001[Music] good evening everyone so let me start off we have a number of recognitions we'd like to talk about this evening and let me just before we get started we have three very important people i'd like to serve as the people who's going to introduce them um one miss dana perez we'd like to recognize this evening for middle school assistant principal of the year um please don't stand up you have to do anything the next group we would like to recognize and that is jill russell better on behalf of all of our music teachers with another music education award that she's going to talk about shortly and then of course the voice for change award and we're going to ask mr dan donovan to help us recognize the teacher and many students who have been
002awarded by not only a commission of education but also the students of connecticut and then dr casamaro i'm going to ask to recognize jill russell so if we can start with our wonderful principle in our own right dr christie zelita and to come up in girls would you mind switching place with dr zelita and um [Music] but also the teachers students and staff in the building earlier this year i was thrilled to be able to nominate ms perez and was over the moon when i heard that she had been selected to represent throughout the entire state of connecticut the middle level as this difference goal of the year when i was filling out the nomination application packet i was asked to reflect on the ways in which data helped influence and shape aspects of the
003school with respect to our school's culture and the manner by which she fosters well-being and safety so students and adults learn and interact productively i shared how she was instrumental in helping us transition the building toward a more restorative approach to discipline that plagued the school prior to our starting as the administrative team four years ago she had experience in training in positive behavioral interventions and support for pbis and together we attended restorative practices training in the summer we worked to develop a year-long professional development plan and for the school and to this day continue to build the capacity of our staff and align our work and decisions to support this approach utilizing her previous training she also began a school climate transformation group that met to discuss our school-wide information system swiss the discipline
004referral data along with our student and staff surveys she facilitated the group's development of our building-wide expectations and in an effort to address the disparities that existed in our discipline practices this work prior to co-closure we dramatically decreased the number of students being suspended improve the manner in which teachers reacted to situations with students and received positive feedback from parents and the community for the changes we are going to get back to that someday i think we all are working towards that once we get out of this current situation when reflecting on mount dana embeds the needs of teacher excuse me the needs of each student as a guiding value to inform organizational decision making i share how this person works closely with me to compile a team of administrators from both the building and
005the district levels to complete a deep dive into our english language students language proficiency data she also as a primary evaluator for our esl bilingual teachers conducted observations and teaching practices and found that many were slowing the pace down not asking higher order thinking questions these observations along with the use of primary teacher-led instruction supported her hypothesis that teachers weren't holding the students to high levels of expectation she presented her findings and then took the lead on working with the department and the teachers to reimagine our new arrivals program to be more inclusive she also helped to coordinate additional sign up account training for esl and corey area teachers through our title 1 funds last year so they could better meet the needs of all of our students in their classrooms her insight and passion
006for doing what is right for all students were invaluable in making the needed changes to the program and as a side note or dissertation work at fordham is focusing on esl work when asked them to reflect on how dana leads the learning in our school so that each learner student and adult will succeed in a globally competitive society i shared how mrs perez never stops learning reflecting or pushing herself outside of her comfort zone in order to continuously improve she shares this knowledge freely and inspires others to do the same i read four books over the break because she didn't get a chance reading that and she thought i should read them one way she has put into put this into action at the building level is through our creation of instructional leadership teams multiple
007teams were created to look at math ela ell and school climate by doing so we were able to involve more teachers in the process prior to covert closures she created comprehensive year-long plans to have coverage for teachers to not only look at data but also to discuss effective teaching practices do peer observation look at student work and work as a team to develop our school improvement plan through the focus on determining the problems of practice developing plans to address them and supporting teachers as key members of these teams she helped build the capacity of both teachers and students when asked then to reflect upon how dana has empowered students and adults in our school community to assume leadership roles to promote each person's learning and well-being i shared how she has played a primary role
008in empowering students to use their voices to advocate for themselves and take active roles in their education in rogers park she compiled a group of students called the student ambassadors that act as our student liaisons with administration and panelists for various events they're even holding training for our teachers in may she facilitated a welcoming walkthrough prior to the ones we're doing right now four years ago when we first started working together as a team with the students to help us gain a student perspective we implemented many of their suggestions in addition to including teachers on our leadership team she's also been the point person at our school for our nyu teacher residency program she has helped select the mentor teachers and that we have chosen each year the two years that we've been participating and
009has been able to support not only our veteran teachers but also works very closely with our pre-service candidates most recently she has been the key facilitator in our ready for rigor plc with the bar foundation she has been collaborating with three more building teachers who are participating and they will be playing a key role as we move our school forward in our journey to become more culturally responsive i cannot say enough and you all know i can talk and that was cut down i cannot say enough about how amazing dana is and any of you that know her know that i'm not at all stretching the truth i am absolutely honored to have her as a partner in this crazy journey and we are on our way to our platinum rhythm because blue just ain't
010good so i only have one page and i would like to say thank you thank you so much um i would like to thank dr christie zalia for nominating me for this award not only for nominating me for this award but honestly seeing something in me that i didn't even see in myself when she hired me for this position four years ago um additionally i would like to thank the superintendent kevin walston along with the entire cabinet and the board of education for constantly supporting me every single day in his role as assistant principal and as an educator in the danbury public school system i would be remiss if i did not thank my family for always standing by my side even when i decided to add a non-profit to my long list of things
011that i'm already doing in my daily basis um and lastly but most importantly not least i would like to thank the rogers park community honestly while this award has my name on it it is a representation of their hard work and dedication to our students every single day the park also known as rogers to our students is a special place where we make dreams happen and all ideas even christy's ideas come to fruition as long as it's in support of our students and so this award is really more for our school than it is for myself i consider myself privileged to work at rogers park middle school considered myself honored to be a member of the danbury public school community and i'm humbled to have been given this award so thank you [Applause] one before
012we ask you to step up again to take a picture um on behalf of the cabinet in the danbury school community i want to thank you for your service and your commitment to our students to our staff and our families we we didn't need an outside group to come in and tell us how wonderful you are but i am so happy to see that you and i with this award thank you so much so we're going to come over here the highlight of your night oh we need someone with a camera that's nice so our next award and this person has been before us once before um on behalf of the danbury music community but dan barry has been named recipient of the danbury public excuse music education program honored with best communities for music
013education designation from the namm foundation and the damn foundation is the national association of music merchants and dr casamiro is going to say a couple of words about children good evening um so we do want to congratulate you jill and now this is a multiple years in a row winning the best communities in music education with the damn foundation i just want to tell everybody a little bit about some of the work that jill does in the background um jill has been relentlessly pursuing grants um how many years now probably at five minutes let's say five or six years now and what that grant does is it puts instruments into the hands of our students who otherwise would not be able to afford instruments and or lessons and so over the last five or six
014years the amount of programming that has built up around in our schools as a result of jill's efforts has been incredible and so you you see any of our programming or sometimes we do a little spotlight of your schools you'll see tons of musical programming kids playing instruments uh and in general uh bolstered music rituals and programs um that has resulted as a testimony to her leadership and the work that she's done with her team so we can't thank you enough it's no shock as to why we received more now multiple years in a row but um vh1 saved the music has been a partner uh with us um but jill's constant pursuit of the grants um and putting all the pieces in place to make this happen is one of the reasons why we've
015been awarded two years congratulations [Applause] um thank you thank you so much i truly believe this is a testament only to us as the school district in the community but also to our teachers and our students um this award this year in the survey that we took was really really based around resilience and perseverance i think we can all agree that every educator here and across the country that's exactly what we've been doing um so again i can't i can't speak highly enough about our staff and the hard work we finally made some great lists otherwise we are one of 730 uh districts nationwide to receive this and we are 27 out of 169 in connecticut we are both 27 school districts in canada to receive this as well the surveys based on our student
016demographics our facilities classroom availabilities graduation requirements budgeting etc and um and with this and with the support of the nan foundation who in turn supports the music foundation and little kids rock and spread music now and the folks that were kind enough to work with us we've been able to increase our enrollment at the instrumental level to about 1250 students this year um coming off of an interesting couple of years so that's that's a lot of little ones a lot of boys thank you parents happening in your home so um thank you thank you very much for supporting what we do and for helping us keep trying a lot and on saturdays may 21st please join us for our hooray code festival that we are finally able to just wonderful to open the doors back
017up everywhere opportunity um it's going to be from 11 support at broadway middle school here we're going to have some great ice cream as well um and we have a lot of performances we have almost all of our elementary schools are combining for choir and thank you [Applause] so and jill thanks again for promoting coded event on may 21st thank you so much last but not least an opportunity to recognize the students and the students who led them to this amazing participation statewide mr dan donovan has a couple of words for us with the teacher and his students who have won some big time serious awards at the state level thanks mr donald thank you uh your calls probably about two months ago i stood in front of you at black box and talked about
018a voice for change project that came out from the state that kevin introduced to us involved students making projects that they felt would help gamer high school so out of that we got basically 13 projects we did a all school voting on the projects and the one that won the most amount of votes and getting danbury high school students to sometimes do things as a little bit challenging maybe we had over 2 400 votes which is a huge number for us for our winning project which was the change out of the water fountains all the students felt that changing from traditional water fountains to the bottom fillers are both responsible and clean their way to do things and uh nancy come on up yeah oh that was liam sorry [Music] they won the student vote
019part of this their project and they're going to talk to you about a little bit about the process you're just going to shake your hands what you do so we presented a video to uh classmates and we created a uh you know an example of how long it takes to get water at dhs and you know provide it with the and it was a little bit confusing to our our students with high school because we went in probably like four different videos i just came in and every single day all the students made [Music] all voted for it and that was the one that won the most as equally proud of is the commissioner herself had five awards that she gave out statewide uh just five of them and we had lucky enough to have
020another group win one of those awards and what the commissioners said when we had our little watch party in the auditorium when they did this kind of live on youtube was that uh you know this was the only one out of all of them that took the staff into account they the students felt they had to give back to our staff at danville high school which was uh redoing the teacher work room a teacher worker at the high school is made up of furniture that we acquire from different places any business that's going out calls us and we run whatever the truck grab we had to come back so uh they're gonna give us each one of these is gonna win twenty thousand dollars that we can use to spend so i'm gonna invite absolutely
021adam where are you nancy come on up and matt yeah come on matt you're up here too talk a little about your project come on over so we made a video in the poster interviews he spoke about what they thought was needed in the break room such as new tables new chairs like those portable charging stations they thought that having these new devices could also go around the classroom and help them just people prepared for the day or being able to leave their house they don't have to worry about their being charged all the time they have an accident or something you can always just charge your own room you know just have things on hand [Music] see they thought they were done like hey you know now they gotta spend time with me to
022go spend money so once we get that money we're gonna be spending it around our school which is you know one of those things that daniel high school is an older building and little things like that this go a long way so we really want them i'm very thankful for what they did now the entire leader of this whole entire thing is not kevin he's not me he's miss heather lorenz come on up here miss lorenz [Applause] saying hey let's try this email from ms lorenz saying why are we trying this and i said okay let's go and since that point she's taking control of this organizing everything from the posters to the videos mr miller was instrumental in putting those videos together as well for all of us and putting that all together putting
023out a student announcement so they could have a vote like i said all the students went into flex on monday and voted for it and it was uh it was great but you can speak about how this process went thank you for everything um so yeah so um i well i prepared everything that he said before so now i now now i'm running flat on the fly again i'm surprised the classroom so essentially and i spoke to the board once before this um essentially i took the project and i scaffolded it so that our students could write public policy i mean that's essentially what our students did um they range from seniors to sophomores that you see in this class you know in my class a lot of seniors and juniors but some sophomores also
024um and they ran with it i mean they i didn't have to i brainstormed with them i helped guide them here and there you know definitely the guide on the side um but they were the ones that did everything and i mean when when mr donovan mentioned the campaign video that liam and chaplain made i am telling you like a president could have run this video it was them swimming through the ocean climbing walking through the desert until they finally got to the water station because as of right now we have four water stations in a building of 3 300 students um 3 400 students sorry it's climbing every day um and and it spoke to the students the students saw the issue they saw the issue that the students were experiencing and then the
025students saw themselves in the video that they made which just shows you that that you can put on a great campaign and you can garner the votes and win and um they both had a vision for that from the beginning and it was really impressive in addition this group maybe my most humble group and yet they won the commissioner's award all the along they said we know we got my chance students aren't going to vote for us but you know we believe in this we believe that you guys deserve better meaning as the teachers and let me tell you the teachers they are established about the fact that they won the commissioner's award um so i just once again i want to thank superintendent walston and mr donovan thank you for this opportunity not just
026for myself because i gained a lot from it but for my kids to give them the opportunity to rise up as leaders in our community and take action and know that their action matters it may be the most powerful thing we can give them as students yeah i just did that um but you know i really believe that like in my heart so thank you thank you and this guy every single question that the kids had he made himself available by email 24 7. so thank you [Music] thank you very much for the opportunity so principal donovan miss lorenz and student stanbury high school just want you to know um you've done an amazing job representing this school district our community i had the pleasure of bragging about you about three weeks ago a month
027ago when the commissioner came to visit danbury high school i reminded her that we are her favorite school and quite frankly you are the reason why so i just want to thank you please don't move um while you're standing now i want to thank i think i see some parents in the background so i want to thank you for being here this evening and blessings with your children uh one but two i want you to stand there so i can take a picture with you to send a picture to the commissioner to remind her why danbury public schools is our favorite district connecticut so thank you congratulations to all [Applause] come here a little bit more perfect [Laughter] great thank you [Applause] can you tell us where we can find these videos okay thank you
028thank you i'll make sure we have them available on the website and the board i did forget to mention there was one thing i forgot to mention there were almost 55 students participating which was the largest number in this stage which is again why the commissioner loves canberra number um hopefully maybe even more next year if she does it again which i hope she does thank you happy night there's no one signed up for public participation is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak anyone in the audience who would like to speak just saying i'll say one last time anyone in the audience like to speak moving on consent calendar bridget would you mind reading that motion please motion that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits
02922-53 and 22-5 as recommended second segmented by kate any discussion seeing none uh all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries unanimously uh moving on to uh staff representatives they all left too yeah okay i don't blame them student representatives would you like to come up there they are yes thank you thank god you guys stayed okay good evening and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for iceland on may 6th ace will administer its humanities bench market the day is event that will see students participate in grade level benchmarks to assess undergraduate driving skills during a three-hour session and is coordinated by the ace humanities department ace will be hosting prospective dha students from may 2nd to
030the 13th 20 dhs students will be coming for a one day visit to experience our program interviews with prospective students and families can take place in gym on saturday may 14th from 1 to 4 pm chase will be hosting the barbecue to celebrate our founder joe heather the day will also include activities for the kids as well as time for alumni and staff to share stories in special memories related to joe and ace experience john can speak more about that later on monday may 2nd dj jimenez and mona alaska most alaska will be a part of the welcoming school of walk room with two a students and two ace parents on may 19 the ace will host its annual wellness day presenters will be coming to aids to meet with students to discuss various careers
031in healthy living lifestyles each student will select four presenters to attend during the morning at ace topics will include culinary yoga boxing art therapy drum circles healthy relationships and mindfulness after lunch on may 19th the top floor basically will open for staff and students to participate in our school-wide renaissance fair this fair was organized by united students joanne tolls melissa alaski daniella esposito kyle charcola ashley honaker and elizabeth thank you staff and students lastly ace elected publicly publicly recognized the following student award winners andre de leon for earning the old timers association scholarship raza diaz lawrence for earning the march student of the month charger stevenson for earning the ace of spades award for harvard jacob miner for earning the ace of hearts first here in nature thank you for allowing me to share what's
032going on with our ace family down on 26 lupus avenue stay safe and remain a strong everyone thank you so much board members any questions for our students no thank you again very much thank you for coming thank you action item a mr russo would you read that motion yes i'd like to make a motion that the board accepted financial report from march 2022 exhibit 22-55 on page 15. second segmented by joe any discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed any abstention one extension motion still carries brings us to the superintendent's report thank you thank you this opportunity i'd like to start out with we have a guest in the audience this evening another one of our superstar principals in the audience and this is principal john weber
033and when john a couple of months ago i'm committed to coming in and following up and providing some more details about joe heaven day and ace and john you have the mike and thank you for joining us this evening sure thanks for having me um it was impressive seeing the the dhs students and dana and i was whispering to the two ace reps when jill came up i said that's jill that's the reason why you have instruments ace in cops and pulse music class so they didn't realize they didn't put two and two together um but they need to know that so thank you joe um so so everybody here i'm pretty sure uh knows joe knew joe probably in various capacities because if you had to talk about the different uh organizations joe was
034involved with it'd be much easier to say like which ones he wasn't involved with because it was like three in danbury and he was involved in every other organization in denver um but joe was the founding member you know founding father of ace and uh 1977 and i was asked by the news tags here what what did show give to ace like joe joe was i mean there there wouldn't be an ace without joe because it was pretty cutting edge in the you know in the mid 70s to come up and work and create an alternative program and it is it's evolved over the years but um i think the one thing that a lot of the staff do is we kind of have this question in our head when you're working with each other
035when you're working with students or with families and communities like this is how joe would have done it you know which would you have done it this way would he have said this thing um and that's that's that's kind of how i've tried to operate um so what we thought we would do last year was doing in-house joe pepin celebration joe's birthday is may 16th and so last year we did morgan in-house thing where we had a bulletin board we had quotes we had students writing letters uh to joe who students now didn't know who joe was so you have to do a lot of building the foundation of ace um and so so joe passed you know this winter uh late winter and so it kind of rekindled the idea that we really need
036to teach the kids now who joe was and why joe believed the things that he believed so we've been working on things like collecting photos and in the main hallway there's an ace timeline now that goes from 1977 up to current and the ace students are trying to decipher which photos go from which years based on different records we have in graduation lists and talking to teachers about which kids are which kids and what year so it's it's going to be pretty neat by the time may 14th rolls around so on may 14th we're going to have a bbq down in ace it's on facebook now it's one to four it's going to be outside i've got a tent coming not going to cost any money i got a you know bouncy house coming for
037kids i want alumni to bring kids i want the alumni to meet with each other uh to meet with former staff with current staff i'll be cooking burgers and dogs on there everybody who's sitting here is welcome to calm down no cost uh i just talked to uh daniel vargo over vision yesterday so we're making these kind of like joe pepin jerseys that we'll be selling there it kind of will look like the yankees t-shirts and have the i say yankees i'm sure every team has a little advice that has the name of the player on the back with the number and then the number underneath the name pep it will be 77 so that's the year he started and that's that's kind of the idea for that um but i'm hoping if there are
038questions that anybody wants to ask about today feel free any questions from board members i'm just wondering john if you are in need of any donations of any kind for the barbecue or any other parts of this donations are always side dishes how about dessert desserts even better just yeah let me know i'll donate the ice cream thank you yeah class uh if you can't attend the affair on the 14th will you be able to get a t-shirt absolutely so the thought was when i talked to danny um we're going to have 50 on sale the day of then we can sell them because he'll have already created the shirt we can just have him print up a new batch okay so absolutely absolutely thank you um and you know joe's family is involved too
039we have family members with joe who are coming up from north carolina just for the day um joe's daughter got spoke at the services and did a really nice job of talking about the connection between joe and ace and ace and joe's family um so we'll have the pa set up outside we'll have people be able to share we're gonna have different tables set up too because you know unfortunately joe wasn't the only person that you lost excuse me at ace is this winner and over over the course of several years so we want to have a like a memorial table where people can come up and they can write memories about other ace family members that we've lost so we'll have a couple of different tables set up for things like that along with
040you know the fun activities joe's a big volleyball guy so we'll have volleyball games going on and you know different face painting for kids bouncy house for kids and stuff like that so we'll kind of try to try to have a little bit of everything in our jail because that's what joe would have helped yes i'll just you know i'd like to add joe pepin i did not have an opportunity to meet him certainly looking forward to meeting his family and his former students i'm thinking he'd be very proud of how that school has developed over the years number one but two i think he'd be particularly proud of the principal who's leading that building right now so we want to thank you for your service to our students in our school community thank you
041it's i mean those many of you know the staff mates but they go above and beyond like the the day never really ends i mean i get texts from teachers who are at the er with a kid because the parent couldn't be there i mean they just the staff is amazing so it's it makes it a lot easier when you're working with people like that thank you very much thanks sean we'll see you at 14. thank you and for the next item on the superintendent's report update goal three fiscal responsibility planning for growth talent acquisition this one is specifically about planning for growth and now that we have the microphone fired up mr john spang is gonna speak to the update thank you very much can you hear me so goal three is the fiscal
042responsibility goal and we had a brief update earlier in the fall we've continued to make progress in that area so a couple of things you know that the overarching goal was to make the budget process efficient transparent and equitable distribution of resources and for that the budget process is this year was revamped it's more efficient now principals entered their budgets online directly from their offices and our resources uh have many have been shifted from beaver brook into the schools and into the locations for the principles but they were distributed they might remember on an equitable equitable basis a per pupil basis you can find that you remember in our in our budget book it's on pages 24 and 25 we gave same amount per pupil to each of the elementary schools a different amount for
043people but the same in each of the three middle schools and a slightly higher amount to our high school per pupil a couple other things we have taken a close look at our grants and align those in terms of the positions that are in grants versus the general budget and it's much more coherent now than it has been in our along with our our budget process the principles next year they actually started this year can make their purchase requests online by putting a requisition on your whole process goes digitally and it's much faster a lot of the paperwork has been eliminated as well so the software's work great a couple other areas of the goal the multi-year budget remember seeing that for the first time last year we repeated that again this year and discussed
044that with the ad hoc committee of the city council on education as we did i i sensed there was a consensus with the fiscal challenges coming up everyone agreed we need to carefully plan each year as we go forward there's a piece in the goal about engaging with city officials to evaluate our financial and school facility needs certainly the agreement to purchase the hardest property it does have very exciting next month there will be a referendum vote on bonding for that purchase that's encouraging in the meantime in terms we also meet with the mayor's office and the city finance director on a weekly basis every tuesday afternoon to talk about the carpet budget and the current budget up so we're having regular communications with them um and then finally our our administrative reorganization uh is
045complete meaning uh the positions are filled now people are working in place and i think we're very poised to meet the challenges that lie ahead with the with the reorganization and the talent that we've been able to put in those positions that's that's the update thank you john i will just add to that i had an opportunity to join the mayor's office yesterday as part of a press conference in pucker the press conference was on behalf of house bill this bill is an effort to accelerate the accelerate the ecs grant funding this would bring the necessary funding to address the achievement gap challenges that we've had most importantly address the financial cliff that we've been talking about these last couple of years as as a recipient of the american relief i'm i'm cautiously optimistic i
046feel like there is significant momentum to support the acceleration of the ecs funding i certainly don't have the crystal ball to tell you that this is definitely coming but i can tell you there was significant advocacy yesterday at the press conference there was representation from caps some of the larger urban districts waterbury new haven danbury new britain the mayor from hartford was there advocating for the acceleration of the grant it was a coalition of clergy from the state of connecticut students advocating for acceleration of the funding so i feel like in many ways the voices in danbury were heard yesterday at the capitol and hopefully the governor will hear them soon as well i would also just like to take this opportunity to thank the mayor's office for their partnership in this work and in
047the effort to try to push for the acceleration in funding but also thank our legislative partners who kind of co-sponsor this bill in an effort to accelerate the funding so stay in the meantime stay tuned i'm hoping to hear more in the next week or two and hopefully we'll have some good news to share so i just wanted to provide that update for the board as well and last but not least in terms of updates just wanted to remind the board the last page of our agenda under future meetings and dates to remember we have a meeting tomorrow evening a board workshop with mr dr john ramos from the department of education and leadership to revisit our strategic plan talk about the superintendent goals board goals and how the three can complement each other to
048help to continue to competition forward so just so you know there will be food and a light dinner and refreshments will be served so if you don't have an opportunity to get home first there will be some food and data provided and of course the meeting will be opened up to the public so just send them that note certainly there are questions so thank question i can have an action is there an extra copy of that uh laying around that i can uh yes we can get you worst case scenario i think you're going to need any other questions for our superintendent moving along or chairperson's report i don't have much but um there is an updated committee list hopefully at your place um several vacancies there that just fill the open slots there and
049so those will be um they're already on the website they'll be um in the minutes uh for this meeting as well um [Music] can i just punctuate one thing about the community oh sure just kind of incoming attractions um we are going to be running multiple administrator interview panels in the coming month or so um so we probably will take just about everybody that's listed on this um in groups of two um so just a heads up and and we'll reach out from my office to go ahead and schedule those of you who have volunteered for those committees for the interview panels and also with respect to negotiations the teachers negotiations will start this summer um it would be nice to have one more representative from the board event on that committee and there will
050be two non-teaching or exempt i'm sorry non-certified negotiating teams running this summer spring summer so imminently um and that will be for custodians and preparers and tutors so if i could have a total of four people for the um non-certified companies that would be great as well okay great um if anyone's interested in that please either reach out to me or to reach out to him oh i'm sorry except i've kind of got some feedback on this is this better i'm sorry so we're looking for we have a few names for negotiations over the summer um it looks like we need about three more yes so um if anyone's available over the summer we have uh teachers coming up paras and custodians you have to do and and kim i don't know if you have
051like a general time frame for each of those but um well both of the non-certified contracts expire on july 1. so we try to get those you know ratified done kind of at least early fall if we can um to have the the payments retro with their rna so that's one that i would like to start kind of imminently but we'll probably go through the fall both of them i'm optimistic won't be particularly long probably three or four sessions okay okay great anything else on the committee lists and again the committee list is has been updated to include our newest board members it's been updated on the website and it'll be in the minute for this meeting two of my favorite committees so i will need that book [Music] so many sponsors um and one
052other thing we were invited to the parents seat as the parents supporting educational excellence graduation which is happening on next tuesday may 3rd at 6 pm at hatter's park if you'd all like to attend they'd love to have some board members there they'll be providing dinner and just celebrating their their graduation from that course i don't know how how long of a course that is but sometimes that's at 6 00 pm it's parents supporting educational excellence what what day what day is it tuesday evening tuesday may 3rd at 6 00 p.m at hatteras park excuse me is the invitation coming to uh the board members or just through the chair just through the chair i can forward the email to you from dr mead if you'd like and that's all that i have are there
053any other um or communications questions quick question um june 15th for high school graduation correct what about the middle school and ace so we're holding tuesday june 14th for the ace graduation it's not confirmed yet okay we're holding monday the 13th for the middle school graduations plural break last year and we're still going back and forth we're going to do the same exact thing last year we had all the graduations on at the airport high school in the football field for the purpose of social distancing right and so we're fine trying to finalize that now assessing the cost et cetera and see if it's feasible to continue through a football field if not we'll have them back at the middle schools we should have that answer by next week well he said yeah he used
054to be in was in the high school all three middle schools inside the auditorium right okay so in the field yet it might be and now for the main graduate high school graduation it's open question i think there was it's one it's going to be one day not two days yes no no no tickets everybody bring everybody type of thing i'm not sure how we've handled the ticket situation before i don't i don't there was there was this was there every amount of tickets or maybe i'm making something else last year was two sessions yes oh two sessions yeah the the stands really weren't folks there's only half that's right yeah yeah yeah okay but i don't know if there was a limitation on the number of tickets before yeah yeah yeah someone i wanted
055parents had mentioned that they might be doing tickets so i wanted to clear it up green chocolate the curriculum meeting in the night i will be that one coaching baseball okay i'll email you just while i was thinking about it i just want to bring about a couple things john as far as the budget is concerned i just want to publicly thank the folks that came out both to the april meeting where the weather was introduced as well as the public hearing where we had a lot of support for fully funding the education budget that the board approved we have one more opportunity and that's the main meeting it's may 3rd at 7 30 in city council chambers on the third floor you'll there'll be a public participation section at the beginning of that and
056if you are there you can speak out in support of the schools and focused on the budget so i just want to make sure folks are aware of that um and then the other thing is that uh this referendum is coming up um it's it's going to require 15 of neighboring voters to go to the polls in order for this referendum to be successfully passed um so i would encourage everybody um you know if you make a note of that right it's june 7th um you're going to be at your typical polling locations which will be open from 6am to 80 pm and again it's really important that we get that vote out because if we don't get enough people going that it serves a purpose to us we're going to lose the opportunity we
057have right now to secure a location that is great not only for the career academy planning but also potentially future schools because that's the whole campus area so to that end i did want to ask a couple questions if i could of kim um we're uh i'm hoping to call community relations meeting shortly um to see what we can do to help uh facilitate getting information out of the public about the career academy and that project as well as the referendum and i'm in looking for some guidance from you i guess as far as what is appropriate i know that we cannot use public funds you know in support of you know a particular vote but we can put information out there about the project and about the referendum so i guess i'm looking for
058some guidance from you about what would be appropriate here so um i think we um shared with you there's some really good there's a piece of paper that comes from the state election commission as well as some narrative from you know we often rely on attorney muni's book to give us some guidance and i think you've got your finger on exactly what i would be most concerned about just as counsel to the board which is the expenditure of funds in ways that sometimes you don't think about like it may be you know sending a flyer home in a backpack or it might be paying for coffee or bagels or refreshments at an event so those kinds of things where there would be any public funds spent um cannot be spent in the interest of advancing
059the purposes of the referendum so advocating one way or the other um but short of that i mean you are all elected representatives who are out you know advocating for the best possible outcomes that may include facilities or acquiring facilities and so it's something that obviously as elected officials you know you're out there advocating for the passage but i think what the guidance tells us is to use care about um using funds or things that you may not think of as being funds dedicated to such a purpose okay um so just a couple of questions when i read that material what i understood is that we could send home a notice uh with students for example that uh specified the date of the referendum and where you know what the revenue is um so i
060hope that that might be something we could look according but also in terms of putting together some informational sessions if it's not being posted by the administration or the board specifically can administration and board members still participate in those conversations and you know is the is the line the same if they're just there um you know in their personal capacity yeah um i think it depends you know i i i think it's we we get into the kind of slippery slope area i think from my perspective as long as you are drawing that bright line about funding that i'm less concerned about that um i think you know when you go to a public forum in a location that may be a board building i think that's okay um but again i think you know
061providing anything on which you are spending funds in addition is where i would draw the line so certainly your personal opinion even your opinion as an advocate for your district or from your constituents is certainly appropriate and as you pointed out the informational piece about here's where you can go to vote here's what the issues are here's what the ballot will look like those things are all appropriate because you're sharing information about the process but you're not advocating for passage or or objecting to the passage of the referendum does that make sense yeah that makes sense thank you and as i read the same guidance that came and shared i think i need further clarification because my understanding is we can't use public funds to even share that information so i'm not confident we can
062make copies and use public funds to push out the information so i'd like to get clarification on something it's mundane is that before we commit to do it so i just just want to make that statement right so can the people of the like the people used to do through ptos like can his principal get it to the pto to share information not send send stuff back get backpacks but send it to the pto to email this and then they could go ahead and advocate for it through the pto or citywide or each individual school so i'm i'm smiling rough as i'm hearing your question some of the guys that came and said there's actually a line in there about ptos that actually can't leverage the third party example pto um so i just feel
063like we just need some clarification on these things sit down yeah just make sure yeah it occurs to me as you're talking it probably makes sense for us to attach those couple of pieces that that i shared with the both of you um maybe for circulation to the whole group so that they can take a look because i think it's one of those topics that it's just good to have it in your head you know it's good to kind of review the guidance pto not being a pta being distinct from a pta ptas can lobby because they're a private corporation ptos are part of our schools right but here's here's another thought email is free so there's no expenditure of funds if we're sending the other thing is i'd be really careful about if you're
064going to invent spending even your own money public money is is what kim just said spending your own money like if you brought coffee and donuts to an event arguably it's an expenditure in favor of a referenda question and it may need to be reported to sec as an expenditure of funds in support of a ballot questionnaire referendum so just be really careful about even spending your own money i think there are people who make their whole careers on these kinds of things expenditure like if you brought coffee donuts probably is it may not be a reportable expense but there's gonna be a number at which sec is going to be interested in how much we're spending even even as individuals it's set on the individual level you can spend up to a thousand dollars
065without without reporting but keep your receipts because even when you don't have a reporting requirement sec does require you to keep your receipts in case they ever want to on it so the school can't tell anybody to go out and vote for something that helps the school no we can't right no you can't send it out so what is our expectation that the city will be pushing this forward i i assume there'll be some sort of city discussion because it is a referendum so will the city be creating um simple social media pieces that we can i'm not sure the city of danbury can expand to public funds in favor of a referendum well they have to allow the voters to know that there's a referendum how much time and effort they will possibly be
066expanding coordinated with our time and effort so that we can replicate and replicate revenue so bridget i can tell you the city did reach out to my office to schedule some type of strategic meetings on how to approach this i will be at that meeting with kim so that we could make sure we have our council if necessary the city will have their counsel at the meeting so that we can just talk about logistics the city reached out to me over the break and then we talked about it again on monday afternoon tuesday yesterday when i was can we can we utilize those electronic boards that we have at this high school and the city hall can we use those to advocate for referendum or just you have to state just the dates and times
067location i would say the electronic boards could only state the basic information that there is a referendum on such and such a date if you go around see like the signs that say vote yes on number or whatever blah blah blah where they where they come from just getting back in the swing thanksgiving i don't want to use the gavel but so uh mr russo did you have something i deferred to okay joe did you have something else all right are we all set on that mr chris cooper um tomorrow we're having a workshop and i know that the superintendent evaluation committee has met and i'm hoping after we meet tomorrow i would like to set up a superintendent evaluation committee uh before the next board meeting if it's uh okay with the chair okay
068i don't have no date but after tomorrow meeting you know i don't want to postpone this or you know have some type of direction as to where we need to move as a committee because we did submit the committee did submit uh six board goals and we can look at those goals and tomorrow also look at the superintendent goes and move forward okay is that okay that's that works you're running out of dates though before next meeting so so we might be able to do it maybe an hour before the record okay yeah you know yeah we'll work i'll work with you soon okay sounds good any other board comments updates questions what time is it tomorrow's at six o'clock [Applause] and there will be refreshments so i'm hungry fruit no veggies this time okay
069with that emotion to adjourn so sir moved by kate excited by al all those in favor [Music]