001[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Good evening. Today is May 1st, 2025. This is a workshop at Crosby High School. The JRTC will present colors and say pledge. You got to stand. We all got to stand. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Order. Right. Vote for Got to slide. Hey [Music] We will now have a silent prayer. [Music] We will now have the principal's report. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor Pernuski, President Hernandez, Vice President Brown, Secretary Srano Adorno, Board of Education Commissioners and Board of Education student reps, and some of our fellow Crosby Bulldogs. My name is Saxon Toms and
002I'm the student council president here at Crosby. I will be attending Yukon Stores in the fall and saying that because it is national. Thank you. And we would like to welcome all of you to Crosby High School. We are so excited to share all the improvements that we have made over the past few years. And I have been privileged to witness the difference between our school from what it was to what it is now. To tell you about all of this, we have Mr. Verino Crosby alum to share. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Saxon. Thank you and good evening. Um we are really excited uh for all of you to be here tonight. Um we take this opportunity to showcase all the improvements that we made very seriously. Uh we are so excited um
003to share some of our improvements with all of you. Uh so Crosby High School, home of the Bulldogs. Um we did provide each one of you uh a presentation in the folders um that you have received. We also provided a gift. Uh it is uh wrapped so uh we encourage all of you to open it up um at your leisure but uh we're excited to you know not only welcome you into our home but also to provide you with a little something to say thank you. So we are Crosby uh Crosby High School home of the Bulldogs. Uh we are Waterberry's largest uh public school. Our current enrollment is 1428. Uh we are also home uh to the early college high school through Post University where our students here at Crosby, a select cohort of
004students have the opportunity to obtain their associates degree from Post University prior to graduating from Crosby High School. Here at Crosby, we have an outstanding leadership team. Uh in addition to myself, um we have Miss Kathleen Newark, who unfortunately is not here tonight. uh she is at an awards ceremony for her daughter who will be uh attending law school uh in the fall at Western New England College. But in addition to Miss Newark, uh we have Mr. Jason Martinez, Mr. Shawn Mosley, and Miss Cara Riley. Here at Crosby, uh we preach teamwork and uh we are able to do some of the amazing things for students because of many different adults in this building, most of which are here today. Uh we have a very strong team and together united we have been successful. We
005have work to do. We obviously know that. But thanks to the work of teachers, counselors, the social workers, support staff, security staff, our school resource officer, uh pair professionals, our admin assistants of course, and the maintainers who who I think have done a tremendous job uh preparing this room. We have done some amazing things for students within our building. Now, we realize at Crosby um we need to improve and we need to improve daily, but we have been unified over the past couple years in order to improve. Now, we've had many different focus areas. There's there's too many to count, but we've had a laser-like focus on five specific areas when it comes to safety, of course, academics, 9th grade on track status, student attendance, and student behavior. And we have seen gains in all
006of those areas. We've done this daily by having a sense of urgency and adopting a growth mindset. We've set goals and we work daily to achieve those goals. We knew that a couple years ago because of the challenges that we've had, we needed to start from scratch. We knew that we needed to adopt new core values that not only are adopted by our students, but also by our staff. You see the acronym before you, uh, the acronym grit, like a bulldog growling. Um, we needed to adopt these core values. Our students now live by them. Our staff lives by them. and they are pictured all over our building. Having a growth mindset, being respectful, responsible, resilient, showing great integrity, and and most importantly being great teammates. This is our school. Our school and together, all
007right, we work to be successful. Now, we are really excited to highlight some of the improvements that we've made when it comes to safety. We have implemented many different procedures within our building that make our students safe on a daily basis. But one aspect of safety that we're really excited about is the way in which we have implemented the revised technology policy that we adopted at the beginning of this year. Each day our students come into our building, their yonder pouches are checked to make sure that they are secure. We also have the opportunity to take down student IDs and the administration gets an opportunity to speak with all students that walk into our building to make sure that they are aware of the policy to make sure that they're accountable for the policy and
008to make sure that the focus in our building is on learning, not technology or not some type of of of issue related to technology. And we are happy to announce that we have successfully implemented the policy. Our teachers do an amazing job reporting any violations and then the administration and the sports staff do a great job of enforcing the revised technology policy. At Crosby, we have work to do, but we have seen improvement in nine out of 12 of the next generation accountability measures. Some of which we're really excited about is our growth in post-secary entrance, which we've um over the past year have gone from 47% of our students attending a four-year or a two-year college to 54%. We've also seen great gains when it comes to our graduation rate. And also uh when
009it comes to the last links assessment where our ESL students improved by 11% in the literacy component and over 14% in the um oral component of the last links assessment. That's a tribute to not only our students but we have a great great some of which are here tonight uh ESL staff including our teacher of the year Julie Janetti. [Applause] you know this this show um the slideshow was I think 40 slides uh long so I am u you know uh using a a faster pace and the presentation you have before you is that original uh slideshow but we have shortened it um but one thing we did not want to overlook was our grade 11 SAT performance uh four years ago less le than 1% I repeat less than 1% of our students were
010proficient on the math portion of the grade 11 SAT currently um you know it's it's preliminary data we've increased over 10% last year 7% of our students uh rece uh achieved proficiency on the grade 11 u math portion of the SAT and looking at preliminary data now that's even uh more this year when it comes to evidence-based reading and writing. Last year we were at um uh the prior the excuse me the 22 23 school year we were at 16%. Last year we rose to 21% proficiency and we expect that to rise again looking at preliminary data this school year. Ninth grade ontrack status has also improved here at Crosby. We have work to do, of course, but we've seen a 6% increase from last year to the current state this year. Thanks to the
011work of Miss Riley and the grade nine team in collaboration with the RISE network, we see currently an 84 84% of our grade nine students are receiving six or more credits and are on track. more improvement, more data to share when it comes to chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is an area of focus not only for Crosby, but for all Waterberry Public Schools. 9th grade chronic absenteeism is an area of focus for not only all of Waterberry public schools, but definitely for for Crosby. And we've used a laser-like focus to look at the data to determine which of our students are at risk. And we are so proud to announce that we've seen an 8% decline. And just today, uh, we've seen the lowest amount of students that were absent from school. So, we truly expect
012that 8% to grow to as much as 10% by the end of the school year. And we are excited that we are getting back to our post-pandemic numbers here at Crosby. And then after we reach those numbers, we we we intend to improve even more. Lastly, when it comes to student behavior, um, three years ago, it was very important for us at Crosby to think differently. We realized that suspending students and expelling students, that wasn't making our our school any better. That wasn't making our community uh any better. So, we've decided to think a little differently when it comes to behavior. And we are proud to announce that last year we saw a 10% 10% decrease in our suspension rate. That is not because all right we do not suspend. We do but we think
013differently prior to suspending a student for for some of their misbehaviors or or some of the things that we find are violating violating uh the schoolboard policy. But we decreased by 10% from 2023 2022 2023 to last year and we expect that number to decrease even more this school year. So, how about a round of applause for our staff for all of those improvements that we made. You know, we aren't we are not satisfied. We have work to do and we realize that that we are moving forward. We have a growth mindset. Uh we we intend to improve. uh we're going to stay uh focused on on safety, academics, ninth grade ontrack status, student attendance, and student behavior as well as many other things. But hopefully um we have been accepted um hopefully we will
014uh be awarded the opportunity to participate in the commissioner's network. Just this year, we were awarded a planning year from the Connecticut State Department of Education and if accepted into the commissioner's network. We hope to use some funding from the state to improve even more here at Crosby High School. We know how to improve. We've shown we know how to improve and now with the help of the state uh uh state department of education, we hope to improve even more and really turn the school around. Lastly, I I I would like to highlight some of the awesome, amazing, and great uh things happening at Crosby. We have so many things to celebrate uh here within this building. Over the past few years, we have a brand new fitness center here at Crosby High School. You
015see some of our students working out, and that will undoubtedly improve our physical fitness assessment scores. Much like other schools within our district, we've renovated our auditorium. Our first school play in our brand new auditorium will be May 8th and 9th. The school play is actually a play written by Crosby students. It is the first play that was where the the screenplay was written by Crosby students. It's not going to be Aladdin or Greece or any other of the traditional uh school plays. The playwrights are our students. We've also uh had the opportunity to purchase new classroom uh furniture in our science classrooms. We knew the importance that uh that would mean for our NGSS scores. We know that uh in order to do labs appropriately and effectively, we needed new furniture. So, we had
016the opportunity to buy uh new science furniture here at Crosby. We've implemented uh the new Halo system. So, we've seen a huge decrease in the amount of students that are vaping within our building. We know the dangers of vaping and we've been uh cognizant of that and with the help of the Halo system, we've deterred those behaviors uh significantly. The Bulldog Beastro will be opening in the fall of 2025. Uh much like our counterparts at willby, uh we will now have a restaurant here for all of us uh to eat at. Uh it will be opening in 2025. you all will be invited uh to the grand opening of course at Crosby. Um thanks to um many different uh partners uh we have a complete HVAC renovation project going on. Uh that project uh we
017hope to have uh complete within the next year. We are the only school in the district uh to have a full service ion bank branch in their cafeteria. Our students on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 to 2, they work at the Ion Bank branch. Uh they serve as interns and they uh you see here our staff and our students uh bank with ion bank uh Tuesdays and Thursdays right from our cafeteria. And a few other celebrations uh before you here um is a picture actually three pictures of some of the mural projects that we have happening within our building. To the right is a mural of the portrait of the graduate that was unveiled two years ago. It is in our main hallway. It highlights Waterberry Public Schools portrait of the graduate. And prior to
018the end of this school year, you will see another mural dedicated to Crosby's core values and beliefs. We have worked with Rise Up uh for the Arts, their muralist, who was on the front page of the paper just uh days ago, has been working with our students, and we plan to unveil that mural by the end of the school year. As always, we are so proud of the Early College High School led by uh our vice principal uh Mr. Shawn Mosley. Our students here at Crosby High School have the amazing opportunity to achieve their associates degree by the time they graduate high school. This is by far one of the best opportunities in the Waterberry public schools for eighth graders going into 9th grade. They have their futures um basically ma mapped out for them
019from the start of their freshman so many celebrations, so much improvement and uh we we not only uh here at Crosby thank our our faculty and staff but there are many community partners that have also contributed uh to our success. You know leadership academy all the way down to some private donor donors like the Ward family. uh we have kind of built a a a great team and a great community around our students and around our school and thanks to their efforts um you know we've done some amazing things for our students. So that was a lot from me. Um we would like to hear from one Crosby student. Her name is Nara White. She's going to talk to you a little bit about what it means to be a Crosby student. Nara. Hello everyone.
020Hello. Um, I'm Nara White. I'm a junior here at Crosby High School. I'm a part of the volleyball team, the cheer team, and the track team. I'm also a part of the mural design that Mr. V previously had mentioned. Being a Crosby student comes with a lot of opportunities like the sports teams, the after school programs and many more. I will also be being a part of the ion bank um being an inter. I love being a Crosby bulldog and I'm going to keep on striving with my Crosby blue spirit. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. Thank you, Nara. Nora is a true bulldog. You know, she has a smile on her face every single day. Uh she's involved in absolutely everything that our building has to offer. We're very, very proud of her.
021Uh we're excited for the things that she's going to do, especially going into her senior year. Uh lastly, um uh to the Crosby staff, um we are making unbelievable progress thanks to you. And you know, I I I included in this presentation a special quote. Uh unity is strength. When there's teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved. And we are achieving some really wonderful things. and we thank you very very much for all of your hard work. We ask a lot of our staff, but they they thank you. Thank you very much for all you do for our students. And now I'm going to turn it over to Sinclair. Okay. Good evening everyone. For those of you who don't know, my name is Sinclair. I am a senior in the early college high school
022program. I just committed this morning to Western Connecticut State University where I will be majoring in political science and minoring in African-American and Latino studies. I want to thank all of you, our board of education members, Mayor Perooki, our students, staff, administrators for coming out tonight. And I want to give a special thanks to the board of education members who came here to see our school tonight and listen to some of the great things that we have going on, but also maybe some of the things that we are working on improving on. And I want you all to come back and visit more frequently. Thank you. [Music] At this time, does anyone have any questions? Any questions? Uh, Commissioner O'Brien and then Commissioner Van Stone. Basically, it's not a question. Um, I want to say
023thank you and thank you to the staff. My twins went here moons ago. Um, and I walked the halls back then and I thought the staff was pretty cool back then, but you guys have done so much that I'm proud of as an alumni mom that my kids want to come. They're 35 now and they want to come back. Um, and I keep saying no, we can't go backwards, but I want to congratulate you for all the efforts that you're doing and knowing that you have more to do. Commissioner Van Stone. Thank you, Madam President. through you. I think you forgot one event this year that uh took place and you didn't give everyone on your staff credit for it and that was our legislative breakfast we held earlier in the year. Yeah. And uh
024for those who don't know, we held Cape has districts within the state and I happen to be the co-director of our district here. And I joke that it's us, Ngatuck, and Litfield County because that's really what we are. And I called both Dr. Schwarz and yourself and said, "I want to host our breakfast." And stepped right up. the room looked down the media center. It looked amazing. We had food uh similar to the back. I still to this day receive compliments from the rest of the Kate folks because we so outdid ourselves compared to where the other legislative breakfastes have been held. We had students up right up front. We let them uh be there to hear and see how the legislative uh worked when we when we sat down with them as we did
025with the questions and answers. And actually I stepped away for a cup of coffee and a few of your students came up to me and we were talking about um you know how does the money from the state work and when it comes to us and and what do we I said that's a great question because most of the people at that table over there don't have any idea how the money works. So it was a great question. We sat and we chatted for about it for a little while. Uh, I did my best effort to show to teach them a little bit about how the money comes in, goes out and disappears very quickly. Um, but it was a great event. The ROC was at that as well. And uh, they all the folks
026that were there that day were very impressed. Our own legislators were very proud to be able to sit there and watch the Crosby family uh, come together and put it all together. U, the the food was of course delicious. the room looked fantastic and uh you left it out so I wanted to bring it up. But uh on some of the other things uh you know and I look at uh Mr. Mosley and and it was I don't even know how many years ago we went down to New York City. I believe you were on that trip were you not? Oh, okay. Um, Representative Napoli was, President Handads was, and we went down and we saw a New York City version of a high school that the children left, the students left with degrees. And
027the big part of the model was very different. It was called PEK. Uh, but the bottom line was it was students leaving with a degree. and President Hernandez and I never stopped talking about it because it was it we got a little lost in the city with the bus driver we had. But um it was a great event that we saw that in action and we've been have been talking about it forever and now we have it and it is so great that we do have that opportunity with Post University. So those are, you know, some great things that I know about Crosby and and things that I've uh been around why we did it. I do have one question though on this presentation and that are uh you know I'm really glad that the
028data uh and and the rate of suspensions etc are going down. But how much has behavior um and the safety in the school building really progressed to the naked eye as opposed to the data. So um great question. You would just have to come in, you know, any day and see. What we've done is we've injected as much positive into our building as possible. Uh we have, you know, fall festivals and and and uh seasonal festivals. We have celebrations. We recognize student achievement. So, first we've injected so much more positive than ever existed before into our building. And then we've thought differently by thinking differently. We've created something called the shaping students behaviors team. So now every one of our school counselors, behavior counselors, all of our support staff team, they have a case load
029of students that they track. Any student that is at risk, we intervene and we step out in front of them and they have check-ins each and every day. And what we've seen is we've seen a a huge turnaround in some of those students because they get a that more intimate relationship with one of our support staff team members and they have somebody that they know they can count on and we've seen their behaviors shift. So if they were part of that 27% two years ago, they were not a part of the 17% the next year. So by thinking differently, we just shifted our mindset. And because of just that and those injecting the positive into our building, we've seen a decrease. And the positive energy and the positive behaviors are as infectious as the negative
030ones. And with on top of the revised technology policy to see all of the the drama and issues that were created by the use of the cell phone, that's why we see even more of a shift this school year. I'm going to ask the students the same question. even though there's a lot of adults in the room, how do you feel about the atmosphere in the school building now? Um, thank you for the question. I was thinking of my answer while he's speaking, but I personally do think that there has been an increase of positivity here. Like I said in when I introduced I said how I've got to see Crosby from when I first entered into now. And when I first came here, it was just a mess. like all the time there was
031fights. It just was not a place I wanted to be personally. But I even congratulated Mr. Verino at some point where I said how much the school has changed over the past few years cuz we actually came here together. I started here and he came here my 9th grade year. So to see it where it is now and see that decrease in um negative activity and people just causing issues and not coming to school for school. Um I could say it's a place that I would want to be like why I went for president here. I wouldn't have done that if I was in ninth grade. Very good. Thank you so much. Thank you Madam President. Commissioner Orso. Thank you. Uh, I just want to you can see the excitement with you, Mike, you know,
032being the principal and being a being a previous bulldog yourself, but I just want to congratulate you and all your staff and all the improvements like the student just said over the last four years that you'll be here and I just want to say thank you very much to you and to your staff, Commissioner Latoya Arling. Thank you, Madame President. And again, I um echo what my colleague said. you know, we just want to congratulate you on the improvements, but I do just have a question. What is it that is improving uh the attendance? What are you doing different that maybe the other schools aren't or maybe they are? But it's good to just know what is what are you doing to make the kids want to come to school? Um, I think that the
033increase in activities, um, in ninth grade, 10th grade, we didn't really do pep rallies or have fun events at school to make us enjoy it. And I think this year and last year, we've definitely increased in the opportunities for kids to be involved in school and, you know, be part of a community rather than just do their school work. Great. Thank you. In add in addition to that um obviously we've increased the amount of incentives uh that we provide to students you know we've we've partnered with a lot of different community partners to to have events and activities you know you know Dunkin Donuts has been a great partner you know you know students that are in uh school on time uh you know we will provide them with a treat but I think the
034the most important factor and and and a factor that curbs a lot of the ills is great teaching um Tier one instruction has been a focus of ours. Um implementing the instructional framework. We've been able to hire some really awesome people over the past four years. Um and we feel that great instruction and if something is awesome h awesome happening in the classroom. Students are going to be more likely to go into the building. Students are going to be more likely to not miss uh a day of school. And I think in addition to the work of our LEAP program and and specific individuals on our support staff and the data tracking and also the incentives, but I think tier one instruction is really starting to improve. And I think all the way, you know,
035what when when we see a a small portion of our student body being absent here May 1st, um when when you know, it's the end of the school year and we see saw one of our our our lowest amount of students absent all year. Something right is happening in the classroom. Teachers are are working hard, all right, to stay mentally and physically well. They're coming to school. They're giving it their best. Their students know that they they are cared for. And and I think that the tier one instruction instructional practices are are really getting better each and every day. And I think that um thanks to the work of the human capital department and and uh our team here recruiting um great individuals and and hiring really awesome people. I think that um that's why
036our number is is decreasing by the day. Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Schwarz. Just uh real quick, I want I'll agree with you 100%. I don't always make comments on principal reports, but uh what I've seen this year is you really do have one of the most dedicated administrative staffs, uh teaching staffs, and just support staffs in the district, and it's palpable when you walk into the school. So, I want to say kudos to the Crosby team uh tonight. Uh I see Early College High School really bossing under your leadership, Mr. Mosley. Uh, and it's it's really just amazing to see what's happening here. Um, your Yonder implementation, you undersold it. It's it's it's it's been amazing. You have the most students in the city, but one of the tightest uh systems in place. And so,
037uh, so much so that other towns have come here to see how Crosby is doing this, uh, with a limited number of staff. uh we don't have security uh staff like other districts and so they were like how do you do this and they they've come multiple times to watch you do this and that speaks to your leadership and the students are some of my favorite I shouldn't say that but they are some of my favorite most intelligent creative students um those preliminary SAT scores are out so we can't really talk specifics but they are looking very good for your Crosby students the attendance date for this month. Looks great. Um, so I just want to end with two questions. Uh, really, so when is the play? Do you know the date? Because sometimes we
038don't get invited to everything, including the superintendent. We love to go to those uh opportunities. So uh you don't I don't want to put you on the spot, but please send us the date and the time of that play uh cuz we we love the opportunity to go to that. And finally, you know, one thing that I want to be critical about is that uh, you know, last year I was invited to a basketball game and I scored eight points and three for four for shooting. And this year I didn't really get to call. I got to call the day off too late and you all lost, right? Is that true? You lost to the students this year because the time ran out and you were down. Not May or you you lost and I
039heard you didn't have a great shooting night. So, uh, you know, next year, uh, let me know a couple weeks ahead of time and I'll make sure I'm there to help you out. All [Laughter] right. Thank you. Thank you so much. I want to introduce our student representatives. Aiden Majai, grade 11, Crosby, and Sinclair Hudson, grade 12, Crosby. I got you, Aiden. I got you. Commissioner Srano Adorno, a motion to suspend the regular order of business to hear from the public. Second. All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. All speakers are encouraged to submit prepared written statements to the commissioners. Comments shall be limited to a maximum of five minutes. There will be no responses this evening to any questions or concerns raised, but they will be referred to the administration for review and response.
040Thank you. We have one speaker, Kevin Egan. Good evening, commissioners, and uh congratulations again to the Crosby uh staff, admins, and students here. As you could all see, the place looks uh wonderful, and they're doing great things here. So, round of applause for the Crosby uh all the Crosby folk here. Great job. Uh, my name is Kevin Egan, president of the Waterberry Teachers Association, an organization that proudly represents Waterberry's 1,600 professional educators. I've come here today on behalf of our organization and its educators to endorse Dr. Darren Schwarz as the next superintendent of Waterberry Public Schools. I would like to start by reading an e excerpt from the current contract between the board of education and the teachers union. The parties here too recognize their unique and complimentary roles and their mutual commitment to the
041goals of providing a suitable program of education experiences for each student and continually improving the achievements of all students. The board and WTA recognize the importance of stimulating responsible participation of the professional staff and others in the community in discussing the policies and actions that will help achieve these goals. The WTA places special emphasis on this provision because it embodies a mandate that is most crucial to overall student success. A mandate requiring open communication, mutual respect, and ongoing collaboration between the board and teacher leadership in order to achieve our common goals for student success. When leadership disregards these essential core values, it is impossible to motivate and inspire educators. And the union's crucial role in this process should never be marginalized as we are equal partners involved in every initiative, program, investigation, and operational decision
042in our schools every hour of every day. And Waterberry teachers deserve a superintendent that truly understands this dynamic and respects our equal role as stakeholders in the Waterberry's educational system. The one candidate that we believe possesses all these qualities has already proven to be a great working partner all year and even for many previous years of dedicated professional service to our school system. Dr. Darren Schwarz has consistently demonstrated a willingness to prioritize support for our educators and work collaboratively on countless issues. Dr. Schwarz is a proven quantity with the talent and experience to assume the role of educational leader for Waterberry based on his many many years of service to the Waterberry community and his unwavering efforts to improve the lives of our students. On Monday night, our community had an opportunity to hear Dr.
043Schwarz lay out his positive and uplifting vision for educational excellence, and we were impressed. We also take this opportunity to thank the other candidates as they will no doubt continue on their own pathways towards educational success. Special thanks and praise goes to Dr. Paul White, a true gentleman and friend we have previously worked with here in Waterberry and who has also proven to be a strong educational leader with a very bright future. In the coming months, the WTA and the board will confront contract negotiations, major school climate legislation, and many other programmatic initiatives requiring substantial work by both union and district leadership. Given all these challenges, it is essential that we have continuity of leadership and a superintendent we can rely on to address these challenges seamlessly with mutual respect and collaboration. We have absolute
044confidence that Dr. Darren Schwarz will continue with his great work he has already begun and we enthusiastically support his appointment as superintendent of Waterberry Public Schools. Thank you all for giving me this opportunity to speak tonight. God bless. Commissioner Srano Adorno. Motion to return to the regular order of business. Second. All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. Item number one, presentation overview of education horizon program. Mr. Flamia Thank you for having us, Mayor Pinerooki, Dr. Schwarz, President Hernandez. I'm just here to introduce our wonderful educators, rising students. Um, these students are participating in the Ed Rising program at the state of Connecticut. We have uh Haley Johnson who is the current student body president. We have Coral Lee Rodriguez who is a uh cabinet member and also will be a vice president uh candidate or
045excuse me a vice president um assistant next year. And we have Rosalyn Sanchez or excuse me Rosalyn McLaclin who will be on the uh student body board next year as well. So I'll just turn it over to these wonderful students. Again, thank you for giving us this opportunity. Mayor Perner Pernerooki, President Hernandez, and Dr. Schwarz, and our other board members for giving us this opportunity to talk about Educators Rising with you. So, first we're going to talk a little bit about what Educators Rising is and how it benefits our school. What is Educators Rising? Educators Rising is a national organization cultivating a new generation of educators from high school to college and into the classroom. And now moving on to what we have done at WCA with Ed Rising. While we have done many things,
046we have ran many community service projects which include organizing and running a blood drive with the Red Cross. We've ran a coat drive and donated to a church to give those people the coats and many more. We have also facilitated many officer breakout sessions including an IED symposium. our Connecticut advising state conference and many more like the teacher of the year awards ceremony. We also participate in internships at Wilson Elementary School, Roberto Clemente International, State Street, and our own school's preschool. We also run a pen pal program with Bucks Hill Elementary School with a fourth grade classroom where every week we would write a letter to fourth grade students and give them a mentorship where we would talk to them about what it's like to be in high school, how to grow, and any questions
047that they would have, we would answer them to give them a sort of mentorship. And we also have student cabinet members like me, myself, and Rosyn and Corali. And we also have ambassadors at our state level. And we could also students are in our national honors program for ed rising. Now I would like to share some benefits and opportunities we could get through the program of educators rising. Through educators rising, you could get scholarships, build res, give you leadership experience, and educators rising national honor society. And our final topic that we would like to talk about is our trips and tours that we've had for educators rising. We have been able to attend Educators Rising state conference which is at Central Connecticut State University. Uh we have also been able to attend our educators rising
048national conference which last year was in Washington DC and this year will be in Orlando. We have also attended an IED symposium, the teacher of the year empower to lead symposium. We have attended capital meetings and met with education representatives such as Jeff Curry. We have had our cabinet installations and we are also this year having our summer leadership academy for any educators rising students. Thank you so much for this opportunity to talk about educators rising. Thank you. Are there any questions? I Rosalyn, do you have anything to add? I just like to say that I'm I'm proud to be um a cabinet member in the following year. Thank you, Vice President Brown. Good evening and thank you very much for uh choosing to be teachers. I think that's wonderful. It's a grand profession. Um
049I just had a question. How many students overall are part of Ed Rising? Uh in our school system we have about 30 members and educators rising and in the state I there must be over a thousand in a bunch of different school systems. New Britain being one of our largest and it is in insanely large across the entire country with students from any different state that will compete in our nationals. But inside of our own school system, we have about 30 and we're hoping to get more next year. So, the the educators rising program is a program within our uh teacher prep education and training program. So, not all of the students that are part of our teacher prep education and training program are part of Ed Rising. You have to apply and become a
050member of it. Um we do have more students that are part of our education and training uh program but not part of educators rising. These students have applied went through the process done an interview process uh application process and um they have gained the the aspects like Haley being the student body president as part of educators rising. Thank you. I didn't realize they were two different things. So thanks for the clarification. and you certainly have the best teachers that you can imagine as role models. So, congratulations. Thank you ladies. Item number two, school governance. Miss Romano Greetings and good evening, Mayor Penerooki, President Hernandez, Vice President Brown, Secretary Srano Adorno, Board of Education Commissioners, Board of Ed student represent representatives, and interim superintendent Dr. Schwarz. My name is Sandra Romero and I am the family
051community engagement management and tonight I'm going to be talking about a little bit about our family engagement uh work at our district. I want to start here uh with our welcome center. Our welcome center was designed to be a one-stop shop where our families will come in and get support services such as registration, mckinu, transportation, uh language assessment and records. We have been working Oh, wait. Can we go back to the We have been working together with the team to create and cultivate a welcoming environment. Here you can see a picture of our welcome center, the entrance. Uh, a couple of months ago, I we partnered up with Waterberry Waterberry Youth Services and the youth at their center created some beautiful art. uh the director there and myself, we planned around the theme and I
052don't know if you can see it but the the art has uh positive messages for our family such as we shine together, we work together, welcome. Uh it is all over our welcome center. So if you guys have some time, please stop by. We will definitely give you a walk around. Uh the other things we have also been adding to our welcome center is that we've been connecting with our parent liaison at the schools and sharing with them families are coming to their school community. Our our goal with that is for our parent leaison and administrations at the school to welcome the families and cultivate that that nurturing and you know welcoming um culture so families can feel comfortable coming in parent leaison uh our parent leaison play a vital role in outer schools out
053of the 32 schools we have 29 active parent leaison we currently have three vacancies and those are at Reed Generali and Wallace. I take this opportunity if anyone is interested please jump in apply so we you can join our team uh here at Waterberry, family engagement opportunities. Uh various schools have hosted events where families can participate um such as STEM literacy night, kindergarten open house uh and math nights. These events helps the school build strong relationship with parents and focus on communication. I have been uh attending those events. Here's a picture of a school that held reading nights. We have we have families there uh that were very engaged asking questions around how they can help the children read at home and how they can help their children find the love for reading. At schools
054we have two different opportunities for our parents to join. One of them is the parent teacher organization. The uh purpose of the PTO is to enhance and support the education experience at the school. It aims to develop a closer connection between school and home by encouraging parent involvements. The goal is for all schools to have fi high functioning PTOs. Out of our 32 schools, six of them are very active. I have participated in those meetings and we have very strong team uh parent uh team leaders in there you know very willing to participate and and support us in our in the students education. The second opportunity at this school is a family uh the school governance council. School school governance council is an opportunity for schools to become centers for excellence that prepare all students
055for success. Uh the school governance brings together parents, school staff, students, community leaders to work together to improve student achievement achievement and analyze the school improvement plan. The goal as well is for all schools to have high functioning school governance. Out of the 32, we have 11 active school governance at the schools and I have also been participating in those and once again we have very strong parent leaders there are very active with great ideas on how they can help their school and make a better place. Looking forward, of course, is for all of our 32 schools to have active PTO's and school governance teams um to create more opportunities for parents and to be engaged at the school level beyond our typical events to work with our partners in supporting our family engagement vision
056uh and to involve the PTO and the school governance team members for each school in our decision making and once again to create more welcoming um schools uh more welcoming schools. for our parents. Um the goal is to roll out uh next upcoming school year the parent twice a year because we want to make sure when we're making this decisions we have data in front of us to have in you know to make those decisions very informed with the data that we collect. The next part I want to talk about is our attendance and engagement. We heard a little bit about the crossbe with the crossby team. Um here we have the learning engagement attendance team which is one of the leap uh which is the LEAP program. It is a Connecticut state initiative that
057utilizes home visit to improve school attendance and re-engage students who are chronically absent. Um the part the really the reason I I wanted to talk about this is because the LEAP includes parent engagement. They do home visits uh to the families. We can go to the next slide. Yes. Uh this is a model at the schools. Every school we have six schools. Uh each school has a team leader and they have a home um a home specialist uh that conducts the home visits. These teams meet on a bi monthly basis. These the LEAP team focuses on tier 2 students. Um their their goal is to build a relationship with families to be able to understand the reasons of absences and to be able to support them or guide them with the with the supports at
058the school. I provided here some data that we you we collect from the leap. Um as you can see 28% of absence is due to physical health. Uh the second one that claim close is student engagement. Uh one of the things that I really like about this is that when the team uh team specialists of LEAP meet together, they are able to make informed decisions based on what the families are reporting back. Here I provided you with the LEAP attendance data for the six schools that are under our LEAP. Our data shows great improvement. Um but we still have this whole month of May and the first two weeks of June but as you can see the month of April we have seen a decrease in chronic absenteeism. Uh definitely a lot of things like
059the the Crosby is one of them has been talking about incentives. Uh but the engagement with the families has been very positive around families you know welcoming the team leader the team specialists at their home to be able to provide them and guide them around you know attendance uh concerns. Each each school is uh marketing market the leap at their own way. This is one of them. Uh they go out to home visits and provide brochures to parents when they place home visits. Uh it's very informative. they you know they conduct the h home visit and after the home visit they hand this over to the to the families. Uh it is in English and Spanish and also you know the team lead can customize it based on the parents uh language if it's necessary.
060Next steps to streamline our operations by involving our partners both inside and outside of the school. To have a clear and concise communication with families regarding our attendance policy to continue building on resources for family and students. To have LEAP be the prevention measures at the schools when it comes to addressing attendance. CAT teams will be the primary supports for the schools without LEAP and to engage once again parents in a positive way that values their culture and current situations and to empower them to be integrated in the school community. Thank you. Are there any questions? Commissioner Lopez. Yeah. Hi. Um so you mentioned there's uh three vacancies in in the schools. What is the interim plan for coverage? Like what happens when a school doesn't have a parent liaison? So I've been attending those
061I've been meeting with administrators and we have developed plans. Each school have a very good support systems in the schools and they have good the the staff that can respond those questions or if parents have any questions or any concerns. Okay. Um and then with one other question for parents who may be watching what is the commitment to joining a PTO or or the governance it is to be able to you know have them give their opinion and also ideas you know our parents have gifts and I think it's very important to include them in our decision making and that is definitely something that Dr. and I we've been speaking about we want them to be you know our partners in their child's education. So definitely I invite them you know go to go to
062go to the school and ask and to be active you know there's no limit on how many can participate the more the marrier because it will be very helpful and how long is that commitment like is it an hour a month is it like whatever it depends on the schools on the need as well um Dr. charge and I we spoke about it as well like you know combining those meetings. Um but you know it's up to it's up to the administration. I'm there you know we're there to support and to guide them. Uh but you know once a month I think you know our parents you know like all of us we they have a job and and you know they have others outside commitments but to have him at least there once a
063month to us is a game. Thank you Vice President Brown. Good evening. Thank you very much for the presentation. and I'm excited uh that we have goals and we've come a long way. I think it you're very organized. We love that. Thank you. I did have a question about and I'm so glad to see some of the root causes that you listed because I haven't seen that uh as comprehensive. So, I really appreciate that. What's the story with transportation? Eight I think it said 8%. is they they don't get on the bus or so the the data that we got comes from calls which is with part of LEAP um I think Dr. way and I we talked about it to get we want to dig in deeper. Um when the LEAP specialist check off
064the transportation they don't have the option to go deeper like what's the reason for transportation they just check out check out like student engagement student health and transportation you know we were speaking about like digging in more deeper because I think that would definitely be helpful for us to make informed decisions. No, I think that would be important for us because I was surprised to see transportation because I thought, gee, we have transportation. And the second one is the health of course is very high and I'm wondering if if families are aware of our school-based health clinics and that they can access health care there. So, I'm wondering if maybe we could, you know, partner more or get the word out that parents can avail themselves of our school-based health clinics uh and and to
065address those issues because I remember, you know, a few years ago when we were tracking it, asthma was was a big issue and a lot of emergency room uh and I'm not sure if that's still the picture, but that's something that that the schools really uh focused on and we were able to get the inhalers in the school as kids were leaving them home. We were we're trying to address some of the barriers to kids being healthy. So I think I think uh we have a very robust health committee and I think these are some of the issues we have to revisit so that kids are getting access to health care and especially you know the ones that are really critical like asthma that we saw was off the charts years ago and I thought
066it was coming down but who knows I I haven't seen the data. Uh and the last question I have is at the welcome center do we ask parents if they uh have health insurance? We don't tend to ask that um you know unless the parent be able to share. Um I know registration department you know they are very careful because that also can be intimid intimidating. So for par parents we do have our welcome center posters in English and Spanish where we you know promote the schoolbased mental health uh the schoolbased health centers there. uh you know our staff is very diligent in asking questions. uh you know they're very careful as well because we also don't want parents to be you know scared or think that you know we're interrogating and you know if
067they give us a prompt our team is very ready to be able to provide and say hey we have uh you know we have all these resources here for you if you're if you're interested in but just going back to your question uh around data this is where we we are going to dig in more um with the experience that you know um that we have been hearing and all the work that the schools have been doing you know we want to work with schoolbased mental health and we want to work the nurses. So we want we're going to definitely dig in deeper around it. You know just collecting the data gave us some eye opener of things where we need to focus on. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you. Are there any other
068more questions? Thank you Sandra. Thank you. Request approval of [Music] a new thing. I think I like it. Request approval of a memorandum of understanding with Sandy Hook Promise Foundation. Miss John. Good evening. Mayor Perooki, President Hernandez, Vice President Brown, Secretary Serrano Adorno, Board of Commissioners, Student Representatives, Interim Superintendent Dr. Schwarz. [Music] The people services department requests the approval of memorandum of understanding between the city of Waterbury and Sandy Hook Promise. The purpose of the agreement is to provide a free online anonymous reporting tool for students in grades 6 through 12 during the next three academic years within Waterberry Public Schools. Students will be able to utilize Sandy Hook Promises online platform to anonymously report warning signs, signals, and threats, especially in social media, from individuals who may want to harm themselves or others, and
069to say something to a trusted adult, or use the anonymous reporting system, which comes in three different ways, an app, website, or 247 crisis telephone line to get them help. The term of theou starts on July 1st, 2025 and concludes June 30th, 2028. This is a nocost agreement between the city and Sandy Hook Promise. Are there any questions? Thank you. Uh, number five, request approval of amendment one to the agreement with Ben Bronze Academy for Special Education Programs for Students. Miss John's, the special education department request the approval of amendment number two to the agreement between the city of Woodbury and Aspire and Learning, Inc., aka the Institute of Professional Practice, which is an outofd district placement for special education students. The amendment to the agreement shall add additional compensation in the amount of 392,81722
070for this calendar year. The term of the contract remains the same and will continue to conclude at the end of this calendar year, which is June 30th, 2025. We had to increase tuition during this calendar year um because we had to add an additional student that moved into the city of Waterberry that was currently already outplaced. So, we had to honor um the terms of the individual education plan that we inherited. Um this will be paid through general funds. Commissioner Van Stone. Thank you, Madam President. Through you, I you know, my understanding was always that a student come from another district into our [Music] district. There was a residency uh piece to all that that the money stayed with that student. So, where did this student come from? From out of state. And why is
071it that that state does not, if that's where his initial um IEP was written, why aren't they still responsible for the money? I thought years ago may have changed that basically the money filed the child. So currently instate agreements, they're still working on that agreement. There's um discussions in state about who pays for what. Um, but out of state, unfortunately, that has not been the case. So, we're responsible. We have to adopt the IEP, write a new IEP, and if a student is currently outplaced, unfortunately, we have to honor what's written in the IEP. Okay. Is that student going to remain at a facility outside the state of Connecticut? No, we have to look for something comparable to meet their needs. Okay. Obviously, we look for being able to meet their needs within district of
072course first if we can. Okay, I can go. I'm going to have some questions on the others, too. So, thanks. Okay, no problem. Okay. Request approval of an agreement with the following for special education programs for students. Miss John's. The special education department requests the approval of amendment number one to the agreement between the city of Waterbury public schools and Ben Bronze Academy which is an outofd district special education placement. Um the purpose of the agreement is to continue to provide special education programming for students with an individualized education program. Uh the amendment to the agreement is to extend time to the term. Um so currently this is set to expire June 30th, 2025. We are hoping to extend the agreement with this amendment for an additional two years. So, there's currently an option in
073the contract. We're hoping to extend it for an additional 2 years. With the additional two years, um we're hoping um to add on an additional, excuse me, the additional two years would add on an additional [Music] $187,720 and that is paid through general funds. Commissioner Van Snow. Thank you, Madam President. Through you. So, um, M. John, this is item five and for each of the items under six, this can be the same question. So, maybe you could just head it off for me. U, this is a contract to be in place and it sounds to me like there's no students yet to be placed, but we need to be under contract with the facility. Would that be true of this and the others that are about to come before us? No. So, currently there we
074have this currently in place. So, I'm looking to ensure that if a student needs to be placed here, we currently have an active contract. That's what I mean. So, if we have a placement, correct? We can just hit the switch and go. Yes. The items number six, we we'll get to those, but that's going to be the same question. If you could just maybe answer it for me. Thanks. Thank you, Madam President. Commissioner Orso, I just wanted to add um my experience being a purchasing director years ago, we never had contracts. We just sent them there. So, at least it's it's great that these contracts are being done, you know, so they just could get the people there because before 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was total disaster until we started with the
075contract process. So, thank you. Mhm. Any other questions? Item number six, request approval of an agreement with the following for special education programs for students. This is John's. So for items 6A through 6G, these are currently in place. They all expire June 30th, 2025. We currently have students in all of these placements. These are for three-year terms set to start hopefully June 1st, 2025 and expire uh June Jul uh excuse me, June 30th, 2028. So, I'll go through each one. Uh but we currently have students in each of these. So, these new contracts would continue services in each of these placements. So, I just wanted all of the commissioners to know these are not new contracts. These are existing. The first 6A, the special education department requests the approval of the agreement between the city
076of Waterberry Public Schools and the American School for the Deaf Institute of Deaf Education and Culture Inc. which is an out of school out of district school special education placement. The purpose of the agreement is to provide a special education program for students with disabilities. The agreement shall commence on July 1st, 2025 and terminate on June 30th, 2028. We currently have 10 students at this placement and the cost of the agreement is 2,235,475 for a three-year term. And this is paid through general funds. Commissioner Vansstone Thank you, Madam President. Through you. So, the only thing I wanted to uh say on this, if if for any reason the student population goes down, it's not as though we're paying them the 2.3 because this is going to total up to about $15 million or more with
077the next five put together. So, we're not just writing them a check. It will be based on services rendered, which currently they are, but in the future, it's services rendered. Correct. Correct. So, basically the contract allows us to um create a purchase order and then we ask purchasing to decrease the purchase order. We only pay the invoice for what the service is rendered. Correct. And because it also is in these contracts that if funding is not no longer available, correct? We're able to terminate we have to terminate the contract. Of course, then we're not providing services that we're legally bound to. Correct. So, the last thing I'll say on all these is we need to get that cap in place yesterday. You know, of course, I know that's out of your hands, but that cap
078really needs to go. So, thank you. Agreed. Vice President Brown, I saw your hand up. Uh, yes. It it's it's a general question pertaining to all of them in terms of the monitoring of these students. uh if you could you know kind of give us an update of how that's going. Sure. Of course. So um our outofd district team created an outofd district matrix. Um and what we do with that is we measure not only attendance for the school. Uh we also monitor teacher certification. We monitor student engagement when we go on property. So we're going once a month. Uh we also monitor adult support. So if students are getting adult support, what does that support look like? how are they engaging with the students? We um look for evidence of curriculum work. Um we
079ensure that students are getting specials and electives while they're on property. And we also then take observer notes and if there's any follow-up items so that we can meet with the director if we need to while we're on property. So, we um keep an ongoing Google sheet um either that myself, my assistant director, or my special ed supervisor when we go on property, we're able to collaborate and all contribute to the document. That's really great to hear. Uh it sounds like you have a stronger accountability system in place. Yes. Uh and kind of, you know, a standardized way to look. And the other question I have is we did talk about you know uh parents and how they are communicated with and updated on their child's progress is do you monitor that as part of
080the school's responsibility? Of course. So not only are we attending annual PPTs um but we're also attending if students are struggling with their behavior or if there's anything else that's being called by the parent. if they're calling for a parent PPT, we as a local education agency have to attend. Um, so we're attending those and making sure that parents are very aware of how their students are doing in this out of district placement. Fantastic. Thank you. Yes, of course. Uh 6B, Special Education Department requests the approval of the agreement between the city of city of Waterberry Public Schools and Area Cooperative Education Services Coop Cooperation, which is an outofd district special education placement. The agreement shall commence on July 1st, 2025, and terminate on June 30th, 2028. Uh commissioners need to know that ACES for
081short um has six sites. Um between those six sites, we have 21 students. So it's our very largest contract uh in the amount of [Music] 6,300,272. It is for a three-year term and it will be paid through general funds. 6 C is the special education department requests the approval of the agreement between city of Woodbury and Aspire living and learning which is an outof district special education placement to meet the needs of students with disabilities. The agreement shall commence on July 1st 2025 and terminate on June 30th 2028. We have 10 students currently placed at Aspire. The contract amount is $3,866,940 and is paid through general funds. 6D. The special education department requests the approval of the agreement between the city of Waterbury and Benhaven, Inc., which is an outofd district special education placement to
082meet the needs of students with disabilities. The agreement shall commence on July 1st, 2025, and will terminate on June 30th, 2028. We currently have seven students in this placement. The agreement is at the cost of $3,645,424 and will be paid through general funds. 6E is an agreement between the special education department requests the approval of the agreement between the city of Woodbury public schools and milestones behavioral services which is an outofd district special education placement to meet the needs of students with disabilities. This agreement will start on July 1st, 2025 and will terminate on June 30th, 2028. This is a three-year term in the amount of $547,9797 and it is paid for through general funds. 6F, the special education department requests the approval of the agreement between the city of Waterberry and St. Vincent's Special
083Needs, Inc., which is an outof district special education placement to meet the needs of students with disabilities. The agreement shall commence on July 1st, 2025 and terminate on June 30th, 2028. The agreement is at a cost of 1,545,270 for a three-year term and is paid for through general funds. And finally 6G, special education department requests the approval of the agreement between the city of Waterbury and Woodford Country School, Inc. which is an outofd district special education placement. The agreement shall commence on July 1st, 2025 and will terminate on June 30th, 2028. The agreement is at a cost of $337,827 and will be paid for through general funds. I have a question. Vice President Brown. Wendy, I just had a quick question. Uh, is transportation part of the cost included or is it just the academic
084or the placement or transportation in addition to these figures? Transportation is additional. Yes, it's additional to these figures. Yes, additional. Okay. Thank you. Additional. Thank you, Miss Johns. Committee on Finance Grant Status report. Darene and Linda Riddic Baron. Hi Good evening. Good evening, Mayor Pinerooki, President Hernandez, Vice President Brown, Secretary Serrano Adorno, Commissioners, Student Representatives, and Dr. Schwarz. Um, I'm here with Linda Riddic Baron, super grant supervisor of entitlement grants. Um, we're here to discuss the grants that we're we have received for the 2425 school year. um it is broken up between our federal grants, our state grants, and some of our miscellaneous grants. So, in total for this fiscal year was $173.5 million. Federal grants was 62,554 million. Um, of that almost 30 million was for the ARP esser, that's the ESSER 3 grant.
085Um, that ended on September 30th of 24. Um, but I do want to give you an update of where we are with that currently. Um, we had about 1.4 almost $ 1.5 million worth um that we wanted to extend. um we put in for the extension at the end of Jan in January. We were awarded the extension. Um the state had provided it to the US Department of Education. We were awarded it and it was for um some of our HVAC projects that just needed a few more months uh for us to liquidate out. We then received news that the liquidation um that was extended was going to be revoked. Um, but there is a little positive news. We did receive from the state of Connecticut who had communication with the US Department of Education
086that we had to provide um a new format for the projects that we want to extend um and we had to put in a worksheet to the state department of ed um and explain why these projects are should be considered and they need to be more studentbased. So, we did what we were supposed to do. Uh, we submitted it to the state. Uh, we did receive on Tuesday that they just wanted a time frame of those projects and we completed that and that went back to the state today. Um, and so we will wait and then they will submit everything back to the US Department of Education to see if we will still receive the $1.5 million. So, so as far as our federal grants, so if we talk about ARP esser, uh we had
087the 29.1 million for this year. Um you'll see that we have some of our afterchool programs that are federally funded for the 21st century. We have adult debt. Um we have some smaller ARPA grants that you'll see some of the ending dates um were either in September or December of 24. Some will continue in through 26. Um our biggest our biggest uh federal grants first are the IDA grant which is totally special education grants. Uh we have runs a two-year so we always have a carryover along with the actual grant for that year. Um which also has a preschool portion. Um we have our McKenna Vento homeless. Another large grant uh that helped out here was the SIG. That's the school improvement grants. Those are for turnaround schools. Um we have the now all the
088entitlement grants that Linda's in um manages and that's the title one again also two-year grants with public and non-public piece to that. Um, title 2A again with public and non-public also two years. So, there's always a carryover year. Title three is more of our bilingual again public and non-public. Title three immigrant youth. Um, title four non-public and public uh also carry over. Um, and then we have some transition support for SPED. So Yukon Robotics again all those federal grants totaled the 62.5 million of 30 million of that being with the ARP esser our state grants obviously our largest one of the 110 million in total is the 76 million from the alliance grant um we also have Carl Perkins we have the priority schools. I'm sorry. We have Commissioner Network. That's also for our six
089schools in turnaround. Um, but you'll see next year we will not have North End Middle School, nor will we have Wallace Middle School as they have turned around the school will no longer receive these funds. So, congratulations uh to those schools for the tremendous work they did to get off of uh turnaround. Um, we have the educator diversity grant. Uh, that's part of the ECS money we receive. Little portion comes off of that for the educ educator diversity. Um, we have F FRC. We have a lot of first robotics. We have the magnet schools grants, priority schools, uh, the summer school from priority that Linda also handles. She handles all the priority schools, the summer school and the extended school hours which are part of priority. We have school readiness um all the various grants
090that go towards the school readiness and the state bilingual grants and miscellaneous grants um at 551,000. Some of those are through donations or trust funds, uh, impact aid. Um, so basically that's the total of our grants at 173.5 million. Um, that we manage. Linda's office manages the ones that she has. Um, and we work together to, you know, make sure the grants get spent down, that they are in compliance. Good evening. I just wanted to add some information about some of the items on the agenda tonight. When you when Mr. Verono was talking about the early college high program, that's funded out of the title 4 program that comes out of here. The tuition and the lunch comes out of that program. And when Mrs. Romero was talking about parent leaison, their salaries come out
091of the title one grant and most of the academic nights that we spoke of. Each school gets a set aside which is required by law and a lot of those academic nights are funded with title one funds. We try to make sure there's transportation. Try to make sure we can feed them a little bit so they won't have a reason to stay home and a lot of the successes because each school gets their own money. This year is about $4,000 per school for every title one school. Have any questions? Commissioner Van Stone. Thank you, Madam President. Through you a lot of money um right now outside of um you know all the Harper funding and all the the other items that expire this June, have we exhausted those funds at this point in time or
092there still some programs that require payments of whatever? cuz it's even at that there's still quite a few not as big as you know the big fund but no all the funds that should end September 30th we will draw down all of those funds so we will request all those funds in full I'm looking at some that say 63025 you correct okay some of them have already carried over yeah right they're on the list because they were part of this fiscal year so some of them have already been fully So we're unrequested and drawn down. They're going to the money's going to expire. It's a done deal. If it continues, it continues. If it doesn't Yeah. Are there any I mean some of these I mean some of these we will receive funds again. So
093like when we are talking to like I know there's a worrisome of you know some of these federal funds that are getting cut. I mean, as the communication we've received so far basically on title one and t and IDA is that they would not be touched. Can I say that some of these other grants we may not get? I I don't know that yet, but we haven't received anything else. And that's my concern is anything that really expires, especially with the others, special arrangements for the students, etc. So we lo the money doesn't come to us any longer but if we continue those programs it's now general funds and if we don't continue the programs do that we just go backwards in the school system. So it's I mean a lot of times title one
094used to pick up a lot of you know in in the past when we had turnaround funds for Crosby and Walsh and there was some positions that remained that they wanted to keep because as you said it helps the school it helped them to move forward. Um I know that Linda's grant helped to pick up. The one issue is is that Linda's grant, the title one was cut this year a little bit, but it wasn't an increase. So, you have to take into the account all the items that she already has into the grant and especially if there's positions, you have to put in those contractual raises. So, it starts to eat money just gets eaten up. So, it is a little bit hard. Um, we try to do what we can to support the
095schools that we can as much as we can. Uh so we just have to keep an eye on that. As much bringing it out just there's awareness that down the road principles come back and say you know we're not going to continue to be off the commissioners network if we don't do this. We did have a meeting Dr. Schwarz and various staff members. We did meet with all of the um commissioners network, all the middle and high schools um few months back to determine, you know, what it is that's important to them and what they would like to keep, you know, and how we can manage that going through the budget process. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Any other? Commissioner Latoya Arley. Thank you. Um, I know uh, Commissioner Van Stone just asked
096a question, but I'm looking here as far as the McKini Vento homeless. That grant will be ending 63025. So, is there no monies for that program at all? So, are you looking at the $50,000? Yes. Yeah. So, that's the amount. So, this is really just for this current fiscal year. That's why we just showed the 630. So if it continues, obviously next year it would be on here, but this this is strictly just the grants that we have currently in this fiscal year. Okay. I just wanted to make clear. Thank you. And that grant for this year just ends September 30. I'm uh June 30th. Sorry. Thank you, Commissioner Lopez. Um you mentioned that there was there's a specific grant for the parent liaison. Um, how's the spend on that one since we have three
097vacancies? What's what's your question? We have the the parent liaison grant. You said there's one specific for that. I just wanted to know what the what the budget was on it currently since we have three vacancies. They're inside of the the millions of dollars that we have in title one. They're just part of that. Okay. Yeah. And so we started with more vacancies and we're only down to three. So we we feel like we're in a good place and hopefully by the fall we'll have those three um filled. So, it's just part of the budget and so we need some summer staff and some of that vacancy will be used for that because we need some um support during the summer at the welcome center. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, Vice President Brown. Yes.
098Thank you for the presentation. A quick question. I didn't Do we have any specific grants for mental health for our students or is that out of our general fund? Because I didn't hear mental health here. We have the one that we have on here is a summer mental health. So that's to allow to have social workers for the summer schools. Um but mostly like if there's anything through the primary mental health um there was a um there was also two counselors under the federal grant ARPA school mental health that we had for two years. It covers two counselors. Um but other other than that it would be embedded through our other our other general fund or other grants. Okay. Cuz my concern was that in the in case we lose money that our mental health
099that we've tried to you know increase services might be devastated but it sounds like maybe it won't be as bad as it could be. Thank you. Yeah. Some of it is embedded in our larger grants. Right. And just to jump in, we also have the Connecticut Stronger grant that's about $673,000 that's also dedicated to that as well. Yeah, it was for clinicians for substance abuse. So, thank you. Go ahead. Are you done? Thank you. Okay. Next is the March expenditure report. Um as I said last month, you know, it the general fund is getting tighter. Um we are putting in measures to make sure that we balance um in the black. Um I do feel strong enough that some of the uh steps we've put in that we will not have to use the any
100of the additional funding such as the contingencies and the surplus on the last page. um as you know that does offset the current the next fiscal year's budget. So I do feel confident in that. Um we are going to monitor each and every line um closely as we continue through the end of the fiscal year. Um as you know um it's our purchase service line that really you know puts a big dent into the general fund budget. um you know especially with the transportation um the out of district tuition purchase services for sped uh our professional service line and of course our utilities. So um you know there's nothing more I can say that is we are watching it very closely and taking the measures and the steps we need to make sure that this
101budget ends in the black. Any questions on the monthly report? Commissioner Van Stone. Thank you, Madam President. Through you, there's three accounts that I won't say keep me up at night, but they bother me quite a bit. Um, the overtime I mentioned last month still seems to be growing. Um, I'd like to maybe some get a little better handle on what that what's that, why it's going on at such a degree. Um, and of course busing is always a concern and we had the conversation. So, special ed transportation is included in this projected $20 million. And you were saying it was special ed now exceeds regular Yes. transportation. Yeah. Uh, but I would still like us to get a handle. The dollars spent and as you report them are the dollars spent. So, going back
102to the people in transportation department, I would like to see some sort of presentation that tells us exactly how it is that special ed understood that our transportation costs just keep growing and keep growing. There's and when we go over budget, it's also telling us that when everyone put their budgets together to bring to you, they're not doing the best job of doing this. Uh this is the number is just I'm astonished at what it was from when I first came on the board to what it is now. You know, a few years ago, we we decided to go propane. It was supposed to save us all this money and the cost still go up. um propane buses that is which our regular education fleet are all propane buses. The diesel buses are all in
103a special ed side with a different company. Um so we really need to get an understanding and again that's not from the finance department. I look over here more to say we need to get an understanding on why these costs you know just keep going up. Uh the price of propane is supposedly every year we pre- buy it or at least get a guaranteed price. Uh so that shouldn't escalate anything because we've already put the money aside based on agreements unless we're not doing that anymore, which we should be. Uh the overtime is the other one. Uh and I and I know you know you're going to be doing some transfers of funding. Um, some of those concern me because they're coming from places that, uh, well, I'll wait till we get to that one
104to ask that question. But, um, you know, transferring money is, you know, it should have been maybe in that account all along. Uh, at least with a better projection, we wouldn't be transferring so many millions of dollars at a time. So, I'm I'm definitely a little concerned on how we're seeing these budgets come to your office and then we put them together and then we just, you know, just basically rob Peter to pay Paul once January comes. Um, so I'm I'm extremely concerned about all these red red columns being that we're now in May. Okay. So, thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Commissioner Serrano Adorno. Thank you. Uh, thank you, Dorene. Um, I've always wanted to ask this and I always forget uh for clarification because I always see the $10 million for the health
105insurance general. What's that line item for? That line item is for our contribution to our employees um city health benefit fund for what was the beginning? I'm sorry, could you? For our employees portion. Okay. So our employees portion you know is probably six times that amount. Um and so this is the contribution that the board of education makes towards the health benefit fund. Um the reason being is um the city has paid has pays for all the benefits on the city side. um the increase that we get in the alliance grant um kind of just to help because the city doesn't get the full ECS any longer. So they they're flatfunded on their municipal side of ECS. The ECS has been coming to the department of ed. So it's just trying to balance the city
106as a whole um and what's best for the taxpayers in the end. So that's just the contribution um for that for our teachers. So other city department it's not just teachers it's everyone it's any education employee in our schools in our schools. So other so other departments also contribute to their well the those other departments are part of the city's general budget. Gotcha. Gotcha. Thank you so much. Any other questions? Okay. So, my next item is a requesting um a transfer for the fiscal year 2425 from our general fund budget. It would be a $2.2 million transfer. Um we need $1 million for the special education outside tuition line. We need $350,000 for our special education purchase service line. And we need 850,000 for our pupil transportation transportation line for special education. Um and it
107is going to be coming from various line items um in salaries um due to vacancies um and so in attrition. So we have um you know Crosby administration, Willby administration, teachers for Kingsbury spray, Carrington reading um the amount savings in the superintendent of schools line item special education school psychologists special ed social workers ABA therapists, operation and maintenance maintainers and districtwide educational. Um so that balances out the 2.2 that we're going to need to transfer into those three line items. um for special education. Any questions? Commissioner Vans. Thank you, Madam President. Through you, um as far as the special ed money coming out, I know that is pretty much a one to one whereas it's probably going to services because we can't provide the services typically. That's when we see it come out of regular
108special ed accounts. Yeah. to go to things like purchase services or outside tuition. That's really that money being converted over so you can write a contract basically or put out a PO whatever it is you have to do at this stage. The others that there's really one that concerns me and that's reading teachers $342,000. This sounds to me like it's not a short-term one teacher left and there was some extra money in the pot. This sounds to me like we've had a significant uh resource uh problem with reading teachers as far as able bodies that are in the classrooms for the whole school year. 342,000 in a budget that is for reading teachers is a lot of money. That is not one, like I said, is not one teacher decided to leave us. Um, so
109again, I'm going to look over here to say we must have had some serious reading teacher problems this entire school year, but it seems to me this is the only way I'm finding out about it is seeing a $342 42,000 um that we don't need in that account that we can move over somewhere else. So, um, I think we need to maybe see more often. I think we got a little little too happy with the fact that we got our, you know, teacher shortage down under 100 or so, especially in special ed. We went from 60 to 40 and hopefully we make more strides, but uh that's a lot of money for just a reading teacher account. So, I think we need to get another HR uh presentation to show us where these shortages are
110because this that's pretty significant for reading teachers. So, thank you, Dory. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Request approval of an agreement with the Waterberry Young Men's Christian Association for Truency Prevention Services. Jan. Good evening, Mayor Pernarooi, President Hernandez, Vice President Brown, Secretary Serrano Adorno, Commissioners, Student Representatives, and Interim Superintendent Dr. Schwarz. The education department respectfully requests approval of an agreement with the YMCA. Uh the YMCA has been awarded a base grant of $75,500. The city is required to match the grant amount. City will match the grant amount in in services. The contract will be from July 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2026. Are there any questions? Question. Vice President Brown. Thank you. Uh Jan, uh just to clarify, Waterbear Youth Services is is part of the YMCA right now because this grant
111used to go to a separate entity, the Waterbear Youth Services. Just for clarification, Hawaii has combined the services of Waterbear youth service and does this and they are are they still doing the um the juvenile review board as well? Do we know the why? She's saying yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yeah. She answered my question. Okay. Good. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you, Jan. Request approval of amendment two to the professional service agreement with Linguistics International, Inc. for the phone and or video ondemand translation services. The education department respectfully requests approval of amendment two between the city and Linguistica International for phone and video translation services. The purpose of amendment two is to request a one-year extension at the original rates of service. The contract will be extended until June 30th, 2026 and will be funded
112through the bilingual grant for $25,000. Any questions? Thank you. Request approval of amendment one to the agreement with Waterberry Symphony Orchestra, Inc. for music mentoring services. Mr. Albini, good evening. Mayor Perookski, President Hernandez, Vice President Brown, Secretary Srano, Adorno, Board of Education Commissioners, Crosby High School Board of Education Commissioners, Representatives, and Interim Superintendent Dr. Schwarz. The education department respectfully requests uh your review and approval of of amendment one between the Waterberry Arts Magnus School and Waterberry Symphony Orchestra. This is a two-year contract uh for violin, viola, and cello instructions. um they do go to the school um a couple days a week throughout the year each semester and this is paid through the magnet school grant. Any questions request approval to accept the following projects as complete. Mr. Gary Beanie. The education department respectfully requests
113your review and approval of a construction contract with Creative Landscape Design. The contract is for a playground resurfacing at Carrington Elementary School in the amount of $126,17 plus a $6,05 owner control contingency. This is their prek playscape. Uh that is at this time a bit unsafe. Uh roots are growing through underneath. We need to rip that out um and do a resurfacing there so we don't cause any injur injury to the little kids and to our staff. Any questions? Use of school facilities by school organizations and or city departments. Mr. Albini skip. Oh, I'm sorry. 12. 12. Request approval to accept the following projects as complete. I did that. Carrington. Yeah. Sorry, Mr. Albini. Request approval. Yes. Thank you. This is a formality with DAS. The uh Bunker Hill and Washington elevators are complete, paid
114in full and operating. Uh so this we now have to uh inform DAS that the projects are complete and uh that can be accepted by the uh Waterbury public schools and we can move on to our next two elevator project. Any questions? Now, use of school facilities. Loose of school facilities by school organizations and or city departments. Mr. Albany, commissioners, with the approval of the committee on school facilities and grounds, the superintendent of schools recommends approval of the use of school facilities at no charge by 18 school organizations and/or city departments as listed. Any questions? Use of school facilities by outside organizations in a waiver request. Mr. Albini. Once again, commissioners, with the approval of the committee on school facilities and grounds, the superintendent of schools recommends approval of the use of school facilities by
115seven groups or organizations subject to fees insurance as required. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Albini. Thank you very much. In terms of superintendent updates, Dr. Schwarz. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, Mayor Penerooki, President Hernandez, Vice President Brown, Secretary Serrano Ardono, our board of ed commissioners, and of course, our student representatives. Uh on Thursday, April 10th, uh we were uh many of us were able to attend. Unfortunately, I was not, but we had the Rivera Memorial Foundation held their annual scholarship uh at Labella Vista and it was a great event. Always uh one that we are happy to participate with. We had 15 students receive an award including Sinclair. That's right. So, congratulations to all of our [Applause] [Music] students. Go one more. Stuck for a buck. On April 10th, I think I see Lori Eldridge
116back there. She requires less tapes that less tape than Mr. Haxi. On April 10th, uh, elementary school hosted their annual stuck for a buck campaign on support for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Principal Lori Eldridge of Bob Hackey, education leison, graciously volunteered to be stuck to the wall. Definitely a fun afternoon to support the cause. Nice job. United Way's 38th annual celebration and awards were held on April 3rd at Arya. our own uh Sydney Molina, who's also here tonight, was uh given the award for United Way Organized Labor Community Service Award, which is presented annually to an individual from the organized labor community who's demonstrated outstanding volunteer service uh in the greater Waterberry area. In addition, Waterberry Public Schools was recognized for being the top 25 contributors and Sydney has done an amazing job of
117uh taking an idea and running with it to create philanthropy teams in all of our schools. So, congratulations to you, Sydney. There's our willby. So, we saw our Crosby JOTC tonight, but we uh uh the Willby MCGOTC field trip to Quantico occurred uh on April 24th to 25th where 23 cadets from Wilby's program uh went to Quanico, Virginia. Uh the student uh the the students uh gained a deep appreciation for the Marine Corps and US history with a visit to the National Museum of the Marine Corps as well as executing obstacles on the USMC office candidate school obstacle course. They put it all together by combining brains and brun to solve leadership reaction course problems. Last weekend there were uh two events autism awareness here in Waterberry. second annual Greater Waterberry Autism Family Day was
118held at April 27th at Bucks Hill Park. It was a great event. I know uh many of you were able to attend, including uh uh myself and I believe the the mayor was able to make it. Wendy John's I think you were able to get there as well. And on April 26th, the social chase uh held their fourth annual free autism awareness form at WHAM. Students and families were able to take advantage of a variety of resources available at both events. I had the distinct pleasure of being asked to be the keynote speaker at the career academy football banquet which was held on the 25th. Uh and I did a a little numbers thing with that with that group and uh not only were they the first water water public school team to win a
119playoff in anyone's recent history. Nobody could remember the last time a Waterberry public school won a playoff game. What I was most impressed by though wasn't just the five seniors who were committed to play football in college or the one student going to Central Connecticut to play football. Um I was most impressed by two things. The coaching staff there are really dedicated to helping the students beyond football. Very heavily involved with volunteerism and uh and specifically academics. And I told the group I was most impressed with the number 3.3 which was their team GPA generally uh uh STEM day and career day. They had us uh they had an amazing event there with uh a large portion of the school uh to hear uh about different uh different um um not just careers in STEM
120but also different pathways for uh students who might be interested in uh teaching as well. So Dr. Johnson and I were able to go there and speak a little bit about what superintendents and assistant superintendents do. Uh which is always uh uh easy to do when you're trying to talk to younger students of exactly what we do on a daily basis, but they seem to respond well. So that was great. Uh similar Kingsbury had a a career day as well where many of us were able to uh uh go there and read uh uh books about what our careers are. And although I searched very hard for a book for elementary school students for superintendent, there is there does there isn't one that exists. And so I created a book uh in my spare time
121about what superintendents do, which was a hit. So who knows, you may be looking at an author in the future. But it was really uh it was really fun and uh had a great time and Hannah Sam did a great job of organizing that event. Fresh off the press here today, uh, many of our students met at the interim superintendent student advisory council at Williams. The students are again are creating a mental health PSA and they're really they they they did a great job of coming up with different concepts of how this PSA could look. We're we're getting support from works as well. Uh uh I have to give uh shout out to Jen Sarah who al also helped develop and facilitate this uh this afternoon. And we've settled on a vision for the PSA
122project. Uh the writing team has their work to be done. We're going to be shooting at the end of the end of the month. Looking forward to that. And I just want to end off uh on two notes. Happy school principal day for all principles in the house. All right. Yeah. I'll spare everyone the poem I sent you. But um I we know how much you do for the city, how much you do for our students. We appreciate uh all of you and we uh really thank you for choosing the Waterberry Public Schools as a place to to work for our students. And finally, I just want to invite all of the board of education so that uh I know Dorney is going to be sending you some more information in the near future uh
123about the board of alderman meeting. It's okay. Board of alderman meeting Monday night where uh they will discuss the 158 million that you sent to them uh two meetings ago. Uh it was uh approved and the board of alderman has to approve what you sent them and that will be on Monday night and we'll send you some more information on that as well. Thank you. In terms of superintendence notification to the board, I have a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. We're going to take a short um break, but can I have the search committee meet for a few minutes? Follow Mr. Fair. [Music] Good evening. This is a special meeting of the Waterberry Board of Education on May 1st, 2027 2025. Lord Mercy. We'll start out with
124the silent prayer. Can we have Aiden lead us in the pledge of allegiance? Oh, yes. I thought we were joking. That's good. All right. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Vice President Brown present. Commissioner Anthony Ireland present. Commissioner Latoya Ireland here. Commissioner Jackson present. Commissioner Lopez present. Commissioner O'Brien present. Commissioner Orso present. Commissioner Srano Doro here. Commissioner Van Stone present. President Hernandez here. Mayor Periski. Item number four, personal search committee. Vice President Brown. Thank you, Madam President. The Personnel Search Committee recommends that the board of education consider Dr. Darren M. Schwarz as superintendent of schools. Second. No. Wait. I hereby move to elect Dr. Darren M. Schwarz as superintendent of schools
125for a period of three years commencing upon execution of an employment contract and to authorize Mayor Paul Pruneri Jr. to negotiate and execute the related employment contract. So moved. Second. discussion. Commissioner Van Stone. Thank you, Madam President. Through you, um, this is been my honor to have this be the second time that I, uh, was able to, as a member of this board to search for, you know, someone to come in and be the leader of this district. Um you know in each time you know you go through a number of items a number of people a lot of reading of resumeumés in many cases searching online um I won't say to find dirt but I search online to find dirt uh and and sometime you do find it uh sometime you don't but that's
126I do that purposely so that I can come for uh the rest of my board members and the public to say that I did my due diligence to bring the right person to lead our district. Um and in this case we we had uh quite a few well we had 15 candidates. Um I would have liked to seen that number larger. I would have uh you know like liked to and I was looking forward to and my expectation was to be extremely challenged on making this decision. Um I'll save that that editorial for somewhere else down the road. Uh but I am very confident in where we have arrived tonight. Uh he we have a person who has served this district for 12 years. He came here in a leadership position. my favorite job description
127of ILD. Actually, I couldn't stand the job description of IL and I fought very hard to get rid of ILDs and uh some somehow this person survived all that. Uh we changed to a different structure within our system and the did end up going away but he was here when we had five. He was here when we had three. Uh became a chief academic officer for a number of years, which is where we spend a great deal of time. Uh as I still do with the chief academic officer, uh not as much as I should probably, but I do spend the time because that's where we then present the curriculum to this committee. Uh so during his time as a chief academic officer, I sat down with him quite often. Um, and I watched I
128did I I can say I watched him grow. He was a pretty young guy when he first came through that door, but uh I knew from day one pretty much that there was something there and we needed to hang on to him even through all the positions. Uh when they changed or he moved on to another position, um there was always a little bit there to keep them in town. Um there are no greater jobs than this one. There's no more ladder to climb here in Waterberry. Um but if that ladder is going to the top of the mountain, I have no problem going to the top of the mountain with you. So I am uh very proud and encouraged to cast my vote tonight uh for Dr. Jiren Schwarz. So thank you, Vice President
129Brown. Yes. Thank you, Madam President. Um, I am wholeheartedly in support of uh Dr. Darren Schwarz. He wasn't a doctor when he came in in uh 2012. Uh, and I got elected in 2011. So, we've we've grown together. I've seen his amazing dedication to students and to the district. I've seen uh his willingness to work with all kinds of community partnerships and get involved with this community. Remember the bed races? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. United Way bed races. Um I don't think we won but it was it was a good I I won on spirit. They were in it. Yeah. Um, I've just seen uh his amazing uh ability to work with all stakeholders and uh especially working with uh personnel in the district which is critical to fostering those partnerships. uh I've seen him
130reach out to the community and we have amazing partnerships with Yukon, with uh Nagatuck Valley Community College and with many other strong partners because of his willingness to work with everyone and and see that yeah, you're bringing talents to the district, anything for the kids. And I love that spirit about Darren. uh and I know he will continue to focus on the students and focus on you know what's best for students and uh academic excellence and student success because he is all about the kids as we see every meeting his he gets excited about going to the schools and participating in all these events it's exhausting to think about what you do really but um I just am thrilled uh I think we're moving in the right direction as a district coming out of some
131rough waters, but I think that as a board we will continue, I hope, to work with Darren closely and uh move the district forward. Thank you, Commissioner Latoya Arland. Thank you, Madame President. So, this process has been long, but this is a very an important decision. And um making this decision, every time I sit up here, I not only think about my children that are still in the school system, but I think about the other 18 9,000 plus that we have. And during this process, I've done my due diligence. I've talked to students. I've talked to parents. And I've also talked to myself because I am a parent as well. But one thing I have to say is I really believe that um for now we are making the right decision and I am happy
132to vote for Darren Schwarz. Commissioner Orsel. Well uh 12 years ago when I met uh Darren Schwarz I was the purchasing director for the city of Waterberry and I have to say he was a real pain in the neck back then. I can tell you that. But what I've seen is a young man grow and I and I'm proud to say that and uh you know I've seen the good times and the bad times and we sat together many times in my office and uh he just happened to you know you tell him something and he did it and he just grew and and he's a fine young man and I'm just very happy to be voting for uh Darren this evening and I think that he's going to do great things for this for
133this uh school system and and and most of all for the students. because that's why we're here is for the students and I think that's what he is going to continue to do and he's done a great job the last few months I have to say. So Darren, I'd be happy to vote for you this evening. Commissioner Srano Adorno. Thank you Madame President. to say that this uh was difficult. That's putting it in in nice terms because it has been beyond difficult um for me personally. For those that really know me, I've always been a transparent person. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I've always just been one to speak to my values and my beliefs as all the commissioners did. I did my due diligence as well and I went back and did
134more research back and forth. With that said and and Darren, please I care about you a lot. I think you've done great. There's a lot of positive things. I I kind of felt a little stronger with another candidate and I wanted the dynamic duel. I wanted you and someone else together and that was more of my vision. But you guys paired very well good together. I applaud you. I know this has been very difficult. The students and staff, every remarkable um positive praise that they have about you, the commissioners, obviously it's the it's the majority and nothing against you. I still looking forward to continue this district to grow. I'm still going to challenge you to my Zumba class. We were going to have a little dance off. So, I'm looking forward to that. and
135I do humbly uh congratulate you and I think you know I'm hoping that our district can continue to grow and improve anyone else. So again to say this process was easy it was not. Um it was very difficult, very hard, very challenging on me. Um I too have seen you grow, but I also have some reservations because I've also seen a little lack of things. Um so I hope moving forward because I will the board has spoken somewhat. uh that we continue this fight and make sure that the first thing we think of is the students and no one else. Students are our priority. With that being said, um we'll take a roll call vote. Vice President Brown, yes. Commissioner Anthony Ireland, yes. Commissioner Latoya Ireland. Yes. Commissioner Jackson, yes. Commissioner Lopez, yes. Commissioner O'Brien,
136yes. Commissioner Orso, yes. Commissioner Serrano Adorno, no. Commissioner Van Stone, yes. President Hernandez, no. Congratulations, Dr. Schwarz. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Not mine. Okay. up and say congratulations. Just coming around. Was I supposed to sit down? Yeah. Let me stay next time. Do you have family here? Please introduce. Would you like to make a statement? Sure. Can I make a I'll make a statement. Go over there. Yeah. Well, whatever. Yeah. We don't want to see you over here. Over there. He should have been standing on the podium. [Music] Well, I haven't sat here in a while. I want to start off by uh thanking the board of education, President Hernandez, the mayor for this amazing opportunity to lead our school district. I I do want to thank JG Consulting uh and the city human resources
137department for I'll just call it a rigorous process over the last good few months. Yes. Uh I do wish Can you hear me? Yes. That's loud enough. I wish the best to all the candidates that did apply to this amazing district, especially to the finalists, Dr. Lewis and my good friend Dr. White. We spoke at length today and I wish them the best. I also want to recognize the superintendent's office staff and the clerk, Tanya, Carrie, Barbara, Margaret, and Margaret for all of your support during the last nine months in this transition. It meant the world to me. I want to say thank you to the cabinet. you have stayed focused on the one thing we talked about in our first meet meeting which was regardless of what's happening in the district. 19 almost 19,000
138students are counting on us. So regardless of the adult issues we may have, we need to stay focused on the kids and you've done that this year without hesitation. And as we've shrunk in cabinet size, you've gained more responsibility and you've taken it all on without hesitating. And I want to thank you all for that. In these moments, it's extremely important that we also acknowledge the work of our previous superintendent. I have personally learned a great deal from the leadership of Dr. Olette, Mr. Henry, and Dr. Ruffen, and I acknowledge their contributions to our school system and appreciate everything they've done for my growth. I work and live in Waterberry for one reason, to make an impact on students lives. and I will continue to do so as the superintendent. I remain optimistic about what
139we can collectively accomplish together as a community. As leaders, we have a powerful opportunity right now to define bold goals moving forward and craft a strategic plan that will drive lasting impact and success. I look forward to the challenge, but I'm also humbled by the privilege to serve and I commit to being steadfast and always putting our students first. I would be remiss if I didn't take this moment to thank my parents who instilled in me the values of hard work and service at a young age. uh my in-laws who are here tonight who immigrated to Waterberry and didn't realize at the time would have become my Connecticut parents and I thank them for their support and everything you do for our family. Not just because you give me a lot of Portuguese food and
140meals. to my three daughters, two who couldn't be here tonight. But I want to thank you all because there are days where I can't attend your special events. There are nights where I can't have dinner with you. And you always understand because you share your dad with 19,000 other kids. The Fatima, my wife, I lean on you more and more. And somehow you remain poised and supportive. I don't quite know how you do it all, but you are my beacon for what is possible for all students in Waterberry and you are the inspiration for my sustained optimism. I believe in Waterberry. Simple as that. I believe in our schools. I believe in our students. I believe in our teachers. I believe in our administrators. We have amazing staff here. I have no doubt that if
141we work together and stay focused on student outcomes, we can accomplish all things possible. Thank you. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjourn. Second. We are adjourned. All right.