BOE Meeting 5/23/2022

001[Music] hey guys we need everybody to shift down one because kathy is not here she's at the town council meeting so well you guys are good we're good okay since captain is not here unless you wanted your snacks certainly shipped to [Music] them okay [Music] all right everybody ready you guys [Music] good evening today is monday may 23rd 2022 the time is 703 pm i'd like to convene the regularly scheduled board of education meeting of the watertown public schools i ask that we all rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all regretfully mrs rinaldi is not with us this evening she is out the town council's

002special meeting regarding the budget so hopefully she'll be here later but i will be presiding this evening miss davidson mr cavallos here mr columbo here espresso here miss lawton here is helium here here awesome thank you very much so this time of year is extra special for the board because we get to see and celebrate the fruits of all of our students labors over the year so i would like to turn it over to dr villanueva as we have a whole slew of watertown students that we'd like to recognize tonight we certainly do and we're very excited and thank you this is beautiful just image to see all of you sitting in front of us um just before we move to that i wonder though oh i'm sorry i skipped over yes we'll just do

003a little backup yes um in friday's packet uh all board members should have received the minutes from the last meeting did everybody receive them yes any comments changes etc awesome do we have a motion yes i move that the board approved the minutes of the regular board of education meeting dated may 9 2022. thank you do we have a second second thank you any discussion all those in favor opposed abstentions motion passes now we can move on to awards and recognitions i was so excited all right so the first recognition is a very special one because we have two students who are going to be going into the military so recognition of watertown high school students entering the military the watertown board of education would like to recognize and thank the following watertown high school

004students for their commitment to serve our country in the military i'm going to say their names and then what branch they're going into and then we can applaud for both students and if i could ask the students to come up to the front payton to fail for the us army and jacoboir for the u.s marines thank you um yes we would love to take a picture so miss davidson how do we want to do this all go around [Music] right here so i think everybody just needs to squish a little bit we'll squeeze in awesome thanks david being able to serve our country is is such an extraordinary exceptional pleasure gift and so thank you for doing that our next is going to be presented by principal lures and miss mangione from swift middle school

005and that is for our cass middle school scholar leader award so i'll have them come up to the podium here and the watertown board of education would like to recognize the following two students from swift middle school and ms lures and miss mangione will let you know who they are in just a moment they're going to receive the connecticut association of schools middle school scholar leader award and they did on sorry they're going to receive that on june 6 2022. consideration for this award is given to academic success for leadership active participation in school and community organizations citizenship and a positive influence on school climate dependability responsibility character and integrity ms lures can you please present your awards thank you very much and good evening yes my first recognition is nicole ramirez nicole is an

006eighth grader at swift middle school and a member of the swift chapter of the national junior honor society based on her outstanding academic record she is a member of the wool club which is an acronym for watertown oakville adolescent heroes she is actively involved with the swift band and our jazz band as well playing the ukulele and the keyboard nicole also enjoys marching in our memorial day parade coming soon outside of school nicole enjoys yard work babysitting snow shoveling and helping friends and neighbors in need she has many interests that include baking jewelry making photography and sewing nicole is so deserving of this prestigious award and we are very proud of her all right and then our next and our next student is nicole's here yep it's jace kiernan james is here tonight jace is

007an 8th grader at swift middle school and a member of the swift chapter of the national junior honor society based on his outstanding academic record besides being a member jace also serves as treasurer of this organization jace has been involved in student council for the past three years plays trumpet in our band and participate in bucket band he is involved in garden club peer leaders in the french club outside of school jace plays soccer and hockey always giving 100 effort in and out of school he plays for the ice hocks of the bantam hockey team and is now interested in speed skating jace is an active member of his church attend ccd and volunteers at church events he helped to clean up rivers near his church when he was a boy scout jace ii is

008so deserving of this prestigious award and we are very proud of him thank you our congratulations award and if i can ask dr parlotto to come up who will share um the bios is the cas ciac scholar athlete award the watertown board of education would like to recognize two high school seniors who received the scholar athlete award these students have excelled in both their academic and athletic careers and miss cody good evening everyone tori distefano represents the very best of watertown high school she very clearly excels at every activity she undertakes she is a valedictorian of the class of 2022 she was named a national merit commended scholar and an ap scholar with distinction she was awarded with the university of rochester george eastman young leaders award at the high school she is the editor

009of the yearbook a class officer a member of the national honor society and mathematics and world language honor societies and also link crew she is a four-year member of the girls soccer indoor and outdoor track teams tori also holds a part-time job and has volunteered with waze and adaptive soccer congratulations to tori for all of her accomplishments as a member of the whs community next evan smutny excels in the worlds of both academics and athletics he has participated in elite athletics since middle school he has been involved in the highest levels of youth hockey including traveling throughout the country while maintaining the grades required for acceptance into the whs chapter of the national honor society evan also has been a member of the whs lacrosse team where he was named captain this year and where

010has earned all conference and second team all-state honors in his first three years of participation evan also has received the society of women engineers award and science department award in grade 11. outside of school evan is a vivid fisherman who takes his boat onto the ocean to relax and learn more about the sea congratulations to evan for all of his accomplishments as a student and an athlete i know all right our next set of awards go to watertown high school students for the connecticut high school fine arts award and the word of the watertown board of education would like to recognize the following seniors who mr hopery will introduce in just a moment who received the connecticut high school fine arts award students in this category must excel in the performing or visual arts and

011possess the qualities of scholarship and leadership in their respective field mr hulkery thank you keith acuna participates in a great variety of activities at watertown high school he was accepted into the northern regional music festival for both violin and choir he has been nominated for multiple halo awards for his roles in les miz and mamma mia and he is a member of our chamber choir and orchestra additionally keith was a member of the cross country indoor and outdoor track teams as well as link crew in the triumph music honor society he is also a life boy scout and junior assistant scout master and he holds a part-time job we congratulate keith for his excellence in the performing arts which he will continue next year in audio and music production at western connecticut state university jillian

012verno's artwork graces the halls of watertown high school and her beautiful and thought-provoking pieces of art are a pleasure for viewers to behold jillian has been drawn since a young age and she has continued to hone her skills especially in painting and pen and ink drawing jillian has been a member of the watertown high school theater and the gay straight alliance she takes dance at the powerhouse dance academy as well as piano lessons for many years and she plays the kalimba which is a finger harp for fun jillian has consistently maintained a challenging course load and she also works at a local restaurant as a food runner and host we congratulate jillian on her excellence in the visual arts where she will continue in her future studies at the post-secondary level congratulations our next set

013of awards um we very happily celebrate our faculty members uh for the unified sports recognition and awards the first one goes to our watertown high school watertown high school was named the 2021 2022 and malafonte rookie school of the year by the connecticut association of schools and special olympics connecticut the rookie school of the year award is presented to a school with a new unified sports program that has gone above and beyond to make this year special for athletes partners parents and school personnel watertown high school unified sports has participated in tournaments with schools from across the state throughout the fall winter and spring seasons the team is coached by miss beth wolfe and miss kristen bates and students representing the team are mackenzie kish morgan kish christina kyle thomas mclean travis travis williams jordan

014williams priscilla adam adabambo sorry ella makowsky gianna decina and rielle mcneil if you can come on up we would love to take a photo with you [Music] two additions to our team we have tonight greg collins and ava kyle as well thank you very much carlotto may i re ask you to hand these out for me sure since you're up front there thank you sorry about that okay you're welcome it's great squishing [Music] there's nobody there and similarly at swift middle school we would like to say a very proud congratulations to the coach of our unified sports team mr richard perez he was award first he was awarded the george senate middle school coach of the year by the connecticut association of schools and special olympics at a ceremony on april 25th rich has devoted

015so much time and effort in his pursuit of creating and maintaining the unified sports program in swift and making the team the success it is today the team has expanded this year both in the number of participants as well as the number of events the athletes participate in and this award could not be bestowed upon a more deserving recipient at the unified sports awards ceremony abigail debale and jordan pelletier were recognized and presented plaques for receiving the mike savage teammate award so congratulations to both of them as well and congratulations to rich and the entire team all right a very special evening so we have somebody who sits with us up here every time we meet every night and hasn't missed one i don't think since he started mr evan davidson has served as the

0162021-22 student representative to the board of education this year and evan possesses a deep interest in the field of education and he plans on majoring in secondary education and english at the university level one of his career goals is to instill a love of reading in students through the various selections he would like to teach in the classroom he's also interested in sharing the many wonderful happenings in our five schools with the watertown and oakville communities during his student board reports evan contributes to watertown high school in many ways he participates in a wide variety of co-curricular activities including as a four-year member of the fall play and spring musical cast with lead roles each year the national honor society the select chamber choir the triad music honor society the interact club and the leo

017club along with keeping a challenging course load maintaining excellent grades and participating in school activities evan works at labonz part time to earn spending money and to save for his education evan i would like to say on behalf of myself and the entire school district thank you so much for the dedication you've had to um our our work uh because you know it's more than just one person and and your voice at the table has really shed a light on everything that's happening in our district so thank you thank you very much and and board members i i think i cut you all off so if there's anything else that you'd also like to say to please jump in there thank you congratulations we're going to take a question evan you are always a bright

018spot in the meetings here regardless of what else is going on i learned that tonight thank you thank you do any other board members have any comments i would just like to clarify um what dr villanova dr villanueva said your many voices um you have uh you have shown us your talents through uh what was your british accent um there might have been another one um but uh thank you for for making the reports fun um and doing them so well um i think future students um are going to be blessed to have you because of your personality um and your drive for education so thank you for all you've done for um our community and watertown high school thank you very much thank you very much mr makowski do you mind if i say

019a couple words of course thank you very much i wanted to take a moment to thank dr palado dr villanueva at the time ms karate and now ms rinaldi for the opportunity to be part of the board of education through my senior year it's been an eye-opening experience in many ways i've learned a lot about processes procedures and even more so politics as many of you know my goal is to become a high school teacher in english and i want to be the kind of teacher that has a door that's always open open to any student who needs a place to work a place to talk a place to sit quietly and think or a place to open up and clear their mind you see in my opinion my high school should be a safe

020space for me my peers and even the adults that come and go through the doors it's one of it's the one place a student should be able to be themselves and whoever that is it's up to them to express this building may be the only place they get a meal may be the only place they aren't abused for who they are this building ladies and gentlemen may be the only place where they are accepted for whom they are each of you who sit at this table have the power to make a difference in the lives of kids on a daily basis that's an awesome task and an incredible job at the same time it's a balancing act like no other and i think a lot of people don't understand that but when we enter the

021realm of deciding whom we do and don't accept and what we do and don't approve of we have crossed the line of what we're here to do i encourage each of you here at the board of education here in the audience and all of my peers and friends at the high school discover and be your authentic self be sure that those around you meet you where you are and give you the space to be that and if you consider yourself to be a friend or ally to someone who is proud to be their authentic self show it in your words as well as your actions some people will march down on main street with signs and chants while others are quietly proud to be accepted as is thank you very much meet them where they

022are don't try to change them don't try to politic them don't try to process them choose to be kind choose to be accepting choose to be human and if you can't just simply walk away in closing i want to remind you all that you have something that makes you unique something that you're known for if you will are you proud of it if you are not tomorrow is a new day start fresh if you are then continue to be yourself continue to always be your authentic self thank you [Music] we have a report from mr davidson back to you me again or still at john trebel primary school we've recently held our incoming kindergarten orientation for our families over 120 parents attended excitement and enthusiasm were in the air administration shared many expectations for our

023families and they were given the opportunity to ask questions tours of the building were led by some of our amazing second grade students our new families were quite impressed with how well these students answered questions and navigated the building we are thoroughly excited for our ben's bells flower installation coming up this week john tremble is extremely grateful to watertown student ella makowsky for allowing us to receive this wonderful gift we have completed all of the steps necessary and have several community members who will join us to install and unveil this priceless gift on may 13th at judson flanders came and explored ecosystems and environments of bugs and insects with grade 3 students how cool to turn over a log from the woods and see what lives inside it was great to see the scientists mine

024in action we are excited and looking forward to flanders coming back for grade four on may 26th to explore erosion in a lesson called watch that slope congratulations to addison panic who won a recognized inventors award at the invention convention awards ceremony for the furry friend floss these awards were presented by the connecticut invention convention to high scoring individuals in their respective grades on may 15th this award was out of 689 students who were at the state level congratulations addie on friday june 3rd we are planning our annual field day at judson we are so excited to invite parents in for a family picnic on this day as well thank you to emily doring and the cafeteria staff for preparing this delicious picnic meal for us on may 17th we held special events in each

025grade level at judson grade 3 invited their family in to play games as it was game day on our abc countdown grade 4 invited parents to come in and do a stem activity with gummy worms and lifesavers grade five hosted a student versus parent kickball game out in the field this was a ton of fun and some competitive competitive spirits came alive thank you to all the families who came and had fun with us polk students were rewarded with some fun in the sun last week as we reached our goal to for be the change nominations for exemplary behavior students dressed in their best tropical gear brought beach towels and relaxed with some good books while enjoying the sunshine mrs borbas the band and strings teacher for pokken judson schools visited each third grade music

026class this week to provide an instrument demonstration and build enthusiasm amongst our students for our instrumental music program instrumental music lessons begin in the fourth grade and take place during the school day if your child is interested in learning to play an instrument please complete the enrollment form that will be sent home by friday may 27th students are asking are asked to provide two instruments they are excited to learn as we need to create balanced groups students will be assigned their instrument and families provided with rental options and a list of needed materials before we leave for the summer there will also be a concert demonstration by the swift 8th grade band and strings programs on monday june 6th the purpose of the concert is to give the third graders a chance to see and

027hear a live performance and hopefully encourage them to visualize that this will be them in a few short years please reach out to mrs borbas at her email borbus re watertown ps.org if you have any questions students has have successfully completed all portions of the smarter balanced and next-generation science standard assessments we are so proud of the students perseverance and hard work throughout our testing window any students who are absent or quarantined during the normal testing days will make up the assessment as scheduled allows on june 3rd or through june 3rd i should say our may polk family meeting takes place later this week we're celebrating all of our hard work on the specs with a disney day students and staff are invited to dress in their favorite disney gear as we embark on a

028field trip to disney students will get to virtually experience some of the rides in the fantastic fireworks display and play disney emoji bingo and a music themed four corners game for the last six weeks here at swift we have run an after school mini swift fitness club for interested 8th graders the program runs twice a week and helps students to learn to get and stay fit especially as it relates to getting ready to play fall sports in high school this is our first year trying this new program and we hope to continue it next year as well speaking of getting ready for next year we have planned a visit for all of the grade 5 students from polk and judson to come to swift for a tour a snack and a chance to ask questions

029about our school this is scheduled for june 9th there's also an orientation for the parents of fifth graders on june 2nd at 6 pm at swift we are very grateful to our swift pgso for all of their support this year as always we especially want to acknowledge a special event this past week when our students and staff were treated to a live performance by world champion bicycle stunt writer chris paulos chris is a well-respected youth motivational speaker and while he wows the crowd with his amazing tricks he also tells stories about his own life relating to how he overcame obstacles to achieve his dream the show was a big hit with students and staff alike we are very proud to share that our students have been working very diligently on the standardized testing in language

030arts and math these past three weeks we extended the time allotted because so many students took their time and worked to their best ability we will finish all the testing this week with the next generation science standards test being administered to all great eight grade eight students upcoming event for the remainder of the year at swift include the memorial day parade with our school band participating the grade eight dinner dance at grand oak villa on may 31st the full school field trip to quasi on june 1st and the grade 8 graduation on june 13th at 10 30 a.m here at watertown high school finally for the high school we want to extend congratulations to the watertown boys tennis team for earning the nagatek valley league championship title on thursday afternoon our tennis players will now

031enter the state's competition congratulations as well to our theater department for garnering 19 nominations for the high school halo awards for this year's productions of both clue and mamma mia good luck to our theater students at the halo awards ceremony next week grade 12 students have finished presenting their capstone projects in ssp we are so proud of the variety of topics students chose the research they completed and the information they shared with their groups our junior and senior students enjoyed the prom on friday night at la bella vista in waterbury the outfits were lovely and spectacular the food was tasty and the dancing was energetic we are looking forward to holding a full slate of senior events this year including in-person awards nights yearbook night and project graduation after two-year hiatus senior students and families

032have received all the dates and times for these events via email our may faculty meeting featured presentations by each of our school committees which are culture and climate vision of a graduate assessment attendance and tardy student behavior and career future focused we had a student presenter at this meeting as well talking about the importance of a positive school climate we are proud of the work and direction of our school this year thank you and to think you would do reports like that coming in and out of uh rehearsals and everything else and you never skipped a beat thank you thank you all right dr v over to you superintendents report thank you very much um and i have a short report but i also just wanted to let our audience know that if you don't

033have to stay for the whole meeting but thank you for coming your choice completely um just one very quick update is that we have our new interim super our interim director of special education uh dr gina and patty foot she started with us last friday and she is officially in um the office and will be with us until june 30th in that role so big welcome to dr patty foot and she's oh she's right there actually there she is um and thank you again for being with us to help us out through this time all right that's it for me tonight fantastic thank you um okay uh agenda item h items for discussion um so the first item is reprioritize three reprioritizing capital projects based on extended time lapses and level of need in the

034district dr v you got it and so i'm actually going to call mr luigi velardi our director of facilities and security up to the podium here thank you and if board members could turn to uh the tab in their binder that says capital improvement you'll see a kickoff memorandum and then behind it mr luigi's mr luigi velarde is going to walk us through each of the pieces good evening so as you can see we prioritized some of the capital improvements by urgency levels if you see down in the memo we have urgency level three meet which means uh high risk that's the most important which we would like to address first so our first priority would be this watertown high school roof from garland it's you guys uh all in your packets had quotes also

035put into your quotes under number so that number's there then the second priority would be john tremble um the astral turf here in the john trumbull primary school roof oh i think mr vilardi is priority to the watertown high school artificial turf and track replacement oh yep our the turf replacement and the track replacement here at the high school great thank you i'm being going through it and and the the main priority that we want to do is keep the buildings safe and secure from from the elements outside so now you know track and the turf field are very prioritized we're at the breaking point with both um if you haven't noticed the swift middle school field i was forced to close partial of that field down and here at the high school were pretty

036close at that level also so priority three would be the swift astral turf replacement priority four would be the low uh slope roof that's the flat part roof of at john trumbull and the other uh priority five would be the high slope that's the single sections so all the pitched roof that's there at john trumbo priority six would be our hvac systems that are all the rooftops that are at john trumbull and again there we have them listed individually some individually prioritized and you all have quotes inside your your packets so we'll skip to priority six and seven or john trumbull rooftops priority eight would be the swift middle school roof maintenance priority nine would be the if got to that level which i assume in five or six years kind of did it like

037a five-year plan but what could worst be what the worst situation to be at that roof right now we're in a good situation at that at that building we have some issues in um various spots that the restoration would address mr valardi if i may um looking at priority two can you just provide some clarification so um in the bold we have a total cost of six hundred and fifty nine thousand four thirty um and then at the top of page two um oh i'm sorry okay so that's the track the track and the bass and the and the turf are separated out process because the track needs to be rebuilt got it thank you so now we're back to priority 10 it's the security and camera replacements of the high school right now our

038security camera system is down and needs severe work and that's in there and priority 11 would be uh judson school boiler number three and the isolators kind of put those two together priority 12 is jontron primary flooring replacement obviously the flooring there the school there is over 20 years and the floor is about in some places that needs to be ripped up and replaced and work needs to be done underneath of what we see in the flooring and the carpeting on the concrete work of it priority 12 would be john trumbull primary boilerplate system and that's a you know all these urgencies that were down the emergency one everything needs to be done within the next five the urgency level one just means that we could wait a little bit to get it but within

039the next five years i believe that that boiler is going to need to be replaced and last but not least or the priority 13 or the boilers at judson burner replacements for all three burners they're outdated every time we have an issue there it's a problem getting parts and try to start goes out of its way to try to keep our costs down and but eventually we have to you know replace the problem and that's the the all right so mr velarde if i could jump in here so you're seeing a reprioritized list as we mentioned at the start um because at this point time lapse we are feeling the effects and the impact of time lapse so when we presented our initial i believe it was ten priority projects more than a year ago

040um those were again although leveled in level three level two level one urgency they were all immediate needs but we were able to kind of parse out what we could wait just a little bit longer on and what we needed to move fast on each year that goes by other things happen and so it is necessary for us to re-prioritize the list so some items that you're not going to see here priority one and priority two you already knew the watertown high school roof and the track and and and uh turf replacement has been on the docket for quite some time at this point the shelf life is really it's i would say it's overextended at this point mr velardi and his team is able to keep it together but it needs to be done

041it's i would say an emergency the swift middle school priority 3 artificial turf replacement also is not something new neither is the john trumbull primary slope so those were all were all part of the original priority six john trumbull primary school hvac that was on the lower end of the priority list in the original ask but is now moved up because of covid we know that our air quality requirements have also increased and so with that needs to be done in addition to that as well you're seeing some newer things around water piping as well as rooftops because our roofs continue to age as we wait um the security camera price replacement which is priority 10 is a new priority on this list um each year that we go by our equipment ages um and

042at this point we are saying uh that we this needs to be replaced and or fixed um and that is quite a price tag you can see on it um can i can i just make clarification is priority 10 i think that's a a typo it's meant to say 400 000 is that correct not 4 million oh 400 000. okay could everybody just make that just i just have a hard time i apologize okay so that's meant to read for 400 000 not 4 million um but the security cameras at our high school all of our buildings really are important as you know we had put in for the seg security grant we put in for all five of our schools we only received approval for two john trumbull and polk so with that being

043said was john tremble and pogba central john truman polk uh with that being said then the high school is something that we will need to absorb the full cost for since the grant is not able to cover that and then just as mr velarde said other things are re-prioritized in there the other thing that we are experiencing right now and you can certainly speak to this is that there is um just supply and contingency increases so things are costing more now so with that being said you see in the next two excel spreadsheets the original ask was around the 12 million dollar mark over five years and the spreadsheet right behind it were in the 16 million dollar mark because of the increase in supply costs as well as uh contingency costs for each of

044the vendors we'll pause there and then mr valadi can certainly speak to more of this yeah especially the contingencies on every bolt that i'm getting but basically the roof of the high school roof here would be a 10 and now they're looking at 25 20 to 25 percent because as the issues that they knew were there they assumed got worse so they came back in and obviously they can't look exactly what's underneath the roof but their you know contingencies went up supplies went up for example for the track the milling for the track i mean it at least a month and a half before he could even get me something solid in a quote because of the asphalt and getting everyone's behind because of covert so even if we approve this plan and the public

045approves this plan some of these will be on a awaiting for a year or two and will get worse do any board members have any questions or comments uh through the chair don't we have some arpa funds floating around somewhere and we keep hearing two million dollars absolutely so we received arp esser funds and that was in the range of 1.8 million dollars we had very specific parameters on how we were to use rpsr funds uh 20 had to be put aside for um learning loss as well as some very specific parameters around what else we can use the funds for we are using a portion of the cost for those security cameras at um polk and john trumbull for the local share of the cost there we're also we've also used that a lot

046for mental health support so on and so forth our town received six million dollars in arpa funds uh which that may be what you're really referring to those have slightly different parameters i believe that they're slightly more open um and i think there might be some pretty good encouraged language around arpa funds being used for air ventilation for facility changes to make you know buildings safer and a better place to be so yes town receives about 6 million arpa we received about 1.8 rpsr okay any other board members have questions or comments so just to remind the public so these projects will go through the town they'll go through a bonding process um and we're in regular communications uh with the town council on these um but mr valardi so to confirm so if i

047added up level three correctly which is the the most dire we're looking at we'll just call it a cool 12.5 million dollars and then do you believe that we should be um to be to be safe and conservative uh allowing for a 10 contingency for the these levels of projects well i would i was told that contingency would be more like twenty percent on some other problems the track project in the turf project the turf project could be ten percent because it's laying down the turf and what the cost is the cost is all the work's there they just have to level cite it and then we're done but the track may have other issues lying underneath so that he said to raise up the contingency so for the reason why i ask is if

048we're looking at 12.5 million for the projects and at a minimum we need to account for a 1.25 million in contingencies plus or we're you know we're into this for you know almost 14 million dollars um so you know we'll continue to to do our work with uh with the town and bring this updated information with them and um hopefully get the bonding package through quickly all right you got it all right anything else all right thank you mr valardi appreciate the uh update thank you all right um item b uh under items of discussion um the department of administrative services uh of construction projects dr v you got it all right so this is here um for a fairly short discussion um department of administrative services as you know as mentioned prior sent us

049a notice to send in a what's called a report an audit report acceptance form um to basically say that we've read through the audit and things of that sort and it is due by june 30th 2022. so i just wanted to put on our radar that um i will be moving forward to submit that so that we can move through the process of what comes next um and i will keep you all abreast of basically what the next steps are thank you um and c board of education meeting date change from june 13th to june 14th wonderful thank you and just sitting in front of you you'll see a copy of our regular board of education meeting dates and you'll see that the june 13th date because it lands on our graduation date we have

050moved it to tuesday june 14th and you'll take a motion tonight as to whether or not you approve that adjustment we are very excited graduations for swift is at 10 30 in the morning on that on the 13th uh high schools at 6 pm um and then we've got project grad and all that kind of stuff so if you're attending all of those events you may be very tired the next day but we look forward to seeing you on the 14th as well for our board meeting great any questions or comments from board members all right moving on to agenda item i board policies first read perfect and thank you again to everyone who attended the policy subcommittee meeting last um not last week but our last round of meetings so the first one is

051the series 5000 for students the high school graduation requirements when we last met it was to have the have the credits put into the form and i'm just taking a glance over my shoulder and i'm not seeing that you're looking at the same document as me in one moment um check to see if in the pile in front of you you have an updated graduation requirement there it is perfect you got it thank you all right so last day when we were together um the shipment red lines have just a broad optional category and so we have now inserted what our requirements are so you can see that in 2017 the language uh moved it so that we would be moving up to um 25 credits and so we are at the 26 credits here

052in the table below you can see the breakdown on the following page you can also see what the credit conditions are as well and how many five years passing of which class you'll need in each in addition to that as well on the third page under the category demonstration of proficiency and basic skills you'll see that the way we do that is through the senior capstone project not every school district does that but many districts have chosen to do a capstone project so that is a first read for that one there give everybody a minute just to look through it do any board members have any questions or comments regarding um the series 5000 high school graduation requirements policy all right the next one we have is another series 5000 it's the administrative regulations regarding

053health assessment screenings and oral health assessments we've all had a chance to talk about this one in our subcommittee meeting one of the questions that arose from our discussion was what does an oral health assessment look like and what does a student experience so looking into it it is that we would invite in either a dentist a qualified hygienist or a dentist dental assistant or it could also be a certified rn who has experience during oral health screenings to ultimately just screen it's not invasive in matters of doing like a full checkup or anything like that of what is happening in a student's mouth and parents are always given written notification prior to and have the opportunity to opt out of the screening as well um now i didn't get the answer of if we

054are doing a swish and spit or anything of that nature but um basically overall depending on who the private provider is that we're bringing in it's a very simple kind of screening of the mouth all right does anybody have any questions on [Music] the health assessments policy all right hearing none immunizations all right and immunizations another one that was actually a hot discussion item as we were moving through the pandemic we had a very clear date provided to us by statute and that date here is april 28 2021 that anybody who had an exemption for immunizations would need to have that exemption in before midnight of april 28 and so all of those are on file at this point and then anybody after that would need to have their immunizations prior to starting school with

055us there are still opportunities when there are exceptional situations where parents and families will contact the state directly there's a form right online on the state's website that they would fill in to show there would be a need for exemption but that is something that the state would walk a family through because we are holding to the april 28 2021 date you can also see of with all the different colors blue being an insertion a red being a deletion and a green being a move a move of items you can see that there was quite a bit of blue added in uh during the pandemic and so the policy has grown to explain those exemptions based on religious beliefs give everybody a chance to go back through it [Music] so do any board members have

056any questions or comments seeing none okay all right moving right along wonderful so another 5000 series the non-discrimination policy you can see that the blue are the insertions and it is a wider description of what it means uh with veteran status and so that is now included in addition you also have the insertion of gender identity and sexual orientation as one of the protected classes here under the non-discrimination policy and also as you move into the second portion of the regulations if there are any complaints being filed against the superintendent uh myself it would be somebody talking directly with the board chair to submit that concern or that report or complaint and that's ultimately what the blue language is inserting into this policy [Music] any questions or comments from board members all right moving right

057along series 6000 instruction thank you all right so series 6000 we have the instruction for optional sorry credit for online courses you'll see in the grayed out sections that shipment always gives us some optional pieces to put in for us to consider as you know last year remote learning was a part of the schooling experience for a lot of disc for all of our districts really and this year we had very clear guidelines that we were not to be providing a virtual experience and rather that it was very important for our students to come back to school in person because we know that that interaction of teacher student classroom was so very important to not only the academic success of our students but their social and mental well-being with that being said the state also

058used this year to study the impact and perhaps the pros and cons of what it would mean to actually offer remote learning to students from their study of this year in the early or late winter early springtime they released a set of remote learning standards for grades 9 to 12 and they have given clearance to school districts to provide remote learning um in the 2022-2023 academic year however with the very robust standards document that they've released they have not put any mandated dollars or funds towards that and they have made it very clear to us as well that offering remote learning does not mean that we are reverting back to what we were doing during covid and kids just jumping onto google me it really is meant to be a robust remote learning experience so

059a lot of um districts who are considering this are already doing their due diligence to look at the types of providers that may be out there to provide that kind of real virtual experience as well as the resources and the platforms that all come with a price tag that would help that experience for our students so at this point in time we are not offering that remote experience but we certainly do have certain situations where we have homebound students that falls under a homebound policy or other students who might be experiencing something that we have accommodations for but we are not kind of wide range offering it at the 912 level but we will look into it and see where it goes from there so with that um the optional portion that you see on

060page three in gray we would not be including that in this policy as part of just your consideration of the redline document and board members have any questions or comments all right moving on to addressing enrollment in an advanced course of program and challenging curriculum series all right um so a few weeks ago in our subcommittee meeting no i keep saying the subcommittee but it's actually the regular board meeting we had a presentation from our watertown high school administration about ap courses ap courses stand for advanced placement and those are one type of advanced type of course that we offer here in watertown you may remember from the presentation that here in watertown we don't have necessarily certain cutoffs we encourage all students to take those advanced courses so that there is great exposure to

061students if they want to take those courses in some districts there is a very hard line on being able to get into an ap course and what this policy speaks to that needs to be in place by july 1st 2022 is that the state is encouraging a plan a student success plan be made in middle school and freshman year so that students understand what courses are available to them so that they are encouraged to take those advanced type courses once they get up into those upper grades for our particular district i don't think this has much of a difference in the way we will be operating because we have we provide great exposure to our students for these advanced courses however to that you will see in the policy that there are some just definitions

062on the front page advanced course or program advanced placement the terms cambridge international program dual credit dual enrollment international baccalaureate we don't offer all of those pieces but we leave the definitions in just to keep abroad in case we do down the road and then in addition to that we've had a chance the watertown high school and the middle school administration just to start conversations on what it might look like next year and the year after to start having our eighth graders actually start talking about their high school planning for courses and pathways all right and board members have any questions or comments cruising right along all right all right we are cruising so um series 9000 board bylaws meeting conduct wonderful okay so series 9000 for meeting conduct um this is typically for our

063board of education and you'll see that we have some blue language that's being inserted here ultimately it is giving us the opportunity to choose whether or not we have both google google me and youtube i mean we always stream anyway through youtube but we have the opportunity to determine whether or not we're going to continue transmitting over google me so that's a conversation that i would encourage our board to have in the next little while um and then you'll also see just some updated language around the freedom of information act um sometimes people equate freedom of information act just to the getting materials but it also may just mean access to the meeting in this particular instance any board members have any questions or comments if you need more time just let me know it's

064a lot if i can add one more thing just on page three there something and again we'll have more conversation around it one of the discussions that one of the parts of the discussion will be when we determine whether or not you know google me continues on is whether we provide public participation through electronic means so all right without any questions or comments that concludes um the first read so we'll move into agenda item j board policy second read uh series 1000 community board operations uh deadly weapons and firearms thirteen hundred okay wonderful so this is a second read now um and this is ultimately expanding the um expanding the definition of school sponsored and environment and so this particular policy for deadly weapons and firearms is stating that nowhere on school property neither on

065a school bus or even if you're at a sponsored event by the school that's out of state out of our town should there be a deadly weapon or firearm so it expands that definition of just the overall coverage in space that is pretty much what this policy is including awesome any board member questions or comments on deadly weapons and firearms seeing none moving on to series 1000 non-discrimination 1400 and 1400r wonderful and similar to the 5000 series non-discrimination policy this is basically inserting language uh for an expanded description or definition of veteran and then it also includes the monikers of gender identity or expression and sexual orientation so that is included here any board member questions or comments just making sure it starts to get repetitive i know but the one time i don't ask

066someone's go i'm gonna forget someone uh series 4000 personnel non-discrimination uh 4090 and 4090r and so same thing 4090 the insertion there is that we are putting in an expanded description of veteran it is also putting in the expanded description of gender identity and expression and then you also have genetic information included in there as well that was also part of the last as well but that it is including individuals family medical history the results of an individual or family member's genetic test that ultimately cannot be part of any discrimination practice of our of our district and organization all right four member questions or comments seeing none all right last one i think um prohibition of sex discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace 4140 and 4140 are you got it okay so this one

067has um this is a thick one on in terms of the regulation uh but basically this is just an update on our existing um sexual harassment and workplace policy um also because we've had now a turnover of who our title nine coordinator is as uh mishovel has now left the district on page three you'll see that it says that the coordinator contact is the office of student services one that will once that role is filled we'll put the direct contact of that person in here but ultimately it goes through there's not a whole lot different about explaining uh the definition of what sexual harassment can be and then in the regulations which start on page three onwards it goes through um clear outline exactly what we need to do if somebody's making a complaint or

068making a report or filing a complaint this also includes the language on if somebody has a complaint about the superintendent that it goes straight to the board chair in addition to that as well they've extended some of our well not extended timelines but they've opened up timelines so that um the language reads that if a timeline if a case is complicated we may take longer than 10 days or however long it takes to address that particular situation sometimes things come up in the summer when people aren't around and so it takes a little bit longer to investigate these types of cases and so they open up that language to provide us just a little bit more time okay i think that's it that is it yes sorry any more any board member questions or comments

069going once going twice sold thank you dr v on hammering through that okay um action item k so uh are we doing that motion already i don't know i'm sorry yep we put the motion right under okay so we want to move into that okay so um do you have a motion for consideration to approve of the above policies um that were a second reading it's not on there i'll make it sir okay yes mr malagueri i move that the watertown board of education move into policy after our second reading the series 1000 community board operation deadly weapons and firearms 1300 non-discrimination 1400 and 1400r and the series 4 000 personnel non-discrimination 4090 and 4090 are prohibition of sex discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace 4140 and 4140 are thank you miss maligoody do

070i have a second i'll stop thank you thank you um any discussion hearing none all those in favor opposed abstentions motion carries all right thank you everyone all right um agenda item l strategic planning update all right perfect and i just want to say that i see mr caruso in the audience here thank you for joining our subcommittee meeting as well as our regular meeting tonight mrs becky if i could use the little clicker and mr dalton is going to bring up the presentation so is that the one where you get it you get a reload every so often um so who would have thought but we are already at um only two meetings left for this year uh today being one and then our second one being june 14th uh so rightfully so i'm

071giving a quick little update on where we are with our strategic planning um first i wanted to just share with our community one more time and with our board of education that back in november 20 on november 22nd 2022 we held an initial strategic planning meeting of the original members of the strategic planning group from our previous superintendent in previous administration we put in rsvp out we had about 13 people who came together and really what that was and i put a picture of our agenda up there was an opportunity for us to take a look at the strategic plan that we have in place right now as you know our current strategic plan sunsets in 2022 and so we're starting the work so that we can make our revisions and move into next year

072and it was really important for us to honor the work of those before us um and it's really it was really an opportunity for me to also meet and greet some of the people on the original team and for them to have an opportunity to say um you know what they thought was important and what actually still held true because there are pieces of that strategic plan that still hold true so that was november 22nd 2022. since then we then created a plan that basically said we would have that meeting we would then expand the committee and then we were not quite exactly sure where we're going to head to but we also knew that we wanted to bring cave along with us on that journey so um we had some kind of rough themes

073that we were trying on for fit last year and those themes were around alignment innovation and authenticity and we invited mr cruzo from cabe to work with us and also be part of our board retreats as well from there i just want to share that it has been a wonderful multi-stakeholder process and journey and it's a continued journey and it will continue to be multi-stakeholder one we've had board of ed members and district administrators collaboratively facilitate meetings thank you we've had students attend community focus groups and also whs specific focus groups we've had parents as committee members and collaborators both from the old as well as coming out for the new committee we've had faculty and staff provide some feedback and input via survey in addition we've had community members even without wp's wps children

074laughing at miss feckity but yes so we've had members without wps children become part of this process as well and here members of town departments although we haven't had a specific group or focus group for them i'm always in contact with our town manager as well as other key members of the town to see where they're going and i'm excited to kind of engage them more in this process because they're their inputs very very important after november we moved into collecting strategic plan data and so on february 24 2022 we had initial strategic planning committee meeting we had about 25 people turn out again multi-stakeholder faculty parents administrators and board members we did some brainstorming around two objectives one was around the discussion of what are wps's core values and what core values will ultimately

075drive our priorities objective two was we wanted to start to the conversation that will identify four subcommittees that we think will have the greatest positive impact on the watertown public schools so when we thought about core values going back to objective one part of the activity and work that we were doing in that meeting was to parse out the difference between what core values aspirational values permission to play values and accidental values were we worked off of an article from the harvard i think business review or one of the harvard articles that helped us kind of create or create an understanding around the nuances between the different types of values um in addition to that as well we were looking at what a value statement really would mean for the watertown public schools and so

076we asked ourselves the questions of what values are unique to the watertown public schools what value should guide the operations of our district and also what conduct should the people of our district uphold so that was the start of that discussion for part two when we were talking about those subcommittees um really it was around um getting to hear about what people not just us what all sorts of people have a sense of urgency about and everybody has a different sense of urgency depending on what their perspective is because when we know what our collective sense of urgency is we can as a district focus our resources and priorities on that on that priority we very much anchored into uh the harvard professional um i'm not gonna get the acronym right the pelp framework which

077i call the gobstopper because ultimately the key is that instructional core in the middle and so all of our decisions all of our resources should be in the service of that instructional core and so we had an opportunity to go through and have people share what their sense of urgency was we had answers from just about anything and everything around you know we had people who felt urgent about facilities we had people who felt very urgent about getting programming up and running so it was great to hear from people then in march 28 on march 28 2022 we had community focus groups we had about 28 folks turn out this included parents faculty students community members um i put a picture of the town times over there that is not the actual article that had

078the issue in it but we invited community through our local paper as well and we did have people who saw it in the paper who came out and were part of those focus groups we had a set number of questions to ask them as well as facilitator protocols and again thank you to our board of education and to our administrative team for facilitating those discussions um because hearing from our parents we i think we all walked away with something new that we learned and all of that is now part of the data that we're moving through lots of writing on one small slide taboo but we followed norms when we were moving through those focus groups and those were the questions that we asked simply when you think of watertown as a school community describe

079what you think we do well question two was what are your expectations for the watertown public schools question three was when you think of watertown as a school community what's one change you think we should make right now question four when you think of watertown as a school community what should we never change and question five was really diving into that core values and then question six we talked about um anything else that anybody wanted to to mention so those focus groups were wonderful mr caruso also helped facilitate one of those groups and we took notes feverishly um and was great to hear from people and then of course we had um making sure that we had student voices we didn't have the largest turnout we only had nine students who came out but nine

080important voices so we are taking a look at that data now and we do hope to hold some more student groups as we move forward into next year but it was great to hear from those nine and mr dalton and i were able to facilitate those focus groups and then this has been a wonderful thing our survey has been open to the public as well as to our community uh here in watertown and we've had about 102 people respond to the survey which has been a great turnout just in terms of us going through the data we've also had a request from a couple of our unions that rather than having a digital survey to actually hand out paper copy so they can hand write things so i'm going to be doing that in the

081next week or so to give it out to any of our union members who may not have had a chance to fill out the digital version and would feel more comfortable with the handwritten version so that end number will start to increase as i receive some more responses back so now here we are may 2022 and we are now starting to go through the strategic planning data that we've collected from all of those meetings that i just shared with you and we're starting to kind of mine that data one of the first steps is to one read everything literally read everything and then to see what themes start to naturally emerge and start to categorize things um so just as a kind of a a pre a preliminary like a prelude to what our final

082will be and i i very carefully highlight the word draft there because this may change as we see more data um we are seeing seeing some uh categories emerge one of those categories is around programming choices and rigor for our students another one was around student support and safety and and i'm keeping these very high level we have the nitty-gritty details of what what creates that category another one was how we build welcoming schools and then a very strong one was the green bucket around community pride and communication um so questions that are also starting to emerge from the data are how do we make people feel like they belong to the community the wps community the student community the parent community and also questions around what do we want to be known for what

083do we want people to expect from us when and it kind of you know continues on and what do we value so all of these kind of initial themes and buckets are emerging again they may change as we go through all the rest of the data but just wanted to bring you up to speed on what we're seeing thus far and then mr caruso if i could kind of put you on the spot um our next steps is to ultimately have all of the data presented to you with the quantitative measures of what we've collected on our last meeting june 14th and then we'll continue our work with mr caruso but i know you've done this work with many districts so um um well we're gonna have a slight problem because june 13th i was

084available ah i'm working i may not be available all right well that's okay then moving into next year maybe some thoughts but i think it's important you know i've been in a lot of sessions but i try not to facilitate some of that stuff like this but i've been in many ways you put the stickies on the wall somebody collects and writes it all up and then nothing ever happens so i hope that collectively and dr b sounds like you've got your hand hand right on this um that that won't happen here let's just collect the data that it will turn into meaningful work and bring the district forward i would also say that the children's values and such that you were talking about the one thing i took away very strongly and our group

085was mostly parents that they talked about the welcoming and the sense of community so that it was a very positive conversation it wasn't like oh we got to get rid of all this stuff and do this it was really these are strengths we need to support that and make them stronger so that's the only other thing i've had that in our group at least it was very positive wonderful thank you so we look forward to that work next year great thank you mr caruso thank you dr v all right um excuse me yes i have a question yes dr villanueva um how are we going to communicate to the community where and when they can get the paper survey ah you know what it was meant for our unions that was who asked me for

086them but i didn't think of offering it to the full community i can put that out on our website and maybe i could make them available at town hall okay i was just wondering because i know there's um maybe some it's actually a great idea yeah people who maybe don't like to use the internet and things like that so you know yeah just a suggestion yeah thank you that's actually a great suggestion because that'll provide us some more feedback as well yeah great idea thank you mr palumbo um okay so uh agenda ida m food service update from our food service director miss dorin perfect thank you [Music] all right so for those of you that don't know me my name is emily doering and i'm the director of food services i have a clicker

087or someone else help everybody there thank you and i am here this evening to give some updates on our program this year and then to talk about some proposed changes for next year including our meal prices next year so we'll go ahead and jump in i wanted to start by highlighting a few things from this past school year what we have in this top chart is the number of reimbursable student meals that we've served to date or i should say through last week this school year and then comparing that to some numbers from the past three school years as most people know by now all of our meals breakfast and lunch are free for our students this year um and we are very excited that we have such a high number of students participating in

088our breakfast and lunch program we are serving more students this year than we ever have before we know that these free meals are helping um save families money on their grocery bills it's saving families time so they don't have to pack lunch or wake up for breakfast so again this is a really great thing to see that we have so many students taking advantage of these meals this school year the other big win from this school year that i wanted to share with everyone this evening is that we had 11 cafeteria members sit for their serv safe exam in january of 2022 they all passed their exam that's in addition to the 10 staff members that we already had that had their serv safe certification so in total we have 21 staff members in our

089kitchen that have their surfsafe certification this demonstrates they have additional knowledge in basically serving food safely as it relates to food temperature the proper rotation of food handling food allergens cross-contamination so again we're serving more meals than we ever have before and we're making sure that we're doing it in a way that promotes student safety and keeping our students healthy and fed nutritious meals the next piece of information that i want to share with everyone tonight is that the we are going to be returning to paid meals next school year the usda over the past two years has issued a set of waivers that have allowed us to feed all students for free during the covid pandemic other waivers they issued were related to sending food home with students sending food home in bulk portions

090and unfortunately those waivers are all set to expire on june 30th of this school year and they are not going to be renewed so as we were before the pandemic we'll be going back to paid meals and families have the option to fill out a free and reduced meal application to see if you qualify for free and reduced price meals but those families that don't qualify or choose not to fill out an application should plan on having paid meals next school year i want to emphasize that even with this transition back to paid meals nothing is changing with the food that we're serving in the student experience this year we were able to bring back many popular options such as the grinder bar and the panini press at the high school we brought back smoothies

091we have warm cookies warm pretzels for snacks at the middle in the high school we had lots of themed meals this school year we'll be celebrating national donut day the first friday in june we did a meal for super bowl for thanksgiving so all of those things we're still going to see next year in our meal program we also promise that we're always going to be feeding our children high quality nutritious food i wanted to point out a few examples of that a lot of the food in our kitchen are brands that you would recognize so most people don't realize this but we are serving boar's head deli meats we have tyson chicken products khaleesi bread is something you might see in the grocery store kellogg's and general mills for a lot of our breakfast

092products and then lando lakes for our dairy products at each of our schools we always give the children multiple options to pick from john trumbull they have two options for lunch every day polk and judson they typically have four or five options for lunch every day and then at the middle in high school they have around eight options every day and all that's going to stay the same we will continue to offer the required components of a school lunch which are meat grain milk fruit and vegetable students are encouraged to take all of those items they must take three in order for it to count as a meal but we encourage students to take all of those and we also allow and encourage students to take an extra fruit and vegetable so ultimately you could

093end up with seven components on your lunch try and then of course we're following all the standards set forth by the national school lunch program so we're monitoring things like calories sodium fat and because of all those restrictions in place our meals are inherently healthy and i just want to emphasize that will stay the same going from this year to next year so while we're talking about going back to paid meals the other big item i want to hit on is that free and reduced lunch application this is something that has always been in place we typically send it home the first week of school it goes home in a nice big packet it's an application it's a front and a back page and we always encourage families to fill it out we know some

094families have gotten away from this practice the past two years because meals were free but we really want to emphasize we'll make sure to send out plenty of reminders please please please fill out your free and reduced lunch application a new option this year and to hopefully help some families out will have the an application available online so families will have the choice to either fill out a paper application or you can fill out the same exact application online via my school apps either way that you choose to fill out the application it's a lot easier than most families think it is like i said just a front and a back or if you're on the online version it's the same set of questions we just need a little bit of basic information your name

095who's in your household the number of people in your household and then you're going to self-report your income on that application the information stays within my office it is not shared with anyone we check what you're self-reporting we compare it to the guidelines and we make a determination for eligibility in our office at the local level the other thing i wanted to share in relation to this is that another way families can qualify for free meals next year is if your household is already receiving snack or medicaid benefits snap benefits are funds that help with your grocery benefits some people know them as food stamps although we call it snap now and if you're a family that is receiving snap benefits then you automatically qualify for free meals without having to fill out that school

096lunch application the snap application can be filled out at any time during the school year so if you are a family or know someone who might benefit from having some extra funds going towards your grocery bill every month then i would encourage you to fill out that snap application because not only might you get those additional funds for your grocery bill but your children would also qualify for free meals next school year the last piece of information that i want to touch upon related to the meal application is just reminding everyone of the importance of filling out this application even if you are a household that does not routinely purchase school meals there are so many other benefits of filling out this application that not everyone is aware of not only can you receive reduced

097or free priced meals but lots of other school fees can be reduced or eliminated for those families qualifying this would include things like our pay to play sports our graduation fees testing fees technology fees all of those things can become benefits to your family if you fill out that application and the last point i'll make is that when you fill out this application even if you're not thinking you're doing it for yourself you are helping our school get additional funding there are lots of funding sources and grants out there that we have to meet certain thresholds of a free and reduced percentage and if we don't have everyone filling out that application we're not able to demonstrate the to the true numbers in our district so i know i just said free and reduced meal

098application like a million times but hopefully everyone understands the importance um and why we are asking everyone to fill this out next school year okay so speaking of next school year i want to move this discussion to talk about our meal prices um i would say at this point everyone is seeing this in their everyday life we know that food prices and the cost of goods are on the rise we are all probably seeing this when we go to the grocery store when we go out to eat in our own lives but i did want to list a few examples right here industry experts are estimating food prices are rising between 30 and 40 percent and as you can see by some of these examples that's probably pretty accurate some things are a little bit

099lower and then certainly some things are much higher keep this up for five more seconds so what i have up on this slide in this chart is a list of our current meal prices please keep in mind these are just for our students our paid students the reduced price and the free lunch are separate from this conversation these are only the paid meal prices for families that either don't qualify or choose not to fill out that free or reduced price meal application we have one set price for our elementary students we have a second set of prices for our six through 12 students and then we have our adult prices at the bottom of the chart please keep in mind that watertown has not raised their school meal prices since around 2007 or 2008 so

100it's been over 10 years that we have maintained our program at this level however on the next slide in the bold column on the right you will see that i am proposing about a 25 increase on all of our meal prices for next school year the reason that we're proposing this increased meal price is yes because the cost of goods are going up the second reason that we're proposing this increase is related to the paid lunch equity tool set forth by the state what the paid lunch equity tool is is it's a number set by the state every year that looks at what different districts in the state are charging it looks at inflation it looks at what the reimbursement rates are and it is a recommended price point of what schools can consider charging

101to help keep lunch equitable across the state it is just a recommendation we are not required to follow it to a tee but we are using that number to help make our determination in the watertown school district the number or the price set by the state this year was three dollars and 18 cents as their recommended value it's a weighted average so if you're looking at our current meal prices of 275 and 325 our weighted average is three dollars which is slightly below the three dollars and eighteen cents recommended by the state so with that piece of information in addition to the rising cost of food we are proposing the increased prices as listed on this chart one more table to share with everyone and this table is comparing our current meal prices to the

102current meal prices of other school districts in our durg our district reference group the state group schools based on the size and different parameters that make us similar to some of these school districts in general we are following about in the middle of all of these prices which is where we want to be we don't want to be on either end of the extreme but just you know be in the same place as all of our neighboring districts again these are all current prices and i can tell you that i have spoken to numerous numerous school food service directors across the state and unanimously all districts are in the same position as us and everyone is proposing some form of increase for the reasons that i already stated so all of these numbers will become

103obsolete more or less next year but it's still a good gauge to see where we're at currently okay so i was just going to end right here again we a couple of big things that i want to hit on one more time is that we are returning to paid meals next year i cannot stress enough the importance of filling out that free and reduced lunch application families have the opportunity to do it on paper or online we'll make sure to send plenty and plenty of reminders about that as we approach the new school year and that we are looking for the board's approval to increase meal prices for next school year for some of the reasons that i've stated based on the cost of our goods what we're seeing in other school districts and the

104state recommended paid lunch equity number here are some pictures of lunch from last week mostly at the middle and the high school as you can see when students are taking their multiple servings of fruits and or vegetables the trays are quite full and i cannot stress enough the value of what you're getting when you're taking the correct portion of the foods for what you're paying for school lunch that is what i have this evening awesome thank you so much mrs doring um do any board members have any questions or comments i have one quick question yes this may sound silly but you noted some of the items with the highest cost increase one of which is the foam trays which with over a double in price and i assume we that's one of the things

105that we go through the most well that and string cheese i don't know how much string cheese we go through a lot are there any alternatives since those are the two of the items that have more than doubled in cost to those products yep so that's a really good question just recently i want to say over spring break the state of connecticut outlawed styrofoam and expanded plastic products in schools and in restaurants starting like in two school years so the 23 24 school year so um actually regardless of cost we have to start looking at alternatives because we only have one more year of using the styrofoam products i purchased reusable trays for the high school our high school is the only kitchen with a dishwasher in it currently so i wanted to start and

106pilot the reusable trays at the high school first those have already been ordered as long as supply chains are not totally crazy we should have those for the start of next school year i feel pretty confident about that um if that is successful here we know that's going to save us costs because it's a one-time purchase and we can keep reusing them and it's better for the environment so that's certainly one option being that not all of our schools have dishwashers there are options available for like compostable and fiber trays the one issue we run into with those is that they're not quite as sturdy as the foam trays and particularly for our john trumbull students who don't quite have the dexterity to hold it on both sides and they got their milk on there

107and it's a little weighted the fiber trays are a little bit hard for the students but that's another option so we are looking at other ways to go and i would love to see all of our schools using reusable trays if and when that becomes feasible any other board members questions or comments i'll just throw a comment too you fed my all my four boys with all these free lunches the last couple years so thank you um i want to thank miss long for a comment because i was thinking the exact same thing and to take it a step further you know not only from a cosmetic mitigation factor but from you know an environmental standard and setting the tone for our students you know i would ask if if you can start to price

108out what it would look like to get these commercial grade dishwashers and to get enough trays in our schools just so that we can get it in front of the board we can get it in front of budget and finance for example or um and just start talking about it um i think it's important that if we don't know about it if we don't have the information we can't act on it right if we do then hopefully we can try and find a way would you like some numbers now or you've read my mind um so i got a quote for the dishwasher at judson it was about thirty seven thousand dollars for a dishwasher dishwasher how big is this thing they're big it like it rolls through so you like it it's like load

109it and unload it too because that's unfortunately not okay yeah commercial kitchen equipment is very very very expensive and obviously everything's going up in price and some of those things luigi talked about carry over to the kitchen so 37 000 for a dishwasher um the trays are about six dollars each but those truly pay for themselves after about six weeks of school so it's not the trays themselves that are the barrier would be getting the machines so one item that we may want to look at just for educational purposes there are auction companies out there so when restaurants close they auction off the stuff so if we can get it pre-loved it might give us an opportunity to get take advantage of of someone else's misfortune and get into a dishwasher or something like that

110so just maybe some food for thought obviously in the current financial environment i don't think we're going out and buying dishwashers and stuff but at least we can start doing some leg work and see what resources are out there so we can track them definitely because that's the um definitely the more prohibitive piece is the dishwasher not the trays themselves so awesome so any other board member comments or questions awesome thank you so much for the update thank you all righty agenda item n public participation in accordance with policy 9050 public participants must state their name and address for the record and limit statements to three minutes the board encourages speakers not to express defamatory comments about watertown board of education personnel or any other persons associated with watertown public schools system is there anybody

111that would like to speak good evening everyone vic vicenzi jr 25 arcadia avenue in oakville [Music] you know why i'm here uh looking for a vote on the return of the indian i feel like you guys are trying to smoke us out here or delay us a little bit i'm not quite sure why there isn't a public participation earlier in the meeting uh there used to be but as you can see i think everybody that's here right now is pro-indian and all right i'm not speaking for you thank you i said almost everything hey if we could keep the uh comments towards the word you could let them know not to say something to me so excuse me i'm gonna pause your time for a second um i'd like to ask for some decorum from

112everybody okay all the comments are directed to the board they're not directed to the to the public okay i ask the public to refrain from comment to whoever speaking give them the courtesy i ask the speaker to not respond to anybody uh in the in the public okay public comment is for the board of education um it is at our discretion to have public comment it is not a requirement so i simply ask that everybody have courtesy for everybody that that is up speaking please proceed thank you so i'm wondering when are we going to get a vote on the indian can anybody answer that mr vincenzi this is public participation it's not a dialogue with the board really all right so [Music] this is it's quite uh quite interesting rob um it's been going

113on for almost two years and evan mentioned something in his uh comments before he mentioned the word politics and i think all of us here members on the board would agree that the board of ed should be the least political board in a town that'd be fair to say so when all this happened politics started it okay we had uh a group of people that couldn't sleep at night because they went to a school that had an indian as a mascot picture that 30 something year olds can't sleep it's ridiculous it should have never been changed okay they snuck the vote in there wasn't enough people uh they knew they had the votes when they voted the indian out we had one member abstain and there was one board member that was not present at

114that time the board chair knew they had the votes and they put it in that night to make sure they got what they wanted and that's politics plain and simple so if how how would you suggest i proceed in finding out when a vote is going to be taken can you send me a written communication as to when seeing as how we can't have a dialogue and i'm just supposed to uh present this to you is there some way that we can get some written communication to let us know when there's going to be a vote on the indian i will say if if you're interested in scheduling time outside of the meeting we'll find time to meet and discuss it tonight i'm not committing because i don't we we have executive session we have

115a very lengthy right so um can i contact you over the next couple of days and you set something up and you let me know yes thank you very much and i'll remind the public that it is not typical that we will engage in back and forth with the community please state your name and address yes rich eveletta 87 concord drive i'm a member of the committee to bring back the indians i'll take a phrase from the song your indecision is bugging me uh i can't understand why you haven't made i'll rely on vixx whatever have you made a decision it's been over two and a half years we've struggled with the fact that there are a large amount of people that want the indian and there are a few people that don't want the

116indian and we still can not come to a decision this is not a political aspect it's not a democratic or republican thing it's a town of watertown thing that we've been working with um it started two years ago with a cesspool of activists and an interim superintendent and a board of education that wasn't too steady we waited until november when we had the opportunity to vote the democratic way to put new people into their positions which we have we're still waiting on those people to make a decision uh we have brought forth more information than the opposition we get certain tunes of uh doctor whatever that they get off the internet they take uh richie avoleta with a couple of uh xyz behind this thing and that's gold we brought you people here we brought

117you native americans that that their ancestors lived in this town before we were they approved the indian aspect they see no damage of uh using the indian in any other way we have brought you talk about students and how the students react to this thing well we've had students at this podium we've had students parents at this podium that have explained to you that the indians should stay you've done things there's probably people on that that board up there that can't wait to say something whatever that was a device that killed us right this is the only way you have a true meaning of talking to somebody face to face don't be high don't hide at your kitchen table and make decisions and call people whatever it's not fair uh we need we need to

118have a decision we have we need to continue this this is a fight listen you couldn't pass a budget you had 15 freaking percent of the people in this town vote i tell you what if you had a referendum with the indian honor you'd have more people vote than they had for vitamin freaking trump and that's not that's not a lie because we've carried you before we will carry you again my three minutes is up see you later joseph romano 190 front street registered voter dr villanueva board of education and students and just to let you know i will come to meetings just to hear you speak my dad always said if you don't know the meaning of the word or can't spell it don't say it you're a wonderful speaker thank you i am

119here tonight two i am pro indian as you know i am pro watertown high school i am pro board of education i am a proud graduate of falls avenue school grew up in a house with 13 children not all of us our mothers were sisters in the three floors so just to clarify that one of um our residents and my brother was louis raza who was a proud watertown resident and town council member and i know louie's feelings on what i'm speaking tonight and i would just say he is going to be so sorely missed in this town because louis was a man of reason not a man of politics we i am proud with uh my family and businesses that again this year we're given uh four scholarships to for academics and athletics in

120this town cam i'm wishing you good luck in your venture in the military my son joe a graduate of watertown high school athletics also captain of football baseball and uh four years in an army tank and um your your quality not cause i go on vacation with you because i know you're gonna do great in the future i brought this tonight i've had this since i was a child playing it used to be a lot of sandlot back then the children today have forgot about sandlot they're too busy on the computers whatever for the reason uh that's the way life is today things do change but they shouldn't change all together uh the people on the back are the the donators the fundraisers uh a lot of them are gone uh but some are still

121here i'm proud to be one of them i want the board of education to seriously look at the indian our mascot we will always be indians no matter what the situation we're not warriors even though our teams do play like warriors but we are the watertown indians thank you mr romano your time has expired you thank you for cutting me off mr melgoody thank you mr mccaskill i'm sorry that's all right hi good evening i'm georgian palumba and my address is 18 stanley avenue in oakville and um my family bleeds orange and black and i'm wearing my dad's shirt george palumba and the fields getting named in honor of him next month anyway with that said i'm here tonight not only as a former student and community member but i'm also here as a mcmac

122descendant changing names and logos will not bring clean water electricity or better schools to native americans it won't stop the domestic abuse the rampant unreported sexual assaults on native american women alcoholism or even bring them better educational systems and won't even scratch the surface of any of the issues facing native americans today and my phone just pooped okay removing indian names and logos is a victory for us a very small group in the community and that victory is celebrated momentarily and then it's gone the social justice social justice warriors promised it's what was best for the community and district but instead just moved on to the next shallow victory in the end what is the victory watertown public schools no longer has any classes on native american history no chance to teach and listen and

123learn all the possibility thrown away with a name and a lego a logo based on lies and personal agendas i believe that if you eradicate the names and logos you will also be further removing native american history that it helps connect us and surrounding towns rich with native culture i suggest that instead of eradication you begin the process of education let's teach our school children about the real native americans that lived in this area the pagasa shikata coke and wappinger tribes in fact the good the bad and the ugly of it all we will stand up for history even though our indian ancestors were dreadfully mistreated killed and repeatedly moved from their homes no one could change the past but we all learn from it let's look at ways that we could promote better living

124conditions education and free and open sharing if we can do that we will have built something that won't just be a victory for a day it will be a victory for generations to come it will bring our communities together with the tribes that lived in these areas it will be a learning experience for our children the communities and most of all it will showcase not only the native americans placed in place in local history but bring them to light in society today that's what this is all about i support a working relationship where the tribes and communities can come together to form a friendship that will move that will allow all parties to move ahead i'm almost done in a positive way the course we are on now is destructive and leaves nothing in its

125weight but ruins cities and towns all over connecticut and the country are voting to return or keep their native american mascots and names while some in our towns see the indian as controversial most see it as a symbol of strength pride including chief belkey of the shikatako tribe and i know my time's up i have a little more thank you mrs palumbo thank you very much jennifer gay 85 streets turnpike [Music] i'm here tonight to ask the board to reconsider the retirement of the indian mascot and call for a new vote week after week both on social media and in board meetings we hear the same group of women spitting out talking points from the liberal media playbook instead of making real connections and talking to real indians they rely on the internet for their

126information yes the internet has a place has placed a wealth of information at our fingertips but to be able to use that information to absorb it to expand our existing knowledge we must already possess a basic understanding of the topic being researched to understand any article you need to know something about the topic addressed even to effectively google something requires content specific vocabulary to that so that accurate information is acquired it is quite clear that this small group who wants the indian removed has not learned anything from their google research nor have they listened to those who are in the know and highly knowledgeable on the subject native americans from our town and even from all over the country have come out to support the use of the watertown indian name instead of listening and

127respectfully communicating these women mock them yes they have the audacity to mock the native americans they go around town preaching love and acceptance yet turn up their noses at anyone whose views don't align with theirs and label people as racist the indian vote is a perfect example of how the left-wing internet apparatus operates where far left influencers attempt to identify a target present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterization across multiple platforms with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them since the vote and their victory these women have done nothing positive or constructive to try to bring the community together instead they have moved on from miss palumba and are now trying to slan it slander and tarnish the reputation of mr murkowski solely because they have a posing point of

128view parents rights have slowly been removed from public schools for years and now the tipping point has been reached we are paying more attention to what is occurring and what isn't in our schools it is time for a change this is why we elected you this is the will of the students and the parents who elected you why are you so afraid of this small group where does it end put a stop to this now and do what you were elected to do make a change for the better of our students vote to keep the indian it's what the students want it's what the faculty wants it's what the parents want it's what our community wants perhaps if you had supported us the way we supported you the budget would have passed do the right

129thing and stand with your community and vote yes to keep the indian good evening my name is rosie mancini 87 sunset avenue oakville i'm here today to ask the board to correct an injustice to not give it one huh [Music] i'm not used to speaking like this okay can you hear me now okay i'm here today to ask the board to correct an injustice to not give in to the canceled culture that is destroying our town and our schools we're asking you to reverse the decision of the last administration on retiring the watertown indian reversing the decision which was purposely done in an improper time would only strengthen a community that has been torn apart over the past few months indians from all over the country who support the watertown indians wrote letters and spoke

130during public comment and they were attacked for not living in our town indians from our town spoke up and they attacked their bloodlines and heritage do they see how despicable their actions are no they don't because they keep attacking a representative from the wappinger indian tribe came supporting the use of the watertown indian the wappinjar indian tribe who the pakistan tribe came from who founded this land we walk on and they attacked her claiming she doesn't know genocide she is exactly who you say we are oppressing an indian student but because she doesn't fit your narrative they attacked her age they keep spitting out the same information from their online polls over and over we showed you our polls just of native americans who this is all about and the only opinion that matters and

131they claim they're flawed your polls are okay even though they're not even of native americans but ours are flawed okay then as your last resort you keep waving around a letter from the matching talkit tribe well guess what we have one too from the scatter goat tribe how are you going to attack that oh that tribe doesn't have a casino so their voice doesn't matter miss palumba sits there and gets attacked by the same people week after week including fellow board members what does she do she does the work she helps with exhibits merchandise and advertising at the indian museum she has raised money and awareness for many indigenous causes but most important she has brought forth the need for indian studies in our schools if our review if our view is so wrong why

132was ms paluma invited by the wappinger indian tribe to the unveiling of their new statute honoring a past chief i highly doubt the tribe would bestow such an honor to someone whose beliefs do not align with theirs do you see a pattern here they will attack and bully until they get what they want all they've accomplished with their bullying tactics is embarrass themselves and make themselves look petty and small taking a picture with a red dress and giving us a ham recipe does not make you a supporter of indian affairs you've learned nothing from this experience do the right thing thank you time is up that was the end of it thank you good evening good evening joe vaiton 78 beach avenue watertown i'm just here tonight to ask someone on the board to make

133a motion to look into bringing back the indian or else explain to this town while you voted him out and you replace him with another native american that's all i need to say thank you any other members of the public in the room wish to speak is there anybody in the virtual audience that wishes to speak sorry go ahead state your name and address uh my name is kristen vanderlin she's a i am a 2016 watertown high school alumni i currently reside in watertown connecticut i'm sorry in hartford connecticut but my watertown address is 194 with spring hill road i am the executive director and co-founder of a local advocacy organization called the reflection zone we are an organization of lgbtq plus individuals based in litchfield county that are dedicated to providing interactive education and

134resources that amplify the lived experiences of the lgbtq plus community a few weeks ago several community members brought to our attention an incident of a watertown high school student who yelled a homophobic and transphobic slur towards other students in addition to comments that were made about the state's health education curriculum framework and its inclusion of information on gender identity gender expression and people who are transgender and non-binary in a 2019 national school climate survey almost 8 in 10 lgbtq plus students reported feeling unsafe in school due to their identity so we feel that it is vital to discuss education regarding these issues as people in the larger community brought this to our attention we will be holding a virtual open forum on monday june 6th at 7 00 p.m via zoo all are welcome and

135invited to participate this will be a held safe space to open a dialogue about what was said how it was interpreted and how inclusivity needs to be addressed moving forward we will have a moderator in case of any inappropriate comments or speakers so that everyone involved can hear each other's perspectives and i'll discuss the nuanced language surrounding this we cannot emphasize enough that this will not be to point fingers or place blame but to have an honest open dialogue in communication you can sign up for this by visiting the events page at the reflectionzone.org to sign up for the zoom link and thank you everyone for your time and we're really looking forward to having this discussion with the community thank you miss vanderlin any additional speakers from the virtual audience wish to speak hello

136this is tom sawyer i live at 176 hidden pond drive in watertown i want to speak to you about image and i want to speak to you about adoption the capital in washington dc very top the highest piece of washington dc there's a native american woman she's called the star woman the smartest people in america put her up there to look after us recently the united states government the u.s mint is producing uh the old buffalo head nickel there's an indian on the front and the mighty buffalo on the back the smartest people in america are putting these coins out they're quite expensive about 80 years ago they came out with a gold coin 50 gold piece on that coin if you look at it it looks exactly like the watertown india exactly now why

137would america the smartest people in america produce such a coin give reverence to native americans so why are we even talking about this with the watertown india you the board many many years ago adopted watertown india and the boards from way back when until right until this last year have kept that promise of adoption now you don't kick your cat your dog out or your son or your daughter's out if you adopted them you don't throw out your grandma or grandpa do you when you make that commitment that's what it is to native americans your word is it you take care of it you should be taking care of this indian properly custer had a problem he had a sickness he could not hear some of these small people maybe they have that same situation

138going on with them they need to think about that their ears are closed their hearts are not well so i will pray for them that their hearts become better that's it on my time thank you very much thank you mr sawyer is there anybody else from the virtual audience that wishes to speak all right seeing none amendment 4319 thomaston road first i just want to say evan you're amazing um every time i hear you speak at these meetings i'm just always in awe of you and what a great role model you are to all of our community so thank you for you are going to be soiling this next year and you have some big shoes to fill for whoever you choose next year that's for sure um that was quite interesting tonight but i

139really would like to say that we've had a lot of political talk beginning the school year first regarding anti-science science matters now about racist non-racist matters and i i just don't know how you guys get past all of this to to the root of the children and really we we now have a budget that was not passed because it's being held hostage by these same people over and over again and at the end of the day this is supposed to be about our children and our children who have suffered in the last two years and who are overcoming a lot of loss coming back into the schools that's where the focus needs to be our focus needs to be back on our kids back on their education on and back on their well-being and i

140would like to see that the conversation stopped going backwards let's go forward let's keep continuing this is mental health awareness month we have a lot of kids who are struggling in our community first-hand experience i've seen many of our students in ers recently in the crisis units and it's heartbreaking and i mean specifically watertown students so let's bring it back to where it needs to be back to our kids please in their well-being thank you that's it and seeing no more public participation i'll turn it over to mrs husking anything from our secretary we received no communications since the last board meeting all right thank you mrs hoskin committee reports back over to you this is hoskin prior to the meeting tonight the curriculum and instruction subcommittee met we were able to look at all

141of the good work it started with a presentation from the high school in terms of our sat opportunities and testing we talked about curriculum frameworks that came down from the state and most importantly at least in terms of the public participation tonight where we're at on our native american curriculum and how we're moving forward this summer mrs feckady talked about the summer curriculum writing our summer program so when we talk about our students and how we're bringing them forward in terms of the effects of the pandemic and the lost opportunities we have wonderful programs planned for the summer and we are always looking at grant writing in order to provide those programs the watertown curriculum council who is a group that's been behind the scenes working hard and mrs becketty also gave us an update

142on where they are in terms of reviewing our curriculum in terms of the audit that needs to be done and how we do continue to work toward what is our most important reason for being here and that is our student and that's my report great thank you um policy and labor mr malagudi yes mr chair uh tonight we had our first reading series five thousand students graduation requirements health assessments immunizations non-discrimination series six thousand instruction credit for online courses addressing enrollment in an advanced course of program and challenging curriculum series series 9000 board bylaws meeting conduct we also had our second reading and also voted into policy series 1000 community board operations deadly weapons and firearms 1300 non-discrimination fourteen hundred and fourteen hundred r series four thousand personnel non-discrimination forty ninety and forty ninety are

143and the prohibition of sex discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace forty one forty and forty one 4140r is that all of it i think it is yes sir awesome thank you for the update um all right budget and finance so regretfully the budget did not pass on tuesday i know the town council had a special meeting earlier today i do not have a official word of the result of that so dr v and and miss kashuba and their teams we'll once we know um what the the end result from the town council will be we'll go back to the board figure out where to go um and we'll provide updates as as that comes um typically don't do this but dr v anything you want to add on the budget process or anything like

144that sure um well in the immediate and time sensitive i'm i'm waiting with bay to breath here to see what the final number is that the town council uh con concluded this evening i do anticipate that we will probably have a suggestion of cut which as you know at the entire watertown public schools community we presented or i presented a budget through the good work of our administrative teams as well as our cabinet a number that was real and not padded in any way it was an increase of 5.1 percent so anything to it will obviously be detrimental to us but we will figure out how to do that moving forward i encourage our community to get involved in the budget process excuse me budget process but also in the outcomes of what our budgets

145are and the only way to do that really is to learn about our budget and then to use your right as a community member when it comes down to voting so i'll leave it at that and as as always i will provide my communications just with updated numbers and so on and so forth i anticipate that our next referendum will probably be outside of school the school academic calendar so please if there's anybody who's going to be away on vacation so on and so forth there are ways in which you can still vote by being away via the absentee ballot so you can certainly do that by going to the town town offices and figuring that out or just googling it thank you great thank you dr villanueva facilities pbc operations uh mr cavallos uh

146no report tonight mr chairman thank you um i do i wasn't sure if we wanted to cover under budget and finance um or facilities um i do want to mention that um mr velardi our director of facilities did present to the board earlier um and gave us a revised um prioritized list of capital improvement projects um we have been engaged with the town council for the better part of a year and a half maybe longer i've lost track at this point but we currently have a minimum of about 12 12.5 million dollars in urgent projects that need to be addressed those are roofs those are tracks those are fields etc so just wanted to keep the the community aware of those those projects that we are working towards um and mrs faresa if you can

147hear me governance and community engagement awesome can you hear me yes all right wonderful um we do do not have um any reports at this time but what i will say though is in light of what happened with the budget and speaking of community engagement we have been having ongoing dialogues about what we can't do as a board to better engage the public when it comes to budget and referendums so we are working on some procedural policies on that ourselves so i just wanted to make that comment and um thank you great thank you mr paressa um agenda item q report from the poor chair um no report tonight and action items agenda r all right so um the first uh consider to change the june 13th board of education regular meeting date because of

148graduation ceremonies at the request of the superintendent it is recommended that the board change the initial scheduled board of education meeting date from june from june 13 2022 to june 14 2022 because of graduation ceremonies on that day do i have a motion yes i move that the board approved the board of ed meeting dates changed from june 13 2022 to june 14 2022. thank you miss hillian do i have a second second any discussion all those in favor opposed extent i want to say exceptions abstentions thank you it's been a long day motion passes consideration to approve of the 2022-2023 national school lunch program and meal price increase for watertown public schools it is recommended that the board approve of the national school lunch program and meal price increase for watertown public schools effective

149for the 2022-2023 school year do i have a motion i move that the board approved the national school lunch program and meal price increase for the watertown public schools effective for the 2022-2023 thank you miss palumbo do i have a second i second the motion thank you mr melaguti um any discussion all those in favor aye opposed abstentions promotion carries all right consideration to give the superintendent approval to submit the reprioritized capital improvement plan request to the town council due to the extended time lapse on projects and current level of need for the district it is recommended that the board give the superintendent approval to submit the reprioritized capital improvement plan that was reviewed tonight to the town council due to the extended time lapse on projects and current level of need and changes in

150priorities for the district do i have a motion i move that the board approved the superintendent to submit the reprioritized capital improvement plan request to the town council due to the extended time lapse on projects and current level of need for the district thank you miss lawton do i have a second second thank you mr govales any discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed abstentions motion passes all right uh future agenda items and board member comments does anybody have any future agenda items or board member comments i will comment yes miss hillian thank you um regretfully i don't have a recipe this evening with that with it being mental health awareness month um i would like to and with in light of topics that have been brought up in recent conversations um i did

151want to highlight some significant statistics um that i feel that are important one i'm just going to read through a few stats at this point one in five young people report the pandemic had a negative impact on their mental health one in 10 people under the age of 18 experience a mental health condition following covid19 diagnosis uh u.s adolescents in the ages of 12 to 17 one in six of them experience major depressive disorder three million have had serious thoughts of suicide there's a 31 percent increase in mental health related er visits and one in six youths six the ages 6 through 17 experience mental health disorders each year that's 40 000 youth in connecticut ages 12 to 17 that have depression also 18.8 percent of high school students have serious thoughts of suicide 42

152percent of lgbtq youth have had serious thoughts of suicide four times more likely to attempt suicide than straight youth 52 percent of lgbtq youth who identify as transgender or non-binary have had serious thoughts of suicide and those trans people have 12 times more likely to attempt are 12 times more likely to attempt suicide than to general population those are some serious and significant statistics and there's a large span of things that can contribute to the mental health and stability of a student something that plays this does play a significant role in an individual's mental health is their identity when a person's social identity which can be ethnicity beliefs culture race sexual orientation gender is threatened or questioned they can become vulnerable to depression and as we see a significant number of students ages 12 to

15317 struggle with depression identity is not something someone chooses it is who they are and when messages about their identity are sent to them good or bad it helps them to feel good or bad about themselves messages can be set in many ways and when education around different racial cultural sexual orientation or gender identities are left out of students learning that sends messages to those individuals their sends messages to those individuals that they are not cared about that they are not important that they are not that they are bad or that they are not enough um it's not acceptable in any way for any student to feel that way children learn about other identities and by doing so it does nothing but broaden that student's knowledge and understanding of others and it also may save

154some lives thank you mrs hillian um oh yes i'm sorry myself um i wasn't sure if or what i would say tonight there's been a lot kind of a lot of topics milling around in the community and at these meetings and i probably won't be as succinct as mr davidson i not probably i won't be but there are some things i think are just weren't sharing because there's a lot of common themes and what i've heard tonight from our subcommittee meeting through our regular board meeting through public comment before the regular board meeting tonight we did have a subcommittee meeting and we talked about some of the curriculum topics and as we came here tonight we heard some strategic planning updates and that included some of the the highest ranked areas of importance throughout the

155town and that included community pride and welcoming schools everybody is upset this week too and reeling over the the failure of the budget but those are two items that we do not need a budget for we do not need a budget to be welcoming we do not need a budget to have pride into in our town in our schools in each other um i hear a lot of people the resounding theme through multiple topics is people wanting to be seen and you know although people may disagree some of what comes up with the topic of the mascot is consideration for students who want to be seen who may feel marginalized by certain things and that warrants consideration and likewise when it's a topic about curriculum and there is a group of people who are feeling

156hurt by what is brought up we see that as well and they want to be seen and all of those things are equally important all of these students are equally important everybody deserves to be seen and that does not require a budget or a number or money on the table to do from us one of us to another at this table in the community anyone in this room remotely parents students alike if we want to have community pride that has to happen or we're not going to have pride or welcoming schools i just wanted to share i think a lot of us want the same things and the answer to that is not to argue about it but to figure it out we're working in native american curriculum which also came up in our subcommittee

157we're going to discuss while being mindful of how certain things can be hurtful and impact and feel marginalizing to a group of students and that's how we move forward because leaving somebody behind is never okay and it sounds a lot to me like there's a lot of people who just want to be seen and so having been here in watertown and and being at this table you know i appreciate that it was brought back to the kids there's a reason everybody's in this room there's a reason we've all been at these chairs for almost four hours now tonight and have much more time to go still and it is the students and that's it that's why we're working for the budget that's why we're having meetings that's why we're discussing curriculum and i hope we

158can all remember that and that's how we're going to have pride thank you miss lawton all right so tonight's just getting started we have agenda item t we will be going into executive session do i have a motion and please be sure to include miss fernaldi because she does plan on being here okay thank you i move that the board of ed go into executive session for the purpose of the superintendent's evaluation attending executive session will be christa palumba john gavales christine faresa via virtual rob mikowski kathy rinaldi dr villanueva jason maligoody liz lawton kathy hillian and myself karen hosking thank you do you have a second i suck in the motion any discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions we are now an executive session thank you all right you could stop the

159recording there mr dalton and if we can don't worry about it sir no worries at all macaos email goodie close no worries sir thank you i'm gonna i'm gonna make unofficial motions for a bio break because like