001Today is Thursday, June 5th, a workshop of Board of Ed. We're going to start out with a silent prayer. We have the Pledge of Allegiance by WAM students Julian Alves and Alexander Perez. With allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty, and justice for all. Thank you, Julian and Alexander. Okay. Dr. Shorts. All right. Thank you, President Hernandez. Good evening, everyone. I think everyone's here tonight for the budget presentation. Is that correct? Yes. No? I don't know why everyone thinks that's so funny. We're actually here tonight to celebrate some of our amazing students here in Waterbury Public Schools, which we are filled with them. And tonight, we are here for the CABE Student Leadership Awards Program, which includes 7th
002grade, 8th grade, and high school students who exhibit exemplary leadership skills. Two students from each school in a CABE member district are eligible to receive this CABE Student Leadership Award. School principals go through the process of asking their staff for the names of students who exhibit these leadership skills based on specific criteria. These skills include willingness to take on new challenges, capability to make difficult decisions, concerns for others, ability to work with others, willingness to commit to a project, diplomacy, ability to understand issues clearly, and ability to honor a commitment. The principal then completes and submits an application with support from their staff, which includes the names and a brief biography of the students who are being nominated for the award. Last year, 476 middle and high school students from across the state of Connecticut
003We're awarded with this prestigious award for the CABE student leadership. And tonight, we honor our Waterbury students. Okay, welcome. Thank you so much, Dr. Schwartz. And with all that great information that he presented, now we'll begin with introducing our CABE award recipients. From Carrington School, Rudy Hamilton. Also from Carrington School, Kendrick Vasquez. From Crosby High School, Zaria Thomas. From State Street, Brady Hartford. Brady couldn't make it. From Duggan, Jaylene Eason. Also from Duggan, Janelise Katz. From Gilmartin School, Savina Montague. From Gilmartin School, Israelia Aduko. From Kennedy High School, Jayden Acevedo. From Kennedy High School, Gloriondi Janeo Gonzalez. From Enlightenment Middle, Naysha Pagan. Also from Enlightenment, Michael McKinney. From Enlightenment High, Kenasia Gregory. We just had a walk-in. From Enlightenment Middle, Naysha Pagan. From Enlightenment High, Zamyra Sarra. From North End, Arlene Torres. From North End
004Middle, Journey Cook. From Reed School, Jose Ramirez-Orlana. From Reed School, Emily Valencia. From Wallace Middle School, Barrera Tanvir. Again from Wallace Middle School, Kialin Cabrera-Rodriguez. From Waterbury Arts Middle School, Alken Onur. Also, Waterbury Arts Magnet School Middle, Hanaleigh Cochiola. Waterbury Arts Magnus School High, Isabella Nizzardo. And also Waterbury Arts Magnus School High, Nadina Bedrazen. Waterbury Career Academy, Jaden Levasseur. Waterbury Career Academy, once again, Dara Cabrera. From Westside Middle School, Valerie Espinosa. From Westside Middle School, Ariane Martinez-Almonte. From Wilby High School, Tamiya Mitchell. From Willoughby High School, Noobie Kwezipi Loja. From Wendell Cross, Evan Delfino. And also from Wendell Cross, Oscar Pacheco. With that, congratulations to all our award recipients. Congratulations. Good evening, everyone. Congratulations, recipients. Before I begin my principal's report, I would like to have a short performance for you all from our dance
005department. So I invite our dancers and Ms. Cheryl Worth to come on up. If I could just make one quick announcement before we start the dance. Looks like some sort of thriller thing going on maybe. If you're a student award winner, if you could just stay for the three-minute performance, and if you plan on leaving after the performance, just out of respect for the students performing, if you could stay for the three minutes, and then after that we'll just give you some time to leave while we still conduct the meeting. Thank you. If you are attending, if you're going to stay for the regular meeting, feel free to stay, and if not, if you could exit the building quietly, we'd appreciate it. Thank you so much, and congratulations to all the winners tonight. Go ahead,
006Mr. Alvarez. lens for you. Good evening everyone. Good evening Mayor, President Hernandez, Secretary Serrano-Adorno, Commissioners, CABE Award recipients, Central Office personnel, our fantastic students, Dr. Schwartz, families, and WAMS staff. Thank you for all being here with us tonight for our WAMS Principal Report. My name is Dr. Maria Stasaitis and I am the very proud principal of WAMS. With Mr. Joseph Knoll, our vice principal. We have two other vice principals, but they're over at the Grand Oak Villa celebrating with our grade 8 students at a formal. This is Jennifer Dealy and Mr. Dan Ferreira. So I have asked Nadina Badrasain, our class of 2025 salutatorian, and Mrs. Isa Alvez, our parent liaison, to sit with us tonight to represent our fantastic WAMS community. So special thanks to Sophia Nugent, who was playing piano when you all
007came in. Our WAMS dancers, led by Mrs. Cheryl Worth tonight, they have fantastically worked on their Michael Jackson performance. And so oftentimes you all get to come and see our shows and musical theater shows and music. So it was really great to highlight our dancers this evening. And behind you, we had an art show, a student art show, and we've left up some of our posters and our art boards behind you just so you could see those as well. Okay, would you like to begin? So Nadina is our class salutatorian, and she has received a full scholarship to Harvard University. Good evening, everyone. I'm Nadina Badgersane, and I'm proud to be a student at Waterbury Arts Magnet School. It's a place that's meant more to me than I could ever explain in just a few
008minutes, but I'll try my best. WAMS has been my second home. It's where I've grown up, not just in age, but in confidence, creativity, and curiosity. What makes this school so special is that it doesn't ask students to choose between the arts and academics. It encourages us to do both and to do them well. Here I've had the chance to explore a variety of the arts, from stage managing and directing to dance and even stagecraft. I was lucky to have the chance to serve as a student at WAMS. ...for plays here, which is an opportunity I wouldn't have gotten elsewhere. Those experiences helped me realize that theater isn't just something I enjoy, it's something I truly love and want to continue to pursue in my future. At the same time, Williams challenged me academically. I've
009taken multiple AP classes and UConn ECE courses that have made me a stronger student who is prepared for the academic demand of college. The balance of creativity and academic rigor here really helped prepare me for what's next, which is attending one of my dream schools, which wouldn't be possible without the people here. The teachers and staff at WAMS truly go above and beyond. Whether it's staying late to hold an extra rehearsal for a show, writing recommendation letters even when we asked them last minute, or just checking in to make sure you're doing okay, they always show up. They see potential in every student here and meet you where you are while also encouraging you to grow. Their doors are always open, not just for academic advice, but for life advice, encouragement, or just to talk
010whenever you need a break. The students I've met here have been just as impactful. There's this unspoken support system at WAMS. Whether you're an actor, dancer, musician, or someone who's taking an AP class for the first time, there's always someone cheering you on. The environment here is creative, collaborative, and welcoming. Instead of competition, there's encouragement. Instead of judgment, there's genuine support. This school also gave me the space to be a leader. I started the debate club here, and it's become one of the most meaningful things I've been a part of. I've seen how a simple idea can grow into something real when you're in the right place with teachers and staff supporting you. So yes, I've learned a lot at WAMS, from how to analyze a text or write a research paper, to how to
011lead a club or run a rehearsal, but more than that, I found who I am. And that's what makes this school so important to me. WAMS has given me a place to try, to fail, to grow, and to succeed. And I'll always be grateful to call it my home. Thank you all. Thank you, Nadina. So some of our school successes for the 24-25 year, we have a very strong governance council. We're thankful to have many community partnerships who attend our monthly council meetings to offer insight, to share data with, to hear feedback from. We have had 98 out of 111 seniors complete their FAFSA. So, big deal for us here. A lot of students who are thinking about their secondary plans, college and career. It's a very large percentage for us here. We implemented our
012Yonder Pouches this year. We implemented ID Metrics for our Tardis. We're in year two of our Pathways program and arts integration work with Cormier Consulting and Dr. Gavin. And Dr. Gavin comes to us and she really helps infuse the arts in our academics and offers a collaboration between a rigorous arts and academics program for us at WAMS. We're so unique here because we're a 6 through 12 school, and we have a middle school and a high school. So as much as we're collaborative with everyone, our middle school does still do a lot of their community meetings together where they focus on academics, attendance. We have mental health awareness presentations to families, to students. We have a middle school parent book club. And we have hosted our second annual career fair with so many families in
013our own community coming to talk to our students about their positions, their careers, and giving insight and advice to our students who are looking into that career path. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Knoll, who primarily works with our high school students. Thank you, Doctor. Good evening, everyone. First of all, I'd like to congratulate all the CABE award recipients. I know many have left, but congratulations to you as well as your families. That's an incredible accomplishment, something to be very proud of. I'd like to thank the Mayor. Board of Education staff as well as our human capital department for affording us the opportunity to showcase what we do here at Williams you saw some of our students excuse me with the pledge our incredible dance performance so it's nice that people get to
014see the other things that we do rather than academics as Nadine has said we are a blend and this year thanks doc this year one of the things we did we have a stellar guidance department and this year we really focused and promoted on post-secondary opportunities for our students some are college bound some are work readiness some are military some are different institutions for work and our guidance department really focused on ideas to help students explore and flourish those opportunities we had great College planning night which was followed up by our financial aid offering great assistance to our students who don't necessarily understand how some of that works it is complicated. We had wonderful turnouts by the families. I thank all of you for that. We had a great FAFSA turnout, one of the best
015ever. We have high school coffee with the counselors where they get to know the families, ask questions, Q&A. Very receptive, our families are. We're fortunate for that. Many college field trips. Two at UConn, who we work well with. as we articulate with some of their coursework, one in the fall, one in the spring. We do our team meetings as well as biweekly department chair meetings where they give us information of things that might help us not only maintain the students that we have, as we are fortunate enough to have our own farm system, our own middle to high school, keeping our eighth grade and seeing what works best as we go into the next part, which is recruitment. We're fortunate to be able to work with not only Waterbury, but we are 70-30 split. I
016don't know if everyone's aware of that. So 30% of our students come from other areas and other towns, and we work very well with them. Our recruitment is to find out and explore opportunities to draw students that feel that this is the place for them. We do that. Dr. Sassaitis does a wonderful job. She meets with... all the other out-of-town groups that we work with. We also have out-of-towners that come in that are outside of that. We are fortunate enough this year, it was our first year, we did an extended waiting list so we can kind of gauge how many students truly want to come here. And I think we had about 150 additional this year after the closing just to give us an idea. We do meet with our especially grade five and grade
017eight sister schools, our three there's just to offer them the opportunities and see what it is that they might like. We work well. WFSB has been wonderful with us not only promoting our shows and our performances which we know a lot of the human capital and board of ed members come but we had an excellent outcome for a great day. Connecticut promotional interview that was not just Dr. Sassaitis but our students. We try to make things as student-led as we can. Thank you, Mr. Noll. So as you know, with spring concluding and the start to summer, we have a lot of preliminary data coming in, nothing official and ready for release, but we have some expected outcomes. We expect 100% of our grade 8 students to be promoted to grade 9, 100% of our grade
01812 students to graduate, expected improved grade 8 NGSS scores, math SAT scores. Smarter balance, grades six through eight in ELA, improved PE fitness, expected exits on the lost links for some of our middle school students, expected growth in middle school on lost links. Our middle school attendance right now is 9.5% and high school 13.3. So something we definitely focus and discuss all year long with our parent liaison, with our community members, with our school governance team. We've also seen an increase in our enrollment for some of the higher level courses that we're offering, such as the UConn, the AP, and the post-university courses. So as you see in 23-24, we went from 110 to 24-25, 121. For AP, 120 to 131. And for the post dual enrollment courses, 19 to 51. So continuing to grow
019our opportunities and access for students so they have a rigorous academic and artistic experience here. We're fortunate to have community partnerships with the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra, with Shakespeareans, Wellmore, Noctote Valley Community College Dance Department, the Palace Theater, our neighbor. the City Health Department for vaping prevention. They've come to us a few times to speak with our grade eight students and all of our high school students in UConn. We're excited to have over 50 board-approved field trips this year, so thank you, everyone, for collaborating with us on that. Most recently, we took our grade 8 students to New York City last week. It goes in line with grade 8 students across the state going to Washington, D.C., and it was our first out-of-state trip since COVID. So I attended the trip with 42 fantastic students. I
020was so proud of them. They had a wonderful time. They saw Hamilton. They saw the Statue of Liberty. Many things that even adults don't get to see. So we were thrilled to experience that together. And we hope to continue that with our grade 8 students and potentially offer some more for our high school students. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to our parent liaison for her year in review. Thank you, Dr. Sassaitis, and good evening to everyone. I just want to thank you, Dr. Sassaitis and the administrators here for your leadership. It's really exciting to work here and to incorporate the arts and academics. So everything we do here, we have to incorporate the arts. So we do a STEAM night to incorporate the arts. We do art of money, not just financial literacy.
021Our governance council, the birth of our first inaugural. Hall of Fame, thank you. Was born out of the Cochiola family, just bringing ideas, and thank you so much for, again, your leadership. We like to promote events. We're promoting the Camp Justice. As a matter of fact, I found out today there is a wait list now because we are just promoting, promoting for our students to have a week with the state attorney and just learn all about the criminal justice system, all of the positives. So I'm also thankful for the donations that we receive from Cherry Valley, Urban Air, Texas Roadhouse. We're able to every month honor our students that are students of the month and just encourage them to continue their good work. And it's really amazing here to be able to collaborate with staff
022and engage in activities. Just something as simple as working with the color guard and having a math teacher come by and say, I want to know how many angles you worked on to spin that flag. So it's just unbelievable. And I have an honored guest here this evening, Joe Adamavicia. He is the gentleman who does our poetry series. He is a poet, an author, an educator, a business owner, a CNC machinist, and somehow he has time to write books. So what I'm excited about most about Joe is that in my role, I always have to lean on Doc to figure out how are we going to incorporate our school improvement program. And I also have Joe to lean on, Mr. Adamavicia, because he wrote a book specifically for us. So I told him what I
023needed. I said, we need to address chronic absenteeism. So Joe tells me, I have a book. We're going to do it. We're going to promote. and help our students stay in school and why. So I just want to thank you for all the books that you write and how you help our families. Thank you so much. Thank you, Issa. Issa is also the proud mom of Julian, who said the Pledge of Allegiance, and Jasmine Alves back here. So we're very happy to have the Alves family with us as partners. Our National Honor Societies are listed over there. We actually have a Tri-M Music Induction Honor Society after that we'll be attending. That's why a lot of our dancers rushed out so they can go over there. This is one of our favorite slides. It's where
024all of our students are attending college this coming fall. So we're so proud of them. And the work that our college and career readiness counselor has done with them, her name is Cheryl Katz, and she has extensively met with our students, with our families. She's one of the main reasons that so many students know about their opportunities. So thank you to our director of school counseling, Ms. Toussaint, and to Cheryl Katz for all of her work with our students. We're certainly seeing the positive results of that. And we're going to end with our favorite slide, and it's just all of the fantastic posters that we've put out. Everything we do here is student-led. Even the dance that you saw was choreographed by our students. So nothing is done without our students leading the charge. They've
025created these posters. I know you've attended so many of the shows that you see up there, so thank you to the board for all of your support and always making it important to come and support WAMS. Are there any questions? Commissioner O'Brien. There was a wonderful presentation and the dancers are awesome. My basic question is, because this was our first year for the Yonder Pouches, how did it transition? How did it go from year to now? So I shared with Dr. Schwartz a quick story of what happened when we were in New York City. And I was going around to all of the tables as they were eating dinner, and I noticed a stack of cell phones on one of the tables. So I said, hey, guys, I want everybody to text their house. Let
026them know that we're at dinner. You're safe. Everything's good. One of the students looked at me, and she said, no, no, no, we can't right now. And I looked at the table, and all the phones were stacked up. And she said, oh, we've unplugged. So I said, what do you mean? What are you talking? There's no yonder pouches on the trip. They said, no, no, no, we want to enjoy our conversation with each other, and all the phones are right there. So I took a photo of it, and I sent it to Dr. Schwartz, and I said, wow, look at the impact of the yonder pouches. So we're certainly seeing that. Any other questions? Commissioner Jackson. So my daughter did attend the trip to New York, and it was fantastic. She had a great time.
027I was wondering in the future, I was kind of disappointed to see how many children's families could not afford the trip, even though I felt like it was reasonably priced, but that all depends on your income. In the future, if there would be opportunities for other parents to sponsor children who couldn't go, that was possible. Yeah, absolutely, and we certainly did have a lot of generosity from members of the community, and because it was our first year back, it is something that is going to be important for us to continue to work on, give students fundraising opportunities to make it accessible for more. We did have 42 students go, which was a great number, but of course we're always looking for more. Thank you. I'm glad she had fun. I had fun too. Any other
028questions? I have one. Who are your sister feeder schools and how many are there? So our Rotella and Maloney, they do have a preference when they apply through the lottery. But all of our grade five students are our sister feeder schools. We have a magnet school specialist and she really gets out there to North End, to Westside, to Wallace. We send presentations. We send flyers. We do a really nice job with the recruitment. This year we had over 1,000 applications. So it's something that we're continuing to work on, get the word out about our fabulous school. WFSB, like Mr. Null said, was a wonderful partner to us this year, and we were able to have a commercial air, and we were able to have two segments on there, one to promote Harry Potter and one
029to promote our late applications. So continuing to still let families know that they can start. apply because there's a lot of movement that happens over the summer with students who come or transfer out and we keep inviting as those students leave. Thank you. Dr. Schwartz? I just want to thank you and congratulations to our future Harvard student. I know you'll do great things, and don't forget where you came from. That's one thing. And the second thing, Dr. Sosaitis, do you have any staff that are here as well in the audience? And if so, can they just please stand and be recognized? Yes, please do. We have our department chairs with us, and we have several staff members. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Is there any public speakers? Tonight we have our Kennedy High
030School student reps. Introduce yourselves. Hi, my name is Jaden Acevedo. I am the junior representative for Kennedy. Hello, my name is Vidya Sagandorf. I'm the senior representative. Thank you. Great to have you. Item number one. Committee on Finance request approval to participate in the healthy food certification program per CGS 10 slash 215 F Miss Francis Board of Education Commissioners Board of Education student representative and interim superintendent dr. Schwartz I'm here this evening to ask for two votes for the healthy food certification. This is actually for next school year, 25-26, and this will be the 19th year that we are participating in this healthy food certification. And the first vote is to just participate, meaning only sell the healthier snacks that are on the Connecticut food and beverage snack list. And the second vote is for
031the exemptions if it's at an event, which would allow other items to be sold. Are there any questions? Linda, did you just do one and two? I did, I'm sorry. Okay. No, that's fine. I have a tendency of skipping over, so thank you. There is one thing that we would like to say to the board. And everyone out there that Mrs. Francis will be retiring at the end of the school year. So we want to wish you well. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for all your support over the years. Good luck, Linda. Thank you. Item number three, Committee on Finance. Request approval of a professional service agreement, RFP 8429, with David Lieber. consultant LLC for Cisco Network Engineering Service mr. Suda good evening mayor Juanita I'm sorry excuse me
032president Hernandez commissioners student representatives dr. Schwartz the computer technology center respectfully request your approval of the above reference contract for Cisco Network Engineering Services between the city of Waterbury and Dave Lieber consulting for $250,000 over five years This contract was initiated under RFP, but we had several bidders in the further project, with Dave Lieber Consulting being the most qualified and responsible bidder. The professional service agreement between the City of Waterbury and Dave Lieber Consulting, effective upon the Mayor's signature, outlines the provisions of the Cisco Network of Engineering Services for the Waterbury Public Schools. Wide Area Network and the Local Area Network over a five-year term commencing on July 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2030. This contract with a total compensation not exceeding $250,000 annually engages the contractor to deliver specialized technical support including planning, designing,
033implementing network connectivity, hardware software support, troubleshooting, and staff training as detailed in the Attachment A. This agreement ensures compliance with federal, state, and local regulations with the contractor maintaining necessary licenses, insurance, and adherence to professional standards. Engaging Dave Lieber Consulting offers a significant advantage over hiring a full-time employee. The contract's fixed cost of $50,000 per year provides budget predictability, contrasting with a full-time employee's potential higher and ongoing expenses. Additionally, the flexibility of a consultant allows the city to scale up services as needed, avoiding costs during low-demand periods, and eliminates expenses related to employer turnover. Are there any questions? Thank you, Mrs. Zuda. Thank you, President Hernandez. Number four, request approval to apply for the CT State Department of Education State Afterschool Grant Program for K-12. Jan Frenes. Good evening, Mayor Panerowski, President Hernandez, Commissioners, student
034representatives, and Interim Superintendent Dr. Schwartz. The Grants Department respectfully requests approval to apply for the Connecticut State Department of Education Afterschool Grant Program for K-12. Louise Brown will submit two to three applications to continue programs at Hopeville and North End Middle School. New program applications will include Kingsbury and Wilson schools. Are there any questions? Thank you, Chair. Item number five, request approval of a professional service agreement, RFP 8454. Capital Region Education Council Resource Group for School Psychology Services for Students. Ms. Johns. Good evening, Mayor Paranuski, President Hernandez, commissioners, student representatives, and Interim Superintendent Dr. Swartz. The Special Education Department. Request the approval of professional service agreement RFP number 8454 between the City of Wooderberry Public Schools and Capital Region Educational Council Resource Group. The purpose of the agreement is to provide psychology services for Wooderberry
035Public School District children between the ages of 3 and 22. The agreement shall commence on July 1st, 2025 and will terminate on June 30th, 2028. The agreement is at a cost of $2,100,000 for a three-year term. The professional services agreement will be paid through general funds. Are there any questions? No questions. Number six. Ms. Johns? Okay, the Special Education Department requests the approval of the Professional Services Agreement, RFP number 8436, between the City of Waterbury Public Schools and the Nurse Network, LLC. The purpose of the agreement is to provide certified nursing assistants, CNAs, to perform services related to daily living skills for students with special needs. The agreement shall commence on July 1, 2025, and will terminate on June 30, 2028. The agreement is at a cost of $2,216,025 for a three-year term. The professional
036services agreement will be paid through IDEA 611 funds. Are there any questions? Number seven, Ms. Johns. the special education department requests the approval of amendment number two to the agreement between the city of woodbury public schools and the american school for the deaf which is an out of district special education placement this amendment number two to the agreement shall add compensation in the amount of two hundred seven thousand dollars for the remainder of the two-year option period which concludes this june 30th 2025 The current term of the contract will not be changed. The purpose of this agreement is to continue to provide services for the additional students that were placed mid-year at the American School for the Deaf and will be paid through general funds. Are there any questions? Item number nine, Ms. Johns. The
037State Department of Education is accepting grant proposals to start or continue grant-funded primary mental health programs at district schools. Waterbury proposes to continue its programs at Duggan and Wendell Cross elementary schools, where the principals and teachers and parents report that the program is very helpful to students. The program is designed to assist students from grades K-3 with social and emotional problems that impact student learning. There is a required cash match toward the total budget as well as to provide in-kind contributions of district staff for this project. Each year of the two-year grant, the grant request is for $20,000, which is the maximum, and the local match for each program year will be approximately $6,000. Louise Brown and the Grants Department respectfully request the permission from the board to apply for this grant on behalf of
038Waterbury Public Schools. The grant application is due June 30th of 2025. Are there any questions? Commissioner Lopez. I'm sorry, is this a pilot program or something that we've always had? It's something we've had in the city for quite some time at these two schools specifically. So this is something that has been very beneficial to students at these two buildings. Would we ever expand at some point to other schools? We'd love to be able to expand. If they were able to obviously provide additional funds, we'd love to be able to expand the program. Thank you. Commissioner Jantz. Thank you. You said that there was a match of $6,000. That's the cash match part of it? Correct. Okay. What's the in-kind contribution part? What is that? I'm sorry. So part of that is us providing resources within
039district to be able to support the students. Thank you so much. Commissioner Arlen. Latoya Arlen, I saw you with a question. Item number eight was removed, but I just assume everybody had it on there, so mention it. So I apologize for that. Number 10, Ms. Johns. Okay. The Pupil Services Department requests the approval of memorandum of understanding between the City of Waterbury Public Schools and Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut, Inc. The purpose of the agreement is to provide increased awareness and knowledge around behavioral health. to enhance the ability to access and utilize community-based behavioral health supports, and to implement and sustain a comprehensive school mental health model during the next two academic years within Waterbury Public Schools. As a connect for school, each Waterbury Public School will participate in leveled tasks to earn
040incentives for their school. There are exhibits that the commissioners can look at which were attached in board backup. The term of the MOU starts July 1st, 2025 and concludes on September 29th, 2027. This is a no-cost agreement between the City of Waterbury and Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut, Inc. Are there any questions? Thank you, Ms. Johns. Thank you. Item number 11, Overview Summer Learning Experiences. Dr. Johnson. and Nyree Toussaint. All right, good evening. Mayor Paranuski, good evening. President Hernandez, good evening. Board Commissioners, student representatives, and of course, Interim Superintendent Dr. Schwartz. I'm here with the Director of College and Career Readiness to discuss our programming for the upcoming summer. I'll begin with our Extended Academic Support Program, also known as our Elementary Summer School. Just as a reminder to the board, we are
041mandated by the State Department to provide summer learning experiences for all of our students who are deficient in literacy. For us here in Waterbury, what that means is that kids are eligible for summer school based on their end-of-the-year M-Class scores, and that's how they find themselves in the program. You'll see that we're in our, traditionally we're in our 5K8 sites, and you'll see the feeder schools that go into our sites. All programs are running from July 7th to the 31st, from 830 to 1230, Monday through Thursday. The exception will be the Wendell Cross site that houses our autism programs for Bucks Hill and Generali. They are running an extra hour until 1.30 p.m. every afternoon, and they are also running an extra day, Monday through Friday. If there weren't any questions for elementary, we'll move
042forward with... Okay, good evening. Our special education program's extended school year. We will have five specialized programs running July 7th through the 31st, Monday through Thursday at North End Middle School. The two autism programs at North End and Willoughby, July 7th through the 31st, Monday through Friday, though, held at North End and Willoughby Autism Classrooms. The pre-K ESY program will be July 7th through the 31st. There will be an AM session where those students will receive breakfast. A PM session, those students will receive lunch. 8 to 11.45 held at the Bucks Hill Annex. So our magnet schools have programs as well. Here at WAMS, we have the Encore program that's set up for all of their students. You'll notice that their program starts very early in the summer and ends very early as well, but
043they run every day, Monday through Friday. Over at Rotella and Maloney, they actually mirror the same program as the rest of the elementary schools, where the kids get selected based on their end-of-the-year scores on MCLAS. And they also reflect the other programs and they run from July 7th to the 31st from 8 to 1230 at Rotella, but only from 830 to 1130 at Maloney. Okay, in our secondary programs, we have middle school credit recovery taking place. All the programs will be taking place July 7th through the 31st, Monday through Thursday. The middle school program will be held at Wallace Middle School. High school credit recovery will be Monday through Friday until August 1st, though, and that will be held at Waterbury Arts Magnet School. Early college high is having a week-long program at Post University,
044and Wallace Middle School will have a robotics program. First session for a week will be grades four and five. The second session will be for grades six through eight, Monday through Thursday at Wallace Middle School. Any questions about any of our programs? Commissioner O'Brien. It's nice to see that we can still continue summer school programs. On the ones that say no busing, how are the kids getting there? Walking or being transported by their parents, ma'am. Okay. Commissioner Arlen. So just to piggyback off of Commissioner O'Brien, so if the children need those services but the parents can't get them there and there's no busing, how would that work? In particular for the magnet schools? So, again, they've never offered busing from my understanding, and so all of the parents are well aware that they run their
045programs independently and that the transportation is just not available. and just sorry just to clarify too I believe isn't there busing for Waterbury students that live in Waterbury for the Maloney and Rotella schools I believe that's what we have on there so we'll just double check that and I'll get back to you I'm pretty sure that we still get it Nick is that correct so yes so Malone so are if it's a Waterbury student that needs the Maloney-Rotella program because of the deficiency in reading, the Waterbury student gets the busing. If it's a student outside of Waterbury, they would have to bring their child in for their busing or possibly have the opportunity to go to a program in their hometown. There's actually some legislation that allows them to do that. But if it's a
046Waterbury student, they do get their busing, just to be clear. Commissioner O'Brien. Does that include the encore for WAMS? No, because that's not a mandatory program. It's based on how much really budget is in the WAMS budget. And when they make the decision of what they're going to do in the summer, they have to calculate how much it would be cost. And don't forget, WAMS would have the entire district to run buses from. And so they probably, my assumption would be because they don't usually offer it because it's an enrichment program. that the cost of running an enrichment program with the busing is too high for the cost of it. And Nick's nodding because he's run it before. It's very expensive. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Vanstone, did you have your hand up? Okay. Item number
04712, Mr. Albini requests approval to accept the following roof projects as complete. Good evening, Mayor Prunerowski, President Hernandez, Board of Education Commissioners, Kennedy High School, Board of... Education Student Representatives and Interim Superintendent Dr. Schwartz. Item number 12 is acceptance of the three roof projects that we undertook last summer, Sprague, Tinker, and Kennedy. They are completed and we are asking for Board of Ed to accept them. There is some good news here. We had allocated $8,866,871 and once it went out to bid it came back and we completed all three roofs for $4,110,746. So there was a savings of $4,750,000. So that was three very good projects that we had some good competition in the quotes. So our portion of that $4 million plus, $4.7 million, we'll go back into our unallocated funds. Are there any
048questions? That's great savings, Nick. Number 13, Mr. Albini. So as we all know, we have our Roberto Clemente school, which is a successful school, but we're running out of room. We can't fit very many more. We have a couple more years that we can be. Two years we can fit. Three years we're going to be very creative. But it wouldn't be the program that we want to deliver as Whataberry Public Schools. So we've undertaken a design. I think you all have the packet of our education specs that we are submitting to the state. It will be successful. If approved, we will be submitting those by the end of June. It's required. It's a priority grant, so you can't apply any month. It has to be completed by June. But it does include adding grades, a
049building for grades 7 and 8. certainly upgrades, there will be air conditioning in not only the new portion, which will house this grade seven and eight, but we'll have air conditioning in the pre-K six building, which is the present building that we have. We're putting new roofs on, we're putting sprinkler systems in. We will have a generator in there as well. So that if we ever lose power, it would be sufficient to run the entire school. There'll be some parking lot renovations, some landscaping. Certainly a lot of two elevators plus one lift. So we will make this building completely ADA compliant. So it's a good project. We still have much work to do on design. We wanted to bring that to you today in advance of bringing it to the Board of Aldermen on Monday
050and then certainly two meetings in the month of June. Are there any questions? Commissioner O'Brien. Thank you, Madam President. Under the community uses, I noticed that you talk about a health and wellness services within the school. Will this coincide with what Board of Health or Community Health Center is doing with A's Links program? Or separate? No, that's separate. Okay. That's probably referring to the nurses suite, which we're moving and making it ADA compliant. But we are doing some other health things in there that will not be part of Aisling's program. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions? Number 14, Mr. Albini. There is a grant. Thank you. There is a grant out. safety measures in buildings. It's a $500,000 grant. It does require a 25% match. We are able to match up to $125,000.
051We still have some safety measures to undertake in our buildings specifically. If you remember one of the items last year, When we ran our drill up in North End and Willoughby, one of the things that came out of it was that we can't communicate very well with our emergency services. Once you're in that building, you can't communicate very well with the police department, the fire department, EMS, anything like that. So this would be what they call the... Bi-directional amplifier, it's a repeater system, so that's one of the big ticket items. That alone is close to $300,000, so we'll be able to upgrade that. Presently, Enlightenment doesn't have an intercom system. It's in desperate need of that. Anytime there's an emergency... They have to use their radios. They have to use phones. Not very quick, not
052very fast, not very efficient. So that would be installed. And as well, we still have two more schools that don't have the man-trapped doors, the second level of doors entering a building, one locking behind them and one forward, and that's Driggs and Wilson. So we'll be putting that in there. So that's part of this grant. So I'm here asking for permission. Foot to apply for this grant. It's it's by the USD oj And I think it is due. I believe the first round next next week is Anyone against the district applying for this grant? Okay, so we have a consensus Item number 15. Are you done? I'll be back Monthly expenditure report mrs. Bello I probably said that wrong. Thank you president Hernandez mayor Pernorowski Board of Ed commissioners student representatives dr. Schwartz This is
053the April monthly expenditure report. It's the 10 month into the fiscal year I will tell you that We will not be using any of the contingencies that you find on the bottom of the third page. So those funds Will remain and be used to offset the fiscal year 26 budget Overall, as I'm working right now towards the end of May's report, I can tell you that we will surplus in the general fund. I don't know the exact number yet, but a couple of line items that we've projected, especially for special ed purchase services. Some funds came in a little bit, some bills came in a little bit lower. So our projection was a little high, so we're saving there. So we're looking to surplus, not have a deficit, but it's also due to cost containment.
054We have gone through over the last few months controlling overtime, trying to control some of the extra classes, looking deeper into things. So I want to thank... all my colleagues there in central office and Dr. Schwartz for working and all the schools that have complied and that helps this budget and it helps us for the next fiscal year. So any questions on the monthly report? So the next item is the fiscal year 26 budget mitigation plan. I don't know if Dr. Schwartz wants to begin saying anything or do you want me to? No, I just want to thank Doreen and her team and especially those in the leadership that have really worked hard over the last few months trying to figure out what's happening in Hartford and how much money was coming in and what
055the numbers look like this year so that we could put together a budget that, number one, made sure that we kept teachers with our students. made sure we kept our staff with our students as best as possible but also at the same time find as many vacancies and use that to be able to trim to get to a place where quite frankly we you know we had a few million dollars to get to to get this budget down to to zero there's still some information coming out um you know exactly how that's going to come out in terms of the special ed grants and different things coming out of hartford could give us some some more room to be able to do some of the programs that we want for next year but right now
056i feel very confident with the work that durian has done to get this down to a zero and then continues to provide a high quality education for our students and so i just wanted to publicly thank her for that and then let her walk you through the numbers. I'd like to also thank the Board of Ed Finance Committee. We've met three times, starting from the beginning with the proposed budget, what that was going to look like and where we were short with the general fund. When we met the second time, we discussed the general fund along with the alliance grant. and where the shortfall was there. And we met the third time. We're showing the mitigation plans that would affect both the general fund and the alliance grant, and kind of where we are with
057the operating budget itself and how we're showing the mitigation plan for that, because that will be the budget that you will be voting on on the 18th. But we can never just talk about the operating budget without talking about the Alliance grant, because as you know, the increase to the ECS grant goes to Alliance, which means our general fund budget pretty much remains the same because the city's ECS funding that they receive has remained flat. So they give us the minimum budget requirement. But the increase goes to Alliance so we can never talk about one without the other but when you do vote on the budget It's really only the operating budget on the 18th. So You received Kiri had sent three Pieces of information. So the first one was the Finance Committee meeting we
058had on May 27th So that's the budget mitigation plan and it's showing that the general fund We still had a $2,186,247 budget gap. The Alliance grant... Preliminary showed that we had a $1,791,408 budget gap. So that totaled to $3,977,655. From the time we did the proposed budget book, we realized that we needed to increase some of the utility lines for electricity and natural gas by $450,000 and transportation line by $500,000. That meant that we had $4,927,655. of a budget gap. So what we did is we combined the two funding sources and we went through budget reduction items that included both funding sources. So if you have your packets in front of you, you'll see the green was highlighted of all positions that we are going to eliminate or cut for fiscal year 26, but they're
059all vacant. The most important thing was not having a full-time employee not have a position and they have to lay somebody off. That was not the intention ever of us, I'm sure, of the board, and definitely of the mayor's office. And I just want to say, you know, just to jump in, Doreen, that we kind of skipped over it a little bit is don't forget that we're also coming off the SRARP. And the funding, which is really the headache of there were so many awesome things that we were able to do through SRARP, additional counselors, additional programming for students. And so it really was a juggernaut of a puzzle to make sure that we could continue as many services as possible, looking at that $5 million gap, because some of it was in ESSER. And
060so now it had to squeeze back into Alliance, into our... operating budget, which is before you today. So it wasn't, it created an additional, I would say, headache or two for Doreen and her staff to be able to figure out how to do this. I just wanted to bring that context back up too, just to remind everyone, because that was a lot of money. Yeah, again, so you'll see the positions that are there. We will be freezing some positions, about a total of 13 for some non-certified positions. But I also want to remind you that we have a built-in attrition number for certified and non-certified already built into the budget. So we were able to still do another 13, but we were going to keep an eye on that and on our attrition number throughout
061the next fiscal year. There's other line items that had to do with salaries, but it's not so much. Some of these were stipends. Some of these are repurposing, like the Roberto Clemente grade five. We needed two more positions. Instead of adding that to the budget, it's going to be a cut, and we're going to repurpose the position. College and career coordinators, there's two vacancies, and we're going to repurpose those positions. part-time IT interns we had ten we're down to seven these are not full-time positions we feel that those can be eliminated and they're for only part-time we had a special assignment administrator and saw we had One position remaining, we used to have maybe two or three in the budget, and it was in the proposed budget, but now we are going to eliminate that
062position altogether. That's at $133,221. So then you're going to get to other line items, non-salary. And some of these we're keeping, they're just being moved to other funding sources. So for early college high busing, we're going to move that to Title IV instead of the general fund covering it, Title IV does pay for a lot of other things for early college high. The post-university dual enrollment courses, elimination of 29,000, going to Title I. The half-day busing on Wednesdays for Commissioner's Network is to move to a Commissioner's Network line. We talked about this in Finance Committee. We were told in the last week or so that we were losing commissioner network funding for Willoughby High School for the fifth year. and that we may not be able to have funding for only two years for possibly
063if they're awarded for Kennedy and Crosby. We have since found out last night that we will have year five for Willoughby High School for Commissioner's Network. And it looks like if awarded, Kennedy and Crosby will have Commissioner's Network for three years as opposed to the two. So that's really huge for us. having a school like will be come off and not when we weren't prepared for that they get a lot of services they have a lot of extra support staff so that would have been detrimental I'm trying to coordinate how we were gonna help and maintain some of those services so that was good news and then you'll see we have Other line items where we were cutting, there was a correction for the Harper Avenue building tax. That was a mistake that was made
064when we did the proposed budget. We've corrected that. The propane for the regular ed busing. We just got the bid two weeks ago, so it came in. The per gallon was less, so we saved $77,500. We're cutting some academic supplies for Alliance, but there's still funds in the line item remaining. Also for instructional supplies, we're cutting $200,000 from the general fund, but the schools will still be getting an adequate amount of funding. Half-day busing for special education, we're going to cut by 225. And special ed busing, trying to use more of the all-star busing as opposed to ambassador, and we'll cut that by 250,000. Ambassador does more one-to-one, where we feel that some students probably can ride on the all-star busing. So we're going to be working with the special ed department to make sure
065that we can attain these goals. We also can save busing overall for the district by $305,737 by going from 181 days to 180 days. So that's a savings of over $300,000 for just one day of busing. For one year only, we are looking to absorb more salaries out of the alliance into the magnet grants. That would be for WAMS, Rotella, and Maloney. And we can do this possibly for only one year. It's not something we really wanted to do, but it is going to help us to maintain and balance out the budget. So we were at a gap of $4,927,000. With all these budget reductions, we've cut $4,367,393, and we still had a gap of $560,262. Page that was provided to you that we just shared with the Finance Committee prior to this meeting is
066How we are going to eliminate that budget gap of five hundred and sixty thousand so we made adjustments We just learned from the governor's new adopted budget that we are going to receive another three hundred and two thousand two twenty one into the ECS Alliance grant So the alliance grant went from an increase of $10,455,000 to $10,757,000. So that was able to be reduced off to the $560,000. Our chief academic officer has gone out for new curriculum that is needed for K-5 math and middle. The quote had come in, or the RFP, and the cost was going to be a lot higher. Jan worked very hard with them, and she's able to save $387,000 in year one of that contract. So for next year, she was able to cut that back, so that's another amount
067coming off of the 560. We also have a savings from a vacant SEL counselor that is being able to be funded through another grant, so that salary and benefits of $121,000. is able to be a savings coming off. With that, and actually having the difference of the increase in the alliance, we're able to adjust the amount we wanted to take from the magnets. So we're giving the magnets back a $250,000 from that $800,000 I talked about on the previous page. So now that will only be $550,000 that we're going to take from the magnets. So now this balances the budget. And this balances the budget between general fund operating and with the alliance. So the third page is strictly the operating budget plan. This is the plan that you really will be voting on on
068the 18th. This is just the general fund. So up top, I just want to kind of quickly remind everyone what the general fund gross budget proposal was. It was $235.1 million. Of that 235.1 million, 60.4 million of that is operating costs that go to the alliance grant. So that's a reduction because that moves to the alliance grant. We show it every year because if we did not have the alliance grant, we need that 60.5 million to be back into this operating budget. So we do include it to take it out so we understand the exact amount that we would need. We also have the increase of the $10,455,000 from the governor's proposed budget back when we did this budget. The portion of that whole, well, actually the entire increase is going to offset this budget,
069and that's funds that will be moved to the alliance grant. So we'll be moving other salary positions of another $10.4 million to the alliance grant. So the $60 million and the $10 million makes up. over $70 million, almost $71 million that has to move to the alliance grant of operating. The next items total $3,625,000, which is what I spoke about when I talked about the money that is offsetting the budget that we didn't use in the current fiscal year, so we're able to use that for the... next fiscal year. So now all those reductions brings us to the Board of Ed budget transmittal request back when we did this in February of $160,561,246. The city's approved budget for the Department of Education, which is the minimum budget requirement, is the $158,375 that left us with
070the general fund budget of a difference of $2,186,000 that we had to mitigate. And as I had said earlier, we made some adjustments prior. So $450 needed for utilities, $500 for transportation. But we also knew that we were able to add in another $302 million from the governor's approved budget for that increase in ECS. $302,000. I'm sorry, what did I say? $302 million. Sorry. You're getting me excited. So new budget gap of $2,834,000. And as I had talked about on the previous page, these are the budget reductions that were on that page that are strictly now just from the operating budget. minus the last line because of savings of what we made on the alliance side, we're able to move $386,000 of the general fund to alliance. This now balances the general fund budget to
071zero. So does anybody have any questions on all this information? And I know you received a proposed budget book. I know you received the alliance. And then you received these three documents. I know it's a lot of information. So, you know, we're here to answer any questions you may have. Commissioner Van Stone. I've been saving it up for this. Doreen, thank you. I know in the committee meetings we saw the really hard work. Great to see the curriculum piece for math. And I'm always told we can't really go into negotiations with these contracts. Well, Mrs. Frennis proved that we can and saved us a lot of money, so thank you. I do have concerns, and I brought them up in the committee meetings. And some of them... Well, let me say this first because we
072talked about it tonight a little bit. The amount of this budget that is fixed costs between salaries, insurance, and that sort of thing, the bus contracts, it takes up 80-plus percent. We're throwing around a number four. So there's not a lot to do in this budget other than to play checkers, which you did. But there are some things that I've mentioned, and I want the Finance Committee to... start looking at now for next year's budget because right now would be way too late on a few items. We have two rental properties that we use in our programs and I really would like to take a look. One as a contractor goes to 2027 and I would like us to start looking for a place to put the program. and maybe in 2027 we can get
073out of that one rental agreement. The one for our, I don't know if we call it a maintenance facility or whatever we want to call the garage where we have all our trucks, et cetera, that's another one that's about $150,000 a year. What really bothers me on that, well, $150,000 does too, is the fact that we actually have a line item, and it's almost 50% of the owners of the buildings. real estate tax that we budget and give to this person. I just, I was knocked over when I saw that. So we definitely have to look at that contract, and it's a year-to-year contract, year-over-year. So if we're able to find somewhere, I don't want to go into my other thoughts on this because I want the finance committee as a group to go through
074all this, but whether we look at other properties that are within our control, city properties, that we can possibly move around and utilize and get rid of these contracts for real estate, that would be wonderful. I also want us to look again at the $250,000 that we do to the Palace Theater. The contract for that was done, I believe, in 2005, if I remember correctly, for that same $250,000. And, you know, that exceeds this school. That's how far back. And I know the history of it. I don't want to even go into details because it's 20 years ago. But the problem is the Board of Education is giving the palace $250,000 a year. And if it's for the 29 dates or what have you that's in the contract for utilization, that's a pretty good rental
075fee per occasion. So I'd really like us to take a look at that more deeply in the finance committee. And the other one is we really need to take a look at the money we send each year to Waterbury Promise. Now, it's a great program. However, it's a nonprofit. It is not us. That is a nonprofit. They should be out on the streets getting donations, which I know they do to some degree. But we give that nonprofit out of our operating budget a half a million dollars a year, and we have been now for three years. In addition, we moved $250,000 additional in this past year. So we gave a nonprofit $750,000 out of our operating budget. And I just don't. They need to step up. If we were doing it three years ago, you
076know, to kick off the project and get it moving, and they do, like I said, do wonderful things. However, if... We could have a line going around this building of other nonprofits that would love to take $500,000 out of our operating budget, believe me. But we don't do that. And then on the other side of the coin is, and I looked at this a few years ago, and I mentioned about the Matatuck, and it's as little as $12,500. And I went for a tour of the Matatuck. You know, with the people that work there. And for what they're doing for our school kids, for $12,500, it makes it even more hard to understand giving other things $500,000 or $250,000. Because the Matatucks do an amazing, amazing job with after-school programs for our students. And it's
077with $12,000. You know, I'd rather give them more than what we're dishing out to these others. But, you know, we really need to start now. We can't wait until, what was our first date we met? March? April? Whatever it was. It's almost too late for us to do anything about the budget. We need to start as a finance committee and report back to this full board. We have to start now. And even that is difficult. when you're talking real estate to find a new home for places. But we need to do it now. We can't wait to March of 2026 to say, hey, do we really want to keep that real estate? Well, it's too late. It's too late. We never could find a new home. We have to start now. And that's our job.
078And we need to do that. So, you know, I definitely voted yes to move this to the full board. I still haven't decided how I'm going to vote that night because I want to bring out these same items again and let it be known that there's things in this budget that we've had put on us, literally, Palace being one of them, that I think need to get out of our budget because this was probably the biggest struggle you had to get to that zero since I've been on this board. And that's even with an increase in Alliance. Thankfully it was there because we moved stuff over. So we've really got to start doing our work now in order to see what we can do in the 26-27 budget. So good job, though. Thank you very
079much. Thank you, Madam President. Are there any more questions? Commissioner O'Brien. That's not a question, but I look at my own budget and I go. I congratulate you and your team because numbers are really hard, mostly in today's day and age. And I want to just say thank you as a board member. Thank you very much. And I do want to thank members of my staff in the school business office. They really step up. They put in the hours. And, again, just collaborating with our central office team and everyone. More than just me in my office So I I want to thank everybody any other questions, and I just want to thank to your point Commissioner being stone. I think it was a good one that we failed to mention earlier is that you know
080we do have to thank the delegation That fought so hard for us to get the Alliance increase this year because it was supposed to be two more years Five and five and they put it into this year all ten up front because it would have been a much, much more difficult reality for this district. So it's important for us to call out those that also are local but fight for us for Waterbury and Hartford. And so we really do appreciate that. Thank you. Committee on Building and School, Mr. Albini. Good evening once again. Commissioners, with the approval of the Committee on School Facilities and Grounds, the Superintendent of Schools recommends approval of the use of school facilities and no charge for the following 20 school organizations and or city departments as listed. Are there any
081questions? Mr. Albini. With the approval of the Committee on School Facilities and Grounds, the Superintendent of Schools recommends approval of the use of school facilities by groups and organizations. by seven groups and organizations subject to fees and insurance as required and as listed. Are there any questions? Thank you, Mr. Albini. Thank you. Interim Superintendent update. Dr. Schwartz. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. President Hernandez, Board of Ed Commissioners, and of stupid representatives who have had a very long day. So I'll make this brief for you as best as possible. Unfortunately for you, May is our longest report because there's so much going on. But I'll do the best I can for you. the interim superintendent report we're gonna start off with just congratulating our ed rising students who went to the professional development day at Sacred
082Heart University on May 20th congratulations to Haley Johnson who is now a national cabinet member for Ed Rising for the nation and for Coralie Rodriguez and Rosalyn McLaughlin who are now serving on our Connecticut State cabinet members and I believe we've had if I recall correctly Dr. Boatwright, Nyree Toussaint and Pete Flamme over there to attend that event with our students. Congratulations to them. Our Seal of Biliteracy Award ceremony was held, and May it will be was a great event, and I'm happy to say that 12 different languages were up from eight from last year. So we had 12 students earn the Seal of Biliteracy in 12 different languages. You could see those in front of you. And I'm really happy and pleased. to let you know that we had 256 seniors who were awarded
083the Seal of Biliteracy up from 155 last year. 17 of our students, just as an aside, they earned the Seal of Biliteracy in multiple languages. Congratulations. And I want to thank also our supervisor of multi-language learning, Manny, who has done a fantastic job and has done a nice job making sure that more of our students are in that, including our teachers. We had a wonderful event on May 22nd. Many of you were in attendance, so thank you for that. We had the Crosby All-Girls Rock Band perform before our Celebration of Excellence, which was a really cool touch. We had Williams performances, just unbelievable energy and fun in the room that night, and we were happy to celebrate all of our staff who are excellent and were awarded this year. Specifically... uh nanichi rodriguez velez our
0842025 waterbury teacher of the year and jackie gilmar our 2025 administrator of the year congratulations to all honorees again I believe our President Hernandez was here today for Academy Awards at the Academic Academy. They said this is the first time they thought about it since they're the Academic Academy. Why wouldn't they have the Academy Awards? And so they had that there on May 23rd and just celebrated the year of excellence and showcased what all the students were able to do that day. It was really cool. You could see the red carpet as we walked in. Really fun day. Right? I had fun. So the kid governor took over my office. He came in and he sat there and I had to sit at the table and he had some great ideas. I bought him one
085pizza and it didn't look as appetizing as it should have, so we had to get a different pizza for him. And Coyote is such a great, special student. You know, he's the fifth grader from Chase. And we just talked about working and collaborating on a bullying campaign and creating a PSA. for that and so he's got some great ideas of how to spread the word about being a student who stands up to bullying. We caught the mayor on the carpet. We had school visits, so we went to Walsh, Wilson, Driggs, and Reeds with Pastor Hopson and Pastor, it's actually Pastor Reese, to discuss future collaborations. Pastor Reese from Grace Baptist and Pastor Hopson from Mount Olive AME Zion. And they just wanted to go to some of our schools. They've heard different things about them.
086This is their second time visiting our schools, and there's some interest there in adopting. school so we walked around and we were going to see and pursue that for the upcoming year and the mayor was able to take part in some carpet time with some of our preschool students you could see there and he he popped right up which I was impressed by Wallace career day at Wallace middle school we've had some amazing career days over the last month or so so we want to thank Dr. soon to be Dr. Toussaint I started that too soon she's studying to be Dr. Nyree Toussaint and Dr. Boatwright and all of the counselors for putting on these amazing career days I know many of us have been able to take part in them and talk about our
087professions with the students and so it was it was great and Triple Stitch generously donated 150 t-shirts to staff and presenters that day so thank you for that. Rotella celebrated We All Belong Together night, and it was a major success. The event was a celebration of culture, community, and connections, and families shared amazing foods and drinks from around the world, and you could see them there. And I believe those on the top is the Rachu, the Portuguese dancers, which not the superintendent's report, but my daughter started dancing with them last night, so that was fun as a dad to see. They're a great team. The CLEP program. Nyeri has also been leading the way with making sure our students have the opportunity to take the CLEP exam. It's from the College Board. It's administered by
088the College Board. Anyone can take the CLEP exam, and they're available year-round. And they can allow you to earn credits if you master the information without having to take the course. And so congratulations. We had 34 exams passed. for an introductory college level course. We had a middle school math competition, so Mr. Haynes from Westside organized this thing among a couple of different teachers and he just brought them together. So you could see that for the first pilot year to try to see how this could work, we had Williams, Westside, Nemz and Wallace attend. We'd like to get all of our... even our pre-k-8s involved. So they just wanted to test it out. They were a little nervous because we haven't done a math competition really since Dr. Sequeira used to do Olympics of the
089Mind. And so this was like a test feeler of how do we get the kids back? Because just like robotics, you know, athletics isn't for everyone and that could be someone's competition. But like robotics and academics, we want to create that level of competitions among the schools. Williams took first place by a hair from Westside, and then Nems and Wallace followed suit. And I'd like to expand on this concept for the future. Nice to see the kids compete. Speaking of competition, there was some collaboration happening again at our UConn Waterbury campus where our teams from Kennedy will be in Waterbury Career Academy. The two other high schools had senior field trips or field trips that day, so they couldn't come. But what they did was they worked with our middle school students and let them
090drive their own robots and talk to them about the robotics and being on the robotics team as they get older. So trying to drum up support from our middle school kids to be interested in robotics. It's basically they were trying to. create a feeder system, which is the whole point, right? So you can see the kids using the field and talking about the robotics. It was a great event. And I want to thank the academic department for helping put that on. Rotella is designated as an art school network exemplary school. Rotella has been named that for five years from 2025 to 2030 and the application process was very rigorous. It evaluated them and their strengths and areas for growth within their magnet theme. So congratulations to Rotella for this recognition. We've been busy. Water Bear
091Exchange Club was at Duggan Elementary School, and they were presented with a plaque from the Water Bear Exchange Club president, Justin Golden, and members for their contributions to the Water Bear Exchange Club. We had a fundraiser, philanthropy action in the district, as we often do, and Duggan was the school that raised the most to battle child abuse prevention, and so the Water Bear Exchange Club came and... Thank the student leaders who helped organize this event to be able to raise money for such a worthy cause. Congratulations to Duggan. The Crosby mural. It's beautiful. If you could see it right there, that's right next to the Library and Media Center. If you can picture that, where that is on the first floor there. And students revealed this amazing new mural that was student-created and student-led, and
092they made that very clear. It was student-led multiple times because... The principal had one idea of what the mural should look like, and the kids had their ideas, and the kids won. And they made that very clear over and over again when they spoke. And Mr. Vareno was gracious in terms of recognizing that he says, if we're going to walk the walk, we've got to talk the talk, and if I want to hear students, then I've got to let you do your thing. And then in the end, he gave them big kudos for having such a grand idea. So I want to thank also the Rise Up group for helping our students with this mural. And I can tell you that many of the students actually were in tears because they, again, it was students
093that don't necessarily compete or get together in other clubs. And they talked about how this was something unifying for them as a group. And so hopefully more to contact with this Rise Up group and hopefully we can do it again at another school for next year. Hopeville Multicultural Night. That was fun. That was a good time. And you could see Mr. Haxey there and President Hernandez and the mayor and myself. And there was hundreds of people there last night. My favorite was the tamales, but that's just me. And I think it was just an amazing students up, fashion show, dancing. community members performing and it was just a great atmosphere. It was a really fun event with not just music blasting but also I have to give kudos to you Mayor because you were brave
094enough to try the guinea pig and I did not try that but you said it was pretty good. I think it's called kui, I think, right? So he, is it? Am I right? Did I nail that? Yeah, I like that. I stuck with the tamale and it was delicious. So it was very good. Today, you might notice the outfit I have on. Today, the Waterbury ESS Substitute of the Year Awards were given out. And this is just working with our ESS subgroup. You know, every facet of our organization is important, including our substitutes. We really couldn't run the district without consistent, amazing substitutes. And so we want to recognize them. And today we recognize, too, Isabella Luccarelli and Rochelle Barnes for everything that they do. and they go above and beyond for our students. And
095it's actually Isabel Luccarelli. And Isabel is studying to be a teacher, and so she does her student teaching next year and has promised me she'd be coming back to Waterbury Public Schools in two years to teach for us. Offer the contract now, Juan. Administrator on the move, Dr. Johnson, congratulations to you. You completed the AASA Howard University Urban Superintendent Academy. The Academy prepares leaders to handle the unique challenges of urban education while advancing equity and excellence in education. Congratulations on your exceptional accomplishment. I know you worked hard this year on that, so congratulations, Dr. Johnson. I was also able to take part in a wonderful event. Our principal at Enlightenment School, Lauren Millay, recently completed a year-long program at the Tao Youth Justice Institute, and that's at the University of New Haven. And I want
096to say congratulations to Lauren. The Tao Youth Justice Institute was created in the fall of 2014, thanks to the generous support of the Tao Foundation, whose many years of investment in juvenile justice improvements have had significant impact in Connecticut and beyond and I saw our former chief of police there from he was there with some West Hartford police officers who also took part in the program believe it or not so it was a great great collaboration there and just some last minute additions obviously we couldn't add everything because this would be a very long presentation but I do want to I would do want to mention two things right now we're pulling out feelers and you'll get an invite officially from me, board, but on June 16th, on Monday, after the last day of school,
097Friday, June 13th, at Roberto Clemente International Dual Language School at 2 o'clock, we're going to have a... a community forum there to talk about the expansion concepts with the community there and And I believe that's the last day the staff can kind of hear what's going on So we're gonna organize that because parents are asking what's going on. My kids are about to go in fifth grade So it's good to go there and say hey this is this is the plan and this is what we plan on undoing and And I think that would be a good for us to communicate and then finally as I said last day is June 13th, Friday, June 13th. Graduations are the 12th and 13th. I want to congratulate all of our seniors who are graduating, and I hope
098everybody has a safe and wonderful rest of the school year. Wow. Yeah, you took all my things for next two weeks. That's okay. Interim Superintendent's notification to the board. Commissioner Arlen. Latoya Arlen. I motion to receive and place on file. Nope. Wait a minute. I move to convene into executive session for discussion concerning the dismissal of a public officer or employee and discussion concerning security strategy or the deployment of security personnel or devices affecting public security. I need a second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, we need Jean to come in as well. I got confused because I thought we were supposed to make the motion.