001how you can do that the reason that we've done this is to protect the order of this session of this meeting and we've had issues with that in the past the meeting i want you to understand is held in public as it must be but this is not the public's meeting the meeting belongs to the brookfield board of education and we have to conduct our business and so we're holding and prioritizing our business tonight and holding public comment at the end we do want to hear from you so if you wish to stay until the end our meeting is probably going to be brief um but i want you to also understand that this board has no jurisdiction on the mass mandate since there's no decision to be made there is no discussion that's appropriate
002for this board to have regarding a mask mandate this board unanimously adopted a mask policy last year and we are not in a position to advocate against our own policies again we'll continue to listen but i ask that you all please respect the order of this meeting and the rules under which it must be conducted so with that let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i also need to remind you that this is a school building and masks are required this is a state law so please if you do not have a mask there are some provided over here if you have a medical exemption then
003you should be sitting at least six feet away from everyone ma'am that includes you please put your mask on there are some up here if you don't have one yes i am here you need to put your mask on it is the law thank you are masks up here please then you can sit six feet away from everybody else please it is regardless of vaccination status you must wear a mask regardless of vaccination status so please put a mask on or sit away from everyone thank you we have all seven of our board members here tonight as well as our student representative and dr john dorel superintendent of schools so the first item tonight is our wms spotlight um so dr brielle do you want to introduce our students sure so i'd like to start
004with inviting up dean renna the proud principal of wisner middle school and this is a when school is in session we have our spotlights every other meeting and we're really excited for dean two of his tremendous staff members up there you can see them smiling away right now there they are right on cue smiling away um and uh they will be talking about the ruler and also a little bit about wellness week and we've got several students okay can they hear me we're good yep all right i am as always i am always very excited to spotlight uh things that are going on at wisconsin and um some of you may know the name we have peer leadership well uh this year for seventh and eighth grade we decided to change the name similar activity
005but same uh change the name to the ruler crew it wasn't my idea so i can't take credit for it but i have two of my great staff ms trotta who's a fifth grade counselor and ms reese who is a seventh grade literacy teacher and i'm going to turn it over to them to introduce the program and our students okay so hi everyone i'm christy chana i am the fifth grade school counselor and um one of the advisors for ruler crew so we're just going to talk a little bit about ruler crew today and this new exciting club that we began um so just a quick overview what is ruler most of you are already very familiar with it but ruler was developed at the yale center for emotional intelligence and is an evidence-based approach
006to social emotional learning so this approach teaches emotional intelligence to students of all ages which is the ability to understand use and manage emotions in a positive way so as a school counselor one of the first things that i ask students when they come into my office um is where are you today on the meter and it's a great conversation starter and it really gets the kids being able to understand and pinpoint where they're feeling um to get the conversation going so i was very impressed that all the fifth graders that i've had so far have been able to identify where they are on the meter or at least understand the computer um so that shows that they are learning it at an even younger elementary level now um coming up from huckleberry which is
007cool so our students have spent years learning about mood meter the charter how to recognize and regulate their emotions and ms reese and i wanted to integrate social emotional learning in a little bit of a different way after school to empower students to think about how others feel and how to create desired feelings of others which is why we started ruler curve hi everyone i'm jess reese so a little bit about ruler crew like mr ender said we are transitioning from peer leadership and taking on a lot of the similar activities but with the framework of ruler so we've been using the yale resources through this program they run called inspired students where they have lessons and activities that we can use to um assess full climate the students will look at the school climate
008and then think of the activities and the projects and the ideas that pretty much you can use to create those desired feelings in school so during our first few meetings we asked the kids kind of what they want to focus on over this year and how what kind of emotions they want everyone to experience while they're at wisconsin and our two big things have been uh fostering excitement and belonging especially since some of these kids are coming in um for the first time in months so the big focus for was on fostering that excitement and belonging so we did some of those lessons we're practicing building perspective taking and we actually have a student from ruler crew here today to help us out to explain some of the things that we've already done this year
009and some of the things that we're looking to do over the next few months so marley you can go ahead and unmute yourself um there she is awesome okay so during our first meeting of ruler crew we brainstormed some ways that we wanted to feel at school and how we could make wisconia a positive environment we wanted to plan events to help students feel comfortable and want to get involved so some things were one of the things were birthday bags we wanted people to feel happy and appreciated on their birthday so we made them this bag with lollipops and a bouncy ball it looked really cute and we added a card to make them happy sometimes having a birthday at a school they can be difficult because there's a lot of work involved and we
010really just wanted to make it hard for them another thing is the classroom charter conversations at our last meeting we came up with some words as ideas of things to add on our charters this way we can help class conversations and share some ideas to help the class and for the walkathon we have an idea called chop the walk and we want people to feel motivated while they're walking the walk-a-thon so right before the walk-a-thon we decided to draw motivational quotes in chalk where everyone's walking to make them feel motivated and the last thing is holiday card making we would like to get some stencils for halloween theme for holiday themed drawings once we finish them we can send those drawings people nursing homes and hospitals people in nursing homes and hospitals don't always get
011many visitors and it can make them sad hopefully when they get these drawings it will make them happier through the holiday season awesome thanks so much marley um and here are just a couple pictures from the birthday bags in action we've had three meetings so far one of them making the birthday bags um and it was really cool to see how excited the students were there was a lot of laughs um we had music blasting too so it was um just a really fun atmosphere and environment right marley okay so um going to kind of changing views a little bit hold on one second miss trotta can she hear me can you hold on one second yeah okay um is there any questions about uh the ruler crew or what's going on before we jump
012into the next thing i think it's great yeah this is great i mean obviously we obviously we wanted to continue the theme as we talk about ruler and charters and the mood meter and like i said it was the advisors that came up to me is the idea could we change it and just having you know being able to use the vocabulary that we are with the mood meter and things to that nature in the charter i think absolutely helps it to come alive more than it really is so i love making it like a community service type of oriented project that's right and i know i wasn't at the meeting but they talked about how kids that's that's really what they want they want to find ways to give back and find different ways
013not just their classroom but obviously in the school but also even ideas in the community and like marley talked about giving back to uh some of the different places in town to write letters and things to that nature so that's great makes someone feel good that's awesome i love the birthday bags and the chalk the walk i just think it's i'm just hoping we're still in school on june 20th yeah not even note that date is my birthday so that that to me i i thought that was awesome yeah yeah all their ideas which is even better great way to give their classmates a boost really nice yep um the next thing we're going to talk about as well on this wednesdays and i'm just not going to take the thunder and let ms try
014to talk about it okay so wellness wednesdays is something that the school counseling department um brainstormed this year and we're working together myself um marianne kish who's sixth grade uh allie fitzpatrick who's seventh grade and then rachel gilbert who is eighth grade so the purpose of wellness wednesdays is to promote positive mental health awareness and encouraging positive stress relief strategies so we are in the process of planning and figuring out the logistics of our wellness wednesdays um i want to start off by giving a big thank you to the brookfield education foundation for helping us um for helping fund these exciting and important wellness wednesdays so again the main thing promoting the positive mental health awareness regardless of whether cobit happened or not it is so important for elementary middle and high school to have
015the mental health awareness and the positive stress relief strategies so that they can bring themselves from one quadrant of the mood meter which might be blue or red to another quadrant of the mood meter which might be green or yellow so we want them to have those strategies to be able to be self-sufficient and do that so currently some of our fun wellness activities again it's still in the works but we've been reaching out to numerous different places um puppies and popsicles so bringing in a local organization to bring stress dogs for one of our wellness wednesdays and of course students would get a treat as well hence the popsicles art therapy also going on so stations of origami or mandala coloring to promote that um mindfulness which leads into the next one so also
016writing thank you cards and playing mindfulness bingo for some really cool prizes play therapy stations to help students focus and destress activities like puzzles and legos and then of course like yoga and stretching so we have a lot of different ideas and activities that we want to have going on these will most likely be one wednesday a month all throughout the school year so we really want to bring something fun and exciting that promotes positivity and you know positive stress relief strategies to the students so we are very excited to be working on this and we will make sure to provide any updates um and of course follow us on our social media for um wms school counseling because we always have updates on there as well you miss trout um and the reason we're
017saying we're still in the process because as you can imagine um trying to uh get people to um come up with these activities for a whole entire school is not easy at all and we can't we have to have certain time frames and we can only use certain parts of the building because we have so many kids so um we're trying to come up with those different activities and days so it won't be like she said once a month we're going to try to be figuring out these things and another thing that we've come up with is even at the end of last year we came up with uh one month end of the month on a friday for like spirit spirit month so they wear a certain you know act uh shirt or or
018something like that to um just to kind of keep up the spirit keep up the uh positive you know vibes with the kids and the kids have been doing an unbelievable job the beginning this year so and again that's these are things that come from either student council and in this case from ruler crew any questions on that and again thank you so much to the brookfield education foundation for funding some money for that for us to get materials and things and also having the puppies lollipops is there any more movement based activities um excuse me sorry this is not an open session so so so the activities again we're in the process i mean part of it could be maybe we're doing something with uh yoga i mean they try to get um what's
019it called goat yoga um in uh zumba i don't know if we want the you know little things nibbling on us um but um but we also talked about zumba you know again exactly we're trying to find different ways for kids and again it's a whole idea helping them to find ways to relieve stress you know whether you know obviously it could be there could be food involved although we're not allowed to have food this year but you know some kids listen to music some kids may draw you know everyone has different ways that they deal with stress so that's really the idea behind all of it it's cool anything else all right great stuff thank you thanks guys thanks there's our juliana marley thank you miss reece all right up next we have our
020student representative report hi ben um it should be up yep there you go just speak into it you should be fine okay so for going back to about or a couple weeks ago when um for the last report um just starting off with some four national merit scholarship semi-finalists so that was prompted by their psat scores that ended up bringing them through the running and now they're semi-finalists so we have sam cotron samita shersat sophia kemp and zane kaiser so just recognition for them and then on top of that um going into different clubs that we have going on right now we these are a few that i'm a part of but of course outside of that there's definitely a bunch going on so there's outdoors club which is currently um we're having meetings and
021this friday we're going to end up going on a hike which is going to be just right out back in the gursky open space area there um and with that we'll mark the first like day of our scavenger hunt which is going to last a month and that's kind of getting different students to get around town and figure out maybe where it's different parks might be that they haven't been to before because there's definitely a lot throughout town that maybe people don't know about so that's raising awareness about those trails and then outside of outdoors club there's also key club which we're currently getting into the swing of things with planning different volunteer events future teachers of america we've definitely started off with meetings um peer counseling continuing to help out the different students who
022may be transitioning from middle school um national honor society which we actually had a scrub and grub recently which was kind of like a car wash and bake sale mixed together and we actually were able to raise over twelve hundred dollars which was really helpful and actually according to mrs lazorchek the nhs advisor one of the most successful scrubbing groups she's had in all of her time so definitely people were happy to see faces of students out there doing the car washing and we're definitely very happy with the result sports is also in pretty full swing recently a lot of turnout to the football events especially so students are happy to kind of be back and cheering for bobcats student government is currently holding student elections so for each grade nine through twelfth they're able
023to run for positions for their student government and we also have this week the club fair so that's an opportunity for students to kind of get around to different clubs that they might may not be familiar with so last year we weren't able really to have something like that in person but this year throughout ilt they can visit the clubs and find out about them and kind of get some information about that and then two other things psats next wednesday for ninth through eleventh graders so that's um kind of gonna i think there's like a change in bell schedule but um that's when the psat is for them and then finally next week is spirit week which will end up um coming to a close on friday with a home the homecoming football game and
024a pep rally for which again was a little different last year but this year is going to be more normal so which is nice to see any questions on all that all right that was great there's a lot going on yeah thank you thank you next item on our agenda is written correspondence uh jamie clavins and marianne gaffy wrote regarding mass ryan rodinis shannon leyda anna prendi and michelle french wrote regarding quarantine guidelines monique matthews wrote regarding bus issues nicole rogers eve turn your notes on glenn rooney and brianna wrote regarding the september 15th meeting jenna gusto and nicole rogers wrote regarding public comment procedures aaron scalera wrote regarding coven numbers nicholas schmidt wrote regarding meeting minutes and agendas and kim gerardi wrote regarding busting concerns and mitigation strategies okay next item is approval of
025board minutes i'll move that the board approve the minutes on september 15th and the special meeting on september 29th second okay any edits discussions okay all in favor all right hi okay thank you next item is the superintendent's update all right thanks rosa good evening everyone uh so a piece that i wanted to just start out with at the beginning before i get into the what's officially documented as the superintendent report is just to give a quick update for everybody regarding uh what most people have heard about is the tick tock challenge september was vandalize your school basically and take take trophy pictures of yourself vandalizing the school uh mr blanda and the team uh have been very vigilant about that and are addressing that um and and we thank them for that and and
026we are certainly not in a position that some of the other schools find themselves in although we are not immune to some of the hijinks and so we're not we're taking a very firm and uh hard stance on that and there's zero tolerance for that kind of vandalism in our school in addition to that october is slap a teacher um month according to tick tock and so we want to make sure that not only our staff and our teachers are well secured and reassured that that is assault and we there's no changes we never never tolerate that kind of behavior ever we haven't had any incidents of anything like that and i have reinforced with the administrative team that anything um and also with our teacher teacher union specifically that anything like that is considered
027assault an immediate call to the the police and possible arrests and and however they would guide us on that we are not again take a very firm stance with that uh no tolerance for that so i just want to get that out there to make sure everybody's aware that we're taking it very seriously we're well aware of the situation um we we do educate 2 700 children all you know all year long uh we are aware of these social media um challenges and things that come along so we're paying attention all the time to those things um coven numbers wanted to just talk a little bit about covet updates and some figures um are 12 to 17 year olds in the community the vaccination rate is up from around 60 to 65 percent uh over
028the last few weeks vaccinations for our staff this was important with a uh one of the executive orders from the governor in terms of people probably heard it all over the news with workers and vaccinations and testing and all kinds of things like that uh approximately 95 of our staff is vaccinated and have provided that documentation to human resources in addition to that the others which were hovering around the number 30 that are not vaccinated have the proper documentation and are doing the uh conducting the weekly testing and submitting that to hr so we are at this moment 100 compliant and so i have to thank the staff and hr for all the hard work to make sure that has occurred and to me that's the sentiment of the cooperation in you know in our
029in our community um i did want to mention that we do have a covet dashboard some people might not be familiar with that and we've been doing that probably since mid-year last year um and each friday we update that with the numbers of staff and students people are coming to numbers and doing that probably since after your last year positive cases with the numbers yeah q all of those were around vaccinations quarantine expectations the executive orders the bus driver shortage that's something that we've had to to deal with and frankly i have to thank allstar and in brookfield while again like the tick tock challenge i mentioned at the beginning while we're not immune to these things we're actually considering the shortage we're actually doing quite well although buses are still late and we acknowledge
030that we'll continue to work on that and also taking the quarantine change from the 10-day quarantine down to the seven-day quarantine with the test out option so we can get our kids back to school sooner um and and those updates are reflected in the opening plan so we did another update last week for that um some really positive news to keep moving forward on um and jen if you could i think you took a look at those already maybe you could pass those down um first that will do afterwards the the framed ones there so over the last two years because of covid things were slowed down at cave the connecticut association of boards of education congratulations to the board of ed once again recognized and acknowledged for excellence in communication specifically going green district
031budget flyer and the remote learning website page and that is those were all honorable mentions and then getting near the end here strategic planning wanted to let everybody know that i've been uh in touch with that advance and we've been looking at the calendar and you know timing up our budget discussions last week we had a special meeting we talked about actually the budget calendar and getting input from the community um and the concept of the thought exchange tool and some things we might be able to do not only for the annual budget but thinking for strategic planning and making sure we can get some very efficient input from the community uh quickly as we begin that process in the winter time and then um i will be sending out at the end of the
032week not a coveted update thankfully but a winter weather advisory update to remind everybody at this time of year um after that october storm about eight or ten years ago we make sure we get it out a little bit extra early reminding families that we want to have a plan in place how the communications will be sent out regarding early dismissals delayed openings cancellations and all of those things and how those decisions are made and who's involved in those and then the final thing is a real shout out to mr renda who was up here tonight uh someone who is uh in the in the region grew up in the region and has been serving gosh for over 25 years here in uh in brookfield as uh as a coach a teacher and ultimately as
033principal of wisconsin for quite a long time now he was actually recognized and inducted into the greater danbury uh old timers association and so we have a lot of fun with the title old timer for for mr renda he he is a year older than me and i make sure i remind him that often um and uh it's really an honor uh you know for his athletic prowess uh as a young man and all the service he is engaged in our in our area so mr renda congratulations and we're sharing that shirt with the board and that is all i have um sure so i mean i could there's a lot that goes on with it uh certainly the nurses um sometimes secretaries uh and the administration is always involved with it um it's it's
034really mainly uh when we get the word on a positive case we immediately move right into the seating charts who's that child been near we look at the bus seating charts the classroom seating charts and so forth and that happens quite quickly because when students are close contacts and are possibly infected we don't want them to continue to have further contact with others so just as a matter of fact today i was actually at huckleberry and we found out a call came in while i was in the in the office that a child was positive hadn't been in school in a day or two uh and immediately they went right to work and then from there to answer your questions specifically i i actually heard mrs labrichado say okay we have to get this out
035and we have to get the calls in right now we have to start making them because we need to get the parents here before the buses roll in so you know i know the effort is there to make that happen um and thankfully it's been reduced over time with the with less in schools infections a long time now and i think some of us on this board would be interested in understanding maybe what some of those impacts have been so do you think you'd be able to gather from nurses and other counseling staff perhaps if students have been significantly complaining about am i sorry am i my cousin yeah so since our students have been wearing a mask for a while is is it possible for you to gather any data regarding um any emotional
036or medical effects impacts that they may have experienced maybe prior to you know i mean during covid compared to before kovid sure if we're seeing any significant trends just to understand the impact and perhaps you know yeah and able to act on it yeah no i know that the the nurses and the counselors if kids come in and complain they do keep logs um and so we can certainly go to those those folks and take a look at their data ask them to report out that um what the effects could be for sure absolutely so um it might take some time to pull together but i certainly could look into that yeah i think it'd be worth it yeah yeah absolutely okay thank you anybody else questions yeah go ahead jen john how are things
037going with quarantining and the instructions of students while they're on quarantine like how is how are the systems sort of evolving to meet student needs while they're out so um we put out an update um to the remote learning or we're calling quarantine learning because there technically isn't any remote learning um so because it's for students who are on quarantine um each each principal has actually taken care to develop a specific plan with their their staff for their building so it's not a one size fits all for the district so right now specifically for center school it's been more hard copy materials and actually asynchronous work frankly because of the students age at this moment and working with the teachers and getting everybody trained on google classroom they're just not ready yet and that's been
038a lot of the feedback that mrs diamond has received although there are zoom opportunities and so forth huckleberry we have had a um zoom sub or zoom teacher if we we call that person and there's an actual synchronous schedule and an asynchronous schedule as well for the day for the kids uh who are quarantined there um and certainly it's as the kids get older and get to wisconsin into the high school they're well versed in google classroom and there is well it's mostly asynchronous there's opportunities to check in with counselors and teachers and so forth uh in that regard so for the there was a rash of quarantines at huckleberry especially but also center school to begin the year it was very difficult for all of us there was some seating chart uh frankly mistakes
039and things made um you know that were involving the the buses and we've rectified that so there's many many less kids and so when there's less students on quarantine there's opportunity for the staff to have better and more quality interaction with those kids who happen to be out at that time all plans though are subject to evolution over the course of the year so like i said about center school as those kids get older and they're comfortable with their devices certainly there'll be much more opportunity for live interactions and things like that um but being open to the feedback you know we've all been through it parents have been through it kids have been through it for a year there is a stress level with synchronous learning it's not it's not all sunshine and rainbows
040it's it's very difficult especially with the younger kids um i i have such compassion for our parents of the younger kids because i you know my i had a son in high school and cut and then now in college and another one still in high school very independent it's different at that age than it is for the younger kids you know and it affects work for families it's been very very challenging but i think all in all we're doing we're doing pretty well and obviously the less close contact we have with students who are infected the less quarantine we have to implement and going from the 10 to the seven day with the test out opportunity that's three more days in school so we're doing doing everything we can within the rules to make it
041work as best we can for our kids and our families anyone else yes i have a quick question have we explored or looked into the busing you know i had brought up before you know in states like massachusetts and new york if all the windows are open it's considered um an outside area and quarantines aren't necessary so i i actually was so i'm sorry joy did you finish i didn't know yeah something else okay so i looked into that that there's no one who's um heard of when the windows are open they should be i mean that makes sense to have them open we all know that ventilation is critically important um and we've asked ken post has worked with deb jones over at allstar to have the bus drivers getting those windows down but
042it when i inquired about that of the different public health people it's not been considered an outdoor space if the windows are open um there is a national mandate that um can't explain legislatively how it's in that it's actually a mandate but it comes through the cdc and it's for all public transportation including school buses that the the main the mitigation strategy is um mask wearing on the transportation um the windows it's a recommendation that they should be open it's not a have to but i think it makes sense obviously to the toleration of cold and um buses are are able to run at full capacity that's what we've been directed so that's what that's more of a dph role here in connecticut i don't know if that answered everything you asked joy okay could
043we stay on buses for a second so how short are we on bus drivers right now um ken i'm going to look where's ken about about three or four right now and they're doubling up and you're welcome to come up here ken if that's easier for you this is ken post he's our director of business operations and he works directly with the ms jones in the bus company we're pretty well fully staffed i think the problem it's got to be up again it is okay you got to talk into the microphone yeah so i think we're we're at fully staffed but we don't have any spare drivers so if somebody is out sick or has to quarantine or anything like that or takes a day off for any reason then it's when we have to
044start juggling runs and and moving people around okay and i think there's two two to three drivers i think in the pipeline correct we're working on and that's a two to three month process once a driver applies and is accepted to be with all-star or any bus company through dmv and other state tests they have to take to become a bus driver so they don't just get a job right away it takes time two to three months is it two it can take up to that long debbie said does all-star pay them give them a salary during that training that i don't know i don't know that but i know dmv we are working with um you know the superintendent organization connected association public school superintendents and the state department of ed and we my
045group as you know the western connecticut group were very very active at the state and we we lobbied uh very uh firmly at the end of the the summer as we saw this really continuing is that we need some help you know enticing people to become drivers in the whole you know with the shortage and so we've been doing everything we can and i know those two organizations are you know they have the governor's ear and they're working on things dmv is a slow spot and i know it's easy to pick on dmv we we all do when we tease and joke about it but it really is they're trying as i understand it to become more efficient because of the emergency nature of the driver shortage because that hits everybody oh yeah yeah they've
046gotta they've gotta release that bottleneck but do it in a safe way because we want safe drivers so but so we're kind of at staff and we've got a couple in the pipeline yes yes and so when there's a shortage it's like when there's a combined bus ride it's because a driver was out for the day that's my understanding yes i can verify that but uh that's my understanding okay thank you you're welcome thank you ken uh john i had a question on the seven day uh quarantine so it's i just want to be clear so it's you test on day five negatively you get you come back day seven uh day eight day so seven full days of quarantine seven full days okay yep and you could test on day five six or seven
047five six or seven yeah any of those days yep and if it comes back if you get it right away it comes back uh negative you're able to come back on day eight and we just ask that the parent bring that documentation in to school nurse and you know they'll go through their intake and get the kids back as fast as we can does that have to be a pcr test or is it as a rapid test acceptance pcr and antigen i believe are the two tests okay and again that's why it's always important our school nurses um have have always been at the skill level they're at in the engagement level with our our parents um but none more than during cobit when all these kinds of questions come in and so i always
048encourage the parents give the give your child school nurse a call and um they're busy offices but they'll make the time to get back to answer these kinds of questions because it's very confusing for people any other questions okay very interesting thank you thank you all right subcommittee reports facilities okay we met on september 1st we reviewed the school dude reports we focused our attention on the hvac issues and roof leaks we were updated about the water at the middle school we applied for a 90-day extension and it's been granted and the installation began that week of september 1st we got an update on the custodial staff and summer cleaning the buildings look great and the custodial staff is working very well together and communicating really well with each other as well and we're operating
049at full capacity so it's good news uh we got a capital project update and review the 10-year capital plan the high school boys locker room product project is going back out to bid late fall so with a due date of about january the hvac system is ready to go to pricing we need an rfp for the 198 valves that need to be installed we also discussed the need for an updated building condition study the middle school wall the nbc is now involved and the town is in the process of engaging a structural engineer to find out what exactly needs to be done or if additional restoration work needs to be done we didn't have any updates on the fire marshal inspection or the high school boiler room we discussed floor tiles at the high school
050the maintenance staff had replaced some floor tiles but we'll need to return to some of that work after they finish performing some maintenance on all the hvac systems we discussed the high school media center air conditioning the rooftop unit has failed and it's time to replace the compressor and the condenser they are not in stock and the lead time is at least 14 weeks we discussed the thermal study that's in the works a contractor performed tests on the section of the roof over the main office in high school to determine the source of a leak and propose a solution and we're waiting for that report and that's it um any questions question about the question about the um the whisk in your wall was there what was going on with that was there anything going
051on with it over the summer was there like a shortage of so it's kind of uh that work has been halted um because we have to bring in a structural engineer too we're still waiting for them to come in yeah to make sure it's structurally safe and the work that we want to proceed with the best plan moving forward so we need a little more time okay any other questions all right uh cape so on september 8th mike joy and i attended it in lieu of our meeting or as our meeting we attended a presentation at the high school that maureen ruby gave about this amazing grant opportunity that our high school students have maureen was able to secure a a very large grant that allows for our students to participate in an after-school program
052that includes art studied at the brookfield craft center some exercise and wellness at the ymca as well as government and politics activities through the y as well and uh it was well attended for a nighttime event of parents uh we had a lot of parents interested and engaged um and i think we hope i didn't misspeak i think there was a 60 students we have space for in the grant maureen we had um we have space for 60 and we had over like 80 students uh and parents who were said that they would participate only did our survey that was required for the grant last last spring and we currently have 41 students several of the students who actually signed up have since uh withdrawn and uh we we will take uh new students okay
053because we have the space okay so that's good to hear so i'm gonna be sending a notice out again um next week but we're trying to actually get the people who signed up to show up okay all right so there's more room and you know what i left out a piece tutoring there's also another piece so it's like free tutoring for the students so it's this really really awesome program so if can i just add the tutoring because sometimes uh folks think that tutoring is a you know like a remedial or negative thing and it's not it could be if people needed help but the tutoring can be anything that a student needs if they've gotten feedback from an english teacher or a history teacher on a paper they can go in and meet with
054the teacher in these sessions and you know get that work done if they want a quiet place to do homework while they're waiting for sports they can go there and they're all the teachers are also willing to do individualized sat prep work with them so that's and it's it's an amazing opportunity for students and students who are not in the full program can still go to the tutoring after school and mr belanda has made that public you know to the students but you know this is an amazing opportunity after school yeah so so be on the lookout there's a follow-up email to come if you're still interested so we'd really love to as many uh students as possible to take advantage of this great opportunity thank you maureen for securing that funding through the grant
055and that's it any questions for jen okay finance all right so the finance committee met on september 13th a couple of brief updates uh first of all i've been talking every month for the last uh every meeting about how our year end last year ended the final numbers are 76 better than budget which is very well received by the town that will go back to the fund balance and i will say in the budget that's four hundred thousand dollars of covet related spending that was absorbed and it was offset by 481 000 of underruns the biggest drivers of which were special education transportation because people we weren't actually transporting kids right and and we had other runs and some staffing costs so it was good news all around we talked about the current year budget
056and it is very early in the current year budget as you can imagine we have some risks in special education costs already that's been something we've talked about as a board consistently and we had mrs wagoner come talk to us about that um but our staffing replacement savings that we always build in our budgets coming in a little better than expected so we agreed that we would monitor these two items over the next couple of months to see how they're tracking we did have a discussion on the arp esser grant and the need to have a half of an occupational therapist we went through it with mrs zygonic the student needs that led to the decision and we agreed to support that uh ken did we did we find out whether this board needs to
057vote on that or not that was the follow-up yeah we do need to vote on it okay so we'll have that on the agenda at the right time correct so we'll have that come back at a at probably our next meeting um we are in the process of doing uh discussing buses right and the bus our bus contract ends it's an awkward time to be negotiating a new bus contract both because of covid but also because we're having significant changes next year so we're actually looking at a one-year extension of the existing contract under some controlled conditions so uh mr post will come back and talk us through that in more detail he had some homework to go do to look at the options there uh the uh we got 123 thousand dollars idea grant
058preliminary plans to use that for a social worker a half a social worker and the rest on yet defined and they but we we can't commit that yet because we hadn't gone through the training yet that's still kind of in development we went through the budget calendar which we reviewed at our last special meeting and that's been approved now and the rest was starting to talk about the budgets that's coming up and of course the biggest single item in next year's budget is going to be our transition right we have a very significant transition to a new school and that will have some cost to it and there'll be a lot of timing questions about when we move into the different schools and or have center come in and huckleberry come in and the whisk
059and here kids could be moved into the new school so there's a lot that'll all come out in the budget process as we uh move forward and that's it i'll take any questions i have a question i see in the notes this has some facility issues at the high school that could impact the budget for the special education costs yeah we actually just talked about the items that you reported in the uh in the facilities committee he was just informing us okay so there was no reason to repeat that here so any other questions all right policy okay uh the policy committee met on september 15th and um we we reviewed the face mask policy that we adopted from in november of 2020 to make sure it's up to date and we all agreed that
060it is compliant so we have no changes to that policy at this time we just wanted to review it take another look and make sure that no changes were needed we also took a look at the bullying policy because in july of 2021 july of this year there were changes to the definition of bullying public act 19-166 which is called an act concerning school climate went into effect which changes the wording in the definition of bullying from pertaining just to a student to now pertaining to an individual so the bullying policy will now encompass bullying between adult to student student to adult and adult to adult and our current policy is not written that way so um we're waiting for guidance from cabe and our board attorney to you know advise us how to make
061changes to that policy but um you know it was just a heads up that we need it's going to be coming down the pike um the other main thing that we discussed was the k policy audit that took place over the summer and we have that as an agenda item later so i'll go into more detail about that and the last thing we talked about was under communications with the new school opening up soon we there's lots of development happening lots of great progress being made so we talked about the need for more frequent communications and maybe some in-person meetings where people from the community will get to really share in the progress see some um maybe video or photographs um see you know everything that's happening in terms of the interior of the school
062and the outside of school so we really want to engage the community and and share the progress that you know we're very excited about so that's all going to be coming in the next few months okay deb might i be able to just add something about that because you know it's really great conversation and um one of the things and we'll talk about when we get the candle with lake but um once we talk about the transition plan formally with a presentation in early november at a regular board meeting um we're we'll try to stay on a pace at each board meeting to do a little sharing and an update uh whether it's personnel or to your point maybe it's just a photo montage and just to talk it through some of the things that
063are going on um and there's just a lot of excitement out there i did send out we sent out a school message probably two weeks ago with um and supposed to be posted on facebook and everything else but it was just a little video that showed the drone pictures going over the uh over the construction you can really see everything coming together so um but but to the point of the committee and the thoughts we have going forward you know it's important to open up the school year and get things rolling and as we start talking about next year in strategic planning and the transition that's really going to take the lion's share of certainly my time and board's time to make sure we do that right um and we're looking forward to that so
064that'll just be fun it really will be it's a lot of positive news for the students and for the for the community so thank you deb yep any other questions for debbie okay um up next is our consent agenda i will know that the board approves the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations transfers all right okay moving on to new business we have um the sub the policy and communications subcommittee cave audit recommendation so do we have an update on that debbie yep i do that's not emotional okay sorry okay possibly so as i mentioned earlier we got back this very comprehensive report from cabe this is our policy audit that we engaged cape to do over the summer it was a very favorable report they said overall we're in very
065good shape we really did a lot of work in the past five to six years and i just wanted to share a quote from the summary of the report they said it is obvious from the analysis that the school system gave more attention to the adoption and or revision of policies in the last five school years beginning with the 2016-2017 school year during this last five school year period 56 policies were adopted representing 16.1 percent of the manual in this same time period 36 policies and bylaws were revised this is a desirable trend to witness representing additional board attention to its policy responsibilities we've reviewed a total of 149 policies in the last five or six years and a total of 165 revisions so it's been a lot of work um so this audit really
066looked to identify policies that uh we could keep the current language or identify policies that needed to be modified or replaced or identify policies that are mandated by statute or recommended by cave cabe and we don't have so what they found was that first of all they mentioned that a large portion of our policies 45 percent was originally adopted in the late 1980s or early 90s so our policies are quite old however the majority are appropriate as written but there were 43 policy areas recommended by cabe that are missing or you know that they they suggest that we add and mandated policies are missing wow so um they they did provide us with a ton of detail if you look at the report there are a lot of charts and spreadsheets in here that outline
067specifically which policies or regulations need modifying and to what extent you know it's a very interesting report but it's also a lot of work so these 43 areas that they suggest we have these are areas not policies so there are policies within those areas yeah sorry um let me see if i could deb while you're looking for that so what's important to understand about it is by series so you know we have the nine series essentially the zeros through the nine thousands they the dr um star dr mastar of the cave sets up a grid kind of a timeline of what we need to move on and where we're okay um and so we could then schedule the work as a committee going forward over the next couple of years um this this is this
068audit in adopting either shipment in goodwin which is a leading law firm and they have a service in connecticut or the cabe service was something early on in my tenure here we talked about with a policy committee early on and i have to thank all the policy committee members over the years because clearly we've done a ton of work um but we all knew and we used to we used to jest about some of the the former younger board members that the policies were actually older than those board members um so we we understand the critical nature of it the decision at the time of those those earlier committees was to not um invest in a cave or other uh entity to come in and give us a hand and help support us um you'll
069in the in the possible motion that's that's here the action is to discuss that as well and i think that deb certainly can can talk to that because we need all the support we can get um just talking with attorney murphy today on a different uh employee matter i asked him about the audit he had taken a quick look and said well you thought it was very comprehensive for the two thousand dollar investment that it was for three months of work for them to produce that that report um he said you know a heavy-duty policy that he needs to invest in given you know the billable hours he has can cost you up to three thousand dollars he said you you don't want me looking at these policies you want to go with a firm
070that already has a plan in place and can can do this in a much more efficient way so the mandated policies that are missing include reporting transportation safety complaints food services personnel code of conduct title ix under personnel evaluation and employment of coaches physical exercise and discipline of students title ix relating to students um surveys of students and student privacy alcohol drugs tobacco use and possession on school property preschool students with disabilities alternate education programs so so um cabe does have these policies written right that would be easier for us to review and adopt right so i mean i would suggest we move quickly on the ones that are mandated yeah right i think it's important to rose i agree with you wholeheartedly i think it's important for folks to remember too that um we
071are subject to state law as as we all know we're all wearing masks right now right um so we have to follow state laws so regardless of our policy we're subject to state law so so we still have to adhere and we do yeah um it's the pace at which we have a volunteer board how how quickly can we turn this around clearly we've done a lot of work um but having the services of cabe to not only give us this report but what debbie's going to present uh as kind of the culmination of a report tonight i think is is really the direction the board needs to go yeah john also some of these policies will affect other policies so it's it gets it gets into a tangle message we just say okay there's
072a doc malt and then it's sort of like yeah yeah it's sort of like a web like when you when you it has references to other policies right exactly this one could be related to seven other policies and then you have to dig through and find okay if i change the definition of bullying on this i have to change it on the bus or for example mike i'm so glad you brought this point up because you have you know there's that title nine reference right there there's other title nine policies but one you know so those are the ones we don't we've got the other ones so it's it really is um and again we have to follow federal and state law which we do um and we're subject to that so um it's critical
073to get the policies up to date that's one of the critical functions of the board of education um and so that's why we're talking about it it's a big deal yeah by the way just as a reference if you go into the package that we all received at the end of each section they list the mandated policies lacking and the recommended good practice policies lacking there's actually nice little listings in each section of our policy manual so there's a summary of the missing mandated policies on page five okay so they included three options for us um to consider the first one is cabe's customized policy service and this gives us a totally new policy manual cable review all our policies for compliance to federal and state statutes and regulations also review all bargaining unit agreements
074and things like student and personnel handbooks and any other relevant materials they will then update all policies and um they will revise and update all the codification and that includes an electronic copy of the new policy manual for future updates you know for us to do on our own so that's a total comprehensive overhaul of all our policies and that cost is ten thousand eight hundred dollars and we have they've offered us two options to i mean could pay it all at one time but they also said we could spread it over two years at fifty four hundred dollars per year or three years at thirty six hundred dollars per year so that's option one option two is to maintain the current manual and cabe only does revisions to the mandated policies and then they
075would provide us with a sort of a sampling of revisions to or sampling of the policies that they recommend or that they recommend that we revisit and then we would sort of see where you know what they're suggesting and the guidance they're providing and then we would make the additional changes ourselves and we would do all the codification in-house they would provide us with a first draft we would have to go through our normal process of presenting it to the board getting comments making revisions and do that part of it on our own so the total for that option is five thousand four hundred dollars and again they offer that we could spread that out over two years at twenty seven hundred each year the third option which cabe was very honest with us in
076saying they really don't recommend it and they have not seen very good results but it's an option is for us to purchase a cd of the connecticut reference manual of school board policies and that comes with 450 examples of policies and we would basically use that to continue the work that we've been doing as we can tackle each policy and then using their audit recommendations as a guide and chip away at it sort of one by one and the cost for that cd is four hundred dollars so we had a lengthy discussion and we reviewed you know their charts and some of their suggestions and um i think mike and amy and i were all in agreement that we thought that the number one option the customized policy service made the most sense and that
077we would recommend adopting that and spreading it over three years at 3 600 per year but of course we want to open it up for discussion and get everybody else's feedback what did the committee feel was the primary draw towards that option um uh legal legal stuff so as far as it was told me that legal protection for the school district was better preserved on the first option than leading us like what we were doing on technically like across between option three and option two uh left us open to you know policies one policy saying one thing and then having them you know cross each other out and then yeah very inconsistent policy so it was for me it was mostly like a legal argument exposure time i would say too we can get this
078done over three years where it would take us doing it on our own a lot longer and i think there's a way to do it all over again there's also the piece that if things change right john during the policies change during that three years they will keep that updated as well so if there's a new policy that comes in that will get rolled in as well and the overall cost of 3 600 per year over the so it's just those three is it just those three years that they make those updates okay that's the initial and then you know even if you paid it as like a long summer it's like a three-year window um i i think i don't know that they'd be able to do this um i know we would not
079be able to do this given right you know 10 to 11 maximum policy meetings per year when you look at one meeting a month in a volunteer organization yeah it takes three months just to get one policy approved um the pace is just designed to be a snail's pace um and and frankly i'll be very candid we have to thank mrs grambling for all of her work uh the the board secretary and my assistant um there there isn't any office capacity to you know to move any faster than we do we move as fast as we can um the the day goes by and um you try to do this we got a i would say quite a positive report but i heard a collective gasp when people heard you know that some mandated policies
080aren't there yeah um again i must reiterate this is something we discussed early on in my tenure and you know because of budget concerns and we weren't frankly in the position we're in now with really uh as a board as a board of finance and board of selectmen trusting what the education budget was seven years ago it's a very different context now so there was reluctance um to spend some money on an outside agency to come in and support but given our track record um of frankly just moving at this slow pace although very positive and thanking not only the current policy committee has done a ton of work on this and lisa in the past members who put all kinds of work and time into this it just doesn't get done fast enough the
081capacity is an issue we need that outside help to be very honest and they're experts at it why should we reinvent the wheel and frankly i purposely mentioned the cost of our board attorney um in the billable hours there i mean that makes no sense to be constantly checking is this the right way to go when the folks have vetted these policies up at cape with with the you know their legal team up there done for us so while it still has to go through the process proper process of approval i think this is the way to go um i really think it's a bargain frankly to get us to make sure we're up to speed and we stay up to date on everything i also feel like um i don't know john if you
082notice this or anybody else on the committee but i feel like in the last year or two things have changed very rapidly and and all of a sudden it's like oh we got to update the mask policy we have to update the bullying policy we have to update the therapy dog policy like things that it's not keeping up yeah you know that everything in like in our environment in our society is happening quickly which is resulting in things that we didn't you know expect to have to revise at this point and that's happening at the same time that our district is dealing with a lot of communication issues as well so we have the new school opening we have the school start time changes so as a committee you know there's just kind of a
083lot of moving parts and i think it's going to be difficult to manage all these revisions and changes at the pace that we would like to or that's necessary especially for the mandated ones and i think if it gives the board some comfort you know i think bethel and several of the districts in the area and many many districts in the state take advantage of this uh service so this isn't something you know new and nouveau that we're trying to to go with this is something we've been been available to us for years and so neighboring districts have availed themselves with this as well so i think it's tried and true process i think it's something worthy of investment okay [Music] i would i would just say we probably 95 of the policies we deal
084with it's relatively easy for us to look at what cave has and recommends and say that's applicable right they write very good policies um we have to be careful on the last five percent because we're not a cookie cutter uh the school district we're brookfield and so i just think we have to guard against being complacent and just saying okay they gave it to us let's go we have to read them look at them make sure they're pertinent to our environment so but man 3 600 a year for that level of a service man i'd keep it going that's the deal of the century um speaking of this is that what you would be if we approve this that would be going into the budget for next year going to budget for next year and
085then we could have a conversation because we have some things when i was listening to bob's finance report there's there's been some news and some homework completed that we want to share on monday at the you know the next finance committee meeting so this is something we also wanted if there's room to do it this year would we uh would we start it this year i i think it's it's yeah we should seriously consider it okay yeah so do you would you like a motion i i think that'd be great okay motion for the lump sum are we doing the 36 for three years 36 yeah yeah um okay so uh i move that the board approve the option presented by cabe as recommended by the policy subcommittee do we need the amount yes in
086the amount of 3 600 across three years beginning well if possible beginning if possible um during this year the the 21-22 school year um but no later than the 22-23 school year all in favor all right all right that's bananas good job okay we have no old business so we are on to the candlewood lake elementary school building project just a few um kind of exciting updates for them we're getting it into the nuts and bolts of the project now but um the foundation for the gym wall is the next thing that you're going to see going up and hopefully the roofing starting by the end of this month the gas line is going in and all of the exterior finishes and materials have been selected and they are gearing up for design and development
087on the interior so uh the other thing is the ffne yes and actually maybe you can touch on some of that some of the meetings that have been going on yeah so we've had a couple of meetings over the last month and a half um where ff e stands for furniture furniture fixtures equipment and we have a number of our user groups in classroom teachers ot special education et cetera administrative team um to look at the kind of the choice furniture selection that techdon and the mbc shared with us and uh we're able to narrow things down and make some selections on uh function and advise on color and you know how how things are going to work in those classrooms so it was really exciting for that eric our tech director is starting to
088work directly um with uh techton on all the technology that's going to be uh in that building as well as communication system and parlaying the phone system um at the new school with upgrades to the phone system in the whole district and we've had some discussions over the years about that so we've got we've got some really good plans going on there very exciting um the other piece is that on november 2nd which is the professional development day we're very excited um both mrs lavroshano mrs diamond and dr ruby and and many others are putting together a day where all pre-k to five uh faculty will be together to begin team building and think thinking and revisiting the developmental um continuum of kids pre-k through five and being in the same building and what that'll
089look like and um although just all that exciting stuff as well as over the course of the year starting to think about different committees where we can have you know committees that across grade level that haven't really worked together uh over the the last number of years and so start working together and start gelling as a team so we're excited about that pre-work that's going in um i will be sharing on november 3rd um an overview presentation we originally had we're looking at the the second meeting in october but we're waiting on some information and schedule information supply chain information from the nbc and omg um so i want to be as accurate as i can in my presentation and discuss the transition plan going forward we'll do that on november 3rd which is our
090november board meeting and then on december 1st i can't believe we're talking about this but it's a budget again presenting the budget for next year and in that presentation talking about those puts and takes and changes and needs for personnel which is which is a big piece and it's always a um sometimes a bittersweet time of year because you know sometimes you you move some personnel or transfer some people that maybe didn't expect to and um you know that's the time you know folks find out about those things so but we plan well in advance and we have the opportunity to really be intentional um about the timing of everything we have going forward so hopefully things continue to go smoothly with the project all right any other questions about that okay let's just keep
091urging everybody to swing by after school hours and take a look at it it's fun to watch all right three main points i was thinking that we would um talk about the whiskaner spotlight and i thought there was a lot covered in dr barrill's superintendent's report about kovid and quarantines and busing and so i think we should share some of that information and then i think the new school update was yeah important unless you want to talk about the cable yeah we could do that too it's not glamorous it's not glamorous but um deb can we sneak in a plug for that um after school high school program yes yes just to kind of make sure people realize there's still space for that sure okay all right so what what are our three main points
092whiskener spotlight covet update and the after school grant yep i think that's right yep all right upcoming events okay all schools are closed on monday october 11th at center school there's a pto meeting on tuesday october 12th at 7 pm huckleberry has picture day tomorrow the huffleberry hustle fundraiser kicks off on tuesday october 12th and the virtual book fair begins monday october 18th and there's a meeting wednesday october 20th at 6 pm at whiskey near the walk-a-thon is tomorrow there's the pto meeting wednesday october 20th at 9 15 a.m and at brookfield high school as ben mentioned the psat for 9th 10th and 11th graders is next wednesday october 13th and it's also spirit week and friday october 15th is the homecoming football game amy i had one other thing yeah october 11th um that
093is uh is columbus day that is a day off of school for students um administrative team um many other folks faculty are working as a professional development day so just want to let everybody know that we'll be working on that day students have off so we can have that pd all right uh the next item is public comment so um just wanted to remind everybody that um we are going to hold for our three minute per speaker allotment we have these visual timers here and we will give you a warning when your time is up we just ask that you please respect this time we would like everybody that's here to sign up to be able to speak and thank you for hanging out and watching the rest of our meeting so um the first
094person who is signed up is igna stepney app good evening today i'm speaking to you oh just uh name and address please oh i'm sorry that's okay agastepnea 38 short oak drive today i'm speaking to you as someone who at the age of six lived through two years of martial laws and as a teenager witnessed the fall of berlin wall what is happening in our country right now is unprecedented and needs to be eradicated deadly and unconstitutional vaccine mandates mass squaring critical race theory program push down our children's throats are tools that are being used to control the order in which the society operates none of this is about the virus or saving one li one child's life as mr dunn or governor lamance has been preaching to us for months now we can all
095agree that connecticut is one of the most vaccinated states in the country have you seen any relief and protocols or and we have not instead we are experiencing more control more division between between vaccinated and those unvaccinated on more deadly unconstitutional mandates every day we do risk benefit analysis and in it is my view the risk of the vaccines outweighed the benefit every day the media and the government officials deliberately covered the side effects of the vaccines and now are trying to shove the vaccines on our children same with mask squaring we don't know what the long-term effects of the vaccines are but we are start we start seeing an increase in reoccurrence of cancers new cancers people having major issues with their hearts long-term mass squaring contributes to the development of bacteria in your
096lungs we know from history the majority of deaths during the influenza pandemic was not caused by the influenza virus acting alone instead most victims died to the bacterial pneumonia following the influenza virus infection i know people who wore masks and still got covered and i p and i know people who rushed to get their vaccines and now have to wear heart monitors i will find out in december if i will have to undergo another cancer treatment i say you want to wear a mask or put one on your child go ahead you want to get the vaccine or have your child vaccinated go right ahead that is your right but do not trend on me as in a social contract we agree to follow certain rules and we we give up bare minimum of our
097rights and liberties but nowhere in the social in that contract we give up the right as to what enters our bodies as a matter of two girls and as long as i am alive i will not let you touch my children with your illegal testing your vaccinations and everything that comes with it this is this is no longer a pandemic dishonesty of our government officials health officials and griezmann you're at three minutes so please finish is slowly eating our freedoms thank you jerry hoppa oh ha good thank you you can step up yeah go ahead yeah jerry hopper 14 cottontail lane my husband and i have lived in brookfield since 1972 with the exception of a few years when we lived in milford and i'm just here to apologize for what happened at the board
098meeting the last time i viewed it on youtube and i was appalled at the way you were all spoken to no one deserves to be spoken like that and so i i want to offer my apologies and i'm sorry for you and i'm sorry it happened in brookfield thank you okay um lisa i'm sorry i don't know thank you hi lisa zolbrecht 16 half brook road um actually i don't think i could say it better than our first speaker if the mass are working we shouldn't need to quarantine any of the students secondly i'm going to be quick still haven't heard anything about ieps and how students with ieps are going to be addressed and serviced and that leads me to believe that students who are quarantined with an iep are not being serviced there
099is a legal mandate that the district is required to serve as students with ieps and therefore if they are not being serviced that means the district is out of compliance um i'd like to hear something this is probably about the fourth month in a row that i've asked for some kind of information regarding how students with ieps will be addressed if they are unfortunately in quarantine thank you all right we have no one else signed up for public comment so without objection these meetings adjourn thank you to all the speakers by the way yeah sorry