9/14/22 Danbury Board of Education Meeting

001that's good scroll back and see if it yeah the delay yeah [Music] we're good yeah I was gonna say this is way that's better all right yeah thank you clear one day hi thank you yeah anytime repeat it foreign thank you treat them arms massage foreign Teresa Rachel Michelle here hey you're you're Gladys Lauren here Bridget your name Julie here Ralph Al Luisa absent okay we have the few recognitions so I'm so happy that um get to recognize these two known about them since they were in elementary school watch them from afar at middle school and now they are at Hamburg High School nothing good evening two of our students um that's right uh it's from a society for Science and the broadcom foundation proud to announce the top 300 competitors in the 2022 broadcast

002master that is across the country the nation's Premier stem competition for Middle School students broadtown Masters seeks to inspire to solve the grand challenges of the 21st Century students selected from 1807 entries come from 35 States long Puerto Rico and the top states of food California 27 Florida 12 taxes eight percent Pennsylvania five percent I'm sorry six percent and Utah five because most students oh I'm sorry I'm sorry and two from them most students percent go to public school current price remain students are in whole Magnet or online school 30 finals are chosen from this so full of 300 to compete more than the more than 100 000 in Awards and prizes finalists will be announced on September 21st and I wish our two students so our first young scholar is the vice president of

003the National Junior Honor Society when she was at West Summit and besides things in Sydney currently play soccer for Danbury High School she is also a World Travelers during this past summer Sydney visited Germany Denmark Sweden and Finney to research the impact of sports and levels Cindy will travel next year again to Australia to study brief generation and conservation this young scientist very powerful congratulate Sydney our next student is Sandia yes I've known her since she was in sixth grade not only does she excel in science she is also a creative and imaginative writer we first met when she joined our magazine staff with Talent our magazine has won State Awards um with the Connecticut writing project featuring because so those are attuned apology here tonight [Applause] foreign [Applause] thank you very much thank you

004principal blue family student thank you so much the board welcomes public participation and ask that comments to be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not submit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about the Board of Education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the Danbury public school system foreign all right sorry for the delay it's our first meeting of the school year we're a little rough together um so the first person I have uh signed up is Sandra so myself school yesterday I went in into the teachers well I'm just going to get into the hallways in fourth grade it felt like you were walking into a song I as a parent felt nauseous from so

005much and my son's severe asthmatic she's an animal day after school um this has been an issue since summer school because we have kids of the nursery I'm concerned not only for my child but with another chance to what is the process of the skin and now hope it still exists there's no ventilations our kids are in our communities classes with other kids that we don't know what they're doing fluid sign I just want to know what is the process of this in school I did call I left a message with the superintendent this morning they said that the school nurse that came foreign do a follow-up thank you very much holding on to the consent calendar Lauren would you make a motion I make a motion that the Board of Education approve the items

006on the French calendar exhibits 22-92 and 22-93 as recommended secondly by Lauren seconded by Kate any discussion a nun all those in favor please signify by saying I I opposed attention carries do we have any staff Representatives okay our student Representatives sorry about that you can come back to your to the front thank you so much please feel free to bring your chair up here and overall University with those EOS essentially work at um beautiful through a credit only which forces them as an automatic 500 High School example as successfully eligible for the credit as for the notebook schedule last year we didn't have less specifically advising period in the teams are able to go and meet their teachers gets involved and a lot of the students ended up now I walk around the hallways

007so Monument way to help you just realize that life is important competitive something yeah so also I want to mention that Andrew is being renovated because um water that ends up being under the floor last we had a piper bubble or so they ended up tripping on the floor and are working Tuesday to that this year so that supports the festival gotta get ready to play here and we're hoping to read that round up extend a very important oh I'm sorry would you mind speaking so thank you technology um this also read about foreign uh a little large but I think the question was started the Third parties um we are also hosting an open night um this Sunday the 19th at 6 of them get an idea of crazy you know Danbury high schools

008that we all know it is trying to understand how that is we also were able to also have um sat briefcase coming up on October 1st on October 12th while those guys are doing the PSAT senior class is going to be able to continue your class photo and we are also going to do the blue wall mirror mural at that time uh three um you're also going to be hosting a club Fair which is leadership and the class of 2023. we're also going to have class elections for junior and then the seniors are going to have their homecoming which don't come against we're also going to be starting up a pep rally on the 20th which is so also we just kicked off our fall season Sports so that's very exciting I do know that

009football is having their first um home game this Friday so take it to our five dollars for adults and two dollars all and as well as five dollars for support I think two dollars for seniors and other sports are going on well volleyball has their game I know soccer also having games to go go Hatters for the sports and thank you everyone thank you for letting us be today and well thank you thank you thank you any questions for our students before they go for board members students I certainly appreciate Beautiful Smiles thank you thank you [Applause] thank you good evening thank you for allowing me Direct ly from my house the Alternative Center for excellence the day began with small guidance meetings and then he got finally he defended team building after the date

010included with an abbreviated class students their teachers student visits an interview perspective DHS students are visiting Casey's this week each day DHS students are matched up with an a student list to Shadow through the day we can be a short-ready prom interviews with their Guardians into each settlement remember divider makes it all the humanities on Friday September would you mind speaking to the next we'll be holding is Community Department grade level Benchmark Friday September 23rd may have rural Firestone where there's a tires to it and body will participate in classes students will be working for a three-hour period after that I will definitely be holding the barbecue the students but they're looking forward to the day of hard work and rewarding fun after that is what the holding its first parents meeting October Monday October

0113rd it's just a minute evening we'll start with parents and parents have put us together to hear about the upcoming events that is the goals and our goals for the 2017-20 school year after that parents will get the opportunity to follow their students schedules and meet with other people's staff family I have a question for Kayla I heard food but I didn't hear the date that you're going to celebrate and have food for that oh that's uh I'm pretty sure Friday September 23rd you're welcome thank you very much thank you for coming okay um for now how large would you speak promotion for action item a I make a motion that the Board of Education approved the safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services plan in accordance with 22-9 -19 on the floor

012seconded by Ralph any discussion putting none all those in favor please signify everything aye aye any opposed any update saying non-motion very unanimously action items B great I'll make a motion at the Board of Education approve the 22 2022 2023 Head Start food service agreement in accordance with exhibit 22-95 bridges any discussion all those favor all right and your toes successions being done motion Theory genetically um I would like to ask for a motion to amend the agenda for a brief presentation uh on the Danbury Career Academy phase one motion tournament thank you there's a second bye now all those in favor opposed motion Gary so while we waiting for him um just to update the board Lisa and I this afternoon attended a city building committee at which we've received an update as to

013what this first phase involves um it's essentially uh demolition the interior demolition site prep work repurchase a long lead items and that's essentially it I will uh I mean we can make many approve the phase so now it comes to the Cold War and from in the cohorts approval is needed for the final stake review um created in plenty of time oh my God you could correct first of all I want to thank you thank you from this to your agenda um I realize you uh conversation right at the last minute I hope to spend some time uh taking any questions you may have had so you guys are comfortable uh is it four fairly large faces by the first faces to face an actress is in front of you tonight and it is strictly

014predominantly a demolition case it is uh what we're trying to do is get our get this building so we can do all the hard construction work uh which would be the next phase and there's no delay so our goal is to do all the interior demolition that's remove ceilings uh remove anything that needs to be removed flooring interior walls ceilings eliminate electrical HVAC systems so they're prepped for new installations and we're also looking to we locate some psychotologies that there is going to be a gymnasium that is going to be built on the back side of this building unfortunately there's a considerable amount of utilities where that building is going so in order to again try to get a jump on this project we're going to relocate them into space so as soon as we're

015ready to actually do the next phase there's nothing in our way to build a building gets constructed we do the excavation work we put the footings in the foundation so that's part of the space we are also going to be doing a roof replacement as part of this space the reason for the roof replacement at this stage is because there's some significant long long lead items for roofing material they're talking anywhere between four to five months some people are saying six to eight months so we want to procure that now put our order in with the factories and get those products so we can hit the road Ryan when they connect um and then the last item which follows along with cement thought processes we're going to pre-purchase a generator a lot of the electrical

016items that have tremendous uh lead item I mean we heard 50 weeks for some equipment that we need first building we want to pre-purchase it now go out to bed get it and have it ready for us so when we need to install and we can install it um the second phase of the project is really the harder to project that's the one where we're doing all of the Interior Renovations we're doing the building editions we're going to be doing the greenhouse uh very strong when I did my last presentation to you when that phase is ready to go would you be in a few months we're going to actually go to your um site facilities we'll do a big presentation with them we'll have the architect there uh and then after they're comfortable working

017more comfortable board and we'll do a secondary presentation uh the third phase is basically fixed furniture and Equipment um that's the third phase and the fourth month which would conclude the practice business technology we always buy the technology at the very end because technology gets integrated so quick that it's like the last thing we want to buy so those are the four phases again tonight part of you is the I would say non-glamorous phase it's a demolition phase and I respect that you have in front of you will cover such things as you got to shut the breaker off before you cut the wires it's that type of work that's that's actually scoped out in the document that we sent to you so I know that's a very quick uh review of the Danbury Career

018Academy phases and what you have in front of you tonight we had an opportunity to go to the state on the 27th and we said you know what another another municipality canceled we're going to take the appointment which drove us to kind of be a little more expeditiously that we probably would like to be able to give you guys some knowledge but if you do need to take some time as long as we can get back up to the state before the 27th that'll be great I do need your approval before I go to the state I do need your approval before I actually get my local officials to sign off on the project so I would like to say there is some urgency in us trying to get it again and like I said

019when I heard an opportunity to go to go to school earlier than I anticipated I just I just wrapped it so but I'll take any questions can you give us a cost breakdown this is your first game so the first phase we just got the estimates in uh last week it's somewhere around 14.6 million dollars that does cover all the different definition works since I purchased it we spoke about it's all inclusive it covers all the other additional fees but yeah we're right around 14.6 million and examples of long lead items you said Roofing switch here and uh generator generator is outrageously long so yeah we're trying to put those orders in with the fact so it kind of meets in with our final Construction and given the um the year the building was built

020it's not that old you anticipate any risk around hazardous materials or usts we really don't the building we can mid to late 70s obviously a specialist products or somewhere outlined it but what we did is we actually not only had a phase one done we brought our environmental consultants in this past week he went in and just did another hard look did some sampling here again my shortest there's probably nothing that's going to come about we really kind of paid a lot of close attention to that prices any questions from board members a ult no we're still negotiating in the final purchase of the building I looked at several reiterations of the actual uh purchase agreement but but we're right at the tail end of community um well um so we do a competitive bit

021obviously we use a local company and we like to see that he has product there ultimately he has to provide the cheapest price most responsible person we just the most responsible price and if he does yeah it'll be great I have a feeling that material is actually for another job that uh he's probably not over now yeah Antonio the 14.6 million does that include any unanticipated costs to renovation so there we always carry an owner's contingency it is a very small one because all we're doing is demolition here um so we're really not anticipating finding a lot of them I'm seeing issues but there is a small contingency in here dealing with or something that we may want to build an advance or phase to incorporated into this phase does it make sense you're relocating

022all the utilities on just a utility Center in the direct location any other questions Michelle uh timeline Milestone schedules the remaining budget allocated for phases two three three four things like that to exist in the HVAC system today you you grab my dog today Insurance 750 million basically a milestone schedule as to when the lead time you're talking about what is an example there were several pieces especially when you're dealing with um this size Transformers Furniture so that's an example of a long way um generators we're looking at one to one and a half Mega megawatt generator that's not something that anyways something that is custom built um switch gear items like that are all specialty items that should be able to get them all because the plants are up and running with the order

023would come in just execute the order now there seems to be a back so you have to get in line it's entitled I I will cover some of the other questions so um as phase two gets further developed as I mentioned to you in the next few months we will be finalizing uh that design piece of it we're actually working with the Board of Education staff our colleagues on your side of the table at driver's drawings got some great feedback at going redesign some items as soon as that face comes to an end will actually secure an estimate and we do our presentation to you they'll actually have that estimate with us and updating one so far the phase one phase is actually trending to be right we figured no I'm saying when is that

024expected to be completed So based on demolition is about a three to four month space obviously we're moving comes in we'll actually start to move things work so that will actually probably carry it a little farther than to you and then the long lead item is as they store them some were safe [Music] what was the original meaning for the state well we didn't we didn't have an original meeting Ashley when we could get up there and he said well interesting enough we've had a cancellation if you guys need to be ready come up so very very quick yeah I just acknowledge that you I also do monetize it is a demolition phase the next page uh you guys should take a lot of time we spent a lot of time with your staff coming

025up with a new layoffs officer building the ministry uh development in all of the site work that goes with it this space here is more of a utilitarian phase while doing Demolition and purchasing equipment okay uh Antonio thanks for coming down to talk with us this evening um I think everybody around the table here is really excited to see papers with the start of these plan so thank you guys for bring that to us and putting that together um I guess so there's two things um and with I didn't realize the roof had to be replaced have we done any kind of evaluation for the possibility of solar so um let me just say that that school that it's a lot of the requirements for the state we have to be able to show my

026screen uh the existing moves there's one move that's fairly new but their wealth within they're well into that your same thing with the HVAC equipment HVAC equipment doesn't meet the standards for high performance the equipment looks great it just doesn't really meet the requirement therefore it does have to generally move so um you know those are the drivers if you will or some of the replacement items that we're looking at but I guess I'm wondering you know given that the roof is being replaced anyways that would be an ideal time if we were going to consider something like solar and I just don't know if that's part of this equation no we we definitely did not introduce solar into this project we do have some examples of for engineering and for educational purposes where we

027have these very well developed solar installations yeah that can be used for educational purposes and you can actually see electricity being made where it's used how much is being used so we did it we did introduce that into the project s thanks um and then the other question I had um forgive me if I'm walking up in a direction that doesn't make sense here um but you're talking about um Telecom like location of like electrical outlets and that kind of thing at this stage um I'm wondering if there's going to be an opportunity you know if we could do like a special meeting to have a conversation about it because part of I understand we're just in the demo phase right now but if we're choosing where um you know electrical electrical connections are going

028to be uh where you know maybe um internet or Telephone Connections are going to be um it would help for me to be able to see like could get sort of a visual way of things and I can understand we're not in that field yet but to be able to see that and we just can be able to evaluate it and be very helpful we typically will rely and understand to kind of help us with uh with that as they understand pretty much how they're going to use a classroom we also rely on our architect to understand the academic programs to make sure that they can actually use a room and where the outlets are to facilitate the educational but we can get into that uh you know when we make it'll take us a

029long time to get through those uh so with that in mind I understand you know you're planning for the 27th and you have other protocols to go through the city level with officials there um if we if we were um is there any possibility that we can give you a vote that look if you guys need more time I'm glad we can spot it's not a problem honestly maybe this is my uh my misjudgment in my in my assumption here but uh because this was such a utilitarian phase of the project the system of dental I thought it was a good opportunity I know the timelines were tight that's a good opportunity for us to Grant this meeting yeah I don't think anybody wants to cancel the meeting but we're at the 14th today so

030you know there's 13 in between trying to get a sense from you if like you need that full 13 I used to go through whatever you have to go through to City officials so one week prior to the meeting I would have to have my local fish officials review the plan the place I am lost they typically like to know that as you have endorsed the project because if they start reviewing them and then you guys don't like the project or you decide you want to go in a different direction and then they just spent all that staff time doing that I could beg them to start the review process just to make sure that it's done so we can submit their approval or whatever review comments that they may have to the state on

031the 27th so um so if you work backwards uh that would probably be the limit of uh pushing everybody to accommodate us being up at the state on the point okay thank you well thank you Antonio or bringing the information to us and if we would and you might understand it tonight that we are to Excel actually which includes phase one to get them started so we won't be one and we don't know what could come up that he might need extra time to do what you need and to add another meeting on the deck I'm comfortable with voting for this let him get started to get started to get this moving and dance maybe the end of phase one that you'll come back if there was some more additional information because as I try

032to get a hold on foreign everything so you know I take your word and I feel comfortable if there's anything that comes up you need extra time I agree and I'm going to ask the question that which Delbert asked uh meeting so how are we time-wise we're opening in the fall of 2024. so we're still shooting for that date um every day we're kind of a job I think today you gave you a perfect example Electronics okay so uh three months ago uh four months ago it was impossible to buy wood well that's not much better so we have to consistently keep an eye on where the industry is going and actually foreign taking advantage we're not so uh yeah that that's where we are if for some reason doesn't look like we're going to

033be able to hit that date I'm going to update you when we come back in a few months for phase two anyway I'm like like you'll be the first uh my my personal feeling um scoopers um just would like to take an informal kind of goal to see where we are if we want to vote tonight or table is there anyone okay and um I know how Louisa is feeling about this she and I can go around the earlier today and we were both aligned as well I want to speak you're feeling very comfortable after that meeting we have Mr chair to really feel you need to use I want you to be comfortable um grabbing it and uh it also shows the state that we're wishing ourselves to meet deadlines so but if you

034need some extra time please I work with you guys since I started here you've always trusted me whenever we do not want this is a very utilitarian phase of the project I apologize for kind of spreading it on you at the last time man I'm sure just a comment find a job today Antonio or Mr Hughes and the whole staff did in school and excellent reputation so you have your work as City engineering a host of other things that you have so I am totally comfortable taking the boat tonight okay would you like to make a motion I'd like to make that motion for uh action item to sing Board of Education authorizes the chair chairman of the board of education the superintendent of schools to approve the final plan specifications cost us it's for

035phase one from the Danbury Career Academy project and signed the scg-042 forms for submission to the state of Connecticut office of school Construction Grants review for approval in accordance with exhibit 22-96 Teresa Rachel yes Michelle hey lettuce yes Lauren yes Bridget Julie upstairs Albert yes thank you so much we'll see you in a few months our security thank you thank you so I'd like to start off with this introducing new director of Academy partnership District we do happen here this evening start off with Jamberry with a background in Education and Leadership most recent Globe Services and Maplewood high school in Nashville Tennessee for five years in his role as Academy coaching work closely with the academies of national team about happening and develop local Partnerships that helps prepare and expose students to real-world opportunities and

036it's those real world opportunities that we are most excited about here in bandana in Canada to talk a little bit more about exciting opportunity to frankly a whole bunch of Staff members through the excited about second I just want to kind of talk to the unique nature of okay thank you so I'd like to talk a little bit about about um itself has been an idea Academy needed for several years so um it's going to help us realize the first Brett thought he was going to move up here from Tennessee to escape the heat a little bit and that if that is not the case um but early on in the development of this project as part of the five-year strategic plan on how to launch an academy and move to a transformation model the

037idea of having strategic Partners in the business Community was one of the most essential components aside from the educational piece is how do we build those relationships and how do we actually partner with industry uh industry experts to to build and to be responsive to the community needs but also to prepare students for college career Beyond and so when we went down to uh Nashville has been you know this is sort of the Genesis of the project was started with that visit um down there and some research work that we had done and uh we were obviously Blown Away we came back and got to work right away um but we were very impressed with the amazing Community uh development and Liaisons that they had developed over the course of several several years with an

038organization called pencil um and then how that lays with all of the high schools down there in terms of sponsorships internships externships um resources for the schools jobs summer work you name it um it was just it was just prevalent throughout and so we came back we knew that that hiring a director of Academy Partnerships is going to be a key part of the process and some folks said you know why somebody's now okay they're not open yet what's going on well you can't open an academy and have fully developed Partnerships and internships and things ready to go unless someone's actually working on them we were very fortunate when we posted that job that um someone from the academies of industrial applied for it uh we almost fell over so um within a very short

039period of time Brent has made a tremendous impact on everybody he meets he's an unbelief Builder it's one of my new favorite people ever uh in the in the last couple of months since we've gotten to know him and he's fired a lot of ground since he's been here so I'd like to introduce to you Christy hey everybody I'm really humbled by that thank you I appreciate it um I've been enjoying my time since I've been here uh in Danbury the energy has been great from the surrounding businesses and organizations um I will say that uh what I've been tasked to do is to secure uh maintain and nurture Partnerships and so that comes in the form of going out to different businesses you know I've chatted within about the academy model and the potential

040behind it even post-secondary institutions as well and so so far I've been getting really good feedback from them just to give you just a few highlights of the businesses that I've been able to attain it's been over 15. um maybe 20. but you have Wells Fargo advisors you got Metro I.T Danbury Mission Technologies new Vans health and a lot more um I will go back to the fans they have already been partnered with Danbury High School but when we talk about different engagement opportunities we're talking about industry related field trips job shadow and opportunities internship opportunities Village professionals collaborating with our teachers so that they can explain what those employability skills look like so when it's time to teach those kids they're giving 21st century skills and those those businesses come into the classroom to

041see what learning looks like so that they can tailor those needs as kids come to those businesses too so the idea of these businesses and post-secondary partners having a hand in raising our youth is powerful amongst itself and so you guys should know that this model is super helpful for the city of Danbury it really is it's going to look you in the right direction so all hands on Deck with it and so I thus far uh the energy and help from the staff has been great um we've been chatting closely with the chamber to give us some advice on certain things and they've been helpful too so just know that I've been busy knocking on doors having those conversations left and right you'll see me all around I've seen this Michelle in so many

042different events and we're always seeing each other but just know that uh I'm here I'm working and if you're ever want to reach out or via email or phone just hit me up anytime so just know that this thing is going to work so that is my skill does anybody have any questions so far that was some intro man thank God I mean you got some uh some stuff in front of you that to handle so I have just two questions so how do you identify a potential partner um you know business that is it based on obviously what the academy is teaching but how do you beat not from you know being not from the area how do you absolutely so looking at our potential offerings for academies and Pathways I started with that

043prior to coming up to Danbury I did a lot of research on you guys to see what you have Connecticut has a lot of headquarters here in addition to that you guys are teaching manufacturing and everything else too uh so with that being said I did my own research after that I was able to chat with PJ parenti the president and CEO of the chamber and we talked about some of the different industries that needed to be highlighted as well too and so that in addition to other people in Danbury where I was able to get some contacts and kind of talk about the needs of the city directed my focus on who actually targeting your doors and talk to me yeah do you find that the business demographic is is the same as regard

044for Nationals or other Nationals business demographic or you find that they are very a little different um you you Danbury is somewhat similar to uh Nashville because Danbury is somewhat Urban to me and so I'm used to working in the city so I don't of course not as large as Nashville but I'm comfortable I don't need anything bigger right now so I'm not just aimlessly you know doing it on my own you know I I do have help that that's what I do yeah are you reaching outside of Danbury as well I am I we we need the help so uh we need the talent to stay here in Danbury right there thank you absolutely any other questions for board members Theresa um yes yeah nice to meet you all as well you all have

045a great night thank you Mr Dean before you leave everyone in the agenda we'll have a meet with we have a joint press conference press release comparable time and City Hall gay mayor of the city to marrying City partners and businesses and Danbury Danbury area Sophie is not already not going to endure they will have a more formal informal introduction school that day one 12 to 1 over 20 seconds see you all there yeah so next on a superintendent report I think it's going to help me a little bit with some updates but I just want to start off by one to take mentioned this earlier Ellsworth Annex his team Antonio his team is here public projects project here they opened up an amazing world we had an opportunity about the classroom which ultimately provides

046more space on the regular side of the outdoor also have additional Early Childhood classrooms now newly improved Early Childhood classrooms and equally as important our registration Center and updated so when our families enter this school Community they are now entering a professional space that's really representative so I just want to thank you this evening all of the work that it takes the boarding community may not know Itt everyone is meeting behind and certainly between everything from placements everything this meeting Kelly has been about um and I just want to thank everyone I also want to talk about the first week first day before school started and that's convocation and I believe different reports and conversation since 2015 or 2016 and whatever the case this school year was an amazing opening a great day of unity

047focus and purpose in the school district filled up with our families who did not know we filled up our football field every seat was pretty much taken in the sand in the field we had speakers come in Yours Truly the board chair the mayor here really an amazing day but most importantly our staff was totally engaged in the in the event we were they was sponsored by the bar Foundation about EOG effort later this evening I can't thank everyone enough of their engagement and their New York I also want to thank sta in the bus company for they volunteer to drive our staff at no cost I'm trying to get us in time tremendous help for us very frankly now that's all the cars in the parking lots of like graduation daytime so Karen and

048her team come to organize bus drops our talk here wants to pick them up going to the school really was an amazing day I also know power of 13 or administrative support team we got thousands of t-shirts and t-shirts in the districts and just hand them out but then someone says well I need a medium not an alarm and the next thing you know you have some very busy days ahead and so I just want to thank you and your team together um next on the list of course we have Transportation which quite frankly can absolutely can help the school district it does not do it smoothly and we had us move forward so I'm just going to ask to provide a couple of updates with Transportation um with Staffing of AIDS also our kindergarten

049orientation this year with a little different course to speak to those things and then just overall just kind of how it works okay foreign drivers and backup drivers from other districts just to make sure that our start went off very smoothly all of the drivers practice their runs for a couple days before school that made a big difference we also did not have to bus over to St Joe's in Brookfield and that helped that gave us time to do our regular obligations so I think with that and and you really could see I think an extra effort from the superintendent just described one of those but in all the schools that I was out at the first couple days you could see drivers really trying to do the right thing being on time driving safely

050so we were we are very pleased with the effort of the company and the effort of the drivers we continue to be busy in the office of talent management and we're working at a full pace so far this summer we have brought in an onboarded 159 certified staff members and another 75 or so non-certified staff members and we have 185 substitutes rostered with Kelly Ed um the Caliente roster continues to increase weekly I meet with them every other week to talk about status they are consistently bringing in people for interviewing continuing to build that pool to get us up over 200 as we start to need subs as the fall leans on for us um we still have 28 certified openings that's a lot of teachers particularly at this time of year we still have

051openings and we continue to lose teachers as do all of our surrounding neighbors we're kind of bouncing folks around from one District to another um we have right now 15 of our teachers on hold meaning they're going to go to another District but we've asked them 30 days while we search for Replacements we're literally swapping in some cases so we're continuing to work at chipping away at those openings the the one most persistent that we're still having a trouble is Kelly's special ed tutors we still have about 60 of those openings as we did last year so um we're still working pretty well at PACE trying to fill out those um all of those open spots we've seen this year about a 15 turnover I think of your teacher ranks and so later in the

052fall I'll come to you as I usually do each year to talk with you about the demographics of your class I will tell you that the folks that came for a new teacher orientation and Dr cashmere will speak more about this they came for three days of training and cheering and you know lunch with the union and and mingling and getting to know each other and I think it was to Echo what everybody said today it was a really positive start to the year we have some really eager really interesting who are now in the process of integrating integrate I report for now um how many teachers compared to and year to year cheers yeah we're seeing more leaving in the summer this year than we have in the past several years um and and

053you know it's difficult to figure out why that is right now we've got post-pandemic data so we're trying to figure out you know where people are going but this year we were running about a hundred and about 112 teachers have left us this summer um that's a considerably from what we've been we're trying to figure out why but I do think some of it is post-pandemic I also think and and Mr Watson I have this conversation daily um we're not alone everybody's in a similar boat good evening everyone um I'm going to speak to you a little bit about the kindergarten orientation that we have this year um so we decided to um kind of stagger the start of our incoming kindergartners and overwhelmingly the feedback from our administrators our teachers and our parents and

054that it has been a very um so just to remind you we have spoken about this in the spring um but our kindergartners came in for basically a meet and greet which is a one-hour meeting an hour hour and a half depending on the goal of the size they came in for a one-hour meeting on the first day of school and that was student and parent so the parents got to come in the building meet the teacher they got to bring in all their materials check out where their desk is Take a Walk of the school see what a bus looks like all those different important things um and the parents brought the students to school and brought them home most of the classes were split up into about three groups in some cases four

055so it was very small kind of intimate group so teachers got an opportunity to talk with parents um and really alleviate a lot of those pressures of where am I going who's teaching teaching my child um and really kind of ease their transition in then on the second and third day of the school year um the uh the students came in for a half day um and so they were transported by bus and they came in for you know regular morning time and they left around lunch time um and we also received mostly positive feedback on this um and the reason for that is kindergarteners are transitioning off of a lot of them either not being in school CARE program and in the day is long um and then on Friday which was the fourth

056day of school which was the last day before the weekend we brought in the wall meet and we brought them in for a full day of school so this is kind of a nice transition um we are walking like I said those two half days should it be one day should it be two days you know how should we ease the man really looking back in the backwards plan based on base calendar um we understand that there are some Child Care issues I'm having a day of school I'm more certainly sensitive to those but I will say district-wide there was a feeling not just at the kindergarten level but at the elementary overall of just calmness not having kindergarteners come in on the bus on the first day I think largely contributed to our successful

057transportation on kindergartners are the most challenging as they've never ridden the bus they don't know where they're going also having um The Kindergartners be transported separately home on those half days the bus drivers got to know the students know who they are and who the parents are it just was a nice soft touch to bring the kids into the school year and from a behavioral perspective usually when we have kindergarteners and some kindergartners are overwhelmed by the day my team tends to get called and tapped on and I will say knock on wood we have had far fewer of those on this school year so we will be looking to Institute a very similar plan for next year like I said we're looking at how many half days is the right amount um but it

058was it was a huge success and I and I have uh seen kind of a return to a little bit more since prior to the pandemic particularly related my understanding really other districts are handling that in the same way that this is very common practice separately and then some school districts do up to two weeks so half days to transition students in I'm not do that here but it is important that it is a long day a shower day even if you've been in full day daycare or Child Care kindergarten is different right it's more than just playing um and there's a lot of Transitions and there's a lot of building Independence going over rules and Center so it really is nice and what we find is when kids are successful in those first few

059days it just sets the tone for the rest of the year across not really across the middle yeah [Music] really I know I know the teachers also appreciated having that staggered start a little bit because they love the personalized contacts um and the kids came in they had already met um so as Kim mentioned before we had new teacher orientation uh probably one of our largest ever uh with the numbers that she mentioned and um you know in Russian a lot of our supervisors in content areas I don't want them and getting them oriented to our literacy programs or numeracy programs our stem programs are depending on the content areas that they were in I've been also going over sort of just our general expectations for clear they were a great group of indeed they

060were very excited to disappoint them they are a large group so we do have our coaches now going to do dividing and conquering and how to provide the best a lot of support to those teachers to get them started with password management making sure they have all the materials at the border and helping them orientate orienting them through the pacing of their first local units it was a it was it was a good experience and a very good moment given the empowerment volume that we were dealing with and having a lot of opening still to fill with interviewing going on in the background so um because everybody said it was a very positive opening I'm going to go to the next Foundation that is equal ity I'm going to conducted in Andy before you get

061started really is this update really is from last year both of these students and in this one all of the goals are important to this District this is one that we have prioritized you know looking to continue to grow like a job to be race on audience really helps this agenda forward we prioritize affecting the families and partners and Families that help improve student outcomes I think we've made some significant steps since the spring of and I feel like the position looking forward to the presentation updating the board one of the great things that this team has been doing get out of the way so that we don't think about what we have done thank you great so thank you for giving us this opportunity to come in and speak and I am going to

062introduce all our places we go through as I go through the PowerPoint I'll stop and we'll introduce who's here with us tonight as most of you know I'm Angie and I'm the director of families and Partnerships along with my assistant director Grace Molina and my wonderful team of folks behind me and we will so I wanted to do a couple different things tonight one give you the actual framework in which we work with it we work under a federal framework and a state framework but our goal is the goal that the district community public private sector plus cluster vested interest ing learning and success all the work that we do some may seem kind of like on the outside but everything you do is how can we help families to support their children so that

063children can reach academic success during their time here in Denver Indiana and so we kind of use a little tagline of engage in power and educate we find that we need to engage our folks and so our family Liaisons are providing that bridge to be able to bring them and give them that sense of comfort create that bridge between home we also at the same time want to empower our families and want to empower our families to take advantage of different opportunities that we want them to feel good about what they're doing how they're doing it because then the ultimate is to educate everyone because families they help educate their children we're also educating teachers along the way too our administrative staff will come to me with questions about families um you know board members

064have in the past year so our goals under that are to really place to trust and teamwork of the center of the homeschool relationship and that truly is a relationship that bridge School presented and worked on by all of our family liaison is the Crux of what is students success when you have schools that are well rich with families and there's trust and there's that indicate bidirectional relationships within the students succeed we pay for all of our family engagement strategies of high impact strategies and we'll talk about those in a little bit and we invest in Building Systems and structures that enable the work and you'll see that in a second as well as I said you ground our work in the National dual capacity framework written by Karen Mack and approved by our secretary

065of education back several years ago in 2018 and has since then on revised as well as the Connecticut pool and people partnership guide which Danbury was one of their sites that they spent a lot of hours in as a state department of Ed and its Partners wrote this guy I'm listening to our Jamboree families of what our families want and so we maintain that there's a non-negotiable requirement of every initiative an element of our plan is consciously linked to students so this is the dual capacity I think I showed you this last time and I know it's really really hard to read so if you go to the next slide I really broke down what's so important over the last couple of weeks under um Kevin's superintendent Lawson um gentlemen we now have put Family

066University throw up of everything we do so all of the work that we do to build these forces 1200 is large and raw a family University everything all of our trainings that we do and you'll see you'll see that in a second everything is under Family University meetings we want families a to the bank B for our all of our families we want that to college and university so here's what we're building with our families and we want to build these four C's and that comes from that green section of that slide capabilities connections cognition and confidence we want our families to feel that they can come and speak to a principal last night I left our new family and Family Faith Center there at Osborne Street and it's been about 20 minutes in the

067parking lot as Ellsworth had their open house I don't know how many families she had I'm sure that people knows they were loaded with families half an hour second and the families because they feel comfortable now they have a wonderful liaison and that's cool that made those connections and invited those families out we're seeing big big changes in our open houses so we're building the confidence of our families to be able to come out we're also building connections and Grace is going to talk a little bit about connections with some of the work that we've done with tech and then of course there are skills so one of the things that I've always thought about over the years is wouldn't it be nice to have this year-long town in your fall brought out so that

068everybody can see what we're doing and so this year Grace is this technology rooms it's absolutely wonderful and I can give her stuff and say you can make this look really good and she does and so you'll see and we'll talk about what these programs are in a minute um this is our calendar event this we did probably six weeks ago we changed it three weeks ago and now we've had new partners come in um our nursing father's network is coming in um Pro Dad just come in we've got the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts coming in and so I need to add some more things to this this is a constantly moving document um hopefully next year when we get more of our partners on the board we'll be able to okay do you

069need to meet now to play in this picture to make sure this calendar our next one so how do we get this information out to our parents okay and so our strategy here is to develop a high level of communication collaboration interaction with our daily Republic School sometimes across confidence and credibility so Mike is going to Dr suleg is going to talk a little bit about the website when we're done with this but one of the things that we started working on about two years ago was What would be a better way to communicate with our families do that we started to talk about wanting liaison that's true based communication but we also realize these Robo calls just weren't doing the trick and after so many Robo Falls how many people just say I'm not

070listening to the next one it must be the same one right we're all been guilty of that or something so we need to find something that would a um be a little bit easier for families two give families options on how they receive those messages and three that they have the ability to talk back to their teachers talk back to their schools and I don't need to talk back in a negative way but communicate that with their teachers and so we're proud to say that last spring we started to roll off here and square and we have over 16 000 individuals on it so their families now remember when people sign up for PowerSchool they may put themselves the husband and somebody else on that communication trade so right now we have over 16 000

071individual repair store so we're really really excited about that uh parents register using power PowerSchool night PowerSchool sinks to parent Square so as new families register it sinks and then breaks almost pretty much every morning sends out an invite to those new families to join parents with it's really important that families join parents where verify their information and then they go ahead and they sign up for the app right now we have 44 100 plus families using the parent Square app this was as of last Friday I think that's gone up and as of last Friday we have 99 99.1 percent of all of our families are contacting by email and text reform if our data department does an absolute wonderful job every day after parents verify they get a notification of Whose phone numbers

072aren't working who's female is dead or whatever and then they fix those they make sure that they're fixed in PowerSchool and then it sinks back from here so we're really really happy about how this is working we do set up administrators are set up in it the teachers have helped to set up respectable secretaries have set up the actual classes in the school and I do believe they've ordered that you have your own parents career group as well so that's something we can talk to your mature person about uses and absolutely another thing we do with our family and community uh newsletter okay um superintendent from Boston will be doing a monthly newsletter and then Michael office will be doing another newsletter two weeks later um other ways to communicate is uh wants to chat

073with Kevin which will start at the end of October those are just internal sessions where he gets to be on Zoom hopefully we can do the person and it's just it's give and take dialogue of what families families just show up for that so we have found over the last year that that was a very valuable he felt was a very valuable um meet for um to hear from to hear from them okay so then we coaching our education and resource and I'm going to let Grace talk a little bit about our new promise program that I kind of want to set up how this happened all right we'll just pass it so now it's your gospel so we have been very fortunate through different funding that we receive grants that we have um how

074to announce tonight 100 school-based family liaison and so I'd like our Liaisons to stand up the wood everybody's here I'd like you to start in the back row your name in your school and just go very quickly let's talk a little bit louder intermediate media school I'm Darrell Florentino and I'm at Danbury High School Diana Sanchez AIS Michael I'm Lori I'm a parent educator for Early Childhood um which is good all of our board meetings we're really really excited to have these folks thank you so very much so um it was a process getting everyone um you know brought in onboarded thank you to our town office to help making that happen if we're missing one or two people tonight but this group meets every Thursday we brainstorm for an hour with problem style different

075people about energy assistance and then make sure that with their families so we have all kinds of different things really really proud of our family and the work that you've done it's just amazing some days they start off by looking families in then following homes for those children that have us fall out for the day I think some of you do lunch coverage some of you are helping the nurse make calls what am I missing yeah the Parent-Teacher conferences open houses yeah absolutely so helping in the class that students get that extra support as well so it really has been an amazing um the other thing that we have is the Danvers family resource guide that will be going out via parent Square to all of our parents and then later down the road we'll

076get it out and pay for copies tell our families this is all kinds of resources from mental health to who's at what school to what Recreation opportunities we have in the community Etc et cetera et cetera to really comprehensive so I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the fun we had this summer so I have to say that we ran an exceptional well-run both 21 Century Learning Program in a sensational program we used a lot of our Community Partners so our Sensational kids that were there got to spend an entire week in New Prime Farm education center learning about what that was um and then we also had a camping day so you'll see that kids are actually marshmallows there and the bottom spot I believe that is one of the teachers

077campers and trucks and his dog and they set up tents we do use those Scholastic lip curriculum with um curriculum and so they're reading during the summer they're doing art all different types of things um the 21st century wrapped around our summer school so famous send their children to a part-time summer school program and then have Care on the afternoon for that as well we built Gardens this summer all kinds of fun things with the Summer with the kids for the summer and it's not just the students but of his families we had families programs going on as well so in Sensational we had 140 and we've had about 220 of the 20 percent yeah other ways that we're supporting families we have a Stop and Shop Foundation that I think I mentioned this last

078year funded our schools thirty thousand dollars for gift cards to our pantries to be able to buy supplies and stuff through and food through Stop and Shop at their food pantry so hard to surviving the other day and then in order to get children quickly in school we go through the registration process at the face Center and then they go to make a Clinic appointment and the clinics are still backed up that it's two to three more weeks or longer so we've partnered with ritual DNA and we see about 15 kids every other week so we're processing 30 more children to get into so this has been one of our our best programs so this started as a Luke inkling in my mind in a couple of people's minds years ago when we flipped to

079Google learning and we realized that there's needed help families needed help how do you access powerschoolers parent square and all of those different pieces we had the advantage of using some of the parent maps to Harvard great absolute wonderful people are now Sam and you ping came on as students as part of their project and movie Corporation funded and we have this absolute wonderful curriculum so I'm going to turn this part over to Grace for Grace to tell you all about new prompts and where this has gone started out really slow and then all of a sudden boom we got hit with wonderful registrations superintendent just come out and met our families yeah so thank you and it's been a whirlwind song in the in the best way testing oh my gosh so it's been

080such a whirlwind summer in the best way um we late and September was here and we thought okay the school Year's starting it's gonna slow down a bit and I don't know where that came from but so as Ann said the promise kind of started as this idea and uh we got together with the Harvard students and before I knew it we have a full presentation so we meet we met with our first group in July we piloted the program in July we then piloted the second round in August and what we found were that families were just ready they were ready to come and sit with us ask their questions and so we brought them in we met here at Danbury High School and we gave them a crash course into everything Danbury public

081schools we wanted them to walk away with um less questions less doubts and feeling confident and supporting their students and so we we went ahead and put together 17 models I have them listed in front of me so I'm just going to look down for a second welcome to DPS is them meeting you meeting the cabinet extended cabinet and board members uh connecting with their school and a bit more about school safety so they they had a full listing of all the schools as well as had an idea of just what school safety was and what that looked like for them connecting with their family liaison which is where they just were able to find their person at their school uh to connect with School attendance Health policies technology which was such a big module

082we sat with families we taught them how to use and are still teaching them how to use everything from Google Classroom PowerSchool parents where Naviance Schoology for some parents we created email addresses with them we showed them how to charge laptops you know we really took our time around this model because we hurt our families when we survey families in March and April when we were first putting this program together that piece the technology piece is one of the biggest areas that families just needed that support with so we took our time with this module uh and so we we rolled out technology on day two in the morning and then Extended Learning Program was next Transportation meals social emotional learning so we explain what it is for some and then explain what that looks

083like in their child's classroom special education Community Resources parent and Community leadership opportunities life beyond High School where we talk about the Career Academy career opportunities for them here at DPS and then we wrap up with supporting your student at home which is our transitional module to module two that's being built out now which will be full curriculum guides for every grade K through 12 in every subject in Spanish English and Portuguese right now this the whole program is offered in all three languages in person and I'm hoping in October we can also offer Zoom option for our families that that's a bit more convenient so one thing that that we learned first like I said families are ready they want to come back in the schools they want to engage oh we give them

084that opportunity they come they come with their children they come with their questions and um you know like I said they're they're ready to get in there with us we have seen a total of 675 families from July until now yes that was my reaction immediately when I when I look at that and that is also including our returning families because what happened was we came at at the council I had the the opportunity to share a little bit about the program and principals jumped on it I have emails called same day told me I want this in my school during my open house so we were able to condense the program a bit for returning families take out that information that they they already knew update some information and go into the schools and

085so we've been to Rogers Park South Street uh we're scheduled for Ellsworth for AIS for almost every school now which is amazing so we've seen that many families over just a few months and 97 of our families that we survey we surveyed all of our families but 97 of them said they walked away feeling more confident and competent to support their student which I was just absolutely mind-blowing and that is across all three languages English Spanish and Portuguese we also offered same day downloads for all of these Technologies so the trainers Liaisons who attended parent leaders volunteers who are also behind me um that came in ready to walk parents through the downloading process of troubleshoot when they could or go ahead and give it to myself or the data team to escalate on which

086was really a groundbreaker for families they walked away with kind of that piece already taken care of for them so they felt more confident starting that that school year we also had many same day sign ups for parent C parents supporting educational excellence and our pep program people empowering people which I think is coming up in a minute so that that's right thank you very good and we'll share about you um empowering people and I have the graduates of people empowering people that are here stand up so this was a great class many of our Liaisons took the course and out of this course they're all responsible um do something in the community so many of them volunteered to become trained to teach the new promise program along with all of our Liaisons we've had

087that training as well we have a program alone no more we're working with the Danbury Senior Citizen Center to uh use that to work with that program and join together with that program to make sure our seniors are all safe so my cup is a support group for stay-at-home moms they're all working on the organic community garden so thank you to our parents see and our Tech graduates it's the work that right right along really quickly of course we had our parents supporting um educational Excellency both of these programs will run again can't speak our currency is in January and that begins in English Spanish English Spanish and fortunately I'm very proud to be able to offer all of our leadership courses in three languages if Yukon gave us the rights to get translated into

088many of you came to well-attended by our families we graduated 32 um students from our School Readiness program and now we are including students each a new Osborne hammocks building and the space that we haven't had a street before slots we moved from 56 to 85 spots for the Denver public school our next one we've done a lot of different professional development with our families and with our staff before school started so that was a very important interesting and um movies part of our professional development is and that's it so I know I like flew through but it's been um quite as gray said the world with um and but it's been wonderful you know when our families um last Thursday night with an open house for our School Readiness family I had parents of

089tears and they have beautiful the building looks they were all fall just didn't go off over the building warring is our family educator that actually helps all those families integrate in Ingrid New York is our director and but I have to this is the group that's really making it happen whether their family Liaisons or folks that have taken the different trainings you're there you're there to help our families [Applause] thank you Lord I remember when we were sitting here talking about the Edge specs for the Osborne so I guess it was please yeah like like you said like Kevin said the building is just amazing just absolutely basic families deserves we're spaced out principles are now using it for meetings during the day so it's great to me so come and see us and thank

090you one question let's talk about first thank you very much it was a wonderful presentation I go to Staples and they ask for contribution to a school box do we participate in that we were one of the ones that were chosen last year and this year we were able to work with many other community organizations to have those school supplies um from Partners in favor and partners outside of delivery to ensure that students surrounding districts thank you back to me gracefully and thank you so much um you guys love to awfully shy tonight but every meeting I've been with you you were not shy School website update and a lot of other updates to provide helping focused ones and initiatives yeah so I'm just gonna Dive Right In because I know we still have a

091few people so this process began back in January I believe it was right around February is when this real phase will begin everything from trying to understand what the website was what we had in the old blood what needed to come over now we moved into phase two which was actually figuring out what it was going to look like and we all know what the bullet point looks like um in just a second but we wanted to have a really quick aesthetic and we wanted to get some branding guidelines and Scholars and then phase three have to really have the site development and that was what was really taking the focus of time is we wanted to make sure that the fireframes were correct the pages came out the way we wanted them to the

092information was put in properly we didn't have broken Pages we didn't have text running off the sides were different and all that kind of stuff and now we are finally entering stage four so um if you go one uh just wanted to show the two different timelines here because the one on the right which is kind of hard to read that was the timeline Lumi had showed us back in February and while the dates are shifted a little bit you can see that the September 30th to 20th approval we are actually in that window for a project of this scale um in a time of worker labor shortages and all kinds of other challenges um it really is a I'm just so impressed that the team at Lumi but also our folks here have been

093able to get this thing ready to go in right on the schedule um so I just want to give a shout out to Ann her team Grace our communications director Vivian Santos um hi Katina RIT director um really just pushed hard on getting these guys with these guidelines on these deadlines um met and they were like every two weeks it was like here's five more pages proof these Pages turn it around get it back here's five more turn it around get it back so it was really Young's work that got us here so um let's go to the whole program so everybody knows this one um I I compared it I think once to the Las Vegas Strip it's hard to figure out where to look and it's just a little bit cluttered it's hard

094to figure out where things go um but without further Ado uh let's click onto the new home here we are if you can shrink it down maybe give it a control negative and scroll down a little bit right there right there so this will be your new aesthetic and we are in that Final Phase of approvals now we have another week where we're going to go through home the information make sure things are accurate make sure we have the right locations on the board meetings and all these little fine points that we're going to be going through uh we already did a training for central office department so each department can go in and look at their specific right um You can see this one has so this is a scroll page we have the

095ability to change the setting right now there's only the two top stories on there for requirements uh we have the ability to make it an automatic scroll so it'll pass Vivian's going to be out and about the school is taking fresh updated pictures that will be uploading to the site we actually have a photographer coming in a few times the big banner features we have a whole bunch of quick quick links here that um found some click on if they're just looking for some um if you go down a little bit we've already gotten strategic plan loaded in here in anticipation of what we're coming be having and then we have a bunch of calendar dates that will be popping up and automatic news stories will populate on this whole page so if you go

096up to the top again so if you see these navigations in the white bar at the top you can roll over them you can also click on them go to a page that has that menu but I want to go to the district one districts and if you click on Board of Education and if you just scroll down to everybody's name will be there with the email address and I didn't have a picture of the current board so I was hoping we could all hang up for a minute afterwards and take a picture and load it up there so it's up there when we launched it next week and then down the district side you can see that those are all um just all the quick links that we have from news you know security

097you know documents about in the case of native reach and have everything that's right there for you really excited to have this launch and virtual face of Danvers you know and I can think it's appropriate that we have we're talking about the website right after dance presentation basically because we think about just the first thing people see when they encounter Danbury public schools and in the physical space right it's now it's Ellsworth Annex and if you're ever over at Cottage you know it was really proud afternoon especially during like heat registration times they've been kind of sitting on the curb like you know out on that driveway it's just really it was a very challenging space to have a lot of people through the new annex I mean just everything from you know the way

098it's designed and also the way just the chairs have been set up the way the desks are organized there's actually the opportunity by the parent wants to have a confidence conversation about their child and talk about some of their challenges process so all of that is just much more streamlined then they can go back and then they can have their have their love testing or any of the other evaluations done it's all private space doesn't feel like they're trying to hide behind little you know cubicle dividers and it's just it's such a great first thing for people to encounter when they come into register um and then of course this is the virtual thing they see [Music] their kids it's going to be a nice little aesthetic and be more importantly easy to navigate so

099be able to find what they need an operation and find your school yeah sure thank you I didn't get it to say something to him before when I started on the board people say when to what to want you to OK her after when I was on board um but what what you've done from when you first started with this was stuff like that it's just it's just no not as much attention as I like to but I've seen it grow and just thank you to everybody um [Music] but it looks nice and clean see that we have a question about in terms of the um but if you can provide an update so there was a win there was a little bit of flexibility on the delivery date it was really dependent on how

100how much dampness was underneath that floor when they got under there best case scenario's been done by the end of September they got under that floor and they found out um so take that in combination with a human outdoor temperature they had to go and bring in this massive like truck trailer size humidifier and then they literally pumped it so it would dehumidify and help Drive the floor that lasted for about a week and a half everything went to plan and they actually started laying the new Maple floor we improved the designs floor uh there's a few different parts that come with laying the floor um they have to block on it and do the painting and everything but we're still expecting an October 15th 15th grade level thank you um deductible for it John

101when you provide some clarity for us last week I met with the assistant Finance director at City Hall to discuss that he asked if we make a special request in other words don't not to make that part of a regular cash flow that we get from the city you wanted to treat it individually we talk about how to do that Monday of this week sent it over to him to process so we're expecting the reimbursement check of 250 000 of that same amount yeah against the mirror the 1000 degree graduate community so I will try to be concise um so um all of the items that are under are tied together first start by positioning that all of the work really has been made possible in the last couple of funding from the bar Grant

102we did in fact receive another award this summer the one that we applied for we did receive that in July and that was a little over 500 something thousand dollars we had a little bit of carryover from the last year and so um that is part of the money that is used to to fund some of the planning on the transformation works for the high school which includes torture The Graduate work which includes having a large management system to integrate towards of The Graduate track qualities and characteristics it's all part of sort of the larger plan so we've been very fortunate about although sort of briefly through a few notes to sort of explain where we are with some of those items and um you know certainly there'll be more opportunities across the year to

103go to go more deeply into some of these things so um as you remember and for those who are new and audience we did already develop a Pog Continuum for grade 612 and I will just show you a little bit about a little bit of what that looks like under the link here some folks saw this a little bit more in detail when it was presented in a curriculum meeting we now have an internal site that we're working from that has the portion of the graduate attributes that has all of the middle school and high school outcomes identified definitions um and the various categories so for example uh Ken if you want to click on outcomes Middle School for advocates that link will now take us to uh more visually friendly rubric that describes the

104different levels of achievement from exploring progressing achieving and consciously pursuing and then the language within is what we're using to kind of guide conversations and to start to think about how do we encourage these practices and skills in the classroom and how do we build activities to support um students even in deepening knowledge their visions some of these areas and so can people go back up to this part of the the work group we'll skip over High School outcomes and achievement and experiments and action for a second our top of the right thank you for a second and so when we got to the end of the year as we were working through this rubric we had a group of teachers that we enticed to come play with us on how to actually Implement some

105of these things and just begin conversations so um we had a small group of long to kind of take some risks and to have some very honest conversations about what they thought about the rubric and how they think the class of what that could look like in the current courses and so I'm not going to go into all the different experiments is what we call them but Ken if you want to just click on and I won't go into all the personal Reflections because I don't want to put them out there as they were very vulnerable in the group to explore so if you want yes number five if you want to scroll down uh you can click on see episode number two right there lower left just click on number five for an example

106just a and these are detailed these are layered there's lots of information to their planning bathroom and so don't click on that but if you go down to where it says we observed and these are some of those collections that we got back students enjoyed working together and were more opt to share when they knew they were being assessed on collaboration and not just a finished product so we heard a lot over and over again that it changed the dynamic of the conversation worked um with each other and or you know in the way that they had worked previously independently so they saw it as a different level what we learned the visuals made it a lot easier to understand the attributes of students Point download in other lessons that followed um and made those

107connections with more collaborator and if you just go to number 15 13. um just just one more idea if I can go on and on and just scroll up a little bit higher I just want to get down to the these are students who worked differently when you apply a new rubric even if the lesson didn't change very much so the added layer of the rubric again students interacted um changed even though the lesson contest was relatively the same so it with that conversation that was broken that was powerful and applying the PhD students practices will result in a change in student performance so he could but um over and over again we have these very versions of um these little points of life that we're starting to see in the way that students were

108driving with their teachers um the teachers all commented that we way more time with this we need to dive deep into this we need to expand our understanding of this um we needed to front load more understanding of this with the students if they started in ninth grade they did the longer scene so so we really are at just the beginning of the war get some involved so the portrait of The Graduate and the bottling with the bar Foundation support as part of that our collaborative work with them and debriefing on them about the processes that we've been in one of the reasons we won the grant is because we with our warnings and our research pitched the idea of working with eight teachers going to the next level more deeply more intensely over the

109course of the entire year this year as opposed to just experimenting towards the end um and to to dive into standard-based learning and to dig into a series of professional development opportunities um so I'm going to have you just skip to the next slide for a second I can just look at standard space we have the length of the top thanks so we have a we have a scope of work that we've designed with future design school who we've introduced to you in the past to dig into the standards-based work and how to incorporate the Portugal and graduate attributes into the current classes and courses that we that we have that's okay and you can go back and um we'll have to go back one more slide thanks um and so they're going to partner

110with us to support these eight teachers and engines and professional learnings across the year and again that small pod will start to grow as we build capacity we start to scale from this um we do intend on developing the KING5 Continuum and it's also part of the work um we just created a scope of work plan with FBS that included no less than 40 meetings um for that work and that's just our meetings with them with our district leaders and we'll bring on some Elementary principles to the Target Network as well um so that will hopefully start probably in late October we're waiting for the year to get off the ground we've got a lot of the mission is happening right now to share with everybody and then a lot of this has also to

111do with the students go for that work you know it's been a Hot Topic lately about how that's going um Instagram has been a massive undertaking um and so we'll talk about that but basically ideas to use schoology because it is a learning management system to track student progress over time and it's a very tricky thing to do when you're creating a non-graded system of giving feedback to students so that happens to a formal reflection feedback and portfolio type work which we're learning how to customize and schoology to be able to create a continuous where our students are developing along it's not a work that a lot of folks are digging into because it's very complicated and that's one of the reasons my bar loves us because we're willing to take that on and that's

112the kind of work that work to fund and that's the kind of work that they see have a free greater outcomes for kids when you're getting that type of feedback or when they're working in these manners with these corporations with these characteristics in a well-developed world um um because we talked a little bit about the standard space PD we're also as part of our borrower um we're committed to a something called a spring Point visit spring Point visit is really about um us pushing ourselves on something called the indicators of school quality and indicators of school quality are really about doing a self-assessment and pushing ourselves around our mission our positive School of climate and culture um but for the for this rant particularly emphasis is on rigorous and purposeful learning experiences and academic systems

113our instructional model our curriculum standards systems to support strong instruction in our graduate graduation Pathways how we Empower close secondary choices our College and Career learning sequences our enrichment experiences and our counseling and how proud of all that supported so we will have a visit with this group that will come in and they will help us do a self-analysis on where we are and then there's coaching sessions along the way and there are something called the communities of practice um that will engage with other school districts across the country who are also rewarded the bar Grant and they're also some work in this it's very exciting stuff um it's a lot of work um but we have a great team that's very committed and we're looking for filing that you teachers who want to participate

114with us this year and now as part of the bar Grant obviously we are continuing to work on the academy development we won't click on that link tonight because that's really just the graphic that you've been circulating so tonight but ongoing work with that and the development of that are about some of the some site visits participating in site visits with some of these Community practices um and in consultation with the national Career College Coalition there are things called Insight on site those are on-site visits and that are highly facilitated to help tease out some of the problems and practice that we'll encounter as field of Academy and then we have something called a Career Academy leadership collaborative and so we're going to be sending out our assistant principals to some of these sites and

115small learning teams and in between they'll have facilitated professional development between visits so it's not just go out to visit and come back and you do nothing with it there's a lot of homework in between the leadership work that um and then we have a pathway leader in elective development plan which will identify pathway leaders at different High School to start to develop Collective curriculum and to become Liaisons also to work with work that are premiering those two things um and we're also looking uh as part of this work we've done some research on how to expand college credit offerings um just a little bit of a highlight in that we started researching Cambridge International which is if you've ever heard of AP schools IB schools and there's favorite schools well Cambridge is not super

116popular in Connecticut it's mostly because our college and universities offer college credit yet in that area and our state has not recognized those courses for the accountability of this however we believe we're working with um Bernstein who's the former um former Regional president of the College Board who now works for Cambridge to partner with the state and our area universities to talk about getting Cambridge to be considered um in the model similar to IB and AP um Cambridge is looking for their first school in Connecticut and I'm looking for elective and high quality curriculum to help fill some of these unique areas that we have in high school and Cambridge has very unique electives that AP and ID and some of these other places do not have so we're very interested in partnering with them

117and it's free for the first five years because they are trying to gain Partners it works more than that I'll update you and see how it goes more to find that and I already mentioned about the monthly coaching sessions okay the one you're all I'm waiting for it's changing everyone's lives right now uh including one um so that is Schoology so um as you know if you have a child in the school system your child has changed over from Google Classroom to schoology and the big question is why the heck would we do that and things were going just slow um and so I just want to be clear that when we talk about the different systems and what we we knew heading into coming folks pandemic we weren't going back to paper pen and

118we were moving Direction deals for our students in 21st century skills and to be especially with the academy coming that we're going to need a real possibility management system Google Classroom is not a true learning management system it's a Google tool so they are all of those classrooms that are out there that we've created our little Islands by themselves that operate as little independent defense with the teacher and the student when a uh anyone can get invited to to those classes by having um it's actually not super secure actually when you think about it so um that's one that's one issue the second issue is that schoology is works with PowerSchool and integrates integrates with our Gradebook it integrates with navient um with all the systems that we have it's designed to for that integration

119and pass back and pass through past over time on our building to collect data to see where students are over a period of time in those classes because we can't do that with Google classroom um so we have a Litany of reasons most of them on the back end technology side along with reporting and monitoring um as to why we there are a few big ones out there schoology canva Blackboard that you know and those are kind of widely used ones as schoology or how many 20 million users in the United States it's a pretty reputable program um but it's a huge implementation shift in Danbury and it's one that's going to take some time and similar to when we shipped it to Google classroom in the middle of the night um and all the

120angst around that and how do we do this and I don't know how to connect and how do I get to my knee um this this tube shall be a process over time that we're going to have to work through and you know we have started to collect in surveys and information from the teachers what are the apps that you are used to using that are not working correctly right now please let us know and we're solely making a way at that information we've had things for example because it is more secure um feedback a little bit a teacher could download and add any Google app that they wanted to into their classroom I want to use this app I want to bring this in it was it was very seamless I didn't need to

121ask anybody permission to do any of that I just added it in there and the Google tools are wonderful so so we're all used to using those um with schoology there has to be an association so um we have to say I want you to talk to Peridot I want you to talk to Edmodo I want you to talk to Desmos and so as we've loaded several several of those applications in um all the ones that we know teachers like some of those apps rely on other third-party apps to deliver their content and so some of those aren't working in some cases and so it's a matter of take because we have uh security Lockers in our system that don't recognize the website from another third-party app because we didn't form that relationship so we

122one by one as those come in and we start to work through those um those email addresses and those third credit apps get added to the list and voila things open up so um we're going been at this for a couple of weeks and you know it's a it's such an implementation that you know once you flip the switch on and kids have their courses you gotta you gotta roll and you gotta real fast card and you got to work through it so um for the most part you know teachers I think are missing sort of the ease of the of the uh fluency that they had with Google Classroom um you know my folders were here and now over here or you know for students I submitted an assignment you know where did it

123go I can't see it um I'm trying to sync my grades it didn't show up well there's a setting in the background in your in your Gradebook that you haven't quite set yet let me show you how to do that so that's going to take some time um and I know um the last part about that type uses the parent side of things and so when I mentioned about the course codes that anyone can can join schoology is a little bit different in the sense that in our back end in our in our student information system has to have to hear an email address in order to have access to that to that course and so we're still working on building those associations just because you have an email in the system in a schoology

124doesn't mean that they talk to and so our director of technology is going to be working on that and she thinks it'll take about another week or so to get that up and running and then we'll push out the appearance this is how you can make sure that you see your students of course from your um certainly they can look on to their students courses right now with them but having the parent side of things is really what folks want and uh put into order to push that out to make it make sense you can't push that out until that Association is safe lots of frustrated parents strikes a lot here so um the tool itself is very sophisticated it's a highly reputable uh program um it what we're doing with it now are very

125basic functions you know assignments posting posting content organizing folders um and but the level of depth and sophistication include in school with G is tremendous which is why to it and we'll get there um but we you know we have limited amount of staff we do not have technology coaches Norwalk has seven so we have you know Gina Jasmine you have myself we've had a couple of teachers that we have on time she's actually schooled up that are helping us out have been amazing Rachel Saunders and Amanda Peterson huge shout out because they're helping join after school um so we're working through it um but there will be it's a learning curve for sure it's a learning curve for all of us so but we will get there and we're going to collect more information

126with information that we're collecting now and then we have information that we'll collect again in eight weeks to see that the number of technical issues come as a little bit more information in the meantime we have several schoology sessions that we're going to be running and support sessions uh for folks who need them but even internally with our leadership staff want to teach your skin for example you help the kids out as much as they wanted was their school they're still put their folders together so it's going to take a little bit of time just a quick question about that um this schoology as a as an entity offer any kind of training or PD for educators or oh yes so yeah um so this started way back last year so we started uh we

127probably had probably already or 40 maybe 50 integration meetings so very Tech heavy meetings about settings for Missions passwords all that stuff um early on last year and then once we got to a certain open up the courses we developed the schoology super youth group so we invited folks who were generally technologically proficient to come in and get Advanced Training so let's get this started and then try to work through what they had so that helped us kind of prepare how do we roll this out to our staff so they were kind of our Front Runners explorers and this they were great to work with we didn't have a full five Training until May 17th during the department uh Department day so we had a full PD day for that um on that and then

128we offered different options for flexibilities that you can either do your training asynchronously um where you could do a live person and then you offered some support about 100 Preschool teachers participated in the live sessions and then a lot of folks before they synchronous they said um but everybody agreed that you know you really don't know schoology you really can't know it until you start using it so you can have a couple of hours of training for the basic stuff it's really not really fluency moving around the environment it's kind of like when you go to the grocery store and they've done a reset and store and all of a sudden it like it takes you forever to find you know all your all your items are there and you just they're in different places

129and it takes you time to figure them out um we did a school getting started live sessions we ended rolling sessions from 2 30 to 4 30 um on several dates um through the end of the school year and then uh more AC furnace training that we offered that we should accept for another group and then um getting started live session we did run another session August 26th we had uh 10 schoology professionals leading um those sessions and we had tons of teachers all the new teachers especially had to be trained so now these are additional sessions that we've designed internally um for after school so on a voluntary basis folks can drop in and learn more about organization or collaborating or how to get their apps to start working um how to create buttons

130that that kind of put things together for them in succinct ways to get kind of shortcuts on how to build your assignments great books and so on so um it's just it is going to take time it is a process and um you know we're all going through it right now um will you be sharing the flow chart or future changes from the setup changes to Schoology you know the approval process for the courses taking away courses programs to change to change School allergy set up so so the courses so most of the courses are our teachers access most of their course materials in Google folders that they've been working out of so curriculum resources tax sets collections leasing guides our improval holders Google Google tools works with schoology so they there's no they're still

131accessing the same content that they have been accessing Friday but it's now built into a course taking away some weights is there a process that you want that up or they just we have curriculum methods that the teachers use um that that has been established and over time when there are edits or changes or improvements that we make some of them are small like I think this is a better um selection for for this standard we'd like to do this activity some teachers this year will be adding in ways to increase collaboration and communication and they'll build certain components in and we'll have those conversations department meetings and so it's really about the standards so the standards don't change um and that those are those are those are things so those are kind of the

132non-negotiables that we have across the school system so we have standards in almost every content area now uh minus some electives that are a little um you know unique course yeah the teachers don't bring on a new course unless unless it is right English social studies like um I decided I'm a teacher and I want to change where I want to add a new course it doesn't it doesn't happen that way teachers teachers have an assigned no that's what I mean the students um in the roster of students well I'm talking about random course never been taught before how does it get out of school so ninth grade English is ninth grade English 10th grade English is 10th grade English all the teachers are teaching the same course what you're talking about the academy yeah

133I understand I understand what you're saying yes so so we have a something called The Brick here so when we have a brand new course okay we will have um content developed around the standards related to that course but in a in a consistent manner and we're going to be working with some more industry professionals to help with the content pieces so for example um if I if we don't have a lot of folks internally who understand about cyber security for example so we would partner with someone in the industry on cyber security to talk about the big ticket items in in that um and then that we would use some of our practical standards that we have some more iste standards these are Science and Technology standards um there could be some Ela standards

134in there for writing and we would blend those in with the course conference to develop an elective that leads to verse one to prepare kids technology career to that develops all the other academic skills I will look at those sure the portrait of The Graduate so the rubric that we had up before we talk about Innovation and you talk about collaboration and we talk about um that students make other students feel welcome that those for those types of areas on the porch of The Graduate we're going to give we're going to give you feedback on that this is this is let me link let me talk you through kind of how I think we did with this let's talk about how you work in that a lot of this stuff also plays into the way

135um you know the soft skills that we want to see students have and so we're not going to say Michelle you know you got an era D in collaboration you're about to call that reader it's really um you know what you're exploring in this area and we want to focus in on how we're going to get you to progressing and these are the things you need you need to do to get there let's have that conversation we still have traditional phrase until traditional grades as in ABCD we have numerical grades our colleges recognize cdcd and numerical grades as well however standard space rating it also gets introduced with uh along these lines so one of the things that we'd like to see more of is that you can get an A Michelle in a class

136because you're raising your hand you're answering all the questions you turn in all your homework um and uh you you go for every extra credit that that teacher throws out there but when I give you an assessment maybe you're maybe you score a different number and so the A and all those extra credit do couldn't actually be masking where your true skill lies and of course with your ability to do everything or to perform on whether it's math assessment whatever so standard space grading it develops achievement indicators where you look at grade levels you look at levels of achievement for us and you are assessing only on those areas that you're giving students feedback volume three it doesn't negate traditional rating but it's in addition to to help provide more um real pure information about

137where students fall and they're learning in conjunction with the grade then basically yeah that's what we're working how how to learn how to do because there's not a lot of folks that are that have done it it's complicated right so and it's in some cases it's extra work so for this experiment that we're running with the bar Foundation teachers are going to keep two great books and so we have to get volunteers who are going to want to do that to the benefits of maintaining back in that area so that kids are getting model to be back in addition to traditional race program is available yeah so I presented we presented the portrait of The Graduate um Continuum a few times and we've made that available and that's that is a internal website that we

138created to house some of the feedback that keep that inside with the teachers who volunteer to work with us so their their personal Reflections are in there which is why it's not external well they're learning to you know be vulnerable and take academic risks and conventional until then oh yeah just going to start off by reminding the rewards where we ended last year the last board meeting about really kind of the state of our Budget moving forward to the 23-24 school year later and at that time we part of our presentation that evening we talked about the shortfall um and we addressed that Gap by escalating I'm Sorry by accelerating our Essa funding plan so we have 11 million plus a million dollars to help build that Gap that we have talked about but this

139also means next school year 23 24. it means with that could be a series we've talked about a couple of different scenarios on how we've entitled to kind of manage and recommend s and so we had some initial thoughts and we'll discussion to John you can just kind of walk us through some of this stuff what we're looking to do is is we need a called a wider lens earlier in the process specialist traditionally as we've put together school projects for my conversation for example with a middle school principal might just be about that middle school and what they plan to do the following year and it's it's primaria has been in all places of a central office driven process in which we then bring you the superintendent's proposed budget um the end of December

140early January to look at uh but with the conditions as Kevin described it's we want to take advantage of really of all the good Minds we have and all the good experience we have here in the district and get their advice early not just on their own areas of responsibility but as the entire district and are getting the what we think will be the very best recommendations uh together when we present the budget that's the objective the advisory committee uh to the superintendent office personnel some community members the board member to have someone from our teacher race Elementary secondary certainly some representation from Nea and the SAA and perhaps among our labor groups after at table so that everyone we share with them the priorities for the district relative to our non-star representative EOG and

141our vision and Mission and we also kind of Identify some additional guardrails provide an opportunity for them to talk and talk amongst themselves and provide a recommendation for the superintendents and that would be one of probably one of many recommendations meeting of the year to share some of our initial did not know him back with it buendancies advisory laughs foreign so my only feedback to that be that clear expectations are that from the beginning to the advisory committee that is strictly an advisory to the superintendent and the ultimate decisions why would this foreign okay moving on to information um I threw the um standing committee meeting schedule in there just so you know that that's communicated you know out to the public as well this was sent earlier to board members from Tara um it's

142nothing Seven Stone but it's just a way to streamline the meetings we've had rougher number of meetings the past few years more than ever we've got a lot of things very busy board especially with budget and our health and Facilities and those committees so if there's any you know anything that comes up in the way of you know hey I want to talk about you know can you throw this on an agenda I'm certainly open to um discussion topics you know and and for the regular meetings as well that is that there are the cave education law summaries oh sure go ahead I'd like to just make a career I would like working with Community once a month I think there's been a lot of time here on curriculum and the development clearly so I

143see that it's only I think three times here I would like be considered based on what would be actually all the information thank you and just to clarify all of our committee meetings meet four four times per year um except for our finance which means monthly and I think our sites and Facilities schedule for eign but certainly there's an agenda topic that you'd like to see at a regular meeting to discuss curriculum just now we touched upon it um it'll I'm sure it'll come up regularly at our regular meetings um sure yeah so I have forgot to mention it earlier on the weekend committed to quarterly updates for po supports undergraduate updates so this evening two years and more time before I'm sorry I can kind of rush through that so is there any other

144feedback or committees so it is yes instead of saying okay great you just confirmed of course Rachel what the procedure is if you know like a chair of a committee wants to bring another meeting forward what would be the protocol well it's not scheduled um great question um I think you know um bring it forward to everything you and I or that that lays on the cabinet liaison how would you like to handle that probably maybe a discussion with the committee board so oftentimes there's a meeting with the liaison on there requests before folks in there that fall on that Zoom meeting to walk out with their calendars thank you for unlocking it we were trying to provide time and provide them up all right Wednesday would just be a challenge all right um we

145have I would say midday September 22nd yes it is the same date as the great plane knowing all of that information is in there from my report I don't have in addition to all of our community we've got negotiations we have administrative interviews going on expulsion hearings the city building committing that the Career Academy task force in that last week we feel meetings are beginning um and then trainings and we have a workshop next week that I'm not next week in two weeks and I'm right before our next regular meeting um I did want to mention DHS Geo meeting Theresa this next Wednesday evening through our party just be dealing as well that is in person um there's a cave parliamentary procedures webinar on Wednesday September 8th at noon I believe that's free it's always

146a good Refresher um and then the cave past convention November 18th 19th uh Cara sent out information that's it for me third board sure [Music] little certainly don't fall down but we heard about getting harder to coordination website in Florida there's not one thing about savings security and I think we're all about that we've had a long time I would suggest that we do a survey with batteries and staff and how they feel about their school receive secure how they feel about the young government but you know I could see something in this meeting you know see well just say we haven't seen it because he came something of course finally locked out ABC's and stuff like that because he was a lot of information here 14 different topics safe secure environment for multiple fog

147education I think that I'm not saying we don't care about it I think it's just kind of an afternoon so that's my thumb and something else cake just want to say a quick thank you to Mr salastrini and Mr Donovan for the athletic Connecticut thank you from that thank you so much um thank you and how the backup three days and minutes [Music] all the way out okay just not having that man period thank you and a thank you yeah thanks staff ing job handling it is moving on to our executive session executive session potential times of agreement with the custodians maintenance and drivers in terms of one year contract extensions for Paris with possible action and public possession all those in favor I um