001uh okay rosa okay uh welcome back everyone um we had to take that emergency recess um so now you are joining us um only by viewing through youtube and our zoom link is private just to the people that you see on this screen i just wanted to explain what had happened and i do obviously am very apologetic for anyone who saw and heard on the things that were on the previous zoom call zoom because the public nature of this meeting has to be the link to that meeting has to be posted publicly which it was which means anyone can can join um so i just wanted to reassure you all especially the parents that are listening that zoom is considered a safe platform this was not a technical overly technical hacking of any sort um
002but again because of the public nature of this meeting and the necessity for for public comment um we had posted the link and that made it very accessible to everyone um eric did you want to touch on any anything in particular more technical um no thank you but you know the only other thing i will say is is we do by default employ the waiting room feature in zoom for those of you who know about it um you know although we use the waiting room feature we do have to allow everybody in due to the public nature of the event but that is a feature that all um our staff teachers um anybody in brookfield that uses zoom has to use the waiting room um and they have to knowingly invite uh people into the
003meeting and actually have an opportunity to uh require the attendee to identify themselves um which is which is a practice we have been and will continue to follow thank you how the rest of this evening will go and i know that we were in the middle of public comment when we last left we do have the recording of all of the previous public comments so those are part of the record and we have those comments recorded how it will progress from here on out is if anyone who is watching would like to make a comment or have a concern to please just email us so um you can either um email the the board of ed at boe at brookfieldps.org and at the end of the meeting um i can read aloud your um your
004questions or comments but i i think tonight's presentation will be fairly comprehensive and hopefully all of your concerns will be addressed that way so um i think we can um simply move on with our agenda and the only agenda item for tonight is a discussion and possible motion regarding the 2020 2021 brookfield public schools reopening plan so i'm going to turn it over to dr brill to go through his presentation and then we have some possible motions following that thank you rosa i'd also like to reiterate my apologies to the public and my apologies to you for uh personally for receiving uh being on the receiving end of those disgusting comments this evening um there's no place for that and um i'm dearly sorry to everybody who had to see that but i'm glad we're
005back on this is a very important meeting about reopening tonight i did want to share just a little bit before eric puts the slides up uh the first thing is that uh i i really want to thank the school reopening team that worked very hard in june and has provided uh in as soon as yesterday as recently as yesterday feedback to the administration who has been working on the plan over the last several weeks um and then remind the board and the public uh in terms of input there's a number of surveys to staff and faculty and to parents that have been distributed in addition to that we also spent time at last week's meeting going over the process in the context uh in the requirements of uh what was it is expected us expected
006of us uh with the reopening so that was done last week at the meeting and there is a powerpoint slide up and video of that from last week that anybody can access this is almost like part two this evening we're really going to talk high level in a powerpoint about the uh the plan uh so it's about the with some pictures it's about 30 slides i will start it off i will turn it over to dr ruby uh and then dr ruby will turn it back to me once we get through um the powerpoint which i think will answer a lot of questions for parents we really uh received feedback from the school reopening team yesterday as well as really thinking about what are people asking us what do they really want to know about
007health and safety uh some processes that people have questions on and certainly what remote instruction might look like so we're going to go through those we'll show some pictures of what a typical classroom might look like at each of the levels and uh and then we'll answer questions and we also have uh the budget toward the end of the powerpoint as well we can talk about what it's going to cost to open up so eric if you would be so kind you could put the slideshow up and we will begin i also want to let everybody know that dr ferrara and dr sullivan are on uh just as they were last week and thank them for their time and they certainly can answer any questions for us as well and they've reviewed the plan uh
008as well and been constant companions throughout the development of it so eric obviously this is the reopening plan this is the key plan details we can move to the next slide so this is a slide i showed last week just as a reminder for everyone this has a link to the adapt advance achieve connecticut state department of education and governor lamont's plan for reopening every single school district in connecticut was charged with developing a three option plan and it's due this friday the first one is reopen school this fall for all students five days a week one has the 100 plan as we like to call it second develop a hybrid model for 50 of the students in the school at a time which would involve remote learning learning for the other 50 and then
009finally prepare for full remote learning and you'll notice we're using the term remote learning now but state changed it from distance learning to remote learning so it it means the same thing but i want you to know that's the phrase being used now anything's we're going to jump right into things all right so there'll be student and adult expectations actually somebody was asking a question or making a comment in public comment uh earlier uh wondering about this so in our plan uh one of the things that's highly encouraged and we want people uh to do is to ensure that if they feel sick there to stay home this is for students and adults uh in the morning we would like the family to do a wellness check and that's detailed in the plan and individually
010as employees or adults or young adult students to do a wellness check which would include temperature taking face coverings or masks that cover the nose and mouth are required social distancing is required and we'll talk a little bit more about that of course hygiene and respiratory etiquette in terms of frequent hand washing and sanitizing is required and unless there are special circumstances for child care students may not change buses next all right so very briefly we talked about these particular uh core operational uh considerations so there's the emphasis on the term cohorting cohorting is where we keep the same group of kids together as much as we can this is not only for mitigate as a mitigation strategy it's also to help with contact tracing so we're doing that with classes uh k through eight
011to ensure our students remain in the same group as best we can buses are also considered a cohort that goes along with transportation um and on the bus mask is uh always necessary you must wear one as you enter the bus face uh face covering nose and mouth in terms of social distancing we talked a lot about this last week we are social distancing six feet to the greatest extent possible working in the three foot to six foot range from the americans from the american um uh pediatric academy academy of pediatrics so i wanted to just go on to that and remind everybody we've got the key keys with transportation face coverings social distancing and concept cohort continue to move on and we'll be revisiting things for the evening all right students the family provides
012the face covering district will have extra mass just in case for the staff the district will provide the mask one to wear one to wash and one for just in case and of course we'd have a few extra round if somebody forgets so there'll be three masks provided and those have already arrived in district next response planning a lot of people ask me dr rowe what happens if someone tests positive in school very straightforward here we have our consulting medical physician here as well as our director of public health we could talk about this as the evening goes on if there is a confirmed case in the school building adult or child we would assess the risk with the local health officials we would immediately plan for a closure at least two to five days
013could be longer um and two that's an opportunity obviously to clean and disinfect the building but it also helps with contact tracing and of course immediate communication to let everybody know what's going on the one thing that's important to emphasize and frame for everybody here is that we will be protecting confidentiality while we are transparent with our communication and what i mean by that is we are not going to tell you who tested positive no one's going to find that out that is we're we just will not do that i know people will want to know who it was but we will not be able to do that and that's very important to understand um we may identify it by uh other ways in terms to give people a feel but the real work will
014be done with dr sullivan his office in the state in terms of contact racing and that's how people would learn about this and we would work it from a public health perspective next all right cleaning people want to know about cleaning how how's what's going on with cleaning how much are we going to clean do we have a schedule for cleaning so sanitizer and dispensers they have been purchased and more have been ordered to make sure we have enough and strategically placed throughout the schools facility director is working with our principals on that hygiene opportunities with hand washing protocols in the plan and hand sanitizing protocols in the plan cleaning supplies all cdc approved and we have purchased those supplies in addition we have uh hilliard consulting services for custodial services they have been training
015with our custodians and they continue to work with us and plan for the number of positions we need to keep up with the health requirements and that is six positions needed to ensure that our buildings are clean and meet the requirements set forth by the state of connecticut in cdc guidelines our cleaning schedule we will actually have clean not only cleaning schedule but we have cleaning logs where custodians log in and initial or sign off that they clean the particular area that they're assigned to so we'll be monitoring that very closely high touch areas so this is why we need the positions um the extra positions sinks door handles etc uh hitting the bathrooms with disinfectant disinfecting bathrooms two times per day these are all mitigation strategies cleaning strategies that are in the plan in
016great detail that we've worked on in addition folks ask about ventilation filters have been replaced the units have been clean and there's ongoing maintenance of our different uh bathroom and uh unit ventilators are all going on and uh our facility director mr caldwell's with us if anybody has questions later in the uh on please all right general health questions people have asked personal protective equipment it has been purchased there are some small amounts of equipment still being ordered but like i said about the mass and other ppe for our nurses and for our staff that has been purchased we have to have an isolation room it's another requirement where students who are experiencing symptoms of covit are essentially putting a different room from the regular health office we've identified those rooms at each school those
017rooms actually have to have a monitor as well so there's a lot we're doing with health and isolation training of faculty and staff ongoing planning this is going on we're getting ready for all the training that has to happen with our faculty and staff in fact just to go back to last week and the work we've done the board actually um helped us with a reduction in school days down from 180 to 177 with the vote last week to change the calendar based on the state's uh decision to let us waive the 180 day requirement that now with the way we've organized our calendar will provide us eight days of training with our faculty and staff prior to the opening of school the first day of school is now september 8th which is after labor
018day weekend so that gives us more time the end of the summer to prepare for the kids communication with families we have been working on this with surveys and obviously any communications we've put out this tonight talking about the plan is the first time we're actually unveiling the plan uh in addition to that uh we're working with the principals right now to schedule some time we will be setting up by school parent q a sessions and of course our principals um with dr ruby and myself and mr post invited to meetings uh with faculty and staff as we set those up for the remainder of the summer are all all being initiated after this evening then there's wellness checks so we talked about wellness checks in the morning earlier in my earlier slide we have
019protocols within the plan there's one thing that's really important for everybody the 100 degrees fahrenheit or less is the temperature that we're using as the gauge for all of us and so it's one indicator but it's something we need to be paying attention to and you'll see that throughout the plant and so when we do take uh temperatures or we have random temperature checks that's part of the plan and that's just one example of many different checks we have in the plan next slide please classrooms folks want to know what are the classrooms going to look like our teachers want to know what are the classrooms going to look like we talked about the three to six feet of social distancing while wearing a mask individual student space at a table or a desk so
020our individual students need to have three to six feet of space and we are working on that in all of our classrooms um there's a we have a lot of tables in in our schools and we need to move to desks to make the social distancing work in 100 model and so we've been measuring our classrooms we're looking at purchasing desks i'll talk about that in just a second and part of getting more space in classrooms is uh looking at big furniture of the armoire type storage units big teacher desks uh other shelving that we may need to remove to spread the students out it's still very difficult to manage and address our typical class sizes in in our classrooms but our principals and our facility director are working very diligently on that the to
021make the social distancing work and have students have their individual space um we need to purchase 542 desks k through 12 to make this work whether it's desks in a classroom to replace uh existing tables where we can't socially distance as efficiently or at the high school and you'll learn about that this a little bit later in the presentation when uh we asked mr belanda to talk a little bit is purchasing individual desks for the cafeteria so we could have the students eat and have the social distancing that they're required to have the other piece is we have to have uh shields for uh for the majority of our k through eight students and these are plastic trifold barriers that can fit on a desk or fit on a table if it's a big enough
022table and we can orient um and this is this is what we why consulting with dr sullivan and dr ferreira is so important because supervision and large gatherings becomes very difficult with social distancing in typical cafeterias so a big part of our plan is that students will eat in their classrooms k through eight at least to start as we work this plan through and when they're at their individual space the students have to have this trifold shield because they have to take their mask off to eat and they need the trifold shield during the school day at their space because they need to take their mask off for a brief mass break so these are things we're working on and we need to purchase those for um our students um and we certainly could get
023into a little bit more detail on that but it's very important to understand that part of being in the classroom and eating lunch in the classroom and i won't get into too much detail on this but our um teachers need their lunch break so we also are going to have to hire and we'll get into this later monitors to cover the supervision of those students quite a bit more to make this work we need to purchase shields for our teachers so they can do their teaching when they're in a six foot distance the adults have to have a six foot space so from the students and so when they need to take off their mask they need to be six feet away and also have a shield for um for the social distancing piece and
024to make that work and one caveat that's really important when you work with the medical advisors that you learn is there's also a 15 minute exposure and so we're looking at time intervals and making sure things are less than 15 minutes when folks have their masks off at those particular times and then there's of course for the classrooms technology planning for remote learning that always has to continue and we'll talk a little bit about that later okay next all right so here's a center school classroom spaced out and this this could fit a group of students at center school it looks very different than a typical center school classroom with tables and centers where students would actually be able to interact share materials and work together but this is this is a way we can
025get the kids to fit um in the classroom and be socially distant and you don't see on there as the shields that we would have as appropriately needed uh during lunch time and some of those other things that i talked about next this is all about kids here's a classroom at huckleberry that's been set up this i believe we have 18 desks in this particular uh classroom there's some room in the corners some big furniture hadn't been moved out of here yet um and this looks like uh from what i was sent today this could fit probably 21 students in this classroom as we move out the large furniture and bring in individual desks all right here's whiskenier this is 22 desks set up in a fifth grade class and you can see mr renda
026has set them up that they are three feet apart on all sides and that meets that american academy of pediatrics that we talked about and the final one i think we have a couple we have a couple from um uh the high school because the high school doesn't have similar rooms all the way across the school there's some very large rooms and very small rooms so we wanted to show this happens to be the french classroom um and i think we have 12 to 14 desks in this room um this is typically there are more students in uh these classes you're able to put the kids closer together with these small desks uh but in this case we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to make the class any larger and that'll be a conversation that
027mr alanda and dr ruby shared uh specifically about the high school in a little bit so show another room from the high school eric okay this happens to be our science labs these are all relatively uniform or science labs downstairs at the high school um you can see in the background there that's mr belanda and mr conklin typically at those lab tables we would we could hit four students um in the case of uh social distancing in the 100 model um the most we could fit any of those tables is two and then you can see the desks we have spread out that are i think those we measured today were four that happen to be four feet apart um and so with that mr velanda um i believe thanks and mr glenn when you
028get on later correct me but i believe with our lab classes we look at 24 and there is a possibility that we might be able to get 24 into the science lab and then we want to show that one of the very large rooms with some in the math department we have some very large rooms uh this i believe uh we fit 29 desks in this room uh and the students are three to four feet apart in this particular room so we wanted to bring some of the humanity to this because this is about students and and what the classroom will look like again this is without the typical tables that we have these are individual desks and this is how we will have to operate in a world of social distancing next slide please
029want to briefly address transportation that's a big question everybody has at this time the way our plan is working out bus stops will remain the same we're not looking at staggering schedules or anything like that that you may have heard buses are permitted to be filled to capacity we did send a survey out at this point parents shared that 59 of parents at this point will utilize transportation the remainder would drive their kids to school the state department of education has encouraged local school districts to work with their parents and encourage parents at this time by children to school because of the fact that we could fill the buses the cleaning of the buses drivers will disinfect high touch areas after each bus run so in between runs the buses will be disinfected the bus
030will be disinfected sprayed from back to front at the end of each day so everybody knows that seating arrangements will be adjusted on the buses to prevent students from passing one another while loading and unloading as much as possible the first students to load the bus will sit in the back filling the seat toward the front students in the front will unload first the loading process uh excuse me loading process it's school based on the bus route to limited passing in the aisles and then students will be expected to ride the same bus to school in the morning and the same bus home in the afternoon every day where possible of course if there's some regular specific child care arrangements that are made you can work directly with your school administration on that and the
031next slide lunch so there will not be a la carte or waiting in line for lunch lunch will be a bagged lunch and it will either be delivered to the classrooms right now that's a big part of the k-8 plan where the students will eat in their rooms and we will need to be purchasing carts to move the lunches from the cafeteria to the classrooms or the bag lunch will be grab and go and so we're working on the details of those plans so um as you can see i've said here the desk shields would need to be up when students are eating their lunch and there's an additional 19 monitors that will need to be hired across the district to make this plan work in addition at the high school the cafeteria and other
032various supervised areas are being explored and that's where we talked about earlier that there'd be additional desks we need to purchase so students could spread out and we can actually utilize the cafeteria and again supervision becomes a a big priority in these because of our efficiency model that we can't utilize anymore with the social distancing next slide eric all right i'm going to turn this over right now to dr ruby dr ruby is going to handle in-person learning for us and then work it right on through through remote learning i think it's very important for people to hear what the model is going to look like dr ruby thank you so i want to first of all thank all the principals and the teachers who have worked really really hard on getting this uh plan
033together it's uh certainly been herculean um somehow i'm not seeing this there it is uh the what we really want people to understand is that we are not going to bring children uh back into school and jump into the academic year the way we typically do um students have been out of school they've been isolated to varying degrees separated from their friends separated from their activities and separated from you know the school as an organization that they've come to rely on for stability and comfort and so we are going to be developing what we're going to refer to as a first weeks of school unit that will be developed across the grade levels um and at the center of it will be social emotional well-being and this is not just social emotional well-being for the
034students which of course is our primary concern but it will be social emotional well-being for the adults as well a way for us to build community within the classrooms um particularly because those of the cohorting and um and build relationships between the teachers and the students and between the students themselves um to the greatest degree possible within the social distancing world um when we started the um the meeting we heard somebody um one of the i believe it was a parent um talking about relationships and there it's going to be really important because we don't know what's going to happen uh down the line to um do as much as we can to which we always do but we have to have a really stronger emphasis on getting right in and developing relationships between students
035and teachers in the unfortunate event that these uh that the time in the classroom is limited should there be an outbreak or something where we have to go to remote so those relationships are going to be key um the teachers will be reviewing the curriculum um from our scope and sequence and what was looking at what was taught in the spring what was able to be covered in the uh in the depth that it needed to be covered so that they can identify any priority standards from the previous years curriculum that needs to be intensively reviewed or taught and then the teachers will be able to look and and departments in the upper grades look at the curriculum and review the um the bundled standards for the um a specific grade level for a specific
036content area reading math social studies science and then further prioritize those standards because by the time we get to the grade level curriculum um we're going to have less time because we're doing all this really important upfront work and then they will be able to adjust the scope and sequence and the instructional timelines and um provide the students with a wholesome curriculum and then with regard to special subjects when i say special subjects i'm talking about art music etc we are going to be providing them in what i'm going to refer to as a cluster rotation schedule and folks who have older students who have gone to middle school will um understand this uh instead of having art or music or physics spread across the entire year like we typically do in the lower grades
037we're going to be clustering them into um into segments so the reason we're doing that is so that we have a greater ability to do contract tracing should that be something that we need to do and to try to keep that cohorting concept which is a mitigation strategy as wholesome as we can by having the adults have contacts with fewer groups of students than they normally would because normally they'd be seeing everybody in the entire school and so we really want to protect the children and the adults by having the interactions be as as limited yet as natural as they can be so we'll be working on re the principles are working on revising schedules for the specialized subject areas we can go to the next slide so we will be using a variety of
038digital resources to support and complement our learning um the reason that we are are doing this is because we do not want to have ourselves put into a situation like we were last year where it was just like an amputation from school and students were all of a sudden faced with and parents as well and teachers with new technology new programs and they they just had to learn basically in an immediate sense so we have purchased already news ela which has ela math science social studies and social emotional learning materials um these are in a digital platform these are um reading materials uh fiction nonfiction news articles and they you can get um let's say it was a a an english language arts text um it's available digitally it can be printed out if we're
039in school and you can get once one story or one article and you can get it at different reading levels so that you we can all also differentiate where we need to um we have our st math and already or k through eight and we are looking right now we have been working eric has been working with two companies and myself uh lexia and ixl and these would these would be materials that we would use to supplement the work that we already have in our newly developed curriculum and we will be using these with our curriculum because students will be being taught in a way that's very different than what they were usually used to and what you've come to know um prior to cobit we're not going to be able to have children working
040in small groups at tables as as john explained which is why we have the uh the different alignment of classroom furniture so we will be able to engage kids through technology in working with each other just as when they're at home and they're on a digital platform working with their teacher or work and working with other students even though they're in that same space in the classroom and they but they they're in their desk and they're three to six feet apart from each other they'll be able to work through some of these digital resources with other students that are in the classroom and more importantly the children whose families for their whatever their reason might be decide to keep their children at home those children will be and i'm going to talk about that in
041a few slides we'll also be using these materials and so children who are sitting in a desk in the classroom will be able to interact with children who are uh you know obtaining their instruction while they're at home so we're building community between the students who are in the classroom and the students who are at home because we don't want kids to be just because they're they there's a reason that they can't come to school to be excluded so i can explain you know more about that when we have our our parent question and answer meetings in the schools the assessment calendar is undergoing revision as well typically um for those of you who've been in district before you know that we do what we call boi beginning of year assessments right um shortly after
042students come back to school because we need to get you know data to to see where teachers are going to start differentiating we really believe that that would be inappropriate to do right when students come back because we're going to be implementing that first weeks of school social emotionally based curriculum with the students so we're going to revise the calendar and move them beyond the initial weeks of school so that we can work on creating community kids are going to need to learn classroom routines that are very different from any routine that they've ever had to learn in a classroom before we want to constantly ensure the well-being of our staff and our students using our ruler tools we want to be able to spend time building the classroom charters we have uh safety and
043health training that we need to do with our staff as john talked about in those extra beginning pd days before school but we also need to train our students with regard to health and safety because there are measures that they need to take that haven't been taken before we also need to ensure that we provide our students with really robust and intentional technology training they have to be trained in using the breakout rooms for small group instruction um and small group work and as i mentioned before inclusion of the students who are working in a parallel situation from home and we can go to the next slide with regard to kindergarten we are very sensitive to the needs of kindergarten students some of which are ha or poom are having their first school experience we
044have students who have gone to preschool and we do still have students who haven't gone to preschool and so for the first four weeks of school our plan is to have a half day so to take that let's say a class at 20 and have 10 in the morning and 10 in the afternoon and we we typically have a break-in period for our uh kindergarten students where they they come in a day later and there's some assessment that's done and they're not in in the full day from the beginning but we decided that the best way to really be developmentally appropriate and child centered is to have half day for the first four weeks this will support their acclimation to to school their acclimation to the rules and routines that we have to maintain to
045ensure their safety and protect their health and if there was ever a place where the relationships were critically important it's in kindergarten and so it will be um much more appropriate for our educators to be able to build strong caring nurturing relationships albeit not with hugs um with 10 children or 10 8 to 10 children in the classroom as opposed to 20 children in the classroom additionally while this may seem contradictory to what i just said about pushing back the assessment calendar we do not have any data on our incoming kindergarten students because the shutdown in the spring precluded us from doing something that's very important to our our kindergarten program and that is the kindergarten assessments that we do when we register our children so part of the registration process is that you know
046children get registered and then they get called in for appointments for assessment but it really looks like games to the children we don't have any of that data and so it's critically important for us to be able to um to get that so that we know how teachers need to work with the individual students because they're all different just because they show up at the schoolhouse door for the first time as a a five-year-old or an almost five-year-old or some six they're very different and our teachers provide individualized differentiated instruction and that's literally impossible to do with without data so having half days children in for a half day smaller group will allow the teachers and um some some of the reading teachers who can help out to get in there and in a very
047calm and nurturing way collect information about students that will allow the teachers to be prepared to teach them no matter what the situation is for our english language learner students we are going to continue with the support through our el tutors and esl teacher we will be training our giving our new teachers when we do orientation um some training in sheltered english operation protocol strategies which is what we use to support our english language learners we will be continuing with rosetta stone and we'll keep our instruction for those students aligned to the kelp standards the connecticut english language learner proficiency standards and our new teachers will get training on that our special education students i i would love to share the fact that mrs wagonic and her team have developed a really um what we
048feel is a very robust and supportive esy program we have not had any negative responses to to the program and it is being done through distance learning so we are very much in tune to the need for the full implementation of our ieps holding ppts and they can be held very successfully through our um digital platform and remaining compliant with idea so i you know i want to thank our special ed um team for all the work that they've been doing and i really am excited to say that we um we have hired some new staff we've gotten some amazing staff this summer including two um really impressive psychologists and we're um interviewing for a special ed position um tomorrow and i don't think that we've had as many um people that we've wanted to
049hire when we i'll speak for myself and john when folks get sent up the finalist gets up sent up to um central office it's like we only have one position and we have like multiple people that we'd like to hire for it so that puts us in a really good position and there um a lot of the folks that have been coming have had varying experiences doing distance learning in their student teaching or their internships and so we can all learn together from what people have done elsewhere i can go to the next slide um there we go so the high school what's real an interesting fact that i want to share with you is that we have had an enrollment increase of 25 net so it's not 25 students and some people have 25
050net new students just this summer as of today and we have a couple weeks left so we have more students not less students um the rooms in the high school as john shared with you through the visuals the pictures have been mapped and because of the social distancing there's a decrease in the number of students that are permissible in many of the rooms and so this then results in a decrease in the class size which is a decrease in course participants so this leads to a decrease in the ability for us to fulfill course requests particularly in social studies and if you're wondering why we're not picking on social studies social studies classrooms when you are in the high school if you were coming out of the main office and took a right down the
051hallway they're on the left-hand side of the hallway and those are our smallest classrooms and and mark can speak to this in greater detail it also results in a decrease in elective availability so the high school staff under um mr blanda is uh scheduling for the high school is always a a monumental challenge it should be like an olympic sport in the summer it's it's just i'm glad i don't have to do it that said they have to redo all of these schedules based on the room requirements and it's really important for us to figure out how to get as many students as possible the courses that they want and need to have for their schedule and i'm not even going to pretend to to say that that's going to be easy or doable but
052with 100 percent of students back in and the same staff that we had who intended to teach greater numbers in those classrooms it's going to be um a feat to figure out how we can um get that done but we're working on it and mr bellander will probably be much more articulate about it than i can be lunch as we already talked about the um with social distancing i think the number i could be off by one or two we can only get 66 students into our high school cafeteria using the furniture that we currently have in there and abiding by the social distancing regulations so in order to be able to get the lunch waves done we are going to use desks and set the desks up in the socially um distance manner this
053may sound really awkward eating your lunch at a desk in the cafeteria but by doing that we are able to get our high school students through um through the lunch period and it opens up the cafeteria for instruction um an instructional area for classes and for for study halls so it it buys us um it it's it's not like going to lunch at tiffany's but it buys us um some space for instruction and i think that's the last oh that's the last in-person slide now the parallel remote learning parallel remote learning is for students whose parents choose to not send their students back to the 100 option and some students have to stay at home for a variety of reasons or just parent preference at this time and so in this remote learning parallel track
054the students who are going to be at home will learn right along with their classmates the technology zoom and google classroom and our zoom classrooms are not publicly available links and the only people that are let into those classrooms are the students that are in those classrooms and the teachers in the classes and the teachers know who they are so um the type of experience that some people may have had earlier tonight or in other venues would not happen in a classroom with the types of security that we have for entry into zoom because unlike tonight's meeting or other public meetings that link is not posted anyplace and students other people can't get in um so this opportunity for the remote learning will be what we refer to as synchronous it will be happening at
055the same time as the school instruction so this does not mean that somebody who's at home is going to be glued to their computer screen for five or six hours a day because just like at school there will be um there's lunch there would be study halls there would be other there would be breaks so they will have the same type of schedule that they would have had in school but they'll be at home attending their classes through technology and we can go to the next slide the hybrid model is john did you want me to continue with this dr ruby you're doing great so please continue okie dokie so the hybrid model um this is um to reduce the school population um if there was a surge in the in the virus and it's
056a reduction of the population of students that are in the school at one time by 50 percent and this model was discussed um the the development of a model for a 50 50 hybrid was discussed with our larger reopening team and the they came um up with two a b type models um dr brill and working with these superintendents in our our area when they got together and they looked at the ab cohorting models that different teams from different school districts had come up with the decision was made that because so many people that live in one town in our area may be teachers or work in another town that would be best to be have coherence among the models and so the model that you see on this slide with an a and a
057b cohort is what the the majority of these schools in our area and in other areas of the state um have in their plans so if you were in a student was in cohort a cohort a students would come into school on monday and tuesday while the cohort b students would be in the remote situation just like i just described for students who um were uh out of school for medical or parent choice reasons um then the cohort b students would be in person on thursday and friday and the cohort a students would be remote on wednesday all students would be engaged in remote learning because the school would need the areas would need to be cleaned thoroughly because of the different cohorts of students what's key to know about this particular model is that
058the students whether you're an a or b are all in their classes at the same time so we're not getting uh like a 50 reduction in the amount of content that students are um are receiving so the curriculum remains whole and the students have the um at the advent the advantage of being able to be with their teachers and uh have those relationships those face-to-face relationships and be with other students but be um more widely socially distanced and um fulfilling the the reduced school population model and then finally on the next slide it's like groundhog day because if you go to that eric this is the remote learning and we're really hoping that we don't need to do this but it's it could be a short-term closure of two to five days or two weeks
059um that would be determined by our collaboration with the medical consultants that we work with and students would engage in remote learning we've learned a lot of lessons and we thank the students and the teachers and parents who gave us feedback on the um the distance learning model that we had in the spring and as many of you know as we got feedback uh each week when we met with students and um and had uh surveys with teachers and talked to parents we um made changes as we went along to try to improve upon our model so taking what we received as feedback the remote learning model will be a synchronous instructional model similar to the part of the at-home component that we had and the hybrid model that i just described to you and
060once again this is not going to be students glued to a computer all day we will develop developmentally appropriate schedules for that synchronous learning dependent on the um the age group and so you can see on the little schedule down there that monday through thursday it's 100 of students with remote learning on friday what we're considering that right now i'm looking working with other districts to make sure there's coherence is a partial day of remote learning and then partial time for teacher collaboration planning and professional learning because one thing we know is that in order for our teachers to get better and better at doing this new type of teaching we have to continually stay abreast of um what's going on in the field of teaching and learning with digital platforms and provide that professional
061development to our teachers and and that's it i'm going to turn it back to dr burrell maureen thank you so much really appreciate that um so um eric if you could go to the next slide please i'd really appreciate it so one of the big pieces in the reopening plan is communication and making sure that communication is coherent clear and consistent and making sure we as i said very early on in the presentation that we're as transparent as possible with our parents with our faculty with our staff and with the public as we always try to be but we want to we're going to make even greater efforts for that in really developing regular school and district communication whether that's a weekly or a daily depending on the situation we will be developing that plan
062the other thing that's important for everybody to know is the incredible communication between the town and the district specifically working with dr sullivan our health director on all of these particular issues but also being in touch with the first selectmen uh in all the work that's going on between the town and the schools we have a specific email set up ask covet 19 bps that's where we'd like any of the questions regarding uh if you're not going to for example send a an email directly to mr renda that has to do with something at wisconsin middle school but you have more of a general question about health and safety and what's going on in the district we ask that people send their email a question through the ask over 19 email and from there we
063will be putting together frequently asked questions and readily responding to folks the other thing we'll do is have a central uh as we've had since march with the covid landing page on our website we'll certainly update our district facebook page and then of course school messages that'll be sent out and the key a real key here that is important in in the first part of our meeting tonight where there's some public comment is parent engagement we're working right now with the principals and i think we'll end up scheduling a meeting tomorrow to have a conversation about setting up q a sessions for each school's parent population and so that should start to uh occur next week we really want to get the questions fleshed out for parents and understand where they're coming from and really
064answer as directly as we can their questions because it's very important we're going to be sending out a follow-up survey to parents specifically if you think back to what dr ruby talked about in the 100 model the parents do have a choice the way the state has set up the expectations that if they choose to keep their child home for the time being then um we would still need to provide education for them and so we need to know those counts it also matters for participation and transportation as well next slide please continuing on communication public expectations are very important when it comes to communication i think one thing we've all learned and i think we're all exhausted by is the fact that information in the coping 19 world continues to change rapidly we will
065provide you with the most up-to-date information in that information may change within hours so there is no purposeful hiding information we are going to do our very level best to make sure that you get everything we know um and we provide that information to you as quickly and accurately as we can and again like i said being transparent going back to my earlier comments will be transparent we will provide accurate timely information but we also will be protecting individual confidentiality i want to make sure people understand that next slide here all right so we're going to jump right into budget there's a few slides here because we have a few uh areas that we started to allude to today i'm just going to walk through it and then once we finish this as i talked
066with rosa before the meeting we're going to workshop this meeting the board's going to have questions we're going to process and we're looking forward to nearing the end of the presentation in a robust conversation so in terms of staffing um we need isolation room monitors one for every school we need lunch monitors and we have those broken up and we can talk about that as how that works custodial services and remember lunch monitors were 19 custodial services uh essentially six new custodians would rather hire a custodial service there's a lot of work that has to go into that working with our custodial team and so forth but we really don't want to provide uh permanent solutions to temporary problems it's a phrase we often hear in this situation and so we think a service might
067be more readily available to us again many school districts are looking for this kind of solution so um we're doing our best and we already have estimates from different companies and we're out there looking right now so the staffing alone to reopen the school is 468 000 as we have in the plan right now next slide please furniture we talked a lot about desks i showed 542 desks that need to be purchased so when we total up our desks you can see the cost there for the high school in the elementary school mr rendo we're at whiskey near they already have a lot of desks so they don't need the the desk to replace the tables in addition we talked about the trifold shields for the students as well as for the teachers and then
068other death shields for office personnel and various partitions uh the way offices are configured or how we might be reconfiguring some of them that's just over two hundred thousand dollars for the furniture next slide please eric are you able to go to the next slide nope there we go personal protective equipment we purchased a number of items for personal protective equipment equipment i alluded to that earlier with an initial purchase for the first hundred days as we worked with our principals and we worked on some of the areas where students will be in situations and i can leave this for either mary rose or for maureen to talk about a little bit um there will be opportunities for students to work specifically in science and some of the other areas where they actually do have
069to share we you know there's just they can't uh not do some of the work uh together in terms of using the same materials and it's not uh practicable for them to necessarily have everything wiped down and so forth so we want to make sure in those situations that the students each each student has a pair of gloves for once a week that would would go on and that's about a 20 000 cost as you can see and then we'll go on to the next slide so other equipment so there's some uv sanitizers that we need there are webcams for desktop computers so our laptops have cameras our desktops do not for the most part and while eric does try to the it department does replenish these and try to purchase some in the normal
070course of budget um considering the situation we're in this year we could use 60 um webcams and for those desktops so just so people could think there's been a lot of virtual meetings for ppts or parent conferences or other kinds of meetings that are virtual many of our staff are still on desktops they do not have laptops and so this is something they need to continue the meetings supplies excuse me the special specials supply kits that need to be ordered the cards for the specialist individual whiteboards packs of 30. so you can just see as we go through pointers teachers are going to be further from students they need pointers to point to the work they're doing or point to their chromebook storage containers and storage you can see the uh rental storage containers this
071is for the big furniture that we need to take out of rooms and store um so there's cost there and so we're looking at uh quite a bit there twenty eight thousand 000 or so we'll go to the next one so total reopening costs um are at 728 000 to open up with 100 model many of the costs opening up for the 100 mile will still be realized if we're in the 50 model probably left less furniture but regardless at some point we'll be back in 100 model and likely still having to abide by social distancing so these are costs we're going to have to incur to open up and then i talked about planning for classroom technology there's some other options we could explore and talk with the board about uh specifically uh additional
072web cameras uh that we could purchase which is kind of the next level up from our laptop cameras that would be a better step that would be a cost of twenty thousand dollars more that was something we wanted to do and certainly eric could explain that and how that would work and how that would benefit students and then there really is um the the grand plan ultimately that would be wonderful for this situation but it's quite expensive as you can see a four hundred thousand dollars these cameras with an audio solution if we really have um beautiful cameras uh with incredible audio and crisp clarity and it would work better for our remote learning and that would cover uh 160 classrooms it wouldn't be every classroom in the school but we wanted to just put
073those out there so everybody could see we understand the board has just been through two weeks ago we had approvals of laptops and chromebooks through the board of finance um and there's only so much funding to go around in the contingencies here in our community and we understand that but we want to let everybody know that to ideally move forward there's some technology that we really should purchase but if we're just looking at getting by for the reopening the 728 000 is what we need to do and we're ready to uh have those conversations so i got a couple more slides and we'll finish things off next one please eric bob is his hand up john i'm sorry what's that yeah john i'm sorry i'm raising my hand like i'm in class um john on
074on the is there money available from the state or federal um uh funds for this sort of school reopening costs so um there is some different grants that are out there for the town through the cares act and so forth we've talked about the small uh amount of money that is coming through that's already earmarked to cover the cost of the seventy four thousand dollars to cover the cost of chromebooks that the board of finance approved a couple of weeks ago there are some other monies out there uh but administratively uh working not only with ken but with martial from the town side it's been very difficult to get the application process going and very difficult to have reassurances that the money will actually be there there's also costs and technology i do not believe
075falls under um the fema reimbursement costs but we're exhausting all of that with the town as a matter of fact uh ken and i met with marsha and steve this morning and has some of that conversation so marcia and steve are aware of all these costs they're they're aware of these costs in theory we invited them to watch the meeting this evening so they could actually see the cost and then we'll provide them with a spreadsheet so they have it um we didn't think it was appropriate to provide them with this information prior to the board receiving it and they understood it i wouldn't be at all surprised that there's no money coming and it and if there was money coming it would go to the big cities so we're gonna have to go figure
076you know with with steve's help and the board of finance and the board of ed we're trying to work our way through this yeah figure out where we can find seven hundred thousand dollars and this is this was a big uh big discussion two weeks ago at the board of finance meeting and they were really looking forward to to having um information on this and i saw at least one of the board of finance members that would join the meeting at least at the beginning of the evening tonight um because this is very important we have to work together on this and try to solve this problem yeah and there i i'm guessing they're listening in okay even though they couldn't make it into the meeting because of this the issue earlier so and there
077are things that that need to be purchased right so the shields the desks things that have to be purchased soon because there's supply chain issues because every school system in the in the nation and many in the world are in the same situation so that's very important um it's important can i ask another budget question or do you want to wait until after you're done um i don't want to finish up the slides there's only a couple more left and then we'll do that the other thing i want to know when we're talking about desk it's very important just in case i forget it um calling other districts working with fathership working with the archdiocese working with mr checo with his contacts in new york uh with the catholic schools and the diocese there and
078everyone's in the same position we're trying to do anything we can to find the furniture keep the cost as low as possible um that may not be an option for us so just want to let everybody know that but eric if you could go to the next slide and then we'll move through all right so i want to just review next steps very briefly and then uh we'll we'll uh get near the end here so uh tonight while the state department of education does not require in this uh reopening plan does not require approval from the board of education like we often do i would say 99 percent of the time do as a with this board of education is we really want to provide a united front with the school of the school and
079district administration so that's why we put it on the agenda for discussion and consideration of a formal approval of the plan so that's what we're talking about by the end of this meeting tonight making any final revisions or edits to the plan if there was any thoughts suggestions or ideas submission of the reopening plan to the state department of ed by friday i'm hoping to do it tomorrow rather than wait till friday disseminate the reopening plan to the faculty staff parents and community after this meeting we will be posting this information online and sending a school message home the faculty and staff have already received this the reopening plan holding the public q a sessions as we talked about of course securing funding as we just started to talk about for the desks and the
080shields and technology cetera that we need the staffing that's a big piece um adjusting the plan uh based on any updated oh i'm sorry can you go back eric our forward one yep sorry about that final bullet on that uh that page is to adjust the plan based on any new health data any new requirements that come down from the cdc or the state department of ed or dph et cetera again things change by the hour um and so that's the case there's one more slide for some next steps and then this district will continue to collaborate and support each school team the school is setting up teams similar to the district team so we can not only implement the plan but monitor the plan and have two-way feedback so we're making sure we are
081um adhering to the cleaning and health protocols and everything else that we need to for our students and staff and then of course i said the q a sessions next slide getting to the end i know we've been talking for a while and believe and that was it thank you so now it's time rose i'll let you take the meeting back over and we'll have our conversation thanks um so i just want my initial question that had to do with the budget um was i noticed in a lot of those you are accounting for the number of students now is there some sort of obligation to account for every student that we have in the district because not all of them and i assume like a pretty significant percentage of them will opt to do
082the remote learning in which case they'll never be in the school environment so do we still need you know plastic shields for all of them and stuff like that the one thing is legally we are responsible for educating the students and so if the student the parent chooses to keep their child home legally at any time if they decide they want their child to attend school let's say you know what i'm going to test it out and see how in-person learning goes a couple of weeks in a month into the school year things are going well and the parent says you know what i'm going to send little johnny back to school we have to open our doors and accept that child in and so we need to be ready and it's the same thing
083even if we started i just want to go a little further with it with an answer to that even if we started in the hybrid model where we had 50 of the kids well we don't have to buy the furniture we don't have to do this well the reality is if we at some point move from the 50 model to 100 model we need to accommodate the students and i don't see any time soon that social distancing is just going to go away so this is the conundrum all of us are in and we're all facing um i know my uh in my role as the chair of the western connecticut superintendent association with our regional um partners of the the other neighboring districts dr ruby started to mention that a little bit the um
084they're all going through the same thing and there's significant cost to their reopening plans as well they're all going through these exactly some might have more furniture and less technology than we do so everybody's got their own local unique challenge that they're doing thanks um so i would just like you know encourage uh board members to speak up with any questions or comments i think the suggestion for the sort of workshop format was a good one and we can continue on that and try to maybe anticipate you know not only from your viewpoint as a parent but in speaking with community members um trying to get some of these questions that might still be lingering answered rosa do you want to do it in any particular way do you want to call on us how
085do you want to organize it um i mean as long as we don't run into sort of talking over each other i mean i think we're usually pretty good with just um sort of speaking up and um yeah so go ahead uh debbie i saw that you look like you were about to say something so go ahead i don't mind starting um i have a lot of questions overall i just want to say john i think and and everybody on the committee there was this is a tremendous amount of work and i know you know you can't possibly answer every question tonight but i appreciate you know the work and thought and effort that went into it i think right now there are still so many unknowns that um maybe the answer to some questions
086is just going to be wait and see you know we we don't know but um i appreciate all the effort that went into it i guess my biggest question has to do with um identification of uh you know infected people i know you said that when there's a confirmed case of covid in the school that decisions will be made parents will be notified but i think a big question that people have is first of all if they're if it takes three days or five days or a week to get a confirmation of a test you know somebody alluded to this earlier in the public comments section there's this snowball effect if that person actually tests positive they were in the building you know the children in the classroom were exposed the teachers were exposed but
087we're not finding out about it until possibly a week later so is there any strategy in place um to notify people that someone may have the virus or similarly um let's say a teacher has a spouse who has covid but the teachers doesn't test positive does the teacher continue to come to work even though she's been exposed so those kinds of questions i think i think the plan just sort of implies that if there's a positive case in the school people will be notified but i kind of feel like there's these like tentacles that that grow from that like what happens in these other situations well i i think debbie i think the best people right now to speak about that because we'd obviously be on the phone uh with our public health director and
088our medical advisor but i want to start with cornea dr ferrara who can start yeah yeah so so i'll start so i think i think the most critical thing today is we should assume everybody is infected until proven otherwise and i think that's why you know when i look at this plan that we've set forth for the school i'll be i'll be open and honest my son goes to the high school so you know i share some of these very same concerns and i work in the hospital i mean medical practices on a daily basis but when you talk to our infectious disease partners right the key thing here to remember is that's why we have social distancing and mask use and it is because of social distancing and mask use that we have decreased
089the rates of covet in this area specifically because our communities and people in our in our towns have really adhered to that measure so we need to make the assumption that everybody is infected and that's why we implement the the tools that we have at the schools so doing your temperature checks that's going to help alert us to folks that have have potentials for fever or maybe in early stages of infection so we can actually send those folks home and say you can't come to the school the second piece is with the social distancing component and then the mask use when you look at just those two things alone the infection rates decrease substantially right so for example with social distancing the reason the american academy of pediatrics came out with the recommendation for three
090to six feet is there was a large study recently published out of europe it was published in the landsat and they looked at 44 different studies at distances so fascinating right so if you are over a meter or more than three feet away from another person who has covet your chances to contract that virus is only three percent once you get into that three foot distance your chance to get covet goes up to 13 so if you had no mask on it's a very low on contagion rate in those individuals and especially in the pediatric population so that's why the recommendation is three feet to six feet if you then add a mask on top of that that three percent rate goes down substantially below that and that's why we have seen this in our
091communities right so we have churches that are now open we've got the town parks that are open and we're just not seeing the spread because people are adhering to these these metrics so i think from from step one we can't live in fear we just need to follow the precautions that we have put in place because those very precautions are the things that have helped us overcome a lot of this challenge in in brookfield and connecticut and new york specifically because of the fact that we're doing the masks we're doing hand hygiene and we're following through on the social distancing so again the assumption should be everybody is infected and not to let our guard down but to follow strictly the measures that have been in place and i think the work that this school
092board has done and the work that's been put into this this basically playbook for reopening the schools is truly a phenomenal job because it really addresses a lot of the things even things that we do in our medical practices are are in these documents so you know that's why i feel very reassured that if we go out from this standpoint i think kids will be fine going back to school this fall thank you dr ferraro dr sullivan did you have anything to add to that to answer mrs brooks's question and you're on it you're on you there you go um i think dr ferrara summed it up very succinctly the fact is that the original recommendations from the cdc where social distance six feet plus frequent hand washing thus covering your propensity practical things don't
093touch your face etc now it came apparent that a large number of population couldn't adhere to that six foot thing because of their job position so they came out as an alternative to say that if both a contact and an individual who is carrying the virus both masked this reduces the chances of contamination or cross-contamination through the contact of counter 1.5 so the masks then became a substitute for social distancing the current the current science is that if you are within an individual without a mask for more than 15 minutes you're much more likely to develop the disease but there again what you're doing is you're adding social uh distancing plus the masks and basically doubling down but as dr ferrara noted the chances of spread of uh cobia 19 virus are extremely small under
094those circumstances the question then comes out what have you do have a ovid positive individual first of all that individual has to be obviously self-isolated we isolate individuals with the disease we quarantine or come and contact someone with the disease so there's a distinction between isolation and the cdc has spelled out the uh exact uh rules basically uh for uh dealing with a coveted positive individual uh who may expose others to um to the uh well maybe maybe i should ask it differently um what would the recommendation be let's just say a child has a family member who's been diagnosed with covid or a teacher has a spouse who's been diagnosed with covid what's the recommendation for those people to come to school they're not diagnosed but they live with someone who is or ray
095who would like to go sullivan go that would be a primary contact uh so contact tracing would take over and get in touch with that particular individual that individual should self quarantine for a period of 14 days that's the infectious period for covet 19. so a primary contact yes into school has been a known contact has not developed symptoms then secondary contacts of that child should not have to self-isolate there's no indication for isolation of a contact so you're saying that child should not come to school but the rest of the people who were in contact with that child should be fine so i don't i don't feel that that's completely spelled out here that if a child or a school employee has a primary exposure to the virus but are not yet infected they
096should stay home that's correct i think that needs to be explicit it's spelled out by the c uh on their coronavirus website [Music] what it says is if they're sick they shouldn't come to school and that the parents should monitor the student themselves but i think in terms of them having a primary contact right with somebody who has the virus we ought to say you shouldn't be coming to school and we ought to say for teachers who may or other staff who may have had a primary contact you shouldn't be coming to school that's correct i just john i've read it through i don't recall that being that it wasn't we'll go dig in on that make sure that's in there yeah already yep dr ferrara yeah no so i agree 100 with what dr
097sullivan said and i think um we should call that out explicitly in the playbook because it will make it clearer for the parents thank you good one debbie tough questions i have something like go ahead uh some instructional questions um how are we you know cohorting dance level we talked you know we talked about special ed and uh el students things like that how we cohorting the advanced level classes such as math or in language spanish and french or especially uh students who are taking advanced math and a language so uh gene do you want to take that or do you okay can you hear me yes we can alright good so at the middle school level what we're going to do is we are going to have cohorts in each by each team and
098then within that team we're going to have sub cohorts of students that would be able to move maybe we'd move half the class that would go to either an advanced math class and the only other class that would happen for is students that take french but other than that we would not have students um so again they would be within their cohort but we would have two a few sub cohorts within that cohort to be able to continue to offer advanced um math classes and also uh french class hope that answers your question yes thank you i had one other instructional question um maureen maybe you can speak to this so i think what was left in everybody's minds as far as parents goes to was how we left in the spring so um to
099make it a little more clear more clearer than what the presentation um provided us was how how is instruction going to look differently now as opposed to the spring so are you talking how's instructional look compared to before we had um the the virus like what's the difference in the instructional model in the classroom is that the question so it i guess well i guess i should rephrase this so if we had to go to full remote learning or even you know or the hybrid model how is that going to look differently than our full remote learning in the spring well it the full remote learning in the spring we went to asynchronous um because we we didn't have time to do any deeper training than you know we're we only had three days we
100will we heard loudly and clearly from um particularly the high school students and the middle school students and um from some parents in the elementary school and there's going to be people who feel differently about this but in general that there was a need for synchronous instruction so whereas in the spring there was there were um curriculum plans week by week for the elementary students that were posted online and then as you um you would go into your google classroom and you would have be able to avail yourself of video lessons you know recorded lessons by the teacher etc and um kind of it was you could do it at any time that's not going to be the model that we have it was um we did that for reasons of one training and reasons
101of trying to be uh make things convenient for people who were thrown into this that's not that's not what's what's best for kids and what's interesting is that not only are students in k-12 the middle school in high school particularly telling us this but colleges did um surveys with their students and found the same thing that the students don't like did not like the asynchronous compo approach they wanted contact with their teachers they wanted contact with their classmates that's what we heard so that will be the major difference it will be synchronous so school will start you know at a certain time and there will be your morning as a for elementary let's say morning meeting and the schedule will you know be clearly defined there will be breaks there will be lunch obviously they'll
102be eating lunch on their own at home um it won't be it won't be like i said earlier sitting in front of a computer for six and a half hours there will be a variety of things but it will be it'll will be synchronous and um the uh the high school you know will be synchronous as well um i don't know if there's any other specific i know i'm talking in generalities if there's anything really specific about that um it no i think that's very clear i think um really defining synchronous for the community and make sure um but you explain that clearly enough i i hope that that's more clear to the community and parents thanks for that question uh mr belden i have a related question actually i have lots of questions but
103i'll take a moment to find and let other people have shots um so when we were describing the go back to at a hundred percent there was a there was a little bit of a reference to some children may not be at school right what is the situation when we're in the hundred percent in school mode right i i can understand the synchronous when we're when that's a hundred percent remote learning my question is about the situation where there's a hundred word where have kids in school and there's somebody who needs to be remote how does that look synchronous i mean what does it look like in the classroom do we expect a lot of that and how would a teacher manage both kids in front of them and some and a child who's remote
104so the what we're what we're thinking and what other schools are thinking is that if so if i'm in the classroom find the teacher and i have 16 kids that are in front of me spaced out in those desks and four kids at home those four kids are going to be um i i'm going to be in zoom now this gets into what john was talking about with technology that's where i'm going okay so so in the model that we have with uh for technology they would be on zoom they would not be able to see everything that was going on in the classroom okay because that with the technology that we currently have that's not possible um and but we would be doing what i talked to about before breakout rooms so won't we
105kids can't go over the kids that are in the classroom can't go over to a center or come to a teacher's small table for small group instruction but we can do breakout rooms in zoom where you know the teacher can give an assignment of what the majority of the students should be doing it might not all be the same work because they may be at um you know working on different problems but now i'm going to take i'm going to take debbie bob mike and joy into a breakout room to because we're going to do a small reading group or a small math group or whatever the instruction is and john burrell's mother won't have him come to school for whatever personal reasons he's also in your group and now we're in a breakout room
106and because you're all you all have your your chromebooks on your on your desk in the classroom and john has his chromebook at home you're all going to be in this room together where you can see me i can see the five of you and i'm working with you together so that's so that would be what would be happening if john burrell was at home and the rest of us were all including i was worried about was the senate you know i know we're sitting here working on a meeting we're focused on the computer screen right we're looking at each other we're looking at the camera on our computer and you can't be doing that and then teaching 16 people who are there in person to use your example because your eyes just don't work
107that way and i i'm just trying to picture the how it works for a teacher in that environment it's highly challenging mixed classroom i mean i could picture a world where if there was a camera and a tripod in the back of the room and they had good video quality that's the 400 000 option that's the 400 000 there you go you just made our case thank you very much mister that's an expensive option so and i'm just the curriculum management the the managing children who are remote the mix of students and i can't i don't even have a sense it is a large number we're expecting or a small number well on our s or our survey i think it was 18 john yeah yeah i think it was 19 18 across across the
108whole district and god you finished what i wanted to go back to bob was um so in a classroom as it is um when a teacher is um up in the front of the the room at like a small table with four five six kids believe me he or she has dialed into those kids and other kids are wherever they are in the room doing whatever it is they've been assigned to do um it's um so it'll it'll definitely be a culture shift um for being on the computer but they're not the kids for them for the majority of the time when they're in a um a room uh a breakout room wouldn't be in this brady bunch um kind of configuration that we're in now because the teacher would be you know using um
109online manipulatives and and doing you know doing things that kids would be doing it on their computers and the teacher could could see when they share their screen so i could say oh okay johnny share your screen and because we teach them how to do that and he would share a screen and i say oh i think you need to move the green one you know you know be giving instruction and then you could see what he was doing on this on the screen so it definitely is going to be different but it can be doable and that's why we need to have the the pd time because teachers will be uncomfortable you know it's something that they haven't done before the kids are usually a lot better at it than we are it'll it'll
110be it'll definitely be different but um and i just want to thought that thought that i just had about the kids are much better at it i've talked to a bunch of people in um in different meetings that i've been to and seen actually videos of it and there was something on wtnh tv the other night a summer camp with kids outside the other day when it was you know like 90 something degrees they had their masks on they were running around in this camp having a grand old time and the only people that were touching their face masks and pulling them down were the adults the kids were just you know they were great so i think um i think we have a lot of um a lot of challenges but if we remain
111positive we will we will get through this and we'll we'll support the teachers it's just going to be different but the other side of the coin is that all of this technology that kids are learning is in the in the end gonna serve them well because we're looking at we're looking at a real paradigm shift in how colleges and businesses and everything else is going to be operating and so they're going to be developing usable skills while we're teaching them the curriculum yeah i understand i just uh i i'm actually with my question was more oriented not as much about the kids as the teacher's ability to manage that environment yeah i think it's challenging i will say we're not there yet because we don't have the numbers and the data and the information from
112staff or families but should we um when you ask about percentages should we get a large number of students and um that are whose parents are going to choose to stay them keep them home for whatever reason and we have clusters this is why we need to get this information in the next very next few weeks and we have clusters of kids in a grade and we have maybe a faculty member who has a medical reason why they can't come back to work for some reason we may and i'm i don't want anybody to misinterpret that i'm saying this is going to happen but should the numbers work out then we start have to start thinking differently and we may have to assign a faculty member to be 100 remote right second grade yeah now
113we have to explore that a little bit more to see is that the best thing for kids to be in a 100 remote environment with kids who are 100 remote or is it better for children who are remote to be interacting with children in the classroom and you know we still may have a class of remote kids but then we have to find opportunities for them to engage with kids that are in school through you know other ways so we really need to be very interesting i don't want to i don't want to dwell on it i'll be really interested in hearing more about this as you develop it i just it's uh to me it's a fascinating part of what we have to do but we we should we i hope you asked um
114uh mr conklin about those cameras okay i'm gonna hold my up i'm gonna hold my other major questions and give someone else a chance um so i just want to jump in with a couple of um questions so i understand educationally the idea of kindergarten doing the initial half days that makes sense to me but i'm wondering about from a health perspective does it make sense to have 10 kids in the morning and then switch 10 kids in the afternoon because i know we're trying to not mix them so much would it make more sense to have them go full days like monday and tuesday and then the other kids go thursday or friday that would be a that would be a hybrid model and we have to have a hundred percent back a hundred
115percent of the time and kindergarten doesn't have a prescribed number of hours like um other grades do i know but are you were are you did you discuss sort of the health impact uh implications of having those kids mixed is that something you discussed yeah and and maybe a cleaning or something in between yeah yeah and so i'm gonna turn it over to mary rose because she's been working with her team um and you know coming up with these ideas that are developmentally appropriate to transition our kindergarten students so please we just actually met with kindergarten this morning as kindergarten teachers to talk about what this is going to look like um and we you know even though they'll only be 10 students in the classroom there will still be 20 desks set up they'll
116still have their own space um so it was they wouldn't be sharing materials and it would still be as if there were 20 kids there to interact with and that kind of thing so we did take that consideration i will also be looking at because it'll be modeled after our pre-k program as well so we've already spoken with our custodians we're going to need to have that mid-day cleaning we've talked about one of the things that was in the proposal that um in terms of budgeting were the uv sanitizers so any material that would be used again this would be pre-k kindergarten um midday would be we would need to use the sanitizers for to kind of clean it all up and be ready for the next group to come in so we couldn't have
117them back-to-back necessarily that's why we for that break in the middle of the day to make sure we had that opportunity okay great so i just yeah i just want to make sure that was part of the conversation and then i just had another question i was thinking about the high school when you said that the for example like the social studies classes are small so we're not gonna be able to you know have as many kids did you think about maybe just if uh moving where the classrooms are so if the spanish classrooms are bigger should social studies classes go in the spanish classroom so i just wanted to know if that was part of the conversation um instead of thinking well these are today's classrooms we'll let mark take that over but we've
118looked at yeah certainly so you know obviously not all the social studies classrooms are that small there's some that are i think one of the bigger issues with the social studies classrooms is that our classes is that we often double up in senior year because students have to take american government as in addition to other classes so that's one of the only subjects that core subjects they double up in you don't often see it everywhere at least it's not a requirement everywhere so that's why we see some of the bigger numbers in terms of what we can or can't fit in um you know the other piece would be you know we certainly looked at different options and i'm not done tweaking those um you know i look at them seemingly every like you know
119we all do at three in the morning four in the morning uh come up with different ideas and plans to see what we can do to to make it work um you know we we have to be careful i'm not careful but i think you know cohorting is always going to be an issue at the high school level uh in terms of what we're able to do um you know we're not like the elementary the middle schools where we can keep those kids a little closer together and keep them the same with the different uh subjects and options and combinations and permutations of what courses kids can take and we're really trying not to limit them uh we're trying to limit the number of of different rooms that kids are in throughout the course of
120the day or maybe teachers um you know certainly you know with off periods we might be able to put a bigger class in that room um you know but i'm looking at you know in terms of what we would need to do to run there's probably like six different extra sections to make sure it would fit so i might be able to find a different room to rotate people through you know our us history classes are some of the biggest that we have um but there's a lot of different options we're looking at jen to see if we can rotate through different rooms i'm not stuck to the idea of you know well room 233 was mine and that's all i'm ever going to teach him you know i know sometimes we all feel that
121way and we have ownership of those spaces um but absolutely we're lucky in the high school that we have at least one room per teacher um but this is one of those situations where we'll we'll certainly weigh in and talk to dr ferreira and dr sullivan and and just get their perspective as well um you know if we need to switch different periods or i just move people there permanently so we'll look at all those options great and you know one of the things i was thinking about because you have the block schedule at the high school that's that's much better because kids are only transitioning what three times or so maybe four times a day wearing a more traditional high school model you could have eight times a day and that's problematic so we've
122already had that in our favor yeah we do absolutely it's going to be you know we're trying to limit those transitions obviously as much as possible and have another conversation with dr ruby today you know in terms of the ilt which the board was awesome to to talk about putting that intervention uh individualized learning time into the schedule um that also creates a bunch of sub cohorts throughout so we might we're we're looking at can we do that differently do we have to just put that on hold depending on what model we're in um but yeah you're right jen having you know three or four transitions throughout the day is much better than having eight so mark what that was my second one of my second questions is you know i've i've been in that
123high school when uh when we're going through a class transition it's a it's a sea of humanity um what are you thinking about in terms of how well at the high school because high school is different than elementary because of the transitions and the fact that kids are changing classrooms and but more importantly they're at an age where there's more risk right than the younger ages what are you thinking about in terms of how you manage those transitions yes so it's it's it's it's a real challenge bob you're absolutely right it's it's quite the the sea of uh of of kids as you transition between you look at uh our enrollment this year will probably be somewhere close to 915 i think we're at right now pretty close to which is a significant jump from
124last year because the incoming uh incoming ninth grade class is relatively big um so we're looking at things like you know what hallways can we make one way sort of kind of like you would see in you know the grocery store things like that um you know what can we realistically depending on weather and you'll hear a lot of people talk about you know utilizing open and outdoor spaces um you know i was at danbury high school one of my first teaching jobs and one of the things the kids did for a while during construction was they transitioned outside they walked from an outside door so you know thinking about where we are in school counseling in the front of the building is it safe we need to make sure we staff security there to
125make sure that nobody's getting you know from the perspective of the outside but we may look to come down that social studies wing bob where school counseling is and maybe those kids are coming out that door and people are coming around so we're we're going to look at a lot of different ways i think the reality for all of us whether it's you know transitioning between classes or class arrival or lunch we're going to have that transition time for all those different things parent drop-off is going to have a significant impact on what on instructional time we're lucky at the high school because we have longer periods already so while it's not ideal um we're not looking at we're trying to figure out how to transition with only 45 minute periods of instruction you know
126we're at 80 80 minutes of instruction you know so it maybe i might have dismissed sections of the building at certain times but even when i do that the challenge is kids are going to different classes so they could be standing and huddling and so in order to keep traffic flowing and moving it likely is going to be some version of utilizing outside spaces and making one-way hallways is what what the plan is at this point stairwells cafeteria exits have you ever been to lunch it's been a little a little busy at lunch you know we'll make an exit and exit out and of course adhere to all fire codes as well so we've got maps and we're looking at different places and different ways we can make that happen to be the most effective
127yeah i just i i remember watching some of it the stairwells in particular right having those one way by themselves will help you so yeah absolutely mike do you have any uh questions comments yes plenty um uh my mine's gonna be more on the testing uh i i i heard you john that you said that that kids were going to be checked i saw the word random are they going to be randomly temperature checked in the classroom john you're on your journey thanks mike uh no so we we worked with both dr sullivan and dr ferrara on this uh the the there's no mandatory from the dph there's no mandatory temperature check for every single uh the reason they backed away from that is there was way too many false positives and so the plan
128would be to insure and do wellness checks on students and make sure that families and individuals are doing their wellness check before school because we don't want people coming with a you know 100 degree temperature to school that we will do spot checks random checks we might check bus 13 one day or we might check mrs jones class from another day or a certain lunch table another day so that's some some of the ideas we have that's how we would do random checks to see how people are going okay i'm assuming that's through thermal thermometer no touch thermometers yes part of the order that we uh placed over yes and you touched on the false positives there what is the protocol for a false positive let's say a student does test and actually i should
129pre uh do this uh what is are the students being tested at school like swabbed at school regularly that that has not happened the only thing would be the temperature check but i'm actually going to ask anna laforgia our nurse coordinator if anna could pop on to help answer dr murphy's question on that about the the false positives well no not really the false possible what does a pot like if we've used the term a lot today if a kid tests positive in school i just don't know what does that what does that mean well the temperature was off so anna go go ahead anna okay so basically it's not we're not testing for covet the schools are not testing for culvert itself we're doing a health assessment we're just checking for symptoms if the
130child has a fever then they'll they'll be sent home and any other covet symptoms they will be sent home so we're just doing a health assessment on the child we're checking a temperature we're checking for coughs fever like i said fevers and anything related and when when they're sent home is that marked as they're not coming back for two weeks is this an opportunity to get tested and let's say they're negative do they get to be allowed back in if they have a fever they need to consult with their health care provider they can return to school after 24 hours fever-free without fever-reducing medicine they need to return to school with a doctor's note and or a covered negative test is that i think that should also be in the plan explicitly that is in
131the plan i don't know the page but i believe that is in the plan i read through it and see that yeah it's in the plan mike but so you know the nurses are putting together um communications um that would be sent via the school's home to the parents that will explain all of those things but it is in the plan um my other like the false positive thing was to the uh the swab test uh i know that a lot of professional athletes are now doing a best of three so let's say the first one is positive then they get tested a total of three times if the two come back negative then they ignore the first positive is that something that's going on or being considered well we don't do any testing so
132okay i can't speak to you know what i'm talking about after let's say the doctors yeah that's a that's a really tough one right so the the centers for disease control when they looked at um initially releasing folks back to to work or to school they there's two options right there was one based on clinical symptoms and and the durations from the onset of the clinical symptoms and then there was a second recommendation that came back and said you have to have two negative cova tests you know to be able to return to work what we're finding in clinical practice is that's a major challenge so we have studies now that shows there are people who still have positive tests 37 days plus after their initial positive test and the challenge that we have right
133now is the the science is not there to tell us whether or not this is just you know rna material that's left within the person's nasopharynx or if that is actually still active infection that's in the system so because of that the the recommendation is really not to try and serially test people because you're going to continuously have these these positives and because of that we follow the recommendation the timelines the things that anna just talked about and the clinicians in the communities have been really trained up through the health systems on how to evaluate those patients and then make recommendations for return to work or uh and my other thing with the temperature checks is there gonna be some kind of uh you know parental sign off on how often you can check the
134child's temperature so i don't think there's there's any so so when you say sign of within us the same day well my question is you're going to randomly you know it's it sounds like it's random what if one kid gets tested like you know 10 times and one kid gets tested once no so i think what we will do with what dr barriel said we'll we'll create something that's completely random right so bus 13 one day you know the next day will be a specific table so i i don't think you're right but that that same kid could that same kid could be at both those things correct so you would just have my questions yeah so anna would and i would probably keep track of that for us within the in the nurse's stations
135so that we can make sure that we don't test the same kid day after day after day unless obviously that kid suddenly was on the bus yesterday and today they're exhibiting some kind of symptom in which case we would call them out and test some more or less anyone that might fall through the cracks not i mean the kid gets temperature checked but there's no no big deal that i mean but but one kid gets tested once in a week and one kid gets tested seven times i can see a problem so basically before the student gets on the bus the parent or guardian needs to do kind of a spot check you do a temperature check and if they have any other symptoms a cough or nausea that student stays home if they have
136a fever of 100 degrees or greater to ensure compliance and to be more accurate then we'll do random checks when they come to school okay um and my last question regarding the health is let's say a parent keeps their kid home because they were they looked sick they had a temperature the next day they don't have a temperature is there a log on that as well as far as contact racing well if a child has a fever the parent needs to call their nurse their respective nurse and let them know my child has a fever of 101 today he or she will not be coming to school we will respond and say check with your medical provider and he can return when he's fever-free 24 hours after that without fever-reducing medicine and then again with
137a note from your healthcare okay i'm good thank you okay sorry may i add something at this point this is ray sullivan i just i just want to add the fact that we are about to enter flu season as well so that there are a lot of considerations with regard to this temperature checking uh currently uh the advice is that you do have a temperature uh you stay home for a period of four hours off of people reducing medications and and free of symptoms you are certainly prepared to return to school that applies both to and to uh um but the big key is that uh there are going to any number of reasons why kids are temperatures from this fall particularly the flu season that we have no idea what kind of thing that's
138going to bring up well can i just ask one budget related question i think it's wishful thinking on my part but i thought i would try it are there any companies that rent desks or some of this equipment so we wouldn't have to buy them because i'm thinking we would need them for this year but we wouldn't need all those desks the following year um i don't even know if that's that's a service that that is out there again we will continue to explore that jared gary gay and ken have been working diligently on that um i can be honest with you i don't know if they've explained the last one thank you anyone else yeah go ahead bob no now you're on mute okay now i'm your community okay um so john when i
139read the plan um there was a section of the plan about other people using the school other organizations and things like that as long as they could comply with our guidelines my brain went very differently than i think you would have expected that i don't want anybody else using our school um i want i'd love to build a bubble around our school that it's only our teachers and our students and maybe parents who have to come in for a meeting like a ppe year a ppe with a ppp or something like that um how are we limiting it's a really odd year right so that we would probably limit it more than we would normally how are you going about limiting other organizations being in our facilities great question bob thank you so the one
140uh there's right now there's there's several organizations that more regularly use our facilities um specifically ed advance typically holds after school child care at huckleberry for students that are in either wisconsin or huckleberry or central school at the maximum about 20 students a day after school for their child care program we've been working with that advanced and that is one area where we don't we're putting our parents out enough so one of the things we've talked about with that advance is that we they adhere to the um office of early childhood and all the guidelines uh similar to what we adhere to and they would bring their cleaning products and so forth so we've had a conversation with them as to how we can um accommodate that program because we want to support our parents
141with significant work and child care needs um there are two other organizations that i won't mention that we're going to have some conversations with but really one of the things that's very important for everybody to know to start the year and i think i say in the document we talk about the first couple of months or first 12 weeks i forget how we referenced it but we really do to your point bob need to create that bubble and limit access extremely limit access to the building so some other organizations that we have wonderful and long-term relationships with they may need to be patient and hold off because there's so much else going on with just maintaining a safe school environment to try to accommodate any more visitors could be problematic so we're being very um
142judicious very strong on that i'm gonna get the quote wrong but uh somebody asked lebron james you know how are you dealing with this and how are you dealing with that he says every time somebody asks me it i answer it's 20 20. it's a it's a different animal than we've ever seen before we will operate uniquely and differently and um i think this whole concept uh we have to hunker down um is a important one do you have to approve any use of the district facilities yourself yes that is one of our nations tonight to give the superintendent to ensure that the superintendent has broad authority which arguably i already do in terms of um being the the executive of the district but we can talk about those later in the meeting but we
143are absolutely um able to preclude folks from uh being in the building we have a use of bill building process and it is up to us to allow people in they have to have i would recommend you not delegate that right that it even you know if you have the authority but you don't now distribute it amongst many people who might do it because you know we use the buildings for a lot of things um and it's there's meetings of town organizations who might want to use the auditorium there's meetings uh there's uh parks and rec there's uh there's there's a girl scouts boy scouts you know whatever um and our facilities are broadly used in community and i as much as i hate it right um it might be the year to say we're
144just keeping the doors shut yeah exactly and and that there's some conversations going on about that strategic but other than that uh there's other places where folks can meet and so i'm leaning toward where you are at bob final discussion about that there's a process that is holding we have a secretary principal sign off on building use and it works uh with the facility director's office as well and so we're all there we're just closing the doors for the first three months or the first semester or through january one and then that's what we have to do then that's what we're going to do do you mind uh mountain chairman if i ask us another question i'll go ahead all right so a question on airflow management i mean you you mentioned that our air
145handlers are getting cleaned um there's as i've read a bunch on the on the virus the management of airflow is is a very powerful thing right relative to the spread of this virus and you know i've i've heard of schools who are telling their teachers open their windows open their doors you know take kids outdoors as often as you can um what are we doing about air management more than just cleaning the um cleaning the filters and making sure the units are working are we are we building some uh institutional knowledge and handling of air um in our schools yeah so you know what i'd like to do about we are and we the the uh strategies that you talked about with air flow and getting outside and those kind of walls our hvac maintenance
146mechanics role the incredible amount of work they do to to make the buildings run in that regard is it's important i talked about this at the school reopening team meeting yesterday it's very easy for pundits and others to in a cavalier fashion say well just open the windows and open the doors and probably go on it assumes pleasant weather number one but the other thing our security issues have not gone away during probing and we remain in a state of lock out all the time or people have to ring the doorbell and we have our sally ports and we have all of our computers so i don't want to give any false things for people about that part of it although all of the outside things that you mentioned are critical um that's why i
147asked my question the way i did i was about building expertise and thoughtfulness because i can't imagine you we we would want to just arbitrarily pick up the rules right it has to be based on knowledge and thoughtfulness yes and dan could explain how the ac and ventilation systems work with pulling outside air and that kind of thing and also some of the maintenance that's been worked on ongoing this summer so dan and by the way is ken back on in case he needs to speak because i know his power went out he is okay so go ahead dan okay am i on yep i did okay thank you so um so we're addressing the air uh in the buildings on a couple of ways foremost on the original uh prioritizing uh was to get
148our bathroom exhaust systems back up to 100 operational 24 7 is was the initial requirement for that so uh our mc de grande has done a great job we had we had uh two dozen of our our units were in failure and joe's been working uh diligently we've got the middle school and the two elementary schools back to 100 on bathroom uh maintenance and we're starting tomorrow morning at the high school with that being said a lot of our equipment is relatively low-tech our building management systems that we have are limited to the amount of equipment that they control so if you were to read the guidance documents where they talk about uh turning off economizers and we want to exhaust air bring in uh makeup air they want to eliminate recirculating of the air
149so that's something that we don't have a lot of control of but our equipment for the most part does not recirculate a tremendous amount one of the things i'm looking for is dr burrell forwarded me this morning that the department of education is hosting a webinar uh waiting for the the date to help us evaluate our system see where we can do the most benefit to the schools with the limited resources that might be out there so our number one goal is to make sure that our equipment is working as close to 100 as it should be and then to follow some of the guys that will get through the department of education is is what they know may work uh better for the district as far as getting that air turned over and exhausting
150it so a lot of these questions not just on this area but a lot of the questions i hear coming up tonight it's a work in progress and we're going to have to make adjustments as we go we have a target for equipment that we need to rehabilitate and we're making good headway on that so we can report back again and i think you'll hear it as i report to facilities and they come back to you if we see uh broader spectrum work that we could do that would improve it so right now uh it's we're waiting for more information and dan can you just i want to make sure we emphasize the point because it it it rang rang true rang uh very uh interesting with me when you talk about the you know
151older equipment that we have in our buildings but the lack of sophistication in terms of the recirculation it's actually better with this situation where we pull from the outside more often is that correct let me show you that's correct so we we have a tremendous amount of makeup air in the buildings and uh quite frankly is one of our biggest maintenance concerns as we transition from heating to cooling and cooling to heating systems uh seasons rather because at times you can it can throw some temperature swings into the classrooms but low tech in this case may be our friend uh and then we can look at we we do have an hvac control project coming up for the high school and certainly there'll be a lot more interest in the exhaust aspect of it as
152well as uh the heating and cooling as we move forward and develop that plan further thank you dad all right thank you dan go ahead mike sorry just one one quick question i have a question for the the nurse uh i'm very interested what's in like a typical school year like how often is a student sent home not not pre-covered how often is a student sent home with a fever like one a day one a week would you say no we sent a lot home during flu season um i would say i just give you statistics for the month of december at one particular school we sent home possibly 15 to 20 kids in a month that's a lot yeah again it all depends on the season right yeah i just was uh you know
153curious on it seems like we're well trained for this then i mean as far as as the nurses are they've seen this they know how to react to it very well yes we know all the symptoms to look for for covert we know all the symptoms to look for any other um health concern and we just triage as such i want i wanted to circle back to that issue for a minute i guess i don't i guess i'm concerned about why wouldn't we take temperatures when kids are entering the building i mean i go to my dentist and they take my temperature before i go into their office i think measures like that are what have kept the virus at low levels in connecticut and i feel like we're going to be ha we could
154be having parents who have to get back to work parents who've been out of work for a long time who might say you know what i got to go to work today i'm putting you on the bus and look it happens all the time we know it happens so why wouldn't we so it's it's that's the it's it's a tough one and anna and i talked a lot about this right so so if people want to skirt the system they're going to do that and there's a couple of ways folks can do that so doing a temperature check is going to be helpful but if a parent is smart enough to give the child tylenol or you know ibuprofen before school they're going to present and they're not necessarily going to have a temperature and
155again it goes back to what we talked about earlier right every kid should be considered infected because there's asymptomatic viral shred so i think following the the protocols doing some random checks right so that parents know we are going to look at this and then secondly making sure that we monitor for kids who show any symptoms during the school day is going to be the key but mass screening is probably not going to help you because you are going to have people who come to school and may not have a fever right they may you may screen them in the morning and they may have a temperature in the afternoon so there's just no no way to do that on a mass scale like that i will tell you in our medical practices for example
156now we are doing nasal swabs within our offices so previously we send patients to danbury hospital where you had to go through the drive-through right now we're bringing folks in who are symptomatic with cova-type symptoms and we're actually using a nasal swab not a nasopharyngeal swab and the requirements for those patients is social distancing the staff that's working with that individual wears a mask and we obtain the specimen so i feel fairly confident that you know if we follow the the recommendations in the playbook we will be better off than checking temperatures on kids because there are going to be people who will be giving children tylenol and they'll be getting into the school so mask hand hygiene social distancing those are the key things that will keep us safe through this season so my
157second part of that question is regarding buses because i just don't understand how if you know restaurants and other public buildings are operating at 50 percent capacity even libraries are considering opening by appointment only and we're going through all these measures at the school to buy new desks and put up face shields but then we're saying the buses are going to be full to capacity i don't understand how that's effective my i can tell you from my experience my kids bus is jam-packed jam-packed three in a seat they on days they have to bring their instruments i have to drive because there's no room for the instruments so i feel like we're spending all this money and doing a tremendous amount of very very good work and very necessary work but then putting kids on
158buses that that there's no way they can be you know one foot apart much less three feet or six feet apart debbie i can say i understand your question because i've asked the same question that's these are the these are the edicts that are coming down from the state you must have a 100 percent model even though to your point restaurants are easing in at 50 even though the governor has said we're not moving to phase three right now we're going to stay in phase two the schools have been mandated to ramp up and be ready to go full capacity and not i get that i get that i'm just talking about the buses can't we look at you know a two-tiered or three-tiered system for buses so they're not filling to capacity they're doing
159two runs to to pick kids up so well we i mean those are things we can we can talk about but again we start talking about impact on budget and i could actually turn it over to ken you could talk a little bit about that and all-star um some of those those issues there and that's why the state continues to encourage the districts to encourage parents to bring their kids to school and in our first round of parent survey 59 of the parents said they would avail their themselves of the transportation so we certainly wouldn't be we'd be at 50 60 capacity on the buses so we might avoid some of the concerns you just talked about that which i understand and see ken can you jump in a little bit there yeah i think
160logistically doing multiple tiers for each run you just wouldn't have the time in the day um unless you were able to expand the school day which uh would create problems with the with your teachers and everybody else who has to work during the day and if you were able to do it with the you couldn't even do it with more buses because you know the buses and the drivers just don't exist right now so i think that would be very problematic and i agree completely with your point about uh you know being able to why why are we able to fill up the buses and we have to keep everybody apart everywhere else john i have a question about um sick days and and kids so if a child is is there any sort of
161leniency that you see coming down from the state in terms of the number of days that a child is allowed to sort of be absent or if they legitimately are sick and not just exposed to somebody directly would they have to do the remote learning could you explain a little bit about sick days well um it seems like there's a couple of questions in there rosa so um the first thing there is um we have a policy that is aligned with with uh state requirements regarding attendance and so further direction will be coming from the state on that which we don't have yet so all the districts are waiting for that um in addition to that i think uh it may it may have been actually from the reopening team joy may have asked me
162uh over the weekend uh if a child is home sick can they participate in the online opportunity and the answer is of course on that so i think i've answered a couple of your questions there um was there another protocol question rosa about maybe primary and secondary uh exposure i'm not sure what the other part no i was i mean i i kind of understood that if a student was let's say um directly exposed to someone who is positive like within their family they don't themselves have it but they're exposed to somebody who does they would have to stay home and do the remote learning that's pretty clear if they were themselves sick and again kids are going to get sick for reasons probably more frequently than coped but um would they be sort of
163mandated essentially to engage in remote learning um during that recovery period or is there some sort of leniency in terms of you know the number of days that you know they're essentially allowed to be again a couple of layers there and i appreciate the question so we have in the plan we have um protocols in there that at any point the superintendent has the ability based on uh the fever and so forth to have someone adult or child not be in the building so that we have that authority but the other part of that is if there is a medical note from a doctor then that is an excused absence for the child so that is a normal thing that's different than no medical don't know the parent just has the child not coming to
164school those two very different situations and again all of the attendance rules and regulations apply um but because of covet in the situation we're in um the state will provide different development for us based on what the statutes are and so forth okay um the other question i had regarding specials i know i saw in the plan that specials would primarily be in the child's classroom and the t the specialist teachers themselves would um cohort perhaps how does that work for library so we are going to work directly with the library media specialists because there are as you know you know deb can talk to us we see her on our videos talking about um you know kids uh getting books and whatnot from the library the books uh we will have a protocol for
165how books will be returned to the library we're not going to have kids going into the library i can tell you that just taking books off of shelves um i'm envisioning but i i'm not going to make that decision myself the and the library media specialists have to develop a protocol that will work that will function with the school i've been in school systems before nothing to do with covid where when kids were studying a certain content or a theme the librarians are given that ahead of time and they would pull books and those books would be transported to the classroom and then um you know handled in that way we're not going to have classroom libraries either where kids are just going and picking books we're going to be very judicious about how books
166are given to kids how they're taken back how their how many hours you know there's some 48 hours how there's they're sitting before they get re-shelled getting wiped off but the the nuts and bolts of that have not been um ironed out yet because we we're not making any of the pro making any of the protocols in isolation of the people who are actually the experts in those areas and implementing them but i can tell you that kids will not be going into libraries um procuring their own books off of shelves and you know dropping you know we going back to return them can i say something maureen yes for whisking here i know that uh the screen spoke with even the other um library media specialists and part of it was exactly what maureen
167was saying was that we would have our online catalog and students would be able to send emails um to be able to say the certain books that they want and we would have like two creators like me at the hospital with um you know delivering um things to rooms we would have people uh delivering books to rooms for students and then also like dr ruby said we would be on that when we get them back we'd have protocols and how long you know we would have them sitting and then obviously wiping things down and making sure they were clean before getting back on the shelves so we i know there's been conversations started i can tell you at the public library we quarantine returned books for 72 hours before they get handled and put back
168on the shelves so they go and you know they stay in the return bin they go someplace else for 72 hours and then we reshelve them okay and i would say for many of the things that are in the plan you know that's the plan is like an overarching um kind of uh guidance document that just like other people were talking like the cleaning there would be there will be a protocol for the cleaning there will be logs for the cleaning so um documents that support our plan will be created and will be available and related to specials i thought i um had read something about potentially in order to keep the cohorts uh sort of doing one special for longer periods of time is that i just want to make sure i was reading
169that correctly so they would say have gym for i don't know that whole week and then so i don't know mary rose if you wanna where are you yeah okay the principal's watching she is do you wanna take that sure so we were um again with the the idea being to minimize and keep cohorts together and minimize exposure we were actually thinking of kind of adopting more of a middle school model um with specials in that you know they might students you know if we have 40 weeks in a school year or 177 days divided by five specials you'd have you know you know however many weeks of pe in a row then you'd have spanish then you mean that kind of thing cycling through so that the specialist teachers would not be would only
170be interacting with four classes at a time as opposed to at setter school as opposed to 18. so that would you know again minimize the exposure it's not an ideal instructional model for you know of course especially you know for little kids and for um for our special areas but it would um serve the purpose so your uh students would be getting their entire art curriculum um in in a you know a span of six to eight weeks and then would move on to their music you know i mean that kind of thing so i say okay and that would be similar i could just say that would be similar with the middle school we would use we used to do a b schedules you know a day b day um our thought now is
171going to be where we have um the teacher specific the art school days again minimizing the amount of in and out of speakers and stuff like that again they would be going for the middle school they'd be going into the classroom also right does that help rosa it does thanks joy did you have a question yeah i know each building's gonna look differently but um if each administrator can briefly touch upon the restroom situations so how that's going to look and um you know will they go be going by class together is someone to be stationed is there going to be an adult stationed at each bathroom i i'll start at center i mean that and that's exactly joy what we're thinking about is that we will have um assigned times um you know obviously
172kids need to go when they need to go especially the little ones so um we typically not um that is our typical practice at the beginning of the year anyway because we are you know we're bringing in 170 new students plus our pre-k that kind of thing so we do typically um station staff outside of bathrooms for the first couple of weeks to help kids you know navigate know where to go that kind of thing so we'll do the same thing this year um and we'll just assign we actually started doing this last year because we found it was much more efficient uh teachers um were scheduling their bathroom breaks um so they were taking their whole class down at the same time you know doing some kind of activity in the in the hallway
173while kids moved in and out um and it just it actually ended up i think for some teachers being much less disruptive in general than kids just kind of getting up and going whatever um so that is our plan is to schedule bathroom breaks and and have um again staff monitoring at least initially um what's happening in the bathroom so what but that i'm saying as an initial discussion um you know staff will be meeting and i'm sure there'll be some other ideas and that kind of thing that we'll put in place but that's that's our initial plan for the middle school um what we've started to look at was a signing circus we have so many different bathrooms throughout the school obviously the signing cohorts or or rooms to only certain bathrooms and students
174would know that they you know usually walking down to the gym they can go anywhere you know any of the bathrooms in the way this time obviously it won't be that where they would be assigned so we would have students in certain home rooms in cohort they would be assigned to bathrooms and we would be looking um to be able to have someone monitor we would try the schedule thing but with again with middle school kids if they have to go to the bathroom you know if it's one get out at a time it's a little bit different um but that's something that we've been talking about and figuring out how we can do that along with the mass breaks and things hope that helps yeah and at the high school uh in terms of
175bathrooms um sad that we have some experience with bathrooms being misused in previous years so uh we've had to actually limit the number of bathrooms that have been open during the course of the day that's something we would do is limit to probably three different sets of bathrooms and then you know do our best to monitor those in terms of kids going in the actual um the bathrooms themselves some have hand dryers those are going to be removed um or at least turned off and replaced with um paper towels so kids can dry their hands uh we'll have a couple different uh ways whether it's we'll talk about how you know realistically there are some bathroom orientations where you might be able to keep a door open and still not see anything in the bathroom
176that's not the case for every bathroom but in those cases uh where it's not possible um we'll have to keep um you know paper towels and a garbage outside so kids can actually open the door that way and go back and forth um you know it is it's obviously you know from more restrictive at the elementary level all up to the high school kids the the busiest times are going to be during passing time um you know and so we expect that to be there um we're also going to limit the number of kids that are allowed out of the room um for bathroom breaks as well so there isn't a really great way to monitor 900 and uh what is it 17 or 12 kids going to you know at any given time but
177we're going to do our best and really going to have to limit the number of bathrooms that are open um at any given time and just kind of work through it so um we'll see what happens but that's our plan at this point the next question i have is actually kind of a two-part question um the first part of the it's not really a question but more of like a comment um i see a lot of parents maybe having a little bit of confusion they when they see that the districts have to release three different plans a lot of parents are thinking that those are their choices like they have the option to choose between going to school doing a hybrid plan or going remote so i want to make it clear and please just
178emphasize or correct me if i'm wrong but parents don't have that choice the state is going to be essentially guiding us in terms of you know right now the plan is to go 100 the state will be making a call according to numbers i assume um if we need to go hybrid and then go full remote if possible right and then the second part of that which kind of relates to that is um is d have you gotten any idea as to what those numbers might have to look like for the state to be making that call i mean are they looking for i don't know a certain number of cases to go up in a day or something like that so the first thing that i'm going to start with that last question and
179then i saw dr ruby raised her hand so i want to let her jump in and then i'll come back um last week i mentioned thresholds where you might move from 100 you know what tells us in terms of our infection rate hospitalization rate all the different things that the governor is looking at the commissioner looking at to say connecticut looks really good compared to the rest of the country and based on this data we should be able to open up school 100 so that's one aspect of it but moving from 100 down to hybrid or from hybrid to remote those thresholds have not been defined at least as passed down to the superintendents that i am aware of and we've been asking for that i think i shared last week that i had actually
180emailed the state and said we are still waiting on those thresholds do you have them yet and the email they got back to me right away and say we're continuing to work on them so dr ruby please jump in and then cornelius if you dr ferreira as well you're on mute maureen i see dr sullivan raising his hand too because i think i think the transition um the way i understood it everybody the the uh we got an email a letter from the um commissioner today's wednesday yesterday saying that um hey guys it was very professional but the message was hey guys if you think you're going to do anything other than 100 you are in violation of state law you are doing 100 unless you hear otherwise from us stay tuned so we're 100
181the transition to hybrid or remote really involves the director of health and the the local conditions because we could have no spike of any kind in brookfield and we're at a hundred percent old say brook could have 25 people with covid and and teachers and and they have to shut down so the decision um they like john said they haven't really given us any definitive parameters but this decision the data that are going to be used are going to be um kind of overseen by the um the department of health and our medical advisor based on our incidents and i'd like to say before i turn it over to dr sullivan on this one is it's important and we mention it in the document that dr sullivan actually has the authority if data says we
182need to shut down to override the superintendent so checks and balances and all of this now dr sullivan could you share a little bit about rose's question sure um i hope i'm not speaking out of school but uh as as speak a new subcommittee is being formed in the rules for the rules committee uh and it's composed of uh public health people from yale it's going to be composed of representative dcmc um the children's medical center a couple of uh local health directors um the assistant commissioner of education our commissioner one of our commissioners uh in public health a couple of environmental health people that are going to be looking at this very very difficult situation of transition from one the other we do know that we would go to complete home learning um uh
183virtual learning if in point of fact we could reach that ten percent moving average that other states are currently seeing and for which they have placed the four uh travel in connecticut uh so going to uh the entire i could say going to full for virtual learning would depend upon that 10 10 percent weekly moving average with regard to positive press here in brookfield we're doing extremely well it appears that we had a very high of positives these i should say and of deaths early on uh but that has moderated considerably we've only had one case since the first of this month so um uh as dr ruby said it's going to depend upon the numbers that we see as to which phase of learning one is going to have to and that remains to
184be seen but uh you know preparation prevents intimidation and therefore uh putting out three different uh potential plans uh is is a really good idea at this point in time but everything looks good for brookfield at this point and we may get more information from that newly formed subcommittee on education for the rules committee of the state so uh stay tuned so at a high level at a high level decision on moving from everyone in school to 50 to uh fully remote a local decision or a state decision that's that's going to be a local decision okay good with advice that's all i wanted i wanted to make sure it wasn't some broad state average that we would be making decisions here in brookfield no we're just going to be getting recommended numbers from this
185new subcommittee with regard to at what point you transition from one to the other good thank you so can i just clarify is is the sort of the way to proceed is that assuming we're going back at the 100 level unless we hear something or will there be a definitive date that there's an announcement that on september 8th this is what we're doing so i think that's a great question so um it's a couple of things because it's it's not just the health data factor that goes into this um and you'll see where i'm gonna go in just a second so number one the governor um has stated i believe that by the second week in august he will let us know as a state where we are going again there could be local conditions
186um i think they'll let us know earlier than that and i'll tell you why last week all of the districts had to submit on the 17th last friday a survey to the state department of education with all of the costs we saw the budget today in our powerpoint with all of the problems for reopening at 100 and so we are all i mean i know relatively original numbers and what our other uh districts are coming up with for their costs to reopen crs is what i propose tonight is in the high 700 thousands if we add the cameras and everything else we get over a million dollars um other districts are in that range or even higher and so that along with can you meet the mitigation strategies of distancing in space and do you
187have the desks so there's a lot of factors that we are funneling up through the state so it's not just the health data because if we don't have death complaints and we don't have a budget or we get into a local discussion that takes weeks to make a decision to order what we need to order or we don't get all of things then how do we open because we can't maintain the social distancing along with them along with the hand all the other things so there's a lot that's going to go into that and then there would be the reality where we have to let the state know we are just not in a position uh to open even though our health data might be fantastic so that's that's the the real conundrum that we're
188dealing with so i wanted to just explain bigger context for you there right thank you did you have something dr sullivan to add to that no uh okay thank you i just wanted to say that which phase one is going to be in uh is going to be a local decision and it's going to be based on science we do know as uh that all probability if we do go back to that seven day moving average of ten percent positivity um that will change things that will change things considerably and it will definitely imply that they'll be learning but the middle phase there the hybrid uh we don't have any concrete uh uh numbers either of uh deposits rates or of uh hospitalizations or deaths to indicate when that hybrid would would should kick in
189but it will be a local decision okay that clarifies things for me um i do have one more question since we spoke so much about student safety i just wanted to touch on the teacher aspect of things so since students are going to be spending so much time as much time as possible in their classrooms and even you know for lunch bringing in monitors things like that are there places where teachers can go to get prep done to eat where they can be distanced as well or how is that part has that been part of the conversation or how is that being handled so i i will i mean i can just speak for for centers so i think and all this i think we've been we have been looking at that um so for
190instance at center school um our stat our gym excuse me the cafeteria is going to become the staff room um so that there's enough space to be socially distant so i think we're all looking at other you know spaces that we have that we can repurpose for that um again that's at center and then we'll also um our staff room with you know will will be used as our conference room um but we could still two or three teachers could be in there at the same time we just can't have it you know it's just not big enough to have the entire staff in there or you know even a small portion of the staff or lunches that kind of thing so our library will be available as well um you know if we wanted
191to do some social distancing in there as well so there will be spaces and that has been taken into consideration for staff similar at the middle school um you know assigning teachers if they want to turn their prep you know go to one of those designated areas again whether it's the library the one of our computer labs um that won't be utilized could be a specialist teacher's classroom but what we're thinking of is assigning you know specific rooms so it's not like the teachers are going to go i'm going to go to this room this week or today in another room another day we would have it assigned so that again the whole idea is keeping um you know smaller groups of people in those rooms or together at a time so yeah at the
192high school it's very similar um you know obviously we are going to be i plan to use our cafeteria so that won't really be an open usable space um we'll be looking at places like the library knowing that those arrangements currently have tables and and group work and things like that won't be possible um we'll always have the staff rooms that have always been in existence we're just looking to add the additional spaces places like the library looking what we can do in the mail room a couple side classrooms you know we're not gonna we'll maximize space certainly um you know some of these rooms that we're in like to mary rose's point you know you might get three people in there right socially distant six feet away from each other where they can um
193you know the bigger the and open more open the space uh the better um and so well that's our plan at this point it's uh but it really has been you know obviously students have been first and we are also thinking about staff i talked to our staff last friday and talked about you know we're thinking about different ways to help them as well um you know to make sure that they have the appropriate um space and time to get that stuff done but that's we're doing the high school thanks um any other questions go ahead debbie sorry um i just wanted to maybe ask ken with regard to hillyard about sanitizing particularly the bathrooms i saw i think it said the bathrooms would be cleaned twice a day is that correct they're going to
194be cleaned every day and then disinfected in addition to that disinfectant so you know my i guess my question is when we say twice a day is that two times within the school day or does that mean uh you know once at noon and once when kids after kids go home at the end of the day you know i guess i want a little more clarity on cleaning and sanitizing um because twice a day doesn't seem to really be adequate to me maybe dan can speak to that what the schedule will be sure so um our normal cleaning routine uh prior to this event has been one thing a day uh that includes disinfecting and so as uh we've worked with ken and i have worked together with our hilliard people looking at our our
195cleaning program to see how to address this and so it's a recommendation uh from the state that we clean bathrooms twice a day so we're looking to have a full cleaning disinfect that will likely happen uh on the evening shift because the bathrooms won't be being used at that time and then during the day the supplemental cleaning uh will be touch points fixtures faucets handles and and touch points uh will be done during the day as as the schedule progresses so we we do understand and looking at that that if if we have a custodian start in the morning that is possible that a bathroom was cleaned uh on the night shift and it's getting cleaned really before there's much use however when it comes to distributing the cleaning load and making sure everything is
196getting done we also have touch points throughout the building so we're going to stagger that and we're going to try to be as effective with our time management and getting in there as possible but the twice a day debbie specifically uh the numbers the additional custodial staff are looking for is is really based on the twice a day cleaning with those descriptions every bit of our cleaning program has a time stamp addressed to it so we're looking to to make sure that we've got sufficient people and we think a request for six additional custodians addresses touch points second round of bathroom cleanings and cleaning hard surfaces of desks and chairs and classrooms which will be done with much more frequency than it's as previous previously been done okay uh i just have a question about
197uh some special education students so if we think about more of uh our disabled special education students um who the whole mask uh wearing might be really problematic like what are our thoughts about that and then also students who have a lot of like one-to-one support like whether it be ot or pt or an aba therapist um what are we thinking in terms of those situations good evening jen um we are in the process right now of working um with the state department we had a meeting today and those were um a variety of questions that came up as far as students who cannot wear a mask um or can tolerate a mask and for the teachers as far as ppe and what would be worn if the students did not have a mask and
198then looking at the lre as far as the inclusion piece for these students and how we would cohort them so we are in the process right now of obviously looking at ieps looking at possibly cohorting um additional ppe for teachers who work with students who cannot wear masks and then we are also waiting for some guidance from the state department as far as um the idea and following the regulations to support inclusion and students who do have that one-on-one adult with them and the part of the social distancing that some of the students don't understand so we are working with the state department on that um as as we speak and making sure that we follow you know idea regs and making sure that we support students in a cohort and follow their ieps does
199that answer your question jen thank you jaina anyone else with questions i have a question about um if we go to the hybrid schedule of you know two days in school and then everybody doing remote learning and then two days home has there been discussion about cohorting by family so that you know all the kids from a family are going into school or just for remote learning on the same days yes so to be very brief because detail has to go into it the principles are actually have looked um in powerschool and really counted you know a through l a a k really looking at where our 50 devised and and how we would break uh the students up by cohort and the thought is that we would go by family and of course uh
200blended families that have different last names but our family together and we'd have to figure out to figure that out as well and make accommodations so i saw mary rose really nodding her head like mine as well so was there anything mary rose you wanted to share a little bit about on some of the details no just just that we have really that that's been a big consideration for us in terms of how to cohort what makes the most sense um you know through busing through family so we you know mark has been working i know with um with the power school team to just kind of look and see what that would look like um so that would be k-12 um and that poses other challenges but that really needs to happen before we
201can do some of the other schedules and classes and all that kind of stuff so big big project thank you okay anyone else [Music] okay so dr brill um you had said that there was going to be um q a sessions next week um do you know when families might expect some more details on that will be broken out by school yes so um we're we are looking to confirm it and i've got some communications this evening you know at the beginning of the meeting that principles are available and uh district team is available so we're going to connect uh tomorrow afternoon and talk about what that could look like and then a communication would be drafted and sent from each principal um talking about what the meeting would look like and the session would
202look like starting next week we might not get them all in next week but have a an opportunity for parents to meet like this and have a q a uh probably send out a form where parents could uh upon the invitation submit questions they have so we could be as prepared as we can to really give direct uh answers to them and again this falls into the larger picture and dr ruby talked about it earlier is we need to make sure that our parents are as well informed as quickly as possible because we need to get the second parent survey out to know who intends to uh attend in person and who might make choices to stay home with 100 model so we're trying to once once we get through a big meeting and a
203big night like this and we submit the the plan the work doesn't stop we continue to get ready and and so parents could be expecting a communication uh in the next few days it's great thank you all right without any other questions um we have some motions uh for tonight now that we've taken care of our big action item bob did you sorry i thought i saw your hand go up i'm having trouble with my mute button i'm sorry um are there any questions that came in through uh email from parents i i yeah so there have been i've i've asked um actually a lot of them that was my question is the questions you asked sounded like they might think a lot of them yeah a lot of them did some of them um
204were i can let me actually let me just um let's see um so one from pascal t there's no last name there but it says uh if classrooms fit 18 to 20 deaths why are kids on a b days and only in school two days a week a typical classroom wouldn't have more more kids than that right um i think we pretty much i think we addressed that question about the hybrid model from kylie dark angelo uh if we have to go to a hybrid model and our kids will be in daycare or in the care of other adults during their remote learning days and not able to access the live zoom classes how will they access the work for the day um so that's actually a good question um you know if they're choosing
205remote learning that synchronous component is a critical component of it right i mean they're not they're not going to get the list of assignments like they did in the spring um will that be different at the high school level or middle school level well i think i think the question that you know i think that she's going for is so if we're in the hybrid model and um you know my my children are at a daycare facility because they don't they're they're only going to school monday and tuesday but wednesday thursday and friday they're at daycare their ability to engage from a daycare facility or some other place the technology could be challenging i think is what kylie was getting to um in her question um you know certainly things we have to work through
206and and figure out but i think that was kind of that's my guess is what she was thinking of rosa and at the high school level um you know we're we're a little bit luckier and that students are a little more obviously more mature and able to really keep on schedules and self-regulate themselves so you know but i'm sure it'll be a point of discussion moving forward to find out what's what's the best for everybody but it's uh i agree it's a good question that actually leads me to another question maybe it was brought up before but if somebody is planning on attending school every day and hasn't necessarily chosen the parallel learning model but you know my kid wakes up with a sore throat and i keep them home can they jump on remote
207learning just for that day and and not fall behind or is it remote learning or 100 in person learning mark you were looking like you wanted to answer do you want to explain that feel free yeah certainly you know so you're absolutely right deb you know if if someone was kept home uh the idea is that these things are going to be um not only broadcast but we also talked about being recorded um because in in terms of to keep kids on pace moving forward we already have a significant amount of time that was lost last year with our response and and we did a great an amazing job to put a band-aid on it but we know we have so much more work to keep moving forward i think reporting lessons or allowing kids
208to drop in and be a part of that if they're home with something else you know it's unrelated to any flu or covet or any number of different things that could be going on with them they had a migraine that day that had nothing related to if they wanted to be able to you know we're gonna our plan is to make that available so the kids could you know have the link to the class be able to go in securely and watch what's going on from home great thanks um beth wetzel asked a question about the libraries if libraries to be still offered as a special and if so uh is there a plan in place for cleaning books and materials when they're returned um so i feel like that was one of the questions
209that i had addressed um monique matthews asked if siblings will be on the same schedule if we were go to if we were to go to the hybrid model so that was asked um let's see um there's a question specifically about um the school reopening survey and how many had completed that survey what percentage of parents had actually completed that uh about 1700 uh responses 2 700 kids so if you look at your parents and you figure out your math there it was a very good response and it was about as maureen indicated earlier it was about an 82 81 at the time said they would plan to send your children back 19 said they would not uh at this point send them to school and of the respondents said they would avail themselves of
210transportation and at what was interesting is that our data were very similar to data from um neighboring school districts and uh actually in uh nationally the the percentages that we were finding were pretty much um you know similar to other schools and other districts and even other states so um i i thought that was pretty interesting it wasn't yeah it it that school districts that are typical to ours it wasn't like you know 60 and 20 and 30 it was pretty much a an 80 20 plus or minus if you first went percentage point split um everywhere you like data and we didn't uh there was no way to break out how many households individual households had actually responded to the survey right because parents answered the survey um leon eric on that one he
211might be able to tell us that uh if we'd be able to find i don't even know it now but we could break that up the question we did we did not break that that up that way um yeah uh not at all at all what we did was we broke it up by uh by school so we asked parents to submit one for every student and specify this the building that that student goes to okay or actually i'm sorry the student that the the building that the student will be attending um in the upcoming school year that's that's what we asked them to put okay so i would imagine to find that out you would be able to maybe calculate the percentage of emails that you had sent these surveys out to had actually
212responded right well it was anonymous so yeah but but what was into what i wanted to add for the data nerds was that the data for across the schools was also pretty um evenly just you know dispersed so the the percentages but we when we do the the next survey is not going to be an anonymous we need to know like who you are who your child is etc um that was really to give us to not make people uncomfortable and you know feel like they were com even though we it wasn't a commitment still when you fill out a survey if your name is on it you feel like it's you're going to be held to that so we wanted to get as many people to participate without feeling any pressure to um like
213it was a commitment so that we could get a dipstick right but to that point rose the next survey uh like maureen said we're going to have to know names of children parents name and there's going to have to be a commitment if someone commits to keeping their child home you know we're working with the principals is that going to be for a marking period a semester because we're developing everything based on those numbers and so we really have to operate in uh good faith and commitment to these uh these figures thanks so those uh those questions were asked by michelle vicaro i'm just going to keep going through here jennifer pink asked will k-12 students be one-to-one with a device if not how will we be disinfecting technology are families expected to purchase technology
214when will the state be providing the criteria for when and if we have to switch to a teaching model that last question i know we addressed um and yes students k through 12 will be one to one with the device correct yes um i think there's a little bit of a caveat there and i'd like eric to just answer that but between byod uh program uh eight through and the devices we just uh set for order last week we're virtually um one to one but i'll functionally one to one but i'll let eric talk to that yeah you you uh you hit the nail on the head there uh dr burrow with uh with the byod component of this the uh grades eight through twelve one to one program uh will continue as planned as
215structured um as they have always been um we are uh with with the um support of the board of finance with their um uh um their their vote to allow us to buy the 300 chromebooks um brings us very close um to one to one we also do have to account for replacement as we do every year a portion of the chromebooks do go to not only go to the one-to-one program but do also directly replace uh chromebooks that i mentioned at the meetings um frankly are well beyond their usable life um both in terms of google um not supporting them anymore and in terms of the um duct tape that's falling off of them um so uh you know so we do have to account for some direct replacement um i i did give
216this number to the board of finance so i'll give it here again um it does put us at close to 2200 chromebooks in the district um not quite our our full one-to-one um however we we do um support and will continue to support uh the byod um i know a good number of families that have responded um that either bought a device during the spring semester uh or um have actually offered to return the chromebook to us because they went out and bought one um i don't have that number to quantify right now we're we are quantifying those numbers and working through that um i feel like that's an important um piece of data to to have going into this uh but between uh one to one byod and our available devices um you know
217i believe we can get there we need to look at a model that um either limits or eliminates device sharing um for the exact reason um of sanitizing and cleaning it it's one of the reasons why mr renda mentioned earlier that um one of the computer labs will no longer function as a computer lab at least for next year um because we a it's tough to social distance in a in a computer lab with stations so close to each other and then b we'd have to account for um sanitizing and cleaning between classes um so with that we're looking for the more mobile approach um with chromebooks um you know available to students in in every classroom um you know should we enter a model where you know we're doing more in google classroom or
218you know we're we're doing more assignments in a hybrid model um you know we understand that these devices are going to be used more and more by students every day um so we know so we also need to account for having devices on hand for an immediate repair and replacement um you know we we do not have the ability to tell a student oh this chromebook is broken we'll return it to you in three to five days fixed um it has to be a direct replacement um and my team is working tirelessly on on a plan for that as well as making sure that we have um as many chromebooks as we um can um ready to go for the first day of school and also um fingers crossed hopes and prayers that we see
219that fedex truck really really soon thank you tara artebani wrote about a home wellness screenings her question was i can rely on myself to scan my child every day but it's very troubling to have to rely on every other parent every single day so can the schools take temperature every day i believe that question was answered by our two physicians that were on the call tonight um tom tottolo wrote did i hear that there was no social distancing on the buses doesn't that defeat the purpose of social distancing and compromise the safety of our children a question that debbie had also asked eileen to tolo wrote how will the high school students handle volunteer hours so that one just came in um yep that's that's a great question um you know right now with uh
220current with the class graduating class of 2021 they've been required to um acquire 50 hours of community service in term and would be awarded credit for it um that will all be prorated so um you know and to some degree the challenge will be i mean i'd like to say that it was over the course of the first two years you had to get 25 if you're a graduating senior 25 for the first two years then another you know um so many but realistically some kids maybe may have planned on waiting and i have to plan on that until their senior year to earn all their hours and to give them the opportunity so that's something i'll be going back probably to cape and the board of ed um you know to talk about changes
221in some of our program of studies um and dr ruby alluded to earlier that's not the only thing i might be going back to but um that's certainly one thing that we will be uh be absolutely flexible on and figure out you know what that needs to be because kids can't volunteer in the community or do things like that like they had in the past okay um she also asked what about children that have covid19 but don't have any symptoms um without doctors sullivan and ferrara on the phone um not sure we can answer this one directly right now and i will be getting back to everyone who has written into the board of ed individually but i don't think we can speak to that question dr ruby what about um i don't know if
222anna wants to chime in on that one yeah i think we'll refer that question to the physicians okay just didn't want to leave you out anna no thank you okay jamie clavin's uh asked we don't live in a brookfield bubble how can we just rely upon brookfield numbers when we're talking about our kids that's also another question that we might want to refer out unless anna please feel free to speak up whenever you um whenever you'd like i will again refer to the physician she also asked how can our kids transfer outside of the building um school shootings are still a real concern um how is this an option and that's why i wanted to bring that up with those outside again it's very easy for people to make statements about leave outdoors open and
223get the air flowing and walk outside um it's weather dependent and school security dependent so i wanted to make sure we didn't forget about that in the era of covet and so i think we answered that to jamie's point oh dr ruby do you have something it sounded like that question also might be um referencing mark what you were talking about with um passing so yeah in particular i think you know the question is about passing so i'm not i want to be clear i'm not looking to open every door in the building and kids walking multiple spots uh what i talked about in particular was uh for one example was the school counseling in the front of the building um you know opening those doors possibly have kids transitioning there through the front doors
224if that's going to happen whether it be our school resource officer parked outside and being able to monitor that to make sure that we're um if that's even a doable thing so that's an option it's not necessarily what we're going to do but we have to keep every and all option open while keeping in mind school security and what that what that entails okay um she also made a comment about the surveys um that so many had been filled out multiple responses per child perhaps um or that the husband and wife had both filled out a survey for their kids so there may be some uh duplicate data that we have and that was her comment uh jessica juska wrote do parents have the option to enroll their children in remote learning only if we
225are going back at 100 percent or do we also have that option if we are going back in the hybrid model well i think the state the state has made it very clear to us that if a parent chooses to keep their child home when we're in the 100 with a 100 model that we would provide as best we can the opportunity to participate um and i imagine they would if they made that commitment for a semester for example through january 15th that they were going to be a at-home learner remote learner then if at some point the 100 model adjusted to hybrid that remote learning child would remain in that remote learning status thank you trina caprone asked four questions uh the first will the desk shields be up all day at each student's
226desk or only when they're eating i'll let um either dean or mary rose jump in but i think i would start by saying not necessarily all day because of the mask and social distancing it would be for mass breaks and for eating but mary rose do you want to chime in i i think we're going to see what it looks like logistically for the kids because we need to see what the shield for them to put them up at least at the elementary at um at the k-1 level i'm not sure they'll be able to logistically put them on and off um and we were also thinking that it would provide a good kind of reminder of where their space is so i think we need to play that by ear a little bit a
227little bit a little bit different with the middle school um you know the idea of being able to move it up and down i don't think it's as big of a deal for the middle school students but yes definitely for the lunchroom time for the lunch time um and mass breaks but other than that it probably they would probably be down okay uh the next question has a few parts so if the desk shields are up all day is it necessary for students to wear their face masks when surrounded by the shield in space three to six feet apart again the desks shields may or may not be up um at learning portions of the day a concern is that it would be difficult for young children to wear masks the entire school day so
228could the shields be utilized for greater portions of the day the shield the shield isn't a substitute for the mask um it's very clear in the in the guidelines and we've been over this with um the the doctor oh anna you want to take that exactly what um maureen had said the shields are not a substitute the mask and the face covering will prevent those droplets by spreading so the the shield is basically there as an extra protection okay and i just want to say we're also you know where we will schedule in mask breaks we've i think we've been told they can be about five minutes without the masks at a time they'll be having lunch you know i mean and we're also and to john's you know mentioned before of outdoor space you
229know we're not going to just send the kids out you know on the front lawn um but we'll be making sure we have the two courtyards at center school um you know during the school day the gates are closed so the entire back portion of the of the property is um is is fenced off so we'll be using that space and really trying to be thoughtful and when we create our schedule to make sure that everyone has access to um to being outdoors as much as possible um as well okay i just wanna um just because i'm still getting a lot of emails so i'm just going to um let everyone who may be listening in the public know that i i will accept emails until 1005 which that is in literally one more minute
230um otherwise because it's turning into a dialogue and um that's not really the purpose of this meeting so i'll just read the the remaining emails that i have there's just a couple of them um i'm still on trina capone's um email so if a student has the common cold not covet it would be difficult for students to breathe through their mass and also unsanitary what would be advised for this scenario um i believe if any student has symptoms regardless of a positive test or not they should be at home correct correct okay uh if we were to move to a hybrid model will it be taken into consideration for siblings to be on the same remote learning schedule we address that is the district looking into any grants or other ways to provide each student
231k through eight a chromebook and we had addressed that as well okay um kent gemmell wrote given that the high school deaths are shared among students will they be clean and disinfected between classes yeah that's um you know we've talked about that they will not be able to be clean and disinfected between classes with the number of kids that we have uh and the staff it'd be it'd be impossible to clean every desk between classes okay um and a rodriguez wrote about synchronicity in the hybrid or 100 remote model how will more structure or synchronicity synchronicity be maintained with younger children and working parents um flexibility was very helpful during the time during this time for those with elementary students and also trying to work from home will this be considered when trying to have
232a better schedule if need be are you leaning in maureen i didn't want to want to go marry rose i don't know what i was trying to get off of mute it's very challenging at this time of night to unmute yourself um so currently we are looking at a synchronous model that's that's where we're at at the present time um because we had while there unfortunately we're never going to have a model that works perfectly for everybody we had so many people that really needed to have a schedule needed to have synchronicity and these things will be recorded that's not that's not going to be the best option um from our point of view in terms of educating the students because then there's no give and take with the teacher we really want to provide
233um an opportunity for there to be give and take for it to be live for it to be synchronous for kids who are at home if if we're in the hybrid model or in the 100 for children who are not there for family reasons to be able to participate with their um grade level peers in the classrooms um right now that's that's where we are um i don't know if you've had anything to add john or any of the other administrators that are here that was very clear maureen thank you thank you um jamie clavin's had another question about the high school and shields um the desks are three feet apart are there going to be shields there there will not be so the deaths are you know from mouth to mouth four feet apart
234is what they are so as and students will be asked to wear masks obviously so there there will not be dust shields at the high school just for clarity this is from both dr sullivan and dr uh ferreira that it's the it's the social distancing in the masks that are the mitigation factors the shield is is there and it really is a function of mass breaks and launch and um that 15 minute less than 15 minute exposure time for the droplets that anna was starting to talk about so that's why the shields also to mary rose's point it could be used as a you can have a little fun office space for the children the younger ones it defines their space um and we can actually embrace the situation rather than looking at it as
235a major chore although it is and so um but but the shield is is not um it doesn't stop the droplets in terms of long-term exposure and things like that anna does that cover it or is there anything else you might want to add on that no that pretty much covers it okay thank you okay and the last question is uh again from jessica juska are parents allowed to enroll their children in remote learning if we begin the year in a hybrid model and i believe the answer to that is of course yes correct believe it is yes first time getting that question not two times tonight but that would apply to the logic okay um so for everyone else listening obviously if you still have questions you're more than welcome to continue to email
236me but um public comments we're going to conclude that portion of tonight and hopefully after such a lengthy discussion future q a's will be more focused and um shorter for you hopefully and your team john um so we do have some motions to take care of tonight i will go ahead and move that the board of education grant the superintendent authority to take any lawful action necessary to ensure the continuation of public education provide for the health and safety of students and employees or to respond to direction from the state of connecticut and or the local health officials second thanks bob any discussion on this okay all in favor all right all right i also knew that the board of education can grant the superintendent authority to limit access to public school grounds and school
237buildings during school closures or elevated levels of transmission in the area thanks bob i think you got it again all right let's keep working on that okay all in favor aye aye thank you and i also moved that the board of education has approved restricting access to the school buildings during the school day by non-essential visitors and minimal use of school buildings outside of school hours okay any discussion on this okay all in favor okay is there any other uh topics that we need to cover tonight rosa um can we go back to the first item in the discussion uh is there someone who would be willing to make a motion to approve the actual reopening plan for submission to the state sure i will move to i move that board of education approve the
238plan for school reopening as presented by dr john burrell and team welcome okay any discussion on that okay all in favor all right okay thank you thank you any other items for tonight you can't do that special meeting okay all right well uh without any other announcements then um without objection the meeting is adjourned thank you everybody for hanging in thanks everyone thanks everyone thank you