001today is august 20th 2020. uh mr oginski have a roll call please mr crippo here miss helen here here miss ham here ms harrigan here mr martelly here mr peregini here mr white here mr chair you have a quorum thank you everyone uh i asked that uh we stand for the pledge and jeff i assume we will display the flag as usual i will so i pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh fellow board members administration staff steve and i know more will be joining us too thank you so much for being here tonight uh especially steven moore for taking time out of your busy day to join us this evening we very much appreciate that for those watching again thank you
002i know mike will give us an idea of how many are watching tonight uh before we get into the agenda just a couple reminders that uh we are streaming via youtube live uh public can and should submit questions via email and the email address is cps cover 19 that's your seat uh the cheshire k12 that's ct.us we'll guess there's a correspondent section audience section in the agenda but as we go through the presentations i know carol and jeff are monitoring mailbox we'll try to get to all those relevant questions throughout the meeting but please don't be shy send in your questions we received some already um and for those that sent questions to the board or administration the last couple weeks on reopening uh administration has all those and i expect most of those began
003so after the course this evening so with that being said um our agenda we decided to do a couple couple things this evening one is you've heard quite a bit from the administration some members of the reopening team over the last couple months in particular about uh reopening options and plans for the schools and i know jeff and marlene team are going to take us through some updates to that we thought it'd be great too to have um uh representatives from help the front chest book out for the health district uh primarily as a number of questions we're receiving really comes down to protocol procedures uh contact tracing some other white scenarios that i know our health business will be working with with the administration on so um when maura joins us i know she'll
004be able to walk us through her presentation steve is here as well uh i i don't have any sports parents out there as we saw some uh back and forth or the last two weeks whether sports being played not played but um in lieu of that um you know we thought we thought having our date to help kind of walk through what a dana life of that might look like and may talk a little bit about some of the protocols and things that to consider so we have some esteemed colleagues tonight to help us through this journey that being said um jeff i'm gonna turn it over to you and i'll let you kick off the presentations under section two thank you tony uh you mentioned uh some of our guests tonight uh with maura
005running a little bit late i know how tight her schedule is these days uh i'll ask steve if it's okay with everybody to present first on some of the reopening [Music] with the the athletics for the fall and i know this is all subject to change ciac happens to be meeting this evening but i know steve will get that that too but uh mr trufone if you wanna present screen you can walk us through it please thank you jeff and thank you everybody as jeff mentioned uh there is a meeting going on as we speak at the ciac with department of public health i do have my other computer on because they said they will shoot out an email as soon as we get information so you may get it hot off the press as
006it comes comes up to us but what i'd like to do is present some information of questions that have been asked by me by parents and things that i've shared with athletes and coaches so far uh hopefully they'll answer some of your questions and and maybe prompt some other concerns that people may have that that we're addressing as well so i'll jump on here and share my screen with you can everybody see the screen there yes yes okay perfect okay so all right so what i'd like to do is just kind of give you an overview of what we have put in place so far and some of our concerns as we move along uh as as this season either comes about or or does not come about so uh we'll begin so the big
007question that i always get i probably get this asked about four or five times a day will there be high school sports we'll find out tonight uh so the ciac with along with the department of public health they're making the decision on a recommendation um and that meeting is taking place this evening an earlier meeting with ciac stated that we may get information tonight uh possibly tomorrow and of course i'll make that available to everybody as soon as we get that so another question is through this pandemic why would we want to continue sport activities uh there's a lot of reasons why obviously we realize that sport activities provide outlets for kids uh it helps with their social development probably the most important part of it is their social social emotional innovative their mental health
008teens will structure we found that they have shown an increase in depression anxiety and substance abuse university of wisconsin did a study in july 2020 and they found out that over two-thirds of high school teens without structure have shown an increase in these items of depression anxiety and substance abuse so we do want to offer these kids some outlet and if sports is an outlet then so be it so the ciac allowed us to set up a summer resocialization plan to get kids back into some type of resocialization with either their coaches and or their friends so we assembled cohorts starting early july and it was the purpose was to acclimate them back into sports back in the hot weather as well and also condition our athletes under coach's supervision it was optional it wasn't
009part of a team tryout and the good news is that with there were 39 000 athletes in connecticut that participated in this and there were no cases reported during the summer cohort training so that's good news so the cohort organization it keeps our numbers low they're easier to social distance there were no more than 10 or 15 athletes per cohort those athletes remained in their cohort once they were developed there was no crossover athletes could not change because they wanted to go with a friend or they couldn't make that night so they had to stay within that cohort uh every athlete there was recorded health status of each athlete and i'll get more into that and of course they needed parent permission sign off for a child to participate which also gave us access to
010their physical and given parents information as far as some of the guidelines that we would be doing to protect their their child what the ciac developed along with athletic directors is we did a self-reporting cohort so student athletes would report daily to their coach and the coach would record their current health status we would uh find out things about were they feeling feverish sore throat headache etc you can read those there were a list of things that we checked off for yes or no any yes that athlete was sent back home to their parents and their parent was contacted we kept all records and we're still keeping those records and the reason why is because it's a cohort should we have a case that does pop up positive we have that record of what kids
011were involved in that cohort of course any personal information is not disclosed with anybody it was all confidential so what are the responsibilities of each athlete they have to come to and from practice with a mask on they have to check in with their coach for their self-monitoring report they must bring a personal water bottle marked with their name on it i'm requesting that the bottle has a minimum of 32 ounces we're requesting them to come with a drawstring bag or a backpack whatever is available to them would like in that a towel a small sanitizer bottle their own personal personalized sanitizer bottle and also a spare mask i have additional masks and will keep those available for athletes should they need them and coaches have available masks as well they cannot share any items
012with other athletes it's important that our coaches really stress to our athletes that outside of the team we really want them to reduce this social contact with other kids their cohort is their team and if they really want to play sports they have to avoid going to any parties where there's a large group of kids where there's no social distancing taking place etc if they're feeling ill we do not want them at our cohort with the team there to notify the coach and all personal equipment whatever is brought must go home that night for daily cleaning and sanitizing and that's where parents can help us to make sure that their children are cleaning and washing their their clothes that they've worn to practice every day what about our coaches they have responsibilities as well they
013will always have a mask on in the presence of athletes they also have to have a personal water bottle we're asking them to bring a bag with a towel a personal towel for themselves a small sanitizer bottle for themselves as well and of course a spare mask they will supply a water jug or jugs for teams to replenish their bottles and only our coaches fill those jugs at times in the past maybe we had a manager or a team member fill up the the water jugs only a coach will handle the jug and only that coach only will take care of of the water jugs coaches will sanitize all items at the end of a practice or a game whether it's balls or shared equipment uh i've been working with vince masiana and rich clavette
014about getting sanitizing equipment so those are available to our coaches of course they will complete the self-screening of our athletes at the start of each session and our teams are divided by cohorts with coaches and the coaches will stick with those cohorts throughout the entire season so they are responsible for those 10 or 15 students and make sure that they are self-screening prior to the start of each session the nice thing about this is that we are doing a self-screening on a daily basis of students so i think that helps as far as school and not only uh sports but it's for a school as well those records would be kept throughout the season and of course coaches are not allowed to share any personal items with anyone none of their personal items as well
015if if a student does not have a mask they're not going to share a mask out of their pocket they'll have to go and get one of the newer masks also we're asking our coaches outside of their team we're asking them to reduce their social contact as well we want our coaches to stay healthy again if we're going to ask our students to be socially distant and stick within cohorts we're asking our coaches to do the same and also coaches are to remain home if not feeling well and notified the athletic office uh that's why we have assistant coaches that's why head coaches can fill in where assistants are missing etc what are responsibilities for masks master not required when an athlete is participating in a drill during practice any conditioning activities aerobic or anaerobic
016and of course during a contest they're more than welcome to wear a mask if they want to but they do not have to when they have to wear a mask is coming to practice and leaving practice so as they leave back to their vehicle or home they should have a mask on if they're sitting on the bench or a seat if they're in a team meeting on the sidelines standing there they must have a mask on sorry i jumped ahead there folks so and coaches and managers are going to be wearing a mask at all times so how do we enforce all this i've met with our fall coaches on numerous occasions so far and and they're all in agreement of what's going on they want the season as much as anyone else coaches are
017responsible to enforce all mandates and we call them mandates these aren't recommendations these are mandates they need to enforce the mandates for social distance masks when masks are required make sure the teams are properly hydrated and monitoring the health of the team sideline management is just as important of everything else that's going on so when kids are on the sideline we have to make sure that they are social distancing if you stretched your arms out that is six feet approximately about three feet in arms so if kids are stretching their arms out their three foot arm and my three foot arms has given us about six feet so now your side lines are no longer 20 yards wide they may stretch from 20 from 10 yard line to 10 yard line depending on how many
018kids we have there but they are going to be social distancing i am attending team virtual meetings to re reiterate mandates to parents and athletes recently i just attended a football meeting where we had probably uh 95 percent of our athletes and just as many parents and we were able to go over all these rules and regulations i will also visit practices make sure and observe mandates make sure they're being observed my supervision or anyone who's filling in for me at all of our home contests i will constantly be meeting with coaches to review any updates as they come through either through the ciac or through chesapeake and parents can really be assistants to us uh as i mentioned when those articles come home every night make sure that the athlete is wiping down their
019equipment making sure that they're changing their clothes that they're going to wear for the next day washing what they brought home that night and of course any athlete that does not follow these mandates our coaches are going to send them home if they're non-compliant or contact their parents so our coaches are pretty serious about what's going on and we've noticed that the feedback from our cohorts saw our athletes so there's a good foundation in place already we have created a sports advisory so it consists of district administrators our school nurse athletic trainer school physician myself and coaches are represented on it we will meet regularly once the season uh begins uh should it begin and during this season as as well and the purpose is just to maintain constant communication among the leadership make sure
020we address any concerns as they arise because things are constantly in flux and say and keeping everybody informed on the best practices to help our athletic programs question always comes up has come up about transportation first of all our contest the league has regionalized schedules to cut really cut down on travel time so we are going to be playing schools around us and schools that we've played before in the past that are just over 30 40 miles we will not be playing them our schedules have been reduced the season has been shortened so we're playing a reduced season a shortened season everything will be pretty much over by november 15th and unfortunately if football does does go on there's no thanksgiving day game transporting athletes uh we will transport athletes per our district busing guidelines
021whether that requires certain amount of seats being taken masks will be worn on buses parents may opt to drive their athletes to and from contests and this question comes up uh quite a bit with athletes they cannot drive themselves to to and from contests so it's either a parent or they're taking the bus that's going to limit also the size of teams that we take just because the number of seats that are available on buses we will probably most likely not be using locker room um but at times we will have to use a locker room uh and it will be minimized example would be our swim team they start practice at 2 30 that's just when the pool is available there is no locker room at the pool so they will have to change
022into their bathing suits at the high school we will make sure that a locker room is available for them and that locker room will be marked where they can and cannot sit and space them apart in that locker room there's no overnight storage in locker rooms and we are going to ask our athletes we are sending all of our students home other than those teams that may have to use practice that may have to practice right after school such as our swim team the other team that will practice right after school will be our cross-country team only because we don't want our athletes on the road late at night so every other athlete we're going to send them home they're going to come back and they're going to be dressed for their sport and they
023will leave and not leave any equipment here so all clothing equipment must be taken home and cleaned that night what about spectators so this is always a hot uh question deck that comes up and i get asked this daily as well right now spectators are not allowed in any indoor event we are not allowing any people inside the school building other than students and faculty so therefore we we don't want to bring in spectators into our buildings in the evening as well ciac is recommending those spectators at any outdoor contest but districts may develop their own plan so the southern connecticut conference we are looking to develop a common plan whereas if we were traveling to amity high school our spectators will have the same option there as they would at art school if all
024of us decide no spectators then we're hoping that the entire league does does the same because of that what we did is uh i had installed what they call national federation of high school pixel out camera we have one on our game field and this summer we put one into our main gym basically it's a camera that follows action it's a high-tech device it's um it'll allow movement to take place without the camera moving it's pretty cool so parents can sign up and and join into that and view all of our contests live as they happen if they sign up for that any school that does have the pixelot camera they can watch that game as well so if we're playing hamden at hampden they have pixel art cameras if they are signed up to
025view it they can watch games at hampden high if we're playing there i'll get information out to parents uh if and when um our fall season does begin so again i i information changes almost on a daily basis we update the high school website under athletics with information uh as it comes in we send emails to parents who have registered their their child for support so far as it becomes available we're sending email updates to parents and we do ask that parents remain in contact with their child's coach they have a lot of questions and a lot of concerns like most parents do with with their children not only athletes but just kids going to school and also i ask parents contact the athletic department i'll be more than happy to meet with parents uh
026i'd be more than happy to go on a virtual meet with them whatever need be just so we can kind of make sure everybody's on the same page if and when the season moves along and we're just trying to keep our kids safe so that's kind of a summary of what i had there i'm not sure if anyone has any questions i hope it helped answer some questions as we went along so what i'll do is steve thank you definitely help i know some questions uh tim had one followed by faith so we got tim oh um yeah thank you tony uh i'm just looking at the questions um yeah was it was you had mentioned there was uh there was a summer program and there was nothing reported during it was there any testing
027done during it we did not do any testing so i don't know if individual um students were tested uh we wouldn't get that information but the ciac didn't report any information to us of any positive cases it within the cohorts okay did sorry did the ciac do any testing no they did not okay um in general you're talking about fewer kids playing it sounds like because you said you're gonna have limited space on buses so you're going to be going with like a varsity team maybe a jv team but you're probably talking is that fair to say you probably have fewer kids playing anyway or at least going to away events you're right tim that that's what happened so our travel teams would be smaller okay our varsity teams will be smaller and what i
028mean by that is normally example we may dress a freshman jv team to attend the varsity game that would not take place we don't want all of our athletes along the sidelines if at all possible so probably just be a varsity team traveling to a varsity event so kind of people's numbers below right now our numbers uh that have signed up are pretty good um they're a little below average right now but of course the season hasn't begun and school has begun and a lot of people will probably sign up and register as we get closer okay and one more question i don't know if this is for you steve or for jeff i actually i basically asked jeff this question like a month ago but i want to revisit it um so at the
029beginning of this year there were several families contacted me about high school coaches lacking permits one thing led to another and it was obvious that at least one specific coach had not been permitted for eight of the past 10 years for several different reasons with that in mind i recently had a resident tell me that he had visited the state department of education website and looked up our current head coaches he mentioned that probably half of them were not listed on the state website as being permitted suggesting that the other half are not permitted how can parents be confident that the high school coaches are properly permitted right now tim i can tell you that all of our coaches going into the fall season are probably permitted some of our winter and spring coaches will
030most likely have to update their first aid and cpr in which i do so i do that once the season begins and we'll make sure that those permits are updated as well we've developed some guidelines to to follow those um they're in place so i think we're in pretty good shape okay when you when you i would also add that when you look on the state certification website which isn't just coaches any certified person in connecticut it asks you to enter the district sometimes when you enter the district district name they don't show up if it wasn't keyed in if you leave it blank sometimes they do show up it's kind of finky that way for teachers and administrators for everybody okay okay um and the last thing i'm just going to put out there
031and this probably would be better if maura was here is i'm looking for a way to just reconcile five months of social distancing with extracurricular activities that have contact it's i can't figure that out in my mind it just doesn't make any sense and and i appreciate everything i want to say that steve i appreciate everything that you just went through and it sounds it sounds like really good things that you're doing but to me the bottom line is contact or no contact and and that's difficult for me to to figure out how that would work we're all um you know this is all new to all of us yeah so uh we all are really trying to help each other guide through this of course we want to do it in the safest way
032for kids if we can offer them extracurricular activities so be it um so a lot of times it's baby steps tim as you know no i know and i think there's i mean i think there's certain things you can do i ran cross-country with with rob schaefer in high school and it's always crowded right at the front of the line you could actually space it out more than that it wouldn't a lot of the runners wouldn't like it but you could do certain things um that could that could improve the situation i think so that's a great example so each sport committee has come up with new guidelines under covet at least for the fall example for cross country you have to have a minimum of a six-foot path for uh cross-country races our current
033path our home meet is not six feet wide so we are looking to change it we may be running our home meets at bartland park we've already walked it we can utilize chapman the chapman field over there so that's a perfect example you're only allowed to run certain amount of kids at a certain time they're going to be spaced so those are good points you know each sport is going to have its own unique change that's going to take place this year okay thank you thanks tim steve uh faith and i think adam after and then and but we'll start with faith okay thanks steve for your presentation um question in your summer program was their face-to-face head-to-head contact or were they all socially distanced no it was all social distance it was just conditioning
034so there was no skill work taking place that's thanks and so specific um you you said you're trying to develop a team can you give us an estimate with specific if this sounds like an oxymoron specific numbers what are we looking at especially for football because six feet um with you know even 40 players because yet you got offense defense and all that times two teams you've got to have a lot of space for social distancing how are you going to do that in a game you do it's um games games will be interesting you know that that's something that's a concern of people because you've got 11 on 11 you're not going to have social distancing per se between everybody but what we can control is we can control our sidelines we can control
035the number of kids that are just standing around so as i mentioned before varsity teams will be practicing varsity jv will be practicing jv that separates now you're taking a team of 60 kids and you're breaking it down into probably 30 kids so you're going to spread them out a little bit more so practices can be a little bit more controlled than contest and i think those things right now are being discussed at the ciac office okay and then just sorry um if uconn is calling its football season and what it what message does that send uh us and i understand and the need for social emotional welfare but if we are doing going through hoops in school um i think we need to take a real serious look at what we're doing after school
036as well it's a good question faith you know and and i'm not going to disagree with that um the one thing that we we know about colleges versus high schools with colleges kids are coming from all over the country and a lot of those states that they're coming from are quarantined states for us our kids are here in the same town uh that's why we're trying to regionalize games we're trying to keep kids playing the same people a little bit different but there's there's still some concerns i i i'm not going to argue that okay thanks thanks faith and i think you're recognizing that uh maura is here maura thank you for joining us this evening we're just uh talking about the sports part of the presentation so again we appreciate you taking time out
037to see and we know you're very busy these days so thanks for being here um adam you had a question um i did have a question but now that moore's here i think i'll wait to ask her because it was about testing because it the governor gave some new information today that i thought would be relevant to athletics so i'm not sure how to ask it to so i guess i'll i'll wait to ask more to see if maybe she presents something about it and i'll i'll i'll hold my question thank you can you hear me yes okay sorry i apologize that i'm late and i'm sorry if i missed something important i just wanted to give a very fast five-minute update as many of you know the health department has been working in covid
038mode pandemic since december starting with the cheshire academy and the their students with international i want to say that through all of this through may march april may june we've had many different businesses um organizations have openings at different times so just like the school is opening we had to do that with the salons we had to do that with the food we had to do that with the camps and i will tell you that you are not like unlike anybody else except you're much larger and there's a lot more to it but it's kind of the same thing in my eyes um that i'm sitting here as your guidance i am not dr uh fauci um but i am uh you know i i took epidemiology classes um but i'm not an epidemiologist but
039i've been in public health for a long time and i understand the mitigation and i understand the studies that help if we do these mitigations lower the risk of people spreading the disease and contacting the disease so we i have been working with all these different people all through the different steps schools have been a little challenging because you have your own issues with your sizes and your infrastructures but i want you to know that working with your nurses and your medical director is not like on nothing i've done already i you know opening up camps was very challenging i had to sit there and hold holiday hill which is a very large camp and they were having students without masks so that was very challenging we went through five or six moments where we
040thought we had a close call but we didn't and i explained earlier to dr solon that they were kind of our guinea pigs we were going to see how they did and they fared really well i will tell you sports when it started opening up we were very hopeful we walked every time there were sector guidelines we went through all of them with every single agency that was going to enforce them i want to remind all of you that you know i have three towns three different school systems three different everything so and only there's only eight of us so it was a lot for me to digest so i am not an absolute expert on necessarily the cheshire public schools plan but i read it to make sure that the public health mitigation was
041present and there because we know that if that plan has that we are going to be much more successful and having gone through and having these camps go through and we've been having really great results now i will say in the last three months we have seen an uptick of cases in the ages of 20 to 29. these are our college kids coming home not following the rules you know i'm assuming i'm not out there chasing them down um but we saw that tick go up that's where my department is going to be assisting almost hand to hand holding the school nurse's hands as we walk through each time some something happens um but sorry um i forgot where i was going with that but we have developed these relationships with the school nurses we've
042provided lots of information and lots of guidance to make sure that you are implementing things to be successful um we did recently have oh i know i was going sorry so our camps did really well now on sports it was a little different for me i have three towns so i have a lot more people doing different types of sports a lot more private um i did have an outbreak um i had a child in a camp in sports camp who did test positive being that we know what to do it was very clear to me i needed to do those 25 people that were in their cohorts that's why cohorts are so important to keep them small because those 25 people then had to be quarantined also the person also played on another league
043which gets a you know let's let's face it a lot of these kids that do that do that and we did spread the disease did spread so that is why there's been some hesitation um with the sports i'm gonna be honest with you i know cic i'm sorry steve i wasn't paying attention i wasn't here for your presentation um but i know that the department of public health had issued the letter on the 13th with their guidance after cic ci caic had presented theirs so right now we're waiting for them to come into agreement as to what they are supporting to happen and i would imagine that's coming out in the next day or two and i know that each of my three towns have taken a pause we need to wait and see what's
044going on yes our numbers are low but the goal of our numbers keeping low is to get these kids back into school that's been our ultimate goal is to get these kids back into to school and hopefully then functioning and keeping these numbers low until we can get a vaccine and i'm very hopeful that through my conversations with cdc and dph that we're going to be doing vaccine uh our critical workforces hopefully by mid when uh end of uh this year so just wanted to give you a little background mark again thank you so much for that just uh again and be after the board administration team thank you for joining us tonight we uh we all know trespass playing a huge role in all this and we understand that uh you're silly you know
045you're not dr falchi but definitely you know um a um a soothing voice in our town and uh i i know maura a little bit just from the food services business has a great reputation in there and as well as this so thank you for being here uh and giving us that it helps a lot i steve i thank you for for the details and presentations um i have a quick question i'll check the chats before i run but i'll get back to adam and tim in a second so you know more touch upon one thing which is you know i can imagine steve for you and jeff and team and you know the the the disconnect between the ciac and the department of public health we saw the last couple weeks you know with
046one coming out one guidance then you know not really being on the same page is doing a wrench with a lot of school districts plans you know we're all in a wait and see mode i know some other school districts postpone sports some are canceled they seem to make individual decisions um but it sounds like i'm listening to a presentation that if the cic gives the go-ahead then we're ready to go and i guess my question is for you know for jeff really in in uh speed is you know should the caac come out with guidance that uh it's okay to start fall sports and by some miracle the department of public health agrees with that are we good are you guys gonna be supporting the decision to move us forward what you know where's
047you know i haven't heard from our leadership team yet um on this thought stars i know they're also dealing with constant changes in direction would i unite support sports moving forward if ciac did yeah i would want to work through maura and our local health professionals um rather than just take ciac guide on it um i think it would have to be a collaborative decision at the local level after the state says after the the governing body says it's appropriate or not right um for the fall season no i as soon as much and i want folks to get an impression that uh you know that's the case but it's glad to hear i mean we're all in that mode we're not alone um is there any thoughts given i know one of the things
048that the department of health put out there i was last week was you know postpone or wait till the spring is there any advantage to us for waiting for spring for this point or is that is going to depend on the situation as it evolves i know so tony the whole jeff excuse me if you don't mind please take please a lot of that is based upon the fact that we know the vaccines are coming and we are very hopeful that um in new haven county i have to vaccinate 11 000 first um critical workforce that is in phase one when phase two comes out that is the general public now they haven't given us details of how that's going to be implemented but that is when your general public your kids are going to
049be getting their vaccination the vaccination is a two dose vaccine and so it will be time but they have been providing me information that they have several vaccines in in in works yeah no i uh thank you more for that i i i work in the drug specialty sector uh most ways to data and i know there's a lot of there's quite a few promising vaccine works and you know we always talk about that you know until vaccine has been tested and administered um and the time it takes to do that you know it's going to be a pro-on situation but so again i'm not trying to put it on the spot i uh this is the first time as a board and administrator a chance to talk about sports so i know steve said
050that cic is discussing tonight maura will see what the department of health comes back with in the next hopefully couple days uh i appreciate the in-depth analysis and i i know the board has gotten many questions from sports parents and not sports parents and i think a lot of the questions tonight we will have is really around the monitoring and enforcement of whatever we do be in the classroom or on the field and so one last question for you steve i i'm glad to hear that i i'm not surprised the coaches are you know taking it seriously i know they they're offering the best interest of our kids i'm glad they're behind the protocol and procedures but how's who's gonna monitor what's happening during the practices and gains like if i know the coaches of
051mine the players but who's mine i think the coaches who's monitoring the gates to stop people from coming in that shouldn't be i mean how do we that's the question i've been getting is you know how do we keep eyes on this and this even goes into the classroom which we'll talk about later but the monitoring aspect of it how are you going to you know keep grabs on whether people are following guidelines or not great question tony you know it i'll be busy there's no question about it you know a lot of responsibility is on me um and of course that's one of our concerns with spectators that it's easy to say no no spectators therefore we're not monitoring who's coming in um we know that you have your sport junkies that you're not
052going to be able to keep them away they'll be hiding in the bushes so those are things that as a league we are constantly meeting and discussing of what are the best options for that not every school has the ability to close off their facility um people can walk through our woods as you know to get to our field so um those are those are obstacles i think that we're gonna have to address as as we get closer and closer if in fact we do have a season got it thank you steve uh uh adam you had many questions i know tim has a question but we're still in a sports aspect so for those watching i'll i'll try and limit uh my my initial volley of questions uh to uh and they're all tomorrow
053obviously um so today uh the governor at his four o'clock briefing i mentioned gave what i thought was a fairly shocking statistic it seemed like three weeks ago or during the height of when when florida and texas were going crazy that the turnaround time to get a test in connecticut was 14 days today the governor said that if i have it right here that 70 that that the average is now two days and that 75 is around one day turn around for a test if that is true should all of our students and teachers be tested do we have that capacity to set a baseline before school begins okay so i can answer that because i myself was tested during that time and yes it took me 10 days and that was basically because all
054of the labs were directed to prioritize the hot states okay my son was tested the day before last right here in cheshire to go back to school and he got it back within two days um so in that respect i think that things have kind of calmed down a little bit and we're slowly getting labs to start because honestly there was a hiatus when that happened um in this in the state that the health directors were going crazy that we cannot do correct contact tracing and stop the spread when we have such a long delay so we did have a very large loud voice to get that back so i'm very happy to say that we are back where we should be now as far as testing everybody goes we will i will tell you
055that there is not enough reagents out there we are still low i i sorry but it is the way it is um so i i we've been saying yelling that there's not enough testing since march um we need more um we need more fast but the problem of it is is that there's things coming out with all the different testing medias so the most accurate ones that they really want us to do is that um where you go to the actually like the drive-in and you're getting a nasal swab um the rapid tests are right now what the cdc has changed that if you get a rapid test and it's negative that's a presumable so you need to then go get another pv sorry i'm forgetting the names um go through the regular drive through
056and get a nasal swap so as much as we've been pushing a lot more for the rapids they're still not accurate and we still don't have enough testing medium so that is what is happening i just want to add one little thing adam today so for what it's worth more you might appreciate this so my daughter's going to fairfield university all the students before they moved in had to take a mail-in saliva based test what they all did actually took us sending thurs they got the results monday came out great tuesday fairfield notified all parents to disregard that lapse test results they lost faith in them and that uh during the move-in day specifically all students they get the nasal test would result within 15 minutes so it's kind of goes to show you that
057you know it's still evolving um but yeah i don't envy the testing scenario yeah we all know the testing scenario has not been been perfected um and we are that we're doing the best we can and the still main thing that they really want people to do is that if you have symptoms please get tested got it we'll get a little bit of that later mark thank you for adam back back to you um and so uh my second question is so since we won't be able to set a baseline um and i know there's been a lot of chatter you know i i i guess i it's just i guess my job to to read facebook as it is tony and all the rest of us to get a pulse on on the community
058um all of the the you know you see on the news all the all the recent studies are saying that the now the kids who are below the age of 10 or through the age of 18 or whatever can carry a a larger viral load than even an adult can and that but they're not sure if they can spread it or not and i'm just wondering if the studies if you're aware i'm sure you're aware of all the same literature and you probably have access to much better stuff than i do um is that are those cases where the the children were wearing masks as like our students are going to be i i will tell you adam unfortunately i don't know that specific study um i've just had so much that i have to
059rely sometimes on my experts at dph and they haven't really updated us on that remember this is a novel disease this is very new and the studies are happening now um we learned a lot from h1n1 and a lot of the lessons and the recommendations are coming from that time but it is still new and we don't know a lot so i can look it up for you and get back to you but i just don't know that specific study okay yeah i was just more concerned that you know because just wondering what the context is because if if all the kids are supposed to be wearing masks and it's supposed to you know decrease the the spread by 90 or whatever you know all these other demonstrations are showing then i'm just wondering if
060we're in a better position than we think we are um that's all i'm wondering there i have one more question but i'll wait i'll let others go and i'll come back uh tim had a question and i'll ask another board member thanks tony um yes i just i just want to say to be clear on this is that um i'm skeptical about sports moving uh contact activities moving forward at this time i with regard to the ciac i appreciate what jeff said um they have their own priorities and they're not necessarily the priorities of the cheshire public schools they may be aligned or they may not be um so my question for you steve is when do you expect contact activities or close proximity activities would start and i say this simply because so my
061question really relates to we're back to school on september 11th and it seems to me that you know we we want to stagger these things and see where we are this is kind of what i was hearing for maura if we had some time to know where we are whether that's two weeks three weeks four weeks make a decision somewhere into the future do we have a flare-up as soon as we get back because you know somebody's older brother was off to college and now they're back because school got closed there in that state or whatever it is so when would you expect contact activity to start or has it already i mean it i think tim that that's what's being decided tonight i know that the the department of public health is looking to
062start sports two weeks after school begins to let schools open up and so what is that date because schools there are schools starting on different dates when when sports if they do start up there's a three-week cohort period where we're slowly going to increase the time uh that cohorts are meeting and also increase the amount of kids within that cohort so what we'll start doing is start combining cohorts as we go along so you're slowly bringing the team together and creating a new cohort and of course the goal at the end is to eventually play a contest so it's probably once you start if and when sports start it's probably three to four weeks out from when that actually begins and in that period of time we're able to really monitor what's going on if
063we start to have setbacks as maura mentioned if we start to see some flare-ups it's going to back it's going to just back down or shut down so the goal here isn't to win championships you know i know i've talked to kids about that the goal is to give them an experience in their in their athletic choice that they they really like if we can't do it safely we won't do it okay so you're saying that uh games or meets whatever the whatever it might be that they would start three to four weeks after the 11th or the activity or the like contact activity would start three to four weeks afterwards three to four weeks uh actually three weeks after the start of when the ciac and department of public health say we can start
064if in fact we could right okay so that would be the scrimmage that would be your first contest etc as a team okay okay okay all right thank you austin thank you uh any other questions from board members on sports uh steve you're certainly welcome to stay um and again i want to thank you for coming this evening putting the presentation together bearing with us all these questions uh you know we're just we really support our you and our our administration and our educators and getting a safe school opening whether it's we're opening schools or sports activities we're just trying to be very um thorough because we do get a lot of questions and we're trying to funnel these into the folks and i hope folks that are watching if you're just tuning in to
065the meeting we're almost an hour into it uh we just covered uh sports as well as the school opening steve took us to a great presentation of all the protocols and procedures i'm not going to recap or being said but uh jeff i did get asked already if uh if it's possible meeting to have any presentations available for the public i know steve mentioned that a lot of materials sports uh website and uh we'll make that information available in case folks want to revisit that steve thank you jeff how do you see this going forward i don't know if moore has a presentation to give do you want to talk about school you're opening maura wanted to share um just a few items and then i know you and the public had some questions for
066her so we'll you know facilitate that and then we can move on i i assume your your voice is well rested right now for now right yeah it's nice to take the break anyway more it's all yours when you're ready so really i thought that was my five minutes yeah what i gave originally so i already gave my presentation um i will be honest with you i i i'm more here to answer your questions um if i wanted to start talking about covid in our experience we would be here for no you know we're confident that more it's you know we're we're trying to funnel a lot of and you're getting these things i'm sure you're getting the same questions too i'll start off with one since you asked um i know um as a
067parent of my daughters i'm going to junior at the high school and my senior daughter has graduated and i still still very much invested in chester public schools my daughter's going in and they get the email uh from cheshire high school that you know we're going to be able to pick up thermometers they'll take temperatures one of the questions i get asked a lot is why are we not checking temperatures uh at school when kids arrive and i i know there's some back and forth in that is there a reason why it's not worthy to check temperatures at school and kids walk in or uh well i'm going to give you a little background in the fact that when this first started we were really using thermometers and basing people's temperatures as the main issue
068because at that time that was the top illness symptom it isn't anymore um especially amongst kids it's not so that is why we got the thermometers and we distributed them to the schools and the department of public health had really recommended looking at the data that we really didn't need to base it on that symptom that temperature because the kids symptoms were different so that's really why the temperatures were taking off now we're still doing that in different places it gives people a sense of security but it's not really an accurate especially is your thermometer been calibrated is it a you know there's a lot of variables in this so we are just really emphasizing that the parents really should be knowing the one thing we really want to emphasize is that if your child
069is not feeling well your child should not be going to school that's really the message and a strong message that we need to be sending to the parents so we're going to give you that thermometer but you know for you to check your child but also we want to make sure that the parents really understand their children's symptoms and we want to make sure that when they come in and if they get a tummy ache or if they're not feeling well there's still other viruses going around everyone uh it's all you know we didn't just uh only be exposed to covid viruses we still have other viruses around with mimicking symptoms and we're going to be in flu season uh right around the corner with with the same exact symptoms so it's really getting to
070know your child and knowing when to keep your child home thanks mara before i go on andrew you had a question mark how many confirmed cases do we have in cheshire now is it higher now than it was in the beginning of the outbreak or i can tell you that in the last three months um i'm sorry i don't have the exact data with me but in the last three months we've had over um 99 cases um i i wanted to see the trends and if you want to go on to chesapeake's facebook page or web page you can see that the trends have clearly been steadying down since our peaks were in april um but we've been a pretty steady five to ten case new cases a week so even as businesses have reopened
071sports and camps have gone on the cases have gone down uh they've stayed steady if you go look since may through now we have been pretty much staying low we are following the rest of the state great thank you thanks sam any any other board members questions for maura so far uh faith um um just some historical just to help me put this in perspective um what is the most common form of transmission is it just public to public family to family what's going on can you tell well i can tell you that we've had over 400 cases and i can tell you we interview everybody can i just stop you that's 400 for all three towns correct yes yes can we deal with just just cheshire specific that's really hard for me to say
072because i just listen to me for one minute if i can just start from there because i will say that about 90 percent of those cases had some connection to medical people so it so regardless if it's cheshire wilkin or prospect majority of them when you start digging down as to where they came in contact with someone that they have some connection to some medical person now not all of them um but i would say that i only have about maybe five percent that have no clue where they were who they were exposed to okay or where they got it all right and so um so it's a medical it seems to be a medical transmission um we were in school for 10 weeks before we finally shut down and you're saying too that in
073december they were actually seeing cases and that's what i'm reading too is they think it was there probably late december beginning in january so we went almost 10 plus weeks can you trace any of those um in 80 you know and cheshire we had 83 cases is there any way to trace any of those back to a school related to cps related infection either through students or teachers there's no way because you don't know who your cases are okay i've just been trying to allay you know our first concern our first cases didn't occur until march 25th and schools were already down to two weeks by then right yeah i don't know you know we were not prioritizing at that time on children we were seeing it big time in the elderly and the nursing
074homes in mostly nursing homes that did not have the equipment the ppe to stop the infection well we had a we were in a very dire situation where we did not have enough ppe not in there not in the hospitals it was all over okay and then do we have a number at which point we will close our schools down is it one case is it five cases ten i mean i read what the governor has sent in terms of guidelines what does that translate to we don't have that data or they have not provided us that guidance at this point um so i i i don't know that answer yet all right thank you yeah let me think about it more i'm glad the answer that and faith you brought that up because uh
075the state department of education did publish an addendum i i was number four number seven but it talked about uh and jeff knows more than i do on this but talked about how to handle situations when there is a case or someone showing a symptom but they haven't released anything yet on non-one and so i you know again for folks watching i know that's probably the top three questions we get is at which point you know does the school decide to close down is it the entire class is it we just we don't have that guideline yet um no but that is why the the importance of these cohorts you want to keep these small cohorts and make sure that everybody is following the public health mitigation strategies washing their hands um keeping six feet
076apart wearing their masks you know we know that if these mitigation strategies are implemented the rates are the chances the probability is lower that they will you know there will be at lower risk for contracting great thanks um adam had a question um yeah so that's kind of the buzzword is cohorts and so that unfortunately leads me to this this question of so it appears that in the elementary school and in the middle school schools um that cohorting of a sounded like a being tuning 20 25 or you know whatever class precise is at the elementary school and a class and the cohorts i guess if they've come up with the middle school where they're keeping passing and re-passing down uh especially to elementary school and i guess to a minimum at the middle school
077so then that leads me to even at a 50 occupancy at the high school where there still will be hundreds of children in the halls passing at what was it was it three or four periods a day i i i forget exactly um uh with all those kids intermingling because it's not like you're gonna take one cohort and march them down the hallway to their next location or anything um how is that going to work since we're stressing cohorting and that does not seem to be possible at the high school well mary i i'm going to push in a spot but i know mary sent out uh communication to this this evening to all the parents in chester high school detailed some of those numbers i don't know if mary if you want to talk
078a little bit about the what that and if put some color to it that that's one of the reasons why we one of the central reasons why we moved to a cohort i'll get into my presentation or move to a hybrid model um we have you know 1 365 students uh bringing 50 in puts us roughly in in the high 600s uh so just to answer your question specifically adam when when we do have students passing with 50 of students in i'd be moving half of that half of the school population so i'd be sending moving 341 students to their next class in an alphabetical rotation that's why it was essential to have four class periods and a block schedule model so that we would have time um and could extend our passing time so
079we could split those groups further as we move students through the hallway and have a chance of keeping them separate our hallways are 11 feet wide um so it really made the thought of all 1300 plus kids plus a couple hundred faculty if they all need to move um extremely challenging uh and next to impossible to to cohort i don't know if you want me to get into more um well so in essence then dr gad um you are kind of you are breaking up groups and moving them around or at least staggering the timing so that you can achieve some form of isolation as the population moves around the building and that is so that would be my interpretation correct okay great well i feel a little better about that i guess uh thank
080you absolutely um andrew got a question sure i'm not sure um who could answer this one um it's kind of a specific question uh that fellow middle school parents have asked me understanding that the dodd teams will be cohorted by groups of 20 or so within um where the teachers will rotate will those students also be cohorted based on their athletics based on ciac's decision tonight can uh address that question uh first of all right now at the middle school level most all the schools that we play against uh have already gone to an intramural program we have decided to postpone all uh activities at the school after school activities until october 1st so at this point uh we won't have any after-school activities at dodd that are going to be occurring in person but
081just virtually for the time being then after october after act we'll make a decision later in september um once you know we'll have a lot more information on the ciac at that point we'll have a lot more information how school opening is gone what the data looks like and i think we'll make a more educated decision toward the end of september rather than right now got it thank you sure thank you andrew um tim thanks tony so everyone here at the meeting including uh people watching on youtube just so you know i actually have a work meeting a paid work meeting at 8 30 so i'm gonna have to leave i don't know if i'll be able to come back or not but i will have to leave at least for a little while more
082a question for you generally speaking based on what you know about the cps plan right now which is again generally elementary and dodd a full reopen high school a hybrid reopen are you comfortable not necessarily thrilled with it but are you comfortable with it that we should be moving forward with it you're on mute more oh yeah you're a mute sorry there have been studies done from back from h1n1 that looked at when that was occurring and they looked at cohorts and practicing public health mitigation strategies and they showed in those studies that they were able to keep the incidence low so as long as we are doing that and following the cdc guidance and doing the best that we can which we are i mean those plans i went through and made sure that
083all those strategies i've been meeting with everyone talking to them staying up to date with the nurses i really feel comfortable um going with the model that you guys have chosen where one to eight is going full time and the older kids uh the high school kids are doing hybrid i i no one said this was going to be perfect nothing has been perfect through this pandemic there is nothing normal about this time but it is the best practice for this known from experience i can't say it is foolproof it's not perfect believe me i'd rather not have it you know but it is what it is and i know that if we need to really emphasize to the parents and to the students the reasonings why we are doing this and if they adhere
084to it we should be okay we did that it's already been proven look at my salons i haven't had any outbreaks in my salons look at my camp i kept very close tabs with holiday hill we did not have one camper so and if we practice this and practice it and practice it practice makes perfect thank you thank you maura um actually i'm going to skip ahead to ann and i'll go back to adam so ann if you have a question you're up yeah i do and this question is probably for jeff um so in our do we have plans that if an outbreak were to be identified in one school does that necessarily mean that we would across cps close things down or would we deal with that one community first yeah i think
085that's a great question and i um in education uh and often in life we like to be able to have a real clear black white if then sort of scenario there's definitely comfort in that unfortunately this is a situation that has wild ambiguity so if asmara was suggesting a student was participating in some out of state sports situation you know thursday through sunday and came back it doesn't have to be sports it could be anything theater or whatever they come back and they realize that they're sick but they've been there with kids from various different buildings that's going to be a much different scenario than if it was i visited one person and then you know i got sick here and i could i could pinpoint what happened i was at a hospital or something
086you know the this is where um maura's team and our team and families and the community will have to work closely together to identify the circumstances and make good judgments about what has to happen next um and we're not going to take chances and you know unfortunately we had to adjust the high school graduation because there was too much ambiguity to feel comfortable moving forward and and you know to be ensure that we were safe we knew there was a positive case um at least one um and perhaps others so you have to move you have to be be sensible about it but we'll work together as a team to figure that out thank you jeff i wrote down that quote wild ambiguities yeah um i'm gonna skip adam again catherine sorry adam um i
087just had a question for maura um you know i think that there are some concerns or questions about the plan as it relates to the adult staff in the schools teachers and and other adults in the buildings and you know from my understanding of the plan i think that we've sort of contempl you know we've we've paid attention to that as well it's not just um safety of the students but i didn't know if you had looked at the plan sort of from that perspective as well um and and sort of you know make sure that we're doing the stuff we have to do from that point as well yeah when you are when i'm looking at any of these plans i am looking at everyone um it's it's from the janitor all the way
088to the top um because this disease does is not pick you know it doesn't pick a certain person um so yes i look at you know everything from how everyone's coming in the building to how everything is being cleaned how is we've gone through all of that and making sure that i understand these teachers some of them are extremely nervous and rightfully so that is how everybody is about opening up the salon owners were nervous the food service were nervous the holiday hill staff was nervous and it isn't just a cheshire thing that was throughout the whole state everybody was nervous about opening up and i think that you're gonna find that once you're getting in and you're going to see all the the things that cheshire school system is done and going to be
089doing to protect them um i think they will be surprised and it takes it's it's a fearful event they've been home they've been protected and they're watching the news sometimes the news can uh put a little fear in everyone uh but this is we're on low rates and we want to keep it that way and so that is why they are doing mitigation strategies the sanitizers increasing washing your hands taking the time they've we've had many discussions about the time that these steps that they're doing are taking out of the day but it's to keep everybody safe not just the students the staff the administrators everybody top to bottom thank you thank you uh adam thank you tony uh well well my questions turned in more in into more of a statement because both the
090ann and catherine kind of uh have covered the the topics that that i wanted to ask about um so i'll just say that uh i think that for everyone who's watching um i think they're really happy to hear that you and your department uh have i feel feel good about the plan that jeff and team has put together as far as the reopening for each level of of our school system um and i i'm also happy to hear that that you uh and at least i won't say i don't know if endorse endorse maybe a strong word but at least are agreeable to having the hybrid plan at the high school i know that the governor uh at least even today was still hesitant about the hybrid plan uh when he because he made comments
091during his his four o'clock uh when he spoke to the uh um i want to call him superintendent cardona or a commissioner cardona um where cardona was was endorsing hybrid and the governor wasn't so uh so happy about it so i'm hoping that the governor isn't going to put a kibosh on this plan because i think the the plan that uh all of you have put together uh as i think um as cutting edge as can be given the resources that we have uh and and i hope this goes a long way to to to really tamping on a lot of disinformation that's been out there about um what what what we are doing what we are doing and you know even to say as board members you know there's been a lot of accusations
092about us uh and you know some of us uh are are going to be uh you know have the rubber meet the road our children are going to be going into those schools and we're going to be uh subject to these policies that you're all going to be putting into effect and um so we're we're praying to god every night too that this all works out and that um that these these uh well-laid plans uh work to the to the best of the ability so i i thank you for for all the hard work that you've done and that the jeff and team have done in putting this together thank you first of all i just want to say uh by no means is uh is anybody on the board putting more on the spot
093to uh you know bless the plans uh set forth that the board uh is moving forward but it is reassuring yeah i'm not surprised i know uh chesapeake has been very involved in a number of aspects of community on this so um and uh and and just uh i'll turn over to katherine she had another question but um uh and i lost my train of thought um it's not just the folks aware so you know my monitoring enforcement you know and i don't think i don't need more for this part uh or else jeff has more to present than reopening just some questions around the reopening in general you know hybrid things like that but uh really the question that we it's probably the number one one i've seen lately is tony board of ed
094school district um you know full well kids are going to be there all day long pulling out their masks and i got full transparency i sat in on a negotiation meeting i had my mask on a half hour into him already doing this with it and uh i think it was jeff that's like inside the head said don't do that and i'm i'm a full-grown adult although my wife will argue sometimes about that but with the little kids um you know the teachers are gonna be the front line in the classroom and you know so they had a responsibility but the monitoring enforcement i guess is what parents come down to is you know the questions we get is um tony you know what's gonna happen teacher can't do a damn thing about it what
095happens in that case and that goes back to jeff's you know flow chart right people want to see a flow chart if one else do this um so i hope little every time a little bit more about you know what parents and students even teachers can expect around enforcement that the mask of being worn someone wasn't aware of what happens um if teacher has a legitimate concern who do they go to how does it get resolved i think that's more than a minutiae of the detail but that's um certainly not chesapeake's area it's gonna be more of the internal mechanics of of the school system so it is a team effort that's that was my point so i'll i'll end there um katherine i'm sorry i need to bypass you you're up no prob no
096problem um so i just have one question because another um i think some people are confused about the fact that um you know the k through eight students will be going to school in person pretty much every day and the high school you know we've we're doing the hybrid model um which i think is probably one of the few ways we can try to you know control things as much as possible at the high school um but i just to ask the question would you have a lot of confidence in our ability to keep the infection rate low if in fact the high school went back to all the kids went back every day all day long i mean do you have a sense of whether that is even something that could be uh managed
097very well door at all are you asking me yeah you know honestly i think that the hybrid model at that age group is a much better more manageable if we were going full time we had this discussion and they knew that when they first gave out the the um planning documents that it was almost going to be impossible to do cohorting with going full time you need to get smaller groups to be able to control and manage because again it goes back to the mitigation strategies if you have kids going everywhere you're not going to be able to manage them so the managing them that's dr gad's area of expertise of how she's going to do that um so i'll turn to her for how she's going to do that but my suggestions again it's
098easier the smaller they are because you can k you can control them better you're watching them and and uh you know if something happens you only have that small group you don't have the large masses and if you have the large masses that's when a huge outbreak in her occur and that's what we're really our goal is not to have that right i i think it was just would i just thought it might be helpful for people to hear from you you know as the public health expert you know sort of what the possibilities might be so thank you very much thank you um any other questions specifically for maura from the board or anyone else yeah there are a variety of questions that were submitted i would just want to try and roll through
099those if we could um let me just pull those up yes please excuse me for 30 seconds i'm going to run to the sure um a question from rob ricato do we know when tested is it coven 19 or other coronavirus are we 100 sure what strain it is yes yes okay we know what they're doing there it's the dna so yes that has already been the next question is um from a parent ritu dar uh how transparent will school districts be in communicating about any infections in school i would like to know about any cases even if my child is learning remotely and i can decide on what numbers uh whether to go in or not in the future so basically uh the reason i read this is even though it's i think that's
100kind of a school question but we work in such concert with chespercott through that process in the case of contact tracing you know maura's office would be contacting individuals in the case of just notification to the community we would notify of a positive uh the people in that school of a positive case um a question from uh parent slash teacher taryn desorbo uh the use of plexiglas dividers uh particularly in cafeteria due the fact students will not be wearing masks is that a possibility for inside spaces when masks will not be worn um i can talk about the lunch piece a little bit but more do you want to talk about the value of uh perceived value of masks or the excuse me the the shields yeah we actually were looking at the shields yes
101shields have a value um any kind of barrier has a value to pr to prevent those droplets from coming to the next person so that they are inhaled and that is how you you get the virus we did have speak to doctor our medical director because we were investigating into that who did not feel that they were as protective the masks are a tight fitting mask sorry that goes over your face and it's supposed to go it goes over your nose over your mouth because it's going to be collecting those particles versus a shield your particles are still out there and whether or not then you have to worry about the cleanliness of the shield because although it isn't a high rate of spread through that it is a known spread that you can spread
102it from your hands touching that and then touching your face the other thing i would add around the lunches and just to build off of that maura's comment there in the um in the conversation with our medical advisor who meets with epidemiologists from yale on a weekly basis for updates really the thought was unless that um shield goes floor to ceiling and basically encapsulates the individual there's there's really limited value to that what we've done in terms of lunches is uh mr maciana and i did a whirlwind tour of our schools and um in the places where it's really hard to maintain more social distancing at the high school where we have calf commons east gym senior courtyard where there's more space to spread out it's not as much of an issue but in our
103k-8 buildings we've secured tents uh which was you know really hard to find tents and when i say tents i'm talking about massive commercial tents that the one at dot is 60 by 120 for example so we can move a lot of people outside with great social distancing during dining so that's really our our uh effort there to to maintain the distancing another question um uh from david cadugan who's a teacher my question is primarily for miss esposito can you summarize this is a multi-part can you summarize the risk assessment and modeling data that evaluated the cps plan to reopen what's the probability of spreading covid19 through people in our schools under the current plan also can you quantitatively destroy describe the effectiveness of masks in schools the chewed all lancet paper suggests that masks
104mostly n95 and surgical might lower the chance of infection about five-fold in medical settings while we seem to be operating under the assumption that mass reduced the risk of infection to zero so i'll try to answer this one um i there is no when we look at the plan my role as the public health director is knowing that through lessons learned like i've said before through h1n1 and other studies that we know that public health mitigation strategies and i don't have my notebook here have worked in the past again i want to reiterate that they have worked in the past they've slowed the spread and that's what we need to do so when i looked at the plan that's what i was looking for were they taking every little bit and examining it pulling the
105layers apart is there a different solution for something can we do this can we do that can you you know so that's that was my role in helping the school system look at that plan so there was no probability model it was just simple public health methodology and really honestly it was from chesapeake's been in the trenches we have been fighting this with all the different places and i've learned a lot when we're doing the restaurants when we're doing the businesses when we were opening all those things i was out there visiting the sites i visited almost many of the public buildings in town and walked through each one to say you know what that would work that wouldn't work just knowing i i don't know how to tell you my little spidey senses it's
106just what my public health knowledge is um yes n95s are probably one of the best ways it's not a hundred percent effective uh you have to be fit tested but unfortunately those n95s are only earmarked for the hospitals there are devices that are more effective but they're they're very expensive and good luck getting them studies are going on right now talking about different masks and that i don't want to get into the whole mask thing because there's a lots out there um but we have there's some good studies that but the whole big logic behind a mask is if it is fitting tight and it needs to go above the nose and around your mouth mouth and be tight then it should be okay because it's gathering it's about catching the particles and holding the
107particles so i agree with you it's not you're not going to be they are not 100 there is nothing 100 percent so exactly yeah there's a and i think that you know like we said um masks are one mitigating factor space is another mitigating factor air circulation is another mitigating factor the the question arises about air circulation i know i've received questions about hepa filters in classrooms the uh department of public health doesn't recommend them the um the uh i did contact many other surrounding districts of 13 that responded back to me none of them are using them so i'm thinking that it's probably because they're not very effective our health provider says they're not very effective any um suggestions for you know what might be possible for air circulation uh i know that they've
108just said you know fans on low perhaps can be used to circulate air away from individuals in the room but i wanted your take on all that wow now i have to be a plumber okay let me get my husband in here so you know plumbing and airflow is not my expertise and um i understand you know that i would definitely have one of your you know have a consultant come through i don't know what you have done so far but yes they've talked about increasing your ventilation and i know that was questions we put out to vinnie um and the schools you know can you increase that airflow because that was one of the questions but i believe the school is looking at this especially the safest place to be during most of this
109is outside so i understand that a lot of your plans rely on going taking the kids outside a lot which is another mitigation strategy other than you know increasing it and getting it done by a professional i would look to your facilities yeah and you know obviously our facilities is something that we as a school system and community are working toward and recognize that you know they need to be improved not only for you know else air circulation but for a myriad of other reasons but um you know just to move on to some additional questions um mask wearing it's just this a question about whether or not schools should be open full-time i think you've already addressed that um in our plan uh the the variable of three feet versus six feet of social
110distancing at the elementary grades um i don't know if you could speak to that issue so originally um when i went back to when this was all happening we were look we looking back at the mitigation strategies and even in the older mitigation strategies they had talked about three feet um during that got changed by cdc they went up to six feet when the pediatric association took a look at all of this and they gave the schools and public health some guidance they had recommended at the lower level that they could go down to three feet um it wasn't you know it was a guidance tool to help you assist you in the worst case scenario if you can get six feet that's what we want you to get but you know this was guidance
111based upon you know every school in connecticut and some of them just can't do that so it was going to help you guide um so that was what the pdf pediatricians had recommended and you know obviously you know we've talked about in meetings previously there are only two ways to get much more space in a room and that's either to you know have less students or bigger rooms so when we look at all of the uh test data all the infection rates balance that against the benefits of students being in school other mitigation strategies we've employed this strategy to have our students in ka in school with tents outside to create additional space in that way because we can't build permanent buildings now um uh for that are larger additionally you know the the other
112uh piece of that is you know bill is going to talk about his finance report that we've hired moving companies and taking all extra furniture out of classrooms that wasn't uh and ship that off to a storage facility to kind of make the room bigger even though we can't make the room bigger um so there is additional space in rooms now um for for social distancing but jeff it is part of the state prior education guidance that um six foot where possible right yeah maximize the the greatest extent we can that would not be in violation of their guidelines or nothing thank you no and that's why i think it's also important that for families who don't feel comfortable with that that there is a remote learning option that's also available and um you know
113it may not be their preferred maybe they want their child to be there with six feet distancing but um we're not we just don't have the facility space to be able to do that all right stop a little just to check in it's about 8 40. i don't know how many more um questions you have yeah i mean that cover has been highlighted but yeah that were the highlights for maura you know okay um none from the board at this time uh moving forward is there jeff you want to give uh is there any update on the school reopening survey that went out there were you ready to present any of that data yet or yeah i mean am i i was gonna talk about that a little bit the superintendent's report we're all in
114the covid if we wanna just there are two other items i would bang out that are covered related one is the the report or the survey and then i asked dr gatt if she could give a quick overview on the high school plan because that went out more recently and i know there were a lot of parent questions about that and this would answer those questions yeah and maura first of all on behalf of the board all of a sudden thank you so much for coming here tonight to thank your team and chester for all you're doing i i know you're a partner with us and we appreciate the guys i know the public does as well you're certainly welcome to stay um i sneak out but uh you know i will i'm gonna give
115more one more shout out though because you know people don't realize that not only is she doing all the the typical covid stuff but one of the issues of concern for us isn't as an employer is child care for our our staff that their children now are in these remote in hybrid and whatever the case may be situations or and they're trying to figure things out too and maura's team has been helping me work through that process with the ymca so that's greatly appreciated yeah can i just give you guys just a little heads up on what's going to happen with the nurses yeah do you have a minute um i just want you to know that part of our surveillance we've always worked with your nurses to surveil them uh to oversee what your
116illnesses are and so we've been working very hard we've actually created an online easy system so your nurses can plug go into chesapeake's website plug in the numbers and easily send it we have also provided to the nurses all this contact tracing questions so that they can start those questions because they know those kids but we are going to be coming in with a team and really digging down into the layers with your nurse and your nurses we we we are going to be working and they are going to get to know us very very well and they've been on the meetings with us we're going to be doing zoom meetings with them we're going to be keeping those nurses really close um because we're we are in this together and the first couple of
117times that's a little you know if there's a little you know someone goes out with a little cold your nurse might not be sure well the amendment five which i think you guys mentioned earlier gave very clear guidance of what are the steps to happen and so we will be walking each of your nurses through the first couple of them and actually every single time that they think that there's a positive we are going to be right there with them so they're not in this alone at all thank you okay so everybody you have a wonderful night thank you for having me okay i'll see everyone later thank you thank you that wraps up uh section two of our presentation um we actually just covered some of the audience questions i think actually all of
118them related to this we're gonna move on to the consent calendar we're gonna do a little bit of board vet business uh fairly quickly sections four and five before we and submit approval before we get into superintendence reports for for those watching uh just bear with us because during superintendence report a little bit later as jeff and the kids get more into the sort of responses and get a little bit more into reopening planned details so that being said we do have a consent calendar on the agenda there are three items uh the board of ed does have this in our in our packet which is on our google drive um jeff you want to walk us through the items first um sure in case the board has any questions on i know we don't
119normally [Music] these are items that we uh usually um affirm or consent to to begin the school year so it might be worth just a couple minutes to walk through a little more detail jeff thank you sure um the first item is our um the board has to approve a class size policy every year basically our policy has remained the same since 1987 that the board shall endeavor to main class size is consistent with proven educational practices which require that various learning situations may alter the number of students per class the board through its committee shall make any recommendation concerning personnel and space requirements based on all factors uh regarding class size so that's an annual um like i said uh policy that gets renewed ace's membership agreement where uh the local regional education service
120center or resk for cheshire is aces that's basically new haven county uh area cooperative educational services we work with them on a number of uh collaborative efforts in the area and the membership there is 250 dollars and we're part of that process that we approve annually additionally for the upcoming school year we appoint a hearing officer uh to serve in place of the board they um hear cases of expulsion or residency issues which could still be appealed but uh the hearing officer hears them uh initially so that's a pretty again three standard um motions that we make every year excellent any any questions from the board on a consent calendar ah adam sorry i didn't see you earlier did you have a question or is adam frozen no i'm not frozen my my question was
121uh about something else and i'll save it for when we get back into reopening questions so thank you sir uh barring those are another questions and comments uh we do have a motion and the motion is move the cheshire board education approves the consent calendar as presented is there a second second second adam grip on the devio others second it any discussion seeing as there's none all those in favor please raise your hand or it is unanimous uh for the six of us present just to mind remind folks that tim left a little earlier thank you next item is reports of standing committees we'll start with finance uh mr grippo uh thank you um i uh uh proudly hand the report over to uh mr massiana thank you mr grippo and good evening ladies and
122gentlemen uh i'll keep the the finance report pretty brief normally the first report of the year we just closed the books on july 31st is usually very short but this year i just want to put out kind of some caveats obviously related to covert 19. the board members do have a report in their packet the board's approved budget for the 2021 year is 74 million 593 926 you know as of the end of july we've expended or encumbered about 12.6 million dollars so it's about of the budget however you know we do not pass all the payroll encumbrances and the transportation account encumbrances you know until we get to roughly mid-september so it's not unusual that you know we haven't encumbered those yet it just takes time to process all those encumbrances the the caveat
123to this year's budget is obviously related to covet 19. we just don't know you know where our variances might be and and our variances are going to be essentially based on are we staying in school for the full year will we wind up remote so those are all going to have a factor or will factor into where our budget is as a precaution and i believe i explained this to the board members already that you know normally when we start the new fiscal year we have a 60 cap on non-payroll expenditures that are controlled at the school and department level this year the cap is 40 so that will ensure that we have sufficient reserve if we have to reallocate our budget expenditures to other areas um what i will um do however and it's
124in in the initial report that we provided the board is i will identify some of the potential costs due to covert 19 that we either will or may incur and i'll start with the largest potential expenditure and that is you know we've contracted with our cleaning company performance environmental they will be supplying 6.5 staff members to do cleaning sanitizing and disinfecting during the school day in all our buildings if we do that and we're in school 180 days then that cost would be 325 thousand dollars is the estimate however if we do wind up going in remote it is a contracted vendor so you know we wouldn't incur that cost but you know that that's a potential 325 000 variance that we would have to make up for in our budget um as dr solon
125mentioned a few minutes ago you know we were able to secure tent rentals and and table rentals so that we can expand you know not only our cafeteria areas but our outdoor areas for mass break you know potentially for student learning outside when the weather is good so the the tenth rental estimate for two months it would take us through november second is about 137 thousand dollars dr solon mentioned also that we've gone to all our school buildings we've identified any furniture and equipment that we do not need in the classroom this year because we're making compromises so removing the furniture which it will be completed this week it started last week storing that furniture and equipment for 10 months and then returning it at the end of the school year that's about a hundred
126twenty thousand dollars again if we keep those items in storage for ten months um the cost of of ppe and disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer and those types of things we're assuming it's fifteen thousand dollars a month i don't have a really strong handle on whether that's enough or too much yet because we haven't started using any of these supplies but that could be an additional hundred twenty thousand dollars and then depending on how many staff members are on leave we could potentially see our substitute costs um you know a hundred thousand dollars over budget is my initial estimate so if you if you took all those together it's about eight hundred thousand dollars you know hence the importance of keeping a forty percent cap on non payroll expenditures and then the last thing i'll
127add for the board on the finance report for this first month is if instead of being in school for 10 months if if we wind up having to go into remote mode and we decided that the broadcast capabilities from our classrooms you know to students who are home so the teachers would be in building and broadcast to the students the board members know that we've already agreed to out 56 classrooms um if we expanded that and added an additional 240 classrooms so that we would provide that capability in all our classrooms that would be seven hundred sixty eight thousand dollars and because it's about thirty two hundred dollars per classroom that assumes we could get all that done you know there are some shortages of of this type equipment and it takes time to install
128you know these devices so it's just to put a little context around where our budget might be you know or where our expenditures might be that we would have to make up those variances within our budget so that's the finance report again a little bit longer than we would normally have as of july 31st so i'll pause there if there's questions or comments and i think uh captain has a i'm sorry ann has a question oh uh i think i have well adam go you go first okay no catherine go ahead um i don't even know where i am on the list okay um so so we're talking about potentially you know a million five well no because the seven eight 768 would offset some of the 801 because we wouldn't be in school however
129let's say we're talking about 800 000 of unexpected unanticipated costs at what point or have we already started to talk to the town council about the fact that we may need some some assistance with that uh you know unanticipated i know i keep bringing this up but i'd really like to know at what point do we try to get some sort of feedback from them on this kind of thing anyone jeff you want it looks like was ready to speak yeah we i'll give him first tips yeah we've had conversations with sean about you know the the reality that there is going to be uh substantial cost implications for providing a safe learning experience for our students and community i think you know where we are right now is that it's still a little bit
130premature to really say you know this is this is going to be close to the number um so we're we're holding off on on that i think you know vin is is often given me guidance about you know when will we have a better sense and he was just talking about you know end of september then we you know probably have a better sense of what a projection would be like but there is an awareness on the town side of the street that you know this is this is going to be a very unique budget situation okay thank you been anything to add there no no it's just at this point there's so many unknowns about what might happen or could happen and you know if we look at last year when we entered remote
131learning learning in march you know a lot of the expenditures were dictated by executive order and so we continue to pay staff and and pay our bus contractor a certain fee so i think all those will come into play i i will say this at this point i don't think other than putting a cautionary flag of what might happen i don't think there's any real action we can take you know i would like to get certainly the first month of school under our belt and understand you know what it might look like and and how much ppe and other inventory we're going through so that we can better estimate where we'll be you know the tent you know tents are only gonna enable us to expand our square footage through november there's really you know
132once we hit november it's gonna be really too cold to extend those tents maybe we can get another you know 15 days you know out of those tents but you know that that cost will stop but it actually creates a bigger problem potentially if we're still you know in school and and that would actually be good news because you know if we're still in school that means that the infection rate is low and that things are going well for us so i hope that that happens and we'll deal with that problem a little later on yeah no i i wasn't really saying we should go to the town council with a hard number i just you know i don't want it and i'm sure it wouldn't be a surprise but i just want to make
133sure it wouldn't be a surprise so that's all thanks um uh i guess i'll i just have a comment um those are some pretty big numbers um and um as far as remote learning goes because i know that there are um school systems that are proposing to go all remote who have a lot less resources than we do and i'm assuming that some of those systems don't have the the fancy new uh synchronous uh systems that that we do um so if we had to go full remote as from a cost perspective um would we have to uh piece together uh a mostly asynchronous um solution again or would we be more or would the teachers be more prepared to to more you know use the cameras that are inside of their laptops and and
134try and share screens and and create the that more interactive experience that we were sort of uh getting to at the end last year yeah i i you know i could start a very very more cheap solution you know yeah i could certainly answer that question but i i feel like it would pale in response relative to marlene's response so i'll pass it off to her hello everyone um we have had a lot more time to get prepared to plan professional development to order devices to trial lots of different tools and teachers to get more comfortable with the tools that we have available so we do have a remote plan in place and we would be ready to execute that at any point if we needed to and our students now have devices and and
135would be ready to go one to one from the start of school so yes we would be more prepared we would be ready and the fact that everyone has a device and we would have learning management systems ready to go down to the younger grade levels would mean that we could do more synchronous work again i think the synchronous part of that is that direct instruction we still would not want children um at of any age on their device from eight to three every day but we would be able to give them a good blend of direct instruction from the teacher one-to-one conferencing small groups google meets conferences etc in order to you know provide them with that direct instruction there would still continue to be an asynchronous piece because there are things that they
136need to do on their own there are things that they need to read that they need to research that they need to spend time struggling with which would mirror more what happens in the classroom even in the classroom on a regular day in person the teacher is not directly lecturing all all the time they are giving small pieces of work to kids they are flipping the classroom asking kids to watch things um showing things on the smart board a lot of the work that would be done demonstrated on the smart board could then be put into a google classroom for students to watch so in my mind i think we're much better much more prepared to do a healthier blend of both the synchronous and asynchronous marlena i can't say how pleased i am to
137hear that um that you and the teachers are using all of your talents together to to put for lack of a better word put together a a much superior product uh for our students so that um the teachers can use their talents to teach the children and the the church the children can learn more effectively uh but at saying that i hope that we never have to use all of all of this but it's nice to know that it's there uh catherine you had a question yes yes i did um so marlene when you talk that remote learning experience is that for kids that are not going to be coming back into the buildings when school opens and will be doing remote learning is that the kind of experience they're going to have as well
138or will it look i'm just trying to understand uh yeah what that looks like right that's a good question and so um it's all it's as with everything since march it's complicated um but again i think we have um those broadcast rooms will really really help okay um again they're not broadcasting every moment of the day they're broadcasting that instruction and then they're available to the to the student as they are to the students in the room um it's going to be tricky in those places where we don't have broadcast equipment available and it's going to be tricky think about we're looking at each other right now so there's how many of us on this call and then picture how many others in your room that whatever room you're in right your living room your
139dining room so you need to attend to both the people in front of you on your screen and everyone else behind so it's going to be really challenging for teachers to do both um but i think we we don't want to leave anybody out and we want to make sure people have options and you know yes there will be a blend of both of those some may have more asynchronous work to do simply because um unless i'm sort of carrying this around with me as i'm walking around the room it'll be tricky if you don't have that broadcast equipment um the the i guess it's going to be dependent upon the tools in the room but still in my opinion better than um what we were experiencing before because now you have a teacher who's
140not just teaching in a box they're able to show you their smart board they're able to have some conversation so to be determined but but still much improved great thank you are there any other questions oh yeah that curriculum response too i was saying to john rook today from the herald that you know it took us decades to reach a gold standard of instruction um through a lot of trial and error consultation with peers you know this is our first foray into this hybrid sort of situation where you have students at home and you have students in front of you and you're trying to navigate that well i think we are much better prepared um every day we'll get a little bit better i mean we aspire to do that anyway when we're not in
141these circumstances but every day we'll get a little bit better uh and you know at this point we're just eager to start teaching again yeah and can i just jump back in there and say that i can't stress enough how important the communication is going to be for all these models that when parents have a question to contact the teacher if parents have a question for the principals to contact the principal we are so willing and able and wanting to answer people's questions during this time and walk them through that so what whatever models we end up in as this year progresses i would just ask that people make sure that before it becomes a problem let us know reach out we are in a finance committee section of the report i know there's ignore
142it well to come out i i don't want to stifle uh a great discussion i just i think people tuning in hey wait a minute i thought we're talking about finance um we like to stick to that and we're going to jump right back into these details shortly around reopening just for um point of order's sake thank you uh so well uh faith as a member of the finance committee i'm assuming your question is finance related as if adam no actually i was on a roll and i'm fine right now um you guys have covered the finance i'll go it was a uh it was a procedural or a um question related to instruction so let's absolutely move on that's fine apology accepted we'll move on and it'll come up later okay so is there
143any other questions related to finance all right seeing none i uh i hand the meeting back over to you mr chairman thank you adam and i i think vincent lewis earlier it's a little early to get into medical best trust fund report so forth hopefully uh recommenders meeting we'll have some more detail around that correct so that being said we wrapped up the finance committee uh school monetization committee update so uh it's on your dinner for a couple of reasons one is the committee did meet last night and met a few weeks two weeks ago uh the first week of august all right it's being done i'm going to ask andrew and ann to give an update on progress being made by colliers and all the groom well i just wanted to let folks know
144one of the reasons why this is also on the agenda for tonight is there was some controversy on that committee it is not resolved but we're often asked what is the board's role with the committee what our thoughts are on that whole thing so i'd like to get that toward the end um so because the board has not had a chance to talk about it i certainly do not want to have an hour-long dissection of people but uh i think folks kind of want to know where our heads are at with the committee but let's start with the actual work update so andrew and if you have some updates uh on the work please share i know you guys are both there last sure i got august 3rd i could take the august 3rd update
145i was not at the august 19th meeting last night um my brother had a baby congratulations thank you last night i was dedicated to helping them put together as the baby was a month early they were not prepared so august 3rd meeting it culminated about nine months worth of work uh of the committee we hadn't met since june first um coliers has been doing a deep dive into all of the already prepared information that exists on the schools including floor plans renovations that have been done projected to be done um the demographer has been hired which is my luna mcbroom which is looking at population trends and building areas within the town to try to put together future planning needs for the school district um the month of october will be really we'll be starting
146to see some of the products coming out of colliers looking at they'll be walking through all the various schools architects engineers and planners coming up with their best case scenarios for the plan the idea is to have something out with a roadmap for the district by december with an application hopefully to be submitted in june of 2021 with our first project um it's obviously very ambitious there's a lot of work to be done but that's pretty much what came out of the august third meeting um i know we'll get into everything else that's happened on the committee but i just you know before tony had been today i just want to say that um we are working hard there's a lot of dedicated people on that committee um there's a lot of work to be
147done and we have a great group so i'm hopeful that we could all work together to move things along and hopefully those that are in the positions of power make the right decisions to help uh push the projects forward so again i wasn't at the meeting last night so i don't know if tony yeah i can briefly just jump in and say that last night um colliers gave us an update that uh didn't go much further than what you just said andrew and um malone and mcbroom were not present at that meeting and uh it was reported that their um demographic report is forthcoming and i think at the next meeting we will get a more in-depth look at all of that um we got a new member added to the committee uh her name
148is kate o'donnell and um she's replacing emery kemp who resigned um what a week ago now um so there's progress on that front and um as tony alluded to earlier you know we we still have some mending to do um and hopefully that's gonna gonna start happening so that's all that's all i would add in terms of the progress but i would reiterate what andrew said there are people working really hard um these are people who are volunteers from our community and um and i'm in awe of the work that they're putting in and thank each and every one of them whenever i get the opportunity thank you andrew's uh quick update last night the next meeting is going to be september 16th i believe uh for a couple reasons one is um the committee
149wanted to know when the remaining vacant season be filled was peter talbott did officially resign uh recently uh so silvia indicated that town council i think down wall street too that they want to try to get that field as soon as possible uh as nan mentioned kate o'donnell came on board her great things about her so welcome to the fun miss o'donnell we look forward to working with you great background there and i think she was actually one of the folks originally interested in serena comes i'm glad that people are still out there working on the work together um you know as far as as far as everything else i'm going to you know piggyback on and said we have very good people in the committee um there are no idiots um there are no
150uh ill will uh well for the most part we have a but i think and i spoke with her at the end earlier today on something and you know she brought a great point that we have not just uh people that were elected to various bodies via town council board of enemy people but just about half of that monetization committee is made up of public volunteers that are not politicians you know they're not um uh seeking office they're truly good people that want to help the community in various ways so you know unfortunately um we i hate to use the word to me it's a dirty word um sorry but we as politicians because we're on the board elected we say oh you know it's politics is part of our job you know i i
151don't like that but it's not part of their job so i know the situation bothers everybody on the team um i try and be careful what i say because i support the group i absolutely support my female colleagues on the committee i wish it was a different outcome um but you know all our words everybody in that group is being um looked at under a mice with microscope everything we say is being twisted in some ways and you know unfortunately it doesn't help solve the problem the group itself it's fine it's just the public out there so by no means has anyone given up on anyone in that committee we have not you know none of us have given up and solving this problem uh just a quick little history on the committee because i
152was asked even today well why is the board of ed doing something the board of ed uh this is not a board of education committee absolutely it was a joint effort and still is with the town council is a town council committee uh by charter this was the only way that the two bodies can actually work together in some fashion in a um charter manner and so the town council formed it there were six of us between the town council and board of ed actually eight uh because we had some turnover at the election that helped select the existing group um based on uh experience etc so yeah it is a joint effort in that regard but when it comes to any action around the committee you know the board has really really has no
153legal authority or authority charter to intervene on issues like this if it was a board committee certainly we can do things like censure and you know i can change our own committees that's not the case here and it's absolutely not a cop-out it's just uh when folks know that you know there's folks who didn't either voluntary to leave that committee i believe or um there's got to be something egregious code of conduct and i'm not going to interpret for the town council i'm not going to put them on the spot because all the discussions around this was an executive session i am sure there's a reason why they chose the action they did only they can explain it um i think if we're in a slimmer situation or executive session we could barely talk about
154things too so that being said um no none of us are condoning what happened uh none of us are telling the females to move on uh by any means i i often you know say confront our bullies you know we have great people in that committee i think the best way in my opinion um to put people in their place so to speak is get the job done and you know let's get it done for a greater good of our community and that's not taking anything situation so it's a it's a letdown for the board because this is now year five i believe since we started the facility master plan initiative and sometimes i equip that there's like a dark cloud hanging over any infrastructure project we try to do for schools this is like
155the sixth or seventh plan in probably 20 30 years and there's always something so there is a greater good here which goes beyond one or two people's um involvement and that's our community our children our stakeholders our schools and the people in this committee can't get it done we all have faith in the committee so that's really all i have to say um i mean i've spoken with some community members i've talked to some town council members um you know so by and large i want to berate this but we're very much well aware but i think you know i want to speak for us the board but we still all have a lot of faith in this committee um despite what occurred but that being said i want to spend too much longer on
156it um i don't know if anybody else wants to add something if not you don't have to uh catherine um yeah and i don't want to get into really specifics but as a person who's been on the board for you know six years now going on seven and i was involved in obviously the facilities master plan um that is being possibly reworked now i am not at all uh confident that the committee i don't know i'm not confident or i don't understand how the committee can move forward after watching you know that the um video of that meeting and i hope that it is something that can be resolved and uh you know months now weeks and weeks have been taken up with an issue that really should have been dealt with um i think
157a while ago and um you know i just have to say that i i i think that the members of the committee who are not elected officials um deserve more and even the ones that are elected officials deserve better um you know we should have a functioning really well functioning uh group people that can work together and get things done and so i'm just saying that and then and you know it's worth like you know not even 1.25 per cup of coffee so that's how i feel i would i would add to that catherine and say um the committee deserves more than to just be functioning we deserve to have the collegiality of of a committee and uh that has been lost over this incident it can be repaired and actually tony and i had
158a discussion today on the phone and um i think you know he's come up with a a pretty good idea and i don't know if we want to address it here tonight with our time constraints but um i would like tony why don't you um let me know yeah i proceed with this by just you know talking about it i i think um what i like to do is because of really we we are squeezed for time and i want to get through the school reopening stuff and that was a idea i been talking with you i thought might be the board maybe worth talking about but i would say let's i'll reach out to digital board members after meeting and just give him a heads up of what i was thinking but let him
159know over it over the next week or two uh and maybe by the next meeting if it's something that we want to talk about let's bring it up and you know have a dedicated discussion uh there but again it's nothing earth-shattering uh but you know it dawned to me today in our conversation maybe something worthwhile so i don't want to do it tonight it's not on the agenda but i did want folks to know um that the board has been thinking about the situation we've talked individually we're still aware of it and you know we'll do the best we can but we still support the committee um no doubt the people on there especially the volunteers um doing great work um so that's all i really have to say on it i'm sure we'll discuss
160it further in the next meeting i would just say quickly also tony i don't consider myself a politician i'm an elected official yeah it's uh yeah we all are you know if i'm considered a politician i'm a really bad one no exactly we're all up at officials it's just uh when i hear people say well that's politics um sorry you know you can't have um bad behavior be excused by politics and that's not what this is about so that's a good point we are elected officials thank you man that being said i don't have anything more on an image no it is fluid has something else on it i'd like to move on to the next topic okay thank you i'm also missing it sorry just checking the chat um approval of minutes this is
161going to go quickly and then we're going to move right on to the superintendent's update with a little more detail on the school reopening uh so in our packets we have minutes from our june 4th business meeting our june 29th special meeting our june 30th fiscal business meeting our july 14 special meeting in our july 29th meeting um you know fortunate cove have been very busy on our items we never got back to this i i went through the packet i don't have any changes to the meeting minutes uh does the board have any updates or changes to those meeting minutes seeing as there are none uh would someone like to make a motion to approve those meaning minutes it is in our linked packet uh andrew please i'd like to move at the board
162of education approve the minutes for meetings held on june 4th june 29th june 30th july 14th and july 29 2020. thank you angela second second thank you catherine uh discussion see there is none the motion is move that the board of education approve the minutes from meetings out on june 4th june 29th june 30th july 14th and july 29th 2020. all those in favor please raise your hand it is unanimous thank you team moving on uh correspondence jeff have we've received anything that i want to address now or wait until you surprise uh i think we could cover it in the next section and for the public uh just in case if you're tuning in or if you've been brave enough and hung through the last two and hours and 24 minutes we are now
163heading into superintendence report we just wrapped up our finance committee and correspondents section we're gonna get uh some more detail around our school opening and some response to the covered emails so that being said dr song and i turn it over to you thank you very much um just a couple of quick ones things like you know mr mrs bellinger asking about why aren't we taking a day off during the week to do thorough sanitation um and do we do background checks to if we're hiring individuals in the elementary schools we background check every individual that we hire um and we're not we opted rather than take days off we've hired additional staff as mr uh masiana has said during the day and we sanitize at the end of every day uh so that the
164buildings are thoroughly cleaned daily um i had a question um i apologize that i can't remember who it was from but uh it was about the school start date and the concern that perhaps um we'd be pushing back our date again you may have heard that there was a request for that i think that really pertains more to districts that were starting before labor day i think we were kind of ahead of that and now we're i wouldn't say a late starting school but we're toward the later end after the orientation i don't foresee us changing unless the governor makes us um so with that i know there were a number of questions uh relating to the more recently released plan from the high school and i asked dr gad to put together a quick
165presentation to provide some more context around that plan i know adam had some questions so hopefully this should address those questions and i turn it over to dr gad good evening everyone so i have some additional information i hope you can see what uh what is on my screen yes okay uh so i'm offering you some additional information about our our reopening plan our opening with a collegiate hybrid model um i wanted to take you through a few of uh the rationale behind uh our move to the hybrid model so the factors that contributed to the development of our plan were certainly population we've talked an awful lot about cohorting room capacity and the use of mitigation strategies mask wearing sanitizing cohorting and social distancing so in the process of putting our plan together we
166pull together three teams health and safety practices and logistics teaching and learning and social and emotional considerations for the return to school and i'd like to thank our departmental leadership the chs administrative team uh our teachers certainly our building maintenance and custodial crew they've been extraordinary through all of this mr maciana talked about moving furniture they they did an extraordinary job in high school and we have over 100 classrooms so you can imagine our school nurse our foods and nutrition department for all of them for their collaboration on putting together the plan it's it's it's been quite a process uh so as we looked at the hybrid model and you you've heard us discuss cohorting just just to give you some some context about the school our daily total population on a regular day right
167we're adding together our students adults and visitors so that brings us to upwards of 600 folks in the building potentially on any given day individual class sessions that students take when i put together our year-long classes so those classes that students are enrolled in from september to the end of the year and then semester one classes it brings us to about 1046 and for all students at the high school they're enrolled in six and a half credits so the combination between six and a half credits and some take many more than that um electives advisories all of the all of the transitions that happen in a day that really represents a total of 16 260 enrollments and we have multiple grades within class sections so why am i sharing all of that well that is
168uh part of the reason why we have some some powerful challenges uh logistical challenges so why would we do a hybrid instead of a full reopening it's because we would need to move nearly 600 1600 people through eight 11 foot wide hallways uh six times a day actually more than that eight times a day if you count lunch waves to and from uh providing six feet of social distancing for students to eat lunch unmasked would be an extraordinary challenge with over 1300 students and really the the extreme difficulty if not impossibility of cohorting giving given the complexity of the schedule that i shared with you but also just the number of students in the building to contact trace it would be very difficult to determine who was where when so we also put together in
169our plan a block schedule as we as we began to consider all of these um factors uh that that made the utilizing the mitigation strategies difficult uh we came up with a block schedule so that we could these are some of the ways that we could reduce students in in large numbers together so our block schedule enables us to maximize instructional time first of all so we would move to 80 minute we are moving to 80 minute classes allowing for 10 minutes between classes so having four periods certainly limits transitions to go from a six period day to a four it allows us time for mask breaks mr parragini was talking earlier about being in a meeting wearing a mask we've all recently had those experiences um the more we're we're back together and it's
170challenging so we're building that in and looking to take those outdoors as often as we can weather permitting the schedule and combined with hot with the collegiate hybrid model allows us to connect with students in smaller groups uh it also inc we were able to increase passing time what i was talking about earlier um that i share with mr grippo that we would be splitting the 50 population that's in the building at a given time so even fewer students would be in the hallway would be able to move students after each period in waves some more clarification about the hybrid and this has been a question that's that's come up actually let me back up to the to the daily schedule we we dr solon just had the question about um the the sanitizing monday
171you know what why aren't you why are you sanitizing not having a day off to sanitize in between uh and another question that we had was why are why aren't you alternating uh students and sanitizing in between why are you doing a monday tuesday students are in on monday and then a different cohort of students is in on tuesday we're doing that because in the hybrid model that allows us to teach the same periods monday tuesday wednesday remote students meet all of those periods and then thursday friday those that same rotation of periods meet so that if students are home for example on their self-directed learning day they're if they're in on monday and they're home on tuesday they can chime they can access a synchronous live stream class potentially if the technology is available
172teachers are going to make every effort to see their students as much as they can we don't have as mrs solano was talking about we don't have technology for everyone to simulcast in every class but we are investigating workarounds utilizing available technology so that students can participate as continuously as possible but students are going to be doing some self-directed learning on those off or alternate days but that learning is at the direction of their teachers so by bringing one cohort in on monday and the next half of the same class in on tuesday it allows where we can for that overlap where students can reconnect with their teachers should they have any questions or need clarification um i also wanted to share that our school is is linked very much to other schools in our
173durg and in the southern uh connecticut conference schools of which we are apart so out of 20 durgby high schools 19 of our fellow high schools are following a hybrid model in one is returning for full-time in-person learning in the southern conference schools of the 23 high schools and some of those districts have two high schools 14 are following a hybrid one school is in for just a half day five days a week five schools are returning full part-time three of those are parochial schools and three schools in the conference have not yet made a decision and of all available data uh from fairfield county all of the fairfield county high schools are returning following hybrid model similar to cheshire and i wanted to share that clarifying information uh as there have been some questions
174about uh and some concerns about will students be uh behind will there be impact on on college acceptance and so at some of the most competitive high schools in the state we're all looking at a hybrid model for many of the reasons that i shared i don't want to speak for every other district but for many of the reasons i shared high school populations especially regarding our schedule and the transitions uh and and the participation in classes at multiple grade levels does make cohorting extremely challenging so in terms of colleges colleges and universities have certainly altered their criteria given that schools across the nation have been impacted and traditional in-person learning has been deeply impacted nationwide uh many colleges and universities have uh gone standardized test optional and i've given you some examples uh yale
175yukon wesleyan trinity says southern connecticut and western connecticut and they all confirmed in august that they are definitively going um test standardized test optional and i've included a link there that's live that when i share this with all of you you'll be able to access that just share all the schools across the nation that have gone uh standardized to test optional and in terms of post-secondary planning and and any of the impact uh potentially the if this is a concern for for parents and some questions have have indicated that cheshire high school continued to use letter grades uh for the end of last year so colleges certainly have more definitive information about the students that are applying to their schools the ncaa has made shifts and requirements offering exemptions and interestingly most colleges are employing
176a hybrid program for students who are returning this fall so our students are able to experience a format very similar to what they might see when they head off to college and so there are some if you can imagine within this extraordinary moment in time some silver linings so there was an article in education dive that talked about silver linings of students becoming more self-directed learners and better time managers when our high school age students are exposed to a hybrid model and there's that we've linked the article there and some other silver linings while in a typical schedule our three-day rotation that is our usual schedule students have about 168 minutes for class in our collegiate hybrid model and under the burden of this extraordinary pandemic we have 110 minutes of of in person or
177the day of remote learning combined for a single class potentially on the alternate days when students are learning at home they can log into their class if there's a synchronous option available to them and again we are working to ensure that that can happen as often as possible students could then potentially have an additional 80 minutes so we would exceed the typical schedule minutes again uh the hybrid model which is why we call it a collegiate hybrid model it mirrors college style schedules um and the last piece and this is this is some of what um maura esposito was talking about it would it would increase the probability for us to to to be able to pivot more readily to an in-person schedule if and as you heard you know kind of the the through
178line uh from mr truffone's presentation to to as esposito's presentation to mine if we follow the the rules if we follow the guidelines um if we continue to do what we know is right and we pay close attention to how we're managing within our our buildings hopefully we will be able to enjoy a full return to get back to some semblance of normal it might not be tomorrow it might not be at the end of october we don't know when um but we certainly will be reevaluating and as you know we're working in close close contact with chespercott and the um the health organizations public health so any questions for me not all at once i do i'm pat i'm sorry to say thank you who's good it wasn't so much a question as it
179was uh uh dr gatt and appreciation um uh because i had even though i don't have a high school student i did get feedback from parents high school parents uh about um there was that that little bit of hole in uh the hole in your your presentation which you just filled which explains about how the students will remain competitive and what the collegiate model does about maintaining the the rigor of the of the academics and and the in the time spent whether in person or or remote um so that i think the parents can have a a better uh confidence uh in the in the hybrid model uh for as long as we need to engage in it and so i thank you for for putting that together and i hope that allays uh a
180lot of fears that uh uh the parents may have and if not then i'm again to feel free to email me and i'll find out more for you thank you doctor yes please email everyone email adam i i faith i'm sorry you're up thank you dr gad um okay so they're going to be getting 110 minutes of instruction could you i'm sorry i know i should know this what is normal what is the normal number of minutes 56 each class so the total for um for the the the typical week would be 168 minutes we have a an alternating schedule where and it's it's it's it's complicated uh we have a series of days a b c and d day and so our typical classes meet three out of the four day rotation which would
181translate into 168 minutes give or take a few because on advisory days if that's it takes some about 20 minutes out of the day okay all right so 110 minutes of instruction versus the 168 and i understand we're in a difficult time i will say i think what concerns parents is this notion of self-directed learning for many it's just a euphemism for two days of homework and um if you look through the report at least the one that came out on the 14th or that was linked in the letter on the 14th there's no certainty that they're going to be able to get back in to observe a class it has to be at the teacher's discretion and i think there are a lot of parents who are concerned that their kids are you know
182it's a wonderful opportunity um to learn about yourself but there are a lot of parents concerned that their kids are gonna say hey i'm gonna get my homework done and i've got two days off again and we're going to be in that position how are we going to hold these kids accountable are they going to be having attendance taken um you know uh i and i i admit i'm a little concerned about it as well it just seems like we're missing a huge chunk especially you know college assumes that kids have had high school and to put a freshman in a collegiate model or even a sophomore raises big red flags for me i'm glad you brought that up uh because it's it's not teacher discretion it's availability of of technology and the ability to
183be able to simulcast with students again we're trying to install systems in as many classrooms as we can we'll have 15 at the high school uh and and beyond that teachers can certainly utilize chromebooks they can they can we're looking at some other hopefully some other tools that can help teachers to simulcast more more effectively if they can because we realize that that's a concern and a hybrid model is that dual that dual model of both in person and remote um it's again it's not perfect uh but teachers are students are not unlike when we were fully remote students are not at home and attendance is being taken and they're not at home able to log in or not log in and then there's a question of did they log in were they part of
184the meet they will be seeing their teachers they will be in the building two times a week so that's very different for us and they are working under the direction of their teachers so there will be more contact and more and very clear expectations of what students need to complete and how they can access support teachers also have office hours every day where students will be able to access direct help or teachers can direct students to meet with them at a specific time should they be having difficulties or not participating in the way that they'd like them to could i follow up with one question on the office hours um so it's a hundred and twenty or one hour 20 minutes of office hours per week correct so um the how will a student i
185guess how will that work that the student will request a time during those office hours will it be a drop-in opportunity do you know how that's going to be set up for parents because i think that would be a big concern as well that might be a combination of all of the above which teachers would work out with their students when they return to school they'll be talking to them about here's how that's going to work in our class and in this way and here's how you get in contact with me okay thank you uh ann you have a question yeah um thanks for the presentation dr gad um my question is about because we have this discussion and have been having this discussion since uh last year in the higher ed uh setting which
186is is there a combination of of um asynchronous presence as well as the synchronous presence there are ways to hold students accountable by their um activity that they're submitting even in the online environment if they're participating in for instance discussion boards or if they're doing group work and they have to have things assignments submitted at certain times or you students can show that they're engaged and working in in ways that that aren't face to face with with their uh teacher and i'm wondering how much of that is worked into any of the high school curriculum teachers utilizing personally remote and i they will continue to to utilize those tools as well as where as we go into the hybrid model and much of our opening days are about laying out exactly how that will work
187within within each course and they're they're they're gaining some vertical time in the 80 minute period as opposed to horizontal time so they're going to be working together to determine exactly how they utilize that time and so all of these all of these tools to engage to sustain engagement and for students to demonstrate what they've learned and how they've mastered standards is precisely what we're going to be working on thank you sorry i'm this is what was written down something i was going to ask i finished halfway through it and finished my thought um that again thank you for the presentation i i did receive as part of a parent email from euro today and uh as adam mentioned filled in some holes which is great and for folks that are watching as of uh
18820 minutes ago we saw 100 people hanging on thank you uh your troopers for hanging around that long um but do know that the the communication you send us whether it's directly to your principal or teacher board members administration ultimately does end up to um to the folks in the trenches so i hope that uh because we need to get some just a little bit more details on hey can you please fill in some of these holes in the high school plan and mary so thank you for getting right on top of that and that's uh again at this point a lot of people in the public are just looking to see uh you know if we cover everything is the communication happening it is still fluid um i don't want to jinx us anything
189between now on september 11th um but thank you and i have a i have a general question it's not so much for a high school it's um we've been asked this quite a bit uh why not and i know jeff you probably answered this it's probably in your emails there too so we're doing a hybrid approach to high school got it check i think it makes sense but why not do that for the rest of the schools um why would that not work is it a cost barrier or is it other it's that's pretty much like a top five the the um not doing a hybrid at the elementary level doesn't have anything to do with cost [Music] the hybrid model we employed at the high school because we couldn't really effectuate any other mitigating
190strategies other than masks at the elementary level we're able to utilize masks social distancing better and certainly cohorting is um is more uh mentioned the middle school for example has gone through painstaking efforts to group kids in classes by not only you know their their team but also what uh language are they in what math are they in so that they can remain in cohorts and teachers will be in many cases coming to them those those strategies we can't apply at the high school level and given the you know in consultation with our medical advising group that the the given the rate of the virus right now those strategies those mitigating factors are good things to have in place and you know as long as the numbers don't change or represent a safe opportunity for
191our k-8 students to come to school every day at the high school we don't have those medicating mitigating factors which makes it much tougher well it's um i remember the last meeting and some of the back and forth emails i saw you respond to it the idea of being between you know that in all schools is less number kids in school less contact that's you know one option but but the smaller smaller populations and elementary schools you know except for dad a little bit bigger there so the mitigation and all the kids there is being addressed by the very nature that you can space them out adequately enough with the cohorts where you can't really um do that with high school unless you go hybrid there so i think because i think i know for
192a few of the the questions not this uh something i do around student state but also teacher safety um which i know more addressed earlier and mary talked about too but um is there any situation in the uh and i'm sorry mary you mentioned earlier the number of class with the high school that would have the classroom technology i forgot that number um that would start out with how many 15. out of uh possibly 56 classrooms i think we were targeting last time or something around that yeah the district wide is 56. the question you aren't going with this so where are the other 40 sure sure is the most that you can't space out the classrooms enough or there's other criteria we have one in every grade level uh in every elementary school in
193the district so when students are electing remote learning in those schools they should be able to access high quality audio and video of the room the middle school has seven of them four in team situations and a few more in other courses that they've identified and we have 15 at cheshire high school the other thing that you know as mary was talking about additional technologies marlene had the challenge today of facilitating our new teacher induction program through the use of a what's called a document camera it basically is designed to just shoot down on the table of take the video of the table but it also has a built-in microphone so we were using that as kind of like a makeshift um broadcast system and we have you know 24 of those available so we're
194looking at different strategies to provide that technology and try and put students who can't be in the room in the room to the greatest extent possible thank you uh thanks for that and thank you mary uh adam uh i forgot my question so i'm sure we'll come back thank you and i think you asked you came in at 9 43 and 94. i hope i didn't skip over you i don't i don't think so any other questions for the boards i think jeff uh dr songs get to the emails maybe around this unless you want to present some more information well all i would say is you know mary her presentation like you guys were saying addressed a lot of the questions that we had for tonight another one was music what are we doing
195uh through the district as it relates to music the state issued an addendum uh specifically related to music so any sort of wind instruments where students um are blowing into like you know horns and things like that that you have to have at least 12 foot social distancing at the high school uh level it's it's really disappointing that the understandable but disappointing nevertheless that the organizing body for marching band competitions is cancelled that season so we're looking for a lot of virtual and socially distant small group opportunities for students to perform i know that there are a lot of students who wake up every day and are excited to get to school because of music so we're trying to bring classes outside to perform but obviously those groups will be much smaller than they have
196been in the past you can't have the full band they still students need to have like nylon um covers over the end of their instruments if they're playing with instruments so there's a lot of detailed information but again our goal is to provide as much music instruction and opportunities as we possibly can under these conditions so hopefully we can take advantage of the fall and get many students outside to be singing and playing instruments to the greatest extent we can and then the last item i had was the peck jones grant marlene if you want to update the group on that sure thing so the peck jones grant was put before the curriculum committee back in june and just to refresh folks memory that was a request that really stemmed out of a couple of
197needs one was the fact that in our budget this year the line item for library books and periodicals etc had been reduced the other was that when we went to a full day kindergarten model our students began performing really well in reading and left us with a need to fill our primary libraries with additional high quality text at higher levels higher reading levels and the other piece was that we wanted to enhance reading materials at dodd and at the high school relative to culturally responsive curriculum and be able to offer a diverse set of materials for in for our young adult readers so that i believe was um approved by the board of was approved by the board of education but was subsequently approved by the town council the peck jones grant is part of
198a set of funds that has been set aside to support enhancements to the educational program and we are allowed to make a grant petition to use that money each year and it's roughly in the 20 to 25 000 range thank you marlene um the responsive curriculum especially on diversity that's something that came out of uh nowhere this is something that i know even the last current committee was starting to work on this and there's also a state mandate if not mistaken to introduce more of this so this is gearing up to introduce our curriculum is there a uh is there a mandated date we need to have this in place by is it for the next school year or is that the question of local school districts so there is and and mary can i'm
199sure chime in on this too as well as faith um there's some legislation that came down about black and latino latinx studies and is working on the curriculum for that course and it's something that needs to be available to students circ is working on the curriculum so that it can be common across any school district that implements that and we will be implementing um offering that as an elective mary remind me is that um for the following year correct it's an optional item for next year and for the subsequent year it's mandatory it's a full year course with half a with the semester focusing on black studies with the second semester focusing on latino studies again as a replacement a few times later this year and uh just refreshed newborn members when we went to
200our new bournemouth orientation last november i think it was a december you know we spent a couple areas on this so glad to see it's gotten approved and thankful council for actually going to the pack jones i know we try not to go there unless we have to but i think that's been a very valuable asset to the community having that grant available to us so thank you for that jeff i had a question on your presentation is it can you talk about survey results or is it too early yes yeah i apologize [Music] so the survey results that we have today maybe mary could elaborate on the high school i don't have as good a sense of that as they were in progress but across k-8 i would say roughly eighty-five percent in person
201fifteen percent remote mary what i don't know where you guys are right now uh the last i i checked the survey it was about 11 12 percent remote and so that would make it 88 roughly 88 uh model does that remain fairly consistent since the initial survey more or less yeah it has um it's it's very close to when we surveyed everybody back in july did we see an uptick in uh parents opt into homeschool we didn't ask home school in july but we have more homeschools than we ever have i would call the number less than 20 though uh i'll get more information on that yeah i just uh i know the board has some plain information i know that the high school is still actually should be closing out tomorrow it's not mistaken
202correct right please finish it uh we're going to be closing it tomorrow by 5 p.m and as of right now we have 900 responses so that's that's wonderful and we are holding pretty steady now we are at x 80 86 uh are looking at hybrid and now 14 are looking remote yeah the last day i checked it so that we got a lot of responses today that's great it's great to hear and thank you all parents and students for filling that out it does help a great deal on the planning because i know uh those responses are critical in planning the classrooms throughout learning aspect and you know working around that so so again thank you everyone jeff was there anything else you wanted to know thank you for uh i'm boring my own you
203know presentation is so boring incredibly short yawn through it yeah so this would bring in the ringers um again on all seriousness thank you and thank you for the public hanging in there is there any other correspondence i'm sorry actually i want to adam you had a question before i move on i'm sorry um i did um for have we heard anything from the from the teacher's side like do we know how many teachers are coming back uh vin you want to talk about that process and also address tim's question on uh busing okay look the busing i'll do that first because it's it's a little bit easier over an explanation so the the state's guidance on on bus is that we can run buses at full capacity and and this this update is no
204different than we had provided last time we've planned all our routes though at a maximum of 50 students per bus so 70 is the capacity we plan the routes at 50 to the extent that we plan rats at 50 and let's say it's it's 12 of students will be remote that will reduce the number of students on the bus from 50 down to you know whatever that relevant you know percentage winds up being so you know i we may be in some cases buses at 50 of capacity the requirement clearly is students must wear masks on the bus driver must wear their mask while they're driving to the extent we have any aids on the bus they will be wearing masks and any student is attempting to board the bus without a mask the bus
205drivers and aides will have mass to hand to the children so they can wear their mask i want to be clear though on the numbers on the bus the 45 whatever students that are on the bus that's that doesn't we haven't backed out the people who said i'm going to be driving my child and we still have 45 on the bus so as vin said we'll have remote learners which would take off a certain percentage of bus uh riders but also those who have elected to drive for a drop off or pickup and i want to thank the cheshire police department who's been working with our principals to support drop off and pick off pickup at the end of the day because we expect a lot more vehicle transportation which is a nightmare and a
206good day okay so that's that's the bus question with respect to um it's not you know i'll answer a question it's really not so many so much teachers coming back but it's all staff you know returning to work this has been a multi-step process we had sent out a survey to all our employees in july asking them you know after we explained what our plan would be um on a high level would they be able to return to work and then you know we've received about just under 100 responses where the employees indicated they were unsure or said that they couldn't return to work for a variety of reasons and then we took from that group we followed up and sent each of those employees a very detailed explanation of what their leave options might
207be or what their accommodations could be so as of as of today and we still are getting some formal written requests you know from our staff for either leave or accommodations um we've we've fielded many many calls and many many emails beyond the 63 formal requests we've had and we've responded to all those requests formally we've worked closely with our attorneys on on you know the responses to those employees and that process is still ongoing because it is multi-step so there's really three basic categories of solutions for an employee who can't return um the first is under the family's first coronavirus response act which was enacted obviously in response to uh covet 19. you know that does allow employees to have one of three potential leave types if the employee has covid or they went
208to a state and are now mandated to quarantine so employees get up to 10 paid sick days covet 19 leave under this particular act if they have a family member that they need to take care of under those same conditions they would get two-thirds pay so the employee has it they get 100 pay for 10 days if they have a family member they're taken care of they will get two-thirds pay for 10 days and then the third available leave option under that particular act is to the extent an employee has child care issues because either the their child's school is closed or their daycare is closed they can have up to 12 weeks of what's essentially an add-on to the family medical leave act fmla so that is a leave option only in the event
209that their child's daycare or school is closed the second potential leave option is traditional fmla fmla is typically unpaid it's up to 12 weeks it allows the employee to retain their position for when they come back and it keeps them on medical benefits and then the third category which is pretty broad and a little bit more complicated to navigate against and that is if an employee has a qualifying disability they have rights under the americans with disability act to have a reasonable accommodation granted so of the 63 written requests you know most i would say fall into the ada accommodation the the process just kind of high level is you know we need to identify to the employees what we're doing in terms of safety measures and then the employee has to you know generally
210obtain a doctor's note comparing the safety measures telling us from a doctor or medical provider's perspective where the employee has a disability and where those safety measures may not work and then what those recommended reasonable accommodations are what we've seen is that in quite a few cases the accommodations being requested are to be able to teach remotely if it's a teacher we do not have any remote teaching positions available at this time um you know so we're working through that process i i know that um as we talked earlier with maura esposito and dr sullen that you know we know employees are concerned we're doing our best to to work through the details get information provide information back to the employees you know request a doctor's note it is a laborious process we are doing
211this with you know our existing staff we have you know one human resources manager we have one benefits specialist so um that's not a lot of people to call through that many requests so we've been you know staying late and getting them done but you know we have responded to everybody formally at this point we're continuing to work through the process and you know i hope all our employees and you know certainly our parents understand that this is this is not easy for anybody you know we're gonna do you know everything we possibly can to keep not only you know students safe but certainly our employees safe we don't want anybody getting sick but we also can't accommodate every request so it's it's not uh it's not easy but we'll get through it like we
212do everything else uh before i back up to faith on the question on the transportation budget then is there a do we have any staff that are not going to return back to school because of covet in general well we've had certainly we've had some employees that have decided to retire or resign because you know they are either uncomfortable they're elderly you know they we've certainly seen some of that some of the requests we've gotten are you know fmla requests you know which you know we've granted some um and whether or not those employees will come back after the 12 weeks because you know family medical leave act is is 12 weeks it's limited to that and so i i would say that as of this point we have some we've seen employees that you
213know probably would have not retired that have retired i would guess that we'll see some more of that as we get closer and closer to the start date of students and the last question on the eda request is there uh for any denials is there an appeals process or is it pretty much at that point once the request denied that's the end of it well there isn't i guess what i'll say is this an employee always has a right to make a you know a second request if they're not satisfied with the response that we gave initially um and then the other piece that i'll add is if if the employee you know if the employee's request is to be able to teach remotely and this links to the survey that we were just talking
214about rather than having the the teacher teach remotely as an example an accommodation may be you know the teacher is in the classroom and the students if there are enough may be remote so you know in that event the teacher would be in a room without other students in it and be able to broadcast you know to the students that may be a reasonable accommodation but at the end of the day to answer your question tony yeah if we say you know this is the reasonable accommodation we can we can supply and you know there really isn't a lot of recourse beyond that the employee can have in some cases thanks ben uh i wanted to back up the faith you had a question about the transportation budget earlier yeah sorry i just didn't type
215fast enough um i i i know i should know this been by reducing um the bus um the number of kids on the bus that increases what's that going to do to our but our transportation that's my finance question adam yeah okay reducing the capacity or the number of riders on the bus um doesn't change the cost we we basically pay per bus run day so you know we're still going to run the buses the same the same number of buses probably for about the same hours even though there's less passengers per bus the only place that we may see some savings is if ridership goes low enough that we might be able to eliminate a route against all three tiers because remember we're running elementary middle and high school so the only way you
216save a full bust run day which is if we could do that it's about a 50 000 savings per year but it would have to be across all three tiers of the runs so and that's something we always you know look to do year in and year out if we have that opportunity we'll certainly take advantage of it but i don't see that as a cost savings opportunity right now with decreased ridership alone yeah i'm sorry i was actually thinking it was going to bump up our prices because there are our expenses but um i wasn't looking for savings but i was just curious thank you thank you i think that's the rebound effect that tim uh typed in the comments not mistaken any other questions from the board i am yes please yeah then
217um i'd be interested to know um why there are not more opportunities for a high school teacher to teach remotely i'll let dr solon address that yeah at this point we have not worked through the process entirely the high school survey isn't even over yet so i don't know exactly what exists what we're asking people to do is these are the and this is pretty typical is guided by our attorney these are the precautions that we have in place your doctor needs to indicate if there are other accommodations that would support your ability to work in the building and then we get that information back and make decisions and that you know unfortunately can take a little while and we're still working through that in addition to finding out how many students do we even
218have remote so we haven't ruled out as vin said that option we just don't have it right today great thanks i i would appreciate um more an update down the road on that because i i kind of i think it's important to the extent possible that um that we accommodate teachers who have medical conditions or compromised yeah accommodation would mean you otherwise have to be able to perform the duties of the job and one could argue that one of the essential duties of being a teacher is you know being in the classroom to manage that group now if the group is remote that's a completely different argument but you know we're evaluating each situation uh on its face value and i will tell you and i've said this to the union repeatedly that you know
219specific to teachers anyway that the best people to teach our students are the people that we hired to do that um and i could get a substitute but that you know unfortunately with all due respect to our substitutes they're not trained and credentialed the same way our teachers are to step in and teach for three weeks or whatever the case may be so um we want our teachers to be teaching our kids as much as they can in whatever form that takes but we follow the legal protocol and get through that right i i understand that this is all a lot and that it's difficult um so but i so i appreciate that you're working on that and love it too because there are a lot of teachers out there that i've been talking to
220from elementary all the way through high school um they're also nervous many of them about being back as maura was discussing earlier in in tonight's meeting and um you know i want them to know that they're important to this whole model that we're doing as well yeah yeah obviously they're critical to our model but also the functioning of our school system exactly from here on out obviously so something we're sensitive to great thank you sure thank you um adam did you have a question uh i did um uh vin vinnet mentioned um you know as as the school the actual the real school year gets closer and the t their more teachers may decide to not teach um even i have had moments of of uh doubt as to whether or not to send my
221son or not and uh though i have answered in the affirmative it just you know that might you know that my son is going back in the in the uh survey but if a parent had answered in the affirmative or or otherwise and they have a change of heart as as the day gets closer do they is their answer is that is that a commitment in the survey or is there some sort of um unofficial drop dead date where they could change their mind again or as as information becomes more clear one way or the other yeah for students the families have the first two weeks where they could shift environments from whatever they've selected to the other after that we ask for a four-week commitment so you know we can't have large percentages of
222our student population flipping back and forth and still effectively function as a school so we have a four-week like enrollment you know lock and then we'll open it up again and go again so but what what if i if i answer one way right now and then as it gets closer before school even begins to change my mind right or if am i committed at this point until day one and then yeah our preference would be to try and stick with it i mean if there's a real you know if there's a concern for one reason or the other you're better off contacting the principal and working through it okay and and one last question and this this bridge is is hopefully not too far but pretty far and that is vaccine yes right when
223the time hopefully uh comes when a vaccine is available are we going by whatever state guidance is or do we as a health district decide what our requirements would be for uh a student to be uh vaccinated as a requirement for anything the state sets the law on vaccinations so it's not a local or regional decision um my guess is that won't be the case next year uh even at the earliest so yeah that would be my my guess that it would not be uh legally mandated next year uh let's hope that it's available and everything's in a great position um that it might be an option for the following year but uh i i think it's like you said a pretty a bridge that's pretty far out there uh to think about the fact
224that we would have it mandated for next year and so it would be state state yeah statutory okay thank you thank you everyone um i don't see any further questions let me just check where we are at the agenda i do want to apologize to cath and i skipped over correspondence i got confused with the emails but i do want to move on move to the correspondence i think we have a few that were received not similarly the covid uh oh wait can you hear me yes okay yeah uh yeah we have three letters um and in the interest of time um i will summarize them uh the full copy of each of these letters will be circulated to all of the board members if they haven't already seen it and be part of the
225minutes but um so the first letter is from anne-marie and neil kemp and uh basically questioning whether the hybrid model at the cheshire high school is in the best interest of the high school students and concern about the self-directed learning days and the you know i think overall the problem is that they think that the difference between the way the k-8 students are being handled and and those in the high school there's too much of a disparity uh hopefully uh the camps have watched this evening's meeting and and got answers to some of their questions because a lot of what their concerns were i think were addressed um during dr gadd's presentation and marlene solano's presentations we have a letter from marlena sobel who actually is a letter that was written to the town council
226and she also asked that it be entered into the record with the board of ed her letter relates to the school modernization committee and the issue involving matt bowman her concerns are relate to the process and that was involved in on the town council side and looking into this and [Music] the uh lack of deference that was paid to the request of the committee um to have mr bowman removed from the committee um it's a very well written letter um but uh you know i essentially um she also thought that the proceedings should have been in the public and not uh in the executive session um by the town council uh finally we have a letter from five different past town council chairs [Music] again this has nothing to do with the board of education
227so but asking that we all as a community uh remember that our elected officials you know we may not agree with what our elected officials do but uh at no time should we be sinking to a level where we're attacking family members or um uh basically we should all just be bringing things to a higher level it's a tough enough job to be an elected official and so we should be respectful of um especially town council chairs apparently um and those are the three letters that we have as correspondence and again the whole the full con the full letter will be in record thank you catherine again i apologize skipped over that earlier no there's no old business uh there's new business i don't have an update i don't want to keep people any longer
228i need to but i do want to announce some upcoming meetings and these are on our calendar on the chester public schools website and let me get to it um let me at least read the next two upcoming ones on tuesday september 1st uh 2020. there will be a policy committee meeting at 6 30 uh the central office board room um i believe that will be an in-person committee meeting due to the small signs we'll confirm sorry what happened all right i was just excited that we might be meeting up sorry i didn't know my mic was on i know i can't see anybody's i got the gender so i can't see the screen i'm like if i say something dumb just point it out as everyone else does um thursday september 3rd 2020 there
229will be a board a board of ed opening of school um it's marked as tbd uh and i'm not sure if that's because it's to be determined location or whether or not we're going to have it uh jeff i don't remember and again it's getting 11th hour i remember the rationale behind that yeah whether or not we're going to have it because that's our opening of schools meeting yeah we won't even be open so we're trying to figure that out yeah i would leave it open because we you know and i i well again i want to thank the public and everyone here tonight for hanging in there for close three and a half hours um but you know if there's i would ask us to consider having that meeting uh kind of placeholder in
230case there's more information that comes out between now and then or more questions and if it's easier for the board to have a short meeting to address reopening questions in a much shorter time frame we can use that but we'll play that one by ear so that is to be deed for september first uh september 14th we have a clip including meeting at 7 7 p.m and september 17th opening a school business meeting which is a little later than normal um a couple other worthwhile events to put out there is that august 27th we will have convocation which i assume will be in a traditional manner with socially distanced responsibility happening um september 8th through the 10th we have student orientation days which we discussed at the last board of education meeting due to the
231late start of school we're taking advantage of those three days september 11th is the official first day for all schools and then uh our fourth through the seventh we have labor days uh labor day with school close on september 28th yom kippur and schools will be closed um again this will all be this is all in our board calendar on our website we have a possible executive session to discuss union negotiations but seeing that we as we have not met uh at all since the uh outage uh there's not much of an update so i'm gonna forego the executive session uh however i will reach out to folks individually to give an update uh there's really not much to update uh we actually did have one item on not the teacher negotiation but a very
232quick item on the administrator one if we i think he would go back to so that being said there is some information there thank you jeff i remember that now right so i'm gonna ask for the board's patience to have a quick executive session uh and so the motion is i move that the meeting be adjourned into executive sessions include dr sullin mr massiana and miss solano today to discuss your negotiations with no action to follow um so for those uh uh do i have a second second half hand up first all those in favor thank you thank you everyone for those of you watching and mike i don't know how many are left uh thank you for hanging in there um this will meet this video will be up alive on our school youtube
233website um i don't know how to index the youtube video so if folks want to go to a specific section of the video just to listen to dr gab um be honest there's no easy way to do that i guess unless someone actually watches the video and post the time intervals where people um give updates we'll try to work on that and i think earlier the meeting for those of you that may tune in late uh we'll make the presentations available uh to the public for for viewing so that being said i want to thank everyone we're going to adjourn into executive session uh with no action to follow and it will not be returning back to this meeting so mike let us know when we're ready to go into example session thank you