001Host. I was reading. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Where Right face forward march. [Music] Roll call, please. Al here. Theresa present. Michelle here. Lauren present. Adita here. Rich here. Julie here. Recognition of teachers of the year and their profession of the year. Another exciting opportunity to celebrate some of our amazing educators that we have in the Denver public schools. Um, I'd like to call to the table uh Dr. Christy Zelita and Brian Bettish, who is our 2025 teacher of the year. [Applause] So Christie, I'd like to offer you an opportunity to talk to us a little bit about why Mr. Pettish is teacher of the year. I certainly have my
002own reasons um having known his sort of teaching trajectories for a very long time, dedication um and the absolute collaborative spirit that he brings to Rogers Park um over and over again. So, um, Brian has taught in the same department that I did for many years. We weren't in the same schools together, but certainly when we we did get together departments, it was very clear he was a leader among leaders. Um, but more than anything, an inspiration to the other teachers around him, uh, and an important figure in many students lives. So, I will turn it over to Dr. Celita to further expand on why he's the teacher of the year. He is, as you said, the most collaborative person I met. He's extremely humble to this. He hates this. I mean, like legit, he
003really does put like school first. Um, it was an easy I mean, he had so many people voting for him. It was almost unanimous in the building. And it's really goes to like what I had mentioned at the at the ceremon's heart. It's he lives and breathes Rogers Park. He wasn't a Rogers Park student. He was a Dbury High graduate. He is, you know, a native Danberry. And it's through and through. and everything he does, whether it's in his classroom and the way that he engages students and makes them want to learn more about history and be a scholar or if it's in helping colleagues be better teachers or helping administrators be better administrators. He is always looking to help improve our school community so that all children and all adults in the building can
004thrive. I mean, I could go on and on and on, but we had to talk about other things, too. But he is just incredible. Um I can't say enough and I know I could ask any of the teachers that are sitting back there and they would come up here with a laundry list of things. I won't. Um but they will they just he is you know I don't he's just exceptional. I don't know there's not a big enough word. He's just honestly one of the best humans. So this is hard for Brian to sit here. He's because he's that humble. But I want to give him an opportunity to say a few words too about your experience. Well, thank you guys. Um, yes, this is very uncomfortable for me. Uh, like I said that night,
005which I think I said that night, um, I was really, really happy for the school. Uh, I wanted this award for Rogers Park, not for myself. It it does not I think I would gain anything from this. I'm very proud of it and and recognition I obviously appreciate. Um, but I really really wanted it for our school. Uh, Rogers Park has always had a special place in my heart. It's always been the school that has been looked at differently in the community. Um, ever since I was a kid and since my parents, my dad went to Rogers Park. Uh, and that's kind of what my goal is for the rest of my career is to see how I can improve that school. Uh, and make everyone have a better experience that walks through our doors.
006So, thank you. Thank you. We have a little something for you from the board and we'd love to take a picture with you. Sure, we can do that. All right, come on up. Congratulations. [Applause] Just don't cheek. [Music] Thank you. Thank you again. [Applause] Can we just stay up here in a minute? I'm curious. It's a lot of fun and uh it keeps them moving. The question was the question was that um if the staff would call you humble but what would the students call you? Amazing. Exceptional their favorite teacher inspirational. That's what they wrote when they congratulated. Yes. I'm just there. Thank you. And well it's our new tagline is be your best self. You got to get t-shirt. Okay. So, this next phenomenal educator comes from AIS elementary school and uh she is
007our parrot educator of the year and that is Tracy [Music] [Applause] Choy. Merl is not here tonight. However, I feel pretty comfortable in singing your praises because you I when I turn around and I see your AIS staff that are here to support you and also that we um anytime I've ever popped into AIS, tried to go into the classrooms, it always took you an extra 45 seconds to pop your head up to even see that I was there because you were deeply engrossed in connecting with students. working with them in small groups. There isn't a time that I've ever seen you at AIS where you were not supporting a student directly. Um and and with the most positive smile and and warm attitude. Um you're a joy to everybody at AIS. I'm sure um
008Kelly has a few words for as well. She's um you know very with all of the the knowledge base of all of our fair educators across the district. And um when your name came in and floed up to central office, I have to tell you it was it was one of the fastest decisions we've ever made in central office. So Tracy, congratulations. Um I would echo Cara's sentence. Um you are a phenomenal asset to our students and families here in district. Uh Tracy is uh very similar to Brian, very humble. She's a quiet but powerful leader. She has taken on some of our most challenging and difficult students and does it with ease and grace and has nothing but positive things to say about them. You're an inspiration to our kids, to your colleagues, and
009definitely to our families. So, congratulations. This is a very well-deserved honor. Thank you. Thank you. Definitely had many opportunities to bond with Mr. Roach over those challenging students. I spent a lot of time in his office and um enjoyed it very much. It's as simple as I said the other night. I just love going to work each day. I love what I do. I love seeing the kids smiles. I love this staff more than I could ever tell you. It was an unbelievable honor. The other night is a blur, so I apologize if there's anyone I didn't thank. Um I've loved working with Kelly and I've known Dr. Casemir for a long time. She's special to me and I just can't thank you enough. I absolutely love what I do. And when I hugged Kelly
010the other night and said that, she said, "And it shows." And I'm glad because I do. I just the thought of being the reason or part of the reason that a child loves coming to school each day. It really means the world to me. I've always said I have grandchildren in the school that I would treat those children that the way I want my grandchildren to be treated in school. That's why you are who you are. Thank you. Well, thank you again. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Mr. Ro, you want to come in? Thank you so much. Thank you. It's a great great night already. We're off to a great start. So now we will follow up now. Dr. Lady, come on up. And it is Rogers Park spotlight for school. [Applause] Down is up. So, I'm
011ready to go. My clicker. So, thank you so much for having us here. Um, we appreciate being able to come and kind of tell our little story. Uh, as you've noticed, there is a blue ribbon up there because one day we will be a blue ribbon school. Um, we are also aligned with our district goal, become the number one urban school in Connecticut. Um, our district, I mean, the school that's No, I'm kidding. It's really about the district. And we're going to be a blue ribbon school within that number one district. We I'm big into quotes. And so, uh, this one spoke to me especially. It's up on one of my whiteboards. Every decision we make in schools implicitly or explicitly communicates a set of values. And so, when I think about our values, I
012think about our vision and our mission. And our vision is 100% of students will meet or exceed grade level expectations. And our RPMs mission is when students leave our school, they feel loved, supported, and a sense of belonging. They believe in themselves and have the skills needed to achieve their dreams. They are prepared to speak truth to power and collaborate for change. So we say this every morning is actually saying it this way is a little bit different because we do it the students do it and it's when I leave the school so you get a little this stuff but this is these are our values when our students leave they are going to feel loved they're going to feel supported and that they belong and we want them to be prepared to be able
013to be anything they want to be and work with whomever to collaborate for change. So when you look at us this is a little snapshot. So we are at 885 students pretty much evenly distributed around the three grade levels and we are a beautiful tapestry of backgrounds and we are always constantly thinking about what works for whom and under what conditions because we have a beautiful tapestry of differences. We do have a couple new students though they're not on the books. However, we have had a seven-year partnership with Yukon a science educator professor uh Dr. John Setlage. He was one of the professors from some of our students and for seven years except for a couple in the co uh we've been hatching chicks. This year we did some ducks. So these are our little
014ducklings. They we had 13 to start across the four seventh grade science classrooms and six of them hatched uh last week and our one of our parsy Cole is taking them to her farm tomorrow. When the chicken eggs, we have 48 of them. Um they don't all hatch, but when they do hatch, she'll be taking them too. Um it was awesome. the little guy, these are all pictures from today. The little guy on the left, he was doing the morning announcements with us, which is very loud. Um, so this is again moving on with our our brief overview. When you're taking a look at our school as a whole school, we are like threearters of our students are high needs. And so, as you all know, high needs means students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and
015or uh students that are below poverty level. So these are students that, you know, require a lot of extra help because they haven't had an easy go in the world. And so threequarters of our students do are made up of those. And so when we think about that, we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. And so we are constantly in a continuous improvement mode and we're always looking for ways that we can improve so that our students have the best shot. So this is our accountability index. And so over the past just looking at the past three years, it's been very slowly creeping up. Um but that is what we're we focus on so that we can make changes to improve it as we move forward. When we break
016it down between ELA, math, and science, you can see that we've kind of had some flat achievement grow achievement in ELA math. We saw a little spike two years ago and it kind of came back down. In science was, you know, trending down. Although we do know this year the scores already came in and we have had a 9 percentage point gain this year and as an aside it is highly correlated to what we do in reading. So the kids took the ELA CAT test today and I'm super hopeful that we're going to see that in those scores as well. When we do look at growth that is usually where we're making the most um progress in our ELA we've had, you know, again kind of flat in growth as well. math, we had a
017nice bump and then it kind of fell short last year, but we're going back to what we did two years ago to make sure that that spike comes back for this school year. When we do break down our who's meeting and the growth targets because growth really got to have growth, sustained growth to get achievement, we're looking at our high needs versus non- high needs. And we do see that the it's I know it's very small for where you are, but the far right in each of the columns is uh differentiated by grade. So sixth grade to your left, the middle is seventh and the far right is eighth. That was last year. So these are the current seventh, current eighth and current 9th graders. We do see that our non- high need students are
018growing more than our high needs. Excuse me, our non- high need students are growing more than our high needs. And so that is something that we focus on to try to help our high need students to grow. That's the way that we can close the achievement gap. If we all grow at the same rate, the gap continues. So when we look at things, so poverty we can't address. We try to help with our meal train, but we do have two groups that we can work day in and day out to help, which are special needs students and our multilingual learners. And so this is how they have been u meeting their growth targets over the past couple years. So when we look and talk about our U MLL students specifically, this is in our accountability
019index, the um percent growth in loss lengths. And so the yellow two years ago, that was when we first implemented our EL achieve new curriculum. And then we worked really hard last year because we learned what we what was needed to help our students succeed. And we had phenomenal growth last year. So phenomenal that last year we exited 75 students which was the equivalent of 22% of all tested ESL students in our school which was a 70.8% increase from the 2022 2023 numbers which were 43 exited students and because well we compete against ourselves and pretty much everybody else we did it again this year. So this year in fact we did one better. We got 76 students. While it was not as large of an increase because we killed it last year, we did
020exit again 20% of all of our ESL students. So, we have an amazing uh staff of ESL bilingual teachers who know deeply what students need and they do everything they can to help students acquire a second, third, sometimes fourth language and do it well and exceed in their core contents as well. Physical fitness is super excited about this. One of the things that we have done in recent years is change up our schedule and the staff will laugh because we used to change our schedule about every year. I love changing schedules. I love it's like a big puzzle. But we have had now and we will have again for the third straight year the same schedule but it's an hourong class. So where are I know I hear the class where our PE teachers in
021a 45m minute class the kids come in they got to put their things down. We don't change for PE anymore cuz that took 10 minutes. You ended up with like a 20-minute PE class. Like you're not going to get physically fit in 20 minutes every other day when you're middle school and you're middle school. So in a 60-minute class where you come prepared, you're already in your gym clothes. You are putting down your book bag and you're getting out there. They're getting a solid 45 or more minutes of PE which has shown the the results there. Chronic absenteeism another thing with that we're proud since um the return to CO that you can see the trend lines are trending down which is what we want to see and especially note that it's the the the
022blue the high needs is also coming down so we are really proud of the work that our PPS and our school counselors do um and when we talk about all this vision is not enough you go back I can go back is is now 16 so we're now below we're below [Applause] I need to put my middle school voice on. Thank you. I'm glad to know that. Um, vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps. We must step up the stairs. And so, we are often reflecting on what can we do better? How how is that working out? And we know that we could have a vision. We want to be 100% of our students, but it's not enough just to hope and dream.
023We got to do. And so we step up the stairs by taking a tiered support approach to chronic absenteeism. So we've done for all is the green the school family connection. We've worked on increasing the student engagement with school. So that's all the different ways that we're changing how we're teaching. We added our seven block. We have tons of clubs after school. We've been uh teaching and using culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and learning strategies. We connect with families. We have we're lucky to have the schoolbased health center and we we can we have mental health support and and medical health support. We connect uh staff or students and their families with CFA and all types of of other community resources for their needs. We're calling parents all the time. We're connecting with them and
024all these things. We we started a new in-house. We love the DSADC. We in increased the number of of mentors this year and we tried a new mentor. So the staff will laugh because I'll read an article or listen to a podcast. I'm like we should try this. And so I read an article about how this school in New Jersey from where I'm not the school I wasn't from that town but from New Jersey. And so I was like we need to do that better. So they have this program and they connected internally our school c our school counselors Tom took it on and now we do helpful engagements addressing recurring trends. And so teachers signed up to be mentors for students who are h struggling with chronic absenteeism. And so there's a through talking
025points connected with parents. They, hey, I can't wait to see you come to school today. Hey, what's going on? How are you? So just kind of bringing that another level of connection, another trusted adult they can have so they feel comfortable coming into school. So we've done all these things. Um, and then so you can see it's kind of like that tiered support. So if that's not working, we send out the monthly letters and we still we're still doing all the tier one stuff. And so then we might get to a truency meetings which we've had. And so that would be with parents and the school counselors, PPS staff and an administrator to talk to the parents and the student and come up with a more intensive support plan to get them into school. And
026if all that fails, unfortunately, we do have to reach out to DCF if we're finding that every other attempt. But that is a last resort for us. Our counselors work super hard to make sure that kids are connected and can come in. And as you can see, the results speak for themselves. When we're looking at what we we we want to or identified areas of academic improvement, and we use data all the time, we're looking for our highest leverage, math growth, and ELA achievement. And so, we noticed that there was only 12% of our students that were proficient in math. And we did see that steep decline compared to previous years. And so when we were investigating, we know that the key issue was a weak or missing foundational skills from students coming in along
027with this over reliance on inefficient strategies to solve problems. For ELA, we've seen, you know, only 23% of our students met with proficiency and we've kind of seen that it's been pretty flat with growth. The key issues there that we found were that students struggle with complex text and vocabulary decoding. So that's what we're going to focus on. And so another quote although I think I read this honestly in maze runner but it is like a culmination of everything. I love to read all kinds of books. We need to understand the problem more than the solution or the solution will become the problem. And so we do a lot of of thinking about the problem and how we can help solve it. And so one of the ways we do this is through instructional rounds.
028And so in the past we've done this for years but what we found more recently is this. We needed to increase the studentto student discourse. we need them talking more. We also needed to emphasize the learning target along with teacher monitoring whether or not the student understood that as it relates to the learning target. Like if if you know what you're trying to teach, did they actually learn that target? And we need to increase the productive struggle to create more independent learners. Lots of times kids, oh, I don't know this, I don't know this. All right. Well, you know, three before me kids, you got to figure this out. We just went over this. You got to, you know, read the directions. That always helps. But things like that, we want to make kids independent
029because they're not going to be with us forever, even though we want to keep someone with them forever. So, as a principal, some of the action steps when I'm looking at how to to solve these problems, when I'm looking at the problem of practice, have been three priorities. One, evidence-based decision-m specifically around using strategic grouping and flexible strategic grouping, I should add, for mathematics. That is how we had our incredible growth two years ago. We did it again this year. We group them and we move them around when they're growing and making progress. Second was actionable feedback around high leverage, high academic engagement and student focused culturally and linguistically responsive strategies. This is how we help our students feel a part of the of the school. They're highly engaged and then they're able to do
030their best. And the third priority that I had was a high quality relevant professional learning. super proud of the work that we've done this year in and around cultural and linguistically responsive teaching and I really think that it's made a huge impact on our school. So when we take this together you'll see that a lot of this is seems repetitive because the work is the work and it's not 62 different things. So our key initiatives as a building is around student engagement. How do we implement strategies to reduce chronic absenteeism? Will you get kids engaged and wanting to come to school? We have our seven class which Brian Bish is one of the teachers that helped create it over the summer. Kids have a class that's one of their seven courses that they go to
031where they are creating projects and they're finding problems and they're solving them and they're big problems. They're redoing the front of our school. They're coming up with independent studies. They're doing amazing things that give them a sense of pride and accomplishment and a leadership acumen that's going to to be something that they can rely on for years to come. Another key initiative, as I mentioned before, was professional learning. And this is including not just myself and the other um administrators in our binder studies, but this is also in teachers teaching others in an unconference type thing. We do our unmeings where a couple teachers will say, you know, I've been trying this tag reading and this is how I did it. And they're just sitting. It's like 10 15 minutes that they're talking to their
032colleagues and then we move around and we learn from each other because we have such an incredible staff and our high needs focus. We know that our high need students need more help and love and so we are looking at them specifically. So how can we help them through targeted instruction when we're leveraging our assets for our school improvement? I mentioned before the flexible grouping in math. We reintroduced that this year and I'm excited to see the growth and I'll show you in a couple of slides. We've increased the student discourse and a lot of this is also in line with what our MLL students do. They need to talk and so the more our language routines that we use in our our ESL classes are coming up in our core classes. Kids are doing
033better. When they talk, they're showing their thinking. We also I mentioned this before, our CLR stuff is amazing. It's validating and affirming students cultural backgrounds. And one of the major cultures is age. And so when we can include kids and make them feel seen and validated and then we build a bridge to a situationally appropriate behavior. So Dr. Holly is is the person who has been teaching us and the thing he's like everybody has to go to the DMV. I was there getting my real ID the other day and while I was raging inside for the hour I waited for my 20 minute appointment, 20-minute window. Me going crazy in there did would not have served a purpose. And so we teach kids, we see you, we see your your love, your energy, and when
034we're doing independent work, what's our expectation? So we're trying to we're building that bridge so that they are able to be successful. And everything is driven by data whether it's quantitative or qualitative. So taking a look at some of these things that we've been doing, this is how it's been turning out for us. We did I already spring assessment diagnostic rather a little earlier this year because we wanted to have eight weeks between there and ESPA because we use the data to drive instruction. It was our full court press and so as you can see reading we met the median growth was over 100%. That means half of the students scored more than 100% of their targeted growth and half of them didn't but 110 like that's really high. Math again is almost at we
035I think it's 120 something and 8th grade the other in the high7s exceptional growth and this is again eight weeks they still had eight more weeks of learning when we look at our proficiency we have seen incredible proficiency so this is like the big stuff growth again eight weeks before ESPA so that was in math we've seen some great gains and our projected proficiency on ESPA this is super exciting is again 8 weeks before ESPA they are showing almost double digit gains in proficiency in math. When we look at our reading, excellent gains, I'm super stoked about the eighth grade because we're going to send kids to high school with more than half of them proficient in reading, which I know is [Applause] Yes. Our teachers have been busting their butts to get this going.
036And if you This is just projected proficiency. Again, we had eight more weeks of learning to happen. So, I cannot wait to see this, especially when I said our science scores went up almost 10 percentage points. It's highly correlated to the reading. I no doubt we're going to we're going to see these amazing things. Getting on to staff and student celebrations. Almost there. Um, we've had two two I think two or three students publish. They have we have an awesome creative writing course that we've actually had students now get their pieces published, which is amazing. We hosted a regional um history challenge and one of our students is now national history finalist. Um we've been in the news. Uh we had Edtopia come and they did we were part of a a story on cell
037phone uses. We so we are also on the hill for our awesome PBL we did on the election and um I've been writing about this in the NASSP box because we're amazing. Uh we have our DPS teacher of the year Brian Ben. um that's who's like responsible for most of the things that are there and we have some amazing teachers who are actually doing presentations nationally. So Lana Cooney has presented work that she's been working with our professor that I mentioned earlier. She's been at ARRA in Toronto and San Diego and Crossroads in Atlanta and Montgomery. And she and Grace McKinley presented work in Philadelphia and she Grayson maybe Pete um might be presenting in the ESR in Copenhagen in August. Wait and [Applause] see. I need to get a passport. Um, so now before
038we get started, we have a little video, but when you see there's some pictures, but one of the video pieces in there is from one of our students. And so in the beginning of the year when we started our our PDL projects, she was not asked to create a anything. And it was a it was a gratitude video to say thank you to all the people that worked in the summer to make the school ready to go. And she just did it in 24 hours. So she has now become my new this is my third AP. She gets all the stuff done. She's a doll seventh grader. I still got another year with her. So, she created the video piece that's in here. She's incredible. [Music] I love how I love. [Music] We are committed
039to creating an inclusive and engaging environment where every student feels [Music] valued. It doesn't get better than this. When it comes to the staff, when it comes to the students, we are one team, one dream. [Music] Heat [Music] up here. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat [Music] up here. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] So that's part of our recruiting video, too. That'll be on. But I thank you all for your attention and letting me come and drag on our school. Super proud of it and can't wait to see where we're going next. Thank [Applause] you. Phenomenal work that you do at Rogers Park, but the efforts that you undertaken over the years to change the reputation of Park is because you changed the climate and the culture there. um and and the belief in the students.
040So, I just want to say thank you for that. That's everything. So, thank you. Thank you. [Applause] The board welcomes public participation and ask that speakers please limit their comments to three minutes. Speakers may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them. The board will not permit any discretion of personal complaints or defamatory comments against board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the dam public school system. Is there anyone in the audience that want to come before the board and do not sign our paper tonight? No. We move on down the agenda. Consent calendar, please. Motion that the board of education approve consent calendar exhibits 25-80 and 25-82 in accordance with motion made by Lisa. Could I hear a second by saying all in favor? Can I
041hear I oppos? Motion so carried. Anyone representing our educational staff here? Seeing none, we move on down to our students. Our beautiful young student board. Good evening board of ed members, cabinet, and community members. Thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the Alternative Center for Excellence. I'm Olly. I'm Alex. Our first thing is that Melissa Laski and the ACE journalism class would like to invite you all to check out our first articles of the school year in the Alternative Times. Our alternative times can be accessed at acealtertimes.com. Next, on Saturday, May 17th from 1 to 4, we will host a barbecue at ACE to appreciate our founder Joe Pepin at ACE. There will be music, face painting, rock painting, and an alumni tent. Volleyball and cornhole, hamburgers, hot dogs, and
042ACE merchandise. Thanks to everyone in advance who attends and support our family at ACE. The ACE benchmark day took place on May 7th. All ACE students took a grade level benchmark to assess their growth and arguing argumentative writing. This year, all AC staff participated to ensure the day went smoothly. Eight ace eight eight ace poets and artists were featured in this year's Rotary Club publication from my heart along with poets and artists from New Town and Danbury High School. This past Monday, three of our poets shared their work aloud at the book launch at Danbury High School. Our 20 22nd annual ACE coffee house in BB will take place on Thursday, May 29th from 5:30 to 7:30 at Hatters Park. The night will be featured music, poetry, and a showcase of student and staff talent.
043Special guests include alumni and poets Charl and Dary poet Lorett, Joanne, and Jackie. All of you are invited to attend. Ace poets accompanied by Melissa and Della Diana. will be hiking at Steep Rock Preserve in Washington, Connecticut on Friday, May 16th. At the summit, they will sit for an hour without talking, texting, or music to listen to the sound of nature and draw or write what they hear and see. Boards will share their work and have a picnic lunch together. This is the 11th poetry hike since it inception in 2017. Diana and Anthony will be taking a group of students to visit the advance manufacturing and technology center of Connecticut State Community College located at 190 White Street. Students will have a tour of the facility and learn what it's like to work in manufacturing.
044Haze Whitewatering trip will take place June 4th through the 6th. The trip is led by Ashley and DJ. Students will camp for two nights at the Amaru State Park in New York and experience white water rafting on the Hudson River. The ACE graduation ceremony been set for Tuesday, June 10th at 5:00 p.m. The location of the ceremony will be Bravie Middle School auditorium. We invite all BL members and cabinet members to come join us for our special event. We will hear our graduates speak about journeys that led them to the graduation day. A special thanks to the broad view and relationship to follow to allow us to host our event there. Thank you all for allowing us to share what is going on with our ACE family. Have a great end of the school year
045and remain a [Applause] strong to have Jack Dinardo come to the come to the table. Jackie is here today with some of her amazing students, some of our amazing students, student athletes in uh the class act program. This is a phenomenal program and I have to tell you just interacting and seeing how sort of various events that these young men and women uh have displayed, how they displayed themselves and um they truly are class act. So I'll let you talk a little bit about the program and explain it and then Jackie sits as a as a leader. First of all, I was here three years ago and I retired. As you can see, I didn't retire. I think I work more hours now being retired than I did before. And we came up with this
046group three years ago. And first of all, I know Christiey's still here, but Rogers Park, you guys raise your hand. Rogers Park. These kids right here are product of Danbury public schools and they're middle schools, high schools. They are 20 elite captains of all the athletics. We have over a thousand athletes at Danbury High School. They represent all thousand athletes throughout the sports, everything that goes on at Daybury High. They are high GPA. We have Alexis and Khalil who just got uh the uh scholar athlete. We were down at a turf on Sunday for the highest GPA. Um, so these are all the elite athletes on their sports and at Dbury High let introduce herself and I've made it this program to be studentr run. I have a president, a vice president and they run
047it and um, so I'm going to let them take it on after this. So why don't we introduce ourselves? My name is Alexis Johnson. I'm the president of Danberry High School's class act council. I'm the girls basketball captain and I'm going to Western Connecticut State University next year. Um, hi, my name is Braden Wolf. I'm the vice president of class act and I am the um varsity lacrosse captain and I'm attending Sunni Courtland in the fall. Hi, my name is Anna Chhatis. I'm the class act secretary. I play golf and I'm attending Yukon next year. My name is Trenen Frasier. I play varsity basketball and also run varsity track. And I'm undecided. My name is Khil Tal Van Wright. I'm a graduating senior at Danbury High School and a rising freshman at the University of
048Connecticut. I am a class member along with a cap basketball Danbury boys basketball captain and track boys outdoor track and fields jump captain. Um I am also from Danbury, Connecticut by way of the Bronx. Hi I'm Gi. I'm the girls captain of varsity team and basketball varsity team and I'm undecided. Uh my name is Caitlyn Zowski. I'm a track and cross country captain and I'm going to Western Kentucky State University in the fall. Um, my name's Addison Michael. I'm the varsity cheerleading captain and in the fall I'm going to Penn State. Whoever got the right. Okay. So, we want to thank you guys for letting us take the time to introduce to you guys everything that our class act council does. So, we have a quick little presentation. So, class act is a select group
049of 20 DHS senior captains and we come together to represent our athletic department. Our main focus is to create a community within athletics and get everyone on board because we want everyone not only to strive to be the best at their sport but also focus on academics while being an active member of society. And then Jackie Dinardo is our athletic academic coach and she plays an integral role in helping high school athletes perform at a higher level to succeed in the classroom, on the field and court, and selfworth overall as a person. An athlete needs to recognize how to achieve their success through hard work and a positive attitude. And athletic participation provides you with moral values that will make you a well-rounded person for future endeavors. She always has her door open for anyone
050that needs help. She's always supportive and getting you into, you know, if you want to play in college, you love your sport, she's there for that. Um, I'm biased because I had her as a coach, but there's always somebody in her office. She's always on the phone with somebody. She really does an amazing job at what she does and she loves what she does. That's why she retired and she stays at the high school. And then our officers, I'm Alexis. I'm our president. We have our vice president, Braden Wolf. Anna Stratitis is our secretary and then Vionette Lao is our treasurer. She unfortunately couldn't make here tonight because she had soccer practice. So some of our work, we do a lot of community service working. So over in the fall, um Anna and myself did
051community service working for DHS football. Um and then we also are always asking questions. I feel like that's one of our biggest jobs. We, you know, we love to ask questions and get involved. So Braden Wolf is on the right and he's asking questions at one of our CIA conferences at the Aqua Turf. We were one of 28 schools to receive the Michael's Jeweler Cup Award. And then we also received the Fred Balsamo Sportsmanship Award pictured here. They're located in the E1 building by the gyms. We have them on display and we're very proud of all of the work that we do. Um one was for sportsmanship and then the other one was the Michael's Jewelers Cup Award. We attended the SCAK and CIA leadership conferences. So the first one, the SCAK one was located
052in Westport at Staples High School where we learned what it means to be a captain. We were split up into different groups and we talked to various different schools. So we were split up. So if I was at a table, I was also with somebody from Wilton, somebody from Ridgefield, somebody from Norwok. And we all just discussed common issues that we have as captains and how we can improve those issues to be better leaders for our sports teams. how to improve our sports teams and improve connections on our teams as well. We really do take pride in our captainship. It's a huge deal to us and we're always willing to learn new ways to be great leaders. We also do a lot of work outside of school. So, for example, we did Secret Santa at
053Regent Endeavor. These kids are, you know, they struggle a little bit and we really enjoyed. We went and gave them gifts. We each got a person and they had a little wish list. We went shopping for them. It was really fun. We had pizza. We talked to them about sports. We talked to them about activities they love doing. We, you know, we just had some really good conversations. Learned a lot about each other. Gave them some advice for the future and it was just a really it was a fun day. Um, we also did the teacher versus students basketball game at Great Plane Elementary School. The teachers asked us for some help, so we had a few students go over there. It was a really fun day as well. We did ReadAcross America at Park
054Avenue Elementary School. We did lots of fun books. Braden Wolf is pictured in the middle picture on the bottom. He's in the Hatter's costume. Uh he really enjoyed that. Didn't you? It's a little silly afterwards, but he really did. It was a really good experience. All the kids loved seeing the Hatter go around. We really, you know, we we introduced that Hatter pride to them. Um they love taking pictures with him, high fives. It it was really fun. And then reading books. Um it and then they also they did some games in the gym, too. So everybody, that was another fun one. We also did March Madness at Mill Ridge. So we split up into three groups. We did math games, we did basketball, and then we read books. Um we did like a little
055throw uh the we did like math problems, talking fractions, little throwback moment. Uh we also really appreciate our teachers because we would be unable to play the sports that we love if we didn't have them. Um so every month we kept track of two to three teachers. We all nominated um we sent it out to the school and each month we nominated two and three teachers that made a large impact on our lives and we put it all together into a big slideshow and last week we put that on for during the faculty meeting. We gave them little gifts, read them a little quote that were written by the students. Um and I think that they they really did appreciate being noticed and I think that that it they need to be noticed because without
056them we wouldn't be able to do things that we love. We also appreciate our officials because they ensure that our matches run smoothly and fairly. We'd be unable to operate without them. And we spend a week every so in the fall, the winter, and the spring. We spend a week. We're currently doing it for the spring this week. Um, and we just, you know, we appreciate them and we say thank you. We hand them little goodie bags with some snacks. We got them, we got them little t-shirts with a little hatter on them saying we appreciate you. Um, and they really they do love that, too. So there are some pictures with our wrestling, ice hockey, and football officials. And then we also did the penguin plunge to benefit the Special Olympics. So we jumped
057into that big ice water. It was very cold, but we did that was a lot of fun, too. And then some upcoming events. On Saturday, May 17th, we have Clean Danbury Day where sports teams and the community come together to help clean the city we love. We're going to go to the middle schools and give them a little pep talk, getting them ready for the big transition from their middle school to the big high school. Um, answer some questions that they might have and give them information for how to join sports. We have a little pamphlet with all of the coach's emails, their contact information so that they can get involved. I know a lot of kids, especially freshman, they don't know how to get involved. So, I think a big step is kind of
058getting out their contact information for coaches so that they can join the the like the summer conditioning and get involved early so that they can help secure a spot for the team. And then we also do uh the captain's fishbowl meeting with the class of 2026. So, we have to do interviews to induct our next year's class act group. So, we kind of give them advice. We took what we learned from the CIA and FCI conferences on what it means to be a leader, what it means to be a captain. We put that on. We show them, you know, this is what it means to be a true captain. Um, and we just pass our knowledge on to the younger class. And then I just have a little story. I'm sorry. I don't want to
059take a lot of your time, but over the course of my time at Danbury High School, I've watched many of my peers struggle, but specifically those who have been on my sports teams. Many students you all have will show up to class with a smile on their face, and you will never know the struggles that they're experiencing at home. Isn't that crazy? Everyone has their own circumstances, home life, learning disabilities and struggles and issues that they have to handle on their own. Most of them don't know how to handle it and need a helping hand to progress. On my basketball team, I have watched many girls struggle with their grades in the classroom and with their mental health. As a mentor to my fellow athletes and younger girls on my team, it has become harder
060and harder to watch so many of my peers and friends I love go down such a depressing path. All of us here have experienced in one way or another a teammate that has struggled to keep up, falls down, and unfortunately goes down a dark path. So, as a group, we all chose mentees to watch over, keep in touch with, and support along their journey. We all check in with each other, go out to eat, send a quick, how are you doing, check in, make sure everything is okay, because ultimately we're family. In particular, I have a quick story to share with you all. There's this girl, and we're going to call her Susan. She's a bright, talented teen that always felt like an outsider during high school. She struggled making friends and would spend most
061of her time alone. Her parents were divorced, working several jobs, and her mom never understood her reluctance to join clubs or participate in social events. It never pushed her to participate. Susan craved a feeling of belonging beyond that of her very busy family. So, one day, Susan decided to go to a girls basketball game. It was a rivalry game and knew many people would be in attendance. While watching the game, she noticed how close everyone on the team was. From the pregame huddle in the locker room to the chemistry while warming up and smiles on everyone's faces while playing the game that they love. So, she decided to contact the coach about joining the team. And it wasn't long before Susan became uh before basketball came Susan's escape and her passion. The intense training, companionship
062with her teammates, and the shared goal of improving and competing to win gave Susan a new sense of purpose she had been searching for so long. Without a role model, she was returning home to an empty house where no one cared to check in on her. However, once her mentor stepped in, she realized she finally had someone that cared for her and ultimately a bond for life. Playing this sport was both a physical and mental challenge. But it pushed her to overcome her shyness and embrace teamwork. The basketball team became her family. It offered her unwavering support and encouragement and taught her not only to work hard, but to trust her teammates, communicate, and manage the pressure of competition. With Susan's skills improving, so did her confidence and self-esteem. She worked harder to keep her
063grades up and her GPA improved significantly. The team helped her blossom into a confident, well-rounded individual. While she continued to excel in basketball, she discovered her passion for basketball had opened doors to other opportunities. She became a role model role model for other younger students and players, volunteered in community service activities, and became a mentor herself to help other students who struggle with their mental health. She was able to use her struggles to help others similar to her grow. And it showed how a single passion could connect an individual to their school, provide them with a sense of belonging, and inspire them to reach her full potential. Sometimes the key to finding oneself lies in embracing a shared passion and finding a supportive community. We understand you as teachers and administrators in our district play
064such an important role in these kids' lives to stay eligible. So, we thank you for your time and effort in keeping these athletes to be able to play the sports they love and to keep them motivated. teachers as well as administrators and staff members play an extremely extensive role in helping our athletes succeed and we thank you for all of your contributions, extra time and support. Um, you can be the difference between them being successful or not and you are the impact of students becoming a positive person in society and not just another statistic. Okay, so here is a quote created by our CLA or poem written by our class act team to really resonate with all the information Alexis just said. I've been told I've never excelled academically, but as an athlete, I aspire
065to transcend my circumstances. Despite facing discouragement and hardship, I'm determined to persevere and prove my worth. I seek guidance and support from my teachers, coaches, and family to overcome obstacles and achieve success. I acknowledge the struggles I face and apologize for those beyond my control. Sports has been my sanctuary, but I know that without them, I risk losing my sense of purpose and identity. I'm willing to work through challenges and seek help daily. As I refuse to give up or excess a life of failure, I believe that with the support of my teachers and coaches, I can change my circumstances and will prevail. So, I really just want to emphasize that especially since co there have been a lot of mental health issues that we've seen throughout not only just kids on our sports teams,
066but kids that are in our classes, our friends, you know, we really it we do see it. Um, and especially when we went to those leadership conferences, we learned a lot about, you know, substance abuse, how to help others that struggle with it, how to help with the the pressures of social media. There's so many different aspects that really put a lot of pressures on teens and we really just want everyone to succeed and we want to lend a helping hand to those that we can. So, I think that that's one of our most important roles and that's why we chose to do our our mentor um program and pick a mentor each and I think that we've been very successful with that. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] And then really quick, we just have
067um from Miss Pasarelli, she emailed coach Donardo and just said, "Thank you for our presentation for our class act teacher appreciation." Um she just, you know, kind of said that it really was meaningful. She really appreciated it. Um she really loved the shirt. It makes her so proud and remembers why she does what she does and why she loves being a teacher. And then we also got an email from one of the umpires from the varsity basketball game on Monday and he really again emphasized how much that we really do were courteous and respectful of officials, how professional we are as an athletic program and how he enjoys coming to our games and officiating our games. So to reiterate, we have 20 senior captains that lead all of our sports teams. We go to leadership
068conferences. We do our mentor program for athletes in need of academic emotional support. We do official appreciation for fall, winter, and spring. We do community service for clean Danbury. We do read across America and March Madness for academic support. We are planning to meet with the mayor to discuss school issues. Um we also do secret Santa Endeavor teacher appreciation for teachers who made a difference in someone's life. Middle school sports awareness to prepare for the high school sportsmanship support for teens who need support. participate in teacher student basketball games, meet with all team captains to discuss a good role model and captain. And again, we really appreciate all of your support. We thank you for taking the time to kind of listen to everything that we have done this school year because without you, we
069would have been able to operate. So, thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Sorry, I kind of got here a little too early. I thought they were already in here. No, we want to thank all of you for coming tonight and and taking time and as student athletes, um you know, you're you are amazing role models in the school. I know you're all going to go on to college and do amazing other things as well. Um and you know, hopefully you come back to Danbury four years later and come work for us in some capacity and you stay in the area because you're all incredible um students and Jack, thank you for your support of this program, keeping it going because this is really important stuff. So, thank you. Thank you. I would like to say on
070behalf of the board, I appreciate you and I know that the rest of the board members appreciate such beautiful faces coming before us with a positive attitude and Jackie who I've known for years always have a beautiful smile. So I thank you. I thank you and go home and be safe. And and you know it was a lot to get. We started out with five and we had a lot of cancellations with the rain and everything and instead of them staying home and not being here, they got here, got lost, went to Ridgefield, some people slept in later. They don't know how to run a GPS, but they got here. This group, this group is so committed and I, if you see, I had so much expectations and they're in so many other clubs, but
071they always seem to come through. So, I applaud them. I'm so proud of them. And thank you. Thank you very much, Jackie. Can you send us the slide deck when you not now but the slide deck? Yeah, I can send it. Thank you. Um All right. So, we will be brief. Um, a quick update on the AIS wall situation. So, as you know, we've had a a safety issue and had to block off some of the parking lots. I'll let Dr. Mike take that one and give us a little update as to where we're at with the retainer wall issue. So, as we shared the email, there's um there's been some movement on that wall. If you drive up to AIS, there's that first parking lot right on the right side. That big wall is
072a it's a concrete retaining wall. goes down about 20 ft. But the piece you see when you're up on top is brick. That brick sits on top of that wall. So, one of the first things they're going to do is remove that brick to take weight off that wall. And then they're going to begin excavating a lot of the concrete and the mud grass area right there to remove uh weight from that wall. That's going to begin probably in the next week or so um just to make sure that that load comes off the wall. Once they get in there, they're going to start doing some excavating and exploring to figure out just what they need to do to shore up that wall. Um there's a few different discussions about what what that could look
073like based on the engineers way above my pay grade. Uh it's some technical stuff, but they're u they're going to be probably tightening up the ties. There's concrete ties that pull that wall into the side of the hill and they're going to be tightening up those ties, probably reinforcing it and then uh uh doing some uh some steel beams on the other side of that wall that are going to actually act as the brakes. That whole process is going to take uh a considerable amount of time. We don't yet know because um they won't know the severity of it until they get in there and they see how bad it is. um and also until they figure out how much money they have, how quickly they can move and what their options are for repair
074and who the engineer is that is going to do it and all those different parts of of a major construction project. So, uh for the foreseeable future, that parking lot is going to be off limits. Um and we'll have a timeline hopefully in the next few weeks as as more of these details um come to surface. Any board members have any board members have questions that they want to ask concerning? It it is a city project and it's going to it's two phases. One is to stabilize the current problem so that it's safe and then part two is is their real fix which will come later and be a little bit more expensive. But the city's been extremely communicative um on this and he's super responsive. Um and so you know we've been staying really
075close with Mike and I on it. Um the the big question is how it will impact summer school. I have reached out to Westcon um and told them about sort of the situation um concerning about having enough parking spaces for events that are coming up particularly at the end of the year. Um they are very supportive of us using the parking spaces. Um but then but then how do we get we're talking about potentially running a shuttle for key events maybe half an hour before half an hour after um to bus people to the school if there's not enough parking uh down in the grassy area. So I think right now the staff is parking. Are you guys parking on the grass right now or anywhere else? On Wednesdays. On Wednesday, right? So um you
076know when we have more parents coming it's going to be a problem. So we'll have to direct them to the west parking. They're about Westcon's about to let loose um in another week or so. We'll have more access during the summer. Um how this impacts summer school is kind of TBD. Um but Westcon is ready to to support us in in whatever way possible. And then I'm just hoping that the whole thing's cleared up before school starts. Uh but we won't we won't know that till they dig into the project. Okay. Um summer orders. We are rocking with orders um getting prepped for this high school opening. Um at the end of the year tends to be a really hectic time with with putting orders in for the for the next school year and closing
077out. Um but the addition of this bringing on this large high school and um everything now having a conversation with Mr. Donovan he's like Cara I need 75 staplers. I need so we're going through all the little things. So, we we've taken care of a lot of the big equipment and the big items. Um, and now, you know, we have a lot of just basic stuff that you need to open up and and operate a school. Um, things that do not come with that FF package. So, um, microscopes and all the science equipment and things like that that we're going through. Um, so we we've been very creative and closing out grants and and things that maximizing every dollar in that area to make sure that we have everything that we need. Uh then we
078have a little bit of money too in the uh ARPA money that's set aside for supplies as well for startup. So if we need to tap that, we'll do that as well. But um there are shipments coming all over this district. We'll be all shipping our boxes pretty soon uh until we can get the shipping address directed to DHS West. Um right now they can't receive anything. So um we'll be giving the update later in the summer, but we are doing all things needed to open up this um large campus. Um I'm going to kick the hiring update over to Kim. That office has also been very busy. We are hopping. Um so this is we've come into kind of our busiest time this year um which is our um first trying to organize where
079we're doing all of our hiring. Um and that's involved a lot of meetings back and forth um in con conjunction with Mike and um with other members of leadership team trying to make sure that we understand exactly where all of these new positions are going to be coming from. Um and so we have spent a lot of time in my office making sure that we've got our systems up and ready to go as we start to now engage in that process um to get these jobs posted and also to get them set up in our system so that they can receive applicants. Um we have done again this year an early hiring initiative. Um what that means is we have sent teams of um administrators and teachers out to college fairs in key areas that
080we have had some really really good hires in the past. Um and they go armed with a basically an early hire offer. So there's a QR code that links to some documents to get people in and early interviewed. Um so far I'm excited to report that we have um pulled in 14 new teachers for the high school already. Most of our buildings, many, many of our buildings are now fully staffed. Now, we're going to continue to get some resignations and retirements, but right now we're in real good shape um at least with our momentum on those. So, we've been very happy with that. Um one of the things that we loaded in this year that has um had us really looking at all of our marketing is a product called Interview Stream. And Interview Stream
081interfaces directly with our frontline Apple track. Um, so the thing that we use to do our hiring and it allows our candidates not only to do a short written sample, but also to respond with brief videos to questions that we've teed up so that our administrators, our teachers, people in hiring panels can now view a whole range of videos from candidates as a screening tool. It also allows us to do some marketing. So it allows us to link to videos to the newmies. It allows us to link to letters from Rogers Park about what their school is about. So, we've really tried to embed similar marketing in these tools that we've been folding into our hiring process. So, so far so good. We're going to do actually a quick 15minute training. Cara, if you want
082to log on tomorrow, um just to make sure that everybody knows how to get in and start using the system. Um it was very inexpensive. It's a great leverage tool for us. So, we're excited about using that. Um we also you're going to see later on tonight's agenda we have um for your consideration the new agreement with our PAR educators. That's a key component in our really pushing through more rigorous and successful hiring of candidates for our many PAR educator programs. Um as we've talked about in the past with you all that affects morale that affects um ability to serve our kids. it it um affects our teachers abilities to do their jobs in their classrooms. Um so we're excited um and I'll talk with you in executive session about the terms of that um
083tenative agreement and then we're hopeful that we will be able to turn key quickly all of our marketing materials that will reflect um a change and hopefully that will help us. Um lastly, not really lastly but enough for tonight. Um we're also spending a lot of time looking at um Caliad substitutes. So um I meet with them every other week to look at data on our subutilization rate. Um we saw some really interesting things today in looking at numbers on search pricing. So picking days that we normally have low um sub participation and high attendance rates. So that that data that we're looking at now is going to help us circle around how many subs do we think we'll use next year? What rate should we pay them? What do we think is the optimal
084rate um to get folks to commit to us? Um and we're looking at doing sort of an event with those um that we do have already in our subpool as a show of appreciation to have them and bring their friends and try to get them as part of our team as well. Um if all of the components that I've talked to you about this year work well for us on hiring hopefully our sub needs will reduce particularly in the area of PAR educators. So um it's a little bit tricky for us to budget but I think we're all optimistic that that's going to we're going to get some traction on that. Um, I think that's all for now. Um, you know, we're really just trying to make sure our systems are in place and that
085as these hiring reports are coming in, um, that we're we're ready to move and turn quickly. Um, several of you have volunteered to participate in our principal interview panels, which we'll have coming up at the end of the month. Um, those are always a good way to to kind of see um, a lot of our folks to work with teachers and other central office administrators. So, also a positive boost to our um our excitement about the fall. Thank you, Kim. Okay. And then the last thing on the uh the list is just an announcement that we have kota this coming Saturday from 11 to 4 at high school. So, music performances, artwork, kids crafts, face painting, ice cream, community and familyfriendly events. Um I will be there um with the PTO for the first part
086of that and trying to get more folks involved in PTO and and trying to work with them to try to bring a little more excitement around that. Um interestingly Kota also is now competing with the ACE Joe Pepin day and also the clean Danberry initiative. So there's a lot of things happening on Saturday. So I'm curious to see where people end up. Um but there's a lot of good things to do in Danberry on on Saturday. So hopefully people can uh spread their time out and attend a couple of those. So and that is it. Um do we have a date for the DHS dress open? Not yet. The target is around the first week of August for that super staff to be able to come into the building. So it's a little bit TBD.
087Um I do believe we're going to be going on a tour at some point um at the end of May. that's sort of targetish, but it's all I look I'm looking around because the the things change very quickly. So, but we'll follow up on a on a date so that the board can um go in and see, but also um we'll get a little bit more of a solid date on the actual opening. It all depends on that everything's ready, but the we've been told the first week of August is a target. Is there no question? We're going to move to our board standing committees. We have not had a meeting since our last word policy. I don't know if Kate can emphasize to me, but we had a policy committee meeting on Tuesday. So,
088we made finance. We have a meeting scheduled for May 21st at 6 p.m. at Brook. Thank you. [Music] We don't really have any plan relations. That's uh if things changes as far as our committee chairpersons and u person we have to set up something let me know action item action item A superintendent contract motion that the board of education accept the Superintendent's contract and salary for 202526 as recommended. Motion made by Wanita. Could I hear a second? Second. Motion second by Louisa. Are there any question concerning? Seeing none, all in favor could I hear I oppose? Motion carry. Okay. Thank you. policy action. I make a motion that the board of education accept for first reading policy 5144.12 restorative practice response as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 25-84. Motion made by
089Lauren. Did I hear a second? Second. Seconded by Al and policy. Seeing none, all in favor could I hear I? I motion motion so carried. Thank you. C motion that the board of education accept for first reading policy 5141.21 student health services as school district medical advisor as recommended by the policy committee and accordance with 25-85. Motion made by Dr. Reese. Can I get a second? Second. Seconded by Al and a question concerning policy. Seeing none all those in favor can I hear I I oppose. Motion is okay. Action item D. I make a motion that the board of education accept the first reading policy uh 5141.21 student health service policy 5141.22 22 communicable and infectious disease as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 25- motion made by M. Second by Judith.
090Any questions? Say none. All in favor I. I oppose. Motion so carried. J item B. Motion that the board of education accept for the first reading policy 5141.231411A.231 psychotropic psychotropic drug use as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 25-87. Okay. Motion made by Julie. Can I hear a second? Seconded by Lauren. Any question concerning policy? Seeing none. All in favor? I hear I oppose. Motion. So carried action item E1 F. I'm sorry. Policy one, excuse me, policy 5141.25, students with special healthc care needs. Motion that the board of education accept for first reading policy 5141.25 students with special healthc care needs as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 25-88. Motion made by one. Did I get a second? Second. Second by Al. Any questions concerning the policy? See none.
091All in favor please say I. I I oppos motion. So carried. Uh, I just like to take a minute and and and thanks and and we have been very strong and and trying to get his policy and the legislation working with our all our committees and I I certainly appreciate it because we come to the meetings and we be prepared sometime can't read all the material but we come to the meeting and we learn and we ask questions. So, I just want to thank you for your support because we all have other jobs and we don't get paid for this as much as we come out. So, I want to thank you. Moving on down the agenda. Okay. Board chair person report is the career plan. Um the um teacher of the year and peril
092educator award last week had been very high. It was it was an exceptional beautiful affair and I just want to thank everybody for participating board members that came and your support is greatly needed and your your appearance here is just um saying that you support what we are doing in educating them. Uh Memorial Day we will be walking and we will be riding. So come on out and join us. Okay. Camera sent off other information on the day. That's it. Nobody have any anything else to bring to the board? I will give the opportunity to before we meet. Yes. Tell us about the robotics team. Oh gosh. robotics team. So, the robotics. Okay, so I forgot because I sent everybody out an email who was happened to be watching. I It was so exciting. So,
093I got an email, a text from Melissa. They do. And I knew that they were in Dallas and that they were, you know, that they had gotten to the competition. She went to the massive competition. So, um all of a sudden they they kept rising through the ranks and she goes, "They're going to the they're going to the dome. They're going to the dome." And so, this is our DHS robotics team. And there's several teams that comprise the DHS robotics team. And this is a program that that we've uh has been underfunded for many years. And then in the last couple of years, we really started to make sure we have all the equipment, you have everything you need, you cover the registration, and they do a lot of fundraising. So they do some there,
094but that uh we we really put some effort into it as a focus. But it's all on them. It's not on us. But they um they their one of their one of their teams made it to the finals and then we got to watch live the how that played out with a uh quarterfinal semifinal and final round um in this massive stage and arena really kind of high-tech environment and they ended up in they ended up finishing second but they also won some awards. Uh and it was, you know, they lost by uh two out of they lost by one match out of a two out of three match. So absolutely incredible. Um Mr. uh Saboi was he he he said he was shaking the whole time uh watching the kids, but they performed beautifully
095and we're so proud of them. Um but this they are second in the world at this competition. So um that's a program that's going to continue to grow. We started bringing uh that backward design down to middle school and we had the high school team go down to the middle school. We had a trained um one of the teachers down there. Um Mr. Brewster is one of the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but now we have a VEX program down at the middle school and they actually competed in a competition already and did pretty well in their first goound. So, um we're going to continue to backward plan this down to elementary and um we have some, you know, some materials, curricular materials. We're trying to change it up
096a little bit and get more materials in the hands of kids in elementary so that they too get interested in robotics and STEM and STEM and all of that. So, we're trying to fill the pipeline, but um the the the high school just did an amazing job. The kids were incredible. And and what's interesting is we had um this scuba company come out. The scuba tech company was in the paper and they do a like a programmed uh scuba robots. same type of idea um that navigate uh different courses on underwater. The company Scuba Tech came out. They're now going to be an industry partner with us. They built a I don't know how many 20,000 gall 15,000 gallon pool back at DHS and they let the kids test the equipment and that program. So
097kids were working the robotics while other kids were watching how it was playing out in the pool. And I say this because the VET robotics kids kept coming down and like kind of finding their way down because they were so interested. But the crossover in the technology and their knowledge base and what they were seeing. So they're just very excited. Um you know the programs in these areas are going to continue to grow as long as we can support it and and with them continue to nurture it. But um the competition was amazing and it sparked a lot of interest across many areas. So, um, my guess is more kids will be registered for those classes and the program next year. Thank you for asking. Yeah, we wanted to bring them in and kind of
098acknowledge that at some point, but like kids taking this or something. Another new area that's coming out is very starting to pick up a lot of for high school is uh drone competition. Yes, absolutely. Y that's that's another one and they're being more and more popular um real estate companies, surveyors, you name it. I need a motion to enter into executive session by second. All in favor? I. Do you need a break? No. Yes.