Board of Education Meeting 6/15/22 @ 7pm

001[Music] good evening everybody i'd like to call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education for wednesday june 15th 2022 to order uh please join me in rising for the pledge of allegiance i pledge states of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice we have all seven members of our board of education here tonight and of course dr burrell so we'll start in on the agenda for those of you who do attend our meetings regularly we've for the last months we've had public comment at the end of the meeting but we've had a number of us have had a discussion that we're going to put a limited block of time 20 minutes max at the beginning of the meeting for items on the

002agenda right because it's fair to let the public speak about the items on the agenda before we actually make actually take actions on them so you may have noticed on the sign up sheet there was an agenda item uh column there that's so i can make sure that we're talking about things that are on the agenda there's a second public comment at the end of the meeting which is for anything under the board's purview so and and so there and so we have i think as i'm looking at the signups there are four people who want to talk about school security which is an agenda item and there's one wants to talk about the after school program and that will be done at the end of the agenda um so with that we welcome public

003comment and the board thrives on getting input from as many people as we can on the decisions we need to make because we are representatives of the public in that regard we will have 20 minutes here three minutes per person for those of you who are speaking you'll see my handy-dandy little timers i'm i don't like to be saying your time's up your time's up your time's up because that happens at some public meeting so i just use these as a visual so just keep your eye on it but keep it to three minutes and i think with only four people speaking we can fit easily within the 20 minutes so with the boards uh okay we'll go ahead with public comments so the first two signed up is laura orban and uh when you

004start please for the record name and address because we need to put that in the minutes laura orban is it is the speaker on john it should be up test okay thanks we can hear it i'm not sure the audience will hear but the tv should be able to hear it 95 stoney hill road and so as you know i'm here to talk about school security and i'd like to address both um the process and the product um so first i'll address process i was very happy to see the administration and board of education taking a proactive and methodical approach and reinstating the school security task force at the last board of ed meeting i think the task force has the right charge and should be allowed to do its work and go through the

005steps of determining what things if any need to be done to make our schools more secure so thank you for doing that on to product or potentially asso's armed school security officers i i firmly believe that there's no parent in this town that is not shaken to their core at the thought of losing a child depending on the issue and personal ideology we might hear platitudes ranging from we should do everything we can to keep our child safe to we all have lives to live and if you're scared stay home so i think that it's important and incumbent on all of us as parents and on leadership that we not deal in platitudes but that we make fact-based decisions um about what will be effective and we should solve problems in the type of thoughtful

006and collaborative way that we expect our kids to solve problems and the same methods that we want them to use as they go out into the world and enter their careers so with that said asso's are not sros sros are school resource officers they're active duty police officers who have received extra training to be in our schools their officers who have access to the health insurance plan that all officers can police participate in thanks to the contract that they have in place through june of 2026 they're police officers who are part of the union that through collective bargaining entitles them to sick leave holidays injury leave continuing education participation in a pension plan uniforms equipment and other benefits all things that for the job we're asking them to do are critically important there's a disciplinary

007process because police officers are human they're not perfect if they're injured on their on the job their contract covers this so i think the process should be followed looking at the timer i think the process should be followed and if the process determines that more of a physical security presence is needed then nothing less than a full police officer with all the support and benefits that that job requires should be considered i i think both our kids and our officers deserve that and it's why i'd like to see the security task force and that process be followed through thank you for your time appreciate that next up is carrie colombo good evening i'm carrie colombo 29 huckleberry hill road on december 14 2012 i promised my first grader i'd have lunch with her at center

008elementary school just before heading over i heard there'd been a shooting at sandy hook school the details were fuzzy and there was a rumor that a shooter was on the loose targeting different schools in the area i arrived at center school as i recall i opened the front door popped my head in the office and i asked if i should take my daughter home i was told that i could decide i walked down the hall and i sat in that lunchroom looking around and planning how i would protect the most children if someone entered the room with a gun i didn't yet know that the weapon of choice can decapitate a person since then when i arrive at my kid's school i see a police car parked outside i ring a buzzer and show my

009driver's license to the camera once approved i'm buzzed in through the locked door to enter the building foyer met with another locked door all doors around the schools are locked within fire code the front office person sits behind bulletproof glass if i'm not mistaken to ask more questions about why i'm there my children and their teachers fall silent hiding during lockdown drills as a matter of practice i hate that we have all these measures in place and i am so grateful for them having experienced the need to protect the children in that lunchroom i deeply value the time and research that has gone into safety improvements implemented over the years after that life-changing december day i applaud your relaunch of the special task force to continue efforts to identify and address any areas for school

010safety improvement as much as many of us find comfort in the idea of a greater police presence in our schools i do encourage you to look at the research that concludes that sros do not prevent school school shootings or gun related incidents overall sros do in fact intensify the use of suspensions expulsions police referrals and arrests of students i fear it would be far worse with armed security such as assos suggested who do not have the much needed and extensive training of our already very skilled sros in our schools when we consider the needs of our students that have been amplified in this pandemic and where we spend money allocated to their welfare please weigh the proven impact of additional mental health professionals and programs that engage our youth who aren't necessarily involved in sports

011or have fewer opportunities to connect please thoughtfully consider research-based interventions proven to improve school safety and the school climate this is the wise approach simultaneously perhaps we as a greater school in brookfield community can talk about more systems and processes and the importance of personal responsibility i'm almost done our community needs to be educated on what constitutes a concern where to report our concerns and how to address them and lastly it is up to each one of us to ensure that our weapons are safely stored in our homes so that our youth are not able to access guns in the first place thank you thank you appreciate that okay third up is adam giuliano good evening i'm adam juliano 16 willow run i'm a retired new york city detective and current certified instructor with the

012state of connecticut post c academy out of norwalk police department um as far as sros ssros and all the other abbreviations they're not cops they're security specialists so they don't arrest anyone they are there for the safety of our children they have they're either retired police officers ex-military which should be preferred if you are going to start hiring they should be trained and have due diligence in firearms and combat and preferably combat experience um you're you're talking about the safety of our children my child goes to schools in this town he's in wisconsin i want armed guards in the school the fact that we have police officers in the school is great but now we're taking police out of the town and putting them on the schools so now the town is less safe and

013the school is safe why not do both why not have sros sros whatever you want to call them have armed guards in the school with special training it's approved by the state they have everything in place for them as far as benefits pay rules and regulations everything's already there let's take advantage of it and do it the teachers they should have active shooter training i teach that course they should all have it the janitor the teachers the lunch lady everybody it should even be in the federal buildings for town town hall everyone should have active shooter training and know what to do you can go online and google active shooter and the federal government after newtown came up with run hide and fight it was a good effort and it was something put together quickly

014to appease people and it wasn't well thought out run where hide where do you know how to fight do you know where to fight do you know what to fight if you're going to hire someone to teach the town the the the teachers the people that work in the town do you do diligence research make sure you know who you're hiring there's a company going around selling window glazing for schools they're scamming the schools and telling them it's bulletproof it is bulletproof one bullet from a pistol not a rifle not a high power weapon and they're paying tens of thousands of dollars to glaze all their windows and it's going to stop one bullet when they could have a magazine with 10 or more if you're going to make decisions make wise ones don't make

015hasty ones don't put my kid their kids and everybody's kids in danger because of political beliefs and nonsense you're going to defund the police there was a lady that was thrown in front of a train in new york city new york city lost a billion dollars in funding i tell you to ask her what she thinks about defunding the police but she can no longer tell you so that's my advice anyway thank you thank you so much appreciate it all right and last up is elena lopez hi everyone elena lopez nine summer pastor lean um so i'm a parent of three brookfield students huckleberry and center schools i had the privilege of attending the security subcommittee meeting which was um a wonderful education on the program and really opened my eyes after listening to offer

016officer publishing explain the asso program i am in favor an asso is not a guarantee that an active shooter would be stopped but it gives our children a layer of protection that they currently do not have one of my questions that officer puglisi answered was why not just have an ssr and sro in all the schools the explanation that sros are a wonderful asset to our schools they are actually not best practice for elementary school aged children which i did not know the gold standard is really an asso an asso is someone who checks ids at the front door and completes sweeps to make sure that buildings uh the entrances and exits to the entire building are secure and i believe in uvalde i had heard that a teacher had left a door open um

017and and these things are you know it gets hot these things are sometimes an accident sometimes they're left open from the night before an activity at the school i don't think people do these things on purpose but if we are paying someone to make sure it's shut they're going to make sure it's shut i do think initiating this program in addition to sros which is how it was explained to me the sros are maintained at wisconier and brookfield high school is really a wonderful addition when we take a step back and looking at protecting our students as best we can from all angles the chief also explained how these security guards are thoroughly vetted and that the caliber of the person who we would consider would be very high the truth is the sooner we

018put out a request to hire such people the greater the pool of candidates is going to be especially considering that new milford has already taken action on hiring these folks there's a lot of debate and discussion around this topic at the state level and at the federal level but when it comes to local government when it comes to you guys sitting in the chairs this is something you can do for our kids regardless of what goes on at the state and federal level so i thank you for letting me sit on this in on the subcommittee so i could be educated and thank you for letting me speak tonight thank you for coming today even though it was a rather short visit today i'm learning um all right that's it for public comment at the

019beginning we put it within the 20 minute window board members just are you okay with this as an ongoing approach just agenda items limit to 20 minutes and i will just urge if we have a lot of speakers to try and do it less than three minutes right um so that people can all have a chance to speak so i think that would be a it's a good way to let the public give us their input before we're actually talking about things we'll come back to public comment at the end before moving on to on our agenda i just i just i do need to pause and thank chief publishing for uh joining us tonight and uh we have a number of items on the security and the asl so items tonight and truly truly

020appreciate your being here and being on the security task force so next on our agenda is written correspondence monique matthews debra case and laura orban wrote regarding the security task force howard lasser wrote regarding written correspondence evan and jessica juska julie falter leslie ruggiero and jennifer ackerly wrote regarding school security officers michael einstein wrote regarding after-school programs and vaccine vaccination status and catherine boniello wrote regarding curriculum at wisconsin okay thank you next up is approval of board minutes i'll move the board approve the minutes from the regular meeting on june 1st 2nd gates moved in second and any comments from the board members on the minutes as drafted hearing none all in favor any opposed no so we'll turn it over to you dr brill for an update all right thank you mr belden so

021uh we we're going to revisit security a little bit later so we will be talking about that but my report is brief and on a much lighter note at this moment in the meeting uh the first thing i wanted to just let everyone know and i think lisa sent you all an email that looks like august 16th will be the board retreat date this summer the other piece is just a couple of great activities and i've been able to um visit and be actually participate in a tug of war and a little bit of pickleball today and some other things it's just been great to see kids getting back to what we'd call normal and enjoying themselves with their peers and their stat the staff and the teachers so really a big thank you to

022our parent volunteers in the phys ed department and the brookfield athletic advisory uh all of our students um for the ces and uh and huckleberry uh field days that were held here at the high school over two days each and just great activities going on it was wonderful to see the kids together and you want to talk about security i did mention that we we definitely can have a mom force and i think you want to talk about having great security nothing like a mom force you see him stationed everywhere keeping an eye on things i couldn't even get through a fence you know there was a gate nope got to walk around it was beautiful at brookfield high school last monday we had the celebration of excellence it really was the the first annual

023uh mr bolandon team had planned that and we've had different academic and sports and all kinds of end-of-year celebrations but this was a combination and also involved some underclassmen not just seniors and it was just a well-attended joyful event and a number of board members were there as well this past monday night the eighth grade whiskey here moving up ceremony was wonderful we had a great night um i think i think mr renda ran the program in just about an hour which i think everybody appreciated but all the kids had their opportunity uh literally in the sun to be recognized and um bob joy and debbie were there and i forgot to mention amy so she gave me a hard time about that so i want to make sure everybody knows that mrs foster was

024there not only as a board member but as a parent which was most important the today i was able to play a little pickleball with some of the kids they were at ymca for the end of year grade four event and um i believe there's a grade four um parent orientation night at wiscon this evening and then tomorrow and i know amy you'll be mentioning these at the end of the meeting but we have the grad walk tomorrow where the um seniors put their cat down the caps and gowns and and take the bus and they visit their uh their three feeder schools and get to see the teachers and the kids and a lot of rah-rah and cheer is just wonderful and then of course graduation is late on saturday morning uh with the

025car parade prior to the graduation and uh we're looking forward to that on on the 18th so those are some some biggies there i wanted to share and the last one which was really another big news we spent monday afternoon with the candle with lake elementary school planning team which i've told you is about 25 employees from teachers to paraprofessionals custodians secretaries administrators it's just a great crew and we worked on not only the mission statement and finalizing that in our second meeting together after retaining feedback but also uh four to five core belief statements so that really is the fundamental document that states the purpose of why we exist as a school so dr pepsoski and the team could really launch forward this summer and start planning the the all the different logistics and

026big ticket events as we lead up to the midpoint of next year with the huckleberry move in and then eventually for the following year with all the center school kids moving in so uh and then candlewood lake itself is another agenda item toward the end of the meeting that is all i have okay thank you um i had one question on graduation um it looks like three board members will be in attendance and handing out diplomas amy myself and debbie um and uh what time do we need to be at the high school i guess is the question we got a nice invitation from mark i would say the best bet given the car parade and everything else if you're there later than 10 o'clock it's going to be an issue because it starts after

02711. what's nice about being there that early is i hear it's going to be a gorgeous day but you get to see the kids and the families coming in in their decorated cars and wave to everybody and say hello so it's um we're not sitting around we're we're greeting and welcoming so okay i would say by 10 10 o'clock would be the target for the board members okay good thank you you got it all right any questions for dr burrell okay we're going to move on to subcommittee reports and joy i'll turn it over to you on facilities okay we met on june 2nd the majority of our meeting focused on a presentation from hillyard they presented a custodial staffing model tool and the model showed that we're going to need additional custodians and possibly

028equipment too for the new canada lake elementary school once it's occupied we discuss this modeling tool and ask hilliard to return at a future meeting because we need more information as to the factors that are leading to the conclusion of neat that needing more staff so we request more information they're going to come back with another presentation to us we reviewed the school dude reports we got an update on the capital projects the rfp for the boys locker room project was issued on may 19th and the proposals are due on june 17th the whiskaner wall update mr post reported the lowest bidder provided several alternatives one of which had a cost of 796 000 which is 96 000 more than the amount appropriated he also reported that the board of selectmen had approved the additional

029funding and the board of finance will be discussing the matter the following night which i believe they approved yeah we have two applicants for vacancy for a custodian position building condition study mr post and mr call will be working with the purchasing agent to issue an rfp for the service and we had a brief discussion about school security and measures being taken at each of the schools such as not propping doors and some miscellaneous discussion we discussed uh ground maintenance at wiscons that's it okay thank you any questions for uh joy joy on the whiskener wall is there a timeline like for when that work might be we're still waiting for that yeah okay yeah so we're hoping glad it's fully approved now yes it's fully approved we're hoping at our next meeting in july

030that we'll have a definite answer for that do they think it'll get done through the summer months or is it something that'll go off into the fall do we have any sense of when i last thought you want to come up can share a little bit i think the the expectation is that it will be done before the end of this calendar year so we've issued the the purchase order in the contract so with the uh the contractors lining up the materials that he needs and getting the has to get permits for the uh abatement of whatever asbestos is there and define whatever spaces we can and cannot use at various times during the project and dan caldwell is working with the contractor and with the principal dean renda on scheduling everything okay thank you

031ken okay any other questions all right so we're gonna move on to uh personnel and negotiations um i'll give that report um so personnel on negotiations this was an interesting meeting because it wasn't quite personnel in negotiations john approached me some time ago and said we have a proposal that's going to need the approval of this board but we don't know who which subcommittee to run it through um because it doesn't quite fit any one subcommittee so we agreed since uh the board chair the vice chair and the prior chair were all on the personnel in negotiations that that we would we would take that on and review it it was a great meeting i mean i'll look at joy and rosa that the topic was about the uh it was actually a report from

032the bhs pillars support group or team um to making a recommendation to improve mental health services for students at the high school um you know that we've gone through a very difficult time um over the last couple of years and there's a increasing need and they showed us some of the data on that for mental health support and there is uh so they reviewed what options we might have and they concluded that there is a organization cifc which is community um i forget what the f c is the actual acronym stood for but cfc is a local agency they support they provide mental health services um and they it's it's actually as a direct service actually contracted with the parents and the student and this and the role of the um the schools is to

033actually provide a space and actually provide access you know that's an option that we can introduce students to we went through what the programs would be and they offer a range of behavioral support and mental health types of services that would be very valuable and they work it through the insurance so that it really in the end isn't any cost to the students so you know we all came through that thought it was a excellent excellent suggestion and they're going to bring it to us at our july 20th meeting right we'll have the cifc representative we'll have the pillar support group and we'll actually do that at the full session of the board in july and they said if we approve it they would be able to start in the fall which is great so

034that's that's what we handled at the uh it wasn't quite personnel in negotiations but it was a good discussion bob i i sat in on the brookfield cares meeting last week and they discussed this and said that you would be mentioning it tonight and it really does sound like an amazing opportunity for us to add to the services we provide i mean i think what they do really it's a complements and adds some of the services that we just can't provide so i think it would be really excellent yeah and they actually are uh federally funded uh they are state funded they get a lot of grant money so what they do is they wear insurance will cover stuff they'll you they'll work with the family's insurance and where it isn't they use the grant

035money to cover the rest and and that's a nice you know approach for dealing with having it and it's private with the student and the family it's the the communications between the agency and the um and the schools is really only what's mandated under the under the special education usually special education but not always special education um uh standards so uh you know where where it's required we will communicate but other than that it's with between the student and the and the agency and the parent and that was really important to us uh when it was uh brought to me originally was that this would there be the communication with the families that was critical we were going to bring people in we're just going to work with students and then where does it land

036in a vacuum somewhere we wanted to make sure the families would obviously be involved that's the critical for anything under my leadership the families are always involved and so um not getting into a lot of great detail on it great summary bob thank you um you clearly were listening there's no doubt about it the um presentation will be july 20th so the team a couple of the team members i think mark bolando will be able to be here our special education director amy dean and cole hickman should be able to be here and we would be able to go through that and have a nice discussion with the board by the way it's the um you might just pointed it out to me it's actually in the notes the connecticut institute for communities cifc is

037what it stands for so so that's any questions okay and the third subcommittee report is the security task force subcommittee and i'll give a high level overview but then i want to turn it and ask the other board members to you know add if you guys would the meeting lasted about an hour and a half um we started with organizational stuff right we talked about reorganizing establishing the committee we talked a little bit about the process and the and the membership um it the for for the members of the public who are listening um and both here and on the tv feed it the makeup of the committee is three board members so it is um rosa myself and sharon and it's uh some administer a variety of administration so dr burrell mr belanda mr

038post and mr conklin for cyber security and i.t and tools and we have chief poglisi we agreed to add the fire marshal uh to the group and three members of the public and we agreed that we were going to go back to the members of the public who had served on the last version of this committee because this isn't a new thing this we've been doing this committee on and off every couple of years for since i want to say 2012. um and uh those two have two of them have accepted and uh and we're looking we're working on adding a third and that's still underway um i think we've had like three or four people who have brought their names forward so that was the first step the second step and it's on the

039agenda for later so i'm going to be short on this we did talked about the asso and uh and heard from chief paglucia and dr barrell about their thinking on that process and since that's on the agenda that's really all i'm going to say about that tonight and then we'll come back to it later and then uh we agreed that we process wise we're going to go through all of the aspects of security right and um mr giuliano mentioned a number of different things you have to think about so it's not just staffing at the schools it's physical security it's prov it's uh threat identification you know there's a lot of approaches and software on that there's protocols protocols with the kids protocols with the police department um there's training of various especially when you

040get to staffing you've got a lot of discussion on training matters so you know we had a list of five to six topical areas and we will very diligently go through those topical areas the administration will bring us the approach that we're using today with thoughts on where we might enhance we will discuss that as a committee um and then we're going to prioritize you know the actions we should take right so it'll take five six meetings i think to get through the first round of all of these reviews we do understand there's urgency on this one staffing item on the asso so we're prioritizing that uh the staffing item as early as we can and we'll talk about that tonight a little bit more but but in in the whole it's about making incremental

041decisions on how to improve things so that's the approach we're going to adopt um and uh and so that's kind of the net of that first meeting you're going to nod your head for me since you were there that's pretty much what we covered right um so so that's it any uh let me start with any questions from the board members on my summary okay uh rosa or sharon would you like to add anything yeah i would like to kind of jump back to talk about the the security task force that we had formed a couple years ago but before i do that i'm sure he won't object i do want to sincerely thank the brookfield police department and i'm looking at chief police over here but they have always been a very critical tool

042in the development of our safety protocols over the years they've been an excellent partner in that and as you all know they've placed their officers at our elementary schools where we currently don't have any or normally have police presence through the end of the year and that's that was something that that was a challenge that i know you guys had to work through but that you're doing it because our kids are um the utmost importance to you so um you all too often don't get the things you deserve so um just as a formality thank you very much um in terms of the last security task force i did want to just kind of remind everybody that um of course the tragedy in uvalde was very much a tragedy but we didn't need another one

043of those to really look at security we have been doing that and we looked at it the last iteration was a couple of years ago and a lot of really good things came out of that we changed we saw a lot of weak areas and we did a lot of changing for that so i just wanted to kind of maybe go through some of those just so you have a very sort of high level overview of some of the improvements that we've made over the years the then chief of police purcell was a part of that committee along with parents and administrators and what we did was is scrutinized building security safety protocols and all of the staff training to find out where our specific weaknesses were and then we prioritized the investments that would

044significantly enhance our safety and kind of close those gaps so some of those things and we accomplished a lot and i don't think really at the time we took enough time to really recognize all of those achievements but one of the big things that came out of that was our sro program we did consider other forms of armed security at the time and for a myriad of reasons we chose actual sworn officers so now as you know there's one at wisconier in addition to the one at bhs where there is also an unarmed security guard who's responsible for checking penetrability of the building throughout the day and these are things that we didn't have prior to the security task force we've installed things like panic buttons that sends a direct signal to the police department

045and we ran practice drills with the police department to see their response times and in most cases they were there within two or three minutes so we have a fantastic force that is always in the quadrants of brookfield we upgraded our intercom system so there was no longer any silent zones within the building we're always on lock out so obviously all the buildings are locked down in those double locked doors but we now have given teachers the capability and the training to call a lock down if they see one so sometimes it's it used to be where the teacher would have to call someone in the main office and then the main office would do something and now it's immediate teachers have the capability of doing that we installed raptorware which is a secure building

046access system so this is something that can alert staff immediately if someone with a criminal record or a registered sex offender tries to enter the building and we've already seen a lot of success with that um and then there's a lot of other ones and i know that i think we maybe could take some other opportunity to kind of walk parents through this because i think it's really important for everybody to know all of the different things that we use but i did want to kind of mention the new school because that's something to really really be proud of the design itself which of course was post the new sandy hook elementary the design itself was created with safety as a top priority so when you're thinking of those long driveways that are headed straight

047to the building those were intentional to provide clear sight lines of anyone trying to get near the building as you know there's we call it a moat but it's not really a moe it's sort of like a big ditch right there's only single access points to the building you could never drive a car up close to that building at all there is intruder resistant glass not the film um actual different glass that's about this thick you could walk on it if you were to lay it flat um yes not ballistic film right single entry points ballasts the list goes on and on but the new school is honestly a marvel for school security so i just hope that that kind of provides a little bit of relief for some of the parents that we had

048this amazing opportunity to build this new school with state-of-the-art security systems um so in summary you know i don't want to take up all the time here but the security task force did a lot of really good things to shore up our security um and there's there should be another forum to kind of go through all of those um but in terms of this new iteration i think it's really important that we go through that same thoughtful approach that we did before we need to prioritize any new findings that we see and make appropriate proactive not reactive uh recommendations to the board and i think that really worked well the last time i think there are some things that and maybe that has something to do with personnel maybe there's other things that are really

049more critical right so we have to look at everything and i think that thoughtful approach is going to serve us well again thank you sharon anything you'd like that rosa pretty much said what needed to be said i'm a big believer that when you're instituting anything to do with the children you need parent involvement on whatever level they're needed so i would like to see more parents come to school activities or actively supervise and dismissal which is always very hectic and just in general make sure that you know what's going on at your child's school it's important okay um you know along this journey that getting this reorganized i've had a couple of interesting uh chances to meet people i actually had a i spent a couple hours with mr checkout who's the head of

050the mbc and he walked me through all the security things and you mentioned many of them but a lot of the sight lines in the design are built around security as well so and i think there's an opportunity for us to have more of a public forum share share with people you know what is the design of all of our schools and uh and i i just wanted to get the opinion of the board about whether we ought to kind of have a forum right let the principals talk about what they're doing let uh let the designers of the new school not in enough deal detail that threatens the design because i know i i had exactly the same pause with my finger in the air my heart palpitates bob i get a little nervous

051but but if you've told me the trade secrets no no no no i understand that but but enough so that people understand that their schools are safe right i mean to me as a parent my number one concern is i want my kids going to a place that's safe right that's uh and that's in this day and age it's a lot different than when i grew up um and in fact and the second person i had a chance to talk to was the person who was in the chairmanship of this board in 2012 in december when sandy hook happened and and i asked him how did you work through you know your process at that time because it was much more supercharged for those of you who were in brookfield i mean that that we

052had four speakers tonight he says that first night we said five hours of uh public comment in that first meeting after sandy hook you know build moats build walls you know i want i want uh i want next week i want you know uh you know safety wire uh fences around every building and he said the motion was extraordinary and the way they worked through it was they started with public discussion right they you know have a chance to share with what we do do talk about what you know get a group going on how could we do it and you know do better they involved uh the families and parents in it we actually had you know one of the parents come tell us that they were on that group man our first uh

053security task force meeting and that was it was important um out of that if you kind of go back the the he told me he says we only had single doors in the front of our schools right it was you and they were unlocked all the time you'd walk right in the front door of any school so the first thing they had to do was physically secure the buildings then they had a long discussions about assos and and armed presence in the schools and actually this he said the standard with a lot of input was to go to full fully trained police officers right who were part of the police force they were incrementally funded we didn't actually steal them from the what we did in the town so you said something uh mr giuliano

054that actually i want to make sure we're clear on we didn't lower the number of police in the town because we put a uh sros in he told me at the time the sro role was a well-defined role and it was only aimed at the high school really at that time and we did it at the high school in middle school it was never aimed at the elementary schools but now there is a elementary school soro well defined role at the state level ssos i've learned are less defined each of the towns has to set up their own standards and training and things like that so but he told me says the long discussion we had actually led to a plan that wasn't implemented overnight it was implemented it was a that was a whole

055training program we had to run a series of officers through to get them trained up to be in schools and and today we have those sros um in the two upper schools and there's much less traffic in and out of the lower schools which is why elementary schools generally didn't have sros in the first place and i learned a lot going through that the thing that i walked away from though which was good was the group the board at that time thought about it got a lot of input was very deliberate about it and chose the higher standard right and uh and i like that i like that that's how they made that decision they chose the higher standard um so i've learned a lot with some of the side discussions we've had that i

056think will be part of everything that we do so i just wanted to share that with the board i think that was it was really useful to have some of those conversations and bob if i may um be very brief here the one thing we no one's mentioned tonight i don't think is we also have a highly trained youth officer here in our community that spends a lot of time between senator and huckleberry that was with officer gary grambling prior and then he retired now it's officer heller and has great relationships with the kids and everything else and they love him so that's important for people to know that that presence is it's balanced and it and it's back and forth that is not 100 and when we get to when we get to the

057single elementary school they'll be pretty much they should spend a lot of a great deal of time of the percentage of their work time at the school yeah effectively another sro yeah yeah i will also say was heartening to me when we did the recognition at our last meeting that our sro at the middle school was named the staff member of the year by this by his peers at the middle school so obviously not just um there but very appreciated and loved by peers and students alike i got a lot of cheering when he was the vision with anything we do the individuals if we go in that direction that are chosen will become part of the fabric of the school that's an automatic the way we work things here in town so uh so

058we're underway right um we'll have at our next meeting we'll have our three members of the public um finalized they'll join us and we will be off and running with this routine of of driving so that's kind of not during the meeting maybe come back at the end if you're still here i just want to say i i really like the idea of having some other kind of forum to go over the safety and security measures like rosa just recapped because i mean even i mean i've been in all these meetings and i still learned things tonight that either i forgot or didn't know so i think that's a great idea and thank you for doing that recap yeah and and there are some things we didn't even mention like cameras over ever aimed at

059every entrance you know you know so that we can keep you know we have radios that connect directly to the police department um and i like what uh um what mr giuliano mentioned about training because we did run through a period where we made sure every we had the formal training for every teacher but we may need to revisit that as part of our thing and just uh drill you can send me some of the information on the program so that would be helpful so and we have regular drills that we run for the students and the staff so it's you know a lot of these are mandated by the state but we have you know faculty meetings where we talk to staff and interact with the the administration staff points out weak areas we

060have uh law enforcement and and first responders at our um drills so we can cite the strengths but find the weak spots as well and continue always always looking to to layer and continuously improve it's never good enough they're always looking to improve that's cool okay any other comments or questions when would you like to do a forum is that a summertime event or do we want to do it in the fall i would maybe think september early october like sort of towards the beginning of the school i was year earlier i know i just think summer people are away and so september maybe if we could get it on it's just tough with open house and all the things that you know happen in september july 20th board meeting schedule these are just the

061regular dates i mean we always pick different dates and i think it's an august 17th board meeting or schedule now so that's i would want to do it in a place where we advertised it to parents and they could have a chance to go which means i think if i remember our summer board meetings because of the air conditioning situation in this room we're going to do them over in the auditorium why don't we do our august 17th meeting and and then by and and put out a blast notice to parents and we'll record it right if people can't come and and john we could work up an agenda but i think it's let each of the principals talk about how i run security in my school right and then let's add let's think about

062what they might not be talking about like the new school would be a good section of it um and i think uh um you know maybe something on how we're managing training and things like that so maybe even a recap of the security task force work yep you know throughout the summer yep which will be on which we are we'll have something on each board agenda i think on the security task force i think in the near near future or a separate before or after what do you think maybe it depends how much we have on the board agenda oh i guess the august meeting is usually really light um we can maybe do a brief on the on the administrative things we need to do as a board and then spend our time on

063the board meeting you know to you know let the so we don't have to drag the staff in because they're also coming in off of um some you know summertime activities juggle their vacation the 17th is good timing in the sense that that's the time that most people at least in administrative ranks are starting to close out and you know if they get their week vacation here or there we we're formally supposed to be back for the 18th of august so some people could be enroute on the 17th but if they're available you know how dedicated they are they'll be there i'm wondering if it should be the following week then if people are still away do it maybe as part of the opening of school you know do it that one of those evenings

064we don't have to decide tonight okay we can think it through a little we'll try and aim for we have our meeting tomorrow i i don't i think if we're gonna end up not doing it in september because it's so busy for parents so it's gonna it's kind of doing doing july august or do it in october right is gonna be what it's gonna be okay okay we'll talk again tomorrow at ours one-on-one okay why don't we move on we spent some time on the security task force because i know it's an important topic for everybody next up is consent agenda i'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires and transfers second okay it's been moved and seconded uh dr brewer any comments on anything this week

065yes just uh tremendous pride it's great news for the high school we had an open special education in open math and an open chemistry position we have signed contracts and hired teachers very early mr belanda was jumping for joy and we were able to pick the cream of the crop and we had great candidates so we're really excited that we're signed and have those people ready for the fall so those are shortage areas so it's very difficult to get certified people at the high school level in those areas so to land those folks now is tremendous and all veteran people who are very experienced and really looking forward to becoming bobcats so we're excited about it excellent any questions okay all in favor of approving the consent agenda all right thanks unanimous uh okay so

066we're moving on to new business the next topic is open choice um this has been floating around the area for a while um and uh we've organized the presentation tonight uh by uh dr uh chip du mat du may good morning and uh um i'm sorry eric from that question i forgot your last name eric thank you and eric quest um to come give us a uh an overview of what this open choice program is about and i've asked them if they would also just help the board understand what decisions we need to make and when relative to that but it's mostly informative for tonight so thank you for coming up to the podium and i'm going to turn it over to you sir great thank you very much chip dumay executive director at cooperative

067educational services which is not your risk it advances your arrest but since we operate open choice in fairfield county this is something that we can do very easily in picking up the danbury area school so we're doing that for at advance and i have with me eric nyquist eric in addition to being the principal of rca the regional center for the arts manages the open choice program for the bridgeport schools as well as what would be the danbury program so 1966 the state put project concern in place and this is to reduce racial ethnic and economic isolation in the state and it essentially started in hartford in 1997 the through legislation if you're a policy walk it's 10-266-a-a and in in in that legislation they identified hartford new haven bridgeport and new london in which

068they would fund the open choice program new london is no longer part of the program there are currently about 50 districts that participate in open choice where students come from either hartford new haven or bridgeport and go to school in a neighboring town there are about 300 or so students from the bridgeport area that participate in open choice in the towns that surround bridgeport and the about 3 000 students total in the state this is a funded program by the state it is a voluntary program by the state districts would establish how many seats they have available in general a district would take on students in the kindergarten or first grade and so the recommendation is that it wouldn't be a single student in any particular school it just makes the whole situation a little

069complicated and difficult from a social perspective so students would start there you receive so one of the questions oh by the way uh i have a number of questions and answers right here that i'll leave with you that cover a lot of these issues um but a lot of the questions that we get are uh chad what about uh discipline what about test results what about uh graduation what about school activities the answers to all those questions are really easy once an open choice student becomes a student here they are treated as a resident of brookfield in terms of their education access to programs and everything else the one exception to that is funding for special ed funding for special ad reasonable costs come from the sending district uh the reason i say that is

070reasonable is the words it's used in the in the legislation the and districts frequently ask us well chip what if we have a special education cost and there's conflict i've checked with the state we've been doing this for a long time there might be a little bit of hey we need to get a couple people at the table but there's never been a we refuse to pay the other funding piece is ecs funding so you get funding from the state for students so the way the ecs funding works under open choice is the sending district and your sending district by the way i'll get to ecs in just a second last year 2021 legislation the state said we're going to put money into funding seats for open choice expansion to norwalk and danbury they identified

071the towns where students could end up brookfield is one there wasn't enough interest in the danbury area last year in order to run this now i mean uh eric does a fantastic job part of what he does is he organizes all of the transportation for students that's paid for by the state it would not make any sense to transport two kids from bridgeport uh i mean from danbury if we were on that program there no we did have one district that wanted something here thank you we did you know me as eric by the way hi um we did have one district that did want to participate um but we only had they were only able to provide two seats and it it was not going to be um it was not going to be

072a good start to the program so we talked to the state and decided we would postpone to give districts a little more time to figure out what they were going to do and hopefully have some more participation for next year norwalk will be running and again you don't have to read much in the news to know that not every town surrounding norwalk is participating the state agreed and this is the interesting part it's not all that often that the state puts a program in place and puts the funding behind it and the funding is guaranteed whether you're talking anything that you do um they put aside 50 seats for danbury in 50 seats for norwalk we will not be using anything near that and so getting back to ecs funding so ecs funding the the

073sending district gets ecs funding they get 50 of what they would have gotten for that student you get fifty percent for what you would get at your rate fifty percent of the brookfield rate for an open choice student here danbury would get fifty percent of ecs funding for a danbury student at the danbury rate even though the student's not there you also there's a stipend associated with this and the stipend varies anywhere from three thousand dollars per student to eight thousand dollars per student of the fifty districts or so there are about ten districts in the state because of the percentage of students who participate in open choice compared to their enrollment receive eight thousand dollars per student fairfield last year had a huge increase in the number of open choice students because in addition

074to a per student stipend there is an opportunity if you increase by greater than 50 the the stipend goes up significantly for that year so um go ahead so while there is a financial piece where the state does give you an incentive to participate the other real incentive is that you're bringing in cultural diversity and diversity into a classroom and you know every study and i could share study upon study with you says that diverse classrooms are are much better for students and it prepares them for the real world it prepares them for college because they're getting to hear different perspectives and different backgrounds and different cultures brought to life right there you know i i remember when i was growing up they showed us film strips of other cultures and we may have had

075a special day where where we ex we had some special food from but when you have students from another culture in your classroom that live that culture every day that's another part of the open choice puzzle that's a real benefit to districts and so it's not just the funding that that happens but it's also that cultural diversity that is a big part of it they want a timeline i can give them that your timeline um so normally um a district that's already participating in going through the process and has been with us for years we ask for their numbers in april that almost never happens because as you know as a board of ed april is budget time and you're still figuring out enrollment and things like that so more likely it's somewhere in may

076that our districts let us know how many open seats they're going to have and dr dumay did say most districts do prefer to start in kindergarten or first grade that way they're yours for the entirety of their education and they know the brookfield way however we do have districts that say hey you know what we have some fourth grade classrooms with lots of open seats we will take some some fourth graders in so we that does happen or some seventh graders or even sometimes at the high school level some 9th graders but so we're talking about april or may however i'm going to ask that because this is a new program this is a pilot program and we're we're needing to tell the state whether we're going to run i would ask that you um

077you tell us whether you're going to participate by november which still gives you plenty of time we're in june now so thank you for inviting us early to speak to you but if you can let us know by november that you're planning to participate hopefully and an approximate number you know an idea 2 10 20 50 that would help us to be able to talk to the state as they want to know where things are in the danbury region so november if you can let us know and then certainly april and may is when you're going to tell us the number of seats that you would have and then we go about my office goes about coordinating transportation professional development for your teachers that are going to be participating uh arranging for all of the

078things and then we have a family and community outreach coordinator who works with our families that are going to participate so that the students are ready one of the things that she does is she looks into what software programs you you all run in brookfield so that she can help families get ready for that so that they're starting the on on good solid footing on day one so that nothing's a surprise um she also helps families to know when your open houses are and things like that so um we try to help the families get acclimated as as quickly as possible through that so that's an approximate timeline um we of course um if you if you uh decide earlier than that what you'd like to do we'd be happy to know but november and

079and april would be your two dates do you mind if i ask you a question um you seem to be very close to the families and students that are that participate how does it feel from a a student who's participating in it they live in one town they go to school in a different town what's been the feedback from from the experience from the students is this then i can see it being both positive and and challenging in some ways sure um i will tell you a couple of things first of all we have about 800 applicants in bridgeport every year for about 20 seats wow that doesn't change that is about the same every year we don't advertise we just get applications because people want their kids in the program one of the big

080ways i know that it works is because every sibling of somebody who's already in the program they want the parent wants their other sibling as they come through to be part of the program that tells me it's working and listen i'm going to be honest we have some kids that are on longer bus rides because if you're getting picked up all around the city of bridgeport and then brought on 95 in traffic to another community say westport that can be a long bus ride and i'm telling you that every year the parents who have siblings that are in the program want their kids in in the same school district or in any school district because they believe that it's helped their child when that child is surrounded by the other kids who are all goal

081oriented and moving forward the parents see the value in it we the only time we ever have anybody leave the program is if they move out of district so say a danbury family is is participating in open choice in brookfield but then they move to new milford they are no longer allowed to be part of the open choice program that's the only time we lose people if they move other than that people don't want to leave they love the fact that their kids are in these schools and their the parents are generally very very positive participants so with those 800 kids who apply and you only got 20 slots is it is it like a lottery or something is that how do they actually select there is a selection process and the lottery is part

082of it um but we also want to make sure that the the students we're sending represent the the basic demographics of the district in other words it would not help the racial makeup of anybody to to send a group of say all white students from bridgeport to fairfield that it defeats the point of the program so we we do a whole selection process um and the lottery is one of the steps of that process but we want to make sure that the the values of the program are met as but you're doing that not the sending district that is correct we do that we do that in my office and we coordinate as i said transportation for the students um and uh and any of those times when there is a question on uh say

083a student needs some extra special education um they may call us in but very rarely almost always the sending district just says sure we understand um when a district i will tell you this when a district believes that that might happen they generally invite the sending district to the ppt so that they can be part of that process and that usually solves the issue right there okay do any of our neighboring towns such as bethel the milford newtown ridgefield maybe participate in this this is this past year was the first year they they could have easton participates in easton reading region 9. they participate in the bridgeport region um but uh the the state legislation defines very specifically which towns are allowed to participate you are one of the towns that is allowed and so

084in let me ask the question differently for the danbury region are there any committed seats at this point or no from any town no yeah not food so we had some committed seats um but not enough to make the program right off so we started off for a year so you're pushing it off to 20 23 24 it will be the first year yep okay you gotta come close chip i'm sorry newtown is not one of the towns identified by the legislation sometimes the legislators don't put forth the best language for addressing the programs and we had a lot of peripheral interest but without changing the legislation newtown can't participate can you just be a little more clear about who incurs you know potential special ed costs because as we all know those numbers can

085be quite high the the first three thousand dollars which essentially would be the stipend that you get would be your responsibility beyond that it is the sending district regardless of the amount eric you mentioned that uh there were some towns around norwalk that didn't participate is there any reasons for that or uh yes uh the there was a highly publicized one that was in the newspaper um and the the board was very evenly split on it they could not they could not decide and so they um they voted five to four i believe not to participate but to talk about it in the future um you know i can't i can't speak for a board of education as to why they particularly didn't want to participate um but we we also we don't consider ourselves

086sales people we're not here to sell you on anything we're here to give you information um and provide you some some insight into how the program works and again i we're putting together a pamphlet with some testimonials from some of the kids that have participated we just had a kid who was a valedictorian of his class who grew up who who lives in bridgeport and the the parents you know are just beside themselves and the opportunities that the child has had and the impact that he's had on the community that he went to have been really really tremendous so um you know we're we're we're not trying to sell anybody on it and and which is why some of the districts have decided you know we need we need more time to mull it over

087um but that's why i'm glad you called us here now because now you have the time um and we can provide you the information and if there's anything else you need from us we can certainly get more information for you and we're going to leave you as dr dumas said some information tonight okay any other questions from the board yeah uh do you what what's like the annual funding for the the open choice program throughout the state or is there is that the fluctuating number there the i don't know the total funding but again the the reimbursement so ecs is one piece the reimbursement is anywhere from three thousand to eight thousand most of them are three thousand uh per student and then there's a supplemental fund and the supplemental fund is divided based on

088the number of students across the state last year the supplemental fund was around 200 per student additional that a school district received plus they pay for transportation right so is so what was the number that this program spent last year like statewide is that i do not know it's it's a pretty substantive story it is a pretty substantial number because hartford is a huge region in terms of open choice they are sending school to lots of small schools and and some of those small schools you know by just taking a few kids that brings their percentage way up and so therefore they're getting the four or six thousand per student because even though it's only a few students that they're taking um so the hartford region it it's really substantial but i don't have the

089exact number for the whole state fiscal year 2017 was uh 19 million orders 67 726 what he said so wilson higher than 19 million 20 million yeah is there a minimum number to get this started i know you had said like there was only two seats so say like brookfield says we can take four and bethel says we could take three is there a minimum number for all the towns to get it going i i i would say as long as we can do it with fidelity we're we're we're going to jump in this state very much wants this program to work and so so we just have to make sure it's it's done with fidelity um putting two students randomly at one school in one school we just didn't feel like that was gonna

090that was gonna start the program the way it needed to be started but no there's no pressure on a district to say well you better come up with certain number um yes we're hopeful that several districts will jump in the water and then we can we can get the program going and if i heard it correctly amy and eric correct me if i'm wrong it's this danbury region there's a total for new fairfield ridgefield brookfield the the several towns 50 seats total to be split among if everybody was interested correct the max we would be able to use that yes that is correct it's 50. um now i i'm telling you that if you did if we got 50 this year the state would be jumping for joy and would i'm sure i can't speak

091for the legislation legislatures but i believe they would increase it for the following year because again they want this program to to work um what are the other towns that are in the danbury i know you mentioned new fairfield um obviously brookfield did you say ridgefield houston bethel and that's for danbury i thought you said easton was in so easton and reading are an interesting community yeah so it comes down to uh the amount of time that's involved in travel so it just so happens that easton is close enough to bridgeport that it doesn't go beyond that limit reading is not the easton schools do the students go to the high school so okay so sorry what were the other that's okay it's new fairfield brookfield bethel ridgefield and reading were specifically named in the

092legislation for the january did you see milford not new milford so one small note as you're considering this is that something that we hear come up frequently in board conversations is per pupil expenditure and how it compares to what you make it reimbursed i would i would ask you to give that a lot of thought before you use that comparison because it adding one student to a classroom does not increase your expenses by your pure pupil expenditure and and so a little bit more on that would probably be a healthy discussion uh and i just give you that as a primer because a lot of people go there first now i'll say one of the challenges we've had as a district is we've been in a kind of the opposite position in many suburban districts

093we've actually been having to add staff to our elementary classes especially kindergarten for the last three years i think because we have a just a burgeoning enrollment coming in it's at the younger levels and it's going to just stay you know continue through the schools so part of us part of the between having a new school coming online and then having uh having the situation where we've been uh we've been struggling just to staff our you know for the students in town i would say it's kind of just had us in a pause mode right we hadn't decided to participate or not participated just we've got other things we're working on so so i think this was good to at least plant replant the seed right and we can use that in our next in

094our next budget cycle and our next enrollment planning and see where that takes us so i just want to ask one more question um how are districts that have participated or have been participating for a while how what was their sort of like rollout did they start with like two seats and then increase to three or four or did they sort of like jump in with 10 seats or something the short answer is it really depends so for the most part a couple of seats per grade level at the low grades and i know eric said that you can come in at ninth grade as the former superintendent of a district that participated in open choice coming in uh later makes things more difficult for students it's it's just a cultural shift that it's like

095somebody moving from any other town and and coming to the school district late so um it's um a couple of students per that kindergarten classroom or that first grade classroom per school so thank you okay so look for the board i'll make sure this is uh we'll have another chance to talk about this right and uh where we were i want to thank you both for coming tonight and uh giving us your insights and look forward to some of the handouts here um and uh and we'll i'll take your you know need some directional statements by november and we'll see what we can do to tell you yay or nay right by then thank you all for your time appreciate it appreciate it eric chip thank you so much for coming the november year the

096november is for two reasons eric noted that our efforts to get everything in place a huge part of that is that the state funding for this includes professional development for the sending community as well as the receiving community a lot of logistics thank you gentlemen john there's another thing to pass around i'll keep that one okay um shall we move on everyone that was useful um should we put them out for the public the leftover sure yeah yeah so there's i'll just say for those of you who are here if you have an interest there's extras of the handouts you're welcome to them sharon if you want to go back to your teacher days you could pass them out to everyone or leave it at the end of the day yeah why don't we continue

097on and sharon can listen and then the next two items and amy one i just suggest you combine them are the approvals of field trips for the next school year and sports field trips for the next school year so and just for those of you listening um we used to have them come up each time that they came up and we agreed a number of years ago we would do for the ones that are calm and we will do to try to do them on mass and uh and do them early so that you know the the teachers and the the coaches know that they're approved so and these are really big trips at the house these are good size trips so so okay yep i will move that the board approved the attached list

098of field trips for the 2022-2023 school year as requested by brookfield high school principal mark vallanda and that the board approved the attached list of sports field trips for the 2022-2023 school year as requested by athletic director steve baldwin second it's moved in second and we all got a copy of what those uh trips are um do you want to talk about them or just just if there's any questions we could just uh you know give the mr belanda and mr baldwin aren't here this evening so you know any questions questions afterward if you're curious about anything and i can but there's i went down the list they're all the same lists we had this last year so they're all pretty well known and just for for the people listening there's a there's a deca

099trip that's not every year but it's a couple of school days there's a music department trip there's the eighth grade washington dc trip which is a beloved tradition in uh we got back this year got it back this year um there's a couple of other deca conferences there's a key club robotics odyssey of the mind world championships um the on the sports side there's a new england number of new england tournaments on different sports there's a training session in florida there's cross big cross country uh overnight meet in uh warwick rhode island um and there's some cheer cheering competitions so and i skipped a couple because they're new england's uh you know general normal competitions that tend to be overnight the board needs to approve any overnight trip funding and out of state in particular

100the funding is usually fundraised by the uh the students themselves so it's not usually a board-funded event although i think with sports we do cover certain items so um but the uh but usually there is a whole funding mechanism that is built as each trip does but they need our approval formally for the overnight trips and the out of state trips i think another thing that needs to be noted given the community involvement of tonight's meeting specifically is one i want to i believe i said it in the last superintendent report the trip uh the athletics uh spring training trip was incident free with the exception of an injury where there was a emergency room visit other than that uh the kids were outstanding the adults that volunteered to go were outstanding i mean these

101are not only our coaches that have personal lives and work lives but also our uh parents who go on this trip or athletic director et cetera and um so the effort's unbelievable just like the washington dc trip when you go on multiple day trips the other piece is a number of parents um and they all want to remain anonymous which is fantastic um and staff people just donate and they'll tell a principal or an athletic director here's extra money put it towards somebody who you know is having a hard time coming up with the funds and so um that's just the community we're in and it just needs to be mentioned because people want to be anonymous but that goes on in this town and it's really important to say yeah that's cool so any

102questions before we approve okay all in favor aye aye it's unanimous all right next up on our agenda is his armed school security officers and our action is to receive an update from dr burrill so why don't i uh we've talked a lot yeah yeah why don't you give us a little bit of insight on the specific topic of ass on the exploration that you've been on with with the chief sure and and i honestly don't know how much more i can add we did go into some great detail but i'll add what i can and then we can obviously have a discussion like we can in any other item so i think it's really important to note not only the good discussion at the um formally at the security task force meeting but working

103directly with chief puglisi and prior to that chief uh purcell on a collegial individual basis as an advisor and working together and actually sitting down with chief police publician our first select woman as well um so so that collaboration to be quite frank is probably four or five days a week we talk or text or whatever the case may be on all kinds of issues but specifically recently on on uh armed school security officers or armed officers in general security in general and so the things we talk about what are other districts doing what are best practices including training management certification what's the law telling us we've done a lot of work with security task force but also chief puglisi has been fantastic in supplying literature and data on what are the studies with sros

104and schools asso's and schools unarmed security guards in schools and have we stopped assailants have we had issues has it been less has it been a deterrent so we're going through all that and that's part of this whole vetting we're talking about the one thing we did talk about is assos has become a thing and from what the literature tells us in working with the chief sros school resource officers are you know there's a national it's called nazro there's the national group um and the national standards for training there isn't necessarily that requirement for asso's from a state or a federal level however chief puklesi and i talked about a vision that if we if the board ultimately through its vetting process decided to go in that direction we would want our asso's trained up

105to that level that national standard um critically important um the other thing kind of relating to what rosa talked about from security task force through um to recent times is kind of a status quo positioning to where we're at right now and it's no secret we have an unarmed security guard here at the school we have an sro here at the high school we have an sro at the middle school our youth officers between both schools and as we all know we have extra police patrol presence since uvalde for the remainder of the year at the elementary schools thanks to the chief um that hasn't been easy to schedule given the time of the year and and the officers time and so forth some of the things we've talked about is uh kind of a

106um a spectrum a an arc of status quo where the security task force last left off that what i just talked about people were comfortable with that our parents were very comfortable that then we talked about is there a way because we have the technology to have an officer monitoring the security cameras that we have or a special guard monitoring security cameras is there a need and we need to explore unarmed guards that are door checkers and greeters perhaps up through more sros which was discussed earlier going with the full officer under uh command structure adding sros and asso's so there's a lot of a lot of pieces that we need to explore what we need to do and what the chief will help advise us on is is best practice specifically and a few

107people came up and defined it already that the asso um and i believe it's by law here in connecticut and of course we're going to double check all of this needs to be a retired police officer that's a enormous piece that has to be there so this this is we have already i think i can fairly say decided we wouldn't go with necessarily a private security company in any way we would want our police trained employees of the police department being our armed school security officers if we went in that direction the vision if we went in that direction would be an armed school security officer at each of the schools in addition to the sros we already have and it would follow similar to the newtown model that the person would serve as a

108greeter helping with identifying and getting a view of people who are entering the building signing them in but also when there's less crowd control issues and access control issues checking doors and doing things like that and becoming part of the fabric of the community knowing the students etc being someone to deter and hopefully delay should there ever be you know a tragic type issue the other piece we're looking at is our high school and the activity it has every single night and do we need and we've explored this rosa i think you may have mentioned it a a guard of some sort armed or unarmed whatever the case may be in the afternoon because there's so many activities whether it's sports music drama meetings like this where we have people here the doors are open

109you come right in we all experience that just now so we're exploring all of those pieces the key is and it was already talked about by some of our parents you know kind of the difference the school resource officer will be involved in investigation the school resource officer is connecting with students the school resource officer is directly under a command structure for the police department with all the benefits that some of the parents discussed the asso is typically a retired police officer and and the job the compensation is definitely less than a full-on police officer the sro is not a security guard they're not what they're not walking around you know checking every single door that's not their role whereas a guard would be you know armed or unarmed that would be part of their

110role so i just wanted to get out kind of the vision there and a little bit about the process so much has been talked about tonight so i want to step back and not go on and on and certainly continue the conversation any questions or further thoughts on some things i may have said we also have the chief here too if we want to have the chief come to the podium has the committee talked about a timeline as far as specific to asso's that's a that's a great one joy and i left that out and saw my little note here one of the things we talked about is the urgency to move at the same time being thoughtful and measured and really vetting things so chief and i talked about kind of a stop gap

111what could we do so we don't have to feel rushed in terms of can we get a patrol or office or presence to start the school year in addition to what we already have that we've talked about numerous times tonight already where we have that full police officer presence in september even into october if we needed to do that while we continue if it takes us a little longer than because getting someone on board trained up even if we decided on something tonight and started a hiring process we still may not meet a august 30th september 1 deadline and some of the things we need to do the other thing chief could share directly because he talked first person to the new milford chief the pool is becoming thinned out because a lot of schools

112are moving in this direction the majority of our neighboring districts have some form not necessarily asos at every single school but they have some form of afsos either on their own or in addition to sros um and now new milford over the past year has been gearing up for this through their budget process and so they're working and they're having trouble getting a deep pool right now uh given the circumstances so we have to consider costs and pay and some of those things as well to draw people and benefits uh et cetera when you say that that pool is thinning out are you talking about those retired police officers who would be qualified as assoc that's my understanding from a conversation with the chief i think it we talked so often it may have been

113this morning or yesterday but he could speak specifically to that so due to the potentially delaying the chance you know or the opportunity to hire you know either at the start of the school year or shortly after um that's why i have reservations about waiting um our pool of candidates lessens you know the longer we wait i don't see it as a reactive movement but as a proactive movement um i don't i believe that you know bringing in police for a board of ed meeting that was reactive and there was a sense of urgency um and which is much less warranted than you know protecting the lives of our students in our district so um you know i would like to put it out there that would make a motion to you know approve asso's

114immediately you're making that motion i am okay is there a second a second okay so it's been moved and seconded um would we like to discuss that i'm not comfortable moving on this tonight i'd like to give this some more thought and i feel like this is a big change putting armed guards at the front of the schools and i can't hear you amy i'm not ready to vote on that tonight or vote before that yeah tonight i think the one expert in the room is chief gleese right he's the expert in the room and if correct me if i'm wrong but he recommends it correct he's talked about the best practice and the balance in the layered approach so he can certainly speak to that i will invite some chief up to speak thank

115you i did recommend it but i was recommending it on the discussions i had with the superintendent to move forward with something we need to move forward with a plan the plan we had in place was a timeline dealing with the enrollment in the new school and uh the closing of the other schools um that being said the uh like it was already discussed with the new youth officer a plan was to have the youth officer dedicated majority of his time not his full job description to being in that school to serve as a police officer in the schools because of the way that the sro program was designed and in discussions with other schools and and and the sros it was never designed for the um the younger kids it was more of a

116program set up for middle and and high school kids so i think the police department will support the board's decision on on whatever you decide to do just understand that we can't continue without approval from the board of finance to provide the officers some of whom are not there because they want to be there we're ordering them to be there um to to fill that gap right now till the end of school so there is um going to be if we were to continue like the superintendent said with status quo um we're going to be looking for some help with with funding as it is now with the way the program is set up i believe the direction that we were given from the first select moment was to uh supplement not replace the sros

117it would be at the added level of security in every school so yes i do support the use of the armed school security and this board and and what the committee is that we decide to do for the hiring process can set a a very high standard it doesn't just have to be a retired officer with you know uh 15 years or car you can set the standards a little bit higher which is why when i discuss with my colleagues into milford um about how they were doing with their you know their hiring process and they were saying that even though they've been at it for a year and they just ramped it up to to add the additional schools that nobody was knocking down their doors so we talked about making it more attractive

118and so the higher you put the standard you know the less people you're going to have and that's what i think we meant when the poll was shrinking was that it was more that um it wasn't as attractive as we thought it was not because there aren't police officers retiring who are qualified it's just making the job attractive to the right person because you could have a retired officer who i would never recommend to you know to be in the schools and and maybe they're just looking for a part-time employment that's not who you want so this board and whoever the superintendent sets up to sit on the committee for the selection can set those standards i mean yes in the schools armed security have to be retired police officers okay other than that there

119isn't a standard like like the superintendent said you know nationally so we can set that you can set the bar a lot higher you can set the salaries you can set the benefits you can set the the training requirements um you can you can set what their job description is going to be most of that with the job descriptions and and and their uh training has really already been done our neighbors have already done the work and newtown for example has been very successful in the program they have a lot of people working for them uh almost to the level they have their own police force basically just for the schools both armed and unarmed as well as the sros but um so i i do support the assos but we will support whatever the

120board decides to do if you decide to tell us that you want to go with an sro or you want to go with you know status quo it's just going to require time and if you make a decision to go one way or the other the time is of a factor to get it for this school year because we didn't plan for it this school year in the one thing i'd like to add to what the chief brought up is because it harkens back to his predecessor chief purcell who was on the security task force and i presented back in november on the new school and some of the staffing implications when i was talking about in november and one of the things that chief mentioned is the thought was and i talked about this

121earlier that the youth officers spent a great deal of time not not every waking moment of their work hours but a great deal of time at candlewood lake and then really frankly because of the size of the school and what we anticipate the amount of visitor traffic in and out that will happen with parent visitors and other visitors that we would have an asso um as another layer at candlewith lake elementary so that was the plan for the 20 when we get everybody there fully enrolled which now that we've been delayed a little bit is 23 20 for 24 next school year not the one uh adjacent to this uh calendar year so that was something chief purcell was also um thinking about and recommending going forward that chief publishi carried on so just everybody

122that was in the works anyway um but we're given we've got this year that we're thinking about right now and the incident that happened a few weeks ago so i i struggle a little bit because you both use the same kinds of words around it we can go define these things and as a board this board has done the one thing we've done well has been to say write it down define it and then we will approve what's right right and that i feel like we're inventing on the fly right we're willing to go have people go approve something that has four letters a-s-s-o but what that is is completely undefined and i i do understand that other towns have done some work on it but i'd like to know what kind of training they're

123going to have for dealing with kids right that's uh that's to me a very unique identif uh the differentiator i'd like to know what specific kinds of training they're going to get about firearm use in the in the in a confrontation situation i'd like to know what extra security we're going to put on around you know the fact that these are firearms near kids right these are all questions that people have raised but we haven't defined our proposal yet right and i before we before i could vote on it i'd like to see that fleshed out i really would and that's something we could put and i just i find it really difficult to go approve something on the promise that we'll we'll go to find it at some future date right um we're gonna

124go on higher what are the standards for hiring right is it are we gonna go for that special person right that we need but the pool is really small we're gonna up the pay so that we can go attract the right kind of people we haven't made that decision yet right let's go make those decisions and then let's bring it here to approve i have to say i agree um i wouldn't be in favor of this motion tonight um and let me be clear it is not because i am against on up against armed people in our schools i'm not against that at all but we have not decided what is best for brookfield we're not in milford we're not newtown we're brookfield and we're going to go through our process that has worked well

125that's going to involve parents not just the seven of us and it's going to involve the police chief and we're going to make the decision that's best for brookfield whether we go sro or whether we go asso or if we go asso what does that look like we have never voted on something that like you said bob was not completely flushed out i need to know exactly what i'm voting on and that's just not here at this point i agree we i mean we've spent more time deliberating much simpler challenges with data research multiple meetings special meetings and this is a huge thing to consider i i can't vote tonight so maybe i maybe i misunderstood the motion maybe i didn't but we i understood as we want to move forward with hey we like

126this idea and we're gonna and we're going to tease it out and there are state asso standards as i understood i think john you mentioned there is state asses there's a requirement for armed officers in your schools whether they're whatever you want to call them in order for you to have armed officers in your schools they have to be retired police officers because of the level of training that they had received prior so you can't hire private security and give them guns and put them into schools right i don't think anyone's proposing that that's that's what i think the uh the discussion on what the training or the requirement was for sso's other than that there isn't to my understanding and i can't find any uh literature on it that there is a requirement uh

127by the state for uh asso's like the national standards for sros and and the advanced servos they meet my misunderstood earlier uh but you know to joy's point i do think time is isn't is is a factor in this and there needs to be some kind of you know i think urgency around this topic so i think maybe that's what's your motion to approve so to to armed officers at each of the buildings so four officers correct that's what you're specifically proposing correct at what pay rate what's the budget we're asking for what training are they going to require well we're making a motion to go through with the plan to and then we'll iron over but we don't have a plan that's the problem but i i don't know what plan well in order

128to go through the plan we have to i'm making the motion to make that suggestion to go through with the plan to iron out all the details but we established essentially what you're doing is you are making a motion to i mean what is the point of the security task force right this is not the be-all end-all the security task force is many layers of security but your motion wants to make that that committee's priority no that's your motion is to represent yes right right i still feel like i'd like to know if maybe when we want to go with sros like i just don't so ready though so if we go ahead with the motion and it passes we're approving asso's without the input of the school security task force what if they come

129to a consensus that that's not what they want right that's what we would be approving separately i don't think that's right we have a process for a reason we establish this task force for a reason we have very well respected members of the community and the schools and the town i think we need to let them do their job and and to me there's some missing things in the motion which is what the budget request is what are we asking for approval on specifically and uh i mean because this does if we go through this if we just approve it as you put the motion through joy the it could be approved and then the board of selectmen or the board of finance could say well you don't have any additional funding so you'll figure

130it out you made the decision right and so we have some work to do on making sure that if it's a request we're making of the next committee that that's part of a motion right that we would do and then to do that we need a specific dollar amount so my next question is what we're currently doing right now should that be still approved or we're just going off of because right now we didn't approve the the security level right now uh yeah yeah we did sexually we did so there was approved in various different boards including the boards that proceeded all over the world i think mike are you talking just to be clear are you talking about asking about we've just done oh yeah yeah that's operational that i have talked about it

131the funding isn't in the budget for that stop gap concept i was talking about if you know we're still working on a board security task force decision as to are we going to do acsos or go for more with more sros whatever whatever ends up being the decision september you know going in there school year starts that's overtime for officers and so we have to you know as a town figure out how we're going to pay for that is that correct chief right it seemed to me that the board of selectmen and the board of finance were pretty clear in their meetings last week that they'll do whatever we need them to do so i don't think obviously i can't approve it for them but i don't think there's going to be an issue i

132i will beg to disagree uh because at one of those meetings mr dunn in particular said oh and we never know if the maybe we should ask the the board of education to fund it right they they always find the opportunities to go fund he went on for about four or five minutes right and we have a very tight budget so i'm not i'm not taking it for granted i do think they're supportive of whatever we decide to do in general but i don't think the budget discussion is a done deal and it will also create a budget problem for the next year which the finance will be very worried about so but we don't have enough to go bring them something to say here's the dollar amount i don't know whether we're bringing them

133uh um you know i've heard everything from uh okay we need four one per school and then i hear oh maybe we should have five maybe we should have six and those have all been common to the part of the company on a sick day and like john said do we do we have them only during the school day or do we have them beyond the school day when we have all these activities at school i don't know it's not defined yet yeah so we're approving we can approve this motion we can approve this motion it's just not defined it will lead us into a undefined period where we had approved something but we don't have funding we don't have definition we don't have a lot of things and it'll be the same as go

134go do that work and bring it back in at our july meeting in whatever a task for whatever the task force recommends to the full board or whatever the full board decides i certainly could work with the chief and my team and come up with a proposal on the various iterations we've talked about tonight ultimately whatever whatever we have to work through anybody else want to say anything because we have emotion on the table yeah i i think we we have to put this plan together and i think we have to define the terms and and i think that should be a priority uh before obviously the next the start of the next school year i would think that i think i would agree with that so i i wouldn't agree with nothing but a

135comment i'd agree with that right last time last chance for a comment because i'll take it to a vote okay all in forward all in favor of approving the motion as stated please raise your hand and say aye aye two votes all against no obscenity undecided okay uh so we're uh we're four against two four and one abstaining so now let's talk about what do we do here right do you think it's fair to bring back a more fleshed out proposal at our july meeting yeah or to have a special meeting to go deal with this because i think we would all agree there's an urgency to making a decision here would would everybody agree to that one way or the other yeah and i think the task force is that entity that will flush

136that out that should flush that out that's what we target to charge them to do so we can charge the task force to bring us a formal recommendation with the support of the chief and dr burrell at our next meeting is that fair for everybody specific to armed school security officers specific to armed school security officers um and the the find the the security committee can decide if they want to bring other things in amongst that right but that would be we would have this we actually asked for a presentation and here's what the proposal that we would bring is and i would i personally would want to have a dollar and cents proposal here's the training and the standards on which we're going to hire and i'm going to make that public i'd love

137to hear from the public on there after they've had a chance to see that and uh and have it actually published in advance so that we have a chance in public comment for people to give us input i think there's a lot of pieces on how you we make decisions here and part of it is being deliberate and listening well and and looking at the facts well and i think we just gotta we got some work to do so we'll bring it back to the next meeting because the next meeting is july 20th so the security task force meeting prior to that we need to have one prior to that correct at least once at least one yeah at least one i think it's going to take at least maybe two yeah so okay next

138stop are you guys ready to move on all right um next up is the secretary's contract um i will move that the board approve the successor contract between the brookfield board of education and the brookfield secretary's union second okay i have a uh brief summary um that um that i stepped over that i get from mr post so thank you because i was going to look at it on my phone and then i couldn't get the internet um the uh we had a we had a negotiation that went for a number of months uh back and forth with the secretary since then the contract ended up being very similar in structure to the nurses contract that we approved two meetings ago it was the same negotiating team who did that on the board the contract

139extent is from uh july of 2021 through june of 2024 we've moved them on to a step schedule which is what we had done with the nurses because remember the issue with both of those contracts is they you know there was just a range and once somebody was in in the middle of the range they were always in the middle of the range they didn't have a chance to progress like other bargaining units would do so in the first year of the contract there was zero gwi but they there was gains because they were moving on to the step schedule the overall increase is 2.93 percent and then in 2022 and 2023 there's two and a quarter and two and a half percent gwis respectively the overall yield over three years is eight point seven

140two percent which is consistent with under nine percent that we have agreed to as a board that's three percent per year basically less than three percent per year um we had a couple of other smaller items we agreed uh for something that's relatively consistent with other union contracts double time for work on legal holidays or sundays sick time could be used to care for an ill parent child or spouse we did improve the language on the bereavement leave they would get three days for immediate family or one day for other family with the same definitions as on the nurse's contract and the pre insurance premium share goes from 16 to 17 percent over the three years of the contract um it's 16 flat for the first couple of years and then 17 in the last

141year of the country so very consistent with what we did on nurses in fact it was the same negotiator on the other side um and i believe they've now signed with the the uh the bargaining unit for the paris has gone with the same union representation so we i expect we'll be seeing some of this yet again so um so that's a summary any questions on what was in that contract it was a good it's actually a positive energy negotiation we did go to arbitration on this one so because the first request was a lot of asks when we had to narrow that down okay all uh all in favor okay it's been approved by the way it's already been approved by the secretary's representatives so so that's it for new business um on old

142business uh we have the subcommittee meeting schedule that we had tabled um a couple of meetings ago um i believe we've all received all the committees have had a chance to give their input and you all have a chance to look at the final report of that and is everybody satisfied from their respective committees okay so let's put the motion on the table i will move that the board um sorry the board continue its discussion and approve the subcommittee meeting schedule from july to december 2022. second okay moved in second in any further discussion all in favor aye okay i'm glad that one's behind us so we're back to public comment again uh this is not about the policy we have a policy to approve i'm sorry there was an update to the agenda and

143i'm looking at the first one so there's a new policy item on policy number 5125.11 health medical records hipaa i will move that the board approved the new policy number 5125.11 health medical records hipaa for a final reading as recommended by the policy communications subcommittee first reading was on may 4th second okay it's been moved in second and any uh any inputs nope we got no changes no additional comments okay any other further discussions by the board okay uh hearing none all in favor aye all right it's approved unanimously now we're at a public comment so this is as i mentioned at the beginning of the meeting we're having two phases of public comment the second phase is for items that were of general interest to the board or anybody else who may have spoken

144the first time around would like to come back up it is not open for people who didn't sign up in the first place so the first up is mr lasser and if name and address to start you know the drill [Music] thank you howard 116 tower road uh but i'm here tonight not so much as a citizen of brookfield though i am for 41 years um here is the executive director of the brookville craft center as you know dr ruby acquired a grant for the schools and the brookfield craft center and the y to collaborate on after school programs uh this past school year we did it with the high school kids uh they did while there was initially some good interest in it this next year we're planning to do it with the middle

145school kids and i just wanted to recognize dr ruby and her efforts really an amazing job and amazing [Music] enthusiasm for bringing arts to the kids and bringing this program and i think she's i know she's leaving at the end of this year and it's a great loss to brookfield i won't say she's going on to greater things because nothing is greater than working with brookfield schools and the kids in brookfield but i wish her well in moving on to other things and i also wanted to mention that the woman who's taking over running this thing sarah sarah lynch has also brought a lot of great enthusiasm and we look forward to creating a really great program for the kids thank you all right i will open the floor to any of the four speakers

146we had before mrs orban mrs columbo mr giuliano or mrs lopez or any of you like to do a follow-on comment okay adam juliano 16 will run um i i'm not quite sure why i understand why you didn't want to go through with the motion what i don't understand is why don't you come up with a deadline for this school year make a deadline you have a task force which i would like to throw my hat in the ring for that do you to my understanding you're missing a third person i'll be that third person happily i have 15 years experience in the nypd combat experience you name it i got it i'll give you a resume counterintelligence counterterrorism i have all of it um either way you look at it you're going to be

147paying for someone to watch our kids with a gun whether it be one of our cops or an ss or whatever whatever it is it doesn't matter you're still paying so why not start the hiring process because a qualified person is a retired cop so start putting it out there and come up with a number it's it's fairly simple if you do the math with the overtime you're paying cops you're probably gonna wind up paying the cops more so why not set a deadline make a motion set a deadline and have something in writing on paper the first week of july you still have what three weeks left in june it's a bit of a priority because judging by what i just heard nothing's going to be done this for this school year so what

148i heard you're going to have cops and what the chief said was there's no budget it's not budgeted in so either way you're going to have to find the money so why not do the work do the legwork you have a task force i will happily donate my time and come and help thank you i will give you whatever you need you know as far as that i still have a couple of connections here and there and and hash it out you know there's a deadline is the only way to go you you you're paying someone regardless it doesn't matter so why not pay a permanent position and four is not enough that is correct you will need at least six because there are sick days injuries you can't just hire four people because you're

149still gonna have shortages and then you're still gonna need a police officer to come and do it you need a cop on your board on your task force somebody that can tell you the politics the funding and the logistics of it i i offer my services when this is over somebody i'll talk to somebody thank you just let's get your resume to dr burrell and we'll uh we'll we'll get into the next just so you know send me an email okay i'll give it to you okay yeah yeah all right thank you very much thank you um elena lopez nine summer pasture lane um so i actually didn't have anything prepared when i spoke during the first public sec segment because um part of the reason why i attended the subcommittee i've watched these meetings

150i've attended these meetings and i'm sometimes confused as to how we end up where we end up with votes and i thought it would be helpful to go to the subcommittee to find out the debate and discussion process the reason why i wasn't prepared to speak um was because i thought that the conclusion of that committee was in favor of asso's and i and i understand that i obviously took that um took that view incorrectly after after hearing the vote um but you know listening during the subcommittee meeting listening to the expert hearing some people's hear personal opinion on the matter there was actually someone who was upset that felt that the decision had kind of everyone else in the room had kind of come to a consensus about it already so to me as

151a citizen just observing the process i'm actually surprised you know i do understand how this can be scary however if you vote that you can't vote on it or if you vote to abstain you're voting now i mean we have cemented tonight that this does not happen for our kids in the fall um it would have been nice to have i don't know if this is possible would have been nice to maybe have something like let's open the position let's interview candidates and if we find wonderful people let's move forward i don't know if you have that flexibility or if you come to a motion you have to hire for and then i agree we don't want to rush to hire four people we don't like aren't qualified doesn't make sense but if there were

152any kind of flexibility to set the motion forward to try to gather to try to interview to find out what you know the salary is we may not have made it to full staff this year but now we're a year behind on this process if this is something we even want to do next year so those are just some of my observations after watching subcommittee and then coming here and once again thank you thank you carrie colombo 29 huckleberry hill road i just wanted to thank you for taking the positions you did on the vote this evening in that you did not move forward on something that has not yet been researched and addressed by the task force as was mentioned by several board of ed members there is a um procedure that's in place

153it's in place for a reason there hasn't been a decision whether we should have assos in our schools there hasn't been a decision whether sro should be increased and the task force hasn't had the opportunity to do that research yet so it's premature to cast that um to uplift that vote in the first place tonight when that research hasn't been done so i appreciate that you're continuing to use the process as it was intended so that we can make thoughtful choices for our schools and ensure that they are safe for our children because now you know if we're talking about in increasing to six additional positions in for a position of asso that we don't even have research to indicate that it makes our schools safer from gun violence then you know we're just putting

154window dressing on and spending a heck of a lot of money to do it so i'm glad that you're being thoughtful about this process and i thank you all right laura you're the only one still here you're done all right good all right that's it for public comment um we're toward the end of the meeting here so uh next is an update on the candlewood uh lake elementary school um i actually don't have a whole lot to report on um i know i talked a little bit tonight about some of the really cool security features in that building um and you know i hope that mr checkout maybe and maybe somebody from tecton could come to that that meeting where we have some of that security overview because that would be really good um but

155i really i don't have any do you have any yeah rose i have one one uh it's not little we talked about small wares before staplers for the new school the flags that are going to go in the classroom the the shape and size of garbage bales i mean all the what are called small wares not only in classrooms but nurses office secretarial desks etc um custodial uh equipment you were part of the hilliard discussion we talked about that that there's going to be an afternoon meeting like we've done with all of our other user group meetings where representative groups the administration brings on representative people from the different groups and they sit with they're going to sit with the project manager and go through kind of a standard list that tecton provides ong provides

156and then from there they'll see visuals of it and i mean down to the stapler people are going to have an opportunity to know what kind of stapler that's available or what they would like to pick um so that's going to happen on the app when we have the staff in on monday when we don't have the students there's an afternoon meeting where we're going to rotate people through that process so you know the buildings is very exciting of course but the the process not only the mission statement and what we stand for that's the critical process but the program and then the supplies that people need in the building the furniture whatever what have you is incredibly important so those steps are also going on in parallel to everything else we're doing when is

157that afternoon meeting coming up the 20th may the 20th and please tell me you're bringing staplers from the other building there's mr checker will tell you we have it in the budget if you could shake it should just be like clean and new well then we have to have a tag sale well what we have is actually mr and mr bolanda already are ready for the the first part of the tag sale so we've tagged the things we need to bring they're specialized and then they'll be able to go through and and uh you know work on what they need for whisking here and so forth and then we can open up a process uh for um you know our neighboring towns and things like that great to take a look oh man i'm picturing

158the tag sale you know i'll go over to the stapler table yeah i don't know dev you could be in charge i i i don't want to do a tag though all right thank you uh three million points david um definitely the presentation about open choice and definitely the discussion about school security and then i guess the discussion about staplers can always say something about the candlewood lake elementary school update is there anything i think i think if we're going to do the security stuff we have to have both discussion on the security task force and the sick and and the isso discussion well it's the same decision but it's two parts of the meeting right right yeah but it's not number two and number three right no one item yeah yeah maybe for the

159school we can add in the part that i talked about during superintendent report as well as what rose and i just talked about yeah put that lump that together with it okay thank you okay everyone okay with that yep all right uh upcoming events okay the last day of school for brookfield high school is tomorrow for whiskenier huckleberry and center school it is friday there's an early release lunch will be served at the elementary schools but not at wiscons the brookfield library summer reading kickoff event is tomorrow night from 5 30 to 7 on the library lawn and monday june 20th is the septo meet and greet with the new special ed director it's here at brookfield high school it's seven o'clock tomorrow at center school is the last community meeting spirit day and the

160first grade grad walk which is really adorable and at brookfield high school tomorrow is the grad walk for all the students through their former schools friday june 17th is a graduation rehearsal and saturday june 18th is the graduation at 11 15 and the car paradise state starts at wms at 10. that's all i have okay any questions okay without objection we're adjourned thank you thank you [Music] you