001all right mr conklin it looks like we're ready to go and streaming live on youtube is that right yep we're all set mr blanda go ahead all right great thank you um so first of all welcome to our families that have joined us here uh to watch via youtube tonight for our question and answer session about the brookfield high school reopening plan uh i am pleased to be joined by many people in this room as i look at the zoom screen it's great to see some familiar faces um so i'll just go around and just introduce with us here is our superintendent dr john burrill we also have our assistant superintendent uh dr maureen ruby is here uh also from central office we have mr ken post he's the director of business and operations uh
002and also from central office we've got a lot of central office today we have mrs terry cavanaugh who's our director of hr human resources and also from central office who's comes the building on a regular occasion um our director of pupil personnel and that is mrs gino igonic we have some building-based people that are also here with us today i'm glad to welcome mrs susan griffin one of our assistant principals uh also uh mrs jules scheidy who is one of our other assistant principals as well uh and mrs doreen fontana who is also she's the supervisor of secondary special education uh and there's two other important people uh first is anna laforgia she is one of the nurses in district and she's also the nurse supervisor she's been with us from the beginning in this
003process of planning and getting ready to reopen she's been a valuable resource and we're so glad to have her on board and i purposely left him last but eric conklin is also joining us here uh the director of technology uh at brookfield public schools he's here and uh we are working this meeting together um so what i'm gonna do first is uh i'm gonna share my screen um and then which will go through a powerpoint presentation um that really addresses and we'll talk a little bit about the format tonight so i'll start by sharing my screen all right uh you know while i said we are broadcasting uh live on youtube this will also be recorded so people can go back and certainly watch it um you know we will certainly um what we've done
004is people have submitted uh questions and answers and a document uh which we have reviewed as a district and as a building uh i met with mrs sheidy and mrs griffin today and yesterday we talked a little bit about those questions to make sure that we get them answered to the best of our ability um and you know you certainly if we didn't get a chance to answer your particular question or if during the evening tonight you also have the opportunity to submit questions uh using um a link which i'll share and you'll see in a minute uh before i continue you know as i look at this reopening plan i i can't help but think about my wife who just told me that she found out from her district uh at this point that
005she's also a teacher um a middle school english teacher and she is uh going to have to go back to school it's looking like five days a week whether they're remote or hybrid and i have a third grader and a sixth grader at home and we're trying to figure out how to do and what we're gonna do with all this stuff it changes day to day um and you know i want to just empathize with everyone i feel the same thing that you're going through uh while it's a different level i have a middle schooler and an elementary school kid um but i'm feeling the same struggles that everybody else is trying to figure out what's what's the right thing to do and the best decision for me and my family and for our kids
006um and just know that our staff has been on board from day one uh and they can't wait to see students again that's one of the things that they're really missing the most uh but we want to make sure we do it safely and appropriately and and make sure that we're doing the right thing so what you see now is the administration obviously this is my screen but we're all in a zoom meeting this is the live youtube link and people have already submitted questions uh through the google form the review of the process tonight how this is going to go is we're going to start at the district level with questions that have been submitted you had an opportunity to select whether it was a school-based or a district-based question and we even found
007some of the brookfield high school questions specifically were really good to be answered across all all buildings so that we kind of up those to district level questions so we'll hear from the central office and then after that we'll discuss and respond to and address the school level questions um that people had and submitted and again if you have questions you can certainly submit them using that form that was sent out and we'll do our best to answer them if we don't get a chance to answer them tonight if we have time at the end we'll go live we'll go to a moderator who will ask some of those questions but if not we'll be sure to release a frequently asked questions document to help you make the best decision and learn more about what
008our plan is so the purpose really is like i said before we want to give parents answers um you know there are specific specific questions that people had uh down to very specific mind new details to the very big global how are we handling this situation uh whether it be transportation or classes down to what do i do with my student so we're trying to do the best to give a general overview of everything for parents so you have a better idea and we just want you to understand the plan that we put together um that was a labor i'm not going to say labor of love but it was a labor-intensive process that we went through um as a group and um you know we want to make sure that you understand that it
009is a plan that is in place and certainly can be changed and it really all depends on several things including health trends executive orders and a bunch of different other things we need to make sure that the building is up and ready to go given the guidelines and recommendations from all the varying groups in the community and the government at this point i will um turn it over to our superintendent of schools uh dr john barrell to talk about the planning process all right uh principal bolanda thank you for the introduction and uh setting the stage for the meeting this evening i really do appreciate it um and and i want to share with with mr belanda and with the community um how impressed i am with mr poland's leadership and his team's leadership uh
010throughout this process and working with all of the principal colleagues the school reopening team and the other staff and directors and so forth at central office to really work since june 29th when the newly updated fall recommendations to prepare for reopening or uh levied from the state department on down uh so that was the first thing i want to say the second thing i wanted to say is kind of echo mr vallando's comments as a parent uh how i can absolutely empathize uh specifically with high school parents as to what you're going through um all of us uh you know on these calls tonight have families and we're all enduring this incredible uh worldwide pandemic uh together and we're going through many of the same challenges so one of the themes i'd like to talk
011about tonight as we go through this is remaining flexible and patient throughout the entire process but as a parent it's important for you for you as high school folks and high school families to know what i'm going through i have two sons one is a uh ascending junior the other is now moving on into college uh both uh like many who are probably viewing right now both of my kids missed their spring sports seasons my senior missed uh you know some of the traditional senior um rights of passage and so forth so we went through this right along with the folks here in brookfield and uh while i'm proud to say we've made it through as a family quite well and just like we did as a district it has been a challenge and there's
012been a lot of disappointment and it wouldn't be right i didn't recognize that and acknowledge that um so again flexibility and patience and let's stick together um and really um count on each other as we make it through this together it's gonna it's not going to be easy and it's going to take time to get through this through this school year so at this point in the summer about three weeks ago when the june 29 recommendations came down from the state department of education the district put out an initial parent survey and what we wanted to know there is uh how many parents thought they'd be sending their children to school and that was about 80 percent at the time about three weeks ago now and about 20 percent thought they'd have their their child
013participating in remote learning and we'll get into the details of what remote learning might uh will look like um but the guidance document that came down from state department of education required us to develop a reopening plan and that plan has already been approved by the board of education last week and i submitted it to the state department of education this past friday we then uh just as late as uh this past thursday afternoon solicited your questions so we could prepare to have this meeting and really globally answer a lot of those similar questions that parents are hungry for answers on as mr belanda said we want to provide those answers um simultaneously to all of this mr belanda had a slide up there he talked about procurement of supplies furniture um their staffing we're
014going to need to meet the requirements of the state plan we're working right now with the board of selectmen and the board of finance to ensure that we have enough desks for example to spread the students out for social distancing in many classrooms we don't have enough desks because we have tables and so there's a lot of configuring we have to do pre-k all the way through grade 12 obviously we're specifically talking about the high school tonight we have a follow-up survey planned for very late this week or early next week where after we have these parent meetings um where we're answering as many questions as we can parents can have a better understanding of the plan and be able to make a much more informed decision as to whether they're going to send their
015child to school or select the option of remote learning we're also going to be sending a letter out to our faculty and staff because we we cannot move as a district without our faculty and staff and we need to make sure that we have the people in place to operate the school system so that's another um element of planning we're working on the schools are finalizing their implementation plans in in thinking through all the details of uh mr glendale talk about what's it gonna look like when we walk through the hallways i mean the the fine-tuned details uh we'll talk about things like that and then also of course the school all the schools uh you know coming out of the principal's office will communicate the plans um and the protocols and anything new that
016parents and students need to know next slide mr blender all right so there's a couple of things this is an important slide here um and i'm going to talk about this slide and then i'm going to talk a little bit i'm going to reference the press conference that governor lamont and commissioner cardone education commissioner cardona held yesterday because i want to make the high schools a little bit different and was mentioned quite a bit in the press conference so the first thing that's really important remember i mentioned june 29th when the plan from the state came down to every single district and that plan from governor lamont and the state department of education called for the districts to prepare three scenarios for reopening school and most of you've heard of this one is the 100
017in-person school experience students in school for five days a week 100 of the time and that's what we continue to work toward we've been pursuing that all summer that's the most difficult to implement considering all the mitigation guidelines but we're still pursuing that then there's the hybrid 5050 model you've heard of where half the students are a cohort and they can come in on one day or two days in a row while the other students are in remote learning and vice versa the second half of the week that the hybrid model we'll talk a little bit more about that and then uh certainly remote learning in remote learning i'm just going to mention this now because dr ruby's going to get into some detail on this the remote learning we're planning for the fall will
018not be the same as the remote learning or what we call distance learning last uh last year it will not be the same so we plan uh our plan addresses all three scenarios but we continue to have a goal um especially considering the health data in brookfield and in connecticut which is very good uh that we can do our best to do everything we can to implement a 100 model for 100 of the time so some of the choices uh parents uh uh ask about what what what choice do i have so for for the opening of school parents will choose between and this is right now considering the health data considering the fact that we're planning to have enough furniture and the staffing we need to open up 100 on july 28th that we
019will set up a district board of education model that's the 100 model that's the plan and you either choose as a parent the 100 model to go to school or you choose to have your child 100 remote at this point when you're in the model that the school is offering there is no choice for hybrid parent can't choose to say well i want my child to go in for two days and out for three that's not an option when the district is supporting the 100 model so i want to be very clear on that we're also prepared by going forward with 100 100 model to transition immediately to a hybrid model or all the way it conditions up warning all the way to a remote learning model so we're prepared for all three scenarios while
020i stay on this slide mr plan if you could leave it up for me at the press conference yesterday the governor announced that local districts would have flexibility um and that they could phase in perhaps even a hybrid model for the high school and that was really a surprise to us we were not expecting that in any kind of announcement yesterday and so that came forward and while it was stated at the press conference that we would have this flexibility superintendents have not received any written information or guidance at this point as to what would um what would govern a decision to say i'm starting the school year as a hybrid model especially when you talk to dr sullivan and you hear on the news all the time that connecticut is actually uh experiencing relatively
021positive data especially compared to the rest of the nation so we just want you to know that we continue to push forward for the 100 model and we will adjust over the next week two weeks three weeks and if conditions change we will be in touch with you and we'll let you know what's going on that was really important for me to address but at this point we continue to plan for the 100 percent model in addition to that i just really have to thank our board of education and recently the board of finance uh along with selectmen because we have made an investment in technology i forgot to mention that in the ces presentation a little bit earlier this evening and so we're moving forward on technology so we could learning uh much more
022readily than we did in the spring so i'm going to turn it over i think now mr glenn if you move on i believe it's a remote um it's remote learning time and i will turn it over to dr ruby our director uh our assistant superintendent for all things teaching and learning i'll turn it over to her dr ruby thank you dr perel so as dr brill mentioned before um the remote learning that we would be implementing this year for parents who chose that over the 100 percent in school model will be different from what we refer to as distance learning in the spring and what's important to know is that as described by the connecticut state department of education the remote learning is a temporary option that they are allowing us to provide as
023an option for parents and so brookfield obviously is going to honor that parent option for the duration of the time that the state is going to allow that and we don't have an end date for that that will is a to be determined by the state department so you will be receiving uh late this week beginning of next week a a survey to fill out for each of your children informing the district of what your selection is for each child whether they will be there they'll be in attendance in school 100 of the time or they will be home learning from home in our remote model for 100 of the time what i want to say on this is that if you have more than one child you do not have to select the same
024attendance option for each child you can have differing situations in your home or with individual children so as an example if you had three children and you had a first grader a fourth grader and a tenth grader you could you could determine for whatever reasons you needed to determine that that children your two younger children would be in school 100 of the time and that your 10th grader for whatever reason you make the decision would be in remote learning so you it will be very important when that survey comes that you fill out the sheets as directed for each of your children so that we know exactly who we are preparing um to have in the classroom and who it will be remotely learning so an another question that came up many times was about
025transitioning from one mode of learning to the other when we're in the 100 in or remote so parents can choose to transition from remote learning to in-school learning this is your absolute um right to do that but because you can imagine that if we have children coming from at home into school that we need to be prepared for them we need to make sure that we have a desk for them in the socially distant space and that we have their um the shield that goes on their desk and that we're really ready for them because the social distancing and the mitigation factors are critical to health and safety which is our number one focus okay so if you decide for whatever personal reason you should decide that you want your child to go from remote
026to in school learning we will be sending you guidance on how you notify us and we'll be asking for a two-week minimum written notice of your intention to change and then your child will return to school on the first school day of the month following your notice of intention so for example if you decide to start the school year with your child at home learning remotely and it gets to be september 17th and you're feeling more comfortable you can see that the things that we said we were going to do we're doing and you'd like your child to come back you would follow the protocol that we'll be providing to inform the school of your decision to send your child back to school and then your child would start back in school on the first
027school day in october giving us that time to set up and make sure that we have everything that we need in place for your child when your child shows up you may send your child to in-school learning and decide that for some personal reason that you want your child to be learning remotely same procedure will follow in terms of notification so you would be provided with a protocol for giving written notification of your intention to go from in school to remote because we are responsible for keeping track of children and their attendance etc and then that could be an immediate change um because obviously there's nothing for us to prepare for it's really um on the burden of the parents to be preparing for how your child is going to learn remotely and i didn't
028mention this in the um the center school presentation i was remiss but if you are deciding that your child would be in a child care center or someplace like that just know because i know that's a concern of parents that many of our child care centers were in communication with us during the spring because they had children working on their chromebooks or laptops in child care centers and our teachers i know that teachers in the lower schools were communicating with folks not not teaching them how to teach but answering basic questions that might have come up so that the child care centers could support the students during remote learning so i just wanted to put that out there mr belanda could you would be okay so mr burrell dr bruhl said that remote learning was
029going to be different from the distance learning in the spring and this is what this slide is all about in the spring we had what was called asynchronous learning that is not what we will be providing it with the remote learning model it will be a 100 in theory synchronous model what does that means that children who are working at home in the remote model will be receiving their instruction delivered live by their t by their teachers along with their peers and the timing for it we've been asked well what will the uh the time of the remote learning day be because it will be live instruction uh right along with peers in the classroom it will be this identical to the in-school model for time um but that does not mean that your child
030is going to be glued to a computer screen for the duration of the school day because there will be non-screen times after a teacher delivers lessons typically in the classroom children are doing work at their desk they may even be doing work with other people in the classroom and so that would not be necessarily screen time if it was individual work but we can afford children the opportunity to work with their in-school peers through breakout rooms on our on the platforms and so they can be engaging with students and they would be in screen time but it it wouldn't i from what we've heard and what i've seen in my own work with uh teaching remotely albeit at um the college level students are engaged in working with each other who are in totally different
031towns and in different places and so we we can support the students to be able to do that um so that the students would get breaks they'd get their break for lunch they'd get mask breaks the bathroom breaks the time that they work on independent assignments so it would there would be some non-screen time because we this is us an instruction this is a curriculum that we're providing it the attendance is mandatory so that's really important for folks to understand it's you can't like tune in from nine to ten and then you know log off and not be present attendance is mandatory in the synchronous remote model thank you all right thank you dr ruby i really appreciate the detail you went into on that so face coverings and masks was another big area a
032big question area so just a couple of basic facts that you need to know about how the district will move forward in alignment with um state expectations and cdc guidelines and so forth parents and guardians are responsible provide for providing a cloth face covering um or a mask for their uh children uh this is uh the schools will have extras just in case someone forgets or there's an accident or a mistake or whatever that can happen to any of us and so we'll have extras on hand but the parents are responsible for providing the mask all students must wear the face cover and cloth face covering our mask while in school in the building um in their classrooms and actually as they enter the bus if they're taking bus transportation we'll have to wear the
033face mask again dr ruby just alluded to it there will be mask breaks throughout the day um students will be socially distanced when mass breaks are permitted either in classrooms or in whatever situation uh mr belland and his team um organized um it's important for high school parents i know this is specifically bhs but students in the ke classroom cohorts will also have trifold shields at their desk um in case you were curious about when uh dr ruby menstruan shields uh students k-8 will be eating it at least for the time being as we start school at their they're eating lunch in their cohort classroom at their desk and so when you have a mask off your face you need that shield uh to help with the mitigation strategies of spread and each school will
034provide further details on how that will work next slide mr glenda a parent drop off and pick up at arrival and dismissal time a big question from a lot of parents not necessarily such a big question from parents at the high school level because many of the students drive and there's a separate student parking lot regardless it is it is a big concern with traffic and of course we're encouraging parents to drive their children because of ensuring that we want to make sure we have enough room on the buses for social distancing as well and so we're working with the brookfield police department and all-star transportation as a matter of fact i was in communication with chief purcell this morning about setting up some times to have some uh some discussions about this and what
035we can do and the whole point of the bus company the police department school administration working together on this is to ensure that we have a safe uh environment in terms of the traffic flow for our students parents staff and the public we need to make sure the traffic patterns into and out of the school property at the property are safe in orderly that the public roads surrounding schools remain safe that students remain socially distanced um and accounted for as they enter and exit the school that the buses and the cars could peacefully coexist and of course knowing that high school parents may have middle school or elementary children and we want to make sure that we're taking a look at how could we set up a parent pick up and drop off in such
036a way that there's some flexibility and opportunity for parents to get to the different schools if they need to so we're looking into all those factors the plan will be communicated once we have it set up and ready to go next slide please facilities and hygiene so some common uh questions that continue to come up was uh in general about cleaning but specifically about bathrooms and so there's a continuum of cleaning that will be occurring there's full cleaning of a bathroom or full cleaning of a particular room there's kind of an intermediate level of cleaning uh that could happen during the day or at other intervals and then there's a lot of touch points that we've talked about you've heard that and some of you parents who are watching even in your offices might have
037someone who is around during uh work hours when there's more people in the office hitting doorknobs and uh frankly in bathrooms sink handles toilet seats etc and doing extra high touch disinfecting so those are things we're working on in the plan uh specifically it's very important to know that in our budget for reopening we have looked at our square footage and analyzed the cleaning needs that have to increase to meet the requirements from the state department and cdc requirements and we need an additional six um custodians or a cleaning service that can provide the the workload of six custodians across the district to make this work so that's that's a feature we're working on in our plan uh desk cleaning this was a concern of uh especially for the high school level um how are
038we going to clean uh desks in between classes there really isn't a physical way to have enough staff to go around and clean desks in between classes so we are exploring options for what we're calling neutral cleaners cleaners that would be very safe and appropriate for students to have the opportunity to wipe down desks um and provide that for them or share with parents what those neutral cleaners are and if parents would like to send their child in with that have that opportunity as well so you know they walk into a new room and they'd like to wipe their desk down you know we want to welcome that so we want to explore the options and see how that might work hand washing breaks are going to be central to the operation pre-k to 12
039and sanitizers hand sanitizer stations throughout the school and those will be continue to be worked out with the principles in our facility department to strategically locate those in those high traffic areas and and provide them as best we can have as much as we can for everybody next slide mark all right so in health under health and wellness there was some key mitigation strategies that uh and some interesting questions that came for folks so i want to get some general information out there um in the in the reopening plan which i do need to stop for a second the reopening plan is a highly dense document it took a great deal of work to put together i encourage everyone to take the time to read the plan i think it will provide a lot of
040answers that you may be thinking of questions and if you just read the plan you'll actually get the answers to your questions the other piece about reading the plan is it might prompt your thinking to ask another question but that makes me wonder about whatever it might be so please read the plan a lot of effort and labor went into it as mr bolland talked about at the beginning of the presentation and i just encourage you to take a look at it's online and it's about 41 pages so it's not not a easy read it'll take you some time but if you can carve out some time in your busy schedule and take a look i'd really i think i think you'd find it um useful so in terms of monitoring you'll see that we
041have um for the 100 model we have the green color coding and then we had yellow color coding for hybrid and red for for remote uh quite often um dr sullivan our health director uh shared with us that currently in brookfield we are at 8.6 transmission rate which is under one percent that's the low category where really you're you're permitted to um be in a 100 model and that's what i was alluding to earlier saying that brookfield is actually in really good shape we're in position to do our best to to strive to go for the 100 model and then the moderate transmission is a one to five percent uh spread and substantial is over five percent so i just want to share that there were some questions about that um we the health department
042monitors daily evidence of community transmission they go right down to the streets the neighborhoods etc they know exactly where the transmission is as it's reported and they're keeping a very very close eye on things but it all goes back to the actions there's a lot of questions so what are actions we could do to mitigate the spread of the virus it's the same actions we have heard about from day one of this very difficult time the last four months which is social distancing face coverings nose and mouth hand washing sneezing into your sleeve other kinds of respiratory etiquette the home assessment of symptoms um of coba symptoms as well as the temperature taking that's very important we ask in the plan that everybody self-assess each morning adults and children uh and then stay home if
043you're ill this is no time to be a hero and force yourself to come in we if you're feeling ill please stay home we hope we want to not only protect ourselves but we need to protect our friends our neighbors our teachers uh everyone and uh by taking care of ourselves and maintaining a healthful uh approach to things we can uh continue to have uh this uh this positive uh outcome we're having in connecticut and in brookfield thanks a lot mark cohorts was a question so uh students will be cohorted to the greatest extent possible um we will well first of all let me tell you what a cult word is so just to remind everybody a cohort is a group in in this case a group of students that we try to keep together
044to not only limit contacts but it's for contact tracing if someone is to emerge positive or something of that nature um k through eight we're able to when we look at the course offerings the curriculum delivery and the developmental age of the students we are able to cohort um at the high school that becomes very difficult that goes back to the slide about the washing of the desks and things in between periods and doing our best there the schedules will be developed to limit contact as best as we can and mr bolando certainly will be able to address a little bit of that as he presents families will be cohorted together what does that mean that's if we move into that hybrid model where 50 of the kids come to school two days a week
045and then 50 stay home and then we switch those groups later in the week for a couple of days we really understand we have families as well and we're trying to figure all this out we want to make things as convenient for families as possible and it would make all kinds of sense and we want to do that is to uh cohort families together so if you have a child at huckleberry whiskener and at the high school they would be a cohort by family that would go to school on the same days in person if we were in a hybrid model and then would be out for remote learning on those other days and really work with our families we'll communicate the formality of that when it's finalized but it's a high priority for us
046next slide please special education it's important to know that special education um is very individual so we're not going to go into great detail here i will encourage now and then at the end of of this slide that parents specifically uh contact either mrs weigonick or mrs fontana about special education um with specific individual needs for their their children but it's important to know that we are preparing here in brookfield knowing full well that there is no waiver of special education requirements under idea we will make sure we are providing a free and appropriate education for all students including our students with exceptionalities in addition to that students of special populations or with ieps will be treated as general education students first we want them in the least restrictive environment and then obviously implement their
047program and iep uh to the fullest extent we can per csd csde which is connected state department of education guidelines um our special su special education supervisors uh will be working with our principals to maintain cohorts again to the greatest extent possible so i want to just make sure i address that we have the contact information for mrs fontana who is our grade six through twelve special education supervisor and also our director of special education mrs weigonick their emails are right there if you have specific questions about your children please contact them they work all summer long and they're happy to entertain your questions and help you next slide mark oh and here we are i'm going to turn it over to our technology director mr eric conklin uh thanks dr burrell so just a
048couple things to cover on technology a very high level very quick um there'll be a lot more information to follow um from the technology department and and the individual schools um but you know for the the first bullet here our one-to-one and byod programs in grades eight through twelve um will continue as planned uh you know just as we did in the previous years with the option for the 50 lease fee every year or the 100 or the um buyout of the device uh mr blanda usually sends those communications out to families in august um we do know that that families were students were able to keep the device in june uh which is not normal for the program um and we will have communication regarding the renewal of of the program for the 2021
049school year um that will be coming your way in early august um for those of parents who um you know have high schoolers but also have students in the lower grades um you know thanks to the board of ed board of finance and board of selectmen um we were able to purchase additional devices that will be made available uh in schools for grades pre-k to seven and although this already applies at the high school level in conjunction with the program we will be fully supporting the byod program district-wide that is the bring your own device students and families will have the option to bring their own device in uh and utilize our wi-fi network and with so many things that we utilize being web-based now um we have a great opportunity for any device to
050be used for instruction at homer in school more information from the schools and the technology department will follow on that um specifically regarding um how students bringing in their own devices and um uh and how the permission for that works um and finally in the building to handle these influx this potential influx of devices um the technology department is working hard on wi-fi upgrades um throughout the district among many other um projects they're hard we're all hard at work on we know that wi-fi access is extremely important when we bring all these devices in um and so we are preparing for that as well again this was this general kind of overview of some of the things related to technology um i'd be happy to answer any future questions that might come in on the
051sheet or or as we communicate with parents um for the upcoming school year um and that's all i have for technology so back to you dr burrell thanks eric and i just want to say a big thank you to the district team uh for for all the work uh in preparing for this evening um and supporting our schools and uh turn it over to mr bellanda uh who has a lot of specifics about the high school so mr glenda please take over the presentation thank you dr braille um you might remember the front of this building this is brookfield high school i hope uh you know we'll be back there sooner rather than later um so it's gonna take a minute actually not a minute probably about 20 is what i have left we scheduled
052about an hour for this presentation i understand that a ton of information has been shared uh at this point um you know so to dr burrell's point about reviewing um the long document when you get a chance to take a look it really answers a lot of questions what we've done is we've collated um some of the responses or the the questions that came in from parents and really tried to put together um what a day would look like a day in the life of a student and we're doing this pretty much for most of the buildings um and figuring that we'll be able to address a lot of the questions that people have about how we're going to go about addressing this and this is really from the 100 model everybody back in school
053so we'll start with the um you know school start time at this point is still going to be 7 15 a.m uh that's when school is planned to start uh dr brill talked a lot about flexibility being a huge piece anybody who's been there in the morning understands that bus bus is coming around the loops um as well as parent drop-off and student drop-off um at best we're we're right on it in terms of time we're gonna have to be a little more flexible particularly with encouraging you know more families to bring their their children to school um you know we're going to look at everything uh traffic patterns um and making sure everything is good for bosses to get in and out and dr burrell to slide about that we're looking at all those
054things to make sure we can make a smooth arrival understanding that school may start classes may start a bit later than usual than they have in the past but that's the flexibility piece we may have to look at a staggered entry into the building whether that's as the buses arrive we let one bus off at a time now at this point when buses come to the school on a regular day um all students get off the bus and walk in at the same time so you might have three or four buses dismissing at the same time we could be looking at dismissing bus by bus to get kids into the building and then one of the things they're going to do is go right to first period class if you've been in high school the
055beginning of the day there's a lot of congregating in the cafeteria the library walking the hallways that's stuff that we're not going to have happen at all anymore students are going to go right to their first period class so that is the arrival portion of what happens um then also we're going to have random temperature checks dr braille talked about this as well in terms of health and wellness that we're asking families to do um wellness checks before the student leaves we're also going to be doing random temperature checks of students uh working with the nurses and we do have two at the high school we're very fortunate um mrs scabbard honest and mrs matier will be doing temperature checks as well to follow up on that and then as always if students did not
056have a first period class in some cases when students get to the upper class level juniors and seniors sometimes they don't have a first period class we're not making kids come into the building at that time unless they absolutely have to so we only want kids when they have classes so if you had a first period uh study hall you know you can opt to come in late and be there for your second period as long as you're checking into the main office so that really has not changed much at all classes um we're still going to run an a b block schedule and for those of you that are unfamiliar with that which might be some of our incoming ninth grade parents that's four classes on an a day that's the first day and
057then a different set of four classes the next day on a b day and we'll rotate through those so that is our plan at this point if we do have to go to a hybrid model the school be divided in half by family so what does that mean so actually the district will be divided by family pretty much to to make sure there's alignment between a student at the high school uh coming to school in the case there's a hybrid issue and we go to hybrid on a monday and tuesday their family members their younger siblings or people in the same household are also going to school at a different school let's say huckleberry or center on the same days so that's what we mean by family they'll be attending schools in the district at
058the same time that does pose additional challenges the the model for cohorting and hybrids is a real challenge at the high school level because of individuality of student choice of course and the comprehensive program that we offer you know students will be going back and forth between different classes so the teachers will basically remain in their classrooms as they always have and students will transition between different classrooms um we did talk about that earlier about the desks and i will get to that in a second but just i want people to be you know clear that in both of our models where students are in school in person and hybrid um you could be with somebody in one particular class in your first period english class and not be with that student in your second
059period maybe see them again in your third period so there is a mixing when it does come to the high school in the classroom if you've been in any of the high school classrooms they vary in size greatly from some of the very very large math rooms to some really really small social studies rooms so we've looked to rearrange desks three to four feet apart which is according to the american academy of pediatrics um you know in terms of distance between each desk um the challenge with that is it's a reduced capacity for all um which is a challenge you know the fluidity of this um of these plans to be able to go between in person hybrid and remote as health data determines um really limits us in a lot of ways i can't
060have 29 to 30 students in a personal finance class which is something that we have had in the past um they couldn't all attend because in that particular room with social distancing the most i could ever fit with three to four space feet between desks would be let's say 24 or 25 kids now that's a pretty normal size what i can't do is allow it to go higher than that so some people are saying oh if we go to hybrid it's great we've split the kids in half so you can put you can get back to that 30 you could put 15 one day on one section and 15 in another section the challenge with that is if we ever come back to 100 in person now i've got 30 kids trying to figure out
061where they fit in a room that according to social distancing and apa um guidelines i can only fit 24 or 25 and so what happens to those kids that were in the class so we're looking at all different kinds of options um and i'll talk about courses in a bit teacher does remain in the front of the classroom and that's going to be a big challenge we are lucky that our district has really looked at how we can provide some professional development for teachers because the instructional model of what has to happen in class is vastly different than our teachers are used to and our students are used to it's a very for lack of a better term old school model where the teacher is going to be in terms of old school in front
062of the classroom and not really interacting directly at and students aren't going to be in small groups pushing desks together you're just not going to see that sort of thing because we have to be aware of the social distancing that being said it doesn't mean as dr ruby said that we won't be able to have students grouped together whether being a zoom in a breakout room or they're very adept at google google drive and google classroom um that they can actually break up and work together on documents collaboratively so there's a lot of really great options but i just want people to be aware of what the teacher situation will be in the front of the classroom as i said before students will remain at their desks and wear masks there will not be shields
063at this point around it's just going to be a student desk and a mask and the next closest desk between three and four feet away we are looking at a plan for mask breaks that's something that's come up from the state department uh that we want to make sure that we incorporate and we're trying to work to figure out how that can best be accomplished at the high school level we're also looking as dr bru said to options for students to clean desks between classes at any given time we can have between 75 classrooms that are occupied at any one given time imagining having staff be able to go in and clean those desks would be very difficult so we're looking at options to see what we can do to make sure students can clean
064the desks if they're interested in doing so it's really important that you understand that we're going to be using a digital platform most likely google classroom would i feel pretty confident in saying and for how we develop and deliver some of our instruction or kind of our warehouse that's going to be really important that allows us that if we need to ever transition from an in-person to a hybrid or even a remote model that students are familiar with that mode of instruction the platforms that we're going to use and all the tools we would need so there isn't a drop-off like we saw clearly when we went to remote learning last spring we talked about sickness classes uh dr ruby explained that very well um whether you're at home uh or you're in in school
065everything's gonna be synchronous we're gonna follow a schedule which we'll develop we'll rotate classes like a and b days like we have in the past we'll put a calendar out for that as well we're also going to focus on social emotional we know it's been quite some time since students have been in school um you know by the time we get back it'll be about six months since students have been in school and that's a significant amount of time a lot of things we want to make sure that we help to support students but also our faculty and staff as well they're faced with some tough decisions and working through some whole new whole new methods of instruction uh and so we want to be sure that we do that and then attendance taken by
066period we're going to continue to do that we are held accountable for attendance we do have to submit that on a regular basis whether it's something at home or it's something in person and then an increased accountability for learning and what i mean by that is um we were reactionary when it came to our plans in march april and may and june last year we've got some more time we really need to get back into the meat of school and really in terms of holding students accountable what i mean that is making sure ensure their learning be able to assess their learning and provide continued instruction it's really important um that we remember this is this is school again this is not um you know a kind of get your work done at 11 59
067at night spend 10 15 minutes answer an attendance question of the day and move forward we're really going to be we're going to have high expectations for students we're going to help them reach those expectations but i just want to be clear that we're going to definitely increase the accountability passing in the hallways so you can imagine you go to your first period class you've experienced your class what does it look like now for passing we're looking at different options for one-way hallways it's a real challenge there are some dead ends um in our building um so to that end we're looking at maybe using outside spaces when we can um you know there's been some questions or some concerns about security you know we still have to maintain the level of security and safety
068from any outside threats as we always have uh so what does that look like and i i mentioned in a board meeting that it could be a police officer you know our sro may be in a car in the front of the building as students pass outside if that's what we choose to do but of course all that's weather permitting and as long as we can make it secure but we're going to look at a bunch of different options if we can't do one way maybe directional on each side we'll figure that out and work from there students are going to be asked to proceed directly from one class the next we know that some students like to take breaks and sometimes they like to uh meander loiter if you will between classes and sometimes
069hang out in or near the bathrooms um which is our next step so we're gonna find that the bathroom's going to be available during class and emergency situations also the nurses is going to have bathrooms as well the reason we don't want kids actually going in the bathrooms during the passing we want to get them out of them we don't want them gathering in small groups taking mass down places where we can't really monitor them is where this the mitigation strategies become really difficult to to address and take care and enforce so absolutely bathrooms are going to be options and kids going to use those in emergency situations and during class we're going to reduce the number of unlocked bathrooms this is something we've had to do in the past not because of concerns for
070covid but for concerns whether it be of broken plumbing sometimes or there's a mess in a particular bathroom we've had to reduce the number of bathrooms um just to make sure that we can monitor those and then we limit capacity so we're not going to have 13 14 kids in the bathroom and we need to find a way to make sure we can monitor that well i'm working with my assistant principals um and we'll be talking about how we can best monitor that not to monitor kids in the bathroom but to be able to make sure that there's a limited number in there they're using it getting out and going back to class lunch is another big question if you've been in the cafeteria uh you've seen the lunch tables uh we did the math
071to keep kids six feet apart because they do have to put their mass down in order to eat that is going to be a real challenge um capacity in the cafeteria with our existing tables uh means we could only fit 66 students if we used our current tables um at any one given time that's a real challenge so we're not going to be doing that we are going to be doing multiple waves um and we're going to use individual student desks instead of tables now i know it may seem i don't know what the term is i've never actually seen maybe institutionalized uh in terms of how you know very sterile and you can see lines of rows of desks but that's what we're going to have to do in order to maintain the a
072proper amount of distance between students while their mass are down and at the same time fit enough kids in there so they can get to the cafeteria eat their lunch and move forward students will always be able to purchase or bring their own lunch we're talking about a system with whitson's working with mr damasi very closely on that like i said six feet between desks and then we have to be able to clean them between the lunches that's something whether we're going to really put back on kids i think some parents would be surprised or maybe they wouldn't i think they would be surprised if they saw sometimes the messes that students leave behind and say that's the custodian's job to pick up well now it's your own individual desk and we're going to be
073expecting you to keep that clean at least cleaning up your garbage it's not everyone it's a select few kids on occasion and sometimes they just forget because they're in such a rush having a good time it's going to be a very different scene we're going to ask them to keep it clean and move forward we'll clean them between the lunches looking at time here i've got about six minutes uh so brookfield high school athletics that's a big question um it's one that i i wish i could answer right now i can tell you that the connecticut interscholastic athletic conference um does meet with directors weekly every week they meet they talk about plans everything is always going to be based on local health data and what it looks like some of the challenges that we
074know are looking into if we're 100 model you got everybody there if you're at a hybrid or a remote what does that look like how do athletes participate in games they're looking at that and practices we do know that if a season is conducted in the fall uh that they're going to be grouped by geographic region we're not going to be going across the state we're not crossing state lines we're not going to be playing uh legend or montville and anything in the eastern part of the state will be staying local and that's one thing they do know and then they're producing overall guidelines obviously for how athletic directors and coaches approach practices and games excuse me and then there's also sport specific i've seen things about how to clean a football um you know
075to make sure leather is disinfected and different uses between different kids and what that looks like it's pretty in-depth they're looking at it and this is another one of those things where we say we don't have the answer yet um but we're going to work together and try to figure out what we're doing next we get through the day it's now dismissal time you know we have athletics we don't have athletics again same thing we're looking for dismissal dismissal is a lot more challenging at the high school than a rival because the buses line all the way up to the student parking lot all the way around we also have parents we know that are planning on coming to pick students up and we have student drivers teenage drivers driving through a parking lot so
076it's really challenging that's probably one of our bigger challenges we have ahead of us to try to figure out how that's going to work but we're going to come up with a plan uh it may include us dismissing by bus number classroom or alphabetically those are other options we're looking at and early dismissal is always an option if a student does not have a last period class same thing with late arrival if they have a last period class they don't have one they can do that there was one other question that i did i meant to put a slide in and i apologize that i forgot to do so i have a lot of incoming ninth grade parents asking questions we are lucky to be able to host our incoming ninth grade night way back
077in uh beginning of march uh so i was glad we were able to do that but you know we do have some people that are wondering what's going to happen for our new and incoming ninth graders i'm working with the peer counselors we have some options in terms of small breakout zoom meetings virtual tours and i really have some creative schedule things that i'll be working on that we can hopefully be able to roll out in the next week or two that might be able to put people at a little bit more at ease that feel comfortable coming into a new building i know it's a it's an important transition even when we didn't have uh the conditions that we're under the transition from eighth grade to ninth grade is huge and it's very important
078to us the kids get off to a good start and are very successful and so we're looking at a lot of different options um and i hope to be able to present something in the next couple weeks um and that at this point is all i have um so i guess looking at time it is 7 58 i'd turn it over to dr barrill and dr ruby i don't know how you want to proceed if there's anything else you would like to add first of all thank you mr belanda for providing such uh uh tremendous detail uh in in in insight into your team's thinking about how we're gonna organize the year and continue to make things safe and provide as much of the outstanding educational opportunity as possible i'd like to turn it over
079to dr ruby because questions uh did come in and she's serving as a moderator this evening we do have a few minutes left so dr ruby is there anything uh that's coming you'd like to share with us and perhaps yes thank you thank you well there's one one question that came in or one comment that came in that i want to clarify right now and i uh it's about the positivity rate of coping infections in connecticut and um it was with regard to something that you said earlier dr burrell uh dr will was talking about the brookfield um positivity rate being 0.6 not the connecticut positivity rate being 0.6 we are well aware that the connecticut positivity rate right now is 1.2 percent so um if uh that was misheard i just wanted to make
080sure that um that i shared what um you had shared uh in your presentation john so that we had that correct um we we already mentioned that we have um really good statistics in brookfield and we're very grateful to the community members for their adherence to the mitigation strategies that the public has been asked to um you know to abide by i don't know if uh dr ferreira if you wanted to say anything about that i'd give you the opportunity while we have a minute and and for everybody watching dr ferreira you're on you for dr ferreira is our medical advisor he's been with us for many years and uh he when he's available he tunes into these meetings to help us out so please dr ferreira so can you just repeat that maureen my
081um audio was off okay yes i i wanted to know if you want to make any comments uh so that people would have it right directly from you about the um the low positivity rate and how well brookfield as a community has been doing yep no so so absolutely so as dr verriel pointed out earlier tonight so the the infectivity rate in our communities are extremely low right and um for me we're seeing patients in the practices we're running a lot of testing through new vans health and even with that the the numbers of patients that are actually positive are so so small that i think we are in a very very good spot in addition to that i just want to let the community know that you know this team that you're seeing tonight
082has done truly an amazing job at putting all of this work together my son is a local high schooler as well and you know with the plan that's been put together i have the utmost confidence that he can go back safely this this um this fall i think um you know looking at what we're seeing today you know practicing good social distancing following all the recommendations that has been put together with regard to mass use hygiene and thinking about the bigger picture of where things fit in the school systems very very confident that this is a solid plan and i'm excited to send my son back to school so is my wife so um i'll leave it with that oh thank you very much that we have a number of questions that have come in
083and we've reached eight o'clock so i just want to assure people that we are going to be responding to these questions we had a number of questions on ventilation and the oversight of ventilations with um in alignment with the um orders that have come from the state on ventilation we will have our facilities folks give you a comprehensive answer on that um even though i'm over i just want to say that we've had questions and i discussed this in the ces presentation on homeschooling questions like can my children still get you know some of the platforms and the digital learning uh programs if they're homeschooled and i just want to be i want to clarify what homeschooling means homeschooling means that you withdraw your child from the school system and your child is no longer
084a student here and unfortunately not to be cruel but that means that they are no longer accessing um the tools of the district um that you are assuming responsibility for the education of your child so that's different from remote learning when the child is in the remote learning mode yes they have access to you know all of the um i'll call it bells and whistles everything that we um purchase for use in school they will have access to using at home and so we have really great questions what we're going to be doing is um taking them and grouping them by by topic and then having the people who are the experts in those particular areas that the inquiries are referencing provide written responses and i really just want to thank everybody especially this team
085and all you know there there are a lot of people behind all the faces that you see on this screen there are teachers who have been volunteering their time to to support us people from other unions our secretarial union people in central office uh the other administrators who aren't working with the high school tonight everybody is collaborating and i'm really um i'm really proud and humbled by the work that's been done so um i echo what dr ferreira said it's it's it's been very hard work but the uh the amount of care and um expertise that's been shared is just beyond impressive so thank you everybody dr ruby thank you for uh those important comments um i i was going to add some some to that effect but you did such a great job i
086will end it right here thank all the parents and staff members who are viewing the meeting on youtube tonight uh thank the team here for putting the presentation together and uh echoing the comments of all the work that's going into this and uh the family support and um it's really important to know as families too um we are here to support you we are here in partnership we all have families we are struggling through the exact same challenge as you are we are together we really are one um patience and flexibility is going to be the theme that's what we have to do for the foreseeable future um probably through the first of the year and and then some it's going to be a while and so we need to prepare ourselves for that um
087and i want to know there have been some parents who have sent out some thank yous uh with some inspirational notes to different administrators and so forth and staff members i've received some of them and the energy boost that they provide is immeasurable and we just want to thank you for that because you know we're working really hard uh for your children and we want to make this the the safest and most healthy experience and best educational experience we can considering this uh extreme uh crisis of this pandemic that we're all going through so thank you thank you all for attending tonight and we will get the uh the faq document with all the uh answers as uh as soon as we can put a comprehensive uh response together for all of you thank you
088very much mark thank you i appreciate it and you know take care everyone and we look forward to seeing you soon