001come on in we on uh it does say we're live but i like to give it a second to load up on my end so i'll tell you in just a second mr renda okay mr render we're live for our q a session all right good evening i'm uh dean rendon the principal here at wisconsin middle school coming live from wisconsin middle school from my office um welcome to all the wms families that are taking time out of their night um to hear our uh reopening plan and really help hopefully we'll be able to answer some of your questions and alleviate some of the concerns you may have um as you know this has been a long process so we want to make sure that you understand it and you're well informed at this time
002i am going to share my screen above no before i share my screen i'm sorry i want to do introductions we have dr verrill the superintendent um to my left i don't know if he's too everyone's left um we have doreen fontana who is our six through twelve uh director of expectation supervisor of special education we have anna laforgia who is our wms nurse and also a nurse supervisor for the district we have ken post who mr ken post who is the director of business and operations we have miss terry cavanaugh who is our director of human resources we have miss wygonic who is our director of pupil services and special education we have mr bednarik who is our seventh and eighth grade assistant principal at wisconsin middle school uh miss gordon was very upset
003she could not attend tonight um but she's she's with with us she said in thinking of us and going to hopefully be able to watch we also have dr ruby who will also our assistant superintendent who will also be our moderator of our questions uh for later on at the end and we have dr sullivan we're very lucky to have our health director dr sullivan here tonight also with us and last but not least uh we have eric conklin uh who is our director of technology and who makes all this happen if we didn't have him we'd be in trouble all right we'll see how well he taught me let's go share screen you put a lot of pressure on me there mr renda right all right i won't do that all righty we want
004don't want to start there we want to start up top okay all right we want to talk a little bit about the um the structure of the meeting that we have tonight as you can see we uh have our administration here in the zoom meeting for tonight we also have our school community participants that were able to um through this live youtube link to be able to watch us tonight which i think is is going to be informative for you and then we also have a link that you were able to submit some additional questions and like i said at the end of this we will be able to hopefully answer those questions and if not we will be able to have a written response to those and maybe a frequently asked questions to be
005able to get out to you and the district and then tonight will be a brief review of the process that we took uh we're going to discuss talk a little bit about and address some of the answers to district level questions and at the same time we want to make sure that we do the same thing for school level based for wisconia middle school we've had two already of these presentations for center school and also brookfield high school and i watched both of them and they did a fantastic job mr belanda and miss diamond along with central office staff with giving that information out so here we go the purpose the purpose of tonight is really in the structure of tonight's meeting is going to be we want to help provide you again with answers
006um and questions for the questions that you have regarding our reopening plan you know be more be more specific to those questions that you have there's been a lot of time and effort that's been put into this process as you know our goal is to really create um a coherent and consistent understanding of the status that we have for our reopening plan and as you can tell that depends on the plan will be dependent upon health trends not just it could be connecticut health trends but also specific to brookfield health um executive orders that are given and also procuring the uh additional furniture and things and supplies that we need to um to make all this happen it it it's a a lot to do um but we're up to the challenge and at this
007time i'm going to invite dr verrill our superintendent to be able to talk a little bit about a brief overview of the planning process that we have dr barrel you're on thank you mr renda and uh parents thank you for joining us this evening we really uh relish the opportunity to uh respond to your questions that you've submitted since last thursday afternoon when you received the google document uh inviting you to this meeting this evening and certainly more questions have come in over the weekend and through the beginning of the week and again uh if your question isn't answered in the presentation or if time doesn't permit for your question to be answered by the end of the meeting tonight uh that's okay we will be putting a frequently asked questions document together uh answering
008all the questions that have come from uh from our parents that have been submitted through that google doc um so the the first thing i'd like to do before reviewing the planning process is thank mr renda and his team um you know we have mr ben eric joining us and mrs laforgia who's been us with you know through the entire summer with this planning process uh the central office team teachers that have been part of this team uh the school reopening planning team that began their work at the beginning of june uh made up of lots of different stakeholders not only of uh for the employee groups but parents and so forth dr sullivan and dr ferreira our health director and consulting medical advisor we've really had a full team effort uh and also uh
009thanking the board of education for all of their support throughout this process and their flexibility to hold special meetings when necessary to review plans uh approve plans move things forward it's really been a great process for all of us in terms of getting closer and really getting an understanding of what it's going to take to reopen school so beginning right at the end of june when the governor and the state department of education produced their guidance for opening school in the fall we immediately provided a parent survey we wanted to get an initial sense of when the fall comes around parents are comfortable sending their children to school at this time our data tells us that 80 of these parents would like to send their children to school with about 20 percent keeping them home
010we will be providing another survey likely by the end of the week or beginning of next week to parents after we've been through these presentations because it's really important for parents to understand more so they can make a more informed decision uh the state department of education um required that the school develop a plan um have it approved by the board and submitted to the state department of education we did that uh in a three-week time period last week on the 24th of july we submitted a plan um we've solicited your questions the board of selectmen uh along with the board of finance um are helping us with the board of education as a matter of fact we have a special meeting with the board of selectmen tomorrow night where we're going to be sharing
011all of the reopening costs um the things we need to purchase the staff we need to properly and safely uh open the school for a 100 return and other supplies and furniture and then we will have a special board meeting likely early next week to continue through that process so we're working with all the elected officials this is a town challenge and everybody's pulling together to figure out how we can make this happen i did mention the uh secondary follow-up family survey already that should be coming out by the end of the week um we're also sending a letter to our faculty um and we're asking them if they have any concerns um that involve their contract or any legal concerns about coming back to work to funnel those questions through the human resources department
012it's very important um we can't open the schools without having the proper staffing so that's something that we're continuing to look at the schools and mr rendall will get into this in great detail are working on their implementation plans based on the district reopening plan and then finally the schools will be communicating all procedures and protocols to families as they always do and that will be an evolving process mr renda can you go to the next slide please all right very important to understand what was required by the state department of education and all local school districts in connecticut work under the auspices of the connecticut state department of education or csde the function of public schools falls under the state constitution so it's very important to understand that our own board of education doesn't
013operate nice isolation we operate under the auspices of the state so there was three scenarios that each district in the state was charged with one was coming up with a 100 in-person school experience uh getting all of our students back for five days a week the second was an option for a hybrid model where half the kids would be in school at one time while the other half would be in a remote learning model and vice versa and in the plan if you've had a chance to look at that which i encourage you to read thoroughly we explain that model not only in a narrative format but in a visual so it's very understandable for everybody and then of course a remote learning model and in dr ruby we'll get into some of the details
014of remote learning in just a couple of slides remote learning and it's it's the state is actually referring to it as remote learning now not distance learning anymore remote learning will look very different from what it was in the spring and i'll let dr ruby uh talk about that later our brookfield plan addresses all three scenarios our goal it continues to be to have 100 of the students in school 100 of the time that is the intention of the district to meet that goal now some parents have asked well what are the choices uh if there's a 100 percent model i understand that i might elect to not have my child come to school for the opening of school parents will choose between at this time the 100 model uh in person that we're all
015going for as a district and planning for or if that is not a model that suits the parent the parent could choose the 100 remote model and work with their child from home with a provision of instruction from the school there is no parent hybrid choice for the opening of school some parents had asked well can i just have that my my son or daughter come in two days a week unless the district's in a hybrid model a parent can't just choose a hybrid model so it's either for now with our model of 100 in you're choosing that or the opt to remote learning the other thing that's important for everybody to know is uh while it's been a challenge uh your brookfield team has really done some great work we are prepared to transition
016to hybrid or full distance uh full remote learning excuse me as conditions warrant so we're going to be ready it's not easy to do uh to turn that switch on and off but we're setting ourselves up for success to be able to do that before we go to the next slide i'd just like to address on monday afternoon the commissioner of education and the governor held a press conference many of you may have heard uh or actually viewed the press conference where the governor continued to talk about districts having flexibility flexibility to start school in a hybrid model all kinds of flexibility at the high school high school's different than the other schools maybe some flexibility at the middle school there was a lot of discussion about that it's important for the community to know
017the goal from the start and in writing just last week it was made crystal clear to every single superintendent from the commissioner of education that we were to continue to pursue the 100 model obviously as long as health conditions weren't and do our best to make sure we have that plan ready to go for the start of school the press conference on monday to be very frank was a surprise and while the flexibility is sometimes nice on the surface to hear about flexibility if it's not clearly defined in writing as to what that actually means um we don't want to make any rush to judgment on on what that means in terms of an interpretation at the district level so we've been on the phone with the state we've been on the phone with our
018with my regional colleagues and we've been talking about things and um we have a meeting with the commissioners all the superintendents do on friday afternoon and so we're hoping to get some more clarity from the commissioner as to what that means that you have flexibility for a hybrid model but again at this time we're continuing our planning for the 100 mile as you all know um it's not just week to week that things change with the cove and pandemic that we've all been dealing with and struggling with frankly for four months it's not even day by day sometimes hour by hour things change and we're doing our best to adapt and adjust as we can next slide surrender all right so now it's time for doctor to talk about that remote learning options dr ruby
019i'll hand it off to you oh thank you dr burrell so i'm going to talk to you about remote learning and dr brill already looted alluded to the fact that what we call distance learning in the spring and what the state is now referring to as remote learning are two very different animals so as you know we were merely going along in school on march 12th and got the word that you know essentially the party was over we couldn't come back so overnight we had to go to providing resources for folks to access at home because we thought we were coming back pretty soon and as you all know because you lived it that didn't happen rather we were told that we had to go from providing supplemental resources to developing online instruction and uh
020kudos to all of our building administrators um our other administrators and our teachers because if we had been told that we needed to do this ahead in advance we would have all been like holding our heads because it would have been incomprehensible but our people are amazing and in the face of the the dilemma that we that we confronted we were able to pull it together and while it wasn't something that was intentional and planful and well thought out given the situation that we were in i'm very grateful for the people that we had so that was that was distance learning and i think because most other districts were in the same position actually all other districts were in the same position as us i think this change to remote learning is multi-faceted but one
021of the reasons might be to distance itself from distance learning because it will be different so distance learning of old was asynchronous meaning that students were not having live instruction for the most part although as we evolved because we listened to what students were telling us we had surveys we had focus groups we were morphing as we went along and supporting our teachers our administrators work to support teachers to be able to use zoom i'm sure you uh you know like i think dean renda is like a youtube star now with his um morning openings i i think he was offered a few contracts this summer actually but the the leaders were really presenting themselves as models for teachers to help them develop a find a comfort zone a sweet spot to be able to
022um use live interactions with students because it's not something that that people were used to doing teachers are are interesting individuals we we pride ourselves in loving our kids and loving our content and being able to kind of morph when we're in a classroom with our students because we have such a passion for that and then all of a sudden um to go from what almost seems like a private interaction into a very public interaction broadcast is um is daunting in the beginning but we had great administrators in all of our buildings putting on the morning show um the curriculum was delivered in an asynchronous mode so we had students even at the high school who were fighting the clock doing work because we can see what time people do their work online at 11
02359 to hand something in the remote learning that we're talking about here is not going to be that way so let's go back to to the slide and look at the important information here um first of all you need to understand that this is not a like a forever thing this in the state guidelines it clearly says that your right as a parent to opt into or select remote learning as a platform for your child to or a program model for your child to access their education at this point in time is temporary and obviously as your your district educators we're here to honor that that option but we can only honor it for as long as the connecticut state department of education allows and while we love all our folks up at the state
024of the state of connecticut department of education they change their mind about how things need to be based on everything that they're hearing and all the information that they get that we may not be privy to and it seems like things change like this so it's temporary it's not for everything parents are going to need to inform the district of what their selection is is your child as uh dr brill said currently we're 100 remote or 100 in school are you going to opt your child into the remote or the in class because that's going to involve a lot of preparation on our part in terms of being ready for your student in the in the selection that you've made so you're going to get a survey and you're going to have to inform us
025of what your choice is now none of us likes to be backed into a corner so don't worry that's not what's gonna happen you're gonna have the right to choose during this temporary period as to whether or not you want your child to stay in whatever you you opted into so if you decided you know i'm not comfortable or you had other reasons i'm going to keep my child home i want remote learning and then september 17th comes and you're like yeah i've had enough that this child's going back to school for whatever reason you need you can do that you just need to give us a two week notice in writing so that we can prepare we have to change the room arrangement we have to measure all the desks we have to we
026there's a lot of work that we have to do behind the scenes to make things safe for your child so if you give us a note a written notice then your child can return to school for in-school learning on the first day of school in the following month so if it was september 17th when you sent us the letter the first school day of october will be waiting with open arms but we will not hug your child um for to have them come back to school so um you can also go the other way if you had your child in school whatever happens whatever your personal uh feelings are you can decide you know what i'm going to have my child do remote learning that's okay too we need notice and you'll see we're required
027by the state to keep attendance so we need to know where kids are you can let us know that your child is going to switch to remote learning and that's not there's no time delay because we don't have to prepare anything you need to prepare for that so um you have any questions on anything that i discussed that are relative this slide please put them in the q a in the document that you have the link to and we will address that surrender you can go to the next okay so synchronous asynchronous so we had an asynchronous distance learning mod module things were recorded as i said before students could log in to either their google classroom or what whatever resources were available to them at a time that suited them that's the best we
028could do at that time those days are gone we found from our surveys from talking to students that they did not like the students did not like this interestingly enough colleges did surveys with their students who were in the same boat as as we were in and they thought that students would like this you know loosey-goosey freedom you know to be able to watch a video of a lesson anytime they wanted and they found across the board that students wanted to be structured they wanted to have live instruction from their teachers and just like our students they wanted to be in a virtual classroom where they could have interaction not only with their teachers but with their colleagues with their students with their peers with their friends so our remote learning will be synchronous it
029will be live instruction so if your child is home your child will be receiving digitally through the computer live instruction that's being delivered live by their teacher right alongside their colleagues who are in the classroom so the the one of the questions that we've been asked is so what will the day look like so in terms of the time structure the day will look like in time the same as out of school as it would in school because it's live so depending on what school you're in i'm going to make up these times if the first class starts at 8 45 at 8 the kids in the school will be at attention with the teacher you know delivering um instruction and the children at home will be on their computers receiving that same instruction as
030the students so will my children be glued to a computer screen all day no because there are breaks during the day for different things so there might be a lesson that's delivered by the teacher live and you're watching along and then there might be some what we used to call small group work where kids would gather at a place in the room we can't do that anymore but we can't our teachers are really resourceful and creative and we're going to be providing them with more technology instruction they can do small group work in um breakout rooms on the computer so if your child's at home let's just pick on some of our our colleagues here so let's pretend that john barrel is at home and dean renda and eric conklin and dorian fontana are in
031my class i can assign them to work together because they're a good group look at them they're wonderful and i can just put them into this group in a breakout room and john who's at home can be working with his colleagues or his peers in his class in a breakout room and i as the teacher can go into that breakout room and have a private conversation and actually look at their work well the the rest of the class is working and other breakout rooms are working individually so there will be that type of a break lunch of course they're not going to be glue i mean they could go into a breakout room maybe and eat lunch with their friends that's an option but they could go off and eat with their siblings if there
032are any at home or or the adult who's at home with them um so there's going to be options to not be glued to the computer kids do independent work they're not going to be on the computer for that in the same way as they are looking at zoom they might be working on a document or something um so the attendance for this type of learning is absolutely mandatory this is not as the state said an a la carte situation where you can choose that your child does online learning or remote learning from 9 to 11 and then you go do something else or the child does something else and then you come back in this is a commitment that you're making to having your child participate in our delivery of instruction but from a
033different location from your home or from a child care center and i'm just going to add in something here um folks who have um to be in work there can't be a family member at home with students have asked you know well what happens if they're if it's synchronous learning and my child is someplace else because both of us are working or who is that whoever the adults are in the home are working and not able to be there um i can't speak for every single child care situation but i can tell you that our teachers are amazingly collaborative and have the children's interest at heart and we had educators in our elementary schools that i can they can attest to who worked with daycare providers who were providing daycare service to essential worker children
034and um while our teachers are not going to like be working with people in child care centers like they were their student teachers or something like that they were fielding questions on the um through email and in telephone calls to support the people who were supporting children who were in daycare so i hope that some of what i've said made sense and was helpful and if it wasn't let us know because we will figure out the way to get you those answers so thank you all right thank you dr ruby really appreciate the detail on that so i wanted to go over some basic kind of across all four schools uh expectations that are going to be going on um that answer questions that have been filtering in over the last few days uh for
035the parents and then when i finish a couple of slides i'll be turning it over to mr render to really go through the details of whiskey here specifically cloth face coverings and masks most of you are very familiar with this but just as a quick reminder the parents will be responsible for providing the mask for their children all students will have to wear a cloth face covering or mask while in school in the building in the classroom and uh before they get on the bus they'll need to put it on as they enter the bus um and then that's there's really not much negotiable there it's very important that we all have to be wearing those it's a key mitigation strategy for us to be able to get back to school students will be provided
036with a mask with mass breaks excuse me throughout the day um students will be at their desks socially distance in accordance with state guidelines k through eight classroom chords will also have trifold shields at their desks um and the schools will re schools will provide further details the trifold shields are um we're looking to order ones that are clear so the students can see but it provides a natural border to remind people about social distancing and also when students mr rendell get into this when they have to take a mass break the shield is another barrier while we remain uh in social distancing um for short amounts of time so we don't have the spread of the of the virus and we really could uh and we're working with our uh with health director and
037medical advisor on this mitigation strategy uh to make things work in this world next slide please a big question from a lot of parents parent drop off and pick up how are you guys going to work that out of course each building is different um but as a district strategy it's important to know for parents to know exactly what we're doing and while we don't have each building strategy and plan fully articulated here's what we're doing to work on that plan number one we're working with the police department and all-star transportation to make sure we have a cohesive and systematic plan which will ensure the safety of our students of course but parents at drop off as well as our staff and of course public safety we're going to be looking at traffic patterns into
038and out of the schools make sure it's safe and orderly making sure the public roads surrounding the schools remain safe making sure students are socially distanced and accounted for at entry and dismissal you can imagine all especially the little ones masks on getting to know them finding routines keeping an eye on everybody maintaining social distancing it's a lot that goes into just the simple act of arrival and dismissal of course wanting our buses and cars to peacefully coexist and then really looking at if there's a way to stagger car traffic parent traffic with bus traffic and thinking about all four schools because parents have to if they're driving their children which we are encouraging that's going to increase traffic with drop-offs at multiple schools and also being flexible as a school in terms of arrival
039times and tardies and things like that so we're well aware of that and so we're going to be working on that plan next slide please mr rumba facilities and hygiene trying to answer the basic questions there's so much that goes into the custodial work that's going to go on and updating and enhancing the cleaning as it exists right now number one one of the analyses we've done is to see how many more custodians we need and maybe even a change in schedules of custodians to meet the new requirements we need at least six new custodians to meet the requirements so we could open school so that's something we'll be talking with the board of selectmen as i talked about earlier in terms of getting the funding to ensure that we have proper custodial staff in
040place bathrooms we talk about a spectrum of cleaning full cleaning to an intermediate type cleaning and then the high touch disinfectant wipe down so a lot of that will be going on not only throughout the school but specifically in the bathroom making sure they're disinfected twice a day um desk cleanings uh we talked mr ren will be talking about the students at their desk cohorted for much of the day um and he'll talk about that but specifically making sure we're wiping down deaths after lunchtime um the high school kids uh wiping down their desks there's a lot that goes into this a lot of logistics um a lot of cleaning supplies a lot of planning so we're looking at that in an option we're looking at to make sure we're really on top of cleaning
041desks even though with the middle school the students will be using their desk and no one else really should be using their desk because they're going to be cohorted we are looking at options for neutral cleaners that are extremely safe that would be appropriate for students to take advantage of if they'd like to wipe their desk down or even if we could share with parents what those neutral cleaners are that would like to send them in with their children to help do some extra cleaning so we're really we're trying to be a team here and really work together um one of the themes of this entire school year coming up is going to be is building on gratitude from this past year is patience and flexibility we're all going through this together we all understand
042the challenges and so we just need to be patient with one another and flexible with the changes that come up and new requirements to continue to evolve over time lots of hand washing breaks will be built in the principals and our facility director are working on a strategic placement of hand sanitizer stations and new wall mounts and sanitizer throughout the building so that's being worked on as well next slide please mr ella health and wellness really key mitigation strategies that you've all heard about will still be in place but something very important in working with dr sullivan just to remind us of how well brookfield's doing in general connecticut's doing well but brookfield has a a 0.6 transmission rate which is below the one percent and when you're in that range that's when it it
043according to the guidelines is safe to go back to school so our numbers are really good in connecticut i know they're creeping up but in brookfield we continue to do well dr sullivan happens to be on the call so if there's some questions uh toward the end of the meeting we certainly could ask dr sullivan to weigh in um and the health department also does daily monitoring of community transmission and so they know down to the to the ad that the person the street the neighborhood the health department is really monitoring uh in an incredible way what's going on in our town but what are those key actions that make it all possible for us to continue on with society and let's think about this and you've heard about these social distancing face coverings nose
044and mouth frequent hygiene breaks washing our hands constantly respiratory etiquette sneezing into your sleeve and so on a home assessment that's really that's written out in great detail in our school reopening plan and again it's posted on our website i encourage everybody to just carve out some time it's a 41-page document please read it um the home assessment we'd like every morning for adults to assess themselves as in and for you as parents to assess your children and take temperature and make sure we don't have symptomatic children or workers coming into the building stay home if you're ill those are the big mitigation strategies and they don't change continue cohorts again i said mr ren will be talking about this but just in general a cohort is trying to keep the same group of children
045together not only to ensure that we um limit contacts but if there is any concern about possible infection um we can contact trace quite easily that's done through the health department and state department of education the school system does not contact trace number one we don't have the expertise nor do we have the manpower to do that that's done by a combination of the health department working with the state department we will cohort to the greatest extent possible specifically at wisconsin families will be cohorted together what does that mean if we go into the hybrid model we talked about flexibility earlier we talked about health data if we decide we need to be in the hybrid model where the a group for example is half the students comes in for a couple of days and
046they learn at home and then the b group who was at home learning now comes in um and that gives us opportunity to spread the students out more in the school because there's less children in the school families will be cohorted together what does that mean the first half of the alphabet for example is one cohort so families are together no matter what grade they're in and similarly second half of the alphabet that's just one example of how we can do it we want to be as convenient to our families as possible because we know how difficult this is work schedules daycare and all that we want to make this work for everybody and so we're thinking of that as people with families ourselves and what would work for us and so we're trying to
047do that um uh with our own children as we would do for you and we'll get that's a priority for us getting that cohort out to everybody so we'll do that as quickly as we can next slide mr randa quick bit on special education the first thing i'll say is that we are prepared uh to serve our students in alignment with the individual disability education act idea and we will be providing a free and appropriate education for all of our special education students like we always do students eligible for special education will be treated as general education students first giving them access to everything that's appropriate for them and then of course working with their individual education plan um special education supervisors will be working with building principles to maintain cohorts to the greatest extent
048possible as we said earlier um but what i want you to know it's we have to be very careful about identifying children so i'm not going to specifically talk about one program or the other because those programs are so small it's very easily very easy to start almost identifying and figuring out who we're talking about so we're not going to do that tonight what i am going to encourage is parents if you have a child with special needs and you have questions or concerns please contact mrs fontana she is our grade 6 through 12 special education supervisor if you have a child going into fifth grade you probably already who has special needs you've probably already worked with mrs baldwin she handles fifth grade up through fifth grade um those are our special education supervisors
049and of course you could always reach out to mrs white gonek our special education director for the for the entire district next slide all right this is technology i'm going to turn this over to mr conklin and then we'll turn it back uh then we'll turn the rest of the program over to mr renda eric please thanks dr burrell um yeah just a couple quick high-level things on on technology that i want to cover there's going to be a lot more information to follow in the month of august um which is generally how we handle technology communication in regards to our one-to-one uh program and any communication we send out um to staff and families regarding technology um first of all at the the one-to-one and byod program will continue as planned for our eighth
050grade students um as well as our high school but for whiskey near our eighth grade students will have the option to participate in our one-to-one program we usually send communication uh for that program in early august and actually um at whiskey near mr bednarik takes uh takes a lead on that so we'll be working with him and mr renda closely on on getting that communication out um thanks to the work of the uh and the support of the boe the bos the board of selectmen and the board of finance um we were able to purchase additional chromebooks this year to make chromebooks available to as many students as possible in grades pre-k to seven in addition to what we already have in the district um and how we um utilize those devices around the district
051um during the school day we will have more information on that as we um set up configure and get the get the devices out to where they need to go um very exciting um we will be um offering the option um district-wide for the first time byod is bring your own device uh for those of you who don't know um we are giving families the option um we know we we heard from any of you that you purchased a chromebook during the spring or or have your own device at home already for your students um we are now going to fully support you bringing those into school um and we'll support with with fully functional wi-fi and and other services to make sure that you um get the same instruction in regards to the resources
052that you need uh more information on that with with an agreement that we have um will come from from wisconier and and the other schools um if your children are in those other schools in the coming weeks about how we manage the byod program um and to handle these influx of devices uh our tech team is working hard um on wi-fi upgrades among other things that they're working hard on on wi-fi upgrades um and uh and additional access points throughout all the buildings this summer um because we know that no matter what model we have uh we're going to be relying on on wi-fi and technology more than ever um i'd be happy to answer more questions as they come in later or um in in the document that we share later but i wanted
053to give a quick general overview um and uh thank you and i'll turn it back over to mr renda who's gonna take it over from here all right thank you very much all right excuse me um before i start as you can see our picture of wisconsin middle school here i want to thank all of our central office staff i want to thank um my principal colleagues our uh administration here at wisconsin staff here we're really trying to come up with being creative and coming up with different ways to make this work while understanding the importance of that our students and staff safety is our number one priority it's amazing how much we really miss our kids we i said this uh in the morning announcements at the end of the year and i'll say
054it again um it's not fun when there aren't kids around uh so we're you know we are excited to hopefully make this uh plan uh work and and with the safety obviously is our number one priority so i just wanted to make sure i said that ahead of time and also um you know i know my other two colleagues mr belanda and miss diamond spoke about having their kids and empathizing and understanding that um it takes a lot to to um go through this and understand all this and at the same time i have a son that's a junior in high school he's gonna be a junior in high school and um you know his angst and a little bit of anxious about going back but really just having conversations with him and understanding that
055you know we're going to do what's right and what's safe for him and for all of us now i'd like to talk about a little bit of a total day all right so a typical day this is what we anticipate at this point as a typical day at wms uh from arrival to dismissal student day will still start at 7 55 a.m um as dr brill talked about patience and flexibility we understand the drop-off between buses and parents um is going to take a little bit longer time we understand it so patience is is we were asking for a lot of patience with this process students will be in their homeroom classes that's the cohort we uh dr barrel was talking about for the whole day although some math world language and uh some small
056group classes will have to be split up in what i would call sub cohorts for academic reasons um so that that those small group classes also will be um will be happening during that time so it won't be the whole day for all of them but probably for most of the students uh will be in their home rooms for the for the whole day there'll be some scheduled uh mass breaks all right as we talk about math i ask that um you know we're thinking during every class period maybe halfway during the class but when we talk about mass breaks um i know uh principal diamond talked about really starting to have your son or daughter um put together and and tell if i get the tolerance uh for wearing those masks i know it's
057hard even as an adult and those of you who know me i have a hard time um you know standing still um and pulling out fast uh when i when i have it on um but again we you know we wanna understand we're gonna be we're gonna understand that there's gonna be times there's an itch or they want to just pull it down a little bit that's okay but we really have to develop the tolerance because our thought process is maybe every you know 15-20 minutes being able to have that mass break and how we have that mass break maybe rows one three and five um and like i will talk about with the texture on the desk and then for a certain period of time and then moving to rows two and four then
058having theirs on again that's something that we are going to um have a protocol for uh once we start our unified arts which is our tech ed health gym um etc will be in the home room so those unified arts teachers will be coming into the homeroom uh students will eat lunch in the classrooms that's why one of the big reasons why we'll have those dust shields is so that students will be able to eat uh you know lunch because they will have to have their mask off in that time also so we will have those best shields there for them and dismissal uh as as uh it's been before we'll start around 30. um and again we'll use that same process with the bus pickup and again understanding that it's going to we're gonna
059have to work through it um you know it may be an extra five ten minutes we don't know it could be fifteen um we don't think it's gonna be that much but i think once we start and uh are able to go through it for the first few days i think we'll be able to get that down i'm sorry but i had to throw some pictures in wisconsin got a haircut as you can tell um in front of the tech ed uh room right there in the left part of our front of our building um you can see that uh all the trees that were there before were cut down we now that's the picture on the left the picture on the right is a picture of what's going to be our new bus if
060we want to call bus lane that we're going to have um and as we talk about as i go into the next slide as i talk about the arrival in the morning what's going to be new is that all parent drop off and pick up in the afternoons will be in the back of the building during the day you would still do the same process going through the front obviously because there won't be buses or traffic but in the morning on arrival parents will be popping off in the back and buses will be pulling around in the front with the picture that i just showed you uh there again we're hoping to be able to get the fleet of buses all the way around and in there we may have to have a couple on
061the side it's gonna be very important uh that you work with us and um we follow you know the traffic patterns that we have set up we have worked with our school resource officer officer flynn our facilities director dan caldwell and i also had all-star transportation deb jones was up here the other day with me and we were looking at the amount of buses that could you know be filled in that front area and the patterns that we're going to need to to make this all happen we will have established patterns that are marked in the driveway and especially in the back of the building where we'll have phones set up that we ask parents to please driving slowly and following those uh pathways is going to be very important you're not going to be
062able to let your son or daughter off you know halfway around the corner because you need to go to work we're gonna have to stay in the um in lane that we are working with it's going to be a very important that your child is ready with their materials their backpack or whatever they have that's set up there to get out of the car as they pull around the back and obviously that's important so that the traffic can run smoothly we it's similar to when it was in the front of the building and that um in that you know we asked the same thing to you then now it's going to be even more important because there is going to be a larger influx of parents dropping off which we understand but we're just asking
063you that you have everything set you you tell them everything they need to to have before the before for that day and they're able to get out of the car at a pretty good pace and we will have s and by the way we will have staff in the back and also in the front uh monitoring on this along with administration in the front we will have buses in the front that we will have a staggered entry into the building so we'll be using different doorways to get into the building um how we do that specifically not sure yet but we have an idea one plus four that's in the line bus eight that's in the line coming in different entryways um into the building again the whole idea is that we're not having large
064groups too large of a group coming in now at the same time um in the past we've had students dropped off at earlier day time at about 7 30. right now i don't think that's going to be able to happen again because we do not want to have too many students that are congregating in the school um in a certain area in the cafeteria because in the mornings we could get up to 70 80 kids in there so that's not going to be able to happen so we're asking right now um and before school starts i'll let you exactly know we're asking that you start to maybe drop off or be in line um topping off by 7 45 again understanding that's going to be a long process so um that'll be something that we
065will definitely talk to you about before the first day of school um when students get out of the cars in the back and then also in the front the buses they are directly what they normally do anyway go directly to their home room we're asking students um you know not to bunch up in the hallway which i'll talk a little bit about after but we're asking them to go directly to their homeroom classroom which again they're used to doing anyway and at the bottom you can see i put it's very important to understand that this new process will take time and that again our student in uh safety is our wms classes students again which i talked about will be in their homeroom classes for pretty much the most of the day their core teachers
066meaning science social studies literacy math world language those teachers are going to rotate into the class along with the unhc the unh teachers are going to do the same thing um coming into the class um this you know like i said before the math the world language is a small group classes uh will be will be uh sub cohorts for academic reasons the desks the desks are set up yes so that students are three to four feet apart i want to make sure that was clear the desks are set up so that the students are three to four feet apart so some people i know questions came in that the desks are three feet apart um it's it's not necessarily three feet apart for the best although they could be it's really from the middle
067of one that's the other but we're trying depending on the number of students that are going to be in that class i think dr ruby mentioned before that we are going to have it set up with x's on the floor so we know with the number of students that there's going to be a desk on top of that x and like i said our thought processes depending on the number of students that come it could be anywhere from three to four and hopefully it's more towards four or or more um but again i just wanted to make sure that was uh clear to two people and obviously as we talked about these cohorts i think that we're trying our best to minimize the exposure um you know that that students and uh teachers are crossing
068paths um staff will remain pretty much at the front of the room and wearing a mask students are going to wear their masks like dr brill talked about and remain at their desks the mass breaks i said are going to be around the halfway point of the class again hopefully students will be developing that tolerance to wear them and um which i which i've been told even in some of the summer school opportunities in different districts that they've had that's the students are are getting used to it so if you haven't had the opportunity for your child to wear masks even at home at times maybe you know i might want to put a mask on my son sometimes just so when he's home so he's not talking um like his father um but again
069the whole idea is to build that tolerance uh student belongings for the most part we're hoping that they're going to stay in the desk i will be putting out an email about supplies hold off on supplies right now because we do not want those big traffic keepers we're going to look to limit the amount of um supplies that we have to be able to put in their desk and also obviously when it comes to the winter with um heavier jackets and things we were going to try to not use the lockers as much but if we need to we will absolutely um take care of them um also along with the classes understanding the fifth graders that have had some questions about fifth grade transition we were very lucky in the um spring to have
070our peer leaders and our student council members videos and talk to uh students from their morning meeting over huckleberry um so that was i think a good you know start where we used to in the past have students able to come up to the school and and you know walk through the school we didn't have that opportunity they were you know we did have a video of that for those students we were also talking about that for new students that come to the school over the summer um we are also uh we'll be able to have a video for them put together and also for parents to kind of get a general idea of how the school runs and what certain um certain areas of the building look like whether it's the gym or the
071cafeteria which we won't be going in um as much um different areas of the building that they will be able to see ahead of time and um those of me again looking to make some videos for that all right synchronous classrooms dr ruby spoke about this we're going to have synchronous classes for all in person hybrid and also in the remote uh learning model so i put there'll be a more there'll be more student accountability meaning they'll have to be there they will we will be taking attendance um you know whether and if it's in the hybrid model you know the students that are home at the time they'll need to be on if their classes from 805 to um you know 8 40 or 850 whatever it may be they'll be expected beyond during
072that time um understanding that we're hoping that you know once the teacher goes through their lesson we talked about you know there will be some kind of students going to be working on their own obviously and doing their work um but that is what we are going to be looking to in the fall because as we've stated before in the spring we were kind of thrown into this remote learning uh now we've been able to have time and and really set things up so that there will be now more student accountability um you know um in this in this scenario for our unified arts uh we are gonna have it we used to be on an a b rotation we're not gonna do a b excuse me a b again to minimize the number of
073uh staff that are going into certain classrooms so they're going to be 18 days in a row so if your son or daughter has art they will have art for 18 school days in a row in certain um specials we are developing we call the personal kit for them like in art we're going to try to develop a small little uh kit for each student so that they're not sharing um obviously sharing of materials so you know for different areas like tech ed um and for you know theater arts and things like that that we're gonna try to if needed put together personal fits for them again the whole idea is so that they're not sharing materials the social emotional aspect of this uh we recognize the additional stress that's going to be on students
074and families um and staff going back we understand that i put ruler in here as you know for most of you that have been at wisconsin uh if you've been in huckleberry that uh we we use the rulers you know approach and um you know there's going to be a lot of emotions going on as we know we need students you know staff and students we need to be able to recognize those emotions and understand them and the big thing is how are we responding to them um because it's going to be different we're going to be walking single file pretty much in the hallways we won't have kids doubled up walking the hallways we're gonna have lines in the hallways to walk it's going to be a lot different we all understand this and
075you know we have to be able to uh take our time and and be patient and understand that you know and they're going to be certain students or and even staff that are you know a little bit more anxious about this so this is going to be really really where ruler comes in and understanding our emotion and recognizing uh obviously those to be able to to um work for everybody in the building and and and make for it for a better day um we're going to be looking to utilize the digital platform um in person hybrid and in the remote like we did last year um we talk about you know google classroom is was the preferred that we worked on but there's going to be other obvious some other digital platforms used by teachers
076at times um and the availability in class depends on availability of technology meaning if in remote obviously we would have that but in person and in the hybrid model um you know hopefully we'll be able with them which uh eric cocklin talk about the byod that will be able to have students with technology in the classroom and be able to uh utilize that uh throughout the day also uh which we talked about if hybrid if we go to the hybrid model there will be cohorts that will be across buildings by family um which dr grill hallways students will be asked to walk single file in one side of the hallway put as close as the wall as possible uh keeping three to six uh feet apart you know from front and back obviously um but
077i mean we don't want students and you know i could see it now or some students are literally rubbing against the wall as they're walking they don't have to do that um but we are going to ask them to be on sides of the um of the hallway and three to six feet apart um you know we're gonna have a tape down the middle we're not gonna tape off three to six feet like you may see in a store um but we are gonna show kids and we are to look to maybe even put videos together to show kids in between the hallways where we have our tiles on the floor the larger sets of tiles that are colored um whether they're i think we have green and also there's some maroon or mauve colored
078tiles that those are usually six feet apart now we understand that every kid is not going to be something like where we're we're saying you need to be you know you're not six feet behind the other person not looking to do that at all but at the same time we do want students to understand that we have to go slow it's going to take a little bit longer but uh again i i have no expectations that students can do this uh lunch we are going to be having that in the hallway excuse me in the hallway we are going to be having that in the classroom um students will be able to place an order for school lunch if you you you want to buy from whitman's we will be doing that the day before
079so the day before in class now if they have high school the day before and then i find we could we'll figure it out how to get them to lunch but the day before it'll be like at the hospital where you order your meal for breakfast for tomorrow we're doing that um so that they are able to have this ready for us um as it comes time for lunch time during the day students right now we're thinking that they're going to be able to have like burgers or cheeseburger pizza a chicken sandwich they could order a salad and or a hot lunch option or that are the things that we think right now are going to be available as always students can bring their own lunch you know that's not a problem students will eat
080at their desk with a desk shield like we had talked about and afterwards desk will be cleaned uh after students eat lunch um every time bathrooms what we're looking to do here is we're looking to assign specific bathrooms cohorts or if we'll call it teams or areas of the building um it'll be available during class and you know obviously emergency situations um we're going to look to have a limited capacity in bathrooms we don't know that number yet but i'm guessing it's probably two to three um but at the same time you know we want to be careful not to have a long line waiting to go in the bathroom either but these are things that we're going to be talking about with students and we're not able to monitor them every bathroom throughout the
081day it's just not possible um but we are going to look during you know as i call a peak time we'll be maybe at lunch or when there is a break that maybe being able to um have have someone outside of the bathroom again just to kind of move kids along um it'll be different than when the end of the period is um that we don't want all the kids to run to the bathroom during that time obviously because then again it's the whole idea of a lot of students together as one but uh that would be uh the time that we would have a bathroom and then uh we had some questions around band and chorus um recommendations are being finalized at the state level uh so i know we don't we don't know
082exactly how lessons will be scheduled at this point they're gonna be setting guidelines there are some guidelines that are going to be set for distance between certain uh percussion instruments or um other instruments or certain instruments that we have and also coral members so um once those are finalized we'll be able to figure out how we can run our lessons with the number of students um that we have because at this point we are not going to be having large performance or large group like we've done in the past with grade levels like all of grade 5 going during elt on monday and wednesday um we're not going to be able to have that now so again we will figure that out once um tomorrow the uh recommendations come out for that what am i
083doing on time at seven o'clock i'm always the one who talked um after school activities uh sports has not been set yet um final plans will be based on local health data that we have with help from our brookfield health director obviously and also along with our um athletic director who i know has been meeting um weekly or bi-weekly with other athletic directors in the in the state um after school clubs and activities right now will not start when we get back to school whether they start um after a certain period of time we don't know but at this point right now we will not have after school clubs and activities to start the school year um and um abandoned chorus did i have that advice in there um like i just talked about by
084last dismissal again we'll have the new new system that all parent pickup will be in the back of the building and buses will be in the front uh we're going to follow those same traffic patterns that we talked about before i'm still scheduling logistics of this so we don't have we just want to make sure that we don't have large groups of students all leaving at the same time for parent pickup so that's something that we've been talking about and trying to figure that out um we may ask to do it by grade level you know parents come in at different times by grade level obviously if you have kids in multiple grade levels they could come down at the same time but again that's not something that we have set yet uh buses are
085gonna again be dismissed it's staggered uh to alleviate those large group of students coming out and students will also need to take the same bus home we're asking that they come to school in the same bus and take the same bus home every day they will not be able to get bus passes to go to another student's house um uh you know during the day like we've had in the past and that's obvious because we don't want students mixing uh through the cohorts and again obviously all of this is about student and staff safety is our number one priority and again i know i'm a talker but i want to say thank you very much for joining us tonight obviously this is all uh you know something that we're still working in and these things
086are changing but we really appreciate your partnership and understanding that this is an endeavor that we are going to take on and make sure that we are looking out for the safety of your your son and daughter and and everyone that's involved in our staff dean thank you very very much for that we know that you can talk you have the trophy for talking and we i do we appreciate that um i always i always tease dean about being the mayor but now i realize that his parents gave him the best name he's like the dean of everything here um we had a lot of questions that came into the um question and and answer um document that we asked you to to fill out and while um we don't have a lot of time
087to go over those tonight i have a couple that i just want to address quickly i know we're over time but if you can bear with me and the rest of them we will be collating and looking for themes um amongst the questions that come in from parents from a variety of schools and we will be providing them in writing in a document that will be made available to you um one of the one question that i can answer very quickly um had to do with something that dr burrell said people always like to ask questions about things you say dr burrow so dr burrell said that he was going to be meeting with the commissioner and other superintendents and the question came in is it going to be remote and that would be remote
088whether we were in a pandemic or not because if you think about the logistics of everybody that's running the the ceo of every school district in connecticut driving to a location in hartford even if there was never such a thing as a pandemic that would be something that would be very costly to districts to have their um ceos driving leaving the district and driving up to hartford so that only happens once a year just so you know inquiring minds um there's a beginning of the year meeting where all of they have to rent a big space to fit everybody in and all the superintendents like go to the mecca to um to meet with us the commissioner but all the other meetings are that we go to that are statewide meetings are usually uh by
089zoom or something webex even without a pandemic we had a lot of questions on um temp on health on temperature taking and are we taking temperatures in school we um we have addressed that earlier it's in the document our plan document we are not taking uh temperatures in school every day and i don't know dr sullivan if you you know want me to address this right now or you would like to address it i'm certainly happy to have you address this question if you'd like sure um actually directly from the cdc guidelines cdc does not currently recommend universal symptom screenings or temperature screenings uh screening of all students that is from grade k through 12 be conducted by schools parents or caregivers should be strongly encouraged to monitor their children for signs of infectious disease
090daily and students who are sick should definitely not attend school uh in person so those are directly from the cdc guidelines um and um temperature taking temperature taking for example uh during this hot weather is basically a fluke we started out doing it in the town hall and found that as the temperatures rose outside we got very very many false positive uh elevated temperatures we had to let people sit aside for uh a time and retake their temperatures in order to allow them to um to do their business in in in town hall so it's it's it's a it's not a reliable um response uh for a reliable test thank you for that now the one of the other questions that has uh come up many many times is um what about why aren't we
091doing covid testing on everybody and would you like to address that briefly sure uh it's it's just not practical um in these situations with the numbers of students and and teachers in in the school system for the benefit that it might produce the numbers of of tests that would have to be performed uh would be extremely excessive and uh the long and the short of it is uh it's it's a not available valuable tool as a screening tool monitoring symptoms is the primary screening tool and one one last question that has come up probably more times than many other questions which i know you're not going to be able to address in full but if you could give us the update on the work that you're involved in has to do with what happens if
092a child in my child's class is positive or what happens if a teacher or another staff member is positive what will happen well that's an excellent question and um there a subcommittee has recently been formed between public health and the department of education at the state level uh to address just this uh issue um if you have read the state plan and i'm sure you all have um the infamous page 24 speaks to or addresses this particular issue um and we hope that the new subcommittee will give us some enlightenment with regard to how we proceed uh going forward if in point of fact someone does test positive and if somebody does test positive they should be self-isolated at home and isolated even from family members because most of our transmission in brookfield has been
093family and not inter community or intra community and likewise all contacts will be monitored and through our contact tracers who will keep in touch with potential contacts um we hope that we can get a handle on on exactly this problem but there will be more coming forward from the combined dph sde committee that has been recently formed and met for the first time monday night thank you very much and so i just want to highlight um building on dr sullivan's uh commentary that for the questions that are addressing you know the cohorting and what we're doing we're very sensitive to being able to cohort our children as as best we can within the context of a public school system because our collaboration with dr sullivan and his department which is responsible for overseeing and supporting
094the contact tracing for the town of brookfield is very important we need to be able to provide the best information the best data on who was where and when so that contact tracing can be provided but it's also important to understand that because of confidentiality laws and burpa and hipaa regulations uh nobody's going to be getting an email that says oh by the way um susie mcgee has coveted you know we're just we're not able to do that we wouldn't do that we're going to respect everyone's confidentiality yours and everyone else whether they're an employee or a community member but in light of all that i need to be thanking everybody in brookfield who has helped us be able to get to this point where we can even pull people together to do this kind
095of work because our community has had such a low incident rate i think like 0.6 we were at i correct me if i'm wrong which is you know very commendable the people in our community have been employing um at a higher level than many other places the mitigating strategies of mask wearing and hand washing and social distancing and for parents out there i think last night we heard from our principals and tonight we heard from dean um talking about um you know practicing mask wearing and building tolerance and we all he talked about emotions too we all are highly emotionally charged about how our lives have changed but what's really important is the message that we give to our children about how we are regulating this and while we need to pour our hearts out
096to somebody about how maybe angry we are or um upset we are whatever emotions you're feeling um we need to really be honest with our kids but not instill fear in them because we would not be inviting children back into school if we thought it wasn't safe the way we were going about it just because somebody told us to do it no no i don't think there's one person we would we would fight back so we're we're here to protect um ourselves and our families as well as your children and your families so we will get to the questions that we didn't get to and i just want to thank everybody who's here and everybody who's listening and dr burrell did you want to close yes dr ruby thank you well said dr sullivan thanks
097for joining us this evening for everybody on the panel to be here and listen um and we will get a an faq document to everyone uh with all of our different district experts and town experts in those particular areas to uh complete those uh responses to those questions and get that out as soon as we can grouped by theme because there's lots of questions that actually are the the same question that people have out there and we tried to address that tonight in our presentation um and to to end around the same uh ideas dr ruby just talked about is uh we are going through this uh right there with you as parents we have our own families this has changed our lives we are um enduring and remaining positive and optimistic and really working
098hard to set up the best plan options we can um my own kids are happening to be a rising junior in high school and one who is now rising to be a freshman in college both like many of your children i know you have older and younger children not just kids at wisconsin miss their spring sports miss senior year rights of passage um don't get to see your family maybe you don't get to see your parents kids don't get to see their grandparents at the level they would over the last four months it has been difficult uh inconveniences financial issues we understand it we need to stick together we need to be one and we need to remain patient and flexible through this process as i said i'll end with a few comments as i
099said at the beginning right now we continue to aim for the 100 of students coming back to school five days per week we continue to monitor health data we will be having a parent survey go out for the end of this week or the beginning of next week we need you to as quickly as possible complete that for each of your children so we understand what your plans are because it's critical for our planning um and knowing the number of students and getting a gauge on how many kids will actually be coming to school and we'll need that commitment very soon so we'll get that information that survey to you quickly um i want to thank you for your time thank you for your engagement in the process continue to send the questions in we
100want to hear from you and we want to provide answers this is fully open um and and we remain empathetic and open and we want to learn uh from you as to what are the burning questions of what needs to be answered so again thank you to everybody thank you for the team for all the hard work and we just have to stick together and plow through this the 2021 school year will not look like any other year we've ever had and we're going to do the best we can to get through it together thank you all and everyone have a great night really appreciate everybody's time thank you