Board of Education Meeting 6/3/2020 @ 7pm

001we are live all right thank you Eric good evening everyone and today is Wednesday June 3rd 2020 and I call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order so let's stand where we are for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I know Debbie Debbie always supplies us with the flag which is helpful so we have all of our board members in attendance tonight and today even though we are not together in person and it's a wonderful time of year because we get to recognize our teachers and staff that deserves special recognition so I am pleased to announce our teachers of the year are as follows

002at center school we have Alisa Larson at huckleberry hill school Wesley Marchetta at whisk in your middle school Kim Marshall and at Brookfield High School Heather beyond Cherie sounds like a good applause and Rosa I'd like to add a congratulations to all four of our building recognized winners of the Teacher of the Year for their schools thank them for everything they do and how they represent the teaching profession and the Brookfield teachers and how they service serves the the students and families of Brookfield were just so proud of them and I'd like to announce that the district Teacher of the Year from huckleberry is Wesley March Anna so congratulations and Wesley Wesley started with us he did some back and forth between huckleberry and center and was then leaner and very very new to Brookfield

003and doing a great job at huckleberry and obviously his peers are extremely proud of him yes I'd like to turn it over to you maybe say a couple of words absolutely um I'm gonna go off of mark bilenda's reaction my journey in Brookfield didn't just start with center school when I was doing my master's program at the University of Bridgeport I did an internship at Brookfield High School and that's where this whole sort of community came in to support me and that journey sort of follows a through line to this very point so it's there's quite a narrative that's taken me to this point and it's a narrative developed through an amazing community so thank you very much I'm very honored to be your Teacher of the Year congratulations again congratulations to our three other

004teachers awesome just wonderful thank you so much for all you do know where we are we're to have such great teachers oh my god yes so I would like to reiterate yes thank you for so much for everything you guys do now more than ever um you guys are really going above and beyond for our district and our students and we really appreciate that we also have some staff members that we would like to recognize so the 20/20 staff members of the year are as follows at center Elementary School I'll be Silva at huckleberry hill school Maggie Heaton at whisk in your middle school Mandy usko at Brookfield High School Carolyn D'Arcangelo and at the town school offices Eric Conklin so thank you so much I want to send a virtual clap there as well

005but thank you yeah sorry did you yeah you say it's important for the community to know and and remind the board members that our staff member of the year started four or five years ago and you know while while we have 230 teachers and we're only recognizing for this evening the remainder of our staff which takes us to almost a balance of 400 employees do a great job whether it's back office work or cleaning or supporting students in a tutorial role or managing and administrating all of the things that go on in the district or directors who are leaders for us it's it's amazing the work that goes on it's important for the community to understand that I always say it's Tim the Toolman Taylor from the old home improvement show used to say every

006job has two things in common it has to be done and it has to be done well and our five five people recognized here are just fantastic examples of that and again thank you all for for everything good stuff words aren't enough obviously they're done absolutely and I wish I could shake all of your hands in person but until then I can just say thank you so much for for everything that you're doing the board would also like to recognize the top ten graduating seniors from Brookfield High School and I would like to let principal mark Belinda who's been with these remarkable students for the past four years introduce them and then hopefully we get to pick their brains a little bit about their experience in Brookfield and at the high school and what their

007future plans are so principal Blanton oh it's all yours thank you Rose I appreciate it this is usually a night of it is a nice night of celebration as I've said in a couple different communications it's just a different version of celebrations of the the accomplishment of not just our staff and our our teachers but of our our top 10 students as well this is usually when the top ten dinner is and then we roll right into the this board meeting which is I know the board members are smiling kind of I wouldn't say licking their chops necessarily but I know some people have their questions ready to ask and you know I have another chance to really prep the top ten some students aren't weren't able to make it tonight so we do have

008a few students here so what I'll do is I'll just go through and introduce each of the students one by one so I'll call it their name I'll let them say where they're going to go and then I think we talked about the possibility of somebody board member maybe asking a question because I'm sure they want to hear a little bit you know about you and just your experiences so I'll start with the first one I see which just happens to be orphanage Mary so our faun you can probably unmute yourself and you can it's everybody little about yourself and what your plans are and then you'll get ready for a question hello everyone my name is orphanage Mary and I'm gonna be attending Northeastern this fall with the major in finance very nice congratulations

009thank you what would you say was your favorite class at Brookfield High School I probably say one of my business classes probably marketing - was my favorite class but I definitely liked all of the classes because all the teachers supported me and every way they could that's good to hear thank you and the other board members want to ask a question go ahead Bob oh you have to unmute your unmute yourself now officialy double muted I do that at work because I always blurt things out so earth on Boston is a great place for college you're gonna love it do you have any expectations on how different it's going to be from Brookfield so northeastern it's based in downtown Boston so more of an urban environment so I'm looking forward to the city life but

010I'll definitely miss Brookfield well you'll have to look up my son who's a PhD student at Northeastern right now I don't how well it's like some great Brookfield connections at Northeastern so and it's just good right just want the only thing I'll tell you is look both ways before you cross the street the current drivers there are crazy thank you anyone else all right well thank you and good luck thank you yeah all right well done Earth bond see so that night got warmed up so now you know he took that he took the first time and now let's see who do I want to introduce next oh let's go to uh let's see if she's still here I liked things up a little bit I thought I saw her name Sophia for lenses so

011Sophia I'm gonna turn it over to you if you want to unmute your microphone then you can share a little bit about where you're going and what your next steps are and get ready for some questions um so hi I'm Sophia and I'm going to Fordham University in the fall hopefully if we're able to go in person and I'll be majoring in psychology very nice I actually have a question so was a psychology major myself so what decided what sort of drove me to that decision psychology what interests you um well I loved my psych class at Brookfield high school I really miss Fallon is a great teacher and I had a wonderful experience in that class and then I just I don't know maybe my mind could change when I get there but I

012really loved the class and I'm really excited about taking more classes at Fordham that's great stay open anyone else feel free to unmute yourself I have like two screens to two screens of people to monitor then raise their hand yeah go ahead Jen so congratulations I was wondering if you could give some advice to maybe a freshman entering Brookfield high school next year what advice might you give them the school seems big but it's not you will find your way around the class around the school and then it will be fine and I know that's probably the cheesiest thing I could ever say but it really I remember when I came into senior year I was so freaked out and felt like I had no idea what I was doing but you will eventually find

013your way and you might end up somewhere where you never thought that you'd be and you'll realize it's the perfect place for you so stressful as it is in the first three years you really will find your way that's great advice thank you thank you all right anyone else move the question okay thank you and good luck well thank you thank you so much nice job Sofia well done so up next I'm going to introduce Cameron and Courtney Spiro it's it's an actual optical illusion they're really not know they are in the same room at least they wear last time I saw them but they are - they are two different young women we're very proud of both of them and how lucky we are all nice pose that's good how lucky we are that

014they're they're both ended up being in the top ten so ladies I'll turn it over to you you can decide who gets to go first I'm sure that's something I believe when on drop off odd days I forget who sits in front on odd days and then the other one when you switch it on even days I forget how that works but remember asking out so you guys can flip a coin and see who gets to go next mute button okay I'll go third hi Cameron I'm going to math can you hear me there's a big wide can you guys hear me yes okay hi I'm Cameron I'm sitting back through college in the fall with a double major and hi I'm Courtney I'm also attending back there cause this fall ah a double major

015and economics in psychology with the free wall track but that is subject to change right now but I think that's what and we both plan on participating in the basket repertory of dance theater as well oh very good please so uh my question to you guys and you guys can choose who answers it um looking back at your time in Brookfield it doesn't have to just be high school but what would you say was sort of most memorable experience for you well we all definitely the most memorable experience in this obviously has memories within it be a part of this peer counseling group all four years of high school I found a lot of great people through the organization I am hugely fond of my advisors I think they really influenced my whole career frenchie

016organization and just having the opportunity to help out the community in a variety and different ways was something I created a lot of them great memories that's great thank you yeah go ahead Debbie are sorry yep Cameron and Cory I'm a parent of twins so I'm very curious about your thoughts like that can you hear me okay I'm very curious about about when and going to college together and you know sort of going becoming your own person but having your sibling there with you do you plan to room together and I heard you're gonna be in the repertory dance company together but what are your thoughts about that so I bastard it actually got completely ran in my system so you don't attention to remain and their wife clean up and put it together so

017we plan on happening our different social lives and slides and have Danice be sort of that space where we need each other and grow her own follows absolutely and Vince o'clock also I human being in parts of society awesome anyone else hey well thank you that was I felt like that last answer was just like you know scripted you you wrote it so perfectly part of society I'm just it's so proud of you of all the students here we do have one more student here who is in attendance that we certainly want to recognize and that is mom see who the board know is pretty well by now after the course of this year so my on see I'll turn it over to you and you can share a little bit about yourself cuz you

018know I think they need to know more hi thank you so much I'll be attending Johns Hopkins University in the fall whether it's in person or online and while I've definitely debated between majors I think as of now I'm gonna double major in psychology and public health on a pre-med track excellent anyone have a question for Monty Monty I have a question what would you say what you're most rewarding either extracurricular activity or club or you know non-academic thing that you were involved in Africa high school I think one of the most rewarding things for me was arsenate Baldrick's event last year fortunately we can have it this year but just seeing everyone being so supportive of each other the way we were able to organize it the way like so many people shave their

019heads the fire department the police department there that was that was really special that was really special today right Amy go ahead I just curious since the school shutdown and what we've all been experiencing with kovat how have you been navigating that and what's your experience been as a high school senior so in terms of classes I think our teachers have been pretty understanding with like the course load I would say it's like it's been pretty manageable like teachers are applying really fast to their emails if we have any questions and technical difficulties there being understanding about that it's nice to hold like little zoom calls and even if you don't have any like academic help you can just go in and say hi to them so it's just those like little things that like

020encourage you and just make the difference so it's been it's been pretty okay for me as a senior yeah I've got what I've got actually I have a two parter for you mom see we've sat with us for a year and by the way it's been great we've enjoyed having you on the as our student liaison to the board and it's been a joy I guess first part my question is now that you've seen what the board does in action if you wanted to leave a legacy for us or something to go focus on what would it be it could be a little it could be bigger it doesn't have to it doesn't have to be a super huge you know cosmic question but things that do you know I always love our board liaisons

021to have a chance to leave us something to work on so I first of all I've enjoyed this experience so much and I'm so thankful that I got to like watch all the behind the scenes and and just see like how the decisions are made and even like contribute like my own ideas I'll make you a deal you can think about it you can send it to it how's that the second part of my question though is the one of the roles as you know of above the board as we look after the senior leadership of our school district so is there anything we should know about mr. Bandhu I actually I I thought maybe I would get my little like the student spotlight thing that I've had had at other meetings um I kind

022of prepared something small I wanted to to say to mr. blando because he's actually done so much for us this year he's done things for us every year but especially this year I am so thankful to him and every student is so thankful to the way he's been there for us through these times I don't want to get emotional but for real um we know when we first got to quarantine he sent us a video specifically to the seniors you didn't have to do that he didn't have to send us all videos he didn't have to show up to the top tens house with this huge poster to congratulate us you didn't have to make these videos every single day with funny jokes that I start my morning with I know so many other students

023start their morning mornings with mr. Blanton at like I am so lucky to about a principal like him like genuinely him being open to change with the grading system with our graduation I had to say anything you'd be thank you so much hey what a great answer mr. ball and uh I think the board thank you didn't say you know am on see you know into the seniors here and to you know I know I have staff watching as well and it's you know sometimes you question why you do what you do you know there's days and I think when all of us want to hang it up and say why are we here what are we doing this for and it's for all the people here it's for the the trust of the board

024and the and the superintendent and assistant superintendent and have put in me to lead the building to work with such amazing staff and teachers and I know Carol Ann is here to work with her to help support you know she's somebody's been at school every day since the school closed down to you know so the students this is what this is why we do the work and it's it's definitely been nothing short of sure sort of nearly impossible but it is all worth it you know to try to give something to you you've taught me so much more than you probably realize you know this is proud this will be the hardest graduation I've ever had to it you know oversee and take a look at and I'm just glad that I was able to

025develop relationships with with you as a team all the all the kids and them in the top ten and a lot of the other students that I feel that I got to know and so it's it's you know you've taught me so much about Odie and you know often times you know teachers and adults will tell you to learn from your mistakes and you know I think I've learned from my mistakes and you know every every opportunity is a learning experience and you've helped me to remember that so I can't thank you students enough not just Monty but everyone else and yeah I'm none too pleased with mr. Belden right now for putting me on the spot so I think it's time for me to stop talking so you know there are there are a

026couple of people who aren't here students around here and I just because they're not here and normally they would be here I know on any given night so I just want to make sure I introduce them and and say to them to the diverse that people watching here where they're going and what their plans are so unfortunately I'm not able be here tonight with us was thighs Kaiser he is going to UCLA next year Jamie hi treaty's who is going she's the the face of the athletic Advisory Council and the CIA see you've probably seen her a lot of different places she's going to Villanova University we have Jackson boo jury who was not here tonight but he is going to Johns Hopkins as well where Mon C's going we also have Molly Birdsall who

027you seen at other meetings before she she plays in this and the string choir does just about everything so she is going to you let's see Vanderbilt and then it looks like our fun will be joined by our last person in the top ten which is Kevin tang and going to Northeastern University so those are the students that aren't here tonight that were unable to make it but it doesn't mean we we celebrate them any less and I think it's just you know looking at and just listening to some of your answers just how articulate you are your your you the enemy of what we we hope for our students at Brookfield High School and what I loved is some of the things you heard about they talked about well there was a favorite experience

028or favorite class things like you know the the Cameron and Courtney they're gonna be working and dance but they talked about peer counseling you know earth on talked about psychology I mean excuse me marketing being his favorite class you know you had Sophia talk about psychology and Montse talk about st. Baldrick's and it's it's it's awesome to hear the rounding out you know we often think of the core five the maths or study science English and world language classes but there's other things that we offer here and the fact that we're able to offer a well-rounded education for these kids and they're getting so much more than just academics the core that we think about is just on I I can't say enough how lucky I am to be a part of the school and

029part of the working with these kids and with the staff so alright I'm done now don't make me talk anymore thanks guys thank you and sorry Monty but you're not out of the spotlight just yet because the board would like to thank you for your service to the Board of Ed as our student representative and it's it's hard not to smile when you give your reports you have such positive energy and we know that you are on to do great things so we just hope that you share and continue to share that energy positivity went in everything you do so congratulations and thank you thank you so much Rose I just wanted to add one thing about Monsey I feel like she's set the bar for what the student representatives and he are gonna be

030in the future yeah I felt like you were a member of the Board of Education on many occasion you jumped right in you asked a question you gave us perspective and really yes we enjoy the reports you give but you were in the moment giving us the perspective of a student and that's really helps inform our decision-making so thank you for doing that I really hope that the students that follow you are sort of inspired by your work and continue in that ilk so really thank you so much I really thank you so much and then I wanted to just add Monsey and I've had some conversations but Jen I was really gonna act I echo what you were what you said that's pretty much what I was going to talk about it's just so

031inspired by the way Monty is able to think on her feet and be part of those conversations and in spite of her her stumping tonight from mr. Belden but we'll leave that for another time but no mozzie great job this year and we just counted on you and you were always there for us and it's greatly appreciated in I want to on behalf of the Board of Ed and behalf of mrs. Fernandes let the top ten and monsley know that mrs. Graham Lee and I are growling and I are working on because we're virtual of course the gifts that we typically provide and give as a nice gesture to the top ten and into our student representatives so those will be sent to your house so we'll figure that out and we'll be in touch

032so just so you know thanks for everything all right so I guess now it is on to the business so up first on our agenda is public comment is there anyone here from the public and I'll have to scroll through two pages so if you could just sort of raise your hand using the reactions at the bottom of the screen so that I can see if anyone's year that would like to make a public comment I don't think I see anyone right okay all right so we can move on to our student representative report okay so I talked about Mr bland already but thank you again you can never think Mr bland enough in terms of things that are going on in online school these last couple weeks of school there's just a lot of

033ceremonies and recognition going on last week was our NHS induction ceremony that happened last Thursday we have a top-ten zoom call tomorrow the undergrad Awards are tomorrow Monday a senior scholar awards Tuesday is senior athletic awards peer counseling is holding we usually have a teacher appreciation dinner so we're having a zoom called instead so seniors will be on Wednesday and underclassmen will be on Thursday we're just we're getting ready for grad we're excited to make our floats for the parade hopefully you know we'll have fun decorating our caps I know I went out this morning to get some decorations for my cap so I guess it's just everything is wrapping up but we're excited to see where it takes us that's all I have for today all right well thank you so much anybody have

034any questions activity related form on C alright so we can move on to written correspondence we have Kimberly Abreu Lynne korchinsky Martha Bella Tina Lepore and Dan Keith wrote regarding the high school graduation and Ron Jaffe shared an article from the child mind Institute that's it okay well aboard minutes I will make a motion that the board approve the minutes below the regular meeting on May 20th 20 22nd thank you joy okay all in favor hi okay thank you this is a different tenants report update so I have a few items on the superintendent report that mrs. Grambling email to the board earlier today the first one is our kickoff meeting for the school reopening team is this Friday morning on that team we have our educational leadership team we also have some Board of

035Finance members and Board of Education members we have our nurses we have teacher representative paraeducator representative secretary one of our custodians and we have a few students that will be participating so we're really excited quite a large group and really the important thing in getting ready for reopening is is providing context to our non educators stakeholders because we really need them to provide that critical input for guidance broad guidance to help the educator testing good clean clear direction going forward into early July to solidify wins based on the criteria that our public health move forward for being able to operate and open safely in the fall well there's a lot of work that's got to be done there but we're excited to get started we also at each of the schools this spring have solicited

036parent and some staff feedback via surveys the anecdotal conversation as well as group meetings such as the athletic Advisory Committee albin runs at the high school in addition to that Brookfield had the opportunity to participate in that thought exchange technology where the region was able to solicit feedback so we've got a lot of feedback that were star and we'll continue to solicit feedback through the process so we're really excited to get started although I wish we didn't have to get started with that kind of a plan that's the challenge before us and we're gonna do everything we can to put our best foot forward on that the four big buckets I want to mention about the reopening committee that are really important for everybody to understand is the number one priority as we think about

037reopening is physical is the physical health and safety and well-being of our staff and students similarly the emotional health and safety of our staff and students then there's another bucket we call teaching action that's all the work and feedback we've received on distance learning so far this year as well as any blended or hybrid opportunities technology professional development and all the things that go along with that student engagement etc and then of course operations in logistics there's been a lot of talk out in the public square about that we'll be very clear in our communication what the requirements are and what we need to do and what the implications whether that's budgetary or staffing or whatever it might be to adhere to those requirements to make sure that we're safe and healthy as we plan

038to open the school in the fall so that's that's a big project that's ongoing to me it's been ongoing and we're doing preparing but it begins formally on Friday morning the other thing that I have to thank mister post he's been working with our Gerry gay our purchasing agent and with Eric in terms of technology as well as our facility director and one of our nurses and that's the post Kovac ordering of supplies and equipment that includes personal protective equipment cleaning supplies cleaning equipment and ordering our technology purchases such as laptops for the teachers and Chromebooks we talked about that a couple of weeks ago that's going out to bid so we're making good progress on that trying to get the best price with hand by working with the town and putting in a purchase

039order together the next piece I want to just mention to everybody is that registration for new students is online I have to thank you nice Walsh and mr. Conklin and the rest of the team that worked on that there's it's there's a linked up on our website parents could go in there and we have the dedicated Reggie designated registrar at each school as we always have but now it's done electronically because of the situation we're in and we're really hoping for success with that speaking of registration the last thing on the night is actually to turn it over mrs. Eman who at this time of year being the center school the proud center school principal as she always says is to give us an update on gaps but our kindergarten registration as John was saying

040went live I think Friday eat like Friday afternoon and so email went out to all the families they already had 146 that were that it started the process as of today we have 152 families that have served the process we had six more families over the weekend that have that are starting their registration process for their children and there are an additional 12 families that we know of from the preschools who have kids who are eligible to come but who have not started the process yet so we also reached out to the preschools they sent the the links and all that for registration to those families so we anticipate that they will start the process as well so including those families that we know are on their way well we're at one 164 students registering

041for kindergarten last year at this time we had 169 so we're in a pretty close comparison to where we were last year last year we ended by the end of June we had 181 students registered or in the process of registering so it's a usually June is a big month and we'll see how things go again people are just starting to get back to work and just starting to get back to routine you know so I think this will probably extend over the length of the summer as we'll see more coming in so I'll you know we'll keep tracking it our secretaries have been fantastic about keeping track of everything and working with Denise to make sure that the process is moving smoothly and so we're we're in good shape thanks Mary Rose I don't

042have anything else to report I didn't know if the board might have questions for me I saw the cook how many started the year last year Mary Rose in kindergarten 181 okay right we ended I think it last June last you made 179 sorry and then by the we started with 181 and the other correctly just we're currently at 179 in kindergarten so we did we did kind of keep those kids throughout the year okay thank you okay we have no subcommittee reports so we can move on to the consent agenda okay I move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda as recommended we have resignations second thank you joy all right all in favor right thank you onto new business we have the healthy school start times presentation and a possible

043motion so actually I'm gonna hand this over to the chair of that committee um so Jen the floor is yours okay John do you want to say a little something to intro or would you like me to start you know Jen I'll just start by saying number one thank you for for your leadership and taking over the chairmanship of the committee we we appreciate that thank you to everyone on the committee who put a lot of time in thank you to mrs. Stern for staying on the committee with us after her leadership on on of the committee when she was our chair and in general I think the biggest piece is talking about healthy school start times it's just that the word healthy was purposely put in there we're talking about an adolescent health issue

044and that's getting the proper amount of sleep so at the end of the day that's the key issue what can we do to to have our students have the optimal environment whatever that might be and when we really looked into this and learned about the research is pretty clear and pretty undisputable that our kids need to get more sleep and I'll leave it at that because it's a very thorough present tation and again thank the committee and I'm sure they'll weigh in once Jen gets through the presentation along with questions that the board may have so general turn it over to you and I think Eric's gonna be putting the slide show up okay so I think Eric I'm gonna try first to see if I can get it up correct yeah we worked a

045little bit on the side to to see if we can get this to work on another piece of instruction there go ahead Jen I'm not it's not really letting me click on my drive would you mind pulling it up I think it'll just be easier so there we go so so the presentation I'm gonna give is just about 10 to 15 minutes and we're gonna I'm gonna go over the committee's recommendations and our reasoning behind it our process and sort of the impact of that decision I want to echo what John said and really thank the committee it was a real team effort I'm going to introduce the committee members in a moment but this was an effort that was started by our former board chair Colette strim and really picked up by Rosa and

046really my job was kind of easy I just had to bring it over the finish line but it was Colette's leadership that brought this to our attention and it was roses hard work that made us really look at it seriously so I want to thank them both as well so so let's kind of go through it now Joe Eric do I have to then tell you when to change the slide since you're manipulating it yeah I'm following along but if there's a certain point at which you're ready to move on and I haven't moved on just say something all right so we'll go to the second slide all right so let's start with the goal and the mission of the committee why did we have this committee and what were we planning on doing so

047firstly it was about studying what is the research that's out there in terms of sleep and health and so that was sort of our number go learn about the research and study it and then the SEC our plan was how can we communicate that how do we how can we take what we learn and communicate it to the community so they understand kind of the science behind sleep and health we also wanted to survey stakeholders we wanted to find out what's going on particularly in Brookfield in terms of sleep patterns in terms of alertness in terms of performance related to sleep we also wanted to analyze any potential change that we recommended what would be the impact of it on students lives on parents lives on staffs lives on f let excite a fter school

048opportunities and financially as well so we went through a deep analysis of that and then finally we wanted to make our best recommendation to the board so we'll go to the next slide so first of all why why get into this topic to begin with so there's a large amount of research that suggests that significant health safety and performance benefits are for adolescents if they are waking at 7 a.m. or later the research really supports that and also many communities in Connecticut as well as the larger United States have been taking measures to research and implement healthy start time so this is a larger movement that's been go probably goes back to at least 20 years but in the past let's say five to six years the movement has picked up steam and so if

049you look at the graph on your right that gives us a sense of well what are our current start times so at the high school our students start at 7:15 a.m. at the middle school 755 and then at both of our elementary schools the kids start at 8:40 so that's the baseline in which we're working now so let's start with our recommendation we're not going to make you wait we're going to tell you right away so here's what we're recommending and then we'll sort of tell you why we came up with that recommendation so the committee is recommending to the board that we revise school start times for the twenty twenty to twenty 20 year as follows we recommend that the middle school in high school begin at 8:00 a.m. and end at 2:45 and

050that our new school which would be a one you know pre-k to five school would begin at 8:50 and end at 3:35 p.m. the result of this change would mean that high school students would be getting 45 minutes of sleep per night in addition to their current what we have now and the other schools are really just having some minor adjustments it wouldn't disrupt what school times are for the other kids much at all there would be minimal disruption to after-school activities and athletics and we really felt like we have an opportunity that we are going to go through some change in two years with our new school building and by giving the two year window we would be able to coordinate the change in busing but we'd also give families and staff and kids

051two years time to plan and adapt to the change we know the more lead time you have for a change the better you can sort of equip for that change as well so that's the recommendation so I want to begin by talking about the committee let's go to the next slide so we had the world's greatest committee if I do say so myself obviously John was on our committee we had Rosa from the board myself and Amy Foster Steve Baldwin who's our athletic director was an essential member of the committee to give his perspective we had a teacher English teacher from the high school Lori Moses who's on the committee Lisa Whelan is a staff member at the middle school but she's also a commune member and a parent of teenagers so her perspective was

052super super important and then we had two community members who also have worked in school districts that have implemented some changes to their start times so Luke Quinn is a school counselor in Greenwich high school and also a parent and Joyce Puteri is a school counselor at John Reed middle school which is in Redding and also a community member and parent and they were able to give us really a lot of information about what worked and what didn't in terms of changing the start times in their district and then of course Colette who is our former Board of Ed was really an integral part of the team because she was really the force behind it as well so that was our fabulous committee and I think many of them are here tonight so at when

053we pause for questions please feel free to ask them questions as well okay so let's go to our next piece was really our process and our actions so we were really sort of deliberate in the way in which we approach the work we began the work a little bit over a year ago in the spring of 2019 by establishing the committee and that was really important that we wanted to have key stakeholders but also people with experience in this kind of work to guide how we move forward and starting in the fall we did a tremendous amount of research we read a lot of articles from different scientific journals educational journals about what is the science of sleep and how does it impact the adolescent mind and body and so there was a tremendous amount

054of work and we had discussions on all of those articles into the fall into the winter we spent a lot of time and a lot of districts gave generously of their time meeting with us we had superintendents from Wilton Board of Ed chairs from Newtown and a variety of other different districts who had went through this process already so they were generous enough to come to our meetings and give us the history of their decisions you know some may change very quickly and we could sort of analyze the impact of that and and some maybe didn't really pull in all the stakeholders so we really learned a lot from from those colleagues of ours and other districts in the winter and into the spring we said you know what we've really got to develop surveys

055that go out to all of our key stakeholders parents staff and students and so we worked on developing those surveys and as many of you took those surveys in the spring and then the work was analyzing those surveys so what does this really tell us about sleep and health in Brookfield and then most recently we analyzed the impact so we were coming to our beliefs on what would be best for Brookfield but what's the impact on a practical matter schools transportation and costs and then we're ready for a recommendation today so I want to just take you through quickly into some of the key research findings so if we can kind of move ahead and I know the board was fortunate to have a presentation from the doctor from Yale I know Mike and Amy

056weren't there at the time but we were we got a lot of sort of high-level research on sleep and adolescents so I'm gonna summarize sort of some of the big ideas but I've also included links to a lot of the research on the later slide so people will be able to go back and dive in a little bit more so what are the big ideas well the biggest idea is that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says teenagers should be sleeping between 8 and 10 hours a day for good health that's really the the recommendation for teenagers 8 to 10 years now if we go to the next slide though there's something unique about teenagers and those of us who have them could probably attest to this but there's something that teenagers and this is

057because of puberty they become sleepy later at night and then they need to sleep later in the morning and this is a result of shifts in their biological rhythms and so it's not just that they're older and they want to stay up later it's really something biological that sort of forces our teenagers to be up later and stay and then sleep later as well so there's some biology behind that and if we look at the next one we know that our era computers go the next one we know that there's a lot of other things going on too and in terms of teenagers and other distractions and we know that the these biological changes are also combined with some poor sleep habits of teenagers and all of this sort of compounds itself to have some

058pretty big implications on their health so if we look at the next slide this is interesting because well obviously when two kids wake up during the school year well they wake up when they have to get to school so school times obviously dictate when students would wake up here's a chart that indicates the national school start times across the country and if you look at let's look at the high school up top so we're in that blue of before 7:30 so only 10% of high schools in the United States currently start before 7:30 the most if we look in the yellow 40% are between 8 & 8 29 so I think you know we're a victim of our own experience and often we think well of course schools just have to start early that's what

059they do but in fact nationally many many districts have moved away from these very very early start times something more in the eight eight-thirty range okay so if we move on next I mean what's the conclusion well kids are have later bedtimes and the school starts early in many cases and as a result they're just not getting enough sleep if you see the visual dictates that six out of ten middle schoolers are reported to not get enough sleep seven out of ten high schoolers are not getting enough sleep and so as a result there's some pretty big health implications as well and so let's go to the next slide and what are those and and they're pretty serious obviously being sleepy seems to be a concern but it goes way beyond that there are some

060physical health implications so here's this is a document from the CDC but if you look at sort of the bottom there adolescents who don't get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight not get enough physical activity suffer from depressive symptoms also engage in really unhealthy risky behavior such as drinking alcohol smoking tobacco and other drugs and performing poorly in school so there's extent there's been extensive research that links not enough sleep to some of these serious health issues another one that's not on our chart is there's a correlation between lack of sleep and risky driving as well and and car accidents so there's really a direct correlation between sleep and our students health okay so we did our survey okay and let's look and see what we found out so we had great participation

061so that really I mean the more participation you have the more valid your survey is we had over a thousand parents participated I mean a nice spread to the different schools we had over 900 students and two 178 faculty and staff members participate in our survey and so we want to share with you some of the big ideas that emerge so if we look at our first survey slide so we asked the high school teachers if students are most tired during their first class and the the response was interesting seventy-five percent of teachers agreed to strongly agreed that students are really demonstrating to being very very tired during their first class so probably not a surprise but the data sort of supported the research that we had reviewed as well and so if we look

062at our second piece of data we asked a little bit more specifically our students struggling to stay awake in class and high school teachers over 60% of them from agree to strongly agreed also saw that that tiredness is gone is gone into beyond just tired but struggling to stay awake so that's supported some of the research that we saw as well ok so our next question that really gave us some interesting things to think about we asked the question to students seem adequately ready to learn each day and this was interesting we wanted to share this with you because there's a little bit of difference between high school results and middle school results so high school teachers almost 50% of them between disagree to strongly disagreed said you know students don't really see matically ready

063to learn every day but less so at the middle school so some of the analysis and discussions we had was that we definitely seem to think that the problem of sleep and tiredness and academic readiness seemed to be more prevalent at the high school our data seemed to support that ok and then our next question we asked teachers our students arriving late because they overslept and again same trend here 60% of high school agree to strongly agree only 28% of middle school so you know it's again seem to support that the problem some of the problems with sleep seem to be much more prevalent at the high school than the middle school okay and then next we asked students we said how alert are you and if you look on the blue that's the first

064class of the day and then the red is your second class so you can see that about 56% of students said either moderate moderately or - not at all alert during the first class but then 56% of them said they are fairly - extremely alert during their second class so there seemed to be some real indication that that first class particularly at the high school at 7:15 is a time when students struggle to be alert okay and our next question we asked we asked them about how much sleep they get so how often do you get less than 6 hours of sleep how often per week and so 59% of our students said that at least one time per week they're getting less than 6 hours of sleep so it definitely again our local data

065seem to be almost perfectly in line with the national research that we were doing and then finally we really wanted to through a series of questions with parents we wanted to ask them on that that next slide what are our values is this something that the community values and so we said how important is allowing students to get more sleep to you so this is from the high school students excuse me parents 90 percent believed allowing students to get more sleep is at least above average of importance and we gave the same question to each of the other schools and the percentage was between 89 and 91 so almost identical at every building that parents are recognizing that it's crucial that my child get adequate sleep in order to be healthy and productive so those

066were some of the big results of our survey so if we go to the next piece what are our conclusions based on this survey so as I mentioned before we've spent a lot of time sort of analyzing kind of the nitty-gritty of the survey and what does it tell us well probably no surprise high school students in particular are not getting the recommended amount of sleep and are less alert in their first classes that seem to be the trend of the data but we also learn that our community values the healthy implications of proper sleep so that was sort of our big big takeaways of our survey okay now what about athletics now the big sort of stopping point for a lot of districts that have pursued a look at healthy start times has been

067athletics community members said you can never change the start time because it's really gonna mess up athletics so we felt like it was crucial to have Steve Baldwin on the committee to find out is that accurate so if we look at the next slide Steve did a lot of research for us so he went and looked at our athletic league and he got information from all of the schools that we currently compete in our league and he got all of their start and end times and so just to give you sort of a global view if you see all of the schools that I've highlighted in blue those are all schools that either have or are in the process of examining their start times so the vast majority of schools in our league have either

068changed their start time to later or are currently going through a process that we've gone through as well so it looks like I mean and we're interestingly currently the earliest of schools in that regard so the changes that we're proposing won't put us you know way out of the range of other schools in our league and again within the next two years I think we anticipate that many of those schools in blue will make a similar change if they haven't done so already so that's a little bit of the data there okay now we also know though that the science really supports sleep and performance in athletics so sleep deprivation is a leading contributor to an increase in injuries among student athletes and that was a theme and a lot of the research that we

069reviewed so there's a direct correlation between the two and on the other side adequate sleep actually leads to an increase in athletic performance so we really feel like a shift to a later start time would have a really positive impact on our athletes now Steve also analyzed the you know the question often comes up well if they had a game that's with a school that ends earlier than us would they have to miss their last class so if we look at our current schedule this and this current start times those schools have student athletes would have to miss their last class about five times per season so spread out throughout the tie entire season there would be opportunities where they would have to miss their last class so that that is something to note however

070over the next two years I meant we had we were anticipating those schools may be changing their start times as well and that would be okay so the bus obviously we've got to get the kids to and from school that's a major responsibility of our school district and so we examined a bunch of different ways in which to do it and and what are the financial ramifications of doing that so if we look at option A and B they're both what we'll call three-tiered systems so that means there's three start times and that means sort of three big roots that are going on in terms of the bus company now the first option we could flip flop those start times we have a seven forty five and eight twenty five and nine ten we could

071flip them to different schools to see which work best for those kids but the major concern we had with that was that some students would either be in the dark when they're going to school and some other students would be in the dark during the winter when they're coming home from school and so that was an thing that we were concerned about so we weren't really happy with option a option B also a three-tiered system and with some overlap and the pro of that no student would wait in the dark that's good kind of a big con we need 19 additional buses and it would cost an additional 1.6 million dollars so that was a pretty quick no on that one because it would almost close to double our current expenditures on busing and we

072thought well that's that's not sustainable so if we go to the next slide this is our recommendation for busing can you just click on that next one for me Eric great okay so here's our recommendation so we're at we're recommending that we do a two-tiered busing option so that would mean the first tier would be middle school and high school so middle school and high school students would ride together on the bus so we recognize that's a change in something you know we'd have to plan for the second tier would be for the new elementary school now why do we like this one well it meets the early time recommendations for the high school we're able to do it and it that aligns obviously with the science of sleep patterns it aligns with our what

073we've learned from our survey from our different stakeholders students state safety is good because there's no dark before or at the end of the day and so that was a big concern now how much what is this gonna cost so one of the things in moving towards a k-25 building which we're doing in two years is that we had dumped some early jhana don't most all this work he did some early analysis and we will need two additional buses in order to have that new have the kids in the one elementary school so two additional buses will be needed at a cost of a hundred and forty thousand dollars with the two tiered system we would so that that's like not changing any of the healthy start times we would it would be an increase

074of one hundred and forty thousand in it in order to change to a two tiered system we would need two additional buses and the bus company is estimating that would be an additional one hundred and forty thousand dollars one of the things we discussed was that we know there'll be a savings in energy cost with our new building and so we're hoping that the savings with energy could somehow balance out an increase in busing okay so almost there thank you so what are our conclusions so we say you know the science the data our surveys all indicate that our current model aligned with healthy school start times and so we're recommending that change and just a review we're recommending the change for 2020 to 2023 for the high school and middle school to begin at

075eight and to end at 2:35 and then the new elementary school has really a minor change and and that's actually no change at all cuz I think they're already at 8.50 high school students are going to gain 45 minutes of sleep a day and really there's no there's some minor adjustments in other regards there's minimal disruption after school and athletics and we really feel like with two years to plan it gives all different stakeholders time to plan and adapt as well okay and then finally kind of what's our next step so obviously if you could Eric just get hit the next one we assuming that the board would approve this recommendation there's some planning obviously the administration will have to work to execute the plan there will be bus contract negotiations with the BOE but

076the committee really felt that our work is not necessarily over and that we really wanted to play a role in educating the community about the health benefits of sleep because we know that just changing start times is not a panacea it won't cure everything so how can we really bring the community along with us to recognize how sleep can have a positive benefit and what are the changes you can make at home to sort of ensure that you know your your teenagers are getting the proper sleep and the health benefits that associate with it so the last couple of slides are just some research resources for everybody to look at it their leisure their YouTube video presentations their articles but they give you all different sort of perspectives on the that we reviewed as a

077come in okay so I think I'll stop there and if anybody has any questions for myself or for the committee let's have a question on slide 22 how many parents were surveyed thousand fifty two I have a question yes please Monty how how would the bus situation work with Liam would they everyone would get picked up from the same neighborhood and then all the kids from BHS would be like dropped off first and then Julia maths or vice versa mazi that's all that that's what the next two years is for is to work out with the bus company how that will walk they you know they have to look at how the students matriculate through the grades and look at the addresses siblings all those kinds of things kind of the same thing they do

078now but it would be given because we have that two-tier system where we would have the high school middle school together and then adding fifth grade to the elementary run in elementary will no longer be a split tier run it will be one run that would go through the neighborhood pick up all the kids K through five and bring them to one building rather than two different builders on two different buckets so there's a lot of pre-work that has to go into that with the bus coming the piggyback Muncey just asked so are we not clear then if our middle school students will be on the bus with the high school students oh no there would be man would be that they would ride the bus with the high school students okay yeah question when

079they ride on the same bus would they just drop off one school and then drop off the other school or is that the plan at this point that's the plan mr. post and I would happen obviously we have a lot more work to do over the next two years and that's the gift of time we've given ourselves to work with the bus company on that you know along with negotiations and all the other things that happen and I wanted to ask about that as well do we have have you seen models of any other school districts where middle school kids are on the same bus with high school kids because I suspect that might be one area I'm sorry actually that's not very uncommon Debbie my kids do that when when they were in middle

080school they rode with high school kids another in high school they ride over middle school kids yeah yeah the district that I work in it's the same thing so the school middle school and high school kids ride the bus you know it's a cultural shift and all cultural shifts sort of take time to adapt to it but I think it's a relatively common practice and just neighbors you know kind of in our in our league if you will or in our neighborhood you know the new towns of the world and the battles of the world I think Bethel is switching to a middle high school run now and there's probably five in our area immediate area that are middle high school runs that run together so it's not this is missus term can share some

081experiences from the Midwest how the bus runs work good it's not uncommon if that's part of the education that's part of a two-year plan at that time to have those conversations and ask those questions be prepared for that you know what are some things we could do is infer Brookfield we talked about the big brother and sister ideas kids mentoring each other helping each other the class X exam to ease that concern folks yeah and that that was really my only concern I know mr. Rhonda just put those schools that have those models do they have bus monitors on those buses because currently I think there's our an issue with let's say the middle school busing and disciplinary issues and things like that and I can't imagine compounding that with now adding high schoolers on

082with sixth graders and vice versa it's interesting the opposite happens so when you have younger kids with older kids the behavior improves because some behavior that you might deem a sort of middle school type behavior tends to change a bit when they're with older kids but I think you know it's really it's a cultural change so it's something we'd have to plan for and work with kids on I a couple questions I I saw in your presentation the survey said that parents agree or feel that you know adequate adequate sleep is very important for their students but I don't remember if there was a question specifically asking them if they I'd say think a plan like this is feasible you know do they think we can execute it does it work with their schedules do

083they trust their high school students to wake up on time if the parents have left earlier to go to work actually I would like to address that question because it was opt the utmost importance that we established the survey that we purposefully did not ask questions that were applying it that way all of the questions were to gather objective data about the sleep habits of students in Brookfield we didn't want to ask questions about start times and things like that because we didn't want parents making those decisions without or having those opinions without having sort of the background of the information and the knowledge of the research that's out there so we really wanted to focus in more on the questions that would deliver us data that we could then drive a recommendation for it

084so we didn't start with the recommendation and sort of work backwards we sort of let the data drive us to a conclusion that makes sense I also remember at one point in discussions about the new school we talked about and sort of floated the idea that it could be possible that the lower grades pre-k kindergarten and first might have a different start time than second through fifth was that something that you considered in the plan or or you're certain assuming that the new school will all be on the same schedule it sounds like yeah I'll start and then please anybody from the committee jump in so we examine that and we could accommodate the the buses to load and unload so we have been taking a look at the the larger context of the entire

085district and trying to figure all this out have it we would have three tiers which would cost even more money if we try to do two separate tiers at the middle of at the elementary school and then the school you know a middle and a high school tear or two separate and seventy four tiers or we would have two separate tiers at the elementary school and then a one tier if we combine middle and high school and it just it didn't work out in terms of number of buses and it didn't work out in terms of timing to have any reasonable timing to deliver and drop off all the kids and so since we could get a start time one time for the elementary school this then allowed us to put our minds through a

086different way of yeah and I think John remember I think you brought us in even the bus drop-off map of the new school and we sort of looked at how many buses can you get in and we analyzed the fact that yes we could it could work that we could get the kids in at the same time yeah a big part of this was Ken and I met with bus company several times but the committee itself met with Eddy from taxi architect and Techcon was in for at least one meeting maybe a second meeting to go over these kinds of things and these kinds of issues the physical layout of a lot the driveways you know what that would look like the stacking of the buses so there's a lot of a lot of planning

087already has gone into how this could work before we got to this point okay I have a question has the committee considered net so if the school start times are pushed later and our high school athletics are pushed a little bit later now our youth programs will be pushed later so that's going to force our now younger children to go to bed much later and now they're losing sleep because we only have field time at a certain time that the high school or high school are utilizing on our fields but now that will be pushed given that their start times are later and that will force our youth programs to now go later yeah enjoy I don't know I agree with that that the premise that that could be the case but I know Steve

088Baldwin was really obviously an integral part of the committee so there was some of those were considerations I know we've talked with Mary from Parks and Rec as well so maybe Steve you could weigh in on a little bit of that even though you don't plan you know for Parks and Rec but you work hand in hand with them on the field usage I mean for us we're lucky you know through our community leadership and there are community support on athletics that we have for lighted turf fields obviously the biggest obstacle for me is sports that don't have lights and readjusting them but I could see possibly in the fall just maybe having to use catechin a little bit more than normal and not so much in the spring other than maybe going to between

089five and six when we normally would end that six because typically our practices now are two to four for four to six six to eight and obviously when we change we'd have to go three to three five five to seven and seven to nine so you know it's gonna take some working with parka rack and use to readjust what we do and we might possibly have to either shorten our practice times or you know find some grass fields to use so I'm actually curious if you if the committee came across any results on how the teachers feel about a later start time just considering the the the current climb and I talked to a lot of teachers and they're working like seven days a week and I kind of curious on is there may be

090a benefit to them as well I don't that wasn't studied but I kind of wonder if there was maybe any findings in that research as a former teacher before I was an administrator I would have loved to garden later extra sleep maybe get the morning workout in for a little longer I mean that's just my opinion but I mean I'll just as a teacher it's you get a little bit more time in the morning maybe you know with your own kids you know get them done and you know even just some planning time in the morning I will just add that we didn't at we again purposely did not ask about start times in any of our surveys we really were out together you know objective data my question was more for the the perimeter

091research that was done I guess spring of nine 2099 from me yep my other question is did you guys come across any research with kind of isolating just the time meaning you know having nutrition accounted for bedtime habits as far as bedtime actual times going to bed screen time has a huge effect on dopamine is the name that pop into the research as far as a factor like like a checking for cofactors in order to isolate the independent variable is the start time yeah I mean definitely all those things play a role but the overwhelming research showed that really was the shift in the adolescent development during puberty that led to that later falling asleep time is what made it different for older kids so yeah I mean those other things will definitely contribute to

092it but overwhelmingly the research really said that older kids fall asleep later and therefore need to need to sleep later as well and need that eight to ten hours of sleep oh I totally agree yeah I think I want I guess I wrote myself with saying I think this is a very thorough job but you guys did I haven't really been part of the board that long to know what you guys been doing this is very impressive stuff research is kind of my thing so I always have lots of questions with research my last last point is is there any research or maybe even just case studies on the schools that have changed on their impact yeah so well we have some anecdotal information so from all of those districts that shared with us they

093each are interesting had done some sort of follow-up surveys with parents and students and really across the board they found that kids were healthier they were sleeping more and so there seemed to be a correlation between the two you know I think a couple of them said well can we say kids are performing at a higher level I'm not sure if the data is there but they definitely supported that and and even you know asked community members if would you change back and overwhelmingly their their information came back that no that they felt like this was a positive change for the community and for the kids how did they measure health you said they were healthier how'd they measure that I don't brisket ever was I'll speak to my conversation with new town superintendent as

094you may know two years ago they went through you know it's very public some of the transportation issues they were having they transition quite quickly and so there was a lot of that logistical unrest stopped all and in talking with dr. Rodriguez she shared with me that not only me anecdotal that Jen talked about but they're definitely right off the bat they saw the the nurses and and the administrators can tell you about attendance and you know calls you know business to the nurse's office and then things like that tardiness a lot of that stuff was kind of some general health data than I can think of off the top of my head that was definitely improved for sure the other thing might you ask some some questions that I thought was important I'd like

095to turn it over to Steve for a second C : because in health class we do talk about obviously healthy lifestyles help it help the ABA's healthy pattern maybe stay you can share a little bit about maybe just a brief overview of what our teachers do in terms of health instructions already and how they can contribute to this you know this movement as well I mean obviously we discuss about all healthy habit habits and all in health class and you know including proper sleep and nutrition like dr. Murphy was talking about and we just asked general observation you know when I come in in the morning and I have to observe some health classes or PE classes you could see a difference in the classes later in the day you know rather than at 7:15

096when the kids are kind of you know sluggish and aren't ready to roll yet so but you know um one of our teachers you know did some surveys with the kids and had discussion on it and the kids actually really want want this although it definitely seems like a nice deftly seems like a great solution I'd like to jump in I'm the counselor for Greenwich and a parent who's lived through this and I would tell you that any transition and any change is going to have its problems you know it's it's difficult it's difficult for people to change families to change faculty to change but you know in the long run having it lived through it I think it's it's certainly when caught on the other side of it when you think about the health

097of the students and getting them through school academically as well as emotionally and socially it was well worth the change and it's one of the reasons why I joined it to me and someone just clarify um I'm one of the earlier slides the disruptions to after-school activities and athletics Julie I'll start and then if Steve could jump in or certainly anybody from the committee so Steve's done an assessment of how often the kids currently based on each sport boys girls fall winter spring might miss the last period of the day because of a competition whether it's for far away travel during the regular season or competition that is like tournament time you know state tournament or League tournament time and so in the current model Steve it was an average of one so you know

098we had some sports that were zero and others that were two basically that averaged about one one time per season sometimes two and then of course if you get into a playoff situation that could skew those numbers in the current model at this point if there was no changes and Steve again we have to go we have to think of the slide Jen showed you with the schools in our league that are in blue that are also going to go later like what we're planning to do along with the ones that have already gone later the majority of the league will be going later we wanted to be fully transparent that max we might see as many as not in every sport but as many as five times where the students would have to leave

099early and you know we don't particularly like that you know and that's what off Steve you could jump in in just a second I just want to finish my point that's in the current model with the other schools that haven't moved later yet assuming they're going to move later and assuming we're in a different world now - let's not forget we've learned a lot about distance learning and its own that that blended model and Google classroom and the things we do remotely especially with our high school kids is going to improve so I don't want to forget that I'd only get deep into that conversation but that's something to be considered two years from now while we're considering this move but Steve I'll turn it over to you to help I'll use Westerners that example

100when when we play Western at home just you know normal freshman game would start at 3:30 from when we play Weston we shift it to four o'clock because of their start time so you know I'm assuming that mostly everybody will also help us with that until they change their times what it really affects are you know the things that we can't control like I said we're lucky in Brookfield we're well equipped equipped for this and we have four lighted turf fields we have cattigan to play softball with on the lights sports like indoor track where those those meets row long and we have to rent facilities such as Wesleyan and Hill House in New Haven so you know that would probably shift to increasing that sports are going later outdoor track again you know it's

101because of the facilities tennis and golf where you really can't a lot of schools don't have lights on the field and you know baseball softball other than that the rest of the sports really don't change or we can fix them it's just you know the sports with that don't have lights or you know where you have to use facilities and a certain amount of time so it's not you know it appears it's like oh my god when you think about it but it's not that bad I mean it's it's we'll figure it out and we'll make it work for our kids you know and the lineup getting some more sleep out of it so just to clarify so that's fine you know current models one to two so no changes would be five per season

102so if you have a three to four or three or four season sport season athlete then that would be fifteen or twenty classes they're missing yeah and I think Julie that would be the absolute worst case scenario that's not considering the things Steve is going to do over the next two years sure it's I don't I don't think it would ever get that high because you know you're looking at you know the spring sports with there will be the highest based on lighting and then when you get into the other sports it's not eat you know you look at maybe a freshman you know in volleyball might have to get out a few times early well I guess the biggest thing would be you know if somebody runs cross-country indoor track and outdoor track you

103know those are the ones that would be really affected I think the most you know and if you add those up at six eleven so maybe fifteen times for one of those kids possibly and again that's in the current model where the you know there's not as if the other schools don't move to later and many are in the have already moved to later or in the phase that were in they're right about where we are making decisions so it'll end up if we you know whatever number that slide was that Jen talked about I think there's maybe three to four schools in the league that at this point aren't planning to go later the majority it's fourteen schools in the league it'll look like there's probably about ten that will be going later so

104that then would eliminate this early concern and again that that was our whole premise from the start I think the board would remember me discussing is very early on that we wanted to we didn't want to disrupt we wanted one disruptive moment and so we thought we'd time it with the new elementary school and make it all work together so we've got plenty of time to work on this but the concern enjoyed I'm glad you asked the question thank you and it was talked about quite a bit does anyone have any questions for the committee I just like to add one more thing like I absolutely respect the their surveys that you sent down and wanting to really base it off data and not subjective information and opinions but I think it it does bring

105an element of value to kind of survey the community and find out about how much support there is you know in you know later start time I think I think it's important information so I agree I think I think community input is is definitely important i think the process that we wanted to follow and the steps that we wanted to take was first from an education standpoint because most people i think in most communities have already an opinion about this despite not really being aware of really decades of research that are overwhelmingly in favor of high school start times being after actually a three so how we wanted to sort of go about this was to inform the public but what we've seen in the research is that you know there are actually common myths

106that sort of emerge in people's opinions of leader school start times and by and large all of those myths are sort of debunked after a district moves to changing the start times so it's important that people have an opinion absolutely but the opinion needs to be informed and i think you know having this sort of collective recommendation now allows us to sort of be united in our communications to the public so that they can weigh in on this but also from much more informed standpoint and there was a lot of data there was a lot of data that we collected from parents to find out the impact of what that would have for example does your child watch another child before school or after school does do your children have after-school jobs and so there

107was all of this you know specific data that we collected which helped us analyze to what extent would this be a disruption and so we were able to to find that based on data and not turn it into an opinion survey but you know it would be helpful to have that information I'm curious sister you know how much of a disruption it would be kind of like what Debbie asked before we said you said you well we the the survey questions really do go into great detail and we certainly you know Jen could provide those and the results everybody I mean there's no there's no secret and it really does get at what the disruption would be its students for example with the job question the majority they're involved in after-school activities so that was

108our focus it wasn't about now they can't work and help their family that because of most of our Brookfield kids are not in that situation so that was the importance of the survey the same thing would be is there an adult at home to for child care do you have child care come in what would this look like if change you know there was a lot of those kind of questions so the committee was really able to be cognitive of where the major disruptions might be for families for sure but it wasn't an any one for the questioner 9% of our kids play athletics so they're staying after school that's just athletics team that's not yeah that's not the clubs and I also think even though you know we will set out to sort of

109educate the public I think it would be it would be dangerous to hold sort of an informal vote on the matter I don't think any such survey or something like that would be representative or thus valid so I want to be I want to caution the board in in thinking that that sort of a logical next step scientifically that wouldn't really yield us very valid data so you know I think it's important that we as sort of representatives our community received data receive actual uh opinionated objective data and we make decisions on what is best for our students now to Mike's point there are a lot of factors that go into student health performance things like that and most of those things are completely out of our control as a board those are you know

110strictly within sort of what goes on at home and we can't tell people how to parent but what we are in control of is when students wake up and that is just the fact of the matter and so if there is a portion or slices of this pie that we can control and the data shows that it would be healthier for our students to do so then we should be able to make that decision and say yes this is actually better for our students so we when you say you know we have to I guess I'm curious about next steps like you said we have two years to plan so are you asking for a board vote and that vote will mean that we are moving forward with this plan or is is are you

111intending to talk to stakeholders anymore over the course of two years and get additional parent feedback Jen you're yeah we're asking for you to vote on our recommendation to change the start times and then the two years is like how do we plan and make sure we do it right how do we make sure the bus is going to work out how do we make sure we educate people how to how do we make sure people know about it over the next two years so they can whatever adjustments they do need to make they can do so yeah we're asking for the board to I think to vote on tonight right bro so do have a right yeah I mean we certainly can vote on it tonight I'm understanding that this is sort of the

112first time that you guys are seeing all of this stuff it's not vital that we vote on it tonight if you guys want to mull it over ask more questions you know flip through the presentation at your own pace we can do that and maybe come back at our next meeting and sort of add it as you know an agenda item but basically in order for us to do anything next the board needs to be united and a plan you know for John needs to be to actually put that plan in action and he needs to have some sort of you know something to actually go on so yes we do need a vote on this if not tonight then at our next meeting most likely and and I just wanted to say something Jen

113thanks for all your support on this but the bus plan is going to work we're not worried about that it's gonna work I mean there's details that have to be worked out that's because we're changing things but it's going to work there's no it's not an issue the buses exist to pick up students and drop students off it's going to work so it's really the the work that's left is just the detail work to make sure everything happens just like every summer they change bus routes and addresses and new students are added and moved in 2700 kids matriculate to another grade and many change to a you know a different school of our four schools and you know almost 200 kindergarteners come in and now they get picked up safely and dropped off safely every

114single day so you know that's natural and in a normal piece of this that we're going to do it's the education and for people to adjust minor adjustment to their schedules remember that's the start time for the elementary school in the middle school others there's within five minutes of change that's it there's no no difference it's our height though that's the beauty of the plan is it's really the change for the high school kids which ultimately is the adolescent health issue I mentioned at the beginning it's to make sure the high school kids get more sleep so leave it at that and it might also be worth it for you you know if you're uncomfortable now the committee has put all of the research that we've taken a look at you know the ones that

115we've found really sort of as crucial pieces to our research study was we put them all online so if you go to the Board of Education site and you go to the subcommittee's and you go to this committee you will see a bunch of resources there so it might you know sort of who view to sort of take a look through those um you know if you'd like to be more informed yeah I added most of those to the last two pages of our slides as well so Bob and Amy you guys have been quiet any questions or anything you want to weigh in on well I was on the committee so I'm in favor of this yes oh I'm a hunt I'm a hundred percent in favor of this I erased kids who slept

116through first period and in class all the time this is the best thing that I think this board will have will it will do in its whole tenure so and I've all my questions have been answered and if they weren't I'd walk down two doors down and I'd be bang on blue Quinn's door anyone else from the committee want to say anything okay so how would you guys like to proceed I do want to make everybody comfortable if we sort of take sort of a you know feel of if you're ready to vote on making this plan in action we can do that I had make a motion to approve this is that your motion yes I'll make a motion to approve the healthy start times committees change in start times for two years from

117now okay I will second that motion those are any other discussion or questions on this okay good I guess my only concern really is the busing I mean I'm a hundred percent in favor of high school students starting later I think that's a great plan I completely agree that it's necessary I'm um stuck on the middle schoolers being bused with the high schoolers and maybe even more so the pre-k and K students being bussed with the fifth graders because I know that that like I said when we were talking about the new school we talked about a couple different options of either different just different bus runs and dropping those kids off at different separate entrances of the building and also even staggered start times so I I guess I'm sort of feeling and maybe

118I just haven't been part of the more recent conversations on that but I'm sort of feeling like those discussions have taken a bit of a backseat in order to the healthy start time plan work yeah Debbie I wouldn't say that the discussions took a backseat I don't think that's a fair picture but I'll turn it over to Ken who runs the operations number one I wanted to clarify that the pre-k kids have their own bus routes transported separately so it would be K through five being transported together uh-huh right right now Cajun four are transported together our fifth graders are actually a bit of an anomaly in our town because they go on a bus with middle school kids and then there has it the middle school is vertical that was part of our plan

119was to bring them more traditional elementary setting and so be more natural for K through five to be bused together so page before already ride together on I'm sorry they don't write again Sentinel huckleberry so but K through five is a normal elementary school very typical and but the staggered times didn't work Debbie not only in looking at holistically at all the kids in terms of being picked up in the dark versus dropped off in the dark because of the separation but also because of cost it just became it just it wasn't Hannibal couldn't make it happen and I think we can easily get you know sort of feedback from very close by neighbors who currently have middle and high schools bussing together middle and high schools together where I went to school job even

120in the 90s I'm not sure they still are region fourteen up in Woodbury and it was fine and even back then I'm sure now they can probably implement kind of what they do with the younger grades or at-risk a near where the fifth graders are in the form of the glass like that sort of stuff wasn't implemented in the 90s but I'm sure that our situation here or something like that could be done and we have something nowadays called video I mean if there's there's right I think this proactive things we deal with you know SEL and behavior and and those are concerns legitimate concerns that people have that I think there's there's a lot of proactive things we can do to address that and more questions and again it's not it's not an unusual

121configuration at all so um there is a motion a second in motion is there any other discussion okay so seeing none let's proceed to vote so all in favor of approving the healthy school start times plan to be implemented two years from now in the year 2022 um signify by saying aye hi I okay all opposed okay so vote was unanimous thank you very much everyone and thank you Jen for such a great presentation thank you guys for being here yeah the whole committee thank you very yeah I was a really thank you to everybody on the committee Rosa I think just as a matter of course we ought to make sure we get a regular report on as a standing report in our board agendas maybe not every month but as we're progressing so

122that we as a board can hear you know how some of the further research and details are progressing very similar to the other reports we get and and I think I did and I would propose we start with every other month yeah that's gonna do all right so moving on we have a discussion impossible motion of the 2021 school calendar so dr. Birol I'm and hand it over to you to sort of explain some of those updates thank you so as we all know we're dealing we're into our third month of distance learning and all of us dealing with as best we can for ourselves and our families and our students how to cope with with with the major change that we've had to deal with and as I opened my remarks and the superintendent

123report I talked about the school reopening team the cross-section of stakeholders and the work that needs to be done some of the some of the work that needs to be done to ensure that we meet the public health requirements for the immediacy of the the physical health and safety of students and staff along with meeting the teaching and learning needs of professional development needs of our staff in preparing for the school year really demand more planning than we've ever had to endure as we prepare for a traditional school year many of you know that in our current calendar and our traditional school year we have two days at the beginning of the school year where teachers engage in professional development as we prepare for the first day of school and if you're have a as

124I'm talking if you could pull up the calendar at least assent there's a link to the current calendar that's been approved by the board and so you can look at that as we're talking we're in a situation where we're planning for some things that are known but we're also planning for the unknowns and we're planning for some of the most difficult tasks that we've ever had a plan for in terms of social distancing learning how to use PPE reorganizing our school staggering schedules we've talked about a blended learning model where we'd rotate days where some students are in some students are out so we could physically space students so with you physically space students on buses there's all kinds of details that have to work out the conversation tonight is not about that because that

125plan is yet to be crafted tonight is about making sure that to honor our students and make sure we are as prepared as we can be we have the days prior to the school year starting with our staff with our teachers to ensure that they have the proper training not only for learning how to use PPE and professional learning that has to happen regarding distance learning and technology but every other thing that's going to come up over the summer with the ever-changing and ever-evolving guidelines and requirements that we have to meet and so I have a proposal this evening I'd like to process with the board and hopefully with that proposal you would approve it which is a change in you it's a budget-neutral change and it's utilizing the available days we have with our

126teachers to make sure they have the proper training the proper time for planning and arranging and being ready for students to come on the first day of school so the plan would involve keeping our first two days of professional development for the teachers on August 24th and 25th that happens to be a Monday and a Tuesday but I've proposed that we move the first day of school for the following week to August 31st that's still before Labor Day so it's still an early start for those of us who used to start after Labor Day remember those days probably probably back in the 80s and then earlier and then the three days the three additional days that week the 26th the 27th and 28th the leadership team and I talked earlier this week and we would

127like to have those three days be professional days as well for the teachers and the administrators to plan and prepare our students and there's lots of things we're thinking about we don't have all five days articulated to exactly what we're going to do on those days but we're getting close and so how we would achieve this is we would get the three days from the following proposal we would look at the Femi of the existing February 12th professional development day which is the Friday before President's Day weekend that is in your current calendar for next year that is a professional day for the teachers a day for the students we would just we would take that professional day and move it to let's call it August 26 and the kids would go to school on

128it make the day up instead of being on August 26 they make that day up on February 12 just go to school for a week that we we would sacrifice the PD day later in the year and get it earlier in the year because that would be our priority that is our priority the other two days and then so let me stop that PD day would be the one we choose versus the Columbus Day professional development or the Election Day professional development because Election Day you really can't change and that'sa becomes a security issue space issue for voting and you can't have the kids in the school while voting is going on in the volume that goes on especially presidential elections and the Columbus Day one starts to get into contractual issues with some of

129our union groups workdays and all kinds of things so we would want to stay away from that so that's why I would choose the professional development day in February while the other two days would be achieved we were thinking of a trade-off and we thought it'd be better prepared to get ready for the beginning of the school year considering all the obstacles and challenges were going to face with proposing a 180-day student day year for the kids rather than the one eighty two teachers have to work 187 day up to 180 seven days by contract and so we would like to get those days shortens the school year to learning days for the students because we think we'd be better prepared and get more value out of 180 days especially those first few weeks of

130the school year having our teachers that are prepared we never have enough time with our training in our professional development and this is this is the opportunity to do that and when we really started to process it with the principals and our doctor Ruby its various and thinking things through and this is why Ghana with all the work we have to do and all the needs of our students we wanted to be able to meet all of their needs not only physically being ready but ready for them from the social-emotional transition standpoint and also from a curricular sampling so that's my proposal I'm sure there's some questions and I appreciate the board's support on that happy to have a conversation and I've asked the leadership team you know those questions come up to please step

131in and share your thoughts on it as well any questions and I know it's a big change but it's something that many of the districts in the region we've been talking about as a superintendent group and around the nation were in around the state we're looking at how do we adjust the calendar so we can make sure we'll prepare because just so much to do does anyone have any questions the school year is being shortened for students by a few days couple days the shortening at John to the 180 impact our ability to lock in the graduation date remember there was some number of days we had to book the calendar for and her to be able to say we can we can fix to our graduation date that's a great question Bob um the

132only person I could lean on right now would be mr. Blandon and the short term on that one because I've drawn a blank to be honest with you and I know that that's a great great question that so mark any thoughts on that so in terms of grad and they changed a little bit of that actually this past year which allowed us to we don't have to have a different number of calendar days we've played some games with the calendar the last two years they changed it so it won't affect when we set our graduation date we can set it and we'd be fine thank you Mark what it was Bob is you had to because of the archaic law you had to game the system and show emergency days to have 185 in order

133to set the graduation date or late for one they eliminate on now we don't have to worry about that's what it was okay that's good okay this is gonna be a very odd year I mean it's of all the years that we have to walk in and deal with a structure that is going to be different than we're used to this will be it and none of us can predict exactly what that structure is yet because you got all your committee work going and and whatnot so I think a thought of taking the time and being prepared early and trading that off against things that are you know we would have been student days off later or shortening to 180 doesn't bother me at all it's a logical thing I know you wouldn't do that

134every year but you'd do it this ya know this I mean obviously this is you know the hackneyed the hackneyed vocabulary word of the spring is unprecedented and never looked at this before and we have to honor the profession of teaching and honor to honor the students to be as best prepared as we can for them and again like the conversation before when we have the opportunity to provide provide time to appropriately plan I think we should take advantage of it and I and I'd rather have our entire organization better prepared for 180 days then have a floppy opening for communication included Oh to gain the extra pay what I mean it just I just picture the world where we need PPE and classrooms and or fewer students with some sort of accommodation on how

135we do that all of the things that are being talked about will require are very valuable teachers to be able to take the time and say how are we going to deal with that and just walking in on the first day with normal with just the normal couple of days of readiness I'm sure nobody wants that we all want to take the time get the classroom ready get the figure out exactly how we're going to deal with all those situations that won't come up right because there'll be a thousand situations and I I mean I'm not one to walk in here thinking it's gonna be a normal year it's I'm walking in assuming that we are gonna need that time to get ready in a major pieces a lot I like how the Leafs nods

136as I talk so that's she's making me happy yeah my goal in life is to make sure I list the smiling during meetings okay um so I will go ahead and make a motion if for some reason for some reason does go back to normal would this be rescinded or is this yeah I think joy I think that's something if normal is something that we can get to and we knew early enough I think it's something we can consider the the point of me bringing it up today is we need to let families know look what the teacher is gonna be going on in two weeks right and people considering the year we've all had that last week of June in that first week into July 4th I think a lot of people are going

137to check out those two weeks and not be looking at emails so the reason I brought it up now rather than waiting two weeks was to make sure we kind of have the community still engaged and paying attention so it's a it's a big communication piece but if the best hopes in the world work out and we know how to open for a traditional school then this could be something to have another conversation about keep changing things back and forth families and on staff but the the reality is in August 31 start date is still relatively early I know not in Connecticut but in in some states where they still start after Labor Day it's still a very early start time okay very good I'm inflexible and open I just want to be careful not

138to chain take the rug out from people after we make one change in then another but but your your points while taking droids done is something we need to be thinking about the Labor Day is really late this year so it's starting on the Monday before Labor Day will be more natural for parents and families than starting a week and a half before Labor Day so I don't think that that bit of it's going to be too negatively receive it's a more normal end of the summer time okay I'm gonna go ahead and make a motion that we approve the changes to the 2021 school calendar to reflect the revisions recommended by the superintendent I'll second look and enjoy thank you all right any other discussion okay so all in favor all right thank you

139the votes unanimous thank you everyone and just know mrs. Graham Lee and I'll work on that tomorrow we'll get that out to families and teachers and the rest of the staff as soon as possible hopefully tomorrow afternoon ellipses smiling again I must have done something right all right okay so moving on we're getting into old business and we just have an update for the new school building project i doubt i talked to paul Traco today just just that you guys are aware in case you hear it sort of out in the in the community the NBC had just reported to the Board of Selectmen that the the project is a little over budget that's mostly due to the additional classrooms that we've had we've had to add to reflect the newer enrollment projections that we

140had and that was that really happened after this project had gone to referendum have been approved it's not a huge problem at the moment you know there are some there are contingencies that are built into projects of this size that need to sort of be sort of flushed out and you know mr. Chuck I was saying that he had wanted to wait to see how things go on bid day because right now the market is really sort of favorable and we might be able to sort of negate some of these overages before we sort of explore other options or things that we have to do but the big picture is that everyone agrees the Board of Selectmen in the MBC that the building really should be built using the current enrollment projections not the ones

141that we had originally communicated to the public when this project originally went out to referendum so so that that's pretty much it you know there's will as a board be receiving a presentation from Tecton on the 16th so that'll be during the MBC meeting and then we will vote on the culmination of design development phase at our meeting the following night so that's pretty much it Rose if I could add we the it's getting very real the building project in a exciting one I'll be meeting with mr. post and it's called one of the architects and the logistical folks to really walk the property with a principal lab Rochon Oh an assistant principal peps auskey next Tuesday morning to look at the the back of the property look at the bus drop-off area look at

142the playground where they're going to put in that second access road which will be the construction road during construction for all the equipment to be moved in now and really start to have those conversations up there eighteen months of construction what will the site look like how will we accommodate plus pick up the drop off parent pick-up and drop-off play areas safety so that really gets very real beginning on Tuesday mornings we're pretty excited about that and really looking forward to coming up with a with a plan that's going to be as least disruptive as possible to the site and exciting for the kids to see the project being developed over that year and a half I knew there are questions comments all right so on to three main points I was thinking about the

143top ten students and teacher recognition school start times will start and presentation and the revised school calendar yeah yeah the easiest three main points ever truly okay have any upcoming events we do ioke tomorrow first center elementary school we have tomorrow night sweet dreams with mrs. diamond to zoom story time with mrs. diamond their children that's at 7 p.m. the alphabet countdown to the year is ongoing students are sharing pictures and videos on flipgrid the links for those can be found in their Google classroom or mrs. diamonds announcements on Monday June 15th Tuesday June 16th and Wednesday June 17th our student belonging pick up there's a schedule that's been staggered by teachers and it was shared with families through email on Monday Monday June 15th is the art show Tuesday June 16th is the first

144grade play these are all virtual events obviously Wednesday June 17th is play date Thursday June 18th is the summer reading kickoff campout and Friday June 19th is the reverse parade dry and a schedule for that was shared with families on Monday through email as well huckleberry we also have the ABC countdown ongoing keep sharing on flipgrid the links are in the Google classroom streams Wednesday June 10th is the virtual science fair Thursday June 11th is the virtual Art Fair Monday June 15th Tuesday the 16th and Wednesday the 17th is student belonging pick up the schedule specific to classroom teachers was shared with families on Monday through email and on Thursday June 18th is huckleberries reverse parade from 10:00 to 12:00 that schedule is also shared with families on Mondays at whisk and here we have

145student belonging pickup starting next week with the 8th grade I'm Tuesday June 9th 7th grade on Wednesday June 10th 6th grade on Thursday June 11th and 5th grade on Friday June 12th specific details were shared with families on Monday through principal rundas email Friday June 12th we have the a 3d virtual dinner dance and Wednesday June 17th is the eighth grade moving up ceremony the specific specific details for that was shared with the eighth-grade families last Friday and at Brookfield High School we have the undergraduate Awards tomorrow night at 7 senior scholarship night Monday June 8th at 7 and senior athletic awards night Tuesday June 9th at 7 these events are all virtual and reliable live streamed and graduation is Saturday June 20th starting with a car parade meeting at whiskey near middle school beginning

146at 10:15 and starting at 11 they will head to BHS and graduation begins at 11:30 the specific details of that was shared with families last week and that ceremony will also be live streamed that's it I have a question for mark is there any information going out to the community about the the parade for the seniors like is there I mean other than like this you know I'm like I don't know if they live on whisk in here they can sort of come out on their front lawns or something yeah so you know the the parade route was really developed with chief Purcell obviously and Johnna minds dr. Breeland myself I'm talking about where we could go and what we could do in terms of publicity and letting getting it out in the community I

147haven't talked to the chief Percell about or the health department necessarily about marketing a parade i think part of the reason that the morale day parade was canceled obviously was because they're concerned about people gathering and too large of groups so i think they we have to err on the side of caution there would be my my guess about publicizing you know who comes out and then celebrates with the kids at the same time the routes gonna be published right it's it's out there because they're going right through the center through town so at 11:30 on at 11 o'clock on a Saturday so it'd be quite busy so you know cheaper sells talked about those things but I have a meeting with him end of the week which is coming sooner than I thought but

148we'll talk more about some of those things so and the other thing marks you and I haven't had a chance to connect keep yourself through whatever his means of communication is to residents he makes sure when there's parades and roads are gonna be blocked he does get that communication out there in terms of the encouragement piece in publicizing definitely we need to err on the side of caution I think between the chief the house opponent and mr. Shaw as mr. Dunn has these plans he's aware of what we're going to do you know he has his way of getting to more residents whereas we have the parent via emails and residents who signed up to do with us so that's the way definitely Rosa we can get the word out but we want to do

149that through our public health and officials and our authorities to make sure we're being careful how we encourage that considering what Martin talked about understandable I just wanted a comment to my award ceremony is not virtual the kids will come and pick up their awards as a drive through I just wanted to make sure that that was stated we got lawn signs for them that'll be all out on the grass in front of my office and we'll drive through with their parents and pick up their awards and their lawn signs to take home mark I had a question about the graduation will board members and staff be inside the auditorium or are we is it virtual for board members yeah that's something I'm going to follow up with John and with Rosa in terms of

150what as to there are pretty specific expectations in terms of what I can how many Pillai can actually have in the building you know from the point they enter at the gym through the long processional line that will exist at 15 feet apart you know I can have a maximum of 50 people in the building at that point so you know in terms of support staff and you know we're talking about what that's gonna look like and how many people I know I've had some everyone has volunteered to help which is fantastic I'm just trying to be mindful of putting together the this this not looking to exclude anybody but at the same time you know I want to be mindful of making sure we get we hit those Health Department expectations and limits you

151know so it's it's a good question Deb but I'm gonna follow up with John and Rosa probably beginning it next week to talk about that grant no Deb I wanted to say to add to what Mark said is you know it's a large school and so sometimes you work with dr. Sullivan and Paulie every our sanitarian and they have they have some creative ideas to how to approach following the executive order but being accommodating to the needs that we have so mm-hmm you know that's something we continue to do throughout this process while maintaining obviously the utmost safety standards we can so if board members weren't able to be in the gym let's say for the retarder corset processional could they be in the auditorium and watch that putting me outside when kids exit and

152be waving there so there's a lot of staging areas where we might be able to play though all that's that's what Mark's talking about when he says to kind of talk to dr. Sullivan myself and start to figure that out great and Mark will you send us zoom information about the undergrad Awards and senior awards yes so so those those will be broadcast right on the Brooke via the bps website so you can just go right to the youtube link that you would normally go to watch that I'm really lucky that Eric was able to help me out with that today and get set up so it's actually gonna be really easy to broadcast live so it'll just be me at the auditorium tomorrow night to give some semblance of a similar place that we've

153been to give the awards and then we'll just go through that way but yeah it'll be available on YouTube yep right starting at 7:00 o'clock so none of those are those aren't interactive in any way with the kids so it's not a it's not a zoom or something like that it's just a YouTube broadcast yeah it's a YouTube broadcast because the number I don't remember the ignitor the undergrad Awards you know I think to put in perspective I have the PowerPoint presentation here and just you know in multiple page multiple students on each page in terms of names I'm at 64 slides right now to get through this tomorrow so it's you know I have included some things that you'll you know if you watch tomorrow it's not just me running the whole thing which

154is nice there there will be you know voiceovers from the different department heads and people and teachers so that part's included so it's not just me I'm doing a very small portion of it like I usually do and letting you know the people that usually participate be the ones that you know give a lot wouldn't be able to be able to talk if you did the whole thing I know you're right and Mark I know we talked about it offline before this meeting and it's come up in this meeting earlier but really I do want to give you a huge shout out for everything that you've been doing to make this graduation you know a special memorable and unique experience for all the graduating seniors I know last week was particularly rough but we truly

155appreciate everything you do and we're so grateful to have you so thank you everything you're doing well thank you Deb you know part of the public service piece is you know and and the most everybody's emotional right now and I completely understand where they're coming from this is such a major focus and something that people are really want to have for their kids and you know I'm I've always said that I'm not so arrogant to think that you know my plan is the best plan and nobody else has in the input and so I was glad to be able to change things around you know within guidelines and make sure we're doing things and you know having the support of the board or and central office has been fantastic you know and each one of

156you either collectively I got a bunch of individual emails I think from every single person to the board so that means the world to me to to know that I have your support I really do appreciate as well so you know we we can continue to thank you you thank me and I'll just keep thanking you we can hang out for the next hour and you know Amy did you have anything else nope that was out anything else for anything tonight any comments questions Thanks all right so that we have an executive session after this so this will conclude our publicly broadcasted portion of the meeting and thanks for everybody for participating and it's been a good year hey Joe hi guys I make the motion Amy yeah we're not gonna you have to make

157the motion to go into executive session I'll move that the board enter into the executive session for the purpose of discussing superintendents evaluation on affiliated salaries and contracts okay thanks joy okay all in favor all right I okay thanks everyone we'll see you up in a little bit okay you