May 20, 2021 Board of Education Special Meeting

001thank you uh the first item on our agenda is the consent agenders there a motion to accept the consent agenda Ms Downey is there a second Miss Stowe all right so we're going to take a roll call vote uh Bernstein is a yes though yes yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Megan yes thank you hey that worked fantastic uh and Mr chair is not in the room and I don't see him 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 nadell take it away thank you superintendent district leaders and members of the Board of Education we are pleased to have the opportunity this evening

002to honor Greenwich High School senior and soon to be graduate of the class of 2021 Mr Collins speaker Collins 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 ledeen oh good evening uh chairman Burger King superintendent Jones members of the

004Board of Education it's my pleasure tonight to uh announce the 12 uh All-State athletes that we had uh this year in the in our winter season but before I announce 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 Colin for an honor to all of us um our basketball state our our athletic director 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

005uh and Gus he's an amazing athletic director and I wanted to introduce him tonight so he could introduce the athletes but uh uh like I said he is committed to uh our teams and their their games right now here I go uh Ball State cheerleading uh Avery Banks Carissa generally and Alexander Corral All State cheerleading All-State boys hockey team Charlie zolin Charlie zolin All State Boys Hockey All-State boys swimming and Diving uh Ryan G Aiden bukeria James Pascal Nicholas malchow Whitaker Grover and Alex plevucus and finally our Allstate ski team Sophia bastic and Matthew siska congratulations to our Allstate uh honorees thank you Mr Bernstein foreign good evening I hope you can hear me uh you're good okay great uh good evening everyone each year more than well several thousand vocalists and instrumentalists from every

006public and private high school in Connecticut auditioned for the four All-State performing groups those are banned chorus Orchestra and Jazz Band this is a two-stage process with a first round of auditions in November in a second round in February do the 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 a 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

007strong K-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 Berry Amani chibana ccj Schuyler McDonald Iris she shuna and Harrison wolf we had 22 students from the chorus selected for the All-State Chorus those students are Charles adorni Lucy Bay Gregory

008bound Michaela Browning Grace Collier Nathaniel Ellis Darion fauser Michelle Ferrone Daryl Ferno Jackson Gales ronit Gupta Brook Haddon Neha ire Alexis Killeen Laura kushuras Brynn cummel Gabriella Mendoza Esther Shaw Isaiah's own Utah Takahashi Jacob Winston and Zion and finally seven members of our Orchestra were selected Lucy Bay Melissa Byrum Alyssa Fang Benjamin gruenbaum Eureka Sakai Anna wixner and Heather zitzman congratulations to one and all [Applause] thank you Mr Jones uh thank you to the board um after winning his 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 senior Sam Florence perfect score senior captains Irish XI and Sam Florin did a remarkable job guiding the

009team through this difficult year by many thanks to them by 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 Irish she Stephen blank Stephanie Chang Jason zong Brandon you Eric Drews and Alan shu thank you [Applause] students are amazing about that I'll tell you my son's probably watching it I'm very disappointed because he's coming to the high school next year and you won't be there 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

010public hearing first we're going to go to our ghs TV 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

011activities and food trucks will be set up around 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 classes 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

012community and I will now turn the mic over to our student body president Mark Chen good evening chairman Bernstein Dr Jones members of the board cabinet and meeting attendees my name is Mark Chen student body president at Greenwich High School 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 phenomenal year with him as part of our team and as far as 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

013make their debut at the next Board of 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

014over a year the energy is completely different and my classes are full of wondrous conversation in life there's 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 with or have 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

015grateful for all the work 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 [Applause] 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 all right next up is the uh Gea comments so Carol Sutton evening board members Dr Jones hang on one second Carol set up for you okay all right Carol you should be good good evening board

016members Dr Jones cabinet and members of the Grand National community my name is congratulations to this evening's 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 deserves we also appreciate that the district

017is 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 boa to use whatever means necessary to bring needed change to Julian Curtis OG Riverside Western and also have a Meyer 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 is are remote options for Greenwich students in the fall teachers do not want the next

018normal to rely on live streaming while dual teaching a remote and in-person student 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 5th 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 and processes that help

019us 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 thank you Council Brian Paul Dennis good evening I am Brian peltonis president of PTA Council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of all of their members PTA Council congratulates all of the honorees this evening

020the breadth of the area is 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 and vigorous in our follow-up we continue

021to recognize the difficult environment in which we operate however we asked 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 6th 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 2122 school year second we continue to emphasize that the desirability of placing additional updated or corrected information requested by the board of education on the district website and the location is easily

022accessible 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 or to make progress prior to the

023election 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 Speaker gets three minutes okay all right all right try now okay so each speaker is going to get three minutes to speak uh we would ask for nothing inappropriate uh if we

024if we have to give you a warning once and 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 uh we ask you we ask you to act with civility per our policy uh 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 of what those ramifications are you should probably consult with somebody not us so again please be civil that's all we ask uh and with that we're going to start our public comments and you'll get a warning

025at 30 seconds so the first speaker is Jackie Homan thank you Jack hacking oh 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 mask 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

026teacher who shared a chart that depicted 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 might add despite the fact their actions directly cause a flare-up of his medical condition I've complained about the teaching style in math where students don't face the teacher inside the room rather the teacher faces the students backs while she conducts class over Zoom carefully monitoring the students activities as if they're taking part

027in an orwellian experiment I raised an issue with the principal after an English teacher played a video from a series called feminist Fridays that discuss 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 planned 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

028yet I received no response when my son received racially charged sexually illicit 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 that they can see what they think and you know what happened that 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 explained the troubling pattern the hypocrisy of censoring 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

029a large and growing group of people in our 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 time [Applause] all right the next speaker is Jane Anderson foreign not seeing change if you could raise your hand if you're online okay we're gonna move on the next speaker is Francis nobe can you hear me hang on one second Francis all right Francis yep Ready yep good evening Greenwich Board of Education this

030is Francisco nobe co-chair PTAC Greenwich remote school special committee representing the 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

031test with self-affirmations I am a math person I am great 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-5 remote Learners enjoyed virtual assemblies and curriculum Link 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 Anila 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

032just five weeks of school I'm truly amazed that we have made it this far with smiles and successes our remote School of 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 health thank you also to Brian paldunis 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 all right um hello everyone uh firstly I just want to say thank you I know this isn't an easy job I was an education myself and I know that these are unpaid positions and and it's not that I'm not appreciative number two I want

033to 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 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 coveted vaccines are experimental there is no way of knowing what those short and

034long-term effects will be the responsibility and accountability of Public Health does not fall on experimenting with the healthy developing bodies of children 78 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 the statistic honestly when would that kind of logic end when would the logic of experimenting on healthy children and then well 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 we can even find

035scientists 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 did not belong to the state not to the CDC not to who not to nhi our children's bodies do not belong to hurt 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 ailments 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 and citizens and are

036not 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 covid 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 [Applause] thank you the next speaker is Cara Philbin Kara foben [Music] Joyce when do I start okay the goal of Greenwich public schools and the Boe

037needs 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 High hold in the highest regard for consistently and reasonably advocating for stronger education for all told me many years ago that every year the children learn less and less in my 10 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 voices silenced GPS is always trying to Pioneer the next big Trend Green Schools or code for technology instead of paper personalized learning learning

038by 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 and 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 replacing a poor math with free Eureka engage math borrowed from New York State who after investing Millions enter 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 keywords delay and deny forget the miseducation of the American boy this is the miseducation

039of the Greenwich Public Schools administrators asked to read problematic views that discourage solution building in 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's upstairs and tying her to a bed a necklace made out of tongues extensive graphic descriptions of death ninth naked breasts young old conservative recently raped big small or mutilated genital or enhanced genitals and especially rotting naked dead bodies and tense women being gagged by a penis her mascara mixed with tears girls that need to be raped again and the first time I ever saw well I'll let

040them learn that on their own while district is ignoring pornographic curriculum just censor board members and facilitating unapproved by the FDA emergency used authorized jobs and covet 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 Boe PTAC 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 or text Bots and thoughtfully selected and pre-approved learning materials and stop wasting money on indoctrination and Technology like securely which asks teachers to stop you can submit the remainder of your

041comments 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 can raise your hand or you're in person all right great come on down we're good 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 where their 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 for in-person learning in addition and just as important we

042were concerned to hear statements from the Connecticut Teachers Union where they only mentioned the safety of the teachers and rarely if ever mention the word student in 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 20 21 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 peers my husband and I really hope that

043she 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-grant 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 had significant free and reduced lunch population during

044that 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 a 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 memory districts in the state in conclusion I hope that the same level of cooperation will occur among the district the Boe the ptas

045and 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 mcquigan 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 in the industry I urge all members of

046the 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 it during Dr Jones's 22-month tenure we have

047also 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 schools shuttered on March 11 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 was left behind Greenwich was a leader in

048the 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 springs continue to 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 priority should be to

049get them back to their home school as expeditiously as possible thank you [Applause] 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 in that room

050principal Ralph Mayo our group Greenwich High School teachers and staff for keeping our kids safe and in school congratulations to senior Colin speaker who was awarded the United States presidential scholar it is a truly remarkable and an extraordinary achievement we also would like to congratulate our winter Allstate student athletes our All-State musicians and 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 all of our

051student 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 change My 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 of those districts

052were 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 execute it 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 foreign if you're online if you could raise your hand the she won't be speaking we're just covered it

053thank you okay thank you very much all right 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 our schools let's not so easily abandon the wisdom

054of 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 Boe the Boe needs teacher parent and student feedback before renewing her three-year contract where is the survey from the community this board should not be determining the superintendent as three Boe members

055are 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 [Applause] thank you 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 in Greenwich critical race theory is an ideology predicated on

056the idea that American society was founded on racism not Liberty there's nothing more than repackaged Market Marxist Orthodoxy classical Marxism describes society's 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 country and its Western judeo-christian values the only thing that has changed is

057their 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 conferred on Mankind we 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 like Dr King to create a colorblind Society based on the enlightenment principles of

058Liberty 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 of 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 about the injustices amid the real progress that has been made and the blood

059has 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 it holds shorter along thank you for your time [Applause] all right let's move on please one meeting ahead of us Greg piccanino hi I'm Greg Pacino I have prepared comments but two things I would like to say is I was educated in the United States I know how great this country is I know I was taught that Marxism was

060bad I thought May 1st was commy 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 thank you I be respectful I didn't boo anybody so I'm Greg patronino 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 been perplexed at the revolving door of superintendents and here we are tonight once again

061attacking our latest superintendent Dr Jones full disclosure when the opening arose I lobbied the board of education for Mr mail 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 and 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 coven response that's not all she's done she worked with special education families conducted an independent audit of the program is making changes she cut three million dollars overnight from the budget

062as 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 get a handle on curriculum when they're busy dealing with our Town's processes when covet closes 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 Grant 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 an uproar about some inappropriate materials shown in class and while not defending the Lord video

063I'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 are 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 policy thank you very much [Applause] 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 uh hello all right we got you whenever you're ready all right good evening chairman Bernstein Dr Jones and members

064of the Board of Education my name is Ethan Cooper and I'm an 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 you when asked what emotions these students had experienced the most over the past year 64 reported sadness as the

065dominant emotion 47 reported a decline in their personal mental health over the past year while only 8 percent reported the opposite yet only 18 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 as a sign of Bravery in contrast expressing the pain you feel inside is a form of weakness until the stigma is

066broken and until more than 18 percent of students are 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 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 shamelessly this can only be done together thank you very much important to hear from students and this is a very important

067topic for you so we appreciate your comments all right next up is Carrie huxtah 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 I can when the Board of Ed asked Dr Jones for a copy of the assignment why was it altered from the original copy given to students why was this survey only given

068in 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 important topics without politicizing it and without making students feel bad about themselves if the district would simply provide transparency much of

069this 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 our students going to compete with others who attend private schools down the road who are learning the map of the United States cursive 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 divide our students abilities the world has passed us by for years on math and we are now letting it happen with

070English 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 where 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 O'Neill 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 of 46 years I've been associated with the Greenwich Public Schools as teacher administrator member of the board of education for

071eight 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 Fleischmann 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 the 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 our many accomplishments Dr Jones initiated a long overdue sped report demonstrated support for the AL program address the need for social workers in our elementary schools and Revitalize the summer school program she also closed

072out 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 saved 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 covet 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 no superintendent can initiate sustain initiate sustainable change in one term systemic change requires time to evaluate what is in

073place 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 in 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 Laborde Anna give us a second she's on can you hear me ready to go can you hear me yes good evening my name is Anna

074Laborde and I along with Jessica and Wright polanish 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 K through 12. our need for consistency in that curriculum within grades and across school buildings our belief that Greenwich has and can continue to offer an excellent academic experience for all students given that we

075work 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 best of their ability as a PTAC committee it is our understanding and hope that Mr D'Amico and superintendent Jones

076also 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 PTAC 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 working collaboratively to make our curriculum a priority particularly in its Financial Planning and support of consistent leadership in GPS

077thank you very much [Applause] thank you the next speaker is Megan galletta 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 learning levels I am speaking today regarding my deep concern about the dramatic shift our district has taken over the past two

078years 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 pushes divisiveness in very sneaky and misleading ways we the informed parents of Greenwich want this to stop immediately curriculum should be

079transparent 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 consistently positioned all of the experimental vaccines still under eua as approved which is completely misleading and has been communicated to the

080Beast 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 at implications if something potentially harmful happened to a student on school property thank you thank you we're trying to get everybody in if if we can't get everybody in we'll have to extend the comments to the end of the meeting so please be respectful [Applause] all right next up Jessica Maloney all right Jessica give us ready to go Jess Jessica you hear me yes oh your name I'm addressing you

081today due to 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 15 was based on about six months of safety data and a severely underpowered study with less than 25 2 500 participants emergency youth authorization allows

082the 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 a 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 covet 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 99.998 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 the list of possible side effects is along since the shots have not been proven to prevent the contraction or transmission of covid and since

083there 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 covid-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 are 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

084from the public schools please reconsider using the the middle schools as vaccination clinics in the upcoming weeks thank you [Applause] thank you next speaker is Marla beer hi I'm here one second okay all set okay I come to you tonight as a 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 for timing for Greenwich Middle School specifically in grades seven and eight we repeatedly voiced our growing concerns about our daughter's lack of progress these concerns were reinforced by our daughter's history of load testing scores on each state mandated assessment since elementary school for inability to complete homework necessity to take tests and quizzes over projected periods of time

085and 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 she completed grade six on a grade level but due to inefficient specialist support has in fact regressed significantly in addition just this past year our daughter special had instructional hours were lowered by two-thirds from 13.12

086to 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 is 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 not require being in a specialized School change in her specific deficiencies as parents it's devastating to think that GPS will have denied our

087daughter the opportunity for higher level college education and success is a productive adult our 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 her on to Greenwich High to effectively make her their problem we are pleading with you to please create transparency and partner with families to find outplacements when GPS cannot service a student I promise you this fourth right approach will alleviate the countless issues surrounding our special education program Respectfully yours thank you forward members know we've got five more speakers I think we ought to take them home before we close this out and the next speaker is Allison buck Allison if you're online could you raise

088your hand Allison 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 foreign 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 and graphic nature of topics is absolutely not suitable to be taught in school here are some examples my

089apologies 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 leadership issues starting tomorrow please provide materials to parents three months in advance he has leadership who chooses to

090allow 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 darianne 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 to give homework if necessary this year no midterms or finals would like to move on the next speaker is Ken shallcross and 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 much thank you for your time but I just want to acquire requirements don't know why but I want to reiterate

091it is not happening in the Greenwich Public Schools thank you thank you uh foreign just hold on one minute and we'll get you uh on on the microphone okay foreign into next year um oh I'm sorry it's not working yeah can folks online hear Dr Jones we closed yes we'd ask for them to be recognized earlier um sorry 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 have 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

092Mass guidance that was after so I need to keep going right um so they did Issue Universal mask guidance today from the state of Connecticut Department of Education and they are saying that the current rule requiring Universal mask will stay in place uh for at this time and um 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 and people are 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

093funding 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 up 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 watching 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

094a 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 Brunson okay thank you very much all right next up is the reports of officers committees and Liaisons Mr share uh Dr Jones thank you for the update I had a couple questions about um things in your report one was I was unclear from the state is it guidance or is it a rule I mean you get I kept hearing the word guidance so I didn't know if it's a

095mandate 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 Advanced 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 and then down on the bottom again it's in bold therefore the current Rule and it is a rule requiring Universal mask wearing for all individuals in all school buildings will remain in place at this time excuse me I'd have one more piece they do have a section about outside and we're going to review that tomorrow to see if maybe during recess and some

096areas like that we might be able to be a little bit looser but again that this came today okay so and what were the exceptions well if a student has like a health 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 a these vaccine clinics um I guess I have a couple questions um why did why do we have family why did we invite family centers into 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

097one at each school and it is a service to our families that want to take advantage of that service and again a lot of our staff were at Brunswick they're 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 question correctly um because I I understood our staff was long ago vaccinated because we set up uh 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 it first

098came out at the general public it wasn't available so I know our staff was long ago uh available I guess these Clinic these clinics gone in recently when did they go in we only we are only hosting one Clinic oh we did the high school today we will have one at each middle school and again that's 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 o'clock and we have families that you know they don't have a car they can't just drive to a clinic there they 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

099assistance okay are they um are we going to do any more are you planning any more of these um not at this time no but we'll have everybody the 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 anymore definitely between now and the end of the year uh okay thank you go ahead Joe I have 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

100vaccine 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 um and certainly they again they've utilized schools this entire vaccine process um so we believe it is a benefit to our families that want to take advantage thank you and I have a follow-up question uh do uh the other schools outside our district uh darianne New Canaan there was some reference made to those that 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

101um at our 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 or are there any members that have anything to report misto just to provide a little follow-up to um Dr Jones pointing out about the nine and a half million um that the American Rescue plan is um thankfully giving to Greenwich Public Schools we are taking it up as a budget committee next Wednesday morning so we could start working with the administration on Gathering community and staff input and obviously that'll 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

102I usually like uh 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 uh the foundations are in uh they're uh 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 end of June unfortunately we have some bad news uh well the bad news is kind of devastating at this point we're just trying to digest it now uh 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

103uh 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 architecture review board uh Planning and Zoning uh the selectman 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 uh of this uh uh this project we also had public hearings uh lots of articles in the newspapers we had votes in the uh Board of Education about about this project uh we then after all these meetings we got the approvals that the town requires us to get uh all the permits we have our building permit we have the permit to build and do everything this Project's needed that the town required

104us to have uh once we had that done we began work on the project uh shortly after beginning work uh 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 he showed up now along the process uh no one's uh in Planning and Zoning or uh DPW or any of the other Town agencies that we worked with ever mentioned uh that we needed uh to have a discussion with the tree guy uh tree Warden actually we I with the architecture review group we went over the different Landscaping changes the trees we were going to plant the trees we had to

105remove uh and uh we clearly went over that we had our Engineers our landscape design guys meet with the architecture review they change 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 uh 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 uh don't get me wrong in that sense but uh but basically let me try to make it clear about the trees that uh we uh we're required to take down but he's told us we can't and I'll break them up into make a very simple

106it'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 we're 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 the Cardinal Stadium right off Route One there are two and they are beautiful sycamore trees there's a pair of 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

107the fire department for emergency vehicles we have no other alternative the tree uh 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 could 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 it because we cannot make sure the thousands of people that are in Cardinal Stadium are safe so therefore we cannot open Cardinal Stadium we can build it but we could not open it because the tree

108guy tree Warden has told us we have to we cannot remove those trees second we have the Ada parking issue uh we uh uh we have mapped out a place where uh the Ada parking is meant to be it's about 17 spots where 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 studies boreholes uh uh the engineers uh the town DPW 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

109now we create a 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 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 landscape design people with the engineers for the drainage with the architect himself it cost us those three meanings cost approximately ten thousand dollars in adjustments of taxpayer money in order to convince the tree Warden that these trees had to be

110removed 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 carrying 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 could not 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 within 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

111advocate for us to be able to make or take down these trees superseding the author party 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 oh half that call for an emergency hopefully a zoom meeting to a vote on this but we have 10 days after the uh the ruling was made by the tree Warden that that Brewing was made four days ago so we have six more days we have a meeting with

112uh the town of Greenwich planting 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 uh so basically we're going to make an appeal uh I feel very confident we're going to win that appeal but according to Tom hagney our land use attorney uh he says 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 there'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

113trees in our architectural 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 this 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 uh peep disabled people being able to come to a game with dignity not 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

114as a coach uh 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 go back with whoever helped him in the seat in the first place we'd take them down and try to do it with as much dignity as possible here we have a stadium with ramps elevators we have a Ada parking we have all that stuff available that we've been dying to have for

115a long time who hasn't had a uh a mother sister 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 but I'm being told by uh by sensible people that uh I probably should didn't do that uh people have also contacted me and said Hey Joe you mind if I show up in the middle of night with a chainsaw and I said you know what please don't and you know what I'm I'm serious if anyone has an idea out there don't do that because these trees are

116tall 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 uh I'm going to end with that but I'm going to come back to a second issue that's passionate thank you thank you Joe did you have another report Mr Kelly did you have another report yes buy up yeah go ahead oh that was quick thank you um the we we 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

117and Route One uh that 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 a beautifying waterfalls on that corner will be funded by uh by public by private money not public money money will 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 the members of that committee and we'll talk about how we're going to form that and what we need to do moving forward all right thank you any other uh board committees Liaisons thank you um I

118wanted to give an update on seaac um so ciac held their first annual meeting last night during the meeting they received ciac is a special education advisory committee they held their first annual meeting last night and during that meeting they received an update on the Esser 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 have that presented to the board and the public and they went over member terms and held an election for the new executive committee and officers with that in mind I would really like to thank Caroline lyram CX outgoing chair for her dedication advocacy and focus this year she's done an outstanding job to help

119shape siac I'd also like to welcome Don Zimmerman the new chair of siac I know she will continue to help ciac move forward I'd also like to thank the departing members of ciac and the other outgoing members of the executive committee Vice chair Jennifer katai 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 CIA can continue to build upon in the years to come and I know that we will have a lot to work on uh next year so I want to thank all of the continuing and incoming members uh some of which who have not been selected yet for for all their dedication and advocacy uh for

120the special education Community thank you thank you Aaron if we could set up the computer Megan if you give us one second we'll uh we'll get you set up all right Megan let's give this a shot all right thank you um two quick reports one of them I get a lot of feedback okay uh the distinguished teachers awards committee header I mean I think 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 the years teachers and Educators were recognized which was which went without went off without a hitch and was um was really a great thing to be a part of um secondly I just want to share some highlights from the Greenwich Alliance who continue Alliance For Education who'll

121continue 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 their they finished their first year and um there's a recital video in the works nearly 70 students received Free instrumental music lessons which is which is really amazing um what's being in 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 will be awarded to six grants of those grants those six grants include the Western Middle School Unbound Innovations New Lebanon Theater Arts having my 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

122the French Alliance um helping helping fund these um helping to fund this uh also they knewarnish alliance's newest initiative is called Avid success has many events planned over the next six weeks so board members in 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 fornias if you have if you need any more details [Music] great thank you Megan all right with that we're going to move on to our discussion item the first item is summer school Dr carabillo and you need to unmute 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 Board of Ed members and

123attendees the Greenwich public summer school program begins on July 6th and will end on August 6 2021. pre-k through eight students who qualify 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 or 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 the 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

124will attend from 8 to 11. esy students will attend until one 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 map acceleration and math courses science English for English language students level one and two and computer arts will be held in person at Central Middle School the remainder of the courses will be remote the um um let's see what else was uh just lost my notes there are some new courses added to the course selection this year for secondary computer art introduction to computer programming a or

125b 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 uh still like last summer the enumeracy for K to five correct and then Credit Recovery 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 they need some 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

126scores 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 or any questions who's Downey um I just have a question about when you said some um of the 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 Oliver said why we're doing things remote uh 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

127that those two areas two content areas have to be in person some of our courses for math are really very intricate and in watching them online last year I visited all of the classrooms it was really imperative that students had 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've made those types of decisions as to which courses should be 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 uh remotely we will make arrangements thank you all right mister I want

128to say thank you Mr chair 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 Breakout by uh grade in School um I will check with Jen Lau yeah yeah what we've gotten summer school reports before so we get an understanding of where the kids are and where the program is going to be located and it gives us an idea of uh how effective it'll be based on prior performance that'll be in the report and um on that that would be helpful yep um you can send it to us through uh Dr Jones I would though note the summer school report we usually get is in the fall so but I understand that but you

129know in this circumstance we've got a changing program so I'd like to understand who we invited and and what were planning so if you could just follow that up that would be great missed calls um I think this question may be more in line for Dr Jones but um given Miss carabella'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 as normal is that how we're proceeding going forward no not necessarily right now we have a survey out to our parents K-5 especially because we're still just so I think we're just under 400 students right

130now 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 it right now because if they don't if there's no vaccination in K5 the requirements from the Connecticut Department of Health may be different for K-5 than they are 6 12. um 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 they 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

131accommodate 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 Caribou yes I don't know why I'm echoing like that but yes we are going to be very flexible for families and students definitely us sorry I'm back to uh being flexible I'm sorry so we are going to be flexible for families and uh make 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

132you know I knew you were talking about looking at the growth that students will show in the fall but I do want to make sure that you know in the past prior to covid our summer school uh had four hours at least per day per course uh and the school was at least five weeks long summer school program was five weeks long um and I know 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 of these courses do you feel that uh we'll be able to get through if if you're looking at an accelerated course uh the proper amount of time for that curriculum for students to be able to access the material to be able to move forward

133for the next year if if they meet their uh benchmarks there will be 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 we feel that that's enough time to be able to address 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

134be or remotely unless the parents feel that they want them to be remote the still attend the literacy and new Mercy 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 work okay so I guess the timing might need to be adjusted because you said a 9 to 11 and 11 to 1 but final question registration begins tomorrow 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 invited students and I think if you turn down

135your speaker a little bit that should alleviate the problem who have been invited they are the only students in the esy students Summer Schools 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 register parents Pre-K eight 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 forgotten one other question I think at one point we discussed that there was going to be summer school and neighborhood schools Dr calabillo or was a decision I mean I just remember

136there was discussion about that or the decision is now that everyone's going to be at Glendale 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 Julian Curtis program administrator have been invited to our Greenwich Public Schools summer school if they qualify for the additional learning time and that's going to confuse everyone so basically what you're saying the 900 you're inviting is in addition to who was invited red Western and a Julian Curtis is that correct correct I think you know to follow up to Mr sure's question I think we'd

137like that data of information of the number of students number of students because it's a fuller picture 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 K8 pre-k-8 okay I'm sure uh I thought I was following along but obviously I wasn't now I'm thoroughly confused about this program I I knew that you would be confused with that do you have an esy program yes extended school year program it's mandated by the federal government yes we do um 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 the I the extended school year

138services and for those students in which schools and at Central Middle School Glenville and Central Middle School Central Middle School yep okay um then we have a set of students who have been invited by Greenwich Public Schools the school district to attend uh summer school particularly for needs of of remediation not for acceleration for remediation these are kids who 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

139changed how we do that I think I need Ann 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 then I don't need anything new okay um and then of course you uh classes you'll be delivering at 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 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 it the title one schools came to

140Dr Jones Mr D'Amico 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 you're saying what money so Dr Jones and Mr jamico and I said let's give it a try let's see what happens using what money we are using Esser funds when 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 this 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

141of the qualifying uses of the sr2 funds but it never came to the board uh it is I believe it is in the SR application which I believe did come to you I'm gonna have to go back and look at that meeting so now we've got now we've got a program I'm not saying it's good or it's bad but now we've got an educational inequity don't we yeah we have an educational inequity a 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

142see if that would be a better program moving forward than 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 our policy on how Pilots are managed I 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'll gladly be wrong where this program was not properly brought to the board for its review and governance and

143it'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 especially 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 the board we don't ever bring approval

144to 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 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 covid we had a new model for summer school that we discussed with the board which was literacy and numeracy and

145it 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 numeracy and it depends on how many students but um and it'll be interesting to see this year how many actually sign 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 member is one who's actually sitting in our audience at the moment 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

146looked 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 it for summer school programming I know at least elementary middle and high school but were there multiple sites we had we had three Elementary sites we had a preschool site and we had uh it was generally um uh cos Cobb 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 high school so if we had a significant portion of students that were invited and they all decided to come and then

147other 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 it sorry um that is correct and I will say just this summer planning for our sights alone was was very very challenging 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 driven by the enrollment whether or not we're going to have to go and have another site and we've already discussed for instance having to move Pre-K out of Glenville because

148that 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 pass especially for students who were invited or required to come for whatever the reasons we've all have we ever it was transportation do 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 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 repeat we do offer Hub stop transportation for summer schools and we have specialized transportation for

149aesy 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 sure I understand the way this will work this summer is that those students that 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 in Glenville and Central 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

150went 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 yeah you know because there's 11 elementary schools and how did they get dispersed throughout the schools then what is the criteria but 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 into 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

151created 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 know 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'm just repeating what I'm hearing from the administration and it bothers me a lot that um oh 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

152somebody 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 catch up we know that that's that's a national phenomena it's a global phenomenon or covet 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 it I don't let's see and 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 I'm just trying to understand I'll explain it to you I'll explain to

153you 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 those 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 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

154so 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 their 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 that 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 uh work that goes on during the summer one will be completely offline this summer as Ms Downey said we can't force teachers to work we get the

155teachers 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 with 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 to do and uh and with the uh with the issues that we've had in the past year and have thanks to covid we may get tremendous up uh uptake of the of the students so I don't know I think I'll look forward to the report in the fall and hear more about this with

156that 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 for information only because regulations don't generally come to the board of education but I felt like this one was important because it is part of the OCR um resolution that we are working on so this um 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

157do our submission to OCR but this regulation also goes 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 some 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

158policy 33510 which is about facilities and then the regulation you'll see has the r it'll be on the website right underneath policy 3510 but the submission is due uh first week in June so I just wanted the 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 or on our website in uh our board policies or et cetera um all of our policies and regulations are on our website uh under the Board of Ed

159Tab and you'll have the policies posted 3510 and then right underneath that any regulation that goes with policy three 5.3510 will have the r behind it that lets people know it's a regulation so they'll all be right there together thank you I'm sure that will help others be able to find it Miss 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 busing work for that particular student we would actually we would Supply the bus thing 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 um a need to move to an ADA

160Compliant 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 school 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 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 Brian through Brian paldunis and then last week uh got feedback from Mr Bernstein a lot of things were things that were said previously so there

161weren'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 strategy of the school district item number two was 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 other item was about uh focus of the system what we should really be prioritizing in the delivery of a

162Greenwich education and the last question was about perceptions of strengths and weaknesses of the system uh just by way of a reminder the last time we did a strategic plan survey uh we asked questions about Mission and direction we asked questions about Focus and we ask questions about strengths and weaknesses as a matter of fact most of the questions that are in the survey uh about like particularly strength and weaknesses and uh focus and direction we're pulled from the survey that was prepared by um public Consulting Group uh 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 uh written by a professional consulting firm at Great expense to

163the board that we would be smart enough as laypeople Karen Karen and Peter uh sure to uh rewrite those unfortunately we had a check on that with um uh professional uh survey people in terms of feedback uh they can probably be put in categories a question about survey length uh comments about grammar of the survey 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 um I'll come back and address that other subjects were in the feedback uh 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

164and 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 in your email box is a link we took the survey fortunately we had the input from 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 um it's set up per their roles a lot of things that were um some 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

165it you can actually run the survey it's in test mode and uh 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 the mid to high 80s they score that for you I don't know what artificial intelligence they use and uh 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 gonna still stick with 20 minutes um but I would appreciate it if board members would go look at

166that draft survey now you can see it you can see the table so on and so forth um and we've adjusted kind of now that it's programmed for proper uh survey uh standards like the likert score the the Leica scoring you can have a a Liker 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 um 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 uh I think is uh um Miss Kowalski said

167at 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 I think it's pretty clear uh by the questions we're trying to get to the answer we're not asking someone to validate the uh 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 Pelt Dennis 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 in our committee just as a way of reminder I think I said this last time but maybe I didn't communicate effectively enough uh communication is being handled in the

168Panorama 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 uh survey every question that could be asked about the district it'll just make the survey longer and it will make the survey not 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 uh you won't all be looking at the same questions not same questions the same items in a question in the same order

169we try to randomize that so the survey is there as I say it's available to be tax 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 members 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 um 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 sounds good Miss Downey um thanks Peter and

170thank 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 thinking 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 the board took that in made adjustments in the program I think what we're looking for now is for people to

171see it Live In 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 it's um slow 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 it's 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 uh the governor at this point is how frequently this the Board of Education meets because if you'll recall uh we had talked

172about 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 going to run at the rate and Pace that the board um takes it up and uh schedules it 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

173the 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 uh you know the feedback I sent you by email was the same 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 um I did just get information uh at the very end of last week from Dr Jones as to the sample questions that are going to be used for the Panorama survey and I responded uh with some questions and comments and uh you know was waiting for that uh to be able to

174give 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 gonna move on so our last discussion item is actually the superintendent evaluations give me one moment uh 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 Collective 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

175school 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 in 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 us 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

176through your leadership you achieved what others couldn't the reopening work done in Greenwich has been the nvn 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 were 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

177for the district including the selection of a new K-8 math book The rollout of the link it tool and the new Parent Portal you've 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 families this will very clearly be a goal for 2021 2022. we asked last year for better Communications and transparency and you've provided more detail to the board and Community you should 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

178through your hiring 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 consistently across the district and that 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 cover the need for continued discussions around the aop program you shared 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

179departments on capital projects you and the team continue to drive forward with ensuring that 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 is 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 provided 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

180around 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 the first action item is the AP European history textbook is there a motion on that item sure misto all right moves to accept the 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

181really 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 seeing new discussion we will actually move into a vote so the motion is to approve the recommended AP U.S AP European history textbook so the roll call uh Bernstein is a yes so yes Hirsch yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Olsen yes and share oh Peter's stepdad 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 Danny I believe you

182have a motion for us yes um having served on both the feasibility committee and I'm now on the building committee I'd like to make them we'd like to make a motion to approve silver Petrocelli and Associates as The Architects for the ghs entryway project I don't know if we're going to get vestibular 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 have to go out again and we received received four qualified architect submissions um and they ranged quite

183frankly 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 Petrocelli which is the architect that the feasibility 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 runs 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

184becomes effectively 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 um I'm not going to say that it creates an unfair Advantage but certainly in the mindset of many 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

185don'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 Mr chair um was it unanimous to pick them it was not um 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 unan it was unanimous vote to vote for them the ranking I believe he in fact picked this one as one number one okay that one being the highest so the ranking was one for your

186high so it's the lowest vote getter okay and just that seven of nine of us had them as first choice okay okay so but yeah I can't remember who were the two who didn't that doesn't really matter I'm I'm more interested in the people who are no offense to anybody on that committee the people are kind of the experts in the room and who do that right so during 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 laypeople and we had people who were non-voting members who had input as well from

187the 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 uh the feasibility studies architect having an advantage having worked on the project how to separate him or her from the opportunity to get the uh final job uh you can't deny them the opportunity to participate I mean 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 and throw it certainly thought provoking is there any opportunity anything you thought of that might be a solution to that no part of 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

188select 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 and developing the feasibility groups 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

189I 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 petrocello did a nice job on the feasibility uh clearly your committee made a uh you know made a decision and 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 rarely 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 and we're not impacting the school year so we're

190really 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 not 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 uh 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

191design 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 this 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 uh taking a roll call vote Bernstein is a yes though yes Hirsch yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Olsen yes sure yes 8-0 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

192superintendent salary and consider consider a contract extension I think we're going to take separately uh recognize Ms Joe yeah so I'd like to make them separate motions so the first motion is to approve a two percent salary increase for the superintendent of schools for the period July 1 2021 to June 30 2022 from 236 640 to 241 372.80 is there a second for that Miss Hirsch discussion that's true 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

193met 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 boat is to increase the superintendent's salary uh for the next year by two next school year by two percent Bernstein is a yes though yes yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Olsen yes and share yes okay that passes eight zero I'll turn it back to you missed out I have a I just want to interject from for just a brief moment but I have I am not quite sure if 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

194we we need the motion on the table that's around the salary we'll take the motion first and then we'll get to discussion Mr I'd like to move to amend the contract between the Board of Education and superintendent Dr 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 Ms Joe for 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 the 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

195board 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 that's this would 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 provides stability and recognize the positive contribution that Tony has had on the districts and 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 years ago and she has by far

196exceeded my expectations she's a thoughtful strong leader who aims to somehow please all the different stakeholders and that's not easy she's made some organizational changes which have reduced the overhead and put more money and focus back in the classroom which I appreciate she's accomplished so much and kept moving our school system forward while doing what many other districts are still struggling to accomplish opening their doors during covid I cannot discuss this point enough since it's important that we don't forget how many could not open for many reasons but Dr Jones listened to the community worked tirelessly with our team and us last summer and I know in speaking to parents and kids how appreciative we all are it's impossible to predict how someone will handle a pandemic but Dr Jones work ethic calmness and strength

197came through as part of her request for an extension Tony has said that she's enjoying her work in the Greenwich public schools and is looking forward to many more years to come I'm also looking forward to many more years with Tony as our superintendent further discussion Ms Kowalski did you want to speak um sure so I have in in general really three points and I've raised these with all of the fellow board members um me and in separate discussions but I do think there are a couple of things that that need to be addressed obviously we um I agree with some of the sentiments that were expressed by Mr Bernstein and Miss Stowe about uh Dr Jones and I also have some criticisms of Dr Jones and she knows them and we've had conversations about

198them um I think that moving at the speed that we are and we do still do as a board have time under uh Dr Jones's current contract but I do think that it makes prudent sense for the board to send out an anonymous survey otherwise I would call it a 360 review for those in the in the business world would have would call it to the administrators staff and and parents because we've heard from parents this evening from both guides to give us a clear approval and and disapproval of Dr Jones but I think it would be prudent to have that review of Dr Jones as her role as a superintendent prior to this board making a decision to make sure that we have all of the information available to us that it that we

199can grab before I think we make a you know a decision of this nature it is one of the most important decisions that this board makes and I think that there is uh it would behoove us to understand her as a leader and how what her administrators and staff think um and and well as the community as a whole further discussion all right on the motion she doesn't have a motion she's just coming all right well if there's discussion on the motion so if there's discussion on the motion this is a good time fair enough if there's is I discussion yeah I have further points that I'd like to make um I also think and we've we've talked about this before that um you know with respect to the renewal or extension of Dr Jones

200is in contract um I think that there's one provision in there that is um noticeably absent from her contract I know we've talked about and how it seems that these are cookie cutter contracts as it relates to uh superintendents in the state of Connecticut but it is not a cookie cutter contract as it relates from a national perspective when we look at other contracts and those are the one thing that's glaringly missing from this is a a reciprocal clause for both of us to have the right to terminate the contract without cause you know Dr Jones is uh eligible able to under Section B8 to to terminate and to walk away and we as a board and as a community don't have that ability to do that we only have the ability under a a

201mutual release but that means that we have to have a mutual understanding that that needs to uh that the relationship needs to end and here we end up in a situation where you know if one of us doesn't think that um the relationship is working that's fine but when both of us don't you know when one of us disagrees we don't have that option and I think we're putting ourselves as a board and as a community as a disadvantage to not have something uh as simple as a reciprocal right in that contract the other piece that I would raise here is I understand the desire to by the my fellow board members to extend Dr Jones's contract by two years to extend it to June 30th to 2024. look my proposal on this and I

202what I could get comfortable with is something shorter than that um for various reasons one of which is that three maybe four of the board members uh will not be sitting here in November and as I mentioned it's one of the most important decisions we make as a board that uh we should see what the election holds and what that new board coming in thinks and how they would like to move forward as that is a clear representation of the community's views by having the newly elected board members present in making the important decisions with that I would suggest that perhaps the extension should not only be should not be two years but should be you know at most one year in which it would be extended to June 30th 2023 whereas the newly seated

203board in November could take up this issue and decide whether or not to extend Dr Jones contract even further at that point giving um basically giving credence to the fact that the community has spoken and they'll be potentially four new board members that should be added to that decision as opposed to strapping the that newly seated board with a superintendent that maybe a majority of them don't like going back to my other point of why a reciprocal provision in the contract would make more sense and I think we're doing ourselves as a board a complete and utter disadvantage by not making some very simple uh changes in the contract discussion Mr share I think you had your hand up first okay um I'm not really saying much about this because I'm leaving the board and

204I feel strongly and I've told my colleagues this um we have this level of board turnover already known in advance because board members have publicly declared what they're doing at least three of us have publicly declared what we're doing um I don't think I should have this kind of voice in this decision um I mean I could I could talk about all the reasons why it might be a good idea to keep Dr Jones an extender contract I could talk about all the reasons why um I think otherwise it's not important what is important is I agree with what Miss Kowalski has shared with board members previously uh that um it's not a good idea for an outgoing board to tie the hands of the incoming board and the motion that mistos put on the

205table ties the hands of the board not only this board it also ties the hands of the next board in the next election which will be out in 2023 so we're not only tying the hands of one board that's incoming we're tying the hands of two boards uh in in the future by uh this proposal um given that's going to be maybe half the board turned over I don't think I thought there was a compromise to be had and the compromise to be had was either or both um to signal to the community we didn't want turnover in the superintendent's office but at the same time Preserve the rights of the board that are going to be incoming and the public to express that through a public vote which they will have an opportunity to

206do uh in November um it would have meant a shorter extension than the maximum that can be given misto's proposal is to give the maximum that can be given under Uh current contract law in Connecticut I would have supported extending the superintendence contract for an additional year which would mean two years from now so everybody could get their feet wet and decide what they want to do I also thought and I liked the idea when I I I'm amazed we're writing contracts that we don't have the residents of Greenwich don't have reciprocal rights and the contract is one-sided I've spoken about this before the response uh given by other board members has been well that's what's in the contract in Darien and New Canaan Shocker the attorney who wrote this contract for the Greenwich board

207is also the attorney for those two towns who wrote those contracts as well so that to me is not a good rationale I think it's just prudent that a board makes certain and whatever the termination Clause is as an example the extermination Clause I think right now is the um super nintendent notify Us in 120 days okay make it so we can do it 120 days if that gets changed to 180 days great 180 days and then our Clause is 180 days I don't care what the number is what I care about is is that we have as a community the flexibility to have a reciprocal right to what the superintendent would have in a contract that we write so that we can make uh the decisions that the community may need to make and

208the communities not disadvantaged in doing that I don't want the superintendent disadvantaged either it just seems to me it should be equal and then to the last point is I'm very uncomfortable voting one way or the other on this contract um because I've served this community for a really long time and um I've learned that as much as I think I do know there's frequently stuff I don't know so I'm not arrogant enough I'm not self-assured enough I'm not Napoleon complex enough that I can sit here and say that I have any idea right now what the staff thinks about their leader which I think is an important input I'd really like to know that they may think their leader is the greatest thing since life spread and they want me to go out there

209and get the longest contract possible okay I'd really like to have that piece of information I don't know where the public is on the superintendent I've heard I've been serving for a long time and right now uh half my mail not even half a lot of my mail is some unhappy people and there's a lot of it and my telephone rings a lot much to my wife Chagrin she wants me to stop talking about the Board of Ed and spend more time on my company uh because she has to listen to it at home but then I also see emails that are very supportive of what has happened with the superintendent so I'm sitting here candidly I I don't have the information I need to make this decision and I've been through this a couple

210times and usually it's one way or the other uh this time it's not so I thought the idea that Miss uh Kowalski had to get a 360. by the way that's standard practice for executives in the real world not in this weirdo School world uh seem pretty reasonable to me but I don't know the the my fellow board members will have to decide whether or not they um from The Limited information they have they can make the decision uh I can't Miss Danny I think if there's a bit of irony as we talk about how much we hear from the community and then saying we don't have enough information to make a decision I think we hear from the community repeatedly we all know in our inboxes On Any Given issue so to say we

211don't know how people feel about the superintendent I it's a little disingenuous to me the fact of the matter is this town doesn't have unanimity on anything so I think to say we're going to survey people to get an answer isn't going to yield an answer any more than the voluminous emails that we already get so I respectfully say I don't think that's a productive use of time I think also we as elected officials that is our job our job is to make the decisions based on the information we've gathered over an extensive period of time um in terms of this board making a decision about superintendent's contract this board half the board turns over every other year to say that we shouldn't make a decision because it ties the hand of future boards again

212is not fulfilling our role or our job that we were elected to do and and frankly half this board is new and we could have said well gee you shouldn't have hired Dr Jones and where would we all be sitting now based on that same analysis um and we do have a termination Clause we don't have a termination for no reason Clause so I am satisfied that you know should there be an issue with Dr Jones which I do not anticipate happening um we would be able to Avail ourselves of that opportunity but I I think going back and renegotiating and it's not a minor point it would be a fundamental point to our contract um is not appropriate um at this moment in time so I respectfully disagree with the points that have been

213made thus far and I wholly support the motion Miss Hirsch um I personally fully support extending Dr Jones contract Not only would this help provide consistency and stability for Greenwich public schools which is something that the community has consistently asked the board to do but with the countless articles discussing early retirement resignations and resignations of superintendents across the country this past year including recent articles from education week and the New York Times amongst many local papers all throughout the country from the biggest districts like New York City LA uh all the way across the 50 states I think it speaks volumes about Dr Jones dedications to our students staff and the community of Brenner's that she's asked to extend her contract um as I said before some someone once said the true test of leadership

214is how well you function in a crisis and I would agree unfortunately this year we've had several major crises and Dr Jones has handled each and every one professionally and with a measured sense of control last year we commended her for her professionalism and responsiveness and for the hard work she has done and we've done so again this year in a year like no other with constantly moving targets she's kept her eyes on the things that mattered most our students the needs of our students and our staff emotionally physically and so and educationally she's taken constructive criticism and the feedback garnered from many parents and worked tirelessly to ensure that our schools could open their doors this fall improve and improve the options for remote students that was greatly appreciated not just by families in

215our district but also commanded by districts throughout Connecticut as a model and I think one of the most important things uh that makes a superintendent a good superintendent and I have having only worked as a board of education member with one I've had the opportunity to work with countless uh supers and and um interim supers over the past few years in other advocacy educational advocacy roles um being responsive to to CR to criticism and making the effort to make the changes uh being asked of you is is exceptionally important and Dr Jones has shown us her willingness to do that um you know I know we've we've made some recommendations and uh Mr Bernstein shared those with you as to what we'd like to see going forward and I'd like to be able to give

216you the time to make those you know take the opportunity to make the changes that we've asked you to do and move our district forward as promised as part of the goals that you set for yourself and the goals that we set for you the year prior and I I'm sure we'll be in the goals that we probably will set for you going forward you've successfully navigated the challenging Waters of budget uncertainty and you've made sure that our Educators and students have had what they've needed when they've needed it you've met every Challenge and answered every question asked and I know because I've asked a lot of them myself and they are always answered you continue to provide our families with consistent flow of information you've increased your communication with the community as well and

217this year has provided you with many unique challenges you've helped our Educators navigate the ways to teach in-person and remote Learners simultaneously I hope we don't have to to uh to figure out how to do that again you've created an entirely new remote school and filled them with teachers and substitutes roles throughout our district amidst a teacher shortage that's that's pretty impressive either way I think that you really continue to be a tremendous asset to the Greenwich Public Schools it's students the board and our community especially with the extraordinary events and challenges you've been confronted with your time here thus far personally I can see working with you has been an incredible experience I'm sure it's a feeling that he's are mirrored by many and I'd like to thank you and with that support I

218really feel giving the opportunity to make the necessary changes and improvements for the education given to our students and the support of our staff through curriculum and professional development I'd like to give you that time call the question um still people that want to speak Mr share Miss Stowe just real fast I've hired a lot of CEOs in my career we've found a good one we don't want to lose you foreign I do want to say a couple of things one the superintendent contract yep it's the same as Darian and a New Canaan because it's the Caps form yes it was drafted by the attorney to have us also do work for us but it is the Connecticut Association of superintendents of schools that actually adopted that form it's used across the state in terms

219of determination provision uh there's a couple ways that it goes one mutual consent if both parties decide things aren't working out if things are that bad with the board and superintendent neither one of them wants to be here okay to the superintendent can give notice we've actually had that happen twice in my recollection uh and uh you know we actually actually extended it from 90 days in a prior contract to 120 days for uh Dr Jones everything in a contract by the way is negotiable once the party decides they want out of it and then third for cause as Miss Downey said we actually if there were potential cause we would work with the superintendent to rectify if it can't be rectified the superintendent goes that's the protection you need superintendents have no tenure they

220are not like teachers or administrators the contract is basically the job security that they get and it's tenuous at Best in a lot of places and this is one of them so I can't imagine the message we would send to a community saying well we want to be able to get rid of you anytime we feel like getting rid of you or we only watch it for one year because the next group is going to toss you out on your ear we have a statutory responsibility to select the superintendent of schools to run our district I take that seriously as I do all of my other statutory responsibilities as was mentioned we turned over four members who inherited Dr Jones when I joined the board eight years ago got lots of experience in this now

221we inherited a superintendent that's how this works folks we don't basically wait we don't say to Dr Jones you know that there's an election in November we're going to see what the outcome is let that group figured out that group has never been on a board of ed possibly some of them may you know the returning members might but there'll be members who wouldn't I don't know I think we rely on the people that have experience with you we've had two years of experience with you at this point I would like to see more years of experience with you um you know the board picks the super we've been elected by the community that's our responsibility just as it's our responsibility to ask for the budget that we need our responsibility to carry out things

222like student expulsion hearings there are certain things we do that is our job I would like to continue to be able to do our job and I think having you here enables us to do that you have been responsive to the board needs you're the first to admit when something isn't right and you are the first to make the change to fix it so I am quite pleased to support to you to your extension and with that I am going to call the question so Bernstein is a yes sorry Megan sorry I'll be I will be quite grateful because okay go ahead I will be quite brief because uh honestly all of my points have been have been said so um to the at the risk of sounding like a broken record or two repetitive

223but I fully support the extension of Dr Jones um a three-year contract you know as elected officials it is our duty uh and you've been consistent she's been consistent um she has had an impressive work ethic and she's filled the cabinet with some really fantastic new hires and I really look forward to seeing the work that she continues to do all right thank you with that calling the question so the question is to extend the superintendent's contract through 2024 yes yes June 3rd 2024. yes Bernstein is yes though yes Hirsch yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski I could get behind one year but not two no so that's a no okay Olsen yes and Cher no that passes 6-2 thank you very much congratulations Dr Jones [Applause] all right with that we're going to move

224on to our next item on the agenda fuel they're with me for a moment so I can bring it up like to make a motion to request the additional funding for the repairs of North Miami and the alternate space related costs and the amount of 2 million 597 912 dollars is there a second sure misto thank you all right I think Mr O'Keefe you were going to be our uh Chief explainer tonight everybody um so as you know we have already received a partial interim appropriation uh for the north Miami ceiling collapse in the amount of 2 million oh fifty five zero zero zero um and the rest of our initial request was deferred until we could get go out to bed which we have just done and completed yesterday so just as a recap

225for what the 2 million o55 includes by the way by the way can we get the chart loaded up Mike are you able to get that up I could get it up with the people in the building yeah I don't think we're going to be able to see it in the room but the board members have the board members have it it's as you emailed it and it's on board docs okay I'll be as descriptive as possible okay um so just to recap on what the 2 million o55 includes it's a 189 731 of Emergency Response remediation and demo uh and it also includes 627 143 for the demo of the first and second floor uh areas requiring preventative work uh it also includes six hundred and twenty eight thousand eight thirty four of uh

226repairs for areas that were damaged so the damaged areas from the collapse uh and then there's an additional 358 000.97 for alternative space related cost and most of that is uh predominantly made up of transportation for about 307 out of that 358. we also applied given the uncertainty given the fact that it was uh there wasn't a lot of knowledge especially with regard to the um the rebuild for the preventative we had applied a 20 contingency which was uh relatively Hefty uh but at the end of the day uh we were awarded uh 2 million oh fifty five since then we went out to bid and the process as I mentioned closed yesterday um just a little background we had a good number of vendors that came in for the walk through at North mianis

227and at that walk through a number of them commented that they would probably not likely bid uh given the aggressive schedule and they also cited several of them decided the fact that uh there was a lot of uncertainty in the pipeline of materials and supplies uh you know so World shortage of things like gypsum and so on um in the end uh when we when we closed at 10 o'clock yesterday we only had one bid and uh and that bid is reflected uh on the uh on the proposal in the yellow section so uh it's a total project cost of 4 million six hundred and fifty two thousand nine twelve that's the total project cost um the uh once we subtract from that the amount that was already awarded the 2 million oh fifty five

228what we're asking for is exactly what Peter had uh mentioned at the outset two million five hundred ninety seven thousand nine twelve so when you look at the top of the chart there are two amounts for the Emergency Response remediation and demo that was already completed those two items for 189 731 and 600 181 those are already completed and those numbers are actuals then below that are the contents of the bid that was received yesterday and you can see that there's a section called uh basebid plus alternatives um and the amount related to that in the bid was one million four hundred eleven thousand two hundred and eighty four and also um there is uh we anticipate a number of change orders that either we're not explicitly spelled out in the RFP or were identified

229uh after the RFP was issued those add up to another 334 thousand uh we also have estimated the cost of a dedicated project manager for six months in the amount of seventy two thousand and again given uncertainty in the world markets we believe that a contingency of 15 is warranted so that adds another 272 593. so that would get our construction costs including these the the two items that are mentioned as completed already would bring you to 2 million 789 dollars uh then we get into the non-construction cost what we classify as all alternative space related costs uh the biggest one uh and it's not yet closed we have not yet closed is the facility rental we estimate that uh if we rent a facility from August to December we estimate that it'll cost about

230170 000 a month so that would amount to uh eight hundred and fifty thousand um we we are working with a site and it's in legal review right now so but so that number is a fairly good number uh Transportation the number has been updated we had 307 000 in the original uh 2 million oh fifty five uh we added another three hundred thousand for the for the transportation from September through December and then we have some other items uh Furniture fixtures and equipment totaling 68 702 security related equipment for nineteen thousand five hundred a small amount for custodial overtime and other Staffing for twenty two thousand uh moving expense we already incurred uh 65 000 for the first move and we anticipate another move to get everybody to the new facility and then there

231would be another another move back uh once the once the work is completed so we've added in a total of 195 that includes the 65 000 that's already been incurred uh storage container rentals uh of about ten thousand dollars so when you add all that up from the facility rental down to the storage container rental it's a million seven hundred and seventy three thousand one twenty three add that to the construction amount that I mentioned just earlier for 2 million eight hundred and seventy nine thousand seven eighty nine gives us a total project cost of four million 652 912 and again subtract from that funding already received of 2 million oh fifty five thousand uh yields a additional request of two million five hundred ninety seven thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars so Dan is

232on if you if you have any technical questions or or I'm here as well if you have any questions related to the numbers all right Mr Kelly Sean I don't want to put you on the spot here but if you could for transparency purposes uh I hate changes nothing annoys me more than uh than having change orders early on in the project uh I'm sure they're Justified because we're doing everything as quickly as we can but just for transparency sake could you explain or if you have the information on the change orders for me please I think Dan would be better equipped to address that so go can you hear me yep we can hear you then so Joe would you mind repeating that question I lost a little transmission there Sean had mentioned in

233his presentation that there was a couple of early change orders that uh changed the uh the price of the uh the bid uh just for transparency reasons I I just like to go over those chains orders if you have that information I don't want to put you on the spot but if you have that information it'd be helpful thank you sure it's not a problem it's it's you know I I wouldn't want to call them change orders just yet um we have to come up with some kind of term for it but these were items that were brought to our attention uh post bid and uh whether they were whether they were brought up by our review of the documents or uh brought up during the scope review with the apparent low bitter Werner construction

234uh there was some significant um lapses in in the design documents and that's probably due to how quickly we uh had to put these documents together um there's some items in there I'll just put some big ticket items out there um painting it was uh there was a specification for painting but it was not clear as to the extent of the painting that was expected um uh pipe insulation that was not visible uh during the documents being put together it was uh hidden by the uh hung ceiling I'm actually going to put that request in with the insurance company but we wanted to get a price for it so that's going to be part of the job um window treatments we didn't realize how damaged the window treatments were they were rolled up at the

235time of the water infiltration and water just sat in the Shades uh and we saw some Visual Evidence of mold growing so we're replacing all the window shades so those are just some of the items that we hit on as potential change orders but they will enact excuse me they will in actuality become a change order thanks Dan that was very helpful Mr chair um Sean I I've got a and maybe Dan will answer it too um I want to be sure I understand what I'm looking at um the demo the demo looks like it's coming in in line with what was estimated right yeah pretty close yeah okay and then the 1.4 million is uh based on the RFP that that was written in the specification that was done by the architect engineer that's

236correct okay and then Dan just explained there's some other items that uh needed to be added um what's item number six HVAC new compressor can you elaborate on what that item is Dan sure the uh we know that we did a an HVAC upgrade there uh about 30 months ago I think it was well less than that about two years ago it was completed um can you hear me yeah yeah okay the um we had some damage to some of the HVAC lines coming back from the unit ventilators that are underneath the windows right we had excuse me you said that in a prior meeting correct so what we've what we've seen is um the controls of the new units because the way the building is laid out you've got some uh classrooms on the

237south side and some classrooms on the north side of the building and we are unable to control uh the temperatures the way the uh this is the way the system was installed by making this change now we'll be able to uh during a shoulder month say in April when one side of the building is in the Sun and it's calling for air conditioning the other side of the building is still in the shade or in the dark calling for heat our current situation we're not allowed to do that the the system doesn't allow for it by making it's an up it's an upgrade and a good upgrade right yeah correct yeah okay and then the um so the demo one four three one seven two so the total construction costs includes the demo correct okay

238and then the this alternate space facilities where is this location uh Tony you want to address that yes because we're in contract negotiations right now between our legal team and theirs we can't say where it is we hope that it will come to fruition and the next few weeks and we'll be able to share more information okay is the space already equipped as a school what I can say is it would be an excellent site um for us to have as an alternative site I don't know what that means I I don't need her to identify the site I need to know if it's equipped as a school or there's going to be some other costs it would be an excellent site and this is the cost that we would need other than the items

239that you see here moving our classrooms yeah I know I see FF and e but it's only 68 000 and I'm I'm just kind of surprised that if it's a site that's I mean the last time you were here Tony you were talk two times ago you were talking about sites in Commerce Park and you said they have been equipped as uh schools for somebody else and you didn't know if they were available but the important part was uh it had already been outfitted as a school so it was usable that way I see here ffne of 68 000. um this is going to be what how many classrooms this is uh 10 no 13 I think was your ask we actually had this this side is a little bit different there are 20 different

240spaces okay of x amount of square feet and that we have it all calculated out and it would literally be another move just like we did when we went from North Hyannis to alternate sites we would be moving from OG Cos Cob and Parkway right and moving into the new space yeah I'm just trying to find out I appreciate that I was just trying to find out how solid these numbers are so Dan what do I am I reading this properly the original request was 8.1 but the new cost is 4.7 that's correct so we really only need 4.7 to do this we didn't need 8.1 correct okay I suppose that's a good outcome uh it is a great outcome and and remember that when we called out the 8.1 we said that there was

241a lot of contingency and a very high level estimate for the preventative work so we knew we knew it was going to come down yeah and I think when the 8.1 was originally discussed it was only for the uh demo and then the rebuild um alternate space I always understood would be a separate item so this is even better if it's all included um my question is to you Dan um now that we've got the whole thing pulled apart I'm not going to ask you the same question I asked before um I know everybody wants to get back as quickly as possible and what have you but you know the school Community I'm not so sure is completely processed then now they're only gonna have one bite at this apple for the next 20 years

242and I'm wondering Dan if there's anything that should be added to this because we've got the whole thing pulled apart I realize you tried to put it you know particularly when this was asked by in the RTM meetings I'm sure maybe Dr Jones sent along my question that was asked by RTM members in District 12. by the way full disclosure this is my own neighborhood this is my own neighborhood School so um but you know there were two schools of thought one was spend whatever it takes do it in 90 days don't do the alternate um you know that was somebody's question and I think you guys fielded that appropriately but the other questions that came out were um is there anything else in the rush to get it done that we should be doing

243because it's all pulled apart and it's the right thing to do is there anything that should be added here Dan um you know I I wouldn't say I like what you did on HVAC as an example that's a great ad well some of the things maybe you don't see Peter is that we did take into consideration some of the older infrastructure there's some pipes that are in the building that are Circa 1925. we're replacing those anything that we thought could uh even uh add to the assets or protect the assets we change so there's some um there's a lot of wooden Millwork that was damaged or or whatever still usable but in pretty bad shape we're we're replacing all that um the windows I was getting to the lighting shot um the window sills also

244would so excited the uh the window sills are also wood and are stained and and cracked uh we're changing those out to a a Corian type of material again all the countertops in the classrooms all the sinks we certainly don't want to have another Costco issue so we're replacing uh all the sinks that are in the classrooms um as Sean stated we're changing all the lighting that is part of the incentive program that was it just happened to be happening at the same time um that would have been an item I would have said let's change while we're in there um uh there's really that the building has got great Bones the bathrooms in the um that part of the building were renovated I think within the last five or six years we do have

245a separate project to replace the bathrooms in the kindergarten Wing that was designed and ready to be put out for bid this summer we put the brakes on that because we didn't know how that was going to dovetail with the rest of this project there might be an opportunity to do that at the same time but right now I don't even want to explore that we have we have the dollars we have the design but it's it might be a little bit too much to handle so 4.7 is enough yes to get this done okay well it seems like this process worked out in the end I mean um and now if you guys already well when did you open these bids and you got it and it was qualified bidder was yesterday have you

246guys already started preliminary contract negotiations yes okay how long is that going to take as soon as we get off that's always a hard question until you tell the lawyers to stop now we've we've been doing it at the same time so uh uh town legal's already been reviewing uh you know turning the RFP into a contract so okay so it'll be interesting to prove this quickly this this approval thing won't be a critical path item if they take time it's going to be a problem right but if they go away which I understand they're lined up to do the the project will go forward right right the BET budget is one o'clock on Monday the 12 a 6 30 on Monday and uh and we've gotta we've gotta determine when the RTM committees and

247full RTM can uh schedule this so we're hoping the moderator did send a note uh we're gonna submit materials tomorrow for the RTM and they will figure out the path forward yeah I I would just say and I know you guys are not necessarily part of this but let's not make other Town bodies the boogeyman it doesn't help get the project done it just gets people really agitated if the BT's stepping forward which it sounds like they're doing quickly thank you bet uh I see Mike Mason in the back thank you Michael and uh hopefully uh the moderator will move as quickly and expeditiously and and we can just go get this project done and the kids back in the school thanks for all the hard work guys all right so Tony Sean Den I'm

248hoping you can talk us through the timing I see on the uh on the breakout budget You're Expecting the facility rental to run through December Transportation through December so can you talk to us about the timing do you want me to take that yeah what do you do it Tony yeah okay sorry couldn't hear um yes for the timing we are looking um that we could go into January and that's um what the company said when they actually did the walk through um we are hoping by uh late December what what will be part of the challenge and we're just trying to be very transparent up front is once the construction is done we have a lot of approvals with this project that have to go through uh Town approvals and that can sometimes halt

249us a little bit uh and go a little bit slower so we're being very realistic about that um so it it is a big project and we will we are expecting to be um if we have an alternate location it's definitely going to be through the fall semester um and that's what what the the construction team has said and I know that uh that Sean mentioned earlier like issues with supplies um can you talk about the timing of that I mean obviously once the BET X and the rtmx and the contract get signed are like how quickly are they going to be able to get supplies well once they sign the contract then they will be able to start their ordering and moving forward that's why time is of the essence because uh we are

250told right now and Dan could definitely speak to you know the supply issue but there's a supply and demand issue and especially going into the Summer where there are so many projects and they need to get stuff ordered so that they can get the work started so every and if you look at it this way when you're you know a month of alternate side is 170 000 if this is four weeks late that's another hundred and seventy thousand dollars just for off-site plus the buses just a question I mean ultimately might insurance cover the alternate space location I mean we obviously don't know that right now but it's certainly something we would try for we um and Sean could speak to this I know he's working so closely um you know with risk management we're

251putting everything forward that we can um and Megan zonesky handles that for the town and does the terrific job trying to maximize what we can get Peter I have a question Miss Kowalski sure so I I understand that there's information that can't be disclosed about the um the rental facility and I'm a little I have some concerns just that the board doesn't know anything about this right we don't know where it is we don't know the setup we don't know um the the type of contract we're entering into is this a month to month what happens are we only able to rent it for five months what happens if we have an overage can we go can we get it for the next month is the contract going to have to be at a minimum

252for a certain period of time um I'm just I'm a little leery that the board has no idea well I'm not complaining about the price I'm just I'm complaining I'm not complaining I'm concerned that we don't know anything and I mean anything about where this alternative facility is uh the conditions it's the costs the terms of the contract and I think these are really important things that the Board needs to know at some point to understand what we're spending a million dollars on um I think right now just just realized that from the contract language perspective it all goes through the town of Greenwich legal so they're working between uh our town of Greenwich legal is working with um the other land attorney that handles and manages the site um we do have flexibility in

253the contract that is written in to extend or if we were done a month early there is flexibility that is written in there but that's part of what you negotiate back and forth as well and it is um it is a site that is in a reasonable distance that was another key component we've heard from several parents um that have had children traveling to Parkway and it's it's quite a distance for children to be on the bus so we've been very cognizant that it's um you know it's close um so I think I answered most of those but it is right now there it's going back and forth between legal between both teams so I'd make two observations one um well a question which is when will we get to know of more information and

254two is it a better process and procedure for the board to go into an executive session to get more information on the contract itself yeah I'm not one that's not posted for tonight so we certainly couldn't do it but I think we'll figure out that way or Dr Jones can let us know as things progress on the legal side but I'm not sure it qualifies for executive sessions so let me let me dive into that with the China attorney and just make sure all right other discussion on the item all right so what will happen is once we vote uh Tony Sean Dan are going to be working on some questions they've received from the bet most of which they've answered tonight for us so they already know the answers uh we're going to share

255that with the BT they're having the budget committee meeting on Monday at one uh BT meeting is six Mike 6 30 on Monday night we will be sharing the interim request with the uh Town Clerk and the RTM moderator tomorrow and uh as soon as we have information from them we'll share that back with the board but we we did give them as much notice as we could the uh you know I think everybody's in it together and I know Dr Jones mentioned the all of the approvals that will be necessary on the back end uh we do have a commitment from the first electman that uh they will work expeditiously uh to make sure that uh that they are in the building as soon as we have them in the building so we will

256move forward uh with that approach all right so uh the motion on the table is for the additional request interim request for North Miami and the amount of two million five hundred ninety seven thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars uh Bernstein is yes though yes Hirsch yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Olsen yes and Cher yes thank you that passes eight zero uh you know I I can't say it enough we're trying to move as expeditiously as we can and uh and I want to thank our our staff for doing the same all right with that the next item thank you to the parents of North Miami for being patient all right um the next item is the healthy food certification uh this is a lovely statutory one it's got two two motions that

257we have to approve with the exact wording so I will make them apologize for the length of them let me put my glasses on I need that for this all right so pursuant to you Connecticut General I move pursuit to Connecticut General statute section 10-215f F the Board of Education or governing Authority certifies that all food items offered for sale two students in these schools under its jurisdiction and not Exempted from the Connecticut nutrition standards published by the Connecticut State Department of Education will comply with the Connecticut nutrition standards During the period of July 1 2021 through June 30th 2022 this certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all times and from all sources including but not limited to school stores vending machines School cafeterias culinary programs

258and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organizations and groups period is there a second for this motion Miss Downey thank you so this is complete uh Hartford overreach uh Dr carabillo you're muted in for the third time I caught you I know and I almost caught myself before I started speaking so this is something that we do every single year last year we added Greenwich public Greenwich High School to this so all of our schools uh right now uh are on nslp and we hope that you will approve this all right any discussion seeing them will take a uh a quick roll call on the first motion uh Bernstein is the esto yes first yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Olsen yes and Cher yes thank you all

259right bear with me while I read the second emotion thank you Connecticut the Board of Education I move that the Board of Education or governing Authority will allow the sale of students allow these sale to students of food items that do not meet the Connecticut Connecticut nutrition standards and beverages not listed in section 10-221q of the Connecticut General statutes provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event three the food and beverage items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is An Occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity for example soccer game school

260plays an interscholastic debates our events but soccer practices play rehearsals and debate team meetings are not the regular school day is the period from Midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is held No period oddly all right is there a second for that motion Miss Hersh all right Dr carabello unless you're going to tell me something different is this the same um yes it is ostensibly the same the only difference is at the Greenwich high school we had to assure that there would be no other food stuffs sold at any of the school events the school the regular school day that if anything was sold separately it had to be after the regular school day and not soldiers special events held after the school

261day so half hour after the school day if I read that correctly all right any other discussion on this item hearing none uh we will take a roll call vote on this motion Bernstein yes Joe yes Hirsch yes Downey yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Olsen yes and share yes thank you that passes unanimously eight zero thank you Dr carabillo all right next up is the financial and Staffing report does somebody want to make a motion to accept the financial and Staffing report Mr was there a second Miss Downey all right Mr O'Keefe take it away thank you okay uh through the month of April our uh expense is 130.6 million which is just about 80 percent attainment of the full year budget 163.4 uh compared to the same period last year spending is up 6.4

262percent and you probably recall from last month we were pretty flatish and the reason why we're all of a sudden up 6.4 percent year to year is because in the month of April we had a three pay month whereas in uh in the prior year the three pay month the second three pay month came in the month of May so what we're going to see is that 6.4 percent year-to-year growth as of April decreased back down to a flattish number uh next month so it's artificially inflated um so let's see what else um so in terms of why we're up right now it's you know salaries and I mentioned the three pay month also uh also due to covet expenses not yet transferred to the grant fund uh also uh higher outplace tuition and settlement

263tuition and then the increases are offset by Savings in the following uh as I've mentioned uh since probably October summer school and esy savings uh and then transportation we knew we had some savings from the summer uh but uh the savings and transportation have been accumulating all year long due to Athletics late bus uh remote and hybrid schedules including going full remote uh you know for a week following two of our vacation breaks fuel savings temporary services Athletics expenses and so on so we we have a lot of savings um so in terms of the full year forecast um we're we are we are now in the process of closing out um purchase orders we've suspended uh new requisitions so it'll be on an exception basis only and at this point in time I I

264am comfortable that uh we have enough savings that uh we'd be able to offset the anticipated 2.2 million dollar exposure in Special Ed so and as far as additional savings we're we're working it by account closing out purchase orders uh as I said we've uh suspended new requisitions and handled it on a one by one basis and so I do believe we'll have additional savings coveted related uh but I'm not yet ready to declare what that is yet so rather than give you a number that'll have to bridge later on I just want to say that in addition to the savings that will what potentially offset the outplace tuition I believe will have some additional savings uh capital overall Capital um the act the actual available balance actually increased uh by about two million dollars

265month to month to 20.7 and the reason for that was the interim the interim appropriation for 2.1 that we received from uh North mianus so uh so excluding that we're basically flat to the previous month in terms of available balance and since the start of the year uh the fiscal year are capital available balance has uh decreased by more than 17 million or about 48 percent of the uh the available balance at the start of the year so making a lot of progress school lunch uh year-to-date Revenue through April a million 598 000 continues to lab uh compared to the same period uh last year when we recorded two million nine hundred and three thousand so a year-to-year decrease of 1.3 million uh the big decrease driven by cash sales which are down year to

266year by a million uh but partly offset by higher reimbursements which are up year to year by 555 000. on the expense side uh we're at three million 028 uh this year versus three million seven seventy uh in the same period last year so a year to year decrease of about seven hundred and forty thousand dollars and that's primarily due to lower salaries and uh lower food costs and Supply costs um and then as I mentioned earlier uh you know every month that we do have unbudgeted transportation costs related to Food Services delivery uh that will be it's it's on our coveted list to be uh recovered so that that expense will come out of these numbers um let's see so in terms of the forecast um we're forecasting overall Revenue will come in around

2672 million 816 000 or approximately uh 1.342 million uh below budget uh compared to last month this is actually a forecast Improvement uh because of our reimbursements went up a couple hundred thousand um of the of the 1.3 million dollar shortfall uh again it's cash sales that are expected to be under budget by about 2.8 million dollars but partly offset by uh the reimbursements which will exceed budget by about 1.5 million on the expense side um uh we expect to come in at uh three million 644 before transferring out the uh the transportation uh after that transfer we expect to come in at 3 million 364 000 uh which would be an underrunt to budget of about nine hundred and thirty thousand bottom line uh we're looking at uh a once we once we receive

268the the general fund contribution of 250 and the transfer out of the 280 for transportation we're looking like we're going to be in a although it's a deficit it's significantly improved from the prior months we're looking at about 298 000 deficit so and it's possible with reimbursements that could still improve foreign towards the end of the package uh there's a chart that I've been talking to all year on outplace tuition uh hasn't really changed that much uh basically uh it's consistent with what we've said uh previously that we're looking at about a 2.2 million dollar over budget in that line and as I said earlier uh I believe we have uh enough savings to offset that um let's see uh well onto covered the the last two charts in the package as I've mentioned we

269have four coveted related grants s or one 758 000 160. we need to spend that money by September 22 and essentially we already have spent it uh the coronavirus Relief Fund is a a grant of one million 203 684. we uh have already spent that it needed to be spent by December of 22 but as I said we've already spent it uh and then in sr2 the grant demand is 400 4 million 268 000.046 which needs to be spent by September of 23 and uh we are we're already proposing uh to recover 2.7 million of that uh uh this year so and then the remaining 1.5 we would uh use for for uh for 2122. as far as the ARP goes uh previously we mentioned that the the grant amount was 10 million two hundred

270fifteen thousand uh we recently were at a uh conference call with the State Department of Education where we learned that the number came down about six hundred thousand so it's down to nine million 585 423 that's the final number and uh we inquired as to why there was a difference uh the number that 10 million two we got from Congressman uh crimes and the Apparently that was just a rough estimate at that point um so the last the last page in the package is is basically just a it's almost like a journal entry so we we to recover these expenses out of our operating fund we had to request uh an appropriation essentially it's establishing a budget in a grant fund at the town and that was approved by the bet so you know we'll

271be moving 758 000 to the sr1 grant fund a million 203 685 to the coronavirus Relief Fund over in that Grant fund and then as I said 2.7 million dollars of sr2 spending over to the sr2 grant fund the ARP fund has not yet been established but will be working on that you know we are before we do anything with that we've got to submit um documentation to the uh to the state and they have to approve it and I think uh Tony mentioned that uh we'll have to get uh Community uh input on that spending as well that's all I have thank you Sean so I guess the the good news takeaway here is we're going to uh end in the black year just controlling expenses carefully to to figure out what that number

272is absolutely okay any questions on the financial and Staffing report Miss Hirsch um I had a few questions in regards to the Staffing report I saw that the media program coordinator position which I believe has been vacant for a while now um uh you know is still vacant and I'm wondering if we're looking to fill that and what that timeline might be Sonia can I ask you to take that one sorry I had to find the page um I'll have to follow that up for you and search okay well then I I would assume that the my next question or two would will probably go in the same category um I noted that there were several positions noted as being on hold including the two media assistants for Greenwich high school and one for Central

273Middle School and I didn't know if we'd be filling those prior to or for next year and the same goes for the food service manager positions for K-8 and for ghs as they are noted being on hold I didn't know if this was a change due to the change in food service this year um and if we'll be filling those roles prior to next um they have set like this um for the whole year so we'll all have to review those again with HR I believe one of the food service should actually be in elimination position that should have gotten should have been moved up but I will follow that up thank you any other questions hearing none the motion on the table is to accept the monthly financial and Staffing report uh Bernstein's yes

274Stowe yes Hirsch yes County yes Kelly yes Kowalski yes Olsen yes and share yep all right uh just before we get to agenda planning and uh and take our leave of this I just want to make note tonight's meeting would have been at North Miami occurred uh and the roof not collapsed so just worth noting for the record uh in terms of agenda planning so Mr Kelly it sounds like we may need to meet on the trees and we may need an executive session to discuss whether or not we want to pursue a legal appeal so folks it will be very soon I will send a note out probably tomorrow looking for available times so be ready for that the other item that we will absolutely be scheduling uh in short order is the results

275of the special education audit uh that Dr Jones we need to figure out from uh from our our friends of the uh at the firm uh when they're going to be ready to present I will suggest we do that at a separate meeting so once we have sense of their timing again I will reach out to everybody in terms of scheduling um and there'll be two parts to that one is the results of the audit and then the second part is discussion about the action plan I think these are probably going to be two meetings and at the second meeting I would presume we'll probably want to take public comment uh the other item I think Miss Hershey noted ciac is going to have a report for us so we've got two meetings already scheduled

276in June one as a retreat the other is the business meeting so if you could check with them on the timing they'd like to be added to our business meeting uh in June the report was approved and finalized by ciac last at last night's meeting so they are ready to submit it to us okay we'll take a look at the agendas for those meetings just so that we can balance them because we do want to make sure we're we're not overloading any single meeting all right anything else for agenda planning here one request from Miss Hirsch what I'm sorry just you know ciac had requested that they not be put on the same docket just because they are the same subject as our audit so as to not get lost in that it would be

277a separate meeting the audit is going to beaning in and of itself that is just going to be a report out to the board all right with that Mr Kelly I believe you have a motion one second sorry it's a clarification Point sorry Joe um you said we were going to go into an executive session to discuss the results of the audit no no the tree water no the tree the tree okay could be potentially pursuing litigation and so that is an exception to foia so we'd have to have a discussion uh any vote to pursue litigation that would be in a public session right can vote in the executive chef understood so we would need to do that soon soon because we have 10 days and we've already had four so we have 60.

278I'm going to send a note to the board tomorrow with a couple of times and check everybody's availability but it probably will be early next week so watch your calendars and Michael will remind me that we have 24 hours uh posting notice so all right with that uh Mr Kelly get a motion you want to make well I'd like to on a lighter note make a uh uh or suggest something on uh Monday uh May 31st there is the Memorial Day Parade in Old Greenwich I would like to suggest that as the Board of Ed we March in that parade we get our banner and show up in March it's time to get outside and time to get life back to normal uh it's uh I'd like to make a motion to adjourn I will

279second your motion and confirm that there is a banner at the halfmeyer building that we could use all right uh motion is to adjourn Bernstein's yes stove yes yes Downey yep Kelly yes Kowalski Olsen yes and Cher all right we are adjourned thank you everybody