001okay it is seven o'clock so we are going to go ahead and i'm going to call this meeting of the board of education to order if we could please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america thank you all right the first order of business is our consent agenda can i get a motion to accept can i get a motion to accept the consent agenda mr is there a second miss hirsch all right all those in favor we're gonna have to take a roll call vote because we've got somebody online so bernstein is a yes francis yes hersh yes kelly yes uh i don't see karen kulski's gonna be late i don't see peter peter we're taking a vote on the consent agenda so i'll give
002you a second to get to your seat and stow yes um peter did you want to vote on the consent agenda sure okay all right and mr share who's in the room is a yes that passes 7-0 um actually six zero sorry uh miss kowalski will be with us miss downey is unfortunately absent this evening we're going to move on to our public hearing so the first uh is the student ghs student government comments so i don't know if we have kwame and uh and avi all right we'll give them a moment still here zayn's here yeah he has a leftover if you could please put your mask on in the back of the room you need to put your mask on it's required by state law sorry we're just waiting for our student government
003guys to get inside so if you give us a moment if you can come right down to the podium we're ready for you all right honey won't you go ahead and introduce yourself good evening board members i'm javi sarah senior class president at greenwich high school i can't express how excited we all are to be fully in person once again granted this is still not a normal year it's nice to finally be done with google meets on that note of normalcy we have begun planning homecoming our vp of special events angelico varonis has been busy in her efforts to create a vibrant school unifying week it's been proposed to move away from the stale low attendance dance to a more exciting event such as a tailgate or drive-in movie or even a homecoming event specifically
004for freshmen to provide their class with an opportunity to get to know one another we're also working on bringing back the vibrant pep rally for this year possibly utilizing our new cardinal stadium if construction permits one of student government's priorities for this year is to rebuild our school community once again after two years of being partially online we hope to revive our diverse school climate to its formal former glory speaking of our once lively student center has turned into a sterile open area filled with clear plexiglas dividers while everyone is grateful to be in person this student center has been a concern for many it has become near impossible to socialize with multiple friends during lunch due to these thick barriers i along with my peers understand that these dividers are in place as a
005mitigation strategy in order to keep us in the building but as vaccination numbers continue to increase and infection rates decrease i hope to continue to work alongside administrators chairman bernstein and dr jones in exploring other avenues that protect the students student body's physical health and emotional well-being in order in order to ensure that student voices are heard student government has changed its application process for this year there are 16 homerooms scheduled and each homeroom will have a representative in the student government they will attend student government meetings address the concerns of their peers and relay information back to their respective home rooms this refined process ensures that every ghs student has an accessible outlet to have their voices heard through student government the past three semesters of ghs learning have been difficult to say the
006least but i like my peers i'm eager to move forward on behalf of my peers i want to thank the board administration teachers and all staff for their tireless efforts to fully reopen schools this year i will now pass the mic to our student body president kwame blatant good evening board members i'm kwame botan student body president of greenwich high school i'd like to i would like to echo the sentiments of javi in stating how grateful i am not only to meet in person but to be able to return to a school full of students faculty and culture in light of a turbulent pandemic year although we are not fully out of the woods yet i have great confidence that the diligence of our school system in keeping us safe and healthy will usher us
007into a vibrant spring semester i mentioned the diligence of the greenwich public schools in keeping us healthy but i believe i was perhaps not clear enough in this claim javi previously mentioned the distinction between the student body's physical and mental mental well-being i believe that our faculty does an outstanding job of keeping students physically safe from contact tracing to traffic flow all the mitigation efforts have been extremely effective in containing the spread of covid throughout the high school although the fret covid poses to the physical well-being of students is immense there are also social and emotional challenges quietly growing in our student center in the same manner that i'd echoed javi's excitement to return to school this year i would similarly like to echo my disappointment with the plexiglas dividers that are still on the
008tables of our student centers an integral component of a student's social emotional health is being able to gather with friends in the student center this year it's nearly impossible to talk and hang out with peers before school during lunch and during open blocks due to the current configuration and protocols ultimately we acknowledge that these dividers have been put in place as a mitigation strategy in order to keep us physically safe however i urge that we as a student body alongside administrators chairman bertstein and dr jones continually monitor the pandemic in order to determine whether the plexiglass dividers can be removed in the second semester in order to support our social and emotional well-being looking forward our goal as student body representatives is to assimilate the underclassmen with upperclassmen given the past two unprecedented years it
009is imperative that we use this year as an opportunity to smoothly transition our disconnected community back to in-person school and unify the student body we have the unique opportunity to build new traditions and take on new initiatives i plan to achieve these goals through one reimagining the design and culture of the student center two increasing student engagement through fun school-wide activities and increased communication over social media three having cardinal cafe improvements and four making adjustments to the mid the midterm and final exams with clear goals in mind i'm optimistic about the progress our school can make by the end of the year thank you for your time and we look forward to speaking at future board of education meetings thank you very much all right the next is uh gea comments so little perron hey
010zane good evening board members cabinet parents and gea who's watching out there my name is lillian perrone i'm very excited to be back again as president of gea although i have never physically lived in greenwich i've spent most of my life here performing and working in many roles and capacities from teaching at all three levels working with our private schools volunteering as a bls instructor for the red cross gems our granite emerging emergency medical system as a coach team mentor state reviewer ghs department head district lead teacher and now back again as my second time around as your gea president in 1983 i was first hired by gps as a science teacher and taught at the western middle school my principal at the time was don strange he was a great administrator leader and a
011mentor to me there went on to see my masters in health education a sixth year in educational leadership and also my own 92 administrator license i've now come full circle and i'm president once again reflecting back in 2003 when i was president we also experienced many hardships that closed down our schools or interrupted the learning process the mercury spill at western the black molded eastern hamilton ave issues ended into a new school building and glenvar modules just to name a few yes it was hard work but as a community of leaders we came to the table and discussed the issues and focus on what was best for students we got it done together now in 2020 you're all living through something that i could not even imagine everyone in our community state country in the
012world has been impacted yes last year was very hard but we did it we're the only district that were in school all year when i walked into the buildings last year what i saw was just short of a miracle i could not believe the eyes of what was accomplished and put in place to get our schools ready and open so i would like to start my first speech of the year with thank yous that i don't think i've heard enough i want to thank the administrators for the hard work over the summer to get the schools open and ready thank you to our custodians and school support staff for getting our buildings clean and ready thank you to our staff i.t staff who work so hard to get our student staff and buildings supplied and
013running with technology thank you to our security staff for keeping us safe and making sure protocols were followed thank you to our ptas for supporting our schools and students thank you to our students who are really great but following our safety protocols and trying to do the best they could thank you for our parents for helping to support the learning process when we had to pivot thank you to my ga teachers i know how hard it was and i want to thank you i too myself lived through it it was physically and mentally draining to be an expert in your trade and instructional practices and then having to pivot and learn new ways of teaching new technological skills new ways to plan and implement instruction at the same time many of you dealing with your
014own family and child's learning too thank you to my executive board who worked many hours over the summer with dr jones and i during to get things ready for students and staff in fact when i first met dr jones this summer i shared my vision and more importantly my plan about the actions and directions that i will be leading gea this year i shared a henry ford quote to have a vision with no plan is just a hallucination well there will be no hallucinating here today or for the year i tell you that gea has already come to the table and will continue to be at the table not with complaints but as problem solvers i've been consulting with my expert teachers in areas and have been meeting and sharing our knowledge and expertise with
015administration working together to do what is best for our students and staff i know some of you heard this before that which you tolerate you accept and that which you accept becomes the practice i also state this as the president of the largest and most powerful unit in greenwich gea will not tolerate except personal attacks against our teachers our administrators or our board it will never be accepted and that will never be a practice or a new practice again against anyone in greenwich that is serving our students i like to end on a more positive note thank you dr jones this year for the first time dr jones and i have traveled together to all our schools we bought t-shirts from the greenwich alliance that were provided we walked the halls we checked in on
016teachers we are there to answer questions and provide support we will complete our last school visit on october 6th at ghs together i like to judge people on their actions and not their words in my 35 years here in greenwich i have never worked with a superintendent with such a work ethic and i've worked with all of the superintendents in the past 12 years i want to thank you dr jones i look forward to our collaborative relationship we are stronger together thank you thank you very much lil uh next i'm sorry we have an agenda we will get to the public hearing in a moment next up is pta council i think i see mimi duff online is that working can you hear me yes you can go ahead okay i am mimi duff president
017of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of all of their members i want to start by saying how grateful we are to have our kids back in school learning in person safely with their peers and teachers we understand the ongoing herculean efforts that dr jones the administration nursing custodial cafeteria and other staff as well as all of our teachers have gone through to make this happen so i start with a warm and resounding thank you next i want to express our desire for the board of ed meetings to remain forever accessible virtually so many of us are working parents and we appreciate the opportunity to stay involved i'd also like to ask that the board of ed docks get posted in a more timely manner this allows us to be more
018thoughtfully engaged now onto the meat of my comments wow we are stunned by the amount of work that was done over the summer and we were thrilled to receive the updates in the last board meeting on curriculum in math science ela and foreign languages as well as the sped action planning our interactions with the new coordinators have been excellent please let us know how we can help we solidly appreciate the move toward greater transparency and consistency in terms of previous rights we are thrilled to see that the chromebook performance issues have been addressed and that our participation is being looked into we continue to request that documents related to the board of ed data requests get posted to board docs so the community can stay engaged bringing the focus to today with respect to this
019year's agenda plan we are hoping for more curriculum updates in addition to out stem and math specifically we're hopeful that you will be adding language arts and social sciences updates with a focus on updates for writing programs in the middle school which have been a focus of concern in the past looking to october we look forward to seeing the achievement data report as well as hearing an update on out our teams are excited to be working with the district on improving communication and transparency one area of concern that continues to be voiced within the community is traffic the areas around the high school costco and north street are a primary concern and we fear that road work on the post road will make matters worse if potential resolutions are discussed p-tech would love to be
020involved to help provide coordinated feedback so what's going on in ptac along with the usual awesome stuff we wanted to share that we have three special committees they are the diversity equity and inclusion committee a facility committee and a student activity committee the descriptions for these as well as our other committees are on the website we too are trying to be more systematic and transparent and welcome in input did you know that we have a public portion to each of our ptac meetings and that we host approximately six academic excellence workshops each year which are great opportunities to learn about district curriculum we're aiming to record these and build a library of resources we're also co-hosting a virtual board of ed candidate debate with the league of women voters greenwich and the alliance on october
02119th 7 pm stay tuned for more details i'll stop here thank you again to our superintendent and the board of education we are all in this together for the betterment of our children thank you very much mimi all right next up is our community comments uh we have 18 speakers signed up uh according to our posted uh meeting notice we're going to have one hour of uh of comments now and the rest sorry aaron can we turn that up thank you all right we've got 18 people signed up as of our noon deadline per our meeting notice we've got one hour of public comments now we hopefully can fit everybody in we would do the rest after the meeting but if everybody's respectful we can get this done per our policy each speaker gets three
022minutes there is a timer please abide by the timer if you go over we will turn the microphone off and we would ask that you please stop speaking and you can submit the rest of your comments via email to the board all right now look we want people to be respectful okay if we have a disruption we might ask the people to leave if that doesn't work under our policy we would have to clear the room we would continue our meeting and folks would be able to continue to watch via zoom we don't want to have to do that so again okay i'm speaking directly into the mic erin we got max volume yeah okay that's lovely thank you folks you're already being disruptive if we have to clear the room we will do that
023that is what i said and you heard it be civil speakers are asked to express themselves in a civil manner with due respect for the dignity and privacy of others who may be affected by their comments while it's not the board's intent to stifle public comments speakers should be aware that if their statements violate the rights of others under the law of defamation or invasion of privacy the speaker may be held legally responsible speakers unsure of the legal ramification of what they're about to say or she can sell first with their legal advisor again we're asking you to be civil we are here to hear we are going to listen we ask that you please treat each speaker with respect as you want to be treated with that we're going to start the first we
024will call people by agenda items first in the order they signed up and then non-agenda items the first speaker is jackie holman at the last in-person board meeting tony jones used police to stop me from sharing a poster with my son's english assignment i was told the poster was too offensive for parents but suitable for my son one of the quotes that bothered me was women are all i also disapproved of the graphic imagery of abuse which included a man's penis as he peed on the back of a person forced under his knees on the ground when i complained about the assignment i was told it was thought provoking when i raised the issue about it to the board in june nothing was done instead the next day at a ptac meeting chairman bernstein mocked
025me and other parents who spoke at the june meeting is just wanting to hear ourselves speak and didn't show any concern about the issues we raised i found the arrogance of the chairman and of board in general on this issue to be appalling and so i took it upon myself to conduct a survey to understand how many people were aware of the issues with the curriculum and how they really felt about it nearly 200 of the 1500 parents surveyed submitted answers to the two questions before tony jones sent an email designed to stop parents from participating these are the same bully tactics you use to push your one-sided pro vaccination views encouraging parents to sign their children up for dangerous shot experiments the shot that the fda revealed in last friday's meeting is killing two
026people for every one person it allegedly saves the same shot the fda also added a myocarditis warning to the label for you are not doing your homework i'm sorry i missed my page nonetheless the feedback represents two percent of the parents in town if we had had the opportunity to sample all the parents in town and if you were able to assume a similar response rate and a similar mix of responses 10 of parents would support the views summarize and the presentation findings i shared with you and they're on the table out there tonight when asked about the presentation mark d'amico said it was difficult to hear but not wrong parents organized a signed campaign to help raise awareness on the several key themes that arose from the survey when i placed a sign in
027the ground at eastern to indicate where we were meeting to pass out signs tony jones sent the police again she alleged the sign was placed illegally which it wasn't but this is now the second time she's used police to threaten me these are the same bully tactics the school is using to push face masks and other useless coveted mitigation tactics we all know that your teachers and administrators mock the face mask rules in private and flaunt their naked faces on social media while you enforce a harmful anti-science anti-human face mass policy on children who are not the problems these are the same bully tactics you use to push your one-sided pro-vaccination views encouraging parents to sign their children up for the dangerous coveted shot experiment it's a shot that the fda revealed in last friday's
028meeting is killing two people for every one person allegedly 30 seconds the same shot that the fda also added a myocarditis warning to the label for you are not doing your homework and i know that because the foia results showed that you didn't do your homework you're pushing dangerous policies you're legally out of compliance with state laws with respect to approval of curricular materials parents are fed up parents called the shots on what's best for our children and that's it you either need to fire the teachers and administrators who broke the mask mandate or end the mask mandate time you need to shut down the vaccine clinics and you need to immediately review all curricular materials to ensure science thank you that's your three miss homeman other people are signed up to speak thank you
029okay thank you very much if you do this not everybody gets an opportunity to speak thank you the next speaker is kdu next speaker is kdu katie you're up good evening uh in the interest of respecting everyone's time i'm just going to skip the formalities so sorry is this better jump right in first off i'd like to extend a welcome to our new curriculum heads that have a meyer and thank them for their work over the summer and the energy they're bringing to our district welcome excuse me with regard to dr reed's presentation about acceleration within math this is a welcome change however i would second dr francis's comment about making sure that ghs is properly outfitted to continue this trajectory as dr reed pointed out students will now have the ability to advance as
030far as algebra 2 honors in the middle school this means that there could be an even larger number of students exhausting our high school's math curriculum as a parent who witnessed the pure joy of working with like-minded peers in classes such as bc calc and ad count and then experiencing the drop-off of having to take an online freeware course such as those offered at mit i would strongly recommend that we consider adding linear algebra and differential equations or possibly pursuing a partnership with local colleges such as manhattanville for students to attend classes with like-minded peers either online or in person secondly here is a test approaching infinity the integral open parenthesis derivative of x over x equals ln of z plus c were you able to hear me i understand and support the decision of
031our administration to keep students and staff safe especially with the highly contagious delta variant however what creative options can we offer to ensure effective delivery of instruction this is a particular concern for two-week kids many of whom struggle with focusing can be easily distracted many chewy kids also really struggle already with wearing a mask from a sensory perspective please consider these kids especially at the high school where complex and multi-step theorems and theories are discussed every day ap level classes where pacing is very fast and we're understanding every spoken word is crucial what alternative kinds of options can we offer teachers such as face shields or teaching behind plexiglas can we supplement learning through written transcripts of classes or recording classes so students can listen later for items they may have missed for specific populations
032the cdc suggests transparent masks masks as an option many teachers at ghs do not have the benefit of the device such as the one i'm using right now for you to hear what i'm saying this issue is obviously very broad and affects all students if this is our new normal we have to think about this in a way that makes it work and doesn't camper 30 seconds thank you very much thank you the next speaker is mariana begonia ready okay my name is mariana begonia i was born and raised here i have three children in greenwich public schools i am a state employee i used to work in this district i've come to speak about the mandate you have imposed on workers you are choosing to follow the mandates and guidelines because you are being
033incentivized to it is why you have ignored the data for the last year and a half it is why you continue to suffocate our children with your mask mandates it's about your politics not about health and safety you collect state and federal funding on the condition that you make every effort to intimidate us and strip us of our rights and medical freedoms you're also getting paid to indoctrinate our children i saw the guidance from the regime i have the document on what to do about non-vaccinated workers the intimidation tactics the withholding of pay for non-compliance the weekly testing even with a medical exemption that can cost up to two hundred dollars per test not covered by insurance and no reimbursements you're not firing us you're just not paying us until we comply and you're making
034sure that it hits us hard financially with weekly testing proceeding with any aspect of this mandate is unlawful and inhumane we also know that the main reason for pushing forward with this is to apply the same guidance on our poor children now you have vaccine clinics on school grounds that don't require id or parental consent you are actively working to build a segregated school community there is no excuse me please if you're disruptive you're going to have to leave the room sir please stop please stop if you're disruptive you're going to have to leave okay sir can you please leave we'd like to continue the conversation with this person thank you go ahead uh excuse me sorry there is no state of emergency there hasn't been one in over a year we are the highest
035vaccinated state in the nation it's it's over we've all been through so much i i worked in this fed department i love my co-workers i love this district and i just i just don't understand why you guys are ignoring us i just don't get it thank you the next speaker is mariah mclogic sorry if i'm mispronouncing your name mariah i'm sorry m-a-r-i-j-a maria maybe okay well we're going to move on to her next speaker if she'd like she can go and join in by zoom and we can admit her thank you all right the next speaker is gail lordsen um before i start can you come to the microphone please i i just have to ask you a question i'm not starting yet but i saw in your documentation that teachers can take their masks
036off to speak to some i'm sorry that doesn't apply to to this form so you're we're going to start the timer please speak with your mask on if you don't have your mask on you're going to have to go just thought i'd ask i'm sorry i'm not trying to be disrespectful please pull your mask up ma'am but it seems like you are okay please please pull your mask up thank you okay sorry please pull your mask up i'm sorry thank you please be respectful i'm trying to be respectful sir okay it was a question my name is gayle lawrenson thank you for allowing me to speak this evening all statements i am about to make are on public record detailed in two emails that i sent to the board of education the last one yesterday
037with data and sources these are not opinions but facts rooted in science and law masks are ineffective potentially harmful and only authorized for use by an emergency use authorization first the science a virus particle is too small to be stopped by a surgical or cloth mask bacteria are 50 times larger than virus particles and remain trapped inside the mask resulting in continual exposure to the bacteria the vast majority of influenza deaths in 1918 resulted from secondary bacterial pneumonia masks interfere with task performances efficiency and can cause life-threatening conditions like hypoxemia which is low blood oxygen and hypercapnia which is elevated carbon dioxide levels emotional connections are important to the well-being of children masks make them difficult at best and impossible for some children with a mortality rate of point zero zero zero zero three are
038not drivers of contagion asymptomatic transmission is a myth the cost benefit makes a masked mandate impossible to justify you are willfully ignoring established science now the legal coven mask use is authorized for emergency use only because the products are investigational and experimental this clinical research requires informed consent and the right to refuse the right to refuse the right to avoid human experimentation is rooted in the nuremberg code of 1947 ratified by the 1964 declaration of helsinki codified in the u.s code of federal regulations and adopted by the fda the law is clear it is unlawful to conduct medical research even in an emergency unless steps are taken to secure informed consent misrepresenting the use of a mask for use as infection prevention or reduction is a deceptive practice under the federal trade commission there is
039no waiver of liability under deceptive practices even under a state of emergency as such 30 seconds children to wear masks is illegal and immoral i understand the 10 million dollars in esser funding comes with a requirement for universal and correct wearing of masks those are the exact words that i saw maybe 12 times on documentation i also understand that you are required to seek public input and that you have the opportunity to review and revise your plans now that you have been put on notice multiple times of the scientific and legal charges against the masked mandate it is your duty to retire mandate and to report thank you very much to the connecticut department of education thank you so much we have other speakers signed up thank you thank you we didn't skip hershey okay
040um michael if you could unmute maria she's got her hand raised mario please remember you've got three minutes thank you can you see me we can hear you i don't think your camera's on but we can hear you go ahead all right well i'm here at home with my daughter who is now in tears because she practiced all day to make a speech and then encountered for the first time in our entire life to not be allowed entry into a place we've gone everywhere for a year plus to stores amusement parks everywhere with ever with never wearing a mask until tonight and now you've made a seven-year-old cry and i am sure it is not the first time that a seven-year-old is in tears because of your mask policies lauren do you want to try
041to read this now she's not even going to read it now and i don't even know you guys have everything blocked on the zoom can't put a chat can't even find the button for the video camera so you can see the tears on her face these masks you know it there is no science behind this this is completely politic and you are taking advantage of the children if you could stop so we can hear her speak thank you you are playing politics with the children of our town that is not what a board of education is for you are not supposed to be the arm of the democratic party you're supposed to be putting the interests of our children first you're supposed to be trying to raise or to teach our children to be critical
042thinkers but when you actually have critical thinkers who know how to look at science and even go out of our way to volunteer our time to send you guys science to collate the evidence for you to provide it you'd instead of embracing the critical thinking and actually make decisions for yourselves you guys are blindly following biased policies from biased law firms and biased politicians with their own agenda your agenda as the board of education should be one thing and that should be the children of our town and their education do you want to say it now you're cutting into her time to speak would you like to try it hello my name is lauren mcclaychek and i'm doing homeschooling because my mom and dad didn't want me to wear the useless mask all day and
043that was great because i didn't want to wear the mask either because at school my favorite things were hugging my friends and sitting next to them laughing and making friendship bracelets for each other but with the mask on you can't see if they're sad or happy and you have to stay six feet apart school isn't for kids it is for robots or at least that is what it is it sounds like and in homeschooling i learned how to read and now i can read the side of the mask box that says these masks do not prevent the spread of viruses i also learned that my immune system is a lot stronger than a mask it is great being homeschooled but i still feel so sad for all my friends who are in school with masks
044all day i'm hated like everything thank you very much we appreciate your comments we stopped forcing children and teachers to wear masks okay thank you all right our next speaker is william james it's it's for the public record people are at home trying to listen to you right because the point right is to think about the classroom scenario for these kids and we're really asking you you know i mean everybody's passionate right because they're like watching their kids go through this but to think about what this engagement is like for them and whether or not you're really achieving any kind of measurable goal with having this mask policy you have right now it appears to me you have one dimension metric you have a one dimension metric which is virus cases hospitalizations desks this is
045a unified demand metric nationwide i don't see where you're even measuring these things across just greenwich right and then you're not measuring dimensions within the classroom what is the impact of students right what is impact to their social well-being what is the impact to their uh understanding of course materials their ability to as you saw right where you guys complain that we're not speaking into the microphone because it's true and they can't hear their students and it's happening to my kids i can already see it coming in the way they're taking their notes and the homework and stuff right so we're asking you to be rational people to consider these things and whatever this pressure is from the centralized departments of uh i don't even know what state i live in uh uh you know
046uh of of the governor or the president or whatever senator wants to be on the tv is just just think for ourselves for this district for what makes sense for these kids right we know we got like tons of vaccination in this uh district uh we got like all these different other distancing crazy rules everybody has to be apart from each other like these guys over here are here complaining but you know they're like begging you to take down plexi walls right you don't think these guys go hang out in the park 30 minutes later on bikes or jumping around or driving around in cars to each other they're sharing all their i mean they're not sharing sped i know you guys right but like you know what i'm saying right like they're already what
047are you achieving inside the schools with these plexiglass windows this is it's just totally irrational and you and you have no measurement of all the impact you're doing just ignore it anyway so i've uh i've said enough you know um thank you so much for the time it's great to be out here and it's also great to see so many other people coming out i didn't know what i would see here tonight so great great to see other people [Applause] all right thank you we're going to move on to the non-agenda items so simpabaye what is your name you're you're down towards the bottom of the list when i call i'll let you know okay we're in the middle of something thank you uh thank you if you continue to be disruptive i will have
048to ask you to leave uh board members superintendent good evening my name is simpa baien and i appreciate the opportunity to provide comments i'm a newer resident of greenwich and i have children who will almost certainly go through the town's public education system that said i have developed serious concerns as i've learned about aspects of the school's curriculum i am now sadly aware of the disturbing content that seeks to divide innocent young children by race many concerned parents refer to this content as critical race theory at least one board member has publicly denied that critical race theory is taught but i think that the denial is misinformed at best i therefore urge the board to address and remove any curriculum content that automatically classifies one race as oppressive and blacks or designated minorities as victims
049[Applause] such content is purely political and patently false i am a french foreign immigrant and now a proud u.s citizen who moved to the united states from a native country of nigeria 20 years ago with 300 in savings a good education and a dream to succeed and not one of the only open societies on the face of the planet i've been treated with kindness and respect by people of all races in greenwich and around the united states i've also been offended on occasion by people of all hues who have made bad assumptions about my abilities that is life i am black i am not a victim my biracial children are neither victim nor oppressor their mother is not an oppressor my wife and i moved our family to greenwich in 2020 in part because we
050wanted a great public education for our children we want them to be taught how to think and not what to think we want them to learn the facts and just the facts about the history of their great country we do not want our children to be burdened by sins that their friends ancestors may have committed we don't want them to resent their african or european ancestors for any possible involvement in a slave trade or segregation we just want them to be equipped to compete in the increasingly global landscape of tomorrow and to love their country we want them to live in the present my high school principal was a native american who had traced her ancestry ancestry believe it or not to pocahontas after a class on the slave trade that she personally taught she
051told me something i'll never forget 30 seconds she said fight your battles in other words deal with the issues of your day at the right time don't live out imagined ancestral grievances and mysteries of the past fight your battles that's what my native american teacher a kind woman with more than enough to be bitter about told me i want this for every child of every ethnicity in this town let's keep politics and controversial social theories out of our children's classrooms let the children fight their battle thank you [Applause] thank you all right folks we're trying to get through everybody in the hour so please let us move on the next speaker is francis nobey i think she's online michael francis if you could raise your hand you can go ahead can you hear me yes
052hello this is francis funobe mom of three gps students returning to school in person for the first time since march 2020 at the june board of education meeting i closed the school year repeating a beautiful poem about grit and perseverance called it couldn't be done by edgar allen guest originally shared by ms kathleen ramirez then assistant principal at north street school and now assistant principal at north miana school stanford the poem was in honor of our incredible greenwich public school community who survived a pandemic year in person high flex and fully remotely today to kick off the school year i've reflected on the optimistic words of the poem just starting to sing as you tackle the thing that cannot be done and you'll do it and i wondered is it realistic is it reasonable is
053it rational to ask our greenwich teachers to sing as you tackle the thing as we go into the third school year of the pandemic will the words of the poem help to rejuvenate refresh revive our teachers our administrators our parents and most importantly our students when faced with challenges do we smile and sing the first time the second time or can that strategy start to tire as we face year three i asked the greenwich community to come together in courage instead of words from edgar allan guest a reporter from michigan let's turn to the words from a teacher and best-selling author brene brown renee brown is a professor at the university of houston who has spent her career studying courage and leadership brene brown says to get to courage you have to walk through vulnerability
054vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation creativity and change vulnerability is not weakness it's our greatest measure of courage to allow for courage by our students parents teachers staff we must provide a safe and emotionally supportive environment to be vulnerable renee brown says to have the hard conversation to show up and be seen to ask for what you need to talk about how you're feeling is hard but ultimately transformative to close i'm asking our gps community to share space foster kindness give grace stay ever curious or in brene brown's words dare greatly yes the gps mission is to educate all students to the highest levels of academic achievement and also to enable our students to reach and expand their potential but also to prepare our students to become productive responsible ethical creative and compassionate members of
055society good days five seconds decisions we agree with decisions we don't agree with greenwich can and will build a caring and courageous community we love and support our teachers and we sincerely thank you very much all right the next speaker is graham fattad hi uh graham fabidad father of three uh an 18 year old graduated greenwich high last year uh eight-year-old and six-year-old at north miana school um first off we appreciate everything the teachers have done over the years for all of our kids but we're at this point where i'm looking out my kids are going to school wearing these masks scared to death of pulling it down and getting yelled at because they can't drink their water without it in the way their teachers and mrs jones for dr jones pardon me i emailed
056you last week they have teachers that are making them run around in gymnasiums in 90 degree weather with their masks on it's crazy so look my you know what i have to say is nowhere near as eloquent as some of the other speakers we've had up here earlier tonight but i'll give you some points there's a recent analysis from the university of florida most mass worn by children in 90 degree fahrenheit heat were contaminated with parasites fungi and bacteria including a virus known to cause a fatal systemic disease in deering cattle how is this okay a 2004 article in the canadian journal of health on masking in a pediatric hospital expanded on the psycho psychological hazards for children and i quote imagine the impact of a hospital filled with faceless people on a young child
057who's smiling how do i recognize my doctor how does my nurse know who i am why is everyone so scared of me and my germs the journal of american medical association pediatrics jam of pediatrics just produced a study in june this year they found the carbon dioxide levels for kids wearing masked masks averaged over 13 000 parts per million of carbon dioxide the normal content of carbon dioxide is 400 parts per million osha has established a permissible exposure limit for co2 of 5 000 parts per million how is this okay that our children are forced to wear masks for six to eight hours a day while this is three times what is acceptable for health for workers under osha standards across this country i suspect that this mandate this mass mandate 30 seconds is driven
058by the desire of certain adults to feel marginally safer even though they supposedly have effective vaccines masks may or may not be partially effective in shielding adults from covid but since when is it ethical for us as adults to burden our children to benefit adults thank you [Applause] thank you all right the next speaker is michael joseph mercanti anthony hi uh good evening so my name is mike macron anthony and as some in the room may know i am a candidate for one of the open seats on the board of education this november i have 23 years of experience in public education as a teacher an administrator and possessed a doctorate in education from the university of pennsylvania in my current job i work for the new york city department of education as a director
059of continuous improvement that means i support schools in developing and strengthening their systems i rise tonight out of concern that many of the district systems could be strengthened the very real lapses in judgment displayed by the curriculum incidents last year suggest that we don't have appropriate systems in place for the development implementation and oversight of the curriculum i urge the board to be careful not to fall into the trap of looking at into individual incidents but instead to re-examine the systems that support a structured transparent curriculum that appropriately challenges all students i similarly worry about the systems in place to support students in light of the falling aspect scores we saw last spring the special education audit called the district out for shoddy and outdated intervention practices it suggests we should be concerned about the
060systems in place for the identification supervision and structure of intervention programs i'm concerned that the superintendent goals approved last month do not point to measurable outcomes as evidence of effective systems these curriculum issues i think are an example of where we as a community would benefit from better communication we need more than current deny curt denials of what the curriculum is and is not and more transparent materials which avoid educator jargon case in point social emotional learning is not critical race theory but a valuable and necessary resource for teaching life skills the district needs to do a better job of patiently explaining that difference similarly there is no question our students benefit from the inclusion of multiple voices and perspectives in the classroom all students need books and stories about people that look like them
061there is a clear difference between ensuring culturally responsive curricula and marx's critical race theory yet when we dismiss these complaints when we get when we dismiss these concerns scoff at them and otherwise do not engage in a spirit of community dialogue and transparency we foster an atmosphere of distrust that leads to some of the complaints we're hearing tonight thank you for your time thank you very much all right the next speaker is cara philbin cara philbin cara sorry hi i apologize i like to pre-prepare speech but i'm going to wing it tonight so i please note that you are discriminating against greenwich community members who are choosing to wait for clinical trials to complete in 2023 2025 to evaluate the data and for a better understanding of long-term effects in addition you are discriminating against
062people who are afraid of the risks of myocarditis periocarditis and vade vaccine associated enhancement disease which the nih and cdc continues to change the name for which is also antibody dependent enhancement and people who are aware that this information is missing or not being properly disclosed to covet vaccine participants and i quote from the pfizer regulatory document i encourage everybody go to the fda website look at the pfizer co my arenatity literature i have submitted it for public submit public submission but it says post marketing data demonstrates increased risks of myocarditis and pericarditis particularly within seven days following the second dose the observed risk is higher among males under 40 years of age than among females and older males the observed risk is highest in males 12 through 17 years of age that is on
063all of you you heard that read the literature it also admits that myocarditis pericarditis and vade is not being properly disclosed and is missing information if you go to the pfizer sheet insert it doesn't even acknowledge those risks you have to go to the regulatory document you you have created hierarchy parents at the bottom students teachers administrators and within this tiered system further divides masked unmasked vaccinated and unvaccinated administrators only masked in public spaces teachers masked under 37 in the classroom students masked unless permitted to have a mass break fully despite mask exemptions and threatened for their mass dropping below their nose multiple times unvaccinated teachers required to provide pcr tests on set dates and for day one through four they get docked pay and on day five they get a pot they get termination
064notification you are tearing apart the greenwich community with these mandates that do not follow the science time thank you very much [Applause] our next speaker is laura coston thank you members of the board my name is laura costan and i wear many hats in this town but i'm here to speak as an individual and a school parent i see all the patriots here but you know what's not patriotic abusing your access to personal information like you did to conduct that unauthorized survey that's wrong and there are many families who are incensed that their personal personal information was misused this way you know what else is not patriotic admittedly taking an admittedly unfortunate event that happened to other people's children and using it to further a political or ideological agenda the incident that happened with the
065second grade remote classes is not emblematic of a systematic problem with our curriculum the video they saw was not a curriculum mainstay it was a mistake people like me of a certain age have seen worse we saw the space shuttle challenger explode before our eyes at school we watched people die and i don't remember outrage at that incident i remember our community coming together your signs asked do you like freedom you don't want to wear a mask or take a vaccine you have that freedom but we are a nation of laws even if you don't like them so rest assured patriots you have been heard the cold shoulder you've received over and over isn't your imagination but like a jilted lover who will not take no for an answer you think that by repeating the
066same song on a mixtape that the scene you keep repeating is somehow less creepy including moments ago for a long time i have said granite should be run like a sec a successful fortune 500 company with a competent c c suite one that adheres to best practices and invests for the future and maximizes value the same with our schools because we want to stay open we do not want our teachers sick we do not want our children sick even if there's just a small chance that they might die we want competent managers that adhere to best practices for health and safety the speakers list here tonight may be dominated by patriots but it's a small list and the rest of our 9 000 students and staff thank you for your efforts thank you connect please
067be respectful folks you want respect you got to give it to uh next speaker is carl hay b all right so well i got some signs here most of you guys uh talked to most to you and uh i first got engaged in this i have a couple kids in the school district right now i first got engaged in this when my second grade daughter's class was showed an erection so that kind of wicked me off so now i'm engaged tony jones knows me very personally she shunned me and decided that she was going to push me off to the side i put it on the front page of new york post do not doubt my resolve here all right i want to know tony right now these teachers these are science teachers right here
068okay science because that's what we're doing here science what's their consequence for not wearing a mask in school this is not a give and take you get through okay so all right if it's not a give and take let me tell you something you guys work for us you work for us i'm friends with some of you guys i don't care for some of you guys but here's what here's what the ultimatum is enforce the standard maybe fire her i don't know but if you don't do something if there's no repercussions on those teachers my kids aren't going to wear a mask to school you know why because there is no standard now you want to get to the science of this you have about i think it was 404 children died tragically in the
069pandemic they're calling it total about 200 a year okay died with covet not of covered with covet all but one had comorbidities that greatly contributed to their death tragically no child should die nobody here wants any child to die 18 19 flu season yet 480 kids die of flu of flu not with flu you had 52 000 kids in the same year hospitalized for the flu you know money been hospitalized for coven 3 800. this our children are not susceptible to this the way we are as adults you want to get vaccinated great i'll give you a ride to the hospital to do it you want to wear a mask super but you should not be telling our kids that they have to do things graham over here said that it's three times the carbon
070dioxide do we care about kids are we doing science i'm serious it's like you guys fly by the seat of your pants and we are fed up we're not going to put up with it anymore i want to be i want to make it clear we're not going to sit here and just let you poo-poo us listen i don't know what you're even doing you've been typing this whole time okay i i don't i don't you're sitting up here typing secretary if you're not part of the board maybe sit over there but it looks pretty disrespectful because i have no idea who you are okay and 30 seconds so i want you guys to know that we're not going away we're not i'm looking right at you tony jones because i want these p these
071teachers to have consequences if you don't we're going to be back here every day we're going to put this on the front page every day because if there's going to be a standard apply it across the board or my kids they're not wearing a damn mask okay thank you the next speaker is islet steinberg violet steinberg i think online michael hi can you hear me yes please go ahead hi my name is ayelet steinberg this is our second year at north mianis my son is currently in first grade we could not be happier with the teachers and support staff who have helped him grow socially and academically over the past year he actually had kovid caught it while wearing a mask at school last year two of my children had to quarantine for two weeks
072my other two children had to quarantine for two weeks nobody else got it but they did lose an additional two weeks of school kovid may make children sick but there has only been one confirmed death in connecticut in children ages 0 to 9. last year no one was sure how quickly the virus would spread within the school building deaths were moved apart masks were purchased and cleaning was done more frequently we have a lot more information now natural immunity is better than vaccines with better ventilation and more thorough cleaning kids don't spread as many germs the vaccine can also cause heart inflammation in young men vaccinated people can still spread and get very sick from covid masks can cause an assortment of physical and mental difficulties masking an age group that is not spreading the
073disease is not supported by any studies that have been done on masking greenwich should be allowing mass choice and while many are eager for their children to get vaccinated there are also those of us that are more concerned about the potential side effects of the vaccine than actually getting coveted and will not be giving our children coveted vaccines the covid vaccine should not be made mandatory for children children are not at risk of serious illness from kovid and they aren't the ones spreading covet certainly no one wants their children to get sick and no one wants their child to get someone else sick but the prevention cannot be worse than the sickness itself we can all do better by our kids thank you for your time thank you all right the next speaker is christian
074naminsky christian so i submitted this to the board it's six pages i'm just going to try to read through as much as i can in three minutes i'm a parent of two children in the greenwich public schools i'm writing to express my grave concerns regarding the compulsory use of face masks in greenwich public schools it has come to my attention that there are widely known hazards health risks and dangers associated with the use of face masks which can result in both physical and psychological harm to the user it is reasonable to expect that you have considered such issues carefully and familiarize yourself with the available evidence prior to making a decision to compel pupils in your care to wear mass however insofar as you may not have done so to date i wish to draw
075these issues to your attention and i call upon you to take immediate remedial action please be advised that i am also of the view that compelling children to wear a face mask is a direct violation of their right to bodily integrity and or physical autonomy and thus constitutes an abuse for the avoidance of any doubt i object to my children being subjected to such abuse and call for an end to the same forthwith for decades the acceptance accepted best practice in regards to medical mass has been to wear them only in a medical setting there are mountains of peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the ineffectiveness of mass in preventing the spread of virus these studies all demonstrate that there is little to no benefit to widespread universal mass usage some of the studies actually suggest that there
076is a potential for harm from overuse of mass these studies are further supported by the manufacturer's own warning on surgical mass packaging that states this product is not a respirator and will not provide any protection against covid19 coronavirus or other viruses or contaminants wearing an earloop mask does not reduce the risk of contracting any disease or infection perhaps manufacturers are only attempting to limit any potential liability consider in a correspondence with a colleague in february 5th 2020 dr anthony fauci himself stated mass are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection the typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective in keeping out virus which is small enough to pass through the material sometime between march
077and april 2020 the guidance on masking changed there's no study or even data to support this change the change in guidance was justified solely on a rare anecdote on may 27 2020 dr fauci told cnn that he supported masking because he wanted quote to make it a symbol for people to see that that's the kind of thing you should be doing when considering cdc guidance it's important to consider that the cdc is somewhat protected from any liabilities concerning their advice because they have no liability to enforce adherence when schools or businesses adopt the cdc's guidance and decide to enforce that guidance they are assuming responsibilities for the outcome of those actions gps is currently mandating mass usage by all students faculty and visitors the justification of this policy is to reduce the number of new
078cases of covid however mass manufacturers clearly state that their products are not intended for this purpose thank you [Applause] all right the next speaker is carlosa bija carlissa i don't know if we have her c-a-r-l-i-s-a michael if you see her online i'm not seeing her online b-i-g-g-o-t we'll just do one more check not in the room all right we'll move on katelyn hayes good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board of directors in this great town of greenwich connecticut i have already submitted my public comment so i don't want to waste any more time on what i'd already sent you which was in effect a legal demand letter demanding the removal of the masks from usage for the children instead i want to talk a little bit about campaign contributions and pharmaceutical lobbying and i
079would like to make an open inquiry into every single board member is that if they have received any contribution from any lobbying pharmaceutical or any specific lobbying that has now resulted in this mandate i am aware of lamont's order i am aware that there is an understanding of attempts to comply with that order of lamont but i would like to express my inherent desire to see an end to this masked mandate because there are psychological behavioral effects that these children are experiencing and at the end someone is gonna be culpable for it that's all thank you for your time [Applause] thank you all right uh next speaker is james waters michael i think he's online you can go ahead and unmute yourself turn bursting can you hear me yes we can hear you please go
080ahead great good evening board of education members and dr jones my name is james waters and i'm a parent at north miana school tonight i want to provide a little context for all of you and those tuning in you're here tonight to conduct the work you are elected and hired to do in running and working to improve our fantastic school system we the vast silent majority of parents and town residents republicans democrats and unaffiliated voters alike support what you're doing and applaud you for making the hard decisions we encourage you to keep your eye on the ball and not let the noise distract you there's plenty to be done and our school system has plenty to improve upon to make it as excellent as it could be for the record i don't think any kid
081likes wearing a mask who does but my kids have been back at school with their friends since september 2020 they've worn a mask just like all their friends and they couldn't care less they'd rather deal with a minor inconvenience for a little longer and get a little stick in their arm in a month or two meanwhile as we've heard tonight there's plenty of noise there always will be there will continue to be noise in the coming months as we go through our municipal election as we attempt to put covet behind us and there will be continue to be noise in the weeks and months and years beyond that there are plenty of axes to grind in our town and axes tend to be squeaky wheels yet keep this in mind tonight most of this noise
082on mass and vaccines and critical race theory is coming from usual suspects suspects we've come to know the same small group that marks this meeting on its calendar drives a cheap signed truck around town and tries to push a selfish fringe agenda that relies on misinformation from cherry-picked sources and fake science i strongly support their right to speak and even to whine but please don't let it distract you from things that really matter from things that are working from things that you need to do focus instead on academic excellence and ways to bolster personalized learning focus on getting our crumbling school buildings rebuilt like the one you're sitting in right now focus on keeping our kids safe and healthy in school these are the things that matter the noise does not thank you excuse me
083please you're being very disrespectful uh honestly folks stop if you continue we're going to clear the room and you can watch the rest of the meeting on zoom the public comments are over we're going to move on in our agenda thank you very much we've got a meeting to conduct next up is our monthly reports starting with it if you continue we will clear the room folks okay thank you that you might want to write to the governor it's his math mandate we're going to move on with our meeting thank you next up is the monthly report starting with the superintendent if you don't stop we will clear the room thank you good evening thank you um first of all i just want to say thank you uh to the greenwich alliance who really helped
084us get a good start off to the year and i know lil perrone mentioned the t-shirts that they provided it we're sharing them in in celebrating 15 years of partnership with the alliance and they do so much for our school system um also just i know that a lot of north miana's parents do watch the meetings and just an update that construction is still on time it's looking really good we've been able to get all of the materials um so we're very very optimistic about that project um also um the big ideas parent night was very very well attended i don't know if any of the board uh were able to watch any of that for your own children but uh on the very first evening we had over 200 people uh join that call
085they were videoed if you'd like to go back and watch them and that's the new math rollout that is k-8 um and then i want to mention just with cardinal stadium we've kept the board updated on that we do have a facilities newsletter that will be coming out that will have a lot more information we are trying to do and i guess it would be similar to what to do in a restaurant with a soft opening um we are really trying to see if we are going to be able to use the field on october 2nd but i i want to cautiously say that because we have a lot of work and sign-offs that have to happen and that would be and i don't know mr kelly if you want to join me or or
086share but yup oh you want a good committee report okay we'll do it then okay so we're going to move on to uh committee report oh mr cher sorry hi tony i i have a couple questions um and i appreciate your update um i wanted to ask about two things we're doing and one of them i hadn't thought about to ask about but it relates to an item tonight until i just heard two things that i really stimulated me i thought this was handled but maybe it wasn't one's about vaccinations but the other one was more about um how we're handling covet 19 in schools i think and please correct me if i'm wrong we're following to the letter in the implementation of covid practices the guidance of the cdc and the connecticut state department
087of health which i've done my homework and read them both and they're completely aligned is that correct is there anything different we're doing that's not in that guidance we're not doing anything different really than we did last year and that guidance not only comes from the guidance document from the state but from the epidemiologists at the state level who we consulted last year um if we are and i think what you're really asking is that in the newest guidance this fall they do allow a teacher to take a mask off when they're teaching however gea and gps together have not advised our teachers to do that because we feel like it's not a great role model just as we did last year and again under the guidance of the epidemiologists um if they are in
088an office space working with their colleagues and they are do they have distance then they may actually take their mask off um if they're in a professional development um just as if our kids are at lunch and they're in the gyms eating they have their mask off um so yes we are following exactly what we're supposed to be doing and that guidance went to the uh staff last year and also again this year okay so let me ask that was not the one i was gonna ask about that that's interesting so what you're saying is is that for teachers we're deviating from the cdc and the state department of health guidance that's what i just heard you say okay no no they're not deviating they're going by the guidance that we utilize at the local
089level which is our local health department uh includes the state connecticut department of health epidemiol epidemiologists also cdc and in fact if we had ucdc last year i'm sure you remember we probably wouldn't have been open uh cdc was wanting six feet of distance last year and we utilized the pediatric dissociation and went with three made all the difference in opening our doors tony i don't want to debate a policy of 12 months ago that wasn't my question my question is a simple question which is what guidance because the board never voted on a quarantine or any of that kind of policy so i just wanted to know what guidance because you'd said to us numerous times and i said okay fine i'm just gonna at the time you said we are following the guidance
090of the cdc and the connecticut department of health that's what you told in told me in july of 2020 i'm like okay sounds good to me you know that was what you were following you know i don't want to debate whether it was a good idea or not a good idea i'm certainly not qualified to have that debate i'm not a public health person and i know you aren't either so that was fine that's what you're doing i'm trying to understand today if we're still following that guidance or you've got your own greenwich version that and that's all i'm trying to ask and then i have a specific question about um uh what's actually happening in a classroom so are we following that guidance or we're doing something different it sounds like we're doing something
091different um as you will remember i did send the board and the board knows that they were updated in 2021 so we would not be following the 2020 guidance that's where the classroom guidance is a little bit different uh other than that nothing else has changed okay so so hold on this is our board meeting no offense to anybody who wants to chime in but this is our board meeting so um tony my question was on quarantining of students because the state department of health's guidance changed and the cdc's guidance changed and it applies to the practices of students in the classroom they redefined what close contact is and they give very specific guidance about quarantining in their new definition of close contact so my question is just a simple one are we following that
092or are we doing something different yes our town has chosen to follow the cdc guidance for quarantine some some towns are following a seven day uh still staying with the 14 day uh but yes we are following that guidance okay so that's on the guidance of our local health department they decide that for us okay so what it says is is that and maybe this is the question do we have any store are we doing small group activities in a classroom where kids are closer together than three feet if you've ever been in a classroom with children it's almost impossible to keep them three feet all day long every minute of the day we absolutely are doing what we did last year and trying to be as responsible as possible to keep our children safe
093and teachers okay let me just move on the my other question was uh and these are two questions i just popped up vaccinations we have a vaccination policy before us tonight that was revised um and we're going to get to that but when we last talked about this they talked about testing i was very surprised to hear from an employee that they're being charged for that testing i presume we're providing this testing if someone needs to have testing uh under this mandate or it's uncove covered by the insurance that they're provided by the town of greenwich is is is that person misinformed or we char are we telling are people have to get a test that they have to pay for every week um initially when it came out from the connecticut department of health
094um individuals were going to have to pay and they were concerned at the state level that it was going to cost because it was every week however on monday they had an emergency meeting issued new guidance and we've been letting our staff know that if they go to a state approved testing site there is no cost to the employee okay and then the second the second thing i want thank you for that clarification that's great the second thing and i saw your note about the listing the site so that was helpful that got sent out um the the other thing i wasn't sure what that gentleman said is i i know that you've been sending out notes to parents and so on and so forth about vaccination clinics and testing that can be done on
095school sites at certain times so on so forth i don't want to wade into that debate but do you know if these clinics that are being housed at our sites do they require parental consent for a minor to get tested or uh get a vaccine do you know absolutely yes excuse me please don't disrupt the meeting not a meeting with all with all due respect this is our meeting hold on just one sec so we're certain that these clinics would not issue a test or a vaccination to a minor without a signed consent so the testing that you're referencing is a brand new program from the connecticut department of health and the parents have to sign the form they opt into to be part of the pool testing where they do like 20 children at
096a time if somebody tests positive then they go back and look at the separate samples but again the parents opt in if they want to choose that for their child you know if they have a grandparent at home and they're worried about the child bringing an infection home they may choose to do the pool testing on a weekly basis we have no idea um how many families will want to take advantage but it's you know it's up to them if they want to they sign up and they can unenroll at any point in time as well and the same is true for the vaccine clinic uh not one of our students can't walk into this clinic if they're a minor and get a vaccine is that correct unless they were if they were a senior
097and i would have to clarify with mary keller and they're already 18 and uh yeah if you're over 18. sure yes if you're a minor but no they have to have parent consent okay clarification so i have a question regarding the what you had said about teachers if they were on campus and they are socially distanced and they're in a room and they're succeeding apart they're not wearing masks is that that's what are they they've taken them off is that what you said if they are sitting like in a professional development they're in their offices things of that nature they can also have a mass break just like our kids do during the day when we have snack in the elementary classroom every other row they take their mask off and have a snack break
098so the teachers yes if they are in their office space or if they're in a training room with five teachers and they're spaced out doing their training they may take it off yes but they're on but okay so they're in a room and they're spaced out and they're on school grounds correct yes so i'm looking at our the policy that was just passed and that the only exemption the only exception for student for for teachers ms holman if you continue to disrupt the meeting you will be asked to leave thank you okay thank you i think it's time for you to go you can feel free to join the meeting via zoom thank you feel free to join the meeting via zoom thank you very much so that type of exception that you're talking about
099is not included in the policy in fact it says the only exception for teachers is when they're in a teaching con when they are actually physically teaching and six feet apart i think that's one of the reasons the policy is changing a little bit tonight because it's even changed since 2020 and but but that is the guidance when you look at policy normally we would have a reg that goes with policy um what i do is send out the guidance document to the staff that is how to implement it yes they are allowed to have mass breaks just like our children absolutely and if they're in a planning session and they're spaced out yes they may take them off that's not what our policy says that is how we are implementing the policy but that's
100not what the policy says well policy isn't it on the agenda tonight or not all right thank you carl carl come on seriously trying to run a meeting we can't have a discussion with that all right so karen if we want we can make a referral to the policy governance committee to take that up i think and i did and i did okay carl that's enough thank you and i actually emailed dr jones earlier this week because in in light of that to say what is the ask here because i knew then and there that that was not within our policy in fact that is a policy violation so if you need to make an amendment to the policy then we need to take that up because that's not allowed under the policy that was
101passed in august i will certainly go back and reference the policy what i can say this hasn't changed since last year and how we are implementing for our staff and for our students so yeah i'll certainly go back and look at that because we do provide for math breaks for students it describes them when they're allowed for math breaks and even when despite the fact of what happened last year the policy was passed in august so it's irrelevant it's what happens after this policy was passed this policy was passed in the august meeting of this year all right we can certainly have the policy governance committee take that up with the superintendent mr cher mr bernstein look this board is the governing authority for the school system our policies have the effect of law inside
102the school system no offense i don't have a debate about this the superintendent does not have the discretion when she implements our policies to modify our policies based upon what she sees fit okay that's not a subject that gets referred to a to a committee the board needs to just and you as the chairman representing the board speaking for the board just need to make that careful if somebody wants to come back and modify the policy through two reads before this board to add mask breaks and kids mask breaks and all the rest of it that's fine but we cannot have the administration after this board passes a policy deciding what part of it they're going to do and not do every day mr share if you read the mass policy there's actually mass breaks
103already there and what applies to students should also apply to staff the referral to policy governance is if there needs to be a change that's the proper place for it to start we will follow with our governance and please stop interrupting us this is a meeting of the board it is not a meeting with the public thank you very much it is a meeting of the board okay we are going to move on so we're under reports of okay please leave i'm asking you to go you're being disruptive and i'm going to have you escorted out okay if you don't leave we will clear the room we need to be able to conduct our meeting we need people to be respectful of that it's a public meeting you can watch the meeting it's not participatory
104ma'am it's time to go it's time time to go thank you very much okay we're going to move on to reports of officers committees and liaisons mr kelly did you want to take up the stadium yes peter thank you very much or chairman bernstein i should say sorry uh the uh uh we're talking about the opportunity to open up cardinal stadium in a modified fashion there's a we have reserved boyle stadium which we played at the last last home game was played there uh everything went fine uh but it is not cardinal stadium we have an opportunity i might have an opportunity we have a couple of small hurdles to uh to get past to have a a reduced version of what the stadium will look like to open it up we'll have uh we'll
105have just the bleachers which are 100 complete we will have all the rest of the construction site will be fenced off with construction fence everything will be of course before we take this step we'll make sure everything is safe but the issues on the negative are that we might have to control the attendance it might have to be students and parents only it might not have to be we're still we're talking about that right now boyle stadium on the other hand which we have to consider as well will not be restricted attendance and it but it also is not cardinal stadium i've spoke to the football coach of course he wants to play at cardinal stadium as a coach for many years myself there is a superpowers that one receives when one is coaching and
106playing at cardinal stadium when you are a greenwich high school student and a greenwich coach so the superpowers we will take away from the kids by not having our game at uh at cardinal stadium so the issue here is do we continue do we use boyle stadium which was adequate to stanford stadium or do we take if we do have that opportunity to open up the stadium and it's incomplete form uh and there will be construction fences up and all there will be no bathrooms we'll have a portal parties like we've had before all that stuff will be ready by the end of the month to the next home game but do we want to open it up uh prior to being complete that is the question mr first of all i think that it's
107wonderful that we even have this choice now joe and thank you for all the work you've been doing on this i had the pleasure of going to boyle stadium last weekend and it was lovely um they did a really nice job and although they ran out of water but um i would say that if we could play in our stadium i know there's something that's so special about that and to me you know it's like moving into the house and all the furniture isn't there but you know it's coming and the fact that the kids when there's only so many games in a football season i went to notre dame so i particularly like football and i think that if you can have a home game and these seniors could be there with their parents
108i know it's a little bit of a harder decision i think if the community can't be there but to me that is a no-brainer but if it's even just the kids and the parents i think we should leave it up to the coach and gus and you know and the kids really if that's what they want i think it's i think that makes sense ms hirsch i would love nothing more than to see our our students playing in our stadium and and having them cheered on by their by our community um and i love it love the idea that we can try to open it up even if it's not fully finished the only question i actually have is you discuss maybe needing to control the attendance but our other bleachers the visitors side is
109still open and available correct so if we needed to limit the number of individuals sitting in the bleachers the home bleachers would the rest of uh our visitors be able to sit on the other side if uh if need be well the yes the visitors side will be completely open as it has been since the construction started uh that holds uh uh well i think it's about a thousand people or so so we still have a good amount but we also do have the visiting teams fans that will be over there as well uh so the stadium holds i think about 3 800 people so we do have a a good number of people in the in the home bleachers i only put that as a possibility that we have to restrict attendance uh but
110uh but to uh miss toes point there uh i think if asked uh the students uh the football players if they would prefer to play at cardinal stadium rather than boyle stadium regardless of the attendance i think to a to a player they would say would much rather play a cardinal stadium are there any players here that agree with that yes i see that yeah unanimous for the room players okay so any any further questions and just as long as oh okay the only other question is we would make sure we would be able to make sure that those who needed accommodations to be able to access the stadium would have uh you know the same kind of golf cart that we've had in the past be able to access we've met with the ada
111people and the ada people uh since we're not 100 complete with ada compliance as far as the elevator goes access to the bleachers is 100 ada compliant the parking lot the uh the handicap ada parking lot uh will not be ready but we are going to supply golf carts like we used to do from the uh from the regular parking and the elevator will be in short order uh i'll be ready to go for the next home game but we will not have use of the elevator and our ada people have signed off on uh on us not having that mr who's that who's the 88 people alan and stephanie the uh first uh first selectmen's well what's the full name is very convenient advisory committee advisory committee you know um my my other thank
112you for asking that thank you for asking karen um my second question or the second question you wanted an answer to was um when what is the new date that this project's going to be complete we feel pretty comfortable that it will be complete for the next home game which will be on the 30th of october so the whole pro the the parking lot will be finished the driveway the electricity all that stuff by the 30th of october that is correct okay thanks all right anything else from that um any other reports from committees officers liaisons misto just real fast uh budget committee it is the beginning of budget season i know it's hard to believe but um if i could ask my committee members i'm trying to find a date with the administration for
113next week so we will get started on that all right any other reports from this oh sorry dr francis your hand all right yep um just from the alliance i had we had our first meeting earlier this week it's always very exciting and it is as was mentioned earlier an organization that has done so much for the schools it's really great um just a quick update reaching out grants awarded 108 000 uh which brings the grants up to 1.7 million dollars to the schools this year it includes greenwich high school eastern middle school western ham ave and new leb in terms of the other big thing going on is avid success one of the new large initiatives it's providing extensions to the different avid programs and one of the big things they're looking for are
114mentors as part of their mentoring program so you can email julie at greenwichalliance.org to learn more about that if you would like to help in terms of mentoring students and this is particularly for students as they leave to go off to college um tuning into music is continuing uh with virtual lessons at this time and everybody should be getting ready for turkey trot which is coming up and registration will be opening soon thank you much thank you all right ms hirsch i just wanted to report on seak our special education advisory committee they had their first meeting of the year um and uh realigned some of their um members of their voting members of their board um due to changes in enrollment um and they will be sending out some information to look for additional
115members uh for committees and other things um they were also discussing some of their plans for the upcoming year and were discussing um topics to go forward to uh for their committees for the audit as well so i just wanted to report on that but they will be reaching out to uh invite others to submit applications to be participatory on that committee thank you all right so you know other reports we're going to move on to our discussion item so the first is the summer school executive summary so dr carabillo take it away so good evening chairman bernstein boe members dr jones parents and colleagues first slide i'm going to give you a brief summary of our 2021 summer school program the dates for the summer school program were july 5th to august 6th the
116focus of the program was to reinforce skills accelerate learning and for students to gain credits towards graduation if you recall last summer all of our summer school programs were held virtually with synchronous learning and teaching we did offer our esi students who required related services to receive them in person throughout the day at costco elementary school this year we were able to have in-person summer school programs with the exception of some secondary classes which were held virtually and they were also synchronous our pre-k five next slide please our pre-k five program was held at glenville elementary school and our secondary program 6 through 12 was held at central middle school we also had two satellite sites one at julian curtis and the other at western middle school the principals of those two sites invited their
117teachers and students to participate in summer learning at their home schools for the past four years we have invited k-8 students to attend our summer learning program who have not been reaching their expected growth on our universal screener star we take the scores from our winter score assessment that occurs in january we invite those students who are scoring at a level one or a level two some building teams also recommend students they believe need additional reinforcement to ready them for the next school year we invite all students who have been identified to receive extended year services esy we are required by law to offer an esy program that is similar to what the identified students participate during the regular school year this year we invited over 900 k-8 students and 443 esy students high school
118students register for courses they are interested in taking for acceleration improving their grades gaining credit or credit recovery that's the correct slide now elementary as you see from this slide the students day included literacy instruction and numeracy instruction students were able to practice a variety of speaking and listening skills critical thinking skills reading problem solving and mathematical skills the glenville program had five pre-k classes three kindergarten classes two first grade classes three classes of grade two three classes of grade three two classes of grade four and two classes of grade five the average class size was 12 students next slide the julian curtis satellite day program was a little different as the students had a longer day and a physical education class they had five classes k through four with 10 students in each class
119and both the elementary and the satellite programs and the secondary k-8 program had from 11 30 to 1 o'clock they received esy students received related services and specialized instruction next slide the secondary 6 through 12 day varied depending on the classes that students took either for reinforcement for reading and math and they were each one and a half hours long with an average class size of 13 or the length required for the courses that students were taking for acceleration or credit attainment the middle school acceleration classes were two to three hours long again depending on the course that they were taking the high school courses were anywhere from two to four hours in length depending on the requirements to cover the content for credit attainment the courses that were listed are offered on the next
120two slides next slide so you can see that these are the courses that secondary students took for credit and you can see the number of students that earned credits and that there's still a few incompletes students are taking their exams at the end and they have not been corrected yet so we're just waiting for a few more scores next slide for more secondary outcomes and you can see some additional courses the number of students in each one of those classes how many credits they earned or accelerated with and then the number of incompletes next slide for the satellite program at western middle school the focus at the satellite at middle western middle school was focused on english and math instruction they met from 8 30 to 11 and the esy students again research services received
121services from 11 30 to 1. western also invited some rising fifth graders to attend their programming so they would have a positive experience for transitioning to western middle school next year next slide our summer programs were in session for five weeks the focus for pre-k 8 was moving students forward with their academic skills and social emotional growth they had morning meetings breakfast and lunch gave students opportunities to practice their social skills the secondary program focused on credit attainment to ensure that students had credits to matriculate through high school and graduate with their peers on time students who are in the esy program the focus was on their individual iep goals and to continue making progress during the summer next slide this slide shows the number of students that were enrolled in each program you can
122see the elementaries had 193 students at glenville julian curtis had 15 students western middle school had 13 grade 5 students at the middle school we had 73 students and that was a combination of both our k-8 students and some of our secondary uh acceleration courses for middle school students 37 at western middle school the high school had 145 students and pre-k had 57 students next slide these are the students the percentage of students that had high needs either they were identified as special education students and perhaps esy students english language learners and free and reduced lunch and you can see the number of students in each program next slide shows you the attendance this year students attended for 19 days that was the length of the program and students that attended over 20 days if
123you look at the attendance you'll see that many students did attend at least 20 days so that was very exciting to see next slide now i'm going to leave you go back one slide please so the the attendance was really important because this year it was shorter than we had last year or the previous year so it'll be interesting to see what the um end outcomes are so this was the second year our summer school program was impacted by the kobit 19 pandemic we were fortunate to have most students in school for our summer learning our classes were small to ensure we could continue to implement and mitigating strategies to keep students and teachers safe only those high school students taking english social studies and pe classes received synchronous instruction this occurred so we could
124keep social distancing for our secondary students at central middle school there were fewer students in our summer program this year and we believe it was due to the pandemic and the students as well as the parents and many teachers needed a break from the challenging year they had just finished students who attended 80 percent of the time more than 17 days of class generally performed at higher levels the teachers at the four sites also focused on developing relationships with the students in front of them i was at glenville many days during dismissal and the children exiting the building were smiling happy and really were happy to be in school but they were also happy to go home we are looking forward to reviewing all of the data from our coming benchmarks to determine new and
125creative ways to deliver summer learning opportunities for our students growth in both areas of academics and social emotional growth any questions absolutely um and it's uh peter bernstein um i guess i'll i'll kick off so i do want to ask about uh performances i know you you talked about outcomes and you basically looked at you know whether or not they were able to get credit i guess i want to dig a little deeper especially for the elementary school students that were invited into whether we saw learning you know the recovery of that learning loss or acceleration for some of them so if you can maybe talk a little bit more about the performance of the students and in particular you know you had the two alternate sites at jc and western if you could talk
126about whether it was successful having that versus kids that were in the other sites what we saw from the data that we had for the star assessment because that's what we gave them at the end of the five weeks we saw that the students that were in the satellite group they tended to have a little bit higher performance on their scale score with with on star the students at glenville and at the middle schools the majority of the students stayed either level with their performance so that they did not lose any any learning at all that they had or they they improved slightly the five weeks was a short period of time and we're not sure whether we will see that carry through when students take their benchmarks this the in the beginning of the
127year they just finished taking star and they're in the process of taking um our benchmarks so we're going to look at that information as well to see if our students have encouraged and um and really made solid the learning that they did this summer so that they can really progress this year thank you all right mr sure i think i saw your hand i've got a i got a couple of housekeeping questions and um because a couple things i couldn't crosswalk so i need your help um and i'll get to that one for the first one was what did we spend on this program this year i know we've you've revamped it and changed it and we used to spend we used to spend a couple million bucks on this thing or a million and
128a half and i know you came last year and said we spend less i was wondering in 20 2021 what did we wind up spending okay i can tell you from 2019 2020 which was the last year that we had a regular summer school program it was regular you you gave us that number i was wondering about 2021 2021 for the uh non-esy program we spent eight 72 and thirty dollars and what did you spend for the esli program for the esy program for 2021 we uh spent 478 dollars and the large decrease we believe was due to busing as well as there was no direct instruction there was some direct instruction of esy students but the majority of the esy students just had their related services at costco school okay this year do you
129want to know what this year was as i have some information isn't this 21 this is year 21 this year we spent we our revenues for summer school general was 58 000. yeah no that part i saw i was more interested in the expense side i know the revenues you presented at the last so the expense for esy this year was 700 and 732 231 but we're still waiting for our final esy transportation bill okay and what was the other non-asy part do you know non-esy part i don't have all of the costs yet pat marin is working on that for me is it roughly the same as the year before uh it's i believe it is okay so if you just follow up with that the other one was um your slide i'm sorry
130your slides aren't on the screen anymore um the the jc program yep just remind me who who was eligible to attend at the jc program all of the students that had been identified as level one or level two students on the winter star score they were all invited but just jc students or were that open to everybody else was it just another site jc students at jc were just jc students okay over 900 students were invited the students that went to jc happened to be jc students right and the um uh the western middle school program right yep was that just western kids that was just western students as well okay um i'm going to want to ask sean sean or ann i'll just tell you but it's really a question for sean breaking out
131the costs to run these programs based upon how you presented it you know kind of site by site so on and so forth but that'll be a follow-up question my other thing question was um i think i heard you just explain to uh mr bernstein that um what you're saying is you don't yet know the impact of the program because you're just putting in the universal screener right now correct correct and then you're going to do a compare against students who were invited and didn't attend correct when would we see that when would we expect to see that data from you uh i will have to work with jen lau and i can get back to you with when we think we can get that for you i'm sorry i wasn't asking my question properly
132at what future meeting would we expect to see an update a month from now two months from now i'll work with the superintendent and with jen lao and we will let you know what the date would be okay the other thing um i i was a little confused uh about the course list in your presentation yep um [Music] and i appreciate you providing the catalog uh that's proven um but we're about to take up an item that's about fees and there are a bunch of courses listed here that are not in the fee list so i couldn't figure that one out like health and wellness is in the catalog but it's not listed in the list of courses with fees i realize you're not responsible well maybe you are i don't know uh software research
133project bridge to test only and i just didn't know are are they do they have other names i know that there there has been a fee for the uh test only for bridge what is that it's the test for middle school students and um to take instead of taking the class during the summer they just take uh the test that's given towards the end of the summer to see if they qualify for the accelerated classes okay um and then ann if is it safe to say that if the course didn't have enrollment that's in your document it didn't run so we didn't retain us that we didn't stipend a teacher for it right that is correct unless it was a credit recovery course and then we tried to uh run that credit recovery course in
134a way that would be maybe a teacher would take on an additional student it depends would depend on the courses that the students needed okay i don't understand what you just said can we try to be very um cost conscious sure of course if a student needs that credit of that course to be able to graduate on time with their classmates then we make sure that there is some way that that student gets to take that course whether it's an asynchronous course or a synchronous course or they are actually in a class yeah because i noticed as an example you know what what caught my attention is you know some of these are pretty well attended right the english 910 those are well attended in high school um some of them are pretty well attended
135i was really surprised when we ran a civics course for one student that was a credit recovery course yeah so do you do you do we automatically staff to credit recovery regardless of enrollment it depends on the course that the course can be offered asynchronously then we will offer it that way and the student will be in a class with a teacher but will not be participating in that class they'll be doing the course asynchronously within that classroom so there's a teacher if there are any questions i'm sorry that i didn't understand that so what i'm just trying to say if if you have like this civic student whether the kid had to come to the school every day or they were by them they were with a teacher remotely it was just the teacher
136and the one student correct no no but i what i was trying to say peter i'm sorry i was not very clear uh civics would have been an us and a synchronous class because it was social studies considered social studies so that student took the course virtually but that student was assigned to another teacher who may have been teaching a social studies course or an english course so if that student had questions about the separate course that he was taking there was a teacher of um that was on on assigned to him so that he could get credit or she could get credit for that class how does that student get instruction then it's uh as i said it's an asynchronous course so i got it i got it okay thank you i got it
137okay miss hirsch well i was glad to see that mr share asked a bunch of the same questions that i already had so my list will be shorter thank you um so i just wanted to ask one of the discussions one of the slides mentioned that some students attended less than 20 days if the summer school ran for five weeks were some of the programs not five weeks in length well they it the program started on july 6 and ended on august 7th and july 6th was a tuesday so it only ran for 19 days then most of all the students would have been under 20 days now there was one extra day in case students needed that time to make up um it also noted that if a student attended less than 80 of
138the classes that you know you were you were noticed noting that they would if they attended more than 80 they were um did better than the students who did not attend at 80 i'm trying to figure out if a student attended less than 80 of the classes if they were still able to pass that class i would sort of assume that there's an attendance requirement for credit recovery for the high school correct they have to be there a certain amount of time and if they have i think it's more than two tardies and two absences then they don't earn the credit um i'd love to sort of see that information at some point just just as long as we are offering these programs i know as mr share said later on that later in the
139we'll be looking at tuition and fees so i'll leave some of those questions for them but i want to make sure that we're providing them what they need to have credit recovery and and support but if they're not attending it sort of uh doesn't help them that is correct and then i just the last question is i know we've discussed this in the past if we've invited 900 students who do not have the scores who are scoring one and two on the winter do we ever discuss or ask the parents to let us know why they've declined the invite i do not know if the individual building principles ask why or not i do not but that's a very good question we could probably send out a survey and ask them why they didn't a
140number of parents did contact me and said that they really were excited that it was being offered but their children were just burned out and they were too and they wanted to have the summer off so their children could play and just do whatever they wanted they wanted to give their children a rest well i'd love to sort of know the answer because i think it could help us build the summer school to be a more uh enriching and fun environment that students want to attend to help support their learning if they're you know learning gaps so if you have the ability to do that i'd love to sort of see why they uh why they were not attending um and i know we talked about looking at benchmark data when you get that so
141i will uh see to somebody else with questions all right miss kowalski uh so i just had i had some questions regarding the differences in the the program so you said that the satellite program at jc which was a little bit had a little bit of a longer day those students you said you think performed slightly higher than those that didn't go to the satellite school where their day was shorter and they stayed relatively stagnant is that did i hear that right yes i would say you do you got that right but as i was talking with uh trish the principal at julian curtis we really think it's because the children knew the teachers they were used to being in that school they were comfortable it was like just continuing and they really enjoyed their
142summer because they were with their peers and they were with teachers that they knew so that's we think that that might have had an impact we i don't know but that's just my observation and then talking with uh mrs mcguire that's what we think and the teachers probably would say the same thing no i think that's probably a fair assessment and that's what's so i'm wondering going forward in taking away this information if it's something that we could consider building out for a summer school program to make them all satellite schools and and that's part one and then part two is did you notice that there was a higher percentage of children that took summer school that went to because they had the satellite school option as opposed to overall [Music] i i would not
143be able to make that determination i i don't know but we have um dr jones and i have talked about it and that's why we're excited to talk about new and transformative ways to deliver summer learning as we move forward and one of our new program administrators at central office tara will be working with us to design some new things based on the data that we have and based on her experiences and you know it's always nice to have some new outlook and some new ideas as we move forward and my last comments last question is i noticed that the the day for summer school is relatively short yeah it could be an hour or it could be two hours and i guess this is a just a balancing act of what makes most sense
144but has we given any thought to a longer day of instruction in enhancing and maybe breaking it up so it's there's a little bit more there's some learning time and some fun time and some learning time but i i'm not i'm wondering if the hour a day if you just did language arts or if you just did math is enough for that period of time to actually make a difference for those children that we're trying to enhance their you know academic achievement which is why they're going in the first place because it takes a lot of work to get a kid out for an hour a day and i'm just wondering if it makes sense and what the data would say and also versus the cost of running a little bit longer program during the
145day in 2019 20 we did have a longer program it was from 8 30 until i believe 2 o'clock for the elementary program and um because of covid and because of the mitigating circumstances that we've had the past two years we believe that this would be uh something that children would participate in yet would not be overwhelmed by being in an asynchronous uh synchronous setting as they were last year or this year after coming out from being in a very i don't want to say um in a pretty rigid summer uh pretty rigid school year programming that they had to stay within their own cohorts they could not um you know we had a lot of separations on the buses a lot of different mitigating circumstances so we felt that this was a good um
146a good uh middle ground for students to be able to come do some you know see some of their peers do some socializing you use their skills build upon their skills and yet still have time during the day to go and just be kids no and i don't and i don't disagree with that at all um and that makes sense i think it'd just be interesting excuse me to see if there is any significant if there's anything you can tell from the difference of a longer day versus a shorter day and maybe the shorter day is the best result right it's focused it's direct and then kids get to be kids and that's all they need i'm just curious if you see any differences between the two well we'll have to look at the go
147back and look at the data and see if there is any difference all right thanks um miss hirsch just as a note i know when we had the school day longer over the summer there was board discussion then about allowing students just to come for math or just to come for ela because to have a student come from math if they didn't need math uh wasn't always productive for them um so it would be very interesting to sort of see how that has helped their test scores now that if you're having them there for both or were they allowed this year to only come for ela or only come for math they were allowed to come for only ela or only map but the majority of the students chose to be there for both the
148classes so that might be some a data point to take a look at because i know in the past that was something we have as a board have discussed and this is peter bernstein again so i i do want to say i'm i'm glad we've moved away from the replicating the full school day model i think it's probably a lot better for the kids to come and get the instruction that they absolutely need i i do like the idea of a little fun time in there too but uh it's not camp at school sadly um so i guess uh you know keep doing this and i suppose the board would get an update before you actually plow right into uh next summer school so i guess we'll talk about that we'll talk about that at
149the chair meaning for agenda planning purposes but i would presume you'd need to come in the spring unless there's a cost element and then you need to do that as part of the budget yes indeed thank you i'm just ticking away thank you very much all right with that we're going to move on to our next item which is the strategic plan update mr share um there's really not a lot to report from when we last met in report it out to you guys in uh june um one update uh which you can see on the screen um this is new fresh data you'll all recall we have a strategic dashboard of strategic measures the board has had these for a long time and this board re-adopted those in june i guess 18 months ago
150or maybe two years ago so it exists until it gets replaced just what you're looking at here is the strategic measures the top five are academic the middle five are about student wellness it provides a balanced view of not only a kid academically but how do we think about kids being whole people and then the ones on the bottom are known as operational or more stakeholder satisfaction all the ones marked in gray have not been updated uh because uh for a lot of reasons there's not new data some of that does have new data from last year so we'll ask the administration to provide the the new data the two ones in the top left are new because we just got new data from the state if you haven't looked at the data from the
151state you should go look at it you should also you know feel free to talk to the people at the kenneco state department of education in the innovation office it's an amazing group of people and they're really really helpful and they're very straightforward and i find them to be very direct and honest really easy to work with but the new update is on a percentile rank which is in ela and mathematics they did not publish data in science the new ranking is 81. mathematics it's 87. um mathematics uh is effectively the same as it was before just so you know a number before was in terms of percentile rank was 86.4 which gave us an 86. now it's 86.5 which gives us an 87. um if you move out one decimal we haven't moved that
152needle at all what percentile means is is that there are 13 percent of the districts in connecticut perform better than we do that's what that winds up meaning the target of the long-term plan which we're now in year six or seven was to be at 92 the 92nd percentile and on english language arts unfortunately um other people outperformed us during the coveted year and we went from 83 down to 81. just in terms of putting that in the reason that the prior superintendents when this was originally set picked percentile rank is percentile takes into account everything else everybody's dealing with it kind of puts you on a a good comparative position based upon so like in our case we say we dealt with covid everybody else dealt with kovid that normalizes that by using percentile
153rank uh it takes it out if you could just go to the appendix uh one more mike this is just the supplemental side if anybody's interested in the raw numbers behind that here are the wrong numbers trend um in mathematics for a number of years we were increasingly increasing increasing and in 2020 there was no data because there was no testing in 2021 uh we kind of slid all the way back down the hill to where we were in 2015. um and in english language arts um you know the idea at the time was when the board asked the administration to focus on getting mathematics up we asked them not to serve not to take their eye off the ball on ela it hasn't moved around too much but the trend is not it's bounced
154it's not always been great so anyway that's the latest data um and that's the update on the strategic dashboard of the board we'll work with the administration to get the other can you go back mike we'll work to get these other ones that are in gray updated uh we should by the way now have college prep rigor which is based on ap scores because those are now out so we can see how our kids did on that and they've always done really well on that which is why it's marked green because we're always above target there and then the ones in the middle um some of those came out of the panorama survey they're questions out of the panorama survey and uh we were in a strategy committee ms hershas the other day dr jones
155about the data that survey was taken in april or may and i'm sure we have the data but you know dr jones will get that to us when when uh whenever they're ready so that's the update thank you michael if you can make sure this gets posted i i don't know that anybody at the table has seen this before that then mr share so if we could get that posted that would be helpful peter that the numbers you had there for the um the percentiles does that take into account the um the remote versus live versus what they have like six categories of test results this year they've actually got they've actually got three and uh you know i spoke to the people up there to say just tell me how to understand this data
156because we don't want to misinterpret this data the good news for us is is that they give you a whole district number and the whole district number is with the exception of 11th grade for us it was you know all people who were in and um it measures um you know in in building to in buildings because that's what we were year to year right it actually works out a little better because when you look at our whole numbers of kids who are in the remote school those numbers are lower than the in building so they also told us within the next two weeks there's data available the disaggregated data is not yet available to districts they told us that our district two two weeks from now the districts will have access to it on
157edsight secure which is a different version of ed site but they advised us on how to do a comparative as you can imagine they're trying to make the distinction between the two i think you can read between the lines the data is not great for a lot of districts so you know you have to be thoughtful about how you think about it i think we're going to get a detailed you know school by school grade by grade analysis um dr jones talked about that in the last meeting and i guess we're going to get that sometime in october and i think it'll illuminate it for our purposes at the board level the board's just looking at the whole district so that number is just the whole district and i wouldn't um i'd be careful about
158people extrapolating past that until there's a deeper analysis done by legitimate statisticians because of the the point you made there's uh special circumstances in the data thank you any discussion all right hearing none we're going to move on then to our action items so the first action item is the tuition and fees i'll make the motion put it on the table so we can have the discussion so i move that we approve the fiscal year 23 tuition and fees as presented is there a second mr kelly thank you uh mr o'keefe and we had some discussion last time maybe you can walk us through this good evening everybody um so essentially this is the tuition fees uh we typically uh will increase the nominal rate at two to three percent to approximate the actual cost
159of delivery you know primarily driven by salaries and and supplies so last year we recommended an increase of three percent we're recommending the same for this year all right discussion uh miss hirsch um hi sean i wanted to ask a quick question um under the 22-23 proposed rates under item c for pre-k to five summer programs um i said the fee has gone up only 40 but the program listed there seems to be running longer than it did this year this year was five weeks and four hours long so i just wanted to make sure that is that forty dollar bump uh going to be enough to cover the cost for the extra days and hours uh proposed for next year it may not be um i mean we have we have funds in the
160triple r account to uh to offset any shortfall so but let me let me get into that a little bit more thanks mr sure uh sadly i don't think we can i thought this would be simple and we would be able to vote on this but if you'll notice this fee schedule doesn't match our course catalog there are items missing so and that's what i was raising with ann a minute ago we need to get an update because um we just need to get that crosswalk so i i appreciate that this is on the floor it probably needs one more turn of the crank it's missing uh healthy wellness health and wellness it's missing software research it's missing bread test only there's another one or two it's missing too and i realized it was just
161rolled over year to year to year it was something just happened well let me let me see if for those particular courses uh what was charged and uh you're right my guess is it's it's following well i don't know what they're charged because there's different ones and um i want to vote on this um i mean i i haven't had the time or the energy to convince my fellow board members some of these courses are like super expensive and i i would and and we're not generating a lot of revenue off of them so as a gap closing measure vis-a-vis the last conversation about s-back performance um other than i mean if you're free and reduced lunch you know i guess you take it for 48 bucks or something but if not you know it
162and some of these courses are hundreds of dollars i'm dying to know to what degree and i don't think anne knows because she doesn't know why people don't attend you know what happened as an example my daughter this year took and i rarely know about this stuff because the genius of my wife takes care of it i try to stay out of it because i'll just screw it up my daughter took an s.a.t prep class and normally my kids are tutored for that but this one's taking a kaplan course and the thing costs like 600 bucks and it's you know online totally focused it in prep for the psat our course is 493 bucks i can tell you most parents are not going to take ours they're going to take the kaplan one if it's
163the same price i'm sitting there wondering you know where can we spend money that's high impact if we're only generating a few tens of thousands of dollars on a 200 million dollar budget on prep and we're a college prep high school and we have the ability to run these courses i don't know why we wouldn't make that number like a hundred bucks and get a lot of kids prepped for psat sat act to succeed i don't know why we would try to compete at the same price as kaplan that just doesn't make any sense to me there are some other courses in here that are not credit recovery that i think are really pretty cool and kids would take i mean chemistry a thousand bucks i'm i'm like are we trying to do more stem
164i mean i i just i would love to see these fees for everybody lowered because it's we're not generating a lot of revenue for it and we know darn well if we could get kids to take these during summer programs and to the point i think uh miss um kowalski made the success of jc was because they were taking uh classes with teachers that they know so why wouldn't we want to try to encourage them to take them from teachers that they know in the high school and by the way uh not all bad uh gets more teachers to have something to do during the summer uh if they so choose and they can earn a stipend so i'm trying to figure out what's the downside in all of that but i would rather see
165us cut these fees particularly for courses that would really have a great impact not you know i'm interested in taking you know i'm going to have a bad example computer programming or something music educate that's a bit i mean somebody's going to be upset i said that but i think there are certain courses that have higher impacts on students and i don't know why we wouldn't be lowering the bar to get higher participation and try it for a year and and see if it had an impact for our kids that would be what i would suggest to the board but anyway this thing's got to come back anyway because we're missing some so before i ask you a question sean i i wish we had a 200 million dollar budget it's about 170 million what
166we could do with 30 million dollars um i guess sean i want to ask what the impact of pushing this off to the october meeting would be is there any reason we need to get anything out early i think usually it's the pre-k registration that we're looking to get out but i don't think that that needs to go out uh that early i think we're okay pushing it off okay great uh in the event of what uh mr share was discussing you know i think i think we we maybe could discuss i get i get the differential between like fees we're charging um for expensive courses i presume uh either you or maybe dr carabillo can tell us why chemistry is a thousand dollars but i'm going to guess there's uh there's additional costs i'm
167running that course i you know i have no problem maybe lowering fees for courses that are for credit recovery for kids that are not free reduced lunch i think where we where we stand though are if something's an elective you know we're not even covering our costs with the summer school program it's really not a program meant to generate a revenue we're hoping to cover our costs and so maybe there's a formula we can come up with and try to figure out where we have some uh some flexibility in the fees or at least for those students who have challenges that are not free and reduced lunch to give give the administration the ability to uh you know make some exceptions there to uh to get those kids enrolled but if you could address the
168question of why courses are priced the way there i think yeah actually earlier today and i know it's a question she had on her mind too so i think actually karen uh sent me an email earlier today and asked that very question and i did consult with ann and uh like chemistry for example has a lab so it's a longer it's a longer course uh has as you would expect uh chemistry would have supplies that are unique to that particular course so there are reasons for that course to be more expensive in that it's longer and uh has unique supplies and a geometry a is another one that's 936 dollars and it's a you know it's an outlier so i think that one's a longer course as well is that correct dan that is correct
169okay all right so i i think the takeaway here is that uh that it would be good for you to align this back to uh back to the courses that you're actually offering making sure they're all on here if there are courses that are on here that you're not offering you know setting a fee for them no harm no foul but courses that are missing need to be added and then if you could look into the question of of the fees and whether there's some flexibility there for uh for students so that we can maybe increase enrollment in some of the core courses mr share yeah i do just so i can be specific i don't know why these engineering i mean it it's crazy to me if somebody has to do credit recovery for
170pe they gotta pay 500 bucks for it or health and wellness i don't know if you've ever seen our wellness curriculum you get the same course four years in a row so it's just and 500 bucks for that credit request that just doesn't make any sense to me so i i you know as i say i mean we're already burning on the summer school program 732k so and our generated revenue is like 25 i don't know what we're doing so i i i i would hope you guys would figure out how to take at mr bernstein's point at least the credit recoveries you know and i don't know my geometry with a geometry book and writing something on the board cost 900 bucks this doesn't we should just pause for a minute not just roll
171over what we've done miss hirsch so would you prefer i i mean i know i have a couple of additional questions but if if this is coming back to us would you prefer us just send those off to you so that you can address them in the next report in october yes that's fine all right so uh the motion on the table is to accept the report um i made the motion so maybe we could get a second motion to table this until the october business meeting okay yeah all right that's fine i'm gonna go ahead and withdraw the motion um the second was mr kelly mr kelly do you object to my withdrawal i do not i withdraw my second all right this item is withdrawn and we'll put it on for the for
172the october meeting and one second i just want to make note of it for agenda planning purposes thank you everyone the next item is the staff vaccination policy mr do you want to make the motion to put this on the table sure um i'd like to make the motion to approve the staff vaccination policy 4118.239 three 4218.239 as proposed is there a second miss hirsch discussion mister sure i have the joy of sitting in for miss downey tonight and i guess i got this job as the former member um chair of the pgc um just to give you guys back up a little bit the last meeting we presented a policy just to get on the table this is something that we need to have as a policy by september 27th so we wanted to
173make sure that we had the first read out to you soon we even then at that time sort of said please provide feedback and you guys did which was really helpful was to try to keep the policy a little bit more nimble um especially as executive orders keep changing and in fact one already has um so that we can stop revisiting it um also i think it should be noted that in these two weeks we or i should say christina on the behalf of the committee send to and discuss this with the town attorney and they are signed off on this policy as revised um so that's that um karen would you like to add anything [Music] um i think that you know christina had sent information to the board to let uh the board
174know as to why she made this role not she but pgc had made this revision um is that you know because uh executive orders do keep changing it is it's directing us towards regulations um which really is you know focused on hr and things that are not uh really our nature so it's something for the superintendent to work with um making those regulations so i'm not sure the only question i would have is i guess if those are going to uh be drafted or already drafted based on what we are going to vote on later ms kowalski so i just wanted a couple of clarification questions which is the the first is with respect to those teachers that do not want to be vaccinated and they have to get tested how onerous is it for
175them to go and actually get tested and what do they have to show and how do they know that it's covered in costs i just want to i know peter talked about this earlier i just want a little bit more clarification about what the process is for teachers going forward on this um so we've been communicating to teachers there was an emergency meeting with the state on monday where they had some new implementation guidance so we worked over the last 48 hours trying to get that out to teachers they did add the state testing sites so that as long as they go to a state testing site they do ask if they have health insurance but their health insurance will not build that back or they can't bill that back to the individual and it
176is covered if they choose to go to a testing site like cvs or walgreens we don't know because if you just walk in and you're symptomatic they will give you a test um but if you try to do that every single week uh if you go back a couple weeks ago they were saying it's likely that cvs and walgreens would start charging um but as long as they use the state testing site then um it's covered now as of this week and um going back to the question on running it by the state attorney i noticed that there's language in this executive order that's that's actually requiring us as a board to pass this is that something what was the question of the to the town attorney as to what what the legitimacy of what
177that we had to enact as the executive order requires us to enact it i just want to understand what the question was posed to the town attorney and what was the advice given i wasn't a party to that call christina spoke with abby and they went and she reviewed the policy and she said this was satisfactory and that we should pass it further discussion all right to the motion on the table mr kelly yes thank you uh any anything's required mandatory um i certainly have concerns about it and it is an executive order and i did reach out to our gea president to say are you okay with this her answer to me was that she's very happy with the way she's working with the superintendent on this issue all things are being addressed and
178i as i said i'm concerned when we're forced to do anything uh and uh she's okay with it so i guess uh i'll be okay with it too mr chair yeah um first of all i want to say you know i don't know who did it i guess it's christina um thank you for actually listening um as you know i've objected to these policies that are written by the board that are super prescribed in areas where there's no qualifications of anybody on the board to actually write those policies so referring it to the state and and following the statutory mandate as us as an agent of the state i wanted to say thank you to whoever was intelligent enough to actually now write something that's three sentences long and uh it doesn't have to come
179back to the board and clog up the board's agenda although thankfully i won't be here um so thank you for whoever did that um the second thing is uh the only reason i can get behind this i had understood that this there would be no expense to our employees for this mandate it's a mandate it's a mandate from us as an employer to employees we can't hide behind the fact that it's coming from the governor we are the employer of record for our employees and i can't imagine voting for something where we're not taking care of our employees on a mandate we're setting on them that's about workplace conditions i did hear lil perrone the new um ga president that's the largest union with 900 people i would love to go out and talk to
180the other ones but i've heard no objections from the unions so i don't worry about our employees uh because they're represented by unions very powerful well-funded national unions with big lobbying organizations so if they're uh not complaining about it and then i assume that that means that all of the rank and file of the unions are okay with this and their leadership is representing that and i think from ga i heard that tonight i expect that's true of gosa because i've heard nothing from gosa about this i expect that's true of wyonna i've heard nothing from lyuna about this i have heard some employees there is one so i'm prepared to vote for this based upon those conditions if any of those things those assumptions and representations have been made aren't true uh i'm going
181to want to bring this thing back and and re-vote it but i'm going to support it based upon those expectations because we have this statutory responsibility to do that dr francis yep go ahead okay good sorry um my question was just to go back to the regulation i think one of the issues that came up at the last meeting was making sure that there was an easy way for our staff to be able to see what um what was required of them what you know what the steps were you know consequences whatever it may be um if we're taking that out of the policy i think it's really important to make sure we've got regulations quickly available is that something that was uh supplied by um our state board i mean or whatever it's called
182i forget now i believe i've already forgotten uh the same people that give us our policy drafts is there something like that that's already been provided or do we have something ready to go because this is sort of an immediate immediate issue um we have we have sent out the document to our teachers to let them know everything that we learned again over the last 48 hours because there were some changes um and we they understand and in working with gea especially wanted to understand you know what does it mean if you don't comply you can have a medical exemption you can have a religious exemption but you still must test on an ongoing basis if they are vaccinated we have to not only now collect the vaccine card information but we also have an
183attestation form that was brand new this week our staff are doing great getting those in to make sure that not only they have a card on file but that the attestation is saying that it's actually legitimate um and valid so that was new this week but all that's gone out to our staff um and we're also obviously hr is working closely um you know with town hr because a lot of our uh bargaining units fall on that side and that's one confusing thing today that will be in greenwich times probably tomorrow where the town is not implementing the same level of testing however if they're on the town bargaining unit and they are in our schools they still must get tested because they're in the schools and they fall into the school um so and
184that i'm sorry that will be in sort of a regulation somewhere as well where someone could look it up i can certainly turn it into regulation literally very very quickly um i once if this passes tonight i i could probably do that tomorrow it's we're being very cautious this week because stuff changes so regularly and as an example you know we have staff that have asked okay i put in for my uh coveted testing i'm trying to get tested today what if the testing companies can't handle the demand and they don't have the results back by monday or tuesday um so it's going to take us a week or two to see what the kinks are across the state as we implement this it's quite complex yeah i'm sure thank you miss hirsch so in
185the interim uh i know this policy specifically stipulates that there will be a regulation drafted it's you know important for us to make sure that our staff does understand the details as we know them i know that there are not a lot a lot of the details are confusing um but if there is an interim period between the time that we pass this if we pass this policy and the regulation is not drafted um i assume that there will be some leeway for our staff um if possible in that regards i know we want to keep everyone safe but it's also these are their this is their livelihood um and also our students rely on them uh on the daily to be in to be in schools um and the second the last question i
186actually had was um i think i just forgot what that last question i had was so i will if it comes back it'll i'm like yeah miss kowalski so on the on the point m and i'm sorry i missed the um ga's comments earlier tonight but have we with respect to teachers and expressing grievances to hr have we heard of teachers that are something similar to what we heard this evening upset about this and the possibility that teachers are just going to say i quit and walk out and then we have an issue of filling classrooms with teachers and teachers we don't have because i've been told we have teacher shortages well let me just remind us too it's not just teachers it's every employee in the district so we could have bus drivers we
187could have custodial issues but right now we're we're not seeing that based on the level of um submissions that have gone into our nurses we think it's going to be very high uh the challenge will be for those people that do have exemptions that are trying to get their testing this week it has to be pcr testing you can't do a home test um you know just an over-the-counter has to be from a lab that was also just updated for clarity this week um it'll be for the that's going to be the next tricky part is getting all of those tests in now if a teacher or a custodian or a bus driver is totally non-compliant they cannot be at our schools cannot be inside the school so if they chose they choose not to
188be vaccinated then they have to go have to have the weekly testing if they choose not to be vaccinated and not to be tested then there is what they call from a union standpoint progressive discipline so the first day that the results aren't there it's day without pay um that's step one you remind the employee they have to be compliant goes all the way through day four by day five they're considered non-compliant and you have to move for you start to move for termination some districts have set it at three days that's where it's a little bit different obviously we use tom mooney's firm as the one that does a lot of the guidance for us across the state with the superintendent's organizations and they've been very clear that it is the law and we
189must comply staff must comply now and look i understand i'm along the lines of you know mr kelly i you know they're difficult to swallow the fact that someone's telling you something to do but i understand and why i can get behind this is simply because what we're being told and being advised that this is the law and we must do this and we must comply i get that and i would just behoove this board that the moment that changes that we get back into this and change it quickly um and we take those steps maybe we don't need to because of the way this policy is drafted which i think that's that's a good thing i'm glad uh miss downey did it that way but uh yeah that this whole thing just makes me
190really really uncomfortable and you know obviously it's an executive order but it doesn't make it right tony just two quick things one is you you see changes are coming that's coming from the state right their guidance is changing yes the guidance that we got this week like added the ad test station form and things it comes from the state okay and the other was i think the implementation date is september 27th which of course is three days before the governor's orders are set to expire but i understand the state legislatures meeting next week to discuss extension so i guess you have a you have a target date of the 27th that you have to do this by yes we have to start implementing okay thank you mr share i just wanted to clarify something that
191said because the penalties for employees not being able to do this that's not coming from the state correct that's actually penalty language per the superintendent per the contracts with the various unions correct it's through the contracts and also obviously on the advice of attorney on how do you navigate an employee who may refuse to comply but it's not it it's not from the state there's nothing in this is there anything in the governor's executive orders or direction from the connecticut state department of education regarding penalties for employees on non-compliance i don't know what you mean by penalty um a penalty would be tony i think we all know what we're talking about the penalty would be day one your docked pay you just referenced it i think of that as a penalty for non-compliance i'm
192asking if that if there's any guidance or directive from the state regarding when somebody doesn't comply or is that strictly a local decision and he decided to follow what's in existing labor contracts it we do look at the labor contracts but we don't have other than i will say gea has actually a pandemic line in their contract they're the only one that had that previously addressed but it does not address a vaccine requirement or testing requirement but what it does do is there are certain types of leave and if somebody is just not complying um with the governor's uh with the governor's executive order that they're not sick so they can't use the sick day okay um well these things are called condition this is in legal terms in a labor contract this is called
193a condition of employment i think that's referenced in the state's executive orders these are called conditions of employment are you know they're you got to show up on time etc etc that's a well-established legal principle so what i think i hear you saying is it because i know in the ga contract there's an entire procedure on um there's language in it talking about meeting conditions of employment and if someone doesn't meet conditions of employment what the penalties are how they'll be notified how they'll be given an opportunity to grieve it how they'll be arbitrated etc etc etc so i guess my question is i think i haven't heard it's from the state so i think i'm hearing it's going to be in line with these contracts and that's how it's going to be implemented correct
194i'm not sure i understand your question because when you look at somebody being on time that's a condition of employment but it is not the law there there is not an executive order or law that says the teacher must show up on time so there is a process in the contract for that there is not a process in the contract for a teacher who chooses not to follow the law i'm really worried about the legal exposure uh you know it'll it'll show up either the union's going to grieve it or not we're going to wind up in arbitration or not i've said my piece on this i i think you should get to a safe harbor on whatever regulations you're writing i would not make them up out of thin air i would have them
195follow something that we already have in place um otherwise we're going to wind up with a bunch of lawsuits and we should be very careful about doing that i don't want money spent on lawsuits i want to spend money on teachers in the classroom that's just me all right dr francis can you hear me now yep go ahead sorry um so uh going back to respond uh one thing that um had brought up was you know some leniency i can understand leniency if someone's gotten tested but there's a delay in their results i think that certainly makes sense i'm not sure sort of i know that's going to be difficult and you've you've noticed that you've noted that so i think that certainly is something to be aware of um but i think that you
196know this executive order has been out there for a long time the discussion has been going on for a long time so i think beyond that i'm not sure a lot of the agency would make sense and i don't know if the executive order allows for that um the second point um i would bring up is that while the executive order may not uh continue forever we don't know when it when that will be over um i'm i'm not convinced that i would automatically want to rescind our requirement for example as a physician or anybody who works in the hospital we are all required and any any group can choose to require should they want to do that and i think it's something we should seriously consider for the health of our students and our
197other staff members that this is a form of protection that we are offering as part of being part of our society um and if that's something that we feel would be warranted in terms of keeping our staff and students safe that's something we take seriously um and then i think that was pretty good all right uh i think miss kwalski had your hand up otherwise we're gonna call the question yeah i just had one question which is the clarification on just the sanctions for not complying or are i'm just unclear of where they're coming from if we're if dr jones you're drafting them because this is on your own uh or if you're pulling this from a document i'm just i'm really unclear about where we're pulling the sanctions from for non-compliance of the policy
198so part of it comes from we do webinars with um tom mooney's firm with the connecticut state department of education the way that every district will implement will be slightly different because we all have different contracts we have uh different types of employees for instance in greenwich we have contracts on the town side that where in most school districts all of our contracts would be on the school side there are lots of differences the progressive aspect is really collectively it's a lot of superintendents discussing how do we actually implement a termination for an employee what we do know is it has to be progressive and that um people need to know how you're going to move determination if they're non-compliant so we have weekly meetings and discuss okay what does it look like and i'll
199give you an example i had a district you know i think you might have asked the question do we have anyone that's not going to be compliant i had there was a superintendent on the call who you know last week a teacher had already said i'm not going to comply it is a position that's a hard to fill position they posted the job even before we've gone through the first testing week so that if the teacher's non-compliant next week hopefully they'll have applications to move forward our last step says that it's i'd have to get the exact language is uh to move towards determination and that termination you're gonna have to go back to the contract go back to the union leaders and what does that prospect sus look like for every union so yes
200it's progressive it's ours is a five-day bridgeport's a three-day some districts may do two days it just every district has to figure out how you're going to meet that termination aspect for somebody who's non-compliant okay because when they're not in the classroom that you know the challenge is if they're non-compliant they can't be at school if you have a physics teacher you have a literacy teacher a special education teacher and they're not with their children to teach you you know you can't sit back and have a process that takes a month with no teacher with our children so i think that's what we're all grappling with across the state is how to implement it where of course we're going to be reasonable with the teacher who didn't get their test results back for some weird
201reason um but we have to be compliant and they've told us that okay so for the progression you're making the decision and then when it gets to the point of termination you're referring back to the contract well progressive discipline means you have to give them a warning that's an ever i mean no no no i got all that but i'm saying you're setting what that progression looks like i'm setting that progression based on what i know everybody in the state is doing or at least in our region how do we get to the point where we're meeting what the attorneys have told us to do all right i'm going to go ahead and call the question so the motion on the table is to accept uh policy four one one eight point two three nine
202slash four two one eight point two three nine it's the staff vaccination policy uh i'm going to do a roll call so bernstein's yes francis yes hirsch yes kelly yes kowalski reluctantly yes share uh yes ansto yes all right that passes 7-0 thank you on to our last action item it's the financial and staffing report i'll make the motion to put on the table i move that we accept the financial and staffing report as presented is there a second for that miss stowe thank you uh sean take it away okay first of all i just want to say that the staffing and vacancy reports are not in the package they will be presented at the october meeting uh just due to some personnel issues uh those two reports were not able to be finished in
203time um so let me get started with the the operating fund um so i i think this i'll do a quick recap i think everybody kind of knows these numbers uh so at the end of june of 2021 our our actual plus encumbrances remaining encumbrances ended up at 163.1 million dollars uh that compares to our budget of 163.5 so we closed with a relatively small surplus of about 317 000. on an attainment basis uh we achieved 99.8 percent of our budget so good story there uh school lunch you know we had a tough year uh overall revenue uh missed by about a million attributable to significantly lower uh cash sales uh under by 3.1 but then because of all the free meals we far exceeded our our budget on state reimbursements we were better than
204budget by 2.1 so that the 3.1 under and the 2.1 over that's the million that we uh we missed overall our expense line came in lower than budget by about 700k driven by lower salaries and lower food and supplies costs uh so before the town contribution we had a net loss of about 489 thousand with the town contribution we were about compared to where we were looking at food services um earlier in the year say around mid-year we thought we would have done worse for the year but we actually did pretty well and it's primarily a trivial to two things one the state reimbursements far exceeded what we even thought and the second thing is we were able to move to fund the uh the transportation uh for food delivery to the esser fund uh
205the move on to capital we continue to make progress in capital uh for the year overall our capital available balance uh excluding any of the additions for four year 22 closed at 13.5 million a decrease of a little over five million dollars uh from the may report for the year our overall available balance decreased 24.4 million or about 64 percent of uh of the uh of the budgets pre-22 so i think a pretty pretty good year on the capitol and we're continuing to keep that focus up to uh to get that work done question um in reference to the exhibit six capital improvement project status um we have a you know projects that are open capital projects i had a quick question because fy18 we have 18 number of 18 projects 18 uh non-active projects
20612 number of act checks project six you know every year we have that between 18 and 22 here how many of those from 18 to 19 are carried over et cetera because at the bottom you have the subtotal but i would assume if some of those projects are active and and did not come close out in that year the reason we have number projects the following year yeah the reason we have some active projects are they're part of a bundled uh funding so once we finish um all of the projects within a bundle then we can uh we can take those off the chart so basically my question is when you have the the subtotal of the projects over the past five years is 269. some of those are carryovers from the year before so
207it's not 269 actual projects it could be less by whatever was active from the year before correct correct correct all right i'm just trying to figure out based on uh to go back and look at the numbers i might have a question at some point okay hey sean peter bernstein uh while we're on capitol uh once again i want to extend my thanks to the entire team please thank them for me uh you guys continue to drive these down close these projects out and it's uh it's good to see i i guess i just want to probably point out but i'll do it in the form of a question so for the fiscal year 22 which is the year we're in it looks like we still have about 50 of the 52 of the available
208budget now i know this was as of august 17th so i i presume the numbers probably come down a little bit this is money for projects that take more than one year correct i just want to make sure i understand why that's there you know so there's there's a lot of things that go into this one is you know you could have a major project that uh you know is multi-year second thing is uh getting certain uh supplies has been difficult uh this summer for some of the projects so uh yeah so these the funding that 15.5 million dollars for full year 22. so that funding just became available on july 1. so uh we're starting to work it and uh this is pretty typical but uh that we'd still have you know such a
209figure at this point thank you um if we could change uh direction i want to talk about the general fund revenue so the exhibit two which is the general fund revenue as of june 30th 2021 so this is the closeout for the last fiscal year um i know we had zeroed out educational cost sharing we weren't sure we were going to get any it looks like we got about eighty one thousand dollars uh sped excess cost grant which was also zeroed out we got about six hundred and fifty thousand dollars uh so the general fund return last year just to make sure i understand this was uh 2.5 million as opposed to the about 000 and change we we expected right okay so i do have a question on on that well good news we
210we gave the town back more money than we expected to do we have any sense of what the state is using these days for the educational cost sharing model and i mean sped excess cost is based on a formulaic formulaic thing that we have no control over but education cost sharing are we zeroed out again for next year did we actually put a number in our budget with the expectation we were gonna get that um well i know the the uh the ecs the education cost sharing grant that's the one if you recall uh was going to be phased out uh for certain districts including greenwich over i think it was a four year period and they ended up you know saying that they're going to phase it out over 10. so we are still
211getting some not a lot but uh it is being phased out all right thank you all right any other questions or discussion on the financial and staffing report seeing none we'll take a vote so the motion on the table is to accept the financial and staffing report as presented so we'll do roll call bernstein's yes francis yes hirsch yes kelly yes kowalski okay yes but you called it the staffing report now the financial and it's financial and staffing report okay that's the formal name okay even though it doesn't have the staffing in it yeah even it doesn't have the staffing and as presented yes okay you're yes and still yes all right that passes 6-0 with downey and share absent thank you uh all right so that brings us to agenda planning so uh i
212guess we'll talk tony at our next chair meeting about uh the summer stats so once the uh once we have that we could we could get that information i want to make sure there's a program update on for the spring for planning for next summer uh and then we'll be adding the um tuition and fees to the october meeting so if there's nothing else mr kelly did you have a motion you wanted to make is there anything else okay miss hersh i just wanted to ask i know in our at our last meeting special education audit update listed several reports within the project milestones i know i see two of the reports listed on our agenda plan um but i didn't know the accountability report in november um and the second one in march are
213we going to be adding those as written reports it was just it was listed in uh the report last week we can at this point those are so far out that i don't know that i'd want to try to push them on but november is right around the corner somebody should make note of them one question yep ms kowalski so i uh on the the special edit special ed audit report i thought last go around we were going to get updated on the timelines and the met of and the metrics and all of that and that was going to be presented to the board will that be ready to be presented at the next meeting uh i don't know that that's on the agenda plan for the next meeting so it's not but what i'm
214saying is is it something that i mean i think sooner rather than later we should see what the timeline is for when those things are going to be completed and i believe um we were told that those were in the works and they'd be presented so i don't think it'd be a big thing to a time-consuming thing to present it'd just be something to present to the board there's the action planning documents well we did get we did get the timeline at our last meeting but we'll discuss that in the chairman and figure out when it's appropriate if you look at our october agenda it's pretty jam-packed already so we'll just have to figure out how to balance that out i get that but for clarification's sake we did get a timeline but we didn't
215get we got an overall timeline we didn't get a timeline on the specific things where they were being implemented of the 28 action items you know we got an overall grand scheme plan and what i'm talking about are the 28 items that are being implemented and the timelines that are being put forward i think the board needs to see those and that's my suggestion is that those be presented to the board sooner rather than later so we understand the timeline of that and i think the community would like to know that as well we'll take that up at the chair meeting and that may be something that can come out i know they're doing the regular sped updates uh they're doing their newsletter as well as got more information on the website than they've ever
216had before so there may be a way to do that even quicker but we'll uh we'll take that up all right with that mr kelly motion sure summer's over welcome fall this meeting's over i motion to adjourn i will last second although i'm not sure that was a proper haiku uh all right quick roll call for uh for closing us out bernstein's yes francis yes hirsch yes kelly yes kowalski yeah and still yes all right 6-0 to adjourn thank you very much everyone