001Board of Ed Danberry uh community relations today September 20th I call the meeting to order it's 5:59 PM um so I know it's been a long summer and the Administration has been working hard I've been in on some of these meetings so I appreciate all of the uh hard work and I know you've got a lot of updates you've got five items on the agenda so I'm just going to go ahead and toss it right over to you Mike if that works absolutely thank you Michelle thank you all right I'm gonna share my agenda here so we can all see and everybody can see it yes thank you okay great and I see superintendent walon is on the call as well so um he and I are going to kind of pingpong this one back
002and forth here and just sort of jump in and out on these different items um we we're both working on different aspects of these and then uh miss an will jump in to talk a little bit about parent University and then we'll all sort of have a hand in um items uh four and five just talking about some of the items coming up over the year um and what we think will be coming up on the October 18th meeting so um all right number one so uh we wanted to talk a little bit about uh board members and I know historically each board member gets assign to one or two schools um and that sort of you know the the region that they stick with and I'll I'll throw to to superintendent talk a little
003bit more about this we came up with a bit of a template here so Kevin do you want to talk through this one a little bit sure sure my pleasure um good evening everyone Kate Gladis Julie Al Michelle um thank you for shairing the meeting for chairing the committee for another year U Michelle and I had an opportunity to look at the um agenda um a little bit last week and and I was making her aware that previously just in terms of uh Board of Education updates and as a as a liaison to a school um my board members have the opportunity to kind of get to know what's going on in the respective buildings um attend PTO meetings or get feedback from PTO members about some exciting things that might be going on in
004the buildings and um during our updates on the board agenda they can provide updates for our board members and I was sharing with Michelle with so many new board members I don't even think many other members even were aware that that was a function of the agenda um and so I just wanted to find an opportunity to just bring it to everyone's attention these are as of last year anyway these were the assigned uh liaison schools um you'll see right now the PTO contact is blank we're working with Citywide PTO to get the appointment of every person for every school building plus their contact email um and we will work with um the schools as well to get any dates so you're not waiting too long on this um we we will also reach out
005and try to get the information from the school so we'll know when their dates are my understanding is a lot of these meetings are taking place remotely if you care to join or if you're available to join um and in then some instances they're um in person at Citywide PT we'll probably learn a little bit more of how these things will function across the District uh but in my first couple of years um in the district um in my prior seat as an assistant superintendent um and my first year a little bit um because at that point Rachel had moved over she was the person who was oftentimes giving the um the vast majority of the updates and reports but when she moved to the chair position um I kind of felt like she wasn't
006doing it as much but she had some kids at AIS and Westside and often times she'd give updates um and you know she would mentioning anything from trips that may be may have been going on for the school um to you know um fundraisers like um toy drives you know during the holidays or um kids coming in to buy books and it may have been a you know a drive to help a bunch of students buy books um and so she would speak about those things and other board members would also give updates about what was going to another school so it's a great way to just kind of be connected to the building and just kind of get an understanding the parent perspective kind of what's going on in our schools and update the
007board accordingly uh so Mike that was it and I don't know if there are any questions I know obviously glad as Kate and Michelle have been around for a while and and Al as well and happy to speak to this a little bit as well ask a question please please Kate um I just want to clarify Mr Walston um my understanding from the last time last year when when this happened is that the school uh principal or PTO um head for that school was uh supposed to be reaching out to us we had this discussion at the Citywide PTO meeting last year um and I know we haven't had one this year but I wonder if there's a way that um you know we could get a a a contact that we could be in
008touch with as board members because I never heard from anybody at the schools I was assigned to I I think he the and that's why we have this up on the screen in terms of of the PTO contacts name um and then email and hoping that would be the vehicle in which to be connected to these meetings um and and you know I I I recall you know communication last year that you know sometimes um you know there may be reasons why some PTO groups are not inviting in board members I don't know um and so if there's anything that we could do to you know address those barriers maybe it's something we could talk about at citywi PTO on Monday okay thank you we can certainly assist with connecting too if if um you're
009not being successful I think ahead let usly go ahead okay I would just like to say over the years it has always been and I think Co put a lot of things on the back shelf where people didn't feel comfortable having people in the classro or whatever the case might be but all my time that being on the board once we did the assignments I think it used to come about January where you going you know which school you're going to be representing uh the superintendent secretary always contacted that school and I'm going back to D Warner she did it for years contact the school and told that particular school I and and I would assume it went through the secretary and the secretary contacted that school uh PTO Le and said this is your
010representative from the Board of Ed would you let them know what when you're having your meetings and I know that's what happened when my son was at Rogers Park and that going back quite a few years good so uh I don't know why it sort of stopped and and we didn't get back into the swing of things but I don't see anything wrong with just calling um you know the secretary says you know may I speak to the principal you know I am your rep could you just let me know when you're meeting and I think uh half of the schools especially Ace they had no set time that they wanted board members to come in and they will always call you the the last the three years that I represented Ace they will always
011call you the same day that they having their PTO meeting to come and I said to him I can't operate like that so you know it it it's contact and who's doing what I I don't see it something that we should lose even though I don't like the way it's structured because Citywide PTO is doing the same thing that we're doing so okay so so I I know that last year Lauren and I went and we started visiting schools and it was almost it was the coid thing I think that kind of changed things up a little bit it and we were told as board members that you know you can go ahead reach out to um to carara and she'll set up appointments if you'd like and we were going to do it in
012like two or three at a time um to try to so I know that I had gone to my Rogers Park and I you know I hit a good amount of schools last year um but I think Kevin and I were talking that we were maybe wanting to focus on a particular school as well like Morris this month and so like if you were going to visit a school didn't we have that kind of a conversation Kevin do you recall when we met yes yes soting yeah so two so two different things um the the leaon school assignment would be a school that we would be connected for the entire school year right yes um Kate uh for example her school I'm looking up on the screen is hazetown and so if assuming you know
013Kate's schedule will allow for it um she would attend uh PTO meetings um as much as she can and provide updates to the board any exciting things that might be going on at the building like so for example I know they have um a food drive at that school on behalf and clothing drive on behalf of uh families in need at that school right and so that might be a thing she says hey it's coming up in November um and and this is what's happening at Hawn that's the kind of update you would give um on the other side of this separate and apart from the um board assigned schools um the spotlight your school that I'm going to talk about which is also in the agenda and I had mentioned this I believe also
014at the last board meeting um to try to encourage board members to um go in and so you know when one of our school is on Spotlight for the month um you know feel free to you know call the principal Carol will set up an appointment if you want her to do it for you and you know see if you can find an opportunity to meet that staff meet the principal see the excit things that's going on in that building and so when our staff and our kids and our families come to see us at the boardroom you know when we go to shine a spotlight on our schools you know we all feel like we've known each other already we've kind of gotten the initial introductions out of the way and I think everyone
015will continue to just um and just kind of embrace the process um as we get to know each other so that was that that was the initial thoughts around the spotlight and um again just kind of focus your visits if we could um on on the schools that are going to be spotlighted for the month so those those are those two different things but um but certainly both involve you know board participation yeah and this the spotlights a good transition before we do I and I'll just say this we'll be communicating with principles too just to let them know that you know the we know there was a little hiccup in this during during the pandemic but it's it's coming back to so they'll know to expect you know to hear from you all so
016and I also I also think that you know uh there's a lot there's a lot of things going on within the district young teachers new teachers you know sometime you know the communication don't get where it needs to be and teachers are doing everything that they doing they pops can do to maintain their classrooms and do their lesson plans and everything else so you know I'm not blaming anyone I just think it's just a sort of relaxed atmosphere and we haven't gotten back to the original thing that we had started to do because I know I can admit myself every time that I knew it was u a meeting it was something else because I you know uh South streak is my school and I wanted to go but something else was happening either bored
017or whatever that I couldn't go so that's what happened to me my whole first year I couldn't make any of the meetings but I could make the Citywide PTO meeting meeting so that you get a little bit of everybody's school and that kind of a situation if you can't make your own personal Citywide PTO you know that you represent that might very true very true yeah that's a good point Michelle thanks for raising that thank you right everybody ready to go on or anybody else thank you thank you so two and this is Kevin had just started talking a little bit about Spotlight your school and how that process works um as well as the portrait of The Graduate so Kevin I'll let you keep rolling on that one okay so we you know I
018had I had mentioned um and I hope the board is not getting tired of hearing about this but um I had talked about the spotlight your school at our last meeting and I just wanted to emphasize that uh we will be asking schools to make connections to portion of the graduate and and so if so for example um if King Street Intermediate is going to come in and say hey these these are our kids um and nobody eats alone for this week uh so for example that's going to be showcased at Great plane this week and that's an that's a perfect example of our students acting as advocates as they're empathizing with their peers they're showing empathy um advocating for everyone to be engaged um at their respective schools and it's a CommunityWide effort to
019make sure um everyone is included right and so like that's an an excellent example of our kids serving as ad advocates in that building um and so if Tina has pictures of her kids engaging in this kind of activity whether it's PBIS whether it's nobody eats Alone um nobody eats Alone um that would be an example of and being intentional about talking about our kids serving as advocates uh but if we have our students and I know some folks in this call Michelle I think you attended last year uh when Mar Park Middle School Broadview Middle School Westside middle school and they all had their um um their Project based learning presentations and you know in many ways that was that those were Char there were a number of different characteristics um showed during those
020events right so it was listening um it was our students acting as Learners um it was our students you can make the case serving as advocates depending on the type of projects that they took on and so we're going to be asking our principles to make connections to the many characteristics of the portrait of The Graduate while they're presenting because I want to make sure we want to make sure it stands aligned with our overall goals of where we need to get our kids um and so um as we and I think we talked about some of these things in the superintendence evaluation and goal setting piece um so Kate had asked a question you know um Kevin how how how do prek-5 um staff see themselves in the work of theems how does 68
021staff and I'm paraphrasing K excuse me um but how does 68 staff see themselves in the development of theems and we need to be intentional about the portrait of the graduate in those respective connections and so if you know Miss Cooper's grandkids if they're going to access the curriculum at the ninth grade during a K1 and two years they need to learn how to read right so that they can access the curriculum in grades three four five and begin to learn um and begin to learn the content that's that they're going to continue to encounter 3 four five middle school and make sure they're ready to to access the curriculum um that we're preparing for them in the nth grade uh so we need folks to continue when I say folks I mean our staff
022and our families continue to see themselves in this this Global work that we're doing and I think quite frankly that the connector of all of this work is our PG work um and so we want to make sure that our board meetings we're continuing to educate the board about the portrait of the graduate but also push our staff to think about uh to think about these things in these kind of presentations so we can all understand connections um and that's not the only way we will connect to work but that's we we we wanted to make sure we found an opport we use this as an opportunity um to make those connections for everyone that's all I have on that one Mike okay thank you all right number three uh it's been another very exciting
023uh start of the year for parent University I think we have one of our biggest cohorts to date and uh an me is going to tell us a little bit more about what coming up uh with parent University great thank you Dr cig good evening everyone yeah this is a very exciting Year we're really into our third year with um the concept of our family University and exactly what that looks like um and so we will be hosting our first Saturday on October 21st it will be a um half a day workshop or work set of workshops starting in the morning at 9: with a light breakfast a keynote and then families will get uh to choose two different um workshops we're looking at things such as um substance abuse and prevention our ESL uh
024social emotional learning that we did last year my child's driving me crazy was a big hit and parents have asked for that again protecting your child online the the fairly new sparkler app that we are encouraging all of our families um to get enrolled on it's a birth to five program where families can um track their child's growth and development and each day on the app they get uh uh some ideas of things to do at home with their children of course the computer skills and financial literacy will be there easy meals um and of course our our new style of doing our um learning what children are doing in the classroom so we'll be using our curriculum coordinators again to um print out the students who are enrolled or the for the parents the
025Dibbles and the I ready tests they will talk to the parents about exactly what their child's uh test scores mean and then provide activities in their native language for them to be able to do those activities at home we did this um style workshop last year and found that it was one of the best ways to really engage parents um and then we had some tracking uh journals that parents kept the hours of minutes that they worked with their children on homework and we were also able to see their score development over a 3mon period of time with those extra interventions at home and so the the proof is in the pudding we were really able to see that children did Excel when parents were able to spend more time and you know many of
026the parents said you know this is so hard and then when they took the workshop they were like you know what I can do that you know my young child can be setting the table and doing one-on-one counting and things like that so that was really great for the students that day we'll have live animals we'll do some Harvest crafts with natural uh products from outside flowers and things like that um pumpkin painting terrarium building uh General arts and crafts and then uh physical movement probably some story telling in there too um so that's where we are with that um the other piece of Family University besides just that day is that the um enhanced p uh parents empowering people have has started it started last Monday night um with a wonderful group of students
027that enrolled in the program about 320 um students who have enrolled that'll be over three cohorts of students and they receive an hour of the people empowering people they then go into a 15minute time of parent and child time together because Child Care is provided but we want parents to learn skills um in their native language and in English to support um their children as well and then they have um their ESL class there is child care provided and dinner for that as well so um we are often running with a whole schedule of events there is a flyer that is out there um you can pick up the flyer on the Sunday morning broadcast of all the events going on in Danbury or request one from my office but um pretty much every month
028we are we are packed with different uh ways to engage our families uh we have a a coffee with Kevin coming up on October 3rd I believe it is in the evening at 6 um and so always just check in with our office here um to see exactly what uh we have going on and please board members uh feel free to come out to it really really important that we have you there last year it was a big success there was like five I think Board of Ed members Kate was there and Ralph and Julie myself and it was a wonderful day with the pet with petting zoo and everything and breaking up into the different programs um I know it's hard for you know not everybody can get out but if we could try
029to get several board members out there to show support that would be great I'm G to do what I can to be there so if anybody knows that they can make it please that time is and can you share those dates with Carie and when I provide my update for the board I can include it in there yes absolutely we'll do thank you thank you y all right thank you an your your programs are every year they just get a little bit more exciting and have a few new new pieces to them so this is this is gonna be another good one so we hope so yeah okay number four uh this one really just talks about um kind of some of the things we plan to talk about over the course of the year
030um as you know we have four Community engagement meetings scheduled the next one's coming up on October 18th um and some of the touch points we you know we won't just talk about these and we won't necessarily hit the one of these um every meeting but this is sort of the broad Arc of some of the things that we we feel are going to be important to talk about um this year we're doing a big push on chronic absenteeism and regular messaging going out uh we have a partnership going with attendance Works uh who's a nationally recognized organization um that that uh combats chronic absenteeism and they have a whole bunch of strategies and U communication templates that we can use to help message to parents just the importance of of coming to school and
031you know um just you know the not missing additional learning time um as everyone knows we had a a big bump at the Statewide it was a a massive bump in chronic absenteeism that started in 2020 and um continued through last year and um Kevin could talk a little bit more about the numbers I think we were around 7 eight% chronic absenteeism prior to the pandemic and last year along with the state we were up into the low 20s um so every District in the state right now is is really working to bring that down um and we're going to be really really um on top of it with some of our messaging um going out to families I know Kevin if you want to add anything to that one right so I'm I mean
032the The Chronic eism challenge that's in front of us is if something is a dynamic we continue to um try to overcome with our messaging with educating um our families and as we approach the uh fall and winter months I think it's something we have to be even uh more intentional about in terms of um keeping our families informed about the importance of being in school every day um unless of course your child is sick or has a fever or you know has those um kind of uh symptoms and so this is something we will continue to work on um and find Opportunities to um inform um our families particularly K5 because it's our families that are making the decisions to keep our kids home um the same is true for the most part in
033middle school as well um and so we'll make sure that these families are informed of the importance of having their kids in school every day uh making sure that they have um they can access the tools to monitor their their kids respective attendance every day um and you know we I'm mapped out a plan with an um in her office um kind of like monthly messaging for our families particularly as we get close to the winter months and in our holiday times uh making sure we're following up with attendance uh attendance messages as well um and so we're going to continue to try to find creative ways to um keep folks connected uh but also encourage our families to monitor their kids attendance um and and and find ways to um emphasize the importance of
034being in in school every day thanks Kevin okay the second one that we're going to be talking a lot more about this year is our Collective impact initiative and over the last year we've been in the very early preliminary stages of our Collective impact effort uh which is really you know we're we're a member of a of a effort that pulls together a whole bunch of community agencies and organizations um in an attempt to sort of look holistically at some of the challenges that our students and families face and think about just the wide array of resources that we have available to us throughout the community we at whether it's the schools or the Health Care system or social services and and uh uh Kevin I know if you want to talk a little bit
035more about the the the point we're at and in that process and what's going to be coming down the pipe this year sure my pleasure and I'll I'll ask an to tag in as well um so so one chronic absenteeism is one of the three things that Collective impact has uh began to discuss um we have a number of representatives from our respective um community at the table um and I think the way I described this to the board previously um it's an opportunity to have agencies and Partners at the table to really address what what is what I see as blind spots for the district um and so when I say blind spots um when we're talking about trying to trying to address gaps um with Early Childhood um and trying to encourage our
036families to have their children participate in early childhood programs from between three and five um this is you know not necessarily within the the jurisdiction of the district um but it does not mean it's it's not still important for the district um and so these are one of the goals that's already been established for the collective another one of course and you've heard a lot about this is chronic absenteeism this is well within our reach uh but then there are some issues um that may arise that without you know outside of our reach and so this is our families that might need um agency support uh throughout the community um and so we have um representation from these various communities uh we may have issues with child care uh we may have issues with um
037issues with uh social emotional challenges and so a lot of these things have been discussed in our meeting um and um collectively trying to find ways to combat these these obstacles um that the district is experiencing um and and make it and make it an opportunity for the entire Community or these Community representatives to find Solutions uh to problems for kids in schools um and I know we have some updates regarding the impact in terms of our ability to secure ongoing funding but also um a person who's going to lead the charge because it's you know right now the initial leading of this has been through consultation in really heavy lift for us um but I think the graduate release is about to start yes yes thank you so we had a meeting um at
038the end of July or excuse me at the end of August where we had 32 different Community Partners and parents at so we're really excited about um that number of folks and we looked at the work that's been done so far we have a draft vision and Mission and we are looking at the three areas that Kevin talked about absenteeism and learner engagement the early childhood and the mental health um of our students we realized that with the use of our consultant um we we needed to have a person that could lead the charge totally on this and so we started advertising for an executive director in uh June we did several rounds of screenings with uh 14 13 or 14 applicants we then brought it down to five and then down to two and
039this past Monday we had the opportunity to um interview at length uh two different candidates who actually had to do a presentation back to us on what their 90day plan would be in starting the um starting as an executive director so we were down to one candidate right now that the references and the background checks are being done on and then we're hoping that early next week an offer will be made um to that person so um we're very excited about this um and as Kevin mentioned we are working with an outside consultant was very well known in this St Alex lunding this is the work that he does and we will be shortly convening um about four or five different Financial Partners um to invest into the uh danber Collective impact um to keep
040this project going uh Nelly May found Education Foundation out of the Boston area has been our Premier funer on this and of course we'll um continue to work with them um for any funds that they might want to continue to put towards this but um as part of its growth and development and sustainability is to look for other funders to support it as well so that's right we were on with that yeah very exciting and thank you yeah it is exciting and Mike just wanted to um and I know Michelle um being at the meetings had an opportunity to see someone from other organizations that are also doing this work but I'm wondering if at some point I don't know if it would be appropriate with the full board or a committee um you know
041maybe we can ask the board members who are in this meeting um if there's an interest to see if we can have maybe someone from um Stanford or Norwalk or Waterberry um I know the gentleman from Waterberry is now is currently um the is is about to be the interim director at the Y in in Danbury um and and he's a very active member of collective in Waterberry now exactly but but guess my point being I'm just wondering if we can get someone to kind of give our board an opportunity to better understand what the collective impact is what it does what it is what it is not but just understand about the potential impact of having a collective in your community we we can certainly um schedule that um at the board's wishes you
042know one of the things that we did when we first started this up we had found out we had the funding about a year ago is we went to those Collective impacts and said okay tell us kind of the rules of the road where are the pitfalls we don't want to fall into those how did you start up yours and most of these are um a minimum of seven to eight years and Norwalk axe has been in in um a collective impact for about 13 or 15 years now and so we were able to Garner all their advice um to really move fairly quickly with ours which has which has been really really good um but we've taken their their great suggestions and I know that they're very open to coming um up to Danbury
043or doing a zoom meeting to talk more about their um CIS in their town I can also share all of the Norwalk work with them um I am a member of the Norwalk one as well and so I get all their newsletters and everything so um it's our aspiration of where we're looking for um to go but um yeah we can certainly get something scheduled so I I guess Michelle I don't know what your thoughts might be I think it's a great idea because it is um you know there's a lot to it um with the pushes and you know the strive program Cradle to Career you know that everyone's included I think it's important to really um get a little bit kind of a little bit deeper for the Board of Ed to get
044a real understanding of what this program is because I I know I learned a lot in a few meetings that I was in okay okay all right thank you Michelle other board any other thoughts sorry yeah I was just saying if there's any other board members Kate or anyone else that would like to add anything or if you're interested in further information to the board I always like to hear more information so you always get a thumbs up for that thank you you and me both good yeah it's really it's exciting once we get to you know know more of the details so I think that's great if you could uh coordinate that Ann that would be wonderful we can do that and what's cool about having some of those more seasons seasoned groups in
045there is is you start to see the longevity data start to come through places where you know we're only talking about chronic absenteeism now but what does that mean over 10 years right and you start to see some of these data points come out where you're like oh wow that that moved as well so that that'll be exciting to have them join yeah all right uh this next bullet now everyone heard about this one at the last board meeting so I I'll just go quickly through it adult and continuing education uh Rick rayi presented our last board meeting to talk about some of the exciting changes that were going on uh in Adult Ed um as you know we have a very exciting partnership that we're starting with we with weace that is uh bringing
046in a partnership with Milford that's going to really expand our array of offerings um for adult ed courses so uh we'll be talking more about that over the course of year just how that's going what the enrollments look like and and all that so um and last ly community events um as always you know the end of the year is going to be chalk full with these events so we'll have them on your radar early this year just to make sure everyone has time to to schedule around them um the big ones of course teacher of the year we're going to be aiming for late April again for that one so we can just get ahead of all the all the May events that are coming up the moving up ceremonies the graduation uh we'll
047be providing those dates as soon as we have them just to make sure everybody can can block out those dates and uh we don't we don't have any double bookings so and again and Kevin I know there's a thousand things that happen you know in the second half of the Year here so anything else feel free to to jump in and and list it out right and so I I was just gonna um say I think we missed the comma Etc U because these events and more you know the the big ones that we think may have might be interest uh to the board we will make sure those are included and we'll create some kind of like Community event event dashboard um and as far out that as we can possibly plan them we'll
048make sure they're available for the board and uh for our community quite frankly to to attend all right and then number five um just a quick overview of what we plan on talking about in our October meeting um of course it is budget season again so uh our colleague John Spang the CFO uh will probably be making an appearance at talk high level about some of the budget priorities um the way the the budget's shaping up with some of the the known knowns at this time usually it's talking about things like salaries rolling over the cost of inflation um and then maybe some of the things that that you know we just anticipate coming down the pipe so I think we'll have some high level numbers at that point um and then we'll we'll start
049sharpening our pencils and um getting down into into the weeds of of where we can save dollars and um where we need to invest um so that'll be uh uh uh the sort of high level um focus and I think the the two things that we'll be drilling down on specifically as it relates to this um committee is going to be adult ed um what the some of the costs look like for adult ed uh and of course um things like family liaison so we're going to we're going to drill down specifically on things related to community relations um in this meeting but but also you know talk about the you know budget just kind of more generally um so you know the you know the the public has just a more broad understanding of
050of the process and how it works and points at which you can engage and and um and participate in some advocacy so any questions about that anyone I think we're good then all right all right going once twice all right is there a a motion to adjourn anyone I'll make a motion to adjourn okay okay made a motion to adjourn anyone second or we just a journ I think Miss Cooper's on mute oh I'm s i second emotion okay great I couldn't see you on my screen