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good evening everyone i'd like to welcome everyone to the first meeting of the equality and diversity committee of the dartmouth school committee to start i will note that per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law glc 30a section 20.
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uh good evening everyone uh what's today may may the fourth be with you i'm wearing a a death star t-shirt myself underneath nice you know i didn't want to just wear the t-shirt i figured that would be you know unprofessional so i covered them with a collared shirt uh let's see um miss jojenski roll call please sure mr gripper here miss helen here and mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum great um oh let's see i'm just making sure i get the all rise for the pledge almost sounded like there was music for a second i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and i remembered all the words this time i forgot that one time i was uh i was out and about uh before the meeting and they were having a car show down in front of uh oh way back burger uh in front of way back and they and they had a uh all of a sudden they started playing the national anthem and they had a flag and i was like okay said stop put my hand over my hair everyone in the parking lot standing there you know why they played the national anthem i thought that was kind of cool i don't think i'd seen that before um alrighty uh dr solon oops oh abruptly um i believe that mr grippo was going to ask if we had any public comment which we do not and i know he'll be i'm assuming joining us shortly there he is no public comments sir hey i kicked myself out of my own meeting i guess there we go okay no public comment great i don't know oh he must have closed the window or uh something right so i guess we'll begin by reviewing um this uh new policy uh fund 41 student health services sure so this is a update to our uh existing student health services policy and really what precipitated this was not the vaccination law that's you know gone through the state although we will have to take another look at that of this policy when formalized and so i don't know that we need to necessarily move this forward today per se but one thing i did want to bring to your attention that we were looking to include in this policy everything you see highlighted is updated so we met with our nursing coordinator uh nancy stanton who has really done yeoman's effort the sharon has had more engagement with our health policy here than than ever as well as dph and chesapeake protocols but um she advised us on a number of these areas that are highlighted uh relative to information we've pulled from from uh cabe policy so i'm just going to try and fix that or i'll ask carol to fix it let's see so um again what what you see here is highlighted um you can play with that later i guess um we just again just updated some language uh around you know who can conduct uh health assessments and whatnot what's required um under our health assessments can i jump in or should we just wait till the end let me just say if you don't mind tim until i jump at the end this is all reflective of state law so this has been updated the vision hearing and postural screening [Music] tb testing has been updated and then the influenza piece we already state that you need varicella um which is chickenpox vaccine uh that's required now uh and that was you know in 2011 so a decade ago we have to update this uh and then the the big piece of this that we wanted to really focus on having in place before next year which is i mean we could just require it is a regulation that we're requiring it at the middle of the high school level for next year prior to board making it formal policy but uh i was explaining to adam earlier that one of the issues we're facing in the athletics department is that students get their physical but they expire in the middle of a sports season so that creates a risk for them and a significant liability for us as well as the fact that it creates a real um problem for the parent and the student in the middle of the sports season to say by the way remember your your uh you know physical expires in the middle of this season and then you know they are in the middle of sports and they forget and now it's like well your your child can't play today or can't practice today because and then that creates a lot of issues for the team the student athlete and the parent as well so we're trying to avoid that we looked at what some other districts were doing and many of them require a physical before the season starts to cover them throughout the the length of the season so um that's something that you know we really are gonna to enforce next year so that that covers the um items in the policy tim i know you had a question or more maybe yes just a couple things um [Music] near the top it mentions medical advisor i'm just curious what is there a quick like explanation what's the difference between a medical advisor and a doctor sure so the district has a district dedicated medical advisors dr jim o'connor he's a pediatrician in town he does a lot with our our school system to ensure that you know we're providing a healthy safe environment for all of our kids okay but he is a medical doctor is the point when it said when it sort of distinguished between medical doctor and medical advisor i just that's all i was worried about yeah yeah he's our medical advisor and we hire him as a doctor he's a pediatrician yeah okay um with regard to the uh the mention of homeless and this may just be state law the way it's written but what struck me in there it says that if you live with someone who's been in a homeless shelter i'm wondering if somebody goes to work at a homeless shelter like i don't know like a is it someone who's how do i put this i mean if i walked into a homeless shelter for five minutes and then suddenly it you know it sort of creates a problem for my kids who are playing sports i don't get that i don't know if you have any yeah this is uh i just want to make one clarification that this is this is uh encompassing this policy of all students that one carve out was what i that i was referencing about the 13-month physical requirement that's only for athletics but the whole rest of the policy focuses on all students basically all the time so um the and you know following the the protocol you really only need that um that testing if you live with someone who's in a who was in a homeless shelter jail or prison uh i guess it's just increased risk of infection so you need to have that testing done so i guess it's just the way it's i'm just this is an observation the way it's written it just strikes me as like say your your mom or dad is a cop you're living with someone who's been in a jail it's like it just seemed it seemed odd but it's probably just the wording is my guess without necessarily being the intent of it anyway um yeah i mean we can review that with nancy but you know that may be the case that if your um sibling is a uh you know incarcerated um corrections officer gosh it took me like three days to get to that but anyway if you're you know like like a parent officer you may have to have the tesla um okay uh so that just to be clear on it the religious exemption the stuff that's been in the headlines so we're gonna be we'll be getting to that in the next couple months or something because i don't i don't even know if it's a law yet they're voting on it but i don't yeah it was kind of tied into law it's official uh oh it has okay yeah as of april 28th it became uh official so lamont signed it then yeah it's it's done okay um let me see the in there in the down at the bottom it mentioned telehealth and those are prohibited does i guess i just my observation on that is i kind of wonder if that makes if that was written pre-coveted and it if it necessarily makes makes sense still or yeah so in um for your child to be eligible to participate in athletics yeah they need to be seen by someone in person the the screening um which is a a fairly uh typical physical where they're checking your breathing rate your heart rate you know asking you a number of screening questions the screening questions could probably be done virtually but some of the exam really needs to be conducted in person and so we don't accept telehealth clearance for a sports participation okay no and i i understand that completely i'm just did everybody have in-person physicals in the past 12 months i guess that's my question because i'm thinking but maybe that goes under the governor and that's a great question if i'm not positive if that was waived or not i would have to ask nancy that's a great question um i'm trying to recall you know if my own kids who participate in athletics i i know that they've had physicals and i think the doctor just filled out the health screening form from that physical which is permissible but um i'll ask nancy that's a great question yeah i mean it's more of an observation just but it could be under the executive order where everything gets waved to the past year yeah potentially but i don't recall that in the executive order um most of the sports were canceled and in the height of this you know uh last winter last spring and you know some participation this fall but i think by then um things had opened up so i'll ask nancy it's a good question okay okay um and so i guess in the last thing i'm just curious why do we rely on the ciac instead of just like the athletic director to to give us our seasons our 13-month period i'm sorry but for the athletic department i guess i should say what do you mean by 13-month period uh well it's i'm just reading it here and you know the examination is available for 13 months as specified by the ciac yeah the the um ciac doesn't specify the 13 months the 13 uh the what the ciac specifies is this season so we yeah so we belong to the ciac is i'm not aware of i mean there are some private schools that participate that'll play public schools um brunswick down in uh maybe it's greenwich participates in ciac sports but pretty much uh everybody participates in the ciac program they define fall season springs to compete for the state championship you have to you know be affiliated with them yeah i just in the past year i've kind of i know i'm not that big of a fan of the cia i know so anyway that's fine that's it it was more observation yeah so they they they're only dictating the season um when it starts when it ends because that's about uh fair competition so you know ciac will say baseball pitchers and catchers can start this day everybody else can start that day so that you know team x down the street isn't starting to practice three months before everybody else is giving them an unfair competitive advantage so that's that's the rationale behind that one sure no i understand i get it i got it all right thank you yeah sure anybody else with any questions on uh katherine you have any questions i don't thank you okay um for me uh just uh firstly so just going back to the the athletics uh portion um that is a a form that's required to be on file so every athlete has to and then that's kept either what is that wherever those forms are kept in the health office yeah in the health office yeah okay um oh health so so that's kept where like in the head nurses office okay now i'm guessing that's lock and key because it's yeah middle and high school actually it's double lock and key oh wow okay great um the office one for the file cabinet um as far as so um going to um so we don't have to alter that line um where it mentions um the home the homelessness line because the because there the duration was was that an annual test for tuberculosis i i have to be you know i i am not well versed in the whole tuberculosis component of this process and i you know again i'd be happy to have probably in the fall we could have nancy come back and talk about you know not only the tuberculosis or other questions you may have about our health screening protocols but i know that there'll be questions at the start of next year about just our vaccination protocols uh you know more inclusively yeah and opting out of that and whatnot so you know i don't think it's a bad idea i just really wanted to put this on the table before you today because i do intend on moving forward with requiring our students to be um to have their health physical cover the entire sports season before the fall season starts so i just wanted to have this conversation with you to make sure that there weren't any you know substantial objections to that component that we might need to take another look at but again you know we're following what a lot of other districts do and when i realized we didn't have that it was um pretty clear to me you know and talking with steve and nancy that you know we're creating a liability for ourselves and a potentially you know bad situation for the player and so um it makes great sense to make sure that the students physical covers the season so we don't uh so are you saying we don't have to move this for readings no we could uh we're not yeah it doesn't have to be moved for a reading it could it could come back in the fall or i don't think we have a meeting scheduled for june but it could come back for the fall we could have nancy come and talk about it but so for right now you're you're treating this as administrative policy or administrative regulation yeah not as okay that that one component yes okay um you know but the the other parts we have a policy already it's the yellow parts we're looking to amend and you know i think it's just important to have it in here if that's what we're going to do and that's what we're going to require moving forward and i think it protects the board um from liability i so it's my strong recommendation that we do move it forward but understanding that not tonight necessarily unless you know you you want to and then it's fine we can always make changes later but i just think if we're you know starting the year off next year we can we can um have nancy come back and walk you through it and make sure everybody understands every element if you feel very comfortable with it as it's written right now then go ahead and move it forward there's no harm and we can still look at it as a second reading in the fall but it's up to you okay i just didn't feel like there's real pressure to do it right now um you know i know well that i mean the thing is that because the law has have just changed april 28th and today is may 4th and we didn't right um yeah that shakes off well honestly yeah i don't know if this is the time to really broach that subject so i'm i'm not gonna i'm not gonna really bring it up uh but my question is in in reading through the policy there is a statutory reference to mandatory vaccinations as far as the types of vaccinations and so my question would be let's say that the legislature next year because i'm sure they wouldn't i don't think they have time to do it this year maybe they do to make the uh the uh coven 19 vaccination mandatory to attend school um that could be slipped in right under that any and any other vaccination listed under uh section what is it 19 dash whatever whatever it was that's where so potentially this policy represents that it i you know at the end of the day this is another one of those policies where state law trumps whatever we say anyway so it's it's essentially irrelevant right so when so since the the governor has revoked the religious exemption we have no power to stop it correct because it's statutory um you're an agent of the state and must follow state law so is a board member so um you're not an agent of the town and i know that's it's a unique situation um but that's why you know you're autonomous from the council and things like that but you know um we would have to follow state law uh and so even if and we've had situations like this before where we just haven't updated the policy because you know we're waiting for the legal um clarification or we know that the law is going to change and our a perfect example of this is our graduation policy you know what it takes because if you recall the state changed uh high school graduation requirements probably uh eight years ago or something and then they changed it like three times thereafter with delays and changes and stuff we couldn't possibly keep up with it in the policy it was just they would seem to be changing so often so at the end of the day though we still had to follow regardless of what our policy said the statutory requirement right this is the same thing okay well at least we had the opportunity to ask the question i suppose um i well you know what um i would certainly entertain a motion to move this forward to a first reading to to at least have the to cover the athletics portion um tim would you like to make the motion or um because we can have discussion after uh yeah i make a motion too based on what based on what was just said to make a motion to move this forward to a first reading okay catherine second all right uh is there any discussion on moving it forward to a first reading uh tim yes yeah um so the i'm trying to so this really relates the idea here that you mentioned is um related to sports i don't have as you know i don't have any kids playing sports at this point not with the schools um but i'm trying to put my i'm trying to put myself in their shoes right now particularly um what goes through my mind is the kids who they're playing a sport for the first time seventh graders i mean i know i the first time i ever did a sport was track it was like you know it's whatever time it's march hey who wants to do this sure i'll go afternoon mom can i stay after so it's it's a last-minute thing and then you've also got i mean the freshman really at any point but primarily i'm guessing mostly it'd be freshmen and seventh graders and so in terms of this 13-month um physical it's not so much a 13-month physical but getting it before the the season starts or giving some sort of uh leeway like okay you can do the conditioning part but not the contact or anything um is that just something that you're thinking about um making the i just want to make sure kids can get into it i don't wanna i don't want kids to go oh i miss the season i can't do it because now i can't get a doctor's appointment for three weeks and then doc the coach said don't bother because blah blah blah now we'll find a way to make it work you know okay that being will make the physical happen um the we'll make the um the form happen you know we don't allow kids to take the field the core the ice whatever the case may be um without a physical and it's a significant liability for us and a risk for them so you know we we inundate parents with the message that you need to have an athletic physical it we always ask kids well in advance if you want to sign up for a sport so for example i you know uh when i was principal dodd middle school for a week in the spring the athletes high school athletes would come down talk about their sports their teams the kids in the caf would be excited about it they'd sign up put their name that we would make sure that everybody gets the emails about athletics but those guys would people that are interested boys and girls would get the information about uh their parents would get the information that you need to have a sports physical so it's like you know entering seventh grade you need to have a physic a regular physical too okay so um by law so we have to send you home if you don't and so when you once you've had that really in seventh grade you've got the sports physical for the year because the the you know pediatrician then just fills the form out um so it's not really an issue for us um parents are really good about it we're really good about communicating and kids are really good about being aware of it and so that's not the issue it's the issue is i got the physical didn't you know i forget about when it's going to expire it expires in the middle of the season that creates a problem yeah yeah okay hey i just i don't want you know i mean it could be tough for a kid to do that for the first time it's you know you're growing you definitely want kids participating as much as we can we we harp on that constantly you know whether it's athletics or music or theater or other clubs or whatever without kids participating so we don't want to shut them out of that we'll find a way to make it happen okay yeah that was my only point just good faith effort to keep them yeah absolutely absolutely um is there any further discussion uh seeing none um all in favor of uh moving policy number 5141 uh to a first reading say aye or raise your hand it is unanimous fantastic thank you um on to our next item which is a policy 6159 individualized education program i believe that we had looked at this in detail last time are there any additional changes no sir you'll find that the rest of this meeting should be like roaring downhill because these are all like the technicalities this if your call is switching from 21 to 22 on special services uh following statutory uh um can i um seeing that there are no additional changes can i have a motion uh to bring 6159 to a second reading i so move that okay is there a second there is a second mr white thank you is there any discussion all in favor of moving policy number was it 61.59 to a uh second reading all in favor is unanimous let the poor guy spit it out kathryn okay our next uh items are um for uh policies for a third reading um 3170 3300 3326 33 26.1 and 41.45 um assuming uh i don't want to assume are there were there any additional changes to those policies since the second reading no sir no revisions um okay then can i have a motion please to move those policies to a third reading i'll second it okay so we have a first and a second yes um the motion on the floor is to move policy 3170 budget implementation 3 300 expenditures spending authority purchasing guides policy 3326 paying for goods and services policy 33 26.1 payroll procedure and authorized signatures and policy 3541.45 student transportation insurance to a third reading and approval from the board um all in is there any discussion all in favor raise your hand is unanimous fantastic um and then we have some uh a couple of items in the other section of our agenda dr solon yes so um the the next two items are kind of more informational um the student activity account uh you know vin is working with as i mentioned i think maybe at our last business meeting uh the new auditing firm just completed their audit and we've set up a meeting with one of the auditors to get more information about student activity accounts um and unfortunately that had to get pushed back from i think today to thursday but i should have more information on that soon and then the other item i'll just share my screen really quickly with you is that um the state has um adopted a law which requires districts to create a minority educator recruitment plan um for diversity and uh non-discrimination so uh you know we've had a plan um and strategies in place and take it right from the beginning but you have the link i don't know that i have to like scroll through this so you can read it but basically we have to adopt a plan and so over the summer we'll create said plan what we have been doing is aggressively advertising regularly in the national minority update um to try and solicit um teachers of colors or professional teachers of color uh any any position really to apply for uh for positions we've done things this year unique with meriden in terms of the affinity group we've [Music] advertised and tried to solicit uh more diverse candidates through job fairs and that continues so we will formalize a plan um but i just wanted on your radar tim go ahead um so i you've had you've had something of a plan in place for years now correct yeah we've been working on diversifying our staff for some time i think this you know past two years we've really um ramped it up you know kovit has kind of put a wet blanket over a lot of our efforts you can't go out to job fairs when they're all virtual you know and it's kind of stinks but we're looking forward to uh getting to that as soon as we can so what what i'm wondering about is uh let me see so my understanding is one of the difficulties you've had in years past has been that a lot of i mean cheshire cheshire for years has been a majority white town right um and you're looking at recruiting you know people of color um but a lot of times when you've found them correct me if i'm wrong on this a lot of times when you've identified people made an offer or something they say well i want to go back to my hometown right and you know cheshire seems nice but first of all it's hard for us to get people to apply which is why you know in through my work with southern that i've been doing for four years now um we recognized that there just aren't many candidates of color uh graduating from our local colleges entering the the teaching profession i remember hearing that of all the admitted students that expressed the desire to select education as a major there was one black male at southern but you know we uh collectively is education need to do a better job of talking up education as a profession uh in the black community and you know getting kids interested and frankly i mean and that's the other part of the work that's going on uh that we're doing at southern is to try and provide greater access to resources to entice students so like geez if i can get a scholarship to go to college for this that might make it easier on my family and make it more enticing um and so you know they they received a rather large endowment at southern and dedicated a lot of resources to recruiting kids um candidates of color into their school of education which you know we certainly applaud but it's a a long process you know if we're identifying high school students that we think would make great teachers someday man you're six seven years out before they graduate high school get a college degree you know internships and perhaps a master's degree so it's a that process it takes a long time to cultivate that but one of the issues we as you said tim in the past has been that um we're hearing from you know just the work that we do at southern when students graduate they want to give back to their community the same way that our kids who graduate want to give back to treasure and you know actively seek jobs here so we're trying to break that and you know make it more enticing for for other candidates to come here so with regard to i'm just thinking about you know kids returning to their hometown so you have people who apply you have you know kids who grew up here and then they so you have do you have any active outreach to you know to students of color who went through the cheshire system and say hey come home yeah i mean i know that i know they come i know that i definitely know they'll come back and apply yeah there's not a significant i'm not waiting for them to apply but actually outreach to them right i i'm not aware of um any significant number of students anybody of color who's graduating from treasure high school and entering the field of education i think that's part of the problem okay that's that's not the first choice is education and i think you know where there are uh larger numbers of black uh in hispanic students um our effort has been to try and make that make them aware that this is a real option for you that you're you're wanted in this community in in as an educator you can make a difference in kids lives and we're trying to encourage students at that high school level to enter college considering education and so that's that's where the efforts been most recently sure sure and i'll just go out the affairs and recruit people but you know a lot of where you might walk past cheshire at a job fair because you grew up in new haven and you want to give back there if you know john paracino is at the job fair calling you over hey you know well let's talk about employment you know it's it at least gets a candidate to open their eyes and consider us where they may not otherwise but when you do it in person you lose that opportunity i don't thank you thank you for that and and so i don't know the um i don't know the ethnic or racial composition of the faculty or the other staff but i'll just point out that you just mentioned uh black and latino and i'm just going to add to that there's i mean asian you know south asian indian type and i would just add all that i think specifically what i'm thinking about is i can't remember her name but she she was advocating something in the past year she was advocating diversity in the past year and she was um for um i'm guessing she was based she was of indian descent american you know cheshire kid or whatever but that's just specifically like what i'm thinking about i mean there are kids out there who are concerned and um not she's an adult now but um anyway that's where i was coming from just outreach to our own student body at some point right yeah i mean yeah sure thank you um just a quick question do we advertise out of state yeah the national minority update uh is a a national publication and we you know have advertised there for what like two years now carol so it again i i don't think the pandemic has really helped our efforts uh to get people to come here and to meet with us to see things it's yeah it's um you know just for everybody it's it's been a downer but i hope that our work with the affinity group in meridian too may um not that i want to pluck teachers out of meriden wouldn't do that to them either but you know if somebody makes the decision that they would want to give cheshire a try that'd be great or maybe you know [Music] a black teacher in that group is an intern and is looking for a job and they meet one of our teachers in that meeting and they're like oh maybe maybe this is an option for me that would be great too so we've tried things to provide some more outreach that's a resource for our black teachers um but also you know could be a way to connect and draw more teachers in right so i just know but believe it or not uh our teachers salaries are extremely competitive especially compared to uh teachers from other states so that's why you think maybe you know especially with a lot of you know population movement now after covid that uh you know right you may find more success and i'd be happy to send our people going to those states to go to a job fair for a school that you know graduates people that are educators um but you know you can't do that so yeah anyway yeah because yeah because there are many states that uh where teachers unions uh don't even exist that that aren't they aren't as strong as they are here and they they may find jobs here more enticing um catherine did you have a comment well i sort of did but because you know i just i've been on this this is my eighth year on the board and we have talked about that our efforts to recruit um minority candidates you know all the time and it sounds to me like this is you know this is not just a cheshire issue this is a across the board sort of issue because if you can't get kids to be interested in the field of education then you just you know that that is much more of a structural global issue um and but i know that jeff has been like committed to trying to um you know do whatever he can to draw people to cheshire and you know i don't know what else you know it's not like this is the most exciting place to live so you know telling you know getting somebody you know younger people may not it's going to be a tough draw anyway if if we're thinking people would move here from out of state um but hey you know i i think we should be doing whatever we can do um i will point out though that if we at the time that we can in fact do in-person job fairs if we're thinking of sending our people to other states that's going to cost money and we i don't want to hear anybody you know in the morning during the budget season that we spent too much on you know travel or something because those are the kinds of things that um could work but then we have to be willing to pay to get that done so um that's all but you know i think overall we've always done what we could do to attract candidates of color to cheshire um and we'll just have to keep trying because i i do think really important and you know i i think that you know we've tried some creative things and it sounds like you're you're still trying creative things with meriden and southern and um so yeah i guess the problem is that hasn't worked right and so you know you have to go back to the well and try something different yeah and that's what we're trying to do yep so um so the plan is that that plan you showed that's the plan that you're going to be submitting to the state or no you know what we'll do is draft the plan to share with you oh okay an option yet all right very good tim you got a final question yeah uh not even a question just an observation which is i mentioned it before um well two things first of all compensation matters um but compensation doesn't necessarily have to be cash or salary and what i have mentioned before is hummuston if we do not end up using hummuston as a school i i i would i would like to see it turned into housing even possibly you know for municipal or school employees i know this would be a massive lift and i don't see it happening but i think it's you know if we end up doing other things would if if we're not going to be using hummuston as a school i think it could be converted into housing and we could use it for something like this for attracting attracting young professionals to the cheshire workforce that's it okay if anything gets creative thinking tim [Laughter] it's i mean it's tough that what what is this what does a first year teacher make jeff 42 45 000.
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uh i would like to thank uh tim the president of the citywide pto for working along with dr sam sort of making this happen tonight that we can work together without having doubled meeting i certainly appreciate that uh first of all the workshop is going to be presented uh board members will ask questions and then uh once uh we finish with the board members then tim and his executive staff uh that have questions will ask questions at that particular time uh i i don't like to get into a time frame but i will uh can we sort of start wrapping it up but at nine o'clock other people have children that they want like you know have to get up for tomorrow go to school and after a couple hours it really get tiresome okay so if we can start looking at wrapping up at nine o'clock and we have to have another session we'll do that okay so um without any further delay uh dr sale uh you want to just open up the workshop yes thank you and i want to ditto tim thanks for uh cooperating appreciate it it's important to get a parent perspective um thank you so um real quick i'll start with kevin's got the slides from the night just the backdrop guys the state board has approved as you know at their state meeting that no board in connecticut is um required to option uh to uh offer dl um next year there'll be four conditions where dl will be permissible you know and that'll be some kind of emergency closing and uh distance learning uh not anything we haven't done in the past but they're talking about that but the requirement that we have to offer it therefore go through that process is no longer [Music] hello uh yeah we can hear you i can't even hear your doctor i can hear you down the stairs the mute is going on and off if you don't hear me and i'm trying to talk my mouth you can't even see me um i'm sorry i'll go on from this so just to reiterate the state is not requiring um dl it's optional there's four areas that it will be permitted in and that will talk more the board could talk more next year but basically when you close school for emergency weather or power outage uh they'll permit uh dl uh for that time at this point but those are just um conversations they're having there isn't any steadfast decision made regarding those elements so for us um we we've uh followed the medical advice all the way along and uh i'm sorry the plan that you see is one that follows the medical advice kevin you want to bring that up kevin is bringing it up bringing it up so just to reiterate we we did social distancing we looked at a multi multitude of options we worked with as i said the other night the realtors um the police not the police ships the fire chief to make sure things that we're doing is okay so we have just in time decisions instead of you know having to wait and come back and bring out folks so we so what you see in front of us here uh it's still iterative we still have to do some scheduling accommodations and other things but ostensibly what you're seeing here is something we believe follows the guidelines uh and we would be able to then open the plan opens up full day at the high school middle school in elementary it opens up monday through friday for 180 days during the school year kevin you want to bring the road to reopening sure wow we have it up dr cell so walk everybody through it kev okay so good evening everyone um and i'm happy to see that uh citywide pto is also joining us this evening so uh ms cooper tim thank you very much for making this happen for everyone so i i just want to start um that this road to reopening proposal if you will is is being mindful of the three foot social distancing guideline and we planned the reopening around those guidelines so what you see is planned around those three foot social distancing guidelines so in our last meeting courtney opened up with the financial implications if you will as part of the board meeting i'm going to skip over those slides and then certainly we can circle back if there are any specific questions um to that piece so so last week at my desk sorry i know i was on your traveling right here okay no problem no problem um so according i'll circle back if it just in the event the board has questions um now that i'm remembering now in our last meeting there was actually a place on the agenda um about those two slides which we kind of made the connection but we can just i think we can just start here with the road tree opening um so so for everyone um and i believe carol wants is also on the call this evening hi cara um and i just want to walk the community the board um city ptl through this uh diagram um and so you know throughout this whole process you know since we've been closed down we've been reviewing our space capacity at every building um every classroom in the district from the beginning um of course first it was at six foot distancing um social distance guidelines and then it was three foot social distance guidelines of course there were some cases in which you know we looked at on the ada social distancing guidelines their recommendation and so all of those things were considered uh throughout this process um you know when we thought we were coming back and then we ended up changing our mind you know because of the spike of cases in town um and then later on when we came back in a hybrid uh we have gone through this planning process a number of times um and feel pretty confident about what our true capacity is in the district the the next phase reevaluating our space capacity uh with with the new cdc recommended three foot social distance and guidelines and so you know despite our confidence quite frankly we went back out again um and and and we went back out again because being afforded these new monies being afforded new monies to purchase new furniture um you know we quite frankly put a different spin on our spacing because and then we went back out to space our classrooms and review capacity based on all of the furniture that we knew that we could buy with with these new asset funds and so so the and so part of this uh this this next area where it says budgeting you know leveraging essa funds to reopen schools safely for all students you know having those having that having those funds and using those funds to purchase furniture was critical as part of this process and then of course um you know there was a piece in which we had to assess the financial impact the academic impact what does this mean for staffing what does this mean for um you know how much money it would cost us in staffing and then also furniture and then other other mitigation factors and you know we reviewed all of those things you'll see some of those things on the subsequent slides and then last but not least we started this process last week in which we would share the update with the board the staff and the community and so again i don't think any of these things are going to come as a surprise to the board of the community and that's the problem and it's even with the social distancing guidelines um we we are still limited without true classroom capacity um and so six through twelve uh my schools did not have the space to house students and our biggest challenge with our secondary schools is our places of gathering and and that and that that being our biggest issue is being the cafeteria um and so and so that's one challenge for us and one of the reasons why we re-entered in the hybrid um this school year we were not able to offer that opportunity for student 612 because we didn't we were not able to provide the safe provide provided space for our secondary students with those social discipline guidelines in place the next area is k5 and so in the k5 schools if we wanted all of our students back we learned quickly that we don't do not have enough teaching sections to accommodate enrollment plus the social distancing guidelines so you know number one we're anticipating 150 plus students in kindergarten this year in addition to you know any increase in enrollment for the 2122 school year so that compounded by the social distancing guidelines really moved the district in a position positioned the district to have to well that's leading to tonight's recommendation to hire more teachers in a district um throughout throughout the district and you'll see that in the subsequent slides where we'd like to put them um and and and so that's this is our space problem some solutions um we uh some solutions so facility and personnel investment so the district would need to add additional staff furniture at least an agreement which i had started you know to talk about last week to accommodate our space and challenges furnishing furniture intent would be ordered in all of our k-12 schools and i'm sorry that it should be read furniture would be ordered for all of our schools k-12 intense would be ordered for the high school and possibly um also broadview uh middle school and so and and the board should also know that the district is continuing to look at feeding options that might help reduce the number of tents needed but right now um right now the way we are currently constituted uh we would definitely need tents to feed kids safely and then um on the second half of this maintain lease at sacred heart we currently have a number of classrooms at that site but but our recommendation is to add lease an agreement with st joseph school in brookfield connecticut and then last but not least staffing leasing and facility upgrades so the district's commitment to reopen schools would require additional staff and furniture and lease agreement we are recommending that kindergarten classrooms from south street elementary school sadly rough and else in ellsworth be reassigned to brookfield danbury high school would look to switch to an eight period day which would open up more sections available uh for for our students and add positions to school to maximize the classroom capacity while also addressing addressing graduation requirements and so year one wrote to reopening and just wanted to kind of speak to the financial impact and so under staffing and supplies recommendation would be to hire 15 teachers at the high school level and ask two existing staff members to teach an additional class to address the graduation requirements at our elementary schools we would hire 20 teachers including special ed and esl teachers and other support staff for the brookfield expansion uh we have we have um after getting feedback from some of our administrators uh we learned that we would need two two and a 2.5 special staff that's the art music in pe to help to help support the brooklyn brookfield expansion and then of course for the new additional classrooms in the district we would need supplies for all of those new elementary classrooms district-wide not just at brookfield but the new section that will be opened up in our elementary schools throughout the district lease and furniture and so least tends for the high school and middle school to address safe to address to safely feed students while maintaining social distancing uh purchase desks at the elementary and secondary schools to accommodate social distancing guidelines in both classrooms and cafeteria and then of course just going back to committing to the lease with st joe's in brookfield which could accommodate at least 250 to 265 students and then transportation i know we we had an opportunity to touch upon this a little bit in our last meeting we would under this plan we would order five additional buses for the enrollment growth uh the five five buses will also be needed for brookfield expansion and the cost would be based on this cost would be based on the current pricing and that's at seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars uh the lease in the furniture um the least is at least in the furniture would come in at 1.86 and the staffing is projected to be at 3.4 um at you know close to 6 million in total for us as a district and so i am happy to go back into the slides but let me just um also say that the the elementary schools there are a number of elementary schools that would receive these um ftes or full-time teachers in their buildings and so i'll just start um just start at um great plane and so great plane is one of our you've heard dr sal speak to the sister school arrangements and so just to give you an example um one number one one about our democracy from last year not only recommended that we have a change in sister school arrangements and so previously ellsworth elementary school was partnered in sister school with hayestown we were experiencing um growth at both haystown and ellsworth where i think we're all certainly aware of the growth at ellsworth that we've experienced and so she not only encouraged us to pair ellsworth with great plane for enrollment balance but she also encouraged us to pair with great plane for racial imbalance um and so accordingly we made that switch um the board might recall um last year i believe in the spring and i think we had reported two years in a row uh talked about the racial imbalance in the city and some of our schools um at the time when i had reported before ellsworth was one of our schools i think south street was not too far behind one of the schools that was getting closer toward an imbalance that would require action by the board in the district um and so she had encouraged us to move ellsworth to pair with great plane and she felt that would help help with our balance and it has certainly helped to balance great plane and it certainly helped to offset some of our numbers um in enrollment growth at ellsworth um i'm saying all it has to say as an example um we've also had um and and i feel like we always say kelly's program it's not fair to kelly but uh we have the program at granville with our pre-k special ed program at granville um these some of these programs were previously um at great plain but also at haystown we are looking to backfill some of those empty classrooms although they're occupied right now but they're not with full-time general ed teachers looking to backfill some of those classrooms with the staffing that we need for this enrollment growth so i'm using this as an example so we would we would backfill one of those spaces with a kindergarten classroom a great plane which would continue to help the growth enrollment growth at ellsworth and great playing but also we would also bring on a grade two section at great plain which at great plain right now they have two sections in every grade level um the majority of our schools in the district have either three or four some of our bigger schools have five in some grade levels um in this in this scenario great plain would have two in every grade level except for kindergarten and grade two this helps offset some of my enrollment growth from ellsworth and also helps us avoid um overcrowding um ellsworth and making sure once we get to the 88 number at st joe's if we continue to have growth at ellsworth we have someone to send those kindergarten students our experience would tell us that even after we get to that 88 as as students and families continue to register in the district they're going to continue to be in our downtown schools and ellsworth is going to continue to be the one um that is that that is populated so i i think as an example of the great plain edition would help great great plane and mostly most importantly ellsworth in this case um you'll also notice that um the district did recommend on the site you know out of the district in brookfield uh brookfield has it's it's a currently it's a elementary school that is vacated uh recently the the parish has made some significant upgrades to the to the school like i said it's 13 classrooms in school i believe there are 11 class sorry 13 classrooms and our proposal is to bring in 11 classrooms and then use those additional spaces for support staff so specials can have its own dedicated space so our support staff can have their own dedicated space and then they have what they formally had used as a library media space and we can put up a temporary wall in there to have you know more space for otp or whatever pps staff might be rotating through through that facility but they also have a a functioning gym in the school which also serves as a cafeteria and so whether we wanted to feed kids in the classroom or in that space downstairs because there's actually extra space um i feel like it's it's a viable option for the district and given our ongoing growth over the years i've heard i can hear joe de silva um in the background saying we've outperformed our demographers projections every year um and this was certainly not only for this year but in the event we are here next year still talking about enrollment growth we would have an outlet for the district and community i think at a very reasonable price at five five dollars and 64 cents per square foot uh which frankly has been half has been half or even a third of some of the commercial um commercial prices that we've seen around town um certainly ideally it would be best if this site was in danbury um it would be absolutely perfect if it was in danbury unfortunately it's on the outskirts um of danbury and brookfield um but you know i was talking to one of my colleagues kara and you know we can come up quite frankly there may be some opportunity for some real innovation being you know partnering with brookfield in some way you know perhaps right now it's premature to talk about that but um i i i feel good about the possibilities because it's a great site um and for a very reasonable cost i think it might offer some great options for the board and for the district kev you want to mention too we also have that increase in k yes yes and so just a reminder um you know we the demographers have projected we were looking at a 150 student increase in kindergarten and so you know along with the three schools that we are uh requesting or reassigned to um reassigned to st joe's uh we've also um looking to add additional sections throughout the district for kindergarten which would help offset some of this growth and so we we feel like we you know potentially position ourselves pretty well here if that growth does come and i i'm sure it's coming i mean every year with the exception during the pandemic you know when borders were closed et cetera we didn't experience that growth uh but i anticipate it will it will be back as it has the years passed um before we move on kevin is kathy here i'm here kathy i did just so the board i mean well um everybody in elsie kathy kathy's been part of the advisory group this year and um she's been our liaison to the state in terms of um any changing conditions and requirement kathy has there been any relevant changes we you need to announce now or can we um no good evening everyone no dr sal there have been no changes um although the cdc you know did recommend the three foot distancing as being safe um when we talk about close contact uh we still have to use the definition of within six feet so um as of last week with on my weekly call with the department of health they did not anticipate any changes coming in that um very soon possibly over the summer but for right now this is where we're at with the three foot distancing and quarantining at six feet within six feet of distance okay so i just wanted up there i wasn't sure if there was anything new i'm listening to the news and tonight they announced something about um making a recommendation for the visor to uh vaccinate 13 and up so as you know guys everything is changing but you know it's prudent i think in our behalf just to make these recommendations based on the current and the current uh rec the current guidelines that we have and that's why what you see in front of you um represent that so with that uh madam chair we're ready for a q a and the host staff is here and and we can go from there if that's okay with you and so dr sal i'm sorry i just wanted to say one one more thing sorry ms cooper um so i i i just also wanted to say because we have learned i i think you know some folks on the cabinet and myself certainly dr sal you know we've talked to other districts uh talk to other superintendents talk to other district leads um around the state some of our neighbors um and and quite frankly asking what other districts are doing and i'm sure there are people on this call who are wondering what other districts are doing um as it relates to some of the decisions and recommendations we are making um and and what we are learning is uh number one um which i don't think anyone in this call is going to be surprised by this folks are not dealing with the same challenges that we are dealing with and i think we all have to be reminded that reminded of that when we are speaking with other districts um i but i've reached out to former colleagues and people that i know um in some of the big urban districts in in the state uh so from new haven to bridgeport uh to no walk um just you know just to name a few um in waterbury um and so when asking the question hey are you guys looking at uh looking at the the possibility of leasing other properties to help with social distancing are you looking at tents to feed your students because you can't fit them all in the cafeteria and you know i i am hearing the answer no but but but i'm also reminded that no one has the numbers that we have except for i think new britain um has the numbers that we have in their high school you know no one has a school that big with a cafeteria that's not you know scaled to that same size um no one has the necessarily the same challenge without elementary schools in terms of overcrowding uh throughout the district at least not at the same level that we have and so i i think it's all also relative just just from kind of comparing us to other districts but i think we should also be mindful of that as we talk about this because there are districts that are going back that are similar in nature to us um and and they're they're using the guideline as a guideline um and not you know using that as um as three foot and and using three they use it as a guideline and some are going in at 2.75 someone going at 2.5 someone going to two feet um and and they are adhering to the guideline where possible um and so just you know i just wanted to share that update and just kind of be as transparent as possible what we're learning um but like i said when we opened you know we established this plan around the three-foot distancing guideline and then you know kind of open it up from discussion from there yeah lastly thank you thank you kevin um courtney has been working with the bus company so we will have additional buses either eight to ten and uh i will tell you there's been a shortage on buses as i talked to surrounding districts uh which and you know but uh very serious they'll be able to give us the ten extra buses which is that we're gonna we're gonna need to transport our youngsters and increase enrollment so with that madam chairman i think i think we're okay um we can go from here now okay thank you doctor said mr walster uh we're gonna go into the question from board members would you just plea ask the questions just go right ahead ask the question to whom you would prefer the question to be asked mrs cooper i have a question several questions okay uh kevin i have several questions one of which is what are the terms that released for saint joseph in terms of the years sure doc sure mr jay so so so um saint joseph's has asked for the minimum of one year um we are um sending back a letter of intent i'm sorry they have asked for a two-year lease at minimum uh we we we are hoping to start with a one-year lease um and then kind of grow from there perhaps one year with multiple multiple current lease options um and right thank you courtney um so so we would like to start at a one year lease um they have asked for a minimum two year i'm sure we can find some common ground in addition to saint joseph's i didn't get the other school that we were also uh working with um sacred heart that we currently have a year left and there's some extra rooms there and then um with kevin reporter was fanville that we already opened about yeah okay those are the only um those are the only buildings we're talking about so it's sacred heart and if we if we add a classroom only if we want to add the classroom we pay per classroom so it's a little flexible in the lease sacred heart yeah so how many classrooms would we be gaining in sacred heart kelly is it four yes okay um the other question is the the i think joe this is the last time and i'll just bring it up to reiterate for those people that weren't there asked the question about the time of the bus and it was stated i think kevin you said it would be about 20 to 25 minutes for our and and that timetable was determined because unlike the magnet school which has to go around the city this is in a specific sector so it would uh cut down the travel time to about 20 to 25 minutes one way is that correct yes that's that that was the objection from the transportation company mr genelli so we did have the conversation for them with them they did ask for specific addresses and and as as as those registrations are coming in uh we'll be able to provide that for them okay but that's what they're projecting as of right now all right now here's the million-dollar question the this is what this is a temporary situation utilizing federal funds all right so let's be optimistic and say in the near future one year two years down the road that kobed is somewhat a thing of the past okay what happens at that point going forward when we're hiring some fte's thereabouts plus or minus how are we hiring these people on a condition that they may have temporary employment or that they're coming back to the district is my first question my second question is none of these funds once they run out and if they were absorbed in the district have been included in any of the numbers that i'm aware of in going forward okay let me let me let me this is a three-part answer good let's start with this uh here um uh i think i've made it clear and if i haven't i my apologies the money that we're getting from dc this primary purpose is to get youngsters back into school whether it's here in three years two years i think rich is correct that is an issue that we we do want to talk about we actually talked about this morning again because it is um disconcerting in some respects but so just i just want to make that clear the money um will be court can speak to that as she begins and i think we're supposed to hear rich this week on the um phase three of the tessa money that we're supposed to get but it will it will it will be mitigation strategies much like essa ii um i'll let kim deal with the hiring but i will say to you that we normally have um could have 25 50 positions open uh in terms of um if we hire folks to keep you know keep folks that we hire here if and when the cliff comes that's what you're speaking number two is we do also add a building up of staff to the opening of the academy of which we have not come anywhere close to that this could help us in assisting us with that uh we will be offering an eight period day which is more expensive but um you know having these folks with us you know it would be a matter of people retiring leaving the district and then rehiring the real question is the cost and i think we could deal with that last but kim the question about the one you're hiring did you answer that first please so um we cannot temporarily hire them um any time a teacher works more than the first 90 days they become a staff for a teacher by law so that means that those teachers at the end of the year either need to be non-renewed or they need to be laid off if we don't have spots for them so that's kind of the short answer we can't hire them into temporary positions because the law says once they've worked that time they become a teacher under the law which means they have certain rights and protections afforded to them in terms of separation so um i think if we um get in a situation where we don't have positions open um then we will be in a in a more difficult position so zionist is saying that we're hoping best case scenario we're hoping that through attrition the additional teachers will be absorbed that would be hope that would be it know the hope okay is it fair to say that when we embark on this this venture that and the financial part i'd say okay it'll run out until the extra money runs out so you have time to think about when you're going to absorb it back in but is it fair to to i'm not sure the word fair is the correct word i hate to use the word transparency but when hiring people going ahead do we tell them what we're doing uh so that they could make a choice in terms of of accepting your position here with the what if and and or is that a common scenario for every teacher when she's hired or he's hired that they never know what the future is going to uh to be important let me just add something to the conversation which is potentially a savior in some respects as we spoke this morning when we were having this very discussion richard is that the governor's proposed budget which has not been accepted by the committee and what left the committee has been um and has been um something that would favor the urban district particularly dense cities like danbury so we're a schedule leader for 5.4 or 5.6 million dollars in alliance for this coming september the following year if this is a two-year biannual budget if the other 10 plus million comes which is moving us towards the that we we've promised that we have had from malloy um this is more than well then we had expected when we were on the onset of the budget if you if you take we spoke this morning because going out and recruiting their sal and richard and kevin and say come with us but you know what i may have to let you go sometimes you don't get the best candidates right people don't want to take the risk they don't they won't commit right off but i think what we're going to work hard to do is try to uh buttress the money into uh those the alliance so i'll just throw out the conversation say let's say we put half of the positions in there we already had all the kindergartens in there we've done that in the past so if we put at least half of it in there then you know the assuredness of having positions is that's much greater so we're looking at that those options now in terms of how do we safeguard when we bring folks in we get quality people in and it's not with a an eye on the door because they may be cut so i just wanted to put that on in the argument understood a final question would be in the event that the three foot the three foot regulation would in within a year be be avoided would it be beneficial for us depending on the government funding and the potential ease for us to operate the benefit that we have lower class sizes uh would be beneficial for us to stretch this out for a year or two so that we could sort of catch up a little bit and not be behind the eight ball all the time with reverting back to the overcrowding situation uh would that be something to to consider um i'll answer for the answer that is yes um our the board's goal when i arrived there one of the nice things that we had which was i felt so comfortable the first three or four years i was there we had very very reasonable class sizes at the elementary then we started really growing and growing and not adding sufficient staff you know what would happen i'd come to you in oregon and say oh my goodness we have to add and we would put a few people in this rigid would give our teachers and our kids um a better learning environment uh it should be much more within the goals of the board for the type of numbers you would like to see in the classrooms so i would say yes it it it is a nice um off benefit from this the the condition of opening next year to sustain lower class sizes and quality learning areas for our kids not necessarily all on carts in hallways on stages and things of that nature it would be it would help us in my view i agree final question does the board have to vote on this at some point in time uh i think in this case you know this year as i remind everybody and i'll get up my that's been on my team's decision about the opening closing the board has been um advising and we've been looking i think in this case i would say it needs a i would ask for a board's vote um on this i think that's very important thank you very much sorry for all the questions okay just to say just to be a little bit clear that when we talked about that 25 and you know the total 36 million that we have projected going forward for all of the federal monies that we got or anticipated getting we had held aside 12 million of that rich for what we proposed to offset some of the needs in the city budget which we'll learn about tomorrow the rest of it we hadn't yet determined the allocation for so to your question this would be a subset of that and one of the things that dr selling kevin in the cabinet where my glove was that the the growth isn't just now and it isn't just covered but it does help alleviate that covid like you had mentioned so it potentially lends us to what we're having for our projected demographic growth in the future um it's what we would naturally be needing potentially in the near future at any rate um and then like dr sall mentioned the alliance money that we're excited potentially to get five million which would grow to ten potentially even more in the following year we're hopeful but you know that's not yet authorized you never know and coordinate to to that point somewhere in the near future we should be able to develop some sort of a theoretical budget for the use of that 35 million dollars since most of the time all of the conversation we've had has been strictly on the operational budget just pushing off to decide you know generalities and and other things using the 35 million so that's something i think we we should have at hand so we're at least abreast of what we're looking to spend it on and and how the uh the expenditures go with our targets etc yeah and rich dr cell has started those conversations with cabinet so we do have you know a draft that's you know in phase three probably of that overall use of the funds and so we've scheduled something for later this week or early next week to follow up when we get the results of the city budget and we expect that the sr3 funding allocation will be released soon and we'll have a better you know picture of all that you know to present back to the board in a very you know soon time frame sure as well as that sometime in september i would hope we would get some sort of a forecast the theoretical forecast of the academy which over the summer i would anticipate we'd have a little bit more input as to how it's going to operate and this way all of the pieces are coming together at a certain point so that we know what our total cost is uh you know going ahead utilizing our own money plus utilizing federal money of which some of it may have to be absorbed back into our budget all right thank you very much aren't there any other questions from board members rachel sorry about that um i've got a few questions um one part is specific to the high school being you know the largest in the state um just some and where most of our kids are i guess and are not but um the most densely populated i guess is what i'm saying um can you clarify whether this is an eight period day or a nine period day we went from an eight period day to block scheduling and now we're moving to either an eight or nine uh period day um that includes lunch um so how does this it's going to be four blocks which be it we'll call it a period day for for our kids and with as of today there will be four lunch waves we had what they called um for a lack of other terms they call it a skinny period right they that the the thinking right now that is with the additional resources we would move towards an eight period day and four lunch waves um in a period day as in apple eight eight number eight number eight yeah eight period day so eight skinny periods well just a period of day it'll be eight periods double blocks i mean however they want to figure it out um right now it's a seven per day with what they call a skinny period but it would be evened out to have an eight period day for our planning purposes so when they schedule next year the youngsters would have um 25 percent chance more chance of getting another class giving us more room for these youngsters to go into that could i just interject just a point of clarification it is um eight periods but it will be four blocks per day so it'll be four blocks on an a day and then four blocks on a b day so that was a block schedule and lunch is built into one of the eight periods okay thank you for that clarification right and rachel one of those periods is a little longer for lunch to be built in there so that i understand why you're asking is it a nine period because of lunch um but the way kelly described it is absolutely right one of them is extended so that that sort of the instructional time takes place during that block okay great and then as stated earlier you know over the year um you know safe distancing could only be achieved given the number of students on dl so with without any students on dl you're saying three feet can still be achieved um and and with other districts you know just kind of dismissing that recommendation you know what would be the consequences of just doing things the same and and and notifying families you know this this may not be possible at times um and and also what if a family feels it is unsafe to return to school and they and they want that dl option it's working for them so let me start with the last one we're not required to offer it it's optional it would be you know if the board wants to offer it you'd have to figure out a whole staffing level and that potentially could create um you know another area of expense so the state is not requiring the board to offer it so that is could be an issue no doubt that's a possibility but um i call it shoeing them in when you start classes at 19 and 20 and trying to find one or two classroom or desks in there for kids that task is much not as great as when you have 24 26 to 27 that you're trying to put into that same classroom so you know it's just that much tighter um to answer rachel's question i would say i would call it you shoehorn the youngsters in there it's business as usual you put everybody in and let let the things roll um you know that that's basically what i'm hearing but my recommendation to the board that's why richard's question should be a board vote yes it should i'm saying we stayed with the medical i'm not willing to make the recommendation not to but it's the board's prerogative uh to um you know just uh schedule the youngsters get the desks in there put them in the classrooms and uh you know if you can put them in there you put them in there if you can't put them in there squeeze them in there i mean that's basically what's being said rachel as simple as i can put it and so right so you know we have the technology we um we have the platform we have the the wherewithal to have distance learning we've talked about this you know be pre-covered as a possible way of you know addressing overcrowding and now we're just gonna shut the door on that option and then i i mean it would just make it all the more harder to to revisit in the future yeah i know i i think uh that's true um you know i i worry about the kids being out so long for social emotional that's why i think if you ask me what the preference is for regular school i'm recommending that kids come to school the board can offer this learning but i will tell you it costs you because that's where we got into some problems this year with the number of staff and being able to uh you know handle it but it's certainly a possibility the state has permitted districts to make that decision on their own but they're not going to require the right to often that's the only difference and yes we're much more proficient dad let us grow up anybody on the cabinet also has a comment or not but kevin you had something you started yes so so rachel i don't i i heard a couple of questions um in there and if if we were not to um adhere or follow those guidelines um so so right now just for some context for the board and for the community uh we i believe dan's number was 800 to 850 students he needs to feed um every lunch period and uh when uh and the plan that we talked about if we had student desk and this would actually be removing all of the cafeteria furniture as we know it um and replacing it with student desks so students could be socially distanced apart not facing each other and probably be a little bit more safer for us um as the school community um i think he had projected he can get about 350 desks in his cafeteria um and so that still leaves us you know close to 500 students that he still needs to populate and and our and our idea was to rent lease tents um right outside of the cafeteria when it's at auto shop um one in like that little lower level and then possibly one more in a different area of his school campus and then possibly also one of the gyms to help make this happen um and and and you know we're still evaluating costs we have a couple of um estimates from a couple of different companies but but but those are the in terms of impact um that's what we would be looking at or uh we would abandon the social discipline guideline and we'd be talking north of 800 students in the cafeteria uh frankly with i mean well i think if this group can understand if we can get 350 with three-foot social distancing um there would really be no social distance and if we wouldn't go full 800.
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bhs has had a special board located in the commons recognizing students have earned a minimum composite score of 30. the a.c.t club 30 are jacob dugar sierra haddock austin hazlitt and briley huber the act club of 30 also had seth jarvis draven myers and will suresey the a.c.t bronze award is the third highest act score in the class congratulations bradley huber and trevin myers who both scored a 31. the a.c.t silver award goes to the second highest act score in the class congratulations jacob dugar and sierra haddock who both scored a 32. the a.c.t gold award goes to the highest act score in the class congratulations austin hazlitt and will suresen who both achieved a 35 out of 36 on the act way to go awesome guys honors graduates students can graduate with honors based upon their cumulative seventh semester gpa honors graduates will be given an honors medallion to wear at graduation honors graduates for kuma lottie gpa of 32 to 3.49 are jordan avengroth mckinley anderson allison buckridge and cassidy combs allie cornine jaren garland maddie huff chloe madlock maggie seaman jalen wright honors graduates with a magnum cool not a gpa of 3.5 to 379 include daniel bartley elijah caldwell samantha cofer isabella fiedler selena flynn chrissy hall carson hess john howard briley ish jaden monosmith brian pair brady rand lilly roth will ceresig abby sleazer addison varvel and drew thorpe honors graduates of summa laude gpa of 3.8 to 4.0 david allen gracie becker caden birkenmeyer aiden caldwell nick davies jacob dugar emma fuhrman and sam griffin sierra harrah gloria hammy austin hazlett alicia hernandez brylee huber seth jarvis trevin myers and allie schneider braden slawyer lydia stedel michael watkins and chloe zaman that group kept them on their feet in the classroom yes they did students are graduating magna laude or summa laude will also receive the presidential award for academic excellence to be eligible students must have earned a minimum gpa of 3.5 congratulations now let's get to the money and are you ready for some local scholarships i would like to say thank you to our local scholarship sponsors for your generosity to the class of 2001.
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so ladies and gentlemen can i get a big round of applause for outgoing board members we don't get a golden key to the district yes it's in the mail okay so that brings us to 5.1 we've got a few people that have a few words to say i think we do all right eugene gatewood [Music] we have a face with cameras that would be great yeah that's good that's why you keep me around all right [Music] that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the board of education board of education of the second community unit school district number 308 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 village i further affirm that i shall respect taxpayer interests by serving as a faithful protector of the school district's assets i shall encourage and respect the true 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 i shall recognize that a school board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a school board i shall recognize and that decisions can be made only by the majority of a school or meeting i shall abide by uh yes i shall abide by majority decisions of the school board while retaining the rights to seek changes in such decisions for ethical and constructive channels as part of the board of education i shall accept the responsibility for my role in the equitable and quality of education of every student in the school district as part [Music] district i shall foster with board extensive participation of the community formulate goals define outcomes and set the course for oswego community unit school district 308 i shall foster the board extensive participation of the community goals define outcomes and the sudden course of our studio community's unit school district reality 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 framework i shall assist in establishing a structure an environment designed to ensure all students have the i shall strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children they will find sustainable i shall strive to ensure this assessment in all conditions of our children and violence i shall serve as education's key advocate on behalf of students in our community school or schools to advance the vision for oswego community unit school district 308 i shall serve as educational [Music] and i shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision the board has created fostering excellence for every student in areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision the board has created fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal development yes [Music] um but there's a little bit of um descent into how to say the next phrase is google gives us one explanation and our attorney gives us yet another let's go we're gonna go with their google if you want to see i'm gonna try i'm gonna trust you over google so take that responsibility with great seriousness i would say make a motion to adjourn sign you die and google would say synodia so there you go we will if i could please have a motion to adjourn in the synodia of your choice i make a motion to adjourn signing diet second oh you are on that all in favor aye [Music] carpe next diem [Music] tony tony she's gone yeah [Music] appreciate you saying that thanks very [Music] much [Music] [Laughter] thank you sir thank you congratulations [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] goodbye i already forgot how to pronounce that thing is this yours yeah [Applause] board members newly sworn in if you could please pick a chair any chair because we're gonna play rearrange the chairs thank you i worked really hard on that for about 30 seconds thank you i thought about that and you missed a really good joke but that's okay we could have music and make it musical chairs however there's one for every person i'm just talking [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] may i have a root a roll call vote of the newly established board of education mrs storial present mr gatewood president mrs johnson president mrs krohner present dr moreno present mrs simonton present mrs swanson presents brenton this one's new all right where are we at i recommend to appoint superintendent of schools dr john sparlin as president pro tempore to preside over the election of the board of education president can i have a motion please actually i make the motion yes i just did it awesome may i have a second second [Music] all in favor aye aye well thank you mrs doyle nominations are now in order for the office of president any member of the board may nominate any member of the board including themselves and nominations do not require a second nominations are now open for the office of president of the board of education i nominate dr donna moreno for president dr donna mourinho is nominated are there any other nominations for the office of president are there any other nominations for the office of president are there any other nominations for the office of president if there are no further nominations the nominations for president are now closed dr moreno being the only candidate nominated for the office of president the chair hereby declares you elected by acclimation and i ask that ursula record that into the minutes congratulations president dr donna marino what's up i'm fogging up my reading glasses now so bear with um right now we're going to take nominations um are now in order for the office of vice president are there any nominations for vice president i'll nominate ruth croner ruth crawner is nominated for vice president i would like to nominate latonya simultan latonya simultan is nominated for vice president are there any nominations for vice president one more time are there any other nominations for vice president okay if there are no further nominations the nominations for the office of vice president are closed since we have more than one member who has been nominated for the office of vice president i'm going to ask you to vote by a show of hands for either ruth croner or latonya simultan you may only vote for one member and to be declared vice president one member must receive receive at least four votes board members who wish to appoint ruth croner for pre for vice president please raise your hand we have three votes for ruth croner board members who wish to appoint latonya simultan for vice president please raise your hand and we have four votes for latonya simultan congratulations latonya simultan for receiving the majority of votes and you are now elected the position of vice president i've never been on this side of the table it's super fun nominations are now in order for office of secretary are there any nominations for secretary i'll nominate ruth coroner who does a fantastic job right now are there any other nominations for secretary there any nominations for secretary and then i say if there are no further nominations the nominations for the office of secretary are closed captioning not available okay 9.4 the board of education will establish regular board meeting dates time and place can i have a motion to establish the board meeting dates time and place i make a motion hold on to establish a regular board of education meeting dates and times for the 2021-22 as discussed and presented second mrs croner hi mrs johnson hi dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye mrs simonton i motion motion passes now we will hear public comments on behalf of the board of education i would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested in speaking to the board this evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name i ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that comments are limited to five minutes per person and that no discussion of personnel matters or responses to questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussion during public comment follow-up to your questions or concerns will be addressed by administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you jared ploger thank you board uh i came up here unscripted so that should probably worry everybody but uh jared plogger2776 la jolla court aurora um i thought somebody from the general public should say thank you to the outgoing board thank you board members heather and matt i see that you stuck around and i think that's apropos heather i can't thank you enough for what you've done up there um you've just been a wonderful person a wonderful board member and uh appreciate everything that you've done i appreciate your ear and everything and and matt um i remember the first time that you ran and uh being a uh a citizen who really tried to understand what was going on with my uh my sons and their education i knew right away that you were someone i supported and uh we we didn't always agree but uh i always appreciated you up there thank you really appreciate that um and now we we're here on a historic night and we need to move forward and um i i think the message that that uh i i wanted to bring tonight from also from uh i'm hoping a very large segment of the community is um this is this is brand new and we're going to move forward um we need to build on this this is such a positive and celebratory evening i i can't hardly contain myself between my emotions with with those that i'm connected with and and just seeing this this is just such a positive thing and and uh we certainly need to move forward better than uh we're moving forward with wolf road don't get me started on that um that's my poor attempt of humor um but um uh um i i i want to remind us that we are all here to support and we want to see our board of education succeed what's what's the alternative right i mean the alternative right is that that our most prized possession our greatest resource here um does poorly and that's not what anyone wants to see right and we want to see all of our students succeed and that's what i think tonight's about right is is that promise to see all of our students succeed and and i can't hardly contain myself with the excitement and and this is a historic evening uh for for the communities uh involved in our school district and uh i'm excited and i wanted to say thank you to the new board members because you voted you ran you you engaged with the community uh and and you showed a commitment and uh unfortunately that's not something that that the majority of us always do and and thank you thank you for for doing that thank you for getting involved and um and appreciate everything uh that's being done here tonight and then i'm excited i'm excited for this transition and excited for for for the community and that's all i wanted to say thank you thank queue you up always good evening good evening my name is kiwana boris i reside at 2529 lambert drive in aurora illinois i sit before you representing two organizations twofold one is parents for education and global success which is a recognized organization by district 308 and the second organization is in double acp of dupage county we represent oversea kendall will kane and northwest cook want to thank the outgoing members tony brent and matt for your hours of service and dedication but i'm here to celebrate with our district i want you to know that the naacp of of dupage county would like this opportunity to recognize the historical event of the election of two african-american candidates latonya simonton eugene gatewood along with a woman of jewish descent and jan johnson who on the when we interviewed when we interviewed you you said you were open-minded and willing to grow and learn we celebrate you the constituents of oswego voted with their ballot for educational equity and diversity representation when we look at our current board it represents our community but we have more work to do we have good work to do good trouble we believe we believe that the school board this school board for the next four years will be solution oriented bridge builders engage in courageous conversations implement strategy with action that focuses on our children with accountability to ensure that district is a place where all students can thrive we will hold you accountable and we look forward to partnering with you thank you 11.1 a motion to return i make a motion to adjourn second we are adjourned
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the public will not be allowed to physically access this diversity subcommittee meeting the meeting will be conducted remotely members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at www.youtube.com dhs tv media the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote meeting participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable good evening everyone and thanks for attending the our first meeting i'd like to thank you all for volunteering to serve on this committee um i think we're all committed to hearing what everyone has to say about what our schools are doing well and what our schools can be doing better with respect to diversity equity and inclusion um and so i appreciate your service to the schools and to the town i thought the first way that we should probably start out would be to to introduce ourselves since we all don't probably know each other um i know everyone shows up differently on different zoom screens so i'm going to call out your name and ask you to just sort of briefly introduce yourself so i'll start my name is shannon jenkins i'm currently chair of the dartmouth school committee i'm the mother of two boys who are currently at dartmouth high school and i work at umass dartmouth i'm currently the associate dean of the college of arts and sciences um i'm gonna oh see and this is i'm already forgetting we actually have to technically take a roll call i believe to open the meeting i'm gonna sometimes look to dr gifford on this um so before we're gonna do the roll call and then we'll do introductions and i will go ahead and call roll so just indicate if you're here please kathleen amero here ross tebow here uh mark hayes here kelly bloom here lily chamberlain here uh diane massari uh i thought i saw diane um she may we may have oh there you are diane okay here okay great thank you i thought i was losing it for a second all right elizabeth murphy here and shelley scott here great thank you all right now we now that we're officially roll called in um i will um ask us to introduce ourselves um miss amaral can i have you go next excuse me um kathleen emerald i am a member of the dartmouth school committee i am parent to three um my oldest is finishing up cosmetology school really exciting um and i have a 17 year old who's out of district he's got some significant disabilities and i have a fifth grader who's near me doing her homework i work for i do a little bit of work for the arc of massachusetts community relations i i train family uh families uh i train uh families of uh individuals with disabilities it's not leadership skills i'm currently a lend fellow out of the umass medical driver um center and for those unfamiliar it's a it's an interdisciplinary um fellowship all related to uh disability and disability leadership so glad to be part of this thank you mr tebow i'm ross thibault i'm the principal of dartmouth high school i'm in my fourth year as principal at dartmouth high school um i don't know if i need to share all about my family like everyone has done but i'm the father of two uh school-aged children not in in dartmouth uh because i don't live in dartmouth but um i'm happy to be part of this work as a representative of the high school and you know both the students as well as the faculty thank you mr tebow mr hayes hello i'm mark hayes assistant principal at the middle school it's my uh my first year as an assistant principal at the middle school and before that i was an eighth grade math teacher there for uh for ten years hey my son's eighth grade math teacher too he loved you all right next let's see miss bloom hi i'm kelly bloom i'm a school social worker at the quinn elementary school in dartmouth and i also have two children that attend the dartmouth schools they're currently 9th graders at the high school awesome thank you miss chamberlain hi i'm lily chamberlain i teach spanish at dartmouth high school and i'm the advisor to the multicultural club and my two kids graduated from dartmouth high my son is now out of college and working as an engineer and my daughter is currently in college miss massari we got you have to unmute sorry sorry i should really know this by now because i i was just telling a parent today that i've been so you know savvy with my zoom and google meet so i apologize that's okay i think you guys use google meets more than zoom so yeah sorry for zoom's not quite as familiar to you all go ahead so um i am the seventh grade guidance counselor at dartmouth middle school awesome thank you um miss murphy hi i'm elizabeth murphy i live in dartmouth i am a parent of two students 10th grade and 8th grade and i was an independent college counselor in dartmouth for a number of years and i have transitioned now i'm actually in school full-time and i work for the unitarian church in fairhaven doing immigration justice work and last but not least miss scott hi everyone um let's see i work here at umass dartmouth as the director of new student and family programs i've had the pleasure of living in dartmouth for about 14 years our oldest is 31 she graduated from dartmouth high school she spent her last year and a little bit here in dartmouth and we have have an 8th grader and a 5th grader in the dartmouth school system i'm very happy to be here and i hope i can help thank you everyone i appreciate that very much as you can see i think hopefully from our introductions the school committee and trying to put together um this committee um very much wanted to try to get representation from the different schools right and different perspectives within the schools and different perspectives within the community i do know which we'll discuss later there there will at some future date be a high school student representative um we'll get to that discussion in a little bit um one of the things that as we talk about our charge this evening the school committee has tasked us with thinking about is whether the representation we have on this committee is adequate um and whether or not there are perspectives that are missing from our committee we do not have the ability to change the composition of the committee but we can report back to the school committee and ask them for additional members if we think there are viewpoints that we're not hearing from because obviously our goal is to be open and inclusive to all sorts of different viewpoints um i thought we'd start tonight by talking a little bit about sort of the the role of the committee how the committee was organized what what we need to do with respect to organization i will also say don't panic even though the zoom is scheduled to nine i don't intend to i hope we're not here um until nine i think we're just going through some preliminary stuff um tonight and figuring out where we want to go um when the school committee created this committee um we created it with uh we ended up i think with 10 members one two eleven we added one because we ended up with three um staff members for different perspectives so 11 members um at some point we would like to get to have people having two year appointments but for the initial appointment we decided what we're going to do is one year appointments and then once we're done with that one year we may renew or not but we'd like to get to staggered appointments because if you the whole committee turns over every year or every two years you lose some of that continuity so your initial appointment is for one year with potential for renewal um if anybody has a question at any time to just sort of raise your hand per sort of i guess it's massachusetts general law we are a subcommittee created by the school committee as such we are subject to open meeting law um kathleen and i i know and and maybe some of you all are familiar with some of the requirements of open meeting law um some of you may not be i really want to highlight just a couple things here about open meeting law that are important one under openly meeting law we may not deliberate via email all right because when you're communicating via email that deliberation or discussion is by definition only available to the people on the email chain therefore you're violating open meeting law so it's okay you know to share maybe a piece of information um for instance i am going to share uh something that i found a website and i may send that to you but we then cannot engage in the discussion about oh i like this or i would change this or i would do that that's a violation of open meeting law the second really important thing about open meeting law i know all of you some of you may know each other um open meeting law requires that we do not have discussions or deliberations in private um so you may talk to one other person right about that um but you may not have what are known as serial one-on-one conversations so i couldn't call you know mr tebow and say hey let's talk about x and that's one on one so we're not violating open meeting law and then call mr hayes and say hey mr hayes let's talk about x because those are serial one-on-one conversations all right so those are also violations of open meeting law and again the goal is to prevent um the committee to pre-discuss an issue not while that deliberation is open to the public and therefore them not having access to it okay um i will see if i can find you guys some more resources about open meeting law i don't want you to get freaked out about this um but i do really want to sort of inform you of our duties as a subcommittee of the dartmouth school committee i'm going to probably from time to time look at dr gifford because she's also very familiar with these things dr gifford i should ask you i also to introduce yourself you're not an official member of the committee i think everyone knows you but maybe you want to ask you to introduce yourself and then also um let me know if you think i've missed anything with respect to open meeting law so far so good obviously i'm superintendent i'm just finishing up my sixth year and since everybody else mentioned their kids i'll mention mine i have two much older students um i'm not students anymore sons but i wanted to mention i think it was diane i'm saying about the google me and the you know messing up this today i had my mask around my neck as we all do walking around with them in my office and then proceeded to ask kate where it put it it was i couldn't find it on my desk i couldn't find it anywhere and it's like it's just the crazy stuff that's happened through pandemic right but anyway um we're just happy that you all wanted to be uh part of this part of this group so thank you for stepping up so um per um i think uh rules uh i went and i did some reading this evening about um and i looked at the minutes and we had a conversation about this because we are a subcommittee of the school committee we do need to elect a chair and a vice chair of this subcommittee as well as designate someone a scribe um we're going to have to do nominations we can open this open this up for discussion i am willing to serve as chair of this committee in part because i'm familiar with open meeting law and procedure but if anyone else is dying to do this i would also be happy to hand it over to any one of you um so why don't we have first order business then we'll be to open nominations for chair of this committee i would like to nominate shannon jenkins for chair of this committee okay do we have a second i'll second it okay are there any other nominations for chair don't step forward at once i know it's a really enticing job all right so i will close the nominations at this point now we can have a discussion of the nominations if anybody has any comments concerns questions okay so hearing none this is normally the point if we're all in a room we would all say i or nay but we are in um a zoom open meeting therefore under those provisions that governor baker put forward we need to do a roll call um so miss amaral yes okay uh mr tebow yes mr hayes yes miss bloom yes miss chamberlain yes miss massari yes uh miss murphy yes and miss scott yes and i suppose i will vote for myself too so that passes um unanimously um now we need to elect a vice chair so i will open nominations for that as well my hope is that we do sort of our work collaboratively and these are more just for sort of procedural titles um because we have to have them and as such i i was thinking it might make sense to have kathleen be the vice chair um unless any of you wants to step in and run an open meeting under open meeting law um if i am unable to so um i'm chair i can't make that nomination um if someone else would like to nominate kathleen or someone else ms scott go ahead i would like to nominate kathleen admiral for vice chair excellent do i have a second on that i'll second it okay mr tebow we get that are there any other nominations all right hearing none it will close the nomination are there any discussion about the um nomination questions concerns issues all right if not i'm going to go backwards this time on our roll call uh miss scott yes uh miss murphy yes miss massari yes miss chamberlain yes uh miss bloom yes uh mr hayes yes mr tebow yes uh ms amaral yes and i am also a yes okay great thank you very much for that um the last thing we need to do is to um nominate someone to be we need someone to take minutes um i'm taking minutes right now um do we want to rotate the taking of minutes do you think that works um alternatively dr gifford would you be willing to track motion i mean i think we mostly have to do broad contours would you be willing to do that for us yeah i'm actually taking some minutes for you right now so i don't perfect thank you so if that's okay with everyone we'll have dr gifford sort of keep the minutes for us and then we can approve them when we move forward do we need to dr gifford do we need to officially appoint you do we need to do a roll call and motion all that uh no let's just no i'll just volunteer okay great all right so um so that's great see like we already have checked off two things on our agenda all right so the first thing i think to start with really sort of substantively is to review the charge that the school committee has given to us that they approved um i am going to say let me see if i can find i think i can share my screen hold on i need to figure out what i need to share with you guys okay um is that um we approve this charge as a as a school committee can you all see that now so we approved that on the 7th of december as you can see there but again one of the things that the school committee wanted us to report back on is whether we thought this charge was appropriate um i will email this all to you in case you haven't seen it but let's just go through it really quickly and and i believe miss waite and i worked on developing this we found this from some charges from some other um diversity equity and inclusion committees in other school districts so the first is to examine the cultural aspects of our community including language cultures student performance and program participation and discipline data to inform our policy and or procedural recommendations two is to solicit input from diverse members of the dartmouth school community around issues of diversity equity inclusion inclusion including but not limited to current policies procedures curriculum facilities communications and messaging from the dartmouth public schools three review and recommend diversity equity diversity inclusion related policies for the district four review district and school plans through an equity and inclusion lens and research best practices and innovative methods for cultivating a safe equitable and inclusive environment with an intent to recommend best practices to the school committee make recommendations to the school committee on equity diversity and inclusion throughout the district with regard to allocation of resources ongoing activities and strategic investments to shape future direction recommend practices and policies involving ongoing professional development for staff and training for students and families in issues of diversity and equity and inform the community on equity diversity and inclusion issues and then finally establish appropriate timelines to complete tasks and make recommendations to the school committee so it's a pretty broad charge i don't necessarily think that we need to like fully process it right now i think all of you probably want to read and look at this some more but i will open it up to see does anybody have any questions comments or concerns um on a first sort of pass at that charge of the committee if you do if you if you do want to raise your hand you want to say something just um let me think uh maybe i'm going to stop share so i can see you all um does anybody have any comments or questions or concerns about that it's pretty broad i think um it allows us some flexibility to do um a lot of different things um at the same point in time i don't think we want to try to tackle all of those things right to start um because there's a lot there um and that sort of gets i think to really what our last item is on the agenda and our on our biggest and i think most important thing is to talk about what it is we want to do and how we want to start and how we want to proceed given that charge given what we're interested in so um i would be interested to maybe start off that conversation to hear some of your ideas of issues you'd like to tackle things that you would like for the committee to investigate proceed with i'm open to any sort of thoughts right now can i start go ahead lily thank you for breaking the ice it's like a first nightmare right when you ask a question but i've learned in my years of teaching that if you outweigh people if you wait them out right they get more uncomfortable with the silence than you do so appreciate you breaking that silence lily go ahead that's a good one i didn't wait very long so i think i need to study that technique um so we did receive a letter from the naacp of new bedford correct correct yes and i can share with the committee if anybody is like that might be something that we should address since it was addressed to the school committee and to the school department okay and the letter from the naacp was around the issue of the mascot i'm i'm trying to remember it's been a while i think it was is that the letter that you're referring to lily yeah yeah okay and i will also say that i think kathleen correct me if i'm wrong that that was an issue very much that was at the heart of this formation of this committee but it's not sort of the only issue we decided we're gonna look at um so that's i think one thing that we can start looking at one item on our agenda what else other thoughts do we want to start with that issue thoughts on that yes yes you do so elizabeth you're interested i'm in agreement on that yeah i do think that was a big part of the founding of this subcommittee so i think it's a logical starting point okay miss scott i saw you raise your hand i definitely think it's an important issue that we should discuss um as we're a new working group i'm wondering if there are other issues um or other ways that we can start to get to know each other as a group and be able to express ourselves and get a sense i think that the mascot issue is a really big and important one um so i definitely respect elizabeth your point of view on starting with that and i could get with that but i wonder if we should consider if there are other issues i was also going to suggest i don't know this so maybe there's some reading i should do but um what our policies are i did read the handbook for quinn elementary i promise you um but it was a while ago i would love to know more about um [Music] dress codes and how we're doing that especially for students who identify as male female whether they are transgender or cisgender that would be i think an interesting thing to look at for this group excellent other thoughts or ideas i will go ahead and take the program of the chair and add sort of one of my thoughts i'm definitely i agree with miss chamberlain and miss murphy that i think tackling the mascot issue is important it was one of the main impetuses behind the creation of this committee by the school committee i would be in favor of tackling that first and then one of the things i think for me particularly as a social scientist is i want to find out what i don't know and i don't wonder like at our institution shelly you may know we're doing a sort of a climate survey or an inquiry into sort of what is the our campus climate around issues of diversity equity and inclusion um and so to me as a committee charged with receiving input from various actors um one of the things i think might be worthwhile for us to tackle is what do people think what are our strengths what are we doing well um and what are some of our weaknesses where we can improve and so some sort of way of tackling what not just the public but also members of our school community teachers staff students think about what are important issues again what we're good and what we need to work on i think might also help us give some direction so for me in addition to i really do want to start with a mask up but also starting with the issue of what what do we know about about this would be important to me other ideas i'm seeing this is sort of a brainstorming session so we can get some ideas out on the table and then we can sort of talk about how we want to move forward so other ideas dr jenkins i agree with that idea about some kind of survey or assessing the climate that was something i thought would be important too i'd like to get a sense from students but also maybe staff and parents and community members about you know how do they feel included or validated or accepted at school and feel like their voice is recognized and and their experiences reflected in the curriculum or in the language that we use and i'd like to hear what their concerns are you know what they see as struggles in our community in areas where we can improve so i think that would be a real good issue to kind of tackle early on so we that could help guide us a little bit and what we should be addressing i also am kind of thought about students who are transgender and you know i know that's something that kids are coming out with more and more and what is their sense of acceptance inclusion and policies that have kind of been changed particularly at the high school level but i imagine the middle school level a little bit regarding that i'd like to kind of look at kind of our diversity statistics as far as you know different ethnic groups or racial backgrounds for students that we have in our our schools as well as our staff and you know i think it's always great to make sure that kids feel like their faces are reflected their voices are reflected in our kind of our curriculum as well as our staff you know and i think that's probably an area where we can improve in you know having kids see themselves reflected more so i'd like to see that issue kind of brought up too i think certainly the issue of race is very much in our culture right now and race relations so i hope that will be something that we can look at too possibly through the survey about how kids feel regarding that in our community and the the openness or the acceptance or again their voices and experiences being reflected yeah i think i think that's uh i i i think it's important to get some idea of climate and also some information about policies and just being really careful on how we think about this so i'm just going to give a small example we do school reports every year right every school has to put together this massive report um and i never noticed it till this year but dusty requires us to report the number of male students and the number of female students right and um i'm gonna get everyone going back and looking but i noticed this year that one person reported non-binary students and they're one school and there was none right but just the act of putting that line in the report to me meant so much right and so it's those very i think little things that that we're gonna i think start hopefully noticing and looking at um in ways that that create that sort of community that we're talking about miss loom i like the idea of maybe um i might you know i hate to ask um our staff to do more work but maybe some sort of short presentation at our next meeting about some of the statistics and data that you talked about um is something maybe we might put together and i can work with dr gifford on that um that we can help sort of inform sort of where we are just in terms of just basic data right about the district so maybe that's something we might want to put um on our um our agenda start early to get us all up to speed other thoughts ideas comments i would just add on to that that i do think when we start to look at the issues of gender and things like that we want to think also maybe through the lens of professional development i know sometimes from doing this work that the the language is really new for a lot of people and it's it's really helpful and we can actually make gains pretty quickly on a lot of this stuff when people have the same same understanding of terminology that is used and how it's developed and why things are talked about in different ways that sometimes if we just jump right to the the data and things like that people don't always understand what they're looking at so focusing on the professional development side would be a priority yeah i also think too um one of the issues um we'll talk about too in just a minute here is is we're all a little bit old folk right i mean we all have kids kids in the school maybe not all of us right but um i say that in the in the context of you know elizabeth your point is for us um a lot of this terminology may be new um but i know for our kids um it's less so and so i do think it's important for us to think about right how do we involve students um it is also professional development but also students because um you know even though i'm not a boomer and there's nothing wrong with it that is my what my my sons say to me when i do something that's not quite right oh you're such a boomer mom right um and so i think that that will be helpful to us too um other thoughts i know it's our first meeting and so we're really just getting started and it's hard to build rapport right when you're just boxes on a zoom meeting but what i really do want us to start thinking about is how we move forward and how we build momentum and how we make progress on this to me it seems like it might make sense for us all to do some reading and thinking in advance of our next meeting um we can share um uh some statistics we can do maybe a little informational presentation at our next meeting we can think about our charge and we can think about some of the ideas that we've floated and how we want to do this i will say in talking about plans i've seen a couple of different models for diversity committees and how they operate one is to have the the whole committee sort of focus on one or two critical issues at a time so we're really like all collectively working on this one thing and then we move on and we all work on the next thing and so it's broad and then all of us are working but narrow in focus right so that's one option the second way i've seen committees work is they work on multiple issues at a time and they divide into smaller like working groups right so maybe a couple of people are researching about mascots and someone else is researching about transgender issues right and then those work groups kind of come back to the committee and we talk about those issues i don't have a strong preference for either mode of operation um again i'm throwing a lot of ideas out at you in part because i can't throw them out at you in email because that would be a violation of open meeting law so i think it might make sense for us to just sort of throw some of these questions out there right how do we want to operate and we think about it we come back together and get another meeting do we want work groups or do we want to focus sequentially on issues or is there another mode of operating that i don't know about we have a list of things that we might get started with let's think about sort of what those how we want to prioritize them right and then come back and discuss um the third thing i would say is that charge right let's all look at the charge and see if we have any concerns additions questions um i think that would be good are there any other items that and we can also think about what other items we might want to discuss right as part of that homework maybe we'll call it are there any other items we want to sort of get out on the table for the committee to think about before we do our next meeting i've got the mascot i've got issues around gender particularly transgender dress codes client we've got sort of climate right just sort of broadly and an assessment of climate and then some information right those are some different topics that we can we can we can work on i think doing information makes sense at our next meeting and then we can sort of talk tackle about those those other tasks um mr tebow may i ask you about i want to not forget this and circle back around about having a student member i know we're super late in the school year now um and so i just kind of want to hear your thoughts about um the idea was i think you were going to find someone from the high school to be a member of this committee yes um that was the plan and so we have a diversity equity and inclusion club that's only met a couple of times this year um we were in par waiting for this group to to meet um that's a small group of students i know lily has the um multicultural club you know i'm sure there'd be students interested from that group that would obviously bring a perspective here as well you know i don't think we'd have a problem finding a student if it's just one student we're looking for um you know we've had other we've had i've had multiple students express interest so how you would want me to go about selecting one particular student you know i'm open to because i think there are multiple student groups within our school that would generate students who are interested in this type of work so um i don't know i want to say one thing and then miss scott i'll come to you and see your hand up so one i will say right now the school committee has one slot for a student right now so we don't we would have to go to the school committee to ask for more slots for a student um if we want the intention is though is that student will be a full voting member of this committee oftentimes student members are not voting members we did not make such a stipulation so that that student would be a voting member miss scott you have a question comment it was just related to that do we have to be limited to one student or could we possibly have more than one i guess with voting rights um especially if the student senses a power dynamic even if it's not really there it may be helpful for both students to have each other and help them to feel more comfortable contributing to the group it's just a thought sure and and again i think the school committee is fair to say kathleen correct me if i don't think i'm wrong was very open to our input about to make these changes so i don't want to suggest the school committee was like no you cannot it's just under the way the rules work that's how we have to ask them and then they have to authorize us so if we feel like two would be fine i can we kathleen and i can go up and do a report and ask and we can have that vote um so other people's thoughts on one member multiple members lily can i ask you i know you i have mr tebow said you're a adviser to that club you know i i i'll be honest most many of my students are graduating this year so i'm going to be recruiting a bunch of new students next year and i don't think it makes sense for us to have a senior on the committee correct um but i also think um you know we have the the gsa is it still called the usa ross but it stands for something different anyway yeah we still have we have the gsa also at our school and that might be another place where we might find people who would be interested in being on the committee but um but yeah i think two would be better than one i think it's hard to be the only kid in a group like this for sure yeah other thoughts comments so i agree about the idea of two more than one i think that would increase comfort for students okay so it seems to be there's some a little bit of consensus here that we would like to ask the school committee to allow us to appoint two student members to the committee is that correct right so i will entertain a motion to formally make that request of the school committee would someone be willing to make that motion shelley you will make that motion um go ahead shelly so do i i move to request formally from the school committee that we have two student members thank you and do i have a second i'll second that all right so mr tebow seconded that you have a motion by ms scott and the second by mr tebow to request an additional member which would bring us up to two um up for the school committee um is there any other discussion about that i just have one other question for i want to ask mr hayes mr hayes i think we're all working under the assumption that probably middle school not quite be ready for this but i just wanna it might feel intimidating for an eighth grader but i just wanna verify that with you since you work with middle schoolers um whether you think we should have someone from the middle school a student um i i do think that it could be a challenge for you know what we'd be talking about as a seventh grader incoming eighth grader um to be the voice of the building in effect um it is certainly you know i i think from my perspective i think one of the most important things that we can do as a group is and it was brought up already is to make the school building a comfortable place for all of our students and staff i think from from my perspective that's the most important piece here uh for for educational purposes for you know comfort at work purposes which then directly affect our affect our students education um so i do think you know from with myself and miss massari on the committee i think with that we're hopefully able to garner the voice of the middle school it might be tough for a 13 year old to do so but i'd like to think and hope that we're able to bring that to the community i 100 agree i just wanted to i didn't want to operate under an assumption um and so i just wanted verification that the assumption that we were making was correct so we're asking to add another high school student right so two by students would mean high school and i just wanted to verify that any other comments concerns any sort of discussion about that okay so i will roll call this one uh miss amarill yes uh mr tebow yes mr hayes yes um ms bloom yes miss chamberlain yes uh ms masari yes uh miss murphy yes uh and miss scott yes um and i will also vote yes all right so that's unanimous uh miss amarillo and i luckily i'm the chair of the school committee too so i get to make the agenda so i'll put us on the agenda um for our next meeting and i will we will make that request of the school committee i don't think there'll be any difficulty with that um mr tebow i'm not sure that doesn't really answer your question of how to select these students um but i guess i might say that i i don't know if any of the i don't really know i'm not sure i can offer you guidance you know your school and your students best um is the committee comfort comfortable with maybe sort of empowering like mr tebow um and maybe incorporating input from ms chamberlain and other people in the high school to identify those students or are there any things you would like mr tebow to do in identifying those students any thoughts on that miss scott i know when i'm looking to identify student leaders here at the university for students to be involved uh there's a freudian slip a lot of times we have the same student leaders that do everything so i know i have to challenge myself to really cast the net very widely and really try to reach those students that just because you're not you know the the student government president or what have you you're not the that you may still just have excellent insight because you are more the every man or every woman at your school so i don't really have a method for doing that other than maybe marketing really well or sometimes asking teachers to nominate students sort of like the unsung hero type student um so i don't know if that's helpful or not but just a thought and something that i try to do in practice in my work too i i think that's a great idea and i will add on my two cents um looking at us i'm so grateful that all of you have volunteered for this committee but we are a very white committee we are and i would very much like to give priority to consideration of demographic characteristics when picking students who are going to be on this committee i think it's important right as a social scientist i know um group discussions who you have at the table matters and so your discussions are better and richer when you have different voices and different viewpoints at the table and i know as a white woman that i don't i experience the world differently right than than people with different demographic characteristics so i would really hope that um that we can add um you know here's what i will say principles of affirmative action if you have equally qualified candidates right then these are these are the things that should matter and that's what we should consider so i'd like for us to cast a very wide net to miss scott's point um and if we're like wow we have five really good candidates then i think that the considerations of diversity should uh be important in that decision that's my um point of view um again i'm open to i would love to hear other people's thoughts i agree with you all right so does that give you some guidance mr tebow i've gotta go about doing that yes it does yes it does thank you all right so i know it's late and everyone's had a long day um we've mostly gone through the items are our agenda there's one other thing i think i really want to discuss with you all with respect to plans um and then i'll see if you have anything else my other question is about sort of meeting dates times frequencies um we're all here on a tuesday night at 30. does that work for people generally speaking i know not everyone's going to be able to make every meeting but if someone's like you know tuesday nights don't work for me i had to rearrange everything to be here i want to take that into consideration does anybody have any sort of long-standing permanent commitments on tuesday nights okay i'm hopeful um you know we talk about things we might want to keep from the pandemic and while i am tired of zoom zoom nighttime meetings are really nice i'm sure dr gifford agrees as a superintendent mr team mr hayes right having to go to nighttime meetings all over the place it's nice to be able to zoom from your house and um that's not to say all of our meetings should be in zoom but i'm hopeful we can continue some of this because it is really quite convenient um how frequently do we want to meet um i know we're just getting started most of the committees that i've seen the diversity committees are once a month which seems about right to me once we get going right i feel like now one month from now is really a long time from now too much so do we want to do two weeks from today three weeks from today what are what is i think like again as we're getting started maybe a little bit more frequent um and maybe through like may and june maybe have a few frequent meetings and then in the summer maybe give everyone a little break and then pick back up maybe monthly in the fall but what do you think two weeks from tonight or three weeks from tonight whatever shelly i see a two elizabeth lily two all right i see lots of twos all right so that seems to be a straw poll so that would put us at i'm going to whip out my calendar here um let's see what's that that would be 18.
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uh a little more yeah a little more than that okay still i mean it's going to be difficult for anybody to be living no it's to be living to be living on your own you know i mean it's one of the reasons to move back to be near your hometown is there's a good chance you can probably live with mom and dad family for for some time i mean i'm just being realistic about it you probably have large numbers of first-year teachers across the country who do something like that not all many of them um because the salaries are not going to be that high but if you could help in some way with housing i i think it's i think it'd be something it's definitely something that i would consider again i think the lift is probably too big because of union contracts all sorts of stuff but i'd love to see something like that happen well i don't think housing really has anything to do with union contracts but anyhow go talk to the town council yeah planning and zoning about this right um okay so um there is uh no nothing left on our agenda is there any new items that uh well no that's it there's nothing left on our agenda so i will uh entertain a motion to adjourn i so move that all right mr white to you second second all in favor it is unanimous thank you thank you everyone and we'll see
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so that's what we would be looking at in the camera or or unless you kept the dl as an option i mean it's oh yes yes not including that right not including that piece that you had talked about right and and can and can the three feet be achieved without any dl students at the high school in the classroom was the cafeteria yes so in the in the classroom in the classroom yeah yes so in the classrooms yes but that is with additional staffing right and so we would so we would literally cut into the class size by having additional staff plus more sections available by going to a period day and some of our students will have been vaccinated at that point hopefully so is that a mitigation strategy that is being considered as you know one of the many layers of safety protocols for next year would you say that again i didn't quite understand that so many of our students at that in the fall will have been vaccinated hopefully i mean is that is that considered in the overall scheme of health protocols in the way of mitigation strategies it's once very but kathy could you respond sure um so we are encouraging the vaccine but it is not mandated so at this point we have offered it to ages 16 and up because that's what is approved for under pfizer um we i'm asking parents you know to voluntarily let us know if their child has been vaccinated but they're not required to report that to us and at this time we're not able to require the vaccine understood thank you are there any other questions from board members i i have one gladius yes captain i just want to be clear about this this whole thing about the cdc i want to be clear about the lobbying that's going on apparently from teachers unions to make sure that they do not change the three-foot rule because in my mind you know come may come june we may be returning to a real normal way of life without social distancing because the cdc has said that most young people do not carry or give off the disease um adults have been vaccinated or or have had the disease and so they have a natural immunity we're getting a hurt immunity toward this so i'm not understanding i guess what we're going to have this saint joseph's in brookfield no matter what even if the three-foot rule goes away but then i'm saying that the three-foot rule will not go away because of the union lobbying that it does not go away so what happens then what i don't understand help me yeah i mean let me try this i mean i if you come no no no it's not that it's been what we've been asking sort of what rachel's asking the wrong yes yes when when this thing started we thought well when people are vaccinated we're good to go well you know it's like what's going on with this uh why aren't we having um a better understanding and clarity about the the um the guidelines to bring well every time the cdc comes out with a guideline they they backpedal as soon as they get pushed back what would happen is i think the board just for um i think rich hit it with class sizes being humiliated by doing this it permits that to happen which is a good thing you are overcrowded at the elementary so st joe's at a very reasonable um price would give a comfort level for the board for for maintaining um an area that you could put youngsters in if you have to even if you have to open up another k-5 building i mean that could be a possibility uh for you down the road so that's absolutely but the three-foot rule is a recommendation i think rachel's question what are other districts doing well it's a recommendation and um you try it and you don't and you're not succeed so be it they're doing that in some cases right now so i would say you know i it would continue down that path those that can with reasonable class sizes uh might be able to get away with it those that have very large classrooms and with kids that aren't on a dl if that's it then they're going to be they're going to be uh challenged uh to put kids in there uh two and a half feet uh two feet apart whatever if the rules don't change but it's uh becomes a local it's a local decision is what the governor has done the vote for rl and the recommendations uh on this so that's the best i can i can i can tell you right now and we're still working on scheduling to see if you know is there some other ways of coming at this particularly at the middle of high school regarding these large areas but um you know the classrooms i think without the api day at the high school um to create more space you got to get rooms to get more rooms you have to get teachers are not teaching and then get that room and then put a teacher in there that's basically what that what he came up with that's the way of handling the overcrowdedness by the way we're making the assumption here that the kids can all sit on the bus coming right i mean uh the buses will be you know windows open and it'll be two to a seat uh at this point they have not done any more restrictions with the buses that i know of so that we're anticipating with the 10 buses we can get all the kids in safely that's the best i could do anybody else cow cathy can you want to take a shot at it kelly or anybody um sure dr sal um so as we know um covid remains a very fluid situation um and it's very difficult to pin down uh making predictions you know more than weeks in advance because everything continues to change you know our goal is to get to hurt immunity so that we can return to you know what we consider normal we're not there yet um we are getting close connecticut has done very well in terms of uh the vaccines but we're still not quite there and there are many you know in the community who have the vaccine residency um so again we're we're not quite there um and we've asked the question of the department of health you know looking towards august september we need to make plans to the school district and they've told us it's difficult to tell us that there could be changes you know more than you know two months in advance it's really very kathy you're frozen yeah kathy is always frozen gladys can you hear me we could hear yourself okay well kathy's frozen why don't we oh sorry go ahead am i still frozen no you're good now okay where did i freeze what was i saying the consistency of the state department to give us timely information well they'll give us timely information as best that they can um you know kovid it's i know this has been a very long year but this is is still so new there's still so much that we need to learn every day and that's why there have always been so many um frequent changes so you know at this point the push is to get as many people vaccinated as possible so that we can get to that hurt immunity and as i said we're just we're not quite there yet hopefully um come i think this summer the vaccine may be open to children 12 and up pfizer has submitted all of their clinical trial data to the fda and they should be taking up review of that in oh she's frozen again one good thing uh guys well she's frozen there uh if we go to tent route um that that'll be a month by month right if we have to do that so that you can eliminate the buses you can right okay i'm sorry yeah the buses are the buses and the staff that's your other big one and that's that's what you'd have to answer the furniture quite frankly um bringing that furniture in um there's a lot of stuff we haven't been able to do so that'll be helpful uh to keep in the future um but those are the commitments now one other one other question for kathy no doubt i know that we we require wow can't even say it um other vaccinations to enter school [Music] will this probably be one of them eventually um eventually it might be it will not be for next coming school year nothing will be for the next coming school year um so you know currently these vaccines are emergency use authorization yeah um so at that point they they cannot mandate that well the fda hasn't really approved them yet right right correct they're emergency use only right um so if they get full fda approval for use then again that would be at the state level them taking that up as to whether they would require that uh to be one of the vaccinations required for so right now we just hope that people will do it and um hope for the best correct and our staff will be okay or will be okay with our staff saying well i'm not coming back to school because the kids are not vaccinated and i don't feel safe all right we won't see that we won't be good with that we won't be good no we won't be good with that so the staff are vaccinated right you know once you've been fully vaccinated once you're fully vaccinated if you're exposed you do not have to test or quarantine if you're not sick so if staff vaccinate get vaccinated they will be protected okay let me ask you questions if maybe maybe let me layer on what kathy so i i work at the i work at danbury and i decide um not to get the vaccine what is what are my options next year as a teacher according to the law yeah yeah that's the ken question right so so that's what i was just going to say is that we have worked with a lot of teachers and other staff members on reasonable accommodations of their disabilities so right had you know any kind of a situation that made it difficult or high risk for them to come to work we made work from home accommodations those few people who still have those in place for whatever reason i've worked with them and alerted them that continued provision of that accommodation will be a reasonable hardship on the district for next year so that that's not something we'll be able to continue in in part because of what rachel points out that you know the dl model is going to be non-existent or very different and so that's not going to create the space that we used to be able to make those kind of accommodations this year so um it's it's going to be a different world in that regard it's a very small group of people honestly thank you you're welcome what if a child is exposed and has to quarantine what do you mean so if they have to what does that mean for the teacher or what does that mean for their education i guess it's not a for you kim but right that is a question rachel that we've been asking i'm just going to take a shot at this don't hold me to it i would say if we current any force quarantining we would have a provision um to supply them in education in the past we did homebound um tutoring in in this situation i think we would try to do learn piggyback off of um you know what we've learned about um the simulcast if we can do it um so we would have to work that's that's a question we have asked but i think you would probably see something like that if we send home your youngster for 10 days because to no fault of their own they were exposed then we would have to provide the education whether it's online or what we call homebound tutoring and normally when it's shorter than 10 days we didn't provide it so i would say we would work it out where it would be some kind of remote learning that's just we have to have more conversation that's just my guess to be fair to the youngster any other questions i have a follow-up question could i could i uh could i ask the question uh mr janelle first and then you can go okay um how many students do you or do you know the number of students kindergarten uh that will be impacted to be transported to brookfield kevin i know it is about 11 12 classes but what do you got sure give me one second miss cooper okay and again a concern parents are working something happened with the students they're living here in denver and they uh over on the other side of town they might have to go pick up their child or something happening within the family and they need to go pick up their child and i'm just thinking about the distance from danbury to brookfield to do what they need to do to pick up their child it could be a family emergency or whatever right so so ms cooper let me first answer your first question um we we our our capacity would be 242 and so it would be 88 for south street 88 i'm sorry 88 for ellsworth 88 for stanley rough and 66 for south street so that would give us four sections four sections and then three sections um from south street respectively and so we we we were we were asked that question um i forget the forum that we were in actually i think it was in a farm with teachers asking the question you know what do we do in the event a child is sick and the family can't pick up their child in brookfield i i know we've had instances in a short time that i've been here in a district uh where we've had similar circumstances and you know we work with the bus company to get one of our smaller buses to transport the child in those rare rare occasions um you know certainly it's not something we want to have to do often um but you know we we've made provisions and and worked it out with families to get traffic to get children to families when they couldn't get to us and again we wouldn't want to make a habit of it if we don't have to uh but you know these emergent situations do come up and if we have to miss cooper then we'll certainly exercise you know with one of these options okay thank you mr west okay mr sure i feel that if this goes the board and the board does accept you know this i do believe within a short period of time whether it be one year or two year that it would be difficult to take away from the say joseph school do away with that and bring everything back into the the mainstream of our elementary schools and then create you know the existing problem we currently have with larger class sizes and potentially you know over the course of the next couple of years the the increased enrollment um not to say it won't be done so a consideration you know could be on the table that perhaps the least just you know stay there for a long term um this is just to me looks like a temporary a temporary solution to accommodate the covet situation and gave us a way out to at least accommodate a little bit lower class sizes in some of our schools but i do believe in a couple of years it's going to come back to a board to reassess the situation and and to your point rachel it made that there may be you know some future dealings of a combination of you know however they look at it for a hybrid and distant learning but you know at least we have one year or two years to operate with some sanity um and to be able to try to figure out the future rich that's what we did with um sacred heart you may recall um you know in terms of it's just that school if it was built like saint joe's we'd have a different option here much different and the granville option has helped with space you may recall that part of the conversation we had a year and a half ago was when they were when they were looking at the campuses to put their early childhood center when the talk was over at great plains not whether we do it or not that's another thing but there was a thinking you were going to need you know something else um so st jones does provide you the time granville provided us the time and having the the backdrop next year um at the sacred heart we think that um you know uh one more year of that then we have the extension at um not osborne husband but over at ellsworth ellsworth that gained some classrooms there too so i mean all of that is going to happen but it depends on how someone said your high school may have to be up to four thousand that means all your classroom all your classes are going to be at a thousand so you know we could be taxed you're right yeah yeah again i don't want to be naive because i think that once you give something it's a little difficult to take it away once people have gotten accustomed to it but you know we'll deal with that in the future it's true okay are there any other questions for board members now i will open it up for uh citywide pto uh tim i don't know thank you chair cooper um thank you dr sal and kevin and board for allowing us to be part of your meeting tonight is much appreciated um so we have some questions that we would uh like to ask we'll ask in a couple of sets between the three of us um one of my questions is uh i feel how how what is the district's plan to communicate to the parents during the summer and how are you going to push that information out well i'll take a shout out even though i'll be here we want to let me just start with now as soon as we have an understanding of the direction we would then be putting something out immediately to the current families let them know what the board's preference would be regarding next year parents need to know we're coming back we're coming back every day coming back full day we're offering dale or not they need to know that so we'll get that out to it now to them then it's going to be a series of um you have your new kindergarten folks registering and i'm sure as kevin just said we know from where they're going to go they would receive information regarding the saint joel's those are the registrants registers i would think that before i leave in june we'd have another uh mailing post remember we have summer school going on that will have to go to the parents uh in in june about what we'll be doing uh this summer to prepare for um the first day of school and then i would think the new superintendent would come in with the cabinet to get something out as well to them that's not to say that there couldn't be a forum meeting if need be and that need may come if the cdc steps in and makes some kind of a revelation that's going to require the board to do some rethinking i think that might be possible so that kind of episodic event would call for some special communication you saw what the board did last year they convened summer meetings to to communicate with parents we had open meetings so those are choices that the board would make depending on some some communication they feel is necessary so that's sort of just the thumbnail just off the top of my head uh at this point um another one would be uh and this may be more directed to kathy um will the district coordinate vaccines to the younger students if they become available will that be through the district or are parents going to be responsible on their own uh no we'll work with our community partners to just as we've done for the 16 year olds and up we partnered with our local health department and the community health center when those students were offered the vaccines the community health center was wonderful they provided me with the links to send out to the parents it was considered what we call a third party or a private clinic so it was only the students registered through that through that link they were provided their second appointments so um we anticipate the same would happen if it's approved for 12 and up okay [Music] um dr sal regarding the the plan for the future um obviously we're dealing with covid but kind of looking a tad bit ahead it still doesn't sound like at least to me and correct me if i'm wrong like there is a plan for the influx of students that we are going to get again at some point um so can you talk about that a little bit is there something or are we going to take that as it comes probably a combination you know the uh enrollment has the new enrollments had has subsided during this pandemic so we're going to have to see what happens to him when we open up again that's sort of unpredictable but we're anticipating our normal growth which i think kevin it was about two percent between the two and a half percent um the um the additional space that we've been able to to utilize tim we have granville which opened up classrooms in our schools to the preschool so that opened up you know about six or eight classrooms thereabouts and we have um if saint joe wasn't in the picture we we would have um sacred heart to help us with some overruns the other the other thing that the board um uh i i know you heard this there hasn't been deep conversation with the facilities committing my understanding and kelly you know about over at granville they they may make an application to add additional classrooms there either four or six or seven whatever and then we would then move more kids preschool into that um into that building so that would help the district with overall classroom space in itself so so that that dr sal and tim i actually i would say the exact opposite actually i i think our proposal is actually position us positioning us pretty well for potential growth in our kindergarten schools um and so sal and i understand that the public might not be aware of what sister school arrangements mean uh but dr sau has alluded to you know this idea in a number of our meetings and so our proposal is to um add 14 additional ftes across our k5 schools certainly we have continued to experience growth um at those levels um you know we we have the annex that's going to be um built and open in september of 2022 um and so you know with that in mind uh we have recommended that we have four sections go to st joe's um south street elementary school right now has three sections at every grade level we have recommended to move kindergarten to st joe's and then we're also looking to add a section at south street again anticipating that growth at that school anticipating the growth in our downtown schools south street in ellsworth we're looking to move you know students out of ellsworth and then their sister school which is great playing add two sections that great plain again anticipating that growth so all of these moves are in anticipation of growth and the existing you know high enrollment numbers that we have of our k5 schools um you know the recommendation that we have coming from the high school and and by the way i purposely skip over the middle school because we don't have room for more sections like we we just do not have the room for more sections um and then the high school is you know we are i mean as everyone has heard earlier we're talking about adding additional sections um you know we have the demographic projections where we're anticipating five to six hundred more students by 2425 um and with those projections you know these additional staff members help to address that growth the social distancing guidelines piece that we're talking about tonight helps us where we are right now but if we you know we hire those positions they also help with our impending growth that i mean we know was coming um so i i feel pretty confident that the positions that we're requesting are in line with the growth that we have coming in the district certainly a little premature because if we didn't have to deal with you know with the social distancing guidelines right now we wouldn't have this issue um we may not be recommending you know so many positions um but we we feel like we're pretty well positioned for you know the the additional growth in the district our class size will be at a pretty reasonable number across our elementary schools um and our high school um if if approved um i just have two more questions ms cooper if that's okay so one one would be um and i don't know if this is even correct but i i just i'm curious will there be any tax implications due to st joseph's property on us and that may be more towards courtney i guess you mean will we charge the tax yeah will there be any tax implications on leasing this property well right sacred heart which is a you know catholic school [Music] and we haven't gotten any tax bill they may put it in our payment you know but i in terms of you of not the tax but the utility but i haven't heard of any tax bill courtney have you not on the individuals but um they are proposing triple net tim which means that we pay the real estate taxes through the um in addition to the least cost so we in our cost that kevin projected it includes that triple net assumption although that would still be subject to the board's approval and negotiation um inter you know community feedback but yeah so no taxes for individuals per se like it won't i understand what you're saying i think because we're crossing town borders but it's essentially like we're not renting from the town we're renting from a facility located in brookfield you know on the border of danbury so just through the triple net we'd be paying the real estate tax so so with that though courtney would would we be then responsible for like building maintenance and things of that nature while we're there yeah kevin's actually been really closely negotiating so you know i can i can tell you what i i just wrote up from what kevin negotiated but i defer to kevin to speak to it but yeah there's portions that we do in portions that they do kevin did you want to speak specifically to it sure sure sure tim so they have um you know as negotiations as is a good word courtney um and so they have number one recommended um and it doesn't sound like it's unreasonable thus far like there are some sure um shared kind of um responsibilities that the tenant and the landlord have um some responsibilities that you know some things that we would be responsible for and some things that they'd be responsible for so some of the major ones are the hvac system some of the major ones are any structural damage or upgrades that the building requires uh you know certainly they would maintain those things um they have requested thus far anyway that you know we take care of the grounds um there's some some negotiation to be had around snow removal but that they take care of the grounds in terms of the grass um trimming the trees in the bushes that that kind of thing we would be responsible for general cleanup and maintenance outside of the school and certainly anything inside of the school uh you know we um you know they've made a request that we fill the oil tank they they will fill the oil tank when they when we come in and when we leave we will fill a oil tank when we leave um you know so so so things like that they have access of course if we're going to have a security system we have one installed and we're responsible for paying for it um if we want to change the locks in the building we are responsible for changing the locks in the building i think a lot of things that we would see associated with the lease if we were renting from an owner we're going to find in this lease and so if we want wi-fi we're going to be responsible for you know paying for our own wi-fi um the building is set up and and has this infrastructure um you know so they have an alarm system in place but that's not live right now um so i don't think we would have to have someone come in and you know um do a total implementation because i think the structure is already there but certainly those wires we need to be meet live and we'll probably need a you know a new box you know to to actually start the alarming process um so those are some of the things that we talked about wi-fi alarm system we certainly be responsible for snow move slow removal is something that's you know to be um discussed courtney i may have missed a couple of things but yeah we do general maintenance and they do the big maintenance they do trash removal things like that it's pretty standard and then they gave us an estimated cost of the pieces that are not included in the lease you know and so we've included that in kevin's projection that he shared with the board in the pto tonight um as we negotiate further he's got a really good partner father o'neill and reverend o'neill i apologize and the others that he's been working with there so that's that's a positive and they're building some beautiful conditions it's in tremendous condition yeah good and my last question would be more directed to dr cell dr cell earlier you had mentioned along the lines of um kind of a little bit of a piggybacking off of what rachel was talking about in terms of if a student was unavailable to attend school whether they were sick or for whatever various reason what would be the difference between i'm just not sure so forgive me between say a simulcast or a distance learning session if you can kind of elaborate on that um distance learning we have now and it's generally through we call credit recovery the simon class is what we're doing now at the high school where if tim you're at home and i'm in my classroom we would then cast that out to you in terms of a student you're in my classroom but you're at home that day or as the uh the point rachel made you may have been quarantined so the board the district could make a decision in those cases we would um you know we would um cast it at home simon cast it at home we'd have to work it out with the teachers and stuff but that that would be the difference um cara cashmere you're on right yes dr you want to answer that better than i can probably well i mean i think we have to talk about that a little bit more in terms of in terms of protocol certainly we have we have students that get sick um they get the flu they're you know they're not feeling well for four or five days then they feel better but not maybe good enough to come to school so you know we do have new technologies that we've acquired um and so you know we we should make use of those where possible um but at the same time i think that you know the goal really is to re-engage everyone in full-time in-person learning so that we can get going and uh maximize instruction and you know there's it's no secret when when teachers are doing both um it slows it slows instruction down it slows pacing down and it is more difficult so um we would want to reduce that as much as possible but yet in rare instances and certainly we'll have students who will be medically fragile still that exist um we'll have to be creative in the way that we we solve those those issues um but we do we do have new new technologies that we can that we can utilize um but the goal is to come back and full in person learning and make sure that we're maximizing that instructional time to the grace capabilities certainly also you know we we really went um the distance if you will with the way that we did our distance learning this year which was great the teachers were phenomenal and we had dedicated distance learning teachers at the k5 level which really helped to engage students but in order to do that again i really would split the staff right so in order to come back in full person we need all of our staff back into the building to make this work so there would be very few um opportunities to have that level of dedication again that we had this year and so it would look very different it would very um probably a little bit more passive in the sense that students could certainly view what's happening in the classroom and possibly here but it would you know i'd have to say that there'd be less engagement if you will that would be more um kind of a window in um and circling back with with questions but again that would have to be worked out in advance and planned appropriately thank you chair cooper that's all i have for myself okay kathy or anyone else from your group have questions thank you i just have a couple of questions and i want to thank you again for inviting us as well as um the excitement where you know i'm hearing about going back full next year and i know it's been an incredible amount of work on all of your parts as well as every principal and administrator out there rearranging and arranging furniture over and over again i'm sure so we're very excited by it glad to hear dr sal and and the board will communicate there is still a sense of hesitation out there i'm sure you can imagine um in the community it's kind of like i'll believe it when i see it so i'm very excited that you guys are are ready to go back um so my questions um that i've been seeing around the high school mainly are about if a student is fully vaccinated would they need to quarantine if you know if someone else in their class got coveted and then my second question is regarding the incoming freshmen as well as the current freshmen and possibly even the sophomores you have like two and a half years worth of students who have rarely set foot in those buildings so would they have a chance to tour and you know go back in earlier over the summer you don't mean a virtual tour right now no i do not it's not real estate but kathy could you deal with the corn question i'll speak to the quarantine um so um any individual who is fully vaccinated and what that means is two weeks past um the second dose if you've had pfizer or moderna and two weeks past the the one and only dose if it's a johnson johnson vaccine you are considered fully protected at that point so if you're exposed to covid um as long as you are not sick then you do not have to test or quarantine and that's staff and students the other question i'm not sure kathy i'd have to talk to the high school about orientation i um i don't know uh cara i don't know uh kelly let me ask kelly have there been any conversation about this orientation there's been only very preliminary conversations right now we've been focusing on you know re-entry summer school things like that but we will certainly bring it up to the high school administration and make sure that that communication goes out thank you and then just really quick my last um i guess comment and i know mr donovan has a planned principal's breakfast his virtual principal breakfast um but there is confusion on the eight block four block you know eight periods four block day because in the not too distant past there was eight periods a day so i think it's a bit confusing and i'm sure mr donovan and his team will send out clarification on that i just wanted to make you aware you know we did have eight periods a day in the very distant past as i'm sure you all remember so so the four blocks a day is still a little confusing but i understand it is to help reduce those sizes so thank you thank you for that i think he's listening in oh okay great i know he's working hard so but we'll bring it up too okay kathy i think i'm the last one here um thank you again everybody for letting us join in i know we have a lot of questions and we get a lot of questions daily um as parent representative um and i wanted to just thank everybody for putting this plan together i know us at the citywide really support this plan and whatever plan gets all the kids back into school five days a week at the same time so this is really important to us and we appreciate all the work that has gone into it um and i just quickly before my questions i just wanted to comment and um on the distance learning piece and i it's really more of a comment because i know it hasn't been flushed out um and i'm sure there are parents that probably aren't interested in that but i just wanted to say with the plan to go back full five days a week everybody in it does seem and i don't care sort of pointed this out and i appreciated that the teachers just in my opinion cannot do both the teaching online and the teaching in the classroom at the same time and still provide the same level of education and attention i know for example several high school parents who have sent their kids in for a couple of days and then pulled them because they felt like they were not getting enough attention um because dealing with the computer and the students online and everything like that just takes away um a lot of the time and a lot of the learning that they can get to and they feel like it just was of no use like to send them in when they can stay home and not be quarantined for example so i do think if distance learning is going to remain it will definitely have to look much different as cara was saying so that was just a comment um in general most of my questions um are regarding the new k academy the kindergarten and i guess i was mostly wondering will it be a school on its own like will it have a new name will it have a principal um you know i'm sure many of you that have children know that entering kindergarten is a huge thing for parents um and they're super excited about it um and i just feel like if we keep calling it saint joe's in brookfield um kind of makes it seem less so i'm hoping that it will have sort of its own thing happening where i mean i i personally think it's very exciting like if i was sending my child to kindergarten having all other kindergarteners there where you could really focus on kindergarten you know and have events for kindergarten and all the teachers teaching kindergarten it seems great like they can play together outside and um and i think sort of setting it up in that way would really help people get on board if they are one of the ones that is selected to go there so i was just wondering if that was part of the plan and or if there will still be say like a kindergartner for south street that's now going to the school in brookfield or will they associate with brookfield as their school so um since i'm leaving i'll take a shot at this so you could blame me in a way that was a concern of of ours because let's just say it's a year thing or two year those youngsters are going to be uh reunited for their with their young with their classmates over in the main building right so one of the ideas that we talked about jade was if there's two sections from south street let's say go there then um they do not lose the ability to participate in the in the life of south street school pto wise trip-wise things like that so that that connection is there just a temporary situation for testing sake we are going to treat everyone the way we do what ace and i mean our other alternative centers that they're part of the high school so south street kids that are in the brookfield count on brookfield campus south the they'll be counted with the students from south street for attendance for graha for testing and all of that so one thing we talked about was don't let them lose their identity on the same token what identity they're going to have when they're over there that you know we have to work that out but i certainly would like to see the key youngsters keep and the parents keep the um the the relationship consistent with the school that the youngsters would have attend from their uh attendance zone that's what comes in we've been having that conversation it's not finalized obviously but that's sort of what we're thinking and would welcome feedback underst i mean i totally understand that they would uh need to keep the identity to matriculate back in and it might be worth it to have a little bit of both you know if that makes sense um it's possible you know just so they can have something to sort of jump onto as they're joining but will it have its own administration like a principal or somebody in charge yes what do we call i'm using the word sacred art they should what do we call sacred heart there um kelly campus gran uh i mean grandville we call it the granville campus yeah early childhood center at granville yeah right so we tried to you know to take the the parochial name out of it so that's something we have to come up with that was another question so thank you for answering that i mean that's something we would come up with it would have to have i think um kevin can answer it but um much like the maintenance part with tim he'd have to set up the same infrastructure go ahead and uh kevin no i i was just going to say one i just want to applaud jade for naming the school um because that that that was really smooth um but but but two um you know it's it's a recommendation so it's not ours yet um and and you know certainly once that happens we'll rename it so you know we can own it and and have new signage up there but i i totally agree it it needs to be associated with danbury public schools and and make sure we come up with the name that's appropriate um we are excited about the idea of having a um you know single academic focus in that building um you know we we told we spoke with teachers from those respected schools um you know just kind of given how we made this public last week um and you know certainly didn't try to talk them into anything but just kind of shared the facts and and you know just kind of reviewed with them the rationale and so you know i i just want to applaud them because you know to a person the ones who are able to participate in the meeting um you know asked a lot of questions and and in my eyes anyway my takeaway was you know they were um excited about the idea you know perhaps a little anxious also because you know that's it's somewhat of an unknown um you know i'm i'm not their principal i don't work with them every day as i'm telling them this is a great campus um but you know they they don't know what that looks like but i i i think they are definitely curious and feel like it could be a really good opportunity and be a part of something special for the district yeah and i thank you for coming up with that option i think it's a great one personally um and then my last question i think kevin you actually touched on it earlier i just wanted to confirm um i know we keep saying that we are looking at probably a larger influx of k this year um all of the other sister schools do have enough room to accommodate additional students within their pairs so that say you won't need another class from mill ridge say at this brookfield school like you have a little padding room between the two sisters that's what i'm that's what i was gathering from what you were saying i just wanted to make sure that you thought that so um the answer is yes and and then of course if we have enough room between and we'll use mrp as an example and so if mrp doesn't have the space in kindergarten uh so between ksi i'm sorry between ksp and between mrp um you know we're anticipating you know with the staffing that we have in place um between those sister school arrangements we'll be able to address any over any overflow between the two of them um you know we feel strongly strongly um we feel strongly about you know our other sister school arrangers as well but not these three schools um that we're moving to brookfield um and so except for ellsworth in which we've opened up an additional kindergarten section at great plain shelter rock um also has a we're recommending that shelter rock also has an additional kindergarten section uh because again we will not be offering um kindergarten at south street and so in the event we've we've exhausted all the sections at shelter rock and we continue to get registrations from south street which i'm confident we will get more than 66 we will open up an additional section at shelter rock uh the building just happens to have the space just kind of the way the building is you know the building the school is built i understand thank you for that and i just want to my last um item is just a comment just to piggyback on what tim was saying that um a lot of the comments we hear um refer to communication and so once this plan is set up i think the earlier and the more clear we can put it out to everybody and um maybe that includes you guys coming to one of our meetings to answer further questions um but as much as we can get out i think during the summer early would help sort of alleviate a lot of the anxiety or confusion associated with it and you know and just make the whole process easier for everybody and thank you again so much everyone you know along those lines you know we we might be able to dedicate something on the website just a reopening page have it appear and keep updating it as this will change so in addition to that that might be something we could talk through as well so thank are there any you questions i have a question it's catherine um my question i want to go back to the tents that are being rented um i know that they were to help alleviate the lunch waves i'm assuming um and maybe dr sal can address this but uh we're having these tents in the winter months i assume too so does that mean that people that they're going to be heated are they only being lunch we had the uh we had the fire marshal well let me let me start with this we're still looking at scheduling i mean and options but the tents that we're looking at catherine the walk through what kevin had with um the city folks and the fire marshal would the specs call for heated tents so that if we have it that long let's say uh then um the tents themselves would be heated um kevin you wanna i know you talked with them explicitly so you wanna add to that sure sure hi catherine so um we we did have an opportunity to walk um uh with with the fire inspector and he you know he he reminded us as long as we had the the level grade tents that had the option to be closed number one right so we could roll the tents up in in really good weather but that could be rolled down um that could be heated you know empowered appropriately if we also need power in there 10 feet away from the building um you know making sure there's levels of egress you know so he walked us through all of those scenarios of course he would come back out and inspect our work as well um he said if it meets all of those requirements absolutely we'll be able to heat and power up the tents and that's one of the reasons why the tents are so costly because they give us the flexibility to provide heat to provide power um to provide flooring in in spaces where the ground is not level thank you yeah you're welcome welcome are there any other questions chair cooper may i ask a few on behalf of estella just give us a quick one go ahead um let me just pull her up real quick or flip to something so estella camacho was asking um and dr sal kevin is probably more directed to you um would there be possibility of any august or such orientation or meeting for late incomers due to this coming into the school system or families moving into the area during the summer and to kind of piggyback on that uh will kindergartners parents be alerted as they register for the district's plan to transport their child to brookfield um so i'll tim if it's okay i'll start with the second question last we have we we have and i don't know if gene is on the call gina who's uh director of um kind of technology and kind of district information we she's also in charge of registration and we have met with the registration team and informed them of this change so anticipating um the board will approve this recommendation we are kind of holding our kindergarten registrations for next year kind of just kind of freezing them and not making any commitments to schools yet just just because we want to make sure that families are aware that if they go to south ellsworth or stably rough that they will be going to brookfield and then we also need to be mindful of our sister school arrangements and just you know i've reviewed our school capacity numbers with registration as well and so if we have three sections and it's 22 in the classroom in first grade 66 is our absolute maximum number uh you know versus perhaps whatever that number may have been in the past because of our just regular you know regular classroom capacity um and so the registration office is aware um and we we we speak every week in anticipation of a decision from this evening and just kind of on ongoing enrollment challenges that we typically have anyway so so i just want to start there and tim i'm sorry can you repeat the first question yeah is there going to be orientation for the newcomers new students is the question and is that new families to the district tim [Music] i believe so right tim yes i'm sorry i was muting myself right right um so so i know registration has you know the part of their onboarding process um you know they meet with families and kind of you know walk them through provide almost like a mini orientation as families come in uh but i certainly can speak to to to ann dr mead and see what might be appropriate for families you know to provide i know ann has done orientations for families new to the district in the past um i know they've been um well attended because we packed a couple of rooms my first two years when i was here so i can just kind of you know revisit that with her and just you know get a feeling of what that would look like for us for late registrations uh to the district ann is here and you want to add to that are you okay with that oh i am no hi i am here um yes we're we will do an expanded whether it's uh virtual or in person um every year each school has done something to welcome their families in usually in the spring it's an orientation um followed up with um some screening next year will look a little bit different um with the start of school we're still working on what that will look like thanks ian you're welcome miss cooper when i ask one more question you certainly can thank you um kevin would there be um in hiring of of some of these new teachers obviously i know we said we're you guys are probably going to be working on some sort of plan for students that might not be able to get into the school would some of those teachers be designated per se for say a distance learning program for those children who may not be able to get into school that way we're not asking one teacher to do both at the same time i'm sorry tim when you say okay will not be able to get into this people i'm not sure i understand [Music] are we going to hire any just exclusively for dl is that the question tim yeah like why why i'm just going off a couple of comments that some uh actual former pto members throughout the the town have set on you know why are we not hiring just a couple of designated dl people just to help relieve some of the you know tension on on maybe parents not wanting to send their child to school quite yet even if it's just a temporary you know fix well let me just uh but that's a board decision we're not required to tim um to do it you know reasons that we articulated but um k5 is getting an elementary person teaching is easier for the you know to hire in terms of the certification but trying to get a secondary person in the in the content areas for a youngster is virtually impossible to hire that many teachers and to to handle it in a economic fashion so um you know that's that's a decision the board would have to direct us to certainly if kids are home because of quarantine or other issues like that then we'd have to do something but at this point um the people that we hire we'd hire to teach in the school at school and if we have to turn uh you know and have them teach remotely then we usually what we ask for who would like to do it and then if no one then we assign it i mean basically okay i don't know if that answers your question entirely but it does okay uh do is there are any any other questions dr say are you off complete mr washington okay i just want to ask the board here it'll be on the next board agenda for uh because it was on the first time for information it will come to you next time uh for the board for action if you know if there's something between now and then that you think would be helpful to get information let us know certainly if even if it's on the agenda next week you don't have to vote and i'm just saying i think the general public someone just said i'll see it when i believe it i'll believe it when i see it done i just think people are anxious to know what we're going to do so my anticipation here is that i'll put it on the next agenda and i ask if you have some specific questions that we've omitted or for clarity we could bring to the table for information to add to it the discussion let us know please but thank you thank you for tonight dr sal yes tim the the board and i just wanted you guys to know and and this goes with all the board and staff um if there's anything we can do during the summer to help you guys push out information we'd be more than happy to to do that i think we are probably planning on probably having a meeting or two ourselves during the summer just to stay in touch with our parents okay thank you okay uh again uh thank board members um dr sale and everyone to help work so hard together to put this together tonight and uh citywide pto again i'd like to thank you uh and especially you know i would like to personally thank cathy o'donnell and i go back to last summer she has been at every meeting and she's been faithful giving us an update and each meeting i came home and i said oh my god i want to say on behalf of the board thank you kathy and i just i don't know if she's listening but on behalf of the board thank you kathy for always um here giving us the information that we need thank you so very much and um i think we have another busy summer young people okay thank you again and good night to everyone okay thank you so much thank you thank you thank you miss have a good night you
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it's unbelievable what you guys give to these kids and i know these kids want to say thank you first and foremost as they receive their scholarships tonight we are awarding over a hundred and six thousand dollars in local scholarships so let's get right to it the first one is the heather arnold scholarship it is one thousand dollars per semester renewable congratulations goes to brylie ish and allison snyder great job young ladies the harold w ziegler memorial band scholarship award is a thousand dollars and tonight's recipient is ali schneider congratulations the christian life scholarship of five hundred dollars goes to gloria hammy great job the mark bowlin trucking career and technical education scholarship of five hundred dollars is awarded tonight to haley rivas congratulations the rod hoover memorial scholarship of one thousand dollars goes to alice buckridge congratulations the burlington wrestling foundation scholarship of three hundred dollars is awarded tonight to kaden birkenmeyer congratulations cayden the cac the cat backers scholarship of goes to these four individuals gracie becker emma fuhrman lily roth and michael watkins congratulations young ladies the napa auto parts scholarship of one thousand dollars is awarded to haley rivas congratulations haley the curt william manwiring scholarship of music in the amount of 500 goes to lily roth congratulations lily the kirk william man wearing scholarship of music in the amount of 1 000 is awarded to allison schneider congratulations ally the burlington james scholarship of 500 goes to these two individuals nick davies shaylen wright congratulations you too the fccla scholarship of 100 is awarded to abigail sleeser congratulations abby the vhs chapter of the national honor society and their scholarship of one hundred and fifty dollars goes to these three individuals kaden birkenmeyer jacob dugar and seth jarvis congratulations the spanish club scholarship two hundred dollars each goes to these three individuals kayden burkenmeyer sierra haddock and micah watkins congratulations champions of character silver scholarship in the amount of 150 dollars goes to gloria hammy and kaden birkenmeyer and the champions of character gold scholarship in the amount of two hundred dollars goes to michael watkins and braden's lawyer and the kwm music scholarship of 500 goes to ally schneider great job aly the community blood center scholarship is awarded this evening to micah watkins good job micah the william f bill or bill bauer career pathways scholarship in the amount of 500 goes to caden birkenmeyer congratulations kaden the aaron shively memorial scholarship in the amount of five hundred dollars also goes to kaden birkenmeyer good job kayden the floyd lewis foundation proud american scholarship in the amount of 500 goes to john howard and braden's lawyer congratulations guys the floyd lewis foundation proud american scholarship of 750 dollars is awarded to glory hammy and seth jarvis congratulations the deborah gates lewis memorial scholarship for cancer support and wear awareness in the amount of one thousand dollars goes to michael watkins congratulations micah the jacob von kaufman memorial scholarship in the amount of five hundred dollars is awarded to these two individuals this evening cody beal and carson allen congratulations guys the burlington firefighter scholarship in the amount of 500 dollars goes to abigail sleazer good job emmy liberty 4-h club scholarship in the amount of 250 dollars is awarded this evening to haley rivas and gavin finnerty the ottawa co-op agricultural scholarship in the amount of 500 goes to maggie seaman congratulations maggie good job under sheriff ken roney memorial scholarship in the amount of 500 is awarded this evening to seth jarvis congratulations seth the lawrence legacy scholarship in the amount of 500 goes to these three individuals congratulations to david allen jaren garland and braden's lawyer the lauren's legacy scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars each goes to these four individuals nick davies isabella fiedler carson hess and addison varvel congratulations good job the coffee county foundation's the roy g de long scholarship of one thousand dollars that is renewable for four years with the 3.0 gpa goes to these two chrissy hall and michael watkins great job the burlington rotary club scholarship in the amount of five hundred dollars is awarded to glory hammy and michael watkins congratulations girls the burlington lodge number 66 af and am scholarship of 500 goes to cassidy kongs great job cassidy the paola livestock auction in memory of gary e meets is given to a student who is going to study agriculture is a good worker and is a good leader the amount is 500 and this year's recipient brady rand congratulations brady all of the following scholarships are part of the bhs alumni association the following scholarships total 50 300 thank you the alumni association the gladiola bowman memorial scholarship in the amount of five hundred dollars goes to emily furman good job emmy the eddie h jack and rita f rich scholarship and the amount of 500 is awarded to elijah caldwell good job elijah the burlington high school alumni association scholarship in the amount of 750 dollars goes to elijah caldwell good job the poorly bell scholarship in the amount of 750 dollars is awarded to kaden birkenmeyer congratulations the vfw post 1030 scholarship in the amount of 750 goes to emmy furman great job emmy the bill freeman memorial scholarship in the amount of 1 000 goes this evening to chrissy hall congratulations chrissy the deborah roth memorial scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars goes to isabel fiedler great job bella the j howard and laverne birkbeck family scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars is awarded this evening to alicia hernandez the congratulations o may scholarship in the amount of 1 000 goes to sam griffin congratulations sam the sally j donahue memorial scholarship and the amount of one thousand dollars is awarded to addison varvel congratulations addison margaret dolores bowman decker memorial scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars goes to abigail sleazer great job evie the john a decker memorial scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars is awarded to glory hammy congratulations the jane keith knapp scholarship in the amount of one thousand dollars goes to libby stedel congratulations libby the dwayne fitch family scholarship in the amount of fifteen hundred dollars is awarded this evening to ally schneider congratulations ally the kiever family scholarship of two thousand four hundred dollars goes to nick davies great job nick the albert clara may and roy matthias memorial scholarship in the amount of 3 400 is awarded this evening to michael watkins good job micah the maria isabel lang memorial scholarship in the amount of 1 000 renewable for three additional years under certain conditions goes to these two individuals sierra haddock and cayden birkenmeyer great job the elmer dean and marjorie herr scholarship in the amount of four thousand dollars is awarded this evening to carson hess congratulations carson the warren and gladys decker memorial scholarship of 4 000 goes to seth jarvis congratulations seth the missy and frank hate memorial scholarship in the amount of five thousand dollars goes to gracie becker riley huber and chloe zane great job congratulations seniors uh and to the staff at bhs we are here at bhs all of us truly love you guys and are very proud of all the accomplishments you've done seniors will receive their envelopes and awards and scholarships tomorrow in their english classes caps and gowns will be handed out wednesday may 5th at the end of the day please finish strong by completing all your school work the next couple of weeks everyone here at bhs appreciates the resilience you all have shown during 2021 school year it hasn't been easy guys but you've done an outstanding job of doing great work i would like to say good night to the class of 2021 and to those who are all watching congratulations to everyone tonight thank you for being part of this and thank you everyone else
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the um 18th right so we would meet again on tuesday may 18th at 6 30. sorry about that confusion around 6 or 6 um but um we would do 6 30. um we will um sort of write up the the the minutes that i will send an email to you we talked about doing a little thinking and research before our next meeting um and that would be i will send you the charge to take a look at that we're going to sort of think about that see if we want to make changes to that um two we're going to think about how we want to operate cereal one task at a time with all of us into smaller working groups um we are going to come back around to discussing like what it is we're going to move forward on first one or multiple things and then also um next um next meeting we'll start off probably with a little presentation some background information um i will work with dr gifford on that if there's anything in particular that you want to learn more about you have data information that you want to know let us know and we'll see if we can find it are there other things that you would like to discuss around our plans our charge any of that miss scott go ahead just really quickly i forgot to mention it before land acknowledgements and i have done some research on that and i'm not an expert but i could share some information if helpful that would be great um well you know we're working on that issue at umass dartmouth you and i have had some conversations about that for those of you right not familiar with land acknowledgements but land acknowledgement states statements are just um acknowledgments by institutions right of sort of the origins of the lands on which our institutions reside as an acknowledgement of that history um you know they started i believe shall we correct me if i'm wrong in canada as part of sort of a native truth and reconciliation commission and so they have been more common there's some controversy surrounding this um in part because if you just do a land acknowledgement statement and that's it i might personally say if you do a land acknowledgement statement and have a mascot you know i don't know but i also think maybe that could be folded under that sort of broader umbrella related to that um i'll also note um one of the things that i'm working on on campus and i say this to mr tebow as we look to next year some of these things are great student projects right like i think having a student do research about the history of our i can think of that as being great for like an ap research or an ap capstone project right um so some of this work i think from my perspective it would be great for some of our students to do because it's kind of the ultimate engaged learning experience um so that's something i think we as a committee can do to think about how we can engage students in the work that we're doing to help us accomplish that work i'm always a big fan of that other things to add comments questions concerns lily sorry so are we gonna try to have that sorry i'm gonna try to um get the students at the next meeting that would be the hope um i know it's a short time frame um when is our next school committee meeting um our bonnie do you remember not monday may 17th okay so we can i think i think we should be able to get that authorization to add that second student at our next school committee meeting um so mr tebow do you think you can make that that that 18th date yeah i think i think that's doable okay fabulous so that's a good question we will try to make that happen because i think the earlier we bring them in the better i think that that would be good sure and just one more question i don't know dr gifford if we have information about linguistic diversity like how many people speak a different language at home i mean sometimes that shows we don't know well we do the yearly um english you know other languages at home but i'm not quite sure how we to be honest how we uh tabulate that or keep uh keep that and i'll have to check that in the office that's okay just just wonder if we had that information so i mean it's interesting though too right as we think about like the data you keep oftentimes matter right and reading a book about um like equity the equity data walking the data walk and talking to data talk right and we can't have do do the work right without having data um and so some of it may be is per our charge like maybe we want to recommend that we collect data on what languages are spoken at home right so we have a better sense of that and so i think we learn as much about what we don't have sometimes from what we do have so that's that's a great question miss chamberlain other questions comments concerns i would just say that i think that sometimes opens up a whole different set of questions too because if you're trying to get at what languages people speak at home how are you trying to get that information in what language are you doing so so that means we need to look at some of that to potential because there can be a lot of communication issues good point yeah other comments questions all right well again i really want to thank you guys all for volunteering um to serve on this committee um you know i know the district and our schools do good work and we focus on this but i think the more eyes ears and brains you have working on a an issue better and i'm looking forward to working with you all on these issues i will send an informational email with the charge with the questions we decided on um for you to work on um we will also circulate an agenda in minutes prior to the next meeting but in the meantime i guess i will entertain a motion to adjourn unless there is anything anyone else would like to talk about i'll make that motion thank you miss amarillo i thought we're going to be here all night so i have a motion by miss amaral do i have a second miss murphy thank you all right a motion by miss amaral in a second by miss murphy um to be i know i think that is also going to be unanimous but i still technically got to do the roll call miss scott sorry sometimes i go backwards and i throw shelly off that's a yes okay we all see that miss murphy yes yes all right miss masari yes uh miss chamberlain yes i'm miss bloom yes mr hayes yes mr tebow yes miss amaral yes and i am also a yes thank you very much um i really look forward to working with you guys have a great evening thank you thank you you
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uh my name is uh tom wright i am the uh cable chair for the um cable commission and um i am in saleem michigan and i'm honored to be part of this committee and this cable access television station i am lisa wondrous i am the communication director for the city of ann arbor welcome to the cable commissions wednesday may 5th 2021 regular meeting um we'll start with roll call and due to recent changes to the open meetings act we now require all our virtual attendee members to state the city and state that they are um calling in from so we'll start with uh roll call tony ramirez i'm tony ramirez i'm in grand marais michigan thank you from the uv as you can see the wood stove thank you tony carol dunnitz i'm carol donetsk and i'm here in ann arbor david pittman tom wright tom wright i am in the city of celine and um that's it that's it zach damon hello everyone good afternoon i am zach damon i'm a commissioner on the cable communications commission for the city of ann arbor and i'm coming to you from ann arbor michigan and we do have bonnie gabowitz who is attending from ctn studios and we're having some technical difficulties but um she is in ann arbor michigan um attending virtually and very quickly um i would like to introduce our newest cable commissioner who we're thrilled to have um on with us now is zach damon many of you may already know zach who is a ctn producer and he is very familiar with ctn and our services and we welcome him um are looking forward to working with him so please welcome back so we can move on to the agenda now tom back to the approval of the agenda all right i'd like to uh have our board approve the agenda minutes from our february meeting actually we need to approve the agenda first if i can have someone move um to approve the may 5th agenda if i had a first and a second from someone i moved to approve the may 5th agenda thank you and zach ii great thank you now on to the minutes of february [Music] does anyone want to move to approve the minutes i move to approve the minutes a second thank you tony so public comments i'm just going to give a few minutes because at this time anyone who wanted to call in to participate in public comment needs to dial 1 2 0 6 three three seven nine seven two three and enter the webinar id number nine seven five seven two oh seven four one one and then you can raise your hand and press star 9 on your phone and we will just identify callers by the last three of their phone number if we do have anyone who calls in so we'll just give a few minutes we typically do not have a lot of public comment at the cable commission meeting but we can just give a few minutes if anyone um is going to call in and share their public comments i'm going to mute myself my bulldog is snoring very loudly okay we might want to move on in the agenda and um if greg mcdonald would like to review the ctn quarterly report that was included in the packet that would be great greg okay so we have the quarterly report for january through march and i'll just go over the uh the highlights from our report the activity highlights uh during this quarter we started providing city council meeting caption transcripts for posting online we do captioning provide captioning for city council meetings planning commission and commission on disability issues and this during this quarter we started we get transcripts of those captions so we start providing them to the clerk's office for them to post online for people to view after the meeting they want to we also premiered a new program show your love ann arbor uh that we started to help uh sort of highlight some of our local businesses businesses that are sort of unique to our area staff attended two dei trainings uh diversity equality and inclusion um it was something all the city staff did during this time uh we had a premiere of our 2021 sustainability forum series i think they're up to the fourth or fifth episode in the series now um we got bids for a new automated captioning system which actually just got approved for purchase monday night by the city council and that will be a way for us to expand uh the number of programming that we do captioning for down the road once we get it all situated uh we produced our sixth season of let's watch with the ann amber film festival uh we began coverage of the council of the commons meetings that's the group that is overseeing the uh i guess it's the commons park which is the the library lot the top of the underground structure next to the library the downtown library we also got some more equipment uh gorilla pods and griptight mounts for the smartphones and some other little odds and ends for public to check out uh help facilitate people doing their production work out at home or out in the field uh and we did purchase new macbooks to replace the current crop that we have those are still in the queue they're not ready yet but in the meantime we also got some gear to allow people to check out the imacs which we had in our edit suite so that people could actually take the edit suite home with them instead of having to come in then we have our programming numbers for the last quarter you can see 58 meetings that we covered um and 31 additional programs that our staff produced uh the public access channel we still get a lot of programs submitted you can see 207 programs were submitted and a lot of 184 programs premiered during this quarter um and then on the educational channel we had 172 programs premiere uh and we have those board of education meetings we're still doing those uh and then our video on demand our youtube had 24 740 hits um i'm not sure exactly why but the top one for the last three or for this quarter was for all three months was a psa on breaking down boxes it's for it's like less than a minute i think and it's basically about recycling how to collapse the box when you put it into your recycling bin i have a feeling it was probably put on a page that a lot of people were going to and that's why i became the top hit every month uh followed by city council which is usually in there and that's the report to this last quarter thanks greg tom for regular business we were going to talk about the um or provide an update from the subcommittee meeting that was held on march 24th do you want to take the ball and run with it on providing that update certainly um what's happened in the last year is i've been able to partner with non-profit organizations two in particular one is racing for heroes that's a program that helps veterans with traumatic brain injury primarily become part of racing crews and the reason is it helps give them a new purpose and trains them for new jobs um we actually uh have done a couple of live programs it's broadcast every week out of new rochelle new york and then we also have um actual videos from the racetracks which we merge in with the program in addition to that i now produce a disability program called danny's miracle angel network the d-man foundation we've um put in over 112 videos that we've put in in the last three to four weeks we have a regular time slot and um in addition to that so that i could be better at doing these sorts of things melissa bondi had me actually attend some state of michigan acm meetings so i could learn best practices from those uh organizations throughout the state and um what the result of the meeting was is that for danny's miracle angel network and for the d-man and for um racing for heroes we're looking at actually getting short vignettes broadcasting them and making that as part of the uh grant making we're doing to major foundations the money is going to the foundations but part of the appeal to the funding organizations is that we broadcast on ctn and then also apply to have those videos broadcast on alliance stations first throughout michigan and beyond mike wazner who's the head of the alliance for community media nationwide has given his input given his input as to how we can work and uh increase visibility of our programming here in ann arbor so i'm most appreciative and we'll see how things go and we'll take the baby steps and um i hope in the future to report back that um people with disabilities veterans etc have been helped because of the visibility their causes have gained on community access television that's it this might be a good time to um it fits here but it also could have come during staff commission comments but um zach and i had met recently um to do a new cable commission orientation and he has been working with a company and doing some work that he had wanted to bring to the cable commission's attention so it was an ideal time for that for him to fill you in on the work that he's doing and some possible um training video exploration that ctn might be able to um work towards the caveat being obviously that we still have our trainer position that's open and until ctn um is reopened um which all city buildings are closed right now per executive order and staff who can work remotely are so until that's lifted the governor had just updated those measures as to when workers would be able to be back in offices um and that's what we would be following until that time comes um we're not going to be filling the trainer position because that's not really a position that can work well virtually um so zach did you want to uh take the reins and um fill the commission in on the work that you've been doing and some of the things that you and i have talked about sure absolutely and thank you lisa and thank you to tom wright and um all the commissioners for the great work that they're doing tom uh tremendous work that you're doing for racing for heroes and uh for as well as the d-man foundation uh just just amazing stuff so congratulations but yes the program um that lisa was alluding to um i came across the disability channel and they're a great uh disability television network out of toronto and um the reason i wanted to bring this up to the cable commission was because they actually um already have a virtual program that is put together uh to train uh people with disabilities who are interested in media and ultimately get them employment and jobs a little bit to what tom alluded to at the racing for heroes foundation the disability channel has media training programs for people with disabilities specifically and they already put together the packages in toronto it's been hugely successful they've partnered with mohawk college in toronto and it's been an amazing program and when i got contacted and they said hey zach you know we're expanding from canada to other states in the u.s i immediately thought of ann arbor and i immediately thought of our community because i thought to myself my goodness how amazing would it be to have a media training program completely virtual and completely online for people with disabilities in ann arbor and of course you know it could give them some great skills in terms of learning how to do podcasting uh again learning how to do some of the other different skills in media but i also thought you know what a better place to really bring this up and partner um and talk to you know greg and melissa and all of you about you know how the disability channel and possibly ctn uh going forward you know could possibly explore a partnership down the road and of course nobody can make any commitments at this time but what i would be willing to do uh greg and melissa and lisa is um at least set up a time for all of us to uh to to e-meet if you will and uh and kind of just talk have them talk about their awesome program and the success that they've had and then sort of explore that option but they're called the disability channel uh you can visit them at thedisabilitychannel.ca and take a look at their content there and then we actually just launched in march the disability channel today show detroit um and so i'm talking a lot about what the disability community is doing in detroit uh and stuff and of course uh you know really involved with that as well but um i just think it would be a great segue because it really isn't to where anybody would have to reinvent the wheel because it's already there the biggest thing is um just looking at the program and then just kind of seeing what that would entail in terms of you know uh talking to ctn and how that could sort of blend together so can i make a statement sure uh my statement is the non-profits that i'm working with in the disability area include um first step foundation which is part of mike barwitz um he actually produced a show on disability on the discovery channel called american muscle they have an entire range of programs and i'm talking to them they're now in four different states throughout the united states they have a wealth of stuff i just met with the father of the producers of the show uh the pharah brothers and i let them know about community access tv nationwide and how we should be getting new eyeballs on their work and being that they deal with like brock miller who was paralyzed and mike helped to walk i think our content could go quite nicely towards that uh d-man foundation helps musicians who have disabilities actually work to get recording contracts and i'm working with veterans agencies nationwide operation encore that's actually going to be appearing in film festivals throughout the united states so if we leverage zach's contacts with some of my contacts i feel that we could have truly unique content and um melissa helped me put together a flyer that we're sending out through the mpeg network which all the people can pick up our content if we do it properly we could contact the different cable access stations throughout the state of michigan and see if they could perhaps pick up content obviously there's work to do before that would happen but i think i would love to see ann arbor to be the hub if you will of this sort of disability programming and um i think we have some great great content and the key is simply strategically planning and taking baby steps so that we use what zack has what i have and what um ctn has to make a difference and with melissa bondi being on the alliance for community media board for central states region it could give us a great opportunity for next year to perhaps put some of our content up for the philo awards for next year and i will say that the ctn staff in ann arbor has been invaluable to me and finding new ways to get content out i'm even being contacted by commercial radio and tv stations asked to put together electronic press kits and send some of our b-roll because they don't have anything like us that's phenomenal it really is and uh i completely agree with you tom i think there's a great synergy there and um i'm happy to to you know connect you into this as well and and send you more information i would be honored to do that i've always admired what you did and have done zach i loved when you had your show at ctn and was always privileged to be there and i think you're a great addition to our board and if we can find ways to extend our reach i think that's great thank you for your kind words tom that means a lot and you know obviously uh a community is a big team so uh thank you for your kind words and you know i wouldn't be anywhere without the uh the work of many other people so thank you to all of them and thank you tom for the compliments i think that sounds like definitely some um great ideas to explore and like i said i think the timing of it um hopefully will be perfect in the sense of us hiring a new trainer who we would definitely want to be instrumental in evaluating this company and their work and i didn't want to negate though um and greg will need to assist me though in mentioning the online training that we do have and i just wanted to make sure that everyone was familiar with the online training that ctn does have and if you're not then we definitely need to promote that more to our producers and our clients um as well as send out a link to our commission so greg do you want to talk briefly um about the program training that we do currently offer um yeah we've had a online training service that we've uh contracted with for a while um excuse me um but it's actually transitioning right now uh because it got bought out i guess by another by linkedin so we're going through a transition process so what to see after that gets done how things smooth out and then we'll be able to share that so people can make use of it again uh it was one of those things that i think the the trainers would use from time to time um as they are helping people understand how to produce their programs so they would look for something online that might help in a particular situation that's awesome you guys i had no idea about that so i hope uh you know that resource can uh also be promoted and prevalent as well thank you greg are there any other commission or staff comments that we wanted to provide sorry bonnie you'll have to if if you had anything um you can let us know via email okay zach i'm hoping that you can connect with me separately and i'd love to see and get your ideas on some of the stuff that i'm producing and see prior to the evaluation by the new trainer position what we might be able to find for content to supplement what i'm doing absolutely uh absolutely i'm uh definitely on board to do that and um i can be in touch with you um you know after this meeting to uh to set something up and and move that forward um then yeah but then as far as um also just getting everyone familiar um it would be nice greg or melissa as well as tom if you guys are interested in just meeting the staff of the disability channel and kind of finding out what their success story is already and kind of what they're doing and because because they're really excited about ann arbor they love the community they know of it they know of the university of michigan um and all that stuff and you know and once i mentioned you guys they were like oh my gosh zach you know you got to connect us with uh ctn out there and stuff so you know greg um you know would you be interested um in just meeting with them you know for a few minutes okay i think that would be a good idea we just might need to um do it again once the trainer position is hired but definitely to have a introduction meeting um and i think um including melissa as well yeah um that if you guys set up a meeting with a company just to learn about them and in the meantime um we are hopeful this summer um that we'll have a better idea of when we're reopening and get the ball rolling and getting that trainer position you know posted and start hiring for that um and tony can you tell me one more time where you're calling in from because i did not write it down and i thought i'd remember and i have to include it in the minutes that's grand marae michigan how do you spell the marae m-a-r-a-i-s it's one of the beautiful spots thank you thank you um i think we're ready for someone to suggest an adjournment in a second i'll suggest an adjournment thank you all for your time you've been great and zach if you can send me an email with the phone number i'd like to touch base with you absolutely sir i will definitely do that yes that'd be awesome thank you happy cinco de mayo heck yeah yes yes happy cinco de mayo my friend i hope you have a good day enjoyable i will god bless you thank you you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good evening everyone if you're logged in from home and joining us we're like you we're all remote tonight mr giuliani are you ready to go we are all set okay uh tonight is an interactive forum to talk about a grade level restructuring that we proposed to the board of education and some facilities uh opportunities we have that we discussed at the last board meeting the forum is scheduled from seven to nine tonight this session will be recorded for future viewing it is also being streamed on youtube uh you will not notice board members assemble tonight this is not a board meeting this was constructed in a way to have the public actually ask questions and normally if you attend one of our board meetings for the go to the cause you ask a question but we normally don't respond we take that information and we get back with you later but this will be interactive and i'll try to answer all your questions to the best of my ability to expedite the process we've disabled the chat feature so you can't chat among yourselves you how you can however chat with the host who's mr juliana who's our board uh secretary and business administrator for the district if you will chat or text him uh that you would like to ask a question he'll put you in the queue and then you can physically log it you can't physically unmute if you're muted and ask your question and that way we'll kind of conduct it in a organized fashion so we don't have a lot of people stacking up waiting to ask their question we in my communication to the community i had asked that if you could take a look at the frequently asked questions we put on the website i hope you had the opportunity to look at some of those we do have some questions though that came up that we did not get on the fhus so i'd like to take a few minutes before we start with your questions to read these questions that have already been posted up to us and that way i can answer those questions they may be questions you already had planned to ask or maybe it will um prompt you to ask a different question and i would just please ask if someone's already asked the question if we not repeat that that we try to utilize the time to get as much information out for everybody as possible and depending on how the end of the night goes the uh the board will take uh this information along with the recommendation i've made and they are we are planning to um present to them an option to take action on this uh this coming thursday so if it could let me start off with some questions that we got that didn't get answered in the faq um we are the parents of a third grade child who has an iep and we're expecting him to remain in his smaller elementary school until fifth grade when we enrolled him in kindergarten he currently receives support from the special education teachers and at a student teacher ratio of three to one if all the elementary schools are now combined as one fifth grade what will be the special education student-teacher ratio and how can you ensure us you'll be provided with the same individualized attention that he's receiving now and the answer is we are mandated by federal law about the number of students who can be with a teacher depending on the program the only option the only modification to that is for us to apply for a waiver any of the programming that we're talking about tonight grade level restructuring or facilities enhancements would not have an impact on our special education program and in fact will give us an opportunity to expand uh and add higher quality to some of our special education programming and give opportunities for some of our children who are out of district placements to return to east brunswick public schools and be around their peers our next question is what steps will be taken to prepare fourth graders during the school year to be ready to move to a larger school with many more students in their grade levels since they are losing a year of remaining in their smaller elementary schools as we plan this we know there's an impact to children and there's actually been a recent question posed about did i consider that the board consider the pandemic impact on this proposal and we certainly did we want to take steps to make sure that the transition for our students is as seamless as possible and we if you didn't hear me mention at the last board meeting uh fifth and sixth grade at hammershow would really be considered an upper elementary school not a middle school one of the things that i've heard most frequently at east brunswick and this actually started with strategic planning probably around the 2015-2016 school year his parents were concerned about the transition from elementary schools to hammershould and they felt like that was a pretty big lift so one of the features that we looked at when we started this proposal was to elongate that transition and by having the fifth graders and sixth graders together at hammershow which is really designed around a house model so you can actually take the students you can compartmentalize them down into smaller groups we thought that would pay big dividends in terms of the transition obviously this proposal is is being made because we are out of elementary classroom capacity and it's not because of construction it's because of migration to east brunswick public schools and we had a demographic study that was done and it was revised in 2019 and updated but it was updated before the pandemic and what we found from the pandemic was that the migration east brunswick continues to accelerate the opportunity to work from home has been offered to far more people and people are looking for a residence that has a good school district a good community and east brunswick has become attractive that way so as far as the fourth graders go we have a year of planning this proposal is planned for september of 2022 not 2021 so one year from this coming september and we would engage stakeholders to make sure that we had the transition for our fourth and fifth graders and those students who would be coming seventh graders at churchill to make it as seamless as possible and one of the ways we can do that is to simply we can replicate some of the things that students are actually receiving in terms of moving up ceremonies activities at school we can replicate those for one year of transition so we don't look at this as an opportunity lost we look at this as an opportunity for enhancement uh the next question after going through all the changes this past year with covet 19 and now proposing this restructuring plan this is a significant amount of change to put children through has any thought been put into how this will impact children currently attending east brunswick public schools and not just be based on the amount of children that will be entering the school system in the coming years and of course that is we are always concerned students come first they're they're my first priority they're the first priority of every administrator in this district we want to make sure that we support them and we know that we're going to have to support students in a different way post pandemic there are going to be acknowledged learning gaps that we're going to have to remediate we have social and emotional supports we're going to have to put out to schools by having smaller class sizes though at our elementary schools beginning with a 2022 school year there is a greater opportunity to meet the needs of those students in those smaller settings in grades pre-k to four at the elementary schools than allowing the grades to creep up and i know some people have said you know well the numbers work out that it's only going to be about maybe one and a half to two and a half students in a classroom uh but when you're talking post pandemic and you're talking about the supports that students need you're talking about the personalized attention from our professional teachers who have been extremely dedicated through this entire process i can't thank them enough this would this would give us a greater opportunity to support all students in elementary school churchill is currently the most difficult school for students to navigate as it does encompass the widespread footprint that was the smith and churchill schools the students did not have time to utilize lockers most of the lockers in the 8th grade wing did not work so students are forced to carry all their belongings which is doubled for the athletes who are in season with the addition of another 800 plus students what's the plan to ensure safety and traffic flow in the school i assume some of this will be alleviated block scheduling being implemented which is wonderful in parentheses but i have trouble envisioning how this will safely work with students racing from tcus which will increase the distance traveled by students across different parts of the school as it appears as it appeared as they are being put on sports fields um and then um so obviously there is a footprint of the temporary classroom units known as tcus it's in the behind the north end of the churchill complex there is a ball field right there right now um we do not see the impact to um on any of our organized sports activities where we're organized sports teams there may be an opportunity to look at uh inclusion of seventh grade into some activities both school-wide and sports or athletics-wide uh by placing the tcus at churchill one of the things i want to emphasize is the name stands for exactly what they are they are temporary classroom units they are not designed as permanent structures and they are not designed to stay there so this is not we're going to put trailers there and we're going to walk away from this and they're just going to stand there for years and years we have to have a plan to replace those temporary classrooms with permanent structures to the point that we can uh given the fact that we would have seventh eighth and ninth graders in the same building we would attempt to compartmentalize the students as much as possible there will be migration around the building for the performing arts for the um for music for uh lunch uh physical education and a variety of other things that that we know we have to have certain spaces for science labs for example it probably would not make sense to replicate those in portable classrooms so science labs would be moved to a certain science class or a lab but we we think there's an opportunity to minimize the traffic and i know from my experience of being at churchill during back to school nights i watch parents navigate their child's schedule from the north end to the south end of the building and that's what we want to try to alleviate even with this by adding additional students on the footprint is to alleviate the not only interaction among grades but also to minimize the amount of student traffic within the building uh security um we have we embedded that at the at a first degree and the temporary classroom units would be secured by fence so there wouldn't be an opportunity to get in we would have security based out there as well so everything that you would normally see in our school would be replicated in temporary classroom units including the look of the classrooms the classrooms are very appealing and we've had um you know some slides we put up on what the classrooms could look like and if you didn't know you were in temporary classroom unit other than the materials they're made of you probably wouldn't know that it was a temporary structure um once seventh graders are moved to church so where their scheduling includes some elective choices that the eighth graders have to allow for more time or some elective same elective choices as eighth graders uh to allow for a more true middle school feel versus the limited selections at hammershaw middle school and the answer is yes that opportunity exists to look at a greater number of electives for seventh graders uh and um greater opportunities for seventh graders to navigate uh an enhanced curriculum we've been looking at what those opportunities could be so stay tuned in the near future we may have a presentation of the board about some some ideas that we've been talking about as someone who was a student at east brunswick high school during the last major reconstruction in 2000 2001 it quite honestly was miserable for us who had a constant construction disruptions but graduated before seeing the benefits the building since my daughter is a current fifth grader i fear she is not only the most affected by the restructuring but she will also endure constant construction disruptions while at the high school when will phase two timeline for building a new high school be shared uh and that's really up to the community part of the part of the takeaway tonight is to get feedback from members of the community here those of you who've um you've taken your time to come out and find out what your what you think about a new high school um i have been out in the community for a number of years talking about this we've been talking about the potential for either modification to the high school or replacing high school since 2017 and you know depending on who you talk to people have different perspectives on that what i will tell you is if you have a child in elementary school right now uh depending on the the um what the community's desires are we could press forward with a um with a schedule that they could uh be aggressive but we have certain timelines and there's another question that's that's asked along these lines um that answers that more clearly um that question is at the last board meeting mr winston stated that the first students impacted by the restructuring would be the first to benefit new high school since current fifth graders are the first to have their high school middle school experience cut short does this mean the high school will be completed for them to attend the next four or five years so again depending on the community what's what is the pleasure of the community and obviously the board of education would have to vote to pursue a new high school at a what scope uh and they would have to authorize the um a proposal for a referendum but under the most aggressive schedule assuming that that all of that was to move forward this next school year the 21 22 school year would have to be a stakeholder group formation for input and support for a referendum and then we would need board approval for all of that so this would be a committee work an ad hoc committee if the board show uh chose to do that and then make a recommendation to the board of education the board of education would have to make approval for a referendum and what the scope of any new construction would be in the 22-23 school year temporary classroom units would go at churchill starting that school year in september uh and sometime during that school year again 22-23 would be a referendum for the new high school and any other associated facility improvements and along with the rest of that year would be design and planning if the referendum passes if the referendum fails we have um i believe five opportunities in a school year to hold the referendum so if we fail we would have to go back if the community or the board decided that we wanted to do but assuming it passes then we go 2023 to 24 again more planning and in that year 2023-24 construction could could begin on a new high school with construction continuing for the 24-25 school year and opening a new high school as early as the 25-26 school year that is aggressive and that's assuming everything else falls into place that's state approvals financing um bidding successful bidding successful contractor successful weather um and there are a lot of variables there but that's that's a reasonable but aggressive schedule uh next question in the junior high school will a seventh grader be able to have a class with the ninth grade and what classes will it be well we don't know yet there might be that opportunity but we haven't formulated the schedule yet but that's something we would do over this next year um at the last board meeting held two weeks ago superintendent victor velesky mentioned this has been a discussion since 2017 wasn't the growth of the population in eb due to new construction taken into consideration when the construction started and knowing that there would be growth it was inevitable that more room would be needed for schools so why is there a rush now to displace these children in a manner in such short notice especially after dealing with the year they had with covid and again we are talking about one year from september and i understand the parents passion about recovery from the pandemic um the reason for the proposal to the board was we are we will run into um a situation that we will cross this threshold and parents at elementary schools will be extremely unhappy by the rising class sizes and the reason i know that's that's a high probability our demographic study said we would grow by 2026 i'm sorry by 2024 um and roughly a little over 400 students but what we've seen in the last probably six months in our registration department which is housed in the administration office so we see uh the people coming in and karen mandler who assists me heads up that department we have seen a lot of students coming in to register in fact since september of the school year if you didn't hear me stay at the board meeting we have 331 new students have registered and 64 students who have been previously inactive who may have gone to private schools and have re-entered our schools and then we also have 110 students who have pre-registered for kindergarten 27 have pre-registered for ela and we have another 50 registration applications they're currently going through so we have a total of the potential of 77 ela students and 110 kindergarten students on top of nearly 400 other students that we've entered into our system now in all honesty we lost about 200 students at the beginning of the pandemic who went out to private schools but those some of those students are already beginning to return and by the way the growth um is something that we we are aware of there hasn't been substantial growth in terms of construction the last major impact to us was kensington place the apartment complex behind walmart um it yielded so far about 70 students out of the entire complex and we were able to absorb those students at that time into our elementary schools and primarily those students came in at um grades uh k to three but we had some others and other grades but that was the primary impact um it was mentioned again by superintendent voleski a number in growth where elementary school students so why is there more concentration expanding in expanding the high school and not expanding or building a new elementary school where the grade is neat or the need is greater i'm sorry so to build a new elementary school we would need land we actually spent an entire year looking for land in east brunswick and there's no land to be had we have all the land is all locked up either in uh protected uh categories or is not available so we're looking at our existing spaces and after a number of variations and discussions with the board it made more sense to build the capacity in our elementary schools and then be able to add these components to like for churchill and then to eventually move the ninth grade to the high school in a comprehensive night high school setting it i think one important thing to mention is we have interviewed students we've interviewed community members we talked about it at our strategic planning meetings many many years ago and even back then there was a desire if we were going to look at a new high school to build a comprehensive 9-12 high school and students overwhelmingly have suggested that they they would have preferred a comprehensive high school experience and dr bannell and his team had had interviews with students over the years and that's been consistently reported uh about having that 9th to 12th grade experience um it is factual that some elementary schools have room to add on more students as it's been evaluated and calculated accordingly i'm i'm not sure where that information comes from because i have the facts and i can tell you we're at capacity those students may not physically be in the classrooms right now because they have chosen to stay remote but they're registered to be in the classes come september and we have we have run the numbers by every class um phase one is supposed to happen the beginning of this school year no not this school year is supposed to happen september of 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
well good evening we'll call this brief board meeting and this work study session and brief board meeting to order today is may 4th 2021 and it is six o'clock and we have four presentations one very brief item 2.01 and then 2.02 and 2 through 2.04 are all finance related and ms betts will be taking us through that so item two dr mccord anything for the order before we get started no sir just uh this is the uh item 2.01 and that is the 20 um 21 political agenda or 2022 political agenda and what you have in front of you is actually the 2021 and their priority issues for asba and so i don't we don't need to take any and actually have any discussion about i just wanted you all to have that let the community know that we're looking at it we'll bring it back on the 18th of may if you have anything you want to add to it please come prepared for that but this is a continuation of of what they've had for this past year so just wanted you to have that in your hands dr santa cruz is from the the equitable funding about the same as is that what is being proposed yes because i know that like the managing the covenant things like that are going to be different but correct taxpayers yeah okay the actually the agenda itself is for your reference and if there is something you feel compelled to compose or address at some point we will make time for that when we submit our either validation of this agenda or the validation of the agenda with whatever we decide that we want in addition i think we get three three to five uh new proposals and i believe the legislative council is meeting in june and the delegate assembly where this is ratified is in september so there is time but there it is of the essence that we uh concur with the contents and move forward it's been a very busy year and a half and this legislative group for asba has been quite busy and i don't see that slowing down for them at all so it's just for your reference i was just going to to answer for mr eugetti that went on the management and managed the impact of coven 19 on public schools that is new but the other four have been set this way for several years so and we may still be doing that next year i wish it would be different yes i'm hoping i'm praying for something different but okay so 2.01 has been presented to you and we will move to 2.02 dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members before you we have a revision number three to the 2021 budget presentation this will be presented by ms bonnie betts um good evening uh governing board members dr santa cruz dr mccord first i wanted to share that the first two items the quarterly financial as well as the budget the final budget revision we are presenting to you in one presentation and we'd like to present in a different order start with the quarterly financial and then move into the revised budget presentation in addition as you can see jackie matanin has joined me and so we will be tag teaming both of these presentations with you uh this evening so for the public we will start with 2.03 if i understood you correctly that's correct and then moved to 2.02 that's correct okay so i wanted to begin by by restating the context for the quarterly financial we talk about the afr we talk about the audit we talk about budget we talk about the monthly financials we talk about the quarterly financials so to be clear as we're sharing the quarterly financial report we are comparing the spend and encumbrance through the third quarter this year to the spend and encumbrance through the third quarter of last year so we're not talking about budget we're really talking about spend and we're also talking about revenues so cash kind of a cash perspective so just wanted to make sure that you're all clear about about what the quarterly financial is about and then to begin i'm going to hand over the details to ms matinen thank you miss betts dr mccord dr santa cruz governing board members as ms beth mentioned this is the fy 2021 third quarter financial report and we'll begin with almost turn my mic up there revenues this slide shows operating revenue by source year-over-year comparison our expected revenue is down about 10 million dollars that is due to the decline in student count and the distance learning reduction you'll see also an increase year-over-year in the local revenue this is due to the increase in the override from 10 percent to 15 percent in addition before we move on i wanted to make sure that that when we're talking about the quarterly financial we're also bringing in all of our operating funds so this is not maintenance and operations or general fund when you when we present the monthly financials to you we have that first page that's really the operating funds so we are looking at all of those funds together as we're looking at our third quarter year-over-year comparative results okay so go ahead i also wanted to mention that although we are three-quarters of the way through the year as of march 31st we've only received about 56 percent of our revenue from the state and that is because they withhold over 32 million dollars until after july first this slide shows the same information as the previous slide again quarter 2020 third quarter 2020 over third quarter 2021 you can again see the decrease in revenues from the 267 to 257 and again at 56 percent due to that delay in the state payment this slide is operating revenue by fund year-over-year comparison so we'll go through some of these you can see that mno is down again this is revenue received as of march 31st 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all right you're good all right good evening i would like to call to order the berlin boylston regional school committee as you can see this is our first uh meeting live and in person some folks haven't even met each other up until this point right so uh it's been a little over a year march of 2020 was our last our last meeting in person and uh so it's good to be back and uh we'll continue to uh they changed what we need to do to make this experience obviously safe and you know and working for everybody right so uh as always this meeting is being recorded and your image into voice may be broadcast just a reminder we are all wearing the mask so um we're just speaking into one microphone so everybody to make sure that they take a moment to speak clearly uh speak up if anybody does need to speak without a mask obviously we can have you move somewhere else uh if you need to you need to do that to give some certain distancing that can happen as well we can take a moment please stand for the pledge allegiance foreign okay we did not have any uh or any public comments uh submitted via the email process for tonight's meeting just an update for those watching in public if you would like an opportunity in the future as we continue to work through the process to provide a public comment please email that to parent questions rsd.org uh those public comments will then get uh if you're not able to attend here all those comments will get read from the public comments section of the meeting you always have the option of attending in person any public comments uh from the audience hearing none all right we'll do our uh agenda uh approval payoff roll with warrants obviously we're not passing it around but we are really getting back on the horse okay good from that perspective okay uh one agenda item i was going to add uh for a gender perspective uh because i missed it after me dale uh angela will add the lab discussion at the end as i am number 11 on the marion hawkins fellowship under business uh consent agenda but i please have a motion to approve our consent agenda thank you both now that we're back in person i believe we can move back to the non-mean for the roll call vote and go back to just um that's all those in favor aye approved two communications uh from the chair this evening and then i'll open it up to the committee uh first set of communication i would like to make is i want to thank uh first dave mccarthy and joel delay uh from the school make sure we have everything set up and that the streaming capabilities are going to be available from the public and all that good stuff so i want to thank those those folks i want to thank jenny ryan for being here she said she's not going for shorts volunteers good for her but thank you very much jenny for being here um and as well as sean killpoint for uh for helping us out and setting up the stage you get everything ready for tonight's meeting so i want to thank all those folks as they could have uh my next communication is there's a tough one here as many of you know a couple months ago um angela submitted her resignation uh this will be her final meeting on the school committee uh i believe we're talking i know right this will be good uh i believe we're about roughly nine years right 2012 was that right okay um nine years so obviously first and foremost thank you for your service um you know just a couple of things that i can take away from my time on committee uh with you being a part of it obviously the role you played in all the berlin scholarships over the years the numerous negotiations and contracts and what you brought to those groups and just your professionalism and your empathy and your ability to just really put us in a great position and help build upon some of the relationships that we have with administration and then obviously most recently importantly uh the regionalization work that we did obviously at the time but um you know the work that i did during that time was amazing so thank you for all of that you are going to be very missed on the committee but also also the uh you're never onboarding the process [Music] in our discussions around what to do for you uh we do not think a fleece jacket is necessarily going to be appropriate for your trip to florida so there is a um [Applause] well i really enjoyed my time over the years [Music] thank you any other comments okay i think i guess angela wins the prize for the acceptance before the school committee photo of the um images of looking like she's having the most fun on the school committee great big smiling forward at the table like this is the greatest position ever so shows to you setting the model for us and now angela is going to add it to you i think one of the things i appreciate the most about your time here is we've always um ask good questions we've always asked thoughtful questions you've always challenged us um and you've always kept the good of the region um in mind in everything we did never made a decision without having good information and um i know i want you to know that it's very much appreciated so in an effort to keep tonight's agenda moving somewhere in the middle or so i will ask if anybody needs biographic or massive break i think uh item number seven on our agenda is election discussion and i don't want to spend too much time on this um obviously it's an important topic um you know we need we have parent uh communication this week uh requesting that we had an update on our election unfortunately i didn't have a great uh update to provide the parents and you know i kind of thought to myself though it isn't a large group of people looking to see when the election and kind of getting some information it does you know i think it's a topic that does deserve and obviously there are there is some interest in what we're going to do with that so i just wanted to kind of bring it back up and my goal is to hopefully for us to get ourselves in the direction we kind of put this topic to bed a little bit and just have an answer for people well is what we're doing this is the process this is when we hope to have our next uh election so um it was kind of suggested we talked about the idea floated around a potential survey i initially said parents but i was obviously makes sense to provide the survey to the entire communities i would need some help trying to figure out i know how to easily distribute it to the parents i'm not sure how to easily distribute it to outside of parenthood community perspective uh i know what the towns do um stuff like that so maybe ask for like maybe website uh town website links or that type stuff and i know like you know tom people's electric bills and stuff like that i don't know if that's an option we have with the time that we have or desire but obviously if we did do a survey it would go to the entire communities um and really kind of what i see as that from this perspective is we really have we have two options and i'll try to i'm gonna try to give all the information i have and then we can have an open discussion about it in my in my opinion we have two options which is we wait until our november our november 2022 next election which i agree that is a long time and it's not necessary from a democratic process that will be a long time before we've had with regionalization and all that having you know with regionalization i think that's what compounds it because we didn't have elections because of that whole process um so it's been a long time since we've had elections had some turnover but it's been an appointment process right um the other option obviously is a special election when the topic first came up i did go through the due diligence of finding out from both top clerks what the cost would look like for a special time it is roughly seven thousand dollars it's about thirty five hundred dollars each town uh costs for special election most of that is made up of ballots um postage and the securities that type then obviously the remainder is the folks who want volunteers and the workers um i when i'm in that draft survey that i put together i put eight to ten thousand dollars only because i'm a business guy and i always plan for the worse maybe you might run into some other challenges uh we could really the cost of postage fluctuates we obviously are going to have to provide in obviously male and valid options still at this point because that's what the mandate is so postage costs could go up and that could fluctuate that type of stuff so i was sort of just patting the stats a little bit to sort of give an estimate so that's kind of where i came up with that number uh and what in what i wrote i did the other question that came up uh from a couple of committee members was they did talk to russ and um he's not 100 sure on the requirement for the home rule petition he thinks we might still need but that could be a touch of subject and i can't see necessarily into that but we can we can surely ask them that and find that out so with that being said um russ has edited and redone our homework petition document i got that from him today and it's been provided back to the town managers uh for review for town legal council uh and essentially you know what would happen is we could uh submit that back for legislation uh to try to get it back into the queue for uh getting through legislation now with the pandemic it's still way behind our current home rule petition act isn't even anywhere near the top of the list to even be discussed so what that does is that puts us in obviously the timeline quandary which is we don't we really can't do anything until we get that approved and then on top of that what i'm what i have to ask tom clark's telling managers is what's the time frame process to put together a special question i don't know what that is obviously you have to allow time for pulling your papers and signatures and all that stuff time for campaigning i mean a typical campaign process starts i think it's about three months long it starts you pull papers and or at least i'll use boylston i think you pull papers in march campaign in april and elections in may it's a three-month process right so at some point we need to decide when that time comes to that point and we're getting closer to november anyways or next year anyways do we want to utilize the funds from school budget to pay for a special election when this first did pop up i did work with bob and confirm with them we did put the potential um so that's all the information i have so really the discussion tonight is do we want to make any decisions do we want to move forward with the whole new petition act and see where that gets us put us in a position to have a special election and then the discussion around i know we talked about this in the past there wasn't a great appetite at least on the committee to utilize school budget funds for a special election um the initial response from the towns was neither town was willing to consistent paying for it we took the back and asked again maybe we could split it but i think that's a step somewhere down the line once we know where we're getting to that thing are we making any decisions not you know we're not gonna there's no vote yet but i think we should uh one um you know we can easily as the school committee decides we don't want to move forward with the special election and we don't believe and we can just set our date as november uh and then obviously obviously i think that would be some pushback from the community so i don't know if the best picture for the communities to work with the talents to understand how we can go from that perspective i mean that's one way to take it the other way is we agree as a committee tonight uh to continue pushing forward with the holding the petition act see if we can get that approved uh and then once we get that approved then determine if we want to survey the community to see if the community is willing to you know take the money out of the school budget and if if the surgery results come back it's really not a huge push to do it and that really just would answer the questions before we worry too much more about it if there's a lot of interest then i don't see a reason why because if there's no interest then we know the answer um the other thing about it is uh i was reading that today i was reading here today i believe the way it's worded is the terms of those elected that would have been elected this past november they're written very specifically that in some new terms because they're like a first term under the new committee so that might need to be addressed a little bit change the languages i don't know or not that's maybe a legal function but it is written that i believe the first time 22 if we had an election november 2020 there were going to be folks who were going to be two-year terms they would be in november 2022 they would be up for election after that first one there were two year term numbers in in the agreement there are i think in boyle state it's two two term members the one four and girls not two years so you might need to review that language the problem any time you change any language in the regional agreement then it needs to be voted by both terms yeah which is the reason for the state legislature because we're asking to do something against our regional ruling so not as simple as just so it sounds like we're going to need to see what i mean with that many things to be decided [Music] some of us are going to be appointed quite a convenient numbers where if you're appointed you have more information anyways so i guess my question is the committee members that are here i mean are you comfortable staying on the committee until uh and really until november december 22 even if you didn't in november to make too is regarding the appointment whether we are fully realized or not when someone resigns it is an appointment process so even before recommendation we had several resignations the only difference was at that point it said the school committee members appointing the new a member we went to the board of selection so it's not like this is something new but it does feel a little good when the i just wonder if do we even do we just make a decision to i work the process of the process of moving towards a special election and do we need to survey the lease i suspect you know should we just start the process of moving towards a special election yeah i i would support that i think that we should have an election i would like to know if um if we speak to our legislators they can work with us to get this through a time and matter what they would have to say about the timing like this because but we have it so once it's just i don't know if legislative legislation has spent up at all right i don't think either i think that we don't know i also think that it's worthwhile to just reapproach the pounds and say can we share inside the cost rather than taking it away from students services yeah everybody should have in that conversation either i just i think it's probably we should wait i mean i think that's the second step is i think this is there are risks of not having a special election i think there's a lot more risks if we have a special election and if they have ever come forward whenever it happens i think you know we're doing what we can to avoid some risks but you know some of the votes we're having not legitimate so i think from a risk standpoint going to special election right we're doing the best we can with some risks of big problems happening and i also just said it from a cost perspective the talents gave us the so2 funds we could have put that towards their assessment i think i would say just take the money and my recommendation is to take the money off the table don't make the times it must be three to four thousand and some people without budget they provided twenty seven thousand didn't ask for any of that separate lender i think let's make that a non-issue and probably going to be enough work to do it anyways just try to remove some of the options to make it happen so i would bring uh all right so i will um i'll try it out i'll add that as an agenda right in each school committee meeting to provide an update or where we stand on those things obviously from a support perspective any support each one of us can do in our communities with our select boards and those folks that play a role in this is a great thing and then when the time comes i'll probably uh ask everybody to play a role they were calling me emailing our state representatives tom did that quite a bit for us his first go-round so we should probably try to do that as well good there great thank you okay moving through number eight with our resignation uh comes the filling of the answer is fee we went through a process of conducting interest and we had one community member interested in the opportunity uh you all have a chance to see her letter of interest and resume via email in our drive so i would like to introduce julie lee [Music] position great thank you mr chair um i'm trying to speak loud enough okay my name is julie lee i've been a resident of garland for 11 years can you hear me um we have my husband and i have four children we have a seventh grader a fifth grader fourth grader and third grader so for the past seven years i've been volunteering in different capacities in berlin through recreation through the pto through sports and now that my kids are aging they're at the upper and that level of the elementary school and moving to the middle and we are after next our oldest will be going to the high school i was thinking about ways to use my time to serve the community and school thing came and i thought it would be a good way to continue to serve garmin and um i'm going to tell a really quick story because i know you guys have a lock agenda so i had a job in roslindale and it was at the professional facility for gdk18 boys but what i took out of that job was quality education matters here were these boys who was 13 to 18 you know living on the streets essentially committing crimes and then they would come to our facility for one to four years depending on the primary committee right so i taught pre-algebra in algebra in mississippi and i would pre-test the boys before and they failed miserably but then i taught whatever it was that i was teaching and then when i gave the assessment they did they seemed really well but it wasn't that they weren't smart enough it's just that their quality of education wasn't good it wasn't good enough it wasn't when i left that job i i've always had in my head that quality education matters because you can take a kid any kid but keep them going on that path or it can also take those kids that maybe aren't on that path and can be really impactful so why i want to sit on school communities because i believe in quality public education and i believe in good people and i think that good thank you yes any um so julie as a member of the school committee sometimes you have to take your personal opinions and put them on the side and you have to go with the will of what the community wants they don't always match um what i was curious about is are you able to separate your personal views from the local community and how are you going to keep your finger on the pulse of what the community wants i think that's a great question um i think you know it's it's hard when you have passion right and the passion that you have doesn't meet maybe the majority or the needs of in this particular case the community right however when you make a commitment to serve you don't always you can't always go with what your passion is because we have to support the thoughts and the passion of the people that were served and i think that that's public interest and that's public service right and we sometimes have to put that but what we really want aside um well i would like to think that what the community i would align my thinking with what the community thinks i say that i think that i would do that um uh actually i don't have a question because florida gives us my question okay i was gonna say i believe i i was asked to sing speaking of the election uh we always hear a lot of feedback from the community about what the community should do shouldn't do i'm sure jeff hears it uh you know we hear it everywhere um so when i was asked that question of my lord back in december um i kind of had a similar feeling i was wondering how you would react how i would react to that feedback that we got from the community luckily more positive than negative feedback right but uh you are the one that decided to step in front of that firing squad tonight and nobody else i thank you for that and uh says lori took my question and you said i'm leaving at that i was excited to see your name come forward because when i was thinking about who in berlin would be a good person to replace me you actually came to my mind but i didn't i didn't like solicit anyone because i felt like someone who really wants to do it things that come forward at their point so i i just think you'd be a perfect person for the physician i've watched you in action over the years just very committed very different um very open-minded so i'm appreciative of that and i think um the question i have for you too is i'm hoping that our committee members in the future are after the pandemic list that we but they become a little more involved in the conferences go to the conferences in november going to the summer institute for massachusetts association the school community puts on there's a district four which encompasses our towns um like once or twice a year um how open are you to doing some of the sort of state level um community level things with your colleagues school members across the state things like that see your schedule allowing me to do some of that um yeah as long as i had you know if i knew ahead of time of course then definitely i think it's a great idea because then you're you know there will be so much learning right happening in that process it sounds perfectly brilliant absolutely i think all of us um has informed the perceptions so i think the reactions from the community had a um what i mean by that is you know for well let me practice it with this i think you did a most remarkable job with this past year with code and your role in keeping the staff and the students and families safe and getting them to keep the kids educated i mean it was just a hard role for leading researchers i think everyone involved in that process really did a great job um i think it's very easy for people to share their displeasure with how things from cooking will crumble um without uh we don't necessarily understand everything that happens in the bathtub right and there were times that i was i was really saddened by how the community responded to things that were happening with decisions that were being released because of that they were such hard decisions and it was all rooted in good you know for the good of the staff and little kids but i don't think it was always receiving well and that that bothered me these are two great communities but they were very painfully at times and i said i think you know that starting with me would be a great thing because you know i can have conversations too you know i have four children you know we know a lot of age groups right so when people are talking you know it's easy to calm the nonsense they're easier you know it's a common process when they're on the sidelines another question i have is just are there any particular ways um the ways that i prepared to be on the school community i would say specifically no i've worked on communities before i've worked with budgets i'm the chair of our recreation committee so i'm familiar with town budget and how long that works um as far as the school committee i i don't know i mean i know the mission statements i know the goals and responsibilities but i don't know as far as preparing though i don't know that um i love to learn that i'm interested in learning it all but it was fascinating so just over time no i think i just have to listen i wish i had you know sacked for five months with angela of course i couldn't learn but but it's okay i'll just you know as hard as i go and any information i gotta get the suggestion that you need you know going to conferences is that's so smart because that's how i'll be able to learn how to protect you yeah one of my famous statements slash questions um um i'm just piggybacking off all the questions and kind of some things that you said right um some of the folks you know susan talked about kind of the community and the response of the coping stuff and all that stuff right one of the things that you almost have to start to believe and understand is the removing of passion from these things right and particularly when you start looking at things like social media and that type of stuff i traditionally am a person who uh sees something that i disagree with on social media and i desire to respond to that right there right and provide my opinion right but that's not um you know i know we're school committed numbers when we're here but and we're not necessarily school committee members you know whether or not you're outside of here but you aren't always a school committee member every time you go you're at the sport fields i see you there all the time anytime you go there um you're going to be particularly nowadays with everything going on it is you're a school community uh and when you um when there's a string on facebook and social media about school committee or school and stuff when you respond to that if you respond to that you're a school community even though you could be a parent it's it's you're you always got to kind of have that and think about that and you know for some of us some of us have talked about this in the past uh you know the ability to take yourself yourself out of some of those groups and some of that stuff right or the ability to um use some of that as information just information gathering not necessarily the need to respond right and take time to respond so i really that's sort of my statement the question really is how do you feel about you know that type of stuff and you're just you know moving forward the ability to sort of kind of pull yourself out of some of that stuff from a passionate perspective and start looking at it maybe from the school community yeah i think that's a great question um i think that like you said you just need to have to remove yourself i think facebook is toxic at its core um so i think when those threads come up we've been participating in reading them i think is toxic also because it will just feed the passion right and then we're human so we will want to respond well if you said you can't because you are a school for the members you just don't want to get into that you know on the sidelines of soccer or you know the parent you know approaches me about something you know i think it's best to even say oh you know i'm just putting an email or you know that can be discussed with the board you know rather than but i think it is a fine one because you are a community member right we certainly can there's things that certainly cannot get discussed right but then you also are you know these are your friends these are your friends parents you know these are your colleagues so it is a fine line to walk um but i think the best way to do that is social media is a valuable tool it's just one of those things that i you know i try to remind people it's just you know you got to be mindful right you know even though you're not in school that time that has not gone those things you have to be mindful of what the future might be thank you so can i ask the question absolutely yeah do you find that community members are mindful that with you as community members if you're at a um [Music] i think it's hard because you want people to approach you with how they you just have to tell people especially something controversial going on like you know there's background information that i can't share with you but the school community has made the best decision with the information they have you know and and friends and family and um julie one of the things that i really like about you is you're very balanced you're passionate but you're logical you're not emotional and i see that really helping you on those sidelines and i do what he says a lot i've always encouraging people i don't care what their view is email all of us let us all know share what you're thinking that's how we know otherwise all we know is the flips and little pieces that we hear here and there but i think your personality is suited for that kind of interaction yeah answer your question uh you know i don't think enough people do that but that could just be my experience people my big thing and my concern always with social media stuff people are entitled to their opinion that allow that's a forum for that to happen informed to share information my concern is when when i get concerned about when i read that stuff or see it it's the continued sharing and building upon incorrect information right and where thoughts and opinions start to become facts which aren't active and that could be resolved very easily by those individuals reaching out directly to a school committee member to get the information the actual information right we as a music committee try to maintain a response uh policy we all have the right to respond and do things we try to keep something out of a decorum and respond to policy when it comes to citizens but i just encourage people to instead of continue to propagate on incorrect information you know take an opportunity to reach out and call anyone i tell people call me give my cell phone number give my direct email email yes ridiculous that i'm interviewing you while i'm looking at this resume so if i have questions i have one question everybody knows that i'm a big advocate for the arts right based on your resume i'm sure you asked this question are you having a kid for the arts yes okay that's awesome good question okay um all right so now it would be the typically the uncomfortable part of your is there any questions concerns discussion as it relates to julie and their potential appointment here or not okay do i have uh more questions concerns deliberation all those in favor opposed [Applause] so from a process standpoint um [Music] you will need to uh between now in our next meeting make an appointment with tom clark to be sworn in and then once you're sworn in you can you know just have to get your email address and stop processing onboarding process as part of andrew was building out that process we had mentors now i was going to assign a mentor but i had one step up and volunteer laurie wanted to step up and be your mentor um so i'm going to appoint laurie to be uh julie's mentor through the [Music] gonna want to start getting your email getting access to the drive being part of you know the emails that you're gonna give us agendas and stuff like that so i would i would recommend trying to do it sooner rather later um mandated conflict of interest training certification okay also which probably will be i actually don't have your time this evening [Music] design step one superintendent will engage consultant with expertise and subject and concepts of equity regarding these discussions book studies and exercises try to understand the meaning of equity and also aspects of education the superintendent superintendent has engaged in services of teacher 21 2020 school year we hired started naj o'reilly um we've had two meetings one on my second one on april 27th if future work in the area given a timeline of our work and equity to extend to the summit 2021 the superintendent will collaborate collaboratively planning the administrative part of the retreat um the administrative leadership team will participate in these key professional development activities that will strengthen the shared understanding of equity the superintendent and administrative leadership team have participated in these three professional development activities to strengthen their understanding of equity which includes administrative book study webinars on culturally responsive teaching and degree presented by zoretta cannon and keeping him keeping your equity impact whether or not presented by gary howard uh three collaborative workers 21 consultants and four participation and individual literacy uh science advising college hosted by the education development center the focus of the cost was to create a pathway for all students k-12 to be able to access computer science classes we talk to you about that we're implementing this grade 7 and crazy computer science program i'll skip to action 7 and 7 which was the superintendent award with the director of finance and operations and the director of curriculum uh combined to budget here two equity goal activities that would be done by the mid years uh let's see number six the will provide a final report of the work done by administrative leadership team and he gives equity that includes action steps related to staff and parent involvement or reception from the year so we might finally talk by the superintendent and administrative leadership team environment to define the meeting of equity that has applied to logistics and students who serve during the 2020 2021 school year to begin a work relations administrative book studies using a recently published book called publishers breakthrough leadership six principal guidance schools where inequity is not adoption written by alan blankenstein and marcus newsom the contents of the court caucus it's greeted primarily through permanently those educational leadership roles an opportunity to better understand the meaning of equity and visualize the pandemic as an opportunity for transformation in our schools references of pandemic so it was timely and that a lot of the uh focus points had to do with opportunities the administrative leadership team met for one hour book study sessions and four separate weeks between january 28th and march 4.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
is this big enough for everyone's screen yes okay looks good can you make it just a little bit bigger sure can [Music] okay are we ready to go are we expecting um kim yeah i am expecting kim okay um let me just texas here she's coming in okay so you guys know us city council meeting tomorrow night they actually published the zoom meeting information on the calendar um in case there's an issue streaming to youtube again okay that's pretty risky um it's an interesting security choice i thought that was the whole reason that it was being streamed but i guess that would be what it will be i appreciate that they want to let everybody watch they have faith so rachel if it's okay while we're waiting on seeing if kim is going to jump in or not looks like it was a calendar snafu um i'm i'm happy to because i heard kate's questions about um number three special considerations that they do i know you had talked about that a little bit but i'm also happy to review some of those things with everyone as well if you like please okay so um for policies for consideration the taping and recording of boe meetings um we had talked about it our last meeting and i think we tabled that until today i was going to initially at first i was going to come back and perhaps review a new kind of slate of policies for the committee but at first i had seen a request to review this policy emergencies and disaster preparedness pandemic epidemic emergencies temporary powers grants to the superintendent and then there was another request to add bylaws um 4.8 public participation and then i had my conversation when we prep as building out the agenda i had x rachel if she also had an interest and perhaps the board would have an interest in revisiting the previous policies that we had approved for covet emergencies as well rachel i didn't put the mass policies in here but i could add that one as well if if we'd like so that the wondering was and i i think rachel had alluded to this earlier um you know these policies sunset at the end of the year or until repealed by the board i think there's language in there kind of for both um i've i i just want to um ask the board to consider extending some until further notice and i'd like an opportunity to kind of talk talk you through the rationale behind behind that request so i just just to give you some background on number three if you'd like i i know um i believe with the first policy and the number three um this committee would probably like some feedback from kim um and then also some feedback on the taping and recording of boe meetings so if if it's okay with the committee i'd be happy to start with visits to schools and student staff and community health and safety the last one again i'm not sure um again i know one of the board members had to request the review of it um but i'm not positive of the rationale behind it but certainly happy to open it up and open it up for discussion so if i if i can i'll start with visits to schools and i'll make this one bigger [Music] and so this policy i think everyone is familiar with it's essentially temporary restrictions on non-essential visitors to school facilities i i think as a district we've learned enough and i think we can begin to invite um expand on the term non-essential visitors and so you know one of the conversations rachel had rachel and i had as part of the development of the agenda uh was you know the the groups who come in to take pictures um you know in a conversation that i had with kathy o'dowd you know people who we didn't have eye screening people come in last year because just kind of given where we were with the pandemic we didn't invite them in but now that those volunteers have been vaccinated um you know this is another group who we certainly would make sense to invite in uh to do our eye screening i mean have those people part of and call them essential visitors to our buildings um i i do think you know at least it opens up the door for conversation about um volunteers coming to the schools um certainly opens the doors you know opened his doors about um conversations about um you know you know perhaps people coming in to push in so you know sometimes like we have grants and i know we had people come in to teach golf at our elementary schools and you know open up those doors and so those doors were closed to those grant like programs this year but we can revisit you know those invitations that we had and commitments we had in previous years and just kind of relax we can define as a board and as a district who those essential visitors are to school facilities um i would i i don't know at this time particularly as soon as september it's a good idea uh to open the doors for parents to come back in buildings as soon as september particularly given in september our elementary students will still not have been vaccinated at that point um and until we get some more guidance from the cdc in the state health department um i i'm going to recommend you know and i certainly had a conversation with kathy as well recommend that perhaps we come back and visit at our september policy meeting um or october policy need to come back and see if there's been any guidance provided over the summer um because i'm anticipating something may change over the summer when we're gone um but at least it gives us an opportunity then to come back and revisit those policies at that time okay and i also want to just point out that um in the policy um the 6114.81 where um it talks about temporary powers granted to superintendent of schools in bullet number six the policy gives the authority to limit access to public school grounds and district buildings during school closures so i just want to point that out that that's also there but i guess it you know during school closures isn't really applicable but right right right let's talk about building access right and so some of our vendors that might want to access our buildings you know this year it was closed um certainly if you know we all agreed you know we can certainly relax some of those restrictions next year on a case-by-case basis and this just gives the superintendent the authority to limit access um but also based on the way this reads to me anyway also gives the superintendent the authority to allow um people with access to the building um that you know as we all know those that access was restricted this year so rachel i just want to make sure i understand you were just pointing it out yeah i just wanted to point that out that it's also there okay okay um so do we want to change the language of that last sentence for this visits to schools policy um this one yes so these temporary restrictions shall remain effect through to the beginning of 2021 to 22 school year or until p appealed repealed by the school board we're not going to revisit it in september and make the decision then you want to okay so we'll just we don't have to change the language then or i think so i think the way it's written in fact i believe when i believe that committee recommended this line or and made sure this line was in all of these temporary policies um for some reason i feel like i don't know if it was joe de silva but i just feel like we spent some time on this line how important this line was just in case it needed to be extended are we covered for this this summer well it says it says the 2021 school year or until repealed so yeah so between these two i would say recover okay okay so for the purpose of the minutes it's going to be the revisiting of this policy and september policy meeting yes please sounds good okey-dokey one down one down right and this one six six one four point eight [Music] two this one is essentially asking um students and staff if you are feeling ill right this is about the symptoms check you know to continue to monitor yourself and do these modest self-monitoring at home um if you're not feeling well that is important that you know you you notify either your supervisor or you reach out to your school um and we're asking you to not be present in school kathy has requested that we maintain this policy because because until further notice the state health department is asking that we still maintain and and be mindful um of all of these recommendations and our policies previously so symptoms of illness the physical distancing we could either move this to three feet or we can say we'll attempt to maintain at least six feet apart you know if we'd like but certainly at the minimum three feet so as we all know on this call this is still applicable as of right now physical distance is continued here then it also speaks to mask as for ppe that that is required for staff and you know as of right now that is still the case for us cleaning and disinfecting um certainly wednesdays will not be a day a day um out of school buildings anymore but there is there is an expectation that our uh custodial staff will be continuing to disinfect those commonly used um uh spaces um in in in our buildings you know whether those was handrails and you know all those things that those things will continue to happen so we would like to maintain all these things in a policy for right now kevin i i did have a thought to change the physical distancing piece of it and i know we didn't talk about that the other day you know and it doesn't have to be we don't have to give it a label but it i think it should it should say that uh we will maintain the cdc recommended distance yeah i like that the cdc yeah cdc i mean who knew back then when we adopted this that it would change a million times you know a million times yeah and is this something we would like to um share this update with the board and certainly doesn't require approval but just share the update yeah yeah especially for the community too okay and this covers us in case this changes again that's a good call so this you don't think this needs an approval of the full board i don't think so because it's a ctc recommendation i mean we didn't make it up they did right right it supersedes certainly our authority we can provide the update for information okay great yes and then i didn't see anything else that really was i mean everything else is pretty standard okay i think on that second page here kevin at the top nope the second one there yeah uh it says right under introduction provision research shall ensure that i don't know if that's just a typo or text that got inserted or if it was supposed to read that way i'm sorry um kate i don't see people are you here in the bold text right above it uh it's instruction and then revising recess oh i think it's just some extra text or maybe it got pulled out of somewhere else thank you thanks that was strange thank you no problem i have to check and make sure that's not in the official copy that's on the website i don't believe so though thank you i may have to copy and paste and put that in the wrong place by mistake thank you no problem okay i'm sorry rachel did you say there was something else in this policy or no nothing from me unless there is anything that you caught kate or kathy no okay okay so we'll put up we'll put this up for information on our next board meeting great what i'll do is i'll share this with cara p after the meeting great okay thank you and do would you like to share any of these others for information or do you feel it's not necessary they haven't changed have they no no no okay i think so all right and then emergencies and disaster preparedness did we need to talk this one through yes because this one also expires at the end of the year and um yeah and also i just you know the temporary powers granted to superintendents of school i wanted to have a conversation um just around that provision [Music] it's not something that we are required to have [Music] i think the state authorizes the superintendent anyway with or without this policy um but the co but the um the discussion in the community was kind of weird around this and i heard from folks that um they've they their perception um to this policy was was that we took ourselves out of the decision-making process um and we gave it to the superintendent with this policy and my feeling was it it did the total opposite you know because the superintendent was authorized with or without this policy as granted by the state but um the other provision in this policy was that it be the decisions be in consultation with the board so in a way we we inserted ourselves in the decision-making process with this policy um but i just want you to be aware like those were the things that i heard from folks um and also with with having with onboarding a new superintendent you know do we want to i don't know you know extend extend this with you know with that in mind that we're going to be transitioning to a new ceo of schools it's a good question but i think you know at the end of the day that person's still going to be responsible for the safety and the welfare of the district so i don't think you can handicap whoever comes in by just because there's not an existing sense of trust or relationship um that's just kind of my gut reaction i had a quick question rachel um as far as the feedback that you were getting from from folks in the community did that seem to be a response more to like the executive authority around the physical spaces of the school or around the financial components or something else yeah i think it was just the um the opening of school the opening and closing you know deciding you know in the fall that we weren't going to you know open whether it was going to be full or not yeah right and then again in october and you know those those decisions whether to go hybrid you know the transition from learning model okay i mean i think what you said makes a lot of sense that um you know normally we wouldn't have much authority with that anyway and that this at least gives us some kind of uh you know dialogue not requirement but strong suggestion so yeah no yeah i'm with you is there anything in particular you want me any lines you want me to highlight for this discussion in the policy no i'm i don't think so i mean it's emergencies and pandemics i mean we have to give him that kind of uh latitude and he has it anyway so right right and we can always say you know as the governing board we still have the right to go oh no no no no right and he has the the option to include us as much as he wants to as well as as with you know dr sal and his latest um you know decision to reopen in the fall he's asked us to vote yes on that decision so i mean and i'm okay you know in keeping with this i think he followed um our health department when he closed school and even when we didn't open full in the fall he still followed their their guidance he didn't i don't think anybody would would do it without researching it yeah without a team a team it was a team decision it didn't happen in his own bubble that's right that's right um but i just wanted to make this group aware that that's the perception out there that you know no other boards i guess in our area had something like this but when i i had um attended a webinar with cabe and vincent mastaro and when this first hit and there were 400 policies impacted by covid and the closures he said these are the four that your board you know the minimum at minimum should consider um and this is in line with what the state authorizes so you know just to make you aware and so we can extend this i guess so just no revisions at this time no revisions but then this would be another one that we would revisit in september if you want to revisit it in september with the other yeah the sun sets in june december yeah yeah we can do that does that make sense to everybody okay goes to me yes great yeah i i agree it's really great and in this policy um just in terms of the superintendent's powers that are granted by this policy uh many of them are directly related to pandemic like decisions um and and obviously they were all connected and so in in many cases the authority that the superintendent has given this in this um policy may not necessarily be applicable if we're loosening the reins on the pandemic itself right so i don't even know if the superintendent can say well i've been granted the authority because of the covet 19 um it it just might not be applicable you know many of these policies so i think it um definitely warrants discussion in the fall just to kind of clarify if it's even necessary and in many cases i quite frankly i don't think it's going to be necessary after the after we open schools knock on wood yes that's right that's right okay great so kim kim is coming in momentarily i see her i apologize for my sweatshirt i wasn't i wasn't planning on spending the evening with you guys i i did take it out of the ponytail though it's kind of coming on again right we're casual here it's just it's a friendly policy meeting anyway tell me how i can help you so rachel would you like to speak to public participation first or taping or recording um let's let's just i think let's get through the um public participation part first i think um you know i don't know make it sound like that's the easier one i think so i think so i i was the one that asked rachel to put it on for a discussion only because i was i'm just so taken aback sometimes by what people think they can say and i'm not i'm not talking about our our own people i'm talking about the letters that come in and um especially from lead i think it was lead they're getting very emboldened every single time and i actually felt threatened at this last letter that came through like you had better hire who we want to hire or else at least that's how i took it and i i don't know i'm just i'm just taken aback by people's boldness [Music] that's a very fair point honestly because i think and this is kind of a bit of a bird walk but you know this age of emails and social media and people are emboldened in ways that we never were when we were kind of coming up the ranks okay you're right and i think also that a lot of times what happens is people don't appreciate that their words can be interpreted differently as written words you know i think people don't see or hear context or you know aggression or anything like that and and some of because i agree with you i read some things and i just i'm so taken aback so i don't think you're alone on that i think um you know this is one policy that i did look at carefully i didn't look so much at the taping one but i will when we get to it but this one um only because this one's tricky because of the speech issue right so you have a choice of you're going to allow public participation or you're not going to allow public participation and that's really your choice to make if you allow public participation you certainly can govern what you're getting at which is the the personal attacks the derogatory nature the threatening the insightfulness you can govern that you have to be kind of quick-witted about it because you have to do it as someone speaking if it's not written right so you really do have to kind of be quick-witted about it um but you certainly can govern the kind of speech but my concern about this policy is i don't think you can govern the content of that speech so what what made me gave me pause was this um that in the it's basically it's in the opinion of the chairperson what comment is appropriate or inappropriate and and and that's where i think you can you know we talk sometimes when we look at statutory interpretation lawyers talk a lot about is that is it so overly broad or so vague that people can really have a legitimate dispute about it and i think what made me nervous about that phrase was exactly that point because if you're gonna allow speech and put aside for a minute the the the tone and the tenor and the personal attack piece put that aside for a second if you're gonna allow speech i think you have to be really careful about are you going to allow speech about for example um i think that columbus day should now be called indigenous people's day well there may be a lot of people that don't think that's an appropriate topic for a public discussion are you going to allow someone to come and say i believe that we should have a student group that should be only white kids and we shouldn't let anybody else in it well you're going to say i don't think that's really appropriate conversation and i don't think you want to put yourselves or your board chair in the position of censoring one kind of speech or the other because you're going to open yourself up to a claim that someone's been been suppressed right so that was the only thing i think what might help and what i suggested to kevin in my email was what might help as you think about it is what exactly are you trying to get at by this policy are you trying to get it stopping the the kind of speech that you described kathy that is that is threatening or are you trying to get it going toward the content and restricting in some way the kinds of things people can talk about and that's what i think you have to come around i think what we want is in public participation is to include the public and let them have a voice but only in our agenda i don't think that we should allow them to just say any damn thing they want um off the agenda if we are talking about um opening school then their their voices should be heard about opening school i don't think we should go off on the search for a new superintendent so is the question about germaness of the comment is that the question i think that note at the bottom specifies that the board can limit commas to a particular topic or to only items on the agenda so we do have that option you know i think that there's kind of the lawyer answer and there's the practical answer so right they're not the same they're never the same in my world yes i think the practical answer on this is how well you know are you going to say to mrs jones who said sits up to make a public comment oh i'm very sorry but we didn't have your item on this agenda so you either have to leave or you have to not speak or you have to go sit down again or yes you can speak because your comments are tailored i think you're going to have trouble kind of doing that all the time one of the solutions i suppose and i don't know how many boards do this but you know sometimes people put public participation in different places on their agenda sometimes they put it at the end of their agenda so you know you go through your whole meeting and anyone who dates to sit through the whole thing can comment about what you've spoken about over the last two hours i mean i suppose that's another way to do it the city council yeah city council uh asked you to specify which agenda item you're speaking about the city council absolutely yeah sorry kate go ahead no i was just i was agreeing with you yes it's absolutely restricted to the agenda for sure [Music] i don't know maybe i should stop being a buttercup about it well you know i i i don't it's a hard like i said it's kind of a hard call there's kind of the legal questions i want to answer them right away and say you know what do you think we're going to do we're going to pick the best person for the job we're not going to i don't care for purple with yellow polka dots unicorn we say yeah yeah yeah no i hear you i hear you uh can i just we may move into a different direction if we follow the city and just limit uh or not limit that's not the word uh you know we know what the agenda items are going to be for that night and they can only speak on those legitimate items you know you could you could try going in that direction and if you find that it's a disaster you can always come back and amend the policy again you know um i don't know that you and and i would want to think maybe think it through a little bit more with you too joe about i don't know if you might these instructions typically sit on your agenda right so i don't know if you couldn't maybe try going to that kind of a format for a while without actually tailoring the policy to it right now and kind of have the policy catch up later i just would hate to see you get into kind of a pardon the vernacular kind of a pissing match with people who are who are or are not topic because then your meeting is going to go south from the beginning you know in case this is the line that you read to the public before every board meeting at every board meeting word for word uh no that is not it's not exactly well did we change it i don't think that's what i read last last meeting it's close it's close but it's not the exact same yeah is this and i apologize for coming in late i was picking my daughter up at dance class but is it me or is this somewhat of a different inquiry if we're meeting live versus accepting written submissions well no you know that people are not going to say the same things to your face that they can say in a letter of course without a doubt um and the germaness of the written submissions we've had seems to be a little more scattered than i think the germaness of the public comment at the handful of like remember i only had a handful of live meetings before we went fully remote but it just seemed like the comments at the live meetings were a little bit closer they huge closer to the agenda than seemingly the written submissions have well if you think about it through you know when we had um when we were going to eliminate freshman sports for instance you remember how full it was and how each of them got up and this is when we were having live meetings joe but they were all polite and they were all telling us why they felt the way they felt and i didn't have this um we didn't have this in a letter writing that i feel threatened sometimes and if you think if you think about it it kind of makes sense because think about this way so you're sitting at home you're a parent and you find out that next week the board's going to talk about eliminating freshman sports you're going to make a point to go to that meeting because it's important to you you know what's coming up on the agenda you're going to show up you're going to put you're going to walk in and you're going to write your name on the list maybe for the moment may be prepared right when we do these virtually i don't think that same kind of thing buzzes around maybe it does i don't know but i don't i'm not sure the same kind of thing buzzes around and so i think you might have your finger on something there that people don't they don't necessarily bear in mind what the meeting's about when they cut when they send in an email to speak you could read it this week you could read it two weeks from now when you get on the topic of what is in the letter you know can i just clarify that we are not recommending that we're cutting freshman sports i'm just saying they had bright bright yellow t-shirts like bright fluorescent and i remember them walking in and just thinking oh no and there was standing room from home that's awesome think about this the city council not only restricts public comment to the agenda it restricts it to the first half hour of the meeting and that's it and they ain't kidding at the end of that 30 minutes you're done public is done end of conversation yeah we we discussed that at some prior policy meetings um to limit it to 30 minutes um not that we've had to we've had very many meetings that you know that goes on and on forever but um if i could just give my opinion my thought on this is um so many times i don't feel that public participation ever has been on not ever but generally is not on an agenda item um you know i think of all this the many things that we're not aware of and then it comes that's how we find out about some things you know otherwise we would not we wouldn't hear about it um that you know and i just i'd hate i hate to limit public voice and it's not this is nothing to do with you know what we're hearing what we're hearing about um i just you know from i mean i for a year sat at the meetings and talked about sibling preference at ais and that wasn't on the agenda yeah we're not the only one yeah yeah but that also was on our agenda yeah well i guess you know what are your goals are your goals to to make the public participation more incisive and shorter and clearer are your goals to be able to be more nimble in stepping in and stopping when it goes off track i mean like what are your goals for for this particular policy that what you have now does not achieve i guess is my question i'm with rachel that i don't want to limit people from being able or feeling comfortable enough to come before us and give us their opinion i just want them to be civil and that's an easy one to address really oh yeah yeah just be civil because you know what we we don't get paid for this we are there i mean look at we're here again tonight and you know we're trying our best and that's why i don't mind hearing from the public but for me to sit there and be um flogged in public is not my cup of tea but we do have these sorry joe oh just and and i agree with both rachel and kathy i think we do need to hear from people and yes if we limit it to the agenda then we do run the risk of not hearing about things that said we've re not that long ago we burned a half hour 40 minutes of a meeting with things with with entreaties to deal with an issue that it's not before us it was did people basically communicating to us about a state's a state issue and an estate where the state senators vote on something now while i respect the the opinions that has nothing to do with us nothing zero zilch not a nothing it's not an agenda it can't be an agenda it's a state statute um while it it's an important issue clearly it has nothing to do with us i mean maybe it's not germaness to to the agenda maybe it's your mainness to the board and that was so wildly outside of our legal remit and interesting but i don't want to say a waste of our time because nothing's a waste of our time but it wasn't a good use of efficient use of our meeting time that evening because it had nothing to do with us and there wasn't anything we could do deal with or do anything about it so that's one that's an interesting point because that's when we're where my head is going on that is what happens if you get the first person who does that and then you have some sort of an intervention along the lines of you know just to clarify um while we appreciate your comment um this is not something that is within the province of this particular board that may dissuade or you may say others on this topic you know it's not something that we can do anything about and we're going to move on to people who have more german topics you could you could be more activist in the way you manage that um without i think running afoul of suppression speech um easier to do in a live meeting than when we're reading emails for sure but it's also also we could review or the chairperson could review the the emails before before there's they're read aloud at the meeting i mean you know here's a question sure insofar as we were talking about emails that are received before me every now and then we receive one during the meeting but usually we have these well in advance they can frankly be circulated to all of us in advance of the meeting made a part of the minute so we don't need to read them at all and there are some districts that do that i mean there's no reason to read them if we all have them and we make them part of the minutes this way the public sees them the public is aware of them in fact frankly the public gets a better view of them than trying to read what our poor secretary has to has to try to to type based on someone's reading of it allowed into the record the board of i think it's the board of finance here in reading they post them in a like in a document and it's tagged to the town website and you can go in and you can scroll through all of them and see them as a member of the public and then when they come in to the meeting those those comments are already posted um the board can choose to you know say anything about them or not and then they will take comments from the floor in that meeting because that's the other question is you know if i write you an email on sunday why should that meeting why should that comment be read during your meeting on wednesday night i'm not physically present there right if it was a board meeting and i wasn't present you wouldn't hear me because i would have sent it on sunday night so it's the internet nature of this is making it kind of hard i think to grapple with but maybe that's the solution is that anything that's coming during the week goes up on you know on the website as comments from people with their names and you know what the comments are and then you know someone could provide a summary or someone could simply say are there any others you know from right now during coming in during the meeting i've seen some in chat rooms um i think you know i think our days are numbered on doing the remote meetings honestly so i i think it may be it may be kind of a lot of conversation about moot point yeah i mean right now we have to get 3000 chromebooks out of the boardroom before you can have a meeting there but once we do that then we should be okay [Laughter] everybody take a chromebook and start doing start we'll start like working on them while we're having the meeting rachel for um bringing this forward of course yes i wanted to have a conversation about it and just um i don't know have a conversation it's a really interesting question yeah and maybe um gladys if if you're comfortable maybe you know a statement from the chair at you know at the beginning of our next meeting just a reminder this is our this isn't our policy around public participation and you know we appreciate your you know your respect and um civility and knock it off and you know maybe even a little something like you know we're an educational institution we are teaching kids how to raise their voices in an appropriate way we should be modeling good behavior for children right um and that's your mission so yeah kathy molinaro for sergeant-at-arms [Laughter] i would just like to say something you know and i know i know a lot of people have a lot of guts out there that's a little bit stronger than bias and i've been in this situation a long time and i've gotten hurt and burnt many times but it's not easy when someone because when someone come up you don't know what they are reading or what they're going to say and and and i i know that i'm a softly sometimes when people start talking and you want to stop them and sort of hard to stop okay and i can remember going back about 10 or 12 years ago and um i was i don't know i was chairperson at a particular time and this parent came in from shelter wrong school and the meeting had started at seven the boardroom was packed i ca i i can't remember what it was about and this lady showed up she really had to make this statement about her child from sheriff to rock school and she came in at 7 45 well we were going on with our agenda and uh she stood up in the back and she shook the paper at me and she says i want to speak and i said so i'm sorry we have a heavy attendance tonight and our meeting goes from 7 00 to 7 30.
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2022 not 2021. so beginning september 2022. um phase one is changing the grade locations and folding classes and trailers or only certain classes being held in trailers or teachers going to have to teach full classes in these trailers how many children will these trailers safely and comfortably accommodate um just as many they'd be classroom sized modules just like we have in our schools so the same class size as you would see in a typical churchill classroom and teachers would be assigned to those classrooms they would not be empty classrooms that they would just migrate to with the students so they'd be they would be those teachers classrooms we haven't decided yet which grade might might be housed in the temporary classroom units and how long is phase one supposed to last um it could be a number of years we don't have an exact date uh but it could be um probably at least five years um phase two was mentioned but no proposed date of this phase beginning was discussed uh when is phase two expected to begin talks and actually take place that depends on the community that depends on what the community wants and what are the expectations of phase one in order to begin phase two obviously we have to immediately address the elementary classroom space issue uh in the temporary classroom units we have to begin planning for that that is a longer term process than a lot of people imagine we are all recovering from the pandemic in the construction industry as well so these are not temporary classroom units that we can simply go and pick out and say deliver those to east brunswick they have to be designed they have to be delivered and they have to be set up with utilities and foundations inspected and meet all the criteria township has so that's why the lead time of you know until september actually we'd have to have them in place probably by the end of july beginning of august um to adequately prepare for students to arrive in september um and this isn't just talk we you know tonight's talk but yeah i want to get feedback from you um if tcus are being built on the fields when current sports teams at the heist junior high school not have a season no they wouldn't be impacted again how long might this change expect to last about five years uh would fifth and sixth grade schedules be similar in terms of classes and electives um that is to be decided yet but we would have opportunities to make the fifth grade experience and the sixth grade experience different than what parents know it today and and have a greater impact on their student have a better experience for their students too how does this change affect staff how many staff members will likely be moved building grade levels teachers would move with the grades simple equation as teachers would move with the grades and as we build out at the elementary schools extra sections we would have to hire more teachers to fill those sections um fourth graders next year in their move to hammer shoulders fifth grader they'd miss out on fifth grade experiences so we wouldn't we would replicate that we would make this transition as seamless as possible as said earlier and we can replicate anything we have look we're east brunswick we can do anything we can make that happen and we can make sure that transition is as seamless as possible class sizes how will class sizes be affected will they decrease or remain the same or not just get bigger we want to maintain legitimate class sizes we want to have smaller class sizes if we can but but if we have to grow we will grow a little bit but we do not want to put 25 26 27 28 students in a classroom we want to have those numbers lower and be able to have the room to accommodate them uh for a great education a great experience no matter which building they're in and again what's the timeline of the high school uh and so that i already answered that question so those are the questions that were out there that hadn't been answered on the frequently asked questions so now i'm going to open it up to all of you so once again if you could let mr juliana know he's the host of this meeting tonight uh that you'd like to ask a question then he'll put you in the queue to go ahead and ask it so um ladies and gentlemen uh i asked please do not text me your question just let me know that you'd like to ask a question and um i'll call on you and you can ask your question live okay uh we have uh sharon kaplan hi hi there dr pulaski um just to introduce myself i'm actually a teacher in north brunswick where we just went through moving our elementary schools pre-k to four and when we when we built a new school and restructured this year okay um the plan had been in place for a very long time we went through the referendum um i've been a teacher there for more than 20 years so i've been through many referendums in north brunswick um my children are in third and fifth grade okay and my question actually is not coming as much from a parent as it is for um by a teacher will the fifth grade teachers need to become content specific certified if they're going to an upper grade or upper elementary um i i don't have the the full answer for you tonight i i don't know there might be some some issues we have to address there but we don't see this as a big show stopper i think that we have um when we talk we're talking about the upper elementary fifth and sixth grade i i i don't think that'll be a major issue but i don't want to say that we have everything resolved because we don't okay that basically leads to what my overall concern is which is that this feels very rushed um it really does feel as though one year is not enough planning when you're saying we have next year to plan that we don't know yet we need to plan that next year in my opinion shouldn't necessarily be on all of these innovative things that we need to change but yet going back to the normalcy that we need to recover from the pandemic if this were a two-year plan instead of a one-year plan i think i could breathe a little bit easier um so my next question actually becomes is there a plan in place to work with these children next year which we don't even know what the school year is going to look like again i'm a teacher so i'm again trying to think um as both a teacher and a mom but is there a a plan to help the children both transition back to school as ignor as normal like with lunches and possibly masks and staggered whatever needs to happen but then also hey you're in fourth grade see ya you're no longer in elementary school this is your big year as you're also trying to transition or oh you're going to hammer shoulder for one year and then you're gonna move on to a whole new school like is there a plan for the third and fifth graders yes there is a plan and our primary focus is and you make a good point about the recovery from the pandemic there are things that i cannot answer tonight because we don't have we don't understand the full impact to some of our students we have students who have who wanted to be in our virtual or a hybrid setting early on we had that some students come back you know and five day a week and some have chosen to remain virtual and will remain virtual all this year just as i'm sure you experience as a teacher in north brunswick and and your superintendent and i talk all the time about you know we have similar dynamics that are occurring in our districts um the the first plan is is the recovery from the pandemic and making sure that we address all the needs of all the students i i believe that our students are more resilient than we give them credit for but i also understand there are things that i cannot forecast right now i i can tell you from my walks around schools and seeing students how engaged the ones who have come back to school and their parents feel comfortable sending them back how they've adapted so quickly to coming back into the classroom and how our teachers have adapted so quickly to having those students back in their classroom so i know there's going to be a transition back um but i i i say once again what my fear is is we're having not only what our demographer had said to us before the pandemic about get ready east brunswick is about to encounter a pretty significant increase in enrollment over this next four or five years and then everything was upended by the pandemic everybody stayed put but well like i said what we're seeing is this pretty aggressive migration and the exchange of houses houses are being sold pretty quickly and that's where we're seeing our new students enroll so the like i said the first focus is on the wellness of students we've already got programs in place uh we've already been engaging in that work to prepare for that and we've already been engaging with students even in this pandemic environment to begin to assess needs but there's there's going to be an academic assessment required at the beginning of the school year to determine where every child is um do you mind if i ask another question i'm sorry absolutely because you probably have other people that want to ask exactly just with that i mean the health and wellness is absolutely overwhelmingly important but at the same time i i really am afraid for the academic levels of where these children are which again is why i'm so nervous about this move taking place after just one year back um just to give you a framework i teach kindergarten and i am in may teaching children how to write their names because they had been virtual all the way through their their families had chosen to stay virtual all the way through april 19th was one of our transitions back and those children came back on april 19th and i i promise you it was the first time some of them had held a pencil or crayon and it broke my heart and they're not the only children there are children in all schools in all demographics when they're in front of a computer and learning to type like this instead of that and i just i guess my question is with the academic needs also there wouldn't it make sense to have even more time to transition have give those children another year in elementary school as that setting well i don't want to debate the fact that you know more time if you have more time to do anything in some cases that's better but the problem is we are running out of time we're running out of time and i guess what i need to say to the entire group is if we don't address this situation in a systematic manner and you know this is in spite of the pandemic when your children get to the high school you're probably going to be unhappy because we have to do something not only to address the space issues at our elementary school but we have to do something with the infrastructure needs of the high school all of our buildings have been air conditioned with the exception of the high school and parts of the high school are air conditioned but many parts remain on air condition and some of the equipment is so aged that our maintenance department they do a great job but they can't even get parts for some of the equipment that we currently have installed so now it becomes a question of do we replace that piece of equipment and usually those that's what we have to do we have to replace the entire piece of equipment and for you as taxpayers that that's going to become a factor that is going to be an impact do you want to keep investing in an older building that will need constant attention and may not be the high school you always want to have or should we have invested years ago and why didn't somebody bring this up and why didn't we address it a long time ago but i understand the impact of the pandemic and i can't negate that and that is that is certainly the x factor in this whole equation because we do not know and i can't say with all sincerity what we will know that children will come back with uh as they begin to return to face-to-face full-time instruction in september of 2021.
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this isn't anticipated this is actual revenue received the other is down this is some civic rental money that has been down because of covid capital is up slightly medicaid is down due to some timing of the of those reimbursements e rate is up slightly and classroom site fund is down slightly we talked about this this is for your reference as far as some of the items to note any questions before we move on to expenditures okay so these are operating fund expenditures year over year there's a couple interesting things to note on this slide you'll see the total expended encumbered from last year at just about 250 million dollars just under the ytd note there compared to the current year of 270 million dollars this is due to the increase of 20 million dollars is due to the budget balance carry forward increasing due primarily to the esg funds from fiscal 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
during these sessions the team responded to questions related to chapters in the book played for acknowledging the culture of our school who we are and what we are about restructuring the organization's organizational system in place the process how we move students through school school systems to ensure that they're successful in session one we focused on the responsibility of leadership to move forward and create a technical environment for all students to learn during the session the team learned more about the difference between adaptive leadership and technical leadership one of the leadership team's most meaningful conversation and his deepest dive revolved around the definition of equity as it was defined in the book as compared to each individual individual's personal understanding and biases as a team we challenged and questioned one another and what it meant for students to be successful who determined that the student was successful how was that interpreted and understood the book discussion was followed by a webinar assignment in which the team was expected for the loretta cameron to present on culturally responsive teaching in the brain in preparation for the father's session the administrative team also focused on relational trust and team buildings in relation to capacity building within the school day during this session we sponsored we responded to the following essential questions how do we engage our staff in creating a trusting environment how do we value their work do we honor each individual we recognize that we do how we treat one another as adults reflect how we treat students you'll see this theme of building capacity in our district is we've focused on it for the last three years and it will become it's a big part of that equity course from here we've moved into the four pillars of the technical learning community as outlined in the book during these sessions a team examining the current mission and vision statements and goals that we have in play that we have had in place the last several years we're going to be visiting the mission and vision statements but we will wait till we do a goal for work on activity seven just writing it first and then doing what makes sense and subsequent subsequent sessions of the book study the administrative leadership team considered what are some ways that you have reached out to the families and community reasons what are some ideas that you would like to consider try what community passions as the school district currently have and what i was working on together to keep the team agreed on three three key understandings that principals would plan to take forward into their buildings next year in discussions with seth one mutual understanding based on empathy and recognition of shared interest two meaningful involvement in families and communities in a variety of school activities and free regular outreach and communication to families and community they also focus on breakout sessions and technical changes that can be made in each of the schools led by the principal and only seen by the super family school at the conclusion of the book of study sessions the administrative leadership team was able to take away a shared understanding that that in alignment with central offices was critical for an equitable environment for all students in which a quote from the book resonated with all times related to developing sustainable leadership capacity reporters we need to we need to develop sustainable leadership capacity that enables school cultures to thrive despite challenges including the trans transition of leadership that's especially our district which is very small has a small leadership team and we're all probably closer to retirement than uh we are in the end for them from here the plan is for them to seek systematic changes to our districts over the next three to five years including one expansion of kickball programming computer science two changes in teaching and learning practices that align directly to the grading needs of our student population community and three opportunities for a greater number of students particularly those who follow us in the most compromised category access to honors and advanced placement courses in the middle of high school these action steps directly connect to goal 2a of a different five-year improvement plan in which we have staged inclusive practices work with building principles on identified areas of equity and development action planning improvement as part of the equity goal the superintendent also hired fresh consultants dr nigel rightly and dr chris scales who from teachers21 to lead the administrative team for series of exercises and expanding the key principles of equity as outlined in the book into a more realistic understanding of the current condition of the burlin boylston school district at the first meeting the superintendent described the goal of the superintendent and the leadership team to be increasing educational equity and adjusting the superintendent and emphasized that not only was secretly the basis for success that had schools but they intended to create a long-lasting culture of equity that would be sustained in the schools in the central office moving forward again if you notice since you know the last four paragraphs often related to building capacities in schools to make sure that this this effort this equity effort is long-lasting and and sort of lives us as administrators in this district during the first session the team focused on adult social emotional competency breaking down the meaning of educational equity the consultants also led the team through the beginnings of the databasing process using the index of 2019 and closing the session a team defined equally in our school business providing opportunities and answers for all students being raising achievement narrow achievement gap by social economic level of gender disability and racial ethnicity and c getting to a place of non-predictability educated with non-teaching shareholding student outcomes based on the limitations received within these specific student identified groups due to the lateness of the stocks the sun start date of its goal and as a result of pandemic the superintendent and leadership team will continue to work teachers 21 through the summer of 2021 with the additional meetings and may june and foreign also speaks to the um these conferences carol and i invited along with with our consultants to participate in an activity and an equity panel nass conference this year and we probably have one school committee member on that we're not going to tell the person who it is yet but we probably don't have one we'll have to be a little more involved in our uh our work um and at first we thought well you know we just started this work what what do we have to offer and the answer is a lot of districts that have um who look like us demographically and social economically and haven't started this work because they don't necessarily see a need for it so really the workshop would be just to talk to districts like us who might not have started they might want to start don't know where to start and just for us to go through the process we you so again we're hoping that happens they have submitted their proposal for us to do that and also you know just just ironically about a month ago students from group students three students from high school seniors emailed us and wanted to have a meeting with myself and carol we have some two principals um from the high school and two teachers to talk about effort and some of the inactivities that they believe they've experienced in their time in school and uh it's unfortunately the seniors and so you know we talked about what their next step would be to not leave all those years on table to actually be able to do something um so they're going to meet with the two teachers who obviously live that they trusted them and um so they're going to work with those two teachers and talk through some of these issues but also there are other groups in the school who are doing sort of similar work who have similar interests and they're going to work with them to try to kind of have a unified message and hopefully next year we can get those groups involved which is what we intended to do i had no idea than you do which is good so when we move into next year we'll finish up on administrative stuff this summer next year try to move this goal into the school and involve students and student groups and the teachers you know we've at least got two teachers who run that fall who who want focus in this area probably having any chances so far so that's um that's goal number one we've got a lot of work done we think despite a late stop and so we're looking forward to the summer work we'll do a lot of it in a summer retreat let's go number one that is that what happened on april 30th i had a question of what you meant what was the issue in the district that was inequitable leading up to a great focus um you know there wasn't really there wasn't really anything stuck out except that you know we know you know we know just from going to school and um i guess i had anything enough observations in the school but the school is really not much different from others than that um you know there were little things having the kids sitting alone things like that you know so we always wanted a client you know why is the student sitting over here well we bought these kn 95 because they're really good but you can't read that so i should have won one with the hole here so it wasn't anything mike but except just observations that i made when i walked through the school that you know these are things i've always wanted about and you know then you're the superintendent you're like okay now i can do something hard or just maybe there's nothing to do anything about it but i suspect it is because we made up i made those observations kids sitting alone or just just those kind of things you would think as normal and then these students now i don't know i don't know what they had written now man i said go to go to the teacher first and talk to them but they did say things like you know just we don't know if i don't know what that means and i don't know but i don't take the bosses in so uh so when we started the goal it was just that to just see you know just see as we move forward i suspect as much we get kids involved with teachers involved that will hear what they one was [Music] was there actually something calling that students plumbing or from accessing the honors classes those are two things well there were always this equity like what specifically is school you know a grade from the previous course and then uh recommendations from the teacher now i know in the last since probably 2008 there was and then another one in 2012 2003 from 2013 i remember was funded by the state to get more students into into weight gain and they the it's always the same thing when they're going to fail well in these two big efforts they've been able to increase another significantly and they didn't fail and then it goes back to this issue of well what success what does it mean to succeed if you didn't get a grade that that you needed to get in that class and i say this as of duty teacher and i say well you know mike you got to see in college kevin i don't know about this you said i really want to take it and say okay so you get it and you don't do great on the test or you get enough to see that might be success for you because maybe getting a c and or even indeed in an ap class might be you might have might have worked harder to do that than it would so i'm not saying there is anything wrong but i think we all make some kind of predictions about students um and and you know point fingers at anybody but but it happens i think there are biases you know biases that aren't explicit that we all bring to the table and that's just what we want to explore and yeah at the point thank you just you know this is one of the things when you do the equity more this is one of the things you that we're going to be looking at and in my head i think involved okay i look at ap as from an ap teacher i did that i said you know i don't you know better way to uh i'll have a better answer for you just to build up that one you may have answered this so forgive me if you did but one of your pieces of evidence for the school one was to identify specific evidence-based targets from improving equity did you reach that point no we didn't reach that point except just individually we did but we didn't get that to that point talk about non-predictability okay and that each of us had stories in our own head we were sharing with each other okay i know when i was a teacher i did this so i saw this but we didn't apply it to anything that's going on here right now so yeah you know this is a big goal and i thought it was going to be and it's a lot more work than i thought it was going to be but yeah i think we all came in with our own idea about what equity is and learned a lot so hopefully next year but i can see this being you know maybe a two-year efficient goal you know five year project okay that's helpful and i'm happy to hear you say that because i think it is a big goal and it's complicated and there's a lot of very subtle factors that that impact equity and it sounds like you're you're planning to do a bit of a deep dive on that and give it the time it takes by may 18 2021 the superintendent was established in memphis no and 12th amendment advisory board representing members of each of these schools the purpose of the board would be to provide the superintendent with ongoing support in the form of information feedback ideas and perspectives on areas related to the school district improvement and changes within the community these areas specifically include the program 19 enrollment physical space available in schools growth in the community initiative and concerns related to related to students okay uh practice step one the superintendent will establish inviting you to include staff administrative community members student by november representatives 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
while i didn't get here on time and i want to make a statement and i didn't let her and you know what she did she went back the next day at shelter rock school she didn't call my name she went back and told all the tents that lady that was the black board of education care person wouldn't let me speak yes yeah so you know and you try to be as courteous as you possibly can to people and sometimes you know i'm like kathy i would have liked to took something and really just punched her but you know i moved on yeah so and i think you you know you don't know who you're gonna deal with and how people are going to come back and and do things to you and it's really not easy to try to stop a person when they're determined to say what they have to say you know one of the things for the most part we listen we listen to all of it yeah yeah you do but when it gets out of hand it seems to escalate yeah you're right continues to escalate and if you don't stop it that public flogging will go on you know one of the things that i've seen happen at meetings over the years is you know those situations where someone comes to speak and just doesn't feel like they were hurt they may say what they have to say and i have seen a couple of times dr sal get up from his seat and walk out to the kind of audience after and kind of exchange like here's my number can i take your number i think that you know even as you go through this process of searching for someone new it's kind of an interesting hypothetical for somebody right you're you're in a meeting and someone is really you've got a parent who's really worked up and i think what you're trying to do on the spot is you're trying to find a way to give them to be an opportunity to be heard in a way that's appropriate that's not going to condemn someone that's not going to take too much time that's not going to be offensive and you know it strikes me that maybe you know we can policy this to death but maybe some of it is really just having this notion of being a little bit more activist as you listen to people speak and kind of you know keeping them to three minutes or whatever it is trying to trying to you know really kind of reign in maybe trying to steer subsequent comments if like joe your example of a topic that something was really off topic um maybe that's really you know what you can hope for the pr the price for speech is high you know the price for free speech is high um but sometimes you can find other ways to to assuage some people who have real concerns you know or or concerns that are very important to them so can we put this policy in our next agenda just for information just to post it out there and so that the community can see it i will add this one please share his information absolutely thank you anyone have any i didn't i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut anybody off on if they have anything else they want to say about public participation or can we move on so rachel i i did have a question um and can i head raise it quickly in one of our email exchanges um just just wondering what the board's obligation is or would be in the event there's a statement made that the board does deem inflammatory and so you know we certainly we have our meetings live but we also edit obviously we've added it before because we've had some unforeseen situations take place and so what is our obligation to share in youtube and what the public after the meeting is done um particularly if something happens that's you know the board deems inappropriate memorialized are we obligated to to record that to keep those recordings we're not obligated to broadcast the meeting at all as a legal matter right i'm not aware of any legal obligation under the executive order right which is how we're doing this because right you may have an obligation to make it in real time available i don't know that you're required and you know once we go live right once we go live sure i mean we only ever have written notes and that's a really easy way to sanitize something that you're not happy about right that's a good work yeah well i i'd be careful it's exactly what we're talking about but i mean we have a secretary that takes minutes and we record the meeting for purposes of of doing the minutes we're not actually obligated to broadcast the meeting when we're live i mean not right now this is executive order um but we're not obligated to broadcast it at all so i would assume we could edit you know if we choose to leave a youtube video up of a meeting i suppose we could edit it however we want to although obviously i would probably i would like counseling against you know too cute an editing job i mean i think if something happens in the middle of the meeting that's really untoward for example we got bombed last summer we don't need to leave that video up i will never forget that i just remember doctor sal going what even is this and i thought oh oh my god i was logging in from the baseball field at my son's baseball practice oh man and i'm like holy oh oh awful what was the worst you know i have to say in this world of technology i'm really torn about this because i you know somebody asked me somebody central office one of the it guys said to me today you know do you think that your meetings are shorter because they're virtual or what do you think and i said i don't think they're any shorter but i will tell you two things one just selfishly i like doing it from home because i don't have to drive home when it's over i've been at work all day but but i will tell you as a parent and a townsperson in my own town i go to many more meetings when i can sit in my living room and turn it on and i can cook dinner and have it in the background and i think you're getting many more people engaged in your meetings because of it um and i think that's been a silver lining of doing this um you know and and you could i would i would urge like you joe to have a practice of either keep them all posted or or you know record all of them in writing you know have somebody watch them and take notes and do it but i wouldn't piecemeal and i'd be really careful about the cute editing because i think you could get killed on that oh yeah i oh i definitely agree we should leave them up i going to my son's first baseball practice a i'm wearing a mask and talking to somebody else and one of the dads is like wait a minute you joe i'm like yeah he recognized my voice from borderline meetings proving some people actually watch this stuff and i think it's great i mean i you know i've i've agreed with a lot of meetings i wouldn't otherwise because it's just easier um so i still can't wait for them to be live yeah yeah yeah i know i know you know you might want to think not not to to joke about the 3000 chromebooks but that's a real thing but you might want to think about i don't know how the black box worked you did a meeting in the black box didn't you um i think that's a really great place because you've got sound you can space yourselves out you don't have to worry about sitting on top of each other like you do you know there you can put people kind of up in the bleachers so i don't know hard part hard part is us us is easy we can space ourselves out yeah the hard part is how do we let the public in in a way that's safe for them as visiting each other and us yeah yeah yeah it would have to be limited limited audience and then also live stream a combination yeah we could hand out those big giggle bubbles to people on the way in here you go and pick up your dust shield find a restaurant that's got one of those igloos and we can all have our own igloo but i think i didn't look specifically at that taping recording proposal but i think you know it sounds like we're kind of on the same page i just think you you if you're gonna do them do them and post them if you're not gonna post them don't post them and summarize you know at within a week or three days or whatever it is you know after the meeting and take them down but be real careful about doing some uh you know some retain forever others not retain forever and then selective editing i think that's we were just worried about any foia um um violations and taking them down again i think we're in a weird space because of this executive order i you know and i agree i think we want to think about it really for when you come back to live um but i do think if there is and i would want to research this question a little bit more but i should think if you if your secretary creates the minutes in writing from watching the tape that the minutes in writing should be sufficient to meet your obligation under foia but again i'd want to look at that a little bit closer and and i'm not sure how this notion of suspending those rules under the executive order would affect that opinion and as a practical matter once it goes up on the internet it's there forever somewhere we can take it down that doesn't mean it's not somewhere you've been listening to my conversations with my 19 year old haven't you my mine are old enough to have that conversation with yet but they will be soon yeah yeah so there were two two versions for consideration um rachel i don't know if this i don't recall from our last meeting if we even entertained both of them as consideration i don't i don't remember where we left off in our last meetings we got stuck at the beginning um just at the um the recording shall be retained for one year um my preference is to keep it the simpler first version i think it's you know it's bare bones and i don't think it needs to be anything more than that so my my personal preference is the first version as long as it doesn't violate any foia rules i i think there's those three points are sufficiently broad it doesn't say where you're going to retain them it doesn't say you're going to keep them posted or it doesn't say anything like that i think you can maneuver in terms of pandemic and non-pandemic under the breadth of those three categories query is the second half of this recording devices component of this are we talking about allowing the general public to really nearly record our meetings and is that wise and do we have to do that that's right and i think isn't that part of the covert recording you know you can't record somebody without their consent and i i think that's probably what that's getting right there's a well i mean it just it looks to me like we're allowing the public to record them we're recording the meeting clearly but the way this is going it sounds like we're allowing the public to record our meetings do we need to do that and should we do that and i don't think we can both options no i think we can i can't i can't record i mean i can't record anything at a courthouse um for sure i mean now that's the judicial branch to set that policy and quite firmly by the way but i mean i mean yes kim knows i mean i i don't think there's a problem with our ability to do that i'm not sure we should i'm just and that that that's just that's a question right right i i'm kind of of two minds on it and i suspect honestly that from the time that that sample was written to now the technology is so different anyway i mean somebody was taught the the tech guy in our office was talking today with me about how you there's a pen device now that you can kind of click on the pen device which starts the camera that you're wearing on your hip and i mean that this you know this is changing as quickly as the policies are changing just think about what google glass allowed before they discontinued it for sure yeah we could omit it all together and not say yes or no i don't wanna i mean we take a lot of pictures i guess when we're parents will sometimes record their kid getting an award yeah that's that's true that's true i'm more concerned i'm more concerned with the person who sets up a tripod in the back of the room and chooses to you know video it and then selectively edit it and whatnot later um which they can't do with our youtube feed because it's copyrighted because if they do it with our youtube feed they get sued for copyright infringement that's just the thought the only other thing i'm thinking you could try to do and you may or may not want to you could try to modify the language a little bit to get it you know if somebody wants to do selective recording like the photographs you're talking about as a supplement to the board's process of recording these meetings and posting them on youtube you might tailor the policy that way that it's intended to provide people a supplemental way to record pieces of a meeting like a photograph of your kid getting an award but recognizes that the primary means of holding people accountable for the content of the meeting is going to rest in the district's recording of it in the back of the room by sterling miller you know that's another way i think you might be trying to split a split a hair down the middle but i because i think i hear that's what i hear you're trying to get at is not restricting that piece yeah i'm obviously not trying to restrict a parent videotaping their kid get an award or somebody videotaping a recognition again i'm more concerned with the person who decides to set up in the back of the room so they have their own video file of the meeting too then you know which it cut and cut and slice and nice in in a way that may not be fair to a member or fair to the chair affair to the district right what does it say if you scroll down a little bit there kevin that second one yeah i don't like number three um i guess that's saying what we could do right but maybe we need to be more maybe we need to clarify that that's us doing that recording i understand what you're saying though rachel it starts to get very complex when you use more words yeah yeah so my thought is to just [Music] omit the second part entirely hey hey kit scroll back up for a second hey kim query can can we scroll back up so we get one two three and four in the in in the picture [Music] so there we go number one says that no go back down i'm sorry there you go the board share person shall permit the use of photographic broadcasting recording devices only after informing those present devices will be used read number four read the second sentence the fact that such meetings are being recorded by the board need not be announced by the board chairman in advance they're internally inconsistent yeah i think what i think what you put your finger on it a minute ago number one is meant for the mom sitting in the in the audience number four is meant for you all as the district what are you doing to record the meeting right and they've been merged into this one policy and the fact that they did that is what makes it confusing which to me yeah the other person it's really hard the other yeah the other version is better because this would appear i think you're right i think that was the intent of both of those you're right yeah in this formulation they're internally inconsistent rachel's right go with the first version yeah because everything that's detailed there one to four fits within the breadth of the top policy right right so are we saying i think what we're saying is we're okay with this we're okay with the first three [Music] just the first three and not in to get into the recording devices break the second yeah yeah yeah so just this i just want to keep this um you know we don't want any guidance around if someone that's the footprint i think we need to keep it in there in case somebody does come in to record there's nothing restricting them if you're doing so yeah you got to keep something there you need to give them some guidance as far as what they can and can't do while they're in there with cameras how about in paragraph one broadcasting recording of meetings shall be permitted in discretion of the chair or the description of the board i don't care how we phrase it i'm just trying to think of something where you know we can at least have some control over the wild wild west or am i being overly concerned about something that's probably not an issue i didn't hear you i was i froze sorry sorry i i i'm wondering if maybe we do something in like broadcasting recordings and meetings shall be permitted at the discretion of the chair or discretion of the board i mean i may be being over cautious on this and maybe this isn't as big an issue as i think it might be um i like that i like that joe right in the number one under according to broadcasting and recordings of meetings are permitted at the discretion of the chair there you go the chairperson i like that cool hmm great so then if there are no other comments there can i have a motion to bring this to the full board for a first reading show moved second moved by kate seconded by joe all in favor aye thank you um we're going to have a busy board of ed meeting on may 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
next the queue is stacy alfonso talking all right hi how are you good how are you i'm nice to good i'm good thank you um so my name is stacey alfonso i have three kids in um the public schools um happy to be have my kids here you guys are agree i'm couldn't be more thrilled with everything but i do have a couple questions so um my first question is you know recess is mandated in the state of new jersey and it is up to fifth grade so they are supposed to have 20 minutes of recess and how will that be addressed if the fifth graders are at hammer sold without an apparatus or maybe i don't know maybe there is the place but you know not a playground type thing yeah we have a space there's actually a field up adjacent to [Music] the back into the parking lot it's seldom used as more you know more of a intramural type field but that would be the space that we would look at we do have a small playground for our early learning academy folks that are based at hammershould but it is really a primary uh you know aged apparatus but that's what we're looking at is the space the play space up above and as you if you drive into hammershould uh you probably wouldn't even notice it but it's off to the right up above you know okay and then i guess they would have to build that into the schedule and things like that okay and then just one more question because you did answer some uh when i when you were talking about the high school and how it has to go through many phases um like i so i'm a teacher also i teach kindergarten also um so oh yeah we've talked but i just and i and east brunswick is a great town and i know that we probably would have a lot of support but like what if it gets not passed so many times and then it's like we're just at a standstill like i know you can't predict the future but like that worries me like i would be more on board to say okay i have a fourth a third and a fourth grader right now you know this the idea of a new high school or a better high school is very enticing but you know how these things go and so i'm not trying to be negative and i would be out there campaigning in any way that i could help for a yes vote but when it does come down as a no like are we going to be stuck with these you know this these tcus and this plan not moving forward no so what we would do is if we we have to have a contingency anytime you go to referendum you have to understand there's potential that you're not going to pass and so that's why you know we need to do the work ahead of time we need to engage stakeholders we need to get feedback from the community about what it is you want to see what what do you expect to have for your children if they're in in the system and they could potentially be the first occupants of that new building what would what would you want their experience to be like and let's take this to another level what if you were the parent as as one of them articulately said you know my children heard the construction noise but never got to see the finished product then what's then somebody will say what's in it for me then and what i will say to them is there's something in it for everyone because um right now i'm sure all of you on this screen have noticed if you're a homeowner uh you've noticed what the value of your home has been like over the last six months over the last year uh if you're somebody looking for a home you you know the pain of trying to secure a home of trying to make that offer on at home when it gets pulled off by somebody who's making an offer well over asking price and having a new high school in this community i think would put a premium stamp on east brunswick properties in spite even past a pandemic because you put our top-notch education our top-notch teachers and then you put a state-of-the-art high school on top of that this comprehensive 9 through 12 high school and you're going to be a community that everyone wants to be in okay thank you next in the queue is denise bergamoto hi hi dr volkowski how are you how are you good um i just have a quick question and i just wanted to know your thoughts i have a third grader and a ninth grader and i think again the teachers are doing a wonderful job i'm not so i'm not concerned about my ninth grader she's doing fine my concern and i just want to know your thoughts not really concern putting potential seventh graders with ninth graders i mean i know my daughter 15 and the kids with 11 year olds or 12 year olds i mean i know the maturity level of seeing high school kids and kind of sometimes the the dynamic sometimes you know the interactions of high school versus seventh grade right what are you thinking i know you said they may interact they may not i just wouldn't want a seventh grader to feel nervous to be around a ninth grader our intent our intent is really to have the seventh graders experience that opportunity more as a group of seventh graders and the eighth graders and ninth graders while they're there they would probably have more interaction with each other but the seventh graders it is a transition year um and i'm saying this and i'm not a social scientist and i don't hold a certification in social social sciences but i'm i'm an observer and you know having been in schools for my entire career and observing what's going on in a variety of schools the differentiation in age between a kindergartner and a fifth grade is pretty significant but in the seventh grade yeah that that's uh that's a different year too it's transition but that gap between seven and nine is is not so significant in age but there is maturity differences right um and so that's why you know in an ideal situation the ninth graders would become part of the high school environment and and by the way we did we did look at and then this was from a top level perspective and looking at the temporary classroom units and could they could they fit at the high school versus at churchill would it make more sense to do that and we looked at this through the lens of the taxpayers of east brunswick where where would be the the most economical impact and realizing too this is a temporary measure and and by far by a significant level the the cost to install temporary classroom units at churchill is far less than it is a high school and one of the biggest driving factors is utilities um at churchill we would not have to connect to existing utilities we could essentially have a self-contained treatment system for the restrooms at churchill that would be pumped out you know on a routine basis but at the high school they have to be connected to the utilities of the high school which involves major infrastructure tear up repair replacement roadway replacement and then if the community said we're ready to build a new high school then you know now you you make you want to go i hope we put those temporary classroom units in a place they don't need to build on because we do we just created a big problem so that's one of the reasons to stay away as well as the cost factor and the impact um but i know some people have asked that question why not just move the ninth graders to the high school absolutely but it became an economic factor in the the temporary measure that we're proposing to the community okay thank you i'm i'm all for the bigger high school i'm all for people okay i'm gonna you're gonna be on a committee then good i'm all for it all right thank you so much thank you next in the queue is kimberly halley hi hi mr velasque my question is just one simple question my son is currently in preschool and um he would be transitioning not next year the following year to a different school i guess because he's in special education so with that redistrict start the second year in this transition or with that would he still be slated to go to the school he's currently going to i think he would still be slated to the school he's going to we're not talking about massive redistricting we're just talking about there would be have to be some adjustments just without being able to put the map up to show you we have looked at the attendance areas for every single uh school anyway every elementary school and there are these little pockets little narrow tangents and little developments that were built many years ago yes you know you might be able to look across the street and see lauren starford but your children go to central yes and so those kind of anomalies have occurred throughout the district over over a number of years and it's just creep so we're talking about some uh some minor adjustment uh for some of the students and we're also talking about in terms of doing that having those you know being able to do that is a soft transition for those students in terms of the enrollment areas that we're talking about okay thank you so much that was it uh next person in the queue is afsana aziz all right hello dr velasque how are you i'm good how are you i'm good i have three children in um israel's week system i have two fifth graders and a seventh grader um i am mostly worried about earlier school starting time for my two fifth graders who will be i'm starting at seven something 726 i believe as a seventh grader and i'm anyway worried about earlier school time and i know that most studies show that sleep is optimal for that age group and i'm worried that my kids will have to start that earlier school time even a year earlier so my question really is that is there any thought of seventh graders starting the school um at the time that they started hammer show rather than following the middle um churchill and high school schedule so i'm so glad you brought this question up um we actually looked in terms of uh later start times uh for students uh those that are in our secondary schools those that are in hammer shoulder churchill in high school right now and we've been talking about later start times and the board's been talking about later start times for a number of years probably back to and we it just we just couldn't make it work but actually through if we were to do this redistricting the opportunity to legitimately explore later start time exist and we can it i know that some people are going to shake their heads but we actually believe that we can build greater level of efficiency in our transportation system by this reconfiguration and actually pull off that later start time because one of the factors driving later start time was to do that in our current situation was to add more buses more routes and when you start doing that and you start putting more traffic on the road um then then route distances start to get elongated too but when we looked at this this was one of the tangible benefits of this grade level reconfiguration that we we could legitimately explore that i i can't say tonight that with all sincerity we'd be able to pull it off but i'm i am optimistic that we would be able to have later start times for our secondary students at some point in this transition does that mean that my seventh graders will be able to enjoy that or it's something that we you will be able to implement later um i'm gonna say that we would be able to explore it over this next year and it is a possibility i would not guarantee it but it is certainly something that's been part of the the whole um comprehensive look that we've been doing in terms of grade restructuring and looking at the high school that later start times if we could make that a component of this this would be a definite factor for our community and for our students that would be a benefit to them thank you i guess one other thing is with the same question really so then potentially seventh eighth and ninth graders will start the school um in a later time um possibly after after eight o'clock or around eight o'clock is that what we are looking at i would tell you i would tell you that we we would not be able to get past any any proposal that we would have would probably not be past eight o'clock eight about a half an hour swing is about all that we have to move um so i don't want to you know let i don't want people to feel like oh you know this could be later than eight o'clock uh you know 7 26 sliding to 8 o'clock we've got the greatest uh movement we could get if if we were able to pull it off it would be about a half an hour swing thank you okay uh next in the queue is lakshmi chamarthi um hello dr velasquez hi how are you i'm good thank you how are you doing good okay my kid is in third grade and um i am very happy to be part of east brunswick and i actually um you know kind of participating in such kind of meetings for the first time and i see how you are taking care of all our concerns um i really appreciate that um so having said that um so my concern is about so my son is in third grade so he will be the in the first batch who will be taking this transition uh but in elementary school being in the fifth grade i think there are a lot of opportunities to be the seniors in the elementary school and also a lot of experiences being the seniors and also um trying to um be the mentors for the younger students like second graders the third graders when they get chance to are doing some projects um being their mentors so how and because of this transition i think they'll be missing all this including the graduation part uh from the fifth grade uh from elementary transition to middle school so how is this be going to be addressed we would take a look at you know the activities the the symbolic activities that our fifth graders go through right now and we would make the attempt to replicate those for them so they didn't miss out on that experience um in in terms of your your mention about mentoring younger students um we could even you know push that down to have that start with fourth graders begin to have those types of interactions with students you know fourth grade is when students begin to change this first time they begin to change classes so i and i understand i understand that when we make this move there are going to be in the first year of the transition it's going to be an impact on certain students in this first and it's phase but as we get settled we have the opportunity in fifth grade to make that an entirely different experience than what our students have right now in terms of just how they feel about their fifth grade experience the school the teachers um just it gives us unlimited well not unlimited but it gives us far more opportunity to explore what fifth grade could look like and as i said earlier we are we are looking at this as an elongation of the transition having fifth and sixth grade together in hammershould as the upper elementary students that allows for that transition and not that abruptness from fifth grade to sixth grade that a lot of people report and some students do quite well some students are well prepared to move up to hammershow and you know have no problems in the transitions through all of our schools but we're not talking about adding any more transitions to our system um so we in terms of a student's career they have the same number of transitions that would just occur a different grade but we would work very hard to make sure that that students have not only at fourth grade which would be their last year of elementary school to make that symbolic to do something for our fifth graders uh to do something for the sixth graders that are there and then move on up to churchill so we're we're very passionate about making replicating that or doing something new and significant that would be meaningful to the students and their families okay thank you next is melanie pope hello i'm sorry good evening dr valeski and everyone um my daughter is a third grade student at um chitik elementary school and i'm trying to understand the transition and what we're preparing for um these children that next year which would be actually this year september 20 21 going into 22 being the fourth grade so she would be graduating with the fifth grade and you had mentioned um a little earlier that um discussions have been made or or this is being addressed with them already and we're already in may and they're ending in the middle of june and as far as i know my daughter's not aware of this at all because i haven't even discussed it with her hoping that this would change um so i i don't know first of all we're preparing for two graduations because it would be fourth grade fifth grade graduation next year what what are we doing to prepare these third graders that fourth grade is going to be their last year thinking that they have two more years well i believe that's once the board makes the decision to um you know what their what their choice is to move forward with this recommendation then we begin having conversations at the school level and with parents and with ptas about what that what that looks like for students so that'll be already when they're in fourth grade it wouldn't even be now preparing them that next year maybe is going to be your last year in school it'll happen in fourth grade when they're there in september realistically yes but over the summer we'll work on it but as far as the students understanding of that um you know they would know before the end of this year but as we wrap up this school year we certainly have a lot of a lot of things we have to do to complete this year um and then you know get ready for the opening in september and then that's that's giving us one full year to prepare the students for what the end of next year would look like i have another quick question um i thought tcus were only allowed five years you had mentioned that it could be up to five years i mentioned i mentioned five years we have to have a plan in place and if say for example the community doesn't support a referendum where we we can't get support to construct a permanent structure we would have to get permission to extend those out for whatever period of time until we could construct the new replacement for the tcus and who makes who's voting on this is it just the board or does the community have so the board votes but it's up to us on how long this would be i i don't understand that no so the prom so the what the board would vote on are you asking about the construction part of this um no um more asking well you i guess maybe i'm confused on you're saying that the board votes on if we're going to move forward with this transition right so that right that's one vote they would vote if they were going to um support the grade reconfiguration and the placement of the temporary classroom units at churchill and then after that i'm sorry go ahead i'm sorry but then it's up to us how long it may take if even if we don't want this right now well no it would be so that the community would have to be asked the question about a referendum to replace the um the tcus or a high school now there you know we would work very hard to work with the township because there there might be opportunities in terms of different grant fundings or things like that uh to support part of a construction but we envisioned there's going to have to be a referendum to to replace the temporary classroom units with a permanent structure that we would not be able to fund that through the normal proceeds of the district one of the things i wanted to make everyone on this on this forum aware of um you know like everyone else been watching what's been happening since the transition to the new administration and president biden has not been shy about borrowing money uh to to put into resources for social reform or for uh support uh for the the coveted relief and he talked about an infrastructure plan and you know obviously that isn't formalized yet but over the over the next three years um he may get support for the passage of an infrastructure plan that may push money down to state governments and if that money were to flow to new jersey and the um whoever is a successful candidate for governor at that time uh decides to make that available for grants for schools to either replace repair or refurbish uh school facilities i want this board this community to be in a position to say yes we want it we want to be part of that and part of this planning is to prepare us for that that opportunity should it exist and it may not happen but i want this community to be in a position to say yes we're interested or no we're not interested i i don't want the sport or whatever is on the board at that time to be in a position to feel like we didn't do the planning and we weren't prepared to even say we wanted it we missed this opportunity so that's what part of this this discussion is about and i understand i've heard from so many parents that are you know that they don't want this for their elementary children because of the impact of the ceremonial part the moving up ceremonies um but i promise you we can replicate that we can do that but we can create better opportunities for our fifth and sixth graders and even our seventh graders at churchill um by by looking at this in a new way um and i think it's exciting and i think having parents involved in part of that discussion is important if the board decides to move this process forward we'll be spending time with the community next year talking to you about your feelings about you know what you would like to see and about soliciting support if the community should you know chooses to do that and the board supports it about moving forward with the planning for a new high school i i'm still confused on why a high school and not elementary and you mentioned that there's no land um i don't know why we can't build on current buildings um i know that time constraints may affect you know because really when do we have open opportunities to build on top of current elementary schools that are standing um but these you're talking about the growth in the elementary and the lower grades but we're talking about building onto the high school and it's these elementary school students that are growing are learning are sensitive um i don't want to take for granted that high school students are young adults but they are and and everybody again and and i just want to add as per sharon kaplan's statement um i i i do agree with her i think after covid i i mean at least give us another year at least one more year before this is done let the children adjust and you said that they're resilient i i i appreciate your positive attitude on it and and we want to be positive about it as well because yes we want to see something better for our community um in east brunswick um but this is not something that came out of the blue because my husband went and he was in a tcu when he graduated in 88 and i know another person who in 2002 and and this is not something that came up out of the blue that high school needed to be grown but all the school systems in east brunswick needs to grow um honestly and i know i'm getting emotional about it i wish you would wait and consider another year at least i at least another year after the year that we had and and it really concerns me children that are resilient and you see that they're transitioning back i i really think they're probably the hybrid students that were going in sometimes and not going in but what about the ones that were totally virtual and finally are going in they're only in for a couple of months right and then school year is cut in the middle of june which is earlier than usual um i i i'm pleading but and i appreciate you planning this meeting this evening and listening to us but i really wish the board would consider another year and really really see what what this affects on what this affects on all of us the parents and the children because we're very concerned about this one of the one of the things i would i would like to share with you i was i was in a couple of classrooms um the first week in the second week um i was in one classroom where the teacher said some of us have been here in hybrids some of us you know came back and they went back out again and some are you know here knew for the first time and you the the really great part of this story is i couldn't identify the students uh when i walked in the classroom they were they were all engaged they were all doing you know they look like they had been there for quite some time and they acclimated so well and um but they were three distinct groups and but i'm not negating the emotion that's tied to this and and i certainly uh am not trying to diminish that um but um mr juliana do you have we have the opportunity to put up just for the group so they could all see what the tcus might look like yes just give me one moment i think that might be helpful for you to see what the interior of of these facilities look like and this is not um as you can see the the top left photo uh that resembles just about any any computer media center we have in the district and then down lower right the classroom setting and this would be an enclosed module so ours would have the interior classrooms as you see in the center or lower not necessarily lockers but it would be an enclosed hallway for security but these are they're they're state-of-the-art and we we would not buy cheap and we would not you know this this wouldn't be something that was a compromise for our students these would these would satisfy the need but they are by their very nature and by their name temporary and designed to be replaced by a permanent structure so i also don't want to negate the fact that we would have to endorse the support of the community in the board of education on what the replacement of those tcus would look like as a permanent addition thank you you're welcome okay uh next in the queue is um jorge medina good evening hi good evening dr valencia um so um but let me ask a question and your answer there so i'm gonna go on to my second question so we have um other districts that have neighboring um basically they they rent out neighboring you know space for pre-k and ela classes so i was suggesting you know instead of moving the fifth graders you know if we could you find some space somewhere in each bronzer or in the neighbor in the neighboring neighbor neighborhoods to um see if we get that space rented out for just the ela and pre-k class and we could utilize that space for the fifth graders okay we did i will tell you we did look at um and this was before the pandemic i'm not gonna you know we did not go shopping for space during the pandemic obviously we were all pretty busy including all of you as family members supporting your children right but we did before that we did look we looked at properties and we had been in touch with the township and we were actually um you know kind of bird dogging a number of properties that were being vacated that we were seeing throughout the township and usually what we found in fact in every case you know they were they were tied up um behind the scenes in some form of litigation or you know there were multiple owners so we had a lot of complex situations so nothing clean that came forward that you know was within the parameters of east brunswick in our our attendance areas and and without a lot of complexity and in terms of security and you know that all the things that we normally put into our buildings that really presented itself that would be acceptable to our students before the pandemic so i will tell you that we have not we did not do any shopping during the pandemic but but thank you for the suggestion no problem i appreciate it um yeah so yeah that that that was it and i agree with melanie i think if we could hold up for another year that will be great because i told them i told the bearing who's my daughter and she's not too happy about it okay you know and she's she's a third grader now she'll she'd be going on fourth and i told her this might be your last year okay um so if if it's possible of any power we could hold off for another year that'll be great okay thank you for your feedback no problem okay next in the queue is agnes lazar hello i apologize good evening good evening i just had to switch out of the room i was in i apologize for that how are you good evening i apologize i was putting the kids to bed while doing this so i apologize double duty but um speaking of them my uh thought about this plan dr valesky and everyone i just wanted to ask is this a what is the long-term plan we make these shifts we make these adjustments let's say uh so 2020 to 2023.
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