Board of Education Meeting

001all right folks we're going to go ahead and get started um I'm going to call to order the um I'm GNA call to order the um Regular meeting I know it is right of the uh Brookfield um Board of Education uh will you all it's 702 would you all please join me in uh rising and saying the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag un unit States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty justice for all it's nice to see so many people here this evening good evening um we have a full compliment of board members Mr feto Miss Scalera Miss sakur Miss Fernandez I'm Wendy Young Blood we've got Sarah dine and Miss Greenstein plus our executive team hi everyone it's really

002nice to see you all good evening I'd just like to make a motion to amend the agenda um launch right in um I'd like to move public comment to after roll call um for this kind of motion is simple majority do know or we two3 to make a a change to the agenda two3 is 2/3 really have a problem with that we have two we have one person for public comment sure all right um all in favor say I I hi okay anyone oppos please signify by saying nay right so it passes unanimously so let's do public comment first then or yeah let's go ahead and move public comment uh to be in place of um item four right be four yeah okay then we have um we have one person for public comment um

003it's Mrs Rice and you want to speak to the board about policy yes yes okay great thanks um Mrs Rice um yeah I'm gonna read the an expedited version okay so we welcome public comment we're really excited to to hear from you um three minutes and please start by saying your um your name and where you live sure uh Denise rice 3 old Hemlock Road oops sorry I just want to make sure you're oops that's long okay shocking to say and I'm sure to hear I'm not up here to speak on special ed I'm here to try to bring some attention to policy priorities that have been missed and some priorities prioritized for convenience fact is that we have policies that are out of compliance for years some of them directly affect our kids yet

004policies have recently be in been introduced by state have come front and center and I just don't understand here's an example um from a few years ago the bullying policy for one the law was passed July 2019 the lobby became effective July 2021 it took our district until May 2023 to update this policy most districts around us were on time or two months late but before the new school year but not us yet a policy to lower cost to our staff to send their kids in District if they lived out a district was rushed through so the speed this one was done would show that it was more important to the district drag your feet on One race through another one directly affects the kids one does not so before I'm shut down I am

005not speaking about anybody that goes to any of our schools it was years ago were the kids out were their kids outplaced or still being outplaced at that time due to bullying yes I know of one but unfort it wasn't the bully the victim one that was so severely bullied that it will affect him the rest of his life and many of you know the mom and or the kid don't you Erin Sarah Wendy and actually all of you he's amazing he's my son but without important policies like this to help keep our kids safe well they come home with chain marks around their necks and the bullies get nothing policies are made to help the kids staff and District as a whole and keep a school environment that is safe for everyone these are

006the policies that should be updated first whether it deals with safety School surveys or policy political positions displayed these should come way before anything else I can think of I want my third grader to have a great education with wonderful teachers and not get swayed by opinion either way on anything that's not why he's there I really don't need him coming home with a tampon but again that was a priority yes it's law but we don't comply with so many what's the difference I guess with so many other important policies that need to be updated that I'm a little confused with that being the one that we stood by thank you thank you Mrs Rice all right let's move then to introduction of certified staff members um Dr BR are you going to take the

007lead on that well what I'll do is I'll I'd like to introduce our princial to come up by school and this is a longtime Brookfield tradition long before I got here where uh new new faculty members are introduced by the principal um as part of the um other uh opportunity here where the principes talk about the first week or two weeks of school depending on the timing of the board meting it's always a nice celebratory time so maybe we start with uh kandlewood Lake and Dr P if you could come up and introduce your staff members that were able to make it today new staff members sure thank you we're on you're on okay uh we were thrilled to get the candidates to stand before me uh we had a very aggressive interview process over

008the summer uh I'm proud to say that we had nearly 200 applicants uh for our teaching positions to my right is our reading teacher Lindsay paselli Who Rose Way to the Top uh for a reading teacher she's already been amazing and then we have Shaina Marx she's our social worker for the upper school equally amazing and then there's Dylan hasselman first grade teacher sorry I have to do it at his interview he shared he wants to be a teacher to say have the same amazing impact his kindergarten teacher had on him he's now teaching across the hall from his kindergarten teacher at kwood Lake and I'm G to do it luchiana Goku rakai she is our she is our K2 Spanish teacher thank you Dean can you come up uh for whis skiner good evening

009I'm Dean Rena principal at whiskin a middle school we had three new hires this uh summer one of our hires is our new art teacher uh Miss Keef Michelle Keefe she could not be here tonight because she lit had a baby in the past year and her husband was working so she couldn't obviously leave the kids so she gets a pass um but very exciting to my right um is our Spanish teacher Mabel Santiago I not I don't know how to say all that in Spanish I'm not going to lie I probably should have paid attention when I was younger but we are very lucky to get U Mabel came from Florida and then we have Kibby gin who came to us from and our ELC program from uh New Milford so they're great addition

010to whiskin middle [Applause] school and Mr Banda from BHS good evening Mark Banda principal at Brook F High School uh this summer we actually had two new hires only one of them is here today um but I'm pleased to introduce uh our new reading teacher this is Miss Kathleen Crawford our the new teacher is um he's known as the father of Bobby Dale and Caitlyn Dale and uh oh my God why am I losing the um Danny Dale but now he's his own person in this building so we're very happy for him uh but Bobby Dale also joins us at as a special education teacher as well thanks welcome to all of you thanks so much and just so the board knows there was a for certified teachers that are part of the Brookfield Education

011Association we had 16 new hires this year that we filled so obviously we have about half the folks here tonight all right so let's move to the next item on the agenda um we've got the opening of school reports and updates all right so thanks for you guys thank you everybody good night see you tomorrow Mark do you want to come back up and uh keep on rolling the opening of school reports and we'll go the other way this time okay thank you again another long time tradition here in Brookville was de me our all right Dean's happy to be in the middle all right so um pulled up our old school enrollment reports and looked at the things we've done in the past couple years uh so a couple updates just generally about the

012school we I tend to start with enrollment um you know after July 1 we had 45 new registrations uh at Brookfield High School and 28 withdrawals so think of that as you go through the um the numbers here we have 229 12th graders 210 11th graders 208 uh 10th graders and 203 9th graders which is brings us to a exact total as of today of 850 students which is down from 23 students at the same time last year uh and that's with all those new registrations 45 and withdrawals that's the class the the enrollment has definitely gone down um I'd also like to start with some uh thanks certainly uh she's not here this evening but Katherine oo uh who stepped in as our interm assistant principal uh starting in April of last year all

013the way through the beginning uh of September got us to the beginning of the school year uh Mrs Griffin is now back uh from her leave and Mr Breo is working full-time at her uh position uh as the World Language and uh El coordinator for the district uh but we would not have been able to do the work that we did and accomplish all that we did without having her so I I want to make sure I recognize her um and then over the summer um first time doing this without uh Mrs Griffin for some time who's really worked on scheduling so had a lot of people step up and help that process I'm sure Dean's going to talk about scheduling as well uh at some point I know he had some fun but I

014appreciate all the um the support staff that were there whether school counselors or our power school uh technicians who did a lot of work over the summer um always thanking my secretar uh Miss Caroline archangelo who you know pretty much I can't runs my life thank God and my wife is thankful for that um you know Rosa as I told you hopcraft is our register in the building you can imagine 45 new registrations in 28 um withdraws the different schools she was busy as well um miss van roal who's worked here in the library uh in the heat all summer uh was able to do some rearranging and help create a new space over there um as always Kathy Kito and Seth Craig who do everything to technology Mary negri um who helps with Athletics

015obviously and you'll hear from Steve later on tonight and then our custodial maintenance staff and I got a great email from uh one of our chemistry teachers um must have been two days ago and just said an unsolicited thank you to the custodial staff for the work they do and continue to do to keep the place clean so that was that was great so I appreciate all the guys and their hard work um a couple things going on as we started the school year with some of our opening day PD we talked about the theme being ownership and perspective right and so I did my best as as the leader of the building to help teachers provide and staff understand you know that perspective for the school year and it's our theme moving forward they

016actually had to go and put their cell phones in a pouch and which was uh very interesting for them to go through that process um and not have it with them and then I gave them while they had the phones and the pouch then I gave them a practice sat so they could see what it's like really because sometimes I think we do lose a little bit of perspective sometimes and we talk about all the things that we're doing and how important it is and you know the SAT is definitely a different sat than we all took and even the kids that graduated from here 3 years ago it's a different sat from them so uh they had an opportunity to take that and reflect and and the types of questions we're going to be

017working that in um throughout the course of the school year and then the other thing that I know Dean had talked about in previous years and themes had been their why right so as you walk around the hallways you'll see pictures of uh each of the teachers created uh and all staff members including secretaries and everyone else uh has created pictures and a little little blur about why they do what they do and so it's that constant reminder when they walk in every day um you sometimes we forget and we have everybody has bad days but we walk in and say okay this is why I do this uh and it's also nice for parents when we have open house tomorrow as they walk around they get to see those faces and people as well

018um a lot of facilities work over the summer uh as you most of you have seen the student uh LED future teachers group that created the grant that did the uh revamping of the lockers with replac them with benches and um charging stations which is awesome um it looks fantastic you saw the new uh some new security measures right some of those the spherical ball uh what how do you say it ballards ballards ballards ballards um they're guarding the entrances now um then we're also planning for additional swipe badge access looking to upgrade and um improve additional cameras here in the building and they're also looking at um you know looking at a double door security entrance by the auditor and gym how we can make that happen um two days ago we had the

019club Fair what a time to do that for nth and 10th graders the same time that Nas came in for district accreditation so that was fun as they walked around and saw all the different things going on at at any one given time we're back on schedule now giving the 9th 10th and 11th graders the digital PSAT in October which is just about a month away um so that'll be exciting for us so we're looking forward to seeing how that goes um the St students started painting their senior parking lots uh their spaces uh on the weekend some amazing artists out there it's fantastic and then before you know it just the way it works out we have an early Homecoming this year uh with our game on Friday October 4th and the carnival and

020then the dance on the 5th um I do you know we always talk about funny anecdotes and I'm glad I get to go first and they have to follow me because I always I struggle with the comedic timing of these two other gentlemen here uh and what they do from their schools so I I guess there's two anecdotes well one anecdote I want to share specifically so the end of of must have been the first or second day of school um we had a new student who's a nth grader uh uh comes up to me as I'm standing outside of the bus you know trying to direct people and I was talking to um our security monitor M Savage and he walks right between us and he says Mr BL I just want you to

021know you hired fantastic teachers you did a great job and then walked away and I was like it was wow okay first second day he's like you hired fantastic teachers I was like yeah we do have pretty great teachers here um and then I would I'd be remiss if I didn't share uh one of my favorite jokes um but I want to tell you a story that once upon a time there was a king uh he was only 12 in tall John he was a terrible leader but he was a great ruler um before you leave um Mr Blanda Mr Blanda Mr Blanda before you leave I just wanted to point out this on this sheet that we have up here I don't know if you guys noticed but the reduction in chronic absenteeism that's

022off to you and your staff thank you I mean that's that's a really significant drop and and uh it had been an issue we were we've been talking as a board about how to how to um get kids excited about schools I mean we know you run the schools but we're like what can we do and to see a number like this something's moving in the right direction so thank you yeah that's something that was the work of really my assistant principles and I went back as I do my open house presentation and I looked my open house presentation last year I talked about things to remind people of and attendance was on there three different times it was tongue and- cheek and done intentionally but we were going to focus on it this past

023year and to see where those numbers are are and I you know I I give the credit to really my assistant principles and the rest of my leadership team and my teachers who were fantastic and on top of everything it it's really it's made a fantastic difference so thank you I appreciate that well please pass along our commendations on that I will absolutely thank you quick question yeah so during your two minutes of fame on TV um goodness stated that you were gonna go yeah collect any of that data so far so I I'll the lunchroom is an interesting environment I would say uh generally right a High School lunchroom is always an interesting environment um you know it's anecdotal at this point I would still say that kids are on their cell phones it's

024still there that is that really has not changed a ton um you know so I know that the Restriction of them able to use them in the classroom um or during instructional time is really I I do see in the hallways occasionally kids in the phones I don't think the passing time and the cafeteria has really changed much quite frankly from what it was the previous year um what I can tell you is that classroom instruction has absolutely shifted from the feedback I'm getting from teachers and then I'll be collecting feedback from students as well um it's I have teachers that have come to me and said listen I've under planned I'm used to it usually takes longer to get through these things I have eight minutes at the end of the I I can't

025get I I need to find something else to do because they're so engaged and there's um so I'll be able to share some survey data I I sent survey out to the staff I think 72 so far have responded so ible to share that information um probably with cape and moving on in the coming weeks um but it's been generally very very positive in the classroom and I would say not a ton of change in the hallways or lunches so it's um you know we'll we're starting small and then we'll see what happens after that so yeah okay thank Mar I question stting year Ain could you put the mic closer no just put it closer last week I don't know yeah last year you um stated that you were going to give um data

026for late start and if the kids were sleeping more and you did so you know it's interesting looking at so we did a the school climate survey the end of the school year we surveyed parents necessarily to get some of that information that did come out in the school climate survey uh it was about I think Fair belief there was two questions in the climate survey one was about um was your student uh negatively impacted by early dismissals that was one and the other question was do you see your child sleeping more right which I think would probably be the a more realistic assessment because when I ask kids things sometimes they're realistic and sometimes they're not I've asked my teenage son and I don't often get the response that I know is the correct

027one um and so I remember I think I have the survey data at my at the table but I think it was around 68% said um that they it was a favorable response that they did see an increase and and better sleep for their kids so y okay thanks yeah I was absolutely I was just wondering with sports and kids leaving early for sports so yeah we and and Mr Baldwin has been collecting since last year all the different times that we have to have kids leave because of sports and that's actually you'll see it in his presentation too a little bit later one of the things Aaron that we're definitely going to do is both of your questions there that he's talking about with Steve but to sleep we do want to uh survey

028the students themselves and so we do want to do an assessment at some point whether it's later this fall or mid year so we get a sense after a year and a half how are we doing with this yeah can I can I just suggest that that's the the same survey that we gave before implementing this change because that's really the best way to have like an accurate sure picture we look at that absolutely thank you Mark okay thanks Mr Renda good evening again um I am going to talk about the start of school year for whiskin middle school I will start off I'll try to keep the same theme about uh attendance uh number of students this uh year we welcomed in 596 students through the uh fir on uh the first day last

029year we're around the same number I think I I tried to look quickly I think it was 592 so we had 29 new students and then the exact number uh that left in the summer um I'm not sure of but the students that did come in as you can see it's it's it was like a a tra off um we had the from the 29 students we had two students move in about a week before school started from another country we had a student from Poland and a a student from Italy literally had just move moved here uh nine students from AIS um we had Georgia Pennsylvania New York and then obviously from a lot of the area towns um so that was our attendance uh I would also like to talk about just the

030thank you to get a to get a year started to go through the summer and Mark alluded to scheduling um we had a little incident with a person that helps out that I say helps out does it builds the schedule um couldn't do that so we had to learn me and Mr Bednar had to learn how to build a schedule and they say you look on YouTube you can find anything you know you Google we did all those things but um literally the amount of time and effort not just from us but uh from my secretaries from Denise Walsh who I know she's already loaded in doing everything that she has to do took extra time out of her days to also help us out which was tremendous um the central office for all their

031support that we had over the summer uh just paperwork and hiring that we do I know it's a lot in at central office at the last minute sometimes but we appreciate you pushing that through uh Deb Jones with the bus company and really you know getting all the uh routes down and being able to help some of our parents because I know the lower levels that's something they get very nervous about um we did not have any kids miss the bus that's a good thing usually have at least one every year or two but that didn't happen Park and wreck for the facilities the custodians obviously for the facilities and doing everything they can over the summer because our building was one of the ones that was used throughout we had most every program imaginable

032and Brookfield was at our school and really we only had a certain section that the the custodians could actually work on at the beginning so again the amount of work and then at the end trying to H hustle when they were out of there to be able to get it all done was uh tremendous staff that worked uh summer school and the staff that helped with teacher interviews and and the demo lessons that we do for those teachers like Dave was talking about um again really appreciative because they volunteer their time to to come in and do that um SE uh secretary the power school scheduling like I said Ed was just tremendous I mean he gave days that he didn't even have to be there to come and help because we knew we were

033it was crunch time um to all my secretaries for all the work they do over the summer closing the end of last year and then starting the new year and then ordering materials and state reports and all these different things and like Mark said you know you talking about your secretaries uh Mary Li is my secretary most of you might know who she is my wife you know thankful for her every day of the year because she was just amazing helping with it and and she's taken on so many different roles because of some things that have happened and um she keeps me on track and and keeps me sane so big shout out to her and and like I said about Mr bnar for the scheduling it was really a team effort um before

034school started we did a uh our normal um uh at the begin beginning of school year when the teachers come back we do have trainings but we do our IEPs and 504 training for staff excuse me meetings and we have staff from the previous grade level meet with the new grade level coming up again just so everybody everybody could really understand kids because sometimes we get a piece of paper with like you know these certain things accommodations but you really that doesn't really know the kid so we do a lot of that at the beginning um getting to know our students uh team and grade level meetings uh going over students to get ready for that first day and also we have department meetings to talk about really just the focus that we're going to

035have in that content area based on some of the data from the previous year also so that was there the first week of school we had a back to school dance first time ever the first week of school we had over 200 something kids we actually had to move it down to um the gyms which was like a hot boox but we had it down in the gyms and I think the kids had a really great time which was was fantastic FC couple things I know that I'm very excited about I did I think I spoke before but we started a web program it's called where everyone belongs and it's a uh a program for our sixth grade student orientation where we had two of our teachers who get all this credit Kayla denal and

036Jessica Reese um they applied for a state Grant a $4,000 State grant that uh really only paid for the training part of it and then we were lucky enough well they they put together something to give to the bef and the bef has helped us fund uh for them to get shirts for the students on the first day of school that they were able to to wear those on the first day of school so if kids needed to um ask any questions they knew who they can go to plus also also the sixth graders would know who their leaders were and then also just supplies that we're going to that we needed binders and all different things that we needed and for the rest of the year the bef has has graciously funded that for

037us too so that was something I'm very excited in this web program what it is is we have we have current eighth graders that were nominated by their teachers we started last they were nominated by their teachers they had to write a little something that they why they were interested they were trained for two days over the summer uh which Jessica did uh Reese did for us and um then they before school started we had the sixth grade students come and they did a little orientation team building activities different things like that to to really get them to feel comfortable with each other and also they they met new other students that they did actually didn't even know um then now what we're doing is the program's going to meet once a month in for

038every five uh sixth graders they have one eighth grader so what we did what we did was two eighth graders get 10 kids together right just because it's better to have someone else with you when you do something um they've already done one of their lessons with the students um the lessons are going to run around Stress Management teamwork dealing with mean behaviors how to lift other people up and then just getting then we will also get feedback from six grade teachers on anything else that they see with these students coming in um that may need the eighth graders may need to you know do a lesson with them the second thing I want to bring up is while the sixth grade is doing the web lessons again that's once uh the month Kayla and

039Jess are starting a un we started an unplugged hour and what this is is this is going to be where students will choose from a menu of activities this is for our seventh and eighth graders sixth graders will be doing their web lessons um the seventh and eighth graders will be running um the the teachers excuse me will be running uh activities is something that they enjoy to do so there's anything from crochet to listen to certain music it's unplugged though that meaning that the kids cannot use their cell phones there's no TV and there's no um computers so again trying to go along with that um as you know the staff we're reading reading the anxious generation and now that our students are supposed to No I say supposed to have their cell phones

040in their lockers um during the day in their duffel bags we wanted to find ways to kind of go along that theme or kids to enjoy activities that they don't have have to use technology again like that that play um that they talk about in the book and then what we'll be doing is that will be the first Friday of every month we're going to do the unplugged hour we we we told the staff about a little bit before but today we went back over it and like I said once they choose their activities they'll be putting it out to the seventh and eth graders and we're actually going to also mix the seventh and eighth graders together with a staff member it's kind of like advisory if you've heard in Middle Schools um so

041again that's something that I'm very excited about and one more thing that I uh we got the numbers today just wanted to share with you was that um last year when I came to you talk about the difference in a schedule for our Bandon chorus that we Chang it and it's in the UNH schedule well last year our numbers for band Bandon course total percentage was 38.4% of our kids participated this year that number is up to 51.2% so having it in the UNH special so kids don't have to don't have to miss a class or pulled out for lessons was we think has been just a really tremendous um start of the year and I have to say honestly it's been a different vibe this year um without the students walking you know walking

042around with cell phones little different than the high school the eighth graders are weren't always weren't really excited I have to say because we allowed eighth graders to have their cell phones in the in the um um cafeteria kids would walk around but they couldn't be on their phone or texting because then we would take them but now they're just not out and the teachers say what a different vibe the sixth grade teachers are like I don't think those guys know any better like the sixth grade so they don't know any better in that sense but our seventh and eighth graders obviously um it's different for them and you know I I just been talking to the kids about it and you know just asking them to some of our kids about that and one

043girl said it's actually less stressful because I'm not thinking about checking my phone because no one else is I said it's a great way to think about it you know and again I know that's just a a small you know a group of students I was talking to that was one girl's take on it but I'm going to tell you right now it is just different it's just you could see it the kids are and not that they didn't talk before like we didn't have a real big problem in the cafeteria with like all the kids had their cell phones out we really honestly didn't but now it's just you don't see any of it so and we've I think we've at this point taken about 12 phones that now parents have to come pick

044them up so we're doing okay thanks any questions comments thoughts all right sounds like a great start thank you it really has it not great start thanks P how about you well it is my pleasure to be here to provide tonight A Brief update on the awesomely successful star tour school year at kend Lake Elementary School all I can say is what a difference one year made our building and parking lots were truly ready and I was finally able to focus 100% of my efforts on being a principal and not a general contractor so so that was awesome I'd like to begin exess expressing my sincere thanks to several key groups who played a crucial role in ensuring that everything ran smoothly first heartfelt thank you to our custodians their hard work and dedication ensured

045that the school was clean safe and welcoming on the first day and every day since next huge thank you to our office staff and secretaries the start of the school year can be especially hectic and they are the calm in the storm for managing Student Records to handling parent inquiries new student registration organizing material their work is essential in keeping our school running smoothly I would also like to acknowledge our bus company and drivers and ensuring the Safe Transportation of our students to and from each day some of you may recall our first dismissal last year the last bus rolled out of can Lake Elementary School just a little before 6:00 p.m. this year on day one the last bus rolled out at 348 nice win-win I would also like to acknowledge that our teachers

046support staff and our Administration teams from both clas and central office from the warm welcomes to the perfectly prepared classrooms the dedication and hard work truly shined the energy and excitement from our students were a reflection of the incredible environment that they've created for them last but certainly not least a thank you to our families thank you for sending us these amazing students as of today we have enrolled 1,088 students prek to fifth grade making us again the largest prek 5 school in Connecticut I believe second place is Cheshire they have about 750 if I'm not mistaken Road I think is it prek 5 I think so or is it prek 8 No prek 5 okay prek 6 sorry oh see see they have all other grade level not fair not fair quick story from

047the opening of the school year very first day I have this adorable little kindergarten student she was holding her hand holding mom's and dad's hands very very tightly walking up to the building wide excitement and after spending a few minutes taking pictures listening to me chat with her parents and watching the other students enter the building she turned to her mother and father and said you can go now this moment was a reminder of the incredible trust that parents place in us and the Readiness of our young students to embrace new experiences it also highlighted the importance of all the work that happens behind the scenes to make students feel safe and welcome thank you thanks da thanks a lot Dave any questions all right thanks Dr PE awesome that's fantastic so let's move then

048to um the uh Brookfield we're going to go to presentations and updates so we're going to hear first from Logan cander of the Brookfield Educational Foundation thanks so much for coming to talk to us thank you for having us I think it's been maybe a year since we were here or so last so we appreciate the chance to let everybody know a little bit more about the Brookfield Education Foundation um first as you said my name is Logan sander I'm a resident here in Brookfield we have three kids and I can tell you one in each school and all of them had wonderful first days thank you guys very much can Echo what you said so um it's great because I also get to see a little bit within each school um but today I'm

049here as the president of the Brookfield Education Foundation we are a 20-year-old nonprofit organization based here in Brookfield we are not part of the town we are not part of the schools or the Board of Ed um but we do work together with those groups our mission is to empower Innovative education and Foster lifelong learning within Brookfield the primary way that we do that is through funding grants you heard uh Dean mentioned one and I'll talk about that briefly in a minute um and a couple others that I would talk about right now um o let me go see if that go up I think this our first one the Brendan slokum event this one was actually brought To Us by the Brookfield Library and it was done in conjunction with the high school Brendan

050slokum was the author of The Violin conspiracy which was a book that was featured as part of the one toown one read program that the library runs and then they were able to bring him back um many months later he did a program at the library we stared shared some of his own personal stories and musical talents and encouraged the audience to discover and engage their own creative voices and then the next day he was here at the high school as a keynote speaker during the high school's diversity day um here he addressed the theme of being true to yourself and he shared his experiences growing up as a young black classical musician and the power of music um this was also live stream to the library at the same time so the community could

051engage and watch this as well I saw it myself he probably spent half of it if not more taking questions from the students too and was really engaged and from what I understand the students were also really engaged during that event um to whiskin we funded the emotion into art program this was brought to us by Rachel jalbert and the whiner middle school counselors this is a unique program um he's a speed painter he's a motivational inspirational speaker I don't know if any of you got the chance to see it while you were there he did programs for each of the grades that were there at whiner middle school and then there was one where the community could come in at night so parents could come in and see the same kind of thing as

052well as other members from the community who might be interested um you can see a couple of the paintings that he did he would use Music he told stories from his own life he would talk about the different key figures that he was painting or others from history so he tied in things from the social studies curriculum and uh theal curriculum and then actually the teachers were able to use that in cross-curricular activities afterwards too that they did with the students super engaging he encouraged students I should say to to follow their dreams but not just follow them follow them with passion um then the foreign exchange program which I think you guys had a presentation on there so the exchange program was already up and running but Katherine oo and Keith Johnston seventh grade

053teacher had come to us to see if we could help fund another component of it and this was going to be a two-day educational tour of Paris and the cool thing here was the students were not only going to get to see all of these art and cultural historical sites and get tours of them but they took pictures they documented it and then they came back and they shared that information with other art classes um language classes and then those materials can be used in those classes now going forward as well those pictures and information that they took um moving to CL we had Jen pink and Laura Miller on behalf of the second grade teachers come to us um to launch this Andrea B thematic unit and here they selected books from author Andrew

054Bey picture books and a chapter book uh emphasize important learning lessons related to courage perseverance problem solving and acceptance the students were able to work collaboratively answer questions about how the characters changed the problems that they faced things like that it had in school lessons as well as some at home so it could engage families within this tube bringing that connection between the school and home and then when it ended they had a trip to the Richfield Playhouse which is part of what you see in the picture there um where they could see adaah twist scientists and friends so the students were very excited about that and they got to keep the chapter book too at the end of it and then you already heard from Dean about uh web so I won't speak too

055much about that but we were really excited when they came to us for this as well these these are a couple pictures actually that they had shared with us um that you can see from the the programs that he was just describing over the summertime um this was something where I think Kayla denal had and J ree had really identified a need within whis skaner Middle School went took the initiative had gotten the training and then came so we could help launch this as a program at whis um so I will leave that slide up so you can see that um a couple other programs since we missed you last year that we had also funded um we did literacy through storytelling with Sheree Smith an author that was from uh whis Ander and also

056done in conjunction with the Brookfield Library so there was a program there that community members could see helped to launch book Creer with Jackie waiting uh bbot which was brought to us by Joyce zalo so those were robots coding robots that kids could use um over started at Center School actually they might still be in the library at CES and Dennis Petrino brought some Oculus goggles to help with some of the science lessons and now they're actually finding other ways to use them in fourth grade that he's there and with um some special ed programs and stuff so some of these programs have really grown in total in our 20 years we have given over $245,000 to brookfield's public school programs for 92 different programs so these might be a project for one classroom one

057we like to reference a lot are the Ducks that Mrs sommerfeld had in kindergarten she was teaching kids about ovias and vivus birth and they got to see the eggs go and actually hatch in their classroom um so that could be for one classroom or for the whole school like the garden that used to be at Huckleberry um that was actually started from a bef Grant Joy was one of the people that was very involved in that one so kids could come out they could take some of their science lessons about the life of a seed or come out and see as you plant seeds in the garden you know use your math skills to plant you have to plant them an inch apart according inch deep that kind of thing um we have also

058helped the wellness room here at BHS The Writing Center the math lab the entrepreneurship and deca Business program and ruler so some of these have really grown some have had longevity and some are onetime events I should also note we also fund Community grants so about a third of the programs that we fund are actually for other community programs so for example we did three different educational series with the senior center this past year year um we have a current Brookfield senior who for his Eagle Scout project had started an origami class at the Brookfield Craft Center um the Conservation Commission has been working on an invasive species identification removal and planting of native species you may have seen some of their signs around they're working a lot at Williams Park and the story walk

059uh it was just at Brookfield Library that was another bef Grant and we are currently looking for new grants to fund we want to help those teacher staff and community members to launch those pilot programs those new ideas that would not traditionally be covered by the school or town budgets so thank you to the administration for letting us come to convocation we were able to speak there so we could reach all the teachers to let them know that we exist we're here please come to us with your ideas and actually to our principes too because we are about to go on uh teacher directed afternoons into each school so that we can go right to the teachers and hear their ideas have help with writing grants any of that kind of stuff that they might

060need we're going to be at clas in September BH in November and whiskin year in December so the last few things I wanted to note are in addition to funding these grants we celebrate the honor and educator program each year you guys have probably seen information about that we have a reception we usually host here to honor those Educators that have been nominated they're teachers but they're also coaches and other um Educators from around town it could be a scout leader so uh and that's something that we'll run again in the spring usually April May time frame and it's a great way I think to recognize some of our Educators in town and the reception we have is always really a lovely chance to be able to talk with these teachers and show our appreciation

061and our largest fundraiser is our annual Gala through this we raise probably most of the money that we Grant out each year some of you I know have been to it before in the past you are all invited everybody at home you are invited invitations just went to the mail information is up here it's on November 22nd at the Candlewood Inn um if you didn't gation please come to our website you are still invited please join us it's a fun night get dressed up have dinner out we have dancing silent auction and we have a new trivia bingo game this year um I just want to give a special thanks to peerpoint behavior analyst of Connecticut they're our signature sponsor for this year and my last thank yous are to our board our board is

062made up of 10 Brookfield residents that volunteer their time much in the way that you all volunteer your time here too thank you for that we also have Dr Anna man on our board is an ex official member Stephanie sakur is also on as a board of ed representative they are invaluable on our board um an integral part really both with our voting members and our non- voting members uh they provide valuable insights and information help promote our foundation uh support our activities grants and Grant Champions uh we really appreciate your help and thank you to our grand Champions those who come to us with these ideas like Kayla coming coming to us to start web this is fantastic for a Community member for a student for a teacher you have an idea please come

063talk to us we want to help you launch those new things those things that otherwise you might not be able to have in the budget to do um thanks to the community that supports us and thank you to all of you for your time and your interest in learning about the bef thank you there any questions okay thank you thanks a lot [Applause] okay now it's time for an update on Athletics uh from Mr Baldwin sorry I'm a little slow I hurt my back the other day um John asked me to keep another five so I'm going to try to go as quick as I can on our update um October 2nd we'll be having our annual Class Act pledge night at Chick-fil-A where the students sign Class Act pledge and they get um free

064admission to the games all year um it's a little delayed this year because Chick-fil-A is having a renovation and this year the students pick pink shirts for their shirts um I want to talk about participation just we are really high on participation this year so there's 4 78 students that are currently playing fall Sports which is 56% of our student body when we look at how many kids signed up for the whole year 701 students that's 82% of our student body will be playing sports this year that's an amazing number and I just wanted to thank the board of ed for adding um spring Unified sports so all the kids get to play their Sports all year round um we'll be heading to the um sport ship banquet in mid October um with uh we

065bring 10 kids but we got to take 11 because um we have a student Vanessa Greenstein on the State athletic advisory and she'll be presenting to the whole group which is a pretty cool thing hopefully she's not nervous because there's going to be like 1,500 people there I would be um just wanted to reiterate that last year we had the Nas and the CIA audit um Dr bro wanted me to talk about some of the recommendations that they made but I didn't want to leave out all the positive things that they said which I don't I don't think that we need to go through those again because you read them so there's two pages of positives and a few recommendations that um Mr bland is going to come up and speak about Steve asked me

066to come speak about the recommendations because it's it's also a challenging thing here's all the combinations I'm going to tell you how I'm going to be better um so but we work collaboratively and and and really kind of going through the summary of the recommendations here um you know one of the things that came up out of the audit was the responsibilities of the athletic director and all the things that he does uh prek-12 uh health and PE including all the things that go on uh with all our Sports and with the addition of the summer work that now happens because of the cia's new rule or allowing coaches and athletes to participate over the summer so it becomes a it's a it's a vast thing so was one of the recommendations was to look

067at that um another thing that they uh recommended we look at the stiens uh that coaches are paid uh those one of the things they looked at uh in comparison to other districts and around and uh what we the salaries that we pay our coaches um and then you know facilities and you know an effective system that Fosters communication collaboration cooperation um between Steve and the director of facilities uh there's so many things that have to go right in order for athletics to work so many different things we rely on um so many different things that can malfunction for example today you know and think I'm so glad we're able to get the maintenance crew on it there was a uh a light guard one of the things that's in the the small gym was

068hanging right and so we were able to get maintenance on there to get there to get and fix it because if we didn't we wouldn't be able to play that game a ninth grade freshman game which we would have a ton of those freshman volleyball games so it's nice to be able to play that it was at risk of not happening because that was there and if a ball had hit it we would have put kids in danger so that's an example of how often that the facilities and Athletics need to work together um so it's continuing to to fix some of those things there um you know we've KC Di has done an amazing job working to revamp and really look at our uh expenditures and our process for finance and budgeting and expenditures

069uh so that's we have handbooks coming out and things that we have so it's been that's been very helpful and that work has already been started um yeah so that those are the big recommendations in terms of what things we need to look at so I'll turn the B over to Steve and I'm proud to announce that we found out Monday that Brookfield High School has been named in National unified Champion school so I thank coach castalano and Coach Stevens for all their work and the amazing support of Mr Roland to to keep that that program going well um I talked about this last year no school has more people on committees at cic than we do uh assistant superintendent Dr man is the co-chair of indoor and outdoor track our principal Mark Blanda is

070the chair of the hockey committee and it's on the board of directors I am on what I feel like is a million of them cic sportsmanship committee equality Advisory Board baseball committee UniFi Sports Committee um I'm the Connecticut High School coach association chair for baseball and I was recently appointed the dance chair for for dance well we we hosted the state tournament here and swcs and they like what we did so they asked me um what I'm more proud of is that we have a student on every single uh committee um again I'll mention Vanessa again Green Scene who is her second year on the cic athletic advisory committee she's done a great job hear a lot of positive things from cic and stuff to she's doing um Emily erson a junior um will replace

071Ava wouth on the student equality Advisory Board and Jamie colber will replace ryy MC on the cic sportsmanship committee so our kids have a lot of say in what happens within our state um I'm proud to announce I never thought I'd say I was an author so in the next edition of inter Scholastic athletic Administration um they're publishing an article that I wrote um it started after covid and it was about belonging and getting kids to feel like they belong on teams and working to make make a better culture um and this started way back when Dr Ruby was here and she helped me finish that off and that's what last year when I went to the National superintendence Convention that's what I spoke about there um transportation issue um with the change in school

072start time we're not we're not getting buses to later and we are getting very few buses um I've spoken with Casey about this um we're doing whatever we can to get kids to games um our really our goto is Carriage limousine their price is very similar to the school bus and when we have to we go to land Jet and they're very pricey so um often times we're not able to get the you know the regular school bus till after 5:00 and you know there's a lot of games that have to start before them you know you think about you know programs soccer there's JV and then varsity and they often start at four and six or five and seven SO waiting for that yellow bus we can't it's hard to do so that's that's

073been a big issue this year but luckily we've only missed one game and that's the first time in my 16 years that that's happened um school start time and again same pictures last year of the golf team um the golf is obviously can't be played under the lights and often times they are they are out of school early there's there has been quite a quite a bit um we try to schedule them as late as possible but again you know because there's back-to-back games and often times soccer will go JV and and varsity will go on the same bus so they get dismissed early to get there volleyball has three levels freshman JB Varsity often times they go on the same bus as well so you know this has been a challenge for for me

074trying not to get kids out of school early but unfortunately I know it has to happen but we we keep running tally and I can share that with everybody from last year to this year all right so now I get to my big kn needs so in in no particular order I just as I thought of them I put them down so as Mark mentioned before cic has started uh a new plan a new procedure for summer workouts where coaches can coach in the summer um and often times obviously in the summer we don't have nurses here and I I really feel the big need to have our trainer here full-time 12 months instead of 11 so when our kids are here practicing we know that somebody's here to do um check the wet bulb

075to make sure that the Field's not hot where they can't practice she's got the radar with um detector for light lightning detector sorry um and it it it's just something I really think that we need to do um you see a lot of schools um New Milford doesn't have a trainer massic doesn't have a trainer we have a very good trainer trainers salaries are increasing in Connecticut because there's very few of them so I just think it's something that we need to look at when we look through the budget um I was told in the summer or end of the spring I had uh work done on our scoreboard he said we are very lucky that it still works so um that's going to need to have to go into the budget for next year

076I believe from what I found in Old paperwork that that was put in in 2012 I think so we we've got some use out of that uh we're still hoping to get a new concession stand at some point um I've been speaking with Park and wck on that um and see hopefully that they can work out something and get something similar to cadigan where we could put it over between the baseball and the The Stadium Field so it's in the middle and maybe put an additional bathroom out there so people come from tennis don't have to walk all the way up there to go to the bathroom um and how can I not mention we have the best ski coach in the state because he's here um La last year um Eric conin volunteered to

077to to start back up a ski team and this year as of today there's 30 kids signed up for that so you know what he did last year allowing those kids to play um he volunteer did it so I mean it's just you know there's two programs that we don't have otherwise we have every single program that the cic offers it's ski and you know towards the end I'm talking about you I have Esports in there um very important I know we have an Olympic athlete in here from from track um speaking in the past few years with um it's especially our boys track coach um he's done a great job and our numbers are growing and but if you think about it we currently have two coaches for 50 kids and you would really

078should have three so you have a track person a field person and a throwing person so that's something that I would like to look into put in into budget to help those coaches out and help those kids um our sound systems both inside and outside are deteriorating Eric has done a great job mending them and getting them to work we find pieces here in the building um it's just something that we may need to look at in in in the future um uh eorts again that's very very popular and there's a lot of interest in our building and there's it's a big time College thing now there are kids getting huge scholarships for Esports which you would have never thought about and the last is um if you've been in our gym we do a

079great job of promoting our kids that do great things but we have no room we're constantly taking banners down putting them up and and they just don't go back up it it's very difficult we actually have there's um because we in a room they put and I didn't know they put a wrestling over another wrestling banner and somebody's like my my dad's name's not up there anymore and I looked I go oh maybe it's up there but we're working on coming up with a new system Mr Bland and I have talked about it we talked with with Casey and Dan about it one time walking through um but I was looking at a touchscreen Hall of Fame where it's in the lobby we can clean up the gy we can clean up the banners in

080the gym and you know I like to walk in there and you can press you know 2024 volleyball and it shows their team picture shows made all state or you can just click on the All State button I mean it is 2024 we can look at updates you know cuz I again if you go in the gym and look and look at the space in there I'll tell you that I have 11 banners in my office that have to go up that I just don't have room for so and that's that any questions um I know that um you know as far as coach coaches stiens that's kind of a collective bargaining piece um but if we can maybe kind of think outside the box a little bit and maybe work on with with the

081Union about maybe be looking at whisk and your stiens for coaches and reallocating some of that because their um position is not quite Equitable with they're on the same level as freshman coaches right so maybe giving some conversations or working with the Union on that to maybe Offset you know the an additional like ski team coach or coaches for track and field maybe having some of those and instituting like an Mo MOA I I've given the union every time it's their time for negotiation I give them all of the surrounding areas this is what they do even a lot of surrounding areas actually give bonus pay to teams that make the state tournament you know not a lot but just something to you know because they go above and beyond what they're expected and also

082too think about it now is that this summer okay they're coaching the summer okay so so the summer we're doing settled settled in 22 SO3 I think we start to meet again next sum okay we definitely can work outside of that with Ana yeah that's what I'm saying working being creative and working outside of that with Ana that again I I I can only ask the union to do it I don't know what happens when they go behind closed doors thank you very much thank you guys appreciate everything congratulations on all the success all right okay now we're going to move to a tech update um from director of Technology Eric Conlin yeah aka the ski coach thank you 30 kids that's a big jump from eight yes it'll be a fun season um good

083evening so I'm just going to provide a quick update on a few of the big projects we worked on this summer um I'll start number one with parent Square we offici officially launched that on July 1st um uh our first user was uh Dr burill Who Um sent out a number of announcements in the summer so we started getting used to using it um the principles have taken it ran with it they're using it now primarily for their communication a number of classroom teachers um I don't have those numbers right now I I'll come back in the future with some data on you know how much it's being utilized and engagement and all that um but uh for now I I know it's being used throughout in in classrooms um we have the guidance Department

084looking to use it for for communication and and working together and collaborating but um it's it's being used to share announcements um Flyers community events um daily classroom announcements principal newsletters and any any of the above um I did a few uh trainings in the summer I had five information center centers I had five information sessions for parents um towards the start of the school year a couple virtual a couple in person um and then I spent two hours at each school during the professional development days and worked with each of those um sets of staff on utilizing parents Square answering questions questions getting everybody logged in and familiar with using the the interface both as a staff member to send announcements and as a staff member to receive announcements and updates and and all

085of that as well um we are just scratching the surface on parent Square it's not it is so far from a completed project um there is a lot of things parent Square can do that include uh field trip permission forms um uh absence attendance uh you know if if you have an unmarked attendance parent Square can call say you know your your child's not here we don't have them marked as attendance you can respond back and give a reason why maybe upload a doctor's note or anything like that right in parent Square um we'll be doing training on par on signing up for parent teacher conferences that's coming um and that's just that's just the beginning we didn't want to do everything all at once when you overwhelm and you do everything all at once

086it's hard to keep track of all the things you can do and then stay on top of that so we're easing into the program we're using it for our district Communications there is plenty more to come on parents square and I'll continue to kind of give updates that on that in future updates the district website launched on July 1st as well and again another work in progress that's never official well actually a district website's never really done um but it um started out with a lot of work starting back in January with the newly formed District web Master committee um that is made up of um administrators and individuals mostly secretaries that update the website for their individual schools and for the entire District uh and so we started with weeding out information from the

087old website planning for the new website and then we launched on July 1st I got to work on updating the district one and then working with each school on there is we held trainings for each school to learn how to update the website add information remove information find information that didn't maybe transfer over or didn't transfer over correct um and so we'll be holding a Web Master committee I don't have a date yet but it'll be in early October as kind of a followup to the opening of school the starting everybody's now had a month under their belts of utilizing the new website updating it um and this this will go on regularly to make sure that the each of the four sites are updated regularly have information um that they need now on top

088of that um we've already gotten some some emails and some conversations and and feedback and things that were maybe missing or don't function in a way that maybe the old website worked or we we should function send those to me send those to your school um you know we're always looking to to improve you know we're going to commit to keeping this website up to date um and also nice and clean and smooth but but um we obviously we we rely on the community and um and certainly welcome the community to reach out to us if you see anything that needs updating or um maybe didn't transfer over correctly a lot of the times when you implement a new website and they bring over from the old the the the documentation the stuff is there

089it just didn't link correctly and so we just have to re relink it and we've been going through Page by Page by Page um and it's it's a it's a it's a very long process to go Page by Page and and check every single link um but we have a good team of web Masters on it um taking care of all the pages um excuse me Eric just for for clarity you want um teachers or parents to reach out to you or to the building uh principles about if they find something that's not working um you know they they can really reach out to either I don't want to over complicate it and give them 10 15 people to reach out to the general rule of thumb I've been using is is the um the

090district website Brookfield ps.org um they can certainly reach out to me you can reach out to me for any of the sites but if it's something on the individual School site it's best to reach out to the school they have a dedicated person in each school so if you're looking at the high school website it's best to reach out to administration at the high school they'll give it to their webk master um who will update it if that person has any issues they'll come to me and and we'll go from there so perfect thank you y um Chromebooks we continue our onetoone program it carries on we got over 200 Chromebooks um delivered unboxed prepared handed out to students um and this goes along with the 800 we received back in the spring from our

091uh the third round of a Federal grant that came out of Co um and so uh a lot of those devices replaced an aging Fleet um many of the older Chromebooks were not touchscreen there is a big need for touchcreen with a lot of the programs and resources that we use now um and so we've replaced like I said dated machines older machines Chromebooks are now set to last as long as they don't get damaged um they're supported for up to 10 years now um and so we have uh quite the fleet of Chromebooks that uh will support us for years to come our TCH fix them in house as much as we can um and so we we buy the materials we buy the parts we fix them in house um and so we're

092able to um rather than having to discard a lot of Chromebooks we're able to retain a lot of our Chromebooks um and fix them at a generally low cost compared to sending them out um as everybody knows this summer we merged the town and bordered technology departments um it has not come without its learning curves I'll put it that way um you know learning um just working together um for me it's learning new passwords and resources and network equipment and and all of that we did hire our part-time person who works part with the board part with the town um her name is Lori she came in hit the ground running um got along with everybody at uh the Board of Ed side has gotten along with everybody on the town side um and and

093we continue to work together the town has enjoyed um having the extra support going from one person to now essentially three um so really two and a half for the part-time but uh and then um and then uh the uh the board of EDS side also gets the additional half person and it's um it's it's gone well again work in progress we're entering a budget season I get to do two budgets now so that's going to be fun um that so as as as early as we start the town has already started theirs too I have a meeting with the town on on their budg on the it budget next week and then we get to start the Board of Ed budget in October so um more to come on that um this didn't happen

094in the summer but it is coming you probably all walked in the front door saw that digital signage that old TV hanging out there um as part of a grant that we got last year the I'm not even going to tell you the whole name it's um it's through Pura the state um Energy company um they have a whole long acronym name for this grant but um it's giving us a total of five new digital display boards um here at the high school and over at whiskin year five each so a total of of 10 it's going to match the existing system the system that went in at CES the system that exists in the cafeteria here at the high school and the cafeteria whiskey near and so we're going to have and actually the

095one that's over here in the library they're all going to work together and we're going to impact increase um along with the whole theme of communication this year we're going to increase our in school communication with digital signage and and um I'm excited to have uh everything working together with that um the townwide radio project specifically the Board of Ed portion the last part was done today the last part involved um drilling a hole in the roof the brand new roof at CES and um running a cable through it we had to get the roofing company to come out the ones who installed the roof had to come out and do it that finally after a lot of organization got done 80 new radios are sitting in my office just waiting to get used um

096and so I'm anticipating within the next month or so the Board of Ed will be up on the new radio system um which is uh which is sort sely needed for some of our aging walkie-talkies and um and and these new walkies get a better distance can communicate between buildings uh among other things so that's coming up soon um the biggest project we one of the biggest projects we also had this summer was we did get our brand new Fleet of copiers um we had 72 copiers removed from the district and 52 new ones put in with a whole new management system um and uh so that was exciting to get some new machines um normally copier contracts are about 5 years we went six because of the opening of CES um there was just

097so much else going on we we delayed a year um and you can tell those machines were starting to see better days so um we've gotten some positive feedback on the uh speed and quality and the print quality and we were able to add a couple more color printers into the elementary school and they're very excited about that um and then the only thing I'll mention is it was involved in a couple of security updates and changes over the over the summer but um that's getting reported by the security task force subcommittee report and so I'll I won't repeat what's coming up so those are the big topics of the summer wasn't too busy was it questions Eric I have a question um as far as the website where can you find extensions for staff

098so I'm I'm going to work on so yes good question so we are going to I've gotten some feedback on staff directory so staff directory was on the old website was managed manually on the new website it was automatic and it could be synced from Power School from our student information system that has staff in it it could be synced to parents square and then to the website but what we're finding is that we can't link we can't do a link for email addresses and we can't put phone numbers in so we're going to have to change the way that that's done and we're going to have to manually add it in um for for phone numbers because we don't have extensions in there we also don't have just the district I mean at the

099bottom of the home pages is the district line um but we're going to have to redo the way the staff directory is done yeah it's hard because you call I mean and whiskin is I think down a secretary so when it's busy they're not picking up but you have no idea how to even get anywhere because there's no ex and this this an example of great feedback so um thank you Aaron um you know and and it's one of those things that the company that hosts this so the company that hosts the website is the same company that it's it's parent Square the product is called smart sites they are also open to feedback so something like having District phone numbers in the staff directory is is good feedback that we can give to them

100so I'll share that with them and maybe it'll be a feature that comes in the future but for now we need to be able to provide that to parents so thanks a lot Eric thanks Eric thank you thank you very much okay um so we're skipping over uh public comment was moved so um Mr BR what can you tell us about our new student representative do we have information on mark would you like to introduce the new student representative who wasn't able to make it tonight but it's Melissa Baines but he could share a few words and then we'll move forward uh isn't really a ton to share um because obviously she's not here tonight but she will be here at the remaining uh Board of Ed meetings so there was an application process interested

101student puts their put their names into um reached out to me to ask if they could um they said they wanted to be part of the process they were then sent a set of application questions uh which were then um scrubbed from names and they were actually scored by faculty anonymously with a vote um to see who came out to be um the top candidate so we had one candidate that emerged as the top vote getter um and so that person was just notified yesterday uh that they were uh in fact the student representative it was very short notice turn around to get to hear to this meeting today um but she assured me she will be here uh for the remainder of the meetings that was actually one of the questions that was on

102um the application was your ability to attend all meetings and listed every single one it was a very long question because it's very important and I think you know one of the conversations that I'd like to have as we continue to move forward is possibly evolving the role of what the student representative is beyond um providing the athletic report and just a general update I think the board at various times has really looked and looking for that student input it's it's important um and I think you know it's something we can talk about capitalizing and that was part of the process too that somebody be willing to to provide information feedback Beyond just a simple update um and maybe stay a little longer as well that was part of the so that I think that

103will slowly evolve over time and hopefully we'll get to be a more involved student here so can you can you just tell us again uh what's her first name Melissa Melissa thank Baines Baines and Wendy can I um part of one of the policies that the policy Committee just reviewed in the 9,000 Series was student update or the student representative and there were some things in that policy that we're updating the way that they're chosen the timeline there's going to be a lot of um hopefully beneficial ways that that evolves I think they yeah we we want it to happen earlier we want their role to expand that's all absolutely choosing this year going into next year and and really look to build leadership even like from it doesn't always have to be a senior

104do we talk about involving other kids so yeah I'm I'm excited that's great to hear good news thank you so they know what they're getting into yep yeah thank you okay let's move now then to um written correspondence Seanie the following people have emailed the Board of Education since the last meeting on August 14th Denise rice new school year recess student safety plan and agenda Andy Korea Boe responsibilities board chair responsibilities fi a for emails and texts fiia for all Brookfield School staff spring 2024 survey results and followup on policy Services Irene Korea BHS team funds and sports Banquets Brian Shapiro BHS outof Town tuition Jessica Hansen classroom displays and recess time at CES Dylan Tanger CES recess Deborah C foia John Lucas National English Honor Society efforts awesome thanks very much okay um so

105now we're going to move to um item 10 um the approval of board minutes I move that the board approve the minutes listed below as recommended regular meeting from 8:14 2024 good all in favor um please say I I any opposed okay so it passes unanimously thank you very much um and now we move to the uh superintendent update Dr bro what do you have for us all right thank you Wendy um so a number of things we're touched on so I'll be able to move through this uh quite swiftly um I did want to recognize and thank the board for showing up attending uh and all the folks who spoke um and the PTO and administration for helping to organize a very successful ribbon cutting event at CES last week um we also had

106tours that followed and it was nice to see some uh various families and couples that don't have kids in school anymore show up and uh take some tours we did put out an invitation for the 26th of this month and also October 10th for some late afternoon early evening tours uh for the public to come and visit and enjoy the school um parent engagement just wanted to let everybody know that uh as a followup to Eric parents square is up and running um and as he already mentioned trainings will be forthcoming as the fall unfolds with some of the uh additional features yesterday the district uh leadership team we met with the district PTO um worked on schedules calendar and soliciting volunteers uh for the food recycling that's going to go on in all of

107our cafeterias this year um I also have an invitation out to speaks our superintendent advisory committee um we have four meetings scheduled and that invitation went went out last week um I don't need to say anything about bef Logan took care of that in the upcoming um times uh she she and the team will be visiting the schools um Wendy thank you for acknowledging the high school um but it's really a uh beyond the high school it's the efforts of the other school folks as well um we really had an incredible uh change in our attendance last year we're 15% of our kids were counted as uh chronically absent um which is 393 students um in 2223 last year 23 24 we're down to 2.5 students 2.5% of our students were 63 students total um

108chronically absent chronically absent is defined as 10 or more absences in a year or four in a month unexcused and so that's just incredible we know kids need to be here to learn it's healthy for them to be here and uh credit to the admin team the mental health Team and and the families and everybody working together to make that that work um the image uh the uh image picture there from Ed site is there if anybody wants to check out the actual data um it's publicly publicly shared information uh in terms of hiring and the new teachers I did mention earlier we hired 16 new certified teachers that are part of our Brookfield Education Foundation that's out of 239 total certified teachers in the district I think it's an important number um we are

109essentially fully staffed with a couple exceptions I'm going to go through in terms of our certified teachers uh in the midst of our national and state shortage we still are doing quite well in Brookfield um we have uh four par particular teachers that have been hired and frankly we lured them away from other districts so they're dealing with the resignations in their districts and there is a um leadership agreement among school districts where you give ascending District 30 days so they could find a suitable replacement before um essentially pirating their their particular employee so we're waiting we have contract signed but we are waiting on the whiskey one uh psychologist at whiskin and one at the high school U but they're signed and ready to go uh by the end of September first week in

110October uh c a speech and language pathologist position which is again we have a contract we're waiting for that person to start in the next couple of weeks and the same thing for a special education teacher position so all of those are shortage areas speaking of shortage area we do not have the part-time bilingual Portuguese teacher that we budgeted for um there were no qualified or viable candidates um we knew going in it would be a challenge we did have a teacher on staff who uh was fluent in Portuguese um but Katherine brao worked with that teacher and the state and the way their certification and their transcript was uh it was not satisfactory to the state's uh um criteria in terms of having that person help us out in that uh situation given the

111fact that we couldn't find someone from the outside uh what we're doing now is working with our ml staff and we're increasing hours for one of our par Educators to work under the tutelage of our certified uh bilingual Spanish teacher and Tesa teacher to service the students and we're working with the state to make sure that everything's above board and that's uh the right now the best we can do the position is still open we'll keep looking um but that's where we're at right now so I wanted to be very upfront with everybody on that very challenging position to fill and that par educator is fluent in Portuguese yes thank you for saying that um and then the last two things I'm going to I'm going to talk about reflective intelligence working with the Boston

112College purpose lab I know Rose and Stephanie actually attended convocation and got to see Tim Klein uh give the keynote address about the purpose-- driven work and the things we're doing uh it naturally ties in to the new teacher evaluation system and administrator evalu uh evaluation system which is based on professional development growth and support um we're really excited about that work 141 of our staff have signed up to be a part of that um so it really is an incredible amount uh of folks um and then lastly on Monday we had the wonderful visit I think uh Steve or Mark mentioned it the nas visit for district accreditation you folks saw that application last year we submitted that I'm going to turn it my time over Dr man to talk briefly about the visit

113and when we might anticipate a decision as to whether we sure are part of that absolutely thank you very much so I just want to if I could just Backtrack on two items um one just back to the uh attendance data another initiative that we tagged on to with the state was the school is better with you campaign um last year so I think that's another thing another reason why we saw the district uh Improvement um this is something that the state has been focused on since the uh Co pandemic in particular and um so we just want to make sure that we you know kind of give our kudos to the state for helping us out as well they sent us a bunch of materials pamphlets uh signs um you know and kind of

114just literature to go home to parents um so that was I think a help as well and I still see some of those signs around around the schools so that's great um and then also with the ref reflective intelligence uh work uh and Logan was also at um at convocation so she got to see it as well um the energy that came out of that convocation um that not only from Tim Klein but also uh that that the faculty staff and you know across the district what everyone um brought uh was palpable uh Tim Klein who's the person who was our direct connection to uh Boston College purpose lab uh made mention to it at at convocation that this is um that the the feeling and the energy and the excitement about starting school um

115was notable and he is currently working with a couple other districts in Connecticut and across New England and um it was unique to Brookfield he was really impressed with uh what he saw here so um and also then he was overwhelmed with the response that he's gotten by the when we when John and I put this together um we were at 141 I believe we're above 145 at this point um our kind of recruiting phase will be concluding uh at the end of this week and then I'll be working with him and his team um to kind of figure out how many people are going to be facilitators how many people are going to be participants how we're going to train the facilitators and then just map out the whole uh professional learning program for

116this year for the people who are involved in that um but then onto the nas visit not to be confused with the neas athletic audit which is a separate part um as you all know we and that was what what uh uh um Steve mentioned um we have applied for district accreditation currently our high school is a Nas accredited uh high school has been for many many many years uh what we applied for was to be to have District candidacy so our kindergarten through 12 so really it's getting our K8 programs um on the um docket to go through the accreditation process and so the first part of that is to do the application which is what um the many members of the school district worked on through the end of last school year we

117submitted it into in July and then the the second part of that process is to have a representative team both a staff member and a member of the commission come and do an on-site visit essentially just to kind of vet out what they saw on the application um and so uh we had two members Fran Thompson and um Dr Jade gopy uh who is the one of the assistant superintendents in waterburry she's on the commission for Nas um spent the day with us on Monday and they went through a whole uh schedule where they met with central office staff um uh Administration and staff members uh as well as each one of the School principles and had a nice tour of the school and then they met for about 45 minutes uh with a bunch

118of teachers um not just uh classroom teachers but a cross crosssection representation from across the district K12 um and asked a bunch of questions about curriculum about uh leadership about all of those kinds of things um and so that was a really uh beneficial time for them to gather that kind of on-site information um and one of the things uh that they shared with us during the debrief was um how impressed they were not only with CES um and the new facility but really all three facilities they they were they were really giving kudos to how clean uh the high school and middle school were and how it really does seem to be bright and um you know and things are look considering the the age of each of these buildings how nice they were

119um the other thing that was that I took away from the debrief was um the consistency of responses from the teacher interviews and the support staff interviews through the building leaders up through um TSO they were they heard the same things and they saw the same VIs um so that's really nice to hear so the next step will be that they will write a report they will bring it to the next commission meeting which is in October for the uh Nas Commission of public schools and um what they will be um hopefully recommending uh they will let us know if there's anything uh that they're not comfortable with but they will be recommending um Brookfield Public Schools become a candidate for district accreditation so we are not receiving accreditation yet because we have to go

120through the whole self-study but um that we would become a candidate District um and so we would get that in if the commission which it has to be a commission vote if the commission agrees to that we would get a letter in um November December saying we are now a candidate District which would mean then we would go into the cycle for going through our self-study having um you know visiting teams come in 2027 and 2029 we'd get on the same cycle as the high school um and eventually earn our full C our full District district accreditation um which would mean that each one of the schools would be an accredited neas school so CES would have its own accreditation WS would have its own accreditation and BHS would have its own accreditation and then

121we'd you know use that those standards and framework to help our um help guide us and continue to make us better thank you sure any questions ni the report Wendy that sounds awesome um it's so cool that they already came and and kickstarted things do you guys have questions no Robert is that a yes no okay okay all right great great then then move your mic okay so then we're GNA move to subcommittee reports and when he's ready we will hear from Robert um about facilities all right all set thank you very much so um back on August 13th we met um uh we had no school dude reports because it was a summer uh for capital projects update we had um the electrical upgrade take place at uh whiskin Middle School um even though

122this is old news the scope of the project had changed um transformat did change and everything went well and you'll hear about that on the next the followup report as well uh BHS Media Center AC will be going out to bid within the week um the pre bid meeting was at the time was the following day uh with prospective contractors roof Replacements at w WMS and BHS determined to be um would exceed $20,000 therefore we have to uh set up uh it's going out to the purchasing agent through the purchasing agent for an RFP for the project um there's two open items at the boys locker room uh Power Monitor and the door to one of the lockers needs to be replaced I know that the construction company is still uh working on these items

123um as well as the uh the locks were completed uh out of the Boe operating budget for new business we had the annual cleaning of the boilers uh kitchen appliances were tested and inspected um by the appliance company fire sprinkler inspections were taken place uh all the fire pumps were being inspected fire suppression uh was being tested and completed um wooden gymnasium floors were stripped and refinished sure that looks amazing I know that looked great in my school um hussy will be out in October to perform inspections on the gymnasium seating uh grease traps were scheduled to be cleaned out later this month chart Wells has been out to look at the kitchen the equipment um everything's being repaired in the uh for the BHS is being repaired and waiting for the part in the

124freezer parking lot lights at BHS with damage during a thunderstorm and that is being replaced and Mr cwell met with the Fire Marshals regarding uh converting hallway area to the next to the WMS uh down next to the gym in the whiskin Middle School into a storage closet Falls within code and we have a quote from the vendor for the work uh for miscellaneous just congratulations to two custodians who retired one Pedro after 24 years and cosme after 27 years so want to shout him out on the shout those guys out on that uh as for the followup as I said in the previous one electrical service what did go smoothly they shut down the power everything came back up they were able to install everything um you've heard enough about the ballards they're all

125fine um there's a few outstanding items in the boy's locker room still that uh the locker room door uh there's a power to one outlet that needs to be taken care of uh Dan did tell us that he was working with tekon uh and diversity to close this out I know there's a few Kinks that they need to to get finished on uh we receiv received seven bids for the B BHS Library AC project um we got the lowest bid from fnf mechanical for 12,500 um we will move to that later on in the uh meeting an RFP was released for the uh demolition of the Portables at WMS pre-bid walk through will take place not on the 3D of September which has already passed um engineering RPS for roof projects will be uh sent

126out this week that was at the time of that meeting specs for WS cafeteria floor will be sent out because those need to be replaced as well to develop an R RFP uh Dan said uh will obtain um Mr cwell Excuse me will obain quotes for repair work on boiler number two which is something that we've discussed before and something that needs to get taken care of uh the new gymnasium walms have been sold WS WMS excuse me they look uh they look really great uh the walk and Frieza BHS has been fixed and we have a for new business some exciting news hopefully to save some money on energy we have a solar energy presentation um and preliminary discussions with the town on exploring solar energy plan for the schools and for the town

127um and that's all I got for facilities if anybody has any questions for the um the locker room Bo locker room are those those are new issues they're just lingering Sor those lingering ones um there was there's one outlet that needs to be uh P power outlet that's up High where the TV monitors that's got to be replaced um I think diversity was coming back to look at that um a couple locks that had to be switched either the the door handles or the locks were wrong so accurate lock has come out to to do those and then I think um Mr balwood gave them two new locks that that he wanted um either switched or new new lock placement so yeah they're they're working on that so that project's still open right it yeah

128it should be done yeah it should be done yeah um who's in charge of uh writing or updating the all hazards plan all hazards plan is a collaborative between um actually uh Lisa Dan Caldwell myself and and then the principles and we actually have a um person who works with the state who's come and helped us the last two summers on that that's due uh November 1st to the state for submission other questions for the facilities folks okay awesome let's U move to finance thank you thanks very much Robert all right so I have two meetings for um back on August uh 13th um after reviewing the check register reports uh we reviewed the fiscal year end report for 24 um if you remember we had a special appropriation from the town of um about

129674 th000 we only ended up needing about 586 th000 of that so we returned about 88,000 to the town uh the yearly audit at that time was uh and is still um ongoing um so we'll get an update on that and our our next meeting in October um and then we switched our attention to fiscal year 25 um we talked about um teacher turnover savings um at the time summer hiring and transfers were still going on um we noted that electricity which we mentioned um I think at our last meeting um is probably under budgeted by about 150,000 um we are locked into a great Supply rate uh it's the delivery charges that are the issue um so that communication um um came to districts actually across the across the state um after budget approvals

130um so um the town is affected equally in that regard um we are seeing some savings from a legislative cap on magnet and vag tuition increases um that's also communication that came through after the budget approvals um that could save us um around $50,000 we're we're thinking um we briefly discussed special education out placements um but I'll provide uh the most up-to-date information in a second on that um we did review the purchasing processes for District employees um what all District employees must follow when uh using Boe General funds um as well as Student Activity accounts um so um that those procedures kind of gave us as a committee an understanding of U purchase orders and timings dues and don'ts um invoice tracking and how that affects our budget reimbursements you know what happens when

131purchases exceed the budgeted amount things like that um and then lastly as miscellaneous we are moving our regular meetings um from the to the second Thursday of every month um instead of the second Tuesday um and then at our last week at our September 12th meeting uh we reviewed the September financial report um which has a reported net budget shortfall of approximately $455,000 um thankfully we are nearly at Target for our teacher turnover savings um and we are seeing also savings from unpaid leaves in vacancies but just remember that those savings need to cover substitutes um and it is just the beginning of the year um in special education we've seen seven students newly outplaced um these could be students that either moved into the district over the summer or students that have new out

132placements um and also five students that were outplaced um have either moved away from Brookfield or have returned to inhouse education um so net that results in about a $446,000 budgetary shortfall considering both special education tuition and transportation and the excess cost Grant is only expected to increase by about $20,000 um we reviewed and adjusted the budget planning calendar which we'll talk about later um and then we reviewed the new Student Activity accounts procedures manual and I know there's like a lot of chatter out there so I just wanted to be very clear about this this absolutely does not prohibit Banquets or the fundraising for them at all it does however uh govern procedures related to the funds for school sponsored activities um now School sponsored activities have to be have to meet very specific

133criteria they have to be events that have an official endorsement from the district they have to use School resources or facilities um they have to be at least partially funded by our budget um are aligned with educational goals and specifically have oversight and supervision from District employees um and they also have to be open to students enrolled in our schools um so essentially this new procedures manual um ensures that we have efficient procedures in place for the operation and management of those funds um it adds controls that are Guided by the recommend the recommendations from both the bloom shipiro Financial advisory and our financial auditor so this is a really good thing um it does mean that outside group such as the PTO they have to operate their funds independently um this is good practice

134it aligns with our pre-existing policy so there's no policy that needs to be updated this is in now in alignment with that um it reduces our liability um I I believe the school Canon will help coordinate with those activities um but we're just you know we shouldn't have monies from Banquets and stuff like that being managed by our business office um and I think we kind of had a really good education on that wouldn't you agree Aon Rob like was well good feedback um then we had a discussion of the district's efforts to reduce cash payments and collections as well as reimbursements and as miscellaneous um I had made a suggestion that we add residency verification either like an audit study um to the 2526 budget proposal um with maybe a new practice of yearly

135verification alongside our annual information update um and that's it for finance that's a lot yeah um is there a way that we can get like when can we get um like a a printed copy of the the manual that um that you and Rosa were talking about the other night um because like I get it when you're saying here but when people in the community ask I'm like um yeah totally yes you can have Banquets but it has to look different yeah we I have a draft available so we can send that out to the full board tomorrow absolutely that'd be great yeah thanks are there questions guys all right well then let's move to um Cape uh committee update please okay we met on August 28th we got an update presentation and overview of

136the portrait of The Graduate the focus was on the domains and their descriptors action steps and the 2024 2025 school year and how it aligns to the board of edge strategic plan um there's some feedback to be more engaging and inclusive of all Educators um portrait of the learner was discussed as a possible adjustment to the language of portrait of a graduate we reviewed the professional learning plan outline we talked briefly about the school climate survey results on professional learning where 67% of the staff responded positive positively to the professional learning program for the 23 24 school year we also reviewed the teacher and admin support and growth plans orientation how it relates to the work with reflective intelligence um an approach in which Administration teachers and students are being more reflective we're learning we

137learned how to identify what's meaningful to you so you feel like you have a purpose students need to know why they are learning what they're learning and how it helps them and our staff can be a part of these reflective intelligence groups we also reviewed the professional trainings for 2425 the coming year we reviewed the BHS AP score report and discussed what we noticed that was good work and we reviewed all the summer curriculum projects that went on throughout the summer and we talked had some preliminary discussions on the upcoming class size report we did re make a recommendation or we discussed a recommendation for a subcommittee for us to start a subcommittee for an adoc ad hoc committee to create some updated guidelines for class sizes um based on our current needs of the

138students in District and updated research current strategic plan Etc um so we'd like to kind of get the ball rolling on that to anyone that might be interested in spearheading that and that's about it awesome super thorough thank you okay uh next policy please okay so we have had two meetings since uh the last Board of bed meeting um the Committee Member numers started in August and continue discussions on the 9,000 policy series for the purposes of updating the Brookfield Public Schools policy manual you will see on the consent agenda tonight a list of policies that we are presenting for a first read they are required and recommended by Shipman and Goodwin and along with those policies you have an explanation page that hopefully gives you a little more detail and Clarity on what exactly

139the policy committee is recommending in the adoption of each policy so you will see that some some of the Brookfield policies have been absorbed into the new shipment and Goodwin policies some have been combined based on our current policy language um some have been renamed just for clarity once you're able to absorb all that information and all of our recommendations please feel free to reach out for clarity it's I think it's pretty straightforward once you read through it it makes a lot of sense um but there is some renumeration and things that may at first glance be a little um need some clarity um um so what we are asking is that you send any of the feedback that you have to me by September 30th that will give the committee time to evaluate the

140policies and all of your feedback before putting forward for a second read and a vote for adoption in the October board meeting the policy committee Erin joy and I um we continue to work to update and bring the recommendations to the board we're continuing to work and bring the recommendations to the board um to adopt the remaining workfield specific policies in the 9000 series so as a result of the committee's desire to move as efficiently as possible we have added another special meeting on Monday September 23rd at 5:30 p.m. um Additionally the committee members and we've all agreed to divide up and begin reading through the 3,000 policy Series in anticipation of finishing the 9,000 Series um and many of these policies have been outdated I mean they need updating from like 20 years ago

141and these are um policies that are pretty quick to move through and actually have a lot of uh sort of overlap with some of the things that we're talking about right now and that um Casey has um been updating um the committee is also committed to listening to concerns and pivoting as needed to discuss policies that might not be in sequence and so one of these has been um Dr Burell had shared some concerns with the policy committee regarding personal displays and we wanted to meet with in Goodwin we had an executive session to talk through um some of the sort of what other what is out there what our options are how we would move forward um and so that will be an upcoming discussion um we're not that just happened tonight but that

142has been an example of how we definitely are listening to concerns that are coming in we are not planning on sort of just plowing through in sequence we I do have a list we've all been sort of maintaining a list of concerns that have come from both the public and other board members and we're trying to figure out how exactly those can fit in without like completely halting the work that we're doing so as we continue to have special meetings and add meetings to the calendar um because we're all committed to this we definitely will make sure that we are um communicating which policies that we're working through when we're working through them awesome um and I think I just want to take um a minute to say that this um group of policy committee

143members joy and um Ain and uh Stephanie have worked um overtime is almost an understatement in in um like attacking these policy updates so um the community may not know that but we sure do and thank you very much for the work that you're doing it's it's really making a big difference thanks all right so um security task force okay all right so we last met on September 9th um this was a special meeting that was moved up um due to some of the reports that we had gotten about malfunctioning badge readers so I do have an an update on that um um so the committee discussed and um they we discussed this and I can report then just for context about 80% of the badge Raiders that are in the entire District are located

144at CA yes um now initially when CES opened um there was a time that teachers had to have temporary badges um that's because their multi-use badges um were being programmed um and if you remember it was kind of a rushed to get into that building at the end of at the beginning of last year um but the recent issue that um you know has you know teachers are experiencing um was due to an electrical storm that damaged the motherboards um and that rendered about 25% of the badge readers that CES um locked as in a permanently locked position no door is ever unlocked um most of those doors were in the interior um could be open with keys but the badge issue was still there um the exterior doors um were staff so that teachers

145and students could come in during that summer repair time because the vendors were contacted right away um and at the time of this meeting all but one of the readers was repaired um and that one that still remained also had an an a door right next to it that student um teachers could use to to exit or enter the building from the outside um and since then so I actually I think like a day after we had this security task force meeting um that last one has been repaired then we talked about the townwide radio project that I think uh Mr Blanda and Eric Conlin also mentioned um this project is going to secure new handheld radios for communication between school buildings but also with the police um and it was just noted that teachers

146can also reach the police or an outside line via classroom and office phones okay so they don't need like cell service um then we talked about the just some remaining capital budget items that we've also heard um there's about 177,000 remaining in the capital budget for security items So the plan for that is more radios within the district more badge Raiders uh Mr Belinda talked about that and more security coverage as well as um a man trap with locked double doors at the auditorium entrance here in this building um and the completion of the Ballard installations which we've heard enough about um lastly um Alice training is um is underway as is the district's annual update of the all hazards plan and our next meeting is Thursday October 17th at 10: a.m. that's it Rose

147I just have a question is the um so the reader and at CES in the cafeteria is that swiping now now it is okay so I know that there was some one of them yeah one of them was one of the ones that was malfunctioning but there was another door like right right there that that was fine so I we just thinking if there was an emergency to get them in they were all going through one stairway so I just wanted to that I did here and I think one thing that's important um at the new school there's 52 total badge readers at the at the other school there's about a half a dozen at each of the other schools so we were covered the key thing is when any Mal function happens because of

148a storm or what have you um the doors were always on lock out those doors are locked and that's really the key thing uh that everybody needs to know yeah it's yeah it is but you know CS is yeah it's cool okay so um then let's move to the consent agenda speaking of big and full okay I move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda as recommended new hires transfers resignations May financials June financials and bylaws listed for first reading all in favor say I any opposed no okay so it passes unanimously thank you very much um moving on to new business now um okay so uh first we're going to um hear a request for funding Capital project discussion um and maybe a motion so Casey this is down to you

149yeah sure great thank you um Robert did mention Robert did mention this in um his update from the uh last facilities committee meeting but we do um the facilities committee did approve a request uh for additional funding this request would have to be made to the board of Selectmen these are um it's a capital project for the air conditioner in this room that we are sitting in um this is a long-standing capital project it's actually a bonded project from uh 2022 um and what happened with this project the reason it got stalled is because once the um the engineering design went out for out for it and bids came in bids came in um more than double what uh the project was estimated at um I think they had earmarked about 90 thou 80 to

1509 ,000 for this project and bids were coming in closer to $200,000 the reason for that was um the the plan for the design was specked so that it needed reinforced engineering for actually a smaller unit that didn't weigh as much so logically it didn't really make any sense um so Mr Caldwell um has been working at getting uh we actually reached out to Mark sakubo who is the firm that did our building condition study um and they submitted a proposal last spring they came out they were able to um respect the project brought in their um Engineers to look at the the structural engineering piece of the project and they um agreed definitively that they it does not need to be sort of re this reinforced um original plans so that being said we

151were able to go out to bid again and with that lower scope of the project we were able to get um as as Robert pointed out seven bids um the low lowest being 121,00 from fnf Mechanical Services um the highest uh was um was at $226,000 um but uh Jules uh kidos who is our purchasing manager um he did um uh do all the reference checks um Mark sakubo did take a look at fnf there was no reason not to go with them they're a very highly qualified uh vendor and so that that bid was awarded um again there's about $990,000 e earmarked for this project so while it is over over budget it's a three-year-old project at this point so it is it is reasonable that the cost has gone up um I did

152talk talk to Marsha about this um she's a she's aware that this um you know this request would be coming um and and it does have to be funded from an another Capital project that was bonded in that same year 2022 and it does look like there are um there's a project or two that can be that there's overage on that can be um transferred so this is a formality uh for the board to make this formal request to the board of selectman um for this uh transfer of funds do we build in contingency on this project I I honestly I'm not sure this was part of the guidance swing roof and the AC on in this um roof so obviously the guidance swing portion is done um being it it was three years ago

153I think you know the cost just escalate year-over-year um I think typically I would say historically yes we do build in some some contingency on these projects um but this does exceed that so an amount not to exceed 400,000 would give us a contingency of 40,000 I'm sorry 40,000 I say 4,000 400,000 my gosh no I'm thinking roofs I'm thinking roofs no please um uh 40,000 does give us a contingency of about you know6 to $7,000 um so should be we should be good do um do we have to ID we don't have to identify what project it comes from is it one of our projects from it is it is our project I I mean like um where we're taking it from no okay okay and so we don't have to request that specifically

154no okay so we just need to read the action and yeah um are there other questions do you guys want to talk about this more are we feeling good like we could move to to approve this and get it underway stay nice and hot and toasty in this sure would you like a a project number to that you're requesting the funds for that might be specific in the wording I can get that for you um so that's uh project hs25 hs25 requires those additional funds yep thanks okay so I move that the board request from the board of Selectmen a transfer of capital funds in the amount not to exceed $40,000 to fund the completion of the BHS AC project number hs25 recommended by the director of the finance and business operations Mrs Casey deti

155second great um now that the motion's on the table um ready to vote right sorry oh yeah go ahead no she was off oh okay okay we were off sorry we're on so all all in favor please signify by saying I hi hi any opposed no all right great it passes unanimously that's wonderful thank you okay so we have passed the uh request for funding um for hs25 great now let's move to the budget planning calendar um bl's you Casey I believe this is you again sure make the motion first I move the well okay you want me to make a motion yes please I'm sorry um that's okay well we we haven't we haven't had a chance to discuss this is there any um moves we should have the table okay go ahead I

156move that the board approve the 2024 2025 budget planning calendar as presented by Director of Business operations Casey diti second great so um do we have any discussion about the planning calendar what were the CH you you mentioned that you guys made some changes or no no we didn't make any changes um just updated the dates yeah the dates yeah we moved like the the the committee meetings from a Monday to Thursday our regular meeting we have like a meeting scheduled but the but the big the big dates are you know the superintendent presents the budget at the first Board of Ed meeting in December um it's due to the first select minut uh January 31st and then a lot of TBD dates um once it's released from us but so let's hypothesize that there

157are members of the public who are a watching this and B really interested in learning more about how the budget is put together is there a particular um date that you would uh recommend that somebody come and listen in to learn more yes I would I would definitely think on December 4th um when Dr Burl presents the budget um to the community is is really important it's always um also available online afterwards but that's that's a great one um there's also a budget round table before our regular board meeting on December 18th so our our two regular Board of Ed meet meetings in December um are very budget heavy in that sense um and so those are good to to attend um and then there's a a public hearing on the budget on January 15th

158that's Wednesday January 15th um at 6:00 and then in between all of those there's the um the public meetings of the finance subcommittee um just about weekly Rosa right I think um at that yeah for those months uh that we'll be meeting to go line by line detail by detail um of the entire budget okay and another note for the board there is the way the regular meetings are scheduled for this F uh Academic Year there's one regular meeting I think it's January 15th we said in um in January the often times is to so I imagine as I kind of project out in just nine years of experience of doing this uh in town uh before the January 31st submission to the first selectman we probably would have a a a special budget meeting

159of the full board U because we'll need to adopt before we go and make any adjustments you know need some a few days to do that before it's submitted to the first elment assuming there's adjustments okay and John can you just get us um after when the director C and building administ submit their requests can you give us that information yes so um October Tuesday October 1st you can see the very first date up here um Casey actually is working on it now putting together the memo putting together the uh Google Sheets uh in preparation for the principles and department heads to have theirs and then I think our submission date is what did we say oober October 28th yes October 28th so they they essentially have a month to work on that um they

160submit and then the three of us uh here uh meet with each department head and we vet the budget we go through it we ask a lot of questions the department head or principal talks about their budget goals um whether it's new Staffing new programming whatever they might need uh consolidations eliminations what whatever they have going on for that year uh in alignment obviously with the Strategic plan the parts of the graduate work and everything else we're doing here yeah if you can get us what their preliminary requests were that would be helpful oh yeah we Shar in the past right okay yeah that's easy enough to share yeah anything else okay let's move then to um oh do we have to vote yeah we haven't voted yet oh sorry okay I was confusing the

161previous one um so we've uh moved and seconded okay so um all in favor of approving the budget planning calendar uh for 2526 I please say I great okay any nay no all right so it's approved unanimously marvelous now moving on to um item C the uh School calendar uh we have a draft copy of the school calendar um from Dr BR from Dr BR would you like to um walk us through sure so so there's there's not a lot of um it's not a sexy calendar or anything like that it is pretty straightforward and what we've done in the past however there are some changes I do want to share and thank our calendar committee um we have several secretaries a few teachers a couple of Administrators um who uh we Lisa and I

162draft a calendar kind of generally with 18 82 days and kind of block off where the holidays are and kind of the the typical uh uh points in the year and then uh we we begin the work from there um we've gotten feedback from the committee and the calendar before you is that uh feedback so what you're looking at is a calendar for 2526 with a very what's been anecdotally very popular start after Labor Day um you can see the professional development days uh in August and then starting after Labor Day on September 2nd with 182 days ending us if there no emergency days on June 16th um again with uh the uh very typical um professional days on Columbus Day indigenous people's day and on Election Day we did build in the traditional second

163semester for early dismissal professional learning uh half days that we have where the kids are dismissed early and the teachers uh continue on those typically in Brookfield uh for as long as I've been here have been on Fridays before some of the longer weekends um we talked about the need for a more efficacious time for the teachers to meet would be parlaying in early dismissal on a Wednesday with our after school Wednesday meetings so we wouldn't have that trans we absorb the transition time and get more of a three and a half hour meeting in there we could really get deep on some topics rather than having a two and a half hour meeting so um we thought that would be helpful for us I'm sorry Aon they can have a long yeah yeah right

164so there you go it would still be a regular day on a Friday though you know we wouldn't we wouldn't do early dismissal there so that's the real big change I would say there um uh like I said 182 days starting after Labor Day and I wanted to hit on the PLC days so I don't know if there's any questions the key thing for the board to know is this is very early it's um September and we're already talking about next year's calendar so it's in front of you and um plenty of time for questions thoughts chat chatting with neighbors and friends and residents in town parents and uh to get feedback the board votes on the calendar ultimately and so we typically like to get this approved by November because people start to look

165at their plane tickets and vacation schedules and all of that uh for the following year so we do have some time there's nothing urgent about it but we wanted to get it out to you as soon as possible do we send feedback directly to you or do we bring it to the next meeting um you could actually send feedback directly to me we can um um consolidate it and then have a conversation at the next meeting or when Wendy and I are building the budget and getting feedback from the board on what should be on the the agenda we could talk about it at both October meetings however however we want to do it is the the state so Brookfield um students go 182 days and is that the State state's 180 180 okay is

166the Mandate yeah thanks and our teachers can work up to 187 days so those are those professional days we build in um May I okay um I just wanted wanted to like add some food for thought because um last year when we were discussing the calendar we had students and families come in and express um you know some they were they were advocating for essentially days off for religious observances um and some policies were put into place that I think protected them from you know missing tests and assignments and things like that um but I it didn't really sit well with me because only one particular religious group is now affected by that policy whereas other religious groups are being protected by our calendar and days off um I personally would like to streamline the

167whole process of have not process but the days that we have off I believe really should be just the state holidays that we can't control I mean I honestly identifi three days on this that we have off that could potentially be school days and one is Columbus Day another is rashishana and the other is yam kapor the others are protected by being federal holidays or state holidays or Governor um mandated holidays um but I think our job as in terms of promoting Equity is um to treat all religions equally in terms of observan now I'm not saying like if if we have like a a very large Jewish population I have no idea and I'm not saying I wouldn't be swayed by some even anecdotal anecdotal evidence that a lot of kids would be out

168of school um but I think that's just something that I would I don't know want to look into yeah so I'm come at the same issue but from the opposite side and I'm I'm thinking about um how many um practicing Muslims uh I know who've moved into the community in the last 10 years and I'm wondering um if there are we are we not recognizing adequately uh a need for observing um the major Muslim holidays I don't know and so just a food for thought kind of thing for you guys to like um I don't know mull over talk to your neighbors about um over the next couple weeks I mean I totally hear what you're saying um but it it seems strange to have um Jewish holidays and not and Christian holidays and not

169um those of our Muslim neighbors so anyway that's just what I wanted to add are there are there other comments about this okay let's move on then okay so uh let's go to the spring climate survey that's item D um and we are going to get um memorandum from Dr BR yep yeah yeah I well I mean he's going walk us through it I'm sorry my bad yeah exhibit K am I able to go now was we didn't have to read a motion okay um so I put this memo together a memorandum together for everybody given the climate surveys uh we have the every year for many years we've had the Panorama surveys at the end of the school year where staff and parents um fill out a a pretty detailed survey um for the

170school and um there's areas of strength areas of growth and um we base our climate goals each School bases their climate goal or goals on the feedback they get from that survey it's a great source of data um the information from the climate survey at this point now is almost four months old just for perspective and um while there was lots of positives from the parent surveys and the majority of the staff surveys there were some areas uh specifically at CES where there was some concerning feedback whether it was anecdotal comment feedback or just percentages um reporting in in the affirmative on particular items um and and I share at the end of the memorandum I'm not going to walk through that part of it with you um where the principles are at with kind

171of their three main areas they want to address either in from the positive side of things or in the constructive feedback side of things and they're going to be talking on October 16th by the way I was able to work with them yesterday um they'll present their school Improv Improvement plans and uh Dr man and I will work through the um achievement report for October 16th that'll be kind of the main presentation um and they'll go through the details of their climate plans um but it's really important to know that um one of the um kind of summarizing thoughts that I had when I saw the results at CES and we don't want to go down a rabbit hole and get really detailed on this necessarily for the board because this is school work that

172needs to happen is Dave and I were talking about it when they when the the results first came out and I think all of us no matter how much planning we did the consolidation in three different faculties coming together affected some people much more than we anticipated it would on top of that um building in the structures at the school for communication and input and so forth especially from The Faculty side of things um was an area that uh staff was very vocal about and and so um we need to acknowledge that I could tell you um Dave uh and his team immediately uh recognized what was going on in that survey and went to the staff and held a staff meeting at the the very last day of school to say hey we here

173we we heard these results there was a lot of positives but there was a lot of things that were not so good and we want to work on those we want to get input from you and we're gonna really uh put our nose to the grindstone over the summer so we've done a lot um as a team each building has done a lot so you know I don't mean to leave whiskin ear and Brookfield High out of this but there was some really uh eyebrow raising uh comments in in that so wanted to acknowledge that having said that as a district we've really put a lot of time in and articulated a lot of things uh here that we're doing uh in collaboration with the schools with District actions and really that's where the board

174supports the superintendent to take District action to make sure which our whole existence is for ultimately is the student is to our principles who hold the keys to those schools to make sure we're doing the best we can in servicing our our students so um to that end I just wanted to go through um a couple of points from this memo it's five pages long so I'm certainly not going to read it at this time of night to you folks um and it's public information it's in the board packet so anybody can go on on the website uh and and get this information the first thing to to really think about is climate is how people feel about the school culture is kind how we do business at the school and so it's important to

175sep you know Define those separately and kind of understand that um the other part is um we need to really understand that from the residents our entire Community our elected officials our Board of Education the executive team here sitting at the table principles teachers par Educators custodians everyone our secretaries we all are a part of school culture and climate and we build it together and you only it's ever evolving and you only build it with well-intentioned people if you're going to build it in a positive direction we all have to be working together and trying to row in the same direction even when we disagree on things but we have to be able to come together um and and and be civil with one another so we can work through these things uh and continue

176to to to build uh the positive energy that we saw tonight with all the various reports that we received uh an incredible showing um so really the goal of the district actions is to engage in purpose-driven employee agency and actions to Foster our teacher and staff efficacy in service to enhance student climate that's what we're trying to do and so there's a lot of actions we're taking there um and before I go any further on the actual actions it's important we talking a lot about policy lately the um School climate law has changed it's adjusted and there's a lot of training we're going to need to do this year to be up and ready to go for July 1st 2025 there's a lot to it and I'm going to be very candid right here with

177you folks I shared my goals with you uh yesterday yester there may be some staffing implications to properly address the amount of work and the time constraints to uh fully implement the climate legislation I have a presentation our friends at Ed Advance are doing some great work with us and so I'll be able to share that this fall with you so you know pre- budget Workshop um so couple of things um uh it's important for everybody to know at the end of the school year we knew about the the climate survey but um driven to make sure our staff knew and understood the vision and direction for the coming year we had a kind of an end ofe summary convocation if you will on one of the PLC days and we brought everybody together the

178whole the whole faculty and staff and really talk through and uh put a presentation together and Anna and I went through some of the key priorities coming up for the coming year from there um we worked with each principal on their uh School climate surveys and uh help them as they're thinking about their school Improvement plans and how the work they're doing um Can dub tail um with all the the climate work they need to do um and integrating uh their school Improvement plans um also as I said working with that advance and then in addition to that um the reflective intelligent work intelligence work that we've talked about uh today again I'm not going to go deep into that and also the new teacher and administrative evaluation plan how all of this fits together

179in developing efficy efficacy and um improved culture and climate to that end working with not only with the principles but also with Bill each has a personal executive coach for this year um we were able to reallocate some of the professional development money um some of you may remember from some convocations and other leadership work Sebastian little of little Consulting is working again with us with the principles and uh Dr corvo from CK is actually working directly with Bill so wanted to make sure our uh our key department and building leaders uh have the support they need as they develop uh professionally throughout the year um on top of that uh some of the research I've done in my dissertation work on teacher efficacy wanted to make sure I bring that forward to the administrative

180team again uh brought it forward a couple of years ago because it's so important on collaboration and communication and connection um and belief and how that impacts people with the purpose-driven work so again it all dub tales and integrates together um we're going to go on listening tours and talk to uh Folks at the school to find out exactly what they're thinking and feeling about all things organizational and we're going to get that input and we'll report back out on that of course the work with the anxious generation and the limitations on cell phone use is going to be another um really impactful piece on climate started to hear it from Mark and Dean a little bit tonight the uh I've seen some of the anecdotal feedback from about 30 teachers I think Mark you

181were sharing a document with me they're logging in um you know what they're seeing and and with the students and the attention uh in the focus one of our teachers was at the volleyball game I was chatting with them uh earlier and they said I was actually giving an oldfashioned lecture and I felt as though they were staring at me for way too long I'm not used to that so they were really appeared engaged with uh with the lecture so um so far so good on that um and further the Improvement in attendance uh goal that we have on page three uh we saw work last year impact the uh students we want to continue with that we can't come off the gas pedal on that we need our students in school but in July

182I really talked to you in great detail about teach teacher attendance right and related to substitutes and related to finances but our staff um we want to get back to pre-pandemic absentee levels we're at about 15 days on average uh for our teachers that's three weeks of school you know and there's all kinds of reasons but we we it's just we cannot be missing that much pre- pandemic was around two weeks of school so about 10 days of school over the course of a school year so we really want to work and communicate with our staff how important they are to the learning process um and of course um it goes without saying but it's important to acknowledge providing a safe and orderly environment is key um our new HR supervisor is really adjusted well

183um is is excited and motivated T she's Inspire she's really working inspired uh to connect with staff and and really be of service to to all of those folks so that's in a nutshell what the memo is and kind of the district actions to give give our people at the building all the supports they need to do the work they need to do at the school open for any questions or ideas buts I have a couple questions um John um so the school climate coordinator who are they in each of the buildings does each building have one or uh yes unless they split a stien I can actually I don't know I can tell you the name of the person but the the they they yeah they split a stip in so how does one

184become a school climate coordinator like did they put in for iton they put in for it um well they're they sta staff or faculty yeah so de de can you just come to the mic and say who yours is and we can just do each one so everybody knows is it a stip in that's very people a lot of people put in for it or it's slim picking um it was it's l w and Alison Patrick last year we actually had three um it was also um Amell can you tell the positions of those people so they know what positions they what they is Ali fck and L is a reading teacher thanks at the high school we have one school climate uh coordinator that's Sarah Riki she's a math teacher um you know and

185I had it was to go find somebody thanks Mark we have two have and Laur a third gr teacher Laur thank you please can I just um please reply a little bit to that also um one of the things with the school climate coordinator as it has been versus as it will be it's an important differentiation question I'm I'm hoping for the November presentation for you so bring it all to we've always had school climate coordinators as a you know a stiped position and just as a kind of on a little side I don't know if we actually talked about this but we streamlined the way that all um except for the coaches um all stiped positions are applied for last uh spring it's something that I had been thinking about well my first year

186here and then when Casey came on board we um worked together so that um each of the schools essentially has a a Google sheet that's sent out to it that all the teachers see all of the open positions at the end and every position becomes open right because nobody holds a position for more than a year they're yearly stiens um and so and what the Casey did because she's a marvelous sheet person um put if you hovered over the the actual you know name that had a little description of what it was so and that was pulled directly from whatever the um information was in the contract or in the uh job description and so everybody was had the option of looking at and reviewing every position that was open um and then they would

187put their name in um through a form and then that would populate the very the sheet so that the um principles could then see who was interested and then they went through their vetting process and if they had to go ask somebody to apply they would do that or if they had to interview people and ask them why they wanted that position because they had to winnow it down then they would do that and so it was a really much more streamlined and transparent away approach versus just having a bunch of forms filled out and sent to TSO um and so I think that it went really smoothly and it was an opportunity for everybody to kind of get a sense of where they might be interested in doing even if not for L for

188this this year then for next year year so and how does that coordinator play into your plan this plan well it's it's part of climate you need to make sure you're following the law so you have to have a school climate coordinator so so they're just more legislative well they're they're these are district actions to make sure the principes have identified their school climate coordinators and then they work with principles on school climate at the school okay Y and then as the as the um the legislation rolls out that school climate coordinator position and the school climate teams have a lot more responsibility and so that's one of the reasons that there will probably be a budgetary impact because the St the stipended position as it is now really is about um various programming for

189students and working on things that might you know um enhance the school day so for example at clees uh the school climate coordinators worked this summer with some curriculum work to develop some plans for um School climate activities through their pause program which I'm sure uh Dr P will share about in o October um so they did some planning for student activities throughout the school year same thing with um at the middle school and high school in terms of that's kind of what the school climate coordinator has been in the past but as we go forward and that will s continue for this year because the legislation um is going to be changing into next year uh so the legislation happened this past two years ago for July 2025 um so that's the legislative piece

190of it but it doesn't mean that we're going to wait until 2025 to start working on it so just last question for that one um so the coordinator is more like student driven yeah it's more well it it can span both though it can be both students it's in case you're wondering it's not the sunshine Club that's something different so it's not about parties for teachers so but that's important because people think that that is school climate and it isn't necessarily it's a nice part of it but I'm not saying you did but that's important for people to know who listening The Faculty piece like that's not the coordinator doesn't have anything to do with the faculty piece of the climate not necessarily I mean there may have to be some after school you know

191like I know that when they um launched this pause program uh it was at a faculty meeting because obviously you have to get the faculty on board and they you know ran through some activities but it's not geared toward that necessarily so um Dr BR you said your your um I mean you and I talked about how this is pretty sweeping legislation it's going to be a big change and so the presentation's going to be in November you think I'm thinking as I look at the scope that I've shared with everybody the the scope of all the presentations that we need to do this fall in in October and then November prior to budget presentation I'm thinking November 20th is probably the best fit in terms of timing uh as I looked at the board

192meetings but um the October 30th may also be it might be worth moving it up I do um I did include in my gold do for you folks the um the actual presentation that Ed Advance did with us as a leadership team that I would be certainly sharing with you folks thanks modify presentation here awesome thank you I just have a couple more things please um are the teacher comments that we received reflected anywhere in this document or no so no the specific no I didn't include the actual climate survey here but if anybody it's an fiable document if anybody's interested they're more than welcome back no I didn't know if you embedded it in these oh no I didn't embed it no okay um for the bullet item the providing a safe and orderly

193environment for students and staff on the I would have lik to have seen so security updates of course facilities updates of course I think having read through the climate survey um one school in particular I think well and I think this goes across all buildings but um having a very clear and concise code of conduct level of expectations behaviors um for students what that looks you know especially at elementary level what does that look like what does that look like to walk down the hall appropriately like having that all streamlined I think that's really important in providing a safe and orderly en for students and staff I think I agree with you um I I would think that that is that's at the building level not at the superintendent level that's the only reason that

194wouldn't be in here but I absolutely agree that's something you would you would be overseeing that that that's well the principles be overseeing that and I oversee the principles correct right yeah okay I guess I don't I wouldn't develop a code of conduct for each School correct but overseeing that that's being implemented sure I guess that but I don't disagree with you I mean I'm okay y um um and I think that touching upon you know the comments from some faculty some big three key takeaways um I think moving forward and it's important to get out there is respect communication and Trust like that's what improves climate and culture which in turn um is directly aligned to teacher tenant so I don't want to us to have a you know unrealistic goal of we got

195to get teachers in school but if they don't feel valued or respected um I wouldn't come either so I think that's although I really like your breakdown of strengths and areas for growth um in that should really be embedded the very strong comments that were reflected from our staff um as playing a role in this that's important so your feedack back is right on the money the principles are hearing it this We're All in This Together absolutely right not I didn't disagree with one thing you said there okay right with you other comments or questions I C with um you know with some of the comments um if the teachers don't feel comfortable right when your walk through do they have an opportunity to you know tell tell somebody anonymously what's boing I mean I

196just think based on some of the comments that we saw sure I think that we really um we want them to be happy um we want them to come to school we want them to teach our children purpose and with purpose so I mean is there something that can be done as far as you know teaming teachers up just to build them up you know it's a big school it's three you know the school's enormous it's a lot of personalities but you know how do you how do you celebrate yeah their uniqueness in one big building and I think I think Dave could talk about some of the if if you don't mind Dave can you share some of the structures that you you've started to build in with the team uh maybe come to

197the mic and share a little bit some of the so just if you go back to the I think Jo did said the three points that you really focus back from student Behavior Uh so one thing that the climate committee did do over the summer is they wrote explicit lessons uh because we can always say this is what a student should behave like but without explicitly teaching student how to behave in these areas so when we talk about our pause lessons we have they are suppos every teacher is teaching how to behave what does PA look like in the cafeteria what's look like in the buses the assistant principles to the lessons in the cafeteria we're actually going to get onto the buses and teach that so with and that was troubling for me because

198you you saw the numbers for we feel respected by students or students display respect uh which was low uh and we heard it we listened and that's why the CL committee came in and did that uh with respect to communication another one so one thing I've had in place now that's been awesome I mean again 12 days in everything awesome right CLE uh after every six day cycles that I mean I so I meet every once every six day cycle by grade level now so last year our PLC blocks was split was half upstairs half downstairs by community so 4 a and I think 1 a had it on the same day it's like okay do I go up to 4 go down to onea can I get to vote have be a vote uh

199so this year we got created with our schedule and so our Specialists are actually working K five during the PLC block so every day one I meet with all first grade staff every day two second grade three four five day six is kindergarten we don't have a KDAY too confusing so uh at the end of that six day cycle having had these meetings and the to talk to the teachers like what is the piece of communication that's most important what do you need the rest of the school to know I have my class connects email every 6 days to go out I've also increased communication with staff request Chronicles uh again the first couple of minutes of every one of our day PLC meetings is communication what does the rest of the school need to

200know uh I admittedly the biggest struggle little Huckleberry so easy right to communicate to all that staff now I have over 200 staff members uh so we are absolutely focusing on communication and respect which will ultimately to hopefully that better climate Dave can you talk a little bit about I thought it was really it was fun um with the visibility you guys are working on your your satellite office and Danielle's rolling desk office and some of the different things you guys are doing yes also for visibility so uh on days 2 4 and six I work upstairs on days 135 on downstairs that way I get around the building uh a lot more frequently L and Lord knows I can use the steps and I've been actively using those this year and Dr rle has

201a mobile desk now so she actually has her traveling desk with laptop and she's going all around the school uh so again we listen we hear uh and we're making steps towards Improvement and honestly I really look forward to the next survey and as far as somebody mentioned do students feel or teachers have to feel comfortable I would like to think yes we have our Union President right in the building uh and he's absolutely has the open door any centry located right through up in fourth grade great yeah if I I just want to one clarify plcs are professional learning communities just so because sometimes we like to use our acronyms and that's okay that's right and they also are different names at different buildings which is another Brookfield anomaly but that's okay um but

202I just also wanted to Echo what um Dave was saying this year at CES not only is is he attending those plcs but all the teachers on one grade level are able B to be together last year they were split that that caused not only from a climate piece but also well from the climate piece that curricular instruction and assessment piece um it was hard for them to know what's happening across their grade level um and as far as that respect communication and Trust I mean that is something those three words have guided this entire approach from each of the building levels all the way up through the district kind of vision and bringing it all together um and that's one of the things that we were so excited about going going into this summer

203planning it it was kind of fortuitous that we brought in Tim Klein at the time we did because that's exactly what um that kind of efficacy and that sense of purpose and that communication and getting to to having people reflect on who they are as people in this building because teachers are people too sometimes we forget that um or you know that it gets forgotten even for teachers you know um but who they are as people and then how they connect with this work and then in turn how that connects with students that's the whole basis of all of this and um I thought that given all of the curriculum instruction and assessment work that the the CES folks were going to be faced with this year that you know I I was anticipating them

204trying to take a pass you know having a pass this year and really working on this SL next year we have um I don't know the total numbers yet because I'm still working with Tim on how it breaks down but I think um it is definitely a representative sample from each one of the schools it's pretty consistent AC across the schools uh out of those roughly 140 um and they are so excited I have had actually three people from CES today asked me to resend them the link so they can sign up so um you know that work is going to be I got to tell you something the Board needs to hear and and I share this with Dave this morning yesterday I happened to uh stop out with officer Jay out at recess

205and two veteran teachers who are unafraid to share their opinions with me um and so you love them for that um both talked about the K3 CK uh reading program and the illustrative math and both uh teachers were big fans they were talking about the reading program is a heavy lift it's a lot to learn um but they're really excited and looking forward to the future in that obviously time will tell um but getting that anecdotal feedback from your your team um is invaluable um good bad or ugly and it happened to be really positive so there a really good energy and a great starts of the year so and then the last the last thing I wanted to say was just um how important relationships are in this entire thing is this whole thing

206is predicated on relationships and um that's one of the reasons that Dr Brill and I have intentionally scheduled and Casey is doing the same thing into our schedules set times that we are in the buildings each every other week um we actually kind of mirror each other um we each sent out to the faculties the entire BPS uh staff the times that we will be consistently in the buildings that does not preclude us from being in the buildings at other times but just so that everybody knows this is a a whole team effort it's a concerted effort and why each of the buildings have unique you know kind of challenges and areas for growth and um you know areas of strength this also is an entire you know we are one town and we are

207one district and we're here to serve the kids so to that end I already have my invitation out with Aaron to come walk a couple of buildings with me during the school day so if anybody has any time in action right so anytime you want to do that I'll take you around yeah you're right awesome um that's it's wonderful to end on a high note thank you Dave really appreciate that St so um anything further on the climate survey um yes um so I just wanted you know just I'm just providing food for thought tonight because I just have a lot of thoughts um I I just think like you know we as a board I think what I'm hoping and I don't want to blabber this tonight but I also don't want to blabber

208this every single meeting that we're at I think climate is obviously super important but I don't want us to forget that we as board members have a responsibility play a role in that climate as well so and that does trickle down to students so I think and I'm hoping that in the coming months you know we we've already you know we've seen the climate survey results we've made the superintendent goals we have a followup on his goals tonight and we will over the course of the next month so I don't think this is ever going away but I think we need to just make sure that we're aware of the role that we're playing and how we are treating the district facing leader you know the board- facing District leadership because that is a part

209of climate too and it's it that's in a nutshell is our responsibility is to promote a climate for district leadership to do what they do so I want us to just hope I hope we can just remain aware of our actions and critique carefully without micromanaging this process I think that's that that's the type of leadership I think that's that's needed from any board at our level so that's just my food for thought okay Sarah did you want to say something too no okay um my food for thought for the evening is I appreciate each and every one of you volunteers um and for always being reflective and having the best interest of our students and our community at heart we do represent the community um and I think that it's good that we're all

210in check with each other so thank you for all your work volunteer work and for always being good reflective thinkers and Learners right on let's move to Old business there's none how about public comment um round two uh Mr Korea you have asked to speak on um climate survey and the the podium is yours oh he he knows yeah Mr Korea knows this better than anybody um okay so I'm also going to have a couple comments about things that occurred during the meeting Andy Korea 45 West whis Road um so uh during the security task force um read out I texted a friend um asking him about the badge readers if they work the comment I got back is that they that they don't work so I would check your information on that apparently this

211is something that is still broken um as it relates to holidays um I've lived in several places across the us as well as um went to a federal service Academy and I have classmates that live all over the US my experience with Public Schools personally as well as friends in terms of holidays um new New York and New York adjacent areas like Connecticut and and New Jersey tend to have the Jewish holidays off no other place in the US that I'm aware of does that it's more of a convenience because of population um the only other uh anomaly I guess I would say is when I lived in New Orleans area they celebrated all the Catholic holidays but none of the um Protestant specific ones because New Orleans is very unique um their counties are

212called parishes so outside of that it's you you observe religious holidays like you would and it's sort of you know the other ones the the Christian holidays that are you know Christmas Etc everybody's off because of the federal government um so that's my food for a thought um on the surveys uh I read all the comments read the surveys um and I read the memo the memo was very general very generic there's things in the surveys that didn't bubble up there were pervasive comments about parents and teachers talking about concerns with special education and IEPs Etc that didn't show up anywhere in the memo and that's a problem the high school had very few staff comments but many of them talked about how students they feel students are taking AP classes to um improve their

213GPA I didn't see that anywhere so if it doesn't get caught it doesn't get into an action plan um so in my career I've had to you know review a lot of um surveys of of employees as well as acquiring many companies uh review employees as they come in and if we saw comments were in the Cs um teacher comments those people wouldn't be continue to be employed I mean can you know comments like it's a to toxic environment people are afraid to speak up for fav retribution favoritism clicks being asked to provide daycare and um for the management team and can't say no comments of new teachers considering leaving comments of last year was the worst year in 20 years these are 45% % of our teachers it's about 20 million of our budget

214in salary you don't put that at risk what should have happened as a Personnel change over the summer thank you Mr K okay let's move down to the three main points so I wrote down um the opening school reports and updates is number one I figured the neas visit is number two because it's a piece of new information feels vital I don't know and number three the climate survey discussion what do you think about nask I mean that's it's big it's coming but it's isn't it next year uh it's we're actually Not Gon to have our collaborative until 2027 this is oh the district CID this is what it is we I mean it's kind of a prestigious thing it's interesting that we're Cloud it's it's going to be a big deal it's something that

215we can kind of get out there as like a I'm laughing thinking that like a main point for a lot of people is the fact that there's going to be air conditioning maybe we should wait yeah let's wait yeah wouldn't be prudent so I'm sorry you said you said um so my three were opening the school the opening school reports and updates the nas visit and the climate survey discussion what do you guys think well yeah it is September Jo your thoughts uh I was thinking like hiring of the new staff and then we waiting a couple positions I think that's important yeah staff update more than the ask which one is that well it's all the certified teachers so if there was a social worker here tonight different service special teacher oh yeah we

216we could expand it if you want yeah oh oh intro to new night yeah ucat put real secret everybody smart so can I include staff that wasn't just here oh yeah right like can can we give all the new staff yeah all the St yeahp you want you want all the names or you just want say Lisa can you copy and paste all the new St I don't know are we just introducing the four people that were able to make it well you're just going to say the staff was introduced you're going the video so you don't need to do all that awesome and also just as we we are also constantly kind of hiring that's why we don't just hire July and August okay we keep on okay it never ends speaking of which

217um upcoming events um yes what do you got it's the beginning of the school year okay so upcoming events for September and October first we'll start with Candlewood Lake Elementary open houses for kindergarten and 1 are September is September 23rd second and thir third grade September 24th and fourth and fifth grade September 25th all dates are half days for CES students CES picture day is October 1st uh the book fair starts October 15th and as Dr Brown mentioned there'll be tours open to the public of CES on September 26th and October 10th in the evening whis ciner Middle School the sixth grade field trip to Mountain Workshop in South Salem New York which is a team building field trip will be September 23rd the WMS PTO meeting will be at 9:30 a.m. on September 23rd

218picture day is September 24th the cross country meet at WMS is at 4M on September 26 they're hosting hats for Hope will be September 2 September 27th with more information forthcoming the shog valley visit for 8th grade is September 27th Abbot Tech visit for 8th grade is October 10th and the WMS annual wathon be October 17th with a rain date of October 18th and Brookfield High School tomorrow September 18th is open house be what isn't today September 18th sorry 19th okay I misspoke I miswrote that 19th tomorrow September 19th is the open house here at VHS the uh BHS Spirit Week starts September 30th homecoming Carnival is October 4th and the homecoming dance is October 5th districtwide days off for students are October 3rd and October 14th awesome so um for everybody who's watching at

219home who's still watching this is the end of the public portion of our meeting um we are going to um well we're going to move into executive session provided the motion passes oh yes yes I'm sorry please please two quick thank you out there our asso is always here for us in the evenings is here keeping an eye on us thank you and there wasn't other police officers available to be here at the meeting tonight Chief pagesi himself came here thank you very much sir okay so with that Stephanie would you care to um make the motion I move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing the superintendent's goals and the board's valuation all in favor I I any opposed okay thanks thanks um everybody C