Board of Education Meeting 12/16/2020 @ 7pm

001okay go ahead Rosa okay good evening everyone today is Wednesday December 16th and I call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order in accordance with executive order 7B suspending sections 1-20 6 1- 225 and 1 d226 of the Connecticut General statutes the public will not be able to attend this meeting in person but will have the ability to view or listen to the meeting in real time by way of the Brookfield Board of Education YouTube channel furthermore such meeting will be recorded or transcribed and posted on the board's website within seven days of the meeting and made available as required by law all speakers taking part in the meeting are reminded that they are to clearly State their names and titles if applicable before speaking on each occasion that they speak

002individuals wishing to participate in the public comment portion of this meeting May do so by calling the following numbers and I don't have them on the agenda do you have happen to have them Eric could probably find them H yes I do they they are on the public agenda hang on let me just pull them up for you thanks Rosa I have them do you want me to read them I got them yep somebody else has them go ahead the first one is 6799 or 6099 and the meeting ID is 9506 perfect thank you all right so uh 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 okay

003we have all seven of our board members and many whis skiner students uh in attendance tonight so um the first thing on our agenda is that student Spotlight so I will go ahead and turn it over to Dr Brill or uh Mr Renda whoever wants to start thank you Mrs Fernandez so just very briefly at during my superintendent report at our December second meeting I shared my excitement for the uh Connecticut arts for learning project that the whis skiner students had been working on uh for a couple of weeks uh so we're going to see a very nice presentation that the staff that's here tonight um and thank I really thank our faculty for being here along with our wonderful students um to share with Mr Renda about that project in addition to that Mr

004Renda and the team are going to talk about what we're doing um with social and emotional learning at whiskin year as well so Mr Ren I'm going to turn it over over to you all right thank you very much I have to say that um I am a very proud um principal and I could stand here with my chest out to talk about what we're gonna uh Spotlight tonight um I can't tell you how much time and effort has gone into the students putting these programs um and slideshows presentations together and us meeting about it and collaborating about it I know you're going to be really impressed um I would like to start with um the arts for learning um project if we would call or presentation um I'd like to first thank my students

005who are speaking tonight I have to say and all of us know that it's not easy for you to get up in front of your peers to speak um and then even be able to now come in front of a board and speak um I give them so much credit um and also to the two social studies teachers in seventh grade Mrs shusett and Mr figorito for coming tonight for collaborating with the artists from the Connecticut uh excuse me learning for Connecticut arts program and uh making this experience is positive and rewarding as possible and in putting again uh this slideshow together for us tonight Dr Ruby and I spoke uh at a past meeting about how lucky we were to secure a grant um a state grant for us to collaborate with a nonprofit

006organization called arts for learning of Connecticut uh the organization's mission is to develop programs using Connecticut artists to engage students of all ages and abilities in learning creatively through the Arts we felt was a fantastic way to integrate the Arts into a unit of our social studies curriculum we chose our seventh grade curriculum um a unit around conflict and protest and um we felt it's a way to reach multiple learning styles to increase the academic understanding of the students of those things and really for the Social Development of our students um at this time I'm going to turn it over to miss shuchat and Mr figorito to speak a little bit about the focus of the lessons and experiences for the students um and themselves and then Eric are you going to share the screen

007or am I gonna do that U Mr render it is uh your choice whatever you're more comfortable with or uh or if you have it up I have it up ready to go let me know you could pull it up to share as they start absolutely um so sorry um just remind me am I pulling up do pull up first how about this I'll do it no problem can can I just say make sure that we share the audio um the the computer audio because there's audio um in that first slide and it won't work without that I'll do it now then here we [Music] go oh not share hold on sorry about that present and I'm going to go back up to our top slide but miss shat and Mr figorito you can start

008hi I'll start um good evening everyone I wanted to start by saying thank you to Dr Ruby for applying for this Grant and providing us with this awesome opportunity um and thank you to Dr BR and the board of education for suppor this and allowing this to be possible for us throughout the two weeks that the art has spent with us the students really engaged in the unique creative experience and when we were looking through the feedback that the student shared with us so many of them said that they now do see art as a way to express themselves which I think was a really great takeaway for them um and I think that they learned when they're generating opinions whether it be in the classroom or outside of school they can use art as

009a way to express those opinions um that's something they might not have have considered before um and I think one of the most beneficial things that the students took out of this was just being able to Showcase some strengths that they usually would not have been able to share with their peers or their teachers or maybe strengths that they really didn't know that they had um and I think that Mr figorito and I are grateful for the two weeks because we got the opportunity to sit and watch our students which as teachers we don't typically get too many chances to do and um we saw them really come out of their shells and tap into new skills and see them in a way that we normally don't get to um we watch them become more

010and more comfortable to the point where student students were sharing and allowing their voices to be heard students that we don't usually hear from um because they felt safe enough to do that because of the artists and the environment that was created through this program um so I think that I'm most grateful for that um the students really do have a lot to say right now and this was a good outlet for them and a way to express themselves um and I can say as a teacher that the that I learned also you know that I can on my own continue to incorporate art into my curriculum so I'm grateful for that as well um so Mr figuro do you like to add sure um hi everybody my name is Adam figuro I'm the other

011seventh grade soul studies teacher um I would also like to thank Mr Renda because Mr Renda put a lot of uh time and effort into everything as well he was at our meetings at our Zoom calls with these artists um and he was a frequent participant in our lessons we had Mr Renda also making murals right Mr Renda he made a very nice one um and I got got to say I you know he was he helped us plan he helped us get ideas down when we were thinking about this probably back in October you know we're getting some ideas for this and uh we're very lucky to have him at was coner I'll definitely say that I think of you know just in just meeting with the students with Mr Renda and having him

012in our zooms I don't remember ever being that comfortable you know with my middle school administrator you know he's someone who really cares about the kids and he opened up as well and uh we're lucky to have you Mr Renda and then going off of what Jen said which is it was so awesome to see and hear these kids their voices their perspective and as we push for more social emotional learning um I think this was a great you know this was an asset we got to hear them we got to see them um I feel so much better connected to them as individuals you know they're not just students they're individuals they come with their own perspectives and their own passions and um through this arts program I thought we really you know I

013got to see that in them and that's what I'm that's what's going to stick out to me the most and um you I know Dr Ruby was there at her Open Mic I felt too and I know Mrs shat felt the same way it was refreshing for us too because as we wanted the kids to open up and to be passionate about what they were sharing it encouraged myself and Mrs shuchat and Mr Renda and anybody participating to also do the same too because if we're asking that from our students then we need to do that as well so M shuchat shared these poems about you know one about her son one about her perfect world with her students I shared one about my mom and I think you know as we asked to we

014heard from our kids and then they heard from us I think it just created this Dynamic where there even during these crazy times we connected on a level that was um that was special and that's something that's going to you know stick with me and I think stick with all of us after this arts program so um that's that's what I got thank you guys I mean again it was just so impressive and you'll see when our students do talk tonight about it um how important and really engaging and really opening up about some um things that are going on in our world and protest and conflict that was uh really so impressive so to the next thing I do is I'm just gonna play we have John Michael Parker who is um who runs

015the um arts for learning of Connecticut and then the two artists that uh shared with our students are ala Cobb and charmont influence little I'll start with John Michael Parker hi this is John Michael Parker I'm the executive director of arts for learning Connecticut a Statewide nonprofit that brings arts and education programming to K through 12 students across Connecticut uh we were so grateful to have this chance to work on this project um thank you to Dean and Dr Ruby and to the teachers um and of course I'm going to now hand it over to our teaching artists charmont influence little and Alicia Cobb who got to do this deeply integrated residency uh with seventh grade students all right over to our artists hi I can't get it off here help me out here Eric

016can hit um on bottom right corner of your screen see little the four squares next to the the casting symbol there you goo it I'm clicking it and it's not doing it then hit escape on your keyboard this is John there Goa Parker I'm the was going crazy all right here we go next was Alicia Cobb uh one of the artists hi my name is Alicia Cobb I am a full-time artist and art instructor out of Bridgeport Connecticut I've been educating children um grades K through 12 um with visual art for probably about 10 plus years right now I work with several organizations in Fairfield County and new New Haven County my most recent workshop with the seventh graders at wisc conia middle school was such an honor to be a part of our subject

017matter was protest um I had the opportunity to walk work alongside charmant little who is um a spoken word um teacher and I did Visual Arts with the kids and we worked in conjunction to create this amazing Workshop where the kids were actually able to express themselves both visually and verbally through poetry and visual art um in regards to the subject matter of protest these kids were engaged they were expressive they were phenomenal in their expression and it was such just such an honor to work with them and learn more about what they were feeling we talked about the Boston Tea Party we talked about the Boston Massacre we talked about BLM we talked about lgbtq issues we talked about a lot and they were really able to utilize the information from class as well

018as what we did with them to create amazing pieces of poetry and art to express exactly how these things affected them and so um I'm really appreciative of the opportunity to work with these students and really hope for the opportunity to work with them again so a a really heartfelt thank you to Dean Renda Mr fig and Mrs shat in helping us to get the message out to these kids and helping these kids get their message out to us and the last artist is influence little hi greetings my name is Shaman influence little I am the owner and operator of influence life LLC I am a nationally internationally recognized spoken word artist poet and orator um this residency was outstanding it was outstanding it was a joy to be a part of actually having the

019kids connect to what they were learning in school which was about the Boston Tea Party in the Boston Massacre and the idea of protest and having them connect today with what happened in the past and their feelings about it they came up with some artistic work some really great work um they learned things like personification and how to personalize poems and writings to get their feelings out on paper and really Express who they are uh the kids were a joy to take away there were so many different perspectives and ideas thank you very much for the opportunity from influence to life thank you all right hi this is John Michael Parker the executive director there we go there we go now I'm we're going to have students that are going to jump on they're going

020to introduce themselves the first is Rama and each of them are going to either share a poem or talk a little bit about one of the pictures that they have um on their slide so we'll start with drama hi um I'm going to share a poem it's my perfect world poem everyone with a book I want the world to have more and more books I want the pages in those books to inspire everyone to go on an adventure on their own to be the hero in their own story to take charge in their life I want groups of friends in coffee shops reading and having a good time I want books to be available to everyone in the world I want people to finish a book and be sucked into that world I want people

021to smile after a book I want people to cry after a book cuz that happens too I want reading to help deepen relationships and I want characters in those books to feel like old friends I want you to read I don't want any violence and I don't want any negative energy I just want people to read great job Rama next we have Sydney hi I'm Sydney and I'm gonna be sharing a piece of art so I have it right here it's a l lives matter flag that says we matter in the middle and I made this because I feel that um police off some police officers most police officers aren't getting the respect that they deserve by and like they do so much for us and I just feel like some people aren't are just

022like not respecting them and like giving them all this hate and stuff and it's it's just not okay and so I made this so that I could express how I feel about it and yeah good job Sydney next is Evan uh hi uh my name is Evan Lucas and I am gonna share one of my poems my poem is my priv TOS okay so here we go what would my perfect way would look like well if I could truly customize it and mold it into what I wanted I would give everyone succession I I would give everyone success yeah whether success means extreme wealth getting an A on that math quiz or reaching Fame and becoming a worldwide known name I would give it to you everyone would feel fulfilled and feel like they have

023a purpose in life a purpose to keep on going a purpose to move on find love find loss find the will to continue onwards life would be easy sure it may seem like a get out of jail for free card but wouldn't our society be more advanced less corruption less of a chance for impending doom and less crime because at the end of the day fulfillment is what we want right great job Evan Brooke Carpenter um hi my name is Brooke and today I'm talking about my dream tree um so I liked how we could make each brand a person that we really care about or appreciate um the thing that I learned from this piece is that you can express how you're feeling or Express memory through ART without having to use your words

024both Alicia and influence taught me that art can be becoming in so many different ways and forms and I really appreciate that we have Annabelle hi I'm be sharing a poem of about someone I love I'm a dog I might not know a lot about the world but I know that my owners love me they feed me every day even though I have special food they take me outside even when it's freezing cold and there might as well be a tornado they spend time with me and the other dogs they let me play with the other dogs even when they're eating dinner and trying to talk I'm extremely thankful for the amount of toys I have even if they're from a long time ago I still enjoy ripping them up and leaving a bunch of

025stuffing on the floor one of them even made me a new toy out of some fabric and stuffing from a toy I ripped up already they gave me they give me and the other dogs tons of belly rubs and go and walks with us they continue to love me and the other dogs even if one of us chews up one of the pillows that's me I show my love to them by licking them a lot and they love it I love them so much and they love me too job Annabelle last we have Talia hi my name is Talia and I will be sharing um my dream tree so my dream tree it meant a lot to me because I get I got to like really understand like me basically and like what I like

026um what who I love and so it really helped me like express myself like what I care about like freedom and kindness like I never really knew that that was so important to me until I did this because it like really just like opened my mind good thank you Talia and then what I was going to do next was I just going to roll through a couple of the uh pictures that you have and as you can see very impressive pieces of art that we have here I know I'm always impressed by Art because I'm not very talented in that area um but you'll see some of the graffiti is the words of protest that we have and other areas of are things that they put together change courage truth change happiness and hope bravery

027equality power equality again Justice hope unfair Rebel or to Rebel we should say fight in family um again as you could see how impressive it was and how really meaningful and um emotional I have to say it it it got even when uh Miss uh shat read her poem and Mr figorito read his poem about his mother I know Dr Ruby was very impressed um by that PO home and then last I just wanted to share quick we did a little survey that um the students filled out is could they identify the different forms of protests again which we were uh looking to for the students to be able to do altogether that was about um 95% of the kids felt either strongly agree agree or neutral um we only had a small amount that

028disagreed or strongly disagree um do you feel the artist program helped you to better understand appropriate ways to to deal with conflict that came out to about 97% of the uh positive responses do you feel the artist program has helped you to make the connection between why people protest during the Revol or why they did During the Revolution and then the more current forms of protest today that was about 96% and last uh about positive experience uh with working arts for learning program and that was about 95% um some of the responses that the students gave us that I just felt were were pretty um really um thoughtful was it gave me more perspective on protest I always viewed protest as something violent but now I realize it's not always a bad thing they helped

029me to better understand appropriate ways to deal with conflict and protest because even though a lot of students choose different opinions and protest words but we all were peaceful about it um I think this helped me connect with people who protest today because it's what they want to do and everyone should have a voice so I think it's really important to be able to protest I strongly agree because writing in art is a great way to show what you are passionate about it felt like a safe place to express how I feel the artists and speakers were positive and uh motivated me every day I looked forward to going to social studies and the last one I thought was pretty cute I really love things to do with art and it was cool to meet

030famous people that live off of poems and paintings thank you any questions on that comments thoughts I just want to thank all the students for being so brave and uh and coming and sharing tonight because I think it's one of the things that we've heard from um people who are on the board of education who you know really frame everything so that we can run the school district that they really want to hear from students and and know what it is that you're doing in school and I'm looking at their faces they pretty much mostly have Smiles on them so I would say they're probably just as impressed as um as we were and unfortunately they didn't get to like really be there and I do need to say that the teachers poems were really

031good I was you know no I love my children but if one of them wrote the poem that U Mr fig wrote for his mother I would be just a puddle because it was just so it was so impressive and I do hope you give her that Adam he said he was I I I did read it to her um a few weeks ago I I'll probably give her a hard copy but she was she was very she was very touched by it she was a fan awesome do we have any questions from the board members I just want to say um you know thank you to the teachers for you spearheading this very rewarding project experience for our students we really appreciate that and to the students you were very articulate thank you for

032being brave and sharing your work and your emotions and your feelings um you all very inspiring I definitely love to take more time to even look at it more closely your artwork uh Rama I loved what you said be a hero in your own story I love that I'm going to use that so thank you for that anyone else I I would just Echo what Joy said I mean I was blown away by the talent um the caliber of work is really outstanding and really the maturity and the the thinking that went into it really was impressive so great job everybody Mr Renda was any of this um recorded or were other pieces um put somewhere that we could see the student artwork yeah yeah I could I could uh we could put some we

033have some of it together we could put more of it together the students that asked us or told us that they wouldn't mind us sharing it um we could put it together and I could send it in um to the board of ed yeah that' be I'd love to see everybody's up close and spend a little more time with it but so much talent so thank you all for sharing some of it might make its way into the literary magazine so yes just saying true now my my students remember what I told you you can go now you don't have to wait with us thank you guys kids there's a snow day tomorrow enjoy yourselves yeah thank you guys great job now my stress lesson people stay I can't thank Ruby and Dr and and

034Mr Renda enough and and uh Mr fig and Miss shot and our students and uh before we move on to the next part of the whiskin near Spotlight oh go ahead Dr Ruby I just wanted to share just so you know that uh because Dean didn't really um give himself enough credit he started this last year okay we worked on this what Dean you started in February yeah we planned on starting last February and when um Mr Smith was here Mike Smith was here he was working this wasn't just this this what you saw tonight rather it was um The Taking of the of the curriculum taking the uh the unit and the stand ards and the lessons that were in that unit and then revising them and the folks from Connecticut arts for learning

035actually came to Brookfield to um start that work um and then Mr Renda and the social studies teachers and the art teachers were involved we had everybody in there to you know because they are the experts in in um in art and the curriculum that we have because we wanted everything to be aligned and then um uh Adam uh took over uh when Mr Smith left and picked up like there was not a step left out and then um Dean and the teachers worked to trans transform basically what had been worked on last year into a virtual model so there what just I really need to give credit where credit is due that this it it's almost like you know a dance recital you go to the dance you know if it's your kid or

036your grandchild or something and you see the dance but really it took all year to get there so they did a lot of work to get to what these um students were able to do in the in the two weeks that we had the Artisan residence so you know thank you teachers and Dean it was very meaningful say Dean I wanna I want to First say thanks to Dr Ruby for all of her support and and effort behind this to make this happen uh with you at whiskin ear but I I I do want to uh I would contend Mr Renda that you are talented in the area of the of Art and your art is the leadership of whisk middle school and your time there for 25 years plus um so don't sell yourself

037too short on you're making me old there not not now I'm mad that I didn't bring my picture that I made of a heart with hands holding it up you know I think we're g we're gonna continue with Dean now and our wonderful uh students and more faculty and staff uh from whiskin here talk about our social and emotional work that's going on uh this fall so Dean please uh as I start I'm gonna just um do little introduction Eric's going to pull up the presentation for this but um I just again I want to really thank the student council and peer leaders that came tonight to speak and the two of our school counselors we have Mrs jalbert and Miss Fitzpatrick our student council and peer leadership advisors Mrs Ryan and Miss hos um

038as you know at the beginning of the year we really made a point to focus on the social emotional state of our students their families um and the staff um our grade level counselors collaborated with our student council and peer leadership groups and they created lessons around stress and finding healthy ways to cope with stress of everyday life um I know that you're going to be as impressed with their presentation as I was I observed a couple of the lessons and uh I got to say most of those students were really engaged and willing to share and really had some personal and important conversations on healthy ways to cope especially during these times of the pandemic um at this time though I'd like to turn it over to miss jalbert to talk a little bit

039overview of the lesson great thank you Mr Renda um yeah so as a part of our school counseling program we push into classes to present lessons on relevant topics and this year given everything going on in the world holidays coming up um we thought a Stress Management lesson would be great for our students um so in the lesson we just talked about you know what stress is how to identify our own personal triggers and how to manage the stress and luckily we had student counsel and peer counselors that wanted to help in some way um which is great because the kids would much rather hear from their peers than us adults um so the student leaders made some great videos to demonstrate their own coping skills um that they like to use um I don't

040know Mr R are we going through the lesson or having the students talk about their videos what I wanted to show here was just you know one of the things that they did talked about what strategy did they feel was most helpful to them and as you can see um from the pictures some of the ideas and things that were talked about but Eric if you'd pop to the next slide please so these were videos that were put together by our um student council or peer leaders I have two of our student council and two peer leaders here that are going to speak uh introduce themselves and then they're going to uh talk a little bit before we start their their video so the first one is going to be Sophia and we're going to

041let her speak before we start her video hi I'm Sophia penko and I'm an eighth grader at ws and my video I made two but today we're going to watch the organizing one and I made this because I personally like to plan things out and organize if I'm feeling stressed so I want to share this my peers all right Eric can you share that one stressed or whenever I'm feeling super stressed or I have a lot on my plate my favorite way to deal with everything is to write a to-do list so a lot of times when I'm feeling super stressed I don't even know where to begin if I have so many things that I need to accomplish so writing a to-do list really helps me find a starting point and that way I

042can start by doing all my priorities and I can separate the things that are really important for me to get done and everything that isn't as important that I can stve for another day and it just helps me feel more organized and I feel like I have a plan and it helps take away a lot of the stress so I'm going to show you an example of how you can do that so I just finished writing down everything and I put a symbol next to what was my top priority so like everything with that symbol and this way I can put all of my focus towards those particular tasks that are my top priority so I don't have stress over things that aren't as important like these two and I can save that for another

043day so I hope if you use this strategy that it saves you stress and you feel more organized and planned for whatever you need to get done that day whenever super so so I think a lot of I know I'll speak for myself I know I could use her um her tip there for coping strategies too um because it definitely does help to relieve stress when you know you uh have things organized next person is Vanessa Greenstein hi my name is Vanessa I'm an eighth grader at WMS and my video is just going to talk about how you can get more sleep and it'll help you um release some of that stress that you may be having and I just wanted to say that I think that um the students seeing their peers in these

044videos and giving the presentation really helps them to relate more and connect more to us and understand that like we're all going through the same thing and that like seeing it from people they know and see around the school all the time or on Zoom um is a really great thing so they can um relate more excellent Eric would you pull up that sleep one one thing to help with stress or if you're feeling stressed out is getting more sleep uh you will feel more rested in the morning and you'll be ready to go and this improves your mood and approach towards life and anything that comes your way you'll also be able to get along with people better and just have a open and clear mind about things um one thing that may help

045with this is shutting off your phone 10 to 20 minutes before you go to bed and not having it right next to your bed so it becomes a distraction um 13 to 18 year olds should be adding 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night great job Vanessa another really great strategy we all need sleep and you'll just notice a couple of uh videos there we're not going to do but they're healthy eating uh physical activity and uh TV watching TV um again some of those strategies can you click to the next one Eric whenever I whenever I'm feeling super stressed or I have all right so this was a video um a compilation of a bunch of students but the first person is Melissa Baines is going to speak a little bit then we're

046going to start at the beginning of um that video there go ahead Melissa hi my name is Melissa Baines and I'm an eighth grader at whiskin year Middle School participating in peer Counseling in my video I talk about one of my coping strategies of listening to music or playing an instrument or just like singing I think it's very beneficial uh especially during these times just to relax and clear your mind for a little bit whether that's five minutes a day or 10 minutes a day and I think music really does that for me all right can you play that first one hi guys one of my favorite things to do is listen to music it could be a great way to relieve stress and just jam out to some of your favorite Tunes when I

047need to calm down I listen to Donas like classical music reggae and a lot more so next time you need to calm down you can turn to music you stop it there Eric there you go and the next person Eric if you could bring that to uh 118 in the meantime I'm gonna have Ava introduce herself hi I'm Ava Tado and I'm an eighth grader here at whiske middle school and I just want to say that it's been really hard to find positive during these times and I feel that speaking positively to myself helped like boost my confidence and it also helped me see the light and positives that can come out of Co since there haven't been many and this is my video about speaking positively to yourself to cope with stress during these

048difficult times all right go ahead ER keep reading this book when we feel stressed or overwhelmed speaking positively to ourselves can make a big difference try thinking of words or phrases that you can tell yourself to boost your confidence and to show yourself your real worth some examples are you're an amazing person you're awesome and keep up the good work focusing on the things and situations in our Liv so just some of the other things in that video we T students talked about cardio talked about uh reading and just LA and actually just laughing laughing uh at different things during the day to to pick yourself up drawing um focusing on being grateful as this one picture is there and also we had a student talk a little bit about stretching and and breathing and

049yoga um again all of these as part of strategies that they use to help them get through these times and I now I'd like to just have Miss Fitz talk a little bit about the next stress action plan okay thank you Mr Renda what an awesome job girls great job um after the lessons all students were asked to complete an action plan where they had to identify specific stressors in their life what they can do to deal with it and when they can get it done so those videos were really helpful giving kids ideas is if they didn't have any um they also want to add a couple parents told me that their child talked to them about the lesson which is great even if they didn't contribute um much to the actual lesson we're

050always happy to hear that it could get conversations going at home so um gonna pass it over to Miss Ryan now who's going to talk about it from the teachers perspective yeah so I was just gonna say that I always love having those conversations with my student council kids I'm the student council adviser but getting to work with all my students some who I've never met in person who I know are probably stressed and some are struggling but I don't get the chance to see that day today or talk about it it was super valuable for me to see what's stressing them out how they're working through it figure out ways I could help know that they're at least thinking about it and kind of figuring out how to get through it it was something

051that I don't get the chance to dayto day in class so it was awesome to just get the opportunity in school to get to know some of them a little bit better and to get to connect with them in a different way so I was super grateful for the time and for the effort that the students put in and that Miss Fitz Miss jalbert put into the presentations it was great and then last we have Miss hos who's our peer leadership advisor hi I'm Miss hos I'm the peer counseling adviser um and I just wanted to give credit to all the kids in student counsel and pair counseling um for their creativity this year and being on zoom and trying to figure out different ways that we can still make whis skire a positive place

052and make a difference um in the lives of the staff and students virtually um and they've done an amazing job coming up with new ideas um being willing to record themselves and put themselves out there for their peers to see um and also we they've done things recently um we've done some virtual fundraisers we did pajama day that was with all of fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth grade student counsel peir counseling um and we've also they some of these kids spent a couple elts when we were still hybrid writing letters to for World kindness day um and so I just wanted to give them credit for everything that that they've been doing and how much they've persevered through this difficult time and still we're willing to step up as Leaders um in our

053school during this difficult time and being on Zoom for longer than most kids are so thank you again I want to say thank you to the girls you did a fabulous job and like I said I knew I can tell you I know people are so impressed with these students that we have here and what they you know just their mindset their positive mindset that they have and the connection that they were able to make um with what's going on today but but understanding making it better than than uh than it could be um again just Kudos goes out to those kids and nice nice job nice job and by the way we raised $3,810 for PJ day today and just so you know that's fifth in the state or the or the list and

054the only ones above us are Coventry Public Schools Enfield Public Schools West Harford public schools and then the Coventry Fire Department in EMS so for a Singleton School we've raised the most money uh for cancer in Connecticut Children's Medical Center thanks to our student council and peer leadership running that very exciting to say and I'm done gloating I'm done you have a lot to gloat about Mr Renda think I do any questions for the girls or comments very impressive very impressive indeed well thank you so much thanks to everyone thanks to our students uh thanks to our teachers uh uh Miss jalbert Miss uh Mrs Fitz Mrs Ryan Miss hos Mr fig and Mr shoot for taking the time to be with us tonight all of the students and uh to to Dr Ruby and

055Mr Renda for all the work that's gone into this we are just uh just so happy and so impressed and thankful for all of you and all your great work and thank you board for uh allowing us to have this Spotlight this evening and thank you for all the stress management techniques and strategies I like to love your to-do strategy Sophia and AA I love this speaking positively to yourself thank you and really mature uh things that we as adults sometimes don't even think of these students are are doing so thanks guys you can go now enjoy your snow day tomorrow okay um up next on our agenda is public comment I'm just going to scroll through I don't see any phone numbers here um just to be sure anybody here willing or wanting to

056make a public comment okay uh so then up next we have the student representative report hi I'm tamany chinner as the Brookfield High School student representative um so the Brookfield High School staff began their multi-year school climate and restorative practices training with school climate consultants and the Brookfield High School teachers also started working with Cooperative Education Services to support the design of distance learning and hybrid lessons um the school counselors at the high school are holding weekly self-care seminars on Zoom every Wednesday which is really nice um for seniors the class of 2021 t-shirts are going to be out soon and um once school starts in person I will definitely work with Mr Banda to plan the pep rally that we were started to plan but we had to stop a little bit there and

057also in April I hope to start an Instagram that just States like where everyone has decided to go to college for seniors um NHS and Writing Center tutors are available all the time to help students which is really nice too and I know that I think they're trying to start a um tutoring thing for AP students with the AP exams coming up in May um there's two new student Le clubs which is the psychology in mental health and UNICEF unite Club um the Brookfield High School international human rights Club um we were the ones that sent out this uh schoolwide survey and we also received like a lot of results I think last time it was like almost 500 results from the school which was really helpful and we started looking at those and started

058holding um weekly meetings as well and there's been a lot of interest which is really good and lastly Winter break starts next week which is a really good break and as well as the snow day tomorrow which I was not expecting which was really good and that's all all right thank you tamy any questions for her all right thanks again for joining us up next we have written correspondence Dennis ceras Joe Penny and Christina Zimmerman wrote regarding remote learning and William Fox and Jackson sharp wrote regarding boys volleyball at BHS that's it okay thanks uh approval of board minutes I move that the board approve the minutes from the regular meeting on December 2nd 2020 second thanks Joy all right uh all those in favor hi hi hi thanks that is unanimous okay uh the

059superintendent's report or update thank you Rosa I will be brief this evening um I first of all uh we we've said Thank you a number of times but boy that was very impressive to see what's going on over at whiskin and um I'm I'm more energized now than I thought I would would be considering the uh the length of this week already in the in the length of the day and I'm sure the board is uh energized as well I mean it's just so so wonderful in case uh uh people didn't know that happens to be a snow day tomorrow and a big storm coming so um we wish everybody well with that and that they stay safe and warm and uh remain healthy and continue to uh uh engage in mitigation strategies because uh

060Co is not behind us and we want to make sure that we stay vigilant uh with that um the Brookfield broadcast newsletter uh we would put out four of those typically in a year one per quarter uh one uh the the second quarter will be going out uh tomorrow the holiday Edition um some may wonder where the first uh edition of the broadcast was this year elected not to put that out with all of the emails and other Communications that were going out to families considering uh the challenging year we've had so looking forward to getting that first newsletter out uh tomorrow sometime to everyone uh for a brief uh covid update um the cases do continue to rise uh in town although we've had a quiet week at the school because we're we're as

061Dr Sullivan tells us we're behind that 14-day uh incubation period or uh as the CDC is moving toward the 10day um uh kind of quarantine incubation period um which uh Brookfield will be moving to I just talked with Dr Sullivan uh late this afternoon and we're going to be working on plans to move away from the 14-day quarantine to the 10-day quarantine in addition he's receiving Dr Sullivan that is our health director is receiving a lot of information on uh the vaccines that'll be distributed not only obviously in Connecticut but to Brookfield uh in that process uh we may need to use a School site to help with vaccinations for those in the community and we'll be getting a list of of of the order of folks from the school system when the time comes

062that would be um in line for those uh vaccinations uh the next thing I wanted to talk about is uh a incredibly wonderful technology donation from R&B Enterprises that uh Mr Conklin Dr Ruby and myself um just found out about uh literally later this uh early this afternoon excuse me Mr Bob Serio from R&B Enterprises uh an audiovisual company uh that specializes in um presentation stations and classroom audio uh and also as a local Brookfield business is donating what are called seven smart cap interactive whiteboards uh to us worth almost $3,000 um and we're very excited to say that we're going to take that donation those seven boards uh will be utiliz in our PE program across the district and I know Mr Baldwin is quite excited about that and I believe Mr conin will

063have those ready to go when our staff uh and students return from the break and we get back into uh an inperson model um in addition to that there's a 65 inch multi-touch interactive display uh worth about $2,000 that Mr Serio has donated to us that we're very excited to have we're not sure of the exact use of that yet what but it is a Mobile station and we're looking forward to having that on a cart and we'll decide exactly uh where we need that um at this point I'd like to take the technology portion and turn it over to uh Eric uh to Mr cockin because uh we did a brief report on technology over uh early in September and and there was a lot of moving Parts with Chromebooks not only Chromebooks that

064we had in our operating budget but Chromebooks that came in through different Grant programs whether Federal cares act or the state um and in addition to that we're not going to talk about now we'll save it for the the budget uh item where the budget is going to be discussed on the agenda but it all relates to the Chromebooks that are continuing to be in our uh operating budget going forward uh that we'll be talking about later this evening so Mr Conlin i' like to turn it over to you he has two or three slides he's going to show on this and um that'll be the end of my formal report and then I'm certainly open to any questions people may have uh great uh thanks Dr Burl um yes so the last time we

065spoke I spoke to uh to the board was back in the the beginning of September at the beginning of the school year like I do um and um if you remember um we were uh like every other District in Connecticut and um many all across the country um dealing with a Backwater of Chromebooks um and all the various technology needs that have come with um all of the remote and hybrid learning um so I will take a couple minutes and just share you share with you where we stand right now um excuse me um so uh back around the beginning of November we started to receive um shipment of our Chromebooks um unexpectedly um the delivery date was set to uh we kept checking Dell's website and the delivery date was set to um December

06631st um so we had uh very little hope of this and magically one day a semi Tru uh pulled up with pallets of Chromebooks um and so we received our 450 Chromebooks for the onetoone pro uh program out of the um the general fund that we were set to receive anyway um thanks to um the approval of the board of Finance the work of um Mrs Maran Mr dun uh Mr post on the caraz ACT application and everybody involved we got the 300 Chromebooks uh that were ordered in addition that came about two weeks later um on top of that in August uh so do burill uh Dr Ruby Mr post and myself um had a few surveys and questionnaires and and other topics we had to address with the state um and what it

067turned out to be is those questions we were answering were setting us up for um the everybody's everybody learns initiative um that the state um uh let us know about in August what this did was uh supplied a certain number of Chromebooks based on what we handed out in the spring um and what we had available in the district uh we had asked for 300 uh the state initially uh gave us 168 um then three weeks later sent me an email stating that they were going to fulfill the additional 132 giving us a full 300 Chromebooks um from the state of Connecticut those arrived in two batches um and they arrived right around the same time as the rest of of them um and so we are excited to have 1,150 Chromebooks in um to

068begin um to uh continue to better support our students um we can use them to support our staff as well for those who need them um and we're currently replacing the older devices we've handed out as as the issues arise and as they come up um the techs are doing just an incredible job staying on top of the help desk for parents um and um you know dealing with just a a multitude of quests that come in um and uh making sure that uh you know devices are swapped out in a in a reasonable time frame time frame uh sometimes day of um sometimes the next day um but nonetheless they have a good system going and it's it's a great team um one thing I have to brag about um you know in the

069spirit of bragging about uh the people here um this uh the two pictures here was Election Day November 3rd uh we had eight eight individuals including myself um I joined in only at the half the second half of the day um so the credit really goes to this team but in one day um they unboxed inventoried configured and shipped off to the various schools the first 450 Chromebooks um this takes us usually in the summer a week plus and we were able to do it in one day and that's a lot of cardboard um so uh very impressive and um we always get help from outside of uh the technology department just because of the magnitude of all this is um you know pictured in in here you see Gladis Cado who works in our

070high school library um who helped out um you know the tech Susan Schmidt Kathy Cavo Barbara McCarthy um you know Logan white who we've mentioned and Steve Clark uh we also had a volunteer that day who's looking to be interested in joining the uh when he gets to the high school um I'm gonna I hope I don't say his name wrong I believe it's Ewan uh lava um who was an eighth grader who uh worked with us that day did an incredible amazing job um we we couldn't have done a lot of it without him um and we're hoping he's interested toh to join us when uh when Logan uh graduates um and and there's plenty of people outside of this picture um you know that help I could I could go on all night

071um thanking everybody but uh there's a lot of people who um you know are always up and willing to help it and then um but ultimately just at the end of the day um up and willing to help um you know the members of the team to get things done for our students and no better example than when um all of the first shipment of Chromebooks uh due to a processing error between um between Dell and uh um a vendor Dell put the address as 100 Pocono Road so um 450 Chromebooks showed up at Town Hall um of which none of our deliveries ever go to town hall they all go to the high school um because that's where we have everything stationed for it um and being that I was so excited that they

072arrived and the last thing I wanted to do was deny delivery um and wait for them to be shipped to the high school I accepted delivery on this bright sunny um cold windy day I remember um and uh went upstairs and told everybody and as you see um I've got helpers from HR who joined us facilities um Dr burill is there Mr post is there um uh um the text the texts are there of course um and and Miss Mrs Reynolds was there um as well um you know I can go on also in the picture Beth Squire's and Michelle Kinsman are down there those are the two the two ladies in the picture um and everybody just stopped um a little bit of their extremely busy schedule um all the work that we were

073doing um to help us get these Chromebooks um out of the parking lot um and into to up up to the high school um and so uh um and you know when I when I said that I I refused to deny delivery on our already backordered Chromebooks everybody understood um and it was certainly in agreement so thanks to the group that helped this um it was a fun day um so the only other update I want to give right now on on things that have happened since then is the everybody learns initiative also provided internet access um to families in need um through that initiative the district was given um a dozen mobile hotspots um through a company called kajit using Verizon cell phone service because Verizon's um a company we already have a contract

074with an agreement with um we've distributed almost all of those um and because they're mobile hotspots um they switch as people need them in fact um uh when I get down to how the Spectrum thing works we handed out two hotspots to families that qualified for the Spectrum internet service so now I'm going to get those hotspots back to give to other students um you know as we need them um and the reason why I bring this up here at the board meeting is is to share with the board um this great initiative and the work the district's doing to make sure that that um families have internet but also to share that this is a this is available um you know to to those in need um you know as the state's um goal

075to get everybody connected uh during this time um you know so we do have the hotspots we do first encourage our families to troubleshoot home internet providers um you know work with wireless providers um any of that um because hotpots don't always solve all of the issues um but we do have them available as a last resort um we did finally starting on December 1st um through some back and forth with the state and spectrum and and all the local districts um the we did kick off the Spectrum internet service paid for one year um um we encourage families to sign up this op for this option if they do not have internet at home um because it's faster and more reliable um all they do is we we uh we send Spectrum uh upon

076request um um and we also looked at um you know the in the the initial push we looked at availability and and service you know in the town as a whole uh but going forward um all we would need is is a request um to have Spectrum confirm eligibility uh we send spectrum and address um you know a home address within uh 24 hours they get back to me with a uh yes they're eligible or no they're not um they would not be eligible if they currently have service with Spectrum or if they had service with Spectrum in the last 60 days um they do not take into account um Frontier um as the as the alternate uh service that's in Brookfield um and then uh we get confirmation Spectrum sends out a kit um

077and then families work directly with spectrum and the state pays for that until uh November 30th of 2021 um a a great initiative by the state and uh something available to our families um the technicians have finished um our 100 wireless access points um installed in all of our buildings increase our capacity reliability um it allows us to um have many hotpots available we've we've had some situations where in some of our older buildings maybe we have a classroom with a with a weaker connection um and we've been able to throw multiple hotpots in that because we have um the new ones that have replaced the old one and we've been purposely holding on to the older ones for just this reason um to provide as much Wi-Fi coverage as we can uh the classroom

078microphones I sent a little picture of what we ordered to the to the right on that little screenshot there um these are um multi-directional um classroom cams are like little conference phones and the idea is that um there's been a lot of audio concerns um in classrooms from the students at home hearing for those remote Learners um among other things um this will provide better audio quality in the classrooms and allow the teacher to walk around the classroom um as needed you know where they are able to walk around um we are working on document cameras for better video but um they are still uh either delayed or back orded so we've been holding on those um and then the new laptops for the Whisk ande staff um were distributed in August and September um

079and those were the um the laptops that were approved by the by the board of Finance back in July um and that has been our busy fall um does anybody have any questions I actually do Eric um so how how confident are we that all of our students have internet coverage or are we aware that there are perhaps other families out there that might still not have coverage um we don't necessarily know so I what I one thing I cannot do um they they would just will not do it um it's a privacy and security thing I I for example cannot go to Spectrum and say okay what addresses in Brookfield do you have that do not have internet um they won't give those out um you know for privacy there there's an example of

080um I I had um I had Spectrum scrub one address to see if it was eligible and they said it wasn't and I said why and they said we can't tell you I said I expected that answer but I had to ask anyway um so we are aware as um as our um administrators reach out to families to find out you know if there's attendance issues um and uh as families reach out to us um so we know that there's families out there um you know we know it's happening just recently I gave I gave Dr Pepsi two hot spots at Huckleberry today for example I dropped one off at the high school this morning um for families that re just recently reached out to us um and either had don't have internet and recently

081reached out or had internet um and for various reasons maybe um you know there's there's you know one issue is we had a household that stated that um the text came out and all the lines have to be upgraded but they rent and it's up to the landlord to pay for that so we're giving them a hot spot um excuse me um you know situations like that that arise um so those are a lot of those but um you know our our administrators are are really doing a good job in making sure you know an amazing job in in trying to find the students that um aren't connecting find out why um and then we do everything we can to make sure um that's really in talking to other districts as well that's really the

082best thing we can do is is is keep an eye on the attendance and and and just a quick aside to that Rosa um if if we reach we reach out based on that attendance we have a very high engagement rate uh it's it's a metric that the state actually now requires all the districts to report on a monthly basis um so we do that um we have a high rate which is great but where we have issues the administrat team like Eric said reaches out and uh we we will not let anybody go without so as soon as we know we are on it and um I'll leave it at that great it's good to hear so sorry go ahead Eric oh no no that's that's great that was uh I I I um

083I I didn't have anything else for the fall so if anybody had any more question any further questions or anything like that if not the the rest of the slides are for later okay thank you Eric okay was that all for your update John that is it anybody has questions for me all right so let's move on to uh subcommittee reports and first up is facilities okay good evening so we reviewed this school duude reports uh Staffing updates we F we filled two um positions at Huckleberry so we have two new hires we still have a night position open at the high school and night position open at the middle school we have a mouse update a few have been caught recently we received an email from OSHA and they acknowledged our request for consultation

084to look at the problem and to go through Solutions and the recommend recommendations are as follows uh the first one is a formal directive on food consumption handling and storage the second recommendation was housekeeping needs to be a joint force between the life skills and home economics classes and custodians the third recommendation was a statement that adopts the rodent adoption plan and the fourth recommendation is to replace the open burner stoves in the life skills and home economics rooms which we're in the process of of doing and implementing all those recommendations uh Capital project updates the high school HVAC controls automatic logic and tecton are beginning to work together to put together a fee schedule to get a design to put out the bid our new business was at whisen near the water system controls

085the control for the wellp has failed but it's being worked on and we're keeping a spare controller on hand to avoid delays and making their pairs in the future and miscellaneous discussion we completed our follow-up testing for the water testing and we'll increase our testing at whis skiner at using 20 sites two times a year starting in January and we're going to submit it to the state that's it unless anybody has any questions thank you okay up next is uh the special Finance meeting well I'm going to actually talk about both of the finance committee meetings that are uh listed there if that's okay yep um so we've had two finance committee meetings here in December and we have a third one scheduled for this coming Monday um as normal business we did reviewed the

086financial results for the month and really there was not a sign any significant changes our Outlook Changed by about $30,000 uh as Mr post looked at it it was some small additional uh um spending in the special ed area and it was offset by Savings in other areas so uh net net we it really wasn't a very significant update this month um where we spent most of our time and these were all multi-hour meetings is we took the details of the budget that was presented to us at our last meeting and have started going through line by line by line uh to so that we as a finance committee have done the scrubbing of the budget to make sure it is uh been inspected by us at a at a detail line level um so

087that we as a board can focus our energies on you know the Investments and the directional things that were presented to us and which I think we will we should talk about as we do that agenda item later today and we have two meetings in January um so far we've gotten through all the salary and benefits lines and most of the services lines and we will be moving into um uh and we've been through transportation and we're moving into uh many of the supplies and uh other cost lines that are in the budget at our third meeting um it's been a very effective uh review of you know what how do we come up with it we've made some suggestions to Mr post on ways that we can enhance our presentation uh there's been some

088good healthy questions and I believe Mr poster uh uh is planning to take all the questions that were answered and put it in the with the other questions that are coming up from the board into a Q&A that can be be shared with the public um as we you know make the process we're going through very very transparent uh we've had good participation from the town controller and from our Board of finance representative on the committee and so there's already good connections being built you know for our down the road present you know submission as it gets to the town they'll have had a chance to also sit through this uh proctology exam we're giving the budget so uh in any case it's been a really good and and actually we're all very I think

089that end L last meeting we're all very happy that we've gone through it in this level of detail now I'll tell you we haven't found any very significant changes the budget is very well put together uh every item in there was built up from the bottom um it's not like like there's just a going rate type of okay this is what we spent last year there for this is what we ought to spend next year uh there are some areas where we uh we have planning assumptions in there because we don't have bids yet from like insurance providers because they don't usually give them to us until early this coming year and we have some discussions because it also affects the town side equally so for example one of the big assumptions is what the

090rate of increase on health benefits is going to cost and uh and so So based on Actuarial input and others Mr post and Mrs Marian had to make assumptions on what the uh uh what the rate of increase of our health benefits are going to be but they will get actual numbers in you know in March roughly maybe early April so in time to intercept the town level budget so we're we're completely in sync we understand how we're going to work that as we go through the budget process and you know it's a good so the uh but there's a number of areas where we found that there were planning assumptions that were made and they are reasonable planning assumptions none of us felt that the decisions um that were made to go into the

091budget were unreasonable so we'll finish that work up at the next meeting um I will give at our at our next get together in early January I'll give you kind of a a wrap up of what we concluded out of all of that I just wanted to make sure that the rest of the board and the public um is aware that we are scrubbing through this in a very very uh detailed way going through it at a at a in some of the line items at a at a school building level uh and in other items making sure everything ticks and ties to the Staffing plans and to the um and to the contracts and just make sure that this budget is as buttoned up as it can be so that's uh it's been a

092really good exercise so far I'm glad we're doing it I just have a quick question when you make the assumptions are they more conservative or there we go on the higher end you know as far as for example like the health benefits increasing do we so so in many of them uh Mr post leans on his uh experience of what happens year-to year um I wouldn't say we're uh generously conservative like there's a lot of contingency in there um but they are reasonable based on his experience um the hard one was the health benefits to be frank because there are uh the health benefits the actuary said 6% uh increase year onye is what we should expect um but if you remember they're implementing a rate structure that says that Fairfield county is going to

093have a bigger rate increase so he added 2% for that and um and that they came up with eight the so far the investigations that they kind of tried to make phone calls and get inputs you know they've called the insurance providers you know the 2% differential might be 3% the rate of increase might be lower or slightly higher and it's really that's the big unknown is the health insurance the others were not large line items and they do T stay relatively stable over time um so they I think they were they were either flat or up at a relatively low low percentage increase and they were reasonable assumptions in my view okay thank you so I think that there's going to be a lot of learning on health I health insurance I asked the

094question is there anything on covid that will affect the health insurance rates and the answer was they've said there's nothing but I'm holding my breath to be frank um and uh so I think we're going to have as time goes on through January and February and March we'll get better and better insights as we go and we're going to have to be much like we are on running the schools flexibly I think on our budget the health insurance is going to be perhaps the most uh volatile item that we're going to have to deal with and from a do we have the right assumption and Bob if you don't mind I I'd just like to reiterate you said it earlier but in case somebody tuned in from the public this is the same issue on

095the town side as well it's the town schools working together on this and and dealing with the same unknowns Y and uh and we're we're actually the bigger dollar amount than the town is in this case because we have more employees but it is the same issue for both so um so in any case this is one where Mr post and Mrs Maran are working very closely together and they're going to keep exercising whatever sources they can get because we have an insurance broker we actually have the insurance providers you know there's a lot of places to go get input from so so uh so that's all that's the end of my report um I'll just open it to the other members of the finance committee anything you want to add I think that was

096a really good summary any other questions okay we'll get some more budget stuff later yeah all right up next is the new school naming committee hey Eric you might if I uh show the PowerPoint on my screen or go for it go for it well let me just ask a question are we doing the PowerPoint here because it's on the agenda later it's on the agenda in under new business this was just the minutes of the last meeting the way I read that was that that's a motion for the board to yeah but that's usually where we would do a presentation okay Rosa you want just give do you want to just give um you know your sort of a a brief overview of how the meeting went and then we can you know use

097the discussion part later on in the agenda sure uh the last meeting December 8th uh we narrow down a very long list of student driven suggestions with rationale uh and we also narrow down a list of community-driven suggestions to three to five names um and I think that's a good summary there okay I don't want I don't want I don't want just want to double I don't want to double speak on the on the PowerPoint side yeah no that's fine that's fine I think it'll it'll be a good spot later on in the agenda where we can actually spend some time on it but um I actually went to the naming committee and uh it was really fun to kind of watch the process and especially hear all the names from from the students so

098uh some are very interesting um but uh but it was nice that that the students got input so um I'm excited for the public to to finally hear some of these all right um up next is the consent agenda I will move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are leaves of absence do I have a second second thanks Joy any discussion on these all right all in favor I thanks that's unanimous okay new business we have a policies the first one is uh deletion of policy 51412 three communicable and infectious disease I will move that the board approve the deletion of brookfield's policy number 51412 3 communicable infectious disease as recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee second thanks Joy deby did you want to say something here yeah I'll

099just say um this is a a very old policy goes back to um the re this policy and the one the rest of the ones that you're seeing tonight all are somehow related or intertwined with the face mask policy that we um approved last month so that's why this is coming forward tonight uh just so that we can update and every make everything consistent um but this is not recommended by Cade nor is it required so we're just recommending that this one be deleted okay just general sort of redundancy yeah it's the language is really outdated and it it's covered in other areas so since it's not recommended or required we would just like to delete it being it's so old okay any other questions or discussion here uh yeah I have a point of

100order question is this being recommended for a first read or is this just is this the final vote the deletion so I think it's a well these are these are all first reads tonight um so we have time to consider should we and I would then I would move that we amend the motion to say for a first reading thank you okay do we need to vote to amend the motion or can we just vote on the you need a second on the amendment vote on the amendment and then take the whole thing to it we just doing it for just this policy or for all the policies that are being brought forward well going forward we'll just add the correct words in but for this one I will go ahead and second uh the

101amendment yeah when you when you read that when you read the motion for the other one just say approve for a first reading right got all right so I seconded that Amendment um all those in favor of the amendment I okay thanks and then any other discussion on the policy itself okay so let's move on that all those in favor I thanks that's unanimous too okay um so the next policy uh emergency and disaster preparedness so am I just adding that just those yeah just read the motion as is and then just add those words okay I will move that the board approve the deletion of Brookfield policy number 6114 emergency and disaster preparedness and replace it with Cab's version as recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee for a first read do I have

102a second second a second I can't come off mute fast enough all right any questions uh Debbie did you need to say anything here or was that sort of covered by your overview yeah I mean it's kind of the same thing this one actually is 36 years old I wish Steve Harding was here we could we could say I think that we have another policy that's older than he is um but again what's that that is almost older than me I'm not 36 oh there okay all right so we're gonna start calling policies that are older than Eric that was Mike but yeah I'm sorry than M uh so again this one uh emergencies and disaster preparedness we recommend deleting this one and replacing it with c's version which um really is much more comprehensive

103and uh provides a lot more clarity in detail great any questions or discussion on this okay so all in favor I I I thank you that's unanimous up next is policy 611 4.6 emergency closings I'll move that the board approve the deletion of Brookfield policy number number 6114 point6 emergency closings and replace it with c's version as recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee for a first read thanks Joy I'm just gonna give them all to Joy all any questions or discussion on this one Debbie is this also um again just replacing just for comprehensiveness and Yep this one um was last modified in 1989 so again is just being updated with a more current version from C great okay so all in favor thank you that's unanimous and new policy 61148 pandemic epidemic emergencies

104I'll move that the board approve the adoption of C policy number 61148 pandemic epidemic emergencies as recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee for a first read second thanks so this one uh we don't currently have so um unlike the others that were just very old we don't have a pandemic and epidemic emergency policy so we are recommending that um we adopt Cab's version which they recommend okay any questions or discussion here all right so all in favor I that's unanimous thanks um okay the new school naming committee and a possible motion here so now here's where we get to uh hear your presentation are you trying to share your screen here we go don't give away the recommendations yet Mike oh man you're right everybody close your eyes no it's a little it's a

105little slow I'm trying to get out of the full screen here just press you can just press Escape I think good catch Debbie am I on mute no I can hear you okay all right so this is our new school name uh committee uh at the risk of butchering some people's last names is going to go by first name myself and Debbie uh PTO presidents Jen and Brenda Elementary School presidents uh Mary Rose and Melissa uh teacher Representatives Kim and Katie and Community rep representatives and also former Board of head members Colette and E so our objective our objectives were to establish a list of three to five names uh for today we were going to follow the naming facilities policy 7551 and create a list of student driven suggestions with rationale as well as

106a list of community-driven suggestions as well so uh just real quick uh I'll summarize the the policy here basically this says our committee has to be made up of a PTO uh Representatives Administration teachers and because this is involving two schools we chose one representative from the uh cental school and one representative from the hackleberry uh Hill Elementary School the school name has to have a geographical uh significance has to be geographically located close to the school and that no other buildings need to be uh should be named the same so we can't have another whiner Elementary School for example so summarizing the student driven process each class was given an assembly from November 30th to December 4th in which they would learn about the history of schools of the Brookfield schools and the history

107of a little bit of the history of Brookfield Deb Brooks uh I think deserves some special credit for putting that PowerPoint together for the assembly and Brenda uh PTL uh representative uh made a Google form for the teachers to submit class suggestions with rationale so this was kind of this was kind of the the the fun thing to read about not just a name that they submitted per class so every class came up with list of names they voted on the one they were going to submit and each class submitted one name but they also submitted rationale to go along with those names uh which were pretty fun to read uh the student list was discussed and narrowed down at the last meeting on December 8th the community suggestions were went a little shorter uh

108Colette brought a list from the uh public forums uh almost a year ago a little bit more than a year ago from September 26 2019 and October 22nd 2019 at the first meeting at November 5th 2020 uh the NBC also submitted a list of potential names and we discussed and narrowed down that list as well as kind of join them into the the final list at our meeting on so number one I I kind of put two suggestions on one side because the rationals were about the same uh canwood Elementary School uh canwood Lake Elementary School so student rationals I I included some of verbatim responses from those Google Sheets uh I thought some of them yeah mean some of these just have to laugh at uh if there's a spot here where little Leno

109was too hard to say I mean that's pretty funny it is too hard to say so I agree uh include a little bit of the history so showing that they they learned a lot through that presentation that Debbie provided uh that people use saplings as candles from The Candlewood trees uh and yeah like I I really enjoyed the uh the rationals that the students came up with again demonstrating that uh there was some good time and effort and and some uh some learning that went on and is can like is the largest man-made lake in the Northeast so now we're going to step away from cwood suggestions uh Lakeside Elementary involves the lake student rationals uh they voted and again it's it's around the can wood theme but uh it was it was an opinion

110on some of the the committee members and also the opinion on some of the students rationals that Candlewood is kind of mentioned in a lot of things street names businesses um and that maybe uh removing Candlewood but also incorporating the lake since it is the lak side of town uh in the school name would be appropriate so uh three would be Lakeside Elementary School also Candlewood is not unique just to Brookfield new New Milford Sherman danburry uh New Fairfield as well and I kind of went ahead here but this is again Lakeside is to incorporate the lak side of town uh without the cywood monitor Newberry Elementary I should put school there too but uh that's that's a typo on myself student rationale again going back to Debbie's presentation students learned that uh Brookfield was

111once called Newberry the general area was called Newberry I guess Newberry was made up of about three towns and the committee said this was a nice kind of throwback to the the foundings and the origination of Brookfield and our fifth our fifth name is Westbrook Elementary and this was not a student suggestion this was a combination of uh the NBC this was a combination of the committee and I think I'm pretty sure Rosa uh came up with this one pretty good the uh the NBC suggested uh Twin Lakes because East and Westbrooks are near the school uh but since the school will be on the west side of town uh and being closer to the Westbrook that we just call the Westbrook uh Elementary so the committee uh sided with Westbrook over Twin Brooks Elementary

112uh I want to include some other notable suggestions but not up for consideration uh sparkswood Elementary again these had very colorful uh explanations uh because they lit the the wood on fire right friendship Elementary uh cool school a favorite of mine the the rationale for cool school is because school is cool so I thought that was that was a pretty good one still River Elementary still River happy Landings Elementary for the uh for the park song River Elementary Greenway Elementary Pine Hill Elementary oops and uh those are again just really just for fun but uh I wanted to show that the you know students put a lot of work into this and uh I want to give those special mention there and lastly I just want to say thank you to the teachers and students

113that parti the municipal billing committee and the Brookfield Historical Society any questions for me I vote for cool school that's not not for consideration because because Co because school is cool that's actually a really tough Tong question so so Mike question for you was Huckleberry Hill a name considered or was it just allowed or what how did that end was considered the reason why we we want to step away from that is because we're joining the center school with the Huckleberry school and with administrations and and teachers um it was just better to you know not combine uh the the center school and kind of you know like it never happened uh just combine and make this a new a new reality a new a new experience we if I could just jump into we

114also wanted to uh be mindful of the fifth graders who are moving moving down from whis skiner um so that they wouldn't feel like you know they're going back to Huckleberry and I don't think any I don't think anyone would be going up to or going down from whiskin no they would they just would not be progressing up yeah they wouldn't be going to whisk right right but it would be like being held back staying in the same school but they're not the second question I had is did the committee have a favorite uh I I I feel like the committee we we uh we were kind of split on all of we we like them all uh we I mean I think individually we all like this you know certain couple but I don't

115think we all were unanimous on one we uh we liked them all and we want to present this you know to the board and and one of our recommendations is that possibly we we make a a parent survey uh Debbie knew more about knows more about that stuff I'll speak on that well I'll just add my own personal choice which didn't make the final cut was Twin Brooks oh because you have to I just picked up on that uh um yeah we were we were talking about um taking the final list of five recommendations and um maybe putting it out as a survey to the rest of the community um we didn't do that yet up to this point because we really wanted the kids to be involved and to hear their feedback and their

116thoughts and make sure that whatever was thrown out put out to the community was from them um but you know I think it could be fun to um do a simple survey you know sort of a Survey Monkey type thing and just rank them see how see which one gets the most votes I I will mention this the the one that got the most votes in the student survey based off of the Google sheet was Candlewood Elementary School so CES um you know kind of a throwback to Center but was it Candlewood or kandlewood lake they were both well no one got one got eight and one got seven so it's yeah it was pretty close I what I will do I I do think a parent survey is a good idea because it's so

117it's this is such a big important you know part of and it's going to be you know such a a big Staple in our town I think it's going to be good to to survey the public um I will say though that I think there needs to be a way that we really um clarify the policy for our own understanding as well as the public because the policy is quite clear on uh the stipulations for a name um although when I was in the naming committee meeting um there were personal interpretations of it so you know it might be good to kind of go through the policy here um tonight and figure out a way that we can you know best explain it to the public maybe in a more bulleted sort of fashion so

118we're not making people read the the policy but do they need to read it because at this point we're giving them a list of five and getting their input on a list of five and we've we've made sure through the committee that that they comply with to the best of our knowledge what the policy is so at this point I don't think the public needs to really dwell on what the rules are right we're not going to name it Brooks or Beldon so I think we figured that one out even though Beldon Hills behind and we could call it Twin Brooks so y well um so then are there any of the names that um you know we don't want to present to the public or is this what we're going to just send forward

119and I just have a clarifying question is the purpose of um surveying the public to determine the name or to give us some feedback before we determine the name it's it's promly for feedback just so we're not you know we've you know the public has has had input but doesn't have in input on the direction on the the five names so I feel like there's now there's some spec specificity to uh you know taking kind of a temperature of what these names are maybe maybe everyone really hates all those five names um and then you know we is a board we vote on a name that everyone hates I I mean that's that's kind of the rational I I was putting forward yeah I guess sort of where sorry Jen I think the feedback would

120be good from from you know the feedback would be useful but I think where I was going Bob in sort of trying to understand the policy and this is just my own inter interpretation but you know Newber Elementary although I like the name and I love the historical significance of it I don't think it meets the policy so let's say that we we survey the public and that comes out as the favorite and then we have to you know we don't have to I suppose but um you know are we I'm I'm with you but we shouldn't put forward any choices of names that don't meet the policy so let's talk about that so why doesn't policy to me um and this was sort of what I picked up from the Ning committee meeting is

121that there was some interpretation on what was meant by the geographical significance so I'm actually gonna just pull up the policy just so you can see it in black and white you want me P my power I can pull my PowerPoint up okay yeah but says that the name has to the school has to be named after the geographic section where it is located so that tells me that it's not um significant to the town's geography but the geographic section where it's located the section of town so I think Candlewood Candlewood Lake everybody knows you know if you say like oh you know where do you live over by the lake everybody knows exactly where that is and the lake we might not have the the longest shoreline on the lake but the lake is

122a very big cultural piece of our town so I get the other names and and Westbrook makes sense because the Westbrook flows right through the property but I'm a little bit hesitant about Newberry and not because I don't personally like it but because I don't think it meets the policy but you know I think on the other hand somebody could argue that if you're if you're looking on a map and you're and you're going back to the history of how Brookfield was named it's between New Town and Danbury it's a combin it was a combination it it was formed out of a combination of three towns that then split off and became Brookfield so geographically it references where it is in location to the other towns that it was originally part of right I think

123for me I was interpreting Geographic section to mean within the borders of Brookfield what geographic section within those borders um not sort of the state or local area and that and that's why I think the the geography part of the requirement is sort of open to interpretation but the very next sentence allows for how you would deal with it if you just continue to read the sentence if for some reason the school is not to be named for the section where it is located a representative group of parents will be consulted in naming the school so if I I I think that there is something that says we could put Newberry up as an option and do a survey of parents that this the doing a survey of parents could be considered Consulting with parents

124I would want to know whether the parents live on the east side of town or the west side of town right so we could the representative set up parents in the area um I would want to look very carefully at whether the people are negative on newb who are from the west side of town right if I had a bunch of parents answer a survey that said I'm kind of upset that you're thinking about naming it after the town not my specific something about you know where it is we would want to think about that as a board um but I don't think this precludes us the way it's written from considering that as a op for me the the most important bullet on this on well not well they're all important but the the

125bullets that we have to observe the third uh you know but most important it should have significance for the students that attend the school um that's why that's that was the whole that that even half of a bullet was the whole reason reason for getting student input uh that was a student suggestion as well I think the NBC submitted that one as well uh but uh yeah geographical basis uh means if it said geographical Landmark then I I I I would side with Rose's point on that but yeah it's geographical basis is kind of you know again it's a base it's a it's a it's a wide thing um and that's and that we we did consider uh removing it um but the the committee thought it was best just to leave it in uh

126and and to Bob's Point uh if if we're going to you know this is what our suggestion is what our recommendation is is have that parent survey out and uh you know see see where where it lands I think that's fair enough did did we V did we vet the names on the second bullet there um it should not be in conflict with the name of other schools in the system surrounding counties or in the state did we do we we eliminated we we eliminated a lot of um or not a lot we eliminated a few names uh based off of uh it should not be in conflict with other school names so there's no other can wood uh elementaries in any around any of the towns around Candlewood nope that's interesting um Westbrook because

127I feel like isn't there a town Westbrook Connecticut there's no Westbrook Elementary School in Westbrook Connecticut there's a town on the I think it's a middle school okay I think the middle school called Daisy it's called Daisy Ingraham Elementary School it's not it's and there's a middle school and it's one word Westbrook it's interesting too I I see this policy was adopted in 1993 so the high school was already built but I I don't feel like Brookfield High School necessarily has a geographic reference it's no that's true other than saying it's in Brookfield no that's true yeah and and originally Brookfield High School was called The Long Meadow School so interesting that they didn't you know that or or revert back to that name when this policy was created good point because otherwise that then

128that would mean sort of I mean whis Ander is is on West whis skiner Huckleberry is on Huckleberry Hill I mean Center is at the center of town right and and we actually in the historical research that that we did and the the PowerPoint that was presented to the students a lot of names from Brookfield history came up as possibilities like the iron work school the Pocono Pocono Elementary um uh Pocono Hill Elementary and we we omitted those you know we deleted those immediately because we thought that they would be confusing because those those really do represent areas of the town or at least street names so it would be confusing for somebody to say oh I go to Iron Works Elementary and it's nowhere near Iron Works you know Iron Works is by four

129corners and the school is nowhere near there right so um there were a lot of good names that came out of the um you know sort of the historical facts that that we uncovered but just didn't really hit the mark in terms of geography of where the school is located yeah we eliminated Rocky River which was uh I mean that's that's what that's the river we flooded to um make canwood Lake C the town that was flooded was called Jerusalem seemed a little had too much of a connotation of religious significance so we tossed that one um so yeah there's there was a lot of there was a lot of names considered one thing um I did want to mention just because I know that this is this might make it into three important things

130and then this little section is going to be something that people watch um but the NBC you know wanted to stress the point that in the design itself they have Incorporated a lot of things that reference or you know sort of tie in water so you know as you know that the the Westbrook you know the sort of the wetlands that's going to be running basically in front of the school is is down underneath in in the ground in a pipe right now is going to be exposed and it's going to be you know a habitat for you know like Wetland animals and butterflies and things like that and it's going to be really beautiful but it's going to be a significant part of the building and some people may have seen um you know

131a recent post with some some of those School uh pictures or sort of the photorealistic renderings and one of the playgrounds sort of looks like a pond you know the rubberized surface sort of looks like a pond and the main hallway is going to have sort of this River look to it so you know I think it's to sort of bring that out in the name might be something that people want to consider too some sort of Rosa the river that is under the entrance there is that the West Brook I believe I believe so I know that the East and West Brook um are on either side of the property but the East Brook is more on the opposite side of Candlewood Lake Road and I think it's the West Brook that goes sort

132of up behind the school um so I if I'm not mistaken I believe that is the The Little Brook that's right in that would be right in front of the school but I'll double check on that we should double check that because that would be very meaningful right to the kids who go to that school you could build a lot around that so um I just had one suggestion maybe if we put the names to the community maybe just pick Candlewood Lake Elementary or Candlewood Elementary they're kind of like the same thing I I I feel like giving people that would if people really like that it might sort of split their vote you know I think maybe we should just choose one of those it's just in order to get really a sense of

133if people actually like that name I agree yeah the reason that we left them both is because they were both heavily voted on so to your point uh Jen that there's a high likelihood of that happening we we actually talked about whether candle would Lake Elementary as sort of a you know a logo like how we have C WMS BHS is clees like too much of a mouthful like more than hes yeah yeah I don't know clees almost you know it sounds like an acronym that you should say like class and it just doesn't work and I kind of like CES as a nice connection to the old center right as hav cwood element so um and so remind me the five it's Newbury Candlewood Candlewood Lake uh Westbrook and what was the fifth one

134lake lakeside lakeside element so less I'm just thinking about I don't we should choose a name based off of acronyms but yeah sure so uh the last thing that that's sort of important at this point is sort of talking about our timeline because uh we are due to break ground uh in the spring and um you know as you know the the bidding process has started and I don't want to get too much into the actual update of that um just yet but um you know we should probably move quickly on sort of speeding up a name for this building so that we have something um for all the construction documents so um you know I don't know how fast we can I mean I'm sure putting together a survey with five names is is

135pretty um pretty simple but other than sort of the geographic place where the um survey takers would live is there anything else that we need to add to that survey I'd love to get some a free form comment field in there right so people why right just you know what you know why did you vote the way you voted right um we'll get we'll some insights from that okay and I just want to clarify why do we want to know what side of town they live on just well I think Bob raised a good point that you know if the people that live close to where the school will be constructed you know feel strongly that they would like a you know sort of a a more Geographic uh significance to you know that section

136of Town um you know then that would may be important to know yeah also let me say it my way it says we'll name it after a geographic section of town and if not we will consult with a representative group of parents right so I think for us to be able to say we consulted through a survey with a representative group of parents we should know that we're listening to the people on that side of town um on that topic especially on that vote if there if there was a strong vote about the Newber um we would want to know if that was a big strong input one way or the other negative or positive okay Rosa uh another idea that came up about um having people vote for the name was also to to

137offer it as a question during the next referendum but do you think that's that's too far away yeah I think it's way too far oh no it's not a too far question a referendum you're voting on something right and this is a decision of the Board of Education I mean it's very clear in the policy it's our decision so the survey is for giving us input if you put it as a referendum question it's much more of a I'm voting on the name and I'm not sure we should advocate for that I like maybe I'll work with Eric to sort of craft something that sort of makes it that very clear that maybe not necessarily what comes out is the top answer is what the board will decide on because it is this is an

138official vote but that we really want everybody's input so we can take it into account it's it's input Gathering it's not voting right Rose uh thank you for bringing up Eric you know I I'd offer obviously um uh our um uh time to put the survey together uh Eric myself uh any admin that can give us a hand with that and had some some thoughts and experience and surveys um we'd work with uh the committee and and you to get that out I'd be curious to know is there you know it's not a a difficult survey to put together is there a timing of when we might want to get the survey out so perhaps during the short week next week we can put the survey together and have it ready to go right after

139the new year when everybody's kind of back in the groove and again this addresses your timing issue um I think of the first meeting board meeting I think of the second board meeting in January which is somewhere around I think the 25th or something like that um so just kind of breaking ground probably won't happen till mid-march at the soonest um it may take all the way till April so just trying to give you all some a picture of what the calendar looks like so maybe we can if we can sort of discuss the results at the second January meeting although that I mean that's going to be a heavy meeting with budget stuff for sure but um do we all feel comfortable sort of taking a look at this again with the survey results

140on on that 20th meeting so that's our second meeting in January so we would send it out like as the soon as we come back after Christmas break and give them until yeah knowing that people probably are not gonna even look at it until the beginning of the year I would suggest I disagree I would send it as fast as we can build it and then send a reminder out at the beginning of the year but for those people do things like this over the holidays right let them do it yeah not lose time I mean it's that's that's like losing two weeks if we want to go look at it in the second meeting in January and we don't send it out until January 5th or there about no I mean I just think

141like I think we if we I definitely think send it out as soon as possible I just think maybe the majority people won't look at it so I don't I think basically what I'm saying is the first meeting in January is going to be too soon so but I think we ought to send it out as as soon as we can and uh and maybe send a reminder out or put something on the Facebook page right after we get back just reminding people to go do it and the second meeting in January is the 20th um and the and I'll tell you what I would love to have this on the agenda when we're doing the the same meeting we're doing the budget because it will be fun um budgets aren't always that fun um

142but just as a reminder we don't we only have one meeting in February and it's not until the second meeting so so you know if we're if we're going to if we miss that second meeting in January it's a whole month later yeah I agree because like people might have seen the board meeting or been talking about it so we want to hop on the buzz you know now okay and I would endorse Jen's thought to narrow the list of four when get only have one Candlewood based name I mean I hate to say it it's just I think we'll get confused about is do we think about them both or do we think about them uh independently and how do we wait that I think they're too close in name so I would recommend

143we choose Candlewood Elementary and um and make that plus the other three so so Bob let me give you a little bit more on the rationale of why Lake versus just Candlewood is that Candlewood meant uh a little bit more than just the lake and then the lake just kind of you know made made it a more geographical landing and candle would Encompass the kind of the the H more of the history of the sa as a committee we want to put them both in because of this discussion we we really didn't want to we actually wanted this to be sorted out uh just as a recommendation hey we like both these names uh you guys you know as board members you guys could uh you know go through this and it fit through the

144five so that's why we so you're getting my opinion as a board member then I think we no I just wanted to say that the cwood lake and Candlewood meant different things in our eyes not necessarily the same thing I know the same name uh but one signified a actual geographical landmark and the other a more you know general area that encompassed more than Brookfield so I personally if we were going to take one of them out I would actually prefer to keep in Candlewood Lake Elementary myself so and I don't know how the rest of the board feels but I feel like if we're maybe undecided or we're divided sort of on which to keep and which to toss maybe we have to leave them both in or why don't we just say Candlewood

145slash Candlewood Lake Elementary as that's the choice because then people are gonna think that's what we're calling the school well I mean just the feel like maybe if we really like Candlewood for whatever reason as a board then we can say lake or not Lake I just feel like if we put both in it's going to skew the results people are going to vote for that because they like Candlewood you know that's my we could do that well I mean do we have a consensus on the board whether or not one name one or two names just sort of I think just one and I would probably vote for kandlewood I feel like we have Lake kind of covered with Lakeside Elementary as that option so I would go for just Candlewood Elementary yeah I

146like Candlewood I I would go canwood because of CES I I kind of like that but to Jen's point I mean it was an 87 vote on classroom so we're highly looking at exactly what Jen's talking about Debbie and Jen I know I'm already outnumbered but I'm just curious what you guys like I I don't have strong feelings on the lake versus not the lake I'm just my original Point only one choice on that's it's the only opinion I have I like um I I kind of feel indifferent to whether it's Candlewood or Candlewood Lake but I like Jen's idea to present it as you know some variation of Candlewood or Candlewood Lake as option number one then option two three and four after that okay Bob you're on mute sorry you got you got

147it I agree with that that's a fair that's a fair way to do it because then you put both names out there but you don't get you don't you don't dilute the vote that's that's the thing I would be worried about we're not locked into one or the other we can decide later true okay all right good idea Jen all right so um I'll work with Eric to get that out ASAP and uh any other questions or um comments on this I would just say um maybe we should talk Rosa you and me and Mike should talk offline about um what else goes with the survey I mean I think I think the public should have a little bit of the history and the the background information that we gave the kids um I think

148we should we should post we should post what the presentations were we should post um the presentation given tonight I think there's all all that stuff should be available to people who are taking the survey yeah sounds good yeah and I and I think just as a a part of that Bob to the the posting that was was in my head this entire time and and I think it should be part of our three important uh three main points for sure it's a big discussion yep um just so we can officialize it I think we ought to make a motion on this and and I would propose that we and I'm going to tell you what I'm thinking about and then we'll just make that a motion but a motion to accept the recommendations of

149the committee and to embark on a parent survey with an objective of having a board vote on the name on uh on our second January meeting and the reason I would say to make it a motion is it sends a signal to everybody that a we are very happy with what the committee did B that we really do want to get parent input and C that we do intend to get on with us in a reasonable pace so that's why I would want to make that motion would you be okay would everybody be okay with that yep all right then I'll move that the um that the board accept the findings and recommendations of the school naming committee and thank them for an excellent piece of work um that we embark on a survey of

150parents uh to be organized with the school administration and that uh we collect that input for uh as input to the board's decision uh which would be targeted at the January 20th 2021 meeting second thanks Amy okay can I just make one oh do we have to um I would just want to say that we should clarify we're not necessarily asking for feedback from just parents I think it should be all Brookfield residents okay although they won't be surveyed but that that I'll am I'll amend my uh my motion to instead of saying parents say to the public yeah okay although how will the rest of the public access a survey I think we ought to ask Mr Dunn if he could uh put it in his next uh put it on website we ought

151to uh we ought to mention it in the you know work with the Press they could mention that there's a lot of places you could get the word out monthly bfield Spotlight that Steve puts out could it could go in that is that an issue technology wise Eric no no I was just gonna say um to everybody's Point there's multiple ways to get this out um and and I can work closely with um with um uh the town it side as well um we have a lot of different um media channels and and and communication platforms between all of us to do this um it'll be a lot of figuring out how we want to present it and get it out Rosa when when we when we uh connect on this sounds good anything else

152all right uh so all in favor I I happily that's unanimous thanks okay uh now we can move on to the review of the superintendent 2021 2022 budget proposal all right so you need a motion on that or did you just do that I think it's just an action okay I'm sorry it's just an action so I'm not sure where you know based on um what Mr Beldon shared um how we want to start this part of the discussion or this part of the meeting there was um a specific comeback On Athletics um and updating regarding the two sports and Mr Baldwin is here tonight and prepared with A Brief Review PowerPoint and then the specific slides with the ranking of priorities in addition to that I asked Mr cocklin to um while he put

153the presentation together during the superintendent report um he does have a couple of slides just to update the board on his um uh technology proposal that I ultimately brought forward as part of the superintendent's budget which involves Chromebooks and so forth and that's kind of a complicated story with some of the the tech needs and so forth so I wanted to have that shared this evening Beyond those two pieces I had nothing else to offer but am here to answer questions or whatever whatever the board may need or however the board would like to proceed so I'll just leave it at that do we want to start with the the specific comeback On Athletics to start there to get the ball rolling yeah let's do that that's okay okay Steve are you gonna share your

154presentation or is Eric going to okay you're on mute Steve thank you sorry I'm gonna do it um good evening everybody hey Steve thanks for being here Steve yep all right oh all right so here we go so what I did was I took last year's presentation I didn't want to reinvent the wheel so last year I came and presented this uh presentation here and it went through all of the requests that that kids have made um through the last couple of years um went through the process so this is just a review and then I'll get into a few new slides if you have any questions just let me know um this was the pr prioritized list that we did last year and then we went through the rationale um for each sport which

155still all of those sports are looking to get added so like I'm just going to go through this because this is just a review and then so this is again we prioritized last year so what what has changed um you know the sole reason for our existance of our profession is the student that's Doc burill and then um I had some students um come talk to me and uh one girl said we just want a chance to be able to play our sport that we love all of our friends get to play the sports they love here in other other schools this was a b BS student on gymnastics um BHS student on boys volleyball we just want to get a chance to play so changing the prioritize list gives all students the chance to

156play the sports that he or she loves while we have 10 programs that we would like to eventually add we must change our prioritized list to fit the needs of all students and give them a chance to play the sports they love the other the prioritize opportunities enhance current athletic programs that already exist so now so the re prioritized list um this is what I came up and just some discussions you know W with the kids and what else is going on again this is my prioritized list what I think that we should add first you know from top to bottom you know obviously uh we talked about boys volleyball and gymnastics those are two sports that we do not offer if you look down six through 10 we offer those Sports and those would

157enhance current programs you know which would help the programs we already have including strength and conditioning Co um coach so you know currently um we don't have boys volleyball we don't have gymnastics cross country we do have a split now but there's just a tremendous amount of kids that run cross country at whis skiner close to 60 and uh again last year I briefly spoke spoke about Esports and we're still looking into that that is becoming a very big uh scholarship opportunity for kids that we don't want our kids not to miss out but I think we're a year or I think Steve froze he froze for a minute so I can I can certainly talk a little bit about this while he continues to you know what Steve was talking about he was talking

158about e Esports being this fast growing piece um the challenges for those anybody that knows anything about Esports um using a Chromebook to play an ort is not necessarily something that you do um you think about the the equipment that we provide for our other athletes um we want to make sure that we're providing the best possible um the best possible technology for them so um you know I think the important thing to take away from from Steve's prioritized list which is something that obviously Bob brought up um you know to to let's talk about this again really is um for Equity to make sure that you look at those statements that we offer every possible sports for for the students that are interested numbers um certainly well we may not have a a you

159know a 27 person gymnastics team or uh boys volleyball team um what we will have is the opportunity for kids to have to play the sport they love um and that is that became a priority over everything else you saw things in there like strength and conditioning coach um holding off on some of those things in terms of that list that was at the top prior it moved down significantly that's really due to um something that we could probably wait due to you know once the locker room and the weight room have been renovated so that's why those kind of moved down um so it's just it's I was glad Steve was able to put that together and really articulate for you why the priorities had changed because certainly those two were at the bottom

160but in retrospect and we're we're always reflecting and thinking about you know what's best for kids um you know we decided to go go that route and and offer something for everyone at the very least so as opposed to just enhancing I'm sorry I don't know what happened that I just stopped I kept talking then all of a sudden my screen went blank yeah you cut out and I just I just kind of picked up from there so I was just kind of highlighting you know the those the reason for why the list got reprioritized and and why we are where we are yeah and and like Mark said he made a good point about um the strength and conditioning coach is you know we should wait until after the renovation because you know right

161now it's so small and you know again it's just offering the kids to have an opportunity to play their sport which we currently don't have so I I don't know what happened I'm sorry but if anybody has any questions I I know Mark was um answering a lot for you guys I did have one question so I know we talked about you know a couple years ago the fully funding the hockey team was sort of priority number one um and I'm curious as to you know how does it sort of shift priorities to fully fund a new sport when a sport that has sort of a history of of heavy student involvement is still sort of not fully funded so so um the best way to answer that is so we are Co-op school we

162co-op with bethl and Danbury so bethl and danburry kids also pay in and um I I I don't know the exact ratio but I would say um the majority of hockey parents in the state pay so it's not it's it's not something that we would we would be doing the other people aren't or we're not our kids are paying and everybody else is isn't so that's that's that's kind of why I did it because it's it's almost the Norman hockey I would love to do it and you know that's your your you know your guys decision too if that's what we want to rep prioritize but that's kind of why I shifted it and what about gymnastics how's that handled um in other districts other districts it's handled ju just like we would do it

163it would be funded and and surprisingly the cost was a a lot a lot less than than I thought for rent renting the facilities the the person in town was going to rent it to us for believe it was $1,500 for the year which is nothing you know compared to we pay you know 25,000 for the pool at the wi for boys and girls swim for the year now if um I know one of the other things that we had talked about in the past is sort of um you know the students that were or the families whoever that was interested in this new sport uh sort of self-funding for two years to demonstrate sort of um I guess you know a history of of Interest has that been something that we tried that with

164skiing um you know we had 15 kids the first year with skiing and then just go ahead Mark no we had one last year I mean I think that's all we had right it was just the the um the cost and I I I I honestly I don't know what happened with that the the the coach the coaches the coach um got a new job couldn't coach and there was just no interest and I think he did a lot of the leg work finding the kids well and I think that the the the process of you know self-funding and going through that I understand it's it's a process that's done not just in suggested here but in other schools to make sure there's demonstrated interest over time with those two um I mean in terms

165of participation in terms of like in the CIA um schools that have fewer schools have boys volleyball and gymnastics for example right that's not a you know um so but in order to demonstrate interest you know I think it all goes back to the conversation about what what are we offering for kids and what can we do um we just we felt that it made sense to offer them at least every possible option adding these two gymnastics and um boys volleyball means we play every CIA available sport at Brookfield High School we we could if this if it goes through so um and that opportunity is great in terms of Hockey being a hockey parent and I know uh Dr Brill is as well and as I'm sure there's others out there um you know

166it's in terms of you know hockey is one of those expensive sports um and the school is still paying a portion just not the whole thing um right now we're not paying anything for but we don't have any volleyball or um gymnastics program so we can't even have a baseline to establish that from I think we'd like to get that Baseline up and then certainly I think move down the road talk about fully funding hockey uh down the road but it's it's a long road and it's expensive and parents know that it and the thing with hockey is like so for hockey we we fund transportation I it's the cost of the ice time that drives that up tremendously and and I just want to go back and touch on skiing skiing is a non

167CIA sport it was it's it's a club we just had a lot of interest in it and and that's why we did did what we did that year for you know because they came forward and said they wanted to fully fund it themselves okay and um for gymnastics and um volleyball volleyball is that uh something that is available to freshmen all the way through seniors or Y and again like Mark uh I I think Mark said it was once we add them then we have everything and then you know every every student who wants to play a sport we offer it you know nobody's missing out or nobody's looking to you know not come here because we don't have that sport what's the interest level for gymnastics like uh as far as how many students

168that's a very specific U sport uh well last year there was I believe five girls that came to the board ad meeting and I know there's a couple eighth grad incoming eighth graders that have interest I think the problem with something like sking numbers wise on most schools it's anywhere between eight and 10 totals so I think with something like skiing you're competing with the other sports right you have a lot of kids that do basketball maybe would our track y um because the ski club with Park and wreck is an enormous a lot so many students do that um so we do have a huge population of skiers um I would think there would be an interest in know ski team but I get what you're saying about covering all the basis um and

169and and and we do the kids do get offered skiing through the ski club too is you know we see every Friday the bags in the cafeteria the amount of kids that are going skiing right the issue was that we didn't have anybody who wanted to really do ski team they want to go skiing but they're not doing ort yeah the comptitive nature of that you know that it's it's different you know being able to compete against somebody else in gymnastics and it's not that our our students that were weren't interested in competing I think it's to your point Joy there's so many things in the winter um you know skiing is a secondary thing it's not a primary thing if you're a gymnast or volleyball that is your primary thing typically skiing unless you're

170living closer to a mountain or in a different area is really a secondary thing where we're I think catering to thinking about volleyball and um gymnastics to be a primary sport something that kids are you know primarily doing more than other things true yeah so so out of curiosity what seasons are those to Sports in gymnastics is in the winter and boys volleyball is in the spring by the way I had a son who didn't come we were living overseas and we're deciding to come back to the US and my son decided not to come back to Brookfield High School because they didn't have a boys volleyball team so I know personally that that's that is a decision Point sometimes what's the reasoning for not having it in the full because you don't want to

171compete with the girls the gym time or jym space no that's that's the season where the cic put it so that's when all the John do we have um like a list like a sort of comprehensive list of all the new Investments with the the dollar um the dollar amount attached to it somewhere we do I think Mr post sent that out after the he did yep a night or two a day or two after the December 2nd meeting so you do have that as a board um and um I don't know if Mr post is prepared with that but if that's something we need to look at as part of our discussion tonight we certainly could pull that up can't I I can't even is K is that something we can pull up is

172that what you want to pull up now Rosa we can no I just I I was just uh Curious I just kind of wanted it but then you reminded me I do have it so I have it the board has that um okay Rose I'm just asking for process you know at this point in the meeting with the budget on the agenda I know there was um as Bob mentioned there are uh specific finance committee comebacks and follow-ups we're working on and really betting the the accounts in the budget uh board members asked some follow-up questions on curriculum instruction PD and the other enhancements I've answered those we don't have it ready for public prime time yet but the the board has gotten that feedback um I'm not sure if there's any more on the

173athletic comeback right now at this point um if we're moving on to another subject I did ask Eric to put together a couple of slides to kind of tie from the fall into the budget proposal regarding Chromebooks and some other Tech initiatives we can do that or again what whatever you like to do this evening uh as we go through this process I know a big part of it is the finance committee nitty-gritty work that's going on right now no I think you guys answered all my questions thanks I would like to thank Mr Baldwin for a a good review there that was very helpful thank you Steve and thank you Mark for all the work on that thank you would would you like me to have uh Eric pull up the slides and share

174a little bit about technology yeah that would be great similar comeback I really wanted to kind of uh close the circle on this for the board and just for full understanding and obviously having our Tech director up U there's significant um investment in that area and it's such a big part of our uh our world all the time but especially the last few months it's been an incredible part almost a year now actually of our lives so Eric why don't you take it away um yeah absolutely so yeah Dr BS um made made the point perfectly there is that uh um you know we we've all known technology is becoming uh used increasingly more in education but uh you know since March I think we've uh seen we've we've seen the shift um and we're

175living in the shift um of more technology which is what led to um you know a lot a lot of my proposal this year um you know so a lot of my you know budget of status quo a lot of my budget contain um you know maintenance and contract agreements we have for IT services um District software that we renew every single year um the Chromebooks we always buy for the onetoone program um and and S um you know the fivr services that connect the district um along with the internet services that the district um has to pay for um but some of my key investment uh proposals increase um include um an upgrade to the internet bandwidth um from one gigahertz well one gigabit sorry one gigabit to 2 gigabit um the one gigabit

176service the um is currently what we have is shared between all five buildings I do include TSO in this because um you know the staff does use the same internet um so the proposal would be to increase to 2 gigabits to um better support the influx of devices um you know we have the 1,150 devices that will um you know be used in school right now they're being used at home but they will come back and be used in the school um we are seeing the you know the big uptick and BYOD because of what's currently happening so students are buying their own devices because all of our devices were backordered they found themselves forced to buy their own device um you know for distance learning for remote learning for for everything of that um

177you know so we are still we are anticipating to see more BYOD um and so we um you know I I I feel that I would be um under under stating it to say that I'm going to see a double in our technology I think it's actually going to be higher than that um you know a double in the amount of devices that are in on a daily basis um you know just based on some of the other Investments you're going to see um as I get further down um you know so the the upgrade accommodates the increase of of Chromebook staff devices be OD which is bring your own device um you know we want to send more bandwidth to our wireless access points because um every single device that we buy now is

178essentially a wireless device um you know although we're going to continue to have hardwired options um and and continue to use that um Wireless is is the preferred connection for flexibility um and we can work with the Cen the Connecticut education Network um who is our internet provider on dedicating bandwidth to where it's needed most um the presentation stations for the high school um if you remember we we did propose some in the budget last year and I think we ended up um not I think I know we ended up with um 10 in the budget um but due to covid and uh what the school year is going to look like with a lot of remote learning um we decided to rep prioritize those funds to zoom licenses um which were required for what

179we're doing now um the microphones that I showed you earlier um document cameras and and all the things that go into remote learning um as part of of that fund um I do have new laptops for BHS staff if you remember earlier I mentioned that the whiskey Ander staff got their laptops this year um to so to to follow the um life cycle replacement um every five years the high school would be next um you know which would then put um Center and Huckleberry up for replacement in the 2022 school year which would actually line them up with the new school um when we break um you know when that school opens um so excuse me getting um new laptops for the high school staff in the 2122 school year would set us up nicely

180for that um if you remember back in the summer we we um had proposed to use some of the funding that came from things like the presentation stations um for uh new and um new District software um again this is where the technology and the bandwidth and and the Chromebooks come into play um you know these are software that we know are beneficial um we know will help us our students and not something we should just use because we're using them during covid um you know Lexia ISL math Ela and of course I can let Dr Ruby um chime in on on any of these if there's any questions newa um talking points and um the expansion of ST Math to K8 um these are all increases in the budget um you know that are

181very beneficial softwares uh but require technology to use them we need Chromebooks we need devices um in both staff and students hands to get the best use out of these software resources um which brings me to the 300 additional Chromebooks I'm asking for uh for grades prek to seven um you know to date uh the district does plan to dispose of um a minimum of the 236 Chromebooks uh which that number is expected to grow as we get them back from all the remote learning um based on Damages and how they're looking um and and and then just age um eventually like any technology and software they're just not supported by the vendor anymore they don't get updates um you know a lot of the Chromebooks most of this 236 we can't even use technically

182can't even use for esack testing anymore but we have because we've had to um and they've worked um so I do expect that number to grow um as the district shifts from iPads to Chromebooks um based on cost and functionality and flexibility um you know we do have as as of today um 186 um iPads that no longer receive updates from Apple um and once you stop receiving updates from Apple apps stop working resources stop working the device slows down could go on and on um you know the reason why we're not asking for more is again I mentioned the number of students that have b yod that have had to purchase their own um we are seeing higher numbers than expected of that which at first we didn't expect and now we do um

183and so we are unsure at this point of how many students will continue to be yod in 2122 are they using a parents device right now that um they have to give back or the parent doesn't want them to bring to school are students getting devices right now that the parent expects to send them with next year and use um that's information you know we don't have um and so we we felt that 300 I I I felt in um the information that we have um our current inventory and what we're looking at right now in our remote learning standpoint um you know that 300 puts us in a really good spot to start getting us towards a one to one while um also benefiting from the the fact that we are allowing students to

184bring their own device um and that's all I have in these two slides do we have a summary somewhere of the dollars and cents that goes with this technology proposal um for the for the increase in the Investments That should be in the um if I'm correct Dr Bill uh that should be in the comprehensive list Rosa was asking for before yes so Mr post could put that up for us we could see all of the technology but we could also see the um we could see the technology and we could see the uh against the other uh Investments as well I was actually more interested in what the overall technology budget sorry Bob I I was not really asking about the I was actually interested in what are we spending on technology no matter

185what line it's in and then I think secondarily is what's Investments and I just don't have a sense of it Eric are you able to pull that dock up or Canen think I can Ros did you just do that oh okay yes this is the this is the only one we have right right that's that's the investment which is what I which is what I think we thought Bob was asking for but Bob you're asking overall technology budget and the the finance committee members have the detailed backup sheets and this the summary sheet on that should give it to you I have I have it up now if I you want me to share my screen oh Bob you're muted go back to the sheet because I saw the biggest single investment you talked on

186on your sheet was the uh investment in the 1 Gigabyte to 2 gigabyte thing and it's not on that sheet that just flashed up so I don't know why it's not an investment do you want to see the whole technology budget yes please okay equipment is down at the bottom so so we're it's it's 533 last year in aggregate going to 503 this year going to 804 next year is that how I read that yes $300,000 increase that's a lot and how much of that did we show as Investments on that prior summary chart it's just the last couple items right yeah so it's a $300,000 increase year onye of which uh only 106,000 116,000 117,000 is listed as an investment so how do we justify a $200,000 increase in the budget um and just

187call it status quo well don't forget we did not include all of those software items that Eric had on his slide in the Investments because we already are using them this year understand so we paid for them this year we actually didn't we process a budget change for those we did is that reflected in the other chart it is not how much was that uh I don't have that in front of me Bobby you asking Bob are you asking for the what the increase is with that additional software look Eric it's a budget review right it's uh we're having a budget review as a board um the presentation you gave had no dollars and cents and I've never seen a budget review with no dollars and cents if you want my opinion um so budget

188reviews come with dollars and cents and so I asked to see the budget it said there's a $300,000 increase in the technology budget only $100,000 is shown as an investment I'm just trying to get my head around what's the what's driving the increase year on year and why are we not calling it an investment that's all I'm sorry it's if that comes across as negative it's not intended to be it's just that's what I'm trying to get my head around and we could punt on this and let the talk about it in the finance committee meeting but I think that's a this is the important piece of our budget it's not the biggest piece of our budget but it's an important piece yeah and I think we can certainly address it at the finance committee

189we have you know it's part of the section of the uh of the budget that uh Jennifer sent her questions over on so we'll have that already that's in the so most of that sits in the section we're reviewing on Monday correct okay so Ken as a general matter of principle the things that we as a board approved as a budget change for the current year are not reflected in the books that we are looking at correct that the budget transfers are not in there they should don't you think they should be yes we discussed that at our first finance committee meeting and I agree with you okay um so look on on the technology budget I mean I'm I'm I'm banging and I'll that's the rest of the board if they're okay with me

190banging on this but um I think we ought to have a a come a specific comeback to the at this level on the technology Investments and the budget and how do they interconnect because um we're putting a that's a healthy amount of money being added into technology right and I mean I would expect to see $300,000 roughly of additional um cost un I don't recall that we moved $300,000 into that software this year so even when you did the budget adjustment it's uh um there's still a big growth in there and that growth we need to be a able to justify in our own Mind's Eye as Investments and I don't see from what you said I don't see the 300 Chromebooks is anything but Replacements is that what those the way you pitch that

191Eric are those replacement machines or are those a real investment to expand our reach um it's it's it's a little bit of both so what I you know we we got 1,150 devices this year um you know some of those are currently replacing um you know thing items that we have um you know so based on what we end up replacing now um you know some of those 300 will replace devices that we end up having to dispose of and some of them will increase our um you know connectivity um not connectivity sorry some of them will increase our count um you know some of that will depend on the condition of the devices that we receive back when we finish with remote learning um you know I'm telling you today what devices that we

192have marked for disposal um that will change I know it'll change it's it's a it's a budgeting Assumption of whether there it's an investment or not and it doesn't feel like an investment to me it feels like a replacement plan um and so the way you well the way you described it if this was uh we're going to really expand our reach on on one-on-one devices at the K through 7 Level that's an investment right and uh and that but you basically said there's 300 new machines and 236 were retiring right so to me that sounds like more of a replacement program it was maybe a little bump um and most of the stuff we got this year wasn't in the budget either some of it was not all of it right I think when

193we bring forward the we we can reconcile the increase in in technology budget for you for the finance committee meeting and I think we probably should have a more of a discussion about uh what we're calling investment and what we're calling status quo or contractual so that we all get on the same page and have the the exact same understanding maybe even document it because I think Bob to your the point you're making I you know we had this discussion throughout this process last year before we brought um before we adopted the budget at the end of J before the board adopted the budget at the end of January what was enrollment and you know and you shared that a little bit at the December 2nd meeting you know these are things we've got to

194decide where are they going to fall um are they really status quo or are they really an investment and in the Investments do we need to break that out further uh you had mentioned that last time we contining talk that through with I do understand that I just think this whole topic of technology is such a focus area and uh and it's a it's going to be a healthy year-on-year increase the cover so that's we have to call a spade to Spade if we're improving our program improving our infrastructure those are investments right if we're doing replacement things I don't see that as an investment I see that's part of running a program once you're in it so um and extending continuing the the licenses on stuff we've already got installed is a is a

195continuation it's not a new investment um so and we made decisions on the budget this year right to invest in those things so I'd like to let's do it l if it's okay with you on this topic I think we ought to put it into the finance committee meeting and then we ought to put it on the agenda in the first meeting in January as a comeback just too important he it again sounds good I have nothing else regarding the the budget and Bob you just wanted to sort of do you want to have that discussion in in January about um you know going through investment versus current status quo items because I know we pic we did pick up on a couple in the finance committee so I don't know if you want to

196what what we ought to decide here tonight if there's no other items for discussion this evening we to decide what follow-ups we wanted to have at the next meeting right and I'm going to make a couple of suggestions I think we ought to have a technology follow up um you know just on that takes Eric's good PE presentation on what we're doing and at ties it into the dollars and cents so we can share that with the public on what are we doing how much of it's an investment how much of it's a year normal year-to-year Dynamic um and uh we can exercise that in the in the finance committee meeting but I think we ought to have it on our agenda as a board right to go through that again um I would like

197to have the administration bring back the Investments and sort it into here's the Investments that are required to deal directly with student known student needs and here's the Investments that are about improving our programs right we talked about that at our last meeting and uh Dr bril I think it's a it's important for us to be able to make that distinction but on the back of that I would suggest that we go through it and discuss as a board on each investment line is this an investment we want to carry forward right and that should be the bulk of our next meeting right is to talk about the Investments I'll give an updated report and Ken I think we ought to on the side um off the back of the next finance committee meeting have

198you reissue the uh the detail sheets you know that have we'll talk about you know the categorizations and some of the line items we had but just reissue it so everyone has a new Baseline and I'll kind of give an update on what what decisions we took in terms of the Baseline but I think if we have the Baseline stuff well in our hands it's been scrubbed by the finance committee meeting we can focus this board's attention on the Investments right especially if we have them properly categorized um so I'm thinking Monday of this coming week we do a finance committee meeting we finish the scrub we talk about specifically what has to be moved between investment and not Dr burill and Mr post you then turn that into here's that here's that list of

199Investments and here's what is required for student needs and I think about some of the Investments we have on some of the tutors and the E uh the uh ESL investment those are student need driven the summer school investment yeah and then there's things that are expanding our program and some of the new sports is expanding the program just to pick on one we talked about tonight so I think that we do that but we get that chart up with dollars and cents and then we go through each of them and Rose I would say we kind of pull the board on members about so what are we thinking about that is that something we want to carry forward to the town right and uh that will then give us a solid base and maybe

200some follow-ups that we do with the second meeting in January before we vote on the on the budget that's kind of how I see an effective use of our time that would be what I'd suggest would be everyone would be okay with that I would agree with that um additionally I would I don't know I this might be a lot of work but is there um I I just want to tie out what we have as sort of our new Baseline for last year after we froze after we cut so that we have a true idea um of what we're looking at in terms of some of these increases because I think some of them are are off because of that we're looking at still at the adopted budget when you yeah when you're talking

201about last year you're talking about the current year yes okay that's what I thought Cent year for a Base to Base and I I think we need to have a discussion with uh um you know we're we're looking at the current year we're spending $400,000 more than as of our budget with the board of finances agreement to cover some of those costs we need to talk to the town controller and our Board of Finance rep about how do you want to handle that in the budget review process right because you maybe we do the budget without the covid spends right we just take that out and we just do a stra you know uh Co you know compare based on our budget adjustments um because this the spending on the covid which is being covered

202by the town is a bit of a Bugaboo here so we got to make sure we're clear on that I think that's a finance committee discussion I think anything and the only other thing that I kind of and I already told Ken I wanted sort of a comeback on this but just so that the other commit um board members are aware I I think it would be helpful to kind of understand uh each line item that was affected by either the freeze or that we had cut um even in last year so not this current Year's budget and I'm sure there's a list somewhere out there but I don't think it gets into as detailed as sort of each department um and that was something that when I was going through the accounts it was

203hard for me to determine you know are we over budgeting under budgeting um because I'm not exactly sure you know and in many accounts it looks like we're heavily over budgeting but like you said those were accounts that were frozen and then not reflected with the new number so that's something that I think is going to be helpful yeah we've got yeah so we have 20920 I'm sorry 201920 was a funny year because we had so many freezes we put in this year is a funny year because of all the co stuff and and then next year then at least the way we're budgeting is a more normal year so how we tell that story I think is really important where did we end up as far as the kind of gamble we took with

204teacher salaries how did that end up panning out worked great we landed pretty much right on it Amy I think uh we budgeted 200 and kenu told us 209 I think was the final number so it came in right on and with some pressure from the board of our Board of Finance Brethren but it was the right pressure so so are we going forward with that yeah the current budget has another 200,000 okay good other board members do you have any other budget questions or comebacks for our next meeting information that you need I agree with Bob I'd like a little bit more clarification on that technology spending um like that's definitely lost me um the the one I would like to have a separate and it could be next meeting or the one after

205or we could figure out when's the right time to do it but I think if you think about our budget the there's Investments right that's been one thing technology is always a big it's a it's a discretionary decision what we're doing on that so we need to understand that I think the other one is what's the whole picture on special education spending look like um because it has been such an issue over the last five years right you know up down you know exposures I'd love to see a summary presentation on expectations for next year on special education what are we doing are we do we have any new programs in there and what are we expecting in terms of the kids you know kids who are going to be in outplaced programs you know

206how's it looking in terms of the Staffing in the schools this year exposures are all are not about the outplaced kids it's about additional spending support type spending in the in the school for kids who are in District so so I I do think as a board we should have a module that where we'd kind of just go through what's in the budget on special ad and then what are the summary numbers around special ad so we all have looked at it right because I think that's we will get asked about that right as we as we bring our budget forward I think that's just one and I I don't have an issue with it but I think it's something we all ought to stare at so that would be the only other topic I

207would suggest we put as a mo a follow-up module um I think you know last year we had some really good stuff that says here's all the kids who are in the program how many kids exit the program how many kids we are anticipating coming into the program it was an issue at the board of finance of do they cover it do we cover it right in the budget and how do we deal with like that contingency of unknown kids I think that's just that we ought to have that very transparent and the fact that we've all looked at it what are we assuming on state support do way are we getting any input on the state uh excess cost and any changes coming on that whole front or is it pretty much the same

208next year as it is this year I heard nothing about it being any different okay and I'd like to Bob on your last commentary on special education I'd like to agree with that I think it's an important discussion to have um I think probably either you know if we decide we need a special meeting in the middle of January prior to the second regular meeting uh there or at the second regular meeting would would give us time to prepare that uh with all the other giv that we're going to be preparing um and obviously the holidays falling in between um but I I always like to remind the board and the public and I and I did this at the December 2 meeting this is why the the board and I years ago decided um

209Bob you'll remember this this was your first go round um after your first year on we decided that next year um in your first term to bring the initial budget proposal from the superintendent very early in December which is extremely early but it gives the board more time because by Town Charter the board has to have the budget by the very end of January the last day in January over to Mr dunk so there's it's a tight window when you when you have the holidays in there as well for when the board has to have it over to the townside so this process is a nice natural process and the more we talk about it the more the finance committee talks about it the more the board and the public understand what the board arrives

210at come the end of January and why the budget adopted is the budget adopted I think it's it's a great process so thank you okay um and I do like that we have three meetings to do it and obviously a lot of finance committee meetings um because I think that get makes it for a better budget um it really does and so what I'm thinking uh Dr bril is we dedicate the first meeting to going through the Investments and us just really dwelling on those investment lines and to come back on it and then in the second meeting we start with a uh an overview of special education and then we go into the review of the budget itself and that's on the 20th and if for some reason we don't get to the B

211the final is and I think we probably ought on that second meeting spends block at some time on the capital budget where we go through the line items of the capital budget that we're submitting for the coming year not the 10-year plan the next year budget items so that we as a board can vote to support the capital budget and we can vote to support the operating budget um and you know that gives us on the the 20th if for some reason we don't come to the bottom of it we have a whole 10 days to schedule a second meeting if we need to a special meeting if we need to so that's kind of what I would suggest we do okay Madam chairman do you agree the question I should ask you it's gonna

212be a heavy month in January but yes I agree always is I know it see it feels like there's a lot to accomplish in just those two meetings and there is but if we have to hold a special meeting that's what we'll do so at least it's not a 6 and a half% budget increase I mean we got a something that starts us in a Range that is very reasonable to start working from so that's true okay anything else on the budget before we move on okay all right so um we can move on to the new school building project project um there's nothing major other than uh the fact that we are now out to bid and uh Mr czecho from the NBC said that the bidding climate is very positive they uh anticipate

213bids coming in around the third week of January so um that's just currently uh currently what's going on with the new school and obviously talked about a name so um I recently made a new post for the new new school buildings uh Facebook page and even though the the the new the renderings were shared on the website you know a while ago um we there was a lot a lot of positive feedback on Facebook when they when people saw all of the all the pictures and so people are getting excited so it's an excit Rosa it's an exciting time if I may I I I personally was able to attend the beginning of the pre-bid meeting this morning held at Huckleberry where inperson probably about 30 contractors were there and I couldn't tell you online

214uh how many but I think the expectation was it probably be another 20 online it was a hybrid meeting that was held uh Laurel from OMG ran the meeting um some of you have met her uh through the different meetings and um it was just you you can feel a buzz in the room the contractors are excited it's a big project around the state uh there's a lot of interest uh you know with these these businesses that want to be a part of our our project um and I do have to thank both Dr pep saski and Mrs laano Along with Dan Caldwell and Eric Concklin uh and Mr preny and Mrs Schmidt for making sure that uh technology and Facilities were ready to host that many people uh who walked around and looked at

215every single nook and cranny every closet door had been was open to really analyze people were on the roof of course they walked the the entire grounds it was really a comprehensive pre-bid meeting process uh was the first I've ever been a part of is actually quite impressive so thanks to everybody who helped us make that happen on on the big schedule when do when are we scheduled to award the bid and then when is groundbreaking targeted for top of my head I can't tell you when uh awarding of the bid happens I know they have to be in as Rosa was saying either mid mid January third week of January so the awarding might happen quite quickly after that uh depending on how long that review takes couple of weeks at most I would

216imagine I don't the schedule in front of me Bob um but the it's anticipated if everything goes according to plan mid-march uh we could be breaking ground I know I know OMG wants to break ground as soon as possible they're they're waiting to go and uh it's ex exting really that would be a big event that'll be a that'll be a ground baking moment if Mr Baldwin's still on we need to get a lot of uh Brookfield stickers to put uh emblems stickers to put on the construction helmets we need to be ready to go don't forget that going to be ready yeah so Rosa just won aside and it's always political as hell but there's always a group of people with shovels in their hands at that groundbreaking you and Paul need you and

217Paul and Steve need to start thinking about who should those people be um because you know the Contra the key contractors want to be part of that the town wants to be part of it we want to be part of it the MBC needs to be part of it there's so many people and uh and it's just like you know it's a the same process of us setting up our naming committee it it takes a little work to figure out who that needs to be and get get we ought to get way ahead of that so with six feet apart from everybody we could take the whole length of the front of the building right I I would guess every one of us would like to be part of that and all the prior board

218members who have been part of this process would love to be part of it I just don't think it's possible to have that many people um actually there with shovels so we can't afford that many shovels we can't afford that many shovels or hard hat B shovels yeah I was we have like cardboard shovels they could just be for the picture oh no I heard I heard Eric has a whole bunch of excess uh Chromebooks we could just use those all right so any other questions on the new school all right so we are at three main points this right name budget yeah I was thinking the presentation by the whiner students the new school naming discussion and the budget discussion sounds good all right so upcoming events okay hi all schools have an early

219release on Wednesday the 23rd and are closed Thursday the 24th through January 3rd for winter recess at Center School there is a community meeting and the annual winter Sing Along on Wednesday December 23rd wear your ugliest sweater that will be live streamed at Huckleberry there's a PTO meeting this Friday virtually at 9:30 next week is holiday spirit week on Monday it's holiday hat day where your favorite hat winter hat or holiday hair accessory Tuesday is winter cheer day where your favorite ugly sweater shirt or socks and Wednesday is pajama day and also a schoolwide holiday sing along the time is to be determined on that and at whiskin we have the last winter wonderland Wednesday coming up next Wednesday and that one is show off your festive holiday attire and that's it okay before before

220we go I just wanted to uh give a shout out to the Center School in Huckleberry PTO who did a food drive um the last two or three weeks and had gave out bags of food to people coming to pick up lunches at the high school this week there was an amazing response we collected food at the library the library was one of the um donation locations and it just was amazing seeing cars pull up and dropping off trunk loads of food and then seeing the pictures of everything that was collected uh and given out to families this week so I I think that was just Center School in Huckleberry but if whis skaner was involved too um just a big shout out to everybody who helped in that effort thanks for mentioning that just

221to add to that um probably half the half or more of our administrative team was involved and handouts and helping with collections it was an incredible effort um in collaboration of parents and uh and and our staff it was just great thank you for bringing that up and Mary Rose just noted in the chat that it was all four PTO oh okay right great okay anything else all right well then without objection meeting is adjourned good night everybody happy Holidays happy holidays