001uh mine's on my shirt there you go rosa we're live all right thanks good evening everyone today is wednesday october 7th and i call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order in accordance with executive order 7b suspending sections 1-206-1-225-1-226 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 that url is on is posted on our agenda furthermore such meeting will be recorded or transcribed and posted on the board's website 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
002names and titles if applicable before speaking on each occasion that they speak individuals wishing to participate in public comment portion of the meeting may do so by calling the following numbers the area code is 929-205-6099 or area code 301-715-8592 and the meeting id is 916. okay uh we have all of our oh actually let's uh stand where we are 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 we have all of our board members in attendance tonight um i will make a motion to amend tonight's agenda and move item a of new business to um above public comment so we'll do public comment after um tecton's presentation okay all
003in favor thank you that's unanimous so um tonight we have eddie and jeff from techton and they're on a tight schedule tonight so i wanted to make sure that they had enough time to present and um i'll just hand it over to you guys and um go ahead the floor is yours uh thank you so much uh eddie lewandowski project manager for tekton architects sitting in the car right now with uh antonia cia varela she is going to be the one presenting to you tonight uh basically we're going to be talking to you about well certification for the new elementary school it's a um a process and uh that we've talked about do you want me do you want me to pull up your presentation sorry i don't interrupt but yes yep yep thank you
004so much that would be that would be great if you could post that that's our agenda um okay got it perfect thank you so much so yeah this is a process that we've talked about um for quite some time uh over the course of the project and uh we're getting to the point where it's time to decide if it's something we want to pursue so antonio's going to give you a little bit of specifics about the program and talk about kind of where we are and why a decision might make sense uh at this time great thank you eddie and thank you all for joining the call tonight i'm really excited to chat more about well and uh this is absolutely a conversation so i'm just going to go through a few of the values
005and why they align with the project and the district and the curriculum and tell share a little bit more about how you might achieve certification and what items to consider in your decision making process so first of all what is well it is a sustainable building standard similar to leed except we say that lead is really about the building's relationship to the environment and well is about the people's relationship to their building and that is what sets it apart from a lot of the other sustainable building standards out there is that it's a health-based evidence-based standard it really relies on public health research to enhance human health and well-being next slide so the research tells us that student health impacts student thinking which impacts student performance and as designers and a community of learners and
006educators we really aligned ourselves around those those values to improve student performance across across their lifespan and uh the building where they lit where they learn has an impact on that very profoundly um in fact by 25 percent we can we can impact student learning progress by 25 percent um and that is why buildings that incorporate well-designed principles are so important kids spend 90 percent of their time indoors and only four to seven minutes outdoors in unstructured play so a lot of the other elements that we're incorporating in terms of outdoor classrooms are beneficial to student learning progress as well next slide thank you rosa yes so well fits in and it stands out um we we felt that as we were exploring different opportunities to incorporate wellness in in this project um well aligned
007itself the most to the values and goals of the district and the curriculum to really create a positive human experience but it can also set brookfield apart from other schools in the region and even other well-certified schools through the unique educational approach and design narrative that we've incorporated in in the building we thought that you know we saw in 2019 that brookfield was recognized as a sustainable ct community at the bronze level and so we thought that that value incorporating aligned with with the well building standard and the curriculum focus on progressive project-based learning and 21st century classroom environments um we thought would be a great fit next slide so low certification is quite similar to leed as you'll see you might be familiar with the silver gold and platinum certification levels of lead and
008that is the same in well by achieving a certain number of points you can certify at a certain threshold and then continuously improve from from there so using these 10 impact categories or concepts like air water nourishment light movement thermal comfort sound materials mind and community so even right there you can you can start to see things like nourishment and mind and community really setting the well-building standard apart from from others like lead it's a very collaborative effort between the design the construction teams the owner and the international well-building institute which certifies well buildings so throughout the process once registration begins there will be a really integrated team approach to accomplishing this and there's support every step of the way so the well coaching contact is an individual from the well building institute that will
009be there to assist us as a team and myself as the well ap in making sure that this project is on the right track towards certification next slide the other really important thing about well is that it's not just a one and done which is such a beautiful part of it that this is this is something that the whole community can um identify with and get behind and can really serve to unify in terms of the student involvement and community engagement to really enhance the environmental stewardship component of the learning environment so well does require frequent monitoring so this would for example be studying the air and the water quality at certain points during the year and then submitting those on an annual basis to the international well-building institute and then re-certifying your project every
010three years just to make sure that the building is still performing the way that it was intended to so it's all about continuous improvement and really having that that team-oriented mindset and that collaborative continuous learning mindset towards towards sustainability next perfect there are certain financial benefits um to to well there's there is a roi of wellness you might might be familiar with that and some of those points are that it really allows you to attract and maintain high quality teachers maximizing the performance of staff to reduce absenteeism in both teachers and students and most importantly promote improved health and well-being you can continually improve and lower expenses through the annual reporting process and iwbi has an expertly curated marketing team and pr content that's available to you once you register so setting your project apart
011from from the rest is supported by ida bbi and the content that they'll provide so not only does it give you a reputation of excellence and innovation the ability to retain and attract talent create partnerships in the community in the state but most importantly it's fundamentally about the return of investment on employee engagement and student engagement next slide so how much would it cost per year um and what might you consider when you're trying to decide if well certification is worth it so some questions that you might think about is obviously does it does it fit in with your budget and does the maintenance component fit in with what you envisioned for facilities and their workload and your curriculum does it fit in with your future vision and values for the district and um does
012it really enhance the student learning component as a unique opportunity is is there is there a strong marketing value to this as well so walking through um the actual certification tracks there are two that you could consider there's a subscription model and the single cycle model the single cycle model is a model that has the benefit of lower long-term costs with a higher upfront cost and the they while they both require recertification every three years the single cycle just allows allows you to fund recertification and performance verification every third year instead of carrying a subscription every year so that's i think one of the fundamental differences there the subscription model has a lower upfront cost but you can expect to pay pay on an annual basis for that and both of them require performance verification
013every three years as a part of your recertification so you might be familiar with other subscription models for for other products this is similar to those the single cycle is the different the difference that would just allow you to tackle recertification every three years with performance verification at that point in time so we have budgeted those costs for you just to get a sense on an annual basis for each what you might expect and i think some other things to consider in the subscription model is that the it's a slightly higher cost but what you gain for that slightly higher cost is that your well coach which was engaged in the research in the initial certification process stays engaged for the length of your subscription so as long as you keep renewing your subscription your
014well coach stays a member of your project team and can help you with your annual review submissions another thing that the added cost of the subscription gets you is the opportunity to apply for an optional mid-cycle review and that is something that for example at the year and a half mark you could opt in for that gives the the well reviewer an opportunity to check in on how your building is performing and let you know if there are things that they see that are that are coming up where you might need to adjust as you're looking towards certification in on the third year in the third year so uh i think we can go to the next slide and that um with with all that i know that's a lot to take in so um
015we we're absolutely open for questions but i um just wanted to close in in sharing that um it's absolutely a conversation today and what we were thinking is that there by the november meeting um there could be a direction that we that we um received that at that point in time because it would allow us to incorporate certain elements into the big documents for the contractor by that by that point in time um it doesn't have to be a certified project today you can absolutely wait and certify after the building is occupied and constructed there are advantages to doing it now however and that would be the opportunity to simulate what the systems can truly achieve and um and we have the integrated team on on-call now to be able to do that and to
016submit documents for you and take care of other elements along along the way so that would be those would be some advantages to now but but really the benefit of the well-building certification platform is that it's um it's an all-opportunity sustainable building standard so they are just they're really open to new and existing buildings alike pursuing certification and since this project is being designed to a minimum lead silver with high performance building standards uh the the opportunity to achieve well certification down the road is is absolutely there and we've been tracking your progress on well scorecards throughout each of the design phases uh so that we're ensuring that certain criteria that are unique to well are also captured in the design um so with that i think i'll stop there and ask if there are
017any questions well so i just wanted to let board members on know that um you know like antonio said we don't even if we don't pursue this at this moment now is a good opportunity to ask them questions about this because the nbc is very curious um because you know at least the initial subscription is budgeted for in the new school project if that's something that we really want to pursue so we need to kind of flush out you know where we are how important is this um so that at least you know we can give them an answer in terms of you know what what's our interest in in obtaining this kind of certification yeah absolutely that's a great point rosa so as you said the building committee is interested in putting up some
018of the upfront costs for this but um but to as tony had described there's an ongoing process and we want to make sure that there's you know and they said it themselves that there needs to be somebody who's going to serve as a steward of the program going forward so if the the board of ed seemed like the likely candidate that if there was not an interest in maintaining it then you know there might not be a reason to go for it in the beginning so just want to make sure that the steps that we take now are are propagated throughout the life of the project know i thought bob was leaning forward about to unmute himself oh i was gonna wait until you asked if there were any questions from the board yeah no
019go ahead i have a thousand questions on this um and let me just start with um can you describe a little bit more in detail what is required to achieve the actual certification this was so generally stated it was like there's this criteria and whatnot and it's not apparent to me how hard it is how easy it is how much ongoing effort there is how much is this part of the building project that we just will get as part of the building project versus things that other people have to do how do we understand a little bit more beyond the marketing materials that will provides on what's it really take that's question one question two is how many schools in connecticut are well certified right now do we know could we find out is it
020important uh does it require added staffing i mean how much time is this going to take um and uh how ex how invasive is this uh every three-year certification um next question would be how do we know what this 25 improvement in student learning is i'd love to understand what the under underpinnings of that are that's a big percentage in student learning progress and somebody's got that number somebody studied it i'd like to know how the well-built building actually achieves that um so i have a thousand questions guys i was i was thinking similar to bob's line of thinking i'd i'd love to see some case studies or testimonials from other schools that have gone down this track i think that would be very helpful i mean i love the idea i just don't understand
021it enough yet antonia or probably antonia is are any of those questions um answerable tonight yes absolutely so i can certainly chat um about about those and follow up with some things like the case studies and some more detail on the research behind that 25 but i absolutely can address some elements of each of those questions tonight so starting with the detail on what it takes to achieve well certification um and how challenging it is i would put it in a similar camp as lead so if if you've certified lead projects before they um they can be very technical in terms of their requirements so we rely heavily on our engineering partners to assist us through that process to make sure that we're incorporating the proper systems that are going to be able to perform
022the way that well requires them to perform there are things called crosswalks between lead and well so a lot of the more technical components to achieve certain levels of for example air filtration and water quality those are pretty consistent across lead and well so the fact that we're already pursuing the high performance building standard is getting us some points already towards well certification some unique things we can share the scorecard that we've been working on that will give you a little bit more detail but just to highlight some of the things that we've been thinking about um in terms of for example fundamental water quality controlling for certain air filter controlling certain particles making sure that we have healthy healthy air filtering through the classrooms with certain amount of fresh air there's a nourishment component
023so studying all the healthy food programs that you have already implemented in your lunch program can help us towards well certification making sure that there are the lights that we're putting into the new school distribute light evenly across the classroom they minimize glare making sure that the active spaces like your gyms and um multi-purpose spaces and even some of the outdoor playscapes are all ada accessible and contribute towards certain certain active building components within within the community thermal comfort that the radiant heating that we have going into some of the pre-k class and the radiant ceiling panels that we have going into the classroom environments those are contributing towards thermal comfort features okay stop there yes um i could go on because there's a lot that we're playing so much so i'm gonna i'm gonna
024be more pointed in my question then so um first of all i don't know lead i'm not a building person i'm a i'm a volunteer from the community and so comparing it to lead doesn't help me an awful lot um just as a general comment but the if i'd be interested in understanding you know you said there's 12 12 components that you can get certified on i'm guessing the difference between a bronze a silver and a gold is how many of those you've achieved is that a fair assumption or not a fair assumption exactly so if you have uh if you've achieved just 50 points is the minimum and that will get you your silver certification 60 points for gold and 80 points for platinum okay so my question would be if we were going
025to go for each of those levels what are the things that we would have to do what's coming out of the building project versus what are projects that we would have to kick off ourselves i mean you just mentioned the nutrition study that's not going to come out of a building project that's going to be something that we would have to embark on and what are the other things that we'd have to embark on as a committee that might take time energy and or money and i just don't understand it well enough uh how much of the the certification level of getting to um silver as if that's the minimum would be achieved by just completing the project the school project as we have it defined versus where is the additional effort and can we
026be specific i'd like to see what the checklists are and what are you know what what what is being achieved and how and then when we come to recertification what it what do we do when we have to recertify because most most of the stuff is coming out of the design of the building we're not redesigning the building each time so there must be some detailed process on the recertification that requires certain things to be done who does those things how much energy they're going to take is going to take a lot of time i mean i don't want to be in a position where dr brill comes to us a year from now and says i need two extra people to go coordinate well um and that's not apparent to me i mean i
027love the idea i'm gonna be very frank with you i love the idea i don't understand it well enough yet play on words okay yeah thank you for that comment um i'll i will um take some time to put something together that may is really specific in addressing your question yeah i just uh because if it's worth doing um we should do it i mean in my view um and it's not four thousand dollars a year that worries me or seven thousand dollars a year those are those are small budget elements um it's the time energy and distraction that we need to understand how much we're committing to and that's not clear to me okay thanks we'll follow up on that yep some good questions we didn't like it created it like education for us
028right about what does it really mean uh because the charts that you have from well are the little too general i'll just say that do you have you seen anything on this 25 improvement on the uh on the uh on why they can make the claim that it's a 25 improvement of student progress and learning yeah i i have so it was um it was a collection of schools actually um from england they did a study of all of their schools and what they were able to find is that through design criteria like measurable lighting quality amounts of daylight amounts of artificial light and the quality of that artificial light the number of air exchanges how much carbon dioxide versus fresh air was in the room during the time of learning and then there was
029a softer side to it so there was a chance for students to self-report how much they felt that they had ownership over their classroom in terms of flexible furnishings and how they could create their own space within the classroom to learn comfortable furnishing soft furnishings to make it feel more warm and welcoming like home for them and then they also incorporated test scores so they were able to study some of the schools that had implemented these things versus other schools that hadn't and they were able to um uh equalize for grade levels and i think demographics and other variables they were able to equalize for those and study based on test scores the benefit of the learning environment and isolate that in as much way as clearly as they could there's a paper if there's
030a paper on that i'd love to read it i just make a comment that dr ruby would uh would give her eye teeth to go find something that gave her a 25 boost off just the environment that's uh that's that's uh that's huge in learning progress it really is i'd like to see the uh evidence-based studies on that yeah absolutely exactly one so i'm sorry i could keep dominating with questions yeah are there any other questions from anyone else well i think it's clear that um she's gonna come back with more more detailed information that would probably address most of our questions so i think you covered it bob most of your questions okay yeah i agree i agree with joy that's uh uh you know referrals evidence all that nice to follow up on
031and and you know what um uh uh john i i'd like to ask that before we come back to the board that our elementary principals have a chance to have looked at the information so they can tell us yeah we can manage that right you know we you know they got a lot on our plate right with all these kids and and i just want to make sure that before we as a board embark that you know your facilities manager your uh you're on on on campus administration they're all looking at and saying yeah this is something that we should do and could do and it's not gonna you know impact other things um so it just would be helpful i think for us as a board absolutely this has been uh something we've been
032trying to get on the the agenda and the timing of getting tech done in front of the board um took over um you know with so much going on uh with reopening we haven't had a chance to have techdon in at all lately to chat with our principals on any of this uh this planning and so trying to get that back on board i think that's a great idea i mean if in fact all those things are all good things so i'm just gonna say that but it's uh it's a matter of you know knowing what you're embarking on that's all right okay so uh eddie and antonia do you you are you guys clear on um sort of your comebacks that we'll need to kind of readdress this in the near future yeah absolutely
033so yeah we will uh we will get you uh basically the detail on um kind of what what the scorecard is what the points we're pursuing are uh yeah better detail on what the ongoing commitment is what uh what is the level of effort required by school or district staff ongoing um yeah we'll provide the case studies on uh the test scores um and i know yeah bob you are also looking to see how many other schools in the state were uh were well certified uh referrals and yeah yeah if there's any referrals that we could talk to get their experience at how hard it was that would be really helpful great okay all right we're gonna try and get that to you in the next week or two so that you have some time
034to digest it before the next meeting and uh and distribute it around um who should we send it to rosa would you be the point of contact for that yeah that would be great thank you okay all right can i just ask a question eddie yes please you just mentioned uh the term case studies so is is that all the uh the evidence that we would have to review would be case studies with regard to impact of these projects on student outcomes or are there any um you know larger scale studies that are done by independent people just not you know that are beyond a case study type of uh body of data so the um in terms of other well schools that would be a case study um or a project story or a
035i guess a project profile type um type read but the 25 is absolutely an evidence-based study and i can send others too so the evidence-based studies wouldn't directly um evaluate well buildings but they would highlight certain design principles that are incorporated in the well-building standard that show that the impact on learning and those would be done by independent people not by people that were involved with well or correct individual okay great thank you yep so we'll have uh both sets to you okay all right great any other comments or questions all right thank you guys great thank you i appreciate you uh you've given us some time tonight and thank you for letting us uh early in the meeting tonight no problem have a good night guys have a good evening thank you okay so
036um up next on our agenda is public comment i i don't think i see any no i don't see any phone numbers on here um [Music] eric they would be sort of in the waiting room right i mean should i give it a second if they're calling in that's correct normally you'd have um public comment earlier so they would have already been on waiting yeah okay um so i don't think we have anyone for public comment so we can move on to the student representative hi i'm tambie chanru and this brookfield high school student representative so in general i do think that students have been adapting really well to virtual learning as have the teachers um students have also said that they felt more grateful for seeing people in person because we're on zoom all
037day and we are learning how to adapt very well and the teachers have also been very flexible with extra help and um helping us in and out of class and then as for clubs there are a lot of our clubs have um started the national honors society has started virtual tutoring um peer counselors we are trying to plan something for the new students um which right now we're thinking of a sort of um mask break during our lunches and we also we have a new human rights club which i'm also a part of and we spoke to mr belanda but um as a starting point i wanted to take the temperature of the school which is basically through a google form it asks questions about how students feel in the school or if they have
038ever felt discriminated in some way which we would pass out during english classes and or not pass out send through english classes and we're also trying to implement a diversity day or week near the end of this year or the beginning of next year where we would basically try to bring awareness to different types of discriminat discriminatory problems in the world through videos or speakers if we could get speakers by that time and then lastly for the seniors um we have been really grateful that we have a sort of normalcy with going to school and seeing each other face to face um but i think a lot of us are just curious about what we could do with events because i know a lot of them can't happen like homecoming or football games um and
039we can't have big gatherings so we wanted to know if anything could happen outdoors like through the powder puff games that we used to have or we basically just want to know what we could do and also recently as of i believe last this past weekend there has been a petition going around about the class of 2020 sign in front of the school and about taking it down and as the class of 2021 we do understand that the 2020 students didn't have a normal ending to their senior year however they have now become the class of 2024 of their respective colleges um we as a new senior class are going through a lot of unknowns but we would like to have some sort of recognition like the class of 2020 did and um the years
040before them so i'm hoping that this petition could be considered because every small gesture would would really be huge for us and yep that's all thank you i don't know if there's any questions does anybody have any questions for danby all right well thank you so much thank you have a good night okay up next we have written correspondence okay heather buckley wrote regarding school reopening and the return to 100 in person learning monique matthews wrote regarding the full reopening of schools nancy brown wrote regarding the cohort schedule christy rondini wrote regarding the hybrid model ron jaffe wrote regarding active shooter drills tatiana preston wrote regarding curriculum and budget concerns anna prendi wrote regarding lunch distribution and mask breaks tess hegarty wrote regarding the equity subcommittee and stacy ogden wrote regarding school reopening okay thank
041you now on to approval of board minutes i'll move that the brew the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on september 16th do i have a second a second thanks boy all in favor aye aye thanks that's unanimous uh the superintendent's update all right thank you rosa so i have a number of items to share with everyone uh this evening and thank you for the time um good news uh just as tanvi was discussing about um activities and things being virtual um working with mrs alvida odyssey of the mind is running virtually this year and mrs almeida is our district coordinator and so we are working on that and uh ensuring that our volunteer coaches uh understand via the permission slip uh as well as um a um orientation with mrs almeida that
042they do each year that everything has to be virtual and when materials are dropped off they engage in social distancing and the commitment to doing all of those kind of things so she's working with the greater odyssey of the mind group um the state group to make sure all of those are instituted and students uh continue to get that experience so we're excited about that um our equity and inclusion subcommittee actually this past monday sent out an invitation to the community for people to apply i guess is the best word to say to be part of that subcommittee from the community we want to gather a broad broad and vast swath of different stakeholders to be a part of the committee and i'd actually like to turn it over to our chair of the committee
043amy foster to share a little bit about that i know she's already got some inquiries from uh interested people thanks john um as dr burl mentioned he and dr ruby and jen laden and myself met twice on september 23rd and september 30th to begin the planning and formation of the subcommittee we discussed broad goals and membership and also decided to name the committee the equity and inclusion committee which is in alignment with similar work that's happening at the state level uh we composed a letter to the community as community as dr bruhl mentioned that was sent out on monday october 5th and anyone interested can email me at my door address foster at brookfieldps.org we're accepting the applications through october 23rd and i think we've had about seven or eight i've had about seven or
044eight already come in and we're planning to reconvene next month review the applications and make a final determination of memberships and hopefully have a full committee meeting at the beginning of december hopefully that's a lot of that thanks amy um jen uh jen laden or dr ruby do you have anything to add to that i don't mean to put anybody on the spot there was anything else anybody wanted to share jen or dr no i i think that you guys both captured it and we're pretty excited about this work because it aligns with a lot of the other things that we're doing thank you absolutely it really does um i think it's going to be great work to bring our community together um another uh update um just to let everybody know uh as uh
045tommy uh briefly mentioned athletics is underway uh through the ciac so everybody knows what's going on competition started last week and continued through this week we uh it's important for everybody to know with the sports everything is pretty much running as normal with the exception of volleyball the student athletes have to wear it's an indoor sport and so the way that's set up through the ciac through the department of public health they need to wear a mask while they play um the football 11 on 11 has been canceled for the fall at this point we are engaging along with others uh other uh league teams in seven on seven passing league uh so the students could get involved with that and and the linemen are working on different linemen competitions uh and so forth so
046that is going on to keep the kids involved and engaged in competing and the camaraderie of being involved in athletics um and then something we're doing and i have to compliment uh certainly mr baldwin and mr bolland on we are we're a school and been a leader frankly in our league and making sure that while social distancing protocols have to be in place and we have to know uh going back to the well conversation of what we can actually manage and what we have the capacity to do as a district we are allowing two fans family fans per uh student athlete and so there's a badge and i guess a lanyard they use and so we want to make sure our families could be involved but still adhere to distancing protocols and so forth so
047um we're excited that the student athletes have an opportunity to participate this year um there is something that's the ciac is talking about and that is an 11 and 11 11 on 11 football season in the modified football season in the spring as more information comes on that we'll certainly share it with you um we had two parent surveys go out recently on september 30th we had a parent survey that really asked parents to give us some feedback on hybrid learning thus far there was open ended questions as well as specific questions uh for them to answer and we really looked at the challenges and strengths of the strengths of that um and and probably common theme that came across uh was that the parents definitely could use some training in technology specifically if you
048looked at the again the broad swath of things was google classroom and zoom uh some more training there so as a as a team we talked this week the administrative team leadership team um with mr conklin as well and uh talked about looking at some recorded opportunities that we could put a brookfield touch on and then share with our family so that's something we're continuing to look at and being responsive to our parents the other piece is the survey that went out on monday for our uh move and transition to 100 in person on november 9th and and that is will uh parents have their children um would that change be remote learners or continue as in-person learners and so that's uh something that we're we've gotten the feedback from parents on that k through
049eight and uh not all parents have responded so each team at the school is calling those parents who haven't responded so we can know our exact counts so we can be setting up our rooms the budget development process uh just began um on september 28th mr post provided the materials for our principals and department heads uh so they could start developing uh their their bottoms up budget working with their staff next meeting two weeks from now i will put forth the budget assumptions and priorities as is part of our annual tradition to bring forward to the board for approval so those will be those priorities going forward as we develop the budget and we could all be on the same page and certainly when i put that forward that's the proposal and certainly we we
050have a discussion about that like we do each year um snow days interesting i wanted to share something about snow days a lot of people have asked questions now that we have kind of established remote days as possible and something we could do and the state accepts those as attendance days for school is that going to happen for snow days right now the answer is technically no um the state board of education is actually taking up this topic this month just last week uh the regional superintendent group that that i'm with the western connecticut group had a conversation a zoom meeting and the commissioner was on and he uh shared with us that the governor's executive order applies to remote learning counting for the pandemic not for other snow days and right now snow days
051don't count as emergency days so they're working on that they understand you know the commissioner certainly understands the logic of a remote day as working for us and working for school systems in the state that that can provide that for their students so that's being worked on i want the public to know on the board to know that it hasn't fallen on deaf ears it's being worked on and as soon as i know more i'll certainly communicate that with you um the other piece just before we move on to the meeting with the commissioner i just wanted to share a little bit about that i'm meeting with commissioner on friday but before i go into that i'd like to just turn it over to mrs diamond just to share a little bit we always like
052it this time of year to continue updating everyone on kindergarten enrollment and with that obviously this is a very different year a very unique year that we than we've ever had so mary rose if you share a little bit for us just to give us an update sure um we currently have 134 kindergartners um and that is a hard number for us we you know we there's little uh you know back and forth with students we're in the process of withdrawing not withdrawing and not answered but that is where we currently are we have about 15 students in the class which is at the bottom of our the lower end of our um of our guidelines um and we're most of them are are you know fully in class with us every day so that
053model has been going really well we just met with teachers today go over some data and started them assessing so it's actually to be uh quite beneficial for the students who are in that those classes the little the smaller classes but that's where we currently are thank you mary rose i'm meeting with the commissioner this friday uh some of the topics that i asked him to talk to me about and then we're bringing him into our area superintendent group meeting next week but i wanted to prepare them on some of the state guidance inconsistencies coveted testing for schools alignment and coherence and coordination of the different state departments such as department of public health and the state department of education um you know we're thinking of the challenges we face locally and and how the
054commissioner can help us the budget and grants uh regarding coronavirus relief and so forth there's also um legislation with law enforcement and sros and we want to talk about that with him um and and those are some of the the main pieces but i wanted you to know those are some topics uh certainly board members i have the opportunity and i have the commissioners here this friday so you know certainly uh in the next day or two if you think of something you'd like me to ask the commissioner about please send send it my way i'd really appreciate that feedback i also had a couple of before i opened up the questions i had a couple of questions that have come in um and mrs brooks and i had a chance to chat a little
055bit and there were some basic questions about going 100 that uh some people have been posing either to me or to mrs brooks and i thank her for sharing those with me um so when when people talk about returning to school um and changing their mind let's say they say they want to be an in-person learner and they want to change to remote they can do that that's still an option for people um on a basic i work with this every day the team works with us every day so we kind of know the rules and the guidelines the remote option while temporary is still an option the state is providing for parents we will be putting out uh an update regarding expectations for parents for remote learners and that comes directly from the from
056the state department of ed we shared that over the summer but people forget and we want to make sure that people understand the responsibilities part of that is allowing their students to come in for for short bits of time for assessments that we need to understand where their students are at so we'll be we'll be sharing that update soon um there was another question about children returning 100 uh will they have the same teacher the answer is yes on that so they're not going to change if we're not planning for changes in classrooms or anything like that um um the middle school will they still be staying in one classroom right now that's the plan i just talked with mr renda earlier this week and that's the plan for now um so everybody knows the
057desks that we needed for the different schools and the shields have all arrived and we're working on the installation into the classroom and the assembly and all of that so the students will remain in the same model at the middle school that was a question um there was a question about social distancing at the high school social distancing the rules haven't changed that's that three to six feet the mask wearing et cetera so we won't um some of the difficulty and uncertainty right now with trying to go not only in feeding the students and lunch waves at the high school um the other the other issue is just space and how do we you know with all the offerings that we have and the class size how do we make this work and at a
058minimum students have to be three feet apart so um that doesn't change in terms of the the requirements um and all elementary students will have shields on their desks that was a question that had come up so i want to make sure everybody knows that um lunch will still be in the classroom k through eight that was a big part of us getting the shields because that's that's another while not required but it is a mitigating uh opportunity for us and let's see what else um i think that was about it i just wanted to make sure i got to those questions because those were just some basic fundamental questions i wanted to have clarity on for people so if anybody has questions for me i'm i'm finished thank you john i think that'll be
059helpful for people good thanks dev i appreciate you sharing some of those with me that was really important thank you any other questions for dr burrell okay thank you welcome all right on to subcommittee reports first up is cape okay so um i'm gonna do my best to summarize our meeting and if i miss anything mike and joy jump in or maureen and other people to fill in what i miss uh the purpose of our meeting was to review some of the work that has been done to date on student placement in world language at the middle school and high school so we wanted to understand sort of uh the background and things that had gone on prior to some of us being on the board of education so we understood placement um so the
060administration put together a presentation for us really kind of the big picture is that social studies requirements have increased over time and as a result students need to be in social studies every year from in middle school what had happened years ago is that students coming from the aia yes problem excuse me um ais program uh which is the magnet school there had been this custom where um sort of informally teachers would place them ahead of their grade uh without sort of any data to support it and as a result what happened over time is that they were starting to miss social studies instruction which is a state requirement there was also some testing done which determined that since we've implemented elementary spanish that are the students who have gone through brookfield schools and um
061other students in other schools like ais had similar proficiency levels in spanish there wasn't a a big difference um and one of the things that was sort of stressed in the presentation is that in any program there's going to be different levels of student readiness and performance um but the it's the work of the teacher to differentiate instruction uh to meet the needs so one exam yes in a typical middle school class you might have a student who's reading at the fourth grade reading level a student who's reading at the sixth grade reading level and a student who's reading at the 10th grade reading level who are all in the same uh ela class and work to differentiate that leveled readings uh because one of the things that's really important about a middle school model
062is heterogeneous grouping um and so in our spanish program and our ela program and social studies you name it that's kind of the concept of a middle school so that was something that was emphasized to us as being important we discussed a little bit about students who the opportunity to take a high school class if you're in middle school if you are at a higher level in something like spanish and uh we learned that it logistically is very very difficult because the schedule for high school it's a block schedule the time is different and it would uh really not benefit the student it would disrupt them so much just to take this one class but one thing that does happen when they get to the high school is that if you once you get to
063the high school if your proficiency is higher that's when you can be accelerated into a higher level of foreign language um and so those opportunities are there uh once students get to the high school um and anyway we asked a lot of questions to sort of dig into it uh and understand the issue but ultimately the subcommittee um understood the sort of recommendation and process and uh supported it and then the last thing is we discussed [Music] that we would love in future cape meetings to start to have some presentations about curriculum initiatives um and not necessarily curricular approval items so that we could sort of stay abreast of how curriculum is developing uh in the digital we can hear from them how things are being developed over time and we're going to share some
064suggestions to dr ruby about what those might be but we're real the administration sort of saying you know what this is what we'd like you to understand this is an important initiative and that way we felt like then we could um the community how curriculum is uh evolving and that that we make in curriculum was that it jen i feel like you're cutting out so i don't know if you were done or if you're just frozen too many people using the internet just yeah i can piggyback what jen said because i know she was cutting out a lot but i just wanted to say that yeah there i mean there's so many opportunities to be afforded to students just through differentiated instruction so that's such a powerful many powerful tools that a teacher holds so
065and you know the importance of we really value social studies and we really don't support the neglecting of social studies and like jen said it's a state mandate so i i think can you hear me now yep yeah my back room for some reason all of a sudden the internet dropped so i have to move a new room in my house periodically so yes that was that was the overview and sorry to dramatic have a less dramatic ending there sorry it's okay thank you all right any any questions for that for for jen all right so we can move on to policy and communications okay uh the policy and communications committee met on september 16th and really the bulk of our discussion was about a new policy that you'll see in your packet tonight for
066first read and it's a policy that involves face masks so you'll be seeing in the in the next several meetings new policies coming up that all pertain to pandemics unfortunately we weren't planning on this at this time but it has become necessary so the policy that we really spent time on in our last meeting was the one particularly pertaining to face masks and definitions of face masks uh very clear instructions about when the masks should be worn and also very explicit instructions about any exceptions to wearing face masks and um this has been reviewed by our nurse coordinator john i don't know if you had the most recent conversation and made some changes with mrs from mrs laforgia so i don't know if you want to um go into any detail about that i believe
067those are highlighted in red on the pollen yeah i i don't think there's really any major changes that change the substance of the of the policy um anything in red you can the board themselves can see um and again this is for a first reading so um there is uh you know you're not supposed to have paper face masks um uh face shield we added the language um clearly those plastic shields are not um a substitute for the close fitting face mask um and then and then you'll see there's just two other uh areas in red we didn't want to about i think it's the fourth page we didn't want to um lock in to a a mask break time limit um we work with the the guidelines in terms of no more than 15
068minutes without a mask which is usually the lunch time um but then you know we we have standards of one to two minutes for mass breaks maybe five to ten per snack and so we want to be able to have the flexibility there in in knowing how many times these guidelines have changed it's very difficult to change policy so we wanted to leave that open and then um i think the last one debbie look here um there was just one line regarding nebulizers that actually um didn't belong in this cave policy we did we talked about it a little bit in the um policy subcommittee finally got some more um information from medical and just doesn't need to be in there in the policy so that one's crossed out but again it's first read um
069so we can get feedback to debbie certainly um if when people have questions about this over the next couple of weeks so that that was it for really the policy portion of our meeting we also spent some time talking about communications and um [Music] we thought it was important that we provide the public with sort of a budget recap since we didn't go we didn't have the opportunity to have a referendum last may um so we've been working and you're talking for the current for everybody to know right the 2021 budget right right right for the 2021 budget um we thought it was important for people to know where we netted out with the budget and with um savings that were achieved through covet and pull ahead purchases that we were able to make last
070spring so we've worked on um a document that is just about finished we're just waiting for some comments and make a couple small tweaks and then that will be put out on the district website for people to see so that was pretty pretty much it for policy and communications okay thank you does anyone have any questions okay so we can move on to the consent agenda okay i will make a motion that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are new hires and resignations okay that one to bob thanks okay any discussion here okay all in favor aye aye thanks you that that is unanimous on to new business and we can move straight to strategic planning master planning timeline and this is just an action item um so i'll actually turn
071it over to dr burrell here and um go ahead all right uh eric are you there are you able to put that up for us i know he has trouble with his internet before so i wanted to double check yes i am john i'm just finding it great thanks eric take your time i had it and then i lost internet so i see your comment there eric spectrum's reporting outage is all over wow tough night tonight for everybody so as the screen is coming up i wanted to let everybody know that one of the items that the pandemic slowed us down on as a board was really we're we're in an initial kind of uh rebooting and uh re-look at our strategic coherence plan uh being at the time four years into it four and
072a half years into it and achieving almost all of our goals we were really looking to move forward um and with the difficulty of the budget process um and some of the challenges we were facing and then right into the pandemic we had to put this on the back burner last year you all will recall that in late fall we adopted the very broad swath of portrait of the graduate and uh there's a lot of work that needs to go into that but the the big main ideas of what we wanted to do there this master planning timeline uh dr ruby and i worked with mr costa for med advance who's always helped us with our organization and planning when it comes to strategic planning um over the last couple of weeks and these plans
073this planned document here is just to to inform the public and get the board thinking um in our administrative team and all of our leaders thinking about the big projects that are out there and what we're already working on and what we need to think about working on and in each colored bar there are plans that are almost all developed and some plans yet to be developed but we have a timeline here over the next three years and so i'll just briefly walk through and let everybody know that these are the things we're thinking about and certainly as we move into a board retreat uh where the board will be doing the self-evaluations and setting some goals in the in the work we're thinking about as an administrative team um a leadership team is worth
074settling down uh i don't know settling down but settling into our new normal of what the year is looking like um we need to talk about uh those those things that are certainly more lofty than just the managerial day-to-day managerial things we need to think about student learning and what we want for our kids because that just can't stop and so just to share with you some of those big pieces that are there you know for really for the next year and a half we need to be thinking about the ongoing code management of course as i just discussed the strategic planning team and what that's going to look like in planning and reflecting revising the current plan to reflect what we want to continue to evolve as a district the impact of covid on
075our students and the assessments we're doing um beginning uh in the coming weeks i just mentioned that about really needing to get benchmarks on our um remote students as well as our students who are in person and then the adjustments we'll be making you know somewhere around mid-year going through the end of the year and you know thinking about that the teaching and learning we just jen was just talking about the cape uh committee work but not the cape committee work meaning the curriculum specialists work the principles work all of our uh instructional leaders work in the curriculum revision and alignment and development all that work that's ongoing that will continue to be ongoing that's there in the purple all related to teaching and learning there of course number five number six i had mentioned
076the portrait of the graduate in in in nes they called the vision for learning you know ultimately what do we want to do with that portrait for the graduate what do we want for our students and then from there backwards design um and that goes right in line with all the the curriculum work that's been you know under under dr ruby and mrs farias and our principals and our department heads and instructional leaders uh the equity and inclusion committee we just talked about that tonight so you know kind of codifying this in one document you can start to see the big picture of all these different things we're working on how they start to at least fit together in terms of the direction of the district um policy we just talked about that with mrs
077brooks ongoing policy revision one of the things i talked about about five years ago when i got here was you know approaching policy a little bit differently various board members who have been on the police served on the policy committee have put in enormous amounts of work and so is the administrative team and our directors uh to to develop our policies um there are different ways to go about that and i think i'd like to talk about that again with our um current policy members uh policy committee members because what's happening is while we're working hard on these policies there's only so much time to meet during the year and inevitably there's a a snow cancellation or something of one of those meetings and then there's changes that come up you know like debbie was
078just mentioning with the pandemic the the policy we just talked about tonight face mass policy probably touches ultimately about 20 different policies um and so there's a lot of work that has to go into that that interrupts the other work we're trying to do we've talked about mr post trying to work on leading and finishing the 3000 series and certainly our director of human resources mrs kavanagh really leading and working on the 4000 series which that face mass policy touches the 4000 series as well as the 5 000 and so there's ways to go forward on that i really want the policy committee to start thinking about different that different way um and as part of that i just want people to know we've probably only completed in five years about 20 of the policies
079and so at that rate we still have policies from the 80s and while the very nice policies they need to be updated and um so that's i don't mean to spend that much time on it but it's very important that we take a look at our process because it's it's just hard to make progress um and we need to think about that number nine start time implementation everybody will recall we worked on changing the start times with the the new school coming on board for uh fall of 2022 so that's something you can see there on the timeline number 10 is the actual transition to the new school building and what's the organization of the building going to look like we need to start planning that after the holidays um the new building construction and
080all the ongoing work with capital um again we just had a facility committee meeting tonight we were talking a lot about capital work but of course the new school construction project um and i'll save for rosa when we get to the new school recap she could talk about the grant that we just was just voted in by the legislature number 12 all of the technology infrastructure that has to be in place to make all of this work um and uh you know the the typical three to five year plan of the technology plan how that fits in and then of course all the professional development and training that goes along with all of these things so you could see you know to operate our district and then to move our district forward to the to
081what we uh want to see for our students there's a lot that has to go into this i wanted to make sure that not only the board but the public knew that there is a overarching timeline and plan over the next couple of years to work on that each of these bars will have its own various plans underneath that it's like i said some are near completion like the technology plan is a very good you know kind of layout of what the next couple of years is going to look like others are ongoing some are yet to be really started we've done some thinking but we need work uh to be done on that so anyway that's uh that's the master plan timeline i wanted to share tonight i didn't know if there might be
082any questions or if you don't have any questions so i'm all set thank you for listening thank you any questions i i just have one about the start time implementation so it looks like that do you mean like the scheduling changes and everything like that yes so you think okay so that won't start until 2022. yeah and you know what now that you say that i could see how it could be interpreted that way so there might be we need to make some kind of notation or marking on that uh but it's not supposed to start until the fall with the building project which would be fall of 20 of 2022 but obviously we need to make sure we have january there as a marker because we want to make sure we're getting in place
083communicating working with the bus company et cetera you know and if there's any modifications to what we because by that time in january of 2022 which is two years away right two years away yep year and a half away um you know and we made this decision about six months ago five months ago things may change and so if things change we need to start getting people ready for that so right okay any other questions all right thank you thank you okay up next we have um a policy okay i will make a motion that the board approved policy number four one one eight point two three seven four two one eight point two three seven five one four one point eight face mass and coverings for a first read as recommended by the policy
084communications subcommittee thanks joy um any discussion on this okay so um actually amy when does the policy committee meet next just in case there's any um our next meetings in two weeks so like the 21st yeah by the end of uh next week if there's any uh questions clarifying questions or comments just have them to amy um by next friday does that sound okay today i'm sorry to debbie sorry yeah next friend i just had one just kind of structural question what's the numbering on this it's the weirdest numbering for a policy i've ever seen this is from cabe right so right this touch is certified and non-certified in the 4000 series bob that's those are those two there and then it is for students as well and it crosses over in five thousand series
085that's why it's okay that way so this is actually three policies in one is that what you're saying yeah okay got it and then you can see actually on the last page or second to last page the list of other policies that will be coming down the pike that are all you know intertwined with this one so right now we're just starting with this one and then in our next meeting we'll start to attack the other ones but if you could get comments to me um like by the end of next week that would be good okay okay so all in favor aye thanks that's unanimous as well okay uh on to old business and we have the new school building project um so the two main updates that i have for you guys um
086i had emailed and kind of filled you in and it's been posted the great news the state legislature um formally approved the grant promises for all the new school construction projects across the state including 16 over 16 million dollars for our town so that's good that was um you know what we had expected and it's great that um now that that has been promised to us that's a big big step in the project but that is kind of piggybacked on some good news that has somewhat of a qualification to it last week the i think it was last week the inland wetlands committee commission has conditionally approved the project to move forward so in in total as sort of a summary of the wetlands issue there is about 22 000 square feet of wetlands that
087will be disturbed by the project and we as the project as a whole has a plan to mitigate restore or improve about 95 um of those wetlands but there's about a thousand square feet of wetlands low quality that is still unaccounted for it's it's essentially disrupted so the wetlands commission has approved the project to go forward um with the condition that we create 4 000 square feet of new wetlands um either on-site or on an adjoining property so that's um that's sort of where the project is at right now that's sort of a challenge that um you know they're gonna have to have to work through but um john was there any update in terms of um you know is there a plan to do that yet i don't think the the nbc i haven't
088met with them just yet so um you know i don't have any any further information i'm actually meeting with um mr checko tomorrow with eddie um just to start talking about some site specific uh with omg so i can ask him tomorrow um and then uh what's great about this meeting tomorrow is it's getting nearer nearer to groundbreaking which is in and this doesn't quite answer your question but i want to get this out there is um so i certainly can ask him tomorrow i don't have any new information on that posted groundbreaking in either march or uh april um we're gonna have a conversation with laurel from omg um who's already been out with techdon and met with uh mrs lavroshano over the summer but we're gonna have some conversations we've got some site
089draft drawings to take a look at and then as soon as we have this meeting we'll be scheduling another one and then we'll have administration building administration involved because it's gonna this is a heck of an undertaking and they need to be involved um they've been involved from the outset but there's you know buses and parking for staff and drop off for parents and play for the students i mean this is going to be a heck of an undertaking um and we need to make sure everybody's involved and everybody's uh creativity and uh very intelligent minds and leadership uh is on the planning for this so we can make sure it's everything's clearly communicated i mean just to put it out there and plant the seed for people you know there may be a couple
090of months at a time where parking may have to be staged somewhere else you know there we're we're thinking of all kinds of things this is a very large project um and we have a lot of driving to the school right now we don't know what things will look like in the spring but if we have that same mass of cars coming in how do we manage all of this so these are these are things we have to be ready for and that's not just this spring to end the school year if we ground break let's say in march or april that's a couple of months then we really ground break and start to demolish the the front building the existing building that upsets the parking driveway access you know a lot of things changing
091in the following school year which would be the 21 22 school year that's where a lot of patients is going to be needed on all parts to make that work on the outside of the building the inside of the building won't be affected and that was the whole point of this plan is to make sure the students aren't affected in terms of their learning inside the building and their safety um so i wanted to put that out for people to be thinking about and and obviously as we get closer and those plans get developed we'll certainly be communicating those anyone have any questions okay okay so we can actually get to three main points i was thinking maybe we would start off with the well presentation from tecton and then i thought maybe uh the
092discussion about the equity and inclusion committee and then i thought maybe a recap of john's remarks about returning to a hundred percent on november 9th does that make sense yeah i'm just gonna look myself yeah i think um yeah i think that was the part of john's update that was really important i thought as well somewhere we gotta mention that the states approve the monies for us though i don't know where you can watch that uh we could probably slide in when we talk about the well you know sort of like a little update on general update on the building project yeah okay okay all right sounds good all right upcoming events okay all schools are closed on monday october 12th for columbus day at center elementary this friday october 9th is a spirit day
093tuesday october 13th is a pto meeting at and fall conferences are upcoming the end of the month october 26 to 28 those are virtual at huckleberry thursday october 8th is picture day for cohort b and thursday october 8th is also a picture day for cohort c from 4 to 6 pm a schedule was sent home for parents to follow and their fall conference is also virtual october 26th through 28th at whiskaner 8th graders will be taking the psats cohort a and remote learners will take them on tuesday october 27th and cohort b on thursday october 29th an email was sent regarding that on september 30th and brookfield high school the class of 2021 will take the school day sat on wednesday october 14th at the high school okay thank you okay um one thing i
094just wanted to add that i completely forgot to mention it at the beginning of our meeting but um the board of education meetings will um at least for now continue to be on zoom we tried for the for the last couple of meetings to meet um in person and the library was really the only um space where we could be socially distant but the problem with the library at the high school is that um the unless we're actually close together with microphones and everything um it's it's difficult and um to pick up our audio and and video so we were having to be on zoom anyways i'm not exactly getting that collaborative feeling and of course it required um you know the disinfection of the library after we left so that students could return the
095next day so we just felt that it was a little more um it was a little less cumbersome on staff and um we have to be on zoom anyways so um at least for the foreseeable future we will be returning our meetings to zoom so um i hope everybody is okay with that and can understand uh the logic behind it so um we do have an executive session tonight so uh amy i'll let you read the motion i will make a motion that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing strategy and negotiations as it relates to collective bargaining and continuing its discussion of the superintendent's goals second thanks bob all in favor aye aye okay that's unanimous so um that will conclude our publicly broadcasted portion of tonight's evening so um
096thanks everyone you