001everyone and welcome to the Waterbury Board of Education workshop in our beautiful Roberto Clemente International School and we're privileged to have some of our esteemed students this evening leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance thank you so much good evening Mrs. Tomasello do we have a presentation tonight yes we do we have Mrs. Rodriguez's third grade homeroom they will be singing a song to us in two languages we are the world okay thank you thank you so much muchas gracias report from Mrs. Tomasello the principal of the school yes good good evening President Brown Board of Education Commissioners student representatives and superintendent Dr. Schwartz I'm D'Yerka Tomasella I'm the principal of Roberto Clemente International Dual Language School and I'd like to welcome you to our school you I'd like to begin by thanking Mrs. Rodriguez
002and her grade three students for that lovely rendition of we are the world in two languages yes also want to thank the students that led the pledge I want to recognize who they are that was Jorge Mestre Daralyshka Rodriguez JC Ambracy Mauro Farias Serenity Pacheco and Diego Rodriguez who led us in that Pledge of Allegiance great job who led us to through the Lord by the start of the wurde estar and I don't want to forget I always want take the moment to thank my staffs who are in the crowd staff families and students they work really hard every day and joining me this evening and presenting is my dynamic mrs. Torres presenting with me so today we will provide an overview of our schools immersion program and the work that has guided our growth
003over the fact the past five years first I will briefly review the three core goals of our dual language program I will also go over performance data and attendance data over the past five years mrs. did on that or excuse me mrs. Torres will review professional learning and how it relates to our program and then mrs. you know net will discuss family engagement how important it is at our school I will wrap up with our next steps for the program and then we just want to show you a very brief clip of what makes Roberto Clemente international so unique work is grounded in the three core pillars of dual language education the first one being bilingualism and by literature literacy here students develop strong skills in both English and Spanish second pillar is academic achievement
004students meet high expectations across all content areas and our last pillar the third socio-cultural competence here students build pride in their identity and respect for others so together these pillars guide our shared vision and drive our student success it's really what we do so Here we wanted to show some information on data over the past few years having to do with our M-Class lectura. This slide shows growth in both English, and English is represented in blue, and the Spanish is represented in green, and that's literacy over time. On the left, you can see our English M-Class DIBELS data, where the percentage of students reading at or above proficiency has steadily increased from 47% to 77% over four years. Below that is our Spanish M-Class lectura, which also shows strong growth, increasing from 51% to 74%.
005When we look at both languages over to the right, we see parallel growth in English and Spanish literacy, which is exactly what we aim for in a strong dual language program. This data reinforces the idea that when instruction is aligned with biliteracy, rigor, and cross-linguistic connections, students can achieve at high levels of academic success in both languages simultaneously. This slide highlights the strong growth we have seen in mathematics over the past several years. Our students' I-Ready typical growth percentages have steadily increased from 94% to 129%. We're seeing a lot of growth. We're seeing a lot of growth in our academic performance, demonstrating consistent academic progress and acceleration in math. Math growth was also evident in our Smarter Balanced assessment last year. As a result of this growth, our school was recognized as a Connecticut School
006of Distinction in 2025. These results have also placed our school among those with the highest accountability index in the district, just a few points from category one. Here is our Smarter Balanced assessment. In 2023 and 2024, our results continued to improve, with 67.7% of students meeting or exceeding ELA. In 2024, our results continued to improve, with 67.7% of students meeting or exceeding ELA. The staff performed appropriately. So these numbers are stressed. This report shows that 23% of students in math were able to make this assessment in the district. Again, outperforming district results. Equally important is our student growth data. In 2024 and 2025, 66.9% of students met their ELA growth targets, while 80.5% met their math growth targets, compared to the district averages of 56.6%. Here we have our attendance over the past five years.
007Here you can see the chronic absentee percent. You can see our attendance over all five years. trends over time for both the district and our school like the district our rates peaked during the pandemic however since then we've made significant progress we have reduced chronic absenteeism by 15 percentage points from twenty three point eight percent down to eight point five percent by the end of last year we are currently at six percent and our goal is five percent for this year so we're we think we're going to be able to achieve that five percent goal this reflects our continued focus on attendance through strong family connections consistent expectations and targeted support for students in need I'm just going to turn it over to this is Torres PD at our school also focuses on the whole
008child leader in me uses the principles of the Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly effective people to build leadership responsibility and collaboration among students and staff creating more positive and engaged and accountable school community staff and students explore key components such as wigs wildly important goals leadership notebooks and strategies to further support our leader in me efforts providing valuable insights that will benefit both our students and staff in New Mexico miss Diodone and I presented on navigating the first years as dual language teachers la cosecha this was a national dual language conference that we were so excited to attend and share what dual language is all about in Waterbury our professional learning program focuses on engaging students invisible and meaningful learning in both English and Spanish our instructional model is grounded in balanced literacy across
009both program languages ensuring students develop strong reading writing and language skills in English and Spanish a key practice we emphasize is cross-linguistic transfer this means students intentionally apply skills learned in one language to support the other for example comprehension strategies vocabulary roots and phonics patterns learned in English can strengthen reading and writing in Spanish teachers help students make these connections explicit so they can begin to understand how their two languages support one another professional learning also focuses on building thinking classrooms and cognitive lift practices where students engage in open-ended tasks that require them to explain justify and discuss their thinking together these practices create rigorous coherent instruction across classrooms while strengthening by literacy and deeper student thinking family engagement is not viewed as participation alone families are positioned as leaders and partners in the success
010of our school community our work is grounded in the belief that language culture and family voice strength student achievement first both English and Spanish are valued visible and celebrated throughout our school community families see their languages and cultures reflected in classroom events and communication which reinforces that bilingualism and biculturalism are assets we also host events such as our Clementa connect series and a family Roots day which create meaningful opportunities for families to share the tradition cultures and experiences with our students and staff these events strengthen our sense of community and reinforce pride in our multilingual identity when families feel valued and empowered as partners the entire school community benefits the images here highlight some of these moments that bring our community together and reinforce our shared vision at RAC IDLS leadership is shared across our
011entire school community our teachers and families advocate for our dual language mission and through their leadership and commitment our program continues to grow including its expansion to sixth grade next year as Mr. has mentioned students develop leadership through Leader in Me and the seven habits framework setting wildly important goals and taking ownership of their learning and contributions to the school community our PTO set a wildly important goal to increase parent participation and involvement and successfully meeting that goal this year this growth reflects our commitment commitment to Leader in Me by strengthening collaboration building leadership in our community, and fostering meaningful partnerships between families and the school. Ultimately, Leadership Accommodate is not positional. It is a cultural with students, teachers, and families all playing a role in strengthening our school community. So we ask what's next
012for us. Well, first, we are very excited to move forward with the Connecticut 2026 Building Priority Expansion Project, which will allow us to grow to grade A and better serve our community. We are also looking forward to continuing to celebrate bilingualism by building clear pathways within our own building aligned with students earning the seal of biliteracy, beginning with benchmarks in grade 5, a bronze medal, and continuing through grade 8, a silver medal. Also, with the superintendent's approval, we feel ready to serve as a host site for MABE, the Multilingual Association for Bilingual Education Northeast, where we... would open our school to regional school visits, showcasing our model so that our other districts interested in dual language model can come and learn from us. Overall, our focus remains on expanding opportunities, strengthening instruction, and positioning our
013students for long-term success. And here is just a very short clip of what makes our school so unique, and we wanted to share that with you. So that concludes... Wow. I didn't want to end. That concludes our... I didn't want to end. Yeah. That concludes our presentations. We're open to any comments or questions at this time. Commissioners, any questions for Steph? Marissa? Yeah. Great presentation. I had the luxury with my fellow commissioners here to come and read during March. And I have to say, just coming through the door, I felt so welcoming, seeing the casitas, everything decorated so nicely. And I had... I wanted to make sure... I read at Mrs. Gould's. I read at Mrs. Gould's. I read at Mrs. Garcia's class. And I had Joe... Joe Dien, who showed me around. He was
014my guide. He held the door for me. Oh, my God. What he... He was just amazing young man. And I... I know it has to do with not just parenting, but the support that he gets here at the school. And you could just see the... He's thriving. And so are the rest of the students. So I just want to applaud you for everything that you're doing to create such a welcoming place, especially with your attendance rates. Yes. That just shows how committed and community-centered the school is. I wanted to know more about what you guys are doing to connect so well with the families and the students. So that would be my first question for you. Yes. A lot of things we do is we like to welcome families into the school. We do something
015called Clemente Connects. And there we do four sessions a year. For example, we share resources, information. But a lot of times, just... It could be just to come in and do something that we call... We practice the seven habits. Sharpening the saw. Maybe a Zumba night. It's really about connecting with the families. We also invite them at the beginning of the year to participate and present in what we call Family Roots Day. And so they are the teachers. And they come in and share all about their cultural traditions and things like that. So I think it's just, you know, welcoming them into the building is what's really helping us. Amazing. And then follow up... Not a follow up question to that. But when I did come, I had to vote on who was the best
016Willy Wonka floor. How was... I would love to know the results to that contest. It wasn't... She wanted it to be her floor. But it was the main floor. Candyland won. Candyland. I mean, all the floors were amazing. All of... It was really hard to vote. Really hard to vote. Congratulations to Candyland. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you. Commissioner Lapp. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to say thank you. From the video, the kids are all smiling, having fun. All the themes from what Commissioner Lopez has said. Everything seems like everybody's having a blast here. So... And the best part is your numbers are through the roof, right? You're exceeding your levels. You're meeting your expectations. So just thank you for what you do. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Schwartz.
017Yeah, thank you. Great presentation tonight. And I just want to publicly congratulate you for being named Calas Principal of Education. Congratulations, Dee. Thank you. Thank you. Just so everybody knows, Calas is an organization in Connecticut for Connecticut administrators and superintendents. And it's specifically an Hispanic-specific organization, but it represents and celebrates people from across Connecticut, regardless of your backgrounds. And Dee was the first person to come to Calas. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Dee was selected this year, and so we're going to celebrate her in May. What's it in May? May 9th. May 9th. Oh, do you have to give a speech? It's already recorded
018and submitted on YouTube. Okay, all right. So, the pressure's off, but May 9th. And if anybody's interested in coming and celebrating Ms. Tomasella, please see me, and we'll make sure we take care of that. But congratulations again, and we're hoping for some kind news soon, too. I don't know if everybody knows. but we had a conversation earlier this week with the Connecticut Association of Schools cast which is a also another statewide organization where mr. Masella is a finalist for elementary principal of the year in the state of Connecticut so congratulations and we'll know more soon enough but just being named a finalist is a huge honor so congratulations thank you so much no thank you all we'll all come again for sure okay I just like to take an opportunity to welcome our Jaden Levasseur
019if you want to say hello and what school you're from. Hi my name is Jaden Levasseur and I'm a student representative from Waterbury Career Academy. Welcome. Thank you. Public speaking. Now we'll go to number one the Northwest Regional Workforce Investment Board and the partnership and Good Jobs Committee Kathy Auad and Joe Di Iorio. Good evening. The Workforce Board wears many hats and we're going to start tonight. with mr. D'Orio's summary and presentation about the good job that's not the right one care oh you're gonna start first no the PowerPoint should be the good jobs ones blue we can we can do that one if we want to switch the order oh there you go okay very good we're flexible okay thank you I'm Kathy Wad the president and CEO of the Northwest Regional Workforce Investment
020Board former member of this esteemed Board of Education so I pray for you all daily and I mean that with all due respect I'm with with me tonight is Joe D'Orio who serves as our fills the role of the administrator for the good jobs good jobs ordinance here in the city of Waterbury Commissioner President Brown asked us to come tonight to just kind of give you an overview as to what that is so if we can oh do we have is the clicker gonna work yep there we go okay thanks so just you know I'm a little bit of a fan of the work that you're doing and I'm a to the role in 2000 the good jobs ordinance was passed in Waterbury as a result of a significant number of employment opportunities that were
021being filled by out-of-state workers when the wastewater treatment plant was under reconstruction it was a multi-million dollar project and the Board of Alderman at that time felt that local residents should have a better opportunity to have experienced to learn to earn wages while working on locally funded projects as a result the Workforce Board at the time was deemed the first source referral program which I'll get to in the next slide but there was an administrator role to monitor the projects that were funded with city dollars under the ordinance there is a responsibility of the administrator to monitor all projects that are funded by the city this thing is enough you know back it up again as you can see the city requires the publicly funded projects of five hundred thousand dollars or more are subject
022to the ordinance that means that we receive a notification from the city purchasing department that they're going out to bid on a project whose some value of the project is in excess of five hundred thousand dollars part we are then we participate in a pre-bid where it Joe goes on site to the pre-bid to the walkthroughs he talks about what the ordinance is how successful contractors would be asked to comply providing weekly payroll so that we can monitor to make sure that a percentage of city residents have opportunity to apply to work on the jobs can we back it up again because the ordinance itself requires that a good faith effort be made to have thirty percent of the residents by craft work on these jobs that twenty five percent of those should be apprentices
023ten percent would be nine minority and five percent women to achieve that goal the contractors are required to use the first source referral program which the workforce board also serves as the first source referral program to meet those goals the administrator we wear two hats in this case monitors weekly payrolls to assure the compliance of the good faith effort just so that you can get an understanding once a project starts we usually get a construction schedule from the general contractor and a list of all anticipated subs on site each week at which point five days after the close of the payroll Joe should be in receipt of their certified payrolls that we then go through and look to see on the payroll how many are waterbury residents and we keep a tally by every subcontractor
024on every job at the height of it a few years back when we were building read the career academy and Carrington at one point we were monitoring over a hundred and forty contractors for their payrolls on a weekly basis so as you can imagine it was a big undertaking there is a fee that is charged to the project for the services of the administrator to monitor the project at the time in the height of the schools i would tell you that it probably cost about forty thousand dollars a year for us to monitor good jobs now with the project being significantly less and more not large building projects but more renovations such as your HVAC project your roofing projects and your upcoming solar panel projects you'll see the budgets for these project monitoring usually in
025the realm of between seventy five hundred and ten thousand I would even say five thousand yeah it depends on how many contractors and subcontractors we expect so that's how we come up with the budgets for that now we can go to the next slide for all of you that are dizzy from watching this the good jobs management role again Joe attends the pre bid meetings once the jobs are awarded he goes to the pre job meeting making sure that the contractors are aware of what each of their responsibilities are that we have a list of that they have our contact information and we have theirs as far as payroll and that we now start to track on a weekly basis a good faith effort which is not listed on here means that the contractor is
026required to reach out to the first source referral program to see if they have any questions or concerns about the project and we will get to that in a minute. In some cases it's a laborer in some cases it's electricians plumbers they are required to ask in some cases there specialty crafts where we may not have someone who were able to refer if a contractor has asked and so the fact that they've requested and we are unable to meet that request satisfies the goodfaith effort the good faith effort includes putting an ad in the paper and let's wind this back 26 years ago that's how you used to look for jobs 26 years ago you put an ad in the classified news right now I don't think they even exist anymore everything's either on deed
027indeed or online so actually Joe and the team from the good love good jobs liaison committee are working to revise the ordinance and update it and bring it in to more modern times for that type of opportunity but again back it up one more it's okay from time to time Joe will go out to a site to monitor for compliance and we routinely audit the workforce we also make sure that all folks on site have the necessary OSHA 10 construction safety card to be on the site we have staff that assists Joe and putting in the weekly payrolls we tend to go to on-site job meetings if there's issues and when a project is seeking payment a certification of compliance is forwarded to our office with the contractors looking for paint paint I'm not sure
028if you can see the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the
029the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the pursuing careers in construction that's a very important thing to understand the Workforce Board has gone out and sought funding from other sources that supports construction trade training but not only for Waterbury residents for everybody in our region
030so when we file our reports the reports are reflective of everybody in our region that's looking for construction trade training so I just want to make sure that everybody is aware that the city does not support provide any funding to support Job Training the Workforce Board through its federal fundings or state grants or in some cases discretionary jobs discretionary grants that we apply for secures that money and then administers the training programs we have a whole nother side of the office that handles the work with the job seekers okay I just wanted to give you a quick list of some of the current projects that we're working on again for school construction or for construction projects and then we also have a structural we're doing elevators some HVAC roofs and the upcoming solar solar panels
031public works we do a lot of work for the Public Works Department the Chase Park Martin Luther King and the Lakewood Park those pool projects that were just completed we supervised we're doing some work with the water department the famous ruptured water main we were overseeing the Thomaston Avenue slip lining of the second water main that had been taken offline we also oversaw the North Main Street pump station renovation the West and North Main Street water line replacement and on an annual basis the paving that happens with either the local capital improvement monies or other city bond monies we support overseeing that to make sure that local residents have the opportunity to work on those paving crews additionally WDC projects that are funded by the city are also under our purview including one exchange place
032the North Main Street water main and the West Main Street water line replacement Main Street firehouse those slabs at 170 and 130 Freight Street the food hub in 77 South Main and the PAL splash pad anymore okay so Joe and I are here to answer any questions you might have or providing the information we have actually reached back out to Margaret Cherubini and asked for a list of fax numbers to your high school business guidance offices so that as contractors reach out to us looking for employed for skilled residents that the schools are made aware of of the opportunity for employment now while you may not think the high school senior is eligible that's the case but if the school knows and we can make the parent aware perhaps the parent is eligible to work
033on the job so that's kind of the outreach and recruitment strategies that we've put in place happy to answer any questions you have commissioners any questions Commissioner Lott Thank You Madam President just a quick question regards to the percentages of residents by craft so that 30 and that 25 is that 25 of the 30 or that 30 plus 25% percent of the residents by craft so that 30 and that 25 is that 25 of the 30 or that 30 plus 25% it's with it that's 25 of the 30 so each is within each so everything is within 30% residents by craft it's women everything else correct yeah and the apprentice would actually go to a specific trade so you don't really have an apprentice for a general labor so that would go towards this specific
034trade electrician plumber yes ever and then a resident consider anyone within the northwest region correct no no that's the city of Waterbury 70% is from here to Torrington area no that's the city of Waterbury 70% is from here to Torrington area no that's the city of Waterbury 70% is from here to Torrington area no that's the city of Waterbury 70% is from here to Torrington area but I was drawing the distinction about the funding because the goals are only for Waterbury resident yeah I was drawing the distinction because there's no funding specifically for only Waterbury residents so the funding that we go out and get that supports Waterbury residents interested it also by its nature has to support anybody in our region that's interested so you would see in a cohort of Joe is running
035a class now you'll see in that cohort Waterbury residents but you also see Naugatuck Torrington Watertown residents when it comes to a contractor requesting someone to work on a job we would never refer a Watertown resident or a Naugatuck resident we would only refer a Waterbury resident for the opportunity okay thank you and for those who don't know in the summertime they do employ what hundreds of kids from Waterbury through Powell and some of the schools I mean everything every job through Powell in summertime is done entirely to them she was in the office for probably like two months before that just getting everything ready there's nine to nine is non-stop so thank you in fact our summer youth employment application portal is open right now we are awaiting the governor's budget because usually in
036the middle of the night the funding gets cut but as you guys well know right we're hoping to again be able to support I think last summer here in Waterbury we had over 300 kids participating Anthony at the why host students what a very pal Boys and Girls Club new opportunities all take care of hosting students throughout the city it's a great program and thank you for acknowledging them Commissioner Ireland Thank You madam president yes I mean we're super happy that you know we're a partner and you know the job workforce program we you know our kids love it but just for the you know the first source referral program so you're saying that you guys not only do job training for Waterbury residents but outside of Waterbury residents as well yes okay okay yeah
037just one question thank you because the funding that we get is state funding and so we really can't we can't limit it to only Waterbury residents it has to be anybody that's eligible for participation you guys do the training in how we know we secure the training we contract out for the training okay thank you I just want to say that the good jobs ordinance was specific to what a very residents and that's what they administer the good jobs ordinance so they're working with the compliance side of the good jobs ordinance I've served on the good jobs committee for a million years and I want to thank you for that thank you very much thank you very much Joe for all your hard work because he does come we meet quarterly and he does present
038the numbers and you know very very diligent about working with contractors and so forth but I think we've been very successful and we've tried to keep the dollars that we we generate as taxpayers in the city so that we can you know be a thriving city and I would really welcome you know a residents of Waterbury who do have the higher skills the electricians the plumbers you know the what do you call the people who drive those big things the big CDL thank you very much yeah anyway so and because Waterbury does spend a lot of money on infrastructure and investment I mean right now we've got even the elevator projects that's going to be quite about 12 or even more maybe 15 million dollars so I'm very grateful to you for your time today
039and I'll see you next time. The idea was to keep the give residents opportunities and to keep the tax dollars in Waterbury so Joe you've done a fantastic job and Kathy's always been so supportive. I did just also want to point out Joe recently held a recruitment while we might have folks new to the trade that we're training for entry into construction trade training construction trade careers we also held an event where we encourage Waterbury residents that are already skilled to bring us their resumes so that when we do get calls from contractors they're looking for new people and we were lucky enough to have a couple of new people that we have a our own bench to haul to call back off of so if somebody's working on a project and they're driving into
040Britain every day they might have the opportunity to then just stay local and work home so we did have a pretty successful recruitment event where we've got I'm sorry go ahead. yeah we're we're gonna run that event again and I will also put in a plug that we have an orientation session every Thursday at 10 a.m. at 249 Thompson Avenue for anybody please come stop by, listen to our orientation. It only takes about 45 minutes. Maybe we can get you registered for some training. So the opportunities are there, so thank you. Commissioner Jackson, and then we've got to move on to the next part of the presentation. I was just wondering, how are we defining minorities? I looked at the ordinance. It's not very clear because I know sometimes women are considered minorities. Is there
041overlap in that? I do report. I don't report females as just minorities. It's by race, which is specified on the certified payrolls. And then I could count them twice as if they are a female minority, but not. I don't count a minority as female. Gotcha. I understand. Thank you. Good question. Marissa? Yeah, I just had a question on how much information is provided to students to get into construction. Do you guys do anything? At the high school level? Yeah. Or even earlier. Well, as far as career pathway orientations within your middle school, high schools, that's really dependent on your curriculum. And I think during my next presentation, Darren and I are going to tell you a little bit about a plan to increase that opportunity. Perfect segue. Yeah, it really was. But I think through
042your guidance counselors and your career pathways in the schools, that's kind of your role as a system. And then they come back to us so that we can work on continuing their training and getting them into job placement. But thank you for the question. I think we can segue into the next question. Yeah. Okay? Okay. Okay, Kathy, take it away. Okay. We did put together, and I hope we don't get dizzy watching this one, too. The Waterbury Public Schools and the Workforce Board, we've put some time together. As some of you may know, we've put some time together. We've put some time together. We've put some time together. I know I did serve on the Board of Education for two separate stints and left right before the pandemic, if I think I'm correct. But I
043had the opportunity to participate here and understand the good work that does go on and how partnerships are important. So I think the biggest part of the partnerships that we bring to the table for the school district to be successful is really about employer engagement and the career pathways. These are school, industry, and community-based. The schools, the industry, and the work force. The industry and then support partners in the community. We have been very instrumental in bringing access to the school district through our regional sector partnership programs. We have three very strong sector partnerships throughout the 41 communities that we serve. One specifically in manufacturing, one in healthcare, and one that recently launched for a regional sector partnership but was so successful that it is now a statewide sector partnership. And our community is doing
044a great job. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Shannon. Thank you, Dr. Owen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And also going to wrap up I just want to highlight the two most important areas of this institution and some of the big areas of the innovations we've seen in the school district. The first is we have a leadership group of students who are in leadership and architecture engineering and construction. Across those three sectors there are well over, there are hundreds of participating employers in our regions that participate. They are industry driven, C suite leaders. And HR people lead the conversations in terms of talent and pipeline development. As well as other issues that their industry is facing that affects their economic ability to be competitive in Connecticut. city with in the last year or so was
045we helped promote the robotics event on the UConn campus we brought some manufacturers into there the robotics kid came down folks were very interested they stayed for the presentation and we were looking to help you guys recruit mentors for your robotics program as well as financial sponsors that was a good event we do a healthcare immersive internship experience I think this is the fourth year in a row now we'll be doing it it is done in partnership with Trinity St. Mary's and we're very happy to have UConn Waterbury Health as a partner they remained a partner during the transition but we're very glad to have UConn as the as a partner now for Waterbury Hospital this sees students from our high schools who are interested in these careers in health apply to participate in a
046one-week immersive experience the kids spend the entire week at the hospital rounding through different departments they have mentors from the hospital each day and they're very excited to be part of the partnership and they're very excited to be part of the partnership and they're very excited to be part of the that they go they are given stethoscopes lab coats and lanyards made to feel part of the team and so it just exposes them to the variety of careers in a hospital from the pharmacy to the facilities management to robotic surgery to nursing all you know soup to nuts in a hospital so we're very pleased with that and we will be running that again this summer the second thing that we do too is we've provided access to our our industry's leaders have created speaker
047bureaus for the purposes of career awareness and the schools can call and book and an industry representative to come in and talk to their their classes about their career paths work ways and like how did they get to where they are so and then we did work with Milestone C this year you guys were doing some teacher externship opportunities we assisted Milestone C in finding employers that were we willing to host the teachers and just give them tours so that's that's the one that we're doing a lot of work on and the other thing that we're doing is we're doing a lot of work on the so that they can have a first-hand look at the career pathways that their students would be considering. I think we did one with Lohman Blasius Chevrolet for automotive.
048One was with King Industries for the chemical industry. And I know we did a third one, but I'm sorry. The hour is late, and I am old. Some of the new partnerships that we're happy to talk about today is one that we kind of thought was a pipe dream but really turned out to be a reality, is we are launching a new relationship. Your school district, the workforce board, and the Home Builders Institute, HBI, which has a pre-apprenticeship construction curriculum that we encourage the district to apply, and you were awarded funding to support the development of your teachers to be able to deliver this PACT curriculum. The Connecticut Home Builders and Remodelers Association has stepped up. They have a wide variety of employers. They'll be assisting us, and right now the plan, which is moving
049slower than ever, is to take the first floor of the, and I have to say very old, Sacred Heart campus, because depending on how old you are, the old Sacred Heart campus could be what to me is the new Sacred Heart campus, but the campus on Wolcott Street that served as your green community school, the first floor of that, the left wing, is going to be turned into the Home Builders Institute. They will come in and develop. This is where the city will have the opportunity to deliver the pre-apprenticeship curriculum to its students, and in working with Darren, we're going to have some teachers certified, but most of your high schools no longer have the industrial arts labs with the skill saws and all this equipment, so we're going to outfit this facility and bring
050the kids towards the end of the day to have that kind of serve as your wet lab when we're delivering this curriculum for construction trades. The construction industry is in high need of carpenters, electricians, plumbers, HVACs, and so we're going to start with the pre-apprenticeship curriculum, and then begin to grow that into each industry trade as we develop the program. So right now, we are working on getting that up and running, and we continue to have conversations with your administration about what that's going to look like come the fall. So this is really small, and I'm very sorry because I can't even read that from here, but we were talking about results-orientated training and getting your kids ready for careers. Okay? How do we deliver programs? How do we deliver professionalism, critical thinking, work ethic,
051and teamwork? Oh, thank you. And then if you could just scroll down a little bit. The communication. So earlier today, I had the opportunity to be up at the Hartford Convention Center where there was a statewide symposium that talked about career pathways. It was very intentional, and I know that, I think it was Mark Perna was available yesterday to some school districts for some coaching on engaging students in developing career pathways. But more importantly, what are the soft skills, regardless of your career path? Looking somebody in the eye, shaking their hand, being on time. These are all very important things that are part of career readiness that we look to deliver, you know, punctuality, critical thinking. So we're happy to continue to work with the school district to develop these opportunities. We have the career
052pathways. We convene the industry school and the community, bringing the public school systems, aligning their academic programs, with the regional workforce needs. We take an intentional look at what are the industry sectors that are driving our region's economy. Obviously, it's healthcare, manufacturing, it is construction, it is information technology, and it is human services. So how can we help coordinate with the school district to create opportunities for your students to experience in the classroom and then in the workplace? We know that work-based learning experiences are big, and it's going to be something you'll see the state key on very quickly about creating access for students to work-based learning. We'd like to work with the district to continue to provide access to employers and explain to employers that what is the risk involved, because clearly an employer
053would be concerned about having a student on site. So that's something we're going to look to continue, again, through our partnership and then embedding the work-based learning and supports for your students to be able to have real-world job-shadowing experiences to understand the career path that they're picking. I'm going to give you a couple of highlights. One is that we have currently running. This year we were able to bring the Future Bankers program to the city. We have some students at Kennedy High School that are completing the after-school online curriculum that is being delivered by the Center for Financial Training. CFT is actually the training provider that all banks use to deliver training curriculum for onboarding new employees and doing incumbent worker training. So we have students here that have been participating in three intentional sets
054of classes. One is called the Principles of Banking. The students have completed that and they will take an exam. And if they get a C or better, they will get three college credits for that. We would encourage you to look at perhaps granting dual credit for that program under either some TechEd or some type of credit for the student to be able to have a Carnegie unit for that. During the April vacation, your students will have a one-week immersive work experience. Some students will be at Thomaston Savings Bank and some students will be at Ives Savings Bank for the entire week of vacation. And they'll be working in the bank's job shadowing and understanding what happens at the employer level for the bank. Again, these are co-designed with industry and they build credible supports for
055the students. And it gives the students something to look back at. A few years ago, we did this out at Crosby. And I'm just going to tell you a quick story. Go Google a kid by the name of Zach Petrarca. He was a Crosby student. I think he's a lawyer and a banker right now. He started in the Future Banker program. He's a tremendous success story. But there were a number of kids. And Zach just comes to mind because I see him on LinkedIn all the time. So it's just an example there. Another program that we run after school that we've been having success with is at the Manufacturing Alliance Service Corps, the building up on Interstate Lane. This is an earn and learn after school program. It's 13 weeks. There are two cohorts happening.
056There are 10 students in a construction cohort and there are 15 students in a manufacturing cohort. These are students that have joined from the comprehensive high schools. I want to thank the police activity lead in the Justice Education Center who provided the funding and the busing. We pick the kids up after school at the high schools, get them up to mask. You're also kind enough to give them a snack when they get there. They then complete the curriculum and the bus drivers either get them to a common bus or sometimes take them directly home. That program runs four days a week and it just graduated. And so those kids have now received credentials and have been encouraged to pursue either a career with the Brotherhood of Carpenters or enter into the manufacturing training program, the
057more robust one at mask or the credential based one at Naugatuck Valley Community College. Again, those students in that program earn minimum wage for every hour they participate. There are certain guidelines they have to have. Consistent attendance. Really, it's hard to play sports at that point because it's four days a week after school and they're not getting home till six o'clock, I think we're in our fifth or sixth year of running this program. And it's very successful providing opportunity for kids that aren't at the Career Academy to experience these types of hands on opportunities again, just harkening back to what we do for career pathways with you folks, construction, manufacturing, child care, health care, automotive. These are pathways to high wage careers and really the return on investment for the stakeholders are really the employers
058in the region who have access to a talent pipeline with students that are very interested in committed. Because if you're going to school at seven o'clock in the morning, we're picking you up on a bus at one fifty and you're not getting out till six o'clock, you're a committed student, you want that. And so industry leaders recognize that these students are committed. And depending on what they want to do this summer, they might be able to have a job shadowing and an employer or if they're graduating. Go right. We have a great program through career with Clydell Manufacturing and some of those kids when they leave the Career Academy are earning more than their parents by the end of their first year of employment. Other collaborations. We do do some work with your transition academy
059at Naugatuck Valley. Those students come down once a week to the American Job Center and engage in our virtual reality career pathway goggles, experiencing different career pathways. They then select which pathway they like and then they complete. And then they're able to do some of the actual virtual training programs, just understanding what it is they're doing. Those kids come down every Monday. That program will be winding down for the summer. And we also wanted to say that we are proud to support the Waterbury Promise with their third annual career and internship fair using our sector partnership employers to come to that fair to help place some of your Waterbury Promise interns and opportunities for the summer. I think I've talked enough and that's what we do. Wow, that's amazing. I think I learned a lot.
060Thank you. Any questions? Again, it's always nice hearing you talk. Miss Aywa, been around for a long time. You hear me? How are the kids students picked? I don't think I heard that part. For the after school program? Yes. There's an application process. We have a pretty comprehensive application that we send up to the guidance counselors. The guidance counselors then reach out to students in the school that they think would be interested in participating. We ask the kids to fill out the application because we'd like to see like what's what is their commitment to it? How are they going to manage their time? Are they committed to coming every day after school? How are you know? And then we have a committee that reviews them. We also ask teacher recommendations. We look at their attendance.
061So it's a pretty comprehensive application project because the slots are limited and we want to make sure that we're giving those students that are, you know, most likely to succeed the opportunity to be in. If you're not selected for the after school program, there's always an opportunity to come back and apply for our. Summer program, which is an in-depth six week program that's 20 hours a week for six weeks, so we do tend to carry kids over if they were on the bubble. But we also have to take new applications for the summer program. Thank you. And then is that the same case? Because I mean, as like you said, when they do sports, they can't really do it because they have to commit. So then could they do that in the summer as well?
062Absolutely perfect. OK. And there's also other summer opportunities, as you guys are well aware. I think some of you actually host our summer. Yes. So it's not just the career pathway ones. It's really just work experience and getting up every day and being on time and understanding the whole world of work. So the experience runs a gamut of entry level to kids that have come back after two or three years, pal runs the summer school tutor program. Working with your summer school kids, they have the culinary truck, the shovel brigade that you see, those are usually workforce kids. And then they do the summer landscaping program where where we shovel in the winter, we mow their lawns in the summer. And then my last question would be is when they open the jobs for the
063workforce for the summer, is there any way that you can get that to me? The portal is open right now. There's we've put it we've put posters with QR codes in all the schools. All the kids have to do is scan the QR code and it will take you to the application. That's been open since February. I can certainly get that to you, Commissioner. Yes, but it is available on our website. And I think there's over eight hundred applications already in the portal. Is that the one that's the thrive? Because that's the one that we've been showing. The one that's on the where it says pal and stuff on April 11th. Yes, that's it. The boot camp will have a dedicated day for kids to come in and do their applications for the for the
064for the summer. And I just want to encourage them. I'm going to use this as a public service announcement. There are required documents that the students have to have. Please do not start an application unless and until you have all of your documents so that they can be scanned in and uploaded. Because then we go in and look and we will do one outreach to a student to let them know if or what documents might be missing. But please don't open that application until you have a birth certificate, your Social Security card, or if you're work authorized. And there's a cheat sheet that will tell you what you need. Please do that before you open the application. And did the numbers go up? I know within last year, I think the numbers cut. We didn't
065get as many students as before, so has the numbers increased to higher or no? So I will encourage you to contact your legislators to make sure that the funding stays because it is 100 percent funding driven. And the other thing I will tell you is as this project has progressed, we pay the kids minimum wage and every time minimum wage goes up, the number of kids in the program goes down just as a public service. Thank you. OK. Anybody else? Thank you very much. More questions. Commissioner Lutz. Parent Square. Do you utilize that as well? It's on Parent Square. Like always is flooding. OK. We work with Niree and the main office. They get it all out on Parent Square. Yeah, because I don't know how kids pass up this. This is a great opportunity.
066Well, if you really want a kid to do something, make sure you tell his parent about it. Right. Yeah. The QR codes are there and it's we try to use the QR codes because that's the easiest. OK, thank you. Jayden is shaking her head. So you've seen it, right? She's a student. So, OK. Great. I'm sorry, Commissioner. Thank you, President. President. Thank you. Just it's not a question. It's just a comment. Just happy to see all of the career pathways and readiness programs that our youth are afforded these opportunities, especially the hands on experiences. So I thank you and thank you, Joe. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to just also say is earlier today I received an appointment to the governor's newly formed Connecticut Pathways Commission. And I'll be sitting on that representing
067the workforce boards. I believe Althea Brooks Marshall is also been appointed to it and from our region. Superintendent Casimiro from Danbury has been appointed to it. So we're waiting for the call to action that was only formed today. So we're excited. We'll see what that looks like. Great. We know you're a woman of action. That's for sure. Thank you so much. And we look forward to strengthening these great partnerships. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Have a good night. Next on the agenda is, let's see, multilingual report. Welcome, Mr. Now, let's see. Sal Debar. There you go. Good evening, President Brown, commissioner, student representatives and Superintendent Dr. Schwartz, I am very happy to be here in front of you today, having the opportunity to present about the work that we have been doing for
068the last year with our multilingual department. So I am not going to read to you the vision and mission, but I want to take this time to thank the multilingual teachers who are across our city, educating their students day in and day out. Some of them are actually here today with us. It is it is them who actually keep this mission and vision alive out there day by day with the support that our office provides for them. I also would like to acknowledge everyone that works in the department with me to make sure that we are not only meeting all the legal requirements by state legislation, but also supporting our our our teachers with all the resources they need as we educate our students day by day. And also importantly, to mention that one of
069the biggest tasks that I have, I guess one of my biggest mission is to to foster more collaboration between our department and other departments. So kudos. To all the supervisors who have spent endless hours having conversations with me around curriculum and best practices to support our multilingual learners. So I want to make sure that I acknowledge them as well as the director of Pupil Services, who has collaborated very closely with me during the last year to ensure that our students are getting the best support. So all of them are the ones who are making our vision and mission in the district possible for us. With that, before I talk to you, I want to just briefly talk to you about the different programs that we have offered here in Waterbury. And actually, I'm very proud
070to say that we are one of the districts who offers multiple opportunities for students to acquire English. As you heard earlier today, this this school is one of our gems here in Waterbury. And I want to echo Dr. Schwartz congratulating Dr. I mean, Principal Tomasella for her accomplishment with the school. But this is a dual language program. A dual language program basically creates not only fosters students ability to speak, listen, read and write in both languages, but it also helps our students understand the importance of being bicultural and that we're not just talking about understanding the Hispanic culture and the American culture. It's all cultures. And as I heard, I think it is who happened to read in this school for one of their events. When you walked in here, you don't just get to
071know the Colombian culture, the Peruvian culture, the Ecuadorian culture. You hear about Jamaican culture. You hear about England culture. So it's very important to mention that because in order for a dual language program to work, you need to have the two of them together. And I think that's what has made this school very successful. We know that this program is widely used in other schools, in other districts. And the key to the success of the program is making sure that you're able to do both of them. We also have our ESL program. ESL is actually present in all 32 schools across the district. The model we use for most of our programs is pushing or pull out model. Students are in regular education classrooms and they get pull out to receive services to help them
072acquire some strategies and how to decode, if you will, the English language so that they can have access to content. We do have six bilingual sites. Sorry, seven bilingual sites. There's four at the elementary level and we have three and three three middle schools and three at the high school level as well. Those are structured differently in the middle and high school. We offer in a bilingual program, students are able to take ESL classes and then they take shelter classes for science, social studies and math. And the main objective of the transitional program is to help students create a strong, solid base in their first language and then help it transfer those skills into language. So that's one of the things that we are keeping an eye on to make sure that our students are
073making that transition from one language to the other. And we also celebrate the culture. It's not at the core of it, but we do celebrate the culture. We make sure that we acknowledge it. It's part of being culturally sensitive to our instructional practices. And then the other one is an LTSS program. The LTSS program is for students who have exhausted 30 months of service for bilingual services. And the LTSS students are serviced in a similar manner as the ESL students in our schools. And the last one, as you can see, there is it's what we call LEP. Those is a small group of students whose parents by law, parents have the right to have the student denied the services for the students. So we do not provide services for them, but we monitor them and
074they still have to take the last assessment, which is an annual assessment that is given to our all students to ensure that they are making gains in terms of acquiring the new language. In front of you, we have the trends from for enrollment for multilingual learners. As you can see, from last year to this year, it has been a slight decrease. It's not significant. It's just a very slight decrease. There are multiple factors that have contributed to this. And this is not only particular to our district. This is actually playing a role statewide. So as you can see also in the next slide, the state is also decreasing slightly. But if you look at the statistics of other districts, their numbers are also going in the decreased tendency, decreasing. And so one of the biggest
075things that the state has communicated to us is, you know, yes, some of our parents do not want our students attending school as a fear for you know, the state of of immigration. And so some of our students are not attending our schools as we as how we wish they would. Some of them are actually moving to different towns or different states. We have not had a lot of newcomers. So newcomers are students who are coming brand new to our are not our district, but in general to educational system in in the United States who have zero exposure to English prior to attending. So we have not had that many of our students attending our schools. And we have not had that many this this school year. Just want to point out that our numbers
076of English language learners in the district is a lot higher, almost by 10 percent, more than 10 percent as it compares to the state to the state numbers. I hear you have a breakdown of our students by program. As you can see, the biggest program continues to be ESL services. ESL is is larger in a K through five schools. We have taken a very close look at the instruction that is happening with this group of students just for your information. ESL tends to be one of the most ineffective ways of supporting students acquire language and accelerated way. So it's not that it doesn't happen. It just take a lot longer to make it happen. So we have pay close attention as to how the instruction is happening in those. So we have to make sure
077that we are continuing to accelerate the students progress to our acquiring new new language. These are the languages spoken for across our multilingual students as well as all the school district in general. And we do have that the highest percentage continues to be Spanish. That was the case last year. And then in second place, we still we still have Portuguese, which was the same as last year. And then. Followed by Albanian, which is about 50 families speaking that language based on this. The you know, the state recognized that ours there was there is a value on students being able to speak more than one language. And so they created this program called the CELO by literacy, which which was started prior to me taking over the program. And we have had really good success with
078it. What this what this is, the students are enrolled into taking an assessment in a different language that is not English. It could be Spanish, Albanian, whatever, whatever language they can speak, read, write or comprehend, and the students go through a rigorous assessment. We use three companies at this time to assess them. And based on their pass or fail, according to whatever their criteria is, then students get awarded what we call is the CELO by literacy. The students can take the test at their junior year. They can take it at their senior year, but the CELO is not awarded until they graduate from high school. There is an ELA component to this. They need to have they need to have certain credits for ELA. And in addition to passing this, this assessment, to be able
079to receive the CELO by literacy, we do have a big celebration. I believe it's May 28th where we bring all the students who are in the CELO by literacy. We give them their. Cords, a diploma, a little medal, and we kind of celebrate the fact that they have earned this particular CELO. Last year, we had one student who earned a CELO in three different languages. We have had multiple of them who had received it in two languages. So you cannot it's not only about one language, it's about multiple languages. Right. So you could earn it and not just one, but multiple, multiple ones. As you can see, from last year to this year, the number has decreased. This is not the last number. And I'll explain to you one of the reasons why the number
080is still low for us at one hundred and seventy nine compared to 250 something from last year is because one of our companies that does the the assessment is requiring us to to sign an agreement with them in terms of sharing data with them. And as you know, we have to go through the proper legal processes to be able to share that data with them. And so we had to stop testing with that company, which happened at the beginning of February. And so we had to rethink about how we were going to test them and using a different company. Unfortunately, this other company, it's the process with them takes longer to get the codes to test the students. But happy to report that we have one hundred plus seniors at the moment who are being
081tested for to to be eligible to receive the CELO by literacy. We're expecting a lot of them to be able to receive. And also we did the number looked a lot bigger at the end of last year because we test them in in in their junior year. So coming into senior year, our numbers look a lot bigger. However, we do have a lot of student transfer out. So we need to, you know, subtract that number of students who have left. And so that's why the number looks that way at the moment. Let me talk to you a little bit about our curriculum frame framework in the dual language program. We have the same program we use Benchmark Advance. And then for the Spanish component, we use Benchmark Adelante. And as you heard, Miss Tomasella said
082we're opening the sixth grade here and we're going to continue use the same program. This program is a program that's available for four districts to use from kindergarten through to sixth grade. So we are going to continue to use the same program. We've seen a lot of success here with that program. We've seen a lot of success with that program as well. And some of our bilingual sites, which they also use. them with the addition of using they both use also a program that we call boost lectura which is the Spanish component to it because we need we need to develop their first language as I said before it one of the neat things that we have seen in our internal assessments is that in some of our kindergarten sites in the bilingual classrooms the
083the percentage of students who are achieving proficiency in Spanish is really high did it I want to say it's about 75% of those students who are in kindergarten and bilingual sites have acquired that mastery level which which it's an indication that we're creating a strong foundation to then begin working on helping the students transfer from one language to the to the next language in terms of ESL services and K through 5 and some schools who are K through 8 schools we use benchmark Express. Benchmark Express is a supplemental material that mirrors benchmark at the line advanced the unit are very similar it focuses on grammar development and vocabulary development comprehension development and just building background knowledge for students we also this year's the first year using benchmark hello benchmark hello is a newcomer program for
084students in third through fifth grade this program is it's not solely academic it's more about helping our students acquire all the skills that they need in order for them to be able to access the academics what I mean by that is you have to work a lot on the social conversational day-to-day language with them before you can expose them to to rigorous content that doesn't mean that that's not happening in the classroom because this is a push-out model so some of our students who and just for your knowledge to newcomers are all the students who have received zero to ten month of multilingual services regardless of what program that the student the parent has chosen for service and then in our middle school in high school we are using for our ESL classes we're using
085the Sabbath's I lit 20 and my perspective for our advanced classes our goal is that if a student is already taking an advanced classes that we are beginning to create that bridge between the the ESL classroom and a regular classroom we want them to be ready so with the when they go especially go from middle school to high school when they go and take a middle school class. take the an ELA class that they're able to to access content there so we want to bridge that and then for our beginners classes and our intermediate classes using islet ELL is is also a supplemental material that helps students develop you know the for them that for the mains of language but but within that program the first 67 lessons are are specific for students who are
086newcomers coming into our middle school and high school so we're providing that support and then in our middle schools we introduced a program last year also called words their way or palabras a su paso so it they both languages to help our students increase their ability not only to spell but to also increase their vocabulary knowledge at that level so it's very specific it goes by stages and teachers monitor their student progress and they begin to increase or move them from one level to the next level to support their language development one of the things I want to add is in collaboration with our which is not here because it's not officially we're still working the the the plan with the with with our people service director we are looking into a program to actually
087support our duly identified students students and we're looking at the program to actually support our duly identified students so our duly identified students are those students who are multilingual learners but they're also identified as students with special needs and so we are looking at a program that is going to help our teachers provide a small group instruction for these students it is very language based so it part of it would be that the students will have to take an initial assessment it will create for them a language pathway if you will and then it provides the teacher with a series of small lessons that they will need to do in small group to monitor and help them increase their language acquisition for our duly identified students some of our highlights as you know miss Tomasella
088already told you and I mentioned before this school is moving to a K through six for the next school year which we're very very happy about that and we're looking forward to moving all the way to eight to grade eighth we have decreased the elementary bilingual side teacher vacancies at the end of last year the beginning of the end of last year sorry we had about eight vacancies and at this point we only have two vacancies we were very strategically working with our human capital department and looking at teachers who in their applications they said that they spoke Spanish and so you know we we call them up we talked to them in Spanish to make sure that that they were able to speak both languages we asked them if they were interested on becoming
089bilingual teachers and then we offered them through one of our grants to be able to pay for them to attend a program called our tail and so the art helper helps our any teacher who wants to become a bilingual teacher an ESL teacher to get the cross endorsement within one year so they go through a rigorous program that helps them and gives them all the skills the other strategies that they need in order to teach our students and I'm happy to say that you know we checked on them very very frequently we check with the principal's to make sure that they're progressing and that they're moving along and they're all doing fairly well at this point I believe we have about seven of them in that program and we're looking to continue to support that
090for them so at the end of this school year if they meet all the requirements they will be able to have the certification to be a bilingual certified teacher we recently actually this past Friday we had a parental involvement event in collaboration with the Welcome Center we had what we call a cafecito night we had invited our families we created an agenda we provided them with of course coffee and some pastries for them and we had talked to them about different topics from you know an overall of what the multilingual world is all about to the ESL practices they could use at home we talked about academics with them and we had a speaker that came over and talked to them about about immigration topics had different community vendors come to our event and talk
091to the parents about different services in our community. It was very, very successful. Fortunately we had about 120 families register. We had about, I will say roughly 40 to 50 families come to the event, but even though it was a smaller amount than we were expecting, it was very, very successful. We will continue to partner with the Welcome Center to create more opportunities for parents to come. Now I'm only talking specifically about events that our multilingual department has provided for families. So I know that the schools do their own family engagements with a focus on multilingual learners. I do not have a list of all of them because usually they tend to happen after April break. We bring them in and a lot of them center around like cultural days, which I know Hopi was...
092Hopi is a very good one to go to if you have an opportunity to visit that one. I know the dual language school also has one and I've been to the one in Tinker too and it's a pretty, pretty neat thing to see. We have established a review of the ML and EL procedures. So one of the things that I noticed when I came into this role is that they were not clear procedures for certain things that needed to happen for our multilingual learners and that was causing some misconceptions and misinformation out there and I needed to make sure that they're in place for them. So these four things that we have in front here, so the new ML students intake procedures, the multilingual classes placement guide for middle school and high school, how to
093change the multilingual learner support services and also the offerings of the programs for our district were not clear to everyone so we started putting all those protocols in place. Communicating them too. Not only our teachers but our principals because they need to be aware of it as well. And I'm happy to say that they're being very, very helpful to everyone. I used to get lots of emails asking specific questions about these topics and because now we have written them all down and we're communicating to them and we make them accessible, we don't get as many questions related to those procedures at this point. In terms of professional development, and some of this professional development has happened not only from our department but also in collaboration with the, for example with the ELA supervisor for elementary
094school. We did a whole PD in terms of writing and language, sorry, in terms of implementing, implications for teaching them, teaching students in your regular classroom when it comes to writing, the writing domain. So we did some of that. We focused on our ESL teachers in terms of developing the oracy. We noticed that our last link results from last year for oracy, oracy is the listening speaking portion of it, were very low so we needed to support our teachers to do that. In terms of the transfer in language and literacy skills, that was in specific PD given to the bilingual teachers and it was actually delivered by two of the teachers who presented earlier today here with Ms. Tomasella as a result of them attending the dual language conference in New Mexico. The two of
095them came to me and we developed a specific presentation for them and I'm actually also happy to say that I have been able to go back a month after we provided this PD to our bilingual sites and I see a difference in terms of how we're instructing our students. We're, you know. We're happy to say that we're making small steps. It's not widely spread yet. It's not fully evident in every classroom but we're making small steps into making sure that we are going to it, that we're implementing the professional development that we're delivering. In terms of our lasting proficiency achievement, as you can see, they're continuing to rise. We do not have our results for this school year. We do have preliminary results but those are still kind of like what we said, sealed. We're
096not able to share those results until the state has actually communicated them, you know, widely to the whole state. But as you can see from 2020-2024 to 2024-2025, there was an increase of students who have achieved proficiency. Those students who achieved proficiency actually no longer need our multilingual services. And so, you know, according to the last link's assessment. For our next steps. We have short. Short. Short-term goals and we also have long-term goals. So one of our short-term goals is to continue to be on top of those procedures that we have already written and are already established. Making sure that they're up to the, you know, in accordance with the guidance from the State Department. We're going to continue to revise and look at our grants that our department handles to make sure that we
097are using our money to continue to support our newcomers and students and all the different programings. We are going to engage this summer in looking at our ESL curriculum for middle school and high school. And we're going to be revising it to make sure that it is in alignment with the language standards for the state as well as with grade level standards. We're continuing to work with making sure that we have more parental supports, PDs or workshops coming out of our department. And we're going to continue to work with making sure that we have more parental supports, PDs or workshops coming out of our department. And we're going to continue to work with making sure that we have more parental supports, PDs or workshops coming out of our department. And we're going to continue to
098work with making sure that we have more parental supports, and we'll continue to work with Human Capital to make sure that we continue to recruit more bilingual teachers for our district. And one point that I did not put in there, Dr. Schwartz and Ms. Franis have asked us to develop a three-year plan at the academic level for each one of the supervisors. And one of the things that we're going to do is make sure that we are all collaborating to make sure that the... Ms. Franis. the multi-lingual plan is not in isolation, but that it is in conjunction with all other subjects, because our students do take every single one of the subjects, and we're going to make sure that we are all knowledgeable of it. Ms. Franis. In terms of long-term, we're going to
099continue to work and making sure that we understand at the elementary level the difference between a bilingual, bill literacy versus a transitional program. We are looking for some potential partnership with the Connecticut State University to make sure that all of ouríamos Okay. students can there at let us see. Thank you so much, Dr. fiddle. again. who are actually earning the seal of a literacy are able to receive credits at the college level we're still waiting for the state to approve some of that so that we can begin to explore how that's going to work with this college and then last but not least is that shift of mindset that shelter instruction is for everyone and it's not only for the multilingual students it's it you know good instructional practices are good instructional practices and when
100you use them for one group of students it actually has a good effect in everyone else and that concludes my presentation I'm open to any questions if you have any thank you very thorough and very organized thank you so much do we have any questions okay we'll start with Commissioner Jackson thank you through you madam president I was wondering about when you talked about not being able to utilize one of the companies because of the difficulty of the school system and the fact that you're not able to utilize one of the companies because of the data that they were requesting is it just a matter of the process of providing the data or do you have concerns over the type of data that they're asking for it's about the way they're wording so we are
101required to sign what's called students data agreements and when we submitted that to legal they were concerns about the disagreement actually violating some of the laws that are already established for sharing data and so we had to put a stop on it okay so it's still in review and you're still talking to the company to you know make amendments and and so forth so that we can use it for the upcoming school year and then I had one further question about getting the award for the biliteracy the seal of biliteracy are there any limits to the which languages that they're able to test for they can test for any language and actually yeah yes so there is a process just you know for your information if we are not able to find a test for
102that language the committee itself so we have a committee that runs the program has to develop a an assessment and has to develop the criteria for passing and not passing and then we actually reach out to the state and we ask them if there is someone to speak that language that they're aware of and they're the ones that actual administer the test and then we get results from them so do you know if anybody's I've tried to test for klingon or Elvish now that I'm aware of okay you could be the first I just had a one quick question and had to do is sign language one of the languages that is covered yes yes yes it is do we have students in that yes we did we had I believe two last year and
103I think we have one that already passed this year and I think we have two more actually being tested yes amazing thank you yes just quick question after a bilingual teacher certified what are we doing to keep them in the district is there anything being done where we're making sure that they get a job once they're done to certified is there anything we're doing to kind of keep them around because you know we're investing money helping to get certified certification but in terms they look like they're not certified they're not certified so I believe it kind of hurts us because it puts in a spot where now we're so struggling to maintain so is there anything that we're doing to kind of incentivize them to stay within Waterbury so one of the biggest things you
104know as a farmer bilingual teacher too one of the biggest things that that helps a teacher stay where you know within a district is making sure that they feel supported and so that's one of the things that I'm doing on my end and I know the principals are constantly checking on them and providing that support so we don't offer per se a monetary incentive other than making sure that we are helping to pay for the program itself while they are with us but we do provide a lot of support for them and that goes from like you know random chickens with them emailing them a phone call showing up in their classroom at you know just having a personal conversation with them I believe a lot of like you know making strong connection with them
105is very important to understand their needs and just listening to them and you know asking them what they need from us so we do check on them you know a lot to ensure that you know they feel connected to the mission and vision of our department. Once they're certified are they guaranteed a position within the same department? Yes, yes, yes so the way it works is while they're going through the program we apply for what we call a DSAP which is a shortage area license it's valid for a year while they finish the program they're assigned to a classroom and then after that then they're able to to fully stay in that classroom. You're welcome. Commissioner Ireland. Madam President just a quick question and your short-term goals can you just give us an idea of
106what your parental support workshops look like? Sure so the first what we did this time like I said before we had a group of us get together and so we all had different expertise so for example I presented to them about all the different programming that we have available in Waterbury. I believe it's very important for parents to be informed about the different programs so they can make a very educated decision as to what type of program they want their students to be a part of and then after I did my part we had and actually we were having that conversation today during my department meeting with the staff at the office that each one of these topics that we touch upon during the cafe seat tonight could have been one workshop by itself right
107and so then we had our social worker and and and and I forgot her title, Miss Sandra, who is in charge of the Welcome Center. The two of them actually tag-teamed and presented strategies for social-emotional learning at home. And one of the things that I really liked about that presentation is that they were not only presenting to the parents, you know, here are the strategies you can use, but they were actually giving clear examples of how to use it. They gave them some tools to take home and use. And the end goal was to make sure that, you know, students are able to regulate themselves before they come into our schools. They will be able to attend our schools more often, so it helps also with attendance. And then we had Ms. Zulma Garcia, who's
108here today, who teaches at Westside, present more about academics and importance of academics and importance of students being able to be in school every day and have that access to it. And so she talked a little about different strategies they can use at home to help them. Not only, you know, acquire the language, but also to be able to access academics. And she did not focus just on middle school. She talked about Cade all the way through 12th grade. And then, you know, at the end, the parents had expressed that they wanted to have a conversation about immigration, so we had an expert come over. She talked about, like, the different ways for parents to apply for different types of visas, which I didn't know actually existed, which is quite, you know, I overreacted. I
109was hoping for myself, too. And so each one of those could have been on a specific workshop. Our goal is that our goal for this year actually was to have about three of those throughout the year. Unfortunately, we're not able to achieve that goal. We're hoping that for next year we'll be able to do that. So we're already thinking about for the upcoming school year, perhaps in September, to hold a panel with parents. And instead of us talking, have the parents. Kind of talked about what their aspirations are for their children in school. And just kind of engaged in that type of conversation so that we can hear more from them. One of the things that I want to do as well is kind of get to know what they're really interested on. So we
110have heard that they wanted to know about immigration. And that's kind of what we wanted to do. But we wanted, we didn't want to make that the center of it. We wanted to make, you know, touch upon as much as we could. It was a very packed agenda. But we were able to get through all of it. So more or less that's kind of what it would look like. I do believe that, yes, we need to continue to celebrate, you know, our culture and be proud of it. Because, you know, I'm proud. I'm very proud to be a Honduran, right? But I think that, you know, we need to go beyond that. We need to go, you know, deeper into how to best support our students. Really not only access academics but make them aware
111of all the different opportunities they might have out there within our district. And, you know, if I can recall correctly, when Ms. Sulma presented this information to them, she specifically talked about that. You know, she talked about all the different opportunities students have at the middle school level and high school level to get engaged. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you. Dr. Swartz, did you have a comment? I just want to thank Mr. Zaldivar for all the work that you've done in the short time you've been here. And I think specifically to highlight two things, the culture and climate that you bring to your department. But also, you know, I think that, you know, we have a lot of work to do. And I think that, you know, we have a lot of work to
112do. And I think that, you know, we have a lot of work to do. And I think that, you know, we have a lot of work to do. And also the collaboration that you bring across the district to ensure that it's not in isolation. You know, we've talked about this right in the beginning. And you've made tremendous work already infusing your work. And I think your experience as a principal and then entering into this role has played a major difference because you can speak eye to eye with principals. But I also think just the fact that you came as a Milken Award winner, somebody who's highly, you know, highly decorated already coming to this district, taking a chance on. and you can see the difference the numbers speak for themselves so I just want to
113congratulate congratulate you on the great work you've already done looking forward to another successful year thank you my pleasure Commissioner Munoz did you have a question sorry I didn't see this probably may have been answered and through you President Brown I wanted to ask in regards to the cafecito night was that a part of the parental workshops or were there just separate overall it was a combination of so yeah so we just use cafecito tonight to kind of attract them to it you know having usually it was late at night we were there from like 5 to like 7 30 and so we thought that we couldn't give them dinner on like cafecito and a little pastry will do and so that's kind of like what we did just kind of combining the two together
114you got it okay thank you my pleasure thank you okay you Dr. Schwartz yes and Nick could come up to the table and Mr. Albini I just want to thank you in no particular order just I see Amy Sims here I think I see Wendy John's Nick Albini Maureen Bergen Jen Frentice and Deputy Mendoza who have been working over the last few months and very hard in the last few weeks I'm not an exception to that this is my big step forward and I'm proud of the people who put their money into this on bringing this item to you board this is one of the most significant items i think i've brought at least in my interim and first year as superintendent so i want to make sure we also give you the time needed
115today for items a b and c under three which is um really core to what i what i interviewed on when i interviewed for the superintendent job which is kindergarten readiness kindergarten readiness is absolutely vital for our long-term success here in the waterbury public schools you can see the systems we have in place you can see things moving in the right direction but if you go back to that number where 70 percent of our students needing intervention entering kindergarten it makes the lift very hard throughout the student's career to overcome those odds and so that kindergarten readiness is vital for our long-term success and what i'm what we're bringing forward to you today is something that quite frankly should have been done a long time ago in my opinion and it's something that we've had
116a lot of conversations about behind the scenes a lot of different people coming in and out trying to figure out how to best do this but as we sit there and try to figure it out bucks hill preschool which is basically a group of portables dropped on the bucks hill site who serve students in grades pre-k three and pre-k four um serve regular ed and special education students alike sits there as portables basically serving some of our most needy students in the most tremendous time of their growth and the bucks hill preschool staff and the administration do an amazing job with what they have which is a group of portables sitting together and they somehow make it feel like home they somehow make it feel like a welcoming environment that quite frankly i think most
117adults really know that it's not because our students deserve more at that age we need more space we've needed more space when i was chief academic officer i need more space when i was the instructional leadership director when i first came here 13 years ago quite frankly what we've done over time is we've reduced hours and days for students because of the lack of space we need a building that is specifically designed for young students built specifically for three-year-olds and four-year-olds that that encourages growth for three-year-olds and four-year-olds and sometimes five-year-olds and sometimes younger than that we also need a space that we believe can combine what we're also doing at the office of early childhood office of early childhood serving a lot of our birth to three students as well and so what we're
118seeking tonight and what we're looking to do is we're seeking a grant application for a waterbury preschool center project approval of preparation of schematic drawings and a building committee dedicated to this concept of building this preschool here in waterbury and time is very much of the essence and let me tell you what we typically build projects school projects here in waterbury and we get a 79 reimbursement which we're very grateful for 79 100 million dollar building will cost the city of waterbury after bonding about 21 million dollars due to some legislation that's passed and for a limited time as we can only assume the state of connecticut has added 15 to that 79 so 100 million dollar building state would cover 94 million of that which would mean we could potentially get a building for
119six million dollars if that was that was the ultimate number which it could be close to and so we think it now is the right time it's been a long time to build something dedicated to our earliest students specifically trying to merge the bucksill preschool in the office of early childhood together adding on additional preschool classrooms for students who may not necessarily need the bucksill preschool but adding more preschools to the district to be able to better prepare students for kindergarten in a building dedicated to that education is something that i know i've been talking about for some time president brown we've talked about probably for over a decade as we've worked on different committees together and quite frankly i do believe the staff and students and families of waterbury deserve this this is one
120of the more consequential things that i've brought to you but i'm more than happy to answer any questions and again the team that's been kind of working on this feverishly over the last you know few months and few weeks to kind of bring this to you we're ready to go we have a lot of ideas of how we can best do this um but i'm sure you have some questions again this isn't the this is just the beginning it won't be the last conversation we have about this we we're just seeking again those three items to be able to establish the building committee have some more conversations but this this this um there is a uh there is a timeline uh and we want to do this and because um yes the application we would
121like to get done by july 1st for two reasons number one we get into this year's round because we're afraid if other communities too many apply and they say there's no way we're going to keep giving 15 to communities that's number one and number two i'm going to get everything out of mr albini before he leaves us so so with that but happy to answer your questions uh nick and i are working closely together with the team on this and and um we'll be happy to answer any questions through you uh president commissioner bowen through you uh question so just to be clear you're saying they're in portables like yeah so yeah but i mean i see a high buck's hill preschool i mean we got we got a lot we got a lot of
122folks here uh tonight who have come here before their holiday break just to see what happens here tonight um but bucks hill preschool if you go to bucks hill you you pull in buck sales on the left most people don't realize there's a whole bunch of portables way back in the right and way back in the right is where some of our most needy students go every single day to get their education many three and four years old and they're ran out of it so good i'm not gonna be able to tell you necessarily when we look at blocked city Hudlers um because first of all the students have been they have they have they have a lot they're like basically an iPod shuffle they have lived past their lifetime and and it's it is
123long overdue to upgrade uh for uh the students and going back to the idea we just don't have we've we've got i've sat in committees where we talked about let's add some more portables up there let's really on a on edge and so uh we don't have the exact space laid out we're not gonna really go into that too much tonight uh because that's to be to be determined somewhere centrally located we've had those conversations there's some things uh we we'd like to see happen uh whether it's city owned property uh board of ed owned property or purchase property if it's purchased property it would be included in that reimbursement rate just to be clear so um yes it's portables in the back of bucks hill and then you said the grades were the ages
124were so so it's it's like pre-k three and pre-k four okay but the ages are really uh the um what a lot of people don't understand is when the student turns three we have we need space for them um they're open for those spaces uh to get those services but uh it's really three to flat five years old is the age range of most students there okay i think that's the only question right now wow yes yes wow yes thank you matter president i just wanted to kind of amen what the superintendent is saying both of my children began in waterbury schools at bucks hill annex um in 2013 and in the following year 2014 my second one went and now oldest is sophomore in high school and i have a freshman and those buildings
125needed to be replaced then that was i think that was the first year you were here and um not only just because these kids need an education in the space but this program is it's nothing short of a miracle for some of these children um my kids used to have play group with some children who were not meeting their milestones um one little girl in particular in their play group i used to just think she was just a um poorly raised child um i judged her pretty hard because she used to snatch things from other children and she was pretty violent and then i didn't realize at the time that the child was pre-verbal and she ended up getting a little bit more of a and i'd like to see it expand um the students
126deserve it the teachers the paras everybody is so great at this school i can't say enough good about it so this is definitely a project that i i would like to see it expand and i think that's what i would like to see it expand and get behind commissioner jackson i'd be happy to um just it i think we have a lot of new members too i can organize i think it'd be great within from now until july 1st which if with approval of the board uh love to take a visit together as a group because um i think a lot of you would amen what commissioner jackson just said if you can see what we see uh with the miracles that do happen up there if i may um this this is probably the
127single most important uh project uh academic progress that this city could take on right now right now i think uh the bucks hill pre-k has about 11 classrooms and serves about 290 students and we're looking at something that would be about 25 classrooms and maybe 570 students so think about the students that are going one or two days a week are able to go four or five days a week what about the students that only can go am or pm could go full day so you have um how many times have we heard our kindergarten teachers talk about students just not ready for school and and you know something it is our responsibility even though it we look at other forces that cause students not to be ready it's our responsibility and this building could
128be such um such a centerpiece of what every public schools and i i commend uh dr schwartz uh carrying on with this and putting this in play it is uh just to get a little bit on the other side now i've been in front of you for expansion of roberto clemente it's it's considered a priority grant so priority grants have to be submitted by june 30th in order to be eligible for the school's grant and i think that's a very important part of what we're doing so and so they'll go into raw souls and then we start to provide physical educationAAAA Is so if you miss that june 30th date you need to wait Vorin case if you miss that the date are eligible for those funds if you missed that june 30th you have
129to wait till june 30th the following year nothing can take place in between Jordan 30th of following year Uma that's why we work kind of quickly here patron also we're not really too concerned about a location right here now because the state does not base theirAT montana award on a location they are based on the need to school here and the number of students and the number and square footage of the reason the state cannot donate their for instance those funds already tell human resources And I guess this is what dólares say so just another little sequester from the IDCo에 I almost have an interruption because if somebody gets out of student needs and the process is non faire I'd still be able to into students and and the square footage of the building kind
130of have to match. You can't build a very large building and only have 100 students in there. You're not going to get that 94%. So it's a very unique situation how we try to design this building so that we're meeting all the needs of our little kids, three- and four-year-olds, that they would need. This would be such a vibrant building. I'm really excited about this. I'm kind of proud to come forward with this to present before it's too late. So I just think that we're just looking for the resolution approval so we can get it to the Board of Aldermen so we can go forward there at that stage. Any more questions? Commissioner Ireland? I think we do have a Board of Aldermen person with us. Alderman Blake is here with us. You're hearing all
131this. Thank you, Madam President. Just one thing quickly. For such a great project and a time-sensitive project now that I'm hearing this, what's the process or how quickly can we get moving on putting together that building committee? Yeah, so we have a building committee, I think, coming up that's already set in our calendars. But we feel pretty confident. We backward-mapped this. We can do it. We'll get this done. And we've done a lot of – we're doing a lot of the work in anticipation that, hopefully, the Board is in agreement. So we didn't wait to start doing some of the pre-work we need to do because, ultimately, even if the Board said no, we'd come back next year and try again. But we're doing the work now to get it done. Commissioner, I will be
132meeting with all of my department to make sure, just as we did with Roberto Clemente here, I'll meet with the IT department, facilities, mechanics. Mechanical. Food service. Safety and security. Bussing. So that we'll make sure that we take care of all what we're looking for in this building. We met today. We have our special needs requirements and enhancements that we want to put in as well. So we'll slowly but quickly, very organized, get all those into our plans because we want to make sure if you don't ask for it, you don't get it. We don't get reimbursed for it. So we want to make sure we put all our plans in, all what we want. It's just not our needs, but all our wants, so that we can get that reimbursement and make those deadlines.
133And I'll say this. Nothing, I think, specifically Principal Sims and Early Childhood Supervisor Maureen Bergen and Wendy have worked really hard on that specialized concept of, like, if you could build a school from scratch, don't tell us what's there right now, how you'd operate. If you could reimagine this. It's quite motivating. So I want to thank them for putting in the extra time and mileage. But it is very exciting because it's just needed. Okay. I'm excited. Thank you so much. So we will be voting on this next month. The next time we meet together. So if you have any questions, I'm sure feel free to talk to Dr. Swartz or Nick. I'll be ready to answer any questions next time as well. Thank you. Or vote now. All in favor? Aye. We were told once
134that you can vote at workshops, just to be clear. I don't know if it's official. Okay. Number four, request approval of an MOA with William Julius Wilson Institute, Harlem Children's Zone for the Promise Pathways Program. Dr. Swartz and Jackie Davis. You're looking at me, huh? You want me to start it off? Your name is first. Yes, I see that. I see that. Thank you, Ms. Davis. You know, just going back, and I know not all commissioners were there. This was also something that I talked specifically about during the interview process about the reality of the thing that makes, that's so special about Waterbury, is we have so many organizations really working hard on behalf of kids. And so many times we're working in our silos. We're working. We're working really hard, but not together. And
135one of the things that's always intrigued me about specifically the Harlem Children's Zone and the things they've done over time is their success rate for kindergarten readiness, their success rate for breaking down all the barriers that get in the way of student success that are created by, you know, years and years of either intergenerational poverty or just not all of those systems working together for families. But in spite of families. And so I was, I applied for and was accepted into the fellowship. With that fellowship comes technical support. And what that technical support would be able to allow us to do, and, you know, they want to be able to come into Waterbury. They want to work with us, work with our teams, work with our, it's not just for Waterbury Public Schools. It's for
136all of our communities. It's for all of our community partners to say, what can we do to remove all the barriers and create all the safety nets possible for students, regardless of the zip code they're born in, regardless of the neighborhood they're born in in Waterbury. You know, we would start one area at a time and talk about what can we do in this one area to make sure that every single kid in this area gets everything they need to succeed so that if any one of us moved into that neighborhood, we would feel confident that our children would get what they need to be successful. Just as confident as whatever neighborhood we live in now or any other neighborhood in Connecticut. A lot of that takes collaboration and communication. And so what this, what
137this agreement would do at no cost would allow that technical support to come in and help us break down those silos, break down those barriers, and talk about bringing the community together. In one area to start with, to be able to support this work that they've done across not just Harlem, but they've, they've done this work across community after community across the nation. Um, and so, um, you know, in, in some pretty prestigious areas, whether it's, you know, Boston or Orlando, they're working in rural America too, um, in, in urban centers across the country. And so I was, uh, I was pleased to be accepted into the fellowship, but I also, um, I know that, uh, although schools take the brunt of why students are successful, um, I think we all know that with schools
138and community organizations working together, uh, it's a powerful, it's a powerful impact on kids. And, um, um, and so I'm excited, uh, to, to, to engage, uh, with those who have done this in communities across the country, uh, to be able to help us, uh, bring this type of support for our students. Uh, and, and so ultimately we create great citizens. and we we we ensure economic mobility for any student born working with us and I have been working with Commissioner Lopez and President Brown in discussions about how we can do this here we've been working with other community partners but really what would happen with this technical support is we want this done before they come and work with us here and come set foot in Waterbury and so Jackie can you say what
139I said but just even better and can you can you beat because I because I know you can chat GPT that yeah beat it but Jackie you have your own unique kind of perspective on this because you've been working side by side with me and others as well and and we want this technical support to come here physically to Waterbury which they're willing to do so just anything you want to add yeah so again to echo what dr. Schwartz says they really lean into this idea of the power of place that a lot of times we're looking outside for solutions to help our students succeed when the answer is often right there in our own communities and so the Harlem Children's Zone has done a phenomenal job in creating a model that is not necessarily
140duplicated in other communities but it helps them to tap into their own power and their own resources and so this would give us an opportunity as a Waterbury community to look at all of the wonderful gems that we have right in our communities and leverage them in a way that helps each one of our students succeed and so it would be very tailored to the needs of a particular community and be able to look at not only resources because that's important right cross sector partners coming together but it would also build on relationships and so we would have the opportunity to sort of listen to community voice and recognize that sometimes most times our communities know what's needed and so they can share you know what what what needs to be put into place for
141their their families and their students to succeed we know that students don't learn and grow within a vacuum and so to just look at what happens in the classroom kind of cuts things short because we have to look at the daily context of a student's life in order to really get them to the place where they need to be and so this program would help us to do that you know to look at what we need to put into place to make sure that we are leveraging again all of the wonderful resources that we have here in the Waterbury community and just to finish that off one of the things we're looking at is also we're not a you know right now we're focused on how can we reprioritize our departments and areas reprioritize and
142listen to the community you know in terms of you know you know we're looking at how can we you know we're looking at how can we we've asked ourselves is it gonna be a cost is there gonna be you know is there some sort of long-term sustainability to this it has to be long-term sustainability for this to be successful we are seeking some grant funding with some concepts that we're kicking around the Nellie Mae Foundation is interested in this concept here in Waterbury you know so we're seeking some opportunity there to do a three-year planning with Nellie Mae Foundation to be able to support to get this ground off to get this off the ground and running but we also going back to the concept of low cost no cost it's not just the community
143partners and cross-sector this this relies heavily on the city buying into this and doing this and we've had those conversations mr. Haxey's been part of those Trayvon Diaz has been a part of those mayor Peruski is very much interested in leveraging the departments to also with we pick a zone pick an area to have them focus on the community and the city and the community as a whole and that's what we're looking at right now. We are here to have them focus on that area to what can you do whether it's you know Waterbury Police Department or the Waterbury Fire Department whether it's you know our Parks and Recs you know our housing authority all of those things that are working for our citizens if we if we could continue the good work they're doing
144but said hey if we all walked and we all you know it's kind of like the neck turns the head if we all focus on this one area what can we do with the power of this area. area what could we do and pop what the power of this area. what could we do and pop with the power of this area. of everybody for once working together in one area what's the power there and so you know right now the the cost is a question mark because some of this might be just reprioritization of what we're doing but we are seeking some grant funding to do that and there's no committed funds at least from the water barrier public schools to be able to do this work just yet because we still need to listen
145and learn from the community before we take on any big project and I didn't know if a president Brown or Commissioner Lopez want to add to that but we'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any for us yes upon reviewing this I mean it sounds great right no cost and are coming look at everything right but long term like you said if you don't do this long term it's not worth it how much does that cost us the long term but we have so many different nonprofits community groups programs whatever doing whatever they're doing and we essentially what sounds right now is we don't know exactly what each of them do right so why continue partnerships with these community groups if we don't know exactly what they do we're bringing an outside
146person to come here look in the city look in the district with their every little thing and then say well they can do this we can do that why can we just internally do it ourselves take on that battle because in some of this stuff it says reimbursement we pay for reimbursement there's meetings there's manpower all that stuff people have you paid for that both things they're not making money doing that they're making money doing it and we are doing it but they're not doing it because that's not how it works things they're not doing these things for free they're not traveling for free they're not doing it out of the kinds of their heart they're doing it they didn't pay so how much does that cost us long term to not only try to
147do it and then sustain it down the road especially with a project like this preschool coming on right we want all hands on deck eyes on this more resources ready to because this is a product that we say we all agreed I think five minutes ago that we need this this is going through next meeting no matter what I think the preschool is so why at this point for ourselves then and look at other spots and look at other you know nonprofits or groups and say well they're gonna let us know what you really do around here and then we're gonna go back and we'll figure out we need or not and then we have to come back and find funding to get rid of them or keep them right so I think so I
148think a few things in there number one I they they're not their job isn't to come in and tell us that's just that's just a matter of time and then we're gonna have to come back and find out what we need to do and then we're gonna have to come back and find out what not and we've had some conversations we've we've interchanged with this group not and we've had some conversations we've we've interchanged with this group just to kind of get it get an idea of how they are they are they are they have established a model that their basic model and they started this a long time ago in Harlem yeah we could do it right here we can do it anywhere but it doesn't mean you're gonna make our model and take
149it and just package it up and you're gonna do in Waterbury they have been so successful and what they've done there in Harlem they've started this this this this this fellowship for superintendents to be able to learn how to leverage the power of the community and quite frankly I think if we could have done it here in Waterbury someone would have done it I think having some outside technical assistance of people that have done it successfully and not just Harlem but across the country to be able to have that type of leadership and understanding to come here and they're not here to tell us how to do it that's not that's not their job their job isn't to come and tell us how to do it their job isn't to come and tell us how
150to do it their job isn't to come and tell us job is to come in and help leverage their knowledge about how what they've seen across the country whether it's uh whether it's a city that looks like waterbury with a you know um strong mayoral government uh versus other places that that that have different forms of government within their local systems that type of technical assistance um and support uh is is beneficial for us they also have um from their work have tremendous access at all levels of government and non-profits that we could eventually tap into to help support the work long term so the question for you know what's it going to cost long term uh we don't know yet because we haven't started the process i can't tell you what the exact cost
151would be um i also would say that just because we're building a preschool it doesn't mean everything else stops i mean we obviously there's there's a lot of work going on in the city of waterbury it's just like you know the work i'm doing with i'm not going to stop that because we're going preschool so i think um you know again it's their technical expertise coming in and helping support us and not telling us uh what to do but helping us kind of leverage what we have and and and kind of run those forums and help us help us kind of bring people together um is something that i think is needed for us to be able to successfully do this i think that you know as a superintendent i can't go out there and
152just run the whole project by myself and i think to your point there's a lot of other things that we can do to help people and i think that you know i think that you know i think that you know we're going to have to do a lot of other things too that i'm trying to focus in on um but this is a collaboration between us the city community folk um and and our partners across the city to make sure uh we can do this so i understand your concern about a long-term commitment um i understand uh uh that but in the conversations we've all had and uh commissioners if you want to jump in it's not about um it's not necessarily a financial commitment it is a uh it is it is a it
153is a rethinking of how we do things instead of just doing it as a whole so i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point saying can we all come together and focus on one area and say no matter what happens we are all going to focus here and put all of our all leverage what we can in terms of our priorities to say you know this one area um this is this is this is something that's historically been neglected here in waterbury and for us to work together uh to make that happen but i think you two might be allowed if i could just say it's a great question but in waterbury
154we we have a foundation to build on uh many years ago the neighbor uh many years ago the neighbor uh many years ago the neighbor hood revitalization's law ordinance was passed hood revitalization's law ordinance was passed hood revitalization's law ordinance was passed which embedded this vision of a community which embedded this vision of a community which embedded this vision of a community planning process planning process planning process and then city hall would use its resources and then city hall would use its resources and then city hall would use its resources to do what the community wanted and we had to do what the community wanted and we had to do what the community wanted and we had success and one success really is the wow success and one success really is the wow success and
155one success really is the wow neighborhood neighborhood neighborhood because i was there for the organ the because i was there for the organ the because i was there for the organ the original organization original organization original organization uh way back in the day and because the the community spoke up and they did the planning, the WOW Community Center was built because of the concept of community power and community involvement. So it wasn't additional dollars. It was reallocating those dollars for something that the community wanted. So I think this is what we're trying to do, to empower communities in our neighborhoods that have been neglected, quite frankly, with abandoned blight and housing and crime and all the stuff that we're familiar with. But this is an opportunity, I think, to build on the success of neighborhoods
156like and the work that NEST is doing in the north end and Riva Espera and the Hispanic Coalition is doing in the south. I mean, there's organizations really doing this work. But I think that it's really trying to change the way. We do business and the way the city and bureaucracies do business. So I'm very excited about it and I think that it has the potential to really transform our neighborhoods. On behalf of the families and the children who live in those neighborhoods. This isn't about us. This is about the families and the children that deserve to live in a great neighborhood. So I see this as an opportunity to build on the technology and the technical assistance. We had the opportunity to go down to Harlem and they have 29 blocks. But they started
157off as a small group going house to house. What are your needs? You know what the first needs they wanted? They wanted more lighting on their streets and they wanted safety. They wanted locks on their doors. So you have to take people where they are and what they want. So I mean, I think I could go on. I'm very excited about this, as you can see. So I just think this is an opportunity to get this technical assistance, from people, if you ever, I mean, their minds are just so flexible and they really give us a lot of ideas. We've been meeting since, what, October? And I think that we've really learned a lot from them. So anyway, Commissioner Lopez, I mean, I'm sorry, did you finish? Yeah, no. President Brown, so that Harlem Zone,
158no one in the state does that, from my research. No. There's no one in the state that participates in that program at all. I read the report. Every program is in New York, Baltimore, all around the country. Right, we'll be the first. We'll be the first. We'll be the first. Yeah. I mean, if you're asking the communities what they need, I think the best person to ask is the community. Yeah. Ask those people that live in these homes, that go to these schools, that walk the streets every day. Ask them, hey, what do you guys need to help you guys get by? What do you need to help you be better? What do you need to help make things easier for you? And actually, yeah. Ask an outside group that doesn't know. No, they're doing,
159I would say. They're acting as a consultant to help us. But they're not going to tell us what to do. And we've already had, you know, conversations with community groups who are very excited with this. And they know what they want. So I think it's just bringing it all together. So anyway. I was just going to share that. How many times have we gone to meetings and people ask, what can we do to fix this? And then nothing happens. So these folks actually know how to make sure that things get done. So they are consulting with us to make sure. That we can achieve it. I would encourage anybody to watch, to Google Harlan Children's Zone. So you guys can see how they went block by block to not just transform how we educate our
160children. But how we transform communities. How we transform families. This is completely different. To your point, nobody else is doing it in the state. This is completely different. And it complements the preschool. Because we're building the kids up starting from preschool. From birth. From birth. We're speaking with parents to get them ready. To make sure they can parent. And they're prepared. And they know what milestones the children need to meet. And we're there with them every step of the way. This is completely, this would transform Waterbury completely. So I want to make sure that we do the research. And that we, can we send the link to the documentary? Yeah, we can send it. I'll take a look at it. I have no problem taking a look at it. Again, just the concern is once
161this planning is done. Once they do their research. Once they do their consulting. Because they're consultants. They're from outside. They're coming here doing whatever they're doing. We already have, Bridget says, shows what they do with their students. We have the rec centers. We have the Hispanic Coalition. We have all these groups that do this great work. But not together. But that's on us as a city. As a city. This is what this is. But why do we need to ask an outside organization to come in and say, what do we need to do? Because if we could have done it, it would have been done. Or there's no effort to make it done. There's no effort to get it done. I think we're going to agree to disagree on this one. We're going to agree
162to disagree on this one. Just because even the Auditorium meeting, right? They had the paving. And the Auditorium meeting said, you know, submit street names or street names that you want paved or redone and done over. The community members were able to submit those street names, give to the city, the street department. And they were able to pick, okay, we're going to pave this one, this one, this one. Stuff like that that we can do. We can say, hey, what do you need as a community to say this? Principals, teachers, what do you see your students are lacking or missing from the SJS part? Well, we can kind of step in and say, okay, we can fix these things. Or use the community groups that already are in place that we have a bond with
163now. They already know the community, know the children, know the students, know the infrastructure, know everything already. Why not just use it? And that's my only thing is because if we do this plan, they give us a great plan that sounds amazing. They're going to do great work, right? They're going to do great work. They're going to come in there and do some amazing plan that works. But, hey, you have to hire one, two, three staff managers to run it. You have to hire this, this, and that. That's not what that is. It's not what it is. So, Commissioner Locke, can I just clarify? Yes, please. They're not giving us a plan. They're not giving us any of that. That's not what they do. So I just want to try to step it back a
164little bit. Their job is to get us to do our job. So everything you just said, which was why isn't the community coming together to do this? We would have already done it by now. Their job is to – they know that community is going to be there. They know that communities across the nation work in isolation. All these groups that you just mentioned, all great groups, all working hard, all working in isolation. Sometimes we collaborate on little things, but we never turn the neck and say, all of us pinpoint from mayor's office all the way through education, all the way through community. And so their job isn't to come in and say, here's your plan, good luck. Their job is to say, it's going to be here to hire all these people. Anything that
165we design is going to be designed by us, for us. And so we're going to be working with those organizations at the table, and specifically how they're going to help us bring the community in and get those conversations. And they're going to – from what they do across the country, it's not all lovey-dovey, like we're all talking good stuff. They're going to hear – we're going to hear the real stuff. We're going to hear the things that people probably don't want to hear in positions of power. They're going to tell us exactly what we need to hear, but at the same time leveraging that community voice, that community opportunity, to be able to work together. And again, sometimes it started off small from what they say in communities. It started off with, I just want
166some sidewalks right now with lights at work. And so I can't do that. But I can tell you what, that impacts my kids. As a superintendent, that impacts my kids. But I can't tell – I'm not the one who's going to go over there and tell the street department to do that. But we need to create an opportunity where every single department of the city, all of those good community partners that we have, whether it's faith-based community or community, to come together. And we want to hear from the community, which are going to leverage their expertise, bring everybody in, and create this opportunity for us to hear it. And then as we create as a team, as a group together, we create that. They're just there as guys on the side that say, hey, you
167know, just a heads up, you know, we've seen it work like this in other places. You might want to take this, this, and this. But ultimately, it's your decision. Ultimately, it's your thing. They're not coming in and telling us, this is what Harlem – we're in Harlem, you've got to do it this way. They're not coming in and saying, this is what they're doing. They're not coming in and saying, this is what they're doing. You've got to hire these coordinators. It's whatever the community tells us that we need, we need to do it. And I know it sounds as simple as like, well, just do it. But again, it's not. It's not that simple. It just isn't. Never been done. It hasn't been done in Connecticut. Never been done across the nation. And I kind
168of ran on this just because the reality is this. Schools have only so much reach. And I hate when – I know that sounds harsh. If people think schools can solve everything, we can't. And that's a super intended talk. And I know you know that. But like, we do just about everything we can in those seven hours we get the kids, right? And we try that before school programs and after school programs and all that. And I think the reality is, is that, you know, going back to the streets, I can't fix the streets. I can't fix the lights. I can try to bring people to the table. I can ask them to fix it. But, you know, I don't have – you know, if there's a police situation in that neighborhood, that needs to
169be solved. If there's a trash situation, if there's a blight situation in that neighborhood, that needs to be solved. It's something that I can't necessarily do. So, again, it's trying to pull everybody together as a community to be able to focus on this one area, one zone, see what we can do as a community to pull together. Because if any place that I've ever been in Connecticut could do it, it's here. I think to your point, you already know because a lot of people here are working hard. Waterbury is a group of people that really care about the kids and a lot of people working hard but in isolation. And so, you know, you're going to be the first one on the team anyways. You're going to come and help out. I'm very excited. You're
170going to come. I'm excited to see what they say. I'll look at that. I'm excited to see what they say. You got it, Terrence. Okay, Commissioner Kaye. Through you, President Brown. So there are several things that have gone through my noggin. And so I was thinking more so of a clarity question. Essentially, Harlem Children's Zone is almost like teaching our institution, rather, how to organize community in a way to self-advocate. Yeah. So I'm just wondering if that's an answer to your question. Is there a way to make sure that we're doing this with that solution together? Is that what I'm understanding? Better way than everything that we said. So, yes, that was probably the best summary. You really summarized that beautiful. We're going to make that a bumper sticker. Okay. So I just wanted to
171understand that that's what I was understanding. I personally like the idea. I like community getting involved and being a part of the change that they would like to see. Because I also do agree that I think that when you are in the nonprofit sphere, you do tend to think in an isolated space. you do tend to think in an isolated space and you're just stuck doing the work that you're not seeing, oh well, non-profit B is also doing what I'm doing and also is C. So I really do like the idea and I would love to see more. So thank you. Great, okay. You will be chair leading that by the end of it. Okay, so we are the leaders. This takes leadership and I wanna thank Dr. Swartz and Jackie and everybody who has
172a vision here. This is a vision thing right now and I think we are providing the leadership to make this happen. So thanks, Jackie. All right, moving on. Number five. Oh, Jackie's there too, okay. Request approval of an agreement with the Waterbury Young Men's Christian Association for truancy prevention services. Yeah, come on up. Introduce yourself. So as I'm joined by my colleague here as we talk about cross-sectional sector partnerships, if I could officially acknowledge President Brown, to all the commissioners, to our student representative, thank you for being here tonight and to Dr. Swartz. So I will allow my partner to introduce herself. Good evening everyone. Olivia Dudley. I am the Director of Waterbury Youth Services, a branch of the Young Men's Christian Academy. So the Education Department respectfully requests approval of an agreement between the
173City of Waterbury and the YMCA to provide truancy services for our students. students in the amount of 75 500 the ymca has been awarded awarded a base grant for the fiscal year july 1st 2025 through june 30th 2026 section 10-190 of the connecticut general statutes requires the city of waterbury to match the dcf grant amount awarded to the ymca and we have been working with waterbury youth services a branch of the ymca for a number of years and offering these truancy services any questions i have a couple of questions um in terms of just the data that you've been doing it for many years i think people are interested in knowing you know say in in last year's data how many students were referred how many were served and how many actually started attending a
174school again if you don't have that that's okay i think we'd be interested to know you know how the program is actually working yeah we do have some data do you want to share the numbers from last year compared to this year so what i can share is that last year we had 284 referrals at this time this year we have 168 referrals at this time and out of a lot of those referrals how many did you actually serve and how many went back to school so those are the numbers we served um i do not have the data on how many returned to school that will come that would be i think interesting i mean important for us to know because you're serving them and then what happens did they go back to school
175or what happened to them so sure okay that would be part of the i think the the data that we would need you know we can get that before uh next meeting good okay all right well thank you very much oh commissioner ireland yes um i just want olivia can you just share some of the initiatives some of the incentives that we've done for our high school students or our truancy students sure so this year we implemented a 20-day attendance challenge with will be high school students so we went up there and celebrated the youth who were chronically absent last year and then started this year with the support of case management and attended the first 20 days we also implemented looking at eighth grade to ninth graders and making sure that they are also
176attending so we had this fight is over we had a an event for them as well bowling event for the youth who attended 30 days of school without missing without missing school so if i can add to that again i think the interventions are very intentional so they looked at the data and i believe there was one data point that showed that the highest rate of referrals in our district for truancy was ninth graders and so looking at that information they said okay what can we do creatively to be able to address that particular cohort and so that's how the idea came about to work with students who were had attendance issues in north end last year but are now this year's freshmen so how do we get them out of that pattern that we
177already see developing and so again i think they have done a phenomenal job not only in being creative and how we approach attendance issues but making sure that it is data driven commissioner um i don't know if you guys have like a report like a first um like of a personal story of like the the young people who are part of this process um i would love to hear their experiences uh and if you do have that again we'd love to see it and if you if not it's okay too thank you we can share one okay and if if i can add with uh the proficient water bear youth services we can share some of the pictures they say pictures are worth a thousand words yes and so the last event where she that
178uh olivia referenced for the bowling it was actually a family event and so it was students with their families present and the pictures are just amazing so we can share some of that as well thank you and okay commissioner bowen did you have a question yes i had a question and then commissioner lopez anybody else so questions um is this the same thing coinciding with the project longevity too is it or are there two separate things going at the same time that i'm confused no okay i just wanted to know that that's all i didn't hear the answer um because i was just wondering if project longevity does something similar i mean there's high school and middle school i didn't know if the two were kind of coinciding with each other or no so they
179do not specifically but one of the things that we want to make sure that we do is that we have a number of different ways to sort of attack truancy so this is one method that we're using to be able to provide resources for families who students are experiencing truancy the project longevity is another way that we're trying to connect students with some of the resources that they need after we do some investigating into root causes of absences and so it's two different things however waterbury youth services is also one of the providers who participates in project longevity so just two different ways to sort of attack the same problem commissioner ireland yes thank you madam president so that was one of my questions are there any root causes that are identified as the root
180causes of absences and why the students aren't coming to school there's many reasons but we do see attendance and health conditions as one of them as doing and then another question i see here that a student accumulates four consecutive so they have to miss four days in a row or is it four days it's four consecutive days and 10 days within the school year but four consecutive days they contact us to get involved with case management so we'll go out and visit and try to figure out what's happening and so the thing that's unique about truancy we talk a lot about chronic absenteeism but the unique thing about truancy is it accounts for unexcused absences and so i think another part that is huge for our district is just the whole education and awareness piece
181i mean in my conversation with families there have been situations where student had the flu you know they were out for a week parents weren't aware that they could send in a note and those days would be excused so we could very well have students that were legitimately sick parents weren't aware of the process to get those uh those absences excused and so now the student would technically be categorized as um as truant and so i think one of the things that waterbury youth service does a great job with is working with the district to get that message out to families how do we educate them on how to um navigate the system you know and and not incur you know some of these um so so that their child is not labeled as truant
182okay well thank you very much it seems like the program has really stepped up over the years because i remember when i first got on the board that you know there were a lot of there was a lot of miscommunication between the program and the school so it seems like that's really strong now so i'm really happy to see that thank you okay our number six request approval of amendment one to the no cost education affiliation agreement with kre bsl husky east farms operation llc to provide certified nurse assistant clinical hours to students mr marotti welcome nice to see you hey everybody career and technical education supervisor michael marotti good evening president brown commissioners student representative superintendent dr schwartz the academic office respectfully respectfully requests your approval for adding waterbury adult education to our current
183contract to expand the partnership with benchmark senior living doing business as the village at east farms in waterbury under this contract all certified nurse assistant students within the waterbury adult education enrichment program can complete clinical hours to meet the department of health cna requirements there are no costs associated with this contract any questions i think it's a great idea wonderful thank you thank you okay all right next number seven request approval to apply for the csde carl d perkins secondary supplemental enhancement grant 2026. good evening the academic office respectfully requests your approval for consensus to apply for the perkins secondary supplemental enhancement competitive grant 2027. the grant application deadline is april 10th and there are no matching funds required we desire to purchase virtual reality headsets that offer immersive multimodal career exploration and training solutions
184with interactive assessments and vr simulations making career exploration and training more accessible more accessible and engaging to learners thank you and commissioners we will need a consensus on this because it's time sensitive so um if if you have questions we'll answer the questions and then we'll hopefully get a consensus does anybody have any questions commissioner lot thank you mr president just quick question how many students do you serve in your program and across the whole district oh i'm sorry i'm sorry district-wide okay and how many like attend and are participating in this so they're based on essentially if you buy a head set then it comes pre-loaded with curriculum across a variety of platforms and career pathways so they offer automotive training culinary health sciences construction and manufacturing so across all of that i would
185say roughly 75 of our high school students would be able to well depending on how many headsets you get but i mean there is a large opportunity to provide these headsets to different learners and i don't know whether you can speak to the same effort manufacturers here but sets of students at different buildings. Again, they're transportable, right? So there's definitely opportunity to hit a number of our different classrooms that we have. The career exploration piece could be dedicated to really any CTE teacher and all the students that are there. So figure roughly 75% of our current high school students take a CTE course. And I figure roughly half of a state middle school would get involved with that opportunity. So a significant number. So the $50,000 will cover a headset for essentially each school as
186of now or the plan to kind of get it there? Right. So this would be the first potential step is, you know, it covers eight headsets, which also includes curriculum to all the different simulations. I think it's 330 simulations in different hours of career training. There are industry standards aligned to all the different systems that are available. So I think it's a good idea to get involved with all the different systems that are available. I think it's a good idea to get involved with all the variety of credentials that are out there. And accordingly, we would connect with the teachers, provide training, and then be able to give teachers and figure out logistics in terms of how we're going to offer the teacher the headsets, when they can take them out, have some kind of
187a sign out system to ensure that, again, if people are interested in leveraging them, that we can get them those resources. And then eventually, if this goes well, which I anticipate it will, I'll be able to leverage a additional Perkins funding to supply each school with their own dedicated headsets. So that way again, there's more access, more hours availability, and just kind of go from there. Thank you. You're welcome. Commissioner Ireland. Thank you. I just want to be clear, in this, you said there's eight headsets? Correct. So there is each headset. So if you bought one it again, it comes with curriculum across all the the five mentioned and the 330 simulations there's also a career exploration component which essentially provides virtual job shadowing where kids can actually access the headset find a different career
188view it and actually kind of experience almost like a day in the life you know you can it is it's pretty exciting I feel like it's really engaging but the number of hours that it really depends on the unit in the curriculum they are we are our curriculum is aligned already to industry standards so this is just a enhancement to what we're offering but a really cool engaging way to get students that may be hesitant to engage on the hands-on component to learn how to do something prior to jumping in on let's say one of the manufacturing machines at Career Academy they'd be able to engage in a more safe environment still learn the content and then build a career plan and then build a career plan for that building and then build up some
189confidence to get on the hands-on component okay thank you okay could I have a consensus show hands no we can't vote consensus okay thank you thank you for your support yeah okay request approval of amendment one to the agreement with Wheeler Clinic Inc for educational services in accordance with students IEPs good evening president Brown board of ed commissioners student representative and superintendent dr. Schwartz the special education department requests the approval of amendment number one to the agreement between the city of Woodbury public schools and Wheeler Clinic which is an out-of-district special education placement this amendment number one shall add compensation in the amount of four hundred twenty seven thousand three dollars and forty nine cents the contract will still conclude on June thirtieth of twenty twenty seven the purpose of this agreement is to continue
190to provide services for raises in tuition and adding an additional student mid-year to Wheeler Clinic any questions for Wendy seeing none thank you Wendy thank you okay monthly expenditure report for February twenty twenty six good evening this is Biola good evening president Brown board of ed commissioners student representative and superintendent student representative and superintendent dr. Schwartz the special education department requests the approval of amendment number one to the school district of Wheeler Clinic this is Biola good evening president Brown board of ed commissioners student representative and superintendent dr. Schwartz this is just the monthly report through February again as I have said repeatedly and in past meetings when I bring this forward we're just maintaining these accounts looking very closely going through cost containment planning to break even or surplus is the most important thing
191at this moment of stage of where we are in next year's budget process because on the last page as long as we maintain the containment of the budget we're going to be able to continue to maintain the maintenance of the budget we're going to be able to maintain the maintenance of the budget as long as we maintain the maintenance of the budget we're going to be able to maintain the maintenance of the budget as long as we maintain the maintenance of the budget we will maintain the maintenance of the budget we will continue we continue to supportHave long term melodrama Attack 이것 I think I think it's an gap on the left column on the right column on the left column this is the 호 Oon Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Oregon Oregon thank you water
192treatment at various schools mr. Albini I think you're a left oh I'm sorry number 10 you have 10 11 and 12 and 13 you're up for a while good evening president Brown Board of Education Commissioners superintendent dr. Schwartz I'm here tonight with Sam pronounce it correctly he can't see seeking seeking from CSW this is in regards to a maintenance agreement on the on the solar panels if you remember correctly one of the topics that came up when we were talking about the installation it was what type of maintenance would be what type of upkeep what type of preventive maintenance would take place and how would we know it so an RFP was put out and all electric was the winning bidder and so what they would do is they would be able to monitor the
193viability of the panels if something is not working properly they would notify us they would take it make a visit to the school and I'm going to have Sam later discuss a little bit more about the technical aspects but this is something that is a great idea once you had a 3st generation solar panels in construction it came to light that we had to that broke down and we didn't we don't know if we could have caught that earlier with a less cost so we don't know that but this is great for any which would cover those and for future solar panels as well it is a twenty seven hundred dollar a year cost and is just for the preventive maintenance notified through an app there's a panel on on Gilmartin school and that doesn't
194seem to be producing as much take a look at it is it dirty is something broken and we would be able to take a look at it that's what this is set up to do not to do the actual repairs but to monitor what is the problem if there is one any questions so are so this would be a new feature for the so no it's not being done now as such that is correct great that's that is correct and is it possible if you've identified something and it does need repair that can we use the money generated from the electricity to pay for it so I think that goes into a separate fund that's on the city side I think that goes into a separate fund but we would be able to do an
195RFP and take a look and see what kind of problem or is it something that we can fix in the future and then we can go back and do a little bit of a review and see what kind of problem or is it something that we can fix in the future and then house with our own electricians so we don't I don't think that's a separate fund where where that money goes it goes to the overall operation of the school okay any other questions sounds great thank you thank you all right number 11 request approval of a professional services agreement with Clearwater Industries Inc for chemical water treatment at various schools thank you this this would take place and in any wherever we have water in a building other than for domestic water so the
196Education Department respectfully requests review and approval of services agreement with Clearwater Industries I know it says 28 schools but it's 30 schools Bergen complex and Laura Hill is counted as one but it's really Crosby Wallace and and now will be North End the total agreement is for two hundred three thousand four hundred ninety dollars over a five-year period so that's thirty eight thousand dollars for the first three years and thirty nine thousand nine hundred for years four and five this would provide chemical water treatment for our boilers our cooling towers our open and closed loop systems wherever there is water in the systems that can cause actually damage right now we have a system that is actually a water treatment system that is actually a water treatment system that is actually a different vendor and
197there may be twice the price so this was a great this was a great RFP for us any questions sounds good okay Commissioner Lott for the repairs they come out art those education department budget for the repairs yes these are our these are ours enlightenment and state street were rentals from the building right this enlightenment we do but we're in charge of the facilities yeah yeah and State Street we own that building thirty a and thirty B Church Street we own okay next number twelve request approval of a construction contract with infrastructure repair service LLC for pool slab repairs at Kennedy High School thank you madam president if you remember correctly when we were doing the HVAC up at Kennedy we discovered that there was a lot of decay underneath the pool deck once they
198took the ductwork down we noticed it we put it out to bid infrastructure repair was the lowest bidder it will be a hundred and sixty six thousand two hundred fourteen dollars its take about ninety days for substantial completion about a hundred and twenty days for final completion that's consecutive days days that's not school days we are going above and beyond we are using galvanized steel underneath where a lot of the chlorine does have a tendency to rust iron and steel so we are going with galvanized steel so it's a little bit better typically when you have galvanized can get maybe up to 70 years with that as compared to unprotected steel and and this would start as soon as this we would give them the notice proceed and we could have this ready within 120
199days for four months in completion any questions thank you and the next two 1314 the Education Department has received 13 requests for building and school facilities use by schools school organizations and or city departments as listed in your packet and they request Board of Education approval okay and number 14 the Education Department has received two requests for building and school facilities use by outside organizations they are the P.Mairano tribute artist show the Rotella auditorium and life as you know it the will be auditorium the Education Department has received two requests and our request waiver of fees that is the city youth theater Crosby high school auditorium and that is seven thousand four hundred and seventy six dollars and what a very promise the Crosby calf auditorium lobbying classrooms for a hundred and twenty six dollars
200and the Education Department received an additional three requests and request waiver of fees because it is during regular maintainer hours I will I will say one thing one of them does not it goes into the summer and it goes at night typically in the summer we don't have night maintainers we put our night maintainers working during the day so they all work together for stripping the floors painting whatever they may do they don't need to do it at night there's no classrooms to clean. So I'm having Miss McCaslin contact that particular renter to tell them we are not open at night. It wouldn't be free if we're calling the maintainer in back after they leave at 4. That would be the Waterbury Ballers. But Waterbury Ballers, Brass City Athletics, and Waterbury Special Olympics. Excuse me,
201Waterbury Ballers is not the one. It's the Brass City Athletics. I'm sorry. They're asking to go up to August 1st and it's at night. We typically don't have our maintainers there at night. So I will have an update for you at the next meeting on what transpires with that conversation with that group. Dr. Swartz? Yeah, I just want to say I know Nick you've been working on some idea of how to be able to present this in a more cohesive way for the board to make some decisions on this. I was able to converse with Commissioner Lott, who has a lot of good ideas in this area as well. I know we have a meeting coming up to try to just start hacking away at it. And you know taking a lot there's a lot
202of examples across the country and online and different places. In the end it's you know trying to come up with something that's streamlined that honors our you know Waterbury community and Waterbury students and those that are serving them. And you know, try to get something that's a little bit more fair and equitable for organizations. That it's also fair to hear. It's also fair to hear about the that it's also honors the fact that you know there's a lot of resource that comes in from the schools and you know whether it's custodial or just wear and tear on the buildings itself so looking forward to that continued conversation I know many of you are interested in in pursuing something that's a little bit more rigorous and and I will soon have a new revised template on
203what the forms will look like the guidelines will be it'll be finalized when we come back from the break we'll start our little internal putting eyes on it take a look what we need to do and then we'll bring it to the board so they can like take a look at it and see what you would like to do with it it's a live document so if we improve it and as we go forward as it's being used if it needs to be improved yet again or something added we can always do that and I'll combine you know Commissioner Law has a lot of good ideas so I think it's important to have a blank piece of paper before we send out the draft and everything we'll we'll put some of those ideas put it
204together and like I said I think it's better to work off of something rather than just have a blank piece of paper and say where do we want to go so we'll combine all those efforts together and then you know hopefully it won't be too long until we have something we can all agree on Commissioner Lott yes mr. Albion you just check with Brassidy Athletics see how many kids they service I mean that's seven gyms for that's a lot for a long time so just see how many kids they have in their program to make sure that we're using the facility properly sure right now their application it says two adults and twelve students so I don't know if that's for each location I'm not sure yeah just get the verification I will I'll contact
205I'll contact them so that was another point that I'll bring up that maybe we shouldn't be leasing for that many months give everybody an opportunity so maybe it should be for every two months reapply possibly look at that too when we have the meeting but just in general seven gym for twelve for fourteen people it's a lot yeah so that's a big ask exactly I will check on that now I'll have that answer for you thank you sir for the for the board actually thank you okay thank you Nick thank you next superintendents update don't be long I know good evening president Brown commissioners I get it okay I mean we got to move the superintendent update to be in the beginning there I could you yes all right so let me get through this
206with you all thank you so much some things to celebrate here academic Academy mock trial team advance to the States okay so huge congratulations to our Academy academic Academy mock trial team I'm the meaning both of the recent trials and advancing to the states and usually I don't you know put the other schools out there but I will you know they be a Cedric Middle School in West Hartford and the Rinzuli gifted and talented school in Hartford for the fall season for the Set is in September in Carter as you see기를 the mall at Pac- ideal you've got very nice viene one of the best scholarships in the Eastmost You know they be a Cedric middle school in West Hartford and the Renzo le gifted and talented school in Hartford for the in есть is
207great to go and just we went through with we had someacje just because our Hartford in their first trial our team represented the prosecution and the second they represented the defense our lawyers and witnesses were articulate and well prepared we are so proud of the students and their coach Amanda Murphy congratulations to our mock trial team making us proud here in Waterbury will be cadets attended the NROTC leadership conference six will be high school seniors in the MCJ our OTC program attended Yale University's a lot of acronyms NROTC leadership and strategy conference conference where they participate in lectures panel discussions that reinforce key lessons leadership citizenship and characters and character the cool thing about this is there were college and university students from over 185 institutions across the United States and I believe I got
208the the email that also said we were the only high school program from Connecticut there Wow go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be go will be yeah great career day at hopeville uh that was awesome awesome career day you were there that's right we were there together you were coming you were you i thought you were coming to ball when you showed up um so so fourth grade students at hopeville welcomed uh myself and uh you uh you know assistant superintendent brooks and and uh mr hacksey we all got in there we talked about education so i hopefully inspired some future educators uh to talk about how we were
209inspired to become educators some of us started at an early age because it was a teacher said something to us and some of us um you know supposed to were inspired by helping others and we all had our own paths uh mr brooks didn't have a choice because mama said so and um yeah so so his his his story was interesting i liked your story he was going to be an attorney he was convinced to be attorney but mom worked here in waterbury was it walsh where mom worked chase so mom was at chase and she like one day she was like i hurt my foot and he was off from break from school she's like can you help bring in the boxes into school i need your help and then she got him like
210to state coming every day and kind of eventually after a while it was like he had no choice yeah yeah mama didn't raise no fools so um so so mr brooks changed from attorney to a teacher and it wasn't a straight line for me either it was it was he talked about the bumps and bruises along the way and in the in the hiccups so uh great students great day at home field they put on a tremendous tremendous day uh at homeville that's great yeah uh i want to i also want to congratulate north end middle school for putting on the first ever in waterbury radiant queens conference uh in celebration of women's history month uh that was uh just amazing it is a high-powered group of uh of women from across the state of
211connecticut uh to teach our young ladies they engage in the series of dynamic workshops focused on building confidence self-empowerment and positive self identity um great so many so many amazing people that i don't want to uh uh miss out on anyone but i want to thank all those from the community that were able to join us on that day uh thank you so much and uh a special thanks to the leadership at north end and cheryl herbert for organizing that event so i you know i'm pretty sure i already report on this so i'll make it quick but i north end middle school won the north end middle school award for the best student in the school and i'm the middle school robotics competition first ever uh middle middle school robotics competition in the city
212of waterbury you got a big trophy you can see it in there the top right top right you see you see the big trophy there so every year when the kids win it they get to keep the trophy for the year so you know north end middle school won the uh won that so you know another north end uh win there um so go go rams and uh the robo rams is what they're called uh up there and i want to give a special shout out i don't have pictures from it but i did attend the high school uh robotics competition and you know all five teams competed all five teams collaborated uh great job uh there and i want to give a special shout out to william's career academy and will be for advancing
213uh to the playoffs during that that event um and we're looking forward but there could be one of our teams going to new england so to be determined i'll let you know congratulations to all the teams that competed uh congratulations also to all the students who uh won the group and i want to earned scholarships from the Exchange Club. Joshua Smith-Myers from Waterbury Career Academy for accepting the Challenge of Excellence Award. Young man has a great story. I want to thank him for sharing that with us. Milo Moffitt from Crosby Youth of the Year Award. Zachary Fitzgerald from Career Academy and Isabel Manette Amor-Gondre from Kennedy for the Marathon Man Memorial Scholarships. All students well deserving and congratulations to the Exchange Club for putting on such an awesome event like they always do every year.
214I was able to hang out up at Crosby last week for the Unified NVL Tournament. So our Unified Sports Teams again for our students working with their special education, regular education students coming together for Unified Sports. Crosby, Kennedy, Oxford, Career Academy will be all faced off and special shout out for Crosby hosting. But also for Crosby getting to the championship game. Congratulations Bulldogs. And you're Superman I see. Yeah, so yeah, we've got to talk about this game. That means superintendent. That's superintendent or Schwartz or however you want to do it. But you know, we were able to win today no thanks to me and no thanks to Commissioner Ireland because you know every time I'm looking for a sub because I'm winded because these kids get played. You know everyone was waiting for him to
215show up in the gym. The legend, he wasn't there. I'm not. I'm trying I'm just gonna try to throw you out there because but you know all that all that you know what it ended up being then the Vano show Mr Verano. So Mr Verano, congratulations. The kids were chanting MVP for him. He did get a lot of buckets. Took a lot of shots. I got a lot of buckets, but I I know that staff and students like we'll have some fun today. You know. Thanks. All right. So. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. It was just an honor to be a part of this. It's a pleasure to be here. You know, it was a great time. And I got out with a win and not hurt. So that was a plus. Yes. Man,
216I want to – this was so cool. I know some of you were able to be there, Commissioner Lopez, Commissioner Munez, to see our students showcase their talents at the Palace Theater. So number one, just our families getting invited to the Palace Theater because many of them have not been there yet. But our students to step on the stage and perform on such an amazing stage, historic stage where past giants have sat on there, gone on there, and performed for audiences, have our kids get up there, was amazing to see the talent that our district does possess. So I want to thank Ray Sienavasi, who put on an amazing light-to-camera talent showcase. He worked closely with Kathy DeWire and especially Margaret Cherubini from central office, among many others who helped out that day, all the
217teachers that showed up with their students at night. It was – it's just those nights are the nights that we live for. You know what I mean? And I did see a stinky leg. So when I did introduce the students, I walked up there. I had the pleasure of doing it with Deputy Mendoza, Commissioner Lopez, and Deputy Commissioner Muniz, who did showcase their own talents. So I will get that video for you all at the next meeting. And you're going to see some moves here that, you know, don't let the formalities of the board fool you. They have some dance moves. So well done. Well done. Well done. A plus. So I just want to remind everybody it's National Child Abuse Prevention Month in April. We are – and we're going to be doing it
218every year. We're accepting donations for a dollar for blue ribbons to go to the Exchange Club of Waterbury at all of our schools. But if anybody else here wants to do it, they'll just come see us at central office. Come see me or Tanya, and we'll be able to give you one of those blue ribbons. We are raising money in collaboration with the Exchange Club to prevent child abuse. Obviously very important to us here in the Waterbury Public Schools. I also want to thank all of our amazing paraprofessionals in the district. Wednesday, April 1st. Was National Paraprofessional Appreciation Day. They are appreciated. They do amazing work. Sometimes the unsung heroes of the district among many of our staff. But we have great paraprofessionals here in Waterbury. I want to thank them all for being committed
219to our students and what they do every day for them. And again, April 2nd, today, Recognition World Autism Awareness Day. You know, we encourage everybody to wear blue for today. And so I want to thank everybody. I want to thank everyone for doing that. And obviously we have many students who have autism and we want to support them and continue to support their growth and development here in the Waterbury Public Schools. I know we are off next week, so I have a slide for that. But we want to wish all the assistant principals, happy assistant principals next week, take the week off. So there it is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There it is. National School Library, Librarian Day is, it says Friday, April 4th, but that has to be wrong because
220April 4th is Saturday. So I'm going to guess it's Friday, April 3rd. So happy National School Library, Librarian Day for all our school librarians. And of course, Good Friday and Spring Recess start tomorrow. I want to wish everybody, for those that are celebrating Good Friday and observing that, but also we will be celebrating Good Friday. And I want to thank everybody for that. And I want to thank everybody for that. And I want to thank everybody for that. I want to thank everybody for that. I want to thank everybody for that. And I want to thank everybody for that. And I want to thank everybody for that. We will be off for Spring Recess for the upcoming week. And we will reopen on Monday, April 13th. And just a reminder, for anybody listening and the
221board that Wishfest is coming to a district near you Thursday, April 16th, 2026. It's a great event that we hold at the Palace Theatre. All of our middle school, high school students go today, this year, in collaboration with UConn Waterbury. We're going to have a theme that is wish to cultivate. I'll be picking up. Wish to Cultivate Innovation, Inclusion, and a Healthier Future. We'll have guest speakers there, some amazing keynote speakers, Temple Grandin, who's a renowned animal welfare scientist and champion of neurodiversity, and Rachel Lamont, winner, CBS Survivor and designer, Puzzle Master. And it's really also to help support our students to understand neurodivergence and to make sure that if they either have neurodivergence or it's one to be more accepted, but also to better understand it if you don't have necessarily neurodivergence. It's really
222important for our students to take part in this wish fest. And it's congratulations to Dr. Hoft from UConn for having the ingenuity for putting this together, and it's their fourth annual, and it's been better and better every year. So I want to thank her for her work on that. And just a reminder to follow us on social media. All good. Superintendent's notification to the board. And I just want to wish everybody a happy Easter and happy Passover and have a wonderful vacation. Just quick, two things. One, as Dr. Swartz mentioned, career dad, Hopeville, I did get to attend. And the one thing that stood out from one girl who never really, she didn't talk, most of the kids in the class talked, asked a lot of questions, but the one thing that she bought as
223a complaint to the schools is that she wishes that we could have more tissue and soap in the bathrooms. Okay. So I thought that was cute, isn't it? Listen, so I thought that was good. Okay. So that's a note. I told her I would bring it to you and let you know. Well, I'm on notice. So we don't usually have, so I'm assuming bath tissue. Yes, yes. So we'll double check over at Hopeville. Ms. Harlby, we will double check. The voice of the people. However. You know, it's real, right? So, you know, if that's her experience, then we need to hear that and we need to fix it. So we will do that. Yeah, a little fourth grader. And last but not least, this past Sunday, I did get to attend the, what is it?
224I think it's Rotella. Is it Rotella? Rotella School had a high school musical, which was really nice. The kids did such an amazing job. It was definitely cute. Cute, quick, and to the point. So kudos to those up there. I would agree. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And right now, if you're interested in the high school play, Kennedy High School is putting it on, I think, tonight and over the weekend, high school musical for the high school experience. So that was high school musical junior at Rotella. Oh, that's cute. Yeah. I was in New Jersey at a soccer tournament weekend, so I'd rather have gone to the high school musical junior at Rotella. However,
225if you're interested in going to the Kennedy play, let me know and I'll get you the information and tickets. Okay. We are adjourned. We don't need to go? You know, we have to get that straight. Sometimes they say we don't need a motion to adjourn and other times we say we need a motion. A motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Well, it gives everyone an opportunity to get out of here. Get out of here. Okay. Have to get that straight. Sometimes they say, no, we don't need a motion. I didn't know it was you. Forever we've been talking about this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.