001been in the meeting because I've been serving as the committee chair for community relations but um I'm I'm in a bit of a situation personally that is not going to allow me to be as present for the work that needs to be done so I'm really hopeful that as we open um uh the selection of our 2023 committee chair that someone else will be willing to step forward to assume that role so with that said let's open the nominations please sure I'll nominate Michelle okay well thank you Lauren is there a second oh second all right seconded by Al right any other nominations all right nominations are closed all those in favor hi hi all right congratulations Michelle I'll turn the reins over to you thanks Kate um thank you everybody appreciate your support and
002of course still hope to be working closely with Kate and Ann and everyone Mike so I'm thrilled in the other board members so with I think I'm going to head over to Mike is that okay go over the agenda now absolutely yeah so thank you Michelle and I just want to say thank you to Kate it was great working with you last year I I wish you all the best and uh what you have going on and uh I you know Michelle I look forward to working with you um on this committee and uh we'll have a a good year ahead so uh let's let's dive in um so that was number one with selection of the committee chair and we just have two other quick items on the agenda and I I actually think
003this would be a pretty quick one um as you all know Anne Mead's work in the family engagement office is tremendous I heard her talking a little bit about the food truck today but we have a couple Community budget workshops coming up um the the the season is all about the budget I'm sorry Rob can anybody take notes today all right Kate thank you I'm sorry to make a big point to make thank you go continue um as we all know this is the budget season so uh I know there's a big kickoff meeting coming in February with um Erica Haynes from the uh Connecticut uh School Finance project and she's going to tell us all about how to understand the budget how to think about it how to advocate for it and a whole
004host of other things but I'll let Ann get right into that and then we can roll right into the collective impact efforts underway so I'll hand over to Ann great thank you Mike good evening everyone it's good to see you congratulations Michelle and I on your uh new chairperson position and um thank you Mike and I Echo Mike's comments to Kate for the work and the support that you've done for this committee over the last couple of years so much much appreciated and of course appreciate everyone that's on par as part of the committee so let's start with the activities that are happening in um our office so we did already send out a parent Square message to all of our families in the district telling them about tomorrow night and encouraging families to come
005to the um board Workshop they know they can't talk a few of them I'm sure will ask that night if they can ask questions but um it's really we've had parents that have come to our forums have sent in emails have been um in attendance at the coffees with Kevin and so we really feel it's important to have really super open open access for these families to be able to come back in and see the work you know they've requested certain things be done certain things be added into the budget so this is the opportune time for them to be able to come back and see where we've put things into the budget that they've asked for so that's on the uh docket for tomorrow night we then go to a little bit different off
006the budget but this Saturday we start with a class of about 24 starting the parent supporting educational Excellency and that'll be a we start with Saturday morning then we go to Thursday nights and that'll be done both virtually and in person it's a great opportunities for our families to learn more about how the school system works policies and procedures how they're developed how the state governs our schools how policies are made and how they can become really change makers and and advocates for the district and Grace and her team right now are just finishing up uh parent C or excuse me pep and I think in that pep we probably have close to 45 to 50 people that will graduate um on Friday the 3rd I believe it is a February so we're really excited
007this is the first year we've been able to offer it in English Spanish and Portuguese both classes filled up and um so we'll have a whole group that will graduate starting in November in February we will have a Spanish pep class and that will be taught by one of our Spanish-speaking family Liaisons that is trained through UConn to be able to teach this curriculum so we're also excited about that um then that brings us to what Mike was talking about with the storytelling um and the advocacy work with a workshop titled it will be in person at the Black Box beginning at seven o'clock titled storytelling and advocacy go hand in hand and so this is a workshop that Erica Haynes from this Connecticut school and finance project with her team will actually help parents
008understand how important their own stories about their children how they progressed either progressed and graduated from Danbury schools or or in Danbury schools right now and what programs are really special and then how do they continue to advocate for that how do they um talk to things around the ECS formula how do they talk to legislators but not just saying we want more money for the district how do they tell their story about why certain things in education was really important to their family that's what our legislators really want to hear the importance to our families and to our community and of course we'll have families also talk about return on investment that you know if if students have great education which they do in Danbury then they'll stay in Danbury and that's a return
009on investment so she'll talk a little bit about that um we are tracking very closely all of the bills um as well as Mr walson's tracking them I know Mike you're tracking them too Erica gives us almost a daily briefing on what bills are coming up and different times that we can jump in and do virtual uh testimony so that that's a good um thing coming up um January 23rd we have new promise and that is filled up with about 35 new families to the district to go through that um 14 or 15 pages of module work so families can get equipped with what they need in the district PowerSchool here are policies around attendance and the things that matters to families and then March 25th is our next Family University so and that Family
010University will be pre-k through 12th grade unlike our one that we had in December that was just the preschool through second grade however those folks that were the the December folks they are coming back on February 4th to pick up materials and we're going to talk to them about how the work that they did at The First Family University and the things that they learned of how to work with their children how is that changing their behavioral practices at home and working with their children and I think for me the biggest takeaway that day was families walked out and said you know what I never realized counting Tupperware Lids or doing math with shampoo in the bathroom tub and doing counting was something that I could do with my preschooler with my kindergarten for them
011to learn their math math facts so the parents were pretty impressed with the ease or the easiness of the materials that we gave them and um they'll be receiving more materials when they come back for that so that's pretty much what we're doing we do have coffee with Kevin on the the 25th of February I think that I think that's the date um it's the last Saturday of the month um and we will also be meeting in a very similar format as coffee with Kevin with our teachers and other folks in the district so that we really can have a good 360 review of how everyone's feeling and have that conversation between folks and Kevin I'm sorry Kevin just put in March 25th so thank you Kevin um no February last I mean Kevin do
012you want to speak about the last coffee with Kevin a little bit and the the um content Oh you mean our last meeting yeah yeah families yeah well all all of the meetings are good um frankly but this last one was a lot about advocating for our school budget we had a number of parents who were asking for specifics on how they can get involved and how they can further support the school budget and it was really good to see um kind of the um foreign to be part of a movement to help support the budget and so we had parents who were looking to organize to help support and find ways to Rally support our parents to support the budget so it was really good to see and we actually had before we got
013off the phone a couple of the families actually connected with each other and shared each other's information a couple of parents who actually volunteered to kind of serve as certainly spokespeople or take on a leadership role so it was really good to see of course Anne made them aware of some subsequent meetings that will be taking place to further inform our families about school budgeting process we had Erica Haynes coming in after that meeting I forget the date right now but it was a really good meeting um you know in addition to the typical questions that I get just about school functioning and you know things that need to be tweaked to help better serve our families but the meetings are just getting better and better and it's really good to see our families and
014just coming out more and more informed and really asking questions not just for them but really in on the behalf of all Danbury students it's been really good and thank you thank you and what I found more and more so families aren't just asking about their specific child they're talking about systemic things in the district trick both on the positive and the negative side and so that's a different level than we've had in the past and so I think that in itself is a strength of our families to really be able to look at something not just that impacts their family but impacts more folks so that next one as Kevin said on February 25th will actually be held in person at the face Center and so we can make it a true coffee with
015Kevin with actual mugs and coffee and some breakfast Refreshments although I've always had coffee in those meetings and just that's right I know you've got that kick up well the the gray cake up absolutely absolutely so any questions about what we're doing or other thoughts of things that we should do I look to all of you as eyes and ears more in the community too yeah Kate I just want to clarify a couple dates Dr me because I apologize I missed them um graduation pep graduation I believe is on the um third I've ever confirmed yeah I will confirm that okay February 3rd from six to seven sorry class I didn't hear the date on when that one was going to be commencing the new one I believe is right the week afterwards okay yeah
016yeah Grace and I are still going back and forth with the date because we have so many different things going on we're really aiming to you know not have it conflicting things going on so we're we're still working on that that started I caught the storytelling at 7 pm or telling an advocacy but what was that date so that's February 13th that's a Monday night thank you if anybody if any of the board members can make these events especially our committee that would be great um well please mark it down on your calendars let me know if you can be there and uh you know because I was at that December 4th um university and it was great it was a challenging weekend there was a lot going on before the holiday and it really
017I mean I was only going to stay you know two hours I ended up staying a lot longer and it was great to talk to the people and you know our parents and our fellow you know committee members is just really a nice environment and the The Cutting zoo was amazing it was amazing so thank you so much for that hard work and you guys did a fantastic job thank you thank you okay did I just make um a suggestion a friendly suggestion um one of the things that we did at that last Family University was just to put out um a space for folks to communicate with board members there and to give them sort of like the option of taking a posted away and bringing it back if they weren't so comfortable hanging
018out and what you know having us watch them um if we could continue that practice to sort of you know try to open up those lines of communication I I hope that we that we could uh continue to use that as a tool thanks and and I'll make sure that the resource room has space for that because I think hey you got some wonderful feedback I mean in English Spanish and in Portuguese and the take that I had on it and feedback from families was they're really listening you know they hear about this you know the Board of Ed is being like this really scary group but we're all human you're all human and and you care and so the table award is not a scary group and is that what you're saying say again
019the board is not a scary group no no they're not and um depends on who you're talking to sorry but no you're not you're not a scary group and I think our families felt that they took away that that you were approachable and I think you had some absolutely wonderful conversations I know at one point Ralph was there um Kate you were certainly at the table Michelle and there were a couple of other Julie I think you were there too right and people just came up and and had a conversation with you that that's perfect that's that's really perfect for our families they really like that yeah great uh anybody else have any comments board members anybody who's not a board member any thoughts no that's it okay well I want to thank everybody then
020I guess I'm going to be closing out the meeting I'm gonna ask for a motion to adjourn so move Madam chair Mike did you have something yeah no I I just wanted to make sure and you you hit everything you wanted on the collective impact I know that was that was I didn't can can we talk about that though I think it's really important I'd rather have you Michelle have you all hear this from from myself and from Kevin's perspective too versus people start asking you about what is this Collective impact in Danbury is is that okay please okay great so Collective impact is a um State and a national level movement of and I'll talk slower on this because it's got a lot of pieces it's a pretty dense work but it is a
021movement of people in a community towards common goals so we have been over the last several years watching Norwalk acts which is in its 13th 14th year now of bringing all Community Partners together first to assess where there were gaps and services from Cradle to Career so if it's a big it's a big chunk of a child's life and from there they develop what's called cornerstones and they pick out certain cornerstones or goals that the community wants to work on and so Norwalk has I think right now probably eight or ten cornerstones similar projects in Connecticut are the Bridgeport prospers Stanford Cradle to career and Waterbury has the water buried Bridges program and so we have toyed around and tried several different attempts at Collective impact under many different other groups in Danbury at least
022through my tenure for the last 30 years doing this type of work in Danbury and because of politics or because of just things the way things shook out and not having money up front they fell apart well Nelly may put out a proposal back about a year ago now and we're looking for communities that they had previously worked with and that they had trust in to put in a Community Driven initiative not a school driven initiative but a Community Driven initiative and so we did apply to Nellie may as a school district with a thought of a community impact driven by the community um our proposal was responded to positively in the dollar amount of two hundred thousand dollars and then the board their board knowing May Foundation looked at it and upped it to
023250 000 for the first 18 months um we have taken that money and we'll let me back up before we go where the money um when a collective impact idea is in its formulation stages it's really important to look at Key partners that do very similar work in communities all throughout the United States and the United Way is a community group as many of you know here run by Isabel Amita and in most of the collective impacts throughout the United States and there's a whole Federal movement of strive organizations that are Community impact um United Way is there backbone organization and so we have had Nellie May and there's all there's been all kinds of mous and moas memorandum of understanding and agreements um that United Way is the backbone Organization for this and so
024through the work of developing The Proposal we began to work with an Alex London out of Simsbury and he is a um contractor consultant that does this type of work he's very well known in the Bridgeport prosper's work of course the Stanford work and in the uh work that has been done in Norwalk and so we had several conversations as we developed the grant put things together and I know even before we put this grant in um Kevin and I and a group had sat with him to just talk about what could Collective impact look like in Deborah so now fast forward the money comes the United Way has um is the backbone organization and we have several smaller meetings at the beginning before December of what this was going to look like and getting
025the wheels turning to get it started um from there we had our first meeting in December with about 10 different people key people that were part of the original proposal that said my organization is ready to roll up our sleeves and start this work it is not easy work it's time consuming it is a really thought provoking work there's a whole data piece that goes with it there's a whole framework that you actually follow it's not something you say let's have coffee over and let's put this in and a year we'll be good to go so the process that we're going through is really more important than trying to rush through this process so we had our 10 folks in December we then realized that we were missing a couple other agencies in Danbury and
026so we have reached out to them so our next meeting is tomorrow at um beginning at 11 15. we outgrew the United Way uh conference room and have moved to the Danbury Police Station for tomorrow and um so my ass tonight is that at some point and perhaps I need to go through Ralph for this we would love to have a board of ed member that could sit on this committee as well okay so that's ask number one um the work that we have done so far at that first meeting was really introducing what Collective impact was our meeting tomorrow um and at that first meeting we brought in folks from Stanford and from Waterbury and they talked about what to look out for what was successful in their Beginnings startup stages and things like
027that we wanted to learn from the best tomorrow's meeting we will have Monroe Nichols or a colleague his from Cincinnati from the strive movement which is the National Organization that supports Collective impacts at the local level it's going to come in and talk more about the national model and the support that they can give us tomorrow we'll also be introducing um a Community Asset map mapping program that we'll be going through before the next meeting so that we can really identify where are the gaps in Danbury and then over the next two meetings we hope to have the work group or the smaller group and we're up to about 20 people now really say what's what our goals going to be I mean are they going to be in early childhood and mental health Early
028Childhood in reading this is something where the folks that sit on this committee will decide and then after they come up and not decide when they come up with some proposals we'll then hold a much bigger community meeting about what Collective impact is and say to folks do you agree with what we're assuming already would be our very best cornerstones or goals that we can have for this project and then it'll come back to the smaller group of 20 or 25 of us to work on and then there will be smaller groups that will actually take on those goals to work um so it's a it's an ongoing process it is a fair amount of work um Alex the consultant that I just spoke about has already met with um Kevin and our data person
029because the data in the district will be very very important the work that of this Collective impact um you know so so many of you may be saying so what's this got to do with the school district so there are things that schools can't always do but a collective impact actually complements the work that schools do around education and so um you know one of the things that comes to mind very quickly is if um and I think haven't you used this example the other day that if you're out with a sports team and that coach can talk to those kids about hey you're all going to school every day right you're not playing hooky you're not you know just hanging out not going to school but you know how important school is so that
030would be you know whether it be an athletic association or a group like that they're able to support what we're trying to do around good normal regular attendance with our kids at school so um Kevin do you want to add a little bit about your experience you've actually been part of a collective impact all right so so I I've been a fan of the collective impact uh mostly because of my uh time in Waterbury that I had an opportunity um and privilege to be part of the collective impact there for for uh the three years I was there I was two years on that committee um and really a an additional way to look at it as Anne had described it's really an organization that is complementing the goals um that the district already has
031but some of those goals and some of those initiatives might be outside of the reach of a school district so for example um Early Childhood goals or prenatal to H3 goals which certainly helps to address kindergarten Readiness but it could be an initiative the entire Community uh to address prenatal to uh three-year-old and then three to five-year-old initiatives to make sure our kids are ready for school um out of school time into to and point in the example that she gave but make sure kids are engaged in activities all throughout the school year and not and also outside of also the school day and so having people at the table perhaps working with the city of Danbury and other profit and non-profit groups around trying to get kids engaged in activities uh throughout the school
032year um and so you know in any social emotional goals that we might have as a community uh if you know to begin with just making sure our families already and all have and their kids have their physicals at the beginning of the year and how we can make sure our families are ready and that the city is ready to make sure we prioritize kids being in school on the first day so that we don't have any delays and again all of these things these are the type of initiatives that are outside of the reach of the district but certainly are priorities for the school district and so we're we're looking forward to this because partnership and I'm not sure if you mentioned but when but when talking about the funding that arrived we worked
033with apply for a grant with Nelly May and Nellie May supported this initiative um the grant was actually written in a way with a collective impact um slid in there nicely and uh was actually eligible for the grants I'm hoping that this grant is something that will it may not necessarily be written the same exact way annually but I'm hoping that we'll we can count on some ongoing funding from Ellie May if not we will have to find ways to secure funding to keep this going but the important thing is that we have uh the foundation to get this team started something that we've been talking about for a couple of years now and really happy and excited that we are moving forward with the collective impact and really have starting to get all the
034right people at the table to make sure these Community initiatives and goals can come together for the school district and the school community so thank you Anne thank you thank you you know the exciting news is um you know we have not officially announced announced anything we'll talk a little bit more about that but we wanted to go through the process to make sure the board was aware of what we're doing and in other groups as well but there's a Woman by the name of Dr Janice Grendel that does a lot of work around infants and toddlers and she's doing some work right now around prenatal care of Moms on Medicare and in her draft report that just came out two weeks ago she said that she's working with the four Connecticut communities that have
035Collective impact and soon to be Danbury Connecticut and immediately my phone rang by the four key funders that fund Collective impact in Danbury and they wanted to know where we were what are we doing and can they have a seat at the table so and I've had conversations with a couple of them prior to gaining the or receiving the the money from Nellie Mae and that they're very interested in seeing this whole thing through so um you know beginning stages but we're going to get there absolutely going to get there and I just wanted to make everyone aware I just put two links in this wonderful one for the Waterbury Bridges to success um Collective impact and then a Norwalk acts uh Collective impact and that you were referencing as well thank you yes but
036you know get yourself a good strong cup of coffee and look at both of their particularly uh the Norwalk site it's just really really impressive they have one dashboard one Community dashboard that every agency functions in and so this past summer I think they had 42 or 47 agencies that work with school-age students provide every child in Norwalk a summer summer experience so that in itself is huge so not gonna happen here you know next year but something definitely a goal to work towards so that's it yeah I just want to you know you know I'm such a big fan of proponent of this work and I know you already had had laid some tracks with it by the time I got here but I'm really excited to be to be joining you guys with
037this I I did a little bit of this work in in some previous um lives back in the Midwest and on the west coast and it's really one of those things where you you know you don't even realize sometimes the resources you have available to you in your community you know and and I've you know some of the research on these you see you know local businesses Workforce training police and fire cultural centers health clinics community centers you know airports right like all these I remember there was uh there was one in New York with a water taxi got involved because the kids were going to that um Maritime school on Governor's Island it's like you don't even realize like oh my gosh this is a resource that will be helping kids so it's just
038so exciting to be on the sort of ground floor of this and getting to shape what this is going to look like in Danbury because every you know every place it happens it has its own unique fingerprint because every Community is different every population is different and we get to decide what this looks like for us so I'm very excited about it thanks for sharing that one good work yeah thanks Mike oh and I just have two questions you had mentioned that there were initially 10 members and now you're moving into 20 for the next who in the community um have you already recruited those initial 10 other than you know Kevin yourself like yeah good question so the initial signers on the grant were um let's see Healthy Families Network um Sue gillio's group
039The Michelle James's group the Community Action of Western Dam Western Connecticut United Way stand together make a difference and then all of the alumni for our pep and our parent C group from last year so that's my very representation yes the library is on there too yes thank you thank you since then we have had um Civic the Community Health Center on Main Street reach out and many more parents the health department is going to be joining us as well because we really feel that there will be a major health component in all of this our next tier I'm just going through my notes Here our next tier will be to reach out to more Community groups uh cultural centers and groups like that because that will be our next step in you know fulfilling
040the group and then this for this particular meeting now we have many uh parents that have are either graduates of Pep or parent C that will be joining us we still need to identify some students that we'd like to be part of it but we have a really nice mix of folks tomorrow okay and tomorrow you had mentioned that it's at the police station what time is that and is it it starts at 11 15 with a light lunch and we delve right in at 11 30 and it's two hours of powering through um an agenda that we worked on with Alex and so he he asked the hard questions which is good because it really makes us think about what we're doing in the process that we're going through so he'll do a level
041setting and go through the minutes from the last it was really the last meeting to make sure that everyone's on the same page introduced the the new folks we'll talk about asset mapping for tomorrow um what the community looks like and how that tool is going to be used we'll actually go through the use of it and then we've got a couple other things on the agenda that we need to you know some logistical things that we need to talk about um you know a regular date for a meeting right now we've been using doodle poll and we want to go to you know the same date every single month to meet and then the Committees the smaller committees coming in between those bigger meetings okay so you're gonna meet once a month and then
042the smaller committees yes absolutely absolutely yeah and are you going to be um recording streaming this uh because I can't make it for this meeting I didn't I wasn't aware of it but I would love to see it yeah we can because we are streaming in um the gentleman from Cincinnati you know so we have all this new technology you can really do really cool stuff so if you if anyone on this committee would like to send me a request to be there we can bring you in and live stream you and yes absolutely absolutely and if you if you are like if I have a conflict at that moment I can log on at another time you can forward me the link or you can probably do the link yes yes and the entire
043meeting is available remotely or just the person who's coming in right now just the person yeah that that is speaking Yeah that's coming in from Cincinnati so we can we can record him and have him available absolutely I don't but I think the question is can folks stream into the meeting um to be part of the meeting I think um I'm not going to say no we'll make that work I think that's really really important yeah yeah wonderful well you know I'm very interested on about this new program you're looking to do um but if there's any other board members that are also interested in possibly you know volunteering for the port as well please let me know get back to you anybody have any questions on you send me all the information on an
044email pretty much can we send it to you yes yes and have it in the back of my head yep yep thank you yeah do that for I don't know myself as well any of the board members here great love yeah I just uh asked a question yeah as I sit here and listen uh you know to listen to uh the the 250 000 you have coming to get parents involved and that's have been my goal ever since I got involved in the community here in Dean there but as I listen near it's it's not an entire commitment it's a one-sided community so we go back and my question would be how do you get the other part of the community to join in with the other part of the community that you're leaving out
045um so when we're talking about part of the community and the part that's being left out is there can you be a little bit more specific you know what I'm talking about because what I'm saying I'm being very specific because we're only talking about one segment of the community from what I hear and what I see that's coming up at the meetings and questions we're only sort of looking and guarantee that this segment of the community get the information so my question to you would be how do we impact the community that are not attending the hand is put know that they ain't talking about as far as her community and if I may you know something like this might be one of the challenges that's raised in the group that we decide this is
046going to be one of the goals we tackle and we say you know there are there are certain parents we just can't get to come to meetings and you know to to you know uh come come to school and we're going to put together a metric we're going to look at all the resources we have and say this is our year one goal is to engage you know more people in the community and all those you know all those heads come together and think of okay we could do it through this cultural center or I see people over here or you know the athletic leagues or what you know Parks you know wherever that that's exactly this type of thing that I think would be addressed okay thank you and then also to follow up
047with that my thing would be how how would you contact I belong to you Hope Baptist Church and I'm quite sure your hand doesn't go over there or spreading the message that she just spreading tonight so how do you get those because they have parents over there just like parents over at Round Street Church that needs to learn to understand the budget process too just like the other parents and they want to learn so if I can answer Mrs Cooper the budget question we use parent Square and so that's our our fairly new we're a year into it now um of reaching parents so every message that goes out goes out in the parents desired language and we every message that goes out reaches 18 000 folks that are members of have children in our
048school and our community members and so if you can think of anyone that you would like to have as a community member please let me know and we will definitely reach out to them um we do have uh Wesley Johnson who is joining us and I will be um with uh Reverend Parker uh next week and I was going to talk to him and um talk to him about this initiative that we had we did we're having we did have a very short um communication about it several months back it's okay the church just sort of just you know people stopped going and sometimes when you have contact person to say okay to the minister this is what's going on and we need parents there that's more influenced than just sitting out a message to
049the people I totally agree yep Miss Cooper I remember when we were doing this work in Chicago the churches were a huge huge partner and I think that's a very important reminder that they need to be brought into the to the fold brought at the table too so thank you thank you and I can add to that that many of the people who have taken uh parent C in the past pep and different trainings that we do are part of what we call our cultural Brokers groups and so they reach out um or par or or are part of these Community organizations in our churches and different other Civic organizations and they are bringing that message back and that's how the group grew from 10 to 20 from this um from the December meeting to
050this meeting tomorrow yeah do we have anybody from like city council or anybody from the city themselves being involved in this the mayor's some supposed to be sending someone tomorrow he's been fully appraised of this all the way along yeah okay yep we can use all the help from anywhere absolutely absolutely yeah and we want it to be we want people to we want we want to be able to hear from folks or the group does yeah and and also um and and I'm not sure what the case is in Norwalk uh but the mayor in Bridgeport actually um has made this an ongoing budget item so in Bridgeport I'm not Bridgeport I'm sorry in Waterbury it's actually a budget item for the city yeah they don't fund the entire program uh but part of
051it a percentage of it is paid for uh by the City of Bridgeport and so you know what whether or not it's going to be added to the city budget or not I don't know um but but in other in other cities and other towns uh they have engaged this city in that way because it truly is a city initiative to help complement on District goals right very true the 250 000 sounds like a lot but I know that we were talking about the summer programs and you know that money kind of goes quickly so I'm sure that a lot of things on the list I'm sure you have some sort of a list where the priorities I know that we were talking about absenteeism you mentioned this today uh during this meeting so I'm
052sure there'll be a goal and eventually hoping to grow this I'm right so go ahead go ahead us you know I know that it's it's you know we're crawling we're just kind of starting up but that kind of a grant you know what what is the committee at this point feel that can be achieved you know is it one area or is it you know you know like an after-school program so the whole idea behind Collective impact to answer your question is not to fund programs but it's to look at what programs are already out there and how can we best leverage the um capacities that we have right now and so the Nelly May fund is to get this whole Collective impact off the ground it's not for it and when I wrote it
053I purposely did not write it for programs at this point yet we need to get all we need to get our foundation built first and then as the group decides what their cornerstones will be then we'll be able to look at you know should there be you know some funding from another Foundation that goes to the after-school program how do we leverage some of the the state funds that you know we do already in in the district for after school and um summer programs but we need to know exactly what are the assets first in the community and so that everybody can say you know here's where my organization excels and it and it's in two ways an organization excels one is the programs that they offer you know how do we help build those
054programs and and and create um Synergy between them to to have more robust programs and then the second part of that is how do we or how does an organization what capacity and what assets does an organization itself have of that can make this collaboration even stronger so that's going to be part of this asset mapping we might have an organization that comes in and says I have a DI trainer that I'm willing to put forth to do training around diversity equity and inclusion for this project or it might be somebody that says you know I have a you know a consultant on my board that does organizational development and so and and he he or she is willing to do more work for every organization that's at the table so if there's really two
055different levels that we'll be focusing on in this community in the Community Asset mapping um but I don't see that that money will be used for programs anytime soon we need to get the the foundation built first um and really specifically to responding to the grant proposal they they want to see that this Foundation is well built um before I would even go back and and ask them for more funding um for programs thank you anybody have any questions or comments going once oh okay I just want to say thank you again Dr Mead um thank you I really always bring everything to the table and uh he really he's very thoughtful about the way you do it so I do appreciate the enormous glitch that you're um office is doing on our behalf well
056I have to give kudos to the team that I work with both at the cabinet level and the support that I get there and then for my team um in the office and my my frcs um my School Readiness programs all the programs they really are the the supporters of all of this and it's where we get a lot of our great ideas from as well thank you yeah just I the meeting is at 11 15. tomorrow yes does that meet uh only a a small portion of your your targeted group because of I'm thinking people out working or is it where 11 15 work for the target market that you're trying to approach right I think yeah I think we need to clarify this is this is a representative group because I I think
057it's coming across as if we're meeting with families as part of the collective impact work and this kind of prep work so can you clarify who this committee who this committee is so we do have families sitting at the table people that are you know work a second shift or a night shift or whatever um and then we have people from agencies that is something that we will have discussions about how do we balance our meetings so that we're hitting people that can come during the day and we know that's not going to be conducive to our student population and so do we rotate our meetings um where we have an afternoon you know a midday meeting for lunch do we then do the next month and evening meeting how are we going to form
058those committees um and have the the workers on the Committees maybe the Committees meet at night and the leadership group meets during the day so those are all things that we're still wrangling with but will come out after we process all these different things we'll be able to to answer that question better yeah thank you and thank your team for the records no thank you so Ann for the leadership team and when you're coming in down to deciding you know where to put the focus on the infrastructure or whatever Direction it takes how is that determined with you know right now you're saying you have a team of 10 and that you're going to be inviting more people to be how does so is that okay good that discussion will start tomorrow um with our
059group of 20 and we may even have more than that actually show up um we will do the community mapping first the asset mapping we need to know what's available and then of course at every meeting we talk about who's not at the table who do we need to invite to the table okay and then um when we start to decide this leadership group this beginning group beginning group better than a leadership group um or calling the leadership group the beginning group will start to come up with some goals okay and we still have a lot of research to do so we need to have a meeting with our data person from Danbury public schools to talk about data and where the needs are the school like we talked this needs to be complementary um
060Endeavor that we do with the schools and so that data will inform us everyone pre to the meeting was set out the uh new Equity um danbury's new Equity profile they were also sent out some other pre-reading material that will be used in tomorrow's uh work to look at what data do we have out there what data do we still need and so that will help inform any decisions about what cornerstones we we take and then like I said we'll go back out to a larger group probably through surveys through forums through you know listing forums meeting in different Community groups you know where should the priorities lie you know what works for your group and things like that so it is a very integral carefully balanced process and that's why we have Eric lunding
061he is actually leading it I'm able to sit back as a participant in the group as well as everyone else and he really leads the group and asks those hard questions and and that's why you know we used Bridgeport and Stanford last time to get their feedback and then tomorrow we'll have the gentleman come in uh via Zoom from Cincinnati to talk more about the national model and what they do and can you repeat the name of the gentleman that you just mentioned Alex Lundy l-u-n-d-i-n-g thank you wonderful okay sounds like a big undertaking thank you so much anybody else we're pretty good okay so I'm motion to adjourn so moved okay so um thank you all right so thank you very much uh we were moved by Lauren and seconded by Al uh by
062Al Rochelle great much for everybody coming out tonight participating