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we have a resolution that we are approving the acceptance of our esea funding this is federal money that we receive it's broken down into different titles title 1 title 2 3 which is esl all of this funding is used primarily to support staff members that we hire for these particular programs so this helps our local budget and uh this year we're receiving i would say about 95 to 100 percent of the allocations that we've received in the past 95 okay 95 yeah which is which is pretty good yes okay so that's one of the resolutions we are passing tonight and page 20 as i mentioned before we have a resolution that's accepting the 21st century funding which is a 500 000 grant that we receive from the federal government that helps run our after-school program in grades four through eight okay any questions regarding the consent agenda at this time i just like to make two comments sure i want to thank mrs cardin for all of her hard work and dedication to the children of this district she has been wonderful and i only wish her the best in her retirement and i want to commend the cliffside park school district with a 500 000 21st century grant as a mom of the child who went through that program every year that you had it i thought it was a phenomenal program one of the finest programs i've seen anywhere and the fact that there is no cost to the parents or you know obviously for the children in the program is just really a benefit to the community so thank you very much and you know very commended on that i have to say i have to say it is a great program the students get an hour of enrichment and the enrichment varies from athletics to cooking to robotics to different things and then an hour of homework help and it's funded and it's not funded staffed by our teachers and that's the best part about that a lot a lot of districts do not do that but we do do that and i think it helps because the teachers know the kids and they're familiar with the work that they're working on and so on and so forth so it is a great program it's excellent you know it's excellent you know that they have their own teachers it's a phenomenal thing and it's not income based right i appreciate that because it's truly for all students and any student can and has benefited from it thank you thank you mr omg one other i am worth mentioning on page 18 we're accepting the awarding of the security grant and there's three components that security grant is a mandate from the state we have four patent buttons in each school and there's two other projects that engage that grant one is the high school pa system installation and phones in each of the classrooms that project is expected to be completed sometime next week and then we will engage in the number five school project same project installing a new pa system and phones in each of the classrooms and that should start immediately after the summer school program which i believe ends with roman gina this coming friday right so we expect to start that project uh next week so far overall the timeline is pretty secure for the high school program and we expect that to be completed by next week great okay anything anyone else just to mention as you know we have an extensive bill list this time of the year uh you know we go through a lot of capital improvements and all the work going on in the schools i did the meet with lou alfano this morning about 7 30.

she then became positive she was a breakthrough case because she had been fully vaccinated interestingly enough and remember moderna is only 94 effective Pfizer is only 95 effective so five out of every hundred individuals can break through so anyway in this case the individual has two children in the school system and they're not in school right now so we're doing okay and we don't have to do contact tracing with them but we certainly will deal with the family so contact tracing becomes very important to curb the spread within a community and the community rate is going to be reflected in the school rate whether or not a child tests positive or not they still can be carriers I don't think many of you are old enough to remember Typhoid Mary from New York she spread typhoid and was responsible for 24 deaths in the city of New York because she was a subtle carrier nobody knew she had typhoid and she was sweating so individuals both children and adults can be can be subtle carriers and cleaning and disinfection we don't have to go overboard of because of the fact that we learned early uh well relatively recently that it's not important to do as much cleaning and disinfecting as was previously thought what brought the initial cleaning and disinfecting out it was fear it was fear that the somebody was going to contract the disease when it was very popular and when it was widespread in the community so we've had well over two thousand uh deaths I mean well well over 2 000 cases in Brookfield um and unfortunately sadly I just received the report today that one more Brookfield resident died yesterday in North Westchester Hospital uh so that's going to happen but it is rare and it is the exception so the bottom line is that we want to layer the prevention strategies such that if enough prevention strategies are in place and we have enough of the community vaccinated such that there won't be any such thing as herd immunity we then have a greater opportunity to get rid of masks from a local Health director's standpoint it's certainly going to be our recommendation to the governor whether he will listen or not who knows someone mentioned we might have an answer in a week it's not likely we probably won't have an answer for two weeks that was what the governor said yes uh yesterday um no no testing would be pool testing and it would be for well I'm sorry this is this is a board meeting and public commentary results thank you um testing will not be mandatory it will not and we applied the elite nine in our plan as we did all of last year to what Dr Sullivan was saying and I know Mr Belden you had a question for yeah I'm listening to the discussion which is which is very helpful by the way thank you um so what you're if we're given the option would you recommend that we lift the mask mandate in Brookfield and use all the other layering to to control the spread I would say I would say yes that would be my recommendation me how much how much power I have I'm only one of six Health directors on the advisory committee and uh I must say my experience uh being on an advisory committee has not been very good I was also on the vaccine allocation advisory committee for the governor and uh my thoughts didn't go very far there either right and and when you say lifted it's all ages young up through High School correct that's correct okay thank you um the disease is very real that's the one I'm important you know we've had 600 000 people die in this country um and uh it's significant and it does affect kids in some instance all one has to do is if you can get in walk through ccmc someday and look at the Missy's award uh Missy is uh multiple uh multiple organ syndrome uh in children and it's very real there's a study going on at Children's in Hartford right now with regard to the number of cases so if it's your child then it becomes even more important but it is somebody's child and that's my concern I have 17 I have 11 grandchildren and I don't want a single one of them to get infected that's for sure but the fact is that the disease is real and we have to try to convince people that it is real and it can't be compared to other diseases because it's so highly contagious and now we have this new Delta variant the Delta variants started in India we know that it's much more contagious we don't know who's carrying it that's the big thing you can even be a carrier and test negative that's another thing the fact is that the slightly older age group of children 12 to 15 who are being offered vaccination are the ones that are mostly spreading the disease 12 to 15 and then 15 to about 35.

2024. my goodness wow okay Mike I have a question uh so uh Dr Garcia is my newest note here 16 of cases uh new cases rather are children uh which you say is a scary stat I I don't what does cases mean I think that's sort of cases well I mean hospitalizations no they just have sniffles are they you know because I see this word cases thrown around a lot and it just doesn't seem to be a very accurate number anywhere I've seen because I I mean I just kind of Google searched that and I saw numbers all over the place so I mean so I kind of want I just uh one was AAP of so I kind of Wonder where'd you get that stat and uh how would you define like what what qualifies as a case just a positive no matter what so what in what I said uh it was uh my source was the CDC website that's from today um and it was the total number of cases new cases yesterday um and so that's positive uh test and with the 16 PCR I that was not mentioned okay so Mike that's my problem with the case number the first comment um you know false positive on those uh PCR test has a less than two percent probability of false positive that's CDC or that's the machine the information from the machine all right it's called Abbott ID now okay so I've seen anywhere between like 20 percent of what's possible you're probably looking at the antigen test okay thank you uh also where I didn't see this is new to me the 15 to 35 carrying the disease where was that found just for my reference I like to follow the stuff either once Dr solver Dr Garcia say that again there was a Dr Sullivan mentioned the 15 to 35 carrying the disease where was that found just so I can yeah it sounds like a national number okay that's that's basically uh um they're basically known as the super spreaders and that was on uh if you look back on the data in the early when we saw the secondary Spike they and if you look at the data you see that the the age group and they break it down unfortunately 15 to 44.

so that does not 2002. um that was when there was a large community convening and this came out of a community-wide group that was pulled together to put this vision and mission statement into place so this has been [Music] there for a long time that may mean that we need to change it um or maybe it has tested the it's stood the test of time i think it's very comprehensive and it's how the community uh came together with us as you said in a collective movement so i don't see a need to change that the expectations came into place my first year as superintendent and that was working with what at that time was called district leadership team has since morphed into district leadership council and that was designed to provide support and clarification on expectations for district employees so the expectations in the mission statement have been consistent from year to year it has been the goals that have changed from year to year but i do think it's important that the board see these in their entirety that was all a very long-winded way of saying there's no expectation that you'd change those yes mr lando i've got one super minor quibble about the mission statement um maybe it's not minor actually i take that back there's a line in there about that we want our student field to confidently compete in a changing global society and that word compete just jumps out at me i really love it if we could participate in or be a member of a changing level society without the i don't find personal success confidently find personal success something like that the idea that we're throwing them into this dog-eat-dog world where they're gonna have to go out guns blazing um i don't know the word compete bugs me i'll be honest in this particular one is abby you suggested a wording change what was it specifically i just know i said personal success um i might suggest that i'd rather see our students confidently take part in or confidently join a changing global society navigate personal access success navigate i can't remember what my word was yeah i think the idea behind your thinking and i agree is that it kind of goes back to our every student every day mantra now um where we're not talking about how they compare to each other we want them to set their own personal goals and feel success based on their own personal growth um so i am i'm i'm on board with you with maybe figuring out different language for the word compete participate are we actually rewriting the mission statement right now yes theoretically okay it's our document i mean i like it the way that it is i'll just say i mean on this on that particular point um no we we compete in in the global society you know and i don't think that it helps the students i mean this is no more than a mission statement but it's no less than a mission statement either and and you know i i think it's a straight talk if you tell kids that they will be competing in a in a changing global society i don't think you should try to sugarcoat it because as many you know insulating things as we have built into our society you know there's no guarantee those things won't go away at some point in time and i think that kids should be prepared i just think that compete is a little bit narrow of a word because it's not just competing that they're going to be doing um i think i like the word engage in an in a changing global society which would lend itself to being competitive but also enjoying life and not always worrying about the rat race you know like we want our students to have that broader perspective of of what their education will do for them yeah i thought about the word engage the problem is that then we have to actually reword the whole sentence because it would say confidently engage in attainable society by engaging in i know it's the worst so we could change engaging into completing because if our mission is you know not just that they're going to take classes but they're going to finish them executing executing see that's that's good bloodthirsty all right how's that for you matt executing sounds even better than compete competing i'm back to liking participate in a changing global society by engaging in a quality education yeah that works too now that i was pointed out that i was being repetitive i need a motion well i would like to move to replace the word compete with the word participate i'll second that motion any further discussion huh no we got we have to wake up matt and kathy [Laughter] i don't have any discussion i i have just something to say i yeah i think it's a dog eat dog world out there and i yeah kind of all the things you said you know um uh i think that i don't favor this change this is not my favorite mission statement in the world the one that we have here but but but on that point yeah i'm gonna have to be a no vote on this one sorry i mean i do think the mission statement is all inclusive and whatnot but it feels like it was made in the early 2000s i'll i'll say that too yeah i'll say that too it definitely lends itself to that it's much different from our equity statement which is eight people to in an hour to my counselor that i had a conversation with today about how i was managing stress in this world would would not want us to have compete in there you know it's it can be debilitating and participate is you know you choose your level and what's what's healthy for you okay uh i'm going to call for a vote we have a motion and a second and discussion on changing the word compete in to participate in all those in favor signify by saying i opposed nay okay four to one in favor okay so we have the mission statement done uh do we want to take another look at the goals or leave them as they are presented we did a lot of work on them boy did we okay let me re-clarify that the goals one two and three are the lcap goals and the borders already voted on those do we want to let those stand um as they are or do we want to add a focus goal if we don't want to add a focus goal we can move on i think our focus has already been described over and over and over in our lcap i excuse me i agree with tom we don't need to pull focus away from that by trying to define something else i think four i want to leave absolutely because we've we've seen evidence over and over that we need to increase meaningful parent involvement and input as much as we've tried we could still do better and i think just having it there and and working on maybe a a workshop with that intended topic would be good and in school climate that encompasses our social emotional structure are everything that goes on in the way of making schools a safe healthy inviting vibrant environment for our kids okay oh i'm sorry maybe i jumped ahead of you i was just gonna say i do think still that it it should have a motion it should probably be a an action item and action to leave it without a focus goal somebody needs some somebody needs to call for a motion okay board do we have a motion to uh deal with board goals for the 21 22 school year i moved to have no focus goal thank you is there a second i will second that i have a motion in a second any further discussion okay let's uh i call for a vote um all those in favor of leaving goals one through five as they were in 2021 without a focus goal one through three huh one through three one two three and we need a roll called loop what are we doing with four and five there's no four and five there's no four sure what have i got did you give me old documents yes that was last year so this is this year you're looking at last year's this is not last year's 21 that's what this says no idea where you got that it came from this is what's in the packet it was a setup that's what it was okay um for those of you that have the correct documents all of us in favor of saying aye dalby tennis not voting and this is based on my my no vote on the lcap lando i uh i think that would be a no vote then yeah that's a no vote robert and i abstain right and tennis now i'm actually abstaining abstaining it's an abstention right that's fine okay um do you have suggestions for what i should say i think this relates back to the lcap conversation right but if you is my understanding just that you're abstaining because you already voted no on the lcap so that you don't feel the need to vote on this because i like i already don't agree with it right i liked the old goals better you know i could go back and read them again and then you'd see how much more how much better they are than these but but yeah i just like the old goals better i i want to point out that we've already had this discussion a couple of times before and so and he can abstain and he doesn't have to explain himself enough to explain okay we just want us to move forward yes okay uh motion carries four to one huh yeah now that i have the right documents because the superintendent's office set me up with incorrect paperwork okay and we are i'm sorry let me get back to where we are next yes yes board workshop topics okay so each year the board has the opportunity to look in depth at additional topics that aren't in depth in a regular board meeting regular board meetings we try to keep the agenda items to 15 minutes in a board workshop we allow 90 minutes and sometimes it goes longer than that to take an in-depth look at a particular topic what i did hear is i asked board members as well as district staff if there were items that they felt were important to have more information for the board or that the board wanted to learn more about and those items are listed here under the suggested topics for 2122 board workshop consideration if you notice there are 15 of them we have five or four workshop months so the most we could accommodate would be uh five at this particular point and that's due to we don't have board workshops in december january and march and usually not august another part of this process is as we determine the board workshop so we always ask for two board members to be the liaisons to staff to make sure that we get it right these workshops are for you to provide additional information so we want to make sure that the information we're providing is what you want nothing worse than you thinking you're getting something and we present in a completely different direction so as we go through this and determine which five we would like to learn more about we'll also be asking for board members to serve as liaisons to staff to help develop that workshop or guide us yes um yeah yes thank you just a quick comment and i wonder if we couldn't fit one more in given that uh we're not gonna we're not gonna have a board area of focus it's true so we have the month for a workshop also your topic what was your topic i didn't have one i never took it i was just uh asking whether we could fit an expert we can do anything you want this just because uh you typically in may we review the board focus and we just chose not to have one so um what i do want if you can look at the sheet that's in your online packet as well that lists the dates of the board workshops and then uh the september first one has already been allocated to the california voters right act because the board is engaged in that process but we've been on hold for a period of time so that one um does already have a topic assigned to it but october 6 november 3rd february 2nd april 6th is that 1 2 3 4.

15 probably is a whole thing all on its own if we wanted to do that 14 and 15. um the the why 14 and 15 came up was when i've read the the overview of the trailer bills that came after you know in the process of passing the budget and saw you know the topics and and all the money and some of it was grants and some of it was direct i went how do we raise our hand to get that money that's what started the conversation was what do we do at the department level at the administrative level you know how do we get that money so we can spend it and plan it if that's not something we want to look at then take 14 and 15 off because that was the intent of those two subjects but kevin can do a cover page for his next budget update yeah and it's not to devalue those topics because those are important topics for us to understand but i just i realized how little i knew about that process i've learned the hard way through my new job yeah and so i thought well you know if i haven't learned it in 40 years maybe i need yeah the money just appears and you just say okay yeah spend it yeah yeah it's it's um i'm sure it's actually a really interesting conversation to hear about i i wouldn't prioritize it in the top five okay i agree take it out kevin that's on you okay so so far we have district-wide communication outreach with student group being included in that we have special education programs with the focus on inclusive inclusive inclusion cte programs and technology plan yeah announce so i have on my list also facilities master plan update learning loss systems of student support in chico unified which was number one systems of support and chico unified that's like all of the social emotional academics isn't that what's in our l-cap well it's just number one on this list that's and learning loss that you brought up is not also also not on this list i think those are what's addressed in the yell gap okay yeah oh okay so um we're going to do 10 and 11 together then we can i'm sorry can we actually just really quick identify what on here would just go into our lcap update so that i understand like where it's going to come up and not be a stand-alone workshop so number one the systems of student support that would fall under hellcap yeah there'd be two meetings well let me clarify that when we do the lcap we're looking at everything in the lcap so that is a very expansive but not in depth so this was on here for a more in-depth look at what we're doing to support student needs we're doing so much that's new this year that this is a very important topic and if it couldn't be done within an lcap presentation i think it does need to be a workshop almost i mean how much of our sr dollars are going towards this specific point how many fifty five zero 55 million yes over 55 million dollars so that's just my one board trusty opinion we have five slots the ones that i i endorse as top five personally are systems of student support and chica unified to district-wide communication outreach and engagement including student groups outreach efforts yeah um cte awareness and engagement k-12 i wanted to make sure we added that um and um special education and inclusion okay those were my those are my four so far i have not been convinced for my number five slot but again i am one of five of the board of trustees okay okay so the ones that i see that we don't have interest in moving forward here would be numbers four five eight eleven isn't eight going to be part of the student group's outreach it's certainly i mean i thought you're talking about i mean that's such a broad topic that could we include it in number one sure put eight and one two eight and one together so um for that one for number one systems of student support in chicago unified with subcategories bias and equity and would we also and let's just extend it another 30 minutes i'm just kidding learning recovery is is is part of that discussion definitely that one academics does that sound good to you madam president i'm yeah uh i like the term learning recovery i think yeah that was much so so you're putting one eight and learning recovery which is part of one part of one okay so we have 1 two and three are combined yeah that would be a second one uh six seven nine and ten are the ones that we're looking at so that's eight one two eight goes with five six madam superintendent can you kind of break that out again rather than just say stating those numbers maybe kind of sure add a few more words to that so one that has been identified to come back as a board workshop is systems of student support in chico unified and under that we would be addressing student academic social emotional and behavioral needs we would be discussing work in the area of equity and bias and we would be discussing learning recovery efforts the second one was district-wide communication outreach and engagement and that would look at parent student staff and community groups included in that would be our student group outreach efforts and that's our both our state identified groups as well as our targeted groups and then as well as chico unified um identified student groups yeah that's c and then um six on the on the workshop list but really would be our third one that we would be considering right now would be chica unified special education programs with the focus on our inclusive classroom practices that's the third one on our list you say yeah so the previous one has a lot a lot under it then communications outreach organizations including uh target and id yeah groups that's all one okay yeah well that yeah that's one item so there is a list um in on the computer and in the handouts that is the list of the ones that were forwarded to us and so that's the list that i'm working off of right now so then we have career tech so then we have uh career technical education programs k-12 the chico unified technology plan and our facility master plan and update on that cte one um is it important enough to specify awareness and engagement you bet please thank you what was that caitlyn cte awareness and engagement k-12 or k-12 cte awareness and engagement okay and then the chico unified technology plan and the facility plan facility master plan and updates tom let me try something out you guys um i just shared a document with you guys i was telling if we could just instead of doing this verbally could we like just all look at the same document and make our list and compare what we like that would be wonderful do you have it that you i do i shared out a document to the rest of the board called workshop topic priorities i listed my top six i think we just all plot something in there we could see where like there's three or four we all agree on call those done and move from there where did you share it as a google doc yes and i should share mrs daley as well okay you went to your net address because that's one associated with her can we squeeze in facilities master plan and technology in the same meeting i don't know i was mostly being facetious y'all yeah they're extremely complex i don't think i can get this through my you got it okay i'm so tech challenged let's see if kelly can forward it okay it should happen until it's brought up there i i i didn't bring the computer where is my email sorry i think i may have made this more complicated needed to be cusd webmail tom did you put yours in your your own rank no they're not ranked they're just i shouldn't have that a non-numbered so really you guys are very very close we need to get it down to five we have six well i've i've got six they may disagree and have a different top six right and then i feel like where if we have well i think what i've heard from the group as a whole the ones that i have circled and the ones that i've crossed out were down to six awesome i've never been in here there's nothing on the second page that was moving forward it was already allocated can't read it unless they blow it up watch it mister i'll come over there [Laughter] this will really just distract you guys like the restroom while you all type things okay that's not fair i'm glad you did this tom um we're gonna take a as needed potty break uh they i don't know ask erica i told her to go get him so how long does do we need before um i think i've got it um actually but yeah it's right here right yeah okay yes this is okay we're back in session back in session so i would like to propose that um our topics that we use board workshops for would be item one on the suggested topic list student systems of support in chico unified and that will include our plan for addressing student academic social emotional behavioral needs um equity bias work as well as learning recovery and that would be one workshop a second workshop would cover district-wide communication outreach and engagement across all parents students staff and community groups and included in that of course would be our student outreach area so that would be a second topic a third topic would be chico unified special education with a focus on the inclusive classroom the fourth topic would be chico unified career technical education programs k-12 both awareness and engagement title a little bit on that um and then the last one would be our chico unified technology plan what we would do is move the facilities master plan and update to a regular board meeting condense it down to a 20-minute presentation so we'll pick an agenda that's light and then this also allows our community to hear more about what we're doing on the facility site so that gives us the five topics that we need and then and then the opportunity to do the facility of the master plan update still updates we'll be getting the ones that everybody has mentioned they wanted to be as mentioned we okay with that okay with that yes okay so now let's keep moving out let's go uh let's assign dates to these dates dates as well as we thinking about this uh board liaisons for each of these board workshops so the first one and the available dates are october 6 november 3rd february 2nd april 6th and may 4th the first one would be the systems of student support i feel like that one should be sometime mid-year november or february but february almost seems too late but november almost feels too early so i don't know what's best mr marshall says you're gonna be leading that one what do you think february yeah but november's late november is late enough to have meaningful feedback but also a chance to make any adjustments if the board feels like we need to make any adjustments okay okay yeah february seems late yeah they're very complete all right so we will put that down in november and uh mr marshawn will be the lead on that um read those topics again on november student systems of support addressing student academic social emotional behavioral needs equity and bias learning recovery i'd like to be the second person on the board liaison liaison with no objection we have set that for november third board liaisons are mustafi and ms robinson and the district lead will be mr marshawn the next one was the district-wide communication outreach and engagement and that includes parents student staff and community and as well as our student outreach student group outreach efforts i'd like to be a part of that all right mr timmins all right well let's pick a date way to get your hand out there though i would say february because it's the same kind of thing you can't have it too soon but you can't have it too late okay any objection in february what's the is it what's the one before november is october um i don't feel like october's too soon but i could be wrong again just to be able to make adjustments you know kind of hear the the framework based off of those initial conversations since this is important before the middle of the school year two thirds of the way through the school year um those are just my thoughts guess what we might want to do it before you help out meetings absolutely the lcap so either october or either i think are we communicating i think october okay because then we can iron out any more anymore type of things over the following couple of months before the elf caps meetings start is that doable to the staff you guys have to give your input to you yeah i was asking eric because she's really our communications expert and she and i obviously will work together on this with um and services on the student outreach part mr tennis and anybody else want to volunteer i have interest i have interest in at least three so it's kind of hard to determine it's like the draft you know yeah usually we only pick two yeah i understand that yeah that's that's why i'm not sure i don't wanna i wanna count um i'll jump on this one yeah caitlyn you're gonna say yes yes please okay october uh sixth is assigned to the student systems of support and district-wide communication i'm sorry district-by-communication and student outreach and board liaisons are mr tennis and miss dalby and myself and erica will be staff leads on that okay moving on uh chica unified special education programs with the emphasis on the inclusive classroom we have february 2nd april 6th and march february because by then we've we've settled in with all of the mtss supports in place and i'd like to see what holes and things have still developed and shown themselves i'd like to see the special education one in february and would i'd like that to be my second one okay okay yeah diane but diane okay so february 2nd we have the special ed assigned to that we have ms robinson and mr lando as our board liaisons uh the next one would be chico unified career tech education programs k-12 focus on awareness and engagement to me we ought to really need to make sure that they're available aren't they in their competitions by then i think it's may when they've been really active kathy were you wanting to be on that uh do i swim huh um did we decide if we're gonna flip those at all or to decide the date yet we could potentially consider flipping those with the special education programs with the thought that there aren't really many changes in this dream we can make to our special education programs so if we get a full a fuller report for the year in april that gives more assessment time and those kinds of things switching them makes sense so um february again cool yeah okay so that means john you drew the lucky may 4th straw for technology and mr vincent and his team would there be an opportunity to maybe also slide in maintenance operations and facilities remember not facilities but just like a quick update on upcoming projects or just a regular meeting okay yeah typically we do a follow-up in september on the projects that were completed over the prior summer and then we bring back the next summer's work list typically in april okay cool that works great where are we putting kathy so i need to go back up to the ones that have already been here on september yeah that is really complicated that makes sense oh july i do but i do but what do we do in may because we scratch the area so [Applause] i'm sure it's best practices and i would be very lonely about myself i'll do it i'll do it i'll engage with the tackle it you have a lot to say about the owl cap i was surprised that you didn't want to i mean it's it's it is long and it's been boring but there's a lot of effort that gets put into it too so we can at least recognize that okay i'm gonna keep us moving here that's up to your colleagues okay see no changes to that on the cosd facilities on it correct um eileen i'll take your spot oh i thought you said you wanted to give it up no oh my apologies i thought you said you wanted to give it up i was just about ready to move away from i finally got to the point after after almost 12 years where i understand what's going on no seriously it took it takes a lot of background in what we're doing and um anyway i just want to stay okay uh the wellness committee we currently have as our board liaisons mr orlando and mr tennis are both of you comfortable still continuing on that committee or would someone say want to get off say this is not my thing as long as you're both okay we'll move forward yeah yeah it's it's broad but food's one of the things well yeah okay all right uh athletic sustainability currently we have dr kaiser and miss dalby you both okay continuing to serve on that uh i would like to ask if we still actually need that they'll actually need that that's i'm not trying to get out of it i'm totally fine staying on there but do we need that specific it's very specific to a very small specific group of students not that athletics aren't important okay i guess with the point of it expanding to junior highs i guess that would be important to keep it in the importance i just remember it wasn't something that was very very the the only one on here that is mandated by law is the wellness committee the other ones are ones that the boards the boards have asked over time to have a standing um reports back to the board so we don't have to give any of them when we were in danger of losing athletics was when that's important that's that's what i remembered and why i even said that but brought up a good point that um yeah i i guess it would be kind of nice if it was a little bit broader than athletics 50 is a lot and there's a significant number of students but not all students are athletes um but that's just my two cents i'm not saying i would agree with you ms dolby i i'd like to see it i'd like to see it so we can add the well in our in our topics about uh co-curricular is that the it didn't and those didn't get brought up for a workshop that was something i was going to say is we did miss athletics and co-curricular activities for our workshops so maybe we could combine those did you have a suggestion right so instead of just athletic sustainability yes extracurricular uh we can let the board liaisons working with uh john and jay and ted since this would be k-12 approach determine the scope of the presentation and and that's why you're there to determine your next code yeah is it cool so you can do that at that point can we say can we just add the word co-curricular in there already sustainability okay i did it i already did it and i'm totally in for staying on that okay uh the technology cyber security we currently have mr lando and mr tennis you two still okay being on that i'm i'm not married but i don't mind it don't look at me okay another question is do we do we need to keep it you know i i don't know that we do since we're now doing the board workshop frankly um it probably will end up being one in the same one yeah yeah we okay dropping it yes john mr vincent are we okay dropping it are we okay yes i'm okay with that the one they would offer to be a deeper view into cyber security that we can't really cover at a board meeting in a work in the us committee because there are things that we can't really talk about at board meeting how we do things that'd be the one thing that would be different from the workshop but you would still have the opportunity you still are doing the workshop and you'll still have board liaisons working with you at that point yes that's correct okay the subject of like youth security like the youth protection in terms of what they're seeing on their chromebook and so forth yes is that something you wanted to discuss at the workshop i mean i think that's an appropriate place to at least put it on the list so you are on that committee you um are the liaison to not committing i got to not use that word um but for that board workshop so by all means when you guys meet as the group scheduling that workshop in that workshop you determine what's going to come from and so it would be a technology of cyber security updates if that's how they structure it when they meet absolutely i would certainly support adding the student access component having concerns i will add it right now i think that was part of what got covered last time by the technology workshop as well but we talked about filtering software yeah yeah okay moving right along we're taking that off of our list of biennial because it is going to our annual because it is going to be a board workshop uh superintendent evaluation we currently have miss robinson and dr kaiser that's not true it's actually miss robinson and mrlando okay um and then board governance and self-evaluation that typically is the board president and another board member but it's completely up to this group i think because the board president interacts with iraq the issues more than than anyone that having whoever uh you know replaces me as board president be on that committee makes sense because that's where you you find out you find out is is stuff working and clear or do there need to be some strengths or so currently we have um miss robinson and mr lando i think what we could do is put forward president and whoever else wants to volunteer to be a part of that do we want to just say board president and isn't there what are our other chairs vice president vice president it might not be that next year you know don't we decide each year yeah december is when the opportunity and maybe it'll be the same people but maybe it won't so we just identify instead of putting a person in here two people in here just put offices in offices yeah and i was gonna put board president and one other person if we knew who that we wanted that to be but for president and vice president is perfectly fine does that work okay okay we are done we are good we are with that party i know that was like a that actually went really smooth in my opinion i was afraid that was going to take like hours and hours yeah now that that's about how it's always gone doing lots of consolidation is usually what this process ends up being and people who can do that stepped in and got it done okay okay now are we on to board self evaluation we are now on to uh governance handbook oh government's handbook did um everyone get to review your governance handbook to look for anything i um i just kind of rolled there and did not let you do your part about getting board approval on is there any public input no that that it's okay to laugh and smile guys come on um i do i hear a motion to approve our uh let's see we did uh did we approve the mission statement is a part of it no it's the topics it's the top word workshop topics date sleep date yeah yeah yeah nine two four yeah it's two there's two action items i mean we ended up turning it into two action items we voted on one piece of this this is the second of the same item yeah yeah thank you dr kaiser is there a second i will second that as laboriously discussed uh you guys okay do we need to discuss it i'm getting a little punchy throw something at her okay all those if you're ready to take a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye yes please any no's okay thank you board thank you good work good work can i make sure that that was gonna need to be a roll call vote opportunity does that need to be real does that need to be a roll call vote i'm sorry oh yes boy that was a long time ago very good okay uh by name all those in favor yes we do good work you said compliant client yeah there's nothing wrong with being compliant that's what we're supposed to be uh discussing and governance handbook okay so each of you do have the governance handbook and it is also attached to the board agenda everyone was given the opportunity announced if they had changes that they would like to make to it to please submit those changes i did not receive any but that does not mean that there might not be some that come up here tonight i don't have any any of the members have anything that have anything we will need to update the cusd mission statement in the handbook but that doesn't matter oh yes yes yes erica usually catches that stuff and and just kind of does it but thank you for mentioning that erica yes i know she is now i'm sure that um this is going to be caught by our perfect erica but we definitely will want to update the date and names at the end too the what the date and the names at the end oh yeah and then would i mean is it i also was going to ask um about our equity statement for the district do we want to include that in there as well um along with our mission it's in the uh i understand that but this is also a reflection of the board so so do you have a place that you feel it should be uh included probably let me think about it towards the beginning let's see like with the mission statement yeah with the mission statement in the unity of purpose right does that need to be an amendment uh dr kaiser are you okay with adding the equity statement as it is stated in the l cap between the unity of purpose and the mission statement there would be an amendment to your motion to adopt the governance yes that makes sense that makes sense and the other is two sentences in the all capital okay okay uh thank you with those noting the inclusion of the the equity statement between the unity purpose and the governance team unity purpose yes yes we we do have a motion and a second with a modification all those in favor for ready to vote thank you five one is approved okay um just an fyi on things that will get changed it when we finish the process of the um district voting in one of our board policies in the 9000 series there is one section that will have to be changed to be compliant with whatever we end up doing just an fyi so that we don't forget later and we might also revisit the equity statement after it gets after it gets reviewed and reviewed and re-something in the next couple of months okay yeah i just acknowledge that too well our documents are fluid yeah yes yes okay 9.2.6 is the board self-evaluation so i will let the board leave themselves through the board self-evaluation uh you were provided documents that reflect the average of all of the scores submitted and all of the board members did submit scores so you okay i um is it on now is it on our agenda now because when i first visited that document it was not yet this isn't this isn't something that i got slipped that isn't valid right okay okay up here um so i think the purpose of this is for the board to um obviously rate themselves in each of these areas and then look over where are the boards and where are the boards self-perceived areas for growth so when you look at some of the higher scores adapt evaluate adopt policies is 4.2 5.0 adopt fiscally responsible budget based on district vision and goals those are some of your higher ones um but there are some ones that you know may be worth maybe discussion either now or in the future that do have lower scores and these are again self evaluations and self reflection it's interesting to see that some of the lower trending scores also already align with some of our workshops well taking a look at the ones that did not score well is uh historically what we have done and then uh discussed why that might be and what we might be on number two the board communicate a common vision that is that is down in the making little progress room for improvement score how might we improve making progress i do think that some of these as previously mentioned will come up in some of our workshops as we especially with the communication piece how do we both as a district staff and board communicate our vision likely will come out of that topic while we're discussing community engagement other ones that you know might fit into that as well involve community parents students and staff and developing the common vision that was another low one so um i agree with ms dolly that how we set up our workshops really do reflect that you had thought about this in the development of the board workshops so you know this may be something that you just need to be aware of and take some time to absorb and think of as we move forward and have future board meetings or future topics in future discussions take collective responsibility for the board's performance doesn't it doesn't fit with any of the um workshop topics that that i see that i see i i i would i i i don't remember scoring at that low but i do remember thinking that i felt some frustration at uh our this board not having had enough time to away from board meetings in a getaway i forget what they're what they're called in the the guidance on how to be a you know a cohesive like a retreat like a retreat yes retreats in the past boards have especially when there was new board members retreats were vital and we haven't had a chance to do that to do that and i think it's hurt and i think it's hard anybody else have any feelings on how we might how we might if it is a problem how we might correct it we might correct am i the only one that feels it's a problem no no not at all i think there's definitely an issue here um i think however kelly said we we're just getting these numbers and the averages from the whole group today right there but yesterday i think it might be more fruitful to uh sit with these for a little bit rather than try to have them out right now i agree how about we ask tom since you and i are going to reach out to the board on their input on the superintendent's evaluation have a section to come back to write on these observances as well do you think that maybe if i don't know it seems like i would like to maybe jot down some notes at least for each one that's under scores under a three um a bare minimum you know even a three to me mediocre yeah anything three and under definitely shows that whoever's scoring it and we all did um that that's an area of concern yeah i just think it'd be nice to have some sort of i guess it wouldn't be complete anonymity but be able to make comments without feeling like you know being on the spot and speculations and just feelings you know this has a lot of this has to do with feelings and perspective and we all like you mentioned are coming coming to the board with different feelings and perspectives i'd like to make sure that we stay with suggestions on how to improve yeah uh if we feel like we need to explain what you think yeah that's okay but i'm more interested in how do we fix it well i mean you can't fix a broken faucet if you don't know what's broken that's true i don't know why i just came up with having input on this daily evaluation by the 11th could we that reasonable to also get input on a score lower than the three that you want to talk about and what we can do to increase them at the same time do you want to do below a three or three and lower one two one two three three and lower yeah yeah that works for me on the uh the one that isn't scored the board uh section one oh that is the same okay just not scoring it's the comments okay we'll include that okay so do i need a motion to table um to a time certain uh let me take a look can i have a comment really quick too um the section three for individual trustee i mean i'm sure that we all have pretty inflated perspectives and opinions of ourselves but um i i kind of feel like that also deserves a look not just below threes um because i mean if we're scoring as low as mid three on recognizing and respects differences of perspectives and style like that to me is not healthy still you know that should be a four in the four range if we want to talk about healthy relationships and person you know interactions for the board just uh just my just my two cents on that because those are inflated it would be you know i mean you know we are here for different reasons you know we we pursued this opportunity for different reasons and you know i mean we're gonna have differences of opinion that are going to manifest themselves let's not you know i mean have too much of a perspective of rainbows and unicorns with respect to how much we'll agree with each other on things i feel you know i mean and i think some of this maybe alludes to to the fact that we've had some spirited discussions some differences of opinion maybe i'm wrong um but i think that our interaction with each other is is sort of maybe as it should be from a constitutional standpoint and in recognition of the roles that we the role that we're playing here and trying to lead the community i would agree to some extent my frustration is feeling that we still don't have enough time to fully explore the basis for the opinions that each one of us hold or have developed to have developed that here on the diet diet is the only time we get to discuss and it because in the interest of time and boring the rest of the world we don't get into being able to tell each other you know well i i feel this way or i understand that because of my experience with x in the classroom process the teaching process the development process because we have we have all four of us have a lot of experience in either being in a classroom or in a school environment for years and that gives you what i give you a perspective that's far different than someone who hasn't served that role whether it's a parent or um you know it just there's there's a difference in how you grow to understand why things are done in certain ways and unless you've been there in the trenches doing it for a long period of time period of time and and can spend that same amount of time getting up to speed on how that happens it's it's difficult this should be a job that should be open to anyone in the community who could do a good job representing a community you know and uh if you had too much of a focus and i don't know how relevant these comments are to to this agenda item but but i think the school board should be something that's approachable for the person who would do the best job at it you know and it could be that what you describe as being a lot of experience that's so helpful and you understanding the job and everything we're doing and all that you could also have you know some baggage along with it maybe maybe a school board could be too insular you know it could be not reflective enough of the community you know what if there was some you know orthopedic surgeon or something like that who thought about running for school board but then looked at the board governance handbook and the schedule of you know retreats that they had to go to and the csba conferences and so forth and just realized you know i don't have time for this you know now maybe you would say that an orthopedic surgeon is not who doesn't belong here but i would say that maybe they do i would be pretty upset if somebody didn't want to put in at least a little bit of effort to expand their understanding of the school system if they're especially if they're coming in from a very limited understanding of how this whole system runs um i i don't know if maybe i didn't clarify this point well enough but so section three number three recognizes and respects differences of perspective and style that doesn't mean that we all agree or that we're all friendly or anything like that those words recognizes so i see you i hear you and i respect you for those thoughts and opinions i'm not going to be a not nice person to you because i see you when i hear you you can have a difference of opinion and i still respect you for that like that's that's what this is all that's what this is saying um you know that's a c minus 3.6 is is um and then the other one after that that's a 3.8 so you know c acts with dignity and understands the implications of demeanor and behavior the fact that any of us and i and i i'm sure i scored myself a little bit lower than a five on that just being real you know because we do get heated and i don't always feel like there's a there's an aspect of dignity even when you know we're trying to make a very important point but but the fact that we would score ourselves below a four maybe and i i honestly don't remember how i'd have to go back and look at where i even put myself right um but that acts with dignity like we really think about that like how does that look we can be respectful and have dignity but also still make our points and make them poignantly without being disrespectful or acting you know out of line so those are just the one the two that i was looking at looking at this list of things um and i think that if somebody wants to join the school board they really do need to know what they're getting into and be willing to be part of a cohesive team that brings different perspectives and opinions and experiences to the board and works as a group because we aren't individuals we don't make individual decisions we really do need to understand where everybody's coming from and by i've had the opportunity to get to know a few of you just because we've had our like you know workshop meetings and you know um a couple of professional developments and it does make a difference in the perspective and understanding where we're coming from i have biased opinions about you because i don't i don't know enough about you and i hate and i hate you know i'm gonna admit that because you know you're a farmer so like i don't have some biased opinions that doesn't mean i don't respect you but i would like to get to know your understanding and thought processes and you know your kind of the way that you operate because i think that it would help me understand when you bring something of concern to the table or your your you know your piece that that that helps that perspective you know it just is a good healthy process to to have that like so that's sort of a more of a personal understanding of each other not that we have to be best friends but just that it helps to know you know oh you like when i told you that i'm from chester i'm from this small town i grew up in a very tiny school like that that gives you a little bit more perspective about me and my background i think that that helps know where i'm coming from sometimes that's that's why i think what we're kind of addressing here yeah i i totally value that i think it's kind of essential you know in the vein of collegiality and just discovering and establishing that we do have common things in common so i'm just going to jump in here and say i do think this board unfortunately did not get the advantage of being able to go together to the csba workshop that other boards have had the opportunity to do because it does give you a common base of knowledge that you all come from and it also gives you time to have dinner together have a beverage together and really get to know each other so saying that i really hope each of you do consider going to the csba workshop in december this year i know you've received some information about it but it does allow many of the things i've heard you talk about tonight so sounds like we have a plan moving forward to get input on the items at least that were a three or below and the opportunity for future discussions on those and then again i do think it would be wonderful for this board to have that opportunity to have some time away and really get to know each other in a different way i think getting to know each other is a concern of mine and i know i i really appreciate the time that mr tennis and i have had to spend together and to exchange we have a lot of things in common in our in our background one of the things that is a frustration for me is when i hear input from parents that assume that i've reached a decision on something because of x input or whatever when that's not at all the case our my um process for making decisions goes pretty deep and pretty wide and i don't know how to transmit that to our parents to let them know that as a board member come i'm looking at a lot of stuff excuse me a lot of stuff and information before coming to a decision and some of that information comes from my own years of experience in in schools yeah i think we all are going to the csba conference in december but last i heard we're all signed up right yes we are we're all signed up and we do carpool which is a great way driving to the airport no not to southern california just to the airport she saw me shaking my head like i'm not driving down there yeah or i'm driving myself i i just even being able to have this dialogue is important it's important very important very important okay i'm definitely looking forward to that where are we i think we need a motion on 9.2.6 and do we actually though can we i mean aren't we just tapering it until we can remove the motion we need a motion to table or we need a motion to approve we need a motion to table uh to a time certain which is the eval superintendent's evaluation input process do i have a motion question okay dr kai is removed is there a second to tabling to that i'm certain yeah okay caitlyn ii all those in favor aye thank you it's unanimous yeah thank you board um okay we should next be in huh items from the floor we have none yes yes items from the floor we have men we have none um board member request to agenda is an item that is an item okay we don't have any any of those then do i have a motion to adjourn all those in favor yay did we meet the time frame no darn we missed it oh well huh

the social group that's out there partying on Saturday Friday and Saturday nights we do know that it's those two groups that are primarily carrying the disease and possibly spreading it and in many instances not even knowing about so children can have the disease and be completely asymptomatic but the disease is real I cannot stress that enough it's the worst disease that I have encountered in my entire career and that includes pandemic flu of 2009 Ebola in which we spent millions of dollars for six deaths within the country and now we have this particular disease that's killed six hundred thousand and if and point affect your mother or father or child are one of those six hundred thousand it becomes a very important issue and much more important uh awesome thank you thank you we'll come back I want to come back and have you give some more comments I wanted to give Dr Garcia welcome to the district by the way thank you your button has to be up if it's if it's off the phone okay good um do you have anything you'd like to comment on or add I just wanted to add about the incidence of um kovid I have uh just had the data from yesterday and so in the United States 16 of new cases were children 16 so um the data evolves every single day and if we pick a day a number from some time ago it would be 0.01 but it changes and I can only say the latest one from yesterday was 16 that's scary for me at least um we've been in the office in Brookfield has been open for six years we have we we do testing in the office we have tested a lot of children in the office this past 18 months um and I have seen some kids who were positive and some were not but it's it's definitely um something to to to in response to doctor as a comment for a doctor from Doctor what Dr Sullivan said um you can you can go to Connecticut Children's Medical Center they have a floor that studies kids who have had uh severe covid case where they've been hospitalized for several days and um they're conducting studies on what happens and but it's real it's there you can see it um before I turn to the opening plan a little bit let me ask the board members if you have any questions for our health professionals who were with us and then we'll we'll turn to back to the plan on you know how we bring it home Dr Sullivan Dr Sullivan wanted to say something may I had just one thing and that's with regard to masking on buses buses are considered public transportation and under a CDC order under the public emergency response act federally it's a federal law that masks will be worn on school buses so Federal all public transportation that's a federal law not a state law and the governor cannot amend that that is also in the plan yes and is that is that a law with a time and date on it um that it's for a period of time or is it open-ended it's law until they repeal it right now I hate to say it but it's 2024.

went up dramatically but it was so as carriers or as far as cases this is this is a contact tracing thing just I'm a hard time following just a contact tracing thing okay so these are people that are getting sick they're not getting sick these are people that are have basically tested positive okay if you're a carrier and you haven't been tested positive okay yeah thank you could I just ask one statistical question for Dr Solon could you comment a little bit about what we're seeing here in Brookfield and the two things I'm interested in is um how is our vaccine rate doing are we higher than the average lower the average or do we not know and then secondly how's our positivity rate relative to our peer communities or the rest of Connecticut are we on the in the mix or are we higher alone our positivity rate is about the same as our peer communities um in a population of seventeen thousand and six and that's what the state uses it's the 2019 population unfortunately we've had 1737 cases and 17 deaths now 18 deaths as of reported today so we've had 10.21 percent of the population uh have a positive covet test um with a death rate of 0.1 percent uh when you compare this to the surrounding towns it's pretty much close except for Danbury um and uh we've had 36 989 tests as of yesterday the 20th of which 2025 were positive which gives us a positivity rate of 5.47 percent but I think that's skewed because if we have 36 000 tests among 17 000 residents obviously many people have had repeated tests so the positivity rate is skewed the same with the reporting from the state they're basically looking at total number of tests and the number positive so it may be skewed by individuals who are having repeated tests trying to prove that they're not that's not positive exactly right so in point of fact our positivity rate may be slightly higher than the state average and that those numbers are from inceptions of reporting to now or to recent data how is the recent data looking that that's up until now yeah currently we're working with 13 cases for the month of July uh interestingly enough only eight have been reported through the Connecticut electronic data reporting system to me but my contact tracers are getting reports from 13.

and now may fourth five gives us five uh slots um is that september first topic is that definitely gonna be able to happen or isn't it kind of in does doesn't it depend on the census information is that part of that discussion so this particular one is uh working with our demographers with the process that we need to go through as well as with our attorney the process we need to go through prior to getting that data so yes it is going to be we're going to have to do a lot of work with the census data when it comes out i i it's unfortunate that we have to spend time on that even though it's important and don't get me wrong about voting rights and democracy and all that there's so many important topics that directly affect our students on the in the classroom that i wish we could you know have that day for um but i i i will stop talking well it let me clarify i mean this is definitely the board's agenda and the board's workshop so if we don't want that there and we want to handle that in another matter or in another way we can do that as well it's a legal mandate that we have only been able to delay because of the pandemic so it's tremendously complicated and affects every single person who votes it just seems so specific in particular that and i i would hate for you guys to throw vegetables at me for saying we should have a very specific meeting just for that that's not a workshop because our workshops also still have you know items from the floor and they have announcements and they have they don't no workshops do not workshops don't have items from the floor but they do allow members of the community to engage in depth in that in the topic right and i guess they would on this too yeah maybe we just start to talk about what our workshops are if we can't get it down to less than six we less than 6 is 5j [Laughter] we talk about high school then maybe we we look at that and talk about you know do we need to add another another night not that any of us want that i'm just i'm just stating well i'm going to say it out loud there there are two community engagement meetings required by that process am i re not remembering correctly correct they are required yes no they're not but they're part of that process so we are going to have an opportunity for the community to come forward and speak to just as they did when the city of chico was going to their um and it's too involved of a process to include it in a regular board meeting oh yeah it yes okay um something that has not been mentioned and it kind of is maybe alluded to only if you read between the lines is support supporting inclusive more inclusive classrooms especially at the elementary level for our special our special needs students i've gotten a lot of parent feedback about um that particular topic um inclusive inclusive classrooms being more inclusive um rather than pull out students have more students in the classrooms that our students special needs um it the only mention i see about special education is a very broad special education workshop but i would like to address that and that's a particular need that i feel pretty strongly about that we should be looking into at in depth and really analyzing um the level of a success and and areas for growth in in that topic personally so there's my two cents for my ideas yeah yeah number 6 mine says eight special education programs and budgets it was handed to me across the superintendent's table it doesn't say draft i would look yes i'll look it up on my computer i would like to suggest that we blend the number four which for us is the independent study online learning programs and career tech ed programs because those are both trying to address particular aspects of our education options and that might be something that we could partner together so maybe call that educational options um independent study and career technical education i i will tell you the cte is huge uh we have a lot of programs and that if we take a deep dive into that that will take easily uh 90 minutes um the yes mr tennis on the cte the the i haven't heard anyone mention in this phase the conversation the cusd co-curricular and athletic programs would that involve outside organizations like what i was talking about earlier no um it doesn't currently that doesn't mean that if that's the direction of the board we could certainly add that is anyone else interested in in this topic um you know trying to create a pathway for kids to become involved in running programs little league scouting i know that we ffa and 4-h kind of are our government programs and so they have a sort of a special status but computer programming clubs and things like that's part of school district any any other advocates for outside organizations up here on the diocese i'm not against it i just want to figure out where you know like maybe specify how these can can go together and start to just rank them the issue is we can't fund them yes i understand that um you could give you know access could that be something under communication or do you think it needs to go further than that i mean could we add that as like a sub bullet under the communication piece district-wide communication and outreach yes in fact i would i would prefer that that was district-wide communication outreach and engagement that's a law yeah can how do i find that well if my organization which has one set of beliefs comes on the school grounds and you're not allowed to then i'm gonna say that i don't understand how that relates to what we're talking about how do you think access about these groups is something that may we have access if any of them can use for free peachtree she's right um yeah i mean organizations like girl scouts and things like that they have you know beliefs um sometimes they're vague and not very particular and relate to you know um things that would be very broadly you know agreeable uh but you know there's a legal case to be made that you you couldn't then you know keep some other organization from doing the exact same thing whether those were applying that standard in terms of peachtree communication which we've heard tonight is kind of shown to have a very low click rate and is not very effective um i mean either you're in favor or you're open to the idea of you know outside organizations being able to to use the the communication and the networking that's available through the school system or not you know i happen to think we could do more to engage with the community in this this respect and i'd like to have a conversation about it um something that was mentioned tonight uh was even having like a community organization carnival where um you know it's almost almost like a rush where um all students can come to a specific campus and you have all of the organizations represented for equal amount of time i mean we could even include that and that that would be part of district um communication beyond peachtree right i mean so right and that falls under outreach and education outreach and engagement i think and to clarify we did have that planned to do working with uh mr terry methlyn and unfortunately covet hit and we weren't able to do carnivals on campuses this year so i do see that as something that we will do maybe that's something we can put off for now i mean i'd like to see it happen i'd like to see a robust conversation about it i know that a lot of these groups are suffering for the fact that they don't have the access that they did in the past um but if i'm the only person up here who who strongly feels that way then i know we have a busy problem it ties in very nicely with the community communication outreach and engagement and that would be very appropriate to have that conversation with that maybe it's just kind of one as a part of yeah as the community part of that maybe i can think on this a little bit and i'll kind of share some ideas with you as to how we might work that into the conversation and you can run them up the flagpole well i'm certainly not against it because i know how much i gained from 4-h which was um you know just invaluable in in what you learned in the way of uh public speaking and and you know project workups and things to the you know we went to the fair we uh and i know i i also had access to ffa no not ffa fha i was a girl so i couldn't get into ffa and you just made my point yes little lee yep so just to um maybe move us along a little bit here i do believe that two and three could be combined together yeah um because you know the student outreach efforts definitely would tie into district-wide communication outreach and engagement so if we wanted to put two and three together yeah would you put it uh i was just trying to get us down yeah let's just get down to the number and then we'll figure out the dates um yes mr tennis is food missing from this list is what food is missing um is there anything to talk about relative to to the food our approach to food the food service that we we have we have a standing committee that meets with the director of nutrition services yeah it's federally mandated we don't have to do anything with it if you want to volunteer to be on that committee he is actually i am it sounds as though you would be a good fit for that yeah i i am on that committee i i like being on that committee i i'm uh you will refrain from giving a report as to how good of a job we did meeting this past year because we didn't do the best job about getting together and it was partly my fault for sure um but i i do want to keep that on on the radar yeah just give mr and cerro and your fellow committee member uh a hauler and set up the meeting and this is one that comes forward every other year correct for the board policies have to come forward to the board for review and approval every other year did we have a meeting with mr enz and sir and sarah where he was here and and was that what you just mentioned was that we did yeah we had a meeting scheduled mr ansar was present that none of our community members were there right no i mean i mean he was here and and he was participating remotely mr and sarah was here we were asking them questions about the the the food supplies that we were having did but that's not what that what that committee's responsibility is it's much broader than that i've served on that committee for several years and um it's it's way more than that it pulls in it there's a list of who needs to be brought in from the community to participate in those meetings and that was part of the problem is you couldn't get the community members either to show up they've gotten better because the anyway i i went but that that committee is the one you're on and you work with your other committee member off the board who tom and set it up with mr encero and he has the guidelines and he's done it well he did it the first two years that i was on the committee and yeah that's what really got me he's excellent to work with and is really receptive to inputs thank you yes can i clarify something yes it's really bothering me i thought that we don't have quote committees anymore thank you okay what do we have we have board liaisons board liaisons and that's for the workshops so this isn't something separate like we used to have a wellness committee that's what you're referring to well in the government document that governs us it says committee am i not correct you are correct but we did make an amendment at some point too it's the government's wording so if you look there is another sheet in here um and i'll just address this very quickly that are our annual and biennial board presentations we stayed away from the word committee because of the legal ramifications that come with that however wellness is the one that does have the word committee in it because there's very specific legal requirements that we have to meet with wellness but that is the only one the other ones are presentations to the board that we plan for isn't the wellness um program also doesn't that also cover the comprehensive sexual health education not just not just food service i'm pretty sure i read that somewhere i don't i do not believe that it does but um i've been known to be wrong it does delve into a physical activity a bit and it certainly addresses physical activity it addresses water it addresses um education within nutrition education within the classroom yeah i do not recall the ss something to do with this part of that school gardens is another component of that so if i could bring us back around and back trying to get us to select five board workshops it's on here is it on there okay youth services tobacco-free schools environmental safety alcohol and other drugs drug testing tobacco steroids health care and emergencies infectious diseases health exams immunizations health screening for school entry school health services sexual health and hiv aids prevention education guidance counseling and services it's not just food and i keep hearing this wellness community is just about the food service and it's not it really actually frustrates me it's getting repeated and when it met before it we did meet on a broad range of subjects okay can we move forward yes you said and i'm not going to argue with that at all that the career tech is really worth an entire board workshop correct kelly okay so uh that then becomes critically one of ours um and i'm not we had a a very significant technology presentation before and that's before all the hacking and the latest the latest csba is about how many school districts got hacked and paid ransom money or had to lost their control so to me with the current security issues i i absolutely think it's critical that we have a technology presentation with the issue of security as well as uh usability john would love to do that yes yeah i mean we need it i don't want to be paying ransom notes you know i don't i don't know if i feel that that's a top five priority to me if you knew the ramifications of having it fail you would move it up there on the priorities list john did a presentation a just short one to show us just what we have to do even to protect ourselves from the the contact between the county and the school district and the number of attempts at being hacked that happen daily all the way from russia so what is it what does it change or do to have to have a 90-minute presentation on that um one of the things it did for me and i don't know about anybody else but it it made me more willing to accept number one having to change my password all the time having to be careful and report things that didn't look quite right so that john and the department could follow up to see if we were being in fact hacked as mr hanlon has you know you know we just we just had a terrible thing happen through our personnel email it just there's it's it's a dangerous world out there and if we aren't helping to protect our district um i guess my my perspective is it just feels a little bit more of a management thing than than at our level i i you can convince me otherwise for sure but i'm not convinced yet and those are all things that could be done in an email in my opinion the special education programs and budget we just did last year there was a requesting uh change that to be focused on inclusion yeah and i think special education should be on the workshops every year okay we should never leave and i support that i think inclusion and team teaching and all of those kinds of things that that do push-ins rather than pull-outs is is very important so i support that topics yeah again i feel like it's something that can be addressed in a regular board meeting doesn't need a full 90-minute workshop again you can convince me otherwise um if we keep talking about it there's been number 10 the facilities master plan and update we're reaching the end of phase four i believe and there have been questions about why haven't we targeted school x or school-wide for those of us that went through the building of the facility's master plan we know but there aren't very many of us left and so that was my suggestion was that because the community the school communities that haven't been touched yet might want to know why and how it go how it happens as well as the board because it's you know we're looking at having to go back for another bond and if we don't understand why we're not going to be able to be effective in communicating you know why why we need to continue with the facilities master plan i thought we already voted to go out for another bond you did or bond sale i guess on sale that's different yeah it's different yeah okay um then i think you would want to have 10 and 11 together and i don't know if special ed could fit into that or not very effectively that might be too crowded number six doesn't fit with ten i feel like this facilities master plan and update almost goes along with some equity stuff too possibly and or obviously budget it's always has always ties back to budget sorry um i think an update on the facilities master plan and discussion um about any kind of possible changes or um needed updates could be beneficial um what about 10 11 and 12 being together i don't really see the need for 12 for a workshop i agree okay yeah exactly okay that's what i'm asking myself can this be done in a regular meeting or through just staff management and email updates or however it doesn't feel like it needs to be a huge board thing what about 10 11 and 15.

2024. my goodness wow okay Mike I have a question uh so uh Dr Garcia is my newest note here 16 of cases uh new cases rather are children uh which you say is a scary stat I I don't what does cases mean I think that's sort of cases well I mean hospitalizations no they just have sniffles are they you know because I see this word cases thrown around a lot and it just doesn't seem to be a very accurate number anywhere I've seen because I I mean I just kind of Google searched that and I saw numbers all over the place so I mean so I kind of want I just uh one was AAP of so I kind of Wonder where'd you get that stat and uh how would you define like what what qualifies as a case just a positive no matter what so what in what I said uh it was uh my source was the CDC website that's from today um and it was the total number of cases new cases yesterday um and so that's positive uh test and with the 16 PCR I that was not mentioned okay so Mike that's my problem with the case number the first comment um you know false positive on those uh PCR test has a less than two percent probability of false positive that's CDC or that's the machine the information from the machine all right it's called Abbott ID now okay so I've seen anywhere between like 20 percent of what's possible you're probably looking at the antigen test okay thank you uh also where I didn't see this is new to me the 15 to 35 carrying the disease where was that found just for my reference I like to follow the stuff either once Dr solver Dr Garcia say that again there was a Dr Sullivan mentioned the 15 to 35 carrying the disease where was that found just so I can yeah it sounds like a national number okay that's that's basically uh um they're basically known as the super spreaders and that was on uh if you look back on the data in the early when we saw the secondary Spike they and if you look at the data you see that the the age group and they break it down unfortunately 15 to 44.

we had two new cases today both in youth so we are make basically copacetic with our surrounding towns with which we communicate often and do we have any data on vaccination right our vaccination rate um I do um foreign our vaccination rate um is showing basically that we have a 76 percent of eligible residents have received at least one dose good regrettably I don't have numbers for those that have had complete two two dose series and that's the entire age range who's available the entire age range right yeah including the young people who kind of became eligible later right okay and we we broke it down into three census tracts basically Candlewood Shores area uh Federal Road Central area and lake villanona side east side and it appears that the the least vaccinated uh in the are in the cattle wood Shores area okay so we're offering vaccine clinics okay uh we will be offering uh we had what we were supposed to have one Saturday night uh but weather postponed it until this coming Saturday night and we will also have one at Down the Hatch and we're offering incentives and we're offering uh J J vaccine single shot is there a breakdown by age too is there a breakdown by the like the young ages 12 to 15 what percentage of them have been vaccinated yes I can certainly give you that um total uh estimated population census 65 population 16 and above 78 percent um 1828 children are not eligible because of age um estimated 10 to 14 60 may have been vaccinated um ages 15 to 44 and we don't like this distribution uh 72 percent age 45 to 64.

went up dramatically but it was so as carriers or as far as cases this is this is a contact tracing thing just I'm a hard time following just a contact tracing thing okay so these are people that are getting sick they're not getting sick these are people that are have basically tested positive okay if you're a carrier and you haven't been tested positive okay yeah thank you could I just ask one statistical question for Dr Solon could you comment a little bit about what we're seeing here in Brookfield and the two things I'm interested in is um how is our vaccine rate doing are we higher than the average lower the average or do we not know and then secondly how's our positivity rate relative to our peer communities or the rest of Connecticut are we on the in the mix or are we higher alone our positivity rate is about the same as our peer communities um in a population of seventeen thousand and six and that's what the state uses it's the 2019 population unfortunately we've had 1737 cases and 17 deaths now 18 deaths as of reported today so we've had 10.21 percent of the population uh have a positive covet test um with a death rate of 0.1 percent uh when you compare this to the surrounding towns it's pretty much close except for Danbury um and uh we've had 36 989 tests as of yesterday the 20th of which 2025 were positive which gives us a positivity rate of 5.47 percent but I think that's skewed because if we have 36 000 tests among 17 000 residents obviously many people have had repeated tests so the positivity rate is skewed the same with the reporting from the state they're basically looking at total number of tests and the number positive so it may be skewed by individuals who are having repeated tests trying to prove that they're not that's not positive exactly right so in point of fact our positivity rate may be slightly higher than the state average and that those numbers are from inceptions of reporting to now or to recent data how is the recent data looking that that's up until now yeah currently we're working with 13 cases for the month of July uh interestingly enough only eight have been reported through the Connecticut electronic data reporting system to me but my contact tracers are getting reports from 13.

77 percent and age of 65 plus 86 percent thank you so obviously early on when the older folks were dying more frequently they were more amenable to waiting waiting and getting the vaccine as soon as possible and we held multiple clinics first at the senior center and then again at St Joe's and uh my volunteer team I have to to credit uh directed by Maureen Farrell mph um has done a marvelous job as far as getting the vaccine out there uh at a time when it was most needed so we're looking at the possibility of eligible individuals about 3 100 eligible individuals 23 percent of the population still needs to be vaccinated first dose and as I say I don't have a breakdown as to fully vaccinated okay and is there anything we can do as a school district to make it easier for either parents or or students to get vaccines should we be advocating or offering clinics related to the schools and our connection with the parents and the families the problem with the younger children is that they're only eligible for the J J vaccine and a lot of myths have circulated about the J J vaccine a lot 12 million I thought it was Pfizer I'm sorry it is Pfizer I'm sorry it is Pfizer um you're right thank you um and it requires Ultra Cold Storage minus 54.

we had two new cases today both in youth so we are make basically copacetic with our surrounding towns with which we communicate often and do we have any data on vaccination right our vaccination rate um I do um foreign our vaccination rate um is showing basically that we have a 76 percent of eligible residents have received at least one dose good regrettably I don't have numbers for those that have had complete two two dose series and that's the entire age range who's available the entire age range right yeah including the young people who kind of became eligible later right okay and we we broke it down into three census tracts basically Candlewood Shores area uh Federal Road Central area and lake villanona side east side and it appears that the the least vaccinated uh in the are in the cattle wood Shores area okay so we're offering vaccine clinics okay uh we will be offering uh we had what we were supposed to have one Saturday night uh but weather postponed it until this coming Saturday night and we will also have one at Down the Hatch and we're offering incentives and we're offering uh J J vaccine single shot is there a breakdown by age too is there a breakdown by the like the young ages 12 to 15 what percentage of them have been vaccinated yes I can certainly give you that um total uh estimated population census 65 population 16 and above 78 percent um 1828 children are not eligible because of age um estimated 10 to 14 60 may have been vaccinated um ages 15 to 44 and we don't like this distribution uh 72 percent age 45 to 64.

and regrettably we do not have Ultra pole storage so we can refer them to the Community Health Center in Danbury or New Milford Health Department has offered because they have Ultra cold storage available and a number of our students have taken advantage of that um I don't have the exact number but uh but uh oh yes I do 712 uh children have taken advantage of that with two doses okay yeah Dr Sullivan can I ask a question on uh people who've gotten do you have any numbers on people who've gotten covered gotten over covered as you said 70 76 Brookfield that's a lot of Brookfield uh do you have any indication on how many people have gotten Kobe gotten over covid as it pertains to moving closer to her immunity oh sure um as I think I mentioned uh we've had um 1732 1737 cases and 18 deaths obviously the rest recovered if there have been a number of hospitalizations uh probably 20 to 25 hospitalizations but they don't have accurate numbers because the hospitals have been reluctant to report it to me but we have had hospitalizations so with vaccination and previous exposure what would you say percentage-wise we're we're probably over 70 percent by the vaccination I'd like to see us uh I'd like to see us well uh over 80 percent of the population you don't think with the form of exposure went over 80 for um no it um if you're talking about the entire population correct you have to exclude the the children that aren't eligible yeah I think is the question if I could is um there's there's a contention in the world that because some a large percentage of the population has had been exposed 10 percent of our population has had positive right uh cases that they have antibodies right they're they do have antibodies well that question I think you're asking is is when you take that into consideration are we reaching that hurt immunity level the problem is that most Studies have indicated that the antibodies will wash out by 90 days I saw a UK study said two years pardon me a study at UK said two years which one oh at a chance it's been as long as two years but on average it's been as long as two years okay yeah it's been on average it's been 90 days and uh that too is another reason for breakthrough cases because they've been vaccinated and gotta they just didn't build up antibody not everybody has a good immune response that's why some of these studies that are done in the laboratory aren't very supportive measuring T Cell response and antibody response they're actually looking at other aspects of the disease in a laboratory setting most recent was Associated I think with J and J just came out day before yesterday if I'm not mistaken that was done in the laboratory and and so consequently if we take the average of the number of individuals who may wash out in 90 days and add those we still haven't reached her uh what we would consider full herd immunity 80 percent of the of the population of Brookfield being fully vaccinated okay got it so we've got to keep pushing the vaccinations and as I said I'm only reporting one the first dose they've had at least one dose I don't have total numbers on the individuals who have had been fully vaccinated and that's a little bit less okay any other questions for Dr Sullivan because I do want to turn to the the reopening plans I got one more because uh so at the very beginning uh you mentioned the study out of I believe was Jama again 2021 experimental assessment of carbon dioxide inhaled uh that which was redacted uh so not a good study uh are we still saying that carbon dioxide doesn't increase in people wearing masks I would hope not because I've worn them eight hours a day for five and a half days a week for 30 years you've measured and I hope that it hasn't caused the toxicity in my brain so so is there any if they've attracted that study or do are you aware of any other studies then um on the carbon dioxide thing yeah currently okay enjoy anything all right so look um let's talk a little bit about the reopening plan itself um and Dr brawl I want to aim this at you so we have that we've taken these tiered strategies we have an intent to open up fall right um and uh last year I recall we because of the scare of covet at the beginning and it was a real fear right we had actually I think the state guided us to have a quick trigger finger right people going into 14 days of quarantines especially teachers that became a problem for us if I remember in December kids being pulled out and going to hybrid actually rather quickly when when things were happening so in the reopening plan what have we built in in terms of this broad picture of quarantines kids being pulled out um and uh and moving to hybrid do we have triggers do we have uh do we have a structure around that we actually don't have guidance on a structure with metrics at this point we do not have that what we do know is we have our layered approaches we've discussed the elite nine as Dr Sullivan started to talk to um there is new newer information discussed yesterday at the dph call that I referenced there was a discussion of quarantine in close contact in close contact there I don't know if this will be the final decision we all know close contact has been that six foot radius they're saying three feet now so that would be less kids quarantined which we would hope for but quarantine is still one of the layers of mitigation and actually talked to Dr Sullivan about that earlier this week um I'm sorry Bob was there a follow-up to that just trying to get my head around what are we going to see when we see the plan is is it going to be one that keeps our kids in school as much as possible as opposed to last year which was a quick quick trigger finger yes so the the plan is and the powers that be are obviously supporting 100 in-person learning we have always supported 100 in-person learning obviously so long as we could do it safely we're not even putting in the plan an option for remote or hybrid that is not necessarily suggested or encouraged at this point so we don't even have that in the plan we know how to do it if we had to if there was some major emergency some major uptick that that that precipitate is such a decision um and again we have not gotten guidance on metrics so the thought process with the social distancing down to three feet um with the close contact down to three feet the layering of the strategies less um reactionary with the less things we knew in terms of the guidance about the surface uh contamination and those concerns we plan to be 100 in person let's not forget the biggest piece for this is Staffing it's staff are the majority of our staff is vaccinated so those issues where we had to quarantine staff that should be absolutely lessened where we didn't have Staffing to actually man the the building the other part of that is um the vaccinated folks as long as they're asymptomatic do not have to be quarantined so you start to you start to see how there's less opportunity for students having to be home and to be in some kind of um checking with the Google Classroom having a substitute ready to work with them we're going to have to do that there will be quarantines we know that but it's going to it should be we are planning for a lot less of that that's that's the whole and I and I think I heard you say earlier we won't have the Plexiglas Shields those will be a thing of the past correct uh will we maintain desks individual desks for each student yes instead of the tables yeah we have desks but we also have tables where we can if we can manage the three feet distance at a table situation then we'll do that okay and again we're working with Dr Sullivan um and and Mrs Farrell on on some of the class configuration especially Elementary where it tends to have more tables and things like that I would just like to clarify the three foot rule applies only to students it does not include apply to Educators and staff it applies only to students that's interesting that's interesting um and are there any other big changes that we would expect to see in this plan that in terms of the experience yeah all the experience I mean they'll be sharing of materials again obviously a lot of hand washing before and after so we'll see in the comments from our teachers that are on the opening plan where excitement you know more of a return to normalcy with the more layered approach and like like I said earlier my initial comments uh the cohorting piece is not nearly as stringent as it was and again we have we have a great experience with our high school model where there was never cohort is there um as far as lunches go in the elementary and Western Air is that will those be returned to the cafeteria it all depends on the individual Fizz building and how the principal and team schedule that so sometimes it'll be in the classroom others may be scheduled to be spread out in the cafeteria so it's it's going to be you have to maintain they're working at that to maintain the distance so um they may start out in the classroom and then find a way you know with our monitors to have some of the kids in the cafeteria as well um supervision is a big part of that too as well as physical distancing and how we can make that work so each School based on the development mental level of the children we actually say that in a plan we'll be making their plan for lunches and how that would work and snack and are there areas that we need to do things on ventilation that are beyond what we've already done ventilation we're doing what we did last year we had three different uh firms working with us in our maintenance department going through every single uh ventilation unit and or we have what are they called there's ventilation units and what's the other thing called the yeah yeah and different exhaust and um literally putting a sticker with their initials on it and the date that they maintain that particular uh ventilation one of the great things we've talked about this a number of times with having the older buildings is the fact that the ventilation while hot in here and everybody feels that tonight we actually exchange the air quite often because it's not as sophisticated where it's you know uh it's an old-fashioned situation but what that does is it Cycles the air more often and meets the requirements so that's what we did with last year and we fixed many of our ventilation units in our classrooms and and elsewhere gymnasiums Etc we're continuing to maintain them through the summer all of that's discussed in the plan that goes the the comment the elite nine everything's laid out right there and obviously from what Dr Sullivan said today um it sounds like for masking um we can put in that we will uh have optional masking uh unless otherwise mandated by State Department entity or whatever it might be so we'll work with Dr Sullivan on the language for that I think the other thing Bob if you don't mind me turning it over to Dr Garcia for a second in Dr Sullivan as well is you know they've had a collaborative um input to the plan and maybe Dr Garcia I know you know you being new to us you really weren't familiar with the older plan but you certainly went through it you see this more this plan that's developed with brevity talk to us a little bit about your opinion on the plan what you think about the plan and anything you need is to improve in the next week before it's considered by the board and sent to the families please um there was a part in the in the plan that I put a comment in yeah about um uh and I can't I can't of course I can't remember it right now um but in in general um the plan was definitely a good a good one and um I can't I just can't remember I can't recall that that one one comment we adjusted I know we took your feedback I'm trying to I can't if I had the Google Doc up I can but you actually like the plan in general yes yes okay and I do need to say that Mrs Farrell our lead contact Tracer that Dr Sullivan has mentioned uh she was extremely generous as a colleague and provided uh several pages of detailed feedback for us just for things to think about and consider and those were um those were uh placed uh and Incorporated uh this morning so we just continued to evolve it to make sure we have all of our health folks and medical folks helping us develop this so so I guess my my last question is what are you gonna what do we do if we don't have guidance from the state right so how do we write and release the plan if there's no guidance from the state I'm presuming the current Mandate of masks in is still law because it's a government you said that at the beginning correct through the end of through the end of September for unvaccinated for oh it's just for unvaccinated which would include most of the younger children yes okay and that would be unless they change it that's the law that we have to abide by that's the executive order number 13 reaffirming executive order 12a okay and uh just on one point here because 12 a I read 12a and it's it just mentions masks in situations where the population is of high risk or uh places that tend to contract a lot of I don't know if we can consider schools there considering current data Public public places anything public it doesn't say any public places though I read it like four times it just says places and people that have been I mean flock of I can't remember verbena but problematic such as probably public transportation hospitals but considering child care yeah if if the numbers are there but schools thank God or are you say like that there might be room for us it looks like very carefully and working as well it's it's there it doesn't say School specifically but it does say areas that and and for people who are susceptible elderly um pre-existing conditions and then also certain places but schools weren't specifically mentioned it's just public places yeah I think we need to read we need to look at 13 which is the extension to see if there's any changes to that Mike and we'll go through this yeah let's take a hard look that's 13 is the extension of 12a okay so that's what we all want to go through well I could even have Council look at that to double check that yeah and we certainly have Dr Sullivan's advice on on the optional uh for um so so Dr Sullivan just for some clarity because we're all here the the the talking about optional unless otherwise mandated that is optional for unvaccinated optional for vaccinated optional for all do you have a sense of that in terms of any documentation or anything we can lean on or what where you're coming from obviously if if I was unvaccinated I would I'd want to be protected from the community um okay again it comes down to you know somewhat of a personal choice but my own feeling is that if I my personal choice is if I was unvaccinated I'd want to be protected from the rest of the community I'm protecting Myself by wearing a mask it's not that I may be transmitting it to somebody else but it is known that if a person has covid-19 and has a mask on it will reduce transmission to another individual who is within close contact now close contact is defined as 15 minutes in the course of a day within six feet of an individual they haven't redefined that three foot except for students so you may be somebody you may you know be passing somebody unmasked and that's perfectly okay but if you're going to be within six feet of an individual for 15 minutes or more in the course of a day and I'm unvaccinated I'd want to be masked to protect myself not necessarily because I'm worried about having an occult disease and transmitting somebody else I'd want to protect myself I I have three daughters who are teachers and that's what they're saying to me that's what they're saying to me so I'm just thinking ahead to the next week right it's what I'm hearing out of this discussion is our health advisors are saying we have a well thought out multi-tiered plan that masking may not be required as part of that except if the state mandates it did I hear that correctly yes okay I heard that that's kind of where you're understanding is that's my understanding is that what everybody on the board okay and we also need to get clarity continued Clarity because there's some different understanding of the ex the new executive order from the governor 13.

77 percent and age of 65 plus 86 percent thank you so obviously early on when the older folks were dying more frequently they were more amenable to waiting waiting and getting the vaccine as soon as possible and we held multiple clinics first at the senior center and then again at St Joe's and uh my volunteer team I have to to credit uh directed by Maureen Farrell mph um has done a marvelous job as far as getting the vaccine out there uh at a time when it was most needed so we're looking at the possibility of eligible individuals about 3 100 eligible individuals 23 percent of the population still needs to be vaccinated first dose and as I say I don't have a breakdown as to fully vaccinated okay and is there anything we can do as a school district to make it easier for either parents or or students to get vaccines should we be advocating or offering clinics related to the schools and our connection with the parents and the families the problem with the younger children is that they're only eligible for the J J vaccine and a lot of myths have circulated about the J J vaccine a lot 12 million I thought it was Pfizer I'm sorry it is Pfizer I'm sorry it is Pfizer um you're right thank you um and it requires Ultra Cold Storage minus 54.

which extends 12a to September 30th we need to get some clarity on that so the to me the definition of what public place means yeah to me to me it strikes me that if our own health director is saying that's a way to go we ought to be looking really careful at that guidance right and saying is there room for us to make a decision right or is it blocking us because it's law right so I would go at that very aggressively right in terms of looking at do we have the right to act right and need your direct input on that uh Dr Sullivan on do we have the right to act because you you you you represent us well so and I want to thank you for tonight by the way this was very informative but the uh but I think if that's our feeling now we got we have a kind of a basis for saying if we have the room to make a decision let's go make a decision right if we don't have the room to make a decision we're going to have to live with the law and that's what I think we ought to talk about at our next meeting is you know do we have the room in an Uber we might have new news we might have new news how do we how do we work our way and we will bring that with whatever new news we have and advice we have uh in collaboration with Dr Sullivan and Dr Garcia and Council and Council we will we will bring it I will bring it to you buttoned up for consideration in the discussion that's perfect is everybody okay with that and the governor stated yesterday that it may be one or two weeks yep those are his words if you listen to his conference but we could write this in a way that's like other districts have done if we do if we get if we don't get guidance here's what we'll do if we get strong Direction here's what we'll do and we you have to work choose those words really carefully we ought not be disingenuous and say therefore we've made a decision because it's we do have influence from online but I do think we can start working on it with that frame of mind sure off the back of this discussion is everybody okay with that unfortunately John was put into a position where he had to have a prospective plan in by June 23rd yeah there was no time and the CDC didn't come out there was no new guidance until the 9th of July and subsequent to that the governor didn't come out with the reiteration of 12a in executive order 13 until the 20th I mean the 19th so everything is moving along at a snail's pace and no one knows really what who the governor is going listening to that's the whole problem yep so so in any case in any case I think we have to go we have to protect what's happening in this District by going in and saying here's how we would behave in different scenarios that's right and I think that's how we Auto attack that would be wise yes okay and it's just the board any further discussion for tonight or we've taken a long time on this but it was a time well okay Dr Sullivan and Dr Garcia thank you for being here and parents thank you for being here thank you so thank you all for your input tonight and thank you for staying all right so that's it for that we're going to go on with a regular agenda we're going to take a brief pause so those who aren't going to stay and listen to the finance report can uh move on we don't have much along other agenda so thank you great seeing you man thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] via texts [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] spent even though it went on a while so we're going to resume with the regular agenda so next up is written correspondence Elena Lopez Sarah Amaral Ryan rodanus and Brendan Hill wrote regarding public comment kova data and the advocacy letter to the state Laura Orbin wrote regarding social emotional learning in the fall reopening plan and Howard Lasser Nick Schmidt Deborah spinikia Evan and Jessica jaska hollene gone Casey Clarkson Michael Emerson and Joyce Pacino wrote regarding the masking policy for the fall okay thank you next up is approval abort minutes I move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on June 16th yes it's been moved and seconded any any comments or adjustments okay all in favor aye aye okay the minutes are approved next up is the superintendent's report thanks Bob um I will be brief the first one is board retreat is next week 5 PM sharp we have three areas to cover I will present the opening plan for board consideration and approval we will have a discussion uh and an update from the equity and inclusion core Committee in regard to process and direction going forward thanks to Ms Foster uh Miss Holly and Dr Ruby and certainly Mrs Layton and then in addition to that Jonathan Costa will be with us to talk strategic planning from a post-pandemic perspective and process going forward just kind of outlining process and things to think about not diving deep on what do we want portrait of The Graduate to look like or anything like that more process a little bit more surface but getting that out hearing suggestions from the board John's got a nice presentation he's going to facilitate for us a matter of fact Dr Ruby and I are meeting with him tomorrow afternoon to go through his PowerPoint and you know incorporate the things we're working on here in Brookfield some of the things he's doing around the state and really get a really thorough process like we talked about for the next five or so years as to what we want to do in Brookfield a lot of public input we're thinking about and things like that so we're excited about it um that's the first part of board retreat my second piece is uh just an update like I always do in the summer um Mrs diamond and her team really keep a close eye on uh enrollment in kindergarten but I thought I'd share a little bit about grade one as well very briefly because that was our kindergarten last year and there was people wondering where is that going to go um our our projections are spot on for this year's kindergarten we had projected 171 and right now we have registered 170.

and regrettably we do not have Ultra pole storage so we can refer them to the Community Health Center in Danbury or New Milford Health Department has offered because they have Ultra cold storage available and a number of our students have taken advantage of that um I don't have the exact number but uh but uh oh yes I do 712 uh children have taken advantage of that with two doses okay yeah Dr Sullivan can I ask a question on uh people who've gotten do you have any numbers on people who've gotten covered gotten over covered as you said 70 76 Brookfield that's a lot of Brookfield uh do you have any indication on how many people have gotten Kobe gotten over covid as it pertains to moving closer to her immunity oh sure um as I think I mentioned uh we've had um 1732 1737 cases and 18 deaths obviously the rest recovered if there have been a number of hospitalizations uh probably 20 to 25 hospitalizations but they don't have accurate numbers because the hospitals have been reluctant to report it to me but we have had hospitalizations so with vaccination and previous exposure what would you say percentage-wise we're we're probably over 70 percent by the vaccination I'd like to see us uh I'd like to see us well uh over 80 percent of the population you don't think with the form of exposure went over 80 for um no it um if you're talking about the entire population correct you have to exclude the the children that aren't eligible yeah I think is the question if I could is um there's there's a contention in the world that because some a large percentage of the population has had been exposed 10 percent of our population has had positive right uh cases that they have antibodies right they're they do have antibodies well that question I think you're asking is is when you take that into consideration are we reaching that hurt immunity level the problem is that most Studies have indicated that the antibodies will wash out by 90 days I saw a UK study said two years pardon me a study at UK said two years which one oh at a chance it's been as long as two years but on average it's been as long as two years okay yeah it's been on average it's been 90 days and uh that too is another reason for breakthrough cases because they've been vaccinated and gotta they just didn't build up antibody not everybody has a good immune response that's why some of these studies that are done in the laboratory aren't very supportive measuring T Cell response and antibody response they're actually looking at other aspects of the disease in a laboratory setting most recent was Associated I think with J and J just came out day before yesterday if I'm not mistaken that was done in the laboratory and and so consequently if we take the average of the number of individuals who may wash out in 90 days and add those we still haven't reached her uh what we would consider full herd immunity 80 percent of the of the population of Brookfield being fully vaccinated okay got it so we've got to keep pushing the vaccinations and as I said I'm only reporting one the first dose they've had at least one dose I don't have total numbers on the individuals who have had been fully vaccinated and that's a little bit less okay any other questions for Dr Sullivan because I do want to turn to the the reopening plans I got one more because uh so at the very beginning uh you mentioned the study out of I believe was Jama again 2021 experimental assessment of carbon dioxide inhaled uh that which was redacted uh so not a good study uh are we still saying that carbon dioxide doesn't increase in people wearing masks I would hope not because I've worn them eight hours a day for five and a half days a week for 30 years you've measured and I hope that it hasn't caused the toxicity in my brain so so is there any if they've attracted that study or do are you aware of any other studies then um on the carbon dioxide thing yeah currently okay enjoy anything all right so look um let's talk a little bit about the reopening plan itself um and Dr brawl I want to aim this at you so we have that we've taken these tiered strategies we have an intent to open up fall right um and uh last year I recall we because of the scare of covet at the beginning and it was a real fear right we had actually I think the state guided us to have a quick trigger finger right people going into 14 days of quarantines especially teachers that became a problem for us if I remember in December kids being pulled out and going to hybrid actually rather quickly when when things were happening so in the reopening plan what have we built in in terms of this broad picture of quarantines kids being pulled out um and uh and moving to hybrid do we have triggers do we have uh do we have a structure around that we actually don't have guidance on a structure with metrics at this point we do not have that what we do know is we have our layered approaches we've discussed the elite nine as Dr Sullivan started to talk to um there is new newer information discussed yesterday at the dph call that I referenced there was a discussion of quarantine in close contact in close contact there I don't know if this will be the final decision we all know close contact has been that six foot radius they're saying three feet now so that would be less kids quarantined which we would hope for but quarantine is still one of the layers of mitigation and actually talked to Dr Sullivan about that earlier this week um I'm sorry Bob was there a follow-up to that just trying to get my head around what are we going to see when we see the plan is is it going to be one that keeps our kids in school as much as possible as opposed to last year which was a quick quick trigger finger yes so the the plan is and the powers that be are obviously supporting 100 in-person learning we have always supported 100 in-person learning obviously so long as we could do it safely we're not even putting in the plan an option for remote or hybrid that is not necessarily suggested or encouraged at this point so we don't even have that in the plan we know how to do it if we had to if there was some major emergency some major uptick that that that precipitate is such a decision um and again we have not gotten guidance on metrics so the thought process with the social distancing down to three feet um with the close contact down to three feet the layering of the strategies less um reactionary with the less things we knew in terms of the guidance about the surface uh contamination and those concerns we plan to be 100 in person let's not forget the biggest piece for this is Staffing it's staff are the majority of our staff is vaccinated so those issues where we had to quarantine staff that should be absolutely lessened where we didn't have Staffing to actually man the the building the other part of that is um the vaccinated folks as long as they're asymptomatic do not have to be quarantined so you start to you start to see how there's less opportunity for students having to be home and to be in some kind of um checking with the Google Classroom having a substitute ready to work with them we're going to have to do that there will be quarantines we know that but it's going to it should be we are planning for a lot less of that that's that's the whole and I and I think I heard you say earlier we won't have the Plexiglas Shields those will be a thing of the past correct uh will we maintain desks individual desks for each student yes instead of the tables yeah we have desks but we also have tables where we can if we can manage the three feet distance at a table situation then we'll do that okay and again we're working with Dr Sullivan um and and Mrs Farrell on on some of the class configuration especially Elementary where it tends to have more tables and things like that I would just like to clarify the three foot rule applies only to students it does not include apply to Educators and staff it applies only to students that's interesting that's interesting um and are there any other big changes that we would expect to see in this plan that in terms of the experience yeah all the experience I mean they'll be sharing of materials again obviously a lot of hand washing before and after so we'll see in the comments from our teachers that are on the opening plan where excitement you know more of a return to normalcy with the more layered approach and like like I said earlier my initial comments uh the cohorting piece is not nearly as stringent as it was and again we have we have a great experience with our high school model where there was never cohort is there um as far as lunches go in the elementary and Western Air is that will those be returned to the cafeteria it all depends on the individual Fizz building and how the principal and team schedule that so sometimes it'll be in the classroom others may be scheduled to be spread out in the cafeteria so it's it's going to be you have to maintain they're working at that to maintain the distance so um they may start out in the classroom and then find a way you know with our monitors to have some of the kids in the cafeteria as well um supervision is a big part of that too as well as physical distancing and how we can make that work so each School based on the development mental level of the children we actually say that in a plan we'll be making their plan for lunches and how that would work and snack and are there areas that we need to do things on ventilation that are beyond what we've already done ventilation we're doing what we did last year we had three different uh firms working with us in our maintenance department going through every single uh ventilation unit and or we have what are they called there's ventilation units and what's the other thing called the yeah yeah and different exhaust and um literally putting a sticker with their initials on it and the date that they maintain that particular uh ventilation one of the great things we've talked about this a number of times with having the older buildings is the fact that the ventilation while hot in here and everybody feels that tonight we actually exchange the air quite often because it's not as sophisticated where it's you know uh it's an old-fashioned situation but what that does is it Cycles the air more often and meets the requirements so that's what we did with last year and we fixed many of our ventilation units in our classrooms and and elsewhere gymnasiums Etc we're continuing to maintain them through the summer all of that's discussed in the plan that goes the the comment the elite nine everything's laid out right there and obviously from what Dr Sullivan said today um it sounds like for masking um we can put in that we will uh have optional masking uh unless otherwise mandated by State Department entity or whatever it might be so we'll work with Dr Sullivan on the language for that I think the other thing Bob if you don't mind me turning it over to Dr Garcia for a second in Dr Sullivan as well is you know they've had a collaborative um input to the plan and maybe Dr Garcia I know you know you being new to us you really weren't familiar with the older plan but you certainly went through it you see this more this plan that's developed with brevity talk to us a little bit about your opinion on the plan what you think about the plan and anything you need is to improve in the next week before it's considered by the board and sent to the families please um there was a part in the in the plan that I put a comment in yeah about um uh and I can't I can't of course I can't remember it right now um but in in general um the plan was definitely a good a good one and um I can't I just can't remember I can't recall that that one one comment we adjusted I know we took your feedback I'm trying to I can't if I had the Google Doc up I can but you actually like the plan in general yes yes okay and I do need to say that Mrs Farrell our lead contact Tracer that Dr Sullivan has mentioned uh she was extremely generous as a colleague and provided uh several pages of detailed feedback for us just for things to think about and consider and those were um those were uh placed uh and Incorporated uh this morning so we just continued to evolve it to make sure we have all of our health folks and medical folks helping us develop this so so I guess my my last question is what are you gonna what do we do if we don't have guidance from the state right so how do we write and release the plan if there's no guidance from the state I'm presuming the current Mandate of masks in is still law because it's a government you said that at the beginning correct through the end of through the end of September for unvaccinated for oh it's just for unvaccinated which would include most of the younger children yes okay and that would be unless they change it that's the law that we have to abide by that's the executive order number 13 reaffirming executive order 12a okay and uh just on one point here because 12 a I read 12a and it's it just mentions masks in situations where the population is of high risk or uh places that tend to contract a lot of I don't know if we can consider schools there considering current data Public public places anything public it doesn't say any public places though I read it like four times it just says places and people that have been I mean flock of I can't remember verbena but problematic such as probably public transportation hospitals but considering child care yeah if if the numbers are there but schools thank God or are you say like that there might be room for us it looks like very carefully and working as well it's it's there it doesn't say School specifically but it does say areas that and and for people who are susceptible elderly um pre-existing conditions and then also certain places but schools weren't specifically mentioned it's just public places yeah I think we need to read we need to look at 13 which is the extension to see if there's any changes to that Mike and we'll go through this yeah let's take a hard look that's 13 is the extension of 12a okay so that's what we all want to go through well I could even have Council look at that to double check that yeah and we certainly have Dr Sullivan's advice on on the optional uh for um so so Dr Sullivan just for some clarity because we're all here the the the talking about optional unless otherwise mandated that is optional for unvaccinated optional for vaccinated optional for all do you have a sense of that in terms of any documentation or anything we can lean on or what where you're coming from obviously if if I was unvaccinated I would I'd want to be protected from the community um okay again it comes down to you know somewhat of a personal choice but my own feeling is that if I my personal choice is if I was unvaccinated I'd want to be protected from the rest of the community I'm protecting Myself by wearing a mask it's not that I may be transmitting it to somebody else but it is known that if a person has covid-19 and has a mask on it will reduce transmission to another individual who is within close contact now close contact is defined as 15 minutes in the course of a day within six feet of an individual they haven't redefined that three foot except for students so you may be somebody you may you know be passing somebody unmasked and that's perfectly okay but if you're going to be within six feet of an individual for 15 minutes or more in the course of a day and I'm unvaccinated I'd want to be masked to protect myself not necessarily because I'm worried about having an occult disease and transmitting somebody else I'd want to protect myself I I have three daughters who are teachers and that's what they're saying to me that's what they're saying to me so I'm just thinking ahead to the next week right it's what I'm hearing out of this discussion is our health advisors are saying we have a well thought out multi-tiered plan that masking may not be required as part of that except if the state mandates it did I hear that correctly yes okay I heard that that's kind of where you're understanding is that's my understanding is that what everybody on the board okay and we also need to get clarity continued Clarity because there's some different understanding of the ex the new executive order from the governor 13.

that puts us at nine sections at uh 19 students in a class there's three additional students pending right now so we still have a month to go and we know as school gets closer some families move or haven't shared with us that they're here yet and they register a little late um in grade one um enrollment this is important for everybody to know enrollment in grade one is currently and that the current grade one the kids going into grade one the projection for kindergarten was 190.

which extends 12a to September 30th we need to get some clarity on that so the to me the definition of what public place means yeah to me to me it strikes me that if our own health director is saying that's a way to go we ought to be looking really careful at that guidance right and saying is there room for us to make a decision right or is it blocking us because it's law right so I would go at that very aggressively right in terms of looking at do we have the right to act right and need your direct input on that uh Dr Sullivan on do we have the right to act because you you you you represent us well so and I want to thank you for tonight by the way this was very informative but the uh but I think if that's our feeling now we got we have a kind of a basis for saying if we have the room to make a decision let's go make a decision right if we don't have the room to make a decision we're going to have to live with the law and that's what I think we ought to talk about at our next meeting is you know do we have the room in an Uber we might have new news we might have new news how do we how do we work our way and we will bring that with whatever new news we have and advice we have uh in collaboration with Dr Sullivan and Dr Garcia and Council and Council we will we will bring it I will bring it to you buttoned up for consideration in the discussion that's perfect is everybody okay with that and the governor stated yesterday that it may be one or two weeks yep those are his words if you listen to his conference but we could write this in a way that's like other districts have done if we do if we get if we don't get guidance here's what we'll do if we get strong Direction here's what we'll do and we you have to work choose those words really carefully we ought not be disingenuous and say therefore we've made a decision because it's we do have influence from online but I do think we can start working on it with that frame of mind sure off the back of this discussion is everybody okay with that unfortunately John was put into a position where he had to have a prospective plan in by June 23rd yeah there was no time and the CDC didn't come out there was no new guidance until the 9th of July and subsequent to that the governor didn't come out with the reiteration of 12a in executive order 13 until the 20th I mean the 19th so everything is moving along at a snail's pace and no one knows really what who the governor is going listening to that's the whole problem yep so so in any case in any case I think we have to go we have to protect what's happening in this District by going in and saying here's how we would behave in different scenarios that's right and I think that's how we Auto attack that would be wise yes okay and it's just the board any further discussion for tonight or we've taken a long time on this but it was a time well okay Dr Sullivan and Dr Garcia thank you for being here and parents thank you for being here thank you so thank you all for your input tonight and thank you for staying all right so that's it for that we're going to go on with a regular agenda we're going to take a brief pause so those who aren't going to stay and listen to the finance report can uh move on we don't have much along other agenda so thank you great seeing you man thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] via texts [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] spent even though it went on a while so we're going to resume with the regular agenda so next up is written correspondence Elena Lopez Sarah Amaral Ryan rodanus and Brendan Hill wrote regarding public comment kova data and the advocacy letter to the state Laura Orbin wrote regarding social emotional learning in the fall reopening plan and Howard Lasser Nick Schmidt Deborah spinikia Evan and Jessica jaska hollene gone Casey Clarkson Michael Emerson and Joyce Pacino wrote regarding the masking policy for the fall okay thank you next up is approval abort minutes I move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on June 16th yes it's been moved and seconded any any comments or adjustments okay all in favor aye aye okay the minutes are approved next up is the superintendent's report thanks Bob um I will be brief the first one is board retreat is next week 5 PM sharp we have three areas to cover I will present the opening plan for board consideration and approval we will have a discussion uh and an update from the equity and inclusion core Committee in regard to process and direction going forward thanks to Ms Foster uh Miss Holly and Dr Ruby and certainly Mrs Layton and then in addition to that Jonathan Costa will be with us to talk strategic planning from a post-pandemic perspective and process going forward just kind of outlining process and things to think about not diving deep on what do we want portrait of The Graduate to look like or anything like that more process a little bit more surface but getting that out hearing suggestions from the board John's got a nice presentation he's going to facilitate for us a matter of fact Dr Ruby and I are meeting with him tomorrow afternoon to go through his PowerPoint and you know incorporate the things we're working on here in Brookfield some of the things he's doing around the state and really get a really thorough process like we talked about for the next five or so years as to what we want to do in Brookfield a lot of public input we're thinking about and things like that so we're excited about it um that's the first part of board retreat my second piece is uh just an update like I always do in the summer um Mrs diamond and her team really keep a close eye on uh enrollment in kindergarten but I thought I'd share a little bit about grade one as well very briefly because that was our kindergarten last year and there was people wondering where is that going to go um our our projections are spot on for this year's kindergarten we had projected 171 and right now we have registered 170.

last year remember only 133 actually attended school they went to private schools as they held out a year there was all kinds of different things going on obviously because of the pandemic so our projection um for the current grade one class last year was 190 it's at 202 so we have 12 additional students in comparison to our projection puts us at about 22 students in a class with nine sections you may recall one of the things we did is we have with our Esser funds we have an additional paraprofessional assigned to grade one and Mrs Diamond has a plan for that to help with transition social emotional needs obviously learning needs and so that's part of how we're mitigating get starting to get on the high side of the class size we'll keep an eye on it and we'll let you know and that's the report any questions he said One Professional for all the sections um she's looking at how he's looking at how she's going to do that one of the plans is to have it more focused on a classroom or two but things evolve the way students move in the way we need to look at schedules so we leave that up to the school and Mrs diamond and her expertise to work on is there any chance that we would have to add an additional section at the last minute um there's as there is every summer there's always a chance I will inform you if I'm getting a little nervous in the next couple of weeks and certainly if we ever have to call a special meeting to have that serious discussion let Mr dunno let the board of Finance know we would certainly do that at this point we don't think that's the case but you just never know okay things change I mean as much as we've done a lot of talking and meeting and thinking and communicating it's it's July 21st for families schools for some families like tonight School is right around the corner for others it's still six weeks away they're not thinking about school yet so some people aren't registered yet some people haven't made their move yet some people who are um you know in a rental situation or moving in with family so there's a lot of those variables you just described my entire family there you go you got all kinds of things Bob we're in the six weeks is a long way away I would like to think that for myself but but certainly that's not not how summer works all right let's move on thank you next up is subcommittee reports let's start with cape who's got Cape all right Dr Ruby the cape meeting we met on June 17th and we had two topics on the agenda the first one was regarding a communication that the board members received regarding firearm safety education and the discussion was held regarding the communication that was received and the information that um Mrs Fernanda shared with us that was received from the Connecticut Association of boards of education and the subcommittee discussed the importance of this topic and decided that more information should be gathered regarding how other districts are currently addressing this concern and possible formats for including firearm safety education in an appropriate and efficacious manner in in the curriculum and we're going to revisit that as a committee next year the second topic on the agenda was regarding classroom library book purchases we understand that the board received several inquiries regarding the purchase of classroom Library materials so a discussion was held regarding the procedure for purchasing classroom library books which I led and we clarified the fact that these are not curriculum books rather these are classroom libraries those are libraries that are in that are in the classroom so that the children have physical access to reading materials and they are we would consider them to be supportive to the curriculum because the teachers in conjunction with the reading specialist and the library media specialist makes elections it's not one person just going through a catalog picking books make selections that are great appropriate and complement the topics that are in the curriculum content for that year that particular grade level and also we want to ensure that there are um diverse authors that represent the children that are in the demographics in our schools not only for those children to be able to see themselves but for other students to be able to learn about other backgrounds because we do talk about the authors not just the the books that we're reading and um the uh it was just really going over the fact that this is not curriculum that these purchases don't come through cape um they're they're done at the school level and uh that was basically the it was a short meeting and we are not meeting during July and August is there anything that you guys um remember that you would like to add to that the other two subcommittee members Dr Murphy or joy I think it's just worth mentioning the Firearms I was gonna say discussion was kind of pushed off until we kind of explored more what they meant by it yeah that's what I said yeah so uh I think we were talking maybe just like as an assembly not like as a yeah well I wasn't going to go into all the things that we discussed but we we want now that you brought it up we you know like comprehensive as far as like how to actually use a gun right more like general safety kind of like how to not start a wildfire exactly and it was a free um education curriculum the curriculum is free any other questions all right thank you thank you all right I'll do the next two um since I'm on the personnel and negotiations subcommittee and then we talked about the topic there and then we immediately went to the finance committee on the same topic and we can it's on the agenda uh a little bit later so uh personnel and negotiations met on July 1st um it wasn't a very long meeting we talked specifically about a specific salary question which we'll talk about um at our uh at the budget adjustment time and uh and that we also had a couple of Staffing items that um are also going to be on the adjustment and the committee agreed fully that we would support it so I'm going to hold the questions until we actually get to the budget item because we'll talk about it in a little more detail there um finance committee met on July 12th and we also talked about the same items and we reviewed it with the finance committee in terms of affordability and the budget adjustment that would be required so we're going to have a budget item on the item tonight more importantly we reviewed the financial statements we're right in the middle of the close for the year and all the news is good news right there's no major exposures that have popped up and it's actually looking like with this million dollars we spent on covet related stuff next year we're going to make our budget anyhow um given all the things that are coming it's not final yet it's probably another week or two away but uh both uh um Mr post and the town controller were very upbeat about how things are are working both on the town side and the school side so um this will be a good year-end close we also talked about uh and so we'll have those numbers probably this time next month we'll have the final numbers on how we'll end it up the other thing we talked about is the audit is starting and that the kickoffs were happening and they've met with the Auditors a couple of times and we'll be talking about that over the next month or two right in terms of that but not a lot to report there other than it's starting so um and we're and you might note that's earlier than we've seen in the past doing that right after the books are closed gets it out of the way long before we're into January and we're into the next budget year right this is a good thing that it gets done quickly so and we're very well organized so that's that's it on the finance report and we'll come back to the topic on the budget items if you guys are okay so pause to see if there's any questions okay all right so next up is the consent agenda I'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are resignations retirements new hires and transfers they don't have a second a second okay it's been moved and seconded any conversation from the board I just want to say thank you to Mr pomponio good luck in your retirement thank you for um really making a difference in my daughter's career as a math teacher who's very unique and real special to her he was special really special and unique to her um he's really sadly missed on behalf of our family thank you Joy you beat me to it so I appreciate that and also for Jim you know 35 years with the district so we wish him all the best in addition to that Laura buffkin our Pre-K team sure one of our Pre-K teachers over 20 years with the district so we're sad to see her leave but excited for her to move on to retirement and uh other things in her life to pursue so uh both to Mr ponio and Mrs buffkin we wish them all the best and thank them for all the years of service I just had a question about transfer um the the math the curriculum specialist does that mean we're not having that K4 the curriculum Specialists they're going to roll into a more of a coaching role okay no that was all part of when we presented Esser back in May and June and we're talking through there's just going to be a math coach yes okay to four and so a number of whether they were a curriculum Specialist or a veteran uh high quality veteran excited ready to go teacher in terms of coaching ready for the training some of our veterans are moving into those positions as well as some of the the new folks coming in so that's that's precipitated some transfers or new hires because you have backfills for some of those people so you can you can see the tracking of that um we'll have about 16 uh new certified people to the staff because there's 12 hires here and there's four coming oh yeah and so but this we have what's called an inout sheet um and so we have that for all of our position control I know there's a lot here today over May June July and August we will continue to receive you know we've had retirements announced earlier in the year we had these two you know on consent so there's uh there's certainly a lot going on um and we have to thank um Dr Ruby and Mr post Mrs Reynolds uh and Mrs Squires who I shared with the board is moving into the HR specialist position to replace Mrs Kavanaugh in consideration of all this work this is this is a large consent agenda it's been a little busy the last four weeks so we've um but we put the pedal to the metal and we've really we're bringing out some super excited high quality people oh document microphone not that you're not aware of this but just to give credit to to give credit to the people at the school because we have teachers that come in you know as you know Joy during the summer on their own time to be part of the teams at the schools before we even get the people that get signed up up to us and also parents provide their children for the demonstration lesson so there's a lot that goes on and without the teachers and the parents allowing children to come and play school we wouldn't be able to be as successful as we are and we also are very appreciative of the fact that before the um the budget was passed for the positions that we knew or goddess because they were Replacements we were able to post anticipated and that put us in a much better position than we've been in previous years where we're kind of late to the party on on putting our postings up and getting people in so you know that was really really helpful so thanks to all those people Ruby is our new hire at uh the social studies instructional coach is that who did our trauma training so I'm just going to brag about the difference it's amazing so we have had you know everybody looks through like a deficit model with this year we've had so many pot there's been a lot of things that have been really sad and we heard the effects that that the years had on families and whatnot and we're not diminishing that but we also have had a lot of wins and we've provided um PD to support um the initiatives of the board and to support the needs of the teachers and so two things happened one we were able to bring in technology integration PD and you heard me talk at the board meeting about how we needed to continue that and we were working with an amazing PD Provider from CES who worked with every single high school teacher and we got positive feedback from pretty much everybody who told us anything and they also I wrote a grant that we got awarded to to pay for her to work with our other three schools when we posted that position she applied for it so it's like a win for us because there's or when in coaching trust is so important and so the the teachers in the district and the administrators know and trust this person so it's even though it's a new hire it's like she's already been working with us for a year the second thing that happened is that the person who's been working with us with um cultural competence and helping us with some of the work that um the equity inclusion committee is involved with is somebody that Christine zapala and I met at a conference four years ago and she came into the district she's from Utah a professor in Utah and she came into the district and did trauma-informed training with teachers with very well received people really loved her and then we brought her back this year to do virtual training and she announced to Kevin and myself when we were meeting with her once before meeting she said I just want you to know that we're going to be moving to Northern Utah you know out of Salt Lake and I'm taking another position Another Universe City and then this was honestly when she goes but not until I got tired of scouring that Brookfield website every week before and I was like are you kidding and she said working with your teachers and your administrators is so amazing she goes the only thing that could bring me back to New England to that horrible weather is if you had a job in Brookfield and I could work there and so I couldn't say anything we posted the social studies position she applied for it and she sold her house in Utah and is moving to Sandy Hook and she's going to be our social find a place oh yeah like this good yep so and that's a credit not to us that's a credit to the people in the schools that these individuals have worked with they we have good people working here and they and people who work with our district like working with our district that's great so willing to relocate seriously so across the country to come here we're really blessed and um and that's another seamless transition because she's a known entity and there's there's trust there yeah so thank you thank you thanks Dr Ruby okay all in favor of the consent agenda all right uh moving on to new business um the we did the fall opening plan already we spent a little time doing that that was time well spent so the only other item is the approval of the budget transfer I will move that the board approve a budget transfer as requested by superintendent Dr John Burrell and Director of Business and operations can post second okay it's been moved in second and let me turn it over to Mr post to kind of describe what we're doing or do you want to do a doctor oh no uh Mr postal code Dr post I promoted today Dr post wow um the postman uh the uh let you kind of brief everybody on what this is about and uh both in the budget itself and what we're trying to get at sure so uh previously we had contracted for services of RBT which is registered Behavior technician with that advance to serve some of our students it was determined this spring that we would better be able to provide services to the certain group of students using ABA paraprofessionals so we're proposing to make the budget adjustment to take the Professional Services out of the budget and reallocate that money to fund to Aba paraprofessionals with health benefits at the same time we've identified the need to add an additional 0.5 clerical in the special education Administrative Office um and we've identified the need to adjust the salary of our technology director and we accomplished this by again removing the Professional Services money that we will save money hiring Mrs Squires as the HR specialist rather than a HR director and reducing the extent Duty curriculum budget back to the same level we have budgeted for this past year which is still a healthy budget and it all washes out all right so uh any questions from the board all right hearing hearing none all in favor all right thank you prove all right um so that's it for new business there is no old business uh next item on the agenda is an update on the Candlewood Lake Elementary School building project Dr Earl do you want to talk about our walkthrough where do you want me to Bob I can I'll talk about some details but I know you want to talk about the walk and taking a walk around and seeing everything okay so you can you can report on the meeting and I'll talk about the boring stuff you do the fun stuff I did get a picture of um um Jack Ludwig though walking around tweeted out last night so just so we have that from the NBC and thanks to the NBC but please so we were invited as you all know to do a walk through um I'll start by saying yup we ought to do this right it's worth walking around and visualizing the space from inside the space it's uh it's uh it's really an exciting opportunity we talked to the uh the building coordinators and said once it's built out a little bit more we ought to have some moments where more members of the public could go through a walk through of the construction site it's a little it's ahead of the curve they usually like to let people in have a grand opening where people go in but man you get a sense of the building and what it will look like even though it's the shell and for the members of the public who haven't got driven over to Huckleberry you're not allowed on the site itself but you can pull up next to it look through the fence it's dramatic what's going on in the back of that Huckleberry property um two things that stood out to me so right now they've built up the um the cafeteria right now it's just the shells of the building and so they haven't really built anything on the inside yet but they've built in the uh the cafeteria the all-purpose room the um some of the neighborhoods the grade level neighbors I'm sorry in the front of the building you know all that stuff on the right side of the plan is built out and then they've done two of the three wings um are fully built down they're starting the walls on the third wing for the classrooms um the when you walk in you realize how first of all how spacious it is it is the classrooms will be right-sized which and there's a sufficient room in there for um you know for both classroom size but also you know work rooms for you know special ed breakout centers and that and the breakout rooms for the teachers and things like that you really get a sense of how the space will come the second thing I walked out of was the space outside the building is bigger than I expected there are lots of space around the back of the building for playground areas and both in the far back but also on the sides in between the wings so um it's and they look like it will be just a very nice experience for our kids so that so one feeling of the progress is really good secondly that we're using some technology that is going to pay off I think for us they're they're using pre-cut pre-insulated forms for the cement walls so that you put out this you put the form in there you stick the rebar into the middle of it and then you pour the cement you never take the form away so no construction you have a form you pour the cement and then you just rip the rip the mold away in this case the old stays and it has that much insulation on either side of it so that will help with temperature control airflow control and all the things and they were they're they're actually the first we're the first school or public building I think in the state of Connecticut that's using this technology and they use it down south a lot and very positive reviews to the point where they've asked us if we would be uh um a showcase for that we'll wait and see how it goes before we agree to do that but uh but it's pretty impressive when you actually see it in person and you could see it from afar it's all the white styrofoam he looks at the look and stuff instead of just playing cement around the building so um really uh nice use of the site and uh and the progress is going really well and there aren't they seem to be right on schedule yep um so so and then we went and met with the MBC you know let you kind of so be very brief Bob you really picked up on some great things there um so reports to the NBC first of all thank you to the NBC they have done a tremendous job the the the volunteers like the Board of Ed and the time they're putting into our project is is incredible as a matter of fact Mr checo gave out of his busy professional schedule gave us uh about an hour and a half I think it was yesterday morning Ken the days are so long I forget um working with our principals um uh um on the elementary principles on what the um transition plan might look like and some of the options some of the ideas some of the thoughts because we really need to develop that transition Plan and there's going to be all kinds of new protocols from entry in parking lot and drop-offs and all of that all the way to how we operate the school um they're tecton arcadis and Ong all gave a report I'm really thrilled to see the collaboration of all three companies working together uh in in concert with the NBC a couple of comments from members of the NBC that I wanted to share um safe secure and clean they can continue to talk about that in the way the site is being done it's even safe it's been secure and it's been relatively a very clean project um you can ask Mrs labrusano she had one or two complaints of a cigarette at one point way far in the corner and we we put that out literally uh immediately I mean it is a clean site in terms of the way behavior is and everything else we're keeping very close tabs on that we're also really excited um working with Dr Ruby and the principals in developing a professional development opportunity Pre-K are you right Pre-K to five on November 2nd our election day professional development where we're going to bring Pre-K to five all of our teachers together at the workspace The Cooperative Educational Services workspace in Bethel for a team building and professional development opportunity in terms of bringing three schools together and we're bringing people forget that fifth grade is coming down you know and this is a big deal for transition for our fifth grade team as well so we're really excited about that and as you can imagine any Transit edition of one school to another school let alone three schools physically bringing them to a new physical plant but as well as for some very emotional their entire career has been in one school closing down two schools let alone demolishing a school and just bringing them together there's lots of nuances in terms of the the Staffing considerations the physical moving considerations in the in the morale and team building considerations so we're working at that we're very fortunate because we have the flexibility and the time to have to plan for a safe and methodic transition in a transparent transition to that end we're planning a putting together a comprehensive PowerPoint and we would pres I'll present that with the team talking to it a little bit with me um at the end of October at our second October board meeting we want to get through the transition obviously we've got emotions are high we've got to open the school got to get those schools in terms of this year get things ready get people settled in and then once our minds are settled in and we're used to the newness of school in the coming year we'll present this plan because we need to be ready uh for for move-in and transition moving over the course of 22-23 so we're excited will the teachers have a chance to walk the site oh they're they're we're gonna those opportunities you and I were talking about yesterday whether whether they're uh some of the folks in town were able to set things up we've got to be very careful because we don't want to get in the way of construction um and we also want to be safe so we have to figure that out but um I think once we have the shell and floors and their safe structured opportunities we might be able to take advantage of those uh on off hours or even weekend hours or something like that where there's less activity going on excitement yeah and we would have to work through just the public with the staff oh yeah the staff needs to start visualizing it yeah and see what it's really going to look like the other thing we'll be doing in the fall a couple of things people asked about these are the nitty-gritty details um it's called FF e Furniture fixtures equipment that's the telephone system how are we going to call in how does that work what are the numbers going to look like we talked about an upper in a lower house you know all these things all that'll be fleshed out in October we'll talk to you about that the fall we'll talk about ffne um some of our user groups will be a part of that the Architects will bring down um kind of a selection of furniture and you know what do you guys think of this get some input get some ideas um obviously bring that back to the end The Architects will bring that back to the NBC decisions will be made um so we've got a lot to do but we're excited about it in our our administrative team our building level administrative team is fully committed really excited and what what I am always um I guess I admire Dr Ruby I talk about this all the time is I admire their commitment to the level of detail to make sure the plan is going to work you know they don't want it's always I admire it but it drives me crazy but it's a necessary exercise as I always say it was a necessary exercise to go through that meeting because we really want to have the smoothest transition we can have um so anyway we're excited thank you okay thank you any questions okay uh next up is three main points what do you guys think new school definitely I'd say the update on the fall opening plan and our comments from doctors Sullivan and Garcia yeah I don't know I've got two I don't really other than that it's a pretty sure maybe welcoming a lot of new hires yeah yeah yeah I have new hire Stones yeah okay I will note that there's a pop star in the list too Katy Perry Katy Perry this this poor young teacher oh do you want to go to the mic you want me to do it doctor okay so so we we have a new teacher who the the person she's heard this probably for the last 10 years since Katy Perry has become a pop star her name is Kate Perry and she'll be joining us we're excited to have her as math teacher at Whiskey near um and uh she joins at the middle school don't forget a couple of years ago we hired Joe Walsh um a math teacher at the middle school and those of us who are at a vintage where we remember the Eagles that's one of the big time guitarists and the other is a one of our sixth grade teachers Will Smith otherwise known as The Fresh Prince so so we have a lot of rock stars and pop stars over at the uh leave it up to Mr Rendon to make of course of course all right so we got our three main points upcoming events I have at Center School the sweet dreams story times with Mrs Diamond continue on Thursdays at 6 45 and kindergarten screenings will be on August 9th August 13th and August 16th at Wisconsin air student walkthroughs are scheduled for August 23rd from 8 30 to 11 30 and August 24th from 1 30 to 3 30 and the new to Brookfield and whiskin air orientation is on August 24th from 10 30 to 11 30. and at the high school the incoming 9th grade new student orientation is on August 24th at 6 PM in the auditorium that's it yeah thank you all right that's it for our agenda so unless there's uh any uh objection we're adjourned thank you thank you thank you for a long but productive evening so [Music] drive safe everyone [Music] foreign

that puts us at nine sections at uh 19 students in a class there's three additional students pending right now so we still have a month to go and we know as school gets closer some families move or haven't shared with us that they're here yet and they register a little late um in grade one um enrollment this is important for everybody to know enrollment in grade one is currently and that the current grade one the kids going into grade one the projection for kindergarten was 190.

um galen would you read the land heritage statement all right um land you statement uh i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including odiwa ojibway bodhi wadmi and wyandot peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the in the united states uh lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807 the one where we work where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals that's the land uh your statement well thank you galen could you initiate the roll call i sure will all right uh commissioner graham i'm here commissioner needham commissioner needham council member this president in from ann arbor right commissioner uh gibb randall commissioner gibb randall councilmember griswold here from ann arbor all right commissioner cali work here uh president or chairperson uh stephen brown president here in ann arbor all right commissioner mursky commissioner mursky vice chairperson mitchell here from ann arbor uh commissioner vandenbroe here commissioner oriole here from ann arbor right uh commissioner zane from my number all right we have a quorum all right thank you galen um the next item on the agenda is approval of this agenda um is that does anybody wish to propose any changes to the agenda for this moment i see kathy griswold's hand up i would like to add a new business item i could report it out with council communications but i think it's significant enough to have its own agenda item and that is uh the a20 plan was revised after a council vote on monday night okay and and council member dish was a co-sponsor of that resolution okay so um shall we append it to the uh to the end or at the beginning or put it at the beginning of the presentation either one okay well let's put it near the end and um let's try to yeah and be uh let's try to be timely with the other items on the agenda are there any other suggestions to amend the agenda okay do i have a motion to uh i guess kathy kathy pass kathy did the first motion or the second to add the silence for the agenda seconds second okay read a second um all of you would i um raise your hand or say i i all who vote no please raise your hand or say no are there any abstentions okay the the agenda is modified unanimously we will add an agenda item at the end of new business for a20 revisions um kathy and lisa will lead that discussion so the next item on the agenda's public commentary this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 or 888 or i'm sorry 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 978-7334-3911 information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established do we have anybody on the line as yet caitlin okay there are no callers okay we'll we'll wait another 30 seconds okay are there are there is there anybody on the line as yet there's no one on the line okay well this ends the first public commentary period um you'll have a second opportunity to speak at the end of the meeting so the next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes um let's um let's go for the may minutes first um and do these separately are there any um suggested amendments the minutes as written i don't hear or see any comments so i do have one and that is um on page five under the section reports from uh committees etc under the council report uh it just states judge cannon ordered gelman two and then there's nothing so it's kind of open-ended so i don't i don't have anything in my notes that really um specifies what that was because as i remember there was discussion afterwards about uh you know about um you know about some other items with the the gelman um i drafted those so if you don't mind i'll just check and see if i can find that all right i don't have them in front of me right this minute but judge connors ordered gelman to implement the fourth cj with that i think that was it but i'm not entirely certain and what what was the date of that reader um may 24th i believe may 27th okay sorry that's the date of our last our may you know i remember reading that steve with that incomplete sentence and i thought that i had gone back to my notes and i thought i had fixed it shoot per my notes it says the fourth cj as amended and restated that's what my notes state as well so if there are no other objections uh to that i think um why don't we is there a motion to add that to the minutes kathy is there a second anybody second a second chris um all who would like to finalize these minutes with the addition of with the completion of the sentence uh judge connor ordered gelman to implement the fourth consent judgment um are there are all who approve say aye or raise your hands all who us all who disapprove or say no raise your hands or say no are there any abstentions i'm hearing none the minutes are passed unanimously as amended okay let's move on to the june minutes um are there are there any suggested amendments or discussion hearing or seeing none um is do i have a motion for accepting the minutes as drafted um i see no hands or hear anything does anybody going hello oh i propose yes oh okay rita okay i have one motion second john john keller commissioner kellywood second did it um all who approve of the minutes as drafted um say aye raise your hands all who um proposed raise your hands or say no any abstentions okay hearing none the june minutes pass unanimously is drafted okay let's move on to the next item on the agenda special presentations um first one is um unfinished business on the first item under unfinished business is a discussion of the work group of chapter 40.

so i i'm not my daughter's fourth generation um so i know your system i know what happens there um you i you guys it might be different now but what i went through and what happened to me i slipped through a lot of cracks and a lot of stuff happened i spoke out on issues i felt that were very important to me in history that was not taught the right way and you guys didn't address me the right way as somebody had who had intellectual disabilities so i want this to be taught the right way i do not want it to be taught to my daughter at a young age who is just delayed and needs help and it may not be getting addressed the right way listen i understand i have friends who are trans and we we we love love in my house and i love east bronze like i graduated in 2007 and i'm not saying that your curriculum misses anything and i i believe that we need to teach our children about stonewall because what happened at at stonewall is very important so that's why i'm saying history needs to be taught because we cannot forget what happens to our gay brothers and sisters we cannot forget what happened to our african-american brothers and sisters because there is systemic racist racism that is happening and education is power and that's what people come to east bronze like for but we also do have a community here of children who are young with intellectual disabilities and who might have just delays that might be slipping through the crack that it might lead to some things like abuse where maybe at home where i'm you know i don't want to get church and state but we're here and this is public things happen so we need to talk about that stuff because abuse is real and you know i come from a psychological standpoint um and i just really care about children okay so thank you guys for listening just please care about children that's all thank you please rest assured we absolutely do and thank you for taking the time to come speak with us tonight i had already closed the public portion so we're ready to move on with our agenda okay moving on to our agenda before i ask for items to be combined on our board of education agenda is there anything anyone wants separated out okay mark was that a hand raise yes on the policies 1581 domestic violence okay so let's take them one at a time there's only two can i please have a motion for item one minutes june 17th well moved moved by laurie second second by leewoo is there any discussion all those in favor hi hi hi all right opposed staying motion carries okay can i please have a motion for item two policies first reading mark you would like i'm sorry which one separated out forget the motion part i jumped the gun which one did you want separated out sir just policy 1581 domestic violence okay can i please have a motion for those policies listed on tonight's agenda except for the first one 15 81 go moved move by laurie second by marco angelo is there any discussion all those in favor opposed i'm sorry oh okay mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mrs boss yes mr hong yes this is lex yes this is rhys yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries now now can i please have a motion for policy 1581 so moved move by laurie second by mark sismar is there any discussion mark sismar i just have a question um the policy stated that we are allowed to grant unpaid leave to a victim of domestic violence for only up to 20 days is there a reason for the 20-day cap because i see it as a very traumatic experience at times and i didn't know if 20 would be enough or if it's controlled by state statute uh so that's my question where did the 20-day limit come from mark i think this came right from strasses may have mandated revision of the policy but i i honestly would have to check on that 20-day cap i don't know if i have to make a motion or you know i would think with board approval there's going to be circumstances where i personally would want to grant more than 20 days if necessary for somebody's unpaid leave so matt did you have something you wanted to say that comes from the state statute and folks should understand that employees who do experience that also have rights under the family medical leave act if they're psyching suffering psychological trauma they could get an additional 12 weeks of continued medical benefits uh during that time and can utilize sick leave so there's actually when you add that together you could be offer you know about four months okay um but that does come from the state statute yeah i'll have to disagree with the state statute on that it seems it seems light to me from the experiences but uh if it's in the state statute i can't argue that absolutely actually that it it does make a good question mark matt is there ever occasion where a board of ed can object to something in a state statute and and is there a formal appeal process let's say just kind of curiosity what the board could do is they could write to their legislature you'd write to your state senator and assembly people and tell them that you don't believe that 20 days is sufficient and then they can go through the amendment process of the statute additionally mrs becker um the board uh could adopt a resolution uh during the periods allotted by the new jersey school boards association and forward that resolution to the association uh for consideration in this delegate assembly uh where they compile position papers uh from the uh njsba to take on with the state you had some good points mark and there's some good fruit and thought there thank you okay um this is also a roll call vote yep mr corangelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gwast yes mr hong yes mrs lex mrs reese yes mr winston jeffy froze yes yes yes yes got it and president becker yes motion carries before i before i asked to combine items one through four in our curriculum agenda is there anything anyone would like separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items one through four move by laurie second by levu is there any discussion all those in favor opposed motion carries i'm hearing a slight echo um do we need to mute some microphones um all non-board member participants are muted okay on our facilities agenda before i ask for a motion to combine items one through three is there anything anyone would like separated out see none could i please have a motion for items one through three moved move by mark angelo second by heather is there any discussion jeff was that a hand you froze again it was the 10th second am i frozen you're you're slightly garbled again um susanna i believe you did have a question okay i just had a question um related to two and three so when we go out to bid and and the bids aren't within we go out to bid do we adjust the scope or do we look for more bidders i'm just curious what is the process to address that if we don't get bids within our budget right in in these cases um this would not be an adjustment of scope um it's really been a function of what's been happening uh in the economy um so if we take for example the courtyard project um in a matter of a couple of months uh the the estimated costs on that doubled to the low bidder and that's uh excessive uh we know that that project should not come in at that level um and then i think at the end with regard to the second item uh on number three uh that is um uh one where we are soliciting uh additional competition um because those uh bids we feel came in uh good so it depends on the on stances if it was a very large project a big construction project um we would potentially have to look at uh modifying the um the scope of work but typically that wouldn't come into play until after we've at least gone through two rounds of bidding yeah because i know there's there's significant supply chain disruptions in um construction industry so so i'm i'd be surprised i would i wouldn't be surprised that we see issues as as we go off for bid for all kinds of work so i mean to the extent we can delay something that that would help us save money so i don't i'm trying to understand like for example with the courtyard then i don't think or our price is going down enough that if we re-bid we think we'll get something we won't be we're not planning to do a re-bid immediately we're going to we're going to hold off at least several months and see what's happening out there in the marketplace okay thank you very much you're welcome so bernie my question is if we delay the bidding process that will delay the beginning of the project will this delay cause any safety uh issue with the case in the in lawrenceville school no not nothing whatsoever it'll be fine okay thank you you're welcome any other discussion okay all those all those in favor aye opposed motion carries before i ask to combine items 1-17 on our facilities services agenda our financial services agenda is there anything anyone would like separated out scene none can i please have a motion for items 1 through 17 in our financial services agenda move by laurie second by marco angelo is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes this is gloss yes mr hong yes this is lex yes this is rhys yes mr winston yes president becker yes motion carries yeah before i ask for a motion to combine items one and two on our human resources agenda is there anything anyone would like separated out saying none can i please have a motion for items one and two oh by laurie second second by susanna is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes mrs chu yes mr tismar yes this is gloss yes mr pong yes is lacks well this is reese yes mr winston yes and president becker yes motion carries before i ask to combine items one through three on our strength development agenda can i please ask if anything if anyone wants anything separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items one through three move by laurie second by leewoo is there any discussion all those in favor [Music] opposed abstain motion carries before i ask to combine items one two three on our student services agenda is there anything anyone wants separated out seeing none can i please have a motion for items one through three by laurie second second by susanna is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo yes this is true yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes this is lax yes mrs reese yes mr winston yeah president becker yes motion carries i was told that our student rep is not with us this evening so this brings us to committee reports information items and for the good of the cause of the board and i would actually like to start out tonight um it would be remiss of me not to commend a lot of people to the outstanding job that was done with graduation this year every year it is a fine-tuned event but this year certainly brought challenges like with everything else not only were all those challenges overcome but we were provided with a heavy dose of community that's been missing due to the pandemic and it was wonderful to have it back indoor arenas provide good venues they're practical in order to worry about the weather their air condition but to have graduation at home this year on our football field it's just darn perfect i remember seeing going into the high school before the ceremony started and seeing the kids lined up in the halls it was noisy crowded dark dimension crowded and yet i have never seen a happier bunch of students in my life they were together in their school after a year and a half of being remote and hybrid and remote only and then remote hybrid they were together as a school community as a class in their home to dr vanella and russell petranco you did an outstanding job spearheading this event you and your entire team are to be commended dr and your entire team the high school staff and administrators were with these kids every step of the way and showed up for this last step of their journey miller rentals which provided a wonderful setting and i think they also put in an order for the perfect weather we had the east brunswick education foundation and jack levitt provided a lift for all of us with a banner flying overhead attached to an airplane people are still talking about it it gave everyone such a boost our district security staff who kept everyone safe as they always do and everything orderly along with our east brunswick police and first responders again keeping everyone safe and orderly as they always do the high school pta active right through the last day east brunswick township in the mayor everyone doing their part coming together as stakeholders in this event the parents families friends of our graduates we've said that before you guys are our heroes what you have gone through your commitment and compassion and dedication with your children this past year and a half is nothing short of remarkable and the senior class i believe i can sum you up in three words if i can struggle to pronounce one of them correctly possessing indomitable heather correct me indomitable spirit you're an amazing accomplished group of young men and women if i'd left anyone out i'm sorry again all stakeholders who had anything to do with this wonderful send-off we thank you so much okay any other board members wishing to speak laurie uh there's really nothing more that anybody can say you said everything so eloquently i just wanted to go back to one thing that i find very interesting year after year and i and as someone who graduated on that field there really was a part of me that loved being there and seeing those kids because i have those memories and as a board member that's been there giving diplomas out in the sun center or cure center or whatever it's called now there's something beautiful about the pomp and circumstance there versus this but i have to tell you you're absolutely right the community aspect of this was so beautiful and if we didn't have the open arena and i know you thanked back and you thank the education foundation you're right that that plane and it's funny we get so many grants year after year from the education foundation they do so much for this district but the irony about that was something so small you know big but you know some really did put a smile on people's faces between that and being greeted with a water bottle on a hot day you never thought about that we think about the grants but you never thought about the human touch and the fact that everybody as a community was all looking up there and and just you know coming together it was even better than my graduation which i thought was the greatest graduation in the history of east brunswick so um yeah kudos to everybody jeffrey yeah i have two things tonight uh but first i was very happy to hear in the superintendent's report uh from dr velesky um about the attention that's going to be paid on the mental health of our community coming out of this pandemic i've been an advocate all year round and have probably made some requests and maybe to probably stretch some of the individuals uh within this district and it comes from a pure place i'm happy to see it getting the attention that it deserves i i won't use names but in in the community next tours i i read about a heartbreaking story which i'm sure some of you may have been exposed to if you're familiar of a young lady who unfortunately uh uh her issues in mental health and and some of the others just got that really took hold of her and unfortunately she was not uh alive to attend her graduation and from what i read it was completely mishandled from the neighboring district i am happy to hear that it's on your radar dr polesky i look forward to hearing a presentation by the guidance department and hear about what they're going to be doing and changes going forward that could encourage us so with that i just wanted to thank you for taking uh uh well said uh and lastly and i'm not sure and protocol dictates this or where appropriate so i'm going to offer him as a motion and uh this motion uh if this is the appropriate place thank you uh and if they get seconded uh i would like to make a motion that uh a uh that pushed down into the policy committee a look at a bylaw and i would like that bylaw to be explored with the board's approval to uh limit executive positions within this board uh to two years on with a one-year break i think it's very important that we get a difference in culture and energy and ideas and exchanges coming from the executive level of president and vice president and i think that would allow two years in one year off to apply a proper rotation so uh many others can bring to the table their leadership skills and their ideas and uh and their cultural uh differences that may in fact benefit this entire community so i would like to offer that as a motion the motion specifically is to explore this idea push it down to policy for the wording and bring it back to the board for a vote and that is emotion matthew just asked for a second this is this during this okay is there a second okay yes i'll give a second to explore it okay is there any discussion okay all those in favor opposed abstain i don't think that motion carried mrs becker um i i didn't hear um very much of a voice vote um across the board i would suggest you guys just call roll so you can hear okay okay bernie please follow me we'll do uh mr carangelo i'm in favor of this yes uh mrs chu no mr sismar i'm in favor of going to policy yes mrs guass no mr hong avastine mrs lax no mrs reese no mr winston president becker no okay uh the motion fails mission doesn't carry mark granger hey guys um coming from the people who said no is there anyone that wants to add why they would say no i'm asking a question lori i can only speak for myself the reason that i said no is that i don't think that you necessarily have to limit people's ability to run for leadership the board is nine members and every year every january whether the nine members are the same or different based on the election you have the ability to elect a president and vice president and if you feel that someone is not doing a good job if you feel someone's been there too long if you feel someone doesn't represent your views you have the ability to do that i don't know that i think we need a policy to change the the makeup of the leadership that's just my opinion that's why i voted no mark thanks laurie i agree anyone else i think you know as board member everyone has a voting right for one and there's no reason and to explain why you vote for why for years or no so i don't think this question is proper for us to answer well in my thoughts i want to learn you know i'm sorry mark uh i think leeway was trying to intimate that maybe me asking a question of why was inappropriate but i just want to learn that's all i'm trying to oh i don't i don't i don't think so legal um yeah i didn't i didn't interpret it as that but um yeah i just want to learn that's all i'm interested in of course i'm here so much you know so questions questions are always are always encouraged lori i just wanted to follow up with that so so mark and i feel bad about this you as a new board member have experienced the board of education in the zoom world you never got to sit around the table and to have conversations and to get to know your fellow board members thankfully as mrs becker said you're going to have that opportunity in our next meeting so no so i i realize that as a new board member a lot of this is new to you and you're learning across the computer screen but personally going forward and i hope you have a you know long and healthy tenure on the board you will find that the leadership is just that you know the electorate elects nine members nine individual members to the board of education the leadership of the board of education is something that is decided upon just between those nine members and the reason that it's between those nine members as you're you're basically taking and deciding who you want to run the meetings and lead the board if you find that you don't agree with that person as i said you're going to have time because generally you're on the board for you know at least a year with them i realized for you you came in your first day you're being asked to um make decisions about people that you don't know and you have no idea my advice um advice to someone coming in in the future is abstain if you're new and there's a change in leadership and there's um a contested race then maybe you abstain if you don't know but generally for all of us you're going to get to know the people around this computer screen a little bit better and that's how you get to know their philosophies how that they would um you know commit leadership and the way that they would run aboard or you know so hopefully for you you're in such a you know you're in such a distinct individual situation because none of us came into it this way we had to adapt to zoom but we all had relationships and you know we've gotten to work with each other so for you hopefully that'll become a little bit easier for you because you can also add ask questions around the table you're in a position where you can't you know look to the person to your left or right and say hey you know what i'm not sure what to do here we all had that and i'm sorry you didn't get to have that but it will get easier i want to sit next to you anyway so you know you play big cookies i hope so gloria i think i think you brought up a really good point and um i i think that um you know a reminder we're all nine individuals we each have one vote uh no one has any special power or authority the board's culture is decided by the nine individuals who make it up at any given time and i think we have a great group and we have an opportunity to embrace a culture and to communicate and again mark glory brought up a really good point it's going to be a whole new dynamic when we're in person and i think you'll you'll really get a lot out of it well i think where my error is coming is um i've only reached out to maybe four board members for advice and uh you know dr volesky too i've reached out to so i think i need to broaden who i reach out to maybe barbara moore or someone else you know susanna so you know i think i need to be better at whoever reach out to as well sure absolutely absolutely anyone else for um anything good of the cause i'm sorry libra i have an additional comment mark the reason why i said that i got so many trials i i have you know so many times the different viewers give different opinions i i'm not allowed to ask why you did that so that's why i think this we are allowed to do whatever you know based on our own personal judgment experience so we should respect each other's opinion so i after meeting you know you if you want to communicate with anyone want to know why what is there his or her decision-making process it's free to communicate but that i don't think it's a good idea to to ask this moment okay was there anyone else with um committee report information item for the good of the cause for the board okay just want to make sure i'm not missing anyone we do have a need for a closed session whereas the board of education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for discussion in a public meeting and these subjects are within the exceptions to the open public meeting act the board of education intends to discuss manners as follows those items listed in tonight's agenda the length of the closed session is estimated to be one hour after which public meeting of the board shall reconvene in action will not be taken can i please have a motion to go into closed session move by laurie second by marco angelo is there any discussion all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries thank you for joining us tonight board members please leave this meeting and log into closed session enjoy the rest of july bye you

most of them were tucson and phoenix campuses staff but we only know of one on campus transmission of the virus one so we've been very successful in keeping in place through mitigation tragedies so i'm really proud of us that asdb is an agency that we were able to hold together and then continue to move forward and then as you recall in the middle of all of that we had discussions and questions about the two campuses being in lea the local education agency and the spring we had hb 2863 passed giving us a provisional law recession law that's asked for one year the two campuses functions as an lea and asdb and ade the arizona department of education would work together so that we can work through the different questions and issues and then bring back a proposed legislation to the next state legislative session in january 2022 and then you the board you didn't step back and say oh this is too crazy it was covered and everything else going on no you continue to work too you develop the strategic plan and you finalize it at the last board meeting thank you so much because you have now given us a very clear direction you have given us priorities focus areas and you have made it possible for asdb to become a data driven organization so i really really appreciate the work that you put into the strategic plan we are already beginning to collect data we're getting ready to input some of that into the measures that we have in the strategic plan so in the last 18 months we have charged right through the storm and we're not done yet we have the new school year i mean the pandemic is still there we're having to revise our risk mitigation plan so that we address the new requirements from governor dew attendance from other staff here you will hear that our work tie in directly with the priorities and the strategic plan so we're continuing to charge a hat into the future into the heart of the storm one final piece i just want to mention to you is that the strategic plan requires fiscal resources we are internally doing a deep dive into our funding our revenues and our expenditures we are starting to have some conversations about how do we meet the strategic plan and meet the needs of the agency with the resources that we have and one thing that i want to share with you is that when you look at our budget keep in mind that in our budget about 82 percent of our expenditures is for personnel salaries and wages ere the health benefits that we provide and other professional staff that we contract with to provide services for us that's 82 percent of our total budget most organizations consider a healthy balance of expenditures say that best best practice is somewhere between 70 to 75 percent of the budget on staffing so we're a little heavy on the staffing and that has a direct impact on asdb in ways that most of us never even think about and what do i mean by that well for example we have aging buildings on the tucson campus and the phoenix campus their average about 45 years old typically in a healthy organization and a healthy budget we would have all along in the last 40 years have been severely under funding the facilities the maintenance of facilities for a very long time we're now beginning to address to address that we've set up a capital review committee we developed a capital plan about two years ago it's just in the beginning stages we're talking about and looking to set up a contract to develop a master facility plan but all of that requires resources so there are some really significant discussions that we will have in the future and at some point those discussions will include you asdb board so i just wanted to kind of give you a heads up on that so that concludes my report we are the american bison we are working together as a herd and we're charging right through the storms that come our way and i will take any questions and thank you are there any thank you superintendent reichman are there any questions for the superintendent on her report no thank you we're going to move on to 1.04 information item assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction dr rex good afternoon president nigro and board members my report that i submitted has a new exciting look that aligns itself to our pillars you had an opportunity to see some of the work that we've been um completing and starting and it definitely is aligning to our asdb strategic plan in addition to the report that i submitted i have the following information to serve our families remotely but have been adjusting their back in person schedules as counties are opening up to serve families this blended model of service will continue to ensure safety for our families as well as our staff the elp program will continue to develop a transition plan to incorporate itinerant preschool age students into their program in the future the supervising teachers from both the statewide elp and the itinerant regions are lending their expertise in working on this plan our new pdsd principal amber atknidus and her team are ready to kick off the school year and pdsd has a theme the theme this year is rise and shine she also hosted town halls for staff and students to connect meet and talk with her this summer to learn a little bit more about her and her role in the principal position as well as her goals for the school year with her moving into the principal position that opened a position up and she has hired trisha waddell trisha comes to us from colorado and she brings a lot of new skills and ideas and we hope that we'll be able to have some time where you can get to know trisha a little better she will be supported by jill voight who has been working as assistant principal and has developed a lot of great systems and she will be mentoring and supporting trisha as she comes on board kelly creacy flint fears and the asdb team are back on campus preparing for our dorm as well as our day students to arrive the 2021 tucson campus back to school theme field of dreams if we build it g region 2 will be led by rosie hicks who joined us in april of this year this will be her first full year in the position and we welcome her skills and talents to the team region 3 in the south will actually be led by jay lisa jackson may be asked to support the agency with some of her institutional knowledge and assist with some ongoing programs and assessments that we are working on but their their retirement provided us an opportunity it provided us the opportunity to look at the duties that both positions held as well as the needs of asdb and with the help of hr both jobs were then repurposed into positions i'd like to introduce robin eichner and kalea cook to the odd team both began on july 1 as internal hires and we're very fortunate to have asdb veterans on the odd team their experience and expertise will continue to serve as valuable assets robin eichner will be the new assessment coordinator this position assumes many of the key duties from lisa but also dan's position her primary duties will include district administration i also wanted to give you an update on our student information system the odd is currently in the rfp process to see if the current student information system is the best product to track asdb data as we move forward with our strategic plan and the need for data tracking the rfp process should be completed by the end of august all principals and directors met last week to develop their personalized smart goals i began by sharing my smart goals with them and we've all been given the task of including as one of our smart goals direct alignment with the asdb strategic plan much of what the work we do aligns with pillar two but as we began to discuss and learn more we found that the other pillar other pillars fit nicely into the programming and the processes that we are developing we will meet monthly to discuss share and align the strategic plan we decided that there's a lot in our strategic plan and this will are there any questions for dr rex hearing none uh thank you dr rex for your uh report um i did want to you know thank the staff and and the agency for keeping everyone safe during uh the height of kovid uh as dr or as superintendent right to mention we had one on campus transmission um so i'm happy that students are able to come to school and staff were able to come to work and uh you know be be very safe in that regard um i think that's really important that we uh you know and that it wasn't because the superintendent said this is our policy and that's it that's because everyone lived it every day uh the the staff the students and the parents so uh thank you to the community for that i think that was it's been very effective and i'm hoping that we can continue culture and pillar for effective resource management as superintendent reichmann mentioned i am working with the leadership team to perform an in-depth review of our fiscal resources and it as it pertains to the day-to-day responsibilities the it department continuously make sure that our technology infrastructure is appropriately maintained and that's being led by paul crazy as noted in my report the operations department led by albert duff specifically our food services unit has been very busy assessing the efficiency of the food services operations and in a few minutes you'll hear more about that from albert under agenda item 5.01 the business services department through some vacancies are still working to work on our day-to-day fiscal year-end close working on building the budget for the new fiscal year wrapping up 2022 budget but also beginning to work on the 2023 budget which is due to the state on or before september first the business approval of the consent agenda consistent with board policy to include items 3.01 6.01 6.02 7.04 and 7.05 uh is there any board member that would like to discuss what's on the consent agenda item or on the consent agenda or would like to pull one or more items from the consent agenda okay hearing none would anyone like to move to approve the consent agenda i move to um accept consent agenda items or approve consent agenda items i need to go back okay i was just gonna read out the numbers but go ahead okay okay lynn so linda's seconded correct right okay um all in favor in case they need us and some join because they have a specific student in mind that may need us so this is just five people that want to be a part of our asdb itinerary program okay i move that we approve the contracts that set forth in the agenda any opposed thank you the motion carries we're now on to 4.01 information item finance report assistant superintendent cooper good afternoon as you all are aware i am wearing two hats right now since the director of business services position became vacant july 1st and still has not yet been filled thankfully we were able to complete interviews on tuesday and i do believe we have possibly identified a candidate i will be reaching out to the candidate sometime tomorrow and we'll be presenting that to the board for approval at the september 9th board meeting our the team has been working on preparing for the fiscal year and close of the transactions for 2021 since that did close on june 30.

thank you in the meantime i know staff will be sending us the forms to submit our submissions so if we can just get them all via email um and then this way as trustees we can check our emails and make sure we have those forms and we're able to access them so five minute break feedback with the firm at 615 as we're setting up here thank you [Music] it's like just for me it's easier to mark them the survey hey thank you so much okay uh looks like we have trusty thumb uh vice president quintero and myself so we have a quorum but i do want to wait for everybody else to return we have trusted now we'll wait for trustee chavez call the meeting back to order at 6 17.

let's see welcome to the july 22nd to 2021 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities there will be two one at the beginning of the meeting and one at the end please call nine 1-888-788-0099 four eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven or two one three three three eight eight four seven or 206 337-9723 and enter meeting id number three three 978-7334 three nine one zero this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 18t channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org watch ctn so call this meeting to order at 706.

yes um so i um would like to just open that for that discussion if i may and um i want to thank chris graham for providing some comments on chapter 40 for um uh re-drafting it um but i would appreciate very much um arranging for a small work group which could be me and chris possibly shannon gabranville possibly uh council member griswold um and um i think chris vandenberg may be interested as well um to look at chapter 40 and um uh just to be able to ask some questions for about the the changes that you had suggested so that we feel confident that um i i feel confident anyway that i understand um some of the terms that you used and that that we can integrate everything the way that it will allow us to move forward um to have um both uh well multiple things reducing turf grass uh establishing um safety on easements um and safety for driving for visual visual kinds of things while we allow more native plants to be placed more plants in general to be placed in areas that um would like to have reduced from mowed grass okay rita so i'm a little confused is this some i just need some clarification about this because we've been talking about chapter 40 revisions for a while um are you proposing any changes in the scope of that not in this scope no it's just interpretation of some of the changes that were suggested the last time i asked for um some input from uh kristen and um uh commissioner gibb randall um and i have some feedback from kristin and we just haven't had a chance to have an exchange so i just wanted to call it a little work group so we could have some discussion and possibly i'm hoping that it could be done in one session because there's there's some significant um improvements that that i'd like to make sure that that i understand before we move it to this group for approval okay um as a commissioner you're fully entitled to do that and recruit whoever you think is appropriate and who might participate and contribute to this work so um i don't think we need any formal action by the commission um so um my suggestion is just that you uh send an email to the entire uh you know entire commission members and ask uh you know um if they would like to join a work group and just outline what the scope and the goals are and the estimated time commitment and then um and uh some and maybe not a formal deadline but some idea the deadline for that work and then um and then um get volunteers and then report back uh next month i think that's cathy one of the reasons that it's taking so long is not the ordinance itself it's the procedures and operations that um come from the ordinance and how it's interpreted and and so we're trying to make sure that we have some of those supporting documents available as well as there are some new developments and one of them is the national wildlife federation has issued a statement including recommended ordinances for local municipalities regarding uh wildlife gardens wildlife friendly gardens and so while that wouldn't be in the ordinance that would be part of the supporting documentation and so we're we're just trying to keep up to date as the world keeps changing and we keep finding additional information that will be beneficial no that sounds great um that sounds great um okay thanks kathy um are there any other comments does anybody else wish to make a comment at this time okay rita well thanks for the yeah thanks for the suggestion so uh look for an email okay um so are you satisfied with this i hope so yes yes thank you um so the next item under unfinished business is a standard item that we have about the gelman plume um i think we do have um some lingering questions about the ms4 situation so i don't know rita would you take the floor and discuss this um this item is here to keep the issue um to our for so that we have an ongoing ability to comment on what's going on with the gentleman plume and i want to just in this case um i want to call attention to um an excellent article that was printed in the detroit free press just yesterday by reporter garrett allison he reviewed the entire history of the gelman plume from its identification from before its identification up until now and i strongly encourage commissioners to seek that out and read it i will send a link to the article for you to catch it but it does have a pay wall so i have been uh in touch with the free press to see about obtaining some copies if i have to pay for them i will do that and and to allow that to be distributed so that people can read it without having if you don't have a subscription to the free press then it would be available but i would like to actually at this point in terms of reporting on status um i believe that um commissioner council member griswold is really um up to date and i see her hand raised so i would like to acknowledge her kathy you have the floor okay yeah i would just like to suggest that our minutes include the link to that detroit free press article even though it is behind a pay wall because i i think it's a very very important and comprehensive article and then also regarding gelman the city issues a quarterly report titled gelman plumen one for dioxane and this is public information one of the problems with gelman is uh some of the activities in court include our legal strategy and so they're privileged but i i can send this link to rita or galen so that we could also put that in um in the minutes and that's sort of the official city's position and it includes the settlement update uh the ms4 permit what eagle carter doing the mpdes permit um and one of the things that i've done is i work closely with scio township elected officials because the the government plume is in scio township and so they seem to be the most assertive and um and they have the resources devoted to keeping up to date every day i mean there's been some actions with the appeals court just in the last few days but at i have not received any um notice of it and the only information i have is privilege but what i can say and and this was in the detroit free press article is that gelman continues to appeal in and fight this in the court system and that has been their strategy all along and so i feel very fortunate that we have the dual path now with the epa as as a second way to work on on resolution or remediation and also related to this the water treatment plant is going to have another analysis they did one in 2015 to determine whether we wanted to invest in uh improvements to the water plant or to connect to the great lakes water authority known as the detroit water system uh and they're going to do another analysis and there will be a work session devoted to it i believe in september of this year so that's uh related to both of the dioxane as well as the pfas levels so that's a council work session kathy that's a yes that's a councilwork session so i'll make sure that the environmental commissioners are notified of the date of that work session in case they want to attend and i don't know if lisa dish wants to add to this um lisa do you wish to comment or chris graham does lisa um i don't hear or see her so chris go ahead you have before for many years i've been suggesting that there might come a time when we have such a drought in michigan that we don't have enough water entering barton pond to supply our water and that would be a calamity since we do not have a enough wells in the city to make up for the 85 percent of our water which comes from barton pond and the river and it seems to me that some sort of plan b ought to be in place if i understand correctly detroit's water comes from lake huron if i understand correctly genesee county and its environs are building a pipeline from lake huron so they can get off the detroit city water supply going all the way out to flint and genesee county i'm not sure i would propose we build a plan b pipeline to lake huron but it seems to me that the detroit water is in epsilante and it might or might not be practical to add a connection in case we need it for a year or so um maybe i'm nuts but uh i remember 1988 when it didn't rain from easter sunday and it was just the spritz on easter sunday until july 17th we were completely and totally bone dry in southern michigan and so was all of the feral growing zone of the united states all the way out to iowa and on days in june that year it was 104 degrees in the shade with a 40 mile an hour wind all day and it was unbelievably awful in 1988 i said uh oh along with james hansen who went to the congress that summer and said we have a problem about climate change and many people went to work until the oil and gas companies decided to quash work on climate change and now we are in a lot of trouble predominantly because of that i'm again maybe i'm nuts but um if our river our water supply doesn't flow very well or stops flowing for a summer we're kind of in trouble thank you um so is it my understanding that this discussion just pertains to the wastewater treatment plant hooking up to detroit's gia the glwa or just the water treatment plant the intake and in a couple of items i want to acknowledge the the water treatment plant um leadership brian steglitz and also glenn wizorchik i don't know how to pronounce his last name uh but they both seem to be very knowledgeable about this and so uh i have confidence that it will be a thorough analysis and a good news item is that 10 years ago we were using 120 gallons per person per day of water and now we're using 80 gallons of water per person per day so we have definitely reduced our water intake so this is this is fee increases and what they do i'm sorry i didn't realize we're talking about sweet stream i lisa thank you for all these reports we're doing a very fine job in our sewage treatment efforts in ann arbor we are very nearly state-of-the-art and i don't think we need to burden this the city of detroit with our stuff to my knowledge there's there's no discussion about sewer treatment connection only only water okay oh right thanks and i wasn't out the lunch all right thank you very much you're welcome thanks kathy um well we say you have the floor um but if we were to join this they would be we would be receiving treated water and we would just be delivering it we wouldn't be treating it and so i do not think that this can be a backup because it actually means an entire it would mean a shift in infrastructure would mean bypass our infrastructure so i think we have to make a one or the other choice either we refurbish the water plant that we have the drinking water treatment plant that we have or plan a switch but i but the idea i think chris of a of a backup in case we have a drought um wouldn't be viable because it's it's apples and oranges you know currently we treat our own water here in ann arbor and to to receive treated water as a finished product from this new pipeline um uh you know when i get to lisa i so detroit is pulling water from lake karen which needs actually very little treatment and i'm not suggesting giving up on our own systems if we have a problem it's going to be transitory it's just that um we have what five wells down on the airport the one in town is closed it's 15 percent of our water 85 is coming from the river and we do really genuinely need to treat that a lot but there may be a way to bypass a lot of our systems with detroit water for the time period that we might need it i'm you know i'm we have we have outstanding people working on our sewer and water systems the proof of that pudding is that somewhere back there a hundred years ago they said well okay we're not going to allow our storm water tiles our storm water drains to overflow into our sewage lines causing what has been disaster first southeast michigan and much of ypsilanti right next door we have a completely separate system we've had wisdom in our in our in the people that worked here for a hundred years and i i don't want to mess with that i'm not suggesting we switch to detroit water i'm simply saying we need a plan b in case the river stops flowing okay well i'm sure that'll be an item of discussion a public discussion leading up to whatever decision might be made but thank you kathy for and lisa you still have your hand up okay so um so thanks for bringing this up kathy um it's very important um there are certainly you know not just engineering implications but ecological implications political implications what have you so uh this would be a very important decision to be making um so let's move on to new business um uh the first item on the agenda is discussion of format of minutes and action points discussion what i'm going to say about this is that um city staff prefers to have very spare minutes that really just mentioned what the topics what the topics were discussed with no little or no detail beyond that um for me i feel like it would be useful to have um more of a summary like what we've seen lately you know um i think it would help another thing that would help is if they were indexed to the timestamp on the uh on the broadcast that would make it easier for people to refer to the to the video recordings you know if they're interested in a particular topic while they're reviewing the minutes um so i think it's worth maybe having a discussion about this about what other commissioners feel is useful um so the floor is open um if anybody wants to i see rita's hand raised so why don't you go first then kathy thanks um i just want to say i think that actually this set of minutes that we just went over these two so are an example that shows some contrast because there was one that um it has more detail and there was one that was a little bit shorter but still had information so i just wanted to point that out to help our discussion um and it um i'll just state my own preference is to have um kind of in a medium amount of detail so that we can see get a flavor for what the discussion was if we can add the time stamp that steve described um to the minute so that a person who may be interested in really seeing the detail of our discussion could track back to it and see it even more in even more detail in an even more detailed way than what we write that would be really super cathy you have the floor i support having the time stamp and uh in terms of the amount of detail in the minutes more is probably better but we have to weigh that against the the cost and of resources to create them so if there's limited resources we can capture much of the conversation simply with a time stamp and an easy link to to the video yeah okay so those are alternatives um i think this may be something that's best table for our uh our working session in august um i wanted we i wanted to bring this top of rita and i wanted to bring this topic up now because there's been quite a bit of back and forth between us and the city staff about this and um on the one hand i'd like to have a seven minutes that's useful for you know the residents and citizens here as well as um the commissioners themselves so um let's see are there any other suggestions about uh maybe modifying the way we uh the amount of detail we put into the minutes what i've heard is that having a time stamp has some support so um i don't think it's worth a big discussion right now so why don't we have a continue this on our working session and traditional working session in august and meanwhile we can have some conversations with cities further conversations with city staff about this and get a better idea of what's how much time staff time is involved in putting timestamps on these on these minutes okay a quick question steve is concerned from the city about the staff time in preparing the minutes or what is the the the concern to keep them brief hey it's it's mostly about staff time taking up and preparing detailed minutes thanks you know it's it's really not um it's difficult for the staff person to be managing the meeting you know organizing a lot of the logistics while also taking detailed notes and getting them into the format and legistar you know we've had us we've had a lot of uh problems a lot of back and forth about getting things set up properly in legistar and a lot of that has to do with the staff turnover and commission support but um but i think uh you know i'm i think some i think we should just decide something based on you know what commissioners feel that the need is or what would be more appropriate and balance that against uh whatever time we're requesting of staff okay and just saying as uh as the chair i've been i've been writing more detailed minutes and submitting them to staff so i'm happy to continue to do that and uh the major problem is getting them embedded into legistar so um so uh we'll explore that further and bring this up as a as an agenda item on the uh working session okay in august and uh have some more and we could lay some alternatives on the table and talk about the trade-offs in more detail at that time okay are there any other comments anybody wish to make a comment i'm hearing and seeing none um i think we'll move on the next item on the agenda is um is about ann arbor's contribution to phosphorus and the huron river so um this was mentioned in our meeting last month lisa dish uh mentioned that council had approved a legal settlement that's the the city has been involved in for i think at least a decade at least two decades um possibly three um and um you know this and i sent out a uh i sent out a powerpoint presentation that i think i'll put up right now if i may i've done some research and um this is um it's quite a complicated topic because just to just to uh recap the situation is that um the city inevitably has to uh discharge through both its storm water and its wastewater some phosphorus into the cowling river the phosphorus cannot be entirely cleaned out and put somewhere else um this phosphorus adds to the natural phosphorus burden phosphorus is a is a limiting nutrient in the aquatic environment here so what that means is that this additional phosphorus contributes i'm not going to say causes but i'm going to say definitely contributes to algal blooms harmful algal bloom blooms both in ford lake down river and in belleville lake um these algal blooms have not just uh they're not just aesthetic issues um uh they're associated with fish kills on substantial alteration of the ecosystems and what's most alarming is that it is um these blue-green algae um secrete toxins uh that are liver toxins to humans so if you remember uh the city of toledo for example because of the harmful algal blooms in lake erie the the where the city of um toledo against most of its drinking water uh they had to shut down their drinking water system for a substantial period of time i think it was a week or more until a situation could be addressed because these microcystins are very potent liver toxins um other communities have also had problems with this um like an adrian on the raisin river because because of cafo contamination the lake erie contamination comes mostly from capos that are located in ohio but there are cafos that's concentrated animal feeding operations that are located in um southern michigan and lenoir counties and monroe counties mostly waterway county and and other counties in michigan but they're not um the uh the river watershed does not have um much of an as much of an agricultural contribution to some of the municipal wastewater treatment plants so um the idea is that um the concept is that if anova reduces its phosphorus discharges into the river that they may have some effect on the harmful algal there's some controversy about whether this is true or not so should we be spending the money or is the money better spent elsewhere if we want to prevent these harmful algal blooms so um this is a it's a complicated topic and what i would propose um is first of all i do have this slide deck um that's all that's attached to the agenda so i can put it up but uh if enough commissioners have had a chance to look over it and it's available for public inspection um so i'm inclined to skip it if there's no um you know there was not as a special presentation um it's just there to facilitate our discussion um but my personal opinion after reviewing a lot of the information is that um i think this is best style discussed at a future environmental commissioning commission meeting where we invite three people to give a brief perspective for 10 minutes each and then join a discussion a more extended discussion for perhaps an hour or more about this issue um the people i would suggest inviting is rick lawson from the huron watershed council because um the mitigation of phosphorus is really should be based on a um on a watershed management plan and the heron river watershed council as a joint governmental body as well as an ngo develops the watershed plan for for the mid huron river here and so they their input would be critical um because they just finished the new water water management plan last year 2020 it was updated uh the second person who we should invite is um the director of the wastewater treatment plant you know or his designate so i think we would i would i will invite him to a future meeting of the environmental commission and then um the third person would be um would be a professor at the university of michigan who has done quite a lot of research on this issue locally and who is able to provide a lot of information um professor layman from lehman l e a h m a names are all on the slide deck um so i think um i think that's that's what i would like to do and um i'm wondering if so i'm opening the floor for discussion um kathy has her hand up and then young oh no no it's something something on your wall young when i don't see your hand up she she had her hand up first oh okay or is it or is it oh i'm sorry it's superimposed on an image of your uh something like a wall sorry about that yeah small picture i raised my hand earlier when i was talking about minutes um i just realized my name was spell around um on the last minute so can we just change that from like z h a n g to a zhe engine we can certainly do that without a vote thank you would you like to comment on the phosphorous issue young women i always think about this okay we'll have an opportunity in a future meeting uh kathy you have the floor uh yes our attorney general dana nessl has raised the issue of phosphorus a couple times when i've seen her in meetings and i was at a fundraiser in dearborn this week and uh mentioned that the even though there was a court settlement the environmental commission was interested in it and she asked to be invited to our meeting so um you may want to send her your slide deck um her statement was and she's made it more than once is that she became a lawyer only because she couldn't make it through organic chemistry but that's not really her first interest so i think that her her interest in phosphorus is is definitely genuine and uh so she would appreciate an invite okay i will certainly make sure that she is invited to this to the future meeting and phosphorus is an inorganic compound anyway not an organic compound okay okay more to learn okay so um thank you kathy because yeah it's uh it's a complicated scientific issue and i think the important thing is it's something that needs to be solved but we want to make sure we're spending the money in the right way yes and i think we're we're fortunate to have an attorney general who who is very interested in this and wants to learn more okay very good okay uh rita you have your well lisa you have your hand up i think lisa yeah well mine's quick i was just gonna say that um earl kenzie would be a great person to invite just from the wastewater treatment plant perspective yeah he's the director so i was going to invite him or whoever he might want to designate um is there anybody else you think could provide useful input for this discussion future discussion to me it seemed like these would be the most uh prominent players okay who could you know who could uh shed light on this issue okay arita you have a floor uh yeah thanks uh steve is there um i know you put some data in your um slide deck and i just wonder if there's anything else that you'd like to refer to us to review beforehand that would help us get a sense of for example the source of the phosphorus if there's a way to track it and if we have that information already just might be interesting and help us discuss well one thing i still hold on as you see there's a mention of something called capital e capital eq eq um i don't i have not been able to find the number um but that's what the uh just to just to recap what the settlement is uh we have two years to do whatever we've been doing what we're doing now we have two years to continue doing that um and uh but nobody seems to know exactly how much phosphorus we are contributing so um i think uh part of it is an estimate is establishing whatever this eq number is in terms of pounds per day that the city is delivering and i think i think both the storm water and the wastewater are relevant in this case um the second thing is that for the next um um practically 20 years from oh my you can see from the slide deck but we have until really 2048 you know to limit it to some fraction of that and then the hammer really comes down at a very you know a long time in the future like in 2045 or something like that so there's plenty of time it seems for both um you know technical advances and or you know and uh the reconsideration of this from a legal point of view depending on what information might come to life um i have been able to find one of my frustrations is that i have not has yet been able to find any document that eagle has issued which um effectively uh um um mentions about uh what remediation um standards are acceptable or what policies are acceptable i'm sure they're out there somewhere all i was able to find was a document from connecticut it points out that there are at least 36 mechanisms by which you know phosphorus could be reduced so that's quite a lot of cost benefit analyses it should be done or at least some triaging to be done so what i'm thinking this is something that the commission is um this would be within the commission's purview and it's also something that we would be capable of doing to help assist a public discussion and assist city council and in weighing the cost benefits of the various options that you might have open to us that's my personal take so i see more hands up this first kathy than lisa i think and then chris i think lisa was first lisa then kathy then chris okay i just wanted to say quickly that that we do i'm sorry i muted myself instead of putting my hand down um we do know a fair amount about where the phosphorus is coming um some of it is in those lakes to begin with um because they're depos you know they're primordial deposits and they just get um when there's a and the lakes are are anaerobic so they're still and and then when there's a like a big rainstorm or something like that it gets stirred up and so that's one of the things that's charging that algal blooms the other thing that we know is that runoff from fertilizer is is accounting for some of that because there was a significant decrease in the algal blooms and in the phosphorus after an arbor enacted its um ban on fertilizer with phosphorus and so the city itself has done a fair amount and we do know some about you know about what is causing this um i don't know i don't think anyone i i yeah i i cannot remember if i do know the amount that's in it that you know that we're discharging i can i was trying to look through my notes but i don't really think i'm gonna be able to find that oh not tonight you know i think that i think we'll have some time before you know we have this on the agenda for a subsequent meeting of the commission to figure a lot of this out and yeah my son my recollection is that we reduced our phosphorus emissions by 28 due that's fertilizer ordinance but we could certainly do more we could certainly do more and we've gotten something like 43 of the way towards a 50 mandate so that's like 80 of the way there just with that so um it's not clear what and um and professor lehmann was arguing with ava about what model they were using we're actually judging how much the phosphorus problem came just from the sediments and the lakes themselves and that uh of course there are the cheapest way to to mitigate this problem is to just aerate you know just aerate the lakes instead of uh that may be the least expensive and most effective way of doing it so um rather than um limiting our discharge further so this is worth you know this is this this this requires some consideration and you know identifying what the data gaps might be um figuring out what uh just figuring out you know how to get more certainty around the remedy the the appropriate remedy and whether you know how much of it uh really ann arbor can accomplish no matter how much money it spends um i think street sweeping is another input there because um you know fertilizer that ends up in the street you know like this is another reason why we should uh not be uh dumping leaves in the street for collection in the fall it's because you know they all contain phosphorus and so the running storm water will reach it out of that so keeping the streets relatively clean and not just fertilizer but any organic matter will definitely help and i think the city has made some steps in that direction as well but i don't have any details um kathy we have your handout um yes i was talking to kevin mcdonald in the city attorney's office and he is also very interested and very knowledgeable about the history of what ann arbor has done to reduce phosphorus and so i would suggest that he be invited to this meeting and also if it would be helpful i could request a summary of what um what the city has done separate from the legal documents for the last 15 years kevin said that when he joined the city that the um the file regarding phosphorus reduction was on his desk and that was the first thing he worked on so he's also very interested in this and and offered some information to me today so i i think that if we take the lead on this we'll find that there are many people that are knowledgeable and and are interested yeah yeah i'm sure there are so um i will i will contact him as well oh okay thanks yeah and um and so i would encourage everybody to exchange emails about this in the meantime and i will continue to distribute information as i can as it comes in and i'll try to consolidate it into a shared document that we can use as a basis for uh you know for informing each other and for helping us facilitating a discussion and making a decision about this at some future time um i think this is something uh is probably not so appropriate for the august meeting since it's a working session um and so we might wait until september to bring this up and as i mentioned i don't i don't personally feel any sense of get any sense of urgency about this since um you know since uh with the legal settlement uh we're kind of we can we're allowed to go through this you know just practice the status quo for another two years but there's no reason to postpone it that long but i think it's worth a a good consideration in building uh you know building a consensus and building more of a political will about you know what to do about what's appropriate okay um chris you have your hand up sorry um well i would hope the aerators in belleville and ford lakes are solar-powered out there in the summer it's nowhere i mean those pumps are serious electricity um it seems to me that we could do two things one relatively easily one much more difficult i suspect one is to increase the storage requirement for rain gardens um they are completely worthless for the kinds of rains we've had in the last month all of them will would have been completely overwhelmed and would be even if we increased the standard to something a little higher and of course rita knows and lisa knows and thank you lisa for passing on all these documents the coefficient of runoff for turfgrass is just about the same as asphalt and of course the i would guess the principle source of phosphate that isn't somehow added to the environment is coming off our soils and if we diminish runoff by converting turf grass to more absorptive plant materials that allow water to percolate rather than runoff will diminish the phosphate low down in the river and causing that to be a regulation is a ways away i would guess but uh it would have a big effect it certainly would um you know do we have the whole example of detergents you know dishwashing detergents used to have we're loaded with phosphorus phosphate and they were banned back in the 70s and they made a big impact um people are still allowed to use um phosphorous as a chemical as a pure chemical you know rock phosphate as a fertilizer but um even just you know just having a regulation where you're not allowed to use a phosphate infanti fertilizer in the city would be useful you know you can still add phosphate to your garden but it has it would be a slow release variety like we have we you know no fertilizers especially not on grass are phosphate contain phosphate in ann arbor that's the rule whether that's true i'm not sure how but i think the commercial companies are complying and i don't see much phosphate fertilizer in the vendors that homeowners can buy here well you can still buy it online and you can still apply it to your gardens but that's expensive to ship so most people are buying from local vendors and and that's right but i know but i know you can buy it off you can buy it from amazon 50 pound bags of it so okay so a lot of this is going to be public education of course so um um let's see chris did you have an um would you like you have any more comments all right i'm sorry okay uh your hand was still up so um does anybody else wish to make a comment at this point okay i see you're hearing none but uh so i will i will continue making inquiries over the next month and i'll give you the commission an update um next week next month and then we will have we'll have probably a whole environmental commission meeting for this item alone when when it when it's prepared when we're all when we all feel prepared for a general discussion and some moving forward to some kind of a decision okay well the next item on the agenda is uh professor sally is going to speak on steve yes sorry to interrupt but i think that we were going to we reordered to have kathy talk about a20 i thought that was going to be at the end at the very end okay i thought it was at the end of new business okay all right well that's continued this is a new business uh sally roy on the uh planning staff report i'm sorry next on the agenda and then kathy and lisa you so um let's see sally areta do you want to uh yes why don't you manage the discussion here sure i'd like to welcome and introduce professor sally oy astronomer from the university of michigan um who has guided the city's development of uh an outdoor lighting ordinance to improve the quality of our lighting at night improve the reduce the use of electricity and actually it's something that will improve our nighttime environment um and so i would uh she has um kind of along with john mursky done a lot of work and this uh ordinance that we're going to discuss tonight has actually been approved by the planning commission it's been slightly amended and you'll see you had in your packet the amended um ordinance that'll be discussed at city council in the first meeting in august i believe but we wanted to just have a chance to have the environmental commission to see this ordinance hear its importance and uh make some comments that i think will um i'm hoping will continue in an educational direction but but before we go i would just like to um again thank sally or youtube for joining us and and um i if you want to start right now and and talk that would be great thank you great um let me get myself set up here can you see my screen yeah yeah uh great um thank you so much for inviting me and um uh i'm actually also the coordinator of an organization called michigan dark skies and that is a community group that is dedicated to raising awareness about light pollution and advocating for preserving the natural night sky which as i will show is a an important environmental concern i do want to again give a great acknowledgement to commissioner john mursky who really took this on and said let's do this when i approached him about trying to put together a lighting ordinance for ann arbor and so without his enthusiasm and dedication and work together with a couple other members of the planning commission and a couple other people this would never have happened so we're very very grateful to all of them so i have actually presented on this topic before to the environmental commission four years ago but most of you are new now so i apologize to those of you who have already heard various incarnations of my presentation but um this is an opportunity to bring everybody on board and as commissioner mitchell mentioned to really hope to spread the word and and the environmental commission is so important for this kind of advocacy so um in basically we're talking about a change to the fundamental nature of the night and the night is its own ecosystem ordinarily it should look something like what we see in this picture the normal night sky with stars and darkness and so forth but in fact 80 of people in the world live in something that looks more like this at night and so that is obviously not natural a lot of this lighting is absolutely necessary for our functioning at night and some of it's beautiful but a lot of it is not and the part that's not is meaning not used means that it is wasted light that performs no function or task whatsoever and that means that it is literally wasted energy and therefore it's pollution it's light pollution when you look down on the earth as you see on this picture you can see all of this light going straight up into outer space where it serves absolutely no one so that light is not doing the function that it was intended to be doing so light pollution is a significant waste of energy and it's a problem that is also increasing exponentially as time goes by here's a study showing what the light pollution map of the 48 states looked like in 1950s in the 1970s in 1997 and then the projection for 2025 and you can see that this is really an existential threat to the natural dark ecosystem here's the light pollution map for michigan and you can see that we're one of the few places east of the mississippi where there are still substantial regions especially in northern michigan that have pristine natural darkness there's even a couple patches in the lower uh peninsula as well so this is something that is very precious now in fact the michigan department of natural resources has designated six state parks as dark sky reserves so even our state recognizes at that level that dark skies are a natural resource worth preserving another thing to point out on this kind of map is that these are particularly light polluting cities that you can see here in red but that their footprint really extends over a much larger area so the affected area is on the order of 10 times larger than the light polluting source urban center itself so the surrounding communities are in fact stakeholders in a city's lighting and its lighting ordinance so this is an environmental issue we humans don't pay too much attention to it because we are daytime creatures and that is uh to the detriment of every creature that lives at night artificial light at night the buzzword is alan for the environmental for the biological sciences artificial light at night interferes with wildlife migration mating feeding and sleep which is pretty much everything that wildlife do animals and plants live by a 24-hour cycle and that gets disrupted by artificial lights and that includes humans as well so for example the nobel prize in medicine was awarded in 2017 for discoveries relating to the circadian rhythms of human health and uh much of this stems from disrupting our sleep cycles which has serious health consequences including obesity and cancer and cardiovascular problems and so forth the american medical association has actually issued an extensive report about the problems related to light pollution to our health and that's posted on our group's website so it's not just ourselves that are having trouble with this but obviously animals as well if we can't sleep neither can they birds are an especially uh sensitive creature to light pollution and that's because many bird species migrate at night but they normally rely on navigating by the light of the moon and the stars but with artificial lights then they get very confused in their navigations and they frequently end up colliding with buildings which are the number two cause of bird death after cats and it's believed that up to a billion birds are killed a year which is just mind-boggling these are up to a billion that actually crash into buildings and die um and you may have heard about how drastically the bird populations have been going down over the last decades we are here on the bird migration highway in the great lakes and so uh that is something that birding uh community is well aware of this problem with light pollution and crashing into buildings and for example here in our great lakes area the royal ontario museum annually puts on this exhibit where they've collected all these dead birds and display them to raise awareness about this issue a particularly poignant study was done regarding the 911 tribute lights in new york city they have this on on every september 11th they have this display where they shoot these very very bright lights straight up into the sky on the footprint of the former twin towers and these actually attract birds so many birds that you can detect them on radar which is what you see down here in the lower left there are so many birds about 15 000 birds that are trapped there that you can actually see them on the radar so this is when the lights are on and when the lights are off that you can see that they're not there anymore and so they actually need to turn these lights off for 20 minutes at a time in order to let the birds go so there are organizations that try to promote these lights out programs including in chicago and detroit has also participated in these in the past as has ann arbor it's always a struggle to kind of remind people to do this every year but there are organizations right here in our area that are uh always raising awareness about the lights out programs including washtenaw safe passage for example here in our county so birds are not the only animal that is affected by light pollution there's another famous example of sea turtles where baby sea turtles hatch on the beach and then they are biologically programmed to look for the glinting of the waves and thereby reach the sea as quickly as possible in order to survive but when they see the city lights they go toward the glinting of the city lights instead and they end up not making it to the sea um and obviously they don't survive in that way so this is from a public service announcement in florida you may also have heard about the insect apocalypse when i was a kid and would go on road trips then you know the front of the car would be covered with insects and that just doesn't happen now which is absolutely terrifying because insects are the bottom of the food chain so light pollution has been definitively linked to insect to the insect apocalypse is just one of several reasons why this is happening but for example when insects larvae are exposed by lights at night then they get consumed by their predators more easily as well adult insects like fireflies even i believe are threatened now um and and yeah basically other activities that insects do are also disrupted they they navigate basically by the same principles that birds do for example and then there are other animals at night that are also uh important to us for example bats are nocturnal pollinators of certain things like the tequila agave and then fish apparently are also affected by light pollution including economically important species and so forth so just to give a quick overview of light pollution itself so there's three types we've got glare which is the kind that you see when you're driving at light and somebody shines their headlights and your eyes that is a health hazard it's a safety hazard um for both drivers and pedestrians and then there's light trespass and uh that happens for example when you've got the neighbor's flood light shining into your bedroom window which is also a health hazard as we've talked about as well as a nuisance and then you've got sky glow which is the unnatural brightening of the night sky itself and that again is a health hazard and an ecological problem there's also an issue with the color of light pollution so blue or light is not as good as as red light generally speaking and that's because blue light scatters much more strongly so that means it spreads the footprint of the light pollution you've also got a problem that blue light is more experienced more as glare especially for people who already have vision problems and then there's also the fact that blue light will also destroy your night vision more quickly than red light which is why astronomers run around with little red flashlights instead of blue flashlights so it turns out that these led lights that are very prevalent nowadays have much more blue light in them if they're the kind that are super super bright like you know when you're under a fluorescent light that's a very very white light that white color actually has a lot of blue wavelengths in it and that's the kind that actually uh you know is a problem at the level that the american medical association again has issued a statement about led lights in particular as being disruptive to our sleep cycles so leds have been wonderful because they are very energy efficient but the question is will they actually save us energy so there's a phenomenon called the javen's paradox which was known since 1865 that if you increase energy efficiency it simply leads to greater energy consumption and what i'm showing here on this plot is the price of lighting energy uh in this dotted line since the year 1700 up to the year 2000 and this is data for the uk and then uh the solid line shows the per capita consumption of lighting energy in the uk over that same period of time and you basically see that these two lines exactly mirror each other so people are not saving energy they're just lighting up more and i think you know anecdotally if you look around at all the led lighting that's gone up recently since the year 2000s it seems completely consistent with the gevins paradox and that's why legislation is absolutely imperative to realize any benefits of conservation for energy efficiency so the good news is that this problem is easily solved simply by following these four steps to light only what is needed no more than what is needed only when it is needed and no bluer that that is needed so this is not like cleaning up a toxic waste dump once you have the lights off the problem is solved uh and so that's the idea behind the ann arbor lighting ordinance the idea is to help accomplish this and to help raise awareness so that people can accomplish this and just uh look at their own lighting and how they can chip in so these are the highlights of the ordinance so it will specify that nighttime outdoor lighting should have warm colors and this is a technical specification for that so it basically corresponds to if you have a white light that it's not that super super white led white white but that it is a warm white in fact led manufacturers are getting much better now at manufacturing those kinds of lights uh that are warmer in color for white light trespass is going to be limited at the property light fixtures are to be fully shielded so in other words no light above the horizontal but not this but this that there would be curfew for business lights and there would be limits on brightness for facades under canopy lighting and parking lot lighting and to the extent possible that there would be some way to get non-compliant lights into compliance so that is what we are seeking support from this commission for i would now go into a little detail on the um on the ordinance itself so you can see exactly what the document is let me just switch to a different screen share okay so here is the document itself uh actually that's the old one and so this is in your packet so it starts with the purpose the purpose is basically to address the issues that i've just mentioned to minimize the adverse effects of light pollution to protect the natural environment to promote energy efficiency and also to foster an environment that actually enhances commerce and whatever we want to do at night if you have these more mellow lights then um it's basically a more pleasant urban environment in our downtown district then we've got applicability and it basically applies to all outdoor lighting at night that is on private property of course and because that's what the udc applies to and there are these exemptions temporary lights are exempted so that includes things like christmas lights so that's for a total of 90 days lighting for flags is exempted and any lighting that has to do with a historic character is also exempt and then there's the color as i mentioned the limitation on the color and then we have the limits on trespass and light trespass means no more than a certain limit is allowed over the property boundary and that's done by zones and then we've got a prohibition on glare and then we've got specifications for shielding so if you're shining the if your target is flat basically on the ground if you're trying to illuminate something that's pointing downward then basically your fixtures have to be shielded so that there's no light emitted above the horizontal plane as i showed an earlier figure for vertical targets let's say that you're trying to illuminate a statue or something like that then that's okay you can point upward some but you should make every effort to shield the rest so that you're not spilling too much light off of the target and then there are limits for facade lighting and a curfew for facade lighting and then there's uh limits to brightness on for under canopy lighting like at gas stations and so forth and then flood lights flood lights are not to be angled any higher than 45 degrees meaning 45 degrees downward and then there's a prohibition on changing lights so no moving lights or blinking lights or things like that the amendment that was mentioned uh extends this to temporary lights and then there's parking lots uh limits to brightnesses on them and a curfew for them as well and then uh indoor lighting also shall not be a source of light trespass or glare and then finally to the extent possible for example if you change an outdoor light fixture completely not just the bulb but if you change the light then it needs to come into conformance uh with the with the new rule and then this would be enforced especially for any site plan that requires a submitted plan to the city the rest of it is pretty much just definitions and there's a couple you know diagrams that are helpful and so forth made by commissioner lisa sovay and then there's the amendment right here that was discussed and added on by the planning commission and that again addresses the temporary lights not being flashing etc and that's pretty much it so um i would be happy to answer any questions about this well thank you professor white i first um i first saw this topic uh i was almost it was almost um four and a half years ago by now the planning commission approved this uh uh just about a year ago in august yeah so i see a few hands raised um kathy griswold and lisa i'm not sure who was first because i can't i still see the screen that's being shared cathy was first okay kathy you have the floor and then lisa okay thank you very much professor i saw this presentation at a local sierra club meeting at the botanical gardens a few years ago and i i also reviewed it and i believe it john mursky's request because i'm pretty outspoken about the need for lighting especially lighting for pedestrian street lighting and i um i agree with everything this is this is really great i look forward to something similar for our public right of way if whatever we can control locally that's not controlled by the the state and federal government what many people don't understand is more lighting is not better lighting and in looking at crosswalk crashes glare is is a contributing factor and also a recent crash that we had in the north side of the street was was quite dark and it was difficult to see pedestrians and so what ended up happening is dte kept increasing the brightness on the south side that actually made it because of the contrast even more difficult to see the pedestrian so i i won't go into more details other than to say um this is great i i recommend that we endorse it and i look forward to the uh the work for the public right-of-way thank you so much council member grizzled i remember discussing it with you thank you very much oh you're welcome okay um thanks kathy lisa you have the floor and then chris and then young when um this is really uh illuminating um i am confused about one thing which is that in the in the document that was on our screen in the applicability section there was um yeah it wasn't that one that we were seeing we were seeing a different applicability section uh and so that's partly why i'm confused the one that was showing on the screen as you were speaking at the very end included any project for which a site review is required uh i would strike that uh i'm sorry go ahead i would strike that because uh we're having the same issue with the um ev ordnance um the requirement of a site plan review by oh wait is it just site plan review at planning or site plan review at council or yours well um the the language that you saw was this can you see my screen or not yeah that's not what we were seeing though when you were speaking it was a much shorter thing and it had something about a site plan review and uh that was the sorry for interrupting but i thought that that was the prior version of the ordinance it was not what we are seeing right now so was it this it's not changing sally i'm not sure what's happening okay i'm sorry um someone it says your screen sharing is paused let me resume okay there we go okay so is it is it this can you go up a little bit yeah so scroll up no because i think this is the same thing again that you were just showing us yes so let me ask is it is it this one yeah it was this one okay yeah this is the existing one so this is going away all together so i apologize because when i first started to show it to you i i came up with this page and that and that was a lot because you were going into so much detail that was not on this page and i was like okay so now i understand and i'm looking at the file in from my agenda so now now i'm not confused i apologize and this what i'm showing right here actually is only for non-conforming existing lighting in the first place but of course if a plan is submitted to the city for any new construction it needs to comply with this and they need to demonstrate um okay um i think um let's see whose hand was up uh chris chris and then um pyongyang so uh thank you um gosh energy commission and planning commission planning commission wonderful help from the university the original request to do something about lighting in ann arbor has been around since the 2000s mid 2000s almost as long as i've been on the commission and i'm so excited that we've reached the level of sophistication that this ordinance suggests um i'm wondering if we could add a provision that would allow uh some sort of complaint process to [Music] to ask for city um intervention and egregious circumstances of too much light i appreciate that it's normal to do these kinds of regulations for cycling review procedures and in the long run that will help but there are um some [Music] obvious um uh shall i call them difficult situations out there that someone might make a complaint about and cause a process that might result in diminishing light pollution sooner rather than later just a suggestion thank you um enforcement has was something that was discussed you know quite a bit because this is obviously something that is difficult to enforce especially because it's at night um and so uh i think we just kind of left that as a c-click fix situation um but i hope that just by raising awareness and this is the kind of thing that's going to need a lot of education um so i hope also that you know we can follow up at some point with the suggestion that council member griswold made about you know moving on to the the city's right-of-way uh stuff also i mean we have actually had some discussions with the city and with dda to begin with and then i'm afraid coven happened then i kind of let that slide because a lot of my notes were in my office um so i think education is very very important in addressing these kinds of issues um but i hope that having an ordinance will at least allow people to start approaching each other and saying are you aware that you know you're causing glare and that this is actually an issue that the city has legislated about um so you know if if somebody is in violation of this then i hope you know there would be a means to at least try to submit it through see click fix and i also did want to mention since you suggested uh that ann arbor has been looking at this for 20 years i was pleasantly surprised that chelsea i discovered only the last few months has had a lighting ordinance for years and they've actually just gone through an update to it which is far more comprehensive than ann arbor's and also scio and brighton have lighting ordinances that work on parts of the ann arbor so we're a little behind the curve on this sorry uh young when you have the floor and then rita yeah thank you so much for the wonderful presentation i really feel the need to like target by pollution because some of my friends are like birders and then they really love birds and they also told me about like how lighting kind of kind of factors and i just have some questions for you so like what are the main sources of light pollution in that knobber it's like from like commercial like businesses or like is it from like residential area from like private homes and like buildings audience like be able to target those problems oh that's a great question that's a really great question um in general businesses produce a lot more light so uh i i don't have actual data on who's producing the most light pollution here in ann arbor but in general businesses do have the most light they need the most light so uh you know that's a natural consequence we've also had a lot of issue with street lights in ann arbor um in terms of the pedestrian globe lights that are downtown and dda has been very helpful in helping us to get some of those get most of those well some of those converted um the new ones that they have uh implemented since we've approached them i don't know if you've noticed but some of them have actually have these light lids so that the top half of the globe is dark and they also have changed the color of them so that they are this more mellow color and you can actually go downtown and compare and contrast you'll see some of these uh newer globes that i'm talking about i think on william i said william and then in kerrytown also on fifth um and deals notice immediately a contrast between those and the the ones that are on main street uh the university of michigan is a huge problem too um and they are not under the jurisdiction of the lighting ordinance so that's yet another you know uh uh initiative that we have um we're only just getting started with the university of michigan but we we do have that on our on our agenda um and then the rest of the new street lights that are going in are actually not bad um the city is aware since we've raised this so i think the new street lights that are going in are in good compliance and then also the the ones that are under the state jurisdiction for streets like um like jackson road and so forth those new ones are also fully shielded and they're generally in pretty good shape um although some of the ones that are being installed at roundabouts in the county we're having an issue with the washington county road commission because they are putting in uh lighting for the roundabouts that is significantly in excess of uh industry guidance so that is something that we're still trying to work on and of course the lighting ordinance won't affect them either so the lighting ordinance applies to the private the private property in the cities it would be private homes and businesses as well so i think the main benefit would be the businesses in answer to your question okay i see and also i feel like like because some doors some stores leave their lights on like even when they're not using them midnight i'm just like wondering like are these lights necessary for safety or like i i'm not exactly sure like what this flight support because like in china when i where i was where i lived for like a long time and they don't usually have lights in the stores overnight i'm just like wondering because i i was just really curious like what what those lights are if like they are necessary for businesses well it's not my job to decide whether the night lights are necessary or an area or not but if they're not necessary they need to be turned off basically uh but the there is a specification in here that lights that are not for safety should be off i believe half an hour after the close of business if they are outdoor lights okay actually thank you thank you um thanks rita you have your hand up you have the floor thank you um uh sally thanks again for this presentation it is great um i want to just point out that in our next step that one of the things that has really come to my mind is that the need for public education ongoing so given that the ordinance has its limits and applicability to the site plans i'm hoping that we'll be able to work with council to move things forward in an educational way to encourage homeowners and business owners to reduce their lights even if they are not covered by the changes in the ordinance it would be really nice in my opinion to reduce some of those holiday lights reduce some of the the lights on as young one was saying lights on in buildings at night it really supports the kind of thing that the hs0 program is guiding us toward that we really should be reducing some of our use of energy overall so i'm hoping that we see some action in that way as well thank you yes i think that's really the most important thing that we could be doing because this is not going to help unless people are aware and i think once people are aware they really do just suddenly say oh i never thought about that i think i'll change the lights on my house and it's really not necessarily an expensive thing to do our group is is available to help with anybody who would like to work on that kind of outreach we have on our website first of all we have a website and we also have educational materials there and our group has even developed a children's activity too i wonder if anyone was interested thank you okay rita um yeah thank you very much professor roy um so if there are no further comments um shall we go on to the resolution i i see additional hands steve sorry i'm sorry yes i did not um notice that well i think i don't know who was first at least i think lisa was first lisa and then kathy and then chris or have a very quick request um uh professor oye would you be willing to share your slide presentation with us because there are some graphics there that i think would be great to put in my newsletter so that my constituents can be aware of the problem the exponential increase for example was a pretty striking slide yes i'm definitely planning to do that commissioner mitchell had already asked me to do that in advance so i apologize for not having them ready for the meeting thank you councilmember dish okay thanks kathy then um kathy and then chris uh chris was next sorry chris and then kathy oh okay i just have a quick comment that probably goes a little bit beyond the ordinance my daughter lives in connecticut and she just drives me crazy because the light's around in the house all the time she's got two little boys that are running around she just can't deal with it but it drives me nuts and i compare it to a situation where i i saw in france once i went into a dentist's office and that hallway was dark and i had to push a button and the light went out in the hallway for one minute you had a minute to make it to the door or something and we just if if we could get a i think this whole ordinance and the whole lighting thing in general to me impinges on the whole idea of outreach you know people just need to be educated that we just don't need as much light as we got and it goes way beyond the ordinance so you know if there's some way we could erase the public awareness of this whole thing it would be great so let's i'll shut up thanks thank you that's exactly the point thanks chris kathy i yes i just wanted to volunteer my advocacy and and history based on uh pedestrian crashes and one of the examples that you mentioned was the lighting at roundabout and what most people don't understand is if if you're driving on a road that's dark and then suddenly you have this bright light at the roundabout it's actually more dangerous because your your eye is not going to be able to quickly adjust to the darkness again and you're not going to be able to see so it's not just a waste of energy so anyway i feel very strongly about that and let me know if i can help in any way thank you so much councilmember griswold i will definitely be calling you uh this issue with the washington county road commission um is exactly that concern oh okay and they are they are building so there's already a new one at wagner and miller i'm sorry this is not ann arbor business but um yeah but there's a problem with with the lighting and exactly the way you described oh okay and it does impact ann arbor residents who are driving out there though sure i feel it's relevant so yeah thank you well i didn't want to take up this commission's time but i will definitely contact you thank you so much which is a lot of anne our residents while mabel was closed but wagner is totally packed with cars yeah okay um i think i don't see any other hands up so rita why don't we move onwards to the resolution right all right so um would the commission like to look at the resolution on on the screen or have you all read it um so um i really feel uncomfortable reading the whole thing um but i think the the the sense of it is that it points out the the issues um of light trespass sky glow etc glare the blue rich led lighting um the waste of energy um just that light trespass is really a problem for safety and and for um just health i think um uh i'm skipping around here um well rita i'm sorry to interrupt but my understanding is that this there's nothing new in this resolution this is a resolution supporting what the energy commission and the planning commissioner already that is correct yes yes right and so the addition though that i just want to say then is the last part which has to do with education so encouraging council to work toward developing some educational materials or perhaps inc um working in conjunction with professor oye and her group um to expand that kind of outreach and education i really think that would be worthwhile so um yeah so that's that um so are there any questions about the resolution move to pass the resolution second resolution endorsing the amended enhanced outdoor lighting um and support of the energy commission and uh planning commissions um submission to city council love say aye we're raising i anyone opposed hearing and seeing nothing um i think it passes unanimously so would you have caitlyn forward this to city council we'll do that thank you all thank you very much thank you professor roy thank you so much all your support is greatly appreciated thank you we'll all be in touch okay well let's move on to reports from committees so natural features chris uh i think he stepped away oh he did okay well how about pollinators um pollinators um is working toward very similar kinds of things that i just mentioned which is education um to provide people with information on um the importance of saying this over and over again reducing turf grass reducing pesticides um and installing um gardens so um we are working with um a young entomologist who is providing us with some background and some um i think some additional support that will help us develop some materials and some outreach so that's that's our next particular program um and also in uh as a another one that i've talked over um significantly with commissioner mursky is um trying to work with some large landowners to convert property to less turf grass and we have a target ex-commissioner anne bannister is working with um with me to to approach one of the local churches that has some significant land that we think would be useful um so we'd be building on um installations there that would be provide educational information for even the parishioners that maybe they would take to their homes and expand it that way so that's just one right now yeah okay um oh chris do you have a report with natural features group um we uh because of my uh overload in business are going slowly a suggestion was made to try to convert a lot of the language in new and old in the woodlands section and the landmark trees section to a chart um apparently that's the fashion in the planning department now rather than just text in code chart and graphics and we've done our first attempt at that and it's not not so easy so stay tuned we'll see how that goes okay you're a pioneer here chris so i'm sorry um the other work groups i need to retire and and put full time on this stuff well um that's fine yeah okay um do you want to mention anything else no but i um had a client that lost a 36 inch heritage tree down into a big red oak down into his house last week i was very sad about that it was really big and uh it was a tree in an 84 fragment on the top of the glendalough hill and came down with no obvious reason perfect a healthy tree lots of acorns oh that's a shame okay um the zero waste working group you want me to go lisa yes i want you to go first and then i'll talk about the policy committee okay sure um so we've completed the micros grant that we will be submitting to um blanking right now lisa next energy yeah um for uh the first phase of work on creating metrics around the circular economy so that's been well worked and the office of sustainability and innovations will probably be submitting that on behalf of the city next week and then the goal for the first phase is to get an intern to work with us to do the background work and the research and the literature review to develop the metrics but then we've already started working on the second phase and the next grant application to move the work forward to implementation we've got great support from several organizations providing letters of support so overall we've put together a well prepared proposal and it's great that we've got uh support from several organizations county city university etc so fingers crossed that we'll be reporting back in september on successful um receipt of the funding which will be ten thousand dollars for the first phase okay so you'll know what the funding decision was in september that's what we're anticipating sometime september-ish yep that's right i think we're committed to the work moving forward and i think so is the city so if for some reason it's not funded i think we're going to find alternative paths right okay and then the other major thing that the zero waste working group is doing is that its policy committee has drafted a zero waste target date which will become a resolution to bring to council but first we'll bring it here um and it is it asks the council to reaffirm its uh zero waste goal which was in not the most recent but the one before that iteration of the solid waste resource management plan and we're asking council to reaffirm this goal and set target dates and think about strategies as part of realizing strategy five of the a20 plan which calls both for expanded composting and recycling so um and also uh to promote a circular economy and part of one of the stages along the way to a circular economy is expanding compost and recycling to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfills and so we will be bringing you this policy document i hope at the next meeting we've gone through really a lot of drafts and a lot of really thoughtful deliberative sessions on this and we've engaged staff support and i think it's a really strong statement at this point so i'm i'm eager for you to see it and excited about that yeah that's wonderful okay um let's see um i guess that leaves the uh solid waste working group uh which is really basically uh construction and demolition ordinance i don't have anything to say today about that um so um i think that covers the committees and working groups um other commissions um i think shannon's not here so planning is not represented we still haven't gotten them assigned a commission or assigned to the parks yeah i hope to remedy that by our next meeting which is a working group session um and uh john mercy is out as well but he's provided he's provided a statement here from the environment from the energy commission that i think i will just read to people and his absence so the energy commission first of all at its meeting on july 13 they considered three resolutions there's a second presentation on the case for a municipal utility uh by the citizens group and order for public power a resolution was also introduced for the first reading asking the energy commission to formally request city council to fund a municipalization feasibility study this is estimated to cost 120 000 so um there was a lot of good discussion that a date has not yet been set for the second reading possible vote on the resolution as it is likely other viewpoints will be presented in future commission meetings if the idea advances there is also likely to be a lot of discussion on the content of the feasibility studies rfp regarding the scope right and mix of assets grid and or distributed energy resources including i imagine microgrids and services to be evaluated in the study so again now this is an alternative the city has um to provide actually to create a supplemental um [Music] um utility um that would be supplemental to what the gt is providing i believe there was a second reading of a resolution in support of a proposed energy benchmarking and disclosure ordinance which applies to the commercial and multi-family housing sector the resolution was voted on and passed unanimously the draft ordinance now goes to city council for consideration a resolution in support of a sister ordinance requiring a home energy audit and its disclosure at the time of sale of single-family residences will be taken up at the commission's next meeting so the two ordinances together will ensure that the ann arbor built environment sectors have some type of energy related disclosure requirement this would be commercial multi-family and single-family buildings so different disclosure requirements make sense for these different sectors both ordinances are modeled on similar ordinances which are in effect in other municipalities there was also a second reading of a resolution asking the city to promote and support the use of low-carbon materials in construction the resolution was voted on passed unanimously and now advances to city council for its consideration so a pilot low carbon meaning 37 percent lower carbon emissions co2 emissions a mix was poured last week on repair sections of south industrial highway and the tridelta sorority the cement workers liked working with the new mix and the second floor was observed by a concrete expert from michigan tech and a rep from the michigan concrete association so all of the above mentioned materials and resolutions are posted on legistar for anyone's inspection um so we should also mention during this meeting that the mayor has proposed a climate action millage to be put to a public vote this november the proposal was discussed only briefly at the energy commission meeting uh there has been some other um i think reports on m-live in a city council meeting was a brief discussion i believe about about this knowledge proposal um so um all i knew at this point personally is that uh you know it's a village proposal to fund the 820 effort basically um it's a 20-year um so far it's a 20-year mileage um i have to propose one mill um so um i think lisa and uh lisa and chris have uh something to say on this so you want to start lisa and then of course it's not on this i wanted to say that i could report from the planning commission and that it's very easy because the planning commission did not meet on july 6th and it is meeting now so there's another report okay all right well thank you sorry i just noticed that uh chris you had something to say about this uh going back to your um um gosh um forgive me i've completely forgotten what in the world you were talking about before you got to this getting tired my apologies no i'm sorry i was talking about the parks benchmarking and before you talked about the arts commission other parts parks i'll think of it and be back to you okay all right so um and then um okay that's all that john wanted to report at this point okay from the energy commission so i'm sure there'll be a lively debate about this knowledge proposal and i um i'm not sure when council is going to bring it up uh on its agenda possibly i think on august 2nd is that correct okay lisa is affirming that so we can expect to have a discussion of council about this knowledge proposed knowledge um that's all i know um so if there's no more okay chris has his hand still has his hand up i haven't thought of it yet i'm sorry i'll keep working with it that's okay so the next uh report uh on the list here is from council and uh you were going to mention about the a20 so this would be a good place to talk about the a20 i mentioned to council member dish that i was working on a resolution for the environmental commission and she offered to co-sponsor it and suggested that we just bring it to council and we did and it passed unanimously on monday tuesday night and before midnight the 820 plan was actually updated so it's truly a living document and the resolution was to add just a few words to um strategy six action six of the plan to include not only monitoring heat air quality waterways and flooding but implement sensors to monitor and strategies to manage and just a few words but that is is very very important because it moves us into a more active operational area and i want to commend um missy stokes for for writing the resolution for uh supporting it and also for um updating a20 as well as jennifer lawson uh and what this means is that we will be more proactive and there will be no increase in funding needed from the general fund because storm water management is funded from the storm water fees so there there is a separate fund for that um and missy and i met with some neighbors who had extensive flooding uh damage and it's been chronic um off orchard hills drive and the proposal is to have a meeting with the neighbors not only in that neighborhood but in a couple of adjacent neighborhoods and we feel that we need to be proactive because if we're having flood damage on a regular basis we can't be a resilient community if we haven't resolved our minor flooding issues that are chronic you know we've got to be ready for for these uh heavy rains and one of the issues is that storm water management was not required in residential neighborhoods until the 80s so many of our older neighborhoods do not have i'm sorry storm water management and in in the case of orchard hills drive the there is a county drain there but it's inadequate and uh we believe that it is collapsed in at least one place so excuse me with with this framework we'll be able to have um the office of osi do education advocacy uh interacting with the community and then um sort of scope out some of these projects and then the actual work will be done um and i'm through public works and that does acknowledge that we're going to need more staff because we can't just say we're going to do more uh through osi when the work is going to be done through public works and so there's already been a discussion about that and that that will be ongoing okay all right thank you you're welcome um yeah this has been a recurring book you know kind of kind of still a um i think a unresolved area certainly um you know so i think this is deserving of a full commission meeting at some time in the near future at the right time are you referring to flooding yeah maybe we can have a review of the city's green streets policy and revisit that somewhat because it does seem to not be addressing the issue completely so um lisa you have your hand up and then chris kathy was first i want to thank you very much for all your work on that it's so important that we make the connection between flooding and climate change and that the work of osi while it has been brilliant and effective in the areas of energy it also needs to extend to these other effects of climate change so um but did you want to update them about the landfill solar project and uh and the fact that council approved the um articles in court of incorporation for joining warmah if the other members of warma accept us or do you want me to have just done that by what i just said because council also did that yes if you do that i i guess i would like to say that um this resolution it really looked easy and simple and it was done within a few days uh but that is because of of the tremendous um work from staff that had been done prior and so it was just the right time to bring this together so i i i cannot say enough about the staff that that worked on this it passed unanimously it was not controversial at all however it was something that has needed uh to be done probably for decades well yeah thank you very much kathy that was that's fairly stellar um chris you have your hand up so um lisa and kathy the performance of the city in the six and a half inch event friday three weeks ago presented flooding problems that weren't on the list of things that were approved in a extensive study three or four maybe five years ago there are things that we need to worry about those that list was a list of chronic things and are underway did we get some new ones to add to the list in this last event um we are aware of them neighbors have raised issues i think that it's still being formalized i know that in the third ward there was an issue on pittsfield street or road um i have two in the second ward narrow gauge nature area as as well as the area around the arboretum uh it will one of them has has made will be on this in the cip however uh when we have this type of flooding we can't be a resilient community if we're going to take four or five years to analyze it and get it in the cip and so i think that this resolution is going to fast track some of these i'm i i begin to see the list and compare it with the really comprehensive study that was done and see if there are new ones in this much i mean for us to have more than a four inch event is really unprecedented and so no doubt some new things showed up would you mind sharing that list with me sure i'll go back and find a study and the city has a model to predict these things and it may explain why i all fast-tracked so much steven um construction debris i don't usually take materials to what used to be called calverts which is where a lot of the construction debris from ann arbor gets cycled through out on jackson way west jackson road now owned by recycle ann arbor and i was astounded at the volume of material that they're processing through there every day i mean the place is just really busy and i asked the guy okay so a load of construction debris comes in here are you sorting it recycling it and he said absolutely so i would suggest that um contact be made with recycling ann arbor with the guys that are working out there i don't know who's leading and solving these problems for them but uh i think they're hot on the trail of no they are sean adams is my contact out there they've been doing um they've been doing this for a number of years in support of led projects you know many of them at the university because they have uh you know because that's a requirement for led certification you're right on top of it thank you stephen yep and you know um yeah and um some of the um you know some of the uh some of the materials are are eminently recyclable and some you know like for example asphalt and all that asphalt that gets taken up when they do road repairs that's always fun that's almost all recycled but other things uh it's more difficult so um yeah thanks for the comment chris um i hope i can update the commission next month uh during the working session about the cnd the other thing that we're really missing is is recycle ann arbor's reuse center on south industrial yeah yeah they lost their lease a year ago and the places remain closed and gosh been nice to keep the thing going for that year of pandemic i guess but um yeah yeah it's my um it's i sorely miss it that was the first place i went to before i went to a hardware store because you could almost always find like uh what you needed like a bed frame or a you know or a piece of pipe to do something to do a project or you know yeah shingles so um i'm hoping um i'll see what i'll see if i can get an update from raa and uh and distribute it to this list okay um so is that is that the complete report from council kathy and lisa that's all fabulous that's really good news i'll have to go look at the uh i'm sorry i missed that council session i'll have to go look at the uh the agenda in the minutes on the attachments myself and see what was transpired for the details um so in terms of a chair report i just have um one and that is that we we need still need to recruit two members we're still missing two members and uh i've requested an update for applicants and i want to encourage anybody who's listening this to if they would like to serve on this commission to apply within the next week on the city's website and you would be considered along with the current list of candidates for these two positions um and i need to continue trying to contact the parks commission to try to get a parks commissioner assigned um that's all i have to say right now um so the next uh are there any questions i don't see any so um the next uh the next item on the agenda is a report from staff uh galen do you have um a report from the staff not this evening okay um so let's see the next item on the agenda is action points review um so what i have um so far is that our next session in august has traditionally been a working session i think that's a good uh that's a good practice so i would like to schedule that as a working session um part of the you know especially because we have new commissioners on hand here so um please um please respond with any agenda items you'd like to have discussed during this working session um and uh galen hardy uh we'll check that off we'll check to make sure that all commissioners have been added to the email distribution list i thought that had been done um a month ago but apparently it has not been done um i will uh send out the promised survey by monday on um commissioners with what their skill sets are and what their interests are uh and what kind of goals they would like to see with for the commission i would like to have this survey returned by august 10th if that's possible so that um i can compile everything and then and then distribute it before our working session on august 26th uh galen hardy will include the link to the freak article in the minutes um and um i have a subscription to freak so i know i can read it um i'm not sure what the copyright laws are on this kind of distribution but i think um i want to respect whatever those are so uh um i'm surprised it's still behind their paywall uh hopefully they'll decide to release it at some time in the near future and then sally roy will uh share her slide deck with commissioners i think possibly rita mitchell already has it so maybe rita can just make sure that uh that slide deck is emailed to all the commissioners as soon as possible and um are there any other action points i might have missed with somebody any new action points can you say number uh i think it was number three again the survey oh yeah you'll include a link from the uh freak article on the calendar no uh no about the uh survey to commissioners i think that was number yeah i'm going to send a survey by monday to the distribution list for the commissioners it's basically a survey it's it's all long answers no multiple choice on what people's skill sets and interests are whatever information they want to share like um you know if they've got a linkedin page or something like that they can choose to share that but whatever their interests are what they're passionate about um discussing and having uh having this commission deal with on what their skill sets are and um what issues they would like us especially investigated over the next year um that's what i was talking about so i'll handle all that galen okay and of course you'll be copied on it as well so are there any suggested items for the next agenda at this point um but i will call i will send out as i have been trying to you'll send out a call for agenda items uh rita and gail and i will put together a skeleton and then um and then we'll see what uh people might want add it to frida you have your hand up yeah i just want to put myself on them for a task to send a message to commissioners for their interest in working with me on chapter 40.

everybody's ready i'm going to start the meeting okay i call this meeting to order due to the covet 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 comments to 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 carangelo hello here this is true here mr sismar here mrs guass here mr hong mrs blacks here mrs reese here 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 one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice [Music] 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 in accordance with the provisions of this act the east bronzer board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education offices written notice was also provided to the sentinel 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 related broadcast and individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules i have a very brief statement i'd like to read for the last 16 months due to the coven 19 pandemic the board of education's meetings have been held virtually in accordance with governor murphy's executive orders the governor has recently rescinded these executive orders and public bodies will return to in-person meetings the board of education will resume in-person meetings beginning with its meeting on august 5th our next meeting i know we're looking forward to it i hope this is good news for everyone we're going to start out tonight with our superintendent's report dr valesky thank you president becker and and with your announcement we have to return to in-person meetings i'll have to make sure that i'm uh not casual on the bottom that are professional on the top and the bottom i think we all will have that same concern sir yeah so good evening everyone i'm so proud to report that our child nutrition department served a total of one million eight hundred one million eighty thousand eight hundred free meals i'll say that again one million eighty 80 800 free meals including breakfast lunch and snack to the east brunswick community this past school year and that number is 300 000 meals more than last year it is important to note that all expenses were funded by the federal and state grant programs and there was no cost to east brunswick taxpayers i want to thank joe crotchfeld who spearheaded this entire effort our child nutrition staff era mark school security officers bus drivers and our school nurses who all contributed to this overwhelmingly successful endeavor that benefited east brunswick students and families we continue preparations for september when we will return to full days of instruction with lunch for all students and beginning the month of august i will communicate critical updates to the community as we approach the first day of school which is thursday september 9th as i did last school year i will continue to use phone email and text to keep you informed of any issues or mandates that may affect our school community we are working hard to coordinate communication from multiple district sources so families are not overwhelmed by multiple calls on the same evening in addition to maintaining safe physical environments in all our schools which became the mainstay for our successful return to five days a week of instruction last school year one of our major focuses this summer is on preparing social and emotional support for our eb schools community as we return to a more normalized school operations in september additional details about this and other important summer initiatives will be shared during school board meetings during the month of august over the past month since the end of the school year and graduation of our class of 2021 which doesn't seem that long ago we have been analyzing what we've learned during the pandemic and how we can reapply so many positive elements to our school instruction and operations using what we have learned we will further improve east brunswick public schools as well as the educational experience of every single student thank you thank you dr moleski um one of our board members was kind enough to pass along to me a message that several parents are having trouble logging into the meeting i know that there was an issue with the agenda that was published the last four digits were incorrect i'm was told that the screen that was put up at the beginning had the correct but let me say the correct code for those of you trying to log into the meetings 977-1264-4525 i hope that clears up any confusion um board members let me know if you continue to hear from anybody who's still having a problem thank you bernie okay this brings us to the good of the cause to the public members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password once more please thank you so much provided on the screen in order to be recognized use the chat feature select the zoom meeting host and 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 on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest to protect the privacy of all students and staff concerns regarding individual students and staff members should generally be addressed by first meeting with the appropriate administrative staff participants will be limited to three minutes duration is there anyone wishing to address the board this evening bernie we have one individual uh mr john arthur okay good evening sir thanks for joining us hi thank you i just wanted to briefly introduce myself my name is john arthur i'm the new director of the east brunswick public library um so obviously as a librarian and as someone who values being a good resource to the entire community that means being a good resource to the entire school system as well so um hopefully we'll be working together on a lot of different projects and i just started two weeks ago here in east brunswick but i've been a librarian for a while i started as a children's librarian i was most recently director of the englewood new jersey public library and actually the director of the metuchen public library before that so i'm also familiar with middlesex county so i really just wanted to say hello and i really look forward to joining the community it's it's obviously a wonderful library and um it's just exciting to be a part of it so please reach out stop by and you know we'll all work together again to make the east brunswick public library the community the heart of the community the way the way it already is but even even more so so thank you for your time thank you so much for taking the time to stop by that was just great so gracious of you and yes you took the words right out of my mouth the east brunswick library has always been the heart of our community and we look forward under your tenure to being back to full speed and residents being able to use it as we always have and again thank you so much for taking the time to introduce yourself greatly appreciate it thank you all bernie is there anyone else wishing to speak to the board we have no one else in the queue okay seeing none i close the public portion i i see a hand uh uh like the hand symbol i don't know is shannon christie i'm looking um let's see okay there's a hand raised yes shannon christie that's yes that's me can i speak sure okay hi um yes um so um my name is shannon christie um i am from east brunswick um so first off i want to say today is national fragile x day i want to make everyone aware of that um so i am a carrier and my daughter is a carrier with a premutation as well um and so she is in early intervention and we are looking at the preschool program uh which is awesome um now my grandfather is also a councilman and he helps our camp daisy and all this other stuff um i see a lot coming in with the critical race theory and all of this stuff which is wonderful you know that you guys are looking into it my main concern with it is i'm wondering if it's more that you should be worrying about revamping history lessons in school more than adding curriculum i was i graduated east brunswick in 2007.

five four three two one uh it is uh now four o'clock uh it is now the time set for uh the regular board meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind um we are back here in person in sedona it's great to see everyone in person uh before we begin just a brief social distancing announcement if everyone can keep their masks on while they're indoors and moving once that you are at your seat and you're six feet apart you're able to remove your mask if i could ask that if everyone uh do that that would be great um we can now start for the meeting call to order and roll call so sue k if you have the roll call sure brittany buchanan present aaron wonders present david nigro present dean howard sue k knife oh there he is um sue k connival present pv chance lynn davison president mike gordon i'm president and linda bove is excused for toni tonight all right thank you first our second item on the agenda 1.02 call of the public called call to the public on agendized items are there any members of the public who have submitted their forms and seeing none and we did not receive any via email we did solicit public comment via email for this meeting we did not receive any for this particular item 1.02 1.03 information item superintendents report superintendent reichman good afternoon everyone welcome to our first in in-person meeting since march 2020 really happy to see you here in person so i want to welcome president nigro assistant superintendent rex and assistant superintendent cooper and those of you who are here rescue with the ic department can you hear me okay uh yes we can hear i okay um i've got a couple of board members that are unable to log in to their board docs okay um so that we're speaking about the remote board members yes well no people who are at the meeting itself okay um is there an issue with with board docs they're just not whatever password they're using is not getting them in okay um do we have uh paper copies for shayna it's for shayna cooper and tv i forgot his last name sure um we're okay now this is assistant superintendent cooper you're you're okay okay um uh pv are you okay you guys are okay yes oh says that he's okay now okay uh superintendent thank you all right thank you superintendent uh you may proceed bye-bye all right are we all okay ready to proceed okay great we have a lot of information this afternoon to share with you all so i'm just going to give a brief 30 000 arial overview of what's happening in the agency and then others from asdb will be providing some additional information but first of all i want to start with the story just a few days ago i watched one of our internal leaders sign a story about the american buffalo or bison awesome story and something i didn't know before as some of you may know i'm originally from nebraska i grew up on the western plains and we had cattle all around like wyoming colorado western nebraska that area so i knew about cattle but what i didn't know is when we had the american buffalo 150 years ago that they they have very particular behaviors that are very different from cattle so when you think about cows what happens when they see a storm coming if any of you have been on a ranch you know that cows they run away they scatter all over the place and they try to outrun that storm but unfortunately some of you may also know cattle they don't run very fast they're pretty slow so typically the storms will catch up to the cattle and cause all kinds of trouble for that however the american bison or buffalo they don't do that they behave very differently the american bison when they sense that there's a storm coming what they do is they come together as a herd they pack together and then they turn and they face that storm and then they start running they don't run away they run to the storm and they go through the storm to the other side isn't that amazing wonderful story and when you think about that you know us as people typically when we see trouble coming the storm coming we too avoid and run away and most of the time that's not successful the storm overtakes us anyways and we're stuck in it and we're even more frustrated experiencing even more pain but if we as people can face this oncoming storm if we can come together as a team as a herd and pack together and charge directly at the storm and get through it then we will have spent a lot less time effort and energy and less pain as well i i think that's just an awesome story an awesome metaphor and really when i look at asdb that what we've accomplished in the last i would say year and a half we have behaved more like the buffalo we we didn't see the storm coming i don't think anyone else saw it either but when the storm came upon us last year and march we didn't fall apart we didn't run away we didn't scatter to the four directions we actually came together as a team all we didn't open when we thought we would we had to wait until october which meant we had to provide remote vegetation and we did that our teachers did that and when we came back in person in october we followed the risk mitigation protocols that we had set up in place and one evidence of our success is that in that one year and three months we had 79 staff that reported covet positive 79.

we're also working with the state to close the fiscal year as such the budget fiscal year 2021 reports as of june 30th will be presented to the board at the september 9th meeting as the fiscal year has not yet been closed due to the transaction still being processed last month ade tentatively awarded asdb over 870 thousand dollars in funding from the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund the funds can be used through september 30 2024 and we're currently putting together plans for student support and other appropriate uses of those funds the sr3 monies do require 20 percent of the expenditures to be used for learning recovery so we will be folding that into the budget plan as well the proposed 2022 budget has been presented in the report and is based on initial appropriations and what we expect to collect in revenues resulting from our initial budget projections positions we do have approximately 99 vacant positions which consist of the teachers instructional and residential service assistants interpreters bus drivers and other various positions on the bottom of page three begins the financial summary where we begin to compare may 31 2021 information to may 31 2020 the budget fiscal year 2021 collected revenues of 30.2 million was about 769 thousand dollars lower compared to last year's expenditures of 31 million and that's primarily due to the decline in what we were able to spend in our federal and state grants medicaid rental and gift donations total obligated expenditures of 52.3 million are higher by about 923 000 when we compare that to last year's amount of 51.767 percent of our expenditures providing instruction and student support and 12 percent in agency administration the remaining 21 of our expenditures are in the areas of transportation operations food services and our two statewide service programs for the deaf and blind programs on page 10 of the report through may 31st 2021 we are showing a surplus of about 2.1 million when you compare actual revenues of 51.3 to actual expenditures of 49.2 million based on initial projections for fiscal year end close i am projecting about a 2.5 million surplus once we closed the fiscal year so that has been consistent with the last three years where we have been ending the year with a surplus based on the review of the financial data there are no immediate concern process reviewed multiple companies and awarded the contract to k-12 by elior k-12 was awarded the contract based on their ability to provide services their company history as well as cost of the contract k-12 currently provides services to many arizona districts including benson tunsan tombstone and thatcher unified school districts k-12 also provides services for the mississippi school for the deaf and blind i have invited k-12 to present about their services today and how they pro how they plan to provide a great meal for every student please allow me to introduce amy gibbons from k12 also due to presentation limitations uh you'll be able to see her presentation on board docs as you scroll through she'll make note as she goes from one slide to the next good evening thank you so much model and we really do try to make sure that every student we serve is given a great meal next our agenda this evening is just a quick introduction of our company how we're going to align with the arizona state schools for the deaf in the blind in our responsive partnership plan next k-12 by elior is a chef-centric food-focused company we are 12 distinct hospitality companies that are united by our passion for food service and excellence we now are umbrella under the name of k-12 by elior you might know us in the field by summit or avians or perhaps lancer or aladdin next collectively we have more that we service more than 2 000 schools in over 500 districts across the united states and annually we prepare over 150 with specialized training for our staff to allow effective support for your students in staff with special menus and service line identifiers in braille digital menu boards technology resources real-time communication access translation apps braille identifiers and qr reader codes for your students and staff our menu software website nutraslice has a text to speak option we also will have a certified dietary manager to support all the special dietary needs of your students we will offer guest chef exhibition cooking and sampling programs we plan on increasing food quality and adding more variety for your students and staff and we will we will have an annual student survey as well as probably monthly students with staff and students we have we will customize your menus based on student needs and local preferences we have a catalog of over 3000 recipes and 75 of our menus are scratch made next on this slide you will see an example of what the cafeterias will look like once all the marketing has been installed we will utilize our roots marketing campaign next and through our triad tuesday's global bites and additional marketing we plan on being able to engage your students we have try it tuesday pick 3 for any students that perhaps bring lunches or breakfast from home we plan on marrying council that meets quarterly and has discussions what does that entail who is part of those discussions sure we partner with the principals at each school to choose who would be on that council what we will do during that time is offer samples of new menu items allow students and staff to have feedback on what they would like on our menus as well as nutrition topics that they would like to see thank you my second question i noticed that you mentioned an annual survey for our students is that set in stone as an annual basis or is that up to discussion to do something more on a quarterly basis a quarterly survey to review with students that then could be addressed in tandem with those culinary council meetings is that something that's potential absolutely so our annual student survey is simple students will pull that item and replace it with something they do like we also talk to students when they're in the cafeteria every day and we also look inside garbage cans to see what students are eating and what they're throwing out so we can change those menus oh thank you also just to make sure that we had uh considerations for our bi students as well as our blind students we've also made sure that all the vi students in blind have heart trays hard silverware in order to work with that we're also looking at the menu to make sure that our vi students considerations and special needs are also addressed within the menu and lastly with k12 because they have such large resources the special meals are also a high priority and those are the special dietary restrictions on our students so we're ensuring that every student receives not only a great meal but a safe meal okay the first option was to look at vacancies in asdb and to do internal transfers some of our food service employees selected that option the second option is to transfer to the new food service company to apply an interview and see if there are opportunities there with k-12 and the third option is to apply else elsewhere our human resources have been actively working with all ten to help them and smooth over the transition to whatever is next in their lives we have been successful with seven but we do have three left that we need to do the reduction in force in doing that then these three individuals become eligible for unemployment unemployment insurance so back to you president nigro okay um team has done their best to help people smooth the transition for their life not everyone is going to be happy about these changes but i do think that it has been important for us to show that we are making an effort to make this change as smooth as possible and with that making that smooth transition i think has happened with most of these employees and as a last resort if we have to do the reduction in force that was our last option so i do want to commend your work that you and your team have been doing thus far i am supportive of this reduction in force so i would like to make the motion to approve the recommendation from superintendent reichman for a reduction in force okay thank you pv uh are there any uh seconds to that motion this is uk i second that possible candidates to be an on budget person and you chose um karen grandin so karen grandin worked with asdb since 2018 about three three and a half years as our onboard person and the one thing that i wanted to point out to you is that in 2017 2018 we did things backwards you made the selection presented me with this election and then when i checked with our arizona procurement rules rather than working for you as the board of directors so this time i decided let's try to do it through the arizona procurement system um to figure out how to do that our procurement specialist lou estrada did some research and she found an on buds person international association that's already a vendor in the arizona procurement system and the onbudsman international association and yes has a list of members that anyone could submit their letter and resume to us as a potential contracted vendor we posted and announced a good match for asdb in terms of working with you the board and working with the agency that we can go back to how we started up with karen grandin and do it again that way it worked with karen grant or i mean what are what are our options what can we do what's your suggestions what do you want me to do and that's why this is on the agenda and said possible action because i wasn't sure you would be prepared to take formal action so if you just want to have this conversation and provide me with feedback or think about it and put it on the agenda for the next board meeting we can do that it's just putting it on the table here so that two maybe three times and the five years i've been here we've had the state on budsman's office contact us with the complaint and then we would respond to them into that complaint so that's happened a handful of times do we set up a more formal arrangement that's a good question and we can explore that the other idea that sort of has popped up in regards just from the standpoint of when we have a client complain and can go all the way up to fair hearing through the ag's office and under the ag's office a lot of times they kick us back to formal mediation with that client and those mediators work out of the ag's office and then we pay maybe take another look at the ombudsman and the role i personally think what was just explained is really good because it has a has a familiarity with arizona with how things work at the legislature with asdb with our community so i think we should take a step back and see just like what was explained but at the same time maybe there's some thought process of uh maybe expanding the the role of the ombudsman in the sense that says you know they shouldn't be within the agency they should be you know a pure true ombudsman and what kind of does that look like are there outside organizations that may be able to fit that bill for us and i say that in the sense that the legislature you know historically the ambassador has not had much interaction with the legislature is there um do you envision an expanded role for the unboxed person that would involve interaction with the legislature i i think it's just something that has just been over the years i've just seen that that issue kind of grow and you know it's it's an issue i think just that might be a potential i might be completely off base in that mindset but it's just something that keeps coming back to me that the agency has a good job of you know going to the legislature and having this conversation superintendent rickman does it a great deal but maybe there's a role on the ombudsman side that kind of sees it from all angles because i think sometimes it just depends on the political wind if you will the legislature what could be happening to asdb short term and long term at the same time we need to make sure that the board understands the um and the superintendent's intention here there are multiple factors that need to be considered when we are bringing on an ombudsperson if we are bringing in someone outside how could we possibly consider the out their outside interest potentially influencing the board and whether that would be a benefit to the agency or potentially a benefit to the students or not my biggest hesitation is that if we were to engage in outside umbuds person for example through an agency or through the procurement process however the case may be that person will likely not be familiar with deaf blind deafblind visually impaired individuals and may make recommendations that might put national level perhaps another possibility is to approach agencies that have a similar population and view of services who perhaps need an ombudsman as well and we can discuss a cost sharing agreement so for example we could consider acdh they may need someone who to perform similar services perhaps the governor's council they may need an individual who is sensitive to the disability community so there may be opportunity to engage in a partnership and again protect the agency's mission uh thank you pb uh mike i believe you uh wandered the floor yes thank you um i apologize if there's been a job uh announcement or a job description that was circulated uh i apologize but i didn't see it so i was hoping that maybe that could could be um distributed to the members reichmann has several possible avenues to take to approach this situation and she's asking the board what we would like in terms of how she proceeds so that's my understanding is that now we have an opportunity to talk about that process and figure out what avenue to pursue and potentially look into additional options that we haven't considered yet some of the concerns that have been shared is that if we have a job posting as you mentioned would that individual be working for the superintendent or for the board do we need to consider a separate or outside position or contract who would report directly to the board rather than to the superintendent could we work with another agency to partner could we uh look through for a procurement contract that already exists in this system of course taking the risk that that individual may not know anything about our population that we serve so i my understanding is that's the intent of this conversation let's facilitate those so those are just some thoughts on my end thank you um pv this is pv dance i have a question for you what does your a mudson structure look like in the arizona department of education um well so we it very it's a wide agency so it's hard to to nail down a specific i think there's multiple intake excuse me i'm sorry mr wonders if you could speak into the microphone a little bit better yeah sorry got off track um so within the department of education it's it varies between program area i think in some part depending on the customer service facing front obviously there's more intake points for that we have various functions so we have dispute resolution services i think it probably varies significantly depending on the size of the district i think the larger districts have a much more sophisticated process and probably a more broad spanning process for that but i can't really speak to specifics about any individual district and this is pv again and why i'm asking these questions um i think that might be where um the board could start looking at what superintendent reichman needs we may be able to model what we do based on another school district of course asdb as a school for the deaf is a unique agency and in a somewhat odd position i'm teetering on the brink of a state agency and also a staff to kind of fit their issue within one of those nine or ten different avenues and sometimes depending on the issue it may have overlapped uh between two of them and it was you know we got things that were um you know kind of filed in the wrong place so to speak and we had a we had to change that we had you know issues of of staff um you know not being afraid to kind of come forward um you know for fear of you know some sort of retaliation which of course we would never do um but if they don't feel comfortable they don't feel comfortable but we still want to hear the feedback um so you know we still want to get any kind of issues um dealt with and and and raise them in a way that that we can manage them so what we did on from the policy level is we consolidated those nine or ten to i think four uh primary avenues and we organize them shown otherwise uh so what the average person does is kind of figures out what the real issue is and then guides that person to the appropriate you know avenue for um you know vindicating their their complaint or their grievance again it depends on the subject matter and then the abundance person would give us a report of her work and there wasn't uh you know in terms of the cost i mean this is not a full-time position i think we spent about seven thousand dollars per year uh in the last four years uh on the previous umbuds person so it was not um you know it's not a full-time position by any means um although that depends on you know a low you know caseload of course and that's why the contractor avenue looks more attractive to us in terms of being you know separate yes the karen brandon was an employee but we you know so that you know that is a fact uh but she operated independently uh folks so you know that specialized experience was important to us our old umbus person had that experience i'm not sure about about this one or the one the resume that that came across here uh but that is something that we're you know you would really need to to look at so from from my perspective uh you know i'm not i'm not certain that the resume we got is going to be you know accurate i mean there's certainly a possibility or going to be the good fit for us there's certainly a possibility to enter into a contract and then move away from that contract uh if if it's not working for us or to get someone in the interim well you know for the next three months or four months will we transition to someone else i think that would likely be okay you know at the same time the uh sharing as such had mentioned with another agency might be helpful that person would have a knowledge of arizona a knowledge of state policies and they'd be local they wouldn't you know be doing everything our policy can change we we didn't have one we didn't have one of these policies four years ago uh we we created it we uh met with some committees we met with some other community and we've we've crafted these policies we can always change them uh if there's a desire to do so but uh to have an unbuzzed person that continues on uh you know in the role that we we've had it uh that's you know to me that's really what we're looking at unless there is some desire to change those policies or to look into them more for more in depth oh tv thank you president nigro this is pb jams i'm considering two things i think it's necessary for the board of two considerations will arise so we need to make sure that we of course consider our recent strategic plan regarding communication and relationship i believe it falls under that pillar and it also could align with effective resource management as complaints arise an ombudsperson being involved could have a long-term impact or result on the agency so it's important that we have the right person who has the correct information to make the decisions that will benefit the agency in the long term thank you pb um that does raise the question of our if we do uh enter into the contract with the uh the vendor that has uh submitted their rfp um ms cooper do we have a right a unilateral termination in that contract or is it are we committed for a year or six months or for some period of time and we can only terminate for for cause it is my understanding that we can do the unilateral i'm sorry it is my understanding we can do the unilateral but i will confirm with the procurement manager okay great so in other words if we were in a full-time position uh you know at all it's it's much more limited than that historically um and i guess you know in in terms of if we were to do hire the person that responded the rfp temporarily i'm not i don't know that she necessarily has the experience working with deaf individuals and blind individuals that i think was one part that you know might have been a bit lacking so i know i'm not necessarily enthusiastic about that but i do understand that we uh we need it on budsperson we've been without them for a few months uh we're likely looking into september before we make another decision at the earliest so that's that's something for the board to consider do we want to extend another few months without one or do we want to try to have this one until we agree to a more more permanent more sustainable solution pv this is pv jam perhaps because this is coming to the board and we have a very short time until school information okay are there other comments on on this matter from the other board members unlike in zoom i can't tell if uh the people attending remotely are raising their hands or turning on their cameras i i don't have any um you know visual indication i just have the audio indication so uh to the extent that you'd like to to speak just just go ahead and speak up this is sukay kind of to piggyback what pv was saying i was wondering if we would need to make a motion tonight to authorize the leadership team to move forward in that direction for an interim for interim coverage of the ombudsman position until we have a chance as a board to develop that more fully uh that's a great a great comment i think what we could do is have a motion where we would allow the superintendent to uh we would allow her at our option to enter into the contract with the rfp provided that there is a unilateral right determination um that we have our unilateral right determination uh and that trying to think other terms that we might need but i think that's it as long as we had that unilateral right determination and more sustainable selection or more permanent selection the agency can do that but we don't necessarily need a board motion or act to do that so i'm not sure how to state it but i would like to move that we allow annette and the leadership team to move forward with an interim contract with the person that we have through the office of procurement with the limitations that they understand this would be a fee for service for the number of hours used for a intermittent period of time until um this position can be developed more fully okay at the superintendent's discretion at the superintendent's discretion thank you excellent um thank you i would uh second that motion like you know from my perspective i do have concerns over somebody that is completely out of state that is not going to be in state coming into our school and our districts and kind of just like going through our stuff i mean i guess this it would you know the files and data would be relevant to their job position but i guess i would personally feel more comfortable if this person was much more local than all the way across the united states can i um i i wholeheartedly agree with you and i don't i'm not suggesting this as a long term i'm suggesting in the case of some a complaint coming up until we are able to define this position and fill that need internally whether it's internal to asdb but internal to arizona i think i think pb's comment of needing to have that backup plan in case there is a complaint before that is developed we should be prepared for that eventuality who is currently handling complaints if there is one either or that i'm uncomfortable giving to my teacher if they're a student um they don't and without fear of that the invites person saying hey you know this you know i have this information and uh you know there's some level of confidentiality there uh that's that's what we have interrupted so in terms of the complaints or grievances that all is still fully functioning uh we just don't have the investment and we haven't since the the resignation several months ago okay thank you pv has a comment this is pv jams again i would like to recognize your comment brittany that is certainly valid and i share your concern the issue that we're addressing right now is again we do not have that centralized person who can handle things if they escalate to a certain level we don't i think that if the board were to allow the leadership team and superintendent reichman to use their executive decision making to figure out how to proceed in that temporary contract that gives the board and the agency some kind of protection at the same time giving us the flexibility to ensure that we are on the right track and we remain on the right track in the long term if that person does violate confidentiality and nef or violates any aspect of the contract they don't have to deal with just us they have to then deal with the state of arizona and that is something that no one in the state takes likely lightly so that would should hopefully alleviate some of your anxieties thank you um and you know from from my perspective uh you know in terms of the the person being in you know in virginia i have not read the state procurement contract uh because it is very long complex but miss cooper i would think that we have uh that the vendor will be submitting to personal jurisdiction and venue in the state of arizona meaning that it would not be difficult for us to kind of drag her into court if we needed to not that i expect that we would um motion that is on the floor say aye aye aye aye uh all opposed okay uh the motion carries um superintendent reichman i think you have the direction from the board that you need uh that you've asked for in this item and uh we look forward to revisiting this in the next board meeting next item is 702 information discussion item legislative update marie murphy good evening board president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent speaker and rex for the record my name is maria murphy i'm the director of policy and government relations for asdv i'm going to impose upon you for about 10 or 15 seconds to just make a personal digression and just say what a pleasure and how happy i am to be here and see all of you in person it's been about 14 15 months since i've seen and except for the financial aspects which all of those became effective as at the start of the new fiscal year july 1st the budget went ahead and passed on june 30th so we got it basically done as close to the deadline as we possibly could and we have spent the last few weeks just trying to tease out exactly what was included in the budgets this year so what i can tell the board is 150 000 was included specifically for asdb for um an update of the classroom notification systems in tucson and we did receive some additional funding in inflation for the baseline for students because um 2863 included um session law language ade and asdb made a joint committee and have started working on what does lea implementation start to look like for asdb over the next year we met and had an introductory meeting on june 22nd we had our second etc so we had a whole three weeks of vacation and as of yesterday we're we're back in the saddle again preparing for for the next legislative session one item that i would like to note is because the budget bills were signed so late into the fiscal year this year i was able to alert the executive slash operations team about the possibility however remote that we could be potentially looking at a partial government shutdown if the bills were not passed by midnight on june 30th so uh superintendent reichman took the bulls by the bull by the horns and got the entire group together and we started contingency planning for what does it look like on july 1st if there is a partial or total government shutdown so the entire team pulled together was able to come up with the draft contingency plan so we are still in the process of finalizing that plan ms cooper would you like to take that because we were aware of that ahead of time yes it will tr um it will have no impact it will just mean that we will have to inform ospb and jlbc anytime we plan to use more than the appropriated revenues within the cooperative services fund we would have to make sure that we have excess cash to spend anything over and above beyond so now we will have three appropriated funds one being the general fund the second being the schools for the deaf and the blind fund the third being the regional cooperative services fund the primary reason for them separating out the regional cooperative services fund was because it made up a substantial amount of our other services that we have our other funds and so that was the primary reason to separate that out but it has no impact in terms of budget we project the budget based on enrollment for those students within the cooperative services fund as well as expected fee for service and vouchers and as just a follow-up question to that is is there consistency in growth year to year in those funds i guess so for establishing a projection for a needed appropriation it's fairly consistent it's not wild even dropped off and maybe no one did but i thought i'd make that clear um it's because i don't have zoom and i can't note it myself the next item is 703 information discussion item introduction of possible discussion policies g c k a i k f b discussion on policy bbbd marie murphy yes thank you for president nico so you have before you the redline policies gcka ik a fb and eeb for discussion they were presented to the public i have not received sorry i i have not received any public comment regarding them but at this time i would like to make myself available for any questions okay um i would like to note the bbbd discussion and i just wanted to bring this up to the board uh for discussion as we transitioned back to you know primarily in-person meetings uh historically we would have all of our meetings in person and there we'd have a a phone line for board members that weren't able to make it for one reason or another they'd be able to participate telephonically just like as they are doing today we wouldn't be able to see them we didn't have zoom at that time or members you know we can miss meetings if needed if that has to be we can use the technology whether it's zoom or uh the telephonic line um if for some other for some reason we have to there's there's no problem with that uh i don't you don't want there to be any i don't want there be any barrier to attending a meeting um certainly if it's you know just location i i don't want there to be any barriers to to be able to attend and participate uh effectively but if the board wanted to discuss and i think the reason we have this here is if the board wants to discuss amending the policies to uh you know set an expectation as to what percentage of in-person attendance the board members would have versus uh attendance via other means you know right now uh there there isn't you know our attendance policy is is essentially after if you missed two meetings in a row uh you get a talking to uh by me um but fortunately i haven't had to do that um i don't believe that my predecessors have had to do that in the nearly six years have been on the board but you can although you can get around that by missing every other meeting so maybe that's not a great um a great item either but you know from my perspective uh is the board interested in having a policy that says you know maybe 50 of the meetings that you attend would be in person in a given year or in a given calendar year and then the others can be um you know attended electronically uh or maybe you don't want to update the policy and we'll have it as is um i just want to get a better idea from the board uh you know what their what their expectations are so that we can get on the same page in terms of uh you know in-person attendance and attendance via technology thank you president nigro i'm sure everyone is like waiting with baited breath what's baby going to say and i'm not here to disappoint you i do have a question my interest is about board member attendance um is 50 typical what is average what is is there some sort of standard what is this 50 attendance oh i meant if we were to change the policy to say 50 are attended in person and then the you know the remainder could be attended via technology so so not that a board not that the expectation is that your a board member is here half the time it's the expectation potentially that there's some percentage of in-person attendance that would be expected and is and storms can often come unexpectedly or if there's limited transportation and they're unable to arrive at a location that we've decided as long as we have some sort of clause that leaves it up to the president's discretion to waive that 50 requirement i do think that 50 requirement would be a good idea um with that clause to waive it at the president's discretion um uh pv i hate to interrupt for a moment um i understand that i have been uh remiss in failing to take a break at the 90 minute mark so i apologize uh for that um the uh the staff does need a break i think we typically break every 90 minutes um so pv if you could hold your thought for a moment while we take a short 10 minute break okay all right thank you though that's the only thing i got going for me hello everyone thank you for that break and we were resuming resuming our meeting on we left off on 7.03 information and discussion item ms murphy if you can return in case there were any questions i know pv was um in the middle of a statement on which i unfortunately had to interrupt him uh but you can continue thank you president appreciate that and thank you for the interruption i think a break was necessary and beneficial for all of us i also want to recognize that 50 in-person attendance i think is a good idea with the potential for having some sort of clause that that 50 requirement could be waived at the president's discretion that way if an emergency were to arise you have the ability to use your discretion in those special circumstances another question though as representatives of the community people who work within and serve with these populations and represent these populations i think it is also important that we include some sort of percentage for being part of the meeting regardless of whether that's in person or remote i think we need some sort of minimum attendance okay thank you pv other other thoughts on the tense policy yeah i would i would just agree with what pv was saying i think it would be wise to also have a contingency baked in okay i i would like to import right um in zuki right now our bbbd says that after two consecutive miss meetings uh the board president is going to send a letter um to to the board member that missed the two consecutive meetings if there are three consecutive meetings that are missed then the president has to meet with or write to the board member to determine whether or not resignation is in order and to report to the full asd board of this communication um you know fortunately that i haven't had to do that again i don't think my the predecessors that have served with me as a when i'm with me i've had to do that um so it hasn't been an issue for us so i i'm i'm less concerned about the overall attendance policy because i think we we have we generally have good attendance and again board member is going to miss a meeting or two um you know over the course of their three-year term i mean that's that's part of life um but in in what i'm more concerned about is that we have an expectation that if we have an in-person meeting that you know we don't just have one person that we have as many people in person as we can uh and then if the technology is used uh to you know kind of allow board members to still participate even if they may have other obligations professional obligations they have travel obligations etc so it looks like what i'm hearing is if we can have a policy that you know our expectation is that we're at least half the meetings we're going to attend in person and it could be an excitation it doesn't have to be you know you get a nasty letter then i think that would be good all right does that sound good ms murphy it does would you like me to include the language um that uh in person could be at the discretion of the board president yeah i think i mean if we use the word expectation it's not a shell or a must it's not a you know a word for terms of requirement um you know we could make a requirement and then say exempted at the discretion of the i mean i don't know it has to be the board president but maybe that's the right way to go if we do use that if we do if we do make it a must or a shell okay uh great thank you very much i'll have it ready for the september first september perfect and then yeah that'll be first read in september and then it can enter the next time yes okay our next item is 705 information possible action item board work study on august 12th 2021 the date for the poll results uh on that one that was the date that the poll said we should have our meeting so i would like to move that we have our our meeting on august 12th and again this is the work study session i second that uh all in favor aye aye david is that an in-person meeting um yes that is that is in person um you know work study sessions so not as formalized as our uh regular board meetings um there will be a i mean it's in person but there will be a telephonic option it won't you know if you can't join in person you won't be excluded from it okay well we when you're talking about electronic i mean we just voted on this but nonetheless uh we're talking about still having a possibility of a zoom option as just compared to teleponic though right yeah i think the i i prefer that we have some kind of video component to it um especially because just because you can get that individual information for those that need it um and it helps everyone really as opposed to just on the phone okay and of course it's better for me too because i can't i can't see who else is on the line and what they're doing exactly thank you okay thank you all right so um that motion has passed so august 12th will be our meeting it'll be in person there will be that technological component to it um that's the more you know informal work study session meeting um on the uh dlea issue that we talked about at the last meeting uh next is 801 call the public for non-agendized items and we so again in this meeting we had a hybrid approach or combined approach we solicited emails and then also there could be any members of the public that are in attendance can fill out the form and indicate that they would like to speak i don't believe that we've gotten any of those forms on this matter for any member of the public that is here we do have an email that was timely received and i'd ask sue k to read it thank you it is an anonymous email from concerned asdb parent and the subject is just concerns and the email is as follows as a parent to a student i am concerned about the state of affairs at our schools and believe it is crucial that the board addresses these concerns one merit pay what merit pay standardized increases are in place for staff and faculty based on performance and cost of inflation how do we keep and then reward our best performers are there yearly reviews to maintain staff with good performance and measures to reduce those who do not meet department expectations year after year what procedures are in place to bring those not performing well to the standards of other individuals what is the time limit to bring these individuals up to those standards number two annette reichman within her five-year tenure what genuine accomplishments have been made beyond a five-year observation of bamboo grassland a farmer does not plant one seed only and watch it grow but tends to the rest of the crops and gardens number three nancy alexander why does the school pay for someone without quantifiable data of accomplishments as a contracted consultant with the responsibility of a strategic plan where is her strategic plan we have paid to have is it is it the standard for any organization to take two years to prepare a plan without execution what controls does this consultant really have why does her linkedin account state she is an asdb superintendent search facilitator isn't that complete is she the person who runs the agency and annette is the token face for asdb number four kelly creasy as a principal of the tucson school why does it appear as though she is uninterested in pushing to make her school the hub it has been for the deaf and blind communities in the past as principal why does she not know asl the community language she serves asl is the third most commonly used language in the us so why wouldn't she know the asl as the leader of the deaf school why does it appear as though her campus has its own agenda to protect itself and not move with advancements in greater learning while keeping keeping complacency and mediocrity as the standards for its mission is hr a part of the problem for not finding a suitable person to run a school with some of the lowest scholastic numbers in the state how do those scores compare nationally with the same school setup number five lisa yancarelli as leader of blind programs why does she not have successful programs in place like the deaf programs like camp leap and the deaf mentor program what is her plan for our blind students success other parents have complained on the lack of blind student support isn't that the main purpose of her position is her position and necessity or is she not qualified for the position thank you for making this public platform available for submissions as i am not able to attend the meetings i will do more submissions for subsequent meetings on where i believe the board should be should turn their attention uh thank you um 802 discussion possible action item agenda items for next regular board meeting scheduled for september 29th 2021 in person in tucson and before i open it up to others i wanted the board to as you you probably noted um we're linking the things that we're hearing about the things that we're doing uh in this meeting with our strategic plan to make sure that our efforts align with that plan there but we're continuing the the implementation of to make that more clear so board docs actually has a which is the application where we run all of our meetings that has some of those capabilities built in um latisha uh showed me how she could do that she showed me another district that does that and she's looking into learning to adapt or use the board docs to to accommodate that so you'll be able to click in um you know let's say on the financial report let's say or particular pieces of it you'd be able to click through and board docs and that would link to the specific goal and it has the metrics of that goal so that was the you know for for the next meeting for me i at least like to see one hopefully that will be working to some extent uh on our next for our next regular meeting in board docs um i also like to see the the dashboarding so to speak of the data that we have in our strategic plan and how i'd like to produce or have produced the formats of those reports so if that's in board docs like that other school district does where you can click through it and see where we already know say this effort relates to this piece of data we can click through and see it that would be great um also if there's a consolidated dashboard where we can take a look at the you know all of the metrics that we've enumerated in the strategic plan and see that in one place and go through that uh you know page by page and and data by data to see our progress and to see if we're making the progress that we that we want to see thank you president micro i would like to see if we could continue the conversation about the ombuds person and that role and what that looks like whether we need to expand the policy or integrate other options i think it's worth having it as a discussion point and potential action item for a future agenda i would like to see what superintendent reichman and assistant superintendent cooper have as far as findings during that meeting as well thank you pv in terms of the uh just to clarify so you're proposing um changes to the to the policy or or are we always focused on the the subject of finding a specific resource just more specifics to have a discussion on which avenue we would like to pursue for a long-term permanent solution whether that be a neutral third party like we're doing temporarily or whether we want to have the discussion to develop contract requirements and expectations as a board just to further the discussion on what our options are as we get some more exploration in the meantime i think that the loss of karen has hurt us more than we realize right now i think that now that we have seen the unique needs of this person the struggle will be to find someone with the qualifications she has left some big shoes to fill okay um so i think i'm hearing both then because we certainly want an item where we talk about the the search for the above person and the specific staffing that we would need we could also have another item where we discuss potential changes to the policy if any of the board members would like that that policy changed or amended in some way to expand or contract the role of the inbox person okay um are there other other items for next time no okay um hearing uh none we're gonna go to 901 actually i'm adjournment and before i uh entertain lin's motion uh to adjourn i would like to thank um all the you know the media and all the staff uh for setting up this meeting in sedona they've done a great job i don't know if you at home can see what they've done here but it's um there's quite a bit of material here uh to produce this meeting that all had to be you know none of it was here natively it all had to be brought up uh from uh you know from our facilities uh and uh and set up and there's there's quite a production um area over there with several staff members that are able to you know to produce this event so i know this uh particular meeting especially because it was not housed at one of our um schools it was not housed in pinkster tucson where we have a lot of this equipment that's that's here it's it's it's available uh we know what our bandwidth with capabilities are we know where our technology is um and to to kind of move this uh up north was quite an undertaking i understand that we're here for a few days uh setting up and they've done a great job so so thank you and everyone should even though you don't see it in the broadcast um it should be appreciative of our staff for that uh so 901 is the german has anyone moved to land yes this is my duty to move that we adjourn meetings uh second uh all in favor aye aye thank you thank you again so much um for for being here and for having our first in-person meeting uh since march of 2020 it's nice to see everyone in person and we will see you we'll see you on august 12th and then we'll see you on the next regular board meeting in september thank you you

new york [Music] um i'm going to go ahead and um call for our pledge of allegiance please join me indivisible with liberty and justice for of you all are meetings um sister i'd like to start in honor of uh the intention and so today um i'd like to focus on the expectations of moving forward uh continuing to um grow literally and with our constructions and speaking of children in the playgrounds and all of our amazing fashions and facilities that our children will enjoy in the future so with that intention i will start oh sorry i'm just confirming that you can all hear me um it sounds really like not clear to me what you're saying so i don't know the mic yeah i was going to say that's why i had my handwriting it sounds very difficult i just didn't know if it was only on my end but it sounds muffled and hard to hear testing one two three is this better no it's not better a little bit testing testing one two three testing testing is that better minimal it's better but it's still kind of muffled and um like echoey natural echo not zoom echo but like room echo natural echo it's audible it's just kind of difficult maybe the mask is sort of muscly um i don't know is this better that's a little bit better better okay um is it a little bit better or like a lot better kindness is kind of significantly better okay [Music] significantly is good good good we have very good dates this year this kind of significantly is good okay so um then when we're speaking when we're speaking let's take off our mask um otherwise uh the recommendations in our county are twitter maps indoors um and so i will be following those recommendations all right so um being that you can hear us better uh trustees speak in the mic um when we speak we're going to go ahead and move on with this process welcome firm we're going to start with item 201 discussion approval of process for interviewing and selection of program management firm we have just uh cerna here who's going to walk us through the proposed uh process that we'll be holding tonight and then we'll move on to uh the public comment before then we go to a vote is just speaking because we can't hear we can't hear and yeah i can't hear anything i thought he was setting up or something for board members present here uh i think i think trustee del oro needs to keep her mica open that's the problem leave your mic up open i mean you're not muting yourself we can hear now yeah i i think i don't know if you heard buddy oh can you hear me can you hear me hello hello you can't hear me um can you hear me can you hear me mighty bell i can hear you i can hear you can hear you i can hear your trusty vehicle yeah i can't when like you said when trust microphone is off i can hear jess but when it's on when it's on mute i can't hear anything and i'm assuming i'm assuming what i'm hearing and what you're hearing is also what the public is able to hear or not that's right so if that's the case the public is not really hearing anything when stress theater loretta is on i hear you and so if you're speaking and you can hear me right now so you can wait a second can i um get able to share and listen to the audience okay can you hear us uh can you say something um i'm talking right now can you hear me and so what i was saying was first of all if i don't know if what i'm hearing is indicative of the public but if it is then we can't hear jess speaking mr sedna when your microphone is muted i think maribel was saying that but i don't know if you heard her say that either but when your mic if you microphone president erella is muted we cannot hear i think other people too but definitely not mr sedna and when you're unmuted i know we can hear mr sedna and i'm assuming we can hear others too all right i will leave myself unmuted should i do a test now will that help hello can hear him a little muffled i can make it work but it's for the public it i don't know if it sounds the same it's kind of muffled is that bitter a little bit okay i'll try that okay okay great thank you would you like something to start over for them okay again as i said earlier uh there are courtrooms before board members present here in the boardroom disney one board member is participating via zoom there are four firms who have submitted a proposal and bid the project management firm will be selected by the board the firm will be asked a full of nine questions the firm will have a total of 30 minutes for their presentation the first 10 minutes are dedicated time for the firms to make presentations regarding their birth the remaining 20 minutes will be dedicated to questions and answers the time for both of the 10 minutes and the 20 minutes will be kept on the screen and the firms can see how much time they have remaining each board member has the names of the firms on their laptop that are participating the questions that are being asked and a sports sheet to score each of the firm the scale for scoring the firm is from one to five one being the lowest score by being the highest level as i stated earlier you may want to think of this in the context of a grading system so a 1 would be an f and a 5 will be an a board members will score each firm in real time meaning they will score them immediately at the end of each bird's presentation those scores are timestamped and dated on the laptop they cannot be changed at the end of the question the excel spreadsheet will calculate those scores the order of the presenters will be done randomly uh there is a uh envelope there that president has the board member will choose a name that name will be the first presenter that firm will remain in the boardroom and then the next term will be chosen uh randomly and then at the end of that we will ask the first to go back into their conference room until carl is on once all the firms are interviewed and stored and tabulated the highest growing firm will be selected then there is an additional piece of the process and that is in the events of a time of the two top firms this is the other feat that the board will be voting on to determine which of the two options they will prefer the first option is there's a time of the top two firms the board has the option of one just rescoring those top two firms for option two is to reinterview the top two firms with additional questions so that is the process being recommended by staffordshire um at this time i believe that the economy will look board to vote on on the process as well as those two options in the event that we're taught there's any questions i would be happy to answer we have [Music] second by uh word by president um at this time do you have any specific questions yeah um about the scoring um mr sergeant is perfectly clear on some criteria that's no problem uh how do you um each of you have the names of each of the firms and the nine questions that are being asked with the scale of one to five you can then score them and press the button for the number that you're scoring of each of the questions that it's on each of your laptops and if i can add to that we will we will be getting um uh email with the name of the firm that we'll be interviewing um as soon as we pull the name so as mr cerna mentioned um we'll have this envelope we have three trustees each one will pick a name of the firm and then obviously the fourth one will be left um as we pull the name and we know that name depending on the order we will have staff email as the form mr frown we don't have it yet so it will be emailed in the moment also yeah i just described it very well it's okay uh just add it to that piece which i think is a key we will get the form sent to us in that moment you will get it shortly as soon as we pull a name thank you do you have any other questions just to remind word president you will also be boarding on one of the two options for the tie-breaking crisis or process um so maybe we'll what we'll do is both first on on the process and then we'll vote on the hydration correct okay so we'll start with that any other questions before we go to a public comment so um we'll say we can help us with public comment at this time do we have any members of the public address support uh yes um can you hear me yeah okay so i did have a couple questions so number one i i'm trying to hear and i can mostly hear but i think mr sedna referenced the scoring um thing and then trusted you mentioned a form that was going to be emailed to us are you talking about the same thing so we don't have the scoring thing yet and it'll be emailed to us okay and as each one comes we'll receive that email that allows us to score exactly okay and then we'll get confused with four forms in our email boxes we'll get them in a moment we'll score them as you know for listening depending on the answer okay and then um so i i heard a motion i think from trusty fam but i'm just wondering what what is the motion what are we are we is the motion to approve the process that we got in an email i think during the past week or what um mr sarnath described to us so the emotion is exactly what mr and i just mentioned and um i mentioned it earlier so i'm sorry if it's not clear we are first voting on the process once we're done with that we will then vote on the tie breaking yeah and that's the reason why i'm asking is because the process that i heard described by mr sedna is different than the process that i saw in the email that was sent to us so i just want to make sure that i'm voting on the um the correct thing you're voting on what mr said and i just presented to you and us okay it took me two hours to hide my sky because i haven't worn it in two years so thank you thank you for your experience so let me start again very clearly you are reading from the process that he said to the world all right so i just want to be very clear because because i know that there are two different ones but i i just want to reassure you that it's the same and i think the only deviation uh superintendent uh um is originally there was some discussion of a rabies here with one depend and there was a decision to change that for one that bond and i think it's important well my question is actually on my question is on number seven because that one it says two different things that says that we're gonna one point says that we're gonna score them individually after each one goes and the other point directly following that says that we'll be scoring them at the end um once all firms are interviewed each board member will provide their scoring so that's the the clarification that i was just trying to make sure that i'm clear on because the one that we got sent says we're gonna score in two different ways but what i heard jess saying is just seven a which is each one is scored individually as they do their interview and 7b would then be nullified and so indeed we're not voting on what we were sent we're voting on what is said tonight by mr sedna thank you the differences that you were noticing so that everybody knows exactly what those differences are and you're absolutely right um the themes that were with what president decided that it would be easier and cleaner for each firm at once once you're finished right uh interviewing and submitting that i was also waiting to score all of them together and that was just that and you are welcome that's why this board has a process before you so that you can deliberate about it um and and you know if you have some emotions from them any step of these process you're certainly welcome to present that to your peers would you like for me to repeat the process again oh my god let me keep going here um as i said there are court firms who have been proposals of his project management firm will be collected by the board the firms will be asked a total of nine questions uh those questions will be asked by the board uh the firm will have a goal of 30 minutes for the presentation the first 10 minutes are allocated for a general description of your firm the remaining 20 minutes will be allocated to answer questions and answers and do as long as answer each board member will have the name of the firm and the question as well as the scoring sheet and they will be scored in real time meaning included they completed their interview they will be scored individually the scoring scale is from one to five one being the lowest five being the highest you can get again the analogy i use for a grading system that you would use in school a one being an m5 being a male scores will be kept and we will be emailed the names affirmed once they are selected to your laptop the questions will be present and the scoring system will be there also those scores will be dated once they're scored and time stamps the excel spreadsheet the system that's being used for platform menu will tabulate the scores at the end of each of the interviews the first term again that that will be the order of the firms will be selected will then be done randomly uh an envelope with all the names of the firms in there uh the first form selected will be the first presenter and so on uh once they have all been selected we'll add firm number one that presents will remain in the room and the remainder to enter to one of the chronic journals once all the firms have been interviewed the scores will be tabulated by the platform the firm with the highest point at the end will be the first selection in the event of a time the top two firms and you will have two options that the staff is recommending option one is to rescore the top two firms that are tied and you will only be scoring those two option two is to reinterview the top two firm different questions those are the two options being recommended i hope uh make it a little bit more clear but that is not as notable and answer questions um [Music] that [Music] and watching our voice right now um [Music] from videoing so with with that i wouldn't bring what we have here but it's not just a little bit i'm comfortable with the way it is i you want to hold up yes absolutely and again you know and if you want to change that process and that amendment depending on your support uh uh sorry again but can i i think myself and the public are having the same experience so we really couldn't hear what uh trustee quintero just said we've been kind of here i'm exposing myself putting my life on the line just so you can hear me now we can hear you now you can hear yes so um the the i i'm comfortable moving forward with i seconded the motion and i'm comfortable moving forward the process is and i understand board president's um uh point of view but i also see that we have a very very fluid process we have people here uh representing to us giving us information and that you know we have multiple organizations or firms coming before us um and at this point they're being compared against each other uh and that we may not want to lock ourselves into a vote and say this is it uh right after we just heard from them we may want to hear from everyone and then at the end go ahead and make an assessment uh based on everything we've heard throughout the throughout this evening and so i was just putting that out that i'm willing to move forward the process is but i also see value in holding up to the very end and then voting based on all the information we received [Music] yeah i think um i i want to thank trustee quintero for those comments because i actually feel almost identical to what he said i think i'm okay with going forward as it is but if i um if i had my preference i think that um it would i would probably be able in as just one individual to provide a more um accurate assessment of my scores if i was able to hear the entirety of the of the interviews and and kind of get some context and a sense of of the entire field that's before us and then be able to do it on that i want to say if i'm not mistaken in the past that we've done it similar for other things and we've been asked to kind of take notes as we go and score as we go but then we submit at the end before it gets shared with everybody so um that's my feelings i i also would likely support that amendment if they were to come before us on in the motion okay is there an amendment uh are you okay with that amendment the problem uh yes i have no problems with you know so i yes so uh amended so it would be still my motion but amended by board vice president from general uh and then vice president second you're good with that yeah i concur with i concur with the amendment okay um all right any other questions comments concerns before we start with this part of the process okay and then we'll go back to the public comments um do we have any members of the public address support [Music] excuse me yes we have miss ellison uh the only speaker miss allison you have two minutes piece of meet yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening board and uh mr ching and dr bauer i'm alison singlani the president or the the chair of the chair of the citizens bond oversight committee i did want to weigh in just a little bit i have read the statements of qualification and i noticed that there is very little in most of those about the way the contractors intend to interact with the bond oversight committee so i am hopeful that they will include in their presentations more information in particular about the process timeline and output for requests for documents or information from the citizens bond oversight committee about things that are happening within the program projects that are happening within the program um i do want to express some concern in the statement of qualifications for trigroup incorporated they mentioned that they will take full responsibility for leading the citizens bond oversight committee including facilitating meetings and delivering required quarterly reports it would be inappropriate for the organization that the bond oversight committee is responsible for overseeing for providing oversight for um to attempt to lead the bond oversight committee so hopefully if try group is here tonight they can clarify that and and we can create a situation that is is more appropriate thank you very much [Music] thank you um okay now we'll take it to a vote um i'll go ahead and start with the trustees present here and then uh we'll go to trustee vicarano [Music] okay so passes unanimously now we're gonna go on to the second piece of the process which is um in case of a tie as mr cerna presented and do we need him to repeat that piece just to it's clear or should we have him presented vice president um justin for a second thank you justify mr serna [Music] the two options the staff is recommending for the highest rating process is option one is to restore the top two finders we would only be scoring the same scoring system uh based on the same responses the top two high minus option two would be to reinterpret the two top two high primers with different questions so those are the two options that you can have available thank you mr stern and the only thing i will add is um the questions um would then uh be picked by the alternative questions that the trustees have those of you that have um submitted alternative questions that we can then pick the question from that list so depending on which one of the two we choose um do i have a motion for any of the two uh okay and present so i i noticed in the event of a time that will use in the ultimate questions okay thank you do we have a second uh vice president second uh sorry i see your hand up if you're seconding feel free to pretend that you're here in person um but i don't know if you have a question comment or concern i had a i mean i did have a question but i think you did clarify it so that um the i i didn't i didn't think that we should do the the first option just because if we're just scoring again on the same questions it's kind of i don't know what we're gonna get from that but the second one as long as we have those questions alternate alternate questions then i think that is the way to go to that is the motion and that is a second at this time do you have any questions or comments around that or any of the other trustees okay seeing then we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment at this time mr chavez any members of the public wishing to address the board okay i'll wait a couple seconds in case we're running for that button any no no no okay so we'll go ahead and move on to the boat uh go ahead and start with board vice president trustee aye trustee chavez aye trustee aye and myself i alright passes unanimously all right uh moving on to item 202 interviews of potential firms and selection of desired firms so before we start i'm sorry to interrupt madam president just to remind the firms that when they are away there nobody is supposed to be downstreaming thank you so we were going to say that but you might hear it a couple times for a reminder it's okay we're not letting you go yet so um we do have an envelope just to here transparent there's nothing else in here i don't have ten of any ones uh we do have tri group coming kitchell and jenkin gates martinez okay and then we'll just start with trusty chavez and then go down the line and she can help us pick the first firm who will stay and then the rest will go back to the room and uh as brenton and mentioned uh you could please refrain from watching the interview online or having any of your friends text you to tell you how to answer because they saw the answer etc etc thank you number one remark one okay so we have firm one uh it will be jenkins gates and martinez so if you can please stay and the other firms if you can wait in the room in the other room um and then we'll call you as you cut that we can go ahead and choose oh sure actually um yeah sure so we know the order so the number one and so just a reminder to the staff um if you can send us the different forms and then we'll be submitting at the end of the entire process for number two so firm number two will be kitchen so um for the staff we're gonna start with jenkins gates and martinez number two will be kitchell and number three will be coming and that leaves four as a tripod yes all right thank you very much um and we'll start with jenkin gates and martinez if you can please stay and then the other firm's completely in the other room [Music] yes so we will give the firm five minutes to prep your team yes a deep breath group up uh and uh we'll see you back here at 6 15.

we are making sure that our audio's on trustee because just a thumbs up that you can hear me loud and clear all right um and then uh firm i'll call you by the name of your firm uh jenkin gates and martinez if you can please make sure okay l g-a-l-e thank you so much jenkins scales and i apologize for that jgm so jjm if you can please make sure when you speak um that you speak straight into the mic so it's nice and loud and clear feel free to take off your face mask as i should now so that our public can hear us who are connecting with us um online um and we'll just uh wait for the presentation to be on and trust the challenge to come in and as you are setting up the presentation and we're waiting for uh trusted chavez um just a reminder to the uh board members we will each have the ability to um ask the questions that we submitted that are on the list so um it's uh the name are on there in case those of us are wondering who will be asking what so we'll just go down the list um the one through nine um if you have those open and available to you uh i know you have those open available to you trust your family have those open and available to you vice president quinteno um um getting them out okay if i can ask this a question while we wait just to clarify um so we have now the google forms thing available to us and i have it open here but just to confirm so we can score on this but as long as we don't push submit we can be fine and just save if we wanted to do it that way we could just save kind of each tab for each firm and then at the very end when we're ready we would push submit on all of them but um that's kind of how we agreed it right that we would admit the scores at the at the very end at the end correct and unfortunately so for us we have we have these in paper we're gonna put it in writing here but it sounds like you have a good system for yourself in keeping the tabs open and you know this is very important for all of us so you know we'll take as much time as we need let us know if there's any issues raise your hand and i'll make sure that we pause um so yes that sounds like a great plan and uh those of us that are here have a printed copy of the questions we can write you know break it up in one two three four so that we identify which firm and your notes and then at the end we'll take time to submit a google form for each firm and then get the total at the end perfect okay um any other questions before we move would it be possible to see the questions yeah i thought that's the way we can make sure that i like this here is the port okay with that allowing the firms to have questions on the table yeah sure absolutely thank you yes that makes sense okay and then um you just give us a thumbs up whenever you're ready no pressure we're all waiting on you take your time you know it's our first time back as jess mentioned i forgot how to comb my hair as well all of it but uh we're back and we're happy um you know and we want to keep it that way so yeah i think we're all we're all feeling we're all feeling anxious of being back with one another but uh we're happy to be here so as long as it takes we will be patient and we appreciate your support bunion um okay we're good all right um so uh we agreed on the process um is there any questions clarifications around that process or just go right into it okay welcome [Music] we're a small minority old business second generation my father started it 40 years ago and i became ceo uh five years ago construction project management architecture it's literally in my blood uh i live buy it i love it especially the education i been on a board chair for a charter school in los angeles i've been a substitute teacher a coach a mentor education and building youth is something that is a great passion of mine uh so they said who are we so jjim we've been we've worked in construction management since our inception and with k-14 schools for the past 30 years so when bond programs first began we were actually on the initial programs for lausd laccd managing their program management the team i brought with me today i have myself mr alert robinson who's the program director and mr toby black who will be one of our program managers also as well you see listed here is david page who will be our senior project controls alert robinson has over 30 years of experience uh he's managed the san jose city college uh bond program uh which is over 400 million dollars at san jose city college as well as other programs throughout the bay area here such as oakland and west contra costa toby black has over 20 years of experience he's developed i.t district standards very well versed in dsa and the requirements i needed for those david page as i said he's a guru in everything project controls he's actually he actually teaches program and project controls and was the one to develop lausd's entire system uh some of the projects that we've done you know some of them are within our proposal so i won't spend too much time but i just want to make sure i highlight the experience that we've been able to do over the last 40 plus years we're a small business but have completed some massive massive programs one of them being la unified and their bond programs like i mentioned before west contra costa fremont unified and their bond program in which toby was a part of los angeles community college district and their bond programs we were a joint venture partner uh when it was first uh when it first began in 2001 i think and we've been there almost since with the exception of i think three or four years outside of that we've been there the entire time managing their programs uh santa rosa junior college were there managing projects over there for campuses up in the bay area or up up north some of which is the life science life sciences labs and classrooms and also the district-wide security update uh upgrades uh they uh from everywhere from santa rosa junior college to their show and farm uh we are installing cameras video boxes call towers everything in which to just help them enhance their campuses so this is what we call the five percent and there's four companies up here um each one i'm sure is qualified some more qualified than others um but what differentiates us uh what we say is the five percent that differentiates us our philosophies and goals and in doing our research seeing the issues that you know alum rock has had in the past it actually irritated us because it goes it puts a bad name with consultants with program management with project management uh it's a distrust and we're here to build your trust for you to say we can trust jgm we want them to partner with us going forward and how we go about that first and foremost is student success madam president you mentioned it before and um during our earlier and i was happy to hear you say that fantastic that's the one thing we look at if we're not keeping that in mind student success none of us should be in this room uh it's first and foremost and i preach that and everyone i hire must do that same thing fiscal responsibility again we're well aware of the issues that have been had and the not only do you need to trust us but the public needs to trust us too we know these uh it's coming from bond funds the public has very graciously uh voted for these bonds and not being fiscally responsible is just a method in which just spells doom uh we keep that in mind uh for every bond program that we're on and just every public works project that we're on bond or no bond we know the money's coming from the public and we have to be well aware of that third is communication and transparency this goes to the heart of trust can is the information that we're giving you is it accurate is it valid is it up to date and not even just you but the uh the cboc as well the the reports have to be timely and we have to say whether good bad or ugly that the what the numbers are what the numbers are it's it's again going right back to that heart of trust and lastly being community partners we have we're here not to just instruct you on what to do we're not here to tell you what to do we're here to work in collaborative partnership with you uh with the board with the public um and it's something that we really take pride in and an example of that is uh at our work with san jose city college they were hosting their first annual golf tournament uh it actually just took place up the road at san jose uh country club we jumped at the chance to be the one of the title sponsors for it uh through actually that we met a gentleman who or a student who we learned is on he's on the basketball team and has a history of working in construction a week later we hired him as an intern that's what we like to do we we don't want to operate in a silo we're here to be involved to have our name right next to alamo and give you the information that you need to succeed and becca one and last point i'll make is the swedes have a term that i just found watching at youtube or not youtube but a netflix show uh called yantalaga and that means we don't like to boast we want you to we implore you to talk to those that we've worked for that we're currently working for uh and have them tell you how we do how we operate how we communicate uh so much so that i will that we love to put our references right here on the screen for anyone to call and we actually encourage that so with that once again i very much thank you for your time and look forward to your questions thank you so much and with that as i mentioned i was on you i'll repeat that uh with that uh we will go down the list of the questions that we have just as they were submitted um and each board member had the ability to submit two questions and an alternate question so we're going to start off with question number one from clerk ednesto mr gerano if you can please present your question to the firm okay you can hear can you hear me yes okay um so thank you for the presentation and i only have one question i submitted because it's kind of a multi-party so i didn't want to take up too much space but the question that i have is do you have experience developing and implementing a district-wide solar energy program if no what is your familiarity with the financing options available to districts and what would your approach and strategy be in developing a solar energy program in alabama if yes please describe your experience and how it would be beneficial to the development of a solar energy program in alamo [Music] okay and i'll take uh this one we've had the privilege of working with several school districts on their solar implementation programs and we've been around since the early days when solar first was introduced and if people remember shamron and people like that actually had a program and you'll see a number of school districts around that have the canopies on their sites over their parking lots so we did a lot of that at west country costa unified school district where i served as not only a construction manager on an elementary school but also became the design program manager that was one of the things that we did as a district standard so our approach is to identify the ancillary funds that are available through the state uh to rebate programs that that are out based on what your utility company is having what the state has and then match that money and put that into an allowance that adds to your bond funding amount so we're not taking bond funds to implement the program minimal bond funds will be used we'll be using the state grants and the other things the federal government grants to ensure that that happens plus all the rebates that you get the other thing that we did from a technical perspective we did district standards in consultation with the experts at the time on solar and we just we did a lot of solar ready projects where we actually put all the infrastructure in through the bond so that then when people wanted to do solar they had the opportunity just come and install the solar panels that connect up that worked out really really well and today if you go to west contra costa over you know half of the new schools we did have solar there now but they all have the infrastructure to add it whenever it comes available so that's our approach and we would work with your district to ensure what available funds are available here in the san jose area and how do we meet the needs of your maintenance and operations department to maintain this great asset and resource thank you so much and uh being the first question here we are supposed to have a timer on screen just to give you all also awesome thank you yeah right on uh jose are you able to help us out with that uh timer on the screen just to ensure that we're all following the same timer and i'm not giving them extra time here thank you so much though for uh taking time for yourself thanks for that so we can just show the timer for a minute on the screen so that i'm sorry two minutes on the screen that we agreed to um so a two minute timer on the screen um next question um and we'll have trustee midfam asking the next question thank you so much and i hope that you all caught that and that there's some sort of mike in the room that's catching me thank you mr uh you can uh proceed with your question well begin the board a summary of the cost control and accountability procedures you use with contractors and subcontractors to ensure that a project stays within its allocated budget and timeline to the extent possible on insurance lines with all labor and workplace safety laws well that's a great question and we put in place processes and protocols that address all of these things basically the contract is sacred for each project and we're going to develop budgets with your team hand in hand every step of the way so you know about design phases and project phases so from project identification all the way through implementation we'll be updating budgets every step of the way with you and your team letting you know where the where the pinch points are and where the challenges are so it's because it's not our money this is your money and your constituents money your stakeholders money so what we do is just ensure that if there are adjustments we have a documented procedure so it's all transparent that you guys approve the changes not just us unilaterally saying we're gonna spend more money here there or wherever you're going to input that and say and set those priorities and once we get that in place we'll adjust the schedule if needed and sometimes it'll be a credit back so that you look up and we did this in west contra costa you get to add one or two more schools because we saved you money just about the process in which we put projects out to bid etc the architects that we choose to work with and identifying the scope of work early on because that's the critical pinch point if the scope's wrong the whole project's going to go cattywampus and haywire just say it's just not going to work out so that's our approach is to be hand and glove and transparent in all we do funding wise and scheduled next question could you name the time has had a conflict with the contractor and elaborate on how to refer and resolve that conflict to ensure the time and progress of the bond finance project go ahead and i'll answer this one um uh i've had the deal in the last let's say 2020 has not been kind to a lot of school districts with contractors oh i'm sorry i forgot it was even on um uh i've actually had to deal with that recently uh contractor actually he went over his schedule well he they went over their schedule uh never submitted time impact analysis didn't start the project on time even though we pushed them to start on time and submitting change orders for things that were already in the contract uh one of the things what we did and they were small contractors uh one of the things that we did uh is we sent letters to their bonding company when it got to the point after we tried to work with them multiple times get them going what is the issue what's causing you to not be able to continue the project along and they still just weren't they were being continued to be difficult what we did is we ended up having to contact our bonding company get with the district hey this is what's happening this is the issues going on uh he what they weren't paying their subs uh they were never showing up on time this is what we would like to do and go with the district this is our recommendation to deal with this because they are wasting everyone's time and they're wasting money we had we had a specific goal of trying to get a building taken down uh within a couple of months we had another building going in but they just kept dragging it out and we it held up another project so we got with the district uh let it find out we didn't want to hurt the fight uh going after the person's bond the company's bond it's going to hurt them getting other work we don't want to do that we're still trying to partner with the community and partner with the small contractors but we got at least let them know that this is costing everyone money what we ended up doing is de-scoping the work uh bidding the the rest of the work out to another contractor and you know back charging the contractors so that we save them on the project uh next question myself uh so my question is have you noticed that some of these questions might be similar you know and these are things that are very important to us um but we'll be exactly listening so on number four have you been a part of any questionable behavior and how would you deal with the board met how how would you deal with a board member or staff asking you to be involved in questionable activity for example fraud fortunately no um we haven't been part of any questionable behavior um how to deal with it i i look at it as a lot of things when it comes to the company is my my name is on the company uh as i said before it's the second generation my dad started it so it's a legacy um he's one of the most stand-up people that i will ever go and i make sure i follow in that same footsteps if there was anyone within my firm that came close to anything that was deemed questionable uh it would not be tommy um yeah again my my my name is there i'm the g in jgm that means everything to me uh so if someone were to come a board member if a staff member uh were to come to one of my employees one of my cell by myself i would then take it to um if it happened to be a board member i would take it to you president uh if it was a staff member i would take to you mr chain um it would not be targeted we will adhere to california state contract public contract code and all of the ramifications they're in and so we'll work with you with writing language in your contracts to ensure that this kind of thing won't happen whether it be from scope definition all the way through completion we just don't do this stuff next question is how would you deal with a delay in a product what would you let the district staff know about any delays um do you have any examples of any delays in any of the products and what uh i'll go ahead and take this one um i was about to put my mask on uh first of all transparency and communication is key we i myself as we were mentioning in the you know with questionable behavior i can't lie because i start laughing so i just felt it's i just it honestly is i just be honest with that and that's what we're here to do is to be honest with the district and with you all if something's coming up where a a project is being delayed for whatever reason we have to let you know uh that way you can let the public know this project is being delayed these are the reasons why it's being delayed um whatever they might be it's communication that's key to everything especially getting trust with the disc with the public is we got to communicate and be transparent this project is being delayed these are the reasons why uh how we handle the delay is we have language in the in our in our contracts is if a contractor is being delayed whatever it might be uh if it's there you know for whatever their delay they need to submit uh a time impact analysis that shows us how they're going to get back on schedule uh and sometimes like currently now there's a lot of shortages of materials that's something that we have to tell the public tell everybody steel's being delayed because there's a shortage of it the chips you know for a lot of uh controls for like say hvac systems are the same chips that go into cars that's right so there's a delay in that and everyone has probably heard of that that you know problem that's come up uh so how we deal with that is well let the public know this is this these are the instead of saying here's the problem we tell everyone here's the solution to what we're gonna do while this is going on we're gonna go ahead and take care of all these other parts first so that you know when a file with when stuff uh material become available we can finish this part off but at least we've got this other 75 completed um the first thing that we will do just by the way i'm kovit 19 certified by the state to actually go in and do this and so i've consulted with a few school districts and clients would be churches other public entities to address this very issue the first thing we're going to do is evaluate your current hvac system and the new ones that have been installed plus the old ones to figure out hey we're going to get them cleaned and sanitized and then we're going to come in and seal the duct works and then we'll come in and recommission them in the case of the 2018 units and make sure they're compatible with the cdc guidelined and approved hepa filters because we're going to replace the filters and install hepa filters throughout the district and then we'll come up with a budget and we'll work with your maintenance department to determine what filters they want to use of the improvements and we'll make that a part of the district's standard as we go in and start evaluating and developing standards so that's the basic thing and the other thing is is just to go in and recommission it commission assistance to make sure that you're getting the best bang for your buck and you're getting energy efficiency as well so it's not just a pure air situation but we come in and monitor your air changes the amount of air flow that you have and so we've been doing this now for the whole coven 19 year we work with different cleaning companies and cleaning firms to go in and address all the issues with our current clients but also put plans in place and standards in place so that we kind of future proof this situation can hear your questions if you can please take off okay well well the uh first thing we look at we need to evaluate the scope of work of those initial projects review the commissioning that those projects went through and at this point most projects go through some form of commissioning before it's turned over to you to occupy so we'll re we'll evaluate that and see where we are in warrants so what safety issues it's really going to be a campus by campus evaluation to determine that but just in our general experience uh 2018 is almost like a lifetime ago and so with the new kona standards and things that are in place the first step is just like the other stuff let's evaluate what systems we have in place how safe are they do they meet current cdc standards and codes do they meet current you know city ordinances regarding safety and then we go from there but for the most part you know most of the stuff that we're dealing with is really on the life safety issue and those codes fortunately haven't changed very dramatically so in terms of your exiting and your path of travels and your egresses you should be in pretty good shape from 2018 till now the big thing is going to be just on the hvac side and the system side you know what kind of uh exposure you have with regard to the existing mechanical systems that are in place or that they provide provided so that'll be a hand in glove exercise with your district maintenance staff so that we can determine we know what cdc says and what cal osha says are the preferred you know types of systems to input and what those standards are and calculations are but we work with your district directly to determine which manufacturers you prefer what's readily available because that's a big issue and then also what we want to implement so this is again a transparent hand and glove solution that we'll come up with together [Laughter] in the last 40 years we've never had litigation we've never had conflicts uh yeah never uh and nor do i plan to that's a streak i like keeping alive so i'm not sure if testing i just unmuted myself uh no i think should i just keep myself unmuted here daniel because i know you have muted me so i just want to confirm the question and just me oh so go ahead and read myself all right okay um no i think they heard me answer okay uh maybe if you want to repeat the question the question was do i preface it with all the other comments [Laughter] have you had any recent litigation or significant conflict within the last 10 years with any of your clients or so please tell us so you heard the response yes thank you can i move on tonight thank you vice president yes please all right um please explain your pricing structure um do you include automatic escalators and you overhead in your proposal please provide an example of items for which you would typically build a district to the benefit of the public so that you are aware or the differences is between the between fourths if i do recall i think we just had hourly rates in there for certain positions uh usually within um uh usually within that we will have a just a three percent cola cost of living increase or adjustment uh that happens every year um that's how we normally do our pricing structure uh for billing outside of that say the for except for the say softballs trailers oh yeah uh we don't really build the travel yeah trailer travel um computers copiers oh i'm sorry that you're my friend yeah outside of uh you know trailers you know copiers uh uh laptops computers you know uh basically overhead um and so that's that's the only additional if if that i think those are the nine questions that we have uh for you at this time thank you very much and if you can patiently wait in the other room and we will call you at the end of the meeting uh with the decision okay thank you so much for your time thank you okay thank you so much and publicly we can be patient as we um as his firm exits and we bring in the next i think um and the next firm just to remind the public we have kitchell um coming in thank you would you like me to ask them thank you can i ask a couple of questions uh president can you hear me hello can anyone hear me i guess not i can hear you chosen okay well i wanted to ask right and if we're not speaking we will mute ourselves uh the next firm coming up will be kitchell um and we will be setting up so thank you uh public for your patience um i don't think she can hear you or me i don't know why yeah i wonder why she can't hear us she on the english channel i am i am too i think she is no because well somebody would hear us i'll just text her go ahead trustee pam you can do it however you want i believe christopher harano is doing a tab on his computer um i'm writing them on our paper um as long as you have your scores by the end of this process um you submit them all yes thank you trusted family okay we have our next firm here firm kitchel welcome and we will open up with the presentation and then go into the questions each board member submitted one or two questions so we will just ask them as we submit them after the presentation thank you welcome just so the public knows um i let daniel our technology person here supporting us to let me know give me a thumbs up when we're ready to go with the presentation oh when i speak thank you thank you very much uh we are the kitchen team we're very uh happy to be here and good afternoon to uh all board members superintendent mr chang and uh we have a brief presentation that complies with the request that you sent us and uh we'll be ourselves talking as we go and uh first of all uh i'll introduce myself our team will do the same and i'll talk a little bit about our uh rest of the presentation i am arturo i am the regional executive for kitchell in the bay area and i am responsible to provide all the resources that are needed for our team to provide the service and fulfill this contract that we are lucky enough to be selected i have 30 years of experience in this industry i used to be on your side of the table i used to be an employee at the director of facilities in real estate both for san francisco unified and berkeley unified so i have a full understanding of both inside and outside the district and what it takes to accomplish a test like this hi i'm patricia nguyen i'll be your program director and your main point of contact throughout the program i've been with kitchell for over 19 years working on various k-12 programs throughout the south bay including two bond programs for san jose unified school district and union school district i am a parent so i have two school-age children in the k-12 program also and i am bilingual i speak vietnamese and english so i look forward to working with you guys good evening everybody my name is jason villanueva and i'm the project controls director for kitchell i have over 12 years of experience with reporting and business intelligence and analytics and so what i do is i support each of the programs that we run uh to really provide accountability and transparency to the services that we provide for our clients and i look forward to working with the district thank you thank you uh in addition to the folks that are here today uh we have other people that uh we have in our team they couldn't be here because of the constraints and the the number of people were allowed to bring and uh but they both are bilingual by culture they live in the area they have work in education in the area myself i also bilingual by culture and spanish and uh we're happy to provide our services we have a history in the bay area for over 30 years we set up originally around cupertino that was our first education client kitchel has been around for over 70 years and here in the bay area over 30 years we started with cupertino many years ago and have done a number of districts around here overall throughout california we provided services for over 60 school districts up and down the state and we have put in place over 14 billion dollars worth of school construction uh in terms of uh the work that we have supported and managed for other districts um we have experience with a number of local districts around here and this experience has enabled us to see and learn and provide and build just about every type of building in any school setting and therefore we bring that experience to bear be that classrooms laboratories gymnasium etc some of us have done just about every building type and we will happy to bring that experience to you uh ron here we've done uh uh milpitas yes our presentation seems to be stuck oh let's have a quick pause here so our presentation can be caught up for the public thank you for your patience we'll pause the timer all right i think we're good now back on so just to conclude my remarks and sorry about that um uh we've worked with a number of districts right now we're helping milpitas we're helping redwood city schools uh we used to work up until recently and hopefully more later over at east side you're the defeating high school district a number of great facilities there and again the our experience comes with us to support this particular district and we're very honored to serve you patricia so you know you've already started some work on the program planning we want to take meet with you and pick up those pieces and really understand what's already been done so we can be efficient and not repeat work that you've already completed but we want to take our experience so we can realign the budgets and help you prioritize projects based on the current needs and really these are components to put together your program implementation plan that's the roadmap for how you're going to spend your bond which how where you're going to allocate your dollars and what schedule you're going to do the projects on and this is how we transparently show the community what we're going to do so due to time constraints we're just going to focus on three key issues that we're going to talk about updating costs in the previous facility conditions assessment and helping you prioritize projects and then jason's going to talk a little later about the dashboard system and how it can relay information in a transparent manner and throughout the process we'll be collaborating with you and communicating with you to ensure an essential program so we really want to work on updating the costs of your facilities conditions assessment that you've already done we understand with kovid there has been major impacts to costs in the area due to labor shortages because there's multiple projects going on and then as well as supply chain on other programs we've had to pre-purchase electrical equipment to meet the timelines we need because not just with covid's supply chain but also the houston freeze affected delivery affected all the manufacturers and we are in constant communication with those suppliers so they let us know ahead of time what's going on and we can work with them and say okay you know let's try to make up the schedule and let's pre-purchase certain things to try to meet the schedule and still meet our deadline and then in prioritizing projects we really want to address look at first what are the critical needs of the campus to address your safety and code issues you know as a parent i want to make sure my child's going to safe school just like everyone's child goes to a safe school and as you're realigning certain campuses in your district we want to make sure that the programmatic needs on each campus are addressed so that we can equitably manage every campus and make sure the faculty and the students have everything they need to be successful with tobit impact showed us how to be flexible over these last few months we were able to on other programs move projects ahead quickly because campuses weren't occupied so projects that we would normally do like a solar project that would have to shut down a whole parking lot we were able to do much quickly much more quickly because there was nobody parking on campus so we we are a team that is agile and can adapt to changing markets so one of the other service offerings that we provide in terms of us managing a program and the projects is really the ability to be transparent and to hold ourselves accountable for the services that we provide um we actually create custom dashboards and what you'll see on the screen is a sample of some of these dashboards that we're able to create and we use these as a communication tool both internally and also for the general public so that they are aware of what's going on how the dollars are being spent so there's a lot more confidence that you know we've set a plan and we can track how that plan is going so a couple more examples here of being able to identify early risk right if we can keep all that information in one place where everybody can go to to work out the same information we can identify that risk and and mitigate it before the risk becomes an actual uh reality last example here is really being able to display financial so we can connect to any system and we use microsoft power bi because it's non-proprietary and it doesn't lock you into something that that you have to pay for over time especially if you don't want to use it anymore and so again this is another service offering to help us with the theme of accountability and transparency thank you jason um uh the big part of this effort i mean is the technical component but the communication strategy it is really important to be able to communicate with a community that has supported you and that we can do that we do that every day multilingually and understand what needs to happen and we communicate what has happened when it's gonna next things are gonna happen so that there are no surprises both you and the community are ever aware of every single element that will be happening and how much is costing and so forth uh just in closing i just want to say a couple of things uh we are a local leader in k12 program management we've been here for over 30 years providing this kind of service we're proud of it and we bring a lot of experience to support you secondly we have a proven approach we bring a skeleton of best practices so that we can adapt to your district and there is no learning curve we've done this before we do it well and we can do it again adapt it to you so you can have a successful program and lastly we're a local diverse group of professionals and we'll be very proud to serve you thank you very much [Music] thank you um and at this time we'll go ahead and start with the questions um we'll have the uh first trustee uh who's joining us virtually and we'll be asking the first question yeah can you hear me uh trustee christine can you hear me we cannot hear you i'm not sure if it's something in here one second i think you did there it is perfect oh you can hear me now yes all right awesome okay thank you for the presentation uh my i have one question submitted but it's kind of um several questions in one so i'll go ahead and go with this question do you have experience developing and implementing a district-wide solar energy program if no what is your familiarity with financing options available to districts and what would your approach and strategy be in developing a solar energy program in alabama if yes please describe your experience and how it would be beneficial to the development of a solar energy program in alabama yeah the answer is yes i do have experience working on a district-wide solar energy program oh i'm sorry yes so most recently um in sara togo we are putting solar panels on three additional parking lots and it's able to take the campus 90 off the grid um that delivery method is a design build project so we worked with um sun power who provides the panels and then they also provide the construction for it and we provide the coordination for the site and for the campus to do that i've also done it in san jose where we worked with chevron and they provided some of the financing for that solar program by selling back some of the solar energy that was created so it's really a district decision do you want to create solar energy to sell back to the grid or do you want to keep it and use it for yourself because um what we did in saratoga was we designed storage so that we stored the power and the campus could use it so if there was ever a power outage they had a generate enough power saved to use for their own campus thank you and that's it before we go into the next okay um we'll go ahead and move on to trustyfam at this time and so we do have cost control measures that we've used we work with work closely with the district to align with whatever program you prefer um but to make sure so i regularly when we're in the cm phase work with the contractors um to review costs every month so that there's no surprises and i forecast any changes that i foresee being out in the field that would result in changes and additional costs for the district um and also part of the part of the technology that we bring especially with different contractors that come on that may have different accounting systems uh whether it's with the district or ourselves we can combine all that information into one place so that we can appropriately track it what we want to do is we want to make it easier for the contractors to be able to you know use whatever system they're comfortable with to track their budgets but we're also able to take that same information so that we're comparing apples to apples with everybody else and being able to provide that information so it's more accessible to everybody it's in real time and there's no barriers it allows people to really be able to see engage how are we trending in terms of spent right if i if i'm able to see in real time the direction i'm heading we can go ahead and make uh changes to that so in terms of things like with labor compliance and safety laws and stuff we can track all that information uh regardless of whatever system people use now by default we use procore internally and that's another offering that we extend to our clients should they not have something that they already use does that answer your question yeah trust your family or you're able to just go into your next question and if you can meet yourself there could you name a time when your firm has had a conflict with a contractor and elaborate on how your firm resolved that conflict to ensure the timely progress of the bond finance project um i think every project has conflict with contractors but how i resolve them is i i work and anticipate the challenges that they're gonna have so sometimes it could be that their subcontractors are not performing if that first first we identify the problem and then i really with our background as general contractors also help them solve that issue so that it does doesn't delay the project if there's times that a subcontractor is not performing we point it out to them and help them support getting that subcontractor back on track so that they can perform and do the work and get the project done in time because there are times when on low bid projects your contractor may not be sophisticated enough to realize that there's an issue but we will identify the issue because our background is builders as well as designers and construction managers we can identify that [Music] we answer the question you have to be answering all right the next two questions are from me um the next question is is have you been a part of any questionable behavior how would you deal with the board member or staff asking you to be involved with questionable activities such as fraud first of all i have not been part of but i've had an experience with that and it was not a k-12 it was at a community college level it it was not a fraud per se but it was an inference from a board member that he would like to see a process that uh favor a a certain professional obviously we have an ethics code that we follow ourselves and we have our own moral compass and uh for me and and i had a very good client then that the vice chancellor of facilities uh was our direct uh boss per se so we always have one contact that we're the it's a go-to person so i brought the situation to that particular uh vice chancellor and he addressed it with the chancellor at the time and they uh worked it out with the board member and welcome to the process of public procurement and at the end of the day nothing happened but uh it is something that we're very aware and that we're very proactive to avoid and to communicate the situation to our clients so that the proper action can be taken does that address your question yeah the next question is how would you deal with the delay in the project here okay the next question how would you delay how would you deal with a delay in the project when would you let you know that the staff know about any delays and have you had an example of any delays in the past um in projects you have been a part of and what or how did you deal with them um so yes there you know there are sometimes unforeseen conditions that causes delays and you know i'm in on projects i'm in regular communication with the the owner and the client so that they're always aware of what's going on so that they can become part of the solution as well i don't want surprises to arise at the last minute so an example of this is a middle school i worked on um when we opened the ceiling there was some structural issues that we were not aware of so the state required us to redesign a portion of that structure well redesigning it and then getting a new approval on that delayed the project several months but we you know the owner was involved in these design meetings the whole time so they could see the impact of this change in the scope and then they were able to talk to the principal um we had already moved the classroom into interim housing so they talked to the principal and let the teacher know right away so she could plan the rest of her curriculum knowing that she would stay in that portable until the work was done um so i think the sooner you let somebody know the better because that nobody likes a surprise at the last minute they want to be able to plan and make the best uh adapt adapt to what's um coming up and if i can add one quick thing typically these situations arise for nobody intentionally gets delayed there's always a cost and what we try to do is focus on the cost the root cause of the delay so that we with the contractor the arc that industry can resolve and recuperate it can be manpower it can be a supply chain or it can be material that is not available typically those are the things so we are there as a practice thank you thank you very much next questions will be uh presented by trustee linda thomas okay indoor air quality is at the center of concerns about how schools can safely open during a pandemic what would you do to solve the air quality issues have you looked at the scope of work on the emg report in 2000 issues the issues that need addressing um so yes we we have on other school districts address the air quality issue we actually our engineering and architecture group did a whole site survey for san francisco unified and gave them a report to identify what they needed to do for their hva system to upgrade it to meet the requirements so they could bring students back to campus and that was except you know the district was very grateful for that report because we were able to do it really quickly we're they're already in-house we didn't have to go and procure another engineer they they could do that all in-house because we have licensed engineers and architects in-house which is i think what sets us apart from other construction management companies um the we uh have reviewed uh lightly the report and have not done a it's their analysis to figure i mean there's only we have a summary of it they have a full report so if we were given the opportunity to look at that in detail we would be more than happy to finalize it and provide some potential solutions to address that for sure okay besides all the five projects that a previous board approved in 2014 and bond money was available and was supposed to be spent to finish those board approved projects in your expert opinion what are the safety issues that need to be addressed first or immediately i'll i'll start the projects safety is first and foremost on every project on every school district and essentially us and not not only anything new you the district are trusted by the parents in the community to safely provide the education for the kids and uh so it is really important to prioritize especially student safety at the outset of any program if you have a limited amount of funds you have to go through a process and figure out what makes sense in terms of how do we prioritize and keep safety and compliance in the top of your list it is going to be very important that those items are addressed as soon as possible and especially if they can grow to become more compounded problems that god forbid we have an accident or something and then the district is in a very difficult situation so it's something that we would come look at and analyze the conditions of every situation and figure okay what can we do here to mitigate their safety and the risk of the district do you have any no that's the data to browse your question thank you and now last but not least we have vice president andres ditto presenting the next question all right the question has been asked and however some of the material is somewhat dated and so i think it's important to provide uh all those who brought forward proposals to to respond to this question that's why i'm asking you so have you had any litigation or significant conflict within the last 10 years with any of your clients and so please celebrate yes uh we addressed that in the proposal i don't have it in front of me but since that has happened we have not had any new situations that uh are a legal challenge where we have done something or someone else did something and we got uh a name in the complaint so what we've had we addressed it in the proposal and uh i don't have it in front of me but we i believe we address there were a couple of situations there and we provide an explanation and provide the uh of the situation and also explain the outcome and i believe we actually were it was well established and we are okay thank you the next question is please explain your pricing structure do you include automatic escalators and any overhead in your proposals please provide example of items for which you would typically build a district this is you obviously have it in writing but some benefit for the community so they can understand how you guys intend attended bill i will uh address that and if there's anything like this please uh jump in uh for us what uh a is a typical cm service agreement and what we do we sit down with you at the outset and map out what it's going to take to accomplish the scope that you request from us we have provided rates for individuals for each of the positions and what we do to the best of our ability without knowing how exactly the future looks but we that's why we sit down with you and we figure out the best uh uh or the optimal uh schedule to deliver the projects that you assigned to us and we basically look at duration times our rates that equals a certain amount and depending upon which staff you uh the project mandates and what we also have is over time if a pro project has a duration of three years we include and i believe we include it there and the footnotes i believe it's about three percent increase annually i can't remember if it was theirs in january or in july but it's a cause that you know we give our employees we treat them fairly they get raises cost of living increases et cetera so it's something that is part of and we're transparent we show you what it is and it's written there uh we have options when we get to the point where we define the the scope of work in the duration where we can depending upon what is the appetite of the board we can convert it to a lump sum uh price including based on the duration including those escalations on an annual basis and that becomes the price for the program management effort and or construction management for certain projects as we see we do it together thank you okay and that concludes the question portion of our interview um if you can uh please wait in the room uh next door and we will call all the firms at the end with the um decision at that time thank you thank you in public if you can just be patient we are going to be calling our next firm up which is get my little notes here we have coming coming up next uh yeah so let's go ahead and take a four minute bio break as the next firm sets up uh looks like we have quorum presentation is ready to start i'm sure linda's on our way back [Music] let's give it a couple of seconds [Music] otherwise let me i have uh vice president quintero here i have mr pham and myself and i see trustee veterano um linda come back we'll go ahead and uh since we do have quorum we'll go ahead and start on on the presentation uh do you have um i think she went with lisa to check on something and you can let let me see [Music] seconds here um so we can restart the clock as soon as we start can we uh pause that or rewind if possible on the presentation up on our screen is that possible otherwise we'll composite maybe i can pause it and maybe it's on me no there it is it's oh it's so good okay well let's go ahead and start um i see uh the 130 on there as soon as we start i'll just make sure that we time it at 10 minutes so welcome um we'll go going to start with the presentation portion uh welcome coming thank you very much we're really pleased to be here today to make our presentation um to the elm rock union school district um the good thing about coming just a quick overview we're a nationwide international company but we have a san jose office each office is a stand-alone but we really collaborate within the other offices so we bring a lot of integrated services and a lot of expertise to all of these uh uh to all your projects which one that one okay now okay my name is john olson i'm the project executive um i will oversee the team i'll oversee bringing the services the right services at the right time to the district um i'm there to provide backup support when big issues start to happen complicated ones i've been in the business 42 years been doing k-12 uh construction management for the last 24 years so i've got a lot of experience can bring a lot of that to to the table importantly is i grew up on the east side san jose i was an uh alum rock um student for nine years of my life starting in kindergarten and i actually graduated all the way to the eighth grade so um it's very near and dear to me you have i like the community i have friends here i have family here um my friends have children that have gone through the district so it is very very important to me to be really excellent everything we do for you with that i'll good evening my name is michael gordomani i'm the project manager for various projects on the bond program i'm actually born and raised in the bay area as well so again working on projects in the local community is something that's extremely important to me and that'll go over to frank hi my name is frank dickinson i'm a director for coming i'm a director of project management um i would be working to help with this managing the staffing of the various of whatever we needed in the way of project management um i've been a california general contractor for over 40 years and we're coming now for uh five and uh one of the relevant projects that we just completed that i managed to team on was pajaro valley school district in watsonville we did three years of their bond which also included the building of a new sports stadium so with that uh just real quickly we'll go over you know who we are we talked about that the project team uh then we're gonna get into our program approach and um thank you so here's the here's the uh project team frank's gonna be your day-to-day central contact um i'll be the project executive i'll be working with frank i'll be working with the district i'll be working with the user groups working with the community i'm here to support the team to make sure the right resources are brought to bear when you need it in a cost-effective and efficient manner um we chose this team with uh and we're only showing five or so people here but we chose this team because of their k-12 experience and their local experience as well as their different expertise and we're going to talk about the different expertise as we go forward okay so as you kick it off we'll have a 30 60 90 day plan yeah it's very important that as we get started on the project that we hit the ground running um one of the first things that we're going to we would want to be doing is to meet with all the different stakeholders and including construction teams uh maintenance teams um even even your i your technical teams we found that if in the beginning you meet with all them and try to get the info get the ideas of what they really need it really makes the thing start out correctly with that information we can better prioritize uh what projects go when so that we can put to start putting together a master schedule also early we would want to bring our cost team in uh i'm assuming that the district has their own cost estimates from for the various projects um and it's the way that the construction is right now a lot of the estimates are are really they change basically daily so it would be good for our costume to come in to see where our costs are compared to now um and then and then to look at that uh as well for any escalation in the future um we would also in the beginning uh try to figure out best delivery methods for the various projects um and then the last thing would be to help you uh engage and um design teams thanks frank as frank mentioned we were gonna hit the ground running i want to talk about cummings way how we approach a program or master program approach and how we set one up really it comes down to setting up the proper documents and making sure that there's transparency and communication through the entire process from the very beginning to the last project closing what that what that entails is financial tracking our financial tracking systems making sure that the expenditures are for bond authorized projects and running through to the project management portion standing up the project management and projects getting project schedules in order project budgets in order as well as the weekly and monthly reporting process so we have transparency and communication on the entire process visibility on project priorities visibility on project budgets project spending and project timelines and that takes us into constructions you know we set up the contract administration process make sure the public bidding process goes smooth and projects hit the ground running as well and we are involved in the inspection process making sure and making sure that construction goes smoothly and we go to the end on close-up um also with that is funding so funding obviously is extremely important so our background you know working with many school districts and k to 12 different schools we understand the office of public school construction different grant opportunities they have for possible funding as well as prop 39 best practices and compliance understanding bond compliance means uh fiscal accountability means fund tracking and reporting making sure the community has eyes and this is a transparent process so we understand what's going on projects and that comes down to record retention having a paper trail i'll quickly just touch on budget and cost analysis and we have a strategic approach that we implement on our projects to make sure again that we can timely implement and deliver cost estimates that are audit proof and provide the financial stability and information that you need when reviewing so hannah glover with the continuing estimating and budget reconciliation uh efforts that we're going to do um we have great value engineering systems we started the concept we look at materials labor uh equipment availability right now there's there's shortages um in a lot of material and equipment we look at that and it may say yeah we want to switch the material or the equipment in order because there's less of a time lag and we'll be able to hit the schedule better we have a great constructability team it's made up of all sorts of different experts uh designers uh civil structural electrical mechanical waterproofing we get into all the nuances we utilize the uh army corps of engineering uh a system and on a recent high school project um ground up we have we found over eleven thousand dollar eleven thousand conflicts errors emissions and we're getting those cleaned up before it goes out the bid what does that do it saves rfis requests for information it says change orders it makes for a more efficient schedule you get the projects done on time and the whole process works off smoother these guys save themselves save the district's money exponentially it is really the best thing going so yeah so scheduling um as mentioned scheduling is going to be a very important aspect once we've talked with all the different stakeholders uh we'll work together with our um coming schedule team to put a master's schedule together we'll look at the particulars um of some of the long-term more maintenance type things because they take different different types of scheduling uh get ready to procure the designers and we'll look at we'll see what you guys have that might be shovel ready that we can really get started as soon as possible to kind of keep it going um and then the main thing is going to be we will be doing keeping up a master schedule monthly and and publishing it to everybody i don't say i am that's my picture alex shepard uh anyway we're i'm really dedicated i'd be i'd be honored and humble to give back to the community to shape my life in my early years thank you thank you so much at this time we're going to go ahead and begin the question and answer portion of the interview we're gonna go ahead and um just go down the list and you have the questions in front of you and we'll just ask them as they are in order there and we're gonna go ahead and start with trustee ernesto vegeta who is connecting with us virtually yes thank you just a quick check can you hear me can you hear me yes yes we can hear you i wanted to make sure all right um thank you for the presentation and my we were able to submit several questions mine is only one but there's kind of a few questions embedded in there so i will read that question now do you have experience developing and implementing a district-wide solar energy program if no what is your familiarity with the financing options available to districts and what would your approach and strategy be in developing a solar energy program in alabama if yes please describe your experience and how it would be beneficial to the development of a solar energy program in alabama so i'll answer the first question coming i talked about where integrated services we've got a team that works throughout california that does nothing but energy efficiency sustainability that includes um life cycle cost analysis but includes all sorts of solar they've done solar on on schools on parking structures on public uh places they're experts uh they give lectures they give presentations so our team understands the financing our team understands the nuances i mean they'll be able to come in and help right-size the the uh solar systems um they're very good at what they do did that answer the question yes i think okay thank you for your response thank you uh we can't hear you now i said thank you for your response yeah they just just just add they'll they will develop a district-wide program for you um you know want they look at the long-term thank you next question will be uh by trustee pham we'll ask the next two questions okay will you give the board a summary of the cost control and accountability procedures you use with contractors and subcontractors to ensure that a project stays within its allocated budget and timeline to the extent possible while ensuring compliance with all labor and workplace safety laws yes thank you so i think to start um really what it comes down to number one is understanding the scope and then building a relationship with the contractor and then as we talked about how we have our standard best practices our cost control process we have regular scheduled checking meetings with the contractors there are certain time frames that if something does come up they're required to notify us so we have a visual on everything that's going with on the project with scope this also keeps them accountability contractual wise as well as we are we understand what buckets are used for other allowances or contingency and how to authorize those um those scopes as well as they should understand there there's no reason for ever to be authorized on scope or building scope that's not already approved to go forward that's something that making sure you have visibility with that as well as understanding the project documents and being involved with the design team um and managing the project's schedule as well making sure that you know in your weekly oacs you're doing a three week look ahead you're managing day-to-day process what's happening on site and understanding that they're not doing any unauthorized work and then at the same time managing the cost control change order process with the district going through these are potential risk items and this is how we're going to mitigate it and this is how we track it just to add to that our our philosophy during design is to make sure the architect's designing to the budget so 30 60 90 we're doing uh budgets validating what the architect's telling you and making those decisions to get it back under under control backing budget during the early parts of the design not waiting till the end and just to close that out and with the you know prevailing wage uh making sure and meeting workplace safety um understanding that being in the process in our kickoff meeting going through uh how the project should be set up as well as the regulatory requirements that they have to meet nice time could you name a time when your firm has had a conflict with the contractor and elaborate on how your firm resolved that conflict to ensure the timely progress of the bond finance project yes we had um a contractor actually in high school district where uh they had a tendency to not do their paperwork to um constantly have delays um look try to look at everything that they couldn't do as an excuse rather than trying to figure out things that they would need to do if there were any concerns and they were at one point we had a schedule that was uh three months out of black and there was a large number of change orders that were being asked for because of their concerns um a number of different things we did we first started started trying doing things through channels the way in the project meetings and uh with letters and with emails and that sort of thing when that didn't work um i actually would take a side a couple of times the owner of the company and tell him where his failings were and sometimes i would get a little bit better uh work from these people and sometimes not uh finally we resorted to uh sending legal letters stating you know the schedule was off you know it gave them all the backup as to why they should where they should be and why we were they weren't why it was important that they get back onto their schedule um as well as making sure that any any added costs that they were thinking that they were owed that they had to do that through contractual uh change orders and when at the end of the project they came to us with a like 150 000 worth of change orders that nothing had been said the paperwork had not been done directly for contract i just want to add that a lot of the districts that i work for i get brought in when a project goes bad we're not part of it but all of a sudden they say we're under water struggling we brought a high school that was way behind schedule everybody was fighting brought into project manager and ultimately got the school open on time okay uh next we have questions um i'm sorry my questions uh so the first question that i have is have you been a part of any questionable behavior how would you deal with it and how would you go with a board member or staff asking you to be involved in any questionable behavior or activities such as fraud we we just avoid it that that's a red line that we will never cross as a company um you say question behavior between us and a contractor or board member or someone something like that any question or behavior yeah whether it's any of that no that's not tolerated that's not tolerated the public you know k-12 is important in the community k-12 has got a great responsibility i'm sure this group has cleaned up a big mess beforehand that i'm aware of and i think you've done a great job to get to get your audits being audited passing them i think that you'd be commended how do you do that well you were straight up you were transparent you were communicated set goals and objectives and if any behavior if we become aware of it i'll probably go to you first i just you know to somebody and say i just got approached by so-and-so that ain't right and by being transparent by being open i have never seen anybody approach us in my in my career and that's over 42 years because i've always gone to companies that were just honest period um so yeah if someone came up to me and wanted to do some shenanigans no because when i added that or just from again it's from the the the culture of the company right that that's how we manage individual projects as well so just in terms of subcontractors and contractors they understand that um we do it right we do a transparency with transparency and it's important to us the community is important to us that we do things properly with integrity and i think people around us work with us realize that very soon so we don't ask thank you uh next question how would you deal with that delay in a project when would you let the district staff know about any delays do you have any examples of any delays in any of the projects you have been a part of and how did you deal with that sure um yeah i can start actually well to start it with transparency so these things aren't coming up as surprises right we're having our weekly schedule check-in meetings as well as our meetings with the district as well so they're they're involved in the entire process now we would let the district staff know immediately and i have a good example actually recently on one of our projects we had a material delay because of uh supply chain and covid and this was something that we had some specific material that needed to be here so we as working with partners with our contractors right in our meetings we're looking at how can we resequence the schedule how can we mitigate this how can we uh manage around this so we can absorb this while still holding an end date so understand a lot of these buildings this one specifically had an accreditation deadline that if we didn't finish in time we weren't going to have accreditation for this program so it's extremely critical that we found a way to get it completed and how we did that was using our resources using our again our partnerships with our contractors and with the district as well in meetings how can we get around this how can we sequence we ended up doing was resequencing how we built the vertical on part of the building so we can come back and do the other portion later so really it comes down to if it's open discussion we have experts working with us we'll figure out how to get it done because we know what's the most important as delivering a project just to add to that um we don't just send paper to the contract you're like that doesn't do any good so on that one project i told you there was real big trouble there was a war between the contractor the architect and the district we came in there and we started working with the contractor and we gave them options i'm not just saying give me a recovery status we gave them options we've said you know this one sub is struggling get somebody to help them um we brought a project manager in that work for the project to talk to everybody they got an answer squared so that's proactive thank you next question from trustee linda chavez uh indoor air quality is at the center of concerns about how schools can safely open during a pandemic what would you do to solve the air quality issues in element the good thing again because we're integrated services we've got estimators uh and mechanical electrical uh especially mechanical uh that will come in take a look at a system have ideas work with a designer and it also is hand and glove with our sustainability and energy group they do the same thing it's all about building health so we can attack it from two different ways early on you can say if you do this give you you know if you put in uh you know this sort of filter or if you start putting in uh separating rooms whatever it is we'll give you options early on with cost and schedule and impacts how's that going to affect the students how's this going to affect the teaching so we've done it we're doing it throughout california right now especially southern california so i've got a really strong team pick up the phone bring them to bear we'll have solutions for you very quickly yeah and one of the things that we with all the different experts of various things that we have there's there's a lot of people that can think outside the box and they'll look at all different options that there are um one example of that was there was a school where they had painted their windows shut you know and that used to be a thing that i used to see a lot of and and so when this started you know one of the things is outdoor air so what one of our people suggested is why don't we fix the windows put a screen on them and then keep them open whenever it can be and something as simple and you know inexpensive as that can really make a difference okay thank you besides all the of the five projects that a previous board approved in 2014 and bond money was available and supposed to be spent to finish those board approved projects in your expert opinion what are the safety issues that need to be addressed first or immediately here in elm rock so to clarify your question these projects haven't been finished they're still ongoing and they're they're occupied students um so first and foremost get out to the site meet with the principal meet with the people on site figure out egress make sure that the work and the workers are separated i've been doing this for 25 years with schools and occupied campuses making sure that the barriers are safe making sure that signage is clear making sure that that the principal's aware of okay this is what we're gonna do we we put out weekly updates this is what we did this week this is what we're gonna do here the impacts so that they can distribute to the school and to everybody here and understand what what are the challenges and what are the mitigation items we're going to take care of and also understand testing understand the quiet times the school needs to have and work the contractors to the off hours whenever possible anything else no say safety is a priority i'll just wrap it up with that thank you and last questions from vice president all right uh so the question is gonna be asked is one that was already you responded to in a packet what the packets are somewhat dated so i think it's important for us to provide opportunities to all those that are here presenting to respond to this have you had any risk litigation or significant conflict within the last 10 years with any of your clients so please tell us so um i will tell you this let me start with this in california we don't have any real disputes there have been a few uh across the country because we are a national company and we have acquired a few businesses that have had lawsuits already pending everything that we have gotten involved in litigation has always been resolved but i will tell you this that um the california team specifically the west coast team uh yeah and i mean for iraqis this way um no litigation we avoid it we resolve it we we're proactive we communicate we're transparent you know it's resolve the problems it's kind of a lean construction technique which is resolve the problems called last planner at the earliest and and best opportunity to resolve a situation so if it's a all of a sudden we find a conflict i've seen it where it's a great map four years ago but where the structural engineer is talking to the iron worker because there's a conflict between the anchor bolts and and the structural steel well they both work together and washed it for an hour she'd go can you do this he goes no i can't do that maybe i can do this she no can you do that and they worked out a problem for a hundred fifty thousand square foot mat poor it was magic so we really believe in taking care of the problem early on if a dispute is starting to come together bring the right people in the room and mediate it at the lowest possible level at the soonest time second question is once again uh this has been laid out from the documents that you've provided however the public should know and should get a snapshot of what your strategy is and how you you approach feeds please explain your pricing structure do you include automatic escalators and any overhead in your proposals please provide an example of items for which you would typically build a district so the way we bill is we developed a team we have an agreed to hourly rate and we bill for actual hours worked so these projects are going to do this one day it'll be one one two people might be seven back down so in real time you get to see at the end of every month who was working on a project in the description what they were doing and be able to know what we're charging so in our package i said what's called our ppme it showed my projected over three years uh all the work that was going to be done and who was going to perform the different aspects of the work once we come on board with you what we would do is take a look at that and then refine it and come to an agreement okay here's a gmp so with that you know what your exposure is we work to be as efficient as possible um we have a three percent a year that's standard in the industry uh escalation to our fee rate um so you know about it in advance you know when it's coming there's no surprises we you know we have to be your advocate we have to be your partner you you know we can't give you surprises we can't very transparent if we have expenses we'll let you know we'll get them approved in advance yeah if we see some big changes that we didn't expect we'll talk to you first we're not going to throw out a change order we're going to talk to you first and say hey you know this is really you know turned out to be what much different than what we play so at any given time we really hold to our budgets you always know what you're paying for and you always you know can challenge us thank you thank you very much now this concludes the question uh portion of our interview if you can uh patiently wait in the room next door and we will bring you in at the end when we make our decision okay thank you very much appreciate all of you thank you very much we'll have a three minute break in between uh the setup take down here take down the setup of the next firm see you back in three minutes and in that process just uh named the final firm we have tri group coming up there is something just opportunities and less reasons for see we're here and they're not okay so it's 8 13 um we are still waiting for the firms to set up so thank you public for your patience um not sure what's happening just waiting patiently so we just found out the reason it's taking a little longer is because they're in the computer lab so thank you public for your patience hopefully there's a root conditioner welcome you are our final firm yeah yes please it took us a little longer to bring you in since you were a little further thank you danielle and just give us a thumbs up when you're ready to book it we're good all right um so welcome uh this is tri group and we'll go ahead and start with your presentation portion and then after that we'll go into the questions and answer portion welcome you can join us at the podium and speak from the podium um for your presentation good evening adam a board president members of the board of trustees dr bauer mr chang good evening first of all i'd like to introduce my name myself my name is june roja from tri group and with me is mr brian rasmussen the vice president of the right group and dr peter parente also another vice president of tri group i'd like to thank all of you for inviting us to this interview it really is a pleasure for us to be here so with that we'll go ahead is it correct the board room is unneeded and the firm is moving is that correct all right thank you a couple seconds okay thank you this is a i'd like to go over about the right group our organization our project approach and team uh what's different about our firm and then we'll be happy to answer any questions from the board so tri grip has been uh in operation since 1987 and continuously for the last 34 years we're a firm with very diverse experience and we represent not only individuals with facilities experienced but we have previous administrators we have four former superintendents assistant superintendents we have four licensed architects in our firm engineers general contractors communication experts so we really have the depth that allows us to be able to provide service to our clients we're a medium-sized firm 48 personnel with offices in california in philippines and canada and we've managed over three billion dollars of direct uh program management construction management for uh school districts with their bond programs so with the composition of our team not only do we understand your challenges we've been there we can manage difficult conversations on behalf of alumni school district when that is ever necessary for us to do that we will do that and we don't shy away from that thank you so we are unique again as i said because of the composition of our firm and that allows us to be able to look at district bond programs not only from the perspective of someone with construction experience but also from an educator's standpoint because we believe at the end of the day a bond program should support student success and should support the curriculum so beyond buildings we build relationships and we only have one client in mind your students so for us our approach has always been it is never our bond program this is your bond program and we are here to help you in any way shape or form that you believe you want to take your bond program to so everyone in this field may know construction however our team knows the direct correlation between the built environment and student success and what you see is what we get we really feel our clients with staff that are seasoned so we don't bring in someone that would do on-the-job training we don't do that you know we really believe that the district should get what they pay for and that is with seasoned experience one of the things that really sets us apart is we have a communication and outreach plan we actually have a full-time staff uh that if we're fortunate enough to be selected for alan rocky in your school district we will have a full-time person helping the district communicate with its contingents so with that with the bond programs that we have managed even now currently for a large school district unified school district that we're helping with tri group introduced what we call a labor partners meeting and in that meeting we meet with all of your union presidents executives and we tell them what's going on with the bond program on your behalf we have done a lot of school site meetings we work with cboc because we believe that at the end of the day it's important for the public to know what the district is doing with the bond dollars and cboc plays a role in that aspect and so we really work with them again we we don't manage meeting were there as a support to the cboc they are in the independent body established by statutes especially if uh if if you've done a bond program uh you know the prop 39 that requires a cvoc we do social media on the district's behalf blog posts twitter facebook linkedin and we do a lot of community outreach and we do a lot of surveys on your behalf at the end of the day a bond program is measured whether or not it is on time and on budget because if it's not on time it impacts students if it's not on budget that means you have less money to spend on other programs that the board would want to accomplish and we also recognize that project schedules need to fit the educational calendar to make sure that students are not impacted by the projects and we will always work to make sure that your interests are protected one of the things that tri group developed for our clients is the art of a bond program and art stands for accountability responsibility and transparency we want to make sure that we represent you as the board to your community by making sure that the bond dollars are spent and that it is spent in a way that's accountable to the public that we take our responsibility seriously that we do everything that is written in your bond language that you have approved and that were transparent in that process and we want to make sure that not just from the beginning but each and every time a project starts we will meet with the community we will meet with your principals with your teachers so there are no surprises one of the things that we're very strong in is we tend to over communicate than not communicating or minimal communication our four focus areas deals with budget schedule record keeping communication and outreach these are the four pillars uh that we follow every time we manage a bond program again i've talked about budget and schedule but because sometimes some of your projects are supported by state money we want to make sure that your record-keeping is uh really solid and again we want to make sure that we communicate with you with your administration and cboc and the public and the staff so why to your right group first of all we recognize that public programs are a public trust and that trust demands accountability responsibility and transparency we will work with and hold all vendors and consultants to your district accountable because that's what you expect from us if you again if we're fortunate enough to be selected and a principle that we have practiced in our firm which we actually have developed is a dollar doctrine principle of a dollar doctrine what that simply means is that album rock school district when you pay someone including us all of your vendors your consultants contractors if you pay them a dollar you should get a dollar in return and perhaps a dollar twenty if we can even get that but the district should never get less than what it pays for and we are very committed to make sure that we do our best to make sure that you're getting that dollar whatever that contract amount may be and sometimes when that happens when we're really holding people accountable it leads to very difficult conversation but we can assure you that our team will always protect your interest i think this slide really represents why we're different you can see a lot of acronyms uh initialisms abbreviation right on the blue section are are those acronyms initialisms that pertains to the typical program construction management firm and right on the green are again acronyms initialisms abbreviations that the education side the curriculum side uses what's different and unique about the uri group because of our composition again with not just facilities uh folks but also educators is we understand each and every acronyms and acronym and abbreviation initials that's there for example the very end when you talk about ada in the blue section uh that's stands for if you're from a facilities frame of mind that's americans with disabilities on but when when you get to the green from the curriculum side it's average daily attendance so i think that's the strength that we offer uh to your district so what's uniquely different despite all the bells and whistles that you you'll hear from the firms we will put in seasoned professionals in your project and again for us we're not just consultants we want to be a partner with you we want to make a difference for you and the students because quite simply it is our passion thank you thank you and uh now we're moving to the question and answer portion of our interview and you have the questions in front of you on the table um we will then uh turn over to the laptop in front of you uh danielle is going to help us set that up and we will go down the questions as they are presented we'll go ahead and start with trustee ednesto by hidano who is joining us virtually and we'll present the first question uh trustee if you can give us a couple seconds to set up the audio go ahead okay quick sound check can you hear me all right good okay so thank you very much for the presentation uh we have the opportunity to submit one second trustee sorry about that president you can answer from where you're sitting yes thank you good okay we had the opportunity to submit several questions my question is kind of several questions in one so i'll just go ahead and read my question and i'd like to answer that so the question is do you have experience developing and implementing a district-wide solar energy program if no what is your familiarity with financing options available to districts and what would your approach and strategy be in developing a solar energy program in alam rock if yes please describe your experience and how it would be beneficial to the development of a solar energy program yes theo right group actually has a solid experience uh in developing and implementing a district-wide solar energy program in fact we just finished a 30 million dollar solar installation for hayward unified school district that encompasses 32 sites 32 school sites so what would be how would first of all we believe that it's very beneficial not only because it protects the environment saves the environment but from a financial standpoint it really saves the district's school money for example the project that we have the 30 million dollar project we have done would actually net the district over 60 million dollars for the life of the bond program uh and all that stevie's obviously helps the general fund you know the process that we believe districts should do first is to make sure that there is a feasibility study that is conducting an engineering study you look at the district's you know energy expenditures in the last 24 months and then you analyze what would the benefits of installing a solar program and when we talk about solar energy that is not just limited to the rooftop solars or the parking shade solars what we've done uh when working with our clients is we encourage them to look at energy storage battery storage we look at ev electric electric vehicle charging stations because all of that can include can actually result in additional savings for the district so you do the feasibility study if it makes sense you do an rfq you you know you vet the potential vendor that will do this and there's a specific government code that will help school districts determine and vet some of those firms so again it's a very quick way to say that yes we've done it we've worked with other school districts other than hayward greenfield for example school district is in the process of implementing that we've worked with them and so so yes we've done it thank you the next portion will be presented by trustee evening family thank you okay yeah i am okay uh when you give the board a summary of the cost control and accountability procedures you use with contractors and subcontractors to ensure that a project stays within its allocated budget and timeline to the extent possible while ensuring compliance with all labor and workplace safety laws i'll ask the brian rosenstein to respond thank you so the the reality is a budget is made during the design of a project and not during construction and while managing it during construction is really important it is really important to be managing the architect through the design process and doing cost estimating and checkpoints along the way to make sure that the project is designed to be within budget in the first place once you move to the construction phase there are various controls that we can put in place we track things so during the course of construction simple things like what's called a request for information an rfi issued by a contractor you can tell based on the question whether there's potentially cost associated with it so while you don't have a change order yet from the contractor we track those things as potential exposures and costs so that we can see where we're falling towards and against the budget relative to um you know on the big picture so that we know how much money we have left and where we stand and you can also track that relative to time over the course of the project and just have a general feel for whether you're having numerous issues up front and you're heading towards a budget problem and that you may need to implement some other measures in order to correct that the question also talks about timelines uh contractors need to submit schedules we typically make pay applications monthly on projects contingent upon having a construction schedule submitted so that we have checkpoints what their perspective is you generally develop just a feel for the project and to know how it's tracking time wise but the bottom line is they don't get paid until they've submitted all the proper paperwork that allows us to monitor the project and make sure that it's tracking on schedules so that you end up with a project on budget and on schedule when it's completed next question uh could you need a time when your firm has had a conflict with a contractor and elaborate on how your firm resolved that conflict to ensure the timely progress of the bond finance project okay i'll use a recent example and i mean i would say off the bat you know we are the district's agent so if there's a conflict we're representing the district and it's a conflict with the district that we're trying to help mitigate and manage but we were recently asked to take over a 60 million dollar project that was mid-course was close to a year behind schedule was having significant budget issues and we stepped in and so our first thing was to immediately do an analysis the project what was going on and what was happening and what we learned was it all boiled down to more of a personality issue between the design team and the contractor and a failure to communicate in a proper manner and by stepping in we brought in the principles of those firms and had a meeting to talk about communication and the staff assigned and we were able then to work through that and the project moved forward much more fluidly after that and we were able to successfully complete the project for the district at the end of the day though it is the district's money and we need to have that in our best interest so we can't allow a contractor that's looking for expenditures that they're not entitled to and there are mechanisms in most contracts that allow the district to force the contractor to proceed and it can be resolved at a later date that's like a last resort but you know there are legal terms within most construction contracts that allow the district to not allow it to end up stopping a project causing yet further issues with schedule and or budget time is money so that equates to you know an issue for the contractor if the time extends they have more overhead and you need to look at that and mitigate that as part of the process thank you the next questions will be presented by trustee linda chavis [Music] oh i'm sorry i wanted to just skip over my questions okay so the next question is have you been a part of any questionable behavior how would you deal with a board member or staff asking you to be involved in any questionable activity for example thank you for the question madame president first of all theo right group has never been a part of any questionable behavior have we been around it yes but we have never been a part of that and how would we deal with it with a board member or staff asking to be involved in pressured questionable activity quite simply we won't and our firm principle is simply this we would much rather lose the contract than be a part of any questionable or fraudulent activity why because at the end of the day students feel and parents feel that the school district their schools are the safest places for them and if we don't do our job managing and and being accountable to the public funds because it's going to questionable activities the students are the one that gets hurt and they're the ones that will not see the value of the community supporting the bond measure because it's not directly benefiting them because going to other inappropriate activities so our position on that is very strong in fact uh as a firm to ri group never on our own while we are let me rephrase that we are always available to you to the board members to administration to answer questions at any time but it is not our practice to actually go out to individual board members and communicate with you directly behind the scenes we just won't do that but if you have questions we're more than happy to answer that we follow the district approved process we will do everything that we believe is right for your district and for your students so again to the point that we're willing to lose a contract and walk away from a contract if we are ever uh exposed to that and and if we have to take action to surface that with you or board or administration we will do that thank you thank you next question how would you deal with the delay in a project when would you let the district staff know about any delays do you have an example of any delays in any of the projects you have been a part of and how did you deal with that so our normal course of action in working with the district is there's typically you know whoever our point of contact is we're having regular meetings with them so instance at the moment working with hayward unified we have a standing weekly meeting at the project level and we have a standing weekly meeting at the program level so if things are suspected that they're going south as far as the schedule and there might be a delay on the project it would be discussed at one of those meetings depending on what it's related to if something is escalating and becoming more urgent then we're working we're reaching out directly at the time we become aware of any thing that might be impacting the project that whatever the facilities team or whoever we're interact with needs to be kept apprised of what's happening so we're doing that constantly i mean and as i talked about earlier we get schedules monthly at least from the contractor your general walk of the job site through the course of every week you can get a feel for whether a project is tracking or not they the contractor also weekly has to supply you just a short look ahead over the next couple of weeks you can track whether they're falling off of that course those are all red flags to start to indicate that there might be a problem so we are constantly communicating and if there is anything major happening on the project the district is the first point of contact to immediately notify them that anything may be happening as far as recent recent projects as i mentioned that project that we took over construction there were a number of delay issues relative to that the contractor had fallen behind on submitting the schedules um you know we literally ended up holding three months of payments until they got caught up with the schedule procedure it's important that that data is provided otherwise you can lose control and not know where you stand it is important to constantly make sure that the required documents are there to make the contractor accountable for what they're doing thank you and now custody okay indoor air quality is at the center of concerns about how schools can safely open during a pandemic what would you do to solve the air quality issues uh in allen rock thank you for your question even long before the pandemic we knew that indoor air quality mattered when it came to student uh success and uh teacher success um as a long time teacher myself and school principal i could see that in classrooms when um indoor air was getting stale or when doors and windows were kept closed and the air conditioning was just recirculating 100 percent of that air so when co2 levels go up students get sleepy um especially after lunch i will say now we've also seen indoor air quality affected by the pandemic and fire smoke so at this point we know that technologies have been have improved and we're looking at increased hepa filters the ability to in pull in fresh air at all times when that's safe to do so and to make sure that also there are efficiency measures in place so that machines aren't running all day and all night long and we can also make sure that the systems are actually up and running each and every school day i would uh also recommend as uh my experience tells me that it still lands at the end of the day with some sense of control in the classroom by the teacher who can make sure that the temperature is adjusted accordingly without having a separate centralized control at the district office where somebody else determines what the ambient temperature should be um so thank you for your question anything else to add to you i'd like to add too uh that this obviously is very important topic right now we currently uh uh are doing what we call the covet risk assessment for one of our clients that we are actually going uh room by room not only sorry i think the timer just changed but real briefly in addition to just air quality we want to make sure that there are uh face mask available gloves the uh sanitizers all that so we're checking room by room and i and i believe uh districts as a matter of course and practice should be doing that along with air filtration systems thank you besides all of the five projects that a previous board approved in 2014 and bond money was available and supposed to be spent to finish those border-proof projects in your expert opinion what are the safety issues that are needed to be addressed first and immediately and have you looked up the scope of the work on the emg report in 2018 the issues that need addressing [Music] so thank you for the question first of all i think with where we are right now the the priority issue should be the ventilation hvac system right because we don't know when this pandemic will end so i believe of the the the projects that should take precedence and be prioritized would be hvac systems in addition to that there are some day-to-day things that i believe exists in alum rock right now for example in your playgrounds in your pavement areas there are a lot of alligator not just alligator cracks but really deep depressions that potentially if you have not experienced a great deal of it yet that students can get hurt so i think anything that's related to safety should be addressed playgrounds so um those would be what we believe if you have a certain limited amount of money uh all of it should be uh focused towards what is going to be creating a safe environment for your students do you have anything just as a i mean at hayward unified again when we started with that broke bond program two and a half years ago our team i mean myself i'm a licensed architect and a licensed general contractor we put three teams together and we did our own visual site assessments and walked every single campus walked into every classroom we took photographs we developed the matrix of conditions of different things not in a detailed sense but we can you know come in and help you identify the issues and walk your sites and look for things and then we can work with you and your staff to prioritize that based on budget and funding available and i could add one more caveat to that i just finished a facilities master plan recently for a school district in california the teachers and the principals knew where the safety hazards were they're the ones getting the injury reports at the office manager's desk and they could point out which crack needed filling or which trip hazard or other issue became apparent so part of this assessment is actually listening to the staff on the campus thank you and the next uh last but not least questions will be provided by vice president some of these questions were asked in the the initial information or the rfp those that was put out but um it's been a while the information is somewhat dated so i wanted to provide the opportunity for all firms to go ahead and respond to this uh have you had any recent litigation or significant conflict uh within the last 10 years with any of your clients and so please collaborate thank you for the question uh mr quintero tri group has never been sued or any claims have been brought against us not just in the last 10 years but since the existence of the firm for the last 34 years so we have never been involved in litigation we've never been sued we've never had any significant in fact let's say we've never had any conflict with any of our clients um so we're it's again integrity is very important to our firm as i've said earlier we'd much rather walk from a contract than be part of anything that's questionable um so we're happy to report to you that you know our answer to this is very brief because we've just never have been involved in these kinds of situations thank you all right the next one is please explain your pricing structure you include automatic escalators and any overhead in your proposals please provide an example of items for which you typically build a district once again the this is information that's here the idea is to allow the public to be aware of what what they're in for because they're ultimately the ones that are paying for this thank you we really looked at uh you know being a former um school district administrator we've been all of us actually have been a lot of our team members have been on the other side and one of the things that i believe is important is for school districts to deal with credible and reputable firm that once a contract has been agreed upon that is a contract right so as a matter of course once it's been signed we don't even look at the contract again because we know that we are so focused in delivering quality work for you the board the administration again but most importantly for your students so when we look we basically look at our pricing this way once there is an agreed upon price that is our price we never go back to you asking you for additional money uh or again nickel and diming the district that's never been our practice in fact we give a lot of freebies to our clients we never charge them for the only time that we would go back to the district to revisit the fee is that the district wants us to do something that's over and beyond what was in the original scope of the program and we believe that is a reasonable conversation to have because when things change then you know there's a potential uh additional efforts uh that might be required so we would like to have that conversation but if everything has been defined by the district and once we agreed on that fee we guarantee that we will never go back to you for additional fees we will finish it from start to end and part again of our principles in the end if we didn't do our calculation right and we end up losing money we lose money we will never go back and ask for more that's just that's just how we operate as simple as that there's a fee agreed upon and we stick to that fee we'll never ask you for anything extra thank you so much and this concludes our interview for today um if you can please uh wait in the room while we figure things out and then call you back at some point thank you for your patience and uh great thank you very much that's the opportunity to be here thank you thank you so trustees at this point uh we will tally up our scores we will submit our forms um our staff will then support us in telling everything up and putting the totals together and then presenting those at some point i see jess at the podium do you have anything to add mr serna well um we're almost there um um at this point you have the four sheets on your laptop um i think and if you need some assistance that maybe down the end may help you if you think you need it at the end of each you press the submit button that score gets submitted and then we will tabulate all the scopes at the end um i i don't know um if you will need to have any more public comments at any point at this point uh prior to probably just prior to your vote i believe that phone call yes thank you um so during this time as we are telling up um our google forms just uh wanting to ask my peers and uh necessarily see you here um are you okay with having public comment first and then finalizing our forms uh i i already submitted and we got to figure out this um i think we need to put our i can't hear you ernesto so we need to figure out so i can hear what you're saying um give us one second and thank you all for your patience as you all know we're doing our best to ensure that our public is involved that we're as transparent as possible that we're able to do i'll deal with all the technical difficulties so thank you for um being patient with us let's try it again trustee can you hear me yes okay i already pushed my submit button on all of my so mine are submitted so i'm okay either way okay um are you all okay he's okay with taking public comment at this time any oppositions to taking public comment at this time okay so mr chavez can you help us with public comment um any members of the public wishing to address the board uh yes madam president at this time we have no public comment okay um okay i'll wait a couple seconds see if we have anybody pressing on that button do we now there's still none okay all right so at this time uh we will finalize the completion of our google forms um danielle is here to help us if we need support in submitting any of the forms thank you and thank you public for your patience if i make president uh that i i believe our staff will be able to allow you allow to display the final totals at the end correct so we are going to be submitting the forms and then allowing time for staff to gather that so again public thank you for your patience okay i'm guessing jose and danielle are involved with the receiving and uh you all will let us know when we have that total um thank you again public for your patience and thank you staff for working so hard no pressure this is where we should have some background music i know right linda's gonna sing a song for us nice can you hear me yes well since we're waiting i'll take a quick opportunity to wish uh an alumrock graduate my daughter a happy 16th birthday we talked last month about our last meeting about how we all parents and families and teachers how we all work through a lot of special events to all of us and you know this it just speaks to the importance of this work that we're doing that we all make the decisions to you know i know people have worked through anniversaries and birthdays and things so so happy birthday to my daughter and and you know we're again it just shows the commitment all of us as a community have to getting this work done and doing it right happy birthday to her can you say her name her full name yes for sochi beautiful happy birthday thank you for letting your dad hang out with us i swear it would be more fun to be hanging out with you oh my so ernesto what type of cake did you buy for her 16th birthday uh we're actually gonna go do something tomorrow because of tonight's meeting so she'll she'll she'll let us know that tomorrow so we're postponing it delaying it for one day i thought you were going to say you're going to sing a song but i mean i'm not i'm not a singer will be thankful for that yay we're almost we're almost there public exciting times so a day we've a lot of us have been waiting for especially those of us in this room and trustee in his home [Music] so are we gonna is are all of the um applicants gonna come into the room and then we're gonna pop it on the screen or do we know what that process is gonna look like already good question yeah maybe we can good question and dr um bauer just mentioned that we can probably bring in the reps um to then have that total be seen by all of us at the same time for safe percussion reasons unfortunately we can't have everybody here um but uh jess you know more or less the timing should we start calling in the reps the representation they have two or three right reps the from each three more or four the three people per person there will be 12 people i don't know if that's too many yeah or maybe we group them in each kind of corner they want to all come in um [Music] make sure yeah let's do that safety precautions especially with this variant and our numbers going up so let's call in the representatives whoever they choose to um get that total um and you know more or less the timing because i know it'll take some time to bring them in and maybe we can start bringing them in one performer we'll get we'll get a copy of this um will we get a copy with the spreadsheet of everybody's total yeah like you know because we'll see the totals here but i mean the one that has everybody exposing like everything that we put the last time we saw the one with everything kind of like how in my appointment interview yeah yeah yeah we saw everything i think that's been the kind of the practice that we've developed over time for appointments and i think i remember seeing just everybody's scores and i think that was even initially part of the purpose of the the google forms kind of thing is to be able to automatically tabulate collect and visualize all those scores let me uh ask staff and make sure that that's how i just don't want to say yes right and that's not what they have but it all makes sense exactly what you're all seeing mr cernak can you confirm that if we're going to have so we're going to have kind of a help we've had when mr pham was appointed when i was appointed um we'll have a total on the screen but that will have access to or even on the screen i guess it would be shown you want access to the individual sport well that's a question for danny yes please so if that's going to take a little longer so you can let them know if you can check in with them right i know they're coordinating that right now danielle are you listening to us and i don't expect yes okay awesome thank you we have awesome staff all around i think if we've collected it as we did in the past hopefully it's this when you do it like that it automatically populates a google sheet so hopefully that'll be visible available yes come on in as we're all waiting patiently anxiously like waiting for our final grade just a reminder to everybody thank you for your patience it's our first time back having this hybrid mode uh learning about you know what creates echoes what where we need to turn on and off so um but we have great staff taking care of things as they pop up so blessed with that i know that um every meeting let's roll back hopefully and are able to be back um it'll just get better and better and that we're able to provide um continue to provide the transparency the information um to our public and all those that have an interest in what we're doing here at alan rock um just very proud of uh everything that we've done already uh where we've been and what we've been through to where we're at now and where we're going so anxiously waiting the for the outcome and uh looking forward to continue to work with you all in one way shape or form you never know and i heard that i broke a record of our last board meeting up ending early so now i'm working on breaking my own record today it didn't happen but in the future in the future it might it might always another chance i have till december and at the rate we're going we're having special board meetings every uh every week it seems like so i'll have plenty of opportunities so when we get the totals hopefully it's clear well either way you know we have to break a tie you know we'll do that but if it's clear then um at that point we've already done public comments we will ask for the motion for that law that firm i'm sorry and then a second and then vote on it can i ask a question about the process now or do you want to wait until we get to that motion i think since we have time it's good to ask questions now um i know we mentioned we have the alternate questions that we're going to go with if there is a type um and then break the tie in that way okay so my question is once we get to the point um to be kind of finishing up the process here is the is what the staff needs is it a emotion that reflects the actual decision of the firm that's chosen or is it more in the form of a recommendation because um i'm assuming that once we give our get our results tonight there's some potential negotiation that needs to occur with regards to pricing and you know just all of the the specifics and maybe some further reference type work so i'm just wondering if we're going to be um putting on the table a motion to just like solid move forward with this firm or the recommendation that staff moves forward in vetting the firm and then moving forward as appropriate good question and you just reminded me of a conversation we had um so yes you're right uh it won't be just a solid because we do have some pending facts and some of the things you mentioned and then also um our staff will be looking jess do you want to go into more detail on that any other information it sounded like the question was after the is displayed there will be a vote on behalf of the board will officially vote to select the top rated firm to be the permits yes but also pending um we i remember i was talking about pending a background correct that's correct yes um and so making sure that we're clear on that right before we present that um so do you want to talk about those details or do you want me to go in further all right i think okay i know we have it in writing because i know we've discussed this so cover if you can help us maybe with that i know we put it in writing um i do remember and or just correct me if i'm missing anything um that um based on today's winner um it'll still be pending the background check further uh background check and then just like trustee picarano mentioned you know contracts and details um to be worked out and insured by both parties um am i missing anything on that cabrera no i don't think can you hear me yes um no i don't think so um here says the firm receiving the highest high score will be selected as the finalist and will be subject to a thorough background check if the final list is not clear background check the runner-up will be selected as the finalist and will be subject to a thorough background check and this process will continue until the fine is the final list clears background check so i hope that was clear thank you chelsea for your questions um any and good question and i'm glad we're saying that before uh we select the final one so i really appreciate that um any questions comments on that item good point that trustee personal is making okay i think daniel is ready to display the uh final tabulation uh one second daniel uh before we do that trustee so i heard that you know it is pending background checks but i know that in part of the questions that that we asked um the firms to respond to it also makes reference to pricing being negotiable so do we want to put into our motion specifically background check or should we just say some pending further um final vetting by the district by district staff or something like that and then that would include background checks any negotiation that needs to happen around pricing and any other things that that you know staff needs to cover i just i'm just a little worried that if we say background checks only but then they pass the background checks but if we can't come to some agreement on pricing then we kind of get stuck in a little something there so agreed and maybe um at the time when we make that motion if you want to make that motion and then somebody can second in um i think we're ready for the results um so as soon as we see the results if you want to put that motion out including that i like that the betting um and then hopefully one of us will second that and then we'll move forward thank you just and um are we ready yes okay without further ado here we go okay so we see the totals um trustee vegarano i i don't know if you want to help us with the motion um based on this are we going to see the the individual votes as well i couldn't hear somebody said something but actually so we could scrutinize those later we see the finals so can we i'm ready to make a motion i mean i'm just thinking in the interest of the public just to be like hyper transfer [Music] and if anybody sees some issues with um but the scores aren't reflecting when you submit it then now is the time to speak well we wouldn't know if it reflected what we submitted unless we saw the scores right can you hear me can you repeat that yeah i said we wouldn't know if it reflected the scores that we submitted individually unless we see the the individual tallies and again i'm i'm you know maybe going a little overboard but i just doing this and i guess in an abundance of transparency to make sure that it's very particularly with this um this specific contract that we're just super transparent about the selection process and especially because it's it's a very close vote so you know my my thought is just in the interest of being very transparent about how things were scored and not having to come back to that at a later date based on some questioning agreed let me check them with stuff okay danielle are you able to uh put the totals um per trustee and our submissions on a table okay he is working on that so thank you for your patience and i agree um [Music] a couple minutes more i hate to say i hate to add to the the time here but you know i just i think it's important no we're all with you uh trust me but i know we're all in agreement uh just trying to manage your the speaker here your voice the mu button believe me uh allowing you to speak pausing speaking but know that our staff are working diligently right now behind the scenes to get that information out and i'm in agreement for transparency reasons so thank you all for your patience okay here we have it uh the totals and um i'll leave them up i know each one will probably want to confirm that our numbers are correct so um as you can see the name of the firm is on top and the totals are okay i there that's i mean at this point i think first of all thank you um staff will say or whoever um is doing this it's an important part of the work tonight and i think at this point it's sufficient anyone who has questions can look at the youtube video or you know wherever they need you to reference it but now we've shown the votes so at this point then i would make a motion to um for us to have staff move forward with the top um top points for um as our as our firm that we contract with for this work uh pending any final vetting necessary by staff that's the motion [Music] i would suggest that uh maker of the motion to say who who the top scorer the person who got the top support or the organization that top square that way there's no question once again uh trustee if you can repeat the total scores as uh board vice president quintero suggested um do you need him to repeat that um i'll i can i just amend the motion to reflect that the top point getter is the coming firm followed by kich kicho jenkins gales and martinez and try group in the event of the need to go down the list based on that vetting process that i mentioned perfect uh yes and it was just seconded by vice president quintero and at this point i'm going to go ahead and call for the vote unless there's any questions comments or concerns by any of the trustees before we go there okay see none uh go ahead and just call your name as uh i have you here and on the screen uh trustee linda chavez trustee minfam and myself i'm passes unanimously uh thank you so much um so uh welcome cummings and thank you to all of you for uh interviewing with us tonight and uh we look forward to continue to be in community somehow or other uh and um yeah thank you everybody thank you public for your patience in this uh first hybrid meeting um and we'll see you soon again yes adjourning this meeting at 9 23. thank you good night