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so [Music] rotc [Music] [Applause] please [Music] now introducing mayor joseph superintendent of schools [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'm so water so foreign ladies and gentlemen [Music] true one [Applause] guys oh my god oh awesome [Applause] uh [Music] yes [Applause] [Music] secretary i would like to introduce my fellow senior class officers all right nick you have one job with senior members at this time i would ask everyone to please turn off their phones [Music] gentlemen please remove your gas i pledge allegiance please remain standing for the star spangled [Music] okay [Music] is still there oh [Music] please be seated i would like to introduce our guests on stage [Applause] cooper [Applause] members of the board of education superintendent assistant superintendent paulson and the rest of the members of the cabinet [Applause] i would now like to introduce the mayor of the city of hamburg mayor alba good afternoon guests it is there and on behalf of the city of cambridge i want to welcome everyone here to this graduation ceremony and i wish to extend my heartfelt congratulations to each of our graduates today in your lifetime in my lifetime there has never been a fair point like this one and although many years have passed since i graduated high school my memories of that day are perfectly clear and the significance of graduating high school was undiminished the pandemic and its effects will be remembered throughout world history as students you were forced to take on new challenges with distance learning and while i imagine that you're all much more tech savvy than i am knowing that leaving your classroom and learning from home through an ipad or a computer was still quite a challenge to you all not being able to see your friends teammates or your teachers even more challenging but through it all you remained resilient you fought through the obstacles adapted to the changes and now you are stronger for it you are graduating today no other generation will understand what the class of 2021 and your peers just ahead of you in 2020 have endured to get to this point this is a day of great significance it celebrates the success of one stage of education development you have come a long way you begin a small child's children eager to learn the basics eager to grow up you have accomplished this and so much more today your education at danbury high school has given you an excellent beginning and a platform for a lifelong process of learning some of you will go into the military some will go to work some of you will move on to college others might take time to explore your options travel or take a gap year to consider your prospects whatever you do though look at the world through the lens of your understanding history and your heart read listen more than you speak hear the world around you it will be your best teacher throughout life you will be asked to master skill and grow as situations change most of you will experience retraining as you may change career direction several times before you reach retirement age your need to learn will never end thankfully the tools you need to proceed down this road have been provided for you here at danbury high school this too should be a time of enjoyment you have grown into young adults you've worked hard to reach this point you studied you crammed you worried and sometimes most certainly struggled but the work you invested has paid off you've succeeded in achieving this milestone it is a time for a celebration time to have some fun you certainly deserve it and i wish you a wonderful summer however it would lack responsibility if i didn't caution you that while enjoying your celebrations that you use good judgment and at all times be safe out there there's so much more in life that you need to experience we do not stand alone in life we share all we do in some fashion with others the world we live in today is not the same as that of your parents or your grandparents and i ask that you become involved for those of you now who now participate i ask that you increase your activity and your involvement we need people who care people who will volunteer their time energy and skills to help society grow to help those most needed to pick up where government leaves off to give back to your community for all that has been given to you to become good kind caring and responsible citizens and last but not least we need to thank your parents your guardians your friends your teachers and administrators for the help support and encouragement that was the bedrock the foundation that enabled each of you to achieve this level of success today that we celebrate here in closing again i want to congratulate the class of 2021 on their graduation and wish them every fortune materially and emotionally may your future be a peaceful one full of happiness and much success may you retain your every goal may you be a credit to your family and your community and may god watch over you closely through every step of your future thank you [Applause] and i just have one other thing to add i just want to say yey jenna [Applause] now to speak is the longest serving board member with over 30 years of service board chairperson ms gladys cooper thank you young man it's a pleasure and it's an honor to be here and i thank him for reminding me also that i'm a senior citizen i am the longest serving board member but in but in all it is an honor and it has been a pleasure to serve for 30 years good afternoon honorable mayor calvo superintendent of schools dr pasquerella board of education members and all distinguished guests how can we not recognize the principle of such a great high school mr dan donovan [Applause] and i'm not i don't have a whole lot of words i come to share because i believe it's about you so i'm going to read my speech and move on congratulations to the class of 2021 as you leave dhs remember all the memorable times that you shared with your teachers and friends be sure to continue to keep your eyes on the goals that you have outlined for yourself the stars are always shining bright when you wish upon a star you would dream like you were very far as you graduate and leave dhs for the next chapter of your life remember to be safe respect yourself and take care of others on behalf of the danbury board of education congratulations to the class of 2021 to give the valedictorian address caleb [Applause] schlissel so as i was writing this speech i considered making a few jokes um i sent my speech to some of my friends and quickly learned i should probably stay away from a career in comedy or i can always just go make some new friends whatever's easier that's beside the point though my name is caleb schlissel and i know some of you know me as the kid who wore bow ties in freshman year i'm really excited to have the opportunity to speak to all of you today but before i do i just want to thank mayor cavo board of education chairperson cooper members of the board of ed superintendent pascarella assistant superintendent wallston mr donovan and all of the wonderful dhs faculty parents and guardians for all of their hard work especially this past year on behalf of the class of 2021 your dedication and continued support is greatly appreciated now to my friends and peers isn't it kind of ironic that we started our last year of high school worried about covid only to end it recovering from fresh cases of senioritis i don't know about you but i definitely started feeling the common symptoms of dwindling motivation and accelerating fatigue way back in april i was so ready to be done with high school and i saw graduation as the last leg of an arduous marathon or the epic conclusion to some blockbuster film for some reason i thought all my struggles would magically vanish and i'd be left satisfied with the happy ending i've worked for now that i'm finally here i've realized how wrong that mindset is there's no finish line finish line in sight for us here today nor will credits roll as we leave with diplomas in reality our lives will continue to progress after graduation with our podium finishes and long-awaited credit sequences waiting for us in the distant future right now we're just taking a breath and rehydrating or getting up to stretch during a slow part of the movie and while we're a long way from the end it can't be denied that we've persevered through a lot whether it be ap exams college applications maintaining a healthy school and life balance or even adapting to distance learning every single one of us has overcome challenges during our time here at danbury high school and yeah it might be a little disheartening but we're not done with stress or failure we might be temporarily free of 11 59 pm deadlines monotonous textbooks and those overcrowded d3 hallways but going forward there are so many greater opportunities and challenges that we get to face so what comes next where do we go from here well first of all let's celebrate let's take our attention away from the race that we might be running and forget how exhausted we might be look away from the movie for a minute and just appreciate the company of the people you're here with we've all truly earned this moment so i think we all deserve to take the time to congratulate ourselves and reflect on how far we've come as to what comes after that's up to you i want you all to think of a goal that you have for your lives after today it might be something like succeeding in college working a job you really like maybe spending time with your family or even starting one of your own regardless of what your objectives are accomplishing them will not be easy we'll have to take risks we'll fail and even when we pick ourselves back up again we'll fail over and over again and that'll be difficult but success without hard work is not what defines us our ability to remain determined and learn from our failures gives us the power to control our futures and it's evident that we all have the potential to do great things but if we give up at the faintest site of failure or settle for indifference we'll never learn the satisfaction of accomplishment so members of the class of 2021 if you're still awake our plan is simple we must keep moving forward until we triumph over the barriers that come in our way and no matter the obstacles we face will strive to overcome them we'll continue to embrace failure take risks and learn from our mistakes adders i challenge you to give your hearts in every single thing that you do from this day forth keep chasing your finish lines and stick around for the credit sequences because with enough patience determination and hard work we'll break through that finish tape and watch as the credits roll thank you i would like to introduce our first student selected speaker melody there hi everyone so i know it's hard and you just want to get your diplomas but i'd like to ask you to listen to me just this last once my fellow graduates of 2021 this is it for once this is the one thing i do not want to rush in my life everyone knows with the type of person i am i do not plan but i will rush through all the actions as if everything is a blur but this once i'd like to have five more minutes with all of you i'm melody darrett am happy to finally stand before all of you without the screen of my laptop separating us being able to see so many of my fellow classmates faces and staff in front of me only reminds me of the busy and crazy year of our freshman lives it seems as if it was only yesterday that we were standing in these bleachers during our first spirit week of high school meeting so many new friends and dressing up in all white with paint on our faces except here we stand four years later one by one dressed in gowns with graduation caps as freshmen we looked up to the seniors thinking they lived their life so freely as if they figured everything out obviously now we know that is probably the biggest lie we've ever fed into of course other than believing we were gonna start coming in school any earlier than february personally i believe the four years we were going were going to be painfully long and hard which made me dread coming to school as early as seven in the morning yet i can't help but feel my last two years of high school were taken away from me if only i woke up and got ready for school the first time my alarm clock rang if only i made the bus so i wouldn't miss 30 minutes of first period if only i forced myself into trying new clubs and sports when i had the opportunity if only i popped my own personal bubble and made new friends in every classroom and if only i believed that time was precious that maybe just maybe i would have had more extra time to appreciate the high school experience with all of you corona made us realize what we took for granted more than anything before i can continue the corny emotional graduation speech i'd like to gain recognition and awareness of being a student during quarantine corona was an immense change on everyone but for some reason at a certain point it felt like the world was against me i may not be wearing as many tassels as i wished i would since freshman year i may not be graduating with the outstanding gpa that i've been beating myself up for for the past four years but i am here right standing at this podium here i stand thinking i would never make it but we aren't perfect we aren't machines we're human beings we adjust and change alongside time we all did the best that we could and we're all standing here today i'm sure a lot of you can really as this period of time has been mentally draining i am a student just like any of you always remember to be proud of yourselves i have multiple teachers to thank for reminding me that thank you for working outside of teaching to save our lives by merely encouraging us i have come to realize that high school isn't just about homework projects and exams which was what made me dread the four years to come but it is what you learn outside of textbooks we are all mosaic of each other whether short-term or long-term encounters with every passing year with new teachers and classmates we created unique memories that slowly shaped our personalities prior to adulthood we may have had a very rough past two years but at least i am able to share this final moment with all of you as of today we leave with pride but especially with each other goodbye can be a simple farewell to everyone but as i speak goodbye seems to be a million words that cannot be expressed so simply we never thought our time would be so limited in fact i'm sure most of us thought that time was slowing down in quarantine so before the goodbyes and thank yous i'd rather say congratulations to those who worked extra hard no matter how optional class felt online and especially congratulations to those who did enough when school became extremely draining after switching to distance learning i'm especially proud of you and of course congratulations to the class of 2021.
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in this meeting hi cara um kelly truchas if she's there melissa naydu um hi to all of you um i've n not only had a working relationship for with many uh people in the danbury public schools but i've also represented many of the professionals and so uh in doing so um i send my thank yous to n.e.a danbury but to danbury public schools rich childbirth uh kevin walston courtney laborious and dr sal thank you so much and best to you and your retirement um the last time that i uh was before board members in this type of situation um it was for 20 years of service and i received this medallion i hope that you still give them out and i still have mine and i never uh felt more valued than when i received that and just gave me um the motivation to continue uh kathy molinero kathy i remember when you came as a board member knew you before them but came as a board member to my school just to introduce yourself and say hi to the teachers um you can't even imagine the feeling um that you left with the teachers knowing that you cared enough to come into their building uh madam chair gladys cooper i've watched you from the time you were just attending board of ed meetings to your unwavering leadership now as the chair um thank you all board members for the time that you have put in and for the days going forward that you begin to look at a superintendent for the danbury public school system i just want to leave these with you i had this hanging in my door for my students the quote that says everything that is popular is not right and everything that is right is not popular i leave that with you and thank you all for being a part of my educational legacy um i would like to say something um hi and congratulations to dr sal on your retirement as well uh i have been teaching for 38 years um over 29 of them have been in danbury and 23 of them have been in danbury high school this is very bittersweet um i hope i don't cry um and i am truly going to miss every single one of you um i'm gonna miss my children i'm gonna miss the kids that i've been dealing with for so long and working with for so long and when i started here i actually started with joan hodge um she she was my partner in crime when i first started in danbury public schools and she was a wonderful woman and she will truly be missed i'm not going to talk that long because i'm not a great public speaker which is strange because i teach children every day but um again this is bittersweet i am going to miss every single moment of every single day but it's a new chapter and my husband and i are starting a whole new life so again thank you everybody thank you to the board for all your support thank you kelly if you're there thank you so much and cara thank you as well we have known each other quite some time and um everybody enjoy good health yes anyone else oh okay well don't forget my offer if you guys feel so bad you know welcome back um there's plenty of opportunities for you and we'd love to have you you've made the connections that are so important to us uh madam chair that ends this part of the program thank you uh dr sal since i met him chair could we as board members unmute ourselves and just take a few minutes and stand up and give all our retirees a round of applause thank you you thank you thank you thank you are we going to move on down the agenda yes you can go to public participation oops i think gladys may have frozen um yeah so i'll move forward with the public participation gladys the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system due to the unique nature of the covit 19 crisis and the limitations of technology members of the public who are danbury residents are invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at danbury.k12.ct.us thank you kate uh carol do you want to read the comment yes so we have one comment from kathy snow good evening i submitted a comment at the may 26 board of ed meeting and i've not received any information or clarification so i'm asking once again can someone please let us know about the june 23rd board of education meeting is it going to be in person will the public be allowed to attend will the meeting be live streamed if the public is allowed to attend are public comments only allowed to be submitted in person or will you still accept them via email and on a related note will emailed public comments continue to be read next year if a person cannot be at the meeting in person please let us know thank you kathy snow and that for apollo participation thank you carol kate could you uh do the consent calendar please certainly i'll make a motion the board of education approves the item on the consent calendar exhibit 21-87 as recommended promotion made by casey second madam chair okay i heard you joe uh are they in a question concerning uh the consequences just one madam chair yes is there an item on that consent calendar considering uh some dollar amounts uh maybe you should be exploring uh export a little further and right others so if you have public there needs to be a correction in a particular dollar amount uh on what particular page oh not not a particular dollar amount there's a okay a schedule a schedule of budget numbers okay that uh that maybe should be a motion rather than on a cassette calendar discussed uh exhibit 2187 okay are there any other questions concerning the consent calendar cm9 uh kate could you do the roll call please sure joe britton aye rachel chaleski hi kate canetta i'm gladys cooper hi joe da silva aye catherine hodgston aye rich genelli hi kathy molinero hi al russo nay amy spelino hi thank you the motion is so careful thank you all we're going to move down to um item number seven uh our educational staff representative is the president of the naa here did aaron erin i don't think so okay okay no she is not here tonight okay so we move on down any of our students here we know and our student reps here from the high school or ace yeah we're here uh from dhs okay okay okay uh i believe jake's here as well um so this is our last meeting jake and i we are i guess we're retiring too we're graduating um i just wanted to say our um we've been here for a few years so we just wanted to say how thankful we are for the board of ed and everything you've done for us i believe jake and i have gone through uh danbury public schools our entire from kindergarten to i even did um early childhood so since i was three years old to a senior in high school so um again i just want to say thank you so much for everything and we have the new board of our board of governors here as well we did an election and a couple of them are here so in a couple of minutes they're going to introduce themselves as well um i just want to say thank you to uh miss cal fiore she's our advisor for the board of governors and she's also retiring this year and we just want to say how thankful we are for her and everything she's done for us so does jake want to take over say something do you want to introduce the new members now yeah if we if jake doesn't have something to say i'm okay because i don't know where he went jake sorry like my what becca was saying cut out so if um i say anything repetitive like that's why but um he was just telling us how wonderful you are and how cooperative i've loved um i guess these are like my like final words so um working with becca has been really great um being a liaison and like voicing the voicing what's been going on at the school and like being that thing for you guys has been an honor um i'm sad that me and becca didn't get to put more stuff together for the school this year but i still i love becca so much um she has a place in my heart and um miss cal you stayed on an extra year for us i hope um we did adequate i hope we did [Music] good um i've loved being here i loved being secretary and i loved being vice president and i'm thinking great things to be happening next year um this council has a lot of potential so we leave it to them and i also mentioned um at the last meeting that i'll be going to university of miami in florida so i'm super excited about that and um i think that's it thank you everybody hey um i just want to say i it's been a pleasure working with you too jake i don't know if you heard me before but um pleasure these past two years um okay so our new board of governor um our new board of governor officers i believe we have three one or four i'm not sure one of them was driving the last time i was in contact so um i'm just gonna so maybe just go in like descending order just go for president to um uh treasurer and we'll see who's here just say your position name and then anything else you'd like to say um hi everyone i'm gregory parker and i am the new board of governors president for next year and i just want to say i'm really excited for next year okay hi everybody i'm tina go um and i'm a junior this year and i'm vice president and i'm really excited to work with the board of ed and greg and scott and jay and everybody hello i'm dre um i'm going to be the new bog secretary you know i'm very honored to you know be a part of this culture and this position like and given this position um you know i can't wait to work with all of you and uh up scott i'm the new treasurer and uh it's just a great opportunity to have this position and just be able to have my input with all of you guys looking forward to it welcome aboard thank you we look forward to working with you come september uh do we have anyone from ace no okay action item a okay students if you'd like to leave this a good time for you thank you thank you bye-bye thank you very much graduation yep what time do you graduate uh jake and i are both at 2.
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call the meeting to order maria oppara present rick rawley here well yeah dennis bender yeah adeline blessing game absent mr uh rawley will you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance sure please rise and join me in the pledge allegiance the board of trustees would like to remind members of our community that you may remove your mask while making your public comments if you feel comfortable we have no cards for public comments okay we need to go into closed session will you go to closed session all right so we're going to be going in a closed session on the following items uh item one pupil personnel annual review are 37 2021. number two public employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave title cnn certificated and classified employees item three public employee appointment resignation retirement reduction title certificated and classified employees item four government code section five four nine five six point nine a current litigation seven cases one eight one three nine five two one nine zero seven one seven two two zero one one one eight three two zero two two nine five six two one zero three three nine six two one one one three o three government code section 54954 section c 54956 subsection d anticipated litigation three cases 2018 1907 2020 21 05 2020 2107.
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[Music] 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 in recognition of this free speech board business agenda item i'm welcoming all and saying um and noting that if saying the pledge of allegiance is not a requirement to participate in the business of this board if you don't say the pledge of allegiance for religious political social or personal reasons you're welcome here as an equal participant in the business of this public school board thank you dr lee okay uh adoption of the agenda do we have a motion thank you mrs anderson in a second one second thank you this is called roll call vote dr lee hi mrs emerson aye madison comments from audience from the audience regarding items not on the agenda do we have any comments and no more comments from anyone here in the room okay great we'll move on to i don't know i'm sorry i love it i love this outfit my apologies i did it when i turned my other computer on i locked this out just to note that we did meet in closed session and no action was taken sorry for that skipping over that all right we're all back online now all right so item number nine consent agenda do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda all motion thank you mr bruno in a second second thank you dr lee and we'll call both dr lee aye this is anderson aye mrs phone aye and mr bruno hi and cheryl taye this is passed go ahead were you talking about the consent council yeah yeah so i just want to acknowledge uh we did and i think some other maybe on their way but mr brett helmsley just to congratulate him as our uh new principal you just uh appointed him he signs to oakhill and h.k peterson evans to gavin peterson to vp for central high school so congratulate and welcome them nice welcome welcome all right you're going to love it here at center they've been here you're going to love it okay at this time uh item number 10 we are going to um recess the open session so that we can convene a public hearing on the local control accountability plan lcap and code section 52062b2 requires that the governing board hold a public hearing on the lcap the purpose of this hearing is to set aside time to produce information to the public and to receive public comment and input on the district's lcap and budget overview do we have any comments from the public or the board or anyone in the room anyone i just want to say that was the longest lcap i've ever read my sister bailey but thank you very much for getting it together and if i could briefly if we have some slides we'd like to go over just interviews to make the public aware and then see if there's any questions but i want to echo [Music] hello uh i just wanted to echo the the the same comments that you did miss pope that i we we do this as a joint effort when we put together el cap but uh i need to give credit to this uh putting our voices into one uh the first time we ever did this we did it as multiple voices and it didn't work did it so we have charged tammy with that so i appreciate the effort that she makes to put that all together so i'm going to try to share my screen here as we go forward let's see all right so what we wanted to do is as we go through this i wanted to share with the board and the community just an overview of what the lcap is what we're looking at and some new enhancements that we're doing with the lcat the plan as ms pope did point out is longer it seems every year it seems to grow uh each each year i think it's probably close to 200 pages now but it does contain four components we have the budget overview which is a new addition for parents that which in our district we had a lot of parents saying we really would like to see something a little simpler than the regular budget because it's so hard to interpret and go through it has our annual update that comes annually that reviews the progress we've made on the lcap the lcap actions and services as it is and then the last component which is new and usually not a part of this but uh covet has given us some new areas is the local performance indicator self-reflection piece so tonight really what we're focusing on is the third portion i mentioned the lcap the plan for actions and services um and if i can advance myself here uh so what is the local control accountability plan it's a three-year plan that describes the goals action services and expenditures to support positive student outcomes and address state local priorities the lcap provides an opportunity for local education agencies to share their stories of how what and why programs and services are selected to meet their local needs it's a three-year plan this is year one of three uh it does not mean we adopt this and we're stuck in it the the nice part about is it's a living breathing document you may make more progress on some areas you may make less progress each year we come back and update it and bring it back to the board in the community to show where we are um the local control accountability plan development uh this one we we really started a new process last year for 1920 was supposed to be the very first year that we were planning for uh our three-year plan kovit pushed that out a year so back in january 2020 we had started some focus groups had pretty good turnout from families and uh district uh staff from a cross-section of our community brought in we did some great table talks brainstorming so instead of throwing that data out we kept that information along with it uh we surveyed our community throughout that time we did zoom meetings we did share out publicly we developed the draft plan from all of that information shared that draft plan with stakeholders from our our associations to our parent groups to we've had it on our website different things just to try and get feedback and input and as we receive that we utilize that to see if we can add it and put it within the plan um the the next part is where we are today actually excuse me we do share it with our county office uh the county office reviews it and goes through it and gives us suggestions input to make it better and more friendly and then a new component is through our selfa the special education local uh plan they asked now that we share it with them so they've also reviewed this plan then during tonight we have our public hearing it's an opportunity for more input from from our community and then we adjust any anything that might come out of tonight that we want to adjust to put in there and then finally next week uh we do come back on june 16th to see if we can approve the lcap and then we we publish it um in conjunction with the public hearing as you'll hear from ms coronado in a little bit uh they ask that you bring the preliminary lcap and the preliminary budget for the year at the same time so that's why we have that in our meetings today and then of course we do bring this back annually and and take a peek at the progress that we've made uh so through all that data surveying pulling things together we we ended up modifying our goals from the previous lcap um and i'm going to just take a minute to to read them because we we weren't submit them around and around and around for quite some time so our first one is all students will graduate college and career ready through a high quality instruction coupled and with interventions and support you have a multi-tier system of sports that eliminates barriers to student success number two all stakeholders will experience a school and district climate that is physically and emotionally safe and supportive and goal three all students will benefit from improved partnerships and communication with all stakeholders and you might think well why three why not four one out one the state has state priorities you have to make sure your goals address all of those state priorities uh when you're developing it so sometimes people why does that seem like that's added in or that seems awkward it's to try and make sure that we're addressing all of the criteria that the state is requiring if i move next just to kind of give you a glimpse of the significant size document many of the actions and services that are in it are things that we've carried on for goal one which was our graduate standards-based curriculum teacher collaboration time really focusing on on our plc work using data to drive our instruction new teacher induction program el support special ed support and our cte offerings those are things we are continuing with our plan but enhanced this year through uh not only the lcf dollars that we receive but also through the covent dollars that we receive so our esser we are able to broaden our academic interventions we now have multiple uh staff that we've added to all of our sites to support that a social emotional intervention we were able to secure counselors and some social workers to to be a part of our our team uh full day kindergarten spinelli was our only school site that had full day kindergarten previously we will be expanding that this coming year to all school sites our kindergarten folks are excited because if you know kindergarten they do just be a fun play time which is important for students but it got so condensed with academics the full day what we've seen in spinelli is they really enjoy they can have a more pace do some of the things that they are able to do and not just have their time where they're just purely academics they can actually do calendar and money and all that fun kindergarten things um development of our engagement team which is also part of our goal too uh our our ap classes are advanced placement classes looking at the enrollment in those and seeing if we're mirroring uh our population is it uh representative of our student body or is it all targeted with with one one group and so we're looking at that and we'll be enhancing opportunities to try to do that with an intervention counselor we have at high school that can allow our counselors to have more time to actually focus on their students and have a smaller caseload and then professional development around pretty much all all of these areas that would help help support uh goal two which is that school climate for lack of a better term and in that what we're looking at is continuing our safe school ambassadors program our sel equity task force continued our education related mental health services for our students who are on ieps that are receiving mental health support our homeschool transportation which is we talked last meeting if we can expand we certainly want to because we know that enabling our kids to get to school is a barrier let's get more kids to school if we can health services and this is also an expansion because we have brought on more health support and we're looking at broadening that continually and then facilities master plan and where we're going with that is the idea of accelerating some of our hvac improvements that we talked about putting some money aside towards that as a result from the coven so we can start from the kobe fund so we can start making those advancements on our hvac units sooner than later and then what if we enhance the attendance engagement through our engagement team uh expanded pbis as positive behavior intervention support that was it i think three of our schools we will be bringing that to all four campuses starting next year uh k-12 and i'm going to commend mr ferguson for bringing his uh team along uh to get the high school center high school and mr french for getting the high schools as a part of that because it is a nice component where we see four of the schools are speaking a specific language and as they go up the middle school could always see wow that person came from dublin they were in a pbis environment versus someone who might not have been so having that same common language will help us significantly expanding school connections through athletics activities and clubs uh diversity and cultural sensitivity training we know that our population that we're serving is is has changed we want to make sure and ensure that we have the ability uh to to understand and meet uh with our community school climate survey through panorama using that data more frequently our sel screener which will allow us especially as we come back with coven to make sure that we understand the learning that students are having not just academically but also as a social and emotional piece of that and then trauma-informed practices training which also is we'll be looking at district-wide as we come through this pandemic and being able to be informed of what trauma our students and get a better understanding of our students and then the one that didn't make the spreadsheet up there is team assist we've been utilizing team assist in our summer school programs we've used it before at dudley elementary in north country and it's a program where students or students participate during recess and lunchtime recess through a structured game opportunities that's been really positive uh received and with cover dollars we can help support that for the for the coming year as well and then goal three is um continuing this would be that partnership and communications one of the things we really want to do is is broaden those partnerships we want to make sure not only are we communicating to our our district stakeholders but how do we broaden it to those stakeholders that are outside of our district meaning they're not connected they may not have kids but they're in our community how do we partner better with with let's say perkos or as we grow as a district how do we partner with our outside groups adult education uh we've this year we did uh 25 students got their geds through our program which is fantastic communication service calling texting email and website uh continuing to make sure we're getting the message to our families and a method that works for them um you know miss pope may like an email uh mr bruno trace bruno may like it as a text so how do we communicate more and get the information to our families and then continuing with the support of our student and family resource center um enhancing that community and partnerships our outreach support and community engagement offerings through our student and family resource really looking at how um mr miranda's department can really partner with us on outside groups to bring resources back in uh in fact we have a meeting next week with a local non-public a non-profit that wants to bring some things in so we're going to sit down through that and talk talk through with them and then increase student and family support services really what this is is we've added more work more employees to that outreach group a social worker has been hired that's targeting our homeless and foster youth students to help our families who are in those categories through through the department there at um our family resource center and then where that takes us then is it takes us to the idea of where we are tonight we're looking for uh expressing to see if there's any more public input and then if there is and we adjust it we will make the adjustments then bring this back on june 16th uh board meeting for final approval and at this point we would love to answer any questions take any input whatever i just have one question so far just one um i'm curious about on the the parent summary i guess this is kind of right the overview for parents on page two and it talks about learning loss litigation funds it seems to be like we're supplanting the lcap funds with the learning laws mitigation funds and weren't those intended to be like an enhancement not a not a supplement planting effect so so you can explain it better like we're like we're not using the original set of money for what correct so there are allowable uses for the funds and we made sure that we met all of the requirements for them but there are some for instance i'll go over my budget like technology we were able to use the funds to buy chromebooks for everybody because everybody needed them to work from home normally i would do um give the technology department a 400 budget instead we used cobia money to pay for that for all of their technology needs so yes we did use some covered money where normally we would use general fund but that was very much loud no no i think you're missing so what i'm talking about is in the learning loss litigation using the learning loss mitigation fund money instead of the lcap money does that is that the same as what you just said i'm sorry i'm like there's okay let me read it to you supplemental concentration funding will be used to continue to provide supports afterwards so right now they're being used to meet the needs of high needs students in lieu of supplemental and concentration funds right so the supplemental concentration funds are still held in their plot of money to be used at a later time when we need them i see yes i see so it's not like we're okay it's just saving them for a future it's almost think about you have ongoing money versus categoricals these covet dollars that we call the esser will expire right if you don't use them you lose them and so we're targeting based on those requirements and enhancing in many many areas okay well and also i would imagine that the that the um concentration in supplemental funds can be used for things that the uh lost learning loss litigation funds cannot be used for correct yes they target our special needs population so australia is homeless and eel etc so it has some of the same focus for sure but it is not that they don't expire to do some things that we couldn't do with were there any public comments um about our lcap before i ask my questions why not i do not have any public comments okay okay so my question is um looking at the um the data points and i noticed that all of our data in our lcap is aggregated data and i'm curious about that and if there's a plan to disaggregate and to set some goals that are based on that disaggregated um data so that we're really targeting the students who are struggling the most um and that are shown to be struggling the most uh through the disaggregated data um i'd really like to if possible see some movement towards a disaggregation of the data and the achievement data specifically and then goals set around around that is that something that's possible scott or is this from an old i noticed some of the um the data's from like 2015 2016 i was just kind of curious on that on that too and where we kind of where we're kind of starting from as our baseline yes so that is absolutely in the works and a good example was our advanced placement work that we will utilize the most recent data target we we already know that it's it does not uh our enrollment in our ap classes is not representative of the um overall student population at center high school so we are using that you will see more as that comes forward where we are disaggregating more in addition when you we start looking at academic uh across the district we'll be looking at the groups uh and things like that so absolutely uh that is 100 a part of the mix so is that something that can be incorporated into next year's lcap like specifically utilizing disadvantage so the metrics that we use we'll start breaking those down as we start reporting that out so i think it will be reflective as we go forward but is that a correct statement but a lot of the metrics are required by okay yeah so that's true so thank you tammy so some of we're breaking some of our stamps some of the metrics are required by the state so we have to report what they say that does not inhibit us later from coming back and breaking that data down but we have to cover there for the lcap there's requirements on how it can run correctly that's unfortunate it doesn't it doesn't stop yeah especially for the uh a through g requirement completions too i was looking at that um i'm just really curious to know about our different subgroups and how they're progressing you know towards that because that's college and career readiness i mean right there so i'd be really curious to just take a deeper look if possible and we can definitely bring that data back in the metrics we can see that overall number they require and then we can go further and actually break it down through our systems okay thank you thank you any more questions maybe more comments okay i just i want to say one more time i just have to appreciate mr belly's work on this i know we probably you know say it too much but this is a big undertaking and i really do appreciate what she's done and i know i can be a scatter brain at time and we'll throw ideas we'll be in meetings and she does a great job of putting all of those things together i always laugh i always say tammy you're my voice and you're a voice of the community because we take all this information and put it into something and and i just i want to give extra kudos for that because that is a challenge um so thank you and now we will uh convene another public hearing this one is on the 2021-22 preliminary question in code section 4212781 requires that the governing board hold the public hearing on the proposed budget at a public meeting purpose of this hearing is to set aside time to provide information to the public and receive public comment and input on the district spending plans for the upcoming years we will if you just give me the nod okay all right sounds good but i'm going to close this down so give me two seconds for that in the budget cycle the district has to adopt our budget before the state actually does their budget and so this is based on information from the governors may revise and when the state budget comes out we'll review that and if there are any material differences then in august i'll come back with the how the changes affect the district dr lee can you see that isn't my sharing okay no not not presently no now it is now i see it awesome so in the narrative for the budget i put in detail a lot of the changes that the budget that the governor is proposing but i just pulled out the bullet points of the topics that will affect our budget specifically and so the first one is our cola increase which is great so they the governor is proposing a 1.7 cola for 2122 plus he deferred the cola from last year so we're getting a compounded colon from last year which is 2.31 percent bringing us to 4.05 percent cola and then he's adding on an additional one percent so he's calling it a super cold black 5.07 so that is um added on to the amount we get per pupil for lcf funding in january it was a 3.84 proposal so that's that's higher than um he had proposed a few months ago so that was good to see special education is not getting the full cola but is getting a 4.05 increase reminder that that goes to our sofa and they determine how that is dispersed to districts so it doesn't come directly to us based on our own special education population what's the whole goal for a special one what's the one you said that we're not getting the full well we're getting 4.05 instead of 5.07 percent that we would get for lcs also in the governor's proposal is to expand tk to all four-year-olds in california by 24-25 and as part of that he wants a 10 student for one adult ratio in tk and kindergarten classes and a 20 student to one adult ratio in first through sixth grade um again that was by 24 25 so we'll be watching to see if that makes the budget the june 20 22nd apportionment will still be deferred to july 2022 however all of the other deferrals have been dropped remember we had a lot of deferrals from last this past year so those are still in play and they will still be paid back at the same um same structure so february's deferral is going to be paid in november march and october april and september may and august and just be paid in july so we still have about five more months where we'll be getting our money from last year remember i had said at this time last year that we were going to run out of money by now and we're gonna have to take out uh loans there is no pension or tax relief included so the stirs is increasing and the purse is increasing i did hear the legislature say that they want to include that in the budget so i'll be watching to see if they help out employers with the cost of retirement benefits the state unemployment insurance usually it's 0.05 of payroll but because we um a lot of people apply for unemployment insurance have received unemployment insurance that cost is passed on to the employer so it is increasing 1.18 of payroll again i heard the legislators say they want to take that back to 0.05 and have the state absorb the cost of the unemployment insurance so in uh 2014 the public school system stabilization account was created by voters it was in this past as a result of that any capital gains in excess of eight percent of the general fund has to go into a budget stabilization account so there were a lot of capital gains in the stock market last year and so there is a lot of money coming in to the state of california some of that budget stabilization account money goes into the public school system stabilization account when that amount well so the state's required to set aside 4.6 billion dollars in the public schools system stabilization account when the reserve exceeds three percent of the k-12 portion of the prop 98 etc it triggers something for the districts starting in k-12 districts have to keep their reserves below 10 when i forecast ahead in 2122 our reserves will be 19.88 22 23 when this year um it takes effect will be about 23 reserves so we need to spend down our funds and create come up with a really good plan to benefit students and employees so that we can bring the reserves back under 10 and what kind of restrictions are those funds there are they're all unrestricted funds so we could get yes but they are one-time money so it's hard to do ongoing salaries and benefits with these funds i think mr jason's already gained money but capital projects are abs capital projects absolutely fund 17 is part of our reserves and we are keeping some of that money um held because we may have to pay for parts of rex fortune elementary before we're reimbursed so we need to keep some of that money to prepay when i'm doing the budget i'm not really looking at what we spent our money on that comes with another actuals in september but i still want to give you a brief update of where our relief funds stand so our round one update we had two slides we had six different plots of money six resources so you can go ahead and look at this and the first plot that carries uh esther one money we received about one million dollars that has been spent the sr2 money we just recently received 4.8 million dollars and we've spent about 250 000 so that is where a lot of our budget is being pulled from for the age vacuum of things next year in our budget there was the governor's emergency education relief and we have about a hundred thousand dollars left in that of the three hundred thousand dollars next slide the crf um money it was 3.3 million dollars we fully expended that and we have some state money 350 thousand dollars fully expended and some some morse copied that has to be spent by june 30th and it will be spent i just need to transfer some charges so it is so sr2 we still have funds available when do they need to be spent so esther 2 needs to be by september he is three three two for us three and three is in 2024.
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um i was very disappointed at our promotion not the kids but they anticipated versailles got important to be promoted uh less than half eighteen out of thirty i don't know eighteen and thirty two so this is just more than half that's very very poor our high school graduation rate was much better than i expected well i've been around the low 90s even with cobalt we had 87 no student that was here the first year in quotation marks the first day of school no senior was not here able to walk uh graduation night so three of the kids came real close a couple of them had classes they didn't need to graduate and so uh basically they were encouraged to drop those classes because they had encouraged me to finish other things those students that were working hard i talked to one parents how long is it taking your children to do the ingenuity work every day and they said well from 8 15 to 3 15.
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um according to the um federal law that that was part of the created essay three twenty percent of that or seven hundred thousand dollars give or take has to go towards learning loss and for at least the thing that we're doing now summer school is budgeted to come out of sr3 and so that's that's part of that it could be um hiring uh we've talked about hiring interventionists so extra teachers to kind of target kids that may be falling behind there was a pass program that was done at the high school to target those high school kids high school seniors to make sure that they graduate that kind of stuff so we have plans in place but it's cindy is trying to trudge through the mud of the instructions and guidance on what we have to do and so we are uh working on evaluating how things should be spent along with um the grant requirements and it's not it's about as clear as money it is uh difficult to to get that across so she's doing a fantastic job but we we have some preliminary numbers and we want to kind of figure out exactly what we need to do before we get those out uh could i ask any questions please uh cindy we know about the summer school this year uh are there other interventions that we're going to need to do with that particular high school uh and that's why the yesterday sort of brought that question to mind uh of some of the deficiencies that not just you know the upper grades in high school but across the curriculum in high school that we found from last last year's disruption the i would tell you that we're addressing a lot of them during summer school and i have uh i'll talk more about summer school a little bit later in the agenda but for example we have more than double the amount of kids attending summer school at the high school this year than we typically have so they're feeling like as far as credit efficiency goes that they're really on track and their kids crop from multiple grade levels attending all the way down to ninth grade so that's going to help substantially as far as skills we had our high school teachers worked pretty hard on some of those basic skill stuff with kids even in the distance learning scenario so the only kids that we think will like may need some extra attention to that end are students who may have taken the year off so we can't say exactly what is that right now we finally were able to get to a report that department of ed reference was available about our kids who are i guess i'll say this theoretically eight wall um you know we've heard those tens of thousands of numbers from across the state this year and we had 137 on that list that withdrew from us either we withdrew for a 10-day drop or withdrew for us and went and never were picked up officially by some other district in arizona so the high school's already been working on ferreting those kids out to see were they dropouts do they just take a year off did they are they homeschooling and didn't register with the county or you know things like that so we're in the process of trying to work that out because it's the only way the kids who we have we know where they were feel pretty good about how we ended the year skill wise credits wise that kind of thing it's the unknown those just sort of vaporized kids that we won't know until they show up well and i can understand the kids that sort of disappeared from them from the system i had certainly trying to get them back in and everything i was more curious about you and i had an earlier discussion about the failures of distance learning you know it just did not work and i just wanted you know since we have this this money if there's any things that you have thought of for the kids that are back in particular right now focusing on high school level to supplant or supplement uh some of the instructional programs that we have or extra activities that we have to try to address the deficiencies that came out of the distance learning so they feel like they've done a pretty good job because we've been back in session for so long we had tutoring virtual tutoring during the periods where we were out but we had several teachers at the high school who offered before after school and sometimes friday school tutoring as john mentioned we had the pass program to bring the kids in and since we finished all of fourth quarter and part of third quarter in person they feel like they were able to do a lot of remediation since they had the kids in at the end of the year between that and what we're doing in summer school heidi was telling me the other day she we have kids doing um 87 full credits during summer school which is a lot yeah so where you're thinking is that basically continuing on with the supplemental assistance that we started this spring through the fall and we'll still have tutoring available we always have tutoring available we'll still have tutoring available um for kids as well and opportunities for credit recovery too beyond the normal in the normal classroom plus online options that we offer at the high school so our goal is to make sure the kids are graduating graduating on time and even with the current year we have a few seniors who are finishing up during summer school even though this was a small senior class believe it or not our dropout rate once these kids finish up this summer that's going to improve that number of kids who may not have graduated exactly in may our dropout rate is still less than half what the states is [Music] even with a little bit of bumpiness you know so another indication that i wanted to share that we learned about on tuesday is that our our current kinder class is right now and we're still very early about the same number as our incoming first grade class so and we still have a month and a half of enrollment time so that's good that means people i think people are coming back and we're also seeing some of those um kids that should have been kinders coming into first grade and we have a plan um to address those those needs as well and is it pre-emergent first or what's the name that we're using um transition first yeah so they're age-appropriate for first grade we can put them in transitional first hopefully they're uh able to kind of keep up as first graders if not that we have plans for them as well to kind of keep them caught up they're keeping me in the first grade though yeah so in essence some of them will have skipped kindergarten right because they just didn't enroll in kindergarten as john mentioned kenner and kinder enrollment itself is at 136 but that kids that um are being identified for transitional first we have that number in place looks like we're going to fill two sections of that so it's like john livingston was saying we felt confident bumping that number up a little bit from where we ended the year for budgeting processes because of that yeah into looking positive on the wrong side super legislative update if you've been following along they actually um tried the house tried to pass a budget and could not um they are then they researched i think until maybe tomorrow through tomorrow so um i don't have a whole lot to report and they have to do something by um june 30 otherwise we're all on vacation july 1st because we're we can't pay the bills so um anyway um not much on the legislative update um there is in your packet there are some parent surveys that we do as part of the process for the paid to the pay for performance on the classroom site fund they i was very pleased with the results even though in some cases in all cases i think they went down a little bit on the uh and shifted to the left a little bit lower ratings but with the year we had i'm pretty happy with how the results turned out um considering that you know people that are unhappy tend to be the the most the ones that participate the most in the surveys and for the most part you know people still seem satisfied with what's going on in the district and part of that is how i think we finished really strong so end of year update we were all at graduation fantastic graduation i think the one of the best of in-person national anthems i've ever heard in my life you know they did they did a fantastic job uh i wanted so i want to give the high school kudos for that i was able to attend most of the end of year celebrations at the schools um just the the vibe the the atmosphere was very positive parents enjoyed seeing their kids at school at school function and so that was really neat we also held our end-of-year celebration for staff we had five uh 27 staff members get their five year 10 16 get their 10 12 get their 15 20 get their eight um apples we have eight get their 20 year apple sorry four get their 25 year special awards two including one here get their uh 30 year special awards and then we had six staff retirees and a little bit about the special awards this came out of the superintendent employee advisory committee something a little bit different than just a pin for the 25 and 30.
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we didn't have a setup like this so um it's a it's really such an important job that you have and I would say um hang in there basically I know there's a lot going on but um it's really a pleasure to be here tonight to celebrate dysert's 100th anniversary as Dr Kellis mentioned my family and I have quite a bit of history with the Dysert District since 1947 and I'm so happy to be here tonight to celebrate with you and as a history lover myself these projects are very special to me in preserving the district story for future Generations I'm very active in the Arizona historical society also both my parents are natives of Arizona um so Dysart was officially established on July 16 1920 as Dysart public schools by Nathaniel Martin Dysert it was initially a one-room schoolhouse with less than 10 students in first through eighth grade in the 1950s as the district population grew the Dysart Elementary campus was expanded again and again but the population continued to grow especially additional growth in Surprise El Mirage and Luke Air Force Base so three additional elementary schools were built to serve those communities in the 60s a high school was built for the first 40 years all the graduates of Dysart Elementary School had to travel to either Peoria or Litchfield Agua Fria to go to high school so finally daiser built a high school and the first ninth grade students started Dysart High School in 1962.
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uh we'll be able to uh ask questions um i will be interviewing the two finalists that afternoon because the goal will be to be able to bring the finalists to you guys on the 21st so that we can name the person before before the new school year starts and so we're kind of compressing it we pushed off uh getting the applicant you know selecting the finalists as long as possible to get as many applicants as possible but now we're going to fast track it i also want to make you aware the food service department received the results of the arizona department of education audit and the audit decided no findings for the department and they were given recognition i'll read it real quickly on behalf of ade i'd like to thank you this is to jessica hostetler the food service manager thank you and the furniture staff at the j.o combs unified school district for assisting me in the completion of your fy 21 sfsb review which is a school federal lunch program it was a pleasure meeting your staff your food service staff while i was out on my on-site review your staff was very friendly knowledgeable about the operations and despite the challenges that you've been placed with during cover 19 j.o combs has done an exceptional job of operating the sfsb or sp excuse me thank you to you and your staff site for ensuring that the children of your community have been fed during the pandemic keep up the great work so it was a nice finding do you have no findings at all let's see just a reminder district job fair next week the 21st is retreat eight to four um oops there's a title there i see your typo now in this car yeah and then we talked about the other stuff a reminder on the 22nd of july will be the convocation uh seven o'clock 7 15 to about 10 o'clock is what we're planning and then i know it's going to break their hearts but i do want to thank rich and carla i'm forcing carlo to come back on the 21st so it's actually a sign to kind of jump the gun a little bit rich won't be forced to come back on the 21st but this will be their last board meeting i'll probably stay awake at night knowing that they'll miss a board meeting once a month um but on the off chance that they don't uh you will be missed and we do appreciate everything you guys haven't done over the course of your time there so thank you [Applause] that is all i got [Music] on tuesday on what's the tuesday the 15th 15th okay moving on governing board uh comments do you guys have any comments no chad nope too bad all right public comments done all right any questions on the consent agenda i'll take a motion i'd like to know that we approve you turn the mic on i'd like to move that we approve the consent agenda as presented i second it all in favor aye aye motion carries three to zero okay okay four to zero to zero all right um eight point one yes ma'am madam president uh 8.1 is uh consideration approval final payout for the school-wide performance for prop uh if you remember this year when we approved prop 301 because there's not going to be the letter grades there's only one option to move forward with and so it speaks to the percentage that's evaluation professional development parent communication and professional investment the list of individuals is listed the payout this year is four thousand approximately 94 percent of our our teachers uh met the goals that were there so i recommend approval as presented any questions no take a motion i move i move that we approve the payment for school-wide student achievement portion of the proposition 301 performance-based pay plan for the 2020-2021 school year as presented hi second all in favor aye aye motion carries four to zero 8.2 8.2 is just the covert 19 stipend that's what we talked about as part of the budget proposal you do have the list of individuals and what they would be receiving the one thing i would remind everybody of is you either had to be employed through your last day of employment so teachers ended on the 25th 27th whatever it is if you were a 12 month employee then the expectation was for you to be employed through the end of your contract which would technically be through june so those individuals that left us before their contract was up do not get compensated those that were here through their contract will get compensated the other thing i would let people know is given that that modification we had originally budgeted out of the essers dollars or out of rooftop fees 265 000 in actuality it came out to roughly 200 000.
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um all right and oh hey you i'm baby oh is uh [Music] um oh [Music] hey guys [Music] and i would like to introduce my fellow senior class officers treasurer gabriel corten vice president qazi begum and our senior class president nicolas satina would the senior members of the madrigals please join their group one member at this time i would ask everyone to please turn off their cell phones at this time we will salute the flag gentlemen please remove your caps please stand please stand please stand 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 please remain standing for the singing of the star spangled banner is hello please be seated i would like to introduce our guests on the stage and ask that they stand to be recognized mayor cavo [Applause] board chair cooper present and past members of the board of education [Applause] superintendent pasquerella [Applause] assistant superintendent wallston [Applause] and the rest of the members of our cabinet as well as our special guest state senator julie kushner i would like now to introduce the mayor of the city of danbury mayor cabo good evening dr pasquerella principal donovan board members honored guest state senator julie kushner i want to welcome everyone here to this graduation ceremony and i wish to extend my heartfelt congratulations to each of our graduates here today in your lifetime in my lifetime there has never been a year quite like this one and although many years have passed since my high school graduation my memories of that day are perfect and the significance of graduating high school is still undiminished this pandemic and its effects will be remembered throughout world history as students you were forced to take on new challenges with distance learning and while i imagine you are all much more technology savvy than i am i know that leaving your classroom and learning from home on an ipad or a computer was still quite the challenge not being able to see your friends your teammates your teachers even more challenging but through it all you remained resilient you fought through the obstacles adapted to the changes and are now much stronger for it you are graduating today no other generation will understand what the class of 2021 and your peers just ahead of you in the class of 2020 have endured to get through to this point this is a day of great significance it celebrates the successes of one stage of education and you have come a long way you've begun as small children eager to learn that the basics he's eager to grow up you have accomplished that and so much more your education here at danbury high school has given you an excellent beginning and a platform for a lifelong process of learning some of you will go into the military some of you will go to work and some of you will go on to college others will take some time to explore options travel or perhaps take a gap year to consider your prospects whatever you do look at the world through the lens of your understanding history and your heart read listen more than speak hear the world around you it will be your best teacher throughout life you will be asked to master a skill and grow as situations change most of you will experience retraining as you may make career changes several times before you retire your need to learn will never end thankfully the tools you need to proceed down this road have been have been provided for you here at danbury high school this too should be a time of enjoyment you have grown into young adults you've worked hard to reach this point today you studied you crammed you worried and most certainly a time struggled but the work you have invested in has paid off you are you are succeeding in achieving this milestone it is time for a celebration time to have some fun you certainly deserve it and i wish you a wonderful summer however i would lack responsibility in my part if i didn't caution you that while enjoying yourselves and your celebrations please use good judgment and at all times be safe out there there's so much more to life that you must yet experience we do not stand alone in life we share all we do in some fashion without many others the world we live in today is not the same as that of your parents and your grandparents i ask that you become involved for those who now participate i ask you to increase your activity we need people who care people who will volunteer their time energy and skills to help make our society grow to to help those most in need to pick up where government leaves off to give back to your community for all that was given to you to become good kind caring and responsible citizens and last but not least we need to thank your parents guardians friends teachers administrators for the help support and encouragement that that was the bedrock the foundation so to speak that enabled each of you to achieve the level of success that we are here to celebrate with you today in closing i want to congratulate the class of 2021 on their graduation i wish them every fortune material materially and emotionally may your future be a peaceful one full of happiness and success may you retain your every goal may you be a credit to your family and your community and may guide watch over you as you proceed through every next step of your lives thank you very much now to speak is the longest serving board member with over 30 years of service board chairperson ms gladys cooper [Applause] good afternoon everyone it is indeed an honor and a pleasure to be here this afternoon at your graduation as a young man introduced me earlier this afternoon and i'm going to remind everyone and i continue to remind myself that i'm probably the oldest person sitting up here on this platform but it's indeed an honor and honor that i have served all these years as a board of education member good afternoon honorable mayor calvo superintendent of school dr pascarel board of education members and all distinguished guests how can we not recognize the principal of this great high school mr dan donovan congratulations to the class of 2021 as you leave dhs remember all the memorable times that you have shared with your teachers and friends be sure to continue to keep your eyes on your goals that you have outlined it for yourself the stars are always shining bright when you wish upon a star your green will take you very far as you graduate and leave dhs for the next chapter of your lives remember to be safe respect yourself and help take care of others on behalf of the danbury board of education congratulations to the class of 2021 i would now like to introduce state senator kushner who will give a proclamation to our valedictorian caleb schlissel [Applause] good afternoon it's so great to see you all here i haven't been at a graduation since 2010 when my youngest daughter one of three children i had that graduated from danbury high school when she graduated much hotter day that day but i do want to say that it's really a bittersweet day for you all because i know why you're looking forward to what comes next in your life you're also i'm sure a little sad to be leaving this wonderful school i know that i so appreciate the teachers and the administrators that help my children get a great start on life and i always look back and think how it would have been different for them if it hadn't been for danbury high school and so i congratulate you all um before i get to our valedictorian i do want i have a little surprise for dr sal because we know we're going to be very sorry to see him go we wish him well but i do have a proclamation for you so i will just quickly read it and then you can receive it it says from all of the delegation from the danbury state senate and house of representatives dear dr sal your leadership vision and tireless efforts as superintendent of the danbury public schools and your 50 years of service and education 28 years as superintendent and 15 years of service in danbury you've brought progress and promise to our school system and to our students we thank you for your dedication and offer our best wishes as you embark on the next chapter of your life but now for the student that has been honored with the position of valedictorian for the class of 2021.
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enough about us i'd like to thank mr donovan members of the board of education especially chairs person cooper and superintendent pasquerella and of course mayor cavo thank you for giving us the opportunities and resources to be where we are today and who we will become tomorrow teachers and faculty thank you for teaching in such a difficult time as much as we dislike turning our cameras off on and forcing ourselves to talk in breakout rooms i recognize your constant drive to teach us because you believed in our abilities despite the drastic change of teaching i'd like to personally thank mrs tong miss hessler mrs lorenz mrs pascarelli and mrs gurney for believing in me despite my doubts for myself you did more than teach me and you taught me the lessons of life i will always be grateful for that even when i'm states away parents and staff thank you for arranging the last few weeks with the events that seemed as if our lives are back to normal as much as possible and so i leave with one last message fellow graduates teachers faculties and families in the event corona no longer affects our daily living liz live as if you'll never know when another pandemic steals your time away remember time will not wait for you so pop that personal bubble and make new friends reach for new opportunities and waste no time remember as you step into college we are all a mosaic of each other you would be surprised how many little habits you inherit from the people you've crossed paths with time is the most important thing that should not be stolen from you value it because you will never be able to replace it nor take it back even if it's five more minutes although we've taught although we've been taught to stay six feet away from each other i hope my corny message has reached you we all may not have met every single one of each other the entire four years but we do all have one single memory altogether and that moment is right now and now goodbye class of 2021 goodbye danbury high school thank you for allowing me to talk with you this one last time for five minutes thank you would the senior members of the madrigals return to their respective seats with the graduates that's not it our second student selected speaker elena jacob i'd like to introduce the madrigals [Music] close your eyes lay your head down now it's time to sleep may you find great adventure as you lie and dream if you're scared of the darkness i will calm your fears so you know i'm here so count your blessings [Music] every day it makes the monsters go and everything will be you are [Music] me forever [Music] from now on if you need me you can sing this song there's a line in the hallway burning all night long so count your blessings every day [Music] and everything will be [Music] oh good night [Music] [Applause] coffee and now our second student selected speaker alina jacob [Applause] mayor cavo superintendent pasquerella members of the board of education mr donovan faculty parents friends and the members of the class of 2021 i have a question for all of you have any of you heard of the game minecraft alright are you even played it just raise your hand let me see all right we got a few we got a few anyone here oh we got a few here too that's good all right i have one more question have any of you read the end credits to the famous game raise your hand all right i heard a no and i don't see that many hands that's okay well i've taken the time to read the end credits to the game and what i found was something not many get to discover a poem if the universe could speak to us i would quote minecraft yes a children's video game and saying you have played the game well everything you need is within you you are stronger than you know minecraft is a sandbox game where you as the player are unexpectedly placed in a world with nothing but your intuition and creativity the moment you hit create new world you are in charge letting your dreams take control of a world you can only imagine experiencing from creating buildings that reach the sky's limit or fighting bad guys to complete the heroic lore the once foreign world becomes yours for many of us we returned to this childhood game during quarantine though we were trapped within the bounds of our house walls this game allowed us to explore beyond what we could not physically touch even if you did not play this game during the height of quarantine you found ways to expand your home because you knew you deserved the chance to explore beyond the barriers created by this pandemic though most of us only thought we were playing a game we as the class of 2021 were already proving we have the potential to create something very few can imagine coming to a reality though our high school journey was let's say unexpected i always thought of high school as a game not specifically a video game but any game you might have played sports board games your occasional kahoot we all have been a part of event where our skills were put to the test some people enter the hallways of our high school unprepared getting overwhelmed with the opportunities this school has to offer or the large crowd of students just trying to get to class others enter this high school with a fully thought out strategy ready to jump in and graduate with honors or have the honor to graduate in other words everyone comes in with their own way to play the game dreaming of the day they go across the finish line with victory but like in any game you play there's always a point where a level is so hard to complete it feels impossible to keep going for us that arrived in march of 2020.
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okay we'll get a picture dr cell don't worry [Laughter] okay bye bye all right i'll make a motion that the board of education approved the authorization of signature change form for the ed 099 agreement for child nutrition program in accordance with exhibit 21-88 i select that motion made by kate seconded by f or any of the questions or discussion concerning action item a scene nine uh kate could you do the roll call please sure joe britton i rachel chanesky hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper i joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi rich gianelli hi kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy spelina hi emotions so carrot uh captain marinara could you do action item b madam chair uh may make a motion that the board of education approve and authorize the change to the signatory representatives for danbury public schools on an interim basis to be kevin wallston assistant superintendent and donna coonan assistant finance director second second mahogany by captain segment bye everybody i got that every bun [Laughter] okay okay thank you oh catherine hodgdon hi rich gianelli hi kathy molinero hi al russo hi amy speluna hi mostly so care thank you uh mr ginelli would you do action item see madam chair that the board of education approve and set the budget for 20 21 22 in the amount of 137 million 150 thousand dollars increase the board of education is also proposing to utilize an estimated two million four hundred and thirty seven thousand one hundred and fifty seven dollars in non-lapsing funds 17 million three hundred and fifty thousand thirty seven dollars of ecs alliance funding and ninety five thousand in care slash sr1 funding six million eighty nine thousand eight hundred and eighty seven dollars in sr2 and eight million twenty seven 27 464 dollars in esther three slash the american recovery plan arp funds as well as ongoing general grants funds totaling an additional estimated 24 million dollars and various other grants that support district activities and this would be exhibit 21-89 motion made by mr janely uh could i hear a second second manager second by uh discussion any discussion questions or discussion concerning the motion madam chair yes uh just uh one question do we have to clear action items d and e before we can uh clear action item c i'm just looking up the next action items um al i apologize are those the exam salaries um d and e yes the exempt salaries and the cabinet i think the contracts are irrespective the exempt sellers were not fully contemplated in the budget so maybe there will be a discussion on that about how that will be included in the budget um but d was is not a budget item necessarily per se okay did i answer your question because we have action item c and then which is action item d is going to follow action i just see the exact answer thank you okay thank you mr russo okay any other discussion on action item c adam chair yes um i would just like to say that i'm i'm certainly going to vote in favor of this budget but um and and i understand that these numbers might look large to to folks who are listening at home or listening on this call but i continue to be concerned about the amount that we're investing in our school system here in danbury um i think that's been a topic of conversation around our table for years now certainly since before i was here um and i think that uh you know we just need to keep that in mind as we move forward that you know really we really need to invest properly in the education for our children and that means using community resources and that's our tax dollars so i certainly will support this budget but i just want to make it known that um i i do believe that our students our teachers and our staff members uh deserve more than what they're getting thank you madam sure please let's not forget that the state has underfunded us millions for years and that the governor proposed a freeze in the ecs um whether that was a bargaining chip or whatever it doesn't seem like that's going to um be the case this year i mean we're getting our two and a half million increase but really we're not getting our full funding from the state until 2028 still most of our kids will have graduated by then so i just you know if you want to talk about funding let's talk about all the streams madam chair if i may yes um i'll concur with kate and rachel in the sense that i i think it is important to talk about all the streams i didn't agree with the governor's proposed budget i didn't agree with the proposal to freeze the ecs increase that was guaranteed back in 2017 with governor malloy's then governor roy's plan i am encouraged by the fact that our legislative delegation was able to fight to get that included back in the budget so we are getting that funding to be clear we need more state funding but to be clear the ball is being dropped at city hall not at the state it is the city of danbury that has underfunded our schools for the better part of the last decade for whatever reasons some good some ill none of them ill none of them for malice for a variety of reasons but the problem is the chickens are coming home to roost as we saw last evening in the presentation from courtney the risks in the out years from this budget when the esser funds dry up are pretty significant and i hope very much that the city of danbury recommits to our students in the way they had committed to our students before let's say 2009 2010.
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i know five conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator dustin conrad employee organization a apple valley unified teachers association item six agency negotiator dustin conrad employee organization california school employees association item seven conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator trenay nelson b employee organization unrepresented and number eight superintendent evaluation and that's thank you eight items there's also a motion to go into closed session mr bender you said you're moving so you said we're moving to closed session right yeah okay all in favor in your post okay my calling the meeting to order um do you have any reports from california school employees association csea we do not do we have reports from uh apple valley unified teachers association avuta we do not thank you close session reports okay yes we got several here bear with me a second okay so the following items we're going to report out on from closed session and the first item is um b3 public employee appointment on a motion by para and a second by so we appointed terry ray as assistant principal desert knowles [Applause] stand up and uh welcome item two on a motion by so a second by okara the board unanimously appoints kristen nichols assistant principal maria academy [Applause] we're not done yet in closed session on a motion by bender a second by okara we appoint brian king assistant principal granite hills [Applause] from barstow to fontana to effort valley everybody always comes back to the desert to the best district okay in closed session on a motion by gokara second by bender we appoint brittany reesport you get it right medina students of phoenix academy welcome she came all the way from san fernando valley uh in closed session on a motion by para second by so unanimously appoint uh sharon heightman to assistant principal vanguard [Applause] sharon's in an airplane flying just blew over first graduation from lineman school yes and uh finally uh in closed session on a motion by bender segment by raleigh board of trustees unanimously appoints sarah garcia as high school assistant principal on assignment to high desert premier academy [Applause] and that is all from closed session okay the board may approve the agenda as is or add on or pull items from this consent agent item for discussion and or action we need to adopt the agenda as is or for employer recognition and retirement mr conrad yes thank you um bittersweet i think is the way to talk about what we have to share next and uh mr buchanan running tech has a uh about a seven minute video that i'd like to just start streaming there's no sound to it but it speaks to uh the retirees that are moving on to the next chapter of their of their life this this year you know we had quite an uh exodus due to uh some provisions that we provided i guess a little redundancy there but um over a hundred individuals and and hundreds and hundreds of years of experience and impact on our community are are exiting the system and moving on um this slideshow here we thought would be the best way our our public information officer zoe widener uh has been reaching out over the last few weeks trying to get a hold of the retirees to see what they would share with us and and many did as you can see take advantage of social media filters and uh provide us some native images to kind of speak into the character of uh how we serve our students throughout this community um but you know some some are shy so at the end of the presentation we have several pages of folks with just by name in their years of service um and i say bittersweet for a couple reasons obviously these are uh professionals that have helped to find our entire community uh this this is why one of the main reasons that apple valley is what apple valley is and specifically what apple valley unified is um them them leaving our system uh it also pains me just in light of where we're at and and hopefully exiting this pandemic uh to not even have them here you know to celebrate but rather go down the pathway of of them you know being honored through a virtual setting instead of an in person um it just to end a career this way at this time you know i i'm excited for them and and yet your heart hurts for them you know and whether or not they truly envisioned the their last year serving our students to be the way that it was and i commend all these professionals uh we'll let this play out i i won't try to speak over it the entire time but uh it is it is worth a round of applause and i think i'll end with that so thank you retirees and for all you've given [Applause] good job getting in trouble she didn't know they were gonna have chickens yes yeah i recognize from the perspective this obviously you know will still be available to us um through our streaming platform as well on youtube would it's always enjoyable to go back and read where people say their plans are there's there's some very creative folks out there that do a lot of very interesting things so and as you can see those that were a little shy about revealing we're we're not letting get away that easy we we want to honor them as well we've got a few slides here those individuals so although it's been a silent stream i didn't want to attempt to sing any background music or anything it really is a celebration not not intended to be a somber moment moment but each and every one of the the names and the the time was you know indicated by their service to our students is just once again we're celebration and um very very very commendable uh so i just wanted to acknowledge and appreciate all those individuals and trenay i think you have something else to acknowledge to the board that um i i have the fortunate job of people right kids adults and one of our retirees one of many i had many people come by to talk before they left and so this is a grenoir drawing that was donated by teacher jeff levitt and it was donated to us to hang some place in a prominent location for the school district and here's why jeff's retiring from the school district after 31 years of education that this was his parents and his mom was an educator for 30 years i believe he wrote on the back for us that i'd have it and and he said i don't know if you want it and i said are you kidding me of course i do those are the things that make apple valley unified school district special that once people leave they may leave their position but they never leave fully their hearts are here they come back and visit if they leave the area and so for us um this is just one representation of what matters in this district which is family and so all of these people that are named up there leave a piece of their heart with us and what a special moment so i just wanted to acknowledge mr levitt said he wanted to be here and he and then i said to him it'll be streaming too and he goes oh i kind of like that idea too and so um his dad is still alive and so for him it was a great thing to be able to donate this and so i wanted the board to know and and be able to see it what a wonderful thing and i think it's it's worth knowledge acknowledging that mr levitt wasn't just a teacher but he was a veteran who came to us with a second you know for him a second career and so um what a great thing thank you uh the board of trustees would again like to remind members of our community that you may remove your mass while making your public comments if you feel comfortable kylie do we have any comment any we do not okay superintendent comment well you heard my my feeling about the retirees this is an exciting time for them a sad time for us but it also brings what we have in the audience today which is a lot of transition in new people that we are super excited to have join our family so welcome to all of you that are transitioning and going to support a school site we appreciate that you're here in person and and the one that's 30 000 feet in the air waiting to um celebrate her son today likewise this past week last friday um i got to participate in the adult education consortium graduation at victor valley college um for this area it's a highlight these are people that are in every age bracket across the system and they've accomplished the huge task of graduating with a high school diploma and are being pushed some of them are already in college course work at victor valley college or other locations it's a joy and a celebration beyond all and especially when they're one of our employees that walk across the stage not only did we have employees we had spouses of employees that i had no idea did not have high school diplomas but big deal big deal so we we celebrate people from um birth to um graduation regardless of their age in this system so super exciting and mr park got to participate in that with me and shake a lot of hands mr sir mr do you have any comments no i uh let me just say that i want to wish our teachers to have a nice few weeks of break know before they come back yeah two weeks thank you mr bender just congratulations to all the new appointees we're very fortunate to have such a wealth of talent to choose from very impressive mr raleigh i'd just like to thank some of the retirees i saw some of the names up there won uh 36 years there's a lot of uh a lot of years that we we've lost and i want to welcome the new people aboard look forward to a prosperous year thank you congratulations to the new appointees happy birthday mr ray and thank you so much to mr jeff lovett both of us were first-year teachers on this campus when he first started and i noticed quite a few of my colleagues retiring now and congratulations to mr mccall it was an absolute honor to see you sign that last autograph on the field i also obs uh went to the graduation at the victor valley college and i was absolutely blown away to hear our superintendent be the keynote speaker at that graduation ceremony um we're looking forward to a great year and we will stop in to see you once we can get into your campuses thank you so much discussion action session it is recommended that the board of trustees discuss and take action on the following items item number one approve the apple valley unified school district governance handbook i need a motion i'll move the item i'll second it all in favor any opposed item number two the board took action to determine whether the vacancy on the governing board will be filled by calling a special election or making a provisional appointment at this time i would like the superintendent to say something before we vote on that so as you heard at the last board meeting last week i had up a resignation from board member blasting game which fills area one in um apple valley and so in working through what the options for the board are you have a board bylaw and that allows for a provisional appointment there's two options in this in this process you can do a provisional appointment or you can ask for a special election if you ask for a special election the process would we'd go to the registrar of voters and talk about the cost of that there is costs associated and um i will be following up with them regardless just so that you have that information um about the cost of a special election there is um what i understand to be a significant cost the second option is a provisional appointment it's called provisional because within the time frame of 60 days from when the county superintendent accepts the resignation um which occurred on august 2nd um we have i apologize on june 2nd which gives us until august 1st to backfill um area one seat either through provisional or making the decision to go with the special election in a provisional appointment you would fly the area and require that somebody live in the area they have to be 18 they have to be a citizen of the of california and um again live in that area so if that is your desire we can get that posted as soon as um we find out how long it would take to post publicly in the newspaper we believe it would be early next week that that posting could take place we would leave it open since it is summer and many people are gone on vacation we go ahead and leave it open until approximately um timeline wise july 19th which would get people back um almost the two weeks before school would start and then i would propose potentially some other timelines about special interviews workshops and for candidates and then an interview process that is a public special board meeting so i just need to know what the desire of the board is in order to move forward so that um this this action would be you either are um making a motion to file um to call a special election or make a provisional appointment and again the provisional is based on the fact that the board can do an appointment however the um area vote voters could um petition and if they were to petition it would require a special election so if they didn't like your appointment that's why it's called provisional they could petition all right action selected by the board what board is going to select um either between uh uh failed by calling a special election or making a provisional assess appointment any discussion any votes if i can make a suggestion like the superintendent mentioned it's a significant cost to have a special election for a year appointment i think that we should move forward with making a provisional appointment i base that on basically the the cost of the district i mean we don't want to be wasting money for special elections when we can make an appointment and i think that with social media the newspaper we can get the word out to the area and make sure that uh we get some interest in it so mr ollie something i did leave out that i do want to include different than when we are we were by at large um with the voter area we do have an issue um that i want to make sure everybody is aware of our next election cycle is 2022.
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so esther 2 is 20 23 and do we know yet when sr3 is going to be um need to be expended do we get that yet i think it is september 2034 and i'm sorry sr3 how much do we have remaining we have not received it yet we haven't received but we're getting it so that is the next slide this is round two buttons so three you're receiving about 11 million dollars zero is included in the budget for next year because first of all i just found out about that amount and also it is booked as unearned revenue so we uh book the revenue when it's spent and we're not planning on spending it until we set our estro2 money because that expires first so that's not included in the budget and it has to be expended september 30th 2024. we have an in-person instruction incentive grant 1.4 million dollars 1.1 million of that is included in the budget and then the eo expanded learning opportunities that's about three million dollars and about two million is included in the budget when you saw the view off the standard learning opportunities plan i think at the last board meeting that's where this money was um was shown to be sent to you can you can you go back to your statement about unearned revenue that you book it when it's spent so that means it will not reflect in our budgets it won't reflect in the budget as revenue or expenditure well until it becomes an expenditure until it becomes an expenditure then it will be bold so i'm assuming the money comes from somewhere else basically it's not actually no so what she'll do is she'll oh i don't need to speak for you no i don't mind um so we may get the money but we have two ways to make money there's fun balance where it once we receive the money then it is part of our revenue we've earned it it could carry over from year to year and i don't determine how to book it but the government tells me how to do that yeah and then there's unknown revenue and it is unearned until you actually spend it so it's in our bank account but i can't actually put it on the books and count it uh interesting yeah i guess okay you must keep a separate accounting then to know how much money is there right right right yeah that's a very strange way to do accounting yeah school financing is incredibly strange illegal sorry we're not doing it though i should have said that sorry i just mean that some of the practices that the state does like the deferrals and stuff they don't fall under standard accounting practices like creating finance you create a financing yes not our fault when i look at the lcf which i'll get to and our revenue that's coming in i am basing it on the reduction in students that we saw this year so when i look at this next slide it's prett it's actual um ada that i project so this is not where we're going to be funded on i just wanted to show the drop in and the students um that we're seeing right now and that we're hoping to come back to our district after we open back up remember in school finance you're either received revenue based on your current year or the prior year whichever is higher in ada the prior year was coveted and they didn't do attendance and so we'll go back to 1920 and be funded on that ada number that amount of average daily attendance for 1920.
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so their house school is school hours and so those kids have no problem but where our students i know our lives alone sometimes the supervisor has to have on parents for uh kids sometimes to pass so i'm happy that eighth grade graduate i'm sorry high school graduation was that good it's still significant about the state average and uh i think with we have all the students on campus there's more of the relationship building with their peers and with adults when they're here that is with the front of the screen and i it's not why we do it but every now i've talked to on campus that's a teacher or an educator they want to see the kids around so hopefully that will happen we'll do more the comments last monday night on call the public i respect and honor uh citizens being able to come and call the public um without going any details i won't do that um the college were complete with their not necessarily from the person that made the comments um i was never asked about any of the things or brought up i don't know if any of you were but it was i was amazed at how much misinformation was there just to let you know that um also we need to have more than one site if we can do that i think it will be more successful several months ago we had a board meeting where we had some pretty sensitive topics and i remember commenting we had a unanimous vote on something that i was completely thinking about for me and i think it's important in our country this is bob lewis political sandbox real quick we are discouraged on discourages but that with what i see happening the national level and the lack of cooperation i make sure you see that here if we can do anything to avoid that i think it's better for our kids and i'm better for our staff and everybody else i'll shut up thank you yeah can i ask one question um since i run the ged program in town um got a unique perspective on things i was approached recently by the parent of somebody who is young and will have to be repeating ninth grade they came to me because they're thinking about pulling their student out of the school for the ged program and in my opinion it's the person's far too young to have an easy time going through a gdp program since it's all itself i'm wondering if there's something that the district can do for students who like the eighth graders that didn't transition or anybody else that was can we write something without explaining that giving what the code of juror was like they're not in an unusual situation and that there's really not a there shouldn't be a shame or a stigma associated with it in my mind you know this person was like well now high school is going to take five years instead of four in my mind i'm thinking really you learned something until you've learned it and if it takes longer than that to get that level then it's but i was wondering if we could do something to encourage like write something to those students we know we're being held back to give them an extra boost of encouragement to not look straight at dropping out be careful yes ged as you all know the first tennessee 16 assignment at least uh what we've done here and i think this is a kind of stretching well i've got a topic here's a summer school so one of the things that we've tried to do with summer school is typically this month is secondary and so we had 7 through 12 because that's secondary next month we get jump start and that's elementary well at one point we're talking about k-3 we've put that bar down i wanted to be k-8 so theoretically students who are unsuccessful eighth grade promotion could have the two weeks in and june and two weeks in july that may not do it but mr dr boltz and i have talked several times um if you have a medical doctor surgeon who says well the surgery was a successful patient died that's what happens to us when the kid doesn't pass yes and this is going to sound maybe out of the norm but at least after third grade there's no research that i've ever found i've been working on this for 30 years more yeah anymore anyway that shows that from retaining a kid helps them learn now that's easier to deal with in k-8 setting than departmental livestock because the state says we have we have certain specific requirements so so one of the things that we've talked about and we don't know how we do it right now if a student comes up to us the eighth of august school first and everything they've got everything done and it looks good then we're ready to go for high school doctor i understand i'm trying to get him i what he's supposed to technically you can't delve into it more i i never have any specifics down under superintendent's record right now we can't ask questions or have any discussion on any of those things oh i could ask a question yeah i i think that's wrong because sometimes what you have in the report we need to have a question or the discussion now if the borders say hey we like to hear this in your report and we put it on the agenda underneath the fence report for that specific ones and yeah we can question it until the cows come home but um we don't know what's going to be on there they can't be in the area but that's not saying like if it's something the board say hey can you report on this during your superintendent's reports all right the first order is the certified classic employment upper july 2021 elementary jump start jump start for elementary students will be july 2012-16 uh and to july and 6 19-23 teachers will work six hours per day in eight days pending the number of students to teach a ratio did we do i thought we did the consensus okay all right we'll go back do i have a motion to approve the consent gender move okay uh teachers recommended to teach for the june summer school are shelley erican rayleigh melendres carystocker marachu beltran uh daryl pullen valente uh anna silvano mary grace robles richard rigadone the paraprofessional teacher's aides are being recommended also as one-on-one aides if their students are in attendance alejandra figuero sherry simpson maria marcia martinez bernadine tamio and maria villa silva and dr dooley recommends that we hire these teachers and para professionals do i hear emotions will move uh mr hopkins uh mrs robertson aye mr duncan hi my name is next is approval of summer school employment teachers for june summer school were approved at the may 12th board meeting the administration is requesting permission to employ two para professionals as one-on-one aides for special aid education employment of the aids depend on the attendance of their students aides will be paid their hourly rate for five hours per day the aids that are recommended are rafael duran and patricia mondes and dr dooley recommends that we approve the hiring of these para professionals do i hear a motion i'm mr hopkins hi mrs the next daughter is a classic classified resignation of the para professional teacher aide laurie daniels laurie daniels has submitted a resignation as a parapro and was effective may 21 2021 and superintendent also recommends the resignation of laurie daniels do i hear emotion and i'll second it aye mr robertson aye mr hoffman the next one is classified resignation para professional teacher aide louisiana luis anna torres louis santa torres has submitted her resignation as a parapro effective may 26 2021.
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there was a our ag department used their laser cutter to design i don't know what you'd call it it's not a plaque but a a decoration that was specific to the employee so i think yours had palm trees that's what yeah struck me because i started to see those everyone was different and i'm sure that they were relevant you know to that particular individual yeah but the artwork on those work was stunning yeah i don't know if those were designed here or these are pre-packaged programs that they are able no i think well i think they can input the like the digital um file but it was all cut here yeah so so our laser cutters did those yeah so and karen's was colorful yeah some of them were just the metals but karen's was painted and everything she grabbed it so quickly you had to sort of look that's not the security you held the wrong side karen as you're heading about that well these people over here were happy yeah but uh mike and i were on the wrong side we just saw you sitting away with it well that was a great idea yeah so and that again came from our stats some of our staff members who thought you know just a different way to honor those 25 and 30-year employees all right and the last thing staffing as of this morning we believe that all of our teacher positions are filled at territorial del rio and heritage we still have two teaching positions at the high school one i think we had nine applicants or something for social studies so we are pretty confident we'll be able to fill social studies um struggling a little for our current technical education teacher to replace uh mr foster our drafting teacher we do have a plan to kind of get those first-year kids their certificate we hired a part-time teacher to teach so they get their second year of drafting done so we and that's actually i think a request that you'll approve later uh no that's welding we'll prove that late yeah that's building but um so we have a plan for that but we have i think four or five different openings for a cte teacher and we take any one of those we're trying to kind of um see if we can just find somebody that has may have some experience that can help us in that position so we have three counseling positions open that's proving to be a little bit difficult um one of those is the high school counselor we have our special ed counselor for our special ed kios and then we have our grant funded position and territorial that we're trying to fill and then we do have various paraprofessional and other classified positions right now so someone's looking for a job we can pretty much put you in somewhere and that's it for my report unless there's any questions any questions wonderful moving on item 7v1 financially thank you thank you so hopefully you got the email i sent yesterday i believe and this has been something i've been just kind of watching closely the last few months since i've been here and there's a timing issue so i did these reports last friday thinking i was in good shape and then when i got here monday june 7th the countdown reported about 900 000 more revenue and dated it back to may 31st on june 7.
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I have some fond memories of this time some of my younger brothers and sisters were I'm the third oldest of 12. so they were still in at dicer school and I'd gotten out in 1955 from the elementary school but um uh I have some fond memories at this time because Mr Northern the long time superintendent that used to come to our home all the time to have my father sign documents because my father was on the school board and the high school was being built and there was conversation about what might the the mascot for the high school be and we were talking about it and the idea of the Demons came up because of the Hot Stuff hot sauce so anyway I guess my father brought I guess my father brought it back to the board and and then it was approved it's hard to remember all the details that long ago and I just really loved us uh being a student at nyserd elementary because we had so many fun activities outside of the classroom time I really think maybe students nowadays really have to work so much harder than we did we had really a lot of fun in school but in 1977 when I was on the board the dicer Unified District was established prior to 1975 districts were required to have separate districts in Elementary District and a high school district that was uh by Statute so the legislation was changed and now Dysert became a K-12 unified system which was just a very important development for us here so growth continued in the West Valley and in 1989 Kingswood became the first school built in the City of Surprise home builders were rapidly buying up land the Farmland is just disappearing very quickly and building at a rapid pace and in 2001 hyper growth began in the district between 2002 and 2010 14 elementary schools and three high schools were built if you can imagine building 17 schools in eight years so today as the Dysart Unified School District celebrates its 100th anniversary and now has a community of nearly twenty four thousand students when I was on the board I think we had three thousand five hundred so it's really a lot of change um and that's 24 000 students pre-kindergarten through 12th grade the district encompasses a massive 140 square miles and is home to 24 schools a preschool and an alternative program so so much has changed over the years and I'm just really proud to have been part of the Dysert um development and growth and to see all this progress It's really been very dramatic and I really say kudos to all of you who've worked so hard to make this celebration possible [Applause] well thank you Margaret and I'm going to invite the board if you'd like to come and stand at the table and our word president Densmore is going to make a few remarks thank you so much Mrs Baker we're so happy that you could join us tonight on behalf of the Dysart governing board it is an honor to be a part of the special Centennial year Dysart has a rich history of serving our community and we are so proud to be a part of it each school and the district has put together time capsules to be sealed this year tonight I get to share with you what items will be placed in the district time capsule and I would like to invite my fellow board members and superintendent Kellis to assist me first we will include some documents that describe our history important dates achievements and awards directories and records of superintendents and governing board members some of our Publications will also be included like Dysart achievers Community connect magazines and annual reports along with historic and recent news and budget reports we also have some items that give a glimpse of what this specific year a pandemic year was like for us with hand sanitizer and masks along with a cost comparison for items in 1920 versus 2020.
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you will probably see that same thing with the retention bonus because it's only for those people that came back this year so if we have 55 new employees they're not going to receive it next year so keep that in mind with the essers money and some of these it's it's it's flexible money we're projecting out the high number but there's a good chance it comes in a low number so just know this is about 200 000 so i'd recommend and it'll go out um in the next week or two towards the end of june so i recommend approval as presented there's one thing i didn't see on that list anything for the board members no we don't get paid you know i don't look good in orange and i don't look good in stripes so we didn't push that through okay okay i move to approve the one-time kovac 19 stipend for all staff members as presented i second all in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries four 4-0 8.3 uh this is uh brought to you annually last year was the first year that i brought it to you and it's the question of eligibility for those students that are online and attending not attending our schools and can they play sports it is allowed to play sports if you're an online student what's happened in the past because we didn't have an online program you'd have a student that could be taking primavera as an example that could go ahead and play in our sports because we now have an online program it would be crazy for us not to say if you want to play in our sports that you go ahead and attend our school if a student was attending another program and playing sports the cot the feed to play the sports does not cost what it does not cover what it costs for that child to play in our sports if they attend our schools even if it's aoi and we'll only get 95 or 85 percent of a full adm on them it still helps to cover that cost so the recommendation would be for those students that are not attending our aoi not be allowed to participate in our sports only those students that are attending our aoi would be allowed to participate in sports last year you approved that so i'm just bringing it back second year so i'd recommend approval as presented are we going to have to approve this every year yes it's an annual requirement under aia can i just request that we change the wording to take out the double negative it depends whether that was a typo on my part or that was what's in aia i don't know that's why i was asking if it's possible to do that or if we have to go without wording where is it uh the motion to not allow students not attending the two knots okay let me i'll work on that in the future okay because i i would just like if we could say we make a motion to only allow students attending the district's online school to participate in district into interscholastic athletics and activities that's fine did you get that deanna okay did i make that motion all right all right go ahead a second all in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries four to zero eight point four uh as you remember we talked about the committee that bruce ran this spring to talk about how we teach kids next year given the instructional model we had this year and the discussion was to separate out those that are in person versus those that are virtual when we go ahead and separate that out our aoi right now currently is used uh uses ingenuity but that's a seven through 12 program we don't believe ingenuity is robust enough but florida virtual will be but the first step we need to do is purchase florida virtual so that we we can utilize it uh the one thing i will let you know is the way the program will work probably financially the best way to purchase it is on a as needed basis per student so we're talking about 50 licenses to start with please note that if a child starts in the program and then bails they've used up one of the 50 licenses if we were to get above 50 kids and right now for perspective i think we're in the neighborhood of about kids at the k-6 level that are interested in online it's a very small number but if for some reason we had 51 kids or 52 kids show up then we can buy additional licensing but this just gives us approval to move forward to purchase the program so that we can move forward with with the instruction next year so recommend passage as presented any questions no okay i moved to approve the purchase of the florida virtual academy curriculum as presented a second all in favor what are you doing chad holy moly okay all in favor aye aye aye aye moji carries four to zero 8.5 uh 8.5 is just a second read and so approval of the changes to policy gcd about professional staff vacations and holidays for administration and move it an additional five days to 25 that was the first reading last month and so unless there's any questions i would recommend approval as presented questions all right i moved to approve the recommendations to policy gcd professional staff vacations and holidays as presented i second all in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries four to zero eight point six eight 8.6 is just the companion policy for ged which is for support staff and it's recommending uh two additional days based on that two additional days means people could go up there's three different categories of the number that they have so it's not a set amount it depends on how long you've been with us but again it's the same as the previous one so unless there's questions i would recommend approval as presented questions no okay i moved to approve recommendations to policy gdd support staff vacations and holidays as presented a second all in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries four to zero 8.7 uh what we did with 8.7 uh some of these needed to come to you some of them didn't but just in the interest of transparency we just brought all of the program all of the recommendations recommended improvements to our facilities this should be above and beyond anything else we've done so in this particular case i say over the summer summer projects just note like with the very first project the shade structure at the high school um there's a steel issue and so just because you're approving it there's a chance you will not see the shade structure done until the end of the quarter end of the semester or even potentially into february depending on what they have but we want to get it approved so we could start moving forward so you have three different programs there are three different four different excuse me projects shade structure at the high school gym and cafeteria painting at interior paintings at the middle school electrical upgrades to the cpac and to the la ag lab for welding and then additional classroom televisions for the alternative schools so i would recommend approval as presented i do have a question do you have a question yes i do but go ahead okay um so the shade structure is not going to it's going to have like it's going to be a material as this actual shade part i mean i assume that with our hopefully monsoons this summer um like or any other time like are we have i i mean i'm i'm sure you guys do but like insurance on that kind of stuff yeah it would automatically be covered uh once we purchase it and it says that you guys are gonna take out trees like how many trees have to be taken out mr fairby there's only a couple okay yeah it's just gonna extend that out because we currently have um close to two dozen or fifteen tables that kids have to sit out in the sun every day okay and so that is to provide them for those kids oh i see okay that's all i had um the question i have is it says a bond construction is this still bond money that yeah we still have yeah we still have bond left and that's why we decided to do it carla do you remember what we have left on the bond i can't i can't remember it's about 800 right so again as we move forward with projects uh that we just do that balancing act can we use essers can we use bond can we use sfb can we use daa and then we just sit and and truthfully it's just this conversation between carl and i is what we think is the best uh funding model or funding source to use this particular case based on what was passed for the bond we felt all these fit within the categories of the bond passage and so we're saying let's use that money any other questions okay okay i'd like to move to approve the summer 2021 bond construction projects as presented i second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero eight point eight uh this is a consideration to approval to enter into an agreement with uh a contract with techsmart we've been having conversations with them for a couple months now regarding coding and a curriculum for coding that curriculum could potentially at some point time actually run from about third grade to 12th grade this initial one is for the high school we've been working with evit at the end of the day we're looking for a grant that will help to pay this so the overall cost of the district is like 2800 bucks is off eve it would supply the the teacher to potentially help us the grant would would cover the cost of professional development if we do not secure the grant we will not be moving forward with this um there are some i'll just say up front there are some concerns with the grant whether we qualify we've gone back and forth with them trying to let them understand where we're at some days people listen better than other days so just because you're proving this just please note there's a chance that it won't go through i'll bring you up to speed but this at least gets us in the game allows us to go for the for the contract and then uh there's money available and people are not applying but there's limitations and so um we want to see if we can get in the game and and it would be a combo with evit ourselves and techsmart that would would provide a potential program that could help kids you got the elliott road quarter up there you got more jobs than cannot be filled in this country for coding which run about 85 grand a year kids can pop into those jobs coming out of high school if they do the right program of study so we want to explore moving down that way however um we'll just see whether it actually comes to fruition so this is just the first step and there's a chance it will go through but there's also a chance it won't is that should we put that in our motion though with the that that it's in it's in contract language okay so the grant is that from evit no it's it's from ade but it'll be ourselves even and tech smart will will go ahead and submit the grant to kde jointly and then they will decide who who wins it based on the criteria there are some federal dollars associated with it so we'll just have to see how that works out and does this um in any way interfere with the curriculum at evit no matter of fact this is one of those things where it puts us in a position where we can train our teachers to do the same teaching of the curriculum as it's happening evit likewise if something were to happen and we were to lose a teacher and even had a teacher we could go ahead and do some distance distance training on the kids uh we'd have to put someone in the classroom to watch the kids but we could utilize their teachers so it's really uh the the beginnings of a quote-unquote joint venture that would allow us to be more flexible in the way we provide opportunities for our kids because we know when we start losing teachers in some cases we lose programs because we have no way to to replace the teacher this would give us a second option if that ever occurred and that would allow us to continue to offer the program for our kids without the kids having to go over to eve it they could be doing it on our campus which is the second piece because the time constraint to drive over to either one of the two eva campuses this would mean they wouldn't have to do it they could actually do it on our campus so does eva do this with any other districts they are working with some other districts um but it's a brand new program that that we just started having conversations somehow the gentleman got my name and so he called me right before christmas so i put him in contact with several of the j-teds including evit and it's just kind of moved from there i don't know who's raised their hand to do it but i know that eve it's talking some other probably districts more our size or a little bit smaller because some of the large districts already have their own programs oh okay couldn't we we have a program but this would this would just really solidify what the curriculum is um i'm just wondering if eva could feel threatened in some way because now we're starting to pull some of what their traditional programs may have been no no i've had i've had several conversations with with dr wilson and we're looking quite honestly we're having honest conversations and full disclosure dr wilson was an assistant soup for me up in aj years ago and so we've had conversations about how do we maximize how we can offer opportunities for kids he understands that there's a distance issue and so if there's a ways ways to use distance learning coming out of the pandemic then he's okay with that and so uh that's why we're proceeding with this with them because it's been a series of of conversations with all the different entities going on for for probably uh whatever it's been six seven months all right any other questions all right i'd like to move to approve the contract with techsmart for the 2021 to 22 and 2022 to 23 school years as presented hi second all in favor aye aye hi motion carries four to zero okay so at this time i i make a motion to go into executive session i'll second um all in favor aye aye motion carries four to zero i guess that means you guys aren't staying huh if you hurry home the game doesn't start for three more minutes just don't get in an accident um a cell phone probably a better connection okay i'm going to leave this open though and so you can come back when we reconvene sounds good thanks no problem um
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caleb i know you're going to say a few words in a few minutes that will enlighten everyone and will show us exactly why you were chosen as valedictorian but i want to congratulate you and in recognition of having earned this distinction i want to say this honor illustrates your outstanding achievements hard work perseverance and academic excellence we applaud your determination and striving for and achieving such high goals congratulations on a job well done and great success in your future and i do want to let you know this is from the general assembly and it's an official citation and it is signed by the president of the senate martin m looney the speaker of the house matt ritter and the secretary of state denise merrill so congratulations [Applause] all right so as i was writing this speech i considered making a few jokes here and there just to lighten the mood um so i asked a few friends for feedback sent them my speech and quickly learned that i should probably stay away from a career in comedy or i can just make some new friends that's beside the point though my name is caleb and i know some of you definitely know me as the kid who wore bow ties in freshman year i'm really excited to have the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today but before i do i'd just like to thank mayor cavo board of education chairperson cooper past and present members of the board of ed superintendent pascarella assistant superintendent wallston mr donovan and all of the dhs faculty parents and guardians for their hard work especially this past year on behalf of the class of 2021 your dedication and continued support are greatly appreciated now to my friends and peers isn't it a bit ironic that we started our final year of high school worried about covid19 only to end it recovering from fresh cases of senioritis i don't know about you but i definitely started feeling the symptoms of dwindling motivation and accelerating fatigue way back in april i was so focused on being done with high school and i think i saw graduation as the last leg of an arduous marathon or the epic conclusion to some blockbuster film for some reason i thought that all my struggles would magically vanish and i'd be left with the happy ending that i've worked hard for but now that i'm finally here i can't help but realize how wrong that mindset is there's no finish line in sight for us today nor will credits roll as we leave with our diplomas instead our lives will continue to progress after graduation with our podium finishes and epic conclusions waiting for us in the distant future right now we're just catching our breath and rehydrating or getting up to stretch during a slow part of the movie and while we're a long way from the end it can't be denied that we've persevered through a lot whether it be ap exams college applications maintaining a healthy school and life balance every single one of us has overcome challenges during our time here at dhs and although it may sound a bit disheartening we're not done with stress or failure we might be temporarily free of 11 59 pm deadlines monotonous textbooks or even the overcrowded d3 hallways but there are still greater challenges that we now have the opportunity to take on so what comes next where do we go from here first of all i'd say we should celebrate let's take our attention away from the race and forget about how exhausted we might feel look away from the movie from it for a minute and just appreciate the company of the people that you're with we've all truly earned this moment so i think we deserve to congratulate ourselves and reflect on how far we've come as to what comes after that well that's up to you right now i'd like to i'd like you to think about a goal that you have for your lives after graduation today maybe it's something like succeeding in college or working a job that you really like it could be spending more time with your family or even starting one of your own regardless of what your objectives are accomplishing them won't be easy we'll need to take risks we'll fail and even after we pick ourselves back up we'll fail again it will be difficult but success without hard work isn't what defines us our ability to remain determined and learn from our failures gives us the power to control our futures it's evident that we all have the potential to do great things but if we give up at the faintest site of failure or settle for indifference we'll never learn the true satisfaction of accomplishment so members of the class of 2021 if you're not asleep already our plan is simple we must keep moving forward until we triumph over all of the obstacles in our path no matter the barriers we face we'll strive to overcome them we'll continue to embrace failure take risks and learn from our mistakes hatters i challenge you to give your hearts in everything that you do from this day forth keep chasing your finish lines and stick around for the credit sequences with enough patience hard work and determination we'll be able to break through that finish tape and watch as the credits roll thank you next i would like to introduce our food our first student speaker melody david [Applause] hi everyone i know you're hot and you want to get it over with and just get your diplomas but i just want you guys to listen to just this last ones my fellow graduates of 2021 this is it for once this is the one thing i do not want to rush in my life everyone knows what the type of person i am i do not plan but i will rush through all of my actions as if everything is a blur but this once i'd like to have five more minutes with all of you i'm melody darrett i'm happy to finally stand before all of you without the screen of my laptop separating us being able to see so many of my fellow classmates faces and staff in front of me only reminds me of the busy and crazy year of our freshman lives it seems as if it was only yesterday that we were standing in these bleachers during our first spirit week of high school meeting so many new friends and dressing up in all white with paint paint on our faces except here we stand four years later one by one dressed in gowns with graduation caps as freshmen we looked up to the seniors thinking they lived their life so freely as if they figured everything out obviously now we know that is probably the biggest lie we ever fed into of course other than believing we're gonna start coming in school or any earlier than february personally i believe the four years were going to be painfully long and hard which made me dread coming to school as early as seven in the morning yeah i can't help but feel my last two years of high school were taken away from me if only i woke up and got ready for school the first time my alarm clock rang if only i made the bus so i wouldn't miss 30 minutes of first period if only i forced myself into trying new clubs and sports when i had the opportunity if only i popped my own personal bubble and made new friends in every classroom and if only i believed that time was precious that maybe just maybe i would have had extra time to appreciate the high school experience with all of you corona made us realize what we took for granted more than anything before i continue the corny and emotional graduation speech i'd like to gain recognition and awareness of being a student during quarantine corona was an immense change on everyone but for some reason at a certain point it felt like the world was against me i may not be wearing as many tassels as i wished i would since freshman year i may not be graduating with the outstanding gpa that i've been beating myself up for for the past four years but i am here right standing at this podium here i stand thinking i would never make it we aren't perfect we aren't machines we are human beings we adjust and change alongside time we all did the best that we could and we are all standing here today i'm sure a lot of you can relate at this time period of time has been mentally draining i'm a student just like any of you always remember to be proud of yourselves i have multiple teachers to thank for reminding me that thank you for working outside of teaching to save our lives by merely encouraging us i've come to realize that high school isn't about just homework projects and exams which was what made me dread the four years to come but it is what we learn outside of textbooks we are all most saying of each other whether short or long term encounters with every passing year with new teachers and classmates we created unique memories that slowly shaped our personalities prior to adulthood we may have had a very rough past two years but at least i'm able to share this final moment with all of you as of today we leave with pride but especially with each other goodbye can be a simple farewell to everyone but as i speak goodbye seems to be a million words that cannot be expressed so simply we never thought our time would be so limited in fact i'm sure most of us thought time was slowing down in quarantine so before the goodbyes and thank yous i'd rather say congratulations congratulations to those who worked extra hard no matter how optional class felt online and especially congratulations to those who did enough when school became extremely draining after switching to distance learning i'm especially proud of you and of course congratulations to the class of 2021 enough about us i'd like to thank mr donovan members of board of education especially chair person cooper and superintendent pasquerella and of course mayor cavo thank you for giving us the opportunities and resources to be where we are today and who we will become tomorrow teachers and faculty thank you for teaching in such a difficult time as much as we just like turning on our cameras and forcing ourselves to talk in breakout rooms i recognize your constant drive to teach us because you believed in our abilities despite the drastic change of teaching i'd like to personally thank mrs tong miss hussler mrs lorenz and mrs granny and mrs passarelli for believing in me despite my doubts for myself you did more than teach me in fact you taught me the lessons of life i will always be grateful for that even when i'm states away parents and staff thank you for arranging the last few weeks with events that seemed as if our lives were almost back to normal and so i leave with one last message fellow graduates teachers faculty and families in the event corona no longer affects our daily living live as if you'll never know when another pandemic steals your time away remember time will not wait for you so pop that personal bubble and make new friends reach for new opportunities and waste no time remember as you step into college we are all most sick of each other you would be surprised how many little habits you inherit from people you've crossed paths with time is the most important thing that should not be stolen from you value it because you will never be able to replace it nor take it back even if it's five more minutes although we've been taught to stay six feet away from each other i hope my corny message has reached you we all may not have met every single one of each other the entire four years but we do all have one single memory altogether and that moment is right now and now goodbye class of 2021 goodbye danbury high school thank you for allowing me to talk with you this one last time even if it's just for five minutes thank [Applause] you [Music] oh [Music] close your eyes lay your head down now it's time to sleep may you find great adventures [Music] if you're scared i will calm your fears so you know i'm here monsters go [Music] all right forever [Music] from now on can sing this song there's a light in the heart your blessings every day everything will be okay not alone [Music] good night [Music] oh [Music] [Laughter] [Music] would the senior members of the madrigals return to their respective seats with the graduates now our second student selected speaker alina jacob [Applause] mayor cavo superintendent pasquerella members of the board of education mr donovan faculty parents friends and the members of the class of 2021 i have a question for all of you have any of you heard of the game minecraft or even played it raise your hand if you done so come on let's see some hands alright i see a couple all right how about back here all right we got a few all right now raise your hand if you ever read the end credits to the famous game i don't see a lot of okay i see one but i don't see that many well that's okay because i've taken the time to read the end credits and what i found was something not many get to discover a poem if the universe could speak to us i would quote minecraft yes a children's game in saying you have played the game well everything you need is within you you are stronger than you know minecraft is a sandbox game where you as the player are unexpectedly placed in a world with nothing but your intuition and creativity the moment you hit create new world you are in charge letting your dreams take control of a world you can only imagine experiencing from creating buildings that reach the sky's limit or fighting bad guys to complete the heroic lore the once foreign world becomes yours for many of us we return to this childhood game during quarantine though we were trapped within the bounds of our house walls this game allowed us to explore beyond what we could not physically touch even if you did not play this game during the height of quarantine you found ways to expand your home because you knew you deserve a chance to explore beyond the barriers created by this pandemic though most most of us only thought we were playing a game we as the class of 2021 were already proving we have the potential to create something very few can imagine coming to a reality though our high school journey was unexpected i always thought of high school as a game not specifically a video game but any game you might have played sports board games your occasional kahoot we all have been a part an event where our skills were put to the test some people entered the hallways of our high school unprepared getting overwhelmed with the opportunities this school has to offer or the large crowd of students just trying to get to class others come in with a fully thought out strategy ready to jump in and graduate with honors or have the honor to graduate in other words everyone comes in with their own way to play the game dreaming of the day they get to feel the victory of going across the finish line but like in any game you play there's always a point where a level feels so hard to complete that it feels impossible to keep going for us that arrived in march of 2020 in fact some may not describe it to be a hard level but an unexpected pause that forced us to step away from the life we love or some consider this time to be a game changer for new opportunities arrived as some navigated their whole lives online overall our stories change from your typical high school experience having no guide or easy hack to follow yet we still managed to pick up our mask and go above and beyond the challenges that laid before us normalcy became appreciated as we headed to classes online but we still made the best of it disappointment lingered everywhere but we still managed to make danbury high school a site of success we have shown this year that when we dream we are actually building a world for our reality and when we stand up we stand for the importance of individuals and even when we are in fear we are not afraid to speak for what we believe in if i had a moment to re re-watch the gameplay you will have chosen to work with i would only see the class of 2021 holding their integrity becoming advocates of a community and growing into young adults who have already proven that they can change the world the universe has spoken to us and we have chosen to play the game well though we are exiting a sandbox we have come to love we have a new game to play and a new story to unfold if you survived high school during a global pandemic multiple political dilemmas and the most challenging of all waking up to your google me class on time you can survive the next level whether you're attending university off the trade school or the workplace serving our country or more i know that the class of 2021 will able to hold the same strength and the same determination as they enter the next level of their life so to end it all off i would like to read to you the final parts of the poem i found and the game was over and the player woke up from the dream and the player began a new dream and the player dreamed again dreamed better and the player was the universe you are the player wake up wake up you have a new dream to play thank [Applause] you [Applause] principal donovan will now address the graduating class of 2021 on behalf of the faculty [Applause] before i start i'd like to make an announcement if we get a big round of applause for our girls track team today that just won the connecticut state open [Applause] it was funny you know we were prepping for coming out and doing all this stuff and nicotina asked me i said how are you going to do up there mr donovan you're going to be able to make it through and i said yeah i've been doing this for a long time i'll be able to do it this could be a tough one this could be a tough one but welcome welcome to danbury high school the largest high school in the state of connecticut i know many parents are excited to be here today but none more than two special people in my life see my mother and father are here to watch their grandson graduate like many parents here today they sat at my high school graduation and wondered if i was prepared for the world if i could make it in college and what the world has in store for me as a parent i figured out now the worry never ends but i think it changes a little i know my parents are sitting in the stands watching their son on the stage in front of all these people my mother's proudly thinking wow my son's in charge of all this and then there's my dad who's thinking wow who in their right mind put my son in charge of all of this growing up playing sports my mother would always whistle let me know she was in the stands where are you mom but just like many of you i learned a lot of things from my parents but for the first time i can say i learned one thing wrong see my parents hated us watching tv on saturday mornings and wasting the day watching cartoons remember that was before netflix hulo and prime when you actually had to get up early on saturday morning to watch your shows i know many parents out there know what i'm talking about kids not so much my parents would say you only live once but that is just not true in fact i think the opposite is kind of true you only die once but you do get to live each and every day every day is and can be a new adventure it's up to you to make the best of each day don't spend hours on tick tock or instagram unless you're a creator and feel free to you know cap cash at me some money or venmo or something like that feel free if you have learned anything from this past year class of 21 it's you should take advantage of the time you have and live like you may not have that time again this past year and a half has been difficult for all and it should have taught you the value of time as a senior class you were stripped of many events which make high school years memorable homecoming dances sporting events crowds a whole school graduation you were left with google meets long days sitting in chairs or lying in your bed and learning to communicate while wearing a mask but you know something you all did it and learning to uh you but you all did it you lived each day you stood up when you needed to you buckled down when it was necessary but your journey is not over you need to take the same mentality and attack your next adventure whether it's college the military united states naval academy or the workforce make you're the best person you can be every day hundreds of principals get to stand up here like myself and say that their graduating class is the best class that school's ever had i'm guilty of saying that myself what i contend to is this class is the most special class by far some of you may not know this but i do have a son who will be graduating today and with that son the senior class comes his friends most principals can only say they watch their students grow from 9th through 12th grade i've had the pleasure of witnessing some of them grow from the time they work in kindergarten even some before that conor borrigas i have spent time watching or watching them now in various sporting events even spending hours at a west side recital watching that awesome percussion group hit that instrument like no other i have made friends with their parents who i gladly share this day with i have witnessed the changes from the young elementary students they were to the graduates they are today including one stage of a great afro by derrick rivers these are things most principals can't claim i claim it and i do so proudly i wouldn't have changed anything or any outcome for any other job in the world one of the graduation traditions i started five ago five years ago was the gift of a graduation carnation the carnation is a unique gift because it's not meant for you the carnation was on your seat is intended for somebody else who helped you through your time at dhs someone you made the connection with someone who supported you someone you feel deserves it be it a teacher a sibling a grandparent or a parent but i need you to take a moment sitting out there on this beautiful day it's a lot cooler right now than it was before and think about someone who has helped you and that is where the carnation goes as i was sitting in the garage with my lovely wife unwrapping 800 carnations i began to think about who i would give a carnation to i mentioned it to my wife that i need to give out bunches of them this year so what most people don't understand is that trying to run the largest high school in the state of connecticut from a computer through google meets and zoom meetings just stinks and i wrote another word in there but i wanted to keep this pg if it wasn't for a fantastic administrative team which supported all the ideas we had the shuts down the contact tracing it would have been an impossible task then there are the teachers can we please give a round of applause for our staff and teachers here today these teachers were thrust into a form of teaching that was new to all of us and they came out smiling on the other side i could have given it to our retiring teachers miss stence miss casey miss harris mr golick miss lieberman and finally miss cal dhs will be losing 135 years of teaching experience the staff will be losing leaders in the building and i'll be losing a group that has always put students first and for all of you i thank you for your time and dedication i could give it to our dhs pto who decided early on that the classes of 20 and 21 were not going to be shorted on anything they worked tirelessly to give their children the best senior experience they could have they also took on the responsibility of beautifying the campus and succeeded on both fronts to the dhs pto ladies as a parent of a graduating senior and the principal i thank you for all your hard work i could give a carnation to dr sal after 50 years in education 28 superintendent 15 years in the danbury district had decided to concentrate on his golf game and having seen him play i couldn't agree more it needs work there there are not enough hours for him to concentrate on his job and perfect his golf game but i would like to thank you dr sal for being a sounding board a listener and a mentor to who i could talk to more than just school but lastly i decided that you the class of 21 deserve my carnation you could have folded you could have complained about everything but all you did was what we asked and you were a hatter when things didn't work out you fixed it you could have shut down and forgotten about school but you rose to the occasion my carnation goes out to all of you you are an extraordinary group of young people you have made the best of a bad situation i am proud of you and remember once i had her you're always at her i love you all i would now like to introduce our senior class president nicholas attina hello everyone i am nicholas satina your class president i want to say good afternoon to my fellow members of danbury high school graduating class of friends and family the reputable mr donovan the ec members of the board of education boe chairperson cooper the honorable superintendent uh mr pascarella one more name um the lovely senator kushner and last but not least mayor mark apologies i met mayor cabo when i dreamed this out my freshman year watching my sister graduate because believe it or not i always wanted to speak at graduation mayor mark was still running this lovely town back then i would like to graciously thank all of those who have allowed me the honor of being your class president which has in turn given me the humble opportunity to speak up here on your behalf today coming from a small private school a lot of you have helped me since freshman year and i'm sure my other parochial league students can relate to this lovely feeling i'm glad to see a lot of familiar faces walking the platform today and it is wonderful to know so many of us are taking the next step forwards in life unfortunately we did not get to do so many of the fun things that we were hoping to do as a class we missed out on football games and basketball season our last homecoming and just enjoying so much time together for the last year about we lost a lot of memories but we worked on making new ones with the little time we had thankfully we only missed out on a short part of high school and still have the rest of our lives to create a legacy for each of you in front of me today there are still decades to come filled with memories of joy and laughter and with that i want to say take ownership of your life in this world we find a lack of determined individuals but in front of me i see a sea of people who want to see a change for the better i hate to break the news to everyone but nothing in life will be handed to you if you want something there will always be a will and there will always be a way to go after it with tenacity and determination the impossible can always be achieved a majority of us here are young adults it is time for us to dictate our lives instead of our loving parents parents all of you guys out there you know how much we love you but now it is the time just to give us guidance and let us make the big decisions in life to you young ladies and gentlemen in front of me it is time to create the life that you want if you want your dream job you'll have to work for it if you want to start a business you know there will be thousands of sacrifices that you'll have to make in this world of sacrifices and hardships the renowned wolf of wall street jordan belfort has always resonated with me he lost his job after the stock market crash of 1987 and then built his own brokerage firm from the ground up although he laundered money and ended up in prison for a little bit he made drastic changes after being released he now travels the world guiding people in seminars as a motivational speaker to make them make the changes that they want in their life to me he's the epitome of taking ownership of your life when there were downfalls and hiccups he took on the challenges and made a better life for himself a quote that resonates with me from mr belford is the only thing standing between you and your goal is the bs story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it there's no time to tell yourself stories that's why you can't do something but instead put that extra energy into doing it giving up on your aspirations is the number one way of falling short and falling behind the rest of the race of life to achieve these wild aspirations you have to be disciplined in everything you do you have to be willing to put the time and effort into your goals and in life personally i want to see every single person in this crowd become a valuable member of society and successful in their own goals always remember some people are born lucky but no one is born unable to succeed the most important part of chasing your dreams or chasing your goals is creating balance in your life sure i just went on and on about how dedicating your life to being the best you can can but you need some balance next year i know a lot of you are going away to college getting that degree is important but so is having a good time and creating those lasting memories just make sure you find that healthy balance where you can succeed and enjoy those weekends once again i want to thank my peers the poultry dutiness teachers of danbury high school the staff and administration coaches board of education board of education chairperson cooper superintendent pasquerella senator kushner and this time mayor cabo for being here today i wanted to add a little bit extra this time i really want to say thank you to my teachers that i've had over this time i have so many great memories with you guys you guys are just awesome you guys have influenced me in ways that i can't even express but you guys are amazing and lastly i want to say thank you to my good friend mauricio ricalde who came all the way out here from pennsylvania he was he was among our class at some point he sadly had to move but it's awesome that he came out here and he's just an amazing person to have around so thank you so to the brothers and sisters i've made while at danbury high school you guys are the best and have truly molded me into who i am today god bless all of you and i'm looking forward to see the great things you guys [Applause] achieve and now the moment i know that you've all been waiting here for the presentation of our diplomas and that's jonathan scholkoff nicholas attina melody david caleb schlissel alina jacob gabriel corte qazi begum music [Music] brian vavaros devin smith [Music] malik stewart kevin vidmar anthony roman gabriela texera anna rodriguez victoria wolf anderson michelle seguenza lima julia wiseman amy santana jutaj grace siebert alexis thomas elizabeth san martin divine thomas and mali sarramento grisbelli ventura rosemary redroven haley suarez talita santana julia whiblishhauser grant salis nora yestremski samantha santos acell tercios ashley salz jonathan zimmerman shirley romero anna velasquez ria rana alex martinez-lille cynthia salinas richie toledo cynthia seguenza jalen wyatt alexis rodriguez sharon vera gustavo silva salsa kevin venezela reneea shields emily stefanelli michelle rose morgan smith byron wrath leonardo ephrain zapata hennessy rico nicholas wilson cuss shakira rosario alexis villacrest aliyah nyusha ruiz claire souza kelly rojas is adora tensener leslie salinas leonardo vital johanna salto siobhani sony jasmine salinas kaya kaya souza raimondo faith veras tiana rogers melissa tuan sarah sang fat angelina thumb jenny redroven kim trinh katherine sanchez augustino trinidad javier reyes brook stillman luis sanchez charles weimer jericho reyna lore vincent ii zachary roos richard vega wayne r lee sargento griffin seim david sig 2 angus wong patrick rosetti [Applause] christopher rita isaiah vasquez derrick rivers claro victorino danny sanchez laura souza jimenez nicholas ruslavsky erica taran carol racino's pinto sierra swords aaron sin jayden stromeier jocelyn salazar anthony schweikert john reynoso jerry tra carlos rosales caden thomas pedro salamo daniel storms joseph naybar aaron stanzione anthony ronari jaylene wilson kevin rodriguez ayanna torres matthew silva tiffany tan alexandria silva ivan yang jenna silva julia rangel amy sad jaren vines grace salvador de senya espinal chris mary crystal reyes alyssa soares nicholas now baden kevin tello sarmiento luke robles jackson vargas daryl rice karina velasco christian nabalton angela torres ariel siegwa edison taurus xavier ross dubar valerio vega ramir rivera emily yeps darren rodriguez nadia omi caleb silva darren turman just sorry ethan summers mahendra mengelem kaitlyn snow rover salinas luca torelli freddie segura nera jasmine tapia angeles rosano angie vasquez jasmine gonzalez elizabeth ordonez maribel gauman araceli lazzo crespo elizabeth kembanska jason puglia michelle maxie katie alexandra puglia yarif lex aya lex lee negra daniel navarro james pitino carla martinez david orsanio romigo amy moracho alexandra presents marlene salazar appina penelope peralta vivian mendez nashly perez gabrielle pires brian then ashley olivia jeremy marmolojos lexi princeton aries casela montero santiago quinzo belichica leida matos amina mufti liana matos sasha palmer kaylee mercado lucia o'brien michaela morillo connor o'brien jacenya my sincho liliana ortiz tessa marillo zoe pascal audrey mercer lauren quinn oscar mendez nunes anthony nguyen alves armand patel daniel donovan [Applause] kaylee arrico riley pearl aileen pham connor borregas melanie pannie avery markey tatiana fernandez taylor poppin talia murray myla macklin tasia murray aiden missouri larissa parsons jalen moray alby marley panaranda jeremy medina karina oliveira jason campisi kimberly mora helky grandoso brandon pinot jonathan morales justine padalka ayanna nuez nunez patel ariana lopex lauren your card how do i say your life demetrius madrid christopher paredes jacob leonardo andres elizabeth cernalo johnny murillo jennifer younga andrew payney matthew mareska dustin nera alexander orr christopher rivera jack oranguera samantha patrick brian morkacho sophia pereira justin mendes honares michael o'rourke amy marin [Music] grayson ortiz jewelry marin parmavilla hibba karishi sit laily morales garcia jefferson marroquin scarlett loja puma anthony palacios guatun chulika sorry jordy perretti diana mackinsala angelina torres anderson gabriel eric naligori christopher corsacal libercura timothy martinez [Music] brian merrell [Music] nija purier colin mcgraw michelle nyanda alex smith mamey obang marcos de souza jose oranello ryan ormundo kevin ortiz sanchez michael morello brian neugra michael mccalla yersen parra tabitha villa matthew keones pedro villa [Music] ashley roxanna lima ashley vasquez vidi rana riley tuano akira regis julia neves carolina rodriguez salcedo nathaniel mclean jennifer reneso chacon [Music] annelise morales idilani kimberly morales justin seminigo nuja milar aaron salmonigo eric mcnamara andrew melody [Music] catherine ivonne seguenza [Music] zoe mistral sean mcduff madison keller addison macy [Music] arturo martinez kendall mcnamara michael montero [Music] christian maida sebastian martinez william moore mclean [Music] james mckenna isaac perez matthew martens joshua mohan zakai campbell [Music] annel medina jennifer mazza elizabeth quinaccio [Applause] [Music] angelica alvarenga christian navarro [Music] janitha orzonia kameli nunez adriana novella travis niola camille quizenda noemi rivas okay all right congratulations class of [Music] [Applause] okay to confirm these diplomas they didn't work for you by the power of vested in me as superintendent of the danbury school system by the connecticut state board of education and as an agent for the danbury board of education i hereby certify that these candidates have met or exceeded the requirements needed to receive a diploma from danbury high school class of 2021 you now may move your tassels from left to right you are graduates congratulations [Applause] hey buddy it's been a good run [Applause] [Music] um [Applause] [Music] you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
in fact some may not describe it to be a hard level but an unexpected pause that forced us to step away from the life we loved or some consider this time to be a game changer for new opportunities arrived as some get navigated their whole lives online overall our stories change from your typical high school experience having no guide or easy hack to follow yet we still manage to pick up our mask and go beyond above and beyond the challenges that laid before us normalcy became appreciated as we headed into classes online but we still made the best of it disappointment lingered everywhere but we were still able to make danbury high school a site of success we have shown this year that when we dream we are actually building a world for our reality when we stand up we stand for the importance of individuals and even when we are in fear we appear not afraid to speak for what we believe in if i had a moment to rewatch the gameplay you all have chosen with i would only see the class of 2021 holding their integrity becoming advocates of a community and being growing young adults who have already proven they can change the world the universe has spoken to us and we have chosen to play the game well though we are exiting a sandbox we have come to love we have a new game to play and a new story to unfold if you survived high school during a global pandemic multiple political dilemmas and the most challenging of all waking up to go to your google meet class on time you can survive the next level come on whether you're attending university off to trade school or the workplace serving our country or more i know that the class of 2021 will able to hold the same strength and the same determination as they enter the next level of their life so to end it all off i would like to read the final parts of the poem i found and the game was over and the player woke up from the dream and the player began a new dream and the player dreamed again dreamed better and the player was the universe you are the player wake up wake up you have a new dream to play thank you [Applause] to address the class of 2021 on behalf of faculty principal donovan [Applause] i know my guy one welcome welcome to danbury high school the largest high school in the state of connecticut just like many of you i learned a lot of things from my parents but for the first time i can say i learned one thing wrong see my parents hated us watching tv on saturday mornings back in the day before the times of netflix hulu and prime you actually had to get up in the morning if you wanted to see your cartoons i know many of the parents out there you understand that kids you may not get that this day but we had to do that my parents didn't like them they'd say you only live once but i say that's just not true in fact it's opposite you only die once but you get to live each and every day every day is and can be a new adventure it is up to you to make the best of that day not spending hours on tick tock or instagram unless you're a creator and you feel like you want to cash out me some money then feel free if you have learned anything from this past year it should be to take advantage of the time you have and live like you may not have that time again this past year and a half has been difficult for all it should have taught you the value of time as the senior class you are stripped of many events that make high school years memorable homecoming sporting events crowds a high school whole class graduation you were left with google meets long day sitting in a chair and learning to communicate while wearing a mask but you know something you all did it you lived each day you stood up when it was needed you buckled down when it was necessary but your journey is not over you need to take the same mentality and attack next year as a new adventure whether it's the college military the workforce make you the best person you can be every year hundreds of principals like myself stand up to the graduating class and say it's the best the school's ever had i'm guilty of doing this myself but what i can say to you this is this is my most special class some of you may not know but i have a son who'll be graduating today and with my with his son in the senior class comes his friends most principals can say they watch their students grow from 9th to 12th grade i've had the pleasure and privilege of witnessing some of you grow from the time you were in kindergarten i've spent time coaching or watching in various sports events and spending hours at a west side recital watching that awesome percussion band hit the instruments like no other i have made friends with parents who i'm gladly share this special day with i have witnessed the changes from young elementary students to the graduates you are today these things most principals can't claim i claim it and i do so proudly i wouldn't have changed anything or any outcome for any other job in the world one of the graduation traditions i started five years ago when i took this job is the gift of a graduation carnation the carnation is a unique gift because it's not meant for you the carnation is intended for someone who helped you through dhs everybody needs somebody and everyone uses someone so find that person and think of that person that you made the connection with and you feel that you should give that carnation to could be a teacher a sibling a grandparent a parent but take a moment sitting there on this beautiful really hot sunny i didn't forgot my sunscreen day and think about who you would give that to that is who your carnation is for as i was sitting in my garage with my lovely wife unwrapping 800 carnations i began to think about who i'd give it to i mentioned to my wife i need to go out and give a bunch this year see what most people understand is that trying to run the largest high school estate from a computer through google meets and zoom meetings stinks i actually wrote a different word in there but i want to keep this a little pg if it wasn't for my fantastic administrative team which supported all the ideas we had the shutdowns the reopenings the shutdown the reopening the reopening the shutdown the semi shutdown and the hybrid through contact tracing it would have been an impossible task then there are the teachers can we get please give a round of applause for all my staff who are sitting back there today this is a group of people who were thrust into a form of teaching that was new to us all and believe it or not if you look at them from why they came out smiling on the other side or do i give a carnation to the retiring teachers miss stence miss casey miss harris mr golick miss lieberlin lieberman and finally miss cal dhs will be losing over 135 years of teaching experience the staff will be losing leaders in the building and i'll be losing a group that always puts students first on behalf of everybody i thank you for your time and dedication i could also give it to our dhs pto who decided early on that the classes of 20 and 21 were not going to be shorted of anything they worked tirelessly to give your children the best senior experience they could have they also took on the responsibility of beautifying the campus and succeeded in both of these to the dhs pto ladies as a parent graduating senior and the principal of this building thank you for all your hard work [Applause] and speaking of retiring i could give a carnation to dr cell after 50 years in education 28 years as a superintendent 15 years in the danbury district he's decided to go concentrate on his golf game and having seen him play i couldn't agree more i don't think there's enough hours in the day for him to correct that slice but i do want to thank you dr sal for being a sounding board a listener and a mentor who i could talk to more than just school but lastly i decide that you the class of 21 deserve my carnation you could have folded you could have complained about everything but all you did is what we ask as a hatter when things didn't work out you fixed it you could have shut down and forgotten about school but you rose to the occasion my carnation goes out to all of you you're an extraordinary group of young people who've made the best of a bad situation i am proud of you and remember once a hatter always a hatter i love you guys now introducing the senior class president nicotine i am a little short he's got that thank you my friend all right hello everyone i am nicholas satina your class president i want to say good morning to my fellow members of the danbury high school graduating class of 2021 friends and family our wonderful teachers the reputable mr donovan the team members of board education and boe chairperson cooper the honorable superintendent pasquerella and mayor mark apologies i met mayor cabo sorry i dreamed this out freshman year watching my sister graduate and mayor mark was still running the town back then i would like to graciously thank all of you who have allowed me the honor of being your class president which has in turn given me the humble opportunity to speak up here on your behalf today coming from a small private school a lot of you have helped me since freshman year and i'm sure my other parochial league students can relate to this feeling i am glad to see a lot of familiar faces walking the platform and it is wonderful to know so many of us are taking the next step forward in life unfortunately we did not get to do many of the fun things we were hoping to do as a class we missed out on football games basketball season our last homecoming and just enjoying the time with each other for about a year we lost a lot of memories but we worked on making new ones with the time we had thankfully we only missed out on a short part of high school and still have the rest of our lives to create a legacy for each of you in front of me today there are still decades to come filled with memories of joy and laughter and with that i want to say take ownership of your life in this world we find a lack of determined individuals but i see a sea of people who want to see a change for the better in front of me i hate the break to the new i hate to break the news to everyone but nothing in life will ever be handed to you if you want something there will always be a will and always be a way for you to go after it with tenacity and determination the impossible can always be achieved a majority of us here are young adults it is time for us to dictate our lives instead of our loving parents parents you know we love you but now is the time just to give us guidance and let us make the big decisions in our life to you young ladies and gentlemen in front of me it is time to create the life that you want if you want your dream job you'll have to work for it if you want to start a business you know there will be thousands of sacrifices you'll have to make in this world of sacrifices and hardships the renowned wolf of wall street jordan belfort has always resonated with me he lost his job after the stock market crash of 1987 and then built his own brokerage firm from the ground up although he laundered money and ended up in prison he made drastic changes in his life after being released he now travels the world guiding people on seminars as a motivational speaker to make the changes that they want in their life to me he is the epitome of taking ownership of your life when there were downfalls and hiccups he took on the challenges and made a better life for himself a quote that resonates me from belford is the only thing that stands between you and your goals is the bs story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it there's no time to tell yourself stories as to why you can't do something but instead put that extra energy into actually doing it giving up on your aspirations is the number one way of falling short and behind the rest of race of life to achieve these wild aspirations you have to be disciplined in everything you do you have to be willing to put the time and effort into your goals in life personally i want to see every single person in this ground become a valuable member of society and successful in their own goals some people are born lucky but no one is born unable to succeed the most important part of chasing your goals is creating balance in your life sure i just went on and on about dedicating your life to being the best you can be but you need balance next year i know a lot of you guys are going away to college getting that degree is important but so is having a good time and creating those lasting memories just make sure you find that healthy balance where you can succeed and enjoy those great weekends once again i want to thank my peers the poultry dudes and his teachers of danbury high school the staff and administration coaches board of education board of education chairperson cooper superintendent pascarella and this time mayor cavo for being here today to the brothers and sisters i've made while at danbury high you guys are the best and have truly molded me into who i am today god bless all of you i'm looking forward to seeing the great things you achieved and now the moment we've all been waiting for the presentation of our diplomas how do i lower this chris thanks you can just put it all the way down at the bottom is it on uh we're going to alternate i think it's just me yeah is this on okay thanks [Applause] jonathan shulkoff caleb schlissel gabriel cortang melody dayrick qazi begum [Music] want alina jacob what cindy garcia flores [Music] justin kelly kyle blackstock kevin cortez brandon bearman alexa duran daniel abraham emily diaz annie ayala brandon de robertas george alion armando siciliano abigail barahona rojas nicholas cuevas christian beluka johann de la cruz brian bueno mia sayani matthew arisena rafael de vita andres avega garcia savannah carvalho kevin bakalima malana catano isabella akiobar marie crawford catherine aragudo tiara justin cordero garrett butler rebecca distillio alana almeida eva lisa caban hillary barreto sierra shavana cindy alves alexa delaney caitlin basteo kayla kregan christopher andrako alexandra cost ethan berger victoria catarino cole byrne ben dodo david armstrong alex cherish kevich phillip alves ryan krastowski cher's son alvarez diana chimbo elizabeth riarega fanny duchy andrew assaf thomas comstock anthony britton dominic krastowski spencer abrams [Applause] john cordova kyle bowler james cardenas samantha bowden hendrick diesel casey bussmann philip durant adrian alvarez kenneth dixon rayanne farah canty carter densk glenn adote milagros dominguez damien amaral emily s kona payton bach ibalis el monte carlos barajona stephanie coelho brian gallarza savannah dorsch [Music] [Applause] adrian guerrero laura grace dykman [Applause] david lopes carla castro nomar yusetta michaela bergen kevin stoss kaitlyn allen sean bautista aisha actor alyssa pero pamela cordova nica chao kiana key camille connor duhamel [Music] alexa baisley zachary christopher rightis brenda amorum rebecca camacho emily bostello maxwell calabrese gabe tatiana bueno jorge alvarez alvarezen sorry honey michael almeida christopher bernard amanda bothwell carla diesel michaela brito ryan clapp megan batty kendall d'amato janelli elizabeth aravello andrea cochancella stephen barr alexis cochencella franklin adamez nathaniel canning alina ali sahana chintak lindsey bieber tanya demelo morgan albano kathleen cummings miguel lopez marcos dominguez karise baxter daniel camacho [Music] breeze eduardo campos emily bleaker joshua de la rosa emma bringman hector casado avery almirano vicente dominguez xander dargade jay chappa katherine ahern edgar costanzella azaria penelope baptiste just lady diesel melody bars ryan cebello isaiah d'oliveira [Music] vincent butera ryan dillilow isabella lozada gabriella silva kirsten hester heidi lopez ochoa gracia campos contreras jocelyn coronel torrey ann parkerson [Music] lucy chen judith de oliveira [Music] julia de almeida jocelyn clayton amy cordova abigail copeland rian chiarello [Applause] elder dos santos sarah felicia [Music] [Applause] mentor kimberly lichi gondino javier estevez rafa hassan alexis esterico justin hawley naomi espinoza jayden harrington alexion espinal canela harley hodge tamiha espinal marissa hope hansel esculestico raphael luna jasmine escobar shawn murphy dennis enriquez luca santos eric erlstein ian linsley lizette almante kevin jaguar emily earhart brian cagnew rowdy guerrellian bernard la sapria joslia isabel acevedo naomi janos natalie ferminano declan jacobson rachel fields gianna aya cuento amanda ferry jennifer roose alberta ferrari zachary leonard luizi ferreira junior tennisella diego fernandez stephanie ferreiras jenna ferrandino daniela ferreiras diana furman joseph gomez jayden fuhrman matthew lucas olivia fuqua david schreier harvey feliz gabrielle napolio cameron farham madeleine johnston cam fassbender bethany pilardi gregory fanning eric did whalen is it my turn calvin alberto rodas savannah calm mark carrillo reggiani silva michael durkin brenda mello marlon acevedo ava williams christian de queue lindsey ward cayenne chavez isabella roberts william dos santos maria laity jacob gardaki caitlyn mckiska lillian arfuega olivia hallas nicholas gardner luis lopes antonio abrantes jared zeiner adam boylan benjamin lahm aiden garvey stephen soto sofia beckenbach alvin joseph samuel justo [Music] tyrell jones lisa grady so you're going to go to mr donovan mason fong [Music] jennifer grant sabrina lee priscilla george liam knight sierra jeffrion manuel luna dominic gutierrez sandra illusaka fran gara jeremy garcia i love you valentina ramos ariamero garcia caitlyn valente socho garcia edison ilisakis ashley guzman cruz augusto garcia stephen gonzalez andy liu maya golly joseph cable billy julianne gaudio gabriella leo lorenko alyssa gagnon faith luchner saraya gagnevin emily reed haley gundack nilaja caramu christopher georgie caitlin clampert mario gabriela lagu anthony goncalves kelly karan matthew grivey eric japa austin bolling jason winacio muhammad abu jafar duarte jessica castro castro bianca carrera [Applause] connor maguire jelissa dejesus alex jeffries samuel carvalho o'neil podar miguel gutierrez johannes martinez joaquin gonzalez mendoza wilson leonardo alejandro luigio timothy kulick andres gomez jordan lima hilder gonzalez anna rita lynch jefferson leon bono kate kohlhoffer sky gas glow brianna khalshaki ania grassy priya patel franklin gosney grace king ayanna golding karissa latin jake goodwin abraham bach nagwala sorry sanza hamedi riya sony and i still said it audra audrey hin zoe cal you notice amara ambrosi vivi lugo costa karen anguasaka panaranda catherine landavar john gonzalez joaquim lopes gibbons ryan grana michael jones christian vanilla nicholas ayo mazzo justin payney tan li carolina guzman jennifer cabrera benjamin hughes sharon lee arcos anna hernandez kiana reyes jorge dubon andres vivas adriana dominguez guzman nicholas lostaco kevin hernandez adam fab nagwala chain howard michelle hernandez gonzalez courtney hollister aaron haynes ryan hicks isabelly rodriguez martens laura gonzalez luis lojo sagbay victoria geraldo lovano gavin highsmith nikolai gonzalez jaylene hawkins gabrielle hernandez jaylisse rosa sabrina jacob [Music] wilfredo dovel juan cordova melissa leon umama mofty anderson da silva andera cephas nicole bernal jocelyn lima zaruma amberly lopez alex lynn go first of all a hearty congratulations to the members of the class of 2021 and to your parents families and everyone who supported you along the way right are you ready are you ready all right listen up by the power vested in me as superintendent of danbury school system by the connecticut state board of education and as an agent for the danbury board of education i hereby certify that these candidates have met or exceeded the requirements needed to receive a diploma from danbury high school class of 2021 you can now move your taxes left to right congratulations terrorism you
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that said obviously i'm supporting this budget and lastly very quickly a big thank you to courtney for putting this together this is once again this budget is a very difficult document to draft it is a very difficult document to put together it is very hard to figure out how many angels to dance on the head of this pin with so literally so few resources and we have to stretch it to make it work and she's crafted a really a strong budget a budget that we can go forward with and do as best we can what we have to work with and thank you very much courtney that's it man i'm sure thank you very much thank you thank you any other comment thank you oh i just wanted to say thank you to joe for saying that and i also just wanted to thank cabinet for you know sticking through to put together the plan because it it took a lot of time to look through all the different funding sources i was really inspired by you know kara and kelly's commitment to um thinking about it strategically and kevin and dr i just want to thank everybody and and thank you board also okay thank you okay i don't have to mention sorry gladys okay you know as far as our legislators go you know i certainly thank them for you know pushing you know to continue on the the increase with the new bcs formula but we had a bill we had a very strong bill that many of us on this board and um you know administration supported and advocated for that would have fully funded us today now we need our our state funds now not 2028.
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