January 19, 2023 Board of Education Business Meeting - Part 1

001good evening everyone I would like to call this meeting to order first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance now Kathleen I don't know how you did this when you were chair because I'm very nervous and I don't think I can do it without any help so can I call for the Scouts BSA to come join us to help us with the Pledge of Allegiance come on up Scouts they're going to bring the flags up to the stage then they're going to come on down and they're going to say a couple of words about the schools they attend and their name and then we're going to all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance stage then you hear me with this oh I don't have to hold it oh very good okay please introduce yourself

002and say what school you go to and how much you like that school um Christopher I go to Eastern and I like the social aspect of it nice Luigi I go to Eastern and I really like the teachers I'm Charlotte and I like the way that the teachers teach fantastic okay now we're all standing now it's time for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much everyone thank you Scouts most of us here who go to Greenwich public schools are Americans and we all we want to be proud of that and we also understand there are some people in our schools that are not

003and either aspire to or they're temporary visiting us so let's make sure we put our best foot forward in every meeting going forward to make sure we show everyone in the Greenwich public school system that this country is the best country in the world and they should all be very we should all be very proud of it so thank you uh may I begin by making a motion to approve the consent agenda Karen do I have a second I'll second it oh good all in favor please put your hand up all opposed nobody we're good now we'll begin with honoring our various a variety of athletes uh and other Awards this evening Music Awards and our uh National Merit Scholarship program honorees we'll begin uh by having Pete George Mr G did I mess it

004up really bad thank you everyone messes up nobody calls him by his real name or actually does they just Mr G at all you all so come on up please your Egypt perfect good evening superintendent Jones chairperson Kelly Board of Education members and everyone in attendance today both physically and virtually thank you all for taking the time to recognize our fall athlete all-state high school student athletes the Connecticut High School School coaches association chose the following student athletes in their respective Sports students when I call your name please stand and remain standing until the whole group is recognized we ask the audience to hold Applause till the end in Cross Country Junior Kate Friedman cross country Junior Christian Christian so that was like cross country freshman Mateo chisara field hockey senior Clara miffelman golf singer

005Charles Troy golf Junior Owen Duda golf sophomore Alexander and Celine football Jake Kiernan senior or he's a singer excuse me football senior Jack Wilson football Junior Griffin galletta football junior John and Cigna and football sophomore Peter Von bulakis for swimming and Diving senior Daisy Decker Junior Annabelle guarnera Junior Sydney G and freshman Melissa Geiger folks these are your All-State representatives from Greenwich high schools give them a round of applause please oh my bad I skipped over soccer soccer senior Lucas Lucas stand up I also would like to thank you guys for recognizing that one not two but three All-State teams in the fall at Greenwich High School uh first up to speak about their team and recognize them will be Jeff Santilli who is the coach of the golf team at Greenwich High School Jeffrey

006congratulations and Jeff and I are friends for years we worked together some years ago years ago Jeff has the uh the coolest job you play golf after school no no no no no it's a mythology please uh during your speech oh before your speech can you please make reference to your handicap what it is please and then then your speech thank you I don't know they'll give me a hard time about that one so we'll just call it about a four or so right Charles is that good enough all right well good evening and thank you for having us here tonight um I first want to start off because sometimes it goes overlooked to say thank you to my assistant coach Matt Fletcher for all he does for this program without him we cannot have

007uh the boys that we have here this evening and get to the point that we usually get to so thank you Matt he didn't want to come up here tonight but thank you I'll be quick I just wanted to go over a few things for the season obviously we had a great year and that's why we're here this evening um but to be the coach of these guys it was just such a special year it was an easier to coach they were just a great group I honestly think we kept Rinaldi's in Villanueva in business this year with some of the food trips but we discussed at the beginning of the year what it was going to take to get to this point and to uh hold a few titles at the end of the

008year um and with that they really put the extra time in over the weekend to get to the point where um they got to and obviously all these athletes here as Michael Jordan says Champions are made when no one is watching and that's clear of what the soccer football team and the golf team um with that these three six guys joined only two other teams on record in the program history that I have found going back to on when Rick osvik was a coach 1981 and 2012 to go undefeated and win both the state and FCI Championship so they joined to Malik company and very proud of them for that it was also very impressive as you see all in this room how many all uh State athletes we had and having three out of

009the six on the golf team was just what an accomplishment that was but I'd like to introduce the players this year uh starting down on the very end you think you may you messed up the Pete's name now AJ enslin got that right for the first time all season all right stand up what do you got Jack Hopper Emmy Graham Owen Duda Dylan Harris Charles Troy and Coach Matt Fletcher again thank you for having this evening and we'll continue to make the school and Community proud thank you thank you Jeff next up is our boys soccer team coached by Kurt Putnam Kurt is a friend of mine for 20 years we've known each other for a very long time been on boards together absolutely and he taught me a lot about soccer I spent many

010years coaching soccer uh Youth Soccer both in uh travel and uh and Saturday morning soccer and I got a lot of lessons from him we worked together on a bunch of different things I served on the board and he was an advisor to the board and uh he's just a tremendous guy for him having coached at the high school with him for him to get the state championship if you guys please understood how important it is to him and I know he's so proud he's the proudest guy in the world right now so I'm so proud of him thanks Joe thank you all right so I actually had no idea I was supposed to give a speech so I'm going to actually do my best thanks for prepping me Pete it's much appreciated uh so

011um first of all I I just like Jeff uh it's really important to to acknowledge the people behind the scenes that uh make so many other things happen so that us as coaches can just basically get on with taking care of our players and trying to coach the players as best as we can for it to be as competitive as we can so really for the the parents of uh certainly the captains on the the varsity team and the booster club um you know it goes without saying you you are an integral part for us to be as successful as what we have been this year my assistant coach Ray Marshall who is uh up there somewhere in Costa Rica probably having a crafty one at the bar um right Ray and I have known

012each other a long time I actually coached his son who was one of my captains many many years ago and uh you know we've formed an incredible work in relationship so uh you know for both of us to be able to share the moments that we had this year it was an incredible experience with respects to the players um I'll be honest it was somewhat unexpected um we kind of labored through the FCX season a little bit um we played some great games we played some kind of okay games and we played some poor games uh we got into the the FC ACT Tournament uh which we have done since I've coached 22 straight years and high hopes of probably getting to the final but we come up against a very good Trumbull team and

013we didn't help ourselves with mistakes that we made and pretty much kind of get gift wrap them the the trip to the final with our first half display and and really it came down to well what now for the postseason and you know I got the group of players together and I said well you know we're making far too many mistakes so unless we fix something with the system that we're playing and we're moving some players around uh we're not going to go very far in the tournament and when the draw came out we we looked at it and it was not going to be an easy part halfway to a final we played the previous year's state champions in the first round and beat them on penalties we played Trumbull again for the third

014time that season and beat them on penalties we went to Newington who were the ninth seed and actually was the only game we won in regulation surprise surprise um we then played Fairfield Prep who was seeded higher than us in the semi-finals and beat them on penalties and then played Hall who had we had actually played in the season and gave us a really good beating and beat them on penalties so um I've kind of done something that the English national team seems to struggle with which is actually winning penalty shootouts and um you know I was on the end of my phone during the World Cup ready in case Gareth Southgate needed to call me up just in case they wanted some advice uh but I have to hand it to these players honestly

015the sacrifice that they made going into the into postseason with a system that we had very little time to to practice there's just their their sheer desire their work rate their effort it was absolutely tireless and you know I couldn't have been prouder at the end when we we even when we got into overtime and then eventually into penalties and obviously beat a very very good team um proudest moment of my coaching career without a doubt um with a group of players who did something that that no other team for 61 years has done in Greenwich which was to win a state championship so you know I'm looking forward to the boys are all coming back next year um and as Leo just said it's time to get a third star so hopefully it won't

016take as long to do it and we can try and get back and do it again next year so I want to call up um The Players well actually the players can stand up the captains Lucas uh Gordy um Jamie and Nick who's not actually here and then um Jack who unfortunately got injured during the season um but we got a nice medal for him at the end of it uh Max some ass Leon uh Charlie um mink Nick uh Nate Mika Matt Thomas Nick Andre um who else we got oh and Javier um just quickly just just quickly about Javier have you didn't play much actually of the postseason however you're talking nerves of Steel and just ice cold he came up and took a penalty and apparently shoots out we've not actually stepping

017on the field in the entirety of that game and when I looked at him and I said you've won a penalty have you he said give me the ball coach I go up number one and that just says a lot about this squad of players that no matter how much they played they were willing to sacrifice themselves and then do the business when it needed the most and I just wanted to shout out to Javier fact because that was absolutely huge what you did in that final so congratulations boys in the third state championship team is the football team at ratings High School coached by Anthony Morello I also had the pleasure about working a little bit with Coach Morello back when I was working at the school and there are some things that we

018certainly like to point out if you consider uh the covet season which we had to shut down uh coach Morello had a uh had actually won a state championship as the head coach fastest or the fastest of any other coach in the history of Greenwich high school so he did that in three years we'll take it if my voice goes out uh I lost it earlier in the week and I'm yet to find it uh but I'm gonna do my best to be as robotic as I can when I announce your name so it doesn't you don't get a squeak in the middle of it uh thank you for having us uh Tony Jones uh obviously Joe we go way back uh so thankful for all you guys do for us uh as a Greenwich

019Public Schools Alum I spent 13 years in Greenwich Public Schools was actually taken back when I uh walked in here today I was in here I think it was the year 2000 I saw Fiddler on the Roof uh Central Middle School was performing so I look back here and we are a long way from anatevka uh looks like New York City perhaps but um it is uh you know it's so great for me to to be able to be a part of this for these guys I know what it feels like uh to to put everything you got into a state championship and and come up short as a player I was over for as a player uh when it got to the playoffs so uh for me personally to be able to to help

020you guys achieve your goals was really uh something that I'm going to cherish for the rest of my life I'd like to congratulate the other teams and coaches that are here tonight um quick story about Coach Putnam early in the season there were we were having a lot of bus shortages uh happening all over the state and we had a freshman a freshman game uh Road game we have a big freshman team it requires two buses and only one bus showed up soccer also had an away game that day and uh the game was penciled in a little later on in the evening and Coach Platinum gave up the bus said hey coach just take take the bus and go so the freshman team was able to arrive on time and play that game and

021uh you know a big thanks to to coach for doing that but I think you know being here with all these teams and here with the town of Greenwich it just goes to show that you know all the teams working together can can do great things and it's not always the case and it wasn't the case uh when I was growing up and uh to have all of our coaches uh working in tandem for the betterment of student athletes is something that I know I'm really proud uh proud of and proud to come to work with so um you know I just wanted to point that out and thank you again for doing that next time it's going the other way you know we'll have a bus to give to your guys um and I

022want to thank Pete for organizing this I know in 2018 when when we want to say Championship we didn't get to do you know this event I think it's a really special opportunity so um as far as this season goes yeah it was it was a a really magical run you know football doesn't doesn't stop and this team the the seniors now and the Juniors they lost the game in early December of 2021 and their season started the next day they were working tirelessly January all the way through the summer with lifts four days a week running programs getting up at 6 a.m for morning workouts uh all throughout the summer and dedicating their time and their efforts uh towards a common goal and they were able to achieve that goal so um kudos to

023you guys you know every day you know that we're we're farther away I get a little more excited about today so it's something that isn't like dissipating it's it's continuing to grow so uh hopefully you guys got um you know hopefully you feel the same way and hopefully uh you've got more out of this uh program than just winning the state championship because if things didn't go our way I sure hope that uh you know you'd still remember all the life lessons and goals that you learned and the friendships and bonds that you made and those are ones that you'll carry on for a lifetime some of my closest friends now are were guys that I played with in high school so um congrats we have a lot of uh student athletes in our program

024approximately 190 uh through all four levels I'm not going to read 190 names tonight but I do want to recognize um the guys that are here and you know other contributors to our uh our state championship run so I'd like to start kind of in reverse order and uh open with our captains so if I can have number eight Matthew trimmer number nine Dominic DeLuca number 14 Jack Wilson and number 76 Jake Kiernan all stand up for me and if we can just do uh an Applause for these captains uh on their own I think that would be awesome you guys were exceptional the the in the entirety of the journey um tremendous leaders tremendous vocal leaders on and off the field and uh tremendous athletes too a lot of multi-sport players and a lot

025of guys are going to be continuing their athletic career uh at the next level so look forward to seeing how that how that pans out over the next few months and uh can't wait to watch you guys on Saturdays in the upcoming years um if you guys can stay standing I'm now going to announce the rest of the seniors oh Wyatt Abernathy and we can hold our Applause till till the end of this uh Wyatt Abernathy Peyton eslonson Ryan Bailey Sergo Boone Christian Brutus Andre Castellanos Michael cipollone Sean Cowie lay art dudushi Charlie Dixon Kane Earhart true fala Teddy Flynn Danny Fox Wyatt Gibson Carl grafasi George Hernandez Vincent and Singa Zachary Jacob Jack konigsberg Michael Mohler miles Moore Robert pastor Anthony petticano sander thomasino Neo vigilante Aryan wadwa James walgum Teddy Walsh senior class

0262023. thank you for our Juniors brand in August Kyle Allen Nick aravides David baumgarten Brandon Boone Dylan brem adorian Campbell Antonio chicarelli Chris Crooks Alex fluke Tyler Fong Griffin galletta Gavin generelli Nicholas granito Rocco Grillo Mark Holtz John and Singa Kiko Ivanov Logan joswiak Ian Kim Daniel manuli Ryan mcbriarty yes here McGee Johnny McHugh Vincent monic Brian Nova Ryan Park Sebastian Parra Tommy pasamano Eric perrino ignaci piatrica Kane Rama James Rowena Jaden Scott John saparis David Varela George Von velakis George weekster and Tommy Ibarra our junior class and sophomores looks like we have Chase ernesta we have Max Merrick we have Michael D'Angelo we have Peter Von velakis what's up uh did I miss anybody that's present okay great uh lastly I'd like to thank my coaches um I'm fortunate to have uh probably one

027of the largest but really the most talented uh group of guys that I've ever had a chance to work with some I was fortunate enough to inherit and others um I was able to to meet and bring in and and uh this one was really shared by all of us and uh you know these these coaches some of them live you know up in Bethel yeah uh up in Shelton and Derby and they commute here six days a week in the fall uh to be with these guys to make practice to drive home in rush hour it's 6 p.m 7 p.m at night day after day after day year after year after year um the commitment to them is unquestioned and I wouldn't be standing here uh without them so just want to give a

028thank you to all of them as well thanks everybody have a great night thank you okay we have some more recognitions which if once we have the recognitions I I know we have midterms so I'd encourage the kids though the boys and girls to go home and study for their midterms uh so but I'd like you to stay for the recognitions uh now we have the nafme student songwriting competition Q uh ice cream in the driveway please like um [Music] it's Friedman come on up thank you hi I'm Barbara Friedman I've been teaching electronic music and uh composition and studio production at Greenwich High School since 2001. started by Anne maduno in 1969 ghs has the longest continually running music technology program in the United States and possibly the world today music technology classes such

029as the ghs program are offered in tens of thousands of schools all over the world along with my teaching partner Jason polis we provide musical arts Humanities and stem learning and credits to over 300 students every year making the ghs program one of the largest in the country this year almost 30 percent of the seniors in our program will go on to college to major in music composition audio engineering music production or music industry and business we hope that they and others will be joining the long list of ghs graduates who are vibrant professionals and well-known artists in the 50 billion dollar a year music and Communications industry hi there uh the ghs music department is very proud to congratulate you to Takahashi selected as the winner in the categories in the category grades 9

030through 12 for the 2022 National Association for music education nafme student songwriters competition Utah was a sophomore and a student in ghs electronic music songwriting and recording class last year with myself and Barbara Friedman as teachers we co-teach the class when he submitted the piece to the composition out to the competition Utah is also in the ghs honors chamber singers Patrick Taylor is the director and he is an exceptional ghs student academically as well Utah is a multi-instrumentalist and a vocalist he plays more instruments than I even know now uh he played and sang literally everything on the piece you just heard titled Ice Cream in the driveway that won the national competition we are so very very proud of all of Utah's accomplishments thank you Take a Bow take a bow from your crowd

031by the way I just want to give a shout out to Utah's parents and to all the parents who are here supporting your young people because without you the parents they really wouldn't have the accomplishments that they have so thank you very much just thank you for having me we've had my kids you know that right I did yes I know of course they did thank you that's awesome uh now we have the n a m m Foundation 2022 best community for music education award Tony that's you right yeah Jones sorry thank you um we're here tonight we've invited Laura Newell um to join us I think we all know that we have one of the best music education programs in the country but it's wonderful when an outside organization agrees with us and I'm

032so glad you went right before Laura because I know Laura you work so hard with all of your staff and our music program is phenomenal and you can't have a great program without a great leader and I know somebody mentioned covid earlier tonight your program had so many impacts here in kova just like our athletic programs and you powered through it and you kept your music program strong without losing a beat and we were just talking I was talking to some people that are going to be in the Eastern musical before tonight and we're just we haven't missed a beat and it's it's very much because of you and also the wonderful people that you hire and that you leave so if you'd like to come forward and say a few words we'd love to

033have you thank you Dr Jones I'm just going to be very brief but I want to make sure that you understand while it's brief um when I talk about my teachers they are the best in this world they are some of the most accomplished musicians I've ever worked with I've moved around from all over the state and I have to tell you that your kids are in great hands they are compassionate with your children they focus on like honing their class their craft every single day not only do they teach music they already they also support your child socially and emotionally I see so many kids in the in the band room in the chorus rooms in the orchestra rooms just being together and building a music Community that's what our role is not only

034to just make them outstanding musicians but to build a community of music so when they go off into the world they're singing to their children they're listening to the radio they're listening to Utah's composition and I couldn't say anything more they are just amazing amazing individuals and when you see a music teacher that you've come across kids in all the years here please say thank you they put in countless hours before school after school to make sure we're on our program is the best thank you hold on hold on okay now we have the National Merit Scholarship program honorees Miss iannello there you are well good evening everyone um thank you to the board of education and Dr Jones for allowing us this opportunity to honor some outstanding students this evening the National Merit Scholarship

035Corporation honors students every year based on their college board scores on the PSATs and just to give you an idea of how exceptional our students are the first group of students that I'm going to recognize tonight are commended students sorry and these students are part of only the top three or four percent nationally so that's an an incredible accomplishment for them academically our National Merit semi-finalists are part of a one percent of the top in our country so we have a lot to be proud of and thankful for to all the work that you've done so the first group of students they would like to recognize tonight are commended students there are 36 of them so as I read your name I'll ask you to please remain standing I need to look this up this

036happens to tall people sorry um sorry so I'll ask you to stand up and remain standing until the end and if you could please hold your applause I will say I've been here for four months so I apologize ahead of time if I do not pronounce your name correctly so please forgive me Isabel benison Nicholas Carlson Stephanie Chang Nina Clark Douglas Dozier Madeline Duff Michelle Ferrone ccg Dylan Germaine Mateo Giuliani El control Nicholas dugliani alcantrell apologize Gaston Gomez and Biko Grover Whittaker Grover Audrey Hall Avery imp Kai Jane Nathan Joy Noah Kim Adam klasharski Victoria Lou Marcus latufo Archer Manning Charles Miranda Nicole Orlowski Alexander Palmer Maxwell raid yukirasaki Alan shu Christine song Jane stephine Benjamin Sullivan and Suzuki Kevin toe pelts Alexander II and Kira young so again these students scored in the top

037three to four percent nationally so congratulations so the next group of students are Juniors this year we have 11 of these students I should I mean you heard me call quite a few names our commended students we had 36 of them and I'm just blown away by the level of achievement that our students regularly show in this school and we we have a lot to be proud of our national semi-finalists for this year for the 2023 our first national money semi-finalist is Sophie Citron yay Teresa Dobbins Alexander Akiko sorry I didn't say that right um Arjun Kishore Lauren coaster Luke mazzullo Joaquina Monday Laura nugen Emil Schoenberg Harry Waters and Brandon you congratulations you guys are all amazing appreciate it well that's great we got some smart kids that's way cool and one more thing

038that I'd like you students to hang around for is to hear from your student government so if I can have uh I believe we start with the student body vice president Mitch Goldstein Mitch you are a friend of my daughter she says you're a wonderful kid we have not had a chance to really spend time together yet but I'm looking forward to doing that going forward uh at the school how you doing that's good congratulations oh thank you and I uh I like the new uh setup we have here we get to talk to everyone at the meeting uh so good morning good evening board members and meeting attendees my name is Mitch Goldstein and I'm the student body vice president this year I want to start by congratulating all the students on their achievement

039this year it's great to see just how much high-level work is being done both in the classrooms and on the fields at ghs this week students are completing their midterm exams and as we look into the second semester the office of student activities and a few student clubs are hosting a Super Bowl food drive leading up to the Super Bowl all students have been asked to bring in cans of soup which will then be donated to neighbor neighbor on the note of food the diversity and Food Services subcommittee have planned a chef's table event with the executive chef Nico to celebrate the Chinese New Year later this month uh students will be able to get food that connects to the Chinese New Year this is the first event in a series of events that aims

040spring a more diverse food options to Greenwich high school and with this Edition the student government aims to provide a more diverse and representative menu earlier this month the student government sent out a survey during an advice race to try to determine the most pressing issues at ghs we were thrilled to receive over 1200 responses the most common concern was related to midterm waiting which has been addressed thanks to Mr mayo and the administrative team at ghs the next priority was student-centered trash followed by proper utilization of flex time and finally GPA waiting and college preparation going forward the student government will continue to work with Administration and with students to address these issues I would also like to thank I would also like to address the new courses that are being introduced tonight I

041want to say that ghs students support the addition of the guitar 2 class and especially the addition of an honors linear algebra class to ghs more high-level classes will allow students to expand their knowledge in a larger variety of academic areas on behalf of the student body I want to thank you all for your time and I look forward to continuing to work with the board as we begin the year I now pass the microphone over to student body president Isabella giga okay Isabella you stood out a lot when we knew you in middle school and your personality is overwhelming and great so please welcome everyone I know this is probably the first time for a lot of you so I'm Isabella gega your student body president at Greenwich High School good evening chairman Kelly

042Dr Jones members of the board and meeting attendees Happy New Year I want to start off by congratulating Mr Kelly on his newly elected position as chair and to miss Stowe we want to thank you for your leadership on the board and your support of the students we are so excited to work with the both of you and the rest of the board for the rest of 2023. as XCOM and student government Representatives head into 2023 we have been reflecting on the past year and set goals for the second semester each class at ghs aims to host one class specific event and our subcommittees will Foster a collaborative environment to brainstorm ideas to continue improving our school we hope to see a large turnout at student events and are optimistic for this next half of

043the school year Beyond this Greenwich high school students are currently deep into the midterm process although this is time of stress teachers have been accommodated students needs and we are incredibly appreciative administrators have been highly receptive to student feedback implementing mandatory review packets a review packet a review day prior to exams and a choice between five percent and 10 waiting for midterms for full year courses during these times of stress though we as students turn to miss Foster our director of Student Activities to put a smile on everyone's face as she coordinates a semester two spirit week kickoff starting February 6th filled with fun events exciting dress-up themes and entertaining activities during lunch we are excited for the end of midterms and a fresh start of semester two I am hopeful for the future to

044the come for the future to come and I look forward to speaking with you all once again next month thank you right okay next up well I'm sorry I'm going to release the students to go home and study for their midterms because that's the uh priority Lil I know you love an audience but we're gonna have to break up this audience a little bit because it is midterm season while everybody's heading out I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that tonight we honored students who were in The disciplines of Athletics academics and the Arts which is pretty impressive I just have to say so congratulations to all of our uh our students awesome thank you everyone for coming thank you you know and now introducing Lil Peron come on upload whoa where's my sunglasses yeah

045wait the music right Mark and I could have danced them again this is my speech that's all right well good evening everyone I'm Lillian Perrone the proud president of the Greenwich Education Association um first of all I love this setup I can look at the people and nothing personal not at you guys and Joe you're right with an Arms Reach of me um you just felt the energy as I was standing back there uh watching all the awards it's really a blessing and just so exciting um just to have the acknowledgment of so many students and and uh coaches and and staff and and teachers and uh just the gratefulness of thanking and have the opportunities um to share their their wins you know it's so exciting standing on the field and hearing a national

046anthem I've been there at the college level and it's really exciting uh for the coaches and players here today um and thank you to uh Laura who also praised the teachers not only students and administration but our teachers do work hard so many so many teachers are out there there during covid um there for the students um they all work hard um thank you to my friend Pete Georgia who's here he's doing a great job great guy and to my PE and health staff that's also here um Kathy and Chris and uh all the other Administration that I see high Daisy um see there um uh so thank you all um it's great that we have a commonality we that we can celebrate success within this great District so thank you to our parents too

047um now to the not more exciting stuff but you know all right so um uh thank you uh Mark oh there you go right there thank you Mark and the coordinators um for the stem presentation I thought was quite interesting um uh K8 K8 stem report the data points um some things that I'm interested in uh hoping to learn from future presentations and conversations I'm looking at the K-8 math SBA Mastery grades 38 student achievement trends for years 2019 through 22. uh very interested in hearing the story behind the numbers sometimes you can't just look at numbers you have to look at there's always a hidden story behind some of the data um one thing I thought was very interesting uh especially grades three and four because when I look at the gray highlighted area

048which is 2019 pre-covered results which might be a benchmark and two indicator of where students are then you compare it to the 2021 um covet scores um you see the data representing um learning loss and as I go to my state meetings uh it's all districts are experiencing uh this learning loss and you know we're having discussions on uh sharing strategies and ideas like how do we in different you know curricular areas how just are they handling this what's more interesting though is that in the third year uh Trend uh in 2002 a couple grades grades three surpassed the pre-covered year scores and got to uh the 75 Target not only got to the Target but the 78 went up to 78 and while grade four also improved Target goals also in 2022 of 75

049percent now if this is if this is for third grade the what I don't know is is it a cohort Trend or are those third graders that was they were first graders and second graders and now the third graders and that's the score when they were third grader so I'm interested um on uh hearing hearing that I also observed the same data trends for the ngss science achievement trends for eighth grade um and I know that we're probably as a district take a deep dive into what and how was done in these two grade levels with the cohort studies Trend and share their Knowledge and Skills and incorporate the best practices so that across all grade levels and all schools we can incorporate the same strategy and best practices to hopefully achieve that for all

050our students here um and Greenwich um one thing I like to also talk about um is the initiative of the State Board of Education newly initiated CT saids program uh talking at the state level again um it was a program that probably had a lot of Kinks that really needed to be worked out before it was introduced to um the school system and the state probably and they know that you know we've already talked to them at the at the state level the the you know kdsca president um a lot of glitches um and and again straight through Connecticut not just the Greenwich problem that's hitting every school the same things on tweaking um it's very frustrating for every school system it's very frustrating for the teachers with programs that put you in a place

051many time with glitches you have to report and wait for the fixes it is getting better um but sometimes we have to think about the positive I try and tell teachers think about the positive things that when sometimes you have to put the work in to front load it and that when all is said and done we're suffering now throughout the state and throughout the district we'll all have common language common things and in the end it'll it'll be better um so you have to keep your eyes on the price sometimes when you're you're stumbling um one thing I asked uh the the board to consider and our cabinet um is there's still lots of work to be done teachers need time our special education and PPS staff have been working very hard and long

052hours we need to be cognizant especially with new initiatives we need to be thoughtful and Pace them and provide support um provide training support uh and the common theme for teachers throughout the district um that I'm hearing is that they they need more time um need more collaboration time and in the end I think we'll reap the rewards of that collaboration so to and that I look forward to collaborating with the GPS cabinet and how we can provide teachers with more time and collaborative opportunities Happy New Year thank you lil and let's hear from pizza now it's Francis Wu nobe is she oh there you are fantastic you made it that's wonderful myself and Francis have had some nice conversations over the last couple of weeks right good evening I'm Francis Fu nobe mom of

053three GPS kids and the 2022-2023 president of the Greenwich parent-teacher advisory Council I'll start tonight's remarks channeling my mom with a traditional Japanese New Year's greeting okay which means Happy New Year sincere thanks for all your care and consideration last year looking forward to your continued support in 2023 wishing all of you good health and happiness PTAC is a non-partisan non-political organization made up of a governing board of directors presidents of all 15 school ptas and 17 Powerhouse advisory committees covering academics buildings curriculum enrichment and more if you're ready to be more engaged in your in our schools please join your school PTA today and nominating for the 2023-2024 p-tax Slate is also now open turning to Hot Topics and tonight's consent agenda PTAC highlights these ABCs for the Board of Education consideration a for

054academics p-tech is extremely interested in tonight's report out in discussion regarding K-12 stem in science PTAC is pleased to see strong District results against the ngss standards keep it up and congratulations to our regenerine Scholars and newest Middle School innovators but in math our math scores need work just to hit the state of Connecticut 78 goal and we have to get to 70 before we can set our sites on the board of education's 80th percentile math Mastery goal there's work to do we parents teachers and the community want to see results that reflect math confidence math literacy and math joy we want to see our students see that math is magical magnificent and mandatory we all know the Working World demands strong math skills whether you become an astronaut a banker Chef dancer or zookeeper

055we see the disparity between our schools so how do we lift all district schools to the Target we look to the district and the Board of Education to identify clear actionable steps we can all take to work towards hitting these important targets B is for budgets p-tech looks forward to Tuesday's bet budget committee meeting to approve the boe's operating Capital budgets parent teacher student and administrator input went into these plans to ensure academics stay strong our buildings stand up and our school district supports all our student needs C is for Community p-tech appreciates the vocal bipartisan partnership for the Western Middle School Fields the continued support for Central Middle School and Old Greenwich school p-tech was very pleased to welcome new Boe chair Joe Kelly to our January 2023 PTAC monthly meeting Joe welcomed our

056input and encouraged all to come together for our students on February 3rd at 11 A.M p-tech welcomes the Greenwich United Way to share their efforts towards adolescent mental health please visit the Greenwich PTAC website for Zoom details and prior recordings to end where we started I wish all those celebrating New Lunar New Year on Sunday channeling my dad this time Xin and Kuala happy year of the rabbit we look forward to working together in 2023 and to all our Greenwich high school students honored tonight well done and best wishes for your midterms and thank you as always to our Greenwich Public School teachers I'll have the speakers here okay now it's time for public comments uh we'll start with uh Jackie Homan Jackie are you here or online hi there hi there hi Jackie good

057evening Board of Education members and Dr Jones I took an opportunity to review the Greenwich together survey that you plan on administering to children in grades 7 through 12. and the survey says it's about positive things that you might have in yourself your family and your friends as well as about substance abuse and other risky behaviors the questions start off innocent at first but then students are asked intrusive questions about parents attitudes and behaviors around drugs and alcohol for instance they're asked if they've ever tried a long list of substances like ecstasy crack PCP heroin fentanyl younger students who took this survey last year particularly the 12 and 13 year olds indicated that the survey is actually what introduced them to many of these drugs in the first place it's what inspired them to learn

058more about these substances since it seems like from the survey that everyone was doing it so presumably this is the opposite of what the survey's intentions are some of the questions on the survey feel suggestive like how easy or hard would it be for you to get these substances if you wanted them students are told the survey is anonymous but anything online is it ever really anonymous and who else gets access to the data once the survey is completed is this data sold to any third parties and speaking of selling data to third parties I would like to reiterate my concern about Yale social emotional program social emotional learning program ruler since I see that the art bester III budget is on the agenda tonight too this program teaches children to use a mood meter

059to track their emotions how is that data used and what third parties have access to that data well students with undesirable moods be referred to the guidance counselor or sent for a mental health diagnosis and how does this intense focus on moods and emotions instead of academics help with learning loss of course the social emotional learning curriculum was never approved by you with the Board of Education as required by State education law yet that fact doesn't seem to be slowing down or stopping the implementation of this controversial curriculum that is rooted in New Age occult spirituality whatever happened to the separation of church and state and we seem to be learning more and more every day about how social emotional learning is being used as a trojan horse to deliver critical race Theory and gender

060ideology lessons to children and as a matter of fact that was the exact subject of the latest project Veritas investigation that just broke this week which 30 seconds reminds me can you pretty please give the community an update on the five different investigations into the former Costco assistant principle it's been a very long time and also can you please give parents an update on the status of some of the controversial books that have been brought to your attention thank you so much for addressing these issues and it's good to see everyone for the new year thank you why thank you Jackie Katie you we'll see if we go back to her okay that'd be great Phil browse come on up Phil good evening everyone I'm Phil browse local in town um thank you all for

061allowing me to speak at your meeting I have an idea that I'd like to share with you all we all have seen or heard of the drug fentanyl it's on the news every day well as you know it's sadly taking our families and friends lives in all towns Across America here in Connecticut we have three drug related deaths every day the Greenwich Department police department just arrested two people with two kilos of fentanyl enough to kill one million people two kilos quite a bit from 2012 to 2021 the increase in deaths from fentanyl is 327 that's in Connecticut that's a staggering stat we must do something to stop this our families deserve a way to fight back in Narcan kits are one way that is directly able to save a life when it's immediately needed

062sorry 75 of those deaths occurred within our homes sixty percent of the deaths were from fentanyl this is local stuff this is not somewhere else in the middle of the country we must do something to help we can no longer in my opinion just talk about it we must take action to help those in need this isn't just our kids it's our fathers our mothers and family friends we must do something what I'm hoping we can do is open up a discussion on how to impair Empower our Greenwich families to fight this horrible invasion of Fentanyl I can name three friends sons that have passed away from this drug in town and that is way too many and those are the only ones that I know about there are many more I'm sure unfortunately what

063I'm proposing for us to consider is the thought of placing an R count kit in every medicine cabinet in our town for every high school student in our town this is possible with your help and ideas on how to do this the town of Greenwich is receiving 24 000 a year to combat drugs from Johnson and Johnson's settlement let us use some of these funds to purchase these kits and distribute them to our families in town many of us have college-age students that have returned home and they run the risk too of using fentanyl not forgetting to mention the parents as they also want to be here 30 seconds nobody can see fentanyl as it's hidden and can only be detected by fentanyl strips that are also available but until we make these strips available

064we all need some way of helping the souls that have been given a drug they may not have intended to use what I Envision as an Arcane kid and every medicine cabinet and every High School family's medicine cabinet did I say that twice available under the moment's notice should they arise for someone in your family time it takes only micrograms of this highly toxic drug to kill sadly our families are still taking these drugs that are fake and made with fentanyl marijuana has also been the other drug that has been infected or infused with this drug sadly our kids use this too and it's too late after the fact Narcan saves lives let's try to have one kid per family in the medicine cabinet and give these families a chance to save a life thank

065you thank you Phil that should start hopefully started discussions controversial we certainly want to start a discussion with that so thank you Julie deschamp there's Julie all right good evening I'm Julie deschamp the chair of waste free Greenwich and I've been working with Angie heart of Phyllis and the PTAC Green Schools committee on the waste zero waste schools program for the district after years of advocating for a waste reduction in our schools we now have a strong program in place and the procedure to bolster it by updating regulation 3513.1r which spells out the rationale for the program materials to be diverted and roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in particular we're grateful to chair Joe Kelly for his staunch advocacy and his time and advice to navigate us through the process and vice chair Christina Downey

066for her instruction and guidance and thanks to Cody Kittle for our Lively discussion and his encouragement superintendent Jones we are deeply appreciative of your thoughtful review of the regulation and the amendments to make the program more effective and sustainable in the future we would like to recognize Blaise Leviton for his responsibility responsiveness and excellent advice as well as Dan Watson Mark Bria and Dan and Dave nannarello for their support we are indebted to the building principals custodians lunch monitors teachers and volunteers who have helped along the way this is certainly a team effort we have now rolled out the cafeteria waste program at four schools New Lebanon all Greenwich Central Middle School and ISD and will shortly launch at Eastern Middle and Parkway the program has cut recycling contamination significantly and achieved a 41 to

06749 diversion of waste through educational training and new sorting stations I'm thrilled to report that just this week we introduced the food scrap recycling pilot at New Lebanon students now separate all food scraps in a designated bin and Food Services also contributes food scraps from the kitchen this organic material is transported by a hauler at no cost to the district to a licensed facility to be processed into compost each day an average of 35 pounds of food waste is diverted from the cafeteria waste stream by segregating food scraps the overall diversion rate has jumped from 42 percent to 76 percent by weight now an average 67 pounds daily or prospective twelve thousand 30 seconds pounds annually of cafeteria waste are no longer burned as trash across to this town that are instead converted to compost

068recycled into new products or diverted to drains to water treatment plants today we had a spirited discussion about littering waste disposal and science of composting and one third grader concluded the process is gross but it's good for the plants the Organics pilot and waste Reduction Program promised benefits to our budget public health and the environment and teaches our children the value of environmental stewardship and civic responsibility thank you for your support and we look forward to working together thank you thank you Julie I'll follow through with that uh Julie's work is all volunteer with her crew with her group and she's gone and put a tremendous amount of work in and at no cost for Greenwich Public Schools Katie you are you there miss you you should be able to speak well return to Katie

069hello hello there's Katie I I'm sorry I didn't see the the screen pop up I apologize I'm sorry about that can you hear me now we can hear you now and go ahead super thank you so much and my apologies again um good evening I will be brief uh really just wanted to uh State you know it's it's been just a really good night for my family and I I really wanted to start with a message of thanks to the many teachers who we feel stand beside our son and who stood behind our son tonight in support to help him achieve this honor tonight and looking forward I really just wanted to express my excitement about the proposal tonight to add linear algebra as a course option at the high school as well as the

070AP pre-calculus class I am truly excited and heartened by this decision to offer these advanced level courses to a growing number of students who will seek to take these in a few years when they are at ghs I applaud the math department for seeing the importance of having direct discourse among like-minded peers this is something that my son truly enjoyed in classes such as Miss francella's Advanced Calculus class and something that he really missed in independent study just a couple of really quick thoughts currently the MIT freeware linear algebra course is typically completed in six months and I believe that this is something that is also common in some colleges so I would be curious to know what the length of the class would be and also since this is likely going to be a

071class for seniors how might this affect the AP Statistics enrollment is it in is it possible to consider allowing students to possibly even take this course uh during the summer to allow the opportunity for students to take linear algebra in their senior year that's all I had to say and thank you very much again good night thank you uh and next is Christine rebstock Christine are you online hi good evening can you hear me I can hear you go ahead thank you okay I'm Christine repstock I'm a transsexual woman I'm speaking out against social emotional learning which introduces gender ideology especially with the elementary and middle school kids as this leads down a slippery slope these kids will be it will think that being trans is cool or fad it's not gender dysphoria is very

072real and it's very tough to live with I'm one of the 40 of trans people that attempted suicide and in our state because a state statute 19a-14c that allows mental health professionals to treat minor age kids without parental knowledge or consent we've seen kids such little girls could go to a school teacher or official and say I'm really a boy inside me and we're seeing these kids be put on puberty blockers hormone replacement therapy and have been given life-altering surgeries this is wrong this is child abuse I've been on hormone replacement therapy for three years and faced a cancer scare if this could happen to me this could happen to one of our one of our kids this has to stop I'm not an anti-lgbtq kid I want to help them and this starts from

073the home with their families doctors and therapists it involves no medical transition it we could teach anyone we don't need curriculum to teach kids that everyone's different let's be kind and respectful for everybody thank you for letting me speak have a good evening thank you Christine Kathleen Steiner um hello Chris Hernandez and I um we're happy to be here thank you Dr Jones and thank you the board we're here from the ghs health and safety education department and physical education department as health and PE teachers and we're here to defend and support our Aquatics and water safety program that was recently removed from our our curriculum according to the National Safe Kids campaign in the national Safety Council approximately 830 children drowned in the U.S annually and in diverse communities minorities are three times more

074likely to drown than their non-minority peers we often take for granted that everyone knows how to swim and survive in the water however this is a false notion the reality is not everyone has the resources to learn whether that be Financial time or ability as a Shoreline Community we have a responsibility to teach all of our students the basics of swimming how to be safe in and around the water and what to do in case of a water emergency Greenwich High School's Aquatic and water safety program has been praised by The Zac foundation and the drowning prevention foundation and has been a fundamental PE course in our 9th grade curriculum for the past 45 plus years statistics have shown that increasing children's access to swimming lessons teaching water safety in schools and providing parents with

075tools to talk with their children about how to be safe in and around the water can have a huge impact on reducing drowning rates our Aquatics and water safety course closes the achievement Gap because it provides basic swimming and life-saving water skills to all of our students regardless of academic ability whether we are at a pool party at Todd's Point on our sailboat motorboat or jet skis having the Knowledge and Skills to swim and survive in the water allows us to have fun with our family and friends but also could be life-saving unlike other subjects the PE and health and safety education department sees all students in grades 9 through 12 each year Greenwich high school has always been a Trailblazer in the state of Connecticut instead of doing away with this vital course we

076urge you to instead to look to personalize the experience for our students let's continue to set high standards and raise the bar thank you so very much thank you Catherine I'm late to that discussion but I've had gotten a couple of calls about it so uh uh there will be some further discussions about that amongst us at least I will have discussions about it uh next is the superintendent's report Dr Jones thank you it just didn't seem like it was on just a couple of items tonight I think first of all I want to acknowledge I think most of you saw in the paper Angie bramonte who was uh now named to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering and I think we'll see him again at the end of the year to thank him

077in person uh when we see all of these wonderful research projects that the students do and most of us can't understand what they're talking about because it's at such a high level so congratulations uh to Mr bramonte and I also want to just point out and they did mention it in the paper that we also now have this program in eighth grade again leading the country in science research and I think you heard tonight we're leading the country in lots of areas we have a lot to be proud and and celebrate I also want to just congratulate Riverside their musical Pippin and you know when you look at what we do and I know we recognized our musicians tonight but our our elementary Productions look like middle school and even some high schools across the

078country and by the time you get get to high school they just look professional so congratulations to all of our musicians Eastern will have their Musical coming up I know the board has a new document that we're trying to share all those dates but be sure that you let us know if you're going to attend because they will sell out with all their tickets the the all the seats will be gone um Battle of the books for elementary this is something that they do every single year it's a big competition and this will be one of our first big events where we're able to use actually the Greenwich New Auditorium Greenwich Library so excited about that midterms I think you know again I think I'm hearing great things students were very much appreciative of the

079administration and the adjustment that they made and some of them reached out just to say thank you and then a big reminder um first of all that the budget hearing is next Tuesday night I've had a lot of PTA you know reach out trying to understand what which date is what happens and Tuesday evening at six o'clock the first selectman will present the town budget operating in capital and then the Board of Ed we will be presenting the operating and the capital and then it's the actual public hearing and so we are also we'll have some documents tomorrow in our Friday note that will help parents know how they can either send comments in writing to the bet or how they can make live comments we also were asked by our PTA to be sure

080and give them information on Central for instance because there's been a lot of just confusion and so I know the board today saw a copy of a q a and thanks to Laura costan for getting that started and um so we've got a q a and there's also a one-page fact sheet that I think is going to be really helpful for the community as a whole and last but not least just thank you to everybody that showed up for the Western Middle School Soul remediation public hearing last week we packed the house and online and as one of The Regulators was leaving he made the comment that he'd you know been doing this work for about a decade just around 10 or so years and that just on this one project he had more Community

081comments and participation than he had in the previous 10 years on all of his projects so we should be very proud of that as well thank you great thank you any questions Laura could I come back to the aquatics now or should we do that later we could talk about that now if you like so just a question um I have two high schoolers that have dreaded the aquatics class because it is the most awkward time to be in a swimsuit with your peers um so I just wondered if we ever considered a test out option so that there would be a way for kids who needed the aquatics program to have it and that kids who didn't need that kind of instruction could use that instructional time to take a different class and not

082one that they didn't really need to take and I think that that's some conversation that we've had we can certainly continue it we are not eliminating the aquatics Force so I want to make sure that you know that I did email the board I think a week or two ago about this it's still available but it's a choice for students and families and I will be very honest I really think ninth grade's too late to be introducing students to swimming and there's a program that the YMCA actually runs and it's aimed at second grade and that's where I really think for an assured experience working with the Y we need to start when they're younger now I will tell you I had a PE teacher somebody that knows the program said that they believe the

083number is probably about 90 percent of our kids come in already knowing how to swim so it's really that 10 that we really want to Target encourage families and students to take the aquatics course but I'm also hoping we'll continue in the high school to expand our offerings I mean we I would love to see us doing water aerobics I'd love to see us having a lot swimming for students who really want to develop Lifetime Fitness I think there's so many opportunities and I will say I think there's a lot of support for the approach that we're taking we are in a time where when you talk about how young people feel about their bodies there are young people who are very uncomfortable in that class and I had somebody ask me well couldn't you

084offer it by gender in 2023 no we really could not without being in an office of civil rights situation and so that's just we don't do that anymore and there are several court cases even when you look at mathematics and gender so those have been settled and we know that as far as testing out I will tell you I had a great conversation with a group of parents they were actually the Eastern parents who were at a PTA meeting and they were asking about that I would support that if we wanted to test out it's not easy to implement but you know in the month of June taking busload of students over like letting them swim across the pool I would be happy to do that that's not where we are right now that's not

085the recommendation but certainly if we wanted to go in that direction that's something we could do but my goal is really to offer swimming earlier in their life so that we know our youngest students are really know how to swim Kathleen yeah I was going to say that I agree with you Laura I just I think it's very important that you noted that it's it's still available but it's not mandatory and I um wholeheartedly support it not being mandatory because I do think it was I'm it wasn't a good use of my child's time either um and however the testing out option is important I know that I had to do that at Notre Dame in order to graduate Notre Dame you have to prove you can swim and so um and I believe Cornell

086has the same program yes so um you know I think it's an interesting option to to take it that way thank you Karen well on the same topic I I would say I also fully support making it optional this is something even before covet I had been asking uh for it's not a state requirement just happens to be we happen to have a pool um but I also understand that uh you know the need for life safety courses is exceptionally important especially in this day and age um I do love the option I suggested years ago about Testa you know testing out and offering other options life safety courses for our students um and I just wanted to see you know when this decision was made like I said I don't know um if there

087was a discussion at the high school or with any of the you know Educators as to what other options we might be able to offer just uh for students and some of the more unique and creative uh types of PE courses because I'd love to be able to have that discussion going forward um you know as you saw a lot of athletes were here tonight uh being honored but not every student's an act you know and an athlete and it's a nice opportunity to to offer some new types of courses for them if they're gonna not have that as a credit option I have a close and trusted friend Steve Lapham who was one of the original designers of this program I understand and he contacted me the other day uh he was kind enough

088to share a story now he said it's not a swimming class it's not a class only to teach people how to swim it's a class that teaches people uh or kids in a Coastal Community how to react to dangerous situations uh it it's he had said that well if somebody falls in the water from a dock or on the beach and and how do you approach that if we do a lot of boating in our community how do you address somebody falling overboard how do you approach that he said the course I've never taken the course but he says the course addresses all these things he he tells of uh a couple years ago some students ex-students have had come back to him one specific and uh and said uh coach Lapham or Steve or

089whatever they call them that's at that stage he said our boat one time on the Long Island side we're way far away from sure we anchored and we decided to go swimming and the uh the boat lost the anchor and the boat drifted away and they couldn't catch up to the boat because the current was too strong he was with the student the Greenwich student who had gone through this course was with uh two other kids two other people well they were adults at that point uh and the two others started to panic and the student or former student had expressed to uh uh to Steve Lapham uh that it was because of the training he received in his course that he was able to calm the two other kids down and hours later they

090were rescued and he thanked Steve for uh for teaching him those skills in that course so I think we have to hear from the people who teach that course these the teachers who have been involved in this the ones who have seen the generations of kids go through and uh and come back and maybe share some of the stories so at least let's bring the discussion to those who will have the boots on the ground for us on this so we can have that a thorough discussion if we decide to go with some of the recommendations that the board members uh make well let's make sure we have the the complete discussion before we do that Cody to offer um any uh or do we require people to take a class for driving before they

091graduate no safety driving class do we have a do we require them to learn the Heimlich maneuver before they graduate they do take it in middle and high school it's in a class and they get tested on it yeah yeah okay uh fine um I guess the point I was gonna get at is you're always you could mandate any sort of safety class for something and if thousands and thousands of people go through the school presumably at some point it will benefit someone uh driving is much more dangerous than swimming for teenagers at least in terms of fatalities um if the principle is we're going to require classes that could potentially Save a Life over decades then we have better places to look but if that isn't the principle which I don't think it should

092be it seems silly to require something that I remember when I was at the high school and actually I was very lucky I only heard when people complain about it because I went there in 10th grade um the idea of forcing people on the swim team to take a swimming class seems insane to me uh so I think if we want to go the route of you know proactively coming up with classes to prevent any harm from ever happening we can look at other classes uh but otherwise I think we should proceed with the way you guys set it up Laura I just would wonder if there was also a CPR or um you know is there a CPR component in a water safety class the new products we're delivering babies you never know if

093you're going to be somewhere and someone goes into labor good point well you don't offer we don't offer a gems course right we do okay as a requirement well I say we can conclude the aquatics discussion saying further discussion is necessary so let's continue to talk about it thank you uh any mother any more questions Karen you have a question over the aquatics or are you ready to move on to another question for the superintendent's report I'm I'm ready to move to nothing else but I do have a question but not on the clock look we're done with Aquatics okay your turn go ahead um my question relates to the the change in the waiting with respect to the midterms uh I just want to understand a little bit more about the process and the

094thought process that's gone through with that it's been historically obviously we made a policy change during covid to take care of a certain grading during that time period That's that policy is now expired but I'd like to understand the thinking and the logic that goes behind the the changing of the waiting My overall concern is the the excuse this excuse me the suggestion was the kids were stressed out there was we were dealing with high flu rates and other illnesses and sicknesses I feel like there's we're always going to be combating something and My worry is that we're getting away from the rigors of what we're putting on and how we are making sure that our children are understanding and being proficient in the material that we're teaching them and I'd like to understand if

095this is going to be a change going forward or if we're ever going to go back to the standard that we previously had and if we're not going back to the standard why not and how does that make sense with the rigors of the academics that we are striving for within Greenwich Public Schools so a couple a couple of pieces with that I think first of all what we're seeing in absence rates is not typical we are still not where we were pre-coded we when when people are out and they're positive with covet or the flu right now and RSV they're missing a week of school so you can have a student who's out for a week um and then they get back to school they're there for a week and then their teachers out

096for a week we are having very high absenteeism and so I do think we're still in a unique spot I think going forward what I would be asking at the principal the assistant principal in their team is to do a really good review and we talked about this I really want to understand better how are the colleges adjusting coming out of covet just because we've always done something in a particular way does it necessarily mean it's the way we need to stay but we really don't know what they're doing at the Collegiate level and I I think we need to do our homework between now and next year so that we do make really a good informed decision and start looking at the colleges just so so that we understand how they are actually approaching

097their midterms and finals and they may have all be they may all be reverting back but are they doing more project oriented work you know what does it look like in 2023 compared to what it used to look like and I think we we really need to do some homework no that would be my suggestion because my my overarching concern is that we're doing our students a disservice in the fact that we're not adequately preparing them for the next academic phase in their life because the way at least when I was at college and the way I understood it until maybe recently and I would appreciate the homework on this is is a lot more is weighted on the one two tests you know the midterm and the final and I think that that becomes

098a very harsh reality and particularly for the transition going from being a senior in high school to a freshman in college that's a big jump for kids right you're you're moving away from home for the first time you're on your own you're making choices they're trying to figure out how how to live life and get to class on time and it is a hard adjustment and so when you're talking about not only is it that hard of an adjustment but there's so much weighted on their academic performance on two tests again the education on that topic will help us they're they're going to be under a whole new stress that we haven't prepared them yet for at the high school level where they're still at home they still their parents to lean on to help

099them get them through the process so I just want to make sure that we're providing our students with an understanding and putting them in the best position to move forward in their academic Adventures uh and that's why I think we should look really closely at this policy change on the waiting to make sure we're actually not doing them a disservice and maybe it's not moving it down to five maybe there's a happy medium someplace else or a different way to structure it but I do want us to give some critical thought into whether or not we're doing the right thing now for but for them in the future yeah sorry I actually I am I know that I was lucky enough to be at the student government at the time and this was something that

100the students did advocate for um this year because I think they liked the change last year but I hear you Karen I think it's a good analysis we have seen so many changes over the past few years I remember serving on the policy committee during the height of coven and coming up with I think a really good plan at that time when things were particularly stressful thankfully things have improved um I think last year was definitely the right call on this as well as this year um and just to be clear I especially thought it was and I know that you guys advocated for this um it's the better of right so it might be five percent it might be ten percent and I think that's that's a that's a nice trigger because for some

101you know maybe it raises that quarter grade or sorry the overall transcript grade for others they proved themselves really well during those four quarters and for whatever reason they had a bad day um and so that gets weird at five percent and everything else goes up according way there is some Merit to that and I think that that is an interesting thing but we should continue to analyze it okay moving on uh Dr Jones I had called you either yesterday a day before and said I'm going to ask for some updates on some things and uh I like to deal in good news but some of these are not good news questions but I think I do believe in transparency and and really find that very important and rather have facts that people can talk

102about rather than stuff than the speculation so if you can uh give me an update on the Jeremy Bolin investigation I know that we're restricted on what we can and cannot say based on the number of Investigations that are going on I know you contacted our attorney and made sure what you said is what you can say and I don't want anything more than what you're allowed to say so please yeah and I'll and I'll just reiterate and I know the board knows this but the community may not anytime we have any sort of personnel issue where we're dealing with a teacher um you always have to go into it thinking it could rise to the level of a termination hearing and this board must be neutral going into that hearing which means that we

103can't when you have an active investigation you can't go out and say exactly what's happening so just for the community but right now we still have uh we have the Attorney General's investigation which is ongoing ask for more documents even as yesterday we've sent them thousands thousands of pages uh chros and the same um they are still in an active investigation thousands of documents uh the town of Greenwich is just starting literally this week so um that will be some sort of data pool we're not sure uh really that's not clear yet and then we also have the Connecticut State Department of Education um so right now until all four of those conclude we don't don't know what they're going to find and will all four of those actually agree with one another so until

104that is completed that's about as much as we can say so on that on that topic as far as and you explained this to me it made a lot of sense uh there are legal Minds that are evaluating our options and without those evaluations they're deciding uh if we speed or hurry to a conclusion or to an action it could be financially detrimental to our district or to our town so there's people or groups of people or professionals that are evaluating how we should proceed is that correct that is correct okay thank you any other questions Michael so does that to clarify does that mean are we doing our own HR investigation or are we waiting on those other four we concluded ours and that has been shared with the other agencies Karen in I

105don't know if we've had a past circumstance in which we've engaged in our own HR investigation and drawn conclusions and then had subsequent or in parallel independent investigations from government agencies is it in the past have we waited for all of those agencies to conclude prior to in taking that into account based upon your own HR investigation in all honesty I've never seen this before um where you have all this level all of these agencies that are investigating something like this so I think it's new for all of us um but anytime you go to a termination hearing number one they're very lengthy uh they're very time consuming for all of you and they are very very expensive you need Attorneys at the table you need hearing officers so investing a half a million dollars

106to go to a termination hearing to then have because you don't know what the results are going to be three or four organizations come back and say your initial investigation was not correct and then you're in a whole nother legal issue so it's it's Consulting with attorneys to make sure that what we're doing we're trying to protect the interests of the district and make sure that investigations are very thorough so but this is a very unusual situation it seems very confusing and I have one final question on this of course others might have more uh do we feel we're adequately advised with Town Council and uh do you feel comfortable uh being privy to the details more so than we're able to be preview to those details that we are okay or or adequately represented

107uh or uh if you think we're not or if there's any question let us know if we should consider going out and getting further advice from somebody so we do that in coordination with the town and we have outside Council working on this thank you next uh I'm sorry if I I said this name incorrectly uh Nicholas uh scur kenish uh can you please update uh what you're able or can say or no because this is not our investigation this is an outside uh they've got arrested by uh by an outside entity so uh so can you update us on that for the sake of transparency so the first action um was through Homeland Security and from a district standpoint when you have any sort of federal agency and sometimes even a local police department

108if it's not Greenwich Police we don't know either so we find out about these things pretty much at the same time the community does when it's an agency like Homeland Security they go through they do their investigation until the investigative report comes out you don't really know uh what's happening and they also do not um and we're not they didn't share either with the Greenwich Police Department they had no idea that this you know arrest was going to be made um so again it's just like kind of pretty much what I just said we have to work with our local Council who generally we're also working with outside Counsel on the advice of our local Council and to make sure that we take the right steps at the right time thank you sorry to ask

109these negative questions but I think transparency is quite important another one is the uh proactive steps that we've taken towards addressing some uh some inappropriate library books that we had uh Dr Jones I'm very I'm very happy with the actions you've taken uh to uh allocate some of our resources to looking through our our extensive book collections and uh and identify which ones uh are inappropriate for certain age children and which ones are not uh could you explain the or at least talk a little about how you've addressed that and how you've taken this Challenge on and and some of the successes you've achieved so far I think the board is aware we've had you know a couple of books that have been brought to our attention that may be at the wrong age level

110just not age appropriate for whatever Library they're sitting in this is not we're not talking about curriculum materials we'll talk about what's in the library um so we started back in October just doing kind of a proactive review um in in the end we reviewed 14 different books and it is our media uh learning facilitator you know they get paid a stipend to be a leader in that media Department who did that first review uh looked at those books looked at um the ratings from a reputable you know writing um are the books actually age appropriate for a Middle School sixth seventh and eighth graders and then made comments about uh yes the book is appropriate by the rating agency um and what are some comments what are some themes within the book and then

111made a recommendation to either keep it on the Shelf in middle school because yes it was appropriate age a developmental age or no it probably needs to be sent to the high school and so after that it came to me I looked at all 14 of those and then I did another review independent from that because I wanted to go look at a different rating system and I even go out to like Amazon and look at how they've rated books because they're a little bit more liberal so you're getting different points of view on Amazon and did a writing there and after I did that I was in agreement with most of the yes or no except for three books where the rating systems weren't a green uh you know one would have it uh

112starting like only for high school like 15 and over another rating system might have said it was okay for 13 or 14 year olds but we're this is a middle school so it's gonna be the library it needs to be appropriate for sixth seventh and eight so at that point we were down to three books we needed another review and so our wonderful coordinators curriculum coordinators got together and they decided he would be the first three people to actually read the book they divided up red the book then we came back together and then they gave their recommendation and ultimately they agreed after all three of those reviews with our learning facilitator in the end out of 14 books we ended up sending I want to say six I think to the high school out

113of the six only one of those books was at all three middle schools the rest were just sitting on a shelf either at one school or it was a digital copy at one school but it really is about age-appropriateness making sure we have books where they belong for the developmental age of the students thank you at one more uh comment on that one that'll open up to others who might have to ask the question I think it's safe to say that in your term as the superintendent none of those books that have been identified uh and none of you found so far have been brought in by people working for you it's past books it's the books that have been uh abroad in years ago for whatever reason is that accurate to be honest with

114you so many the way that books so ordered you're talking about media Specialists media assistants I wouldn't want to answer that like I have no idea who bought the book that's fair okay anybody else Aaron so there was a very graphic book and I think I sent a picture of it to some of my colleagues um and I don't even remember the title but I could quickly find out what is the status of that book I could describe what the picture was okay well I could and in fact it's in one of our libraries that all of our students are list watching or I can check out so the question is where is the status of that book so when it gets to looking at what's age appropriate um you can't just look at one

115picture from a book and say that it's not appropriate you have to look at the book in its totality and our media Specialists do a great job when we question a book I've had the high school actually media Specialists have read one or two books because I'm like somebody sent this about this book can you tell me is it okay they've gone home I actually read the book over the weekend and in its totality it was okay to have on the library shelf you have to realize that just the health curriculum alone and what our students tackle in high school they do learn about sex and there are going to be library books that may have some pictures in them and it is actually the the life that they're living and learning about and if

116it's in the context of age appropriate narrative then it's okay the book you're referencing we haven't finished so I don't know all I have is a picture and I've got to get the book so that we can read the actual text Karen I'm sorry we finished sorry Karen um I'm assuming that we're talking about the same book as I people had reached out to me as well I've done a bit of my own research I know it's an award-winning book and this is issues and questions have been brought up about this book all over the country for many many years uh not even just recently and um you know it most people haven't pulled it off the shelf it's oftentimes labeled with a label that says 18 and up but if they someone who's under

117the age of 18 wants to take that book out they need to have parental permission is that something we would possibly consider if if uh after your review you found that to be an issue um I haven't read the whole book as of yet I'm waiting to get a copy so I can do my overview but it was um interesting having read a little bit about it currently the book at least the one that was that I'm reviewing that was sent to me from more than one of you um is not an 18 and over it's actually it's the age rating is for high school so it's really about reading the content making sure what's in it is appropriate from the from the high school developmental age but the various ratings are all matching for

118high school so and again I'm not a big fan of banning books but I also understand that they're we have students that come in at you know the young age of you know what maybe 14 at high school then you have students who are 18 19 graduating high school it's a vast difference in those ages so if we're teaching you know there's some discussion and health classes what what grades do those start so I mean that's we don't have to answer that now but that's a question to ask um in that regard because if there's a vast difference in we were just talking about the swimming class uh students coming in at 14 body types um and puberty and all sorts of other things at that age so it's a so now that we need

119to get into that kind of conversation now but good point yeah my goal so just to be clear something clear to folks watching at home they um I believe we're talking about fun home um a family tragic comic they um that was the one we got emailed so just because um I'm not interested in talk I hear you talking about one book the um many many a board of education has gone down the rabbit hole of spending hours debating book and a book in a book I don't know if that's the most productive use of our time they um I do think moving forward at a time after this evening it probably does both of us to consider um the purchasing process that we're using in the rating system we're using for for books moving

120forward because um and also how we're getting books um in general the um we know that um this is a national issue um we could Google any you can very easily Google any number of these uh political groups around the country that have compiled these lists of books and are actively encouraging local communities to say go hey go find out if you have this book in your library and raise a plus with your board of it it doesn't make any it makes sense for us to try to pre-proactive and some of that they uh particularly if there were books that could be concerning they um I'll leave it too um of my understanding about this particular book as we're doing review Let's find let's continue to review the but I do think as far as

121the process goes I think that's something that is a board we we should consider moving forward thank you Karen yeah I agree I know uh Tony you and I have had some exchanges on the process by which books are selected and how uh they end up in in the libraries and I think it would be a great benefit to the community to understand that process in Greater detail as to foreign what is the selection process what how are they deciding what come you know how do they end up on the shelves but because I think parents want to know that and want to know how that their whether the money is going for and what books their kids have access to and so that they can also help have conversations with their kids about what

122books are what they view is appropriate because parents have a say and parents should have a say about the types of books that they have access to and when they don't know what books they have access to that creates a harder problem for a conversation at home in order to articulate what is appropriate and what is not in that one's household thank you I think Cody wanted to jump in if uh he was gleaming as if he had something very exciting to say well no at first I was just I liked um Karen's uh lineup I'm not in favor of banning books but but I actually I'm sympathetic to that because I think this was I was interested to say this might be uh a moment or at some point we should consider um the

123idea of laying out some parameters that can be useful for the book buyers whoever it's not going to make sense for us to micromanage individual book choices but in particular for this one it you know like just to throw out something for us to consider is a book that has lots of pictures that are sexually graphic like maybe if books write about stuff but it's fine or they can use their discretion but we put a you know I I think we have the ability to say hey we're we're not going to have in our libraries um things with uh pictures that are like extremely graphic because everyone who saw that thoughts the same thing I don't think anyone thought oh well if I have the context around what was in the paragraphs that would make

124it better um so I think that's something we should consider because it might be pretty easy and honestly I don't think it will have any academic impact most of the books and libraries things are symbol and they're kind of in the books you choose to have in the library like the books you choose to have in your house you're kind of a representation of values if you know and like hey here's who here's who we are um and so uh that might be an easy way for us to systematically just say look um we're not into the book Banning business but uh if you want to get books with pornographic image content buy them yourself you know there's a lot on the internet well I was going to just say the same like our kids

125have access now to so to so much more so than we did but at the same time if we're talking about and again this this goes back to it's not about books it's about the discussion discussion of the process and the policy what what works well for one person who's reading a book what they find interesting is not going to necessarily be the person next to you is going to find a book interesting on that same topic and so to have the discussion and the process of I I can understand that piece of the discussion but when you sit there and have a discussion on it we have books that cover a wide range of of things that are part of curriculum we talk about this all the time not everything makes somebody comfortable when

126they're reading it but when they go to the you know for curriculum but when you're going to the library you have the choice uh and what student a versus student B or C is looking at when they go to the library and the things that they're interested in reading about uh varies so vastly so which is why I'm like I think it's exceptionally important that we don't base it on what one Community or another Community or another type of student a student or interests are when we're looking at books I I think it's exceptionally important this book is slightly different in in other ways um so I that's why I had reached out and asked but that's just yeah Michael you could wrap us up good um I think if we've accomplished anything we've probably

127raised the sale of this book six thousand percent account this evening is by always manageable um so I'd actually like to propose a a a a motion to amend the agenda um if I could we have a number of community volunteers here from the Old Greenwich building committee and as you see we have a very lengthy discussion item list of discussion items so I I would like to propose amending the agent make a motion to move item a um up to next on the agenda item on the floor the the item a under action items up to uh before the discussion items for the good of our community volunteers who've been waiting patiently I would second that and and I think we do we need discussion or can I call the question uh can I

128have we have a motion I've seconded it you know yeah I told it just to chime in when she wants to talk so I don't know if she's yeah I just my only concern I guess the question is is this really the time we're still in the middle of the monthly reports I'm not sure it's the time to make this motion I think I'm not I just I'm not sure I don't know if anyone else has a thought on where it falls in like Robert Christina we're going to put it after the report so we'll still have our reports then we're going to move it to just after the reports so that's satisfactory then uh uh we'll call about no but I'm saying I'm not sure it's the appropriate time to be making the motion

129procedurally I'm just I you know I don't have it my Robert's Rules handy with me but because we're reordering our agenda now which is fine yeah I'm not necessarily opposed to it I'm just no no she's just saying do it when we're done with reports we're all going to agree to it we should finish the reports before we start changing right you withdraw emotion and we'll do that at the end of 5B make the same yeah thank you and since we're not thank you Christina for pointing that out and we'll now go to and actually we'll go to Christina uh for a community approach reports she's going to talk about the Greenwich High School vestibule and I love saying honest with you because in real life I've never said that word before until this project

130vestibule thank you investable entryway tomato tomato um I just I'm happy to report that the RTM overwhelmingly granted the 500 000 interim request for the entryway project um so the next step is the building committee is working on finalizing the plans to go to the state and the construction drawings it will come back to us one more time for a final approval to authorize the going out to bid and the construction drawings which will hopefully be in February and keep the project on track to commence right after school gets out in June and that is it thank you Christina remember to use sunscreen when you're out in the sun tomorrow anyone else for a committee report Karen um I was just going to report that um ciac met uh last week and you know very

131lovely meeting and they were discussing a lot of interesting different topics um Michael Joseph and I have reached out to the the heads of ciac to to arrange some brown bag meetings with them uh prior to our next um uh presentation on the update on our action items on the um on the audit right at The Retreat yeah so um hopefully we'll be speaking with them soon and we'll have some additional updates um I know that they're looking to add some more parent um education and speaking um sessions one was uh in the end of January they're looking to set something up with about a mental health Workshop in the spring they've spoken about a couple of other different speakers uh and looking into somebody for also next fall once we have more information on

132that we will um share that with you I know that uh I think the end of January Workshop I think I could be wrong is January 24th at 7 pm is that correct okay how okay well I had I have a date here so I'll come back to you on what that was I thought that's what it was anyway so that's uh that's our update thank you anybody else uh Laura we're going to update you in our update sure you don't have to update the granted line update yep okay and Kathleen thanks just real fast um proud to be now a little liaison to the Greenwich Alliance and um Julie provided me some quick updates which is 80 000 in scholarships was just awarded to 37 Avid college students which brings the distribution for this

133year up to 155. um reaching out Grant applications now available on the alliance website and due Friday March 24th the alliance is looking for proposals for programs that expand opportunities for underserved students as well as Inspire educators um GPS honors band Festival will be held on Wednesday February 8th at 7 pm at the pack and last but not least one of my personal favorites so I'm so excited to be announcing it is the trivia challenge um one year one of my board colleagues and I went and you guys remember this gay time I celebrated because we won just saying and with a few other people I have to admit who might have carried us but um still the that trivia challenge is Friday March 3rd will be held virtually and allows teams to include friends

134and family for all over the country so mark that date maybe we get a little bit of a team together okay thank you Kathleen I'm finding more and more about that Alliance I didn't know much about them and they're a great organizations so thank you for being so uh involved with that anybody else with a committee update I have a couple I'll be quick virtual net metering we went out with an RFP we had successful replies uh we are now in the process of evaluating uh and uh that's a very good thing we've talked about that before uh and uh it's a good thing and Blaze says that we'll be getting results uh very very soon uh next one JC building committee we've met a number of times we're putting together an RFP for an

135architect that's going to phase the improvements on JC we're going to have an elevator uh security entryway a whole bunch of cool stuff that we're going to be upgrading our building on at JC uh anybody else with a report okay Michael did you want to make some sort of motion I would I would if um I would like to move that item a under action item be moved to next on the agenda I will second that and also call the question uh all in favor of moving that would leave the two-thirds vote please put your hand up that looks like that passes unanimously you don't want to vote for that okay passes okay very good so we'll do that so why don't we then uh that would be then now so Mr chairman they um

136I would like to introduce uh the chairman of the Old Greenwich building committee James Waters and it is my great pleasure to be the Board of Ed liaison through this exceptionally hard-working um group that's been meeting multiple times a week for months now and they're very excited to bring with you the to bring to the board tonight the suggestion of the architect to hired to keep moving this project forward the bike is yours thank you don't break it I'll try not to thank you I appreciate it all right thanks Mr chairman um good evening members of the Board of Education Dr Jones um I'm James Waters and I'm humble to serve as the chairman of the Old Greenwich School building committee the Old Greenwich School building committee is excited to join you tonight to recommend

137silver Petrocelli and Associates as our architect as you know our committee's been hard at work since September since October and I hope you've all had a chance to read our first quarterly report distributed last Friday in the past 14 weeks we've met 18 times and have made significant progress in making the Old Greenwich School renovation project actionable we owe tremendous thanks to our Stellar team of volunteers who've committed themselves to making this happen many of them are sitting here if you guys raise your hands please thank you yeah our committee I'd like to also thank GPS's purchasing department for swiftly adjudicating our questions and guiding us through the RFP process it's pretty it's pretty uh detailed there are tremendous asset to the town and we certainly appreciate all their hard work we'd also like to

138thank the town legal department and town clerk's office for helping us stay on track and buy the book finally I'd like to personally thank Stephen welko Tony Turner Leslie Moriarty and Mike Mason like sitting back there um and many others for their thoughtful input and guidance this has been a true team effort and we feel lucky to have so many great public servants dedicated to the OJs project in our town so this board approved the Ed specs for Old Greenwich School in October 2021 as a reminder key items to address in the upcoming renovation Edition include bringing the school into compliance with the 1990 Ada act including the installation of an elevator creating a single secure entryway for visitor management managing storm water to prevent further flooding and raw sewage seeping into classrooms adding a

139building-wide sprinkler system to adhere to the current fire code addressing health issues with the building-wide HVAC system ensuring new classrooms account for a strong sustained enrollment at ogs and 21st Century Learning environment the ogs building committees rolled up its sleeves to understand the Ed specs and then draft solicit analyze proposals from Architects and owners reps we've interviewed candidates compared costs and had begun the process of interfacing with key stakeholders and members of the community just this afternoon we were proud to give a tour to the first selectman so he could see the need for advancing the project we'll be prepared to speak to the board of estimate and Taxation about the ogs renovation during their upcoming FY 2023-2024 budget deliberations our bet representative Stephen selps who's over there has been keeping the bet a prize

140of our progress as we go about hiring our professional team to include an architect owners rep and other Consultants at the Forefront is staying on time and on budget we're confident that we're in a position to move forward on this project in the coming fiscal year if funds are included in the budget as this board has recommended we know that this board budgeted 24 and a half million dollars for the ogs renovation in addition to the one million dollars approved by the BET last year in the coming months we'll be taking a deep dive to refine the estimate Insurance consistent with the scope of the project and current construction costs taking into account inflation and the supply chain issues so after lengthy and thoughtful deliberation the ogs building committee unanimously an 8-0 vote uh voted

141to recommend silver Petrocelli and Associates as our Architects we felt their experience with the town strong team familiar familiarity with projects like ours an integrated approach to solving challenges made them a great fit to lead our project so with that I'll turn it over to David Stein from SP a who will walk us through an introduction to what SP a will bring to the table to get this done thank you I think there's a presentation and no perfect how does that happen with magic so good evening everybody my name is David Stein I'm a principal with silver petrocity Associates my partner Amanda Cleveland is here also to speak on behalf of the project but let me first begin to um to to thank the committee and also obviously the Board of Ed were familiar it's

142nice to have an opportunity to be here live I didn't know I've spoken to you in the past where I've been up on the screen um being a part of your meeting so it's actually nice to be here and see everybody face to face um I want to just start out and giving everyone an introduction of our team and sort of our approach to to this project so we are a uh an integrated practice um our our firm is in its 32nd year of service um and it's really built around the principles of good sensible Design Within the educational community that is our core that's really our core guidance is to sort of work within the communities that we live in communities where we work in um and this project really aligns with what we

143like what we like to do which is bringing Architects engineers and interior designers all in one uniform group we're unique in that way of just 50 individual goals that that are sort of focused in in that a lot of our peers are just bring in consultants and we do have Consultants that we will talk about I guess actually on the next slide is a good good place to go to um to that so what you see there on on sort of the face page of the group that we have purposely assembled for this project is everyone sort of above that red line is part of the silver Petrocelli uh Team we have two offices one in Hampden one in New London a majority of the group will be working out of hand in but in

144you know in the virtual world we um you know work is done work is done all over um but we bring in the Consultants that really are important to the challenges of this project such as Langan engineering and these are also similar team members that are working on the ghs project that Miss Downey just referenced that we were also on and in the process of sort of finishing up those revised designs um so just having that continuity a team player I think is important um to understanding the challenges of this project along with um understanding the goals of the budgets that are set forth so we have Langan engineering they have an office in uh New Haven they have an office in in White Plains Michael Horton Associates structural engineer key part of this overall

145project is sort of evaluate that original building and how we're going to be able to Institute mechanical electrical and plumbing systems in it they were also on the high school project rounding out that we have an I.T consultant with D'Agostino and consultants and also pmnc and I'll talk a bit about them they are third-party cost estimators out of Boston and they are going to be a key part to doing that sort of independent check of our budget as we continue to go along and move through this project so if we do need to Pivot in a direction we could do it at the right time and obviously those are things that unfortunately caught up on the Greenwich high school projects and we plan to be back on track with with that one next slide please

146so as part of our experience majority of our work is actually in the renovation of of existing schools and uh the does the list of dozen projects here two of them are actually projects that we work with Dr Jones when when she was in when she was in Fairfield that actually the Mill Hill project that we recently completed if you could see some of those just scale of those projects they are equal and just those order of magnitude um but also just equal in terms of the complexity of projects that will be constructed while the students are in school that is a really complex way of what goes first designing a building based on its construction or designing a building that obviously is for its students so having that broad experience in renovation projects we

147are going to focus obviously on the educational goal but understanding how can we sync with sequence the work and we're going to be partnering with the owner's rep that will be brought on shortly in a construction manager they'll be brought on shortly and with that teamwork we will find the right design to work with the phasing of this project uh next slide please so with that as we begin to craft a project we are mindful of the process and the process begins with the educational spec that's really sort of our guiding or north star on a project we have reviewed the educational spec that was approved and we will as we get further along we may make suggestions on making slight edits to that in the intent to maximize your reimbursement from the state of

148Connecticut so there are different strategies just in terms of the way that's crafted the way that it's worded to make sure that it's broad enough to capture everything that you want but it's not finite enough that may limit your reimbursement so just as you saw those 12 projects on the previous slide those all were state reimbursed projects with various reimbursement rates from each of those communities and with that our charge as your architect of record is also to help navigate and maximize the best of our ability the reimbursement of the project we looked at sort of four goals that we interpreted as part of the project the educational adequacy of the project and that really is looking at a 21st century forward learning environment it's a bit of a challenge to adapt in a building

149that was built in this error but I think we have some solutions and Amanda will talk briefly about ways that we think we can um we We Can Make spaces a bit more flexible as opposed to being fixed items security and none of these are in any particular order of importance or just the ways that I've sort of just crafted them here in the presentation but security obviously is a key piece on our mind in the world that we live in and we want to we want to design strategies that are not only physical but also passive solutions that can work well as we adapt into your building accessibility barrier-free Universal Design these are solutions that we are mandated by the nine by the actually we're now in the 2010 Ada code which came up

150in 1990 but we need to come up with solutions that are not obvious to be in just accessible they need to be Universal they need to be part for everybody to use and not a specific item that says this is the accessible entryway it should be for for every entryway health and safety is a broad statement but in the world that we live in today obviously air quality ventilation daylight are all critical pieces to create in a healthy environment for the students and your Educators that is going to be a challenge to fit those mechanical systems and those modern systems into the buildings that you have but those 12 projects that you saw before equally had those same challenges and most of 169 towns in Connecticut are all dealing with that same approach of renovating

151projects and with that I'm going to turn it over to Amanda and then come back with a few more slides yes perfect thank you so again my name is Amanda Cleveland I'm principal of the Interiors department at Silver Petrocelli um as James had mentioned part of my job is talking to all of the key stakeholders on the project so that ranges from the students who use the space the Educators who teach in it the paraprofessionals that come in the PTO the Board of Ed the parents you name it Whoever has any involvement in these classrooms I want to know your opinion as you can imagine a student using classroom has a very different experience than the teachers who's giving it and that's why I like to hear all the different aspects of how those classrooms

152are used I like to know how they work well and more importantly I like to know how they don't work because what our job is to take that aspect that we've been given and actually challenge you because it's a year old and things have changed in a year we've seen that we've had to adapt classrooms for covet everything was get them in get them tight we're trying to get as many people in there as possible and now what we're seeing is space them out give them room how can we teach remotely as as well as teach in person so these are all the different aspects that I'm going to help guide through the process so that we make sure as we go through and we do that design that we're giving you the optimized space

153that we've looked at every angle every cabinet that goes in is designed for what needs to be stored there every piece of technology that's being used is the most up-to-date and user-friendly but it's also about blending in all of your specialty so making sure special education stem and steam programs you name it has all been thought out and I like to say that I create this geeky little spreadsheet that only I really enjoy but what that is is it's that road map that David talks about that truly then ends with not only picking the appropriate finishes because we're talking about allergens and green and off-gassing but sustainability all the way down to I will be there unpacking the boxes of the furniture as it's coming into the building making sure that everything goes into place

154so the more information and the more people that can get involved in this process really makes my job a lot easier so I'm going to pass it back to Dave thank you um just wanted to show you a case study when when we first um were interested in this project and and did the walk through um and learned more about some of the the water course issues and the drainage issues around the property we we immediately went to a project that we just finished in the north west part of the state in Winstead uh it was Barry Hinsdale school we just completed it you saw probably saw it on its list about a 18 million dollar project um that that school actually had a water course that was running under it if you could believe

155it someone thought it was a great idea to run one time to build a water course there it also had uh accessibility issues in the entry was was sort of done to script and we knew we needed to sort of solve two problems with one solution what this is really illustrating is what we did is we reworked the entryway and we also rerouted the water course so by engineering and Creative Design can we solve two solutions in one and that is kind of the approach that we bring along through all of these renovation projects because with budgets even at 24.5 million dollars we are still challenged to make that all work so if we can do the two for one solution we will look at that and this was one case study we presented to

156to the building committee because we just draw a direct parallel with that next slide please we talk about sustainability and renovation is probably the best way to um to practice sustainability the majority of this building is going to stay the way that it was originally built okay these are not being demolished and going into dumpsters there's a lot of value in that and that's why we like to practice that new buildings are wonderful and they have their purpose but the renovation of an of an existing building um is sustainable just in its own merits a high performance building is what we're going to be obligated to provide the state state statute requires that a building of this order of magnitude we are going to need to meet the U.S Green Building council's lead silver equivalent

157certification which is the Connecticut high performance building we're going to do that through a variety of solutions that we can fit within the building that is there but we're also going to challenge ourselves and challenge the budget to see if there are certain Alternatives that we can lean forward obviously aligning with your plan of conservation and development and find the right solution that could fit within that building some of the tools that we use to make sure that works as you can see just this graphic at the bottom right of the the screen is all of this work is captured in a three-dimensional model we actually take your two-dimensional drawings and we um we build a building three-dimensionally on the computer that allows us to determine conflict resolution and then whether or not beams are

158going to intersect with new piping and so forth so we're going to try to proof that out before we get out to construction When contractors then already have Solutions in hand so this is going to be a key part actually this is where the majority of the money of the budget is going to go unfortunately our Engineers in-house their best work is never seen but it's the most important piece of really the project is that health and safety component of it and we're going to work hard to make sure we find the solutions that have a long payback um for for the investment that you're going to be putting into it and lastly if you could go to the next slide please I want to talk about um schedule so um with that schedule drives

159budget budget drives schedule for that so our team along with the owners representative and the construction manager equally are going to sort of pull at each other to keep ourselves on time on time and on budget what is crafted here we have reviewed the building committee's goal of moving the design through starting in February and really continuing through September to get those initial Concepts developed presented vetted challenged and so forth once the construction manager is on board they're also going to be doing the same they're going to be reviewing the projects of our drawing they're going to be making suggestions on material supply chain issues these are different challenges than we've ever dealt with in the past and that really guides the the process that we go along with it the pre-construction phase is just

160that it's looking at items that we could get onboarded before we really start construction and then it's moving through your approval process in terms of the bet the back to the board of ed in terms of formal approvals and on to the RTM for final funding and so forth so we'll be there to help Shepherd that project along and provide that technical support and speak on behalf of the design in the merits of the project and then once we go into bidding and awards and and construction our team we do have dedicated construction administrator we also have a licensed building official we'll be on board to help manage the project make sure that the contractors and their team is building the project in accordance with the mission um and at the end of the day

161certify that this project meets and exceeds the expectations that were set forth as as we start off today so with that again thank you for try trusting us with this with this important project we are excited to get started and we know it's a long journey but we'll be there one step at a time so thank you happy to stay well thank you let's please stay we're going to follow through with some questions does anybody have a question well I guess I'll start off nobody else has one uh well obviously I have a comment I have a comment go right ahead okay um I just want to say you know I wasn't aware that silver petrochelli had been selected by Old Greenwich up until you guys just announced it so it's not like I just

162want to be clear this process was very independent on behalf of the Old Greenwich building committee uh that being said they've been a pleasure to deal with for the high school entryway they've been responsive they've been thoughtful um they've been open to our suggestions crazy and not crazy um and David and his team have really just been a pleasure to work with and we look forward to working with them and completing the vestibule um and um happy to say we've been very happy customers um thus far with them so I just wanted to give that plug and it really did not know until tonight that they had been selected so thank you thank you um the only I guess the question or one question I have is uh uh what did you think about the

163uh we voted we looked at the feasibility studies some opportunities to uh sketch out what our thoughts might be during the feasibility process do you have any comments about your observations of our feasibility we did and you know we we didn't want to be too presumptuous but we're Architects and we we brought our own thoughts at least initial thoughts more just to sort of demonstrate to the building committee how we think than anything and you know we were doing that in a vacuum so we didn't have the opportunity of of learning more about the project and meeting the individuals um that we'll be working with but yeah we did look at that we we came up with some solutions that we thought we could possibly reduce some of the square footage if we just looked

164at sort of rearranging the corridors um circulation is a big part of the school circulation is basically the hallways those are just square footage that gets you from point A to point B and if we could do that in a shorter shorter manner we could save costs because building buildings is just cost per square foot so we we looked at a solution that we thought could possibly do that we also looked at sort of a two two to one scenario that we similar to what we showed you on the Mary Hinsdale project in which we're con one of the contemplate can we move the original entryway back to that front entryway resolve the Ada issue by creating a upgrade scenario but under that can we also now put storm Drainage Systems in that so that

165still needs a proof of concept to see whether we can make that work and we do want to explore that um but again we we start a project like this with an open mind we will challenge that other solution but understand that there's other ones that are there and work towards that it's really a one step at a time process but yes we did look at that we saw the merits that were there and I think we could keep a lot of that we would like to look at some other Alternatives that we think may be able to help save cost and we're going to need to do that across the board because prices just aren't going down so we're going to have to do whatever we can to to get in that right direction

166so that it's good that we've given you a bit of a nudge in a direction that we certainly are we're okay with that recorded way back when uh and I guess there's the uh we it's luckily we have two advocates for you guys obviously our liaison board liaison Michael who is The Advocate and what a surprise we have Christina as well so that's a that's a plus minuses are this is the first we're seeing of any information so I'm not sure that our our members are are able to uh gather enough to make a a decision so I'm going to leave that to them if they uh obviously will call the vote at one point but I'm going to leave the floor open to anybody else who might want to gather more information to see

167if they're I think get enough tonight to make that vote Aaron well I was going to Second what Joe said I'm going to see I've seen the work and the presentations you guys have done here with other other projects but this is the first time we've seen this so I knew I had asked earlier if we were going to have an opportunity to see any of the information but I want to make sure that this is being posted because it's not up on the website um I don't have any questions simply because I was watching I I haven't had a chance to really make it through but I know I had spoken to members of the building committee uh without knowing who they selected um and it heard that I believe it was it a

168unanimous decision yes uh by the building committee and that uh they all had very positive things to say uh without sharing information with me as to who is to who had been selected but I did reach out to other members to ask so I thought I at least share that anybody else Karen and now we got changed just a little bit sorry all right um so first of all I'm really pleasantly surprised to hear the words coming out of your mouth about working within the budget and coming up with Solutions because I think to be honest it's really important we're on the verge of you know with Old Greenwich and then we have CMS as well which is in an enormous burden on our Capital uh here in town and it is nice finally to

169hear someone say we're going to work with you to try to keep this as close to budget as possible we're coming up with Solutions we have new ideas and ways in which that we can perhaps shrink the square footage that doesn't impact the educational opportunities which were provided this is all music to our ears and I'd also like this or at least to mine and I'd also like to comment that uh you the track record that you have given with the high school entryway and the fact that we as a board came back and said you know the expense of this was going to be something of an additional two and a half million dollars and we said yeah we're not doing that and you came back with an alternative that works provides the solution

170that we're looking for at just a little bit more of a cost but certainly not the full weight of what was originally being presented to us is also you know gives us I think and gives me the Comfort to say we're looking for a partnership and I think that's what a lot of projects often miss at times is that partnership it's we're not you know we're not an endless bank that's just rolling out the dough uh we're just not and I am grateful to hear the words of we're working with you and the budget and trying to stick to it because we haven't heard that in a while and I and that gives me a lot of confidence in the project so I appreciate that I was on the feasibility study for the old Granite

171school we worked really hard to try to push that down and getting the right number for that school in what needed to happen uh it's a great school it's in a great Community it has a lot of unique characteristics that I want to keep and and basically accentuate and rather than get rid of because that school has a lot of history particularly attic if you've been up there I'm kind of worried if there's bodies um anyway but I do appreciate that and I thought the presentation was great thank you Kathleen real fast just to wrap this up um building committee conducted due diligence references All That Jazz great great question anybody else one big thing that's helping me decide on this was Barbara O'Neal you've convinced her to support this project so always smokes you

172gotta love that and and Joe if I have to make a comment okay of course um I think you know I think as if the building committee has done their due diligence while I think none of us love that we just didn't get any documents in advance in the presentation now um it is the role of the building committee to do the due diligence and make the decision and the fact that they were unanimous and they're making a recommendation in addition to the fact that I think we have familiarity with silver patricelli um I'm good with voting in favor tonight I see no need for to further delay the project so that's my point of view others can disagree thank you and Michael I guess maybe you can conclude and then they can think about

173it so so so yes so based on I I appreciate all the comments and I think a lot of the comments um that um fellow board members have mentioned are why uh we said all of us on the building committee felt so strongly about uh silver Petrocelli they know Greenwich um they're thinking creatively um they have an in-house team and they they very much um very much impressed all of us um and their references all checked out and I'm sorry Christina you weren't enough we we kept you in the dark we were we were advised to keep everyone in the dark but I assure you that uh the chairman Waters had many conversations with chairman Walco um about about no no I like that they know because then it shows that it was an independent

174decision so it's good that we were kept in the dark um so I'd like to make a motion um to um I'd like to make a motion to accept Sylvan country Sally of the architect of the Old Greenwich project I'm happy I'm sorry so we have a motion Second To None over there hello in the floor at the Kids Table over here okay all in favor please raise your hand hi that is unanimous congratulations thank you thank you okay moving on let's go to the Central Middle School update Dr Jones I think we've really talked about this just a reminder we have a question and answer document the board has that will go out tomorrow I think it'll be very very helpful for the larger Community we also have a brand new fact sheet that

175the board got today that will go out tomorrow as well and we do have a third document we're working on um more specifically it's a little bit more detail even for the bet so I'll just leave it at that but it will once it goes out it will be online be on the project page be available to everybody who wants to learn about the project thank you anyone on Central Middle School that's a negative let's move on uh Western Middle School uh please again on this one I think I've already addressed it uh in my superintendent's comments so uh we don't need to belabor it anymore we could move on to the next item if you're happy so I understand Parks and Rec as rent has already assigned the fields for for uh fall so

176we could be ready that that soon is that correct just kidding okay moving on uh now we have new courses uh ghs to be approved for the cosg first read that carabello I don't need the podium thank you so much I just have Jason polis and he's here tonight to present the guitar too uh new course which is very exciting and then after Jason we will have Andrew Byrne present the linear algebra course thank you my name is Jason polis I teach at ghs thank you all for your time tonight as I present a an exciting potential new course offering at ghs at ghs we currently have we currently offer a one semester three block beginning guitar course after having taught at ghs for five years it's clear to me that our guitar program is

177growing and there's a need to offer a second level of Qatar this new class called guitar 2 will serve students at ghs in a number of ways in the past few years we have increased our class offerings of beginning guitar from three times per year to five times per year due to demand many students and parents are now asking if there is a way for students to continue their study of Qatar as guitar classes are three block classes they complement the heavier six block offerings of orchestra band and choir meeting uh and choir meeting the needs of a segment of our population that love music but sometimes can't commit to a performance Ensemble like band choir or orchestra or simply don't have the room in their schedules for a six block music class another need

178that this class addresses is that we often have guitarists enter ghs that already have substantial guitar experience and there currently is no class that meets their needs for pursuing guitar past a basic level I have taught the beginning guitar chorus for several years now based on my observations most students who have taken guitar one would be interested in taking guitar too much of my teaching role at ghs involves teaching electronic music classes this expanded guitar curriculum will help to feed skilled guitars into our electronic music program and Jazz ensembles we have two Jazz ensembles we have enhanced our electronic music curriculum in the past few years to include learning guitar piano bass and drums in our songwriting and recording classes students now play in Rock Band type ensembles as part of their assured experience students

179who have taken guitar one and two will not only be a major boost to the electronic music program but we'll have we'll now have a way to collaborate and play in small ensembles with other students using their guitars and their guitar skills in addition after taking guitar to ghs will have many guitars that will be capable of joining one of our two Jazz ensembles lastly expanding our offerings and especially three block offerings in music will allow us to engage musically with a more diverse population of the school and as a result will strengthen the connection of the music department and the entire School that's it okay questions Karen so is are we intending to offer this for the for the next year yeah for the 2023-2024 right yep okay that's the plan and how many

180students do we think are interested in this program uh it's it's hard to say I've taken in informal polls in the class and have the students give me um sort of like exit exit polls and stuff as they finish the class and um uh I'm I think there could be as many as as 40 students that want to take it next year and so we're planning on offering it first and second semester and then based on enrollment figuring out if we're going to have it both semesters action and how will this impact or can it be used for any portion of their graduation requirements that's a great question I can't answer it's uh it's complicated I know they need Fine Arts it can it can serve in a few different uh ways okay it's a

181fine art credit but it's more than that as well and so I can get back to you on exactly all the possible ways that it can help them but part of part of what's great about offering something like this is that it can help to fill fulfill needs for the kids in a music area where they may not they may not be in band or choir something like that it's a way for them to get involved in music we have a few other classes that are three blog classes uh intro to music theory and then uh electronic uh introelectron music but that's basically it for music so this wouldn't this would help like I'm all for expanding our our music program I meet under um Miss Newell and what she's done with it and building

182it up and I think it's only shown that the we have an amazing and talented group of children sorry students that are looking for ways in which they can span expand on their music credentials and I think if there's a need for this class and particularly with the number of students there's no reason we shouldn't be offering it and I think we should just make sure that we can find ways in which that it could you know go toward their graduation requirements I know that there's a lot of rigors there and I wouldn't want these particular students because they want to take this these classes because this is what interests them in any way hurts their ability or jams up their schedules with so that they can get the right credits to to graduate yeah

183I have a question oh go ahead Karen no please no girls first no yes your question's probably a lot better than mine I I don't know if my question's any better but I was gonna say I I love the idea of this I think it's an incredible opportunity to offer you know more Arts programs as Karen was saying um and so if there's inter I had two questions you know if there's an interesting guitar too do you think this might have any opportunities to lead to other upper level technique courses um either in you know guitar in my mind I dream like you know this is so I teach electronic music and in there we have a new initiative as the last couple years where we have the kids playing in bands it's really incredible

184so part in addition to songwriting they're learning how to play together and they learn bass drums and keyboard and um but anyways they get to I can imagine that these these two once they finish guitar two number they can go into the songwriting and that will give them a place to further develop because they will be playing in ensembles and for a school to have kind of a school a rock thing it's pretty it's pretty rare it's really cool to see these kids and my favorite part about this whole boosting up the guitar program at ghs and and the electronic and music program in terms of getting kids to really play as a group there um we're attracting a whole population from the school that wouldn't isn't always you know they're not always your band

185kids they're not your Orchestra kids necessarily and they just they they're starting to really come out of the woodwork and they love the collaborative nature of getting to play rock music and and write music together you know well I'm glad my I thought process was so transparent that you went right to school of rock but so my other question is I know you mentioned that um there was going to be no cost for educators and that you were going to be creating you know there was a discussion at um uh looking at a method book so I just wanted to he was wondering if you or other educators are going to be creating the method book for the course or are we going to look for um any just materials additional materials or have access

186to some online resources so I've created a book The guitar one course and I can share that with you guys and then I've created this I I will be creating the second as well so I've been teaching guitar for a few decades so I'm looking forward to you know uh designing that and I can share that with you guys and basically I wrote wrote a book for the first course and there's also YouTube practice videos so if a kid even never misses a class they literally have a whole video of me just playing the stuff with them and they can they can you know so that would be the idea for the second level too well now that I know there's YouTube videos I can oh I'd be very happy to teach myself to play

187guitar I definitely would need an educator to help with that but thank you for answering my questions now level ones that's in there that's in there right where are we level two give me some sort of uh oh that's a good question well um they're gonna you know they move on to Green Day and they learn they learn Led Zeppelin and um you know they oh they were they'll end up doing some funk stuff James Brown they'll do some uh get in there's a little bit of jazz too so well uh honestly guitar one it's amazing what they end up walking away with and if we can have guitar too I think the kids will be just delighted that they get I think they were honestly shocked that we could play really play at the

188end of the first semester thank you that's a great answer thank you very much any more questions thank you very much for that sure appreciate it no problem uh so we have K8 stem report where's that okay honestly algebra this is part of the course of study guide same same section well same thing okay sorry about that that's okay Mr Kelly good evening uh chairman Kelly uh Board of Education Dr Jones thank you for the opportunity to speak with you here today about our proposed course honors linear algebra as you've heard me uh through the last couple of years we're really excited by the work that's happening at our elementary and middle schools as far as math and math advancement and we're seeing more and more students who are uh running through our program at

189a very quick Pace it's a really good problem to have um so I'm excited to bring forth forward to you today uh honors linear algebra which is really kind of the the next step in a child's mathematics progression it really is the foundation for all stem Fields as you can see in The Proposal here tonight the applications of linear algebra are varied in many everything from economics to Neuroscience to uh theories of Relativity so we think this will be a wonderful opportunity to encourage our students to continue to grow and we're really excited to to be able to bring this forward to you tonight thank you any questions oh we've got lots of questions Well mine's on a well I may have a question but I just wanted to start by saying a huge thank

190you I mean for many many many things but in for this in particular because this is something that I know that parents have been asking for the board has been asking for for so long that we have so many students at the earlier levels now doing triple jumps that they're running out of math courses so I am just thrilled that you brought this forward but I'll let Kathleen ask her questions because I know she has a student that might be been you know might be in that course if we ever approve it go ahead Kathleen yeah which is um so you would think I'd be all four but I'm going to ask some questions about um you know because it's a limited group of children right let's let's sort of reset everyone just so people

191understand I mean my high school's topped out a BC calculus we're talking about the fact that we are children can take Advanced calculus here already um so in order for you to be on track for this course you'd have to be a sophomore taking BC calculus um I am lucky enough to be in that you know I do have a child in that but that means that I mean I think he has there are six kids perhaps um throughout his class doing that is that right that is correct yeah we uh currently have um seven students who are juniors in our Advanced Calculus class um so we would definitely need to recruit a few more students to be able to run the course but to have it on the books and really have it as

192an opportunity or understood pathway I think would be um really helpful to a lot of our community that have inquired about that over the years yeah and so I do appreciate that what I guess I need to understand because we always have to look at things is if we kind of run a course right if it's appropriate it's it's I appreciate that it costs money we talk about the books but I mean obviously we also have to find a teacher a teacher which it's already challenging to find teachers to teach Advanced calculus right it's these are hard classes to teach um but the independent study does seem to be working well for some right I want to understand that a little bit because I know that that's it's MIT right it's it's free right yes

193100 we you know we will continue to offer those independent study Pathways um you know not everyone is interested in linear algebra just in our our research I think the vast majority of students who are on this pathway will take linear algebra and that's why we chose to go in this direction as opposed to other directions but you know until it makes really fiscal sense for for Grant High School and and certainly the board um you know we would work very closely with Dr Jones and and Mr Mayo mrlada to ensure that you know it makes a lot of sense to have a full class dedicated versus taking a look at uh the independent pathway independent study pathway so you bring up excellent points but we're not I I there's certainly no plans to just

194run it with two or three kids um and the independent study pathway has been working well for us but I think it will be important as we see more and more students come through that we have it on the books that we get teachers trained and get us get ourselves ready for when that big influx will come because it is coming yeah I was wondering we're starting to matriculate more and more children into this path I mean it's incredible I actually wanted to say is do we have any comps are there other high schools that are doing this I mean I feel like wow already yeah so I did a survey throughout Fairfield County there isn't another school that has it on the books many of the schools will do an independent study that would

195like we've done a broader search you know there's some schools in the city like Bronx school science and Stuyvesant that do have it on the books um so just to kind of put that in perspective in some schools like the Massachusetts math academy Math and Science Academy also I was in underbook so they're few and far between um but I I love the idea of us getting ahead of it and actually having it there as a as a known pathway for for our students and for our families yeah that's I mean that's incredible the fact that we're even can contemplate this is impressive but um so thank you but I I know I realize it requires a lot of diligence and and thought Mike yeah I um I mean I'm I'm not I'm not unsupportive

196I'm supportive of the thing but I do want to caution us because this is not a no-brainer in much of the country there's a huge if you look like you know you read there's a lot of debate going on in other parts of the country that we shouldn't be doing this kind of math acceleration there's no question that you know on that triple jumps and things like that we should you know are not are not healthy for kids social emotional quality um you certainly cannot point to uh what What's they um well I'm not I'm not saying I'm not arguing I'm not arguing either way I'm just saying it is a very rich debate if you look and see particularly out in in California which has its own problems but there are a lot of

197there's a lot of State policy right now to push back on this so I'm not saying suggesting we do this but I am suggesting that part of the reason for that is the significant social emotional pressure the uh um you know we talk about we point to you you raised Stuyvesant and Frank science neither one of these are synonymous with um student mental health they um you know they both those schools have significant crises um in the pressures and stretches so I just want to caution us that as we continue to consider these kind of advanced enrichment options for students um just because it's available for students doesn't mean that um it's healthy um when as soon as we create these paths that means we're creating pressure for students to take them um we know

198the competition is real um and is that race to at some point we we all we do have to consider of that race to these kind of super Advanced sophomore College before you graduate high school is is necessarily worth it um um so I'm not saying we're voting no but I think we need to be mindful of all aspects of this debate I'm just going to go to Cody real quick because as a math genius I was curious I do love linear algebra that was my favorite uh no I'm serious I was hoping to say that I was in math major I know you're working a year of it I love it it's I was actually curious about something else why is calculus a requirement to take the class because I I looked at the

199list of stuff and you can do linear algebra with no calculus knowledge and it's actually what I was thinking about is it's such a and this was eye-opening for me when I took it is it's a really different form of math that if you don't like calculus like which I'm sure there are some mathematically inclined students who don't love calc that could take it as an alternative and it kind of opens up the world of math I was curious why it would be uh restricted to only calculus students it's a really good question and one that I I didn't settle on or our team didn't settle on lightly Cody um as far as the uh reason at the end of the day I think in our work in canvassing colleges and specifically engineering schools one

200of the things that we hear regularly is the importance of having that ad calc or multivariable calculus before you go into uh some of the high level physics and engineering classes so we didn't want to send the wrong message there partially the second thing is that we our Advanced calculus classes do enjoy some pretty good enrollment and uh you know we want to be able to sustain that over time and so at least initially the way our team was thinking about it and it may evolve over time is that we really want to try to Target those students who have gotten through ad calc and had that experience and and really are committed to to going to the mat exploring math at that level moving forward so it wasn't done in isolation like I said

201we looked at a lot of what the colleges are reporting back to us as far as um what they're looking for um and you know I think because it is new and we're kind of embarking on this um with very few models we decided to go in that that direction but we would certainly be open to other suggestions moving forward just uh one thing I would maybe consider um and I'm reflecting on my own experience I did AP Stat as an elective when I was doing BC calc at the high school with Mr Speaker um and uh yeah yeah two years ago uh when I was a senior um and uh we maybe consider making it um an option for people to do as an elective so they haven't if you haven't completed calculus but

202you're enrolled in it because then it would solve the issue Kathleen was talking about of being only available like being only available for sophomores who are taking calculus it would then give you presumably another year or two of students available and oh it's a great point we and we continue to kind of try to find that balance one of the things that's happened probably since you've graduated is all the AP Computer Science classes have been added um so we have a good number of students as you've seen in previous reports who are taking both AP Computer Science principles and AP Computer Science a and so a lot of our students who are on this pathway that don't pursue a course an independent study will take advantage of AP Stat and the three two other computer

203science classes because that will give them college credit I think one of the criticism systems here both of adcalc and honors linear algebra as as we have them is that they don't often lead to much if any recognition when you get to that um to University or college level some kids will have to depend upon where they go retake these courses um so you know the the value of having the AP credit sometimes outweighs exploring the the independent study so we try to work with every individual child to be able to give them what they need in order so that they can continue to pursue their passion and pathway just to the last comment I totally missed an opportunity to make a math joke I should have said that calculus and linear algebra are totally

204orthogonal to each other uh someone got that so we but I would say this to my peers linear algebra is a really really amazing class so just from the content standpoint I would totally recommend this