001stand for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance thank you good evening everyone we are so great to see so many people here tonight um let's go straight to it because i know we have a lot of wonderful recognitions and then a busy meeting so um the first item of business is the consent agenda can i please get a motion yes okay miss downey can i see a second miss hirsch thank you um all in favor of the consense agenda that passes in miss costume can you say yes since you're on zoom yes great that passes 7-0 miss kowalski is just running a few minutes late but we will she said to start without her um let's go straight into the student staff recognitions and first up are the distinguished teachers miss gilbert that's why i'm
002gonna get online so i can tell you're permitted to talk please go ahead miss gilbert can you hear me we can go ahead thank you good evening i'm marlene gilbert and i'm the chair of the distinguished teachers awards committee this is our 37th year of celebrating exceptional teaching in greenwich selection of the six distinguished teachers is done by our 20-member committee which includes representatives from the board of education pta council greenwich education association greenwich organization of school administrators kiwanis and the community at large i am honored to present to you six individuals who are passionate about the work they do and who strive to inspire our students to become lifelong learners problem solvers and innovators it is my pleasure to announce the distinguished teachers for 2022. please stand when your name is called if you
003are at the meeting in person libby craig international school at dundee advanced learning program [Applause] ryan jones greenwich high school social studies allison kistler north miana school kindergarten tyler mccosey western middle school science william ronk riverside school fourth grade and darcy zigmont north north street school third grade on behalf of the distinguished teachers award committee i want to congratulate all of you you are most deserving of this award if you want to learn more about these special teachers please come to the awards ceremony on may 5th at central middle school at 4 30. thank you thank you so much we have so many over 900 teachers in our district so obviously these six are quite special and we are really lucky to have them i'm sorry that i haven't had none of my children have
004gone through any of uh your schools but um very happy to have you here tonight and i know the award ceremony is always really special so please mark your calendars next up are the allstate musicians miss noel and mr taylor please are you here or online i guess online okay go ahead laura good evening everyone each year more than 1 000 vocalists and instrumentalists from every public and private high school in connecticut audition for our four all-state performing groups band chorus orchestra and jazz band this is a two-stage process with a first round of auditions in november and a second round in february due to the ongoing covet concerns this year's auditions once again took place via video submissions that that necessitated additional planning and preparation by the students nonetheless i'm pleased to report that
005greenwich high school once again had more musicians selected for all state than did any other high school in the state the students honored here this evening have spent many years working hard to become fine musicians and although it is primarily their passion and dedication that has led them to this impressive achievement their efforts have been continually supported by their parents and families our exceptionally strong k-12 music faculty are always supportive school administration and our board of education all of which place a high priority on arts education i am pleased to present the 30 greenwich high school musicians who were selected to represent greenwich high school in this year's all-state band chorus and orchestra for allstate band we have quinn collins cece shea hannan stern for the all-state chorus we have kate adorni charlie adorney lucy
006bay gregory bound michaela browning stephanie bussani dawson clark benjamin cooper ethan cooper jackson gales brook hadden alexis colleen yunu cook charlotte marcusen juaquina mendive joe nagai luke avzog madeleine phillips delilah ruiz esther shaw utah takahashi jacob winston and ziyiyan for the allstate orchestra we have luca dolga elisa feng benny gruenbaum and chloe henske congratulations you guys are in the room please stand i feel like some of these children must be here yes yes thank you thank you i know that um i believe all their certificates will actually go to um to school so they'll be handed it there right yes okay well congratulations that's that's really impressive and quite a large group of children um next up is was that all of it for the all-state musicians am i right yes okay um next up
007is the harlan virtual supreme court mr hall is he here aaron yes you are there you are i'd like to uh invite nicole orlowski and arjun kishore to join me up here please dr jones and members of the board i speak to you tonight to recognize two juniors on the ghs we the people team nicole olofsky and arjun kishore they competed in the national finals of the 10th annual harlan institute ash book the virtual supreme court in washington d.c over the weekend 60 teams and pair started the competition by preparing extensive legal legal briefs and initial recorded oral arguments in october then 38 teams made up of 76 students from across the country competed in three virtual rounds online with sitting practicing judges in a mock trial of the current supreme court of the united
008states case new york state rifle and pistol association inc versus bruin they expertly represented the respondents for the state of new york facing a very hot and very conservative bench the finals were held in person at the georgetown law center the bullpen if you will of the supreme court they argued in front of a three-judge panel made up of d.c circuit court judge naomi rao u.s court of appeals for the armed forces judge gregory mags and u.s court of federal claims judge stephen schwartz past judges include associate justice brett kavanaugh for their participation in the finals they will be invited to attend the ashbrook academy on the supreme court in the constitution in june 2022 and will each receive an amazon gift card additionally we were able to tour the supreme court in person which
009included a visit to the highest court in the land the basketball court above the supreme court itself i couldn't be prouder of respondent council kishore and orlovsky as they faced an uphill battle and represented greenwich with prodigious talent and skill please give them a round of applause [Applause] do they want to say something i mean they're clearly good at it so okay um yeah i don't have a whole lot to add uh but we got a lot of help on our project so i'd just like to give a thanks big thanks to everyone who helped us out of course mr hull but then a bunch of uh teachers and students who also helped us prepare case so yeah big thanks to them i think we didn't prepare as much for this as we did for
010our actual competition so um but more specifically we'd like to thank the other gov teachers who ran rounds with us and duke maloney who did practices with us as well and we worked with some other former we the people students and just had a lot of amazing resources and help in this so we really appreciate that and especially mr hull's helping support through all this i'm sorry to put you two on the spot but i knew you guys could handle it so thank you so much really impressive thanks for representing greenwich um next up is and i think they're in front of me the boys swimming and diving state champions mr lowe [Applause] members of the board gerry stowe superintendent jones this is a team that showed incredible resilience and determination to recapture the state
011double l and open championships after two covert years in which they were denied that opportunity they came through with flying colors winning the climactic state you know open meet by over 200 points and turning in multiple swimming and diving all-america performances after quarantines that had us down to four swimmers eligible to practice in december the team showed joy and determination as it faced the hard work and challenge of fighting its way back to the top i'm especially proud of this team and to introduce each one of them for their state victory contribute excuse me each one of the stake victory contributors to you today first up i guess we'll just have them stand and sit individually as we go through it first up a junior evan belmont who went all the way from our jv
012and uh uh two years ago to become a state finalist in the 200 free this year jonathan bergbaum a senior our only sprint freestyle to make it to the state open in the 50 freestyle this year will be off to the university of miami next in the fall in bucharia triple gold medal including two relays and all-america time performance and winning the 100 breaststroke you'll be a 2023 captain zachary chalnick jr who made his mark in the backstroke at the double l championships this year keegan clark softball who went from most improved last year to a four event state open swimmer this year hunter dower senior who scored in the 500 free at both double l's and the open will be off to ithaca college in the fall mick delasha senior captain and four event
013open swimmer who keyed to relay gold medal efforts will be off to the university of alabama this fall andrew diamond senior who after three jv years was the biggest surprise of the team this year anchoring the 200 free relay to the gold medal at the state open he'll be off to mass maritime academy this fall liam flaherty a junior versatile swimmer who could score in any event and a key member of two all-america qualifying gold medal relays captain to be mitchell goldstein hardworking junior 500 man whose season ended at the double l championships and was voted in his captain for 2023. matthew hawkey senior open meet fire and breaststroker who stepped in to swim the fly leg in our gold medal double l medley relay he will be off to hamilton this fall justin jacob
014senior captain who alternated leading off as the backstroke leg of our gold medal relay with swimming the fly leg as well an open finalist in both of those individual events he'll be swimming at nyu in the fall ryan g senior captain who not only contributed to two gold medal relays but also achieved all-america times in both the individual medley and 100 butterfly in which he was the state champion he'll be off to colgate to swim alex kilco junior who made a strong comeback from a mid-season injury to score in state meets in both the individual medley and 500 free luke mendelsohn freshman who made his mark this year scoring in the 50 free but his versatility will make him a multiple-event man in the future michael merson senior sprinter who made his contribution in the
01550 freestyle at the double l championships he'll be off to stevens institute of technology in the fall daniel siknik a freshman surprise who made the jump from jv to state double l finalist in the breaststroke jacob winston sophomore diver who scores have him on the brink of all america's status haddon woods a freshman who also made the leap from jv to double l finalists with this dramatic improvement in the butterfly these are the swimmers and divers who made this a championship team additionally i would like to add that without the dedicated coaching staff of kevin thompson our diving coach and assistant swimming coaches james o'malley and joan lynch we would not have reached the level of accomplishments we did have this year thank you very much can i ask you a question please if you
016can return to the podium because i think everybody should hear this answer uh can you tell everyone here how many years you've been coaching at greenwich high school please how old are you i'm 59 not that many 54. wow thank you joe for pointing that out that's longer than coach k i think right that's impressive much longer um and but you have more champions so there you go so there you go um i would let you guys go but you should probably stay because now the next group of comments is from your student government then you can leave after that how about that you should support that all right so next up is our public hearing which always kicks off with the ghs student government comments good evening cherish though dr jones members of the
017board and meeting attendees i'm javi sarah senior class president at grants high school this past monday the senior class hosted a dodgeball tournament at seven o'clock the 15 teams brought fierce competition and firm camaraderie there was a team of administrators and a team of ghs teachers competing as well a team of baseball players took home the title and they each received the 50 and aldi's gift card in other news the cardinal cafe is beginning to reopen and offer a wider variety of food selections students are eager for the return of the sandwich bar and fresher food in general the student center is also becoming more lively on tuesday during lunch there were games of musical chairs where tens of students played or watched as music blasted through the student center it's been great to participate
018in activities and celebrations as we gear up for the end of the school year i'm excited that our commencement speaker has been selected and will be announced the community soon beyond our preparations for graduation the senior class has also hosted a car wash fundraiser on april 10th at old greenwich school many senior volunteers scrubbed cars and solicited donations to support our upcoming senior prom lastly i just want to give a huge shout out to the man i get to call my all-time favorite teacher role model and friend mr jones on the distinguished teacher award recognition mr jones has been a transform transformational influence and i'm so lucky to have gotten to know him this award was so incredibly well deserved and congratulations to the other winning teachers you've all earned it as always thank you
019for this opportunity and for your time here tonight i look forward to speaking with you all in a month's time good evening chairstow dr jones members of the board and meeting attendees i'm kwame boateng student body president at ghs i'm glad to report that this week students are participating in an electric spirit week monday was great color wars tuesday was an iconic duo day from pop culture wednesday was usa day today was mitch mass day and tomorrow students will be bringing anything but a backpack to hold their notebooks and computers in as we approach the end of the year and the end of my high school journey i would like to take the time tonight to thank all the administrators and teachers who have constantly supported the student government and all its endeavors a special
020thanks to mr silkman mrs foster mr mayo and miss tulato we've had countless meetings and can never support our support system enough for their guidance and feedback as we advocated amongst our peers day in and day out the names i mentioned are only a handful of the great faculty that have supported my peers daily throughout high school and we are all incredibly grateful for all they do for our community it has been a long two years with kovid but with every passing day i see jhs come back to life and i am truly optimistic for its future next time i speak here will be my last remarks as student body president then at the board meeting in june javi and i will introduce next year's student government leaders thank you as always for your time
021tonight can't wait to see you in a moment thank you kwame and hobby it's always great um you guys can stay but i don't want you to feel like you have to just so you know it's a lot of pressure um next up are the gea comments let's give them a few minutes go ahead there's so many of them thank you again thanks for coming you can talk to an empty classroom right low your guys you can talk to an empty classroom right usually my classrooms are full kids love to come see me i'm sure we can get started and the right polo and dive teams perron's an aston bad mitten no one can beat me all right that's right i'm live good evening board members dr jones parents gps community and to my 900
022gea members my name is lillian perrone proud president of gea i first like to acknowledge and send congratulations to all the recipients who received their community service awards this past monday night in our performing arts center more importantly to thank all the students for the significant contributions that you all have made to your schools into our greenwich community thank you thank you and thank you congratulations to all the students even though they walked out on me it's okay here tonight that were recognized for their awards uh and my friend terry lowe 54 years that is just amazing thank you mr kelly for bringing up that i know tonight is all about the recognition of that's going to be coming up not tonight but on may 5th but i do want to recognize the six teachers
023again but first i'd like to start off with thanking our gps staff and when i say gps staff i mean the entire staff that makes our school system run and it's a long list and i won't do that to everyone tonight but i just want to plant that seed and you let it grow while i'm talking okay a gps staff are community members parents that all supported our schools and all of our students a second shout out to all our greenwich teachers again for all you are distinguished you all are distinguished in my eyes you are truly amazing and distinguished you pivot on a dime you show up every day and made it happen that we in greenwich did what no other district did in connecticut we were open for business and school was in
024session for our students now to our six distinguished teachers that i know are listening to me in their car on their way going home and that's what really makes them distinguish like to start out with this quote from albert schweitzer success is not the key to happiness happiness is the key to success if you love what you are doing you will be successful of course my mom always said if you love what you if you love what you do you never work a day in your life too right that's for my mom uh that quote's important because i think uh what distinguishes uh our teachers uh the six that we announced today is that their true love of teaching the love of students the highly qualified instruction that has distinguished them all so i look
025forward to their celebration of excellence next thursday may 5th 4 30 right here right here at central um so i hope to see a large turnout there so we can celebrate all their successes i like to end with because we won't be here next week i want to wish all our moms a happy mother's day have a great day moms thank you thank you so much love i'm sure uh next up we have pta council i think i see maybe there yes good evening dr jones stowe and other members of the board of education i'm mimi duff president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of all their members i want to start by saying thank you for acknowledging so many of our students and staff in the various ways that
026they show excellence and give back to the community whether that be in athletics the arts contributions in community service or in other ways going through the agenda items for tonight we're very excited to get next an update on the western field situation it has now been six years that our western middle school students haven't had full access to their fields where the baseball and softball practice teams have to be bussed to other fields to practice and where school spirit may fall short as western is unable to host at-home track meets our western school middle school students deserve better and we look forward to seeing some progress toward a lasting solution we also look forward to the central middle school update and the various textbook review updates we appreciate all the moving parts and various efforts
027that are ongoing in terms of improving building issues textbooks and curriculum reviews we would note that parents remain concerned about the heavy testing schedule for k-5 students we know that the district is looking into this and we want to make sure it stays on your radar we also want to convey again that our parents would like to see a second parent teacher conference for k through 5 students across the district we know that some schools are voluntarily doing two two conferences each year but our community would like that to become the expectation and put it into our teacher contracts so that as so many other districts in the state have done we also see that a revised student title ix policy is back in today's agenda we noticed some wording changes versus what was previously
028presented and we would like the board of ed to share the motivation and potential impact of these changes to the public listening tonight ultimately we want to ensure that our students are protected and respected and have the full protection of title ix before closing i'll note that our green schools committee will be offering comments tonight discussing current initiatives in support of a move toward a zero-waste policy this team of hard-working advocates continues to pave the way toward a greener future in and out of our schools finally i want to thank thank again this board of education for the accessibility provided to our community via hybrid meetings and the public comment we continue to see great community participation and we are grateful thank you thank you very much mimi sorry i'm getting some feedback here okay
029now we are going to go into our community comments we have a pretty um long list so we will try i'll announce the person and then the next so we can try to be efficient um so and try to get all the uh comments in before the hours up okay so first up is jackie holman followed by joe solari good evening board of education members dr jones i'd like to start off tonight by thanking you for proposing what seems to be a very reasonable title ix policy parents certainly appreciate your efforts on this front so thank you but speaking of policies i'm wondering if you could direct me to the policy that says it's okay to dumb down the curriculum by replacing a classic book such as the odyssey in 10th grade english with a
030movie when i asked about it dr carabillo told me that all of the salient points standards and expectations had been addressed and the teacher believed it was best to have students see the odyssey production instead of continuing to use class time for students to complete the text does this happen in other classrooms or is this just an isolated example because parents have noticed a trend toward replacing books with online articles youtube videos and movies often this is how questionable unapproved content creeps into the classroom i'm wondering why you don't publish a detailed list of all curricular materials approved for use in the classroom it strikes me that so many of the issues that parents have raised at board meetings over the last year could be easily resolved if you would just be transparent about what's
031in the curriculum otherwise parents assume you have something to hide so we're forced to file freedom of information act requests just to find out what's being taught to our children that would also give the parents and the opportunity to opt out of potentially controversial content before it's presented to our children not only not after the damage is done such as with the f-bomb-laced graphic novel persepolis or that article and survey about white privilege given to the seventh graders last year or the video that showed the fully erect penis that you all want to forget about the same is especially true for the unapproved social emotional learning or cell programming that completely replaces academic classes for children in certain grades including 8th graders at eastern who have lost at least 10 percent of scientific instruction time
032to stand-alone cell lessons they're designed to teach them how to feel most students i know come home on cell days feeling frustrated about school and dreading the next indoctrination lesson they'd rather just do science and out of curiosity why are you being so secretive about the implementation of the transformative cell program ruler why won't you address the fact that cell has not been legally approved by the board yet it's being used anyway don't you have an obligation to follow connecticut education law [Music] aren't you supposed to consider feedback from the community especially on the cell issue because you know how controversial it is instead you just push it through behind closed doors and use government money to pay for it that is absolutely disgusting and shameful and you should stop that practice immediately thank you
033very much next up joe solaris followed by beth mcgilvray good meeting everybody my name is joe solari i'm a granite dad parent been here for a long time coach sports um and i love my town and i love my kids and our children um and that's why i'm here tonight i actually run a group in town called the concerned greenwich parents the start of just a few families now at some thousand across greenwich and westchester and up through stanford and fairfield county and you know what we try and do is protect parental rights and and stop policies that could be hurting rather than helping the kids so tonight uh title ix i signed up to speak on that i'm hopeful that the reason the title ix is on the docket is it's in order to
034use it to protect the sanctity of girls sports and stop the state mandate to allow boys to play girls sports i mean it's crazy it doesn't doesn't make sense no one wants it and it's being pushed forward by the state you know all mandates they all are they use force to push an agenda whether that's boys playing girls sports or all the acronym radical progressive programs like crt and scl and dei being mandated by the state and woven into the curriculum an unapproved curriculum the board's got to do better on that that promote a political agenda they spur division sexualize children and change the focus of education from education for achievement to education for indoctrination that hurts our children instead of helps them so just calling on my boe members here uh my fellow parents
035to stand back stand up and and fight back against harford don't listen to the conflicted advice perfectly conflicted of a law firm that advises it seems like every educational body in town and union don't comply with state mandates but protect our children from them return the mission of schools to education fulfill your fiduciary duty by standing up for our children and our parents and our teachers and our town and our constitution fight back against bad state mandates pushing an agenda rather than achievement-driven curriculum and pushing boys playing girls sports hope you do that tonight thank you thank you very much um next up guys bilbray followed by current carrie hopster beth online can you hear me yes go ahead you can get started good evening and thank you members of the board of ed my
036name is beth mcgilvery and i'm a mother of three boys and one girl and a high school and college athlete i am speaking out against the potential travesty of allowing males competing in female sports firstly i am not confused about what is a woman or female nor a man or male science has taught me that there are two types of humans females with x x chromosomes and males with x y chromosomes science has also proven that males are stronger due to their biological makeup given these revelations title ix was institute to protect i repeat protect females i competed on a championship ski team in college we raced on the same course as men raised given their biological advantages the men skied faster harder and handily finished stronger than any woman even one of the male
037ski racers gay or homosexual outskied any girl or woman on the race course every time this leads me to another point one sexual preference should have zero bearing on your placement on a team boys boys team or girls team female or male if you are homosexual bisexual transsexual pansexual asexual i do not care this sexual preference has nothing to do with your xx or your xy chromosomes which universally states that you are a woman or man female or male boy or girl i'm going to finish with a story about two years ago my son's football teammate teammate a linebacker was headed into new york city to go to a bar i was surprised as he needed an ied he looked at me and said mrs mcgilvery it will be okay i will borrow my sister's
038id she looks just like me and i will just show the bouncer her id and tell him i'm transsexual he will let me in because he won't go there so as the board of ed are you the bouncer that's going to follow science and allow xx chromosomes to compete with xx chromosomes and also let x y chromosomes compete with x y if you are still confused i urge you to research the origins of the origins origins of title ix thank you 30 seconds okay thanks very much next up kerry huxta followed by jen vero okay carrie's here good evening dr jones board of ed members and the greenwich community i am here tonight with some of my fellow wildcats to let our community know how important it is that the issues surrounding the western middle
039school field continue to be addressed the fact that six years have passed with students never playing on their school field is simply sad it has caused our students and families to shuttle across town to access available fields and sometimes only learning the location of a game hours before it begins this is incredibly difficult for families and interferes with planning and time management we want to encourage all groups boe bet deep federal and local officials and our western community to continue to work together in a meaningful transparent and swift manner we'd like to remind the district that many years ago we were promised quarterly updates our families have been promised over and over again that the fields will be remediated only to be let down year after year we would greatly appreciate it if you can
040clarify why the project continues to see delays please know that the western pta and our families are here to support our district in any way necessary and we look forward to significant progress and that timely updates be shared with our school community thank you thank you very much terry next up jen barrow followed by grace mattel you can go ahead and speak jen i see you online hi can you hear me we can go ahead good evening dr jones chair stow and members of the board my name is jen barrow i have two daughters in the gps system and one of them is a high school athlete i wanted to take a moment to address the changes to the proposed title ix policy for students as it is on the agenda again tonight title ix
041is a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in an educational institution receiving federal funding after behind the scenes board discussions a salient clause has been deleted from the proposed policy that deleted clause stated discrimination or harassment on the basis of sex includes discrimination or harassment on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation this was stricken removed somehow this concept is unacceptable to this board but notably just for the kids in fact district staff had their title ix policy approved by the board in january without reduction thankfully and as you already know the greenwich board of education cannot undo title ix protections with an edit title ix does protect students against discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation after a recent supreme court ruling the u.s department of education issued a statement
042in june 2021 affirming that title ix prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity connecticut statutes and ciac policy are clear on these non-discrimination protections too i am disappointed by the deliberate omission in the board's proposed policy for students this is a missed opportunity for the board to set an example of openness and acceptance to actively affirm civil rights of all students i will quote the connecticut state department of education's guidance on civil rights protections and supports for transgender students the state of connecticut has a strong commitment to ensuring that all students feel valued visible protected and empowered to pursue their education in a safe and inclusive learning environment instead of erasing protections the greenwich board of education should demonstrate the same commitment thank you for your attention thank you next up grace natal
043followed by elizabeth hi i'm grace natalie president of the western middle school pta i'd like to see my two minutes today to another pta member who has a little more information than i do good evening sheriff stow board of ed members and dr jones my name is john black i'd like to thank you for the inclusion of western middle school fields update in tonight's meeting as president of bank raider football one of their our youth coaches and a member of the gyfl here in town i'm also a parent of a soon-to-be 8th grader at western middle school and an incoming 6th grader so i'm quite familiar with what we're talking about with the field at western and i wholeheartedly and 100 percent understand the importance of what needs to be done for those fields i
044would like to ask how the community can best navigate the channels to get the fields in working order for both our youth at western and the organizations that use the field we feel it's very important it's in support of our youth programs not only at on the west side but all kids in greenwich that are going to use those fields for these programs we are very we are very hopeful that the progress is being made um and we the parents and as coaches in town would like to continue to hear updates on the fields and know how we could support the issues that we believe what it will take to resolve as soon as possible we thank you for working with all of us stakeholders including the bet to to uh fast track this project
045once the state has approved it so thank you for your time what's your name again i'm sorry john black thank you john all right appreciate it all right next i'll close it with the haven followed by amy moof see elizabeth you can unmute yourself so i'm here oh my gosh that's my husband i'm like sitting here and i'm so focused on the computer and you're just standing right there i'm like a student on the screen okay good evening chairwoman stowe board of education members dr jones cabinet community members i'm here tonight to speak on action item a regarding the title ix policy and listen to hopefully a very robust conversation about how the policy committee came to this revision and to hear the board's reaction my name is elizabeth dehaven i grew up in town
046played sports graduated from the high school and i'm currently a parent in the district i've worked in the field of education for over 25 years as a teacher and a leader and i currently direct an educational research lab none of my sons are lgbtq as such i'm here tonight as an upstander in the world of education and bullying prevention an upstander is someone taking action to stop bullying and discrimination as opposed to standing by because it doesn't happen to them as i have watched the title ix student policy discussion unfold over the last six months i have at many times been speechless angry unsure if i really heard what i thought i did and overall ashamed that these conversations are happening at the meetings of the governing bodies of our schools sadly the message our
047students are receiving is that the adults who oversee this learning community and represent their parents relatives and neighbors can decide based on personal opinions regarding transgender girls participations in sports that they will delete the gender identity and sexual orientation clarifiers from the draft of the gps title ix student policy to reiterate what your council and some board members members have said this is not a policy about high school sports it's about protection from discrimination and harassment in any educational program or activity if this was about transgender girls participation in sport i would be here talking to you about the fact that one of the connecticut cisgender girls who filed the lawsuit over the track and field participation beat the transgender girl named in the suit two days later at the championship or that an estimated
04810 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome which elevates their testosterone level but this is not about transgender participation in sport the largest current project in my research lab is working to identify the factors that lead to success after high school many of which are represented in the gps mission of note one of the most linked factors to future success is a student feeling supported at home and school this discussion and the deletion of gender identity and sexual orientation is not supportive of our students and is not just for students who identify in these ways our youngest son cannot understand how adults are so discriminating in a policy that is all about non-discrimination and he is right he doesn't feel understood by you and neither do many of the students in the greenwich public school
049system thank you very much next up amy moos followed by megan golova good evening dr jones and board of education members my name is amie muth and i'm here to speak out against the proposed changes to the title ix updates as presented in tonight's board docs as i thought about what to say tonight i was guided by four former superintendent fleischmann's remarks earlier this week at the service awards when he spoke about senior prathi korap the recipient of the fleishman service award what i witnessed was his empathy empathy what is empathy emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people's emotions coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling i ask that you and members of leadership imagine you are a parent of a child of
050someone who is defined as other be it from learning differences hearing or sight difficulties neurodiversity physical limitations racial ethnic or religious minority and or is struggling with gender identity or sexual orientation like most children your child is just trying to be seen and understood trying to feel a sense of belonging looking to be included and but your child isn't accepted and feels like an outsider and may even be bullied until you are that parent you don't understand what that is like but imagine what you would want for your child in these circumstances imagine how you would want to protect them from the shame and internalize negative feelings about themselves in addition to the physical and emotional abuse they've experienced from their peers or the additional trauma experience from the adults in the building without the
051skills to cope with these children and help them manage the bullying imagine having to decide that it is better to take your child out of the district to be safe so you don't lose them all together now imagine that your child is non-binary transgender lgbtq and they have no title ix protection i'm a parent of a bully child in this district not a parent of a lgbtq child but a parent of a bully child and i unfortunately i know many other parents who've also experienced this here i cannot stand by silently and watch as your policies further bully our most vulnerable children why would you go out of your way to remove from your proposed title ix updates the definition of discrimination removing that it includes children of gender identity and sexual orientation further why
052would you remove the mention that the board of education is required to follow connecticut law why are you communicating to our students that this community does not protect children regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation the language of this update sends the wrong message i ask that you as leaders of gps in the greenwich community be brave and leave during a time where it is very difficult and may affect your political base put aside the needs of your own families and think bigger think of others your role is to protect all students gps needs to do a lot around inclusivity and diversity time lead with empathy thank you very much next up megan goleta followed by christina thank you i'd like to thank the board members for working diligently toward a resolution of title
053ix as a former college athlete collegiate athlete i appreciate standing with and supporting female athletes in our state and district to protect biological females and enforcing the doctrines of title ix i would also like to take this time to shed some light on the current required grade 11 health curriculum and point out some very significant differences in the curriculum from 2016 in which i had children in this particular class until now 2022. i just think it's important for parents to understand what's happening um a view of the curriculum from 2016 included uh protective factors risk factors to reduce your your chance of being a victim or perpetrator of a violent crime drug abuse sexual assault teenage brain disease addiction uh prevention um and depression all extremely important and appropriate topics to be sharing with 11th
054graders shift to 2022 grade 11 curriculum includes youth suicide discrimination and diversity concepts which seems to be a lot of the curriculum here compare and contrast the dynamics underlying prejudice and discrimination discuss the role of leaders and followers the dynamics of diversity discrimination and diversity skills how discrimination may affect your life um and then types of violent acts relationships and sexual behaviors various forms of abuse abusive teen dating relationships so i i don't think the parents had been made aware that there was a shift in the curriculum i'm happy that i never delete my gmail my account is ridiculously large but it's helpful i would also like to understand why the emphasis of the course objectives have shifted toward discrimination and diversity has there been been a marked uptick in discrimination or racially charged incidents
055in our schools or an uptick in violence that should be addressed have parents been notified of these incidents and have have we been notified of a plan to shift the curriculum and the course objectives in the health curriculum the required health curriculum to address these incidents it should also be noted that very recently 10 students are being memorialized at uconn this month 10 college students that had passed one graduate student at fordham and another last week from jmu perhaps we should be looking into some of these incidents of perhaps teen suicide mysterious mysterious sudden deaths among teens and young adults and rampant drug overdose or just some of the and a few ideas that come to mind for health curriculum thank you thank you thanks very much next up kristen leminsky followed by whitney hayed
056they must be online let me see sir kristen niminski i'm not oh sorry she's here uh good evening board of ed members and dr jones i'm speaking to you as a parent who's highly concerned about the direction of our educational system is going in i am very disturbed by the progressive gender ideology an attack on female gender that has been taking place in our society and our educational system no teacher or administrator should ask use or ask preferred pronouns there's no such thing as a preferred pronoun in grammar this is part of a progressive ideology and has no place in our school system schools need to be based on facts and science there are two genders male and female children are being taught that there are upwards of 72 genders or that there are no
057genders and gender is fluid biological men are being allowed to compete against women which is destroying women's sports most recently the state of connecticut removed the word woman in regards to pregnancy they now use the term pregnant person this is an abomination and an attack on women will gps be reiterating this in the curriculum i would like to know if our children are going to be taught that men can get pregnant as well as women this is not based in science and should be forbidden to be taught in school this progressive ideology is poisoning the minds of our youth children are getting confused about what gender they are or what gender even is kids are being taught and told that their skin color and sexual preference defines who they are this is wrong why in
058middle school do our students know what pansexual means but they have no idea what prepositional phrase or the industrial revolution was my daughter overheard a history and english teacher discussing how upset they are about the changes in curriculum for next year because they are now not allowed to mention the uyghurs or discuss the atrocities of the holocaust if this is true everyone should have a problem with what is happening with the curriculum and gps we need more transparency with the curriculum schools are the largest influence on our youth and something needs to be done about eliminating the progressive agenda that is permeating our schools gps needs to concentrate on academics i am tired of the politicization of our schools i'm tired of the sexualization of our children i'm tired of the leftist progressive ideology that
059is pushed and embedded in almost every subject schools need to be grounded in science and facts not political social justice and progressive garbage i implore the board of ed to start getting deeply involved as this has a huge effect on our children and our community as a whole i've heard some schools in california where teachers have trans closets 30 seconds give students clothing of the opposite sex to wear during the day and hide it from their parents there are schools that push kids into transitioning to the opposite sex and have these conversations in secrecy from the parents this will come to our school system if we do not fight against it now connecticut has already taken some parental rights away when my daughter turned 14 to 14 i could no longer access her medical records
060without her giving me permission the purpose of this is to allow children to get abortions or hormone treatments without the knowledge of their parents thank you thank you so what was your name i just want to make sure i got it right kristen niminski okay sorry thank you so much thanks kristen next up with me head sorry if i said that wrong whitney thank you followed by keith steinberg can you hear me yes go ahead whitney thank you all right sorry it's haze i'm sorry i was typing really so it was misspelled i was like i was really trying to say that i'm sorry yes i was typing really fast i got it at 12 o'clock on the dot so got it no problem go ahead whitney i'm going to apologize but i'll be as
061quick as i as as clear as i can so my name's whitney hayes i've lived in the town for about five years before that we were abroad for 12 years i've lived in seven states in the us and traveled extensively worldwide so it's safe to say i've seen my fair share uh thank you i'm sorry i'd like to first of all to talk about this evening um about progress and um covid among other things because i think we all would agree that it's forced some change um some good some not so good um so as such uh as i've seen greenwich uh change just in the time that i've been here i've seen uh it's been significant and uh i i would like to um sorry i lost my place um as more people migrate
062here and there's more construction and more living spaces more families equal more students so with this change we must progress i have done extensive online research and made phone calls asked questions because we are relatively new to the area uh over the past few years but uh for whatever reason i've not been able to find adequate information or answers to the following questions so hopefully notes will be taken tonight and my queries will fall on the right ears the first uh item or topic i'd like to to discuss is transportation so thank you first of all to anyone who had a part in giving the indian field road area communities uh a bus uh it solves a series safety issue since the road's now far too busy for students to walk along in order to
063reach the high school second under transportation is activity buses perhaps uh when this was a town in the true sense of the word a yellow school bus could be used for transports to kids events field trips or away games but now as i-95 traffic becomes increasingly worse and smaller roads struggled to keep up with the flow of vehicles it's simply unsafe and unacceptable i haven't been able to get an answer about why this happens uh the third uh point under under this topic is uh parking at the high school i realize this is a long-standing conversation and complaint but again times have changed and so must we uh i've been told that the turning point began around the the time when there was the construction of the performing arts center and as a result there
064was a large loss of many parking spaces the school population grew now we have construction and upgrades with the athletic fields and the shortage of spaces is growing for students and staff and still the the school is growing even more uh so i oh goodness i'm only halfway done okay i'll have to do this another time um so i just like to um to say that even old topics can be revisited um our family standard is don't complain unless you have a solution in mind so uh my number is eight four 203 and my email address is ct goodlife17 gmail.com i do have lots of time whitney you are always welcome to email the board and if it's not related to school business we are happy to find the person that could help you that
065would be amazing thank you so much thank you very much okay up next is keith steinberg followed by julie deschamps okay he's not here okay let's skip for now uh julie are you here are you in online good evening dr jones and the members of the board of education my name is julia deschamps i'm the founder of waste free greenwich and a former ptac green schools co-chair greenwich public schools have a sizable environmental impact the school district has the largest energy footprint in our town and is one of the biggest generators of waste in our community its diesel fueled transportation fleet is one of the town's largest and its properties sit on significant tracts of land while school systems are major contributors to the causes of climate change they can also be an important part
066of the solution greenwich public schools have started on a path to a more sustainable future with led upgrades eliminating styrofoam cafeteria trays and recent budget requests to plan for electric buses and a dishwasher at the high school we are grateful for these efforts thank you but this is just the beginning much more needs to be done i call on you the board of education to be a force toward a more sustainable future to prioritize sustainability and commit to actions and policies to this end including waste reduction a large percentage of waste generated in our schools can be reduced recycled composted or replaced with greener products resulting in fiscal savings environmental benefits and educational opportunities through many pilots conducted in our own schools and case studies in other districts we know that these waste cutting programs
067are highly successful trials of reusable wares and a dishwasher at new lebanon school reduced trash by 80 percent by volume cafeteria trash went from six bags to just one in 2019 to 20 a waste reduction program with educational programming and sorting stations cut waste by an average of 55 percent by weight and there were considerable potential savings however the covid pandemic revealed weaknesses in waste management and the need for a more collaborative approach and showed us these efforts cannot continue to be primarily bottom-up as a result we have created a zero-waste schools proposal with three priorities one a district-wide waste reduction program two food donation and diversion and three recycling the proposal also defines roles and responsibilities for stakeholders a team approach to create a more sustainable resilient waste management system and it provides recommendation
068for consistent engaging educational programming this is the moment to re-establish and expand effective programs to reduce the district's waste stream adopt greener procurement practices and training staff and students please support the zero waste program thanks so much um next up angie harcher phyllis followed by sophie lynch oh my gosh that's bouncy okay hello members of the board and dr jones i'm excited to be here this evening my name is angie hart of phyllis and tonight i'm speaking as the ptax green schools co-chair ptech has many committees and each committee pursues its own threat of interest along specific topics that are shared across the district each of these various committees has passionate volunteers with representatives from each of the 15 individual schools in the district who come together to work toward common district goals ptac green
069schools not only has representation from each of the district schools but we also do a lot of collaboration with other entities such as the town of greenwich the conservation commission commission granite street conservancy parks and rec waste free greenwich grab and others before the pandemic our group in collaboration with others were making strides to reduce waste in our public school system we had established new sorting stations at six schools which included recycling stations liquid station a regular trash signage in both english and spanish and in some cases composting and share tables at these schools principals green school chairs custodians facilities and waste trade greenwich representatives got together to bring the plan to life collaboration cooperation and buy-in is needed by all these parties to make it a success then the pandemic hit and there are
070major setbacks i realize that's an understatement however in the specific world of green schools recycling went out the window we of course understand now as we did then that there were many other priorities that took president we have been understanding in patients the past two years when there was little to no recycling in classrooms or cafeterias we are excited that things are now moving in a positive direction the students are grateful to be back in their real lunch rooms with all their friends p-tech green schools is excited to get back to working on creating less waste in our schools like we were pre pandemic as i'm sure everyone is eager to get back to their productive projects green schools would like to make two requests to be accomplished for the close of school this june
071one we would like all recycling receptacles to be back in place in gps schools we also ask that in the six schools that already had the new waste reduction stations in place before the pandemic that they'd be back in place along with their signage and we know that you're making efforts to do that already and we appreciate your support in achieving that goal by the end of the year the pandemic showed us something else that and that was that you know we were successful successful to the collapse of a program when you remove the volunteers from it this of course was a function of the times but it made our group realize that in order to make waste reduction a sustainable reality that functions without volunteers we need to have more formalized approach with both
072bottom-up and top-down support ptech green schools also is in support of the zero-waste which you have hopefully all received copies of this proposal includes a manageable time frame that has step-by-step achievable goals that culminate in greenwich public schools being much closer to a zero waste district by 2024. this proposal also highlights all the stakeholders and their responsibility in the process if it's to be successful board of ed i'm grateful for all your service to our community and thank you dr jones thank you very much um next up it looks like we have two students uh sophie lynch chow and sam jack okay thank you oh yes there she is go ahead sophie hi um so my name is sophie lencho and i'm a sophomore at greenwich high school um i'm just gonna jump in there
073and say that i'm advocating for the zero waste schools program for gps and after looking it over and providing some input from a student's point of view i think that it's a really great initiative i've noticed in the past at eastern middle school and now at greenwich high school that waste reduction is definitely not a focus when it really should be for instance at the insulin student center where the students eat their lunch there are hardly any recycling bins you really have to search for them and as a student i know that many students don't try to find a recycling bin because they just want to get back to their friends and honestly are just too lazy to go searching this means that the majority of waste gets thrown in the trash at ghs when
074really it could be managed in a much more sustainable way not only environmentally but fiscally as well the zero way schools program would be such an effective and efficient solution to this issue if sorting stations were set up all over the cafeteria or student center kids would be able to easily access the correct bins and quickly dispose of their waste furthermore in school many of my peers don't even really know why recycling composting and really just effectively managing their waste is important they don't understand that reducing your waste reduces greenhouse gases which will slow global warming or that it will save energy and precious resources or even that it will reduce incineration and landfilling which will prevent water and air pollution all of this in my opinion is pretty basic knowledge and should be taught
075so i think that moving forward it's really important to teach the students often in classrooms cafeterias and through special programs why waste reduction is important instead of just how to reduce your waste that's another reason why i like this program so much it really educates the younger and probably older generation like the teachers on the impact of waste management now i know that i'm only a student but i think the fact that i am a student is a really big reason why my voice should matter on this issue my generation is figuratively and literally the generation of the future we need to develop habits such as waste reduction habits that will benefit our future and our planet in the years to come as we know the planet is quickly deteriorating and climate change is quickly
076becoming a very serious concern will teach students about these environmental impacts and also teach them very easy ways as to how they can reverse these impacts by simply sorting and lessening their waste so that's just my opinion so thank you so much for letting me speak i really and truly hope that the board will support the zero waste schools program thanks thank you very much thanks for coming next up is our signing up next up sorry i lost my spot is sam jeff is he online jaffee also apparently a student i'm not seeing anyone by that name online if they are if they could use the raise the hand function okay let's no one here right no okay let's uh we can always come back next up andrew walsh followed by cheryl resnick good evening
077dr jones and board members i have two kids in the greenwich public schools um i just want to say that the fields at cms have been pretty muddy for the last many years and the recess is usually in on asphalt so if and gym class has been held in the tennis court so please address that i want to talk about diversity equity and inclusion these are very noble sounding goals who's against diversity who's against equity who's against inclusion you all may have a good sense of what you think these words mean but i urge you to find out what other people in the community think these words mean um i think i mentioned this to mr kelly just as an example of how this can get out of control the word equity or inclusion my
078son was at a hiking camp this summer where uh it was two female instructors and eight boys uh it was a heat wave they tried to take their the boys tried to take their shirts off but they weren't allowed to because it wasn't inequitable because the girls because the two female instructors couldn't take their shirts off so that's an example of lunacy another one is that they were not allowed to have private conversations on the hiking trail because that's not inclusive um so just be very careful what you mean by inclusive inequity thank you thank you very much uh next up cheryl resnick followed by francis followed my francis no bae dear board of ed members and superintendent jones i wanted to share with you a story about what happened in my daughter's class at
079ghs yesterday her teacher in an elective class spent the first 10 to 15 minutes lecturing the kids about covid the risk the deaths and the number of cases in greenwich in her lecture she stated she wants the kids to wear a mask if she's helping them out on the computer and if they didn't wear a mask she was going to help them from across the room while she sat at her desk the story is not hearsay it came directly from my daughter in a text i received while she was in class because she was so annoyed that the students were being assisted differently by the teacher depending on whether they were wearing a mask furthermore the teacher shared with the students a personal story in her life as to why she felt they should wear
080a mask around her the classroom should not be an environment where the teacher expresses his or her personal opinion especially on sensitive and private issues for the special boe minutes from february 16 2022 the boe unanimously unanimously voted to end board policy 4118-237-5141.8 for face mask face coverings and mask and that quote mask wearing is to be an individual choice in the schools effective march 1st 2022 if the teacher is wearing a mask while teacher while teaching students that is fine and it is his or her individual choice just as it is for the students however it is wrong for a teacher to treat or teach a student differently based on their own individual individual wear and mass choice the teacher's differentiation and how she taught the students is in violation of the board of
081ed mass policy and should not be allowed i wanted to bring this occurrence to your attention as i want superintendent jones and the boe to remind all teachers staff and students that discrimination on mass choice is not permissible on a positive note i also want to share with you a text i received from my daughter during the school today her text read quote the food at ghs is back to normal and super good the muffins are like 10 times better we can create our own sandwich with anything on it breakfast and lunch new snacks and it's open all day i want to thank the ghs administration for bringing a little brightness and joys to the student state having a good nutritious food at school is vital for the students it really does make this school
082day experience that much more enjoyable thank you thanks very much next up francis nobe this time i brought a stool because i remembered i couldn't reach the podium all right hello this is francis winobe mom of three gps students for at least the past year i have used my three minutes to remind us why we're here more importantly for whom we are here for we're here for the children their creativity their compassion their character to help center ourselves in the eyes of a child let's read selections from two books both books were written by valerie bowling valerie bowling is one of our own a veteran greenwich public school teacher who is taught grades 2 4 5 and 8 and is now an instructional coach at eastern middle school the first excerpt is from let's dance
083which was published in march 2020 the book showcases dances from around the world from the cuckoo of west africa to the cha-cha of cuba to step dancing of ireland dancing is everywhere you go tapity tap fingers snap turn twirl twist whirl jiggity jig zigzag zig glide and slide side to side wiggle hips spin dip dip groovity groove bust and move dosie dough to and fro cha-cha-cha ooh la la boogie down to the ground up on toes strike a pose leap high fly fly fly the second excerpt is from together we ride which just came out tuesday the book shares how learning to ride a bike is no easy feat experience the fear anticipation and delight of achieving this ultimate milestone inside outside slow guide quick stride slip slide tossed aside hug cried tears dried decide
084push goodbye pump fly what pride run beside coast glide inside outside side by side ride thank you to valerie bowling and all our greenwich public school teachers who are by our side in stride with pride we love you and we thank you very much thank you very much and that concludes our community comments um appreciate everyone coming out okay um next up are our monthly reports dr jones i just have a couple items tonight first of all um i do want to also say congratulations to all of our student honorees um that was just a fantastic ceremony on monday and i also want to just note that um jonathan sopranowicz organized that and he had a wonderful email from dr fleishman that it was the best one in 36 years so thank you for organizing
085such a great event we did announce today that we have a new human resources chief officer so that is wonderful uh dr jonathan budd will be joining us um also just in case anybody missed it at the board of selectmen meeting last friday we did have the request in for the central uh building committee they approved that unanimously and they are starting very aggressively to take applications uh we'll be already have their interview date set over two different days so that we can make it to the june rtm meeting so that the building committee can get started this summer so very grateful to the first selectmen for moving aggressively on that um we also do have a new website update and i thought this would be of interest especially for pta there was some links
086and things they've been asking us to look at it has a fresh new look they've been working on it for really two years uh and so to mike antonaccio to jonathan everyone that's worked on that from the communication side and we'll continue to make enhancements there um also of course to our distinguished teachers i want to say congratulations i can't wait to um here uh we'll hear what people will have to say about them and the wonderful stories i'm sure um and just last but uh not least i think um just you know thank you very much um to the committee for the distinguished teachers it's a lot of work that goes into really organizing that and it's hard to make those selections so uh thank you to everyone that worked on that that's all
087great thank you i'm gonna look to you guys who wants okay yes oh first cody did you want okay go ahead mr kettle i was gonna do the greenwich alliance for education update ahead so three three things uh the reaching out grants committee as currently meeting with applicants from the schools and the community and the recommendations for their 2022-2023 grants cycle will be made at the may board meeting second the new lebanon school theater program uh which was a recipient of a 2021-2022 grant has some activity going on all the students will be visiting the ridgefield playhouse to experience for many uh live theater for the first time it's kind of exciting also adam's family will be performed by the fifth graders in june with invite details to come third the avid program has a
088class on good money habits a program for financial literacy that has been pretty exciting and additionally they've got at western middle school some avid sponsored college visits and career panels and mentoring events they are currently looking for mentors and if you can are interested in doing that send an email to julie j-u-l-i-e at greenwich alliance.org that's all oh okay we can go back that's all right we're flexible go ahead i know i thought you had a quite a follow-up question for cody okay okay no we can go to you michael go ahead so so dr jonathan if you um just back to the superintendent report could you clarify um that anecdote we heard it just could you clarify as far as our policy as far as our approach to um how students are treated um
089as far as their mass choice and as far as um staff requesting students to wear masks and all that i have no doubt i know mr mayo is sitting right in front of me that he will be following that up tomorrow because it is concerning we also acknowledge we still have some people who are very nervous but we obviously need to have a conversation because that should not be happening from the teacher perspective good question miss downey okay we're done mike moving on okay um two things i just wanted the budget i'm gonna be calling a meeting of the budget committee just um after the rtm vote um just because then we'll have a better picture of what the budget's gonna look like for next year but until that time i think um so budget
090committee members um just be forewarned um part two is that we're uh the ghs building committee um the process with the state continues to move along but as we're all seeing this takes a little bit of time so we're hoping that we're going to get our meeting to get our documents approved that the board approved at one of our recent meetings um so that we'll be able to go out and to bid so we are hoping that that will happen in a timely fashion to begin the construction this summer obviously it's running closer but we're still optimistic and the building committee's meeting next week to talk about timeline i actually have a question about that sure thing so do we need to wait until this state what do we need to so we've got our
091reimbursement rate approved by the state but then the next step in the process is the state has to look at and evaluate our construction documents we cannot go out to bid until we have that meeting with the state looking at our construction documents so we are awaiting that meeting before we can go out to bed when do we think that meeting will happen um i we're hoping next we had hoped we could do it in mid april so we you know our uh construction solutions group advocate has been pestering them to try to at least get the meeting on the calendar to get things moving i actually ran into him by happenstance today and he said he was going to see if he could really push to get it next week if at all possible
092okay thanks thank you miss downey michael joseph did you have anything should you plan on kidding me strategic plan committee meets next week um so we're still working towards our timeline of having stretch goals for the board in june okay thank you ms hirsch just going in order for once i do not have any committees to update on down there mr kelly you have a couple of kind of cool things so let me go over those we have reached or nearing the end of our cardinal stadium project which is way cool we are now as of uh either yesterday the day before we are now totally ada compliant the elevator has been inspected by the state inspectors it is now ready to go we have the proper parking spots uh and they're situated where they
093need to be we have the ada elevator the stadium is almost good to go uh we have the team rooms and a couple of the other features of the stadium that still need a few adjustments when we have those few adjustments will be taking place right away we will then have the final inspection when we have the final inspection then hopefully after that shortly after that we will no longer be permanently temporarily cfo we'll have our permanent permanent cfo so we're hoping for that very near uh i've been hoping for that very soon i don't know if anyone has been by the stadium lately we have our giant banners hanging up there they look really cool we have the giant cardinal which kind of saw that in the newspaper that was kind of cool as
094well that cardinal looks over the uh the field of play right pete that looks kind of cool out there all the kids are really excited to play under the giant cardinal we reached uh a very uh a good uh a good point we've been trying to get for years uh the uh the state to work with us on that route one in and out and many people have been talking about that it's probably like 20 years in the works because it was very complicated when it got dumped in our lap as far as the whole stadium project the right turn in right turnout state property uh high school property route 1 entry in and out it was very complicated we had a call on our state representative to help us out with hartford we had
095a call on our first selectmen uh to uh uh do some uh uh deals uh with uh with some former dot workers and eventually we got to the table we negotiated an agreement and finally we have i made the agreement it's all um told most of it's signed and uh and we should be receiving the final permit which will give us the opportunity to finalize that in and out at cardinal stadium which has been sitting in limbo for like 20 something years so i think we're about to put that one to bed and one final thing about cardinal stadium but not one final thing about reports just about cardinal stadium we have uh the football team has agreed uh to work together and if you've been behind cardinal stadium you'll see there's a state property
096right up by route one and down uh that runs down and it runs to our property where there's a fence put up and there's a bunch of fallen trees and leaves and stuff and hasn't been taken care of for a very long time the football team has agreed uh the the parents committee the captain's parents committee have agreed to organize that and uh and get the football players and the parents they've got uh vendors or or or people from around the town to uh bring trucks there and and clean it out under state permission they're going to give us a one day uh permission the our state representative has arranged that and uh and we'll get the one day opportunity to clean all that stuff out and our first selectmen has allowed us all the
097dump fees to be waived so we can bring everything to the dump take care of that and clean that up so that's the football team saying thank you uh to the board of ed for uh for constructing their stadium and the next project is the road project we're almost ready to submit for municipal improvement uh we need money to continue the project we don't have any money allocated to this project in order to get this project complete or even moved along we need an interim or we need uh to plan sometime in the future my concern once again and i tried to bring that to everyone's attention in the past is that this route one project the bridge project which is going to take place in 2023 is going to create a giant nightmare of
098traffic this road if we're able to get in place and there's still a window of opportunity to do that if we can get that in place we uh we can alleviate some of the stress that will be created by that bridge project that is all i'm going to speak about the road and i'll continue to make that request every meeting going forward as long as i'm serving on the board of education and what i've done in line with this is that i've worked with the or met with the bicycle task force now there are some discussions one part is not necessarily related to the road but another part is uh what they'd like to do is for us to work on a survey uh to the various schools about how important and how used it
099would be if we can create safe paths for our kids to drive their bikes to school saving energy maybe saving time and traffic so they'd like to know if it's important to the students so they'd like us to create or add to one of our surveys to find out about that a second thing i'm working with bob d'angelo is a big bike advocate everyone knows bob from the boys and girls club and the local y and the greenwich ymca we're talking about creating a space during that route one project where we can safely park bikes a separate drop-off area so kids can be dropped off those bikes can be stored while there's this this gridlock of traffic we somehow create a safe path from those drop-off points where they could take these bicycles and take
100them to greenwich high school park them at greenwich high school and we're responsible for making sure they're safe so we're talking about a project like that could somehow alleviate this nightmare of traffic that's coming up in in the very near future which we have to and i keep we'll be reminding everyone we have to address this because we can't just ignore that it's about to happen it's going to be a nightmare so we're going to uh so i suggest we do that and we're working with bike task force on that next topic the energy management advisory committee we have some really cool news somebody mentioned before uh is julie still here well julia be happy about hearing this she said that uh uh we're certainly used a lot of electricity well you know what we
101do i've been working with sean o'keefe mostly shown o'keefe has worked on this virtual net metering project virtual net metering is basically taking our energy consumption our electricity consumption that we have for the high school and taking that and then working with a company with the subsidies we have statewide and national taking those subsidies working with a a solar developer to get land where it's not so densely populated and have that solar array uh that solar system create the same amount of electricity which we consume we would have that built that solar company would then benefit from the sale of that electricity into the grid we would benefit from that by saving 25 of our electricity bill more importantly to many and i know to me is we'd be erasing our or replacing our footprint
102uh with our electricity consumption footprint with renewable energy which i think is a very important move we can take all the electricity we use which is a heck of a lot of it and then create it in a renewable way that's certainly a positive move carbon-free renewable way so we're excited about that i have to give most of the credit to sean o'keefe who's diligent diligently working on this project i've worked with the uh with the emac uh the the energy management advisory committee uh who has made sure that we're getting what we're entitled to with the various grants that the uh that the state and the federal government are working with to make this happen uh this is a very a very helpful move as far as cost benefit on the cost-benefit side of
103things one of the things we've discussed and we're concerned about but i'd like to create incentive uh for uh further projects which would be in this category is we were concerned that when we told the bet that we were going to save 25 percent of our electricity uh of the electricity cost then the concern was that that's going to be removed from the budget so where's the incentive for us to save electricity other than the fact that we'd be good citizens in doing so so basically what we have to do is not have to have a discussion where we're just having it taken out of our budget for all the effort we put in we have to create some relationship with the bet and the town to say hey listen we could do all these
104these good saving things that could go on for perpetuity but we have to somehow be able to benefit from doing it as well so if we can figure out a way of benefiting uh from doing these these great things uh with the town and the bet in particular in this case then we'll have the incentive to do these things it was really strange when when we talked about that we'd be able to accomplish this that we were told well maybe we can't say anything about it because we just have that money taken out of our budget so we have to figure out a way of incentifying us to continue these sort of things uh that's the end of that topic uh waterfall project parks and rec listen to us some i don't know if you've
105driven by the waterfall recently at the front of the high school they've taken down some of that debris that have uh has blocked that wonderful waterfall uh ashley cole is continuing to work on arranging a uh a cleanup day where we can clean up the leaves and all the junk that's in front of there and sam bridge nursery have uh have donated a design for one day maybe we could possibly put uh some sort of design of of some plantings or things around that area so they've donated that service to us um one uh one final thing is i guess the topic well not i guess we're definitely going to be talking as i sit in the parks and rec i am the parks and rec liaison uh the natives were a bit restless when
106it came to uh western middle school so i'm glad that was put on the agenda they were talking about raising all sorts of hell up in uh up in hartford i said well let's get an update and find out where we stand then decide what we're going to go from there that is all thank you very much wow joe i don't think you need any more jobs okay um now let's get into the meeting um so western middle school soil update dr jones yes thank you very much um online tonight uh ryan woolston who is our um project manager for this um is going to walk us through kind of a timeline powerpoint we also have jane warren with us tonight um online and she is the one that has managed a lot of the
107the land aspects from the legal side and the great thing for from uh from jane's perspective i think that will be helpful to hear from her is that she also is the same person who oversees the high school soil remediation so she's been with us for a while and definitely understands um the process in greenwich from both different projects so ryan i think at this point i'll turn it over to you and jane sure let me um just start by saying i know i i listened to the to the last um presentation i know there's a lot of angst about the whole remediation process of the western middle school field um just to give you a little background i've been doing environmental work for a little a little about 35 years now um i've worked
108with the town of greenwich for probably 25 years on various projects um i've been involved in the high school remediation since it started in 2011. that project is 11 years in the works and um we have several more years to go as those of you know who follow what's going on over there remediation is incredibly frustrating sometimes i feel more like a therapist than a lawyer it takes a long time it it's you know it's very difficult to deal with things under the ground that you don't know how deep they go how far they've spread the middle school has some challenges that the high school doesn't in terms of having the transfer station next door and a commercial bakery on another side and historic fill that we you know doesn't necessarily end at property lines
109um so we've had the benefit at the middle school i know it seems like it's it's been eons it has been eons that the field hasn't been opened and incredibly frustrating for all the families and students that that could that attend the school um but you know it takes it takes an inordinate amount of time we have good relationships with the regulators they're not always speedy they're not this isn't the only project greenwich isn't the only town that has issues in not only towns but but private businesses um they're incredibly stretched thin um and i'm not defending them i've been frustrated many times beyond beyond frustration but we have a very good rapport with them um these projects involve not only the state but the federal government and um they involve pcbs which are regulated
110by both the state and the epa and that and we've had to deal with the department of health over the years so the benefit of having the high school go first is it it did cause us some delays over the years because we we didn't want to propose things that were going to get bounced at the high school and spend an awful lot of time and money chasing down the rabbit hole for something that ultimately wasn't going to be approved and the high school started sooner than the middle school did uh five years sooner so we could afford to learn from what the regulators were not going to accept there um so i just wanted to give that sort of overview um uh you know i'm always happy to rattle cages and have over the
111years when needed but we have to work with these folks um long term and so um you know we we have to be delicate in the way we handle them while expecting them to be doing their jobs and issuing approvals that we need and i think um i'm going to let ryan walk through he has um prepared a a power point for you that's going to show you the progress that's been made where we stand now and what what the timeline is for future activities and then we can answer any questions that you have and and get into a further discussion so ryan why don't you um share that share your screen and and um go through start uh at the beginning thanks jane good evening everyone as jane and tony mentioned my name is
112ryan wohlstrom i'm an environmental engineer working with langen and i've been working on the western middle school project since it started in 2016 and the primary focus of my slides in this presentation is to provide for a chronology of events for western middle school and give an update i'll reiterate a couple things that jane just mentioned but before jumping right into that some additional context and some things to keep in mind as i walk through the timeline of assessment activities first um jamie just did or james provided a good overview of comparison of high school to the middle school um but it's important to note that yeah we are we starting 2016 compared to high school that started in 2011. now the high school and middle school are a bit different but there are some
113significant similarities from the two projects from the perspective of both fields or schools were constructed using an import of contaminated film material and the remedies proposed by the high school and to be proposed by the western middle school are based around protective measures to reduce exposure rather than removing everything from the site so it's important to note these type of risk-based remedies require much more thought on behalf of the state and the epa which for both projects has translated into requests for information before they render a decision which results into a lengthy back and forth process these type of projects take longer than others because prior to the high school's approved remedy for part of their fields there has been no precedent in connecticut for leaving pcbs in place at a school project above one
114parts per million that's the state residential standard so that's one thing to keep in mind are two things the third bullet here on the slide is um with respect to the heterogeneity of the site impacts um it's basically a long word for something that's non-uniform random or unpredictable early on in this project it was the the non-uniform nature of the site impacts that at times led us to believe or led us to draw somewhat misleading conclusions about the nature and extent of contamination you'll see in the upcoming slides that we've collected hundreds of samples at western middle school and roughly half of them samples have come back clean so while this was initially considered favorable news for the site we have since established that these clean results were simply the result of the non-uniform nature
115of the fill material so in most these areas where we've resulted in clean samples you can take another test bitter boring five feet away and have some pretty high levels of contamination so there is very little correlation of impacts from one area to another not like a tank spill or a drum spill where you have a source of impacts in the center and it's predictable the concentration disperses as you away from move away from the source that's not what we're talking about for western middle school uh and the last bullet for the last point i have in this slide is not the last iterative evaluation process as i go through the project timeline you'll see that we've completed a number of investigations and it's an exhaustively iterative process i know we've talked about this in
116a number of different presentations but it's important to keep in mind that each assessment phase involves a number of steps including work plan preparation regulatory review of that work plan the assessment itself lab analysis report preparation meetings with regulators to discuss those results the strategized next steps so uh it's important to keep in mind that each one of the assessments that we've done is based on the prior results and involves this iterative process and lastly um as jane mentioned that you know coordinating with multiple agencies including some inter-departmental agencies at dep can be time-consuming however it's by no means unwarranted given the complexity of the job and the particular nature of the site impacts uh so i'll jump into the timeline now there's been a lot of work done to date so bear with me
117as i try to run through this i'll attempt to be as succinct as i can and respect for everyone's time so starting in june 2016 lebanon was considering a swing space for their students during construction of their new school and that's when the project started lingan was asked to assess the conditions of soils and the areas that were going to be used in the swing space and that's when we first found some impacts and the first signs of impacts were pretty minimal some minor arsenic experiences and pcb detection so pcbs weren't detected above standards but we detected them in the soil at this point we consulted along with greenwich public schools with department of public health and the project got kicked off it was after consultation with dph in august 2016 where we collected another
11830 sufficient samples across the athletic fields and this is when we closed down the fields we found some elevated levels of arsenic lead and pcbs at the surface i'll toggle back and forth a few of these slides so you guys see the additional borings that were advanced um so starting september 2016 several rounds of delineation were conducted it was during this delineation where we first triggered uh tosca our new us epa involvement when we found pcbs of 50 in excess of 50 parts per million which triggered us to uh get epa involved in addition to dep and dph december 2016 additional pcb soil sampling was conducted in this area i'll toggle back and forth so you see the areas that we're assessing it's down here we call it the recreational area the town and school
119wanted to keep that area open so we confirm that those pcbs and that impactful deleterious film material was not present down there so that was good news so that area um was remained open and january 2017 we submit submitted seh our significant environmental hazard notification to the state and um in march 2017 we held our first really big meeting with dep and epa to discuss the results of the sampling to date and we discussed the need to do additional sampling so uh a sampling work plan was submitted to epa and dep in june 2017 and i'll talk back and forth so i see the additional borings that we did but in starting in june 2017 we conducted a significant further assessment of the fields and it was in the upper foot so we collected samples
120at the surface and at one foot lake great surface and you see the red is areas where we found pcb impacts and the green is generally where we find pcbs below one or below the residential standard uh august to november 2017 we'll talk back and forth again multiple rounds of delineation sampling was conducted and uh really weren't achieving endpoints in multiple areas so in starting december until the 17th through the early parts of 2018 langen did a preliminary remedial alternative analysis as requested by the regulators and in march starting in march we held multiple additional meetings with the regulators db and epa to review the alternative analysis and to discuss an approach moving forward for further assessment starting in may the investigation of work plan was submitted to the epp for review we got comments
121from dep in june 2018 comments from epa in july and then the investigation work plan was submitted in august 2018 so this is part of the iterative review process that's involved with each assessment starting in september i'll toggle back and forth so you can see the additional sampling we've done to the southwest the southeast northeast and northwest of these what we thought were hot spots we evaluated the extensive infected soils and we did find that while concentrations decreased as we moved away from the fields we're still seeing these impacts along the borders of the fields we also further assess the competition of film material beneath multiple areas in the field indicated by these black dotted lines and unfortunately we found that the film material was prevalent in most areas not necessarily at the surface but
122at depth ranging from 1 to 10 feet below great surface and we also evaluated the groundwater groundwater was good news since the site's been subject to infiltration since the 50s when the school was built and groundwater concentrations are low and we feel confident that remedial action for groundwater is not going to be needed here that's been supported by more recent sampling so february 2019 the investigation report was submitted to dp and epa and the results indicate unfortunately that you know we're now in under the impression that ultimately the remedy for the site will need to address impacts across the site and not just in select hot spot areas starting in march meetings held with dep and we discussed with the regulators the potential mechanisms to remediate the site and it was at this meeting where
123dp requested more details on the different remedial alternatives analysis being considered and those details were submitted to them in april 2019 may 2019 this is when there was a little bit of a lull but it was a deliberate wall we decided to weigh as jane indicated for some feedback and input to happen with the greenwich high school project they were a little bit ahead of us and getting their feedback or getting the regulator's feedback was important it would have been a helpful guide or it was a helpful guide for us to continue with mediation planning jumping to october 2019 finally the greenwich high school of projects learns that dp and epa are supportive of a race-based remediation scenario where not all impacts are removed and um we're still waiting for more feedback before we do
124any additional sampling as of october 2019 in february 2020 this is when the the western middle school project elected to enter the voluntary mediation program and this was a decision really determined and bolstered by the progress and successes of the high school project february 2020. april 2020 ecaf environmental condition assessment form was submitted to the state in conjunction with entrance to the vrp the voluntary mediation program and we got confirmed enrollment the vrp in june 2020. july 2020 a virtual meeting was held with the entire project team where they requested once again additional sampling the intent of this round of sampling was to confirm that the impact of film material was not used during constructions of the buildings themselves and they also request additional groundwater sampling uh so supplemental meeting was held to discuss the
125investors investigation scope and we also discussed with a potential approach what to do about the uh the borders of the fields along the the sloped uh edges to the north northeast southeast i'll toggle back and forth so you can see the new borings that were added but essentially what we did was a series of borings along the eastern edge of the building and those results were favorable we did not find either visual evidence of fill in those borings these the building and the lab results were also did not identify any contaminants above state standards and we also did uh or advanced and installed three more groundwater monitoring wells and once again those those groundwater results were favorable to not show that we need to do any remedial action for groundwater that's september 2020. um in
126december the investigation was shared with the dp epa and then at this point lane was asked to do more calculations specifically mass removal calculations for each of the alternatives and to generate figures and details for each of them those details were submitted to the regulators in february 2021 uh in april and may uh multiple virtual meetings were held to the full project team where we discussed uh the approach for how to handle the the signs of impacts along the borders of the fields and uh we discussed what we're going to do to to assess and remediate uh sort of a proposed investigation work plan was submitted to the regulators in may 2021 june 2021 we transferred with the design and permitting of the fields themselves including layout grading drainage athletic field design and regulatory permitting
127weather's burping and so forth going august 2021 so we're getting pretty close um i'll toggle back and forth to see the new borings and test bits this investigation uh included the notes august 2021 32 delineation soil borings you can see as they pop up along the edges unfortunately most the samples that we collected along the slope of the fields also contained impacts um we also assessed during this investigation the composition of this mound if you guys know western middle school this big mound out here that we thought was a bedrock outcropping and it is and uh the intent is to level this off and flatten it during uh the ultimate remediation for the project will find this out and make it part of the fields so you don't have this big mound here in october
128we had another virtual meeting with the regulators to talk about this data and the need for additional potential off-site sampling meaning sampling off the actual town parcel uh unfortunately the consensus was reached at the school needs to be the priority this is uh november and december 2021. um the dep acknowledged that it's important to get these fields open so any potential further investigation and or remediation of off-site areas can come at a later date so that was good news and then january 2022 so it's a couple months ago we submitted a supplemental investigation work plan for approval also in january we submitted the engineering control variance request at dep which is essentially the document needed to have the state approve a remedy that's not prescriptive to the rsrs and from february to march we perform
129the additional investigation so i'll toggle back and forth so i see the new borings and this round actually was pretty favorable you can see the green dots along the edges of the the fields most of these samples uh actually came back clean so we're pretty close to the point where you know we think the dep and epa will acknowledge that uh you know we feel confident that we have the edges of the fields at least within our property boundary defined and we can in the near future move forward with rap preparation we also did additional groundwater sampling and soil vapor sampling the other buildings to assess the vapor migration pathway and those results were once again favorable nothing was identified in soil vapor or groundwater above state standards so april 22 is now too many
130the last week or maybe two weeks ago we submitted that report to epa and dp and the engineering control variant request is still in their hands for review so um we're actively working on the project and i know it's been a while but we're really close to the finish line guys um it's tough to really commit to you guys right now with a timeline for remediation but you know we'll feel pretty confident that we're pretty close um we need to get comment and have the regulators weigh in on our most recent sampling event but um we're getting there so uh happy to answer any questions that you guys have let's let everyone come back over here thank you um i'm just gonna i see your hand lauren can i just start for a second just
131with sadly the oldest member of the board here not by age just by time just to make that clear um [Music] there's obviously a lot of frustration and i'm going to just try to take a step back here i'm looking at the principal staring at me right and the pta members and parents and of course these kids and so please know that this isn't any animosity towards you but we are getting more and more um frustration within the community because um it's a lot of sampling right and it seems that um and it's not you're i mean obviously you're just responding to the stage but the history is helpful jane because a lot of what we've been hearing is the high school is moving so much faster well i guess it's not what concerns me
132is that if i'm doing the math that would suggest you had 10 years from when misa started to when we started to clean up the high school so then that means we're starting this project in if you were to look at the same way that everything went with the state last time so first i'm going to have you address that but before i have one more question and then i'll let everyone else answer the question open the floor i pulled you know we've done these presentations a lot and i pulled the presentation we did i think it was right before i went into covid and you gave all these different remediation alternatives there was a chart and um i'm sorry i should have brought it electronically but there were seven alternatives we talked about and
133you recommended five number five at the time and i think it was a choice a little bit for recognizing that the money aspect but there was also the fact that we thought it was the best thing for the community and then it would be um not as sort of difficult um with the surrounding area do you know what do you remember what i'm talking about yep okay is that just like out the window are we still talking about these things should we because this this had some real meat to it it had a real analysis we were able to make some choices and then i felt like we were almost there and you know now it's more than two years later so if you could kind of explain to us what happened since this report
134because i remember that being saying just hang on guys don't go to hartford don't worry about it we got it it's it's about to happen and you know i coveted fine but there were a lot of meetings that happened during covet so yeah if you could address that that'd be great let me start and then ryan can fill in um it won't be 2026 before we before we start our remedial activities at the site because part of the delay that we've already experienced was waiting to see what how the regulators would deal with leaving pcbs in a school field and as ryan said it hadn't been done before and so we spent a lot of time and did a lot of health studies and risk studies at the high school to get them comfortable both
135federal and state agencies with the fact that with caps with impermeable caps we could make the field safe for use so we have the benefit of that now at the middle school where ryan left off in the slides is in april is they have now the the last what we hope is the last bit of investigation and and you know i hope from this you you have learned that langan isn't out there saying geez i have nothing to do next week let me go take some more samples this is all being driven by the regulators who have the responsibility to make the environment safe for the for the residents um so you know they we present a plan and they want more and so we um we you know we negotiate and and we do
136what we can like we did with off-site we said we got to stop we we just we can't we can't do any more we're just focusing on this on the fields now in december and they backed off of that um so what's happening next the next stock the next big package that's going to go in is the remedial action plan um the remedial action plan ryan referred to it as a wrath that go that gets in we've already done the remedial alternatives plan we're going to put with those six or seven i think we had 12 then we had eight then we had seven and we had six different options um those have been narrowed down as we've learned more about the site and we're going to present our remedial action proposal to the state
137um and you know our our expectation is that you know and i don't wanna i wasn't at that board meeting um a couple years ago that you had so i don't know what was said in terms of timing but i think that we are very you know we are hopefully months away from getting their final approval uh on the on the remedial action plan because ryan has it ready to go it's ready to be submitted and and you know we have to get their feedback on this latest round of sampling and once we do we can submit that wrap that remedial action plan and and begin to move forward and we have um we also have the ability at the at the middle school which we didn't have at the high school um because hopefully
138we can get access through the bakery property so we don't have to be going through you know school parking lots and bus parking lots and whatnot we can access the field through the bakery so we can be doing remediation differently than we did at the high school which was really compressed over basically eight weeks you know wait till the kids are out fast track your immediate you know your mobilization your remediation then have to demobilize and get out before the kids come back to school we don't we won't have that issue here so once we get going it'll it'll be a lot quicker um ryan did you want to add anything to to this um yeah i mean to one element of what you brought up is you know the alternatives analysis that we presented
139i think it was yeah january 2020 things have changed based on supplemental sampling was done after the fact and it was really confirming that the extents of the impact did not stop at the edge of the athletic field which is not entirely surprising given that this whole area is on kind of an elevated plateau the fills present wherever there's really uh higher elevation soils so that the additional sampling we've been doing the last two years would have been required regardless of the remedial alternatives suggested for implementation during that meeting yeah i think there were six or seven with the most robust alternative being complete removal or maybe a four foot cut going down to a one foot cut um so it's important though that regardless of the depth of the excavation which is really the
140changing condition between each alternative it was really the lateral extent of contamination that we've been working on with along with groundwater and soil vapor sampling with the regulators over the last couple years happy to elaborate if i didn't answer your question i might come back but others have questions so sorry miss costume then i'll go to you joe go ahead laura um so you've mentioned the wrap the remedial action plan um that's ready to go but can you tell us what it entails i mean i'm thinking to what is being done at the high school now with gravel and the impenetrable layer and then you know and and yes leaving some contaminants behind but um but in a way that doesn't present a zero percent risk because you've used the term risk-based remediation but it
141you know how much risk are we eliminating how much are we not eliminating and i i this is these are some nebulous terms that don't necessarily roll off the tongue for you know lay people who are not in the remediation business so i you know can you give us some clarity on the plan that you keep referring to and how long given the green light it will take because this port you know these poor kids have not had access to a field and and um it is a significant portion of the curriculum is pe for for young children so we you know we do sort of need to know what we're looking at in terms of a plan and a timeline and how quickly it it can get done once we're given that green light
142sure so first you know regarding the risk-based strategy so eat whatever option that was was being considered over the last several years each one of those options include for or provide for a similar reduction and and toxic toxicity and risk meaning that whichever solution is approved by the dep is going to be safe for the students essentially the the approved remedy will involve some impacts to be left in place but these impacts are being left in place below two feet below a great surface so between the impacts you're going to have a thick layer of drainage stone shock pad in the artificial turf and or grass depending on where you are on the site so there's there's going to be a protective barrier between any underlying impacts and the affected public use of the fields
143each will also include the implementation of land use restrictions meaning i know no further work on the site can take place without involving epa or dep or a consultant like myself where you have to follow material management plans in order to lift the restrictions do any kind of work on the site and there's also long term and permanent cap inspection and maintenance programs to be implemented as part of that wrap um and that's what the wrap does it provides for uh details of what's going to happen for the remedy which in a in a brief nutshell but this site is looking like it's going to be it's going to be a two foot cut across the entire site with chasing of impacts of pcbs above 10 parts per million so almost regardless of depth we're
144going to be chasing the more severe impacts so 10 parts per million the residential is one so if it's at 10 feet below grade surface we're going to be chasing it up to 10 parts per million and the wrap's going to document the verification sampling during excavations we're going to be taking samples when we get to a uh the bottom of the excavation where we expect we're at the end we're going to collect confirmation samples to confirm that both laterally and vertically and the wrap's gonna detail the maintenance and monitoring required for the engineered cap the uh the surface of the material the surface of the fields um hope that answers your questions and how long if we're optimistically assuming that the two foot cut plus chasing 10 parts per million across the site construction
145days again this is based on consultant estimates still got to go to bid have uh you know they're really the experts in the construction field to provide input on timing we're estimating about 100 days um as jane indicated you know we have the ability to use the access to the rear of the site and the grass about to do some maybe more engineering to make sure it grows more feasible for you know tri-axle trucks but you know we're hopeful that we don't need to be limited to summer work for western middle school thank you yeah sorry joe and then karen thank you um rod this is for only ryan ryan this is joe kelly do you remember me i do joe how you doing i'm well thank you how are you good we've been obviously
146talking for two and a half years uh when i do hear you talk and you come out and talk to us it's basically a bunch of words and things i really don't understand and it's happening again so what and that's not to any fault of you at all that's sort of what you do it's not what i do so i would like you to help me and humor me through this process i'm a businessman and i approach things in a business manner in the last couple of years i had the lovely opportunity of understanding how you do a public project as opposed to a private project now you approach a private project very very differently than you do a public project so you're gonna and this is very very extremely important brian you cannot get
147offended about anything i'm about to tell you because it's more or less a hypothetical in a way or maybe an exercise that i could use to talk to the general public about what's going on with western middle school fields can i have your word that you will not get offended i'll do my best go ahead no i need your word yeah you got it thank you okay thanks help me explain this i have a couple questions quickly do you have any kids in western middle school no i do not are you a volunteer doing this work you're doing right now am i volunteering doing this work no we're getting paid you are getting paid to do this yes the longer this lasts the more you get paid yes okay so what is the incentive for
148you guys to finish this thing uh in a uh in in a quick period of time why not oh we have a a a really big customer here who has endless money that if we drag this out and once again this is a hypothetical i'm not accusing this i just need you to humor me because i need to explain this to the people in greenwich why and there seems to be no end to this process you are not really given any incentive to finish this i can't find one business-wise uh you don't have any kids in the school you're not a volunteer you're getting paid so every year this goes longer you continue to get paid we're a client that pays up and we pay on time and there's nobody really checking not only that
149but we're also told that uh uh that we can't tell our elected officials our delegation to start for it we can't tell them or have them advocate for this to move along quickly we're told not to do that so tell me how do i and i'm not accusing you ryan what i'm doing is trying to help me to explain to the citizens of greenwich that see this process going on and on what are we doing to motivate you to fulfill this this project to make it a a similar to what would a private project be not a public project that just keeps moving along moving along how do i explain this just help me and there's no accusations here and you promised me you would not get offended yeah it's a tough one um i
150mean i would say generally speaking as a firm there's not really a difference in how we handle mediation projects whether or not the municipality based or privately based or funded i should say our incentive is you know reputation it's you know maintaining our relationships with greenwich also with the regulators at epa and dep you know one of the primary purposes of this this slideshow was to really show that we are not sitting on our hands we are actively moving on this project it is certainly and admittedly slow sometimes to navigate um a complex project like this one with multiple regulating multiple regulatory agencies however um you know from from a comparison from comparison purposes again the high school and we're six years in compared to 11 years in and um you know we're getting pretty
151close so um yeah it's a really difficult question to answer about the incentive given you know when i'm volunteering or have students in the western middle school um on the fields but you know i sympathize and you know all i can ask you to trust me and like we're certainly not gouging you guys for money we're doing the best we can gordon are you a little bit suspicious of an answer like that good that's important to me because i need to explain to people like yourself and other people so basically what you're saying is trust us i've known you for two and a half years you seem a nice fellow you seem pretty smart so uh so basically we're in that position if you could give us once again i concluded my comments to you
152last time if there's anything i could do to move this along any way i can create incentive for you to get this process moved along more quickly please call me i will give you my phone number directly i think i gave it to you last time as well but i'll give it to you again uh directly after this meeting thank you thank you very much for humoring me joe you directed your your comments at ryan can i can i just only if you promise that you're not offended go ahead janet okay well while we're waiting um miss kowalski so do we we still have ryan still online right yes yes near me okay so i just want to understand that the next steps in timeline going forward so i which is we are close to
153being able to submit the remediation plan did i understand that correctly yes where we are right now is the summary report the most recent sampling event was documented in a report submitted to the regulators it was two weeks ago yesterday and it's you know in their appropriate for review both epa and eep um the last round of results were favorable meaning much better than the last round where we're getting to the end and kind of the toe of the slope um surrounding the athletic fields and you know most of our samples were below state standards so you know as soon as we get that feedback from the regulators we will issue the remediation action plan that plan will be in draft form until you know public comment is had with respect to the proposed remedy
154and we receive comments on the engineer control variance request but those are the next steps comments on our most recent plans issuance of the wrap now sorry so let me just interject so once this we get approval from the regulators regarding the remediation action plan that would come back to the board to review and provide comment to decide based upon the approvals what is the best plan to go forward yeah the proposed renewal plan would be provided to the community and discussed in a public forum and to the general public so the public can provide comments to the town and to the reviewing agencies such as dep and epa sorry all i'm back i i lost my internet connection for a minute i apologize i think i don't know what happened apologies sure so i
155was asking questions of ryan but i i think why don't you go ahead and jump in and address the comments that you wanted to make in regards to joe's questions yeah i i was i my my laptops keep saying i have no internet connection so hopefully my cell phone holds out um i was just going to say that you know any one of us could be could be terminated tomorrow and not only do we um do we enjoy a reputation with the town but every resident in the town and every business person in the town can certainly talk about what the job we're doing to every other um friend and potential client we have so we are not in this to um to gouge the town to make money off of the town we we
156are professionals that have a job to do and we um i believe that langan is doing the best job that they can under very difficult circumstances and we have a lot of um we have a lot of regulators that are throwing things at us constantly and um the the just having managed large remediation projects for 35 years i just you know we're not saying that um that you know we're perfect and that you know somebody in the town couldn't couldn't say to the whomever the governor and you can you give us some attention we are getting the attention that we need you know not we don't get day turnaround nobody does um but but they're not ignoring us and and it just takes a long time to figure out how how significant the problem is
157they're not going to approve a remedial plan until the regulators are comfortable that that the site has been thoroughly investigated and that it's safe and so you know we could have started with a million borings and and spent you know 10 million dollars we started small and do more as the regulators ask for it so we're not starting big and saying let's you know come up with the most expensive remedial plan that that that proposes digging up the whole site if it started at a conservative measure an affordable measure and then it gets bigger as the regulators ask for more information and i hope that ryan's presentation tonight um helped help you when you get pressured by people you know share these share these slides share this presentation with them on that point i don't
158think we have the presentation so if we can get that because i think it would be helpful to for the board as well as community members to be able to refer back to it yes i agree at the high school we have we post everything on the website um that we have for the high school remediation i don't i don't know what's done here for communication we will the same thing yeah i think that's a good idea yeah there's a separate part on the website in addition to the board docs so we should add that so that people can readily access it and it should be updated accordingly as well so yeah definitely okay sorry karen hirsch hi i feel like we're we're in a time warp here um and uh i'm a big fan
159of history but i i really focus now on looking ahead to the future um you know as our students have really been negatively impacted by the closure of these fields now for six years um and i know that's really hard to swallow for many uh who have students including mine who spent full through their full three years at western never having touched their home turf um you know that that negatively impacts them educationally we have programs that we use out on those fields and you know it's a sense of a point of pride um you know you can't take pride away from the western wildcats though because you know west side beside and all but i i you know i feel like two years ago you know we we approved uh we voted to join
160the vol you know to voluntarily join the department of energy and environmental protections uh voluntary remediation program um and you know i'm simply curious to see what sort of has specifically changed from two years ago when we voted and approved of a plan um you know lang and i you know and i i know you guys have worked with many other districts um and have other projects in the state but have you ever had another one that has had continued sampling like this uh for over six years ryan do you want to answer it or do you want me to it's an incredibly unique project um six years of assessment um is you know not normal you know most of our projects are point source projects you're dealing with industrial sites that had a leaking
161clarifier underground storage tanks and um you're not dealing with the heterogeneity that i discussed earlier where it's not predictable what's changed really in the last two years is the expected lateral extent of contamination and really battling with the regulators to what to do about the edges of the fields as we approach the property line a lot of most of the delineation laterally had not been conducted in june or when we entered maybe january 2020. most of that work's been done in the last year which has been the biggest change since the last time we presented okay because i i distinctly remember two years ago when we voted to do this you know we were told that it would take a little longer at that point simply because he wanted to get the approvals for the
162high school and once we had that this was going to be you know moving forward and and i and i'm not blaming you i know that this is you know i have volunteered for uh close to six years to go up and sit on someone's desk but the state if that would do anything um you know it's it's really really you know as as our chairman stow had mentioned very frustrating um so i you know i know that you mentioned um once we have another plan put forward for approval you're gonna have public input on the remediation plan and i'm just again curious as to what changed because i thought we'd have have uh really put together a remediation plan i could have sworn that's what we voted on two years ago but i could
163be wrong about you know grasp and turf and all sorts of other how we were going to lay out the field was that not the plan that we're submitting has there been change yeah the vote that took place two years ago was to decide on the ultimate cap the surface cover for the fields whether that was going to be grass or an artificial turf or field that ultimately gets selected so that that's what the vote was for which was helpful because that that information was needed to you know have these conversations with the regulators and incorporating an artificial turf field compared to a grass one does make the regulators feel more comfortable because it's much less likely to be disturbed compared to grass okay so my last question i know i know we went through
164all the the ups and downs of how this would negatively impact the students while this was being done how we would keep them safe while we were removing soil so we've gone through all of those discussions at this point i just want to know realistically when you think that we might hear back because i keep hearing it's going to be soon and i've been i feel like i've been hearing that for a really long time and i have to be honest you know i'm picking my son up from college from his freshman year tomorrow and flying out early in the morning and he spent three years at that school and has spent maybe six months where he was allowed to be on that field i had a daughter that's gone through that school has never
165touched the field and she's working her way through high school already and there's kids coming through that it's just it's just devastating to me to to know that this is continued and i i really don't want to keep hearing it's soon so if you have any really how much more do you think and what we can do like joe said to get this pushed forward it's you know it's very frustrating for all of us i think and including you guys as well but you know what are your estimates yeah i mean first you know it's important to note that yeah we have heard back it's like that not like we haven't spoke to the regulators in two years we've had many many meetings with them it's just the iterative process of additional analysis we've conducted
166performed maybe 125 supplemental boring since the last time we met so it's not like we're not hearing back it's just it's every step and we follow the data every every investigation phase is dictated and based upon the previous investigation phase so if we find more impacts we have to continue to chase them but each one of those steps involves coordination work plan approvals and meetings with the regulators um regarding an estimated start date for remediation i mean there's you know while we do feel confident that you know assessment is pretty close to the end there are things that need to happen [Music] we need to get the regulators to buy in that we are done with the investigation phase and i really think that this most recent round of sampling um you know got us
167pretty close to the finish line i can't commit to you right now that you know we are done with delineation there's always a chance they ask for a little bit more but every time we do more we're closer to that finish line so i think we're pretty close maybe the two three r line from really getting the wrap submitted and starting the you know the formal onboarding process of getting contractors to bid you know whether or not we can start this year it depends on you know some things that are out of our control which the big thing is regulatory agency review but uh you know if if if we're if we're not required to start during the summer you know i'd say it's you know possible maybe towards the end of the year we
168can uh get rolling but you know that's maybe a little bit optimistic maybe towards the beginning of the following year um you know if we need to start during the summer miss downey um okay ryan just a couple of most of my questions have been answered um when you mention the hundred days kind of best case project starting that's you know from day you're talking about that's from like day one that the trucks roll in correct uh yeah i mean there's there's some prep work and mobilization both before and after and there's ancillary work associated with installing the turf so the hundred days is really times from trucks leaving the site and trucks coming back with imported feel at the end of the project that's what the hundred days is and that's like 100 work
169days or 100 days because we have a lot of weekends in there i'm just construction days construction day okay um number two um describing as we put in this voluntary action plan and at our board meeting we had all these different combos you know you go down two feet it costs you this you go down one v when our plan goes into the state do we give them i mean i just want i feel like i don't fully understand are we giving them them choices and they make the choice for us or do we get or they're gonna say this is what we're willing to let you do i don't it's not fully clear to me how that combination decision gets made sure so the wrap the remediation action plan does include remedial alternatives analysis
170meaning it does present multiple options but you know we won't be submitting a wrap unless we feel confident that the selected or recommended remediation strategy is going to be approved so we'll know that through conversations and meetings before we submit smith's sent before we press send on the wrap we will be recommending um remediation alternative right now it's number two which is two foot of excavation across the site plus the removable pcbs above 10 ppm regardless of depth that is kind of the nuts and bolts of the proposed remediations uh proposed remediation strategy however the wrap will detail a four foot cut a foot and a half cut and a one foot cut but we've we've had these conversations with the regulators and they've essentially told us that you know you're likely gonna get a
171two foot cut remediation approved but we could go in asking for a foot cut and they could come back and say you can only have the four foot cut that is a possibility correct um no i wouldn't say no it's gonna be it's not gonna be a four foot cut no but i'm just all right let's just say okay it's possible it's possible but it's very it's a very unlikely scenario we've met with them enough to to know what they're going to approve before we submit it okay so they approve it now let's can we just talk briefly through the process then they say okay this is what you've you know we've done our we've the plan has gone in after our public input correct so it goes into them they they give us the
172blessing then what happens before we can do construction so with the wrap um goes along with it the construction documents the field itself meaning the drainage details layout grading lighting benches you know that information gets incorporated uh into the bidding documents which go along with specs you know number of specs for uh the construction and those go to bidding bidders uh we're a part of the leveling process ultimately the town will select a contractor and i don't jump the head there's still as i mentioned before there's a public forum process that needs to happen before the wrap gets approved but once the wrap is approved those are the next step getting contractors to bid leveling the bids and then choosing a contractor thank you michael joseph no thanks i i excuse me i i appreciate
173the um the frustration with the the the the iterative process here i think um obviously other board members have mentioned the the frustration with the community in six years and two generations of uh middle school uh students having gone through at this point i i think the other frustration um is really around the clarity of of the project um and i think that came out in a lot of the questions that we're hearing um i it really would have been helpful tonight to have in the presentation clearly laid out what are the next steps um and i understand some of them are regulatory dependent but it sounds like there's a public forum someday we're going to get to 100 days um the the half of the families that were um in in these conversations half
174the families in the middle school now weren't involved in these conversations when this project was proposed you know three years ago or two years ago um so so i think that this presentation in honesty was was it was a missed opportunity um to provide clarity um i i really think as a as a next step um we need to have written uh very clear what are the next steps um with the proposed timeline it's conceivable that i understand that that first next step could be that we're in then we're waiting for soil samplings and it's going to take some time so but let's be clear on that and let's put that out to the community um this kind of nebulousness that this q a over the last uh 20 minutes has been um is just
175increasing the frustration um we need to have that written um and and clear so the community knows the second thing is um six years ago um we're not blaming this board or even several superintendents ago we talked about quarterly updates i think at this point um we don't necessarily need our consultants here every month but i do think it is appropriate that um we talked about this early as part of that the as part of the superintendent report or whatnot that we have every month where are we on on um on these next steps that are out there in the public and what step are we on and are we on our proposed timeline or if we have we need to go back for soil samplings but the um we need to be much more
176as a board and as a district i think we need to be much more aggressive in monitoring the next steps here and communicating that out regularly um because the the we know we know the complications here but the much we can do with clarity i think the better because we know it's a complicated process did you i know did you ask something on that dr jones yeah um we do actually do quarterly updates and we have a capital um news that actually we have a lot of projects going on in the district right now and we send it out quarterly we've done that um since i think i think it was the first second semester i was here um and we send that to rtm members we send it try to get it out to
177bet i think we need to look at how we can somehow maybe push it out at the school level so people will see it we put out so much information the hardest thing we have is getting people to read because everybody's busy um so i know that um at our executive meeting um as we planned the agenda we talked about making this a monthly item just so we can do a simple update here's where we are so i think that's a great idea and we'll continue to see how we can get those quarterly updates um easier in people's inboxes cody just an observation i think it's a shame that all the students left and missed this presentation it would have been an excellent example of what the regulatory state looks like up close probably taught
178them more about civics than what their wonderful teachers will in a long period of time exactly um i just wanted to thank you first of all and i know we probably have to move on but um to michael's point i think it would be helpful if we maybe as a follow-up uh got a more specifics on what the timeline might look like recognizing that i could have a plus or minus based on what the regulators say but just to know what the next steps would be maybe what we should do if we're going to provide this power point to you is just add a slide at the end or however many slide or two at the end it says next steps and sort of gives just a you know generic um public meeting you know
179it's the middle of rap public meeting um dep agency epa approval you know construction starts it not necessarily um even with a timeline but just these are the steps that have to happen and that can be tacked on to the presentation that that we gave tonight would that be helpful that would be great the other thing i was going to say probably not to add to that presentation because it's hard to do without any color but perhaps in our next monthly meeting this comparison of the remedial alternatives that i wish i'll pass it around to my colleagues but it really it had these six plans and i like i said we originally talked about five i think you said you were looking at two but when you described it i think it's three which is
180removing the fill to two feet and plus the pcbs of greater than 10 ppm but you know we had a cost effectiveness right that kind of fell in the middle and i think it's important because it's all going to come down to costs too um is that there was a decision made at that point i suspect these numbers have increased so perhaps this information is now um you know dated but i think for the next meeting we should probably update this the remedial alternatives as we see them now ryan won't that be in the um in the wrap it will be but we can definitely provide an updated slide that presents those okay that's great okay anything else no okay thank you so much for your time i know this can't be pleasant to come
181to we really do appreciate it thank you i've been to the bet meetings the the budget meetings those are even more painful so thank you all for your patience i know it's been a really trying process and and we're doing we're really we we appreciate the frustration i have a brother that lives in greenwich so um i i i understand as parents how frustrating this is and and it's just a balancing act between the the the parents who want their kids on the field and the regulators whose job it is to make sure everything is safe and so if you look at these slides you'll see that there we haven't been ignored the regulators are meeting with us we can't tell them that you know they're meeting with us we just can't tell them how
182to make a decision we none of us can go up there and say would you just would you just ignore any more science and and not have any more sampling done and just issue issuing approval that's not going to happen right so we've got to make them comfortable that that their approval is on sound basis because there are people that are are looking at this you know at the high school we've had we've had citizens complaints and so um you know they want to be on sound ground too so i understand we all understand the frustration um hopefully this gave you some clarity and some things to be able to present back to the to the residents and we'll we'll add some more information to the end in terms of next steps and give you
183um as many updates as as you want tony we'll talk after to to see what it is that you what kind of schedule you want us to and what you want us to give you and so you have all the information you need on a timely in a timely fashion great thank you very much thank you good evening all right bye-bye bye-bye all right next turning to our middle school central middle school other one i think this one will probably go a little faster um just for clarity uh i did mention in the superintendent's report where we are right now is getting the building committee established so we are right on the timeline that we need to be to have that building committee approved and again i just want to say thank you to the
184first selectmen's office for moving aggressively on that we do actually have a draft that the consultants have i was hoping to have it on the agenda tonight but one of our consultants had gone to ireland on a vacation that had been put off because of covid and has been stranded for the last two weeks so i did not want to present that i really feel like you need to hear from the consultants and those of you that have heard from both of them they're excellent and i want you to hear who all they've met with and talked with but we should have a draft for you very very very soon in front of you um and that's really all i have um again we're right on schedule where we want to be um for central
185right now so remind me that means at the board meeting in may we would see the draft ed specs we could and that's a question i would probably follow up after this meeting to see you know is it where we would like to have you know an hour-long meeting that is special just for this issue um those of you who are able to attend i'm going to call the town hall but it was in here i thought it was very good we didn't have a huge big crowd but the questions were great and they're really good i think at providing depth to their answers on questions that the board may have just even about the process itself because they're so experienced yes okay thanks so on the timeline perspective right we wanted to have the
186ed specs approved by june correct well my goal really was to have it tonight like for you to see the first draft in early may i that's why i would really like to see us consider maybe a special meeting so we can go a little bit quicker um but we definitely want to in june because once we have our building committee we need to expect to hand them so that they can start their work on what it is they're going to be constructing so maybe when we get to the planning stage of our meeting we should think about having an interim just a cms meeting to go over that so that at our next at the may meeting we're approving those ed specs so that they're ready to go that would be great agreed that's
187exactly what i was going to say because we really should have a presentation of the ed specs and they then get an opportunity for public comment so i think it really behooves us to consider a special meeting solely on central mr kelly thank you um i was kind of disappointed with our meeting here that we held to the public uh i counted 13 people it's a little more if he counted their kids but uh there was 13 people and if he added the reporters as well that kind of admit slightly higher number not go with that because the public is not aware and they're not showing up and that's not good so i'm concerned about that the second thing is there's been some discussions amongst board members of other opportunities uh to happen at central
188middle michael was speaking of uh of bringing the uh hoverby administration as part of the building project wouldn't that have to be discussed way early that was discussed with the consultants during the the meetings we had it came up in the one karen kowalski and i were in and they basically i mean without talking out of school they said they didn't think it was practical because the number of employees that have a meyer number one and the amount of space that that will require and number two the timeline that we want to get the school up and running the have of meyer decision um any any change of where headquarters is going to be it's premature relative to what you know they're just on different timelines so they don't align that was what my takeaway
189was well my takeaway on that was that it was outside of their scope for what they were asked to do so they weren't evaluating it for those purposes they um i don't i'm sorry christina i don't recall them saying those comments i recall them specifically saying it was outside their scope so they weren't even looking at it for those purposes and i will say they did say that doing that would have the potential of slowing down the project well now hold on karen i've got the floor here everyone sort of stuck away my floor time so if i may i know well that's exactly where i want to summarize what the reason why i brought it up is i don't think we're on the same page here the last board of ed meeting i said
190we have to have the board involvement on these steps more closely i had 15 minutes in front of a uh sharing the time with a bet member uh 15 minutes with the people doing the head specs i didn't get an adequate representation of where we were i'm not sure where we all seem to be in different sort of zones here so uh i think i guess some it was just mentioned that we have to have some sort of special meaning i think we have to have one very very soon on this topic because we all seem to see different things or hear slightly different things of what's going on is that fair i'm i'm not really sure how to answer that question because i guess because i to me is that that would be the
191point of them presenting us with the the draft version of the ed specs is that that's our opportunity for round one of discussion as a group so it sounds like the sooner the better on that i think it's the conclusion and someone just texted me the reason they felt like that one meeting wasn't well attended is because they weren't as wonderful as we are with virtual and these are people that have children at home and that's a very good point so next time we should probably consider for the town hall to do the hybrid like we are doing right now having gone through a round of ed specs already uh i don't know really in the formation of this i don't know where we are i didn't get to give an opinion where i know
192in the last round at jc i was curious about some things that were being suggested so i shared the thoughts with my fellow board members so we're we're and that's what the process is changing which i was concerned about having gone through it before but we don't have any say or that much say in the early stages here as we have in the past we do why don't you explain it dr jones a little bit more yeah basically what they're doing right now is they're getting input from everybody they meet with they've met with all the different staff our teachers music teachers they've we have survey input they're listening even though those few people that were here you notice that traffic is a big going to be a big issue here you know where they're
193going to enter the site where they're going to leave the site and that's why we need to get the consultants in front of the board so if you have a creative thought that you haven't shared with them that's your input on the ed spec most of the ed spec is meeting the state standard of how many classrooms we need what is the size that you know is that they're going to approve um you know are we concerned about the reimbursement on certain areas or are are we not and for instance a lot of the input that we've received is that central is um a meeting place for the town so that this auditorium is you know i think it's twice the size of what they would generally approve for middle school but they have adjusted
194the ed spec when it comes before the board if you disagree with that you'll say oh we don't really need it this size let them go meet somewhere else i don't know but that's the input they're going to have to get most of it is very it's formulaic and then it's getting the input about storage and all those other components um you know looking at okay do you want to have flexible space for meeting spaces if you think about like new lebanon and how it was designed that's really important to the teaching staff so they've built that into the ed spec based on all the input that they've received i guess the difference here is and i understand i asked that specific question of them what percentage is what's necessary versus what's uh arbitrary or
195what we get to choose and talk about and there was 75 25 75 is off the shelf they've got to do that there's 25 of us to discuss these things the board answers to the town on uh whether it goes right or goes wrong the conversations i found very helpful to hear that uh the the passionate appeals for the teachers wanting certain spaces the uh the members of our community wanting things i thought that really helped me tremendously i feel absent from those discussions even though they're taking place and you made it clear to me that they are but ultimately the elected members of the board of education are the ones that ultimately have to answer to the community and i don't think we've got enough representation in these discussions i said it last time
196i'll say it again all these discussions there should be a board member or multiple board members involved in these discussions and i think i i think it will um i guess i don't feel the same way you do job look ahead karen well i was going to say i think we haven't gotten to the discussion stage yet and i think that's why you feel a little bit of a frustration and that they as kathleen mentioned at least because i i asked them during my time with them i was i shared it with a with a bet member as well we also had a similar discussion to what christina mentioned and that was the response i had gotten from them um as well but i think that when they come to present us present to us
197it's going to be covering all of the input that they got from staff administration parents board of ed other uptown you know elected representatives um as to what should go into the space they also because i had very specifically asked you know i'd say you know we what the building was used for what i'd heard from staff and and parents that what this facility was missing etc i even mentioned fields um and reminded them we had voted on that at some point to look at those documents um but i think that when they come to present to us is when those discussions start to happen that they give us that that basis like dr jones had said what what requirements are by the state for a building what other spaces and things we've asked for
198and that's when our discussions really take place and we get to have more additional input but they haven't been able to give us that presentation yet i think that's you know as it was mentioned it would be very helpful to add an extra meeting uh specifically just focused on this and that way we can also have a you know public input as well there um because i you know i think they were just gathering uh information at this point we haven't even had the opportunity really to see what they've learned to then have that discussion going forward so i think you're frustrated you're frustrated as we haven't had that but uh we haven't had that opportunity yet they're still just doing their research you're we're gonna get presented to us what got past discussions that
199have already taken place we're gonna miss out all the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor and i'll tell you though going through this before i experienced things that things were suggested others said no don't do that and then others said well maybe we should do that we're missing all these discussions because we're ultimately responsible these discussions that they're they're eliminating and they're presenting to us after they've already been eliminated we're not hearing these discussions stuff that maybe one person suggests and then uh and then others might say it's not the case i'm feeling the step we're cutting out we're missing this we have to somehow create the opportunity for us to be involved in it or maybe i should just speak for myself i'm missing these discussions well i was i think
200i think you bring up a good point though is you know that there are things that may have been left out but i think that that may be a good question for us to ask them when they present like what things were suggested by you know more than one individual that you think might have been good that have been left out of this i think that's a great question to be asking them i think that that is always something that we should know because they may be going in a more formulaic plan and our teachers may have found that they really want something specific in this facility for their students or parents feel that they're missing or other representatives of town that use this facility for things so i think that's actually a really good
201point and question it's i don't necessarily know we need to be involved in you know all of the the little different meetings that they've had but i i do agree with you that we should get that information as to what what things were not included and why right i almost hope that there's that's a good way to put it i almost hope there's like a toggle between you know do you want a room this size because the town wants it or did you want to have it half the size to meet the enrollment attention middle school and therefore you're trading it for the music room or something like i want that to be something that that's that's money but that's also you know how we're developing our building so that's it's important for us to
202have that conversation and i would hope that that would be a part of the decision process when it's when it's when we're going to have multiple conversations on this yeah i mean i feel like what they're doing right now they have far more input than what we ever have on a feasibility feasibility we have a committee that basically meets at the school and you go through the feasibility phase but they don't really have the same outreach that the consultants are having right now listening to everybody i would say the one direction that we've given them is don't eliminate something because you're not going to get full reimbursement such as this auditorium so not just using the state reimbursement but in a lot of communities where they get 60 and 70 reimbursement it's really important that
203they stick to that formula we've made it really clear we're they're gathering all of the input from the community and what's supposed to come to the board is is what they've heard and at that time i mean they're going to take feedback from the board and i think that it just hasn't happened i was hoping it would happen tonight we would start but it you know they weren't they weren't here to be able to do it karen i think what might be helpful to address joe's point and it i think it's a highly valid point is in part of their presentation it just shouldn't be the proposed draft ed specs but it would be helpful to get some kind of presentation or deck in advance of the meeting spelling out an overview of what comments
204did they receive from the public what comments did they receive from the teachers what comments did they receive from the board what were the asks and how are those asks reflected in these ed specs what was decided to be cut and why and taking into account so that we can see the entire layout of the information that they gathered and how they processed it and how decisions were made with respect to the ed specs that they presented the other on that point and whether or not they're presenting multiple versions of ed specs or how we get to the ed spec that we we like is is a little confusing to me which i think goes to joe's point which is are we just going to get a draft ed spec in front of us and
205say and it's one version do we get multiple versions to check from and and maybe we like a little version a and a little version b and we want to combine them and i think because we're on trying to keep on a tight deadline when i through this process of conversation i think not only do we have to have one meeting we may have to have multiple meetings so that we can process information and make them go back to the drawing board but the first step would be for them to give us some type of report to show how information was processed and how they have come to the drafts or the multiple drafts and versions that they've come to and i think we cannot as a board make a decision and i think joe's
206right on this without having processed that information so that we can get comfortable in saying they did their job and this is what the community wants so is that good during agenda planning or well no i just want to make one more comment i think one thing you're going to see that's different is this is the ed spec and what generally through through i feel like throws us off in feasibility is people get into designing the building and that really isn't the intent and then when the building committee gets started they start all over again often with a brand new architect and i think what you're going to see are the spaces and so it is really different because at least from my experience when we did og and jc we spent a lot of
207time talking about connector halls and like you're almost designing the building and that really wasn't the intent i think it it's why it also took longer for us to get the ed spec approved because there was so much feasibility early design work that we're not doing with this building because we're really saying the master plan has looked at it once and then when the building committee comes together they'll start all that that work as well so i hope when they come when they're coming for you you'll feel like they're giving you um exactly what you're asking for okay