Board of Education 7-29-20

001uh mr zesky can we have a roll call for quorum sure mr grippo here ms hallon here miss ham here ms harrigan here mr martelly here mr paragini here mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you carol asks that uh we stand for the pledge of allegiance i assume jeff you're gonna show up the flag i will [Music] let's rise for the pledge all right pledge of allegiance your head's getting cut off well uh good evening everyone thank you to the board for attending this evening uh mr solomon miss milano carol mike uh knows a lot going on so i appreciate pulling me in together pretty quickly last couple days especially with the updates on reopening before we uh dive into the agenda just want to apologize we're a few minutes late

002a few of us were uh in a prior non-meeting uh at the high school of all places and we had to uh beat but 10 traffic to get back here in 10 minutes so apologize if you all been out there waiting and uh mike when you get a chance during the meeting if you don't mind texting uh or messaging how many people we have watching uh before jumping to the uh actually before we actually jump into superintendent's updates do we have any correspondence or anything from the audience at this point uh jeff to the covet 19 email address we do we have uh quite a few emails uh to cover about covid19 yeah i'll ask uh we can certainly go through those now or if you feel that the majority of those emails really corresponds

003to your update yeah there's there's really one that doesn't um that i need to address um it's kind of tied together but i want to address it kind of separately it's from the cheshire change coalition which is exciting it's a group of uh cps graduates uh most of them graduated like between 2011 and 2016. and it's particularly exciting for me because most of them were students when i was a principal at cheshire high school or at the very least it died before that and they are committed to supporting the district's efforts to build on diversity uh understanding of multiculturalism and positive change anti-biased anti-racist curriculum so today as a matter of fact unfortunately i had a meeting come up at the 11th hour today and i couldn't meet with them uh the way i had

004planned and i'd get into that in a minute but um kevin hanlon met with them our k-8 curriculum coordinator and they had a few questions for the meeting that really fall within that domain of equity that i want to address outside of the all the other covid nuts and bolts so what specific ways will reopening plans address racial environmental disparities in under served communities i don't know that our plan necessarily addresses that [Music] in as much as it you know the next two questions really speak to it how will you account for working class families that may not be able to work from home or hire help to supervise children remote learning um last year last spring that was potentially an issue for people but certainly mitigated by the fact the vast majority of people

005were home if we go to a remote learning environment i think it will be again because the viral spread is so high that unfortunately we may be looking at that scenario again but we'd have to go to you know that would have to occur before we got to that point again and i think this next one is how does your plan specifically for a supporter assist families that may not be able to afford proper required technology for remote learning um and it's a good question as you know we provide a one-to-one device for every single student in the district at no charge is part of their educational experience here last year we made substantial efforts to reach out to families and provide hot spots and technology to those who may have needed it or additional

006support to those who needed it we had a student through a unique arrangement who was actually living in bridgeport we drove technology to their home like we go above and beyond to make sure that everybody has access to to learning and that um you know your your economic conditions should not impact you here and we uh we definitely live by that so those are good questions we appreciate the group sending in thank you and uh for the board members what jeff is referring to uh leoroti is a spokesperson for the petition and cheshire change.org has been uh great reaching out to us and uh looking to get something stuck with the board soon and have a discussion around equity and so forth so we're gonna work to try to plan that out but you all

007have the uh email um from writing on this with the content behind it um adam you had a question i did uh the uh dr solon's uh comment about the student bridgeport sort of set off something in my head i know that in years past we've talked about um the uh uh participation we have with uh new have the new haven school system right a lot of times and um do you think that you know going forward once covet has passed i know that you you've always said that we have a kind of a high dropout rate not a dropout rate but the uh high school students tend not to attend cheshire high anymore when they come from new haven and uh i would just like to for you to consider unless it's something you've

008done already perhaps that um uh those types of students could perhaps uh attend remotely that could be a consideration for the future to sure to allow them to continue to have access to our school system if they yeah i mean thanks it's a good point adam obviously we'd love to have them in person and i think that one of the um the challenges just in my experience at both dodd and cheshire high school has been that the older our kids get the earlier they have to get up to take that ride and it's that's really prohibitive so um it's another consideration as we move forward but i appreciate you talking uh thinking about that and sharing you know another strategy for us to make sure that they remain included in our schools thank you and

009i i know the rest of correspondence at least what i've seen is all related to uh school reopening ideas and concerns so uh we're going to address those during the course of stupidness update i also remind uh those of you watching that you can submit questions concerns complaints that they have some to the cbs covet 19 at cheshire.k12.ctus and we'll get to those um as we get through the superintendent's update so that being said uh dr sullin we're in item four which is your superintendent's update okay so there are quite a few items as tony mentioned related to um kovid 19 and our reopening for the fall so this week has been a little bit of a roller coaster in the sense that on monday the governor announced plans to really allow districts more flexibility

010around planning for the fall particularly around high school and the rationale is that high schools we're finding across the street the state are very very hard to integrate uh some of the mitigating interventions for the spread of the virus so one of the things that you know we talk about is social distancing um a real challenge with bigger people the data says you know the older you are the more likely you are to spread uh so our 18 year old bodies look a lot different than our eight-year-olds um so that's a another consideration being able to cohort is near impossible without scrapping all a tremendous number of classes and academic options which is really not palatable for students that are trying to you know gain admission to various colleges and universities and so there are

011a number of factors lunch is a huge factor given the size of schools you know i work a lot with meridian wallingford and southington southington's high school's 2000 students we have 1400 at cheshire high school getting them through lunch in a socially distanced distant manner it would start with brunch at you know eight in the morning and run through one um to be able to provide it within the space that we have and these are problems that are not unique to cheshire high school but across connecticut and so the governor and commissioner at that time said you know we really need to look at flexibility particularly at the high school level tuesday the commissioner was on a conference call with numerous members of boards of education from across connecticut and reiterated that districts will have

012flexibility today there was an emergency call i got on at three o'clock and was told well you know we really haven't defined what flexibility means yet and we don't really have a plan for um you know if what percentage of the community is covered positive do we go to hybrid versus remote i know new york and massachusetts both recently released their plans so now it's back to that state of limbo [Music] and evaluating this to a great degree i really am concerned about at the high school level our ability to mitigate risk and still deliver a high quality educational experience with all students all day clearly that is my preference to have all students attend all day every day i think that's everybody's preference [Music] our worst option is all students remote every day and

013i'm worried that by not taking precautions we're going to accelerate our our transition to an all-student's remote everyday situation so at this point i've asked dr gad and the team at cheshire high school to examine various options for schedules if we were indeed to go to a hybrid model one model we looked at had half the students coming in the am the other half in the pm um the benefit of that is that all students have contact every day some of the drawbacks are that it's a very short window the periods so in the morning uh half the school would meet in four periods uh in abbreviated periods they'd all come in get their their instructional time leave in the afternoon grab their lunch or whatever the other group would come in and those students

014would go to the same four classes in just a different part of the alphabet they teach the same four classes tomorrow you do the same thing with the other periods now the cost associated with that is fairly astronomical if we were to do this by alphabet split the groups by alphabet the cost for transportation alone would be about five thousand dollars a day on top of that we have a number of shared staff members between the middle school and high school particularly with world languages and they couldn't teach all the classes they teach and unfortunately they're languages that are hard to find quality certified people so you talk about french german latin those classes would be really compromised and i'd need to hire additional people to cover that schedule tweak alternatively we've looked at um

015having all students in every other day so you have half of the group in day one the other half day two and they just alternate every other day in that scenario we really have very limited conflicts and there's zero change in cost the benefit there is we've exp we expand out the period length so students are in classes longer we'd still divide up the periods students would have a little bit more time in the class during that day but we call that the collegiate model where students basically are attending their classes every other day um and so on their off days between their live instruction they are engaging in additional the work that the teacher has assigned them for that day as well as you know checking in with support staff during that day uh

016to support their work the following day they come back to school very much like a collegiate model where the classes are a little bit longer in length but not meeting every day either way our we would have to institute something for a short period of time this is not a long-term solution we would be looking at you know doing this probably until early october and then do we commit how is it working do we commit to this for another period of time do we alternatively uh pursue a different option but at the end of the day this whole thing may be a moot point if indeed the governor says you don't have that flexibility that all students must return based on the data that we have so um i just want you to know that

017that's what we're working on at this moment um how we're approaching it uh to try and again provide the best educational experience we can in a way that um makes sure limits the risk of spread i can never make sure i mean the only way we could do that is stay home and even people who stay home aren't always great i'm sure you have neighbors or friends that are out about with no masks or whatever but it's critically important at this time we want all of our students to get back all day every day i encourage our community to wear a mask when they go out in public and to be vigilant about you know not taking that mask off when you're in close proximity to others and please you know be smart if you're

018traveling to a hot spot area because you need to when you return you need to quarantine this is the best way that we can make sure our students are in school every day um if we can and then we got to continue to do those good things that have been helping our our limited spread so with that i just want to pause and and give people the opportunity to ask any questions on on that piece of it i have one that comes up uh and some of our communications are received which is the eight foot six foot distance that um in the presentation game last time asked about you know uh three to six foot spaces between kids our classrooms city connecticut six places what was if we were to go back school and we

019can't keep kids in the classroom uh further apart than three feet does chester got given us the green light to do that just that's the email on that like who's gonna yeah give us confirmation that three to six feet is allowed sure less than three feet is allowed actually when you read the state guidance it says that schools should quote maximize social distancing they do not give any guidance as it relates to the distance apart that students should be now the the three feet and the six feet guidance that's how far people need to be away from each other at least without to not be wearing masks depending on your age and size um with a mask and the reason we mandate the at least two-ply mask if not up to you know n95 is

020like a single-layer bandana the viral aerosol distance when people speak is about three feet on average when people are wearing a two-ply mask it's two and a half inches so that's why we're being pretty rigid about the type of mask that people can wear because it dramatically reduces the viral spread i'm not saying it's safe to stay stand three inches apart if you have a mask obviously we want to have the the greatest distance we possibly can but the state has given zero guidance in that respect they've said just keep people as far apart as you can so one of the things that we've explored and i would talk about this in another part but is uh tense outside uh our buildings to provide more space in rooms that may be more densely occupied or

021rooms that you need to just get outside and take a mask break and maybe the sun or the weather is not conducive to that we want to have shelter outside for people to do that or if there's you know a dining situation where we need to you know get people outside for that then you know it provides us more options and we've we've tried to pursue those um but you as you know with the restaurants tents are a little harder to come by these days but we do have why thanksgiving i asked some other questions but let's get it to the end so basically to recap the update so far on the governor's comments on the hybrid model what you're saying is the focus is now uh until we hear otherwise or get it confirmed

022especially at least at the high school we can entertain a hybrid model but we're not necessarily entertaining that yet for the elementary school elementary school is that correct that's correct right now the data doesn't support that and we have mitigation strategies at those levels uh that we can't employ at the high school cohorting as i said is is near impossible at the middle school where we initially thought we would be cohorting in groups of approximately a hundred uh they've done a tremendous job to narrow that down to get it to closer to 25. so you know that's a dramatic difference and so with those conditions we feel much better about being able to offer full day instruction again if the data stays the same as it is now and that's the wild card variable in

023all this we could plan hybrid we could plan a full day in august 20th rolls around and the data explodes and now you're all going remote anyway so what we've tried to do is develop three quality models with the idea that we may very well be using all three at different points in this year thanks jeff uh question from adam and then andrew hi jeff um so just as a quick recap so it's going to be at least to start assuming that the governor maintains the flexibility point of view that he had yesterday and not necessarily today but yesterday that it would be full open for elementary and full open for the uh junior high for the middle school and then uh we may be looking at a hybrid situation for the high school which

024looked to be an ab day which means that every other week the days that you were on and off would alternate from a monday to a tuesday is that is that kind of what i'm thinking there right because of the day okay so it'd be a so basically a two-week uh period of time the days would alternate in such a way that the high school student would be at school one day and then remote the second day or was it like you're doing homework the second day i didn't quite it's more like doing homework but we are pursuing check-ins for students through first of all uh special education is an obvious place where we would be looking at check-ins we have math labs uh writing labs uh reading instruction those folks could do check-ins um

025and we are looking at is there another way to to connect more with students who may need that support um it it does require students to be more self-directed unlike the remote model though you know where it was easier for a student to check out because they never had to check back in now you check back in you know the next class and that's where you know there's more accountability in that that respect and so it sounded like you're trying to make up the class hours by having longer classes during the days that they are there is that right okay so like okay like a collegiate model okay like an hour you know that's part of why we call it the collegiate model i you know and i think we're trying to make some lemonade

026out of lemons here too that you know we respect that the data says the vast majority of our students move on to two or four-year universities not that all students have to or need to but a number of students do and so this is a a brief period in their four-year history please god where they are engaging in this form of learning and we think it may be advantageous for them when they're through the high school to have had that experience with the additional supports that you would receive at cheshire high school that you may not otherwise get it at the you know collegiate level uh could i ask one more question that's okay finally yeah okay um um let's see which one will i ask that too all right um disinfecting i guess so

027originally you had a plan where it was like two days on a day of rest two days on where there was a day where you're going to be basically scrubbing down the school for a day and now it looks like the school be occupied every day um so i'm so that there would be no disinfecting during the week or would you be thinking that maybe there would be some uh self-direction where there'd be spray bottles in the class and okay class spray down your desk and then let's get class started or yeah i don't know sure let me let me clarify that so when students leave the room and again this is the since the other day the data hasn't changed right like i mean it's not dramatically different it may have gone up and

028tick or down a tick i can't even tell you that but today which is weird because usually i do know every day but um the data is still in a place where you might be able to argue that full day is a good idea i and i i think reasonable minds can differ i am very concerned however that i do not want to be backsliding into a remote everyday situation and we do know of other schools in connecticut who probably will go all day every day and i would probably rather let them be the canary in the coal mine to be frank with you and allow us to transition back to this in a way that supports um again provides that lemonade from the lemons provides a unique opportunity for them to get that collegiate

029experience in terms of the cleaning either in either any protocol that we have where kids are in school at the high school level they will be asked to wipe down the desk after they're done the student who follows them if they have concerns may wipe down the desk as well we will have wipes in the room the rooms will all be disinfected at the end of the day every day so that is still there um yes this is different than our hybrid model um that was the yellow model for the high school that we introduced initially and uh i don't know yet given the fact that this is two days that we've been exploring this if the data means that we have to go to hybrid we may go to that model that yellow model

030that was in the in the plan and i can't tell you that definitively today but we are we would explore that thanks can i add one more piece to that just for clarity um and to be thorough so yes there will be disinfecting every night and there's also will be disinfecting of all bathrooms and all high touch surfaces um during the day at least one time so we will have a crew that's disinfecting intraday at all the schools so you know we're going to be disinfecting on a on a pretty consistent basis midday and every night regardless uh you know which model other than remote thanks vincent uh andrew and faith sure jeff has there been any um information that you've heard or is there a date certain that we'll be able to draw the

031line in the sand and come out with a plan to send to all the district parents um understanding that numbers change and it's kind of a moving target but people are trying to desperately plan their lives starting in september and um sure you're hearing this from other districts and other superintendents i mean at what point do we just say these are our plans send them out to the community and right moving yeah i think that's you know a great source of frustration for superintendents for parents everybody alike and um our plan is by next wednesday to have our principals send out basically a day in the life video of what life would look like for students including you know pictures or video of classrooms things like that in addition at that point we'll ask you

032to make a commitment one way or the other to in person or remote whatever the case may be hybrid maybe at the high school and then um we'll have clearer data about where students are going um and what you know the the parent can then plan at that point we can better plan at that point uh it is frustrating to be a moving target though to hear that plans are changing and governor may or may not change them at this point we were told two weeks before school he'll let us know well before two weeks before school is different all over connecticut depending on what your birthday is so i don't know what that means necessarily so it's everybody's in a tough spot right now okay and one other thing vin where are we install

033the technology in the classrooms uh well they've they've been moving through the schools with the initial install of speakers so i know chapman highland i think they were at norton today so it is progressing you know we we are expecting it to be installed in time for school to start and um they've been moving at a pretty good clip they're getting five or six classrooms done per day but they do have to go back and install the um they're doing the microphones and the ceiling speakers first and then they'll go back with the cameras and do the wiring and all the other components so it's tracking which is great to hear and how many classrooms district wide for those listening 56 60 i mean depending on 56 classrooms though okay thank you okay uh faith

034in manhattan um okay so jeff i realize it's been um a long time since socrates and i were in college together but as i remember um we had our schedules were very defined very limited courses and i think of a high school schedule as being very diverse so what is this going to do to electives if we go with this route right we have to concentrate on the course and are we going to set up a hierarchy of courses and how do we balance it because it's six hours max in a day right yeah that's that's a great question faith uh and we are very much committed to providing a well-rounded educational experience which you know well core content areas are certainly important we also feel like you know elective classes are equally important and

035they could be really the reason that some kids come to school that day like you know maybe i'm so passionate about cooking that that's why i get up to get to class that day so we're not eliminating any classes in this model and they're given equal time in the model um and i can show you a sense of the schedule uh one you know one version that we're considering here you know in that collegiate model you though day one a day you'd have period one two five six b day three four seven eight so you still take every class in your schedule um the nice thing is that with half the students in the building it allows us to limit you know attendance and commons cafe and east gym to be able to feed people

036from roughly you know 11 10 to 12 30 throughout the day which is a certainly much more natural lunch time than we'd have to consider otherwise but it is really important to us that all students receive all classes next year we don't want to you know that's part of why we're doing this is to maintain a high quality educational experience so that's what we're we're aspiring to could i follow up with one other thing just um if we're going kind of the collegiate model um would it i and i actually this could span the entire k-12 experience um perhaps a syllabus that outlines objectives so when kids are off days or you know if we're god forbid we're going remote again either the kids or the parents know what the objectives are for the year

037for each student um because then that way it could save the teachers you know just being harassed and not harassed but being questions day in and day out if the parents know where those kids need to be at the end of the year right well we've definitely committed to google classroom as a anchor point particularly at the high school level for where our work will be focused so it should be crystal clear what learning expectations are for students on a day over day basis in terms of plotting out an entire year the biggest challenge we have there is the bouncing back and forth between particular models so if we're going to school as normal the syllabus would probably look one way if we're every other day it probably is going to roll out even different

038than if we're remote but you know i i want to give marlene the chance to chime in on this in terms of you know creating a syllabus for classes hi everyone so um very important points that you're making faith i think part of that information is communicated at open house and those open houses will happen even if they don't happen in person they'll happen virtually and there's quite a bit of information that's given out to parents at that time when you think about a classroom teacher this is what we're covering these are the expectations for this year in grade three math and in etc and then when we have those parent conferences again those are revisited for the half year along with you know progress reports all the way through so we have a couple

039of places at each really each level where that is done um in addition there are um links and things that we send to parents so that they can clearly see curriculum-wise what we are covering for the year um and certainly we're monitoring and adjusting that based on last year and this year as well okay thanks see we have adam and tim [Music] well me and tim back to back there should be a flurry of questions i i have three i don't know you can cut me off at any time tony um so uh firstly uh as we've seen with the professional uh athletics uh at least certainly with baseball uh where their model is traveling um where the other sports so far are going to be in a bubble we still haven't seen how that's

040going to be but it looks like testing has been successful there um is there a possibility now or at least where we've seen where one athlete could could uh take down an entire team in the locker room has there been any discussion with the ciac about uh postponing or canceling fall sports or athletics in general for the year and if so i know that's been one of the major talking points as far as uh starting times go as far as school start times if athletics were eliminated would a later start time be considered since there wouldn't be that need to coordinate with other athletic events and schedules that would normally start after three o'clock uh so that's question number one that's a two-part question adam but anyway oh i'm sorry the first part of that

041is the ciac has not yet made a decision on athletics for the fall they've been very deliberate in their rollout to my knowledge there have not been positive cases associated with high school athletics to my knowledge um but i certainly am not familiar with every athletic program across the state but i have not heard of any uh the other part of that if fall sports are cancelled the challenge in changing our school start times would be transportation if we're providing transportation to all schools so right now the runs are cascaded one on top of the other so if i backed up the high school i would need a lot more buses to run dodd at the same time which we haven't budgeted and given the budget overruns we'll have through covid this year i wouldn't

042necessarily recommend uh pursuing that option although you know i do think there's benefit to a later school start uh this isn't the time to try and tackle that i'm afraid thank you jeff um let's see secondly so with the with the hybrid model um for the high school and then with full open for the the other levels um is the opt out still a consideration at the high school level absolutely yeah the opt remote learning is a consideration at every level no matter what we do um so if we're you know all in or hybrid then you can opt to go remote if we all go remote then obviously you're remote already um and the the last option would be to withdraw from school completely in home school or private school i guess you could

043pursue but they're all kind of the same but we are and finally uh with the hybrid model and i guess well with all the the levels um has there been any commentary from the teachers about um their feelings on the full open and or hybrid model it it does run the spectrum i will say you know there's probably there's anxiety among some at all levels there's you know a desire to get back from everybody but different people have different concerns this week met with about 75 teachers so far in meetings throughout the day so what we try and do is talk about here's providing more clarity around what the plans are and then talk about what concerns or suggestions do you have so for example yesterday a concern was raised about a unique uh educational

044environment within the district that all right that's a unique challenge vin met with those teachers with a special ed uh supervisor today robin and kerry and they tried to brainstorm about how to solve that so we've encouraged a lot of dialogue between our teachers and our administrators and we try and collaboratively solve problems everybody wants to be in school everybody wants it to be safe how do we work through that is definitely a real challenge but our teacher's been really good about it thank you uh thank you tony uh yeah so i've got a couple of a few different questions but i think they should be quick answers that's my hope um adam asked a minute ago about the ciac is that a state agency a quasi-state agency it's not a state agency it's a

045it's an organization that it's like the ncaa it's not that's not a national organization that is overseen by anybody it's it's more or less a body that all of our many across the state belong to in order to participate in sanctioned state championships and things like that they don't have any uh official authority other than to say that they're gonna cancel championships or whatever but because it's comprised of athletic people from all over the state i mean it's it's self-governing if you will okay but they don't they don't take direction from the state necessity they probably follow guidance but they don't okay all right um number two uh the second question uh marlene had mentioned uh the open houses yeah and um so i'm just so one thing that i've heard from some of my

046friends who are teachers is they've said and this is not just in cheshire this is in the area where they've said to me bluntly you know the remote learning didn't work as well as as in classroom learning and so they're expecting whereas in a normal year they probably take a few days or a week to sort of gauge where students are and sort of catch up on stuff they're thinking it probably will take a little bit longer this year to do that and so my question is simply in relation to open houses and the timing of them um typically i think they happen within the first week or two of the year uh do you believe that do you we don't even know when school will open necessarily right now at least at this second

047in time right is the idea to have the open houses occur after teachers are comfortable that they've gauged their students and where they are um no not necessarily because we have two different i think objectives one with open houses is really to provide a more generic overview uh marlene was talking about using that time to highlight what it is that we're focused on learning the expectations of classes things like that now a teacher conference is different that's where we're talking more about individual student needs we anticipate at this point in time i think it's pretty safe bet that we're going to be doing all of these things remotely and so yeah the generic overview is more that that open house and then the parent conference it gets into more of what you're talking about we

048haven't considered pushing that back yet but that that's later in the year anyway toward october okay yeah parent-teacher conferences okay yeah um we have 50 we're getting 56 classrooms are getting the cameras correct how many classrooms do we have in the in cps uh several hundred uh more than three hundred okay all right then do you have a count on that yeah it doesn't need to be specific i was guessing more than three hundred it's 300 and 400 if you can every learning space that includes libraries and other areas okay so we're getting to maybe 20 20 15 to 20 depending on how you count it okay yeah and with regarding uh elementary schools and the cohorting goal um it sounds like you're talking about moving toward a full reopen for elementary schools um it

049seems that makes total sense to me uh in terms of the ability to cohort but i'm just wondering uh in terms of the non-standard classroom stuff so lunch specials that being library art music is there an idea on that would those teachers be going into the classrooms with each of the students would they be canceled i have no interest yeah marlene you want to talk about that sure tim great question i'm glad you asked it um a couple of things i believe and don't i don't have the exact statistics for every single school building but when last i talked with the principals on this topic it sounded as though most of the schools were going to be able to provide art music library pe in their original spaces when that is not possible those special

050teachers will go to the classroom to provide that so each of the school principals will be putting together that day in the life or like that one pager of what recess will look like what specials will look like where will they have those um where what will that look like so they're busy working on all of that to send out to principals along with um a video to kind of show what spaces look like thank you thanks tim uh just for a little change of order how about faith and then adam sorry adam okay just real fast follow up on tim's question all right so we have 300 rooms we're obviously not going to win the lotto tomorrow so what is a good number what we have 56 that's clearly um what is what's the

051goal and how do we get there well you know first i just want to be clear that there this is so unique in that we don't know what sort of environment we're going to end up in i mean if we were to go to remote learning tomorrow because the data said we had to and we don't return to full-time and until we get full-time instruction everybody's back for three months or four months or something let's say worst case scenario we just wasted a boatload of money on ppe and our goal has been to be very conscientious about the money that we're spending um and be very judicious in how we we make these decisions with the best case scenario being that we purchase something to cover us in covid that has residual value after cobit

052as a matter of fact you know in the case of the audio systems and technology in the room it doesn't just have residual value it has an enhancement after the fact which is why we've been more eager to pursue that uh intervention than you know other other options for example so yes we have 56 classrooms we would love to do more to do another 30 would cost approximately a hundred thousand dollars and as situations evolve you know i i right now the company uh r b enterprises is doing for us exactly what they can with the materials they have available what we've committed to them financially they're working as quickly as they can to get these things in the room for the start of school it's going to take them a month to really do

053all of these spaces we have in that time i think we should know more about the data and where we are and i don't want to just run out and spend the money because we can and i know that's not what you're suggesting but by the time they get to the end of the installation process we'll know more to be able to move forward on more i'm thinking that you know based on the current trajectory i i think 30 more would be a responsible number uh to cover highland is a very big school right now they only have one in every classroom or one in every grade level excuse me i think they could certainly benefit from more dodd in the high school could also benefit from more if we're going hybrid if we're committing

054to a hybrid model we'll know that in a few weeks and what does that mean at the high school in terms of the remotes do we need so i think waiting a few weeks is prudent here but in the projection we're looking at about 30 at the cost of a hundred thousand dollars and then we'll you know we'll talk about that as we get closer to the opening of schools okay thanks yep thanks great jeff i want to do some quick recap and then one last question so we started a meeting uh michael posted around 6 35 at 83 viewers as a 7 16 that jumped up to 221 which is great and i think it goes back to uh the obvious interest in the reopening which you know no doubt it's a big it's

055a big deal for us and parents and all stakeholders also going back to what andrew said earlier you know about having a final plan published so for folks just tuning in a quick recap is um jeff gave an update on the recent changes or at least communication that came from the governor's office uh literally monday that a hybrid model is being considered for the high school specific for due to space limitations so uh dr sullin did walk us through that um what that would look like in terms of a days b days i won't rehash it so but that only applies to the high school and we're still uh awaiting official confirmation from the state department education that that will be an option we can't pursue there's the reason i bring it up is uh

056we understand that and from here are the boards that a lot of boards have been preparing hybrid models in the hopes that that will be a go-to model but that has not been made official yet and so we're hopeful that will be right now it's going to recap it only seems to be for the high school that's being considered as far as for the rest of the schools uh jeff uh it's still the option of going back full time synchronous or asynchronous learning you know that's still open to all the schools actually so that has not changed so the question i have around that regard is will you be sending out a survey soon um to pull the parents again uh on yeah i guess similar to the last one a little bit more detail

057around the options that to consider and see if the percentage has changed at all since this yeah yeah so our plan is uh by next wednesday we've asked principals to put together that video that i was talking about where kind of go through a day in the life of a student so that our parents have a better sense of exactly what our kids will experience or their children will experience and with that video will be the survey and we'll give you um our plan right now is to send that out wednesday and ask people to commit by sunday night whether whether they're going to pursue the plan for that building or they're going to um choose remote that you know that'll give us better data and better ability to plan thank you we've had some

058uh parents and our stakeholders i think got the emails to offer their uh their assistance and helping draft the next survey you know that a little more detail around this so if we need anything that a pulse probably one or two more i guess as things change but uh with regards to the 56 classrooms being set up with the audio and video is it is it safe for me to assume that the the classrooms being targeted are or degrade just to say are those grades or class rooms where the space um is constrained for a full class for the social distancing guidelines therefore those are the best candidates for the remote learning to help not necessarily the rooms um within a grade level within a school are generally pretty much the same size so what

059we've done is you know work with teachers to identify volunteers and those that are a little bit more tech forward to facilitate again this is very intuitive technology you don't need to be bill gates to figure this stuff out but you know we work with the teachers to identify appropriate folks and our goal would be to try and assign more students who are remote learning to those teachers got it would it um be helpful if uh i know i asked uh last week i know vincent is working on this but at least for the board to see all the classrooms uh square footage how many kids will be in there just so i have an idea right you know it's it's three feet gonna be too close to some cases six feet and i'm wondering

060if it'd be helpful for parents to see that maybe if their child is gonna be in the classroom where they feel well yeah they're all the same size but if my my my son or daughter has 30 kids in a classroom uh they maybe may feel comfortable making a decision knowing that to keep them at home and synchronous right right or the level of detail but it might be helpful and that might that might uh be answered when uh you started doing the walkthroughs of the classrooms i know you talked earlier marlene talked earlier about the videos from the principles that'll be gone to the parents soon walking them through the day in life for a student just so they get a visual of what it looks like i think that's something some parents will

061want to say got it but i don't feel that comfortable yeah you know i often send them in but i'm gonna start off at home at first and see how it goes but you know i just but the point is there's options for all the parents still we haven't taken anything off the table yeah other than is now a hybrid option at the high school we're trying to get confirmation on that and lastly just to recap you're not advocating the board spend 900 thousand dollars retrofit all the classrooms with technology at this point uh just in case folks tuned in and didn't hear that um i think that's prudent and i think we discussed at last meeting that you know at the early grade levels you know we don't know how effective it's going to

062be um so as things change and evolve you'll bring to the board conditions whether or not you know like 30 or 40 or 50 required right spending all the money right now right and it turns out we're full remote learning and we have technology saying the classroom is unused right i mean yeah as much as it would be a benefit to have all the rooms outfitted i realized that our resources are finite you know they're not absolutely unlimited and even if we wrote a check tomorrow for a million dollars for this company to do every room they couldn't do it over the course of even you know the next six months probably just because of availability materials the rooms being used they can't get in there and stuff like that they couldn't even actually facilitate

063that the other reality is that these um systems take some bandwidth when we're running google me uh across a big part of the district it eats up bandwidth and i would be afraid that if we went to every room we would crash the system if we had that many people accessing it at home so you know there are a lot of considerations in this and that's what's make this summer really challenging is we're just talking in such detail about the tech you know we think we have to go to this level of minutia for lunch for kids walking in hallways for bathrooms for transportation for staffing for it's just outrageous and that's why if we could get a clear destination of what we're allowed to do it'd make life a little bit easier yeah one

064last thing and i know you have more to talk about um you well two things you accidentally slipped the name of the company doing a technology install so i know my fellow board of chairs will be uh probably calling them to uh yeah whatever we've got a lot of inquiries but it is hard to come by number two though what about costs you you alluded earlier to the fact that we are going to overspend on some things do we have an idea yet and i'm assuming that the 56 classrooms that money um is it being paid for out of the two hundred thousand dollars to set aside is it where are we where do you project us to be in quote-unquote going over budget as things stand right now and what could the potential be

065if you have your crystal ball uh down the road for that cost only because at some point i know we're doing the best to absorb what we can in our budget but at some point we would like to get in front of town council town manager tom financial planner again you know where we actually going to be with your opening and if we need help if any i don't know yeah given up that there might be some things discussed in the course of the year as far as our expenditures just have an idea they can question and maybe plan for i'm not saying we're there i just i assume we're gonna have something that's another great question that we ask ourselves every day about like oh my god what is this gonna cost us and

066you know we are very sensitive to that we're not you know shorting things uh we're not shorting safety because we're worried about the money but we think about the money and when do we ultimately have to go back to the town and what is that going to mean so right now i think you know the short story is that we're too early to absolutely know like i said if we went to remote and we weren't using any ppe we don't have to keep eyeing it but i'm gonna ask i mean i would expect that a few weeks from now as we get close to the start of school we'll keep buying the things that we need to ensure public safety and educational you know uh progress within reason um and if it's a massive i

067like we wouldn't pull the trigger on a you know 30 more cameras without talking to the board but we're going to continue to purchase ppe and the things we need to open school safely and move progress of education but i'm going to ask ben to talk about where those areas are from tents to ppe um that we're focused on um we may not even be able to give you clear numbers on each of these areas right now but you can get at least the sense of what we're doing thanks all right good evening everyone again um i'm sharing my screen really to identify these are the pressure points that we're going to be watching closely in the budget so this message that you see on the screen is you know this was a message that

068we uh spoke to the administrators about at our meeting this morning but you know the budget obviously we're asking for extreme caution this year we do have a 40 expenditure cap in place until further notice so you know all the principals with the accounts that they have responsibility for all the department managers that have uh budget responsibilities cannot exceed 40 of their approved budget again that's the way we typically manage the budget normally at this time of the year we allow 60 percent we're at 40 percent those bullets identify those areas that we're going to be managing against and as jeff is alluding to there's some variability like cost of um right now we're in the middle of looking at what furniture needs to be removed from all the classrooms and whether we're disposing of

069it moving it into storage and then we'll have to move it back so the longer that the items stay in storage the more it costs and i you know the we have a vendor that's going to do this for us the second bullet is the um item i mentioned earlier we're going to be disinfecting sanitizing and cleaning the buildings intraday we're hiring a vendor to do that so that only goes for a month it's a lot less than it goes for 10 months and the advantage of using a vendor to do this is we're not hiring and adding staff we're going to have a vendor who if we don't need the service anymore we can just discontinue it with you know just a week's notice really purchase of things like the ppe sanitizing wipes paper

070towels sanitizing and cleaning products all going to be a variable cost the longer we need to continue to buy those items the more it costs additional staff we're being really careful not to add staff but we know that we're going to have to add staff hours simple example if we had a lunch wave at an elementary school we have to bring in our teaching assistants that lunchroom playground aids earlier the food service staff would have to come in earlier or possibly stay later depending on the schedule student transportation we do have a budget for that but as jeff mentioned earlier if we go to a and a different schedule at the high school where we have an a.m and p.m all students in the building that's going to cost us you know as much as

0715 000 per day or as little as 2 400 per day for the period of time in which we do that and the twenty four hundred dollars is simply um one hour of overtime per bus which is a hundred dollars times the 24 buses will need to meet that schedule we talked about the classroom broadcast capability that's about two hundred thousand dollars the last bullet is the tents that jeff mentioned so if we install tents at the schools there'll be a cost associated with that and it varies uh it's a monthly cost so the longer we keep it the more it costs and the last item which is the one bullet up from the last really is not related to covid but it is something that is breaking news that um our transition students normally

072we would provide services until age 21 there was a court ruling that requires us to provide services now for those uh students to age 22. so i don't have a number as to what that would be at tracy nolan hussey i was director of pupil personnel is looking at that but those are the categories that you know have the biggest potential for variances to our budget and you know i i was reluctant you know jeff and i spoke earlier to put any numbers to that that are definitive yet because i don't know what they are until we know what period that they'll extend to yet we are in the first budget month of the year which hasn't closed out yet but obviously i will be providing finance updates as as we progress here so i

073hope that at least answers the question kind of at a high level and we'll keep narrowing down the numbers as we go forward thanks vincent uh jeff i'm sorry let me turn it back to you i'm not sure if there's some more emails that came in or if you want to go on with your update on those more let's talk about yeah i mean i definitely wanted vin to be able to give that financial update you know as the next item on the agenda and then to address the myriad of kovid related emails and i will tell you you know uh there's a solid stack of them and some of the questions that are asked are you know brief enough that i can kind of give a a quick shout out on some of them

074that have come in in the last half hour or so long that i i couldn't even read them to respond yet in this um in this forum this sort of forum without people just sitting there staring at the screen uh for a long time so um the i'll just try and crank through these questions um and and summarize them uh we're concerned about teachers ability to serve both in-person and remote students equally what happens also if the student or if the teacher becomes ill excuse me um and we have to go to a substitute so uh marlene you want to talk about how much we've been focusing on consistency between classes this year this summer yes we've been doing a lot of work with that especially knowing that in the remote environment we want to

075make sure we always want to make sure that kids get the same experience um obviously that's going to going to vary based on things like teacher personality and how they choose to teach a certain standard however the the material that they learn and the content that they are are asked to master will be the same we actually have a number of teachers going to conference workshop next week three three days two hours a piece that a number of us will be attending so that we can provide some professional development also to all of our teachers around this idea of again you've heard me say this before meeting students where they are regardless of the fact that we've just experienced covid and this is a practice that we we want to employ all of the time

076not just during this pandemic so there's been a lot happening behind the scenes as far as teaching and learning and instructional practices that we'll be utilizing during that time thank you i also want to just indicate to people that are watching um at home that on our website right on the front page it says frequently asked questions so you know if you were to go to our home page um the cheshire public schools website and show you quickly here how easy that is this is our website right here it says has our school reopening plan and then frequently asked questions below that because many of the questions i get are available here in the faq section and we do update this as things change so this uh is a great resource for people to access

077if you have a question and um just kind of want a quick answer on that um next question is about uh will if we have to go to a cohort or excuse me a hybrid model where half the students are attending one day and half the other will you be conscious of siblings and the answer is yes we'll do the best we can easily within a building but also try and look at that across different buildings different grade levels um if with the current hybrid model monday tuesday thursday friday what will happen with many school holidays that fall on monday that was an example in our hybrid model so when we identify what cohort students are in we would identify the school schedule around that because we wouldn't want the cohort who always has school

078on monday to always be dripped if uh numbers still stay low we'll be there will there be a time place to move to a full five day a week school and the answer is probably the state like i said earlier new york and massachusetts have both both released guidance around that connecticut about two weeks ago indicated they would but we haven't seen that yet what percentage of students or parents are take three it's been a long day what percentage of teachers do not want to return to school what will happen if our teachers refuse to return to school first of all all of our teachers want to return to school they want to do so safely though and so that's really what we're focusing our energy on is to try and make sure that that's

079safe we've asked teachers that have medical conditions to um notify our hr department and vin and his team are working through those things and i'm working through those with the union we're meeting actually next week to review some of those um you know if you if you just don't want to return because you just don't want to um that's not really an option obviously you know if there's not a health issue or anything you just don't feel like it you know or you're concerned but there's no medical you know we try and address it if there's a concern how can we help mitigate that concern but otherwise you know you really have to report to work [Music] with a hybrid model teachers and staff will be instructing two days for two days and remotely for

080three days that's not necessarily accurate i just want to make sure people understand in a remote in the hybrid model the teachers are teaching in person four days monday tuesday thursday friday for example during the week wednesday would be a day to everybody's home doing remote but in that model the the teachers there all four days doing live instruction and the students at home again this would be an area where we would really want more of those camera setups it would really help on a broader scale to be able to do that at that point but i still think it's prudent to have a wait and see approach at the moment have we thought about uh possibly extending days to ensure adequate drop off time uh not necessarily extending days but we're working with the

081cheshire police department to set up more efficient drop-off situations for students on buses and on um and who get driven to school as you know that's already a huge issue in our buildings and we're looking at alternatives so for example as an alternative that we're exploring this is not definitive but you know white students who are getting dropped off at cheshire high school have the option of getting dropped off it's escaping me the next street over where the funeral home is might they get dropped yeah thank you a walking path to cheshire high school um as opposed to having all those car cars pull around front i mean we're looking at different options with the cheshire police to make sure it's safe and to make things more efficient in our buildings what about leveraging volunteerism

082to fill gaps absolutely when we send out our survey we'll be asking for parents who may be interested in uh supervising buses you will have to pass a background check to do that um or to uh come and help supervise at recess or something like that where we need more eyes on people and supporting social distancing that would be really helpful and we are going to ask for that [Music] have we thought about moving to outdoor classrooms yes i talked about the tents um we don't have there aren't enough tents in connecticut for us to move a lot outdoors but we do want to provide more options for that [Music] if there's a an issue in a school or class and plans shift to learning models in a more localized way so if there's an

083example at the hot high school for instance would a decision move to hybrid or virtually made only for that school actually in a cohorting model we try to only do it for that group uh is the most in the most limited degree that the people that the individual's been in close contact with so elementary and middle that's why it's it's easier to have that cohorting at the high school now if it's an alternating group that gives us some cohorting capacity but not great we would still work with only those that the child came in contact with but all the kids that are going on the other day if there's no positive in that group we have no problem um would we consider a modified hybrid model for younger students that has them engaging in class

084more regularly so after we issued the hybrid model the monday you know tuesday with the wednesday off thursday friday is we explore the youngest grades we think that there may be room to continue to discuss and explore with medical advice is it possible to get the younger kids in still on a daily basis um and that's gonna you know it's going to depend on data and medical advice but we're certainly open to that idea um there were a few emails we had uh four emails from different people two of whom were married that were concerned about pushing the start of the calendar back um and we'll talk about that a little bit later on um will teachers be provided details of building specifics before making final decisions about returning based on their medical conditions we're

085trying to provide everybody more detailed uh information about their return things like the state changing what's permitted obviously um derail that to for a short period and we're trying to get as much detail out as we can but please know even when we send out videos about what a day in school will look like we're still trying to finalize those we'll probably still be finalizing those until the bitter end which is why you know we anticipate providing the first two weeks real flexibility about changing your mind uh going from remote to school or vice versa uh after that we'd like you to really lock it in uh for a period of a month and then have a kind of an open enrollment period at the end of that month um so that's kind of where

086we're at at the moment um does have you seen recent data on children under age 10 being transmitters and contracting covid all the data we have to date is very positive around the younger age groups but again this is so fluid it changes uh seemingly daily and we continue to monitor that as well as take guidance from the health professionals and chespercott uh including chesapeake i should say around what's appropriate not i want to just take a second to shout out our pediatrician jim o'connor who is always available to talk to us about concerns and questions we have always very responsive and getting us feedback and he regularly uh as part of his professional development is working with yale and is often the conduit for many of our questions that we have uh to go

087past a body of experts in in the field of epidemiology and transmission and illness and and he gives us back great feedback so thank you jim for that um will teachers be provided an option to teach remotely that's already something i addressed if there's a an illness that is something we would certainly consider most but if it's just i i don't feel comfortable we would work with that individual to try and make them feel more comfortable but unfortunately may not be able to accommodate every one of those requests [Music] will there be a new survey sent out to parents i've kind of covered that into teachers you know we're going to send out an email that a survey that says which one are you committing to um that's really where we're at at this point

088in the game we have to be able to make plans for the return to school so um parents can expect that uh again next wednesday one quick question on that commitment i just saw a couple come through my hand so is when when we ask parents for a final commitment or uh say and where they land when sending our kids to school or not does that bind them into that option can they make it just it does in some respects but again for the first two weeks we'll be flexible and letting people in and out of that okay after those first two weeks we really need to kind of lock that down um for continuity for the children's sake and for our staff and so you know uh we would look at that point for

089at least a month commitment uh in either way okay now obviously if the state changes and says you know three weeks in everybody goes remote then everybody goes remote but you know in terms of the choice that's what we're we're doing this is a really lengthy email that i can't read the whole thing but basically it's a advocacy for district choice for hybrid model and it looks like this person's uh pushing for uh that being a consideration at all grade levels again we'll consider you know with the data and our medical advice if we do that uh this next one is that um dr solon indicated a previous meeting that one classroom in each grade will be wired for synchronous teaching um is that one classroom enough and again i think you know when we

090get data back about how many people want to go out at that point we'll be further along in the installation process and maybe even able to to pursue more if that's prudent um if of parents are driving their kid to school how will we manage the start of school the individual principles will talk a little bit about arrival dismissal but i've already talked about us working with cpd to support that process and i'm really appreciative of lieutenant jeff sutherland to offer us his support on that [Music] what about an individual student testing positive and the students that they may have been in contact with before during after school so if there's a positive it doesn't matter if it's a child in our community our schools or an adult in our community more esposito and her

091team at chesapeake actively pursue uh contact tracing for those individuals so the the challenge here is that a positive test can take 10 days to get back and you know everybody tell me everybody you've come in contact with over the last 10 days for some people that's easier than others um and you know so it's created a bit of a challenge for more on our team that one that's that's that's when it comes up right so i think the context of one of those really questions is if uh my my son or daughter is in the classroom uh you know their course of school and it turns out that one of the students of classroom contracted covet what's the procedure for the rest of the the classroom right uh did the parents get notification that

092there was an exposure do they go off it gets tested and related to this is will the schools force testing on kids i know we can't and wouldn't right but i think it's more about what happens when uh your child was it's gonna happen i think we plan for the worst hope for the best right but if it happens in the classroom the concern is what's the protocol then for the classroom the kids impact the teachers right because the answer will follow justification guidelines or house so we're working with chess for cotton surrounding towns to develop common guidance around that chest ricotta initially said well we need to assess the situation is this a student who never wore a mask and has been playing basketball and with all the buddies in the neighborhood well now

093those buddies may need to be quarantined and individuals that those kids sit next to did they wear the mask all the time would they have to be quarantined we would work with chespercott to notify everybody who needed to be notified if there's a positive in the building will notify the building community that there was a positive test not by name in that but that there's an individual in that building now if it's a child in a specific class we're more than likely going to cohort or you know in that cohort uh at the middle in elementary schools that class might very well likely be quarantined but we're still working through the details of that and i i think maura justifiably so is sensitive to you know hard and fast in the sense that well you

094said that only the kids from the class would be quarantined well that's not true the kids in the class might be quarantined so are the five kids that this guy has been playing basketball with outside every day for the last three weeks with no masks on and so those kids would also and maybe some of the other kids in their classes would have to that's the absolute worst case scenario that we hope doesn't happen and why we need to reinforce how critical mass masks are with kids um and adults in our community um if we go with a hybrid model are we consulting with other towns this comes from a teacher who a parent who's a teacher in another district the answer there is yes we've been working closely with other surrounding towns on that

095um and i i feel bad that i i keep just hitting these through but i want to be i want to honor the time that these people put into asking questions and it also gives perspective to everybody who's in the audience about the diversity of things that we're we're trying to work through um uh person saying i think the proposed challenges changes to the school calendar are great especially starting later in september um about why the last possible date for kids would be june 17th what happens if there's a blizzard or weather related event and we'll talk a little bit about that and that's really we're going to go to remote learning after the second snow day so after that um second snow day has occurred every snow day thereafter would be a remote learning

096day and that's somewhat contingent upon what happens with the uh school calendar discussion later but that's that's the the plan at this point um okay i just want to get back to the start of these questions here um sorry all right um backpacks instead of lockers uh we do we are um requiring backpacks instead of lockers uh that we don't want kids congregating together uh closely that may change as we get to winter and have to worry about coats and things like that but at this point no locker use what will lunch be at the high school that'll be addressed by the high school plan we will not be cutting any elective courses in the music program we really want to you know for those large ensemble classes get them outside as much as possible

097where they can play musical instruments where they can sing as i said before for some kids that's the reason that they come to school every day and i really want to make sure that we continue that our team is committed to that questions about safety drills fire and lockdown still waiting for guidance from the state on that issue it seems to fly in the face of the health guidance to have everybody congregated together so we're waiting on that um a question about being a substitute and how will that process work we've just signed a contract with kelly services where they will provide us significantly more access to a larger pool of staff should we need it now i think not only might we need it for teacher subs if worst case scenarios but also for

098additional ia support and to provide supervision if we don't have adequate numbers of volunteers will need to do that will subs be able to participate in cobid training before school starts i think that's a good idea we'll work with marlene to try and get that off the ground question about will there still be freshman orientation we're going to address that in the calendar conversation in a little bit um well this is uh somebody who's just given me a shout out for the the leadership stuff and how things have been going um one concern relative to reopening with the increase in covid cases among 10 to 19 year olds how can we responsibly open schools knowing a significant portion of students made the leading demographic for recent infections um we are working still very closely with

099our medical personnel and you know we are so far away in some respects from the opening of schools that we will continue to monitor that very closely and follow the guidance of our health professionals like i said more esposito namely and then also with um with jim o'connor and others that we consult on these issues uh the this is from a teacher who happens to live in town with a concern about the potential for the new hybrid model uh and the concern for extra prep time being needed i think that's something that we'll work through with the high school administration and teachers there to to continue to work on that that's something that we're we're very sensitive to as i said earlier uh the worst thing that we can do is burn out our staff

100that results in bad um you know diminished uh instruction for our students and so that doesn't work for any of us we need to work collaboratively to make sure we have positive experiences for everybody with the can we use ac uh air conditioning and will the heating systems be able to run uh while the students are in school i i know heating may sound crazy after the last week and a half that we've had um because it feels like the earth is on fire at this moment but it will be here before we know it quickly though with the ac we can't use window units uh we can use central air systems we've purchased upgraded uh filters for those are in the process of of trying to secure those for the start of school it's

101called a merv rating uh we currently use a merv eight we're looking to go to move merv 13 which is recommended and we will uh do that we had another question about um working with optimizing airflow and things like that we have been consulting with a mechanical engineer to optimize all of the airflow that we have as well as with a physician from yale who's helped us with some of this as well and we are implementing that for our schools um i am conscious of the fact by the way that without air conditioning it could be super hot in some of it's hot you know in our buildings now and so what we're looking to do is um consider half days if the temperature is going to be that hot or even a remote learning

102day uh asking our students to spend the day and staffing the day for the full day in the school with the mask on when it's 90 degrees in the room is overwhelming and you would know that if you've been outside for more than 10 minutes with your mask on in the last week and a half how will students be able to wear masks in schools opening april august 27th when there's no air conditioning will portable units be deployed unfortunately we can't use the portable units they simply recirculate the air so those are forbidden and so we are looking at pushing the start back a bit uh what's the plan to screen all adults etc uh temperature tracks required tests uh we don't have required testing as a matter of fact you know we did explore

103if you saw last meeting batch testing or pool testing it's called where it's a simple nose swab and not the the deep nasal swab but it's a nose swab where say 25 people put their swabs into a container the lab tests those and can pretty quickly turn them around the problem is there are so many false negatives with that process that's not been perfected yet and so um we kind of abandoned that strategy the other thing is doing the the real deep nasal swab the the tests that uh you must see on tv those take so long to turn around that they're not really an effective manner to screen so we ask people certainly our staff and students to take uh covid screeners at home we're providing um the kinsa thermometers their smart thermometers for

104families in cheshire to be able to take their own temperature before they come to school that data is then provided to uh anonymously to the state where our chess for cot can track this and see well geez we have more fevers at home and it's going to take this entire thing to wipe out uh kovid takes an incredible amount of personal responsibility uh from all members of our communities i've been harping on masks temperatures as well if you're feeling the symptoms stay home we want to try and provide you uh with instruction at home to the greatest extent we can not if you're at home for one day you know we don't do that now we don't automatically hook you up but if you're home for multiple days and you're quarantining or something we want

105to try our best to get you the best education you can during that period especially if you're not ill is anybody exempt from wearing a mask if a student staff or visitor is exempt from wearing a mask how will those individuals be screened for covid19 everybody really has to wear a mask that's the bottom line it's a it's a public safety issue if we do have some individuals with significant needs who may not be wearing a mask and we are providing additional ppe for for those unique situations but really masks are necessary for everybody are you talking about high school only remote yes um then there was they referenced a survey a statewide survey about teachers not wanting to return you know i think there's some validity to that i think there's real concerns that

106our teachers have and we're working with them to address those concerns elementary school question if only one elementary school classroom per grade is equipped with synchronous learning at this point uh will parent-teacher ratio be maintained um and yes so uh we know that if we were to uh put every student who's remote plus um 20 other students in a class with a teacher that would be a terrible situation for the teacher and the students in the room so we are maintaining the class size ratios i think tony made a good point about um you know will teacher will parents know how many students are in rooms it's kind of a chicken in the egg situation where i don't know exactly how many kids will be in a room until i know exactly how many kids

107will be going remote um so i won't know in advance but i can project out for people and that might be helpful um this is a question a statement about the governor indicating six feet distancing with a mask 12 feet without that's not the guidance that was presented in the uh state document so you know we're we're following the state document to maximize social distancing to the greatest extent possible i'm sorry this this email is just it's really long give you a short break yeah take a drink first of all thank you for going through all this so i just want to make a couple of comments i know for folks watching or who may um be brave and actually watch us after the fact for its entirety because there's a it can be a

108long meeting uh thank you i know there's a a lot of information everyone's looking for i would encourage uh central office or as a jeff in this case that all these questions that we're getting and all the answers if we can put them out there in the faq and just keep it going and get folks to see that you know so i'm hopeful out of it's possible i know there's a tremendous amount of work going on in central office but maybe for the next meeting if there's a way to get the faq updated all these questions and answers and points made yeah it's a running list yeah before the next meeting it it may help folks um you know kind of turn tune in the middle of the meetings they're not really answering the question

109we kind of answered it an hour and a half ago and had to watch the whole video i mean i don't want to watch myself a little video i'm sorry i'm sure people might watching you through a whole video jeff but it's a lot to absorb and having that document uh to work with is is key so um the point is let's update that site as soon as we can i'm happy to help if i can but i know it's not that simple it's both yeah yeah thank you and and we are trying to maintain that and continue to to update that it does need to be updated particularly after the number of questions we received today so we'll work on that uh do you want to break hearing questions maybe go on a section

110and come back to the questions i'm okay cranking them out if you are you know they're i'm fine if the board feels otherwise speak up i i also worry about the folks watching yeah yeah i mean it is tough i mean it is tough to go through all of them i know people want to hear an answer to their question um which you know we're trying our best to get through them but obviously there are a lot of questions and um it gives a sense of you know these these 100 questions or whatever um it's reflective of the amount of planning and challenges that we have to overcome to open schools effectively and and safely so you know getting back real quick uh athletics there's a question about that um as i said that you

111know ciac is going to work on that a question about has the board seen the cea survey that was released yesterday i'll be honest i haven't had a chance to read it um it basically says statewide i think it was like the 48 percent of teachers don't want to come back uh they're concerned i almost say don't want to come back i think they're concerned about coming back is a better choice for words but um i don't know if any board member wants to address that um go ahead yeah i just this is really a reminder because i've heard from parents and i know i've mentioned it before i think marlene has spoken to it um a reminder to there are i've heard from parents who want the classroom to be set at a specific

112time this is probably more uh it might be remote learning for the high school um the thing that uh i just want people to keep in mind is you know of the 400 teachers plus staff that are involved everybody has their own story and one of the things that goes through my mind is caregivers not just necessarily child care but also you know senior care care for anyone really um but life can be complicated and if we are if we end up in a situation where we were before where teachers are teaching remotely from home being able to get to the camera at a given moment in time is can be difficult and maybe it's not appropriate um you know for this is a new year and maybe that person should not be teaching because

113of that situation but i want to add my own personal experience that some people probably saw before i've got a preschooler this is just one small example preschool uh i think it was 20 kids basically per class and jeff you might be able to speak to it i know you have relationships with the preschools but it's dropped down per the state rules right now i think it's dropped down to 14 kids per class so simply even finding preschool even if a teacher wants to could be complicated um so i just want to remind people that the teaching remotely is complicated because everyone is bringing their home with them and i know we all sort of know that now we've been doing it for a few months those of us fortunate enough fortunate enough to have

114a job but uh i think it's it's just important to keep the complexities in mind of life for everyone jeff on the cea survey i i did see in fact uh some of the board chairs were talking about earlier today i mean just just rough numbers uh so you know basically the ce survey of united's teachers it finds that about 81 percent of teachers expected they'd be back in the classroom so there's expectations that you know they will be back but given the choice of being bathroom online or a mix of both uh being in the classroom the survey indicated sixteen percent of teachers would prefer that forty six percent wanted to go online so and as you noted earlier it's not that they don't want to be back it's more about safety concerns and

115you mentioned earlier on the call that you are meeting uh with the local teachers union and i think you've been talking to them anyway something's gonna go into that but i don't have any talking to further detail about some of the concerns i have locally but you've also been meeting with teachers you said about 75 so far uh into this week it'll be more so be curious um the sentiments of that survey across the state are different than what you're hearing especially based on the things you're trying to ensure our teachers do feel safe they did go back to the classroom but those were the high level numbers from the survey thank you yeah um the next one was if us if a student is quarantined would they be able to do remote learning you

116know it's easiest if a class is quarantined that teacher and students would do remote learning like we did last spring if it's an individual from a different class it would take us a little bit more time to set that up but we would definitely want that individual who's home to have access to their education particularly if they're not sick i mean that's that's the worst case for a parent that your child is not sick but they're home and you know we want to make sure that they continue to be educated particularly if it's such a long stretch these 14 day quarantines [Music] the question about are they are we going to send out another survey it felt like the last survey was misleading that survey was a survey from the state that we were required

117to to send out that asked where people were now the next survey that goes out is going to be here's more information about what school will look like and which one would you like to commit to um in the cps plan states uh students who choose to participate in remote will be placed in classes that support synchronous learning um the at the elementary level does this mean that students will be placed in a cohort that has the synchronous technology in the room and if the child later decided to return in person they'd be added to that same cohort to a degree so we would make every effort to place um students that are designated as remote learners in that synchronous environment however there are other variables that may trump that um and so you know

118we would rely on the the principal's discretion there to make those decisions that are in the best interest of of the student um and yes i mean that that if you do come back in that situation you would stay in that cohort with that same teacher um another question about how many teachers are not coming back uh how are we dealing with the union i think we kind of touched upon these issues and i don't have detailed information yet uh just like for students i don't know exactly how many are not coming back yet um question or concern about yes chs is larger but keeping kids socially distant elementary schools near impossible um the their this person is basically concerned about um not allowing hybrid at the elementary level again this is something that we

119consult with physicians on and our health health team and we make you know decisions that are are uh in the best interest of all students and we are providing an option for those that um don't feel that's appropriate for them uh concerns about teachers you've heard how you're addressing them i've kind of addressed that already that i'm meeting with large groups of teachers i very much value the opinions and perspectives of our teachers and they've been very helpful the meetings that we've had for them to express concerns to us because we try and rectify them the best we can including things like you know i don't know what i'm going to do with six days of professional development for child care so we're looking at ad options for that not that we're going to pay

120for child care for our staff but how do we make it available and how do we make it easier and so that's what we're looking at masks this person saying still unclear when kids need to wear them you need to wear them all the time unless you're outside of the six foot social distancing um you know unless you're eating playing an instrument where you have adequate social distancing you should be wearing the mask all the time unless it's a mask break plan for transportation it's a it's a good question right vin you want to talk about transportation just to break up my voice okay well i mean we're going to run the transportation the way we normally do except that we're trying to have a maximum capacity per bus of 50 students the normal capacity

121depending on the bus we have some 70 passenger or 80 passenger buses so you know 50 is the high that we're setting our routes to and then to the extent that you know parents are not sending their children there would be less than 50 students on the bus so i mean that's the plan um across the district i'm sorry jeff there's not much more of a longer answer than that so no i don't need a long answer we're looking for short answers these days this would be a good thing uh thank you next question is about a hotline to report concerns about safety and non-compliance i think it's a great idea you know we could definitely set that up for the start of school just forwarding on that email so we can address that um

122sorry weekly testing um i've already covered that outdoor schooling as much as possible we've covered um reduced density where kids go a couple days a week that we've addressed through the high school level where it's uh currently most supported by our medical team uh if students decide to go remark so this talks about that same question before if you're remote or not remote you stay in the same cohort answer is yes if you are in starting in school and you go remote however you will probably receive some live instruction from the person who's doing synchronous your teacher will be responsible your teacher of record will be that homeroom teacher if you come back you're going back to that teacher you are assigned to and you will be getting all your work your grades everything from

123that teacher you are assigned to uh i i want people to understand like we're used to the normal and um i i could give you a lot of data and give you a lot of examples that you know we do normal school better than pretty much everybody in connecticut you know over the last four years or we've skyrocketed in our ability you know and our performance and everything this is not normal school even when kids come back to school seating in in rows all facing the same direction it's not normal school i still think that we will do and the best that can be done under these circumstances but things aren't going to be normal so the idea of being in one class and possibly getting some live instruction from another teacher is not normal

124and it's it's just weird to think about it's hard for our teachers to consider it's hard for our parents to swallow but these are certainly not normal circumstances and we're doing the best we can and we'll learn more and we'll continue to evolve but that's really the the challenges that we're dealing with at this time will there be an option will there be option for non-synchronous learning uh like we had in the spring i think that's something that we're still trying to work toward um recognizing that not all parents are available and uh maybe perhaps students aren't capable of logging on um you know at that time so uh particularly with younger grades so that is something where we're working toward um just a shout out you know for trying to answer a thousand questions

125uh can you describe any changes in the plan for dodd since the last meeting including how you reduce the cohorts from 100 to 25 um and it's a good question sid and honestly right now i i don't have enough detail on that plan mike woods the principal there will be sending out information on what those cohorts will look like on by wednesday and at that point i think you'll have a lot more clarity and i know mike will be able to answer that question uh better than i can so i apologize i'm not i don't have that one off the top my head will you be having dry runs for the new technology uh yeah we are installing that right now we actually want to um to have another meeting in one of those locations

126so people can see that it's really quite impressive so why not hybrid for for dodd again we're working with our um guidance of our our health team and consultants to make that determination and this is an absolutely fluent situation so i could be sitting here telling you a hybrid's appropriate for cheshire high school today and come back three weeks from now and go hybrid's appropriate for the whole district or we could be saying we have to close the whole district or everybody goes back full-time we all want to go back full-time we all want to be safe we all want our kids to be safe and we're working with the health guidance and i know with 4 200 different students there are going to be a lot of different parent perspectives about this so we're

127trying with the guidance of health professionals with our talented teacher team and administrators to provide a a really strong option that captures everybody as many people as we can in the center knowing that some people on either end may not be happy and we want to try and provide options for those folks regarding the notion of a positive case it will be shared within that school building um but what about siblings uh to consideration something that we'll talk to maura uh in the health department about um kids driving themselves to school uh and with others i mean that's been a real concern from a variety of folks including our teaching staff about when the school day ends it's disheartening even now to drive through the community and see a whole bunch of kids together not

128wearing masks and stuff and so it's it's obviously impossible for us to police that um and it's really got to be a community commitment to be vigilant about wearing masks um you know when you're around those that you don't live with um the as it says as of now is the state accepting hybrid proposals we have to submit a hybrid uh proposal but um that is not yet you know something that they've allowed to happen with the will we continue with the um the ymca program yes we are working with them they have a great team chrissy uh cassisi her team they've been great with us and we're gonna continue to work with them for after school at this point again if numbers change that may change but uh that's where they are right now

129we are asking students to put their basque masks in ziploc bags if they're capable if not we understand that again if a mask gets dirty we have additional masks for students in in all schools hybrid model chs where classes don't have a camera speaker option [Music] that right now is the if we go to the different hybrid plan um we would have to worry about that than just our opening hybrid plan at this point right now we're focused on that um twins uh should likely be uh cohorted in the same uh class i know that's something that we really give parents the option of uh for twins and so at this point we really unfortunately can't give much of an option there to maintain cohorting so yes they should be in the same same class

130um so what uh this is a great question about uh what sort of um manipulatives are provided for students in say an engineering class or um more like a science biology lab we're working through professional development to try and find identify like home options for uh like labs so what materials could we use at home to replicate this alternatively do we need to put kits together that families can pick up like we did during the spring uh so that they the children at home can get the best possible experience without being in the room so this also impacts us with uh labs that we typically do in pairs and things like that so we are trying to be considerate uh how are kids going to play win instruments without spreading germs uh marching band gonna

131be an option uh during band performances we don't have distancing so traditional band performances will likely not take place as we've known them in the past that being said we're still working with mr kuner to provide marching band uh pep band with with the social distancing that's required in order to facilitate that so um those large ensembles we want to get those kids outside because i know how critical it is to them to actually be outside and be engaging in that so um our our uh board will be very happy to know that i have reached the end of our covid questions and this ordeal for you is now ended i hope that there is um you know some education in there for not only our board but certainly all the members of our community

132well if your deal isn't quite over adam has a question but in all and just of course um jeff the majority's questions come in during the meeting yes yeah i was gonna say i know an ideal situation if they came in ahead of time it was a way to write them up and post them somewhere so we can refer to the meeting but i know it's not always that easy and i suspect during the next meeting uh and i'll i'll uh i'll yield to adam in a second at the next meeting i think he alluded knew this earlier that sometime next week you're looking to the board to put our approval on a plan is that correct well um we've already submitted the plan that we were required to submit um today what we're looking

133for is approval on the calendar the plan is going to be something that even if you approved it today would probably be different three days from now would be different five days from then so there's not a formal approval process for the plan but meetings like this help us you know keep communication open about what's going on and that's how i was going so um it might be worthwhile to have another meeting next week even though that things are a little bit in flux just so we can keep answering the questions and if there's any change in information or options that come up it it might be easier to try to do it in small chunks to answer these questions versus waiting two or three weeks out another meeting but we can talk about that

134i'm sure uh after today if folks what if someone watches this video you'll probably get more emails um yeah but i do thank you for going through all that yeah i just want i want to make sure mr massiana is available next wednesday because our viewership goes through the roof when he's on and i just went well we were 221 earlier i don't think it's gone up down since you started talking offense but well well sorry i'm sorry guys long days you know uh and i'm sorry you've been waiting for a question for about a half hour so please go ahead thank you uh actually it was developed through the uh listening to the the questions that were submitted by parents um and with in regards to the synchronous learning it sounded like we have

135a self-imposed cap on who can participate and if if i did interpret that correctly does that mean that parents who choose early to have their kids be schooled remotely would they then get a preferential treatment and a preference to be in the synchronous learning as opposed to a pure remote learning situation or is that is the intention to be purely synchronous uh at the beginning of the year for those who decide to opt out so um it's a fair question i think what we do is regardless of when the request comes in we evaluate the requests and the needs of the student and uh we trust the principals to make really good decisions about what is the best learning environment for this student um and that you know is often made with you know feedback

136from the the parent or the the teacher that they had last year um any sort of needs that the child may have um not that those are used to rule people out if you have special education there's just a good chance that you would be in a synchronous learning is not but um what are the individuals needs how can we best meet those needs we want to try and honor that you know synchronous learning request um but in some cases as you heard the questions we may get asynchronous requests for kids that are out so you know in that case we we're going to be judicious about who we place in those classrooms making sure it's in the best interest of the student so then we are sort of self-limiting the access to the synchronous

137learning you know based on the original data adam uh there just aren't enough kids in any grade or school based on the original survey that would exceed the number of kids we would have in a classroom anyway that may change i'm very conscious of that it may change in that case we'd probably be looking to add more synchronous learning capacity but um right now it wouldn't exceed so we're not like limiting it yet um we may have to make that determination in a couple of weeks okay um and then as far as ymca goes as for before and after care and i don't know i don't know if they they sh they share data via via to you directly or if they have to go through chesapeake but um if by before school begins would

138they be sharing with you their their data from their summer camps as far as if anything occurred there yeah my knowledge right now they have 550 kids not wearing masks cohorted predominantly outside without issue now i mean that's different than you know being inside but these are kids that are going home to families every day coming back and it's it's you know for me that's positive information and i really hope that that will continue with kids once school starts but yeah they would we would definitely be in communication about any sort of positive test or any sort of issues that they may be carrying over from the summer as of right now i'm not aware of any and we communicate regularly but um yeah that's a good question right well because i know that once

139uh before and after care begin in the at the elementary level any kind of um restriction that they may have during the day i don't know if it'll necessarily carry over uh before or after care and would they are they required to to tell if uh if there were any incidences i don't know if they take temperature or anything like that but if they say someone came in in the afternoon with the fever are they required to report to your office uh that day if something occurred like that for the next day yeah we would make a condition of their use of the facility to report any concerns i mean in some respects it may be an early screener for somebody who comes into before care i mean i'd hate i certainly am not advocating

140jesus if you're not sure if your child is sick why don't you just send them to the y and they'll figure it out you know obviously if you're not sure if your child is sick if it's a question in your mind they have to stay home period end of story and let the school know and we'll work with you um to try and support your child and your family the best we can but uh we we will maintain close communication with the y we have that already and that'll that will only be closer uh this year that's good to know and uh lastly for for teachers who don't feel comfortable in returning um does their union give them any sort of like a sabbatical option where they're where they basically risk a full year off

141um but not endangering their career if they're you know they bet that kovid will be solved for next year and so they're going to take the year off is that is that something that they can do or is that is that something at the university level you know that that would be possible here as well that if a teacher asked for a leave of absence we'd be likely to grant that um again as every situation is so unique and specific to the individual um that if they have questions and you know including that they should reach out to our hr department who can help them i know the unions ask them to reach out to them too and that's good you know because we work closely with the union as well so you know we

142want to try and support each other because we need them desperately for our kids to be successful and they need us um as much for for their su for our support and um you know it's a symbiotic relationship no doubt thank you okay before we move on to the next update tim had a question earlier thanks tony uh yeah so maybe i don't follow the news closely enough jeff so everyone may already know the answer to this but you wouldn't have said before uh there's a 10-day delay for test results yeah it's running about that long yes look coincidentally i had i had surgery about a month ago and i i drove down to st rafes and i got the the jump in the pool deep dive covid test and they had the results in

143a few hours so i'm wondering is the state i mean i'm not talking about you but is the state looking to put something like that on their bid where we could actually get the results get the test done you'd have to hire nurses the equipment but what i've heard is and you know i'm not a public health specialist so maura could give us the best answer on this but my understanding is that the supplies are in such incredible demand from the states that are overwhelming that it's been hard for us to get local supplies there are limited locations in connecticut where one can get a turnaround test uh where you just like unfortunately i had to do that um about a month ago and the gateway location was open in new haven and my wife

144and i found out in the matter of an hour that we were negative in the whole process which is what we would want in a best case scenario across the country really unfortunately that availability just doesn't exist in connecticut so when you go to your doctor and you do the typical process you know maura has shared publicly she had to be tested for covid it was 10 days before she got her results she's the public health director you know i mean it doesn't give us a lot of confidence for people who aren't the public health director thank you um and one other thing and i don't know if you're going to speak to this separately but it was on the um graduation is in a couple days graduation is uh on august 2nd how exciting

145um okay yeah if you're gonna bring it up later that's fine i just wanted to ask about that briefly yeah i mean i i could tell you that we uh we were very hopeful that the way things were trending we would have the opportunity to have a more traditional in-person uh ceremony unfortunately it won't be that way but each graduate will can bring a car with their their family to the farmington polo grounds on sunday afternoon and the information is available through the cheshire high school site and uh we will be live streaming it and uh it should be uh an unorthodox but memorable event for all of our graduates thank you thanks tim jeff uh did you want to get or vincent we got a financial update do you think you covered that it's

146part of your yeah i think ben covered that anything you need to add vin about medical claims any changes no update to medical claims yet i'll have a i should have a report probably in the next week though thank you vincent we have no old business but we do have new business so we have um approval of a revised 20 20 21 school calendar but uh jeff and marlene you want us give us the overview of what the options are and how you let how we came to this sure sure so i'm going to share my screen really quick and you know um this is information that we floated to the community uh last week and asked for some some feedback on it like i said we did get the handful of folks pushing for

147a later start and we had a handful of folks pushing for the um the uh earliest start possible so in sharing my screen with you here this is proposed version a it looks a lot like our startup school now this is our current start of school the 24th 25th and 26th of august 27th 28th and 31st would be the mandated days for the state professional development so our school year would start on september 1st i just want to hit each one really quick and and point out some of the differences and then we'll get to you know what my recommendation would be this is a similar calendar where we start the rpd state pd the next three days would be what we're calling an orientation like a hybrid orientation model where we would have approximately

148a third of the students in each school attend those days there's no additional cost for this from a busing perspective or anything we would run regular bus routes we would pick up a third of the kids based on their alphabetical last name we would bring those kids into school and run an orientation program with them given the idea that the mask thing will be different for them we have to run them through mask breaks uh transitions to a new school with transportation uh will be different for obviously our kindergartners our first graders at doolittle our sixth grader or excuse me seventh graders at dodd and our ninth graders at cheshire high um who'd never received the benefit of transition programs last year all students would also have the benefit of a more intimate day with

149their teacher just a small group of students in the class getting to know their teachers which we found to be really the most critical part of remote learning when we got there was the relationship between the student and teacher and we figured that would be a very good way to uh kick it off this by the way that that three day rollover was unanimously endorsed by everybody on the uh the stakeholder committee that looked at how do we we returned to school the last option uh version c we start our teacher professional development days a little bit later the 27th 28th and 31st um we then have our state professional development days the three days leading up to the labor day weekend the uh orientation days are the 8th 9th and 10th and full start

150on the 11th um now this uh option here is the one that i would most endorse because as i said earlier the governor still hasn't told us if a hybrid plan would be allowed or not at any level including the high school although they have said that the high school would be the area they'd be focused on [Music] if i don't find that out until the middle of august which is the current plan our ability to adapt and provide you know a quality experience for our kids is going to be really compromised the earlier that we start and i you know i can we do any we turned around from brick and mortar to uh remote learning in two days but you know if we're looking at what's in our students best interest i think

151that the you know having that additional few days would be beneficial from the planning perspective the other uh reality that a lot of folks have expressed i've said in this meeting several times that we're not permitted to have air conditioning now could it be 90 degrees on september 9th um and not on the 27th of august or something yeah of course i mean but we're looking at probabilities in a situation where the eighth ninth and tenth um we have a third of the kids in the building it provides greater options for mask breaks kids to be able to just go outside if it is a hotter day and the 11th would be then all students in or engaging in remote learning that day and even for students that are doing remote learning students the teachers

152in the classroom and other kids in the class will be connecting with each other at this part of the alphabet these days as well because we're not forgetting about the kids that are home and just tending to those who attend school but those students would also be a critical part of these transition days for our our students so the goal would be to start all students on the 11th if i had a secondary option it would be the the b plan where the transition days occur before the labor day weekend and we start full on on the 8th so i i want to just throw it out for a discussion um just a quick observation i think tim uh met brought up before the meeting started that on options b and a uh the calendar

153shows in june june 19 the last day for students but in the listing it says june 14th okay yeah this is accurate the the this here is accurate so the last day for students in option a and b would be the ninth and i'm glad you brought that up because in option c uh the last day shifts to the 14th now in that option what we've said is that for the first two snow days so the 15th and the 16th it would push the calendar back they would be traditional snow days if we were to have a blizzard or something like that if we once we got to the third snow day um not in one weather event but throughout the course of the winter the third snow day and each snow day thereafter would

154be a remote learning day so on those remote remote learning days they would count as our school days and um so we could guarantee that the last day of school for our students would be the 17th um cat uh ann has a question then katherine i just want to share that my daughter doesn't like the idea of snow day being remote learning today but well the first two are the first two she can have a great time it's it's i'm sure she likes the idea of summer vacation though so i heard a squeal from the kitchen so uh ann and then catherine yeah i actually uh just to go off of what you were just saying um maybe in the future that's a way we can handle snow days even if we um if we

155have this um online learning remote learning uh capabilities if we get it done really get it down to uh to the science that it is um we might be able to use that in the future yeah some people live for the snow day i remember as a principal even as a superintendent like the snow day is a blessing from god because i could come into work and catch up on all the things i hadn't been able to catch up on and you know for kids they may not feel that way uh they like you know my son would like be excited about fortnite or roblox for my other guy you know it's like but they get two of those days and then after that we get back on track so we don't burn up more

156summer my only comment was that i had when i looked over those three scenarios was i really really like the three days of student orientation and i accept jeff your explanation of of why you might want to start later but uh to me the the main issue was having those three student orientation days i thought that was that's a great idea yeah so that's available in b and c right that's all i have thank you um i think i'm next right tony um so jeff i just had a quick question on c so the last day of school would be the 14th if the three snow days that your plan that the intent would be to do remote learning if something happened that prevented remote learning from occurring that that i guess would push the

157last day of school out another day past the 17th right so it's some sort of action you had three like a tornado big power outage power lines down yeah something like that so you know but only if we couldn't do the remote i'm sorry you know like but happening are a 110 in 2020. on the third day of school is going to take out all the communications in gesture and that so as much as i hate you for bringing that up you're probably right uh and so we have to explore that i will put an asterisk on the calendar um yeah okay category may extend the school year that's it that's all i had thank you but i do i i do support the sea as well it just seems to make more sense to

158me to push out the start so that we avoid a lot of heat days you know so um i think that's a really good idea i would say our administrative team at the meeting today begged me to advocate for c um because like i said the nuances of what we're planning for for the start of school to even buy them those few extra days at the start and then the um the heat uh two real considerations from our staff as well they're very concerned about students in their own you know well-being in the heat now again i mean we could if we didn't start on that c schedule we could still play the you know remote learning day due to heat so that's still out there but um doesn't preclude us from not being in

159that day right but it does give you more time to handle the last minute change that the governor's going to throw at us basically and that's a real issue that's really a huge thing yep thank you uh tim and then hey thank you tony yeah my um my real comment was what catherine had just touched on about power outages or whatever scenario might happen in avoiding guarantees on a last day of school and the only other thing i'll point out is uh snowy day one of the best children's books ever snow days are important for some of these guys anyway that's it thank you thank you thanks tim adam you're up thank you um so it god forbid we had to go back to full remote learning um i think one of the godsends was

160that we had you were able to basically shorten the year to i think it was june 1st if i recall or you know they the uh well okay unofficially june 1st and then it was like yeah so is that sort of that would be the plan with plan c would be if if something like that occurred perhaps we you know we'd all get a reprieve as of june 1st and then hope for the best yeah is that the thought well the yeah the bottom line for this entire year is flexibility and you know if if god forbid we ended up in an extended period of remote learning to close out the school year again um i think there was a tremendous amount of positive feedback from our parents and students and staff around you know

161having that first week in june be a close-out of anything you know assignments work kid kids needed support with and then we did need an extraordinary period of time under the circumstances for return of materials um so we would probably pursue that again if indeed it came to that and um lastly if so regardless of whichever uh calendar we choose uh this evening um is there any consideration of teaching outside because at least at least what you've seen so far fingers crossed is that when the kids are all outside at the summer camp it seems like when they're all distancing and and cohorting that it seems like it's successful at least on the elementary level um is that is that a consideration until the the you know the summer breaks you know at the end

162of september or and if it is why would we not consider perhaps the b model instead where you at least you're getting a few days more of potential good weather than bad weather when you move into october sure so absolutely you know that's why we're pursuing the tent options and um so we want teachers to have the flexibility flexibility to go outside um any time that they determine that that's what their class needs and when it's appropriate obviously instructionally and it makes sense for the the kids and developmentally so many different considerations but we want teachers to have that flexibility you could as i said before consider the the b model um i i don't know that you know do we need the time more up front versus you know toward the end um i

163i think we probably need the time more up front to adjust than we do in october um and that's just the the rationale there um is as to why our team really preferred that c model as being in the best interest of our students thanks sure thank you thank you i lost track here but i believe adam's up next no you're good at him goes so i uh i i think option c gives the most flexibility for not so much to heat because i'm going to be tony downer and say that if it's hot you know in august end of august it may be hot like you said it could happen yes most likely we'll see i think it gives a few more days for you and your team jeff to adjust to any last

164minute uh uh changes from the state and last minute could be literally a week before reopening or two weeks before you still need time to adjust as we're saying so i like the idea also i think the fact that there's three days for our students to have orientation and get acclimated to the new reality that they're going to be working with whether it's in schools or at home or hybrid i think it's key because it's going to perhaps lessen the adjustment period for them to get used to already removed so i i support that option um the last question i had is um i know what the professional development for teachers of three days that was recently passed down as guidance from the state department ed it lessened the mandatory school days from 180 days

165to 177. do we have to meet the 177 school days yes at this point yes yep so unless there's further guidance throughout the school year where we have we've seen this past school year that is the number at this point so um that being so if that doesn't change and we do have snow days that we can't do remote learning then we can see an extension of last day of school but um but beyond that i i pray support version c before we ask for a motion does anyone else have any questions or comments on the three options provided i just want to add that there's no more public comment either nobody's nobody submitted additional public comment a faith has a comment not much of one i just i mean if you want to hear

166from all of us i agree with um what tony just said i we saw that the governor can change his mind on a dime you could get two days it may not even be two weeks and um i think you need as much time as you can to adjust and i i think option c gives it to you um and we're all in the middle of global warming so there isn't going to be a winter yeah so adam don't worry you're going to be outside in january but i think i i do think i think c is the best option yeah options i mean as i said before without having a final date from the state to receive guidance we as a district need the time to plan the parents the time to plan having

167those orientation days built into the schedule with third occupancies the teachers get the routine that you know everyone gets to know what the routine's gonna be i think that makes the most sense so that being said um does someone have a motion we literally fill in the blank with the version catherine i'll make the motion um okay i gotta read it off the agenda uh i move that the cheshire board of education approved the revised 2020 2021 school calendar marked as virgin c thank you catherine is there a second adam s i i gotta be honest with you i flip between tabs so i'm not sure if ann put her hand up first or adam so i i saw adam first it's all good with me seconds and uh the motion is move cheshire publication

168approved revised 20 20 21 school calendar marked as version c is there any discussion from the board refer to this question yeah um do sorry if i missed it but do we have continued flexibility throughout the year based on current executive orders or well that's that's a an important note that things could change again flexibility at any minute and right now is it's been outlined uh we would be able to count those three orientation days uh as our student days it'd be a flexibility but you know again two weeks from now the governor may put the kibosh on it so i would put a caveat that the 8th of september could be a first student day for all and we wouldn't be able to do orient those orientation days we would we are exploring other

169contingencies for kids if we're not able to do that but there's no question that the days as we've just outlined are in the best interest of our students i just hope to hope that we the governor allows us to keep that when does your when does your the current executive order end beginning of september yes okay and so he may he may re-up that but we don't know at this point well right like for example the 180 day reduction to 177 hasn't been issued through executive order and nor has has the law been changed so technically it's kind of just a declaration hanging out there there's not it's not legally binding yet until he issues another executive order or the you know i guess the legislature could change it but i don't know that that's

170going to happen sure okay we all just have to be open-minded about it this year flexibility is the key feel like if we're any more flexible we're playing uh yeah okay we're gumby obviously our parents and teachers being very focused around this too uh any public comment on the motion and i was just texted for jeff to please check his email again okay i just had one come in at 907. i don't know this way to the motion or not but we can see exactly one individual talking about what they would like to do for their child for the first month of school so that's the only email i have on the covet or direct email okay i just got two more can this be a parent vote um at this point i think we

171need to move forward and you know doesn't meet the needs of all parents um again we've had some that wanted to do it um so it has been out there for several days now and i received a total of less than 10 emails in either direction and we do have to tell our parents at some point like this schedule needs to change the sooner that we do that the better we are and we'll support them in you know with their kids and everything in that process we're one of many districts including southington meridian and wallingford also looking to move their start day after the uh after the labor day weekend thank you barring an additional comment uh read the motion one more time move that the cheshire board of education approved the revised 2020 2021

172school calendar marked as version state uh all those in favor aye aye it is unanimous the motion passes thank you uh i as far as a chairperson's update very briefly um i think i communicated this to the board yesterday just through an fy email so uh after governor governor's comments on monday about the hybrid option for for the largest schools high schools um just so folks watching understand i know there's a lot of information out there um it's it's i'm thankful that gary will not put this out there that he's considering that option commissioner uh cordova cordona also seems to agree with it but and i think jeff alluded earlier we have not he has not received official guidance from a state department education that that is the option um been approved so the point

173is we're hopeful that it will be the option an option so what the governor says until the state of our education actually publishes guidance to the school districts in this case jeff who can't immediately act upon it so what the uh what the board chairs have done through cape uh the connecticut associations of boards yesterday was asked uh that the commissioner get clarity in writing essentially the guideline that is the case please write it down and submit to school districts asap so we could solidify his plans and also ask the cave's legal uh council patrice mccarthy to clarify that as well so we expect to receive something concrete soon but it does not mean that uh superintendent stolen is waiting for an official confirmation you know he actually can't um pull trigger so to speak

174but i know i know the team is planning on a hybrid option we just need confirmation from the state i know people seen the news the government says this why aren't we doing it that's one of the reasons why so it's not just us it's every school district just you know again following following rules um i don't think i had anything else just a quick update for the board uh earlier this evening we met with the teachers union to set ground rules uh guidelines for negotiations we are starting the next four-year contract negotiation with our local teachers union so we set dates and so forth uh before the meeting which is great we still went forward uh but beyond that i don't have anything else and given that we're going on three hours and 15

175minutes i'm gonna end my update there um before i adjourn this guy uh call for a motion to go inside this question do we have uh definitely last-minute communications we want to address or is that pretty much it well i got two emails suggesting like saying they wanted to adopt schedule c so i don't know if those were the ones but they got their way i guess well let's see let's see how things play out uh we'll see how flexible we are at that schedule yeah that being said i do have a motion um i move the cheshire board education i'm sorry i moved that the cheshire board education uh adjourned into executive session to discuss unit negotiation uh with optional um part uh absolutely having uh marlin solano vince and massiana uh attend because

176they are part of that discussion uh with no action to follow is there a second cat and seconds all those in favor thank you we will be adjourning the executive session to discuss collective bargaining negotiations there will be no action to follow uh so for those of you watching please don't wait around for us to come back because there'll be nothing to discuss uh for those of you that have um tuned in whether through the whole meeting or part through thank you very much on behalf of all of us um we thank you for your time and patience um i know there's a lot of information shared tonight uh superintendent solomon is going to update the faq on the site if you feel that your question has been answered or gotten to um i would

177say let's give jeff instead a few days to catch up on emails but certainly reach out to any of us i i do want to thank on behalf of all the boards board members i know all of us have been in contact with many folks out there parents teachers other stakeholders we are getting your feedback we are sharing it so thank you for that keep it coming that being said um we're going to executive session and mike let us know when we're able to have that discussion