June 17, 2021 Board of Education Special Meeting - Part 1

001hi good evening we're going to go ahead and call this meeting of the board of education order if we could please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right our order of business uh do we have a motion to accept the consent agenda mr is there a second miss hirsch all right not seeing any discussion we'll go ahead and take a vote on that bernstein is a yes so yes hirsch downey kelly yes kowalski yes wilson and mr share is absent so that's 7-0 thank you all right next up is our student and staff recognitions uh so i'm going to take the first

002two together mark and meredith maybe you can come up to the podium i'm going to stay seated here because i have a microphone all right so this is our senior class president and our student body president so mark and meredith on behalf of the board of education i want to thank you for your service to the students of greenwich high school mark obviously served as the student body president meredith served as the senior class president this has been a very different and very challenging year unlike any faced by your predecessors you rose to the challenge and worked together with the student government to make the student body feel a sense of community even when more than half of them weren't in the building at any given time and when the student government couldn't even meet

003in person through a variety of virtual events and communications you were able to bring some normalcy to an abnormal year you represented your peers quite well here at our board of education meetings as i mentioned to you during our last executive committee meeting it is not always easy to stand up in front of the board and the public and voice the concerns of the student body but you did so ably and with respect you made your voices heard having interacted with both of you throughout the year i can say that you leave these positions knowing that you left large shoes for your successors to feel and we'll hear from them a little later as for what's next mark you're on your way to the university of chicago where you plan to major in philosophy and

004minor in public policy studies to have that right wow i should note that the university of chicago seems to be a magnet for former student body presidents i know of at least two in the past five years that have ended up there so uh way to follow them uh and i know you've mentioned law school in the past um i'm happy to try to talk you out of it we've got a couple other people here that she'll talk out of it too we're here to help uh meredith is attending harvard university after taking a gap year we were talking about that a little earlier undecided about what you're going to study but i know you're going to find something that you're passionate about and put your all into it and don't rush meredith many of

005us here are still working out what we want to be when we grow up so again thank you both for your service and best of luck to uh to you in everything that you do can we give them a hand thank you all right the next step is the gps representative for the 2021 connecticut teacher of the year so i guess i'll turn it over is it kathy burnetti that's going to start us hang on kathy we're working on audio are we good yup you're good now hi peter good good evening everyone i'm kathy burnette chair of the distinguished teachers award committee on behalf of dtac we want to express our congratulations to allison fallon for being named greenwich public schools representative for teacher of the year program miss fallon has a true love for

006teaching offers endless support and encouragement to her students and continuously partners with staff and parents for the benefits of her students we know she will make greenwich public schools proud in this state level program thank you and congratulations miss fallon all right kathy is that it yes thank you all right no problem miss fallon if you're watching at home i know at least two students that have grown so much by having you and i know there's many others so we really appreciate the work that you and all of your peers do all right with that we're going to move on to our next item which is the 2021 science fair award winner so mr bramante i don't know if you're with us in person or online um can you guys hear me yes we can

007how are you guys uh good evening everyone my name is andy bermonte i'm the science research teacher at greenwich high school i'd like to you know this is an amazing opportunity doing this virtually actually allows me to to share some good stuff with you guys so if you give me just a second can you guys see my screen you see that it's a powerpoint presentation yes yes okay awesome um so thank you to the board for the opportunity to acknowledge these great kids um 2021 was really an amazing year um so much so i mean it was a very you know different year as many of us know um at best these kids were hybrid and in very many cases most of these a lot of these kids were remote so i came up with

008this quote which really encapsulated or encapsulates the commitment hard work and imagination of these kids and it's while covett dictated how we would interact science research was once again performed at the lab bench many all of these kids basically came in on off hours evenings weekends holidays to basically get this work done amidst the you know the crazy schedule that we had so with that i'd like to describe a lot of what what happened this year uh the first thing is the 2021 regeneron talent search and this is the many of you guys are aware of this this is the balance search for seniors where about 1800 kids are paired down to about 300 what we call rsts or talent search scholars and each of those students are awarded two thousand dollars each and the

009four once again we had a great showing of we had four scholars hannah goldenberg for her work on linking e-cigarette usage to copd alexander petty for his work on increasing crop production using metal oxide nanoparticles sofia pronina for her work on a rapid detection for lyme disease and edgar sosa for his work on eliminating or finding a way to eliminate coffee rust which is a fungal disease that impacts the coffee industry quite a bit later on so that was in december and january uh the finalists so the 300 scholars are are basically uh whittled down to 40 uh of the top students in the country those are the finalists and once again we had two finalists hannah goldenberg and ed gesosa uh these finalists were featured on npr nbc nightly news ford magazine and american

010lung association so what i was hoping to do and i hope it works is i'd like to show you just 20 second snippets of two of these features if i can so here goes nothing um you guys see that yes for edgar sosa his project hits close to home it's not easy to leave your country he emigrated from guatemala after his family lost their coffee farm to something called coffee rust coffee rust is a fungus that has been killing coffee for several years now edgar studied how to kill a similar fungus using a copper-based particle and hopes to one day test this in guatemala now their advice to aspiring scientists no one should be afraid of getting involved in science it's okay to be smart that's edgar's now in the case of hannah she was

011featured on um a show for the american lung association i'll give you a few seconds of that we were younger we were always warned about the dangers of smoking tobacco cigarettes and using using other drugs but our teachers and doctors and all the other adults in our lives hadn't really accounted for e-cigarettes and all of my peers told me that they thought it was harmless but i definitely have my doubts because um there are very few things that you should be inhaling playing besides clean air and i didn't think e-cigarettes were an exception to that rule so just keep in mind guys i remind you these are high school students out there on npr american lung association forbes and nbc nightly news this was truly amazing um next up is the 2021 connecticut junior science

012and humanities symposium uh in this case about three or four hundred applicants from the state are are well there are 300 400 300 to 400 applicants and about uh 12 or 13 oral presenters are selected from that list and about the same number of poster presenters uh this year we had three oral presenters present their work in what amounts to what is like a ted talk ambika grover for her work on rapid iphone detection of particulate matter 2.5 uh alexa nakanishi for her rapid test or her rapid reading test computer-based for to discover whether a student has dyslexia and sophia pernino once again for a detection of lyme uh for the posters we have madeline minichetti for who created a wearable fabric wearable stretchable energy resource that's based on sweat once again alexander patty for

013his work his metal oxide growth of crops and finally uma pencar for her work on finding a way to introduce these nanoparticles to seeds to to better enhance that whole uh growth benefit for for farming and crops so i'm i'm excited to tell you that first place in the oral presentation went to ambika uh second place in the oral went to alexa nakanishi fifth place went to sophia pernina and first place in the poster session went to alexander patty which was truly amazing so four out of the the six uh top awards were greenwich high school um at the national junior science and humanities symposium which these three students were afforded the opportunity to go to um and b grover was awarded first place in environmental science just to give you a little quick snippet

014of uh alexander's work he basically took these nanoparticles and put them into basil plants and witnessed this increase and he was the first in literature to actually find these nanoparticles in the actual plant if you look at those pictures on the right that represents a needle-like connection between a leaf and the plant and that's our electron microscope and you can see the little dots in there are the little nanoparticles that basically migrated through the plant um for alexa i thought you might be interested in this this is a reading test and if you look at the very center of the of the screen you'll see what is in purple that is basically a reading test for a typical reader and the motions are very linear from left to right and they return and they're linear

015once again and if you look at a dyslexic reader on the right in blue you could see that there's a lot of jet you know a lot of jaggedness a lot of interruptions and if we look at the actual eye movements and what's called a correlation or how straight is that line you could see a very distinct difference in typical versus atypical readers and this became the foundation for her test so now a student or a young a young child can actually take this test in minutes and and get these results is amazing uh in ambika's case she looked at what's called particulate matter 2.5 microns which is a it's basically smog that is a silent killer and leads to all kinds of respiratory inflammation including lung cancer copd stroke and heart attacks it the

016reason it does that is it causes our lungs to to create nitric oxide so she created a test that would that you would basically breathe on it's an iphone based test or smartphone based test where you would breathe on this little sensor and it would turn green based on the amount of nitric oxide or the particulate matter that you were exposed to she created an app that would basically tell you what the result was and then actually launch it into a gps coordinate so you could actually look and see if you're in a hot zone or this pollution which is really incredible moving on to the connecticut science and engineering fair we had 14 participants this year stephen blank was the first for his rapid covet test haliclossi was created a very rapid liver cancer

017detection system timothy drinkel looked at the air movement around an uh airliner wing to basically enhance the the stickiness between the air and the wing itself which would increase fuel efficiency uh sam florin uh looked at error corrections for quantum computing we have hannah in there again and bika which we spoke about already autumn kim created a novel a sponge that would basically remove oil from oil spills and in oceans and lakes and the like uh adam klaczewski looked at risk preference based on cohorts based on age based on number of children number of siblings all kinds of things and his results were very interesting uh profit corrupt looked at new treatments for multiple sclerosis once again we had madeline minichetti in there ella moore looked at looked at new ways to prevent respiratory inflammation

018which is the major impact of the covid uh disease uma pencar once again uh eureka sakai created a smart bandage that would basically elude or release antibacterials on as needed and elizabeth wallace made a heavy metal and fertilizer waste filter based out of spinach waste products or spinach root um so for this fair again it was done virtually the kids actually worked in front of a camera using the the boards as a backdrop and had three to five minutes to actually spill their guts about all that they did um and these are the uh awards there basically was a clean sweep of all the top awards now i remind you guys um there are six isaf spots which represent the top awards at the connecticut science fair and if you count down in red there

019are six winners so it was basically a clean sweep and bika was first place in life science and biotechnology she won the gerber award for scientific excellence autumn kim first place in physical science isaf spot won the gerber award for scientific excellence holo klossy first place in engineering timothy drinkel second place in physical sciences hannah goldenberg second place in life sciences sam florian first place in math uma pencar first place in environmental sciences and eureka second place in engineering uh regeneron 500 award profit corrupt second place in biotechnology ella moore fifth place in life sciences madeline minochetti an office of naval research award uh elizabeth wallace i'll speak about this in a second the stockholm junior water prize nomination for the state and finally stephen and adam were finalists in the life science division of

020the fair uh so after that our five students went to isaf which was held virtually once again so there's timothy sitting at the computer and again everything was done through that pc and this in this case they had about 12 minutes to talk about what they did but we had halo classy timothy drinkel hannah goldenberg and bika grover and autumn kim and i'm happy to tell you that three of our students did receive awards um timothy drinkel received the air force research laboratory first place award of 750 dollars so this gives you a little indication as to what he did uh something called the kawanda effect you know when air moves over a wing it basically releases as it goes behind the wing and that creates drag so timothy had the neat idea to actually

021use some exhaust fumes or some wasted heat by the aircraft to heat the wing and that would cause the air to stick as it passed through the wing and that would increase fuel efficiency uh and basically eliminate or not eliminate but reduce stalling as well so it was really pretty impressive um ambika got a fourth place award in translational medicine for which i've described to you before for her particulate matter smartphone detection system autumn kim got a second place award in environmental engineering in two thousand dollars for her uh sponge system which would um basically remediate oil in in oil and water spills so currently if you look at an oil boom it only removes the surface contamination which as you can see on the left there what autumn did was she created this new

022sponge made out of graphite bentonite and a sponge then you could see the electron microscopy image at the bottom with the active ingredients and what it does is it allows you to put the sponge in water it sucks up the surface oil you basically squeeze it to recover the oil you put the sponge back and then it actually takes out the oil that you can't see which is really it's a dual phase system which really doesn't exist at the moment it's really pretty cool uh and then finally uh the stockholm junior water prize is a is a competition there's a basically a state winner our state winner for connecticut was elizabeth wallace she basically created an eco-friendly remediation system for pulling these contaminants whether it's phosphates or arsenic heavy metal um from you know from

023these contaminated water sites so that was recently held and you know she was this this tip is a typical poster just to give you an idea of what these kids actually create to compete in these different science fairs so congratulations elizabeth and thank you i try to get through that as quick as i can thanks for recognizing our research students everyone and certainly if you guys have any questions about what the kids are doing feel free to reach out thank you so much amazing work by all of our students and obviously uh inspired by the work you're doing in the classroom so thank you very much all right with that we're going to move on to the public hearing portion of our agenda uh first we'll start with the ghs student government tonight represented by

024kwame and javi if you want to come down and introduce yourself podium uh hello to this okay hello to all the members of the board and to the people observing hello all right all right hello to all the members of the board and to the people observing the meeting tonight my name is meredith blanchard and i'm the ghs senior class president this is the last time that mark chen and i will speak here and we cannot express enough gratitude for your willingness and enthusiasm in listening to student voices ironically though this is my last time addressing this audience it is also my first time here in person we have had a roller coaster of a year but the fact that i am standing here shows that there is normalcy on the horizon through the pandemic

025i came to realize just how resilient we are as a school community and how much our administration and faculty care about the well-being of the students the class of 2021 missed out on many of the traditional senior activities but we did not falter i would like to recognize miss karen foster for diving head first down every avenue that would possibly make this year just a bit easier for seniors and all other students from the new fun days all the way to somehow pulling off a safe and fun prom ms foster was there to support student government and the student body as a whole with her dedication and openness to new ideas it was a privilege to serve my class during this trying time as i got to witness the adaptability that is present in the

026hearts of my peers they made the best of this year whether by attending virtual school at a friend's house or enjoying the extra sleep in the morning i think that moving forward we need to keep finding the positives that lay within factors out of our control for instance because the student center was modified for social distancing we were able to open up a new avenue of conversation about how we can redesign the student center from the bottom up is that type of spirit of making positive change in the face of difficulty that has made student government such a pleasure pleasure to serve on we must keep this forward momentum going i thank you again mr bernstein and dr jones for dedicating so much time to student voices i also want to thank mr mayo and

027mrs tulada for spending countless hours meeting with me and the other representatives of student government to mr silkman for keeping student government organized and running and to all of the other administration and faculty who have helped us along the way with an abundance of gratitude and fulfillment i will now turn the mic over to our student body president marc chen thank you all good evening chairman bernstein dr jones members of the board cabinet and meeting attendees my name is mark chen student body president at greenwich high school as i stand before you tonight delivering my final address in this official capacity i am humbled honored and beyond thankful thankful for the opportunities that i've had in this role the fact that student government is specifically devoted its own line on every agenda at every business

028meeting is a testament to the established culture of open and easy collaboration and communication between students teachers and administrators dr jones and mr bernstein especially have been incredibly accessible and helpful this year and i'm so grateful that they join us for every lunch meeting so too are our principal mr mayo and vice principal ms tulada who never waver in their constancy of their support for our initiatives i would also like to recognize our student government advisor mr silkman who in his very first year in this role helped facilitate and realize a standout year for student government i've received email responses from him as early as 5 40 in the morning and as late as 10 in the evening and his dedication is truly admirable as we begin our transition to the next school year and

029move forward with tonight's meeting i'd like to share a couple of parting thoughts education is the greatest equalizer that we have in our society its worth and resounding impact is simply immeasurable in this we must not shy away from topics of discomfort or controversy it is my view that such discourse should be encouraged and facilitated to not only develop critical reasoning skills but to expand our world views to let our difference of opinion bring ourselves closer together rather than further divide we must realize a more collaborative future grounded in substantive productive and respectful conversation we must approach each other from open positions of understanding rationality maturity and kindness this is how we progress forward and this is how we raise the leaders of the future generation with this i would like to introduce next year's

030leaders of student government student body president kwame bolateng and senior class president javi serra i have the great pleasure of personally knowing these fine gentlemen they are upstanding leaders athletes and students who are destined to accomplish greatness i look forward to the wonderful year that they will bring thank you for your time tonight it has been my greatest pleasure and highest honor um so good evening board members and committee attendants my name is kwame bowateng i'm a rising senior and next year i will be the future student body president of greenwich high school um i'm beyond thankful to have witnessed mark navigate through this unprecedented year he really did a great job he's extremely diligent and passionately advocated on behalf of the student body through his various initiatives in addition to regularly attending and speaking

031on this board although i have big shoes to fill i'm confident in our pick in our capacity to facilitate collaborative discourse that will foster a strengthened connection between ghs and our local community furthermore with a quality of executive committee and an excellent student government advisor in mr silkman i look forward to what next year holds with that being said i'd like to introduce next year's senior class president javier cerro hello board members in attendance it is a pleasure to speak with you today my name is javi sarah and i'm a rising senior at ghs next year i will be the senior class president to reiterate what kwami said the work of our predecessors meredith blanchard and mark chen have been greatly appreciated and highly regarded by the entire student body and we are excited to

032continue their dedicated efforts to improve the greenwich high school community i'm excited to guide the student body of ghs next year in our return to normalcy thank you again to our student government leaders next up is gea carol sutton in her swan song that was a long walk good evening board members dr jones cabinet members of the greenwich public school community my name is carol sutton and i'm honored to represent 900 members of greenwich education association and i'm glad to be with you and all of you in person this evening the most sincere congratulations to this evening's honorees we commend mark and meredith for their leadership at ghs we wish them all the best in college as always the work of our science scholars defies imagination remember those names we're going to hear from them

033again and finally congratulations to our own allison fallon this year's teacher of the year you make us all very proud as you challenge your students to expand their horizons each and every day so this is my last public comment as gea president and uh for those of you who are counting maybe it was you peter or you peter it's it's it's about a hundred a hundred times i've uh spoken with you and um gea greatly appreciates the permanent place on the agenda that you have and your willingness and to hear the teacher perspective we greatly appreciate that and hope it continues my successor lillian perron if she could give a wave is uh we'll be with you next year and uh hope to continue a good productive uh relationship with the board so i hope

034you'll indulge me with just a little little walk down down memory lane because i'm not only ending my career as as a school educator but also um as gea president so when i started teaching martin luther king day had just become a federal holiday 39 years later a new federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of slaves in texas it was about two and a half years late they took a while to get the message is heading for president biden's desk after a unanimous vote in the senate unanimous vote in the senate and only 14 no votes in the 500 535 member u.s house of representatives when i started teaching the vietnam war was an open wound 39 years later the us is leaving afghanistan after 20 years with inconclusive results the ghs class of 2021 has

035never lived in a nation at peace when i began my first term as gea president greenwich was in the throes of the racial imbalance issue and the implementation of a new math program math in focus eight years and four terms later racial imbalance has been supplanted by other pressing issues the big ideas math program is coming to our schools and ghs was one of eight connecticut schools to receive a no place for hate designation from the anti-defamation league thanks to the hard work of the faculty and students of ghs the entire community that the classes at ghs are as segregated as greenwich neighborhoods is a topic for another day and this year many of us started the year fearing for our lives with the real prospect that the schools would become super spreaders of covet

036we didn't know fortunately our school community pulled together adhered to health protocols followed the guidance of our superintendent and the greenwich public schools did not lose a single student or staff member to covet we worked tirelessly and we learned a lot and no matter how 2020-21 tested us we passed the students passed the faculty passed the board passed and we've come out hopeful for the next normal the next normal but unfortunately our fear of the pandemic has been replaced by dismay i won't call it fear but it's dismay as our profession comes under attack many in the audience tonight are here because they believe that we that teachers are teaching a negative view of our country's history and our present society or that we're exposing our dear students to harmful and dangerous ideas let's not

037forget that the mission of the greenwich public schools is to prepare students to become productive responsible ethical creative and compassionate members of society the preamble to the vision of the graduate says that our schools will prepare students to function effectively in an interdependent global community that's what we do at greenwich high school in the greenwich public schools that's what we've done for my entire career we teach and we model critical thinking evidence-based decision-making and productive discourse we ask students to consult multiple sources and to evaluate those sources for reliability and to look at things whatever the topic is from multiple perspectives i used to say to my students so they'd like they'd like make fun of me i would say okay put on your sociology glasses or put on your global global studies glasses and

038we'd look at the topic of the day we ask our students to be honest and to care for self and others and by any measure any measure you give us the greenwich public schools is one of the most successful school systems in this country and if you need some evidence look at mark look at meredith look at the new officers look at our science scholars look at our teachers of the year and so i leave you with one very simple idea we can't protect our students from ideas we can only prepare them for ideas and that's what the teachers will continue to do thank you so much again for for inviting the teacher perspective um yes peter you've been asking for a t-shirt for how many years i don't know but i finally have one

039for you and uh i have some some stickers i'll get some more t-shirts from the car and um the the student leaders can have a little uh you know i admired you guys all year so you can be honorary members here's a little you know put it on your car they don't don't know what it is thank you again [Applause] please be respectful thank you very much for your service carol uh next speaker is uh pta council brian peldinis in his last appearance with us good evening i am brian peldinis president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of their members pta council encourages all parents to provide input on the use of covid relief funds being provided to the district via the district website or at any additional in-person or

040virtual meetings pta counseling congratulates all of our student leaders all of our student scientists and ms fallon this evening amazing job thank you very much and to carol sutton you can't get away yet thank you for 39 years and enjoy your unending spring break one of pta council's goals this year has been to be consistent in our comments and vigorous in our follow-up we thank the district administrators who have responded to our comments and reminders particularly in a year where everyone was taxed to their limits for example bonnie o'regan briefed the group including pta council and parent representatives this week on steps gps has taken to follow up on recommendations presented to the boe another example is dr jones communication last week to all gps families in response to questions which emerged in recent weeks

041regarding curriculum or mike ting's work to improve our technical infrastructure or mark d'amico's focus on curriculum i could mention many more names and there's always more to do but for this year's efforts thank you our biggest thank you is reserved to our teachers for our teachers and our support staff you did an amazing job in the most difficult situation i could go on but i'm not very good with adjectives so i will simply say thank you very much on agenda topics members of pta council provided input regarding the strategic plan survey to the committee and we thank you for listening we look forward to a survey which will be useful in formulating the plan or at least guiding the next round of analysis pta council and i would say the much larger parent community looks

042forward to the release of the special education review and the follow-up discussions we hope an open process including parent input and direct feedback from pcg will continue to build the trust and partnership needed to address the critical issues raised by parents as i finish my term as pta council president i want to thank the board of education and dr jones as well as a certain unnamed virus for making life interesting this last year when talking about getting and keeping our students in school council's board of directors used words like heroic herculean relentless successful they provided the adjectives not me for all of your efforts this year under unprecedented circumstances thank you i almost cut this last part since mark said it much more eloquently than i probably could but i'm going to go ahead with

043it anyway i had hoped to provide some profound words of wisdom as a reflection on the past year yet as i pondered what i was thinking about i came back to a single rather mundane word balance we may not always agree on what is best for our students but i believe together we can find the best balance to move our district forward regardless of what side you may take on any particular issue if we lose the the desire or the means or the ability to communicate with one another about an issue we will fail to me communication doesn't just mean talking it also means listening and understanding and it should result in action it may not be the action you or i personally believe is appropriate to the situation but the act of talking and

044listening and understanding can lead to a balance and openness which can result in actions which help educate our students and isn't that why we are all here in the first place thank you very much brian thank you again for your service as the pta council uh president all right we are now at our public hearing uh per our meeting notice we're going to take an hour of comments right now and then the balance will be following the business portion of the meeting we're going to take agenda items first so there's inside of agenda items and then we're taking everybody in the order that they had signed up at agenda items first per our policy you get three minutes to speak uh when the timer is up we ask that you please stop we've got 46

045people signed up so we're going to try to get in as many as we can in that first hour so that we uh we can get on with our meeting and then we'll take the rest of the end i i'd ask for our policy that you please be civil uh you know civility is something that we try to teach our students it's something that i hope the uh the audience will understand uh if we have to we will stop you we will turn your microphone off we'd rather not have to do that uh no cheering booing hollering that really uh takes away time and the more time we spend in between speakers are cheering afterwards the less time the less speakers we get in so we really want to try to get everybody an opportunity

046to speak but again please be civil um if we have to we will eventually clear the room we do not want to do that we'd rather continue with our meeting tonight with you in attendance so with that i'm going to call speakers some of these folks are online some of these folks are in person so just bear with us we uh we've been working out the technical issues as this is only our second meeting back all right so the first speaker is uh james waters followed by cara philbin is it good evening board of education dr jones and members of the greenwich community tonight instead of focusing on what really matters here educating our kids you're going to hear some voices spouting misinformation and disproven ideas about critical race theory masks and vaccines rather than

047engage in a tit-for-tat rebuttal of obvious falsehoods i'd like to share a personal story i'd like to tell you about some real american patriots who are quite different than people who call themselves that i served for 12 years as a leader in the navy seal teams the men i called my teammates were tough smart and mission focused they relied on facts on the ground to do their job often under intense scrutiny and they didn't let terrorists distract them from what they were trying to accomplish i feel privileged to have served with these men and our nation is lucky to have them but what really distinguishes these verifiable patriots some of the best military operators in the world is something totally different among their most defining qualities by far was their humility and their genuine care

048for others i found that the best seal operators were often the best people too they never thought they had it all figured out and they'd gladly make sacrifices of any sort for their teammates families and even innocent people in afghanistan caught in dangerous situations in my time in combat we protected and in some cases saved every single innocent civilian we came across even if they lived in a house dominated by terrorists where it put our lives at risk i'd posit to you tonight that this humble selflessness is indeed credible patriotism it is founded on a genuine concern for others not pushing a selfish agenda and so tonight i'd suggest something pretty simple be a true patriot and ignore the self-regarding voices trying to distract you focus on what we elected you to do focus on

049building our school public schools and the premier system we want it to be focus on ensuring that our students excel focus on how we will bolster our crumbling school buildings there's a lot of work to be done distractions founded on untruths and motivated by self-serving national media figures aren't going to help you get it done i absolute everyone's right to speak and even to wine but i also support our town's need to focus on what really matters i fought overseas lost several friends and came back to the place i grew up this incredible town loaded with tremendous opportunity for all of us including our kids don't lose sight of your mission nor the fact that the vast majority of this town supports you for every sign on our streets right now there are a hundred

050people in your quarter let us know how we can help and thank you for doing a tremendous job in a difficult time please keep your eye on the ball thank you [Applause] all right thank you the next speaker is kara philbin followed by karaskibo michael i don't know if uh the next speaker's online same person signed up twice i do not see her in the list if she could raise her hand if she got her in person uh i did thank you so much i it's brilliant for the new sis not yet it's brilliant the new system you have that now people can speak to different have three minutes allocated to different agendas yeah one you get three minutes you get three minutes and if you want to go over we're gonna turn it off

051and we will stop public comment you're taking up time that other people could speak you get three minutes board policy and your documentation on your website you get three minutes to speak and your time is running now it doesn't please go ahead and start you get three minutes ma'am can you start the clock now please okay can you hear me there is an alarming pattern emerging in the greenwich public schools of prioritizing social emotional learning and technology at the expense of academics as evidenced by the data for college readiness 2018-19 ela performance 79.3 percent for all students 66.4 for high needs growth 68.9 all students 62 high needs math performance 76.3 for all 62.3 high needs growth 73.7 all 63.3 percent high needs science performance 77.4 all 65.8 percent high needs these numbers did not

052get better over covid with a directive of no direct instruction at the end of last year homework went only when necessary this year and no midterms or finals this year or last year we are at a critical point in time where district and boe need to prioritize academics and rigor over all else so that students can realize their potential build self-esteem and confidence through achievement and and grow a love of learning regarding the esser funding very little of the 10 million is allocated to academics the current proposal is approximately twenty percent academic and eighty percent so social emotional and other the school strategic plan is ten pages of covered and just shy of one page of for for academics we are here tonight to tell you that we want the 2021-2022 strategic plan to include

05310 pages of academics parents would like 90 to 80 of the sr funding allocated to academics including academic supports learning loss learning acceleration and recovery grammar reading writing and math interventions tutors extended learning time music immersion for k-8 language immersion k-12 science labs for six through twelve and mid-term final preparation and immersion programs that our children can compete with their peers at neighboring private and public schools as social emotional was the priority through covid and doubled up in the beginning of this year we do not want the money spent as proposed on additional social emotional learning wraparound supports code for health centers in our schools family and community connections udl ruler training and furniture and redesign of the greenwich high school student center 30 seconds we would like another town hall and a q a

054to discuss how the money will be spent on academic learning loss and academics as it seems too much money is being allocated to technology and sel at the expense of academics parents want transparency and financing a set place where parents can view the money spent on outside organizations or programs and the money received from outside organizations and programs time thank you very much that's your time ma'am our policy is 93 25 3 minutes per speaker thank okay i'm going to speak to the next agenda no you're you're not ma'am you're done aaron please turn the microphone off you get three minutes i announced the uh the policy it's 93.25 feel free to take a look ma'am okay please sit down because you're now eating into time that other people could speak thank you very much

055you can email the board if you have additional comments she's had her time and other people have signed up okay guys we will stop the public hearing please ma'am well you signed up using a different email so please sit down ma'am our policy is three minutes please sit down please sit down we have 40 plus additional people ma'am that want to speak you're now holding all of them up please sit down you can email the board if you'd like you may email the board if you'd like thank you erin can you turn the microphone off please okay please sit down thank you okay somebody's leaning on the lights in the back okay please be careful not to lean on the lights thank you all right if you're going to continue that we're not going to

056be able to continue our public hearing thank you the next speaker is john gulletta followed by nicole rincon good evening board tonight you may hear arguments that support critical race theory in our education system these viewpoint these viewpoints come from a complete misunderstanding of what critical race theory actually is and how its curriculum affects all school children k through 12. i call on the board to listen and understand what i will be displaying about what crt is and how its consequences have been disastrous for the developing minds of children my age and younger the definition of the critical race theory is the teaching of an oversimplified version of american history through the lens solely based on race and relating these skewed teachings of the past to today's america as a means to create a race

057conflict in order to usher in anti-western parks values i call on the board to understand what crt is not and it's as follows crt is not simply the teaching of ethnic studies jim crow laws slaveries and difficult times in our nation's past and we're not calling on the removal of these teachings of these events whatsoever we must make this distinction and now understand what crt looks like in practice crt oversimplifies american history while using social constructionism and storytelling to paint a broad and vague picture that supports their narrative that being race conflict crt uses historical revisionism of major events to provoke those learning to understand all events through the guise of race more more specifically through the lens of the oppressor and the oppressed this teaching becomes very dangerous to young minds so it does

058not acknowledge that america has recognized its mistakes in the past and has amended those in favor of liberty and equality of opportunity under the law greenwich public schools has openly admitted to teaching and supporting a faction of crt known as diversity equity and inclusion gps seems to not understand what crt is because they denounced the teaching of it yet directly support its messaging critical race theory is derived from and adopted from critical theory which is the social philosophy established by the frankfurt school in the 1930s germany whose theoreticians regularly drew from karl marx and sigmund freud according to the board of education book of policy and regulation code 4118.21 titled academic freedom it states that academic freedom is not absolute and it must follow certain responsibilities the first responsibility reads as follows understanding of our

059democratic tradition and its methods reading this policy my question to the board then is how could factions of crt be in the curriculum when the theory directly goes against the board of ed policy since crt derives directly from critical theory which was based off marx's writings and the name of the principles of democracy and the policy of the boe i call on the board to reassess this curriculum which seeks to divide create conflict and misrepresent and rewrite american history in order to usher in marxism 30 seconds okay folks we want to keep moving with our public hearing the next speaker is nicole rincon all right guys you're eating into the hour so it's really not going to help anybody all right the next speaker is nicole rincon followed by alyssa diamond fields hello my name

060is nicole rincon and i'm speaking in support of critical race theory in our public schools because it will benefit all students an education on racial bias please be responsible it's history honestly we'll help students who face discrimination understand their experiences and prevent other peers from being aggressors of racial bias i myself am a product of connecticut public schools i attended julian curtis elementary central middle greenwich high nora community college and the university of connecticut it wasn't until my freshman year at uconn that i studied critical race theory in the classroom in 2014 my palestinian professor taught me the intersectionality of race class and gender i learned of oppressive systems and unlearned how to perpetuate them thanks to that curriculum i continue to learn the complexities of different identities and unlearn my own bias to this

061day although i didn't study theory in central and ghs that is where i learned to understand racial bias i cannot speak to the experiences of all black indigenous and people of color students but i can speak on my own as a first generation colombian-american i often had to defend my right to exist in this country i had to learn how to debate my peers and teachers not only in history classes during discussions on immigration but in english in physics class and any class that randomly inspired xenophobia my friend group at the time was diverse ethnically and racially so we began having conversations in the student center regarding our different experiences and learning from one another those conversations taught me how to discuss race and ethnicity without my blood boiling and eyes welling up i'm grateful

062for pursuing that knowledge both in and out of the classroom because i've had these difficult conversations for years with friends family peers professors co-workers bosses and more recently protesters organizers politicians and journalists i'm inspired to come and speak here today because of the young students i've met at black lives matter protest locally this past year with the with them pursuing this knowledge at protest they deserve the opportunity to learn critical race theory in the classroom they also deserve more black indigenous people of color faculty members in their schools and their input in this curriculum and other subject matter i'd also like to add that the recent witness stones project at the historical society demonstrates that greenwich private schools already have developed complex curriculum regarding race and aren't receiving backlash for it if we remove critical

063race theory from our public schools we're putting them at a further disadvantage to their private school counterparts lastly many who are opposed to critical race theory bring up cancer culture however people who study racial bias and unlearn their own biases are less likely to be exposed as racist or held accountable for be having bigotry the best way to prevent someone being kicked off of a sports program or an undergrad program or fired for a job for being racist is by teaching them to be anti-racist education will not result in hate only ignorance will cause hate the latter has been demonstrated to me from people of garnish in the past year we must acknowledge educate we must acknowledge the racist history nation of our town please be respectful you want people to be respectful when you

064speak please be respectful the next speaker is alyssa diamond fields followed by gayle lawrenson please be respectful honestly you want them to be respectful when you speak be respectful at everybody's point of view good evening chairman bernstein board members dr jones and community members thank you so much for the opportunity to speak this evening my name is alyssa diamond fields i have a sixth grade daughter here in town and i couldn't be more grateful that our k-8 kids were able to have full in-person learning this year and the job that our district and schools pulled off should truly be celebrated the issue i'd like to address today is the emerging discrimination shaming and bullying with regard to covid vaccines several of the private schools have reportedly sent emails to parents stating that vaccinated children will

065be welcomed back in the fall without masks and those non-vaccinated will have to continue wearing them as well as forego sports and extra extracurricular activities while this was thankfully not a discussion we've seen from our public schools it's deeply concerning to see any schools and universities coercing parents and teens into rushing these experimental shots what is equally concerning is that our news media has been glossing over issues as they are coming out and always playing up the narrative that the shots are completely safe and the only path forward is that everyone must be vaccinated for us to return to normal our kids are being taught that anything questioning the safety of these experimental products is dangerous misinformation the fda approved the shots for emergency use in those 12 and over they held a meeting last

066week to determine what data would be needed to grant emergency authorization for kids under 12. several of the advisors spoke on the need to wait until the risks are more clear as children are known to be at both low risk of severe disease as well as hospitalization there were concerns brought up of an increased signal for heart inflammation in those under 30 and the cdc will be holding an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss the 300 cases they're working through it should be noted that the cdc's underreported vera system vaccine adverse event reporting system has captured over 800 of these cases when teens started getting vaccinated in connecticut two months ago we saw reports of at least 18 teens hospitalized with heart inflammation a few days after their second shot all of these kids will have

067to be on medication and not able to do activities for six months to a year i've been hearing many anecdotal stories of weird menstrual changes in women of all ages and when i searched those issues on bears i found over eighteen thousand reports of irregularities following covet shots in better news several new studies are emerging pointing to long-lasting immunity and those who have recovered from covet even with mild cases a washington university bone marrow study found plasma cells producing antibodies which would be expected to continue indefinitely according to the authors this was 30 seconds oh man okay um all right well as as most as most of the at-risk adults and teens have been vaccinated and as our hospitalization rates have dropped to under 50 people in all of connecticut we can hopefully all take

068a deep breath let our kids run free without masks and let people freely decide without consequence when and if they want to participate in these ongoing clinical trials set to end in 2023 thank you all right the next speaker is gail lauritsen followed by daniel shiltern gail you're here in person great the greenwich school district is recipient of over 16 million dollars in covert emergency relief grants the most recent 9 million is yet to be spent with 20 set aside for academics for the record that seems low regarding academics there is concern in town over some lawn signs about critical race theory crt in the school curricula one town resident wrote in social media greenwich republicans support these values so it looks like the signs will stay up as long as it takes for every

069person of color to get the message they are not welcome in greenwich another town resident says crt is leftist indoctrination that forces children to look at the world through a racist lens we need to teach our children how to think not what to think the inevitable accusation of racist serves as a damper to free speech what is similar in those two statements is the sense of political discord i also saw in a greenwich time article stating the greenwich public school district does not teach critical race theory okay then why have all the greenwich teachers been assigned to read white fragility by robin d'angelo here's a quote from the book the mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety it is

070born of superiority and entitlement d'angelo also writes i believe that white progressives cost the most daily damage to people of color keisha king a florida mother has been subject of a recent school board viral video she said crt puts our children down putting them in these oppressor oppressed categories as a mother of two black children i am concerned about how critical race theory will harm black kids who are being told they are less capable and will accomplish less than their white peers do solely to their skin color so it's clear that there are two sides to this coin and those sides seem to be drawn clearly down the middle of the political aisle and that's where i have a problem please don't waste valuable classroom time with political re-education the classroom must be a safe

071haven for children from all political spheres i ask you to scrutinize all new requested programs federally funded or not what are the goals is there a political doctrine does it take time from academics what might be the downside the decision and the responsibility lies with you general statutes of connecticut section 10-220 states the board must develop review and approve all curriculum have you the board reviewed and approved the the curriculum the new curriculum chairman bernstein and vice chair sir i would ask you to put parent students and taxpayers first follow your policies and do not allow the school system to become politicized please put in writing in a letter to the administration that the greenwich public schools must not teach politically charged material including any form of critical race theory including d e i say

072s e i and any curricula that is not approved by the boe if that over nine million dollars in funding is attached to canned programs of political ideology then i respectfully suggest we don't need it the goal here is to keep thank you all right the next speaker is daniel chill term followed by carrie huckster how you doing all right um my family and i are from new york my kids are unvaccinated in 2019 they lost the right to go to school and any school was stripped away from them from cuomo we moved to greenwich last year with the hopes that our kids would attend school this year we continued to homeschool because we thought putting our children behind mass all day was not an option for us we care about health and for our

073understanding that will never come from covering your mouth and breathing in your own co2 in april our children's rights to go to school in connecticut was stripped away by governor vermont since they were not grandfathered in before the law changed and once again they lost the right to attend school any school i'm here today because i'm sick and tired of being persecuted our children all children and all families who think differently than the cnn or dr fauci are being persecuted a word defined as an act or practice of harassing or oppressive treatment especially the infliction of injuries such as loss of property or civil rights physical suffering or death as a punishment for adhering to some opinion or course of conduct as a religious creed or a mode of worship which cannot be properly regarded

074as criminal we are being persecuted this just so happens to be pride month how coincidental pride month is supposed to represent equality we see rainbow flags and decorations everywhere major corporations have changed the color of the logo and the rainbow to show their over-the-top support for equality if everyone is truly for equality then my children have should equal rights to go to school their families should have equal rights to decide what health means to them based on their own experiences and the uncensored science they choose to read and follow now you may think everything i'm saying today is unjustified because of science because please remember that science once told us that african americans were inferior to whites and then homosexuals could be changed or fixed with pharmaceutical drugs and therapy and whether you do or

075do not realize it well educated even ivy league scientists are being censored for bringing new yet unwelcome science to the table for discussion especially since this whole covet fiasco began every single day you you need only to look outside the pharmaceutical owned mainstream media true science is gray areas and is continuously changing or is at least open to changing this is exactly why choice matters when it comes to health wearing a mask wearing a mask that cuts the flow of oxygen to a young child's brain should be pro-choice not mandated group think mentality and the lack of free thought is a problem here and that is not science an affluent and presumably well-educated town of granite i'm appalled to see that most don't even question the narrative most don't even ask why and the freedom

076to truly be you is actually suppressed regardless of how many rainbow flags are flowing time i'll just skip down thank you very much [Applause] thank you all right the next speaker is carrie huxta followed by aaron johnson miss huxta is at home uh miss haksa you are talking permitted feel free to start okay can you hear me yes go ahead okay good evening board of ed members and dr jones i am speaking tonight on behalf of the glenville school pti recently there have been many concerns surrounding our curriculum as a pti we value and believe in a quality education that prepares our children to be well-rounded global citizens we also value our teachers and appreciate all they do to support and enrich our children we also value the parent-teacher relationship and believe that we are

077partners in learning with that being said we would like you to remain focused on consistency and transparency please do not fail our students we are counting on you to deliver a curriculum that is fair and balanced across all schools for example every third grader across the district should be learning the same of materials utilizing the same resources in regards to transparency we simply ask to be informed on a regular basis what topics will be covered in class and what materials will be used to teach the lessons it would be helpful to receive this information three months prior to the teachings there seems to be a consensus that a three-month window would be achievable for both gps to provide the info and for the parent to review lastly we continue to have concerns over the amount

078of screen time our youngest students are exposed to technology most definitely provides a positive contribution to learning but it cannot replace the necessary developmental skills young children need to succeed in life in particular they need more time to develop their fine motor skills such as writing coloring and using scissors and more face-to-face communication and interaction so as we continue let's be mindful in striking a healthy balance if together we can achieve consistency and transparency then as a community we can master the excellency we know all of our children can achieve they will thrive and be prepared for the future thank you and have a wonderful summer thank you all right our next speaker is aaron johnson and you will be followed by sookie ulrich good evening aaron johnson gps staff member and outgoing gea first

079vice president good evening board and superintendent jones i'm speaking to you to encourage the administration to reinstate the frozen media job at ems our largest nationally recognized and highest performing middle school also to reinstate the frozen media assistant positions both at cms and ghs moreover the media coordinator needs to be reinstated for the department services to continue to thrive the cms media department has been without an m.a for a year and a half this position was not filled when the ma transferred to another school ma's are essential workers that keep buildings running and their building functioning and their building is currently functioning with an extreme deficit mas promote reading and set up monthly book displays gather and organize book collections for teachers printing and laminating for large teacher materials distribute loaner chromebooks which is not

080part of their job description um for uh daily use and linkedin testing for example at wms our m.a distributed 250 loaners for for our last testing session manage media space inventory and collect overdue books and missing assets it is no surprise that over the last five years three distinguished teachers have been from the media department they are the superheroes of our buildings we serve every staff member in the building as well as every student moreover during the last 15 months the media department has helped the staff switch gears to full remote and then transition to a more media a more hybrid model the frozen the eliminated position at ems will create a huge inequity across the district middle schools few of any chances to promote reading to students no media support for new student teacher

081device implementation limited time to manage the school website limited availability availability to support teachers of their curriculum and assured experiences limited availability to collaborate with teachers that would benefit from having another certified teacher and understanding that will make before and after school opportunities almost impossible grants public schools have always been a champion of the media department the current administration is irrevocably creating inequities across buildings by slashing the department the current practice of freezing positions does our staff and students a disservice and there have been no plans for reorganization of the media program with half the staff our department does not know who to contact with programmatic programmatic issues and emails sometimes go unanswered moreover changes in june do not allow the public to voice their concerns about the reduction in staff please follow the guidelines

082put forth in the budget book page 274 to 276 and re-estate the above positions and utilize uh one of the best assets to their fullest potential thank you all right next up is silky ulrich followed by kathryn labalbo my name is silke ulrich and i'm a parent with three children in elementary middle and high school at gps i've been a member of the pta executive board for 10 years and currently holds a vp of education position at nms however tonight i am speaking as a private citizen and a concerned parent the academic excellence committee read a statement at the last boe meeting here is the portion of that statement as a ptac committee we continue to strive for consistency transparency and excellence in our school system we express our gratitude for our teachers and their

083expertise we hope in a transparent process and a curriculum for grades k-12 our need for consistency in that curriculum within grades and across school buildings and our belief that greenwich has and can continue to offer an excellent academic experience for all students given that we work together respectfully it is my understanding that the connecticut's duties of boards of education as outlined in section 10 220 shall provide an appropriate learning environment for all its students which includes first and foremost adequate instructional books supplies materials equipment staffing facilities and technology further in section 1020 221 boards of education shall prescribe rules for the management studies classification and discipline of the public schools in other words you the boe have to approve the curriculum have access to the curriculum and therefore have the capacity to give parents the

084curriculum the board of ed is also accountable for the curriculum this is a public school funded by taxpayers as such we have the right to know and advance what is being taught to our children this is not micromanagement similar to a syllabus including books articles films materials presentations and video clips parents can opt out if the material is unsuitable just to be clear teachers are not to blame here they are doing what they're hired to do teach a boe approved curriculum the boe needs to be transparent consistent with curriculum and all appropriate learning materials across all schools in schools and grades tell all staff they are not permitted to email minors and they need to provide opt-in for topics of a mature and complex nature including are related to sex gender violence drugs and alcohol

085politics and race with an alternative and alternate assignment option transparency is the only way to move 30 seconds when there is no transparency it breeds distrust the boe is here to represent the best interests of our students first and give them the best and appropriate education that our tax money can buy chairman bernstein and kathleen stowe do your job and create a policy to protect our children from exposure to over sexualization violence and political views in the classroom make certain all curriculum is approved by the boe and taught with fidelity time thank you all right the next speaker is catherine the balboa followed by lee galetta a little short good evening my name is catherine lavalvo i'm the current chair for the rtm on the park and recreation committee but i'm here tonight speaking as

086an individual because in that role i've seen the detriment to our educators students and the entire community at large when fields go unremediated and remain out of service so i'm here tonight to speak on an item that i believe is on your agenda tonight and what the board of education will have control over as a high impact for positive change for our students and it's what i hope you will be focusing on in your debate tonight families at western middle school are still waiting for years they have been waiting for full access to their fields and i ask that we commit and plan as i've asked in previous to the bet and other members on the rtm that we commit and plan for financing for this project in the next next budget cycle so there'll

087be no additional delays once approvals are in place i'm confident that you'll not be distracted from your duties tonight and responsibilities to provide equitable facilities and safe educational environments indoors and outdoors to the families of greenwich thank you for your time thank you all right so next up is lee galetta followed by logan valletta with lee followed by logan hi everyone thank you for your time this evening thank you for listening to the community this evening i am megan goletta mother of four children and a resident of greenwich for 20 years my children are currently in and have gone through the greenwich school system and range from the ages 15 to 23. i am here this evening to express my deep concern that our schools are becoming politicized for decades greenwich has been known as

088a strong district supporting the needs of all students with a robust and rigorous curriculum in fact it is a major reason why our town is sought after by many families across the country and world my kids received an excellent education in a non-politicized school system because of the enriching curriculum and diverse extracurricular offerings my two oldest were accepted into top colleges they have both graduated and my youngest is a 9th grader at ghs one of the strengths of our district has been that we've never allowed politicized conversations or activism sourced from the top down into the classroom children should be encouraged to hold respectful conversations about politics in the classroom fostering debate and discovery as they learn from multiple perspectives and sources it's obvious that the ugly nasty political discourse in washington has now infected

089greenwich schools it's like a disease in our schools and it needs to stop we need to return to our strong community-based values and foundation as a school system that does not allow politics to infiltrate and indoctrinate it's imperative the board emphasizes building relationships and rapport amongst the students and community creating an open environment for collaboration and cooperation boe i have done my homework and have read the boe policy document and it's clear to me that you are not administering the policies of the board rather you are allowing material to be taught that has not been approved i'm asking you our elected representatives mr bernstein and ms stowe for you to step up for the parents and taxpayers in the town to make it very clear to your single employee the superintendent that the gps is

090not a political zone we want you to do what is required by law and by the board policies here are three things provide a letter to the superintendent that states politics will not be tolerated in gps and make the letter public we want you to ask the superintendent to send a letter to the staff that reiterates this and that should also be made public we want all course material to be made public so parents can review it beforehand and not after the curriculum is delivered finally we can we we the concerned parents and taxpayers of this town deserve better we need to be checking in with our community and making sure our schools are quality safe and supportive learning environments for all students as parents we want to ensure the board is held accountable for

091their to their role and responsibility in allowing unapproved material to slip through the cracks in addition per the board of ed policy we need to make sure that we the the materials are appropriate um for the intellectual and emotional development that they have a concern for the welfare growth maturity and development of children thank you thank you all right so the next signed up speaker was lucan thank you the next signed up speaker was logan galetta followed by david lancaster you already spoke okay so you were on there twice okay so the next speaker is david lancaster followed by christian naminsky thank you mr chairman members of the board in may of this year a bill was introduced in the pennsylvania house that will likely pass requiring all school public schools to post the curriculum

092plan and materials online for parents to easily review before the school year starts school websites are required to be updated for any changes in curriculum including textbooks and copied articles legislators here in connecticut are actively looking to support parents in their quest for curriculum transparency the greenwich board of education should take the leading connecticut by instituting this curriculum transparency plan for the fall semester across all grades without exceptions if you are confident of the quality of the materials that are presented to the students you should have absolutely no problem posting them on a website for parents to see before the semester starts and time for them to be able to review the materials their children will study second point is i would also like to clarify a few matters regarding critical race theory i direct

093this to the board of education particularly mr bernstein and vice chairman stow it has been claimed by the administration that there is no intent to institute crt in greenwich public schools when in fact it is already part of the curriculum through its many tentacles like sel or when teachers and administrators are encouraged to read white fragility parents are therefore not misinformed they are very aware and that awareness is growing every day this board needs to stand up and make it abundantly clear publicly that this racist curriculum and its tentacles has no place in our public schools we are not calling for the elimination of ethnic studies which crt is not nor are we racists we are working towards fulfilling the exact same dream of a colorblind society dr king spoke of and died for and

094i think we can all agree that dr king was not a racist we support ethnic studies and histories of all kinds in our schools particularly those of african americans who have suffered disproportionately in our country's history banning crt from being taught is not evidence of systemic racism but a rejection of an untruth that conflicts with our universal understanding of the nature of man and the founding principles of this country if someone were to suggest that school children study the national socialist understanding of the superiority of some races and nations as a valid historic historical interpretive tool all sane persons would recoil in horror like we do with crt opposition to crt is a multiracial cutting across all geographies and party lines and is growing why because the attempt to prove that all men are not

095created equal by virtue of their skin color is so odious to the fundamental values of americans and is the very definition of racism the more people learn about crt regardless of their political persuasion the more they are repelled by it and those numbers are growing especially in this town crd crt does not resonate in the hearts of everyday americans nor should it be taught to our children children who are exposed to this theory over an extended period and successive grade levels i predict will emerge from their public education both ignorant and angry i urge the board of education to demand the removal of all crt light agenda-driven social engineering from all curriculums in the greenwich public schools immediately for the good of the children their families our town and the country thank you for your

096time thank you all right the net speaker is kristen naminsky followed by jackie hulman christian there you are thank you all right next speaker after that is jackie hulman thank you i believe esser funding should be spent on making up for lost academics from the shutdown we need more science labs technical and trade classes music classes more school instruments to learn and mandatory grammar classes my children have not been taught grammar and i have one in middle school one in high school just a few days ago my daughter said there was a question in her english class and some reading they did but no one could answer it because they didn't know what an adverb was my son has been taught what pansexual means but not what prepositional phrase is this is an academic failure

097by our schools what we do not need to spend s or money on is social emotional learning we need factual learning i want my daughter to be an architect or a doctor or a writer or many other things but not a social justice warrior or activist i want her to know proper grammar please i want her to know proper grammar and not to be worried about whether she's using someone's preferred pronoun or not i don't want her taught that she was born racist because she's white in the same way i don't want her to be told that her country is racist seven hundred thousand americans died in the civil war to rid our country of slavery and america has done more for minorities than people in need around the world than any other country we

098are not racist we cannot allow crt to poison the minds of our children children are not born racist but that is what crt teaches we all support teaching history the good the bad and the ugly crt is not history or ethnic studies it's just what they like to call it so they can call you a racist shut you down and slip it through for parents not paying attention in dr king's dream people no longer see each other's skin color in crt all you see is skin color everything is seen through a racial lens it is not inspiring it is demoralizing it is not uplifting it is demeaning the proponents like to call it ethnic studies or racial sensitivity or social emotional learning or many other names but what it is is a radical racist ideology

099and it has no place in our schools does the board of ed think greenwich is racist does the administration think the staff is racist why did they need to read robin d'angelo's white fragility i suggest you all read the article in the atlantic entitled the dehumanizing condensation of white fragility written by john mchorder a black man now they want to push this racist ideology onto our teachers does this administration think gps teachers are racist crt instills racism in people by assigning groupthink or other attributes to people based on the color of their skin children are not born racist why does the school want to label them by the color of their skin and teach them that they are different we should be concentrating on how much we are the same that is how you rid

100the world of racism teach them love not blame teach them the value of a good economic education hard work and perseverance not privileged and oppressing our issue is not with the teachers in general we love and appreciate our teachers it's with the steady push in curriculum across the country to indoctrinate our children with political and social justice views and turn them into activists stop politicizing our schools and our children our kids should come home thinking about math science history and english not race and gender give our children facts and let them be critical thinkers and formulate their own opinions schools should be the neutral purveyors thank you very much all right the next speaker is jackie holman folks we're trying to get through more speakers so jackie holman followed by carl homan thank you over

101the last week concerned parents placed hundreds of yard signs around greenwich to encourage the community to stand up to protect their children from dangerous curriculum like critical race theory to unmask our children and to protect their medical freedom most of the signs were stolen or vandalized and often in broad daylight it was a rather brazen attempt to stifle free speech in my opinion but it didn't work in fact it had the opposite effect since people wanted to know who was responsible for the amazing signs and i think some of them turned out here to let you know what they think when the yard signs were attributed to me i became the subject of rumors from a facebook group you all know the rumors are untrue and could be easily disproved if the concerned person who

102made the anonymous post decided to ask i thought we didn't tolerate bullying and greenwich but as the victim of some rather vicious personal attacks over the last two weeks i know otherwise people who have associated with me have now become the subject of bullying and intimidation tactics as well i can assure you these tactics don't work on us it seems when you can't attack the message you attack the messenger because the truth is this content being presented to our children is indefensible how many f-bombs are appropriate for your ninth grader to read in his homework how many times does the word rape have to be used in english class when did curriculum shift from books like to kill a mockingbird to articles that tell my child how to write about africa i encourage you all

103to take a look at my posters that i was not allowed to put outside of the building because the board changed the rule about that they're right here on the side please take a look that's from our homework it's about the most racist thing i've ever heard now i find myself i can defend my children from the dangerous ideology of critical race theory which says my children were born racists simply because they're white how can that be is that what my neighbors really think about me that because i was born white something that i can't change that i'm a racist that my children are racists that everything they do must be viewed through the lens of systemic racism when are we going to get back to academics instead of activism why not teach them how

104to think instead of what to think why not value diversity instead of indoctrination vice chairman stow the board needs to immediately tell teachers to stop using unapproved curricular materials especially ones laced with profanity and highly sexualized content the board must start following its own policies and use good taste and judgment when selecting an approving curriculum as a matter of fact it's unclear whether the current curriculum has even been approved according to the board's own policy what is ruler exactly vice chairman still chairman bernstein the board needs to demonstrate leadership and adopt a policy against crt in all its forms this includes social and emotional learning which we all know is just a euphemism for crt the board is not fulfilling your legal responsibilities and instead you are allowing our school to get transformed into a

105social justice all right folks please we're running up against time so we want to try to get a couple more speakers in uh the next speaker is carl homan is here okay thank you very much the next speaker is alyssa barelli followed by francis snowbank no you cannot that does not work sorry the next speaker is alyssa barelli alicia borrelli no thank you we've got other speakers now you had your three minutes i'm sorry please go ahead there other it is our policy thank you other people are going to speak now please be courteous we listen to you now let others speak thank you our community is not concerned with whether our district will adopt the harmful rhetoric of crt the concern is that critical race theory is already very much here and deeply embedded

106in our district culture and school curriculum already western middle school hosted a speaker when my son was a student there in 2018 who told an auditorium full of our young students that white children should be passed over for jobs someday to make our country more fair for others this school year a child was allowed and encouraged to create and present a powerpoint that included anti-white ethnic shaming in the form of entirely made up negative and fictional racial imaging and stereotyping for the purpose of inciting resentment there is a bulletin board i believe currently hanging in this district that promotes racism misogyny and anti-semitism and distinctly calls on students to take part in speaking out against anyone who rightly disagrees with such messaging containing specific wording that calls for silencing objectivism using community resources and our

107trusted educational institutions to coerce students to not only accuse but go after one another by insulting by insisting that students are obligated to become active agents of anti-racism may certainly be woke but it is so in that dangerously irresponsible way and our school district isn't just condoning this our school district is actively encouraging it i certainly hope that the stand up to hate day scheduled to take place in greenwich high school next year does not become just another exercise in criticizing and vilifying white people or males what hate exactly is being stood up to on this day can i guess will it be the systemic and inherent and privileged hate of toxic toxic white males again will stand up to hey day be just another day i send my child to school to receive an

108education but instead and again he'll be unforgivably and irrationally shamed no thank you anyone who thinks critical race theory is ethnic studies is dangerously ignorant ethnic studies are the studies of different ethnicities critical race theory is a plan to use our educational institutions and resources to condition students to be critical of one another based on their ethnicities teaching students to find imaginary faults in themselves to blame judge and find reasons to resent one another and calling it standard standing up to hate is not critical thinking nor are any of these topics conducive with any core components of this district or possibly any core components of any rational and compassionate free thinking human being illogical and dishonest blame-stoked educational malpractice will not possibly help any student someday function healthily or productively in or help them be

109a part of forming any community global or otherwise the political and cultural morals and ethics of our children nor their bodies are available for the use of manipulative power tripping adults that were hired for the express purpose of providing them an education the fact that this needs to be said is appalling teachers know the governing body of this district create a climate of trust with their students or their community when they abuse their position position over their children to make their students feel ashamed the fact that i feel that i have to be put in this position where i feel so threatened in regard to my child's minds and body that i feel that i must show up to protect him from those who are supposed to be educating him is mind-boggling we all have

110to speak up at this point to protect our children and i ask anyone listening to get up with me and do the same i ask the board to get up and defend our children from a virus of radical ignorance thank you all right thank you the next speaker is francis nobe followed by maria mcleod miss nove is participating virtually you are allowed to speak mr nobe can you hear me hello yeah hi this is francis munobe representing ptac remote schools special committee with co-chair bob chaney we have so enjoyed a year supporting and cheering on our k-12 remote learners today i attended my fifth grade girls moving up ceremony in person on the blacktop at north street school to honor the incredible pandemic students of march 2020 to june 2021 vice principal kathy ramirez shared

111a poem by edgar albert guest entitled it couldn't be done tonight i will re-read this poem in honor of the gps teachers staff and administration who taught our more than 9 000 students in person remotely and both at the same time with sincere gratitude appreciation and humility somebody said that it couldn't be done but he with the chuckle replied that maybe it could but he would be the one who wouldn't say so till he tried so he buckled right in with the trace of a grin on his face if he worried he hit it he started to sing as he tackled the thing that couldn't be done and he did it somebody scoffed oh you'll never do that at least no one has ever done it but she took off her coat and she took

112off her hat and the first thing we knew she'd begun it with a lift of her chin and a bit of a grin without any doubting or quit it she started to sing as she tackled the thing that couldn't be done and she did it there are thousands to tell you it can't be done there are thousands to prophecy failure there are thousands to point out to you one by one the dangers that wait to assail you but just buckle in with a bit of a grin just take off your coat and go to it just start to sing as you tackle the thing that cannot be done and you'll do it congratulations best wishes to my fellow 1007 still fully remote learning families we did it you did it your kids did it your

113teachers did it with our hearts very full bob and i officially closed out the ptac remote school special committee and look forward to our new roles yeah we're not going anywhere look forward to our new roles on the p-tech executive board with incoming p-tech president mimi duff we look forward to continued collaboration connections good cheer and courage together for now have a great summer thank you so much thank you all right the next speaker is marija miklos mcluzak i'm probably mispronouncing maria first name m-a-r-i-j-a sorry i'm probably really mispronouncing your name you can help me out thank you good evening chairman bernstein and members of the board my name is maria mikolajczyk i'm a parent in the school district and i'm here tonight to ask you to immediately make face masks optional for all students

114teachers and staff each family should be able to conduct their own risk benefit analysis in consultation with their chosen medical provider to make their own choice on mass usage statistics show the risk of covid for children and most age groups is very low with a 99.99 recovery rate we have also seen evidence that mass usage is ineffective at preventing the spread of viruses those who conclude that the harms of wearing masks outweigh the benefits should have the choice to not use them for themselves and their children those who see it differently of course should have the choice to continue using the mask if they want to the covering of faces of their peers teachers and other adults in the learning environment has negative impacts on children socially and psychologically communication is impaired because it is

115harder to hear and understand speech through masks and because they prevent visual cues from expression and micro expressions this seems especially important for youngest children special needs students and during foreign language instruction again those who conclude the harms of mask wearing for their children's learning outweigh their benefits should have the choice not to use them there are also concerns about the possible negative respiratory and bacterial health effects of wearing masks a recently published study of bacteria profiles on masks worn in a school setting showed a concerning amount of pathogenic bacteria parasites and fungi including those associated with causing pneumonia tuberculosis meningitis lyme disease among many others on the masks parents and individuals concerned about the bacterial growth in the warm moist environment of a face mask should have the choice to not use them some

116private schools fitness centers and other venues are now using a segregation system to pressure people into receiving the experimental covered vaccines by requiring mask wearing only of those who do not receive the injections because of the number of deaths and injuries reported from these experimental vaccines is imperative that our schools do not participate in these discriminatory insegratory practices that would likely result in bullying of those singled out for not taking the experimental vaccines masks must be a choice independent of vaccination stats 30 seconds while we understand that the state department of health has issued guidelines each local school board has the ability to make a better decision for their district other school districts within our state and in other states and even entire states have ended mass mandates with no adverse impacts preventative medicines vaccinations

117therapeutics and treatments for cobit are now widely available and the mandating a mask is no longer justifiable it is time for the greenwich school board to be leaders in doing what is right and allowing our children teachers and staff thank you very much freely thank you all right that represents the first hour we're about halfway through our list so we will resume the community comments after the business portion of our meeting so we're going to move on to our monthly reports starting with the superintendent thank you mr bernstein just a couple of items tonight um first of all we only have three more days of school which is pretty unbelievable in many ways it seems like it was the fastest year and then the slowest as well so i am very very grateful for all

118of our school staff for our students i think what they accomplished this year was really phenomenal so you know thank you for being brave and i think that gea said it well tonight um it was it was a hard start at the beginning of the year everyone was nervous and i just couldn't be more grateful we also have a graduation on monday which will be live i know several of you here have seniors so that's very exciting we'll be on field six and seven and we do have our special education um audit the executive summary is supposed to be delivered to ms valentine tomorrow and she will post that on board docs once it's posted um we will make sure that's also in the family notes so it'll be an easy link to find next

119thursday we do have a special meeting where pcg will be here and they will a wednesday thank you thank you 23rd uh we'll be here to present all the recommendations and the executive summary has the actual recommendations from the full report and right when they finish presenting they will then email the district the full report so that that can also get posted um immediately but everyone will see all of these at exactly the same time we also have just for those of you that have been eager about ham av fields we are doing the graduation on the new grass it will be open the last two days so children can actually play on the field they will close it for a little bit of summer just to let it grow some more but we're excited

120about that cardinal stadium if you haven't seen the pictures i encourage you to look at the the digest that went out today but you actually when you drive past can see bleachers which is very exciting north mianis families i know you're eagerly waiting on the alternate site we're very very close we are doing a site visit a couple of staff are tomorrow trying to sign the last bit of an alternate not sign trying to get the approval then to come to the board um i also was asked at the last meeting just to share the virtual numbers and just to give you an idea for elementary we started on september 15th we had about 634 full remote students as of june 10th we were at 343. so we still have quite a few in remote

121uh for middle school started at 392 students will remote we've ended in june at 192 high school was interesting we started at 434 and in june we're actually at 471. so it's a little bit higher than it was in september that we think that's because a lot of our high schoolers have been off doing other things as well um let's see what else the other thing i'll just mention is we did have our sr3 town hall and that is people were referencing that funding tonight it's about a 9.5 million there is absolutely no plan as of today we are taking feedback that's what the town hall is for we will have the link again and the family newsletter tomorrow we are asking for feedback people are emailing me on a daily basis with some ideas

122and right now that plan it's very very detailed in what the federal government requires for sr-3 and that has to be submitted by mid-august and somebody did reference to 20 tonight and i just want to make sure we obviously weren't clear enough on the town hall we are required by the federal government to spend at least 20 percent so that's what the 20 percent means we absolutely will end up spending more than 20 percent of that for academics and that's all i have thank you all right so we will move on to reports of officers committees and liaisons uh see mr kelly i have uh some bad news uh our rugby team is in kansas city playing for the national championship right now seconds ago unfortunately we lost ten to seven i know it's a

123little sad news there sorry about that but good news we have the cardinal stadium if you drive by like our superintendent said we are moved we are cooking with gasoline we're moving quickly the buildings are going up the bleachers are being delivered the site work is being uh uh being done so we're uh we're moving forward in a nice way uh phase two uh we're moving forward not necessarily in a fast way but we're analyzing and deciding what we want to do to go forward so that's my report on cardinal stadium phase one and phase two mister you're just a fault can you hear me yeah just to follow up on what tony said um we met a couple weeks ago as a budget committee she the administration presented some ideas to us around sr

124funding um then you had the town hall we will continue to meet over the summer because as you know we need to submit something to the state by mid-august and so we will continue to work with the administration as a board and um with the community of course as we take feedback to make sure that we get everything that we hopefully want and one thing i wanted to note that we noted the budget committee but i think it's important as there are a lot of people here we actually received more than other towns because we were actually in school and we didn't know that we didn't know that was an incentive so we just got rewarded for doing the right thing um but i think that's worth noting because we people were wondering why greenwich

125got so much more than other towns and in addition to other factors such as having some title one schools but that also was a driving factor and something that um i think we should celebrate so thank you thanks uh other reports of uh officers nope uh so i just wanted to uh talk about the special ed report that's coming out uh next week and i wanted to just address i think there are some questions about timing and the sequencing of events and so i just wanted to uh lay that out a little bit more clearly for everyone that if you had questions so as tony mentioned or dr jones mentioned there'll be a link tomorrow in the her weekly uh in her weekly email with the executive summary that executive summary is going to everyone

126at the same time that includes the public and the board we have not seen that we thought it made sense from in order to put out the report to give everyone time to read the executive summary and then allow pcg our consultants who had done all of the work to come in next week and to give their presentation on the executive summary as well as the report that none of us have yet seen in order to provide some context you're going to have lots of questions we anticipate you're going to have questions i hope you have lots of questions and if you send those questions they will be answered and if you send them to ms hirsch and myself we'll make sure that we funnel them to pcg over the course of the next week

127so that they can either address them in their presentation or we can get back to you with answers in regards to those the reason for not releasing the report yet at this time and giving you the executive summary is to provide context and to let everyone settle in with the rather than having the full report and not having pcg explain all of the work they've done and the conclusions that they've reached this is something new the sequencing usually the board gets the report in advance and it has a chance to provide comment we didn't do that here and we did that for a very important reason the community has expressed a heightened concern over the transparency over special education the studies that have been done in the past and we didn't want that here and

128we wanted to make sure that out of an abundance of caution there was full transparency so no one on the board has seen this report we will all get it at the same time as the community does and we will get and we will have i've talked to mr bernstein this week about how we're going to through email that we're looking at ways of how we can make sure that we address all of the communities comments and concerns once the report comes out so i assure you your voices will be heard we expect that they're heard and the sequencing of events is in order to make sure that the community is as happy as we are that there has been uh complete candor and transparency in how this report how the um research was done

129and the report was created karen if you want to add something and i'll i'll just add that uh during agenda planning we will be discussing adding an additional date um after the executive summary is being presented where there as there won't be public input uh in comments on that night but we will be adding an additional meeting so in order to take public comment uh once we get the fault we all get the full report as well as to start plan action planning discussions which hopefully we will also start after we get the executive summary and then the board can make that decision uh after getting public input so uh there will be additional time for public speakers to come and speak on uh the audit report and recommendations thank you miss olsen um so

130first of all just from distinguished teachers i'd like to once more congratulate miss fallon um it's phenomenal and i also just wanted to report out quickly about greenwich alliance so um avid students had their graduation last night it was a huge success 40 students were in attendance which is awesome um so congratulations to avid students and just going forward avid success is is one of the newest and largest initiatives that helps avid students and alumni achieve college and career success by providing essential extent extensions to the gps avid experience so in other words basically avid students get over 10 year period through middle high school and beyond where they get support things such as you know good money habits job and professional job and professional meetings and mentoring and coaching and um avid is is

131still doing amazing things as is the greenwich alliance so stay tuned um i hope you don't mind i just want to take a brief minute also to thank miss sutton for her time because i actually was a student of miss sutton so thank you for your 39 years and it's it's it is and that's not to make you feel old that's just to make you feel special and um and we we share this night tonight actually um miss sutton because this is actually my last night serving on the board as well so i i'm honored to share it with you and um because we're relocating so i'm honored to share this night with you and um i just wanted to sing your appraisers for just a brief moment that's it thank you all right so

132i'm going to give a quick chair update so megan didn't really give us a lot of time or warning she well she did two years ago two years ago yeah exactly so we don't really have anything for you tonight but we'll catch up with you later and embarrass you a different way um so the board will be uh we'll be taking up and when we get to agenda plan we'll talk about how we're going to take up uh filling that seat until for the remainder of the term which is through november i believe election day is sometime november 2nd so that's what i remember anyway thank you very much all right we're going to move on to our discussion items so the first discussion item this evening is the western fields update you know dr

133jones we have someone online i believe and also uh principal being seen was here so he left he had enough of us um we continued to work hard since we entered into the remediation plan last spring and ryan woolston is normally here but tonight he couldn't be here but jamie barr and brian phillips um are both online and i i think jamie's going to actually take it um first and um as a reminder they are with the firm langan who is managing the field for us and we do also work with mccarter english is our land attorney who's the same land attorney we use on the ghs project so i'll turn it over to jamie barr before you start is there a presentation or you're just talking to us no i'm just gonna i'm just

134gonna speak to uh to general update thank you we just need to know if we needed to move into this screen yep we're good go ahead oh no we're good okay um so uh thanks everyone um so uh as dr jones said um my name is jamie barr i'm a principal at langan engineering um you've seen ryan wolf from here one of my colleagues um most of the time but i'm here filling in tonight so just to give you a quick update on on kind of the progress that we've been making with the wms remediation and the athletic fields i'll give you kind of a three-part update first related to you know ongoing negotiations and discussions with connecticut dep and environmental protection agency on um you know selecting ultimately selecting a remedy for the site

135we um you know think back we started this process i think they were started evaluating 10 different remedial options for the fields um happy to say that we are um essentially down to uh about four options um that are realistic and are more realistic and two actually that are that that are likely to be the final evaluations um i say that we're close because the state has asked the state and epa have asked us to do some additional uh investigation um recently around the edges of the fields just to confirm some of the assumptions that we had on uh in a number of our remedies and um so we're just waiting right now for comment back from the state and epa on our proposed plan for investigation um the plan would be once we get

136that approval we would execute that work and um hopefully that be that next step towards selecting that final remedy um so that's the first update the the second update is is related to kind of the future remedy and and whichever remedy is selected there's there's going to be logistics associated with that work and we've started a little bit of a planning study on uh you know how we would operate the remediation with respect to trucking and um access into the fields and timing of all that work so um usually that's that's it's not done this early but um but we've we've started that early to make sure that when that remedy is uh finally approved and we're at that point we'll have all of this already thought out um so um we should be a

137little bit ahead of the game there with that and the the last piece um each of these remedies um you know has incorporated the last few remedies that we've been we've been looking at has incorporated you know a synthetic turf athletic fields as part of the capping system capping component and we've had numerous meetings and coordination meetings with various folks from the board of ed and the school uh to discuss you know alignment of the fields and um kind of working through some co concept uh sketches of what this what the fields would ultimately look like and kind of started down that road of uh when we finally get to to to build this cap and this remedial cap the uh the turf fields will you know be designed and everybody will be kind of

138on board with that stuff so we started the the con conceptual drafting of those sketches and and running through the alignment with um with those in greenwich so that's basically um a short and sweet update on on where we are i hope to hear from the state and epa shortly and get moving on finalizing the remedy jamie this is uh peter bernstein i've got a suggestion and a couple of questions the suggestion is to make sure that the parks and rec department is brought into that conversation if they happen already yeah they have been yes they have been sorry yeah thank you um i know at one point we had asked at a previous meeting to make sure there's trenching for electrical and whatever else we need to run out to the field so i

139take it that's already part of the design work that's happening so that's yeah that's part of uh what um brian phillips one of my colleagues who's also on the on the call uh as part of the civil group um are you know pulling together as part of the design for the fields for the uh fields yes okay just one last closing one before i turn it over to my colleagues i've got to ask the timing question because this has gone on for quite a long time and and well it sounds like you you know you've got the next meeting scheduled and you're always good about getting the follow-up meetings is there a projected time frame at this point for this project to be able to move forward i i don't know um it's it's not

140entirely in our hands um you know this this we're in a voluntary remediation program with the state the epa is involved we're trying to work as quickly as possible with them to come to a resolution um it looks like this investigation that they've most recently requested is kind of the final piece to to shore up some of our assumptions in the design and if that is the case then um we'll be able to move on on finalizing the um you know an approvable design very quickly um i i can't say timing wise how you know once the designs we can complete a design quite quickly um once everybody's on board the state's on board with it i think it has to go through a process of of um vetting and and comment but um so

141i don't know how how lengthy that process will be or the procurement of the services for you know construction and whatnot that would be completely out of our our control um but i i we're we are in terms of environmental remediation i feel we are very close to to honing it on an approvable remedy i just can't give you a time frame i just i'm sorry i no we understand i mean we know we don't control the process but just as long as we're doing everything we can to move it along and it sounds like you are all right miss downey um yeah well just sorry um a related timing question um i'm really happy to hear that you're kind of planning for the process while simultaneously to the design so that we're kind of

142running in parallel um is this the type of the logistics of doing it are we limited by only doing it in the summers because if you're planning then it's like are we already booking into next summer or is this the kind of thing that we may be able to do during the school year as you're looking at the logistics element to it so we can give our community a sense of if once we get approval what we're looking at or is it going to default to next summer anyway so so in terms of the evaluation and we're discussing it um with wms and dr jones uh we're considering you know what would it look like if we had to do it during the school year which is part of the discussion on the logistics of

143where where where do trucks come in how does this how how would it get fenced off how would ever you know the areas be protected where would the air monitoring stations be set up during the work so we're kind of considering it um all scenarios in terms of can can we do it it can certainly could certainly be done um it's just a matter of how do you protect um uh the areas outside of any of the remediation areas and and you know essentially the the whole field eventually will likely have some level of of excavation across it um not just not just select areas so the sequencing of that uh could be tricky if if school was in but no no decisions may have been made yet in terms of you know around the

144clock um school year summer time but we are looking at you know what the impact would be thank you all right mr kelly hey jamie i got one simple question and uh it is is there anything that the board of education can do to get this moved along more quickly i asked this question because i worked or i work i am working on the uh the stadium project and that is my first public project i've worked on multiple private projects for many many years i lose a lot of tools in my tool kit in that project i lose the ability to bonus and i lose the ability to fire now with those things lacking or missing i find that there are some things i can't accomplish as quickly as i could in the private sector

145so could you tell me is there anything absolutely anything the board of education can do right now to move this along more quickly uh i i i think i would have to say from what i know your capabilities are i you know i don't know everything but uh i would probably say no this is uh this is ultimately going to be approved by the state needs to be approved by the state and epa to move it forward and we're doing everything we can to meet with them and you know execute assessments as quickly as possible turn around work plans as quickly as possible and once we're at that point where they say okay here are the remedies that are approvable we'll turn around the design very very quickly i i don't know that there's anything

146that can be done to push an approval when there's still um some data that that both the state and epa would like to see before before we start discussing the final remedy thank you jamie that was a good answer and just to add to that slightly if you do come up with something please contact me or all of us immediately with what that is thank you happy to do so all right miss kowalski sure hey hi jamie it's karen kowalski um question for you you had mentioned we've gone from 10 remedial options to four options to two likely final options what are those remedial options what what does that entail well i i i won't i don't have them in front of me the the ten um because we but i can give you just

147essentially what what they consisted of there were varying varying volumes of excavation right so depending on chemical concentration and depth in the ground and location where they were we we played around with those numbers and ran those through health risk models to see what was still safe so every one of the models had had some some element of excavation and then and then capping which is essentially creating a barrier uh a barrier from contact with any of the um any contaminated material below that so there were there were just varying degrees of excavation uh of excavation to certain concentrations and then there were risk profiles generated for those um for each of those options and then we vetted through uh with the town and with the regulators down to essentially four that fell within the

148confines of um you know what has been approved within the state what is uh what is deemed to be uh appropriate with the regulators and and some nuanced things like you like you see at um greenwich high school where they're doing uh some innovative work there on those fields so um the the the one that we're zeroing in on right now is essentially removal of of the column hot spots of you know elevated concentrations of contaminants in in certain areas that are that are highly or that are at higher levels and then a two foot removal across the field and a two foot cap back onto the field and and about 75 percent of that cap is essentially your synthetic turf so uh so it's not so they'll be very so the of the two

149proposals it would entail two feet removal across the entire field with deeper removal at various hot spots is that correct that's correct yep and of those hot spots how deep are we talking about needing to go has that been decided yet or what is part of the proposal well yeah i'm i'm i'm not sure exactly i can't remember what the deepest spot is but i i want to say it's somewhere around eight or ten feet down we pull that material out mainly because there's there's uh there's some material above that as well that's hot so we would go down to uh to to about eight eight or ten foot depth at a couple locations and remove those and what what it does is it reduces the concentration loading you know within any of the material

150and essentially um uh drops the average concentration of contaminants across the site even even though you're you're basically putting a clean cover on it so that nobody can access it got it okay and then one question you may not be able to answer but on the timing piece of this assuming one of those two likely scenarios gets approved by the state and they and you and epa and you get the approval from the date of approval how long will it take you to actually finish the project um i i can comment on on how long it will take us to finish the design i don't know how long it will take to go through the procurement process and the bidding and all that other all that other stuff but the design would likely be on

151the order of maybe three or four months um for the design uh it could be faster than that if um if we're able by time we get to that point because we have been having so many discussions with epa and connecticut dep they're they're right on board with us as we're kind of kind of developing it usually it's you develop the design and you submit it and then they comment and it takes a little bit longer we're we're in a much different position here where they're right along with us what we're walking them through our thought process so it should be a much faster review process i think and an approval process once the design's ready we can pull the design together quite quickly within i would say you know a month to two months

152fully designed and and submitted for approval thanks all right miss hirsch um i'm hoping that uh we can um get this moving certainly very quickly because it has been a very very long time for our students i know i have one uh that two that went there that never stepped foot on the field one is graduating on monday so i guess many of the questions i had have been answered but one of the other questions i sort of wanted to get out there is i know you're starting to work on some of the plans for access to the fields and how to get things done um you know in a safe manner but i want to make sure that you guys are also considering the needs of the students um not only in order to

153get the work started as soon as possible but to ensure that there's there will be no unintended consequences due to excavation and work um so i'm hoping that you're thinking about that as in you know ensuring that our students that the work will not interrupt our students education um so if we have any blasting yes the uh uh hopefully hopefully no blasting um we don't have any blasting plan but uh so i think the um the answer your question is absolutely that's part of the evaluation um the principal is involved the athletics director's involved in these discussions as we kind of work through logistics and and and what it would look like so certainly part of the evaluation so that's really good to know um and um just as a comment to uh to my

154fellow members of the board and i and other town bodies and i'm hoping that we're all going to be able to uh to move this along as quickly as possible once we get uh a necessary approval from the state um and making ensuring that all the necessary resources are there to have a shovel on our grounds as soon as possible on this hopefully by the start of next summer at the absolute latest so whatever we can do to get that moving forward i know joe asked please keep us updated because many of us would really like to see this move forward quickly all right i think that's it on this item thank you very much for the update we look forward to uh to hearing that we have reached an agreement with the state and

155can move this project forward all right the next item is the strategic plan ad hoc committee update mr chair uh thank you mike can you bring up the the slides mike yeah perfect so for those of you who are following along on zoom uh you can see um there's not any particularly new information but this is a prop for the board to kind of recap uh where we are if you go to the next slide you'll recall we're in a strategy process you've seen this slide many times before here's just a reminder like at disneyland you are here on the map we are between um bishop and setting strategic goals um makes no sense to set strategic goals without community input so we're here talking about the survey that is part of the process we've

156all agreed to pursue the community survey and input if you go to the next slide mike just by way of a reminder our committee's met on this survey and input 11 times the survey we've developed is derived from the 2015 strategic plan survey which was designed by the pcg who's also doing the work for us with special ed and also you'll recall that the board looked at other leading school districts best in class surveys to arrive at the design that uh is in the packet in front of the board it's focused only on the information necessary for long-range strategic plan decision making there was a lot of push and pull to add everything in the kitchen sink to this things we might want to know and we tried to stay disciplined and focused stay in

157our lane to come up with a survey that was focused on information needed it's also deduplicated from other greenwich public school surveys we don't repeat questions that the board already knows the answer to from other surveys that we've put out like panorama and others that are circulated if we already have the data no need to go back and ask parents that again the development of the survey was advised by a very helpful parent volunteer who's a recognized expert in market research and polling you'll also know and this has been before the board a couple times we programmed it in surveymonkey which is the standard uh survey tool used by greenwich public schools so we could see if it could actually be programmed and it worked most recently since we last met if you could move

158on mike um we got a a series of uh a review was done by the uh pta council um we got consolidated comments from the pta council we spent an hour at least in a meeting with the pta council going through their comments deeply understanding what they were saying and what they were concerned about just by way of review let me go through what was there they were in essentially six categories one was the structure of the survey and these by the way are their descriptors so this is verbatim from their document they were concerned if it would be offered in spanish language of course it needs to be they were concerned about survey length we're all concerned about survey length they had questions about uh question order because they rotate which is a standard

159practice in in and they were concerned about that they were also concerned about the way answers would be presented um within the survey and that is standard practice to rotate those so you move out um what's called question and answer bias so we discuss that with them and i think they were clear about that and comfortable with that they had some comments about the demographics as you'll recall the demographic survey to remove controversy is the standard educational uh survey questions from the survey monkey question bank for surveying on educational topics in particular in k-12 education there was one thing missing there is a question about language spoken at home primary language spoken at home and for some reason surveymonkey does not ask if japanese is one of the questions that's spoken at home we have

160a japanese community in greenwich so we had to add that thank you to the ptac for pointing that out um and then there was a little bit of a debate of when do you ask the questions is the beginning of the survey or the end of the survey different people have different views on that most surveys are and of these type are at the beginning so we're just going to follow the survey monkey approach to it but we appreciated people think about that uh they commented about emission omissions there were two questions that some of their uh members thought should be asked one was questions about out placement we didn't put that in the survey because there was a separate uh discussion amongst the board and a report on that so that's an example of

161de-duplicating and not asking questions twice they also thought that there some people thought there should be a question about a resource availability we that's really an implementation question when you have a plan it should be asked a later time when you have something for people to look at and review um it's an important question it's just not at this part of the process they had a lot of comments about wording they were concerned that in some places we were called greenwich public schools and in other places we just referred to it as greenwich schools on our own documents we use both but to accommodate the input we standardized on greenwich public schools so it's a little bit wordy but everywhere in the document it now says greenwich public schools there was a concern about a

162strategic plan or a long-term plan we use both terminology the recommendation was to combine them too and consistently call it the long-term strategic plan so that's everywhere in the document there were some other small recommendations on wording and you can see those in the draft survey that's out on surveymonkey right now a lot of the discussion was around question types there's a question type it's informally known or jargon known among survey people as polarities it's a questioning type and a questioning technique where you give someone a two choices and or three choices and you kind of force them to answer a question you can't take those answers literally as they are they have to be taken in context collectively so you can really uh discern what it is people are saying it's substandard it's it's

163technically known as forced rank you can look it up and google it if you're interested um it's a standard uh approach so we had a lot of conversation about that the ptac made some suggestions on changing the wording so they thought parents wouldn't get confused it used to say would you say and then it's given them two polarities it now says uh which statement is closest to your view and uh so we took care of that and we took their recommendation and we changed that um they're in the process of sending uh they asked for us a definition of what this is and how it works uh i we sent something to brian today based on feedback that we got from our parent volunteer expert and i think they'll be sharing that with their members

164there was also a concern about the definition of neighborhood schools this had been raised by board members as well so we took care of that they were concerned about grammar and spelling yes absolutely it needs to be vetted for grammar and spelling it has been done i'm sure there's still a grammar spelling issue somewhere uh in the survey it's a lot of pages so we went through that so we addressed all of that and really thank you to brian uh peldunas and the ptac team for digging so deeply giving us the feedback and we were glad to uh address it all the last point was after we made those changes oddly we have a higher score from surveymonkey on the survey itself it went from good to great which i think is always a good

165thing i think but the completion rate estimate completion rate went down a couple points i don't understand what their algorithm is they also think it takes less time to answer the survey now um and they are estimating only 14 minutes uh we've put in the survey as i've said before uh to tell people it's going to take 20 minutes um we want people to really think and and really take a look at it so the survey is now completed with all the comments oh one other thing we did get one more review feedback from ms downey thank you very much christina uh we took those into account we made some changes based upon what you uh pointed out i hope you've seen those in the survey we took out as an example single high school

166that question was really meant to get at the house system i think future boards really need to get at the question of preservation of the house system because we have the second largest high school in connecticut and uh you know there is a strategic question about how you want the high school to run um just one big giant high school or do you want to do parents feel need to be broken up into something that's more manageable not physically not practically but through some things the administrators might come up with and the other question was people were concerned about questions about the leadership in the survey you'll now see that's broken out into a separate question and it gives context to parents about why that question is being asked in my experience doing strategy consulting

167for a long long time with business units if you look at a strategy and you're not asking a question about the effectiveness of your leadership you're just missing a huge hole in any kind of strategic discussion doesn't mean our our leadership is good or bad as a board or whatever but it's really important to get an understanding of what the key stakeholders think to be considered so that's in there too so you guys can all see the change and we incorporated all the changes we incorporated all the feedback um we were going to meet as a group one more time this week to go over it we just needed to take it in and get it done uh unfortunately our meeting got cancelled for a variety of reasons i'm glad to tell board members separately

168um but anyway the survey's there it's done it's complete i'm hoping there isn't a meeting 12 but you know that's for everybody else to decide without any questions all right so check with the committee members if they have anything they want to add before we go to discussion karen sure so i think i've spent a lot of time um on the survey and we've spent a lot of time taking in the comments that we've received and uh accommodating those comments where it made sense and i think peter has done an eloquent job of explaining where in certain circumstances we we may not have thought that those um while appreciating the comments that um why we didn't take them and i think from my standpoint um this committee has worked really hard in getting to this

169point it's taken us a long time uh i think that just goes to show the amount of thought that has gone into all of this and from my personal and humble opinion i'd like to be done with the survey i'd like to move on to the next step i'd like the board to if they have i take a look at it and and bless it and we can decide when to get it out i think we've spent more time on the survey than actually needed to be and i'd like to get to the actual getting some getting additional data and getting to the point of actually drafting and formulating a new strategic plan that we can put in front of the board and the community because i think that's where the real debate and dialogue

170will happen and should happen i think we've kind of got lost through the trees here on what we needed to get done and it's just been stuck in purgatory for lack of a better word so i'd like to you know i'd like to get my i would like to get the blessing of the board to move forward with the survey um we can decide at a different time on when is the best to get it out i have some reservations about putting it out over the time of summer but i'd like to get it out and i'd like to move on to the next steps and i'd like the board's blessing to do so miss hershey you know have to um well i i was participatory uh as part of the committee and the discussion

171with pta council but i i hadn't when i saw the survey post i hadn't seen the changes made so i don't have um much comment so i because i what was posted was was the original one so i don't know um when the revisions were made but um they were discussed thoroughly um we've spent a lot of time trying to go over this you know so i don't know what exactly i knew what you were suggesting but i think you also mentioned that jennifer negrin was going to share um an understanding of the polarity questions correct yeah and i already sent that to brian and it's copied to you and to karen it's in your mailbox so okay i didn't yeah so i don't know yeah so that that's already out there and then they'll

172have to tell us if they need more um you know we've well anyway um and the changes are all online so you should look at it again when you have a chance all right um michael if you could post that powerpoint to the uh to board docs um peter i'm probably one of the 72 percent that started and didn't finish it uh i think the work that you guys have done has moved it along right we had some questions about formulations and and other stuff i think you've resolved some of them although i did go in and look and i can't tell because there's some green comment um things i don't know if that's something that's changed something that you were working on you know the cut there's 22 comments there were people who went

173there were two people who went online uh one was the costco pta president and i put in looked at all the screens and commented anybody could comment uh the other person was karen hirsch there are only two people commenting and collectively they had uh 20 uh sorry not 22 23 comments we we reviewed every single one of those comments and uh you know as as ms kowalski said every single one of those that committee thought made sense you know we changed some of them were like hey there's a spelling error here or you know so and so forth and then some of them are substantive you can you can actually see them online so if you you know because i've given review capability to everybody so if you want to see what those are but

174we went over all of those and resolved all those too because i tried clicking into one that didn't let me and i don't have a surveymonkey account and i don't know if that's on it's not on the school's platform so i don't know whose surveymonkey platform it's on the town of greenwich platform because the at the time that we asked for support from the school system the school system said we're not the administrator said we don't have resources to support you in this right now the town the town of greenwich did so it's all still in-house okay presumably we'll be able to move that over to our platform well you have to move it yeah yeah it has to come from the greenwich public schools okay um so i guess what's there now is the

175final final survey is that right because i started it i saw the green bubbles wasn't sure if that was indicative of what was still needed to be fixed no those won't go away just because they're people commenting but they don't go away there's no i mean i could go in and delete them all we could go in and delete them all just that might eliminate some confusion for anybody that's clicking the link yeah that's easy all right and i know the pan around my server let me just ask a question do we want to delete them all karen and karen because i'll i'll go i'll go get it done so that for the other board members it's not confusing well i think we're done we're done with those right you remove the ones that you've

176resolved we resolved them all so do do yeah i'm fine i think we should just remove them i i think whatever people want to do yeah i don't have an opinion the purpose of originally leaving them was to see so that others could see the comments that were there and so that you had the benefit of understanding what other comments had been made and seeing what we did if it's confusing and we've already resolved them then delete them and send it on can i just say like because it i think it only got posted today and i haven't had a chance to look at it so whatever way you think facilitates the eight of us looking at it one last time i know not to beat the dead horse but i would like to just

177at least look at the changes so whether it's keep them in or take them out whatever whatever you think makes it you guys can take cleaner i have no preference review it you can take it up whenever you want if you want to take it up as an item in the meeting next wednesday you can do that it's up to you guys i i don't know i mean the panorama is in the field i don't know what our response rate is i know you're probably going to have it in the parent node again tomorrow i'm not so sure about doing a survey in the summer just because we lose parent interest so i mean we can have that discussion miss towney right to to follow up on peter's point if we just say okay the

178survey's cooked it's ready to go and we're just not putting it out till september um maybe this strategy if you're part of the pun to do it but are there things in terms of advancing the process that we that the committee has in mind to do while we're waiting to get the survey or is this a stumbling block to any further tasks if you could kind of i kind of missed your i didn't write down all the steps that you had kind of where that you are here what other steps can be done in the meantime the next step is the board has to i mean you get to the meat of the strategy process right and i i'm not going to be here i mean i'm i'm gone in november so this process is

179going to go further than november so this is really a question for those of you who are going to be here the way that strategy is developed is it's informed by critical information to help you ask and answer strategic questions right not operational questions this is where discipline is required and um the purpose of this is to really take the temperature of the key stake the key stakeholders right you also need information about what the uh administrators other stakeholders need but this is the most important set of stakeholders because we're here for kids right so that's what the whole thing is focused on so if you're going to sit down as a board team and i'm glad to help you in the time that remains you know in september and october and um focus on

180strategy is not about what to do it's actually about what not to do because if you look at greenwich public schools i mean you're going to look at we have 4 43 to 50 major programs so doesn't mean you're going to keep those or get rid of them or adam but it's really about focus and what's the most important focus so your next step would be to talk about as a group informed um where do you want to go what what are the goals where do you want to be where do you want to be in the time frame you're setting i believe you're setting a five five uh five year time frame maybe you guys want to change that but the last one was done on five years five years is good uh particularly

181in an organization that is like a public organization and doesn't move as uh as a with as much agility as others so that's the next step um i don't think you can get very far in that conversation without actually having this information if i if i were my suggestion um i think there's so many stakeholders are interested in it i don't think it matters when you put it in the field because our response rates in greenwich are so high historically every time we've surveyed they're so high you're not going to have the problem of a five percent response rate that won't be a sample but if that makes everybody comfortable christina what i would do is put it in the field right when people come back and then schedule the meeting where you're going to

182review the data and you're only going to put it in the field for 10 for two weeks not three not four not forever you're going to put it in the field and you put it on the september agenda where you're reviewing the results at a date certain what's happened here is this thing's kind of just bubbled along for months and months and months and months and months and you know we're not making any progress so that's what i would do and then you can have a conversation about strategic goals you'll get the advantage in that conversation of people like peter me um megan particularly who uh kathleen who have a little bit longer edge perspective but we're not going to be a part of the process maybe kathleen will be if she runs again i

183don't know what her plans are but this will be for a new set of people to do um my suggestion just pure suggestion was take advantage of that skill while it's here but it's going to disappear uh the first week of december and then you can move on to revalidate that with the new board members and then maybe you have a shot of moving on and talking about what would the real strategies be which has to be a deep dialogue with the administration that has to be done collaboratively particularly goal setting can be done by the board but when you get to strategies that's where the real collaboration starts with the management which is where the rubber meets the road and you might have a shot at doing that january february and having a plan

184by march that would be my view of the calendar but it's an off the cuff typically i'm used to going faster because it's more focused but we don't typically run that way and then you've got this nasty thing of the budget and an election in the middle of it does that help ms hirsch i do think mr chair makes a very good point and we've talked about repeatedly in our committee um that the need for stakeholder input should also include um our educators and administrators so that whatever strategic plans and goals we put in place are things that they can actually accomplish um and so the the only other thing i could say that we might be able to do in the interim is if the board approves this particular survey or parts of the

185survey whatever it is that you guys are going to approve as a whole um that we could take that and then revise what's in there uh to speak to our educators um [Music] yeah so i'm saying that that could be done in the interim before this one goes out we could just take the time to revise it for educators okay so if i'm uh if i'm following peter we would take up at some point in the uh in the not too distant future authorizing the release of the survey in september maybe scheduling when we're doing the agenda plan for next year which is a couple items from now putting a strategic plan update basically to discuss the uh the results at that meeting and then you go from there all right so just peter what

186i would do is i i think we've had these before i my suggestion would be when we get to agenda plan if you guys are so inclined but you know it depends on what you guys want to do particularly those who are staying um i would set the september i would also set a goal session to at least start that conversation in october i would pick a date certain to set that um and but you're not going to complete you won't i would not recommend you try to complete that in october but i think you should get started in october based upon the discussion of what comes out of september that would be my suggestion to you and i agree with what ms hirsch was saying which is um if you really think you need

187input after particularly after you look at panorama i don't know when dr jones is releasing panorama to the board it should should be right away now um no i as soon as it gets out of the field right the the raw results should look at that because what you really need to figure out to ms hirsch's point is you need to figure out out of that what else is strategic in nature because there's other stuff in panorama that's more operational strategic in nature that's going to have an information gap teachers and administrators is an information gap we've talked about in the committee and i agree with you maybe over the summer or early september you finish off that survey so you can put that in the field do okay any other discussion on this hearing

188none we're going to move on to our action items so the first action item is summer transfer so i'm going to go ahead and make the motion to authorize the boe executive committee to approve all budget appropriation transfers during the summer is there a second for that stow any discussion this is an annual agenda item just to move it along all right hearing no discussion we're going to go ahead and take a uh vote uh bernstein is yes joe yes hirsch yes downey yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes and sure yes thank you that passes eight zero all right the next item is the financial and staffing report again to move things along uh i'm going to make a motion to accept the monthly financial and staffing report is there a second missed oh

189great all right mr o'keefe give us the highlights okay um so through may we're at 100 and just a little under 144 million dollars which represents 88 of the budget uh of 163.4 uh compared to the same period last year our year-to-date spending's up a little less than one percent which is attributable to salaries uh covet expenses that have not yet transferred they will they're actually being transferred this week to the to the grant funds for a total of 4.7 million which was previously approved by the bet and the board of ed um also uh we have higher outplays tuition as you all know that we've been tracking all year long and then we have some covert related savings and quite a bit of it some are esy savings significant amount of transportation savings attributable

190to summer athletics late bus full remote days hybrid schedule days and just as an example of uh you know we had two fully remote weeks following vacation breaks where we were remote and uh that that drove about 250 000 of savings for each one so considerable savings fuel savings professional learning and related travel uh professional other services all contributed to the covert related savings um the projection um right now uh you know well previously i communicated that we will not be needing an interim for the for the special ed tuition uh in addition to that that's still true in addition to that my my projection at this point in time is that we will probably have somewhere in the vicinity of about a million dollars in the black now still a lot of balls in

191the air so uh you know we'll be updating that number uh with closer to the pin views and we'll keep the board updated as we close in on the number in the next two to three weeks uh capital overall capital balance stands at 18.7 million which is a a decrease from the april report of about two million dollars uh as of today we're at 18.3 so another drop of uh 400 000 in the last 10 days since the start of the year due to the increased focus on capital uh our capital available balance has decreased by 19.2 million dollars uh or about 51 52 over to school lunch uh year-to-date may revenue for school lunch uh 1 696 000 which again is lagging well below the same period last year when we we recorded 2.7

192million so a year-to-year decrease of about a little over a million dollars cash sales are down by 1.87 million but our reimbursements are are significantly up by about 800 000 uh year-to-date may expenses overall uh three hundred and seventy four thousand compared to three million four a year ago so a year to year decrease of about 70 k and that's attributable to lower salaries uh food costs and partly offset by the food delivery transportation cost and and slightly increase in benefits as of today we're projecting that revenue will come in about 3.1 million or about a million less than budget with cash sales uh expected to under run by about 2.9 and reimbursements expected to be uh 1.8 million over budget for expenses we expect to be at approximately 3.65 million or about 610 000

193under budget uh from a net point of view we're projecting uh our initial projection is a deficit of about 500 000 but when we transfer in july we'll be doing this we'll be transferring the food delivery costs over to sr2 uh the net the net deficit will come down to about 247 000 and then with the general fund transfer of about 220. if you could keep it down in the back it's a little hard to hear thank you and then with the and then with the the budgeted transfer from the general fund of 220 it should bring us close to break even about a slightly negative number about but i do believe that the state reimbursements could be a little bit higher based on the latest trend so we have a good shot at breaking

194evening or even a slight profit in the package also is the is the typical uh the usual uh out of district placement and settlements uh as of june 7th or out of district placement tuition 3.641 million dollars settlements represent the tuition settlements 3.692 million uh we still have some pending items of about 460 000 so right now we're projecting about uh seven points uh seven point six seven five million dollars uh which is um about 2.3 million dollars over budget and about 375 k over what we projected at the beginning of the year but again we'll be containing that expense with our covert related savings the last item is covered related so and i won't go over this because i've reviewed a lot of it already we have four grants received to date esther one

195for 758 thousand which needs to be spent by september of coronavirus relief fund or known as crf a million two hundred and four thousand uh to be spent by december 2022 both of those items have been fully spent and are being transferred this week to the uh to the grant fund over at the town the third one is the sr2 for 4.268 million dollars of that 4.268 we are transferring over about 2.7 million leaving about 1.5 million to be spent in the 21 22 school year and then finally is the uh the arp also called sr3 and that is 9. almost 9.6 million dollars to be spent by september of 2024 uh that that fund is just getting started and you know as tony mentioned the beginning of the uh the session it requires community

196input and that uh initial community input already took place about a week or so ago and uh so more to know on that uh on that one as we get uh further inputs uh that's all i had for the uh any questions thank you sean peter here sean can i ask you a question about i i don't know if i've already approved this or if it came before the board um i am looking in the budget book and i am looking under the program library of media services and i'm looking at it has a variety of major cost centers to it i'm looking particularly eastern middle school and i'm looking at the two lines fifth uh 51 10 and 51 20. and as i read these it looks like they're funding uh essentially three heads

197um that looks about a salary that's probably related to three heads um and i understand i got a note today i don't know if anybody else on the board got it from someone pointing out that that's not how we're staffed right now so i'm i'm trying to understand what we're actually staffed at at eastern i have the same question for other schools but this one i know and i understand um and how many head count are there and if we transferred this budget to something else uh when as a board did we do that and i wasn't paying attention peter i i'm gonna have to get back to you on that one okay i mean i you did you know if there was an actual departmental budget transfer that we've ever done for this i

198am not aware of that yeah it wouldn't i i didn't recall it either but i i could miss it so could you do me a favor could you look into that and i will absolutely do it tomorrow yeah um i'm interested in understanding in library media services versus the approved budget if what head count is in these budget lines right now and um if anything was i'm just interested to understand so if you could go look at that um and i'm i'm looking at 51 i imagine there's 51 10 and 51 20 at uh eastern i'm interested in it at central and i'm interested in it at western just to complicate the question okay thank you central and western the same thing yeah same thing i'm interested in in how many head count are applied

199against budget lines 50 51 10 and 51 20. okay okay yep thanks thanks a ton appreciate it no problem hey sean this is peter bernstein okay i want to understand this so uh you said we're likely to end the year somewhere around a million dollars in the black which is great um but just just to confirm the only reason we're in the black is the covet expenses uh that have been applied from the grants which is 4.6 million plus additional covered savings so without that without the savings without the the grants we'd be seeking an additional appropriation is that accurate you you can absolutely interpret that uh the 4.7 million dollars that we're applying to uh the the covert related grants would without those would have been an interim of 4.7 million and and then

200and then you know we'd be asking for an interim for the special ed tuition of two point uh 2.3 million dollars but because so we've been able to basically absorb the additional expenses due to covid as well as the special education uh tuition thanks to the grants and the savings in transportation and other lines that's that's in a covid related savings and transportation is a big part of that um so covert related savings and the fact that at the beginning of the year we had no idea we were going to be getting these grants so we were kind of hoping that we hoping we'd be able to figure this out somehow but the grants came through and enabled us to contain all of our covert related spending all right well that's good news ms hirsch

201well in conjunction with what mr sherrod said um dr jones this is for you actually um at our last meeting when this was presented to us i had asked about the several media assistant positions that were on hold including the two media assistants at greenwich high school and one for central middle um i see they're still listed as awaiting the superintendent's approval and i know i had asked just for an update are we going to be filling those prior to or for next year especially now that our schools are going to be fully open well let's hope they're all going to be fully opened our students will have the opportunity to be able to utilize those media centers and we'll really need that added support in there as much as possible i'm working with the

202administration on that question um our three middle school principals um are looking at a lot of scheduling aspects right now and then we've been very transparent and had those on here as frozen um this almost entire year and it's been on every financial report so and we've had it on there for that reason one of the buildings that you mentioned which is eastern has some scheduling challenges that um and i think pcg may actually bring some of that forward as well i have no idea if it'll show up in the report so we're being very very careful about the fte that we have to work with and where the need is the greatest within that building and we are listening to administration who are really trying to make sure they have fte in the right

203spaces where they really need it not only to be in compliance in some areas but just for their student need right now so that's why it's been frozen and and when any position leaves in the district the first thing we do is freeze it and analyze it just to make sure we don't continue doing what we've always done just because we've always done it and it is hard with our budget because we do the budget a full year in advance um and you know we start having all of those discussions um so it is hard doing it a year in advance yes sorry it was a multi-point question um well you know as that is i knew this was an unusual year and how our students were in our school facilities and how they were

204utilizing that so that's why i wasn't asking during the year while they were on hold but next year hopefully we will be returning to normal and i really like to be able to see those positions um returned it's the same question i would have that i asked the last time in regards to the food manager positions for k-8 at havemeyer and at ghs um i know there was a change in food service this year but i'm hoping that we're going to be looking to fill those for next year um and it asked for an update at our last meeting so if you can make sure that uh to keep us updated on that um as soon as possible to make sure that they're going to be filled or how we're going to handle the vacancies

205before next year thank you all right miss kowalski i don't understand i don't understand what you mean by scheduling challenges how do the scheduling challenges affect the um the approval for media assistance because when a position comes open um if the building if the billing principal comes to me and says we have an open position i really would like to use that fte in a different way we start that conversation because all three buildings and middle school especially do not actually program their media assistants even in the same way they all three buildings use those positions differently some of them are on the rotation one position may not be so that it's a conversation with the principals because they only have the fte that they have to work with so if they come and they

206say i really have a scheduling challenge and i have this open fte i'm not you know taking away anybody's position we might freeze the position so it doesn't go away but they really need an fte for um intervention or for something of that nature we go in and look at that because we have to live within what we have in the budget in the operating budget so what are the challenges you said all three middle schools so what what do the three middle school principals want to do with their fte they if if they decide they have an fte it could be they want they need an intervention position it could be that they need more music in order to get their their students scheduled so that they can go to um you know their

207intervention class and not have to make a choice between taking one class or another but all three of the buildings are different in how they schedule no i understand but you said scheduling so they you said we have scheduling challenges so that's why they're on hold so i'm trying to drill down and to understand what are those scheduling challenges that keeps these positions on hold so what what are they asking for that we don't that can't put the media in place so clearly they've asked for something and i want to know what have they asked for well so i'm going to use eastern as an example their schedule looks more like the high school than it does some of the other middle schools and our students who need an intervention class and i may not

208have this exactly i need my notes in front of me but we may have a student who really needs a reading intervention and there's actually and i can like i know i have parents in the audience that could correct me uh where they actually don't get to take social studies because they have a need i believe it's in reading they're not in their heads yes that's a problem and so we're looking within the schedule at what can we actually go in and be able to get the schedule to look a little bit different to meet the needs of the students and it is a series of you know difficult decisions and discussions when you get to this point in the year again the budget was set you know it's already set um and that's that's

209part of the discussion right now there's some challenges like that um at eastern specifically right now where the principal has requested can we freeze that fte so i can have time to go in and really because he's committed to the schedule and wants it to look a little bit different next year if he can get there when you look at the high school let's say we have a media assistant that opens up and we think that we can get by um especially at the beginning of the year when we were looking are already at huge deficits not only from special ed not knowing what's going on with covid we didn't know if we were going to get any federal grants we didn't know if we were going to get those federal grants to drop in

210this year or where they're going to drop you know after july 1 into next year's budget so some of those positions we will freeze because we know we may need that money um to be able to take care of some of the deficits we could have we've ended in a much better place as you've heard tonight so we'll we would certainly be looking at the ghs ones um we just haven't done that yet yeah well i just along with karen i i think you're keeping us posted as soon as we decide and having a better clarity on what they're on what the middle schools are needing those full-time positions for as the alternative because i it's still very unclear to me what they're asking for from a scheduling standpoint what do they want to fill

211versus use putting back into place the media assistance i i'd like to have specifics what do they want to use that full-time person for yeah just real fast um on capital i know we've done a really good job of working it down but since we've had a theme on western tonight i just want to make sure i'm seeing these numbers correctly we have sean 1.2 million or so still to work with before we'd have to go on for an interim of any sort if we were lucky enough to get western um agreed upon by the state is that right yes that sounds about right okay great thank you all right mr share um dr jones i'm gonna i think there's a process and information gap here and i'm just gonna assume it is um i

212understand everything you've said about the budget i've been doing budgets in greenwich a lot longer than anybody sitting at this table the process is we set budgets and our policy is we have major cost centers and we budget by program and dollars represents heads um they can be moved from one to the other but that's not a management discretion to the superintendent or the superintendent staff prayer policy any move of more than 10 000 has to come here so we allocated this money and we approve this budget if the administration wants to take a head count out of one program and move it to another program that has to come before the board for approval so the idea that we allocated this money for this program these positions were not filled so the money that

213we appropriated was not expended and we made that decision at that time by vote of the board based upon full transparency of what the program was supposed to be that money was supposed to be spent on that part of the reason we do that is when we look at a budget we have to look for equity we have to look for a variety of different things so as an example if at western i have 300 kids or 400 kids and i've got one media services person and then at eastern i've got 800 kids now the two principals aren't going to see that issue but that is an equity issue we now have a situation where we're not staffing appropriately so when we frozen like that we do that the point that's made is absolutely these

214things can be changed but it has to come to the board for approval it's not something so i don't i'm very interested to understand how many head count are in that i'm i want to i want to work off of facts so that's my first question to sean and for what wasn't expended i want to know if any of that money was expended on something else without coming here for a proper transfer so there's a process to do this but i think there's a confusion that this is somehow full discretion of the administration and under our policies and our procedures it's it's not it has to come back through the board to be approved i recognize that ms hirsch called this out a couple of meetings ago i don't want to overreact to it i

215want to hear the facts first but then we need to correct the situation because if the board approves something uh that is based upon the proposal from the administration i think there's a clear expectation that that's going to get executed once it's proposed unless somebody comes in and deliberately asks to do something different and um i didn't hear that in the dialogue and i just want to be sure that going forward uh there should be no confusion about that okay i think that's it for discussion and i guess sean and tony i guess you've got some takeaways um all right so the motion on the table is to accept the monthly financial and staffing report so bernstein is yes joe yes hirsch yes downey yes kelly yes kowalski uh i'm i'm abstaining okay olson yes

216and cher um yeah because it doesn't matter but i'm not in love with what's in there on the head count okay so 701 thank you very much uh the next item is the budget procedures uh so somebody wants to make a motion okay so your motion is to uh accept the brigid procedures as presented yes sure sorry a motion to approve the fiscal year 23 budget procedures all right is there a second for that miss downey thank you uh mr o'keefe you want to just give us the quick highlight yes so this was the second read of the full year 23 budget policy and procedures so it was first looked at by the board uh several weeks ago uh at that time two changes were requested on page two added number 18 utilization of s

217arp funding in the operating budget section and then on page three in item five uh starting with priorities we added uh ada compliance as well all right any discussion on the uh on the budget procedures and i guess mr as you said earlier the budget committee will meet throughout the summer with the administration as they start work on next year's budget absolutely last summer i got to do policy all summer and this year we could do budget all summer so this is good times fantastic all right with no other discussion we'll take a vote bernstein's yes joe yes hirsch yes county yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes and share yes all right thank you that passes eight zero and the last of our action items is the 2021-2022 agenda plan i'm going to take

218a stab at this because we have some some changes so i moved to uh adopt the 2021-2022 boe agenda plan as presented with the following changes uh the date for the to be determined meeting would be september 23rd uh we would add on i think it was august oh i'm sorry august 23rd yes sorry about that august 23rd uh for the september um actually i don't know that we have a date for this yet i'm gonna hold on that one uh and for the strategic we'll add strategic plan to september 23rd and that would be specifically to review survey results and that's that's the motion for now um is there a second for demotion i got confused on the august 23rd what is that august 23rd is the basically setting superintendent goals uh return to

219school uh and possibly julian curtis ed specs we had august 19th some board members uh said that date didn't work i sent an email to the board everybody came back that the 23rd worked except i didn't hear that yeah it's the first item on the agenda plan that's on the uh on board okay and then the other question is well we need a second for the motion first peter before we get to discussion well do we want to get it all right let's stop we'll try to do as much as we can in the first motion and then we can add to it all right so go ahead and we get a second from stoke go ahead this is this is the current this is the agenda plan for next year that we're looking at

220right so we're we're we're going to set this up my question was uh it appears under sr3 we need to have an lea approval is required we are the lea unfortunately that's not delegatable to the superintendent so the question becomes when do we have to do that so that that application is made on time yeah so i was actually going to uh take that up when we got to agenda planning for this year because that's still an extension of this year good point um and i think you have to work backwards from when you need to get it to the state query like is anything in the summer part of this agenda plan including the s or money or a special ed no i that would still be we'll just take that as this this

221current year even notwithstanding that it's after july one yeah after july one because for for purposes of this agenda plan it's just for planning for next year we still have visas they're open items currently right so we'll just take them as open i know it's miss hersh uh i noted this last time but i still don't see pta council's end of the year uh summary on next year's so i'd like to make a motion to amend uh the current um agenda the agenda plan for 21 22 um usually they tend to go uh at the last meeting and i'd like to be able to add pta councils um and greenwich alliance i didn't see them on here at the start for next year um their uh end of the year summaries to our last meeting

222all right so i'm going to second that amendment any discussion on that amendment so let's just take a quick roll call bernstein's esto yes hirsch yes downey yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes and share yes okay so uh we'll add that to the list so august 23rd adding the item to uh strategic plan to the september uh business meeting and then adding those um things one other item that i know we need to add but i'm not sure of the timing and we we have to sort that out uh we are negotiating as joe mentioned in a previous meeting the gosa contract this summer we will need to approve that probably in september i'm just not sure if if it's the uh the board retreat based on the timing we'll have to find out

223from tom mooney so michael if you could note that as a tbd for the agenda plan it will probably be september just based on previous approvals once we agree to it there's a statutory schedule we have to follow so just please note that that's probably september michael all right miss hirsch and i assume the moment that we get any information back uh regarding western middle school fields we will immediately add it to whatever uh the next agenda is is that correct yeah i mean if we need to have a special meeting for that if there's something we need to take up certainly i think we'd we'd all do that and we obviously can keep meeting together pretty quickly if we get it so we're ahead of rtm and bet discussions and approval that would be

224great yeah absolutely all right anything else we need to add ms kowalski i don't see on here and i saw it on a i could have sworn i saw it on a prior draft but the old the approval of the old greenwich ed specs so i think some of that's just dependent on the timing of when we take up jc and also the capital budget process i think that would probably be when we do that um i think that's a that's another one michael that should go on the uh to be determined to be scheduled whoa why yeah why don't we just take it up at the same time and get it done they're two very different questions at this point jc is a send back from the bet it was a previous budget request

225oh gee we have not approved the specs yet yeah but we've already had meetings where we take them both up i mean i don't know why we just don't take them up let's get it done for goodness sakes then somebody can go figure out the timing yeah i thought it was previously on for september was it i don't think it was september but i don't have the date in front of me i think it was later just go back and look at the old agenda plan but the real question is why don't we just get those done and then somebody else can figure out the timing of which project comes first well i think that's something we as a board on determine not somebody not somebody else peter that's a board that's what i'm saying

226i mean that would happen in the capital process now i understand that that's right peter may i just address that one more sure i need to understand why we're not putting it on the agenda i think we kind of want to get those things voted on what are we waiting for till we get those things voted on i'm just trying to figure out right now if it was in october we'll throw it back there but give me one second to pull it up from the previous agenda i just think the sooner we get it done i think it was in october because i think we we thought there were going to be other things in september um you know like strategy and you know enrollment and we thought there was going to be things that

227were going to need to be addressed in the early part of the year i'm just kind of looking through i think it was october but we can check but why don't i mean these are not controversial items we've already visited them why don't we just put them on and vote on them and move on i mean they know what they need to do on og and i don't know where they stand with that committee we know what has to happen at jc right so just go get it done and put it on the agenda and let's get it out of the way it was like i'm both then it was october 21. all right so why don't we add that back in is there a motion what's possible you want to make a motion to

228add that it's emotional amend yes i'd like to make a motion to amend the uh 2021-2022 agenda calendar to add the old greenwich ed specs in for the october 21 meeting as an action item okay and is there a second for that miss hirsch any discussion yeah i'd like to know why we're not putting jc in there too is already on there it's actually in august never mind thank you for asking all right hearing no further discussion uh the motion is to the motion is to amend to add og for october 21st as an action item bernstein ziesto yes hirsch yes county yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes and cher remind me when is og now uh where it was on the previous then october 21st i don't like it but i'll say yes

229okay so that's eight zero thank you all right so we've got our uh our amended agenda plan now remember this is always fluid our agendas change over time but we are trying to be a little more balanced in our meetings we are trying all right with that uh the motion on the table is to accept the agenda plan as amended uh changing the august state to august 23rd adding in september the strategic plan uh june adding to june 10th uh june 16th the ptac and greenwich alliance written reports uh and october 21st uh ed specs for old greenwich school was an action item and we'll take our vote bernstein's yes stow yes hirsch yes downey yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes and share yep all right thank you very much that passes eight zero

230all right so now we are at our agenda plan for this year which is going to be never ending until the next school year starts so before you get going i've got a couple items already listed um i want to remind everybody 623 is the special ed report out we may have another item the board should potentially hold because miss olsen's departure we may need an executive session to board before that to discuss the potential for filling that vacancy and potentially depending on how fast we move at some point we'll need to take that as an action item yes megan we're not going to let your seat get cold um so uh just please remember that that meeting is scheduled and uh i'm going to send an email out tomorrow about a potential executive session

231so that we can move quickly with this um because we're discussing feeling of vacancy and it's allowable under under foia and our own rules all right uh so next up on my list is uh sped action planning so following from the uh the report out that we're going to get on wednesday we will want to have i think at least one session and i'm looking to miss hersh or miss kowalski to give us some guidance on that uh as well as take some public comments so if you want to research i was going to say karen and i can certainly take a look and um we can reach out both to you to the other members of the um audit committee to see what dates might work best um and then we can present that

232to you i'd like to try to do it closer to um the presentation than later um once summer gets rolling people are away and with whatever recommendations come forward i'm assuming that there will hopefully be some items in there that can be addressed uh over the summer for implementation in the fall we don't want our students to have to wait uh just because we're on summer break um and we also will have a new pps director i believe starting july 1st and i'd like to have uh her seated um and her opinions as well so i'm you know countering a few dads yeah that's fine i think we we can coordinate but i yeah i i think it's difficult to schedule anything without actually seeing the report and coming up with things which we've decided

233in the past but so when we when we get to the end on wednesday let's hold some time for a discussion about the next steps perfect great uh and the other item is uh esther so dr jones if you can figure out when the when the actual report is due to the state and we can work backwards from there as to when the board should uh should meet to hear the input and mid august july okay we're meeting in july and to add perhaps to the esser meeting in all likelihood is we're gonna have to approve the design for the high school entryway um before we go probably in all likelihood before that august 23rd meeting so we can maybe bundle that with the esser funding approval all right and that's so that you can

234start the land use approvals correct exactly multi-month processes okay anything else for agenda planning so we've got a bunch of stuff to be scheduled and uh megan's leaving us yeah just noting that i don't know if there's a correlation between those two items i'm guessing i'm just guessing all right