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[Music] oh [Music] yes [Music] okay foreign okay [Music] this [Music] yes [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] very cool this should have to work oh thank you uh thank you i know now uh [Music] people um please stand for the singing of the national anthem [Music] we [Music] stars [Music] um [Music] yes [Music] foreign [Music] oh welcome i'd like to thank garrett makowsky for playing the piano as you all were coming in to be seated [Applause] we would like to extend our thanks to the elhs chorus for the recording of the national anthem and for mrs forward for providing us with that i would also like to give special thanks to mrs hellyer for printing the certificates and helping us with the labels on the seats today um the custodial staff for setting up the event and mr page for his patience while organizing this event with me huge nervous nellie okay at this time i would also like to acknowledge our honored guests mr gordon smith superintendent of schools ms pam [Applause] miss pamela blair assistant superintendent for business miss heather brown director of curriculum instruction and assessment dr joanne welch director of student support services mr gregory thompson school committee ms sarah miss sarah trulia school committee mr william fonseca school committee miss antonella rashilla also school committee [Applause] miss elizabeth marzian butcher mr frank page our principal [Applause] and mr gary wright assistant principal [Applause] so i'd like to say thank you for everyone coming to attend and welcome to east long meadow high school's national honor society induction ceremony we are so glad to have everyone here to celebrate this impressive accomplishment in a year of challenge and change i would like to extend my congratulations to the students who will be inducted this evening on behalf of those who are currently members we would like you we welcome you to the national honor society at this time i would like to acknowledge the current members of the east long meadow chapter of the national honor society if you are present please stand so we may acknowledge your achievement ariel aldor angelina carrando brianna brianna conant [Applause] kylie fox [Applause] kayla gates abigail howler brianna hannigan maeve jordan [Applause] elizabeth laughlin [Applause] william najwan reina pleviak margaret ryan [Applause] and sophia wachowski i decided to come up with a theme for this year because you know english teachers kind of like themes so my theme was challenge and change it's been a year marked by challenge and change for so many obvious reasons right planning this event was a challenge finding a date an annual challenge and following guidelines that could change at a moment's notice was particularly challenging as for changes you only have to look around to notice those all the empty seats the masks and the camera despite all of this it's quite remarkable that we are inducting the largest number of students in the past five years there's 36.
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certainly uh joe britton here's okay um rachel chapuski here kate canetta here gladys cooper yeah i believe lauren is absent for the regular meeting is that correct yes okay thank you uh joe da silva i don't know joe's popped on since we started i don't see him uh catherine hodgson here uh rich giannelli here kathy molinaro here al russo here amy spamino here okay uh we're gonna move down to the recognition part of our agenda yes is dr lavanca here i am okay let's do the uh you have the honors there thank you very much good evening everyone it's so nice to see you today good evening it's nice to see you thank you a west side middle school academy is so proud to congratulate the connecticut school counselor association counselor of the year our very own mr curtis dara is waving to us you know curtis does amazing service to the school um our parents our students and our faculty but i think you know in recognizing him for this award it's also a great tribute to the service he does for his association and the counselors across the state making presentations frequently serving in leadership roles at the state level so we're just so very proud to have him as a member of our school for the wonderful job he does for all our students and also for the recognition that he brings to us uh as well so curtis congratulations thank you so much dr leblanc um so you know i wouldn't be myself i would have a couple words i wanted to say to everybody um so danby public school staff students and esteemed board of education i'm humbled and excited about this award and to be representing not only our state but danbury candidate at the national level you might notice my purple cow in the back that's milky way and i'll tell you about why he's an important part of my life as i reflect on the past six years in danbury and being at west side middle school academy i can't help but smile at all the learning experiences i was so lucky to be a part of in this district my favorite part of being a middle school counselor is having students for three years from sixth grade to eighth grade everything i do is with a lens with what's best interest in my students the amazing transitional growth in middle school from sixth to eighth grade has always been a delight for me to be a part of that adolescent journey and as eager and excited and hopeful learners those three years are full of mistakes passion courage and learning they leave middle school as independent grateful and inspired learners from around the world this past school year alone we helped with many students find their way take on new challenges and as school counselors we've been there for when a kid realized they did something mean something wrong got accepted to college scored a high grade that they worked for and cheered them on at a dance recital the smiles and the hugs and the thank yous the high fives they make it all worth it it's funny as i go into this profession that sometimes i feel like i'm the one that's teaching them all about life and at times i get surprised when it's a student that teaches me what life is all about for my favorite dr seuss story the lorax i learned that unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing's gonna get better it's not oh and milky way here around the last week of school a student gave me this cow and said mr dara i simply just want to thank you so much for teaching me how to be a purple cow and they said wow a purple cow and he goes you taught me that's important to stand out than to fit in i'll remember that for the rest of my life i challenge you all to find the purple inner cow within you seek adventure explore every opportunity enter those i can't and i won't to i can's and i will stay true to yourself and be who you are this summer make sure you spend some time at the ocean i was told that the ocean forces you to dream and insist that every single one of you become dreamers always remember to have courage and be kind thank you all so much for this recognition thank you on behalf of the board we would like to say we are just so happy to have you uh working for us in our system and with that smile anyone can wait can you can gain anyone over with that beautiful smile thank you thank you congratulations curtis thank you all so much okay um kate what do you do yeah i'm sorry i just want to let you know i just heard from joe to silva he's running a few minutes late that he expects to jump on shortly okay okay could you do the script for public participation and after that uh carol will do the three comments the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system due to the unique nature of the covit 19 crisis and the limitations of technology members of the public who are danbury residents are invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at ct danbury.k12.ct us thank you kate okay our first comment tonight is from ann riddle to the board of education thank you to kathleen o'dowd donna whitehead and susan germain for their seamless guidance in navigating quarantines cova testing and vaccinations for me a dps teacher their health included phone calls directions times for testing and a late afternoon phone call to run to rod to rogers park to get a vaccination that became available that day their assistance every question a person might have had had been anticipated in addition i think the board members and the dps administration for presenting public discussions on covid19 with dr fong and others finally i appreciate the tough decisions made by dr pasquerella in conjunction with the board of education to keep the rest of the school year as a hybrid in consideration of the health of our students staff and community second comment is from gabriella perez submitted by gabriella perez on behalf of christela cruz hello everyone thank you for this opportunity my name is christela cruz i'm a danbury high school graduate and have a younger brother who currently attends dhs i wanted to share a little bit about his story because i think it's worth hearing the stories of children in our system my little brother is a great kid he is kind and caring but he has a tendency to be very very shy in a school as big as dhs it was very easy for a student like him to get lost amongst the chaos of thousands of other students my brother struggled with this because he needed a more individualized approach to his education and perhaps smaller cast classrooms to put him at ease and allow teachers to see him fully less kids would allow him to come out of the shell as well as the opportunity to explore his interests my brother loves to cook and one day hopes to become a chef because of his passion my mom and i tried to enroll him in abattek as they have a culinary program in smaller class sizes but unfortunately he wasn't accepted and we have and we were left with a very few options for his schooling my brother tried to join one of his few one of the few home act classes at dhs but again he wasn't lucky enough to be chosen while his teachers are wonderful and try their best to accommodate him it is clear that dhs is severely overcrowded and quiet shy kids like my brother aren't developing full potential as a result danbury needs more schools we need charters and magnets and technical schools so the parents and students can make informed decisions and get the most out of their education please consider the urgency of the situation as our town continues to grow bigger and bigger thank you the last submittal is from eva jimnet jiminez first i would like to say thank you to the board of ed for the opportunity to submit my testimony on behalf of my community i am a proud member of lead latino for educational advocacy and diversity as a resident of danbury who went through the public school system i know firsthand many of the issues faced by our school the main issue is one of overcrowding especially in our middle schools and high schools i am writing today to urge the board to put politics aside and advocate for a more permanent solution to our problems of overcrowding in the city i do understand that many decades of neglect and poor funding are to blame for the crisis we are experiencing today in order to have an equitable solution that satisfies our future needs and provides another educational option to our parents the democrats and board of ed must end their vocal opposition to the charter school we are working so hard to open i will be blunt and honest since i am not a politician some board members are losing credibility for their opposition to the charter school and they're unwaving unwavering support of our democratic delegation this divides our community when we could all be working together and using all of our resources to ask for more equitable funding from both the city and the state this blind opposition slowly based on politics discredits many board members as they asked city hall for more funding it makes them seem like they only care about our children's future if it fits their political party the majority of our community continues to support the opening of a charter school and our base grows every day we have noticed that our delegation is willing to perish on an ideological hill that will turn the majority of latinos against them what we are witnessing is a blatant disrespect for the needs of an entire minority community just because the delegation has gathered a handful of latino leaders to oppose something they don't even understand it doesn't mean that the majority of d'amberians does not support the charter school we ask that the objective leaders of the board of ed to work with us ask our delegation and the union to back off and allow us to build this school you know it is the right thing to do and it will go a long way with helping the crisis we are in then we can join forces and partner to ensure we have equitable funding from both the city and the state if you allow some of the board of ed members to continue to put politics ahead of the needs of our students there will be a long-term and irreversible consequence i feel that our community is being ignored and underestimated i do hope the board of vets is sarah seriously considers a meeting with our delegation and allows us to build this much needed school right in downtown thank you and that concludes the public participation uh thank you karen for the three comments uh kate will you do the motion for the consent calendar yes i make a motion that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits 21-56 through 21-59 as recommended did i hear a second eleven seconds okay motion has been made by kate seconded by al are they in a question concerning the consent calendar cn9 kate would you do the roll call certainly joe britton joe's mic is not working yes he gave me that i read in the chat give me a thumbs up there yep okay rachel aye kate canetta aye gladys cooper aye uh catherine hodgson aye rich gianelli aye cathy molinaro aye okay thank you kate the motion is so caring uh kate would you do the emotion yes i'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda promotion has been uh made by kate to amend the agenda could i hear a second second promotion made by kate second by captain kathy what's the amendment i'm sorry what what is the amendment it is related to the solution okay yes the motion was made by kate second and by captain all in uh in favor okay all right all right did you roll call yeah deuteronomy sure joe britton yes uh rachel chaleski abstain uh kate canetta yes gladys cooper yes uh catherine hodgson abstain rich ginelli epstein kathy molinaro uh you're on mute kathy sorry hi thank you um al russo uh amy spalino abstain five abstentions and foreign favor okay so the motion is defeated okay am i correct him i'm sorry i thought she said five in favor and four abstentions uh flip those numbers okay it it i i guess i'm just questioning is the reason for the uh i'm curious the reason for the abstentions maybe you can clarify yeah okay and i think it may be some confusion about what the purpose of the amendment is right uh kathy uh marnell will you read the uh motion or just uh go about what we would decide why we need to add this motion to the agenda tonight you're on mute um so this is a motion in order for um the board to be authorized to enter into a contract with a search firm for the search for the superintendent and so in order to enter into that agreement um the board needs to um then needs to vote affirmatively to enter into the agreement and that's what the motion's about so kim why wouldn't that be presented with the motion rather than just a blind it could be it could be i think that's more just yes it absolutely could be that's the purpose of it yeah so maybe somebody could call the question again yes to amend the agenda i make a motion to amend the agenda purpose motion made by counting purpose to uh to so that the board of ed can vote to enter into a contract with a search firm i will second one okay motion made by kathy seconded by kate in a discussion deuteronomy uh kate sure joe britton yes rachel celestine aye kay canetta aye gladys cooper aye uh catherine hodgston hi rich ginelli yes uh kathy molinaro hi um al russo yes amy spolino hi and i see joe da silva on here now i snuck in when you weren't looking thank you thank you okay thank you emotions spoke so bad so for clarity's sake for me is would that come under the action item yes right okay so you might want to uh kim just for clarity did we take it up as the first item you you can you've moved to amend the agenda so you can put it i would put it right now since you're all on the topic that's that's okay are you ready for the motion yes that the board into into enter into an agreement with ray and associates for the purposes of providing consulting and search services for the selection and hiring of the superintendent of schools commencing july 1st 2021 under the terms and conditions as provided in ray and associates standard agreement second promotion made by kathy segna by a joke and a discussion on emotion cnn 9k do the roll call please joe britton yes rachel chaleski hi kate connetta aye gladys cooper yes joe da silva aye catherine hodgson hi rich genelli yes kathy molinero aye already yes amy spolino hi thank you motion so care do we have anyone from the nea to speak in good evening everyone good evening miss cooper how are you today hi erin how are you it's nice to see you all um i want to take a minute before i get started to just congratulate my friend curtis dara i am so so thrilled for him winning this award earning this award for his hard work with his students on a personal note i just want to say curtis and i share many students over the years and the students who some of them happen to be my favorite i know we're not supposed to have favorites but we inevitably do will always come back and tell me how he changed their lives in so many like small ways but essential and important ways that they remember forever i have high schoolers coming back and telling me you know things about curtis i have um fifth graders who have just met him for the first time saying they can't wait to go and work with him and and do the fun activities that he talks about so he's a he's a pretty amazing asset to danbury public schools and um many of you don't know that he's also a fierce lobbyist for our students and he testifies often at the state level on behalf of our students and he's a fierce student advocate so all of his work um he's one of our unsung heroes so it's nice to see um curtis get some recognition and we're just really proud of him and he's also a wonderful active member of nea danbury and does a lot of work with us too so we're thrilled thrilled for him so spring is in the air everyone and um as a third grade teacher i always kind of want to couch my remarks at these board meetings like a report card like a teacher writes a report card right so i'm going to start off with some really positive things tell you a few things that maybe that we need to talk about on a deeper level in the future and then i'll i'll wrap it up with some some more positive and exciting things so with spring in the air um some great things are happening in our schools and in case you haven't had a chance to see them personally i've been told that 381 seniors managed to get together and line up for their senior portrait which was a huge undertaking and administration did a fantastic job making that happen a little bit sense of normalcy coming back to the high school and kids starting to feel like you know there's light at the end of the tunnel the hatters class of 2021 finished their beautiful hand print mural if you haven't had a chance to see that it's amazing and the teachers doubted this that all all of the senior class would stand in line to put their hand print on this mural wall and everybody did they waited so it was worth it to them which is a cool thing to see proms graduations underway for planning it's exciting times and certainly normalcy that everybody welcomes in elementary schools this week walking through the halls kids are making mother's day cards and mother's day presents another sense of normalcy they're growing seeds and journaling in their notebooks about seed growth they're playing on the playground together they're doing outdoor play dates my own students are talking about getting together with masks outside for playdates kids are having baseball games together on the fields and talking about who is going to strike out the other one first hearing these conversations in school is just doing all of our hearts such such benefit and and making us all feel like we're moving forward some of the challenges that we're undergoing right now um espa testing and um our teachers once again have are working through unprecedented challenges for this state mandated administering of this test and the biggest challenge has been administering it to our students who have chosen to remain dl for this test administration and we've faced countless amounts of challenges and teachers have been so resilient with you know very little training to administer the test remotely they have been connecting with parents training and tutoring parents how to upgrade their system software at home and do all sorts of tech issues to get the kids on for their testing and so just really want to commend teachers for their effort in in getting this done our state union lobbied very hard to um have these tests negated for this year and and not have to put our students through it but we're all doing the best we can and kind of smiling and getting it done because you know it's something that we have to do but i hope everybody understands the amount of work that teachers are putting in and our students are are doing to have to sit through these tests during these times um so teachers are once again rising to the challenge and i am pleased to say um we can report really a return from spring break without any major disruptions which is also good news for danbury public schools some of the things that we want to talk about um some of our concerns are are looking at the future for next year our state union and our local indian union of course are lobbying fiercely against dual teaching for next year i don't think i would really have too many people in disagreement that dual teaching simultaneous teaching of remote students and students in front of you is not sustainable for a long term and it's not a positive thing for either student or teacher and nobody really benefits greatly from it so hopefully our governor will do the right thing i know there has been some preliminary discussions about um eliminating that and hopefully it will move forward officially in the coming weeks um that being said i do want to point out and something that you know perhaps we can have further conversations in the weeks to come i've been getting some feedback from some members that in some of their observations from supervisors that they're actually getting written up for not being proficient with dual teaching which is just unreasonable and unacceptable for something that we learned how to do or didn't really even learn how to do just had to start doing less than three months to go so you know i hope that's something that we can work towards in the coming weeks where that won't be happening and let teachers and students try to get through the last 30 plus days um doing the best they can in the situation that we have in front of us another more serious thing that i want to bring to the board's attention tonight is an issue that um came about in february and is something that we've been working through and we're working with not just the nea um executive board on this we're working with the secretaries union now the nurses union the para union and we're even having discussions with the teamsters with this as well it was an incident that involved the switchover to our payroll a new payroll and accounting system back in february and as a result one of the major problems that arose from this was a transfer made to our hsa accounts and then withdrawn so what that what happened for employees is on their statements it looked like a direct contribution and then a direct distribution so why is that important and why does that matter well that obviously could have very serious tax implications and um we've we've been working with the district on a remedy for this and i have to say working with kim thompson and dr sal on this has been wonderful um big picture we are very concerned that our finance director did not communicate in a transparent way to employees when this initially happened very disappointed that we had to find out um kind of by by accident about this and um and our finance director was very late to the party to try and come up with a red parody for this so what we're working for right now is making sure that we have um assurances from the district that there won't be any financial implications to our employees over this and we're working with miss thompson to um get some documentation to verify that and she's been great working with us on that so i just kind of want to put it out there that we work really hard to make sure that communication is always open between our union and our administration that's something that we've been forging over many many years and so it's very important when there are mistakes and that you know listen we're teachers we we live on trying to you know have have things rectified and people learn from mistakes but when mistakes feel like they're being covered up um that is concerning to us so we wanted to bring that and kind of go on record and bring that to the board's attention that that's kind of where we're at in this resolution process and i do want to say you know um you know we do not hold dr sal responsible for any of this and he has been wonderful in trying to help us come to a resolution for this but i wanted to go on record with that that being said the challenges that we face ahead in the months to come with planning for reopening in september um will be great we already know how huge of a task we all have and we already are kind of um talking about how we're going to have no summer yet again as we're trying to get things in place for our students in our schools next year so it's really important that you know labor and management continue to work together and continue to have that trustworthy relationship together and um i just want to put it out there that as you're discussing um selecting dr sal's replacement nea would like to be included in the interview process and have a role in that we really need to have a seat at the table to make sure that the best choice is made for all of our our kids and our employees and i think you know having the biggest voice in labor which you know representing almost almost uh you know what are we up to almost a thousand employees now kim right um so i think you know it's really important that you know you allow us to have that seat in that voice at the table dr style has always strived to keep labor and management working together and so i hope that will continue to be adaptable and flexible and communicate with honesty i always promise to wrap my remarks up with some good news um you know that we have been lobbying to make sure that our education budget gets fully funded and we had one rally at the last meeting that i spoke about um where dr zelena joined me and in advocating for fully funding the the budget we have another event coming out that we invite everyone to join us at it is um tuesday may 4th so next week at city hall the defenders of public education and danbury are having another rally abridge the gr bridge the gap to fully fund danbury public schools we have a lot of co-sponsors with this event the community for change is joining us jamberry's naacp is joining us connecticut students for a dream are joining us jamberry justice network is joining us western connecticut area labor federation afl-cio is joining us and the amalgamated transit union local 1622 is also joining us so the cool thing about this is with each one of these events our community network is growing and it's not just the teachers screaming for more money for our schools it's our entire community so please get the word out and help help us spread the word i know you're all doing the great work and lobbying for the funding on your end but if you can lend a voice to our rally and hopefully mayor cava will take that into consideration as the final decisions are being made for the budget thank you so much for listening and again happy spring and hopefully the positivity will continue to grow in the next few few weeks thanks everybody thank you aaron this is cooper yeah i've got a comment i find it appalling that an employee of the district is is publicly reprimanded by another employee we've never had this we have a code of ethics relative to the the comments in the public section and in my 15 years on the board i had never heard of anybody being thrown under the bus like this for a mistake that apparently is what's mentioning is a mistake and then prior to that asking for pleading for some sort of dual teaching stuff and the errors that they they made in order to get there i mean i don't know what's going on but this is unprofessional as far as i'm concerned this is not to be a form for that you go through the ranks within the district to the superintendent and then there is an executive committee if there are other issues but not to iron this stuff out in a public session i really don't think this is the form for it may i respond to that please since it's directly directly to me yeah yes we're not gonna oh we're perhaps perhaps background on the information will be given to you at a later date but we felt that with two and a half months of working through this and not getting um any any um edification or apology until probably three days ago we felt like it needed to go on public record that we are very concerned about the transparency that has been going on um with this one department all right um and i just could i just say something please as chairperson uh mr janella and aaron to me this is not the the right place or the time to have this discussion okay so i would just like to say that um chair um personal gladys if i might that i i yes and by the integrity of my work and i value the relationships tremendously with all the teachers in the district including you and and you know i can appreciate the concern i do hope that i'm able to show how it was rectified and it was rectified in the in the quickest manner possible and you know i do hope that you know you and i can speak about it in future in greater detail um but i i'm saddened to hear this in this forum i do stand by the integrity of the work i do and the work of my department and thank you gladys for allowing me to state that thank you you're welcome okay could we move on to the on the agenda dr leader cooper yes thank you for letting me speak tonight um i will echo erin said about the students they've been so adorable it's really cool to see them kind of in the spring mode it was so beautiful today and they were out and they were smiling and they're getting used to going outside with that mass break and taking it off a little bit it's been really nice to have more students in the buildings and we've really enjoyed it and espa is is is it is um i want to shout out the administrators who have spent countless hours planning and talking to the state and scheduling when kids are going to take it when they're not going to take it who's going to hand out hundreds of more computers i was just out front handing out computers to our distance learners who have their own computers that can't really use theirs because they need a special uh website it's been it's been um but we're getting through it as we always do we'll come out positive on the end and in true to form i will be sharing my screen so that tonight i have a presentation that was put together by our k5 esl bilingual um group headed by tammy um cordona and so can you all see the the supporting english learners on your screens yes i can perfect i'm going to play this [Music] now hmm [Music] chinese [Music] so [Music] you [Music] blue how do you do get your job [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'm [Music] you [Music] so thank you so much for letting me share that with you and have a great night and thank you again for always bringing us good news thank you thank you uh any of our students here hello can you all hear me yes hi so some stuff about sports this past month congratulations to dj donovan and anna rita lynch for being named the cx scholar athletes for 2021 they'll be awarded in early may the dhs hockey team took the division iii championship at at the south west conference which is great spring sports are also in full effect with the baseball softball volleyball lacrosse and tennis teams playing home in a gate home and away games every day so now about some more school related things the chipotle fundraiser organized recently was a success we appreciate the pto so much dhs in partnership with community health center inc is offering vaccinations to eligible seniors many students have gotten their first dose of vaccine already the class of 2021 met yesterday to take senior class pictures and leave a nice memento in the form of a handprint on the blue wall near the gym entrance due to the hard work of the pto it was an asynchronous learning day and the juniors took their sat we wish them good scores and good rest today many seniors are also committing to college and we couldn't be more happy for them on april 19th to the 23rd students took their connecticut seal of buy literacy test which is a fantastic opportunity the date for prom is may 28th from 7 pm to midnight at the amber room and tickets will be sold next week the senior trip will be friday june 4th to six flags new england hopefully students will will be able to get a semblance of their senior year back graduation planning is also underway which is a great feat and that is all i have for you thank you no thank you thank you jake does any boy members have any question for jake no okay thank you again jay do we have anyone from ace yes good evening board of ed members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence eight students participated in the 53rd annual danbury cultural commission poetry contest then congratulations to sabrina carvalho for being awarded third place in the contest the danbury cultural commission will hold the awards ceremony on may 20th the ace 2021 graduation ceremony will take place on wednesday june 10th at the broadview auditorium at 3pm a special thanks to eddie thomas the and the hospitality of the broadview team for allowing us to use their auditorium to be able to provide a graduation experience for our students families and staff planning for the ace renaissance fair is underway the this day of student engagement is being led by english teacher daniela esposito and social studies teacher kyle choccola english teacher melissa melissa lasky and social studies teacher robin melillo are beginning a quarter four humanities collaborative project exploring how popular culture has impacted our society with the english 3 and u.s history students a romeo and juliet virtual field trip was coordinated and organized by daniela esposito to take place on monday april 26th the opportunity was offered to 52a students thank you daniela the 18th annual ace coffee house is being organized by english teacher joanne tolls and her poetry students and will be held on thursday june 3rd ace will be hosting a spring career day on may 21st with virtual guest speakers to present careers that serve the community this special day is being organized by diana dinardo and dj jimenez lastly ace would like to publicly acknowledge and congratulate our most recent students of the week kaylee cartrill and jacob miner keep up the great work youtube thank you for allowing me to share the great things happening with the ace family this spring stay safe everyone and remaining strong thank you chris okay thank you chris amy would you do action item a sure i make a motion this is high school graduation date i make a motion that the board of education set the high school graduation date as june 10 2021 with a rain date on june 11 multiple ceremonies will be held due to cobia 19.
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um all right it is 5 30 p.m welcome everyone to another school reorganization team um meeting uh like always i want to start off by uh thanking you uh for being here uh thank you for being part of this process uh um so so so once again uh thank you for being here and thank you for participating and thank you for engaging and thank you for your ideas i had a fun um a fun last couple of days uh interacting with uh with you all a lot of you personally about your ideas and what you have brought forward um i want to take a little bit of time to explain uh what today is going to look like um and then also explain uh our next steps okay uh so number one uh over the course of um the last uh couple of days uh there have been a total of six new ideas for model three okay um i was very uh clear with everyone that in no way shape or form could they change the model the model had to remain intact well what does model 3 mean sixes one tk8 one middle school one high school now in terms of where the tk's tk sixes are or what the tk sixes are or the tka or the middle school or the high school it's everything is wide open and it's all fair uh but participants were not allowed to say okay well model three i want to change it back to two high schools or i want to add three middle schools that was not allowed because we had already decided on the model so there are six ideas for model 3 that keep model 3 as we had decided and we had agreed upon for model 4 there are four new ideas of what model 4 might look like and when i say new ideas i mean ideas different than what we had originally presented uh tonight we are going to i think i was able to reach out to most of you if i if i if i did it i apologize and don't worry about it we we have an escape clause if that's what you need but we have asked um the creators of these ideas to walk us through these ideas right so this is what i did i moved this school here because of xyz i moved this school down here because of this i thought that it'd be better if we can do this school and so they're just going to walk us through their plan their idea we as a team are going to be excited that there are folks who took the time to present new ideas to us that doesn't mean that we agree with those ideas but that means that we applaud we thank we and we're appreciative that people went out of their ways to think about new and fresh ideas okay so we're gonna let them walk us through those ideas again we're showing appreciation for that and we're lit we're being good listeners to understand their ideas not to judge not to react but just to understand them and we have if if we don't run out of time we have 10 of those ideas tonight six for model three four for model four and that's the objective of tonight that's it to listen and understand these 10 ideas there might be depending because this is live television there is no script this can go so many different ways and so there might be an opportunity for clarification and questions i don't know we'll see how that how that plays out as we go along that's all we're doing tonight let me tell you next steps after this tonight you might have been an author of an idea you're one of the 10 people or one of the 10 ideas tonight maybe you did not author an idea tonight but no matter if you did or if you did not between the between the end of this meeting and sunday night we are going to accept edit read like pull outs like um i had that idea but after listening to other ideas i my idea is no longer it makes no sense or whatever that may be or again some something inspired you tonight and now you have now you have a different idea so between tonight and sunday night this team will be allowed to submit edits delete or a brand new idea that we want considered again just like i was able to have a conversation with a lot of you that does not mean we are altering the model the model is done congratulations to this team good matter and different you know what that was our best thinking and we should be proud of that now the reason we want sunday night is because we want to get in front of you of this team to be able to share all of these ideas or or the the the edits or the deletes in a in an early timely manner so you have some time to process what has come to you i will summarize for you uh in an email like hey model 3.4 the author of that model has decided that after listening to everything that idea is no longer valid or they don't they they want to pull that model or you know what after listening uh they really like what the other person did so they've changed it so now they've swapped these schools you know what whatever that may be after listening to to each other's presentations right then when we get to wednesday and again this is live tv right so all of this can change this is just right now what we are thinking when we get to wednesday we will start engaging in a protocol to take these six model threes which could go which could which could grow or could decrease depending on what happens between now and sunday night and then working on a protocol to start narrowing that down to a model three same thing with model four taking the model fours four of them that are being presented tonight again that could go to five models or six that could also go down to two i do not know what happens between now and sunday but the idea is that we get to wednesday and we start narrowing that model 4.
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there was no motion about revisiting it for summer school but can't we make it when miss densmart says future agenda items can't we stay as a future agenda item summers people need to enroll in summer school now really so really the math summer school as a future agenda item no but she's saying parents are deciding whether or not to enroll their students now now so if we're going to make this supper expire on this month on the 20th we need to be clear one way or the other whether or not it's supposed to continue for summer school or or if it is i believe it's like football conditioning starts sometime in may or like freshman you know football camp uh madam president the week the school ends on a thursday the following week we start with athletic um camp's athletic conditioning right and bandcamp you start with band camp um there's a theater campaign as well so there are activities and because bands not a sport i mean they don't really get that aia accommodation oh but i'm telling you it's terrible yeah being outside marching with your instrument it's brutal it is and to put that mask on top of it is unacceptable and it's really abusive to our kids so the um the motion that says uh to continue the mandate until the requirement protocol mass program until may 20th um again that would imply that after may 20th that's no longer in effect um i would ask okay but i'm probably not going to vote for that either way i would ask that at some point administration be given the autonomy to make decisions based on summer activities i understand that it would be a good conversation for the board to meet again and then make a board vote about summer school and then again in the fall and moving forward there's some wisdom in allowing administration to manage the protocols with continued conversation as we have been doing with the board well remember we have a work study session on may 5th also next wednesday that's next wednesday i think because we didn't get to hear people speak tonight and then we had so many emails about people's opinions and feelings about masks that um rather than just letting it expire and then people are wondering well how do i know whether to sign up for summer school are we having math so we're not having math do you feel like there should be some formality and letting the community know okay this is what the boards decided on summer school for mass so then then they know okay do i want to move forward and send my student or do i not um and they can start planning your administration can start planning so um so i don't think we should take that matter of order point of order that mrs grant made the motion she could amend that motion and otherwise you would need to carry it's been motioned and seconded you'd have to move forward with the original motion if the person who made the motion still chooses to modify that and become seconded again and that could be emotional why don't we keep it real simple and vote on my motion and then make another motion for summer school you can do that or you could just submit your motion the same sentence okay write it down i will amend my motion to say that the mass mandate stay in place until may 20th and that for summer school summer school because wait a second hold on hold that thought because they don't have to wear a mask for rigorous outdoor activities outdoor activity so rigorous outdoor activity would include band no that's not right we're talking about summer school and it wouldn't include the camps happen after may 20th huh can't stop them after may 20th right because i thought that okay we're only on summer school right okay all right here's the amended motion motion to continue the district's mass protocol through may 20 2021 and and that for summer school math by students or just the optional director that maths are optional for summer school and is this for staff or student level it's not a good question um so the difference between summer school is you're not addressing the gap in between so if you say an optional thereafter then it addresses the camps that happen before summer school starts and after may 20th if you only want to talk about summer school there's still uncertainty about what the requirements are during that gap time right and also by making the motion now without hearing from the same parents or community or staff members that would have wanted to speak tonight we're kind of making that decision on optional or not without giving them the opportunity to come and speak their opinions so i wonder if rather than making a specific motion of summer school which sounds like according to dr kellis doesn't really capture everything that needs to because we have these other activities going on that we just that we just say that the board will yes maybe can we just put it on an agenda prior to the end of the year and talk about i don't think it's going to change could i make a simultaneous motion you'd have to vote on this one first and then we can have a second one thank you but um so take summer school you're just going to take summer school out it's not because it's not all inclusive it doesn't capture everything that we need to address especially that gap that we'll get from summer activities i don't care i'm not going to move forward but i also want to make it clear that we have the option to lift the mandate after the school year i'm going to vote to oppose it too i just don't want us to lock ourselves in we're not talking next school year we're just trying to get through this school year i know i know but my concern is that it'll just keep going it'll just keep going so whatever there will be a new fear a new fear a new fear a new fear i mean just one after the other it just snowballs it's just gonna snowball so may 12th is a board meeting can't you say we can be in discussion on mass mandate after may 20th we'll be held on may 12th will we i'm sorry what they don't have to wear it when they're out we have not made that policy change yet i haven't made the policy change i thought wait a second now it's when they're engaging in rigorous activity or recess right lunch and recess before and after school we don't regulate blood and recess or the times that they're outside unless they're walking between classes all i'm concerned about is we're going to be in the same situation in two weeks from now that we are today so i don't whatever we decide i feel like we should at least have a good direction of where we're going for summer school rather than just leave everybody hanging in the wind because that's where you say may 12th then you you say that you're there mandy is going to be kept in place through may 20th that district activities after may 20th beginning may 21st will be discussed at the may 12th inning i mean it's an option i don't know that will address the need for like this can't keep going on and on and on we have to discuss it that's going to pin us down to a date um and then that's when we can really think about okay is it summer school is it fall is it what i feel like we're just going to have a repeat of tonight's scenario i mean i'll do whatever the majority goes whatever whatever i'm wrong besides that's fine but i feel like we're just gonna have another repeat of tonight's scenario if we do if we have another vote for summer activities i mean we can do that if that's what everybody wants to do that's perfectly fine but i feel like it's just the process is going to keep coming up the same well i don't think so i think we just right now i just want to get us through the school year we haven't you know i just want to get us through the school year that's it and things change i mean we all know that things are the numbers are lower things are changing as we go so we can discuss summer school and then who knows like by next fall i mean everybody is projecting as more people are vaccinating that mass and everything's going to go away yeah there might be another virus that's a whole other story that we have no control over but for now we just have to get through this during school year right and so i definitely don't want to repeat it a regular motion does everybody want to amend that motion or are we going to just vote on mass at the end of the school year i'm just going to say one more thing so at the lab the end of the last school year we didn't have this heat we didn't start in the dead of the heat you know in the fall like we normally do because we had that delay our kids are not used to this when these masks get wet it blocks airflow and our kids are going to sweat it's going to block that airflow and i don't care what kind of medical background anyone here has or half a dozen it's a fact and i i've got three kids in the school district i also have one with a chronic health condition with a suppressed immune system a medically chemically suppressed immune system so i know what i'm talking about too and i would even rather have him not in a mask so that his lungs can function properly and i just i take this very personally i'm pretty passionate about it and i know we all have our hills that we're going to die on and this is it for me so that's just wanted to say my piece we haven't crossed the hill yet for boundary changes i do a great crystal that i don't want to i don't want to have a repeat of tonight too especially if nothing's got the only reason why i was thinking about having a specified date is just so people aren't feeling like as long as they are appropriate they have a venue in which to speak more directly i just don't like to take those options away from people but i get what you're saying too yes it would be killing it i'm just trying to find a way to appease people feeling like you know we don't want to just be out there floating someday in the bike we're going to talk about it we'd be actually giving them that so they'd feel like they were heard and they had that opportunity but um yeah i guess i just don't want to feel like we're comfortable we are continually moving the goal posts you know i don't i don't want to say oh we'll deal with that next time and i understand what you're saying you know you want to get parent input you want to give them a chance you want to give them another chance to come back and tell us you know exactly how they want us to vote you want to give them that other chance i guess i just feel like they're just saying oh we'll deal with it later we'll deal with that later and summer's going to get here before we know it it's like like there's literally four or five weeks of may and then bam we are in summer activities and we've only got we've got the 12th we've got our meeting on the 12th and that's the only meeting we have scheduled before all the summer begins okay so okay so at least we have another meeting but i i i don't know if i was if i was that parent i wouldn't want to know i wouldn't want to be i wouldn't want to wait till the last minute to know i don't know that's me but like i said we can we i feel like if that's what we want to do if we want to push those back to may 12th that's fine i feel like we're just going to keep going around the same hamster wheel yeah i get that i i don't care either way about that i just uh i do think though it could be a moving target i mean that's why i wouldn't want to say the mathematic would be possibly gone forever um may 20th because heaven forbid things get worse and we're in august and things have gone way way south well i can't say that then yeah let's just always have it optional i mean there's just new information coming constantly like it always was before and i just think we always need to make informed up-to-date decisions on the data that we have so that's my only hesitation we're just saying okay as of the 20th and never have to worry about marrying mask if you don't want to i mean when you see the data that we have are you basing it on the five cases we've got or are you talking about our our city our state are talking about the department of health the cdc as far as what their national level well the department of health arizona department of health so at this point now there's a point of order if you want miss grant wants to um proceed with her original motion or she can modify it to um say optional after may 20th that can be done or she can remove her motion from the table but if she wants to keep it as is then it would be appropriate for the mad president to call for the vote so what is the motion would you like me to read i let's just i think because there's so much i still haven't figured out whether what what to do about something summerslam if we're going to talk about summer school on may 12th then my motion is going to stand with we will leave the mass mandate in place until in the schools until may 20th now that doesn't say that if if after let's just please don't that there's not another whatever whatever whatever that we can't come back in august that's not for connection in august to reinstate math that's just saying getting us through the school year through may 20th that's promotion so basically we're making this motion just to because it's evie no i disagree with that statement all together this is not easy at all i've done my research as well i have been looking into all of them i feel for every parent who's sending their kids to school but a lot of parents you know again they're looking at the big picture protocol and i understand what you're saying about your son i get that i just think that for right now we've done it for 200 and 150 days 180 and i'm not you know we only have 16 days i'm glad that you feel comfortable making health care decisions for my child i'm not making a health care decision for your child this has been a this has been a protocol in the district since last august september that wasn't my decision i wasn't on the board well it sounds like we're just making it but we keep going around in the circle we've never had a mandate that the board collectively never made a mandate i understand that okay we were following one from the governor so we had absolutely no control over it i understand that now we do yeah yeah so he did say it's up to districts thank you my statement stands yeah we're making you're making a health care decision for my child myself i'm making a health care decision for all the kids in the district because like i said we have to fly at that 30 000 foot i'm saying that we should give that power to the parents and give them that choice and again i'm saying that well we can we just have to vote on it let's just vote because we can't confirm about this and then we'll discuss summer school and madam president that would be your responsibility you called for the vote well i just said i'm calling for the vote okay so i have a motion by joe grant to motion to continue the district mask protocol through may 20th 19 i mean 20 may 20th 2021 sorry seconded by tracy to saw your sink bills okay vote is online maybe do we need to refresh again uh i don't know mine didn't pop joe i'm still waiting for years did yours come up no okay do you see the votes in front of you does anybody okay so i know you guys don't see it i will read them off do uh don densmore no christine pritchard yes tracy sorry your sink bill yes crystal chefin no joe grant yes motion passed moving on to agenda item h4 oh gosh we still have three i'm sorry dr kelly thank you madam president members of the board and cabinet um this is the second read for section 10 there was a request last time the the policy section referring to sex offender notification be modified and you will note that the language that was added says the language added says that it's not a sex offender notification as the child abuse reporting but this responsibility may not or this obligation may not be delegated thank you are there any questions or discussion about this item we'll make a motion to approve the revisions to policies within section 10 10.35 through 10.69 as presented second seconded by tracy sawyer did it come up no not yet oh there it just did okay i refreshed it too oh come on it plays games with you well i don't have my little mouse either and i will fly over here okay we have all board members voting yes motion has passed all right and item five dr kellis land president members of board members of cabinet uh this is a second reading for sections one through eight and there was some conversation and i believe section two and three um some modifications have been made um some recommended language has been added and if you want to review that and have the discussion i'll entertain a motion if there's no discussion um i move that the governing board approve the revisions to policies within sections one through eight as presented second hmm there you go okay although members voted yes motion has passed end of age six dr thank you madam president members of the board members of the cabinet and mr dean will introduce this item dr dean excuse me because i'm struggling and this evening we bring forward uh to you the calendar recommendation for the next two year walk for 2022 2023 and 2023 2024 it's difficult to believe that we're actually talking that far out but we are the calendar formats that are in front of you follow the same template that we've used for the last several years the template has worked successfully for the district um there are a couple of differences with the two calendars that i want to point out this is the first time that we've been able to balance height balance semesters exactly at 90 days apiece so we're pleased about that additionally we are able to provide a full week of fall break and a full week at thanksgiving as well and so those two years have that option and we believe that we found a formula now that will allow that to continue to move forward you will notice that for 2022 2023 um that graduation date is established and that for 2023 2024 is to be determined we have not yet received a graduation date from the stadium for that year and so once we received that we would bring that back to the governing board additionally we are requesting a change to the next school year calendar 2021 2022 which is a very small change and that is to include the middle schools into the day before winter break as final exam days to be on par with the high schools and so we're requesting that change as well as adoption of the other two calendars which would give us three years calendar on the books and allow parents the opportunity to look ahead um three years at a time it is our goal to continue to have a process bring forward or bring a calendar every year to continue to have three years on the books at a time which will help parents um as they look ahead to them and i'd be happy to answer any questions i just have one question well yeah um on the next the i can't believe it the 22-23 um is the graduation date now we're into may today this year it's may 19th now it's may 23rd is that because of the whole week at thanksgiving um madam president mrs grant our graduation date is somewhat dictated to us by the venue that we utilize and the venue goes in an order to allow schools to choose based upon who's used their facilities the longest out of the six school districts that utilize the stadium we're currently fourth in that list so by the time they get to us there's limited days and we do the best that we can to select a date within our calendar so then you pick that dead work backwards yes okay thank you my question to you dr dean is how did you actually come up with doing the 90 and the 90 because that's very difficult what formula did you use well in working through my dissertation apparently i got a little wiser in math i'm kidding with that of course but we finally uh you know we finally operated from a perspective that that was a priority to us and even ironically even an 89 91 day split is not as effective for our high schools as 99 and our teachers really want to see that 90 90 piece so we just were able to finally calculate an opportunity to allow us to get to that point and then again we discovered a way that we could schedule the calendar to get those both of those weeks of break in in the fall which both our teachers and administrators are very thankful for currently with the two days of thanksgiving we have a great amount of absence in those two days and so that's a positive congrats on finding that formula because it's it's difficult make a motion to approve revisions to put um i'm kind of gosh careful the flies careful the flies flying around my nose just keeps sorry want me to do it yes okay i know that the governing board approved the adoption of the school calendars for the 2022 2023 and the 2023 and 2024 school years as presented and revisioned to the 21 excuse me 2021 2022 school year a lot of 20.
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this was presented to the board previously last week and you've had several days to look at it if you have any questions be happy to answer those questions i used to have a question um clarification on 11.14 community use of school facilities um just making sure that we're still um ensuring that parent or the student needs continue to take priority over community needs and community groups as far as for example use of our auditoriums or buildings won't be opened up for community groups until it's after availability is determined once the student events are calendared are we still doing it madam president mrs pritchard that is correct and as we look to expand our community access to facilities throughout the district whether it's playgrounds or auditoriums or what but be it students will always come first thank you i had if there's no other questions or discussion we'll move to um item h2 sorry so sorry oh my gosh g2 big difference dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we're very excited this evening to introduce you to some more of our very very talented students and mr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening we're very excited to present to the governing board information related to the dysart student broadcasting program or better known dsb live the planning for this new program that started this year began prior to the covid pandemic outbreak however it turned out to be incredibly timely to be able to provide services to our community at no cost and so with that i'm going to turn it over to the director of the program and that is brian yoder and mr yoder the floor is yours thank you dr dean madam president members of the board dr kellis and cabinet my name is brian yoder the coordinator of student broadcast and i've had the luxury of working with four amazing film and tv instructors and their students here this year if we are without them we wouldn't be here in this position so before we get started we'd love to turn it over to a video that was created by the willow canyon students and uh we have a little bit of wrestling action for you this afternoon and welcome dsp live student broadcast here for the women's basketball game good evening and welcome to shadow ridge high school this was the first year of dysart student broadcasting and boy did we get a lot done [Music] as a team of schools dysart willow canyon valley vista and shadow ridge live streamed over 150 events these events showcase the academic artistic and athletic talents of dysart district students shoots it what a goal off the crossbar and in for shadow ridge gonna throw down this and it is caught by eight should be a touchdown pike tinsel for three bang this student-led initiative gives us an opportunity for hands-on work and learning we had student announcers student camera operators and student directors we also had students creating graphics and animations so we could put on such a great show using industry technology students were able to bring live sports to parents faculty and staff during covid restrictions [Music] we were here to help our school community during these difficult times each school now has its own vimeo web page a central place for teachers parents and students to go to find engaging live streams and cool content created just by us we hope to grow in the future sharing even more live events and stories about our district to the surprise community thank you and instead of you guys listening to me tonight we thought it would be fun for the students to be able to share their perspective and what they were able to do so tonight's first stop is high school hello dr callison members of the board my name is andres aguilar i am a senior student in film and tv at dysart high school beside me is miss haley linderman our film and tv and dsp instructor here are a few things i would like to take away from my time in broadcast we are not only just a team i call our team a family we learn a lot from post-production pre-production um the ideologies behind film in general how to work the graphics and most importantly the chords so important dsb live is comprised of all four high schools dysart high shadow ridge valley vista and willow canyon high schools we are on schedule to have completed over 200 live events in the areas of arts academics athletics and we will be completing high school graduations at the cardinal stadium on may 19th each instructor will be the producer for their own students graduation and students will be running the whole productions themselves all these graduations can be seen on vimeo.com thank you and as they transition to the next speaker i might just indicate that they are dsp live students are filming as we speak so practice in action hello my name is miranda mathis from shadow ridge high school and standing behind me is my dsb live instructor mr rodney moore i am a senior student at shadow and i am planning on attending asu in the fall to study sports journalism i always knew i wanted to write in the future but i didn't know where to take that dsb live has helped me realize exactly what i want to be involved in and that was the sports side of journalism dsb has been a great opportunity for me and i've learned so much about what goes on into live broadcasts and different career fields i could possibly take on in the future one of the essential pieces of our program is that it is student-centered student-driven you will see an adult play-by-play commentator at our games with the student serving as a color commentator we went through a training at the beginning of the school year and the adults have helped us learn our craft and broadcasting like myself some students are moving on to colleges and universities to do film and tv and we will rise above our class due to our experiences in dsp live this school year hi everyone i hope you're doing great my name is caleb berwin and i'm a junior at valley vista high school unfortunately mr martinez couldn't make it today because of an anniversary dsp live coming to valley visa has been an incredible experience i've taken on more of a leadership role i've been able to mentor students and make more friends than i could have ever imagined and now i have a potential career pathway lined out for me it's it's crazy what we've been able to do in just a year alone valley visto alone has made 103 events completed by the end of this year you can check them all out at dysart.org slash dsb live this is the first year out of a three year build and i'm excited to see where it goes next thank you evening my name is lolo crowell and i am a sophomore at willow canyon high school with me today i have my film and broadcast as well as my dsb instructor miss allison tickemeyer throughout my time in dsb i have come across many great opportunities for example this year i was able to conduct an interview with mr matthew earl jones our film commissioner for state of arizona and it was such a fun experience to hear what he does and the advice he gave to students in high school who might want to take work in the film industry with the opportunities given this year it gave me the benefit to open more before i came into dsb i was a very shy person and always hid within my friend group but that has all changed thanks to dsb the list could go on and on but here are a few things we as a community have accomplished this year daisar student broadcasting dsb live was developed in july of 2020 we created a unique logo and put ourselves on the map with student broadcasting in the state of arizona we have four high school instructors with the support of over 124 students just in the past year we have done over 200 live events we have connections with the city of surprise and 18 businesses to share our stories each week we share a story with surprise tv to air on their channel as well we have done productions in the arts academics and athletic areas the list could go on we are excited to move our work to the next level next school year as we hope to welcome in more students i would like to thank you for your time and please welcome our director of cte to the podium good evening madam president dr kellet's members of the board and community when we talk about career and technical education this is career and technical education whenever we talk about dsb live and what these kids are able to do after school with the equipment that we've been able to purchase for them and the work based learning that they're getting listen to them doesn't that get you excited it gives me chills when i'm sitting listening to them talk and you know bringing brian on and and coordinating this after school um even during school sometimes we're hoping to get some of those great events going on but whenever you look at what we have going on and brian congratulations on a very successful year dr dean thank you for your support and the board for your support of this program because this has given our kids work-based learning that they truly needed with the tv broadcasting so thank you all so much madam president members of the board dr kellis and cabinet that's our our report on dsp live thank you governor members if there's no questions and we'll be happy to move to the next piece thank you very much i just i just wanted to add um i was just so impressed i had the opportunity to be involved with the heat wave i don't know dr kalis or mr hicks if you're familiar with that program but um i was invited to be a part of that and just observing the students um coordinate that whole program and their their knowledge and their professionalism was just amazing to watch so i have heard firsthand experience with that you guys are just awesome and just incredible that you're able like at your age in high school you know to be able to just create programs and run them professionally and just have that knowledge base at your ages is just amazing so i'm so glad to have you all in our district writing that program it's wonderful so thank you madam president if i could also just add as was mentioned in one of the presentations um it's a three-year build for the program it's the objective that within those three years we have this professional program to the standard that the sponsorships will fund the entire program and so it will be a self-sustaining extraordinary experience for student learning thank you thank you next we have item g3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening the board will receive some information about what's happening in our community as it relates to our district and the the growth in our district and mr ken hicks will introduce this item thank you very much dr kellis good evening madam president members of the board superintendent of dr kalas colleagues and community members let me i'd like to introduce mr kevin shipman our planning administrator and he's just going to go through a report on our growth within our district and some demographic information thank you ken president dinsmore members of the board dr kell's cabinet and the public um as we discuss our district enrollment let's first consider the biggest drivers of that growth that we see in the district so this is an illustration of the maricopa association of governments um projections for our district's population over the next um 30 years the green bars our population and then the blue is the total growth and what's noteworthy here especially is that there's approximately 35 000 new residents expected within the district from that growth over the next 10 years so again as we think about those biggest drivers of those large enrollment increases that we could see certainly the population growth that comes from the housing boom is is responsible for that this chart displays our k8 enrollment history and forecast of course this year as we saw nationwide districts and schools saw a decrease from the the outcome of the pandemic as kindergartners were withheld homeschoolers and other students just weren't present for school so as you can see our our enrollment forecast is a little bit lower based on that change that we saw in the last year however there's a lot of uncertainty as to what happens in the future and as you can see we are expected to grow several thousand k-8 students in the next few years here so and of course we'll be monitoring this closely especially trends in the near term so that we can better understand what's going to happen post pandemic with our enrollment so as we look at enrollment and enrollment capacity it's helpful that we just briefly define that so this is a hypothetical set of classrooms and as we look at what the sfb the school facilities board defines as capacity they're just looking at a straight square footage rate for each school with some excluded spaces and then our architects or engineers who develop a school they'll have a design capacity and then of course there's exceptions to that capacity right when we have a kindergarten room that may only have a capacity let's say 27 students and then of course and this is noteworthy here is that we have special programs where we may have a room that has only 10 or 12 students that's absolutely fully utilized and it's important that we point that out just as we look at what we're defining as capacity and how we're utilizing the facilities that we have available so so you can see that the school facilities board says we're at 68 of our capacity and as we look at design capacity and then our actual utilization based on what's actually going on in our classrooms and our facilities you can see we're right about 78 and these are current numbers so pre pandemic we were more maybe 82 or so so i think it's important to note that as we look at our enrollment and then this is the same information it's arcade facility utilization by school so you can see for the most part our schools are pretty full this is interesting because if you look at one particular school like let's say you were to look at countryside elementary for example if you looked at the sfb or design capacity numbers you might think that oh that's that school has you know 60 enrollment or something like that but really when you look at how that space is being utilized and where we place our programs there's definitely more utilization there than you might consider so so this is a map of our development activity we monitor this regularly it doesn't probably look too much different than when we showed you last year certainly there's a lot more in the pipeline right now that's the pre-development activity before they begin to break ground and definitely it's really noteworthy that despite the pandemic there's a significant increase in all of this activity there's a huge pent-up demand nationwide for housing obviously that's driven uh the price is up and so you can see especially in the north part of the district and then in the southwest there's a lot of growing growth occurring so um and then we're going to take a quick look at these three particular schools and look at their forecasted enrollment over the next five years so sonoran heights and mountain view are in the southwest portion of the district and certainly their enrollment this year took a bump we'll expect to see the majority of that return or perhaps more and then both of those schools in the next five years are expected to see some pretty significant growth we do know that sonoran heights is merging with rancho gabriela elementary school as part of our middle school k4 model so that will help absorb some of that growth but again we'll be following that area closely just to make sure we're we're keeping track of the growth that's occurring and then asante preparatory academy so in the last year or two we had some very large numbers forecasted up there and despite the pandemic we're really seeing healthy growth up there and the building and construction activity is really significant so obviously you can see that we expect over 2 000 students up in that northern area here in the next five years so so as we look at that development activity and then this map also just includes where we have our k-8 sites as well as where we have existing properties or identified or pending school sites that are identified in a plan so i think this useful just uh as a reminder of the work that we continue to do where we are making sure we're positioning the district for future growth and making sure we're ready for that new building activity as it occurs this is our high school enrollment forecast so we've been working with the state or i should say having conversations with the state about maybe do does our high school growth trigger the need for a high school that the state would would fund in the next 10 years and certainly there's i think maybe more uncertainty with those high school numbers given the pandemic so we'll be following really closely next six months see what happens with our enrollment trends so we can get a better idea of what's going to happen with high school in the next five or 10 years the high school capacities are a little more ambiguous because you have different periods you have labs you have just a lot of more moving parts and so i think there's a little more room there to place kids but you can see we we definitely had a dip in enrollment in our high schools and um all the schools are are relatively full they have healthy enrollment populations and we'll continue to keep a close eye on them so and with that i'd stand for any questions i do have one question mr shipman i'm glad you understand the nuts and bolts of all this stuff um but my one question has to do with um the capacity or let me see the projection the forecasted five-year enrollment you have sonoran heights you have mountain view and then we have asante so we know that that development out there excuse me several developments that are out there um will continue and continue and is that correct in regards to 2500 or more than because our schools can only take so much before we would have to do something else with that particular area so you're projecting more than 2500 yes that's right madam president member sawyer st bell so um there is uncertainty i would be surprised if that number is somewhere at let's say 1500 or 1800 we do expect that student population that is for the entire boundary for asante and so there's all the development around ahsante but then we have the cortland properties and then we have rancho mercado which is up in the very corner of the district that most people don't notice but we're we're talking about thousands of homes coming up here in the near term so yeah that's a reasonable number um and if if you can you can drill down to the data see the permits lighting up see all the activity and the and the pre-development activity that's going on or the grading um yes so so that does pose an important question of of what happens when we get to that point so because our schools um i mean before when it was desert moon was um had the capacity of 1100 i believe so what are we going to do in order to look at this and decide in regards to boundaries or another school what dr kellis and the president sorry sink bill you mentioned a couple of those options right there is boundary changes could be an option adding an additional school could be an option what typically happens when the neighborhood grows and surprises the poster child for growth over over the last 10 15 years when we were building sometimes two and sometimes three schools a year to keep up with capacity we're starting to see evidence of that in certain parts of the district certainly not district-wide but while we could change boundaries um the state would say that they look at the entire district and all of our portfolio of buildings to determine if there's still capacity you saw a chart that had a lot of green along the top that's what the state would say you still have empty seats in these schools now it's not reasonable it's possible but we could bus students from el mirage or from asante to el mirage or from asante to the center of the district but in real in reality when you have growth you build schools that's a huge number that is a huge number when the schools can only hold 1200 maybe so that that's a real big concern because five years is going to be here within a matter of minutes i think something that you may um see around our neighborhood as you see well there's a new school right there that just got built and there's another new school right there that just got built those are not districts dysart schools those are charter schools that don't have to go through the same process that the district goes through so they can just take out a loan and build a school without any voter approval even though they're still using tax dollars to build those schools and staff them so as the district goes and looks at the growth and the potential need for the future we would look at right now starting those conversations as was mentioned with the state facilities board to determine let's get ahead of this and let's let's hopefully get some properties acquired as soon as possible as i remember the time when we were building like you said building two to three schools a year and we just had that big it was just a big boom of growth and poor mr thompson was just running around here like his head was cut off it was a very busy time and i just don't want to get caught i do understand the capacity as far as the district as a whole but this can be very concerning with a five-year projection so something to think about well and just looking at the five years i mean there's no way we can wait if this is correct you know that first line or that second line is at a thousand and you know it goes up from there so so how soon will we be looking at because i know several years ago we were saying that even though our our buildings were meant to hold like 1100 students once you get to about 950 to a thousand it starts impacting quality of instruction just too many kids in classrooms and buildings so how soon will we be looking at because i mean even if it just gets to a thousand just barely i mean that's that's just barely up the graph right here so how soon will we need to be looking at some of these alternatives we can't wait five years madam president miss pritchard um thank you for that question it is a uh a weighty matter for sure because we're not talking about what ifs um the ground has been broken and the the framing has started the the families haven't moved in but the framing has started on all of these homes in these very hot spots as far as how soon it usually from pencil to pencil and paper putting design plans in place to the first day when we open the doors is about a three-year process so if we were to anticipate as you looked at that chart for asante where they're pushing 2 800 students clearly we're not going to put 2 800 students in one school it would be within two to three years that we're already pushing probably 1800 and then over the next couple years after that uh being up to nearly three thousand so now is the time as as i just mentioned we can't just go to bank and get a loan to build a school and we don't have 25 million dollars to build an elementary school and that's uh through voter initiatives that we're able to purchase and build those new schools and um it's it's unfortunately the process that we have at our disposal but i mean so then therefore since that's a much longer process are we looking at boundary changes soon for that particular area madam president miss pritchard if necessary that would be the solution there's another solution where we can increase the capacity of a school by moving portable classrooms put them on a trailer haul them out there and plant them on a playground that's also expensive because then you have to run all the utilities underground and overground to make those those facilities part of a school we call them portables or modules modulars so there are interim things boundary changes is one i know that the board has some members of the board have experienced boundary changes and parents like to go to their neighborhood school and when that's not possible it becomes very frustrating so we'll address this though one way or another before it gets to the part where it impacts student learning so you know before we are at 1500 kids which i mean it's even too many right that's what i'm saying before you get to that point but 1500 compared to 2 500 sounds like you know way in advance but we can't even get to that point so is this something we're going to be looking at over the next school year madam pritchard madame president miss pritchard we're looking at it now but as far as coming to the board with recommendations for boundary changes um we should anticipate something similar or if we can buy another year with portable classroom movements it will be within the next 12 to 18 months i just have one question i mean along the same line i mean we're talking asante and the growth out there but that's what the assumption that these are all kids k through eight what about the high school i mean what what's the impact going to be on our high schools i mean i realize we don't know when somebody buys a house if they have children how old their children are but what's the impact going to be then on our high schools as well mad president grant even though we don't know for certain we have formulas that can pretty accurately predict the population of kinder and high school students so yes we can look at the demographics as we are very very frequently and readily and we can make those same projections ouch any other questions okay thank you very much moving to item g4 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item good evening good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members thank you very much for allowing me to present the arizona auditor general school district spending report this was a report that was concluded i want to say february 28th but i think it was emailed out to the board the first week in um in march um i think i put a email out to the board just a little quick little summary of some things and highlights um i think i was scheduled to uh present on this earlier but um such packed agendas we've moved this back a little bit so this is just really brief the really good news is is that a lot of our projections when i show you the rainbow report we're all spot on so congratulations to miss meridel spidel and her miss lisa smith who did all the projections and told me here's what we expect is going to show on the auditor general report and they were exactly on on every single one of them so uh when i come to our um to the rainbow report you'll you'll see that one part so here's the beginning of the report just to highlight state the the state level per pupil and they talk about the teacher average teacher salary increased to 54 814 uh 13.3 increase over 2017's but short of the 15 cumulative goal this in and of itself just highlights and summarizes the issue we have a lot of school districts with the auditor general report the assumption is is that we didn't give a 15 raise which we did give a 15 raise but they're making the assumption that every single employee stays in every single district so that everybody got the 15 raise we gave a 15 raise but you have people retiring you have people leaving they come in at a lesser amount they don't get the full raise in that sense and and so there's movement in that and so that is um part of why we have problems with some of these auditor-general reports they make big grandiose statements and then walk away and not go down into the detail of that um so i've just uh snipped a few of the part of the report i put at your up uh by your on your desk um there um the full report it's just a one pager they're required to do it every year we send our books our general ledger to the auditor general after you approve our afr we send them everything by in october they put it all together and then report out on all school districts this is just school districts so charter schools don't apply they're not having to require and present this information and so the first one we normally look at is our classroom spending and a lot of times i'm just really looking at it doesn't say a ton of contacts this is per pupil um but i do look at the total operational so if you look at the district we did increase our spending we did get the as we were talking about the 20 for 20 by 2020 and additional funding and inflationary funding so we went up from 81.75 to 85 85.85 but you could see per our peer averages and the state averages we are still below our and the peer averages is a large group um so we are well i think technically with the auditor general categories is extra-large and we um with our size we're one of the 10 largest districts in the state and so they categorize us with those and you can see where we spend a little bit less than them and from a state average we spend a lot less we get a lot less so a lot of times i'm saying we do more with less in that sense and as you've heard from previous presentations we have equalized funding in arizona so the same student gets the same amount everywhere else it's all the auxiliary funding which could be additional voter approved incentives either a capital override a bond a bond project and what that does is a lot of times that picks up the capital load and then districts will transfer over the capital into mno and then spend it there and sometimes there's districts with higher poverty there's districts receiving more funds more grants and so that accu that makes up for the difference you look at the very bottom the total per pupil so you have the top operational is basically your mno but other grants that are eminent like you have capital the total non-operational below for grand total so we're at 92 almost 9 300.
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is there any questions or comments from the board on that seeing none i'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the regular board meeting of april 15 2021 so motion by john long on the second bye second by karen anderson roll call vote from the police kim karen yes yes yes greg meyer yes yes all right yes motion carries on to item five um tonight's special board meeting is uh uh we have a few folks three folks that are that are leaving us and we will be be seating the new board members shortly so in recognition of the retiring board members where do we want to do this kim right over here aaron ray and the rest of the board would like to uh thank you for your years of service uh for john long 2017 to 2021 really appreciate what we've done thanks again for the board and for the school speech what's that do you have [Laughter] greg o'connor thank you very much for what you've done here in the board and for our school from 2013 to 2021 [Applause] karen anderson for those of you don't know karen has been on the board for 20 years from 2001 to 2021 and a lot of history is leaving walking out this door tonight but i really do appreciate what you've done for us and the students and this is for you as as well for 20 years of service oh gee well thank you so some of those schools so renovated new renovated there you go um i don't usually prepare speeches for the board meetings because i've always believed that it was necessary to listen and get all views presented to find objective solutions but tonight is different and i just wanted to thank a few people and didn't want to forget those that i had on my list having served 20 years i've served with 21 other board members when elected in 2001 i had some great mentors who demonstrated some of the highest performance of boardsmanship thanks to goes to mike lawler sam habermill dale heffinger and ron long hans who was also elected at the same time with myself and bill phelps we all understand that we had to work as a team with the administration and the importance of hiring administrators who are experts in the education field i'm proud to have had the pleasure of working with several administrators that had nothing but the best interest of the school district staff and students first we went through years of high funding and low funding a fire a new middle school a rehab of the old unit building new turf field plus several additions the baseball and softball field upgrades plus many others we added staff to meet the needs of our children and have created new programs and courses no no board is successful without recognizing the recommendations and expertise of their administrators so i want to say thank you to these administrators that i've served with for a period of time that have been i really feel been loyal to our district uh brian reeves back there you're the principal that i've worked with the longest i think you've been around here most of the time there was beth horner courtney costelli jean goacher jack turner ed settles chris grody and the longest superintendent that i served with is gina sega biano i want to thank all of the staff i certainly respect and admire the work you do whether in the classroom cafeteria arts technology gym hallways buses or on the grounds you've been entrusted with our most precious resource our students to develop and help them make positive choices leading to a successful career and life parents thank you for taking an active interest in the district and your children's success and accomplishments there may be some situations that can be stressful but in the end know that the staff and administration of the school district are here to support you and your child i'm proud that my children had the opportunity to attend columbia schools i promised my family in 2017 that this would be my last term i guess i really didn't make that clear to the public because i was questioned by a new board member how long a person can could serve i was impressed with at the last iasb convention a member that was introduced with 50 years of service i'm going to miss all the fun events like award ceremonies and graduations these are the highlights of the year recognizing the accomplishments of a successful school career i'm also going to miss all of those fun sessions of negotiating contracts they were long stressful times but i really appreciated the opportunity to get to know and get a better understanding of some of our staff and their needs thanks to all those who negotiated to the new board members i wish you much success take advantage of all the training opportunities available to you meet with the southwestern district schools one of the hardest things you'll encounter is looking at each situation from your own perspective your friends and family members and those who will let you know what they believe you should do one more line however do not forget those in our community who may not have a voice may not have the same level of resources or may not have the necessary family support their needs are important also i want to say thank you to scott middle camp for his dedication as president and thanks to the other outgoing board members john long and greg o'connor for your service thank you karen thank you [Applause] so before the board members get up and leave we have one last thing for you to do and the next item on the agenda is to uh seat the new board members and the first item on that is to approve the abstract the vote certified by the county clerk so i'd entertain a motion to approve the abstracts of votes certified by the county clerk for greg meyer 1423 adam hemkin 1373 andrew corey 1750 and tyson search 1502 looking for a motion so move motion by karen anderson second bye i'll second second by john long roll call vote for me please kim yes yes right yes yes thank you very much and now we work we will administer the oath of office to those new board members are they newly elected there you go thank you so we're going to administer the use of officers [Laughter] let's just start i i state your name do solemnly swear or affirm that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the board of education of columbia community unit school district number four in accordance with the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of illinois and the laws of the state of illinois to the best of my ability of office of the member of the board of education alumni community union school district number four in accordance with the constitution of the united states of illinois i further swear or affirm that i shall respect taxpayer interest by serving as a faithful protector of the school district assets by serving as the faithful protector of the school district's assets i shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees respecting the privacy of students and employees i shall recognize that a board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a public board shall meeting that a board member has no legal authority as an individual and this is a distinctly made from the majority vote at the public meeting i shall abide by majority decisions of the board while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels i shall abide by the majority decisions of the board of any right to seek changes in such decisions as part of the board of education i shall accept the responsibility for my role in the equitable and quality education of every student in the school district i shall accept the responsibility for playing a role in the medical role and quality education of every student and in the school district i shall foster with the board extensive participation in the community formulate goals define outcomes and set the course for columbia community unit school district number four i shall foster with the board extensive participation of the community formulate goals define outcomes and set up the course for the columbia communities from the reform i shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational to ensure framework students have the opportunity to determine their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework i shall strive to ensure continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with state law and all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with the same lab i shall serve as an education's key advocate on behalf of students in our community school to advance the vision for community columbia community unit school district number four and i shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision of the board has created fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal to lead the school development toward fulfilling the division of the board has created fostering excellence foreign areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal development great welcome to the board [Applause] i hope you all would just grab a seat and we will continue andre gets the hot seat already all right on to item seven organize the board of education and elect officers this will be for a two-year term every two years when we have elections we go ahead and re-elect or elect board president board vice president board secretary and then the last item on the agenda for that is establishing meeting dates so the first item on that is to appoint someone as president pro town i make a motion approved to nominate scott middle camp to serve as president approacher we have a motion to appoint scott middle camp as president pro tem do i have a second to that motion i'll second the motion okay motion by greg meyer second by tammy hines we'll call vote for me please kim i don't have it yes yes yes yes scott middle camp yes lisa schumacher yes tyson search great motion carries on to item b elect the board president nominations are now open for president of the board of education i would like to nominate greg meyer mr president nomination for greg meyer any more nominations for board president do i have a second for that nomination i'll second nomination for greg meyer by tammy hines second by lisa schumacher are there any other nominations so the motion is to elect greg meyer as board president hearing no further nominations i will entertain a motion to close the nominations i'll make the motion motion to close the nominations by tammy hines second bye second by adam hemkin i need a roll call vote on that right so roll call vote please tammy hi yes andrea corey yes greg meyer yes scott middle camp yes lisa schumacher yes tyson search yes adam hempkin yes motion carries greg meyer you are the new board president on to um does he take over here do i just finish out thank you okay on to item c elect the board vice president i'd entertain our entertaining nominations our nominations are now open for the vice president of the board of education any nominations for the vice president i'll nominate lisa schumacher i'll second that are there any other nominations so motion was made for lisa schumacher by tammy hines a second by andrea cory hearing for no further nominations i will entertain a motion to close the nominations so move motion by greg meyer to close his nomination second bye second by tyson search roll call vote for me please kim andrew yes greg meyer scott middleton yes lisa schumacher yes tyson search yes adam hemkin yes tammy yes okay motion carried uh lisa schumacher is the vice president on to item d elect the board secretary i'd open nominations for the board secretary i make a motion i nominate tammy hines for the board secretary and she did it to me so motion by greg meyer for tammy hines a second by andrea cory are there any other nominations hearing no for no nominations i will entertain a motion to close the nominations motion by lisa schumacher second bye i'll second second by tammy hines wrote call vote for me please kim greg meyer yep scott middle camp yes lisa schumacher yes tyson search yes adam humpkin yes tammy hines yes andrea yes motion carry so congratulations new board president greg meyer vice president lucia schumacher and secretary tammy hines so the last item on the agenda before adjournment is established meeting dates times and locations you want to go ahead and do that or yeah it's um customary that the meetings have occurred on the third thursday of each month starting at seven o'clock that would be the recommendation that we keep that going any questions okay i'd entertain a motion to establish a meeting dates times and locations as are except the meeting dates times and locations as presented motion by lisa schumacher second bye i'll second second by andrea cory roll call vote for me please kim scott middle camp yes lisa schumacher yes tyson search yes adam humpkin yes tammy hi andrea cory yes greg meyer yes great motion carries on to the last time on the agenda adjournment i'd entertain a motion to adjourn actually before we get to that i would like to take the time to thank scott for his service as president of the board of education you know when we had a pretty contentious election a couple years back people might remember and scott and i were kind of on opposite sides inadvertently and uh we had i think got to work well with everybody and he'll set a great example for the board and uh i've come to admire scott for everything he's done and and your leadership so i want to thank you thank you greg i appreciate that so it was very nice that the divided board could actually come together and work together and i think we've done a great job in doing that and i think that's going to continue with this new board as well so i agree thank you on to the last item adjournment who would like to make a motion to adjourn motion by tyson search second bye i'll second second by adam hankin roll call vote for me please kim is this jamaica yes tyson search yes adam pumpkin yes yes yes frank meyer yes yes motion carries we are adjourned [Music] [Applause] [Music] congratulations [Music] my [Music] you
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and he said the northville coaching staff and student athletes were very understanding of the inconvenience handled the situation with great flexibility in class this is a direct reflection of their head coach torrey shaffer he does a great job with the norse baseball program teaches the student athletes not only to play the game the right way on the field but also to represent their school in a positive manner off the field eastern greatly appreciated how the northfield baseball coaches and student athletes handled the situation in themselves on monday night and then i also had a battle of the books team of seventh and eighth graders that competed with mr martin which i found is harder to do i know the kids having had them a shirt creek so i'm like you're doing it you're doing it because they get in junior high there's a million other things they can do and so they don't want to do it as well but they ought to so we they had we had a team and they did real well those participants that competed virtually were ashton aderman patience foodray logan graft anna hodson jasmine kelly and osborne and cody geiser so i just want to thank them for participating in mrs mckillop our media center teacher for sponsoring the team and spending the time making that available to the kids and then we also i wanted to thank our seniors that earned the honor and went and attended the grow wabash county honor student luncheon i think it was a week ago last thursdays a little over a week ago and those seniors that attended it was on april 13th were logan cox michael fisher emma uber abby hunter jett snyder toby bear alex hopper emma brainard addie baker lindsay carter elise gotcha chloe miller and jenna crum and even though a couple of them including my son said they weren't going a promise to kelly's ice cream afterward so i ratted him out but whatever it takes and then i also just want to thank it's not on here but mr daniel reminded me and i don't know if i've had this on here um ryan zincroft and shelly myers for the senior trip that they just planned because we couldn't go to new york this year and then denise stauffer and a lot of juniors and parents that helped put on prom last weekend and post prom went really really well um and the kids were awesome no issues it was foggy i was worried about getting home but we didn't have any issues and so i just appreciated all the parents and teachers health getting all this done and thanks to everybody in here for getting it done and allowing it to happen before graduation i will say msd is one of the few districts that have tried to keep things as normal as possible and everything i hear from parents is that it's much appreciated and i'm sure you heard the same thing okay that's it for now all right let's move on to public comment agenda items only and we'll wait for facebook feed to catch up all right we'll move on to the consent agenda items uh the minutes for the last meeting on march 23rd which we need is have approval of those so motion and seconds are approved for the minutes from our last board meeting all in favor say aye moving on to financial claims okay that's pretty large number well sometimes i'll just ask for my own information you got to be on a picture yes do you have the same time yeah so gaggle i don't know much about it you might be able to talk a little bit more about it we we have a we have a safe mail service that it's a human monitoring system monitors our emails and things on our devices as far as messages and things of that nature and if they see something that is inappropriate or of concern then they notify an administrator to deal with the issue safe mail i think is what it was called safe male human monitoring and we have not that have not been pleased with some of the things that they have not been catching and the timing of some of those uh responses to us about those issues and so they looked for another service which is this gaggle service and so that's a three-year we to get a reduced price we had to make a three-year commitment [Music] for that and it's for student safety and they actually did a test run for two or three months and compared it to what the other program was doing and it caught a lot more and so in in a timely fashion and so it's very critical if there's a for student safety if there's a self-harm situation and you find out about it two days afterwards and some of the principles can contest to this that um it's not a it's not going to be appropriate so that's why we're looking for something different in it and sometimes when you have a more robust robust system um it's going to cost a little bit more but this is a three year that pays for three years for three years yes and it is more expensive than the other but it provides more looks as far as other programs besides just um our email the other one is supposed to be like google drive documents and things like that but but it's uh it's just a it's a lot larger and more robust something needed this includes all this setup and training yes besides the licensing features then regardless now that was metro north yeah it seems like old information since this was the end of may and we're getting ready to end april or end of march and we're getting ready to end april but these were the end of the month statements then for march uh time period just reflecting balances again nothing specific to focus on or talk about there and then the next pages reflect the education and operation fund balances from the end of the month cash flow for march and not much has changed there changed their one difference is that we know what our dollars will be remaining from april to june uh because of our february 1 adm count so those dollars are actually reflected in there in that change and then obviously we got good news from the state budget and so we're still working out what some of those details and then eventually we'll get those plugged into our cash flow estimates once we have a better idea of what those dollar amounts include and what our estimate adm is remember we have to put in an estimate adm i believe i put in an estimate of 2 000 students in there so our revenue from july through october will reflect that and then once we get our new adm count in september then those adjustments will be made for the remainder of the school year for those dollar amounts is yes so there are increases there are increases in uh what we call the the foundational amount which includes complexity which is a little confusing but it includes complexity index we actually lose money on the complexity side but we gain money on the foundational side and then there is an increase in special ed dollars for certain um categories and then no additional dollars for cte but they brought it back some of the cte uh low rate wage what do you call and it's just like basic weight well they call it the low age because there's a higher and lower there's all those different categories they were taking some of those categories out but they brought them back in but there's no additional funding from that they just put those categories back in and then honors no additional funding for the owner's grant so really it's just foundational and special ed dollars where we'll see an increase in that so good news there and then operation i didn't have to change much on anything but that because that's not typed in or anything like that so we don't have to go through all of this but i kind of like to show this every once in a while so since we kind of ended march which is the first kind of consider the first quarter i just kind of wanted to show you how those transfers are going remember that we are required not to transfer more than 15 percent of our educational fund dollars into the operational fund so out of these three past three months it shows that we've transferred 12.49 of our operation dollars and that's really only led to about um 11 000 in deficit i guess if you consider a comparison from what accounts used to be paid out of that fund that are no longer paid out of that fund that tracks pretty well with the same percentages last yeah if year go through the rest of them i think i show the last year's percentage this would be if we did actuals and then the next slide this was last year's so it was like these aren't no that's really impressive though and it's impressive to make sure that well it needs to be lowered but if you also see last year out of the 12 months we did do 12 but we also transferred i don't say a surplus but we transferred more money than was probably needed to uh how it worked out by the end of the year move on to personnel under resignations we have megan mission and roberta herron both aides at northville high school effective at the end of the school year jewelry patty secretary at southwood you see the effective date there retirement susan kiefer choir teacher at southwood carrie hamill math teacher at southwood and rhonda kirby aide at southwood and those are all effective at the end of this year or this summer underemployment elena raid junior high cheer at northfield high school joseph mitchell spanish teacher at northfield for next school year analysis spam special ed teacher in their field for next school year you know i can just miss mentioned uh mr daisy uh susan keith kiefer she actually came to us after she came back from retirement um she did a fantastic job so we're just glad that we had her for a few more years after her official retirement and if mr mcdaniel was here he would echo the great things that she did successful you know i talked to you just not very long ago about how many students that were auditioned for the state choir and all of them made it and all the other things that she did was great and then carrie hamill been with msd for for many years he was at white's junior senior high school transferred to southwood has been coaching done a lot of things really build relationships with students and does a great job and i know mr medina would also do that ronda curry as an aide done that for a long time so we're losing some very very good people but we wish them well in their retirement and in the employment part too it's kind of neat to see the first two are actually i'm almost sure for the first one i thought she's a norfolk graduate yes right and then of course joseph mitchell's also a norfolk graduate uh has been teaching mr snyder knows more about that um than me um he was at fort wayne right chair busco and so coming back home uh which is great and then alyssa spann who was actually a substitute teacher for sharp creek because we had those different sections there and she had an open position she wasn't going to have a position at sharp creek but now she's been hired at northfield so although we're losing some great people we're also gaining great people too heartland career center report matt do you have anything to say of course really quick uh they added an adult welding class we approved that they're going to apply for a 2021 21-22 perkins grant we authorize the student scholarship program which we've done the last few years taking the rent money from the land and giving it out i think a thousand dollars to separate kids that are going on to school we accepted a grant from perkins reserve grant of 38 866 dollars and that's to go towards the ag program and also got a gene haas foundation grant and i can't tell you the dollar amount on that but they're planning on having the senior certificate hunter program may 24th at honeywell trying to get as much as normal as again just to have as many people but that's still the plan and we had one student which is really got enough credits done have been since in criminal justice that they will only have one year have been sentenced to get there so it's really neat that they've got that much going on with fuel credits and so on isn't that neat yeah that's it all right thank you super tenants requirements yeah and most of these are just recommend or recognition and some of them have already been mentioned i know that um mrs moore mentioned some of this mr mcdaniel and mr snyder but we have a lot of students that are competing in that innovate within and had an opportunity to watch they had to stream it on the regional meeting on the regional competition where alex weiner got second place and hopefully will be able to go to state did a fabulous job though and the other kids did also and we have the tomorrow is actually the local competition and it's amazing i believe we have looks like one two three four teams at least four teams from southward at least two or three teams from northfield and so we appreciate those teachers that are helping those students be able to work on that and compete and some of these just like alex weiner alex is going to with his busy bees he's going to go right out of high school he's going to go and continue his career as busy bees to build that up plus do some other things maybe with his dad but anyway just interesting how they've taken this on and done a great job so just wanted to mention that also i asked mr mcdevitt when i was at one of the graduation ceremonies if i could share this at the one of the board meetings and so i'm going to do this and this is from molly molly was a graduate and they actually get to to give basically what do you tell them you tell them to give advice to the other students right how does that work i love them uh to say two two things one people they want to thank they've helped them get there and then two just you know words of wisdom and here's one of them there's a lot of great ones i will tell you and this is just one i thought this would be interesting to share because you know we heard the situation with terence there's a lot of things great things going on there and unfortunately with terence but yeah the leadership and things but this is from molly and this is what she wrote to the advice um to share with the other students it says i know being here isn't ideal no one has to be here but don't sit here and waste your time i know not everyone is here because they struggle with addictions but whatever you're here for take this time to better yourself and remember no matter your past or how many bad things you've done god will always love and forgive you when you ask for it and so this is really very special and the things that they learn at whites not just inside the school but also with the residential and the collaboration that they have with the two so i just want to share that i thought that was really neat um also i'm going to i put this on here we don't always talk about these there were things but uh the general assembly of course dr kuhn already mentioned that but uh the increases we really appreciate that um of course adm is another factor to all that and so we will continue to work and promote and do well with that and then not a normal thing that we would report but it is great that this year we were able to have um like we said the proms we've had the senior trips are on schedule and we're looking forward to having graduation um and not necessarily having any um capacity limit at this point i mean things are really good hopefully that continues so anybody that wants to come can come we may have a few little um minimal restrictions protocol like we have to have in schools with masks when you walk in or something like that but for the most part it should feel and look um as normal as normal as what we've had before uh pending no other situations with code so it's just great that we're going to be able to finish the year and have school and and continue to do the activities that we're doing all right thank you curriculum and instruction for mr gray as usual we're testing and so uh this round we're in i iowa and we've got a week or two left of that and things are going very well um i do want to say that we've been working on accelerated learning through the ester grants and so i know mike's kind of told you on some of that earlier but uh really proud of what we're putting together for summer school for our elementary kids um and some of the other social emotional learning things that we're meeting and so uh trying to take full advantage of those funds to try our best to accelerate learning i guess just the simplest way to say that lots of conversations lots of great conversations for our principals to get all that stuff going so let's start to roll out now yeah yeah um the conversation at first was about talking about efficiency but when you're talking to kids that are struggling and then you say hey by the way you're efficient like all you're doing is doing like the negative of that and so um by framing it as an accelerated learning now we're helping those kids and some of the kids that were not struggling anyways and so um you're gonna like i said expand summer school but also try to find ways to offer more programs and more opportunities for kids fans will buy into that of course the older the child the harder it is to get the musical that stuff and so uh we see a lot of interest in our k to three group uh four to six has a little bit less interest and of course your high schooler but but for sure the k23 was the most impacting and so it's very confident about that we're going to be able to use those funds to pay our teachers regular hourly rates to get them in there and so we're bringing in our veteran teachers and giving them a lot of attention so it's a it's a special opportunity and i think we're all excited to offer that all right moving on to new business uh first item on the new business is a bond hearing that we're gonna have and i'm gonna turn that over to dr kuhn yes so uh i don't know if we have to do anything necessarily formal here but do what we have to after you make your recommendation okay uh so according indiana code anytime that we are going to [Music] finance some projects that are over a million dollars we have to have a bond hearing which is open to the public for comment and so we noted we posted a notice for that project hearing uh on in april 17th meeting that legal requirement and so this is our bond hearing in regards to the money that we're planning on borrowing so the project will cover primarily the majority of it will be spent at the two high schools on roof repairs we also have some additional work that we're doing or plan on doing with ceiling tiles and our um network and fiber cables within those buildings to upgrade some of those and then additional money to be spent out at metro north looking at their parking lot fixing up the parking lot on the west side and then possibly doing a restroom renovation of some capacity there to fix those up a little bit right now the roof replacements have gone out for bid and i believe that those bids are due on may 2nd and then we put out four quotes the ceiling tiles and the [Music] fiber and cable installation we're also working on the quotes of the parking lot and we're kind of in the basic stages of looking at the restroom repairs with that so we haven't gotten too far along with that yet if you slide over to the next page this gives you an idea of the roof sections that are going to be replaced they all match up at both buildings except for that middle section there where that is just being fixed at northfield because it was already replaced at southwood about 10 years ago when they did some of the roofing projects back then so it wasn't anything that needed to be uh changed at this point in time so that reflects that i wonder why there was a difference in price on the roof yeah so that reflects the difference in prices there okay the ceiling tiles we had them do an initial quote or bid for the hallways with some alternatives in the office space areas the main entrance area and the auditorium entryway as well to fix those up similar to what we did in the athletic hallway with the two foot square tiles i believe it is and so [Music] our maintenance crew is going to do some of that as far as the tear down is concerned and so since we had that tear down it's also a good time to update our fiber infrastructure it's been around since the early 90s and we've just kind of piecemealed it together as technology has grown and so some of those cords and fibers are becoming brittle and this will allow us to put them all on a track so that we can gain easier access to them plus allow us to upgrade to be able to push more data through those networks so as part of the bond hearing we talk about the cost of the project and the money is borrowing so we plan on borrowing two million dollars there will be no net increase to the debt service fund tax rate relative to the current rate so that does not increase that debt service tax rate that's already established it extends it out for another year so the bonds instead of being paid at the end of 2022 that we paid at the end of 2023 with no impact on tax rate and then the second thing then just shows kind of the windows bonds will begin payment so it talks a little bit about the interest rate the maximums not spending so we won't be borrowing more than two million dollars our interest rate won't exceed five percent uh i talked with jim elizondo from stifl today a little bit about it and you know interest rates he said right now you know if we were to take this too big right now are hovering around uh half a percent so hopefully we can still stay in that market range of getting a pretty good interest rate when those bonds go out so with that being said then we would open the hearing to the public to open a public comment period for the bond hearing typically we would only have to do that to those actually present in the room but we will extend that again to those watching us on facebook live because of the public emergency i guess we are still under officially for the schools for clarity and chris one year yeah we'll fix it into 2023 we'll start payments on those bonds in and they'll conclude at the end of 2023.
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she was homeschooled until high school and with her homeschooling she was at grade level so she entered high school and she went away to college so she left home she went to another state to go to college and live in the dormitory and everything the big thing about my cousin that i think is most important and it is um part of how i formed my philosophies is that she was a big believer in educational equity she was a standard she was a teacher for special education but she didn't teach the curriculum that they offered because it was not challenging enough she felt so she thought that she plucked in the standard curriculum rather than less challenging one because at the end these students were going to be led out into the world and the world wasn't going to take into account that their curriculum was different so she made sure that her students would be able to function in the same world without being underprepared so it's very important to me because i do the same thing i am a strong believer in equity and i don't like to take away from the students i believe that you're capable of learning everyone's capable maybe we address it in a different way but we're all capable of achieving the same thing understanding it working through it and being able to complete it um the other person that had a strong influence on me these are is my principal from elementary school she my school was a very small school again i was in queens new york it was on jamaica avenue if anyone's from new york it was on jamaica avenue in queens new york when they had to when they still had to train with the above-ground trains and it was situated between a furniture store and some other store i remember the store on the other side with an apartment on top of it a little part with apartments on top this stands out to me because one day when i wasn't paying attention i was looking out the window you know the fire next door so that was the excitement we had to go down the alley between the two buildings to run out to get away from the fire but it was a small school and it was a poor school because the neighborhood was mostly working class people and they were people from all over was probably every nationality in that small area that was there so we had people from all over the place that came to that school but they didn't have a lot of money so part of the way they paid as i said before was like my um principal had parents in the school they offered services they volunteered in school so he couldn't afford a secretary perhaps so this parent would be the secretary building you know making costumes doing all kinds of things for the school i remember one parent was a piano player played the piano for us it was a p and a music teacher so we had a lot of different people but the thing that was inspirational about it was that we again we had everything that the new york city public schools had as far as curriculum went every book that they had we had so there was that creativity and that desire and that drive for us to be the same or have the same opportunities as the larger group has and she achieved that i don't know how but she achieved it the students that left at school were well prepared us is better prepared than some of the some of the children that were in the larger environment she had great impact on the students you know for years they would talk about her they would see her she looked at the community they went to the same church so these are people that helped form me helped form my mind my views and my desires as far as education and i think i probably would not have gone into education if it weren't for them okay so the next question says what is something you have done that you are especially proud of and it does not have to be work related something that i've done well i'm proud of all my students i have great students um i'm connected to them but i haven't done everything i think most recently and it is it was a big deal for me because i was so proud of her i had a student that when we started out for four years ago she was barely coming to class so i called her grandmother and her grandmother came and we had a discussion so the girl would start coming to class and so she started coming to class and she started waning off again and then she showed up again and i teach high school taught high school in springfield she showed up again she told me that she was pregnant but more than that she her grandmother told her that while she was in school that she should find someone that she could trust and she could depend on that would support her and she chose me and i was a little taken back because i was like so what am i supposed to do i don't know but i also told her that she should think twice about it because i'm tough and i'm hard there's things like that i believe in education i'm a strong believer in it and i don't think it should be wasted and her practices were wasting it so she agreed to step up and do what needed to be done long story short she had the baby then baby became an excuse not to come to school so i took care of a baby for two years while she came to school she bring the baby i teach i hold the baby she'd go to class the end of the day she'd take the baby she'd go home on her graduation day i held the baby she graduated she took the baby she went home she's now thriving and he's thriving they moved but i think that's probably something that i'm most proud of that i actually got her to graduate helped her through it and she's working on becoming successful and finding her place thank you for sharing that story and the last one says is there anything that you would like the fort river community to know um let's see well one thing is i live where i work so would i be chosen to be principal i would immediately move to amherst because i believe in the invested in the community in which i'm teaching so i would be visible accessible living with next to around sharing hello hello hello hello hello can you hear me we can hear you oh lord everything is going against me today um the phone's still working you're still being broadcasted so they can hear you too oh my goodness um so like i said i would be part of the community like i live where i work i don't have more than i have been fortunate to not have more than a 10-minute commute to my job i you know i can look out the window and see students all the time when we see each other in the supermarkets everywhere we go so it's important to me to be part of the community so that's one thing um i like i'm not a very talkative person that's probably the most i've talked in all two weeks but i'm not a very talkative person but i am accessible and i like to do things i like to know people and i like to learn cultures and learn about people i travel a lot i like to share um and what else can i say i lived in spain for two years and i'm the type of person that immerses myself in a culture i didn't live as an american i lived as a spaniard would live my first semester i made the mistake of living with an american and i thought i'm anti-american but my roommate was just terrible roommate so i moved in with a different group of people we were five women in the apartment how did it go three were spaniards one was danish and then there was me the american so we learned each other's cultures foods everything but we i mean i lived like a spanish for two years and i taught and i like to be part of my community and part of my culture i do things within the community to help better lives of other people or just whatever community service that there is so i'm very much dedicated to the people in my cert in my area my surround um i have like i said i was born in queen in jamaica queens and queens is probably the most culturally diverse of all the five boroughs in new york city i'm a graduate of this porter school in farmington connecticut my graduate of the university of massachusetts at amherst as an out-of-state student and i graduated from nyu with my masters my master's degree was in the role of the dictator in the modern novel in a modern hispanic novel but um i say this because that that eclectic and diverse experience that i've had both in and out the classrooms both as a student and teacher has made me like sponge-like and sensitive to communities to which i've been exposed and hungry to learn more about them while ensuring equity for all cultures and ethnicities regardless of age status of class i told my students today that in my lifetime i knew two people that were over 100 and that was astonishing to them but it was also to explain to them that age doesn't separate us when i'm 16 years old and i'm talking to someone that's 100 years old and we can find common ground age doesn't separate us we separate ourselves when we don't have to so kind of an open book okay well thank you for joining us to this evening and you know we wish you well as um and and thanks again for sharing your experiences as to why you believe you'd be the next principal or best principal for the fort river community so i know with the technical difficulties many might want to have an opportunity to at least see you live and in the broadcast so what i'm going to do is ask sasha the assistant to the superintendent to schedule another stream yard possibly for tomorrow so that maybe you can respond to one or two more of these questions and the audience gets to see you live and that'll be posted also and available for the families of the fort river community to be able to see you okay thank you very much and i do apologize for the internet issues it's not you it's not your issues so you know technology things happen with technology right now everyone's you know learning it or struggling with it or having difficulties with it um in some way shape or form so we we're sure that you know the next time you're able to meet with us they'll be able to see you via the stream yard platform too okay okay all right so thank you again for being here and you take care and for the community thank you everyone for listening to me okay take care bye-bye okay take care bye-bye and for the community i just want to remind you that via the email where you have the um links for these four live stream opportunities there's also a link for you to decide who you'd like to see as the next principal of fort river so please go back to that email and click on the link to put your vote in and let your voice be heard as to who you'd like to see move forward to the superintendent thank you again for joining me in all four of these forums and please remember that you can always go back and review and watch these meetings again thank you and all of you stay healthy and well thank you
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i really had to work to get the names to appear on one page of the program despite the challenges over the last year and the change in educational modes these students still met the requirements for membership there are four pillars of the national honor society that make these students stand apart and they are scholarship leadership service and character of course the students gpa show how dedicated they are to scholarship and the pursuit of knowledge even with the changes to our learning environment these students either maintained this dedication or used it to challenge themselves to do better and earn that 4.20 gpa their commitments to extracurricular activities show their leadership and service here at elhs all of this is impressive with all of the changes logging on to meetings remotely after school after being on google meets for class all day shows how much these students want to participate finding opportunities to show leadership and service was the biggest challenge for students in a socially distant school year yes this theme is apropos of the 2020 2021 school year but i'm looking forward to next year's theme yes i've already come up with one here comes the sun is next year in which these inductees will shine their freshman year of college or their senior year of high school i'd like to now introduce the president of the east long meadow high school chapter of the national honor society kylie fox who will officially begin the ceremony [Applause] hello everyone i'm kylie fox welcome to the 2021 induction ceremony for the east long meadow chapter of the national honor society i would like to start by thanking all of the high school staff and faculty school committee superintendent smith and our friends and family in the audience and watching from home you've given these inductees the support and resources that allowed them to be here tonight the national honor society was founded on march 1st of 1921.
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motion made by amy but i hear a second oh second second if the board wishes i think dan is here he could yes does he want to speak on a graduation yes dan uh thanks for having me uh i know last time we were here dr martens came on uh sorry i couldn't make it and um talked about what our plan was as far as getting information from our parents and students so we sent out a survey we had 500 responses to that survey 370 which is a little less than half the students in the graduating class uh responded to it we talked about three options that we were going to give them one was the whole class out there with live streamed and no guests the second option was the drive up similar to what we did last year with uh looser guidelines now uh that we have and the third was multiple ceremonies on the field and uh 53 percent of the parents and students chose the multiple um one to have on the field so we were planning on going with three but now let's uh change just from the government stuff allow us to do two ceremonies on june one two o'clock one at five o'clock the orange cohort will go at five and each guest it'll also be live screen but each graduate will receive four tickets bringing us to about 600 spectators in the stands which is where that's all been dotted um three feet apart and masks will still be one unless something changes i know continued there's been a lot of talk about uh the senior events you know we just had a pretty cool day the other day tuesday when the juniors were taking the uh sats where we had a great number probably close to about 550 juniors came into the building and took the sat uh you know we had to take 60 some odd rooms so we only put 10 to a room we had to do an except this seniors in we had about 300 and 380 ish seniors in three different waves come in somewhat of a graduation picture those ones that you see at the entrance of dhs and then they would go down onto the field and we set up the 2 0 two one and that group would take the two the next group would be zero and then grouping down the pto did an outstanding job of uh getting the mural picapi who is a west side uh arts teacher uh we had them come out the hands and they'll put their hands on the wall so it was a pretty great day to see the kids um it was very well organized by my administration team and a special thank you to you know mr portelli the uh who was out there taking it for uh the yearbook the picture will not be in the yearbook because the yearbook is already out and but look for way out to then do what they want with it uh dr obre who now was picture thing i'm to get socially distanced and now he's doing his photos to try look well mr who's uh does all the work for you all here who took a awesome drone picture of the two zero two one at different times and then pasted them all together which we'll get out to the seniors the class officers uh the class not the class officers but the class advisors of miss gurney miss messinovic who helped organize this whole thing and our staff that was out there it was a great day and you know it was to bring a little normalcy back going toward our senior events i've been working very closely with cathy o'dowd and discussing what we can and can't do and you know it's the prom coming up on the 28th is at the amber room we have a meeting with them to discuss how many students can go uh following their guidelines of what they have to do as a business with uh you know tents outside and things like that we're looking to have a senior fest our six flags trips movie night for them and then the graduations um both graduations that is up to the board uh we here at two o'clock it's not going to be as long as it normally is because we're not going to spend 35 40 minutes saying names it'll be half of that so i imagine graduations are going to be about an hour and 20 minutes long for each one the middle school graduation is june 9th they are doing their three schools up on uh up on our field as well so we tagged it together with them on the ninth us on the 10th and then rain dates as it goes through after that so that's how it all came about thank you thank you uh does any board member have any question for mr jonathan madden chair yes mr donovan can you just repeat the times for each cohort it was breaking up on my end i don't know if it was for everybody else i'm sorry uh two o'clock for the blue cohort and five o'clock for the orange cohort right and everybody gets two guests you said four oh four okay great thank you mr donovan once your schedule is set can you make sure that all uh that schedule is set to the board members please yes ma'am thank you any other areas for the board the park and just as we've had in the past [Music] um if you don't have any questions about that i want to ask mr donovan something mr donovan did i hear someone getting some award from your family my son won the uh ciac or was the ciac scholar athlete of the year for danbury high school congratulations must be a problem it's been a very tough year and dan has been trying in in so many ways to make it normal as possible and um it's been a human effort i just want to thank them for doing this because it it will make the end of the year a little more special for them as i said in the commercial you're going to give them a shot at a better year and i'm so proud of us being able to do that so thank you dan my pro my pleasure there's no questions we can go to the next item argue the roll call oh yeah approved thank you this is off-screen i apologize uh joe britton yes rachel chaleski hi kate canetta i uh we'll skip gladys um joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi rich gianelli hi kathy molinaro hi al russo amy spelino hi okay motion carries um action item b um rachel i'm just wondering if you have any thoughts as the uh the policy chair about whether or not we should be reading these whole entire paragraphs or kim perhaps you could chime in on that yes i i've read them every year how do you feel about reading them this year go for it kate i'll make a motion that uh pursuant to cgs section 10-215-f the board of education our governing authority certifies that all food items offered for sale to student 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 1st 2021 through june 30 2022.
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at this point in time up to up to now nobody in this room unless you wanted to of course but that's that's neither here nor there we are not talking about what is our preferred model three or four that is not our task right now our task is to understand the model threes and narrow it down understand the model fours and narrow it down and then of course we have a lot of work to do after that because before you can decide on if you're going to go with model 3 or if you're going to go with model 4 there's a lot of information that we need to bring forward to you to help you kind of really dig in and really understand uh so you can have uh again a good sense of where where we are going this is my final thing before we begin our presentations tonight i want to just reiterate um in phase one um call it consensus call it luck call it you know destiny whatever that whatever you want to call it the team pretty much coalesced around we don't want model one we don't want model two um coalesced around these are the two models that we want to talk about and coalesce around eventually these decisions around around model three but i want to reiterate that once we get to that point of the final moment whenever that is and however that is um this group does not have to be a hundred percent on the same page right we're not asking to force your opinion uh one way or the other it has to be 100 or nothing it is perfectly okay to go to the board of education and and share with them the data of this team again if it happens that it's one model that this team champions then so be it if the team is split between the models so be it right well we what we owe to the board as a team what we owe to them is the correct data to say this is how the team uh responded so i i lied there is one more thing um the district had come to you with model model uh a version of model three and a version of model four right and then you all went and started working on those models and changing them around and making decisions on on that because we have six model three and four model fours we are going to step back our initial ideas we want to applaud your ideas and say we're gonna concentrate on the ideas that were created by this team and so we are going to remove the model threes and the model fours that we initially brought forth mission accomplished we brought forth a product so you can chew on and you can see what it looks like and then now you have the ability to create and so uh so when i say that there are six model threes there really are six model threes because the seventh model which is the districts for right now is gonna come off the table and when i say there are four model fours you all created four model fours there is a fifth one which is the one that we brought forth but again we're gonna retract that one and concentrate on the four that you all created all right um i sent everyone an email um that has uh all of these models uh on a on a spreadsheet i'm gonna be sharing my screen uh but if it's easier for you to to do it that way great um if not no worries i'm about to start i'm about to start sharing my screen right now give me one second okay if i did this right where is it at share screen um [Music] i think that's right do you all see um do you all see my the spreadsheets yes all right awesome okay so that being said um i am going to go in the order uh that we receive these um that's all we're doing we're just going in the order that i received these these ideas um again i want to be thankful and appreciative of the people that worked on these um you're just sharing the model this is how it works this is what it is this is why we did what we did you will notice that i took away the three-year phase-in stuff because that's just noise for right now we really just want to talk about the models so with that being said i think i need to turn it over to mrs fish sorry i wasn't ready i was printing out your models or them that you sent so um okay this is my dalton model um i want to note first that i am not familiar with the programs or the demographic demographics of where our students live so my models are based solely off of the capacity of the schools and the locations of where they are located so for my models i noticed that north uh i'm sorry south of the 210 in the models we were keeping four schools we were keeping one school in between first street and foothill and only one school north of foothill so i wanted to adjust that to have had um dalton and hodge both north of foothill to make sure that we're taking account all the students who would live north of sierra madre and also up in the rosedale area keeping one school kind of in the middle which would be lee and then adjusting it to have the three schools south of the 210 which would be magnolia paramount and dolly dale and with that model i changed dalton to be our tk8 because dalton is already a stem school that having it absorb the tk8 the seventh and eighth graders it could allow for them to have a focus on their um on their electives so as part of the will their teachers would now be specialized in that stem program where it could help them have something a little bit better than whatever other teachers at another location that aren't specialized in something could be if that makes sense um i think that was it for that model awesome i'm going to take a pause while she collects her um her thoughts because amber actually has a second model three um but i wanna say just for the rest of us that are on dock um that's perfect right she stated what she did she stated why she did it in this case it was important for her to think about location so she said two in the north one in the middle three in the south um and so that's that's uh that's a perfect a perfect start miss fish um was there anything else here or do i move on to 3.2 3.2 okay so now we're going to move on to the second model three okay there it is so this model is a little bit different and we actually realized that myself and another parent came up with the same model and submitted it so i'm going to share a couple of my notes as to why i did it this way and then we'll let her share her notes as well so it's keeping with the same idea of having um two schools in northern uh north azusa one in the middle and three south of the gives us hajj and dalton being at tk sixes uh switching powell to be in instead of lee and keeping paramount and valley um south of the 210 but taking out magnolia and murray and turning center middle school into a tk8 this allows for a larger campus that would have a larger cafeteria locker rooms for the kids who play sports in the 7th and 8th grade a gym labs for science and would also um sorry i do realize that there are additional costs with sending with changing the center middle school into an elementary school because we do have to add in preschools now and section off a section for kindergarteners and tk's as well um also adding some playground equipment for other kids so i'm not sure that this would be financially responsible of us if this is if this is the model but i do feel that having the larger campus um is beneficial to those seventh and eighth graders that would be part of that tk program and also because that one um campus is so large that's why i switched out dalton for powell to kind of adjust our numbers to be a little higher capacity and that's all my notes for those um i'll speak on this model as well um although initially i uh didn't vote for a tk8 in our district if our district is going to do one i think it being at a middle school location um could be a way to make sure that there's ample facilities for the older children i do realize the numbers work out that um murray could actually um also serve as a tk8 with magnolia's student body added in i wanted to add a couple um caveats to the fact that we are parents there's a lot we don't know about the programs at different schools about the facilities of all the different locations and we are although we're presenting these models i'm not saying this is what i'm necessarily going to vote for i can't wait to hear what other people are going to present and the reasons why there's a couple things that have been brought to my attention about maybe a special ed hub at one of these schools district kitchens think things that we we we don't know um also i will note that our own schools um of hodge um are unaffected by this and that um i did look at maybe the tka being at center i'm sorry at slauson instead and hodge and dalton being a feeder school for that but i i really felt like um dalton with one of it with its um stem pathway and powell with its arts pathway that we keep those programs intact that if it's a school wide school site-wide program um i really didn't feel like that could be moved some of the other reasons why um sorry i have like a million notes um the other the reason why um paramount hodge and valleydale are also not on the list for possible closures are the fact that they are they have the three largest enrollments they have the least amount of projected open seats um there's also the dual immersion program at hodgen valley dale although it's not a school-wide program i also want to see that we considered not just capacity i considered population size of school capacity of school site proximity to a prior school closure knowing that we had recently closed down two elementary schools um i didn't think that closing schools nearby that those those families have already moved schools from gladstone and mountain view and also the distance to a nearby elementary so um the uh lee to um dalton is only 0.8 miles obviously the traverse is true dalton tilley is also within a very um small radius and um the distance between um sorry ellington to valley dell is .6 miles which is the smallest distance between any of our elementary schools that i i made mad notes trying to figure out all the distances between all the elementary schools so i apologize if i didn't get that right but um i believe that that is one of the closest distances um i know that that ellington does um help us reach a demographic and covina um that we would perhaps lose some seats be because of that and they also have a linkedin also has only 33 projected open seats which is quite low um and it it's not easy to pick any schools but those are some of the reasons why we came up with this model thank you mrs fish and mrs wilson perkins very appreciative um okay uh we're going to go we're going to move on to the third model three and for that we're going to call mr anthony contreras yeah this is going to be very uh clicking quick and clean uh the only thing that came up is when i when the capacity numbers changed a little bit and since we were turning about out at capacity i just noted it notated that in the middle school setting with one middle school the the smallest site would contain the biggest capacity because it would you know we would be more on the equilibrium side but uh truthfully uh when once that number changed all three sites would now become viable options to to house there and we might need to take into consideration other other points but uh in terms of just straight capacity it's the site that would uh maximize out capacity borrowing other things sir don't undersell yourself one other change that you made um you also said hey if we're gonna if we're gonna if we're gonna rebrand the new high school we would have to rebrand if we're only gonna have one middle school we would need to have a a new middle school as well and uh rebrand that as uh to stay consistent so if we're going to have one high school rebranded we would have one middle school that should also be rebranded okay those were those were just my two points for this particular model thank you sir welcome all right moving on to the fourth model three uh we're gonna call mr antonio flores thank you mr ortega good evening everyone uh so taking into account uh comments that were made last week and concerns that were made last week regarding the programs at dalton and powell also the investment that has been done with our teachers and training them to be you know efficient with the programs there my idea again thinking outside the box as mr ortega said last week you know think outside the box what could we do if we were to rebrand this was to take foothill create that a tk8 bringing dalton and bao powell to foothill and creating a magnet steam school so we still have our stem and we still have our performing arts and our and our teaching our teaching cohorts are together our student cohorts stay together our programs stay together so our foothill becomes a magnet steam magnum foothill becomes a tk8 magnet steam school then slauson becomes a traditional 7 8 school um and my thinking was you know and again speaking for paramount you know we have a fledgling stem club you know shout out to mr mr hartman for getting that started with us but you know after sixth grade you know my kids may still want to continue with stem and so now they have an option they can go to our magnet steam school and continue with the stem work also again speaking from paramount we do at the end of the year a a play and so our kids could get that taste of the performing arts and perhaps they want to continue that and again that's an option that now we have a magnet steam school where they can continue with performing arts or they want to do behind the scenes they want to be graphic they want to do the graphics for the video cameras and so now slauson is an option and another idea was now we have a tk8 magnet steam school option on the east side of our city and a traditional middle school on the west side of us of our city so that was my thoughts behind this this uh this model thank you sir okay we're going to move on to our fifth model three and for that i'm going to call on miss margie avison i believe meg will be speaking to this one or jen okay great um so the four of us teachers that are on this community got together to try to um share our ideas and and so like mrs fish and mrs wilkins perkins kind of you know worked together we did the same and and then margie sent it off to you so that's why her name was on it um um one i want to say to antonio that i i really like and appreciate your idea of the of the the kind of bigger tk8 right there and absorbing the steam school i think that's great and i wish i had thought of that for this model um we thought of it for the other one but not this one and so i want to just give you a kudos for that um and everybody's ideas that's not to everybody but um i want to share why we left ellington at tk8 here and that is the history of the school and i know that some parents had shared that at the board meeting but our reasoning for putting ellington back there is because it was originally created to be a tk because we were hemorrhaging kids and losing them to covina and it was one way for us to capture those kids and keep them there and then inevitably a huge percentage of those students then went on to gladstone instead of leaving and going to northview and so we all felt as a group of teachers knowing this history that that closing ellington in any fashion would really really affect our ada and so we were really looking at it simply from a perspective of keeping our our kids in the community and you know also knowing that ellington is located in covina and a lot of the kids from the unincorporated parts of azusa go to ellington it's just an essential to leave it open that's why we took it off the yellow section and put it back up so we wanted you to understand our reasoning and then the reason we moved lee down again was because of a capacity issue um and we felt like these schools that were potentially looking at at closing are schools where they can be absorbed by other schools nearby in their entirety almost because in order to protect those programs we all feel as teachers that you're literally going to have to pick them up and move them over and put them down because otherwise if you do this gradual transition process which i know our churro has taken off um so that we're not worrying about that but if we do do that you're going to slowly be chopping up the teachers and sending them and the kids to other places whereas if you if you literally pick up dalton and hypothetically speaking you moved it over to hodgen you dropped it right there that whole program those kids everything is going to stay intact so whichever ones we close i think that that's part of our thinking behind why we looked at these particular schools also i want to say we did look at lee and bring it down to that part of the list because it's a non-modernized school and while i really do appreciate anthony and antonio's ideas about um you know um you know utilizing slauson in some way or another um again not not a modernized school and i know we're not talking money now but that is part of our thinking in the sense of why do we want to invest millions of dollars in in schools when we already have the certain ones that are modernized and then take those dollars and put them into a brand new pool at the high school or whatever it is you decide to do so that is our thinking behind why we made these choices thank you just to be 100 clear so that last the last piece was your rationale on why foothill is quote unquote the middle school is that correct yes in this model yes awesome thank you all right thank you we are at our sixth model um three and for this one we're gonna turn it over to miss kimberly c so for me um mine was kind of like what amber and melissa said more geographical um so i would bring dalton back so there's more schools on the north end i would either leave ellington as a tk6 and and then make maybe paramount the tk8 so it's more central geographically to the city and then close lee and powell and that was it that was it for me thank you i appreciate that so a silent round of applause to our six uh presenters today again uh thank you for pushing yourselves uh for thinking you know how can this model three work best again i want to reiterate these are your opinions and opinions can never be wrong um are there eventually right we can't have six model threes so eventually we're gonna have to start working at chipping away and chipping away and chipping away and chipping away but what a great start and i applaud again your your your efforts your time uh your ideas on on getting us through this all right so we are now moving on to [Music] model four uh we have four model fours and so we are going to begin with yvette valdez hello hi so um my idea was um mostly based on location um so i chose dalton hodge powell magnolia murray ellington slauson um and of course the suzanne gladstone um i chose these schools um because of where they are located in the city um um wanted to make sure that ellington powell um stayed open just because in the area that they're in they're neighboring um uh very closely to other districts so glendore and kovina and i feel that we would lose a lot of students closing those schools i'm in this meeting as a or i'm in this committee as a parent but i also have the opportunity to work for the district and um i actually see how many transfers yearly we actually um get coming in and out of the district and i think i averaged about 220 transfers out to kolina and glendora on a yearly basis alone that's not taking other districts um into consideration for that number so that was one of my big concerns was if we closed down powell um dalton ellington uh gladstone high school that not only are we going to lose a lot of our current students but siblings and um so on so that's why i chose them um i also chose i chose slauson um as one of the schools originally my thinking was that maybe hopefully if there was any way of incorporating back in a tka or a middle school that slauson would work as that but if not that could also work as a school to cover the an area that um is kind of empty for those families between hodge and ellington um so slauson could be another tk6 um to fill the gap in that side of the city um let me see if i'm just looking over my notes and i think that was it for me i think those were my main points of why i chose those schools thank you miss mildes i appreciate it all right moving on to 4.2 uh um and that goes to miss margie anderson or megan jen that's gonna say i'm not margie but that's okay i will be today um are you gonna put ours up or uh this is it there we go i'll make it a little bit larger no it's okay i was looking at the middle thinking they were all elementaries i'm sorry okay so this is two high schools and um two four six seven elementaries um we we looked at foothill knowing that it is a centralized location within the city and it's it's got the large capacity and we were looking at the smaller schools um dalton powell and we put lee because lee is right there and we thought that we could make foothill into a steam school and just as we said in the first model if you literally picked up powell and picked up dalton and picked up lee and you moved them over with all of their programs intact it's going to become a steam school and then you have eliminated school that has not been modernized and two of the smaller schools that have smaller capacities and you've created a much larger elementary but but calling it the steam school or even a magnet school to you know even further attract other kids wanting to come and with dalton you know while some parents may not want to travel to foothill there is capacity and availability at hodge and also if there are parents at powell that didn't want to move over to foothill there is capacity at magnolia and then lee is right next door so um our thinking was proximity but it was also about trying to keep these programs intact and our district has invested an inordinate amount of money in the vapa the arts programs at powell as well as all of the stem stuff at dalton and so creating one school that is steam and combining those opportunities in such a huge campus and environment could really help them to thrive and so that was our thinking as to the elementaries that we chose combining them and putting them all intact on the foothill campus jen or margie or edna did you have something to add that i forgot i'd like to add a couple of things also thank you meg and you really explained it quite well but the uh the placement of the the steam school at foothill is advantageous for the community in lots of ways and one of them is that um they both rely heavily on support and and um and and learning with apu and foothill is very close to apu there's a lot of uh like for instance at powell powell uses their their ceramics labs and and every year apu comes in and helps them put together an art show and they have a lot of relationships that are depend the programs there at the at the visual and performing arts school and also at dalton rely on those relationships and so it's good to be near apu so we can continue with that um because dalton lee and powell are very close to the glendora border and then you think about the other two schools ellington and um glendora high school all being on the borders of neighboring schools those five schools together that's that is that we really take a huge hit to our enrollment and we're a little worried about that but by putting it uh close to the three schools in the north that would make it possible to hold on to more kids which also allows us to um keep our teachers especially our young ones as the older teachers start to retire so um i think that that's it i think that meg covered everything else pretty well thank you meg all right thank you thank you margie aka meg uh moving on to our third model four we're gonna call and bring back mr antonio flores um arturo that wasn't my model this was not your model no i don't know i only had 3.4 you only had model three uh yes i only did uh changes to to model three but not four okay all right while i figure that one out i'm going to call then uh to this model for here i'm going to call miss diana ochoa good evening everybody so um i am um i collaborated with our team csca and also with yvette valdez um i too work um with the district so my uh reasonings for the these uh schools are because one of location i want to make sure our community doesn't have holes and enable our students to get to schools you know a lot of our families walk so i want to make sure that you know there there's no holes in our community where you know a family has to go clear across town just to get their kids to school also too as yvette mentioned i'm going to piggyback on her because with her collaboration on all this um and talking as a parent too i am a parent here employee um transfers are a big you know a big hit and if we don't keep ellington and gladstone on there we're might as well give a bow to covina and glendora and say here you go take our kids um that's gonna be a huge hit and we see it all the time we deal with it every day um and it just you know it it's really hard for us to see those transfers go and then um you know we as as as the secretaries and the records technician clerks that you know have no say in um so again i brought back dalton because of the area just like i know some other people had mentioned um keeping you know hodge up there and dalton in that vicinity uh bringing back ellington because ellington you know all our kids are gonna be are gonna go to las palmas they're gonna go to covina um and we see that already happening so um and then um i brought back pal because then we have our neighboring you know district glendora and they've taken enough of our kids so we want to try to keep as many as we can um the only one that i did have a little change um uh different from events uh was paramount um i was kind of seeing the location and more of um the borders of it where it's at because i know we don't have mountain view no more we have it's too heavy on that area we have ellington valley dale and paramount right now that's that's a lot um so by taking valley dale out you know we still have mounts uh paramount there um but the main thing is is trying to make sure these this is you know equipped for our families we're here to serve our students i didn't focus too much on the capacity because i know we can make things work we've done in the past um and i didn't focus too much on the programs because i know that's going to be our discussion later on down the line and hoping to keep all that together and then i kept the two high schools because for me that's history and um you know having the two high schools we don't want to lose all those kids to to northview because we will or charter oak it will happen um so and then the history behind it a lot of us have been you know born raised in azusa gone to schools in azusa so there's a lot of history and pride in in those high schools so this is why i chose model 4 to keep those schools and to keep our high schools um and that should be it thank you thank you mr john um miss fish was this yours yes it was i figured it out all right i had a panic moment there sorry mr flores for put you on the spot unnecessarily so miss fish awesome walk us through your model form no problem um my only change was again for location reasons keeping two schools north of foothill keeping one school in the middle and then we'd have the three schools south of foothill dalton and hodge um i mean that that's honestly really all it was was just it was just moving the schools um i feel like there's a heavy um there was a heavy presence of schools uh south of the 210 and not north of the 210 so it was just an adjustment awesome thank you okay because this is live tv and this is happening live and there is no script uh we're we're building it as we go um first i want to reiterate what our next steps are um and then i want to propose something brand new since it's 617.
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i'm so glad you did that so re-seconded by dawn or joe dawn did it come up it did oh there it is okay the vote passed unanimously moving to item i1 request for future agenda item i have one request and my request is i had a kind of touched base with dr kellis on this um if we could get the traffic lights um update with the city of surprise um with the crosswalk like especially the update with west point and i had also mentioned to him in regards to students that and it was a concern with some people crossing over reams road at troya if there is some type of movement with that president would you like that as an agenda item or is an update on the weekly update or um i think it's information that all of us need to know so i would say as an information item school on may um okay i think you got that okay again as just for clarification so everybody's on the same page that given tonight's action that the mandate goes into effect until may 20th and then it is no longer in effect so you're saying that no it's not going to be an agenda item well i'm not saying it isn't that's just for clarification i have a motion by don densmore second by chris christie for check madam president the board could stay just a second after we can give you instructions to exit the board voting unanimously
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our peer groups are 10-4 10-5 and then the state average is 11-1 so we are spending we're getting a lot less and spending a lot less in the state so we are very efficient and effective with the use of our funding they do produce um average teacher salary across all districts and you can see where the higher line and so this last year we came out at 58 so we are 3 500 above the state average for teachers this is something that was new last year that was just the top part of the graph is just showing the difference over the last five years of where the money has moved no surprise student support went up because if you remember one of the big things we did is we implemented social workers at every single one of our schools which is categorized in the student support and so we um you can see a lot more money moving into that category with decreases in administration plan operations food service and transportation over that time this is a new one the bottom half is the lowest and highest so they're trying to just create a little bit more descriptive data to say hey over the last 19 years what are the highest and lowest amounts in the classroom spent on instructional spending the lowest being 50.8 when it first started and now and the highest in 2006 59.4 after that uh normally i i i hovered around there it dropped after all day kindergarten was cut all the cuts to capital all the cuts to mno all the cuts to the classroom and funding and so that uh drove it down but you can see in our last two most recent years we moved up to 57.2 and then we continued another half percent up uh this last year this is also a new indicator on the report it's just how much in federal funding from the coveted relief was being spent by the district and our peer group we spent hundred dollars that was all in our esg so we did spend a little bit money in esg and um our fema edema money um not all of it we received um 5.2 million from the state uh for continuous um continuing our education um enrollment stability grant 5.2 we spent 1.5 last year the the rest of the esu will be spent in this fiscal year and then there are some additional covet funds so the esser funds sr12 will also be reflective in this fiscal year so next year's report here's the hard to see rainbow report but it did not change from the december so i'm not going to focus too much on this really the only thing oh i forgot to take it off is the pink down or the purple down below where it says ag's estimated calculation i forgot to take off the estimated because it's now actual but none of the numbers change because our top-notch staff did a great job with projection so it's all fully in line and so really there's i don't want to be labor and just talk about the rainbow report and everything because nothing really changed from december we'll be doing it again i do it for every budget revision so when we revise our budget may 12th i'll update this and then i'll go into it a little bit more and so i will stand for any comments or questions and comments i have a question regarding um the transportation as far as operational measures relative to peer averages what do you think is keeping our costs high to very high compared to our neighbors that's a great question so not snipped on but if you look at the report you could see that it's red and uh and orange which is the very high now that's not the cost that we're spending because on the previous graph you see that we're spending less on the previous descriptive data transportation at 351 dollars per pupil we're spending less than our pure average and less than our state average but for that descriptive data of looking at the cost per mile and the cost per rider is high which is very indicative of we also have above average special ed cost special ed enrollment we have and a special ed bus costs a lot more has less riders and puts more miles so the cost is higher on all those so that just on the surface is a quick explanation of why our cost higher on the per mile and per rider is i believe we have around 18 of our population special ed and we have a high amount of ieps that require transportation and that funnels into the higher cost thank you very much uh mr hicks is there anything any type of legislation or anything that's coming about that will hopefully eventually require charter schools to complete a report just like this madam president members of the board no nothing at all because i know i know that they're they're not required to complete any type of report like this and um it is um very concerning when once in a while you will hear on the news that a charter school has had mismanagement of funds and they are not detailing the per cost for anything for per pupil spending or or anything and so there's nothing there's no legislator that is actually trying to lead the charge with this madam president members of the board no okay i think we need to talk some different legislations any other questions for mr hicks thank you very much for your update all right item g5 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item as well good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues community members i'm very happy to be back with a presentation uh seems like it's been forever since i talked to you um so this is the accumulation of a process that started back in october with our iba negotiations meet and confer team taking a look at what we recommended the previous year what actually happened looking at our annual financial report fund balances where everything is we kind of just look at all balances where everything is take a look at that we then look a little bit at benefits and then we do meet with the governing board to get direction from the governing board back in january so that can help guide this process and you'll see that embedded in this recommendation this recommendation is it is an information only it is not an action item and that is because um we will be listening for the board and comments at the end of this process or throughout but there are a lot of agenda items whether changing hiring schedules notice of employment going out placement schedules mousse with changes in our mous that are all going to change after this presentation after hearing the board so if there's any concerns or anything please talk to us but there will be probably a handful of different agenda items over the next two months that will all embed all of these recommendations into those pr into those presentations and action items so although this does not an official action item please give us some feedback on that here is the team um that that represents all the different groups from the district we have the dicert education association for our certified staff dysart classified staff representatives our dysert school administrators and dysart cabinet representatives and as well as mr dr croto and myself that help facilitate the whole process the process does take time we do a lot of talking we start although we start a little bit looking at the finances from the previous year we do make sure that everybody has a chance we're trying to make a safe place that anybody could say anything question anything question any cost question whatever we're doing so that we feel like we're going forward with the best options possible so it's not a flat line straight line process it's very dynamic it's a lot of discussion in there we do make sure and we validate our recommendations against the board adopted standards and so those standards legal affordable alignment sustainable viable efficiency necessity judicious and equitable we read through that we make sure that everybody understands that that our recommendations going forward do not violate any of these and so there is a check and balance process on that so as i said we start with telling the story where each group comes from we identify interests what the direction they'd like to go find common ground we brainstorm look at options to solve all of those we layer in the direction from the governing board to make sure that we're on the right path we evaluate them against our standards to make sure we're not violating anything and then we go with consensus so everything being recommended has a consensus approach meaning that if one person says they're not for this then we have to keep talking about it modify it better explain it or take it off and so that is the process that we work through just as a reminder back in february the governing board already approved a three percent retention stipend so this is just a reminder of that and we reminded the group of that also in february the governing board approved our benefits package because we're an open enrollment right now with our benefits so we had to do that a little bit sooner so that happens before and that had our benefits it did have some premium rate changes as you remember some up and down and some hold steady and change the hsa contribution the state retirement cost increased as well and so we already had to make sure that we took into account those expenses one of the recommendations from the group was to look at this was a cha recommendation that was made at the end of last year for this year's iba and meet and confer team which was to extend the vaca the time for exempt and hourly staff to use vacation we extended it to december 31st and that was because at the end of last year we had the pandemic hit us a lot of people got moved to home there was nobody could travel nobody could take vacations and so we wanted to create an opportunity for them to have more time so they didn't use it or lose it and so this created an opportunity for them to use more since then the group said let's go back to the october 31st travel's been open people can take time people should take time for themselves even if it's a just stay home day staycation in that sense and so we are recommending that we roll this back to october 31st as part of the process as we're looking through all the other recommendations and looking at what we had available for compensation the group voted on and we are recommending a 1.3 increase to the base pay for all current and positions part of what was approved last year during the iba meet and confer process was to help a little bit with decompression was to can we increase our new higher placement schedule which was how about the proposal last year that was approved was whatever the raises to our current employees the hiring placement schedules will be increased by one half of that and so this falls in line with that recommendation which so if 1.3 is what all staff are getting then this is increasing those placement schedules by 0.65 if somebody has already come before the board for hiring starting next year they were using the current placement schedule that did not have that they would be eligible for that 0.65 percent increase not the 1.3 percent if they're not an employee they're not a current employee going on to some mou stipends create a lead nurse addenda of 3 150 per year we noticed that we had a lead addenda out there that was not being used and um is somewhat redundant to another addenda and so we're asking to eliminate the lead adaptive pe physical physical education teacher addenda 3150 and then also create a lead ess specialist agenda of 31.50 per year we're also recommending to change the high school drama agenda to high school theater so name change and then modify currently right now it allows for uh one in the fall and one in the spring one play in the fall one in the spring we would like to double that to two plays for the fall and two plays for the spring each semester getting the 2042 so it's basically doubling that create a ess hard to fill addenda at fifteen hundred dollars there currently is for three groups ess special ed math and science currently get a hard to fill stipend addenda of fifteen hundred dollars then the next year that's the first year they're coming in then the second year is a retention it drops to one thousand this is to uh create a new line which is for ess hard to fill and it stays at 1 500 and does not go down so we would still have the hard to fill addenda and the retention agenda for hard to fill positions those are just for the math and science and those would stay as is with no changes this would only be keeping the keeping the ess hard to fill agenda at the 1500 so they come in it does not drop after the first year so that would be providing a 500 increase to all ess teachers all staff that are receiving that um another request was to create a dsb live addenda for up to 4 000 per semester per high school based on criteria and the criteria i think mr dean dr dean presented some information on the number of shows or activities or events that they're hosting or doing currently right now this has very little cost increase because they're currently getting paid on timesheets so the budget's already out there to provide some time sheets for them this is to have our teachers stop putting in timesheets to get paid for all the events we're just going to do a stipend for them and they could do based on the number of uh events that they host there's also was a request to increase our ctso sponsor addendum from 2042 up to 3 000 per year per qualified activity this is not paid through emino but just ran through the same process and this is using our cte funds to fund this increase it does align with a lot of the school districts around us as well this request is to create two specialized program nurse positions um currently we have health service assistants filling these positions so we would eliminate the health services positions create the two specialized program nurse positions and move to place them on grade w for an increase in pay which is more aligned to the criteria or the qualifications that are needed to be compliant for the services that they're providing in this specialized program i believe this is in our aspire program that has some high needs students that have higher need service needed to them and so this would align a position with those increased uh qualifications would that be uh mr hicks would that be lpn or rn it's depending on the need you could turn on your microphone dr croto will help with that madam president um member sawyer stinkville uh the answer is both to that depending on the child's needs uh the lowest qualification is an lpn but sometimes the needs of the student require an rn so and it's based on what's written in the student's iep and the needs of care all right thank you uh the next request is um focused on our special ed paraprofessionals and this would be recommending to move our special ed paraprofessional from grade d to grade f so this would create a our resource base paraprofessionals so grade d is currently 12 15 and grade f would be moving them to 1372 so 1.57 base raise for everybody that qualifies on that this would then now create a tier so right now all of our paraprofessionals are on one we would then now break off and have a modified special ed paraprofessional specialized positions so we're calling it specialized positions to differentiate and these are in our aspire one-to-ones our preschool our vi vision impairment program our stc program and our pbs programs so those specialized positions in those programs would then be going from grade d to grade h grade h is 14 39 so they would be getting a 2.24 raise per hour along that same we would be moving our ess behavior technician and the preschool special ed preschool facilitator from the great age to a great l grade h is the 1439 grade l is 1591.
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the bathrooms yeah and we're still working on some of those details on that obviously expense will be considered as far as what can be done what can't be done when it comes to that so i know that adam is checking right now on some things with the state in regards to some of the ideas we put out there if we do do that do we have to do a full ada renovation of it so he's just kind of working out some of those details to make sure we're not put in a situation where we would have to do some type of full renovation if the funding happens to slip away from us then we can pull out capital projects to do what's new yes and that doesn't mean in another five or ten years there won't be an additional sections that will need to be revisited because it is piecemeal together i'm not seeing any public comment okay any other questions before and you guys are stuck in the republic too so if you have any questions okay with that we will close the bond here and move on to the recommendations to approve these resolutions so there's just a little description about those resolutions i kind of went over them in the bond here and so the first resolution or exhibit a really just establishes the estimate cost of the project the tax impact and the timing of that impact and so we would make a recommendation then to approve the project resolution exhibit a i don't know if you want to do these individuals [Music] appendix a for the uh project on flavor say hi okay exhibit b then just really establishes the maximum amount to be borrowed the maximum term of repayment and the maximum interest rate which is that two million and five percent so that preliminary bond resolution i moved to the preliminary bond resolution of industry second half i'm going to send a second to adopt the preliminary bond resolution appendix b aye aye recommendation to adopt reimbursement resolution so exhibit c reimbursement expenditures really allows us to go back and reimburse ourselves for any payments in related to this bond uh down the road so for example like we've already had costs for the advertisements and that type of stuff so we could essentially reimburse ourselves for those types of payments from the bond monies moving forward until we get the for any payments now until we get the bond essentially because typically what will happen now is after all these are resolved then there's a couple advertisements that we have to post and then in the may 11th board meeting we kind of have a couple more resolutions to approve which finalizes the bond selling and then then it goes out to bid and then we receive those funds typically our goal is to receive those funds by the beginning of junior and so there's still a little time process involved with all this and we do have some other information as far as final approval at the next board here we're at the next board meeting so there'll be some advertisements and other things that we'll have to put out there but this just allows us to reimburse ourselves for any expenditures that we've had in this throughout this process since we don't technically have the money yet and this would be called the declaration of intent to reimburse expenditures i moved to through the declaration of to approve the declaration of intent to reimburse expenditures appendix c all in favor say aye recommendation to approve strom for the nhs shs ceiling replacement project so we got the quotes for the ceiling tile project we got three quotes which were required to to get strong came back as the cheapest so the these base quotes are for both northfield and southwood and the ad alternatives then were the the office area the entryway and the auditorium area and so they came back to be the cheapest strom is the one who actually did it for our athletic entryways when we did the flooring and painting in the buildings and so our recommendation along with barton co's recommendation would be to [Music] use strong for our ceiling tile project and steve and his crew would work with them on the timing of all that the goal of this would obviously be done during the summer time when advising the buildings are these areas are you happy with the prices this was the best price we had yeah and they're a good company to work with i think we're anticipating about 160 000 to do the project and so this is just over 100 that saved a lot for us that helps us doing some of the work too i always appreciated that replacement project all fair side all right okay recommendation to approve intercept technologies for the nhs shs network upgrade project so aaron was uh working on these quotes to replace and update the fibering within both of those buildings we anticipated it would be about 150 000 intersect was the closest uh to that amount and they were the lowest bidder uh with that and so as the as the ceiling tiles are down the intersect would be able to go in and upgrade and replace that wiring and then straw would come in behind and put the ceiling tiles in so that's kind of playing with this and again working through the summer when there's less interruptions in the hallways and office areas to try and get that done before school starts and interests that is more or less local here right yes yeah [Music] it's technology technologies to do the network upgrade at both the high schools volunteers okay so that is that is the end of the uh and then probably at the next board meeting like i said uh we should be getting these roof bids back i think may 2nd so we'll probably have a recommendation there for those roofing so they can get that started too that might be that's going to be a project that's probably going to go throughout the school year a little bit the goal end date is to be done while the on the bid the end date was to be done by the end of december of 2021 and so there may have to be some shuffling of some classrooms and things like that a little bit because you don't want them working directly over a classroom with people that when they're doing different sections so they'll take some coordination with the building and go to principles i don't know there seems to be so many sourcing okay the last two items we have in our new business our overnight and extended trips we're going to handle both of those together uh the first one is a recommendation to approve an overnight extended field trip for sharp peak elementary sixth grade class to camp mullen ir in silver lake indiana may 19th to the 21st of this year and the other recommendation is to approve an override extended field trip for the southwest junior high school eighth grade class to washington dc in may the 10th of the 15th of 2022 so that sounds like a second to approve both field trips all there say aye aye opposed we have no unfinished business no work policy any public comment on anything we'll let facebook catch up with us there i'll share sherry which way he's made a couple of comments um she referred first she said missy is the best i assume it was melissa ball for driving down and she thinks dr coon's reports are awesome i'll just read it as i see it and she echoed kevin kevin's interest she was happy we were using all right so we have no public comment on that any items for the board members
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making this year its centennial anniversary incidentally tonight we have one of the largest groups of inductees we have ever seen at east long meadow high school and without a doubt contains some of the brightest minds of the future at such a significant milestone in the society's history it is a privilege to be sharing it with all of you this evening students sitting here today are some of the most hardworking and driven peers i have been lucky enough to know they excel not only in academics but in life through their contributions to the community of usang meadow and their clear demonstrations of leadership in the many athletic and extracurricular activities we offer here being surrounded by like-minded people is one of the greatest motivators people helping and encouraging others to do their best for the benefit of the individual as well as the group it is and it is abundantly evident that their success will continue long after their high school career comes to close now the membership of the east long beach national honor society has been earned by the effective demonstration of the four qualities held in high esteem by this society four of our members will review these qualities for the candidates scholarship means a commitment to learning a student is willing to spend hours in reading and study knowing the lasting benefits of a cultivated mind we should continue to learn even when formal education has ended for education and only with the end of life knowledge is one great element in life which leads to the highest success and it can be acquired in only one way through diligence and effort learning furnishes the lamp by which we read the past and the light which illuminates the future candidates have have the charge to continually expand their world through the opportunities inherent in scholarship service service can be described in various ways in the routine of the day's work many opportunities arise to help others willingness to work for the benefit of those in need without monetary compensation or recognition is the highest quality we seek in our membership we are committed to the idea of volunteering our time and abilities to the creation of a better tomorrow leadership should exert a wholesome influence on the school and taking the initiative in class and school activities the real leader strives to train and aid others to attain the same objective the price of leadership is sacrifice the willingness to yield one's personal interests for the interest of others a leader has self-confidence and will go forward when others hesitate no matter what power and resources may exist in a country they're ineffectual without the guidance of a wise leader leadership is always needed thus to lead is a substantive charge to each of our members and character character is the force within each individual which distinguishes that person from others it gives each of us our individuality is that without which no one can respect oneself or hope to attain the respect of others this is this force of character that guides one through life and when once developed grows steadily characters achieved and not received it is the product of constant action daily striving to make the right choice the problem of character is a problem with self-control we must be in reality what we wish to appear daughters by demonstrating such qualities as respect responsibility trustworthiness fairness caring and citizenship we may hope to prove by example that we value character will the candidates please rise candidates if you agree with these four pillars of our organization you're welcome to join us in the following pledge i pledge myself to uphold the high purposes of the national honor society to which i have been selected i will be true to the principles for which it stands i will be loyal to my school and will maintain and encourage high standards of scholarship service leadership and character when your name is called please walk across the stage to receive the membership certificate will the following candidates come forward to be inducted in the east longmeadow high school chapter of the national honor society you can sit and then i'll call you let's go okay uh just one more piece before we get to the uh distribution certificates um so i just would like to send a quick message to the students who are here tonight uh so on behalf of the elhs administration i would like to thank everyone for joining us for tonight's ceremony both those who are here and who are watching at home however tonight uh why they are here and why we are here is not simply because of what these students have accomplished in the classroom becoming a member of the national honor society goes beyond academic recognition becoming a member is a charge to be a leader amongst your peers as a class officer as a student council representative becoming a member is acting as a role model through service to your school and community through the key club or other volunteer programs becoming a member is having the character be compassionate honest and ethical as you walk the halls of elhs becoming a member of the national honor society means that you embody each of their four pillars scholarship leadership service and character on a daily basis we are here tonight because these students time and again have demonstrated their commitment to this higher standard however the embodiment of these standards does not simply end with tonight's induction what is so great about this group of 36 individuals is the work that they continue to do together after tonight i've seen our national honor society do great things here whether it be tutoring they're struggling peers coordinating running charity drives the individuals who work the individual work that they have been doing prior to tonight will become a collective effort to better the world around them i am proud to have the privilege to work with these young men and women every day and see the awesome things that they are accomplishing i am even prouder to say that these young adults are now deserving members of our elhs national honor society so with that ms fox uh it is time to hand out some certificates julia ferentino miranda rodolakis [Applause] foreign olivia watson attica awan nina bedford kyle burks [Applause] delaney barello michael carlone nicholas cassidy alexandros dimitro glue [Applause] elise donahue [Applause] james dodie [Applause] dylan delginos kyle fisk [Applause] kyle garvey hannah [Applause] aaron hamilton brandon hanouche alana joyce robert kane amon karana stefania lacorie garrett mccoskey allison mandrala [Applause] rebecca manna [Applause] gabriella michelski [Applause] sarah moriarty [Applause] ryan morneau [Applause] katie nguyen sally nguyen jacob pachetto ainsley smith patrick stevens noah szymanski christian thomas cleopatra trung and brooke vicaro congratulations to our new members we thank all of you who have attended this year's ceremony so at this point that brings us to a conclusion of tonight's ceremony um unfortunately we can't have any refreshments like we have in past years but if the rain has not started if anybody wants to step into the courtyard to mingle for a moment or take pictures but by all means do so and we appreciate everybody coming tonight so thank you very much hey
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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 second by catherine i'll do a quick roll call joe britton yes rachel celeski hi kate canetta aye uh joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli aye cathy molinaro aye all right the motion so carries thank you um richard do you want to take that second motion under action item b um i'll make a motion regarding food exemptions the board of education or governing authority will allow the sale to students of food items that do not meet the connecticut nutrition standards provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event and three the food 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 or 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 and must be the same place as the food sale thank you for taking it by catherine second by catherine thank you i'll do a quick any discussion okay we're going to roll call joe britton yes rachel celestine yes kate canetta aye uh joe da silva all right catherine hodgson hi rich gianelli hi thank you kathy molinaro hi all right the motion carries thank you very much uh joe da silva could you read the third motion under action item b please uh yes just give me one one moment to bring up the agenda i'll read it if you want me to uh thank you catherine if you would pinch it for me that'd be awesome i'll make a motion for exemptions for beverages the board of education or governing authority will allow the sale to students of beverages not listed in section 10-221 q of the connecticut general statutes provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event three the beverages are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence sorry is it an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity the 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 and most must be the same place as the beverage sales all right thank you for that thank you joe um any discussion all right uh joe britton aye rachel chaleski aye kate canetta aye um joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich janelle hi kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy spelino hi thank you very much that motion carries all right we're up to action item c uh joe britton absolutely thank you madam vice chair i would like to make a motion that the board of education except for first reading policy 9273 conflict of interest as recommended by the policy committee all right do i hear you seconded by catherine okay catherine you get the second there any discussion or comments yeah i got a comment kate questions called a conflict of interest yet when you read through this i mean it wouldn't be my interpretation of any conflicts of interest um is that just an inappropriate word or am i just not understanding the text rachel did you want to speak to that i'm trying to pull it up here sorry rich i'm just also pulling this up on my screen here appreciate your patience simplistically i think a conflict of interest would be you know if you had an employee then as a board member or teacher or something you know if it was possible that that would be a conflict but these just seem to be guidelines i mean it's not saying it's a you know point but it just well it's it's a civility code yeah that i could understand rachel and also meeting protocol um it does it does specify in parts of the document you know that you cannot take private action that will compromise the board and the administration you know he had to conduct business in an open transparent manner um i think there were components of that but um rachel you know obviously you is the the chair for that committee um you know maybe we want to bring that back for discussion we don't pick the caption yeah that caption came from cave and we don't pick the caption and it's and it's pretty uniform across all all boards i mean then it's a numerical enumeration so okay the titles are wasted thanks rachel okay uh any other questions or comments seeing none uh joe britton aye rachel celeski aye kate canetta aye jojo silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich gianelli aye cathy molinero aye al russo aye amy spelino hi motion carries um action item d um joe do you have that up now or or shall i move on to something else i'm sorry i caught you again i'm sorry no i was just on you i have it okay thank you action item d motion that the board of education except for first reading policy 9300 methods of operation is recommended by the policy committee 21-62 and page 41 in our packet can i get a second please second thank you rachel uh any questions seeing none uh joe britton aye rachel chaleski aye kate canetta aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich gianelli hi kathy molinaro hi thank you al russo hi amy spelino hi motion carries thank you um amy could you read uh for action item b please yes i make a motion at the board of education except for first reading policy 9321 board of education work sessions as recommended by the policy committee 21-63 page 42.
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so now you have heard six different iterations of what model three can be and you have heard four different iterations of what model 4 can be just tonight in tonight's presentations right we heard we heard someone say i wish i would have thought of that so right now what our next steps are is between now and sunday night you have the sheets i sent them to you if you are an author of one of these ideas or you are not an author of one of these ideas you can now think oh my gosh i i have an idea that i need to think about i want to put this idea forward or you're an author and you said ah if i would have thought of that i would have done that so you're going to change what you originally submitted to me and we saw tonight right so uh you are you are dr seuss you wrote the cat in the hat you today you saw something different and you want to change that that is perfectly okay but we're asking you to do that by sunday night miss fish can i ask a clarifying question on the models you said we're not supposed to change them right but i noticed that some of the schools have seven schools and for the elementary or tk six through tk instead of six um our model three is five tk sixes and one tk8 so are we okay with adding that additional school in yes okay yeah thank you for that question and let me let me let me pause then and reiterate what the models are model four are tk sixes and seven twelves um the amount of tk sixes um can vary depending on what today i think you saw some that went less and some that went more um and i think that's gonna be okay uh for model three the model is tk sixes you must have one tk8 you must have one middle school and and then the one high school uh but thank you for that clarifying question um so that'll be our next step a next step is to go back to the drawing board if you want to if you don't want to and you're satisfied and you like what you heard not not an issue not a problem you're not expected to send me an email or to send me an idea uh that's only if if you find it in you to do that and if you're an author and you like your idea and this is the way you want to keep it perfect no issues and no problems whatsoever from gabriel question from gabriel mr fernandez yes wondering about uh the different types of facilities that the schools are on like as we consider refining from six to one or two however we're going to go through the model 3 and model 4 next week um which sites have gyms which sites have enhanced facilities so to speak beyond modernization so another thing for me as a relative newcomer to the district to understand what our capacity is a different way yeah thank you for that mr fernandez and uh definitely i mean that's something that will definitely you're not you're you're not the first person to to to say that that might be helpful and so we'll think about when we send this email to you all in terms of next steps uh what what other pieces of information we might we might add to to help and assist um okay so with that being said and we do have a little bit of time here's what we're going to do we are going to allow people of this team to unmute themselves if they have a clarifying question clarifying question clarifying question means that the person can either answer it with a yes or no or a simple response we're not going to do any probing questions because probing questions would be uh now you're getting to you're getting to to um wonder kind of push their thinking in in a way that um might be judgmental so hey that was you know [Music] like why did you do that don't you know that blah blah blah blah blah that would be probing a clarifying question is hey you said that x y z can you help me understand one more time or i wasn't sure what you meant by by this perfectly we we we're we're striving to understand and know so we'll open up for clarifying questions once that fizzles out then we will conclude our meeting and we'll begin our process of getting your input by next sunday night so once again if you have a question which model is it and then you may ask the clarifying question meg did you have a question before the questions i do can you take this screen down so we can see everybody because this is a particular model and then i do have a clarifying question but i can wait to go talk to somebody okay let me i have a clarifying question too i'm not sure i know how to ask now that i've seen so many are we able to like look at menus one of their menus uh models one at a time and then ask questions while we can kind of see it i'm i'm fine with that so we would leave this up you're saying and let's start with this one like for instance start with this one anybody clarifying questions with this and then move to the next one is that what you're suggesting jen yeah or maybe just you know if we can have it so that we can pin it and look at it and then unpin when we want to but does that work on i don't know if that works on zoom but um yeah i i just feel like i may have clarifying questions between so many models i can't remember which one is which so i don't know if anybody else feels that way but when you so are you going to send them as model 3.1 model 3.2 you are okay and then the next process question or clarifying question i have it relates to what mrs fish said and um because i want to make sure i understand we we were making the our decisions as to the recommendations we were under the impression because we were unders we understood that it was a fixed a fixed number in the sense that okay you're gonna have one high school and um two middle schools and six elementaries right one two one tka and and five uh tk6 but you're saying then that we can have more than five tk six that's what you're saying now right that's changing we're not trying to limit is that what you're saying yeah my my and again i apologize that this is my misunderstanding but my my my understanding was that the model is tk six one middle school one tka and one high school um and i apologize i i was not caught up on how many tk sixes um the only numbers that i got caught up on that we decided as a group was for sure one high school for sure one middle school for sure one tk8 and then the tk sixes would vary uh so for instance right now on the screen um you have you have you know you some of them have different iterations like this one right here right so so so yeah um i i would say so again unless the team disagrees i i would say that yes because the reason it was five is because that was our initial like that was the district's proposal right and the way we proposed like oh it works out with five um but but now there's new information there's new ideas and so so yes okay so then the next piece of my question is as we're going back and doing this because as we were also formulating our ideas we're trying to keep capacity in mind and it's it's very clear that some of these have different capacity levels much lower much higher whatever and so is there a directive about what we're looking at for the capacity versus just saying the higher the capacity the better you know overall i mean match to enrollment versus capacity can you give us some direction on that one because i thought that we had an understanding and maybe we don't yeah and so first i want to point out like what i think meg is saying so if you look here and i don't know again off the top of my head who's these are but if you look here on this model 3.1 for e you will notice that this model at the at the tk 6 and tk level this model puts us our capacities at 95 percent if i go to just to pick a this one right here this model drops the capacity down to 67 percent so to answer your question meg is there like a hard-nosed number they have to be above 90 they have to be above 80 uh no but we have been saying that we are trying to maximize our our capacity in terms of facilities and in terms of programs and i believe um that the reason that we are doing that is because we don't want to find ourselves after going through this entire process two three years down the line and saying uh-oh we're back down to 200 school you know school with 200 kids or three and now we got to come back and so i think the board's vision was let's let's have this big plan that's gonna carry us through uh through a through a through a lengthy amount of time so that we're not having to come back to to to restart this conversation let this amazing team right figure out a way that uh that they can do that so so yes no no magic number but definitely the the objective here was to maximize our capacity and maximize our programs thank you for that question and can i ask one more question i know that gabriel asks questions about facilities um i i also think it would be helpful if we had what the actual number of ada is in these sites and let me tell you why okay so hypothetically speaking i heard some great comments from different um members of the of the committee saying that well i chose this school because we wanted to have it in the north and we don't want you know these kids to go here or or in the south and we don't want these kids to go there i'd like to look at it and see okay i i get that i know what the capacity of hajj is it's 753 students well if they have 500 kids and dalton has 200 could it absorb dalton i want to know where if you could you could you can't you can't you know and so that helps to make decisions too in the sense of what realistically could could be done or i heard two different iterations of using foothill because it's so massive to do something well how many schools could you fit in the foothill i mean or for example center you know um half of anthony's iteration um involves having a tk8 somewhere else well then center absolutely could have the capacity to house all the middle school kits so it's like but we need we need to know the actual enrollment so could we have those numbers or is that too hard no definitely not too hard again let us think about in my head right now swirling uh is like a data package um again we will make sure that that is public when we meet on on wednesday but maybe like a data package like a like uh again some kind of synopsis that might assist in your dreaming and your ideation and your and your vision okay i'm going to go with jen's suggestion i think it's a good one so i'm going to leave you still have two hand raised miss patricia and diana i'm so sorry miss patricia i i can't see the thing so thank you for helping me latasha uh ms patricia sanchez good evening everyone um i just want clarification don't ask me which model is honestly uh there's so many but uh so is this a question for for someone who authored one of the yeah we're gonna get to that right now we're gonna go through them okay when you see it you can get to that so thank you okay mr no question okay was it somebody else latasha who had their hands raised it's diana oh miss rojo was that other diana um i have a question regarding the just the clarification regarding capacity numbers um and and i could wait until we go to the models if you want if it's a if it's a if it's a question to a person that that mentioned a model it's a question about what they did then yes you can wait till we get to that model no it's not it's just overall then go for it yeah all right so i i would just like clarification on um not the process because i understand the process of how you determined um the capacity for each school based on you had to mention going to each school site deducting the six classes um i know you sent an email to us regarding uh recalculation of dalton um because you found an error but i'm wondering within the capacity of each i guess classroom what was that based on was it based on a total of 35 students per class was that half of them were 26 another were 35 like how did you come up with that number that we see right there on the chart of latasha yes take the first stab at it thank you thank you girlfriend so here we go so to get the capacity like we said we had an outside company what they do is they take the number of classrooms available divided by the number of grace bands i'm going to use dalton because i have it in my head dalton has 20 classrooms available they have a grant grade spans you take divided by 8 you get the 2.5 that tells you how many classrooms you can allocate to each grade then you take the district's class size for that grade so we have is it 24 you guys 24 for tk don't kill me what's the number 26 thank you you take 26 times 2.5 you get the 65 and you do that for each grade span and that total you add all together that's how you get the capacity at a school when you subtract in a classroom you take the average class size which is 33.
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part of the conversation as we're ending was reminded that this is to help with a lot of vacancies and a lot of turnover that we've had in our paraprofessionals that are impacting our special ed programs our ess programs and then the thought was well we have bus aides that uh service uh that are on buses just for our special ed programs and that we should be in an equitable move should be moving our bus aides from the grade b to grade f to align with the lower of those three tiers of those specialized positions which that would be the resource special ed pair provisional and so that would be moving them from the 1215 up to the 1372 position as well one thought just to make sure everybody was on the same page and just for clarification that when what commonly happens now is right now they're all paid the same our specialized our resource are paid the same and so positions people will get hired into the resource position but then a vacant position in one of our specialized program specialized programs and we'll just move the resource over to the specialized because that is more iep and more needed and more impactful on the student and so we could have other solutions to solve the other vacancy but now that we're creating a differential in pay it would be unfair to move someone hire them at a lower move them and have them do the job of the hire and not pay them so we're requesting that uh paraprofessionals who work 10 consecutive days in the specialized or ess behavior technician position will get paid at the rate of those positions so they might be able to fill in a day or two here or there but if it's going to be somewhat permanent we need to pay them at the higher rate so mr hicks we have uh several vacancies that had not been filled correct so how many did we have for this year that were not filled madam president member source think bill um i don't know the exact number but if i was to estimate off the top of my head that would probably be um around 60 to 70 pair of professional jobs that are not filled and i think i remember i think i remember you saying something about 63.
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thank you amy can i get a second please second thanks joe britton uh any questions or comments i just want to make a comment that um uh policy nine three two one is already um in established but this the board of education workshop sessions it should read is 93212 i know that bylaw 4-3 was included as a reference um and i just want to also make a point that um in that by-law that we're not approving because it's already existing for us um just that there is no city clerk um any longer that there's a town clerk so i don't know if we can make that um that simple just word change and that bylaw um that's that kind of precludes the um the workshop sessions portion of this i don't have it it does rachel i have a question i don't have it in front of me what was the city clerk referenced for was that for a notice it was just a notice of meetings yes kim can we do can we substitute town clerk for city clerk in that instance since we don't have a city clerk anymore without having to re-move it yeah i think i would call that a scrivener's error maybe you know i just want to make sure that the town clerks the appropriate governmental official to get the notice in the absence of a city clerk i would need to check yes i i believe okay okay then yes then i think rachel's right i think we should make that change um so there's a motion on the floor here with the with a second um in that correction that we're talking about we'll come back on the second read is that right okay so i'll do a roll call for the accepting of the first read here uh joe britton aye rachel chaleski aye kate canetta aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli yes thank you kathy molinero hi thanks kathy al russo hi amy spelino hi all right thank you very much motion carries um al can you read action item f performances administrative regulations formulation adoption and amendment exhibit 21-66-84 motions the board of education except for first reading policy 9313 administrative regulations formulation adoption and amendment is recommended by the policy committee and i have a second on that please second uh joe da silva got that one uh any questions or discussion okay seeing none joe britton aye rachel tuleski i kate canetta i joe da silva aye catherine hodgson hi rich genelli yes kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy smolino hi thank you motion carries uh we are down to action item g um amy could you read that one please sure thank you uh i make a motion that the board of education approved the march 2021 operating results and analysis general funds grant projects in accordance with let's see we have exhibit 21-65 on page 47.
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because you don't know what grade span you're subtracting so you take the number of classes that you're trying to subtract times 33 and then that's what you subtract from the first number you calculated latasha can i clarify about that then so that 20 classes at dalton is that after the six that are being saved no dots after the six that are being saved dalton actually has 17 classrooms but to start what we did is we went from the 20 that was available from decision insight use their capacity we subtracted so in dalton case three was already subtracted so i only have to subtract three more classes which is where we found the error we subtracted six classes and they already had three i mean three taken out from decision insight so we realized we really were short and dalton three additional classes and it wasn't just dalton we did it across the board so that's why you noticed everyone's capacity changed it wasn't just one school site and so what we did is we said okay if decision insight already took away three our goal was to get six we took away three more and that's how you get dalton's new capacity and that's the same for everybody okay thank you you're welcome for that you're welcome all right awesome so in the in the few minutes that we have we're going to start with three i i can't figure out how to raise my hand but can i just it's not a clarifying question no i just want to thank i just want to thank those that brought up ellington i had a lot of parents come to me very concerned just about they were asking me if i knew the history of ellington and i was like i've been at ellington forever just to reiterate ellington was created as a k-8 simply because we were losing a huge number of ellington students to los palmas the parents didn't feel comfortable having their students walk to center versus walking to las palmas so it was created to help keep those students in our district and we've kept quite a few of those students in our district gratefully because we were able to have the k-8 so just throwing that out there just is a a good panelist a good member of the committee thank you all right here's thank you here's a 3.1 does anybody have any clarifying questions for this author edna has her hand raised but edna is it for this model oh nevermind she took it down sorry okay really quick i cannot remember whose models are who so it's fish yeah okay thank you because thanks thank you i'll all thank you i'll say it i'll say it when we get to to those so thank you any questions for mrs fish on this model again this is an understanding this is not i like or i dislike i have a question yes ma'am so mrs fish um your um your reasoning as i recall for this model is you were thinking about proximity of one's from one school side to the next so it was kind of um equally distributed around the district is that right correct okay thank you all right i'm gonna move to the next one this is also mrs fish and mrs wilson perkins any questions clarifying questions on this one okay uh this next i'm sorry i do mrs victor mrs perkins i have a question um and this is um looking at your tk8 at center middle school and this is where it would help knowing um the actual like ada of the sites um i i i'm looking that murray here is is you know being suggested to take off and you know how close that proximity is from marina center and murray's capacity is almost the same as center so if murray became the tk8 i'm wanting to know why you chose center to be the tka instead of murray for example absolutely so i i think although murray could absorb magnolia students that if if center was chosen and it was an in between location that a magnolia would have less distance to travel and b personally from what i've heard about the tk in the district we haven't done it to the standard that we need to to offer that to parents um instead of middle school there needs to be maybe instead of the wheel like everyone sort of talked about like a magnet something um that gets those um six seventh graders um more um more facilities more opportunities so although murray could absolutely accommodate it this this was purely out of not knowing the difference between those two locations and thinking that a middle school may offer a bigger cafeteria a bigger campus in order to make a really exciting tk8 preferably with a pathway or magnet for our district thank you all right um moving on to i've lost my script guys so i apologize 3.3 um i don't remember up to my head who this was mr contreras okay mr contreras any questions around thank you any questions around uh 3.3 okay moving on to 3.4 this is mr antonio flores any questions for mr flores i have one for mr flores um go for it i i'm i'm understanding um why you um put the tk through eight at foothill that makes sense to me i can't see you mr flores either so i don't know if you're talking i'm here oh yay okay um but why i understand dalton and powell i i get it but i don't understand ellington what was your thinking of choosing ellington to take off the list versus another school that could have been closer by even if it was like magnolia or lee or something that was in closer proximity what was your thinking that valley dale could absorb them or i mean what was it that you was kind of your reasoning sorry um i mean it could be that valley dale could absorb the students but again you know i i'm not uh completely attached to the schools here i mean if we wanted to switch out ellington with foothill if that worked out that would be fine with that as well but that was just my my thinking of putting foothill there and then adding slauson as the other middle school can i also ask you two um um why you would have a beast lawson instead of center and i and the reason i'm asking and i'm not trying to be it's not loaded and i say i love your i love your plan here it's great it's so but modernized versus not modernized what was your thinking capacity or so i was actually thinking azusa as the center line so we would have a tk8 option on the east side of azusa and then slauson being on the west side of azusa of you know zeus avenue so you had an option of uh you know tk8 on the east and slauson um on the west are you left-handed everybody else thought south and you thought east and west i'm a lefty too so that's that's what it is yeah east and west there you go okay thank you very much okay moving on to 3.5 this is any questions around 3.5 do we know who presented this one i'm sorry yes this these questions would be from meg okay so i have one meg um in regard to it you had mentioned about uh dalton being relocated over to hodge a question uh for clarification um at the size that hodge is at and the capacity of their auditorium and everything else that's there how do you imagine the fulfilling that capacity with dalton students i i don't um and so let me clarify it is our it would be our intention that dalton would literally get lifted up and programs go with it and be put with foothill along with powell and lee to create the steam school magnet school to keep the programs and the people the teachers that have been trained intact so that kids that started their younger can continue along the progression of their stem learning all that kind of stuff what my comment was is that if if there are kids whose parents don't want them to go down to foothill hodge actually has the capacity to absorb some of those students from dalton who would not want to go with the program mr vela yes i i believe that you were responding to your model four and the one that's up right now is the model three oh yeah cause i don't know how to read correct um either way actually i do believe that with your um ada that you have right now that hodge can't absorb most of those kids okay and then just the same numbers that's why i asked them specifically and then also a clarification is you talked about funding on remodeling um and i don't know if it would be you'd answer it or if it would be um the cabinet um funding is isn't that money already set aside through the um modernization funding that can be utilized for that so it wouldn't directly affect the district's main budget as a loss i guess you can say or a hit are you talking about like for example modernizing slauson instead of something else is that what you see because you already made a comment in regard to why remodel a school that we we could put in in another school that's already it is it you're right it is bond money but you have bond money that supposedly is slated to modernize all of lee modernize paramount modernize slauson and my comment was ultra dalton i thought that dalton had already been modernized no we're just in the same boat as the other schools you mentioned okay and so i didn't i didn't know that but honestly it doesn't affect what i was thinking anyway actually even better because then what you could do is instead of taking all that money and putting it into dalton take and make everything even better say it foothill that's already been modernized and has two computer labs and all of these other facilities and so just take what was slated for this and make it this even better like even the high schools you know all the things that we want to do and i know they're doing a great job with with how they're managing that money that's not the common i'm making it's just it's about choices thank you thank you so just to clarify uh meg because you did mention um a couple of times that lee is not a modernized school so that's why you had it as the on the list of closing even though it has a capacity of 606 um you do realize there are other schools on the other list to keep that are not modernized right i do i do just paramount correct on this particular list dale murray magnolia hodge and ellington have all been modernized so it's only paramount that we have kept on the list anyway that was just a piece of our thought process it was not the determining factor so i mean the only determining factor all right moving on to can i ask a clarifying question as well yes ma'am um when you guys looked at your schools i noticed that you only have one school north of the 210 and the all the other ones are south of the 210 did you put into consideration some of those students who may be kind of more in the center um but now they'd have to travel farther north to the to the only one school or south of the 210 to get to school you're muted i think the one school that would affect most is lee because um powell is is close to magnolia and dalton is close to hodge and so really lee is the one issue school where if you're not going to make say foothill into a mega school or something like that that isn't going to be an issue for lee proximity you're absolutely right yeah so all right moving on to [Music] number six and i apologize i did not again i lost my script here so if someone can help me out who this whose model this is mine can barely see okay kim so thank you so any questions for this model for miss c all right moving on to our first model four 4 this was miss valdez's model any questions clarifying questions for ms valdez was your your model based on the data you see as you process the transfer requests out of the district based on schools of origin for those transfer requests yes that was a big part of the reason why i chose the um these schools i actually gathered the data that was just recently submitted to the um to kevin and to the board from our office for the last five years and that's where i um so i took all the little charts for the last five years and i went through them and so that's the reason i chose those schools but between that um and also just mapping out like i don't know if you guys can see it but different schools from different districts that are surrounding our district and just mapped out where they were at that was another factor um and yeah just location uh where they were at how far away they were from uh other schools within our district but yeah transfers and location were the two big ones miss melissa's hand raised sorry mine was a similar question um i keep coming to this again and again the valley dale and ellington being so close um 0.6 miles um apart and valleydale being a bigger school a bigger capacity school and a larger enrollment school that it seems like people keep going back to the um keeping ellington at because it's um in covina and it keeps those covina kids i took that into consideration too um the reason why i just kept going back to ellington is just because if we can always add portables they did that for the the middle school portion of it and it worked out great um on that school so if we needed to increase the capacity and possibly portable or construction is available then the capacity wouldn't be so important then because we could put you know drop a couple portables in um the school sites that i need more um capacity and so that's why i kept going back to ellington versus valley dale okay moving on to the second model four this was uh meg savannah i hate to say this i just want clarification on modernization because i literally am i'm being text like bombarded um is just to make clarification on the modernization part that we spoke of early and it's kind of also been brought into this as well some of the language was brought up uh or about modernizing um what phases are we at at the schools that are on the list currently for modern that are in the middle of modernization um can we have some clarification on that yes so right now we have paused on any construction that has not started so that way we are not starting a project but until this process has been completed so everything that was in the works i think all of our projects that are there they're like 10 um we have projects like for dalton um paramount where we submit plan to dsa but there is no construction whatsoever taking place until we finish this process so but the phases themselves and i apologize my dog um like i know from our site we're on the last phase phase three uh do we have other schools that are at phase three are they at phase one or they have phase two because that also with the comments that meg had made you know i think we should let the public know also and also our committee know where we're at because if we do have a school that's just about done or school that's just the beginning it may also affect the committee yeah i'll i'll talk on on that one just a little bit um so to double down on what mr mall said right now um we took the approach to pause everything right now until we figured out what was happening with school reorganization number two uh in terms of the phases um those phases were based on the assumption that we had all these schools right so you have a set amount of money and you say okay based on this money and based on the number of schools that we have this is what we're going to be able to do right roofs underground classrooms right that kind of like that that mentality that we've been in uh which still might might hold true so we can definitely go back backwards and say this is where all the schools are at but moving forward we cannot because again the trajectory and what can be done with the remaining funds that we have uh can be altered severely uh based on the model that we land on and the number of schools that we land on so we can definitely go backwards and say okay this is what has been done but but but moving forward um we we cannot because moving forward would still be under the old assumption that we have all of these schools and this and we're going to continue with the plans that we currently have make sense okay awesome all right moving on to 4.3 i have a quick clarifying question for meg's plan what schools was it that she talked about picking up and moving to foothill i can't remember you're a mute make but i can answer that for you because i wrote it down you go right ahead friend because i was right about to break the rule and have to pay a dollar in the jar so go ahead i think you said that uh it would be picking up lee dalton and powell yes and then that because dalton is um stem this is on stem paulo's emphasis on the arts uh that foothill then would become a steam school and all of those right and lee is right there which solves that problem that diana was right about in the other model whereby you know they don't they are in the center of the city and so for them to be you know pushed to four corners of the wind is very far for those families to travel that is very accurate miss wilson so we had the stem program paul had the arts program and what was what was dalton's dalton is the stem program system okay all right perfect thank you um so i mean i um i mean i'm a little bit biased as a hodge parent thinking you know dalton's going to close we're the only two schools up here we i just did the numbers we can only absorb half of their um projected enrollment for the following school year so at least half of the school would have to select to go somewhere else we also have their projected enrollment numbers we only have their the uh we do on the slides that we got at the beginning of the process okay um so there the projected is um um three 329 for dalton 585 for the 2022-2023 school year for hodge um leaving us at 915 hodges capacity although it feels very full already um the capacity apparently is 753 um so we could maybe take half of dalton um i'm also nervous that that up um that this area is also there there's a growing number of homes and um that it's a growing neighborhood and that if we close say dalton that that there would be families who maybe not use our school district who are maybe moving into rosedale and things because um there would be thinking because the investment that the district has made into the programs in dalton is really that those kids are going to go they're going to pick them up and go put them on foothill i think that the teachers are very invested um after having been trained in all of the stem activities i think the parents are invested and so i don't i would be very surprised if this is my opinion and i taught at hodge so and i love the school and i i believe me but i just think that um it wouldn't be absorbing the entire school i think and i agree i think um dalton is a destination school with its program that that families come to use it and i um i hadn't thought of moving the entire program i just knew that um you know dispersing it at all would be very disruptive to the program but i do like what what you guys are putting together with that the entire program moves i'm just nervous about um in moving so far south all right we have a couple more minutes i think we can pull this off questions for miss fish moving on to 4.4 questions for mrs ochoa can i ask another clarifying question just in general because i'm not familiar with ellington but listening to what miss jones said about um ellington being a school that we lose kids we were losing kids to covina so ellington was created to help with that loss of kids she mentioned that they go to a different school is that school a middle school that that you said that they're going for so it's the seventh and eighth graders at ellington that we're losing seventh and eighth graders okay so sixth seventh and eighth graders so kind of in my head what i'm thinking is having that tk8 there is what's keeping them there so changing that into an ek 6 which is what's proposed in a lot of these models doesn't really solve that issue actually there's more right next to las palmas so right next to las palmas there's another elementary school so it's not only middle school it's also elementary because literally there's i think there's a there's lark allen there's art gallon there's grove center there's yes oh here it is there's lark gallon las palmas grove the lark island's closed i was going to say i think they're going is closed yeah it's close oh yeah manzanita is right behind it so yeah lark ellen is the one i had it crossed off that one's the one that's closed but we have grove center too and manzanita's right next next to it yeah all right ladies and gentlemen you did it um number one again if we can just have a quick silent applause for all of our authors tonight what they did takes time uh takes brain power uh to put your ideas out there and so we are super appreciative how lucky we are to have 10 different models 6 for model 3 and 6 for model 4 to to wrestle with to digest to chew on to ponder to think to wonder to imagine to dream and so we thank all of you who took the time to really think about this you will get an email from me saying um here's what it is everyone has these models already i emailed them to you um again if you are an author of one of these 10 ideas today you have the ability to say oops i changed my mind um i after listening tonight i want to edit my my model perfect it's your model you can edit it if after tonight you say hey after listening to everything i want to pull my model again you authored it that is your choice and your decision or if you authored something today and said i'm good i like what i what we came up what i came up with what we came up with and it's going to move forward that way great and then lastly if you did not author something but tonight you feel inspired or you see something and you want to throw a model out there you are also allowed to do that again i want to reiterate it will be in the email this time there is a deadline and that deadline is sunday night uh that is not to add pressure that is just to add transparency to this team so you uh more quickly ahead of time uh you get to see uh what your teammates are doing so again thank you so much we know this is not easy but we appreciate what you do have a wonderful evening and we will see you if not sooner next week have a good night everyone thank you
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