06 23 2021 BoE Meeting Zoom Recording Part 1

001that's what we'll do okay you're ready okay let's see i'll call the meeting to order at um 703 i think it's verizon time is ian there too now great thank you okay we'll start with audience for staff and citizens anyway can i say something rose who are you well it says i'm juan but it's dana i says i'm not gonna okay dana sure um just that the school sent the wrong year for the annual report yesterday you sent 2021 not 1920. so yeah it's the fiscal year's 19 2019 begins in july 1st 2019 and ends on june 30th 2020. so we sent one that would cover the year we're just ending up instead of the one that covered last year correct so that chunk was taken out and the beginning was okay because it talked

002about i think we just put in that the two years were difficult whatever the phrase was yeah and and and i added that you began distance learning per the cdc you know on 2019 and that you formed a group because you probably did form that group um in 2020 in june probably before july my guess so that whole piece about forming a group to of this this this and this of these people remained but my suggestion is i don't have it but next year the board of finance is going to take a more active role so we're not doing things at the last minute like like they were um i only got involved yesterday and there was you know um a lot that wasn't there and it's the board of finances responsibility so i believe

003the board of finance is going to take a more active role so my suggestion at this point because it was really good what was submitted for your 20 20 21 and it's done so don't even reinvent the wheel i'm going to ask the administrative assistant to send me what you sent her and i'm going to put it in the board of finances file for next year because you're all done wonderful okay well the only the only caution is since we're not going to do it next year we're going to need extra reminders the year after because i agree i think that's where the ball got dropped okay i can't say but i think that the reminders didn't go out regularly like they should have and they only went out like at the end of last

004week maybe yeah most most people hadn't submitted okay oh that's good to know oh yeah no no no there are only like three entities that had submitted nobody else had so that's what i'm saying they're gonna the board of finance is gonna take it over a little bit of a different okay but i'm gonna put that submission on file of the board of finance so it's already done okay thank you so much okay does any other comment from um staff or citizens hearing none we'll move on uh correspondence to the board cave letter dated 5 21 21. um is that is that the same letter frank as i got from bob raider how can cave help you yes well no it says um the subject line is state board of education equity policy statement oh

005no that's very different um so not get that other one yeah because it went to the board chairs when i thought you'd gotten it i thought oh that's funny no this one board chairs and superintendents that's why i don't i don't have it up so could you read it for us sure okay this is from uh bob raider executive director of cave the state board has updated its equity policy statement below our thoughts on the statement and my concern over developments in other states according to a recent article in usa today may 13 legislators in several states have introduced bills that would prohibit schools from teaching divisive uh these are in quotes divisive racist or sexist concepts unquote according to the article the quote focus of these bills is to stamp out conversations about race

006and equity unquote these attacks on quote critical race theory unquote are a new part of cultural wars while disparaging the ideas of systemic racism white privilege and according to usa today article quote how the taint of racism still affects black americans unquote these legislators ignore history oh i just need to add somebody kathy donny who's coming in um the key um ignore history and the way in which discrimination still affects our society cabe proudly supports the state board of education's culturally responsive position statement as caves positions adopted by our delegate assembly the work of its board of directors and that of our diversity equity and inclusion committee make clear our association believes in cultural competency respect for many cultures which strengthen our democratic society and that all children are entitled to both equal educational opportunities

007and to be treated equitably the social justice protests of last summer and the anti-asian hate we have seen recently surely provide any needed evidence that to move forward our society must respect the history of all of our people and encourage all of our students to be proud of their backgrounds and our country the state board's uh position statement reaffirms its quote continuing commitment that sufficient specialized and appropriate resources must be provided to close the achievement gaps between high performing and low performing students males and females and students of different racial ethnic and socioeconomic groups unquote what could be more american and patriotic than that signed bob rader thank you you have any other correspondence i do not okay i have a letter from the same person um that was sent to oh yes russ can

008i comment on that last uh readout by uh well you can comment when we get to that item on the agenda how's that well what choice do i have well i guess not a big one i mean it makes more sense to have it as part of our agenda discussion than during thank you um so i have another letter from the same guy that was to board chairs asking for help but he he wants it from the full board so i i want to um read it it says hi chairs cave needs some help from you we have been asked by acting education commissioner charlene russell tucker and deputy commissioner desi nesmeth to craft cave activities that can make a big difference for boards of education they specifically asked for high impact transformative ideas that

009would fit under the lens of equity and the state board's goals learning achievement academic renewal and student achievement nope student enrichment family and community connections social emotional learning for students and staff strategic use of technology staff development and the digital divide building safe and healthy schools we would like to know from you and you can certainly discuss this with your board members and superintendent how we can best help you become more effective we are looking for new ideas so feel free to use creativity thank you for your help bob and patrice so that's um robert rader who's the executive director and patrice mccarthy who is their lead counsel um i'd also like to add that under additions to the agenda um so ideas for cave okay so we'll move on to approval of the 5

01026 21 minutes oh [Music] thank you any discussion hearing none i'll just say matthew does a nice job hearing none um all those in favor oh okay well i'll do it in order again minutes mark mark are you it doesn't yeah you okay i you look to me like you're saying yes even though we can't hear you yeah i don't know what it is is your volume down low but if you raise your right hand okay thank you um russ yes neil yes mary ellen yes and yes um juan yes and one two three four five six seven and we're missing matthew and we're missing susan that's it thank you okay on to superintendent's report um my report contained um actually um three sets of external papers um one was was the superintendent's report one

011was uh this copy of your um plan that we had for reopening of school last year um or actually reopening of school this year she's getting me confused by him so this one is this year's and then this is a essar notification for um uh that we have to put on our website which is there now about the plans we have to safely reopen what i was trying to do in my report is tackle a very complicated and constantly changing um environment and try to make some sense to it the esser funding um requires that we post um the plans ideas and then send it out to different people so that the stakeholders who are involved in our our school have the opportunity to look it over ask questions and um then the plan is

012revised based on those uh inputs and the final plan is due no later than august 23rd um because it's a rolling application and the sooner you get it in you sooner you get your money because the state already has the money we can start expending it um on whatever it is that we as a group of stakeholders have decided would be appropriate on the hundred and fifty one thousand dollars or thereabouts because that number also has changed somewhat um and we've we're facing some issues because we still don't have a real understanding of what our final budget is we have been informed from ashford just recently and mary maybe judy can help us with this when she has her report without making any concerning issues we do have um new students who in special education

013who have some serious concerns that we did not know about and we also have a shortfall in the student population for our pre-k as you know this school readiness um grant is based on the number of children who fill a predetermined number of slots or chairs we have assigned to us 16 slots each slot is worth a reimbursement of six thousand dollars to cover the ongoing costs of faculty and staff who um work with the pre-k that number is approximately that number i'm sorry of the cost the fixed costs is about 120 000 and at this point uh we do have at least sam i don't know if any other numbers but eight students have been registered with actual paperwork and that represents half of what we would have gotten for a total of 96

014thousand dollars so we are in deficit at this point without any other problem coming up of 48 000 and so what we're trying to do is figure out how within the budget that we have and um redefining some positions so that we could take advantage of the esser funds um we are looking at um re-assigning um faculty one of whom would become a accelerated learning teacher for our youngest grades because our youngest grades who were out of school for whatever reason um uh need a lot more support than our third fourth fifth sixth graders um because they all attended school uh remember we only had five students in kindergarten and um seven students depending on the time frame between seven and eight students in pre-k last year the reason we didn't have the same problem

015last year with funding is because during covid uh the office of early childhood that funds the school readiness program funded us for all 16 slots so we received 96 000 in school readiness funds this year they have changed that and that's the crux of the problem and so um this is just the first run through i've already spoken with the certified staff i've already spoken with the group that we call the reopening discussion group that features actually a members of the staff teachers board of ed uh officials administration um to go over that in a discussion with oh and parents sorry um to go over that um these ideas uh at this point um it seems that there's a consensus that the plan that we that stated september 2nd 2020 um seems to have worked

016extremely well it's implementation by um beverly our school nurse um her her actual name is beverly fauci danielson because she seems to have been the best um that we have on our side so in terms of dr fauci's understanding of the problems and so she carried us through and we reached our goal of every child every day for 183 days and only according to the state 1.3 percent of all schools in the state of connecticut were able to open for their full complement of school days now remember last year um this past academic year you could go for 177 days um the normal year was 180 days many districts went 177. we were able to do the 183 so that essentially is my report and the consensus as i said is to continue with the

017reopening plan with minor revisions um so that uh it's more updated uh we had six feet social distancing and now it's uh it's no less than three feet social distancing but i need to caution everybody and i have done this for each of the three groups thus far none of our students have been vaccinated or can be vaccinated um and so we have a population within our confined building of uh approximately 96 of the occupants have not received a vaccine at all so we want to make sure that our children are not exposed or as much as we can possibly help it um by keeping this plan in place and so the real complex issue is how to handle the financial issues um that are staring us in the face do we have any any

018um comments um recommendations questions about this preliminary draft report the sooner i can button this thing up the faster we can get our funds and the um if there's any actual work that needs to be done in the building to be done before the students get in for example the air conditioning units so um i'm very very cognizant of time but i don't want to have a slip shot plan either i want to make sure that everybody hears understands and there may not be total approval but certainly consensus of where we're going with this plan so frank um i don't think from your report it's really clear what some of the solutions are um what's going to happen to the kindergarten students when the kindergarten teacher is working with the first grade or the team

019a students um they'll be in with team a so they will be it will be um at least the iteration that you're looking at at this point this could change that there'll be two teachers in team a um one is the lead teacher and the other is the accelerated learning teacher and two pair of professionals the um will use a large classroom and a small classroom in order to um develop that team a i um i don't we don't know how else we can afford um to retain our kindergarten our current kindergarten teacher um she was last hired so first fired concept um and we cannot put kindergarten in with pre-k um the uh niacc accreditation will not accredit the program anymore and all our funding will be reduced to zero because office of early

020childhood would not support it without nyack accreditation so we have this conundrum of how to pay for that deficit and one way is to re-assign miss border to that accelerated learning and have her work uh and now she remembers she knows all these um kindergartners who are who are coming in because they were with her last year and there are a few um first graders per se second grade will have um a returning student and um they would be able to use a smaller room so the the question actually became a an interesting one because um mary ellen asked me well if if you have them in that big classroom and they have to use the bathrooms those toilets are more older not our kindergarten age students so that's uh a flaw in this and

021we're going to have to really address that issue very carefully well what toilets do you think they use when they're home do they have special little toilets at home i would say that that would be my response to that concern they don't and so i assume they would use the same toilets as any other adult in the in their household would use um so i'm not sure that that's a critical issue but it was it's one of those issues that is brought up that we have to you know really think about and it's those tiny things that could trip us up so the more you you have input for us the better this plan is is ultimately going to be okay so we're going to hear more about the plan i guess yes i would

022like to have a at some point mid july once we have a secondary meeting with the reopening discussion group i'd call a zoom meeting for staff and faculty then we could have a special meeting and then say this this is where we are um and i'd like to um present this to the board for their review so that you have a clear understanding of where we are okay thank you juan you wanted to say something yes ma'am when you when you talk about team a are we talking three grades now yes kindergarten first grade second grade yes but it in in the um umbrella called team a but in fact it'll have a team leader but two years and the younger kids would be uh in a different uh environment than the older kids uh

023the second graders so that would be that teacher would be the accelerated learning teacher correct okay so but we're talking separate classrooms also ultimately yes okay and the bathroom issue shouldn't be an issue like rose said if they use adult toilets at home that shouldn't be a problem okay thank you yeah i would assume that you're that that is the stance that i would take um but i really do want to yeah think about it before we make that ultimate decision yes we don't most people most people probably have stools or something so that the kids can get to that height i mean we had that for actually it's still in my bathrooms both my bathrooms for my girls so right you know that's the standard practice so we might be able to just do

024a simple solution of that but it's just one more thing to clean and sterilize yeah we might also need to have an adult accompany them i i don't know if we have some students who when they're home using the bigger toilets have adult assistance so yeah i agree it needs to be looked into i i want to get back to something you said frank so you're saying that um team a when it is joined by the kindergartners will have two certified teachers in charge of those children correct okay thank you any other questions russ said something earlier about being funded ninety six thousand dollars i'd like to know where the ninety six thousand dollars how it was used because i i don't understand why where that amount of money was spent you mean um well

025let's look at this past year because uh that's where i was referring it that's a grant to run the pre-k program right it's based on the number of students who fill this we call them slots each of slot is worth uh six thousand dollars and there are 16 slots that 96 000 was given to us last year in full even though we only had eight kids in our program right that's what i'm asking about so that ninety six thousand dollars offset the cost of the hundred and twenty approximately 120 dollar cost for salary of the certified teacher her insurance the salary the paraprofessional and her insurance and the board picks up the excess costs and has that's the way it happens all the time um this was calculated beforehand before we got the 96 000

026that that that's how it was going to be broke down i'm confused no the ninety six thousand dollars is a that's the dollar amount that's when we get to run that program so there was no calculation involved it was ninety six thousand dollars the problem is the calculation this coming year was changed and so they will only pay for children who actually are attending pre-k right now i only have eight students of the 16 slots signed up now we to throw another wrench in this whole discussion well first before i go into that russ did i answer your question at all are you still confused i'm still confused okay i'm not sure so just like from a schedule budget line standpoint like all like probably more than this but the one thousand one line of

027education like frank was saying praise for certified staff substitutes paraprofessionals health insurance uh professional development funds transportation funds travel funds instructional supply funds and all those line items add up to about 000 for the year that's what the budget is to run pre-school to pay for the teacher and that is almost irregardless of numbers because it is what it is i mean you have to pay for that teacher no matter if you have 10 or 16 students okay and so that's what the 120 comes from and then what dr ola is saying is that the grant um is the grant get your six thousand dollars times nine of 16 is the what we get for the grant so then the difference has always been what we paid okay so we calculated our budget determining that

028we were going to receive 96 000 ahead of after this right that's right well no the budget is what the budget is i mean by the time you pay for all those line items it ends up being about 120 000 dollars yeah but the grant was we assumed the grant would bring in what we did was we calculated not 16 but 10. right okay the other question i have is you've to be concerned about uh uh children not being vaccinated is that a concern of yours because i'm not aware of that the children need to be vaccinated no well they don't have vaccines for really young children um but we had only one twelve year old in our school this year uh right at the end of the year so none of our kids are

029currently able or have vaccines that are authorized for their age group right that's what i'm getting i have to assume they're they're not going to have vaccinations on september 1. okay okay i got confused on that thank you yep dr ola this is juan yes sir so we're talking about two certified teachers and one para because of the kindergarten or the yeah no no no let me correct you we have two certified teachers and two paraprofessionals one is going to be with the second grade part of team a and the other one will be with the kindergarten first grade that total is at this point 15 students okay that total of kindergarten and first grade is 15 students okay uh how many kids are in the first grade team i mean um right now um

030the kindergarten class we had had five students in it they go on to first grade okay how many in second grade uh i think my my report contained that information there are so many numbers in my head i have a difficult time giving you a really accurate answer sam's report says nine that there are currently nine students in grade one so that they would go on to grade two now remember that nine um we have um how am i going to say this without going public um we do have a child returning let's put it that way okay thank you oh so it might be one more you're saying but from out placement that no it's the it's the difficulty of it of the issue not the number so much okay all right so um

031yes mary rose um and would like to say something okay ann yep hear me yes we can hear you okay just quickly um you know that number eight for the preschool enrollment i think we probably would benefit from remembering that that's a fluid number so when you know there are a lot of circumstances that affect parents uh speed or lacks error of in terms of registration you know that it's been a challenging time for some people and they may be planning to register but they haven't done it yet so i just think we don't want to carve that in stone along the way but to think of it as current enrollment with the understanding that that number can change thank you rose yes thank you um i just want to make sure anne that you

032and the rest of the board realize that sam has been on the phone talking to parents we put out a couple of um um requests for anybody who knows a neighbor who has um you know pre-co a pre-school age three and four-year-olds to contact the office we sent out based on the enumeration report of 17 packets directly to the houses that we thought kids who were born three and four years ago lived in um and we got a number of them back um address the unknown um so we have tried to kind of beat the bushes for students um in in fact i've tried to get um someone from brooklyn to send his child to our school um so but that didn't work either so are we really trying very hard to to find those

033students in i know you are and i know you are and because i found the school readiness council too and i've you know talked to them throughout the past few months i know that everybody's working really hard and i respect that i'm just saying that it's not a stable situation and and you know people come and go i mean there's been a lot of mobility in terms of real estate so when you're getting letters back it means that people are moving into town too so i'm just saying it's not a criticism frank oh no no i didn't think about that right i just wanted to make sure you informed enough to know that yep the the critical issue the scary one is according to enumeration four people were born um last full year and only

034zero were born from january through june according to the enumeration report i received so the you know three years from now um there'll be a dearth of students a severe dearth well if of don't have pre-k students we won't offer pre-k uh well we need to think about that as a possibility it's amazing to me i have a yes mary i have a quick question when you say there's a team leader that team leader is one of the two teachers correct correct yes it's still katie katie is still the team leader of team a thank you you're welcome okay let's move on to the thank you frank let's move on to the principles report hi everybody hi um [Music] we've been this last month has gone by really fast we had our step up ceremony

035and everything went really smooth [Music] the teachers were very creative in keeping the kids cool and doing outdoor and quiet activities when we had our little heat spell um [Music] the um all the teachers have been teaming up in and tightening up our math plans so that we have a smooth transition to a math program that's more individualized or personalized for each student um we had a team of the younger grade students that pulled together our phonics um they are only missing a piece because of ordering we have to order one more piece and um miss ankini with some support has pulled together summer and math reading programs with some other activities and science stuff uh packets some some books were sent home with all of the kids um first summer and they'll they'll bring

036them back in the fall and we'll um we'll do a little celebration then but um the only other thing is that the building is a disaster because the cleaning crew is putting everything in the hall and mr andy is scouring away at the floors trying to um get them buffed up and shined again then everything will go back into the classroom so they've been busy at that great thank you sam does anyone have any questions hearing none we'll move on to our director of special education's report judy you're muted thank you good evening everyone okay um so this year as you know was an irregular year and i counted on my calendar quickly and it looks like we had approximately 80 ppt's this year which is which is a lot for the number of students

037we have um i will just um kind of piggyback on what dr olas said um there's um we are bringing a student back and we do need to keep our second grade very small that that's actually important and i really appreciate dr ola and mrs roberson's creativity and the staff there was a lot of lot of a lot of time put in to how we could value every child and meet every child's needs with our existing resources including visits to other schools and a very lot of meetings um but it was it was heartening because it was all about what is best for children and meeting students needs so um my next thing is during the 2021 school year because we're in june now we did go through an audit and i think i may

038have mentioned that before but we received zero corrective actions and there were zero findings so that was good news for us um and then i participated today i'm on the con case executive board in a strategic retreat about the work that we're doing next year around accelerated learning social emotional learning and those kinds of things and i had the opportunity to speak with mrs roberson this late afternoon and she and i are going to meet together tomorrow to try to determine how much summer work needs to be put in um just so that we're prepared to hit the ground running we we do have that um amazing record of being open for 183 days and we're very proud of it we're everybody's tired but we know because of this some of the new rollouts um

039from the special ed department on accelerated learning and then there's some social emotional and i i can't recall someone on the call may it's um there's an acronym for it but that's going to be free for schools but isn't available yet great thank you yes rose yes one i have a question for dr benson okay uh dr benson how many special ed kids do we actually have at hampton elementary because you said we had you had 80 ppt people yeah approximately and you know um one was i did count diagnostic meetings in that okay which are the everyday which are the every two weeks and we did um and i'm trying to like dr ola not give away information but we went above and beyond in my opinion and our commitment to bringing a student

040back as i said we need to keep a class month and we met every two weeks on that one student so that really added to it it did skew it for sure okay but i i still like to know the number with and that doesn't give anybody's name away or any of that and then on that on well every two weeks what are there 36 weeks in a school year so i that right there is 18 and there were definitely more than that um because there were emergency ppts um there were definitely more so so there was one student for whom there were a huge um number of meetings but i feel i feel like very good work was done we collaborated and created a plan using google docs and really looked at what would

041be needed what you know our questions were we collaborated with outside people but we had a very lot of meetings on that and then as you know one two um sometimes there's an initial meeting right when someone is referred to special ed and then you meet again to determine whether they qualify so you know sometimes there are a couple of meetings there and then the other thing was because of covid there were some extra meetings i mean this is this is irregular but the reason i counted it quickly and i used my calendar on my phone to count is because it felt really busy in that way and so you know i just went through and counted and and it it was it was very busy with that okay excuse me dr benson clark the

042original question was how many students who we have with ieps oh i'm sorry thank you um okay thank you so one um i apologize okay so last last year we had just under 20 students and for next year i think dr ola asked me to speak of that we are expecting to be about the same um possibly a little a little bit more i've been in touch as as he said um you know and knew early that we were getting some students from ashford a couple of students with some some different needs that we're getting some from a therapeutic placement my number my my operating guest number right at the moment is 20 but like um like dr gruenberg said and as you know certainly that's fluid yes okay thank you and i i'd like

043to commend you on your on your audit that's excellent yeah well it's it's our team as you know it starts from the top with dr mrs roberson and it's the paraprofessionals it really is everyone i mean i feel i feel very lucky to work in hampton it's a it's a great staff and great community and parents so thank you um neil yes dr benson thanks um i think we've had this question before so you're as the 20 would i consider i'm doing my math again 20 students out of the 78 that we have so we're up around 25 that need this um remedial i don't know the white word to work to use it yeah you know that that has been and that's a conversation that um you know mrs roberson and i had even

044late this afternoon that we're always looking to strengthen our srbi program um and we're we're always looking to um improve that and to do a better job with that sam just said to me that our final count ending the year um mr moon was 18 students identified i was giving um that i believe we're going to have 20 in the fall but that that could be that could be off but we are a little bit high some other districts seem like that they're a little bit high um there are some folks i think um dr gruenberg and um said at one point that speech students are counted in that and we have younger students being a pre-k through grade six population and so sometimes that can be because we catch kids early in early identification

045i i don't think i can tell you with confidence that i don't believe we're misidentifying students i mean that was one of my questions when i started it really was you know do we have are we just identifying students i think that we do um a good job servicing students and i don't know right now i'm not prepared to answer this um with numbers but i can tell you that we do graduate speech students meaning they exit special education so you know i think at one point maybe marielle and donnelly and gruenberg and some others said maybe maybe that's even a good practice or our best practice because we're really um getting involved early and with speech it's more than just how you say a word but it's really working on all of the background

046knowledge and hearing correctly and there are a lot of can be a lot of pre-reading skills does that answer that kind of uh pretty much and that that uh you said we're a little higher than say a town like chaplain or scotland no no no no no no i i i didn't say that a town like chaplain or scotland i know we're not higher than we're not higher than scotland i know that for sure i i don't know about chaplin okay yeah i just wanted to make sure we're somewhere in the ballpark here i on my reasoning is going off and i don't know to me it just seems high anyway i don't do the job and that's what we rely on you for so i'm just trying to get numbers in my head no

047and that's that's a good question and thank you for asking that or clarifying that a little bit more so i understand um i'm actually the director in scotland too so i'm i'm positive that we're about the same um dr ola um was also concerned properly and he had um the director of chaplin and i meet with dr ola dr barron and um mr henry sheet and we did really analyze that we looked and we were able to do that kid by kid and we we left feeling comfortable with our students who are identified i think it's a worthwhile um activity to make sure that we're identifying students correctly and servicing students correctly but at that time all three of those districts our numbers and percents were very very similar we we were not higher in

048hampton okay is that helpful yes absolutely thank you and thank you know what thank you for helping clarify and thank you mrs bisson for bringing me back to mr mr ariela's original question great thank you for your report of course okay we're going to now move to the item eight discussion and possible action on the cave letter cited above so mr moffat this is your opportunity would you like to to make your comment now thank you mrs bisson um yeah i wanted to comment on uh on what the cave fellow uh i forget what his name was i didn't write it down i i'd like to know where he got his information from the basis based his opinion the way he did you mean is there anybody that can you know give me the information

049that what he had to say was uh factual or is it his opinion so are you are you wondering about the he was commenting on a document put out by the state right are you wondering about the state or are you wondering what he based his opinion on well he's the one who said that he wants us to back what he had to say he was asking for us to back him i'm wondering what he wants us to back him for it was kind of it was kind of uh i i couldn't kind of figure i couldn't figure it all out what he was actually trying to say was it his opinion or was it was it numbers or information that he had in front of him that he was using i i didn't hit

050it i think he basically said racism is wrong and that was his message so so we're supposed to go with that message and tell our children who are just that that are so young and that doesn't have an opinion about this and bring this upon them and ask them to understand what he's trying to get across i i'm not for that not none of those right now we teach them that being white is great and i suspect that they're asking us to stop that they want us to tell our children that we are special people because we're white that's what they're wanting us to do and there's no reason for us to do anything like that right but that's what has been done historically you shouldn't even be thinking about these terms they're they're innocent

051they don't need to go back 200 years ago where slavery was in effect and they had nothing to do with it neither did i needed my forefathers i came from my my forefathers came from ireland and i still have posters in my home that says i irish need not apply so how do i feel does that affect me no um it brings it brings it to my attention when this kind of stuff gets brought up and these children are innocent they don't need to be hearing anything like this so i happen to be half irish and my grandfather uh in boston saw those posters my grandmother saw those posters so i understand them but i still benefit from being white there are things that i am able to do just because i'm white that someone

052who isn't white would be excluded from and i think that's what's being referred to is that we need to teach our children that everyone is valuable and just as valuable as someone else and that hasn't been taught up till now i'm sorry but i don't agree with that theory at all i mean that's way way why would you why would you want to bring the kids into this kind of thinking why would you want to do that well i would want to teach children that everyone is valuable because that also addresses bullying well it addresses many things in the bible all all people are created equal too okay and need to be treated equal and they are being treated equally well they aren't well that's an opinion well i think we'll find there are a

053lot of people who who believe they're not being treated equal and when they discuss it with me okay i hear your opinion yes neil yeah uh i just wanted to um so i guess the first my first question was going to be um so this this is going to happen um because the state board of education has decided that this is what they want to do teach critical race theory which in my opinion is reverse racism is that what we are going to do are we are we going to initiate the crt training because the state board do we have any i do we have any choice to say we don't want this or is this going to be shoved down our throats to accept this i guess that's my first question before i go

054into anything else so i guess i don't know they've made a statement i don't believe they've written a curriculum and told us we have to teach it i don't believe there's a law passed that says we have to teach it frank are you aware of a law saying that we have to teach this no there is no law um i think um the state board of education is using it as a um way of saying this is what we think is appropriate that we teach children to respect each other in each other's history and background um in fact um i don't believe i have ever heard that there was any issue of um um forced curriculum for for this issue at all i have heard that the state is going to have for all subjects

055is going to have a model curriculum but boards get to choose whether they'll teach those or not i mean we don't get to choose are we going to teach math but we get to choose are we going to follow a curriculum developed by the state yeah yes mary ellen i'm trying to raise my hand for ann she's been asking me to raise it go ahead yes i'll keep it short and simple but i try anyway um you know currently we do have a requirement that teachers you know certified teachers have to be exposed to multicultural perspectives and you know some some would say that progress has been made in that realm we do have statutes already in place that are requiring that the state provide models like you were saying wrote it's not a requirement

056that everybody you know has multicultural curriculum per se but the state needs to provide support to programs in order to incorporate constructively more equitable multicultural perspectives and they're they're doing different things like yesterday i participated in a summit it was virtual and there was input from people like principals and administrators and teachers from all over the country um so there are initiatives and i i think the intent is to be positive and constructive and um not just get caught up in the jargon but we're living in a time when there's this is in the spotlight not just in educational programs but all over like meet the press and what have you you know that these are topics that are being addressed all over and we need advocates and i think what i'm hearing you say

057ross is that you believe in supporting students and that's a good thing and i don't hear anybody saying that we're doing the opposite of that so i'm gonna just be quiet now because i recognize that there are other people who have something to share well i'm sorry russ i missed what you said it says you will be involved in the students if you institute this as a board i mean if you go on to youtube and you listen to offer officer brando tatum who is a black man who is deadly against this candace owens a black lady who is definitely against this amala from prager uh uh university hodge twins ben carson they're all totally totally against this big time people have been brought on to youtube and they've been and we've uh watched them

058give their piece in about uh parenting uh how they're deadly against this because it's not anything that they want their children to be involved with and i have to agree with them after watching all this uh and hearing their side of the story i i agree 100 that this shouldn't be thrown on our kids back who hasn't even got a thought about this until we bring it to their attention so i don't think that at the level of the elementary school the information you're referring to would be actively taught uh but i don't know exactly what that can be brought up well sometimes children yes mary ellen would you like to say i i just yeah it the letter doesn't address the words critical race theory it says the state board's position affirms its continuing

059commitment that sufficient specialized and appropriate resources be provided to close the achievement gap between high-performing and low-performing students males and females and students of different racial ethnic and social economic groups and i know that connecticut is really bad with the achievement gaps um among races i mean that's been shown and harford why is that so why don't you let mary ellen finish her statement then you can ask her question yeah they're they don't mention critical race theory and they just say that they're going to provide resources to schools it doesn't ask us to teach anything specifically or even in general in there they're saying they need to provide what the state is obligated to provide so that we have more um even achievement in our school systems in our districts across the state so i

060don't i'm not worried about them forcing us to teach anything or bringing in the words critical race theory or any of that into the classrooms i don't think that's what it's meant as a matter of fact the second letter that um that rose was talking about asked for things like um you know improving family and community connections improving the digital knowledge having schools be safe and healthy making sure the kids are learning it was nothing mentioned about race so that i wrote that i was taking notes as far as i could fast as i could so so i'm not worried about them are you finished mary ellen okay yes russ so what you're saying is we're we're lacking in all those issues that you just brought up our children are all lacking in these and

061and we should be associating this critical race theory upon them to to correct it i think mary ellen said the opposite that nowhere in any of these letters is critical race theory mentioned yes neil i'm sorry but a lot of this is semantics i've studied this enough and have paid enough attention as to what is going on with crt i don't know maybe a lot of you aren't aren't familiar with what is happening uh but crt is big martin luther king you know judged somebody not by the color of their skin this is exactly what we are doing here in reverse you know since since me as a white guy i i'm supposed to have had all these advantages all along and i'm supposed to accept it because you tell me that that is not

062the case with me but you are going to try to shame me because i am white to accept that position and i never will and that is what is going on here everybody i i broach rose with this because i think everybody better be prepared don't do some research make up your own minds i'm not trying to push my attitude or my my beliefs on this but i can tell you right now parents start to come in and from what i've heard um with school systems around the country and these are not radical right ring wing towns uh you're having 250 people show up at school boards and shouting them down and i'm telling you we better be ready for it it's a small little town but if they find out that you're forcing their

063kids to make themselves feel not as good about themselves as others you're going to hear about it because if i had a kid which we didn't have kids i'd be in your faces so you guys better understand that this is out there and i'm not on the side of the normal school board many of the school boards that they're showing now all of all of them are liberal okay and you're getting people that are conservative black white hispanic making speeches and saying stay out of my child's business this is the business of the parent this is not the business of the school to be teaching you know how how kids should be viewing other kids you ask a little black kid you ask a little white kid they don't even pay attention to color but

064now you're going to be bringing race into the school and saying oh yeah but see you're a white you've been had advantage in and and the white kid is going to go home and say they they say i'm not as as good of i have to give up my my feelings i don't feel like i'm a bad person i mean i could go on for this for quite a while i'm yeah i think we get the message now i'll stop where i am i thank you i have made my point and uh i i don't you get usually excited about this stuff but this is not right thank you you're welcome yes i'm sorry mark's hand is up yes mark i think when i i guess i may be reading a little differently i mean

065i think all they're saying is they're just bringing up uh examples of like where's they're trying to maybe prohibit certain teachings in schools and i can't agree with you i think it's more probably geared towards more like social studies related items for maybe a higher grade level than an elementary school but ultimately it just says that the camp condition i mean they're just they're asking us to you know maintain a culture of you know basically helping all children succeed uh entitled to both equal you know all children are equal entitled to both equal education opportunities and to be treated equal incredibly that's that's what they're it seems like when i read this letter that's what they're asking for and i think that's reasonable i mean you know you wanna everybody should be treated equally i

066mean you shouldn't have a a student being treated differently because of a race or color it's it's not like that you know i think i support that and i i mean you know you could make the same argument that we shouldn't be teaching about the holocaust because that would be rude to germans i mean why would you do that i mean you got to learn from history and slavery and you know inequality is partially you know it's history that needs to be taught and we learn from our history and so you know you i think it's it's important we do a whole black history month in february and i wouldn't say that we can't do that anymore because we we you know shouldn't be in equal so i mean i i don't i don't read

067that letter as saying hey we want to start teaching that um whatever the term is i think i read the letter as hey we want to say that we support equal education for all so maybe i've read it differently than others though okay juan has asked to speak yes juan thank you um first of all i i think we need to get rid of the word race what what i've read from and what i've discussed with people is it's actually critical thinking and analyzing information and i've gone to schools to try to correct history because history is represented by the conqueror or the fact that the conqueror percent presented without ever speaking to the people or acknowledging the views of the people that were conquered and i would say the irish would be an example

068of that the native americans uh the chinese who came from china and worked in our railroads and helped us develop as a country and you know and i'm glad that the constitution acknowledges that we should all be created equal but three-fifths of a vote when the blacks were voting was not correct not having women vote because they didn't own property or whatever other reasons or native americans we were the last people to vote and then we can go on and on i i went to school that was segregated it was desegregated in the process because we were never getting the equal opportunities to the same books we were we got the leftover books from there from the school district that were left over for us we didn't have minority teachers to tell us that we

069were just as good as everybody else and yet we have survived and and i think all minority people have we've all kind of have held our tongue because america has treated us equal and all we want is to be seen in the same light and to be acknowledged that we actually have brains and so i this has been like an ongoing issue with me all my life because i've looked in the mirror and i know i don't fit the part i mean when i was in maybe four years old i took a wire brush and see if i could get rid of my skin and now what i've discovered in the process was it bleeds red like everybody else's when my father discovered when he was fighting uh the japanese in in the pacific was

070that if he went down he went down with everybody else and everybody else got treated the same then so you know what i i think what the crt is trying to do is just give the view of everybody not just one culture but everybody's bit and how it affected everybody in the process and hopefully aim it towards a positive uh solution of uh where everybody can acknowledge okay this is what happened but we have to move forward and these are the mistakes we make we made and we have to correct those mistakes and make sure that they're not repeated thank you thank you neil you wanted to speak well i i definitely agree with juan um and i think what the difference here is that we all want equality but having equity that's a subtle

071change of a word we'll go back to semantics what is equity it's an enforced outcome and how do you get an enforced outcome by telling someone that you have been superior for so long and it is now the other person's turn and you're going to be presenting this to a child say a seven or eight year old i don't know how long this is how low this is going to go um that it's somebody else's turn when they don't even understand what you're talking about until you brought it to their attention i mean we we've taught history and i i think juan would agree that at this point the united states of america is not what it used to be in 1930 40 50s 60s and partially maybe even into the 70s we've made a

072miraculous turnaround yes we have to address this every day but in order to understand what this critical race thinking is you i as a person as a white person or any black person is that i have to accept the fact that i have to relinquish something that i never did anything about history changes we've gotten better and now all of a sudden i'm going to skip ahead quickly here i don't think this is about race in this country this is as political as i'll get i don't think race in this country isn't a problem this is class when juan was talking about you know indians the chinese and russ mentioned the irish did not do not apply as we got different situations in this country and they are trying to stoke this racist attitude um

073and try to divide this country into different classes not just race my opinion on this again is that i wanted this brought up because i want people to not just immediately react to what i'm saying but go do your own research on this there's plenty out there and i've done i'm not going to keep i talk too much but i i i just want to make my point is that don't believe everything you say do everything that you hear crt is critical race theory it's a theory it was a theory by some guy that started this in in around the 70s that uh believe it or not he was a communist this is marxist thinking this is what they do to bring down civilizations you might think i'm a wacko now but i'm talking about

074this how do you think the nazi regime started to change all these people they started picking on the jews now now we're we're we're picking on the whites because supposedly there was systemic racism which i have i'm 68 years old i have never seen it in my lifetime i'm sure juan has he's gone through it and anybody that's black has but i can tell you right now that i don't see systemic racism existing and that's what critical race theory is trying to monopol uh be uh to use that benefit of anger amongst all of us in order to to create a different society and i'll end it there thank you for listening hopefully i made my point i think you did yes thank you mary ellen yeah i just want to briefly say that i

075hear you and i understand what you're saying i've done some reading on this too about marxism and the link with critical race theory um what i was hearing from the state department and in that letter was just something like willomantic gets more funding because they're um i forget the name of the um alliance an alliance district they have more children with um um food free and reduced lunch than we do well i'm not sure that it's then we do because i don't know the count but um that that's what i what i was thinking of when i heard this that the alliance districts and they just in the new legislation uh actually gave more towards um i think they change the percentage of children who get free and reduce lunch and the amount of money

076those districts get i wasn't thinking of teaching children anything about um how we look at them as white children i was thinking that a school system that has a lot of poverty in it gets more money because they don't have the tax base that we have so but i hear what you're saying i will do more reading about it thank you would anyone else like to comment all right um thank you neil for bringing the subject up for our agenda for discussion we'll move on now to item nine discussion and possible action on the board of finances vote to reduce the board of education's 2021-2022 budget um does anyone have a comment i'm thinking that it would be helpful if we waited until we knew what our budget is before we started finalizing anything um

077i do think that we're going to have to as a board determine if we want to cut a bus before we know our budget because plan planning needs to happen and we can't wait till august would anyone like to give an opinion about about the bus if we should keep the bus the third bus or go down to two i don't think i would support it i mean i understand uh people can count numbers on students on a bus but i don't think that's accurate as far as what the runs will be and i think it'll have a major disruption about the starts and stop times of the day and how long kids will be until they get home at night okay mary ellen did you want to say something yeah for i don't know

078if it was last board meeting or the board meeting before i took the information that we got and it looks like we would have to change our start and stop times for our school if we go down to two buses so i think we need to review look back at that before i make a opinion tonight about so how do you want to review it is that accurate yeah we'll have to change the times that's very accurate do you know what time we'd have to start and stop dr ola do you know that in front of me yeah i think i think dr ola knows yeah approximately 15 to 20 minutes both both ends of the start and stop instead of uh ending at 3 15 we'd have to end approximately 3 30 which then

079pushes our buses um remember not only that 15 minutes but there's an hour and 20 minutes on a bus for some of those students so in the winter there would be students getting home after dark getting off a school bus i think i heard someone else say they had a comment to make i have a question yes and my understanding you know without violating confidentiality and i don't have the information in any way but my understanding is that there's at least one child who has been receiving services out of district who will be returning will that offset any possible i mean will there be a need for local transportation for that child you mean will they do all of us perhaps oh because two large buses and all of us we we can't answer that

080at this time definitively i i didn't expect you clue i don't need to put anybody on the spot but it's a lot of moving parts in the picture and i know i appreciate that we need to be careful of it yeah thank you i i i i think i appreciate that and i think without trying to say much i i i think for many kids the longer bus ride would be more difficult um you know we we never want to have to do special transportation but it would depend on the student needs thank you um so i'd i'd like to go back to marielle and you said you you'd want us to do more analysis i think we've done all the analysis are you saying you want more time to do to think about it

081or i don't think there's anything else for us to analyze to be honest well the way we said it if we end school at 3 30 it's an hour and 20 minutes home they're getting it home at 10 minutes to five the last child that's correct yes one i speak um let me just make sure mary ellen was done okay thank you were you done mary ellen yeah okay okay yes one uh okay i i i've seen the bus one bus picked up five kids and buses go through downtown most of the time so i i don't see what the problem is the second thing is mary ellen meaning no disrespect who made you a transportation authority because i don't remember reading that on anything that had to do with it because i can go

082out and lay a lay uh a bus route also and probably shorten your bus route and i'm sure that somebody can come up behind i'm sure russ could probably come behind me and shorten my bus route so instead of going from board members telling us the this is the bus route no let's let somebody who knows what they're doing let them tell us what it is because you know what there's always going to be some kind of favoritism or there's going to be some opposition to this we need to lose the bus plain and simple five kids on a bus every day is not it's just not profitable it's not worth it we can do better than that thank you i've never heard you get so emotional about something at a board meeting one um

083i i do want to just i was involved i asked the question uh may i just think i was in dark matter can i just say my one sentence um we're talking times of covid so i don't know if this is a good time to make the judgment about how many kids are on a bus um but mary ellen that's all i wanted to say i'm not an authority on bus transportation i took the information that was given to us by dr ola and um and i put it in a in a table so that i could understand it it and it was done i believe by computer um by the company that currently transports our kids by subtracting one bus and coming up with run times so i just took the run times and

084put them in it in a table so i could understand it and i sent that out to everybody everyone has it so i didn't generate any information myself i just plugged it into a table and what happened was it gave us a start time and an end time and well it gave us that we'd be late to the elementary school um and that's what i wrote down on the table that we would be late i i kind of feel um disrespected and accused of something and i'm not feeling very good about that well as chair i'd like to apologize to you for that um i i don't think any disrespect was intended um so what what does the board want us to do not doing anything is the same as doing something in this case

085would someone like to make oh okay so russ russ's hand went up and then i saw ann was coming so it's going to be rust than ann okay well i just had a question i don't know how the time lapses were were computed was it computed like let me put this in the right perspective here um if we have a bus that's supposed to pick up 20 students but every day it picks up five is that the timeline that we're going by when you add up the timeline that's going to make them an hour later or whatever if we just disallow a bus so what i'm saying is there are students that every day don't use the bus no matter what their parents drop them off and i know that we can't consider that but

086that's the case that it is so are we considering that all these children are using the bus and by adding taking away a bus that adds on more time and that's where we end up with the time that we're talking about ola can you answer that question yeah that is correct east khan did use their computer program um based on the student addresses and went from three buses to two buses and that's the data that they had generated through their run program can i yes mark can i interject a little bit so yes they did use the 20 students versus the five but i think in the morning um i think the bus is obligated to run the full route even if they're not making as many stops so the length of time is shortened

087but it's probably not that much shorter i think in the afternoon probably is a better case where the bus might be able to modify its route based on the students on the bus but in the morning i'm not sure if that's really going to be able to be the case at least based on our current policy ask the parents to bring their children in and if they do not need a bus ride anymore maybe that's what we should do that that's a tough one because um something could happen and then they need the bus and they would have the right to it we can't ask them to sign their rights away i'm not asking i'm just asking if they can use it yeah you're saying though i do understand yeah but it it is a

088good point that if to kind of piggyback on what mark said if so only 10 kids get on the bus it won't take an hour and a half to deliver them home and maybe no child would get home at after dark maybe we could consider that but i put in off i'm sorry and did you want to say something hold on start again okay thank you um we're required all school districts are required to provide transportation whether they're using it or not i mean i think that's a statutory requirement my main concern and i think it's it's a little redundant to keep studying this and studying it but at the same time some of the some of the details change from year to year so while it may seem that we've been here before we've

089seen this movie um it's not exactly the same as it was a year ago or two years ago but my main concern is that we're being that assumptions are being made the decisions are being made about reducing funding to the district with the assumption that i mean people have actually articulated this um that the bus situation would be changed based on the change of financial support to the district and i i just think that's the wrong way to make a decision especially this decision my opinion i'm not sure your first statement was accurate i don't believe the law says that a bus has to drive the fire i'm getting feedback i'm sorry i'm sorry ann you go ahead and say what you want to say well i i said it so i just want to

090make sure we're talking about the same thing that there is the statutory requirement i believe unless that's changed the districts provides transportation so whether like if a family is choosing not to use it that doesn't mean that it's not a requirement for the district it's it is a requirement my understanding is and i could be wrong but this is an important detail that we want to check i mean if we're if we're assuming that we don't have to provide transportation to some kid that's a big assumption and i'm i'm thinking that we need to operate under the accurate information and if we're if we're not required to provide transportation that's a whole different scenario okay we are we are required to provide transportation but if a parent tells us my child is not going to

091get on the bus we're not required to drive a bus by their house every day if the parent calls and says oh i need bus service for my child then we are required do you think i'm right dr ola or do you think i'm wrong um i believe you're kind of half and half we have to we have to create a bus route that every child has picked up i would say that if a child is not standing at their the end of their driveway the bus just simply continues to move on um and more than likely if one child or four children are not going that particular day because they're ill or because the parent says you know i'm driving them they still would follow the route in order to pick up the other

092children on that route so you're kind of correct yes we have to supply transportation but i'm not sure um all a parent has to do is have the child stand outside and the bus should be able to pick that child up even if that child hadn't stood there for 181 days the 182nd day they would have to pick the child up okay if if we knew a parent had told us that they were not going to send a child and the child lived on a one-way street uh a dead-end street was the only child on that dead-end street would the bus still have to go by more than likely oh more than likely um a dead-end street the bus wouldn't go down anyway because there's no turnaround and buses cannot go on private property because

093that becomes a liability for the bus company if it backs into a a parked car or whatever so more than likely the parent would drive this child to the end of that dirt road or that dead end and wait in the car on triple bucks came by so um it's that's why it's so difficult to give you a straight answer um because there are all kinds of circumstances that are problematic okay thank you so the the mark is pointing at something ross he's pointing at me holding my hand up for the last five minutes okay russ what would you like to say on my own i'd like to say that if a parent or a guardian calls the school or the bus driver or the whoever and says that the child is not going to

094be picked up they no longer need to stop there but if a student is being picked up and they're not out at the end of the driveway there's a requirement that they have to wait at least two minutes for them so that's the point i wanted to make thank you would anyone else like to make a comment up ian can you have more yes yes just that there's a difference between calling to say my child is not coming to school today and calling to say my child needs to be picked up today because we're not an uber service and and there's you know from a caregiving perspective those may seem equivalent but they're really not because it takes it takes a coordinated effort to pick up a child and to not pick up a child

095it's like easier than to pick up a child when you haven't scheduled it so i'm just think that i think the potential is there to misunderstand the flexibility piece of this you know that that it would not it would not be feasible for a a caregiver to say i need you to pick up my child today if they haven't been doing that on a regular basis okay thank you i'd like to say something it was back in march that dr ola sent us the information about um the specific bus runs it has the exact times that they stop at every uh place for example 556 at the hampton office bus lot 559 153 old route 6 etc there you know there's pages of this for each household so if we want to review that this

096is june if we want to review it and just bring it up again in july i think that's probably enough time that's my opinion okay so i am noticing that i'm not hearing a motion to cut a bus rose i'll make the motion that we cut one bus for the next school year and do we have a second i'll second that okay thank you oh i forgot i'm taking minutes um juan and neil any discussion hearing none we will take the vote mark oh no russ yes neil yes mary ellen no and no and one yes we have a tie um three no's and three yeses [Music] um so the motion fails we will i guess then move on to the next agenda item uh discussion and review of the approved sr2 grant funding dr

097hola did you want to lead a discussion um i just wanted to make sure everyone understood the sr2 funds um uh the um staff were concerned that our current software of success maker is not working properly on the older equipment that we have we called in east con to come and look at that equipment and understand why we couldn't get full operational quality on success maker which is our main software for english language arts math for distance learning and everyday learning and uh they reported back to us that our system is old our chromebooks are not capable of working with all the sophisticated work uh that success maker is capable of doing or for that matter any other software similar to saw to um success maker so i sent you a copy of the and

098see if i can find it real quick of the um recommended um expenditures that were the grant money that is allowed the grant was accepted in the amount of fifty eight thousand five hundred dollars and we will be replacing almost all of our uh infrastructure for um our internet and all of the wireless materials that we have in our building so we will have probably one of the most updated um systems in our area and that's all i want needed to tell you that sr2 is different from sr3 um in sr3 um in my report there must be eight different ideas everything from um clubs after school for kids in third fourth fifth sixth grade um doing the um the teacher accelerated learning teacher in the first second grade so um and there are other

099pieces to that um sel for um added time for mrs sorel um actually we're gonna start focusing in on parents um and they're coping um with the cobot issues as well as our students so um that's all i wanted to do is make sure all of you knew where we were what that piece of paper was all about that was included in your packet actually the same thing for um number 11 which is the school readiness grant and i think i've already explained what my concern there was for 21 21.22 and that's at this point we are we're getting 48 000 half of what we should be getting okay i just want to give well thank you for your summary and i just want to give um [Music] board members a chance to ask any

100questions they might have about the esser 2 funding ann wants to make a comment yes in yes it's actually um born of frustration here is it possible that my devices aren't working in this facility or you know connecting with your zoom because of the outdated systems frank you're you're muted i don't have the expertise to answer that that certainly is a possibility but really it might depend more on what you have at your end rather than what we have at our end because no one else seems to have the possibility of not coming in so a combination yes is there some way we could have our tech person meet with anne to discuss and try to figure out what the problem is i was just going to suggest that and they're in on wednesdays every

101wednesday tyler tom or one of the other um they were here today we got a lot of our equipment in um so yes ann any if you call lisa at the office and make an appointment we have to pull a slip on that so that tom and and tyler know that you're coming in and that they will they probably can tweak your your laptop or whatever that you have your ipad or whatever and make it work for you we'll let ann call you and do that she doesn't have to do it at a public meeting yeah okay um is there anyone else who has a comment about the esser funds okay how about any would anyone like to comment about the school readiness grant um frank kind of moved over to that too okay hearing

102none we'll move on to our committees um communications hasn't met the hampton scotland joint committee um i think we met since our last board meeting um oh we did because that was when we had the guy come from i think he was from essex and he talked about the arrangement that is in his school district there are three towns and they use cooperative agreements i didn't think that paralleled us at all um but some people thought it did uh so there wasn't really any discussion on what would our three towns do it was just listening to what he did uh and the finance and operations committee uh yep uh we met last thursday um uh actually dr ola do you have anything did you meet with the mrc rep on tuesday you're on mute again

103oh sorry he came on monday and um he uh uh made a i thought a very uh interesting recommendation he looked at our plot measured it out and um he recommended standalone since you we don't have the money to do a hundred thousand dollar playscape he's recommending standalones and that you could connect them or interconnect them depending on what you're purchasing so i have a picture of what we looked at um and um what we um have purchased and um it's a an arch that has um climbing ropes on it something very different it's designed for five to 12 year olds and up to 10 students can be on that apparatus at any one time it's a long 32 foot arch but it's drop zone i hate to say it that way but that's what

104they call it the drop zone is only eight feet wide so we're looking at putting it in uh parallel with the building on that 50 by 50 piece and then you can add other pieces as you get funding um besides that um you know just uh still working on the front parking lot with not a lot of progress yet so that's all to report thank you um policies yeah am i okay to speak yes okay great um i'm trying to schedule a meeting it's not the easiest thing and i left a message for russ and i spoke with matt um matt's not sure he's going to be available next week but we're aiming to have a policy committee meeting soon and we have some catching up to do but some of it is i mean

105we managed to get through the school year um with a lot of policy implications and and they the legislative wrap-up session um provided some guidance in terms of changing requirements and um the second part of the legislative wrap-up is provided even more but they're they're working on model policies that keep so hopefully we'll be able to catch up before too long thank you minority recruitment subcommittee that is juan hi hi uh first of all we have matt second i'd like to talk to a doctor ola about whatever resources are available or what i can tap into and then make a strategic plan to go about and see if we can get a person in if we have openings but that's my outlook and i'm hopeful that we can accomplish that uh why don't you make

106an appointment to meet with dr ola uh in the in the summer actually i make appointments all year long if i need to meet with you okay make an appointment yeah okay great doctor i'll be knocking on your door thank you okay um i juan and i are the only two on that committee right now if someone else would like to volunteer just let me know and the ad hoc oh you're on it too i volunteered to be on it i'm sorry and juan ann and i are the only ones on that committee i'm sorry i got confused i thought it was another committee um so juan you'll be in charge of that i'm sorry i missed that last part um juan when when we meet you'll need to invite uh ann and i as

107well yes ma'am thank you thank you on the ad hoc committee on the superintendent's evaluation hasn't met um cade thank you am i am i okay yeah go ahead so the legislative wrap up second part was this week and the first part was last week um and sarah you know as i said before before there are a lot of implications for school districts without getting into the crt issue um cabe is also planning the conference for a one day conference for november 12th i believe at mystic marriott so it will be after the delegate assembly and cade does have a committee on um diversity and inclusion so i mean there's a lot more but i'm going to skip it because i know we have other things on the agenda but if you have questions feel

108free to ask thank you um gom we had a board meeting yesterday and um it's pretty much routine board business uh evaluating the executive director compensation for him annual budget and we're meeting again in july on the baha'i laws that's about it thank you additions to the agenda um i was going to suggest that we put our put on the ideas for cabe but how about if we all think about it for a month and put those cave ideas in next month's agenda did anyone else have something to add mark are we um are we finalized on meeting in person next month or do we need to discuss that we could certainly add that um does anyone else have anything russ was at it were you waving to tom no okay all right mark would

109you like to make a motion i move that starting in july we uh restore back to in-person board event meetings um at least for the full board meeting and then i think each subcommittee i guess could still have their poetic license i'm sorry i meant could you add make a motion to add it oh yeah good call uh i'd like to make a motion that we had discussion of restoration of board of ed meetings in person onto the agenda a second i'm just making sure i get it written down uh boe meetings in public [Music] uh one second did it okay any discussion um i'm sorry frank um i just want to make sure that um uh if you do go back into public um session i know there was i i think it was

110mary ellen but somebody we have to still keep social distance um and um if there is an audience that um would be unable to be socially distant we might have to move from the library into the gym if we do that um we'll have to figure i'll i'll figure out a way of getting microphones so that everybody can hear um and whether or not it's it would be appropriate to have a hybrid meeting that is you as board members are there but audience members may in fact be able to use the zoom link um and um participate in the meeting in that way so those are some options you might want to think about and i would certainly help implement thank you so is it the law that if we go public if we have

111the meetings in public that we have to be um socially distant six feet uh can we just vote on adding it to the gen agenda oh then do that of course i'm sorry i got caught too mark okay so um i'll make the roll call and we'll vote whether or not to add the discussion of the restoration of public meetings okay mark yes russ no neil yes mary ellen yes and yes one yes yes all right so it's um five to one the motion carries we will add we will add that as item 15a all right on to 15a now we can have mark's motion to restore meetings to the public is that what you were saying mark yes i the only the only um like the fno committee we talked about it and we

112said there might be some benefit for the subcommittees to still meet via zoom so i did i would say that i would make it more applicable just to the full board meeting versus a subcommittee meeting so if i say you move to restore full board of ed meetings to the public beginning in july would that do it it would um just i might be caught up a little bit but the word public versus uh in person just because these are public meetings now i mean very good point to in person did you want to say beginning with the july board meeting or did you want to say beginning july 1. beginning in the july board meeting is fine okay do we have a second second thank you one okay now we can discuss it roses

113you had a question about whether it was the law to keep the distance i had suggested that based on a another board member's request the last time we just discussed it the person is not present today there is a public act right now i mean sorry it's an executive order right now that expires july 19th or 20th it says that all people in public or private schools must be we won't know until july whether that executive order is changed okay um so we had we had someone request for distancing but would it work for us to distance that individual i mean does everyone have to be socially distanced or just people who want to be socially distanced i don't know yeah i don't know either and i i read some of the um policy statements

114about asking am i can you hear me yes and i think some people are interpreting it as discretionary in terms of public i mean private schools no it's not it's not it's not i participated with the department of public health webinar and it's not discretionary it's private and public well we're public anyway so it doesn't matter what the private schools do where public school we're supposed to be at least until july or 20th and then after that we're waiting to find out yes okay so i see a difference i see a difference between masking and being socially distant i yeah i have no trouble with the masking i think if we have to remain socially distant we'll have trouble meeting in person that's my concern rose what what happens if you're vaccinated because i thought

115that was supposed to take care of that problem um i don't know and the reason i don't know is because something we discussed earlier about children um below the age of 12 cannot be vaccinated and i think that's why we're supposed to wear masks when we're in the building but i don't i just don't know how it would apply to meetings during the summer when no children were using the building uh should we i just don't know what to do we could shoot mark i'm sorry mark i thought the current guidelines even for the children is that they only had to be distanced three feet apart but with masks so wouldn't we follow the same at least the same policy of what we're evoking on the kids and then i mean i i agree with

116you i mean wholehearted let me know i kind of been in the society of being at work every day for the whole pandemic so i might be a little bit more immune to it but ultimately um ultimately what was again sorry my dog just distracted me um ultimately i think you know it should be person's discretion but i mean i think we could maintain the three and if people are uncomfortable with three then the one and two board members should go to six i mean i think that's reasonable and then from an audience standpoint if we have enough audience for participation that we're worried about social distancing that's going to be my best day on the board ever i mean you know that's that never happened so um i say bring it on for the

117town if they want a china challenge just for a spacing concern then i would love it so um so anyway that's that's my opinion i i'm all for going back in person and i think everybody should do what they need to do to feel comfortable okay so if this motion passes we can wait for the 19th and we'll do whatever we're told we have to do and um and keep in mind that there are some people who might want to do more than the bare minimum that we have to do that's an option um like to say something okay ann it's a question to gather information in the previous years we've had summer schools summer school programs with children attending in this facility i'm sorry someone neglected to um mute themselves but they've muted themselves

118now i don't think they were laughing about you yeah okay well i won't take it personally a good laugh is always a good thing almost always so um yeah but it sounds like there are no uh summer school programs scheduled for this summer in this in the elementary school is that correct dr ola are there any summer school programs for the for this summer no okay so it was correct yes okay that's an important piece of information we're talking about opening up a facility for meetings and that's i i got the information i needed okay okay great all right is there any further discussion rose we could move the meeting to town hall because you were there last night and it was a good meeting and there was no social distancing and so in case

119we can't meet it at school we could also meet a town hall or the pavilion thank you you're welcome um we could move to our gym as well um but i i think personally mark i i agree with mark that it's not very likely that we're going to fill a room full of an audience but it did occur to me while we're making this discussion is in the fall well let's have let's worry about the fall in the fall um i'll call i'll call for the votes i will review the uh motions may i ask one more question um the new legislation um if a person wants to attend a meeting and they give 24 hours notice we need to provide a zoom call or zoom does that only apply if our meeting is hybrid

120or does that apply if it's in person if i have an answer to that question can i speak yes okay my understanding and we might want to double check this information but my understanding is that that applies to 100 virtual so if if there's absolutely no hybrid or anything like that it basically it provides access to people who need access but the provision is the stipulation is that they have to ask for it this is not required that districts universally supply the divide and and the physical location but if they're asked within the 24 hours i believe um they're they are required so if everybody is online and a member of the community wants access the district is required if they go through the proper protocol and ask for it thank you ann any other

121questions all right i'll call um mark no yes russ no neil no mary ellen a minute and asked to have the motion read again i'm sorry it was you were already calling i didn't hear mark moved to restore store full board of education meetings to in person beginning with the july board meeting you already voted too late thank you very much okay so mary ellen are you prepared to vote i'm sorry um to restore yes well i'm in favor and yes and one no oh great okay so we we've done it again three are four restoring it and three are against it's a tie so the motion doesn't carry we'll be on zoom again next month and the requirement that anne discussed that if someone requests 24 hours ahead of time we must give them

122a place to go and all the technological equipment to be on zoom would apply for that meeting okay go ahead yeah so i think the issue of the functionality of the infrastructure is an issue because if we give i'm not assuming that we would be asked to provide devices but if we give a device and the device doesn't work because of the infrastructure hasn't been fixed yet um that that is a little bit of a concern well what patrice mccarthy said when they reviewed the legislation the other day at the webinar you don't have to give a device you have to provide a place for that person to be with the working device so we could open a room at the school and make sure that they could hook up to zoom and do it

123there but we'd have to give them a device if they don't own a computer we have to supply the computer no no she was specific about that she said you do not have to provide a person with a device you have to provide them with access someplace to go to to participate via zoom so in other words like go to town hall go to the school go someplace where there is access so that still means having somebody you know open up the school and and doing it but you do not have to provide a person with a device just access i heard it differently as did i i didn't hear that you have to give the person a device but you have to provide access to a device texas correct yeah well mary ellen we're

124disagreeing with you we don't have to give them a device for their very own forever but we do have to let them use a device to get on zoom okay we should just check it out before july yeah find out what i'm still trying why is it any different than what we're doing now it doesn't come up now we have the same thing that's happening now right like tonight if somebody would have asked the law the law wasn't in place for tonight but no one has told us that they want to come to our meetings and they're unable to i mean that's a good point uh we'll look into it okay so but the motion did not carry we will be meeting on zoom again next next month okay time for audience for citizens and

125staff hi yes linda hi i have two things i think it's great that ms gruenberg wants to have her device looked at but infrastructure is the infrastructure in the school building and you're not in the school building so the wi-fi and that portal is not what you're using for tonight's meeting just pointing that out well that's okay um but um i'm really right i came on because um there's a hes has a student rachel mcguire who achieved third party third place winning for a writing award from the ee smarts contest she wrote a story about the value to recycle and repurpose items and she had in the realistic fiction story the little river and the um town i don't even know what it's called but i'm looking at her writing really quick um where you

126bring on saturday where everybody goes the transfer station thank you she has the transfer station i couldn't pull up her writing she went there too and the rail trail so that's all i wanted to share would you say would you send me an email with the organization that gave her third place and i'll include that oh okay sure yeah thank you thanks good night good night anyone else yes trump yes it's dana even though i'm online could linda send that to the gazette that information and and the store that's possible to republish i i think i thought i did no i don't have it yet unless you just no no i i'll look thanks yes i'll make sure because i wondered why i didn't i usually get a reply and i probably messed up no

127i don't have it okay i think we will publish that information in the story okay okay thank you thank you all right anyone else like to make a comment hearing none we'll move on to an executive session for negotiation of an employment agreement with a public official may i have a motion to go into it i move to go into executive session for the negotiation of an employment agreement with a public official thank you do we have a second second okay one or russ all right let me do the the roll call uh mark yes russ yes neil yes mary ellen yes ann yes and juan yes yes all right we will we will enter executive session at 9 19. are we inviting dr ola well mary ellen did you mean to invite dr ola

128you know i i didn't write this agenda item i don't know um if if this is just going over the contract i don't know if this is a discussion about compensation what your choice grows it's not about compensation dr ola already said he doesn't want a pay raise um it's just to actually i'm not um it's just to go over the employment agreement i'm fine with with inviting dr ola then if we have a question we could ask him okay i meant my motion okay and frank is that amendment okay with you juan i have you a second yes that's okay with me thank you okay thanks okay uh does anyone want to change their vote now that they know we're inviting no okay great then we will enter executive session now it is 9

12920. uh so we'll have to say good night to um ms roberson and dr benson clark thank you for attending bye bye okay recording