Board of Education Meeting 8/19/2020 @ 7pm

001name you hold on thanks here we go there you go thank you that's power frozen nobody say anything bad so we're good we are live all right so good evening everyone today is wednesday august 19th 2020 and i call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order so let's 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 so we have all of our board members here tonight except for joy greenstein um so for public comment tonight we're going to be doing things how the town has started to do them which i think works really well so public comment tonight will can only

002be made by calling into the zoo meeting i'll provide the numbers in a minute but they're also posted on the agenda that's posted on the district website you must identify yourself before being allowed into the meeting and you'll immediately be put into the waiting room and then one at a time you'll be entered into the meeting when you're in please state your name and address each person will have one three-minute segment same as always and once you've made your comment please exit the meeting and continue watching the live stream on youtube any remaining phone participants at the conclusion of public comment will be removed from the meeting so just to give anybody time to jot this down the numbers to call in are nine two nine zero or 301-715-8592 and the meeting id is 913

003nine six zero four two three seven five okay so mr bolando one at a time let's absolutely we do have one person and the in the waiting room so i will let that person in now okay last three numbers are 948 so okay so uh welcome please uh state your name and address for the record last three numbers are 948 so okay so uh welcome please uh state your name and address for the record and you might want to mute um your computer if you're also watching the youtube stream yep i did that so there we go is it okay yep okay laura orban 95 stoney hill road um and i wanted to just mention i understand it's not a dialogue and that's fine um i just wanted to mention some of the things that

004the parents have had questions about that we haven't been able to get answers to and hopefully doing it in this forum will make it a little bit easier to get those answers because it's not clear who is supposed to answer which of the questions some of them seem like they should be answered at the district level and when you email and don't get a response then it's not really it's not really clear if the right people know that we're waiting for these answers so i will run through them quickly and i can email them after there's a lot of questions about privacy and concerns around the use of cameras for zoom are kids in the classroom going to appear on zoom in kids homes if so will parents have to sign a consent form to

005have their kids appear on zoom in people's homes or in daycare if not how will group projects work will parents be asked to sign an agreement not to record what's happening in the class when their student is remote if the only thing that remote learners see is the teacher and they're not able to see anyone in the class how is that any different from watching a video how will we manage parents watching every zoom and scrutinizing the way the teachers do their work and speak to students i don't think we want that how is the teacher going to manage a class without saying students names assuming that the privacy issue is not resolved there were a couple of other things how does synchronous learning work for kids that are in daycare or in an environment

006where there is not a dedicated adult to constantly manage their ability to fix technical issues log in to zoom or otherwise help them when they need it and will students be allowed to go outside like on the playground and whether it's on the playground or not well getting too close to other kids or removing masks be treated as a disciplinary issue so thank you for all of your hard work getting everything together and thank you in advance for your help with these questions i will email them to the board of ed and look forward to all of your help going forward and our support of you thank you laura is there anyone else for a public comment nobody else in the uh waiting room right now but i can keep you posted okay um well

007if there's no one else in the waiting room maybe all of the questions have gotten filtered through uh mrs orman so um let's move on to written correspondence okay uh jeremy farrell tess hegarty sahil kazar and saliha denman wrote regarding the subcommittee on race equity and diversity jenna scottino wrote regarding virtual meeting security christine lajava wrote regarding transportation jillian beswick and jenny mccaffrey wrote regarding food service monique matthews wrote regarding social media ron jaffe shared information about a children's play about racism and laura orban jamie clavins denise herrera kristen and gary lennisi courtney madison heather buckley trina capone thomas shevlin melissa mcfarland stacy mciver ron jaffe crystal ramos olivia quinslen melissa mahmoody kathryn nam kristen longo evan and jessica juska nancy brown sean sylvester chris and charisse payne and kimberly girardi wrote regarding school reopening

008a lot of emails thank you thank you amy okay um approval of board minutes i move that the board approve the minutes from the regular meeting on july 15 2020 and the special meeting on july 22nd 2020. thanks bob any discussion on these okay all in favor aye all right thank you it's unanimous uh the superintendent's report thank you rosa um and and boy do i um appreciate uh the public comment and also the emails that have come in over the last few weeks regarding reopening it's uh certainly uncertain times and um even with the parent q a sessions and the frequently asked questions document and spending a lot of time responding to the emails that people have sent there's just a lot of questions out there the media is covering reopening constantly news is

009changing constantly and and we know all too well with this amazing leadership team and and what they've sacrificed in terms of their time and their their families this summer um we're reinventing school not only reinventing school health and wellness and operations we're also uh reinventing instruction in terms of what we're doing with technology and and remote and uh even in person the way we're going to be set up school will not look different and uh i empathize with everybody who's having unsettled feelings i have them too um and we're really working very very hard uh to to make this work for all of us as best we can um i wanted to go through a few of the things that are i would call health and wellness and operational um so i'm on the record

010because um there are some um questions that come in that we have answered that are in all of the different letters and documents that we've documented and recorded in meetings and so forth and people still are sharing that they don't know the answers to certain things and certainly mrs orban's questions i look forward to getting them all in writing because we really want to get back to her on especially those zoom questions are very important um and certainly some of the nitty-gritty on mask wearing and things like that though those are important for people to understand and to know um what i'd like to share with everybody this is not only for the public and for the board but for uh faculty and staff as well is that we have really worked hard and i'm

011it's going to take a little time to go through this but it's um it's important to share with everybody the mitigation strategies that we really need to stick to in working not only with our guidance from the state of connecticut and the department of public health uh the department of education um dr ferreira dr sullivan and everybody you know who has been involved in the reopening planning mask wearing hand washing placement strategic placement sanitizer [Music] desk shields physical distancing hence the hybrid model reinventing school operations starting a little bit slower spacing people out all these safety features that we're putting in place that will work to help keep us safe we know these work we are continuing to put them in place in addition to that the ventilation in the bathrooms the ventilation ventilation in

012the classrooms and the larger spaces rehabilitated uh we repaired all summer long with several different contractors and our maintenance mechanic making sure those are those all those rooms are ready to go for the start of the year um additionally and i'd like to use the phrase mr belton came up with a month ago kind of putting a bubble around the school limiting visitors not having people in the building unless there's an extreme circumstance or a special case where they need to come in the building and only having the the building available for school staff the cleaning that goes into that and that's part of the reason and the cohorting and keeping people together so we can contact trace later on um meeting virtually even the adults in the building not gathering as full faculties but

013being in smaller groups and pods and meeting virtually communicating via email phone etc with one another our orientations many of our orientations are virtual at this point except in areas like kindergarten where mrs diamond is working on some very uh measured and very nice approaches to getting our kindergarteners in to see the school for the first time um self-monitoring of adults making sure they're doing their morning wellness check and parents doing their wellness check with with their kids um i'll be putting out a communication hopefully it'll be ready for tomorrow reminding everybody about the 14 day quarantine as they come back from vacations and things like that they were in a hot spot [Music] the process developed with guidance from the state of connecticut and the department of public health in terms of what we

014do if we suspect a case or someone thinks they've been exposed and how we go about that with our nursing staff and with dr sullivan and so forth um all the things that the nurses are putting in place that they'll be sending out in their letters to families there's just so much that's going on the way we're organizing our hallways so i want to make sure everybody knows that we are going to maximum effort to make sure we have a healthy and safe environment signage for six foot six feet of distancing and reminding people about hand washing and all those things that go on there's just so much that goes into it and while i don't want to take a lot of time just talking about it um i certainly want to make this opportunity

015for the board if they want to ask some questions or things like that but before i turn it over maybe to some q a just on reopening because i've got a couple other topics on my superintendent report for this month is i also wanted to talk about reinventing what we're doing with instruction and um the incredible leadership that dr ruby has provided and just preparing right now and getting ready for the professional development training that's going to be ongoing um as we all will recall we've adjusted our school calendar so we have plenty of time with faculty and staff to have not only training in ppe and things like that and training with our nurses and so forth but also all of the instructional and technical opportunities that we will have for teachers to work

016with their students and so maybe dr ruby if i could turn this portion of my report over to you to talk a little bit about the planning uh that we have in place for onboarding of new teachers which starts as soon as it's friday and then rolls into teachers all of our staff coming back next week our teachers coming back next week so new staff which is being hired almost daily now will be in the buildings on friday monday and tuesday for a new teacher orientation and we have a variety of topics that we typically share with the new teachers so that they understand you know how we process things in brookfield and they're going to get the same training that we have always planned when we're in you know full uh 100 in classroom

017education because the we're providing education that aligns with the standards as we always have we're just doing it a different way so those folks will be um uh present it won't be virtual um we'll be socially distance in the library media center thanks to the high school allowing us to use that space they will be getting additional training compared to what we usually provide to new staff with regard to technology because we're going we need to train them on technological strategies that we typically wouldn't be using making sure that they understand the zoom platform and the google classroom they'll be getting their personal computing devices learning about powerschool in addition to learning about our gradual release a responsibility model what that looks like the basis of literacy that are incorporated into all of our teaching

018then on the 26th next wednesday when new teacher orientation is completed on tuesday all of our teachers come back and we have the eight days the wednesday through friday of next week and then the following monday through friday and we've kind of really mixed that up compared to what we typically do one because we have more time and two because we have a lot more things to to cover and so the first three days are on that wednesday through friday the teachers will be um all building based they'll be with their principals and their colleagues on the uh we have a lot of i call them goddess things that we've got to do they're mandated trainings that we as a district in the state of connecticut must comply with regulations so on the 31st which

019is that monday it's a it's really a full day of going over mandated regulations and then at the end of the day getting signatures um from every staff member that they have completed the training and a lot of it has to do with the um bloodborne pathogens which is not new we do that all the time um um the how do how to use pe it's not it's one thing to get the pe and give it out but it's another thing to actually teach people you know proper mass use donning and dopping of gloves and and gowns and masks etc our teachers need to actually have the same training that um nurses and other medical people have in hospitals for the use of ppe and we have to sign off and maintain the data that

020we have provided that information and there are a number other health related topics that need to be covered and those are going to that pd is going to be delivered by our nursing supervisor and the we also have dr sullivan and dr ferrara providing some of that training in the afternoon we're going to have extensive training on the and informational sessions on what's been done with facilities in alignment with addendum 4 of the state plan which covers um building cleanliness ventilation etc etc and that is all going to be done by mr caldwell and his team and then i'll say sprinkled throughout the rest of the the four days of that week are some um district level trainings that have to be given to everybody and some district level trainings that are for um special

021populations of teachers and then all the rest of the time that isn't taken up in this in the schedule or mandated trainings such as the mandated special education training that we do every year um by mrs wagonic um training updated training on st math for the appropriate grades training for all of the grade levels on news ela which is a a digital program that we have purchased to enable our teachers to have access to a wide variety of literature and articles because we have to be really careful about the use of books in the passing of paper but all the time other than that is dedicated to the work that needs to be done in the buildings so it's a lot of time and people are going to be very happy that it's a three-day

022weekend after that friday and then our convocation can't take place the way it typically does so on that friday the last friday of the week um dr brill will be giving um an address via zoom and um and that's about all for our convocation as you probably realize all of the um celebratory aspects of what we do with teachers you know coffee and treats in the morning those things are all those are all gone we can't have um people having communal food etc so it's gonna look it's gonna look a little bit different um for the convocation but we are very hopeful that things are gonna turn around and we'll be able to celebrate in an appropriate way with all of our our staff at some later time during the year so that's kind of

023a wrap up of what we're we're doing people are super busy putting this together i'll also add that we've talked about the um opening units teachers have been working on that the opening units and there will be more work done on those opening units when everybody's back those small cadres of teachers have been working on that um and so that's that's about it thanks maureen i mean it's just incredible the amount of work that's gone into planning this you know throughout the summer and where we're at now to get ready to to execute and be ready to go um the other thing that you know we've done a lot of work with is in the hr department you know there's many staff members who've come forward and had concerns about coming back concerns about child

024care concerns about maybe they have a health concern that they wanted to talk through with hr and i really uh got to thank the hr department and our principals for you know bringing those in first and then directing them to terry to have those conversations and we want to continue to support our staff so i want to make sure that's out there for everybody so they know that number one but the other piece to that is dr ruby worked with the ymca and we were able to support a good number of our staff uh with offering some child care opportunities so maybe dr ruby you can share a little bit about that so the latest update i have is hot off the press um i got marie from the uh from the y contacted me

025this afternoon and they've been working we've given them two data updates we gave them the last one today and they have been really scrambling um to put a program together so that the i think there were um 45 children that um folks said that they would be am i right terry 45 oh thank you terry if i don't have terry i'm lost with numbers but um 45 children and she marie thinks that they can potentially accommodate them all and she said that she will be sending us information on friday so they're working just as uh as fast and furiously over at the y as we are and we really appreciate their um collaboration with us and i have to just let you all know that you know marie contacted me um early in the summer

026and said when you have your plan and when you're ready you know we we want to see if we can help you out so by friday we'll you know things go um on her time schedule we'll have information and she will contact the um the folks the the staff members who indicated that they were interested in those services directly because part of our survey said you know by filling out the survey and putting in your contact information you're giving us permission to give over your contact information so it'll be a direct relationship between the why and the folks who are interested in that service we're very happy to have her very much thanks for putting that together with marie that's that's a great service they're offering 45 children that really helps out our staff that

027are having difficulty uh well they probably won't have difficulty anymore so it's great that they'll be able to accommodate that number um continuing on reopening just one one more item on reopening and then i want to get into the final piece which is just a brief update on enrollment um in where we're at with some of our survey data that isn't quite complete yet um the there's been much talk in the newspaper especially mid to late last week regarding the ciac and their recommendation um to move forward with all fall sports um uh as as scheduled which would have begun this past monday with with football starting and then the following week with the rest of the sports starting and then the next day the department of public health came out and expressed serious concern

028with the high-risk sport of football and uh volleyball because of it being an intense indoor sport as i think a medium risk uh that then prompted the ciac very late in the week to hold on starting with football for this current week that we're in and pushing things till monday my understanding is that the ciac is meeting with dph tomorrow and we'll have further conversation so i would just say for the public that's watching in the board let's await that news and see what occurs and what recommendations come forward um i know that's uh especially for our high school um athletes student athletes and their parents it's a hot topic people have been waiting on that and the back and forth is frankly uh very difficult for our students that it's been going back and

029forth so much over the summer um the other piece to that is it's important for people to know uh mr baldwin put out a communication just continuing to update the um student athletes and their parents at the high school uh about what's going on with the ciac and their recommendations as well as the southwest uh southern southwestern uh connecticut league that we're in the swc and both the league and the ciac at this point have made a recommendation for no fans at all uh at any sporting events if we move forward with sports at all and again we're waiting on all of this um the regional superintendent group that i'm within the western connecticut uh we have not had a conversation a full conversation about that at this point and we're meeting tomorrow morning so

030i'm sure that'll be part of our conversation on the agenda um that's you know concerning um and we know it's a big deal mr baldwin has some ideas and some things he's thinking about as a way that we would be able to maybe accommodate some kind of uh viewing of sports in person um the piece with that is obviously distancing and our ability to frankly monitor and police that our capacity as a system to even be able to do that the other piece to that is making sure that we are in alignment we want to be in alignment as a region and as a league and certainly as a state would be really nice considering the data that's out there and where we're at so there's still a lot of things up in the air

031unfortunately i wish i had more definitive and concrete information for for folks but um we're waiting on dph and ciac i have a big meeting tomorrow and um as dr sullivan and dr ferrara said when when we spoke about this late last week um you you we take our cues from the department of public health at the end of the day um they they are the the the true authority on this um and so this is a public health issue and we have to look to our public health officials and our medical officials on these things um so that is is is high level and as brief of an overview as we can do although i don't think it was too brief to get ready for reopening uh we'll soon be ready for questions on

032that the last thing i wanted to talk about is just a quick update on um the parent survey that went out i don't have hard definitive numbers yet regarding the number of students that are coming in for hybrid learning that have elected for hybrid learning or the parents who chose for a full remote um and the parents who have withdrawn their children uh what i can tell you is the reason we don't have the hard numbers on that we probably had about 400 that did not uh families that did not reply and so we have staff all week have been calling and trying to get that information so we could have accurate data um we're somewhere in the area of about 83 percent right now 82 to 83 percent look like they're they're coming for

033hybrid and certain those folks who have responded we know um somewhere around 16 to 17 percent saying that they're going to elect for remote learning um and for those who are withdrawing the last number i saw was about 17 withdrawing um i think that number might actually be a little bit higher though and so that's uh that is where we're at and i wanted to give you percentages rather than numbers because people get hung up on numbers if you were around 26 2700 students so i've given you those percentages you can do the math um so that is what we have and then our device survey that we sent out we're going to keep it open one more uh one more uh day until noon tomorrow uh mr conklin asks that we do that to

034make sure we get a healthy reply at this point we're around between 300 and 350 parents have requested a device uh for their children um and many have said that they have their own device and uh are ready are prepared for that so that is the update the last piece of it i'd like to turn it over to mrs diamond to just give us a quick kindergarten update uh as to where we're at so mrs diamond good evening everyone um i just wanted to let you know we uh we do have a number of families that have decided to defer kindergarten and or to enroll in private kindergarten um for this year uh so we are currently at uh 157 students in kindergarten who will uh who are registering and and on their path to

035enrolling for the fall um so we had about 20 25 or so students who've decided that they're going to defer um and or attend full day from the kindergarten um in a private a private institution so we are we're uh as john said we're chasing down those numbers just to make sure that they're firm and we're we have people registering every day so it's it's the numbers fluctuating but that's where we are currently yeah and that's the thing mary rose can you share a little bit about and again you can't investigate the future but just the the amount of new registers that have come in so it really is a there's a little bit of a flip here in terms of we've got a lot of young families uh children parents with young children um

036registering at center school oh yeah so i mean there are definitely as i said there are new families coming in every day um uh it's it's not and we've had a lot of we've actually had a lot of inquiries about our pre-k um you know but uh there are there's a max number of kids you can take in the program so we really don't have the openings right now in our four-year-old program which is where we've got a lot of inquiries um but as john was saying they really uh we we we're taking registrations in we've had a lot of first grade registrations as well um so really uh there are there are definitely families moving in it's just the choice right now is if some families are choosing if they can defer kindergarten um

037that seems to be some of the choice that they're making on and or full day yeah and we've also had we've also had a increase at the high school and uh at the middle school um i don't know if mr bolland or mr renda could share a little bit about that uh the net you know there's always students who move out in the summertime before we leave oh i'm sorry could i could i ask a question to mary rose please please um i'm sorry i just before we went on to the other schools yeah um so mary rose remind me how many sections do we have for kindergarten for this year what do we stack two we have nine section we have nine sections for kindergarten so that's with the current enrollment that's how many

038kids in a class roughly um maybe 17 17 or 18 okay though on the low end of our range still in the range basically okay good i just wanted to yeah i think we're yeah we're still within that spot it's not as uh it'll they'll be smaller obviously but it's not uh it's not outside the realm of what's reasonable this doesn't change your thinking on the number of sections we we need no i think that we're um that we're staffed the way you know again we don't know when people are going to come in people can change their minds so we're still you know still kindergarten is a number that fluctuates a lot as you all know um so we're still kind of planning for the uh for the nine sections okay great thank you

039and if it you know the rate they're they're registering we could be a little higher than that 157 pretty quickly so i think that's really important to emphasize for for everybody here um but bob thank you for that question thanks for stopping me we've gone on for quite a long time so we need to have that respite um mr renda can you share a little bit of uh before mr olandigos about your roof um the last i looked i think we were at 30 new students um and five withdrawal um so probably a net of about 25 um new families i'm coming to wisconsin so you know you can see a big increase there and uh you know we've all heard a lot about you know what's happening with this uh mass excellence from new

040york and i mean i'm certainly seeing it in my hometown and um it's it's i'm sure we're not alone as a community in brookfield and mr belanda similarly has i think he talked about it last month a little bit about the increase there he's over 900 and i'll let him go in just a second but this is really where social distancing becomes a really big piece is the capacity of the school and why when i when i don't use the term loosely when i say reinventing uh school operations and health and wellness and what we're trying to accomplish um starting starting with hybrid and making sure we have taught the adults and as dr ruby just went through in great detail but also teaching the students how we need to be and behave and operate

041much differently with all of our protocols than ever before and we're taking 150 years of what we know about school changing it in literally 60 days so it's an incredible task so mr vallando please could you share a little bit yeah so as of the end of last week we were at a net increase of 27 um this week through from monday through today we have four more so we're at 31 additional students 31 net new students wow yeah and about 25 at wisconner so right there we're over 50 you know just grades 5 through 12. so um we're monitoring obviously quite closely and it was just important to share that with everyone there mark how many were there any withdrawals from bhs anybody that's the net so we had about the same thing as

042dean so we were at like about five and then plus the you know we're 22. so it's we had about five withdrawals over the course of the time and then we have these new ones that doesn't include anybody at this point that may have indicated on a survey that they were planning on um homeschooling or withdrawing that does not count yet we have we don't only the ones that we have processed to this point are the ones we're including gotcha thanks that sometimes doesn't include just so you know students who withdraw to go to immaculate or other schools um before they go into ninth grade i mean i could get that i don't have that number today right now but i could i could always get that number if you wanted it thanks everybody so

043that's all i have for my superintendent report i know it's quite extensive tonight um we're certainly here to answer any questions you may have before we move on with the agenda so yeah i was going to ask if any board members had questions go ahead jen so um i wondered if one of the principals or maybe maureen could i think one of the things that parents might be having a hard time imagining because we know school is going to be really different but like what is it going to be like so we know half the kids will be at home half the kids will be in that classroom can anybody just talk through like even generically like an example of what it might be like so parents can and kids can start to sort of

044imagine what that will be like and maybe we can start with dr ruby on that please okay so in the hybrid model this is pretty consistent across the state and i think across the country in terms of what people are doing for hybrid with the 50 of students that are in the classroom they'll be not in the classroom the way they used to be because they're not going to have the um it's almost like on the plane when they turn off the light the seat belt light you can you can get up and freely walk around that seat belt light basically is never going off again they're going to be in the in their seat and with their space that's around them where they have you know their belongings and their materials and then the

045children who are at home one mrs orban had a question about you know the synchronous learning it is synchronous learning and one of the things that uh many of the people on the board who have been involved in um negotiations understand that you know we have teachers who are members of our brookfield education association and we have a contract with them and so um what we do um in you know has to be bargained if it changes their work conditions and so we have teachers that are will be teaching in the classroom and they will be synchronously teaching the children who are at home or in a child care facility or some other location where they're being cared for and the teacher will not there will not be children that are going to be if

046when we when and if we get the camera any camera equipment or broadcast equipment to um stream the teacher while he or she is in the front of the classroom there will not be children that will be broadcast on that the only time that children will be any place seen by anybody else will be in a zoom classroom so the children who are at home will be accessing the direct instruction that's taught by a teacher through zoom um the teacher will be sharing his or her screen we'll be sharing um demonstrations through zoom children who are in the classroom will have devices so i think we've talked a little bit about this before for collaborative work using zoom breakout rooms the teacher can assign students who are in the classroom to a breakout room through

047the the zoom technology to be working with children who are not in the classroom because the children who are in the classroom aren't going to be able to get up and walk around and go to a center or someplace to work with each other because we have to abide by the using the mitigation strategies one of which is social distancing so a teacher never i mean we have you're a teacher jen we're never standing in front of the classroom for like multiple hours on end just talking so it wouldn't be a situation where a teacher is just like talking at um into or into zoom all day long there will be times there will be a mini lesson or a focus lesson and then students would um be working together the teacher is can call

048on students that are on zoom to provide an answer and this is not going to be recorded can call on students who are in the classroom to give an answer if if they're in the classroom and they're not on zoom then they're not going to be heard by the children who are at home but as good teachers we would say like say debbie you were in my class and you're you know in there with me i i would say oh debbie just shared blah blah blah you know does anybody else want to add on to that i mean we we would to engage the kids that are not in the classroom the best we can given the situation so now when we go to doing work if it's individual we try to do a lot

049of group work it's not going to work out the way it would prior to covid but we're trying to use those zoom rooms which we have we've used breakout rooms um previously and all of our administrators have had experience this summer in some of the pd that we've done with state organizations being put into zoom rooms and i would say it really worked out well um kids have been using zoom rooms in schools across the country all through the spring so they would do some group work the teacher can go in and out of those rooms to monitor what's going on they're not going to be able to be in every room simultaneously but in a classroom if you're over here working with a group you're not with the group that's in that's in the

050back of you or on the periphery then students will be doing independent work so the children who are at home will have you know their writing their um whatever the content areas in the individualized work for um other i'll use phys ed because we've worked very hard uh mr um baldwin has worked with his phys ed people several times over the past couple weeks trying to figure out how they can make this ed um equitable and and gate and equitable experience and engaging experience for the kids who were on their remote days and you know in order to give the children who were in the classroom because everybody's going to be in the classroom at one time another except for the children whose parents opted in to remote learning that was a choice and it

051was very clearly stated in the in the information from the state that that was going to be different because it was an opt-in out of respect for people's personal preferences so on a day that children are in class the chil that those children if it's a nice day we want to get kids outside as much as possible and if they're if that gym class that phys ed class is going to go outside to do whatever it is that was planned before that happens the phys ed teachers would be you know doing an opening um introduction and we have um a a large um compilation of activities that we that the phys ed teachers from pre-k through 12 have collected over the spring and there would be something that would be provided for the students who

052are at home or in child care centers or at their grandmother's or wherever they are to be able to engage in at that time okay so they they're not going to be um because that teacher isn't going to have a like a camera showing everybody else outside having fun while some kid is sitting at home we're going to provide activities for them to do so i you know i'm kind of just rambling on here um hoping that you're getting a picture of what it would be like now on there will be uh just like we have in in the regular classroom there will be um conferring time so just as a teacher goes around and sits with you know if rosa was in my in my class and i was able to go and sit

053with her back prior to march and look at her paper even though she's in my classroom now i can't do that because of social distancing so i might actually confer with rosa in my classroom through zoom through a one-on-one zoom experience because i can no longer go and do what i did when we were in the the pre-covet era so if if bob belden is in my class and he's at home and he's written a piece i'm going to look at the google doc or if he's a little guy i'm going to you know look it through the camera and and have the give him the same feedback as i would as i was in class and the same feedback the same type of experience that rosa got even though she's right in the classroom

054because i can't go up and sit you know in proximity to rosa even though she's in the classroom so it's going to be different for everybody and the teachers you know this is new for all of us we're all going to be learning together and we're going to be um taking advantage of whatever opportunities we have from people who um have designed these strategies to learn and then providing you know ongoing pd to our teachers as we go along and we'll just as we did in the spring we'll get feedback from um from kids as to what's working and if kids go i used to love it in ppts when i was in that role and i would bring kids into ppt's for kids to say i know you like that strategy but it doesn't

055really help me it's like okay then we'll stop that oh what do you think will work and kids are like the best source of information because they will tell you the truth what works for them and what doesn't work for them and so our teachers because we're going to focus on relationships first and foremost and social emotional learning and getting kids as comfortable we're going to build we're going to feed off of their cues and take their information across the board from pre-k through through grade 12 and then adjust as we go along because we're not going to be perfect when we start and that's just a given but we all have the desire to get better and my motto is you know if you knew better you'd do better and so you have to

056find out and so if you if if every single day for 177 days if we can embrace the fact that every single day we'll try to do better than we did the day before and that's the attitude that we take faculty support staff administrators board members parents and children and we're going to be okay but if we if we say it's not perfect it's not the way we want it it has to be better from day one and we just cut and hack away at that we're not going to achieve what our staff is perfectly capable of achieving but we have to support them and i i i know that this board will support them but that's that's our goal our goal is to get better every single day compared to the day before and

057to take feedback from our students because they know best what's working for them and what isn't maureen what about um subjects that are typically very hands-on like art ceramics chemistry labs things like that how will kids doing remote learning get the most out of those types of classes well a lot of kids aren't going to be able to do whether they're in class or not what they were doing before with those hands-on things so our science people um we are in constant contact with the health department and with our nursing supervisor and that team as john said before so just this week we finally ironed out what the procedure will be for being able to use microscopes when i tell you that we're looking at every single like how do how can we use a

058microscope how can we use this how can we we have to have procedures for all that so i'll tell you about microscopes we will be able to use microscopes um the children will be wearing gloves the teachers will provide um we'll have to put cling wrap or a saran wrap over the ocular component of the microscope we have a cleaning procedure that has to be used um on each microscope so it's going to take more time to do all these things but we can use them for some of our um our science experiments we will not be able to do them they are much too involved they're much too um because that's what we went with with this hands-on really engaging type of experience we're very fortunate that the company wants to support us and

059so they have provided a lot of distance learning type supports to go along with the program so um some videos of experiments that just really there's no way to do them there are some hands-on experiments that can be done because we've uh or we're we put together a request for gloves for students to be able to wear in science and remember they still can't get close to each other so there has to be a lot of moving to the material and away from the material there will be i was just speaking with rachel cohen the other day who was our middle school um teacher leader for science and talking about looking inventorying the science experiments that need to be done um as a demonstration so we talked about having teachers collaborate to do the experiments

060in advance and video them and then have the teacher be doing a think aloud and being able to stop the the video and ask questions and whatnot so it's like we said before it's not going to be like it used to be art our art will have to be very individualized the art teachers i don't know mary rose if you want to chime in on this because you guys did a lot of work you and melissa with the art teachers putting things together um if you're there i couldn't get my uh i couldn't get my thing coming um yeah so yeah our teacher um has uh put together um individual kits is working on that for each student we just were putting the orders through um so they each will have their own art kit

061um at their desks that they'll keep with their supplies um and when it's their art rotation um they're working on what that will look like for students who are at home and at school so she's really rethinking you know what the hands-on piece will be at school and then there'll be some kind of related projects that they would do at home um after she gets direct instruction so there'll be like again there'll be a mini lesson and maureen is kind of describing for pe there'll be a mini lesson that kids will have when they're in class they'll be doing more of the hands-on kinds of activities and then there'll be something for students that they will do at home um when they're there that will be related to whatever the the content and skill is

062so our special teachers are are also you know they're now teaching their entire curriculum in seven weeks so that's um you know they're really uh some in some ways excited about it because they can do longer term projects you know it's hard when you have kids once a week to kind of get any momentum going sometimes and if there's a day off or something like that um so they're uh you know and speaking with them they've been excited that they might have the opportunity at least the art teacher to do a little bit more um kind of bigger bigger more involved projects um over that time thank you mary rose melissa did you want to add in sure hello everyone i did want to just piggyback off of something that dr ruby said in regards

063to you know what instruction would look like in the classroom um you know just because children may only be live for the beginning of a particular lesson does not mean that they won't be actively involved in some way during that 45 minute block of time so i just don't want you know families who are watching this to think wait i thought my kid was synchronous all day long but you're only saying they're going to be live for about 15 minutes or so or 20 minutes or so and that's very similar to a typical day or a typical content block of that 45 minutes right so we always have teachers do their mini lesson students an opportunity to independently practice their new skills their learning and during that time teachers are meeting and small group instruction

064which will be the exact same thing except students will be live for the mini lesson and then while they have opportunities to independently practice classroom teachers will be pulling those small groups with students that potentially are home and also our learners that are in school at the same time so i just don't want there to be a disconnect that wait i thought my kid was going to be live more than i thought um based on you know a particular math block of 45 50 minutes um that children will still be included they just may not be live for the entire time of that particular block so melissa in that scenario after the 15 minute mini lesson the student at home maybe is working independently and 15 minutes later they're stuck they have a question so

065what's the process for them reconnecting with the teacher to get some help sure that's a great question so this was my suggestion to some of my staff members when we have been talking about some type of creating our instructional plans of what you know hybrid instruction and remote learner instruction potentially could look like so are there going to be times where a child may tune off after the 15 20 minute mini lesson and may have an additional question you know we hope that teachers will also be able to build in time sometimes at a closing of a lesson but we know that's also not realistic every single lesson that teachers will be able to connect with again within that 45-minute framework um you know we through the platform of google classroom students will still have

066opportunities to email questions through google classroom to their classroom teachers we've also talked about you know we know that this is not typical instruction in the sense that students are going to be able to get it the first time so also doing much more of that reinforcement of lessons on wednesday we're looking at particularly doing small group instruction and more one-to-one individualized instruction with students so we do know that questions are going to arise kids aren't going to get it the first time all the time and we do know that we will probably have to do more front loading and reinforcement of lessons as well as you know as mary rose and dr ruby have said it's not going to be perfect right off the bat like these types of questions and situations will occur

067and we'll address them as we go another thing that could happen is if i if i was your teacher and i we were in a zoom classroom like we're set up now and i were to do um a direct a direct lesson and then say okay so now i give an assignment or i put people in group work now i can turn my mute my mute on i put my mute on so you're you're all not hearing me because you're you're doing whatever or you're in a group room and it's still the students who are at home would still be able to see you know that's that screen whether they have their [Music] camera closed or they have their camera open then there's the chat room so this wouldn't work for kindergartners and first graders

068necessarily but the student can you know the teacher can say while i'm in the breakout rooms or while you're working on your own if something comes up you can use this is where we'll teach students the diff especially when they're in the classroom on their in school days teaching them about you know using the um the hand the hand raising how to use the chat so they'll learn how to use the different features that are in zoom to be able to stay connected with their teacher it's not going to be a 15 minute minute lesson see you later alligator you know that's not what's going to happen there's still going to be an opportunity for them to be they're not going to be like left on their own especially initially when we hit the ground

069running because we're all learning you know zoom the new platform all the aspects of zoom and also we can't expect the children to know these features right away either so i think that's important you know we are in the process and i know dr ruby referenced this in creating a welcome kind of welcome back unit um where we will be embedding more ruler instruction and lessons for sel but also a big chunk of that is technology lessons where we are explicitly teaching children how to use those types of features on zoom how to upload and take pictures of their documents to turn in their homework how to really navigate google classes and that's not going to happen overnight you know we know that students need explicit instruction to learn these types of fears and it's

070going to be gradual and to build on that we didn't have that opportunity in the spring that's what's going to be you know it was like goodbye and kids had to kind of and teachers kind of had to bend for themselves we were only able to give a few a couple days of instruction to all the new technology the teachers had to use prior to them using that but the children didn't get any instruction so what what melissa is saying is going to really uh be key to the success of remote um the remote days for as long as we have to do them hopefully not too long but on the outside chance that god forbid anything ever happens to change the data and we aren't able to fulfill our our goal of bringing everybody

071back in who except for children whose parents opt into the remote temporary option as long as that's available if we ever had to go to remote we will be in such an amazing place not that that would be an amazing place i'm not trying to say that compared to where we were because we will have taught the students um all of this the skills of using the technology through the work that we're doing in our our current hybrid model so it's going to be a continual um work in progress where like i said before our goal is every day to be better than we were the day before and if we can do that and commit to that we'll be good and dr ruby and those who've answered the questions i really i thank you

072because you can see the level of detail that's gone into this work and the thinking and the reflecting and um um i hope it's helpful to those who are watching into the board members but i want to be careful because we're on superintendent report still and you know i don't want to overuse our time here for this in this forum so i'll turn it over to rosa um i don't know if you want to continue with questions really move on to the next item but thank you everybody i really appreciate the time thank you very much yeah no i do i do want to move on um unless there's any other questions from board members that are really sort of burning for you okay so um let's see yes so we are on subcommittee reports

073uh the first we have is finance okay finance committee was pretty standard this month we went through the financial reports the year end our 2019 2020s actually landing pretty well again is on the tail end of it it actually came in a little better than we had last forecasted uh to the board of finance so um not dramatically so but um helpful to the town that will all any underruns from last year return right to the fun right to fund balance and and that's a good thing given we need the flexibility for the town we went through our normal check register review no concerns there and we went through an update on the um school opening costs and and the potential under runs and we agreed on a kind of a standard format that we

074will use for uh tracking um any costs and we'll use that format for this committee and for the board of finance so that they have one format we're all looking at the same way and uh ken's working with uh the town controller marsha marion on uh you know working on the primary format and then also how are we tracking the actual purchases ken do you want to add anything in terms of what being on the school opening purchases i mean are we do you want to share with the board about are we getting in all the things that we agreed to go pursue in particular but they're they're all in the works in various stages um the biggest highest priority items were of course the the desk shields the teacher sorry the student desk shields

075and the teacher and office desk shields and the partitions for the nurses offices so those have all been ordered and they're in process and they're expected to be here by around september 1st and then we've since also ordered the uv sanitizers the webcams the carts for the lunch delivery and the specials storage containers are on site we've had folks in helping the principals move furniture around to set up all the classrooms which was a huge job we've gotten the staff laptops that that we ordered that the board of finance approved back in early july and the tech team is working to get those ready so and uh terry terry kavanaugh is working very hard to try to get us monitors which seems to be a herculean task i will i will say that i was

076very glad that we were ahead of the request on the equipment because everything i'm hearing and i'm in the industry is the backlog of orders for uh all sorts of you know mobile equipment whether it's laptops or uh or the or macbooks or any of the other types of uh the cool you know the what's the other name level um oh yeah there you go um all of them are backlogged i mean badly right now so we the fact that we've got in the laptops is a good thing um that's uh we and because we put the order in early and thank you for doing that and thanks to the board of finance for jumping on it when they did um so the uh um can uh when will you have your first report on

077the uh you know in the format we discussed um that we could start sharing with the with the uh with the board if i could share my screen i could show it to you now okay that would be great mark do i have the ability to share my screen i'm going to work on that right now ken thank you sir i will share um while ken is doing that regarding the movers so we did have um as uh mr post uh mentioned that we had movers come in and help relocate some of our desk furniture and for the people that are watching at home the classrooms look amazing they look like a typical classroom we were actually able to um keep much more of the furniture we actually didn't have to really remove any additional

078furniture uh the desks were all situated six feet apart um and it i don't know i think just for the public to know that you know it's not this sterile environment classroom teachers have been coming in this week decorating the walls their bulletins hanging the uh window scapes and things like that for our student classrooms really do look great they're not they don't look like you're walking into a sterile environment or a hospital room at all thank you melissa so are you able to see my screen yes so we've got two sections the upper section up here is the estimated potential savings that we've discussed before we added a couple of items on to it the special education extended school year program as primarily because we didn't have transportation we're going to realize the savings

079and i have a column for estimated and a column for actual i know that the special education program will be about seventy thousand dollars but i don't have the exact number yet so that number will move over into the actual column uh we're making a change to the special education life skills program and we have some professional development that would have needed to be done in person that we won't be able to do so those are savings identified and then ones that are not identified are mostly around the sports and and uh and uh field trips right yes sports and after school activities yeah um on the after school activities when do you think you'll have a better handle on we'll have we'll have a better handle because one of the things we're doing bob

080is any of the activities that that's that's potential maximum but uh we've talked to the principals and um any of the activities we could run virtually we're going to run virtually so we don't want to not have that opportunity for our students to connect that in the school so um we've got to assess what can be run um we're still making those final decisions and uh and the athletics is all tied to the ciac cic and of course department of health absolutely yeah and we and we don't know if they're going to move the fall sports to the spring so so that's another thing we you know fall sports some get moved to the spring then that cost just push forward we don't realize the savings so a lot up in the air with that

081yeah so this will be changing quite a bit as we move forward uh the bottom section is expenditures uh starting off with our initial ppe order and the electrostatic sprayers which actually are back ordered so we've i'm pretty confident we're not going to have them for the start of school um we have the staff laptops like i said we just got the monitors and all these are all the other items that we uh spoke to the board of finance about a couple weeks ago and again they're in various stages of uh being ordered and or received already and then since then we've identified a few other things um to add to our list that we have to find a way to to fund uh can i just jump in here real quick um so for

082the the items that say sourcing are ordered are those still on track to arriving before school starts i believe the things that are ordered are on on track the only ones i have sourcing are gloves for the students and parents and we have some of that already so i'm not so worried about starting if we don't get those you know right at september 1st okay we have them and the town has a supply of of of of gloves also that we can dip into just a quick aside for everybody it's important for the public to know as well the ppe we're ordering that for the most part um often in concert with the town we're working with a fire marshal and um and town purchasing so we're trying to get the by by the most

083we can and get the best buy we can and i used to do that question about the gloves are the gloves uh mandatory they are for use with students and staff like dr ruby was describing before if we have manipulatives that need to be used where the teacher or the students have to share the same item they will be wearing gloves when they do that and that's mandatory i think go ahead ken yes i mean since we can't it's not practical to disinfect items between you know each student using it then yes we would make it mandatory but it's not it but it's not mandatory all day you have to be in class no just in those situations right so i just want to add in that for all of these every single procedure that

084we um we study how it's going to be implemented we then run it by our nurse supervisor who then uh she is the the go-between with um dr ferrara or dr sullivan or the um dr gilmore up at the state department and um i mean we've had we've had a phone conference last week with the um the state health commissioner on a question where we're we're we're looking at every single procedure that we're doing to make sure that we're keeping our kids um help you know safe and in order to be able to provide the you know as many of the learning experiences that we want to children to have that you would want your children to have um the gloves are necessary because there's you know we can't we could never afford to buy

085a class level science um kit for every single student in the class um it's just it wouldn't be they probably wouldn't even have that many to be honest with you to sell to us so when they're sharing if they're if there's something set up that they have to go up and everybody has to do something they have to have gloves on because they they can't cross contaminate with their own hands so what we're what we're buying is about one third of the quantity we originally identified as uh thinking we would need and then we'll we'll watch the use and see where it goes from there the thought was that we would have one pair of gloves for each student and for each teacher per week now they might be doing a lesson where they have

086to use the manipulatives five days in a row so they'll go through five pairs that week and then not need them again for three weeks but we're gonna we're gonna track it as it goes along and you know reorder as needed it can some of those numbers are pretty big uh what what is a document camera that's the can i go back up first before sure okay it was about to say i went past the uh the cleaning service uh we have an estimate for that we have actually a bid opening tomorrow and as far as i know we had at least one sub one bidder as of uh this morning so we'll see if more come in tomorrow and we'll have the opening i think at 11 o'clock tomorrow and i'll be at that

087so can i talk about document cameras please dr ruby that would be great okay so um we just real quick if you could just kind of introduce that section because that's newer and we haven't had that full discussion with the board and we talked a little bit with the finance committee the other day and guys i got i don't want this to be a long evening i mean this is like one second on each of these it's not this is what i opened this door up for ken so he could just make sure everyone's aware of what's coming okay sorry bob i'm not intended to be a two-hour review of all of our financial requests so all right well why don't we start with ken then just a brief overview and then if that's enough

088and that's enough okay yeah these last uh seven items are just the things that we've identified you know since we had that last conversation whether they be curriculum related or you know hand sanitizers we discovered that we would need the movers to help us set up the rooms and and get furniture out of the way take some some desks from one school to another so could we do a brief description on the uh on the first like four or five items there just so the boys are familiar with them sure just the big ones yeah yeah okay dr ruby you got the big ones document cameras we researched how we could more um reasonably be able to have the teachers be able to do any live streaming we had looked at i think eric reported

089on uh fifty five hundred dollars a classroom so we talked to different class uh different schools across the state a document camera is something that we can't that is used to project onto a screen a document but we've discovered that you can if you have document cameras that have a hinge that the part that you can hinge it up this would be normally looking down at a document but you can it's a very high level camera and you can use it to actually stream the teacher working in the front of the classroom so it's a very economical way to be able to outfit all of our classrooms for way less than fifty five hundred dollars a classroom um the next thing is lexia lexia is a a reading program a digital reading program that we

090were using in the um spring because it was free and our children did very very well um if we had time we could hear from mr renda and he would tell you that it worked so well that there were some students who were significantly behind in reading that made such great growths that we continued them in the summer ixl math is a a digital math program that we we used to have a subscription to and we weren't getting a lot of use out of it in terms of the reports so we dropped it but we got got it for free in the spring and it was extremely useful students loved it teachers loved it parents were very happy to have it back and we think that with the even if we went back full time

091that it's um though that it's a very a very wise investment um hand sanitizer is hand sanitizer um and movers or movers right thanks maureen and mike keep in mind we haven't we haven't ordered any of these things nope seventeen thousand dollars in hand sanitizer that seems like a lot of hand sanitizer um a lot of hands that's a lot of hands yeah no it's hundreds of gallons 150 or so uh touchless uh dispensers yep we have to have them for the athletic sponsors they have to sanitize their hands upon entering the building uh whenever they encounter in and out of the cafeteria bathroom you know and of course their soap and water you know in our bathrooms and all that and in the classrooms where we have sinks so it's a lot 150 sanitizer

092stations wow i'm all over the schools all right look guys we talked about these items i it's useful for us to go through them we did talk about them at our finance committee meeting um the next step will be a continuing review and ken is actively working with our town controller and they talk about each of these items and our purchasing agent and uh we will need to also go to the board of finance um the direction that the finance committee gave to ken is keep looking for the savings on the top part and that's why that's on the top of the chart because we want to be able to cover what we can through reductions where we don't need to spend money in other places so that's intense actively looking for those opportunities on

093an ongoing basis so and that's where by the way some of those larger reductions came from is a hard look at what can we do without um and you know and and we found a couple of areas of that so um so that will be an ongoing discussion at our board at our finance committee and at the uh at the board of finance so okay and that's my report any questions thank you bob all right let's move on to facilities um is uh amy or debbie going to yeah i have joyce thanks some notes so i'm just gonna read right from them and then if there's anything can that you need to chime in on let me know um and this is july 15th and august 12th we review the current 10-year capital plan which

094we're going to continue to discuss and make changes as we look at our priorities however we spoke at length about the roof of the high school specifically the section if you're looking in the front entrance from there to the guidance wing we're in an emergency situation it needs a full restoration it's leaking very bad and coming in the walls and affecting the isolation it's a cold tar pitched roof so when it gets cold it gets brittle and thaw and frost make it worse this section of the roof is beyond its life cycle and will be reflected as a high priority in the tenure capital plan for project updates all the paving at the high school and middle school has been completed there were some additional monies to extend some of the site work the generator

095project at the middle school is done the report's signed off and the job is closed the roof at the high school and at the middle school there's been some maintenance and spot repairs done the exhaust hood at the kitchen at the high school is going to start soon that's funded from the lunch fund uh hvac we'll get back on schedule and move on to the next planning stage and we need to get back on track for a lighting project in order to get a return on our investment which we haven't done yet the custodian staffing update we now have a head custodian at the high school and recently one custodian at huckleberry has left so we're looking for a temporary hire to get through the year and school reopening we're doing an audit of all

096the buildings 41 total exhaust fans 24 which are in various states of failure we were able to rehabilitate about a dozen some are about 35 to 40 years old at this time we've replaced all filters unit ventilators and rooftop units every single bathroom fan and motor have been fixed these fans will begin running two hours prior to school opening and one hour after school exhaust fans in the bathroom will be running 24 7 as well maintenance to the ventilation system is ongoing and our problem with main problem with facilities is room capacity and lunches we need to hire more lunch monitors and staff for the isolation rooms and we need to purchase the carts which i think was already done for delivering the lunches and that's all she has i don't know if there's anything

097you need to add to that ken sounds good thanks amy okay we can move on to the consent agenda and board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires and resignations all right any discussion on this okay all in favor bye thank you that's unanimous okay um on to new business the new school naming committee um so uh we'll talk about the new project a little bit later um but we wanted to get this naming committee on the agenda because now that the project is nearing you know going out to bid potentially in december it would be nice to get um you know the name for the school starting to incorporate incorporate the name into the documents for the building so we actually do have a policy on this that was attached

098to your board packet i think just to sort of summarize um the naming committee has to have at least two but through up to three board members two of the other members on this committee need to be residents one teacher one administrator and one pto rep um and what ultimately there's a few other stipulations in the policy in terms of a building must be named after a geographical area the name of a person can't be used but most importantly the knee needs to be significant to the students who go there so we do need kind of a group um when you come together and get some ideas for um for this new school ultimately the committee will have to come up with at least three but no more than five names and then ultimately the

099board of ed will decide what the name of the school will be so um you know ultimately i don't think this is a very long committee maybe meeting a couple of times over the fall um just to get some ideas but i'd like to hear your thoughts on um committee makeup i mean as a suggestion i would you know since two residents do need to be a part of this committee i was going to suggest someone from the historical society maybe they you know understand a little bit more about the geography of town and stuff but um that's really my only suggestion i i'd like to make a suggestion about town members or maybe we just make them an ad hoc ad we had two chairmans of our uh school committee right who are along

100with us and it would be a great honor to have them be part of the naming it really would and i'm and for the that's colette and uh any um who at different times did very important things to move this project along and i think they would it would be a nice honor to include both of them in that i think that's a good idea and uh and the second thing i would say is i know it says one teacher and one administrator since we're merging two schools i would suggest we have one from each right one teacher from each school one administrator from meet school so that everybody has a voice in this i mean it makes the committee a little bit bigger but it's a uh but i think it'd be the right

101thing to do and then um for the pto rep we uh what did you guys um perhaps think the huckleberry pto um president or somebody that they designate or who are the current presidents of the pts what's that do we know who the current presidents of the ptos are uh well it's brent piper at center yep okay an ad hoc student at huckleberry and also at center okay at huckleberry we're in the need of a pto president so any viewers watching in second third or fourth grade we have several positions we need to fill including treasure we only currently have a vp and a secretary so help oh so so rose i would suggest we have the pto president from both of the schools just like a teacher and an administrator if they don't have

102uh they don't have a president at the huckleberry school that huckleberry won't have a representative yeah that'll motivate someone to raise their hand yeah yeah there you go it's more incentive thanks bob to help name the new school yeah um yeah sign up for sign up to do some work and you can name the school or be part of it i wonder i wonder if any of the teachers at huckleberry um like just would do a are interested in maybe doing a little thing with the kids like looking at what the criteria are and maybe that some of the kids could have suggestions that they submit to the committee might be kind of fun and i think that's the point of the committee too it's really important the committee could come up with the ideas

103for those activities with the kids jen i think that's great you know and remember we collected some some names at a lot of the um public forums as well and it wasn't a really long list it was it's a pretty i think it's an easy project to tell you the truth it's just i love the idea of letting the kids have some input absolutely yeah so um in terms of board representation who wants to be on it i would love to be on there i think it sounds very exciting great anyone else you need at least another one sorry i don't know who all right mike you're right let mike my kids are out of the school i think i'll volunteer to do those sorts of things but uh you know i uh love to

104see board members with parents or parents in there that'd be great mike's got the youngest kid so he should do it you get the bigger vote yeah all right um so i will actually go ahead and move that we establish um a naming committee for the new school one second thanks amy all in favor okay all right thanks the votes unanimously so the process what would be the process for naming the administrators and teachers um so that's the kind of the unknown um is that uh john something you would launch with uh i certainly can um or the committee could meet and have that discussion first and give provide me with a little direction or we'll talk about that um i think we discuss discuss we ought to have one teacher and one administrator from

105each school so just do it all right sounds good as long as mike and debbie say that's what they want well i was gonna say maybe mike and i can have a conversation offline about um you know when we would meet how often we would meet so we can sort of define the level of you know involvement and how much work it would be and then john can reach out to the schools or we can and um you know there's there's not technically a deadline for this but um you know i'm thinking a few times over the fall meeting and you know maybe hopefully by november um we actually will when we get to the new school project update on the agenda i was going to tell you guys but in november we'll be getting

106another presentation um from tecton so that might be a good place to kind of also inform them of a new name november and john or maybe it was rosa who will just who will have the ultimate decision is it the board well okay the board of ed makes that decision um just so everybody knows its policy five five one if you want to look it up later on every movie seven five five one right my my my guess is we would have the committee come report to us and with oh here's the whole three to five options that we came up with and here's our recommendation and uh and we could talk about it and uh if the board likes that then we would approve it and if the board didn't like it we could

107either say go back and work more or we make a different decision so i think but that's a very logical process and it'd be great to have a lot of input to it so i think you know i'm always a believer that you know getting the community involved is always a good thing okay great sounds like fun yeah okay uh let's move on to old business uh we have some policies amy do you want to read the first motion i will move that the board approved the deletion of current brookfield policy 6141.3 and current brookfield policy 6141.321 and replace them with new proposed k policy 6141.321 with revisions for a final reading is recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee the first section 50. were there any other um questions comments edits or recommendations for

108this policy i didn't get any i didn't get any um questions or uh suggestions for it okay the uh the one the one thing um that i uh i didn't have any suggestions and uh and i will admit not having sent one in but i was reading them again this afternoon and it's more about the form that we're going to have students and parents sign and we talk about we never actually say in that form of the policy talks about no recording and it's very well written by the way i thought the policy was really good um but we never explicitly say something about no recording in the form that we asked people to sign and i actually think that would be a good thing right and i don't think that's is that actually part

109of the policy or was that more of a the phone bob would fall under more of operations and regulation so i think there's a suggestion we can um circle back with eric on that okay i would just have you go look at it and think about it from uh that's what i thought by the way um right you really look at whether we ought to we what we say in there is or otherwise prohibited by board policy so it's covered but i just think saying something explicitly in that form about no recording is allowed right is really really important good suggestion thanks bob yeah go ahead maureen and that's actually the recording is actually covered under state law so i don't know if we need to reference that that but i mean it's what we

110we we point out that we point the state law and recording out to people when they ask us about that yeah i understand but my only point is if you're gonna have somebody sign something you might as well stick it right in their eye right it's not allowed under state law if that's what i want to say it's a it's a i just think we have to keep reinforcing that because it's a worry of our parents it's only the students and it's a worry of our teachers so all of them went to the heart of part of what mrs orton's public comment is about people about this and that's why this will probably help in explaining that yeah i just like it and so i i don't have any issue with the policy i think

111the policy was great all right any other questions or comments on this okay so all in favor aye thank you so just as a matter of process on that do we go to a second read now because this isn't yet yep that was the second that is right whatever we're proving okay got it okay um update on current brookfield policy six one four one point three two eight 6141.328 for a final read is recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee first read was july 15th do i have a second second thanks bob any questions or comments on this one nope i didn't get anything on this one either okay any tonight okay all in favor aye all right thanks everyone okay uh subcommittee composition um i we had discussed this at our last meeting um

112and i think the only outstanding um community that needed a little more time coordinating schedules was kate okay so um how did that come out i think we said first days right what's on the show i don't know because you were gonna move yes i uh i had the university changed my course to tuesday now it's tuesday supposed thursday no no i changed my course from thursday to tuesday because jen couldn't be there so now the meeting is on thursday okay okay is that still good for you mike yeah no i still i'm still confused and i'm explaining all right it's thursday that's it we're good thursday thanks for changing that morning i know that wasn't no problem so so what's on the form that was distributed with the package still has cape on tuesdays

113right i'm going to pull it up myself now just looking i'm looking at the um it does say third tuesday third tuesday so it'll just be the third thursday instead we'll have to adjust that okay do we have cool men the motion at all yeah um so it was an action it wasn't emotional okay um unless there was a motion on the table from the prior meeting so look i'll make i'll make a motion off the back of this so is everybody okay with that being the only last change we need to make yep right so i'd like to move that the uh the brookfield uh subcommittee makeup is approved as distributed with the adjustment that the cape meeting will move to the third thursday of each month instead of the third tuesday of each

114month second thanksgiving any other adjustments or corrections okay so all in favor aye okay all right so an update on the new school building project um so the next time i i mentioned that the next time we'll be presented to will be in november um our approval our approval will be needed again before the project actually goes out to bid which is still uh the goal is still for early december um unsure if they're going to make that uh that target but at some point in december i think the project should be able to go out to bid we talked about a name for it oh at this time throughout the whole process we had talked a little bit about um getting a well certification for this building there is a cost that's associated um

115for that um subscription or that certification every year and the nbc wasn't sure if they they didn't want actually to commit to having that additional expense for the school so they are at this time still looking into at least the one-year certification um which will which can be rolled into um the cost of the project except itself and absorbed that way um but that might just be something that we want to sort of keep in the backs of our minds in terms of you know budgets coming up and and so forth um if we want to keep that kind of certification um oh so last night at the ubc meeting bless you um bless you again you're gonna mute yourself so last night at the mbc meeting um the last time we had seen an

116exterior rendering of the building um this board had raised a lot of concerns about the look of the front facade how it might be a little bit too cold or futuristic modern looking so what they did was in particular the canopies now i didn't see the photorealistic rendering just yet um tecton i guess is still working on that but what was presented and i'm going to ask eddie to send it all to us if he can but it did look a lot better so the the canopies still have sort of the angle that they had before but they changed up the material to a timber which really kind of softens it makes a little warmer and it kind of gives the impression um of maybe like a tree house or something that a child almost

117might dream up and build so um it was it was playful and it kind of fits really nicely into the site which um at least in the renderings looked really natural and organic and it looked it looked really beautiful so i'm going to have eddie uh hopefully send over those new drawings to us but i think so um that's all i have uh john did you want to add sure sure there's a couple things thanks to that oh i'm sorry just so everybody knows uh you know there's a lot ongoing with the project water and gas main coordination continues um wetlands approval ongoing working with the office of school construction and grants management there was just a lot of paperwork that we had to continue filing and working through with that department um the other

118part is that the police and fire departments have met with the mbc and other folks for logistical plans we've been working on that we had to cancel one in july but really getting ready and working with melissa on the back of the school and when ground breaks probably in march or april uh for some piping underneath that needs to be uh updated before the actual construction starts um there's gonna be a lot of detail on that and there's there's going to be a lot of site work in front of the building in terms of getting a roadway to come in and uh it's gonna be a lot of work over the course of 18 months that's going to happen and um we'll have to work on bus pickup and drop off and also uh parent

119pick up and drop off and and parking and so forth to be a lot going on with the site um the other piece is the hazardous materials test was was done throughout the school to get ready for when the opportunity to demolish uh huckleberry happens so we wanted to get that completed that is complete the exterior renderings rosa went through that also security parks and rec technology and registered voters all have had meetings with the team for their needs and so we really made some good progress there um and then the other piece that's important for people to know that 50 of the construction documents will be sent to the construction manager by the end of next week which actually now is this week the way i was writing this report so we're really moving

120along at a nice club right on pace right on track because i understand that's all i have you're right anything else on that okay so let's move on to three main points i think reopening's a biggie are you sure i'm usually quiet about everybody but uh considering the importance i guess that's uh the first thing on my list yep reopening maybe the naming of the building it's kind of fun naming at the school yeah really nice and and maybe um if we can get the what we presented here at the board meeting we uh if we get from eddie the presentation from the mbc meeting we could include it in the link yeah that would be nice to get out there for everybody okay so reopening the new school and the naming committee sure yeah

121naming could be a separate from the new school maybe what you guys want to do okay yeah okay sounds good okay uh any upcoming events across the district we should know about tomorrow night for center school there's a story time sweet dreams with mrs diamond a zoom story time at seven o'clock parents can sign up for the link and all schools the date that all the parents are waiting for august 28th the powerschool portal will open for class assignments the most anticipated all right thanks amy did you have that that was it for you i just wanted to add something um if i could put on my library hat for a second um the brookfield library is offering back to school buttons and these buttons are three inch circle buttons with a picture of students

122smiling faces on them so that they can wear them and maybe hope in hopes of sort of easing the awkwardness of wearing a mask back to school and mrs diamond sent over i think it was 46 photos of the center school teachers and staff and we made up buttons for her and um mrs labrizano i was talking to a parent from your school today and she said she was going to follow up but we're happy to do them for all of the teachers and staff we've been getting great response we did 90 students yesterday and 65 students today so tomorrow's the last official day we'll be outside on the library lawn from four o'clock to seven o'clock tomorrow for anybody that would like to come by and get a button but as i said we

123can do the staff ones you know outside of those hours if anybody would like to uh get us some photos and for that you just um for the kids that are coming let's say tomorrow you just need to bring like a photo that'll fit within a three-inch area they can bring a photo that'll fit or if they don't have a photo we have um a camera set up outside we can take their picture we just won't have the button ready right at that moment we'll we're printing them afterwards and then assembling them and we'll call them to pick it up probably the next day great all right anything else okay so we have uh an executive session tonight i move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing strategy and negotiations

124as it relates to collective bargaining and discussion and possible action regarding attorney-client privilege communication addressing return to school issues and board communications thanks bob okay everyone so um well all in favor all right thanks so um for everybody tuning in this will conclude our broadcast and um thanks for listening all right i'll see everyone else in the other meeting