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dr stewart mr burgess mr president and board members each year the board is to consider the plan that is proposed by the teacher committee for use of the classroom site fund this fund has been in place since about 2002 or something like that in the past the law required that these funds be split 20 percent into one fund 40 percent into another and 40 percent into a third the legislature has removed the requirement for those percentages and so the committee this year is proposing some changes to accommodate that change in the law however they felt like we should keep the way we've been using it pretty much the way we have just not necessarily be as restricted by those percentages but still continue a to put funding approximately 20 on base pay approximately 40 percent to pay for some specials teachers uh for music art library those kinds of things to reduce class sizes in regular classrooms roughly 40 and roughly 40 for uh performance uh compensation for a number of things that they do the changes that the committee uh is recommending are in red in this document that's presented to you and the document was presented to teachers for their vote and passed by more than the 70 that was required so it's now submitted to you for your approval for the way that we use this funding in uh fiscal year 22.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so that's where we're at we're still it's harder to get the middle school kids enrolled than it is to get the elementary school kids we're at 96 kids so that's the you know the the 12 students per group and the other thing that we have at each program because i think i explained to you about the title iii grant for supporting owls at each site we have a certified tesol teacher who will not have a class but we'll be going in because we're you know mixing mixing all the children together we'll be going into all the classes to support the teachers and the students um that need tesol support so that's what i have to share with you so it's 96 kids total yeah right in the k-4 in the k-4 and there's 50-something so far they're still trying to recruit kids right right it's challenging right how many were we expecting how many were invited i don't have that number for you but way more than the people that we got right yeah yeah okay way more um because we did it but i don't really want to go into you know because i think we have to be sensitive to that but it's way more than the number that we got um and then we had to cut it at the 96 because of the number of teachers the number of the amount of space that we have and the funding that we have so we're really looking to be very hands-on with the people who are working in the program so that this can be successful and then we can evaluate the program and think about where does the district want to go in the future so now enrollment's closed right you've hit you're i'm sorry so now like enrollment is closed for that no they're actually still they're still still they're still recruiting middle school where the elementary school the element the elementary grades were maxed out i think we had more of a demand than we had spaces yeah which is um it's both unfortunate and a good problem to have for future planning so any other questions all right stay tuned thank you maureen thanks thank you and then just the last piece um rose and i have been talking a little bit we um and i believe she's maybe put some feelers out to the board on dates when people are available um so our regular board meeting next board meeting is july 21st um we put a date uh and a time of uh tentatively right now we'll continue to plan at five pm to do a special meeting board retreat um and at that meeting um we thought the beginning part of it would uh be good to talk about next steps and process with the and an update with the equity and inclusion committee uh and also revisiting the objectives to ensure that uh the subcommittee has the direction it needs going forward so we look forward to that and then the other part of that um actually dr ruby and i are meeting next week with mr costa who's worked on our strategic planning process over the years done a really nice job for us from ed advance we're going to meet with mr costa and start planning out the process one of the things and i won't belabor it tonight since we've gone longer than i think any of us anticipated um with strategic planning what's i think what's exciting is you know uh 18 months ago in november and december of 2019 we worked on our portrait of the graduate but we we didn't we talked about updating and kind of renewing the strategic plan but we're in a different place 18 months later and i think it's similar to what we did before but i think different um we really need to have an inclusive process where we take our time and we bring the entire community in uh through different tools and processes um and and have a committee for the strategic planning process of not only board members administrators and teachers but our stakeholders like we did five years ago because we really do need to start planning and take our time with that plan and develop uh and embellish what that portfolio will grad of the graduate really means all the way back down to pre-k um inclusive of even the operational side of things for the next not only five years but we need to start thinking 10 years out and what that's going to look like so i could tell you the ad council is chomping at the bet they're getting excited about this we want to get to those aspirational goals and move forward you know after surviving what we've all survived and we heard it tonight you know we're all tired of this and we want to move forward on really moving things forward and planning and talking about it and getting people together and unified in one direction so that that's i'm really excited about that um and that's that's all i have for um the uh the report so thank you everybody and it was a long one tonight thank you all right uh subcommittee reports first one is facilities okay the facilities committee met on june 2nd for school dude reports we didn't have any formal reports as mr caldwell was on vacation but he filled this in that all the recent building issues were routine seasonal issues with air conditioning that are common this time of year wms water we have spoken to corrosion control a first draft is done and was sent to the state for review the following monday we expect the state to approve or suggest revisions and we'll take it from there we have one year from the date of the consent order good news on custodian staffing we had three current openings and we have an upcoming retirement we had four excellent applicants with great references and all those positions are filled for capital projects not as good news the bid opening went out for the bhs locker room and we only received one bid the base bid to complete the work over the summer was 3.1 million and the alternate to work into the fall was 2.1 million which both are considerably over our budget we're working with tekton to go out to bid again we think the reason we only got one bid is because it's very late for a summer job that would need to begin so soon and also the documents that they have to review or over a thousand pages and they only had about two weeks to review it so we're working with them is there any more news on that the the girl mr dunn uh was working with mr and uh the purchasing agent and the um it went out for bid again okay um they're also working with a firm that mr dunn has experienced with uh called gordian to try to take a look at the specs and see what kind of uh costs to kind of double check against tech time and see what the the cost is the budget as you said it was over budget amy the budget approved for the project was based on the estimate from tecton which was 1.3 million so even the alternate at 2.1 or whatever it was was considerably over so um and certainly so late in the game we'll see what this bid brings um but i i don't know that contractors and supplies and everything else are available for any work to really get going over the summer but we'll see okay um other capital projects the wms building management system we got a quote from johnson controls that came in under budget to upgrade that system a lot of improvements including new server software head engine computer many other needed improvements there and we'll have some security upgrades at center and huckleberry over the summer like additional cameras being installed at bhs the hvac upgrade design is done the construction docks are almost done upon doing some physical inspections we're finding that we need things that we didn't realize so we're also working to streamline the building systems and use the same company allerton at the high school that we'll be using for the new school and we're going to need to work with the town on that to approve that as a capital project the wms wall specifications have been delivered to the purchasing agent it should be a straightforward job we found the original plans and we're just matching existing conditions there's only one manufacturer of the box we need so this will take some time but it will go out to bid as a mason job and hopefully start late summer the beginning of the school and should take a few weeks to complete and lastly osha mr caldwell's responded to the findings from their second visit the two hazards being the dead mouse and the misuse of extension cords and power strips the following week mr post sent a memo to all personnel regarding the use of appliances that per osha and the fire marshal all personal appliances must be taken out of buildings at the end of the school year and not brought back and that they will work with building principles to be sure that staff has adequate access to district provided appliances and common areas and that's it okay any questions all right finance we had a very brief finance meeting just this past monday you may have noticed we put in those minutes kind of late but we thought it would be good to get it behind behind us the entirety of the meeting was spent discussing the may financial report which was all good news and i we had moved from having a projected variance against their budget of about 65 000 down to only about 50 000.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so i don't want to say our average is about 17 1800 in the area kind of took a look in general just to get an idea um that's about what we're looking at you're right if we were at one campus all those programs would be on one campuses mr ortega was saying everything would be there there wouldn't be that choice i've heard that a bit um the same thing with one middle school if there was one middle school um and i saw some people in the chat if we had one middle school we would be able to offer honors classes we would have they'll have an honors section and avid and programs we would from my experience we would be able to manipulate that being honest about it like if i had that much staff there yeah we should be able to work a master's schedule to be able to have a lot more offerings um i i saw somebody mention about the competition for sports i i i was in the activities office over at glaston well uh competition's good you know i i tried out for many a team i i made some i didn't make one a year you know there's some character in there but to tell you the truth i'd rather see a varsity at jv and a freshman team all together um with us having three levels instead of us really scrambling to have one team and bringing that back to azusa as well again that that would be nice to see uh i'm just going to call it extracurricular i'm going to take action i'm going to take the sports out of it really extracurricular we're talking everything from song and dance to cheerleading band um anything that's done after school all those extracurriculars you're correct it would be um there and there somebody's right uh some units do have tryouts you know and i don't know how many of us grew up with tryouts and you know tryouts were were just a part of life and i think a lot of us learned a lot from getting ready and having a trial i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing the other one with vertical articulation i saw on the saw i just want to mention that i'm at a middle school level we've already been articulating as once a month we have it built into our early release time and i and once a month we have that set up to be district-wide uh articulation so i could absolutely see us using that once once a month release time to be the high school and the middle schools uh getting together for articulation i think that would be a great idea what regardless of the model we're at right now but i think that would be something we should probably look in dr mitchell you can write that down for next year maybe about some more articulation vertically so um though those were my points i just heard ms wilson perkins mention a little bit i think she was more worried about that side and you're right uh students can go up for like a band class or nest but not necessarily for sports athletics is run by um the california interscholastic federation cif and they run under a different uh set of rules so that would happen okay that's my piece for right now thank you thank you um and again i just want to just piggyback a little bit on what anthony said i think all 24 individuals in this room are here for what they believe is the best for the district and that could be 24 different ideas and all 24 are valid and okay um and so that's the beauty of what we are doing right we're not trying to rubber stamp we're not trying to force you we want to hear your voice and we understand that there are 24 individuals and again you can't be wrong with an idea someone can rebut someone can challenge someone can try to persuade but at the end of the day you have to make the decisions and that you have to that you have to make just a couple of things before we move on just to be super transparent because it's gone away a little bit uh at 6 30 uh 6 30 p.m i only see two hands right now uh so if it happens before that's fine but at 6 30 pm we're gonna pause and we're gonna take a poll on that form that i sent you in the email so you knew the questions in in front and the reason we have to do it at 6 30 is because based on the results of that poll we might have to talk about next steps and so i don't want to escape today without without that so latasha who is next mr gabriel and then missy bet thank you thank you miss latasha um just a couple different ideas that haven't been expressed yet out loud i think to add to the pros and cons for either model i think about school size and our ability as school leaders and as teachers and support staff to focus on students and the larger we get the harder that gets um i have colleagues in high schools of three thousand i have colleagues in high schools of 2000 i have colleagues in high schools of 400 and i'm at a school where we're about 900 right now and one of the things that the school experience really is rooted in i think a quality school experience is the ability of all the adults to pay attention to kids and beyond the programs the the essential fact of any successful school i think any model is the ability of teams of teachers and teams of counselors and teams of parents and students to have those quality relationships and the larger we get the harder that gets and i and i can speak for the team at gloucester and i know the same of dr gomez that azusa we have good teams at those schools and if we can enhance that and build on the strengths of our two schools we there's something there and the ability of us to sequence or articulate uh seven and eight into the programs that we have existing would enhance the quality of our existing programs we're not looking to restart something we have an outstanding medical academy at gladstone and there's no reason why we couldn't have a seventh and eighth pre-medical academy there's no reason why we couldn't have a pre-ecp program for seventh and eighth graders that are going up it is already working why are we going to try to combine it all together and that's just my opinion like you said mr ortega it's a conjecture but i mean in in the science of schools we start from what's working and we have a lot of what's working in the district and as we start to bring the complexity of high school programs together onto one campus we're going to have some challenges and some things are going to be lost so i don't know what's going to be lost in a one high school model but i am concerned because we have some high quality programs at both sites that we could lose and and again what is it going to be we don't know until we try so that that's that's something else um regarding sports like dr contreras said cf doesn't allow it and we've seen that but um one of the things that we need regardless is is a strong athletic program at the elementary middle level no matter what so whatever model we have we have to build our programs and and it does come down to what i'm seeing in the chat box playing time the more kids you have i mean it's likely that we don't see a lot of playing time for some kids at a bigger school where you do get to participate at a smaller high school and i'm thinking about schools like edgewood high school in west covina that is 7 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
can you scroll up just a little bit please so right there component three the rate of 1500 to be paid the mno that is the portion of those three funding sources they wanted yes uh most recently it was fourteen hundred fifty dollars uh and uh that made it a little tricky for some of the calculations for salaries uh and so i proposed to them that we add that other fifty dollars that come out of classroom site fund um to make all of the calculation things a little easier plus it gives a little a little more of this money to every every teacher which is what they deserve and so what happens is that this is the part of their of their salary that is paid from this fund okay any other questions on the classroom site fund i will add for you that this 1500 on base pay is for teachers who are paid out of the regular m o budget maintenance and operation budget it does not apply to any of the teachers who are paid out of grants or other sources however the 40 percent of classroom site funds that teachers can earn for performance is applicable to every teacher no other questions then i move we approve the class classroom site fund plan for school year 2021-22 second that all in favor aye corey burgess hi genie borland aye charlene diaz so i moved item 5.2 discussion of possible action to accept bullhead city school districts fiscal year 2021 c2e rate funding dr stewart mr president and board members uh you know that i'm skating on thin ice when i get to this little piece of of news but you did a week ago get this information every uh five years or so we can apply for e-rate funding uh james mcnutt handles that for us and has done the applications and those things so we're asking for approval of in this case the use of the funding any questions e-rate's a great program i mean the offset is is incredible savings to our district and i think and i think we probably should mention that so e-rate uh anything that we purchase using our e-rate funding uh e-rate pays for 80 and we pay for the so it's a it's a really good deal for us to keep our technology up to date no questions okay then i move we approve the e-rate for the 2021 school year sorry 20 21 22 school year i have a question yeah is this contingent on we need to approve 5.3 in order for what we're purchasing in 5.2 to work no the the 5.3 is the next step good question sorry i second the motion all in favor aye corey burgess aye jamie borland i'm charlotte so moved 5.3 discussion to purchase the vane and x grid extra grid backup solution and the optional and to optionally seek proposals for cloud backup storage dr stewart as we've discussed in the past we're one of the few districts in the state that now has an actual backup system for our servers our main servers and our networking and all of that we contract for services for those backups not just to our equipment but for backups and those tend to come in multi-year contracts so you can see the comparisons mr mcnutt did here he actually had been asked by the trust the arizona trust arizona retention trust um to uh to try out uh scroll down kim because i don't remember the name yeah to try out druva and so uh he did it ran a test on it it had some good things about it but you'll notice that he has a complaint there about the fact that or not a complaint necessarily but a comment that that relies 100 on cloud backup and that creates an issue if we end up not having internet working so he went back to look at we currently are using barracuda which is the vendor that's listed at the top their price their prices and their rates have gone up significantly so he went searching for another source so that's the basis of his recommendation for uh v veeam and uh ex sagrid uh to do this backup for us uh what it ends up being is a contract and we pay the pieces as we go along and it also doesn't tie us to us it does not tie that one does not the last one ties us to the well we might not lose our data but we couldn't get to it uh you know we we've got the backup system at sunrise uh now because we've got that set up but we wouldn't be able to get to it because everything because of the cloud connection so we need to make sure that we also have a non-cloud connection any other questions okay it says if we exceed the storage capacity do we foresee exceeding the storage capacity we don't but let's let james answer that good evening mr president members of the board and dr stewart we we currently do not anticipate exceeding the storage requirements but uh every time i seem to make a a proclamation that we have an adequate we have enough bandwidth and adequate storage uh something changes within two years to tell me that you know we do not have adequate bandwidth and storage so at our current with our current server capacity in that we are confident that the the storage will be adequate for five years however if we do exceed that capacity unfortunately it's it's not something we can just add like a hard disk to an appliance or whatever it would have to be a completely uh a new appliance added to the system uh the one that we're buying is the the bare minimum it's the the smallest storage capacity that the company offers but it does have all the features that we need and i i think we're going to be okay um we currently are using one-third the storage that the new system provides but we're only backing up our most critical servers to that storage so this new system will give us the opportunity to not only back up our financial server and our active directory servers but also back up our library servers and data servers and that sort of thing every day instead of every month like we've been doing the the only comment that i that i would make is that this is a five-year deal when we buy this we will own the equipment the physical hardware and we'll have support on that hardware for five years and we'll be buying a five-year license for the software so we do get some physical components along with this that we will own no matter what happens in the future additionally i would like to seek proposals for cloud storage just because it's a good idea to have things that are disconnected from our network when we're doing backups if we back up locally and something were to get into our network and discover those backups and lock us out of them our only option would be a cloud backup and with the new software we have the the methods to make those cloud backups unchangeable so once the data has been copied to the cloud which could be amazon web services microsoft there's a company out there called wasabi that gets great reviews and once it's copied there it's locked and nothing can change it so if we did have a cyber security incident that data could easily be restored without fear of it being deleted or encrypted if there were any changes we would bring those to the board before we initiated them thanks for researching all that for us thanks thank you any other questions all right then i move we approve item 5.3 to purchase the vm and extra grid backup solution all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland hi charlotte so i moved okay item 5.4 district stance on critical race theory uh the reason i asked this to be put on the agenda also after our workshop is so we could make a statement and i believe we need to i would like to instruct dr stewart to draft a letter reflecting our stance on where we stand with critical race theory um as we spoke in the workshop uh all the board members here have voiced their opinion um so i would like to move that we instruct doctors or actually we can just direct dr stewart to write a letter explaining that our board does not support critical race theory that we are in favor of legislation that will prevent such thing and any additional things you guys may see or want in that would be there and then send that draft to us before it's sent out absolutely right it's direction but everyone is okay with that direction yeah all right and i did make write a statement i contemplated if i wanted to read not read i mean i come from a little bit of a different background i'm i'm caucasian but my children are not so i just i wrote my words down so i would be able to say i'm little easier as seen on social media over the past few days critical race theory forces everyone to take sides and demand reorganization if you are for critical race theory you're considered to be someone who will look for racism in everything until you find it if you're against you're going to look be looked at as a white supremacist in schools it will mean teaching our children to think this way and always be looking for racism in every situation and interaction i was brought up to treat everyone equally with respect due to a fellow human being as we were all the same on the inside when i said that a few years ago in one of my master class discussion boards i was told that i was unconsciously racist because i was apparently disregarding the stories of people of other races i've taught my children to love all humans and pray they never look at someone based on their skin color sexual preference or political beliefs i responded with that on my discussion board and was told that i must be white because i do not understand by supporting critical race theory it shows any individual is inherently racist sexist or oppressive based on that person's race sex or ethnicity in my opinion that theory is 100 percent anti-american saying it is designed to look at everything from a race first lens which is the very definition of racism while race may be a prism to see reality it can never be the prism critical race theory makes the race critical race theory makes race the basis of clash struggle dividing the country into oppressors and oppressed based on skin color this theory creates and encourages the conditions for conflict unrest and bitterness and allows for no peaceful racial coexistence we have an obligation to educate ourselves about the problems and weaknesses in the critical race theory we have an obligation to listen to the words of martin luther king hate cannot drive hate only love can do that and while we all may have come in on different ships we're all in the same boat now the words written on our district letterhead do not dictate the thoughts or feelings of myself nor the district as a whole but rather the sole opinion of a writer an opinion that she has every right to have as a as a citizen and human being however i was disappointed to see it on district letterhead on a social media platform any other comments okay i do want to reaffirm to the entire community my stance on this that i don't believe that that has any place in our classroom and our top priority of this board is education that that is what we are striving for this is something that once that letter is written i hope that it it does reaffirm where we stand that that has no place in our curriculum and it is not something we are looking to adopt we did ask for that yes mr burgess i would also like to reiterate that i am not a proponent of critical race theory nor would i ever recommend it to this board for education of our students thank you all right okay moving on to 5.5 bullet city school district return to school for the school year 2021-22 mr president a new bill that was passed by the legislature that requires that districts submit let me give you a little background the um now that we're talking about oh it's a return to school plan i'm sorry i'm on the wrong item that's both of us right okay um okay return to school plan one of the requirements for sr3 application uh is that we have a written return to school plan this was fairly easy to do because i felt like we could just update the one that we had which seemed to work pretty well this past year they're just wanting to know the requirement is that we are taking into account uh and it was and the way it was written was primarily for school districts that had not had students in person so it made it a little you know a little strange for us to have to do this but it's required so we planned we've already planned to open uh in a regular way in on august 4th but there there is a statement in there about us making sure that we are continuing to pay attention to recommendations from the cdc so it made it fairly easy to just use some of the wording that we had used before take out a whole lot of the wording and and then also help our families whose students have been in virtual school for this past year to know that we are not abandoning any of the the things that will help keep kids stay safe yes no masks yes those things but we want them to know that the physical facilities will be we will continue to pay attention to those things and and to good hygiene habits um but so then also building in in case there is some kind of strange thing going on next year that we're not caught off guard again for a plan if we have to close a school close the schools down we hope all of us hope that that does not happen but i think all of us learned a long time ago that hope is not a plan and so uh so i'm proposing to you this plan uh uh so that whatever contingency comes up this year we're ready all right so according to our return to school plan we are going back to normal yes and normal means those of you that may have asked about going in and visiting the schools yes you can go to our schools and visit sites we actually encourage it it is it is a we have incredible people in this community that bring their own insight into the classroom please volunteer please volunteer we don't have enough we would love to have more um if we could get this type of outreach that move into our classrooms oh my gosh it would be incredible at every level please come to our schools you have insight that i don't have you have insight our teachers don't have our administrators don't have and it is welcome it is appreciated um please please do so you weren't uh we had one mother say she couldn't go to the school when we were under covert restrictions that wasn't allowed i apologize for that but it was because of the situation we were in that's the only time it has been that way we have always opened our campuses to our parents we want our parents at our campuses we want our community members because these children are not just our children they're yours even if you're not the mother or father of one you are still helping us raise those kids and like i said i can tell you i've had several community members come into my classroom before their insight is incredible incredible um probably the most talked about thing i ever had i used to have a holocaust survivor that would come and speak to my students at the high school uh unfortunately he passed away but that was a life-changing moment to my kids they still talk about that it was incredible um those things are are greatly appreciated and yes ma'am our schools are open please come to them mr president and could i add something to that um visiting anytime please do not be put off by some of the restrictions relative to if you want to volunteer i think you all can understand that we want to for somebody who's going to be working directly with our students you all as parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles want to make sure that your children or nieces and nephews are safe if volunteers come in and work in our classrooms so we do have a rather brief and easy procedure for that so don't be put off by having to go through a couple of steps to actually be a volunteer as opposed to just a visitor okay it's pretty easy and depending if there's a higher level of volunteering so if you were going to go on a field trip we do ask for your fingerprints and that kind of thing because you and i know that we don't want some dangerous person on a bus with our kids going on a field trip uh and it's and you know it's it's to protect all of our kids that's our first concern thank you for letting me say that and mr president i wanted to add on to your statement every school site has a psych council and the site council are required to meet at least at the minimum quarterly a lot of them meet on a monthly basis you are welcome to attend those site council meetings they do talk about curriculum they do talk about um everything every yeah everything that goes on on the campus so if you are interested you've got a child at a certain school or you don't you are welcome to attend those site council meetings you know pick a school and and find out when their meetings are held and by all means please attend and now that we're getting back to normal we'll see more of those site council meetings president i was just going to add what dr stewart was saying that the applications are at the district office they're also i believe um they're also supposed to be in each campus lobby as well the volunteer process for the elementary district is slightly different than it is for the high school district just because of different peer structure but the applications and the steps are here and available during like we were saying with gus going back to normal this idea of site council amazing site council actually makes recommendations to the board for curriculum so if you want to know what's being taught in our classrooms and how it's being done site council is a great way to do it yes i have a few questions [Music] i would have to say we've already passed that but i would be happy to answer anything after the meeting and you can also talk to to dr stewart we we did that in a in a workshop beforehand and now we've we've already already gone through that um if your if your question was how we're handling that we did cover that and we are not in a favor of crt and we were actually drafting a letter stating so my question if you will is the teachers not to voice their opinions regarding crt or any other societal we'll actually be discussing that in our employee handbook which is coming up so so you'll get the answer to your question shortly any other questions concerns with the back to school plan all right then i move that we approve item 5.5 blood city school district return to school for the school year 2021-22 second all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeanne berlin i'm charlene so moved item 5.6 instructional model statement now the instructional model statement okay um this year because of circumstances of this past year of course there were legislative concerns and questions and discussions about schools continuing to offer distance learning and so a bill was passed to allow school districts to uh have a variety of instructional models that's what they're calling these and in that process authorized schools to have some have a hybrid or whatever for the next two years that doesn't particularly affect us because we had determined we were not going to continue distance learning however in passing that bill the bill the law that was in place that authorized four day school weeks was rescinded and so the 50 or so districts in the state who operate on four day school weeks were concerned about how that affected them so the ade um handled it by saying we all we needed to do was to submit a statement the board submitted a statement that says um that uh there were when when we instituted the four day school weeks there had been community forums and there had been at least discussions at at least two board meetings and so we went back to the minutes of meetings you can see the dates there on november 21st of 2014 and december 18th of 2014 and those minutes reflect discussions about the school calendar for the following year and that school calendar had four day school weeks so it meets the requirement and we just need the statement and i will say that it's it's written this way with brandy's name as a signature because we knew last thursday you were not going to be here and that she probably would be so we can we can change it to to reflect who's actually here tonight but this is all we have to submit to the state to comply with that new law all right any questions okay then i'm move that we approve the instructional model statement as submitted with the exchange of the signature thank you i'll second that motion all in favor aye corey burgess hi j.d borland hi charlene adidas so moved item 5.7 employee handbook for the school year 2021-22 dr stewart uh if you recall in november i submitted to you and you approved an employee handbook the first time our district has had one for all of our employees and as time has gone by we have noticed some things and folks particularly administrators have noticed some things that we probably needed to include that we didn't so i'm proposing this one for the new school year and the proposed changes or additions are highlighted in gray i'll answer any questions that you might have about any of the items and i also have the document in front of me so that if you have changes i can make the changes as we go any could we go to the top yeah i have lots of questions i don't know is this something that we can table till our next meeting maybe put it on our workshop and discuss it as a full board not just three of us absolutely okay sure absolutely we're not in a hurry to pass this so okay any okay then would you like to make that motion to table i make a motion we table 5.7 employee handbook until our next meeting okay before i ask for a second i just want to address something on there can we scroll down to the curriculum and this also goes right to site council that in our handbook it is stated that nothing will be taught that is not approved they will follow curriculum they will bring any any changes anything new anything they may want has to go to a site council has to be approved has to be done that that is all in this document i hope that answers your question but more about personal opinions teachers are supposed to be teaching uh teaching children to think not to think like they do and so my question is will the board make sure to instruct teachers not to share any kind of personal views regarding crt racism etc and if you do plan on doing so will that be in the handbook and will there be actual consequences in writing for those teachers to violate those rules because we are going to table it what we're going to do there until that point um but it does outline that they will follow our direction so um but since we're not moving on it that'll be we're going to workshop it so if you'd like to come to that we please we welcome your input and there are policy and there are policies in place to discipline employees who do not follow board policy okay all right so we have a motion i will second that motion all in favor aye corey burgess aye jamie barland aye charlene diaz it has been tabled um 5.8 extension of the contract with heinfield mech and the vision rollover and business office training dr stewart this will be the last request i make of you the payroll audit has been completed and corrections have been made in uh in all of our visions software module that had to do with payroll we are ready to do rollover of this current budget and all of that to the new one so i can actually finish the budget to present to you next month and we are actually starting that process tomorrow and then we are uh would like to do some training with uh with the um accountant to make sure we don't uh inadvertently or intent certainly not intentionally but so that we know not to go down some of the same paths the part that is training if you recall in our sr2 funding we built in training for everybody all of our staff in the district for various things the training portion of this we would then pay with s or 2 money so it's just the wrapping up of the rollover and that part so i would please ask you to approve that we can that we wrap up this project and this is the as far as we can see this is the final stage it should be the final stage of this yes any questions all right then i move we approve item 5.8 the extension of the contract second all in favor aye corey burgess aye jennie berlin aye charlene diaz it's unmoved item 5.9 reconsider withdrawal from the insurance trust dr stewart mr president and board members in may we had a special meeting and with the information that i had at the time recommended that the board consider withdrawal from the colorado river uh health trust uh since and i told you at the time we had information from three of our four insurance companies carriers following that meeting we heard from the the carrier for life insurance and disability insurance that company is unum and the news has not been good from them so i will try to explain to you why i am now asking that you reconsider that withdrawal because it is not in the best interest of our employees so while the other companies uh provision and dental care were both willing to honor the contracts for the coming year uh even if the uh if we withdrew from the trust uh unum was not and unum said that they would immediately create two new policies and uh so here's the damage that would be done currently under the policy that we've had for several years our two districts pay a premium to unum for life insurance equal to double the employee's annual salary so i'll use an example it doesn't directly apply but it makes it easier to follow so if we're paying a hundred dollars a year for an employee to get insurance for double their current salary unum says that if they change those split the policy they would only fund the annual salary equal to the annual salary for 200 so double the premium and half the benefits that's one of the dangers the second one is that we have a number of employees in the current policy who have opted to buy up so the district pays for that first piece of double the current salary the employee can buy up to as much as five times their current salary so they're paying that additional premium that opportunity would go away for our current people and the third issue is that any of our employees who have been diagnosed with chronic or serious illnesses that might not make them eligible for life insurance if they've been diagnosed during the time that they've been on this policy they would no longer be insurable as long as we maintain the current policy they continue to be insurable so it seems to me that virtually every one of our employees who has benefit of our insurance our life insurance policy would be harmed if this were to split so my recommendation is and this may be one of the reasons that the requirement gives everybody 60 days to think about it is you get the rest of the information so i'm recommending that you withdraw your withdrawal and and then we proceed with the next item on the agenda but that we at least protect our employees at this time how many people does it affect that cannot get alternate coverage uh you mean all the the folks who've been diagnosed i'm not privy to that information because of hipaa i just know that it's a number of employees in both districts but even considering that the one to five those that opt into that can't and half the coverage for double the cost were there any other policies that we've looked into that could go with that that aren't with that company we would have to we would have to research all of that and um and and our folks would i mean we can always do that um and that you know but the thing is we know that it's that the rates are going to be different and and more expensive uh we've been with this company for several years and i suspect i don't know this for a fact but i suspect that we're kind of being grandfathered along with this policy and that they're you know they're in business so they're looking for any reason to to have more income and less expense i suspect so i i know when michelle bemelman talked with them and then she checked with some other insurance companies that the rates elsewhere are much higher than what we are paying for unum there is a possibility that there are others out there um it's just not just not would be good for right now i mean our 60-day window is closing that is something we can always rescind and back out of the trust later so i do understand when we didn't have that one and we knew we didn't but we still acted by my recommendation um however now having the new information we are still in that window so it gives us a chance to and it does affect retirees as well oh thank you for reminding me that i had forgotten it yes it does affect our retirees yes but the retirees pay their own now right so they would they be able to continue that's something we can look into well they could they they would be able to continue but once again they would only get half the coverage for twice the payment okay well those things that we have to weigh yeah so we we do have to look into that um i agree i think at this time we we do need to uh rescind our withdrawal from the insurance trust it is something we can look into later so i would like to move that we rescind our withdrawal from the insurance trust all in favor aye corey burgess i i would like more information i guess i mean we we held a special meeting it was imperative we did this right then and there you gave all these propellant factors as to why we needed to go and do this so quickly we acted on it do those benefits outweigh the fourth factor or i don't know i'd like that information too but like i said this is something we can still rescind again if we choose not to and moving in looking ahead 5.10 a meeting with the high school to discuss even maybe we'll get more information at that point too hi genie portland hi charlene diaz so moved item 5.10 the crh evt board requests a joint meeting with the high school district and our elementary boards um do we have any ideas at this time when no i think it would be a matter of the three presidents of the boards of deciding on a common date um to to have a meeting and i know that's you know it's a lot of people lots of people yeah it is a lot to put together is there any dates that don't work for someone in here next week and we do have our july two meetings but we're we've already set two meetings in july which is what dates the the 8th and i think it's the 13th 8th and 13th we've already sent those out for those dates because we have to split our july meeting because we have so much um so july 8th and july 13th unless they wanted to meet before i'm okay with that as an option i would just like to give them the dates we can't do i'm fine after july 5th after july 5th me too and before august 5th so after july 5th you're good and without the other two we don't really know so if we could send out the dates that we can't do okay um and then reach out to the other board members and maybe we can condense that calendar a little better and see if we do have enough to get it sure get the board there um with your permission i would try to coordinate that with mr silk who is the new superintendent at the high school so he can coordinate with his board president and then with greg eidsness who is the chair of the um the trust board genie how would you feel if the dates were before july 5th and we could still form a quorum would you be okay yeah okay so that's a possibility also okay thank you we'll work on that looks like uh miss diaz and i are wide open [Laughter] all right so let's get with mr silk and see what we can do on okay to me the sooner the better all right um so it's just direction that's all we needed on that that's fine we removed the executive session item 7.1 we won't have um 7.2 we've actually already covered so did we want to table 7-2 until after because i think we're going to go over more goals so yeah because we're going over more goals now that we've been through that whole fiasco um with covid we can table that thank you let's see where our goals are for that to table 7.2 yes please so i moved 7.2 superintendent's performance goals and contract for school year 21-22 i second that all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeannie borland aye charlene diaz all right 7.3 future topics um we've got several um we do we have we have um this the meeting on the 13th is probably mostly going to be workshop i mean at my recommendation you know you can add items to an agenda if you want but we need i need to go over share with you uh the many ideas that we've gotten from our stakeholder groups the strategic plan um and get some direction from from you on priorities i will send you the entire list so you can see all of it but i will also indicate some priorities in there that those various groups have suggested or recommended and that we actually administratively are recommending as well um and so i i think it's it's an opportunity for a real really good discussion about a long-term plan um you know we're we're not going to drop 10.3 million dollars in a short period of time uh and and on the other hand it's it's equal to two-thirds of our annual budget so we have to think about planning it out over the time that we have legally which is through september 30th of 2024 but we have to think beyond that too so we need to think about how all of our various budgets can can be kind of woven together to make the best use of all of our funding so i think that it's going to be it's going to be a lot of discussion i think but that's for workshop that's for yeah and and that would be for the meeting on the 13th and and whether there need to be other business items that night is up to you we also want to do the employee handbook right so i think that's going to take up a ton of time with those two items do you want do you want the handbook on on the on the 8th on the meeting for the 8th which is the budget meeting well there are a number of other things we have to do every july but that's the big thing is budget yeah so we could do a workshop about the handbook on the 8th are we ok with that and then we can discuss those items that you wanted to have in there in that workshop but that would be stuff that we put on the 13th because we're really focusing on that and and um i know jeannie had questions on the compacts those things that go with oh absolutely and and they are worth you reading because they're uh they are they are kind of legal documents i mean they are and they're not but they're required for us to to do so it's important that you know what they say and that you know and that you back them because it's pretty important okay so you want those on that one too um let's see i don't see anything else in my notes any anyone else any of the other future topics all right we have those sets um and then um if you're okay we'll just withhold any any more uh covering of new of the of the uh policies until august if you're okay with that we've got plenty on workshop between now and august although i do have a couple of uh things that i've found for instance when we changed the wording relative to masks from shall to may we missed one and so i would just it's a regulation so i'll just put it on the next agenda you know and that's all it's just the changing the word from shall to me and i found a couple of others that are like that are that are just one word changes or two word changes and uh so we wouldn't even have to discuss them in a workshop great no other future topics all right upcoming board events uh we have the aspa journey 20 21 22 lunch and learn webinar uh july 26 2021 september 27 2021 members choice uh and september 29th 2021 ask the experts asba law conference september 8th through 10th and the county meeting september 29th now we are open to go to any of these you feel you want to or would like to um if you haven't attended the law conference i would recommend it it's actually really good um and we really do need to be represented this year at the county asba conference we i don't think we had anyone there last year and uh that's a worthwhile just a meeting in the evening but it's worthwhile where they're holding it they have not but if we can you know okay i will probably go to that so thank you and i and i second what you say laura laurie cory about the law conference uh i'm planning to sign up it's it's always worthwhile and um uh you know and it'll be nice to have an in-person one again yes um so just like kim know if you want to attend any of those events they're open to all board members um 7.5 date time location of future meetings we have set july 8th 2021 at 5 30 p.m um do we want to make that since we're adding a workshop a six o'clock meeting with a five o'clock workshop change it to that are we good with that change i'll try my best all right yes okay so we'll have the workshop at five and the meeting at six on july 8th okay and the 13th do you do you want to decide on a time for the 13th at this point no let's just wait until then okay yeah thank you things might change by then uh 8.1 our favorite motion to adjourn a move that we had during this meeting second all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland hi charlene diaz we are adjourned [Music] you
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so the drivers of that we found additional savings in transportation fuel and instructional supplies it was slightly offset by some special small special ed costs some substitutes and cleaning services but net net there's relatively small gifts and takes but it all worked in the district's favor and and he's continuing to manage toward year end to try and bring it in as close as we can to the original budget despite a million dollars of spending on cobit-related supplies so so all good news we had a brief update on special education but it was there's nothing dramatic in there with some small exposures and some small opportunities that he walked us through and we agreed that mrs wagonic will come to an upcoming meeting and give us a more thorough update so on on what's going on around special education costs and that was it it was about a 20 minute meeting okay any questions all right consent agenda i'll move that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are resignations and the may financials check it okay uh all in favor all right that's unanimous uh we can move on to new business and the first is our athletics update thanks for waiting mr baldwin um good evening everybody um it's nice to see everybody here in person obviously we heard what was going on with the locker room but i just wanted to take a second to thank all of you for your hard work and getting this project moved forward i also want to thank our athletic kova team dr brill dr sullivan and dr davis for all their guidance of keeping our athletes safe during the pandemic we may be the only school in the state that never quarantined the team all year none of our athletes contracted covet during the season none of our teams had a quarantine several times during the school year or and we'd have to not play games against other schools because they were quarantined we never did um and you know i want to thank you know all of our coaches for making sure the kids were using hand sanitizers wiping the stuff down making sure the kids on the bus weren't eating had their masks on it did everything we were supposed to i mean we truly truly did a great job again i don't know of any other school that never quarantined anybody you know with the exception of us the falls winter seasons went went well unfortunately there was no football they did seven on seven competitions um the the fall and winter season did not have postseason only league playoffs and our hockey team won the scc swc championship the spring seasons all of our all of our teams qualified for the state tournaments and had outstanding seasons highlighted by olivia walters a freshman was state champion in the 400 meters for track that's quite an accomplishment for a freshman baseball won the swc regular season championship and boys lacrosse made it to the semifinals we overcame some serious busting issues there was days where i just didn't have any buses um we found some unique ways to get our kids to games whether it was coach buses or even limousines which were less expensive than the coach buses but we got our kids there brookfield once again this year was recognized as one of seven schools for the michael michaels cup award winners for having the best overall athletic program in the state this is due to a lot of hard work by our athletic advisory and we're excited to have boys volleyball gymnastics next year i meet with a person um in danbury about you renting their facilities and he's got a coach lined up for us hopefully i may meet with him on monday and just i'm tired to be honest it's been a long year i'm looking forward to a restful summer and you know hopefully go back to a normal school year like the parents said without masks but thank you guys for everything thanks for your leadership steve thanks steve anybody have any questions thank you thank you okay uh the next item is the bef update and uh kristen joshi is not here tonight so julie's going to give us that update yes so i'm reporting on behalf of kristin joshi from the bef brookfield education foundation um that supports school and community grants uh this was a slow year for receiving grant requests but they're hopeful that we'll get a lot more grant requests with some new and exciting programs so here's a brief review of the most recent grants this year the blood pressure self-monitoring the why created a virtual blood pressure self-monitoring program to reach those individuals who typically rely on in-person support from physicians senior centers et cetera at a time when they they're encouraged to stay home and stay safe the goal of the program is to support individuals with high blood pressure as they work towards making lifestyle changes to lower and or better manage their blood pressure the second grant was that plat 4m education fitness it was um spearheaded by jeremy kasich at bhs this request was for an online platform for education fitness features customizable lessons and units that include video tutorials and assessment tools for our high school students the pe department started using this tool immediately during the second semester of the school year in 2 21 the intent is to utilize it for years to come students download an app and are invited to a class where they can follow along with lessons that progressively take them through proper exercise form explain why it's important and how to progress to the next level students have the ability to use tools to track their progress not only in pe but in their extracurricular sports and personal fitness interests as well the results the program has worked really well at home for students along with personal fitness and other elective classes it also is useful for stations in pe class along with introductions to fitness yoga and mobility training so it's really exciting especially in our current past year bhs has a wellness room this is a newly funded grant it has a long-term goal of providing a space where students can connect with support staff for academic social emotional and career related services the room provides counselors and other support staff with the opportunity to meet with students parents in small or large groups the goal is to provide students with more opportunities persist to participate in self-care seminars have a safe space to connect with counselors in a more engaging welcoming and casual environment and the goals for students to feel safe and supported emotionally and then in turn this will enhance their ability to learn and find success academically as well so it was just approved on june 1st and will be implemented in the fall and they do want to take a moment to mention past grant past grants that have been awarded the 3d ppe for frontline workers and the mobile maker space at brookfield library they're both funded by the bef utilize equipment for their programs to create and provide pbe during the pandemic and the girl scout silver award no the hand sanitizer so that obviously was um they couldn't have anticipated any better prior the pandemic so they believe at this point the expense for the hand sanitizer refills have been built into the school budget and the library story walks debbie brooks thank you brookfield library this program continues to be used for different story books and has been a great way for the community members to learn with their children and be mobile mobile during the pandemic and they felt that it was really important especially this past year to honor the extraordinary educators so everyone has received the um chocolate that they gave in addition to um a gift card a dunkin donuts gift card to enjoy coffee or treat so they had over 300 nominees that received these items and they also provided each school all-star and tso with a box of chocolate bars also from bridger chocolate as a small token of their thanks they said as a board we want to recognize the stress and strain that the pandemic has created for our teachers staff administrators and town officials we'd like to thank all of you for your tireless efforts to guide our residents through this unprecedented time we recognize that how we educate has changed dramatically over the past year we also realize the need for social and emotional programs needed for our mental health at this time we'd love to be a part of helping with these obstacles we ask for any teachers curriculum specialists or administrators to please reach out for any assistance we can offer in guiding you through the grant process finally they want to extend their sincere gratitude to everyone who has made the programs refund reality from our generous donors to our grant champions that envisioned and brought these funded projects to life and they'd like to add the only way the bef will be doing fundraising this year is through donations on our website at www.brookfieldeducationfoundation.org our annual gala will return in fall 2022.
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i've i've supervised and watched all the kids on that bench getting playing time that's that 7 12 i think is like 800 or 900 students total 7 through 12. but those kids are getting rich opportunities so even at that level of a thousand twelve hundred kids seven through twelve they're staying still getting a high quality educational experience so i don't think the smaller we get we have to be in fear that it's gonna get worse i i do think that we really need to keep our eyes open when it comes to relationships and focus on kids i think that's crucial to the decision we're making so that's that's my two cents thank you missy back hello so um in regards to what patricia was originally saying about the original four models um what she was trying to explain was that um it would be a good idea to discuss uh the possibility of a fresh model five or six because although we were uh given the option between the four models and to modify them i don't know that we were given the option to create a model um that was completely the idea of the team um to offer what could possibly work or not work and i think that's where she would that's what she was getting at um is to create because she's right um we have talked about it before and we've talked about it to with other parents staff members within our little team that we have and um we like you know uh something about model three something about model four and we kind of almost want to make a model five out of both of them and say you know what this is actually the best way to do this or this is the best suggestion and not only offer um something like that to the board but also give them the background information as to how we came about um that idea and explain the pros and the cons to the to the board about what we see um because i think that that like like you guys are saying we're doing we're asking the hard questions and maybe they're not seeing something or they haven't thought about something that maybe we can help them see and so i think that's what she was getting at um and so i just wanted to add to that in case there was some confusion yeah so again just to to reiterate um when we took the models one two three four at that point in time we said there could be models five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve uh there was no five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve uh this team decided to do three and four with changes to three and four um now again that does not mean that we cannot do model five um as your facilitator though um i have to say like how does that happen do we say okay we're going to start all over guys go back and everybody you guys can come up with a different model and then we're going to present these models here and then we're going to go through the same process again because you and i'm not me i don't mean you events i mean you in this room can be thinking of a model 5 right now but those model 5s can be 27 different things and so so so i again if this is what the team wanted to do again this is your process but now we're in a pickle because we have a community meeting next thursday and so what what what what are we saying at this community meeting next thursday um if if if we are entertaining and again this is the group this is not arturo if we are entertaining going back to the drawing board to create more models then everybody needs to have an opportunity to create more models not one person not two people not three people not four people but everybody should have that opportunity to do that and then in my head and i could be wrong but in my head now we we've and again i'm not saying is bad i'm saying we we have to restart this whole process again not the whole process but the the process of all right everybody gets to go back reimagine the model reimagine what schools were were selected and then we have to go through this process uh here um and again we have a community meeting next thursday and so what what are we presenting or what are we saying uh at that meeting would be my wonderings uh in terms of in terms of that we have miss jen then we have miss meg and then we have miss melissa can you hear me clearly because my husband is also talking at a meeting right here can you hear me at the same time okay so um i i think i might be the only person in this group who has actually um experienced a school closure because i was a gladstone street teacher and i want to tell you a little bit just i want to reflect on that experience and um some things that when we're starting to talk about possible new models um this far down the road um well that concerned me a little bit and um when we uh closed gladstone street and mountain view um there was a whole process the 7-eleven committee that we were required to go through and we did and um the decision came so late in the year that the school board had to make the decision really quickly and then move people and it was all very very fast and full of lots of unnecessary stress and problems and things that happened simply because there wasn't the school board didn't get to have enough time to make decisions and i would really like it at this time if we could avoid dragging the process out for so long that the school board doesn't have time to make decisions and then start working on construction and things that need to be fixed as it was glaston street couldn't even be used mostly on one half of the school for a full year when we could have maybe planned ahead and made it a little bit easier to start using that school site a little easier if uh if it had been done in a timely manner so i think the purpose of this committee is to have these discussions and make our recommendations as one of many groups of stakeholders in the district that are going to have something to say and then the district is if we are not making the decisions the school board is going to make the decisions and i have to tell you once again because i've had this experience the decision that they make may be completely different than anything that was recommended and so we the best we can do is offer our opinions and put them in there so that they can get started on what is going to be an extremely difficult process if they're closing this many schools it's going to take months to go through all of this stuff and i don't want to keep dragging this out and bringing up yet another thing and thinking that we need to get another little piece of information that is just going to make it more difficult for them um when we are giving them so little time because frankly we could be asking questions forever and whatever we decide here no one there's not going to be a unanimous agreement about what we recommend to this committee and there's not going to be a unanimous agreement in the community after the school board makes the decisions and so i think that we just need to look at what we can get done and say this is our best and here is what we have and we hope that it is it is so clear and so good that you can use some of it in helping you to make your decisions thank you who is meg ms meg several of you have talked about going and talking to parents or talking to teachers and your constituents and while we did that as as a as a group of um teachers i also went and spoke to my father my father was a high school principal and then after being a high school principal for four or five years they decided to change his school to a seven through twelve and so i called him and said dad oh my gosh this is crazy they're they're gonna go for it and he said great tell him it's the best thing that we ever did and the reason why he said that was because um he dealt with all of the issues that we're talking about now fearful parents um worried kids about what that new dynamic was going to look like pissed off older brothers and sisters that didn't want their little sibling on their same campus in their high school experience all of those things and he said after all of those worries were put to bed in year two everybody said they were so glad they did it for all the reasons that we've been talking about the vertical articulation amongst teachers um the parents being able to drop all their kids off at one site the master scheduling being an easier thing the ability for the seventh and eighth grade kids to start at ground zero with electives and become masters in that craft by the time that they're seniors also it made the kids have ownership to the school and want to stay there because now they're either an aztec or a gladiator or you know whatever you're going to call the school and and that pride that came with it my dad's circumstance was very much what our true described whereby yes the kids for the most part are kept to themselves as seventh and eighth graders but those kids that are ready to go to an advanced math class and be in ninth grade with parent permission could go ahead and do that you know the kids could during pe have similar pe teachers that are in high school and those those coaches are going to spot those kids in seventh and eighth grade and start building those skills while they're in seventh and eighth grade and so i guess i just um and this isn't me saying to make that choice that's not it i i want to one most first and foremost as a teacher and a parent alleviate nervousness and fears of parents who are anxious you know mrs perkins i can sense that you're anxious about that the possibility of that choice and and as a teacher and a mom i don't want you to feel anxious i want you to feel safe and so i just wanted to share that because i felt like he made me feel like yay that's great you know and that's good for kids and again back to what anthony said what gabriel said what many of you have said is ultimately we want what's best for the kids and so i don't want anybody to be fearful if that is the ultimate choice that we come down to and my father wound up being a superintendent and um he said he'd be happy to come and talk to us and answer all the questions that you may have if interested because he too wanted to make sure that everybody felt good about that choice so there you have it okay we have miss melissa missy and i believe missy bet if her hand is still up and then this dish um thank you and i'll try to be fast i i am i am worried um i you know we we sort of like we're most familiar with often um and i love the idea of my two little sons staying in azusa and going to this like high school that offers everything right and um i appreciate everyone's input the the other the other thing i i'm worried about is how much more model 4 costs and what we could get for that by doing model three if we could restore the pool at um azusa high um i i want to apologize to parents who are watching last week i did not bring up the um the differences in the the cost i hadn't seen them as a chart i saw them on individual slides and like my brain my math brain isn't the best i needed to see them well stacked on top of each other as a parent pointed out after the last meeting for me to realize that it was silly of me to say let's not spend extra money on on on rebranding and parents aren't interested and community members aren't interested when we were dealing with something catastrophically more five times more money to do model for so i want to say that i also want to thank the school district for sending out the snail mail i think that's really important and i'm just really looking forward to hearing what parents think and i hope that all the information is presented in a an easy way to parents and teachers with the cost stacked on top of each other and that we never value a building or money that we spent on on fields over you know over kids i mean we all want we all want it to be good for the kids for azusa all right and this fish was six minutes remaining sorry helps if i mute before i start talking um so i'm i'm listening to everything you guys are saying and i i want to jump on board it's so hard as a parent of a young student and talking to other parents who have young students who are going to be in this district as a long haul um between model 3 and model 4.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
that was gonna be my question thank you okay um item c is approval of field trips for the 2021-2022 school year i moved that the board approved the attached list of field trips for the 2021-2022 school year as recommended by bhs principal mark belanda second thank you any discussion on these all right so all in favor aye hi thanks that's unanimous item d is approval of field trips for the sports uh for sports for the 21 22 school year i will move that the board approved the attached list of sports field trips for the 2021-2022 school year as requested by athletic director steve baldwin second all in favor aye thanks that's unanimous as well it's a very good process now yeah you're into a routine all right um on to old business the only point is the candlewood elementary school candled lake there's uh yeah we forgot the world we got the word lake there handled lake elementary school building project um so the nbc had a meeting last night um if you took a walk or if you took a drive over there um you'll see the tall walls going up that's area a what they call and they kind of they're gonna start moving from that right side of the areas you're looking at the building over to the left um so the stuff that's on the way left of the building hasn't even doesn't like they're still excavating footings and putting in the foundation and things like that so um it's going to sort of like just follow along as the tall walls go up they're going to start to move on to the foundation and and so on and so forth until the building is totally complete but they have a really good process going they were saying the contractors are working really well together the only potential thing that they're going to be keeping an eye on is the supply chain issue um the steel which is sort of the next big step is there and they don't seem to have a problem with that but they're potentially looking at roadblocks in aluminum which is what's going to completely enclose the building and that needs to be done with windows and stuff before they can do anything on the inside so um that's something that's potentially coming down the road as as maybe a little bit of a challenge um but otherwise there's um no other major updates with that it seems moving along really well and definitely go take a look at it if you haven't already because it's pretty oh my god definitely it's amazing take a look at it it's amazing and you don't i went last night and you don't have the sense of the size of the school unless you're physically there yeah and i still i stood outside the the the fence and i'm looking and i'm saying wait a minute that's just one little wing one yeah it's a yeah it's a monster yeah big facade and the now that i got the magnitude in my head you realize how big the the there's kind of a building in the front and then another building in the back and you realize that's the classroom wing in the back and it's uh when that thing is built it's going to be a big facility so and you'll probably notice also that some of the construction fencing had been moved so just in case you're wondering that's for the sanitary lines that are starting to put in um so they had to just shift some things around so that they can still get construction vehicles in and parking and stuff so the one question i had looking at it is i thought the stream that they were uncovering was actually was kind of in the sports fields oh no yeah but it's it must go under the parking lot uh yeah so it's actually a lot further forward more forward yeah yeah it's a lot more forward and i think [Music] um in terms of the scale about to your point the building is much more front but you're closer to the playground parking lot in the back than people thought yeah i mean yeah when you actually look at that and then obviously once the the huckleberry isn't there anymore and things are reconfigured you'll see how the driveways work the other question i have is what are they going to do with all that dirt there's a lot of dirt on this knuckleberry building yeah we'll make a dirt bike park or something yeah yeah right all right that was it was there any questions on that all right uh so we are on to three main points um i was thinking first we should probably talk about the covid discussion and yeah mask issue and our discussion that followed about advocacy to the state um i thought dr ruby's summer school update would be good to include and then maybe the athletics update from steve baldwin sure i like it yeah the befriends too yeah that was important um what do you guys think it has asked me three three four four main points since it's the last meeting of the year so and it sounds like they're struggling to get people to uh yeah to pitch you know to apply so maybe promoting it would yeah maybe that's a good idea you know yeah and i think they're important i feel like the athletic we got a lot i've already i saw it a lot on facebook already about attraction that's true i'm a huge fan of olivia walters for the record she's my neighbor oh cool i need to start working out with olivia yeah having ran that 400 in high school i know how difficult it is that's amazing what she's accomplished as a freshman all right so we'll do the bef then yep yep okay all right uh upcoming events okay just a couple um at center school the sweet dream story times with mrs diamond will begin next thursday the 24th at wisconsin restaurant week fundraiser ongoing right now through sunday these businesses are going to give back a portion to the wms pto so tomorrow is jj stacks friday hibachi king saturday manja manga sunday agora and also each of those days is the red colony diner and at the high school yearbooks have arrived the class of 2021 can pick up june 17th 18th and the 21st between 7 30 and 2 30 in the main office and underclassmen can pick up um beginning july june 22nd between 7 30 and 2 30 also in the main office and the office is closed on july 5th amy i had one other thing i just uh found out before the meeting that the colleges that our graduates will be attending uh we always have that post that it was posted today it's on the high school website all right so is there anything else okay so then without objection this meeting is adjourned thanks everyone thank you why [Music] northeastern [Music] you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i feel like model of four is a good option when you're trying to fill in your school district but we have the ability to fill in a middle school with all of our students we can fill in a high school with all of our students combining them it's instead of splitting them up you allow all these kids to grow up together instead of separately putting these great programs together in one location and i hear a lot of you guys talking about vertical articulation having azusa high school and foothill high school across the way how can we wait get our teachers working together at those two campuses they're they're across the street from each other we can have our our 7th and 8th graders or 8th graders come and take electives they can cross the street have have proctors walk them across make sure they're going um you're talking about sports bring those kids over to the high school afterwards let's have them do their sports on that high school campus with those um with the older kids like uh i think as mr fernandez was mentioning if the campuses are next door to each other we can still have that seventh through twelfth filling without having the children on the exact same campus and i just feel like parents are going to be more comfortable with that and i know it's the comfort zone like megan meg said that she talked to her father they said it was a great idea but maybe their community needed that because they didn't have enough to fill to a full high school and a full middle school are we can do that here and we can make the best we have the best varsity teams we can have the best marching bands our middle schoolers can do the same things they can be trained with our high schoolers so they can come in prepared to to be a part of our high school programs i'm i just feel like we're look we're worried more about keeping to schools and we're trying to be fiscally responsible and as miss perkins said it's a five times greater price to change to seven to eights as it is to keep a semi-traditional model as what we have here but i also wanted to note i read the feedback from the parents and the staff it was a lot and i noticed we noticed that there were a lot of mentions about changing gladstone to the middle school i don't know if that's feasible i played with some numbers without knowing what sixth graders um without how many sixth graders i roughly put in 500 and it makes our middle our campus would be right at about 75 if we made gladstone our middle school and that's again totally guessing the numbers for sixth graders but it did seem like that was a lot of what parents were mentioning and i don't know if that's what um some of you were talking about when you said you wanted to re-imagine models but that could be an easy change if that helps get more people on board with having a mega middle school and one high school just just my thoughts miss fish thank you and just for clarification uh what was sent to you was only staff sorry yes staff yeah there was no there was no uh parent um yeah and in addition to um in addition to that um this is a good example um that we have heard multiple people not only on the survey but on in other avenues saying like hey if you went model three why why would you close glaston high school you have a beautiful campus why can't that be the middle school the one middle school um but again these are all things there's so many right we there's so many ways that model three can exist there's so many ways a model seven could exist um that at the end of the day and i think people have said it really in an eloquent manner tonight um at the end of the day those are the the the pieces information the data points uh that that the board uh is gonna have to uh consider uh as they're moving forward uh to uh to make a decision um all right well we have we have reached um the point of our meeting um before we launch uh the survey um i again i cannot say enough to thank you so much for what you have done uh so far i've lost count i think we're on meeting something like that you've dedicated so much time so much energy so much brain space so much heart so much emotion uh that i want to thank you uh before you we launches this uh form i want to briefly discuss your three options when we get there option number one is going to say i am ready to vote for my preferred model and my preferred idea idea what does that mean that means that you're ready to say i want model 4 or i want model 3 and you're ready to say i want 4.1 i want 3.10 you know whatever that whatever i'm just making up the numbers i don't know them outside my head that's what that means if that were to happen and that's what we were to land today then we are semi-officially done uh in terms of next steps the reason i say semi officially done is because when we get if we were to finally finalize this portion of it tonight when we get to the board i don't want it to be my voice i want it to be your voice and so i want to imagine how this recommendation would come to the board and that's why i say semi because i would still be tapping into this team to help in terms of voicing what this team went through and where we landed and presenting that to the board your second choice is gonna is gonna say i am ready to vote for my preferred idea so that means 3.9 3.10 3.2 3.3 so you're ready to vote for one of those and then you're ready to go for the the fours there's two models left i think it's four point five and nine i'm not sure so you're ready to narrow it down so that we only have one model three and one model four but you are not ready to then decide between model 3 and model 4.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
that's option number two if that option is what ends up being the most popular then after the after we get the data then we need to talk about next steps the last option is i'm not ready for anything i'm not ready for model 3 or model 4 and i'm not ready to talk about an idea um you still need time um some of you have voiced in this room that you want to wait to see what happens with the parents um and so eventually as your facilitator um i will have to uh say um you know sing a mr mr rogers friendly neighborhood song or something because eventually we will have to be over um we cannot uh just you know continue and continue to continue uh eventually we will have to be over and so again if the decision is i'm not ready to do anything then i want to be very clear about what our next steps are um because i don't want to as they say in the trade right have a paralysis analysis um where we we just we're not we're never going to be ready and we're just going to continue continue and continue and so eventually we just have to um do the best that we can be satisfied with the best that we can and move forward and and move it to the next to the next steps um so those are the those are going to be the three options for the survey and again depending on the results then we will go from there this also plays into what happens at the community meeting if number one wins and you guys have a recommendation and we want this model and this idea then great when we get to the community meeting we say these were the models that were up for discussion for for feedback the team decided on this model and this idea but tonight we're here to get your perspective and your feedback so even though the team this is what the team is recommending you can disagree with the team and that is okay to disagree with the team but we want to hear your input and your ideas that information then goes to the board of education and we do the same thing with the staff if option two wins where you're ready to narrow it down to two ideas but you don't know about the models yet then again great we go to the community meeting we say okay these are the two models that are left but there's no more you know four model threes and two model fours there's just one and so again we want your input where would you land on this and if we're not ready to decide anything then i think we need to take everything to the community meeting because that's that's what we have right now we don't we don't have more we don't have less so last thing before we ask sam to put the form again you are an individual an equal partner on this team doesn't matter who you are of the 24 you are an equal partner on this team all of us have heard different opinions all of us of us have heard different ideas all of us have heard different uh you know ways of looking at things and seeing things but at the end of the day i we want to hear you that's what we want to hear we want to hear you and so as you are filling out your form please fill it out as you all right sam we are ready you are going to put the link to the google form on in the chat please thank you sir the link is in the chat if you can please open it and fill it out um [Music] sam as you are seeing the responses come in if i'm not mistaken i think there are 20 so we're looking for 20 responses okay i'll let you know when we get 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
where are we out sir we're at 19 just waiting on one more okay i never got a anything to vote with it's in the link oh it's in the link never mind i'm the one that you're waiting for all right that is no one it's been a long day sorry no worries okay we are now at 20 responses all right sir um you're going to show us the results of this so you'll show us the the graph portion of it okay give me just one second no worries okay can you see my screen i can we have 50 percent for i am ready to vote for my preferred model and idea and fifty percent for i'm ready to vote for my preferred idea for models three and four but not ready to vote for a model we have what looks like zero percent of not being ready to vote for a model nor an idea perfect thank you sam um i'm gonna be talking i'm gonna give you uh a little bit a little bit of time um you are going to create another google form um sam um and there's going to be two questions um maybe uh jorge you can assist with this uh with him since sam is is jumping in tonight uh question number one is going to be of the model threes which model do you prefer um and the four choices are going to be um let me before i lie here let me double check it with another piece that i have here the four choices are going to be 3.1 3.3 3.8 and 3.10 so question number one my my the model three my preferred model three um and it's gonna be 3.1 3.3 3.8 and 3.10 okay question number two is going to say my preferred model 4 is and for model 4 there's going to be only two options and those two options are going to be 4.4 and 4.5 okay all right i need a moment to create this and i will let you know when the form is ready all right jorge can you run over there uh with sam just to to double check um as they are doing that uh just so so we're on the same page this was 50 50.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um so so number three was out so therefore there's one thing in common with number one and number two and the one thing that's in common which means a hundred percent of you are ready to choose an idea um and so that is why we're moving in this direction hey how's it going sir sam you're on you're i'm muted i mean you're yeah you're unmuted uh just a nice greeting for mr jorge thank you uh so just for clarity again uh that is why we're doing what we're doing uh based on the way you answered this uh zero percent chose number three and because a hundred percent of you chose either one or two then by default that means that everyone is ready to choose an idea not everybody's ready to choose a model but everybody's ready to choose an idea and so we're going to give them some time to uh go ahead and uh create that mr rotary i understood the reverse way that everybody was ready to choose a model three or four not necessarily an idea uh let me let me double check unless i have the model and idea verbiage backwards uh based on the way i sold it and wrote it i am under the impression that um that everyone is ready for an idea question number two said i am ready to vote for my preferred idea for models three and four but i am not ready to go for a model and i just double checked the question to make sure and that is the way it reads now just for funsies uh once we do this this this this uh this this round right now uh and if there's time uh we might do one last one last run um while we're waiting uh let's uh let's play this out um so half of the people in this room are ready to move forward and say we're ready to pick a model 3 or model 4.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
half of the people in this room are saying i am not ready to choose between model 4 or model 3. so no pressure don't feel you have to but can we hear from someone or some people that are not who have who said i'm not ready to choose model 3 or model 4. and if you are not ready to choose between model 3 or model 4 if there is some rationale or some reason why or what you need to get you to that particular readiness if you will we have miss fish hand was raised first then we have miss melissa then diana i'm going to be a big big advocate for our parents here big you're talking about changing the actual structure of the current school system that we have we currently have tk5 tk6 tk8 middle schools and high schools you're talking about changing that completely to having a tk6 and a 7-12 and i do not feel that it is fair for us as a committee of 12 to make that decision without having parents feedback parents the people who have their children going to this school district willing to keep them or take them somewhere else throw out their opinion if our parents come back and say we love model 4 i will jump on board if our parents come back and say we love model 3 i will jump on board it's we're 12 people out of thousands and i just i don't feel that we should be able to make that decision without having parent feedback this fish may i ask a question yes absolutely because i don't want to assume so please correct me if i'm wrong i'm just trying to listen very carefully to you would it be fair for me to assume or to to interpret that once you hear or see the data from the parents then you will be ready to choose a model three or four is that is that a fair statement yes okay i see miss melissa wilson perkins so so you're you're good okay diana are you in the same boat as miss fish and miss uh wilson perkins yes but i would like to add a comment um just because i know our district is huge on hearing all stakeholders and having their input um i feel like you know you've gone a lot of our input as a committee you've gone the staff um input but now we're missing the parent input and just like meg asked her father about the two high school model um because obviously to me that seems like not the best idea having uh 12 year olds with 18 year olds so i since i don't have children i asked my niece who um just went into seventh grade this year what were her thoughts on you know she had to go to a school that was 7 12 and she said no way thea um it's hard enough to go to a middle school and have those eighth graders that are older to you than you i can't even imagine being with students that are much much older um so i was like okay i got a student perspective okay so so the people that have that thank you first and foremost so um all right thank you for that we're gonna consider next steps uh but first uh we're gonna put uh the next uh form uh in the google form in the chat again we're looking for 20 responses uh and again now we are narrowing down our ideas in the models sam please post it thank you so um sam where are we we are at 12 responses okay uh update some 18 responses just waiting on two more and just needing one more okay we have all 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all right you want to show us the results okay so for the model threes can you scroll down a little bit on your screen so we can see both graphs thank you um thank you thank you sam all right so um based on this um we'll start with model four because that's an overwhelming uh 4.4 um and so um that is the model that's i'm sorry that is the idea not the model that is the idea uh that we will work that will be our working model for uh for model three um i don't know the percentage but obviously a small percent on three point oh there you go thank you five percent on three point one uh fifteen percent uh 3.3 20 on 3.8 meaning that none of those um three options came even close uh to half because there are four models 60 is an overwhelming uh set again the other three models did not receive even even uh even half so it looks like 3.10 would be the idea that we move forward with model 3.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um let me talk to you about next steps i want to remember we're a group we're a team and so we have to respect all of our opinions and all of our voices and all of our needs and all of our wishes so this is what we're going to do unless there's somebody in the room who also voted oh anthony you think it needs more discussion yeah i was just thinking uh similar to some of the other panelists just uh after all the financials came out i think everybody's like whoa whoa whoa and they kind of wanted to go back but i think we were too far into the process and i think that's what i heard a few of them talking about and one idea that i had mentioned before just like what we lost this year when doing everything virtual is we didn't have that one good big work day like in a facility so we can all have those discussions and kind of hash out some of the other items we've been doing it in these uh 90-minute blocks and i think it kind of got a little lost rush so that was just my thought maybe there was so much there because um now people are reconsidering like oh man i would have done this i probably would have gone that way but that one needs to be tweaked now because of the cost all right that's just my thought got it okay thank you sir um so so based on what what i heard and and then there was nodding after miss fish uh spoke and uh diana spoke as well um this is what this is what we're gonna do um we're gonna have the town hall next thursday you are more than welcome to come participate listen look learn um and that all of that is fine uh that day we will be launching the survey i don't want to launch it before um because i want to be able to explain the survey and the form and what it is and what when you click on this this is what it means and this is what you're voting for and this is what you know the opinions that you're going to be giving giving uh we will give it a window uh windows are are are interesting because if you leave it too long then the sense of urgency kind of goes away but if you do it too short then you know oh i didn't have an opportunity to do it so we're trying to find a sweet spot of what that window will be in terms of being open because we have a diverse community we will have to do it uh at least in um uh at least in spanish uh and we'll entertain if there's other other possibilities as well uh once that is wrapped up and by wrapped up i don't mean the town halls by wrapped up i mean the the actual survey the form and it's locked and here's the data um i will share that data with you all only because i i'm going to assume that well i don't want to assume i take that back then i will reach out to all of you uh with a new date uh for us to reconvene and meet the the the request today would have been satisfied at this meeting because we're going to be meeting a after the town hall and b after you have gotten the information from the community and from the and from the from the parents so i will throw out a date and say okay we're reconvening uh at that meeting then uh we will be moving to the next phase to say are we moving with model three or are we moving with model four um and then at that point in time um again we will be um we will be um moving to the steps of recommendations to the board of education unlike the unlike previous things that we have done uh when we get to the model 3 and model um and all along the board is going to know let's pretend we go to model 3 and model 4.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
and um let's pretend that one model gets 92 percent and one model gets eight percent eight percent that information will be shared with the board of education we also plan to share with them 92 of the committee or the team voted for this model and this is not by name but this is how they're made up eight percent voted for the other model and this is their makeup and by makeup i mean staff parents uh teachers classified admin you know those kinds of things we want to give them as as robust a data set as possible as they start to move and navigate through this again i want to end by thanking you for what you have done so far what you are doing so far and what you will continue to do at least for one more meeting uh stand by again i will i will send that email once we have wrapped up and by wrapped up again i mean with the with the survey and the data i will share with with you that information and then i will also share uh our new date uh to do that in the meantime uh yes ma'am what what are you sharing with model for the parents for model three are you only sharing model 310 or were you sharing okay just want to make sure based off of mr contreras comment yeah they will know again when we when we present to them they're going to know that this has been a process they're gonna know that we started off well at least my vision is i'm gonna know that we had four models that it was never down to two that there was i think at one point in time i think there were 12 ideas for model 3 and how that got dwindled down to um to four and then that was doing go down to one so we're not gonna hold or with with with withhold kind of that information uh they will they will know the process at least again that's my vision right that they that they kind of understand the journey that you have been on and where we have landed but when we when again right now on the spot the idea would be that when we're asking for feedback we're asking feedback on where we landed today which is uh model 3 310 model 4 4.4 but just like we did for staff there will be open-ended and again we want to make that visible like hey if there was something else or you had a you know that you wanted to chime in then they'll be more than more than uh able uh to also write um open-ended kind of uh suggestions ideas comments or dislikes or likes or whatever whatever it is that they that they want um so again i'm sorry can i ask a question yes you had said earlier that you were going to resurvey all staff again as well because of the fact that they did not know all of the information that the parents are going to get um so is that going to happen at the same time so we could look at those results too or how's that going to go down yeah i've been thinking about that again if you want to provide input right now live with one minute left my concern is if we do it right now that we're going to have a section or sections of our staff that might say you cheated me from the opportunity because i wasn't there i wasn't checking my emails and so that is a concern of mine because people are are now out and we cannot and should not uh expect them to be engaged with work when they're off contract uh on vacation or doing their what what they need to do so um i i i it's not it's not sitting well on me to say we we should do this right now with staff i i don't think it's fair and so again looking into well when do most people start checking back in the beginning of august um and so that's why i said i'll send you a new date because i got to play with all of these considerations uh in terms of getting us back because i want to make sure that everyone has a true opportunity now if they don't want to do it that's perfectly okay as well but we want to provide them a true opportunity to be able to to provide input so for clarification um when um you meet with the parents of course like you said you're going to dwindle it down to what it is uh first question is will parents have an opportunity to discuss or is this just information provided and then they take the survey and then secondly will um when it's all brought to us i mean it i think it's important that we do have the staff input like you're saying because um why introduce it if we're not going to use it um i mean we couldn't do just an all-call would do with parents but um but and then at that point will we also have a moment of discussion before we just you know like you said get to that point of closing out and submitting it to the board so to answer your first question no unlike you guys they will not be taking the survey or the form live uh so we will not be sharing a link to that to that so that they're doing it live right there and there this is for them to hear then go home and then think about it and there will be a window that they will have an opportunity to fill this out the second point that i want to say is that they don't have to be at this meeting to be able to fill out this form so maybe they skip the meeting and they don't want to watch the video they don't want to watch the recording and they just want to you know vote that that is going to be perfectly okay as well um so no they will not be doing it live right then and right then and there um and yes again in terms of of staff again i think that uh we have to give them an opportunity to be able to chime in the way the parents in the community are because again they're chiming in at a different in a different level right we've kind of gone past this journey and so now they're a different level and so they should have the opportunity to chime into that and that will be provided to you all as well and so again i will i will make sure to make that all visible uh in our in our email and then just for clarification purposes you will be receiving a cancellation in your inbox it's not because i don't like to be with you it's just uh next week um again would be prior to the meeting prior to any day any any data sets oh no i didn't answer your question patricia your second question we'll kind of do it like the way we did uh this time around so yes if we want to open and dialogue and get those last words in and those last you know whatever that's awesome and that's great but there will be an end time and i will say okay at this time conversation's over uh and it's time to uh to cast our cast our votes and cast our opinions so uh again thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you so much uh you have been doing an amazing job we are indebted to you so so thank you for everything you do again if i don't get to speak to you for for a while have an awesome break have an awesome uh week have an awesome weekend have a good night everyone
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so [Music] good evening graduates staff families board members and special guests i'd like to welcome you to our graduation ceremony and offer my congratulations to the class of 2021 [Music] [Applause] gives me great pride to introduce samantha serrano for the singing of our national anthem please stand [Music] twilight's last queen [Music] we watched [Music] in it gave proof through the night that our plaque was still there oh say does that star [Music] the [Music] [Applause] please be seated at this time i would like to introduce michael green senior class president to deliver the class of 2021 address [Applause] [Music] hello my name is michael green jr from the information technology program i am the 2021 senior class president it's been an honor to have been selected to represent the student body and it is my pleasure to welcome the graduates families and faculty to this event the class of 2021 is graduation from cctech every one of you has made an impact on the graduates who sit here today and i have no doubt that we all stickle and emotional struggles of the pain to our personal obstacles and navigating relationships with our family and friends it's even figuring out how to handle a new virtual broker and it's important in a very real future the need for us to let out a collective cry crept up more often than any would otherwise like to admit but every step of the way we're able to pick ourselves up and persevere because of all of you on behalf of the class of 2021 i'd like to thank you all for your attendance but more importantly your continued support high school is a long winding road and the class of 2021 cannot tell you how much we appreciate having you help navigating that difficult path a little over four years ago this class our parents and our guardians visited cctech in front of us stood a shiny new school with only 200 students in attendance in essence it was a blank canvas ready for us the next group of teenagers to brush their own unique swaths of color but with the excitement of a fresh and new experience came the fear that we weren't exactly what we were gonna get when we came here but i think we've taught ourselves the answer to that question in our time at tech through four years of hard work and thinking outside of the box even at times when that long riding road seemed to circle back on itself again and again we've learned that life's not only about the destination many times it's about the journey and more importantly how to adapt to sudden changes that lesson combined with knowing that we wanted to make our journey our blank canvas the best it could be this resulted in what you all see before you hear today a group of young people who are confident creative mature and willing to try to take on life's challenges with a little more humility than most but don't get me wrong it's not always all business we've had a lot of fun over these four years too and we've made some great memories from our freshman meet and greet to winter formals and spring dances to our food truck to prom we're fortunate to have laughed with one another as often as we have and i can't forget our most successful event the powderpuff football game which i'm sure lots of you attended this created memories we will carry with us for life we've set the tone for fun events and i hope that the classes after us are able to forever improve upon what we've done thus far but the elephant in the room is the pandemic as pandemoniums swept across the world this year no can have ever expected our lives to be shaken up as they as much as they were by vaccines mass mandates social distancing and even virtual learning the list goes on but regardless of how you feel about any of it it's something that impacted all of our lives but where many people tend to focus on the negative aspects of the pandemic i want to end with my take on it that many ways and maybe even paradoxically in a world of social dissonance it brought all of us closer together despite these difficulties throughout the year we were able to continue to make our school as vibrant and as lively as we had before students faculty and administration continue to keep a smile on their faces smiles so large that yes you could even see them through the masks let's remember that as we all finally get together here to celebrate our class the class of 2021 no matter how you feel about the social aspects of the pandemic we're all here together celebrating the way we were meant to as one community and my classmates class of 2021 to direct you directly you're composed the most resilient highly capable and incredible people i've ever had the pleasure of meeting i know sometimes will be hard and difficult to stay focused and retain the motivation to pursue the things that you love but the resilience we've all learned throughout the last year is probably the most important ingredient to our success so never forget who we are and what we've accomplished together when those times of doubt creep in when the goal seems too difficult to reach think back on these times where we all journey together to remind yourself that as long as you follow your own winding path and enjoy the process your end result will be no different than the one we're all here sharing at this moment thank you all for your time [Applause] [Music] thank you michael at this time i'd like to introduce our next speaker mr scarpa is a true pioneer in the communications field he was a co-founder president and chief operating officer of american cellular network corporation the first publicly traded cellular net company in the united [Music] co-found st wireless communication systems and was one of the original members of the nationwide cellular one network an entrepreneur in the broadcast industry he helped to establish the new jersey and northeast cable tv associations and assisted in the launch of the internet service provider earthlink through the john f scarpa foundation he supports education healthcare and disadvantaged families including the frank and edith scarpa regional cancer center at inspire medical center in vineland the edith viveretto scarpa arts and sciences building at st augustine prep and of course the john f scarpa technical education center of cumberland county he is also a major donor to the higher education institutions including stockton university where he gave the largest donation in the school's history in 2020 and villanova university where john f scarpa hall is home to the widget school of law and the john f scarpa center for entrepreneurship and law which serves as a hub to cultivating an entrepreneurship mindset in the study of law and other disciplines across villanova campus to deliver the career and technical address i would like to invite john f scarpa to the podium [Applause] good good evening to all and uh students and graduates uh please remain seated mostly people stand up when i come up to speak but you get special dispensation today but thank you county commissioner chairman dorella and fellow committee board of vocational education chairman ruth hans and board members superintendent dr tina rossi faculty staff most important the class of 2021.
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i'd like to call this meeting to order due to the covert 19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held via video conference and streamed on youtube on the district website at www.ebnet.org in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education will the secretary please call the role mr angelo here this is true here mr sismar mrs guass mr hong hey mrs lax here mrs reese pierre mr winston here president becker here we have a quorum please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands for liberty and justice for all the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed and acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act east forensic court of education has closed notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education offices written notice is also provided to the sentinel of the newark star ledger the home news and tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions are videotaped later broadcast and individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening and welcome to our last meeting before the end of this school year unbelievable how did we get there took a lot let's start off the meeting with dr valeski's superintendent report thank you president becker and good evening everyone i'm happy to report that a variety of school activities have occurred over the past two weeks marking the end of this school year fifth grade moving up ceremonies for all eight elementary schools were completed this week and have been a big success and i want to give a shout out to john mcminiman for the production of those events tomorrow friday june 18th is the last day of school for all students and staff graduation for the class of 2021 will be held on j doyle field at ebhs beginning at 9 30 a.m tomorrow morning i'll apologize in advance for the traffic and congestion tomorrow morning but i promise it'll be worth it as we send off our seniors in one culminating event marking the end of a difficult school year for my final report this school year i want to express my appreciation for the entire east brunswick board of education support of my recommendations over this past school year i want our community to know that some of the issues have gone through vigorous debate but without reservation i can say this sport has been introspective and proactive this board student-centered focus is at the epicenter of what distinguishes east brunswick it's not just words it's your actions in support of me and the administrative team to ensure the district is well run thank you for your leadership steadfast resolve and commitment to the east brunswick community that ebps will remain a premier public school district no matter the circumstances that need to be navigated to achieve that goal thank you thank you dr valesky i'm sure at the uh good of the cause of the board we'll be hearing more about uh our appreciation for all the stakeholders this year but thank you for that very lovely and touching thank you victor okay now for the good of the cause to the public members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoo by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host then enter and send your name to the host you will be recognized to speak when your name is called and individuals will be invited to speak in the order in which we have received your request the board of education recognizes the value of public comment and educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest participants will be limited to three minutes duration is there anyone wishing to speak to the board tonight i have no one currently in the uh in the queue no one is in the queue okay seeing none i close the public portion we have several resolution of commendations of recognition tonight our first one is for the 2021 all eastern orchestra recommendation whereas two east brunswick high school seniors hannah were accepted to the 2021 nathan hall eastern orchestra and whereas musicians were selected from applicants across 11 states and washington dc hannah and varun participated in the virtual weekend experience and whereas as a role model for excellence in the arts maroon and hannah are an inspiration and motivation for their peers and have brought honor and recognition to their school the district and the entire community therefore be resolved that the east brunswick board of education recognizes and commends east brunswick high school students hannah lee and varun and their teachers dr arvind gopal and dr brian talk for this outstanding accomplishment may i please have a motion for this resolution is there any discussion i would just like to say that that in any year this would be an outstanding accomplishment to accomplish it with the added stress duress of a pandemic is extraordinary we are so proud of you any other discussion all those in favor hi hi opposed obscene motion carried well done for our second resolution of commendation the new jersey state seal of biliteracy i would like to invite our beloved superintendent of world languages ruth chang to read our resolution thank you mrs becker whereas 51 eastponzo high school seniors have demonstrated intermediate native proficiency in a language other than english and whereas we have an echo bernie are you picking it up yes we do ruth one minute please we don't want any of this to be anything less than perfect ruthie may continue thank you whereas these seniors have met the english graduation requirement and whereas the state of new jersey department of education certifies that these seniors have successfully qualified for the new jersey state seal of biliteracy approved by east brunswick school district now therefore be it resolved that the east brunswick board of education recognizes and commends the following seniors for having earned the new jersey state seal of my literacy yusuf chokri abdullah el-dasuki michael sun aaron ma honey wong emily dong jasmine liu brandon gao sophie gao abigail hortenoy filza siddiki rihanna nag ariba khan elizabeth minkowski janvi pai julie hamm srinidhi ayasa maya jula caitlin wong christina chen vincent beckler harner core kevin ernst gavin march guy plonner kia thakur shriya virgiswarin eunice kim neha rani marazaki jordan baker maya iskewitz gabrielle ignacio nikita yangar navni riley chase yusuf chohan emily chu enya madawa madurowala katherine costa alexandra gramulia adam ahmadi liliana cantillo srianz biswal minta kaune and jennifer ugly congratulations can i please have a motion for this resolution i moved moved by second by barbara is there any discussion laurie very bittersweet because ruth chang is part of the reason that our students year after year and so many of them attain this honor and this level of achievement so it's so fitting that you read this and i'm so thrilled to see you reading it i'm so happy for those 51 students and their families and i'm hoping that whoever um takes up the challenge and fills those big shoes of yours is going to have more and more and the best tribute we can have to you is to keep building on that number and have it get larger and larger every year so congratulations to you your staff and these wonderful students and their families thank you susannah um i just also want to echo thanks to um to ruth for everything that she's done for the world language program um and and also just you know to to wish you well in retirement um we're going to miss you dearly and i am just curious do you happen to know how many languages are represented by the students here in the in the test they've taken uh we have about 45 languages spoken in east brunswick here i think i have um probably about 12 or 13 different languages spoken here we have students who are native speakers who also were tested portuguese russian arabic um hindi hebrew in addition to the five languages that we teach that's amazing so kudos to the families who maintain their own language at home kudos to them for continuing that it's fantastic great okay thank you so i 100 agree with what uh laura and susanna said ruth i want to thank you for so many years devotion to our world language program i believe on many of all our students will miss you i will miss you too thank you thank you for your support and ruth it's a teamwork it's teamwork i don't think i could improve on what my colleagues have said they've said it so beautifully but i just wanted to tell you i i don't believe a school district is just an inanimate organization it has a heart and a soul and you have been such a part of that heart and soul thanks teamwork teamwork it is teamwork you have mentored and established an incredible department devoted professional teachers who have inspired our children to reach for the stars in terms of the languages they can learn and all of these children certified by literacy skills you're absolutely right without the support of their wonderful families it couldn't be achieved right but you have been a piece of our heart and soul thank you i just want to share that the students are the ones who now have the ability they have a skill set to build bridges of communication and understanding right beyond they can reach beyond borders now so kudos to these students i don't think i took a vote yet bernie did i oh you did not okay all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion carries well done all of you excellent job students excellent for our third resolution of commendation i'd like to invite jeff to please read it thank you president becker i like this one resolution of commendation to the students bodies of 2019 and 2020 and the 2 2020 and 2021 school year whereas the student bodies of 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 21 school years were required to quickly adapt to an unfamiliar learning environment resulting from the kobit 19 pandemic and whereas the student body's remarkable resilience underlying that twice in adapting to very different worlds both inside and outside of the classroom have exemplified the very essence of the east brunswick public schools and whereas the students will carry and benefit from the experience as they continue to learn importance of adapting to unusual circumstances throughout their lifetime now therefore be it resolved that the east coast board of education gratefully acknowledges and applauds and commends the steadfast perseverance of the student bodies of 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021 school years well done students well done can i please have a motion move by laurie second second by leewoo is there any discussion i would like to say that this this resolution was worded perfectly and to me the word that jumps out is perseverance it categorizes everything our students have done i cannot begin to imagine myself in your shoes you're just incredible to have made it through the pandemic to have accomplished what you have just incredible thank you for every ounce of courage dedication and commitment it took thank you lori that was so beautifully said um and you know it's funny we talk about all the the working parts and the people the administrators the staff and teachers everyone's done so much and you're right the students are the ones that stepped up day after day whether they were in the buildings or online and what amazed me was seeing the fact that they still were able to create that sense of camaraderie that you forgot sometimes that some kids never met this year except across the screen and you know i saw with my own kids they'd have study groups and things like that that they were able to do form relationships and just be kids and it was just so wonderful to see and you know what a great resolution thank you so much for that congratulations to all these kids because you not only survived these two difficult years because that's such a negative connotation you you did such a great job you thrived you helped each other and you'll come out better for it so enjoy your summers because you definitely earned them yes yeah to the students you know we've had some spirited conversations in my house over the last 16 months and and i can tell you many of us in this room have been through some crazy times in our lives and we talk about them proudly as old people uh remember the time of the gas crisis remember this remember that but i'll tell you what you have a story to tell and you have something to be so proud of that you were able to accomplish the things in this locks and mrs becker said and what this resolution said you have done something that in all likelihood no one will really be faced with again you came through it in amazing shining colors and i'll tell you i cannot be more proud of a group of kids in this township i think you're amazing and your stories you will tell your grandchildren about these last 16 months they're gonna tell their grandkids and grandkids and grandkids so take a mask squeeze it in your in your scrapbook have your uh have have dr volesky sign it because that is uh that's that's money it's it's it'll be a memory that you will really listen so great job kids jeff did you take a peek at my graduation speech for tomorrow i i something was stolen off my computer i just assumed it was you now nobody has to come to graduation tomorrow they just basically heard my speech okay thank you so much for that um beautiful reading jeff can i uh all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries to our students oh yeah thanks folks yeah okay and now on to our regular items we have one item on tonight's board of education agenda can i please have a motion for item one move by laurie second by lego is there any discussion mark was that a hand up to motion or a hand up to discuss um okay i'll get you next time any discussion all those in favor aye post abstain motion carries on our community programs agenda we have one item on the agenda tonight can i please have a motion for item one no move is there any discussion all those in favor barbara discussions i just wanted to commend the community programs department for the variety of programs here you have coding enrichment i mean during a very unusual year like we said they offered both uh virtually and in person so many different programs and they made it really wonderful for the students that they had both programs before and after school so just a thank you out to them any other discussion all those in favor aye opposed stain motion carries moving on to our curriculum and instruction agenda we have two items on the agenda tonight before i combine them would anyone like either separate it out seeing none can i please have a motion to combine items one and two on the curriculum agenda move by laurie second by jeff is there any discussion suzanna um i just have a question on the uh the chemistry textbook noted that there's a one-year pilot of online digital resources so i was wondering what our game plan was to assess the digital resource and um you know what what we would do with it in subsequent years and and is that standard for textbooks to make that an option um or are the textbooks tending to come with you know digital resources dr boley would you mind sure they come with digital resources uh this is a new uh set of resources available for the teachers to try out and pilot so before we commit to the purchase uh we thought that we would just try them out and see if we're finding bang for about there but that would be the trend that that textbooks are coming with the digital resources and that would be the plan to utilize both going forward right yeah right um this book has some opportunities for students to work out some of the situations in it so um it's it's it's a quasi textbook workbook so the digital resources provide um you know additional videos um instructional materials students can access at home and in the classroom great thank you so much i'm sorry libra i'm sorry so talk about it how many teachers will participate this pilot program this year i think they're about six okay thank you joyce do you anticipate that um digital resources coming with textbooks will eventually allow us uh not to have to replace the actual hardcover textbooks but rather and it will be a cost saving measure to have a digital version only yes um in many situations we are moving in that direction it's much easier obviously to update the digital resources than um a print book that's out of date quickly so yes we are moving in that direction currently but president i do want to caution the board that the textbook publishers are very savvy to the to the changing dynamic and the digital format will still cost the district money uh even though we won't have physical hard-bound copies in the future they will still charge us for every digital copy we use and license and that's an excellent point dr velesky i was actually thinking also of how it would save the kids shoulders in terms of not having as heavy a backpack to schlep around okay for for the uh our children will not carry the books but to plus their eyes there are many debates about the hard copy textbook and electronic textbook so we need to take a careful look before we adapt or switch to fully attack electronic textbooks absolutely and i i i think we have every indication that our curriculum team and dr valesky are not rushing into anything li wu but it was a a good point any other discussion all those in favor mrs becker if i may i'm sorry this should be a roll call we didn't indicate that on the agenda you did not indicate that on the agenda but that's okay we will do a roll call for you call us i'm so grateful thank you mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr han yes this is lax yes this is reese yes mr winston yes and president yes motion carries moving on to our facilities agenda there are two items on it tonight before i ask to combine them is would anyone like either separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items one and two on the facilities agenda [Music] move by jeff second by laurie is there any discussion all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries i hear a bit of an echo again bernie is it um apparent to you also yes it is i'm not sure where it's coming from but uh there is a little feedback okay i think it's jeff moving on to our financial services agenda before i ask for a motion to combine items 1-15 is there anything anyone would like separated out scene none can i please have a motion for items one thing i moved by laurie second is there any discussion okay well the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr hong yes this is lax yes this is rhys yes mr winston yes president becker yes except i do abstain on item number 11 report of awarded contracts thank you moving on to our human resources agenda there are four items on it before i asked to combine these items would anyone like anything separated out see none can i please have a motion for items one through four so moved to larry second by marco angelo is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes it's rahab yes this is lex yes mrs reese yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries we have one item on our staff development agenda tonight can i please have a motion for item one so moved move by laurie second second by jeff is there any discussion all those in fever opposed stain motion carries on our student services agenda before i ask for a motion to combine items one through eight is there anything anyone would like separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items one through eight move move by lori second by leewoo is there any discussion barbara i just thought it it would be nice just to explain to folks about number six about effective school solutions how the superintendent in the district is working in the board to try to prepare for uh people folks coming back full time to school and uh and offering special uh social and emotional supports perhaps someone could explain it better than me but excellent excellent point barbara thank you for bringing it up dr valesky and thank you mr reese and you know the uh the board was very supportive of this program and expanding this program but leading this charge for the district so got to figure out would you mind saying a few words about this for the absolutely and thank you again uh miss reece uh for bringing it up and dr velasque if you ask me to speak briefly about it um we have uh looked at the uh our student body we realized that this has been a very traumatic time of many reasons in many ways during kovid um the board has been very supportive of our concerns and our issues when making sure that we were as prepared as possible when students come back to school that they have the supports that they need to help them be academically and socially emotionally successful um so that's really the goal for us and again i can't thank the board enough for the support um a tremendous amount to our students um as we move forward so thank you again and thank you lou and your staff this program could not possibly be a success if it wasn't for the dedicated staff you have who will implement it any other discussion this is a roll call vote for the secretary of state mr angelo yes mrs chu yes mr hong yes mrs lax yes this is rhys yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries we're now up to committee reports information items and for the good of the cause of the board and tonight i would like to start out with a presentation from our new student representative nora hennessey we are so glad to have you we welcome you um and we look forward to hearing from you by the way um you have to come every single meeting in the summer you're not allowed to miss one only kidding nora you will not be graded on this there will be no pop quizzes we're just happy to have you so the floor is yours thank you for the introduction i'm very happy to be here um i might come to some this summer i did just want to talk about our end of the school year events and about everyone being able to come back together after being virtual for so long we had our senior awards and our varsity awards which got some parents in the school and a lot of the students back together uh even though it did rain for the senior awards um and then we had this senior night i believe that was last week um and that was a big hit i think there were over 400 students that attended that and they had a lot of fun i've heard from a lot of my friends that it was very enjoyable just to be able to be together with people and their friends that they haven't seen in a while um and then we have graduation tomorrow as everyone knows and we have um i believe tony talked about the increase in tickets allotted per person which will allow more families to come and more friends to watch their students graduate um and that is mostly all for the end of the year uh going into next year we have student council was aiming to plan a beginning of the year event to welcome everyone back to the school and kick off the school year and we'll work on planning that over the summer so i may have some reports on that and i believe we are we are setting up a homeroom representative uh for each home room next year and that will be our principal's council that we will uh we're hoping to get a wider variety of students and their insight on the school for a more broad report for here and to the principal beautifully done nora thank you so much and you got two thumbs up from dr valesky and and a partial thumb from dr figueroa that's very a partial thumb is good so to start us off tonight i just simply want to say piggybacking on that wonderful resolution that jeff read yes our students were amazing this year last year as i said before i cannot imagine being in their shoes but every stakeholder in this district rose to the occasion and surpassed it and got us through a very dark time in a very positive way from the top down dr velesky and his incredible central office team all our administrators all of our staff our support staff all of the parents and guardians and families we could not have done this without your support and participation and i know for many of you it was an opportunity to finally learn that calculus that you managed to get out of in high school but you had to revisit with your students i heard from a few parents that they actually enjoyed being the mentor for the homeschooling when our children were on remote because it gave them an opportunity to go back to the classroom so to speak of course it wasn't it was just a few most of most of the parents it was a tremendous amount of work and finally again to our amazing students to the township of east brunswick to all the officials who cooperated with us and made everything possible all the initiatives we had to do to all the residents to all the businesses this was truly an undertaking by a village and we are profoundly grateful okay i see laurie's hand so we are a village and i just want to reiterate this village was led by a very important patient person dr volesky it was actually very nice for me to get to see you get accolades by all the parents at some of the past events that we've had with the national honor society the senior awards because you sir take the brunt of everything you get to hear everything you've done wrong every complaint is going to come to you so we thank everyone i don't think we thank you enough because you are the head of this organization and you take care of everyone from your staff to the students to the parents to every stakeholder that that vicky has mentioned so kudos to you again because while we thank everybody else um we've seen you take a lot and you've done it with such class and such grace and those parents that came up to you night after night at those events to thank you it was good to see that they recognized the work that you put in because we all talk about the students and the staff and and they wanted to make sure that that um didn't pass us by and speaking about the events what ms norris said is so true it's so nice to see some normalcy i love seeing all the signs because it's not just the graduates from high school it's the fifth grade and they had their moving up hammer shoulder had an end of your party and it was so nice to see 600 kids running around hammer showed eating ice cream eating ices just being kids and laughing so um we're all going to make it and you know good luck to all of us and i know they said good luck to you in retirement ruth but i'm still very very upset that you're retiring so i wish you the best but you know i wish you weren't retiring so yeah i hope you miss us a little i hope retirement is good but i hope that there's some twinges of darn i miss that joke yes absolutely absolutely yes thank you any time bernie i just want the record to reflect that i did mention dr boleski's he's the one vic you know we get it too certainly people bring the board for the good the bad the ugly i was kidding that a lot of the pressure rests on on his shoulders what you said was lovely i was kidding i just wanted to absolutely well i i thank you for those very kind words but i do have to acknowledge uh karen mandler and janet angeline in my office who have talked to a number of very upset parents over the many many months and have have been you know helped me be the face of the district and and so we have the entire central office team has been the face of the district out and about communicating the same message so i'm so proud of them um for what we together as a district board members and administrators have accomplished i'm just very proud you really should be because a lot of the board members here are parents and some of them still with kids in the district some whose kids went through and will be going through so you know we we appreciate that on that level and your staff is absolutely terrific but you you sir at the end of the day i don't know how many parents out there realize that you will take phone calls from parents angry parents happy parents you know you don't hide behind anybody and i think that's just very adverbal and you do have a terrific staff he did good well thank you but i think the representative tonight nora and then tony before her uh who's going to be you know graduating tomorrow i think they represent a student body that as you said earlier as jeff so eloquently said you know they're they persevere they're resilient and and they represent our future and i am so confident uh that we are all in good hands with the capabilities all these young people have demonstrated over the last 15 months thank you dr velasque and again beautifully said lori yeah they get better nora you're gonna do terrific i have no doubt you're so well spoken and every year we have a student that comes and knocks our socks off and we think what are they going to send us next year how can they be better you know tony was terrific you're it's it's uncanny you're all personable and bright and the reports just make some of us feel like we're back in the high school and um yeah you are our future and that makes me very very happy i see jeff's hand up yeah i i don't want to embarrass dr valesky anymore and keep praising him for his death first i think it's i think it's been very well stated and and another thing that dr varesky uh did was put a little spring in the parents step uh in getting the kids back to school and uh the tip of the hat to the patterns for persevering uh through all of this uh we need to give them a resolution but you know if you do take if you do i'll i'll take it i think it's great um parents uh what i've gotten into feedback i know you've you you've fielded a lot of days um and i guess the positive ones don't call you but i i heard a lot in this township and there was an enormous amount of praise and the fact that you could add pandemic management to your resume makes you uh that much more special i think i think you did an outstanding job i know the parents truly are for the most part very happy um so i know i am so so with that uh thank you very much to you and your staff karen and everybody uh to a job exceptionally well done thank you any other board members susanna um i just have a committee report to give um and on the theme of our amazing students um this past tuesday the human relations council hosted a facebook live event and it was called unity at east brunswick high school so if you missed it it is available at the east brunswick human relations council facebook page and a diverse group of students got together to share their experiences and perspectives about how they connect with their backgrounds and their cultures and one thing i wanted to point out is that many of the students pointed to and highlighted the benefits of the many extra extracurricular programs and clubs that are available at the high school as as being uh invaluable to them uh in in terms of growing and learning as individuals and within groups so there was a lot of accolades for the benefits of completing in the programs and the variety of the programs and the programs that that bring students of of all backgrounds and cultures together um were all highlighted uh in that evening event i was just so impressed by the uh the young men and women who spoke at that uh at that event um and talked about their you know their experiences so i encourage you to listen in if you didn't have a chance to do so uh at the live event thank you and and of course i you know i just want to echo everybody else's praise for the entire staff students parents the entire community um you know the days are are brightening up now and really looking forward to graduation tomorrow uh before i call on laurie again was there anyone else uh laurie again and then barbara stuck her hand in okay barb laurie after laura is fine lori barb i thanks i just want to i forgot since we're speaking about events i just wanted to tell everyone now that school is out and we should all be outdoors the annual vfw post 133 benefit 5k walk slash run barbara we know because barbara and i have walked flash fun on on july 25th it is co-sponsored by the vfw and the east brunswick education their pride in public education if anyone has come to it before it's a great organization it's a great event it's a lot of fun you do not have to run you can walk it um but i just wanted to tell everybody you know look for it uh you can still sign up they give you a t-shirt and they have the road closed off it's a great event and it's a worthwhile cause so again it's july 25th um if you want information you can go to the vfw website um for any of the board members i have this the sheet here but i just wanted to do that and don't kill me vicky you know it's funny i have to just thank you as well because you ran these meetings during the pandemic and we all talk about zoom it really is not fun no one likes doom and i have to say as someone who can't stand being on the hollywood squares and you never know if someone can hear you if there's feedback you ran these meetings for the last 16 months like a rock star so good for you all not knowing who to call on where to see um as long as we're all talking about you know all the good that people have done it's no easy feat so thank you so much and now we'll stop talking thank you so much lori that was really very lovely and of course it couldn't do it alone even though sometimes i feel like i'm ruling my world from my the real world from my family room um everybody on this screen we got through all these meetings i like rock stars like pros so thanks to everybody here but thank you lori it was lovely barbara i i thank you uh i just my sincere and heartfelt thank you to everybody it really uh our fellow board members but dr valesky you know i it's been said i'm echoing what has already been said but to you and the administration the principals the teachers the staff the parents and families honestly i think some people just take it for granted some of the things that we have had here that even the things like the meals like with the distribution of the meals that's a massive operation and the fact that it's continuing in the summer it runs so well so many people have been helped by that and things like the technology being able that we you know you had uh your staff and worked so hard so diligently in the technology department to you know when we had a trouble with something when there was a computer that was broken it got fixed right away uh you know just there's so many different examples of even with uh having a vaccination clinic i mean it's like a one-stop shop so really i don't i'm sure i you know i represent the whole board to thank you for all that you've done all that your staff has done and the parents have been amazing and the kids but if if it wasn't for the fact that we have such a wonderful uh superintendent administration our assistant superintendents the whole the whole central board it wouldn't have happened and i think sometimes when we're in these friends we just think well this is how it works but it doesn't work that way every place else and it really works well here and we thank you for for everything and this seems to be the night for shout outs and barbara you touched upon something very important um this was a year when we needed technology more than we've ever needed it before and last year too and nicholas electronica are you here tonight i think i see you i i am here president becker um you guys are the real rock stars uh everything you and your staff did to support all our teachers our administrators our students and our parents was mind-boggling mind-boggling dr valesky had the foresight to prepare us with the technology going into this not knowing that we were about to enter a quarantine that was only supposed to be a few weeks and that extended 16 months so to speak what you did nick you and your staff was enable education to continue in east brunswick and we are profoundly grateful your statements humble me and i really give great praise and thanks to the entire i.t department very dedicated group of people thank you good job nick president becker if i could mention one one more thing real quick okay um you know what we do uh as an organization is all about relationships and i can't go without saying that you know we have we have a good relationship with east brunswick education association and the east brunswick principles and supervisors association and they've been partners at the table in the planning for every next step that we took um and have been supportive in the communication consistent communication so i applaud dr dana zavicky and mr andy scanlon who who lead those organizations uh for their efforts and you know it's just everybody's focused on students and from the board on down i said it earlier the student center focus is what is the hallmark of our success and and people who have people reached out to to me today who have been relatively temporary employees at east brunswick and that's what they're impressed about the people they're working with that are the the tried and true east brunswick employees how everybody is student centered and they haven't seen that in other districts they've been working in so you know kudos to everyone it's just been um it's been an experience we don't want to repeat but everybody not only stepped up to the challenge but they exceeded the challenge so thank you talk about running a meeting remotely how about running an entire building remotely as our building leaders did we're just running your classroom remotely as all our staff did as you said dr valesky it was a mammoth effort and done so well anyone else wishing to speak we do have a need for closed session the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting these subjects are within the exceptions the open public meetings act and the board of education intends to discuss matters as follows those items in tonight's agenda the length of the closed session is estimated to be one hour after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and action will not be taken and i please have a motion to go into closed session moved by laurie second by jeff is there any discussion all those in favor opposed abstain motion carries we're going into close good night thank you for joining us keep your fingers crossed for good weather tomorrow for graduations happy summer you
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Hello my name is nicole scales and I am the instructional coach for the Madison School District and I want to welcome you to our Madison Virtual Academy! We call it MVA. I'm going to be supporting you and your child as your child attends our school. I'm so excited about the great things that they have planned for you and I'm so excited about my role that will be that it will include supporting you as you join our school. Thank you!
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Hello my name is Dr. La Joi Gardner and I am the Madison School District Science Coach and Coordinator and I would like to share details about our Madison Virtual Academy science program. The Madison Virtual Academy science program is designed as a teacher facilitated semi-self-paced inquiry learning program. As a semi-self-paced inquiry learning program that is teacher facilitated, students are provided with their weekly learning assignments expectations and goals. Students engage in science learning activities that develop a deep understanding of science concepts aligned to the Arizona and national science standards. These learning assignments include interactive reading, interactive inquiry activities, interactive lab investigations and simulations, group discussion blogs, online science journaling, and performance based tasks. The Madison Virtual Academy science teachers will provide the details for the weekly learning assignments, expectations, and goals for students on the class web page. Students are expected to complete and submit all learning assignments by the end of the last day for each school week. This offers students and families flexibility by self-scheduling their science learning weekly. Science teachers will continuously monitor each student's progress, provide feedback, and be available during the school day for academic support answering questions and providing one-on-one virtual support when needed.
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Hi, my name is Ashley Bohlman and I'm the Madison School District English Language Arts Instructional Coach. I just wanted to tell you about what the MVA ELA reading block would look like. Every day Monday through Friday your students will have live instruction up to 135 minutes in the area of english language arts. This is our only subject area that is done live with the teacher leading the lessons. Students will be engaged in reading, writing, and speaking and listening daily. There'll be cooperative learning structures used so students will be talking with each other and working together as they practice their fluency, work on comprehension questions, and even give feedback to each other on their writing. We plan to integrate social studies into our ELA block. At the end of each quarter, students are going to experience a 10-day multi-learning experience in which they're doing some problem-based learning.
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