question is if we assume that a uh an individual test positive for covert 19 or refuses to test um thereby we we thereby we say that they're positive right will the individual need to provide a negative test after the 10-day um period they that they isolate prior to to entering the campus a wonderful question um so the guidance that we receive from the department of public health is that a negative test is not required what is required is that the person uh not have symptoms for through uh for at least three consecutive days and also not have fever for 24 hours without fever reducing medicine uh just a quick component of this as far as the science for that uh while the person may not be contagious and and and you determine that because they don't have symptoms anymore they may still have the virus that will present itself in a test that is why we don't want to require a negative test thank you mr rokio and thank you uh everyone for your amazing insightful and thoughtful questions uh unfortunately that is all the time we have tonight for live questions uh but as a reminder we're going to take all of your questions that are in the q a and turn them into a frequently asked questions document and we will be able to share those with all of you as well and they'll be in english and in spanish in the next couple of weeks your school sites will be holding similar meetings like tonight but they will be able to tailor those meetings to their specific sites and they'll be providing greater details uh as well pertaining to you we also want to take this time to invite you to our board study session next tuesday march 16th at 5 30 pm where we're going to be dedicating the night to reopening plans as well lastly a reminder that we have a dedicated web page that contains everything about reopening for resources for you we want to thank all of our staff that has been working extremely hard to ensure that the return of our students is a safe one we can't wait to welcome them back to our campuses we know that every family has a personal decision to make and we respect that and we honor that we want to thank you for joining us tonight a reminder that this will be available as a recording for further viewing as well thank you so much have a wonderful night everyone

but as i mentioned good news about our coven 19 numbers for the first time in several months yesterday and today we have had zero students out for any covered reasons for quarantine or positives and zero staff out so it's great to see those numbers the county continues to trend well our zip code didn't have any positives last week as well that being said we are still moving forward with our mitigation measures to make sure we can end this year strong i wanted to let you know that we are having parent conferences uh thursday evening and friday morning this week if you're a parent and you have not heard about those please reach out to your school tomorrow because we have tried to communicate about those conferences and what those will look like this year in a virtual world also if you're not aware i'm sure you are because your kids have reminded you we start our spring break on friday no school on friday and then the following week is spring break hopefully every student can get out and enjoy some some kansas spring weather we've also started a kindergarten roundup and enrollment for next year so if you know of anybody that has a kindergartner please let them know to visit our website to find out information about how they can get their kiddos signed up to be with us next year some exciting news from our art department at clearwater high school our students at clearwater high school several of them entered an arts show from fringe university and our school was the total points winner so we won the art show competing against schools from across the state most of them much larger than us congratulations to many winners that we had and especially to lauren lebo who is the recipient of a fifteen thousand dollar scholarship through that art show so great work there we did wrap up our winter sports season last night some great success our boys basketball team were runners-up for sub state our girls basketball team won sub state and unfortunately were knocked out of the state tournament last night at andale but a great season by both those teams and i also want to shout out to the band the cheerleaders our our youth section when we were able to have uh students show up and to our crowd for for the effort that everyone put in this year it was really great the last boys game and girls game of the season were both away and our crowd outnumbered and out cheered the home crowd where we're at so really impressed with the pride and the support that our community showed for those teams great work so with that spring sports are underway getting headed in into that direction uh just a reminder uh one change the calendar coming up yet this spring that wasn't on the original calendar is april 19th will be an in-service day for teachers and no students will be on site at that day so i want to keep it brief pass on the good news uh with our covered numbers and we're excited to continue uh cranking on i know when we get back from spring break things are going to just be a blur and will be to the end of school so as always reach out if you have any questions good things are happening in clearwater schools hope to continue to get a chance to meet more of our community and learn more about the wonderful things going on here take care

knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you missy by the way i just listened to a podcast today from vancouver washington or vancouver british columbia and they read a similar land acknowledgment at the beginning of their podcast which i thought was very cool so um could you lead us through the roll call absolutely let me pull that up here great uh commissioner hook him he's here yes commissioner mccomber i'm here if you're here great mr schreiberg here commissioner cleavy here commissioner colvin garcia here councilmember briggs here council member radina here commissioner zacker commissioner hatcher here commissioner mccoy here commissioner jordan here commissioner singleton commissioner kerber you have a beautiful quorum excellent so um next on the agenda is approval of the agenda um i hope everybody's had a chance to look at it um do we have a motion to prove the agenda as published so moved do we have a second second any discussion okay so all in favor say aye or raise your hand i i i can't see everybody so um if any opposed i'll go on the opposed no opposed so it um the next is um approval of the minutes um hopefully everybody's had a chance to take a look at the minutes um again they're always posted with the last meeting so um does anybody have um or would anybody be willing to uh make a motion to approve the minutes commissioner and the second executive all in favor then say aye hi hi hi any opposed so we are off to the races public input is the next session or the next section on the agenda and i will go into the details of that again um so this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn you're going to need to call one of the toll fee numbers that i mentioned before and i'll read them again it is one is 888 788-0099 or eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and enter the meeting id nine one three five five seven eight three four five zero two and this information again is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone and you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television or background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and finally please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments so missy i think we had one person waiting to give public comment we do we have a few folks uh caller uh with the last three digits five one nine hi my name is ian mark i'm an ann arbor resident my address is 1811 independence boulevard i was calling in in support of the local municipalization campaign for our energy grid i think there's a lot of great reasons to support that uh the least of which being making sure we actually meet our a20 goals um and decarbonize the energy grid gain more democratic control over it um but just speaking from my own experiences one way that i can identify it would have a very direct impact in my life would be um a more reliable energy grid you know i can think of uh just one time this last summer i was up i was without power for over 24 hours um and i you know that was obviously very frustrating um and i looked into it more and i found that even though dte charges us i want to say 32 higher than the national average per kilowatt hour um we actually have oh let me look up a statistic but it's um we're actually uh it's actually one of the least reliable grids in the country um you know metro times analysis revealed that a lot of the grid is actually as many as 40 years beyond its functional life um so just as an ann arbor resident i find that very frustrating that we're paying a premium for a grid that we can't rely on you know as the recent emergency in texas has shown uh losing power it's not just an inconvenience it can be a matter of life and death for uh some of our most vulnerable residents so yeah that's uh that's my spiel on municipalization um i definitely support it thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my two cents thanks thank you ian appreciate you calling in missy do we have a couple of others we do yeah so uh caller with the last digits eight two zero i can hear me i can hi my name is phil bianco i am a resident of ann arbor in ward 1.

kamala harris became a vice president in 2020 her full name is kamala devi harris kamala harris was born in oakland california kamala harris stayed from 1990-2021 this exhibit is made possible by the norton school of third graders hello well thank you dead manky and norton student council and mike salamini for filming that lovely presentation of the live museum at norton school anything yeah can i just make a comment first of all kelly and and deb i miss you guys um not that i don't totally love being liaison at chapman school this year um but um i do miss coming to norton school to read or and just to see you guys we miss you too ann but anyways um that that was fabulous i i could have watched an hour of it i hope it's an hour long and um and it you know really it just goes to show why we have a teacher of the year at the school and why we are a blue ribbon school and all the other accolades that norton school has had in the last several years so i just want to say thank you i know that it accolades like that don't come without a lot of hard work but hard work doesn't seem like hard work for the people who are clearly enjoying getting the students to produce what they can produce letting them take an id a small idea and run with it make it into a big thing and a big important thing is what this is and it's it's really it's just marvelous to to watch the kids and the pride that they take in what they're doing so thank you you the two of you are doing such a service to our school um and i hope that video can get around let's let others thank you ian thank you um yes kelly i know kelly lens um has that link and maybe was thinking of posting it i'm not sure if she has but um we can certainly share out the link if you want to watch it in full it was probably only a little bit longer but it it didn't even do it justice so i i apologize like in real life i hope next year we'll be able to invite everybody in that's my hope thank you is it possible to send that out to board members that link that would be great thank you that was wonderful thanks so much thank you so much it was it was awesome well thank you norton school and now mr mike woods has some information to share with us about how dodd middle school recognized uh or celebrated black history month thank you marlene very much i'm just going to share my screen here looks good mike all right so i can't see you guys obviously you're seeing this so um just i wanted to give you a brief overview of how the different teams um had done activities with uh black history month um starting the overarching piece in which i spoke to team leaders about and also spoke um actually these these three themes first started when i was speaking with uh chris and juliano over the summer as things were uh really ramping up around the country was one really recognizing what is going on reflecting on it and then making connections with uh within our own community so carrying that theme over to black history month telling the team leaders you know make sure our activities recognize the figures of people of uh african-american heritage um and also what were their lasting contributions reflecting on their journey ensuring how adversity and obstacles have been overcome that we take a look at those elements as well and then connecting current social events to the journeys and the struggles of african-americans fight for uh equality so and kind of taking a look at that that helped shape some of the prompts some of the activities some of the approaches um that teams took um at dodd seventh grade teal team um students were making google presentations we embedded some of the technology pieces that we were taking a look at um and even you can see uh some of the prompts what were people famous for how our students lives have changed um as a result of of african americans throughout um we had um prominent african-american figures such as rosa park uh rosa parks and and taking a look at um you know her contributions of of what she did and did not do um which was actually what made her uh such a prominent figure uh in the civil rights movement taking a look at uh another trailblazer um across all different areas such as sports with jackie robinson and taking a look at what his contributions were really as the trailblazer in sports we are very fortunate to also have some media as a former social studies teacher i'm a huge fan of of introducing different media to engage students to to really give them a hook and allow them i think uh filmmakers do an excellent job in doing that for us so um we took a look at different african-american stories the prominent picture hidden figures taking a look at even our maroon team watched the melody 1963.

There are signs on the doors of the classrooms and the office. These signs tell us how many people are allowed in the classrooms or the office at one time. There are also arrows and distance markings on the floor that tell us which direction to go. We must walk and also to help us maintain social distance. Key performance of the match on a platter. Stur unstable regarding the version. His arrest without tickets to Surf Action. His perfect mining. Puppets server. Air France after the triumph. They live so big. Watson Sennheiser Ones. Our classrooms will have a somewhat different appearance than they did in the past. Student and staff desks have been spaced out to allow social distancing. Desks for students and staff also have shields to keep our community safe. Teachers' desks will be separated from students' desks. Students will have time to wash and sanitize their hands throughout the day.

i'm calling similar to the previous caller in support of public power in ann arbor of municipalizing the energy grid the energy utility in ann arbor i think there are many reasons to support this to increase local control to make it more affordable reliable and to invest in our community here in ann arbor and also to do the enviro environmentally responsible uh thing so yeah i mean i think those are all really good reasons to support public power in our city um i also i mean i would also just like to highlight that you know and i hope that the commissioners and i'm confident that they will you know in thinking about this issue uh will you know strive to make a decision based on what is the right thing to do here because i think the opposition um to it will likely try to sow a lot of fear about lawsuits and other kind of things that could go wrong with a public energy grid but i really do think that in ann arbor we're a community that takes climate change and environmental responsibility very very seriously obviously and i think we have a really good opportunity here to really lead on this issue by advancing uh public power in our community and so i just really urge and i hope that you know as the commissioners are thinking about you know this issue and thinking about what it's going to take to make it work that you really think about what is what is the thing that's going to be best for you know future generations of people one or two generations down the line um because i think again we have a really big opportunity here in ann arbor uh to to make a difference and to show communities across this country that there's a lot more we can do to stop climate change if we're willing to take on uh private capital and large corporations like dte um so thank you for your time and yeah thanks thank you for calling in we have a couple more missy we do yeah caller ending in seven seven two hello my name is rowan tucker meyer and i live on shattered road so we as a community have to keep our eye on the ball we are rapidly running out of time to transition our energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels so you all as energy commissioners are in a unique position to help our community transform our energy system and reduce our carbon emissions now the path to achieving this is municipalization starting with the feasibility study and frankly we should have de-privatized our energy system a long time ago when climate change was still off on the horizon it's outrageous that the public service of energy is controlled by a private monopoly but this problem is more urgent now than ever before we cannot continue to wait and hope that bte will transform their energy infrastructure for us because it's pretty clear to anyone paying attention that that's not going to happen now in spite of their green watching pr campaign the truth is this they have no intention of preventing this crisis because they're an investor owned utility so if they invested in solar panels for instance instead of natural gas that might give their shareholders a little less money at the end of the day so their hideously disingenuous carbon zero pledge is actually in stark contrast with reality they're in fact continuing to invest in new horrendously dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure like this new one billion dollar natural gas plant in sinclair so dte isn't going to save us so if we're truly committed to stopping the climate crisis our best option is to take the power into our own hands pun intended so we can't wait for a cta either because first of all that plan would have to pass through the michigan legislature and it's personally very difficult for me to imagine that ever happening and even if it somehow got passed we would still be reliant on dpe's infrastructure municipalization would be both more feasible and more effective than cca we simply cannot waste any more time if you want to you all have the ability to help ann arbor do its part in the fight against the fight against climate change and so to do this we need to municipalize our energy thank you do we have any more yeah call our ending and four four five um hello can you hear me yes we can okay so my name is virginia i reside in east ann arbor and i'm here like the rest of my fellow public commenters to demand that the city transition to a public power utility um last time i called in i mentioned that millions of young people's futures are on the line due to climate change and global warming and i'd like to reiterate that fact and stress that continued inaction is unacceptable we saw it in the california wildfires that devastated millions of lives and burned acres upon acres of land we saw in the recent texas snowstorms that left millions without power in the freezing cold and we see it today where people in this very state in this very city are suffering due to extreme temperatures extreme precipitation and continued destruction of our ecosystem you might recall that over half of dte's energy comes from burning coal while a small feeble amount comes from wind and solar power you have heard stories of your own constituents suffering because of the disastrous consequences of climate change and you have to understand that with a public power utility you can finally transition away from dirty fossil fuel energy and towards energy that is clean and sustainable taking steps to halt the climate crisis and pave the path for future generations not taking this step is a failure to the community and it's an impending disaster of a climate crisis isn't enough municipalization benefits us in other ways it's more reliable affordable and equitable than privatized energy it allows us to have a say and a decision in making these decisions that is not owned by powerful for-profit fossil fuel corporations like dte it's time to follow through on our promises and municipalize energy here in ann arbor continued inaction is unacceptable thank you and thank you for your perspective virginia missy do we have any more yep caller ending in 218.

it's a series of american girl dolls that have uh dolls of of different uh color and heritage um and disney had put out the movie regarding that um but in this um they really focused on where the obstacles were so going back to the presentation that you saw before taking a look at the obstacles that had been excuse me the obstacles uh that had to be overcome and each one of these stories uh spoke of those obstacles in the lower right hand corner you can see they talked about the tulsa race riots uh hidden figures you know the three women went through their journey of their obstacles that they faced at nasa um and those types of things so um really taking a look at studying how things were overcome um in society back in whatever time period was uh depending upon the figure as well and then finally it was the connection piece uh taking a look at how our students can be connected to some of these struggles to some of these journeys um into some of the accomplishments of the of african americans in our uh society we've also introduced um in our book clubs in the language arts classes stories that have a lot more diverse characters different diverse perspectives students are taking a look at some standards that ask them to relate and connect um you know we we take a look at different authors and and their perspective we did take a look at uh langston hughes uh was um we took a look at a couple of poems from langston hughes that he wrote on the yellow team um i don't know why my hyperlink for my complete list is not there i will get that in um and then we also took a look at uh the prompts and reflection activities in social studies uh below here um we had our black history month our black history month periodic table um each one of those colors represent people from politics sports arts and entertainment science and those types of things and then this was in our blue hallway and it talked a little bit about what their significant accomplishment was but i thought it was really creative this was an idea that came from our new social studies teacher clara o'shaughnessy that she brought with her from a previous school so we really made that an opportunity for kids to take part of and to to read about as well i think after this we took a look um at where we can grow with future opportunities and i think it really is uh something that we need to take a look at even you know take a look at this month with women's history month as well but you know just really taking a look at current social movements um and their impacts on american society you know growing our library connection uh collection with more diverse um stories characters prom plots authors and those types of things and then we have uh you know areas to grow that we can do some more standalone reflective activities in each of these areas that correlate with diversity not just an african-american but including gender color ethnic background and then really taking a look i know christian giuliano our division leader for social studies has really done a lot in incorporating dimension four and that's in the c3 framework of social studies but really taking a look at how we're communicating and taking informed action what can we have our students to be contributors um to you know any struggles um any recognitions um or any purposes that we can help um you know taking a look at reflecting and relating to diverse backgrounds moving forward so that was our brief overview if anyone has any questions uh just a quick question mike um i'm just wondering if um are there uh conversations at dodd at the dodd level about like the black lives matters movement and things like that really current stuff that's going on yeah and we we dealt with that at the beginning of the year primarily through social studies um i i would say kind of the same approach that we had with the capital insurrection really more individual conversations with kids answering curiosities and those types of things we really haven't rolled anything out um you know as part of curriculum or standalone activities yet but really we focused a lot um in august and september um making sure teachers felt supported about if kids had curiosities um you know and information about that great thank you and i feel like we lauded you last month meeting for for dodd middle school so i'm going to hold back on my praise this month oh well i appreciate that and thank you but you know it's there mike um okay i confess my ignorance could you explain um c3 for me i'm sorry yeah it's the um it's the social studies framework it's almost like the ngss for social studies okay so there's four yeah there's it's college career um oh my gosh college career uh readiness um standards that we take a look at um but primarily there's four dimensions in it and it's it's along the lines of identification up through upper ends of and taking informed action where kids and students um do activities and we look at it from that those four dimensional mindsets um and and taking a look at those mindsets um how do we create our activities and how do we embed uh the skills that are in those activities primarily for social studies i can tell you social science teacher there are probably skills in every single subject area so yeah okay all right thanks you're welcome those three c's are college career and civic life and as we go a little bit farther into um our meeting next month i think it's next month uh we'll be hearing from the social studies department who will be presenting to the cheshire curriculum council and so you'll be hearing a lot more about the c3 as we move forward next up i believe we have dr reed to talk about activities and happenings at chester high school related to black history month yes hello and congratulations to the other levels who elementary and and um dad looks like you guys did a wonderful job with the students um so we did a couple of activities at the high school um considering they're i think pretty organic in nature which i think is is good um the first one was actually brought to us as an idea by gabby who is one of our home monitors which really i think shows that the educational culture in the building includes all you know from teachers to hall monitors to you know uh cafeteria aides that were sharing that responsibility she came up with an idea um she found a website called 28 days of living poetry and she vetted that through and well speak the um school the library media specialist and um worked together they came up with a schedule for students each day to read one of these poems so the students would get on in the morning say the pledge the announcements and read through one of the poems so that was really a daily look at some of the wonderful celebration of authors through black history month and then we did our second activity was a culminating activity and we did this through our um it was to focus on these 28 days of poetry and we did it through our advisory program so just a quick review the advisory is um we have we meet like every other week approximately in a normal year a little bit less this year um but we um it's organized by grade level and we meet in groups of um 10 to 14 kids and all faculty have their own advisory and it really is a place for us to share our activities and and work with connecting with kids for um the faculty members so um at the end of february we held one of our advisories and um we as i said it was a culminating activity for the 28 days of living poetry so in the advisories the students picked um out of that website the poems that they thought were really um important you know that they had been hearing all month and um they they talked about them in this group with their advisory teachers and and their fellow students so there were some you know questions thrown out so that they had some pieces to to kind of latch on to and talk about with these poems so that happened at the end of february um and then our next um organic activity really was driven by students we have a group called rams against racism and their advisors are john demeo who's an english teacher and greg clad nicky who's a social science teacher so rams against racism worked with and well speak again library media specialists and they wanted to highlight a book called between the world and me by tana hissy who is a black author and the book is really um a letter it's it's a it's a short read very powerful a le kind of a letter written to his son about society and and um circumstances and feelings and um the future and so the the um the group rams against racism felt that this was a very powerful read and wanted to share it with students so they developed three different book discussions that they held through google meets and um ann was there i popped in on one of them and and shared some of what was going on it really was an incredible experience they ran for a little over an hour each book discussion and there were probably 15 to 20 kids on the screen in these google meets just sharing out their thoughts sharing quotes from the book throwing them out for discussion relating to their own lives it was a wonderful very powerful thing to see the students interacting like this um so actually i think i'm going to if you don't if you if i'm going to try this share my screen just to show you the um the main leader of rams against racism sid actually developed a google classroom and he put up uh like google slides for each of these sessions so i just want to share with you because he did so much work on this um one of his sessions let's say all right can you see that yes you may want to present we can see the whole thing okay so i will just and i'm just going to quickly go through the slides just to give you a flavor of what he did um so he were the moderators they had they had specific guidelines that they had to follow you know to keep it a safe space for everyone to talk and they really were so respectful of each other it was amazing um so you know here's one of the things that they did in a chat type in a word or phrase so we did that and then after a few minutes we allowed for discussion among the group talk about emotions talking about another quote that has to do with the the um discussion then actually quotes from the author so that they had pieces to talk about um that continued and then you know at the conclusion of of the book this was the last session kind of talking about interpretation and and what can we do now um so i just wanted to share that with you so you got a flavor of what these students were doing each of these sessions um and they really were amazing they ran it all and kind of sat back in the background but you know it would would join in the conversation just as i did when i felt there was a piece that was you know i was dying to share um so it really was almost as if i was with with my colleagues it was amazing so those were the three activities there was one more thing that wasn't directly related to black history month but is in um some has some relatability to it it involved about 60 students um we are working with facilitators from the connecticut state department of ed to conduct student focus groups to further explore equity within our school so last week you know the end of february they we about 60 students gathered in google meets and small groups and we were allowed to have one adult with them so we would have these school counselors in each of the sessions and um the students were just asked questions by the facilitators no identity or names would you know be um will be shared but it just helps to analyze students perceptions of equity in our building so again not directly related to black history month but a part of the whole process of you know looking at through this lens of you know how we're doing and what we're doing and celebrating um everybody and diversity so that is what the um chester high school group was up to for the last month you've been busy yeah really any questions okay hey um i haven't i just threw this out for y'all um so a great survey of modern um african-american history um have you especially at the high school but even in the middle school gone back to um the 18th and 19th century and looked at you know original source documents and and you know like banneker and and um you know uh booker t washington and w b du bois and and frederick douglass and and had the kids read their works and respond especially vis-a-vis you know um today's event current events and um just wondering what and what their what their reactions are when they read these works um so i i'll jump in mirror you can add on too if you want um just kind of excited by that question because yes it's in our curriculum you know it's in the social studies the english and they do study these pieces throughout their time at the high school of different courses different areas and i don't even want to say it's just limited to social studies and english those are the most you know the ones that i'm most familiar with um other areas as well you know um so yes they they analyze they share with each other they make connections to today that that's a common occurrence at the high school very personally and and in english classes they'll do they'll make connections between historical documents and then imaginative literature and and contextualize modern texts if they're written from a different historical perspective so that it's it's very deep work that they do in in those departments absolutely and all part of our creed and it's it's the same thing at the middle school we just do it better for us it doesn't mean you do it better for us yeah it's it's definitely embedded in our curriculum um and that's been a long standing piece when you start taking a look at all the way from we go all the way back to the triangular trade routes um we take a look at this the slave trade we take a look at companies that were doing this back in the day so there's there's a large breadth of you know the origins of slavery in america already embedded in the curriculum okay all right thanks um so i guess that wraps it up right we don't have any other higher level here high school is it so you guys thank you so much um and do you have any further comments or no i'm good i'm pleased with everything that i've seen and uh i feel like and this goes back to when my kids were at the high school i it was clear they were reading things from different authors and and synthesizing information in different ways so um i so i know it's going on and it continues i saw books in my house that i didn't buy so so nice job to everyone yes congratulations thank you thank you i'm actually gonna go wait i'll just put thank you oh you can stay through the end of the meeting um all right we are going to get a mid-year data review um if we could and it is in the agenda so kevin hanlon is going to walk us through the mid-year data review for the elementary and middle school grades thank you marlene i'll take just a second to um well first a little bit of orientation this is not um a typical i'm sorry that i've got a car going my time yeah uh this is not a uh a typical report that we would give at the curriculum committee meeting this is part of an ongoing effort this year to pay really close attention to the learning that our students are having i am all of you are parents our teachers are just keeping a keen eye on making sure that our students are still learning um you know we're obviously in a different instructional model this year with our classrooms looking different than they historically have so it's it's writing good to ask a question about how are students doing this we would often do this type of mid-year data review of the curriculum committee meeting but we wanted to make sure that we could share about how our students are performing so i'll share with you tonight just a few snapshots of our reading performance in kindergarten through eighth grade and our math performance in kindergarten through eighth grade so give me a second just to present a tab here okay so i think uh that you can see that and give me just a second to orient you to what you're looking at this is a chart that shows the percent of students performing in bands three or four so that's our proficience end-of-year proficiency levels are higher uh on the scholastic reading inventory the reading inventory we've shared some of this information before for each grade level you can see a few sets of bars the ones that are in the salmony orangish tones are from the 2019-2020 school year the blue ones are from this year on the left the left hand set within each grade level are our fall scores and the right hand set within each grade level are winter scores so overall programmatically programmatically from looking across the grade levels we can see that our reading performance is very very near for most grade levels within about two percentage points of our performance as compared to last year now this is from a programmatic view anytime that i would we would show this type of view to our principals or teachers um they are instantly uh and rightfully so going uh down to the student level and paying attention to student growth and that's not what we're necessarily showing this this year we are showing movement towards end-of-the-year proficiency but we're not down at that student level as our teachers would be really paying to pay intensity individual growth so as as i'm reviewing this some of the things that i think are important to note is that uh at our winter which is approximately mid-year we are very close to performance that we have been historically there's one grade level all again within about two percentage points across the board it's important to note that those um trends from fall to winter the growth the movement towards end of year expectations from fall to winter are very comparable to the type of movement towards end of year expectations that we would see in a normal year and even the one grade level that's a little bit more than two percentage points off we do still see that growth moving forward so on the whole our students are performing at or near where they have in a non-covered year relative to reading when i take the same uh type of look at math um again this is percent of students performing in bands three and four on the easy cbn math assessment same orientation the salmon bars are last year the blue this year the left-hand set in each grade level is for the fall and the right-hand set is for the winter we also see performance that is very similar to previous years where we were probably about two percent under our typical performance in reading we're about that same percentage over in most grade levels so math we are performing it in really strong ways and this is um one lens to just keep keep a real clear focus on making sure that our students are still learning when teachers are looking at this information they're instantly going to if they have a student who isn't reading uh showing their reading where they want to be they are i know from the meetings that i've been involved in with with our rams and division leaders the plans are are in motion to try to get students move along um and back up to where they want to be and through those these kind of data review process they have an opportunity to do so so on the whole really pleased with the fact that given all of the parameters that this year uh has shown that we're seeing um good growth good movement within the school year towards our end of the year expectations in both reading and math we are near our um typical performance room with with reading near or at and we are at or above our um recent typical performance in math those are all really good signs that even though um you know this year has clearly looked different than others that were that our students are demonstrating a lot of learning growth or a lot of learning and showing their proficiency towards some key ending year benchmarks it's a brief uh mid-year data review um as it relates to our covid year i'll take any any questions and do you have any questions um that's a lot to how i you know i would have expected to see it a huge drop but even still the kids are meeting they have been meeting um what were you expecting and does this surprise you or are um i can't even frame the question but i i guess the first place is what were you expecting to see yeah so i i don't know if i would have been able to put exactly what we were expecting from this year i know our efforts were to try to make this year as close to a typical year as possible and the thing every step along the way where we have checked in on how students are doing they have shown that they are they have learned and are still learning um the things that i think are painting into that could actually lead into kind of the next item that i agenda we have you have heard us talk about uh leaning on this acceleration and leveraging technology tools and i think that has done a few things one it's really sharpened our focus on the things that are most important that we need to be teaching we were talking about that during the middle school showcase you asked a question about can you give examples some of those priority standards and what's what that looks like so i think the sharpening of that focus and really keeping the most important things in front of students has led to this continued growth a collaboration among teachers any teacher meeting where we're we're saying kind of what's going well with this year the first thing out of uh the the teachers feedback to us is the time to collaborate with one another to have that sharp focus has been really important so um in terms of what we were expecting i i don't know if i would have been able to put a stamp on exactly what we're expecting but i know that the efforts to keep moving forward with the curriculum not trying to go back and fill things that might we might have missed but to keep on moving forward and helping scaffold to bring kids up to that has been a key um key to this and the fact that we're constantly engaging in conversations with teachers looking at data like this at the teacher level we're looking much more you know at the individual student data it's just helping us really keep the truck focused on making sure we're doing the right things to move kids forward so i don't i know your question was about what did you think was going to happen i don't i don't know but i'm i'm very pleased that we chose um through marlene's leadership and connects with the center for school change i think grounding our work this year on that acceleration strategy has critically important you know we've we've heard of some districts who went and spent the first month reteaching lost units from last year and that is just not how we approached this year and i think it has made a world of difference and so um a couple of things um of course it goes right when anyone asks it um have you were you able to parse the data to see if there was a difference between the um in-person instruction and remote learning and also um there's another one just went these questions just pop in and out of the head let's go with that one and i'll try to remember the other one while you're talking yeah so we haven't done a full kind of district level review of that um in this systematic way however that very same question has also come up in every meeting so i know that's something we're going to be paying a little bit closer attention to as as we're moving forward because i think that's that's important what is this experience and what does student growth look like for um for our students who are in person versus our students who are remote and are there any differences in that kind of performance i i will say that at the that's in a snapchat like this at the teacher level they're very keenly aware of of the individual students and that performance and um anecdotally i would i this there are similar ranges in terms of strong and good growth the way we wanted and and students who are not quite growing the way that we want them to in both in-person and remote so i know those teacher-level conversations are happening we don't have right at our fingertips that kind of instantly can we can we parse that up but it's that very question is one that's on our minds and i know that we're working to look through it for that lens great and and then um how has um your the interventionists the math interventionists and the and the reading specialists have they been working overtime or is this i mean are we seeing um are we relying on them more or is this just uh what do i want to say um not normal but um this is the result of everyday instruction um do you see what i'm saying do you know what it is by and large it is the result of everyday instruction okay there there are a small number of students that might be popping up and paying attention to that we might not have in in a non-covered year but not in any remarkable numbers and not in anything that i would say shows us any trends or those kind of things so in large part we're not seeing huge numbers in in our kind of srbi groups um or anything of that nature this is largely um largely grounded in the good everyday instruction that's happening great okay well i do want to say to mike and to kelly um and to all the other principals good job um in terms of your work with your teams um i don't know if you guys want to add anything but okay thank you kevin all right um okay so uh we're going to move on to the next item and that is update on teacher professional development yeah and and i feel like i might have already said uh the bulk of what i wanted to say in this we've had one half day professional development day since our last um since our last cricket committee meeting of course we've had uh collaboration days where um it's teacher driven on how that collaboration time issues we've had one professional development day or a half day that's been planned at the building level and we have leaned on acceleration and you heard through the middle school showcase the emphasis on priority standards there's other parts of that model including scaffolding for students responsive teaching really building that self-evidence efficacy in students that believe that they can achieve some really meaningful and and hard things through good effort um and good um meaningful tasks for students so our professional development looked a little bit different on leading some part of those acceleration strategies but every building worked on some part of that acceleration model and also ways that we can leverage technology to help support the engagement of both in-person and remote essentially the things that you heard via the middle school showcase i will also say that we are currently have a group of approximately 50 teachers continuing with um acceleration and professional development through the center for school change very similar to the initial group that worked in the summer revisiting that work um that's ongoing we're about two uh through two out of four sessions so this is something that is not uh just covet specific we see it as something that is really going to help move our work forward in the district beyond this year so let's go go ahead marlene sorry um i wanted to let the committee know that while it's been we've talked about the difficulty that we've had to do professional development that we would typically do by getting some subs pulling a department together having all those people in one place to collaborate to learn a new topic because we have because of cobid and not having enough subs for a luxury such as that in this type of year we have not been able to move forward on on some key pieces right that we had plans in place for um some of it was math related some a lot of it was science related we've had a great opportunity to not only have a group attend through the center for school change those acceleration workshops in the summer during the power outage i might add but we have 51 uh of our cheshire public school school staff attending um four sessions that are from four to six that's where i was jumping on and off when i was talking to you earlier and i know kelly grillo is there and dr gad and mike woods and kevin and also kristin pells at the high school and myself and jeff along with a really broad range of teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade who teach everything from ap physics to you know elementary reading and these sessions are set up again i want to reiterate what kevin said and i want to go back to faith to something to that you said i think um one of the last meetings when you heard us talking about prioritizing standards when you look at the standards that are there there are many many standards and they aren't all to be given the same amount of weight or the same amount of time in the curriculum and so when we talk about prioritizing them we talk about the ones that are most important to student overall growth and so that's where we spent a lot of our time at the end of last year in the beginning of this year we're continuing to do that as we enter into this third trimester fourth quarter this this workshop and what we're hearing from teachers this is really good work for our district you know we um we're trying to teach rich authentic tasks that engage students complex thinking skills this supports that mission so we're not only prioritizing standards that's like one of the things we're talking about how we scaffold for kids how we scaffold for students with a 504 plan with an iep students who need intervention students who this year may have been remote who we're going to be reintroducing to schools next year and how do we make sure that we can we can reach all students we talked today about responsive teaching kelly's been doing a lot of this work with her staff on getting questioning techniques to really draw out those those do students know something or or don't they um within that questioning and then talking about student self-efficacy so i just want to highlight our teachers and our administrators today who you know after a full day sit down for a two-hour session of acceleration training why be because we want to do even better next year and we're so encouraged by the results that we got that kevin showed you that we want to continue to do that because we we believe on our students and and we know that despite this pandemic they're going to continue to do really great things and they're going to achieve at high levels so i just wanted to add that in so if i know acceleration was brought in um to to deal with what we're going to be um you know almost truncated what what we knew were going to be restrictions on on instruction time um but now you're finding that the results are pretty good so is is this acceleration going to become normal the new i hate that expression but the new normal right yeah what we know is that all of the strategies that are inherent in this term acceleration which might not be the best term to use but that's what the literature has us using we know that most of that is those are all good teaching practices and we get our teachers together and you hear department chairs and teacher leaders getting so excited and talking about we do this these are examples of how i how i scaffold these are examples it's good teaching so we have to remind everyone that this is what it's grounded in it may have a new name you know or it may be referred to something that we didn't didn't term it before but this is the work you know this is the good stuff this is what teachers can dig into that we can spend time on professional development and spend time in collaboration and spend time writing our curriculum with these rich authentic tasks right we don't want kids just memorizing stuff that we know that's not going to work for them in the world we want them to be able to have those transferable skills out into the real world to get jobs we know the type of skills that employers want we've embedded those in our in our performance standards and we know that we need them to think complexly whether it's using the c3 standards for social studies or the ngss standards for you know science we need to continue and develop this so this is um something i think that we're we're excited about and when we've met with the administrative team that's on this call and our teacher leaders and we've talked about what are the things during the pandemic that we want to keep that are working well acceleration is always mentioned you know and the things that we we don't and then there's things that we want to change and make better but acceleration has been identified by all these groups as something we want to continue i see you again yeah can i think something important that you're hitting upon in in what you're saying marlene is um this professional development is vital to uh because the teachers can't do this they can't zoom in and find i mean as a whole school district right all of them have to be involved in it and you can't just do that on top of everything else that you're doing it has there has to be a concerted effort there has to be time devoted to it and quite frankly there has to be money in our budget devoted to professional development so that we can offer that to have all of our staff prepared for you know different ways of zooming into on what needs to be done in any environment and so i applaud you for um for finding you know you know following what needs to be followed and developed in this way but it it's it's i just want to make sure that people know that it's not done without a lot of effort and there has to be a commitment of money and time devoted to uh to training all the staff in these best practices thanks ann so that's that's my update on uh our mining kevin's update on professional development next month when we talk to you we'll be sharing with you all about our full day of professional development that is happening this friday but we're not gonna get ahead of ourselves we'll talk to you about that next time great okay um thanks and um and i fully agree with you on on the budget i mean you know yes it needs money but oftentimes it's a point that i made during the the budget meetings um you know i'm going to harp on them again but the unfunded mandates and people outside the district who think you know especially in our legislature who um just kind of keep want to keep on piling on um and making demands that pull away from academic um efforts and and something as vital as teacher development i just kind of just on my soapbox saying i wish they would kind of take a breather and let us you know let's get the money going where it needs to go and that is into the classroom and to the teachers so anyway um all right so we're moving on to smarter balanced assessment yeah faith there was um an email that i know was sent to the board from uh jack bester and he i happened to click in um after the public comment um he has also sent that email to the kobit 19 email where we encourage folks to send in how do you want to handle that mute unmute i mean um yeah no i think let's um it came in and our policy is to read it um do you i don't even have it uh you've got it okay yeah bear with me i have to i have to increase the font a little so i can read it hold on okay uh this is from jack bester in light of tonight's discussion on statewide testing at the curriculum committee meeting i thought it would take a few moments to let you know where i am coming from as a retired school psychologist i have a great deal of respect for the assessment process in determining how to improve instruction for students the problem is that the next generation common core aligned computer adapted assessment system currently in use was poorly developed never properly vetted or field tested and rushed into use in order to meet a politically driven demand the smarter balanced assessment is simply a bad test since the u.s department of education has given each state an opportunity to secure a waiver from administering this test this spring i think it is incumbent on the school administration and board of education to consider what is in the best interest of our students this year after all the students have had their learning disrupted for nearly a year now despite heroic efforts by teachers administrators and the board of ed to present instructional lessons all admit that it bears no semblance to normal learning in fact instruction in the years of covid education represents a new normal and all that it entails it is important however to recons to recognize that the federal government offered flexibility because it fully understands public sentiment is to suspend 2021 mandated testing altogether so in its recent letter demanding that assessment remain in place for this year the u.s department of education provides each state department of education with a great deal of leeway as to the administration of the 2021 mandated testing one of those flexible options allows the state department of education to request a waiver for shortening time spent on testing as far as i know the esea law only requires that each student's skills be measured in reading math and science and older grades on the same test i would ask whether the board feels it is in our students best interest to undertake 4.0 to 4.5 hours of testing not including practice benchmark and interim tests and preparation when they are still trying to adjust to a new normal in their learning as much as i believe the smarter balanced assessment protocol should be abandoned entirely i recognize that this is not on the table right now however we have an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of our students by speaking up and encouraging the governor and state department of education to pursue this waiver and limited limit the time our students will spend undergoing meaningless and pointless assessments during the 2021 school year i had meant to end my statement here but late last night i received an email from ajit galapa christian connecticut state department of education chief performance officer who was responding to an email i had sent to acting state education commissioner and members of the state board of education i had asked whether the csde slash connecticut state board of education would be asking for a waiver in order to shorten smarter balanced assessments this year he neglected to answer that question but sent me information on smarter balanced assessment protocols which i was unaware of particular interest to me was the use of interim assessment blocks and focused interim assessment blocks which were made available to school districts to serve as formative tools to support teaching and learning throughout the year these interim assessments were outlined in a 12-page document released by the connecticut state department of ed 629-20 entitled sensible assessment practices for 2020 2021 and beyond within the doc that document it becomes clear that interim assessment blocks and focused interim assessment blocks are meant to teach to the test outlined within this link in endnote number 9 2019-20 interim assessment overview there is discussion on overlapping items therefore students who take icas and iebs more than once or who take the icas and iebs in the same grade levels and content areas may see the same items more than once ica equals interim comprehensive assessment that is a smarter balanced assessment in itself in other words icas and iab's draw from the same bank of items and performance tasks with endnote number nine is a broke breakdown of the number of iabs and focused iebs available for each grade level a review of that chart available indicates that there are a total of and he outlines i will not list them for you how many in each grade level from grade three through grade eight how many ieds how many focused diabetes i was shocked to learn that so many interim assessment blocks and focused interim assessment blocks were recommended for grade level youth and supportive instructors i would like to know how many of these iebs and focused iebs are administered at each grade level and in each school to our students i believe it is important for board of ed members to be made fully aware of how much time our students are spending in this test prep process simply redefining the instructional activity as formative instead of summative does not mean it is supposed it is does not mean it is proposed as anything other than test prep apologies for the length i hope you were able to read to the end the mandated statewide testing process is complicated and i believe riddled with double talk resulting in further confusion and frustration bottom line the smarter balanced assessment protocol remains highly controversial and making it more complex by redefining terms making it even less transparent and troubling as always i look forward to hearing any discussion on this important topic jack thank you um so it um it does raise some questions and um i i do want to just ask i'll just throw them out to you marlene um can you give us you know just if you want to give us a brief overview of the jennifer genesis of the smarter ballast assessment um and kind of put it into a perspective for us and there are a few other follow-ups if i could sure and faith i think what i'll do is sort of refer back to um february 11th of 2019 which was our curriculum committee meeting um back in that year when i was the curriculum coordinator and i had shared that the common core state standards are a set of academic standards in english language arts and math in kindergarten through 12th grade they were developed through a state-led effort by governors and also by state commissioners of education and this was made up of 48 states and the genesis of these standards was to provide a common set of standards across states because prior to this there was huge variety on the quality and the content of what standards were taught in any given state we knew that just from having students come in from out of state and sometimes they were off by you know grade levels and it was hard to um you know to catch them up i'm sure that wasn't just the case here in connecticut in 2010 the connecticut state legislature they unanimously adopted the standards which we refer to here in connecticut as the connecticut core standards and so districts do not have a an option for opting out of of teaching the common core or the connecticut core and so the smarter balanced assessment really came from a place of those states um uh getting together and the this consortium the smarter balanced assessment consortium was put together to find a way to say well what's the accountability measure how are we going to see if teachers districts states are teaching the standards that they set out to teach and so how would we how would we look at that so it started out as an achievement measure and here in connecticut we now look at a growth measure so i know that norton school and at times chapman have other schools in our district has been recognized for the growth that students are making and so we can see that very clearly now with this type of assessment along with that assessment because teachers again we are wanting to see where kids are along the school year and by by giving them a formative assessment we can understand all right so was there something in this last month that i taught that i need to revisit or that was my teaching aligned with um with the standards and is our curriculum aligned with the standards are the things we said we were going to teach are are we meeting that goal so in connecticut it's become an accountability measure where it's you've heard jeff talk about the one sort of apples to apples comparison we have and that parents families have in choosing a district that they want to live in an education system that they want their children to be a part of is that next generation accountability report where you can see how kids in cheshire did compared to how kids in durham did et cetera et cetera and we look at um at also at our special education students to see what is the gap and you've heard us talk about our gap is one of the lower gaps in our dirk um i can't remember if we're the highest but i know we're close to the top jeff would know that off the top of his head um and so these are some of the things that we look at to see what kind of changes do we need to make as a district as a as a curriculum um etc we'll look at growth over time too because teachers are teaching what we want to see it helps us to determine where do we need to put our professional development efforts you know how do we need to align our professional development and efforts to give teachers what they need so that all of their students make a year's growth parents can use that information too by looking at their smarter balanced assessment student reports to see where students started and where they are and every student in k-8 is given a growth target to say based on the metrics they should be making a year's growth and this is what it is so you can see if your child has made more than that growth if they've made their growth target if they haven't made it so it's a piece of information that um gets shared during parent conferences along with lots of other information about how kids are doing how they're doing in the classroom um the kinds of uh teacher-made tests that they're also given to to see along the way how they are doing so i don't know if that was more than you wanted to know no that's fine that's good and and so um so that the parents i mean what i guess what we should tell our viewers um is that you know you are about to send out the letters to parents uh just outlining the yeah that's the item that's on sorry let me just talk over here that's the item that's on our agenda tonight is actually the letter that will be sent to parents um outline letting them know we do this every year um right let's know that the smarter balanced assessment is coming we tell them the dates um it's all total about four four and a half hours students in grades three through six um get the english language arts and math test seventh and eighth as well in grade five they also are tested on science five eight and eleven is where the science comes in and three through eight is um english language arts and math okay so just to address the question that that mr bester did raise about the iabs and the focused iabs it said that they are recommended do we actually use those in class or um you know this is going to sound very very um uh non-professional but do you do you just for lack of a better term wing it i mean um you know no testing in the classroom you know pre-testing in the classroom but you um you have such confidence in the program that you're sure the kids can take what they've learned sit down and do the test so we do a combination of things the only time we're using the interim assessment benchmarks is when the teacher is looking for that other piece of information to make sure that kids have have mastered part of the standard if we're assessing whether or not kids are getting what we taught and we're trying to identify who might need more help then we we do use some of those interim assessment benchmarks we're not using all of them okay all right they're used as needed sometimes teachers will use some of them they can pick and choose which ones they want to give sometimes they'll use them whole class to make sure that um as as like a whole class activity and then students will go off and do other things on their own but as as you heard me talk about before we're we're teaching and our learning walks have been focused on complex thinking this acceleration strategy is really talking about deep learning experiences our curriculum writing institute this summer is to put in authentic tasks authentic performance-based tasks for our students to do so we we are not um a district that um believes in test prep nor do we think that there's a you know and mr bester would certainly i'm sure disagree based on based on his email and i appreciate that um but we don't feel that we are teaching to the test i don't think there's a good way to teach to this test i think it's pretty complex in what it measures and i think the performance tasks that they're asking of students really require them to be deep thinkers okay and then um so i'm just the um you it sounds we've already addressed this but you do lay out for the parents how to interpret these tests and and the teachers and the parents work together for the betterment and the advancement of the students um based on some of the results that you see in these tests for these right so the the individual student reports go home in the fall it depends on when the state you know shares shares that information and so that's sent home and we often get phone calls from parents teachers really get these calls and help me you know help explain this to me we send home some literature i know kevin gets some phone calls um when the smart balance first came out we did a number of parent sessions making sure that parents knew how to understand them principals communicate in their newsletters information about them so there's ample opportunities uh for folks to to to learn more about it and and you know understand what the implications are for their child and again i want to stress it's one data point yeah right and and so um you know you've gone through the you've gone through the benefits that drive to the school and and to the parents when they figure out the test what would be uh if this were to be suspended for another year what would the impact of that be and how do you intend to use the test this year um especially because it's such an unusual year and we don't have results from last year so what do you what do you want to do with those so a couple of things um we we really use this information again we use the we will use this year's information to look at our curriculum even though this was an odd year this is going to be a valid and reliable indicator of some of the other assessment and more classroom assessment that we've done to gauge whether we need to make any any tweaks so so that's sort of on the curriculum side certainly on the instruction side as well but we'll be looking at where students were two years ago and looking at those growth measures to see did they make the growth that they needed to the state has had and kevin you may be a little more on top of this than i um the state has has uh communicated to us how they might be identifying um what those targets would be this year the results that we get this year um will not be used in any penalizing way so that's never happened to us we're in good standing our scores continue to rise um but in some districts where they have been remote this year and they haven't had student engagement um sometimes the results of those are used to determine whether or not they're a school of need that needs to be have support from the state um that that's not about us but our teachers use those um they get that information in the summer in the in the fall and they use that to look at their incoming class to see where the holes might be in learning for their incoming class what they might need to focus on um we also use it as a one again one piece of information to determine students who might need intervention who might need support who like at dodd we might put into a numeracy support class or a literacy support class who we might put our literacy tutors with at the elementary level we're also you've heard us talk about our english learners we want to make sure that they're meeting those benchmarks as well so we're really using to monitoring each student's growth trajectory um we use it to screen or identify for the intervention process curriculum revision we also plan professional development around some of this um am i missing anything kevin pretty exhausted um ann will it will it show to any extent what um this success or not success of the of your attempt at this accelerated yeah yeah yeah we could draw good job conclusions that our instruction has been successful if during a pandemic when we had all this lost instructional time if our kids made the growth that we wanted to see great thanks sure you know um it just i think i think the concern i've talked to with mr with mr bester is is um the fear that data will get in the way of real teaching you know um i think you know where we'll start we'll become so dependent upon metrics and numbers that that for lack of a better term the art [Music] the intuitive uh just understanding that takes place in the classroom between teacher and and student will somehow go away or evaporate or be replaced and i i think you know that is a concern for all of us with with education is you know um because we are becoming a data-driven society and you know so i don't know um perhaps things nothing can replicate the experience that happens when a teacher and a student a teacher in a class are in person together aha moments that magic that happens you don't need a computer you don't need a test to do that you're talking systemically right and you're talking about me being accountable to all of you to make sure that our kids are growing yeah i i don't think you should just take my word for it i think it's probably good to have a little bit of data to back that up yeah so you know that that's how i would i would answer that we're looking at district-wide data to make some of these these changes the teachers are more focused on are the kids in front of them growing what can i do today to make that happen what kind of a connection can i have what kind of an engaging lesson can i have in order to motivate this student and get this student to the next level of writing or reading how can i get them to be interested and passionate about this this novel you know how can i get them to write about experiences they've had um yeah that that's why people got into teaching in the first place i like to think of teaching as an art and a science right so and it's a delicate balance of both but you know where when i cut where i come from it's we need to put some trust in our school district and the fabulous job that they're doing should give us some confidence that our teaching staff our administrators are are attaining that balance that art and science of good teaching and good education so i am yeah i think you need both yeah and i think it's healthy to have these discussions every now and again so absolutely but you know you do have that letter i don't know if you want to put it up so our massive audience can see what the test schedule is are you ready to do that or do you want to um no the letter hasn't been sent out yet this was really informational for for all of you um i don't know if mike we've even solidified that those particular dates i'm happy to put it up i just don't want to do so no that's going really we had originally you know planned to send this out march 29th so it hasn't but generally speaking we're looking at it early may yes early may i mean just to give give a heads up just to win very much draft form um very much in line with um what we have typically done which is largely the beginning of may for again english language arts math and ngss okay great all right well thank you for that very thorough um analysis anyone else have any other comments or questions i would i have a comment um marlene that was a that was a great synopsis that you gave and uh if we're going to have any kind of discussion as a whole board can we get that taped part of what marlene said and make sure that the other members um get a chance to digest it as we have i think it would it would be uh helpful we can just refer them to this meeting yeah but we have to know where in the meeting to send them to yeah so they don't have to sit through the whole thing it's we have so many meetings we really do i know we do i know um okay and and i don't want to keep this one long longer than it's going to be so um but thank you and yeah we'll find i i will go through and find where this starts and send it out to everybody so they can watch the discussion um it's actually at the one hour uh one hour and thirty minute mark no one hour mark it started at eight o'clock so okay um excellent um our last item tonight is the uh student engagement and expectations at the high school so and for that we've got dr gad thank you so much for being here and sharing the information sure thing so um i will offer to you about four topics regarding student engagement and expectations first uh the increase in in-person attendance uh upcoming fingers crossed prom and out and events um our social and emotional learning connections and engagement of students and then finally how that ties into our homework policy okay so uh increasing in-person attendance i know that that's been a topic and i just want to reiterate why what the complexity is at the high school level we have over 1300 students we do not have a mechanism to cohort them where they remain with the same cluster of students for every period they move around and interact with multiple groups of students so at the beginning of the year we opted for a hybrid model which 17 of the 19 dirk b schools are still operating in a hybrid model we have begun in earnest uh to move toward increasing in-person learning so we've brought in many four-day learners uh from about late fall to present and we have increased our four-day learners to 328 to date as of our last influx what that means is we have in person every day just about uh six 650 more than that students in person every day which is where we were at the beginning of the school year when we were in our full hybrid model and we had split the school in half and we had very very few remote learners so now we have over four days that that number of students in monday tuesday thursday and friday because we've increased our in-person learners what that means is students who attended in cohort one now a portion of them about 170 or so attend in cohort two and students who typically attended in the hybrid model cohort two also attend cohort one about 158 so that's where you get the additional 328 which increases our numbers to where we were at the beginning of the year it's excellent because we want our students in if we could throw the doors open and go back to fully in person safely we would but we do still need to socially distance we can't increase in-person learning which then reduces the cohorting that we could muster given the structure of our school but doing that and it decreasing social distancing is a problem so right now we are able to bring that many students in and maintain social distancing but we're now starting to see that some of our sections are at or are very very near capacity so we are currently problem solving that very issue to see how we can work through that and it was a letter that i sent to all parents along with an explanatory video today saying that we need to get more information from them we're doing another google form which we've done multiple google forms uh to ask parents to let us know what changes they wish to make uh and so the next one will has gone out to parents and the due date for that that will close on march 29th so that it gives us ample time well not a lot of time but it gives us time to analyze those requests and ensure that any additional returns are done so that we are still able to maintain some level of social distancing hopefully as things continue to progress news continues to be positive about vaccinations and declining infection rates we can move faster it's our goal but we also have to do it in a very very precise way so that's that update uh aligned with that is we've begun planning for the spring and i'll be talking about this with um our pto tomorrow evening uh this was an idea that we we had a couple of months ago but we had to see where numbers went we are looking at both of our proms our junior and our senior proms being held outdoors under tents uh which is going to be a really unique venue for us for students in person venues still with even with the updated guidance from the state does not allow more than um a too small a number it's still at 100 of of in-person attendees in an indoor event which our problems far far outnumber that but within our tents in in an outside function we're able to utilize 50 of a tent capacity which gets us exactly what we need uh for our typical prom attendees so that's exciting we are also looking at graduation on the turf whether it's splitting the the class in two depending on how we can seat everyone or or what but we are committed and dedicated to that occurring on the date period um that's where we are so um in terms of sel and engagement we want our kids to have an exciting spring so we're also looking at our typical ap art fair um to be an apr exhibit to be held outdoors we're looking at award ceremony outdoors our honor cord ceremony outdoors of of course uh attendance from from parents but simulcasting we can't invite parents to attend so details will be coming out as soon as we have more guidance it does seem to be shifting and loosening a little bit every few weeks so we're hopeful but right now um given given the guidance that we have we're planning on this level and so we're looking at outdoor events with tents uh plans for overflow um and having outdoor in-person activities uh so that's important for social and emotional connections and we have a goal at the high school that has been year long to focus in on social and emotional supports teachers survey their students as part of our school-wide goal to determine needs to see how students are doing and feedback as we've gone through the mid-year discussion evaluation discussions teachers have said over and over that student input has really been invaluable to them as they've engaged in this incredibly challenging teaching uh and and learning so students have been sharing some of how this experience has been for them and teachers have been able to adapt as they go along the physical education department each wednesday has had uh wellness wednesdays and the past three have been devoted to time management and we found that our students really do still struggle with time management and it's good to engage them in that dialogue and teachers and school counselors recommend students who struggle to with time management to meet with them directly and we can also and do assign them to our learning lab which focuses on executive functioning support really time management support and that ties into homework uh we have a homework policy which is a guide when i use the word policy it really should be emphasize that that's policy little p not big p not not board policy but school-based policy so um we reviewed our our our policy and really we endeavor to to create practices that are broad and tied to our our educational philosophy and through those policies we can then address individual concerns that might arise uh policy really isn't created um to address every single individual question but but to address in broader strokes what we believe in our current policy that the the first part of the homework policy we we reviewed this in our instructional leadership team and we feel that the the first part articulates what our beliefs are very strongly about homework that it's about practice it's about reinforcement it's about preparation and it's about applying learning in a deeper way where i think the policy becomes confusing and what we are actively revising is the section talking about time that can that comes out as a misleading um set of time ranges so better articulated is that each course that a teacher teaches will assign different kinds of homework practice and reinforcement might take a little less time while application and integration work requires more time and long-term projects require not only additional time but students have to find time to seek out guidance from their teacher to help them plan accordingly and really that's the spirit of of that policy and teachers uh are really accountable to their students and to the work that they're trying to to get them to understand and to learn and to work through deeply and i will say having been a high school teacher for many many many years if you're assigning something and the kids have other stuff do boy they let you know so they're very direct about that and teachers are very responsive to that and i think all of us felt that the way the policy was written especially given our current practice and our current focus on supporting our students and ensuring that they're doing okay in this incredible environment it really didn't track with where we were and any questions um i have a couple comments one is on um i think this is a beautiful opportunity to bring prom back into its essence of just getting together with our classmates and having a good time and let's let's take some of the money out of it some of the awful expense and um the divisions that that creates between the families who have money and those who don't um i think outdoor under a tent sounds wonderful it sounds like so much fun and um and hopefully we can continue with just a simpler a simpler kind of celebration that's just my personal views on on prom having gone through it only once with my own kids and once myself okay um with the you'll have to get mr hair again and go to prom yeah if only there were a mr harrigan um and i was just gonna share with you mary that dr gad that um college students also have time management problems and even in this year when they have more time on their hands to be doing their work they're still having trouble with the motivational part of it and so um we we all continue to struggle with that and you know how do we really so much of learning comes from within the student themselves and it's it's hard sometimes to motivate them when when in a climate when they may be feeling very um emotionally distracted i would maybe call it but keep keep up the good work and thank you thank you yeah thank you um so in along those lines you know again it's a different year totally different year so um how about when it comes to you know assessing grades especially homework grades i mean are our teachers taking a different approach with regard to grading these assignments and um you know some it's things that would have been graded in a normal time or perhaps just being used for evaluative evaluation purposes and and um not necessarily going in and and if that's the case what do you do when you have only a few grades even though the the work is there and and they're using it um you know more as a is a guide and a development tool i think teachers are are doing a range of approaches in response to their students and student needs and if the student uh isn't clear on on where they where they stand uh certainly the first step is to talk to the teacher and to share concerns uh that you know parents and and students can certainly talk with their teachers and and ask um and ask about their their status in their um and how they're six how they're doing how they're succeeding additional feedback um then then they'll they'll work to that i think i think teachers especially this year um but in every year are really quite responsive um and concerned about how students are feeling about what they're doing and about how they understand their progress it's all about communication yeah yeah um it just said so you had your first round of uh or the teachers had their first round of vaccinations today right today um how many in how many high school teachers i do not have that number off the top of my head but i will say that very scientifically a lot okay there you go and so round two is april april 6th okay um and so that should bring that should will that help you with your spacing issues do you think or well here's the thing because students still won't be vaccinated too right so we have to take all of this into consideration and we know masks work and and but but we have we have it's a balancing act it is really a balancing um it's a balance between um infection rates uh proximity mask wearing um it's it's all of the above and and i can't i can't i cannot appropriately convey um the extraordinary complexity of one change let alone or 200 because you you because of the way our schedule works it's not grades it's not by grade it's not by grade level each individual student has potentially eight courses in which they're enrolled and so you multiply that by 1300 and you get another scientific number a lot of sections right so that all has to be evaluated and measured but we're working on that that's precisely what we're problem solving now so we can make it as easy and streamlined and as safe as possible for everyone okay okay great um yeah all right that and we'll just you know if you don't mind updating us on a regular basis and just let us know how it's going that's great um you know and with regard to proms and all i'm i'm so glad you're going to the pto because clearly this is a parent an administration issue um because you know that's who runs the problems or the are the parents so um i don't anyway thank you for doing that and um was the last thing so um and sports are coming back on also correct uh because basically they've been on okay winter sports were in and spring sports are on deck and the day that winter sports end is the day that spring sports begin and it is mid-march and will there be spectators or in crowds at this point no okay but so this is all a wait and see yeah okay i think that covers all my questions um okay thank you can i piggyback on your on your last comment faith um so have have we had any discernible um any measured uh covet responses to our sports gatherings we have had some um some infection rates uh from teams um to teams that are not yet we have had some but but not not school to school that as a student on the travel team actually um we've had some some some infection there so so we're just um um we're just responding to it on an individual basis correct when it happens right and everything all of the safety protocols um that they can but we have we have had positives on teams yeah thank you and and actually thank you anne because i go back um all right so we're we're dealing with baseball lacrosse um softball um and i'm going to go back to the spectator question clear can spectators sit way out in the fields i do not know the answer to that question steve is really the better person to to give you the the absolute details because he said he he actually had an sec meeting today and so they they have dialogue and i haven't had a chance to speak with him since that meeting but but they have meetings weekly to review uh all of the the procedures that schools are following so we're all on the same page and faith middle school's in the same boat as you know we're waiting to see what we're allowed for spectators and those types of things the middle school is looking to open up spring sports as well we have locker room conversations as well in that whole entire thing so the ciac is putting out guidance for us excellent thank you yeah and i'm sure the whole town will know because that'll be a big event for sure so okay um thank you very much and um i guess that and and our agenda so um our next meeting is april 19th and ann do your thing so moved okay um all in favor all right thank you everybody good work good work yeah thank you kelly grillo for sticking around all right to all of you who came out tonight for this and and for your presentations i really appreciate it yeah thank you so much good night everyone

Even with these changes, we are confident that we can provide a safe and engaging learning environment for our students. By component of the Betis changes, we were able to test safe. They have gaming learning in Parliament. [Music] Fresh from the water fountains will be closed, but each school has installed new stations to refill water bottles. Students must bring a water bottle to school every day to fill out three papers to impress. Nor does Bachman receive from the campus. Students who are in Learning in people will receive a lunch in a voice at the exit of the school the students who receive a lunch at the school farewell can also participate in the weekly food pickup from our drive-thru locations you can leave parking options [Music] infinite which a new day is wanting to give spirit of baseball cafeteria redistribute turned to the bastion be of the union marimba 20 to exile so sad thematically we have a very modern and very elegant machine called a thermal scanner and so before arriving at classes they will go in front of it and have their temperature taken and choose from a disturbing item of the mission to attend school river beni meeting without eating in the green / adeac of bridges in adversities that must be taken advantage of each school will have a plan for drop-off and pick-up or the arrival and departure of such studies make sure to attend your school's meeting about reading the schools so you will learn more details about the campus or your school and the procedure for arrival and departure and tala gualeguay vasco alfonso whole of software interests inform that sandro actors chris Next fall in construction and found years as well as in question of angels on the river festival when you arrive at the school you will see signs placed in all parts entrances and also exits and you will see floor markers and directional arrows it is important that you follow the instructions on the sign and the arrows follow them through the gaps and the entrances to the office and also to the classrooms the required public bid of the description is google sites and information be dismissed the strikes minimum information and work evans a reopening guide will be published on our district website and you can also find it on the web on your school's website there will include information about the reopening plan and you can also find many details about the plan pizza world shows green building information the bayern franz wever habitidad questions invigorating each school will also organize its own virtual meeting about the actual opening for your schools your school will have additional details and the information will be included on the web so we can also answer questions from the community please attend such meeting to decide the kinship of Mexican residents Wilmer Flores de Bach & Go [Music] Hello, good evening.

two one eight you're unmuted two and eight you want us press star um is it star nine missy or star nine is just to talk i think star six is too unmute they're unmuted they are okay thank you uh maybe we'll circle back maybe yes let's do that okay we'll be back uh caller ending in two two eight caller entering in 2-2-8 hi sorry about that can you hear me yes we can hi uh this is greg woodring calling in uh i presented last time with ann arbor for public power and i wanted to call in once again to give my perspective on municipalization and specifically talk about how i really do believe that we have an opportunity here in front of us you know i'm a pretty young guy i'm 25 years old and to be honest growing up i haven't seen a lot of hope for the future the climate christ is impending and it seems that every powerful person in the world is dead set against doing anything about it our institutions are failing all around us and frankly it's a pretty disillusioning time to grow up but i really do think that we are in a time of crisis and in times of crisis real change is possible you really we really can change the way that our society is structured we really can take back power into the hands of the people create a more equitable just society a society that isn't built off of the rules that a few cruel and greedy people set and i believe that municipalization is a step towards that future it is taking back what should have always been in the public's hands electricity is a fundamental part of our lives it is as ubiquitous as water or heat or shelter we are we we cannot maintain our standard of living in any sort of way without electricity and we saw this we saw this just recently down in texas as other commenters have mentioned when we put such a necessary resource into the hands of a small group of people who are selected due to their ability to maximize profit for people who are not affected by their decisions we are creating situations where what happened in texas will happen again and again and again and we should not replicate that system into the future we have to rebuild our entire energy grid we are not going to be able to continue on with fossil fuels if we are to survive and so when we look forward towards how are we going to rebuild our energy grid we should think about how do we want to structure our society around that new grid how do we want to make changes because this is the time we can do it when we when we need to rebuild is the time we can do things better let's not repeat the mistakes of the past let's put power back into the hands of the people i believe in municipalization because it is going to be a cheaper more reliable solution that will get us to carbon neutrality but i also believe that we need to break the stranglehold that these large companies have on the state's politics we cannot continue to live under the dominion of dte into the future we need municipalization we need to lead on this issue ann arbor can do it and arbor should do it and if we do it others will follow thank you for your time thank you greg for calling in thanks for your perspective caller ending in 172.

On behalf of the Board of Education, the Board of Trustees, we would like to welcome you to tonight's meeting, which focuses on our reopening plans for elementary schools. Before we begin, we would like to inform you that during this meeting, if you have any questions, please write them in the Q&A section here on Zoom at the end of this meeting. We intend to answer as many questions as we can while we are here live with you. For all the questions we are unable to answer today, we will compile them and create a document, a frequently asked questions document, to ensure that you have answers to your questions. We also want to inform you that the guide you will see today, the video you just watched, and many more resources will be available through our website. There you can find everything that will be discussed today.

hi yeah my name is daniel smolkin i'm a native annabrid as i've lived here well over half of my life and i live in ward 4 and yeah i'm calling in support of this push for energy municipalization you know my reasons why scorpios are twofold um first of all i think we have a strong ethical imperative to make this change um as we call it just before me mentioned um nowadays you really do need access to electricity in order to meaningfully participate in society in fact many vulnerable people such as people on oxygen or ventilators need access to electricity just to stay alive and so i think it's unconscionable that we have this system in place where there's people profiting off of vulnerable poor people's needs just to stay alive um aside from that you know the the ipcc release for this report a couple years ago saying we have just until we just have 10 more years to reach carbon neutrality until we we have environmental devastation due to climate change we're going to have mass flooding we're going to have food shortages we're going to have water scarcity and you know if if we have electricity then power companies uh operating under profit motive they don't have a reason to change things you know ceo jerry anderson he's not gonna suffer from food shortages he's going to be okay and so why should he do anything to to move to carbon neutrality i think if we want to have a power company that um serves everyone instead of just serving the shareholders um then then we really need to have municipal energy um another part of this this athletical imperative is again as people mentioned look at what happened in texas um during power outages during their blackouts um the cost of electricity skyrocketed up to nine dollars a kilowatt hour um and in fact this was done artificially the market you know went up to maybe five or six dollars and then they decided to lift it up to the the government's uh mandated a limit of nine dollars um and then it stayed there and so you know this is what happens when you have again a power company operating under the profit motive is they're they're just going to take advantage of desperate people and you know as again as climate change gets worse and worse we're going to see more and more of these freak weather uh sequential situations um and you know this this year happened to texas but next year it could happen here um you know it happened uh uh uh in quebec for instance uh in 1989 with a big power outage um and so there's this there's an ethical imperative to switch to municipal energy um aside from that it's just simply cheaper um you know on the one hand uh again dt ceo jordan or cia he makes seven million dollars a year uh i don't see why we should pay his salary just to be able to participate in society to stay alive um so you know and then the data is there as well the energy information administration um their studies showed that municipal energy tends to be about 14 cheaper than um for-profit energy companies um and so yeah i just want to emphasize that this is a thing we need to do um this is a thing we can do with them elsewhere uh los angeles has municipal energy austin has invisible energy we can have municipal energy in ann arbor and we have to do it soon or else things are going to get much worse thanks thank you for calling in uh caller ending in 218.