001uh we talked with the over in Brookfield at St Joe's with the kindergarten for three years years is one year so that money is unallocated I'm sure we have the staff but we were going to have buses go up there every day for three years rent so what we'd like to do is move some of the requests that would have been in the budget into that sr2 plans that we didn't need that would require a state approval a state Ed department has to be an amendment but we think we can get some relief there we we also believe the new reading program might be able to come out of that the way the grant was written and what you're allowed to do that would be a financing source for that and then finally the third
002strategy is success or three um there are on things in there as well that we're not going to do because the pandemic changed we thought it would be and we think we can put some of the positions that we need so desperately three strategies bring down the answers because we'll we'll have more on that later but that's the plan uh just a couple more here we just um this slide just you know like anywhere else we have everything else we have to buy too just to keep things running you know for 12 000 students were much bigger than a lot of colleges so we have stuff we have to buy and well things running every day there's always new mandates unfunded there's one issue with personal hygiene that's on the list just the regular things
003the school buses to keep them running there's a little increase there and we can get I think we can get more into that when we do our line item review or if there's a special area we'd like to talk about we could um just a couple more the uh we're gonna budget again repairs on our buildings we went through this with sites and Facilities earlier tonight this does not conflict with what the city does the major capital projects and public buildings these are smaller things if you did that in this year's budget remember we had to cut it a little bit but we have some projects in one I won't go through each one of those given the time considerations Transportation things and things are changing there I'm going to have a better more detailed
004look at uh like you saw last year line by line of that we're doing more with transportation we have more early dismissals with parent conferences and the way we do that our special ed bid that every year these are the kids that placed in out of District placements you see them in white bands we've been caring school children those prices have gone up primarily because of fuel so that's just an example of look it's a you know it's a 13 million dollar item in our budget it's big it's almost 10 percent um so just something something you do and then finally just put in a word about Esser you know it's been said by some in some City school districts that the the Esser money is what's been keeping them afloat and we're not far
005off from that here either the money has been used for really to perform critical functions no doubt about whether it is to address the learning loss that everyone knows about or the social emotional needs and what's happened to children micro taxes that's been wrong so to worry about that I know that what was kind of long could answer any questions now or you'd like to proceed we've got a bunch of workshops coming up just a quick question a disadvantaged 48 percent or 68 which qualified three months right is this the student population of 48 or the citizen population these are students those numbers are New Jersey and their student accounts that's that's the 12 000. you can that's how many of the 12 000 already I just thought it was a higher percentage maybe Kelly
006is here right sorry can you repeat the question again I was out of the impression this is from our economically disadvantaged students was a population approximately 65 to 68 and I see on this study it says 40 48 right now and uh just am I mistaken on that 60 because I've got that higher number qualified as for student lunch is basically for our kids because what's the percentage of Freedom reduced Dodge however I can tell you the city of Danbury is prepared once again to actively advocate for a bill to be right now behalf of Danbury to support the acceleration of the East on the ECS funding helps to address and mitigate some of those challenges that you're talking about and so I was in a meeting earlier this afternoon where I was sharing we
007have the highest percentage of English Learners in the state of Connecticut into further underscore that point we have the second most number in English Learners in the state of Connecticut and as with New Haven it's Waterbury Hartford in all these big districts that's how many students we have meanwhile we don't have any additional funding to support those students and so the acceleration of the funding will serve as a major resource for us at this time and if the bill is supported we would instead of waiting I think the year of the increase in for the ECS fund is 25-26 in acceleration would mean the world to our budget right now because it would be able to get either 17 million dollar bond which would help to offset a lot of these challenges that we're going
008to talk about thank you good questions so there are several puzzles right now to accelerate the education while sharing formula I propose one but I know I know others have proposed similar I'm hopeful this year you know however however it's done I'm actively advocating for our school district I'm in Hartford so you all know and I hope you know you'll reach out to me as a resource for anything as well we will also that lady at the city boy she mentioned that they were also you can't hear you sorry I'm sorry sorry uh at the Citywide PTO there was a lady from uh Windham or even and her organization was petitioning to accelerate as well the um strategy hurricanes yeah just a couple of points um okay I multiply level agree um I am a
009little less infused tonight than I was on Monday so thank you for going over this again and in a little bit more detail and also for providing the food book I really appreciate that um I think what um got us stuck last year were the two different numbers you know of our spending plan um where we proactively looked at savings and efficiencies and came up with this puzzle um so I think just when we're out presenting to the public um focus more on just our overall bottom line ass so that there's no confusion as to as soon as before and then also in when we're presenting to the community and the city Side this presentation isn't to have the one Monday night was very heavy on uh Talent acquisition I thought it was just like
010it's great for us but just maybe too much for for um in my opinion to share your own and I was also glad to see a breakdown of the energy percentage because looking at just a one line of the 38 was weird for me they're all very different so I appreciate that in any more detail you can and we're there is pictures um Monday night you were talking about putting the monies from the vacant positions in the Brookfield money I think was it sr3 to spend it this spring for fall did I hear that right there are two potatoes professional scenario that you're talking about in this general fund budget just to make sure we close down together all right the general fund budget the school budget that's where the unfilled positions are primarily power
011Educators and their benefits that money that won't be spent would like to come to you and ask for a transfer into the applying for computers and computers over in the Esser brand off budget is a field plans were and that's where the monies are undesignated and that's what we'd like to use for the reading program maybe for some so quick quick thing so the next sort of important Workshop when are we going to get the bottom line ask Ed if I said because that after me well not well uh right now we're suggesting it'll be 150 million you may want to add or subtract over the next month and then we we have your vote on February 8th I think it's a regular your first meeting in the month two at City Hall at the
01214. that Monday so it's whatever we decide and then the mayor there could take a look at it right so this is the proposed difference [Music] and it becomes uh after in a month from now becomes the Board of Education yeah whatever you'd like to ask a quick question please sure okay thanks um I I don't know if this is a question as much as it is um just a quick comment um I I think I see exactly what you guys are doing I think that this is a much better outline of this on Monday um so I appreciate that thank you um what I'm looking at and where I'm a little concerned is the lack of mental health care support decreases um there's that's something that's come to the table a number of times
013from different sources in the last year it seems very clear to me that that's going to continue to be a struggle as you know we try to act on the kids back to school and also deal with some of the overcrowding and the conflicts that come out of that over the crowding so I just wanted to make a statement that you know if it's possible for us to you know add to this request I think that we ought to consider doing that to try to build a bolster our mental health supports thank you yeah if I could just for a moment I do just want to highlight that in the high school budget request the three School counseling requests are um you know working on both the long journey Academy as well as supporting the
014students social emotional needs we are also fortunate um in in Kate I appreciate your comments I couldn't agree with you more as far as the name there so I want to be sure we certainly could use extra Folks at any point in time in that area um but there there has been a specific request um you know particularly for the secondary there's also been conversation about those Middle School level positions being off people Services support staff to support at that level so there has been consideration there we've also been the recipients of the leap Grant this year so that's the um learner engagement and attendance program regarding chronic absenteeism and re-engaging students and families in school we've been fortunate to be able to onboard staff through that um so I think the combination between General
015budget and our funding to address those areas but I certainly would support engaging in further conversation as it's no secret that that's a neat across [Music] it thank you very much you're welcome any questions just correct me if I'm wrong I asked your budget was 137 million 2.4 was from our Reserve fund uh well now this is one I say two years ago that was the 21-22 year correct okay and 2223 is 141 million that right now there is no Reserve funds in that house no no um I did have a conversation with the finance director this week about the reserve because in 21 2021 we added another 2.8 million to the reserve and he's looking at a little differently than his predecessor but when it went to the city council there's a letter I'll
016share with everybody they earmarked it for unplanned expenditures it's a little different than one-time expenditure before so I said when I was uh can enrollment be unplanned for it and I didn't say no to that we didn't say no to some other things so I think um you know there's room to talk for sure thank you yeah any questions would you this is really good is it worthwhile inviting the council to our Workshop talk about that at one of your meetings I mean we have a 100 understanding of the budget and what we're asking for if that's what people want to do [Music] I mean if I think what happened we couldn't invite them I mean if it makes much of a difference I don't think it does it hasn't before but I mean if
017that's what the rest of the board wants for the administration I think it's a good idea I would say engagement I mean I'm okay thank you everybody's just going to make a difference I mean I'm okay with that I think Kevin's okay next next there is a um as of now that he is involved so helping you participation if you keep your remote okay so chair and chairs next year of the finances up to um but the closer we come through I think we would be better off in person so I would like to change the experience [Music] so yeah you're talking about the work the workshop is in person correct yes Workshop right now we scheduled to be home it's scheduled Zoo correct some schedule yeah I think if we do the workshops in
018person and maybe the media so councilman I'm I'm a fan of in person yeah obviously me me personally but I'm showing Finance community on the 17th thank you the Workshop is Wednesday [Music] like I said I'm a fan of in person because that's but it's not it's up to the chair in the fight on the 17th I would like to be here it seems we have a lot more questions for John a new person we do that yeah I'm sorry I'm in the building anyway so that's a wonderful thing English my workshop I'm not I'm I'm taking what I Rachel um I only brought about anybody who did that city council um um in my opinion I think we should keep policy committee Zoom oh yeah and do the workshop in person that's what the
019rest of the members want um policy is 18 yeah thanks Zoom yeah all right let's act like okay let's backtrack a couple things on the table I'm having a bad night already so it's money let's not keep going so yes to inviting the city council to the workshop correct Thursday Thursday okay Workshop in person in person finance committee on the 17th yes okay we will make each other we got it if you want all right I like dealing I like dealing with giant person at all right could I just say uh make the comment ever since I generally bored and we started workshops for the budget we've always remember what always going to the common Council now whether they show up or not it used to be one two or three but communication always we
020always and the superintendent secretary can go back and find out that we have so obviously it's a big deal with this stuff [Music] yep [Music] so as a finance committee on the 17th I think what I'll say is good is it different than what we saw tonight because it and we're going to get down to the nitty-gritty on the workshop that's what though well I thought um like we did earlier tonight where the sites and Facilities look at some of their buildings and grounds things we were thinking maybe the finance committee could hold its own on one of the finance things such as utilities really transportations some chunks Workshop [Music] Mr Russo are you asking about the agenda from the 17th is that what I'm here I'm sorry sorry are you inquiring about the agenda
021for the 17th yes so I I think John's intention is to have a regular Finance meeting on Tuesday will you review your monthly your monthlies certainly another item would be to review provide a deeper dive into some of the line items that you saw here tonight under energy because those things come out of John's office just to provide the committee an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper specifically into the areas that John area and then and then I believe that's it unless the committee had something different we were not planning to review this again in committee because on Thursday night of course we will be reviewing the same presentation no numbers will be changed the same presentation uh but with an opportunity for a deeper dive and then the second agenda item is the
022line by line book that you see tonight uh the idea was you have to book this evening give you some time going into next Thursday to develop any questions you might have um in John will be prepared to go live by life thank you so if you could ask Karen to reach out to the council please well yeah because we can get that book okay yes absolutely thank you okay [Music] thank you John appreciate it okay temperatures we have two as part of the superintendent update we have two areas we want to focus on retention and Recruitment and then also teacher kind of recognition if you will Kim Thompson um it was a PowerPoint that's in front of you we'll speak to the Recruitment and Retention piece so we'll start there kind of an update
023on our teacher recognition work that we've been doing great thank you yes all right so um every year right around this time is when I come to you to bring you kind of a recap of where we've been in our season of hiring in this last year and so I um I did put this PowerPoint presentation in the packet so you can have a chance to read in Greater detail at your leisure but I just wanted to focus on some of the hybrids today just to give you an idea of where we are and how that fits in our strategic goal of diversifying hiring across the district so here we go and I'm technologically whether it's unemployment sorry if not I pregnant all right um so just to note kind of of where the larger
024landscape is out there in the world um everybody's reading at the same things we're all reading the same um popular articles about how there are labor shortages Nationwide and there's a couple of good articles I link to it in there and you can see in the materials you'd be critical and read it I just wrote another one today actually what we're seeing is depressed levels of available hiring pools across the country across automatic arrays of jobs in our district we're seeing it particularly around teachers in shortage areas para Educators for sure nurses and substitutes and one of the notes that I just put in here that I thought was trying to use it what we're seeing is since the pandemic that teachers now are considering leaving the teaching profession after five years at a rate
025that is now up to 30 percent so the most frequent reasons for that we're seeing are stress changes that they're seeing in the classroom and to some extent wages next time um Nationwide when we look at demographics of teachers and this is old data but believe it or not most currently available from some of our national sources the numbers are not all that different over time but you can see that predominantly the workforce among certified staff is white not Hispanic and then you can see the next number there 6.7 black or African American and 9.3 percent of Hispanic um so I don't know the performance is really focusing on it a little bit but there you can see okay next slide is um General observations are um and this is something that you've heard me
026say for the last couple of years is that while we're seeing an itching up of the pool of teachers of color that we are seeing dramatic increases and changes in the demographics of students um so that the changes in the teacher pool are not really keeping track of the changes in the student rule so here you see 47 students are white 27 Hispanic 15 black five percent Asian and these numbers are coming out of recent peer research and again I link the study that we want to take a look at it so what we're seeing Nationwide is a trend where while numbers of teachers of color are increasing slowly that the student population is changing more dramatically next slide please so um let's just take a brief walk through the state of Connecticut data I
027will say the state has put on edsite much better data so it's a lot easier to do this work now but what you can see from this chart is from 2017 to 18 through last year 2122 that there's been fairly static growth um if you look at black African-American teachers 3.7 3.84 4.1 4.3 study book smog growth same among Hispanic teachers steady above small growth and the numbers in terms of percentage of that Workforce are still really under five percent per group in some cases even smaller than that slope and steady increase but not the kind of numbers that are tracking the changes in student demographics next slide please so how do we step up in this and and I really need to use the term post pandemic we've seen a lot of changes in
028how you're in pre-pandemic and post-pandemic um so how do we stack up so um you'll remember those of you have seen this presentation before I like to break this out by both the hiring cohort meaning the number of teachers we hired this year and then we'll look we'll zoom out and look at how they fed into the larger pool now remember you have 1100 teachers here so it's going to take a long time to change any of the demographics of your largest teacher group it's going to come in very small increments hear what I find interesting about this this chart is different this year because the number of teachers coming from New York is up to about 15 that's high for us we drew a lot of teachers across the border quite a few from
029New York City area that's helping our demographics obviously it's where we're bringing in a more diverse Workforce that is new for us the other number I like here is 25 23 Danbury residents the reason why I say I like that is of course we like to have people living in the district that are teaching here but also what it's saying to me is there are certain things about working in a priority School District that are an advantage there is a discounted student loan rate for example for people who are teaching in a priority School District there is provincial mortgage rates that are offered to teachers in this District so what that says to me is that we may be attracting some folks who live and work in Danbury because of some of these other perks
030that come from the primary school district next slide the one thing that we saw this year is we saw fewer teachers coming to us with their master's degree already in place um that's a drop of about six or seven percent over last year um I don't know that there's a super amount to take from that just kind of a point of interest that teachers are coming more frequently with the bachelor's and work towards the Masters when they get here slide please uh gender this is again no surprise and I'm hard to budge what we're seeing is a heavily female cohort a heavily female applicant group and um particularly in the areas of special education and Elementary education so here you see Elementary applicants and special applicants um this data just so you know if we
031pull this from Apple track which is where we take all of our applications from they do a really interesting they have lots of different reports and things you can run but it's really interesting because we can look at entire pools we can look at buildings so we can really drill down and see who we're seeing in terms of applicants and that who we're seeing in terms of higher hired applicants so again happily female applicant pool Okay so what we saw this year is not horribly different from what we've seen in years past you were at about just shy of 25 of your new teachers hired or teachers of color that's a great number for you um in the big scheme of things it's fairly steady for where we've been um it is um oh not
032quite two to one but more Hispanic Latino teachers than black African American teachers and again a heavily outnumbering Asian teachers but the teacher of caller number is is I think for us it's a keeping with the trend the upward Trend we've seen over the last few years um in here I kind of charted it out for you so this purple line shows where we've been since 2014 um since we really started tracking these numbers and you've seen kind of a steady increase overall um and again um some kind of ups and downs our scale is by five percent here at a time so um this looks like a dramatic drop it is you know a few percentage points but we're seeing generally things going in in the correct direction the interaction we'd like to go
033in in keeping with our goals okay so remember a minute ago we looked at the Connecticut Trends and we saw nobody really inching above five percent um in any category and this is your Danbury School District Trends over again this last five years excluding again the current cohort because the last year that the state has our numbers here 21-22 but again you'll see kind of a steady increase 3.9 percent four percent four percent uh for black teachers um you're seeing six and a half percent six and a half percent going the size of 8.2 um last year 9.2 so you're seeing that steady increase in numbers that are outstripping actually the State numbers um so again trajectory in the correct direction um and in generally the same proportions we've seen in the last five years
034or so okay so what I did for you in this Grid or this graph is I try to depict for you um in charts because I'm a visual learner I like to see visions and graphs and pie charts but what you can see is this year over last year in terms of your existing teachers and again same story you can see this blue sliver right here is fitting features 10 last year was at nine percent um black teachers again this year at five percent last year at four percent we're seeing this increase again remembering that removing a pool of 1100 teachers so when we had 25 teachers of color we're seeing very incremental changes to our overall demographic of teachers and um so this is kind of the big comparison slide so the two bars
035here the blue bar and the other are green bar our state of Connecticut numbers and the red bar and purple bar are Danbury numbers so you can see again um certainly here in this first depiction we are well almost doubling the numbers in terms of percentage from the state and we're hovering about study with the state here in black African American and we're outstripping pretty well in the in the category of Asian teachers um what I like about this slide is it's kind of it's certainly showing our progression in the two years over time but it's also showing in comparison to the district it really resonates on something that we talked about earlier about what are we doing at the state to increase funding for some of our great groups that really need additional funding
036like ESL what you're seeing here is you're seeing us drawing in a lot of Hispanic teachers those are many of them are native Spanish and Portuguese speakers coming into you bilingual teaching roles ESL tesol teaching roles and that's why we're seeing I think a bump up in terms of the hiring in an outsized percentage to some of our other groups uh one more way to look at this um so if you agree with this theory that it would be um a perfect world to have our teachers in the same demographic relationship as we have our students so if we have 50 Hispanic students it would be nice to have 50 of our teachers needs better if if we if that's our sort of holy Grails that's what we're trying to get to or that's what
037we're always working towards you can see we're inching very slowly in that direction um this pie chart on the left is the percentage of students of color that we have on October one of I should say 2022. sorry um and you can see here this percentage so you can see for example three percent of our students here um in that in that cohort were Hispanic students I'm sorry robots that's two or more 62 percent 62 Hispanic Latin Americans do latency and over here 15 of the newly hired cohort I can't remember that's going to be a little bit higher than your current existing Workforce so um here in the um black students seven percent of our population um and again nine percent of cohorted teachers that number will be a little lower move about our
038full teacher population so you know we're we're making incremental progress next slide please and here you'll see this one is actually a realistic comparison percentage of students of color and percentage of all of your certified teachers um again an incremental progress to try to get to a world where students will see and learn from people that they identify with right people who don't like that particularly from the teachers next slide please again a quick note on where we were last year we're seeing incremental change we're seeing slight increases um but overall trending in the correct direction when we compare students and color by declarative ethnicity and for Ascension to a teacher okay so um last year I talked a lot about where we were searching we spent a lot of time focused on how do
039we find teachers where where we get coming from we continue to see um High numbers of teachers coming to us through CT reads CT Reap is an online kind of a bulletin board of jobs where teachers go and administrators go we're seeing um as you can see here about a quarter of our folks are coming through CT Reef 33 are coming straight to our website so they may go to our Danbury public schools website they may live in the district they may know of us and they'll come directly through our Danbury public schools site and apply that way and then the places on the left are places that were generally recruiting we still continue to do a pretty vigorous business with students from UConn from Wisconsin and from Southern and we continue to expand to
040programs like Sacred Heart Bridgeport and NYU where we have our um our affiliation family as well so a kind of a diverse group Next slide this is a little bit of a look on this year's applicant pool by the city again heavily um white applicants and the areas where you see some movement are in the ESL World Language areas where we tend to see more teachers in color one that we do and so [Music] in a subjects so this one is a new slide this year we made a lot of offers this year that were declined we have not seen that quite a few years and so I probably talked about a little over 200 candidates have you brought in about 140 we had a lot of internal movement this year as well people change
041the billions people changing kinds of jobs so I wanted to drill down and take a look at the ethnicity of people that were not coming here to see if there was anything to draw from that and what I found really was that the numbers the percentage numbers really look consistent across from all of the pools how many people that offers how many people rejected offers in those very similar numbers so I don't know that there's much to conclude from that so we're going to continue to kind of explore why we think people are not taking the offers that we're making I do think that your salary scale for teachers is pretty competitive more so at the middle of top level instead of the entry level but with this new contract I think you're going to
042see that you're very competitive so there's something else about here that we're not we're not locking down as many as we have traditionally in the past so more food for thought as our as we start to have conversations with our hires with our decentralized hiring teams out there in the world to see um if they can leave any information about what might be an issue again I've investigated the candidacy Department you can see there okay so um let's slide is one more and that's the last slide on the left what I did was I literally looked at last year's presentation and wrote down for you copied the action steps we talked last year a lot about increased visibility and recruiting increased partnership Pathways changing a little bit or tweaking by adding new locations to go
043to and implementing an exit sort of thing all of those recruitment ideas are all still very much at the Forefront of our strategy for hiring so for example today we put out a new grid that went to all administrators with about six or seven new hiring Affairs some of them are kind of grouped together so there might be three or four colleges that are one hiring fair so we're putting out to our folks that go out and do the interviewing on site some new locations a little bit of a look about why the school might be interesting to you for example they have a lot of special ed candidates or they have a lot of Early Childhood Specialties so we're going to continue to expand where we're looking within kind of a hundred mile radius
044because a lot of the research that we've seen says that we're going to be looking to attract people that are generally within about 100 miles from here so that very much on the left on the left side all of those bullet points continue to be true we have implemented the exit survey this year it invites certified and non-certified staff to go through a series of about five questions and then invites them to a meeting if they'd like to have a special conversation with me right now we're getting some decent feedback we seem to you know people will do a short survey not everybody really wants to sit down and have a conversation with me which I want to take personally but there it is um so we're going to continue to push on the exit
045survey to see what we can believe what we're seeing from it is exactly what we've been hearing all along um either teaching's not for me this isn't the job I thought you know the um particularly some of the larger classes of the high school where they're teaching a lot of overloads there's people who say this just isn't the right fit for me there's people that are leaving teaching that are going off and going somewhere else to do something else there are people saying their quizlets are too high so we're seeing kind of the same narrative that we've been hearing for a little while now nothing really different about that all of which informs our conversations about Staffing for next year which it can point about for example of increasing Mental Health Services how are our
046PPS staff doing are they leaving higher proportions and why so those conversations are very much ongoing and they are bolstered by the information we're getting for but what I just want to take a minute for is kind of the right hand column here what I've rolled out this year is a three-part strategy and there's three words is attract recruit and retain so attract to me is um what are we doing in all of our materials what are we doing in every bit of publicity that we have to try to make Danbury an appealing place for candidates to work um do all of our materials reflect for example our mission statement do they all reflect our strategic plans our strategic goals are we out and visible so that someone will say hey I'm going to go
047to the Denver schools website and I'm going to apply a good job that's online so that's the attractive people that are out there that may be local may know about us and say come and look and see what you've got and I'm going to go ahead and apply for that job that's kind of the um it requires some work on from the internal for our outward facing documents but those are people that are going to look to us and see what we are in the field the recruit piece though is the piece that we continue to work on with that left-hand column what are we doing to recruit new hires to here that may not have thought of Danbury as a place where they want to work and then retain and um you know we'll
048talk in a minute about the teacher of the year what are we doing to affirm and validate the people that are here to try to stem the flow out of the district so what strategies do we have that are kind of HR but also kind of central office Eve about what do we do to to validate and really praise and reward um those that have chosen to stay with us so um the attract is as I mentioned um a minute ago we're working on a more curated website curated content that reflects our mission and values and it highlights what are the benefits to working here I talked about discounted student loans rates um mortgage rates what are the things that coming here are of value to you the shorter 10-year track if you have a
049tenure in another District recruit is we're going to continue to expand that recruitment sites list and we're going to really try to do some targeted certification area hiring so we're going to exploit for example the state department of education's lists of who's certified and what shortage areas Christy Salita did a really nice job last year of put together a letter about Rogers Park here's all the things that are really great about working at Rogers Park and she targeted people who showed certification in particular shortage areas she got a lot of loved your letter you know not looking right now but I really appreciated getting it so I think that's a real plus and I think that's something that we're going to try to really leverage as we go into this hiring season um and um
050in terms of recruiting we're also going to roll out for the second year we'll want to expedited hiring initiative so there are certain locations like at UConn where we're looking to to Really lock in some of those kids early we know that they're high quality really good quality candidates so we have recruiters going with letters in hand that say I like you I'm impressed with you we have set up a demo lesson for you for next week with this team we'd love to have you come in lock you down with a letter and a contract right away last year we did an incentive which was um of what was kind of a modest amount of money but given to those teachers for classroom setup so use it to buy materials you hear a lot about
051teachers using their own money to set up their classrooms and that will be given to you on the first day so that we don't lose you in August afterwards June which has been a consistent problem so we're looking for ways to find those candidates early but find a way to hold them but they don't decide until July obviously they're going to go somewhere else did you see you have a question as you see the phone call from the now retired professor of education at West Carolina he would like well it was his idea to put have an office either at the new Academy or at Danbury High School as a counseling position to further education any students who are looking become teachers and I told races I work with whatever you want as long as
052you've got like you're retired now is this what what's current your new chair wants to do so if I get any more work pass it along to you have them contact you to me I don't care I'm in one of the pathways that you know we've talked about for a long time with kids at the high school has been careers in teaching so we have a pipeline program that goes into West hunt particularly for teachers of color book we try to really Shepherd some of our kids there those kids have an opportunity to do some teaching in our summer school which is great as they go through the program so we're always working to build alliances I've talked with them frequently I know as the pathway develops Cara's folks will be walking working closely with
053them we also have Kelly education who does our substitutes I've got them working closely with Wisconsin as well to see if you know is there a December graduate that's looking to do some subbing that we can pull in so we're trying to get many fingers in there so I think that's a great idea Teresa I love it serious with clarification this person wants to volunteer this time I wish it was 54 years at Wisconsin I used to be chair of the department Dr Cruz so yeah it's a great resource for us yeah you know we try so hard to build these alliances with Bridgeport Sacred Heart with um with just a lot of the surrounding schools that sent us interns so we really I think that grow your own model is really the most successful
054yeah well I thought that was interesting that he missed out and with like the area reserved yeah I love that type of thing yeah because um and then the other retention this is kind of a new idea um and and Kara and I have been talking about this and she's been rolling out a survey talking with our staff um there is an opportunity for us to have our currently certified teachers who are interested to pursue a cross-endorsement in bilingual and tesol education it's about a five thousand dollar tuition and we've looked at some grant funding to go ahead and be able to offer funding for those students are those teachers who want to participate in a cross endorsement program and what we're talking about is probably a two-year commitment so we provide the tuition they
055go through the program and get the cross endorsement and then they would stay with us for two years so that's another way that I think we're trying to recognize the staff that we have and give them continued growth opportunities so that they see this as a place there where they don't want to just train and go to Norwalk they want to train and stay here with us and that's really the goal so we're continuing to look at those but um so that right column is really what you'll see in terms of initiatives here from HR to try to attract group and retain and then lastly um the other thing that's been ongoing for this year is um we have been participating in um a coaching alliance with the rest this year um and it's a
056I want to say it's a six-part program and um it's been Kevin and I and Christy saliva for the administrators luanelli Iglesias who you know many of you know one of our bilingual teachers from Roger Park and Terence Cunningham and we the five of us are going to this these um these coaching meetings the goal is to meet the state requirement of having an in-writing diversity increasing diversity hiring plan so that's one thing that we have to have in place for the State Department of Education but in doing that what we've done is we've been really peeling back on questions like not only what are the demographics of your Workforce but why and so what I'm learning is I'm looking through the data is where we have a bit of a Down hole is where
057are candidates of color falling out of the hiring funnel is it at the screening in process is it at the interview process is it at the post interview offer process so what we're going to do in my office this year is we're going to try to push all of our administrators in to do online um scheduling of interviews so Apple tracker system will allow administrators to say here's the interviewing slots please candidate go ahead and pick your slot that will give us data on who they're interviewing who they're screening in that will then be able to look and see is there anything to be made are there any Trends to be spotted among buildings or among the district as a whole about how candidates of color are coming through the process to us so that's
058kind of some exciting work that I think we're going to do this year we're trying to get some of my folks trained on kind of apple track 2.0 to be able to just zip that data out but a place where you know I think that our our trajectory is really good I think our numbers are looking pretty solid particularly when compared to State numbers but I think there's more to to unearth here about how we're doing and with our process and that will lead I think to Greater continuity among all of our buildings on what kinds of questions are they asking what are they doing in the demo interview or the demo lesson who is on your teacher panel that's evaluating folks so that's going to be the next place that we go to try
059to provide some kind of continuity among all of our buildings who do their retire that then funnels into us um so that's action steps so that's where I've been thank you Kim that was a very interesting consultation anybody have any questions okay so um [Laughter] yes just two more quick updates um we have Talent acquisition 3.2 accomplishments of teachers and today sure this is just a quick update on the teacher of the year which we brought back into real time last year we listened to some feedback about it was a great event and we finished it with a big event it brought you most of the board was there it was great all the teachers come up on stage the principal says something really nice about them and then we elect our district teacher of
060the year um who's then eligible to go on to the state competition in Hartford last year we ran it um it really started about the end of March early April and then that culminating event was in Middle late May kind of right at that crunch time and all that end of the year stuff is going on so this year we're going to walk it back about a month so that that event comes late in April and we'll hopefully get people at a time when they're just not as crushed with all the baccalaureates and award ceremonies and everything else happening on the district so we'll have a timeline for you guys coming up shortly on that um and all that to look forward to in April awesome yes last but not least Danbury Career Academy and
061just an update put a full board to make everyone aware of it's no longer a secret that I mean academies at Danbury High School at the Cardiff sites is the building is being delayed uh will not be open until 24-25 school year the physical site will now be opening 25-26 city of Danbury is playing do you already have a meeting plan for January 24th to formally begin to review well no more discuss and War the 3 800 students who will have at the American High School at that time academic from an academic perspective we still plan to move forward with our planning and so the ninth grade that was intended to be in the school of the 24 25 school year our ninth grade is now it was supposed to be going into that new
062building 2425 um try to work on scheduling in the way to make sure that they can receive their Academy offerings at Danbury High School right now it will take a lot of work from our Administration and physically make sure that it's going to be done last but not least I know um last but not least I know there was some discussion by the board members and I we have the Academy of course coming up really soon we have a lot of questions out there from our families and Community about how do I get in what does the what what really do the academies offer oh wait a minute I heard about this Middle School how do I get into Middle School can you tell me more about what the middle school offers would like to
063suggest that we have a report Workshop specifically for this purpose really soon I have asked the my assistant superintendent Dr castanero director of Academy partnership to work on a schedule so that we can get out in various quarters of the community and whether that's with our parents without families with our Community Partners and talk to them about what the at what the academies can offer our school community and before we start that Roadshow of course I'd like to start here with it for a day and then launch here before we get out to the creative community appetite for a date but I do want to ask requests if we can have one relatively soon so Cara and her team will get in front of you to start talking about all the amazing things that are
064about to happen we're the families so why don't we come up with a couple of date options to Philadelphia city and print Dean so now that we're postponed for two years what is he uh you know if there's someone who's doing at this workshop and can he give us show us some any progress he's made with Partnerships and uh the businesses and stuff in the meeting mean talking about I actually think um did you meet in the meeting I thought you wanted to answer that now no I'm saying he mentioned it right yes you know I certainly don't want to bring anything else out something so okay no I I mean I think the academy model with that evening would also be a great opportunity for us to speak to for its role in clarification
065about his role and what that means and kind of the pre-work that it takes to help pull that off all the big things and major things that we're talking about so I I think it would be a really good evening for us because we're doing things so differently um we're you know we're proposing things education so differently like I think it requires some clarity clarifications I think yeah I'm talking about we we know what it's wrong talking about progress has he made into progress and with Partnerships I'd like to have an update on that great and his role was you know it started well I'm gonna finish what you started so his role was you know started in you're supposed to have this all in play by September 23. now he's got an extra year
066so he's got an extra year of course we're moving forward so right so we're so we're launching at 2023. okay so we're and we could speak more about that in the workshop if you'd like so we're moving full steam ahead it's more complicated than it has will be if we had you know our original plans but we intend to to launch and still move forward and get creative within the than the parameters that we're working with and I can explain more about that Workshop yes sir okay okay so long for information you'll see the uh 2023 standing committees we didn't really change much except this integration amount to some that I was on um and the district committees and btlaisons that we did and change even though someone does want to move something Cara did
067send out a a you know uh email at the current ones so if anybody wants to jump on that or switch something around feel free so if you want to just change from for me to take care of the email yes thank you a couple things on the district committees I won't be able to make gdec you in a day now so I'm you know if you've been designed somebody else for that and the first meeting is February 6th 55. and then I also think that Michelle gave the chair outside the facility she should take my place on the school building committee I agree with Lisa still there and that takes the council has to vote on them I believe is like an extra step for that what what's the step does it go to
068we not not automate but we think we might have do we both do we go in the back up from the last time we did this yeah thank you very much okay board chairperson's report just like to thank everyone for participating tonight and uh presentations were wonderful a lot of information yes and I think that's it for me mentions and the other board Communications or comments from anything that went on I just have to change the finance committee meeting on April 18th a little late too uh Finance I have on my schedule a finance committee meeting on April the 18th possibly the problem with the 25th [Music] finance committee members does that work for everyone to move it on the [Music] 24th thank you yeah we're here on the 25th a day before April 26th
069right you could or no that would work for me if it would work for everyone else finance committee members yes no [Music] okay still there okay foreign [Music] first meeting you guys this is a lot of presentations a lot of conversation about this anyway um anything else so if we as a board look at a workshop for board housekeeping and your Market I would say March that'll give us some time to think about here's some some little housekeeping that we need to take give me like a self-evaluation like a self-evaluation no well rules and regulations and probably and that would be some roles and responsibilities I think that's a great idea sounds good I make a motion picture all right