001Board of Education meeting for Monday October 24th if everyone could please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and uh tonight we are going to start out with an RPS showcase tonight we have art students from the high school uh students of uh Dana Phelan with us this evening the first hi my name is Harrison beckenstein and um no the ghosts of Ridgefield so in art room g210 we are given the opportunity to discover many academic Fields like the cycle in which we learn um it feels like we get sorry it feels like school is a cycle sometimes we learn study and get tested rhs art program
002has given so many students including myself a place to step out of the norm and into one's mind and creativity on the left you will find a sculpture I made using metal and strong it represents what culture means to me each part of the sculpture signifies something different for example the butterfly wings are not to various species in South America and how the progress of migration feels coming from to and from the states not only do we challenge ideas in our class but we practice skills and techniques we study human form and other artists and take a closer look at the world around us the piece is a drawing I made with pencil that represents the study of movement I believe that art is a way to engage with nature and the tangible things we
003prioritize this class is more than just a therapeutic Outlet it's a way to challenge ideas thinking and our perceptions it's gonna be hard to power that one up but um uh my name is John O'Connor um a little bit about me uh before so I get a background of what my art is I play hockey at the high school as well as being our student which explains to the boot but um I uh I got into graphic design recently and I love logo design um especially anything that it has to do with mascots so in this class I've learned Advanced art um that uh the creative background in brainstorming is these are the hardest and most important part of any art piece including my field and logos um so what's on the screen now is
004everything that you know just a rough brainstorm um and literally just a piece of uh my Sketchbook which is why you could see like the cowboy stuff in it which has nothing to do with this piece but um yeah so it goes uh along with the uh rough sketches of the robin head all the way to the final sketch and then the graphic of that eventually um so probably one of the more simple things that you'll see here today but um a lot goes into it and uh I was like I'm lucky enough to you know go to a school where they um really educate us on um on computer arts and being someone who is the least tech savvy person um and it's kind of ironic that I'm in computer arts but uh I
005I love it and I was able to pick it up really easily based on um I'll help give it to you thank you thank you Ryan all right so hello okay hi my name is Chelsea Bonnie um for me with the art program it was helpful that I get to express myself I don't get to express myself really with like any other subjects so I was the only way I can show my true feelings and um put my thoughts down on papers as you can see with my first piece I used my real hand and I was supposed to be like a like a resolution a representation of me um reaching out and reaching out for help I tend to have a big problem with not reaching out to people and asking for help so
006do this um it's just to show that um I'm I'm you know trying to like trying my best to like reach out to someone and actually ask them out for help instead of being stubborn about it uh as you can see with the second piece we were given a topic which was basically childhood toys um it's a work in progress I promise to finish it by Friday but it's basically about um instead of like having a specific toy I wanted to talk about like a certain era in my life where I was basically grown up by the internet and how it influenced me and influenced my art I took the cartoon approach since a lot of the things I grew up on were cartoons and basically 2000 like early 2000s anime as you can see
007by like a lot of the designs that um are displayed around the character so yeah the art program was rhs's art program was the only one that really displayed that gave me the opportunity to display this idea than any other subject in my opinion thank you Chelsea hi my name all right hi my name is Amelia and um these are my paintings so just to give like a background of what I'm into uh usually I really like doing portraiture so that means either pencil drawings or like oil paint oil paintings and both of those are kind of unfinished but I kind of wanted to like start by showing off how um I was developing artistically before I um I took art classes at rhs so you can do the next slide so um with my
008the classes that I took at rhs um it's forced me to think more about how I use color and space and how I think more creatively instead of just um copying down uh what's in front of me or in a picture so as you can see um I kind of uh I kind of was a little more imaginative in these pieces and I um both of them are digital so that kind of challenged me a little bit and then just the last slide so finally um this is my actually my most recent work is on the right side and it's not completely finished but one thing that I would never have thought to have done is to just like splatter ink on a page and then after I went over it and white marker and
009I was just kind of thinking about how um to use positive and negative space and I just wanted to conclude that the classes at rhs forced me to think about um prompts and questions and kind of um ponder about ideas and they forced me to um put them down on paper and express myself in a way that I wouldn't be able to do any other way my name is um to go off what Amelia was saying um I get uh challenged by my teacher Miss Phelan to try new prompts different ideas and so our uh our high school we did this poster uh the library where uh we had to kind of look at the banned books that are Across the Nation and we had to come up with the poster this idea and normally
010I wouldn't have tackled this because I like photography I like kind of portraits and Landscapes and you know postages aren't my thing but my uh future Miss Phelan uh told me to kind of like look into it maybe if I could um see how I could kind of use my background in photography to go after this so what you see the first one is my first portrait I ever made that was uh this year a couple like a month or so ago and uh it actually really captivated me I had such a great time making it and I learned a lot I learned about just you know composition and kind of making everything seem like a bit together and so after that I started my journey and I uh I moved on to those two
011other posters which I made afterwards I kind of found this passion away from more photography and more bass into photoshopping uh design and um AP Studio Art has been been able to give me like an environment a space where I can learn I can improve and uh space for me to explore my new interests and I appreciate this feeling and the program for being there for that hi is this can everyone hear me yeah well uh hi I'm Cassie um I love the art program a lot um you know struggling with anxiety for a very very long time you know it's hard to find places in school where I feel safe and having the art room having the ability to do my art in school and just feel safe and okay that's invaluable that's invaluable
012not just to me but to so many other people I mean I love expressing myself um as I said I love drawing things that represent me and I got more on the second slide that's a bit less colorful um you know I like drawing color I like drawing black and gray especially by black and gray um there is a second slide right yeah that's my second slide um this the first one over there um I kind of pushed myself that was the first time I really did black and gray maybe like second time actually um and it's just like a normal pencil an eraser um and it was pretty fun I had a lot of fun doing it I didn't do it in school but I took a lot of inspiration from my classes you
013know pushing myself I did a lot of sketches like outside of this which was super helpful I mean I just it was a great way for me to be creative and I did that in the second one too um I never do collages ever like it's not my thing but you know I was really pushed to try something new and try to explore different themes and I'm forever grateful for that and I'm forever grateful that I have a space where I can feel it thank you hi I'm Kaylin um the art room has always been my favorite room uh we are given the opportunity to explore new ideas in depth and create pieces that are unique to each individual the rhs art program Strays away from the normal school Conformity and encourages students to think
014differently and outside the box it also creates a comfortable space where students can think outside of their normal academics and express their emotions um I really liked what Cassie was saying I feel like our room is really the same thing for me um I just started taking an art class last year my junior year um and I immediately I found people that I love talking to on a daily basis and love doing my work with and loved it's like really a room where you can express yourself creatively in each person like gives their own opinion on your pieces and it's very collaborative and this feeling just makes it like a very very comfortable place to do your work and stuff um so the two pieces on there the one on the right was done by
015pen these both were last year and the one on the left was done by charcoal and yeah I just think the rhs program is the largest art program is like the best program in the school because it just brings a whole bunch of people who love the same thing together thank you so unfortunately my friend Maddie could not be here today but I'm just going to talk a little bit a lot of work so she's a very outgoing and enthusiastic person and I think you can kind of get that by your artwork but she asked me to read this card so I'm just going to speak for her he said art has always been a way for me to express myself and get my thoughts on a paper with the rhs art program I can
016um I can share with the stress of my classes that there's a balance between arts and academics and the rhs art program has been a wonderful experience and I've made great memories so you can kind of just tell that she expresses her thoughts and feelings um onto paper it's just a bunch of different colors and lines and she's a very unique person thank you thank you thank you for sharing your work with us truly impressive work really inspiring to hear what it means to you and it sounds like the art room at rhs is really a great place to find incredibly talented thank you okay now before we convene in an executive session do I have a motion I move that the Board of Education can be in an executive session for the purpose of
017discussing school security inviting superintendent Susie de Silva assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction Corey Gillette assistant superintendent social services Elizabeth Hadaway the director of personnel care and doing the Director of Finance Jill Brown uh the facilities manager Joe Moritz representatives from First Responders Academy Academy Gary McNamara and Josh Zieman and Ridgefield chief of police Jeff creitz and I don't believe um Jill Brown is with us to see Jill Brown is going to be listening ill she's quite um listening in she's quite ill today so you won't be seeing her and likely won't be hearing from her but she's here in spirit literally wait a second Divya all in favor