001thank you sorry that we're starting a little late here good evening um i'm calling this meeting to order it's a board special meeting february 24th can we please rise for the pledge of allegiance thank you first up is the consent agenda can i get a motion to put that on the table all right thank you michael joseph can i get a second laura costen all in favor of the consent agenda i think it's okay if we do hands and then we ask cody to cody give it a thumbs up okay that passes eight zero thank you cody okay with that let's go straight into our public hearing ghs student government they are here wonderful thanks guys come on down there you go uh good evening chairs though dr jones members of the board and meeting
002attendees i'm javi sarah senior class president at granite high school last month i spoke about the anxiety of students in the lead up to midterm exams now i'm pleased to report that we got through them i would like to thank our school administrators especially mrs tulata our vice principal for their willingness to collaborate with student government about midterms due to the waiting accommodation students who did poorly will not be significantly harmed by this one exam and students who did well will still stand to benefit i would like to advocate for the permanent institution of this flexible waiting policy because it will reduce the stress among students to some degree while continuing to offer students with a higher stakes learning experience thanks to teachers department heads and administrators many grades were curved heavily this year because
003the raw scores were relatively lower than prior years this served as a reminder to us all that we still have some ground to make up since kobe disrupted learning nearly two years ago before the february break students enjoyed semester two kickoff activities including fun games at lunch and ice cream giveaways additionally roots and shoots hosted a canned food drive that collected more than one thousand non-perishable items to benefit neighbor neighbor now i have a piece of bittersweet news from the senior class standing room only better known as sro will not take place this year due to a lack of student signups miss foster and the sro chairs worked tirelessly to recruit participants for this long-standing ghs tradition but based on a student survey there was just not enough interest while this may be somber news
004to many here tonight we are committed to creating a new tradition for the whole senior class we'll come together before the curtains close on our time on 10 hillside lastly i just wanted to express my personal excitement at the unanimous board decision to repeal the mask policy considering our higher vaccination rates and low cases i'm looking forward to seeing everyone's faces again as always thank you for this opportunity and for offering your time here tonight i look forward to speaking in a month's time thank you so much tommy good evening chairs to dr jones members of the board and meeting attendees i'm kwame botan student body president of greenwich high school the build off of javi i think it is fair to say that many students are excited about the board's decision to make mask
005optional i am personally thrilled to see everyone's faces after what seems like an eternity however it is equally fair to say that our feelings are not necessarily the norm while many students have been eager to move forward and are dealing with kovid many are still scared about a possible future of unknown variants and spikes in cases while some may think that making mass learning optional will polarize our student body i am more than confident that empathy and understanding will supersede the vision if we can take any way away from the last two years of this pandemic it would be our community's capacity to sacrifice and care for one another and the common good i would like to use my time tonight to thank the board the ghs administration and all teachers for showing the utmost
006diligence and care for us students during the pandemic as we look forward to march 1st and beyond i'm certain that ghs is prepared for what for what the future holds this year mandatory homeroom classes were added to our schedule as a state requirement its intent is to create bonds that last the duration of high school in many aspects homeroom works to achieve this goal with activities and resources provided by administration however many students believe that there is an opportunity to make improvements if the fundamental purpose of a home homeroom is to build a more intimate community within our larger ghs community then this activity should be casual and meaningful for students to enjoy collectively from my perspective playing a game of uno or charades with peers would result in a closer knit community as opposed
007to individually completing assignments that seem to have little connection to our ghs experience as student representatives we are excited to collaborate with the ghs administration to strengthen homeroom for the future and finally we would like to give a shout out to central middle school students and staff that joined us at dhs a week before break we know it wasn't easy and we are grateful that cms has been able to safely return to their building thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight take care and i look forward to seeing you all next month thank you so much kwame up next is gea is lil here or is she online okay lil if you unmute you can speak okay thank you good evening madam chair and fellow board members teachers parents and members of
008our community who are listening online i'm lillian perrone president of the greenwich teachers education association with over 900 members strong i'm happy that our board had a unanimous vote 8-0 for moving to unmask starting march 1st and going back to normal but what does that really mean for our students teachers staff and community we have all been in a state of trauma for the last two and a half years i don't think we can just flip an internal switch and just say all is well as if nothing happened we need to engage in conversation and then check in to see how well we all are doing what do we need to give our staff and students and supports both mentally and physically we have all witnessed the trauma and division that has happened in our
009community everyone has suffered in some way our parents who did not have the choice for the children not weary masks to those who have concerns about teaching or their children being in a room now in close contact with unmasked individuals we need to take things slow and one organized step at a time the only thing i do know is that we all need to be kind and compassionate to each ot to each other as we just heard tonight we may not know what is going on in each individual's home or with family members of parents students and teachers who are health compromised our younger children may not understand and speaking with a few parents they shared how they told their children it was okay to take their mask off but their children still said that
010they wanted to keep it on is that fear anxiety i don't know and we won't know until we engage in that conversation things are not back to normal we need to be there as a community of caring humans and support all through this transition i like to change gears i am fascinated with our financial report pages 14-19 quite interesting the amount of repairs and replacement items which is absolutely fantastic in kudos to dan watson and his crew just to mention a few uh hba series hbac repairs costco greenwich high school eastern middle school western havoc meyer north mianis north street parkway riverside north mianis ionization along with four other schools that's absolutely fantastic just the teachers have been asking for just about every school plumbing electrical roofs generators to name a few most interesting though
011projects 2022 42 2021 91 69 2019 49 and i didn't have the information before that that's concerning this is what i do know the mess our school buildings are in this did not happen overnight the current people in the jobs now or on this board are not responsible for this mess but they are working hard to fix the problems our town elected leaders are responsible for not making it a priority to keep up the maintenance of our public schools i will be engaging them in conversation they have led our students staff and greenwich community down i personally had to work with three trash barrels in my classroom ceiling tiles falling down and sewage coming up through the drain and i have everything documented photos which i will be sharing sadly to say this is not
012a rare occurrence throughout the district but it will and must stop every time a building closes it not only affects our students but it also is carried on the backs of our teachers imagine being given only a few hours to pack up and go to a new site and not and now being ready to teach that's what our central teachers had to do and our north miami staff before them not to mention the impact it had on the three intake schools the custodians all the administration and support staff that made it happen our teachers are always there to do the right thing they show up they do what needs to be done and get it done now i'm asking our town leaders to do the same and our community should be asking them to thank
013you to be continued thank you very much lil um next up comments from pta council is mimi duff online okay i'm unmuted good evening dr jones chairstow and other members of the board of education i'm mimi duff president of pta council representing 15 school ptas and the families of all their members i was happy to see the heavy concentration of central middle school discussions on tonight's agenda i hope by now you know that we ptac stand in support of fixing and funding all of our facilities not limited to central middle school as we transition to the mass optional world in greenwich public schools we are left with the question what are we doing to support our students teachers and other staff through this unprecedented transition we've heard in these forums from families whose children know
014no other version of school except for with a mask and from teachers who are fearful as they cannot control who is and isn't vaccinated for each of the vocal brave folks who have shared their stories we know there are many others who may have a health issue or other concerns even kids who are supposed to be excited to go massless may feel fearful after such a long road we need to make sure we're providing support for everyone through this transition by now i'm sure you're aware that these ptac folks are an organized group with super volunteers some of you listening may be wondering what ptac is we have a website on the district page and i encourage you to check it out and get involved among other things our roles include coordinating pta efforts and
015programs facilitating communications and advocating with a unified voice let me tell you our team is strong and mighty tonight i want to acknowledge my board members and the other volunteers that i get to work with that make my job more meaningful one conversation i had this week with a couple committee chairs was around advocacy and it really resonated with me they were saying that advocacy is hard it is hard it's especially hard in my opinion in a world where fake news is easy to spread i truly appreciate the board of ed meeting process that has materials distributed in advance internally and to the public so participants and listeners can show up prepared and be efficient in doing the hard work to improve our schools i would like to call on the bet to adopt the
016same procedure one recent meeting had some surprise charts where the data sources were not cited appeared incorrect to my eyes and were met with surprise this element of surprise may seem catchy to some but it's no way to conduct business and have meaningful discussions around the best ways to meet the needs of our schools i urge the bet to shift toward a process where materials are presented to the community in advance of the meetings so that we can so others can review fact check and prepare regarding advocacy i'll remind you of teddy roosevelt's paraphrase quote nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort in terms of following up items i'd like to highlight the following on our hot list we would still like to see measurable goals in math with regular updates provided by school
017we appreciate the attention given to the math and science reviews and we look forward to reviews for language arts and social studies we would also like to see a follow-up conversation with respect to the security incident at ghs last winter we would like to see explicit line item funding for both the ghs science research program and also the broader assured experience short experiences across the district specifically we'd like to see the assured experience funding levels restored which will help level the playing field finally we'd like to ensure that the board of ed meetings remain hybrid with a remote option we have never seen so much community engagement at our board of ed meetings i pleaded a strong case for public comment at the last meeting and i continue to feel very strongly on this thank
018you so much for your time thank you very much mimi that takes us into the community conference um as always it's the order is agenda items then non-agenda items and i'll try to announce the next speaker so we could uh move along and make sure everyone gets up here so first up jackie holman who is currently speaking on the cms capital request followed by julia faryonars good evening board of education members dr jones i originally planned to speak about the debacle that was created by the mismanagement of central and the fact that central students were sitting socially distanced in gyms and auditoriums not learning at all for a whole week literally just sitting there staring at each other but then my twins got their course selection information for ninth grade and i learned that the
019same book that appeared in my older son's work that prompted me to make these thought-provoking posters is still part of the curriculum so once again i complained the graphic novel contains pictures that were so offensive your security officer prevented me from displaying them yet somehow you've decided it's okay to assign readings from a book that says all women are a book that shows graphic imagery of a man's penis as he pees on the naked back of another man a book that says women like me should be pushed against a wall and and then thrown in the garbage when i complained about it again dr carabio said it was optional but students didn't feel that way it's been in the curriculum for four years the board is required by connecticut law to approve all curriculum so
020chairman stow when exactly did the board approve persepolis or have you decided to stop reviewing an approving curriculum and let the superintendent willfully violate the laws of connecticut instead did you know you're also in violation of your own policy number 6141.323 regarding internet acceptable use it says that you must block or filter access to visual depictions that are obscene contain child pornography or are harmful to minors including a lewd exhibition of the genitals that's why the security officer blocked me from showing the posters it seems to me that either the board or your only employee has ignored all of the statutory and legal requirements regarding curriculum when was the last time you approved new curriculum anyway you have an approved ruler yet you've been testing it on children at eastern isn't that illegal according to
021connecticut law you need to immediately stop teaching ruler it's unapproved psychological programming and it promotes viewing the world through an equity lens which is we all know as a euphemism for teaching the tenets of critical race theory you need to direct the superintendent to immediately remove all other unapproved curriculum including social emotional learning we all know that these are not just modifications to previously approved content it's all unapproved and you need to uphold your legal obligation to approve all curriculum going forward so you can protect children from harmful content like this in the future my children should not be getting this for ninth grade there are much better texts available for this time you all know it thank you very much miss hellman next up is julia farinard speaking on new courses dhs followed by
022amy moof okay good evening chairwoman stowe dr jones members of the board of education cabinet pta and community my name is julie fariniarz and i am the executive director of the greenwich alliance for education the alliance is the only non-profit in greenwich 100 focused on our public school students teachers families and alumni our vision reads in partnership with the greenwich public schools the greenwich alliance for education drives innovation opportunity and access in learning to empower all students to achieve academic personal and professional success and it relates as it relates to our vision i am here tonight to express the alliance's interest and support of the new state-mandated ghs elective course african-american black in puerto rican latino studies as mentioned in the report this course embodies and develops many vision of the graduate principles particularly recognize
023and respect other cultural contexts and points of view a capacity that is so important today and always this course would not only celebrate the history and culture of our ghs students and families of color but also expand understanding empathy and ability to affect change for all ghs students it is the alliance's hope that all community members will adopt a learning mindset around these issues and questions and that the board will support the school in its commitment to provide this course and encourage student participation good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you very much julie thanks always to the greenwich alliance uh next up amy mood speaking on new courses at ghs followed by kara philbin hello you're good go ahead amy okay good evening dr jones and boe members i speak
024tonight as a parent of a current and former gps student i've thought often of last month's public boe meeting particularly the language that was used to discuss some of the topics at hand as a community member and frequent and long time attendee of these meetings we've become accustomed as of late to the comments of the new but very loud minority in town but it was most disturbing to hear the language our boe members used and how they were in contradiction to our school norms in creating community and culture and a culture of inclusiveness for our students it inspired me to remind myself of the boe's mission statement what its overall role is as you know the board of education is the governing body of the district and shall govern the district in such a manner
025that it's that's the national standard for governance oversight public engagement and steward stewardship of the public education system the mission of gps is to educate all students their highest level of academic potential and to teach them the skills and knowledge to become capable creative and responsible members of society to me this sounds like the overarching responsibility of the bues to set policies and oversight that supports the mission of gps with that in mind i'd like to speak directly to the failed passage of the updated title ix policy a policy that provides protection on a state and federal level but locally was already late to be approved the reasons of concern for why we shouldn't pass the title ix updates were focused on the most vulnerable population transgendered youth and how they might take away opportunities
026from our cisgendered girls i have a daughter at gps and i want her to have every opportunity but i don't want it at the expense of another child again you are talking about a very small and vulnerable population one of the board members made the comment of this being a moral conversation with the conversation with anything but moral if you look at the data around transgender youth particularly the trevor project's third annual national survey on lv lgbtq youth mental health in 2021 it found that 52 of all transgender and non-binary young people in the us seriously contemplated killing themselves in 2020. more than half thought it would be better to be dead rather than trying to live with rejection isolation loneliness bullying and being targeted by politicians and activists pushing anti-trans legislation imagine there were
027transgendered youth listening to the board talk about the title ix policy update last month imagine how they might have felt these are the children you should be concerned about protecting who need protecting through your policies but if you want to bring it back to cisgender girls i'd say you instead put my biracial daughter very slightly at a greater risk of needing title ix protection further the conversation around the state required black and latino history elective which will move from a pilot to a requirement next fall was equally upsetting we should be celebrating that connecticut became the first state in the nation to require every public high school to offer an elective in this content but instead and to celebrate the gps is part of the pilot program but instead the aggressive behavior and language used
028by board members around this topic was shocking it shifted to a conversation about crt which was not mentioned either by the teacher administration or state requirements thank you very much amy if you have further comments please email them to us next up is kara philbin on new courses ghs followed by jennifer behead i don't see carol online do you okay i could always come back let's go next on jennifer hett on cms capital request followed by isabel harper good evening chair stow distinguished members of the board of education and dr jones my name is jennifer behead i am the co-president of the central middle school pta tonight however i will be speaking as a parent of a sixth grader at central middle school as well as the parent of a future sixth grader there with
029the rights and privileges bestowed upon you in your elected capacities i implore this board to do what is right and necessary to re resolve the crisis at central middle school the directive is simple at best make central safe not for the week month or year but rather for future generations let not history repeat itself with lack of expeditious action procrastination and accountability our kids staff members and parents are counting on you thank you very much jennifer uh next up is isabelle harper on new courses ghs followed by janet mcmahon hi my name is isabella harper and i'm a student at ghs and i just wanted to just say how important it is for the student body of ghs that um this new course on black and latino history be be adopted by ghs and i
030think every student that i know including myself wants to learn the whole history of the country not just of one specific culture but like of all the cultures that have helped to grow the country to what it is now and to have an inclusive and an accurate representation of the happenings of history and everybody that contributed to all of the new ideas and and to all the foundations of what our national identity is today so i just wanted to voice support for this curriculum and also to communicate that there are many students who are excited to take this course and that i want to congratulate all the effort that went into creating this history course that is a long time in the making but is very welcome by everybody who wants to take it and
031this the student body in general thank you thank you very much isabel we always love hearing from the students uh next up janet mcmahon on cms capital request followed by michelle voigt can you hear me we can go ahead janet right good evening dr jones sheriff stow members of the board of education and the broader greenwich community thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is janet mcmahon and as a parent of a central middle school student and a soon-to-be central middle school student in two years i urge you to approve any and all interim and capital requests to get cms repaired and rebuilt without delay additionally as a taxpayer and a member of the gps community i also urge you to accelerate the julian curtis reservations so that this critical and long-awaited
032project does not get delayed or forgotten just because julian curtis is not crumbling yet doesn't mean we can continue to kick that can down the road delaying julie and curtis curtis would not only delay all of the projects behind it including the much needed ada renovations at old greenwich and riverside but it will also come with additional costs to town as construction and labor costs only continue to rise and as we're seeing with cms rebuilding always costs more than renovating i and many others stand with the julian curtis community who have been patiently waiting for almost a decade for ada compliant and modernized facilities they have followed all the processes processes and procedures they have suffered from stifling classrooms lack of elevators and inadequate pre-k and special education facilities for far too long they have
033dodged countless ada lawsuits but at some point their luck will run out and will become an expensive town problem there is unity in our community that now is the time to fix our schools all of them not just the ones that we have neglected to the point that they're crumbling beyond repair like cms you alone have the power to request request the funds so please exercise that authority and let the bet figure out how to finance it finally i want to take a minute to express my wholehearted support for the new black and latinx studies elective as mandated by the state it is critical to teach our children the whole of american history from past to present and from a variety of perspectives especially from the perspective of those most marginalized in our society i'm
034only sorry that it took this long for it to be offered as an elective and look forward to creating more enlightened learned and critical critically thinking ghs graduates thank you thank you janet next up michelle voigt on cms repairs followed by mara klockenbrink good evening board chair stow distinguished members of the board of education and superintendent jones as a parent of two central middle school students i ask that you remedy repair and or rebuild central middle school immediately i ask that you approve the request for interim funding to create central middle school educational specifications approve the request to modify the capital request to pull forward the ae funding for central middle school to the current 2023 boe budget request in the amount of two million five hundred thousand approve the interim funding for bridging and
035temporary repairs at central middle school of the masonry design as designed by dtc additionally and most importantly i am asking that you put measures in place to protect the health safety and welfare of central middle school students and employees of greenwich public schools through additional regular and ongoing engineering safety inspections until central middle school is no longer occupied or is demolished it is my understanding that the district annually performs facilities mechanical inspections by gps facility management this is not adequate thank you so much for your time and your consideration thank you michelle next up mira clock and frank on new courses ghs followed by molly selibi good evening everyone my name is myra clockenbrink and i am a greenwich resident when i was born it was illegal for a white woman to marry a black
036man our children would have been forced to attend segregated schools in my lifetime in this town and in towns and cities across the country signs hung in country clubs and other establishments barring jews and blacks entry with time and a lot of hard work these laws and practices have given way and we now live in a multi-racial society we brought our multi-racial family to greenwich some years ago to take advantage of its fine schools and our children have received an exemplary education next year our son will have the welcome opportunity to take a course in black and latino history the curriculum for this course is stunning in its comprehensiveness it is more than can be taught in a single year and if it were up to me i would mandate it along with reading writing
037and arithmetic it is that foundational to becoming a literate american a republican member of the board threatened last meeting to audit the course i recommend all the republican members audited since they are suspicious of its use i recommend their democratic counterparts to audit it as well since they were silent when its validity was called into question we should all take the course since it seems there is so much yet we have to learn thank you mara next up molly sleepy followed by brian zeller hi everybody good evening thank you central middle school glad to see the a e funding request being moved up um as i called for a couple of weeks ago in a public letter and others have had thoughts about i realize that's not an original idea nor a novel thought but
038and i'm asking everyone to work together to get this timeline moving as fast as possible without cutting corners i believe a lack of thorough communication is the root of all problems or most problems there are lots of support for this in the community lots of different entities from the bet to the rtm everyone is standing ready please and i also hope that uh the school financing scandal up in hartford is all sorted out and doesn't have any um effect on our timeline i think as well you know if it were up to a lot of us this building would be getting demolished this summer and children would be going to a rental place and this would be getting built um in a couple of years i have a very good friend with a sixth grader
039here who's um has a first grader and you know looking at the timeline maybe kids are in this building for six months or so in a new building by the time this child is ready for the sixth grade here so it's it's painful how slow things can be i understand that we're subject to process and public funding but whatever we can do to keep bureaucracy at a minimum and let's get this moving and there are a lot of people a lot of volunteers ready to help in whatever way we can the kids deserve it thank you thank you molly next up brian zeller on the cms capital request followed by peter sharer hi good evening chairstow dr jones and members of the board my name is brian zeller and i'm the co-president and speaking on
040behalf of the central middle school pta first we want to acknowledge and thank cms principal mr healy the rest of the cms administration the teachers and the staff for their efforts during the challenging times over the last few weeks we'd also like to thank greenwich high school eastern middle school and the costco school of ptas for their incredible support and for being such gracious and wonderful hosts we also want to thank dr jones and and mr watson uh for their time in addressing and answering the questions um from our parents during our pta meeting during the the week when we were at our host schools um and last but not least we want to thank the cms parents for their flexibility and their support you know as you know given the events of the last
041few weeks um cms we cannot wait on any further delays or deferments to next year's budget cycle the time is now to approve a more aggressive timeline for for a rebuild of cms we ask you know in an effort to further limit the impact on future cms students and parents that the boe the bet the rtm all the governing bodies work intensely and work in concert to move this project forward as quickly as the process will allow and finally once the cms budget is approved we hope for this for the sake of the broader greatest public school community that a shared vision may be adopted by the respective governing bodies to ensure that a thoughtful transparent and aggressive approach to the modernization of other greenwich public schools could happen thank you for your time thank
042you very much brian next uh peter sharer this is the beginning of non-agenda items followed by mary heaven um actually speaking on an agenda item but um i registered that way uh hello i wanted to address the board about curriculum especially curriculum management i wanted to make two points point one is uh tonight you'll take up a new social study uh curriculum course called african american black and puerto rican latino studies uh it's comprised of 59 lessons it's described in a 300 page document it's a really interesting course i hope that i would have the chance to take it the content seems excellent interesting topical engaging however there's a problem with this course and i want to make a suggestion to the board on how it can remedy the board is committed numerous times the
043critical race theory is not shall not be taught in greenwich public schools unless you change that that's your current commitment dr jones has repeatedly claimed that crt and crt concepts are not being taught in greenwich public schools and will not be taught in british public schools yet here they are proposing a course that by the actual description in the document is teaching anti-racist principles uh the problem exists in six out of the 59 lessons that are taught in the curriculum if you address these six you can probably address that and make sure that the greenwich curriculum does not become politicized there's a lesson called systemic racism if you're not familiar with crt systemic racism is at the heart of that concept it's uh systemic racism 1965 to present it's a four day course then there's
044a further one on black lives matter if you've seen the actual content that's all about crt as well there are four other modules that are problematic if you aren't aware connecticut is the state in the nation with the highest number of italian-american descendants there are four modules about columbus depicting him as essentially uh conducting genocide and then essentially talking about how the united states has occupied and uh created massacres uh in puerto rico i think that content's a little bit offensive i would tell you that the other 50 plus lessons look great and i would look forward to taking them uh point two uh this isn't the only place where there are lessons being taught in greenwich public schools with these kinds of problems um as it was said by someone else tonight under connecticut
045statutes uh the board is required to review and approve all curriculum uh that's also true in your own policy of the board 30 seconds that's not happening in in a couple areas so i have three suggestions about what you should do stop teaching curriculum that isn't approved particularly sel make all curriculum sent through the authorized curriculum committee so it can be brought to the board and approved and then fulfill that commitment that's unfulfilled from dr jones to make all of the boe curriculum available in a public site please take these actions to build public trust in our students education and prevent the infection of partnering ideologies plaguing other school systems around the country thank you thank you so much peter uh next up is mary heaven followed by roger oh jamie johnson it seems that
046she was removed from the list upon her request according to this so sorry so next up then uh mary heaven followed by roger rosendahl i'm not seeing her are you guys no i don't see her online if she is online if she could raise her hand not seeing any hands i suggest we'll move forward then um roger rosendahl are you online followed by francis novae i'm not seeing roger online mr rosendahl so i don't see him here okay so then francis novak hello this is francis winobe mom of three gps students including two cms cougars tonight i'm reminded of a book by nas khan called room for everyone khan's rhyming counting book selected as kirkus 2021 best picture book tells a charming tale of a trip to the beach to show us how we join
047together and make space with shared humanity compassion and inclusion let's enjoy an excerpt the dalai dallah rumbled and roared and musa and dada were off to the shore to feast on fish at the friday bazaar by the blue crystal waters of zanzibar soon after zooming past sulekha street they saw one old man and his bike with no seat so the driver honked pulled to the side and asked dear brother do you need a ride it's hotter than peppers out there in the sun come in there's room for everyone but dada said moosa i don't think there is enough room for that man in that cycle of his don't worry musa there's space galore if you move just a bit we can make room for more onward they went with a honk and a tooth till
048vendors appeared with three baskets of fruit so they pulled to the side and as you can guess musa cried out and began to protest mangoes and melons and parachichi we don't have the space please listen to me but up came the baskets of tropical fruits and down dripped the juices on ankles and boots everyone wiggled and giggled galore till somehow they carved out a space on the floor the dalai dala drove past some farms till they saw five mamas with fish in their arms so the conda struck his head outside yelling sisters hello do you need a ride no cried musa this rickety bench has no room for those fish and their icketty stench but the passengers wiggled and squished on the floor and made enough room for the ride to the shore the passenger
049shouted do you need a ride and as you can guess musa worried and cried this is outrageous we can't let them in we're already smooshed like sardines in a tin that was clearly a very tight fit they wouldn't give up no they just wouldn't quit the tires were reeling and spinning and burning the passenger sweating and twisting and turning elbow to shoulder beak to nose feathers to feet utters to toes what a sight to see what a comical crew stucky together like probably goo the clunkity clown clicked junk in a trunk so close to the breakdown kirk plunketty club when suddenly all of them heard a screech alhamdulillah at last at last they had finally reached the blue crystal waters of nangwi beach where musa and dada and everyone could wiggle and giggle under the
050sun greenwich public school community thirty seconds make room for everyone wiggles and giggles heart to heart with respect and curiosity we learn together thank you so much francis um since we had we skipped um well kara i see that you're now here and you weren't here before would you like to speak now since we're on to uh non-agenda items and i know you've been here for an agenda item and then we'll go back to non-agenda items hi at the town hall proposed spending was for roller training which will embed social emotional learning into core academics we were told that parent input for sr funding would be collected until august however teachers were already being trained in roller training in june roller training is currently being piloted at eastern middle school for example students were given
051a political quiz with questions like what is your stance on abortion should the government continue to fund planned parenthood should health insurance providers be required to offer free birth control should the electoral college be abolished should foreigners currently residing in the u.s have the right to vote should a photo id be required should funding for local police departments be redirected redirected to social and community-based programs should the government require children to be vaccinated for preventable disease who would you vote for in the connecticut u.s senate governoratorial and presidential election nearly 50 questions later it ranks students answers for their list of nine political parties including new to me transhumanism why are we embedding ruler training into our core academics with declining performance and covet academic loss who on the boe approved ruler training to be
052embedded into our core academics who on the boe reviewed and approved the assignments who on the board of ed can describe transhumanism to me anyway there was an 8-0 vote telling district to leave our advanced learning program alone who on the boe despite this 8-0 vote approved and allowed our middle school advanced science program being mainstreamed into the classroom who on the boe approved our traditional classical english language arts elementary alp program to be infused with social studies with a focus on perspective bias and social responsibility which boe members are going to reinstate our advanced learning programs that should have remained unchanged per the 8-0 vote immediately regarding parents want curriculum transparency and they want the curriculum in advance they want the board of education to fulfill their role to review curriculum and to prove
053it regarding central middle school for the 2.5 30 seconds capital request for a feasibility esta um a feasibility assessment i did the walk through there is significant drainage coming down the two hillsides into the the area of um most in need and it's my opinion that if you rebuild um in the same spot you're going to have continued damage and um in those particular areas so it doesn't seem necessary to do this disability uh assessment thank you so much cara please feel free to email us further with your comments it should be rebuilt on higher land next up is caitlin deforest followed by sarah klasinski hi how are you um i'm a parent i'm a parent of a third grader at north myannis school i'm here today to say thank you thank you to all
054the teachers and the staff for doing what you do as an er nurse i know how discouraging it can be when you are constantly being told you're doing it wrong are not good enough since the day my daughter has stepped foot into north miami school she was welcomed with nothing short of the warmest hearts not one day in four years has she come home from school upset or had something negative to say despite the challenges we have faced as a community we have truly been blessed with the greatest teachers so without going any further i want to tell you that there is a community that stands behind you and appreciates everything you do for our children on a daily basis thank you for choosing to be a part of the most important times in our
055children's lives guiding them and helping them grow remember the noise is just noise eventually it gets drowned out thank you for your time thank you caitlin next up sarah klinsinsky followed by alyssa venos good evening chairperson stove board of education members dr jones administration and community members my name is sarah klasinski and i'm here tonight on behalf of the north mianis pta as one of the co-presidents i am speaking to you tonight to show our continual support for our teachers staff and administrations we are lucky that our children are educated at a very high performing elementary school in 2021 u.s news and world report ranked north mianis number 13 out of all connecticut elementary schools just three years ago in 2019 north mianis won the national blue ribbon award as one of the nation's exemplary
056high performing schools we currently have seven 28 percent of our classroom teachers distinguished teachers according to greenwich public schools award winning teaching all of our 495 students as and north mianis has 18 former distinguished teachers including a 2020 teacher of connecticut teacher of the year semi-finalist it is clearly a school of full of amazing and talented and successful educators we as parents are truly lucky to have our children being educated and cared for by the teachers staff and administrators at north miami school we support their teaching decisions throughout the day and know that our children's best interests are at the forefront of all of them over the last 24 months they have been through the sudden shutdown of all schools to move to asynchronous remote learning that had never been done before then back to
057teaching in person during a pandemic while worrying not only about our children falling behind but also keeping them safe physically and mentally and then 377 days ago one of our fourth grade classrooms had a devastating ceiling collapse you all know what followed a sudden pivot back to the remote learning and then 25 of our classes being split between four different schools with administrations and special teachers driving across town all day rather than just walking down the hall to another classroom and then moving once again to a form to the former trinity high school in stanford and finally back to north mianis in december all that has happened in the last 24 months has taken a toll on all of us but the 75 people who work at north mianis and for that matter the teachers
058and staff at all the other 14 schools as well have had it even harder they have had to put aside their personal frustration exhaustion and fears to support our children's education educational and mental needs and their safety we the north miami's parents thank them and support them we are all human and living through this pandemic together we should treat each other with kindness thank you good night thank you sarah next up alyssa venos hello good evening my name is alyssa vanoss and i'm the parent of a seventh grader and speaking as co-chair for ptac's diversity equity and inclusion committee a special committee created this year that we will hopefully make permanent my co-chair ami muth and i work with individual dei reps from each school in the district our mission is to foster an overall
059sense of belonging within gps community by building relationships and inviting diverse perspectives to the pta tonight we'd like to speak to the com to speak about our community norms be here be safe be honest care for yourself and others let go and move on i say community norms because i truly feel that we are all responsible for being an example of these norms i also believe that some version they are all some version of what we try to impart to our children in our homes and i do believe that we are all here in service of what is best for our children be here be present our kids should be able to experience their school days free of the noise that gets in the way of their education a complete education a factual education greenwich
060is a multicultural town and our children will go into the world a global multicultural world i expect that we will want them to succeed as a committee we believe they should be exposed to a rich and diverse curriculum be safe our children should feel safe in our schools all of our children should feel they can be their authentic selves and not fear bullying discrimination or harassment we as adults in this community should be sending a message that all children will experience a sense of safety and belonging in our schools we were baffled by the refusal to pass title ix locally last at last month's board meeting while we still have state and federal protection for title ix by not passing title the title ix update it sends the message that we do not believe in
061providing providing the safety and protection to all of our children especially vulnerable transgendered youth be honest our children deserve to learn from and participate in an honest environment what we teach and what we are willing to face about the history of the us shows integrity removes barriers and opens opportunities for honest conversation we should not lean away from our history we applaud the efforts of gps and piloting public act 19-12 the law that directs all regional and local boards of education to include the course of studies at the high school level which provides students with a better understanding of african-american black puerto rican and latino contributions to the united states history society economy and culture this description in no way implies critical race theory and it's dishonest to imply that it does care for self
062and others we are community we are not each having complete completely unite unique and individualized experiences we teach our kids to be kind help others if you see someone being harmed our children learn from our actions the things we say 30 seconds when they think we're not listening a recent forbes article stated that empathy is the most important leadership skill in business today it's always been important but going forward is it is imperative for employee engagement and retention learning empathy starts here in our schools with our kids let go and move on none of us are perfect but we are good it's the mistakes we make that we learn from thank you thank you very much and that concludes our community comments thanks everybody for coming out or for joining us on zoom now we
063will go into our monthly reports and first up is the superintendent's report i just have a couple of items i want to mention tonight first of all um i think most people saw the announcement that we have three incredible principals who are retiring um and i just want to take this opportunity to say thank uh thank you to them for decades of service to gps and they did let us know several weeks ago so i just also want to assure the community that terry ricky at isd we have gene schmidt at costco and angela schmidt at north mianis that we are hard at work on getting the process ready um for an inclusive hiring process that will include engagement with families with staff and um we are we will make that happen to be communicating
064to those communities but i know it's there's they're all so loved um it's a big change for those communities um i will also just say uh thank you especially to dean watson our facilities um our finance sean o'keefe and his staff for working through february break um you know it's a time that sometimes it can be it's always busy for facilities definitely um but it is a time that usually you can get a little more time off um and it's it was an incredible incredible job just getting that building open for central and getting our kids back in right after the break and then last but not least um i have already set my alarm for four in the morning so i've been asked a lot what's what's going to happen tomorrow and the last
065two snow calls were so difficult that this one looks very similar and that they don't know when it's arriving they don't know if it's rain if it's sleet or it's snow so it will probably be an early morning call and i'll leave it at that that is a fun part of your job okay uh committees yes ms downey um am i on yeah um just in terms of the high school entryway um like this is partially agenda planning that um the construction drawings final plans should be before the board at our march meeting we were hoping to have it done for february but the pnz process took a little bit longer than anyone hoped so we were trying to finalize all of those details but it will be before the board in march and then
066we can move on with the state reimbursement process and hopefully going out to bid and getting the project going yes mr kelly i've got a few things so i'll try to be as quick as possible uh parks and rec uh i was given the job to be liaison with parks and loreck so i decided to do a little research into the parks and rec and luckily the chairman of parks and rec board is a old friend of mine scott johnson and he brought me up to speed on a lot of different aspects of that board what i did find out is that uh joe sisliano is the director of parks and rec and he is the one who actually does the work for us uh where the scots board the uh the board is an
067advisory board to the first selectmen so the uh as long as i've been on the board there's been questions about the service that parks and rec does for us so i've asked the first selectmen to allow me to invite the director of parks and rec to come and join us for a meeting so if we can schedule a uh sometime in the future uh joe sisliano to join us the first selectman's okay with that and i'll put it by joe and uh if he's okay with that which i'm sure he will be then we'll slot that in and we'll talk about that as agenda items later on in the in the meeting uh the next topic is the energy management advisory committee uh kathleen you passed this off to me a little while ago and
068we uh luckily uh met a few times it's a very interesting group and we have some really good news about something we're working on ashon o'keefe has uh uh worked very closely and and worked very hard on virtual net metering which is a a wonderful thing where we work with a uh a solar developer where we lease out some land and uh and actually we're going to get a sign off from legal we've already put out an rfp on it what it's going to do is save us a huge amount of of cost on our electric bill we work together with a solar developer renewable energy so it's all good stuff and it's going to be savings a big number savings for us and it's going to go on for years and years so we're
069at the early stages of it but sean is doing a tremendous job making sure that we uh that we make this happen this year we had eugene watts said put the rfp out so it really sounds exciting and could be really happening in the near future so it's a lot of fun if anybody has any questions on it please call me and i'll explain it further next one the waterfall project we just had sam bridge uh join us as far as the uh group or team of people that will be helping us clean that up in the early spring we will have a group together to just do the cleanup there nothing more than the cleanup but we'll continue along with that project uh a bit of uh fun news the uh greenwich st patrick's
070day parade is march 20th uh the board of education has secured a position in that parade uh kathleen is uh kathleen and laura making up a banner that we're going to march with and we have invited our teachers our administrators the teamsters the custodians and the trademen tradesmen security guards coaches bailey staff and everybody who has anything to do uh with our schools to march with us and be recognized by the community for their great efforts over the last two years so we're gonna have people uh uh meet at the uh havemeyer building uh we're gonna move over to town hall meet at the half of my building at one o'clock move over to town hall at two o'clock we're going to march the route of the saint patrick's day parade down greenwich avenue we're
071going to spread the word to the community to get out and cheer on those heroes who have worked for the schools and taught our kids and battled over the last couple years and hopefully the community turns out and really supports them then we're going to end up at the end of the parade down at the teen center on art street and have a little gathering down there for our teachers custodians teamsters security guards coaches voe staff and all our people so looking forward to that that's on the 20th of march st patrick's day parade greenwich um next one is the havelmeyer building uh we are working with the first selectmen to restore the building to its previous grandeur uh what we're looking to do and this is a promise by our first selectmen is to
072make sure he understands the need to get our staff better much better accommodations than they're in right now because that building is not in the best of shape so there's lots of other opportunities that first selectmen has made it a high priority for him to make sure we find over the next few years uh the the best opportunity to put our our staff and really good uh opportunity uh for them to function in a better better surroundings he is then working in public uh public private partnership uh to restore havemeyer uh he believes or they've he's announced that it's gonna cost somewhere between 25 and 50 million dollars to restore this he said he is engaged with some uh some very generous people to make sure this building gets in the center of greenwich avenue
073brought up to its uh uh where it should be so uh uh so he's uh uh he's working on that with us and uh hopefully we can get that accomplished because i don't think that we can do the proper service uh to that building where we have to really dedicate our funds and finances going forward to the school buildings rather than the administration buildings so uh he's working very closely on that one the last is the uh safety road uh where uh had made some submissions to wetlands and moving forward on that project uh that's all i got kathleen well that is a lot i think um on havamir i think that might have to i i know it has to formally come before the board so let's talk about that for agenda planning purposes
074um and with sorry any other michael joseph do you have a committee update i do how about now there's that sounds okay um so the strategic plan committee met um yesterday we continued to move forward with the timeline that the board reviewed at our last meeting recall there are two different groups here as part of strategic plan there's the strategic plan committee which is obviously the board um and then there's the leadership team led by dr jones and the administrators um throughout the throughout the district that team the leadership team met as well and have started work on the strategic on their aspect of strategic plan they do a lot of because we want them to have ownership of it they're doing a lot of the work on the ground whereas the strategic while as
075the strategic the board strategic plan committee uh provides some oversight and and ideas so for example yesterday at our meeting we talked about chapters two and three of the book strategies in action uh which is providing a lot of the basis for the the timeline that we rolled out last week last month uh particularly around what kind of data we'd want the strategic plan to look at um and some other ideas around that as the timeline continues over the next month as far as next steps the leadership team is going to be identifying some of the major issues that if if addressed will help us as a system over the next five years more fully realize the existing vision of the graduate and then look at a root cause analysis of those issues of obviously
076this is all moving along towards our june deadline of trying to have so those two to three stretch goals uh for us to review at our june retreat to guide us over the next five years excellent anyone else going once twice no okay um so we don't have any discussion items tonight we're going straight into action and it's all things central which is very appropriate given uh given the state of the building but it's also great that we're sitting here tonight and that um that the administration and thank you so much dan mr healey who i i think i've mentioned before i have a child here and he was out directing traffic um the week that we were going to three different schools and he was just he was really remarkable and but i know
077everyone's happy to be back and uh so with that let's talk about central downey yeah i just you know am i on i can't okay um my my one concern is just the order that we have these listed on our agenda feels a little backwards because it kind of jumps it kind of chronologically i don't know if there's a way to or just open and have a discussion of central without having motions first on what we're doing in the fiscal year 23 budget versus what we're doing for an interim request is just a question it's funny the bet actually specifically for monday asked us to do it this way okay that's why which is kind of why it feels a little backwards because i'm a chronological thinker so do you care what i mean do
078you have a preference well so so just for process then maybe we have the discussion and then we do all like well we need to get it on the table because they are action items so i think let's just follow the process i'm sorry that's right and then um i'm happy to put it on the table if you want or i'll put on as a budget that a motion that we take 2.5 million dollars in the fiscal year 23 budget requests we have made to the bet take it out of central building envelope masonry and change it to architecture and engineering for central middle school in the 23 budget sorry are you looking at the whole motion there's three aspects of this motion i know that that's why i i was i think it's again
079i think it's a little unwieldy personally um and because i also have well okay i've put the motion on the table okay sorry second it okay i mean the problem i have with doing it this is why i said it's a little backwards is taking out feasibility money until we know that we're going to have feasibility money on an interim basis seems not wise i mean the bet can perfectly take the feasibility money out of next year's budget on their own if they've granted it but i think until we have that money it would not be a wise move by this board to delete our request i don't know my colleagues think about that go ahead karen so just to clarify for for those of us you're suggesting that instead of reducing our capital requests
080uh fy 23 capital request by the amount needed for the feasibility study for fy23 not physical for the okay instead of us approving uh our request to modify the fy 23 capital request before we have approved the funding for a feasibility study or what have you later on on our agenda and or before it has been approved by the bet is there a way that we could position uh maybe not our motion or whatever saying that if it is if the feasibility is approved for 20 you know an interim request is approved for this year that we would then automatically ask to have the money removed for the following year so that we're not doubling down with the same we're not asking for this i understand what the bt wants but i also think until
081we have an approval for feasibility money from them and from the rtm we shouldn't be deleting our request for next year until we have approval in the current fiscal year would be their understanding that if they approve the feasibility that they could then remove it from the net you know fy twenty they can they can remove it on their own if they approve it for this year so just to clarify the motion on the table is to pull ahead the cfs design request from fiscal year 25 to fiscal year 23 in the amount of two and a half and then reduce the cms amount around masonry and so that the capital overall request is obviously a net zero for fiscal year 23 but it's shifting one item to another but you're not including just for
082everyone's clarity number one on the motion and i understand the concept for why you're not and i think that i suspect bet members are hearing us loud and clear and that's probably something that they would be comfortable doing on their own but i understand now why you made the motion that way and then in addition on number two when we say we're pulling it from 25 to 23 that just goes on we're only really making our 23 requests right now um so that's why it's not really a pulling it forward it's taking the 2.5 out of masonry for 23 turning it into a e in terms of making it a line item in the capital budget so that we are actually asking the bet and the rtm for no extra money in fiscal year 23.
083and in fact if we take out the 250 we'll be asking for less i agree um sorry i should give it a turn this is why i said it's convoluted i i should turn it over to sean just if he wants to weigh in on that because i see him here and then let's keep the discussion going first first of all i think the reason why we're having this conversation is because the order is all screwed up thank you christine you're absolutely right okay so we could find if everyone's comfortable moving to the next i was just okay so let's table the motion there are be team members who are texting saying they did not direct any particular order leslie tarkington for the bet budget committee did oh okay so i'm not making this up
084but anyway um so i'm fine with switching it that's just why the order had come this way but so let's let's would you like to withdraw your motion happy to would you like to make another motion for another item on the uh thing give me a moment um i'd like to start with a motion to approve an a request an interim request for repairs at central middle school in the amount of 940 i'm happy to second that motion so just um the budget committee sean will speak more of this was presented without figures just the concepts here of and and dan and sean i think are best served to explain both the bridging which is our where we are now and our repair process so i would turn it to the experts okay in the
085the detail underneath the cover sheet there's a first chart entitled emergency cost so let me take you through that so we have a total of 717 uh thousand dollars 141 of emergency costs related to the the uh the closure of the school and the bridging activity that took place over the last two weeks so if you look at the top we have werner that did the original bridging installation it was 264 thousand uh there was an additional change order to add to the bridging that added 142 000 on walls a b and c uh there was additional lighting requested for 206 000 uh in order to get everything done so that the students could return by february 22nd there was some overtime incurred by wernet to the tune of about 40 000 and then finally
086uh there was some installation of some gravel uh to replace mud and dirt to make it safer around the areas so the total for the bridging was 662 000. 141. related costs we have uh fifty thousand dollars for diversified technology consultants for construction management uh the bid process the putting the bid package together and also uh approximately five thousand dollars for uh project management uh for from a vendor csg so it adds up to 717 thousand dollars we do have uh we do have available uh capital funding for masonry uh 436 000 from it's in central middle school already available to do this and another 235 in district wide so we're utilizing 671 000 of available masonry capital money to uh pay for the 717 um the the remaining 46 000 we have added to
087the interim request which you'll see on the next chart so if you can flip to the next chart thank you so the estimate for the repairs is 860 058 trade and labor materials 607 000. 30 000 for general conditions overhead insurance and profit 75 contingency at 121. uh architectural and engineering and consulting costs 27 000 total repairs 860 000. uh add to that the 46 000 that i mentioned was not covered by the existing capital funding from the previous chart transportation costs for the week of february 7th through 11th to transport the students from central to the three schools that were involved and uh some police over time related to traffic so that the total of everything is 939 rounded we rounded up to 940 thousand dollars as the request any questions mr kelly yes
088thank you a little feedback nice uh hey dan can i ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind sir go ahead john thanks dan as as many don't know maybe some do you and i have worked together uh before i'm very confident in your abilities and your experience uh and uh and i also watched the way you worked and you tend to uh to be on the side even though you've got a lot of responsibilities outside this job itself uh did you spend a a fair amount of time supervising this specific project absolutely uh these numbers uh in your opinion and i trust your opinion i just want to hear from you not that i don't trust shawn's numbers but sean is a is in a different location going over the numbers where
089you're actually boots on the ground well these these are interchangeable sean and i spent and dr jones uh spent a lot of time on this uh we're very comfortable with the numbers um these are our estimates we look to putting it out for bid soon we're hoping we don't have another eastern civic center issue i don't think we will we've been in contact with the the engineer who put a uh cost estimate together for us i've been speaking with a few contractors uh the products that were listed to be used seem to be all uh available fairly quickly so there shouldn't be any delivery issues um so we're we're pretty good that was exactly my question you're good with these numbers yes thank you this costume so the the hundred and i'm not a construction
090expert i don't play one on tv um so the um contingency if that's not utilized i assume that just doesn't get spin and is then added to added to what happens to that it's returned okay anyone else uh kathleen can i ask a question oh of course sorry cody i i just a question for dan again um in one of our previous meetings dan can hear me right he can yes uh in one of our previous meetings i'd asked dan if he if he had a view on whether julian curtis or central should be a higher priority and i believe his answer i don't want to get it wrong it was recorded so we can double check but his answer was that he couldn't provide a view on that i just wanted to see in
091light of uh recent events at central if dan if you have a uh a perspective on uh priorities as it relates to central versus julian curtis yeah i think you better check the tape because i've always said central was priority for me even before the board prioritized things four years ago so um in an open public forum i i definitely now would say central without doubt needs to go first uh just because of the shape of the building you know it's not a it's not a crumbling heap but some people may see it the building definitely needs help and i i hope we move forward with it right no thank you that's helpful i'm glad i asked so we could clarify that that's very helpful yes okay so um we currently have scaffolding up around
092the building and obviously that's going to stay until the work is done is there a line item here for the cost for that scaffolding on a rental basis so my understanding is that there was a rental cost for that scaffolding to stay at like 25 to 35 000 a month or something is that incorporated here in the top line the trade labor and material cost okay so that includes the work that's going to be done plus the ongoing rental costs to keep the scaffolding up as the construction work is done to be able to remove that at some point correct right that's correct anyone else did you want to that's a good question karen how many months does that assume then if you don't mind me in that in the 607 do you know dan
093sorry i believe it uh is a 60-day rental so assume two months so if we're assuming two months it was put in in mid-february that goes to mid-april is that long enough because the the original cost was through june 30 for the rental of the equipment the additional two months is figured in as well but the original cost was through june 30. so basically for the summer work you have the extra 60 days got it correct yes okay so the expectation for this work would be to start it the day after school gets out and i'm making that assumption that's question one and then if that's the case then how long do we anticipate this work taking how long this work will take place assuming the paperwork isn't is in place meaning contracts approvals permits
094we would start the day after school if there's some preliminary work that we can start we will do it sooner but we're we're looking at a 60-day cycle for their work um it probably less than that weather permitting we should be very quick and then the next question i had was for dr jones um and forgive me for not knowing this but does this have any impact on any summer school activities that would otherwise happen at cms over over the course of the summer yes it does um this summer will be complex in figuring out our facilities but we we will get it figured out um cms was supposed to host our summer school as well as we last summer had to share with park and rec uh for their programming because the high school
095campus is also closed in the summer for soil um so i'm working with matter of fact just even today we went back and forth with park and rec and we will find a solution with our other buildings so uh yes go ahead michael joseph yeah so so i think it's probably unless i'm missing something which i think i am the um maybe it would make sense to walk through so it sounds like we we did work over the last week to make sure that um the building was safe but there is more work that needs to be done this summer can we dan could you explain what you know for the community i think that's important to to understand why the building's safe now but there's still more that has to be done to keep
096it safe i'll make it perfectly clear we did no work the only thing that was done was we put in sidewalks gaffin like you'd see in new york in front of buildings there was no remedial work done whatsoever that work is we should have those design plans in place by i wanted him today we're probably looking at monday it's going to go out for bid um we should have those numbers back within three to four weeks at which point we'll go to a contract and we'll start day after school but as at this point there's been no work done on the buildings okay and can i ask i assume there is a reason we don't want to do construction and i think i know the answer since again well it's it's very it's the process
097is going to be very noisy um obviously we don't want to do it when the kids are in school we looked at doing after school work unfortunately with the noise ordinance in town we wouldn't be able to get a full work day out of it it would have prolonged the work obviously prolong the cost overtime costs with the school being safe and able to be occupied it makes more sense to do it in the summer make sense to me any other questions on this particular item okay so the motion on the table was to approve the interim funding for five year repair solution at cms in the amount of 940 000 all in favor mr kettle yes that passes eight zero thank you dan where do you think you're going you're gonna be right back
098up here okay miss downey do you want to put another motion on the table oh you want me to uh okay just give me a moment here okay i'm gonna make a motion that the board make a request for interim funding to create central middle school educational specs specifications and conduct environmental testing in the amount of and fifty thousand dollars i'm happy to second that would you like to i think doctor jones maybe you could talk to that um sure so one thing that we have to have is our ed spec that the board of education actually approves before we request the building committee to be put together from the first selectmen and what this will allow us to do is to we're trying to fast track which i think everybody agrees with and have
099a different approach right at the very beginning of the project one of the things that the master plan did is did test fit we did renderings so we don't feel like um staff don't feel like we need to go and do that piece all over again we would rather get our ed spec together which is based on the space that you need for a middle school a lot of that is boilerplate we know we need an auditorium we know we need a gym it's like the ghost of cms folks keep going you want me to keep going oh goodness okay um so at the very beginning um generally we would when we do feasibility it takes a full year we we approve the feasibility money we then form a feasibility committee we go through and
100we create renderings again they're just renderings um we get the ed spec and then the following year you come back and ask for the actual funding um for the design so what we're trying to do is cut off a year on this project and we feel very good about doing it in the sense that we we do have test fit we do have renderings um so we we've looked at this property pretty extensively from that perspective but we do need the ed spec and one thing that we will make sure is when we're doing the ed spec you know we get input from the community we get input from teachers you meet with the pe department and the music department and you know what are the spaces that that need to be in the building
101and i will say if you haven't looked in the master plan if you look in there it actually has the model program it has our current program you can actually see almost what you're going to get when you go and do an ad spec it's pretty much the same thing um so it is um that step and i have to say it's i know again this is being confusing with the paperwork but the mapping for that is was on the back of the one you just looked at so this is a timeline again it was on the one you looked at before this motion and this timeline is just to help people understand um you know how the process works and if you actually look at the very beginning where it's read and you'll see
102for february and march that's where we're i'm trying to look at getting an aggressive again just the ed spec together so that down on the very bottom of that you'll see the rfp we can get that ready we can start getting our building committee ready so that uh once the board you know has that ed spec approved we can ask the first selectmen to also because it you know he has to interview and go through the process to put the building committee together um then the design money that you have asked for is right up at the top which is number two and you can see that it goes from you know left to right you see what's in green and we need the design part of the design completed as well as things like
103a 10-year projection for enrollment in order to have what we need to submit to the state if we're going to get reimbursement for the project so to do that by june of 22 is just impossible we could not do that between now and june so that means our target date we have to make is june of 23. so a full year we feel like we'll be able to get what we need um submitted and through that design process which is what you see with the red the big bar in the middle um and then you see the little star at the end that's when we're going to submit it and after that is submitted the next thing that you'll see is in december we then hopefully are on the priority list for the state and
104then behind that once we get approval and there'll be work that's going on while we're waiting on the approval um the yellow to the right i mean you can't really see it oh there you go um it's a 20-month uh construction and once we get approval that's when you put the shovel in the ground and again this is based on state requirement so it's really a meshing the greenwich process along with a state requirement um so that we get reimbursement because it is you know a large project and then once the building is constructed the last thing you have is the demolition which is the orange so on this actual timeline and i know some people are going to say this feels slow but again it's it's the process we have to live with if
105we're getting reimbursement it would open somewhere around um i'm just trying to read my chart it's too tiny what uh january january i think 2026. thank you january of 26th so can i can i ask you a question this does feel like the fact that this is us expediting it is kind of incredible to me um and that you know so i think about it admittedly i have a fourth grader so my fourth grader would would i guess she'd be here eighth grade in january which is that's remarkable having said that so i have to ask the question the reimbursement rate is well interesting enough as i was working on this uh this afternoon with csg if it's totally built as new it's probably going to be closer to 10 instead of 20. so i
106don't know if that would make a difference but you're talking about millions of you know dollars you would be leaving on the table so you're like talking like six to twelve million dollars is what we're looking at basically to accelerate to to add a year in theory correct okay that made a lot of hands go off i'm sorry lori you were next constant so is there no way to proceed more quickly and then ask for reimbursement later no no just i will tell you just because we're doing it on the high school entryway project it is a very precise prescribed process there is no wiggle room that if you have to wait you know if you have to put your application in in june of 23 and wait till you can't go out to bid
107until you get your state approval of your project what if they don't approve it or do they always approve it i mean that's a good question i mean i mean are we waiting a year for for money that may not materialize well i think isn't that really a question for the bet and the rtm in terms of like we can approve the project right but we don't have to you know if they said we will fund the project we don't care about state reimbursement we're entitled to go full steam ahead right or the building committee would then have the mandate to do that but i don't think that's a decision we can make and i think it's also setting realistic expectations you would be cutting off months not a year or two i mean there's
108a lot of work that goes into building a school so i'm just looking at the grant application process being quite quite lengthy i mean a year so that's you know is that 6 million is it 12 million i don't know what that time but while you're waiting on that there's still work that's taking place you know so they're still getting ready i mean there's a lot of work that's that can still take place um and i'm happy to add more to this timeline if the board wants a little deeper dive but but it doesn't cut it's not going to cut off a lot a lot of time so i just want to be realistic about that yeah and just to your point laura knowing there's a june like if for if you keep it on
109the state reimbursement track then that's a june 23 deadline so it keeps the a e process moving quickly without that deadline now seeing on my current building committee things can drag out so then you don't have kind of this then maybe a e doesn't get done until september and you see whether you actually save time obviously no one really knows but i don't think there's a guarantee of saving the time mr kelly from what i understand there's still some money owed from the state from when they built old greenwich school so i think we have to consider that there is going to be payment in arrears i'm joking about that because i was 120 years ago but uh but but i was like joe i think you're a little confused but basically what we do
110in the the bet and town has to be prepared uh for paying for it and we have to then request what we're entitled to make them aware of what we believe we're entitled to and then we get reimbursed given that we get reimbursed so the bottom line is we have to have the money from the bet to do the project and we'll explain to the bet we expect to get this much make sure we do our our procedures properly and then we will then after or at some point after we've already started we will then get reimbursed that's how i understand the process to work am i correct as far as you guys know yes and sean i know that um you worked them closely on the other reimbursement students welcome to speak to that
111that would be helpful so if i understood what you said you're saying that you could proceed with bet funding and then and then uh go with go with the reimbursement later did i understand that that's the uh the question i had asked i believe with new lebanon that's how they proceeded no no you'd the bet would have to commit the funding um before you even apply for a grant correct that's what i think i was saying that we we start the process we pay for it we get moving and then we request the money from the state but i think you have to wait you have to wait for the approval from the state before you actually start the construction so there is a delay yes karen um i think dr jones you said something
112about if we rebuild it's if we build new it's 10 or if we do something you said it's 20. did i hear that right and can you just explain that a little bit yeah it's right around 20 if you were just coming in to renovate but we would not recommend that we even attempt that with this building it needs to be a new building if it's brand new um and i think they do that probably to try to encourage you know school districts um to try to renovate buildings versus just knocking them down and building new but we would not recommend that for this building michael joseph karen oh sorry you were just advocating for her hand okay got it karen so and you know it's sean um and or dan i know you guys
113have been involved in this for quite a few buildings within our district uh over the years and know how long it can take to build a school and i know how quickly we can move when uh motivated and the needs are are met i saw the difference between ham av and glenville and the speed with which things were done so i know i know what can happen uh but realistically you know if we are waiting for the state you know what as laura asked i know the question becomes is what kind of guarantee do we have that we will get reimbursed um you know this does fall in line i think with what the state would reimburse for um but you're in the history of time you guys have been involved have we ever been
114turned down when we've asked for reimbursement as as a matter of fact we've been turned down twice for the entryway project because the paperwork was not complete i do believe once you have completed paperwork it will get processed so i don't believe that the risks are high that we would not get reimbursed you know christina so provided that we submit the proper paperwork just it goes to your question so the my understanding is you have to be on this you have to apply you get on the state priority list but to laura's point there's no guarantee that we get on that priority list in which event we we're waiting and we don't get reimbursement but i think that's a decision that has to be made like is it worth waiting for x million of dollars
115um and i think you know we certainly talked about this in the budget committee meeting with our be you know a number of our bet colleagues were at the meeting and it's seen this timeline and are aware of the process okay so the let me just get back to the question quickly you know is there a possibility that we would have an indication from the state whether the likelihood is that we would land on that list and if we land on that list then the likelihood is if we don't mess up our paperwork and make sure our teaser you know eyes are dot and our t's are crossed that uh it will go through because the question then is is you know we've had other projects that we're sitting and waiting with uh you know
116baited breath for the state to get back to us and they haven't and they haven't and they haven't um and so i just don't want the students and staff of central to be waiting like other schools have been waiting for fields access roads etc absolutely you know i think if you look at the buildings there's you know the likelihood that it could be slow absolutely that's just the way things unfortunately work through the governmental process and if you look at um when we first started sean and i both i know um leslie moriarty and leslie tarkin shared with us that we had some outstanding and then we had glenville you know we had ham ab we had misa and but once we actually processed that paperwork very quickly they were they were pretty fast to
117get those reimbursements um but it is an ongoing process because sometimes they'll deem things ineligible and you're going to want to kind of you know go back to them and ask for clarification so it is a long process and they tend to do it in tranches instead of just giving you one big reimbursement i'll take some back i'm happy to take some even if it's not all but slum is good it's downing yeah just like for example on new lebanon um there were periods of time we had progress payments from the state along but then there's when the project finishes out there's a final audit and that process i believe takes it a year could be two years could be several years so that last chunk of money you typically are waiting for for a
118while in terms of reimbursement i'm less worried about the time waiting for the full reimbursement than to get our go-ahead to start putting a shovel on the ground once we as a board uh have approved our ed specs and the the other town bodies have approved the you know the whole process on our end that's all i think i just really need to appreciate if we're talking six million dollars how much what do you how much time are you giving up because if it's a year i think we're having a conversation if it's a few months and that's what you're implying maybe we're focusing too much on something here that's not that important is that fair i would say that's fair i think the timeline that we've said is realistic and uh when we're waiting
119on that approval there are there's still a lot of things that we can be doing i also would like to point out joe i don't know if you'll remember this but we pulled the fields one time from our capital request because we said that maybe one point we will be rebuilding central and i think it's um important that we did that because it's likely we will be building the new building somewhere on the fields so happy we uh that was not some cost if you miss harsh so i i think that would be that's an actually a very good point that you just made kathleen and i don't remember if it's under uh this or number or letter c um for the interim request because i know you uh dr jones had mentioned not uh
120doing the feasibility study which is something we've done with many of our other schools as she noted there was a lot of detailed information that we would find in the master facility plan and for many who haven't had access to see that i don't know if you just want to just give a 10 second overview i i went went back and read through everything there uh you know there are images it varies specifically uh and i can read the language because i pulled it up specifically stating that they did not recommend that we renovate this building that it was very little worth uh saving and it would be in there in our best interest to build a new facility and then it recommended locations so i don't know if you want to just because for
121some that may not have seen it uh yeah i think you captured it and they actually had the building kind of right behind this one and dan feel free to chime in if you if you want to speak to that but where it would sit on whether or not that works or not that's one reason and we've added in some of this environmental and you might want dan to speak to what that environmental would be used for because it is some soil work but it's not the typical soil work we do in greenwich so the as far as where the placement of the school would be i think that's that's open to interpretation by whoever the design team is going to be um and i think kg and d uh who did the master plan
122felt it would be best to put it directly behind the school because there was some there was some talk about you know you saving as much of the field as possible because fields are precious here in greenwich um everybody knows that we have a shortage of fields that's why we were talking about turf fields whatever um but as as far as i'm sorry what was the you wanted me to answer it was the it's talking about the um the soil a lot of people seem to think of polluted soil but so we we've done some preliminary studies on the field when we were looking at are we going to put in a field are we going to put in a turf field is it going to be a hybrid field that was you know um
123border bed banter two years ago so there was some preliminary stuff um we're not going to have the same problem as we have at the high school there's probably some contaminants probably some natural contaminants arsenic whatever that may have to be tested may have to be removed so we do need to do the testing the other items we have to look at is uh drainage um is the is the field suitable to maintain a new building in what part of the building you know can we put a parking lot out there all those things will be uh answered when we do some kind of test and you know it's uh it could we could end up building a a new building in the far corner maybe we maybe we put it where in the other
124far corner or right next to the school these are the kind of tests that will give us the best locations and it'll also drive what type of construction it's going to be you know what kind of footing so you have to you know do we have to put the building on piles maybe you know maybe we go vertical which to me i think is the way to go uh but i have a little say in that design so just for clarification purposes what we have from master the master facility plan and work done by kg d the soil work that we had done when we were looking and uh we're approving the fields here um is a good start but we are saving a good 250 000 by not and time as well by not
125doing the feasibility study which is is also a savings and trying to expedite the process but we have pretty much what we would need to get ed specs uh done and find an appropriate location if we approve that funding i don't think the location is part of the ed spec i think the spec is just the contents of the building right but for the interim funding that we're asking for is for looking at correct soil and placement as well as yes so we everything else we have okay thank you that's all i was just trying to confirm okay so i guess mine is a follow-on question to karen's which is how do we get the 150 000 number my understanding from prior discussions is that we were we could get ed specs for like 15
126000 which i thought was a little on the light side for what that would cost so i'm curious how we priced and how we came up with the number for 150 and think that that's suitable go ahead you know it's it's not a it's not an exact number we have to put some kind of not to exceed numbers together when we have engineers come out we may have we may find some spots where they're going to say it's absolutely not suitable to build a building in this location and we have to go to another spot so we're going to end up doing quite a few holes out in that field and it could you know we we could find uh we could find some issues some environmental issues so that's it's just a really jumping
127off point i think we're going to spend every dollar of it um but there's no i don't have five different estimates to go by and it says we picked the highest one okay so [Music] we could be back here asking for more money then at some point for this particular item i i don't think i think it's a pretty decent number you know i've talked to a few different environmental and a few different structural companies got some ideas of what it would cost but we haven't done anything yet okay so what i've built in a little bit more on top understood so the finished product that we would be getting for roughly the 150 000 is the ed spec plus um a preliminary assessment on where we could actually put a building based upon the
128soil testing we're doing that's a that's a pretty broad stroke but yeah we're going to get information that will allow the professionals to say this is the best place to go okay yeah because i understood i guess from the our you know architect and engineering component i i figured the engineering piece of that also included where best to place the building based upon the information we had we're gonna we're trying to jump ahead of that in by providing the professionals with that information so this is one of those time saving uh initiatives well we do like time saving initiatives mr kelly just to further elaborate on this point with the as we accelerate this process we're eliminating some redundancies we're making allowances for some of the redundancies which we had in the past in case
129we have to revisit those so basically if we do not have to do the redundancy the waste that we've had in the past by taking an extra step that we might not have had to take then this 150 thousand dollars will be considerably less we would hope correct okay so on the point of expediency is there anything else we can do now that in order to help our a e folks later my own opinion i think i think we need to i mean obviously this is the type of project that's going to need a building committee and i think we really need to get the right people on the building committee um to help us expedite things through get people who have the expertise in certain things legal architectural building department representatives from the school
130all have the same goal uh i i don't know if how many of you have been on a building committee but there's sometimes the building committees just don't they don't jive and you end up with meetings that don't amount to much um i think the building committee that's doing the the the entrance is they're they're working well together uh you're seeing some pitfalls that are happening if we could maybe steal some of your people uh so we can work through some of those pitfalls but it's you know i'm just i'm just saying there's there's some really good people who would really i i think enjoy doing this kind of thing and this is gonna be this is going to be i don't want to say like the crowning jewel of greenish but this is going
131to be you know a big talk for the next couple of years i think and and you know we're also reminded how well the new lebanon building committee did right they came in on the budget all the time i mean you've got a beautiful there's a beautiful building there people work together i i think there was some issues in the very beginning not with the building committee but with the whole process so the state part actually right there's a learning curve there so if that building committee can meet with other building committees that would be huge i think it's important there is a fair amount of over there are a few overlaps from new lab to the high school entryway i'm not going to name it i think we all do so that that's you
132know and get an idea of where we can get the where we can put the building you know get a strong enough building committee that can drive the architect every architect wants to put their own stink on thing but but if we've got if you have an idea of what we want let's put it down on paper you know i'm putting together some kind of standardization for some of the equipment and materials that we want in the buildings that'll help me in the you know at the end that we have some some parity across the district we don't have any uh if we put in the same type of air conditioning system we have in some of the other schools there's no learning curve for the people in the building all that stuff plays into
133it if we know good products tell the architect engineers hey we're using this this is what we want that's going to save time and money no and i think you made a very good point dan we this is going to be a very special and hopefully wonderful school that we will have well for at least 100 years and um you know as a result there should be a lot of community engagement on this topic because it'll be very important and something i know that we'll all be really proud of in the end so anything else on this particular item okay so do you want to i think we all know the item on the table did cody want to ask oh sorry cody did you have a question on this particular item or no no
134i think we all know where all these central votes are going to land so you never know cody okay nothing else to hold us up so the uh motion on the table is to approve the request for interim funding to create cms ed specs and conduct environmental testing in the amount of 150 000 all in favor that passes eight zero thank you okay we're going to go to the other essential item but i just wanted to make a point of distinction now so these two interim items will of course go to the bet next week for their approval and i have to give my shout out to them they have been really um kind and are willing to meet and pivot quickly and so the budget committee will be meeting at 10 o'clock on monday
135and then of course the full bet will meet on tuesday morning at nine o'clock to vote these and at the same time i of course was keeping up with the rtm and alexis was uh quite accommodating too she said that of course we could put our resolutions in tomorrow in order to make the call and that it would be subject to bet approval so that it would also be on their march call so hopefully everything's lining up in terms of order and approvals so now the next item we're going to talk about will only go to the vet because it's change in 23 capital well eventually it'll go to the rtm but obviously that's part of the budget process okay so miss downey i do over okay that we modify our fiscal year 23 capital
136request to change um i had it all written the amount from cms building envelope um christina can i help yes please i had it on a different piece of paper and i've been moving them all around thank you sean um the the uh the motion is to modify the board of ed capital request for full year 23 as follows number one in anticipation of approval of a current year interim for cms ed specs and environmental testing to reduce the requested full year 23 budget for cms feasibility in the amount of 250 250 000 reduce it to zero number two to pull ahead the cms design funds from full year 25 to full year 23 in the amount of 2.5 million dollars and then number three to offset the pull ahead of the 2.5 million dollars
137reduced 2.5 million from the cms masonry uh item in capital from 2.971 million to 471 000. i'll second it and nobody i don't think we wanted to take the 250 i didn't think you did that's not the motion you wanted to make sorry sean sorry sean no but i mean that's what's that's what's in the uh in the cover sheet so you want to eliminate one of those that's fine do you want me to make the motion i think i have it or karen do you have it yeah do you want to just do it i can do it well i guess here's my question is do you want to do it with about pulling ahead from 25 to 23. i think it was too complicated i'd rather do go ahead christine i think you
138got it there we go i found the piece of paper um i'm gonna make a motion that we modify our fiscal year 23 capital request to move 2.5 million dollars out of central middle school building envelope masonry and it changed that amount instead to a request for architectural and engineering for central middle school perfect i'll second that finally discussion on this matter miss hirsch sorry i was just confirming so that i had the motion proper because you know kind of got it sean i don't know if you want to talk about um how changing or the number for central middle school building envelope masonry um the impact of that just to so that people are clear that what it's now going to be 471 000. you or dan maybe the amount that's in there is
1392 971 000 for cms masonry for full year 23. we would be reducing that to 471 000 reduction of 2.5 million dollars 2.5 million would move to to uh to cms uh architectural and engineering and but that would still leave us some money for masonry work uh 471 thousand dollars to the extent we need to do any other minor issues in the building next year correct that's correct okay can i ask a question so it begs the question then so we just we don't need this additional two and a half million because we did a lot of the masonry work now but that was only 740 000 or so if i'm remembering correctly so are we somehow underfunding the entire masonry amount by doing this no when we when we did the initial review a
140couple years ago we we had some preliminary drawings that showed a much more extensive replacement uh instead of drilling holes through the building and putting supports in there were designs of removing the outside skin of the auditorium the gymnasium putting in carbon fiber supports um pretty extensive uh those drawings we only went to about 40 percent and then we started looking at the crack monitoring um and that's where we're at today is that the the design of the i don't want to call them temporary repairs but the repairs that we're going to undertake this summer are not as extensive five-year like you say it's because it's in a five-year emergency plan if you will okay miss downey and i and i think i think i said it earlier but in mcconnell that basically what this
141means is our capital request for fiscal year 23 vis-a-vis central middle school is the exact same dollar amount they're just two different line items a smaller amount for masonry and the architectural engineering which amount to the same amount that was requested before any other questions on this matter okay and i think we got the motion right i'm not going to repeat it so seeing no other questions i'm calling this to vote all in favor cody yes okay 8-0 thank you very much okay that concludes central and again this will also be discussed um with the bet this is not something that goes to the rtm yeah because it's just a change in budget and so then it'll be rolled up in their consolidation process okay next up can i get a motion from anyone on
142the new courses ms hirsch to get this on the table i move that we approve the two new courses at ghs as presented happy to second that just okay discussion ms hirsch um i had a quick question i don't know if dr carabillo is is on but um one of the things that i noted um [Music] as being offered as part of this course is an honors option but there's really no mention as to what that entails do you have details on that sorry i do not have any details on that but that would be the work that we would do during the summer to make sure that we had that option in there okay another question an honors class for honors for what well actually both of them uh have honors list honors options
143listed oh and i didn't realize that the african american one did as well but that would be the work that we would do this summer to see where it could be accelerated so to confirm for both courses the work would have to be this summer but i did not want the teachers to do additional work until it was approved okay the second one is an honors course the first uh course yeah the american studies offers and honors options it's getting a little late for me that's why i'm sorry miss hersh sorry miss kowalski sure so um my questions uh pertain to the um black and latino studies class and i've gone through this fairly extensively look and i think overall um i think it's a great course it's a great elective when we heard from
144a student tonight that's looking forward to taking it and um contrary to comments tonight i i too am looking forward to taking this class i i hope it's earlier in the morning for scheduling purposes but um whenever it is i'm happy to attend um the question i have though is and this still remains unclear to me as to why we need to take the curriculum that was put forward by cirque as it's written i've looked at the statute i understand that it is a requirement that this class is offered for the next year and that's clear as day what i don't see in this statute and what i is that we are required to take the curriculum that they've provided which is you know a fairly detailed day by day course by course without having
145gone through our own curriculum committee and that's unclear to me as to why we're just accepting this rather than it going through our own uh curriculum committee as required by our policies all of the um activities that are in this particular course are just recommended activities they are not required activities and teachers always have the opportunity to take a look at what is being recommended and then use from that recommendation what they feel is most appropriate for those students in front of them it is used as a guide um and the circ the people that worked on it at circ are all educators or administrators and administrators or educators as well and all of the materials and which i think is really important have been vetted and all of the uh information is correct so
146i think that it's a really good curriculum to look at to really try it out for the first year and then as we see that we need to maybe move things around but it's built to build upon one another as what students are learning each next chapter or whatever it is that we're following each section builds upon what the students have currently learned or learned previously so that it really is is a very good project that was done look no disagreement on some of what you said but i think last time that we met the understanding i had i think what we were told is that this actually couldn't be changed and what i'm hearing tonight is it can be changed it's a guide it's a guidepost for which we can use and so it
147goes back to my original question which is we have policies and procedures in place as to how curriculum is to be vetted and it should be gone through the curriculum committee and they should vet it and then it come they vote on it and then it comes to the board and we haven't undertaken that process here so my concern is one why we haven't done that and two why aren't we doing that the teachers at the high school have looked at it and they have they do think that it is an appropriate course they are going to be receiving some training in april and in the summer and if there are changes that they really believe need to be made i'm sure that that will be uh appropriate for them to make those changes but
148wouldn't that be that would be a curriculum change that is within the board's uh policy it has to come to the board to make that change and the curriculum has been been presented to you as presented and this is your opportunity to share with us what your opinions are and then you have an opportunity to vote on it i just overall look i think you know there are there's a lot of great content in this class and i don't disagree with with most of it i don't disagree really with with any of it i just i think that there is some strong political i had a lot ideology in this in certain of the uh i don't know what you call blocks that are being provided that falls outside of what you know the granite
149schools of t are teaching and for that matter what we've set approved as a board is the proper curriculum uh for our students and so i have you know i have concerns in in that regard and i have concerns that it just this hasn't gone through the process of the curriculum committee it hasn't been brought to the curriculum committee which is pursuant to our policy we are a policy driven board that follows process and we're not following process here and that's my concern and if we don't follow process here where else are we not going to follow process and i think it's a bad precedent for this board to go outside of our procedure in approving something which is why we have a curriculum committee i will have a conversation with dr jones to see
150if there is a way that we can formalize that process that the teachers held at the high school on this course and see what we can bring back to you look and i understand that we need to put this into the course handbook and if i recall from our last meeting the concern was to have it approved before it goes into the course handbook um i have no problem putting this course in the course handbook and making a vote tonight and modifying the motion to say subject to the curriculum going through the curriculum committee and coming to the board for a vote in that matter following our process and procedures as have been outlined and been in place for quite some time so i have no problem doing that i think we are a process
151driven board and we need to follow our process otherwise i don't know why we have so many policies in place and why i currently sit on the policy committee and spend needless hours reading and modifying and making sure that we're doing the right thing if we're not going to follow our policies michael joseph yeah i think i think it's important i'll just speak for me the um but i think it's important that um it's clear that uh i'm certainly not saying and i know karen isn't either but i'm certainly not saying that a a black and latino history course isn't important to offer absolutely it's important the um i think what we need to recognize here is that this is coming to the board in a set of very unusual circumstances right this is a
152state legislation um the state has mandated this course okay um then the state has created this curriculum sounds like a lot of very thoughtful people spent a lot of time ten committees according to the report spent a lot of time drafting the curriculum by that very nature of the process there's a lot in the curriculum that has that makes the curriculum the curriculum guide and i hear what what dr carabell is saying about it being a guide um a little problematic um in certain aspects um one is the the breadth of the curriculum i'll just give you an example the um in if you read through the whole document in september there are two units in the month of september there are eight learning objectives and there are 37 big ideas um that's that's very
153hard to cover in any kind of um um thoughtful matter i looked through the scope and sequence over the course of the 10 months and i didn't see time in there for review i didn't see actual time in there for assessments because the curriculum is so jam-packed by its very nature that guy teachers are going to have to make thoughtful decisions about what to include and what not to include um secondly there are aspects of um there are some of those lessons on each on different different individual lessons that cover um controversial topics great i'm all for teaching of controversial topics they um we need to teach our students how to look at different sides of an issue and develop their own opinion of it it is unclear the way some of those topics are
154structured in a lesson that different sides of the controversial topic are presented in a way for students to make up their own mind case in point on the columbus lessons the evidence of learning is to write a op-ed onto why columbus day should be re-titled indigenous people's day um maybe that is true they um that's not our that's that's not the purview of the board nor but i know there are a lot of people in the community have different opinions on that and all the more uh appropriate that the curriculum supports students in developing their own mind about that um and looking at the evidence for both of those for those reasons because of the the breadth of the curriculum and because i think it's we need to um make make certain that we're supporting
155students and developing our own minds about controversial issues of controversy where there's a diversity of opinion they while teaching this very important subject i think it's important that we take this guide just like we would any other subject any other course and develop our own curriculum documents case in point for example can think of this as a less controversial issue geometry class we have a geometry course we have state standards that the geometry course should be teaching towards the we have a geometry textbook that forms the guide for that course we then develop curriculum documents um to to adapt that curriculum in teaching to the standards so that's appropriate for our students and our um here at greenwich i think it's the same thing here the um we have a course that buys this state
156statue um we should be teaching and it's important of course that we should be teaching towards these state standards we have a guide that the state has given us to support the teaching of the standards we now then must adopt that guide to the specific context of our um of our students to support the teaching of those standards i think that's a very reasonable thing and i think it would have happened in any other situation the way it has in here is because you have this um on high um curriculum by legislation um that's that's that's developed and i think now it's time to take the reins and make sure that the actual curriculum that we're approving um is appropriate for for our students and and teachable so can i go ahead and no i'm
157i'm just shaking my head thank you okay so i just want to take a little bit of a step back i mean first of all i process is sometimes used when we're not comfortable with a subject so but i'm going to sort of and so that's that's my first point but i have to say that i this is something that's mandated by the state but it's something that i think is wonderful that's being offered in our public school system um i also appreciate that they're offering it as an elective so i think that's remember very important to remember this is not one of our required courses if this is not something a parent is comfortable with their child taking i for one would be i think it's important to learn about this other cultures other
158perspectives um but it's not something that you are forced to take like like global studies for example that my son was taking today and i thought we need to be reminded that we approve the concepts or curriculum we don't approve daily lesson plans i don't think that's the job of a board and i think teachers are professionals who take a guide they're not robots and they pivot and so for example this is why i'm bringing up global studies today they were covering the berlin wall coming down but guess what this wonderful teacher did today he talked about russia invading the ukraine and that was relevant i think it was important to pivot it wasn't a part of his lesson plan but guess what it is a part of global studies and so i think this
159is something i know i i understand the process point and maybe that's something we should be working on not just as it relates to hope to black and latino studies but also as it relates to this biology course that we're also approving but i don't want to get lost in sort of form over substance here and i think that this is an important course that i know i will want to approve tonight so that it goes into the course of study guide for greenwich high school so just ahead karen just spelling thank you just following up on that point it's something that dr jones said earlier with respect to the process in the biology class this was something that the teachers were going to work on with respect to the curriculum over the course of
160the summer we don't have it yet and we're simply approving the course going into the course book but that we would follow the process that the teachers would look to build the curriculum it would go through the curriculum committee and come back to us so we're following the process in one regard but not in the other and i think that look i agree that teachers are not robots teachers are magical and perfect and wonderful human beings that do god's work we know that and i think um here it is not the content of the of the subject matter with respect to process um that's not why we're we're here and obviously i think this is a is a a perfectly wonderful class it provides a lot of great information that i think we do our
161students do need to learn um i myself am looking forward to learning it next year but i think here we need to understand how this is going to play out and like i said happy to put it in the course book for next year just like the biology class but again i you know we talk about being a process and procedurally and policy driven board and i think that we either need to practice that or not okay definitely or can i just put my hand in the queue for talking yeah i don't know if uh dr marcus is on i don't see him but i could be wrong i think kathleen made a good point um i had actually asked uh mike to to make a similar one there no no there's a vast difference
162and i think it's it's it's something that most people and i'm not suggesting necessarily members of the board or or the community are missing you know misinterpreting understanding but there's a vast difference in an understanding when we say the word curriculum right and so parents uh often you know use that not not every parent clearly i'm not making a judgment here but many use that term to encompass the entire discussion as to what our students are learning every day when they walk into that classroom and the curriculum is sort of the overview right the bones of a course and the daily lesson plans are something um that support those bones and what we are being asked to approve as a board are the bones not the daily lessons plans not the materials that are necessarily
163given on every given day to our students that is in the weeds that is not something that we as a board uh are supposed to be doing we're not the educators um so the one question we have is whether the bones are are proper whether the the sequencing um and the timing which is what uh mike was getting at when he looked also into this and look i will simply say i fully support offering this course to our students we really need to ensure we offer courses that are reflective of our students interests their experiences their histories that allow them to fulfill the vision of the graduate it's what we're talking about uh pursuing unique interests passions curiosities recognizing and respecting other cultural contexts i think that's what this course is is here to do
164and it's important we give them the materials that allow them to critically interpret evaluate and synthesize the information and explore define and solve complex problems that being said i i also don't necessarily see something wrong with asking the curriculum committee to sort of review the sequencing just to ensure the course meets our standards of rigor make sure it's as robust as our other course offerings and making sure the pace and sequencing is lined with other courses um just so that our students have the opportunity to really delve in um and deeper into areas of interest and ensure it fits with our block schedule i think that that's that's something that we we can ask but you know again uh you know i i think it's just important for people to understand that the vast difference
165between [Music] the overarching curriculum and daily lesson plans materials and all the other things that go go into go into that um and i don't know if if dr carabilla wants to to give a brief if i'm in the right ballpark there on that you were definitely in the right ballpark the curriculum is built upon the standards that are expected that we want our children to be able to demonstrate and and be able to incorporate in their everyday lives and build upon those particular standards so you are absolutely correct and um when i looked at it when i first looked at it i thought there's no way that we can follow that scope and sequence so we're going to have to make choices but i think we have to give the teachers an opportunity first
166to really take a deep dive into it there are a number of schools that have been piloting this this year and they have been giving a lot of feedback to the state and to the people that wrote the curriculum and they are going to be getting together at the end of the year they have been putting in comments all year and what has been successful and what has not so i'm sure that they will be able to um share information with us so we can make the adjustments where we feel they would be necessary so as we all know the um the the guaranteed curriculum to cover all the standards is what we have that's how we build what we are going to actually expect children to know and be able to demonstrate but the
167way we teach it is where we really look at who those students are in front of us and what is appropriate for them and we have a very diverse group of learners in our classes and we really want to be able to meet each one at where they are and move them forward one of the things that i really thought was particularly impressive about this particular way that the uh the courses were set up is that they're all built upon the udl principles and our teachers have just gone through a year of professional year learning and this is a way for them to see how those principles have been implemented and included into some of the activities that um have been recommended so i think that that's going to be a real plus for our
168teachers who teach this and i don't know how many teachers will be teaching it because they have to volunteer for it they have to do a lot of work to learn about the curriculum and the standards that are expected to be taught so i think that you are right on mrs search and thank you so just the last statement is just that there may be changes that are because people have piloted this program already this year that we may find that there are some things that are being removed and updated correct okay mr kettle i i have some comments but i just i'm not sure i fully understand something when i look at this curriculum file there's this page that has learning objectives and essential questions i'm guessing that's probably close to when we talk
169about the standards and and the overall mission of the class i like i i'd imagine that no matter what we have to adhere to that but is is what you're saying that our teachers could actually answer this way is it correct that our teachers could look at look at those learning objectives and essential questions and say we can address it our own way and come up with their own curriculum to do that and ignore the scope and sequence that's laid out um in the cert the 300-page cert file or do they actually like when you open the search file and it says you know early mid-september like this is what you're studying uh two and a half weeks 12 days you know this unit like do they have to follow what where is it that
170they have to follow and what do they have option and optionality and control over it's not followed rigidly because of the students that you have in front of your classroom we have a scope and sequence in most every it's really a pacing guide and what we would expect to be able to cover within a certain period of time a certain unit in a certain period of time but there are many teachers that maybe they have a class where they really have a great understanding and they can demonstrate it in a much shorter period of time so they can accelerate and go on to the next unit so it's not you have to do every single day and follow what they have it's a recommendation it's an estimate about how long it will take to teach
171that particular unit and then you've got some resources which another really good thing about this is the resources have all been vetted to make sure that they are age appropriate for the students that would be taking the course so i think that so if if i were a teacher would i have the ability to say i think i could cover all of these subjects by going super in depth on you know the writings of frederick douglass and we're only going to study that and i'm going to cover all these concepts and ideas doing that i'm just using that as an example would you be allowed to do that or no no because you have a supervisor that would make sure that you're supporting one another you have other teachers that you're teaching the same course
172with and you get together you have your professional learning communities and you talk about what has worked how the students are doing you look at what they're doing as they are able to demonstrate their understanding and you make those decisions together it's not an individual one but if you don't want but just in terms of the mandate from hartford that's what i if if that's of course yes i got the course as a mandate if that group of teachers and this is a guideline and we're going to use the to make sure that we are in adherence to what we've been required to do by the state right and that's what i'm trying to get it is what are we required to do by the state effect required we are required to offer the course
173as an elective and this is the guide for the course the two courses that we will be teaching and the guide is not limited to the objectives for the standard questions to make sure that we're covering all of the standards that are included in the courses including the schedule and the order which i get that you might have a day where you're ahead or behind but it's a guy it's a guide and it's it's uh it was presented so that it would spiral on the students learning experiences as they're taking the course i guess i'm still keep having trouble there's a there's a mandate right and so you can't be your office as an elective to all students in high school yeah you can keep saying it's elective that doesn't relate to my question the
174the the i'm trying to understand how boxed in our teachers how much freedom do they have to decide how they want to address these subjects and teach them um that's the art of teaching they've been given a a variety of resources they know what standards go to build upon that particular course and what those standards are looking for and they have a different way to do that i guess i'm having trouble understanding your question i'm sorry am i allowed if i'm a teacher to skip unit 4 long long history for equality which is covered in a 14-day period and late october to mid-november can i say you know what unit 3 and unit 5 are so much more pressing we're going to skip unit 4. am i allowed to do that i would have to
175look at the standards and see if the standards are covered in another place i can't answer that question for you cody i'd have to look at the standards and see what actually is being covered in those particular units and concepts okay um i don't know if other i just what's confusing to me is i i think one of the one of the challenges with this concept is that we are teaching by um you know uh i think someone on someone in this meeting said from a curriculum standpoint it doesn't really make sense for the board to design day-by-day curriculum lesson plans i would uh extend that to the idea that it doesn't make sense for politicians in hartford to kind of mandate day by day plans and i know and you're going to say that
176this is all designed by experts but it's still a political process i'm just uh i'm still confused on what's required and what isn't but maybe just to pivot to some of the other comments i wanted to just address really quickly i've heard a number of people say that they think it's important to learn about other cultures or perspectives or stuff like that as if anyone is opposed to those ideas i think everybody is i haven't i've not met or heard of any parent or anyone um say that they're against learning about uh slavery learning about other cultures i've never heard anyone object to the many classes that we have at the high school that cover those ranges of subjects i think it's really important when we discuss something like this to not create straw men
177um i think mike made some really interesting points on this class and why some of the um some aspects of it are problematic and probably should go under further review with the curriculum committee or whatever it sounds like um i mean i think that's a very reasonable approach i just would point out that uh you know i saw there's a letter in the grinch free press parents saying oh you know people that don't want to teach this it's because they don't want to address whiteness or white supremacy that's the real question here is we have a class being forced on us by politicians in hartford that have different incentives and people who are focused on uh ensuring kids get quality education and if something is you know pushed pushed down from the top like that
178you run the risk of it the quality of the education being compromised i think there's mike made a number of good arguments around that i would just point out also that um if i have some concerns on how this would be taught and i would much prefer to have greater um flexibility for the teachers to actually design the curriculum but just in terms of the political aspect of it there are things that are troubling in the 300 page document i'm not sure how many of the parents who spoke at this spoke tonight about this have actually bothered to even uh scratch the surface of it but i'll just use two examples that i found which weren't even hard to dig up there's a one of the lesson plans asked the question is reform of inequitable
179systems enough and i just that stuck out to me because it's you're not saying hey let's evaluate whether the systems in the us are inequitable it presupposes that and then just says there's reform enough and that's i had great teachers at greenwich high school like mr epstein who wouldn't have a lot of similar political views to me but he always started the questions very broad so you could explore everything there's another one how will this is asking students how will they dismantle but more importantly rebuild outside of the euro-centric model it's like questions like this that i think parents in the community here and they go is that teaching critical thinking or is that teaching some something with a lot of political assumptions built in and again it's not that there's any right or wrong
180answer it's that you want to expose the kids to a broad um a broad set of viewpoints and be able to debate it and not teach them something that actually there are intelligent debates about uh is orthodoxy so i know i've been talking for a while i apologize but um i do have concerns over this uh and um you know i think i and i just want to encourage everyone one more time to really address what the debates are versus these straw man discussions as if anyone is opposed to you know having interesting classes about the experiences of different groups of americans or other people thanks cody um and question for you um i know that you talked about all the educators that does that design this but i can understand the point have greenwich
181educators look at this because we of course pride ourselves on doing things hopefully better than others um so have ha and i having you know the high school is incredible so have our greenwich high school global professionals one from greenwich that was on the committee other than our former um chief academic officer irene parisi but i know that there have been some teachers that have been following some of the work that has been done because the the the i'm going to forget what uh her name did commissioner has sent out um various updates on what's been happening in her superintendent reports or commissioner reports monthly and she has been sending out updates as to where they are and what their work work times are they've had work groups and people were able to join those
182work groups if they wanted to but i am not aware if any of our greenwich history teachers participated in that and any of those work groups or not dr jones i think you must have and i think there's there i think she was asking um have our teachers looked at this and weighed in on it for greenwich high school we know they weren't on the state committee um some of our teachers have looked at it and i don't know what their comments are but i know that uh lucy is very excited about it and she said some of her staff that have looked at it really think it's great they had a number of teachers working on the presentation of what the course would look like and what the what the concepts would be and
183what the standards were and they they thought that it was good helpful miss downey um kind of if you're talking about like they're looking at it in terms of offering an honors option how does that get determined i mean that's not teacher specific isn't it it's that the t the group of teachers who will be teaching it will look at criteria and anything for an honors option i don't know if you can i know you said it'd get looked at could you talk about that just for a moment um it would the teachers would have to make a determination if they could have students they at the high school they have students that can take a course and it can become an honors course if they have a conversation with the teacher that they would
184like to go deeper into certain areas and have uh you know have have it be a little bit more rigorous than what the course is offering i know that they offer that in a number of courses so what they would have to do is to look at that and say all right if we have a lot of students who want to do that would it make more sense to have a separate course as an honors course or can we have the students in our class at the same time who want to take the honors and just have them do some additional uh whether it be a presentation or research paper or something like that which is what they've done in some of their other courses that they offer as a regular course or an honors
185course but you're in the same classroom but let's just say you have three sections of it with three different teachers is the is the honors non-honors distinction standardized across those or is it teacher specific i would have to get back to you on that because i've just started to uh really delve into that especially with the some of the courses that have been offered i'm really learning as to how they make that determination so i could get back to you on that christie i think we'd find that helpful information that would be much appreciated thank you miss kowalski so no no you have to have michael joseph okay so i think i'm hearing i'm hearing a few things which i think think are are are noteworthy so the um this is a guide from the
186state roots of the state um it's been piloted the state's going to revise it um continue to revise it based on feedback we're looking at an honors section um i think for all these reasons i'm not clear what we're approving they um why not we have to have i think i think this can i think i'm hearing consensus that we should have something in the course catalog as far as a course that teaches the standards uh of course on black and latino history that uh teaches the state standards i think it sounds like um what still needs to happen is we need to develop we need to have our people develop um an appropriate scope and sequence that uses the guide that might have an honors track that might have um might have a non-honors
187track that thoughtfully especially since the state if the state document is even in draft all the more reason why i think we need to have our own curriculum here they um i'm not it's not clear that we're um it's clear what we're what we're voting on um i think it might seem might just be reasonable for all the reasons including the um um the vastness of the of the what's in the guide that um we have our people develop a more adopt a more thoughtful um scope and sequence which it sounds like they're going to do anyway so why not have that done uh bring it to the curriculum committee and then we will approve on that as opposed to approving this piloted um revised well we're not going to teach all of the um
188um guide um that that that is currently for us it's no fault of no thought of you dr kuril but that's what we got from from the state they um that sounds like a reasonable approach to me can i just add one thing and i'm just all i'm thinking in the moment here um i remember a few years ago sitting at a board meeting and the computer programming class beyond ap was added i remember the questions we had around that were really interesting like wow we have students going beyond ap computer programming but we didn't go into the detail and i have a technology background and we did not go into the detail of all aspects of how we were going to be teaching that new course which was above and beyond probably many of
189our understanding and it was going beyond ap so it wasn't prescripted like you know you could argue that the biology class is probably prescripted because we're offering this biology class because ap bio went away and this was a hole right um that was something completely new i just i'm a little bit worried that we're creating a slippery slope here i because of the content of this particular course and that's i'm not trying to be political i'm just i'm just i think that it's more of a precedent setting a moment than you might think um i'm i think we should call the vote unless you guys have something else and we could say let's let's hear more about this at the end of the year or something as it comes to agenda planning or something along
190those lines as maybe something that gets us all comfortable but um sorry joe had a question so did karen joe hadn't spoken to sorry i spoke on the topic yet um i guess mine is a more basic simple approach to this that this is african-american black puerto rican latino studies just in the title in itself tells you it's a little bit sensitive more than maybe a computer program that we're looking at so there's a degree of sensitivity here and i think everyone and not out of fear of being labeled because i know most of you guys and there's no racists on this board here everyone's uh uh open-minded and and want to do good things for the world that's why we volunteered to to work on this board so basically i think what everybody's saying
191just trying to summarize now is that we all sort of agree that well we have to teach this class or a class like this that's a fact we all agree that there's a lot of very good things about this this course and uh i i can't think that further scrutinizing or for further analyzing this has any harm is there any any time sensitivity here dr jones that we have to approach that we can't take a little time is there what's the time center has to go on the course of study guide kids are already signing up for it and how soon is that now i know my kids are saying it is already in the course of study guide if you go on the web the grants high school website well they could pull it
192obviously if we didn't approve it and courses aren't finalized until march first or something i know it's like the last day they came up with their guidance counselor so oh sorry mark you had something to say keep going joe and then please so uh uh mike i've teased you about this a little bit when you're when you're running you said you uh we should not be jumping from crisis to crisis as we jump from crisis to crisis you uh uh we're now here we are again you're telling us our backs are against the wall and we have to make a decision uh but there are some in a sensitive topic where we have opinions on both sides we're not getting to really understand the specifics that uh might infuriate some of our citizens some of
193our constituents without taking a full look at at these issues that worries me uh basically we should be able to have enough time to to take a good look at these topics especially the sensitive ones because we're here to reflect the opinion of our entire community not just our opinions but everybody so it worries me that we're we're we're forced to take a vote when people in our community and people on the board here want to look at it a little uh further so i'm kind of stuck there where it worries me the fact that we're we're kind of forced into an issue can somebody give me an out here where we can spend a little more time looking at this without being forced to make a vote immediately karen and i had a response
194to joe look i had karen sure i also had a response i have a suggestion and the suggestion is is really very simple it's pass these two courses for being put into the course handbook which sticks with both what we need to do from a time perspective and in compliance with the state requirement that we need to teach this class and no one on this board has said anything that we don't want to teach this class every person on this board who's spoken tonight has said we want to teach this class the question then becomes what do we do to solve the issue that we're facing which is the the process component and making sure that this is properly vetted and i would point to the text of our policy 6161 that says any textbook
195or learning material that will serve the function of a textbook hard copy or digital must be processed through all the capital letters the district curriculum committee following the district regulations concerning adoption of textbooks informally adopted by the board of education so i would suggest that we revise the motion to simply say the to the proposal for the new course pilot or programs be put into the course handbook subject to further revisions and review put forward through the district curriculum committee pursuant to policy you have to amend the emotion so you have to make a form into the motion let's keep it in discussion mode does anyone have a problem with what karen just had said i mean we okay with amending let's i need to hear the motion that's why we have to follow proper
196course you have to actually make the motion you have to get a second to it then you have to amend the motion then we have to come back and vote on it okay so i move to amend the motion on the table that uh and the amendment is the proposal for the new course pilot course or new program for the african american black and puerto rican latino studies what's the other one and the biology class be approved for posting in the gps course handbook subject to further review and revision through through the district curriculum committee pursuant to policy 6161 you have to get a second okay so now is discussion on this particular amendment i i'm just i i think i'm generally there what i want to point out though is that is again you're
197gonna probably have to go back and look if you're putting this just know you're setting a precedent for other things maybe we have to go back and look at the computer programming class for example which we didn't do that for i think this is a different situation i think when we create a course um well then bio shouldn't be a part of it maybe yeah i'm not sure biology should be a part of it so they can amend the amend the amendment but um when we create a course it's a little different right that we're our curriculum committee is probably already doing that work in the process of creating the course unlike a course which is given to us you know on a silver platter with everything all the materials in there so i think
198there is it's different because of that not because of the content to be honest is that correct dr jones so that that is right so in theory the biology class course went through the curriculum committee and this did not let me make it that simple yeah dr carabillo would have to answer that but i really think we're we're con confusing when you're talking about curriculum and i certainly could go back and look at the regulation you know maybe we've got a really old regulation or something but we couldn't bring every single curriculum when we're talking about the actual curriculum you know to the board um and teachers always have flexibility and in what makes this one unique is it's also an elective course so it's not like we have state standards that we have to
199offer the course they've given us guidance but it's not like we have an assessment at the end where our students have to meet a certain standard which is very different than what we have like with an advanced placement course or you think about our sbac testing and mark mark feel free to chime in i know you wanted to say something i think just about curriculum sure i'm happy to you know just to take a step back in its most general sense curriculum means it's a course of study but then you get into the more explicit curriculum which is an individual teacher's curriculum so for example that includes the specific learning standards the lessons the assignments materials used to organize and teach a particular course it also includes the pacing guide i think cody mentioned that
200earlier you know you have to talk about um scope and sequence you have to talk about the general understanding of what will be covered the essential questions and and how that aligns to the standards that are we that we are required as educators to cover but when you dig deeper into the actual lessons that teachers create i don't know necessarily that's the purview of what the board should be approving because again if you take a look at a textbook for example if you're if you're asking the board to approve a textbook you're approving it in its entirety you're not taking certain chapters out of the textbook and saying we're going to exclude those for instructional purposes so it really is you know taking a step back and understanding from a real general sense what does
201the word curriculum mean and it's a course of study but when you get specific into what it means for a teacher it's much more dynamic and explicit so michael joseph no i i i i hear you i know that's that's a valid point i think that's part of the where this is a little problematic because you know to take the geometry example right we'd be adopting the geometry um textbook as a guide in this point at this point what we're being asked to is where we're being asked to adopt the um the state document as a guide and the state document specifies this you know very specific lesson by lesson um and i think that's the challenge i agree i don't think that it is it is appropriate you know when we talk about the
202curriculum at this level to mandate what teachers should be doing on a day-to-day basis that's the the job of that's their professional judgment in the classroom i think all the more reason why i like this amendment because um the curriculum that we have before us um is um is is and is not helpful enough in supporting teachers and making that decision because this there's so much there and things like that i think it makes sense for um the educators in at the high school in the social studies department to take a look at this and develop unit plans that um more thoughtfully adopt um to more thoughtfully teach to the standards in a realistic way that lesson plans can then be developed just like you know just like any other course ms hirsch this is
203a side step but i had a quick question because you just mentioned something about not having assessments uh like we would obviously in ap uh i assume that even if we weren't given assessments this will be treated like every other course and have midterm and final no yes before a project is that would cover that definitely i'm wondering if i could do something slightly different but there's an amendment on the table so i can you have to vote on it or withdraw it no i try to pull that i think the right way here would be to withdraw my amendment because it includes the biology piece but for cleaner purposes i think we should draw the original motion and put a new motion on the table well why don't we withdraw and then we can
204vote on the amended motion as amended but do you have a i have a slightly different but you should go because that was your concept then i would draw my emotion okay because is it better to segregate the two policies and just that's what i was going with withdraw the original motion vote on each of the two courses separately it's a little cleaner okay but so then okay that's fine so why don't you do the bio one because that's obviously simple and then we can talk about the second one again we have to have the original motion withdrawn first okay i will withdraw the original version okay so who wants to put the emotion to approve i'll do the bio one go ahead i had so much trouble on the other stuff earlier um i'd
205like to move that new course in honors anatomy and physiology be added to the greenwich high school course guide for the school year 22-23 school year joe's second oh sorry joe seconded all right all in favor okay that passes eight zero okay cody raises his hand um i'm just i think there's a slightly better way to do this other motion but i don't want to put it out there because this was your idea so why would you want to try something karen or but if you have a slightly better idea why why keep us you know on the edge of our seats because it's not really well formulated it's not exactly um because i'm trying to find a compromise here and but i i'm just i'm worried about and i can't think of what it
206is but i'm worried about a precedent that you're setting so that okay that question then because if there's no change if we bring a few items back we can if we approve the course they still are looking it's listed here with an honors option they have no understanding as to there has been no discussions what they might do with an honors option we approve the course it can come back to us as a discussion as well as to what they would be doing in an honors program and if the teachers have had the opportunity to review the course scope and sequence and find that it fits great if they find that there is a certain unit that is not even necessary but scope and sequence doesn't fit they can come back to us with that
207i mean i don't know mark is that typically what you think would you know happen if there was a revision i i think that you have to take a look at the materials that have been provided by the state and look at how they would be adapted for an advanced level course i'm not as familiar with the high school schedule so i'm not certain how many days are actually allotted for an elective if this is a year-long elective or if this is a marking period so a lot of that would take into consideration when you talk about an accelerated class usually there's an accelerated pace but that is the work that the teachers would need to do in either a summer curriculum institute or as part of a curriculum advisory committee at this point so
208there's two courses mark it's the first semester the first course is african-american and the second course is puerto rican and latino so they have it done into one course each semester but together it's the studies of those different cultures yes it's a year-long course [Music] okay i had an idea um is there a way that i could for how about if we put i mean this is not again this is not i'm obviously not something i'm really excited about but kathleen can i offer one brief comment i actually have to get emotion on the table at this point because we can't keep the discussion without an action so hold on and then feel free um okay the i'm going to say to put forth a motion to approve the black and latino studies course for
209the ghs course of study guide but the it but it will need to have further vetting via our district curriculum committee does that make any sense basically you're just saying that we want you to do it we're you know i'm just just i'm just trying to meet that we're asking just our curriculum committee just to do a once-over to correct you know the same way they've done with every other course that we have so that it falls in line with every other course they have put their eyeballs on this and and made sure it is is as robust and rigorous and follows the same [Music] way we handle our other courses yes and what i will say you need a second okay someone's just i'll second it thank you so and what i'd like to
210make clear in the interest of total transparency is that there are two members of our board that are on the district curriculum committee and they have a seat at that table that does not mean it comes back to this board it means it goes to the district curriculum community and that you and both of you are on it have a voice there but i don't see it coming back to the border i want to be clear about what my motion was in the interest of transparency the way the curriculum committee had worked in the past that was sort of the case the curriculum committee would which is made up of of leadership and educators uh would review it and then they would probably present it you know it to to the full committee as a
211discussion item so it's you know i could we can certainly put our voice in but it's not it's being run differently this year because they're doing souped nuts all of our all of our curriculum and in different scope and sequence that's why they laid out a document at the start of the year as to what they were doing when over the course of the next few years and so i just want to ensure that we give them ample time you know we're not messing up everything else that they're looking at but they should be taking you know at the very least to look just to make sure that this is in line with everything the scope and sequence is in line and as robust as all of our other courses we want to make sure
212that our students are getting uh same rigorous um well thought out programs that we give to our students in math in science et cetera and i think that's what you're asking but it wouldn't come back it wouldn't necessarily be discussed as a full committee they would go in and take a much you know a deeper drive and then come back with a recommendation got it okay any sorry so having now put that out there other discussion on that item since it's an action item now cody did you want to say something now now that i have it on you're on me sorry i wasn't sure if i finally was able to um uh what was i going to say oh yeah on your precedent point um i think one way to to bifurcate this for
213when should we fight a higher level of scrutiny is when hartford is the driving force of the curriculum i think kevin you made the point that our teachers and greenwich are better and no offense to other places um and it's one thing when things are homegrown and it's another thing when they're from the legislature i also just wanted to point out there is somewhat of a uh i feel like everyone feels the need to go oh this is this is so amazing i want this class but is that there and there's nothing wrong with the class that there's a lot of interesting subject matter but i do find it um somewhat entertaining that um you know i i don't know if you went back in the archives and looked over the last few years how
214many times people have gotten up and asked for this class but um it's interesting that you know only when legislature and hartford decided to require it to suddenly everyone feel that they need it and that's not a comment unique to the class it's a comment in general because we could come up with probably you know an infinite number of interesting subjects to study and and probably the large number of marginalized groups that uh are probably worthy of having their stories told and so you know i think people should just reflect on is the the it's funny that when something is created by especially by folks in hartford that everyone suddenly feels they need it and maybe everyone can go home and think about what other classes they think we need and we can come up
215with them without having hartford just so that you know all common you know we have to teach to common core and uh very specific you know standards for every course and that does come from hartford every single one of those and yes we take them here and flush them out but that's come up with this page document for the anatomy class that we're creating that's not my point my point is that you're saying it's been given to us and i i'm saying i understand where you're coming from and saying that they've given us a 300 page document for a course that being said [Music] yes it's a scope and sequence that's being given to us as well but everything has come from from hartford for all of our courses just so you're clear as to
216what what the standards we need to teach too okay okay sorry joe i think maybe we should call the question what do you think i i think assuming yeah i guess we seconded my motion so it's on the table so thank you for the opportunity to do that so all in favor of the motion um my show of hands and then and then i'll do it as amended first you have to is that pass or no that's seven cody are you interested or no i i what was the motion i'm not even sure what so the motion um is oh gosh i hope someone wrote it down it was um first we're approving it and then the district curriculum committee is going to review it that's right thank you did you hear that so we're
217going to approve the course the black and latino studies chorus but it's then for the course of study guide but then the district curriculum committee is to review it further and this is one of those where we have to vote for it anyways because hartford requires us to so much of a vote i swear they should rename the capital what would you say okay okay so anyway all in favor of this vote to accept the motion okay that's seven or no eight zero we're good sorry that was the motion i hadn't amended it it was straight up okay oh god thank you so that passes eight zero um very good job okay no last action item i don't want to put this i'll put it on the table a motion to authorize the financial report
218for period ended january 31 2022. do i have a second okay thank you ms kowalski uh mr o'keefe can you walk us through this okay the financial report as of january 31st 2022 our year-to-date actual uh through january is 84.5 million which is 49 of our for your budget compared to a prior year our year-to-date spending is up 1.8 million or 2.2 percent drivers of the net increase are uh increases in salaries and supplies and partly offset by net decreases in services salaries are up 1.3 million or 1.8 percent supplies are up 1.7 million or 88 percent due to the residual effect of the uh pre-spent activity at the end of fiscal 20. services are down net uh their uh the transportation is down uh but partly offset by increases in special ed tuition uh
219the transportation variance which is down will self-correct by the end of the year however the special ed tuition as we all know uh is uh is deteriorating uh we we previously projected a five hundred thousand dollar exposure for the year we're now up to 1.3 uh due to uh higher volume of uh placements and settlements and several of which are quite expensive [Applause] um onto capital overall capital available balances are down to 26.3 million a decrease of 900 000 from the prior period uh all of that 900k decrease was in older projects which is where we're putting a lot of our efforts to significantly reduce the amount of prior year projects since the start of september of 20 our older project balance has decreased by almost 17 million dollars or about 60 percent um again
220we remain focused on closing out all projects but special focus on the uh projects prior to uh for year 22. food services uh continuing to see low cash sales relative to the budget due to the mandatory uh free meals for all which is in place until the end of the year however we're seeing some very strong state reimbursements uh and you know we expect that will continue through the end of the year uh strong in that i believe we may be able to come close to achieving our overall budget so the shortfall in cash sales i think we have a good shot at offsetting that in full with higher uh state reimbursements for expenses uh we're up year to year in salaries and cost of food and supplies but uh we expect that we'll probably
221uh come in close to budget for the year um there's a chart in the back on uh that i put in every month on sped tuition you'll see that the uh the current assessment is that we'll be we'll close the year at about 8.6 which is about 800 000 more uh than we had previously projected so again it's higher volume of uh placements and settlements and uh several of which are quite expensive um there's a chart also on sr2 uh so sr2 i'll recap the sr2 grant was 4.3 million dollars we spent we spent 2.7 in full year 21. the remaining 1.6 is being spent in full year 22 of the detail of the 1.6 and 22 social workers uh math interventionists which is uh in our operating plan uh beginning in full year 23
222and additional alp resources uh also ppe and classroom supplies uh there's also behind that is a two-page arp chart that breaks out the grant the grant for the three-year period is 9.6 million broken up into full year 22 we project spending three million of the nine six full year 23 4.6 and full year 24 2.0 of the nine six in total uh our projection is that certified resources and benefits will will be about 5.3 million uh ppe over the three-year period uh about a million dollars hvac related spending about a little over seven hundred thousand um the this uh projected five hundred thousand dollar spent for the ghs student center redesign um let's see uh community connections another 400k teaching and learning uh expenses 1.3 and all others about 300 000 so that's a quick
223synopsis of uh the proposed spending over the uh 22 to 24 time period any questions yes uh miss downey and then it's like a game show we'll get their hands up first um sean um what's good the out of district tuition and settlements um obviously it's a very large number yeah um how are we gonna manage this and we're now you know we're closing in it's february um we have a couple months of school left you know how do you foresee us being able to pay that um some given that it's you know way over budgeted we we've already identified a number of uh savings for example esy uh savings during the summer will help to partly offset that we are also identifying now other items i feel confident that by the end of the
224year we will have the means to offset this number ms kowalski yeah i had a question on the the last page on the sr3 funding what is the school climate consultant for seven thousand nine hundred dollars uh let's see and is that patty jonah's work that is patty jones work and that is one of the requirements of the grant that's an area that they felt was really important was family and community connections so that is patty jones jomo's work which he has started with our some of our elementary schools and our goal is to have all of our elementary schools go through this particular program that she has developed which is excellent and one of our middle schools one or two of our middle schools so that's the goal for the end of 24. and
225can i just correct one thing ann i don't think you meant the word requirement we have different buckets that we can actually um put in the grant but um this this one was highly um encouraged family and community engagement and we initially started i believe it was in 1920 with the alliance grant and our title one school you weren't doing it i used the one word thank you talking about the wrong thing i didn't ask about the family and community engagement i asked about the school climate consultant oh i'll have to i'll have to double check that do you have it in front of you anne yes that's the work that's being done at the high school to improve the school climate what do you mean that it's not properly heated i i no no
226no it's not it's not climate as in heating and um uh hvac system it's the school environment making sure it's a welcoming environment that teachers know how to interact with students know who those students are making sure that students feel safe that's the school climate i'm sorry so understood so how come it's different we're only spending 7 900 this year and then years going out we have 3 500 is this a this is an individual that we're paying for it's an ongoing professional learning and they will be working with the students and the teachers in the building and also parents and then what is the additional pcg action planning that we have a hundred thousand for we originally paid them i think two hundred thousand for their action planning last year that was in the
227budget um why are we paying them an additional one hundred thousand dollars this was the work for this current school year putting together the action planning it includes um things that were in our recommendations um like the udl training they've been managing that to help us train the entire district um and this was um this was discussed at the finance with the finance committee board finance committee so do we have a contract for them for the services that they're going to be providing we we do have they invoice this monthly for the work that they do um we have the action planning and that was based on an hourly rate and then we have um the same thing for like the udl training which is huge as you can imagine training the entire staff so
228yes sorry michael joseph yeah so sean on the special intuition i don't i don't know if you can answer this or not the um the proposed program next year in in upper elementary um do we know if that's going to um address any of these needs or is that i mean i know stacy's on the call but what i what i can say is three of our most significant needs it would not address these are very unique situations and then can you remind me what the 3.3 in esser um and sr2 and sr3 the 3.3 alp is and last year it was utilized for the superblock when we were really high indicovid at the very beginning um and the buildings all had a 1.7 so it gave them a 0.3 bump and this year coming
229in we maintained that it looks a little bit different than it did last year because we were in a different place with cove but that's a portion at all of our elementary schools any other questions or can i call the vote all right so the motion on the table is to approve the financial report all in favor that says eight zero great okay so now we're gonna go to agenda planning i know that um christina you mentioned the high school entryway coming back in march is that correct correct yes joe a couple of things um we had talked about parks and rec and joseph lyanna who might come up and i know that many of the board members for the two years i've been involved have certainly an opinion on parks and rec and the
230services they provide for our our our district so uh uh maybe you could find a way to slot a possibility of having him in so we can ask him some questions uh as long as it uh it lines up with his uh uh his uh schedule so that that's one thing that's a good idea i remember we did that a few years ago um actually when ralph was the interim super good we always did it so it's a good revisit of that what you brought i did i guess i'm not taking credit for it you're right it was me that brought that right so great minds think alike absolutely athletic minds you know so all right second is i caught wind and i don't know uh dr jones tony if you know anything about a
231uh a sports donation in excess of five thousand dollars uh i i there is one i caught wind of so we from when i understand anything any donations we have over five thousand dollars we have to approve it so why don't we so it doesn't delay the apparatus that it's uh donated for or maybe slotted in for the next meeting so maybe we can find out the details of that get it in and vote for it or vote on it yeah that has not risen to my level yet so i'll check with our id thank you sorry michael joseph yeah we've talked about um just so we don't forget about it we talked about probably reconvening an executive session to get an update about how the high school has adopted its safety protocols um post
232the incident in november i think we heard that again from ptac tonight so i just want to make sure we didn't lose that that's a good point and i actually had reached out to gtv to sort of see if we can do a joint town hall so it would be not just us but for the public um so that's a good reminder i i know he's very busy but i will uh follow up again because and i think we should make a broader i think it's something i talked about i know at least with a few of you and um i mentioned to the chief we might want to not just do for the high school but for middle schools and elementary schools and for everyone to get very comfortable in general karen no i
233was just going to ask you know and i guess it's not necessary for agenda planning but i was going to say once we move a little bit forward or hear back from bet and not our funding requests uh and interim approvals um having a date that we add to even if it's not necessarily for board meeting just a a town hall or something for central because i know that had been asked for uh as well but just just to consider that we we should consider a date sure uh dr jones go ahead um we will be doing um you know forums and meeting with different groups and and the right the first the week that the school was closed um dan watson and i did a pta and pta meeting and we were the whole
234meeting so um there were there were several hundred people that were on that call um so they did have a really i think a good forum and an opportunity to ask a lot of questions um once we know the funding is approved we'll start you know we're gonna have to do a lot of meetings to definitely in the next few months yeah i just i just meant i think it's really hard for a lot of people to understand like even even the some of us on the board uh the whole process the timeline how did with the different pieces and how they fall and it's just i think for a lot of the parents it might be very helpful to to understand why it might not happen they may not have a student that comes
235into a new school uh like kathleen who's a fourth grader or now you were saying yes fourth grade maybe would see it in eighth grade maybe right incredible okay uh anything else for agenda planning don't worry there's still time okay but um okay anyone have another emotion for me laura costan yes motion to adjourn can i get a second karen hirsch all in favor that passes joe come on 8-0 all right thank you very much everyone thanks for hanging on have a good evening stay well