Board of Education Meeting Part 1 of 2 7/20/22 @ 7pm

001is july 20th 2022 regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order please join me for the legislation [Music] for which stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and since we're here in the auditorium at the uh high school because the air conditioning is not yet installed in you know in the library um i think to the board members we're gonna have to be passing the microphone back and forth with one another we'll have a second microphone here at the table but for now it's at the podium it's the first thing on our agenda is public comment um before we start we do have one two three four five six seven eight people who signed up to speak and they're all on topics that are on the agenda for this evening so we

002can do those in this first segment you all remember for those of you who watch our board meetings we've set up two parts of public comment on our agenda the first one is for just items on the agenda and the second section is for anything that has to do with a school management so everybody can speak in the first segment we have a limited 20 minutes in that first session and if there's anybody who doesn't get a chance to speak we have a second chance to do that at the end of the agenda so before we open up public comment i would like to talk about the agenda a little bit tonight because i see most people said they want to talk about school security school security is on our agenda for this evening so

003it's very important but i think for those of you who are here tonight you ought to know that that discussion will be held in executive session which means we will do it without the here in the public sector we will be talking about school security actively at our next meeting but tonight because we're going to have a very detailed discussion about the current security and future security the the executive session rules allows security and very few other topics but security is one of them to be handled inside executive session so that's we're going to be doing that that way because it's sensitive material as you can imagine to make that work for everybody because we're not trying to hide anything none of us here on the board or trying to find we want to have

004an open frank discussion we'll have the police chief with us um but i will come back after the executive session and give a thorough debrief of how that meeting went i won't talk about risk items and things like that but what decisions do we what do we talk about what decisions do we make we can't vote in executive session we need to vote in the public so we will invest that self if you would stick around because not only are we going to do that we make sure we videotape it and it's available to the public because uh everybody know what we're talking about when it comes to security but when you're having the day-to-day the minute-by-minute discussion you might be talking about security risks or you know how you might handle this situation in

005that situation and it becomes a little awkward to talk about that um in a public forum at least in the first time so that's how we're going to run tonight but if i go and bottom know so so with that next on our agenda is public comment i will call names i just will ask that as you speak we need your name and address please limit your comments to three minutes uh we do have a maximum of 20 minutes so we should get we'll fit all seven people in um but if everybody could take a beat three minutes it will make it easier for everybody to get drive i'd like to thank the board of ed and the security task force for providing students and the youth commission the opportunity to provide input in this

006school security discussion very much appreciated by me and all members of the youth commission what follows now are my personal views one of the things that we discussed at the task force meeting was including involving students in the creation of messaging to students on changes that will be implemented and you'll be surprised by how eager they are to have their voice heard and you'll hear perspectives and that would not have occurred to you so i'd really encourage the schools to take advantage of that finally whatever decisions final decisions you make about increasing armed safety in and around the schools consider what additional mental health support the district will need one of the data points i've learned is that one cohort group that has difficulty with the increase in armed officers in schools is students with

007mental health issues we know that before covent 12 to 15 of students identified as having mental health issues postcode that that number has grown to 45 or more so it's important that any solution you consider include a vibrant and funded mental health component thanks for listening thank you next on the list is troy greenstein and joy i understand you're not speaking as support number you're speaking as a member of the public correct i'm going to state that joy greenstein 10 club report i'm speaking as a parent and a taxpayer what is the main goal of an armed intruder at a school the factual answer is to get as many kills as possible they choose the time of day when they will be the most students and faculty in the building to give them the best

008chance of the highest body count or kills it's impossible for an unarmed security monitor to be a first line of defense for this you can't bring a knife to a gunfight knowing this fact then why would we propose an asso for just after school if it's deemed appropriate for after school then why isn't it equally important during the school hours what are the duties and responsibilities of an sro in their job description and order of priority it is my understanding that security is nowhere near the top of their list how is it possible for an sro to protect the school from an armed intruder when that sro has so many other responsibilities outside of school security what happens when the sro is teaching dare and an incident occurs at the bare minimum you will have

009students being killed before the sro can respond the sro can't respond fast enough from whatever unrelated duty he or she has to effectively prevent the death of children who is positioned at the main entrance for the entirety of the school day the unarmed school security monitor that the security test proposed an unarmed security monitor cannot protect the children at the school against an armed intruder why not then put whomever in that position let's put a lunch monitor there for school staff personnel if they're going to be unarmed what's the point whose job is it to maintain the locked doors of each school the unarmed security monitor that security task force is proposing we need the doors to be locked during the school day with only one point of entry and asso at that entrance the

010entire day with the sole purpose of being the first line of defense many schools of associate have no issues students are not and will not be scared police officers are their superheroes it is our job as educators parents and the community to roll it out appropriately and in a manner that's developmentally appropriate young children will follow our lead has the security task force taking the poll or vote of what brookfield parents want for their children or the poll the students and faculty the ones who will be directly impacted the security task force is misrepresenting what the citizens of this town want most important the proposed plan that the security test work has put forth is giving the town a perception of safety for their children when in reality the schools are no safer than a

011school monitor being at the front entrance do we want the perception of safety or do we actually want to protect our children we need an asso at the main entrance of every school and we need it now you can't put a price tag on safety [Music] next up is evening everyone collette stern 159 long little drive and i'm speaking tonight as chair of birthday cares for anyone who may not know what brookfield cares are we are a non-profit community coalition that works to promote awareness education and outreach for substance misuse anxiety depression suicide and other mental health concerns it is on behalf of brookfield cares that we express our full and unanimous support for the on-site mental health agency that the bhs pillars committee will be presenting to you all today we are in a

012mental crisis cdc has said from 2019 or 2009 to 2019 there was a 40 percent increase in anxiety and depression among 13 youth and that number has significantly increased since the onset of the pandemic now the way to address it is very multifaceted but we do know that some effective pathways are to reduce the perceived stigma of mental health issues and to improve the accessibility and availability of obtaining the services essentially removing the barrier between mental and physical health so that seeking help for a mental health issue is as easy and commonplace as seeking help for a sprained ankle or asthma or a sore back and we do believe that having an on-site agency will be a great step to address those goals so not only will we work to improve the health and well-being

013of our student population but our community as a whole so brookfield cares does stand and support in any way for this initiative thank you okay next is joyce casino okay joyce posino seven broadview mode i am a very concerned parent of a high school student here in town and my bottom line regarding this issue is that we do need more than one armed officer in each school it has been a talking point that we already have armed guards in the school when in fact the two elementary schools have only recently had armed protection added just since the texas school shooting when the new elementary school is complete there is a plan to only have one armed officer there i am far from the only parent here in town that thanks for that sprawling property with

014more than 1 000 students more than one is absolutely necessary i still find it unthinkable that our town being so very close to the sandy hook tragedy had never added armed guards to our elementary schools currently surrounding towns have already stepped up to implement additional our security and are currently hiring and training these personnel as we speak why is brookfield going against our police chief's advice and against the lead of our surrounding town at tom's actions in my opinion the board of ed is not only slowing things with this dragged out process but not listening to the public opinion there was an overwhelming poll on our community advocacy facebook page in favor of more armed security in such a hugely important matter the public needs to be heard we elected the board of ed to

015represent our interests in closing i hope to god that there is still a pool of highly skilled individuals left to hire and train considering the lag time to act in a timely manner we all can agree that we want to keep our children safe we need to take the politics out of it and protect our children to the fullest capacity as other times have already done and do this with no regrets thank you next is aaron zimmer uh aaron zimmer 50 on twos hill road um i'm a brand new resident i'm the new chair of the dtc uh it's my understanding that the task force will not be recommending any ssos outright in all schools as our first select when select women recommended last month and i've got to say i'm relieved i'm relieved because

016this idea that adding more guns to our schools would somehow keep our kids more safe it just doesn't seem to be true all you have to do is watch the news this week from evolving look at the data from all school shootings it's going to tell you that more good guys with a gun does not does not stop a bad guy with a gun nearly 400 cops didn't neutralize one bad guy and then one bag that killed 19 babies and two teachers so it seems clear to me once someone shows up in our school ready to do harm it's already too good and hiring a ssos is putting a band-aid on the wrong spot it's an easy solution that gives parents a false sense of security if the board is elected are going to approve

017a half a million dollars to keep our kids safe let's spend some of that on prevention let's give our kids more tools to spot and report the signs and let's put more energy into anti-bullying initiatives as a collective town voice let's support politicians who will keep guns out of the hands of the people who should not have them no i'm not implying that we don't need some level alarm security we probably do and if that's true let's have them be active duty brokefield cops this notion that a former or retired cop can be as good as an active cop doesn't make much sense to me particularly when we consider a diminishing pool of candidates i mean who would we be honored are they good with kids are we going to take what we can get

018and are we adding additional risk simply adding more guns cannot be the sole solution you almost notice i would just urge the board to take a holistic approach to keeping our kid home thank you next up is shannon wilder i'm sorry i skipped i think he's next absolutely it seems like one or two board members overrode the recommendation to have armed guards within our schools students who attended who attend brookfield public schools came to the security meeting and expressed they would like armed ass within our schools the vote on july 14th to recommend unarmed asso's those children's voices we're not as parents we are the experts when it comes to knowing what is best for our children and the board of education should be listening to us parents and the children's voices it's obvious the

019majority of the brokefield's parents want armed guards and once again just leaving a few four to bed members we aren't listening to or listen to what the children feel they need at the time of school five days a week during the july 14 security meeting there was only one voting parent one at that meeting again one voting parent the rest who voted were either town employees or board of ed members and i find that so unacceptable and i have to kind of go off of what someone said before to say that our kids are already at risk and they don't need armed security i don't know what parent can sit here and say that we can should not be protecting our kids i mean we might as well unlock the school doors and just let

020anyone in we need to protect our kids and it's upsetting to think that we don't to thank you thank [Applause] you shannon reilly 11 year run road um i'm here as a parent but also an educator across the state forum and i just wanted to i guess express that i think that the board that you are doing a good job that the considerations that you've made and putting forth instead of just a reactionary um split second decision and considering all pieces is should be applauded by the town i do [Music] want the board also to consider that you know the biggest piece here in all of like that connects all of these different school shootings with mental health and that mental health should be part of our response to something like this that if the

021money needs to be spent for more security that there should be a portion of that money spent towards mental health in my son is a student at wisconier he spent an entire month this past school year without a school counselor where the assistant um principal had to fill in as a school counselor because there was not someone filling that position we got an email on the first of april saying that the school counselor was leaving and then did not get an email until the 10th of may that a new school counselor had been hired um i don't know if you know about what middle school is like for students but during that time they are dealing with many emotions that they are processing what it is like to be an adult as a child and

022that supporting that through mental health school counselors school psychologists you know even hiring an sro an sro does have training to deal with students and forming that relationship with them where i don't know what our qualifications or what you're going to be looking for in an asso but i would be much more comfortable as a parent and as an educator myself having someone who has the the backing of our police department and the training that is provided also be um having to react yearly with their guns okay that's all i wanted to say thank you thank you so that works jennifer ackerly is our last hello jen accurately five navy road brookfield connecticut um i don't have any special speech prepared and i've just been taking in everything as it's come but i am a

023mother of a five-year-old who just graduated from goddard which is a wonderful preschool up here in brookfield and i also want to thank you guys for addressing these concerns because i know it can't be easy hearing everybody's opinion and everything um essentially um my greatest concern was i was all excited for kenwood lake elementary school i was like yes they're secure and with all the shootings i have to worry about that then the sign went down we have to go to center i'm sure the education and everything's wonderful my daughter is going to be attending the kindergarten with about 10 other kindergarten groups and just from basic assessing the grounds not just from a shooter standpoint but safety the fences were outdated there was a gate that the latch could come open a child could

024fall into somebody else's yard it was just some basic principles i didn't have a surveillance camera in my apartment that weren't at the entries or the exits and among the shooting being a big threat there's also a child exploitation kidnappings that happen six trillion dollars a year actually go into that more so majority of them are kidnappings having an asso there is someone who's trained to focus primarily on protecting the asset versus a cop and it can be a retired cop but they enforce laws security officers are there to protect the children the building the grounds do the rounds see what looks off what doesn't and that has the emergency preparedness available which is provided to us by the state of connecticut saiza will come out and bring us create a professional to just assess

025the ground so parents know what risk we're taking it is scary because you know sandy hook and but if you look at our surrounding towns new milford's on board newtown's on board all these towns are on board where do you think these assailants are going to hit the ones who don't put this issue ahead and we get so high up on guns we're scared of guns take it from the different position what do you think that will do to a shooter it might deter so wouldn't it be smart to have that prepared action plan in place no different than a fire drill and it doesn't have to be scary it's just a response so because myself as a parent i'm a focus on work i want the teachers to focus on educating my child i

026want them to focus on their learning without having to worry somebody's going to come to school and kidnap me okay and i think we all deserve that as parents as people as residents and i'm just hoping that we'll be heard okay um that is the uh end of our public comment we actually hit the 20 minutes almost dead nuts um so thank you all for uh and i appreciate everybody's input i know all of us just for all of us that we really really really appreciate everybody's input on these matters um so next up on our agenda is when we go through a couple of updates and then we'll get under the core of our agenda so first up is winning correspondence leslie ruggiero and anthony distepan wrote regarding school safety and security trina capone

027wrote regarding portables school security officers and older choice laura organ regarding the security task force and armed security officers jessica jessica wrote in praise of her child's teacher steve harding and lisa coleman wrote regarding armed security officers jennifer ackerly wrote regarding school safety and funding plans carrie colombo wrote regarding school security and climate the brookfield youth commission wrote regarding security task force and ready to step in a row regarding the task force recommendations okay next up is the approval of board minutes i'll move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on june 15th and the special joint meeting with the nbc on july 11th okay it's moved and seconded by mrs fernandez i'm going just if it's okay with everybody i'll just mention on for the for the video of who seconded

028it so we're not having to pass the microphone for seconds um the movement second any discussion on the minutes okay hearing none all in favor okay uh so we're going to move on to the superintendent's reports dr brown thank you mr belden um so a couple of thank yous i want to send out we've had a great start to summer school extended school year uh busy at both wisconsin and center school i'd like to thank dr rudel and mrs ryan for their work with leadership of summer school and all the staff there and also for the extended school year program uh to mrs johnson and mrs fontana for all of their work and of course the staff that's that's their welcoming and teaching kids every single morning i'm really pleased with what's going on there

029in addition to that um just a follow-up from last week's special meeting regarding the technology package handle handlewood lake elementary rob ten is our project manager from arcadis along with their confident technology director met on the 14th with the state department's office of grants management there was only a couple of comebacks for some clarity we anticipate the next two weeks another meeting and a likely approval by the state at that point so we're really excited about that was a major major undertaking the next thing i wanted to do is throw it over to our principal of center school mrs farias to talk a little bit about kindergarten enrollment the new support repair positions and the first week schedule so mrs hello everyone thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak about the center school

030kindergarten enrollment and the beginning of the school schedule for our kindergarten first i'd like to just say that it's been an amazing two weeks back at center school have just been extremely excited and honored and humbled by the outpouring of support by uh you know dr brill and the admin team as well as you know staff i even had a couple of former students uh come by so it's been just really awesome a little tiring but really awesome um so kindergarten enrollment as you all know is very fluid especially this time of year uh we have approximately 160 students at this time with six weeks left to go in the school year so we anticipate getting some additional students so right now we're about 18 to 20 per class which is in range with our

031class size guidelines which are about 17 to 20 is the class size guidelines with a target of 19. so with the paris support that we have we're pretty comfortable with those numbers i'd like to first give a shout out to some of the amazing kindergarten teachers that came and collaborated along with me to work on our opening of school schedule nancy sommerfeld sean knapp sarah dougherty who's at center school as well as the district teacher of the year uh laura lynch and elizabeth larson so together we came up with the schedule for the first week of school basically for kindergarten so as has been at practice the very first day of school which is august 30th is a shortened day for kindergarten students it's a kindergarten visit where the students will come in during a

032small group scheduled session along with a parent and guardian and they have an opportunity to the teacher and some classmates drop off school supplies so they're not lugging them you know the next day of school the parent and guardian may schedule a a brief connection meeting with the teacher for the afternoons of that meet they get to meet their classmates receive a personalized bus tab and take a short bus ride and that seems to be the most enjoyable thing for the kindergartners that day so it's really an opportunity for them to experience the school and the school setting along with the parent and guardian so it really eases with the transition back into the school uh the remainder of that week which will be wednesday august 31st thursday september 1st and friday september 2nd you

033may recall that the shortened week or the shortened day schedule used to be extended for like two to four weeks and we've changed that this year so instead of two to three weeks of early dismissals which tends to be very disruptive for families and quite frankly well while we certainly know that it's developmentally appropriate to really ease the transition for the students to extend it that long sometimes is really not as helpful so it's just those three days for that week that'll be the early dismissal so the schedule will be from 8 40 to 12 20. the bus that they'll be riding home on in the afternoon will be the same place that they take in the morning i spoke with deb jones at the bus company um so they're at least it'll be the

034same bus driver and they'll be able to have an opportunity to work with small groups along with their teacher and or the paraprofessional to really learn and have some multiple practice opportunities of how to be safe kind and responsible in the various settings of the school cafeteria classroom playground etc um and also it's the bus dismissal without an excuse to be developed in 80 or so first graders so it's just the kindergarteners getting used to the routine of the bus dismissal in the afternoon so it also helps with the transition from the pre-k and the day cares that they've been um going to perhaps and i know that our kindergarten teachers when they went for the visits they noticed a lot of the students were having an extended nap time in the afternoon so it'll

035be a little bit of an adjustment for them um you know coming to school with without that nap time and it also gives an opportunity for the teachers to connect with the parent guardians in the afternoon and also to begin doing some training with the paraprofessionals so um you know we're very excited and really feel very you know pleased in having the support of the board the community and the paraprofessionals to get to our kindergarten program to be able to be responsive to the kindergarten needs and to make sure that the kindergarteners have an additional trusted adult and we've been talking about social emotional you know support and certainly with our youngest learners we know that having a connection with a trusted adult is something that's really very important to be able to support both

036academic as well with social emotional learning and to help with the routines and the academic behaviors most of the behaviors at most but many of the connecticut core standards for kindergarten talk about with prompting and support with guidance and support from adults because it really is again an opportunity to have small groups one-on-one and to be able to help support students with that prompting and support so we're really excited um about welcoming uh our kindergartners uh at the end of august and certainly our first graders as well certainly looking forward assembly to uh to your different coming center school so that's it i hope anybody has any questions thank you and then the next part of the report i wanted to turn it over to joy since there's not a facilities subcommittee report this month

037but for this board meeting i asked joy to walk through some of the updates for the summer projects so at the high school we have bathroom renovations uh bmp construction is a general contractor so demolition is complete through ceramic tile floors and walls are installed painting is underway bathroom fixtures are on site and installation will likely start this week work is on schedule and is anticipated to be completed on time for the start of the school year the hvac controls the project continues to make good progress automatic automated building systems abs and modern mechanical mm are the contractors so abs is installing the communication wiring thermostats and equipment controls throughout the building good progress is being made mm is installing valves and actuators on the heating and cooling equipment in the classroom mm start was

038delayed until 7 6 due to supply chain issues but are making good progress as they've completed installations in 20 classrooms as of today abs expects to start taking over control of the hvac equipment with the new system beginning in august the boys locker room project our renovation project there was a meeting held last friday july 8th it was a planning coordination meeting the project will have a late december january start to ensure proper time for pre-construction planning including permits planning for utilization disruption the hvac unit to support the locker room will not be available for the project to be officially completed until at least march 2023. all these factors were taken into consideration as we develop the project timeline office roof repair high school um eagle rivet is the contractor this project will address chronic

039leaks failed roof insulation and leaking ductwork we anticipate work to start the week of the 18th july 18th media center where we typically have meetings the project is out to bid there's a 14 week lead time for equipment the town arc of funding of 90 000 will likely not be enough the guidance roof repair this project remains in planning the project has not yet gone out of it and at wisconia the new electric service rnc electric is the contractor equipment has been ordered lead time for the switch gear will prohibit completion of work this summer and the gym wall pelletier construction management is the contractor the project is in the permit process the contractor contractor is mobilizing and there's an anticipated start date of 7 18 with approved permits that's it any questions questions still

040going on joy thank you for going with it um a couple other announcements board of education retreat is on august 16th and so just board members if you can make sure that's on your calendar the 17th of august is the regular board meeting uh mr belden started to talk about the next board meeting being a security forum we'll be inviting our uh principals for some conversation with the public uh [Music] of that meeting and then the last thing that didn't make the superintendent report that i just wanted to share which is really good news is kind of the concept of the reset and relaunch of the uh of the school year getting back to normal i actually had a brief conversation with dr sullivan some of the simple things getting our water fountains back online

041uh being ready to go uh our case number here of uh the new coke variant is five percent in town where he's ten percent statewide um he was actually really excited for us at the start of the school year and kind of the concept of return to normalcy and i think we're all excited for that so um we're really uh we're really fired up about the school year working with the admin team and our teacher leaders that have been in an outdoor school year it's it's been amazing a lot of energy we're really excited so i thank you for the time it's important any questions i just um had a question about the boys locker room and i don't know if it's a question for dr burrell or through joy but i'm a little confused

042about hearing that there's a late december or january start date because i thought the last time facilities committee update or actually for the last several meetings we were talking about the original estimate came in very high there were going to be modifications to the plan i thought they're gonna be new drawings so i sort of feel like we didn't get an update on how that got resolved and now it sounds like there was a planning meeting and they're moving forward so at some point will there be like a presentation about what the boy's locker room is going to end up being because i feel like we never saw that i think that the one thing that we talked about with the modification to the plan was really the reduction of a full there's hvac but

043not a full air conditioning of the space and also the programmatic improvement and to the fitness room where the weights and the cardio equipment are that isn't going to be touched because it became so unwieldy in terms of the cost of the project so working with the nbc that's the big section that was reduced but it'd be a renovation of the actual footprint of the locker room updates to the bathroom facilities et cetera showers and then the and we started to do a presentation um and then the outdoor access to new bathrooms uh from the outside um kind of that basic uh update to the regular footprint the other part about that with working on the timing of the project and joy mentioned all the pre-construction the there was to get started now and disrupt

044the school all fall when they no matter what could not on the on their best finish the project until sometime in march because they can't get all the hvdc that was the common theme of joy's reporter is that hvac equipment is very difficult to get they're not going to get that until sometime in march and that's basic best case scenario right now as we talked with mr belanda mr baldwin and uh mr czecho from the nbc we talked it through it made more sense to wait and do the project in the two to three month window from december to march rather than prolong a offline locker room for six to eight months so that was the decision okay so so what i've heard is a request to have a presentation on the locker room project

045scope is and what the redesign point was is that yeah let's do that yeah i mean i think i think the public was so interested in it there was so much feedback and it sort of feels like we the concern was expressed that we this thing moved ahead without us being as a board fully involved and and i do know we did re-did it uh even the rebound needed some additional top-up money it could go to the board of selectmen who were giving great support uh borderline and florida finance to make sure that this thing could get off the ground so i've got to thank both of those boards for their support on us but i do think we've never circled back and done a presentation here so i do think that's a good idea

046and we ought to do that and think at our next committee meeting we can get together and talk about that get in touch with the architects and yeah maybe get mr czecho to come to another meeting and we can put a presentation better and let's have that in august or september we've got to meet two sure in september or one two weeks ago okay so got a couple of opportunities to talk to you okay i think everybody's not thank you anything else for dr all right let's move on next up we've got subcommittee reports um and you'll see we had so many subcommittee reports i've kind of grouped them and i'll just ask each chair a person to quickly go through them we do have some outside speakers tonight so i don't want to hold

047them up too long so first up is finance okay um so i'm going to combine the two of them but really in both of our in both our 613 and our 7-eleven meeting we spent the majority of time talking about the current year's budget at the 6 13 meeting we were still under the impression that we would um considering our budget foreign not the over budget despite the fact that we had some significant overages and substitutes professional services and heating but by the time we reached our july meeting on 7 11 a lot has changed so this is the first you guys are hearing better from me but we are now over budget by about 90 000 although ken is saying that that's coming down which is a good thing but around about 70 to

04890 000 which is a big change from our last report we were saying that we were going to be able to cover most of our overages uh within the budget um some big line item overages are special education by about 70 000. we did have about 90 000 in unbudgeted copic costs our budget for substitutes is very over and interestingly we are also over budget in our salaries that's a very typically a very stable line item um considering that we build in um quite a bit in turnover savings so we're going to do a deep analysis to figure out where those discrepancies are whether they're coming from leaves vacancies retirements and i know ken is going to probably dig through that person by person so we'll get another report probably by next month um the

049freeze that we did implement it's important to note that that did um to the positive of our budget give us about 390 000 so um the freeze did really do a significant job in covering all of this up but if you remember from our cooperative discussions with the board of finance last year we had planned not to budget for coven-related items and instead run those costs through our budget because in all likelihood we might be able to cover a lot of that so really if we're looking at sort of the grand scheme of things we're really looking at just the coping cost being the significant over budget item we did also talk about the possibility of taking some of some funds from the cafeteria fund that's um for everybody who doesn't know is it's a

050separate fund separate from our operating budget it can accumulate money but what can be expensed from this account is very very specific for example we pay some of the cafeteria monitors from this fund but only the portion of their pay that they spend in the cafeteria which you know doesn't include the recess duties that they have as well um so that's that's generally the place that we're at right now we're gonna probably have another um come back in august to kind of tell you about where we ended up but um also what we'll end up happening next month is an ask from the board of selectment board of finance for a special appropriation or to cover the rest of this budget which again has been part of the discussion all along about these open costs

051any questions for mrs fernandez uh second up is uh security task force and i'll be very brief um because we developed a pretty significant discussion later on the security tax course but the security task force met on the 15th of june the 21st of june the 7th of july the 14th of july and so i've had four meetings since we've lasted that in those discussions we have pretty much dedicated the time to reviewing the staffing proposals that are out there and not the other topics and we met with the youth commission i think you heard that in public comment to get some input we had two students come to the meeting and the third student had given us some written input they were pretty rambunctious meetings i'll speak for the other committee members in terms

052of going back and forth on what should the solution be what are the considerations uh at the core the discussion was what are the risks you're trying to solve and then focus your energy on fixing those risks and and understanding that you're starting from the point where the schools are pretty secure as they are so um so we will have a further discussion on that in executive session and as i mentioned at the onset of this meeting i will give a very thorough debrief of how that meeting uh proceeded it's not going with us to walk out and say it's over right we will give a good debrief so that the public understands what our discussion was um and that's it for the security task force opening questions or anything the other committee members have

053left on that okay third is policy communications thanks policy communications mattered on june 15th and we spent a good part of the time talking about policy 5144.2 which is the use of exclusionary time out dr barrel had asked our director of special special education mrs steve nicola hickman for her comments on that policy as an expert in the field so we really wanted to take our time and go over her feedback and after doing that we agreed to bring it to the board for a first reading tonight so that's in your packet we also discussed two other new policies gifted and talented students program and non-discrimination they're both mandated policies that we did not currently have so uh they're very straightforward again you'll see them in the packet later on for a first read we

054didn't have anything to discuss about communications we really just focused on policy at that meeting so it was actually a fairly brief meeting that was it all right so that's it on the subcommittee reports next up is our consent agenda that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are empires resignations leave of absence and transfers second okay it's been seconded by joy and just for the public it's a page and a half of uh items on our consent agenda um dr bill any comments you'd like to make on the yeah very uh you can see there's quite a bit of movement whether it's transfers promotions new hires of custodian para teacher or whatever it might be it's been an exciting month since graduation or i should say before graduation was started the

055hiring process for next this coming year i have to thank the principals their teams of interview personnel and also hr for all the work that's going on it's been incredible and matter of fact some of the board members who were leading for the negotiations meaning that they saw that i was busily interviewing four or five candidates for some of our elementary jobs over huckleberry and uh pleased to let you know we move forward on some of those as well so we're really excited a lot again a lot of great energy some really talented new folks coming to perfect so dr barrel roughly how many new hired new teachers will be having in the district are new employees um well roughly it doesn't have to be personal yeah i would say teacher wise with movements you're

056looking at about 15 probably 15 to 20. in terms of the new positions as well as when um you know we had a math interventionist for example one of our veteran teachers has become the math interventionist so we have to then backfill that person so there's been you know that kind of give or take um dr rudel who became the permanent assistant principal we have to backfill her coach position so there's just a lot of that on top of okay thank um thank you any other comments or questions on the consent agenda um look before we put it to vote i'd like to just make a small statement if i could um i missed the meeting when uh dr ruby was put on a consent agenda because she's moving on to a new job tonight

057this is our last meeting before she departs and i felt it was really important to say a few words for uh for dr ruby and she joined this district in 2015 so she's been with us for seven years i just want us to think about the things that dr ruby has done in her tenure here as our assistant superintendent um some of the stuff we've taken for granted we've all used the term gradual release of responsibility and we take that for granted because it's so common in everything that we do where you actually teach the teachers of how you release responsibility to the students she brought that to us she brought us a lot of curriculums right guys let's start with elementary uh reading and writing or kate reading and writing phonics as a core

058construct of that the the science curriculum did some math work a lot of curriculum work that's very fundamental she brought us a whole new focus as part of that on how do we incorporate standards and think about all the professional development that we've managed through what's on board but also our entire staff on professionalizing standards into how do we run the curriculums she brought us a whole new model on assessment right all of the assessment tools that our students use in the classroom from the determined logic progress rooted in standards were led by dr william um she brought us ruler and the whole social emotional uh structure that we have today and that's what she's going on to do at sacred park to teach teachers on how to do that professional development i remember my

059first board meeting professional development government professional development day what are we doing and we kind of got the big wide eyes we never get a school high school by school very well thought out plan on what professional development is needed and how do we do it because educating our teachers is what makes great students right so making sure they have the science of educating and i think our teachers have been better for but i think our students have been better for it we've changed our k4 report card right and that's done a whole new initiative in terms of how we've done that um so around a whole area of curriculum assessment and presentation of that it's we would not be where we are today without the leadership that dr ruby has brought us but let's

060add a couple of things shannon personnel organization reported to her every single time we've negotiated a labor contract she was there on our side helping advise on what's the right way to you know structure our agreements with our teachers the best practices in hr that we have implemented the teacher evaluation model she's in the core of working with the teachers to have a very workable teacher evaluation model the whole hr structure is better for her and let's not forget france right she's brought us a number of grants including especially the high school school improvement i think i saw mr bolland here tonight he's probably nodding his head saying oh yeah that was a really important thing um and then let's not forget all the leadership and collaboration with the principals and the other staff members

061right that's what an important role of that assistant superintendent to draw so i just wanted to remind everybody that we our school district is benefited from dr luby's leadership and i personally appreciate the hope she's given the board to understand a lot of the concepts and structures and approaches that that we need to do but the future of our district is built on her shoulders and i think she's not here tonight i wish she was but she's not i'm hoping she would watch this on video but uh thank you my personal thanks and wish you the best uh for your future and ever since so and did anybody else say anything i mean i think you touched on every some very important accomplishments that she's done for our district um you know most important i

062felt that she was always very transparent you know she never slanted the data she recorded it um you should build you know teacher and leader capacity she was such a strong leader she really helped me grow personally as an educator i really looked up to her i had great conversations shared articles um and i always appreciate it and respected her perspective and big loss to brookfield she was monumental and turning this district around in addition to dark world appreciate everything you've done and i'd love your audience to join me right and with that we can approve the consent agenda all in favor of approving the consent agenda okay so that's it for the core business of the uh the regular matters we're gonna move on to new business items now and the first item is

063an update from the brookfield education foundation and i'd like to invite tristan joshi [Music] all right we'll pass by that if you tell us we will we will do it um so the next up is the dhs pillars and cifc presentation so the recommended action is at the board receiving update uh for a new proposal for mental health support so mr landry you want to make some opening remarks thank you mr galton for bringing mr bland up our high school principal we're really excited about this initiative and uh we heard in public comment uh concerns about mental health and this is one opportunity with some of our tremendous teacher leaders in involving community resources to really help our kids thank you dr braille thank you mr belden it's my pleasure to be in front of

064everybody here today i want to introduce a few people that are coming up to the stage uh two people that will talk initially um but i have my assistant principal uh jules shaiti is here as well as my team leader of school counseling department jim jolio and someone you hear from a little bit later melanie bonjour with civic which is a community organization that you'll learn more about today i'm only going to talk very quickly and took the presentation over to mrs julio and mrs scheidy and they're going to run through a process that our school has gone through it is a presentation that's um really i think it's 15 slides something along that line but don't be fooled this conversation and this work has been going on for the better part of 10 months

065to get to this point tonight um so we are so pleased that the subcommittee board was able to hear our presentation and listen to some of the things that we're looking to bring forward to the building um i'm going to step away due to some technology issues and the inability to click from here so i'm going to go to the back and click the presentation uh so one either mrs stratton mrs julia will very nicely prompt me now mark let's go and then once they conclude their presentation um you know we'll invite miss monjour up i'll come back up as well and we'll answer any questions the board may have i also want to recognize there's other members of this pillars committee you're going to hear a lot about tonight mrs griffin is here she's

066here she's been here all day she's got about an hour ride home and she's still here to support to make sure that we're here and there's other members of pillars committee that aren't here tonight but worked unbelievably hard to make sure we brought this to you today so i'm going to turn it over to jules and susan and we'll go from there uh we are educators and members of communities and members of the country in general and what we saw post pandemic uh mr william you can go ahead and advance to the next slide um this will not be new to you we kept hearing young people soaring rates of depression anxiety trauma loneliness into that suicide gallery the pandemic further altered these numbers and experiences of our children in particular the recommendations from these

067agencies that are listed above really push that we need to make sure that there is access to high quality affordable mental health care whether that be in our homes in the community in the schools we really need to make sure that there is access to mental health care and so with that in mind we start looking at our data and i'm going to ask mr julio to step in and talk about what we started to see as we started digging into our database committee so we knew that we were feeling as if we were seeing more mental health needs within our building but we really needed to ascertain whether or not we felt that way or this was really happening so we decided to collect some data so this is saturday we gathered from the

068beginning of this previous school year to february 1st within that time frame we had six of our high school students who were referred to a juvenile review board which is an alternative to the traditional court system so those are six students who were involved in some sort of criminal behavior we had just over 25 families who were referred to dcf we had 20 plus students who received support from 2-1-1 so 2-1-1 is the number that we access we need to request emergency mobile psychiatric services for our students so what that means is that means we have a student in acute crisis who needs a clinician to come to the building to assess their safety and make determinations on next steps at the high school we reserve two on one calls for acute distress which generally

069means students who are expressing suicidal ideation [Music] we had 12 students who were referred to the denver youth services truancy partnership program so those are students who are chronically true and from school 12 really doesn't kind of show how many students we had this year who experienced truancy that number is 12 students whose family has provided consent for us to refer so that doesn't include all of the students who would have benefited from that support but we didn't receive consent for we had seven students who work from the school counseling office for part of or the entire school day um in all of those cases it was because the students were experiencing anxiety and or depression that prevented them from fully accessing their schedule we made five calls for ambulances strictly due to mental health

070that does not include physical health calls and we took a look at our entire building and identified any students who are on either a 504 plan or an iep for the diagnosis of anxiety and or depression as well as any students who have those diagnoses but are not on a formal plan and that took us to just about 130 students this is just another data point that we think is important so this school year we had 63 new students to burkefield high school alone over the past four years we've averaged about 48 new students so this is not to say that students that are new to brookfield high school automatically need mental health care but if that number continues to increase or at least remains at that height level we certainly will need more resources

071i just wanted to clarify the 2-1-1 and crisis intervention data that i talked about again we've had we had just about 20 this school year and again we knew that that felt like a lot more but we needed to really determine whether that was more or not so we took a look at the previous few school years going as far back as 18 19. that school year we had six calls to 2-1-1 the 19-20 school year we had eight calls seven of which were prior to the lockdown one of which happened while we were all at home and the 20 the 2021 school year we had three referrals um it is important to note though that that school year students were only in school part-time if at all so we do anticipate that if students

072were in school full-time that number would have been a lot larger so this confirmed for us we are seeing a severe increase in mental health needs and we need to do something about it which is what we're here to talk about today so we started looking at what are we seeing what are the problems um and so the one is a general continued decline in overall student well-being we're seeing the school avoidance and truancy continuing to increase an elevation in discipline issues including substance abuse failing and acting out and a general downturn in academic performance for some of our most at-risk students couple that with the other problem of more than ever the limited access to mental health services due to a shortage not just in the schools certainly that's worldwide you're seeing mental health

073services there's a shortage of those resources so this committee's put together some recommendations uh the first one was that we would restructure some of the committees we have here internally and we have done that um there's the srvi committee which is a scientifically researched based interventions and then we put together that's academics and we separated and we started putting together a team that is dealing more with mental health and substance abuse issues the second thing was that we worked and suggested that we would begin securing interns school counseling and social worker interns in particular and we have um that is in the works for the fall we actually have one hour in case coming up with vhs this call the third recommendation was that we would start exploring the option of partnering with an outside

074agency and the outside agency would offer their services here on site and we wanted to explore what that might look like we found out that the key components of an outside agency that working on-site here in the high school would we would be able to offer on-campus mental health care for students and families that would be one of the key components that they could offer we would also be able to have immediate assistance with two crisis calls and jen you know a typical two-on-one call to for us to get assistance will typically range from 45 minutes to an hour to get someone on site so this would give us someone here in the building for immediate assistance with those calls we would be hosting an outside organization in the building to provide students and families

075with access to the support which would decrease or greatly minimize the barriers that families run into in trying to access that support outside of school and then while this is a partnership it's very important to remember that it is very separate what is happening with us the high school and the district versus what is happening with the organization is separate so we looked closely at four different agencies and we started narrowing it down in two of the agencies that stood out was the cost to the district would be zero cost to us these agencies would place a therapist in the school they do accept insurance they would partner with their families as well as offer the other therapy to those families who agreed to it they would be able to offer therapy group sessions here

076within the schools they would function as certified dcf and crisis clinicians and then they would they would provide care for our students who are 18 and older and those we do have a number of those typically our juniors and seniors will turn 18 and so that care will be there for them as well they do offer substance abuse preventative care and they also offer something that is an on-site medical option which we aren't going to get to at this point but um that is an option that these outside agencies offer as well so with all that put together we are this committee is recommending that we partner with the agency connecticut institute for communities and it is recognized with the term pacific and we are recommending that it would start slow we would bring in

077a clinician on a part-time basis slowly build a caseload and then the long-term goal will be to shift to full-time clinician if and women becomes great enough and with that i'm going to turn it over to miss bonjour and she could talk more about what this agency has to thank you so offer very pleased to be here um tonight to share a little bit about this uh connecticut institute for communities and our school-based lesson model and to say that i it's really been a pleasure to work with to my david tolson to you know acknowledge you know that the brookfield school district recognizing the mental health services i've been working in um i'm school-based in the program manager for the organization connecticut institute is a non-profit organization based on being very um health center organization

078and to get the designation it receives federal funding to provide comprehensive medical behavioral health and just in general health care across the age whether it's on site or by referral there's other components of the organization we oversee the head start and on the learning program in degree and norwalk we oversee the wic program in gamer in milford we have a low-income housing project we have a community health center at the wellness center uh you know we do when we do the school-based law centers and i've been overseeing school-based law centers for connecticut institute since 2013 but my history in school-based goes back to 1994. the school-based clusters of overseas several of them were under the umbrella of the city of danbury and i retired from the city and they they had to institute um the

079programs under their umbrella because it would offer you know more support and the continuity of care and they asked me to come home my history goes back again it's almost 30 years that i've been working in school-based health centers and i believe in the model and i really have seen i was telling the two of them that you know over all the years they've seen the benefit of the services because i've seen students come in with whether unmet medical needs dental needs or paper health needs see them really struggling academically physically emotionally and over the course of providing the care on site and timely fashion to see these students thrive medically and drive academically if they want to graduate and be thriving you know adults successful adults the school-based health center model is to remove

080barriers to access to care by bringing services in the school and there are many different barriers of student care in some of the poor communities there are rural communities there's transportation barriers you know students or their families may not have the access to a vehicle or be able to have long transportation routes and so you may not be able to get to care some have financial barriers and may not have the funding may not have insurance mental health is in um not all behavioral health providers or psychiatrists except insurances many of them are cash only the cost for psychiatric or even counseling business is pretty absorbent and some families will choose not to whether they have the financial needs will actually not to pursue mental health um behavioral services because they just can't afford or

081you know have other priorities and so those needs get pushed to the back burner and could lead to more you know serious issues um and some are stigmatized and mental health and the recognition of mental health aids has really come to the surface and more people are you know expressing their issues with suicidal radiation anxiety you know students certainly are i think we've seen post colder during coconut post copic more youth more children more adolescence coming you know to the school districts to go to teachers to guidance to our organizations and to their parents saying i'm really struggling and i don't know what to do and but but there are some families that still are concerned about the stigma of having a mental health issue so they choose not to bring their children um to

082a provider and and what we see in many of these cases is the problems getting worse in connecticut and it's across the country there's a significant increase in suicide attempts and suicide completions especially one of my fails i'm on numerous have been working in this field for a long time so among both local and many many statewide boards a lot of events is to a suicide um institute and and you know increase the suicide in times of completions is um has continued to increase which is extremely frightening and then we all see the um you know the increase in federal overdoses um and in substance abuse and substance use is you know often a result of automatic mental health needs and so by by bringing the services into the school where the kids are we

083get more time like access to care and um you know in danbury we have provided this year i just finished the numbers and we've provided over seven thousand patient visits to students in engineering schools um in the danbury public schools very high the two middle schools technology state we have dental um we you know provide a ride in adventure services including medical mental health and dental services but we're also working with different districts we are working currently with the new milford school district is similar to here in brookfield they recognize the need for you know the students struggling student striking out struggling academically lack of available providers in the community that's one other barrier which i didn't mention just a few minutes ago you know there are not enough providers to go around and see

084what's happening is parents are having difficulty and if they want to get your child into a community-based provider unable to do so where the wait list can be months weeks you know weeks and months if not many many months and so a child was at risk may get you know find their problems to exacerbate even more because they have delays by bringing that provider in the schools to where the students are they're able to access those services in the school in a timely manner and the other thing that the benefit of having a provider in the school is that we're able to have a continuing care if that child does not come back for a fellow visit you know after initial intake we can find that child in that classroom in their building and be

085able to find out you know what's going on why don't you come and the continuity of care is better it's much better than if they're in the district you can take your child to a community-based provider and they're all wonderful out there but they don't want to go back they may not go back but you know by having the access in the schools and i truly appreciate the work that's been done by the committee and the time that they've put into this recognizing need understanding that taking the time to research programs really going on in the community uh this is an established works in other communities we've seen it uh and we know the benefits that that this would bring to the school community um so at this point we certainly opened up to the

086board if there's any particular questions we did absolutely presents to the subcommittee of the board we've heard this and recommended you know our in full support of it but certainly we want to answer any questions any of the four of us up here could certainly answer questions you may have about the program and what it may look like from the timeline the quotation of everyone's questions okay does that mean that the parents of the child's insurance takes over because i know that the school has insurance that covers physical injuries when the parent's insurance does so is there an overlap when it comes to mental health as well forever there is there is no um they're not going to want services for children but they will build insurances and they accept husky various partnerships with various

087insurance agencies and that is an option but no tokens and such are um for behavioral health you know it's it's a little easier or less you know financially easier to bring behavioral health providers into a school district because the only thing we really need is a confidential room space for them to work in that's comfortable whether it's individual approved therapy to have access to legacy and internet access and by we support our services by billing for those behavioral visits similar to if the family was to bring a child out to a product you know through so we can build husky in private insurances if a family does not have insurance we will connect the family to our financial eligibility workers so that they can assist them with linking them to husky insurance and so that

088helps us to generate revenue by being a federally qualified health center we get a higher rate of member reimbursement so that helps offset so there is no you know cost of the family or the child coming in we don't want i think we want to remove those bears access care if they don't have insurance or they're you know there's because of you know certain eligibility you know situations we do offer sliding through scales and we can slide that down to zero but most families are able to be successfully getting them linked to insurance and so the cost of the district is really providing that space and supporting their provider and your meeting providing making sure that you know they help with you know promoting the services coming into space internet access and small things like

089that thank you and my next question is as far as the tools in the tool develop so therapy is one ten minutes there was a medical intervention what's an example well within this partnership that we're talking about tonight we're really responding to the behavior of services um you know if if we the community felt there was a need to there was unbelievable medical issue then we would explore another option and that's a full-service school-based lesson model in which there's an integrated team that works on site it's a licensed aprn an advanced practice nurse practitioner we create a medical exam room within the school building itself and they work with the payroll provider so they work as an intermediate team you know that's a full service model it's it's something that takes more time but you

090know several of the the schools that i have you know being dangerous in new town um and it would be the same thing we've seen in pediatricians office acute care chronic care you know sick visits school physicals vaccines immunizations i'm very excited about this mark you know i sent you a letter back in may asking what else can we do because i i really felt for a long time there are so many unmet needs among the star our kids and so i thank you for all the work you've done i'm very excited about the possibility um could you explain a little bit about how you deal with privacy especially you know here in high school i think there is this stigma about getting help so how do you how do you set up a space

091for kids to come meet you and how does that kid feel comfortable that all his classmates aren't saying oh you're going to the therapist or you know when you when somebody misses their appointment and you said oh well we can go to the classroom and say what's going on i haven't seen you how do you deal with that amongst this population of kids who already might not you know it's a very good question and it's a very good question and uh there's a number of approaches you know we work i do want to say that we don't work from you know we work as a collaborative family in the school district we work with the school guidance the social workers you know the school psychologists the school administration you know they know the students within

092the school building and they are how comfortable and and really have i think the trust of the students and so they are referral source um when we come in you know we talk about um you know that we're there to support the students we talk about music and preventive approach we do a lot of health education we do a lot of outreach and i think it's you know well i might in my um seeing that it would be difficult for the students to feel comfortable we find that when we're in schools if we just become a natural part of that school team in a kind of med school team there's not you know they don't feel uncomfortable we do student satisfaction surveys every spring every monday and we ask the students to respond to questions

093and um you know they can fill out their own comments and off so often they want to work holy and they say they go there because they feel very safe and trusted and so it's um you know you know i really don't have a real solid answer to that but you know i've been doing again this for a long long time and you know the students naturally feel comfortable they bring their peers their friends that come so often you know we're working in high school and we just saw everybody um just a spring and she brought her boyfriend and then they refer and so it it's you know starting that presence being in presence in the school um and you know the students just actually end up they talk and they come i think i

094feel comfortable there i feel safe but the records that we have are we do you know protection you're not part of the school rep the school records you know it's not part of furniture it's part of it that the referring party there will be some information that's shared so that you know the social work refers and they know someone in the disposition but there's you know a limit on how much information is shared so you know that is also something that's communicated to families that you really protect the students and the parents great thank you i want to say in terms of space that as we looked at the building you know spaces that are premium in just about every building um ever system so we certainly look at different spaces and have some ideas

095and opportunities you know to strike that balance between privacy right so that students feel comfortable going there and also you know as you start looking at the possibility of family sessions and things like that we also don't want a location where family member had to come in the middle of the day and parent and kid are walking down the hallway and going through an office that's also creates a so we're looking for that balance we think we've identified a space that that would work really well that has phone internet and all that stuff including some privacy class as well so we've got a pretty good idea as to where we're going to go and then one other thing i want to add about that is you know if there was ever a concern a child

096you know started we did an intake then they started their meeting they ended up not coming to school and we can do telehealth also we might be in school in school but we can also do telehealth business as well and if there was any positive that came out of hope for behavioral providers and everywhere is that most implemented telehealth visits and in physicians in medical practices you know it's it's been kind of a way with mental health because you don't you have a chance of not losing that patient and you can do some telehealth all right so look um we don't have to formally improve this but i think we should i mean that's a just to show off support so i'm going to put a motion on the table that we applaud and support

097the implementation of this partnership okay it's been moved and accepted any discussion from the board okay all in favor any of those no it's unanimous so thank you so much for the presentation thank you for what you're doing they're here to do this [Music] [Applause] all right so the next topics are um policies we've learned about this from uh debbie's reporting a little bit earlier i'm going to turn my phone over to danielle who lead us through the emotions gifted and talented student program for a first reading as recommended by the policy subcommittee and policy number 5144.2 use of exclusionary timeout for a first reading as recommended by the policy subcommittee and that the board deleted the old version of policy 4118.11 and approved ku's version of policy 4118.11 nondiscrimination for a first reading as

098recommended by the policy subcommittee okay so um the first first of all i should say all three of these policies are mandated by cane and they are policies that we don't currently have that's not to say that we're not already following these procedures we are doing all the procedures that are outlined in these policies but we didn't have a formal written document so the first one exclusionary time out we've been following the procedures outlined in it we have logged all the interactions that we have with students and as i mentioned earlier we we spent a lot of time reviewing the input from our special ed director this is steve nicola very much appreciate all your input and it's really very pretty straightforward um now that it's cleaned up and rewritten so i think i don't

099think you'll have any i don't think there's anything confusing or anything in it it's pretty straightforward really just outlining the procedure for exclusionary time out as um as as part of a behavior plan the second one is 6172.1 our gifted and talented policy and again i mean i keep saying it over and over again kate mandated we did not have a written policy but the policy that was submitted by cade um was just yeah was very straightforward and very clear so we recommend that we just adopt their recommended policy it really talks about how how we have to identify kids who are talented and gifted what the steps are in doing that and then the last one is the non-discrimination policy this uh is mandated by kate and actually i made a mistake we do

100have a policy on this but it's from 1989. so a little outdated and we are recommending that we just delete the old version and approve cabe's new updated version which is very succinct and clear and straightforward are there any questions now for everybody who's listening in i just actually explained throughout the process um we approved things for what's called the first reading which basically is putting this into the process where the board has a chance to read and review and provide inputs and we have 30 days to do that so this because we take policy very seriously we want to make sure people don't just run into the meeting having read it once and then just approve it so we start the clock by accepting it for a first read and then a month from

101now we'll give or take a public take because it has to be over 30 days it'll be back on the agenda for a final and that will give the board a chance to review that so that's called the second read which we are going to have one of those momentarily so um debbie just before we uh approve the move to first read when do you need feedback we were thinking of august 12th based on our meeting schedule so board members if you could take the time and read it and get input and committed by the 12th that would be helpful and then you'll summarize what we got when we meet again on this okay so all in all in favor of accepting these for our first reading okay 5144.4 physical exercise and discipline of students

102for a final reading as recommended by the policy subcommittee the first reading was on may 4th 2020. it's been seconded by joy so any feedback so i'm presuming that means i've depending on a chance to read through it in this comfortable world that is written correct and discussion here this evening okay i'm all in favor of approving it for final read okay so that's it for old business next we have our second public comment session on reagenda so anybody in the audience who didn't get a chance to speak the first time who wanted to make that statement the hearing none will move on an update on the canada lake elementary school building project [Music] the stone veneer on the exterior is complete and they're now starting the brick so there's actually multiple materials that are

103going to be used in the exterior stone bricks there's some wood metal so multiple materials have started the approval for the tech package i believe actually was at the office of school construction grants and review today the the gas line to the building is going to be starting to get worked on and that's going to be hopefully picked up within the next month they are now starting to select a moving vendor so some of the moving supplies are already delivered to copperberry and a moving vendor with tours of the school to gauge the volume of items that need to be moved over is already starting so um starting to think about the moving process is exciting but so we're getting there there's ongoing work in all of the in all of the areas so we're

104talking about framing mechanical electrical plumbing windows sheet rock taping but there are two areas where most of that is complete so we are moving along there too all of the ff furniture fixtures equipment all of those items have been purchased and the vendors are scheduling delivery and the playground equipment the designs those are all being coordinated with steve baldwin so that's that's the most stuff that's undergoing and i think dr will has a little more rosa that's so comprehensive thank you it's getting more and more exciting so hopefully we can get a uh another one of those tours maybe in the next month or so for the court to get uh get a walkthrough what i wanted to share is i'm working with the architects um in preparation for the security forum in august we're

105putting together a presentation regarding all of the security that can be shared publicly about the new school so to share that as well i think that'll be beneficial for the community we're really excited about that that's all okay any questions for rosie or john i will say that we did have our joint meeting on the technology package and i want to thank um when you go through the technology package it's often kind of dry it's you know what we're going to do on smart boards what we're going to do for this i'm just going to say this for the public if you get a chance to go look at the lu system the lu system and look at some of the videos it's a interactive video system in the for elementary physical education that brings

106in a lot of educational characteristics and it's really exciting that we're going to have this in our district and i'm sure the board as i sent you all our links to some of those videos it's pretty impressive what we will have supporting the basics of physical education in the gym and so i just would urge people to take a chance to look at that away from okay next up is three main points i think we should definitely include the presentation by the bhs pillars committee also the canyonwood lake elementary school update i think we probably should include something about school security although a lot of the discussion will be in executive session we will probably come out of that and have some information to provide correct yes yeah so that's right one way or the

107other we will have information we don't have it now that's good i would just also ask that on the section on the security we ought to uh also feature that we're going to at our august 17th meeting uh we're going to dedicate a lot of our agenda to hear from the school principals and the techcom team about some of the how do we secure our schools today because it's very clear that not everybody understands all the different things that are in the schools and it's not just people it's a lot of other things so it's a chance to hear how do you secure how do we secure our schools so i think that's something we have to advertise so i think it's you know it was purposefully you know dedicating which is august 5th at

1087 pm here at brookfield high school to benefit [Music] i will let the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing matters concerning the security strategy or the deployment of security personnel or devices affecting public security thank you it's moved and seconded i'd like to just make a brief discussion on it um uh and i'm gonna repeat a little bit of what i said earlier um because this is you know this has been something that i've struggled with uh personally on the one side talking about security in a executive session allows to actually talk about details you might not be able to talk about in public right in terms of specific considerations and it's one of the reasons the state of connecticut suggests that we do security discussions in the executive session the

109one thing we don't want to do is to create a security problem by you know talking about some you know some of those things in um in public form that makes me uncomfortable a little bit because i think we need to be transparent so uh because i think everybody who's spoken tonight and the people that have come to some of our security task force meetings really do want to understand what we're doing so understanding that the discussion might be you know give and take it i said we're going to do this in executive session because i do want our board members to be able to ask pointed and permanent questions so that some of which may be presented but at the end of the meeting i do think the public needs to understand exactly what

110we just talked about and how we did it maybe skipping all the things that were creating security risks so my commitment to everybody here in the room i want to make sure that the public understands what we went through what decisions we're thinking about and more importantly any motions have to be done right so we can't make decisions and we will be right here at this table i've asked our uh our support here if you will hang out i hope you brought a book but uh we will stop the video for the time being but we will record this and make sure it's available so for those of you don't want a six year photo an hour or two while we do this executive session it will be video right i'm not gonna make sure

111it's just that's kind of where i do things without maybe talking about and quite frankly it's going to start with the discussion of our schools pretty safe so so we'll have that discussion we've also asked that uh our police chief in town chief philip lucy if you would join us at this meeting when i mention that no to the board earlier today because i think he's a hugely valuable resource as we work through this and talk about policing and security and the different types of roles so so with that except that we've got a vote on the table emotion on the table to the mentoring that was actually the session uh all in favor so we're going to stop the video broadcast and then we're going to we'll be back you