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I think we're there, Rosa, aka de la mano, because although I thought Alexandra Lamy would explain to me when they said that there should be bilingual people who speak Spanish, well, I've seen it And also when we used to go to school, I've also seen that they should implement people who speak Portuguese because a lot of Brazilian people go to Maurice Street school and some people have felt like they're outside the school because sometimes they don't speak Portuguese. Thanks to Alexandra, and so it's an area of debt, and they don't stop learning about language and peace, and Spanish, of course Portuguese, but also about this secretariat, Peterson, personal, on disc, no tribute to help it in the brigade, and they're not peaks, a try of e-books for health, and they're in my personal life, Winston Churchill, wherever, who communicates, is a state of nerves, cube in the Franco, and to this, what they see once again tells them that's what they 're looking for, that's the goal, that's the goal where they want to reach, they want all the schools to try to have a person or people who understand each other in the same languages, right?
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I wish, but sometimes you can't find them, so they're preparing, they're looking, but that's one of the goals that the Denbury district is looking for, so they adapt. [Music] efe min wants to thank you Thank you all for participating tonight. He is very, very grateful to you for the recommendations, for the new recommendations and recommendations that they have heard previously, but tonight they have heard other new recommendations. Thank you for that. They will think about everything you have suggested, they will prioritize what you need, what your family needs, what your students need, and in consultation, they will look for ways to meet those needs so that we can provide what we need.
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good afternoon thank you for joining us for a joint meeting of the committee on education and committee on housing wednesday march 17th 3 o'clock conference room 229 these are um one item on the agenda house bill 525 hd2 relating to teacher housing clarifies that doe may construct housing for teachers on a public school campus requires that housing units constructed or acquired on a school campus after 6 30 2021 be rented and at an affordable cost to new teachers or teachers teaching in a rural or heart to staff location with priority given to teacher teachers employed full-time at the school where the housing unit is located um with me are housing i mean sorry education committee members vice chair senator donna ricardo kim senator kanuha and senator chang our housing chair on virtual i'm not sure if other members are with him anyway to testify actually we have several people that gave written testimony and no oral testimony is that correct all it says okay to testify roy ikeda for the department of education i don't see what i see rendering randy are you here to testify of that yes yes chair uh cherokee dani chair vice chair kim chang and vice chair con thank you very much for your time for the sake of brevity i will be brief we have submitted testimony and we support the intent of the bill i'm here to answer questions if you have any thank you very much for your time aloha aloha thank you randy members questions if not next testifier corey rosani president hawaii teacher state teachers association aloha laverne moore speaking on behalf of corey rosenberg president of the hawaii state teachers association we stand on our written testimony in support of house bill 525 with comments house bill 525 allows a public school teacher with less than six years to occupy which is good for incoming teachers where will the teacher go like on lanai after five years of teaching or in a higher to staff area that may not be affordable this is when we lose a number of our highly qualified teachers back to the mainland because they just cannot afford to live here i like senate bill 804 teacher rental housing which makes living in hawaii affordable for a long term and helps with recruitment and retention house bill 525 teacher housing is a start senate bill 804 teacher rental housing is sustainability for our teaching profession thank you very much thank you laverne members questions if not let's see chair chang did you have any questions or comments for the testifiers i did not okay recess okay returning to our joint meeting on committee on education and committee on housing for house bill 525 relating to teacher housing the recommendation of the chair will be to pass house bill 525 hd2 with amendments and the amendments are directing the doe to partner with hawaii public housing authority hawaii housing finance and development corporation and the school facilities agency in the construction of teacher housing on school campuses number two clarifying that units should be rented at comparable affordable rates as existing teacher housing and number three that they should own no other real estate with no further questions and comments recommendation of the chair is to pass house bill 525 hd2 with amendments chair votes eye hospital 525 hd2 with amendments chair vote side vice chair vote side senator de la cruz excused senator kanu aye and senator favela excuse um with three members president all voting in the affirmative your recommendation is adopted thank you sheriff housing thank you chair and for the committee on housing the same recommendation to pass north amendments share boats eye for the committee on housing hb525 chairs recommendations passed with amendments charitables i vice chair vote side senator mauriwaki aye senator rhodes and senator favela is excused here you have four eyes recommendations adopted thank you this meeting is adjourned good afternoon thank you for joining us for the joint hearing committees on education and committee on government operations wednesday march 17th 3 10 p.m in conference room 229 we are here to hear house bill 515 hd1 relating to the department of education requires the auditor to audit the department of education school food services branch to determine how much local produce is being purchased and served to students to testify we have randy tanaka from the department of education randy hello chair kidani vice chair kim chairmaulki and vice chair de la cruz thank you very much for your time we stand by our testimony presented i appreciate your time here to answer any questions if you have any thank you very much aloha thank you members are there any questions of randy tanaka from the department of education if not we are moving on to micah municata testifying for lupono initiative my cup please afternoon chair kidani chairmauriewaki michael monica here on behalf of the hulu pony initiative we stand on our testimony in support of this measure thank you thank you members are there any questions for micah if not our next testifier is brian mitu miyamoto testifying for the hawaii farm bureau brian thank you good afternoon cherokee bonnie chair war walking flights chairs kevin de la cruz brought me a moment here on behalf of the hawaii park world hawaii farm bill will stand on it's freaking custom report just wanted to highlight that the data will be very helpful creating the baseline and we believe that that will help facilitate more local pros and products into our farm school and partnership program but specifically for the performance group so thank you for hearing this measure thank you brian appreciate the testimony members any questions of brian um chair mauriwaki do you have any questions or your members okay i'm going to go into recess thank you reconvening the joint hearing on community and education and committee on government operations on house bill 515 hd1 relating to department of education recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments um technical amendments as well as to effect the date members questions comments if not chair votes eye chair votes eye on house bill 515 house draft one uh vice chair vote side senator de la cruz excuse senator canooha senator favela mama chair four members president of voting affirmative recommendations adopted thank you chair mauriwaki before the committee on government operations uh same same recommendation their votes i uh senator gabbard hi senator thank you this this concludes the hearing um hello everyone this is the committee on labor and cultural affairs jointly with the committee on education we have a hearing on one bill today um today is wednesday march 17 2021.
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hi this is superintendent mike morris thank you so much for joining us tonight for this session the folks two focuses of the session are one about the four by four block schedule that is planned for the high school for the next academic year and then also the in-person return uh this spring uh for students at amherst regional high school so thank you for joining us maybe we'll go around the room just so that people can introduce themselves so uh sam you want to start us off sure hi i'm sam camera and i'm an interim assistant principal at the high school i'm tall to the interim principal here at high school good evening everyone i'm mickey gramacki assistant principal at the high school hi i'm robin supernut the interim nurse manager in the district and the nurse at amherst high school and again thank you for being here we ran a similar session this morning so thank you the way this will work is that uh we'll do some presentation about the 4x4 block schedule and then take some questions uh and feedback then and then we'll get into the spring uh in-person return and then again open it up for questions but sam and mickey will do most of the presenting of the content and i'll be helping with some of the questions in the chat and the other features there but you know thanks again for being here with that i'll turn it over to the team at the high school to start talking about the schedule hi everyone so we are here to talk about the 4x4 block schedule which will be our schedule for next year and the rationale for this schedule um we need a lot of time in order to plan any master schedule for the high school sam you can change the slide um there we go so we need a lot of time and a lot of planning that needs to go into this and so the goal was really around health and safety and because the four by four block schedule which in essence means four courses in the fall and four courses in the spring and we can talk a little more about those details in a couple minutes but the idea was that stu that we would reduce the number of cohorts and um and have students only have four classes at a time next year in the fall so i'm going to go ahead and talk about the timeline we convened a scheduling committee to evaluate past and present schedules and then updated tnl which stands for teaching and learning and those are our department heads um and other school leaders and then convened this particular group of um faculty and staff members and then in february we gathered input from the entire faculty and with that feedback we proposed um we got feedback from that schedule and then proposed another schedule which is this one we are then planning to build we are working right now actually on the program of studies um we'll do course registration shortly for all students we will also then finalize summer school formatting and offerings and then in april we're going to do course registration as well as a 8th grade or what we call rising 9th grade family curriculum night we actually do have the evening date scheduled for that which is april 8th it's not in this we just scheduled it today so i should have added that and then in may we'll do course verification and then throughout the rest of the summer we'll finalize the schedules so there's actually a lot of different block schedules and so we just considered a couple different ones and we just put this up here so that people have an understanding of how we ended up with the four by four so you know you could do a three by three block um the issue there is that you wouldn't it would be difficult to meet the 990 hours of instruction and students wouldn't have nearly as many elective choices um we could do the three by three plus one which is similar to what we're doing this year um the issue there is that you end up with a very awkward year-long course and that it's not necessarily one that would make sense for students um that's the one with seven blocks that's closer to what we have this year with the seven blocks um but we then looked at the four by four block that also gives students extra elective opportunities and we recognize that this year because so many high school students are in a three by three without a d block we wanted to give students additional elective opportunities for next year in essence to kind of make up for that a lot of very popular block schedule is an ab block where students have courses all year but they alternate every other day the reason we did not choose the a b block for next year is because with health and safety being the the primary purpose or the reason why we were directed to go with a block schedule we knew that putting students in eight different courses at a time would not really fulfill that goal and then some people even asked us to look at the trimester maybe some of you remember that or you have older children that were in the trimester and we felt that um to go to a trimester in a year that we're only doing you know it's a one-year kind of emergency schedule that um there would be a lot of redesign challenges in order to do that for one year okay so this is our proposed schedule for next year again the times or estimations given the travel and um transportation for all students so there's a little bit of um there may be a little bit of difference here but we'll the teacher day will be approximately 805 to 3 35 in the morning we'll use that time for collaboration iep 504 meetings as well as faculty meetings and department meetings we've got two options here one is a two lunch schedule and one is a three lunch schedule if you look on the left hand side they're just a tiny bit different and it really depends on how what our distance requirements are our physical distance requirements are for for the fall so as you can see on the left two lunch schedule would mean more students in the cafeteria whereas a three lunch schedule would mean fewer and so a period runs from 905 to 10 25 b period 10 30 to 11 50 and then c period is where it diverges a little bit and so the times are a tiny bit different and then we've got d and d plus and d plus is designed to offer students some executive functioning support opportunities to email teachers and communicate with folks about what they need to bring home for the evening we will have some sport teams that may need to miss some of the d block and so all students are going to have at least a half an hour in d block in order to plan for that absence the athletic director is going to be communicating with area athletic directors in order to see if there are options to start a little bit later so as we look at frequently asked questions on uh our proposed schedule for next year one of the questions that came up in light of this year is what about music ensembles so like most 4x4 blocks we will have a music block that will alternate every other day with an academic course that allows our musicians and um performing artists because we believe that dance will be in this as well um to study their um art every other day all year long and it actually will only take up one of their blocks because it will actually dovetail with one of their core most likely one of their core academic classes that they're asking for um we're also uh choosing to run electives in a quarter in quarters so that they will occur every 45 days we think that that allows students to really maximize the wonderful elective program that we have at the high school and give students opportunities to try lots of different electives sometimes people ask if they'll be directed studies in a 4x4 block we will not have directed studies next year we think that you know spending a quarter of your day in a directed study especially when you have fewer classes at a time is not a good use of time yet it's really important to that we embed extra help and support within those 80-minute blocks so that students feel like they have enough time to focus on their classes so what about academic skills for students in special ed programming um teams will work together to determine if this if those services um and students require if students require those services during the block um so if they do indeed require it then skills will be offered in an 80-minute block um but some students may only need a few days out of that service in a six-day cycle so we're going to have to be flexible and creative in this um [Music] in this so the second one is will some courses run year long in a four by four block um this is also known as double blocked and the answer is yes there will be a limited number of courses that we're gonna double block which will be will run all year long um a few examples of what we know for sure are algebra integrated math 1 topics in math ap bc calculus as well as ap physics we also do have some courses that are going to run three quarters of the year doubling up on math and world language so we we've heard you know people were certainly concerned about the continuity between classes with um both math and world language and our plan is to allow students to request additional blocks and double up in either math or world language and so we're going to do our best to accommodate those requests so the 4x4 block that we're going to have next year that's only a one-year schedule so the question comes up what about the following year so our plan is to take feedback in the fall and get input from students staff faculty families and determine whether or not we want to stick with a 4x4 schedule at amherst high school or if we want to return to the previous schedule which is the drop one that's actually the negotiated schedule with the apea but there is a memorandum of agreement um that suggests that the principal can change the schedule but there has to be a lot of community student and faculty input in order to do that so we are going to engage in that process in the fall and review you know the um the seven drop one which many of you know from last year as well as the four by four so if you're interested in learning more about the 4x4 block locally northampton high school is in the 4x4 block and one of the resources that our scheduling committee used was the work that cambridge ridge and latin had done on the 4x4 block so they've posted to their website a lot of resources that they used as they made the change to the 4x4 block okay so i think we're going to move now to the second um well i guess do we want to take some questions mr mackey okay so this is a good opportunity for folks to ask questions to put them into the chat if you have them about the 4x4 block before we move into our return to person part of the presentation and just if you haven't done that before towards the lower bottom right hand corner of your screen there should be sort of a blank line and you can type anything in there and it does take a little bit to get on the stream you know five ten seconds but any comments or questions that anyone has you can type them in and then um the team here will try to access them uh answer them excuse me as best we can i am not seeing any come through on on the youtube so perhaps maybe move forward and then we could as questions come up later we could answer them towards the end if that's okay with the team all right that sounds sounds good good evening everybody want to talk a little bit now about what to expect when we come back to school so first i'd like to thank everybody for filling out the survey and apologize for the confusion we have some little technical difficulties with the first survey that went out so we sent out another one today and we've been working out the issues so families should be able to fill out more than one survey on one device if you have more than one child in high school should be able to do multiple surveys on your one on one device and we have about 260 responses so far about two-thirds of the folks that we all want to come back to in person about a third right now we're saying they want to remain remote so sort of information want everybody to know right now uh so we do plan on having an orientation for the ninth graders and the new students to the district on friday april 30th so it'll be an asynchronous day for those students they'll be able to check whether teachers or teachers will know they'll be coming in to the school we have a lot of national honor society students who volunteered to take students on tour show them what their classes are i help them get familiar with the building there'll be some adults here that day maybe some guidance counselors some so the admin team will be here to also talk with students answer some questions they may have and then right now our proposed date is to start back five days a week starting may 3rd but as you can see next tuesday night we're going to be presenting the plan plan somewhere to what i'm gonna be speaking to you about now to the school committee and they vote to uh have may third the day we're gonna return that will be the day that everyone will all students and teachers who are returning will be back in person and most of the teachers will be returning and be in their classrooms if you want to and so right now i want to kind of walk you through what a typical day will look like for the students who come back and for the students remain remote so schedule is going to remain the same except if you see it goes till 2 30 so we've added 10 minutes at the end of the day in those 10 minutes we use mainly for organization making sure students have a little extra time or in person to talk to their teachers the adults in the room with them to get some extra help before they leave the day the class a period will still start at nine o'clock and then still go to 11 20 and then the period is still 11 uh 10 30 12 50.
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okay go ahead rosa all right thanks good evening everyone today is wednesday march 17th 2021 and i call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order in accordance with executive order 7b suspending sections 1-206-1-225-1-226 of the connecticut general statutes the public will not be able to attend this meeting in person but will have the ability to view or listen to the meeting in real time by way of the brookfield board of education youtube channel furthermore such meeting will be recorded or transcribed and posted on the board's website within seven days of the meeting and made available as required by law all speakers taking part in the meeting are reminded that they are to clearly state their names and titles if applicable before speaking on each occasion that they speak individuals wishing to participate in the public comment portion of the meeting may do so by calling the following numbers area code 301 301-715-8592 or area code 929-205-6099 and the meeting id is five 913-5460-0656 and let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have all of our board members except for mike murphy here tonight and the first item on our agenda is the student spotlight and thank you rosa i am going to turn it over to mrs laprashana to introduce her faculty and wonderful students we could see them all there um to talk about student council and some of the great work they've done this year so mrs labrasano please take it away sure we do have a lot of excited friends here this evening for sure good evening everyone this evening i am excited to share with you all the great work that the huckleberry hill student council has been engaged in during the school year this school year definitely looks different and our student council and student council advisors have been working very very hard to support our huckleberry hill and brookfield communities i would like to introduce to you our huckleberry hill advisors miss june hartel mrs annie benz and mrs cara giametta also known as miss albersi and our students will be introduced by our advisors our advisors and students can't wait to share with you all the fabulous work that we have done and continue to do so i believe miss benz is going to be sharing her screen or i'm sorry miss albersi and we will get started so the first two students we want to introduce to you tonight i am thrilled to introduce jordan lucasy and she is in my class ms artel's class in second grade and evan vacco and he is in miss miller's class in second grade and they are going to talk to you about how student council has changed this year jordan i think you need to unmute hello there my name is jordan and i'll be reading you this advisors and members meet on zoom instead of in the hhesgm meetings are at 4 30 in the afternoon instead of at 8 in the morning hi my name is evan vacco i'm in second grade from miss miller's class members from every class can share their thoughts and ideas on our google classroom page we have to brainstorm extra creative ideas because because we need to think outside of the box this year nice job evan thank you jordan next we have gracie marciniak and hadley um sorry marcolus from actually from my class and from mrs jemeta's class and they're going to tell you a little bit about how student council has helped the brookfield community this year actually sorry the huckleberry hill community in february we created we created a kindness challenge on flipgrid where students and staff could share messages of love encouragement motivation and kindness hi i'm gracie to honor the one-year anniversary of going remote we came up with ideas to acknowledge how much our community has gone through and how far the students have ideas include reading books on perseverance writing a thank you letter to someone who helped you over the past year in creating your best self we plan school spirit days for example today was green day for the saint patrick's day sorry i thought when i clicked the oh that's okay sorry i thought when i clicked the uh space bar it unmutes me not uh moves to the next slide um so now we are going to share some examples from the flip grid that the students created videos of to share words of encouragement and kindness during the month of february here's our second grader delaney giving advice on how to show kindness mrs jamada just make sure you share the sound mr meadow we mr better we had no uh we had no audio on that can you re-share your screen with audio and then do it again yeah so sorry about that um this is uh nothing new this happens every day um let me share the sound and then i will re-share the slideshow okay let me go back to the turtle but you're not let me go back hi huckleberry i just wanted to say stay safe and if someone looks down in the dumps help them they don't have to be your friend help them because you never know what they're going through at what they're going through bye and this is louis one of my third graders he decided for the kindness challenge he was going to read um a part of one of his favorite doctors books yurtle's a turtle by dr seuss on the far away island of salimba sand yertle the turtle was king of the pond a nice little pond it was clean it was neat the water was warm there was plenty to eat the turtles had everything turtles might need and they were all happy quite happy indeed they were until yertle the king of them all decided the kingdom he ruled was too small i'm ruler said ertl of all that i see but i don't see enough that's trouble with me with this stone for a throne i look down on my pond but i cannot look down on the places beyond that this throne that i sit on is too too low down it out to be higher he said it was a frown if i could sit high how much greater i'd be what a king i'd be ruler of all i can see those were the two pages of yertle the turtle by dr seuss you're doing so we wanted to also share with you just how hard the students worked on the speech that they would give to the whole school on march 12th when we celebrated the one-year anniversary of going remote so at our very recent our actually the last meeting that we had as student council the kids all got together on zoom and decided on what they wanted to say over the announcements to commemorate the one year of going remote we had two fourth graders then read what the whole student council came up with and we had julia koch and owen glenn from student council read this and here's what they had come up with one year ago on this very day we went home not realizing that we would not return for the rest of the school year last year when we first began learning from home it was hard to do our assignments without our teacher or classmates there and then when we started the school year in the fall things still didn't look or feel the same we had to figure out how to learn on the computer instead of in the classroom everyone has been through a lot of difficulties but we have finally made it through and we should all be proud of ourselves since we all worked together teamwork made the dream work yes some days were bad this is true but you got through it by just being you we never gave up always looked on the bright side and supported one another along the way today each class will take some time to recognize and honor how much we have accomplished during this very unique year from hhes student council and finally our two fourth grade student council members katie and ace line are going to share a little bit about what h um what the hhs student council has done for the greater community outside of huckleberry so katie whenever you're ready you can share hi my name is katherine zigglemeyer but you can call me kb for short and today i'm going to be telling what student council has done for the greater community during the holiday season the student council collected donations for the women's center in danbury the knights of columbus and brookfield and the new fairfield animal shelter we successfully donated over 50 bags of coats multiple gifts and gift cards and food and pet supplies we also created cards for brookfield's nursing home communities awesome job katie and acelyn whenever you're ready you can share um the upcoming events that um our student council has planned hello my name is a fun and i'm going to be talking about upcoming things that will be going on when the new school is built we will be working with center school and listening middle school for our future second graders and fifth graders to experience a virtual tour of the schools and to understand what they should expect when they enter the new building at our next meeting we will be planning a way that hhts can celebrate earth day on april 22nd also we will have also we will have begun brainstorming ways we can honor teachers and staff during the month of may all right and acelin you can read this slide too any question i have one um and you guys did a fabulous job presenting my question is what's your favorite part of being on student council this question for me or any of you well mine is just that i'm helping other and i've always wanted to be on student council because it's a it's a lot of responsibility and a good way to learn what the outside world will be like but learning it in a much more smaller way but still getting these can i say something so boys and girls thank you so much for being great leaders for our district you did a wonderful job and i love that we're embracing a really challenging time in switching our mindset and celebrating this one year anniversary it's so exciting to turn kind of a negative experience into a positive one thank you for doing that and reminding all of us that we can overcome you know hard challenges when i saw your hand raised did you want to share something yes i wanted to share that being in student council is a way of participating and you get to have fun by making new ideas can anyone share a thank you letter that they wrote to someone that helped them get through this maybe gracie or catherine who did you write a thank you thanking them for helping you get through this or hadley or evan looks like jordan wants to say something quiet sweetie oh jordan um my mom and dad have helped me when i was on zoom they would help me get on zoom when i didn't know or they would help me do a math question if i didn't know how to do it that's great thank you for sharing jordan gracie did you want to share too i wrote a thank you letter to my friend justin because he plays the game after school with me and i would probably be lonely or bored after school friends are important that's great hadley you have your hand raised go ahead at school i made a thank you letter for my sister emma for um playing with me through through 2020 when we all had to stay home go ahead acelyn i wrote a thank you letter to my third grade teacher mrs johnson for like helping me and giving me like extra help that's great that's some classmates that's wonderful thank you for recognizing our teachers yes they're a wonderful thank you to the teachers for putting this all together and supporting our you know children to this difficult time great job to everybody you guys are quite an inspiration and it really was nice to see how everybody found ways to stay positive during a very difficult year so thank you for sharing with us thank you for having us yes thank you thank you so much thank you everybody thank you we're so very proud of all your work and mrs lavrochano and faculty thank you so much uh for being here with us we really appreciate it keep up the good work guys all right uh the next thing on our agenda is the student representative report hi guys i'm tanvi chandra as the brookfield high school student representative um so the winter sports season is coming to an end soon and spring sports are officially starting on march 29th and recently another email was sent out to parents which you guys probably all know about about possibly starting in person school for four days a week for high school students so fingers crossed because that would be great nhs is continuing their tutoring services including ap study nights as ap exams get closer the deca competition awards were on march 9th and we had three teams that qualified for icdc which is our um national competition the students of brookfield is hosting their annual trivia night through zoom on april 7th nhs started recruiting candidates who will be probationary members this year and official members in the following years and their applications are due at the end of this week so they'll be starting that soon as well um key club is looking to do a fashion show at the senior center as some community service and they're also looking to do an outdoor game day or a bowling night as well the sophomore student council is selling selling slides which are sandals with the brookfield logo on them and they're available to purchase for the whole school so that should raise a lot of money for them on april 1st um we have an official event which will be a bhs faculty game bhs faculty faculty versus wisconier faculty game with a bonfire after for seniors which will be our first official senior event as well which is super exciting and lastly the senior student council is um continuing to work really hard to get in as many events as possible for like this last quarter of the year and we're super excited to get some things in motion and that's all i have if anyone has any questions anything what was the night of the faculty game on the bonfire april 1st yep feel free to avoid that mrs brooks you know you want to see mr render or i pull a muscle please i will talk to mr baldwin we'll see if we can get that on the national federation of high school website what do you think about that mr renda i i actually just think it's great that it's on april fool's day because we will be fools out there you're absolutely correct all right any other questions and just can you get us information about the fundraiser for the slides um yeah i can send that to you yep you get a lot of athletes to support them absolutely i can send that out to friends i'm sure would love those sure absolutely i'll send it out okay anything else for sandy all right thank you okay our next item is written correspondence okay i just have kim rachel wrote regarding the school calendar okay thanks and approval of board minutes i'll move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on march 3rd and the special joint meeting on march 9th okay second thanks joy all in favor okay thank you that's unanimous uh the superintendence update thank you rosa i was going to acknowledge the fact that we made it one year since the the world shut down and we moved into remote learning and so forth but the students did such a great job i will not make one more comment on it except to say boy you can't help but smile uh listening to those students and that that wonderful uh faculty advisory team i mean boy are we lucky here in brookfield just incredible um just have a few items uh there's a couple of presentations tonight so i'll be brief um the first thing i wanted to share is that the smarter balance assessment is coming up um administration uh third through eight is beginning to schedule um uh scheduled development that's an annual parent notice we'll be going home we have been through this coveted year and it's important to know that the the federal department of education along with the state department of ed wants to assess learning loss we all know it's been a very difficult year schools um although we will be conducting the smarter balance schools will not be evaluated on smarter balance for the spring of 2021 and schools will not have to meet the 95 participation uh requirement therefore if brookfield or a school does not meet the 95 participation requirement it won't be a penalty like there is in a more typical year it's important for everybody to know schools also have to plan for remote learners who will be taking the smarter balance um and while smarter balance will give us some data there obviously are questions and concerns about when kids take a test at home and reliability and so forth so we're well aware of that and paying close attention but like always parents do have the option to decide if their child will participate in the smarter balanced assessment or not and again if we don't have the 95 participation which is a typical year requirement um the school system and the district will not be penalized so i just wanted to make sure everybody knew that that was coming up uh in addition to that mr belanda and his team are energetically working on the massive uh logistics for the school day sat which will be taking place next wednesday wednesday excuse me for our 11th graders um and i really have to thank uh he and the team uh i know mrs shy is working very hard on the schedule um and and the teachers that will be monitoring and proctoring the assessment and that really works out quite well for us given the schedule where it's a remote day on wednesday for the high school so we're able to work on that mr bland is certainly working with plus company and so forth there's a lot that goes into that so we wish the students luck in addition to that just to add to what tandy was just talking about in terms of mr belanda sending out a survey a second survey actually to parents regarding choosing remote or thinking about students coming in five days a week he and the team are again really working hard on the plan and now that they have the results of the second survey they're actually going through 400 rosters to look at the way students fit into the classrooms and how they could break that out so we are looking forward to that plan um hopefully we will be able to accommodate a five day a week in person schedule again it all depends on the number of students desiring to be remote versus wanting to come into school and how we could actually accommodate that in a safe way because what we all need to remember is we didn't create any more space over the course of this year so nothing's changed since beginning of the year and the requirements on physical distancing are still there so we really there's a lot of logistics that has to go into this and so everybody knows if 100 of the students wanted to come back in person it would not be possible to fit into the school so due to the fact that we have the remote option and less students would want to come in than a 100 percent model um gives us the option and the opportunity to try to plan for a five-day a week model for those desiring to come in person so look for more information on that and i believe mr bellander shared with his families that by the beginning of next week a communication will be forthcoming so i wanted to get that out to everybody and we're really excited for that and thankful to the team for working so hard and thankful to our community for being so patient uh then the last thing i wanted to share was a vaccine update last week was this the second round of uh brookfield educator vaccination clinics held by our health department so again we're very thankful to the health department for arranging that for us we're really in a good place and um come the beginning of april will be the kind of final round of brookfield educator clinics for those needing their second dose of the moderna vaccination so we're really excited that we're getting closer and closer to probably over 85 percent vaccination rate of our faculty and staff the last piece on that i wanted to share with you that mrs laforge our nurse coordinator has spoken with our health department and subsequently is connecting with other health departments and even local pharmacies to see what we can do regarding uh being a liaison as a system to have our 16 year old and older uh high school students whose parents obviously would give permission to help them um expedite the process of getting vaccinated come i think it's april 5th and so what's important for everybody to know in brookfield we've talked about having a much smaller capacity health department than some other communities we actually checked with our health department and one we don't have the pfizer vaccine which is what is approved as we understand it for the teenagers at this point and we also just don't have the capacity with the freezers and so forth for storage so we we couldn't do it as a health department here in brookfield uh we have reached out to the ridgefield v a and i know mrs laforge has like i said earlier looking to collaborate with whomever she can to help liaison that for our families if they so choose to have their children vaccinated so if there's anything we can do please know we're working on it um hopefully we'll be able to help in some way some small way and that is all i have i don't know if any board members have any questions on anything yes no no john um what percentage of our teachers at this point have received the first vote um i would say in general faculty and staff bob it's uh 85 or just over 85 and we're basing that not only on just over 400 full-time employees that's also coaches bus drivers and everybody's all the people who interact together we had that we did the mrs cavanaugh conducted the survey that was the response rate was about 85 of all the people who had the opportunity to become vaccinated were saying they were interested in definitely getting the vaccine oh that wasn't my question my question is not how many are interested how many actually have it well we i won't know that because it's not man mandatory and through um medical confidentiality we will have that information okay so it's not something we can ask them about um they don't have to answer it so i would say that i think i would love to know as a board member that figure maybe not immediately but i'd like you to consider whether we could collect that information so we would know and the public would know you know how how how far how broadly we've vaccinated in our in our educators i just think that would be a good thing to have or sure i can get you the number of vaccinations given at the clinics like at the educator clinics that's probably the best i can do but we'll look into it and see what is possible okay i just think it would be a good thing for us all to know so i just think it's a it's surveying it even if it's optional survey it's probably not a it's a good bit of information to have so john can can you just go back now and clarify what was the 85 percent then is that people who staff that indicated that they wanted to receive the vaccine but it's not necessarily the people who did receive it is that what you're saying yes okay and you might that you might they might say i don't i don't i i don't need it because i already have it right correct they could have gotten it especially with the age ranges our older employees could have gone out on their own terry cavanaugh our hr director terry did you have something to add no i was just going to say we when we surveyed folks um it took into effect those who already received it so the 85 percent are those who wanted to receive it um then you would add on to that those who were already at the 65 plus or 75 plus age range for when we got it so to john's point you know we can survey but as a district we didn't make it mandatory to get the vaccine and hipaa would really not allow us to tell you who is vaccinated um they can offer it up but i will tell you that they offered over the brookfield clinic offered over 500 vaccines to brookfield um just to the education sector personnel so that included our teachers our powers our secretaries every single person that works in the school district um and then anyone who drives the bus the food service prepares the coaches um so all of those folks were vaccinated or were offered vaccine so we can tell you how many people were vaccinated that would also however include some of the daycares in town um country kids kids castles they were also eligible in that sector um so i think 85 is a really good number um and we can certainly ask the question um but i think 85 percent is a really decent number um to say who got the vaccine uh i would disagree with that it's anecdotal given the way you just described it it's anecdotal well i i i think uh we know who signed up and we know who was in the van system um to receive a vaccine um but i i would consider it a little better than anecdotal but um certainly uh that that's where i would start okay i'll leave it in your hands i'm interested in learning more thank you thanks bob there any other questions for me with my report um i i follow one question to that once the vaccines are finished and you have that a couple week waiting period right that we all know about that you know to build up antibodies after the second vaccine what happens from a staffing policy in the schools if there was an exposure do teachers now continue to teach if they're vaccinated is that how it works or does that what is the cdc guidelines once one's vaccinated which is like you said bob um i i in particular have the johnson johnson so i'm told that two weeks after the johnson johnson vaccine um you are considered fully vaccinated if i was a close contact of someone who was infected in my case i would not have to quarantine so it's similar for the different um like you said a couple of weeks after okay absolutely and as you know about that that's the key question right because of the quarantine issues that's where this we had the staffing issues after uh people had to quarantine and and that caused us uh to move into uh remote several times the past year yeah i just you know i'm not sure that the public hears all these different things about why schools are open or hybrid open for brookfield everybody wanted to be in person and teach right it's always just been a question of could you keep the schools open on staff due to staffing or did you have to go remote so that's never been an issue of desire it's always been an issue of of quarantining right and so i'm actually really excited that this gives us a uh an opportunity to have our teachers feel safer and in in this environment and at the same time be able to stay open for uh for education i think it's wonderful no it really is bob and you made me think of something and adding to that you know our mitigation strategy strategies of distancing and masking and all the cleaning we're doing um have really put us in a position where we have no evidence of in-school transmission throughout the entire year when we've been in person so i mean that speaks to everybody's commitment to implementing those strategies with fidelity so you put that on top of having these vaccinations really positions the team well sure and it's kind of the root of my first question which is if we're 98 vaccinated but by either our own clinics or other means it's different than 80 vaccinated in terms of the impact on the school so i just statistically there's a big difference between 80 and 100 percent and knowing where we land on that actually helps us think through staffing dynamics just that if you want to know why i was asking so thank you also may help um families feel a little more comfortable um i know the governor announced um i believe it was today that virtual learning may be part of education indefinitely and i don't know what that means entirely yet but i know that a lot of other districts are really concerned with you know are we going to have to keep this going next year even when most people will probably be vaccinated um and that would i think it would go a long way to sort of comfort families and saying you know like at least x percentage of our teachers and staff are vaccinated and again we have no transmission in schools and all that stuff so agreed we'll see what the governor's announcement actually means in the detail of that announcement from today and what what the impact really is on local districts yeah very careful is remote learning going to be some kind of state function or the local rests might take it on rather than putting it on the backs of each of the individual districts so we'll see what that what comes with that any other questions for dr burrell thanks everybody all right uh subcommittee reports first up is facilities okay so we reviewed this we'll do reports and discussed work orders related to heating and cooling and hand sanitizers the whiskenier water update we were on track to submit to the state but then there was a lot of technical data still to go through so we needed to apply for an extension and was granted 120 120-day extension to file a plan with the state we discussed the possibility of tying into the aquarian water line on route 25 we're looking into aquarium to add a large-scale water system to address these ongoing issues mr post and mr caldwell will do a cost benefit analysis and report back to the committee the water systems specialties company will be doing the work they have a very optimistic response to help and tom our water systems operator will continue to take the lead on this unfortunately we received another issue we an elevated chloride level at the middle school so we'll need to do additional follow-up and testing and analysis so in addition to addressing the lead we'll need to address the chloride as well and we also want to be very open and transparent about the level of benzene that was found in the drinking water at center school we will need to do follow-up testing and research on the surrounding properties and quarterly monitoring from april 1st to june 30th no further action is required at this time we still have two staff positions open one lead at the high school and one night position to be split between the buildings and scheduling of interviews are happening soon or possibly happening at this time the hvac control project at the high school is moving forward the town has formally engaged tecton to do the engineering design work and construction documents there will be a project kickoff meeting on the 11th to explore existing conditions and to get the specs out there to bid our expectation is to go out to bid so we can move forward to be a summer project and be ready for the winter we discussed our upcoming special meeting with the board of finance as it relates to the boys locker room project which we had mr checko from the municipal building committee will be attending the meeting as well we discussed the issue with the mice at the high school we've made a lot of improvements and they have greatly diminished we haven't been finding mouse droppings and we want to reassure employees that we're being proactive and many mitigation strategy strategies have been put into place does anybody have any questions no mice jokes all right let's move on to finance i was going to start by saying we had a little mice crawling all over our budget reports but i guess not um so uh our finance committee met on march 8th and it was focused on really two topics and the same two topics we've been focused on all year one is the current year budget uh outlook and the second is the uh where we are on next year's budget um and i'm gonna hold off on the report on the budget until we get to that item on the agenda but it was uh you know at the core it was some discussion with the board of finance about where we could you know carry some things on our on our shoulders versus what the board of selectmen had suggested um in terms of the february financial report it was actually really good news um and you guys have in your package tonight the updated copy but at the we've been tracking our spending overrun this year um due and you know we're spending more due to covet and we're offsetting that with underruns of normal operating things and we move we were at 140 000 overspent um which the board of finance would agree to cover because it was more than it was like three hundred thousand dollars of covet related stuff of that we offset 150.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i love the main tag in front of the tv that is the nameplate i can see what she's doing i can see what you're doing carol thank you for everything you do as long as we have a minute here you are awesome lady yeah that's smart kelly can you confirm that those they can hear can you guys all hear us awesome beautiful awesome and then if you want to speak just go ahead and unmute yourself um when it's appropriate all right so the board met in a closed session um the board met in closed session and uh no decisions were made and now we'll do flashlights sorry my apologies no that's okay um mr freda would you like to lead us i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right you're right now it's an announcement of what picture was taken in closed session sorry about that okay um i would like to move that we pulled item number 10 from the consent agenda and with that adjustment would anyone please provide a motion to adopt the agenda i'm looking for about the agenda as amended thank you mrs pope i'll second that mr bruno okay moving right along just as a reminder to the board if you guys make sure you speak into your microphones it might it might help a little bit in the room i know we have the air flow on so and the door open so thank you okay next is our organizational reports vanessa mesa president of cta good evening board members thank you i have to report that the teachers are all in their preparation modes to make sure that we are ready to return to campus next monday and for the return of students on march 25th and 26th hello if you can hear what you do this could be a long night i just texted her hang on that's okay i'm just reading over her notes for the presentation the slides yeah i'm looking forward to that hmm [Music] hmm [Music] we can't see you though [Music] and then i wasn't there you know i wasn't sure how much of my report you heard of it pretty much as soon as you started talking we heard that okay teachers are all in preparation for returning to campus this coming monday and then looking forward to the return of students beginning thursday and friday at all of the elementary sites as well as the middle school and then on april 6th for mcclellan high school and center high school the teachers are in deep preparation mode making sure we have lessons for online streaming as well as in-person construction and of course the tech as you all are becoming more and more aware is not easy to manage so that's my report any questions from the board thank you thank you vanessa i like video now thank you okay and now marie huggins from csa and i would like to take a moment marie uh marie could not join us today so i'm welcoming uh miss naish knock who is the vice president for csea and so we'll turn it over to you did we lose dr lee okay sorry i couldn't see it yeah and just for bandwidth since we're having such problems uh i turned my video off so that when the person is speaking they can be seen yeah that was important the problem was i lost connectivity on the laptop thank you though all right sorry okay hello everyone hello my name is maisha harris not i am the vice president of center chapter 610 i have been a central district employee and a csc member csea member for 15 years and currently i'm at north country elementary as an instructional specialist ph autism aide i have been working virtually with a full roster of students at north country i have observed firsthand that many of our students have adapted to our new normal over the past year through distance learning my my morning schedule is that i have been working with the students during the sponsor intervention rti which is an early identification and support for students with learning and behavior needs additionally i have been working with the students on their intervention goals during their class assignments posted on their google classroom from their general education teachers in the afternoon i am currently the vice president of our chapter i am also a member of the negotiations team some of the activities that i have participated in include pre-retirement coordinator i attended the csea annual conference and the officer training in lieu of our annual member dinner last november we recently provided our csca members with the choice of either a coffee break goodie bag or a pve goodie bag the coffee diddy bag consisted of starbucks gift card and pastries the ppe goodie bag included a contactless key fob face mask face shield and wipes i want to thank you for this opportunity to address the board i have a question which one of the goodie bags was more requested i picked the starbucks of course any questions for her okay uh committee updates facilities mr craig diesel good evening i've got a few updates uh for you today um moving to the kindergarten project first they did complete party the foundation last week which was if you if you get on google you probably won't see it but it's quite a massive um foundation for the three buildings they're bringing in um the next couple of weeks are going to be working on the retaining wall that goes around the foundation and then hopefully if all goes well on april 5th they will bring the buildings the modular buildings and crane them on top of the foundation and they'll all be in place before the kids get back that doesn't mean they're done but at least they're on the foundation they'll start working on the inside for our new school site rex fortune school on friday we interviewed six lease leaseback contractors and we have chosen one to bring you to bring to the board for approval next month we're in the design development phase of of the architectural drawings well they actually just got completed and from those design development drawings they just completed the estimate of what it's going to cost for the school but we haven't had a chance to let the architect look at it and kind of review it yet so i don't have that actual number to share with you and then we also have interviewed and chosen a um a modular contractor so we have two different contractors on this job um the classrooms are modular construction so they'll actually build them site and bring them and put them in place and then we have the administration building in the multi-purpose room that will be built you know with them sticks and with two by fours and a whole bit from the ground up the contractors that we interviewed the least leaseback contractors we interviewed um they will um actually be doing all the ground work and so i'll be putting the fields putting in the hardcore doing all the underground for the utilities and all that stuff as well as building the stick built buildings so next month we're hoping to bring you the modular contractor and the lease lease back contractor and then what we'll do for the final construction documents of the project is we'll bring the architect both of the contractors together and they will review and work on those final documents together and that's the that's one of the benefits of the week's lease back contract is we bring those two entities on board early and what that does is since they're all looking and participating in those final drawing documents before we go to dsa it reduces the number of change orders through the project because everyone's had a chance you know there's no time for them now to say well you didn't i didn't see this before or you didn't show me that or tell me i had to do it that way so so we're going to be happy to get them all together and start pushing forward with our construction documents um actually the completion of the project will be august of 23 and it's a 15-month process so about may of 22 probably so a year from may 22 a year from this mate and then breaking ground would be a year from this way okay and then the completion will be a year and three months after that so it's going to go from may 22 to august 23rd correct breaking ground on may 22 a year from now here okay it's it's still a ways out but um we are we are pushing forward and it's amazing what you have to do to get from this point to the construction documents in the dsa starting construction through construction you know it did it was a long process thinking of the ceremony we had for the junior high and make sure rex gets invited to there will definitely be a party when that school is finished yeah and actually we do a ground breaking as well you know we would do something like that as well you know breaks there is it just me again or we lost them huh we got you we hear you we yeah you're okay can you guys hear us we're here you can hear me okay okay um and then for the cte project the the career technical ed project um the design development phase um and the estimate on that one are also complete so we'll be moving into the construction documents on that and we do know that the estimate that came in on that is below the amount of money that we got for the grant so we're within budget on that project so we talked about it today that we have contingencies in the project in case anything goes wrong and then as we start the construction and find that we don't need those contingencies we can push that money back into other things that we wish we could have done um as we were as along the way so technology since the technology yeah so so that we're excited about that um we are going to be we just released rfp which is a request for proposal for a sequa consultant and sequa is the california environment environmental quality act and what we have to do is we have to make sure that by by putting these buildings in we're not disturbing there's 13 areas within the environment that we have to check to make sure that we're not disturbing whether it's noise pollution light pollution endangered species waterways all those different things that consultant will look at and make sure that we're not disturbing any of those is one of those things [Music] yes are they finding like solar panels and stuff for that um for the ctv we we actually aren't planning within the building of that project solar panels you know but as you remember we we do get 50 of our power from solar panels within smud but we'll look at um other ways that we can um we can meet some of those goals the other thing that we just talked about on both of these projects is going all electrical on some of this stuff because one of the things smud is working on doing is becoming grid neutral by 2030 in the next eight years and they're pushing everything electric because then you can use solar power and you can use wind power and the folsom dam power to make sure that they're providing all the electrical needs without burning fossil fuels so so we are looking at going all electric to start reducing our carbon footprint you just mentioned our solar farm going into the bench of the solar farm but could you just briefly for those of us who are new that uh might want to know why we get half of our tower from solar yeah real quick yeah so about about four years ago we entered into an agreement with smud and it's similar to a power purchase agreement so if you hired solar city to put solar panels on your roof what solarcity would do is then they would sell you power produced by those solar panels at a cheaper rate than you would get it from your electrical provider so we entered into with the board's direction an agreement with smud that we would purchase a certain amount of our energy from solar fields that they have to produce our our energy and with that we were able to get a reduced rate um on our electric bills so 50 of our electric bill that comes from solar panels is at a lower rate and then 50 percent that comes from the grid as that is at a higher rate and like 15 solar panels it's it's just like putting solar panels up but you don't have to so and the reason that smud went into that type of agreement with schools and other commercial entities was they were competing with the solar cities and the people that are putting their solar panels up on on other people's roofs so they were renting people's roofs for their solar panels i just wondered about the cost of as they age redoing them well the nice part is they're not ours so when they age they need to reproduce them and yeah yeah um and then just two more things on um on cte and then one bonus okay we're working on setting up a meeting with cdd which is the california department of education because not only does dsa the department of the state architect have to look at the drawings and make sure that they need all the building standards cdd looks at our drawings and makes sure that it meets all of the requirements for the grant so we wrote a grant and we said we're going to do these things and as far as educating our kids and then they look at our drawings and they look at our plan to make sure that we're covering all those things that they've given us money to build that project so um we're gonna they're gonna do like a mock-up one before they actually go to cbd and make sure that they've done everything that they're supposed to be doing and then the next steps on that we'll finish the construction drawings they'll go to dsa in july and then we'll start construction in december the very end of this year december 2021 and it will be complete in august of 2021 so when kids come back to the 21 22 school year those buildings will be open and then the bonus was i received an email today that stated that our um bond debt waiver that you approved for us to go after was approved today i have a couple of questions for you um on both the all three the kindergarten rex fortune and the cte could you tell us a little bit about the uh modulars that were putting in and all their newfangled features because they know they have them so um basically a modular building can look any way that you want you can have any kind of outside surface that you want you can have any type of inside surface that you want um the big things that we're looking at within our modulars are we want slow bruce because that really reduces the amount of leakage that roofs have over over the long term and then the inside features as far as the new school they will all be the 21st century learning environment with multiple whiteboards and multiple um tv screens so they'll be very technologically loaded with really good stuff to to deliver education to our kids without airflow vocs um airflow one of the things we're doing with the new school is instead of putting an air conditioner on every building we're kind of doing like in your house we'll put a we'll put hvac units at the end of every wing and then we will vent in through conduit and things like that through the vents we'll bring them in so that one of the reasons we're doing that is because it's easy for maintenance to come and work on them but they're all together and then it's a lot quieter in the classroom because they're not here in the air conditioner behind the van to bring to air in but as far as indoor air quality and things like that everything gets better as as things are new when they incorporate those things into the drawings docs the the gases that come up from carpet and and walmart and things like that the rules are getting more and more stringent where you can't they only allow certain amounts so the materials that they're building are just making them safer in the long run for kids any other questions thank you all right moving right along comments from the audience regarding items not on the agenda um let me just read the statement here anyone may address the board regarding any items within the board subject matter jurisdiction however the board may not discuss or take action on any item which is not on this agenda except as authorized by government code section 54954.2 the speakers shall be limited to three minutes all public comments on list items listed on this agenda will be heard at the time the board is discussing that item so these are just items that are not on the agenda i have one from bernadette that says as we have been hearing on the news that teachers are getting an incentive for returning to school can you touch base if this is happening at our school and if so why are we giving teachers money to come back but not the classified staff i thought money was given to get schools back and open and if we have been ready for months why the incentive and then from rose mendoza classified and certificated all play an important role i've heard that teachers are going to be getting an incentive is it really fair to tell all staff that you are required to come on campus and do your job but we are going to give half of you an incentive can you please just clarify why teachers are getting an incentive [Music] i have another one from bernadette four i just want to give a shout out to our admin at center high school mr ferguson and mrs mcnichols have been working non-stop getting our schools ready to open a big shout out to the office for all your hard work getting supplies to students and being available for parents questions we are excited to get students back on campus and that is all i have thank you we're not allowed to discuss something that's not on the agenda but we are allowed to make our board reports and i believe that the superintendent's report is going to include some information scott should say something about the reopening okay you want to go first and do your board report yep sure so just just to to to address that a little bit i wanted to to echo the sentiments we heard in public comment our employees have been working very hard in person and those that have been working uh remotely i think our our staff across the district from our classified folks to our confidential to our administrators our teachers to district administration have all been going above and beyond there has been some recent news of some districts providing incentives to teachers i want to share that what we have done is we are providing stipends for our certificated staff that are going outside of their normal work hours to prepare for our transition so not all teachers would be getting that but those that would be eligible for the stipend would any classified folk who works beyond their regular scope of hours would also be eligible to put in a time card get paid for that our our goal is to not have individuals work uh beyond their normal days it is a little bit different lately how we've been working but if someone goes above and beyond or outside their day to accomplish tasks we will absolutely time hard pay them to to do that we do not want people working for free um so did that answer that for you yeah i mean basically the extra prep work that's required for transitioning they're still doing their full job remotely and now they're going to be prepping to transition to their so that takes extra time and that extra time is being compensated through a stipend right correct um then also to continue with my report so i just wanted to remind the board that we do have april 7th at 6 o'clock we've established for our brown act workshop uh so um scott holbrook from atkinson-hamilton loyola route will be present with us to go through brown act and answer any questions that you all may have uh also i know the board has been excited uh since uh probably last month at least we talked about uh getting with csba california school boards association to look at some uh governance training some workshops uh that might address team building and different things i'm happy to report i have spoken with the consultant um and i think i've shared individually with you guys the opportunities that will be there and for under future planning or advanced planning i'd like to see if we can come to a collective agreement on some some ideas of scheduling and then i'll reach back with a consultant and bring that back to you so i'm excited to have that happen also i just want to give a shout out to all of those that participated and helped with our csp last week as i the board has been informed we did receive approval from sac county public health uh also as a part of that they have a new thing where they're actually having task force people that would you could schedule to come out and they would come out and visit your school sites just to see if there's any other suggestions before students come back we scheduled four of those they wanted to primarily focus on elementary today we had a representative from county public health come out and look at north country and dudley elementary and i was able to join the second visit at dudley and the consultant was very excited to see she had some suggestions it was great what we all determined was it's nice to have someone from outside look at what we think because sometimes you'll see you know when you read a paragraph and you you miss errors that you just can't see she had some very minor suggestions uh things to help us be even better so we really welcome that and i want to compliment all the sites but dudley and north country for being our first uh round with this it was very stressful for all of them because you know they want to do it right and they want to make it as safe as possible for all so i i want to just give a big kudos to them for for doing that next week smelly and oak hill and then we will we will proceed from there another update for the board just to kind of share with you um there has been news recently regarding the state testing uh today and yesterday the state board i think was going to be yesterday the state board authorized the ability for federal government to do a state waiver for flexibility on cash testing so the state of california will be applying for that waiver if that is the case we could either use uh local measures and still report them out through the dashboard metrics or we could go with casp we will look to very closely because we have the cast testing takes a couple weeks to get through so one of the things we're internally looking through is what's the best use of our time since we haven't had students right in front of us and so is it worth two weeks of testing so we're going to analyze that if this waiver is approved we'll come back to you guys with much more information on what our plan would be but it is very clear that you would have to desegregate report the data in the same method it has to be standards aligned so just want to throw that out that that that's something that's out there and then finally as it comes to the the reopening i just want to thank there's definitely as we heard from mrs poor's uh uh comments here there is a lot of buzz and excitement around coming back there's some apprehension around coming back but we're really excited staff is is kicking it into double overtime really working hard to make it as is overly prepared as we can and just to let you guys know district-wide we're about 60 60 percent of our students are are selecting to return it in person our elementaries are running around a high 60 percent to return to hybrid uh middle school is around 54 center high school is about 60 percent uh mcclellan's around 38 as of right now so um that may change i'll keep updating you we have to update a state website every two weeks so i'm happy to share those numbers as we see things develop but it does show to me that folks are interested in getting back and i know there's definitely some excitement and um some nervousness around it but it'll be good i've had the opportunity to attend uh visit some of the pillboards just looking in it's great to see the kids on campus so anyway that is my report for this one what's the open dates for the junior high high school uh so our junior high march 25th and 26th is when seventh and eighth grade will start and then high school everyone will be back on april 6th tuesday so when you say everyone though that's still on a uh a hybrid hybrid schedule since we're in the red tier and then we can if those dates are all cleared and we have sent out word to families that we've reached the red tier that those dates that were established at our last meeting are are official so people can start looking at my notes too all right mr bruno would you like to give your report sure um first of all i wanted to point out that we are in the frontier now which is good news a lot of people are excited about coming back but one thing that i noticed didn't get a lot of mention is they actually changed the definition of the red tier they moved the target percentage from 7.0 to 8.0 which is how we qualified so i would like to just remind the entire public please still be cautious wear masks social distance washing hands all that fun stuff because although we're in a better tier it's we're still not down to the 7.0 we were hoping to get down to and the other thing is um i've heard some feedback about some employees not feeling appreciated and um as an employee of a different school district myself i can relate to that looking around this room i see a lot of familiar faces um that come and report to the board all you know regularly but i also acknowledge that there are people that are working doing other behind-the-scenes work that maybe aren't interacting with us but you know mr easton's report i'm sure there were other people involved all along and just because we're not seeing you here i don't want people to think they're not appreciated all the work that's being done to set up the schools all the interfacing with the public you know i'm also a parent and i've had to go in to center high and have a meet and everything the administration there's been wonderful the people that greeted me were enthusiastic and friendly um you know the custodians that are keeping our schools clean food service workers everybody plays an important part and even if we don't see it firsthand i i appreciate the way this district works in everyone's working together really well for the good of our students and i just want to thank everybody so thank you all yes yes so thank you mr grinnell i reiterate everything that you say so thank you everybody we all know how hard you're working and it's much much appreciated um i would like to congratulate mr uh lair and cabinet for their diligent work on csp congratulations on your success on that and thank you administrators and support staff and the csb is the coded safety plan that's right thank you mrs kelly much appreciated sorry no i appreciate that um yes that is what it is and uh thank you for for your hard work that is a great success for us um i would like to thank the antelope lions club they sponsored the north tele excuse me north country elementary individual reading tower the lions club donated if i believe i'm correct 12 kindle fires so that would be two kindle fires per grade level and what happens is the individual challenge is you know the individuals read and whoever weighs in a drawing they'll pull out the pull out of the hat and they will get a gentle player so it's two handle fires per grade left mccullen high school and center high school are busy with credit recovery and credit loss center high school has also incorporated ingenuity that is an online and blended learning solutions for their students so that's a great success for them one thing i did continue seeing is schools mentioning their successes in multi-tier systems of support they are focusing on all students academic behavior and social needs it's important that we continue our work on mtss as a whole to keep our district in line with our local control accountability plan so that's huge then some important dates to remember the deadline to submit your application for the center booster scholarship has been extended to april 18th at midnight so check their website center boosters and also you can call the school office for additional information and then the elective forms for the 21-22 school year for riles middle school is due march 19th happy spring everybody and have a great spring break thank you and i'll go ahead and go next so um just want to welcome our new employee tanner wise and congratulate our three uh employees who were promoted lorenzo garcia mary neil and some third guy i'm not sure eugene graham congratulations and then congratulations on a big huge thank you to lisa morton who is retiring this year um and then i'm going to come back to this section about that i'm going to ask mike to talk about um mike's not here right there sorry i'm sorry mike looked right at you um i just wanted to have you talk about um the mental health supports that we have in place to support our pe our students who are just supporting the extra step that we're doing and just kind of give an idea of who should be seeking that out and kind of remove the stigma around the whole mental health category that it's really just a way for people to socialize and kind of get out of their isolation and whatever else we're offering so if you've had a few minutes to talk about that but let me finish with the rest of my report and we might want to agenda i mean if that's something we want to come back says oh i mean i just wanted him to say what just just a brief overview of the services that are being i just i don't i don't want him to feel unprepared is my only thing no no no no as long as he's good for a quick overview it doesn't have to be anything fancy dancing um let's see i can't read my own handwriting so give me just one moment here oh i just wanted to say that yes um as mr bruno had mentioned we have moved into the red tier and they did change their criteria and one of the thriving factors that allowed us to move into the red tier was the fact that they that california has now administered more than 2 billion doses of vaccine to what we call disproportionate or you know overly burdened populations and that was one of the criteria that the governor put into place with his most recent revisions to the blueprint for the safer economy the reason for that of course is you know i like to i like to think of it this way you get more bang cream up if you go to the communities that are that are hit the hardest take care of them first it helps everybody and it's not only helping them because they deserve it and need it but it's helping everyone by you know addressing the greatest need in the society so i'm super excited about the fact that we did that we met that goal and of course we're exceeding that at this point and that's what helped us drive down into the red tier and then in addition to that because we are now in the red tier i just wanted to note that on the february 17th meeting the board voted unanimously to open all schools in the red tier so we are all now on the same page and should be in alignment for a really good problem it wasn't a unanimous vote uh i just want to point that out as a point of order the meeting notes do state that so if that's not correct that was for the february 17th meeting not the march third meeting so when we voted to open two weeks after moving into red tier that's correct that was moved by um mrs anderson and secretary i and i just wanted to say that you know that that's great because now that we're in the reds here i think we can all be excited about the fact that we're moving forward on the opening and then um let's see i wanted to thank heartland child and family services who's going to be providing grief counseling as needed and it is a uh an item that is on our consent agenda tonight and then i recently attended my first uh what's called meg training which is masters in governance training so my first classes were last friday and saturday and a lot of what we talked about in those meetings is the thing are the things that we're going to be covering in our csba first training things like team building communications norms protocols a handbook all of the things that we need to make sure that we're working together as a great team and i mean a lot of us are new so i think it's real timely that we're taking care of that and i was excited and happy to hear the training that went on because of that um one of the things that they pointed out to us is that for the board of five people and one superintendent there are one-to-one relationships so i have a relationship with scott a relationship with nancy mr bruno etcetera and around the room there are different relationships and they really encouraged us to build those individual relationships we can meet with people you know outside we can talk to people on the phone we can go to events uh oftentimes i've gone with mrs pope or mrs anderson to one of the plays or which obviously you can't go in the theater and sit and play but but but just you know um build those relationships one-to-one because that's going to make us a much stronger team as a whole and then um one of the things that i had been talking about with the mr lear was having someone from the board participate in the social emotional learning committee and having some representation on them you can have up to two board members that attend that committee and so just put some thought into that i don't know if we need to agendize it but um i'm definitely interested in having some representation there so that we can know which can benefit from that the social emotional learning committee scott remind me why was that i wanted to do this there was a specific well one of the things we talked we talked about and that is looking at data and then identifying so i think it would be good and we can do that under advanced planning i think at that point it would be nice if if a couple of you would like to be a part of that we'd love to include that then subgroup could then put information look at data and then bring some some ideas back to the whole board so we can make sure it gets pushed through right and really get some traction on the very important work one of their next um items that they were already planning to address was the the question of disproportionate outcomes for our various uh impacted populations so really excited to get started on that and and get that ball rolling when do you hear on the csba position oh i haven't heard anything but i'm assuming that that i mean i guess i shouldn't assume there were only four candidates have you heard the deadline was just this week oh what do you mean it was so we're submitting the the ballots the votes it was monday so they would still have to talk we still have to but there were five vacancies and only four applicants so okay i think i think i'm on it but does that like area though doesn't it depend on areas i mean it was in our packet of what we voted on there were five openings and we could vote for four so i think that is our region in our area i just caught where it seems like we're drifting a little more towards the conversation i think it's important to stick with the board report and then sorry no that's college no uh happy st patrick's day everybody um and that's it and this is anderson you're next okay um i would like to hear a little more on what our children's day is going to be like can you put your light up on your phone and on your planets glaring in my eyes your pen the light on your pen thank you thank you anyway um i would like to hear if it's possible a little bit more about what the elementary child's day is going to be like what they're going to be allowed to do as in recess or classroom activities um sure and we have everything outlined i know mr jordan went over a lot of that last time we're happy i can either meet individually with you or we could come back with something i'm happy to to do that okay well maybe we'll meet in your office or something okay um and other than that i just want to say i could not be prouder of center school district and the way that they have pulled through this pulled together um have accomplished what they needed to accomplish and make sure that we were ready to go when time came for these kids to go back to school and i am so thrilled that we are able to put these kids back in school because these kids are suffering they really truly are a lot of them that just can't hang in there being you know by themselves or they aren't self-starters and they're just not getting it so some are some are able to do it on their own but there's a lot of them that are suffering because they don't have that companionship or those relationships out there and they need to be back in school so i'm absolutely thrilled with the leadership that mr lair has provided and the follow through that our sites and our administrators have had the response from our classified our teachers everybody in the middle the whole entire district has done a fantastic job and i couldn't be prouder so thank you to each and every one of them and that's my board report thank you mrs anderson um dr lee if you could give me just one more minute i i neglected to ask um mike jordan mr jordan to come up and just kind of give an overview of some of the social emotional uh supports that are available just really so this is just kind of an overview of what's happening right now so we had our social emotional uh task force district-wide task force come together about a week and a half or two ago one of the things that came out of that we're putting together a mobile mental health task force so when we come back on the first couple of days we have people ready in case uh you know something happens whether it's kids are experiencing anxiety about coming back to school or uh you know want to talk through some of the things that have happened depression those kind of things so that group will be able to be able to go to site to site and help out so no single site gets overwhelmed we also have are going to repost for our counselor position we're going to try for a school psychologist this time to help out on our educationally related mental health services team um ann lyons has done a fantastic job as well as uh bonnie nolte and rochelle haywood meeting with our students counseling throughout this entire pandemic meeting with them online virtually we recognize the the services we need to increase so we're bringing in some some more people to do that um we have continued with beacon which is i think i've discussed this a little bit in the sel uh report uh sometimes blended get it last month month before whenever uh so that is continuing to go on and that is to uh support our students who are online who are are looking at uh suicidal ideation or or self-harm and we have had a few hits on that and we've been able to uh to intervene successfully on that which is fantastic uh not fantastic that happened but fantastic we were able to intervene um we are we're also almost done we've been we started meeting up what six months ago or so to put together a grief team and that grief team will allow us when an unfortunate or horrible incidents like what happened with our two students have been calling the beginning of the year with the accident or we can mobilize and get people uh students and staff that the mental health that they need and that's partially where that heartland alliance comes in they've agreed to help themselves after 30 professionals if we get overwhelmed with the need that they would help us out free of charge for the first 100 hours to come in and support our students as well so we're looking at supporting kids in in every way we can just that's amazing thank you very good thank you all right and now we are all really looking forward to dr lee's presentation uh during her board report so we should go ahead and start the slideshow um there's no sign show but i just want to say um greetings everybody and and thank you i wasn't quite sure if i was going to get a chance to do my report usually we use alphabetical order um for our reports so i was kind of thrown today by the bordering but they do it ten times it changes rent and i'm the only reason i went with mr there first usually he goes last is because it was a perfect segue from the public comment so then i just there is no rhyme no reason it was just the way it worked out sorry right yeah so um greetings everybody and happy women's history month um you know it was recently brought to my attention by multiple constituents that for the past 30 years or so this board has not once recognized black history month in february or women's history month in march and while these are things that we should focus on all year the fact of the matter is that these months were developed as a way to highlight folks that have been historically marginalized and continued to be marginalized in the larger dialogues so when i ran for this position i really promised to focus on diversity inclusion academic data and culturally responsive teaching however you know for those of you who are reaching out to me it's to really change things in the district instead of taking more than just one new board members interests or passions it really needs to be a collective effort and i want to remind folks that we are a team and we are a board not just individuals acting turning my attention back to the more immediate i hear your concerns that you shared with me since our march 3rd special meeting i am listening i'm bringing those back to my colleagues i did request that the district provide the board and the public with a detailed accounting about the cares act and coronavirus funds that have been spent and allocated including highlighting how the funds were spent are allocated on our most vulnerable student populations i've also requested some data about the percentages of the certificated and classified staff that want to be vaccinated and have received it i did see that as well vaccination rate information has been released by dry creek and other small and large districts and there was even a kcra report or something about it about local districts and vaccination rates so i to know that about our district 2.
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we are in conference room 229 and is roughly 3 20. we have one bill like i said the house bill house draft two this is relating to the uniform employee and student online privacy protection act prior to starting i need some housekeeping announcements this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed live on youtube you will find links to viewing options for all senate meetings on the live and on demand video page of the legislature's website in the unlikely event that we have to abruptly end this hearing due to major technical difficulties i believe the labor committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on friday at 3 10 p.m in this room can you meet friday or wherever you're gonna what time do you wanna reconvene in case we get abruptly three o'clock yeah three o'clock friday okay and the education committee will uh meet at 3 p.m on friday also let's see if you are online and would like to submit testimony you may do so on the legislative website until midnight today again we'll go to house bill 125 house draft two we have some testifiers department of education we will stand on our written testimony in support of this bill we are available for questions of course thank you for the opportunity thank you um we have testimony from the commission to promote uniform legislation uh commissioner oshiro good afternoon chairs uh senators blake usher on behalf of the commission to promote uniform legislation we stand on our written testimony and i am available for any questions thank you we also have written testimony from the hawaii civil rights commission which is supportive of the bill do you have any questions from members for the two testifiers no okay [Music] with no questions that i guess we will recess the public hearing and go into decision making welcome back this is the decision-making session for the joint committee communities on labor cultural arts and the committee on education we had one bill house bill 125 house draft 2 this is relating to the uniform employee and student online privacy protection act both chairs have conferred and we will recommend that we pass this bill with amendments will amend reference to the age of majority on page 6 line 9 to under the age of 18 and make other technical and non-substantive amendments is there any discussion from members if not um for the vote for labor so later committee members were voting on the chair's recommendation to pass hp one two five with an endless chair tony gucci all right bye she goes i senator chang hi senator kyo colorway hi senator favela the recommendation is adopted thank you thank you and members for the committee on education the chair recommends the same with to pass house bill 125 hd2 with amendments chair votes eye chair vote zion hospital one two five house draft two uh with amendments chair boat side vice chair woodside senator de la cruz senator kanoha senator favela all five members president senator fabella can i hear him thank you all five members present voting affirmative recommendations adopted thank you for recess good afternoon welcome to our committee on education this is wednesday march 17th 3 20 p.m agenda here in room 229.
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then during the lunch block that hour time period half hour of it will be spent students will have the opportunity to eat we're going to divide them up so they'll be kind of two lunches two lunch cohorts so while some folks are eating the other people who have d period will be in their d period with a deeper teacher and that will be remote for some folks and in person for others and then they'll switch back and then you can see see period is still the same now we are asking that at 2 30 when we're dismissing that all the students do go back to the buses or to the families that walk and they're going to be leaving the building now 2 30 to 3 time for the teachers who are in the building it'll be a time for them to give extra support to the students who are remote because the way it's going to look while student while the teachers and students are in the building they're going to be still teachers can still be using the google classroom that they've been using all year teaching their lessons from the classrooms the ones over here and so students who are remote will be accessing it the same way they have in the classroom will most likely be the google classroom projected onto a board and the whiteboard in the classroom teachers will be teaching interacting with students are there answering questions for the students for remote and again that extra 2 30 of the three time will be devoted strictly to the students who are remote who didn't get a chance to ask questions as many questions as they may have had during the school day for students who have special education services academic skills for the ones who are in person that will also happen during the half hour lunch break and for the ones who remote they'll still access it at the same time that they're accessing it currently i went through that quickly but we'll have a chance for you to ask questions right now i want to talk about some of the frequently asked questions that we've had excuse me so one of them has really been about lunch so again we'll have two lunch cohorts right now we plan by the time we get back hopefully but whether we warmer hopefully won't get in those knowing when may or april snowstorms and the students will be outside for the most part we'll also have spaces in the cafeteria where they can meet we'll be able to spread the tables out limited number of students at the tables and that may also be an opportunity for students in the classroom to work out those details of the cafeteria folks but they'll have a few different options and i'll know exactly where they can eat i know which days so that is the one time where we can pretty much guarantee that students will be spaced six feet apart now depending on how many students do end up showing up for each of the classes right now our average class can hold 16 people in it space six feet apart so we cannot guarantee that students in the classrooms will be six feet apart because if a class has 22 students and 20 of them show up they'll all be in that out of the class or whatever class it is together we'll do our best to space folks out we do have hand sanitizers in each of the rooms air purifiers windows will be open so we're taking a lot of measures to try to keep folks as safe as possible and you can see another question about the d block so i've explained before d block will happen when students aren't eating lunch during that hour-long lunch break for those students who do either get dropped off or take the school bus their first class will start at nine if they show up before 8 50.
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well this month we dropped that overage from 140 some odd thousand to a hundred and seven thousand so it was good news well received by the board of finance uh that we continue to find opportunities of open offices on that we've had to spend this year so that's good news and so what changed um we're under running our legal fees budget we're under running uh we have salary savings on leaves vacancies and overtime and the special ed tuition actually came in yet another notch under and if you remember the last couple of months i've been reporting that's been uh coming down uh which has been good um and then field trip transportation i'm not spending a lot on field trip transportation this year so that was another under run those were offset partially by some in-district special ed costs for a student that had returned to school and some additional costs on nursing services and less reimbursement from the state on the excess cost grant all told it was about a uh 34 000 decrease to our projected deficit which is good news and uh so we're in good shape and continue to operate very appropriately given the environment that we're in so we all i think as a committee all felt very good about the report that mr post gave us and then uh mrs fernandez shared that with the board of finance who also felt very good about the continued efforts that we've that we've had this year so i want to thank everybody especially the administration in the district who are really focused on you know good prudent financial control which is you know what this just shows so um other than that and i'll hold off on the budget discussion uh we did have a briefing from mr post on the options being explored on the water treatment uh conditions over at whiskenier which you know are a variety of options and so it was just a briefing more to come on that subject down the road as they flush out so um and uh and that was the total of the meeting uh it was about 45 minutes it was a pretty quick meeting any questions okay all right thanks uh the next uh subcommittee report is equity and inclusion okay um the committee met last week on thursday march 11th and we spent the bulk of the meeting completing our committee charter the four feeling words that were chosen by vote after the february meeting are respected challenged impactful and heard so we returned to the jamboard tool to add some ideas on what behaviors would help achieve those feelings and then we discussed those and dr ruby summarized some of the ideas that we landed on for respected showing up on time and forming of an absence monitoring your own air time engaging in active listening for challenge stepping out of your comfort zone stretching your critical thinking skills and problem solving skills being empowered to disagree with an idea and not a person for impactful making informed decisions and following through setting realistic goals defining measurable success criteria holding ourselves accountable and for heard giving time and opportunity for all voices to be heard acknowledging all perspectives keeping a log of ideas and utilizing different mediums such as padlet for ideas and concerns to be shared offline or anonymously for someone that might choose to do that and not want to speak out during a meeting so that took the bulk of the time as time was winding down four members volunteered to work together we actually met today and um just kind of polish up the wording and we're going to bring the completed charter forward to the full committee next month then to close out dr bruhl just shared and revisited the board's vision for the committee the statement and the objectives and we charge members with reviewing the document and bringing forward some ideas for actions and goal prioritizing at next month's meeting and we also set our future meeting dates we're going to continue to meet on the second thursday of the month for april may and june and that's it so amy could you um maybe what's sort of the next steps for the committee that's pretty much it i think like we're so like i said dr burl went over the the board's vision and some objectives that he had already come up with for the committee and sort of where what lies with the committee what lies of policy what lies with administration so we should have like a shared google folder for everyone to look at so that they can sort of come forward with ideas and sort of make some prioritizing i don't know if or doctor wants to add have you guys decided that you would break up into your own subcommittees i know that you were thinking about that at one point i had not yet i don't think we're there yet i don't know if you want to expand on that dr ruby or dr barrella save dr puppy's hand up so yeah but maureen please jump in so based on the um the information that well that dr royle shared in terms of the charge of the vision statement that the board um created what are the things that are um you know policy things obviously the policy committee works on um there are certain things that the the tso and administrators work on and then the bulk of the work for the committee um was shared and so after we approved the charter that the subcommittee that was our first subcommittee uh breakout for completing the the formatting of the charter as amy described the next um action that we would be taking is having the committee um review um the items from the vision statement of the board of education to prioritize that the committee has to prioritize what they as um teachers parents community members and the board members that are on the committee believe um should be done first you know what what is what should we tackle once the committee identifies the prioritization list because i mean we i think we've uh really um shared the um the long-term commitment of this committee that this is this work is going to take you know years to do and so we need to have the committee give their input on and and there's probably going to be discussion um on what it is that's um the most important thing to um to really work on for the end of this year and planning the work for if people are going to work in the summer i i you know we we have to determine that and then what's going to be done next year and so once the committee members prioritize the um the work that needs to be done then they will have to do i think we're we've been talking about using uh providing some pd for the committee members on design thinking so that we can uh really have a strategy and a format and and there are people on the committee who have background in design thinking so that we have a real a real structure that it's not helter skelter that everybody is has a methodology for working together because we are during this time of prioritizing it's going to be a really important charge of all members of this committee to build relationships that are centered on transparency and trust because the content of what we're working on is a lot of it is really very sensitive um in terms of the nature of the topics and so all of that will be happening at the same time but the committee members are going to decide what is the number one priority and so we don't know what it is because it's going to be a committee decision okay all right so so it's very process driven and we want to make sure that everybody feels supported and we have very we have very people who are obviously very comfortable in in sharing their feelings and their um you know what what they're interested in and we want to try to get to some level of equilibration so that everybody's comfortable and as amy shared we also discussed what other um uh venues would there be for people who just really aren't quite comfortable in speaking their mind you know in this checkerboard square situation that we have when we meet in zoom and i think amy mentioned padlet and other things and so there's a lot of really um really diverse thinking in the committee membership which i think is very important and um you know we're we're we want to go slow so that we um so that people gel and that everybody's heard and we can really work on things that they feel is important to supporting the board's mission okay well we'll look forward to hearing your next update amy thanks you're welcome all right um let's move on to the consent agenda okay i move that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations and the february financials second thanks for all in favor that's unanimous uh we can move on to new business and the first item is the brookfield youth commission presentation so eric are is someone from that group a co-host so they can share or do yes i know somebody from the group was going to share and i can if there's any issues or somebody can i can certainly do that okay okay ron is you're all set to share ron i am okay great i'm uh marnie mcniff i am the chair of the brookfield youth commission and we are very happy to be here tonight to share the results of um the survey we sent out to the students of brookfield high school and wisconir middle school i'm actually going to turn the presentation over to our youth members who are students of bhs who are going to run the presentation tonight are we ready i need to be able to share so eric ron jaffe is the one who will be sharing the presentation yes i do have it set for are you getting an error because i have it set for all everybody to be able to share this screen uh okay i'm not seeing it there we go okay all right uh hello um my name is matt anson i'm a fellow member on the brookfield youth commission uh i am a senior and uh who we are well specifically um if the other uh members would like to introduce themselves now you guys can hi i'm matani nala cherry i'm a senior at brookfield high school as well i'm nicole zurkan i'm also a senior at brookfield high school i'm siesta a senior at brookfield high school as well and um so all of us uh make up the youth members on the brookfield youth commission we provide an advocacy and information platform for youth representatives to get more engaged in town issues we also work to identify gaps and services to youth and their families through an ongoing assessment of needs um you know continuing on from you know with the the uh huckleberry hill students i said earlier you know this will be focusing kind of on the issues that with you know distance learning as was in the title slide i know we kind of skipped through that really quickly but you know we help to recommend new programs events craft initiatives and partnerships with other town boards and departments and suggest ideas for new policies or regulations to consider we also share news and information about important talent and school projects and programs within the youth of the community um so the surveys you've worked closely with the school's principals and the brookfield youth commission's board of education liaison we created surveys to get input from high school and junior high school students the input was saw on how students felt about our new coveted reality its impact on their education and whether they feel connected or not survey invitations were sent through the schools and participation was voluntary okay so to start with the high school survey we'll start with the multiple choice responses so it's important to mention there were 171 responses uh and the first question was what grade are you in so as you can see here there's about equal representation between all grades with mostly seniors i believe all right and the next question is what method of learning has benefited you most most people said that in-person learning has benefited the most followed by virtually and lastly neither so the next question uh has to do with technology and access to technology specifically and it is on a scale one through five one being poor access to technology five being easy like good access to technology and as you can see the majority of people said five followed by four three two one uh next about the connection between particularly students and teachers so how they have connected uh that's the question how all of your teachers connected with you the most common response was a four on the five point scale followed by a three then a five two followed by one and the next set of questions were open-ended responses so how this worked was that it was open-ended so students could say whatever they wanted and research by keyword to get this data so first question having through technology was what aspects of technology have been most beneficial during online learning uh the most common responses have the keywords of google slides or google docs followed by zoom and breakout rooms and then multiple other aspects of technology such as jamboard padlet edpuzzle and earpod the next question is what aspects of technology have been most problematic during online learning most people responded with wi-fi connectivity followed by zoom and breakout rooms then camera and audio issues followed by google jamboard ed puzzles and lastly too much time online and distractions being tied with teacher interaction the next question has to do with challenges that students felt so how have you felt challenged during the school year was the way the question was phrased uh the most common responses were having to do with focusing or learning virtually followed by the workload and the academics themselves then a loss of motivation followed by loss of activities and loss of extra help like opportunities for extra help followed by time management and lastly feelings of loneliness and depressed then on a later note we asked how have you felt inspired during the school year the most common responses had to do with college aspirations and more independence followed by growing academic or personal interests then tied is support from teachers and great improvements then the school's efforts and lastly support from friends so that brings us to the question how could we improve your learning experience many students thanked many teachers and staff for the work that they've done to adapt to hybrid or virtual learning and while there is a strong consensus that returning to school in person is desirable suggestions may include reduced screen time increased communication with teachers reduced distractions and consistently which means either being 100 in person or 100 virtual i terms think vince middle school survey we sent out uh these are the uh when we first sent out are we good here or yeah i think we can hear you okay thank you so uh like i said out of 289 responses uh as you can see when we first sent out the survey we did not receive any responses from seventh graders which uh can be attributed to i think uh just a technical error so we did go back to whisker middle school and ask that the seventh graders retake the survey but uh for some reason when the results came back they came out as eighth graders but rest assured uh all grades are represented here so in terms of what method of learning has benefited you the most in person is the majority as can also be seen in the high school survey in terms of access how would you rate your access to technology uh thankfully enough the highest chosen responses were five and four showing that most students did not have problems with technology in terms of online schooling and then how well have your teachers connected with you the plurality of responses uh came into number four followed by five three two and one and then surprisingly enough as notable as students age the responses on a scale from one to five did decrease a bit so during or for grade five the average rating of teacher connectedness was 4.32 well grade 8 had a average connectedness of 3.88 now for the open-ended responses so for most helpful what aspects of technology have been helpful during online learning uh peer deck took the majority of responses with 41 followed out followed up by breakout rooms google slides and docs and jamboard and for most difficult uh what aspects of technology have been most difficult for online learning uh the top three responses were zoom which can mainly be attributed to the fact that it's the most widely used technology app for online learning followed by why high connectivity and issues with google so when we asked the students to explain their responses and how their teachers have connected with them thankfully many of the students did respond with saying that their experiences were positive and they were thankful for teachers work with these sorts of conditions and some of the comments did address issues including loneliness separation technology challenges timing of response to emails difficulty of personal connection increased distraction at home and more and while many responses dealt with learning in general some discuss difficulty maintaining focus increased stress too much time or too much screen time and learning on zoom so how could we improve your learning experience many of the students expressed happiness and gratitude for their experience thanking the staff for the work they've done to adapt and the uh suggestions they uh included were increased interactivity and group work more individualized contacts allow cameras to be off on occasion flexibility on due time and dates and more breaks from screen time so as we discussed in the beginning our role as the youth commission is to use us provide an assessment of needs of the students and work to address those needs so we stand ready to work with the schools and community to continue to understand and advocate for these needs of students through assessments like this survey and our next steps that we suggest are meeting with actual students to discuss what they told us because they did provide suggestions of things that would make this easier for them to build on the district's current caring environment that they have provided and i believe that's the end thank you so much for listening we really hope that this was a helpful survey and assessment of needs for the students right let's open it up to board members for any questions or comments i just want to thank you guys for doing this and pulling it together it's uh you know it's always useful to get information you know directly from our students so i appreciate that and and we'll take this on board and figure out what to do with it now so thank you so much all right thank you guys for being here the next item on our agenda is the healthy food option certification okay i will move that pursuant to cgs section 10-215 f the brookfield board of education certifies that all food items offered for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the connecticut nutrition standards published by the connecticut state department of education will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards during the period of july 1 2021 through june 30 2022 this certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all times and from all sources including but not limited to school stores vending machines school cafeterias culinary programs and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organizations and groups that was a lot do i have a second a second all right thanks joy uh is there any discussion on this ken did you want to explain or anything i think it's pretty self-explanatory i want to apologize for the length of the motion that the language is uh provided to us by the state and it has to be word for word so basically we're just certifying that all food offered for sale to students within the school will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards uh doing this allows us to get extra reimbursement into the school lunch account which last year totaled about 17 okay and we do this every year right yes yes and it's and it's this long every year i think it gets longer all right so uh all those in favor aye all right that's unanimous uh the next item on our agenda is the healthy food and beverage exemption i think in our agenda it says food food but just food and beverage okay that's another mouthful i will move that the brookfield board of education will allow the sale to students of food items that do not meet the connecticut nutrition standards and beverages not listed in section 10-221-q of the connecticut general statutes provided that the following conditions are met the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of a regular school day or on the weekend the sale is at the location of the event and the food and beverage items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity for example soccer games school plays and interscholastic debates are events but soccer practices play rehearsals and debate team meetings are not the regular school day is the period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held okay do we have a second anyone second thanks troy all right um i believe this is pretty standard too right ken it is basically the board the board has two choices with this you can either approve the motion allowing the exemptions for for events or if you do not approve the motion then any all requests for exemption for like for every football game or every soccer game would have to come before the board individually okay either either way the exemption has to meet the criteria in the motion okay question bob oh all right so all in favor aye all right thanks that's unanimous too uh moving on to old business uh let's talk about the board of education 2122 adopted budget um first i'm going to turn it over to dr burrell to kind of um talk us through uh the sr2 grant uh updates that we've been um kind of chatting about for the last few weeks so dr berle the floor is yours all right thank you so yes i'll i'll i have a several slide powerpoint i want to review the plan i know several people have asked about this over the last few weeks and we were even asked at our joint meeting last week from the board of selectmen and board of finance what the plans were for the esther grant so share my screen get in presentation mode all right hope everybody can see that so um we really want to as a as a leadership team we've talked about the different grants that have come in over the course of the year and i'll review those on the next slide um or two the esr ii grant is a pretty significant grant coming from the federal government um and many of uh kind of more well-known is last weekend uh gosh ten days ago now congress met and passed the 1.9 trillion dollar uh esser uh relief act which included the sr-3 funds for public schools and i'll mention that as part of my presentation this evening but it's important to go through this because we are we really want to be strategic with this opportunity um for for this additional funding that has come through that none of us were certainly counting on so let me start by walking you through and let everybody know what the sr2 funds are supposed to be prioritized for um there are four key areas that are priorities for the state of connecticut as they implement the yes and release the estro ii funds academic supports addressing learning loss addressing uh the fact that we want to make sure we're accelerating learning for our students and recovery school safety and social media social and emotional well-being not only of students but of staff school safety isn't necessarily what everybody thinks about school safety like security it also is for things like healthy environment hvac air quality things like that number three remote learning staff development and also closing the digital divide or technology professional learning things like that and then connections with family and community and certainly with students and on the slide for people later um i have a link to the actual priorities as there is a four-page narrative that explains uh and gives us guidance on how to use the funds uh also when you hear the word esser it means elementary and secondary school emergency relief so everybody knows what that stands for so i have this slide here i also have it as the at the end of this presentation as a summary of how we plan to use the funds the total amount that brookfield is receiving is 328 thousand dollars we've talked about several areas that are in white where we will actually spend plan to spend the money um for items that are already in next year's budget um and and we are allowed to do that based on the nature of the particular activities as i just listed them out so our first ever um regular education summer school is planned for this year it's actually in our budget at a cost of 50 an estimated cost of 55 and summer school is subject to the grant um you can imagine learning acceleration learning loss so we plan to reduce next year's budget uh by that much along with the technology pd that's in the budget already 15 000 and the math tutor for center school at 25 000 so that amount of money is about 96 000 and we plan and we've already worked with board finance and board of selectmen to reduce that out of the 2122 budget we would like to take the the remainder of the grant funds in next year's budget and move into an instructional coach model which i'm about to get into and that would be a science instructional coach a social studies instructional coach both of those would be initiated at the middle school level and then eventually transition to the k-8 level in year two there'd be some supplemental coaching and science in social studies professional learning we estimated about ten thousand dollars and for parent engagement we've talked about parent university and some other activities we want to continue to to work out with our parents once we're out of the virtual mode um and there's uh printing and materials and things that we anticipate we would need with programs like that um i should say that we do have uh through the fall september october ish of 2023 to expend these funds and then um not spent in the 21 22 year is about 40 000 and we would like to use that toward the uh offsetting the coaches in year two all right so it's important i thought to share a brief summary of the different funds that have come in because there's been a lot of puts and takes and conversations from the summer time where we're getting ready to open school and lots of news stories about different funding coming in and governor press conferences and so forth so very brief review of what we've received here in brookfield thus far there was cares funding of 74 000 some people referred to that as sr1 i don't think technically it really is under that uh emergency term uh for secondary schools but it was called cares uh act funding that was about seventy four thousand dollars we purchased chromebooks uh a good number of them uh along with operating budget chromebooks in the uh over the course of this year uh some fees also went to christian life academy very small about two or three thousand dollars so that's just important for people to know as a summary piece in addition to that the coronavirus relief fund was 54 000 we use that to offset the additional bus runs we had at the beginning of the year with kindergarten uh you may recall we had a very different model than the typical hybrid model to start the school year with the rest of the grades um so for those bus runs for some cleaning supplies uh and also cleaning services in white under the line there is sr2 which i'm going to outline in the presentation uh this evening and to remind everybody we've been very careful to look at the guidelines and requirements of the grant everything we're putting forward tonight is in alignment with the grant and then just passed as i mentioned earlier as part of the 1.9 trillion dollar relief package is sr3 the information that mr post dr ruby and myself have received from a memo from the state department of ed is that it looks like brookfield school district will receive 815 thousand dollars but we're awaiting federal and state guidance there's a lot of talk out there that it might be up to nine hundred thousand dollars there's also talk out there that it's multiple years uh that will have to spend the money but then i'm also hearing we only have two years so we just don't know yet no guidance has come out on the sr3 rescue funds yet so i want everybody to know that but i also want to be upfront in addition to that the town will receive um from that sr3 grant it could be well over a million dollars or into the millions of dollars in relief as well we don't know the actual um final decision on that and so all that information as it comes out everybody will learn about okay so i want to talk about building instructional capacity and share the rationale for why we want to go with the coaching model which we're really excited about the instructional coach model so i want to do a quick review what have we been doing in district as you know although we talked about the strategic coherence plan right before the pandemic the board worked on the portrait of the graduate and we're really moving forward almost the second phase of the strategic coherence plan so briefly i'm just going to just go over these bulleted items here we've been working on differentiated instruction all of our tiered interventions sometimes referred to as srbi um assessment literacy has been a major uh initiative in our district all the curriculum development work we've been doing um technology not only infrastructure technology but technology for learning um integration of science and math and english and social studies for stem and humanities all the the ruler work and the social emotional work and trauma-informed instruction and then um working toward personalized learning and of course always working on instructional leadership whether that is building administration central office administration or uh teacher leadership and we've done a lot of tremendous work there it's been a major focus of strategic coherence planning and the achievement of all of our objectives and goals um so where do we want to go now we want to ins uh really strengthen tier one or what's called core instruction what happens first that instruction in the classroom and how we the next level of that in brookfield considering where we've been is um the implementation of the instructional coach model we're really excited about that and what an instructional coach does is it's going to be able to provide embedded uh personalized pd um that's driven by student assessment data and it's just in time feedback uh with our teaching staff um also helping with planning and aligning standards and and uh ensuring that the the talk curriculum is uh the written curriculum is a talk breaking on the learning curriculum uh maximizing the the leadership uh in our organization developing our collective capacity and uh certainly aligned with the efforts in equity uh engagement learning acceleration uh sel and technology integration which are all part of the grant and things that in brookfield we really want to continue to move toward and master um we want to capitalize on that personalized learning um the concept uh you've heard mrs farias often talk about self-navigating learners a student that's really student agency voice and choice and then certainly maximizing opportunities for differentiated instruction coaches can help our faculty with that and be real partners in planning and executing on lessons so what's the actual plan how are we going to get there with the grant money i talked about two coaching positions in the earlier slide so what the plan would be is to bring in a one 1.0 fte in science and one in social studies who are instructional coaches starting next year in grades five through eight and these positions in year two would transition to a science and social studies instructional coach for k through it um each coach would possess a content uh expertise um to really help and continue to elevate the work we're doing here in town all right so looking at reorganizing when when we make you know there's always a domino effect or uh the other visual for you is when you push on one side of the balloon the balloon moves out on the other side so everything we do has to be coherent and everything in the organization needs to fit together so we have some other uh teacher leader positions that are impacted uh by by a move like this and that we would want to make sure everything fits together to help more holistically so not only would we bring in the five through eight science and social studies instructional coaches and transition them in year two to k-8 but we have some existing roles that we need to take a look at how we might reallocate them to support this model so as you all know in k-4 we have two curriculum specialist positions um and we'd like to transition those two specialist positions which are both in math and english language arts to do much more coaching than they do now um really personalize that coaching versus some of the the major uh group professional learning that they do um and so they would transition into a math and language arts coach at k4 and then we want to maintain the coach position we have at the middle school which is in mathematics and that is currently shared by two different uh faculty uh a half time and a half time they split some roles there uh it gets a little complicated so i don't get into too much detail and confuse anyone and then we also want to look at our reading ftes here in district and transition one of those positions into a fifth grade to eighth grade ela coach and so you can see through this what we would do is we would add to the math coach at the middle school we would then bring in the ela coach from an existing role add the science and social studies and we would cover all the subjects at the middle school we already have the elementary covered in math and language arts and then in year two when we transition to candlewood lake elementary have science and social studies also handle the elementary level and we have the four core subjects covered k-8 in this coaching model the key thing for everybody to know is we maintain all teacher jobs through the grant we would add these two additional positions new positions will be posted with job descriptions and all the other subsequent information that would go with that and nearing the end here for everybody so the next steps is the leadership team needs to really dig in on the detailed planning we have to work on staffing plans for the transition to candlewood lake elementary um everybody knows that's fall of 2022 but we have this is all integrated into that we're thinking about that and we'll really talk about the transition plan as we get later in the school year and into the fall and then the other piece we need to do is think about as i mentioned earlier taking the s or three funds that we know will be coming in and we'll have guidance on shortly um integrate them with s or two and look at how it transitions us with the candidate lake elementary plan with his coaching model and how we could continue to support things for next year and then one last piece on the sr3 funds um some uh there is some thought on collaborating with the town with the funds they're going to receive to make sure we look at maybe some one-time big capital purchases as well so there's a lot to think about um but i don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves with sr3 that's the plan for sr2 and i just have a final slide to put it back up here for everybody which is what i started with is how we're uh planning to allocate the funds uh in the first year which is quite a bit there um in those first three items summer school tech pd and center school math tutor will help reduce the 2122 budget um i have a question on this uh is there could you maybe explain i'm thinking of summer school in particular why you know these coaching positions might be a better use of this grant fund as opposed to funding summer school for multiple years well one of the things we we talked about is learning learning for students happens over longer periods of time one of the pieces with summer school is summer school in a lot of ways is it it's for some students it turns it could be acceleration but really for the most part it's really a prevention of loss and keeping kids engaged and so that that is the thought process there is we can get more bang for our buck with improving core instruction uh throughout the year rather than putting our funds into summer school after summer school because at the end of the day and i think we talked about this maybe at the last board meeting or it was at the finance committee meeting is managing the operating budget as grant funds peel away and how we could integrate things that we know we need for our next steps into the operating budget so i hope that answers your question rosa yeah yeah it does um so we would i assume plan to keep these coaching positions even after we've expended the funds so we would figure out how to essentially invest in in keeping these positions that that would be there if they're all working out right yes if it's working out and we believe that we can show uh data and we could describe what's going on and we share um we are going to we believe these positions are going to work out and um as you all know we're we're very responsive as an organization and when it's time to move uh adjust uh we do and the the key thing to know is we've got the grant funds it's a way to start up a position like a coach position and from there manage that operational budget so there is no um i think the term people use this financial cliff you know we don't want all of a sudden funds to dry up and oh what do we do we need to know this and see into the future and manage that over the next couple of years questions on this from other board members well so so when i i'm feeling like we're building a cliff um dr brown i really do um you've got um the summer school is something we'd like to keep going on the math tutor we'd like to keep going on these coaches we'd like to keep going on and if i add that up it's like almost a percentage revenue if you had to stick it into the budget um or most of a percentage of revenue and so are you prepared to um when it comes to the end of this grant that year there's zero new initiatives right because that's what you're gonna be faced with because you're gonna be trying to jam this stuff into the budget and uh i just i feel like it's a cliff we're gonna have to deal with and we're making a bed because the town's not gonna approve this getting into the budget they might not even approve this under the budget but they might not definitely not going to prove this and a bunch of other initiatives that we would be wanting to carry forward so i'm worried about this i mean i i i think i answered that before bob so i i agree with you we need to manage this and be prepared for that but it's got to be we gotta simulate it out and say what's that budget year gonna look like i mean i i really think we gotta anticipate what this is gonna mean as a board we're making our bed for the next budget i mean or the budget after i'm not sure which one that'll hit but i think this is really important it can't just be you won't go work yep and we have we have um and again it gets confusing but we have s or two would have in the 22 23 year we'd have funds to offset you know half of uh one of those coach positions and then we have the sr3 funds coming in that would be able to support the positions depending again how we want to phase those into the operating budget the other thing is i'm struggling with this to see how it fits directly against the objectives and priorities in the connecticut priorities list that you put up in your first chart um i mean it's a great idea i by the way i'm not disagreeing with the coaching model i think it's a good model but it's too general compared to how we're going to put academic supports to deal with the learning loss that we've been dealing with the learning acceleration and recovery it's too gen it's too broadly general and not directed enough against that and all the other ones don't seem to fit that so um i'm a little are we really feeling like this fits in the guidelines that we have actually yes and i i really tried to keep the powerpoint as brief as i could but there's all kinds of training in instructional coaching another really interesting thing we are we're initiating this spring um and we're going to hit on all of those items in the uh in the grant requirements but at this point it would be perfect i think dr ruby could do a really nice job answering uh that question bob because it's a great question how it all fits with coaching again specifically let me just restate my question slightly differently we're getting this money from the government to help fix the situation we're in and do it as rapidly as we can and and when i listen to the words on the coaching it feels like this is a good structural thing that we're going to help us over the long run it's building capacity which i think good but i can't see how it's fixing the loss in the short run for our kids right and and it's more about coaching our teachers and i'm not getting it we're going to connect with us right now i'm not connecting these thoughts yet okay guys john um have you looked at other um other supports that we may need next year other than academic things like additional social workers counselors you know how to get kids can i have you just hold your question really quickly because i think dr ruby was going to answer bob's question and and i think deb i think we're going to this it's a great question because it's connecting the dots and again my my powerpoint was designed to be more general but we were prepared to go into more detail depending on the board's questions and what direction they wanted to go with so i'd ask dr ruby to just jump right in on that and help connect those dots okay so the um i don't want to get into a bunch of research here but the best tier two which is intervention to catch kids up is a strong tier one and having uh pd is the way to support teachers to be able to solve problems of instruction problems of practice in their classroom to meet the needs of students and so going from what we've done we've done and with thanks to the board a tremendous amount of pd that's gotten our faculty to a very a very good place but just like a star athlete you know you always have a coach to get you to that higher level so the type of pd that we've been using to be of to be as efficient as possible which is you know more of those large group pd's um pd's with numbers of teachers in uh plc's etc is has been working but now in order to meet teachers and we have teachers on the board who probably can relate to this teachers reach a point where now they want personalized individual pd that's going to help them be able to solve the problems that are in their classroom and that's what a coaching model is designed to do so having a a schedule where teachers are working with the coach who has um experience and expertise in that content area but is a learner as well so a teacher has something that's not working to move those kids that are behind or the kids that need to be accelerated and now has this coach as a partner who comes in here's what the problem is that the teacher wants to solve get either has information to provide to that teacher or gets the information and then works with the teacher to solve the problems in the classroom so the whole the whole goal of coaching is to support a teacher in problems that they've identified that they need to solve in their classroom with students so it's very student-centered so it really does meet that first bullet of learning loss differentiation and accelerating student learning that's what it's designed to do and there's um a great there's a lot of research evidence on the efficacy and the impact that a strong coaching program has on student learning and meets the personal professional learning needs of teachers and i think that's where we're at and what we're what we've heard from teachers is they want more professional learning that connects to what they have to do in their practice and what they're interested in learning more about because of the need that they have as an individual teacher so it's a it's a um it's a more sophisticated type of pd that our teachers are certainly ready for to solve the problem dr ruby maybe if you give like a specific example that would help i was like thinking about myself so you think of it like a triangle so your base is your tier one which is your general classroom your tier two is you know what i provide tier two interventions it's your reading specialist your math specialist and then your tier three is your special education uh population so we wanna keep everybody on that tier one and provide those interventions with those classroom teachers i don't want all the kids to come to me and then we have to fix the problem so um you want to provide those supports and give those supports to the general education teacher the general classroom teacher to service those her his or her students first before they become they spill out and then the second tier we don't want kids going to tier two we want we exactly we only want kids who absolutely need intervention literally bleeding into intervention um because when we have too many students going to intervention because you know teachers need more tools in their toolbox and they're not going to get them from any place if we don't provide them with individualized supports because um they're generalists there and and that's what coaching is designed to do the people that are the reading teachers and other support teachers they're not able to service the kids that really need the help if kids that could get help in tier one are bleeding out into tier two and it becomes so in it in a healthy system uh a three-tiered system of a multi-tiered uh system of supports in that coat in that core one where the tier one or core um instruction theoretically should serve 85 percent of the students with differentiation and there should only be 15 of the students then that are in tier 2 or tier 3.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um i also agree with folks that have reached out to me and expressed that the students in our district deserve to have clean safe air in their classrooms and and furthermore that means we need to upgrade our hvac and ventilation systems so that they can handle the types of filters that are needed to trap viral particles and that's what we need to do with some of this extra funding that we're receiving it's challenging for students to learn in spaces where the basic human right to breathe is not adequately protected while a global pandemic marches onward so i want to assure the public and those of you who are bringing these concerns to me everyone is working hard everyone's working overtime and on we're also working on more transparency so we should all expect to hear more about these things soon in the meeting packet for this week uh you'll find what appears to be a photocopied version of my report to the board about the listening session that i held in february that was seeking to inquire about the state of social emotional and culturally competent teaching in the district uh if you are someone who wants to click the hyperlinks that are there or interact with that interactive document just email me i'm happy to send it to you so you can see more of what actually took place during that meeting what we discussed uh some of the poll results are are linked into that that you can't access with the way that it was distributed through the pdf file that was attached to our agenda packet my interest in this topic and my interest in data informed decision making comes from my lifelong service as an educator the data is one thing that can point us to areas that need more support and areas of needed improvement and as a board we have a duty not only to ensure fiscal soundness but to ensure physical and instructional soundness of this district we have a lot of opportunity now to change what we do instead of trying to get back to what we once knew and what worked best for a long time for some of us but not for all of us the data around instruction in this district tells us that we have work to do when it comes to instructional equity and supporting achievement for all students for all students including english language learners for all students including our homeless students for all students including students with disabilities for all students including our african-american students when we really start this process of looking critically at what all means all means and what the data tells us about our progress towards all means all we'll start to see our budgets our efforts our expenditures all of those things reflect a visible and verifiable commitment to increasing equity i just have a quick one here did you know that social emotional learning that's implemented in a culturally unresponsive manner can actually do more harm to students than good it's really true and that's why we need to take a closer look at how we're implementing social emotional learning and to ensure that we're doing so in a culturally responsive manner so i want to thank everybody that attended and shared information with me so i could learn more about the culturally competent social emotional learning in our district the work that people are doing in our district is phenomenal and so appreciated and we need to see those efforts system-wide instead of just in small pockets of activity or single classrooms at the listening session in february i learned that our district has had a variety of social emotional programs and operation since the early 2000s i was surprised to learn that i've learned that right now we have several social emotional programs operating in various capacities at various sites and that we have school sites with low numbers of support staff that are critically needed to serve students and families as they return to in-person this instruction this semester and beyond so i'm really glad that we're receiving some assistance to boost up our support staff in terms of counselors and that we're looking at ways to bring in additional supports for students not only are they are we going to need to navigate the devastating social and emotional effects of this pandemic and a year in quarantine we're also going to need to navigate the very tough ongoing racial violence that is grounded in our nation including things like the horrific attacks against asian americans yesterday in atlanta and ongoing events that rise into our consciousness and awareness daily in these situations it's not enough to keep doing what we're doing or to pretend that we're teaching and learning in a bubble uh we cannot just return to how we were how we were is no longer we need to return stronger and better informed by the lessons that we've learned in this past year as a district we also need to have an overarching framework that brings all these various social emotional programs we have running at our school sites to really focus in to this work through a lens of cultural competence our students deserve nothing less so again thank you all to who have contributed to furthering the dialogue who are doing the work every day i appreciate every student every staff member every teacher i'm thankful that our covenant safety plan was approved after we made a decision to set a reopening date without having that approval at hand we just entered rent here yesterday and the health equity measures remained at unacceptable levels the data tells us that this global pandemic is not over it will weigh heavily on me as an individual board member should any member of this learning community face exposure to this deadly virus because of hastily made decisions let's hope all fares well and given the conditions and that every member of our community is protected as much as possible from needless exposure to a deadly virus i continue to express my opposition to our reopening plan as articulated because it does not phase in a return to school for students instead we're returning students to five days of in-person instruction in mass i continue to question whether our facilities safety plans and instructional supports are ready to handle that i'm also looking forward to our cova dashboard being posted and updated so that we can have access to simple information about the safety of students and staff in our district and for vaccination information about our certificated and classified staff being made public in the same ways that it is for other large and small districts in our area that's always wrapping up here should you wish to connect with me i am available steadily first mondays for drop in office hours from 4 to 5 p.m every first monday i'm there the room is open the link's on our board website it's on my site feel free to drop in or contact me i'm here to serve and make our district fiscally goodly and instructionally great and that is the end of my report thank you dr lee dr lee do you know who rick's fortune is you know uh nancy performative actions like naming a school after an individual or person of color do not demonstrate a commitment to equity that's seen at the instructional level but yes i do know the rest that wasn't my point my point was that yes we have had celebrated black history month and we've done a lot of things as far as promoting hiring african americans as teachers and education wise and i just somehow get the impression that you don't think that we have i don't understand why you've gotten that impression but i'd love to talk to you someday about it and maybe uh you know we need to look into the data nancy uh that's as simple as that the cast floors are very clear our graduation rates are are clear too uh so that's what i look at when i'm making when i'm making statements and i'd be happy to talk with you uh offline uh about you know what i've seen in the data and what's available publicly in our data um and the fact that we need we're doing things but we need to do more and now is not the time to rest on our laurels or pat cells on the back we have a lot of work to do to support our students of color our students with disabilities our homeless students uh um you know our english language learners so many parents of students um and by supporting them we'll be supporting all students and that's what's so critical um and i it's something that i hope that we can turn our focus to even greater um so that's something that i'm looking forward to doing together as a board and dr lee i think i don't know i i can speak for at least three four of us that are sitting up here we all agree that more needs to be done we we all realize that it's something that that i spoke about at my very first meeting when i came back it's something that um we're excited you're here to to rally for it as well and nobody's disagreeing with you at all that this is definitely an area of focus that we need to work on um and so we're just excited to get to work do it but i just i'm confused we're not resting on our walls so i mean i think i think it's when there's comments like that but it gets that's like a recipe yeah let's keep going okay moving right along it does you know we can just not interrupt each other and you know let folks give their report without feeling need to interrogate parts of it if you notice i didn't do that for anyone uh so if we could just you know of course that would be teaching yeah and you had said your report was done so we apologize if we interrupted um okay moving right along uh consent agenda so uh there's been a motion to pull item number 10 from the consent agenda do we have a motion to approve the remaining consent agenda items as their whole idea of um thank you in a second mr bruno thank you so much we have general consent to approve the consent agenda maybe you can do a real question uh yeah roll paul would be better um so dr lee aye mr bruno aye mrs pope mrs anderson aye and the chair votes i and then item 10 was pulled not for any negative reason but i was hoping that we could have um mrs coronado come up and just give us a general idea of what the consolidated application is for and what we're looking at when we look at that item sure um and i uh will have to say i do the financial part of the con app and so mrs bailey is the one who completes the con app and turns it in so for the financial part i uh we break down the federal programs so we break up the title one program the el funds that come in and some professional development funds from the federal government and for the title one i have to allocate funds to the different title one schools before we do that we take ten percent of it off the top as required to go towards family engagement and then we also give a minimum of 50 000 to the family resource center so that they can use that for our homeless students and some funds go to administrative costs for instance uh salaries for the people who do the combat what is left is disseminated or disbursed to the different sites based on a pure pupil allocation so i think it was 645 per eligible student at each school site was allocated and then the school sites create school plans with their suicide councils to determine how to spend that money so the conf is really just an accounting of what is uh it's just a way to account for all of our federal dollars right so there's two components you have the application phase it truly is back in the day we had state and federal also categorical state categories we bought 20 different pots of state categoricals during jerry brown's tenure he removed a lot of the categoricals to create the lcff formula and so this dot this used to be more about state documents you apply for those at one point in the year six months later you report out so this what we're seeing today tonight is the reporting out of those funds it used to be much much more expensive because you had i think there's 40 different categoricals that were that were in place each of the federal ones do have some rules the transferability title ii you can transfer serve we don't do a lot of inner transferring with them we use title ii to do professional development we we use so we use them for the purpose that they're getting and we're not transferring them yeah if we were going to transfer that's where this was correct correct thank you so much do we have a motion to approve item number 10.
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first on the agenda is house bill 1360hd1 relating to early learning establishes an early childhood education stipend program to be administered by the executive office of early learning to address the shortage of qualified early childhood educators in hawaii requires stipend fund repayments where the early childhood educators type in program to be deposited into the early learning special fund to testify we testify robert peters chair early learning board good afternoon chair kadani and vice chair kim and members of the committee the early learning board strongly supports hp 1360 hd1 as a vehicle for incentivizing workforce capacity building which will be so critical for our expansion of early learning as outlined in act 46 i'm available for questions if any are asked thank you for this opportunity thank you members any questions of mr peters if not thank you bob next lauren moriguchi director executive office on early learning lauren please good afternoon chair vice chair and members of the committee uel is in strong support of house bill 1360 hd1 we thank the legislature for the passage of act 46 last session which increases access to early care and education and for your recognition of the need for qualified early childhood educators here in hawaii in 2020 there were 3 410 early childhood care and educational workers by recurring projections we'll need to double our workforce over the next 12 years in order to reach our goal of expanding access to all three and four-year-olds the stipend program will help to increase the workforce by providing funds to cover tuition and fees while reducing financial barriers for those who are amongst the lowest paid workers i'd also like to emphasize that this bill leverages private funding and doesn't require appropriations as we recognize the dire economic situation the state is currently facing thank you for this opportunity to testify in this bill and i'm happy to address any questions you may have thank you lauren members any questions for lauren moriguchi if not thank you lauren next to testify kathy betts director for the department of human services kathy please is kathy there sorry student accident chairman on behalf of director kathy best we stand on our written testimony in supporting the intent of this measure and providing additional comments i'll be available for questions as well thank you for this opportunity thank you dana members are there any questions for our department of human services if not thank you dana also to testify we have an individual kate stanley a name from the past you're you're on mute i can't hear you kate you're muted i think her play is not working she's not muted okay your audio may not be working apparently you're not muted okay do we have do we have her written statement yeah she has written testimony okay we have your written testimony apparently we can't hear you i'm sorry but thank you very much for testifying and sorry we can't ask you questions because all of our questions we saved for you [Laughter] thank you kate okay members go ahead kate i'm having trouble with my computer can you hear me now yes we can hear you go ahead okay i don't have anything to add to my testimony but encourage you to move this bill forward thank you so much for uh participating and it's so nice to see you kate members any questions are kate if not thank you kate that is all of our testifiers we do have several more written testimony members and with that we will move on to item number two house bill 608 hd2 relating to the board of education requires the board of education to hold no less than six community forums annually with at least one forum in each county to testify sorry to testify randy tanaka department of education no sorry he's there i'm sorry okay i'm sorry we have no testifiers for house bill 608 so let us move on item number three this is senate concurrent resolution 38 and senate resolution 27 urging the hawaii state department of education school food services branch to adopt an addendum to its agreement for the aina pono hawaii state farm to school program requiring the procurement of goods and or services from food hubs to testify randy tanaka department of education randy please hello sir donnie turkey advisor kim thank you for your time today we stand by our testimony we have made a comment or two about further definition of a food hub uh i had some discussions with uh mr miyamoto and uh we're to do our best effort to get more of our local farmers to our student cafeterias thank you hello members questions of randy tanaka if not next to testify brian miyamoto hawaii farm bureau afternoon cherokee dawning vice chair can members of the committee brian miyamoto uh here on beyond the hawaii farm bureau uh chair our testimonies offers comments however we do support the intent of this resolution we absolutely support um more local produce and proteins in school lunches we are very supportive of food house we think that they are going to fit important role not only with our einer pono program and our farm to state program but just the growth of agriculture as we all know hawaii has many majority of our farmers are small farmers however uh we have some concerns with uh language in the resolution that says that that requires purchasing and the interpretation may be that a doe can only purchase from food hubs and not every farmer participates in a food hub or in events such as a heavy rains now maybe a food hub may not be able to provide the products that the ue needs so we we do suggest that instead of requiring uh what we could encourage we absolutely want food hubs to be part of farm to school and ida pono but by requiring it we may have some unintended consequences thank you for this opportunity to provide customers thank you for that input brian appreciate it members any questions of mr miyamoto if not next to testify dexter kishida individual good afternoon chair um dexter kishida also with the city and county of honolulu food security and sustainability program manager um and uh standing in on behalf of matt bonser our ccsr director but um standing on our testimony would like to add as an extra note after reading the reso again there is some wording regarding an mou to the ainopono program that that section should probably be removed um as the mou was with then lieutenant governor shanzitsui um and just for the pilot program um what we did suggest in our city and county and my personal testimony was to maybe do a working group um around food hubs to really define to help articulate better with the dod and with the state institutions or and the food what is the best path forward thank you dexter members questions next to testify hunter here villain hunter are you there madam chair that he's not present thank you and that is the end of the oral testimony and we have a few other testimonies that were sent in moving on next item on the agenda scr 63 sr 45 requesting the department of education to convene a working group to create a model statewide school policy on student suicide prevention intervention and postvention in grades k through 12.
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we're going to ask the students wait outside we'd much rather have folks kind of congregating outside then in the hallways when the weather if it's a rainy day like now we'll figure out they'll probably be in the gym and we'll have areas will spread students out as much as we can and start sending to their classes a little bit early but ideally we'll open the building at 8 50 so students will have plenty of time to get to their first class you know cut down again on the computing inside the hallways good i uh the next slide so they had 2 30 so all the students were in the building at 2 30 i think i mentioned this earlier will be expected to leave the building we don't want students again congregating in the hallways and actually that after school time it's really going to be helped time for the teachers who are in person help the folks who are remote hoping that during the school day if students need extra help that they'll be able to get that from their teachers during that 80-minute block period and yes enough so we will have the orientation for the folks who are for the ninth graders the new students of district on april 30 of this year and then at late summer we will also have an orientation for all the rising ninth graders current eighth graders and also the current ninth graders now because some of them won't be in the building until next year the ones remain remote and even for those folks who come back in april there'll be another opportunity for them to get more familiarized with the building to learn about the new schedule and how it's going to affect them and have a an additional chance to speak with their teachers and their guidance counselors and hear more information so we do plan on having another orientation session in the fall as well so that information kind of quickly if you do have questions now would be a great time to put them in the chat i'll do our best to answer them thanks so while we're waiting for the questions to flow in um i know one of the ones and i know you you know you sort of address it on the faq but um what how would you advise a family whose student wants to come in but but they're not quite sure right and they're worried about if they come in and they don't like it you know what are they going to do what advice would you give for families because i know we're hearing uh actually k to 12 some concerns about that my soviet advice would be to try it to on the survey indicate that you do want to return in person so we we do want people to be really thoughtful in making their choice to remain remote or to return in person but it's much much much less challenging for us to have students who come to school and we plan for them to take the bus and accommodation for them in the class for them to then go remote it's much more challenging to have students start remote and then decide after may 3rd if that's the day we're going to be back to then come in because with the transportation and then again trying to figure out classes and lunch and whole contact racing thing so we're asking that if students do choose to remote placement now that that's your final decision but if you do choose to come in person you can then decide that you don't want to be in person anymore perfect i think that addresses uh another question that was just came through so thank you for principal sadiq for that um here's another one uh please repeat are you inviting current ninth graders and next year's ninth graders um so in other words the orientation that i think you described on april 30th who's the target audience for that it's the current ninth graders is atari audience for that we'll have excuse me later on april 8th we'll have a curriculum night to talk to families about course registration preparing for next year and then in august we'll be having an orientation for the rising eighth graders who will then be ninth graders but on april 30th of this year it is for the current ninth graders only um another question on that uh orientation on april 30th um is it for those who wish to return in person or remote or everybody who's a ninth grader right so it'll be mainly for the people who want to return in person but if someone who is deciding they want to be remote and wants to join they're welcome to join it's open to any ninth grader and also folks who are new to the district who want a chance to see the building uh spring sports question one with spring sports start and what will students do who are in person before sports so spring sports start on april 26 the day we come back from spring break so we'll get folks will get dismissed and they are going to be outside waiting hopefully they can find a space outside to start doing their homework generally practices i know like with football and other sports there's like a lot of pre-practice stuff that happens um folks have to warm up get changed and also again start to do their homework a little bit outside though if it's raining then again we'll try to figure out how to keep folks as dry as possible if obviously it's thundering lightning that practically cancelling folks would just be going home right after school thank you um next one was uh how would teacher how would the teachers do online and in person learning at the same time tell do you want me to take that one sure okay so there there is a lot of variety in the ways in which people are doing distance learning in different departments um and so there's going to be a little bit of variety in how teachers will choose to do this um i think the most equitable way of doing this will be to have the teacher running a google meet in the front of the room but facing the students that are in the classroom and projecting the faces of the students that are in remote in the remote spaces and so but that's a little bit different than let's say you're an art teacher right who can actually move around the room um and and so we've got a lot of creative ideas it's not perfect but in order for us to maintain an equitable ultimately choice here we will be running to the best of our ability google meets for both remote folks and folks that are in person thank you sam uh this one's for robin with the benny covet testing and maybe you could talk a bit about binex and the program there if that's okay sure we do have a limited program running now for students who are meet a criteria that that they're having coveted symptoms and we're able to test it's an antigen test that we can do with parent consent we get results in 15 minutes it's something that we will be doing we will have a medical waiting room set up with a certified nursing assistant assistant who'll be working with the nurse for any student who's symptomatic in school um but we can do uh by necessity with parent consent thank you robin here's another question if student chooses remote does that preclude them from participating in after-school activities like club sports um etc absolutely not please come um it was a question i think was answered in the chat but in case someone else you know didn't see it in the chat uh while we're waiting for more questions to come in it was on the prior point would a senior be able to take both physics and ap bio i think this relates to the question about the 4x4 block earlier that's also a yes absolutely great thank you so one that's coming through but i see it a little sooner is will there be any breaks where students can remove masks like going outside or mass breaks um throughout the day yeah that will be worked out by the individual teachers in their classrooms and the plan is definitely to have mass breaks be part of their 80-minute classroom experience they'll be able to go outside we want to use our outside space as much as possible and then either for the entire class or part of the class or at least for students to be able to have breaks yep and and uh the other piece which i think you've referenced earlier is that meal times will be you know that's you know breakfast or the lunch certainly for lunch is also a place where um students will get a break from mask wearing as well give people another a couple minutes if they have additional questions that they'd like to ask you well while those are people are thinking of maybe some last questions are there other things that anyone on the team would like to share about the decision of returning in person um or uh remote any other you know tips or thoughts that you'd like to share because it is i know a difficult decision for many families um any any ways that you might uh offer uh not that they should or shouldn't do one or the other but just how to think about that and a process to approach that decision right it's really a you know a family individual decision so you think about what is going to be the best for your student and for your family again if you obviously folks who have some underlying medical concerns obviously i think it'll be best for your family to choose to keep your child remote for those who aren't sure you may want to try i would suggest trying the room in person and then switching normal because i said before it's much less challenging for us to have students start in person and then switch to remote we're asking that the people who choose remote that's their final decision and the folks who choose in person they will have the option to switch out so just keep that in mind when you're making your decision thank you very much so will students be able to change clothes in the school for after-school sports uh at the school so we're still trying to figure that out i believe the locker rooms i believe are on the list of the rooms that are being tested currently uh they were tested this week actually yeah so we'll get the results next week assuming that they pass those there will be a limited we want to again try to keep folks as safe as possible but there will be a limited opportunity for students to use the locker rooms to change assuming again that the air quality is sufficient thank you mike i just want to make one comment about health and safety um that the nurses in the district are working really closely with the amherst health department um and we're finally finding um strict guidance with local state and the cdc guidelines thank you robin so another question came through uh are students able allowed to use the gym and the equipment in the gym area so that the plan will be for um pe to happen in the gym we're gonna have make sure there's a lot of wipes and the part of the class process will be students also assisting in wiping things down of course the teacher and our maintenance staff will be helping with that as well but yeah we'll plan on using the gym as much as possible and also going outside a lot too i mean we want to have as many pe classes outside as possible along with as many other classes we can space folks out and have them out there great if student shoes in person needs to be out for a day or so could they join their class remotely yes definitely uh what's the plan if there's an outbreak so uh i'll let robin answer this question but uh i think one of the things that i want to say on the front end of that is that the reason we're taking so many mitigation measures in terms of mask wearing ventilation um you know the schedule we have that reduces the number of students who would be potentially close contacts with one another um are preventative measures and i think it's a fair question of what if those aren't successful in other words there is an outbreak but i think it is a lot of our work is on the front end of that uh but robin do you mind talking through you know what would happen if we had students test positive and what contract tracing looks like and what would be the implications sure and it's hard to describe what the plan would be because none of these situations are the same there's always a twist in them somewhere uh but we work really closely with the amherst health department all the nurses have been doing contact tracing um while while we've been away from school so that's something they're very familiar with um and we would uh be following the guidance of the local health departments and and what the department of public health has set forward make sure cleaning is done contact tracing will definitely be done anyone who's considered a close contact would be notified and would need to follow um depending if they're a case or a close contact either isolation or quarantined guidelines yeah i think thank you for that i think the other thing to note is that what we've seen in massachusetts anyway is that when there are outbreaks at the high school level they're often tied to non-school activities um so i think we're more likely to have um more likely it's probably the wrong phrasing but i think it's accurate um outbreaks tied to things that happen outside of school then things happen inside of school so that's a lot of our planning is what if there's um an outbreak within the school population um how do we manage the school end of that because that seems like our experience in massachusetts is where the risks are aren't often in the school building or in school activities it's what happens outside those hours so the question will in-person work be done on chromebooks is currently or will it be greater use of other materials that's an excellent question um so uh material sharing is pretty complex and so for many of our science classes the science teachers and some of the technology teachers as well as all of the art teachers have created kits that go home for remotes that have gone home for remote students and so we will continue to use though those kits and some will be in person there are a few departments that are talking about rotating carefully materials we're still working on that that's a really complicated question and so our hope is yes but at the same time we want to be equitable and so if we are using additional materials we want to also then make sure that students that are studying remotely will have access to those same materials and so let's say say we do a lab simulation and the simulation is happening in person we want the at-home students to be able to do that as well so we're working on it and and given the the challenge of um in person and at home we want it to be equitable so more to come on that one okay let's see so question is about what percent of the teachers will likely be coming in person at the high school so i'll start on this and then anyone can jump in um it's the significant majority of staff members will be coming in part of the reason it's hard to give an exact number is that we do have staff members who had medical exemptions uh for coming in but um we have people getting vaccinated pretty rapidly and some folks who uh were not planning to come in now are able to come in because of the because they're in a different place in terms of their health and safety so you know it's a significant majority um but we can't give a percent because it actually changes we've had even in the last week we've had k-12 um significant numbers of teachers who have indicated that uh given their vaccination status they would plan to be in the building um and they've got doctors notes clearing them so i don't know if there's anything that anyone on the team wants to add but i think that's why it's hard to pin it down but it's you know i've heard rumors that it's always only 20 of teachers coming back and that's not the case anything else that we should add mickey sam or talb okay so i think uh as we maybe give another minute or two for any last questions um this video uh this meeting is being recorded um so this youtube link that you're on right when we finish it'll be accessible so if anyone wasn't able to come or you want to you know catch something you might have missed at the beginning you don't need a new link or anything it's the same link that you're on from youtube it'll be accessible indefinitely if they're friends that you couldn't make it you know you could send them the link and they'll have full access to the the um the full presentation you sometimes take a couple hours for the comments to come up but we've been displaying them on the screen so that uh hopefully uh later viewers would be able to see them as well anything else that anyone on the team would like to share i think you're really thorough tonight i really appreciate uh all the work and uh what i want to share with the larger community is just appreciation for the work that this full team has done both at the school level and then you know robin not just at the high school level but across the district these are obviously complicated times we're finding ourselves in and we're trying to make the best to support every student and there's some forced choices that come with that and please know the complexity has been explored in all incredible detail by this leadership team here as well as faculty members at the regional high school and we're going to do the best with for our students whether they choose in person or remote and that's our job to make sure we're taking care of all students and we're not trying to leave anyone out of the learning and want to make sure everyone has full access so we appreciate everyone being on this call if there are follow-up questions uh you know uh please do get in touch with uh any of us i think you get enough emails from anyone all of us on this call where you know how to get in touch with us um but certainly can you easily get in touch with me even if i have to you know punt it to people at the school level i'm happy to do that because i know you get a lot from me um but that's sort of our plan and you know i think we were just yeah kind of chatting a little bit before the broadcast we'll try to see if we can get some more information out for people who weren't able to attend today so they have a sense of the start date they have a sense of that optional piece that if you start in person it's not going well that you can go remote not so much the other way around because i know there's a critical piece of information as they make their decisions but thank you all for being here we hope you have a good rest of your evening uh hopefully not much snow tomorrow forecast looks a little better uh and then spring starts on saturday um i think uh or this weekend both literally and figuratively so uh we have some good things to look forward to with warmer weather and kids back in school and that's you know both of those are great job great things for all of us but thanks again and i hope you have a good evening
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so you want 80 to 85 of the percent of students having their needs met in a very strong differentiated core one 10 to 15 percent in needing tier two and only five percent of our students needing to that's our goal and we're at the we're at the point in in the i mean we've been working our teachers have been working very hard um and we've accomplished i think i'm very proud of the work that teachers have done and the administrators have done and this is we we talked about this in previous years and now with the the catch-up that we have to do for some students we looked at data we have just to you know i don't have the numbers in front of me right now but we had our district data team meeting um our mid-year meeting this week and i will tell you that the work that our teachers have done in in reading because that's where we've had the most pd in reading because we have the biggest problem in reading and our reading scores in some grades are better than they were last year and in overall are we're very close to where we were last year except for a very few things in reading it's it's remarkable um math we have um we're like the rest of the country where math is uh we haven't done as much professional development in math and math is a different animal to teach and i think it's a you know when you do when you give a math lesson to students in a zoom class it's not like afterwards they go and do math problems um if you're teaching reading and students know how to read students do read on their own not all students but some students so exactly what joy was saying and i think i heard jen kind of echoing we we really want to make sure that we are providing teachers with what they need in a very specific targeted way so that they can service children in their classroom and they might be able to service children in their classroom in a much more efficacious way when they have somebody else who's coming in and supporting them listening to what their problem of practice is that they want to solve for these children that are in front of them this week this month this year because with little with tweaks to their instruction they can differentiate and there's plenty of research that supports us because it's been looked at intensively for the past 20 years because this whole um coaching model in education really came into play in like around and the jury was out in 2000 2001 2002 3 and whether it was whether it was worth um worth investing in and then there was there were huge studies in 2004 and they've been replicated since then that when done well this works and so i if this was if this was my money in my school i think that this is the best investment in our teachers and ours for our students that we can make at this time i don't think our teachers are going to um have their problems or practice solved in the way that that we want to solve their problems with them you know not saying they have problems but anytime you're doing any any any type of teaching you can always learn more and you always have a different crew of children in front of you that are all individuals and as teachers we're not jacks of all trades and i'm gonna say it sounds trite but two heads are better than one and this is collaborative problem solving to meet the needs of the students um i sound like a used car salesman i know but um i do want to jump in and sort of ask a question though so we don't feel or are you confident that throughout this crazy year that we don't have already a significant number of kids or even just more kids that doesn't have to be a very big number but more kids that already need tier two intervention oh we have to that doesn't solve that problem right if you can be if we if we know what we know we have data okay so we know what children need we want teachers to be able to provide that in the classroom we don't want kids to all have to go out to someplace else because when they're out of the classroom they're missing things that are going on in the classroom i mean we can right we can talk about that however we want but that's the reality of it when you're playing in the classroom you miss right but it sounds like these coaches again are are great for improving tier one instruction right and preventing them from needing sort of our specialized interventions um but if we still have we still have our tier two instruction right now i'm thinking at that level and there's more of it what i think i think we might be just worried about is that we get to next year and we have all these coaches and that's great but we need a lot of kids that need like a little more special intervention and now we're gonna have to add tutors and you know other specialists that sort of you know come in that we didn't budget for but maybe we needed sort of as an emergency type of situation but if we don't if we don't continually supply supply our provide our teachers with see that's the bleeding out that will happen so if you if we're not providing professional ongoing professional development of the type that our teachers really need they don't need any more group big we've done that okay we're we're i think our teachers really know you know what they as much as they could have possibly ever gotten and quite frankly there when you or when you're at that level you check out when you go if you just keep having big you know one day bring in somebody to talk about something that's aligned with the curriculum i mean we've done that and our teachers have gained from that if we don't if we don't continue to professionally develop our what we invest most of our budget dollars into which is hr and we just we did more i'm not i'm not saying we could always use more tutors i mean there's nobody on planet earth who's going to tell you that they don't that they wouldn't welcome more help but if you put your money into that so you're taking care of these kids but if our we're not continuing to ever improve our tier instruction those kids are still going to be bleeding out and then you end up having an overload of kids needing intervention if you're not continually supporting teachers to be able to provide better and better core instruction in their class i don't know joy or jen if you have anything just just if i could just may i say something so just for a sec so um just the one like big takeaway is that this model reaches more kids than a tier two intervention so we know that all kids are struggling in some way as a result of the pandemic so a model that's centered on in the classroom is much more effective and reaches that did you say 85 percent of kids i forgot the stuff 85 yeah so you're you have an 85 of kids that you're reaching through this model versus the kids who are getting pulled out is a much smaller percentage so if we're looking to maximize the impact on a larger percentage of kids because we know all kids were impacted in some ways that's the purpose of this type of a model versus just adding more tutors and things of that nature but it's still generally just preventative right preventative in terms of the bleeding out that you're talking about i wouldn't call it preventative i would call it it's intervention in the moment okay you know so you're making instructional changes in the moment so kids so and so you're you're making fixes and adjustments so so whatever learning loss is occurring you're fixing it in the moment versus after yeah rather than saying oh my god all these kids they need to go out you're working with your you have a thought partner who is able to support you in a different way than you ever had before when you don't have a coach and so rather than saying oh my god these kids need to go out they need to go to srbi they need to be you know have a plan and what where where how can we what can we do how can we differentiate this how can we do the guided instruction the small group guided instruction in the classroom to support this problem that's what that and so i'll give you an example teacher could say you know john could be a teacher and i could be his coach and we it's our time together and he goes you know i i just don't know what to do i've got a group of kids and they they're i i just can't figure out how to move them from here to here in let's say multi-slavic word uh decoding and then i'd say well tell me what you've done and then he tells me what he's done and i go you know let's talk about their data we talk about their data and then we in through that talking you know i make some suggestions to him well did you do this you did that did you try this blah blah blah and so then we come to some conclusion and then the question in coaching is because coaching isn't like um uh it's not evaluative it's not because there's something wrong with you it's actually because there's something right with you because you're you're asking for help because you're seeing problems in a problem of practice then the question usually with the coaches so how would you like to do this you want me to come in and observe you um teaching that a lesson you know like tomorrow the next day whatever or would you like me to look at this lesson that you're going to teach and show me where you think the trouble will be for these children and have me come in and show you the strategy that we just talked about and then they decide whether they want to be observed or they want modeling and that that happens and so it's also that there's a schedule and and there's there's not a lot of lost time because the co a coach i've had this job um has a schedule for working with teachers and that's decided at the school whether you're working with one grade level a week and another grade level next week and of course just like a a physician there's emergency appointments where you you know when somebody really needs help like like on the spot so that's kind of how like a there's a that's called a coaching cycle so i either come in and observe you or i teach for you and then we meet after we look at the student data to solve the problem bob did you have a question for me i saw your hand i think i know i was going to let you finish because i'm learning something and the more you talk the more i'm learning so um the thing i'm struggling with dr ruby is the linkage of what i think is a very good model generally i will i will grant that to the very specific issues that we're seeing coming out of covet um kids have been remote we we all have heard of kids who are tuned out pockets of kids who have fallen behind kids who are suffering emotionally um and uh and kids who may need athletic you know support because they don't have men up about to play i mean there's so many different things that are coming out of the coveted world that the thing i think i'm struggling with is how we're taking the the generic that you've described because you were talking about coaching in general it's a good model and here's how it works and all that focus it in on the issue we're trying to solve with this grant right how do we deal with the pockets of children who need specific support either from their teacher or environmentally how do we spot them how do we uh get organized to attack it i haven't heard once that you might need social emotional support that may not be there i haven't heard that there's uh methods for identifying someone who's fallen behind and how we bring them forward what i'm hearing is generic things good this is good and i'll give you that it's good i really am i'm just not feeling like it's focused on what the grants intended for that go back to my first question well i'm sorry that i didn't make that clear okay that's what happened i'll try again okay all of this work is focused on students who are behind students who need more support it's the way to give teachers the support to give those students the support with regard to the social emotional needs um we right now are trying we have um two cohorts of um training for trauma informed sel instruction our technology integration work that we're doing right now is on scl in technology in um teaching online we we've been doing this work uh so we wouldn't be using that grant money to to uh focus on sel um because we're already doing that with and we're doing it with other grant money we're doing it with um title money this year and actually that pd is going amazing both the sel in technology and the trauma informed instruction and scl within sel focus so we wouldn't use this particular grant money this sr2 grant money for that purpose because we're already taking care of that um but you think you think we could easily make the statement that the coaches especially in the first year after we're coming back full time will be focused in on the pockets of kids that are in special need of recovery and how they're do what their focus in their coaching it's not going to be general hey you could teach better this way or that way it's gonna be no no no differentiated area and here's how you should focus on it and that's exactly what i was trying to say but i must not use the right words because the teacher okay i gave you what a general coaching what the framework is but the specific teachers their problem of practice is meeting the needs of those at-risk kids in their class the kids that are the most behind so those are the things that the coach and the teacher are going to be working on not just general things our teachers our teachers are very good at all of that but what they need more support on is these kids who have those specific needs the ones that would be bleeding out into tier two and tier three and if it went on long enough they you'll be going to special ed okay that's what this is about special ed do we the one of the most at risk spots of kids falling behind is in the special ed population so um do we need more special ed teachers to deal with this the the the risk of those kids falling behind and are we ignoring that need or are we dealing with it in a different way no we haven't had a request this year for more special education teachers in our you know we don't think the kids are falling further behind yeah well i think the important thing to mention is there is no doubt going to be gaps and that's well that's but there's going to be across the board it's not going to be like a specific amount of kids across the board there's going to be gaps um you know for example i spoke to you know one of my children's teachers about math and they noticed that the scores were low in geometry you know that was taught in the spring so they know so they're using that to drive their instruction to put more a lot more emphasis on it this year when it comes to the spring when they you know do that the topic of study again so they're they're looking at the data as a whole too and they have to be coached in that using that data to drive their instruction and to look at it holistically too and not just you know these certain kids are behind when really there's going to be gaps across the board yeah i i kind of agree with that i just i i would that what i was struggling with was the linking between the gaps and the coaching model and just the coaching investment and solve the gaps right and i'm not oh you're saying yes i'm saying no right i'm um and it's not that i'm saying no hard no i'm not sold yet um and so i'm i'm on because i think we've got some gaps out there that are more than just okay we're gonna we're gonna do some teacher coaching um and i don't want to minimize teacher coaching i think it sounds like a good idea but have we identified pockets that we think we need to put uh i mean i don't call it pull them out of the classroom level to support but other types of supports that maybe that we anticipate will be needed to help our children come fully out of the cobot world that's the thing i'm struggling with with the whole thing it's just it's we're gonna lay on a general answer to something that i think is specifics if i could just um chime in and this relates to the question i tried to ask earlier and i think bob maybe this is part of what you're asking too is what about stuff like pt and ot and speech and guidance counselors and social workers and all those supports that kids might need you know gaps in in those services that they may have is there a plan oh i'm sorry debbie no go ahead no i was going to say what we had said earlier there's been a lot said we we still maybe it was joy who said it i don't know um but we still have in place our tier two in our tier three and you know to to the question about students who with special needs who may have particular differences or gaps in their plans or whatever it might be you know i could certainly turn that over to mrs wygonic to address how the department plans to address that because they work individually with all of their students all year long whether it's been remote hybrid or now in person k through eight um so maybe gina you can share a little bit about that that's a very specific question that that's uh kind of waited to ask so you know and at each point in time we have students we have their annual reviews we have triennial reviews and we look at programming and as of right now you know with the programming that we have in place you know this the amount of staff that we have um we did have put in the budget for a part-time slp um because of numbers up at the high school um as of now you know we we have our staff our services are being provided um at this point i think if i can go back to what maureen said the more intervention that you have it keeps the numbers down in special ed because you're giving those kids the services in that classroom in that tier one which is preventing some of those kids to be referred because they're getting that tier one intervention right in that classroom um you know the the everyone can always get better at what they do we all know that and i think the coaching piece what maureen said is people want that individual coaching you can get a pd a large pd but that individual coaching on targeting kids collecting data in your classroom um and having that piece within your in your in your class you are going to have that tier one that is extremely strong in the classroom so i think you know that interventions in place special education numbers tend to tend to come down um so i think right now as i said we need a part-time slp up at the high school as of right now um but you know the ppt's that we have we have more referrals i'm not going to say we don't um but you know i don't know where that's you know where that's going to come out whether students are going to qualify or not i can't predict that um but as of right now um i think it's a wonderful idea to get coaches in and work with teachers and you know get that instruction um in the classroom where teachers will say this is what i want to be able to do in my room to support these kids by the data and uh debbie you the board probably doesn't realize this yet but um i had asked dr brill to kind of give us um the board an update on what we're doing with ruler and social emotional learning and at our next board meeting yes at our next board meeting um we'll have that presentation um so maybe that will go some way into answering some of your concerns for what we have in place and what's going to be planned in the future um and listening to this presentation it kind of it it brought up a lot of questions for me too about the coaching and maybe i didn't quite understand what this whole coaching model is but it does play into the next part of what i was going to talk about with this budget item which is getting back to the board of finance so as you know and dr brill explained that part of the plan for the use of the esser funds at least in our next year's budget um it actually reduces next year's budget and that was very much communicated and part of the plan that we had talked about openly with the board of finance so um i don't know if if you want me to go start going into that because then we're going to get away from talking about this grant in particular but you know i don't know how you guys feel about about moving on from from this discussion or if we want to keep talking about it but it's going to be important to have a plan for what we do with these funds obviously so what's the what is the process on the grant just out of curiosity what uh when do we submit our requests and do we as a board need to vote on anything i mean i just i'm not sure i know what the the process here is my my uh my understanding is the board doesn't need to vote on the grant and i have to submit the plan for the grant i it's either march 31st or by april 2nd it's a very tight window right at the end of the month beginning of the month of april you mean yes so it's either it's either i i can't remember exactly what it is april 9th maybe the 9th that's it 5th maybe you know it's it's early it is so you got to get on the schedule to actually fill out the paperwork that goes along with it i guess i guess i just want to make sure that in terms of the social emotional needs of kids after this crisis that we're being proactive and not just reactive you know we're not waiting to see how kids are when during the next school year and you know i i just think you know maybe there's more we could be doing to identify kids who are at risk emotionally um and i don't know what that looks like but i feel like i didn't hear a lot of that in this presentation but again if if dr brill is going to do another presentation at our next meeting then maybe it's in there but that will be after he submits the plans for the esser grant it sounds like i think debbie i think that's what rosa was trying to say i mean part of this is it's it's just timing of everything to be very candid it's we you know you get as you all know not having enough money is a problem and having too much money come flying at you in a short window of time could be problematic i mean it just there's a lot coming at everybody one thing that i haven't had a chance to say yet to this point is one of the things we've been talking about in our region as a superintendent group and i have conversations with folks from all around the state there's a strategic opportunity we have here not only to do exactly what i know some people are thinking maybe we need an extra tutor here or there or but we again we've got a lot of those those pieces in place we've also got additional extra grant money coming in we can't forget about that but we the other piece is the sel work has been frankly amazing and you saw some of that tonight um you know with the with the students and the work they're doing how resilient and tenacious they are um and we've seen that through some several of the the student spotlights over the course of the year so you know our our students are doing a great job they're actually so resilient they're doing for others i mean they're just amazing and that's the credit to our staff and our faculty and our administration and and a lot of that has to do with the kind of people we have in this district the kind of people we've brought in over the last few years and in addition to that bringing in the rule of approach and trauma informed practices and so forth i think it's going to be pretty impressive and i think the board will be very excited on april 7th um the principles dr ruby and the teams are going to be sharing uh and highlighting some of the great work that's gone on all year long and i think if that presentation was a month earlier from getting these esser funds i think you might have less questions um because you just some of the dots might be connected even more with what we're already doing using title funds personnel we already have in place and how we're handling those things so really i mean by sort of like presenting this to us and the board doesn't need to vote on sort of how you'll use these funds are you just sort of presenting as more of a i don't know to get our blessing or yeah this is the plan you need to know um i i would i would obviously love to have the blessing and the consensus um and and to move that forward the other thing that's important to understand with this and not that i'm saying i want to go and do i plan to do this a month or two from now but what's great about the ester funds is they've given us the flexibility yes we have to have our plan in but should plans change we could call up the state department and say listen we've had a change of plans we've got a change of priorities we're seeing x having an issue with with this and we need to do y to try to resolve that problem so while when we make a commitment to a plan there's months and months of planning that needs to go in to get ready for execution and implementation at the same time there's the state really has built in flexibility and i understand they're going to build in that flexibility with the additional sr3 funds um and i saw an email today it is not an official email where those sr3 funds we might have three to four years to um to extend those funds so it isn't something that you've got two years you've got to rush spend all this money and then that that there's gonna be a cliff or something like that i think we have we're gonna have some time that actually helps a lot with my first question yes yeah and that's a that's a very real concern yeah because that would maybe allow you to ease out of the of the it's all grant funded maybe we go you know it's half two-thirds grant funded and then it's one-third grant funded and then you know it's in our main line budget on these kinds of things that would be a lot easier my big worry about the cliff that actually we have three years to do that we could be very conscientious about how we use them and i think bob you said a long time ago to me when we were doing budget development years ago that you sometimes you have to finance your priorities you can't do everything at once not only do you not have the capacity but you don't have the money to do everything you want so you've got to build it in over time yeah but the grants give you some flexibility here i agree with you and i hadn't thought about the sr3 might allow the continuation and and a very deliberate you know phasing into regular budget over time that's the thought process well so so uh mrs fernandez i would suggest we uh give firm direction that that the first three items on the list that we need to lower our but we're going to end up with a lower budget on we give firm direction and leave the rest of the essa grant application in uh in the administration's hands um and then i would also ask that when we do come back on the um on the discussion on the uh emotional and social learning we also have a brief it doesn't have to be long or fancy but uh how does this uh coaching and all the other pieces directly deal with uh come out a covered question right and uh because what i've learned from the ongoing discussion here is there's lots of pieces right um and i think all of us would feel more comfortable if we said these are the anticipate-ish issues here's the pieces that we're going to deploy to solve those issues and help our kids right and that's the thing i was struggling with because we went right to coaching is good right and not there's a bunch of pieces and we anticipate here's the issues that we're going to be grappling with in the next year so i think there's a good discussion for us as a board to see that as we get back into full-time school and part of that quite frankly for me is what are we spending money on that will allow us to get back full-time at the high school regardless of what happens with govern um and uh you know should we be i mean if the issue is we have too many kids in classrooms how are we dealing with that if the issue is there's too much crossing space in the in the hallway how are we dealing with that right so uh right now we're still hybrid at the high school um and uh i'd love to have all our kids back full-time and we ought to be thinking ahead on what are we gonna use this funding for to help us get there and deal with the kids who've fallen behind they know the kids who have emotional issues deal with the kids that have all this other stuff i think so it's kind of turning this discussion on its ear right anticipate what we're trying to accomplish and then what how we were deploying the pieces right and this coaching piece might be an important piece of that i'd be okay with that i really would and i think that's how the team's thinking about it but it wasn't jumping out of me okay is that a fair way to go forward i mean so i think as a board i don't know if we need to do a vote or not but you know i think the input to you dr burrell is firmly those first three items we're gonna we're not gonna get the budget so let's let's deal with it is everybody okay with that okay all right um so there is a few more things i wanted to mention on the budget because the board of finances in uh is wrapping up their deliberations which is uh very early actually um normally we are um a lot later in the month um when the board of finance is still sort of uh going through all the town budgets um but last night uh the board had discussed our budget um they're very happy with how we've communicated our process um and so they have planned to restore 24 000 to our budget now none of that is final they haven't voted on that yet um but that was openly discussed last night at their meeting they're going to just marinate on everything again tonight and tomorrow they they plan to vote um and they don't anticipate any changes being made but just to sort of recap for you guys the board of selectmen had reduced our budget by 140 thousand um as we've heard tonight dr bruhl has worked out a pr uh plan with these um sr2 funds to address 96 000 of that so that left us with 44 000 in reductions that we would have to find um again with the board of finance restoring 24 000 of that we would still need to consider about um a 20 000 reduction um but i've been talking with dr brill about this we've been openly communicating with the board of finance and he has been in communication with his team department heads um since it has been five months since they submitted their budgets so dr bill i don't know if you want to share sort of like a general sort of overview i know there's nothing specific yet in terms of um you know what that you know roughly twenty thousand dollars means um but uh it's it's it looks like it's not going to be something that we're going to have to consider at a board level meaning any anybody no i i think i think uh we're confident i should say and i think terms we've gotten used to as educators financial terms exercising the budget scrubbing the budget these are things we would come accustomed to and i think it's been a skill set that we've all learned um or a value we've really learned to really dig in um and evaluate some of our assumptions and the estimates we have in the budget and so forth so uh just some examples of areas we're looking uh some of our our newer digital tools we're taking a look at usage uh but not only usage actually working uh mr conklin and dr be working with the vendors and some of the contracts and the structures uh in addition to that looking across the board at the principals are looking at you know furniture and instructional supplies and looking at um you know have needs changed in the last four to five months since they initially put their six months since they initially put their budgets together and so you know we're very confident that we could you know find 20 the 20 000 necessary without uh sacrificing what we're trying to accomplish in the budget and in the other the other things in rose i don't know if you said this or not um but there is really um and if ken needs to open i would certainly ask him to but one of the things is the uh insurance uh agent has shared with the town and with the board uh that the conservative estimate is that four percent increase remember we have built in gosh 11 or 12 percent we have a huge savings across the the entirety of the town and at four percent so a conservative estimate at four percent means plan for that but it really could there's a chance it could be less so if that breaks in our favor there's there's funds right there that are freed up that are just operational costs that are reduce our costs and don't hurt anyone um and so that that could work in in favor of the county and the board there's positives on the horizon yeah so i mean all in all it looks very good and it looks like we're not gonna you know usually at this time of year we're sort of we're digging through the budget ourselves and kind of finding where we can take a little bit here and take a little bit there um and i'm really very confident that we're not going to have to do that this year one thing uh they did the way they've been doing the florida finance meetings and i've been listening to them as they do they talk about it and then mr rooney does a straw vote around the table um when they did the board of finance budget um they uh they they landed at this 24 000 reduction instead of 140 000 and 24 000 being put back in the budget which um which you know basically was resolved as um mrs fernandez described they were very it was a 6-0 straw vote right in support of that and it was very complimentary of the work that we've done and the cooperation the two boards have had so we should be happy at the investment that we have made and in fact the thing they cited the most was our list of questions that we posted and put in their books of all the questions we asked about the the budget and all the answers the detailed answers that came back so they thought that was wonderful that we would share all that with them and i'm glad we did that um so uh so we've done some things this year that i think have helped the town for the finance board of education it hasn't been at all confrontational and quite frankly we we started in a much better place than we did last year because last year remember at the beginning we started at 6.4 i think or 6.5 increase and uh but this year we've worked hard and we should all be proud of ourselves for all the effort we've put in to make sure we had a tight budget so absolutely and i think at least for the first time since i've been on the board the what the what the voters are essentially going to see is the budget that we put forward and without any any adjustments any any cuts any reductions um so i think that's a real big accomplishment for us and um yeah so i mean all in all this is um so far it's going good so we'll just look for it so again the board of finance will will vote um tomorrow night um and then all this will be we'll be finalizing we'll start with the i will also say they've been spending a lot of time with capital i'd say half of the meeting last night was on capitol projects and our uh so far our capital has survived pretty uh pretty readily through that process including thank the lord the boys locker room project um and uh they were actually appreciative that we had identified that 55 000 item that we had had a previous capital release on so that helped them a lot um in terms of their overall picture and so um i think that's going along pretty well too so um by the way did we get did we send them the answer on the the the planning numbers for the for the boy's locker room the boys like that it was a 70 000 and the 35 was on fire yeah so they've asked me to to come to their meeting tomorrow night just to give them that brief update so i'll do that then okay need to know that when they're thinking about it was very that was the only thing they were confused on last night yeah okay anything else budget related okay so then the next item on our agenda is the candlewood lake elementary school building project um i hope you guys have all gotten a chance to drive by huckleberry um because obviously it looks a lot different which is very surreal and exciting um but uh the construction fencing is up um the construction entrance has been made and i believe um that's going to be the south exit once the school is totally built right that's going to be that sort of it won't be an entrance exit it'll just be like the exit right i'd like to commit to that but i look at those maps and then i see where things end up on the land i tell you melissa when i look and we're like we could have sworn the fence was going to be there the site supervisor was like oh no it was here all the time only are you sure about that so i i don't want to make a commitment one way or the other rosa right okay is there a sign outside at all of the construction area i don't think so i don't think so yet i saw something that looked like it might be a construction sign like where it would go so maybe they're planning on putting one there i just i i i'm a believer that a future home uh lake elementary school your tax dollars at work you know you know whatever the messaging is there's a important positive message that the town we can bring the town into uh what's going on so if it's a it's one of those construction signs with a thousand little lines of all the contractors that are working on it yeah they can put that up over here right i think front and center we ought to be asking them to put a you know something that says with the name of the school on it so i just think that would be a really good thing that would be nice yeah all right i'll talk to i'll talk to paul and see if he can do something about that but speaking of which uh the nbc did not meet uh this week so they haven't met since our last board meeting so there's no other updates on the new school all right uh we can move on to three main points well i was thinking um one point could be sort of a general covet update about the vaccines and the high school reopening plans that are underway and then i thought the second one should be about the ester ii grant and budget and a budget update where we stand in the process yeah the third third one would be um that equipment has been delivered and construction is beginning on the school i like those thank you very much bye yeah please drive by but not during drop-off or pick up please there you go what were you going to say joy didn't say maybe insert an image or two john sent us yeah that would be great and there's a lot more pictures now and by the way if the board doesn't know this yet and sometimes so much goes on we assume everybody knows but um eric's been working with the mbc and getting some camera equipment which is going to be delivered soon so not only have we been taking drone shots and still pictures yes we're going to have um a camera mounted and we will have the the real time uh i think it's every 15 minutes it's going to take a snapshot of the work site and we're going to see the building go up over the course of the next year and a half so oh then we can make one of those time lapse videos yeah that's yeah that's the idea so yeah we're really you know um and we have to thank the tech team certainly and logan from the high school and our nbc for uh helping this all come together so it's it's great it needs to be just a tremendous collaborative effort so um i'm glad i thought to say that because i probably assumed you all maybe already knew yeah i think the kids got a kick out of seeing the drone i i heard about it my daughter was like we saw a drone there was a drone there today so it's really exciting is there a date for the grand official groundbreaking yeah don't have a date yet i keep asking for it i i don't know if they're waiting for sort of i don't know better weather maybe but i'll keep pushing on that yeah and i think one of the things was was a weather issue was maybe maybe waiting get a little more work done um and so that's where where where paul and josh were on that so we're trying to get some agreement on when we think we want to do that yeah all right those are opera press opportunities that's the only that's the most important thing for that so okay uh upcoming events okay at center we have tomorrow and friday our early release 12 20 for conferences on march 19th also friday is rock your socks for world down syndrome awareness friday march 26th is a remote learner lunch bunch with mrs diamond wednesday march 31st is a community meeting and thursday april 1st is wear blue for autism awareness huckleberry also has early release tomorrow and friday for parent-teacher conferences and march 24th through the 31st is the virtual science fair on flipgrid and march 26 is a virtual pto meeting at 9 30 on zoom whiskener has an author visit next thursday and friday the 25th and 26th and the end of the marking period is the 31st and at the high school wednesday march 24th is the sat for juniors and april 5th the third quarter ends and all schools will have an early release on thursday april 1st and will be closed on april 2nd good friday and that's it okay um okay i guess we are actually at the end of our agenda so um without objection the meeting is adjourned have a good night everyone bye
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aye and the chair vote zach thank you so much the consent agenda is passed all right business item a second interim report i'm sorry we should just let you just stay up there right this is coronado thank you sure so the powerpoint presentation is in the back of the packet for anybody who's on the screen and on the power in the package it says first enter a budget report but after winter press i probably did that the second report what page it's on the screen 179 if you go to 179 that's right it starts right there so this is just a reminder of our district enrollment i did share this at first interim and we did see a decline when we moved into the distance learning format and we are hoping that the students return now that we're going back to the hybrid or at least next year when we go back to full learning hoping we go back to full learning so because enrollment is off down in many schools and because it's hard to take attendance the state let us go ahead and claim last year's ada as this year's ada and they're also letting us claim next year's ada last year's ada for next year so for three years we will have an ada of 4115.34 students that allows us to budget and because as i just showed our enrollment is declining this benefits us greatly because we get to claim ada for the higher enrollment that we had last year if you look at 2022 and through 2023 that fudged ada dropped significantly because we could no longer claim that last year 1920.
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to testify heidi armstrong for the department of education heidi please good afternoon chair kidani and vice chair kim i'm heidi armstrong department of education testifying on behalf of superintendent kishimoto the department stands on its written testimony offering comments and within our testimony we've listed the existing policies that promote a positive school climate where students feel safe supported and have the sense of belonging and recognizing that each student has their own unique and personal circumstances which influence how they're impacted by risk factors the existing policies hold the department accountable to ensure that all students have access to a continuum of prevention intervention and postvention strategies to address the range of risk and protective factors for suicidal behavior and supportive of the department's work and commitment to promote positive mental health provide suicide awareness and prevention training aimed to ensure that students safety and to create caring environments the department respectfully suggests that this resolution is not necessary at this time thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you heidi members are there questions of heidi armstrong um heidi i do have a couple questions um as you know we've been uh you've been corresponding with me on this on this issue so um i i wanted to ask in your testimony you list multiple board policies and administrative rules that you believe makes this resolution unnecessary but in the last response you did to my office on suicide prevention training you noted that the schools have multiple options for suicide prevention curriculum but are any of these curriculums specifically tailored to groups mentioned in this resolution like the lbtg lgbtq plus youth with disabilities or chronic mental health conditions substance abuse homelessness foster care oh they're not tailored to a specific subgroup but they all do address the common signs and symptoms of mental mental illness within the age groups that we um serve they address the common signs and symptoms of substance abuse how to act with the child or adolescent in crisis how to connect people in need with help based on the symptoms that they're providing the trainings also in general address the suicidal risk factors that we know could be environmental risk factors health risk factors historical risk factors that could include include family history child abuse neglect or trauma and then they also address the warning signs that serve as red flags being the the talk or the verbal cues that a child is giving for example if they talk about i'm feeling hopeless no reason to live or there's behavioral warning signs there's mood warning signs and so the trainings that came out of that 270 provide that overview and the resources for the school personnel to either utilize based on the situation or to turn to when more assistance is necessary heidi um your your um testimony though when you say that you know this resolution may not um be necessary you know this one specifically talks about you know uh looking at these different groups and if you're not specific to these groups and are you you know doing reports that account take in account these numbers and you know what the issues are because i don't know how we're able to address it if we're not looking at it that way for instance um you also note you noted in a response that you were going to send out a reminder this month and is this you know for them to do the training and i think when i looked at it about half or so of the schools had not done the training as of yet so you're sending out a reminder to do this is it only because i asked or does somebody actually check on these no we do have a person from our office who checks throughout the year and every complex area or district has a lead person leading the effort for the schools in that particular complex area so the reminder was just one as we track and keep track of who has completed the trainings and who hasn't i can't predict what would have happened i do know and it's not an excuse it's a very unusual year that we've had and so it doesn't preclude us or excuse us for not completing all of the trainings and tasks we've been assigned it's just been a very unusual year but our goal and our aim and our directive is that for school year 2021 every single one of our schools has completed this training to be in compliance with act 270.
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the hope is that by the time we get to that year the students will return and the 88 will go up but i chose a conservative figure for ada and based it on the kids that we have now and what if nobody returned what all our funding scene would be looking at the unrestricted revenue from first interim versus second interim and first interim went through october 31st and was reported in december our revenue this year really didn't change any but the next two years it goes up significantly and that's because in the governor's budget proposal he added a cost of living increase and that equated to about two million [Music] dollars i'm actually quite cold so my teeth are chattering sorry for that anyone who's been in my office knows that it's a sonnet when we look at unrestricted expenditures those don't change much from first interim there are some changes just due to uh being able to reduce some budgets and from staff changes as well thanks ari when we compare the unresearched revenue versus the expenditures and contributions we'll see in this year we will have about one million dollars more coming in than going out a lot of that is because we are using uh coded funds to pay for some things that we normally use general fund for and next year in 2122 we will have a surplus of 2.5 million dollars this is greater than what i reported in this first interim in first interim i said we would have about three hundred thousand dollars but this increases due to the cola that we're getting and then in the third year out in 2223 we have about 1.3 million dollar surplus previously first interim i showed that we would have about a 775 000 deficit 50.
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thank you for that heidi um i will say i agree with you that this has been a very unusual year but i think more so this training you know was necessary not just this year but also last year with them you know with the seniors that didn't have their proms didn't have their graduations and uh you know something that i think some of these students you know that's all they look forward to you know that's the big event and you know graduations you know ceremonies didn't happen so that's why i'm very disappointed that you know this was let go this long um so do when in the year do you guys take a look and see whether or not the schools have have performed this um survey or not or her the training our office checks continually and we follow up and we have followed up throughout the year as the data comes in on who has and who hasn't completed the training so we are aware of who has completed it today and who hasn't completed it today and the the directive which everybody has received and understands is that this training will be and must be completed um prior to the end of the school year thank you and i look forward for a report at the end of the school year as to whether or not that was uh done absolutely members questions thank you very much heidi appreciate it thank you we have another testifier kagan miller testifying for the trevor project fagin good afternoon chair cadani and members of the committee my name is keegan miller i'm senior advocacy associate for the trevor project previously i served as a special education teacher and i currently lead our efforts on school suicide prevention i appreciate the opportunity to express the trevor project's strong support of h.r 45 requesting a model statewide school policy on suicide prevention the trevor project is the world's largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for lgbtq young people we work every day to save lives by providing free and confidential suicide prevention through 24 7 phone lifeline chat and text our 2020 national survey on lgbtq youth mental health showed that 40 of lgbtq youth have seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous 12 months and more than half of transgender and non-binary youth had seriously considered it the coven 19 pandemic has exacerbated the need for mental health and suicide prevention especially as social isolation has increased due to physical distancing and other preventative measures recent polling by the trevor project also shows that 35 percent of lgbtq youth report feeling more lonely during the coven pandemic compared to only 22 percent of their cisgender straight peers a higher baseline of vulnerability at when thank you keegan um members this is the last of the oral testimony we had we do have some written testimony are there any questions of um testifier keegan miller uh keegan i actually i actually have a question hearing the last testimony from assistant superintendent heidi armstrong and um there is already a program within the department of education apparently not so much geared to the lbgtq group but is there any programs that you guys have that may be useful or you may you can make some recommendations for the department to look at that that you guys may have used or is recommended by the different medical authorities absolutely so it's really about the schools having policy to include these high-risk groups um we know that they're often left out of of consideration the trevor project the american foundation for suicide prevention the national school psychologist and the american school counselors association actually have a model school policy that is easily accessible and can be used as a resource or as a reference point for for this type of policy work thank you so much for that appreciate it okay members we'll move on to no further questions to our next item scr 81 and sr 61 urging the department of education to include the teaching of financial literacy and the existing existing personal transition plan course requirement for each student to testify terry ushijima for department of education good night good afternoon cherokee diamond vice chairman of kim and members of the committee comparing to my whom assistant superintendent of the department of education testify on behalf of dr christina hishimoto we stand on our written testimony and offer comment on scr 81 the department would like to highlight that there are varying personnel transition plans or ptp models across high schools and each high school has a flexibility to design its ptp curriculum within the department's guidelines and other school improved requirements further there are various options to deliver financial literacy that schools can select from career and technical education business courses economics guide advanced guidance or the new financial literacy course and others thank you for the opportunity to testify and i'm available for questions thank you terry members are there any questions for terry yoshida yeah senator kim has a question um so terry is this financial literacy part of the core um core courses or is it all elective and the financial literacy is an elective course so is there any any intent to include it as part of a core core curriculum not at this time however the schools have been figuring out different ways to infuse financial literacy into their school offerings so students have opportunities for financial literacy we realize that this is a very important skill for our youth and so we also have partners with some credit unions and different programs at different high schools and so the schools have been addressing it in ways that are in are matching their community and student needs i just can't understand why it is not part of a core because in order to be successful in life you have to have financial literacy i mean that it has to be a basic and if our students are not getting that especially we have um other students on the financial lower financial end that i think probably is that they don't have this kind of education and they're probably not want to select it as an elective so i'm not sure why we need to include these kinds of results it should be part of your core curriculum i mean what is considered a well-rounded education if it doesn't include financial literacy i yes i i agree financial literacy is very important for students and it is important that they have the opportunity to learn those skills while they're in high school i think they should be required to learn it or just have the opportunity do you folks also include any kind of education on the stock market and the economy that kind of financial literacy as well in your courses i i have our um specialist we have an economics course um and so i think that's where that would fall under so um i don't know if um we can elaborate further on that oh no thank you very much thank you thank you members for their questions terry i think i'd like to point out that um maybe a couple weeks ago we did um something about the edu prize the commercialism bill and i think that would be a great opportunity to look at that program also to be able to teach some kind of financial literacy because this this is based on helping the students learn you know about business to learn to commercialize their uh their items whether they they're making t-shirts or hats or whatever at the school level or doing other things and disappointing that to hear that since october or whatever nothing has been done on this and therefore the bill to move this along but this might be one of the opportunities and hopefully the department will get serious about making more opportunities to give our students financial literacy thank you terry thank you members if there's no further questions we'll move on to our final item scr 83 sr 63 urging the department of education to use coronavirus aid relief and economic security act and coronavirus response and relief supplemental appropriations act monies to retain teachers and prevent hurdles to testify brian hallett department of education brian please good afternoon sir kadani vice chair kim committee members of the department uh stands on its written testimony with comments on this scr it stands by if there's any questions thank you thank you brian members are there any questions for brian hallett if not that um concludes the testimony we do have a written testimony from corey rosenly on this item so let's go into recess reconvening our committee on education hearing 320 hearing for house bill 1360 hd1 the recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments there are technical and non-substantive amendments no questions chair votes eye care votes on house bill 1360 house draft one well just to see who's here is the vice chair vote side senator de la cruz excuse me senator favela four members president vote informative recommendations adopted thank you for bill 608 hd 2 recommendation is to defer decision making until next monday march 22nd at 305 pm in this room 229 for scr 38 and sr 27 recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments to clarify that doe is urged to include food hubs as part of the overall procurement strategy for goods and services related to the farm to school program but not exclusively purchase from food hubs also to remove language related to reference of mou with lieutenant governor's office and technical and non-substantive amendments members questions if not chair votes eye charvatza and scr 38 and sr 27 of the four members president is anyone who have reservations any members voting in the negative hearing out your recommendations adopted thank you for scr 63 and sr 45 recommendation of the chair is to pass as is chair bozai scr 63 and sr45 okay the recommendation is to pass as is as cr 63 sr45 of the four members president any members voting with reservations any members voting in opposition hearing none for members voting all your recommendations adopted thank you for scr 81 and sr 61 recommendation of the chair will be to pass with amendments and this would be to add another be it resolved to for the department of education to have consistency in a financial literacy curriculum for the students um there's no technical okay so recommendation is to pass with that amendment chair votes eye turbo tsai and scr 81 and sr 61 of the four members president any members voting with reservations any members voting in opposition hearing none for eyes recommendations adopted thank you and the last one on the agenda today scr 83 and sr 63 recommendation of the chair is to pass as is question chair volkswagen sure votes on scr 83 and sr 63 the four members president any members voting in reservations any members opposition hearing none four members i voting i recommendations adopted thank you and that concludes our hearing you
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so the cola really helped us and that is including the lower uh ada so if we get more students we will see even a bigger surplus however i do want to mention that in next month we will be bringing a compensation package to you and that is not included in this and so that package totals 1.6 million dollars and so that would reduce our spending our surplus next year so when you look at our ending fund balance the the larger number is our total energy from balance the light blue bar and the darker blue bar is what is unassigned so some of it would be our reserve that's set aside for and some of it is stores and and other non-spendables so you'll see that our any fund balance is increasing but again when we take out that 1.6 million dollars should you approve the compensation package then that would go down a little bit other funds fund 17 has currently 2.5 million dollars in it but in the second interim packet there is a cash flow projection and we're showing that in june we will have a negative cash flow of about 1 million dollars when i add in the the compensation package should you approve it that would be another six hundred and sixty thousand dollars uh that we would be not less on um in june so we would be negative one point six two million dollars so we will have to use fund 17 to cover that one thing that could change is that we might get estr 2 money this year if they were to give us that money then that would be cash for us and that would help us with cash flow but i have not heard anything about when we're receiving that so i can put that into a projection also just as a regular reporting in fund are other post-employment benefits we have 331 000 in the trust we have not contributed contributed to that in quite some time just because we're unsure of the budget and then we have 615 000 and fund 20 and we can always use that money too if cash forward to uh [Music] i think i'm guessing not last year the year before i believed i'm sorry everybody uh looking at the comparison of what we spent as of january 31st in 1920 versus 2021 we have a savings of about two million dollars and again a lot of that is from uh spending coven money for regular semi-regular expenditures um certificate salaries we have three sell two salaries that we moved over to the covid funds and they are to help with technology and professional development we have classified salaries the big portion of that is for transportation food service and new duties in an effort to not do layoffs we were allowed to use coveted funds for positions where they're doing substantially different duties and so transportation for example did not pick up students but they did deliver lunches and they delivered homework packets and they did other tasks to help us function and so i was able to move their salaries over to the equipment fund when we look at coveted related revenue there are five pots of money that we've received so far three from the federal government and two from the state they total about five million dollars we also have about five million dollars coming in called the sr2 funds we have not received that i don't know that we're receiving that i do know that the deadline to complete all of the paperwork to receive it is march 31st so we haven't even hit the deadline for uh districts to apply for it so i imagine it won't come until june perhaps next year i look at covert related expenditures this is what we have spent our money on so far first certificated salaries which i mentioned classified salaries also which i mentioned and the employee benefits that go along with that the supplies services capital outlay is all included in the board packet in the back there's about 50 pages of purchase orders showing everything that we've spent our covet funds on so far so if anybody's interested in that they can go to the board packet and check that out of that over half has been spent in technology we've spent 1.67 million dollars in technology to make sure that we get devices to every student to make sure that we provide internet connectivity to everybody and to get the teachers set up so that they can teach distantly we've spent about 400 thousand dollars in additional textbooks physical and online books so that every student has what they need to learn we spent about 200 300 000 dollars in custodial just to make sure that we uh change the filters out and the ppe is included in that in the cleaning supplies and so forth we've spent about four hundred thousand dollars from the maintenance department and then the other site budgets the school side budgets is about three hundred thousand dollars i included a slide of what we're allowed to spend the coveted funds on because um some people just have questions about that or think that we are spending it on uh you know salaries like specific salaries that are not called like an incentive or something like that and that's not included in what we've been spending on um so looking ahead the covered related funding will look for the sr2 funds i believe we're receiving other federal grants and other state grants as well we'll watch enrollment and we'll watch cash flow and back to the covet related expenditures and the ii i want to also point out that we are using these funds so far for summer school for extended being extending the school year and for the extra hours that the teachers will be working and also the extra hours that food staff will be working because we have to extend the lunches to get everybody in socially distanced and prepare all of the grab-and-go's we are paying a time party and new duty aides because they're helping with supervision before and after the school day the aim and pm sessions and we are time partying other crews oh instructional aids because they're going to help supervise as well so yes teachers are getting extra hours paid for but so are many classified employees as well how about support staff such as the receptionist or like attendance people so if they work outside their eight hour work day then of course they should time card so this is probably more of a question from mr decent but i know that usually during the summer months the custodial staff does things like refinishing floors and deep cleaning high cleaning all those kinds of things do we have a plan for how we're going to do that with the schools being open are we hiring consultants are we working extra hours what's what's the plan on that for easter break you should leave typically we'll we'll have we run the summer school students will be running a summer school and that may not be the name but sometimes summer school has a negative connotation we want to make it fun enjoyable learning experience but we would have the month of july still to do some of those big areas we also won't be using every single room so we'll be able to rotate through also our our schools because we have been empty from the normal traffic we we also have had a lot our schools are pretty darn good um if you go around our custodians that work really really well in fact mclaughlin high school i just went over there the other day to see mr french and congratulate dennis that school it looks fantastic so i think there's been a lot of deep deep cleaning that we wouldn't have even been able to get done in summer yeah obviously um so do you have any questions about any of the spending are we thinking or considering about extending the day the year at all so we are looking at a learning loss that we would offer uh four weeks in june where we're already currently surveying staff to see who's willing to do that and then hopefully in the coming weeks we'll be surveying families to see who would like to participate uh both uh in person and distance so we can try to recoup some of the time that we have and then as we move into next year we'll also look at creative opportunities to get a learning loss my point on the summer we want to try and make it some of our students haven't already been on our campuses and so we want to make it not just about academic kind of grind i guess you could say we also want to make sure that kids know school's a great place to be so a lot of like stem stuff science stuff just trying to make it a little bit more not just sit in your row and do your work so that's all in the works and you will continue to hear more uh with that great i have a question because you know i always do when it comes to the budget so my first question is do we have a rough idea of how much extra funding we're going to be using for certificated and classified hours for the learning laws and for the summer school hours do we have just a ballpark number right now we're surveying staff to see so it's contingent a little bit on that but we would be able to uh address that better probably i don't want to even guess scully because i'm afraid i'd be wrong but with the the second part of esther money that's what we're planning to utilize for that yeah and so i think uh to your point i think dr lee's pointed out too is we also have a plan for our hvac systems and once we identify that learning loss plan we'll also carve out and come back to you with a plan to start looking at our most um age uh hvac units and i know craig hasn't i'm thinking that scott i'm so glad you're addressing that no but i i do that that is definitely something that we'll be looking and is allowable with these funds so we'll look at portioning portion out because staffing is going to be the biggest cost for our summertime program we also want to make sure we have it for during the year coming up that if we're going to offer there's some after after-school stuff that we want to offer additional tutoring different things that we want available to the the students and families that want to take advantage of that in addition to any other supports for our family so when would we be able to get a report of projected costs for all of the learning loss and summer school programs i would say mr jordan we're working on surveying staff so possibly by april we can come back with a good guesstimate okay so when we get to new agenda items we'll maybe add that to it does anyone else have questions for mrs coronado no i'm the only one that's all right um i want to make a comment uh to miss foreign for the transparency um anyone who is interested or has questions about expenditures that our board has made it's all right there you even have detailed line items so you can look at it to your heart's content and please have confidence in the way that we that the funds have been spent thank you i appreciate that dr lee and dr lake and i add on to that too is even if you don't want to interpret the information because it is it is hard give us a call i guarantee you mrs coronado or anyone in the business department would be happy to walk line by line of any of that stuff so i want to go even beyond that saying give us a ring shoot us an email we're happy to help anyway because we don't want it to be a hidden thing we're not hiding anything so thank you okay so um looking at page four on the executive uh briefing where it talks about the deferrals did you and i apologize if i missed you talking about this but i really want to kind of point out that deferrals are back in full swing which is lovely not lovely and it's interesting because the deferrals from february don't get paid back until november the deferrals from march it came back in october eight won't get paid back in september so the sooner we get the deferral the longer they get to keep our money and we don't get to get entertained interest on that money and yeah and sometimes they're only paying us 50 or 40 of that that's not the case yet not that good but what happens with these deferrals if we were not in a cash positive situation we would have to get what's called a trend which is a bank loan and guess who pays the interest on that so not only do we not get our money and they get to draw interest on our money from the state for however many months but then we have to pay interest to the bank to cover our cash deficiencies because they have our money they're really detrimental to us i i applaud governor brown for eliminating all of those during his tenure and i just can only hope that we see the back side of these when we see the back side of this pandemic so and luckily the they were in place to go on in future years and at least that was removed so we only have this one batch of deferrals and i also want to thank everybody at the district for allowing us to have um a reserve that will get us through this time period because when i went to a meeting initially before the cola money came and everything we were in the only district that was able to not take out a tram and and you know i i've often been on the fence with regards to reserves i kind of feel like the people today are paying taxes to educate their children today and that money is intended for that purpose but then of course you know on the flip side is that we need to stay solvent so there's a really fine balancing act between using the money for the people who've paid the money right now and not funding 20 years down the road when people decide they don't want to pay taxes or whatever they don't want to fund bonds whatever the reason we don't want to be funding the future but at the same time you know having to keep that balance so we do a really great job of that yes with that first big crunch we had six percent because it was our always our policy to put more in than what we've mandated yeah so when we lost mcclellan air force base we had six percent in there and that's what saved us i know and i get that nice so i get that i i do understand it i i i can see both sides and i think that we definitely err on the side of caution which is good um are we anticipating that those are actually going to be paid back to us when they say they're going to be paid back to us well i am going to hope that yes they'll be made back our reserve so speaking of our reserve what exactly is our reserve right now percentage-wise i know it says 17 but what about the unallocated that is our total um unallocated between fund and fund 17.
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that includes all of that um and then i think that was all my questions i have lots of highlighting and notes but no little questions so okay support any other questions thank you great job lisa thank you motion to approve item business item a by mrs health and the chair votes i vicious item a has been passed okay advanced planning we're almost at the finish line people so advanced planning future meeting dates board workshop on wednesday april 7th just so you know that workshop will be live stream just like any of our board meetings it might be boring but you are more than welcome to stay and let's kind of listen to it that might be interesting you never know but that workshop will be on brown act which is the laws that we have to follow as far as communications public communications and publicly agendizing items so it should be interesting if not riveting um and then all can be live streamed or are we going to be present oh i'm going to be president yeah i mean it could be zoomed and live streamed but we're definitely i think we've made the decision we're going to continue to live stream all of our board games correct as long as we can yeah to encourage participation from the community i think it really helps okay and then item two is the regular meeting wednesday april 21st here in this room and by zoom and by live stream and then suggested agenda items the only thing i was going to add is the csba training i kind of need to nail the five of you down so there's a couple questions one is the training is six hours so the first question consensus-wise is do you want two three-hour sessions or one six-hour session if we determine that then i move to my next question is how do you guys want to proceed with me schedule this i'm thinking end of april we have um you know april 7th already scheduled out we have a regular meeting what what what works for the for the group as far as knees if we do a six hour for those that are present we'll bring lunch in we'll have frequent breaks um we can i might suggest we use uh room five which might also mean if we use room five it wouldn't be live stream because i don't know if we can live stream in room five but it also is more comfortable the brown act one absolutely we can do right here that's not a problem so i just need some direction from you guys so i can get back with csva to say let's schedule i don't need a date per se but if i can get kind of a a ballpark idea then i can happily go back to them and say here's here's what we have to offer then i can get you guys to see us together doing it because word bonding is what it amounts to and it goes so far um when things get tough and you've had a chance to know you know get to know each other a little bit and know what each other's about right so if you were high there csba may be virtual themselves their directive right now is all virtual so if for example we had our trainer coming in virtually we could do a zoom thing have two people on zoom if that was necessary three people um and then in room five we have a big projector that we could put it up so it'd be as if they're there and then we you would each have your own table um more and so realistically that's kind of a secondary question to it do you want to do two evenings basically or do you want to do one day what would work best so i'm kind of the feeling that it should be a one-time thing um and whether we do it on a saturday or maybe start it at two in the afternoon and go two to eight two to nine with an hour break or two so perfect so i'm seeing i'm seeing four knots dr lee i'm seeing you nod a little bit but i'm gonna lean to steve okay and so do you want to do if we do so six hour i'm gonna circle that i saw a bunch of nods on that we could do they can train monday through saturday no sundays so monday sunday you can't help me on that one that was only online so would you like to do we can do a regular day if i give you advanced notice that could you could arrange with your work or so our regular alternative meeting date is may 5th correct correct which is the wednesdays so we could do a wednesday start at like at 9 00 a.m go through have some lunch and then finish wow you do that friday dr lee i'm trying to hear a weird angle for me so i'm trying to see when something like that works for you just for for me and how my schedule works the saturday for the six hours it would work a lot uh better than a weekday okay so that would be the eighth of may or the 1st of may correct saturday's fine with me either way did you do may 1st dr lee i heard you say something about the eighth did you say the eighth would work better what about the first yeah the eighth would work or the 24th of april um also works i'm just looking i'm looking at another yeah no [Music] i mean the 24th is pretty soon i think i'm out of town next day in may um would be the 15th right i hope that's not my wife's birthday she'll all be in not tell trouble our birthday present is that she can participate in the training it's not right in the middle of a son and a wife and then at 15th is dead center in the middle you tell her i said that that she needs to participate in the training um i know that i've got some plans for some weekend today and i'm not sure which weekend i think the 15th is clear okay so why don't i shoot for may 15th we do like nine o'clock start 9 a.m start does that work for everyone but you guys are way easier than i thought you'd be i was worried this doesn't take longer than the whole meeting with everyone's calendar so may 15 9 a.m i will reach out to csba tomorrow see if that date will work for them and then hopefully by friday i can let you all know just to confirm it in your your calendar and then steve if you want to double check just let me know or i'll let you know do we want to come up with an alternative date in case that doesn't work for mr bruno now just go for the next saturday the 15th or the 22nd just so i can give them two dates that's the best priority number one did someone say they couldn't do the eighth or was that i so why don't i shoot why don't i shoot for the 15th and then because she said that if we're the later the the more likely we're going to get a date the earlier it might be more questionable so what did we do may 15th and then if that doesn't work look at april 24th okay if not the 24th of april absolutely okay miss pope i thought that in george versus 12th november doesn't work i'm pretty confident the 15th of may will work but just it's nice to have a backup okay good good good together kind of a summary uh i've heard you ask ms kelly a summary of what we see costs for uh summer we'll bring that back so we can inform inform you it just really depends on getting the numbers and who's going to work and how many processes and then also we're going to possibly take volunteers for the social emotional learning do we want to do that tonight is that part of advanced planning we could if there's two people we can make sure we include on it and i would love the idea that if two of you or one of you whatever we just can't have more than two would be a part of it then what i can do is we'll get the date to the next meeting and start looking and then that group could then bring information back to the whole group to start setting the charge of where we want to go as a district and i think that is who who might be interested in purchasing i don't know and really we're looking at some of the disproportionality we're looking at trying to set a drive for where we want to go for equity and disproportionate outcomes and really i see getting in and dr lee shared a lot of data too we'll start diving into that data i think it's important so then we can start identifying where do we want to start okay well i'd be interested and this is focus interested i was trying to leave it open for anyone else that might exactly be interested and then what we can do too is usually with subcommittees you can you can have rotations so if if you guys want to stick with it for a few months then we could certainly opt in to steve one to often rotate through i think that's more than appropriate and then those meetings when they normally meet um we're going to look at the calendar i know it's um it's usually afternoons right now it's been a little bit less frequent just because of everyone's schedule but there's no particular day of the week though not right this moment no okay so i'll have to look at those on an individual basis okay sounds good if i can't attend mrs anderson has volunteered too with the idea that with that group the charge is going to be to identify key areas to focus on that the board as a whole would then come back and say hey this is the priority that we want to work on correct okay so that's three items was there anything else that we have for advanced printing i think that was it i think i heard um earlier someone i don't remember who asked um that we wanted to know how is a typical day looking for our elementary school students so if we could that you're set on the 21st so you want to do it again we can do it either way mr jordan and i would be happy to share a day of elementary or just maybe resubmit the documentation that was presented last month we don't have to do it again since it's right now whatever you guys wish and i know i have a note nancy that you would ask for specific so i was going to call you and set up the time but [Music] actually happening and not what was planned because as we know in education things are planned and then they're executed and sometimes there's a wide difference between the two so that's why that's my interest okay um by that time it would have happened back and i'm curious to know okay so we'll provide the overview of the elementary schedule and then kind of an update status of how things are going whether it's the next meeting yes so the budget versus actuals yes yes okay any other agenda items and if not the board will entertain a motion at this time too are we are we adjourning to close session or are we just a journey we're just adjourning unless there's something that we need to return to closed session for good i just want to clarify make sure we're just good night everybody you
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and i gotta fix that for next time yeah but then we should just stay virtual until they fixed it all right guys we're going live now yep mr smith we are live now uh mr smith we are live now we have five we could go right into exec while people filter in if you would like one yeah we have we have just five again here just confirming we are live on the stream okay [Music] my internet connection is unstable it says wonderful okay i like to call uh the regularly scheduled board of education meeting of march the 18th 2021 to order if you would all please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by a brief moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to indivisible with liberty and justice and justice for all thank you okay mr uc roll call please mr awad miss bassford it's beltran mr canova gotcha mister what you got mr daley yeah i sit here here danny here mr casper here mr abedrabo here mr smith here uh mission statement mr casper would you like to read it please the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world okay the uh reading of the open public meetings act the new jersey open p o book public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight at this time the uh board will be uh convening into executive session to discuss some special education matters uh we will come back for the regular board of education meeting starting at 7 00 pm no action will be taken in executive session do i have a motion to go to executive session no move second so moved by mr daley second by mr casper all those in favor hi again so moved mr mountain please take us into executive thank you sorry we didn't get in here um hear me we're in the main session now hello uh miss danny you should see an invite to join the executive session there was a 30-second hiccup but all is good now okay because it looked like we were back out in the in the main session correct do you see an invite to go back to executive no i don't see anything i see an executive session there but no i don't see yeah i don't see anything either i see the executive session like blacked out there but you know i i see just the four of us here for us eric uh mr teigen you know yeah it's weird i think but i'm not in the i'm not an executive should i leave and come back i'm not wondering that i'm seeing thomas awad and danny um still in the main room so yes do you see any invitation to join exec session no no no i didn't get any no yeah we had the original but then it got uh okay so i think that's i think that's very good um good approach so if you leave and come back we'll get you right in there um mr rawat if you could leave the meeting and rejoin i'll bouncy right in i'm not sure what the what the hang up is here mr mountain just let me know when we're live okay we're live right now okay live just a couple people um still switching from exec session to the normal session okay [Music] your life mr smith looks like everyone's in the regular session thank you can mr gingaro move that podium listen mr jim guerra would you mind moving this podium for us sir the one up on top okay now thank you thank you mr jager okay all right everyone ready i know we're waiting for delise but we can start okay okay i'd like to uh call us back into regular session the board met in executive session to discuss some uh education special education matters no action will be taken mr a roll call back from executive session mr awad here miss password ms beltran yeah mr daley here miss danny here mr casper here mr abedrabo here mr smith rivercorn here okay next we'll have the adoption of minutes of the uh the previous meeting do i have a motion so i moved some move by vice president abu drabo miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yeah mr smith yes um i see we have i'm sorry we guess we should have bought we could bundle those two you could yeah i mean yeah we have uh adoption of our regular meeting minutes of march the 4th and meeting minutes a special meeting of march the 8th put those together come on i have a motion so by my vice president [Music] second second by mr casper discussion see none roll call mr awad yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daly yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr abedrabo yes and mr smith yes motion carries next we have communication and announcements we don't have any next is a presentation of reports from administration advisory committees and special committees um at this point i will uh turn the meeting over to our um business administrator uh mr michael usey who will make a presentation on the preliminary budget thank you president smith just give me one moment to share my screen short can everyone see it well all right we'll get started then good evening commissioners and everyone virtually attending tonight's meeting and those who are in person at the high school i'm mike yusi uh the district's business administrator quickly i'll introduce uh dr robert tosie superintendent of schools mr uh mark teigen assistant superintendent of schools ms kusalevich assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction who's going to jump in during this presentation regarding some curricular highlights and staff editions um also mr thompsoevich our assistant business administrator who will also be assisting in some slides later on just to be clear this is not the public hearing on the final budget but a brief overview of the 2122 preliminary budget that's required to be submitted to the county office for educational adequacy and technical compliance tonight the board will be voting on a resolution approving the submission of the 2122 preliminary budget to the county office which can be changed from now until the public hearing in may i want to start off the presentation with a quick snapshot of the district's operations to try to put into perspective of how large of a district we are the clifton board of education has 23 facilities consisting of 14 elementary schools with an annex two preschools which is which are our clifton early learning learner academy the selas two middle schools an extremely large high school the administration building the transportation garage and the stadium during normal activities on a daily basis we transport over 2 200 students in district with 52 buses and vans the district employs over 1600 full-time employees and has 10 948 resident students on roll we have 28 different sports 53 teams 73 coaches two athletic trainers with over 1250 student athletes with also 150 vast co-curricular activities and clubs throughout the district the district followed this budget schedule for the 2122 submission for the department of education the preliminary budget will be voted on during tonight's meeting for the submission to the county my office must submit the preliminary budget to the county by uh monday march 22nd and the county office has until april 20th to approve the preliminary budget the advertised budget will be in the bergen record tentatively thursday april 29th and the public hearing on the final budget will be during the may 6 2021 board meeting which um which meets the deadline of being able to hold a meeting um what we have to hold the public hearing by may 7th and then the last day to submit to the county the final budget is may 14th now over the main focus points of the budget on the revenue side the budget calls for no tax levy increase from the 2021 current school year into the 21 22 school year next year we had a state increase of 12 million 756 thousand for 21 or 29 nearly 30 percent the budget maintains its full unassigned fund balance which is essentially a surplus account which is capped at two percent of our budget by the state so we maintain the whole thing we're not using anything to balance the budget however the budget does call for using excess surplus from the 1920 fiscal year of 1.8 million that the board put away back uh last june lastly on the revenue side is um semi which is the special education medicaid initiative of 330 000 and miscellaneous revenues of approximately 850 000 which consists of um just interest facility rentals uh school fines insurance dividends um and prior year refunds on the appropriations side the budget maintains all staffing and programs with the addition of 21 instructional and other staff members ms kusalevich will go into more detail about about how the budget may change and expands programs and support and supports instruction throughout the district on the next couple slides for out of district placements we have 119 special education placements in private schools um county special services or other schools and we have budgeted 743 students at pcti the votech one of the biggest increases in any budget area is the charter school tuition which i i say this every year it comes directly from the doa it increased by two million eighty nine thousand one eighty eight or nearly twenty eight percent from the current year so while the district did receive a significant increase in state a there was also significant increase in charter school and then finally budgeted salaries and employee health benefits which make up approximately 75 percent of the entire appropriations budget um now i'm going to turn it over to our assistant superintendent mrs kusulevitz for the next couple sites thank you mr uc if you can go to the next slide for me please and it's lagging i apologize for that so this budget with zero percent tax increase uh if you can go back a slide please i don't know what is happening thank you maintains our current staffing and programs um our main focuses are the completion of our one-to-one chromebook initiative throughout the district infusing technology and 21st century skills in all programs our support of the defined stem program across content areas and grade levels differentiated instruction to support diverse student needs from preschool through 12th grade our excellent fine and performing arts programs our core literacy and math programs the instructional teaming that takes place in grades 6 through 9 to support students success and also help them with their transition through high school we have three main academies at the high school with 17 career concentrations we continue to grow our dual enrollment programs and of course support our district-wide pbsis program to support social emotional learning and to round out the whole child education we have extensive sports and extracurricular and finding performing arts programs the additional staff included in this budget really focus on social emotional needs as well as the special needs of our special education population five of the positions are counseling positions this includes two elementary counselors which will allow each of our elementary schools to have a full-time counselor this adds two middle school student assistance counselors for our students who need support in milk that difficult middle school age and an additional high school counselor we're also adding an esl high school social studies teacher to address our electives and social studies needs for our growing english language learner population and finally 11 special education teachers in that area we're looking at two to address our preschool disabled program four elementary special needs teachers for resource room speech and then the self-contained autism and multiply disabled programs three in middle school also one self-contained for the autism program and two resource room one high school resource room and a high school and a special education behaviorist these positions allow us to keep our students served in the least restrictive environment while also providing self-contained programs in districts to help keep students who need more intensive support closer to home in their schools in our town may i have the next slide please some additional staff include two computer technicians as was mentioned on the previous slide we have now gone fully one to one in terms of devices just in the course of this one school year and that requires significant addition of support to support our technological infrastructure software and all of these additional devices we're requesting an additional bilingual secretary for our welcome center at this time our registration program has access to both spanish and polish speaking staff members to help translate for those parents who come in who need the support of another language clifton's three main languages are spanish polish and arabic this position would help support the arabic population in clifton and finally we'd be returning a custodial night custodian supervisor which will return us to a fully staffed custodial supervisory team to manage and oversee over 90 staff members throughout our 23 buildings thank you mr uchi thank you um just moving on so our district's total tentative balance budget is 209 million 209 million 108 698 which is comprised of the general fund that contains the operating budget and the capital outlay budget um special revenues which are federal grants and state entitlements that the district receives and also our debt service and i'll go into all these on further slides here's a quick overview of the general fund um revenue sources as i stated before the tax levy has no increase from current year so it stands at 134 million 259 260.
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