May 20, 2021 Board of Education Special Meeting - Part 1 of 2

001thank you uh the first item on our agenda is the consent agenda is there a motion to accept the consent agenda miss downey is there a second misto all right so we're going to take a roll call vote uh bernstein is a yes sto yes hirsch yes downey yes kelly yes kowalski yes megan yes thank you hey that worked fantastic uh and mr share is not in the room and i don't see them online so that passes 7-0 thank you all right so we're going to move on to one of my favorite things the student and staff recognitions uh the first item up is the united states presidential scholar so miss nadel take it away thank you superintendent district leaders and members of the board of education we are pleased to have the opportunity this

002evening to honor greenwich high school senior and soon to be graduate of the class of mr colin speaker colin speaker is one of only 161 seniors across the country to earn the united states united states presidential scholars award quoting miguel cardona our u.s secretary of education the 2021 presidential scholars represent extraordinary achievement in our extraordinary times the program is intended to remind us all of the great potential in each new generation and to renew our commitment to helping them achieve their dreams quoting kelly dwyer collins school counselor colin speaker has a rare combination of great intellect great passion great determination and the ability to lead and effectively communicate with his peers he has been extensively involved in volunteer service in the community he's not afraid of trying new things or failing in the pursuit of

003a goal colin contributes 100 to every organization in which he participates he is a person who cares more about the success of the entity as a whole rather than his own individual success finally quoting colin himself from parkway school to western middle school to greenwich high the greenwich public school system has provided me with an exceptional education both in and out of the classroom colin is continuing his studies at the university of pennsylvania in the fall where he will no doubt be a powerful positive influence in the jerome fisher program in management and technology colin you have our very best wishes for continued success health and happiness [Applause] all right next up is the winter allstate student athletes so mr mayo mr levine good evening uh chairman ferguson superintendent jones members of the board of

004education it's my pleasure tonight to uh announce the 12 uh all-state athletes that we had uh this year in our winter season but before i announced their names i'd also like to congratulate colin and his family for this remarkable really remarkable achievement as being named presidents or scholar colin also a vital member of student governments this year and the co-captain of the tennis team so i don't know how he has time to do anything else but uh thanks collins for honor to all of us um our back to all state our athletic director um couldn't be with us tonight mr lindeen because he's at the lacrosse game it was senior night and he thought he he needed to be there uh and uh be with the team uh on senior night so uh and gus

005uh lindeen is an amazing athletic director and i wanted to introduce him tonight so he could introduce the athletes but uh like i said he is committed to uh our teams and their their games right now here i go uh allstate cheerleading uh avery banks carissa gennarelli and alexander corral all-state cheerleading all-state boys hockey team charlie zolin charlie zolin allstate boys hockey all-state boys swimming and diving uh ryan g aiden bucaria james pascal nicholas malchow whitaker grover and alex levucus and finally our all-state ski team sophia bastick and matthew cisco congratulations to our all-state uh honorees thank you mr bernstein that is our all-state musician good evening i hope you can hear me uh yeah okay great uh good evening everyone uh each year more than well several thousand vocalists and instrumentalists from every public

006and private high school in connecticut audition for the four all-state performing groups those are band chorus orchestra and jazz band this is a two-stage process with the first round of auditions in november in a second round in february due to due to the pandemic this year's auditions took place via video submissions that necessitated additional planning and preparation by the students nonetheless i am pleased to report that greenwich high school once again had more musicians selected for allstate than did any other high school in the state the students honored here this evening have spent many years working hard to become fine musicians and although it is primarily their passion and talent for music that has led them to this impressive achievement their efforts have been consistently supported by their parents and families by our exceptionally strong

007k-12 music faculty our school administrations and our board of education all of which place a high priority on arts education although the students aren't able to participate in an in-person all-state music festival this year the connecticut music educators association created a variety of virtual activities to educate and inspire these students to even higher levels of excellence i am pleased to present to you the 37 greenwich high school musicians who have been selected to represent our school in this year's all-state band chorus or orchestra we have nine members of our band program selected for allstate those students are alexandra bailey andrew bailey brady baby amani cabana c c j skyler mcdonald iris she and harrison wolf we have 22 students from the chorus selected for the all-state chorus those students are charles adorney lucy bay gregory

008bound michaela browning grace collier nathaniel ellis darian fouser michelle ferrone daryl furno jackson gales ronit gupta brook hadden neha iyer alexis colleen lara kusurus brin kamal gabriela mendoza esther shah isaiah zone utah takahashi jacob winston and ziggy yan and finally seven members of our orchestra were selected lucy bay melissa byram alyssa fang benjamin grunbaum eureka sakai anna weeksner and heather zitsman congratulations to one and all mr jones uh thank you to the board um after winning its 12th consecutive fairfield county title in early april the math cardinals took on the best teams in the state ghs held off amity and new canaan to win its 11th state title in the last 12 years led by uh senior sam florence perfect score senior captains irish she and sam floren did a remarkable job guiding the team

009through this difficult year by many thanks to them my thanks also to the board of ed for recognizing the team over the last 13 years i have confidence that tanner caracas will do a great job leading leading the team from here on out ladies and gentlemen the state championship math team sam florin ira she stephen blank stephanie chang jason zhong brandon u iric drews and alan shu thank you uh my son's probably watching at home very disappointed because he's coming to the high school next year and he won't be there so thank you very much for everything you've done for our math students and the amazing program we appreciate that all right we're going to move on to the next portion of our agenda which is the public hearing first we're going to go from

010our ghs to government devoting time to student voices at each meeting and i'm excited to participate in one of the first in-person meetings as we near the end of ap exams i have some updates to share about what is going on in the ghs community first of all it has been really exciting to have seniors and now also juniors make a full return to school we're all seeing peers that we haven't seen in person since last march and with this the sense of community is much stronger than it was before the freshman and sophomore classes are now also eagerly awaiting the days in june when they can also return additionally freshmen sophomores juniors and seniors alike are all looking forward to their respective fun days in which activities and food trucks will be set up

011around the school it has been a tough year and students have definitely been missing these special types of activities and class bonding that contribute to the community feel of ghs in other news the senior and junior classes have put together prom committees and the senior class is currently in the process of finalizing a graduation speaker student government also led a very successful initiative during teacher appreciation week where students could send messages of gratitude to their teachers we emailed well over 300 individual personalized gratitude grams to well-deserving teachers i will now wrap this up by stating that the spring is beginning to feel more and more normal and we can't wait until the fall when hopefully everyone will be back in person thank you all for supporting our school community and i will now turn the

012mic over to our student body president mark chen good evening chairman bernstein dr jones members of the border cabinet and meeting attendees my name is mark chan student body president at greninja school it is really so wonderful to be here in person with you all tonight i'd like to take a moment to recognize colin speaker for being named a presidential scholar he's an integral member of student government's executive committee as vp of student concerns and has been a phenom phenomenal year with him as part of our team and as for our student government goes we are wrapping up our year in less than two weeks time we'll have our transition meetings with the new executive committee and perhaps the new student body president and senior class president will make their debut at the next board

013of education meeting i'd also like to take this opportunity to express my support for the board of education as they navigate the challenges of the cardinal stadium project our community and ghs students especially are truly excited for the future of the stadium and i hope that we could find an expeditious resolution to the current tree removal process this is a project that has been long in the making and long overdue and we are all looking forward to its continued progress and eventual completion i'm so happy to end the year on such a high note as we begin to reach some sense of normalcy it has been incredibly special to have all the seniors back full time and now juniors and many of us have not seen each other in over a year the energy is

014completely different and my classes are full of wondrous conversation and life it is also my understanding that ghs hasn't had any new positive cases in a week now which is such great news i'm sure that there are many here who are also familiar familiar with or i've seen pictures of the rows of individual desks set up in the student center for lunch and i'm happy to say that there is now the return of the original lunch tables with plexiglas set up in the middle of each we've also moved breakfast back to the student center from the gym so rest assured that there have been many quality of life improvements for students and as i look to a normal prom graduation and senior internship experience in the coming month i remain incredibly grateful for all the

015work that everyone here has done for us to be able to even reach this point i recognize that even staying open all year is no small feat i look forward to speaking with you all again very soon thank you for your time tonight it is always a pleasure thank you very much hadley and mark aaron are you sure this is on are you sure are you sure this is on uh can those of you at home hear me megan if you could give me the high sign yep i hear you i hear them okay thank you all right next up is the gea comments so carol sutton evening board members dr jones hang on one second carol okay all right carol you should be good okay good evening board members dr jones cabinet and members

016of the greenwich public school community my name is and i'm honored to pretend that 900 members of granite state society congratulations to this evening student honorees may your performance in the classroom the arts and athletics continue to bring you not only accolades but joy in the years to come congratulations on the rtm budget vote and thank you to the board dr jones mr o'keefe and the rest of the team that work to make it happen with only five weeks left in the school year gea has its mind on the future it is exciting to see the plan for the secure entryway for ghs coming to fruition in the very near future it has been 22 years since columbine and nine years since sandy hook finally ghs is getting the secure entry that it needs and

017deserves we also appreciate that the district is is has created a clear procedure to deal with matters of ada non-compliance we appreciate that work is ongoing to address deficiencies in this area and implore the boe to use whatever means necessary to bring needed change to julian curtis og riverside western and also habermeier with about 10 million dollars in sr3 funds coming to greenwich public schools teachers are looking forward to meaningful participation in decisions about how the money is allocated all signs point to a need for more mental health support for students who have dealt with trauma during covid and a need for resources to support the unique needs of learners who have not thrived during pandemic education one sure thing is that if there are remote options for granite students in the fall teachers do

018not want the next normal to rely on live streaming while dual teaching a remote and in-person students simultaneously may be economical and a good plan on paper the consensus is that it is inadequate and unsustainable for everyone involved if the board would like to hear more gea will be glad to set up a listening session with our members finally this time of year is one of transitions not just the changing seasons but students changing grade levels graduating from pre-k fifth grade eighth grade and high school with the requisite celebrations the end of school year marks a transition for me too as i retire after 39 years as an educator eight of them as gea president during nearly 40 years in the field i remained optimistic about the greenwich public schools because our community has norms

019and processes that help us engage to solve problems together today these norms are being attacked by an individual or group that has littered school property and retail parking lots with specious accusations and solicitations of anonymous complaints against our schools this has created consternation and dismay at the end of the most difficult year we have ever had as a school community these actions are the antithesis of how we work together to solve problems and address differences of opinion they are not productive and they are a terrible example for our students thank you and we look forward to a productive meeting all right our next speaker represents pt council brian paul dunas good evening i am brian peldinis president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of all of their members pta council

020congratulates all of the honorees this evening the breadth of the areas covered by these honorees demonstrates the historic quality of our school district pta council would like to thank all of the recently elected incoming pta presidents committee chairs and board of director members for the coming 21 22 year or term for volunteering and all of the continuing and outgoing council members for their service pta council will host a virtual recognition ceremony on june 10th to thank all of our volunteers and partners pta council and our member ptas look forward to being involved this summer in the community and staff discussions about the education related covid relief funds being provided to the district we are available to provide any appropriate assistance one of pta council's goals this year has been to be consistent in our comments

021and vigorous in our follow-up we continue to recognize the difficult environment in which we operate however we ask the board of education to not lose sight of the various initiatives and information promised as a result of the discussions held at these meetings of which we have reminded you regularly first chromebook issues particularly at the high school level we understand chromebook purchased for incoming sixth and ninth graders this fall will have appropriate capacity for remote learning at the same cost as the older models and we hope that the legacy books are not a hindrance in a quote normal unquote world of learning for those with chromebooks issued prior to the 21 22 school year second we continue to emphasize that the desirability of placing additional updated or corrected information requested by the board of education on

022the district website in the locations easily accessible to all third we reiterate i'm getting a lot of feedback peter okay third we reiterate pta council's desire to participate in the needed follow-up on work as described in the alp report our academic excellence committee will speak later to amplify the approach that committee is taking to work together with the district and with teachers on curriculum on tonight's agenda we note the lack of documentation for six of the ten discussion or action items perhaps it would be helpful to label items which only have verbal updates so that the public can prepare appropriately to provide comments on the at the next public hearing we look forward to the update from the strategic planning committee and note that time is slipping away to accomplish a survey this school year

023or to make progress prior to the election of new boe members this fall as we get close to the end of the school year the pta council board of directors would like to express our appreciation to dr jones for her openness and responsiveness to questions and concerns raised by and through pta council during our monthly meetings emphasizing the plural with her finally we understand that bids were only open yesterday but we continue to ask all involved to expedite processes in order to get all north miami students back into their school as soon as possible thank you and i will see you next month in person i hope take care all right try now okay so each speaker is going to get three minutes to speak uh we would ask please be respectful uh nothing inappropriate

024uh if if we have to give you a warning once and that doesn't take then we will actually cut you off we'd rather not do that you may offer objective criticism of district operations and programs but not towards individual personnel we ask you we ask you to act with civility for our policy with due respect for the dignity and privacy of others affected by your comments you should be aware that if your statements violate the rights of others under the law of defamation or invasion of privacy that you could be held legally responsible if you're unsure what those ramifications are you should probably consult with somebody not us so again please be civil that's all we ask and with that we're going to start our public comments and you'll get a warning at 30 seconds

025so the first speaker is jackie homan jack jackie oh she's here oh okay even better better i've been asking all year for the board to take action on a variety of issues yet nothing ever happens as a result of my complaints i'm lucky if i get an auto-generated response a clear violation of the board's own code of ethics the first issue this year involved my mask exempt middle schooler who learned the social studies grading policy included mass usage and social distancing the policy felt discriminatory singling out literally the only child in the building with a medical condition that prevented him from safely wearing a mask a week later again in social studies he learned the news sources he used to complete his homework were considered fake news by his teacher who shared a chart that

026depicted most conservative sites as propaganda and it wasn't just his teacher who considered the sites to be fake news most were blocked by the technology department so my son couldn't access conservative news sites from his computer again it felt discriminatory as the year progressed my son would get bullied for exercising his right to be mask-free at school but it wasn't the children who were the bullies it was teachers who bullied him and without repercussion i might add despite the fact their actions directly caused a flare up of his medical condition i have complained about the teaching style and math where students don't face the teacher inside the room rather the teacher faces the student's backs while she conducts class over zoom carefully monitoring the students activities as if they're taking part in an orwellian experiment

027i raised an issue with the principal after an english teacher played a video from a series called feminist fridays that discussed racial inequity in hollywood how's that considered english it sounds like a social justice training camp when my child pointed out the creator of feminist fridays or when a child pointed out the creator of feminist friday seemed to be making the topic more divisive by talking about equity instead of talking about the things that bring people together the teacher said the child was wrong when i asked the superintendent pta and board to correct lies told by a local doctor on a pta call nothing happened i asked for the word unapproved to be used when talking about the experimental gene therapy products just like it says in the package inserts themselves yet i received no

028response when my son received racially charged sexually explicit and profanity-laced homework i complained again guess what i was told the content was thought provoking i thought if the content is so thought-provoking why not share it with my community so they can see what they think and you know what happened the people in my community thought it was so vulgar the police were called on me two times the officer said can't you just tell the super or the board then i explain the troubling pattern the hypocrisy of censuring a conservative board member while allowing profanity-laced materials to be freely given to children and worse they asked me to stop sharing the flyers i told them how frustrated i felt that the board doesn't care about the concerns of a large and growing group of people in

029our community that tony jones has a history of ignoring problem parents and it feels like the pattern is continuing in greenwich worst of all the board seems to be renegotiating ms jones contract in bad faith ignoring feedback from parents teachers and administrators whose voices should be considered given our schools have dropped to a seven under the current leadership it's time to wake up and respond to the community you were elected to represent thank you all right the next speaker is jane anderson if you could raise your hand if you're online okay we're gonna move on the next speaker is francis no bay can you hear me hang on one second francis all right francis yep ready yep good evening greenwich board of education this is francis winobe co-chair ptac greenwich remote school special committee representing

030the more than one thousand grade pre-k to grade 12 students still remote thank you to our gps teachers for their continued efforts to engage and connect with our students in all modalities especially the extremely challenging high flex modality this month our remote students are taking state sba exams remotely thank you to our gps teachers and administration for the virtual parent information session the multiple student practice sessions live tech help and as needed the option to take the tests in person the tests are going as well as can be expected the best part for me as a parent is hearing my third grader independently and proactively self-talk the questions out loud and hear my fifth grade teacher encourage her students to get ready for the test with self affirmations i am a math person i am

031great at tests i persevere when i get stuck if i need a break i reach out we got this before and after sba testing our grade k to five remote learners enjoyed virtual assemblies and curriculum-linked field trips thanks to the generosity of greenwich alliance for education and for grade five a special thank you to the international school at dundee who gave that program to our remote learners these virtual programs have been seamlessly coordinated by remote school volunteers emily brown and nila ahmad and gps staff anthony stembian and jacqueline carlin thank you so much our remote learners are also grateful for continued efforts by the gps school psychology team to offer virtual social clubs and parent chats to keep our mental health strong as we look ahead to just five weeks of school i'm truly amazed

032that we have made it this far with smiles and successes our remote school volunteers now turn our attention to re-entry and in-person reconnection with outdoor play dates and in-person moving up events special thanks to remote school volunteers eve chen and jana mcqueen for year-end help thank you also to brian paldunas mimi duff and the ptac executive board and our 15 neighborhood school pta presidents for supporting our remote learners this incredible year we will finish the year strong thank you so much uh we're gonna move on to our next speaker alyssia borrelia a second hello everyone uh firstly i just want to say thank you i know this isn't an easy job i was in education myself and i know that these are unpaid positions and and it's not that i'm not appreciative number two i

033want to say that i'm not anti-vaxx that being said it is my belief that due to poor leadership in this area of our country that our children have been needlessly forced to carry on the burden of covid they have absolutely been oppressed by authority as they have already lost a year and a half of their lives in terms of learning physical activity and socialization i am disappointed that our district leaders have not done a better job advocating for our students in terms of making sure that they were returned to cl in class learning more quickly do not fight for mask removals for them and have not taken a position to protect them from the possibility of mandatory vaccinations the truth is that the existing covert vaccines are experimental there is no way of knowing what

034the short and long-term effects will be the responsibility and accountability of public health does not fall on experimenting with the healthy developing bodies of children seventy-eight percent of covet hospital hospitalizations are the result of patients that have have compromised their own health by being overweight or having self-imposed respiratory issues the solution is not to inject our children for the health of others especially a population for a great part that doesn't take their own health seriously enough to avoid this statistic honestly when would that kind of logic and when would the logic of experimenting on healthy children and then will we start drawing blood from school-aged children to to better the chances of the greater good maybe harvest their skin or organs to save every life does it sound dramatic it's the same concept i'm sure

035we can even find scientists that would insist that doing so would be perfectly safe experimenting on our children for public health is not acceptable and as district leaders you should be defending our students not taking part in possible vaccination mandates it has been a year and a half our children lives and bodies do not belong to the state not to the cdc not to who not to nhi our children's bodies do not belong to herd immunity hopes or the greater good or what is best for the public health of a public that largely does not take their own health seriously enough to avoid such elements our children's lives and bodies are not they're not available to anyone else to offer up and sacrifice on the altar of covet or anything else our students are individuals

036and citizens and are not obligated to take on risk to provide for provide for or protect the health of anyone else the possibilities of embracing such would be harrowing countless families around the country and in this district have voluntarily cooperated and complied with restrictions and sacrifices that they did not believe in out of kindness that should not be confused with a forfeiture of rights i believe that the decision to vaccinate children with covet vaccine belongs to parents alone and i hope that the school district stands by us i implore you to use your positions to return a sense of freedom and dignity to our children and the families of greenwich thank you thank you the next speaker is kara philbin kara thoben i apologize in advance when do i start okay the goal of greenwich

037public schools and the boe needs to be transparency and curriculum and that means all learning materials for each grade across all schools that is accessible to parents three months in advance the renewal of the superintendent contract can't be approved without teacher student parent and community insight and input a father in the gps system for 15 years who i hold in the highest regard for consistently and reasonably advocating for a stronger education for all told me many years ago that every year the children learn less and less in my ten years i can attest to this indeed being the case sadly this father's voice and those of other parents have constantly fallen on deaf ears to no avail voice is silenced gps is always trying to pioneer the next big trend green schools or code for

038technology instead of paper personalized learning learning by technology instead of a teacher and now sel code for social workers in school gps lost sight that education is meant to provide all students a neutral safe place to build a foundation through skills that empower them to become their own individual critical thinker not indoctrinated through a critical lens gps used to be the gold standard but now it's hunger games science standards borrowed from stanford replay singapore math with free eureka engaged math borrowed from new york state who after investing millions ended the program after one year for curriculum and it was time because there was no curriculum and it was time intensive to build one a non-existent early literacy program and a special education system built on two key words delay and deny forget the miseducation of

039the american boy this is the miseducation of the greenwich public schools administrators asked to read problematic views that discourage solution building and white fragility students asked to unpack their white privilege second graders learning that a naked man with an erect penis may ask you to touch it or put it in your mouth seventh learning about sorry ass clown crotch ticks and sequin strippers eighth about strapping down male parts fantasizing about carrying a female upstairs and tying her to a bed a necklace made out of tongues extensive graphic descriptions of death ninth neck naked breasts young old conservative recently raped big small or mutilated genitals or enhanced genitals and especially rotting naked dead bodies and tenth women being gagged by a penis her mascara mixed with tears girls that need to be raped again and the

040first time i ever saw well i'll let them learn that on their own while district is ignoring pornographic curriculum to censor board members and facilitating unapproved by the fda emergency used authorized jobs and coveted tests for money the gps education is broken not because of our wonderful teachers so stop blaming them this is a problem with programming transparency accountability and leadership at the highest levels district union b o e p tech pta our children deserve strong leaders of a healthy unpartisan mindset who will choose the right choice even if it's the harder choice leaders who will choose creative engaging engaging rigorous foundation and skill based learning free thought over critical lens replace articles and videos with text bots and thoughtfully selected and pre-approved learning materials and stop wasting money on indoctrination and technology like securely

041which asks teachers to stop you can submit the remainder of your comments to the board via email thank you very much [Applause] all right the next speaker is cheryl resnick cheryl if you're online if you could raise your hand where you're in person all right great come on down my husband and i have been residents of greenwich for nearly 22 years our three children have all gone through the greenwich public school system with our two oldest graduating from greenwich high school our youngest will be entering 10th grade next year due to the uncertainty of the school's reopening this past fall of 2020 my husband and i enrolled our youngest daughter in a local private school where she attended her 9th grade year we moved her out of gps because of our concern about schools reopening

042for in-person learning in addition and just as important we were concerned to hear statements from the connecticut teachers union where they only mention the safety of the teachers and rarely if ever mention the word student and their concerns for going back to school granted i know that teachers union represents teachers and not students however teachers wouldn't have their jobs without having students in their classroom it appeared as though the connecticut teachers union was becoming even more politicized as many teachers unions around the country were as well however for the upcoming 2021-22 school year our daughter strongly wants to leave her private school and go to greenwich high school where many of her friends are and where she feels she can speak more freely and have a healthy debate on various topics among her teachers and

043peers my husband and i really hope that she will experience the same lively open school environment that her two siblings experience at ghs but we do have concerns about the curriculum issues the push to vaccinate children for a vaccine that has not been fda approved the loss of being able to claim religious exemption for non-grand grandfathered exempted students mass mandates etc for the sake of our children and for our community we need to show them our state and even our nation that we can work together as one to be transparent about our children's curriculum and listen to one another in all areas including our children's health i feel the need to remind everyone about a challenging time in our gps history in 2013 i was pta co-president of an elementary school in town one that

044had significant free and reduced lunch population during that time the town was faced with a categorization by the connecticut department of education that some greenwich schools were quote racially imbalanced my children's elementary school being one of them the gps board of ed and the superintendent together with the school's ptas fought this categorization of our school district and worked together very well it was wonderful to see the community come together on this issue the gps did not see students based on their skin color as the connecticut department of ed did in hartford rather parents pointed out that the town's diversity existed and how many people were from countries around the world which actually made our town racially balanced compared to many districts in the state in conclusion i hope that the same level of cooperation will

045occur among the district the boe the ptas and the greenwich community during this polarized environment that we are currently facing let's be an example to our children of what healthy debating and working together looks like thank you [Applause] thank you very much all right the next speaker is janet stone mcguigan okay janet great can you hear me yep i'm janet stone mcguigan um but i'm actually going to speak on behalf of janet mcmahon who can't attend tonight but it goes without saying that i agree with um what i'm about to say dear members of the board of education i am unable to attend thursday's meeting but would like to express my family's full and emphatic support of dr jones's well-deserved salary increase and the maximum extension of her contract which i understand is three years

046in the industry i urge all members of the board of education to do so as well as a gps parent for the past seven years i have personally seen two superintendents and two interim superintendents come and go it is no secret that greenwich has a revolving door of superintendents and in fact dr jones is our 12th superintendent in 20 years since 1990 there have been nine superintendents and eight interims for an average tenure of 1.8 years since 2009 there have been four superintendents and three interims for an average tenure of 1.7 years i think we can all agree that this high superintendent turnover has set our district and town back significantly over the last few decades we are now presented with the opportunity for stability continuity and success under dr jones and we must seize

047it during dr jones's 22-month tenure we have also been the beneficiaries of her numerous and tremendous accomplishments the most important of which was her measured reasonable and calculated response to the global pandemic you'll recall that dr jones began her tenure a mere eight months before coronavirus upended the world not an easy feat for anyone but dr jones took everything in stride and rose to the occasion when school shuttered on march 11th dr jones mobilized around a thousand teachers and staff and around 9 000 students to pivot to the then unheard of distance learning literally overnight and over the summer no one worked harder than dr jones to ensure that our students returned back to school in person safely to accommodate remote learners dr jones architected and executed a robust remote school so that no children

048was left behind greenwich was a leader in the state and nation in this regard and we will continue to be pioneers in educational challenges with dr jones at our home in short we are infinitely lucky to have dr jones leading greenwich public schools and voting to approve her salary increase and extend her contract three years would be a genuine symbol of support and a vote of confidence in her work please vote yes on this item on another note please also vote yes to the north miami interim appropriation request it has been well over three months since the ceiling collapsed and provide an hour-long or over bus rides to get to other area schools and or parents are driving 40 minutes each way to get to alternate school sites with no foreseeable end in sight our

049priority should be to get them back to their home school as expeditiously as possible thank you the next speaker is stephanie cowie i think you're also online hi good evening sharon bernstein hello hold on one second oh no problem all right steph i'm ready for you okay great thanks good evening chairman bernstein superintendent dr jones and board of ed members i'm steph cowie and terry lamontia and i as you know are the co-presidents at greenwich high school we're so thankful to see our seniors and juniors back in school full-time and for our sophomores and freshmen later this month we look forward to seeing all of our seniors and their families as we the pta greenwich high school teachers administration and board of ed celebrate their well-deserved graduation we are most thankful to all of you

050in that room principal ralph mayo our gr greenwich high school teachers and staff for keeping our kids safe and in school congratulations to senior colin speaker who is awarded the united states presidential scholar it is a truly remarkable and an extraordinary achievement we also would like to congratulate our winter all-state student-athletes our all-state musicians and math team state championship congratulations to all of you you are truly an outstanding group of greenwich high school students the greenwich high school vestibule committee interviewed architectural firms this week and through this work as a committee we believe the end product will be a wonderful balance between security and design additionally we would like to share our disappointment about the most recent delay to cardinal stadium due to the tree wardens ruling on monday this has been a blow to

051all of our student athletes our parents and community we want you to know we support all of the board of ed efforts as you navigate through this delay completion of the stadium means more to anyone in this in this community one moment additionally sorry we would be remiss if we didn't mention one last congratulations and that is to dr tony jones and her team for an outstanding year during an unprecedented times while nothing is perfect she and her team executed the impossible our elementary and middle school children have been in school full time since september with remote school available to all greenwich high school executed a hybrid schedule two cohorts greenwich and cardinals to alternate in-person and remote learning supporting close to 2 800 students in comparison to our peer schools in connecticut the majority

052of those districts were fully remote there was no playbook at the start of this pandemic last spring and no one would have thought we would just be coming out of this pandemic today dr jones is steadfast in her decisions communications for them from the district were consistent and easily accessible and i might note this has been the first time in quite some time dr jones is executed under tremendous pressure with grace we are in support of dr tony jones's contract renewal dr jones thank you for your leadership we thank you all for your continued efforts and support of our children faculty and administrators and look forward to our students being back in school in the fall thank you [Applause] very much the next speaker is lila horn ayla if you're online if you could raise

053your hand she won't be speaking we just covered it thank you okay thank you very much alright so we're going to move on to our next speaker wendy walsh the federal government is expected to pressure schools to adopt critical race theory and anti-racism practices into our schools is greenwich going along with this these policies are imposing toxic new curricula and forcing our children into divisive identity groups based on race ethnicity religion and gender this new educational mission derived from marxism divides our children into oppressor and oppressed groups to one group it teaches guilt and shame and to the other grievance and anger but to all children it spreads unhappiness radicalism and failure critical race theory and anti-racism teaching practices are racist hateful abusive and divisive at their core there is no place for this in

054our schools let's not so easily abandon the wisdom of dr martin luther king jr that one should be judged not by the color of their skin but rather the content of their character one goal of the gps and the boe needs to be transparency in the curriculum not just in standards and benchmarks parents need access to actual lessons learning materials and resources such as videos speeches and print across all schools and grade levels we should be able to see these these materials up to three months in advance why because we have serious concerns based on what we've heard from tonight with regard to the new three-year contract for our superintendent the boeing the boe needs teacher parent and student feedback before renewing her three-year contract where is the survey from the community this board should

055not be determining the superintendent as three boe members are not seeking re-election if you are going to disregard the above then at the very least sign a six month to a one year renewal which will give the superintendent at least a year to plan accordingly thank you very much thank you and next speaker is david lancaster thank you mr chairman members of the board my name is david lancaster and i'm a native of greenwich and i've lived in this great town my entire life as my as did my parents and grandparents before me i also attended greenwich public schools during most of my youth i've never spoken in a public forum about educational issues but felt compelled to do so about critical race theory which is being considered as part of the educational curriculum here

056in greenwich critical race theory is an ideology predicated on the idea that american society was founded on racism not liberty it is nothing more than repackaged market marxist orthodoxy classical marxism describes society as an economic conflict between two classes workers the proletariat and capitalists the oppressed and the oppressors with crt people are now classified according to the color of their skin rather than their economic status white privilege is the new evil like capitalism was once was and if you disagree with this you're suffering from white denial again shutting down debate yet the ultimate goals are the same the elimination of private property free speech and the overthrow of a free society society starting with the brainwashing of the young make no mistake the intellectuals who propose this latest marxist brew have no use for this

057country and it's western judeo-christian values the only thing that has changed is their vocabulary using words like equity social justice and diversity the sad irony of this discussion that we're having is that we've we had we been taught more properly which means with historical accuracy about the evils of marxism and the great historical uniqueness of the american idea as well as the benefits this nation has confirmed on mankind we know might not even be discussing the possibility of this latest marxist mutation being brought into our schools given the wreckage this poisonous idea has inflicted upon humanity the idea that american was born out of racism is not only a historical but completely antithetical to the country's founding principles expressed in the declaration of independence and the bill of rights and the persistent striving of men

058like dr king to create a colorblind society based on the enlightenment principles of liberty and the respect for the dignity of every person against the power of the state ladies and gentlemen members of the board there will not there will not be enough legal reserves on the books of the town of greenwich to defend against the lawsuits that will result if this twisted and racist curriculum is implemented lawsuits are being filed across the country against schools that impose this theory on students on the grounds of the first amendment which protects citizens from compelled speech the 14th amendment which provides equal protection of the law and the civil rights act of 1964 which prohibits public institutions from discriminating based on race 30 seconds let us teach our children the whole truth about america let us talk

059about the injustices amid the real progress that has been made and the blood has been shed to secure the blessing liberty blessings of liberty for all the stories of the of the noble sacrifices of men and women of all colors and creating this great land can lift the hearts and minds of our children rather than the dark nihilistic ideology whose goal is not justice but division and ultimately destruction lastly i recommend that this town not renew the contract of the current superintendent of schools for another term however short or long thank you for your [Applause] time all right let's move on please got a long meeting ahead of us uh greg piccanino hi i'm greg piccinino i have prepared comments but uh two things i would like to say is i was educated in the

060united states i know how great this country is i know i was taught that marxism was bad i thought may 1st was comey day it wasn't international labor day i also was educated to look at truth and real information so the people who think the state cannot mandate vaccines should go to the united states supreme court website and look up jacobson versus massachusetts because it very much is in the domain of public health and the right of government to mandate vaccines now are they respectful i didn't boo anybody so i'm greg piccinino i lived in greenwich since 2006. we decided to move to the suburbs we looked at rye and greenwich and we chose greenwich for the balance of good schools reasonable taxes in a more diverse community we never regretted that choice however we've

061been perplexed at the revolving door of superintendents and here we are tonight once again attacking our latest superintendent dr jones full disclosure when the opening arose i lobbied the board of education for mr mayo the board chose to hire dr jones and i can't find any public information to question her performance she joined in january 2019 and like every super she's been questioned and micromanaged by the boe in the community endlessly as far as i can see there's no valid assessment that's been made public to say that she's not doing a good job in fact i would suggest the public information i've seen supports the idea that she is doing a good job i'll talk about her coveted response that's not all she's done she worked with special education families conducted an independent audit of

062the program is making changes she cut three million dollars overnight from the budget as the bt requested without impacting education quality and curriculum honestly does anybody think any superintendent who's been on this job for a year and a half can get a handle on curriculum when they're busy dealing with our town's processes when coveted closed this down overnight she moved the system from in school to remote in less than a week and while i was not in love with the system i have to say we did get it right eventually she also got the school system ready for this year and greenwich was one of the few districts that had k-8 in school option and in the first day of september we're the envy of my friends in darien new canaan etc recently there's been

063an uproar about some inappropriate materials shown in class and while not defending the lured video uh i'm going to go right to the chase at what point do we acknowledge that the problem may not be the person in the super the super seat but our ineffectual ineffectual and dysfunctional system of student government and oversight the supers have come and gone and the constant element has been us the political parties the voters let's look in the mirror and see who's at fault and unless there's a real reason that is unknown to the community to attack dr jones i would say we're playing petty politics thank you very much [Applause] all right our next speaker is ethan cooper ethan you're online if you give us one second to get you set up hey ethan you there bud

064uh hello all right we got you whenever you're ready all right good evening chairman bernstein dr jones and members of the board of education my name is ethan cooper and i'm in eighth grade at central middle school over the last few months i've been researching mental health as part of my capstone project this is a serious issue worldwide studies show that two out of three teenagers have suffered depression or anxiety during the pandemic the mental health crisis that has been raging through the teen population for the past 14 months is a pandemic of its own closures mass and social distancing have disrupted critical developmental years in the teen's life as part of my capstone i surveyed my peers about their mental health during the pandemic i would like to share some of the results with

065you when asked what emotions these students had experienced the most over the past year 64 reported sadness as the dominant emotion 47 reported a decline in their personal mental health over the past year while only eight percent reported the opposite yet only 18 percent said that they would be comfortable asking for mental health help the board of education and the district have provided my middle school with extensive mental health resources including social emotional learning but my survey suggests that many students don't feel comfortable utilizing these resources one of the main factors that is stopping teens from getting the help they need is the stigma especially among teens that is associated with mental health mental health is not much different than physical health yet in a teenage mind breaking an arm and getting a cast is

066a sign of bravery in contrast expressing the pain you feel inside is a form of weakness until the stigma is broken and until more than 18 of students are willing willing to utilize the resources that are provided to them by the district we will not be able to meaningfully address teen mental health issues in our community we need to find ways to help students better understand their mental and emotional health is not something to be ashamed of then students will be more likely to take advantage of the resources made available through our schools as a result schools as efforts to help students with their mental health will be far more likely to have an impact we need to change the norm and open the way for teenagers to get the help they need comfortably and

067shamelessly this can only be done together thank you very much you can always importantly hear from students and this is a very important topic for us we appreciate your comments all right next up is kerry huxta hi can you hear me ready for you carrie okay good evening board of ed members and dr jones i'd like to express my deep concern over the recent unfortunate events surrounding our curriculum to say that we rely on teacher judgment is not enough there are an abundance of problematic examples and to say they are isolated is not correct i was also infuriated when i came across a copy of the white privilege survey in the greenwich times why was the title of the document changed from macintosh survey to icann when the board of ed asked dr jones for

068a copy of the assignment why was it altered from the original copy given to students why was this survey only given in one class at one school i have asked very simple straightforward questions and my emails and phone calls have gone unanswered what does it say to parents when the administration does not respond it creates distrust these days one cannot turn on the news without hearing about yet another school district fighting over the curriculum i love my community and i do not want to see greenwich on the news because we were unable to work together to provide a solid meaningful healthy education we should be proactive and discuss these controversial topics as a community and let the families of greenwich decide what is best for our children we need to find a balance that teaches

069important topics without politicizing it and without making students feel bad about themselves if the district would simply provide transparency much of this can be prevented it should not take parents like myself several weeks to obtain a copy of their child's curriculum also the lessons being taught across our classrooms should be consistent with one another from classroom to classroom and from school to school we need to prepare our children for a global economy how are students going to compete with others who attend private schools down the road who are learning the map of the united states curse of writing and mastery of long division our students do not have a strong understanding of grammar and spelling it depends on technology to correct it the failure to educate our children on these important topics will only further

070divide our students abilities the world has passed us by for years on math and we are now letting it happen with english and communication we are raising an illiterate generation who cannot communicate effectively perhaps if more time was spent in english on literature grammar spelling writing reading and less time on privileged surveys ted talks on oppression and youtube videos on feminist fridays our children would be in a better place academically and emotionally i respectfully ask that you work together as a team put your political differences aside and put together a comprehensive curriculum that is consistent transparent unbiased and prepares our students to compete intellectually with the world thank you good evening chairman bernstein board members dr jones i'm here to congratulate dr jones in advance of the vote to extend her contract over a span

071of 46 years i've been associated with the greenwich public schools as teacher administrator member of the board of education for eight years and chair for two and now as member of the rtm education committee during this time i have worked with over 20 superintendents dating back to before dr fleishman so i know the qualities required of an outstanding superintendent dr jones exhibits those essential leadership qualities including the ability to communicate effectively and the willingness to listen and adapt in addition she is resilient and remains positive even when faced with refusal of the bet to fund various capital projects and with bet budget guidelines that among other things don't permit the hiring of essential custodians and mental health personnel among her many accomplishments dr jones initiated a long overdue sped report demonstrated support for the owl

072program addressed the need for social workers in our elementary schools and revitalize the summer school program she also closed out several lingering capital projects created greater transparency in the budget process and won the confidence of the bet with prompt and comprehensive reporting but above all dr jones kept our schools open and our students safe during covet this permitted students to continue their education and maintain their social interactions which is critical to their social emotional health this was an enormous achievement requiring working 24 7 to keep logistics and communication protocols appropriate for the constantly changing covert environment clearly dr jones has an incredible work ethic not only does she put in a very full day she attends over excuse me over 160 meetings in the evening continuity and leadership benefits all our students for we know

073no superintendent can initiate sustain initiate sustainable change in one term systemic change requires time to evaluate what is in place to build a strong academic team and develop rigorous academic programs i applaud the board in advance for voting to extend dr jones's contract the vote should be unanimous to demonstrate support for her excellent work and to encourage dr jones to continue on in the greenwich public schools the community and all the town governing bodies should join the board and supporting the work of dr jones the alternative is to revert to a revolving door of superintendents thank you very much the next speaker is aaron hall aaron if you're online if you could raise your hand all right so we're going to move on then our next speaker is anna labord anna give us a second

074she's up can you hear me ready to go can you hear me yes good evening my name is anna labord and i along with jessica and wright polinish am speaking again tonight on behalf of ptac's academic excellence committee in regards to curriculum in our schools given the public comments at the previous boe meeting and in light of recent efforts by some in our community we wanted to reiterate and further express our support for gps's teachers as a p-tech committee we continue to strive for consistency transparency and excellence in our school system again we would like to express our gratitude for our teachers and their expertise they are the experts our hope for a transparent process and curriculum from grades key through 12. our need for consistency in that curriculum within grades and across school buildings

075our belief that greenwich has and can continue to offer an excellent academic experience for all students given that we work together respectfully we believe that with consistent and transparent leadership our teachers can receive the support materials and resources they need to continue to help our students excel while we do not want administrators nor the boe to micromanage our classrooms we have come to understand that gps teachers have been looking for and are deserving of consistent leadership and support within gps and within the broader community in particular gps needs to offer a comprehensive suite of curriculum materials resources and accompanying professional development particularly at the k-5 level this must be a priority in both initiative and budget if we are to allow our outstanding teachers to reach their full potential and educate our students to the

076best of their ability as a ptac committee it is our understanding and hope that mr d'amico and superintendent jones also endeavor to offer a consistent transparent and excellent academic education complete with curriculum and resources provided to gps teachers and communicated to and transparent for gps families the recent incidents have brought our curriculum to the forefront of the conversation in greenwich it is up to us as a community of educators and parents to capitalize on this moment by working together with mutual respect and direct communication in order to further the goals of consistency transparency and excellence in gps our p-tech committee will continue our dialogue and work with parents district leadership and the gea to further these goals and we hope that the board of education along with the bet and rtm will join us in

077working collaboratively to make our curriculum a priority particularly in its financial planning and support of consistent leadership in gps thank you very much [Applause] thank you the next speaker is making goleta thank you thank you boe members thank you for listening to the concerned parents of the gps community sitting before you this evening i have raised four children in the gps community since 2001. greenwich has long been known as a diverse community with excellent schools and a driven dedicated supportive administrative and teaching staff and i have to say sadly we are a far cry from where we used to be we have always been sought out by families all over the country and internationally as a great place to raise a family with high academic standards strong parental involvement and support of students of all

078learning levels i am speaking today regarding my deep concern about the dramatic shift our district has taken over the past two years i am very entrenched in the community and i speak on behalf of many many parents in the district here are our shared concerns the district has placed a wedge in between the students and parents by communicating directly with the students this is not acceptable and it must stop there have been there has been a major shift in the curriculum over the past two years by introducing explicit inappropriate and divisive narratives we do not raise our children to hate question denounce or apologize for their race gender ethnicity social status etc our curriculum has not has been shaped around these harmful narratives including anti-american critical race theory revisionist history based on 1619 project which

079pushes divisiveness in very sneaky and misleading ways we the informed parents of greenwich want this to stop immediately curriculum should be transparent to the parents in the community as it once was all new curriculum programs should be made known to the gps community and surveys and communication should once again be shared with the parents in advance and voted upon i am deeply concerned regarding the stance this district has taken with the experimental vaccines and greenwich schools being used as vaccination clinics i am not an anti-vaxxer all of my children are fully vaccinated all i am for full transparency and for freedom and privacy to choose what is best for individuals i do not support our schools as being used as vaccination clinics this is placing extreme and undue pressure on our children our district has

080consistently positioned all of the experimental vaccines still under eua as approved which is completely misleading and has been communicated to the gps community the gps has been extremely irresponsible and misleading in the weekly communications the emails are coercive by suggesting that a vaccinated community will help us get back to normal once again this is irresponsible move by the administration and the board with all the horrific incidents and including death in adults and teens who have gotten vaccinated has anyone even considered the liability and implications if something potentially harmful happened to a student on school property thank you thank you we're trying to get everybody in if we can't get everybody in we'll have to extend their comments to the end of the meeting so please be respectful [Applause] all right next up jessica maloney all

081right jessica gave us how to get yourself ready to go jess jesse can you hear me yes okay good evening i am addressing you today with concerns about the use of the greenwich middle schools and high schools and high school as locations for the family centers of greenwich to vaccinate students as young as 12. the fda lists many medical complications as possible side effects of these vaccines such as meningitis transverse myelitis encephalitis stroke seizures narcolepsy myocarditis and pericarditis to name a few in fact the u.s government has vaccinated that first events reporting system to which such reactions can be reported and as of last friday about 193 000 total adverse events have been reported including 4057 deaths and 17 190 serious injuries the emergency use authorization of the pfizer vaccine for children's age 12 to

08215 was based on about six months of safety data and a severely underpowered study with less than 25 2500 participants emergency youth authorization allows the fda to authorize the use of unapproved medical products to treat or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases and requires that the known and potential benefits of the intervention are balanced against the known or potential harms the pfizer vaccine clinical trials in both adults and children did not prove that this intervention prevents people from contracting covid or transmitting kova to other people we also know that children are at minimal risk from coven 19. according to our government's own statistics people aged 0 to 14 years have a 99.9998 survival rate and people 15 to 44 years of age have a 99.993 survival rate since children are at little risk from covid since

083the list of possible side effects is along since the shots have not been proven to prevent the contraction or transmission of covid and since there is very little short-term and no long-term safety data in children the emergency use authorization of this product for children is not warranted and should not be promoted by our town's department of health or our school district there is absolutely no emergency when it comes to children if parents would like to vaccinate their children against coven 19 they can make an appointment with their pediatrician or one of the pharmacies in town children see their schools as a trustworthy safe place our schools should not be promoting experimental medical products with very limited short-term safety testing and absolutely no long-term safety data a school clinic sends a message to children that these

084are extremely safe products that should be used to protect our school community this should be a private medical decision for each family with no involvement from the public schools please reconsider using the middle schools as vaccination clinics in the upcoming weeks thank [Applause] the you speaker is marla beer [Applause] hi i'm here one second okay okay all set okay i come to you tonight as the parent to five gps students the majority of our children have had an outstanding experience from elementary through ghs however tonight i bring forth serious concerns regarding our daughter who has a severe learning disability throughout her time for greenwich middle school specifically in grades seven and eight we've repeatedly voiced our growing concerns about our daughter's lack of progress these concerns were reinforced by our daughter's history of low testing

085scores on each state mandated assessment since elementary school her inability to complete homework necessity to take tests and quizzes over projected periods of time and difficulties completing projects when our daughter entered middle school she was evaluated by the gps team and was found to be at a fourth grade working level she was placed into a non-collaborative classroom with many other children who in addition had behavioral challenges this placement was not in the lre the least restrictive environment as required under the idea today as she prepares to leave her middle school she is working at a grade four month five level according to her iep dated march 8 2021 essentially graduating having made only five months of progress over a three year period in fairness he completed grade six on grade level but due to inefficient

086special ed support has in fact regressed significantly in addition justice past year our daughter special ed instructional hours were lowered by two-thirds from 13.12 to 3.75 hours this was done by the principal despite our daughter's continued low scores and ongoing learning challenges it is abundantly clear that our daughter is not ready to move on to ghs as she is currently 4.5 years scholastically behind her peers despite her receiving all a's and a handful of bees during her time at middle school her state testing points to a vastly different set of circumstances we believe that the gps staff who are trained professionals in good conscience recognize this as well despite our daughter's very clear needs the gps ppt team has stated that our daughter is ready to matriculate to greenwich high with minimal support and does

087not require being in a specialized school trained in her specific deficiencies as parents it's devastating to think that gps will have denied our daughter the opportunity for higher level college education and success as a productive adult her daughter's middle school has also refrained from offering her additional services such as reading comprehension and one-to-one support instead choosing to allow her to essentially regress to a fourth grade working level now attempting to pass around to greenwich high to effectively make for their problem we are pleading with you to please create transparency and partner with families to find out placements when gps cannot service a student i promise you this forthright approach will alleviate the countless issues surrounding our special education program respectfully yours members know we've got five more speakers i think we ought to take them

088all before we close this out uh and the next speaker is allison buck allison if you're online could you raise your hand so we're going to move on to our next speaker wendy day michael do we have a windy day wendy if you're with us if you could raise your hand i do not see her online okay not seeing wendy so we'll move on the next speaker is ashley newey good evening i'm here tonight to speak on behalf of every child in the greenwich public school system what is being presented and taught to our children in our schools is appalling and disgusting at greenwich high school 10th graders were were assigned to read a pamphlet entitled the miseducation of the american boy it is essentially a primer on what is wrong with boys the language

089and graphic nature of topics is absolutely not suitable to be taught in school here are some examples my apologies ahead of time it's hysterical to surprise a buddy with a meme where a woman is being gagged by by a penis her mascara mixed with her tears he may or may not send a funny text to friends about girls that need to be raped we definitely say a lot and we call each other and the first time i ever saw a vagina stick your finger up there and make the come here motion any questions from the board it's very uncomfortable isn't it how do you think the children and the teachers felt teaching this and reading it perhaps you should start questioning the community feedback on hiring decisions and stop blaming our beloved teachers for the

090leadership issues starting tomorrow please provide materials to parents three months in advance gps leadership who chooses to allow students to benefit from the therapy of rigor not leaders who disadvantage our students ability to learn and compete with neighboring districts for college spots by not teaching for three and a half months last year new canaan and darian were one month in covid into covid instructing teachers to make themselves available one time per week not to teach but to check on the welfare of children each instructing teachers should give homework if necessary this year no midterms or finals you'd like to move on thank you the next speaker is ken shaw cross ken if you're online please raise your hand thank you hi can you hear me okay all right ken we're ready excellent thank you so

091much so much thank you for your time i'll make this right this way i just want to acquire environmental don't know why but i want to reiterate it is not happening in the greenwich public schools thank you hello just hold on one minute and we'll get you uh on on the microphone okay is that they'll loosen that i think going into next year um oh i'm sorry yeah can folks online here dr jones yes we closed yes i'm sorry that was just too late we'd asked for them to be recognized earlier um needs sorry just the graduation um so our graduation we are excited this year that our graduation will be in person on june 21st the rain date is the 22nd and the graduation will be on field six and seven so that we

092have two uh full-size football fields so that we can social distance and have a good number of the family members in attendance not limiting to just one or two which was really important um to the students um i the math guidance so that was after so i need to keep going right um so they did issue universal mass guidance today from the state of connecticut um department of education and they are saying that the current rule requiring universal mask will stay in place for at this time and this is part of the governor's order as well as the connecticut department of health and they will continue to evaluate as we go into the summer but we did get that direct guidance because it's been a little confusing with the community opening up um and people

093are asking what's happening in schools and we also have an update to our reopening document which will be posted in the next week and that is a requirement coming from the federal government that goes along with our arp or sr3 funding they just shared that with us last week and we have to update our opening document every six months because we've already been open it's a little late for us we did it last summer but there are a lot of districts across the country that didn't go through that process so they're requiring it of all of us in order to get the access to that funding and when you see ours and the way that it's posted online it's pretty short we are anticipating a normal opening going into the fall and we will be

094watching all summer to see if we need to pivot according to what's happening with covid over the summer we do have with our arp funding just so people know we have to get broad community input through town hall surveys a variety of ways in order to access that funding they have set the deadline for that to start next week the application opens with the connecticut state department of education and it will have to be submitted in august so a lot of this input will take place in the summer and we will encourage the community to act on that and that's all for me mr bernstein okay thank you very much all right next up is the reports of officers committees and liaisons mr chair uh dr jones thank you for the update i had a

095couple questions about [Music] things in your report one was i i was unclear from the state is it guidance or is it a rule i mean you could i kept hearing the word guidance so i didn't know if it's a mandate or it's guidance from the state to districts do you know and i just got this this afternoon so i'm going to read um exactly it's okay if you'd rather digest it and send me well it's pretty clear because it says adapt advance achieve which is the connecticut plan to learn and grow is requiring all students and staff to wear a face mask when inside a school building with limited exceptions um and then down on the bottom again it's in bold therefore the current rule and it is a rule requiring universal mass squaring

096for all individuals in all school buildings will remain in place at this time um they do have a section excuse me let me just i have one more piece they do have a section um about outside and we're going to review that tomorrow to see if maybe during recess in some areas like that we might be able to be a little bit looser but again that just came today okay so and what were the exceptions well if a student has like a health uh condition and they have something on file with the nurse that has been since the beginning of the year okay and my my other question was uh these vaccine clinics um i guess i have a couple questions um why did why do we have families why did we invite family centers

097into our schools to to dispense vaccines um we're it's not really us it is family centers that issues that they set up the clinics and again since the very beginning of the immunization most of our staff went to other schools this is the only clinics that we have hosted we're doing one at each school um and it is a service to our families that want to take advantage of that service and again a lot of our staff we're at brunswick there are probably people up here that went to brunswick school that went to bridgeport high school this is the way that the state has implemented the vaccine since day one we just didn't have this opportunity earlier for our staff and our staff actually wanted it yeah i'm sorry i i probably didn't ask my

098question correctly um because i i understood our staff was long ago vaccinated because we set up there were special clinics that were set up specifically for teachers sites were available to them when it wasn't available to the general public like brunswick as an example brunswick wasn't available to me when they first came out and the general public it wasn't available so i know our staff was long ago uh available i guess these clinic these these clinics gone in recently when did they go in we only we are only hosting one clinic uh we did the high school today okay we'll have one at each middle school and again is it only a one day thing pardon it's a one day thing yes it's one time it starts late in the day goes until about five

099o'clock and we have families that you know they don't have a car they can't just drive to a clinic there there are families that want to take advantage of this i don't expect it to be large um i think today the high school we had about 35 students that took access but those families needed the assistance okay are they um are we going to do any more are you planning any more of these i'm not at this time no but we'll have everybody the eight the age group actually now is from 12 to 16. so we've offered there have been ample opportunities for people to get vaccinated so i don't see that we'll need to offer any more definitely between now and the end of the year uh okay thank you go ahead joe i

100have a question on that did we make this decision to do these clinics based on demand uh have the parents of the children contacted us and said hey could we somehow maybe set up a clinic at the uh at the school and uh and maybe facilitate the inability for them to uh uh to go for the uh vaccine i would have to ask our head of nursing that and the department of health like what decision making was on the back end of that but i do believe that their you know parents have asked us and been very grateful for us helping them know where they can get these vaccines when they are given and certainly they again they've utilized schools this entire vaccine process um so we believe it is a benefit to our families

101that want to take advantage thank you and i have a follow-up question uh do uh the other schools outside our district dairy and new canaan there was some reference made to those are they also hosting clinics in their districts most of them yes and we were actually criticized early in the vaccine because we didn't do that at art school sites thank you very much okay i'd ask the audience to please not uh comment we're in the middle of our actual board meeting all right we're going to move on then to reports of officers committees and liaisons were there any members that have anything to report mr just to provide a little follow-up to um dr jones pointing out about the nine and a half million on that the american rescue plan is thankfully giving to

102greenwich public schools we are taking it up as a budget committee next wednesday morning so we can start working with the administration on gathering community and staff input and obviously that will be posted shortly so we welcome people coming and to our meeting then of course we'll report back to the board mr kelly well i usually like presenting good news but i've got a mix of good news and bad news i'm going to be talking about the cardinal stadium project the good news is the foundations are in uh they're where we need them to be they're complete they're now ready for the delivery in june of the actual bleachers themselves which will be coming in erected quite quickly and uh will be in place uh we'll see significant improvement in cardinal stadium uh by the

103end of june unfortunately we have some bad news well the bad news is kind of devastating at this point we're just trying to digest it now and it's kind of really kind of hard to talk about but i'm going to try to explain it as clearly as i can the uh i personally have attended about a hundred meetings in the last year and a half regarding cardinal stadium uh we've been with the dpw the architectural review board uh planning and zoning the selectmen committees all other committees groups that wanted to have questions or had questions about cardinal stadium every two weeks we had a staff meeting talking about the progress of of this uh this project we also had public hearings lots of articles in the newspapers we had votes in the board of education

104about about this project we then after all these meetings we got the approvals that the town requires us to get all the permits we have our building permit we have the permit to build and do everything this projects needed that the town required us to have once we had that done we began work on the project shortly after beginning work a tree warden showed up and the tree warden who i believe gets his authority from the estate from hartford not local uh uh although he works for local it's kind of weird he works for the town but he gets his power from the state uh he showed up now along the process uh no one's uh in planning and zoning or dpw or any of the other uh town agencies that we worked with ever

105mentioned uh that we needed uh to have a discussion with the tree guy uh tree warden actually we uh with the architectural review group we went over the different landscaping changes the trees we were going to plant the trees we had to remove and we clearly went over that we had our engineers our landscape design guys meet with the architectural review they changed things move things around and we accommodated the needs of the town of greenwich this gentleman showed up after all the approvals were made we started work and told us that we have to we cannot remove a certain number of trees now those trees i love trees most people love trees there's not a lot of people who dislike trees i'm a big fan of trees so don't get me wrong in that

106sense but uh but basically let me try to make it clear about the trees that we were required to take down but he's told us we can't and i'll break them up into make it very simple it's kind of complicated but i'll make it simple leading down to cardinal stadium there's a road that road needs access uh by fire trucks by emergency vehicles and it's required by the uh uh by the town by the fire department by the fire chief uh to make this road 20 feet across in making it 20 feet across we only have 20 feet we have the state property we have the board of ed property the 20 feet leading down to cardinal stadium right off the route one there are two and they are beautiful sycamore trees there's a pair

107of them they're beautiful and but unfortunately we have to remove those sycamore trees those two beautiful sycamore trees in order for us to be compliant with the regulations uh for the town uh for the uh for the fire department for emergency vehicles we have no other alternative the tree uh the tree guy told us we cannot remove those trees we cannot have safe coverage of cardinal stadium for the fire for police for emergency vehicles according to other regulations so he's told us we have to leave these trees we can build our beautiful stadium uh we can build it we can have the press boxes the bathrooms the team rooms all the latest features the whole town of greenwich has been hoping for for some time we can have all of that but we can't use

108it because we cannot make sure the thousands of people that are in cardinal stadium are safe so therefore we cannot open cardinal stadium we could build it but we could not open it because the tree guy tree warden has told us we have to we cannot remove those trees second we have the ada parking issue uh we we have mapped out a place where the ada parking is meant to be it's about 17 spots uh we're required by federal law to have 17 parking spots for the amount of seat capacity within cardinal stadium the new bleachers we're putting up so we've made allotment for that uh unfortunately well within construction that the as we pave the parking area there's now going to be overflow of water non-permeable surface which creates drainage issues so after many

109studies boreholes uh uh the engineers uh the town dpw uh many people have figured out how we could deal with this drainage issue and we've got the approval from the town with the drainage issue now we create a uh rain garden to collect this water now there's a certain sort of underneath rock formations that exist in that area and there's only certain areas that can accommodate the uh the rain flow from the non-permeable surface so therefore there's an area where there's some trees and those trees have to be removed uh the tree warden told us we cannot remove those trees this was explained at great expense our our engineers and our our architect met with the tree warden three separate times we met with a whole staff of people with the uh landscape design people

110with the engineers for the drainage uh with the architect himself it cost us those three meetings cost approximately ten thousand dollars in adjustments of taxpayer money in order to convince the tree warden that these trees had to be removed we he simply did this he looked at the area saw there was another area where there was no trees behind that not caring that there was rock formations underneath it not caring that the soil could not absorb the water from the parking lot and he said well why can't you put it over there we explained to him multiple times why we cannot put it over there he just said well that's too bad you're gonna have to put it over there so the tree warden has told us we cannot we take down those seven trees

111within the uh the drainage area so this being said we do believe we have federal jurisdiction uh over this by ada uh regulations that the federal government we've contacted the department of justice the attorney general who could advocate for us to be able to make or take down these trees superseding the authority of the state tree warden also we too believe as well those two trees that create a hazardous issue with emergency vehicles and fire vehicles we think we do have the right to take those trees down so we think our appeal that we're going to make is is when we the board of ed is going to have to vote and that's we might mr bernstein we're going to have a i'll have to have call for an emergency hopefully a zoom meeting to

112a vote on this but we have 10 days after the uh uh the ruling was made by the tree warden that that ruling was made four days ago so we have six more days we have a meeting with uh the town of greenwich planning and zoning katie deluca set up a meeting quickly for monday morning to address this issue she was unaware of it we made her aware of it today so basically we're going to make an appeal i feel very confident we're gonna win that appeal uh but according to tom hagney our land use attorney uh he says uh he anticipates in his experience with appeals over the tree warden could take as much as a year so basically the cardinal stadium will be built it'll be beautiful there'll be uh team rooms uh

113there'll be bathrooms all the things we wanted in cardinal stadium the entire town of greenwich wanted that now because of nine trees uh we can't do that and plus also i must say this this last bit about the trees in our architectural in our landscaping plan we are planting many trees beautiful trees we're planting really really nice trees now understand the sycamores they'll be very very hard to replace the other ones that they're making reference to they're not as beautiful as those two sycamores breaks my heart to take down those two sycamores but unfortunately the health and well-being and safety of the people in cardinal stadium is more important to me than a couple of beautiful sycamores ada parking uh the people the uh disabled people being able to come to a game with dignity

114not being driven in a golf cart for everyone to watch as they scoot by having to wait far away from the stadium with a golf cart golf cart to pick them up there are situations where in the past as a coach uh of a team where parents wanted or have their grandparents or disabled people come to a game they would call me an hour or two in advance where i would actually literally carry with the help of others these disabled people into the stands an hour before to save their dignity and put them up in the stands they'd watch their their grandson or child play in the game and they'd wait till the stadium clears out we'd all go back and i'd go back with whoever helped him in the seat in the first place

115we'd take him down and try to do it with as much dignity as possible here we have a stadium with ramps elevators we have uh ada parking we have all that stuff available that we've been dying to have for a long time who hasn't had a uh a mother sister or somebody say something about the porto potties how horrible and disgusting they are and that we need this new stadium so the tree warden has put on the brakes for this project for what looks like a year we're gonna fight i've suggested but i think it's probably uh me being too aggressive that we ignore the tree warden uh but i'm being told by uh by sensible people that uh i probably shouldn't do that uh people have also contacted me and said hey joe you

116mind if i show up in the middle of that with a chainsaw and i said you know what please don't and you know what i'm serious if anyone has an idea out there don't do that because these trees are tall and if somebody gets hurt doing something like that because we want a stadium i don't want to have that on my conscience so please do not the dark of night chop down these trees but we have to do something as a community and not sit sit by and take this i'm going to end with that but i'm going to come back to a second issue that was passionate okay thank you thank you joe did you have another report [Applause] mr kelly did you have another report yes yeah go ahead oh that was quick

117thank you um as talked about in one of the previous meetings uh the community has come together hillside community and others uh have decided that it's it's time to beautify the waterfall at the corner of hillside and route one uh that is a beautiful feature it's way over overgrown ashley cole has volunteered to spearhead this committee i told her i would serve on it as well any other board member that wants to partake in that that that committee uh is more than welcome the committee uh will the action of beautifying the waterfalls on that corner will be funded by by public uh by private money not public money money be raised for this uh there's a lot of enthusiasm behind us and uh uh superintendent jones dr jones will be giving you a list of

118the members of that committee and we'll talk about how we're gonna form that and what we need to do moving forward all right thank you any other uh board committees liaisons karen mrs thank you um i wanted to give an update on seac um social held their first annual meeting last night during the meeting they received ciac as a special education um advisory committee they held their first annual meeting last night and during that meeting they received an update on the esr grants they reviewed and approved the draft of their year-end report which i will bring up again when we get to the agenda planning later this evening is uh i'd like to make sure we can uh have that presented to the board and the public um and they went over member terms and

119held an election for the new executive committee and officers with that in mind i would really like to thank caroline learum seax outgoing chair for her dedication advocacy and focus this year she's done an outstanding job to help shape ciac i'd also like to welcome don zimmerman the new chair of ciac i know she will continue to help ciac move forward i'd also like to thank the departing members of siak and the other outgoing members of the executive committee vice chair jennifer khatai recording secretary robin baldwin and the corresponding secretary katie bistron thank you all for your service and your invaluable input this year your hard work and commitment has truly helped create a strong foundation with which ciac can continue to build upon in the years to come and i know that uh we

120will have a lot to work on uh next year so i want to thank all of the continuing uh and incoming members uh some of which who have not been selected yet for for all their dedication advocacy uh for the special education community thank you thank you aaron if we could set up the computer megan if you give us one second we'll get you set up all right megan let's give this a shot all right thank you mr bernstein um two quick reports one of them i get a lot of feedback okay uh the distinguished teachers award committee head of i mean as soon as teachers awards were done remotely thank you to kathy burnetti um it's a really beautiful remote ceremony and both um last year and this year's teachers and educators were recognized

121um which was which went without went off without a hitch and was um was really a great thing to to be a part of um secondly i just want to share um some highlights from the greenwich alliance who continue alliance for education who continue to do amazing things for our schools a couple of a couple of points uh tuning to tuning into music which they just we just finished they finished their first year and um there's a recital video in the works nearly 70 students received free instrumental music lessons uh which is which is really amazing um what's being the process right now are the reaching out grants for the 2021-2022 they were voted on by the alliance board who met on tuesday 108 445 dollars will be awarded to six grants uh of those

122grants those six grants include the western middle school unbound innovations new lebanon theater arts have admire families as partners eastern middle school ruler ghs esports and the greenwich high school education and wellness center so amazing things are happening in our schools thank you to the crunch alliance um helping helping fund these um helping to fund this uh also the new garnish alliance's newest initiative is called avid success as many events planned over the next six weeks so board members and the community are welcome to attend this is monday market calendars monday may 24th the mentor training and thursday june 3rd student sponsorship coffee so please reach out directly to me or to julie fernies if you have if you need any more details [Music] great thank you megan all right we're going to move on

123to our discussion items the first item is summer school dr carabillo you'd think that after all this time i would remember to unmute before i speak but i don't so good evening chairman bernstein bordevet members and attendees the greenwich public summer school program begins on july 6 and will end on august 2021 pre-k through eight students who qualified for literacy numeracy extended summer learning have been identified invitations will be sent to their families tomorrow morning pre-k 8 students who qualified for esy related services have been identified and the pupil services staff have notified families are in and are in the process of determining which families choose to have their children attend the pre-k through five elementary students will attend glenville elementary school this summer regular education invited students will attend from 9 to 11 and

124the ey eys students will attend from 9 to 11 for their lea and 11 to 1 for the related services and that depends on their ieps all invited middle school students will attend central middle school they will attend from 8 to 11. esy students will attend until 1 o'clock for the related and specialized services all middle school acceleration math courses and secondary acceleration credit recovery advancement attainment will also be held at central middle school from 8 to 11. some courses that have labs will be longer the registration opens tomorrow morning some courses will be offered in person and some will be remote all math acceleration and math courses science english for english language students level 1 and 2 and computer arts will be held in person at central middle school the remainder of the courses

125will be remote the um let's see what else was i i just lost my notes there are some new courses added to the course selection this year for secondary computer art introduction to computer programming arb the art experience and health and wellness we are looking forward to having the website open tomorrow morning and secondary students may go in and register for their courses please look for the gps summer learning program on our website under gps summer learning any questions doctor if i have this right basically uh still like last summer in numeracy for k to five correct and then credit recovery is still for uh for the high school as well as some advancement courses is that right that is correct six eight also has been invited for their literacy and numeracy continuation you need

126some additional time during the summer okay and can i ask how you're going to track the um how you're going to track the success of these students that are coming in for the literacy and numeracy we are using lexia and then the scores on that they receive in september to see what the growth has been from june to september on their linked assessments that we track the benchmarks that we give our students thank you all right any questions mrs downey i just have a question about when you said some um i think it was only the secondary are going to be in person and some are going to be remote could you give an example and you kind of went through it rather quickly so just kind of i'll understand why we're doing things remote

127uh we're offering the remote courses because we feel that it gives uh students and teachers choice as to how they would like to take their courses the algebra and the science courses have to we from our experience last year we really realized that those two areas two content areas have to be in person courses for math are really very um intricate and in watching them online last year i visited all of the classrooms it was really imperative that students have that face-to-face experience for the other courses for american history for civics for english those courses were able to have more opportunities to work in small groups and to do some work independently and then come back to together as a group so that's how we made those types of decisions as to which courses should

128be offered remotely and which courses should be in person if there is a student who is supposed to be in person but they really want to have it remotely we will make arrangements all right mr say thank you mr sure and how many how many people did you invite we had over 900 students that were invited that qualified can you send us separate can you send us separately a uh break out by uh grade in school um i will check with jen lao yeah yeah well we've gotten summer school reports before so we get an understanding of where the kids are and where the program's going to be located and it gives us an idea of uh how effective it'll be based on prior performance so that'll that'll be in the report and um if

129you could on that that would be helpful you can send it to us through dr jones i would though note the summer school report we usually get is in the fall so but i understand that but you know in this circumstance we've got a changing program so i'd like to understand i'll send you a copy of what's so if you could just follow that up that would be great miss yes i think this question may be more in line for dr jones but um given miss carabello's comments that this was a majority of this was going to be in person um and we could try to accommodate for those are going to be remote are we officially at the end of this year terminating our remote school and and then summer school will take place

130as normal is that how we're proceeding going forward no not necessarily right now we have a survey out to our parents uh k5 especially um because we're still just so i think we're just under 400 students right now and surveying whether or not the parents are looking to return full a full return within that age group they've encouraged all of us to kind of stay nimble and so we're still processing that right now because if they don't if there's no vaccination in k-5 the requirements from the connecticut department of health may be different for k5 than they are 612. so we're we're working through that but right now the numbers are looking at least in the survey fairly low of the ones that may still feel like they're immune compromised or have other situations where

131they would need remote so it's definitely i don't think going to be what it was this year so do we feel comfortable based upon how we intend to run the summer school program that we can accommodate all the needs from those students that are appearing in person and those that may elect to appear remote yeah and i think i might let dr carabillo answer that but i think we're willing to be very flexible with those families that are still requiring that right now dr carabello yes that is yes yes they're very very flexible i don't know why i'm echoing like that but yes we are going to be the world cups of both families us sorry and back to uh being flexible i'm sorry so we are going to be flexible for families and uh

132make sure that we meet their needs as best we can um so i i appreciate that you've made some slight improvements in the uh the timing for classes uh from last summer um but i still just want to make sure you know you know i knew you were talking about uh looking at the growth that students will show uh in the fall um but i do want to make sure that you know in the past prior to covet our summer school uh had four hours at least per day per course uh and school was at least five weeks long summer school program was five weeks long um and i note that we're we're still short of that um it's slightly better than last summer which was two and a half hours per day for some

133of these courses do you feel that we'll be able to get through if you're looking at an accelerated course uh the proper amount of time for that curriculum uh for students to be able to access the material to be able to move forward for the next year if if they meet their uh benchmarks there will be certain courses that will be four hours long we have to take the lead from those teachers as to what is required thank you um i also wanted to ask i know you were talking about extended school year options um and i know that you know you have that from 9 to 11 and then related services again from 11 to 1. um and i want to make sure that again that you know within our special education community that

134we feel that that's enough time to be able to address um some of the issues i know that a lot of those services were uh shortened last summer for obvious reasons but will those students also be able to they'll be attending in person if need be or remotely if that is within an interesting person unless the parents feel that they want them to be remote they'll attend the um literacy and numeracy in the morning with their peers and then their specialized instruction and or their related services from 11 to 1. they also will have lunch and be able to have a break between because kids need okay so i guess the timing might need to be adjusted because you said nine to eleven and eleven to one but mike last final question registration begins tomorrow

135hours and then elementary hours who have not necessarily been invited as well and when is the information going to be going out to parents i know oftentimes they need to take the time to look through the catalog to make that decision for the elementary and middle school um indicted students and i think if you turn down your speaker a little bit that should alleviate the problem for the middle school and elementary students who have been invited they are the only students and the esy students who will attend summer school secondary students math acceleration for middle school students and secondary students will be able to register for whatever courses they need and when is that information being sent out if you're looking for acceleration it will the website will be open for all secondary students to

136register parents pre-k for the invited students will have an invitation tomorrow morning with the information on the invitation so that they can register their students okay thank you all right miss downey i just forgot another question i think at one point we discussed that there was going to be summer school in neighborhood schools talked to calipillo or was a decision i mean i just remember there was discussion about that or the decision is now that everyone's going to be at glenville everyone who does not who has been invited to two sites western middle school or jillian curtis elementary school those two administrators have invited specific students to attend their summer program it is not connected to our greenwich public schools summer school program the students who were not invited by the western administration and the

137julian curtis program administrator have been invited to our greenwich public schools summer school if they qualified for the um additional learning time and that's going to confuse everything so that basically what you're saying the 900 you're inviting is in addition to who was invited at western and at julian curtis is that correct correct i think you know to follow up to mr schurr's question i think we'd like that data of information of the number of students number of students who qualified to get it because it's a fuller picture of who's going to be utilizing the services yep did you hear that anne yes the number of students that were identified and invited across the uh the k-8 pre-k okay mr cher uh i thought i was following along but obviously i wasn't um now i'm

138thoroughly confused about this program i i knew that you would be confused with that you have an esy program yes we extended school year program it's mandated by the government yes we do we have to provide that to students who are identified for extended school years as part of their as codified in their individual education plans their ieps that is correct i understand that sure the uh the i the extended school year services and for those students in which schools they will be at grand glenville and at central middle school glenville and central middle school central middle school yep okay um then we have a set of students who um have been invited by greenwich public schools the school district to attend uh summer school particularly for needs of of uh remediation not for acceleration

139for remediation these are kids consider it we consider it acceleration because they haven't been able to achieve their student growth during the year for whatever reason and correct and they need additional learning time so we really frame it as acceleration we want to accelerate their uh skills but they're selected they're selected on a series of criteria that says that in their particular grade they're essentially below their growth projection correct it's a combination of things yes okay so now you've changed how we do that i think i need an now an understanding of the selection criteria was that in the report on summer school that you provided already so you already told us what the new selection criteria are it's been the same it's the same uh criteria that we've used in the past okay fine

140then i don't need anything new okay um and then of course you have classes you'll be delivering at the high school no or from or from the high school secondary classes will be offered at central middle school because we cannot have students at the high school this summer because of the uh soil remediation that is correct okay so those courses will be there what is this uh western middle school and julian curtis admin selected what is what is the title one schools came to dr jones mr damico and i and asked if they could run their own program they wanted to see if they could um get their children in front of their teachers for a period of time during the summer so dr jones and mr tamiko and i said let's give it a

141try let's see what happens using what money we are using esser funds went so i'm sorry did i miss it was this disclosed to the board before today not to my understanding so let me just be clear we're using funds that have been given to the am i am i hearing this correctly the administration made a decision to spend money on put a particular new program that is not a part of one of our existing programs yes it is one of the qualifying uses of the sr2 funds but it never came to the board uh it is i believe it is in the esser application which i believe did come to you i'm to have to go back and look at that meeting so now we've got now we've got a program i'm not saying

142it's good or it's bad but now we've got an educational inequity don't we yeah we have an educational inequity certain schools have certain programs that other other students don't have the students who were chosen for western and for jillian curtis are the same students that have been qualified to attend the greenwich public schools summer program the administrators wanted to see if it would make a difference to have them in their own schools with their own teachers and wanted to see if that would be a better program moving forward then the larger greenwich public schools program that sometimes students get their teachers and sometimes they don't so so now i'm hearing it's a pilot that's that's a definition of a pilot i don't have a problem with a pilot but there are very clear rules in

143our policy on how pilots are managed i'm just we're supposed to be governing the school system and i'm not saying this is a bad idea at all i can i'm all ready for the attack on oh so and so said this was you know is attacking these students no this is a situation unless somebody can show me otherwise and i'd gladly be wrong where this program was not properly brought to the board for its review and governance and it's it's money dr john i'll move on yeah if i if i just might clarify these are students who qualify for summer school the request of the principals was simply for them to have summer school in their own schools with their own teachers and all of our title one schools looked at doing that this summer

144especially coming out of covid they feel like if their children can have their teachers that are actually in their buildings and they're in their home schools that they're going to be perhaps more comfortable and they may see more growth it is still part of our summer school program it's not like we're running something that is a pilot that is totally different it's about connecting kids and children with their teachers and we that board we don't ever bring approval to the school sites to the board we actually plan that according to what schools are open according to all of the capital projects that are going on across the district how much space we have in any one building and how many students actually qualify that we actually need to place in the buildings all right miss

145hirsch ms hirsch so just as a quick follow-up then you know i i know last summer we did everything differently so we're going to just put that to the side in the years prior for summer school how many different sites were summer school courses offered at well we actually though let me just clarify even with that because last summer even though we were in covet we had a new model for summer school that we discussed with the board which was literacy and numeracy and it used to be like an all-day program where there was art and all kinds of things that were offered and we changed it to be very targeted on literacy and numeracy and it depends on how many students but um and it'll be interesting to see this year how many actually

146sign up just because we invited more doesn't mean we'll necessarily you know get more students but it it depends on how many actually decide to come yeah i know that prior board members one who's actually sitting in our audience at the moment um have had long-term discussions in regards to re reinvigorating our summer school and how courses are being offered to be able to give them only there for part of the day so that's to so i appreciate that that was something that was being looked at but last summer a lot of courses were offered remotely for obvious reasons so that's why i was saying not including last summer in years prior how many different sites were offered for summer school programming i know at least elementary middle and high school but were there multiple

147sites we had multiple elementary science we had three elementary sites we had a preschool site and we had uh it was generally um costcob and then one other elementary school then we had the high school program which was the secondary program which is where the high school students went and some of the middle school acceleration courses were there middle school students generally went to the high school so if we had a significant portion of students that were invited and they all decided to come and then other students wanted to come for acceleration we would have to open additional sites to to support the needs anyway is that correct i might answer that too that sorry um that is correct and i will say just this summer planning for our sites alone was was very very

148challenging so we'll be watching it right up until when we enroll because losing the entire high school site is a that's a big site for us and it also hosts um the park and rec programs so now we're having to share central with park and rec as well as summer school so it'll be very much um driven by the enrollment whether or not we're gonna have to go and have another site and we've already discussed for instance having to move pre-k out of glenville because that could be at least four classrooms into just an another pre-k site by itself okay and then the last question is you know i know in some summers past especially for students who were invited or required to come for whatever the reasons we've have we ever it was transportation

149do we you know is there funding if transportation is needed or do we feel that it would require less funding if it's for certain schools to be in their neighborhood schools that they can walk to we do offer transportation for summer schools and they are from pub stops unless a student who receives esy services has specialized transportation sorry and that was a little garbled at the beginning if you could uh repeat we do offer hub stop transportation for summer schools and we have specialized transportation for iesy students if it is on their um if it's one of their related services and they have to have specialized transportation thank you all right i guess we missed you so just to make sure i understand the way this will work this summer is that those uh students

150that are that currently are at western and julian curtis that apply that are eligible for summer school they are the only students that will have the opportunity to go to their same schools for the extended summer program yeah if their teachers sign up and that and that's the thing all and we looked at the other title one principles were hopeful that maybe they would have it they just didn't have the staff to work in the summer and if we were going to have them with different teachers anyway then we went ahead and went to the central site like at glenville if they're going to have a teacher from another building so then how do the other students from the other you know because there's 11 elementary schools and how did they get dispersed throughout the

151schools then what is the criteria well i think ann was referencing the criteria to qualify and then they go to glenville or or right now they had planned to have fourth and fifth also at central it's going to all depend on numbers because central is also housing the park and rec program as well this summer all right so we'll look forward and to getting the follow-up from you mr bernstein yes mr chair i i just i i just want to say this for the record um we have just actually created an educational equity issue we are telling students if you don't go to julian curtis julian curtis by what the superintendent says they get a program where they get teachers that they know and it's delivered in their neighborhood westerns they get teachers that they

152know and it's delivered in their neighborhood students at central and eastern don't get that and all the other elementary schools don't get that i mean i i i'm just repeating what i'm hearing from the administration and it bothers me a lot that um i don't know who else is concerned about the educational equity association our job as a board we're required to deliver educational equity if we wanted to deliver a program for students to have their teachers that they know teaching them in their neighborhood that would have been fine somebody should have brought that forward i would have supported it i i think we are spending not enough time on this board dealing with programs that we know that work that achieve that close the achievement gap we know there are kids who need to

153catch up we know that that's that's a national phenomena it's a global phenomenon or covid yet here we are i don't know six weeks before this program is supposed to start finding out that this is what we've done i i don't know how i i don't know how to stand i don't know let's see i'm trying to understand what the inequity is that you're concerned about when you're saying we're creating an inequity we're providing an opportunity to tell your health i'm just trying to understand i'll explain it to you i'll explain to you here's the inequity okay they obviously thought there was some educational merit by what the superintendent said to say uh julian curtis and western think that they can do a better job fill in the blank do a better job educationally for

154those students by having teachers that they know in their building teaching them locally in their building so we've now done that we're now going to do that in two schools but the rest of them sorry you got to get on a bus and go across town but it was discussed with us which is why i brought it up that it was going to be in multiple schools that it was proposed and we and that's why i asked the question but but we also can't force the teachers to work so at a particular school so i'm just asking the question would you rather just not allow them to do that and have everybody go centralized you know no i would have rather if this was a discussion we were going to have that the administration on

155their own would have red flagged that they were uh oh that's a good idea but we may be creating this issue therefore we need to think this through and clearly it didn't happen i guess i'll just add my two cents as we close this out um i don't think we want to be opening all 11 elementary schools over the summer in fact a lot of schools have the work that goes on during the summer one will be completely offline this summer as miss downey said we can't force teachers to work we get the teachers that come to us i heard dr jones say the other title one schools looked at it and they couldn't get staffing in order to do this so i'm not sure we would get that across the district quite honestly with

156with 900 kids identified across the district and the capacity at glenville somewhere in the mid-fours we may be seeing an additional site need for an additional site i think parents are probably going to be looking for things for their kids uh to do and uh and with the uh with the issues that we've had in the past year now thanks to kovid we may get a tremendous up uh uptake of the uh of the students so i don't know i think i'll look forward to the report in the fall and uh and hear more about this with that i think we'll move on to our next item which is uh the regulation around facilities so dr jones thank you mr bernstein um this is really just uh for information only because regulations don't generally come

157to the board of education but i felt like this one was important because it is part of the ocr resolution that we are working on so this is one of the first steps where we must have a regulation that actually helps families understand what the process is if the building is not accessible for their child or even if we have a parent who feels like that building is going to impede access to their child's classroom this lets them know what the process is abby wadler with the town of greenwich legal is working on this and we'll do our submission to ocr but this regulation also goes um goes along with floor maps of the buildings where ocr wants to see where an elevator is in a building that's being recommended it also goes along with

158some evidence that we have put more signage up around our schools right now it's temporary signage and though we will have a sign on those doors that are not accessible that lets people know which door in the building and how to get to the accessible entrance for instance instance at old greenwich the only accessible door is actually um kind of in the alcove area where the dumpster area is that's level and so the other doors at old greenwich will be posted how they would actually go to that door to gain access and again this regulation goes with policy 3510 which is about facilities and then the regulation you'll see has the r it'll be on the website um right underneath policy 3510 but this submission is due first week in june so i just wanted

159the board to be aware all right any discussion ms hirsch um thank you for providing this to us i just had one quick question um once you uh vet this through legal etc and it's given to ocr where will this regulation be posted just uh so that parents will be able to know where to access it should they need it going forward um you know if it's in handbooks or on our website and in our board policies etc um all of our policies and regulations are on our website uh under the board of ed tab and you'll have the policies um posted and then right underneath that any regulation that goes with policy 35.3510 we'll have the r behind it that lets people know it's a regulation so they'll all be right there together thank

160you i'm sure that will help others be able to find it ms kowalski i just had a question regarding um busing when a student is moved to a different school because of the ada compliance having not met being met in their neighborhood school how does bussing work for that particular student we would actually uh we would supply the business okay and then the other question i have is um does this also so for example with respect to families let's say they have a child that has a need to move to an ada compliant school but they also have a sibling do and they don't want to separate their siblings does that fall within this as well where we would move both siblings to the other school yes we would allow the family to attend one

161school all right thank you very much the next item is the strategic plan update so mr share you're up um hi everybody last time we met um our committee had submitted a uh draft survey uh to be sent um we asked for feedback uh we got feedback very quickly from uh miss downey thank you christina very much um a few weeks later we got some feedback from ptac from bryant through brian pildunis and then last week uh got feedback from uh mr bernstein um a lot of things were things that were said previously so there weren't any particularly new items uh just by way of reminder because we haven't talked about this for a month the survey essentially covers five topics one is asking parents if they have any input or attitude about the current

162strategy of the school district item number two was uh about educational equity and how much of a focus that should be that was at the request of superintendent jones then we asked questions about the mission and direction of the school system that was uh largely a function of our work earlier in the year or almost a year ago now uh about mission which we adopted but rightfully we should check with the community about that and then the uh other item was about uh focus of the system what we should really be prioritizing in the delivery of a greenwich education and the last question was about perceptions of strengths and weaknesses of the system just by way of reminder the last time we did a strategic plan survey we asked questions about mission and direction we

163asked questions about focus and we asked questions about strengths and weaknesses as a matter of fact most of the questions that are in the survey about like particularly strengthened weaknesses and focus and direction were pulled from the survey that was prepared by a public consulting group when they did that engagement with us we didn't think on the committee that it would be a good idea if the questions were already used already used with students i'm sorry already used with parents written by a professional consulting firm at great expense to the board that we would be smart enough as laypeople uh karen karen and peter uh sure to uh rewrite those unfortunately we had a check on that with uh professional uh uh survey people um in terms of feedback uh they can probably put in

164categories uh question about survey length uh comments about grammar of the uh survey um there was a discussion about definitions of two things uh one is uh the definition of personalized learning and the other one was on educational equity i'll come back and address that other subjects were in the feedback particularly the pta thought are you going to ask questions about communications with parents and they also thought there should be some operational questions they're not strategic in nature but they're operational concerns like transitions uh between elementary school and middle school and other things like that and then the last uh point was kind of order of questions so by way of update and then i'll address each of these uh in your email box is a link uh we took the survey fortunately we had

165the input from uh ms downey uh when we were trying to do it we took that into account and we programmed the whole survey so when you go into your emails when you get home you can see the survey it's all programmed in surveymonkey it's set up per their rules a lot of things that were some of the things we adjusted so that when you program it it works a little better so it would be helpful if all board members would go back and take a look at that now that you can see it you can actually run the survey it's in test mode and give us uh feedback we've incorporated the feedback that we got it also will particularly help with looking at survey length according to surveymonkey the response rate will be in

166the mid to high 80s they score that for you i don't know what artificial intelligence they use and we thought the survey length was 20 minutes in length they're saying it'll only be 15 minutes in length okay um i'm not smart enough to question what surveymonkey uh is doing you by that the use of that tool uh we adjusted it to remain to say the survey will take uh 15 to 20 minutes i'm going to still stick with 20 minutes but i would appreciate it if board members would go look at that draft survey now you can see it you can see the table so on and so forth and we've adjusted kind of now that it's programmed for proper uh survey uh standards like the likert score the la the leica uh scoring you

167can have a a like with five attributes or seven attributes we standardized on five now that we've seen how to program it etc you can see that we've corrected grammar um in terms of definitions just a reminder personalized learning definition is from the published strategy documents that are published on our board of ed website there may be other versions of it floating around but they're not approved by the board so we're not going to use them and then in terms of educational equity i think as uh um ms kowalski said at the last meeting um in the state of connecticut there are five different definitions so we don't really know which one to pick um i think it's pretty clear by the questions we're trying to get to the answer we're not asking someone to

168validate the a definition of educational equity we've asked some very specific questions so go look at that um in terms of other subjects particularly for brian peltunis and his team on the ptac very important question about uh that they think should be asked about how well the district communicates and engages with parents yes that's an exceptionally important question um in our committee just as way of reminder i think i said this last time but maybe i didn't communicate effectively enough communication is being handled in the panorama survey by the superintendent and their staff it's a critical question um and as i said last time we're not going to ask in the strategic plan survey every question that could be asked about the district it'll just make the survey longer and it will make the survey

169not focused on what we need for the strategy process in terms of the orders of the questions fortunately surveymonkey automatically um takes questions and if it has more than one option it automatically randomizes that that's a standard best practice in surveying so regardless of what you see in this document the paper document when each of you takes the test survey you'll notice that you won't all be looking at the same questions and that same questions the same items in a question uh in the same order um we try to randomize that so the survey is there uh as i say it's available to the ptac so brian if you could circulate that look at that now that it's programmed uh come back to us with any uh adjustments you need the same uh with board

170members and anyone else in the community who's interested in giving input to our community our committee rather about the survey just uh send us an email you can send it to board i'll watch uh what we get and if there's a question about the link i'll be sure and send you a copy of the link and you're welcome to give us feedback we only want a survey that is useful uh so with that that is the current status discussion um thanks peter and thank you for giving me a little gold star sort of thing um anyway um i just want to find out like the committee after our last meeting like did you guys discuss the survey and come up with a game plan vis-a-vis timing or you know kind of what what was the

171thinking of the group you know based on the feedback and where we're going to go with it from here we have not met uh we were waiting to see what kind of feedback we got uh other than what was said and your note uh we didn't get a lot um then the ptac came in uh so with everything that else was going on on the board cut took that in made adjustments in the program i think what we're looking for now is for people to see it live and living color and to take that input and then i'm going to schedule another meeting of our committee based upon uh what comes back because this is we're only advisory to the board this thing runs at the rate and pace that the board meets so uh

172it's um slow right just just to get a sense of what we're thinking in terms of when it would go out because now we've kind of you know obviously you have to do it right doing it fast and wrong isn't the right answer so it'd be to be the panorama survey you know back to survey fatigue to people if there was any thoughts the governor at this point is how frequently this the board of education meets because if you'll recall uh we had talked about being on a schedule to get in the field and uh and have the committee really drive that on behalf of the board but um as we've been reminded in recent meetings we're only advisory to the board so it's gonna run at the rate and pace that the board um

173takes it up and uh schedules it i i i don't know the calendar maybe someone can remind me when is the next time the full board meets june 3rd june 3rd so this won't get taken up again until june 3rd unless the board uh wants to give us instructions otherwise uh offline um you know now you're in summer and what have you and you know it's now running it's the as they as they say in project planning the critical path item the limiter is the meeting schedule of the board so that's where we are okay well thank you very much for uh for building it it'll be a lot easier to uh to see and feel and touch and give you more feedback but you know the feedback i sent you by email was the

174same as the feedback i shared at the meeting so you you've got it miss hersh oh uh just as an update um since we haven't had a chance to meet or discuss i did just get information at the very end of last week from dr jones um as to the sample questions that are going to be used for the panorama survey and i responded with some questions and comments and i you know was waiting for that uh to be able to give it to our committee uh so to just to address the questions on communications to families uh they are specifically and well covered in the sample questions already uh provided through the panorama survey all right i guess we're going to move on so our last discussion item is actually the superintendent evaluations give

175me one moment so the board met with dr jones last week in executive session for the purpose of conducting an evaluation of her efforts for the 2020-2021 school year dr jones continues to evidence professionalism with her calm cool and collected demeanor even the face of adversity and the 2020 2021 school year certainly presented its share of challenges throughout all you have been focused on the students any discussion around this year must start with the response to covid in the return to school the lessons of last spring and summer school certainly guided dr jones in the district in developing a plan and ensuring regular communication with the board and the community throughout the process you took our feedback and criticism from from last year on wanting live learning and better remote learning and responded you kept

176us informed as the state guidance regularly shifted you held multiple forms with the parents to allay fears and explain options you were accessible you listened and you were responsive to our needs that we were able to begin the year with full in-person options for elementary and middle school and a hybrid model for the high school while also running a parallel remote school is a testament to the work of dr jones and her entire team as well as the teachers and staff through your leadership you achieved what others couldn't the reopening work done in greenwich has been the envy and model for other districts in the state and country the community the parents especially the working parents and the students thank you your positive attitude and diligence meant that every problem was addressed and that you

177were willing to lead the staff to a place where we could best serve students beyond the academics you have supported the social emotional learning aspect for students at a time when that is needed most i know that you were looking forward to getting back into the schools to interact with students and out into the community more at the start of the next school year even with that going on you've continued to move forward by setting goals for yourself based on the priorities for the district including the selection of a new k-8 math book the rollout of the linkit tool and the new parent portal you have championed the independent external review of the special education program and remain committed to driving recommendations forward so that we may we may better serve our students and their

178families this will very clearly be a goal for 2021-2022 we asked last year for better communications and transparency and you have provided more detail to the boarding community you should continue continue to ensure that all questions are answered and that the district follows up on board requests in a timely manner you've made difficult choices and changes and shouldn't be afraid to make further changes as needed however now that you've had two years in the district and have put a structure in place through your hiring and staffing decisions you must really start to delegate more this will provide you the opportunity to focus on more strategic issues and ensure that staff is executing as we discussed please continue full speed ahead with the ongoing curriculum work to make sure that it is visible to parents implemented

179consistently across the district and the teachers have appropriate tools to use we discussed a renewed focus to drive achievement especially developing an action plan to close the achievement gap we also covered the need for continued discussions around the aop program you showed grace during the budget season and did not get flustered by the number of questions posed by the board or the other town bodies you and your team were lauded for providing detailed written responses and for forging strong relationships with other town departments on capital projects you and the team continue to drive forward with ensuring the processes are followed as you close out prior year projects it was pointed out that you never leave a meeting with the state and epa on remediation at the western middle school without ensuring that the next meeting

180is scheduled so to keep that process moving the rtm was interested in more information on capital projects and you and your team responded by creating a quarterly report in addition to the information you already provide to the board monthly overall you have helped create a culture by having a plan and then implementing that plan you stand your ground when needed and you always keep moving forward your work ethic is off the charts and you are self-motivated you clearly set the tone for those around you we thank you for your continued strong leadership and the stability that you have brought to the district with that we're going to move on to our action items uh the first action item is the ap european uh history textbook uh is there a motion on that item sure mr

181where our moves to accept the uh recommended ap european history textbook a second miss hirsch discussion dr carabillo you're gonna have to unmute and aaron's gonna have to capture you one would think i would learn uh we're very happy to present this textbook to you i do have a copy of it in my office should you like to come and peruse it it really is a fabulous textbook and i love the way that it's organized and i think that you will too the comments from the students really show that it is a book that is going to really keep them engaged you give them multiple opportunities to be as well prepared as possible for their um future endeavors in college and beyond so i hope that you will consider approving this text all right discussion

182seeing no discussion we will actually move into a vote so the motion is to approve the recommended ap us ap european history textbook uh so the roll call uh bernstein is a yes joe yes hirsch yes johnny yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes and cher peter stepped out all right well that vote is 7-0 all right thank you very much the next item is the ghs vestibule architect approval so mr walker if you want to come down and while you're doing that miss downey i believe you have a motion for us yes um having served on both the feasibility committee and on now on the building committee i'd like to make a we'd like to make a motion to approve silver petrochelli and associates as the architects for the ghs entryway project i don't

183know if we're going in vestibule or entryway thank you i'll second that mr walco uh good evening um superintendent mr chairman board of education members um i'll be brief we uh we've been meeting with the building committee for a couple months now a little bump in the road with respect to architects in the selection we went out to bid the initial time and received only one submission that was qualified we had to go out again and we received four qualified architect submissions um and they ranged quite frankly in cost and in scope we ended up interviewing all four we then um took out the uh one architect that just didn't seemingly meet our needs and we ended up with uh three that were sort of in contention and then ranked we ended up selecting silver

184petrocelli which is the architect that the feasibility group had also selected we were comfortable with all of the three that we ranked and um and so with that submission uh we certainly can hit the ground running once uh uh the vote takes place here today um i will say from a from a sort of trying to always improve the process i think the board of ed should really look into the process between visibility study group and then building committee group if you if the building committee becomes effectively as a continuation of many of the feasibility group individuals and you're interviewing those same architects unless that architect has stumbled tremendously in the feasibility study the sense is that they have a leg up they know the project they have drawings and i'm not going to say

185that it creates an unfair advantage but certainly in the mindset of many of the committee members i think it's just natural to assume if you voted for this particular architect previously you're going to vote for that architect again um and so i just think someone should look at that uh because quite frankly it's a process that takes time take energy not only from the board of ed purchasing department but from building committees and um and it's something that we might want to try to improve upon i don't necessarily have any answers for you tonight but that's something that um maybe should be discussed so with that uh i would recommend to you uh the silver petrocelli they also you should note that they were the lowest bidder um on this about 2.7 million dollar project

186mr cher um was it unanimous to pick them it was not um the vote i mean the ultimate vote was unanimous the ultimate vote was unanimous the rankings were not um i think there's a couple of architects on the committee one oh there's only one okay how did he vote i believe well again the united it was unanimous vote to vote for them the ranking i believe he in fact picked this one as one number one okay one being the highest the highest so the ranking was one for your highest so it's the lowest vote getter okay and just that seven of nine of us had them as first choice okay okay so i can't remember who were the two who didn't it doesn't really matter i'm i'm more interested in the people who are

187no offense to anybody on that committee the people are kind of the experts in the room and who do that right so in their view so but i got it thank you fair enough it's just so you know the the part of the process was we had asked that one member to develop the list of questions to ask the architects to that very point of relying on him more than anyone else who's lay people and we had people who were non-voting members who had input as well from the building department and steve i know you said you had no answers but i find it quite interesting no suggestions for improvement i find it quite interesting the feasibility studies architect having an advantage having worked on the project how to separate him or her from the

188opportunity to get the final job you can't deny them the opportunity to participate i mean it's it's an interesting suggestion and it makes a lot of sense but they do have an advantage um but i have to certainly think it through it's certainly thought provoking is there any anything you thought of that might be a solution to that no part part of the issue is that the charter requires not only the building committee to recommend the architect but then the board of ed to select the architect so you have a system where maybe maybe the delay is naturally built in and maybe it's good to have that check and balance um but there's also the sense that if you're an architect bidding for it and you know an architect has already been on the site

189and developing the feasibility group's input it's it it's just harder hi steve you might remember me we were on the building committee for new lebanon together and i would like to remind you that we did not select the architect that worked on the feasibility committee they did submit but we actually chose a very different firm which had a very different proposal so i hear your point on on the process stuff but in that instance we clearly went in a different direction so you know i guess it works both ways right they get the knowledge but it doesn't mean they're always going to to get the win for sure but here i i think silver petrol seller did a nice job on the feasibility uh clearly your committee made a uh you know made a decision

190and i see no reason why we wouldn't support that so and just so you know just to give you an update because i don't i really get to come before you in terms of updates on these projects the goal really is to to obviously not build a very safe secure entrance way also to define the front entrance of the building which really doesn't have a front entrance but it's also to do it in a time frame when we're not impacting the school year so we're really trying to pay attention to do we front end this and try to impact a a spring semester where you're getting out or is it going to impact the fall semester when kids are coming back especially being the front entrance so we're we're trying to when we know we're

191not going to be able to complete a project in one summer so it's going to impact a school year we'll we'll let you know and and let the school know how that's going to impact it all right thank you just for the board before we vote on this the next step is the committee is going to go off with the architect if we approve it they will work on a design they will have to come back to the board per the charter with the design and we have an opportunity to to uh to vote on that design and at that point i'm presuming you'll update us as to the schedule anticipated scheduling correct which would include all of the town processes and procedures and there's no trees in the front of the high school for

192this project that is correct all right the motion on the table is to approve silver petrocelli as the architect for the greenwich high school entryway project taking a roll call vote bernstein is a yes yes hirsch yes johnny yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes cher yes eight zero thank you very much to the committee uh congratulations on getting an architect and we look forward to having you back soon great thanks all right then the next item is to set the 2021 2022 superintendent salary and contributor consider a contract extension i think we're going to take this separately i recognize ms stowe yes i'd like to make them separate motions so the first motion is to approve a 2 salary increase for the superintendent of schools for the period july 1 2021 to june 30

1932022 from 236 thousand six hundred forty dollars to two hundred forty one thousand three hundred and seventy two dollars and eighty cents is there a second for that ms hirsch discussion mr um i mean i think this is a no-brainer frankly tony took a zero last year uh two percent to me seems more than reasonable it's in the budget it's what the rest of the cabinet is getting i believe it's in line with the town employees and um like i said i think i think you should get at least this so thank you yes the bet met on monday night they voted a two percent increase for the town management employees other discussion all right hearing none um okay so uh the vote is to increase the superintendent's salary uh for the next year by

194two next school year by two percent bernstein is a yes joe yes hirsch yes downey yes kelly yes kowalski yes olsen yes and share yes okay that passes eight zero i'll turn it back to you misto i have a i just want to interject firm for just a brief moment but i have i am not quite sure of the language of the motion and if it was in the paperwork i apologize for not having in front of me but i have a a couple of things that i'd like to address and i don't know from a we we need the motion on the table unless it's around the salary we'll take the motion first and then we'll get to discussion i'd like to move to amend the contract between the board of education and superintendent

195dr tony jones to extend the term through june 30 2024 and authorize the board chairperson to execute the amendment to the contract i'll go ahead and second that motion mr discussion yeah let me just give you a little background here under the provisions of paragraph 3b of the contract prior to the end of the second year of this three-year agreement the year that we're currently in the board shall vote for a new agreement dr jones requested we extend her contract for an additional two years making it again a three-year agreement on may 13th the board met an executive session to discuss the superintendent's contract as allowed under the connecticut freedom of information law no votes were taken in an executive session the current contract with the superintendent currently runs through june 30 2022 thus this

196would be a two-year extension to the contract and have it run through june 30 2024 by law superintendent's contracts can only run for three years and three years seems to be market a two-year extension would show our support for dr jones provide stability and recognize the positive contribution that tony has had on the district since starting in july 2019. i won't repeat all that peter said in the evaluation earlier but i have to say that i was very lucky to lead the search for dr jones a couple of years ago and she has by far exceeded my ex