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number two we went over to reminding ourselves who are we doing this for who is at the forefront all this work is for who and of course is for our students and then number three it was very important for the coalition it's something that we said over and over again to allow people to have a voice in this presentation in this initiative and that of course includes our students and of course being the elementary principal and south street school who better than for us to start at the beginning and so i went um to my kindergarten class and you're gonna see in the next two couple of slides you're gonna see two questions that i asked we didn't practice this we didn't we didn't prep them this was genuinely coming into the classroom and asking them two questions and this was their response and if you ever want to understand and want to go and look at what our kids are capable of doing you're more than welcome to come to south street believe me kindergartens know what they want and they know what they need to get there thank you thank you carmen that's perfect i don't think we're getting audio carmen there's no audio right ray can you start that over yeah i will start that over i think i might have to be unmuted for this i guess okay let me know oops sorry about that let me know if this works yes oh it'll catch up give it a sec you want to be a police officer why do you want to be a veterinarian you like to protect animals in the whole world when you grow up a singer why do you want to be a teacher because i like to do the names and give out the crayons and tell people whose calendars i'll play some stuff really why do you want to be a police officer so i can retouch people wonderful the next slide is i wanted them to tell me what do they need in order to achieve their dream go ahead ray what do you need to learn you need to be nice what do you think you need to learn how to do to be a great teacher to help people learn what do you think you need to learn how to do well in school to be a great teacher to be nice and respectful that's wonderful anything else you need to learn to be nice to people who's not doing the correct thing okay do you need to learn anything in school that's going to help you to be a great police officer okay what do you think you need to learn from school get faster like what do you mean what do you need to learn in school to be a good singer thank you carmen so we have um and we really just want to again applaud our community for their participation in this process uh we really feel like uh given given the um given the participation that we had uh we really we really do feel like this is a danbury portrait of the graduate and and certainly part of our goals and and i think you've heard uh cara and melissa allude to this um in their presentations about the pathway work you know certainly we want to be mindful of um where the projections are in terms of where their jobs might be in the next five to ten years but then but but then locally we need to also be mindful of um what what what the local trends are right here in our danbury community and so and so we we get feedback from higher education we get feedback in industry leaders right here in danbury we get feedback from our educators and so in our eyes we were able to put together a danbury portrait of the graduate that we think if we focus on these skills our kids are going to be well positioned to be successful already right and here are some projections uh some some reflections from some of our community members i just also want to share the full video can be reviewed on the website when we post it to the website uh we have feedback from students from staff etc but we're starting closer to the end of the video uh just for um the sake of time [Music] see all these different parts of the community that sometimes are difficult to reach out to all collaborating on this idea of what it means to them that a danbury graduate should be and i also really liked the experience of being able to work with students who were part of the coalition also and i felt like their voice was heard very often being able to work closely with the ideas of the parents and the students was a pretty cool experience i'm an early childhood educator in the community and this project uh gravitated my you know pretty much my attention to it because of the different capacities i can um bring my views into the project uh first as a parent of a junior high student who will graduate in few years uh then as an early childhood educator i'm a childcare director of a preschool in the community and um and also representing my immediate um community as a community leader an immigrant from the asian indian community the graduates have to be um have to have the skill set for the jobs uh then they did have to be market ready they have to be ready for the global market but also the best part was it was looking at um the systemic you want to tell it systemic inequalities in the community uh as much as we enjoyed january as a diverse community when we put up whoops i'm sorry everybody my bad an immigrant from the asian indian community the graduates have to be um have to have the skill set for the jobs uh then they did have to be market ready they have to be ready for the global market but also the best part was it was looking at um the systemic you want to tell it systemic inequalities in the community as much as we enjoy jamboree as the diverse community when we put a project together like this it was important all of this thought processes are brought together into the project and rolled it on and tailor-made the right way and it was challenging but it was awesome to have all these different voices um come to something together and to be able to agree on what a danbury graduate should look like it is looking forward to the future of deanberry this is what you want danbury graduates to look my own starting from my own graduate who will be graduating six years from now i want to see him as an innovator i want to see him as a collaborator i want to see him as an excellent communicator i want to see him advocate for himself and someone like him okay thank you um so i'm going to my name's bray coletti um i'm one of the english teachers um that um kevin alluded to earlier unfortunately at least tobin samaha is not here with us and she carried a lot of this load um early on and uh she hasn't been with us for a while and she's missed in spirit um but uh she was a really important part of this process so i just want to go through uh the timeline and and how we got to where we are um so starting in uh january of 2020 as kevin said we went to boston for um a convening with the bar foundation um we created um our coalition we just designed our action plan um and then came um you know between january and march we ran our first coalition meeting and we were um really excited to start our our thought exchange survey where we were going to engage the community and what they thought the skills and dispositions that they felt our graduates needed to have would be but the pandemic came we had to pause our work um from march to may um but when we decided to restart the work in may what we found was a very eager coalition um that very much wanted to re-engage in this work and that really made it very easy for us between may and june we were able to run the thought exchange um you know in the schools and in the community um and we're going to talk about that in a little bit um and that was so we were able to go into the summer with a pretty good head start we had a lot of information that we were able to work with when we started back up in the fall unfortunately as we know the fall again we had to pause the work in the beginning um because of the pandemic and the situation that was going around but when we did restart the work again again we found that our coalition was very eager to to meet with us i mean we had an extremely productive december um leading into the new year we were able to actually you know take those that focus group data from the previous spring and develop our categories run focus groups around it um and here you can see us now january to june presenting to the board of education and finalizing this work so that we can submit it all to the bar foundation so it's been a very busy 18 months for us and the coalition has been very dedicated to this process all along and so is the community and just to show a little bit about what that coalition commitment looks like you'll see we ran 10 meetings we had 69 members um and they came from you know the public school system from the community college university religious communities when we ran the thought exchange we had over two thousand participants uh with you know shared over two thousand thoughts almost three thousand thoughts um and we ran approximately 65 focus groups on the thought exchange and on the results of it um and as you can see we were able to hear from the administrative side we're from teachers uh we're also able to hear from students um and other things you can see here we ran um quite a few different focus groups um around different stages of this um so just to talk a little bit about the thought exchange which started this all and was the initial um where we got our initial thoughts from our initial ideas from we ran it twice because we wanted to make sure that the results of it were more representative of the diversity of our community as you can see we had roughly uh over 2 000 participants um and what we ran the price for was because we wanted to make sure that we were hearing from as we heard earlier in the slides um the marginalized people not at the table as you can see we were able to by running it twice increase our participation in the hispanic community and make sure that we're here for more people in the community as well as you can see from the stakeholders we're able to hear from lots of different people and especially students we heard from over 1100 students in the thought exchange survey and we also heard from uh over 477 people in danbury public schools um teachers and administrators so we really were able to hear from a lot of different people uh we're really proud of the student participation in this so after we ran the thought exchange everybody was able to comment on it we basically came up with what were the top 20 thoughts what were the thoughts that the community was gravitating towards and as you can see from the picture on the right here you can see things like organization and perseverance problem solving techniques on creativity and you can see there the diversity of our community on the critical thinking skills and these were the thoughts kind of dwindled down and kind of what they looked like so this is what our starting place was from as far as what were the you know the dispositions and the skills that we felt our graduates needed to have these were the top 20 skills that we were looking at from the beginning um and the next pages here the next two pages i'm going to show you are really just the highlights of the thought exchange and what they focus in on um are the different stakeholder groups that we're able to hear from as you can see here we were able to hear from students and their voice was very important as you can see from the third bullet here that they learned they wanted to learn about saving and managing money that did lead to some curricular changes with personal finance becoming a required course you can see that we heard from families um as well and we were also able to hear from community members um who wanted to you know hear more about science and accountability and we were also able to hear from people in danbury public schools and as we said earlier a lot of teachers and administrators and a lot of those voices were able to be heard here um and as we ran those focus groups so what ended up happening is we took those top 20 thoughts um and through coalition meetings and through focus groups with teachers and community members and administrators and students we were able to kind of reduce those 20 down to what eventually became the categories for the portrait of a graduate we ended up with about seven of them and from there we ran focus groups to see how the people in the community would respond to those do they represent um what we've wanted to see for our graduates in danbury public schools um and we ran quite a few of those i ran um make over 30 of these and we were able to hear from a lot of different people as far as what their opinions were on it and bring that back to the coalition so that we could revise what these categories and these outcomes would be um as you can see from the focus groups that we ran around the initial draft of the portrait of a graduate which you're going to hear about in just a couple of minutes here a little further on in the slide we had quite a bit of participation here as you can see um teachers and students um we're well represented here we also are from community members parents administrators alumni and as you can see here in our stakeholder groups as well um when we ran approximately 23 focus groups you can see again a lot of student representation from 9 to 12 here um a little bit from pre-k to 8 as well and then that led us to what we're going to introduce to you now which is our portrait um it's gone through quite a few drafts in quite a few stages um and so we needed a preamble for it and so mitch peterson uh took the lead on that and with some feedback from the coalition um in some revisions we were able to come up with this final statement here which kind of sums up um what our we hope our portfolio for graduate accomplishments which is that upon graduation all learners will be able to communicate effectively and collaborate with others to create innovative solutions to problems that advocate for a diverse array of topics and issues and with that i'm going to hand over the the presentation to megan who's going to take us through um what our portraiture graduates thanks ray i feel like i should have a drum roll or something i'm sorry that i do not maybe the next time we revise the portrait of the graduate kevin spoke about me being confident with the money funders and i was confident because i know that this community is a good investment and i know that because i've worked here for 12 years now and i think that the equity um the equity work that preceded this really solidified my commitment again to the district and to this into this project and so um without further ado these are the five categories you'll hear them referred to as buckets we needed a word where do we want where we're going to hold these things hey put them in a bucket so these categories really represent the attributes and they encompass some skill pieces that we think every single student in danbury deserves to graduate being proficient in the first category is advocate there's a lot of discussion around the word advocate we talked um a great deal you can go ahead right thank you um we talked a great deal about the diversity that we are also very proud of in this district and then there was a lot more conversation about the so what so so we care about our diversity what are we doing with that what are we instilling our in our students in terms of how can they elevate how can they lift up others and that we heard a lot about empathy in the beginning and so empathy where do you go with that and so the idea is that we want to make sure that our students are um are positive agents for social change and that they are valuing diversity and that they are valuing diversity by ensuring that we are always actively working to protect the rights of everyone in our community um there's been a tremendous amount of conversation around social justice and injustice and i think that um our group was um was really painfully aware of that and i think that the work of the design at the margins helped to emphasize some of these pieces and i know i personally feel like a better educator for having participated in that project we talk a lot about educating the whole child and i really think that these categories speak to the need to move beyond reading writing and math that people who are really bright and can't advocate for others can't interact with others they don't go too far and so we want to make sure we're attending to all of these so advocate is really moving beyond appreciating our diversity which we do but to make sure that we are protecting um the rights of others the second category is a collaborator and i think that kovitz certainly highlighted for me the need to collaborate right we we encountered problems just in a school system that i can tell you never came up in my principal preparation programs and um we were smarter for working together um and i think that the pandemic really underscored the need for not only human connection but also the positive things that happen as a result of that and i think that the key here is really interdependency right so i can be really good at one thing i need to depend on others i can't be the kid doing all the work in the group work i can't be the kid doing none of the work in the group work and i think that the idea of collaborating um with a solutions oriented mindset is really what we were trying to get at here hearkening back to being respectful of diversion thinking and differing types of opinions the third category um is one you will see very frequently in different portraits of the graduate and i think that really speaks to the fact that we need to be good at this we need to be good communicators and that's not just saying what i think it's saying what i feel being able to receive that information from others that it goes beyond just this traditional reading writing and speaking just the process of trying to find a way to communicate the portrait of the graduate involved graphic design and so i think that we really broadened our thoughts about what does it mean to communicate it's not just getting your point across it's also participating in active listening this reminds me of emotional intelligence right i need to be able to understand where someone's coming from i need to be able to communicate where i'm coming from and i think that as you'll see and hear a little bit more about these pieces they really do work together i think to make a positive and productive person the next category is innovator there was a tremendous amount of discussion around this category um we had as ray indicated we had seven to begin with we had critical thinking and we had problem solving and all of those things are good but we landed on innovating an innovator is really utilizing critical thinking to solve problems in a creative way and we heard about creativity from our from all of the thoughts that were shared and so i think that the innovator really encompasses a number of the pieces that were communicated to us through the feedback of those that are that um that participated i think also inherent and the innovator of einstein you know how many times do you fail before you get it right part of it is being resilient in the face of innovation and adversity and failure and learning how to get back up reflect on what went wrong and try it again the last category is learner and i think this also went through a number of iterations students were very clear most of my focus groups were students students were very clear they wanted to understand how to adult um when they left school you know things like personal finance and everything that encompasses you know car loans college application processes all those pieces um they wanted to be able to feel confident that they were able to do that and so the learner really encompasses knowing yourself being able to pursue additional learning advocating for yourself knowing what you need as a learner and adaptability and i think that that's really really important when i think about the little faces from carmen's students at south street they're going to have jobs we don't even know exist and so the idea of continuously learning is something that's really really key and we want to instill in our graduates so how do you measure all of this stuff um we have a couple of ideas and as has been indicated a few times this cannot just be a danbury high school exercise students need to have a number of opportunities recursive opportunities to practice these attributes to get feedback from teachers and so i agree with kevin when he says the timing really could not be better we need to build some of these pieces in along with other revisions that need to be made to the curriculum so that way these are thoughtfully integrated into the learning experiences of our students on a pre-k 12 endeavor so these are just a couple of thoughts that we had this will certainly need to be fleshed out further as we continue to work on the curriculum you can go to the next slide please thank you and i i do you know i'd be remiss to say that the portrait of the graduate is something that is expected by niask our accrediting body for the high school and so we have just had our visit the old standards did not require a portrait of graduate the new standards do um and so i think that we have been developing these with a number of things in mind our accreditation process has certainly been um in in my mind as well thank you thank you thank you ray thank you meg um so so one as part of our next step um and this is our kind of last transition before questions um it's going to be important for us to continue the feedback loop with our school community and so you know along the way there will be curriculum updates there'll be professional development updates uh there will be budget cycles um and i think it will be important for us to continue to inform the community how things are going i mean continue to get feedback particularly from our staff um and in any improvement strategies that we're looking to implement and making sure that we have a continuous cycle of um of communication going um the next one is expand equitable learning environments and and you heard how important from from angelo from lewinelli from janet uh when talking about that work at design at the margins ensuring that there's an opportunity for all of our kids to be engaged and be mindful of the most vulnerable in this designing process um you know our our team um you know probably unlike quite frankly any district that i've been in um you know the director of curriculum instruction would be overwhelmed by what's ahead and frankly cara melissa trish and the team they couldn't wait to get their hands on this stuff um and so i'm looking at the next bullet strengthened curriculum assessment professional development they they've been waiting for this day so that this could be handed over to them so they can connect all of the dots for pd connect all the dots for curriculum connect all the dots for future purchases um around curriculum and curriculum design in our district um so this really is a great opportunity for us moving forward last but not least and which i think will also be exciting for the school and the school community is branding the porsche of the graduate you know so so typically districts have symbols associated with their pog uh we we were leaving that for later a little later on down the line because we wanted to make sure and actually we were encouraged to make sure that our pog any branding efforts from our pog is aligned with our branding for our academies uh so we just want to be strategic as part of that process uh but i i remember it like it was yesterday at danbury high school we were meeting with some students and one one of the young ladies who has since graduated she said you know that symbol is important to me meaning that someone that's at the bottom right corner of your screen right now i remember that symbol when i first started in danbury public schools as a kindergarten student and so we know we need to be mindful of you know these symbols for our school community for our kids what that symbolizes for our district and so we just wanted to be really careful intentional about this process and so we will be back to try to figure out what the branding looks like for our district with this work right so just one last thank you to everyone to our students you saw some of them in the video let me just also say about the video you did not get to see some of our high school students middle school students with similar questions that come and ask the younger students i encourage everyone to take an opportunity to look at that video andrew lambeau who i think has a career in the news um um kind of kind of led the entire thing so he was cut out of the video i asked that you take an opportunity to see that video in its entirety i want to thank the community members people in business higher education they were just amazing people to work with our parents our board of education members amy thank you so much our teachers administrators and and anyone who has contributed to the portrait of the graduate we want to thank you all your participation in our thought exchange our surveys um and ray thank you for for sharing that information um all of that feedback has informed and helped to lead us to where we are today so i think the next slide ray is our questions one um it so and and then of course i would thank you um but our questions and miss cooper just wanted to hand it back to you and and thank you for um carving out this time for us this evening and i i would imagine uh the board might have some questions for us thank you for watching thank everyone for participating in this uh workshop and bring this information to the board uh at this time uh does any board members have any questions mrs cooper i'll ask one this is richard can you hear me yes i can okay um kevin to you what words can we associate with the portrait of a graduate is it uh our vision is it a creed i'm looking for something that you know i can connect to to to what it is you know without a long drawn you know conversation that long very wrong paragraph or anything like that is there any anything that you could uh share with me that that might help me right right right so so mr genelli i i i think um you know something that immediately comes to mind when you ask that question um i think i i think this beca becomes our north star as in the district i think we're going to find um and i think the cabinet and i will continue to be back in front of the board in the community um as an example as part of the budget process uh when when talking about um the the commitment that we're making to the portion of the graduate right and then and then what that means for resources uh for our district and so i think we've gone through um you know significant efforts to talk about um the pathways for for the danbury academy um and and recognizing the investment that's going to take well this requires an investment k-12 right and so i think in within the district it requires a different kind of investment change in the way potentially the way we work perhaps changing the way we deliver professional development perhaps changing the way we order supplies and books and materials uh you know perhaps changing the way we teach um uh but but then we also maybe need to be resourced differently um and so in many ways i i see it as you know almost like a north star for us as a school community because i think we'll continue to point back to the portion of the graduate that hopefully will be approved at the next board meeting and then all of the supports and efforts that he associated with that pog i like that north star to me and i associate with that a guiding light so very apropos thank you very much thank you mr nelly are there any ques other questions from board members i don't have a i don't have a question mrs look at rachel um i just want to say it was a phenomenal presentation [Music] i enjoyed it immensely i'm so i'm so excited and you know thrilled i think i see this as a springboard to new and exciting things to come as a result and so i just want to thank all of these great minds here today presenting um really great job i'm really proud and excited i was part of two focused groups and i really enjoyed those discussions so um and amy thank you for representing the board i know there were many meetings so thank you thank you rachel thanks for mentioning that because i i really think this work is going to unleash quite frankly the talent that we already have here in the district i think our teachers are going to be invigorated by this work i think our administrators are going to be invigorated and like you i think our parents and our kids most importantly are also going to be really excited once once this work gets underway yeah i i just wanted to add that um to that kevin that i like the collaboration very much and any time that you can include all of the stakeholders and listen to their opinions um you know you're going to be successful so thank you very very much to everyone it sounds very good but to me it sounds like we're going to go to school year round instead of 180 days thank you kathy are there any other comments no except to um with the academies coming on um the timing is so perfect kathy just said something interesting you don't go to school yeah a lot of a lot of the academy the internships externships all extending the wall of the schools in order to do a lot of these things so the kids will be putting in a lot of their time i just want to commend everybody i want to keep going on it's very impressive work very solid work and very sound work the north stars is probably a new symbol for us but uh this will guide your budgets i think it was kate that asked a few months ago you know how we're going to direct our direction how are we going to talk about um resources well when you talk to the council and you talk to the mayor you talk to folks this is what needs to get in front of them uh i think all of you know that and it should serve us well so i thank you very much thank you doctor if there are no other questions from board members i will need a motion to adjourn unless mr watson has some additional information do not miss cooper but i would like to just thank everyone um again for their participation in this work um the crazy thing is folks are so excited and and i think kathy said something about you know working all year round well kara's already asking her team to work all year round and and and and folks need a break folks need some time off but folks are committed to to to to ensure successful experiences for our kids and staff so i'm really looking forward to to what's ahead okay okay thank you again thank you everyone i need a motion to adjourn the workshop come on motion made by um rachel seconded by what's happening okay seconded by amy all they've been in favor say aye aye aye motion's okay you
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this means that these assets are going to have to be depreciated in a much shorter amount of time leading to a lot of unnecessary economic impacts for customers and then on the appliance side every fossil fuel appliance you have in your home lasts anywhere from 12 to 15 years that means that before 2050 when scientists have said we have to get to zero across our economy our economy we only have one or two opportunities uh to replace a furnace so with an all-electric option so um if if we don't replace it with the right technology today we might be leading to unnecessary burden by consumers that will have to prematurely replace these appliances so because of climate because health and because of the economic burden it's really important for us to start tackling uh building electrification today and brett will tell you a little bit about what building electrification actually looks like thanks anna sophia so and sophia set us up with uh kind of the why behind electric electrification i'm going to dig in here for a few minutes on what we're actually talking about as far as the technology you can go to the next slide this will be a primer we could spend a few hours probably talking about this it seems like every time i talk to a builder or an installer of heat pumps i'd learn new things but this can give an overview of what the technology is and how it works so building electrification that term when we use that term what we're referring to is the replacement of fossil fuels that are combusted in the home by efficient electric equipment and the idea here is that of course that that equipment has to draw its electricity from from somewhere and electricity is generated by a source and increasingly um that electricity source is is is going to become clean um if it's not already somewhat clean already we also in this topic of building electrification we also do talk about the conversion of inefficient electric heating technologies to higher higher efficiency equipment so next slide um so when we talk about beneficial electrification we're we're not talking about electric resistance baseboards baseboard heaters that's literally the same technology that's in your toaster um that's not what we're talking about we're talking about heat pumps uh heat pumps use the refrigeration cycle it's the same cycle that's in the in in your refrigerator in your kitchen um essentially the same as as the air conditioner that you have right now but run in reverse and so it it it's electric powered and it uses the refrigeration cycle to move heat energy from in the winter time from actually from the cold outside air into your home so even though it's winter time there's heat energy out there and the refrigeration cycle can grab that and move it into your house and turn it into usable warm air so that process uses significantly less electricity than electric resistance and when we look at the source energy so tracing that that electricity all the way back to the power plants um we see that it's generally going to be more efficient than um than burning gas in in your home next slide so the term heat pumps they're actually that term can be used for a few different things um what i was just describing would is air source heat pumps and so that's kind of what's starting to see the most uptake and a lot of applications even in in the upper midwest here and that pulls heat energy out of out literally out from the outside air and moves it into your home there are also ground source heat pumps which have been around for some time which is the same thing with the loop and the ground they pull heat out of the ground in the winter time water source heat pumps it's another variation if you have some body of water or some source that is nearby you can pull heat out of that you do also that term water source heat pump can also be used in multi-family buildings as a solution for delivering heat to each of the individual units but in that case there's a water loop that has to be fed by some kind of central central plant or central boiler for the building and then lastly heat pump water heaters which is a solution to domestic hot water that's about three times more efficient than than an electric resistance water heater next slide a few pictures of what this looks like so on the top this would be the space heating and cooling and i should note these units all do heating heating and cooling they serve both functions all the way on the top left there that would be the outdoor unit for sort of a residential type mini split system and the one next to it is you know that looks familiar that looks like your air conditioner probably that can be run in reverse and do heating in the winter time too if it's designed to for larger buildings you can assemble a number of these these outdoor units in a plant format either individually zoned or tied together to deliver the capacity that's needed and then there are also variations that go through the wall like a package terminal heat pump as as is shown in there so these products all exist on the market today they're increasingly becoming commoditized um i'll talk a little bit here about how they're they've improved in performance for cold climates heat pump water heaters on the bottom there the bottom left is probably the most most common that is seen right now that's a unit that would sit inside your inside your home inside of the conditioned space and it pulls heat out of out of the out of the air in your home so in a mechanical room or in your basement pulls it out of the the air in the room and puts it into the water so that's called a unitary system there are also split systems as is shown on the right there where you've got an outdoor unit and an indoor storage tank and so there are a couple of options there next slide so like i said one of the reasons that elect the the conversation for electrification has been heating up recently excuse the pun uh is that the the technology has increased it has improved significantly for cold climates recently and so um you know ground source heat pumps have been around for quite some time that's probably the first time you heard the term heat pumps but now the air source systems can you can function and maintain the needed capacity down to negative 15 or even down to negative 30 fahrenheit the there are still in in installations here i have seen often electric resistance that's installed as a backup or if there's existing fossil fuel that can be left as a backup source it's not it's in most cases it's not necessary um you know the anecdotes i heard when the polar vortex went through recently is that because this was the you know the the cold climate heat pumps have sort of just come on and this was the first big test and some people did run out and buy space heaters as a backup but then in most cases they didn't need them because the heat pumps kept up as well as anybody else's furnace did so cold climate heat pumps that is it is a special thing um not all heat pumps are created equal there are there's a great database from uh from an organization neat who runs programs in the northeast and they've started assembling with a list of what products work really well in cold climates and classifying them accordingly so it's important to select a cold climate heat pump specifically next and keep going next slide so putting putting this together and sophia talked about the why good high level introduction to what the technology is um so from the city's perspective how do we think about starting to engage the community and first and foremost i think it's important to to emphasize the equity cons considerations associated with with beneficial electrifications and there and there's a couple ways that that can and should come into play um for one thing uh looking at the building stock that serves low and moderate income customers and especially affordable housing there are often opportunities there to significantly improve quality of life comfort reduce energy bills affordable housing can tend to have more electrical resistance which is kind of a no brainer in terms of cost of effectiveness which gives me cost effectiveness replacing with heat pumps today um so looking at that building stock as and finding solutions for that immediately is a big opportunity um the second is thinking about the jobs associated so there there's a clean energy transition that's going to happen here and it's it's got this aspect of work that needs to be done in the homes and buildings in our community and engaging those the communities the black and brown communities that haven't traditionally been part of energy efficiency um is another great opportunity to level the playing field so i've had conversations with uh with ej focused uh organizations who say you know get us get in at the ground level let's let's be part of the solution um have our communities delivering the solutions to our own communities and and have that be part of the um the wealth and job creation in this next energy uh sort of transition for for the country so engaging those communities early on um as part as as part and contributors of this not something to be done to them after the fact but have them be a driver um next slide and then there is a question here on on prioritization and so you've said heat pumps can work really well um they're you know obviously we've got a whole wealth of infrastructure that that's already out there and um the vast majority of homes do have gas so we can look at the building stock and sort of prioritize where it makes the most sense and and think about where we can get some early wins that that demonstrate that the technology works and start to build that capacity in the marketplace with with contractors and awareness with customers so new construction is great application because it's always easier to make these decisions up front you get the benefit of not having to install gas infrastructure to a home and you can design design the home easily to minimize system sizes and things like that so new construction is a great application replacement of electric resistance again this is another potential quick win electric resistance compared to air source heat pumps you're going to cut cut electric use by you know approximately um two-thirds and you're going to have the panel capacity required to electrify you you've already gotten plenty of electric capacity to the home replacing delivered fuels you know more of a rural solution i think but again there it's very cost effective and also looking at the gas infrastructure for whether it's you know new neighborhoods or replacement of infrastructure within the community i live in chicago i love chicago we're in the process of replacing every gas line in the entire city because it's aging out and um at the same time that we're also talking about decarbonizing across the country so um thinking about the gas structure question is also important and then last but but not least think about the health and emissions impacts that anna sophia mentioned earlier i'm trying to put a value to that so our mind did analysis on for new construction comparing the economics of a mixed fuel gas heated home versus an all-electric home in a number of locations across the u.s and we found that in every location it is cost effective on a net present value today to go with the all-electric home and that includes columbus ohio same climate zone where is where you are and all the way up to minneapolis which is obviously much colder and so um you know we've got a link to this to this study and that we can provide um but the outlook is good as far as economics of new construction yeah and um i think it's really important to think about new construction as a high leverage opportunity because retrofits are really hard any of you that have done anything to your house know that it is challenging to do anything and we see that in the electrification space too this graph is just one example of many studies that try to quantify the cost of transitioning a mixed fuel building to an all-electric building this happens to be um a set of different commercial buildings and what you see here is that if you look at the simple payback of some of these retrofit these retrofits to electrification in some buildings you do not get a payback for transitioning to building electrification today so this means it is super important that any new building that we are installing now is is built to the quality that we want uh for for our future that said i i do want to emphasize that we expect that these costs will continue to come down over time brett has talked about some of the big technology improvements we've seen over time but one of the the biggest sources of costs that we see across the u.s are actually from soft costs so these are installation costs so cities have a big role to play in helping drive down these costs making sure that installers have the right information the right training so that they are not pricing in a big risk premium into uh their retrofit installations um like brett mentioned there are a lot of really wonderful resources out there uh for cities um that are looking to encourage building electrification in their cities and i'll point this one out because it's it's it just came out maybe two weeks ago and it's a really wonderful resource and they flagged four key considerations for for city staff that are looking to encourage retrofits the first is to really think about engaging with building owners before equipment fails you know once a building owner or house owner furnace breaks that's the wrong time to be talking about building electrification because at that point it becomes a a heating emergency especially if this is happening in the winter and there's no time for um upgrades to to the infrastructure and so early engagement is really critical the second is demonstrating to the supply chain that your city is an appealing place to invest either via policy or market sizing opportunity information that you can offer manufacturers the third is supporting whole building electrical service upgrade this will be especially important if you're not only thinking about building electrification but you're also thinking about electric vehicles and solar you need to think about how all of these components are affecting the building in a whole whole system um and then the last and really touches on on the point that brett mentioned about an equitable transition you have to think about you how you're providing safeguards to prevent displacement if you're making investments in in the buildings so with that um you know here here's how we see it uh if we were in your shoes this is kind of how we would be thinking about where we would we would focus first and we would start with new construction i know that ann arbor doesn't have the luxury of setting its own building codes today but there are ways to incentivize a new construction um to be built right from the start the second opportunity which brett really emphasized was on electric resistance this is a cost saving opportunity today for residents and actually ann arbor has quite a few residents about 22 percent of ann arbor's housing units currently run on electric resistance so this is a great place to start building that supply chain and getting cuffs and getting contractors comfortable with this technology next city buildings affordable multi-family housing introducing this technology when people are replacing their air conditioning as brett mentioned this technology provides both cooling and heating and then probably the toughest nut to crack will be the gas retrofits and we can talk about those um in the questions so with that um i'm offering here some some next steps as you're thinking about where to go from here assessing and growing government capacity will be really critical if you are engaging with building owners early and often what does that mean for how much staff and what is what background they need in order to support that you need a productive relationship with the utility especially as you're thinking about electricity service upgrades to specific neighborhoods that are going primarily electric and demonstrating city leadership is also a good way to build that supply chain if you start with city buildings that can be a good opportunity to to help bring down that risk premium that we talked about earlier green zoning opportunities are a good way to get around this building code preemption that you have in the city of ann arbor and then i know missy is a big advocate across many many forums but continuing to advocate for regulatory and policy interventions and then lastly making sure the people that are making decisions have the right resources and i'm sure this all feels very overwhelming this is not easy to you know completely transform the way that our buildings run but fortunately it's not the first time in the united states that we've made a big transition um you know in the 1940s most of our homes ran on coal it's hard to believe that today and in just 40 years coal has basically disappeared as a heating source and and electricity has been on the rise ever since so we can do it and i hope that you all consider rmi as a partner and thinking through this complicated but really critical transition we've laid out here some of the best resources we've used i think a lot of them will be useful to thinking about how to move forward i think missy can provide these but with that eager to to hear your questions i know we've gone a little bit over missy but feel free to tell us how much time we have for questions uh this is john murski um as far as i'm concerned um this is really important so i don't know that we want to limit um the questions um i have a little bit of glare if people can use their uh reactions and put your hand up i see that commissioner cleavy has a question mark you want to start us off with the q a yes i'm one of those who think of rocky mountain institute myself i can't quite get it to rmi these days it's great to see you guys are still in business and please give our our best to your founders my question it really has to do with staging do you have resources or papers or some writings or something you could point me to that addresses the pacing of electrification and the priority of electrification um it seems crazy to put an air heat exchanger on my house and then run it with electricity that's generated with coal frack gas so at some point i have to have access to renewable energy either through a a utility that we have a really good relationship with good luck or some other way so i guess the question is as part of your formula or a recommendation on next steps how does access to renewable energy to um you know power the electrification factor in that's my question i can give that a shot if you want and sophia um yeah that is a key question because you do have to think about where your electricity is coming from um the i guess the two things that i i'd stay to that point um i mean for one thing immediately you have one thing in your control which is you can put soul around your house and feel feel pretty good about it um of course you're still connected to the grid so there's that aspect of it but um the other the other part of it is looking at the lifetime of this equipment and so in the time that that you have this heat pump installed or the alternative the furnace how many years is it going to be in there 15 20 25 how long do people leave equipment in their houses it's important to look at the cumulative emissions across that and what the grid is going to do across that trajectory i don't in my backpack i don't i don't have exactly what that what the summation of that looks like for um ann arbor specifically but um i don't know we could follow up offline with that and see if if um if anybody's done thinking on that specific yeah yeah i'll i'll add um brett i your i think that the key thing to emphasize here is um you're right building electrification on its own is not the solution uh we're we're thinking about decarbonizing the whole economy um and the the overall strategy that we talk about is efficiency of course we need to use less energy overall uh renewables and then electrify everything to run on those renewables and so um because we are on this journey to uh decarbonize our electricity system uh we did an analysis of every state in the us and we found that for 99 u.s residents if you install a heat pump today if you look at the emissions over the lifetime it will save emissions compared to a highly efficient gas furnace and in places like ann arbor where you're talking about much faster pace than what we're seeing nationally those efficiency those emission reductions would happen much quickly over the lifetime of of the technology but the quickest way to do it as brett mentioned is to put solar on your roof thank you commissioner schreiberg yeah thank you great presentation um just want to see if you can expand on the bullet point where you said the need for partnership with utilities because i'm trying to think through the incentive structure for utilities and what sorts of partnerships are needed to help accelerate this yeah i think there's um there's there's two flavors of that one would be um incentives for installation and in michigan like like many states is purged energy efficiency regulations it's tied to energy efficiency as opposed to beneficial electrification and so there are incentives out there check them out they're good they'll take a bite out of um take a take a bite out of the price of a heat pump um but it but it varies and and um you know it's not going to buy the whole heat pump for instance it's probably not not going to come close right now the other part of so that's part of it link up to with the energy efficiency programs the other part of it is thinking about electric capacity because especially in retrofit application um you may be in a condition where you need to add capacity to the home um or you know at least run 240 volt service to where you need it in the home to these things and so i'm connecting with the utility for to streamline service improvements like that whether needed um is something that could go a long ways towards easing a glide path to electrification that's right and i'll just point out that the second resource on that resource list is a is a deck all about utility and city engagement on electrification that you can look at in more detail commissioner calvin garcia you are muted thanks thank you so much for being here i've been really looking forward to this presentation my my question is with regards to the key city staff next steps your first item um about growing government capacity can you speak a little bit more to that you want to take that yeah happy too um yeah i think the key thing here is to understand what role you're expecting the city to play in this transition and then to make sure that your staff is um has the right skill set or is properly resourced to do that so you know one one example would be if the city is supporting um building owners prior to their equipment failing which is ideally the way you would do it you would engage with building owners way before they have a problem uh then you would need staff that could support that level of engagement you know kind of spoke the language that building owners speak uh in order to to talk through the these problems with them so i think i think similarly and in the planning process if you're providing uh zoning incentives for for building electrification or or all electric buildings you'll need um you'll need city planners that are knowledgeable about the technology and and and what building owners or building developers should really be providing so those are the types of things i'm thinking about when i say evaluate and consider improving or erupting the capacity of of governments the the other thing that i've heard um from other city officials that are trying to deal with this is that um often the the questions end up that you know the buck stops with the city they have to answer the questions and um even down to the level of the technology and sort of convincing um certain parties that it works and the solutions are out there and so to the extent that those resources can be developed and on hand for sort of an easy response we provided in in the resources we did provide links to some resources that have been used in that capacity specifically in other locations and i've heard rumor that there's a michigan specific version of kind of a guide guide book for electrification that should be coming out and and certainly from another organization and uh and uh i think that could be extremely useful for city officials but that's good to know if you get word of that if you can let missy know that would be appreciated yep absolutely great i have a comment a brief comment and a question that i hope will spur some thinking and questions potentially from planning commission members just a brief comment and that is that uh it was not mentioned that there are also heat pump dryers in the big scheme of things that's not a significant contributor obviously they're not running um typically um as much as a stove a gas cooktop or or oven for that matter as well as a furnace but i own one they came on the market about five years ago in the u.s i think they've been on the market in europe for about 10 years so people we want to encourage people to consider that the question that i had is you talked about starting out with focusing on new construction and you mentioned that there's savings to be had by only installing electrical infrastructure in a new building i'm wondering if it's also possible and maybe someone from planning commission can speak to this whether it's possible that the city does something to maybe change fee structures or something like that for tap-ins on either the gas side which makes it more expensive or on the electric side would potentially makes it less expensive if a gas connection is is forgone or not not used i'm wondering if there's anything that you've heard uh anybody on the call or from rmi or from planning whether that's uh something that potentially could be leveraged sarah did you have a comment on that or did you have a different question totally different question totally different okay we'll take years after any comments about mine or yeah on the the gas service question um i have heard that that might be a question about rate basing with the gas utility um so it may be something that rises to the policy level um so that that's where where it might go um and don't forget there's also piping in the home too so it's not just getting the gas to the home but also the copper inside so yeah i i i can see where much of this would be controlled by the utility i'm just wondering if the the city can do anything uh to offer carrots or sticks so that we basically with new construction uh eliminate as much uh canoe construction with the double infrastructure of gas and electricity and just move to strictly electrical infrastructure with new buildings does anybody know um whether that's possible that the city can influence that right did you want to speak no but i'm curious to hear uh if people have thoughts on this and i was thinking brett leonard maybe um two brits other breads um so uh uh for those that don't know me i'm brett leonard i'm the planning manager um and um so i think it's a it's an interesting question i will say that i've um i've had more involvement in exploring those related issues frankly as it relates to water and sewer fees at the city um those can be um i i'm speculating here but i think that they can be much more adverse to a project than the utility um tap fees which are sort of um while there are some incremental aspects of those that are city related street cuts the like i think some a lot of those are are established by the utility companies themselves so um my initial thought is that it might be possible but i think that because those particular aspects of the development the city has a relatively minor role in those i don't know how beneficial we might be able to incentivize that but every bit helps so um the short answer is i think it's probably worth exploring i i don't know how much of a large benefit i see there yeah okay great oh we i just know go ahead sorry i'll i'll just note that something that i've heard some cities do i think this was started in the city of seattle that um also did not was not able to require all electric buildings initially um although they recently uh have was that they first required all building developers to consider the cost and and show the proposal of what an all-electric version of the building looked like and so often building builders would come with both proposals and what they would find out uh kind of being forced to do this exercise is that actually the all-electric version is cheaper and they're like oh well looks like i'm going all electric and this is not something i considered before and so you know perhaps that is an approach um that is just just elevating the cost savings because i think a lot of developers um have not considered or do not consider what an all-electric version would look like i think the planning commission has been doing that in recent instances um at least requesting it but potentially a policy change to require it is something we can think about we'll capture this in the minutes um and do a little bit more digging after the meeting so thanks for that exchange um commissioner mills take it away as anna sophia knows i've got a lot of questions um but also for the energy commission too just so to kind of background like we have as planning commission we have been asking inquiring um encouraging because that's what within our current confines and we do have some policies that do encourage um or incentivize um but but they have we haven't had very many takers and so that's one of the things like realigning those policies we do have like green bonuses um it's also tied to affordability though and so this is because these things often come up in the same breath and these are dual goals in our city of sustainability and affordability um we hear different some different things when we've asked developers about this um there's different kinds of housing stock new buildings that are being built in the city single-family homes right multi-family like low-rise and then multi-family high-rise the like the upfront cost analysis do you know if that's if it's consistently cheaper across all of those building types electrification um no i don't think it's possible to make it make a blanket case like that um and it probably like there's there's so much new nuance to um to cost estimates and i came from the design world an architect and it's it's just you know what what does the supplier have on hand and what's the familiarity or are they intentionally bidding themselves out of something that they don't want to do and um and then also how much presence is there from the manufacturers are they there as a resource to help help these people figure it out so they don't have to put a big risk premium on top of this stuff um so i don't i don't think it's possible to make a blanket statement like that it also you know to recognize the cost um the cost savings it really needs to be done um it done correct and sort of integratively and look at all the elements in the big picture but i certainly have i i've heard enough anecdotes out there from you know like in the mid-rise um or i should say load low to mid-rise multi-family sector at least around here it's kind of the wild west of system types right now because they're up pretty darn close and so that's one where it seems like multi-family is is right for a pretty pretty rapid transition and then home building is a different beast because it's so commoditized and streamlined it's a matter of how fast we can sort of transition that market that's not a very good answer and it uh it doesn't explicitly give an answer to the question but um that's that's what i know but i i think it's important to um elevate where these cost savings are coming from uh and i think there are there are a couple drivers uh the first is the lack of gas infrastructure so you know it does depend on the you know what the utilities is going to offer the developer um and how much they have to pay to extend the gas lines to the buildings and you know to to develop the the gas infrastructure within the building but the other big driver is only having one piece of equipment for both heating and cooling um and of course that that would be different if the building is not providing cooling um or had not intended to provide cooling or um and so when i've seen several different analysis those are some of the biggest drivers to the the lower upfront costs of all-electric as opposed to mex fuel buildings so hopefully that good the idea that we're getting mixed things could be legit it's not that they just don't know that they may come back saying we ran the numbers and it's more expensive i mean what we heard recently honestly on a project is we can't do it on the end units we can do it on the middle units of a of a condo building um and so is that so that that's not crazy it's not just the lack of education it could be that like first based on you know different building types that may be different right and especially in a nascent market and in today's construction market where there's a shortage of everything um i'm i'm not surprised to see fluctuations in prices like that um i just say keep pushing on those the savers that anna sofia mentioned and um and hopefully we get more of the success stories and build a market and then it snowballs and and it commoditizes and costs come down commissioner hook um did you want to comment on this before uh sarah goes to her remaining questions oh i've got a hundred questions but myself i'm a building engineer so this kind of fits in my hobby right um the one answer to that question i think you really need to look at is life cycle cost if you just look at it from a first cost which unfortunately a lot of the regulators have to do um it doesn't hunt at residential scale right now but i think if you look at life cycle cost and you throw in a carbon piece whether it's a tax or a fear however want to structure it i think any of these infrastructure types will hunt with electrification right out of the box the challenge is getting regulators to think life cycle and actually put that in rules and adopt some energy codes that really focus on that i think we'll see some big changes then but right now you mentioned that michigan is kind of a tough spot because our codes and standards are lagging we're not allowed as a city to do anything differently so we'll have to continue to fight the fight and see what we can do i think one piece that rmi thank you for presenting tonight the one thing you might want to mention too is with the pandemic the number of commercial buildings out there is kind of bloated and i think going forward we're going to see less demand for commercial size holdings what i think we should be looking at is kind of like megawatts why do we need all this why do we need all these new buildings um let's retrofit and use buildings that have the capability to perform well as an electrified building and eliminate the buildings that are antiquated and cannot be energy efficient if we start thinking about that mindset i think we'll see a reduction in stock that's related to the size of the city we won't be building as many buildings we won't need as many energy systems to support them and i think will really make a difference from a carbon point of view so just a point of view of a life cycle kind of mindset thanks thanks great point i just have a quick comment too mark and then we'll get back to sarah i think um sarah on on the question of uh that you're you're asking here perhaps part of the answer is you know sort of do no harm to future electrification because we know that you know during the next 20 years or so their lifestyle of these buildings the economics are going to change over time so the one thing i think that we can do and you heard it from the first question i have asked is we need to get as much solar up as possible and so on these new buildings that to me the number one question that seems to be relevant is that is the business thing does it face south or does it is it solo ready um and those kinds of things you know we've we've seen lots of uh buildings and housing complexes and stuff be uh approved in ann arbor where the the houses are purposely designed so they don't face south and just a slight change of the orientation of the buildings you'd still get the same things you might have to change the driveways a bit but otherwise it you're making all of those houses solar axis you know and and for for future time so i would think you know that would be one of the number one things is you know well if you can't do the economics now does it work at least don't put your roof in such so that you'll never ever be able to put solar on because when the economics do change they're not going to change in your favor because you gave up your best option for on-site electrification which is distributed solar on that building um also raising its its real estate value et cetera so i would think that's a question that could help you go forward if you just get that answer thank you thanks commissioner sir uh commissioner mills did you have some other questions and then we'll get to commissioner clark i do but i want to let them up the others go and just to say like in the interest of sharing between our committees one of the the tools the incentive tools that we have is something called a plan project modification which gives some flexibility to developers it used to say solar orientation you got you could check it off with solar orientation and we actually changed it to say that's not enough you need to go farther and so like we're really trying like sure we're not going far enough clearly um but i just so you've got some sense of kind of what is in what kind of the the mechanisms that we already have at our disposal or what we're trying to do to better orient not not just orient but like push them over that hump so um any other i mean clearly other commissioners should clearly chime in because i could just keep talking mr clark hi so i was interested a little bit more on the affordable housing you mentioned that um there's an area of opportunity for affordable housing and um like one thing ann arbor does well with our nonprofit affordable housing is has been um trying to shift towards all-electric which is a pretty good accomplishment and um i'm just curious about um actually it's interesting because i think our affordable housing uh developers are held to higher standards of market rate here because we have to meet the enterprise green and living or equivalent and so i was just curious if you had any thoughts on um if there are any other cities that have done like required or at least advised or had a score on the enterprise green that they were suggested to receive or if you have a preferred criteria the living buildings challenge or any of those which ones stand out yeah um well i can this area on building electrification and affordable housing is is a growing space um and i'll i'll mention that several housing agencies now have commitments to retrofit all their housing to all electric especially because of the health impacts of and all the health benefits of all electric homes but for new development or significant retrofits and the city that comes to mind as a as a as a good example is um philadelphia um they uh look to make it a requirement uh for um for all affordable housing subsidized affordable housing to meet a passive house standard um which is essentially all electric there's some ways to get around it but um they tend to all electric and are essentially zero emission um and they found consistently that there is essentially no cost difference for the developer between meeting the passive health standard versus um you know the standard developments that were uh being built and so that that example is not shared in this resource list but i think i can pull it out and send it to missy to forward along if you're interested sorry can i clarify really quick i was asking um if there were any cities that had had market rate um developments required to do a certification similar because our affordable housing already is held to pretty high standards as far as like um going towards electrification and um air quality our score all of that and i was just curious if that was a model that's been done in other cities um or if that makes sense or if there's a preferred set of criteria as opposed to others got it so you're you're you're asking about market rate housing uh unregulated market rate housing is that right yeah just to see if we can hold them to the same standard as the affordable developments yeah um it's pretty uh complicated and there aren't very many examples of um of cities taking on a existing buildings there are maybe three or four that use a a tool called the building performance standard um which essentially um it usually only um is used for large buildings which multi-family buildings might qualify under but it requires buildings to meet a progressively tighter standard over time for emissions in new york city uh for example has this so does dc um st louis uh recently passed one as well um and that is something that michigan could do um but it requires a lot of city investment because you essentially have to estimate the emissions of every built thing that you're monitoring and that requires um a pretty high degree of mark of um city management and oversight and so we're seeing um we're seeing a lot larger cities tackling this but hopefully um as more and more cities adopt this policy they can um they become more more consistent because you're right there there are a lot of policy lovers for tackling existing buildings um i think we need to be careful time wise um but missy i see you have your hand up um and sarah i knew that you had some questions does he want to go first quickly super quick because i'll talk in the staff updates but i just wanted to flag on that particular point that staff and osi working with a number of other units do have a draft benchmarking and home energy disclosure ordinance which would give us the foundational data that we need to be able to track how our buildings are performing so we can elevate high performers and then be much more surgical in helping our underperformers be better performers in that landscape so you'll be seeing that in the not too distant the last question i had really kind of oh i'm sorry it links actually quite well to what commissioner clark was saying which was in terms of specific standards and this is um more about um to rmi about when you say green zoning um i've got a sense of what i think it that means but can you tell us like what you what your intention is by that and like what others have done like what other places would you point us to that we might yeah so since we're short on time i'll tell you what the resource is um on the on the list of documents it is number three massachusetts has done a lot on green zoning and there are a lot of cities within massachusetts that have um that have implemented policies at the local level uh prior to being able and they have a similar situation where they're not allowed to um or they weren't allowed to develop their own building codes so it's actually a very similar policy environment so um yeah i'd point you to that resource there commissioner randall i'll be fast one thing we've also heard from developers is that the capacity of our grid can't handle it um and that we've asked them to be able to put solar on top and things like that and that's one way to address it but if you're doing a high-rise there's only so much of the percentage you're building that that can tackle and i'm just wondering if there's anything you could guide us in any way in terms of how to either think about how to tackle that question which seems immense or if there are other things that we're just not aware of or thinking about when people raise sales i think that's that's a great opportunity for a conversation with the utilities because the those situations are going to be so localized at the distribution level um and digging into the question too because is it when they say that um you think about winter peak versus summer peak i think it gets quite complicated and um yeah it's probably a pretty granular conversation with the utility i'm not i'm not sure i can answer it with a statement okay yeah uh definitely work with the utility um you know and or potentially uh intervene in regulatory proceedings you know the utilities are incentivized to do things like upgrade electric infrastructure because they can rate base a lot of that infrastructure improvement um and if they can't perhaps that's a conversation you can have with the regulator so i'd encourage you to look at resource number two and the existing resource list that talks about that exact issue great thank you mr leonard um i would just like to tap onto the complexity of that that issue commissioner mills had actually helped educate me with some conversations on this matter and uh you know even things that i took for granted for example that a multi-family development on a per unit basis might be more efficient than a detached single family in fact we were hearing that from the utility that in fact they program those buildings sort of for a peak energy usage which is higher on a per unit basis that might not be borne out over operation but again the complexity of sizing that service for 100 units with the corresponding shared spaces and elevators and building systems for that building are quite different than 100 separate units and so i just to add a dimension to how complex that that it is and it probably does really rely on almost a case-by-case conversation and probably infrastructure sector by sector conversation with the utility companies thanks for the comment i think that reinforces the earlier comment about potentially requiring studies um because each one of these situations um has a lot of different factors and is unique you know how tall the building is whether solar can go on the roof or not what the far is of the building all these things have implications um with the envelope how the envelope is designed i think it might be something that we might want to talk about too is some of the different standards that commissioner clark mentioned um and also anna sophia you talked about passive passive house that's something we might want to talk about at some point my understanding is that generally pretty expensive because the envelope requirements are so tight but you know these are all interdependent uh topics that impact and the energy use of the of the house um so it's it's pretty difficult to come up with uh one or two easy rule of thumbs and then apply it across the board to every single type of building unfortunately um that's yes some go ahead um and then i'd like to maybe take one more comment or question and then move on to our second presentation yeah and i i just want to emphasize that um this goes back to the comment on government capacity uh you're right this this often will require a judgment call uh to figure out is is the is the developer acting in good faith um have they made the best effort or or are they not aware of what exists in the market and can i connect them with with those resources um and and your staff may already be uh capable and ready of having those really amp theft conversations across all these levels but perhaps there needs to be development in some areas to support that level of individual scrutiny yeah good point i mean this is basically a multi-variable optimization that we're talking about here and gets really complex that's why you know larger buildings are using engineers to do this kind of stuff i think chuck was um you know understands that that uh very well so um i guess um we would like to thank you again um brett and nanosphere for joining us uh it was really i think instructive and maybe a good uh aspect of this was that we may be left with more questions leaving it um than what we entered but that's that's a good thing because you've peaked our curiosity and um we're going to have as missy mentioned earlier this workshop on heat pumps tomorrow i think we have well over 150 people that are signed up so maybe we're going to end up with even more questions after that um and um that's our job is to hopefully start to provide some some good answers to all these questions that are arising as we make this journey so thanks again very much and um you're welcome to to join us and continue to join us search with us um with our second presentation um which is a presentation on a solarize model that's called solar faithful and murray i don't know if you're there missy do you see murray by chance i don't see him let's see murray's with us murray i think you wanted to leave yours right maureen i see him now very good okay all right so murray um we're ready i think to go ahead and uh do your presentation why don't you start with uh a brief uh introduction i could do that but you'll do it much better than i all right but i'll introduce myself in a minute but before we do i want to do a little audience participation how many here raise your hand belong to a house of worship for instance a church synagogue mosque all right i'm seeing probably about half how many have a next door neighbor or good friend that belong to a synagogue church or house of fortune keep your everybody keep your hands up so that's just about everybody so i'm gonna try to enlist your help at the end of my presentation in the last presentation one of the things people said was getting solar on as many roofs as we can so that's what what this is about and working for a volunteer organization a house of worship i i really have free labor because i just ask people to volunteer and they do it i i don't have to pay people to make decisions so that's one big advantage i have so let me share my screen and start my presentation if you can go to full screen that would be great yeah we see it wonderful all right great so here's where i introduce myself you can see all my many roles and i don't get paid for any of those i'm retired i make money as a consultant but i'm president of the genesis board genesis is a house of worship i'll be talking about today i'm co-chair of the genesis green team that's how i got my start in this business of solar i'm a member of the ann arbor 2030 district leadership council which is trying to get reduced energy usage of buildings here in ann arbor i'm co-chair of ann arbor solar faithful with which is the organization which which helped us do this project and i'm was also recently invited to be on the ann arbor lmi load mil income working group for solar so i'm going to try to start this with the little four-minute interview i did for the 2030 district and i let's hope it plays if not i have a fallback plan hi i'm murray rosenthal more about me later the important thing is that we're standing in front of the genesis building as you can see this building houses two houses of worship saint claire's episcopal church and temple beth evan and this is the one of very few organizations in the world where two houses of worship have an equal partnership in worship today we're going to talk about our solar installation which went live in february of this year 2020.
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this is our social hall and there's 80 of these panels on the top of the social hall the flat roof there's also an office building on the other side where there's another 80 percent it's 160 solar panels generating a ton of power this is a very powerful model well we're back inside the genesis sanctuary and this is our neutral position where we can hold public events but those panels hold out and you can see the sacraments for the sinclairs and also the the ark for genesis so just to give you a background before we're at now to give you my background i'm a scientist i just retired from terumo a few months ago where we made heartland machines and before that i was a clinical chemist and i invented the first hemoglobin a1c test so let's talk about the cost of solar panels those are 160 panels on the two roofs here at genesis will generate about 30 percent of our electrical power when our building is open right now it's closed because of covid but those panels cost money in our case a hundred and twenty thousand dollars but we use the very unique funding model called the investor model where 20 congregates about half from each congregation half from tbe and half from sinclair's provided five to fifteen thousand dollars as an investment and they formed an llc so they could take advantage of the 30 percent tax credit that was available in 2019 so that's a true win-win situation where the house of worship only pays for the solar power generated there actually genesis is getting about a 16 discount right now from dte rates now we can't do this we couldn't do this on our own we had a lot of support from an organization called michigan interfaith power and light and they're one of numerous interfaith power and light organizations across the country just about every state has one and the goal of michigan interfaith powering light is to allow its members to practice great sustainability to put solar installations to put leds like in this sanctuary we replaced all the lights with leds a few years ago now right now they have a climate voter initiative which they're trying to get people to get out the vote and to vote for candidates it's very important this time of year to vote for candidates who appreciate sustainability and will hopefully draft legislation to support solar panels and other sustainability just like the sum it up hey we did it 160 panels 160 solar panels above our heads here at genesis all right was it everybody able to hear that give me a thumbs up all right all right great all right i'm gonna use an acronym in many of my slides it's how very simple means house of worship but in this case it also means non-profit because nonprofits can benefit for this too and here's a picture of campus chapel on the michigan campus and they have solar panels there too although they didn't use the investor model they they got some of the alumni to donate money and they have a solar installation there too oops so i mentioned ann arbor solar faithful it's basically an email group we don't have any bylaws or website or bank account we're just a group of hungry altruistic volunteers who want to get solar on any building any non-profit building we can in ann arbor or washington county actually john recently joined the board thanks john for helping out so this is this is about the solar faithful investor model as i showed in the interview there and there's going to be three parts to my presentation what we did and the next slide has a quote from a very very patriotic american jerry garcia somebody had to do something and it's just incredibly pathetic that it had to be us so the second part of the presentation is why we did it and the third is how we did it so here's what we did and these are the numbers you can read them but your images are blocking my views so there's 160 solar panels it's a 64 kilowatt system uh 400 watts per panel and 31 of the consume power and larry kerber who was our installer he said he told us in our quote that we would generate 31 of our power and it turned out for the first year it was 30.6 that's pretty close and that that's first is a normal year we were close so it's actually over 50 because we were close but compared to previous years when we were open it was 30.6 went live in february last year this is a little closer pic pictures you can see the on the left the panel the panels on the slanted office roof are are actually attached to the roof the ones on the flat roof of the social hall are weighted down by concrete blocks so they can be removed if we needed to do service on on the roof and you can see we have an app and my phone and i look at it pretty much daily to see how much power we're generating from our inverter so why do we need an llc for this investor model well there's two reasons there's the 30 tax credit that we take advantage of our investors and we also have depreciation so this is the way the investor model works eastover power which is the company that the congregants formed they bought the panels and paid for the installation and they owned the panels and genesis agrees to have the panels on the roof and use the power and pay east over for the power generated the investors in in east over get a 30 tax credit as we speak they're probably getting their refund this week i hope and genus this pays a little bit less for the electricity 11.5 cents fixed rate for the next 20 years and the current dt rate when i made this this powerpoint pack was 12.5 is actually almost 13.5 now so it's quite a savings dte typically raises rates once a year so we formed this company called east over from the the congregants of saint claire's episcopal church in temple bethlehem and one of the one of the investors thought of this name east over and because east over genesis is located on the corner of packard street in east over place so why not name it east over but that's not the real reason is because it's a contraction of our two spring holidays easter and passover so here's why we did it it's our shared climate volatility problem and people like to say global warming but it's not only warming it's the climate is more volatile even we're getting cold snaps just because the the cold air from canada is being dragged down by the by our hotter climate uh we wanted to reduce the carbon footprint of our building that's one of the reasons why we wanted long-term energy cost savings and we are saving money already the first year we saved about seven hundred dollars increased property value another reason and genesis sponsors a food bank and it's in a really old 150 year old building in the front of our property called the wisdom house and we we help one to two hundred people with their food every week and why do we do that there's no payback for that we do it anyways because it's the right thing to do and that's the main reason that that we we put solar on there is because it's the right thing to do and here's how we did it and this is a big process but we made it simple for you we have a how-to document so i'm only going to cover the first the first step the other 17 are covered in the document and oh i'll give a little detail on some of them but i'm just going to look at the detail the very first step because i think it's the most interesting step so our focus for today is that how investor model there's a federal solar tax credit credit it's not as an energy tax credit it's called investment tax credit and it's been extended through 2022 thanks to congress when they passed that that bill for the our i think it was a 600 or 400 per person payment back in early part of this year they also extended the 26 tax credit two more years so if they hadn't done that it would would have gone down to 22 next year next year in 2023 or i'm sorry 2022 so that gives us some uh a little bit of rope before we hang ourselves so you got to get the initial buy-in talk talk to the people in charge talk to your clergy your light leaders your board members about the idea in general terms and since you all raised your hands you can do that or get your friend to do that and make them an offer they can't refuse i mean this is this is like a no-brainer you're going to get solar inc stalled at no cost no donations no payments except for the power that's generated using this investor model you're going to save money in year one and not pay a cent this is a no-brainer so tell them about similar success stories at other buildings and we're going to get to that later and just tell them you're going to explore the idea for now this is this we're not forcing you to do anything just think about it so then ask the question may we proceed with a solar power investment group and they're gonna say interesting you may proceed so we took it to the two congregational boards and the genesis board and one of the congregational board one of the investment opportunity open to all members of both congregations but specifically said they only want the the congregants to be members of the investment group so we couldn't go to bill gates or somebody else with deep pockets but that doesn't mean that another church can't you could you can find uh and you know somebody who pays anybody who pays taxes and has some extra money lying around can be an investor and make it an altruistic investment and even make some money over the years so we we covered step one in detail as i said and there's a total of 18 steps and they're in our how-to document which is actually on the michigan inner faith power and light website and it's going to be referenced on the next page here there it is and that's uh that's who that's that's sort of you should look for the how-to document but in any case solar solar faithful is supported by michigan interface power and light so that's that's why they put that on their website and that's uh that's another example of win-win where just a informal email group of volunteers is being supported by a large organization and interfaith power and light is a national organization just about every state has has that an office so that's where it is and this is part of step 14 this is actually a part of a power purchase agreement we entered into actually three agreements to do this one was a power purchase agreement which shows how much we pay for electricity over the years and buyback which is in the right hand column so the panels are depreciated and after year five uh we have a buyback where they if the congress genesis and the two congregations wants to buy the installation and no longer pay us for the east over for the the power they can do it and there's there's buyback going all the way out to year 20 at which point the panels will be fully depreciated and east overpower will donate the panels if they haven't been bought already and so at genesis we kind of run in quicksand because we have to get everybody in the same boat i mean if if we're in a board meeting and some in the vote is seven to one we've got to go back to the drawing board we need consensus i mean every different issue i mean that's that's the way we operate and so to do this we had to only get five different entities to approve it the genesis board the temple beth emmett board the saint claire's vestry the episcopal diocese of michigan which stick their lawyers on us and saint claires had a congregational vote pretty much if you have a church and do this you probably only have to pass one of these i had five it took about six months but hey we did it so there were three parts to our presentation here and here's some resources we have that how-to document on the michigan interfaith power light website we have solar faithful here to support anybody who wants to do this we have we have our faith upline our our boards and our clergy who are who supported us in doing this sustainability there are religious tenets that that support sustainability about the earth in which we live our group loves to present just like i'm doing right now just ask us we have communication i'm constantly answered answering questions uh from churches uh your installers are a very big resource use them they are they're great including larry and the government you guys are supporting what we do we have publicity i've i've been asked by many times many times about our installation by our congregants and even one of the uh people in the investment group put solar panels on his optometrist office building in ypsilanti so this is generating interest uh there's two articles in the washington jewish news one was in september one in april last month and so far we've saved about 138 000 pounds of co2 emissions equivalent to planting over a thousand trees so what's the path forward so we need your help we want to get this set up like they have in detroit where they have interested house of houses of worship they meet on a monthly basis and they learn about energy savings they can do for their building and we want to set this up here in ann arbor uh with our vast amount of volunteer activity we can do it and we're thinking of starting to to get this going hopefully by the fall and we're working with through the 2030 uh district and also michigan interfaith power and light to to support this so if you have a church find out who the green team is if you don't have a green team tell your pastor you need one and ask somebody to volunteer and let's get them enrolled in this all right so genesis was only example there are seven other buildings in southeast michigan who have done done this using the investor model total of 534 panels 188 kilowatts and just a little bit under a half a million in investment and i i did leave a pdf of this because i know it's really busy and if you want to look at the details it's in the same folders as presentation is this presentation and here's a picture of ozone house with which john mursky and janet culbertson formed that llc and that was new construction and the solar panels were i think on into day one it's a beautiful beautiful campus there for ozone house so i'm ready for questions thank you murray uh i'd like to comment real quickly or emphasize um before i uh open the floor up for questions that this can be used for any non-profit so it can be used on green hill schools it could be used for a parochial school it could be used for a government or a township building it can be used outside of the ann arbor this is not obviously exclusive to the city of ann arbor this can be used anywhere nationwide i'm working with my brother-in-law in new jersey to put it on their house of worship um just outside of new york city so um when you think of this model uh it can be used for by any non-profit that um you know is um owning a building and um using power for that building so think of this in the broadest terms and i'd also like to just point out that um when murray talks about all these steps there are templates for all the contracts there are templates for calculating the costs and you can change any of the variables to see what the impact is um for all the parties so this is really uh something that has been standardized and we have now a bunch of best practices that can be applied and tweaked to any organizationals any organization's needs to be able to apply this model so i'm going to open it up to questions commissioner cleavy thank you murray um just a quick comment um over about 25 years ago reverend charles morris and i hooked up with jerry lawson we got a grant from jerry and we founded the michigan interfaith power and light and uh basically in my living room and you know at the time in farmington hills so um i just want to say how pleased i am to see how this uh how this project has happened and you you have far exceeded our expectations for for this and i i thank you so much for keeping this thing going and doing so well so do more it's great we got 12 000 congregations in michigan so let's hit them all and so congratulations good well done yeah thanks yeah there's over 100 in ann arbor by itself does anybody else have any questions or comments yes commissioner lee i just wanted to say thank you uh there's no uh silver bullet to environmental sustainability and so i just want to say thank you for obviously doing this and putting together the uh obviously the entire pamphlet related to this so literally from the bottom of my heart thank you hey you're welcome welcome you're welcome and and one way you can you're welcome me is hook me up with your house of worship and and again this this can cross state lines so if any of one any of you know someone um in another state or for that matter or another part of michigan um have them reach out to murray or to me or others commissioner streiberg yeah for when the echo thanks and actually i'm the member of temple beth emmett and on the commission didn't even realize this uh existed so this is amazing um i wanted to just ask how you're doing or if the outreach to uh membership of these uh houses of worship is is part of that uh process uh i won't take long in this but i work at the national wildlife federation we have a program called sacred grounds that works with houses of warship to install native plant gardens but the key component is actually you know inspiring and incentivizing people to do it at home so i'm just wondering if they're parallel efforts in terms of inspiring uh home and other installations on solar a great question and you know we we do have several houses of worship who over the years with solar faithful have have expressed interest and some of them have done it as i've shown and the the problem is when i reach out to a house of worship a pastor or perhaps a congregant i yeah i email i call but you know i get voicemail i get no response i think i've sent out over 100 emails and called maybe you know made five or six cold calls and i i just get to get stonewalled except for for once so hey if i can i need your help to point me to the right person to make the introduction that's all i need just do the groundwork and make that introduction and once i get my foot in the door they'll see this is really a no-brainer anyone else i i also wanted to add something that john had an idea about and i i did have some interest from a condo association a condo association could put solar to at least provide electricity to the common areas maybe the outside lighting so that's another type of non-profit quote non-profit that can benefit from this and if you have a question about whether an organization would qualify you know we would certainly be willing to uh pursue clarification of that matter for you so well thank you very much uh murray and um hopefully you'll get a lot more inquiries right so if you need my email just ask josh mcdonald or missy they can they can hook you up with my email all right very good thanks everybody thank you so that ends our formal uh presentations and um i just like to offer to the planning commission that the next point on our agenda is a report from the energy office and the office of sustainability and one of the things that missy is going to cover is some of the broad details of the settlement agreement between the city and dte and so depending on what other topics you have to consider you're welcome to to stay for that i have a hard stop at 8 00 pm your time 5 pm my time so i'm going to turn over the running of the meeting if i may to my vice chair carlene colin garcia and i'll stay on for just a few more minutes um but then i'll leave but missy um do you want to take things then from here yeah we have a lot of updates relevant to the conversation today so i'm so excited to have some of our planning commission colleagues with us before i kind of give i'm going to give a slew it's going to be like fire hose style friends just letting you know what's about to come your way but before i do that we have a special guest with us coming on camera right now valerie braider is the city's external legal counsel and i invited val to join us to give the overview of the settlement how would you like to take it away sure so i think as many folks saw the ann arbor city council approved unanimously a settlement of the dte voluntary green power case and it had a lot of what we had really wanted to see in it um so i wanted to make sure folks who were very interested were aware because it's good things right now but also the promise of some really exciting things in the future that would not be available but for being able to work with dte under our current law um so the fact that we were able to get it through a settlement is actually better than what we would have been able to get from peer litigation so one of those things is right now the way the voluntary green power programs or the my green power programs work is that residents have sort of access to one program which is backed by certain projects and businesses have access to others newer projects some of which are a lot cheaper than the ones that were built originally to serve the residents and that really created a situation where larger users could get better prices than smaller users and under the settlement there will be one pool of projects so it will no longer be that you know businesses get access to these kind of newer cheaper ones and residents don't it will actually be one pool of projects that we'll be able to uh use so that really should benefit residents who would like to participate another big thing that we got was really talking about landfills the landfill solar project and ann arbor's desire to have some community solar type options uh for residents and we've been able to kind of put those together in the dt has agreed to run a pilot program where if you know ann arbor will essentially build the landfill solar and sponsor it we can open up part of the project to anybody in dte so any customer in dte would have the option to say i want to sign up for that in the same way i sign up for my green power today they'd get a share of our power and get the same credits and the same costs as as we would so it is truly a kind of equal footing for folks who choose to sign up um to participate in sort of whatever size of the project that we would be and this also makes it a lot easier to have the discussions with pittsfield township about their desire to participate because now it's as easy as signing up for a new program you know compared to trying to do all kinds of complicated work arounds it's and again we're able to offer it to residents and businesses so people you know assuming that the project is buildable and is you know comes forward with a reasonable cost so that you know ann arbor wants to go forward will be able to offer that to anyone who wants to have the same solar benefits that we do in terms of ownership and the kind of credits that you would get in the program so while dt will own that program or will own the project um itself on being on the landfill that's probably a good thing for the city because of the liabilities that can come from building on a landfill um there will be that opportunity to participate on an equal footing and get all the benefits of the project you know and the cut costs and all that shared just as if you were you know the the anchor tenant which ann arbor would be so that's really exciting because it gives us a lot of control for being able to offer something that we know residents wanted but also people across dt's territory can participate so that was a big win and then another win really looks at what's in the future for uh our ability to really address some of the equity issues and environmental justice issues while looking at meeting our sustainability goals more efficiently and more quickly and right now michigan is one of only four states where you can get the same kind of green attribute for doing extra energy efficiency as you can for building a solar uh field so if your solar panel would have generated one kilowatt but your energy efficiency project generates or you know prevents one kilowatt from going under michigan law if you work with the utility you can get the same credit for that um nobody has ever tried that and we really wanted dte to try that with us and they have committed to working with us over the next two years to design that kind of program um we call it a voluntary power reduction agreement instead of power purchase agreement that would let a someone like in ann arbor that's saying look i want to be greener immediately it really invests in say schools uh in your disadvantaged areas or host communities that need new boilers or rec centers uh or things for kids or non-profits museums or other kinds of facilities and make those more energy efficient it's great because we know that those that demand means carbon is coming off the grid so not just that we're adding clean generation but we're actually removing a demand that would likely be filled with carbon generation it would also let us again address some of the historic inequities if we wanted to do that and it tends to be quite cost efficient and especially as it may take a while to get things built it can also be a good filler for while you're waiting for that solar to come online you're not waiting to reduce carbon so we're really excited because dt is committed to working with us to try to um put forward that kind of program in the next filing in two years um which would mean it would be available again not just to ann arbor but to other customers that wanted to do the same and both the community solar and the voluntary power reduction agreement and other kind of carbon reduction sort of programs are things that you can't get by suing uh you know the public service commission the government can't force dt to offer exciting products to us but um as part of the settlement process dt did agree to do so in the um anchor tenants for community solar space and then for this voluntary power reduction agreement to work with us over the next two years to develop that product so there were many other good things in the settlement too but in the interest of time i won't necessarily go into those unless folks have questions but really puts ann arbor in a great position to advance some of its sustainability goals in ways that would not have been possible uh but for that settlement thank you so much al so that's one exciting thing that's moving locally i also wanted to share that we have uh respondents in for our rfp for rooftop solar so we're moving that forward that's for city facilities somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 megawatts of particular we hope to have be installed in the future we're working on a parallel rfp for affordable housing sites uh which is super exciting and then here comes the deluge uh we had worked uh i shared this with the energy commission i believe but we had worked uh with congresswoman dingle to submit a bunch of potential infrastructure asks including a net zero energy fire station we are uh building a new fire station fire station four and we've been working with the chief to define that too a net zero energy all electric field uh so we submitted for some funding to support that we also worked with our colleagues at the ann arbor housing commission to submit resources to have all of our housing sites be retrofit to be safer more comfortable all electric and to have generation on site so rooftop or geothermal depending on the assets and the attributes of those that particular set of infrastructure we're looking at that's pretty exciting fingers crossed that that manifests itself excuse me uh i also want to pick up this is where it gets a little crazy in my notes because i was following what rmi was talking about i want to share that tomorrow we do have a heat pump workshop i just checked registration we're over 200 now we're at 209 registrants households for that event which is really exciting this is a workshop that will have contractors there as well as rmi and others to talk about heat pump technology and what really is viable here contractors will be present to have questions from individuals but this is part of educating folks coupons actually do in our climate and what does that mean and what's right for you but many of you identified this is a really sticky problem because it's not as simple as i have to help council member rodina understand that the heat pump makes sense he's going to go to the market and then his contractor is likely going to talk about it so we're also working with michigan saves and others on contractor training and incentive programs so we get to a heat pump first program where when a contractor comes into your home the assumption is that they are helping you make a switch when electric and that it's actually a hurdle to get to natural gas as opposed to right now it is a hurdle potentially even a boulder you have to put up a mountain to get someone to sell you a heat pump so we need to change that aspect we also are working with manufacturers primarily mitsubishi vane carrier and rheem to look at incentive programs in their training so that they're bringing more product they're training their contractors on their products they're giving more incentives so we're trying to intervene at multiple points in the system last thing to share on that part well actually two more things to share we did submit to the governor and ask for new funding from the stimulus that would focus on direct rebates to individuals to do the right thing we're also asking uh our state legislators tomorrow for the same thing right now you can get incentives um you can't get incentives for fuel switching right they go from a natural gas system to a very very efficient electric system you're not going to get support for that so that's one thing we want to rectify and the second is many of the programs we talk about have tax incentives but that doesn't work as we've heard if you're not a tax paying entity and you don't have an llc set up you're low income and you don't pay taxes so why not have a direct rebate to help lower access and get money in people's pockets really fast so more people can access this we're working on multiple points of innovation intervention at the federal and state level with a bunch of others on that initiative we also are launching a sticker replacement campaign i am so sorry everyone i really do talk this fast we have a lot i wanted i want to save you some time uh we have a sticker campaign our stickers are in root uh which you would put on your furnace or your air conditioner and it's cheeky and i am happy to share it with all of you and it's basically saying next time i'll be electric and it's a reminder right because when your furnace goes you're not going to make that switch at that moment or your heat pump goes so how do you make the commitment in advance uh and so we'll be launching that for a20 week which is so exciting a20 week is june 1st through june 6.
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we hope you will all join us we have a series of decentralized and distributed events around town i think last count we're at 20 different events and they center on learning something doing something and having some fun around carbon neutrality and equity work the smattering of events we just solidified we're working with ann arbor public schools so we'll be sending a backpack flyer out um and then all pre-k through fifth grade uh we are doing an emergency preparedness initiative with them to help the families create an emergency plan we're going to be distributing little bedside flashlights to all of the use in pre-k through five they're fun but they're also really functional if you've got a natural disaster right you've got light you've got access you have a financial disaster and you can't afford electricity for some reason you can still do your homework you can access you can feel safe you can sneak under the covers and read a book at night when your parents don't want you to lots of few things can happen with a flashlight so we'll be distributing those through the school and then we'll be doing a competition a drawing for everyone who submits an emergency preparedness plan they'll be entered for a family of four emergency preparedness kit that they can get which comes fully stocked for up to three days of full supplies materials that they would need we're also working with ann arbor public schools to do emergency kit distribution at their food distribution sites uh where we've got our families in the greatest need so we really want to focus on making sure those families have have the resources they need to not just survive but thrive uh gosh let's see so much going on other fun things in a20 week uh we are gonna do meditation which is really key for some of us to like slow our faces down uh we also have a fun event with the ann arbor distilling company they are launching a new drink called tree hugger you might actually see it soon hitting their shelves the proceeds of this drink go to helping to treatment in low-income areas of our community so if you are so inclined to support a local business up on buy we're formally doing a launch on saturday of that event and then there are there's just so much we have a mural that's going to be launched for a20 at gallup uh we're recognizing sustainability champions in the community there's a call for nominations if you know someone that we should highlight uh please take a look and again i'll send a link out to everyone excuse me we're launching 820 kits with ann arbor district library so people can do their own home assessments and learn about energy there's so much it's delightful uh last few things kind of round us out we do work uh this is more for any commission colleagues we meet every month with executives at dte and uh our last month's meeting was on grid capacity and hosting capacity so we are looking at uh what is where we're tight on the grid where we've got room on the grid we're asking for more data and in fact we've asked them to protect a doubling of electrical demand for ann arbor and they are factoring that into their designs and upgrade efforts because our models that fong on the line has helped us develop so that we will double electrical demand with ev charging infrastructure and with the electrification of work this morning so we do meet with them regularly our building department is also helping us start crack electrification when you fill out a permit we might just know you're getting a furnace but we're now going to understand if you want electric free wet gas so we can start seeing how our interventions are or not influencing the market there is so much more but i'm going to stop there that's kind of a smattering of some of the stuff going on it's really good to see your faces and thank you for staying with me for that back over to you coach here come on i was so excited taking all kinds of notes of your update i got questions but i'm going to i'll hold those for another time um like everything that you said was super exciting and i need to submit my sustainability champion application so everyone please think about people in your world and even yourselves and submit submit your nomination okay so moving on to working group updates uh and uh we have a report from the environmental commission which we can we can skip until next month so uh we have the uh which of the groups do we have that are in action right now we have the concierge group that's working correct um who who would like to give an update on that chuck you're on the you're on that in that group right yeah we have our fifth meeting tomorrow night um we're making progress we've created a questionnaire that we're going out to various host cities with and had reporting responsibilities for all the members of the task force and so making movement i think we should have something pulled together here i don't want to speak for the group but month or two out we'll have something some outline or some feedback to this group all right thanks all right and uh the the transportation electrification uh committee uh did not have a meeting this week so or this month i'm sorry um so there's really there's no update at this point in time does anyone else have another update at um councilman burke briggs you have a question i just thought um i since we were doing a joint session of planning commission and energy commission um i had sent a note to mr leonard today asking about kind of an update on the lighting ordinance and he had sent me back an update on that and i just thought others might be interested to know and kind of where we're at in terms of the status of of that ordinance that that our both of our commissions worked together on it could be terrific i thought mr leonard you might want to just it's a brief i thought you might yeah yeah no no no problem um so the um that well work group had put forth a uh outdoor revised outdoor lighting ordinance it was passed by the planning commission some time ago it has been somewhat languishing on my desk the reason for that is some of the conversation that came out of the planning commission was i would say a desire to continue to evaluate whether or not zoning was the proper place for all of the corresponding regulations that were part of that and specifically as it relates to maybe realizing the benefits of it more quickly than zoning would typically provide for zoning is perspective and long and in short i haven't been able to find a lot of good corollary examples that would suggest that there are a lot of opportunities within our legislative framework so the short of it is is that it'll probably be proceeding in its current format as adopted by planning commission without any recommended changes and i anticipate that coming to city council either in june or july for consideration are there any questions from either commission on this okay moving on um this is our opportunity for public input the end of the meeting and if uh um for persons who are interested you have up to three minutes to speak if you're watching on ctn please call 788-0099 or 877-853 and enter the meeting i id number this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press the star 9 on your phone when you hear an automated announcement that the host will uh is allowing you to speak uh when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments awesome we have caller one three four thank you dr stultz and co-chair colton garcia this is ken garber 28 haverhill court a few random comments on the problem of getting developers to go all electric in new construction i really like commissioner hookham's suggestion that we focus on life cycle costs which is also something emphasized in rmi's report on economics of electrifying buildings that mr bridge had mentioned in all seven cities rmi looked at including columbus and minneapolis the life cycle cost of all electric buildings was lower than for gas it's true there can be grid capacity issues as commissioner gibb randall mentioned but so far anyway these haven't kept valhalla glenn viridian 211 packard and lockwood senior living from committing to going all electric yeah every case is different but in general it seems to make economic sense to go all electric in new construction i know planning commission sometimes here's developer say that going all-electric will lead to higher utility bills for residents that wasn't true in five of the seven cities that rmi looked at but i think it's true here when i compared gas to electric for my rental condominium i calculated that i'm paying only 64 cents per therm or 100 cubic feet of gas or 100 000 btus they're all equivalent exclusive of fixed charge charges that compares to a dollar fifty two per therm for a theoretical air source heat pump assuming an average heat pump coefficient of performance of three so that means my heating bills would roughly double if my landlord replaced my furnace with a split system heat pump i might have made a gross error somewhere but i think wayne appleyard came up with similar numbers when he looked at his home there's been some email exchange on this so my question is why are gas heating bills so much lower than um electric heat pump bills would be in ann arbor is it because our electric rates are so high our gas rates are so low or a combination a combination probably but i suspect it's mostly electric rates dte is charging me about 17.5 cents per kilowatt hour assuming 500 kilowatt hours usage per month accounting for six charges as well as the usage base rate that's about 32 percent higher than the national average residential electric rate and significantly higher than what residents of lansing holland traverse city y and dot and chelsea pay yeah rooftop solar can help but we've seen in recent multi-family approvals that rooftop solar only provides a small fraction of the building electric demand if we had a more reasonable residential electric rate the economics of building electrification would be much more favorable so planning commission may not be aware but there's been an active discussion at energy commission in recent months about establishing or moving towards a municipal electric utility to take over from dte apart from better rates a city-owned electric utility should have the ability to acquire renewable exit electricity from the grid to power our newly electrified buildings the vgp settlement that with dte then ms braider discussed uh is great but it does nothing to get us to that goal we do know the challenges of doing a muni but we should consider moving forward with at least a feasibility study and i hope this discussion can continue thank you mr garber anybody else missy no co-chair uh we don't have anyone else from the queue all right okay um so uh we are at 8 20 p.m and thank you so much uh members of the planning commission for joining us on tonight's meeting and i think it was very very beneficial and productive tonight and um perhaps we might want to consider doing something like this again maybe on one of your meetings um or however you know like just it's i think it's very good for us to be able to like get familiar with each other and um utilize each other as resources in our respective uh responsibility here so uh um i believe we should just go ahead and call uh the close of the meeting and uh is there anybody else who'd like to have a make a comment or who has a question at this point okay so you just need a motion to adjourn we need a motion to adjourn okay thank you commissioner lee any i need a second hey councilmember radina meeting is adjourned thanks so much everyone you
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mrs robertson here dr dooley here mr edward here and will miss burnsville mr hopkins mrs duncan on mr arvindton mr justin hi um i'd like to make a motion that we recessed for a few minutes allowed mrs robertson to go and collect some documentation for us i like to make the most robertson hi mrs duncan hi mr hopkins i've been here thank you for your service a little bit they just reactivated [Music] i don't know about that um um i'm gonna use the mic and then so you're just gonna see a bunch of people moving around um um [Music] to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all visitors are welcome to speak on agenda and non-agenda items comments are only 53 minutes please state your name and address prior to linking comments please note that members of board may not discuss items that have not specifically identified on the agenda therefore action taken is limited to directed administration to look into the matter responding to any criticism as scheduling the matter for i would also like to draw attention to the back of the paper that says do personal attacks on board members staff personnel um cfd is a policy that's inside of your handbook i believe that you have somehow you've adopted um it's it at one of the board meetings um i think it was just the last one that happened last month mr robertson had asked for um some solutions to add some to some problems on campus and to possibly have maybe dr julie give some examples i don't know if that's happening still or not i'd like some help telephone like how we can involve community better into the school system so i found this school-based management policy cfd and i highly recommend that you guys take a look at it it says the governing board may delegate to a school council the responsibility to develop a curriculum and they delegate any additional powers that are reasonably necessary to accomplish decentralization this can be something that the board puts forward and it sounds like it's something that the principal um kind of overseas it consists of three parents three teachers one non-certified employee one community member if the school is a high school or two community members if the school is not a high school one student if the school is a high school and the principal and there's many different pages of this policy school-based management there's a regulation and it just goes on and on it helps with conflict resolution and it also uh helps to increase efficiency and effectiveness of school of the school so um if it you know constantly people are coming up here and begging for ways for you to communicate with the community and with the staff this might be a really good solution to that problem um thank you thank you thank you next is jesse green jessie green music teacher 228 first avenue um i just like to give a few final remarks reflecting my time teaching here firstly to my students i had a great time teaching them we started basic from scratch and ultimately we got some difficult advanced sophisticated music uh some of it challenged me uh but we both released a challenge and i'm very proud of the work that we accomplished the last four years many of them unfortunately aren't here on campus i did return so i can't say this in person but i hope this message gets to them and that i wish them the best of luck whether they're coming back next year to finish school or even graduate and go on the life's uh the new challenges that await them in life and i'll miss them uh to the superintendent of the board these last few years have been increasingly frustrating and not necessarily difficult there's little to no protection for us teachers who are rarely met with an attitude of health and cooperation but rather than a punitive approach this is a very dysfunctional disrespectful organization lots of poor communication abuse and policy i didn't serve in the marine corps to get a master's degree to come in and work and be treated like i have been this is why i'm leaving that's why i think the other teacher is leaving probably why i don't continue with you the parents some of the teachers over the last four years i've had a lot of conversations with you out of all these conversations i can't recall a single story where someone had an issue with the board the administration brought to the attention and it was resolved to their favor not a single one it's no wonder why so many families pull their students out this year or just choose not to enroll in the school to live somewhere else community the school has a very bad reputation we're here to serve the students in the community the service that we offer i find is often unsatisfactory to the community i'm not proud of them to be part of this organization i don't say this to be submerged properly unified but i stayed in hopes that the administration and the community do something take some steps approve this place from the top down i wish you guys the best of luck next year too you're gonna need it all the years to come and uh [Music] mr robinson michael robertson 546 west hospital hill um mommy on tuesday absolute question on the survey you have to live the administration with a question about whether the teacher thought the school board members had a good knowledge of the everyday workings in school unfortunately dr julian gave you a non-answer he said some people have that impression and they should have the knowledge that you should have this knowledge and the moment to explain your role is important i can answer your questions doc you already include that question because it doesn't threaten him do any of you realize that dr gillis spent hundreds of dollars of high school health and wellness grant money consult about this survey with grouper qualified professionals who study this stuff emily saunders into the moonlight ten months ago they recommended a school culture survey one that included hundreds of questions separated and tailored to individual stakeholders instructional staff non-instructional staff students and parents dr dooley's survey was 13 non-threatening questions a survey conducted himself among a small population of staff a predominant survey offered none of the benefits outlined in a 24-page presentation that saunders created just for him on administering a school culture survey more importantly it didn't deliver what this board requested for almost two years i heard this board asked dr dooley for an employee satisfaction survey not a survey about what the staff thinks about what the school knows about the school or the board knows about the school not a survey about that bullying is happening but an employee satisfaction survey i would be embarrassed to deliver what he delivers this for he had outstanding resources at his disposal that the district paid for and he ignored them and delivered a stinky feet to the sport lonnie i think that's what dr julie's going to do the less you know about the everyday work useless school the better this board asked for an employee satisfaction survey over and over again for a long long time you didn't get one you still don't have one that should tell you everything you need to know of the interworkings of this school let me be clear so long as dr dooley the superintendent of this district you will not see an employee satisfaction rate mark my words but what can you do about it i don't clearly want the superintendent to conduct an employee satisfaction survey but you can't get it what are you going to do ask her to be an agenda item ask again for the survey and wait two years you're spinning your wheels which is what dr billy wants this board is ineffective for lack of leadership you need the board president that you elected to hold dr dooley the superintendent you hired accountable for ways not to and that's not going to happen and our school suffers for it and the community is watching this broadcast the is leonard edlund i live at shallow ridge rv park and i'm the principal here so month after month we come in here and we sit and we listen to statements by some people that are critical inaccurate misleading without actual factual data behind them and we never get a chance to respond i assure you most people believe the things that they hear because they don't do their research and they don't ask for facts we shared the results of a survey a staff survey that was given to all staff members some chose not to turn it in um on monday night we shared that and that information did validate our effectiveness and willingness to help staff to provide a safe environment however it did show that we had an area that we had to continue to improve on in our communication with both staff and the community and i'm sure that the district will continue to work towards improving that and i ask the community to remember it's a two-way street when we send messages when we request information we have to get responses the survey that we gave was something that we did because it was requested of us as far as i know there's been no direct request from the board of some other survey maybe from a board member but not from the board last month in our public board meeting we had a board member that violated the rules and protocols of an executive session meeting by disclosing information from that meeting in the public coordination this violated the confidentiality trust and confidence of everyone who attended the executive session this was also a clear violation of public open meeting law that was to be self-reported to the state attorney general's office for open meeting law the open meeting law team there and as as of today that there was no record of that that i was able to find so this is something we need to continue to follow through and you have to get better at that as a district and as a community we hear a lot of oh you have to follow policy you're right we do have to follow policy every one of us have to follow and i hope that we all learn from this we all grow from this that's three minutes thank you north street i didn't want to make this an agenda item i didn't want to take up our agenda with things like this but i can if everyone i will be giving an annual scholarship starting this year it will be the rose kurzner cameron memorial scholarship it will be for 500 minimum the stipulations will be the graduating senior will be entering the fields of education or healthcare they will receive 500 they must have a minimum 3.0 grade point average and i will have input from the administration onto the [Music] like myself who have said recipient is registered to attend arizona state university they'll get a 100 bonus on top of that and we'll be giving that out this year thank you superintendent's report i appreciate the fact that mr cruz has been to conduct a scholarship nameless camera's name she was definitely devoted to this school in this district this community and i appreciate what she did i also appreciate some of the comments that mr edwin said about um just because someone speaks they're called public we are limited and it should be this way um and what we say always respond uh unfortunately i think sometimes comments are made that uh people totally understand we're not liberty with disclose information because of family bike privacy actually because of uh personal issues so i'll keep the rest of this brief uh desert say you're contacting me now i've spoken about covid has authorized code i'm sorry cdc has authorized clinics to approve the pfizer use the pfizer a vaccination for students children ages to 15.
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at this time i'd like to call the meeting to order for the dysart unified school district and we'll go ahead and rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and let the record reflect that all board members are present and before we begin our public hearing i do have a statement to make that's been prepared by by the district public meetings are an important component of dysart unified school district governing board members sit together on a common platform to exchange views and opinions and reach solutions benefiting the dysart community behavior of participants and guests at a governing board meeting is important to the successful governance of the district dysart respects the first amendment rights of community members to share their comments with the board through through civil discourse in that vein the following rules will be applied or followed all present will demonstrate behavior that reflects respect for self and others disorderly conduct that interferes with the educational processes of the district according to ars 13-2911 or failure to comply with reasonable requests will not be tolerated any person who engages in disorderly conduct according to ars 13-2904 will be dismissed from the meeting trespassed by law enforcement and or arrested thank you and i'll hand it over to dr kellis thank you madam president i will allow mr hicks to introduce this item good evening good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members i'm before you tonight to present our second and final revision to the 2021 expenditure budget first i'd like to thank miss maridelle spidell spidel and her team for all their work on extremely difficult budget revision as you'll see there's a lot more than a normal budget revision budget revisions are required per 19 15 905 to be done in their respective year before may 15th and my interpretations of 15 905 are that all budget revisions require public hearing so let's start with the mno budget first this is our main budget and our general fund general budget limit and as you can see just quickly on the surface you can see on the total down below that our m o total did decrease by four and a half million dollars and um this was expected so when we revised our budget in december of 2020 ade had not completed or provided our school student data and the reduction for the hundred day nor the remote learning reduction that was coming we had both of those instances that applied to this to us in this instance or the circumstance enrollment first as we discussed this was going to be down we knew with the increased competition um that it was going down thus we budgeted for a reduction with covet it went down a little bit more and we talked previously that it was going down an additional approximately 600 students for a total of about 720 students is what we're planning on it actually ended up with a reduction of almost 900 students so it's a little bit more than what was anticipated or what we were projecting a few months back and so why i am talking about student count and adm right now i think it's for those of us that have been it in this for a long period of time um i don't know if you remember the days when we used to say stace was a four letter word um 10 plus years ago we are back to those times our data has been fraught with errors um the remote learning the calculation the ade our special ed data is um unusually difficult uh this time around and so this uh budget revision is pieced together using march data april data and a little bit of may data and and then running internal reports to verify and try to get the most accurate projection going forward also knowing that our remote learning reduction could shrink and or grow by the end of the year this is through um end of april data also there's a summer school component from the pro not the pre not this year but the previous year that we provided that we've never been funded for that we'll look at additional funding from two so we have a couple of potential ups and downs still happening in this and so back in the days we used to not get our adm data until six months after the school year we still don't have our final adm data and our hundredth day was in the middle of january the third week in january and so we're still working on that and it is still a little convoluted and so just that disclaimer if we would have used the apor 55 report from ade on may 3rd or may 5th it would have shown an extra thousand kids that we know where it's not accurate and we're not going to budget over budget just to see it come down the second so that's the adm and with the reductions from student account the second half of the big part of the reduction of the four almost four and a half million was uh due to remote learning that is when the district started as remote learning as per the executive order all students that were not in person were required to be treated as aoi students from a financial perspective which means we lost five percent of funding for every student that was online or not in person throughout the whole year and so that reduction came in at around two million dollars as well there were a few other adjustments as noted in the forms which is an ade audit adjustment that's from a three-year ade comes out and does a deep dive on the students and found that there's a negative adjustment there of a few hundred thousand dollars we also had a transfer from our m o over to our energy and water savings fund that is for the led and energy management systems controls that we were implementing throughout this year using the savings from our utilities to make the lease purchase payments on that project and that was approved back in august and is still in implementation mode as it's going through the district to implement all of those so they all contributed to the reduction and as we have been saying um and have talked about the governor provided the enrollment stability grant and sr-1 that carries relief covet fund was for this purpose it was for there was an anticipated we knew there'd be a reduction of students we knew there'd be a reduction for remote learning and so those funds the 5.2 and esg and the 3.9 for master one was provided exactly for this reason and it worked essentially so consequently with the reduction we moved some expenses out so as i just mentioned the esg ester we moved some expenses out of our mmo and moved it over to our federal projects line so on the budget forms that's page six of eight mainly what was moved out or put into those funds was tech devices so chromebooks some technology devices to help the instructional we put could move custodial out so that was the mno plan operations that was reduced reduced down and we moved our sub costs our permanent subs over there and there was a reduction in transportation not that we transported less but at the beginning of the year if you remember we created learning labs those were funded with our transportation staff to put those at every school that program was funded um in the federal in those federal programs and so those expenses were also moved out and that had a reduction i'm taking them out of transportation and over to that so there's a lot to unpack in that but that is a summary of that our capital funds you can see unrestricted capital really didn't change that much that's based on previous year adm so it wouldn't change that much due to some instability in our student count but the building emergency or the emergency building renewal grant program this is through the arizona school facilities board you can see this continues to grow from where it was from where it was two years ago i think two years ago was less than a hundred thousand dollars mr young and his staff continue to look and um get out and anticipate in a very early manner anything that could potentially be eligible for the sfb for those that projects that are failing capital purchases a lot of these are roofs the large ones roofs we have a lot of chillers we have a lot of hvac equipment in here i think we have a fire alarm panel emergency notification system may be in there so as they are eligible and they're failing we're identifying it and instead of covering out of our capital costs we're submitting it to the state for reimbursement or for covered and they are doing that and so i think in december i said no i wouldn't be shocked if this was going up to two million dollars you could see with the recent awards or we're anticipating the awards on june 2nd um that it should be up to 2.6 million dollars and from those programs so very good job um by mr young classroom site fund also this is based on previous year's data so you can see very very minor adjustments special project funding this you can see a huge increase from the adopted to the revised to the revised number two up to 41 million these are esg our enrollment stability stabilization grant the sr1 and sr2 all in here contributing to that huge increase the state grant increase that's primarily due to our results-based funding increase and food service holding steady as we just like to always remind our community and staff and anybody that like to watch this presentation we also here's the place on our website under district budgets to click on and you can see there's just a wealth of information not just some narratives up top on it but then all the different official forms that are going on and then our average teacher salary so a lot of information we try to be as transparent using it pushing out and publishing as much as we can on our website for anyone to see and anyone to call and meet with us about because we don't mind meeting with anybody to talk about that so um and then uh finally here's the rainbow report this really is just a analytical tool to peel off and look at a 30 000 foot view and provide some context which is some trending data the very top is aligned to our revised budget so you can see revised budget too and it just really looks at the main funds that the governing board has total control over so we normally exclude a lot of the federal funds for example food service is the example we normally use to say hey let's not include that in the audit the auditor general includes it because it's part of all funds but let's not include it for this analysis because we can't move dollars into the classroom out of the national school lunch program because we're required to follow those federal rules and requirements title funds have a lot of restrictions and a lot of guidelines that we have to follow and so let's take those funds that we have the most control over and the governing board does and let's just look at where they are and so how much is going in the classroom these are the function codes that are identified per the usfr and the auditor general so that we can do comparisons within districts within states or between states and so just look at where we're going and you can see we're still looking at budgeting 61 almost 62 percent into the classroom and then below that is the actual annual financial report so not just where we budgeted but let's just see where we actually spent so you can compare year over year those expenses and you could see instruction going up a little bit you could see admin costs holding plant operations you can see that's down and that's specifically because of the federal funds that we just talked about that we're moving over our custodial costs out and then also transportation costs down a little bit but it's up down on the mno side up on the capital because we did buy some buses and so we have capital increase but we have an mno reduction so it offsets and looks like it's an increase uh the emino side it's went down but the capital side it went up so this really just tries to provide just a little bit of a thousand thirty thousand foot level just to see some of those trend data and as i talked about down below is the auditor general school district spending report to see what their numbers are and so you can see a little correlation you could see some about analysis of fy 20 dollars in the classroom percent was 57 percent but yet of those funds you have most control was which means all those more restrictive funds coming in primarily went outside the classroom because they didn't follow the same percent if they were the exact same percent at 60.98 that means the exact same funding level was being proportionally appropriated out to the different function codes and it wasn't primarily went outside of classroom to other areas in that sense so that's really i'm just trying to provide additional context so that you have a better understanding as where we're trending where we're going and what we're budgeting for and i think that brings me to the end and i will stand for any questions or if the public has any comments questions madam president um as part of a public hearing this would be a time if anybody from the public wanted to address the board regarding the information that was just provided if there is nobody then we can proceed with the agenda do we have anyone that would like to make a public comment okay thank you thank you so much all right and we'll begin our regular meeting and moving on to item c1 recognitions and celebrations dr phillis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet dr pulling will introduce this item good madam president members of the board cabinet and an audience it's my pleasure to recognize the dysart pod team the pod team it's a point of distribution team for the code vaccine and this team came together to work very hard to host a cobot vaccine for all local educators and daycare workers so not just dysart folks but the whole community and of course you have to have two dates several weeks apart they hosted both days and we had a total of about 800 local educators and daycare workers vaccinated with covid thanks to the great efforts of this team so i'd like to recognize dr corey montano our director of exceptional student services and jack and jackie hoffler our lead nurse and uh lori mourinho a regional nurse and doug curry our director of transportation and alan van horn our facilities manager so great job to you team tremendous effort thank you so much for all you did thank you all and last but not least like to recognize renee ryan our director of pr giveaway renee she's working over there continuing with our recognitions this evening we would like to turn our attention to our career and technical education students in the ctso state state placements so good evening madam president members of the of the governing board dr callison members of cabinet the cte department is excited to recognize the cte student organization state results career and technical education student organizations are one piece of successful cte program all of these students participated in the virtual version of the state ctso competition and this evening we're going to honor our students by high school we're going to begin with dysart high school and the sports medicine students is that correct miscellany all right very good so and their teacher missolini second place student in medical reading lindy poddle come on down [Applause] and we have and she's also an international qualifier we have a seventh place um finisher in epidemiology and that's lane vasquez luna [Applause] and missolini i'm going to ask if you'll come forward and introduce the last our last recognition you can do it right there just say it loud and proud um i believe that was digital photography and this is miss taylor mccormick come on down thank you missolini [Applause] all right moving on and we should have our students from shatter ridge is that correct yes all right good i can read and we have the right folks that's a good thing so we're going to start with our students our animation students um our skillsusa instructor uh mr scott kaczynski we had 3d vigilation gold first place alessandro nieto and cayden greenfield if you're here come on down if not we'll give them a round of applause we had our architecture students once again place in the national homebuilders association student design championships with second third and fourth place and that's emma davis saban sebastian st germain savannah starks charlie motley and mckenna braden if you're here come on down all right we're over two with digital communications we had alyssa horton gina mcfarland lilly combs bella camarillo jessica chappelle and ariana block black oh for three all right how about we give him a round of applause [Applause] all right this one i know is here because i see ms fusell our marketing students we had emma bellinger first place in career development project how about cole callister second place financial literacy zoe claussen fifth place entrepreneurship why don't you just tell us your name okay hold on just a second let me see if i can find it on our list and we'll be good to go so all right i'm just going to keep reading names until we find you and we'll be good to go also we had from marketing deca brodie fusell austin coochie bryson fusell mercedes joyce jamie springer cole summers aiden volkman aha very good i'll give give these gentlemen a round of applause [Applause] christina dunham nicole glabba paige kelly paige come on down [Applause] pages says here that you are first place in personal financial project is that correct congratulations also stephen mckellar had first place in personal finance project come on down [Applause] how about kyla proctor no okay all right do we have any sports medicine students over there all right so in sports medicine we had emily bingham in first personal care skyler nelson first clinical nursing and emma horton third in sports medicine congratulations excellent job we'd also like to thank miss donovan as well for being here thank you all right on to valley vista high school culinary arts with our fccla instructor matt dawson ali luft and haley morse first place come on down [Applause] come on down that means keep walking all right on to willow canyon and i will okay if you guys will hold right there i'll call your name and when i call your name come forward and we're gonna recognize them as a group so if you could hold your applause until we get the entire group up here you guys are all host of sports med right yeah all right that's the field to be so with sports uh medicine and our teacher mr miller we had madison abdu veterinary science international qualifier and health care issues tyra davis behavioral health we had brenna dykstra we have karina ricketts garduno autumn goodlow jasmine laby alyssa morris amy peka emily riley hannah rubin and piper salo and we have brooke shimanowski catherine ramos tobar and siobhan morris come on down hosa students and mr miller come on down as well you guys are awesome great work continuing on with willow canyon do we have lab assisting folks do we have tv production folks do we have skills usa graphics media aha all right with miss mctag we have katie daley annalise diggs marcus allorado ariana peterson jackson mcgee allison coltsbar and justini justini bramblitt come on down give him a round of applause [Applause] thank you so much and congratulations on a great year everybody with ctso thank you very very much give another round of applause yeah you can go out right out right out that way thank you very much you as well and continuing on to our final recognition this evening we have two recognitions to make one both are cheer teams once your team is unable to be here tonight because they are having tryouts for next year and that is the willow canyon high school cheer team who won their national championship um in their division so congratulations posthumously to willow canyon high school's cheer team [Applause] and here in person this evening we have valley vista high school's cheer team who was the national champion in co-ed cheer would you please give them a round of applause [Applause] and they are here this evening with their coach coach trish brown congratulations ladies and gentlemen okay and madam president that concludes our recognitions for this evening all right next we have item d1 audience with individuals ms pritchard no okay thank you all right and next we have the student update dr kellis thank you madam president this evening we welcome our two students from the dysart student leadership team three students yesterday our council yesterday our council met to celebrate the success that we've had over this past year even with covid we were still able to hold community service project which fed 20 000 families across our community at our last update we told you plans to send out a district-wide survey with students in the district and we would like to highlight some of the responses we got back when we asked for one word to describe dysart some of the things we heard were flexible inclusive and diverse when we asked for when we asked students to share a dizer extraordinary experience with us this is what we got an extraordinary an extraordinary experience that i had and will continue to have is all of the social events and clubs that i'm in another response we had was that dysart is very inclusive of everybody the staff and teachers make sure that everyone feels welcome and included so that everything gets done another response we had was that the specialized courses that can help teach essential skills and lead you down an amazing career and life path and these are just some of the responses we've received and we also want to thank dr kellis for his support miss louisa brown for getting the buses here getting the meals there and the rest of the cabinet and board for their support as well so thank you thank you these uh these young men and women have done a fabulous job throughout the year they represent an entire council which are representatives from each of the high schools they meet monthly here at the district office and they will continue during the upcoming year to to do so and do extraordinary things for the students of of the district all right next we have the superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this last week dr celebrated our teacher appreciation week and expanded that to all of our employees and we absolutely um are the district we are because it's a collective effort of so many people of our community we took a little bit of time to recognize our employees but we also recognize its parents it's students it's it's our community so um it's it's a great time to stop and reflect on everybody that that makes a difference here and i again extend my appreciation to all of our employees in the district this is the week before the last week this is the last week for our seniors they finished up their final exams this friday and then we will be pleased to celebrate their graduation ceremonies next week at the state farm stadium all of our other students will continue through next week and we wish them the very best of success throughout the rest of this week but also throughout the summer and we hope that they all come back safe and sound in the fall that's all i have to report thank you dr kellis next we have governing board update i'll open it up for anyone that has an update to share go ahead um i just attended a few things uh the valley vista honors convocation uh the safe day mayo steamtastic event at thompson ranch and the shadow ridge end of the year dance recital just a couple of things i too attended this um i probably say it wrong this uh demaio steamtastic celebration at thompson ranch um i think uh dr sanders was just giddy um at the amount of people that were actually at the event um the folklorico dances and the band in the courtyard and uh walking around to the different classrooms to seeing all of the steam projects that the kiddos have been working on for several months it was fantastic also attended the dsb live awards ceremony even though it was the first year it won't be the last there were so many different stories and videos that were put on by the students and i it wasn't just for dysart it was also some points in there with the city of surprise so i know the kids learned a lot but then with the help of mr yoder and all of the instructors he actually makes fun learning fun so thank you for everybody's work for that vital industry i also attended the bands concert that was at willow canyon but it featured the the marley park canyon ridge countryside bands and it was the first time i had ever heard a song called mouthpiece mania the trumpet players took the mouthpiece and they did the entire songs with the mouthpiece so it was totally awesome uh yes teacher appreciation week was last week and we recognized all staff for their appreciation but i did want to especially thank the nurses because that was nurses week also the rns the lpns cnas mas especially going above and beyond just putting a band-aid on a skinned knee we do appreciate for what they've gone through over this past year and yes graduation is next week big celebration working towards uh their diploma um it's been a a hill to climb so congratulations on your accomplishments and also the fact that we have 54 dysart students that will be receiving their arts seal on uh their diplomas this year and you know they had so many things that they had to do 80 hours of extracurricular activities and a capstone project at the end so there was a total of 665 students across the state of arizona we also had three students out of 13 across arizona that received a double seal on their with their certificate so they actually completed two disciplines so it it goes to show you that the arts and the athletics and the academics in dysart make a profound statement on our students so i am really looking forward to graduation and i know a lot of our students are as well so keep up the great [Applause] all work uh next we have the item f1 and i will make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented seconded by ms grant motion passes thank you next moving to information item h1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening item h1 is again our ongoing monitoring of our governing board policies and this week we bring forward section 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
do so do okay six o'clock on the dot we're gonna call this meeting to order at six o'clock i need um a motion to adopt the agenda you boys are on it's just me and the boys tonight so they're gonna be hot today okay i move that we approve the minutes from the last meeting or the agenda sorry make second okay all in favor aye aye aye motion carries three to zero uh we'll go ahead and do the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay well welcome everybody it's uh oh do we need to approve the meeting minutes yes oh all right never mind hold please um don't don't welcome him we're gonna take back all right um i'll need a motion to approve the meeting minutes all right i moved to approve the meeting minutes as presented second motion carries through to zero okay now welcome everybody it's it's awesome to see this house packed for such an exciting thing so we're just gonna get right to it dr wyman okay i got a couple things on our student are on the superintendent's report and then we'll move into the recognition portion of it uh you do have the numbers for enrollments again there's not a comparison of previous years just because last year during covet 19 we weren't we weren't tracking this i'll just say the pattern is holding in terms of what the numbers look like this uh this month in comparison previous month so there's no drastic change there i did want to let you know on uh honor for the business services so carla and her department received the certificate of excellence in financial reporting from asbo [Applause] this particular award recognizes school districts across the country that have met or exceeded the program's high standards for financial reporting and accountability the district was recognized for its comprehensive annual financial report what's called the kafir for the fiscal year ending in 2020 this is the 11th consecutive year the business services has received this award and it's just a validation to our community that we spend our dollars wisely and and in line with accepted practices also marketing we have introduced some new software to track both incoming prospective families and those who want to come into the district as well as those that are in the district we law requires that all uh families in the state review their information on the student information systems every single year so we're using a system that's actually taking care of both of those those both of those uh uh things one when we started this in april or february excuse me for the kinder roundup we generated uh another 31 new students that may be coming into our district next year based on enrollment we have others that we're still working on and if you put a value to that that ends up being 170 000 to the budget with the general enrollment campaign we're looking at potentially of 111 new students to date and this was as of last friday uh and uh uh it's just a way for us to reach out to our community or to our families and respond to their request for information in some cases requesting information about our district and what it takes to sign up and then in other cases it's just part of the enrollment process that enrollment process and verification of the information that we have on record for families is extremely critical for us as we've noticed this year with covid trying to communicate with families if we have a bad email address or a bad phone call it creates its own set of issues and so it's critical for that during that process we also are allowing families to indicate uh are they gonna be online next year are they gonna be in person that it's not a binding thing that if you say you're gonna be in person then you can't go uh virtual next year but it starts to give us a rough idea of how many families are looking at in person how many families are looking at online so that we can go ahead and do some planning uh as we move forward so we just started that and we're seeing some really good numbers and we just need to continue working on that did want to make you aware that the boys basketball team had six players awarded for making the academic all-state for 2021 uh the first team academic all-state were 100 claire levi tuckfield uh alex aikens and brody tucker and then we had uh isaiah excuse me isaac guevara and tanner price that were arnold mentioned all-state so on top of being a successful basketball team they also are taking care of business in the in the classroom and we always love that um on april 29th it was international dance day and the combs high school dance participated in the rush dance company uh celebrity dance competition uh with everything going on this year it was the only competition of the year and they scored high goals in all five of their dances their piece emotional mirage by a guest artist angel castro earned second place for the senior open division and the sophomore student arianna bondrak's piece ain't no sunshine earned a score of only two only 2.5 points away from a platinum scoring so overall they did an outstanding job um with the dance company so again just trying to show some of the good things that are happening in the district uh and then i would just remind everybody graduations the 26th at six o'clock at the stadium so please let us know uh if you're coming and then in in june we do have our regular board meeting on the ninth but also a uh board retreat on the 21st so we'll we'll give you more information as we get closer to that now what we'd like to do is recognize some staff members and what we're going to do a couple different things we have actually some staff recognition and some student recognition given the crowd we'd like to go ahead as we recognize the different groups have that have them come up the different individuals receive an award or recognition and then if you go back and just sit take a seat and one we've done recognizing everybody we'll go ahead in the back corner we'll take pictures of the different groups all at one time students of the month as well as the the the different uh employee groups that are getting recognized that'll be a great time for pictures for my parents or family members um and so we'll take a little pause but we'll do it after we give everything out otherwise it'll get confusing as we're trying to take groups back there for pictures and announce groups up here and it'll take us twice as long to get through this so we'll recognize the groups and then we'll take pictures at the very end so right out of the gate the first thing we would like to do is recognize individuals in the district who are retiring at the end of the current year and what we've decided this year is to go ahead and recognize those employees with five or fewer years of service with a certificate and those with six or more years of service in the district will retire give a retirement gift which is a plaque that looks like this so we're going to call them up one at a time to give them recognition and miss hargis will help out i don't know if everybody's here yet because it's been confusing but uh retiring with two-year service in the district but many more years of service in the education uh celia erickson i'm not sure if she's here i'm another individual with many years of service and education but four years of distinguished service in the district the 80 scott schmidt [Applause] with six years distinguished service in the district but also again a number of years of distinguished service elsewhere randy bunch come on down randy uh with nine years distinguished service in the district susan belshee nine years in the district richard [Applause] dobson ten years with the district ready for retirement rebecca river we got we'll move on 12 years distinguished service with the district robert canela and 20 years with the district done an amazing job keeping the district on the straight and arrow when it comes to finances carla slovicky i'll get them to you and now we'll have uh dr duplis has come up with excellence in education awards through the combs educational foundation madam president governing board members and dr wyman thank you for the opportunity to share to discuss and celebrate our incredible staff in our schools we're very blessed here at combs before doing so though as the executive director of the combs education foundation i'd be remiss if i did not share what the foundation does for this beloved district the cef is made up of 14 community members from business education and the service world the mission of the combs education foundation supports educational opportunities for students staff and families by funding the development and implementation of quality programming establishing strong community partnerships and sharing the goal of the j.o combs unified school district we fulfill this mission each year by giving three in three important areas we raise money for student scholarships and awards and this year we've had four major donors mccarthy construction arcadus sps plus architects and stifel we also give out scholarships to our students at the high school tomorrow at combs high school at 8 45 a.m in the gymnasium we're going to be giving away 11 scholarships to our chs students and this year we also developed two new scholarships the zulfer thompson cte scholarship and the arcadis scholarship and we also sponsor the staff excellence awards which we'll be giving out tonight tonight's awards may look a little different the apple of course symbolizes the love that children have had for many many years for their teachers you know we used to give an apple to the teacher every day when you walked into the classroom and the blue symbolizes of course combs as we see on a lot of our literature so we're really happy to be able to give these out tonight and the foundation is very proud to be able to share this with all of our staff before sharing the finalists for the staff excellence awards i must ask you which i will always do as the executive director if you have a company or you're involved in a company that wishes to donate time money and energy to combs we'd love to have you and i'd love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you or a cup of tea depending on what you drink at this time i have the sincere pleasure of announcing the staff excellence awards could i have the following finalists for the rookie award come on up and i have some colleagues that will help me could i have darby pyle from combs high school joey partee from comes middle school angela butler from cta raquel white from ellsworth kylie fisher from harman and laura gardy from symington [Applause] we are very proud to announce the rookie of the year for the combs unified school district darby pyle from the high school [Applause] and now we'd like to award the non-certificated support staff members of the year could i have david bastillos from the high school come on up john goodwin from combs middle school [Applause] adrian nava from cta jenny mcguire from ellsworth margaret kane from harmon [Applause] loretta lotta from ranch and lori ostrich from symington [Applause] we're very proud of you all and all the hard work that you put into every day my father was a custodian and my mother was a food services worker as i was growing up so i understand the hard work that you put in congratulations to this year's 2021 non-certificate staff member of the year john goodwin from the middle school and now we'd like to have the certificated licensed non-teacher of the year come up these are the nominees from your sites brenda lore from the high school cheryl king from combs middle school casey bates from cta leah carberhall from ellsworth brenda scepter from harman [Music] john grafing from ranch and jolene king from simonton thank you for all your hard work and support in the schools we appreciate everything you do every day the winner of the 2021 certificated licensed non-teacher of the year is casey bates from cta thank you and now if i could have the nominees and finalists for the teacher of the year jane chu from combs high school craig palm from combs middle school chrissy kepp from cta kelly bond from ellsworth my name wilton from harman steve frank from ranch and cynthia soto from symington thank you for all your hard work every day especially this year with the awkwardness of the covid issues that we've dealt with so we appreciate your hard work determination and dedication to the district for the teacher of the year for 2021 kelly bond from ellsworth thank you thank you everyone and my apologies and oversight brenda lore is with us two years she's retiring also she was recognizing the counselor we want to thank brenda too and then dr duplicious we're into students of the month all right that's right we're going to call up mr jesse crowe director of ancillary services at banner health he'll explain a little bit about what's going on in banner health and then we'll recognize the students thank you thank you pleasure to be here with you and congratulations to all the award recipients um i'm jesse crowe i'm the director of ancillary services at banner ironwood madam president board members superintendent it's a pleasure to be here with you guys today um just wanted to give you a little information and update on some things going on at the banner ironwood hospital next week we will open our first inpatient pediatric unit at banner ironwood this is going to be very instrumental for the community currently when we do have pediatric patients that need to be admitted we have to transfer them to usually banner desert which as you know is far away from our community and so next week we'll be opening six beds and on a campus for pediatrics we recently hired ten pediatric nurses in the last three months of at banner i award we have two positions still available so if you know any pediatric nurses please let us know okay also we're celebrating our one year anniversary of our infusions therapy center at banner ironwood as well this has been a great success for our community historically patients needing long-term antibiotics iron any blood transfusion they would have to go to banner baywood or banner desert to get those infusions and one of the things that we notice antibiotics usually is a six week course which is infused every day for an hour for six weeks and we've had many community members transfer traveling to banner desert and back every day for six weeks so now that we've opened this infusion center they can stay close to home and can be well taken care of by the by their community secondly i just want to thirdly i'd like to mention our ed wait times we've put a lot of work on trying to reduce the ed wait times i don't know if any of you have had to use our ed but we've historically there's been some delays in the ed and she's had to so i just want you to know that you can trust that we're trying to cut that wait time down as much as possible and we want to make sure that you know like our mission says we want to make health care easier so your life can be better thank you [Applause] thank you jesse for your report and thank you for your community involvement and everything that you do over at the hospital jesse if you wouldn't mind going over to the over that side over there and we're going to do some awards to our students could i have laura farnsworth from combs high school come on up we will make sure that mrs farnsworth is recognized at a later date could i have alexander snaith come up from combs middle school [Applause] you ready all right you gotta turn around and look at everybody okay there you go good job alexander is a very diligent student he always works hard towards his success he has also no we have also noticed and this is um his one of his teachers mr johnson has noticed that alex will take an assignment and go way above beyond and he is on what he's assigned and he makes it even better than required alex is also a very willing helper he will help other students complete their assignments when he's once he's completed his own he spends his time his free time to help others be successful alex is always respectful inquisitive and a willing discussion participant congratulations alexander you were nominated by mr johnson and the combs middle school team could i have abigail butler come up from cones traditional academy there you go good job look at that abigail butler is a curious learner respectful classmate and an exemplary cta knight she's a high achieving academic student and also an active student in our community she shows leadership within our nehs club and our yearbook club abigail is also known for rigor responsibility and respect regularly say that rigor responsibility respect love it this daily sustained level of excellence has allowed her to progress through our behavior recognition program to the level of a night congratulations abigail abigail can be counted hold on abigail can be counted on to engage with others in a calm positive and collaborative way so that all are involved that are heard and valued congratulations abigail butler could i have miguel valle come up from ellsworth ready okay there you go good job miguel joined mrs mcclure's class this last quarter of third grade of the third grade he's been learning virtually since the beginning of the year miguel has been a great citizen in the classroom community in class and online he's respectful he's a respectful young man that listens to the speakers and participates in the activities and discussions miguel is kind to his classmates and cooperates with them during that throughout the day it is nice to have miguel as a role model in class i can count on miguel to work hard ask questions and always show that big smile every day you were nominated by mrs mcclure and congratulations miguel could i have claire hume come up from harman [Applause] could i have mackenzie martinez come up from ranch [Applause] this is mackenzie we at ranch would love and like to nominate mackenzie martinez for the student of the month she's a great example to all of her peers she is always honest kind and does the right thing when no one is watching which by the way is a huge leadership trait when no one is watching being a leader mackenzie always follows the rules and helps her friends follow the rules too she takes care of things in the classroom and always remembers to clean up again another great rule to remember as a leader we're very proud of mackenzie congratulations mackenzie i'm i'm pretty sure that the staff the staff should have come up that way to to receive their awards yeah where was the hoppiness skipping where was the hopping and skating i'm a little disappointed now kelly i want to see it on the way out every day again this is the best part of my day i say it every time right could i have joshua blinko come up from symington and he's wearing a cubs hat look at that joshua is a great example of a good citizen he always has a smile on his face and he treats everyone with kindness he always shows respect for others and for their property when joshua is asked to do something he does it without hesitation or complaint he's always willing to help others and he goes above and beyond to offer whatever help is needed joshua is also a great listener whether he's listening to his friends or to his teacher during class he always stays engaged on on task and joshua follows the rules even when he thinks nobody is watching are we seeing a theme there's a theme here he always strives to do the right thing which makes him an outstanding citizen congratulations joshua okay we're gonna go ahead and just take a a few minutes break so we can get pictures of all the different groups for the staff members at juan awards we do have boxes up here that you can put them in so you don't have to carry them you might want to get the picture first and then put it in the box but coming up we'll give you a box so we'll take a few minutes parents uh loved ones if you want to take pictures you'll get them it'll be in the back behind that uh i learned this from marking that step and repeat that says combs so we'll take a few minutes go ahead and get those pictures thanks thank you congratulations thank you congratulations nice now yourself can we do it in the order could we have the retirees the retirees please go to the back there where the blue is and we're going to get the retirees first then the rookie teachers of the year thank you thank you sir thank you sir we could have rookies of the year back there and then the non-certified staff will be up behind them so rookies of the year that'd be great okay okay now we'll have the non-certificated staff members the support staff members and then the certificate non-classroom wait kayla i think we have one more david do you need a picture now the non-certificated teachers of the year and then we'll have the teachers of the year followed by the students non-certificated staff first then teachers you might want to let the winners teachers of the year now what so we'll do teacher of the year hey and now if we could have the students of the month back there so we get a picture of all the students of the month parents great opportunity to take a picture this time too how are you hey how are you tonight sir are you i'm sure yeah you're okay hey you know what this time of the year beginning of the year you know it's you just got to get through it you know yeah i saw them out there doing some surveying are you guys getting ready to break ground on the new high school down on the rigs very close very close that's right at the end of my development i'm over there with erica and orchard ranch so i know that we had talked and that was yeah i don't i don't like i i have my lanes right you know so i don't know that the purchase is final i think it's very very close i don't even know i just know that it's i know you guys own that big piece of land i know originally they talked about an elementary going in at that one right in front of our development because it's had to sign up here for years well like i said i i don't blame you i see it i see the presentation once a year you know like here's the property we own here's you know here's what we think we should do with that and i'm like you know when i left mesa i was done with all of that so i i mean it's not that i don't find it interesting i do but like i said i got my own stuff to worry about oh i know you guys ready to roll i'm ready all right we're going to go ahead and move on with this uh this meeting here uh the last thing is that the governing board uh updates do you guys have anything that you would like to share no okay believe it or not i do one it's for bob but bob did um get somebody the julie from asba got back with him and about this the uh the superintendent evaluation that we're gonna do for them i know you're super excited chad however um so anyway she did get back with him and that we're going to go ahead and try to do that whole pilot thing and you know what you could give her your feedback of it is too long why did you encourage bob i don't hey that's not very nice we all just want to get along and play nice in the sandbox we'll try it out um the last the other thing i had was that i um i don't see john strogam here but um i attended the cte awards and it was um very nice it was a awesome event for our children the cte all the cte teachers it was uh it was a great event so and they kept it under an hour better so um anyway um let's move on do we have any public comments no we don't okay all right so then do we have any questions on the consent agenda i had one question on 7.8 that's the one that we had talked about before with the landscape management correct we talked about before yeah no questions that was easy any others chad all right then um i will take a motion i move to a pres present the i'm sorry i moved to approve the consent agenda as presented second all in favor aye aye motion carries three to zero i would like to take a moment just in personnel we do have uh three uh individuals that were i know carla you're trying to get up you're trying to get up and you're trying to get out the door your last budget revision of your career sorry you're gonna have to wait a little bit longer i would be there if i wouldn't get interrupted [Laughter] we did have uh some individuals that were approved under the personnel that are new administrators and so just want to introduce them real quickly so they can stand up we have bob anderson who will be replacing rich dobson bob [Applause] bob's had a lengthy career in uh a variety of different places you don't need to speak bob we're going to let you go because we're going to do early we usually have like a a minimum of a five-page speech but today we're going to let it go [Laughter] and so bob will be starting and replacing rich and we're looking forward to having bob with us then over at the high school we have two new assistant principals uh first mike griffith who is coming from marcos denisa a long time long time assistant principal in temp union at marcos and at uh mountain point uh and also mr carl hill within the district who's now moving up to assistant principal so we welcome aboard them with the leadership team and just know the first meeting you'll be attending will be june 1st and june 8th it'll be all day and we'll just have a grand time getting to know you yeah but we will feed you so you're okay then you say june 1st through june 8th june 1st okay yes mark out your calendar now jack brief [Laughter] okay carla 8.1 you go girl madam president just yell yes i will um this is budget revision too i'll make it very quick because it was it's just a 95 000 reduction what happened was we had a slight increase in enrollment from when we revised back in december and so that that increased about 142 000 in the budget limit and then again the district learning adjustment took place when we initially put our number in which was about 22 percent of our students we had a reduction about 279 000.
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here catherine hodgkin here rich genelli here el russo here amy spallano here i'm two missing okay thank you um now we're going to turn the recognition part over to uh dr seth yes thank you very much we'll start with um with jill is jill here yes i am today well first of all jill i just want to put you on a pedestal and say thank you for all that you've done you've led the uh music department in ways that i i just can't imagine it's been wonderful you've brought in a lot of resources we've got so many youngsters now on instruments and it's really been a guiding light for us so you're coming through financial tough times boards and usually look at curtailing those but our board has been very supportive but it would have been difficult without your leadership and getting the grant and the instruments for the kids to play it's very um very expensive so um we got an award maybe you could talk to the board about the award again and let them know what you're doing please thank you absolutely thank you so much dr sal and i um would like to echo your your words that it's it's been the support of the administration the board of education the school district fellow teachers and all contents our parents and our community because we still show that we believe in educating the whole child and we believe in the arts and we believe in all content areas and that's just a very important message that we are sending out and we just can't thank you enough for all of your support that you continue to give us um it has been it has been a crazy year right i guess that's the easiest word for it and um last march the uh the lights went off and the sound went off in our music rooms literally um it was we've never heard quiet music rooms before and that's that had been what we had been hearing for a long time so like every other educator we've you know we've worked really hard to to gain as much as we can in resources um to do as much blended learning and in the process as a department we've learned amazing ways to work together that we haven't had the opportunity before and really amazing ways to move students forward after we come out of this and i do believe that we're going to come out of this in a great spot um we we began the the save the music grant about i want to say four or five years ago it began with three of our elementary schools we were given a core band grant for each of the schools there is obviously a lot of requirements that we follow in order to keep that grant following our first year we received three more grants moving forward to there we also have seen grants and additional instruments on top of it go to shelter rock school um with the pandemic there's been a lot of freezing you know i think in the grant and non-profit world but we were able to achieve a hybrid piano that we brought put to one of our middle schools it's a top of the line piano that records and just all wonderful things that support students in addition to save the music foundation we've been so blessed to work with an organization called little kids rock they're a national organization whose pedagogy um reflects modern band music and teaching kids what they what they know and what they're interested in so when we think about student-centered learning and we think about tapping into our kids interests that that's where that's where it begins um using music as a second language we've been able through that grant to obtain guitars and drums and electric basses and ukuleles and keyboards and i even feel like a rock star doing it and i didn't feel like one before so it's been it's been a really great experience and expanding it to all of our k-12 schools um that program has been wonderful as well um very surprisingly we did receive another grant this year um as you know with with all the mitigation strategies we've been doing to keep our students and our staff healthy and safe and to get back into schools which is which is what we all want uh we were able to we we uh it was a ten thousand dollar grant actually um from save the music foundation that was funded by sony and it was ppe equipment for our wind instruments the national federation of high schools released their third round of aerosol studies which shows all of the safe mitigation and ways that we can be performing in school that guidance has gone out to the district a huge thank you to kathy and to courtney who provided the masks and the funding we needed additional surgical masks and can 95 masks to go along with that and the district came through and i just really wanted to acknowledge the tremendous help they've given us through this um although we've lost a lot of authentic music making as we knew it we've gained a lot and what what warms my heart is when i see i saw in the beginning of the year teachers actually outside of their schools waiting for students to come with instruments to change uh strings to tune instruments to give kids the paperwork that they needed um we had a teacher in the beginning of the year that did a tremendous donor's choose and was able to send music kids home with every one of us t students and two elementary schools um so i think the more the more we've gotten for this the more we've learned and i just again i couldn't feel proud and honored to work with the group of teachers that i do work with we we recently um put together a teacher appreciation video for them and one of the questions i ask them every year is why did you become a music teacher and the common answer is because music is my passion i love teaching and i had such a positive experience as a student that i want to share that with with the rest of the kids in the world and it's just so important that that we as educators you know that we care as much as we do and just wanted to reiterate that and how impressed i am by by our music staff so a huge thank you it's it's been it's been a tough year there's been a lot of school districts making very tough decisions and to the best of our ability we've kept our programs in intact and again i want to thank all of you for that too although dr sal i did promise you brevity um as a parting gift for your retirement so i will i will stop talking because i do believe that students and what students produce for itself so i have a short montage of um video of clips that we attained permission for to share with all of you and i can i can go ahead and do that sure go i'm sorry i thought i could quickly hold that thought so this all resulted in us getting the um being recognized the best community for music education by the uh foundation which is a tremendous honor thinking of of the challenge that we have so pretty impressive thank you i um actually cannot believe that we achieved this three years in a row um it's it's not a very easy task to get there's over 600 school districts in the country that received it and we were one of 23 in connecticut neighbors our neighbors in bethel also did receive it again this year and just a huge congratulations to our colleagues across the state but also we're able to achieve this all right go ahead and play it i think it is i think we're in okay [Music] oh [Music] team [Music] version that i [Applause] [Music] and this wear [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh there was a time when i was alone nowhere to go and no place to come home my only friend was the man in the moon and even sometimes he will go away too and one night as i close my eyes i saw a shadow flying high he came [Music] hello my name is timothy and i've been in the orchestra at danbury high school for two years now i feel like music has really had a big impact on my school experience and a lot of this comes from just how orchestra is a different class in nature than a lot of the other classes that i take at denver high school [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] is [Music] every mood has a song to match with it it really helps and it can make me happier and i find a lot of songs that i can relate to and i know that i'm not like alone i know that it's not only me so that makes me happy like it does like it doesn't have to be sadness it can also be like joy for something a specific thing that also has a song written about it so we i i know i have someone who shares that same joy with me and that makes me happy [Music] peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] thank you thank you thank you jill thank you thank you for your leadership all the parents who homeschooled their children and worked from home and allowed them to play an instrument while this was all going on so but thank you all very much congratulations to our cablingers this evening thank you got to say are you going to do the cave um if you're ready for that sure yeah um the connecticut association boards of education as you know is 169 districts and each district board of ed recognized students in their school system for their leadership and contribution to um to the wellness of the schools and the climate of schools and tonight we have families and youngsters that we'd like to present the award to i think we'll start with dr thomas at broadview yes and amanda i think i saw you online i just want to make sure just say yes yeah okay great because i hate just talking to myself amanda we first of all it's such an honor always to present stellar students to the board we are just so proud of our all of our students but when we have kids that have maintained excellent grade averages since sixth grade all the way up to eighth grade it's really a great honor as a principal to be able to present them so thank you so much for giving us this opportunity um my first student at bravo is amanda amanda is a bright passionate and responsible young lady she has maintained a stellar academic record throughout her whole three years at broadview in addition to having an academic nothing but academic success she is also compassionate supports of others and she also is very she can persevere of any obstacle that you put in front of her he's just amazing like that she participates in all kinds of community services especially in the broadview community what i like about the fact that she is part of the national junior honor society but the best part is this year we challenged our national honor society to do peer um tutoring with the students that were struggling a little bit with their peers and amanda took on the call and was extraordinary did a great job helping out the students so we're just very proud of her she just keeps pushing through wanting to learn new things i just can't think of anyone who deserves to support more than a panda so amanda congratulations hey and um is mom or dad there yeah my dad's here dad keep it going she's going to the high school so i think mr donovan would appreciate it if you keep her going strong congratulations amanda next we have gianni shafallo um what interesting thing about gianni is i had him when i was at penbrooke in kindergarten not many principals can say they had students from kindergarten to eighth grade i get to say i did and he was an extraordinary student at pembroke now he's graduating from promoting from broadview he's just a hard-working student he's very diligent he's been maintained a high gpa at broadview for all three years he ensures that he will stay on top of something when gianni say he's gonna do it he'll do it it's just simple as that he keeps his word um also what i like about him too is he's exemplary not just with his academics he stands up for other students he doesn't he's not afraid to speak his mind but he does it respectfully and he's very passionate he stands up for every cause um and he doesn't see he doesn't like to see the underdog suffer and he's just that type of kid just shows respect for everyone and he demands respect which is even better so i am just thrilled i didn't see him on but if he was on you would be with me and congratulating him for being an extraordinary student at broadview and once again i always say it but i always mean it you're going to hear about them again so just remember the names thank you thank you mr thomas rogers park dr zelita good evening everyone thank you so much for honoring all these students this really is my favorite time of the year not just because we're winding down but because we do get the opportunity to recognize some of these eighth grade students as they round out their middle school experience and so tonight i had the pleasure of introducing you to our two cave winners our first winner is raquel there i know i see her here hi raquel well raquel is such a doll she is the sweetest kid she takes her classwork so seriously and she's always given her best effort she works hard on all of her assignments and i think she might be our only student who is handed in every single one of them this year and that's a feat so we are so proud of her she really has a positive influence also on those who are around her because she is so fun and she's clever and her teachers and her classmates are just delighted to be around her she's a very thoughtful girl she often gives thoughtful gifts and sweet treats to her friends and they just love her for she also likes to have fun and she loves to play among us with her classmates when they get some uh downtime so i'm super excited to to welcome her here tonight and to honor her with this cave award so congratulations raquel and our second winner is alexandra perez-lieva and alexandra demonstrates leadership qualities both academically and socially at rogers park she is a very active member of our national junior honor society the social justice club the yearbook club and the student council in class she is one of our active participants and she's often offering assistance to other students whenever possible she's another very kind and understanding student and her teachers say that she is an absolute pleasure to have in class so these are two more names to keep in your head and i know mr donovan will be happy to have both of them up at dhs next year and so i congratulate alexander as well i didn't see her on here but if she was here um congratulations thank you very much thank you thank you dr zeta and we have from westside middle school dr lavanca hi thank you dr sal all right yes i want to echo dr thomas and doctor's comments it's always a great honor to recognize our students for the excellent work they do and we're very proud of them so first i would like to introduce chloe djilani chloe i know i saw you and say hello because if you don't say hello then no one in the youtube audience gets to see you so uh hello everybody so chloe is an absolutely wonderful student she's a member of our national junior honor society she's participated in a theater program she likes to read and one thing i really love about chloe is she's such an advocate for positive social change and you can see that she uh she had an amazing interview with the production that theaterworks did with us earlier this year that you can see she's a wonderful writer she's recognized by the kinetic writing project for her work and uh just a fantastic student so we're very proud to recommend you chloe for all your great work and second i'd like to introduce eric gelb eric say hello to everybody hello so eric is another wonderful student he always makes you smile he's also a member of the national junior honor society he's classically trained pianist he's a risk taker in his learning eric did amazing work this year on his uh his science research projects he presented the state and won numerous awards for his work he did the state came and borrowed our giant structure matter crusher and and did a fantastic project with some plastics and really just great amazing work he's a great debater he acknowledges his peers and their points of view and we're very proud to recognize eric for his work and i agree with uh dr thompson doctors elite again we look forward to seeing you guys again in four years uh just like we're recognizing uh becca who's a senior this year west i graduate gotta give her the props for that who will be recognized by uh mr donovan in a little bit so uh congratulations to eric and chloe thank you dr i'm gonna go to ace and then to danbury so we'll go with john weber next mr webber sure there's twos good evening everyone there's two uh a staff members here so just uh people uh understand that ace teachers wear multiple hats and so while they are content area teachers they also serve in the capacity of a guidance teacher so danielle esposito will present the second student because that's her guidance student and excuse me the guidance teachers really build a strong relationship so the first student i'm going to present is brian gallardo valverde he is one of glenda armstrong students so i'm pleased to uh read the narrative that glenda wrote for brian uh brian gallardo galarza valverde has embraced the american dream he is a person that we can be proud of today tomorrow well into the future he's inspired us as educators at ace because he was inspired by a math teacher in middle school that saw potential in him that he did not see in himself he took that inspiration as a framework to manage his life to prepare for the future brian has managed his life so far in many different positive aspects that allow him to be worthy to receive this prestigious award when he found himself being overly influenced by negative forces he transferred to ace at ac positively responded to our focus on social and emotional skill development that we provide this resulted in brian being recognized multiple times as the ace student of the week and student of the month winner this caring positive young man gained greater motivation for life when his when his friend unexpectedly passed away last summer brian refocused himself to graduate early in january 2021 a semester early at 17 years old with a grade point average of over 3.2 this was after he took a part-time job during covid to help his family out last spring as well as assist his little sister each day with her studies when she was distance learning presently brian still maintains the same job that he had back in last spring as well as being a student at nagatok valley he just recently com concluded his first three classes uh took his math exam today excuse me and actually walked all the way to take his exam to make sure that he got there um brian also recently uh just swore in to the national guard so his goal is to serve the country that has allowed him to embrace his his own personal american dream congratulations brian thank you hi everyone i'm daniella esposito i saw layla there layla do you want to say hi hi um i am leila friedes's guidance teacher as john had said and i'm just thrilled to be able to present this award and to talk about layla because not only am i her teacher and she's my student but she is just such a great person and i'm really fortunate to know her and to have her among my guidance students she was recognized by all of the ace teachers we wanted to acknowledge and recognize her hard work and her perseverance over the past years of high school she's grown from a shy young girl who was unsure of her abilities and who lacked some confidence into a strong resilient young woman who's found her voice her strengths and her potential from day one at ace layla has shown others her very kind heart her thoughtfulness and her concern for her peers and her teachers and we really need more people in the world like you layla at school i have witnessed that layla is re reliable she's skilled in diplomacy she stands up for people who need an ally or who need a helping hand and in the last year she's been working on the front lines at a grocery store during during coven while juggling school and maintaining her grades laila's growth commitment thoughtfulness and potential predict her very bright future congratulations layla congratulations thank you and uh the last for this evening i'm mr donovan from danbury high school thank you as you could uh see i'm in my mobile office uh right now so i didn't even get a chance to get home yet so you know when the cable ward comes out the two that i'm presenting to you tonight were the first two that popped into my mind when they did it they're going to be very familiar names to you because you've had them for the past uh two years i believe jacob rebecca right two years they've been representing danbury high school at the board of education i couldn't be prouder of these two not just in their academics but when we shut down for covid they took a huge leadership role in trying to work with the student body and seeing how we can connect with students from virtual um you know virtual spirit weeks to any idea we could and we were talking all the time about things we could do to get better but first i'll start with rebecca who is an extremely hard working student uh currently uh bog student body president soul studies honor society president music honor society vice president the model united nations secretary a lead within the denver high school theater productions a liaison to the danbury board of education as you know in addition to her extracurriculars rebecca works two jobs takes care of her brother nick who's at our school who has disabilities during the day while a single mother works doing all of that she has a 4.4 grade point average during her time at the high school she has been awarded a high honor roll seven times and outstanding delegate twice in the yale model united nation program she's excited to continue that the model united nations program further in her college career she's dedicated to her academics she's just an all-around really cool person to have conversations with that you can take to a different level and we enjoy hurting jake a lot uh where'd we find out we're going becca i think it was temple yeah she'll be attending temple university in the fall she had a lot of choices a lot of discussions that ucla was one that we were going back and forth but i don't think mom wanted her going that far away she didn't want to go that far too expensive her hard work paid off and temple gave her a nice package that was affordable so she's going to be heading down there and jake has never failed to put hard work in each and every year he assumed a role in student government from his freshman year he was the secretary sophomore year as a secretary um and then he moved on to student body secretary as a junior and now he's the vice president this year of the bog he's a membership chair of the key club i was a participant for two years in that in the key club uh no stranger to all the different clubs involving himself in theater the hatter's herald the yearbook committee green club various national honor society gaining insight from his experiences he earned high honors i believe it was every semester jake was at high honors and he's got a 4.3 gpa he's never relented on his schoolwork he's never stopped he's always kept it going his hair is usually a different color once every two three weeks right we get to guess what we're going to do there and he loves serving in his community as well and jake did you make a decision about next year yet i did i'll be attending university of miami in florida uh two words two words for you jake sunblock now i'm not sure if that's two words or one word but you know me and you gotta have a conversation before you go down there my friend i'll definitely be packing that in my bag in closing uh did more than the than anybody when it came to student government in the past two years we couldn't hold elections so they stayed on with the jobs they moved up in the jobs and they put all their effort into the student body of dhs which i'm not even sure the students recognize but i just wanted them both to know that the principal of denver high school thanks both of you for spending time with him during covid to spending time thinking about the student body and i'm so excited to see you guys on june 10.
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one it is now officially 5 30 p.m and so we are uh going to go ahead and jump in and uh begin uh first and foremost i just kind of want to recap um where where we are and what we've done so far and what tonight uh holds holds for us as we continue to to move forward here so last week last wednesday we discussed that every team member was going to have the opportunity thursday friday saturday sunday and monday to take the models which are nine possibilities for model three and four possibilities for model four uh and rank them uh based on your perception right your ideas uh the things that matter to you um what you have heard what you consider to be the best that doesn't mean that everyone in the room was going to be identical because again we're all coming from it from different perspectives uh different viewpoints and that's a good thing that's not a bad thing that that's a good thing um the reason we had nine and four uh is because along the way we have had several of our team members uh withdraw their their ideas or their options that they had put on the table and that's why it had it had narrowed down to nine at model three and four at model four we also wanted to make it super duper clear that when you were ranking you were not communicating in any way shape or form whether you were pro model 3 or pro model 4.
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they're looking at trying to come up with a way to do the parking lot type and i'm not going to work for 12 15 years parking lot type immunization program here there's nothing being decided but uh it's an emotional political issue unfortunately i want kids to be safe we've had a number of kids test positive this year and last spring uh fortunately we've had no uh fatalities of staff or students but i don't want i don't see that happening so i'm working with them on the executive section i apologize to the board uh we had something come up late this afternoon and uh our training is not being available we're going to talk about personnel lab and we'll do that in a later date i'm talking about coping things i'm carrying when i watch the news and listen and read things from peony county health department things are looking better i can't fathom what's going on with poor people uh if we don't get i hate to say this but we don't react silly our irresponsibly saying over the summer when you keep the count down i we're talking about opening school on august 9th fighting the normal year and that means athletics in the whole nine yards if something happens i'm nervous about even saying that in front of alexander oh you're in their height i'm more nervous about saying that with copper news here i want people to know we're thinking about this but that is far from guaranteed uh depends what the numbers are but the cdc says on freedom campuses because um we're going to follow their recognition they're the experts and there any of us i sincerely appreciate the out of the communities they're not happy about not having school but they didn't do here what happened in the mail just a couple of weeks ago that was really appropriate i was told by someone that's much closer to the system than somewhere else in the state because they're just angry if the kids underwear face masks as i mentioned in the board letter um the governor made the decision his last executive word without consulting the state superintendent of public instruction president's school board association my knowledge asa regional school administrators any educational leader in the state about his decision say okay not to face medicine school but it's still up to the local school to make up the money so what i hear from that is perhaps politically he wanted to free people up to be uh based on this but he didn't take the heat if we made that decision and we made that decision you think it's safer i'm pleased that distance there's times i can walk out someone's in love everything operating they expect that the next wave to happen next winter so we could very well start the school year in august and september to be flying and then by the time the kids come back for christmas break that could be when the next big wave of culvert is it's scary it makes it for me thank you madam president i would like to make a response i believe i can mr island you said that a board member made a fairly um concrete violation of open meeting law and previous meeting i don't know for sure but i think he might be referring to me um i made that motion based on advice that we received during the during the executive sessions that indicated that i was able to do that from our attorney just just so you know you want to get to them all right so may i have a motion to accept the consent of the index all right moving on we'll go through the verses number one is the insurance certified for the 2021-2002 school year the united states department has again i've extended one visit programs international teachers miss and emily and bernie who have been given a one-year extension to teach in our district for the result of the actions and both are very anxious to do so um so the system candidate recommends the insurance of the certified teaching contract for the 2021 2022 school year to let's see to garcia now angelina garcia was not on that list but dr dooley recommended tabling a rip of anthony garcia cte funds are now available for her contract this district will offer her a high time contract for 21 20.
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the typical recommended changes that have been done to other policies semantics generally with regard to policy governance and potential connections to that have attempt has been made to remove any of those connections and so this is presented for the board's information only it would be brought back again at a future meeting for a second read so there's no action on this tonight dr kels i do have one question with regards to 12.5 it was the relations with education accreditation agencies so we went from the advanced ed to an accreditation agency just curious as to why we went that way uh madam president mr sink belt that agency has changed names about four times in the last five ten years um it was um north central it was advanced ed i think now it's cognia um as this company merges with other companies and changes its name it is more reasonable to just put the accreditation agency versus advanced ad which is one accreditation company in specific so that's why okay and one last one 12.2 we eliminated that completely [Music] why did we do that it was relations with colleges and universities madame president sarah sinkbell this was eliminated because it is in procedure dysert does have relationships with research opportunities for students in the universities and we have procedures in place that allow them to conduct research within the district there are other policies with regard to student privacy information so for that reason this is not something that is recommended by statute and nor by asba nor by our peer districts and so for this reason it was removed thank you that was all i have okay moving on to item h2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item this item was brought forward at the request of a board member good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members as dr kellis just mentioned this as requested at the last regularly scheduled governing board meeting i'm providing additional information about our safe routes so we'll talk about three in in particular uh first i'd like to thank mr kevin shipman for our planning administrator for all the work he does on creating safe routes to school and identifying and promoting and training our crossing guards and going out for a pickup drop off and looking at the patterns and seeing all that he does a great hands-on job to learn everything he would be here today he's under the weather and absent today but he has the most intimate knowledge on all of these but just he still works he does a great job working with all of our municipalities so working with whether the county the different cities that we work with he reaches out and works with all of them to help create these safe route schools and also i think the maricopa association of governments mag he works with to on some of the grants to provide some of the resources for that currently he is working we have not completed the safe routes for our new configuration of middle schools so that is still under works and as soon as that is done this summer we'll be posting those safe routes for all of those new changes with the configuration due to our middle school program i'll start with the reims and choya there's three specific areas that i'm highlighting in this update and then stand for any questions at reims and choya there is no signal there and no plans for the city to put a signal at reims and choya with the configuration as we've communicated to our community we still plan on for a safe route the only safe route we can create is busing the students across reams and choice so they will be bussing across that um across reams i'm sorry to interrupt you do you mean sweet water uh no it's choy okay i just didn't see that on here did i say sweet water on here no you said troya okay okay sorry yeah sorry go ahead so that's the sonoran rancho okay um and it's uh and so we'll be busting the students across that the second area that would probably have some concern is the shadow ridge area there's a couple hot spots but the one that is probably the most concern is at peoria in perryville that does create some complexities as maricopa county owns or is responsible for the south west corner of that intersection it is undeveloped on that corner which creates a misalignment of that four-way stop which creates a ton of confusion if you're driving there during the parents pick up and drop off creates a ton of confusion and a lot of hot spots and that there's currently the city does not have plans to put a light up at that point at this time they have some metrics and other data that they use to drive that and it does not meet that criteria as of yet as xan hail trails and other developments get built out i would definitely see that there will be a light there i just can't tell you when it's probably on their long-term capital plan it's just not in this year's capital plan to put a light up there this year we do work with them kevin meets with them we try to advocate for it as much as possible they understand some of the safety issues and concerns that that creates especially with all the students coming out and nobody queuing up and stopping there but so we understand that hot spot and we continue to work uh installation of a track fly is the best solution to create a safe uh crossing but as i just said that's not in the city's um immediate plans right now the third point our third area to for presentation is the west point and so that's the greenway and litchfield manor and rose view developments that's the square mile just south of west point there's approximately 500 students they all walk to school we do provide a bus and so not all of them do i think we have two routes that go in there are two bus stops in there to pick up but in the morning you'll or an afternoon you'll see kids running across partly that is because they either have to go down to west point parkway or they have to go all the way to litchfield either way on the two sides to cross across to get to west point in that sense and so what we've been working on for the last year and it's your plus is to how can we get a light we've been meeting with the city the city has supported that they will put a light if we realign our entrance way with the developments entranceway on the south side that will create a straight pass-through and so we would they would support putting a light in and so what we've been working on is planning to get that that entrance moved east probably about 50 feet down which would then align it with it then it would allow us to put a light in place and so we're doing all the paperwork the design of it is i almost fully complete we're getting quotes and bids on that project right now and so that would greatly increase the safety now because it would be using adjacent ways funds for that that does require if it's over fifty thousand dollars that we have to submit that to the arizona school facilities board for their review and or approval we believe we'll have all the paperwork done and submitted to be placed on their june 2nd agenda and then would also require the governing board to approve that project as well we would if we get the approval by the sfb on june 2nd we'd be able to put it into our proposed budget for the governing board's approval it is an expensive project just to realign it would be abandoning and one entrance entrance and moving it down that's approximately 750 to 800 thousand dollars and so that would be funded directly from our local property taxpayers and so the governing boards would need to approve that separately so that would be on the proposed budget through the adjacent waste fund to promote that to provide that if we do that the city has put that traffic light in their capital plan for this coming year and so that we it would be difficult to align and get them to donate the money so it gets done all at the same time so we'd move forward as soon as we're able to and get that done as soon as possible on a positive sense i could see that being done before october and then the city working on it thereafter to put the light in and so i don't know their timeline if they would wait until winter recess area or spring break or the summer but they would then have the ability to put in the light as soon as they're able to and that way to greatly increase the safety of that site and i'll stand for any questions and hopefully that addressed all the areas that were asked about thank you mr hicks and since i'm the one that uh actually requested this be placed up here um we'll start backwards the first one that you started off with which is reams and troya and the reason that i had asked about this was because of our conversation back some time ago when we were having the middle school conversation and um at that particular area of rooms and cholla can be busy it's two lanes going south and two lanes going northbound a total of four lanes and um while i know that we are going to be bussing students from one place to the other do we i know that was a concern with some of the parents at the time of the discussion um the city does not feel that it's going to be a point where we may need a light or a crosswalk at that particular area madam present members of the board at this time talking with the city they have no plans to put a light in there and without a light a crosswalk would be very dangerous with the cars at their speeds going yes and so so i no not at this time they have a criteria and a matrix they look at and evaluate everything i'm sorry i don't know all the details of that but we've asked them and they said they have no plans to put a light there i'm going to come back to that in a second let's ask questions for clarification just to make sure i know we keep saying rheems enjoy it but the agenda item says reams and sweetwater so is that also another concern as far as the safe routes or is that an error yeah that's an error thank you all right i just want to make sure i wasn't missing something sorry thank you um with regards to perryville and peoria is that right on the cusp of waddell and surprise because that is a very congested very um it's it's gotten to the point that we've had several accidents at that particular um t or it is it is across and um are we looking at that to help the city speed up in order to get something at i know we have cross crossing guards there now but it's gotten to be to the point that we just that area is very congested and so many kids are getting clipped while they're on a butt while they're on their bicycle and it's members of the board i'm aware of the last time there was an accident there that a lot of citizens called the city had a lot of concerns i think they continue to evaluate it and it just is not meeting their criteria to put in a light immediately and they only have so many dollars so they have to identify where the most greatest need is on their capital funds and their capital plan and it still has not risen to that level so we do encourage when people call us on that putting a light there to contact the city and sometimes i give the city a heads up when there's a lot calling to let them know that they're going to be calling and they're fully aware of it but we've had several accidents at that particular area yeah even just this past year and some that i'm i'm very fearful of that area um not only that i live in that area but i'm very fearful of that area that um sometimes there's no care as to the people that speed through whether it's a student or whether it's an adult is it something that we need to rally the troops and go to the city about i mean it is a very dangerous area madam president members of the board we could look at various options i know there's been times when dr kellis has contacted the city directly i'm not sure i don't know how much there sometimes you talk to other elected officials and it's different i'm not going to speak to that i will say the the undeveloped portion just watching videos or being out there at a time personally a few times the confusion is tremendous they don't know where to stop they edge up they don't know if they're going to continue to edge up they continue to go through they don't know they're going through students are walking through at diagonal areas or straight across it it is a very confusing difficult area so we've talked to the city many times i don't know that talking to them i'm not exactly sure what's the best plan i do know that they plan on putting a light there when the numbers there and the criteria hits it's just this homes have not been all sold and you don't have enough citizens there or residents to generate that so working to improve their accelerate that on their capital plan might have some so i'm sure contacted them again and saying this was a conversation at our governing board might have some but i don't want to speak for that we don't control that and i i appreciate you know the the information that you've shared but um it's one of those things that you just want to push forward because there have been so many accidents and near misses and hits and everything at that intersection and folks have come to us because of the school being there and while i appreciate you turning them towards the city i just feel we need to just push ahead on that okay madame president seat belt um i will definitely continue to advocate for some improvements to that intersection and if it's something that the board would like to have a conversation about the district paying for i'm sure the city would have a different conversation with us if they knew that they're not paying for it but the district is going to pay for it um but that's again up to the board if the board wants to have that conversation do we happen to know the cost of that um mr hicks i know that for the west point intersection is costing the districts some money to do some realignment there would have to be some improvements and some really some permissions from the landowner to allow us to make those those adjustments to that intersection once the city does its part um it seems like i remember it was about 400 thousand dollars for the lights um madam president uh members of the board dr kelly says right on this la estimate that's the latest information i have is could be up to 400 000 on a light that's not including our work on the land improvements correct that's just for installing a light that's just for the equipment and the installation right but not necessarily permits and that's correct and other things okay last one with regards to the one that's uh for west point and um greenway 137.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
currently it's um reduced some so it's only 238 000 so um the net is 95 000. and that was the only reduction for this go around any questions no questions my budget man's not here i know i was ready for him too oh i'm sure he read so but obviously no no issues so any questions no questions i'll take a motion all right i moved to um adopt the revised budget as presented second all in favor aye aye thank you thank you did you say i yes i did okay sorry motion carries three to zero 8.2 this is just a quick motion that you have to make to suspend policy bgb which allows you to go ahead and suspend it so you can make a change to policy in one reading instead of two in them in the motion uh my apologies for making an error there that you should put as relates to addressing items 8.3 you guys got that yes okay go for it you're on steve all right i move to um i move to temporarily suspend governing board policy bgb as it pertains the first and second reading of adoption policy adjustment for the purpose of addressing item 8.3 on this agenda perfect how was that that was awesome you did great that was great i i couldn't see where i was supposed to where that was all in favor no i need a second second okay all in favor motion carries three to zero so now we'll discuss 8.3 and this is just uh bill uh uh house bill 2705 was passed and signed by the governor and it now makes it such that if someone is wearing a graduation exercise excuse me uh wanting to wear culture's culturally significant equipment it could be eagle feathers it could be lays it could be any number of different things they're now allowed to mandated by law you have to allow them to wear it there's been some situations in previous years where individuals were not allowed to wear what would be religiously significant or culturally significant uh stuff for graduation this now makes it mandatory to allow it and they want us to pass it so that we can get it in place for this graduation in case there's a situation where someone would want to wear that that that so i'd approve or recommend approval as president so ikfb is that just the name that's that's the policy it's graduation exercise it's under policy i kfb and p graduation exercises or is that you just have to prove policy ikfb is graduation exercise in one word do you have any questions on that no no okay do you nope all right so i moved to approve the changes to the board policy ikfb for graduation exercises as presented second all in favor motion carries three to zero all right uh 8.4 uh this is just with the school calendar uh every couple of years ago you approved a five-year calendar and this is a change to the calendar it has no effect on kids it has no effect on instructional minutes it's just so we're bringing back our staff three days early that was part of the budget process and since the since the original calendar was approved you need to go ahead and improve the changes but it really has no impact on anything other than the fact that our staff will be coming in three days early so i'd recommend approval as presented all right i moved to approve the changes to 21 to 20 21 2022 school calendar as presented second all in favor aye motion carries three to zero uh 8.5 uh we just need to renew the lease agreement with pinal heda community child services for a head start down at cta this is an ongoing annual deal we will be bringing you something forward uh probably in june or july we need to update uh the original agreement but this will at least keep keep us moving forward and then we'll we'll work on on going back to the original agreement which hasn't been approved in a while uh this has been reviewed by legal counsel and they're fine with it so i'd recommend approval as presented okay all right i moved to approve the lease agreement with pinal county child community child services as presented second all in favor aye aye motion k aye motion carries three to zero 8.6 is just the approval for the salary increases based on the budget recommendation you will see that you had all the individual employees and the increases i placed that in executive sec in the executive portions only you saw it as opposed to the public portion of it um but it just reflects the the increases that we've already talked about with the budget and move forward with it so i'd recommend approval as presented right and this is what we had discussed yeah this is yeah this is just the final once you approve the uh salary schedule last month then we could go ahead and apply the the increases and so this just represents what their total dollar amount would would be for for this year's budget and you were going to go and talk to each weren't you going to go and talk to the oh you were going to do that powerpoint yeah we we went ahead and did i did a presentation uh for the staff on the budget recommendations in in general all the different aspects of it very similar to what i presented to the board that night and so yeah we did all that uh any comments uh there were very minimal comments and so then we moved forward with the salary schedule after those and now we're moving forward you'll see this uh increase this month uh in order to make it a little bit easier and spread it out at the end of the year then on the next meeting in june uh we'll bring you the the increase for the cover 19 which you guys approved so it's just a step process that we'll keep moving forward with okay how is it received i'd say generally and principals can speak up very very favorably and as a whole the whole package excellent okay any other questions comments no okay i move to adopt the 2021-2022 salary increases for all district employees as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries three to zero six point seven oh eight point seven uh this is uh just a consideration for an amendment to the uh evit uh iga and especially related to sped uh the way eve it was calculating uh funding and then providing money to school districts there was an audit this year and it was determined at the federal level that they could not do what they were doing that they had to go ahead and follow um statutory the statutory formula and they couldn't deviate from it and so the recommendation that came back to ebit was to to make their adjustments starting next year but because there was an agreement signed the iga was signed back in 2019 and was for several years they have to go back and make the adjustment for next year so they're going to have to amend the the iga as it relates to sped services and and they the way they pay for it it's just one section of the whole iga uh agreement and this essence of ade had been adding 10 percent to at student count before calculating the distribution of funds to ebit and then the sending those funds to the school districts and the opinion is they can't do that they have to follow and distribute the funds as the way it's done uh the way it's statutorily required so that's the adjustment they'll take the 10 out and then just redistribute all those funds starting next year without the 10 increase it'll be based on the number of kids you actually have within the program so something that they have to do at the it's 80 down to eve it but it's coming from the feds so i would recommend approval as presented all right i moved to approve the amen amendment to the ebit special education iga as presented second all in favor hi hi aye motion carries three to zero 8.8 this is uh the asba uh request from governing boards to review the 21 political agenda and then reaffirm your top five priorities you have to do a vote to affirm what the top five priorities are as a board and they're due by uh may 21st those priorities based on what everybody else says around the state will then be put together and a a slate of priorities will be put to the delegate assembly on saturday september 11th and so this is just the first step in the process it's just a step to say hey these are what our priorities are you have in front of you the political agenda for 21 you can you can only do a total of five but you could change priorities if you wanted to or you could accept the priorities the same as last year so assuming we we can submit what we're supposed to submit you're supposed to have submitted tonight and then when we put in so i'm just going to give an example i was on the board once and i had a board member who wanted to every year have uh the legislature move forward uh uh increasing the age that students before students could get their driver's license if they weren't getting passing grades and so that individual would bring it up every single year and then the board would have to vote if they all in favor they would take it down to the delegate assembly every time at the delegate assembly it never got passed along but that would be the process that we would do and they discuss every word yes just so you know i've been there two years every word and you are representing us again this year aren't you i'll be happy to that's kind of fun all right well we got that part done sir um okay so have you guys looked over these yeah i can't i can't remember what our five were before well it looks like the the they just this year the asba included something related to covid managing the impact of coven 19 on public schools no i mean what were our five that we that we did last year i don't remember i don't quite remember we definitely went back and look bob um craig can you you can put up on the screen inside it's it's uh the 21 agenda is there so you're going to see you have adequately and equitably fund districts uh right so there's five on there right it's their fine two three four in the blue yes there's five on there so if you wanna just take those five and not anymore then you just approve those five right and i think it's i think it's fine yeah they're five are fine with me i mean some of these i don't know how it's ever gonna actually happen but okay that what it does is it just gives them if there's a bill that comes down and it's on that list then they'll go ahead and advocate for against based on what's there but sometimes you won't even get a bill on it just because it's on the agenda it doesn't ready it gives the um lobbyists kind of the direction to go that makes sense so i figured so um i think we can just we need to we need two different do we need two different motions or can we just make all that that he's that's steve is going to be if you are a delegate if you want to do that or uh asba will usually put something out uh generally in july to say do your delegate now so we can do that we can get ahead of it or you can just do this that's fine let's just do this for now we can nominate steve right now no let's not let's do that later when they ask for it then that way we don't have two separate ones it's too hard all right let's uh got a motion yeah i moved to approve the political agenda um the five that were presented on on the agenda tonight okay second in favor aye aye motion carries three to zero all right so 8.9 yes you already approved the fee schedule uh earlier in the in the year we bring in a couple different changes the format's a little bit different but the two changes uh one is the addition of insurance fee for any student who has computer checked out to them as part of the district's 101 computer initiative that's what you approved of the the last couple meetings so we wanted to put that in there uh so that um uh you're aware or a public's aware of what they're going to charge again it's an insurance fee that's scaled based on free and reduced so the insurance fee is 50 annually but if your family qualifies for reduced lunch fee it'll go down to 25 and if it qualifies for free lunch it'll go down to 15 annually and that will help to cover the cost if there's any issues with it then we're also asking for a waiver of fees associated with summer school for and 21 22 where i will tell you up front that we don't have lots of we had teachers that would teach in-person summer school to high school but we haven't had a lot of kids signing up for it uh and so we're not sure that we're gonna have a ton of kids within summer school but in both cases because of the esther's dollars that's who would pay for those fees um so we want you to waive the fees because right now it has a specific dollar amount in so the motion or the action to approve the fees would cover insurance for uh computers and then waiving of the summer fees for our students in the district so i have a question now did we i don't remember talking about this when we talked about the one-to-one did we i got to remember this being part of a discussion when we had talked about that off the top my head i can't remember i know we've talked about it quite a bit it's it's a fee based thing that just allows for if a kid breaks a computer breaks and damages their computer then the insurance will cover the cost it's pretty standard for several several districts i won't say all districts because i don't know and so it's just designed to cover we wanted to scale it based on free introduced lunch just so if there's some families that couldn't afford it um like they could put in it's actually a fee so if somebody cannot afford it at all it would be automatically have to be waived that's part of any fee that can't be covered by someone but by scaling it we're hoping that that will at least have so to speak skin in the game for the different families because they put some money up and if the if the computer is damaged uh then this would be uh dollars that would come in to help with the replacement of the computers that are damaged as opposed to charging the family for the damages right well the insurance makes it cheaper on the long run than than charging and and in many cases you're probably just going to replace i mean the chromebooks are going to come in about 300 bucks a pop i mean it's not like you're talking about a a 2 000 or 3 000 computer and so in many cases if they're damaged you're going to go ahead and and move it elsewhere what's that okay so deanna's saying that bob asked a question that the last meeting was discussed i remember reading about it so i have a so if they what if they don't what if they don't take one home again i think the the the piece that's there depends on what the reason is that they don't take one there or take one home the issue that we're we're looking at we've we and what we found during last spring is there's lots of people who thought they had state-of-the-art equipment and the issues although that we got blamed for it because of internet access and stuff like that the reality was they had computers that didn't work and so we would treat it just like i don't want the textbook well this is a resource that we need you to use so we would sit down and have a conversation with the family with the kids to try to figure out what's going on and why there seems to be an issue as to whether they want to not accept why they don't want to accept it i can't give you a specific answer what the what the end result would be but we would treat this just like any other piece that says hey this is going to be necessary for you to complete the work in the class and therefore what is an alternative or option that we can work with you to to utilize uh or to ensure that you're going to complete the work in the class and so we'd have to probably deal with it on a case-by-case basis again if it's a financial issue and people really can't afford it then by law uh they would be that the fee would be waived um as all fees are if it's just hey i have a computer i don't want a second computer i think we're gonna we'll continue having a conversation at some point and i'll lay this out right now though we're still working on it it might be a year out at some point we're working with some firms right now to talk about how we can have on low bandwidth access for all students in our district to our network from home uh basically create a lan a wide area network that would cover the entire uh district and kids would have access through these their own computers to get onto our land that's probably not going to happen by the beginning of the year but that's going to force uh kids to use our our equipment because you're just not going to necessarily be able to access it from a computer at home and so in the long range pictures we talk about where we want to go with computers uh this insurance is going to piece that we we have to account for a way to hold hold people at least semi-account accountable for the equipment they have but if they couldn't and they didn't want to then we'd try to work with families to come up with a solution right thank you yeah i agree and i like i like that uh authorizing the principles to handle those decisions so are we good to make motion right and make sure you read the motion as is so that we have that authorization suppression okay i move to approve the changes to the 2021 and 21-22 fee schedules as presented and authorize the principles to waive the assessment of all or part of the fee assessed if the fees create an economic hardship second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries three to zero so 8.10 eight 8.10 would be ratification of supplemental intervention programs uh as a as a district the cia department principals and coaches took a look at some supplemental materials to help with those kids that that either are uh struggling because of the loss of the opportunity to learn this year or looking for enrichments and then looking and reviewing um uh the stuff that was out there the options that were out there lexia learning and sd math programs were the two that are selected they were brought into the district at the end of march and through funding from title one and title four and it's a ratification since with everything going on i didn't want to bring it until now because it was going to confuse issues with all the budgetary stuff that was going forward so using it fairly successful from correct marcus throughout the district um just another way to go ahead and check on those kids um any one of our kids make sure that they're getting what they need so i would recommend uh uh ratified as presented is that the the principles is you guys thinking this is good okay any question nope okay i move that to ratify supplemental intervention programs as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries through to zero what the heck 8.11 a lot of them huh yeah we had uh both ashton woods is the is a primary developer of the land that's called wales ranch which is north of uh combs between uh kenworthy and schneff and they came to us with request in in conjunction with epcor in order to attach to the sewer system uh from that depart from that development they would have had to go down kenworthy from the midpoint of the property two combs up combs to as a pecan north uh right there in front of the middle school and then go up to north of the middle school to connect into the into the sewer system so they came and asked for an easement on the north part of our property in which they could just take a straight shot across the northern part of the uh combs middle school property this summer and go ahead and make a connection uh it was obviously beneficial to them and our desire to continue a positive working relationship with developers and or epcor we would recommend that we would approve that there will be a a decent uh donation to the combs educational foundation in lieu of uh the money that's being saved by those companies uh we're still working on the details of those but that was the the uh the trade-off for this this easement the work has to be done this summer because the way the easement goes it will create a situation where they're um they're going to have to pull up a little bit of the bus turnaround parking lot at the middle school so that's why we're bringing it forward at this point in time and so uh we have had our legal uh council review all the uh the agreements they have made some comments on the initial proposal and uh ashton woods and epcor place those changes into the document that you have in front of you um so i would go ahead and recommend approval as presented is there any um landscaping or anything like that that they're gonna go through yeah the the the portion and rich you can help me out but the portion that's from the eastern edge of the property to about the midpoint is is through landscape it's the north part but then they come across most of it is so are they going to replace like they're going to put back everything that better is good better's good okay do we need to pick the plants as long as you go water them and they're they're pretty sure they're going to finish in the summertime is there i mean i'd what if they don't finish is there a plan b well i mean i i think the issue that we have any time with construction is we have indicated to them they don't have a choice that we start school on this date and that we have to have the bus um the bus turnaround available to us obviously even with kids we would rather than not be on anywhere on our property but can i stand here and stand here and guarantee they'll have it done no but there's been conversations with him is there a plan b well there will be there will be by july 26th we start school and there's kids in there no there will be by by july 26th but we have confidence and faith that it'll be taken care of we'll just send our middle school principal to take care of business if you need help i got you back so if it doesn't go this summer and it doesn't go until the next break we have so they could the construction phase on the project is not anticipated to start to do their basic um uh infrastructure until december this year so there's a chance they're not looking at home building until um i believe it would be i'll say fall a year from now and so the ability to have they have to go to next spring excuse me next summer to do it then we'll push to the next summer we just want to make sure that the agreement's in place and move forward but we're we're fully understanding of i mean trust me i don't need those headaches any more than anybody else does so so we will make we will make sure that whenever it's done whenever it's finalized and we we have it there that there are plans a and b c d depending on what's going on okay all right i moved to approve the wastewater line easement as presented second all in favor aye aye motion carries three to zero okay uh with 8 12 on approval upgrades to technology infrastructure you may remember that [Music] previously we had made an agreement with pinal county and the agreement with pinal county was to to be connected within the the ban the network that they were creating for all schools in the county this was probably about a year ago it was designed at the time to make sure that we just had an option as to whether we wanted to move forward with or not in conversations with him craig and pinal county um let's see zeo is the is the group we found that the the switch over to zeo would bump us up to 10 gigs as a backbone instead of six at a cheaper price than what we currently pay um uh for with cox uh what's happening the network now that it's been done around pinal county uh the majority of the school districts in pinal county are on this network it's not housed out of the pinal county offices it's actually housed out of downtown phoenix with zao but because of the savings of the cost on the increase with bandwidth the recommendation is to move over to zeo to go ahead and increase our bandwidth there are some there is some work that needs to be done with our infrastructure here in the district office and we figured if we're going to do this we might as well what was it originally intended in the district was that the main point of demarcation into the district would be here at the district office it's currently at cta um we did move it last year in january because there was a concern that well what happens if something goes down while you know during this move we were going to do it this summer well then we had covered so we haven't done the move over we're figuring with or this past summer we're figuring with what's taking place with this it's in our best interest to make that move right now the 29 thousand dollars is the equipment that's needed to do the cut over to make uh the connection point in our district for this network here at the district office instead of cta we'll keep the cta piece but it really is a backup and so we think it's in the best interest to have a stronger network for our kids 10 gigs over 6 cheaper cost in the long run and so recommend approval we're looking at funding it out of the bond uh primarily because that was originally what the intention of the bond was was to make this move to make the the jump off point into the district here at the district office so we'll use bond funds to cover it so i would recommend approval as presented all right i move to approve the recommendations for the upgrade technology infrastructure as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries three to zero okay all right so today what was that um we'll need um now we have uh the first the information to discussion yes so you don't have to make a motion i can handle both of these at the same time just a general conversation uh there'll be some stuff coming forward probably in the june board meeting uh the change in prop 301 and the wayprop 301 is going to be calculated uh the movement down to one bucket instead of three and the uh numbers that came out this year from prop 301 which were significant we had originally said in our presentation to you guys with the budget that we thought we were anticipating a 30 increase it was a 308 dollar increase now 192 208 somewhere in that range is a one-time dollars uh money coming in but it's a significant increase that's going to end up going to teachers because that's the only place it can go uh and so we anticipate that there may be uh something brought forward to you in june that would be an additional increase to teachers we haven't had a chance to really have a conversation about it what's happening however is you're taking the teacher salary schedule and you're squeezing and compressing it in comparison to the administrative salary schedule and so we have to start taking a look at how do we address administrative individuals as well as any 12-month employee the any pay increases to administration has to come through m o and that makes it difficult because m o is where we're probably struggling the most within our budget and so the recommendation here is to start looking at other ways to support administrators and 12-month employees and so the suggestion would be to increase the number of vacation days that are available for them during the year this this becomes critical as you move to year-round schooling and two-week breaks and the number of days that are available are not available for people to take time off so the proposal in front of you on first read is to increase the number of days it's five days increased from 20 to for administration and then for the second reading or excuse me the second agenda item is for classified staff and it's an increase of two days uh for each of the different groups and that is based on the number of years they worked with us and the number of uh vacation they gave days they get based on the number of days they worked on this what generally would happen with this is we can answer questions tonight or if you need time to study it and take a look at it then when we bring it back for second read next month then we can address any concerns there if you have major concerns i would ask you to give me some heads up in between the meetings so that if i have to make an adjustment to what the proposals are or figure out a different agenda item i can do that for you but i'll be open to any questions but that's the gist of what we're trying to do with with these both of these agenda items but wasn't this on their presentation no the increase in housing this this was uh there was a conversation within within my salary discussion or my contract discussion oh okay that's that's where it goes got it so i say i think that this is just our first read i think that we should take the time go over it if you have any burning questions to email him and then we can revisit it the next time i just like to make comment i think that i think the thinking here is good um i like the i like the idea i like the idea of increasing the number of days for the administrators and um i think it's i think it'd be also wise to continue to look for other ways as well to further compensate and make sure that our administrators are taken care of we'll definitely be doing that okay wonderful um i'm gonna skip down here to uh anybody have a request for future agenda items not at this time what really you're you're i'm you're actually disappointed right i am a little disappointed okay i'll come with some more next okay [Laughter] all right do you have any no when we go to the retreat are we gonna have time are we gonna be able to talk about things there and yeah well we're working on the retreat but though it'll be different than it's been in the past so it'll be here in the in in the boardroom and it'll have the full leadership team there and so we're gonna do a couple different things which shelly and i haven't had a chance to talk all that through i think that if you have something that you want to discuss during the retreat let me know okay so when i go in the discussion with him i can make sure okay it's covered okay then no i don't have any agenda no okay i make a motion to a to adjourn a second oh it's steve um he won um all in favor hi motion carries 3-0 at 7 17.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good morning oh uh all right uh oh [Music] you're serving guys [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh okay [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] um [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] sir man you benjamin [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] huh [Applause] oh [Applause] oh give it over [Applause] huh [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yes hello one two three [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] right oh [Applause] oh [Applause] oh [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] come on [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] oh all right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay [Music] [Applause] oh my god um [Applause] one two three [Music] okay [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] let's go [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] come on [Applause] oh [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] what's up [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] oh my god thank you [Music]
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
uh congratulations everyone was so proud you know what's interesting we just finished uh the portrait of a graduate and mr genelli said something like you know how do i put this into words you know and kevin said well you know what it's let's just call it our north star i think we just witnessed our north stars guys right right in front of us so uh this is what we want to emulate these are the characteristics that we want in our graduates and the attitudes and and just all-around wonderful contributors to the goodness of of danbury and danbury high school so i congratulate all of you on behalf of the board congratulations thank you thank you okay uh next we have let me just i'm trying my he keeps going up um i had sent something out it's it's national um nurses week i think rachel celeski has something that i sent out she was going to read i know kathy's there so um rachel you have it we really do yep would you read it for me please sure um in honor of national school nurse day today may 12th please accept this note of appreciation on behalf of our students the danbury board of education and the danbury school community you are extraordinary individuals and i want to recognize each of you for your part in the very important task of keeping our school community safe well during this difficult and uncertain year of the pandemic this has enabled our students to continue to learn to their highest potential as national nurses week comes to a close i am hopeful that each and every one of you have been reassured of how valued important appreciated embraced and loved you are as this is dr sells last year with you he would like you to know that through your service you make a difference in the lives of our students and families every day and your passion commitment and dedication are qualities that he will never forget nor has he ever taken for granted on behalf of the danbury public schools community thank you thank you and give me just a second here kathy i know you're here are you not yes i'm here uh dr thank you good evening everyone um and thank you um yes but i i just would like to thank you for that beautiful message it's greatly appreciated on behalf of our amazing nursing staff who have gone truly above and beyond during this pandemic we sincerely thank you dr sal thank you for your leadership to all our administrators who are so supportive of our school nurses um i really appreciate your message thank you you guys are terrific and maybe you can make an announcement about the about the vaccine you just uh uh yes um so um as you may have heard the fda has given emergency use authorization to pfizer to now administer their vaccine to children ages 12 to 15.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
that that was not part of this that that you were not communicating any of that whatsoever this was just hey if we had to do a model 3 this is how i would rank them if we had to do a model 4 this is how we would how i would rank them and that and that was the extent of it uh through the course of thursday friday saturday sunday and monday uh we received uh your rankings uh and all of you took advantage of one of the three ways and so we appreciate that you have that you have done that today's objective is to look at the results of these rankings the results of this data and our objectives is to try to take the nine model threes right and decrease that to a a a lower number so that as we continue to move forward our scope gets a little bit more laser um and we can have our next set of discussions uh and i'll bring i'll actually ask you guys but the next set of discussions as we move forward in terms of um program again i know that this group has talked a lot about for instance steam but again we have some ideas that we would like to bring to the table these are only ideas for you to consider and think about right as we ponder but now we have a smaller group of model threes and a smaller smaller group of model fours as we continue on this journey together now eventually as tough it as tough as it is going to be or maybe not i don't know what it's inside you know your head but eventually uh we will get to the point of picking your brain right and saying okay now that we are here do you prefer model three or do you prefer model four but we are some steps away uh we are some steps away from that uh before i move to the data and show you the data um i want to point out some obvious things right we're gonna we're gonna be looking at nine model threes so it is obvious that in the process of narrowing that down there are some people in this room who have who have put out an idea whose idea will not continue forward right that is obvious right because we're narrowing it so if there's nine ideas and we're narrowing that down that means that some ideas are not going to move forward and again that is okay and we applaud the thinking behind these nine ideas and the same thing holds true for the four we are trying to also narrow the four right uh and the same thing right that is obvious uh what might not be as obvious but i want to point it out as well because this is a ranking after all um there might be some models that move forward that in your ranking we're at the bottom and again that that is okay that that is not something to to to make us feel bad or to make us feel less or whatever this is part of the process and what we have to embrace is that together as a team we are better than individually as a person and so if we continue to honor the team and continue to honor the process then what we are well we are all embracing is that together as a team the best ideas are going to surface that does not mean that the other ideas were bad it just means that they were all good but the best ones will be the ones that move forward yeah so as tough as it is i know um and as difficult as it is again i know we have been saying this from from day one um we all signed up for this right we signed up to to be able to to make a recommendation to the board of education um so as they start to mull over and decide and discuss and talk about uh that is those are the things that they're going to uh to look at as well so with that being said i want to share my screen uh if i remember how to do this um give me one second here [Music] okay i think i got it uh right there does everyone see model 3 yes okay awesome all right so let me let me share with you uh what it is uh that you are that you are looking at uh so that we can have an understanding together uh before we jump into uh conversation so what you see here uh our abcd oh look it messed up on my on my alphabet flunked english that's better so what you see here are a b c d e f g h i each letter pertains to a model a model idea for three so a is either three point one three point two three point three three point four three point five three point six three point eight or three point nine or three point ten okay so you don't know and actually right now it's top of my head i don't even know we don't know what those models are but what we do know is the data of how these models played out so here you will see that the top model the most popular model scored a 3.72 right so the score was one through nine one was the best model so they scored a 3.72 the lowest model the model down here scored a 5.83 and then of course everything in between okay so top model 3.72 the next top model 3.89 the next one 4.83 so forth and so on so what we're going to do is looking at these numbers i'm going to turn it over to you as a team right now in a second looking at these numbers i want someone to start talking or thinking out loud and saying based on these numbers it seems to me that these would no longer continue these models would no longer continue based on these numbers it seems to me that this many models would would continue forward right so you're looking at the data here and you are trying to make a recommendation based on the numbers on which models how many models would continue forward i'm going to turn it over to you as a team if you have questions or if you are ready to give a recommendation okay i'll throw it out there just to let something stick against the wall a b and c um top three um they all have um less than five points um i would even venture to say a and b um because the difference between a and b is literally what is it one tenth of a point whereas the difference between b and c is the whole point right so i would like to throw out there either we do a and b or a b and c knowing they're the top three it's just a thought to launch the discussion thanks meg i'm going to reiterate uh what missabella just said right now just so you understand you know what she did so so she said initially she said let's move a b and c forward meaning that d e f g n h and i would not move forward and her rationale was this is 3.7 3.8 4.8 they are the three top vote-getters and that makes sense but she also said another way that she might look at it is to say well actually i'm i'm also fine with just moving forward a and b because the difference between a and b is literally right point point one right one-tenth uh of a point whereas from b and c that's a whole one point away right so two different um two different options uh that are put out uh by meg thank you for starting that conversation appreciate it anybody agree or see see the data maybe a different way i will agree and concur with meg for the exact same reasons miss rojas can i ask you a clarification uh does that mean that you agree with three or two um i i would say the top three um because it's obvious there those are the high our lowest whatever highest um uh but i just like meg said i could live with just a and b if we want to start eliminating to move the discussion forward okay thank you uh miss rojas i'm interested i'm sorry i can't see so it's okay it's okay i think miss jones uh said something or wanted to say something yeah no i agree with meg i and i but we do just focus on the top three we have so many choices to choose from um and so i think the top three are what i'm voting we we focus on okay uh miss pilsnick i am interested in seeing more than the top three because my concern is that some of the models were so similar somebody may have voted for one but not the other and then combined they would probably have a high ranking and i don't want to end up eliminating both of them from if they end up at the bottom because one somebody voted for one but not the other one actually it's a it's a good model and so i would like to see more like one two three four the first five because i would think that if they were so similar and people liked them they would at least be in the top five okay so based on this data uh you're saying that you are recommending that we move forward with five models and only to start with just to see if they're similar so i want to make sure i understand so you're saying like a two-step process so you're saying let's eliminate let's let's eliminate f g h i let's see what those models are and then you're saying maybe you're okay eliminating more after you see them yes okay question question for you this is just a question so let's let's follow that logic so let's pretend that these are the five that are going to move forward right are you saying that after you see the models you are okay as a possibility to eliminate b because now that you've seen them you have said oh well these are kind of similar so i'm okay eliminating b even though b is the second highest ranking uh model i want to see if the people who created those are willing to talk about how they are similar just like we did last time and can see that we could eliminate one and before we were developing it so that the two can come together into one model okay [Music] i would agree with jen i like to see a few more models instead of just the top three knowing that we have some unanswered questions about the cost of modernization and fixing wi-fi at certain sites that could you know potentially be extremely expensive when another model might not have chosen a certain school i just you know i just want to make sure that we're making the best decision not only walkability but also financially with modernization and upgrading on wi-fi so i think the more models that we have to look at top five and then i would be willing to winnow those down as well i use again i just want to make sure that we're super duper clear here um are you saying that you you also see a two-step process but are you saying that after seeing them that you see window windowing that down today or no we're gonna move five forward and now we're going to talk talk about all of those and then later on we're going to do more if you i'm i have a no problem winnowing today as long as there are some uh hard numbers about modernization and fixing the wi-fi um issues at one of the schools just in general because if that if you know it's going to cost hundreds well i know that the number i was told that one school site how high that number was is that really a feasible issue fix for one of the school sites to make it operational to keep it open okay so we have two we have three folks uh saying top three and i i think i heard even two of them saying top two that they're fine with the top two and we have two people saying move move five and i i would like to see the top four move forward please i think two or three is isn't enough and seems like there's a decent gap between d and e that um but i think we need more information and at least if we have four we can then um really dive into those four and um move forward from there okay and i agree with miss wilson perkins i think uh four is a good number to look at i also agree with with them that look at the top four with the possibility of whittling one out of there later today depending on what the models are i agree with that too who i'm sorry who said that remember lacy okay thank you sure um i would be okay with the top four um i also with the caveat as um margie was mentioning is but the realization that we may run into something at some point where we do have to take a a good look at whatever model it ends up you know we may there may be some change down the road uh if something comes in there with that without understanding i would be okay with the top four not not that this matters whatsoever but again since we're talking about numbers um i know that we have two we have three we have four and we have five right now on the table as suggestions right um two three and four puts us at at least knocking off more than half 5 still keeps us moving forward more than half and again this is just a numbers thing i'm not advocating one way or the other i'm just giving you a different way of looking at the numbers i would suggest five uh uh very similar to anthony i think we need more discussion look at what our options are sorry that's my dog looking at the options um before because there are a lot of questions and i hate for us to decide just based on numbers i'd like to see more before i also agree with patricia i think i would feel comfortable seeing the top five go forward and then going from there um more so because we still need more um questions answered and we need to discuss any any uh consequences and stuff like that we need more more information i'd like to ask um out of curiosity why we were given this and not with the models yeah uh thank you for that question um if we put the model numbers there uh then that makes it harder to be objective and so now you're seeing the models and so now you now the objectivity it becomes a little bit harder instead of just looking at the data and letting the numbers speak for themselves so for instance just as an example i arturo the model that i want is f so now my objectivity goes out the window and i say i want the seven i want the first seven and i start making reasons and rationales why i want to move seven because i see my model on number seven and so this is just to ground us on the data that you guys created right this was not invented you guys created this data to help us remain as objective as possible okay thank you absolutely good question and i just um have a question i want to clarify last week you said the this data wasn't going to be used to eliminate models so here we are winnowing just based on numbers i just wondered how we got here i apologize a hundred percent if that's um the way i communicated that but i thought i communicated uh the complete opposite but i apologize if if if um if i did not do that um i i thought i was pretty clear and even in the emails that this was to eliminate models but again this is this is your process um right um again we can we can continue on a different path um but the the this this attempt is to get us to a smaller number right to then decide okay now what comes next because you know in the past i did not bring this question up because we weren't to that point yet but if we know that it's going to cost 10 million dollars to modernize a middle school or an elementary actually probably more than that um then we really need to be looking because some of these models have four of the non-modernized schools ask schools to remain open and one of those schools slosa middle school almost a million dollars i heard but i could be inflating that number i know it's at least a half a million dollars to upgrade for the wi-fi because the switches are all wrong and you know it's not correct it's not been correct since the three different upgrades done to that site so in knowing that information maybe the person who put forward a plans that kept slauson middle school open that has not been modernized in the classrooms nor does it have workable wi-fi um that model might have changed so that's been my underlying concern yeah it's all it's absolutely making sure we have capacity but it can't just be capacity um the last couple weeks been working on you know walking distances um for families but also financially you know i i understand that the bond is paying for this and some of the supplemental monies from the state but you know is it responsible reasonable and doable to keep schools you know multiple schools open that could be millions of dollars to modernize when another school a half mile away that has been modernized could absorb the others the non-modern high school so that i kind of thought we were going to go there first tonight but so margie uh just to bounce off of you that's why i've requested three different times monetization report so we can see what phases we are at because there are some schools that are almost at the last part of it they they're just at the end of it but no one uh here um we don't have that information and that you're correct it would be good to know where we're at in phases because there could be some that have just started and there could be some that are right at the end of it and to see our financial you know with measure k you know we kind of did get hit hard our district and we kind of made a promise that you know we would spend the money wisely so if we could please have that report because that would really really help with this as well yeah and again just as your facilitator right right now we're talking about facilities but you have to keep it we we all have to keep in mind um that that this might be a major factor to some of us in this room to some of us in this room um location is a major factor to some of us in this room um east west north south is a major factor to some of us in this room uh is you know sister schools and so um so for sure without a doubt again we can talk about that but also keep in mind that if this was just about facilities and modernization while there's only a handful of schools that haven't been completely modernized all the other ones have and so is that a determining say okay if you are not fully modernized then you are out but i think that the our discussion i would say is that there are a lot of varieties that do involve location questions that involve location that do in modernization it's not just on one i think it's on a multiple things and i think that's why choosing yes we did choose and you know i'm excited to see what the it is next but there are those other factors that we need to take in in every aspect and i i've been hearing it tonight that i think a lot agree as well we need to take all that into place and one of the other issues was the um some of the models were developed based upon the specialty program and i'm not sure if the writers or those models realize of any of all the specialty programs the only one that cannot be picked up and moved really pretty easily is magnolia's adult transition program everything else is you know is movable you know so you know i'm not sure i heard a couple people talk about their um their models based on the idea that they have that program and the port it seemed like it was a portability issue so miss savison could ask a clarifying question since you're approaching since you were the first approach this conversation i want to make sure again i don't want to put words in your mouth um are you still at your original idea that we move five and then have these conversations or have you changed your mind hmm i i'm i'm really torn because these are questions that you know we really do need to talk about with the models that make them feasible or not i'm comfortable i would be comfortable with having five models but i really do you know if we you know if model a is the model that has four of the non-modernized schools that really the best approach to go so i can i can go with the group on this and maybe can i ask a related question i don't know where i am on the list i've had my hand i don't know but i'm sorry yes if we're if we if we only look at three or four or five that doesn't mean the other ones are disappearing off of here right you're not going to delete them we can always look at other things if we need to and bring them into the conversation is that correct semi um the idea is yes if we said we're only going to look at two three four five then again moving forward those are the five that we would be talking about and discussing so the reason i say semi is because as we continue to talk about the two or the three or the four or the five um again this team might morph into something different from those but but yes the idea would not be like okay now we're gonna talk about this let's bring all the nine back that definitely would not be the intent can i ask um when we're looking at these models we don't know what we're seeing completely yet but we're not saying we're completely locked into this so say model a has podge dalton and paramount on there but we say hey guys guess what one of these schools isn't really up to standard would it be better to switch out this school for that one school without getting too crazy and completely changing it we do have that option to do that with any of the models that we choose to move forward so if you're saying yes to that that's the way i that's the way i see it but again this is i'm only facilitating you guys because again if we're gonna take all nine then we don't have to do this exercise right now right you you guys are saying you guys might be saying something different saying no uh forget forget the nine we need to continue talking about the nine then that's different i feel like if we're allowed to make some adjustments with the group as a whole to model it be let's let's say okay fine let's move forward with four or five maybe we throw up a quick poll that asks to three four or five to move forward with if if everybody's okay with that i it gets the process moving a little bit and knowing that there's room for adjustment with the schools nothing is set in stone if that's more helpful for people boss laurie ray has her hand up then it was diana and then our diana ross and their diane ochoa thank you i didn't realize had my hand up but um but since i do um i will say i think we need to take a pool to see i don't think we need all nine i mean you know some of it's 5.3 you know i think we should take a poll whether you know it should be three four or five and and kind of start because right now we're doing all these you know well how about if you know if it's like this or how it's like we don't even know what models they are so i think we need to take a poll and then then we can start looking at the models that's my opinion anyway thank you uh who did you say was the next miss jamal rojas i hope i said it right yes um thank you uh i would just like to comment um mr ortega that i appreciate the way you presented the data to tonight with just these letters and not models because i agree with you that um if we can't see the names um we are able to be more objective and just see the letters for the numbers that they are and not have the emotional attachment to the models um i i hear all the great questions that um people are bringing up and the points but i think it's time for us to uh get to some level of eliminating uh all these models because there's too many models and we're never going to get to the nitty-gritty discussion that we all want to get to unless we reduce this number to a manageable number and if i recall correctly um i believe when we started this process you had said that we were just picking a model and not necessarily the names of the schools that are presented in those models that once we pick those models we could have the discussion and change those names as we see and then did you say it was ochoa yes um i had a question so we have two models that we're looking at obviously model three and number four what is our goal to get to give to the um the board of education as far as i mean like if we have four on model three are we presenting that are you trying to are we trying to narrow it down to give them two models one models what is our goal at the end because um i'm just curious because like this one has nine the other one has four so at what point um do are we give how many are we giving are we gonna just try as us as a team recommending just one of each model to them two three like where are we at with like how do we look for that because if that's the case then yes the top three the top four um and then go from there and then submit it to them or is it two one like what's our future looking like for that yeah good question uh so again this is going to be up to the team but in in my head but again the team can say i throw in the whitetail we've done enough now the board is going to have to gonna have to deal with this and we're gonna send them nine model threes four model fours and let them decide that's that's an option right an option is to say we're just gonna cut it today and then we're gonna send four model threes or five model threes or three mark threes whatever that is and two model fours or whatever that is and and again our our work is done here as a team we've done as much as we can the original intent is that we would keep hammering away at this keep having conversations and take the most concise recommendation to the board of education that we can as a team maybe the most concise is that once we do all of this the most concise is going to be this team lands behind this model whether that's model 3 or model 4 and this is how we well this is how we recommend it should look like but maybe this team again we we're we're so diverse and maybe the recommendation to the board is not that and maybe the recommendation to the board is look this team did a terrific job here's one model four here's one model three but the team is split amongst the three and the four or again even broader we did as best as we could but we saw but we're bringing two model threes and one model four all of that is okay it just depends on where we are going to be landing as a team um again i think the more that gets sent forward as a recommendation then the more that that that we as a team are allowing right for for basically anything to happen the more we can narrow that scope uh the more then the more influence that this team might have on the final decision uh whatever that whatever that may be so we could kind of maybe like you said if model three has three mon two models we send and model four has two models the board of education can then turn around and say well you know what i like a piece of this and i like a piece of that and make their own model correct and they could take that so the more models we give them the better chance it has of having them hear our concerns about remodelization about location and all that and then they can maybe come up with their little um model and um and then go from there okay okay 1 000 and again just to be super uber transparent right we can we can go and say one model three and one model four and then at the end of the day it becomes a different model three in a model four right just to be uber transparent about that right we're we're recommending miss uh who is next mr fernandez so fernandez in the the end game here when we do present x number of models to the board as part of that presentation would we include the rationale behind the models as well because as we hear the conversation it sounds like some of the plans were based on walkability some of the plans were based on making sure that we keep as many kids in the district as possible so that's part of what will present to the board as well a thousand percent and my vision is that again unless there's a massive coalition right that everyone's moving the same direction is to share both sides of that story right the people that want this model it's because of this the people that want this model is because of this but let's also share some of the not so right the people who don't like this it's because of this the people who don't like this is because of this mr mull that's the last hand boss i see missabella i don't have a hand i mean i have a handful i don't have my screen um in an effort to move us forward respectfully can we please take a poll on whether or not to move forward three four five schools so that we can get to that next step of whatever's in the process and i'm just doing this in an effort to move us along three four five models not schools thank you thank you matt may i may i before i thank you and and again unless someone's opposed to that then you know again raise your hand or mute yourself that no you don't want to take a poll but again just facilitating here um i'm hearing three four or five so again just in facilitation purposes if we don't go to a poll can i throw out the question those of you that want three are you okay with four those of you that want five are you okay with four it's just it's the middle ground there it's a question that way we we don't have to pull and we can move forward it's just a question again those of you that want three are you okay with four those of you that want five are you okay with four if the answer is no then yes we will move to a poll if the answer is yes then we've made a consensus and we can move forward with four i'm going to throw this out there and say i'm okay with three but i'm not okay with five so let's do a goal there you go okay all right so uh so what you're gonna get is you're going to get a poll and so let me tell you what you are voting on um you are saying i want to move forward three then you're going to select three i believe um if you want to move forward four you will select four if you want to move forward five you will select five miss lika do you have that poll ready yes i am dropping a link in the chat right now and it is to a google form with people okay so if you go to the chat and find the google form and please vote there i'm not able to get that to open can you click the link from the chat or copy it okay i see the responses coming in looks like just a couple more how how will we be able to show that are you going to share your screen yes i can share i can share my screen okay perfect you have not yet voted please do so [Music] now i believe if i'm not mistaken uh lika you should have 18 responses we're at 17 right now okay the 18th just came in so let me share this really quickly thank you okay and are you seeing the pie chart at the bottom of my screen yes so 50 55 say four 55.6 to be super accurate yes yes 55.6 i don't know how we get point six per person but yes and to put it a different way a third of people want um three and eleven percent want five thank you lika so i throw it out to the team is it safe to assume that we are moving forward with four yes all right good deal so uh what i will do is i will unveil the top the top four uh models uh at this point in time it's just an unveiling um i'll give a little time just for your own personal reaction doesn't have to be any other reaction and then we're going to move to model 4 and go through the same process okay all right so that means a b c d will move forward for consideration and those are models 310 3 1 3 8 and 3 3 so we will move forward with those again we'll we'll loop back at the end of of today so we can talk uh next steps and and where we go from here uh but um but those those are the four that that were the top point getters in terms of this process okay all right also are you intending to be sharing your screen right now because we don't see anything oh my gosh it's because lika probably yes sorry sorry i kicked you out it's okay can you see it now yes sir yes we do okay let me do the drama one more time so these are the four a b c d so we're going to unveil the four those are three ten three one three eight and three three thank you i apologize for that okay we'll talk about next steps um after we go to model four okay this is model four uh this is a little a little different just to give you again just just a view it's it's it's identical but i want to show you what i did to maybe help or maybe confuse i don't know right here in s is the actual ranking that the models received okay so 2.06 2.39 2.67 and 2.89 that that's the actual ranking based on the one two three four scale all i did if it helps the conversation because again we're talking one through four very different than one through nine right you have bigger numbers in row t all i did was multiply by two so i doubled the number just to give you maybe a different look of what it would look like if these would have been higher numbers okay so once again just like we did last time just looking at the data is there anyone that would like to make a motion or like to throw out an idea as we look at model four uh in terms of what moves forward and what does not i would recommend um taking the top two a and b a and b moving forward with just ambi i concur with mrs rojas i also agree with mrs robles i also agree with top two i also agree up by ms jones uh i see thumbs up from miss avison from his pill stick as well from miss ray from miss ochoa let's do this backwards uh does anybody disagree with moving forward a and b for model form miss roya you had a question okay sorry i couldn't mute um can't we just move all forward that way it's like an equal number we have four and four to answer your question can we yes this team can do again right whatever whatever they want so i heard i saw a lot of thumbs ups a lot of yeses a lot of agrees and we have a question for miss loretta in terms of can we move forward um any anyone else i would just comment that um in all fairness we're trying to eliminate models um to focus on our discussion um so uh again i would say let's just move the two rather than all four based upon our discussion of the model 3 with what elementary schools that the committee would suggest closing a lot of that information can just transfer over to this model for for the same they would be the same type of reason so you know move two and if our discussion takes us in a different direction at model 3 and we can always look at these but similar schools are being suggested on the models okay so um thank you miss louetta so we did hear from miss loera in terms of a question about four and everyone else um i heard a model two i'm sorry i heard to move the top two so if that is correct then i think we don't need a pull for this one i think that we are ready to move forward with the two okay i see a lot of nodding and i don't see anyone unmuting to say something different so we will move forward and can you see my screen yeah okay now so now it will work uh so the the two top model fours that will move forward are uh four point f uh four point i'm sorry it's because this um let me do a formatting here the formatting is off so it doesn't show decimals it's trying to round so that will now tell you 4.4 and 4.5 will be the two model for two model fours um that we will move move forward first and foremost i want to congratulate you and i want to thank you uh we're going to keep saying this i know this is not easy right but we didn't we did not sign up for easy right the moment you knew that this was about school reorganization you signed up for a challenge and so i appreciate what you have what you have done uh so far um i wanna i wanna share with you what we would envision uh to be uh the next steps or possible next steps but i want to remind us that all all we're doing is facilitating you so if it does not sound right to you the next steps or it doesn't sound logical write the next steps um then by all means that is that is perfectly okay and perfectly fine okay so this is what we would envision next steps to be um we have had a conversation uh in this group some of you have in building your models uh have suggested um things like a steam school um so we have uh ideas uh around programs uh possibilities um that we wanna throw out to the team not that we're trying to convince the team uh but just ideas uh that that might be possibilities of how we might want to look at what a model 3 would look like or what a model 4 would look like and by possibilities we literally mean possibilities right so just because we've been talking it about it a steam school right so do we move to specialty schools right that would be an idea that we would throw out and then we would call out some possible specialty schools in addition to a steam school right things that we might want to consider like hey we really like this idea of having you know these like these schools that are concentrating around some kind of program or some kind of uh curriculum or some kind of uh content but we also want to be cognizant that that is not all the ways of doing it and so we also want to come out with you know uh let's abandon the idea of these specialty schools and what if every school had steam as an example i'm just making this up right but we would talk about that um we would also talk about this team asked us to reimagine uh or rethink the support staff and so again we have taken your request and we have indeed reimagined what support staff might look like and then uh we have also this team has asked in terms of budget implications and part of budget implications came up today this whole notion of um modernization this whole notion of you know picking up a program and moving it to somewhere else um uh this notion of of you know a school that currently is not elementary school possibly becoming an elementary school right and so to to bring kind of those pieces of information uh to to continue the conversation so so what we're proposing is that it is now time to have these conversations uh this team requested that that we go through this process first and then we have those conversations but we think that it's important now now that we reduce a little bit to to move forward with those conversations we also think that right now is probably a good time and i think i don't want to quote the person so i'm not but i think someone in this room uh said that it would also be valuable uh as another piece of consideration uh to see what other other others are thinking not that not that again there's now another recommendation or another idea or another model but hey based on these two model fours based on these four model threes and what we currently know maybe to get a straw poll right in terms of our staff in terms of our parents uh again not a straw poll about do you like model three or model four that comes later right now this is just hey of these model fours which ones seem attractive to you and why or you know these two model fours which one seems attractive and why so we can do those two things kind of simultaneously and as we're having these conversations about budget implications about uh support staff and about program if this team would like and again someone in this team for sure at least one person made this recommendation may be having again just a straw poll as just another data set as we continue to try to narrow it down even further once we have these conversations so that that is what we we were thinking in terms of next steps and we throw it out to the group to see if that makes sense to you all can i jump in absolutely so model three go to model three the top two were models three ten and three one which happened to be mine and melissa's and i know that a lot of the concerns were that the two models are exactly the same with the exception of that tk8 we would be willing to combine our two models knowing that that tk8 is the only portion of it that we're willing to to move around to adjust um what's best for the commit what the committee seems to sees best as to where that tka should be placed so it does knock our models to two instead of three or sorry three yeah and those thank you miss fish and those are definitely considerations and uh conversations and i appreciate you kind of thinking about that in a in a in a in a big way right and so thank you for that um so are we okay the next steps are now to really dig into uh budget staffing and programs and then also think about a way to engage all staff and all parents again just as a straw poll as another data piece for us any objections to that i don't have an objection but i would have an extra data piece so somebody did ask for the um i call it the attendance or the ada and that in the area i did i did receive some of the information about had all the little dots and jeff georec um one thing i i feel like we missed using zoom and meets is that um we didn't get to have that kind of robust discussion about you know when you're in the room and you're looking at the data that at the same time you know we all kind of read it a little bit separately and they came back in with their ideas so i think one of the things and i'd love to see is to be able to have a discussion with the team in real time about where the students live how many students are in a particular area but be able to have that open discussion as as we move on in addition to the modernization the the financial numbers if we can add that piece side i appreciate it anthony can i ask you a clarifying question because i want to make sure that that i that i understand what you are asking for absolutely i don't want to bring what you are not asking for that makes no sense so are you saying that you are looking for data on where our students live uh correct let's just say uh school a happens to have this huge population within this geographical range where we're talking walkability et cetera etc and now this school is going to be moved and i'd like to visually be able to see that impact of closing that school of where those kids are going we've started touching on it but we kind of did it separately i don't know if you know somebody may have seen something i missed and i kind of feel like we didn't we kind of missed that discussion there also azusa is a little unique uh in terms of it looks like on paper and data and numbers that something's kind of close but it's not um you know there are pockets of azusa where you know it's just geographically it looks like it's close but it's not necessarily close so i'd like to be able to have that discussion as well sure and i mean absolutely and another thing that makes azusa unique is at the same time that we are geographically small right compared to to other districts who are geographically large and so you know from north to south if you don't include the canyon and from east to west uh we are geographically also at the same time uh small so okay i think i think we got that any objections again as we move forward and we come to you with all of these data pieces again we have budget we have construction we have programs we now have attendance areas we have staff um [Music] and then again this idea of thinking about how we're going to engage our staff in our community as well again just as another data point as well any other any objections to that as we move forward all right see no objections that is what we will do now comes the most important question of the night uh we have been meeting wednesday nights consecutively now for for a while um my the the essential question of of the night is are we okay to continue to move forward or do we need one wednesday night off um and then pick up on the 26th i don't want to assume that that that we are okay we're ready to keep moving uh but i also want to honor the commitment and the time that you have already uh that you have already given uh to this yes june 9th would be uh an obvious one sir but thank you uh but but i'm just thinking about next week the 19th are we yes questions yes um is the goal knowing now that in the fall we are not starting this process in the sense of the transition of three years or you know um is the goal to have a recommendation for the board before the end of the school year is that a request that they have given because if that's the case mapping out what it is we need to do is it necessary for us to go every wednesday until it gets done just so that it can get done can you kind of elaborate on that absolutely um i would say that the goal is to get this done as as as efficiently and quickly as possible but doing it right there are many many benefits to your point um mr vela we are not making any student or staff changes next year based on whatever model that we recommend but there are many things that we can we can take advantage of the fact that we're not starting next year if we're thinking about things that have been brought up today construction um that that we can start to plan and start to move forward with uh programs let's say you we fall in love this team falls in love with a program but that program we're gonna have to invest some maybe for some facilities or curriculum or material that's all stuff that we can start doing to prepare next year knowing that we don't we have this gap year so so i would say the goal is is as quickly uh as possible but not to hurt the process anybody want to make a motion one way or the other to say yep let's continue meeting next week or uh thank you yes i would like one wednesday off please i would like to continue just because i'm worried about getting it done i see some nods as yes i see thumbs ups okay anybody have a different opinion than that all right well you guys are the best um i appreciate what you are doing again i want to honor and and recognize uh that this is this is not easy um but i appreciate uh what you display tonight in terms of objectivity in terms of teamwork it's it's it's to be commended because again this is not the easiest topic uh to be talking about and so we appreciate that i will send out calendar invite just so that it so that it is in your calendar um and and it is there visible for you with the link and everything uh so thank you so much um a round of applause to all of you for doing such a such an amazing job um and we will see you if not before we will see you next wednesday thank you everyone have a wonderful night thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
yes sir so these two ladies that are staying we had planned on in that in a proposed budget we had time on replacing them with two other teachers yes okay so we just don't have to run the equity market it's two less than recruit they're under seventh year typically they have three years plus two years from extension and last year that sixth year i talked to the agency about a month what means i'm gonna be a seventh year for sure what and so we found out on monday afternoon and i talked to people one of them was like the next day the other incarnations there were three people that that affected the other time we decided to go home thank you okay uh mr right hopkins is the approval of the summer school employment summit scope of middle school and high school students will be june 7th through the 10th june 14th to the 17th from 8 30 to 1 30 pm teachers will work six hours per day for eight days and paid by the essa esf er three funds elementary and secondary school emergency relief which can be used for learning a lot in the summer enrichment program the teacher is recommended to teach with the june summer school of math cabinet events science studying while karen's daughter study law and online balloon garcia english and language learner is shelley aeroton study hall god blue kc and special education is married to girlfriend uh men have a question are you going to do something for the elementary school yes we had something very similar there's a lot of research on the summer slide from the kids the corresponding positions from june 7 through 10 to 14-17 right now what kind of uh once the board approves this i will talk with mr lopez my colleague here at the right and teachers about how we can start letting people be here i think the fact that we may have had a hybrid system last quarter may help that we're going to have a feeding program as well i think that will help uh one of the things that i get frustrated about kids will come to two or three days in this church this summer and they have had their freedoms for almost a year for a year okay mr hopkins this is robertson all right uh the next is uh non-enrolled is certified staff member and that is what we um [Music] i am all forwarding all sides but some of the information given this administration regarding this individual makes me feel like we may be obligated to act on this tonight just due to the student safety aspect um under section one of personal conduct the leading of a butcher knife a steak knife openly displayed yes [Music] no we don't need illegally we're not required to have an executive session i would have preferred to have this executive session with mrs allen's so she can speak to us in executive session or public if she so wish but i am really stuck on this item here in regards to student safety because we've had issues before with parents that have you know covered fire on the campus and one person has to handle the issue um i'm not a big fan of especially my child in that classroom there's a butcher knife and a statement attended i feel that's a very strong safety issue still there what is the status of yourself um you still on the table we are i am not trying to scare general because i understand that we all would like would have liked to have an executive session with mrs alas and i appreciate that [Music] so i guess my feelings are i see obviously yeah this is a very long-running and complex situation and i think making this vote tonight would not be wise i think we all absolutely have to have we have not received any advice from our lawyer and at this point it looks like the lord is getting blocked from access to the district so you didn't receive counsel from the writer about this matter and he said it could be handled if you can say yes or no yes i'm sorry yes uh in a case like this listen for me status teaching and working in the district in 2017 18 school of years that's apparent reflection is not helped gain continuing status we used to call that tenure because i've done a little 10-year long non-continuing status employees basically need one reason to not believe and there's no there's no um requirement or lounge for here at this minute situation i think the whole thing has been carried over i think it's time to act you're speaking about me and not invited me to make comments you cannot comment now not during overview why have i not been invited to make comments about us better than the executive section but now we're in an open house and you were invited to the second question i have no idea what you are talking about right now i'm just making that perfectly clear as i stated non-continuing status teaching that's why we have non-continuing teachers to see if they earned like what a word if they earned the um approval of administration aboard to have continuous class and administration's professional experience and that's what we're hard to do for us that is not the case in this case uh there's no option for your executive session people are advised that you're going to be an executive session because the board is not required to bring a person into the central station who has a personal action deal um they the employee in this case was notified uh trying to argue the employee employee can say i want to have the discussion and i know the meeting because the board among ourselves on this you know i mean we just saw this just in case you're interested i don't know if you are you are my just before the name started i communicated with the attorney and he's available monday tuesday wednesday next year i know some of you folks aren't available so it's nice to have a five minute board for this important decision i think it makes sense to have some discussion with the attorney presence and yeah i'm sorry about it virtually yeah i'm not really sure why this is on our table i mean i i think it should have been done at an administrative level and and then and so i don't know why it came to us and the fact that it came to let us but now it's here now i feel like that's what i'm looking for i'll liable for our decision you know and so so that's my only concern is um and i have to have all that i have to be educated and all that which probably better than a direct session on exactly how this got to where it got and what our responsibility is here and and why we have that responsibility because when i fire somebody at all it's that's between me an employee he never goes to the board right and so i but maybe we're not a public community but in arizona the superintendent makes a recommendation on termination or hiring the board this is this is the first time in years the non-continuing status person is you know [Music] so that's where my major concern is i think that i think our live mode is greater we're not dealing with this tonight because i mean what says that there's not another object or weapon [Music] it's the honest truth now if you folks are looking for a middle ground we can take other action independently of the border and guarantee student safety until the lord has a final meeting if that supports um people also worry about student safety which is number one contrary to what some people may believe but i just number one you can't teach them to read and do math and art and music without being safe i'll just say it again i think we should label this and um session as soon as possible um to discuss it before we proceed with any vote i'd like to make that question right mr duncan hi mr guppy i desperately know thank you folks thank you if you folks would kind of give me a the nights are available monday tuesday winter next week um and then at that time when you do it five o'clock we do the fourth day like 4 30 apartment like we planned tonight um it's up to [Music] this is not majority okay thank you're the folks i'm here a long time before by the long time after five seven nights thank you thank you next is a classified retirement for school secretary clinton ochoa uh has submitted the attention to resign in school secretary at the end of the 2012-2000 fiscal year i recommend the board except miss ochoa its retirement effective may 31st 2022 and when i say i received a question about that second quarter of discussions so a question is i understand by giving us notice a year in advance she's entitled to some benefits she's entitled to five percent several increases okay just adjust the motion a little bit to say uh accept the retirement effect of may 31st 2022 and offer an updated contract accordingly that comes that comes by nature you can say that but obviously we'll do this because it will have to come back to us right it's partly that i don't know for sure i don't think we can just change the now in the same contract it's not a contrast the classified people is called the being that in essence it's a classified contract if we didn't approve when the mr robertson hi mr gilbert the next um item is a classified recitation of the food service director robert ogden robert opted to submit a letter of resignation effective april 27 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um so you're saying the possible timeline is october did i hear you saying um madam president members of the board on a very good situation we could have our work done before october okay um they would be able to sorry if i'll just continue to so some of the work they could just pause for an hour in the morning pause for an hour in the afternoon and make sure that the safe ingress and egress and they'll continue doing the work during the day even during when school starts okay for right now i'll hold the rest of my questions thank you very much okay okay thank you all right moving on to item action discussion item i one dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr croto will introduce this item thank you dr callus madam president members of the board uh superintendent kellis cabinet and guests uh tonight we bring you a series of agenda items about seven that have to do with the iba that mr hicks presented last last board meeting and to our iba recommendations the first one is the mou the memorandum of understanding with the dysart education association this year's revisions you will see were have been done in conjunction with dea you will see editing throughout the document um as you know it's a compilation of many years of additions and and all that to the mou we did a major edit this year cleaning up some language cleaning up some format issues we cleared provide clarity in the document particularly with national board certification we did recognize additional national board certification which we have been recognizing since day one we just put the clarity into the document so that would be with ots or our occupational therapists or school psychologists and behavior analysts they were included and then on page 15 in the mou we added with special education being an emphasis this year we did reduce the class size in special education classes for our resource teachers from 25 to 30 to 20 to 25.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so we've once again partnered with the community health center and today i sent out registration links beginning tomorrow uh every day including the weekend through may 18th students ages 12 to 15 will have the opportunity to get the vaccine it's also available through the vaccine assistance line to make appointments as well as vams and late this afternoon i was informed that our school-based health centers possibly by the end of next week we'll be able to obtain up to a thousand doses of the pfizer vaccine so i'll be working with them in the next day or so to be planning clinics for our schools it will be open to students 12 through 18 years of age regardless of whether they are registered with our school-based health centers um that is not a requirement and they will also open the vaccines to parents of those students if they have not yet been vaccinated so this is a very exciting opportunity uh certainly a positive step in moving us forward towards herd immunity and we're very happy to be able to offer it once again thank you for your leadership i mean i'm just amazed this was going to happen and um we've already got a plan to implement it so this is what um my note went out today just so many levels of appreciation thank you again madam chair with you with the recognition okay thank you dr sarah we are moving on down to your agenda uh we're going to public participation the board welcomes public participation and asks that the comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system due to the unique nature of the covet 19 crisis and the limitation of technologists members of the public who are danbury resident are invited to send brief comments and questions by email in advance to dps public comments board of ed at u danbury.k12.ct.usd now at this time i'm gonna ask uh carol are there any comments to read tonight cara um i i think that the mute buttons on carrick can you hear us sorry about that yes okay we have two public comments first one is from chrissy marufi good evening all i wanted to start off by saying how grateful i am for all of your hard work and dedication especially given the increased difficulty of navigating us through this pandemic the last year and a half at the last boe meeting as well as the reopening workshop it was mentioned by dr sal that although distance learning will not be an option next year we will be able to utilize that framework next school year for inclement weather related closures as we all know over this past year remote learning and snow day quickly became a topic of heated debate and one that most people have strong opinions on opinions on one way or another there are no doubt many scheduling benefits to having a reliable last day of school date months in advance and there are also valid social emotional concerns over taking away that unexpected day off as it is something as children enjoy and have fond memories of long into adulthood i wondered if we might be able to find a balance between the two scenarios for instance maybe you can give students the first one or two snow days as traditional days off from learning then after that those that have been used fall back to a remote learning option for all the others going forward doing this could allow us to have the best of both worlds keeping a mostly fixed last day of school as well as little of that spontaneity students and staff enjoy so much and look forward to thank you again for all your hard work and allowing me this opportunity to contribute an opinion and the second and final comment is from oswaldo chin i would like to thank all of you for the great work you have been doing despite the pandemic please do not feel discouraged or unfounded and by baseless criticisms from people who do not represent our children nor they represent the latino community these people are representing special interests and it's their personal agenda under the camouflage of advocating for our children and the latino community please keep up the good work and thank you for your time and that concludes the public participation thank you so very much care the consent count uh kathy could you make a motion to uh for the consent calvin police that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits 21 through 68 through 21-70 as recommended motion made by kathy could i hear a second second stacking that by joe de silva and a question concerning the consent calendar cnn uh cathy can you call for the consent calendar please yes yes rachel hi gladys yes lauren aye joe de sobo hi catherine hi richard hi al hi and amy hi eyes have it okay thank you the motion is so caring uh the educational staff representative uh n e a erin miss cooper can i just interject just quickly excuse me um yeah we have some we have some students on the call um and in our meeting just may not be aware that their excuse to go um so i just wanted to let them just wanted to thank them for joining us this evening and they're certainly welcome to stay but if they don't want to stay they'd certainly welcome to leave thank you for sending that message out mr williams sorry aaron excuse me no problem okay thank you everyone good evening it's nice i am so excited we had i have something wonderful to share with you we had an event um this afternoon as you may or may not know every year nea danbury sponsors a retirement teacher appreciation dinner at the end of the year in may and usually we host uh upwards of 350 people at the amber room well obvious for obvious reasons we weren't able to do that kind of an event this year and so we were [Music] how can we celebrate our retirees how can we celebrate our teachers after the hard work that they've put in for this year and do it in a fun way that was meaningful so what we came up with was um kind of a drive-by caravan at the amber room very similar to what the danbury museum had done for their ball this year where um our teachers were able to come by and pick up a free dinner for to this evening to feed for their families and they were also able to drive by and celebrate our retirees we had seven retirees that we honored this afternoon and um it was quite an interesting um setup they got to sit at little cocktail tables in front of the amber room with um you know balloons and decorations as all teachers and colleagues got to drive by celebrate with them in their decorated cars and then pick up a meal so it was kind of yet another one of our um alternative ways of celebration and accommodating um this unusual terrain that we've all been kind of navigating this year but it was a very special moment and we were thrilled to be able to do that for our teachers this evening also wanted to mention the rally that took place last week the bridge the gap to fully fund our school budget obviously you all know we've been working diligently to try and get the word out to our community members to our council members and to our mayor to try and change the the tide of funding our school budget we all know now that you know we didn't we didn't end up with what we wanted and um i don't want anyone who participated in um you know lobbying the common council and making phone calls to our elected officials and reaching out to the mayor i don't want anyone to feel like they fell short because the efforts didn't fall short it's it's the people that are choosing to not fully fund our education our boe recommended budget that are are really failing our schools and our children so i wanted to just congratulate everybody for putting in a hard press effort to get more money for our students this year because you know whether we all agree or disagree on certain issues we can all agree that our schools need more money and our kids deserve more money and that's something that we're all um in the same boat working it towards so the rally was a great success we had over 100 people came we had people from all different um parts of our community and different organizations that came to speak out on behalf of funding the budget fully and we will not give up we're going to continue the push and i just want everybody to be reminded that the teachers do lead this charge every year every spring we're always fighting for that budget and fighting for our students um so a couple good things and a jill russell benner my gosh that video you put together whoa tears you're such an amazing person i'm glad to call you my friend and uh jake goodwin and becca dastilio oh my goodness youtube as someone who personally knows you and all the work that you have done over the years to be a stellar student sorry about my phone ringing in the background um we're just really really proud of you and jake as a former student of mine my goodness i'm so proud of you so i wanted to put that forward um i also wanted to address a couple of misconceptions from our board meeting from a couple of weeks ago i kind of wanted to just clarify a few things and we won't go get into any of the topic of discussion from the past meeting but i do wanted to put some things out there for the board to hear tonight um some of the comments that were directed towards me i perceived as animus directed at me whether they were meant to be or not um and i replaying that whole that whole evening in my mind and discussing it with my executive board officers and and fellow teachers i i think there was a miscommunication and a misunderstanding um please note that the information that i was trying to bring to you that evening i had already shared with dr sal and had already followed the proper chain of command to do our due diligence to rectify things when we bring things to you um you can trust that we've always brought things to our superintendent and brought things to the chain of command and through the proper channels before it comes to you there are times however when our nearly 1 000 teachers feel like you need some additional information and that was what i was attempting to do on their behalf a few weeks ago though i'm proud to call myself a third grade teacher and i adore my students when i come here to speak to you i'm not speaking as aaron daley the third grade teacher employee i'm speaking as aaron daley the elected union president that represents 1 000 teachers i'm not here talking as a teacher i'm here talking as a president who has to look out for all the teachers in danbury that's my role just as all of our board of ed members are are elected to do their to do their service for their community my role is i've been elected to make sure i give you information that the teachers want me to give you want me to share with you and that i'm serving to protect the teacher's best interest that's my role i think um it's it's difficult sometimes when i have to bring information that's unpleasant i try to always bring you some good news and some good scenarios and good stories that are going on in the teacher world as long as as well as things that are going on with our students but i am charged with bringing you the good the bad and oftentimes the ugly because that's what's going to make our school district better and you having all the information that you need to have that we want to share with you that sometimes you may not get a chance to get um that's my job that's my role and it was my goal a few weeks ago to give you some information and it was my hope that dr sal would bring you additional information in executive session i don't know if that took place and you have to understand from the teacher's point of view this is our only forum to communicate with the board this is it this is our one opportunity and they do that through me so everything i bring to you is their voice so i i want to make sure that we continue our good working relationship and that you know you understand that my my role is to bring you information and what we perceive as things that you need to know um and also just to let you know i know it was said as a comment but as a union leader i can't be reprimanded reprimanded for bringing you information and for speaking the voice of the teachers that's that's just not something that can happen maybe aaron daly the employee but certainly not aaron daley the union leader which is how i come to you this evening i really want to just impress that the city and the school system will only only work well when there's a free flow of ideas and collaboration and i really hope to make sure that we continue on that road so thank you again and i appreciate you listening as always and i'll see you in a couple weeks i think christie is available oh boy did we go disconnected can anybody hear me yes yes i can hear you doctor sir okay should we okay thank you i didn't know if something happened to the video goddess did you want to go to um dr zelita yes uh i was muted sorry okay dr leader good evening everyone i'm so happy to be able to continue the celebration of the arts this evening i have the great fortune of working with jill and i'm so grateful for her tenacity and her collaborative nature that's really made this a success so for tonight's silver lining across the district i want to give a special thank you to rachel wade another influential arts person she's our k-8 art department head who shared with me the slides i'm going to present with you i just threw some imovie music on it so i want to it's a short one i promise so please enjoy i'm bringing to you a look at our k-8 students art experience this year so do please enjoy [Music] so so thank you so much i know um i'm missing a person the board of ed room and i'd always remember rachel would fill the walls with all the amazing artwork that our students did so i know that was a little bit fast but i hope that you enjoyed it and i look forward to seeing you all soon thank you now thank you dr leader uh what beautiful artwork i mean it was beautiful thank you uh student reps jake i think i'm gonna do it today okay okay okay is jake's still here okay rebecca okay i don't know okay jake is still here but i think i'm gonna do it um uh first off i just wanted to say thank you for um honoring me today and i think jake feels the same way um i was very kind um i don't i get like weird when people say nice things about me but i i am very thankful so well deserved by the way yeah thank you thank you i really appreciate it um but yeah we do have some exciting stuff to talk about um for like end of the year things so um we sold prom tickets last week um that was like the last week of selling them and the seniors are really excited that we were able to do a prom i know they didn't have one last year which was i know a lot of kids bought their dresses but i think i'm reusing mine so probably what's happening for a lot of people um so that's going to be on may 28th at the amber room and i think it's going to be outside and inside i'm not entirely sure i i sometimes miss the memo on what's going on but i'm pretty sure that's what's happening um also uh the vog organized the class officer elections so last year we didn't have class officer elections just because of everything that was going on but this year we were able to culminate um about 25 different students participated in the student elections which i was pretty proud of by just getting kids to participate online can be very difficult but we had students campaigning through social media and stuff like that and i had over 300 um ballots filled out just today for the senior class um and it's only the first day and it's closing tomorrow so that was that was nice to see and students went really all out with it some were using green screens um so to like put a little presidential background yeah it was pretty cool um so then the bog elections which are different from the class officer elections because bog is the entire student body those are happening next week um applications were due today and then i think there's a board of education meeting june 9th i think that's when we're bringing the new um bog elected officials and everybody can meet them at that time and then jake and i will officially retire from our duties as um board of education liaisons which will be sad because we've been doing it for two years um so then a couple weeks ago i don't know if it was two weeks ago three weeks ago i kind of lose track of time but um we took pictures on the field for senior pictures which is something that usually happens um a little earlier in the year but we're glad that we got to do it it was a dif it was four different groups i believe three different groups we went down to the bleachers we took the picture that the seniors usually take and then we like did the 2021 on the field and then um the danbury pto uh painted the wall for us um near the field near the baseball fields and then we did all did our handprints on the side of the building which was really fun it was like a it was a nice senior experience we got to be with other seniors which is nice um so then on may 10th the key club celebrated its 50th anniversary and did an induction so not the not the overall key club but the dhs key club has been there for 50 years which is a pretty good achievement and then also the peer leaders put together a celebration for teacher appreciation last week and they had every day of a teacher appreciation week they had a poem written about a different teacher right over the loudspeaker and then they did um so that was all handwritten poetry and then they had like food and they had like something in the break room for all the teachers which was very nice and i think that's all i have uh this week but we'll be back probably obviously before the end of the year so that's it thank you thank you yeah okay so uh do we have anyone from ace good evening uh cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence these students will host our 18th annual coffee house on june 3rd students and staff will have the opportunity to share their creativity through reading original poetry musical performances and artwork the ace graduation ceremony will take place on wednesday june 8th at the broadview auditorium at 30 pm the change in date will allow ace students to participate in both the ace graduation ceremony and the dhs graduation ceremony on june 16th ace will be celebrating the birth of our founder joe pepin a virtual slideshow is being created to celebrate the impact that joe has had on the danbury community and the ace facebook page is collecting appreciations that alumni and staff have for joe students in the building are working on creating a bulletin board to celebrate joe's legacy and the history the ace humanities department will be administrate administering our humanities benchmarks the week of may 17th to may 21st on may 21st this will be hosting premier day with virtual guest speakers to present careers that serve the community this special day is being organized by diana dinardo and dj jimenez ace staff will be running entrance interviews from may 18th to 20th and then again on may 25th and 26th thank you to the ace staff for beginning the process of building the relationships with our incoming families ace would like to announce our april student of the month award winners excuse me sorry about that thank you to the ace staff for beginning the process of building the relationships with our incoming families ace would like to announce our april student of the month award winners ramir rivera and alexa dar congrats to alexa for also making the honor roll in quarter three ace would also like to publicly acknowledge and congratulate our most recent students of the week liliana palma and jen sedano keep up the great work thank you all for allowing me to share the great things happening with the ace family this spring thank you chris uh before i move on does any board members have uh any question for either one of our representatives okay saying not seeing none uh we're gonna move on to action item a rachel okay i move that the board of education approved the 2021 to 2022 school reopening plan for five full days full school days per week for 180 days as presented by the administration motion made by rachel could i hear a second second segment by joe de silva uh madam chair i we've been getting some updates from regarding the essa money and one of this regret one of the requirements and i think i gotta double check it maybe by june 23rd but i'm not really sure they've just uh looking at some dates but we have to publish the uh but for the board has to publish your reopening plan that is a requirement for us to submit the grant so i just uh wanted you to know that that's all thank you thank you doc thank you dr sam um kathy could you do the roll call can i just make a quick comment yes i just want to you know reiterate my point from our workshop um and thank you for having that that was you know greatly helpful um just about the distance learning piece and i'm not suggesting that it remain you know as in its current form just just that we should recognize the innovation of of what happened when when this first when we first launched dl you know i thought that this would change education forever and uh you know it's funny we talked about extending the school year because i thought you know with this there would be a way to um mitigate the summer slide the the learning loss over the summer um so i just you know to have it fall by the wayside i wonder you know what we've learned from this experience or what we've gained from this experience so that's just my thought of course we need to fully reopen schools and no doubt in my mind i mean that's been the message from the state level all year long and so you know i'm glad i'm glad we're making it work okay thank you are there any other yeah are there any other questions on uh action item a see you none cathy could you do the roll call please rachel aye gladys yes lauren daly aye joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi richard janelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi i just have it thank you the motion so care rachel would you do action item b a move that the board of education approved the revised 2021 to 2022 school calendar in accordance with 21-71 move by righteous secretary jack not by yourself um okay yeah i just need to add something because okay go ahead at the beginning of the um board meeting you heard a commentary uh let me what my understanding as of right now from the state department is that um the boards are not required to um not introduce i'm sorry to offer uh remote to the to your to the community but in in that same communication they articulated five or six opportunities kind of like what rachel was talking about when you might be able to use it as of right now um the the emergency days in the calendar there's five days in there and we'll talk about that but the board has to stay with the five days because we have no authorization the executive order has expired to say to anyone that you can offer dl at this point now they may they'll probably come up with some recommendations but i just wanted to make that uh known to the uh to the board and maybe uh carrick can speak about the calendar for them um i want to just quickly comment on what rachel brought up because i think at the point you were trying to make rachel if i'm correct is along the innovative practice and use of technology in terms of you know creating learning environments that that look different for students and we're having lots of conversations about that and so i kind of want to separate the pandemic distance learning from innovative practice moving forward and so we're having you know informed conversations that guide graduation requirements for students and opening up flexibilities that perhaps perhaps were not there before um in our understanding of what is acceptable quick example um you know as we're looking at um after school programming um a lot of our kids either you know can't do the bus or can't get picked up um and buses busing is extremely expensive we've already talked about after school programs where kids can log back in virtually once they get home and meet with the teacher convenience for the teacher convenience for the student we're likely to get more engagement and it's really all about the balance of the virtual use and i think we were at a point where you know the pendulum had swung so severely um and it's really about where can we instill innovative practice in in our teaching learning environments that maximize what we're trying to do using the digital technologies that we've now become familiar with so i just wanted to say that we are very much thinking along those lines that's great cara thank you so much welcome um i don't know kevin or cara do you want to kevin you want to comment about the calendar or adjustments i could just quickly briefly there were just a couple of changes on the calendar and it really had to do with um you know now with the moving into the year really more delineating some of the the pre-days for teachers really the structural calendar for the students haven't changed um we did remove um two or three of the early dismissal days uh just to really only make sure that we have in there what it is that we need and to reduce anything that was back to back uh which we thought was a little disruptive and so we just took a second pass over that um we added a new teacher orientation day in there um because we didn't negotiate three not two and so we just moved that some of those professional development pieces around at the beginning of the year but it really didn't impact the structural calendar for the student um there was an error in in in june on one of the dates and so that has been since corrected it was more of a typo so i think we're good to the the calendar has been uh you know vetted by both unions and have gone through the uh gone through the circles overview thank you are there any other questions concerning uh no just ken just to mention to the board that um what surrounding districts have done it's relative to the comments the parent made if in fact the um the state comes back and says the board has an option for the remote learning for um those days one of the things that districts did and i i think it's a good idea personally but you can talk about it uh you could you could use the first three days for example as emergency days and then because and then you can bump the next two just so that you don't go too late in june the motivation guys anybody that's subbed in our schools to do anything we do not have air conditioning in schools it's very difficult late june so that is an issue for us but i just put that out there so if things change the board can consider some kind of a of a blended uh opportunity but that's that's that's remaining depending on what the state does and they come back to you with i just want to leave you with that thank you any other questions on this motion uh captain could you do the roll call for the motion please rachel chaleski aye lettuce cooper aye lorraine i'm sorry lauren daley hi joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye richard gennelly aye al russo hi amy spolina hi nice habit thank you motions of care amy would you do action item c yes i make a motion that the board of education except for first reading policy 9326 taping recording of boe meetings as recommended by the policy committee i'm sorry 72 okay any questions on the motion me and i captain can you do the walk rachel chaleski hi gladys cooper hi lauren daley hi joe da silva hi catherine hodgston hi richard jannelli [Music] catherine hodgeson would you do action item d yes i make a motion that the board of education except the second reading and adoption policy 9273 conflicts of interest as recommended by the policy committee 21-73 promotion made by catherine could i hear a second belarusian okay any questions on the motion cnn uh catholic could you do the roll call please rachel chaleski hi gladys cooper hi lauren bailey hi joe da silva hi catherine hodgdon aye richard janelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi eyes have it motion so careful thank you lauren would you do action item e please lauren okay yeah could you do it joe what i got right here um action which one was it f 300 series yep i got it i make a motion that the board of education except for second reading and adaption adoption policy 92 73 com oh that's the one we just read i make a motion that the board of education except for second reading and adoption policy 9 300 methods of operation as recommended by the policy committee sorry that's okay made second by catherine catherine any question concerning the motion saying uh catherine would you do the roll call please rachel celeski aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye richard jannelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi eyes have it thank you emotion so care russo could you do action um number e the 993 series i'm sorry i make a motion at the board of education except for the second reading the adoption policy 93-21 board of education workshop sessions is recommended by the policy committee and exhibit 21-75 second about show any questions concerning the policy cnn captain cause you do the roll call rachel chaleski hi gladys cooper hi lauren daley hi joe da silva hi catherine hodgston hi richard genelli hi al russo yes amy spolina hi eyes habit motion so careful thank you so very much uh richard uh mr janella could you do action item g sure emotion left the board of education except for the second reading and adoption policy number nine three one three administrative regulations formation adoption and amendment as recommended by the policy committee motion made by mr ginelli do i hear a second second by rachel or any discussion a question concerning the policy cnn uh catholic can you do the roll call rachel chaleski aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgston aye richard gianelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi hi ted thank you so very much dr sale you're up next okay let me just get to my um give me a second okay [Music] you want to start with the city council municipal budget those of you that attended thank you um you you heard last week what happened at the meeting um we were later's budget as recommended to the subcommittee and then recommended to the community as a whole they had a long discussion about it but our budget is at 1.25 in terms of our operation budget um and we're going to have to start dealing with that what i number two on here talks about the state and federal state grants and let me tie those two together because um as you know the board had asked for that 13.5 million we're down to we asked for that six and a half and we reduced it because of money in the essa we're going to have to now uh go into there and uh look at how we're going to um mitigate um the the difference um you all know i don't want to preach to you all um we're going to have to open schools the the opening of schools in there along with staffing and other things that we need uh we talked about the cliff that's just a reality um you do have some help on that with the way we're opening the reopening with some of the staffing moving down but you are going to be faced with that issue in three years with me as the money goes so now maybe something else will happen that will mitigate that that's a possibility next year when you come around to the budget season um i checked with um and courtney's on i know we've been checking with hartford we're trying to get clarity on language and let me tell you it's been very very difficult it's not because our our our contingent our legislative group has hasn't tried it's just the way they operate we believe that the money that was coming out of the committee that will go for a general assembly for a vote which would give us uh next year i believe two and a half million dollars uh more money that we should be getting there's also some other options there with pilot money coming to the city that we may be in line for but right now um you know the the governor uh has not pushed back uh on that you may recall his his recommendation was a pause that doesn't seem to be happening so that's the good news for us how much we won't know i don't think until the first week in june is when the vote is supposed to be so we're going to be um meeting and looking at the uh estimating and we did meet the state is sending something out they've added some criteria that they have some money in terms of due dates um um and um we're we'll have to follow those and we'll be in good stead to do that they're going to ask us to build on the so2 money with the criteria so we're we're going to be pretty good with that it's just that we're going to have to figure out what's going to happen in the alliance money because that was part of ecs so until we understand uh what's happening with that we really don't know how to move that that around but we are going to have to look at the essa money two and three to mitigate the difference between what the town had recommended and what we need to open school i'm going to just stop for a second and ask courtney uh if she has anything to add to that no doctor i think that captures it um we have a budget planning session on friday so i i'll just say we did submit the sr2 grant um to the state um and waiting for acceptance on that and in the process of submitting the sr3 grant they released the time frame um and so we're working through like dr cell said we have our carry forward of the seven million plus the six million additional needs and the new reopening plan so as we go through and prioritize we look forward to working with the board about a multi-year plan that looks at the next four years um until the esser money runs out and talking about as we've built that strategy to build towards that um that need for those academy years and for when those as their monies potentially are not with us any longer so we're looking forward to briefing the board on that as we start that process on friday thanks dr cell thank you thank you and again ryan um ryan is monitoring it for us in hartford uh i know courtney sent him an email the other day um and then he sent some information to us so as we get this information obviously we'll let you know but right now as we think it's good news that the governor uh will sign at least that recommendation that came out of the subcommittee so that um that'll be helpful to us um thank you that takes care of a and b really for me unless anybody has any questions thank you dr sale you're welcome okay so um thank you gladys i think that's i'm done with my report you want to go to discussion the discussion i didn't got to say yes okay um me uh as we just try to frame this the tyler is the program that we're moving into that's the budgeting system and um you know as the board of ed members have heard and discussed the finance department has been working on this since you know february uh to correct uh you know these errors that were made with the hsa and they've been working diligently on this um as we looked at this problem um we've noticed some other tendencies in there and i will say to what we're learning i think it was joe asked well where did the problem stem from it really is the way um these systems are set up with calendars of deductions and data that's entered it seemed that uh for us the error at least in this respect was a data entry error so what we what we are doing with this new financial system it is pretty comprehensive and it's very uh difficult to maintain and our department is not that well you know staffed quite frankly so we worked on uh doing a few things that the board should uh know because it's paramount i know that the importance that we follow steps in order to assure that we have an opening what we're told everyone uh as we transition through the next month and a half july 1st is our window to open up so we have to make sure everything is in line with our budget our payroll and those things so when we open up the new budget here everything uh paychecks and deductions are all uh corrected so one of the things that courtney had needed to do and we've been able to uh do that along with the tyler help is that we have a project manager in the next two months that are really going to assist in terms of making sure that all of the various components of the transition happens and happens in a timely way we've been able to ascertain because this tyler conversion has is not unique just to danbury many of districts in the in the state have been had to transition because of um the ending of the of an old system that not being maintained we've been able to uh have a person who was very deeply stead in the uh this process of of the tyler and uh is going to work with courtney um into looking at the um the setups to make sure everything is in line she has been through these and been through a lot of the issues so with her advice that will give us a lot of safety net and redundancies to make sure that everything uh is is according to the way it has to be in order to go in into thailand and then um we'll make sure that we're working obviously with tyler very closely with hr and the finance committee because right now this is a blended program and they will be uh helping us what i suggest that we do if it's okay with you all because i know you'll have questions does that that the finance committee meet maybe next week and tomorrow morning we're going to present a work plan with these constituents there talking about our needs and maybe uh if it's okay with you madam chair i would invite the chairman of the finance committee to the meeting tomorrow morning and to listen in and be first in what we're doing so that when we meet as a when you meet as a subcommittee of the board on finances you have a full understanding of how what we're how we're moving forward how we're reconciling the books how we're doing and publishing our um you know our balances making sure sure all of that uh is known so i thought that might be a good idea uh so that everybody is updated that's okay with you it's okay with me if it's okay with the board members there's no questions if it's okay then maybe then you could call a uh finance committee and you could update everybody on that and uh about the work plan and that that would be a good step forward are you okay with that yes uh is it possible right now uh i know we're getting busy uh the 19th which is off wednesday which is fine just i happen to not be available lately okay okay did dr sales say there was a cabinet meeting tomorrow um did you chairman the chairman yes the chairman meeting executive committee yeah you're invited to that also madam chair i'm sorry i'm the vice chair of the finance committee am i also invited to that meeting with your co-chair yeah yes yes sir thank you the leadership would be good so i apologize and by the way it's at eight o'clock out well so cara will send you an invite yeah i've got the invite i'll forward it along that's all right okay thank you thank you for working this out okay courtney can i ask courtney a question could you clarify some of the beginning points that sal made uh what was the what was the the initial issue sure so um we were in a system a legacy system called phoenix that went offline with support on july 1 of 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
prior to submitting the attached resignation letter mr ivan had verbally expressed his need to resign to the superintendent prior to april 13th 2021. the superintendent recommends with regret the acceptance of prophet audrey's resignations director food service for the university the next is a classified resignation of apparel club teaches a jennifer dillard jennifer dilla the teacher dave semeta submitted a letter of resignation effective april 21st 2021 superintendent recommends the acceptance of the resignation of jennifer dylan as a teacher may i hear a motion i'm second to none [Music] mr she was here she did a very good job family illness she thought she had a responsibility the next is a classified reassignment food service director alejandra alejandra ortega has served as the assistant food service director for the last 16 years the administration was submitting the request to promote or reassign alejandra as the district student service director and she has definitely um i think who explained to us been working with mr for a number of years for a couple of years [Music] yesterday i was unable to be here because of personal matter but we had a employee recognition breakfast and they got some kind of speaker again and i heard a lot today i came back and i was creating around before schools i heard about positive comments about the work and the way that continental breakfast was presented so i had talked with her she appreciated her her satisfaction was she just plenty of some apocalypse [Music] i was suggesting the next is classified reassignment as assistant food service director francis lopez francisca lopez uh council teacher aide i had previously served as a cook in the aqua school cafeteria for seven years she has expressed an interest in returning to the food service department to serve as assisted food service director superintendent recommended that francisco lopez be a reassigned proposal to the position of assisted service director thank um workshop on june 1st to the 4th 2021 this spell trend is being asked by training of a special education para professional staff nine paraprofessionals will be authored this training and will be paid 12.15 per hour but 28 hours through the four days of the summer workshop breakdown of the workshop and attendees are attached i didn't say this i apologize just if she's off calendar she'll be paying her normal payers and she's done this before the apology that we i found a significant i think slowed down on the turnover repair professions i think they saw themselves valued i think they understood america's needs and special education along the way and they realized that what they do is support the kids and so i appreciate your her wonderful viewers she will be her only special ed teacher on campus this summer so she's going to be a busy lady does she the specialized curriculum she teaches one teacher is going home and one teacher has a vacation plan before she does have some special curriculums like increases they want to build a resident and they served on the committee to do this for unfortunately for two years that's a good question the cultural exchange so they have to show that they're they're providing for the culture that they're here and then they share with the culture that they're coming from so it's just all adding to that cultural visa nine times out of ten except for open times we can't keep these people up for years 2021 budget religion number two the current year's school district funding especially during the financially challenging times such as districts are experiencing creates the necessity of fiscal year budget revisions prior to the end of the fiscal year leanne burns will review which he did with aboard any budget revisions that are currently necessary and the administration will submit for approval on wednesday and so superintendent is asking our approval of the ohio unified school district for the year 2020 2021 budget division number two as recommended per ars 50 this is the last time you can do during the year we get what you recall in december and with federal money's coming in and money going out that we didn't plan on spending things for uh budget has been in flux more than any other year i've been doing this so um we will do as leanne mentioned monday night the june board meeting will have a budget hearing for the 21 22 school year and there's a timeline by which we have to vote on it but our time i believe our board adopted board meeting schedule will fit it can't be more than 15 days or less than five days between the hearing and i had spencer you just kind of ring her hands over this and she had a good point she goes we can't change the budget at all between the present the proposed budget in june and the adoption judge in july so this kind of one more thing mistake said just do it but that's okay we're um leanne and i are working on somebody right now we've been discussing this somewhat since february um all right is second reading and approval or board policy gc2e retirement staff members her boy discussion he attacked government board policy gcpu retirement professional support staff member was submitted to the district attorney for approval his recommendations and approval are attached along with the comparison of the two divisions [Music] uh first is just the explanation we had a discussion on this and the board requested a policy revision that removed basically the second half of gcpe and i i gave you guys a um a copy of that of what that looks like it kept the top impact which is separate and remove the bottom partial portion because it conflicts with monthly agreements so the idea was to maintain the agreement because the benefits to the staff was a little bit better and remove the wording from the policy agreement but what was given to us if you look in the board book is completely different than what the board asked for it removes third time incentive program which is a significant benefit for the teachers and it changes the employee agreement benefits for a sick leave buyback on retirement which is not what we asked for additionally there's a letter here to the attorney that says attorney says are the changes being proposed by asda or are the changes being posed with is proposed by the district and the response is they're being proposed by the district by the board these were not proposed by the war i don't know why sure i believe um and one of the suggestions was the teachers specifically were interested in two items because i agree grievance the type of faculty like me christian and the retirement and our our plan which goes back 100 years one of the reasons i'm hesitant to i wasn't still in to simply substitute policy that was a suggestion of the policy totally for the lead portion of the working division of these two items and retirement in the very simplified version if you recall the asba said a person would be here 10 years whether they had a buyout of sick leave on the retirement and retirement didn't mean moving the yield event and retiring being part of the head of paralysis and the other part was five agreement dnas per my first level founding number or five per year um the retirement program is i did i don't understand that you said the board agenda took away but it's it's exactly what you gave us from the three paragraphs so are you talking about this question right right so it's the same thing no it's not all of that's been renewed by my retirement the numbers have been taken out the amounts have been taken out we didn't ask for that we asked for the for the numbers to remove from the bottom half which is safely payment upon retirement instead both programs were adjusted and things were added in we didn't ask for anything to be added in you just added ask for something to be removed so it would be simplified and the uh employee agreement would stand without confusion instead things were added for remove that we didn't ask for and things were added that we didn't have so this is what i provided you when we talked about it and i gave it to you again tonight his attorney hasn't seen asba has always told me that we don't copyright policies that we haven't written and sent out in the policy of life and so but a lot of non-districts change this policy [Music] right so the board has already i understand that this has been going on for more than a year the board has agreed to this we don't have to table it and i don't see what i need to see it i need to talk about what is that we need to vote on what the board agrees to which is i want to make sure that i want to make sure this let's take this next meeting of course it doesn't need to be table that's my point but really i'm confused so i just have one quick question so this is the items that are about to be removed [Music] yes so this was this was something that we have discussed right we talked about this already the steps to get this approved not published not copyrighted by asp have been credited and put it on the policy bridge is that the district has to obviously rewrite the policy first and have to have the district attorney look at they will not let their friends look at then we submit those two and the asba [Music] i don't feel comfortable adopting policy if there's a small change there that i'm not aware that make sure we're in the same place i think it's a fairly simple solution as i'll make sure we're guaranteeing the process that if we come to the board with something slightly different than what i think ben approved i don't want to speak for him and say yeah the attorney supports this because that's what's not safe so we haven't had a teacher retire in this district for about 12 years by the way so because the policy is not used frequently and partially because of a higher percentage of international teachers speak and then in our next work session she can explain explain to us so we can vote more intelligently on it and so my motion is hi the next item is approval of the governing board policy graduation exercises the house bill 2 2705 enacted by the arizona state legislature revises section 1 title 15 chapter 3 article 2 of ars methods 15-348 degrees dress code policy traditional table regalia objects of cultural significance graduation and ceremonies definition a a school district deputy board a charter school governing board party or any public school may not prohibit a student who is a member of a federally recognized indian tribe or who is eligible to be enrolled as a member of the federally recognized indian tribe from where traditional tribal and area are altered or cultural significance at a graduation center and then b for the purpose of this section objects of cultural significance and traditional tribal regardless will include and we will feather our legal food or an awful 20 wbc issued executive orders 2020 41 prioritizing kids and schools during 2019.
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