001the order and everybody one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice form s Teresa person Michelle here me here Gladys yeah Lauren here Jesse here Bridget here Julie Presley Ralph ow L and me yeah okay next up we have recognitions okay Danbury Education Foundation 23 school year 2023 24 Grant award recipients presented by the organization chair mayor Dean Esposito so we have a few recipients so I'm going to let you sit up here yes sir yes thank you so much yes as it was stated to Danbury Education Foundation the foundation form related through the mayor's office initially I think it was mayor bobbin that formulated the foundation and the intent of the foundations to be able to raise money to help subsidize different programs that are out there with regards to education and we're
002proud to be able to do some of that um allocating of the funds tonight this is Lindsay seti from my office and uh I have to acknowledge Lindsay as uh one of those the my office in the past year that worked diligently to help raise this money one of the biggest fundraisers we have is the Danbury mayor's cup and it's at Victor Park and we had an outstanding turnout and Lindsay never says no to anybody so we haven't stacked up five deep on each hole but the reality was good for a good cause and then we had those that sponsored different programs throughout the gulf day uh different holes and different programs that hold one and stuff like that but we raised a a substantial amount of money as far as we were concerned and
003it was one of the best that we've ever had no one thank Lindsay for that and I wanted to give Lindsey the opportunity to uh hand out the certificates for each of those teachers that requested funding for different programs and went by the award date their Foundation board to evaluate and approve so all of of our grant recipients tonight applied for funding for kind of out of the box unique programming that would be in addition to what they can do in the classroom we're super excited tonight to award forty five thousand dollars worth of funding projects we invited all the teachers to come I'm not sure exactly this year but please come up I have a little Awards if you are here so the first one is to Melissa brostak with Danbury High School for
004the computer art lab I have Barbara Bogart with Danbury High School for the sound Waters Harbor science for all students thank you Elizabeth we're going to do a picture with everybody at the end all right perfect um I have Allison toroski with Danbury High School for the Bas program field trip and fun fridays Melissa teal Danbury High School cultivating cultural awareness I have Thomas Barako with Danbury High School afjrotc fields Benjamin Schultz Danbury High School Danbury High School digital photography program John Schlegel Rogers Park Middle School 8th grade project-based learning experience World War II UB the historian [Applause] mark um oh sorry nope just one um Master Rogers Park Middle School theater production field trip thank you Amy Rose Ville Danbury High School releasing trout back in the community this was I'm really excited if
005I was still in school um Hannah mikesell Danbury High School French cultural field trip Robin McAllister Moore Street School Moore Street school garden and gardening thank you Caitlyn Lewis Danbury High School College and Career exploration the last one duplicate um Rosemary done King Street Intermediate King Street makers baseball great I'm just super excited and we're super excited I just want to thank you again again for giving us the opportunity to speak tonight concerning the board and as mayor of the city of Danbury I'd like to thank each and every one of you for your diligence and your your work each and every month year after year and what you do for the citizens of this city and most of all the students thank you can we get all the recipients to come forward to over
006there please . um all right Perfect all right everyone ready one two three perfect thank you all so much thank you everyone thank you around here [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] please motion the Board of Education okay any questions or comments all those in favor please say aye okay occasional staff representative um student Representatives can you come up to this table right here and the middle here you grab an extra chair and pull it around hi folks thanks for joining us we are glad to have you here if you could start by just introducing yourself and then um go ahead with what you've prepared for us thank you hi I'm Pearl I'm Bob president and I'm Serena I'm the Bob VP [Music] and Josh can you explain to us what did you say Bob I'll
007explain what that means um High School Board of Governors so basically we were the student council we're in charge of school-wide events you know pep rallies homecomings this is the dance for all grades events like that that are like you have school-wide instead of very specific um right so the class councils they basically will cover events for each grade we're sort of like a supervising we do overall for the whole school lesson perfect thank you um okay so just to just to start off basically we're about a month into school um we just started a bunch of classes starting up we have Club parents tomorrow so Club fair is a session going to be every single Club outside job will get a table at lunch to broadcast their Club to try to recruit members and
008we just hope that it really increases engagement throughout DHS it encourages students to really participate in Christian school spirit um and just overall really try to use General participation in DHS in the student life other than that a bunch of other great specific stuff that's been happening the junior class they just wants to be very successful Spanish Heritage celebration dance um I think I had around 100 members or so 100 participants who all paid to attend and the money on suicide fundraiser as for the senior class we've had a handful of senior class activities such as two weeks ago we had senior Sunset before school started that's from six to seven and then this Friday actually we're having a um senior Fest so it'll be just a little celebration for the seniors until five after
009school until five o'clock a little celebration of seniors they're all beautiful food like Bull and just like faster house uh pot events one of the students to just sort of enjoy their senior year other than that as we are getting started with the school year there are a couple policies that have been implemented such as such as the discount policy um his job policy is essentially a new new this year is a policy where students that are in their late sixth class they have to go down to the office and get a Missed Out Pass um and it goes under record but it goes on the back on some record that they've missed out um so this is to try and keep students much more accountable for being late because DHS previously does have a
010very high um like tardy or Thanksgiving class so hopefully this will sort of like you call that down and improve attendance service in general um other than that we have like three week impact value going on okay so we have officially scheduled the week first year week is going to be October 10th to October 13th which is four days and um just to go over the themes because you know it's not everyone wants to know the our first day is going to be bargain hierarchy which some of you know some of you may know the movie's Barbie and Oppenheimer came out on the same day and it was kind of like a cultural movement for us kids so we wanted to do a day based off that after that we have Jersey versus Jersey Shore
011which should be fun because if you know the if you know the show it's there it's very chaotic um then we have you know the classics we have color days where freshmen are pink sophomores are so that's going to be Thursday and then on Friday we're going to have good old orange and blue day and dance with homecoming but one thing that we did last year for the first time in over like decades um that we are going to continue on this year is we're going to do a pep rally before coming before the homecoming game and you know dance which is important to be on October 14th this year um that pep rally is going to be on Thursday so the day before the homecoming game and um to organize for that we've created
012a dog Community which will which we separated into three parts and two of those parts are dedicated solely for getting ready for the pep rally they've come up with a lot of ideas for games to do during the pep rally you know like tug of war like stuff involved with like you know balloons or water balloons specifically and other fun activities like that we'll be hearing more um I'll update you on those next time because nothing's set in stone yet but we are making remarkable progress we have two Bob committees meeting tomorrow to get from the brainstorming and work done so our plans with the pep rally are going well and for spirit week we're collaborating with peer leadership which is a group in Denver high school that kind of like Fosters school spirit like
013interacts with the community they're helping us out with posters banners wall decorations window decorations so sorry um and lastly for the pep rally we are going to one of the actual value besides the games we're going to have like a lot of fall Sports come out cheerleaders um band and they're going to be performing routines of their own and we hope that it will just be a really fun interactive way for teachers to Foster some school spirit and I think that's all we have and Josh is going to talk a bit about home um so I'm just going to give a brief just you are homecoming we're going to start planning before homecoming tomorrow with our first class we will start planning for homecoming decorations and homecoming will be on Saturday October 14th after a
014lot of deliberation we came to the Tangled movie team um we will run tickets through on tickets Wicked she was kind of a kind of a fiasco selling tickets so basically we want to kind of get a more streamlined and online is probably the best way to do it and to beat those uh online tickets we're going to have Refreshments to me came out of tickets that was selling it should be around 1100 at the maximum for homecoming Court we have a few applications and the nominations are starting to come through pretty quick uh the application will be announced at the pep rally and for finally professional elections we have four candidates because you know the freshmen they don't really want to apply for a school office but we're getting some candidates going and the
015numbers are starting to grow but you started off at four and it shouldn't be going up Court uh Yankee we're excited to start the Year and thank you for having us does anybody have any questions so Pearl Serena Josh welcome we are happy to have all of you here at the board meeting and representing Danbury High School in our school district I so you should know the board and I we had a meeting earlier and we were talking about this missed out initiative at the high school and so can you just tell us a little bit more on exactly what folks were missing out on and what the initiative was about and how the initiative was going because I did speak to principal Donovan a couple weeks ago about this right so Mr the missed
016out policy is developings at 7 20 every morning um and the mental policy is essentially that once the veil brings the student cannot get into the room the teachers have to shut the door and lock the door and any students that show up late they're sent directly to the global office for a missile pass and what are we missing out on [Music] like missing like being tardy missed out um [Music] um I'm not sure it um I'm pretty sure after a certain amount of missed out to like you know it's parties um you can get detention and then at one point you get an in-school suspension and then after that you have a parent intervention so it can add up pretty easily those are the it goes on you know right so while uh Pearl
017is grabbing the microphone back I I love this idea about missing out and placing importance on learning time and so I'm curious how behaviors have changed if at all from you guys perspective at the high school since this initiative has been implemented honestly I think for this job possible maybe you're not in the hallway so you don't know I think the national policy is more to the benefit of teachers just so it believes that pressure on the teachers themselves to assign those detentions and sign those tardies um is it much more like is a higher I guess a supervisor way of assigned attention to tardies without putting all that Pastor all the teachers to actually do it so as for like the student point of view I'm not sure how much it's actually [Music] um
018well I can speak to that a little bit because I had a couple of visits to my level up this recently and um and in the process I met a lot of kids who missed out and from the way that they were speaking I don't believe that you know they're truly got the concept yet I feel like um it hasn't really because um the kids that I didn't talk to they were like this isn't gonna stop anyone it's not gonna stop me I can take my sister two or three so that's the perspective that I got from the kids that were in the office I'm not so sure about I mean I do know kids that emotionally good kids but got a little late and got missed out past and now they're like you know
019super Capital super careful to make sure that they're at school in class on time but for the kids that like you know it's in the office and they're like I can save my ancestor too it hasn't really like you know registered yet but perhaps it will eventually I'll keep you updated thank you the sophomore classes up they're kind of used to the you know like I missed class or whatever but the Freshman Class they're kind of scared straight with the with the missing out policy so I mean I know my whatever it is at least and um I mean he hasn't struggled with the class like he got like the school layout pretty quick because of the missing out policy so um at the beginning of the school year the freshman year same same people
020three of you thank you thank you so much for being update we really appreciate you it's a pleasure meeting you all thank you thank you you're welcome thank you for having you thank you thank you when you comment I just want to comment a little bit on the missed out so I was up at Denver high school for instruction around this past week last week and the uh you know prior to the implementation you know one of the things that we'd often see in the beginning of our class is kind of the trickling in the students and the teachers kind of waiting to start the lesson and so over time that kind of erodes some of the instructional time but this last round of construction rounds where we were up there the kids were in
021the classroom the instructions started right off time and that's one of the great benefits and always were clear so the the policy is working the other reason that Mr Donovan implemented it is because it has to do with the academies and I think he explained this and he may even recognize some of what I'm saying here but to to be an employable adults who have to be on time to work and as part of the academy and building those soft skills and students we're trying to instill things the idea that being on time is important otherwise you do miss out on them not just in class but potentially on jobs so thank you very much for talking tonight yeah thank you guys okay parties representative I trust me tonight [Music] um and community members thank
022you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the Alternative Center for excellence isn't happy to welcome 30 new students since the start of the school year which includes staff participating in student and Facilities this week and that Suite Facebook people holding the humanities department for your local Benchmark on Friday September 20 the 18 years program has created a dashboard schoology classroom and the entire student body participation based on your highest grade level of English and social studies thank you 18 minutes The Benchmark process takes place during a three-hour clock and students will have an opportunity to demonstrate the skill level with regards to their tasks after the benchmarks are completed Ace Mobile afternoon barbecue welcome student at the 2023-2024 school year the first Ace parents today was held on Monday September 19th
023at 6 PM parents and students began eating together to hear about how many offensive School post for the 2023-2024 school year after that Harrison students will have the opportunity to file in a student schedule into a staff it's hard up here on October 5th however this team will be taking the astronomy class in the African-American black and Latina Studies classes to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in addition to the exhibits within the museum students will be attending a share the Hayden planetarium to the world's Bianca students will return to Asia by 5pm this has been taking a twice annual poetry Health since 2017. on Friday October 13th is teachers from art and English classes are ranked 25 to 30 artists and books from AC to Washington Connecticut Valley Preserve describe
024contribution was transfer natural hosts that stand around the river bridge your group will spend the day of hacking and writing and Stephanie insurance Countryside Ace will be administering our school on PSAT for 9th 10th and 11th graders on Wednesday October 18th on the stairs seniors will be transferred to DHS to participate and see your activities occurring on that day for suicide prevention week and the ace students could choose to attend two plus periods where they learned about suicide prevention and to talk away in the dark program as well as the 988 helpline the students also create an awareness posters that are displayed in the policy on the federal needed bulletin board during our lunch time the students at ASAP and large papers and flowers to Applause of chrome students for Fox Fair Cancer Center this
025is the third Ace care school project width and forecast there these simplifies as soon written messages that affect their cancer patients caregivers and staff careers you've led to deliver the sunflowers on Wednesday 10 7. wants to the video decorate the waiting room do you guys have any questions yeah I'm all right have a good night everybody okay um take moving moving on to action items okay can you do action items hey I'll make a motion with the Board of Education except the July and August 2023 financial reporting and it works of visited 23-108 awesome Bridges questions or comments sure I just want to make sure that all board members are aware of that conversation at the finance committee meeting tonight some there's some expenses that we did not anticipate with regard to we couldn't anticipate
026with regards that I.T reach that happened so it was approximately 202 thousand dollar uh expense associated with that and I know that we're probably going to have this conversation at some point about how the special education legislation has changed um but my understanding is that we're looking at a potential 400 000 increase this year as we're responsible for educating special education students through age 22 through the individual year so that's just so that folks are aware there's a six hundred thousand dollar cost uh that we could not have anticipated when the budget was originally drawn and we're going to hopefully figure out how to run a complex those expenses all those in favor all right any opposed okay um Gladys can you do action IMB please yes on make a motion actually I'm going to
027be marshbree school Family Resource Center continuation of service application I moved that the Board of Education approved application to the Connecticut State Department of Education or the continuation of services at Marsh Street Family Resource Center in your quarters was exhibit 23-109 a second any questions or comments about that seeing none um all those in favor um any extensions um Jesse can you do action item C for me please sure I motioned that 22 oh 20 23 2024 teacher and administration evaluation plan I move that the Board of Education approved 2023-2024 teacher and administrator evaluation plan in accordance with 23-110 second so Julie perfect any questions or comments support just a question too the superintendent as a board and plan to think back and maybe somebody as long as you is this the first time we
028did uh uh playing like this for teaching graduations I'm gonna go on back maybe a couple of years ago I can't remember so miss Cooper is something we have to do annually last year we did it in September I believe the last meeting in September of the first meeting of October years prior it was done in May submitted to the state and identified our in terms of our calendar we start to formally start to observe our staff no later than October and so by our first meeting now to kind of ensures our alignment that we have a plan in place I think Kelly has some additional shoes just to give a quick overview of what the continentality health plan you have a copy in front of you um there are no proposed changes for this
029year um so it is the exact same plan as last year the only updates our calendar um updates as it proposes a timeline so when teachers or administrators need to turn in their professional practice plan and then timelines for which we have to evaluate and it's broken up into two categories the first being new teachers and we classify the Indian teachers as year one or year two or anyone that is below proficiency so a struggling and Care um and then anyone with three or more years of experience and so for our new teachers we do two formal observations two informal observations and then two reviews of practice and essentially the difference between a formal and an informal is length of time the formal is longer and the formal observation requires both a pre and a
030post conference the whole premise behind our teacher evaluation plan is to model teacher growth and the research shows that conversations about professional practice and feedback around that practice about what is seen and what is observed is the most influential factor in helping teachers to grow interestingly while the observation is important it's really the feedback and the pre-conferencing and post-conferencing that make the most impact um and so those are required for formal observations for informal observations it's the feedback after the observation um and then reviews of practice are talking about checkpoints throughout the year so usually middle and end of the year how are things going how are we progressing towards your goals do you need to adjust make any changes um and then for our experienced teacher so three or more years and people that
031are showing a proficiency are above um so those have one formal observation one is formal and two reviews of practice and under both plans I think what's important is this was a change I believe we added last year or the year prior is that a teacher can request an additional observation as long as it's done by the 150th day of school so about 30 days prior to the end of the school year um so oftentimes you know an observation is a snapshot one point in time we all know people have phenomenal days and sometimes we have not great days um and so it allows the teacher the opportunity to ask for additional feedback if they so so if they feel that you know they want the principal to come in on a specific day where
032they're modeling or demonstrating something they want to get back on or if they feel the administrator maybe pop them on an off day one day um it gives that opportunity and the administrator is always allowed to go in and do more observations so these are minimums um you must be in compliance with the plan that you can always do more okay thank you very much so if a teacher doesn't make a request for a second observation of their classification um how do you are you doing the average of those proficiency or yeah so um it is calculated on different factors um but yes it is the cumulative average of upstairs yep subscribe to yourself um the amount of observations and the standards that we have is that exclusive to us or is that standard in
033different districts or what do we model um every District submits in their own plan but I would say they're very typical compared to other districts as far as the amount and the requirements on that um I think initially we did a little bit more of but shorter um uh shorter observation sessions with more frequent feedback the longer we transition to and that's not just similar to other districts around us and the last thing I should add is that we're currently um our pdap committee is currently working on understanding the shifts and changes in the state teacher evaluation model and so we are looking at significant changes for next school year so more updates on that will be coming um and the frequency and the types of observations as part of that conversation thank you any
034other questions thank you and all those in favor excellent okay moving on to the superintendent's report thank you Laura so I'd like to follow up first I have a through e in terms of superintendent report updates but if it's okay I would like to add it just the library a little bit on the impact Kate referred to regarding the new legislation around specialized students who are 22 years old and so we had projected a number at approximate proximate 400 000 impact for this year which which yes is indeed um for for this year but I know Kelly also had some additional thoughts in language she wanted to share with me sure so I just want to make sure there's an understanding is right at the end of the last legislative session it went into effect
035on July 1st so we found out the last week or so June that it was a possibility and then was voted into into law July 1st and essentially what it does is it extends the school year for students that are 22 until June 30th or the last day of school in June um and so previous legislation happened right right after post coven the students could stay until June 30 and the third 21st birthday we were doing that for years then they extended it until their 22nd birthday so we had a student that was turning 22 in October leaving October one in April leave in April and so they weren't finishing out that full year and so that legislation was put into a fact to kind of have everyone have the same ending it does have
036a significant impact have students that were we were anticipating exiting out two or three weeks into July and then we have other students that we were thinking we're going to exit out you know in October or April and so forth um and so uh you know I did look at the students that we have it is about 27 students that we're talking about um and I say approximately as often times we'll have a student or two say that they're going to return in the fall and then decide to exit for other programs and so forth and they're allowed to do that through the end of September um and so I'll have an exact figure for that October 1st count for you um and but I think the we have a a couple of high cost
037kids I will call them that have different or unique programming and so the unanticipated expense of having those costs for an additional in some cases couple of months in other cases closer to a full school year is where the figure came out for that 400 000. I do just want to add though that in this legislation will continue we are going to need to look at our transitional programs as I will say that we are max out on space as far as capacity and keeping students anywhere from a couple of months to almost in additional longer is going to impact the capacity in those programs so that's something my team is currently working on to see you know for next year will we need additional support in any of our transition programs and those typically
038are students that are done with their High School Credit requirements but require those transitional skills they haven't quite mastered some of those life skills in order to be successful in transition to the next steps be that post-secondary education work Workforce or some other programming option and so I do think that this will have not just the impact this year but we'll need to look in future years I just wanted to alert the work I don't know if there's any questions what kind of courses programs do they need if they already have the credits sure what are we talking about so students um that are under IEP so individual education programs there is a requirement in the federal legislation for what's known as transition planning um so that is independent living skills post-secondary education skills and
039employment skills so a student may be done with their High School Credit requirements for English math science and social studies but still need more support in the special education realm to be able to maximize their independence to be productive you know citizens once they exit um so what we're what we do is they're just because they met their you know a Core Credit requirements we do not issue a diploma because they still need additional support from us and so that this legislation allows us to do potentially not all of our special education students stay Beyond four years of high school but some do these are traditionally our students with more significant needs and disabilities and they just need some additional support to become the most independent that they can be and then so they stay
040on for that additional instructional time sometimes it's one or more years and then they receive their diploma as they exit out of our program so we have a couple different transition programs but one being a partnership with Westcom where students bought it and attend classes so they're getting the support on a post-secondary track and the other one is supportive employment where they go off to work sites with job coaches and support and so that those individual students are getting support on the post-secondary Ed and both programs incorporate the communication and life skills that students believe things like power within a checkbook how to apply for a driver's license how to set because and all the transportation systems things of that nature and the population of students that we're talking about that many of these programs
041are students for whom they would not be able to independently pay all those skills going to need some explicit teaching from special education teachers and other coaches to be successful in those thank you for that sure um question you said that there was a space issue where are these students nowaday at the high school is that where the transition program is yeah so um one of the transition programs is outside of the high school it's located next to the auto body shop where formerly the auto body shop right there um and it's because it's separate from the high school it's kind of their own little space um those are the students that go off to our employment sites um so they start and end the day at Danbury High School they are Danbury High School
042students and they are about to and from but during the middle of the work day they are out in the community with supports doing various different jobs we have students actually that are working in this building there are students working at lesser evil popcorn there's students that work in TJ Maxx ShopRite you name it uh City Hall um they are online a bunch of different um you know companies in that regard formerly and Cardis so we um we have students all throughout the community the other program is housed at Weston and students take their programming is located on the west on campus and so while they are technically Danbury High School students they are offsite with their instructions thank you Teresa do we provide them transportation for all those jobs okay that's the cost any
043other questions there are other I mean Transportation as a cost but there's cost to hiring teachers para Educators there are other programming costs but transportation is certainly a cost thank you thank you and so they report this evening focuses on enrollment class size and so I wanted to give the board and the community an update on where we are with enrollment ahead of our October first submission to the state and so as of this afternoon we are hovering at 12 000 exactly so 126 students and I'll just give you a breakdown at the different levels 126 students at Ace reach Endeavor plus which includes some out of placement students 3592 at every High School 745 at Westside Middle School 871 at Rogers Park uh 1095 at Broadview for our elementary schools across the board it's
0445446. enforce in context this might help a little bit when our demographers came in and conducted their study in June of 2022 their projections for the elementary schools well 5 311. we are at 5446. they projected our middle schools to be at 2416 these were the high projections we are 2711. our high school to be 3746 this was including Ace and we are at 3717 so about 30 under with reach that tomorrow so we will see how we're doing uh we did as we continue to clean up the data you know we certainly have more kids coming in but our offices will also clean up the data for the students who have left us the role as well across the district nothing has changed in that regard Danbury continues to be an attractive place for
045our families to move to yes do we still have students waiting to be registered or is that kind of like yeah okay we do we do and so this is something we 've been talking about in our in our ship meeting every week we had ahead of the October first submission is really important to me to us as a team to make sure we addressed the students and families in the queue if you want people who are still waiting to be registered and so we have families who are waiting you know it's it's not unlike the Department of Motor Vehicle you have to have materials to bring in before you can get your license in this case to be register and so our office we've avoid people to the registration office to help to cut
046into the list to follow up with families because we have a deadline meaning October 1st because we certainly have essentially tuition's not the right word but Revenue associated with those numbers that are formal numbers that are going to the state and so we want to make sure we can account for every student that we're going to be serving because we know we're going to continue to enjoy enrollment increases after well after the October 1st submission date so we will continue to have some updates for you Carol wanza typically comes in front of the board the end of October early November to talk about efficient numbers and talk about enrollment Trends perfect timing not only for Budget season but also just to give everyone an update of the numbers for this projected school year so we
047will have certainly some more details for you in that meeting including class size what that looks like 612 and share with the board of K5 numbers have stabilized post pandemic at this point averages across the district are in the 22 for class size range we do have some certainly some exceptions in some of our schools sadly Ruff who during the pandemic we actually added sections and although we reduced some of those social distancing classrooms that we added during the pandemic sadly what we will not able to reduce from that because well enrollment and that building it still is maintained and so Stanley Ruff has four section averaging four sections averaging 25 in the classroom and then at Ellsworth they have three sections in grade five grade five is closed at Ellsworth and they have 26
048and three of their sections at grade five at Ellsworth and so despite those numbers that you're hearing the numbers are still averaging 22 across the district but as you might imagine we do have pockets of some higher class size in our K5 classrooms middle school then High School gets a little bit more complicated than talking about class size and classrooms and when Cara wants it joins us she'll be able to give us more comprehensive look into classrooms and what that looks like I can share people ahead of that meeting and that conversation regardless of what class size looks like our buildings are certainly at capacity and certainly there's a lot of classrooms at Danbury High School that are well within the contracted range and the range that the board would like to see but 35
0493600 students in the building is just too many so that's that's a conversation for a follow-up conversation I'm sure we will continue to have and that's why we have a new building School vehicles foreign superintendent goals national standards a practice visit gentlemen I I will start this conversation and ask Cara to collaborate we had a gentleman by the name of Jay still he is a spokesperson from not the academies of Nashville but an extension of that organization I just want to speak to my opportunity to present to participate in this process the national standards of practice really speaks in our role in making sure Danbury public schools can serve as a national model and there and there are things expected of us as board members there are things expected of us as a district leadership
050team things that are expected going to be expected of us at the school level in terms of leadership and certainly of all of our teachers in our classrooms and this Continuum that stands as a practice helps to articulate that in a way that I think we'll all be able to understand and we worked it out where Jay can come back here I believe in the spring he's going to have an opportunity to walk the board through a similar exercise he pushed pushed the staff and leadership team through when he made a stop in Danbury as he was traveling all throughout the country uh making these presentations Cara if you can give the board and Community a little people look into that work that day that the high school engagement on that Tuesday to a professional
051pathology sure so just to clarify Jay Steele he was the original architect of the academies of Nashville so he's one of the founding members he was also their chief executive officer for for many many years he left oh he left Nashville he found it um you know obviously he did did his job so well that he became very popular around the country and around the world he founded the national Career Academy Coalition which is ncac so from time to time you may have heard me reference ncac or work with ncac so they are the organization that we partnered with pre-pandemic to develop our 13-page action plan while we were in the background trying to get ready on how the team launches how little this out how to prepare the staff for it so Jay JB
052worked with Jay in person for a whole day to developed that plan and from time to time we used to check in with him to kind of go over our problems of practice and how we were rolled out in the meantime a lot of our professional development of our administrators have been around and see standards of practice and that's something you're going to start to hear a little bit more and more and so we're just the same way that the Connecticut has their common part of the national common core standards or Connecticut standards for our content area or for an organization Academy models effective Academy models also have standards so what makes for a quality Academy you know are they rigorous what is the level of community involvement what is the level of sustainability what
053is the level of teaching and learning the business partner active engagement there's a variety of different quadrants along a Continuum of Excellence that we would be striving for over time the rubric is really rubric or continually Dives our work and holds us ourselves accountable helps us to kind of do a self-reflection like where are we on this right now like a little check and then you know each year we kind of work towards getting a little bit stronger in fulfilling um you know what makes for our quality Academy program so Jay we brought Jay in to talk to the staff to kind of give a high level overview of how the standards work and that's one of the things that we'd like to do with you this year is to make sure that you fully
054understand them as well as a district team we're learning about them deeply and our administrative people will learn about the Deep things that our teachers will be learning about them as well and we'll all be putting them into practice we've seen you know Nashville has been at this for 17 years or longer we've seen some schools that achieved National model standards of excellence within three to four years which is really fast right and that's like the first cohort goes through they bring in ncac to do a deep evaluation to see all the components and they get rated and evaluated that's how you can be certified and then people start coming to your District to see how well you're doing things which is which is great but just the idea that we googled ourselves to the
055high standards available is really the goal of what we're talking about and we're very fortunate to be partnering with Jay Steele he's not just working in the country and now he's going he's in different countries right now setting up setting up the Academy Susan he's doing a lot of work in Thailand right now which is legally hiring him to set up I think it was close to 30 academies full stem full-on stem and green energy and all these like the the government that's you know is going Full Tilt with the academy model to help reduce Thailand and to help produce you know in further timel goals so many many countries is working and he's actually in Hawaii he's doing a lot of um work there as well one of our former former employee of Obi
056listening she's now our state of department head was one of the first people who kind of got a chance to see the model in action and they have had a previous connection so we're fortunate for that relationship and we've been working with them for the last couple years now so March our Target date right now is is the middle of March when we can get Jay back in town to come and do a workshop with the board the standards for the Academy model we're in sync with the states standards yes so they're they're different in the sense that so our economic doesn't have um Academy standards to guide that works absolutely but what we have is a sync yes yes and so our academics the unders don't don't change they fold within the academy structure
057the model any other questions thank you thank you so the next update is from the Commissioners health and safety update not I believe it was last Friday Kelly and I had the opportunity to attend uh the Commissioners Friday update providing health and safety some of the discussion or the vast majority of the discussion was around the reality of interim fall in winter season and the impact this can have have on our children and frankly frankly staff and community and so of course the discussion of covert came up of course the discussion of the flu came up and also the discussion of respiratory illnesses like like RSV and so some of the many recommendations from these Health officials talked about what they are seeing in hospitals around the state and that they are indeed beginning to
058see an increase in covert cases in hospitals around safe some of the monies that were typically that were used previously to monitor Kobe cases in the community is is right now and so the hospitals is where they're going for this information our local Health director and the health directories across the state I would imagine like Cara Frontier public Bank Department State officials to get further guidance we did receive further guidance in the event our staff or our children have indeed come back positive and so until Kelly is going to speak to some of these recommendations for us ahead of that I would just also like to share some of the concrete recommendations that I left the meeting with encouraging our community to make sure they proactively get the flu shot proactively consider the covet booster
059and if they feel comfortable not to get the RSV shot at the same time for prioritizing the first two first because they were seen in English in the communities and then the last one the RSV um Kelly I'll ask you to share some other recommendations that came into the group just also say I do not anticipate any action from the board at least considering where we are now I will ask Carol Frontier for further guidance on this but where we are right now I do not anticipate we're going to have any policy implications with historical Kelly sure thank you Robin um so what we are doing is learning the process of just re-looking at our sick day guidelines which we always have in place for parents you know General reminders if your student has a
060fever they have to be fever-freed and chemical route workers right they have injunctivitis or a guy they cannot come to school until they're treated for 24 hours those types of things and we're trying to balance this with the post-covered world of we want kids at school right do not keep your kids home for lengthy periods of time if they do not need to be calm but we also need to remind people that when children are sick they need to stay home and they need to rest for their own well-being as well as the well-being of everyone else in the classroom around them and so related to coven is very similar to what we ended last school year with they are recommending um that if your child is diagnosed with covid or a staff member that
061you're notified of the school of that diagnosis you can use a home we cannot require but we are strongly recommended um that you do a test and that can be an at-home test and in those guidelines we also remind families that if you have tests left left over in your home from last year to check the law and expiration days some of the expiration dates and you can just Google it um have been extended so the lab number you can see that even though it expired in the spring of 23 they're now saying it's valid until the spring of 24. so to check those but a home test kit is fine if you so choose and if you are diagnosed with covid that you are still having to remain home for five days and then
062on days 6 through 10 returning with a mascot for the health and safety of everything again we are we are strongly recommending we cannot require um but I think that that's imperative to get the message out to our community that this is for the health and safety of everyone in our community um and so if you do have coven you are to remain home for five days um we have seen covet cases in both staffs and students um I you know I don't want to alarm anyone they're not a running race but we are saying it um and so these are uh you know the best health and safety practices um also a reminder to our families that if you would like to wear a mask that children are able to staff are able to
063we are not seeing many elect to do so but that is an option for anyone that is feeling more comfortable with that so we will be putting this all together in a revised Fit Day guidelines and memos to well probably the first week of October I think is what we just could you say after fifth day to come back to school the sixth day that is not required for you to wear strongly we strongly recommend but it is not required I just want to make sure okay great thank you I just wanted to comment already implemented his policy unfortunately we do that personally but she strongly recommended and I think nation and she was extraordinary in her follow-up and conversation with me to make sure that I was clear Samia that's great feedback and I
064will say for those of you I um we will bring her to a future board meeting but we do have Carrie Burke she is our new coordinator of all the nursing Services she's replacing caviar dad who I know spent a lot of time with this group during coven Carrie comes to us with a wealth of experience formerly worked at the school-based health center at the high school so she's very familiar with the district with the community and she will be leading this and making sure that all of our nurses are aware of the policy and um can we offer the flu tests and for the tests of the school-based health centers yes they are they are already offered and available at the school-based health centers which um would you need approval or some sort of
065slip signed by a parent in order to get any kind of so if if a student asks for this yes so if a student um is a member of the school-based health center which requires parent permission um they could then go there to get get the test so the um the signature allows them access to any of the services that are offered there they could also go there let's say they had an earache they needed to be checked for an ear infection um so it's consent to all the services that are provided at the school base Health Center and those are offered in some of our schools so um the Rogers Park and Broadview have a school-based health center the high school has a soul-based manager Elsewhere for working on that you have a list
066of those services that the parent is going ahead and saying yes like I get it if you're giving them as you know an aspirin but you know that hence I say that there are other other interesting Factor yeah and I think that will show everything that form outlines could you speak for this moment about the partnership with the local organization it was helping to run on the survey so yes um so I I they've been great Partners uh with us so I will say during uh during covid um you know whether it's Distributing anything that we needed across the community um if there is a need of any of our students they have been able to gain vaccines for our students medications for our students of course all with parents consent um but we enjoy
067their partnership and appreciate their service to our students and our community so I think they've been a great great partner and certainly I know we've been exploring ways to expand um you know if and when we have something one more questions the health and services we're talking obviously you know shots or whatever but is that also mental is there they're so under that so when you're signing is there any way we can get a you know a layout of what's covered in there I want to be clear it's not run by Danbury public schools it's a partnership with Civic yeah um and so certainly we can share a copy of the form that parents receive and you can look at yes well if I were to sign off I would just like to know exactly
068what I would be so much thank you [Applause] so the next item one they're made for is item D budget calendar and development and this is really just making the board aware through the finance committee first I wanted an opportunity to review really a calendar of events leading up to our budget process like to get started much earlier than in previous years and so through our committee in all the Liaisons meaning the the cabinet Liaisons that work with the board and so whether it's the curriculum committee uh caravar Cara working with Kelly and Lauren Daly and saying hey here are some staffing recommendations we envisioned for the 24-25 school year here are some supplies and curriculum supports we envisioned for the 24 25 school year Mike Seely doing the same thing with Michelle Coelho on
069our sector facilities committee and so whether there are some initiatives around security whether the same initiatives around I.T office grades that need to be made we walk every committee through those projections for next year and we want to get started as soon as October and so yesterday or last Thursday the holidays appear to be the same now but it was last year I was able to leave we had the finance committee meeting [Music] in our next finance committee meeting we would speak to the budget calendar um feedback from the committee before bringing it to the full forward so that we can begin to move forward the plan so I just wanted to make a board where that was coming and that we will have an opportunity to review a full-fledged calendar for this the suppose
070we use programs or Pathways development art is that going to be included in the upcoming budget the costs are developing new courses and programs yes so any costs associated with curriculum development you would find in the curriculum committee certainly so whether that's Staffing whether that supplies any projected costs associated with professional development particularly if it's going to be found in the general budget anything that's going to be landed in a general budget we would be asking those folks to identify those costs associated [Music] hope what you propose the cost for development of these programs what will be that just for development right so I mean isolated in that way is a little difficult because like for example I believe uh camera has secured a grant for curriculum development but Pathways so it may not necessarily
071be applicable in our general budget and so it may be a cause that you see but it may not necessarily impact our local taxpayers but that doesn't mean it's not a conversation that would not be had I think but in terms of informing our budget processing 24.25 that it may not be applicable at that space but that doesn't mean things under the umbrella teaching and learning there'll be a lot of things to be able to talk about Staffing is going to be our biggest call sets you know you're not impressive any other questions and then and then last but not least is the demographic study and I wanted to make the board aware of another legislation that's come our way and this is about requiring students to be five years old either by no land
072in September in order to enter Canyon Garden starting in August of next year I should note that our families can submit a waiver if you will and depending on the results of the test so it's a waiver plus and assessment to determine readiness while all of those things are going on of course we're not the only District in the state of Connecticut having to deal with this it ended up being deal with this in a bad way but we just understand clearly they're going to be implications either at our Pre-K level that we have not initially planned for or in our schools next year and one way the following year and so you know right now we experienced a bubble in our second grade we have over a thousand students in grade two because a
073lot of families elected well they elect to keep at least 100 students home in this community during coverage and so because of that we have grade two where there's a hundred additional kids it very well could happen it could happen and have an impact on our initial planning for pre-k across the district and or it could have an impact when attending article and so given that we right now have a our last full comprehensive demographic study was 21-23 we had a a kind of additional study but it wasn't the same comprehensive study done completed on June 2022 so if you might recall initially we were going to be at one High School site and we had to have another study done because we moved to the Carter site and so that's the reason why we
074had to do an additional study but in light of this legislation in addition to the special education legislation we think it might be appropriate now again we were going into a new building hopefully very soon to have a study to help with and particularly since we've outperformed our study again fresh demographic study I hope that might help a plan for the next few years so we wanted to bring that to the board's attention I know we initially talked about this inside the facilities to get some feedback from the board and see if there was any before we go forward with some pricing and that we can further talk about and exciting but these two legislation legislate most recent legislations are certainly going to have some impact on us and just an ad we're anticipating probably
075three classrooms worth of students for next school year at the preschool level that are going to have to remain at preschool for an additional year so um that would be it we are currently looking through because not all of our students are are registered and enrolled preschoolers come in um you know coming out of birth to three services on their third birthday but it's not uncommon that a child will register at four years old so we will have a better idea probably early spring of the exact number that will remain or remaining in preschool but less going to kindergarten so we're going to have to look at our staffing and adjust that quick question so would that be three additional classrooms on top of the ones that we are already extending um yeah so I
076think three additional fashion fashions that are we retaining the space in college students we are yes what right now we have extended release for an additional here with the option to extend and right now until additional plans get made we would love to do that for the problem doing this um not for the not for next year um but just long-term planning um it will adjust our numbers slightly um but I I am pretty confident that at least with the initial conversations with the plan that we would have enough right in Bridgewater thinking is and or the study could impact the planning of the great building I don't know what their total capacity is but if these studies suggest something different I would like to think that could also impact the planning on itself thank
077you thank you okay is there any discussion moving on to information the 2023 educational education law summaries about some more summaries that are so it's just additional information for at your convenience and this is shared with us this summer in July 2012. okay okay thank you um does anybody have any board communication or comments or big ports from companies I would just like to say on behalf of the superintendent evaluation committee I'm going to certainly thank everyone members and numbers of people that came and you know we finally completed the superintendent evaluation and we had our meeting we've had two meetings I'm looking at 20 20 24 uh superintendent gloves and I just want to thank everyone for their support and coming out and listen Foods any other comments or committee updates um I just
078want to mention I went to Moore Street for no child weeks alone you know when it's alone is fantastic excellent I got the skinny from fifth graders excellent and um and then Julie and I also went that night to Hispanic celebration which was really a hit so I saw Kevin there for a minute but they're released I would say about 100 kids there and really enjoyed it and you know there was ethnic food there and dancing so it was really a fun time awesome thank you I just wanted to commend the AF Jared to see students 40 of them got up and met in high school at 4 30 on Sunday to go down and support the tunnel to Towers program they've been doing this for years and this was a much earlier start than
079the last several years they were committed to it and they did a wonderful job representing the JROTC and different High School um just I just want to say that schools back in session as we know so PTO meetings are happening so make sure you're making those connections with your schools again and try to get out there go ahead Teresa thank you for mentioning PTO meetings I went to the DHS and the parents were when at the end of the meeting were commenting about the parents night that was previous Monday and the lack of water in the science building is uh problematic skills and that was the issue we're very uncomfortable with because there were two teachers who refused to work around it I guess the other teachers were okay but there were two teachers during
080parents night complaining about the lack of water in the science level the the issue of challenge that relates to referring to their Plumbing challenges in the science building and so it's not allowing our science teachers to conduct their experiments and really implement the curriculum in a way that we would expect there's I think we're looking at a longer term issue that we have not been able to find a work around right now until we begin you know we're staying in contact with the city to try to get this resolved but we don't have answers today anything else so moved everybody in favor have a good night everybody thank you