001i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all here rachel cholesky here michelle colella here kate canetta you're gladys cooper here lauren daley here jody silva joe dacilla will be arriving late okay here albert rousseau here louisa brinton here and ralph professor president we have recognitions this evening good evening everyone like at this time um invite up dr christie who is going to recognize the women's club of danbury new fairfield the recipient of the connecticut association of schools distinguished friend of education award i'm actually going to let a cast member a former principal good evening my name is mike morocco and i was the principal of old saver middle school for 25 years
002and i retired in 2013 i'm still an interim principal throughout the state i want to make 55 years as an educator i don't do it for money because i love kids so it's my honor to be here tonight and actually this is my second time recently because i visited middle school for the chair of the committee for the distinguished connecticut associate principal and i see that she's here and i think she's a jeweler for david from the school and for the community she blew us away the school blew us away and i prayed both in the administration great job but really why i'm here is i'm on the committee for the recognition and awards which is one of the biggest awards when you have the women's club you've got to read very carefully it is
003my honor to be here with christie to award this award to the women's club of danbury little fairfield cafes established this award distinguished friend of education was in 1983 to honor individuals and organizations whose efforts helped to better the schools and communities which our children learn and live it is the highest award given by our association to entities not directly involved in public education we host numerous recognition programs each year and the distinguished friend of education is by far our most popular every year we receive dozens and dozens of nominations from schools around the state and every year it is a very agonizing process to narrow down our selection this year was absolutely no exception the fact that the women's club of danbury new york fairfield was chosen this award from such a large and
004competitive pool of nominees gives testimony to the power and importance of this work on behalf of cass and the members and schools we represent i congratulate the women's club on the achievement achieving this much earned recognition and i thank them for the wealth of resources and opportunities that they have so selflessly afforded to the students staff and families of the danbury community i would like to have christie speak through like janet dabisky come up and accept it on behalf of the women's club these are many of the members there are other members that are tuning in from home so hello to you the women's club is no stranger to danbury public schools they've been helping out in many of our schools and they're just such a group of generous women who want to give back
005to their community and the way that they have been helping us last year as many of you know we started 501c3 i think i got all those letters and numbers right we basically have a non-profit at our school because of so many students that are in need of food they're food insecure so from the pandemic dana because she is so amazing along with one of our secretaries terry and our school social worker karina started the meal training and so one of our old retired not old people retired first practitioners was was sewing masks when the pandemic first hit and we raised tons of money we were able to fund it last year you know the funds were getting a little lean and these lovely ladies put on an amazing dinner for us that raised over
00612 thousand dollars for our meal they didn't stop there because they love to give back and so they work with us this year and in conjunction with our pto they have purchased for us two picnic tables and our pto has two picnic tables for our new greenhouse that we got from our title one money last year so we are on our way we need two more anybody wants to build it but they have been such wonderful women and we are really proud to have been working with them and thought that when i saw the opportunity dana and i said we've got to nominate them for this because they really need the recognition they're not they don't ask for much they're not out there but they're really giving back and it's just such a great testament
007to our community and danbury and how we want to support each other so thank you [Applause] um what i'm going to say is probably repeating doctors of the celta um how it all began in 2019 a member of the woman's club mentioned to our community improvement committee writer's park middle school weekend program needed help with some food for 15 and 15 to 18 students at first we started to buy and replenish the tiny cupboard uh with convenient food that the students can take home and put in the microwave or just heat up as time went on we found more students and families needed help and that was when i opened my mouth and suggested a silent auction thirty give back baskets were made and tied with green ribbons twenty one gift certificate information uh was
008placed in plexiglas stands ready for the display and one week to go we were all excited and then came covered all baskets had to be stored food had to be checked for expiration dates and replaced businesses had to be contacted to see if they would still honor their gift certificates for another year after three postponements we finally held the auction on june the 18th 2021 it was hard work we had lots of fun and we raised a lot of money i only thought we were going to raise two thousand dollars and our president who couldn't be here tonight so we she said no we'll make five well we raised 12 over 12 000 and that was the thanks to the generosity of the area businesses your pto and the members of the women's club and
009my wonderful committee then nancy probably repeat thank you she's my co-chair hi there the education committee of our club has been involved in many educational projects they build a lending library for the interfaith learning center as well as donate supplies they collect the box tops for different elementary schools every year 40 of money raised from our point status sales is given to scholarships to high schoolers in the danbury area the remaining 60 percent goes to the greater danbury area charities finally on behalf of the danbury club of danbury and new fairfield we want to thank cas for their award also dr zelta dana perez and karina chelsea i hope i haven't messed this up for organizing this worthwhile project thank you [Applause] good night thank you very much right now moving on to public participation
010there's no one on the list is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak tonight nope okay make sure consent calendar i make a motion that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits 22-43 through 22-48 as recommended second lauren move segmented by al is there any discussion just a correction on the minutes exhibit 22-43 i was president of that meeting so could we have a direction in our next meeting that i was in attendance um is there any other discussion any other questions so i need a motion to amend the minutes i suggested so move by kate is there a second sure any discussion on the amendment seeing none all those in favor any opposed motion carries back to our original motion lauren i moved dissected by that
011was you now any further discussion on the original motion all [Music] um educational staff representatives our student representative laura's yours how are you i wasn't able to print out my notes today so i was wondering of course thank you good evening board of ed members and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence tomorrow the ace environmental science students will be taking a trip to the normal program with kante and dj on thursday melissa laski will be taking students to dhs to experience burgerfest on may 6th ace will administer its humanities benchmark the day is a whole school event that will see students participate in grade level benchmarks to assess our diminutive writing skills during a three-hour session and is coordinated by the ace
012humanities department ace will be hosting prospective dhs students from may 2nd to may 13 20 dhs students will be coming for a day to visit our program on saturday may 14th from one to four facebook posting and barbecue to celebrate our founder joe kaepernick the day will also include activities for the kids as well as time for alumni and staff to share stories and special memories related to gel and the ace experience ace would like to recognize our super attendance award when it's kristen balani and nicole kushby um do you also like to celebrate our for demonstrating leadership in the classroom and the ace community thank you for allowing us to share what's going on [Music] did you say this is [Music] is it open to the public we are expecting principal weather to come
013back to provide some more details from the last what do we the next board meeting um um going backwards because i see some of our staff representatives would you like to speak this evening action items uh kate would you do action item a i'll make a motion at the board of education to approve the 20-20-22-2023 school calendar as recommended by the community relations committee and in accordance with the exhibit 22-49 is there a second part um i just wanted to i just want to say that you know the conversation we had dr selig brought forth the results of the survey that went out to our community um and it was a 60 40 split 60 were in favor of the uh the half day sessions so that is what the recommendation is from the committee
014uh you know recognizing that we're not going to please everybody but we are trying to follow the feedback that we got from the community thank you for that any other discussion all those in favor one abstention motion carries um action b michelle would you do that please 2022 high school graduation date motion that the board of education set the high school graduation date at wednesday june 15 2022. is there a second any discussion about the graduation page all those in favor aye any opposed any extensions motion carries unanimously um i will now open the floor for a nomination for the board of education secretary for the remainder of 2022. not are there any other nominations for secretary saying none will hand out ballots please thank zelda not just come terry i'm gonna stuff the box
015i got too i love you man uh that was a short back to where i started next to miss cooper i'll take that any i think i have one in here a lot of things happen tonight yes oh [Music] like i never left guys so more good news from rogers park middle school i would like to start there as part of the superintendent update this two weeks ago now we had an amazing as typical of the rogers park administrative team and great teaching staff over that building there's always great things going on in that school and two weeks ago no different the leadership there forged a partnership with the nearby school district had an amazing day titled harbor me rogers park study and student exchange program and we have asked christie's elita and dana perez
016and staff to come down and walk us through the excitement that took place a couple weeks ago [Music] thank you so much for having us here this evening we have a little presentation so you can get some visuals in july this past july tim salem jamberry native and principal at shelter rock middle school in ridgefield reached out to myself and dana to ask if we were interested in pairing with his school to do a book study so of course the way that we roll is that we'll pretty much try anything we love to collaborate and talk to other people and learn from other people so he said of course they met with them and their his media specialists and our media specialists came together and talked about doing a book club we have very different
017makeups in our schools obviously and we thought it'd be important where we have students come together and see that while it may be different in many different ways we're all still human they're all still crazy bubbles of course and anybody that has a middle school or who has had middle school it doesn't matter where you live we're all a little crazy but we still love them and we you know use this time in middle school to help them set themselves on the right trajectory make good habits and learn from each other so with that we moved into picking a book and harborview was a wonderful book that was chosen by the media specialist that really looks at students from a diverse group of diverse backgrounds but they're in a school that the students are placed
018in in a room it sounds crazy once a week with no adult and it's just like what are you gonna do so they forged this friendship and they learned that although they have all these crazy backgrounds they all still have something in common which is that they at the end pledge to harbor each other knowing that harvard is a place of refuge in rough seas and when things are uncertain and so they come together and they end up hiring one another and it's interesting in reading the book so the assumptions that you make when you start speaking because they don't tell you which kid has which ethnic background or which kid has is from a more affluent part of town and your your own biases which we all have kind of come to play and
019then you're oh man but it was such a great read for kids i highly recommend it to anybody no matter no matter your age but so what happened is we got together and then as a school we used our social justice club we're really proud of our after-school programming that we have we offer many different things for students to get involved in and so we thought that the social justice club would be the best move to vote so we had about 25 or there's like 50 kids in the group we brought them all together and it ended up being about 25 kids that really wanted to get into reading the book talking about the book and then they talked about them you know you're actually going to get a field trip too which is really
020cool because no one's been anywhere for two years so each month we start in november and the kids would read you know chapters one through eight and then we'd meet the library media specialist mr duff and miss foley they did an amazing job they did really the hard work we just took attendance and got the kids there made sure we had coverage where it needed to be but they really did the hard work of getting kids to talk to share and this is kids across sixth seventh and eighth grade so they aren't just a group of kids that came from in an english class this is a wide diverse group of students that came together and really started to to uncover things about themselves and each other and so we would meet in person and
021then we would meet with um scott's ridge scottish middle school online so we met with them twice so if you can go to the next slide and thank you so i kind of talked about that already so this is the cover of the book by jacqueline woodson so this was our first digital meeting so we were lucky to work with cass of the connecticut association of schools and tim and his team had presented previously around book study and so the lady in the corner rosie is the cast person who helps facilities facilitate this and help us and i'll talk about the later slide how to move forward so we met this was the first one in november you could go to that side and we would meet and we would talk and then we'd come
022together again with richfield and then the students we went through specific questions about the chapter groups and then our first meeting was in person at statridge and that was back in march so you see us coming in that was the top left when we were first when we were all you know you come in and grow like you could tell who was who because we all had to stay together they stayed together and then the team at scottridge put together a couple different activities of the human scavenger hunt find out who has the same birthday month as you and that kind of like easy ice breaker stuff so the kids started to say oh look okay you have a september birthday too and then we did an assumptions activity which was fun of course pizza
023brings everybody together so after our tour of the school we had some pizza together and then we ended it with another group of another part of our book study so the kids by the end were like oh i can't wait to you know to see you again i want to go to school with you all day it was really awesome to see how they kind of came together as a group and kind of broke down any barriers that might have existed before just because you didn't know anybody so you could go and so our second meeting was in april that was uh mr walson said two weeks ago when they got off the bus this time there were hugs and they were like they were so excited to see each other so our students are
024in the blue t-shirts and then um scotch ridge is right there in the front and they had brought we had we all signed that will you harbor me we all signed it as we left and they brought it back to us actually stopped in my office and then we had nato welcome it's hard to see welcome to rogers park from to the staff sergeant so you go the next one so our day we started with an acrostic problem and we put a twist on it so where as you're usually going like kkk is really hard once my first initial let's go with d d for dancing dancing game so instead of going like d a and a we would try to find what are the things that are common between us and so the kids
025would pair up with roger sparks students and statues students and then what are the things that are the same in the top right hand corner and that was one of my favorites the way that they all it all shook out they were all epic so they all had an e in their names and so it was really cool to see the kids connect and we were in our new learning commons at our second floor of our media center and so kids were working on that then we moved into our story walk so similar to um what is a privilege walk it's we didn't do it in such a like you know i mean like as heavy a topic but it was like have you ever felt you know alone and then take a step back
026or have you ever felt like someone supported you at school take a step forward and so at the end of it you couldn't tell which kids came from your school because at the end of the day we're all having things that help us move forward and things that pull us back and we ended it with a circle so we circled up and kind of shared it out and we take away from them we facilitated them the kids were talking they'd share a lot and bring it back but then at the end of the day they walked away knowing that while you may feel alone when you look across at all the other kids they're going through things too and so you know this theme of like having empathy for one another and understanding that like
027they said you're not alone okay so we came back we also did a tour it was fun mr salem had his first student teacher was in there mr andreoni and one of his former students is in there and mr navarre so it was like a big reunion from salem and the kids really loved it of course if there's got any food we like to represent with those gringos and they provided us with delicious the chicken that went quick the rice was amazing and eben we barely got one which was awesome because the kids really enjoyed food and then we ended it again with a book study wrap up and then the kids our kids had our writer's parks and they had all the kids like signing their shirts so it was really cool by the
028end of it that they really connected and shared handles instead whatever those things are all social media stuff those were good this time so we were really excited and um moving forward we're actually presenting a poster we're doing a poster presentation at the cen conference in may around our collaboration with ridgefield and we're working with rosie and tim to do a cast webinar to try to kind of spread this out to other schools to say hey partner up with a local school and see you know how you can bridge some more gaps so thank you so much for letting us present we're really excited about it and you're all welcome anytime [Applause] big thank you to your media specialists and teachers at the school thank you so much [Applause] voice for change update for the
029board of education and school community a couple weeks ago we had was that the black box we had miss heather lorenz the civics teacher at danbury high school and a number of students a couple of students present out on the projects that they were submitting on behalf of danbury high school to the state of connecticut the commissioner's initiatives a voice for change in which schools would receive in which winners would receive twenty thousand dollars for uh presented projects and friday the state made an announcement of the winners and so there were two winners for the state one that was chosen by the commissioner the commissioner's office and then another winner that was chosen amongst the peers so of those two winners and sorry i just have to grab again danbury high school had more applicants
030than any school in the state of connecticut and lorenz thank you again for your amazing leadership in this two winners both by the way danbury high school the first winner of the student election the student election is the project is called water fountains water fountains which was led by the state's 20 000 grand 20 000 grant will be enough to help buy and install 11 new water fountain refill stations within our school there are currently four active water fountain stations refill stations serving a school of over 3 300 students this grant will help take out the old porcelain water fountains and replace them with the safe and effective water fountains which also have a bottle refill station creating this project will allow numerous students within the school ready and quick access to awarded instead of
031needing to travel between buildings this will create a more healthy and happy school in addition to enriching the learning of students as as there will be less class time spent looking for water furthermore refilling bottles will have a small but noticeable impact on the use of disposable plastic water bottles as many students will start refilling those while bringing in stronger material water bottles uh congratulations to the sioux students and the winner of the commissioner award i can't help myself um damn very high school again uh furniture for the faculty nancy sarmiento matt newton and liam wong the commissioner stated she specifically chose this project because of the out of hundreds of projects submitted to the state this was the only project that focused on the mental and physical health of the teachers the state's twenty
032thousand dollar grant will help to provide an efficient and refreshing environment for the danbury high school staff in the teachers lounge as the school has grown the number of students who need to work in a teacher's work room is to eat lunch there has grown too the grant will help to replace the current furniture with your tables and electric outlets chairs and furniture teachers can choose to relax on thus providing a restful environment for faculty another addition would be to provide portable chargers if the grant money allows new equipment for heating lunches now new refrigerators and possibly a sink to clean dishes which be additional upgrades and then we have a list of all of the students who participated in voice for change from the ap government and politics and peer leadership class and i'm
033going to i have a lot of names here so i'm going to read first names sarah sophia lyanna jessica jillian leticia kayla reagan faith marianna pamela hannah paz paz matthew dunn aaliyah tyler saifully nancy chris christopher junior chiara pj chapel sydney ava liam kanika camillo jaylee justin viviana and scott wait a minute there's a few more william lisbeth caitlyn haley matthew nicole lewis natalie taylor jackson kayla florence ian olivia marcus olivia chloe gregory chloe and alexandra heather lorenz thank you so much for your leadership and dan donovan thank you for your leadership congratulations [Applause] all those two students city council update um ad hoc committee was last night and if you and grace want to come up you're going to be nice last night was our ad hoc committee i recognize all the board members
034can't make all the meetings and the ones who are able to make last night's meeting i really appreciate the support we had a number of folks from the council who not only had our committee but were there were also very interested in the outcome of last night's meeting several board members a couple of people from the community and of course many members of my team as well were able to make it john and i representing the district in the budget and proposed budget again we reiterated our need rationale behind 152 million dollar request last night despite our case last night's recommendation to the council from that our committee will be a recommended budget city the mayor's budget 145 million the team and i i know the outcome ultimately will be tomorrow night but the team
035and i certainly we will roll our sleeves up get to work and determine what this means for the district so our position has not changed just in terms of the expiring um grants that we are facing and the cliff that we've talked about for that's been well chronicled for the last couple of years the team and i will provide an update for the board i'll be in the next couple of court meetings but this means for us to move forward but you know i remain optimistic that the partnership we try to afford for the city will help realize some better outcomes moving forward and for right now we will deal with the hand that we've been dealt and dig deeper and figure out other steps so we will get back to you and speaking of
036updates a little more positive in this regard and that is updates regarding goal 2 for the superintendent's update go to family school and community partnerships andy grace from this department provided a brief update about community relations committee and i have asked ann and grace to come to give an update to the full board i believe you're going to need us to move in a minute again because you have some presentations to make the board might recall our investments in family engagement through the through the positions we've hired called family liaisons so ian is going to speak about that this evening but as part of the goals this year we've also talked about developing parent leadership programs we were recipient of a grant this year and through that grant leadership of and in grace they've been
037able to mobilize a lot of parents in this community so they can speak to some of those great things going into the community and that will get out the way so that you can provide those examples thank you good evening everyone you settled for a minute i'm going to stand for this all right so welcome back to ralph and good evening everyone this is a great opportunity to share all the work that comes out of the office of family and school community partnerships so right now as you know we're located at our 17th cottage street while the renovations are being uh are taking place at um our home at 49 osborne street so we're excited i go there about every three weeks and take some pictures of them the alterations and everything that's going on
038and then share with the whole staff so they know what they're going back to um and are getting very very excited about that we hope to be able to return both the people in august towards the end of august and then we will move our central registration families probably our staff probably back closer to the end of october when registration has slowed down so that conversion and that move is still in the works so go ahead so i want to just give you a little bit of foundational knowledge on what we do and why we do it the philosophy behind it our goal is to engage empower and educate our families our parents and when we say families we try to stay away from the word parents to a certain point because it's really families
039our we know that our students come to school that they live with grandparents um they live with foster parents um you know not every child is raised by their biological parent and so we want everyone to feel welcome so we use that more inclusive term family when speaking about it so the goals of our office is to place trust and teamwork at the center of the homeschool relationship and that's really what all of this is built on is how do you build relationships between school and family and so i think as you'll see through this presentation that mantra is in everything that we do you'll be able to pull pieces of these three key parts out the second one is that we anchor high impact family strategies in student learning and well-being our focus is
040what can we do to help families support their student learning so that students are more successful in school and then the last one is we look at looking at building systems and structures that enables this work in an efficient high impact way and so i can share more documents after this i've shared one document that i'll walk you through a little bit but i can share the connecticut framework with you which even gives you more of that why and how common why we have this bad impact or why we use these high impact strategies so we ground our work in what's called the dual capacity framework i'll show it to you in a second this was written by karen mack who was one of the three gurus in the united states are international around family
041school partnerships she had a rendition that she did for the federal government that came out in 2018 and through a lot of revisions and a lot of work with everyone throughout the united states about what is a good partnership what is dual capacity she was able to change that and you'll see the new model in just a second but what we do maintain throughout everything that we do is that we consciously link student learning and improving their outcomes to everything that we have here great so this is a little bit hard to read and i will make sure that you all get copies of it but it talks on the left hand side what are the challenges what are the challenges in a educational system and then what is what are the challenges in a
042family system you know families being able to access materials access training and then for the teachers you know being comfortable in um working with our families you know when we first started that pandemic when we first shut down i got a lot of calls from teachers saying how can i talk to my family this is brand new to me i've had english i had math or i'm a math teacher whatever but i didn't have a course in what is effective family school partnerships can you help and then we go through process conditions other conditions that have to be in place because you can't see it i'm going to skip right to the end where we really want to or actually that green section where we want to help build the cognition appearance the ability to
043be able to support their children we want to build the relationships that they have with their children and with their schools and we want them to become really strong in advocating for themselves and other children in the district and so i'll share this so you can see it on the better so out of this whole philosophical piece we have written a um plan for the district of what we will do and it is aligned with mr wallston's goals and so no idea it's not a misprint family school engagement is goal number two out of the four goals that kevin has so this one is develop strategies to promote a high level of communication collaboration and interaction within our community to build trust confidence and credibility and i want to talk to that for just a
044second because i very strategically have built the team in which i have it's really really important that you have key people on the ground i don't speak another language i don't speak another language so people say how are you the director of this when you don't speak that language because i'm very careful in how we coordinate our staff how we use our community partners which you'll see later in the presentation and how we strategically place staff so that when a family comes to the center they're met in a language that they um need and so my assistant director is grace molina and she has come in with a whole my raised skills right on the technology piece and so we've been able to jump in to many ways to raise that sense of communication that
045our families have or the ability to be able to communicate so we are in the process right now of launching the new danbury website it's a slow process because you go through many steps from you know development of the wild wire frames to what it starts to look like in color and content so you'll see more of that is that on rolls over the summer and we are in almost the final stages of parent square this past newsletter that we had last week went out through parent square and as i look at the data we're doing pretty good our families are reading it i can tell from the back side of the program how many open it how many read it how many seconds and minutes they're actually in the program so i can tell
046do they just do a nice letter from you know that guy or look at all this stuff going on in this lab and so that's really really important so we can share those stats down the road with you too next phase in that schools we'll start to use it right now we're just using it from the district office side we continue to do as i said that newsletter um that goes out through the parent square to educate our folks educate our communities share resources and things that are coming up events that are important for families i already talked a little bit about that welcoming center it does have registration it has extended learning program it has early childhood resources in it it has a welcome packet so when families first come to the district they
047get this nice welcoming packet once all the registration paperwork is good to go it has the calendar in it we'll be very happy tomorrow to start the package for next year put the new calendar in thank you for voting not today i can't tell you how many people have come looking for next year's calendar already has a letter from mr walston in it has all kinds of community resources many of these families are new to the community maybe sharing space with other families they need heating assistance they need to know find out where to um get medical insurance and food all of those different types of things so that welcoming packet is just has great stuff it it also is jam-packed with the importance of food school attendance and so that's in many different languages
048in that packet that says you know we expect your child at school every day unless your child's sick we are in the middle right now of a district-wide welcoming school initiative we have 77 people trained in this initiative this is a curriculum or a protocol that's written by the capital region education council so all of our family liaisons went through the training and then we had representation from every school and we tomorrow is our first walk through rogers park so a a welcoming school specialist from craft will come down we'll meet with the team that has been put together at rogers park to do this walk through they're going to look at physical environment they're going to look at when they walk down the hallway to somebody just walk the opposite direction or do they
049say hi how are you can i help you they're going to look at how they're treated when they arrive at the school the signing is you know can they find the front door they know where to park um they're going to look at written materials is everything just in english or does it count multiple languages to the family there'll be a couple of debriefing after they do the walkthrough and in this walkthrough it's teachers social worker nurse the principals decided on their teams and all of them have pulled in families so from that school so we're really excited about that um some pto members are on there some of you may have gotten calls we actually lisa and i went for a walk through at um west side today okay great so it did start
050today okay right right i did look at the schedule to see exactly what was up because it's they're doing it now right good so that's good news what will happen after that visit the people from the capitol regional education council or prep will come back and generate reports of improvements at school they'll put a small budget line into it and then we'll work with our sites and facilities and our budgeting department john and superintendent wallston to make sure that we can you know fund these small things that need to be done in these schools otherwise it's just a report that sits on the shelf and part of the work in this will also the recommendations will go into the school improvement plans as well so this is all part of a bigger picture as i
051spoke last week at the community meeting we had a great showing of 99 of all of our kindergarten teachers did virtual phone calls home visits at the start of last year we knew that we couldn't bring all our kindergarten students into the schools because i was just too much and we're still trying to be coded safe so what we did is we had the teachers call home make an appointment to meet with that family they could do google they could do a zoom they could just do a telephone call and the teachers asked one question what are your hopes and dreams for your children and that just opened up the door for a flood of conversation between the teacher and their family about that child again focused on that child and from that the principles
052really got to the principals and teachers that did the kindergarten teachers really got to understand where the families were coming from and what makes them tick and what was special about their children so the very first day of school it wasn't like all these new children walked in the teachers already had an idea of what the children liked and what they did like so again creating that bridge between involved in school the second to last is our open communication our monthly chats with kevin i think there's one coming up right after vacation on that tuesday night um they have been well attended uh pretty deep conversations with the families and a couple of community folks that join these conversations and i don't know if you'd like to add something to this about them they're great
053conversations they're very informal their questions are difficult enough okay and lastly in this goal we have or my office has convened what i'm calling the menu improvements so we engaged sodexa who's our food service provider we've gone through a couple renditions of the meaning our first one which is a general meeting how are we going to structure this what are the needs of this group what are the needs of the district what are we hearing from parents and how do we move forward our second meeting we brought in students from moore street and boy those little fourth and fifth graders are really really honest about food let me tell you and they not only told us what they didn't like they told us what they liked and how to improve it and so immediately i
054hope as you looked at the menus you saw a change in those february march menus yeah january was the february venues uh leah who is our dietitian is always open to new ideas of different food within the usda guidelines that were given what they can do and then in individual kitchens they make sure that you know if they know so in my building in cottage street or our building cottage street the preschoolers don't like stuff together they like chicken they like sauce they like the beans and here's the burrito and so amanda who is our food person she serves it just like that and then the kids put it together the minute you mix that all together don't like it so and we're you know aware of you know sensory issues with our children and
055not liking different textures mixed and so amanda does a great job okay they also put in place um sodexo put in place a feedback sheet that all of the lunch staff could give her so she's getting monthly feedback from the staff to feed the kids what they like what they didn't like and how to make improvements our last month we met with the students at rogers park so we've been meeting pretty much every other month for these changes in the menu so hopefully you're seeing better menus your students are coming home from school for those of you that have students and saying i like lunch a lot better okay you know that that's the goal of this we will continue to meet with them every other month to improve these venues we've had a lot
056of policy questions about could children receive a second fruit or a second vegetable we try to clear up all of that and just recently we have taken their menu change text and added a spanish portuguese version to it so that parents can sign up ahead of time you can get a text in the morning that you know you're thinking it was going to be chicken burritos and now it's changed to a corn dog your child knows i mean not eating that corn dog so as a parent you can provide a multiple childhood so we're really really happy with the changes that we've been able to make there so that's an ongoing process all right so now we go to goal 2b which is really our family education opportunities our opportunities that we have using our
057community partners to be able to pull in funds to run the actual office itself because my office also works under many federal and state grants most of those grants have a five percent set aside that all have to go towards family engagement so like our 21st century learning grants we have four of those in the district right now they have a five percent set aside so we take some of those funds you'll see who some of our other funders are with some of our partners and this is how we're able to bring all this education to you so grace has her earpiece in here somewhere she took it off but we have parents see on tuesday night so right now right now there are here that's what it was 22 people taking this course this
058is of course that was designed by the center for school change in hartford we have patrice nelson and felicia bears out of manchester who are actually facilitating the 12-week course save the date of may 3rd at 6 o'clock place to be determined you will all get invitations for the graduation this is the eighth time that we've been able to run this class since i've been here in the district in 2008. the funding comes from the parent trust fund out of hartford so we're very through the department of education so we're lucky to get that also along with that we've just received the pep oh so let me just go back to the first one parent c is helping families understand how boards function there were some people that came to a board meeting that one
059night that we had snow or canceled and we went virtual they were all going to come to class it was so exciting then we went virtual because of snow but they'll be back so they're understanding how all those board policies are created and then what is their role in helping to create positive change okay they've done all kinds of hands-on activities some of you may have been interviewed over the last couple of weeks i think um so they're looking to make positive changes on a district um part of the school park our people empowering people this will be i think the 14th or 15th time that we have run this raceway with one of our family liaisons um marine molina from rogers park to take the training through uconn and they will start that class
060on the 27th 27th and that will go for 10 weeks we're all kind of short on time because some of this funding has to be done by june 30th but we're really excited and you have how many folks we have 18 so that's a nice nice nice number nice number to work that will be in person parents see right now is virtual because we started in january um we weren't sure where we were going people wanted to be safer just staying in their own ways okay let me go to the next one all right um ongoing workshops that we have so though we try to aim for the higher impact ones that are a longer period of time those 10 weeks those 12 weeks there are certain workshops that lend themselves to be a shorter
061workshop so we have talking to your teens about alcohol kelly trooshes and her group grand one already on the drug prevention rate yeah a couple of weeks in plain sight and then what you look for in your kids so you know we hear from parents i'm concerned about this are we going to call i don't know what to do with this or i talked to jim antonelli in the police department he's like we really got a problem on this how about we join together and do some parent education around different topics we have um so the talking to your tongue teams about alcohol coming up um in two weeks the eight dimensions of health and welfare wellness strategies to reduce drug and alcohol use in the home through prevention is on may 12th and then
062internet's safety digital parent seminar is only for parents that night with scott driscoll and um clicking last week's newsletter and all that registration material is there for families we'll we'll broadcast further the internet one we'll broadcast all of them further but the internet safety one is really really important at this point we are seeing all kinds of new things i'm sure you're hearing them on the news all the time of programs that students are getting into that they just don't need to be into and so how as a parent can you know give them that internet connectivity but how can you make it safe for them and so scott does a really really effective kind of scary presentation but it makes you realize there's a lot kind of out there lurking on the dark web
063we've i felt i feel and my team feels that we've given families lots of opportunities for feedback on district-wide decisions and budget development and certainly that was around the escrow funding and then the development of this next year school budget i guess the kudos program to take away that we're really really proud of is our school-based family liaisons and they are the ones that are creating that bridge between families and schools when mr wallston came in here to the district he was like what do you mean richard liaisons who creates that bridge and i said well it's whoever the school can do there's not a person that's doing it and so we have taken the best of the knowledge that we have from other districts throughout the united states and in connecticut of what they've
064done and we are definitely flying the plane as we're building it because every school has slightly different needs in building that bridge with their families and so we only have at this point two schools that don't have one we're excited that we've been able to um i joke i was stood on the corner and said do you like families you do apply for this position and we have found some absolutely wonderful folks out there to be our lighthouse so far every single one of them which you know when you walk in the door and you don't speak english and someone's speaking your own language immediately there's a sense of comfort so that is you know been absolutely great to be able to do that for our schools the feedbacks and principles is just wonderful we
065meet with them every friday morning religiously at 10 o'clock in the morning we bring in community resources so they hear about what does action do what are the resources that they have there we bring in children and families aid of how do you help a family linked to mental health services all different types of services out there then tomorrow we start back with my baby's favorite play to learn playgroups anybody want to come out at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning this is life so exciting to be able to bring our families with their children birth to age five back into our building at sacred heart in the gym to partake in an hour play room so they come in they play for a while we then have a curriculum it's either a book being read some
066usually pretty good messy sensory project for the children to partake in we have some gifts for them to take home tomorrow then there's a 10 minute segment where the other adults will pull away the children and play with them while the parents go over and talk about something that they need to know about tomorrow they're going to look at the sparkler application which is a developmental application that we encourage parents to use on their phone and get a daily tip specific to their child's age of activities that they can do and then we will start to do the ages and stages with all our families and what we have found in these play groups is we are able to help refer many many families to our birth to three program which is a state-run program
067for children or for parents who have concerns about their developmental uh milestones for their child and so that earthquake iii program is able to bring these families in and many times provide services for them that then they're done and released out of that service and never come into our three to five system so we know that early intervention works and that's what we want to do okay the next page this section goes really really fast but i just want to highlight some of our community programs and our partners we had we still do we have a fair amount of parents come in to register their children they're new to danbury they're ready to go they're ready to start school and then they say you know today my appointment for my child's physical is may 5th
068well that means that that child can't start school until after may 5th so we have partnered with original dna health services we run a clinic every month so for like next monday they will send in their social worker hearing site registered nurses they do all the pre-physical part and then on wednesday the doctor will be there we'll actually do a physical with the children he she will dr saunders absolutely wonderful she will sign off on what vaccines they need the social worker will again meet with the family if there's any other resources that they need they fill out that entire blue form front and back we have it's kind of like like this machine work you know you do this and then you move to here you move to here we have translators in each
069section and so the families get their whole physical um and we've been doing not only our school-aged children but some of our babies too because we've got a lot of three to five year olds that aren't getting physicals like they should be and they're just not up on their vaccines so thank you to uh rachel viennel next one is our family leadership training institute that is the other big parent training here in danbury it's run out of families network of western connecticut on main street that's a 20-week course i know many of you have been through that course as well and some of our 21st century funding helps support that program that five percent set aside that was talked about okay uconn fairfield county extension service comes in through our 21st century program buys meals
070for the families and then through this pandemic we haven't been able to do the cooking on site they do a zoo meeting and talk to parents about healthy meal preparation and it's really they're really cultural or culturally responsive because they add in all these different foods that families like but they're showing them how to prepare meals that don't have a lot of fat don't have a lot of sugar and really you know fulfill the vegetables and the fruits so fairfield county extension service that's part of our yukon program last week we found out through the stop and shop charities that we've been working with that broadview established rogers park in haystown food pantries will share a 20 000 rent from stop and shop for their food pantries so by the amount of students in your
071school they'll receive gift cards for those families to be able to go shopping and stop and shop so those families that are identified as foodborne we are starting to see unfortunately the need for food to go and back up it's really sad last week we're also notified too through the connecticut master gardener association that we've been granted funding for our summer pollinator vegetable and flower garden at great prince school and so that will be started with our elp students towards the end of the school year and then manage the entire summer with our sensational summer program and then back to our eop in the afternoon it'll be in their courtyard and it'll just look fabulous and principal smith is really really excited about um this is another partnership that we have through the state connecticut
072was one of the 11 states that applied out of i think probably 50 states applied to the federal government for a family school partnership grant 11 districts were chosen connecticut being one and the capital region education council administers this grant and what happens here in danbury is they are all part of this national network of partnership schools and so i work with those schools in making sure that they have more goals around this year we have uh two academic a behavior and a family engagement so for instance at mill ridge they're planning a weekend of cleaning up around the school as that engagement piece um our building we're going to be doing hopefully building some picnic tables to be able to encourage families to be outside for a place to sit for registration again the
073the true academic and the behavior or the social emotional our goals are all aimed at encouraging and supporting better student success in school lastly we're coming to the end here we have been so fortunate to have been especially during the pandemic work with the connecticut food bank trump and beaumont ingelheim they did uh great food at the bottom picture there is the bi folks we would begin part of the pandemic go every day pick up food and then we would go to the federal housing sites in denver and just and deliver meals boeing or stays sandwich is supporting us as we start to move forward in our new endeavors in danbury next one is the moore street youth program through our family resource center they just received a nice grant to do more youth development
074and theater work out there through sde of course david library jammer youth services and united way all support um the programs in one way or the other through services we don't see usually cash through them but it's referrals and its services that we we partner with them and our last slide this is our newest program that we are proud to be rolling out we constantly hear from our families we don't understand this u.s school system back before we moved out of osborne street we registered a look with family through boys from the congo they came out they got registered we knew that we thought they were all set they came back about three weeks later and they said their laptop students no idea what power school was no idea how to get into the computers
075what was a computer they just never what's google right they just had no idea and so based on parents saying we need supportiveness we have been able to partner with the harvard graduate school of education on massachusetts we have three of their senior graduate students working on this program funded by lindy corporation that is in the process of developing two different modules the first module is really technical what does it mean to get into google how do you get into google how do you navigate these computers how do you get into power school what does power school mean to you how do you use parent square in all of that the second module will be more fit based on the learning of students and we will be out getting clips done from the first grade
076math specialist that then will go up into the module in different languages so parents can click on these modules and find out that you know they're a first grader they need help in math but they could click on that and be able to get that help that they need um we're fortunate with these harvard students they're doing it this work as part of their project we do have a focus group on a thursday night seven o'clock so if you're interested we can send a link out to that if you want to hear about families responding to them we've also done a survey out to our new families too that have just recently come to the district on what what help do you need and so we're hoping that a program like this will level set
077the parent knowledge before they even start schools and end as they start schools so that they're off and running and really successful so i think that's the last one any questions thoughts yeah nice to see you again great job great job as always can you send the copy i'm assuming i didn't get it yes i will send all of you [Music] one meeting i'll get it out too because i feel like you will get nothing interesting i can't spring a presentation i'm just saying in general you gotta get a week before to ask some questions right and you know that hardware is always open to come down and see us pick up the packet from our welcoming schools uh work that we did the principal said you know could we put a sheet in for
078our schools in the packet so principals and school secretaries are working on their sheet we sent them a template and said please fill this out tell us a couple things about your school who's the key folks that people need to know and so um that's out there so when somebody comes in no care comes in to register a child says i've got one broadview one at whatever school we'll say here's your pack and here's your sheet from broadview damn very high and whatever yeah yeah yeah great thank you very much thank you thank you dr me grace molina thank you both of you alicia and board chair celeste that concludes the supervisor um before chairperson's report i don't have anything really except to say welcome to our new member ralph education um welcome back i
079should say are there any other board communications comments questions i just need to give a shout out to my friend chapel for his success with the voice for change program he would be very upset if i didn't mention that congrats thank you anybody else any updates comments questions and i wish i knew secretary wallen's success thank you terry for stopping by do you need you need my part canvas you're good tonight probably okay there's a quiz only for you rob just kidding well don't start extending the length of our meetings we heard we said it a week before so you can ask questions baseball practice